I have seen the enemy and it's Jewish housing

Tom Gross

Subject: Obama: I have seen the enemy and it's Jewish housing

* Greg Sheridan, the Foreign Editor of Australia's most respected countrywide newspaper: "Obama's anti-Israel jihad is one of the most irresponsible policy lurches by any modern American president. It rightly earns Obama the epithet of the U.S. president least sympathetic to Israel in Israel's history."

* "You might even conclude that Obama is trying to interfere in internal Israeli politics and bring down a government. This is something post-colonial, post-multicultural Obama would never do with Iran, but with Israel, the U.S.'s longstanding ally, it's fine." * "And what was Netanyahu's crime, this act of infamy that Obama's senior staff described as an "affront" to America? Building homes in a Jewish neighborhood five minutes from the Knesset that everyone had already acknowledged would remain part of Israel."

* "Beating up on Israel is the cheapest trick in the book and can earn Obama easy, worthless and no doubt temporary plaudits in some parts of the Muslim world."

* The Australian: "Accompanying Obama's own actions has been some of the most dangerous rhetoric ever to come out of a U.S. administration, to the effect that Israeli intransigence endangers U.S. troops by inflaming extremists in the Islamic world. No serious analyst anywhere believes that Israel is an important source of the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq. Using this type of argument comes dangerously close to the administration licensing a mutant strain of anti-Semitism - it's all the Jews' fault."

* "Point is, Mr President, we're a nice little liberal democracy, with women's rights and gay rights, and Arab Israelis and black Israelis in parliament, and welfare and universal health care. Even when we go to war we don't just carpet bomb our enemies, like your hero Franklin Roosevelt did to the innocent civilians of Dresden and Tokyo. I don't get why we rate most-hated-nation status from all those so-called progressives wearing your face on their T-shirts."

* "Why does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem so intractable? Why do we hear the same ideas over and over again, even though they never work? Why do Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton think there can never be Jews living in a future Palestine?"

(This dispatch can also be read here: www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001102.html )

(Just for clarification, the title of this dispatch - Obama: I have seen the enemy and it's Jewish housing - is a little joke of mine; it is not something the president actually said.)

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CONTENTS

1. The Australian: "So why has Obama gone into full jihad mode against Israel?"
2. Why does peace with the Palestinians, require ethnic cleansing of Jews?
3. Israel doesn't want to be pre-WW1 Belgium, relying on phony guarantees of neutrality
4. "Arab countries have benefited disproportionately from the exchange of populations"
5. George Mitchell on Jerusalem and Manhattan (January 2010)
6. "Obama's anti-Israeli hysteria dangerous and destructive" (By Greg Sheridan, The Australian)
7. "Let my people stay" (by David Suissa, Huffington Post)
8. "The Netanyahu Diaries" (by Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal)
9. "How about an Arab 'settlement' freeze?" (by Ruth Wisse, Wall Street Journal)

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[Note by Tom Gross]

This is the third part of a three-part dispatch. The other parts, titled "The fall-out between America and Israel is a serious threat to world peace" and "A paper peace, or a real and lasting peace?" can be read here: www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001100.html and www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001101.html .

I attach four articles below, with extracts first for those who don't have time to read them in full.

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EXTRACTS

THE AUSTRALIAN: SO WHY HAS OBAMA GONE INTO FULL JIHAD MODE AGAINST ISRAEL?

Greg Sheridan, the Foreign Editor of Australia's most respected countrywide newspaper, The Australian (a paper for which I sometimes write op-eds), writes:

Barack Obama's anti-Israel jihad is one of the most irresponsible policy lurches by any modern American president. It rightly earns Obama the epithet of the U.S. president least sympathetic to Israel in Israel's history. Jimmy Carter became a great hater of Israel, but only after he left office.

Obama's dangerous new lurch into anti-Israel populism changes global politics in extremely dangerous ways...

When Obama met the king of Saudi Arabia, a nation in which no one votes, women are subject to severe and demeaning restrictions and it is against the law to have a Christian church, Obama bowed in deep respect.

When Obama ran into Venezuela's murderous despot, Hugo Chavez, at a summit, there was a friendly greeting observed by all.

