Obama on the Wrong Side of Israel Border Issue
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
May 20, 2011
Bigger than the 2012 election, the security and ultimate survival of the State of Israel are at stake thanks to an irresponsible and radical speech given by the most hostile US president Israel has encountered in its 63 years.
In his May 19 speech, Barack Obama callously called for a two-state solution where Israel would revert back to the days of its pre-1967 War borders. He may as well be seeking a “Final Solution,” that would give Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and the Muslim Brotherhood reason to dance in the streets.
Such a suggestion by Obama would shrink Israel’s “waistline” from roughly 45 miles to a mere 12 miles, creating an untenable situation with “virtually indefensible borders,” according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, adding, the airport would be in total jeopardy.
Obama and anyone else supporting such an outlandish notion need consult a history text pertaining to the Six Days War of 1967. A war where Israel was mercilessly attacked by the quartet of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria. Israel fought back, rightfully defending herself, and in the process garnering the lands of Gaza, the Golan Heights and the West Bank.
When you win, you win, was an oft-quoted comment from the late Rabbi Meir Kahane (1932-90). Kahane was also correct when saying one does not return land won in war – especially a war started by ones enemies, as in the case of 1967.
Adding insult to injury, Obama expects Israel to surrender land for a guarantee of nothing in return, a plan criticized by legal scholar Alan Dershowitz. This is a “one-sided insistence that Israel surrender territories without the Palestinians giving up the right of return,” said Dershowitz, adding, “the president’s speech gave no cause for optimism.”
Not unless that optimism is being felt by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian Authority, who have in their various charters calls for the destruction of the Jewish State and the death of the Jewish people. With these extreme beliefs, no amount of surrendered land can ever placate an enemy with such genocidal goals.
Land for potential peace is a farce at best. Stand on your head if you think Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood or the Palestinian Authority can be trusted. Clearly history has demonstrated there is no precedence for such trust. Once land is gone, it is gone, yet peace is fleeting at best and ever so tenuous if ever achievable when dealing with such volatile combatants.
Further, a two-state solution is no solution, but instead, a reward for generations of terrorism, murder, and the systematic teaching of lies to future generations of Israel and Jew haters. Such a return to the pre-1967 borders would put East Jerusalem in the hands of the Palestinian Authority, along with the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Mount of Olives, the Temple Mount and the Room of the Last Supper – sites of religious importance to Jews and Christians.
The call for a return to the pre-1967 borders would also see the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens – Jewish, Christian and Muslim from their rightful homes. Where these major population centers are concerned, Netanyahu correctly criticized Obama for breaking its commitment to Israel made in 2004 by former President George W. Bush.
Bush rightly recognized both the existence of these population centers as well as the enormity in attempting to move those already living there. “It is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines on 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities,” Bush wrote in a letter in 2004 to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
There is absolutely nothing in Obama’s plan that Netanyahu could possibly agree to that would satisfy and secure the safety of the people of Israel. Obama has thrown Israel under the bus, as many, including potential GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney (MA) has said since the outrageous speech.
“This proposal is a slap in the face of our friends and only democracy in the Middle East,” said Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK).
This speech by Obama had better serve as a wake-up call to the Jewish community, who gave Obama 78 percent of its vote in 2008. Christian conservatives who are typically ardent supporters of Israel seem to be more outraged than many Jewish voters who will find any excuse to vote for the Democratic ticket.
Israel is the canary in the minefield of global democracies. Obama is on the wrong side of this issue and we must make him pay at the ballot box next year.
Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN. The 10 year City resident still keeps a finger on the pulse of Alexandria.
