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Raw Diehl: WaPo Editor Excuses Omar’s Anti-Semitism; Blames Bibi

Raw Diehl: WaPo Editor Excuses Omar’s Anti-Semitism; Blames Bibi

Washington Post Editor Says Netanyahu Alienates Democrats; Excuses Rep. Omar’s anti-Semitism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwOL2KcRPtg

Once upon a time, not too long ago, The Washington Post was a somewhat reasonable voice on matters of foreign policy, especially regarding the Middle East. Since it supported the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, and fought Donald Trump’s election the following year, its views have become increasingly marginal.

The latest data point for this descent into irrelevance is deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl’s The Democrats have an Israel problem — and it’s not Ilhan Omar. The Democrats have a number of newly minted Congresspeople who are openly anti-Semitic or who ally with anti-Semites, but the real problem, according to Diehl, is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who “has doggedly and successfully worked to thwart the goal pursued by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and still embraced by most Democrats: a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Ah the two-state solution is a Democratic priority, (funny but didn’t Bush, in 2002, specify the two-state solution as a policy goal too), and Netanyahu has been the major sticking point, according to Diehl, who in the early 90s was the Post’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief.

The problem is that it’s just not so. And even Diehl undermines his “blame Bibi first” instinct in the narrative he presents:

Netanyahu proceeded to sabotage the Mideast peace process, dragging his feet on every step. His poor relations with Washington were widely seen as contributing to his ouster in a 1999 election. But Clinton failed to close a deal for a Palestinian state, thanks mostly to the intransigence of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. After Palestinians waged a campaign of suicide bombings, and after Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, turned aside another statehood offer, Israelis voted Netanyahu back into the prime minister’s office in early 2009.

The first assertion isn’t even true. Netanyahu – admittedly under pressure from the Clinton administration – withdrew Israeli forces from most of Hebron, something that his Labor Party predecessors did not do. (Read Charles Krauthammer on why this was important for the peace process. Diehl, though, refused to give Netanyahu any credit.) Of course, the Clinton administration reneged on the guarantees it gave the Likud government to get the deal, which is why Netanyahu subsequently dragged his feet.

But pay attention to Diehl’s chronology. Clinton failed to get a peace deal in 2000, even with Netanyahu’s successor Ehud Barak, who was keen to make a deal, because of “the intransigence of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.” And then in 2008, “Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, turned aside another statehood offer.” Only then, after about a decade out of power “Israelis voted Netanyahu back into the prime minister’s office in early 2009.”

Think about that. For ten years, Israel had three prime ministers not named Benjamin Netanyahu and in that time the Palestinians were twice offered a state and said, “no.” How can he suggest that Netanyahu is the major reason the two-state solution has not yet been achieved?

Furthermore, if thwarting the two-state solution is viewed as scorning the Democratic Party’s top leaders, why don’t Democrats view the Palestinians – who, at least twice, rejected it out of hand – so negatively?

If Arafat said “yes” to Barak or Abbas had said “yes” Ehud Olmert, (and the peace held up,) Netanyahu would not now be prime minister. Why isn’t Diehl blaming Palestinian leadership for Netanyahu’s political success, and the lack of peace?

(BTW, in one of the most important columns about Abbas, from 2009, Diehl effectively predicted that Obama gave Abbas every excuse not to negotiate with Israel. During Obama’s two terms in office, it was Abbas, not Netanyahu, who stymied the administration’s peace efforts.)

Diehl certainly knows better, so I can only ascribe cynicism to his effort to shift blame from Reps. Omar and Tlaib. He wrote that “they represent a minority of Americans and are isolated in the Democratic caucus.” But supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign isn’t simply criticism of Israel. It is outright anti-Semitism.

For Diehl to excuse Omar and Tlaib – instead of demanding the Democrats take stronger actions against them or unequivocably denouncing them himself – at the same time that seven members of the Labour Party have resigned due to the growing acceptance of anti-Semitism in the party, shows that he hasn’t learned the lesson from Britain. Excusing the normalization of anti-Semitism, will allow it to grow. That he ignores history – even history that he acknowledges – to blame Netanyahu instead exposes the deep cynicism of the column.

[Photo: Washington Post / YouTube ]

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Comments

It is always the fault of the Jooz. Always has been, always will be. Have to wonder why any Jewish person would vote for the Socialist-Democrats and financially support their MSM propaganda arm.

Moral blindness.

My perspective is that Jews allied with Blacks long ago as both were, or were perceived to be, marginalized minorities by the white majority (eg, neither could join certain country clubs). But things are different now, and I am not sure why many Jews maintain a faithful alliance to the the democrats since the democrats have embraced the Muslims as a new disenfranchised minority to explo, err, assist. Heck, I’m not even sure why so many Blacks continue to blindly support the Dems.

    tom_swift in reply to MajorWood. | February 21, 2019 at 3:48 pm

    and I am not sure why many Jews maintain a faithful alliance to the the democrats

    Maybe something religious and therefore immune to rational review. Like goofy dietary rules.

