Our Israeli correspondent MC reports from Sderot with thoughts about President Barack Hussein Obama’s visit to Israel, and what changes it might portend for the regional balance of power.
This One I Dread
by MC
It’s raining here in Sderot, and when it rains we expect the missiles. Along with rain comes reduced visibility, and thus greater safety for those who launch the missiles.
Much as I hate the missiles, and the reasoning behind them, one is forced to concede the ‘bravery’ entailed in launching these missiles. I suspect that more missile launchers have died at their posts than citizens of Sderot, their victims.
Mostly, the missiles are harmless, but the small percentage that land within the city kill and maim indiscriminately. But then that is what terror is all about.
The aim is to so intimidate me that my normal life is disrupted, and I seek safety by abandoning home and job. This was the aim of bombing in the 20th century wars. It did not work, but it made the home front populations feel better.
We have now had some 3 months without an alarm. I suspect there are several reasons for this situation, the first is that Iron Dome missile defence system proved so effective that the return on investment has became nil. Secondly, the Egyptian regime appears to have facilitated the introduction into Gaza of longer range missiles that go ‘over our heads’. Missile systems have a minimum as well as a maximum range.
Thirdly there is the political solution to Pillar of Cloud, details of which have been kept from us, but I expect we are going to find out about very soon. The feet of Obama on Jerusalem’s hallowed ground is not going to bring good news, joy or peace.
Then, there are the goings on up north, in the Golan. The Golan was occupied and held on to because of the Syrian penchant for meddling with water supplies, and particularly the headwaters of the Jordan river. Being baptized in the river Jordan is still a sacred practice foe Christians, and the river is a popular stopping point for the many tourists in the area. Syria planned to divert the river.
Now we find that the SRA wants to secure the Golan area prior to Obama’s visit. The question I ask myself is, which borders will O want Israel to concede this time? The 1967 ‘Green Line’ or United Nations Resolution 181 borders? It will certainly not be the League of Nations ‘Jewish Homeland’ of 1922.
The ‘Green Line’ was drawn on a map in wax crayon as an informal agreement between the two opposing generals in 1967 in a private arrangement to avoid ‘accidental violations’ it has persisted into today’s politics, but has no significance in law.
To revert to the green line will be a huge victory for Islam in many ways, the most tragic being for those Israelis living in suburbs like Gilo. Gilo is a newish area about a mile from the Green Line. It will be ethnically cleansed.
Muslims appear to be exempt from the idea of ethnic cleansing as a ‘war crime’. The ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Bosnia and Kosovo seems to have been totally overlooked by the NATO court ICC in the Hague. That it is the intention of the PA to implement Judenrein in any territory they gain seems to be insignificant. Serbs and Jews, now where have I heard that linkage, oh I know, the Jasenovac death camp.
One thing Israel has learnt in its short history is that ‘friendship’ in international terms means that friends do not kick one quite so hard as enemies do. The US relationship with Israel works only as long as there is a strategic need. Obama seems to see Egypt as fulfilling that strategic need better than Israel, and I can visualise this coming visit as signalling a pivotal change in US-Israeli relations.
One of my sons is currently doing service in the IDF. He was telling me that the army was somewhat nervous of having 6,000 US servicemen in Israel, not so much that the U.S. Army is hostile, but that their Commander is just not predictable.
Luckily, O cannot afford to alienate too many Democrat-supporting Jews.
The Arab-Israeli war seems intractable, but it is not. It is, however, convenient for geopolitical players to have the conflict continue smouldering, with the occasional flare-up.
Just a thought; Weapons research which cannot be done in the US because of domestic politics can easily be done in Israel, so do we really have a neutron bomb? It’s a horrible thought.
It is now bright sunshine. Today we need to finish planning for Passover. For those in Jerusalem, closed down tight for the O visit, this Pesache has become a nightmare. All traffic has been banned from the ‘old city’ so preparations are totally disrupted.
If only I could find something good and exciting about the President’s visit. There are presidents I would have welcomed; there are presidents I would have loved to have met.
This one I dread.
Check out the map of Israel released by O’s people prior to his visit.
I suspect the border changes on the White House’s map may indicate what price Obama intends to exact for any support beyond nice words.
From Dymphna: The comment that was here, written by “Jon” and let thru by the Baron violated the rules of discourse for our blog. Thus, I deleted it. Readers who wish to leave opinions have to make certain they do not call names or dismiss others’ points of view as wrong.
We can disagree without being disagreeable. That’s the bottom line.
If interested in trying again to put forth your point of view, please treat your interlocutor as you would wish to be treated. Any other course will not stand.
No doubt the Baron’s one good eye is bothering him this late at night. But I don’t mind doing clean-up. However, I am not as good an editor as he is: I saw no way to redact your comment to make it courteously phrased.