But there is one leader whom Obama draws the line at. He will not be seen in public with Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Astonishingly, when Netanyahu saw Obama at the White House this week, all photographers and all TV cameras were banned, a level of humiliation almost completely unique in modern White House practice.

You might even conclude that Obama is trying to interfere in internal Israeli politics and bring down a government. This is something post-colonial, post-multicultural Obama would never do with Iran, but with Israel, the U.S.'s longstanding ally, it's fine...

It would be a radical change of policy for an Israeli government to decree that no building would ever take place in Jewish areas of Jerusalem. It would also be a change of American policy.

Moreover, no serious analyst could believe that such building is a roadblock to peace...

So why has Obama gone into full jihad mode against Israel? Three explanations suggest themselves. Obama has had a terrible year in foreign policy. He has achieved nothing on Iran or China or anything else of consequence... And Obama is showing that his personal popularity, not America's standing, still less matters of substance such as Iran's nuclear program, is what motivates him...

Beating up on Israel is the cheapest trick in the book on that score and it can earn him easy, worthless and no doubt temporary plaudits in some parts of the Muslim world...

The anti-Israel hysteria is totally disproportionate and wildly over the top. The British decision to expel an Israeli diplomat because Israel is alleged to have used forged British passports in a Mossad operation is a case in point...

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WHY DOES PEACE WITH PALESTINIANS, REQUIRE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF JEWS?

David Suissa writes on The Huffington Post:

Why does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem so intractable? Why do we hear the same ideas over and over again, even though they never work?

At her AIPAC speech this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of the need to find "a new path" to the two-state solution. But nowhere in her speech did she actually challenge a key tenet of the current path: We can never have Jews living in Palestine.

She's not alone. For decades now, the world's most brilliant political minds have worked with this same unimaginative and racist assumption: To have peace with the Palestinians, we must have ethnic cleansing of the Jews.

As a result, a peace vocabulary has developed that suggests anything but peace: words like "freezing" and "dismantling" rather than "warming" and "creating." The Jews themselves who live in the areas of a future Palestinian state have been globally demonized as the biggest obstacle to peace.

Sure, there may be terrorist entities like Hamas and Hizbullah that are sworn enemies of any peace agreement, but as far as the world is concerned, the soccer moms in Ariel and Efrat are bigger obstacles to peace.

Never mind that when Israel tried to cleanse Gaza of all Jews a few years ago, it got rewarded not with peace and quiet but with a few thousand rockets.

... But what if the peace processors took a different view of these settlements and saw them not as obstacles to peace but as potential contributors to Palestinian society? What if, instead of forcing Jewish settlers to leave as part of a peace agreement, they were invited to stay?

In all these failed peace meetings over the years, has anyone considered that a Jewish minority in a future Palestine may actually be a good thing?* That it would encourage mutual dependency and co-existence and democracy - and help the Palestinian economy? ...


[* Tom Gross adds: I have done so on several occasions over the years. For the sake of the democratic and liberal well-being of both Israel and Palestine, and for a two-state solution to be viable, both states must be able to countenance each other's minorities within their borders. It was a huge mistake to not allow a single Jew to live in Gaza - not just for the sake of Gaza's Jews who were forcibly removed in 2005, but for the sake of Palestinian society. A society that cannot countenance and protect a minority within its borders is unlikely to be a tolerant society for its own people, as we have seen repeatedly in Gaza since 2005.]

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"WE DON'T WANT TO WIND UP LIKE BELGIUM BEFORE WWI, RELYING ON PHONY GUARANTEES OF NEUTRALITY"

Bret Stephens writes in The Wall Street Journal (in a piece written before Obama's latest insults to Netanyahu at the White House):

The following note was discovered aboard the plane that brought Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington yesterday. It appears to be the Israeli prime minister's personal talking points - with deletions in brackets - for his meeting today with President Obama. Handwriting experts are unable to confirm the note's authenticity.

Good to see you again, Mr. President. And congratulations on your big health care victory! Well done, Mr. President, on your historic achievement. As you probably know, we Israelis have a similar system, and it has worked out pretty well for decades [though our doctors don't labor under ruinous medmal premiums and the constant threat of tort bar annihilation and also we're a tiny country with a huge tax burden that drives one in nine people, including many doctors, to live abroad.] ...

