The Price of Bush's Commitment to Palestinian Statehood

[galtgulch]

www.aynrand.org

The Price of Bush's Commitment to Palestinian Statehood

By Elan Journo

On his recent visit to the Middle East, Vice President Cheney voiced the Bush administration's belief that a Palestinian state is "long overdue" and vowed to help make that goal a reality. Many conservatives and liberals agree with the administration that America should help fulfill the long-deferred Palestinian aspirations to statehood. The idea is that in doing so we would go a long way toward dousing the flames of Islamist terrorism.

But does U.S. backing for Palestinian statehood advance our security?

Only if you think we're better off fostering a new terrorist state.

That may seem excessively harsh given President Bush's mantra that Palestinians just want "the opportunity to use [their talents and] gifts to better their own lives and build a future for their children." The Bush line we keep hearing is that the terrorists and their supporters are but a fringe element that will be marginalized under the new state, which will coexist "side by side in peace" with Israel and the Western world.

But listen to Palestinian clerics at Friday sermons, calling for violent attacks on Israel. Look at the lurid posters in the homes and shops of ordinary Palestinians, passionately glorifying "martyrs" and terrorist kingpins. Look at their coordinated digging of tunnels to smuggle in weapons and explosives. Look at the popular collusion with Islamist militants and their stream of recruits. Recall the years of ferocious attacks against Israeli towns.

If the mass of Palestinians just want peace and a better life, they would not despise and war against the only state in the region, Israel, that protects individual rights and that offers a standard of living far superior to (even the richest) Arab regimes. They would be far better off, freer and safer, if they put away their rocks, bullets and dynamite belts and sought to live and work in Israel (as some once did).

Instead, they flood the streets to protest negotiations about peaceful co-existence with Israel. Ideologically, their dominant factions are the Islamic totalitarians of Hamas and the nationalist terrorists of Fatah. These differ only in their form of dictatorship--religious or ethnic. Both promise their followers, one way or another, to wipe out Israel.

That hostility to Israel, the only free nation in the Middle East, should make any U.S. president stand firmly against the Palestinian cause. Particularly in a post-9/11 world, Washington should recognize that U.S. security is strengthened by preventing Islamist terrorists from securing another stronghold and training ground.

Given the overwhelming evidence that it would undermine U.S. security, what explains the Bush administration's come-hell-or-high-water promise to do "everything we can" to back a Palestinian state? It is the administration's belief that America has a duty to ease the suffering of the world's wretched, regardless of the cost in lives to us.

That's why, after Palestinians brought Hamas to power in a landslide, Washington responded with "compassion" for their "humanitarian" needs. Of course the United States and its European allies felt compelled to "isolate" the Hamas regime by cutting off direct aid to the Palestinian Authority. But they refused to believe the Palestinians themselves should be held responsible for how they voted, because they're already dirt poor. This meant suspending our judgment and absolving Palestinians of culpability for choosing murderers to lead them. So, despite the embargo on aid to the Hamas-led government, in 2006 U.S. aid to Palestinians increased by 17 percent to $468 million, propping up their terrorist proto-state.

This policy's result is to endorse, facilitate, and vitalize Palestinian aggression. We've seen the unleashing of a popularly supported Hamas-Hezbollah war against Israel in 2006 and ongoing attacks springing from Gaza. Al Qaeda has reportedly already set up shop alongside other jihadists in the Palestinian territories. Just imagine the mushrooming of terrorist training camps and explosives factories under a sovereign Palestinian state. Imagine how emboldened jihadists will feel operating under a regime that Washington has created and blessed.

This is the price of a policy based not on furthering U.S. security, but on undeserved pity. This is the price of willfully ignoring the vile nature of Palestinian goals, treating these hostile people as above reproach and rewarding their irrationality.

Isn't it time we demand a policy that puts our security first?

Elan Journo is a resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (http://www.aynrand.org/) in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org.

Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

[Mike11]

Righteous Victims By Benny Morris, Professor of History at Ben Gurion Universtiy

Palestinian Identity By Rahid Khalidi, Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University

A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict By Mark Tessler, Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan

Those are some books anyone interested in the conflict during the "Happy Days of Uncle Tom Colonialism" should read.

