MarkSilverberg

Nicholas Kristof, in his column “Seeking Balance in the Middle East” suggests that Congressional opposition to the forthcoming UN vote on a Palestinian state is a serious mistake, and that President Obama would be better advised to follow the advice of the anti-Israel Jewish group J-Street on U.S. - Israel relations so as to produce a more “balanced foreign policy” towards Israel and enable the U.S. to capitalize on the “Arab Spring”. Should the President choose to do so, he will discover that such an action will neither lead to the democratization of the Arab world nor serve America's long term interests in the region.

On Thursday, August 4th, Arab League foreign ministers and representatives from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon and Qatar announced that they would support the plan of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to seek a seat for a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly (UNGA). So what kind of state exactly would the UNGA be endorsing, and what could be the political and economic repercussions flowing from such an action?

The entire Western world has suffered from a lack of moral authority for decades. Today, we in the West are reluctant to use our full military power or seek victory in war lest we appear imperialistic. We hesitate to enforce our borders lest we appear racist. We are reluctant to ask for assimilation from new immigrants (especially in Europe) lest we appear xenophobic. We are pained to give Western civilization primacy in our educational curricula lest we appear supremacist. In short, today the West is on the defensive, because the very legitimacy of our modern societies requires constant dissociation from the sins of the Western past - racism, economic exploitation, imperialism and so on. And, in the process, we’ve lost the ability to discern right from wrong. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the demonization, de-legitimization and the double standard applied against Israel in the international arena.

President Barack Obama appears to be preparing a fresh outreach to the Muslim world in coming days, one that will ask those in the Middle East and beyond to reject Islamic terrorism in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death and embrace what he believes will be a new era of positive relations with the U.S. Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser at the White House told the Wall Street Journal: “It’s an interesting coincidence of timing - that (bin Laden) is killed at the same time that you have a model of change emerging in the region that is completely the opposite of bin Laden’s model.” Problem is, this emerging model of change won’t be the kind the U.S. Administration is anticipating.

There is an enormous ethical and moral divide separating Palestinian and Israeli cultures. What the Obama Administration and the Europeans fail to understand is that Hamas was not elected by accident back in 2006. It was elected because its very rationale for existence reflects the prevailing attitude within mainstream Palestinian society. For the Palestinians, terrorism is not a weapon borne of “root causes”, desperation or poverty, but is a strategic choice. So if Hamas and its Palestinian supporters seek the annihilation of Israel, they had best understand the consequences that will flow from their actions.

By excusing the Itamar slaughter as a justifiable Palestinian response to Israeli settlements and “settlers”, the Western media has encouraged the savagery, incitement, hatred and demonization of Israel that has become the trademark of Palestinian society. As a result, the Palestinians see no need to confront this psychosis since, in the eyes of the world they can do no wrong and need not fear any consequences for supporting terrorism. The world expects nothing of them and forgives them for everything.

The Tunisian Revolution has electrified the Arab world and sent Arab dictators and despots scrambling to pacify their uneducated, repressed, hungry, unemployed and frustrated populations who suffer from the same malaise and sense of desperation that led to popular revolt in Tunisia. Despite outward appearances, however, the nature and history of Tunisian society differ dramatically from that of the other Arab countries of the Maghreb. It is these societal differences that mitigate against the ultimate success of similar democratic revolutions occurring elsewhere in the Arab world.

The U.S.-European effort to have the Arab/Muslim world recognize "two states for two peoples" in the Middle East is sheer fantasy.

Perception, it is said, is everything, and no where is that clearer than in Middle Eastern Arab/Muslim culture. Coming from a Western perspective, we fail to recognize that our efforts at compromise, contrition, accommodation and appeasement are perceived by the Arab/Muslim world as symptomatic of our weakness and reinforce the belief of our enemies that we are “paper tigers” (to use bin Laden’s term) and easy prey.