Point is, we're a nice little liberal democracy, with women's rights and gay rights, and Arab Israelis and black Israelis in parliament, and welfare and universal health care. Even when we go to war we don't just carpet bomb our enemies, [like your hero Franklin Roosevelt did to the innocent civilians of Dresden and Tokyo]. I don't get why we rate most-hated-nation status from all those so-called progressives [wearing your face on their tee-shirts].

But on to more pressing matters... Mr. President: Most Israelis don't trust you, the way they trusted George W. Bush or [even] Bill Clinton. And let me tell you why that's a problem.

When my predecessor Arik Sharon pulled out of Gaza, he didn't do so through negotiations with the Palestinians. Those negotiations fail time and again, in part because the Palestinians figure they can hold out for more, in part because they're cutting their own deals with Hamas.

So what Sharon did was negotiate with you, the United States. And what he got was a promise, in writing, that the U.S. would not insist on a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines in any final settlement agreement.

My problem is that Hillary disavowed that promise last year, and you did so again by treating a neighborhood in Jerusalem as a "settlement." So when you pledge your commitment to Israel's everlasting security, how can we take your word for it, or know that your successor won't also renege? We don't want to wind up like Belgium before World War I, relying on phony guarantees of neutrality...

Let's make a deal, Mr. President: Our settlements for your bombers. We can't fully destroy Iran's nuclear sites - but you can. You can't dismantle our settlements - but we can. We'll all come out the better for it, including the Palestinians. Think about it, Barack.

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"ARAB COUNTRIES HAVE BENEFITED DISPROPORTIONATELY FROM THE EXCHANGE OF POPULATIONS"

Ruth Wisse (who like Bret Stephens is also a subscriber to this email list) writes in The Wall Street Journal:

... Of the children of Abraham, the descendants of Ishmael currently occupy at least 800 times more land than descendants of Isaac. The 21 states of the Arab League routinely announce plans of building expansion. Saudi Arabia estimates that 555,000 housing units were built over the past several years. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced during a meeting in Baghdad last year that "Some 10,000 units will be built in each province [of Iraq] with 100 square meters per unit" to accommodate citizens whose housing needs have not been met for a long time. Egypt has established 10 new cities since 1996. They are Tenth of Ramadan, Sixth of October, Al Sadat, Al Shurouq, Al Obour, New Damietta, New Beni Sueif, New Assiut, New Luxor, and New Cairo.

In 2006 the Syrian Prime Minister, Mohammad Naji Atri, announced a new five-year development plan that aims to supply 687,000 housing units. Kuwait expects to have a demand for approximately 100,000 private housing units by 2010. Last year Jordan's King Abdullah launched a National Housing Initiative, which aims to build 120,000 properties for low-income Jordanians.

Arab populations grow. And neighborhoods expand to house them. What's more, Arab countries benefited disproportionately from the exchange of populations between Jews and Arabs that resulted from the Arab wars against Israel. Since 1948 upward of 800,000 Jews abandoned their homes and forfeited their goods in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Yemen. In addition to assets valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, the property deeds of Jews from Arab lands is estimated at a total area of 100,000 square miles, which is five times the size of the state of Israel, and more than Israel would include even if it were to stretch over all the disputed territories of the West Bank...

The same White House raised no objection when Jordan recently began systematically stripping citizenship from thousands of its Palestinian citizens rather than providing new housing units for them in a land much larger than Israel.

[Extracts above prepared by Tom Gross]

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(This is an additional note)

GEORGE MITCHELL ON JERUSALEM AND MANHATTAN (JANUARY 2010)

One example of how two-faced the Obama administration has been to the Netanyahu government is this American TV interview George Mitchell gave in January 2010, where he indicates he has no problem with the Israelis building in Jerusalem. He explains that for Israelis building in Jerusalem is like Americans building in Manhattan:

GEORGE MITCHELL: Now, the others don't see it that way. So you have these widely divergent perspectives on the subject. Our view is let's get into negotiations. Let's deal with the issues and come up with the solution to all of them including Jerusalem which will be exceedingly difficult but, in my judgment, possible. The Israelis are not going to stop settlements in, or construction in East Jerusalem. They don't regard that as a settlement because they think it's part of Israel...

CHARLIE ROSE: So you're going to let them go ahead even though no one recognizes the annexation?

