For weeks now, those who care about Israel have been worried about what the Paris summit would portend. We were told that in Paris, impossible parameters for "peace" would be foisted upon us complete with Auschwitz borders. We were told that after Paris, Israel would be well and truly a pariah state, in complete isolation from the West. Finally, we were told that what was decided in Paris would embolden the terrorists, the knowledge of which woke up that sick feeling in the bellies of all Israelis, the flickering fear and the panic sowing visions of knives and blood and fire.
In the end, however, Paris was a big, fat, zero. It wussed out, a giant anticlimax. We wondered why we worried, lost sleep, and experienced all that fear.
It was a lot like Y2K.
But the media must still report what happened (even if not very much happened) and of course, since all the mainstream media wants to do these days is bash Trump, that figured largely in how the Paris summit was reported. The Wall Street Journal, in particular, took the Trump thread and ran with it.
Top diplomats from world powers gathered in Paris to affirm their stance on peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, days before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office threatening to upend the international consensus behind addressing the long-running conflict.
Some 75 governments and international organizations used Sunday’s meeting to send a message to Mr. Trump that the only viable solution to the conflict is the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Yeah. 'Cause that's worked so well until now.
Noting that a new administration was poised to take power in Washington, French President François Hollande said that decades of talks to create a Palestinian state can’t be “improvised or overturned.”
Wait. So because this is the way you did it for decades with the result that it didn't work, we have to keep doing it without changing a single thing? See Einstein's theory of insanity.
“This solution is the only one possible for peace and security,” Mr. Hollande said during the meeting.
But the Arabs reject this solution. And if they reject this solution, it can't be implemented. Also, just because you say it's the only solution, does not make it true. Even if you say it very firmly in front of a whole bunch of people, the representatives of 75 countries.
The conference marks another flashpoint over Israel between the international community and Mr. Trump, who has forcefully backed the Israeli government since winning the election. Mr. Trump’s team objected to the conference in talks with French diplomats ahead of the meeting, a French official involved in the discussions said.
“They made it clear that they did not think it was a good idea,” the official said. The Trump transition team couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.
Could it be that Trump thinks the Wall Street Journal is a "pile of garbage" reporting fake news and therefore refused to comment? (Heh heh.)
Mr. Trump’s moves on Middle East policy have threatened to upset the delicate balance that the U.S., Israel’s most important ally, has striven to preserve between Israel and the Palestinians. He has pledged to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a step seen by Palestinians as backing Israel’s claim on the contested city as its exclusive capital.
DING DING DING. Media bias. This is supposed to be a straight news piece, not an opinion piece. Yet right here authors Matthew Dalton and Rory Jones reveal their blatant anti-Trump bias with phrases such as "Trump's moves," "threatened," and "upset the delicate balance."
The authors' bias is based on Trump's perceived but as yet untried policy toward Israel. But actually, it is the Paris summit and not anything Trump said or did that threatened the delicate balance. That would be the "delicate balance" between war and peace in Israel on any given day.
The Arabs, we know, were watching and waiting for their cue from Paris to terrorize Israeli civilians. The more concessions made toward the Arab narrative, the greater the censure of Israel in Paris, the more likely it would be that the Arabs would respond by unleashing terror against Israeli civilians. That was the very real existential threat we were feeling in our bellies these past few weeks. Obama's final present to Israel.
And by the way, Jerusalem is not "contested." It belongs to Israel exclusively and Israel has made it clear that it will not negotiate it away. Israel is a sovereign nation and has decided that Jerusalem is her capital, and this is her (exclusive) right.
Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, on Sunday called Mr. Trump’s remarks a provocation. “A question as sensitive as Jerusalem can only be addressed in the framework of negotiations between the parties,” Mr. Ayrault told reporters after the conference.
Sorry. No. The French foreign minister does not get to decide how the "question" of Jerusalem will be addressed. Jerusalem belongs to Israel. Forever. Europe does not get to kill 6 million Jews and then tell us that our holy city is held over as some kind of "question." There is no question. There never was. Jerusalem is ours. Forever.