Now... what to point out?

That the ARI has historically denied Palestinians should ever have a State based on Israeli righteous revenge down to the fourteenth generation? That its leading propagandist served with the Israeli Army supporting its right wing Crusader ideals? That the ARI based on its own ethnic make up, propensity to mythologize and sheer warmongering is not an objective source .... ?

And no, I have Zero interest in picking this article apart, I've argued about this before and don't want to.

Those are some books to read, MSK will probably post an intelligent (but differing) view as well.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Those are some books to read, MSK will probably post an intelligent (but differing) view as well.

Mike,

LOL...

Actually I did have a thought when I read that. On philosophical grounds, I am totally against any kind of argument that has the following message at root to justify the use of force:

If so-and-so people really were interested in their own welfare, they would not mind being ruled by us instead of themselves and actually embrace our rule.

Why? Because... well... uhm... we are better than they are! That used to be a popular line of reasoniong in the deep South before slavery was abolished.

If philosophers want to argue against a Palestinean state and be taken seriously, they have to come up with something a hell of a lot better than that. Even blind hatred sounds more authentic and intellectual.

Michael

[Mike11]

Damn straight MSK.

Its possible I'm just to hard on the ARI but self serving tomfoolery is the norm, at least as far as Eretz Yisrael is concerned. Look, I'm not a racist and I'm also a Jew but if I were part of an organization founded by Jews, run by Jews, and uses former IDF personnel as commentators then claimed to be truthful and honest about the Jewish State, would you not be skeptical? Especially since I identify Israel as The Good Qua Good (Except it may be too merciful) and address the arabs as barbarous enemies whom it would be a moral perversion to talk to (of course in the same article we have another piece of ARI bull shit, "Land was not 'stolen' from the nomadic tribes meandering across the terrain, any more than the early Americans stole this country from the primitive, warring Indians." I guess Lenny has never read a history book on America either, the Cherokee, Walking Purchase and Puritans come to mind. source )

If the organization was known for absolute Submission to the Will of the Guru's Divine bloody Interpreter, would you believe what I had to say about, anything?

... Stop Joel, don't want to get to angry....

Look, galtgultch, I don't blame you for taking the ARI at its word on this but these people are idiots at best, self serving racist imperialist bastards at worst.

[galtgulch]

Look, galtgultch, I don't blame you for taking the ARI at its word on this but these people are idiots at best, self serving racist imperialist bastards at worst.

I am on ARI email list and when I get one I just copy it and post it here so you all can bring your minds to bear on the subject which enlightens us all.

Sometimes I don't even have time to read the ARI piece because I have to get to work. I look forward to coming home to read what has been posted.

Please don't assume that just because I bring the ARI copy to this board that I necessarily agree with what they write.

I fear that there will always be those on either side who continue to hate for real or imagined reasons whether we are talking about the Catholics and Protestants, the Israelis and the Palestinians, Hatfields and McCoys, Patriots and Yankees, Republicans and Democrats, Blacks and Whites.

I assume most people just want to be left alone to pursue their own lives even if they are branded to be within some competing group. Being brainwashed as a child by thoughtless parents doesn't help one to break the chain of violence.

There are those these days who observe how our own government has gone beyond the bounds of the Constitution made more frightening by the fact that the judicial branch has not been doing its job. Witness the refusal of the Supreme Court to accept the We The People Foundation's case first submitting a petition to the Congress and Senate simply asking them to admit or deny that our country has invaded another country without formal declaration of war as required by the Constitution, Article One Section 8, then appealing to the Supreme Court to interpret the last ten words of the First Amendment which state the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

King George ignored and did not respond to petitions by the Colonists for decades before the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. How long will our present government refuse to respond and answer petitions by a single private citizen who has submitted no less than seven petitions in recent years, see www.GiveMeLiberty.org.