MITCHELL: You say "Let them go ahead." It's what they regard as their country. They don't say they're letting us go ahead when we build in Manhattan.

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FULL ARTICLES

OBAMA'S ANTI-ISRAELI HYSTERIA DANGEROUS AND DESTRUCTIVE

Obama's anti-Israeli hysteria dangerous and destructive
By Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor
The Australian
March 27, 2010

www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/obamas-anti-israeli-hysteria-dangerous-and-destructive/story-e6frg6zo-1225846153221

BARACK Obama's anti-Israel jihad is one of the most irresponsible policy lurches by any modern American president. It rightly earns Obama the epithet of the U.S. president least sympathetic to Israel in Israel's history. Jimmy Carter became a great hater of Israel, but only after he left office.

Obama's dangerous new lurch into anti-Israel populism changes global politics in extremely dangerous ways, and poses a challenge for Kevin Rudd.

Perhaps Obama's most distinctive contribution to the foreign policy debate in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election was his avowed determination to talk to and engage the U.S.'s enemies if he became president. He was happy in principle to talk to Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but did not know for sure that the Iranian president wielded real power. But he sent all manner of felicitations and greetings to Iran and its government. When that government stole an election on Ahmadinejad's behalf and viciously brutalised its citizens, Obama refrained from speaking too much or too forcefully, as, he said, he didn't want to be seen to be interfering in Iranian internal affairs.

When Obama met the king of Saudi Arabia, a nation in which no one votes, women are subject to severe and demeaning restrictions and it is against the law to have a Christian church, Obama bowed in deep respect.

When Obama ran into Venezuela's murderous despot, Hugo Chavez, at a summit, there was a friendly greeting observed by all.

But there is one leader whom Obama draws the line at. He will not be seen in public with Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Astonishingly, when Netanyahu saw Obama at the White House this week, all photographers and all TV cameras were banned, a level of humiliation almost completely unique in modern White House practice.

You might even conclude that Obama is trying to interfere in internal Israeli politics and bring down a government. This is something post-colonial, post-multicultural Obama would never do with Iran, but with Israel, the U.S.'s longstanding ally, it's fine. And what was Netanyahu's crime, this act of infamy that Obama's senior staff described as an "affront" to America? It was that the relevant housing authority passed another stage of approval for 1600 Israeli housing units to be built in East Jerusalem in about three years' time. It was very foolish that the Israelis allowed this announcement to take place while U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden was in Israel. But they apologised to Biden at the time, Biden kissed and made up with the Israelis and was back to delivering fulsome pro-Israel speeches before he left.

After that point, though, the U.S. reaction went into overdrive. Impeccable American sources tell me this reaction was driven by Obama, and to a lesser extent the Chicago mafia around him.

We must ask why this is so, but first let's get Netanyahu's infamous crime into perspective.

Last November Netanyahu announced a 10-month moratorium on all building activity in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Israel has already promised not to take any more land for settlements but there is the question of renovating existing buildings and constructing new ones in existing settlements.

As Hillary Clinton acknowledged in her speech this week to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, East Jerusalem was never part of this agreement. The two main peace offers Israel has made to the Palestinians in recent years were the Camp David/Taba proposals and the accompanying Clinton parameters in 2000, and Ehud Olmert's offer to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. Both plans offered essentially the same formula. The Palestinians get all of the Gaza Strip, about 95 per cent of the West Bank and a compensating parcel of territory from Israel proper to make up for the small amount of territory in the West Bank that Israel would keep which houses the main Jewish population blocks. The Palestinians also get some parts of East Jerusalem as their capital. This principle of territorial swaps was accepted by Yasser Arafat and Abbas.

East Jerusalem has always had a different status from the West Bank and some Israelis certainly don't want to give any of it to a new Palestinian state. But everyone accepts that some Jewish neighbourhoods would remain part of Israel. These are mostly neighbourhoods, as Netanyahu pointed out this week, which are five minutes from the Knesset and a couple of blocks beyond the 1949 armistice line. The administration of George W. Bush had formally agreed with the Israelis that these areas would be permanently part of Israel. Bill Clinton had negotiated an offer to the Palestinians in 2000 which accepted this.

It would be a radical change of policy for an Israeli government to decree that no building would ever take place in Jewish areas of Jerusalem. It would also be a change of American policy.