Mr. Trump’s pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel, his personal lawyer David Friedman, has further fueled international concern. Mr. Friedman is known for his hard-line, pro-Israel views and has provided financial backing to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are a key stumbling block in the talks.
Why does anyone call Judea and Samaria the "West Bank?" You can't see the Jordan River from anywhere in Judea and Samaria. The only body of water you can see glimpses of, and then only very rarely, on the clearest of days, is the Dead Sea. If you want to pay lip service to the lie that Israel stole its own indigenous territory from Jordan then don't talk about giving the land to a third party: one that is neither Jordan nor Israel.
The authors speak of Israeli settlements as a "key stumbling block in the talks." This is a lie. Homes are not a stumbling block to talks. Arabs and their terror are a stumbling block to talks. They refuse to sit and talk and negotiate. They refuse to stop attacking Israelis.
The stalemate on peace has nothing to do with settlements and nothing to do with homes. This is just the authors editorializing and exposing their bias anew. They're repeating themselves. Repeating the same old platitudes.
So let me spell it out for them: It's not the settlements, Stupid. It's that the Arabs don't want to wheel and deal or negotiate on any level with the Jews whatsoever. It's that Arabs don't want to talk to Jews. The Arabs don't want to recognize Israel. The Arabs don't want the Jews to have even a single inch of Israel. They want all the land, all to themselves, and they want it Judenrein.
In short, it is the Arabs that are the key stumbling block to talks. Not homes, for crying out loud. Arabs. Arabs and Arab terror.
Late last year, Mr. Trump slammed the Obama administration’s decision not to veto a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements. Western diplomats worry that without peace talks under way, tensions between the two sides remain at risk of exploding into full-blown conflict. A truck attack earlier this month by a Palestinian killed four Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem, breaking a period of relative calm.
Now here's a quizzical statement. The authors tell us that it's the lack of peace talks that caused the truck ramming in Jerusalem. That's another big whopper of a lie. Actually, Israelis are quite convinced it was UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that ignited the terror in Jerusalem, emboldening the terrorists into thinking that the West is on their side.
Why not? Resolution 2334 says that it is illegal for Jews to be in Jerusalem!
That's all the license a terrorist needed to kill Jews in Jerusalem and that is what that terrorist did on that no-good, tragic, awful day, thanks to all those horrible people who clapped as Resolution 2334 was passed. Four dead Israeli youths can thank Obama's abstention for their deaths, with that abstention breaking the long-standing pact between the U.S. and Israel, and killing those soldiers as surely as bullets shot from a gun.
Applause erupts after @UN #SecurityCouncil passes first resolution on #MiddleEastPeaceProcess in 8 years. pic.twitter.com/mZcn1OXSnZ— NZ at the UN (@NZUN) December 23, 2016
The international summit comes as support for the two-state solution is waning domestically in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Here is the truest statement in the entire piece. One that belies the conclusions of the authors as well as those attending the summit. Neither Arabs nor Jewish Israelis believe in the two-state solution. The Arabs don't want it, so the two-state solution doesn't work as the basis for talks. The Jews have no way to give this solution to the Arabs without sacrificing their security, so they don't want it either. We saw and see, what happened with giving them Gaza.
Besides, the Arabs already have Jordan. They have Gaza. They have 22 other states in the region which could absorb them in two shakes of a lamb's tail with some economic pressure applied judiciously by the worthless UN. In any of those Arab states, the Arabs of Israel might speak their own language, be among their coreligionists, and feel culturally right at home.
But Israel? It's the only Jewish State there is. And it's all we've got. It's tiny.
But Israel? It's the only Jewish State there is. And it's all we've got. It's tiny.
Moreover, Europe, you have NO RIGHT to cut up our land and give it to others. You have no right to decide the future of Jerusalem. You killed 6 million of us. But we are done satisfying your evil whims. Done.
“This conference is among the last twitches of yesterday’s world,” Mr. Netanyahu said on Sunday after the weekly cabinet meeting. “Tomorrow’s world will be different and it is very near.”
A-frickin' men.