While liberal elites focus on the soon-to-rise Cordoba Mosque near the site of the destroyed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and see it as a symbol of religious tolerance, liberty, and interfaith understanding, other issues have been pushed to the sidelines - issues that may appear trivial, perhaps even foolish to to us, but which resonate throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine where Hezbollah control of Lebanon ends and where Lebanese government control begins. The terrorist organization now dictates Iranian decrees  to Lebanese officials and institutions, manipulates their activities, and greatly influences the country's decision-making processes through infiltration, intimidation and terrorism. No decision can be made by the Lebanese government or any of its institutions including the Lebanese Armed Forces without Hezbollah's approval.

Recognizing Hamas, as CENTCOM and the Obama administration seem poised to do, would be a colossal blunder that will have major ramifications for American interests and credibility in the Middle East for years to come, and provide Iran with its long sought after base within missile range of Tel Aviv.

The President may think that his single-digit approval ratings in Israel are simply because his middle name is “Hussein”, but he’s wrong. The Israelis have plenty of reasons to distrust the man and his promise of an “unbreakable bond” between our two countries. From their perspective, he’s been doing everything possible to break that bond for the past year and a half. In reality, his middle name could have been “Smith” and the Israelis would still distrust him because his actions have spoken louder than his words, and no charm offensive or eloquence can change that perception.

When Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post attacks Obama’s outrage over the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee’s decision to approve the construction of 1,600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo (a post-1967 Jerusalem neighborhood) as “ideological - and vindictive,” you know that Obama has made a serious political blunder.... The Obama Administration seems to see Israel as obstructionist, defiant and intransigent. He does not yet understand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not territorial, but existential. The Arab Street will never support America. When the U.S. distances itself from Israel, it does not win influence with the Arab world. It proves only that the U.S. is not a reliable ally, and in the case of our friends and our enemies, it merely earns their scorn.

In 1945, after the liberation of France, it would have been unthinkable for the Allies to have stopped at the French-German border (believing they could contain Nazi expansionism in the post-war era) and begun attempts to stabilize and reconstruct France without first destroying the Third Reich and de-Nazifying Germany. For the same reason, the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, and indeed the entire Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa cannot be accomplished unless and until the Iranian mullahs have been removed and Iran has been de-Islamified.

The foreign policy paradigm that an apocalyptic, messianic Islamic enemy bent on establishing a global caliphate can be appeased and contained is not only delusional, but guarantees the rise of Iranian Islamic hegemony throughout the region and beyond. Iran is to go nuclear, we had best insure that a friendly government rules in Tehran. If not, no nation that ever opposes the mullahs' global Islamic ambitions will be secure once their nuclear shield is in place.

The shadow of Shari’a law is descending on Gaza. In November 2009, Shin Bet (Israel's internal security service) issued a Report describing how Hamas has begun instituting Islamic law and thought in all areas of Gaza life since its violent takeover of the area in June 2007. Should Israeli security forces withdraw from Judea and Samaria, it is a safe bet that the implementation of Shari’ a law would follow a Hamas take-over there as well.

Concerns are growing in Israel’s government over the possibility of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence within the June 4, 1967 borders, a move which could potentially be recognized by the U.S. and the United Nations Security Council. On August 26th, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad issued a 54-page plan ("Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State") that proposed the establishment of a de-facto Palestinian state within two years – a state to be established regardless of negotiations with Israel and outside the framework of the performance-based March 2003 Roadmap and the Oslo Agreement

The assumption that the Obama administration's diplomatic initiative to our enemies will enhance America's image in the world and increase our security is becoming more questionable with each passing day. What we have learned is that dialogue and accommodation with messianic, apocalyptic Islamic regimes like Iran are not only pointless, but threaten the stability of the international order.

The problem with the insistence on a "two-state solution" is that a Palestinian peace partner doesn't exist and has never existed and no amount of rhetoric, Israeli concessions or Arab pandering can make it so. The Palestinians have consistently rejected the concept of a Jewish state in the Middle East and until that changes, all talk of a two-state solution is not only irrelevant but dangerous.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Ilan University on June 14th was more than an exercise in judicious phraseology. It returned realism to Israeli foreign policy and set out a clear and precise diplomatic formula that reflects the worldview of the Israeli majority.