Moreover, no serious analyst could believe that such building is a roadblock to peace. Peace negotiations have gone on with such building taking place in the past. And all the things that truly make peace impossible - Arab and Palestinian refusal to accept the legitimacy of any Jewish state, Palestinian insistence on certain deal breakers such as the right of return of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel proper, the insistent and violent anti-Semitism of Palestinian and Arab propaganda and the regional ambitions of players such as Iran and Syria - will be completely unaffected by any decision to build apartments in a Jewish neighbourhood in East Jerusalem in three years time.

So why has Obama gone into full jihad mode against Israel? Three explanations suggest themselves. Obama has had a terrible year in foreign policy. He has achieved nothing on Iran or China or anything else of consequence. He is too smart to believe this intimidation of Israel will advance peace, but it might get peace talks going again. The Palestinians only made settlements a roadblock after Obama did. They are refusing to join Israel in peace talks, which Netanyahu would be happy to participate in. They have said they might engage in proximity talks - which means not talking to the Israelis directly but to mediators who will shuttle back and forth carrying messages between them and the Israelis. This is primitive and ridiculous stuff, but if such talks get going Obama could claim some kind of victory, or at least progress.

And Obama is showing that his personal popularity, not America's standing, still less matters of substance such as Iran's nuclear program, is what motivates him.

This leads to the second explanation of his behaviour, and that is to make himself personally popular in the Muslim world. Beating up on Israel is the cheapest trick in the book on that score and it can earn him easy, worthless and no doubt temporary plaudits in some parts of the Muslim world.

And thirdly, Obama is the first post-multicultural president of America. In his autobiography he talks of seeking out the most radical political theorists he could at university. For these people Israel is an exercise in Western neo-imperialism. Obama makes their hearts sing with this anti-Israel jihad.

Accompanying Obama's own actions has been some of the most dangerous rhetoric ever to come out of a U.S. administration, to the effect that Israeli intransigence endangers U.S. troops by inflaming extremists in the Islamic world. No serious analyst anywhere believes that Israel is an important source of the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq. Using this type of argument comes dangerously close to the administration licensing a mutant strain of anti-Semitism - it's all the Jews' fault. Why is all this a challenge for Rudd?

The anti-Israel hysteria is totally disproportionate and wildly over the top. The British decision to expel an Israeli diplomat because Israel is alleged to have used forged British passports in a Mossad operation is a case in point.

The British precedent pressures Rudd to do the same. Rudd should resist this pressure, as Opposition leader Tony Abbott has urged him to. 2010 is a critical year for the Middle East. Israel's friends now should rally round it, or the spectre of wild and hysterical anti-Israel sentiment will be unleashed with all manner of destructive consequences.

Now is the time for anyone who cares about Middle East peace, or who claims as Rudd does to care about Israel, to stick close to Jerusalem. The Australian Federal Police inquiry will not be conclusive about whether Israel used Australian passports or not. Obama wants to be popular. Gordon Brown wants Muslim votes and to distract attention from the latest scandals of his government. Rudd could be tempted to bash Israel as a way of courting Arab League votes at the UN. But the path of statesmanship here does not lie in apeing these foolish American and British moves.

There would also be a gruesome comparison in the way Australia responds to big as to small nations. China imprisons one of our citizens, denies consular access to most of the trial and treats Canberra with contempt. In return Rudd changes policy and declines to see the Dalai Lama and similarly declines to send an Australian minister to Taiwan in the entire course of the government's parliamentary term.

Yet Israel, our close friend, is alleged to misuse a passport and then gets the very big diplomatic penalty of having a diplomat expelled. It would be disproportionate and foolish and cowardly.

The Americans and Brits don't always get things right. There are times when Canberra should definitely not follow their lead.

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WHY DO WE HEAR THE SAME IDEAS OVER AND OVER AGAIN, EVEN THOUGH THEY NEVER WORK?

Let my people stay
By David Suissa
Huffington Post
March 24, 2010

www.huffingtonpost.com/david-suissa/let-my-people-stay_b_511936.html

Why does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem so intractable? Why do we hear the same ideas over and over again, even though they never work?

At her AIPAC speech this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of the need to find "a new path" to the two-state solution. But nowhere in her speech did she actually challenge a key tenet of the current path: We can never have Jews living in Palestine.