Sounds like censorship to me. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck………..
Has this blog gone pro-Zionist now?
@Jon
I am not sure what you wrote, but if it is against the rules then it is not censorship.
What is pro-zionism?, all Jews who believe the bible are ‘zionist’ after all we lay down by the waters of Babylon and wept for Zion in about 580 BC, what were your antecedents doing then?
Anti-Zionism is ‘newspeak’ for good old fashioned anti-Semitism; a very old form of racism currently being made popular by the liberal left.
*Sigh*
Accusations re “censorship” demonstrate a failure to read (or perhaps heed) the rules posted at the top of the comment box, immediately under “Leave a Reply”.
Here, once more, are our rules re the constraints on speech:
“Gates of Vienna’s rules about comments require that they be civil, temperate, on-topic, and show decorum. For more information, click here.”
[that ‘click here’ isn’t linked. Open the Reply to find the live version]
Your comment violated the rules re civility, temperance and decorum and was thus deleted.
This is our living room. Commenters may enter and be heard as long as they – once more with feeling = are civil and courteous. If they refuse to honor that basic rule, then yes, they are shown the door. Or censored, or however you choose to frame the a priori limit set on everyone, bloggers and commenters alike.
These rules are for everyone appearing here, not just commenters. Admin, guest essayists, etc. – all the Gates of Vienna folk – follow the same proscription.
If this were really censorship, then you wouldn’t be permitted to make your comments anywhere. But for the moment, you are free also to open up for business with your own blog and say whatever you want there. If that condition didn’t exist, then yes, there would be a lack of free speech.
It is a rhetorical fallacy, a categorical mistake to be precise, to claim that our a priori limits on what may be said here constitutes censorship. This conflation of rules and censoring seems to be a common error amongst liberals; we don’t see conservatives fall into that error as often.
In one of his books, Malcolm Gladwell notes that it takes ten thousand repetitions to become really skilled at something. Since we long passed 12,000 posts that’s at least 40,000 comments we’ve monitored before letting them stand.Based on Gladwell’s ideas, I rate our ability to estimate the worth of a comment as expert.
As if Anti-Semites do not practice “censorship”…
” Has this site gone pro-Zionist now ?” It has always been pro-
Zionist, from day one. In fact, it seems that one of the purposes of this site has always been to give World Jewry good publicity,
specially in regard to the much debated Holocaust. I know that this must be true because my comment here goes straight into the bin.
OK, Mr. DuCain, you can have your say about Zionism and world Jewry this one time. Then we’re done.
Yes, you’re quite right: I like Jews. At least the ones I’ve met — I don’t know George Soros or Rahm Emanuel; I might not find them as congenial as the Jews I happen to know.
And, yes: We are pro-Zionist. We support the State of Israel as a strategic necessity, and also as a bastion of civilization surrounded by darkness and barbarity. We support the right of Israel to negotiate the terms of any “peace” — assuming it ever gets one — so that its own security is not compromised. Those are our positions.
You’ve made it clear many times that you don’t agree with those positions. That’s fine; I don’t require that people agree with me.
But I have learned from hard experience that if “anti-Zionists” are allowed to vent their feelings without check, they will turn a comment thread — any thread, no matter the topic — into a Jew-hating screed. They highjack it and despoil it, driving away other interested commenters who don’t share their obsession.
I won’t have it here. I’m sick of it, and have been sick of it for a number of years.
It’s not my job to allow you uninhibited expression of your idiosyncratic preoccupation.
There are plenty of sites that cater to your specialized tastes. Dozens of them; I’ve seen them. They will welcome you with open arms, and sympathize with your distaste for our “pro-Zionism” and our support for “World Jewry”. There you may vent to your heart’s content about a glorious future free of the taint of Jews. Depart thence and hold forth, with my earnest blessing!
But not here. I’ve had enough.
<<>>
Thanks for the honest confirmation at any rate, although it had crossed my mind from some of your writings.
Being anti-Zionist is not the same as being anti-Jewish! I also like Jews and have had many friends who are Jews, but they have not been of the Zionist persuasion and are, in fact, disdainful of the great sham which Zionism stands for.
From my way of thinking, the world would have been a happier place without Zionists and Islamic agitators as counterpoint. Without a state of Israel the Moslems would have had little to build their eternal loathing of dhimmitude on. Admittedly they’d always have that chip on their shoulder about being turned back from Europe in the Middle Ages, but we could reasonably survive a mere tanty about that.
As it is we’re now caught in a cleft stick – if we reject the militant Islamic ‘risorgimento’, does that mean we have to be seen to support Israel? Or, if we reject Zionism does that put us in the market supporting an Islamic takeover?
All these questions and more, which will doubtless present themselves in time.