How long before we fight for our own freedom in our time? This election may be an opportunity to regain our freedom by using the ballot box rather than the alternative. I will attend a Republican caucus on April 5th in one of the ten congressional districts in my state to see if we can elect delegates who truly believe in the Constitution to attend the nominating convention in Minneapolis. If there are enough delegates who are of a mind to they might alter the process and select a nominee based on the one best representative of the Constitution.

Wm aka galt

[Mike11]

The problem is not freedom, though freedom is the political expression of the solution. As I mentioned in another thread a short time ago I realized what humanity is capable of, not in the abstract hyper reality of "Man's Barbarity to Man" witnessed in the great crass banality of the Holocaust but in a very real human way. The almost supernatural monstrosity of the SS Soldier's psyche. The unnatural coldness, the "Iron Heart" that Heydrich was said to have. The Will to Knowledge possessed by Doctor Ewen Cameron or Shiro Ishii that cut through the human soul like a knife cutting butter. The mutilation and disfigurement of Humanity has existed in Churches, States, Businesses, it is omnipresent.

Politics is just words on a page. Treating a human as something sacred is the real struggle.

As for the article, I didn't mean to accuse you of a moral or intellectual flaw. The Middle East conflict is the most complex and heated one on Earth, someone who hasn't vested huge amounts of time on this can't be expected to see the problems in the article. The problem is the selection of facts, not the distortion of them. As MSK pointed out there is an underlying moral message in the article, that Israel ought to occupy the territories for the good of the Arabs (and, while he doesn't mention it directly here, the enrichment of Israel as well). This is an aggressive motive, all the other facts simply serve as cover for it.

The fact that Power needs Terror can not be ignored. To take a "Pro-Israel" example, where would the absolutely corrupt Arafat have been without the IDF? How could he keep his people from asking where the billions were going if Israel were not perceived as an immediate existential threat? Or to use an example you allude to, remember how desperate the Federalists of the late 1700's were for war with France, it was the only way an elite could keep power out of public hands. A similar relationship existed in Israel. A dependent pool of workers half your own population is a valuable thing to have; and that is enough motive even without the "Greater Israel" dream of annexing all the land held by David. The more resistance is identified as a terrorist threat, the easier it is to keep a hold of such an economic value. That is how Palestinian anticolonial resistance is consistently framed by the ARI, "Why can't they just accept our superiority and serve us? Why do they need guns and a say in their own lives?" The history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance is of course erased from the narrative as is the will for a people for self determination, (as the article states, the honest Palestinian is a servile Palestinian, its only the evil agitators who scare them into supporting the dream of freedom). This is all very backward and very sick.

Needless to say, the crimes of the Occupation to not exist in the world of the ARI. No right wing fascist expansionism, no Orthodox fundamentalists (During the Gaza pull out signs read 'To give up our Land is to defy our God!' and the like), no land theft, no water theft, no imprisonment for opening a business or factory in the territories (those economic laws of the Occupation are where the "Culture of Poverty" the ARI Roids love to intellectually masterbate to comes from), no banning of higher education, no aiding Hamas to offset the secular Intifadah, no banning of existing democratic institutions and no legal immunity for anti-arab violence from Jewish colonials.

Never Happened.

This isn't just the myopia of bias, it is staggering dishonesty toward undeniable reality.

The truly amazing thing about that circus is they are idiots even by Israeli standards. The Israeli Right has never had any illusions about the morality of its enterprise. Jabotinsky, the founder of the Israeli Right given power from the 70's through to today, proclaimed (quite openly in his literature, this is open historic fact and not conspiracy) that the Palestinian Arab (He acknowledged the Palestinians existed as a nationality back in th 20's) would fight against colonial oppression and would require military humiliation and absolute repressive domination to accept what he described as the theft of their rightful land. This is the founder of Jewish expansionism (he was also friends with Mussolini and had Jewish kids goose stepping) showing a greater self awareness than Pope Peikoff the Rational.

