In today's Jerusalem Post Daniel Gordis published a blog post titled When Expediency Becomes Principle discussing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's promise to Defend Israel Whatever the Cost not because he feels forced to, but as a principled stand to defend the Jewish state from unbalanced criticism and an ongoing campaign of delegitimization from the world community, in international forums and using the language of human rights, and by the worse violators of human rights at that.
This, in stark contrast to the latest strategy in President Obama's terribly managed 'quest for peace' that started with an unprecedented demand for Israel to freeze construction in the West Bank and Jerusalem, as a pre-requisite to peace talks, and his promise to the Palestinians to create a Palestinian State in two years, which made the peace process moot.
Today we see that the Palestinians are continuing to extract further one-sided concessions, as they have since the beginning of the Oslo process, on paper. And most recently, the Palestinian Authority has openly declared their intention of unilaterally declaring a state, turning these defacto concessions by Israel into a basis for their new state, without having to agree to any form of reconciliation or sign a peace agreement with Israel (you can read more about this subject here). And why should they when President Barack Obama has promised them a state within two years, no matter what.
Yet the most concerning development of all is the method by which the American administration is trying to force Israel into a renewed freeze. While Israel is requesting written guarantees that the US will not demand yet another contruction freeze after this one, believing that the Palestinians are just playing for time and concesions. The US is offering a package of "incentives" to get Israel to agree to a renewed freeze, part of which is apparently the promise to fight "the growing assault on Israel’s very legitimacy," as worded in Mr. Gordis' blog.
However, when examined what this really means is that the US is conditioning its support of Israel's legitimacy upon its agreement to a renewed settlement freeze. That's right, apparently Israel can no longer assume that the leader of the free world will defend their right to exist (nor any other nation or people in the world for that matter).
What has American politics come to when the very legitimacy of Israel's existence isn't only being questioned in international forums, but the President of the United States himself uses this most abhorrent campaign as a bargaining chip in his attempt to force Israel into freezing construction (which they already did for 10 months) and making yet further one-sided concessions in his effort to try and convince the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table. Something that would have never have been needed if he himself didn't make the unprecendented demand, as mentioned above, to freeze construction as a prerequisite to negotiations.
Everybody, and I mean everybody should be concerned when the President of the United States and leader of the free world transforms the right of Jews to self determination in their own state into a bargaining chip in what has become an absurd display of failed US policies.
Have we really come to this?
Does the current American administration no longer know how to take a principled stand? Or are principles no longer a value of this American Adminstration? Either way, Americans, America's allies, and the poor and oppressed of the world should all be very, very concerned. I know I am.
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