      Valerie in reply to tom_swift. | February 21, 2019 at 5:05 pm

      During the Obama years, the Democrat Party could send out a fax blast to most of the rabbis in the country, and they would talk about what the Democrats wanted their congregations to hear. I’m sure they’ve mostly migrated to email by now.

      Milhouse in reply to tom_swift. | February 22, 2019 at 1:48 am

      The ones who are faithful to the Democrats tend to be the ones who don’t do “goofy dietary rules” or anything else that’s actually Jewish. The truth is that Jews whose only expression of religion is that they are not Christians invest a lot of emotional capital in being “not-Christians” and in not celebrating Christmas, and obsess about Christians a lot more than do Jews who actually practice Judaism. And that translates into a phobia from those Christians who seem to take their religion the most seriously, such as Evangelicals, and thus of the Republican Party in which they are active.

      Also, the vacuum left by not practicing Judaism doesn’t remain empty; to fill it they’ve invented a doctrine they call tikun olam, which is identical with “social justice”, and that makes them regard voting Democrat as a sacred duty and voting Republican as a sin.

      I won’t deny that there are a lot of observant Jews who also vote Democrat, but the percentage is much lower and they can often be persuaded.

Diehl is easy to explain:

“”it supported the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, and Donald Trump’s election the following year””

The only way to show repentance and re-ingratiate itself with the anti-Semitic left was to fall in line with them until people forget about the Post’s previous sins.

Surprising he didn’t blame that Son-of-a-(censored) Johnson.

(Obligatory Forest Gump reference)

Since it supported the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, and Donald Trump’s election the following year

This is a major typo.

Any analysis of the Israeli-Arab “Palestinian” conflict that refuses to acknowledge the 1,400-year-old jihadist bloodlust and supremacist imperative that is the root of Arabs infantile and incessant hostility towards Israel, specifically, and, Jews, in general, is divorced from reality and cannot be taken seriously.

Bizarre reasoning by Diehl, but that’s nothing new.

If Bibi is having a negative effect on the Democrats’ views on Israel (which I reject, given their embrace of new, blatantly anti-Semitic members of Congress), then why is he not having that same effect on the American people as a whole whose support for Israel (versus the Palestinians) stands at historical highs?

Bibi is seen as a hardliner, and thus he is easy to scapegoat as an excuse for the Democrats’ increasing acquiescence to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism among members of its caucus and its rank and file voters.

Is Bibi to blame for the infestation of anti-Semitism in Britain’s Labour Party as well? Surely Britain’s agreements and dealings with Israel are not a perfect match with America’s. And why would Britain’s Labour Party retreat into the darkness of anti-Semitism due to the real or imagined obstruction by Bibi of American Democrat politicians’ goals in the Middle East conflict? When initiatives and undertakings by the Labour Party are stymied, across the pond do the Democrats react by retreating into ugly age-old hatreds? (I imagine, as I imagine the Brits imagine, that Democrats as well as most Americans hardly take notice at all of any Labour leader’s failings.)

Thus, it seems the real heart of the problem is in the DNA of contemporary progressivism and the pathologies attendant to its latest “intersectionality” form.

Although a shocking disgrace, two or three openly anti-Semitic members of Congress in and of themselves are not a serious threat to Western Civilization. But if their presence proves to be anything but a short-lived aberration, then this may prove to belie a much deeper and widespread problem inherent to a large portion of the left-of-center electorate. Therefore, heeding MacArthur’s two-word axiom of conflagrations seems in order:

“Too late.”

Too late seeing the problem develop, and too late attacking the problem head on.

Now is the time to push back not only against the Omars and Tlaibs, but also the Diehls, who run interference and give them cover.

The odd thing is that Netanyahu is anything but a hard-liner. He is in fact a complete squish. His first major act in power was to give away Hevron, he offered to give away the Golan, he’s been paying protection money to Hamas, He called an early election because as soon as it’s over he’s going to embrace Trump’s “Deal of the Century” which will involve negotiating over Jerusalem and expelling Jews from villages in areas that will be given away.

Don’t ever expect the anti-semite to write truthfully.

    Arminius in reply to Gersh204. | February 23, 2019 at 9:17 am

    You, sir, are correct. It becomes tiresome to cite chapter and verse over and over and over and over and over…blah blah. As if theres some skittles and beer context that turns “kill them” into “love them.”

    Sorry, the unicorn they’re worshipping just ain’t s***ing that.