[Martin Radwin]

The problem is not freedom, though freedom is the political expression of the solution. As I mentioned in another thread a short time ago I realized what humanity is capable of, not in the abstract hyper reality of "Man's Barbarity to Man" witnessed in the great crass banality of the Holocaust but in a very real human way. The almost supernatural monstrosity of the SS Soldier's psyche. The unnatural coldness, the "Iron Heart" that Heydrich was said to have. The Will to Knowledge possessed by Doctor Ewen Cameron or Shiro Ishii that cut through the human soul like a knife cutting butter. The mutilation and disfigurement of Humanity has existed in Churches, States, Businesses, it is omnipresent.

Politics is just words on a page. Treating a human as something sacred is the real struggle.

As for the article, I didn't mean to accuse you of a moral or intellectual flaw. The Middle East conflict is the most complex and heated one on Earth, someone who hasn't vested huge amounts of time on this can't be expected to see the problems in the article. The problem is the selection of facts, not the distortion of them. As MSK pointed out there is an underlying moral message in the article, that Israel ought to occupy the territories for the good of the Arabs (and, while he doesn't mention it directly here, the enrichment of Israel as well). This is an aggressive motive, all the other facts simply serve as cover for it.

The fact that Power needs Terror can not be ignored. To take a "Pro-Israel" example, where would the absolutely corrupt Arafat have been without the IDF? How could he keep his people from asking where the billions were going if Israel were not perceived as an immediate existential threat? Or to use an example you allude to, remember how desperate the Federalists of the late 1700's were for war with France, it was the only way an elite could keep power out of public hands. A similar relationship existed in Israel. A dependent pool of workers half your own population is a valuable thing to have; and that is enough motive even without the "Greater Israel" dream of annexing all the land held by David. The more resistance is identified as a terrorist threat, the easier it is to keep a hold of such an economic value. That is how Palestinian anticolonial resistance is consistently framed by the ARI, "Why can't they just accept our superiority and serve us? Why do they need guns and a say in their own lives?" The history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance is of course erased from the narrative as is the will for a people for self determination, (as the article states, the honest Palestinian is a servile Palestinian, its only the evil agitators who scare them into supporting the dream of freedom). This is all very backward and very sick.

Needless to say, the crimes of the Occupation to not exist in the world of the ARI. No right wing fascist expansionism, no Orthodox fundamentalists (During the Gaza pull out signs read 'To give up our Land is to defy our God!' and the like), no land theft, no water theft, no imprisonment for opening a business or factory in the territories (those economic laws of the Occupation are where the "Culture of Poverty" the ARI Roids love to intellectually masterbate to comes from), no banning of higher education, no aiding Hamas to offset the secular Intifadah, no banning of existing democratic institutions and no legal immunity for anti-arab violence from Jewish colonials.

Never Happened.

This isn't just the myopia of bias, it is staggering dishonesty toward undeniable reality.

The truly amazing thing about that circus is they are idiots even by Israeli standards. The Israeli Right has never had any illusions about the morality of its enterprise. Jabotinsky, the founder of the Israeli Right given power from the 70's through to today, proclaimed (quite openly in his literature, this is open historic fact and not conspiracy) that the Palestinian Arab (He acknowledged the Palestinians existed as a nationality back in th 20's) would fight against colonial oppression and would require military humiliation and absolute repressive domination to accept what he described as the theft of their rightful land. This is the founder of Jewish expansionism (he was also friends with Mussolini and had Jewish kids goose stepping) showing a greater self awareness than Pope Peikoff the Rational.

Mike,

Excellent post, beautifully written and cogently argued!

I fully agree with you about the ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity of ARI. Anyone whose primary source of information about history is ARI op-eds is going to be both severely misinformed and, most likely, convinced both of their own brilliance and their own absolute moral rectitude.

Martin

[Mike11]

This article expresses why, IMHO, so many are violent towards Objectivism. There is Objectivism the Ethic and then there is Objectivism the Mythology. The latter would contain Israel The Galt-like, Native Americans The Uncivilized Horde of Cannibalistic Phantoms, Athens the Free! Athens the Rational!, Christopher Columbus the Enlightened Harbinger of the Good Qua Good! etc etc

I know an Objectivist who was pretty pro-Israel due to the ARI, read a book, lost his faith, and now begins conversations by pointing out the USS Liberty and moving from there.

No good comes of this propaganda.