There are two things that I would like to see friends of Israel promote this year; the first is acknowledging the futility of any possible negotiated conclusion of hostilities between Israel and Palestinian-Arabs and the second is clearly articulating that although Israel remains a close ally with much of the West, it will also, as a matter of basic common sense and national well-being, pursue mutually-beneficial relations elsewhere.
Acknowledging the Futility of a Negotiated Conclusion of Hostilities
Anyone who is not hostile to Jews should acknowledge that the effort ulimately was pointless, because the Arabs do not want a negotiated conclusion of hostilities via a two-state-solution (TSS).
2016 should be the year that we finally bury Oslo and TSS.
I was a proponent of TSS ever since Clinton stood on the White House lawn with Yitzhak Rabin and that grinning terrorist, Yasser Arafat.
But those days are long gone. It is now time for Jewish people and the Israeli government to make it exceedingly clear to our frenemies that this particular phase of the Long Arab War Against the Jews is concluded.
It is a matter of learning from the past. We tried to settle things with the Palestinian-Arabs by offering them the entirety of Gaza, something close to all of Judea and Samaria outside of Israel "proper," with the eastern section ofJerusalem as a Palestinian-Arab capital, but that is not what they want. If the Arabs felt the need for another bloody Arab-Muslim theocratic-dictatorship they could have had that long ago. They could have accepted any number of offers thatcame their way since the Peel Commission, but they did not.
Instead they chose to sacrifice their own children because they honestly believe that any bit of land that at any time came under Muslim domination must, for theocratic reasons, remain under Muslim domination. This is basic Islamic doctrine and there is little that we can do about it.
In countries where Muslims dominate they will only accept Jews and Christians as dhimmis. This should not be a controversial statement because it could not be more clear. Anyone who cares about the well-being of the Jewish people, not to mention the Christians of the Middle East, and who has followed the conflict over the previous decades knows this in their bones because the Arabs have been good teachers. They simply will not accept free Jews in the Middle East. They do not even accept Jews as a people.
From a human rights perspective Israel treats Israeli-Arabs better than Arabs treat themselves. Nonetheless, they constantly scream to the heavens that their misery is the fault of an exceedingly generous, and long persecuted, people. They even managed to convince westerners that the source of Arab misery is the Jewish state.
This is unjust in itself, but what makes it morally insidious is that these westerners frame their hatred for Jewish autonomy and independence in the language of "social justice." Western children in the universities want to claimthat they are part of the lineage represented by Martin Luther King, Jr., despite the fact the MLK, himself, was a friend of Israel and despite the fact that Israeli Jews offer more social justice to their enemies than any people have ever done throughout human history.
So the question, as always, is what is to be done?
My growing inclination has been for Israeli unilateralism. Israel should declareits final borders, remove the IDF to behind those borders, and toss the keys over its shoulder.
In any case, Ted Belman is correct.
There is no diplomatic solution.
East Asia, India, and Friends
The people of North America are generally friendly toward the State of Israel.
It is hackneyed to say so, but we do share similar values. The Israeli government and the governments of the West are democratic and liberal. The hostile Arab-Muslim dictatorships that surround Israel are not. This being the case, Israel should endeavor to maintain good diplomatic, scholarly, and economic relationships with the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Nonetheless, Israel must diversify its economic relations. Europe, for reasons that should be entirely obvious, is becoming increasingly hostile to the Jewish state. The United States is starting along a similar path, but is maybe a decadeor two behind.
Thankfully, the non-Muslim parts of the Asian Pacific Rim have no particular history of anti-Semitism. Furthermore, this is the most economically aggressive section of the world today. In the coming decades China will really flex her financial muscle, you can be sure.
Given these circumstances it is wise for Israel to look eastward.
India is increasingly friendly and that, too, is for obvious reasons. For over acentury the West has longed for China to open its markets to western goods, but that has not really happened, at least in part because China has been a poor country.
This is changing, the USA is not the only show in town, and the Israelis know it.
India is increasingly friendly and that, too, is for obvious reasons. For over acentury the West has longed for China to open its markets to western goods, but that has not really happened, at least in part because China has been a poor country.
This is changing, the USA is not the only show in town, and the Israelis know it.
Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.
