There is one worthwhile clause in an otherwise worthless article at The Atlantic by Steve Clemons, Obama Tells Palestinians to Stay in the Back of the Bus.
Clemons lays out the fiction that the Palestinian strategic move to take land without peace is something Gandhi-like:
Obama’s position on this is dangerous in another sense as well. Obama — who looked to so many early in his rock star style rise to the Presidency as a leader on the level of a Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or Mandela — has assured the rise of Hamas, the legitimation of violence in pursuit of Palestinian political goals, by yet again showing that peaceful, non-violent moderates like Mahmoud Abbas ultimately get nothing — even if they play the role of the “good Palestinian,” the one who listens to his masters, who doesn’t get too disturbed when humiliated at Israel’s border check points and at UN Security Council meetings.
Obama assured the rise of Hamas? Hamas has already risen. Obama legitimated violence in the pursuit of Palestinian political goals? Have you been sleeping the last 60 years? Really, can’t The Atlantic do better than this nonsense? Bring back Andrew Sullivan, the relative voice of sanity.
The “occupation” is the cause of all the problems?. Oh wait, Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza and Gaza now is an Iranian missile base. Oh wait, the effort to drive the Jews into the sea started before the 1967 war, indeed, prior to the creation of Israel; just ask the Jews who used to live in the centuries-old Jewish community in Hebron before the 1929 Arab riots and massacre. Oh wait, Hamas does not agree to the existence of Israel. Oh wait, Abbas said just a few weeks ago he never — as in never — will accept Israel as a Jewish state.
Land for peace is risky enough; land without peace is a suicide pact.
But there was one clause in Clemon’s piece which has a truth to it:
If this was 2013, Obama might be in a different groove ….
Damn right. Let’s not forget that, for a second.
Term No. 1 pushed Israel to the brink, the voters of NY-09 and the looming presidential election pulled it back.
In Term No. 2, if there is one, all bets are off.
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