She's not alone. For decades now, the world's most brilliant political minds have worked with this same unimaginative and racist assumption: To have peace with the Palestinians, we must have ethnic cleansing of the Jews.

As a result, a peace vocabulary has developed that suggests anything but peace: words like "freezing" and "dismantling" rather than "warming" and "creating." The Jews themselves who live in the areas of a future Palestinian state have been globally demonized as the biggest obstacle to peace.

Sure, there may be terrorist entities like Hamas and Hezbollah that are sworn enemies of any peace agreement, but as far as the world is concerned, the soccer moms in Ariel and Efrat are bigger obstacles to peace.

Never mind that when Israel tried to cleanse Gaza of all Jews a few years ago, it got rewarded not with peace and quiet but with a few thousand rockets.

It's gotten so absurd, that the headlines around the world two weeks ago weren't about the terrorist rockets flying into Israel, but about interim zoning permits for apartments in East Jerusalem. Had those apartments been for Buddhists or Hindus or Hare Krishnas, no one would have flinched. But they were for Jews, which makes them obstacles to peace.

The Obama administration's obsession with freezing Jewish settlements - including Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem - has further demonized the settlements, made the Palestinians even more intransigent and pretty much frozen the peace process.

But what if the peace processors took a different view of these settlements and saw them not as obstacles to peace but as potential contributors to Palestinian society? What if, instead of forcing Jewish settlers to leave as part of a peace agreement, they were invited to stay?

In all these failed peace meetings over the years, has anyone considered that a Jewish minority in a future Palestine may actually be a good thing? That it would encourage mutual dependency and co-existence and democracy - and help the Palestinian economy? And that for Israel, it'd be good to have Jewish representatives in a Palestinian parliament - just like we have supporters in Diaspora communities throughout the world?

I know what you're thinking: How naive of you, Suissa! How many Jews would want to be part of a Palestinian state? Who would protect them? It'll never work!

To which I reply: Maybe you're right! But nothing else has worked, so why not shake things up and try something new? Let's poll the Jews of the West Bank who'd be most likely to be evacuated and see how many would be interested in staying in a future Palestine, and under what conditions. Dual citizenship? Security guarantees? Equal voting rights? These are great questions for peace talks.

Even if you're a cynic who believes peace with the Palestinians is impossible in our lifetime, pushing for the right of settlers to stay in a future Palestine is a game changer. It disarms critics who claim that settlements are the main obstacle to peace and shines a light on fundamental issues, like whether the Palestinians are willing or even able to deliver peace, and how they would protect a Jewish minority in their midst.

Just like Soviet Jewry was about the Jews' "right to leave," this new cause is about the Jews' "right to stay." And if the world ends up opposing the idea, well, we'll finally have our PR homerun: An international movement fighting for "Human Rights for Palestinian Jews!" Our mantra: The Jews of Palestine deserve the same rights as the Muslims of Israel.

If you're not a cynic but a hopeless romantic who believes in the power of co-existence, you should have been with me the other night at the Levantine Cultural Center, a storefront salon on Pico Boulevard co-founded four years ago by local activist Jordan Elgrably to foster harmony between all peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. The guest speaker was author and journalist Rachel Shabi, who was talking about her new book, "We Look Like the Enemy: the Hidden Story of Israel's Jews From Arab Lands."

Shabi, a Jew of Iraqi descent who grew up in London and now lives in Tel Aviv, has had a lifelong fascination with the story of Jews who come from Arab lands like Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Algeria and Tunisia.

As she spoke about the long and complicated journey of these Jews of Arabia, she didn't sugarcoat their struggles, but you could feel her passion for the golden moments and possibilities of cultural co-existence.

Stuck between my cynical and romantic sides, and perhaps caught up in the moment, I couldn't help wondering whether there might be, one day, a Palestinian chapter to this Jewish-Arab odyssey - a chapter that wouldn't be about Jews being kicked out, but about Jews being asked to stay.

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WHAT ISRAEL'S PRIME MINISTER REALLY THINKS

The Netanyahu Diaries
What Israel's prime minister really thinks
By Bret Stephens
The Wall Street Journal
March 23, 2010

[Note - This was written before Obama's latest insults to neat at the White House]

The following note was discovered aboard the plane that brought Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington yesterday. It appears to be the Israeli prime minister's personal talking points - with deletions in brackets - for his meeting today with President Obama. Handwriting experts are unable to confirm the note's authenticity.

