Israel's announcement of a new or renewed massive building project in East Jerusalem occurred earlier on the same day that Vice President Joseph Biden was to meet with the Israeli president and prime minister. This synchronicity can in no way be dismissed as happenstance or as a resoundingly bad-timing accident. It was intentional, and it was intended to deflate the significance of discussions with a man who has long been the most uncompromising pro-Israel figure in the Obama administration and one of the staunchest supporters of Israel in the Democratic Party and in the United States Congress.
What were they thinking?
I do not believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted to stick his thumb in Biden's eye; however, I do believe that this incident shows that what Netanyahu wants is not necessarily decisive for some of his most important ministers. Netanyahu understands that he must work with President Obama on advancing the negotiations with the Palestinians. He would privately admit that he even wants these negotiations to avert his second term as prime minister ending with the same sense of abject failure as his first.
Nevertheless, Israeli Ministers Yishai and Lieberman are determined to prevent a revival of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, even though Netanyahu must realize at this point that he can no longer be passive and permissive about the actions and decisions of his more extreme ministers. If he remains silent and inactive in face of these actions, he will have forfeited his leadership. In addition, it would then no longer be reasonable for the United States to adhere to its policy that it must work with Netanyahu, rather than look to the realignment of his government or simply await his fall from power.
When the Israeli government alienates such an unflinching friend and ally as Vice President Biden, it strongly suggests that there is an element in Israel that cannot abide the desire of most Israelis and most American Jews for Israel to be a full member in good standing of the Western alliance and a respected state in the family of nations. That element would prefer to see an Israel that stands defiantly alone. It wants to defeat the majority consciousness that seeks a place of pride and independence for Israel and to replace it with a counter-dependent Israel that will never be attracted to agreeing to anything that is initiated from outside its narrowly-defined cognitive boundary. Any such agreement, even with friends, smells too much like assimilation and arouses anachronistic fears of loss of identity through becoming close to anyone outside or inculcating outsider ideas.
Theodor Herzl Zionism explicitly rejected such fears by espousing the idea that an independent, sovereign Jewish state could live as an equal with other sovereign states, including those most advanced in science and freedom of thought. This Jewish state would no longer need to fear that the other states might became hostile to Jewish aspirations or might overwhelm Jewish culture, religion, and political independence.
Prime Minister Netanyahu in the last weeks, beginning with his surprising speech at the Herzliya conference, set out to show that he was committed to strengthening Israeli nationalist consciousness while moving towards peace with the Palestinians and with the Arab world.
Some of his ministers are distorting his meaning by conflating strengthening national consciousness with a radical isolationism. They manifest a fear that Israel's identity would be lost by conducting peaceful relations not only with Israel's own regional environment, but with democratic countries abroad, even with those that have been most important to the emergence of the State of Israel, its military strength and its security in the community of nations.
Netanyahu must show unequivocally that this is not what he intended. He must assert his leadership by demonstrating in word and deed that the pursuit of peace and the strengthening of national consciousness are not simply consistent, but are mutually necessary.
Stephen P. Cohen, president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development, is the author of Beyond America's Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East.
Really?
The rest of the post puzzles me.
Who needs the advice about "the gurl ya brought to the dance"?
Zionists are experts at propaganda, disinformation, denying facts and outright lying. Any criticism of Zionism or of Israel is labelled as "anti-semitism", where this is interpreted to mean "anti-Jewish". This is a slanderous falsehood. Criticism of Zionism is criticism of a particularly ugly political movement, not criticism of a religion or of the adherents of a religion. One may be critical of Zionism and of Zionists while at the same time being quite tolerant of, or well-disposed toward, or even an adherent of, the Jewish religion (as we see from the websites cited above).
Whether one approves of or dislikes the beliefs and practices of Judaism it remains that Jews have a right to hold those beliefs and maintain those practices. No-one, however, Jewish or non-Jewish, has a right to drive out people from their homes on land where they and their forebears have been living for centuries, to deprive people of their human rights, to cripple their society and to damage the welfare of others by a parasitic subversion of the government of another country for base political purposes, which is what Zionists have done and continue to do.
Basically, what you are saying is that you will let Jews survive if they just be nice, meek people and go back to Germany or Poland. Your use of the term "parasitic" is generally a tip off of someone who revels in anti-semitic myths. Covering your tracks by trying to separate Judaism from Zionism won't work.
If Palestinians get a state of whose borders are under their own control and include frontiers with other nations than Israel itself.
If Palestinians have the right to "right to live in peace and security", the right to make alliances with other nations than Israel and the right to self-defence,(not defence of Israel.)
It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
In short, hard-line Israeli want to kill hard-line Palestinians, who want to kill hard-line Israeli...
A Plague on both their Houses!
How did you manage to drag the Palestinians into what is clearly a uniquely Israeli phenomenon?
Can you defend your comment?
We could probably pull the comments from all the posts written about Israel for the past, oh say five years or so, and plug them in this thread, change a word or date here and there, and we'd have the same comments.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/03/12/israel.palestinians/
Have you any idea about the meaning of words?
Is it deliberate, or abject ignorance?
UN humanitarian chief criticises Israel over Gaza
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8563569.stm
I also came to your blog to get away from the bleating on the general HP post of Mr. Biden's visit. The blatant agendas for and against Israel are loud and distracting and serve no purpose for me...it is the same story and same argument.
Your words, Mr. Cohen: "When the Israeli government alienates such an unflinching friend and ally as Vice President Biden, it strongly suggests that there is an element in Israel that cannot abide the desire of most Israelis and most American Jews for Israel to be a full member in good standing of the Western alliance and a respected state in the family of nations." are interesting and educated. Your post worth a read by many.
Thank you.
the only solution is UN sanctions, trade embargoes, freezing of israel assets and America has to stop offering israel an umbrella to shield it from taking responsibility for its crimes . . in short it is more than just the lieberman element . . this has been going on for 42 years . . .
America needs to wake up, regain its pride and stop all funding for Israel.
It makes as complicit in their land grabs and crimes against humanity.
And please don't compare them to the primitive unguided homemade rockets fired into Israel that kill so few and do so little damage. Proportionality does matter.
This not is self defense on Israels part it is war crimes.
Hmm, maybe that would work on shutting people like you up. I've seen those rockets in person and sure as heck wouldn't want one of those to hit my house with me in it...
Did it ever occur to you that having a block-buster bomb dropped on your house, with you in it and fifteen other people with you, might be a little disturbing?
Or are you so self-centered that what happens to "others" is of no interest to you?
Your ability to empathize reaches only those with whom you feel identified, it in no way resembles a fully humane view point.
There is no one in Israel that can empty the west bank of 500,000 land squatters and unless they are gone, eventually Israel will find itself in a war against the world and the US will be unable (or unwilling) to help Israel.
I know how this will end and I am deeply saddened that Israelis have written their own doom with their actions. The Arabs are willing to let Israel exist, but Israel MUST atone for its many past sins and no one in Israel even understands just how badly they have sinned, let alone be willing to atone.
Anyone with an understanding of the flow of history and human nature knows that Israel will lose everything in the end if it stays on the current path, but it is obvious that Israel will stay on the path of doom.
Such a waste of so many humans lives.