Why “Progress” Toward Israel-Palestinian “Peace” Is More Likely to Bring Regional Instability
Secretary of State John Kerry has every what-should-be-discredited cliché about the Middle East firmly ensconced in his head. Of course, he is not alone. I just briefed a European diplomat who came up with the exact formulation I’m going to deal with in a moment. What is disconcerting—though long familiar—is that Western policymakers hold so many ideas that are totally out of touch with reality.
They do not allow these assumptions to be questioned. On the contrary, it is astonishing to find how often individuals in elite positions have never heard counter-arguments to these beliefs. It is easy to prove that many of these ideas simply don’t make sense, but it is nearly impossible to get elite intellectuals, officials, and politicians to open their minds to these explanations.
(Read more…)
(Read more…)
Grassroots Jewish Republicans Moving to the Right
While the public perception of Jewish Republicans is largely colored by a small number of figures, many of them liberal Republicans, the Jewish grassroots is trending more conservative.
While the article is from the Forward, a far left paper slightly to the right of The Daily Worker, it does capture the fact that the same tensions exist among Jewish Republicans between RINO bigwigs and a more conservative base.
The civil war now engulfing the Republican Party is laying bare a split among Jewish GOP supporters, as well.Some of the party’s biggest Jewish donors are taking the lead in pushing for a more moderate conservative party following the Republicans’ defeat in last year’s presidential election. At the same time, grassroots Jewish supporters, many of them Orthodox, are finding a new home among socially conservative Republicans who populate the Tea Party movement and the Conservative Political Action Conference.(Read more…)
Obama/Kerry are demanding a map rather than a freeze
By Ted Belman
Shmuel Rosner in the New York Times, under the title “Please – Draw me a state”wrote
- “The core issue right now is, how do we get sovereignty for the Palestinian people and how do we assure security for the Israeli people?” That is to say, settlements no longer rank high on his agenda because “if we solve those two problems, the settlement problem will be solved.”
In the past Obama has mooted this idea by saying if you first agree on borders then you agree where settlements can be built.
Rosner argued,
(Read more…)
(Read more…)
Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel
Posts