Good to see you again, Mr. President. [And thanks for not having me skulk out the side door like the last time I was here].

And congratulations on your big health care victory! Well done, Mr. President, on your historic achievement. As you probably know, we Israelis have a similar system, and it has worked out pretty well for decades [though our doctors don't labor under ruinous medmal premiums and the constant threat of tort bar annihilation and also we're a tiny country with a huge tax burden that drives one in nine people, including many doctors, to live abroad.]

Point is, we're a nice little liberal democracy, with women's rights and gay rights, and Arab Israelis and black Israelis in parliament, and welfare and universal health care. Even when we go to war we don't just carpet bomb our enemies, [like your hero Franklin Roosevelt did to the innocent civilians of Dresden and Tokyo ]. I don't get why we rate most-hated-nation status from all those so-called progressives [wearing your face on their tee-shirts].

[Question to self: Why are the same people who erupt at the thought of prayer in school so often more in sympathy with Hamas in Gaza than with us?]

But on to more pressing matters. We've had a bad few weeks, your administration and mine. I'm glad we can talk them over face-to-face. As Hillary told me the other day [isn't she a charmer?], it takes a true friend to tell the hard truth. I'm sure you'll agree that in our friendship that works both ways.

I know that, from your part, you think the hard truth is that we've got to get out of the settlements. You don't have to sell me on that score. I've said repeatedly that we don't want to rule over the Palestinians; I'm all for a two-state solution in theory. It's the practice of it that's got me concerned. In fact, it's what got me elected.

So here's the first hard truth: Just as you've got your Ben Nelsons and Bart Stupaks, I've got my Avigdor Lieberman ultra-nationalists and Eli Yishai ultra-Orthodox. Some of them have ideological red lines; some of them just want stuff. That's how politics works. So what's my Cornhusker kickback, or my executive order on abortion funding? I'd welcome your ideas; [you're obviously good at this].

This brings me to the second hard truth, Mr. President: Most Israelis don't trust you, the way they trusted George W. Bush or [even] Bill Clinton. And let me tell you why that's a problem.

When my predecessor Arik Sharon pulled out of Gaza, he didn't do so through negotiations with the Palestinians. Those negotiations fail time and again, in part because the Palestinians figure they can hold out for more, in part because they're cutting their own deals with Hamas.

So what Sharon did was negotiate with you, the United States. And what he got was a promise, in writing, that the U.S. would not insist on a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines in any final settlement agreement.

My problem is that Hillary disavowed that promise last year, and you did so again by treating a neighborhood in Jerusalem as a "settlement." So when you pledge your commitment to Israel's everlasting security, how can we take your word for it, or know that your successor won't also renege? We don't want to wind up like Belgium before World War I, relying on phony guarantees of neutrality.

Mr. President, you need to start building some serious trust with Israelis if you mean to give me the political tools to negotiate with the Palestinians. Honestly, you didn't help yourself by ratcheting up the rhetoric against us the way you did. If your purpose was to show the Palestinians that you're going to play hardball with us, all you did was give them a reason to be even more uncompromising than before. And if your purpose was to try to drive me from office, it didn't work either: To Israelis, you came across not as anti-Bibi, but as anti-Israel.

But the hardest truth is that Israelis are losing faith that you'll do whatever it takes to stop Iran's nuclear bid. The sanctions you promise keep getting delayed and watered down. Hillary gave a fine speech at AIPAC yesterday, but we all know that you're already planning on containing a nuclear Iran. That's not acceptable to me.

Let's make a deal, Mr. President: Our settlements for your bombers. We can't fully destroy Iran's nuclear sites - but you can. You can't dismantle our settlements - but we can. We'll all come out the better for it, including the Palestinians. Think about it, Barack.

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HOW ABOUT AN ARAB 'SETTLEMENT' FREEZE?

How about an Arab 'settlement' freeze?
Why are 21 countries with 800 times more land so obsessed with Israel?
By Ruth Wisse
The Wall Street Journal
March 17, 2010

When she is surrounded by a swirl of conversation she cannot understand, my two-year-old granddaughter turns to me expectantly: "What they talking about, Bubbe?" Right now, I would have to confess to her that the hubbub over 1,600 new housing units in Jerusalem defies rational explanation.

