Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Who Cares What You Think, Roger Cohen?‏

My Right Word

Roger Cohen is at it, again.

In the NYTimes today, he pomposes about "My Jewish State":


...Then there is the rebounding Israel-is-a-Jewish-state bugbear: Netanyahu wants Palestinians to recognize his nation as such. He has recently called it “the real key to peace.” His argument is that this is the touchstone by which to judge whether Palestinians will accept “the Jewish state in any border” — whether, in other words, the Palestinian leadership would accept territorial compromise or is still set on reversal of 1948 and mass return to Haifa.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, says no; this “nyet” will endure. For Palestinians, such a form of recognition would amount to explicit acquiescence to second-class citizenship for the 1.6 million Arabs in Israel; undermine the rights of millions of Palestinian refugees;...

...This issue is a waste of time, a complicating diversion when none is needed....If Israel looks like a Jewish state and acts like a Jewish state, that is good enough for me — as long as it gets out of the corrosive business of occupation. Zionism, the one I identify with, forged a Jewish homeland in the name of restored Jewish pride in a democratic state of laws, not in the name of finicky insistence on a certain form of recognition, nor in the name of messianic religious Greater Israel nationalism.

Let's take one point of his:

 undermine the rights of millions of Palestinian refugees

and let's see what Arabs really think about it.

Here's President Hafez Asad back in May 1977 at the White House:



And that position has not changed for otherwise, why not accept Israel as a Jewish state?

Unless, of course, after a peace treaty is signed, it is not all that final and the 'right of return' becomes the next issue.

Cohen, you even admit:

It’s also true that Palestinians leaders, with zero democratic accountability, and through facile incitement, are not preparing their people for territorial compromise at or close to the 1967 lines.

Cohen, for a Jew, you're a failure for Israel.

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