A reader left a link to JoshuaPundit’s post on this subject. The title is striking:
“Narcissus in the Promised Land”
http://joshuapundit.blogspot.com/2013/03/narcissus-in-promised-land.html
A litttle correction, the ‘wax’ green line was actually drawn at the time of the 1949 armistisce and lasted up to 1967 when the whole of Jerusalem was taken, including Temple Mount. The Temple Mount area containing the Dome and Al Aksa was returned to Jordan under the care of the Waqf. Another hollow gesture .
Is Obama about to demand an “Israeli plan for withdrawal“?
While we’re at it – does Obama also have a secret plan for Israel’s (and the USA’s) destruction?
Note – the video in the second link was uploaded on 3 March 2011… Since then, part 1 of this “plan” has arguably been accomplished… a coincidence?
Just keep Obama from making any surprise announcements on the temple mount.
I’d be concerned if Buraq took off.
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I am pleased to be allowed in your living room. Reading MC in Sderot pleases me as did the “one eyed” Baron’s response to antisemitism.
@Jon
I am an anti-Colonialist, if it had not been for the colonialists, the USA would not be here today and the bombs would not have been dropped on Japan causing terror and injury, threat and malice, worldwide for the last 75 years, we would then not have had the Russians causing grief and threatening us with their violent Communism, We would have all lived happily ever after.
One can make up this kind of argument about anybody, it is called a “fairy tale”, we, currently living in Israel did not make the decisions that brought about this state of affairs you call zionism, the British, Americans and the French did in 1922 and 1947.
The bottom line is that, for whatever reason, you hold a body of Jews responsible for your misfortunes, and you feel that eliminating that particular body of Jews would alleviate that misfortune. So tell me why that is any different to any historical anti-Semitism?
@Jon,
If you really think that, without zionism, we would not have dhimmitude and Muslim supremacism and Muslim violence, sedition, totalitarianism, taqiyaa, civilizational conquest and violence–then you are extraordinarily ignorant about Islam. If you knew anything about Islam’s teachings, religious texts, history, culture and practices you could never say such ridiculous things.
I’m very well aware of the notional ambitions of the Koranic zealots to evangelise globally. However, the presence of Israel and the scurrilous manner of its establishment in 1948 have provided a huge propaganda boost to the willing recruitment of many young jihadis. How many times do we read of their hatred of Zionism as an excuse for destroying buildings in New York or London?
First of all, the UN helped establish the state of Israel. There was nothing scurrilous about it.
And it had never belonged to the Palestinians. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. According to the last Ottomon census, at the end of the 19th Century, the majority population in Jerusalem at that time was Jewish. Get that?
Jews have lived there for thousands of years. There was, for example, a thriving Jewish community in Hebron in what is now known as the “left bank” until the 1930s. What happened in the 1930s to end this? An Arab massacre took place. This was decades before the establishment of the state of Israel.
Small groups of Jews and small groups of Arabs lived in the area for thousands of years, even after the conquest of the 2nd temple in 70 AD by the Romans. When Mark Twain visited in late 19th or early 20th century (can’t remember his dates) he reported that the country was most empty of people. Jerusalem was not empty. It was majority Jewish. Get that? What the mainstream media now call “Arab east Jerusalem” used to be called “the Jewish Quarter.”
Funny that you don’t think the establishment of Iraq, Syria, Pakestan and many other countries in the region that were established with the help of the west was “scurrilous”–just the establishment of Israel. That’s because it’s the country of the Joos no doubt.
Read Horowitz or any decent history. [personal epithets redacted]
Furthermore, according to Bin Laden, it was the presence of American troops (the filthy unbelievers) on “sacred” Saudi soil that led him to form Al Qaida and attack the twin towers.
The only argument you use that is correct is the fact that some jihad recruiters use Israel as an excuse or inducement to recruit. But they also use everything the west does or does not to as an excuse to recruit. They used Iraq, our “terrible treatment” of Iran, our persecution of Muslims in the West and our “Islamophobia,” our immoral society, our lack of recognition of their superiority and their Califate, our support of Muslim dictators who are not Islamic enough for them, etc., etc.
I suppose you blame the Iran-Iraq war on the Joos or the state of Israel? Likewise what’s happening in Syria? Or the murder and dispossesion of the Serbs in the Balkans? Or the Jihadi attacks in Thailand, Nigeria, Tunisia, Indonesia, the Phillipines, etc., etc. All of these conflicts and more have served as a clarion call for the Jihadis who were called to areas to help their co-religionist.
The clever Palestinians have convinced the mainstream media and many of our left-wing politicians that Israel (read “the Joos”) is the source of all the problems in the world and that the Muslim world and the world in general would be a Garden of Eden if it were not for Israel.
And, of course, you believe them. Because they always speak the truth. Right?