Of the children of Abraham, the descendants of Ishmael currently occupy at least 800 times more land than descendants of Isaac. The 21 states of the Arab League routinely announce plans of building expansion. Saudi Arabia estimates that 555,000 housing units were built over the past several years. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced during a meeting in Baghdad last year that "Some 10,000 units will be built in each province [of Iraq] with 100 square meters per unit" to accommodate citizens whose housing needs have not been met for a long time. Egypt has established 10 new cities since 1996. They are Tenth of Ramadan, Sixth of October, Al Sadat, Al Shurouq, Al Obour, New Damietta, New Beni Sueif, New Assiut, New Luxor, and New Cairo.

In 2006 the Syrian Prime Minister, Mohammad Naji Atri, announced a new five-year development plan that aims to supply 687,000 housing units. Kuwait expects to have a demand for approximately 100,000 private housing units by 2010. Last year Jordan's King Abdullah launched a National Housing Initiative, which aims to build 120,000 properties for low-income Jordanians.

Arab populations grow. And neighborhoods expand to house them. What's more, Arab countries benefited disproportionately from the exchange of populations between Jews and Arabs that resulted from the Arab wars against Israel. Since 1948 upward of 800,000 Jews abandoned their homes and forfeited their goods in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Yemen. In addition to assets valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, the property deeds of Jews from Arab lands is estimated at a total area of 100,000 square miles, which is five times the size of the state of Israel, and more than Israel would include even if it were to stretch over all the disputed territories of the West Bank.

These preposterous disparities are a result of contrasting political cultures. The Arab League was founded at the same time as Israel with the express aim of undoing the Jewish state's existence. Although much has changed over the ensuing decades, opposition to the Jewish state remains the strongest unifying tool of inter-Arab and Arab-Muslim politics. Trying to eliminate the Jews rather than compete with them has never benefited nations.

It is unfortunate that Arabs obsess about building in Israel rather than aiming for the development of their own superabundant lands. But why should America encourage their hegemonic ambitions? In December the White House issued a statement opposing "new construction in East Jerusalem" without delineating where or what East Jerusalem is.

Ramat Shlomo, the neighborhood at the center of the present altercation, is actually in northern Jerusalem, west of the Jewish neighborhoods of Ramot, home to 40,000 Jewish residents. Why does the White House take issue with the construction of housing for Jewish citizens within the boundaries of their own country? The same White House raised no objection when Jordan recently began systematically stripping citizenship from thousands of its Palestinian citizens rather than providing new housing units for them in a land much larger than Israel.

Perhaps Israel has been at fault for not doggedly insisting on unconditional acceptance of its sovereign existence, and for not demanding that Arab rulers adhere to the U.N. Charter's guarantee of "equal rights of... nations large and small." Preposterous as they would have thought it, perhaps Israelis ought to have called for a freeze on Arab settlements to correspond to unreasonable Arab demands on them.

Any peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict will begin with a hard look at the map of the region in which 21 countries with 800 times more land are consumed with their Jewish neighbors' natural increase.

Guest Comment:Great Medley

Why does peace with the Arabstinians aka Palestinians requires ethnic cleansing of Jews?

The enemy of the USA is Jewish housing...it is Jews In Israel

Obama is trying to interfere in internal Israeli politics and bring down a government. This is post-colonial, post-multicultural Obama would never dare do with Iran, Syria or Lebanon, but with Israel, the U.S.'s longstanding ally, it appears to be fine... Beating up on Israel is the cheapest trick in the book and can earn Obama easy, worthless and no doubt temporary plaudits in some parts of the Muslim world."

Obama's rhetoric and actions has been some of the most dangerous ever to come out of a U.S. administration towards Israel. To blame that Israeli intransigence endangers U.S. troops by inflaming extremists in the Islamic world is accusation no serious analyst anywhere believes; a serious analyst will laugh at Obama and his cohorts blaming Israel that it is an important source of the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq. Using this type of argument comes dangerously close to the administration licensing a mutant strain of anti-Semitism - it's all the Jews' fault."
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Shalom,
Nurit
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