Wishful Thinking Realists
Prof. Paul Eidelberg
In her November 13, 2009 article, “Obama’s failure, Netanyahu’s opportunity,” Jerusalem Post’s senior editor Caroline Glick clearly confirms, what she conveyed in an email to the present writer several months ago, that she opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state. To this extent, she does not agree with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s June 14 endorsement of the “two state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Consistent therewith, she deems “ill-advised” Netanyahu’s “profound and urgent interest in holding negotiations” with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Indeed, in view of “Obama’s disgraceful treatment of Israel,” of Fatah’s “disarray, and the myth of Abbas “moderation,” Glick would have Netanyahu “strike out on a new course and work toward the integration of Judea and Samaria, including the Palestinian population into Israeli society.” This suggests—but Glick does not go so far as to make explicit—that Israel should effectively declare Jewish sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.
In defense of as it were “Greater Israel” proposal, Glick refers to a study of an American-based Demographic Research Group, a study that exposed the Arab demographic threat as (another) myth. That study, she points out, revealed that “the combined population of Israel and Judea and Samaria leaves Jews with a two-thirds majority.” Moreover, “with Jewish immigration and fertility rates rising, negative Arab immigration rates, and decreasing Arab fertility rates,” Glick concludes that “long-term projections of Israel’s demographic viability are all positive.”
This demographic revelation prompts Glick to endorse “Netanyahu’s economic peace plan, which envisions expanding the Palestinian economy in Judea and Samaria by among other things reintegrating it into Israel’s booming economy.”
Here Glick, a “realist,” succumbs to the wishful thinking of crypto-Marxists and capitalists who think there is an economic solution to human conflict, including religious conflicts. Like Shimon Peres, she thinks Muslims can be bought, that they will jettison their 1,400-year ethos of Jihad and metamorphose into milk-and-toast bourgeoisie.
This reminds me of Netanyahu’s maiden address to a joint session of the United States Congress shortly after his election as Israel’s prime minister in May 1996. Netanyahu, in utter disregard of eminent students of Islam and the Middle East such as Bernard Lewis, baldly declared that there is no clash of civilizations in the Middle East, hence, between Islam and the Jewish State of Israel.
That Americans live in denial of this clash of civilizations is bad enough. That one of Israel’s most brilliant political analysts should do is almost incomprehensible.
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