17 June '11
(I received this earlier today from David, who many times has graced us with his insightful comments below the postings. While there are points I clearly would take issue with, he does not disappoint. Yosef)
Dear Yosef:
I just sent the following letter to the White House requesting they remove me from their official mailing list. I thought they were entitled to the reason I was making my request. It is self explanatory.
The statement regarding my position might be of interest to others so feel free to publish, share or forward to anyone you wish.
Warm regards,
David
________________________________________________________________________
Letter to the White House
I strongly campaigned for and worked for President Obama to help get him elected.
I contributed financially, over and over again, repeatedly and far beyond my personal budget allowed, because I believed he was a man of rare intellect and that he believed in Justice for all people in every part of the world regardless of skin color, religion or ethnicity.
I have been sorely disappointed by President Obama especially in his clearly apparent lack of understanding of the factual history and issues pertaining to the Middle East.
At best, perhaps he means well but is gravely misinformed and has been poorly advised by others.
At worst, perhaps he wants to prove to the Arabs and the Muslim world that he is determined to do whatever is necessary to satisfy their demands and placate their wishes.
It is abundantly clear at this point that Obama will never stand up and call a spade a spade and not a perfumed shovel.
Why has this President never once publicly stated to the entire world that before he will make any effort to improve the chances for peace in the Middle East, representatives of Iran, Syria, Hamas and all their allies, supporters and friends, et al., must come to the White House and assure the President of the United States, in signed, written statements that they fully accept and forever Recognize the State of Israel and Israel's Eternal right to exist.
But President Obama's empty poetic statements regarding the Middle East, and his perpetual platitudes repeated ad nausea, fool no one who really knows history and understands that as tragic as it may be, the adversaries of the State of Israel will never accept Israel's presence in the Middle East nor Israel's Right to Exist.
Recent events reflect what a poor understanding President Obama possesses of the issues in the Mid East conflict.
It is clear he never will or never has any intention of letting the facts get in the way of his personal agenda regarding the Middle East.
It is a true tragedy that Obama entered the White House with such factual deficiencies and experiential deficits regarding the already troubled Middle East.
Obama truly might have become one of America's greatest Presidents.
But based on recent events I cannot ever imagine that happening.
I have never voted for a Republican for President and never will and for all the same reasons that no lifetime supporter of the Democratic Party, including President Obama himself, would not vote for a Republican. It is not necessary to elaborate on this point.
This means I will be hard put to know what to do come the next election and dread the thought I might have to vote for a Party for whom I hold very great differences of opinion on a multitude of issues.
I believe I am only one of many millions of Americans who share my disappointment with how President Obama perceives the issues with regard to the Middle East.
Needless to say both President Obama and his 'advisors' will write people like me off as a small minority of voters whose opinion/s will not diminish his chance/s to be re-elected.
More is the pity.
In any case, I attach hereto some incontrovertible historical facts regarding the Middle East which President Obama, as an honest man wishing to learn and know the facts- should read- and then insist his entire White House staff read- and then read- and then read again every day.
These facts were penned by the distinguished David Harris. What follows is not opinion nor hypothetical conjecture but purely historical facts written and presented in the precise chronological order in which they occurred.
President Obama and his staff can like these facts or hate these facts but they can never and will never- be able to dispute them or refute these facts.
I will always remember how full of hope I was when Obama declared he would run for the White House.
And his being a man of 'color' added to my sense of euphoria that he would make history and show the world that in the United States of America, any man or woman can rise as far and as high as their innate human abilities, intellect and talents, allow.
I will go to my grave haunted by what- at least for myself and my personal hopes and dreams- might have been.
Sincerely,
With kindest regards,
David L. Pakter
900 Park Ave.
New York City
16 June 2011
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Remarks of David A Harris
Why the Six-Day War Still Matters
David A. Harris
aish.com
12 June '11
http://www.aish.com/jw/me/Why_the_Six-Day_War_Still_Matters.html
Ten crucial lessons that resonate to this day.
Mention the word "history" and it can trigger a roll of the eyes.
Add "Middle East" to the equation and folks might start running for the hills, unwilling to get caught up in the seemingly bottomless pit of details and disputes.
But without an understanding of what happened, it's impossible to grasp where we are -- and where we are has profound relevance for the region and the world.
Forty-four years ago this week, the Six-Day War broke out.
While some wars fade into obscurity, this one remains as relevant today as in 1967. Many of its core issues remain unresolved and in the news.
Politicians, diplomats, and journalists continue to grapple with the consequences of that war, but rarely provide context. Yet without context, some critically important things may not make sense.
First, in June 1967, there was no state of Palestine. It didn't exist and never had. Its creation, proposed by the UN in 1947, was rejected by the Arab world because it also meant the establishment of a Jewish state alongside.
Second, the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem were in Jordanian hands. Violating solemn agreements, Jordan denied Jews access to their holiest places in eastern Jerusalem. To make matters still worse, they destroyed many of those sites.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control, with harsh military rule imposed on local residents.
And the Golan Heights, which were regularly used to shell Israeli communities far below, belonged to Syria.
Third, the Arab world could have created a Palestinian state in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip any day of the week. They didn't. There wasn't even discussion about it. And Arab leaders, who today profess such attachment to eastern Jerusalem, rarely, if ever, visited. It was viewed as an Arab backwater.
Fourth, the 1967 boundary at the time of the war, so much in the news these days, was nothing more than an armistice line dating back to 1949 -- familiarly known as the Green Line. That's after five Arab armies attacked Israel in 1948 with the aim of destroying the embryonic Jewish state. They failed. Armistice lines were drawn, but they weren't formal borders. They couldn't be. The Arab world, even in defeat, refused to recognize Israel's very right to exist.
Fifth, the PLO, which supported the war effort, was established in 1964, three years before the conflict erupted. That's important because it was created with the goal of obliterating Israel. Remember that in 1964 the only "settlements" were Israel itself.
Sixth, in the weeks leading up to the Six-Day War, Egyptian and Syrian leaders repeatedly declared that war was coming and their objective was to wipe Israel off the map. There was no ambiguity. Twenty-two years after the Holocaust, another enemy spoke about the extermination of Jews. The record is well-documented.
The record is equally well-documented that Israel, in the days leading up to the war, passed word to Jordan, via the UN and United States, urging Amman to stay out of any pending conflict. Jordan's King Hussein ignored the Israeli plea and tied his fate to Egypt and Syria. His forces were defeated by Israel, and he lost control of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
Seventh, Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded that UN peacekeeping forces in the area, in place for the previous decade to prevent conflict, be removed. Shamefully, the UN complied. That left no buffer between Arab armies being mobilized and deployed and Israeli forces in a country one-fiftieth the size of Egypt -- and just nine miles wide at its narrowest point.
Eighth, Egypt blocked Israeli shipping lanes in the Red Sea, Israel's only maritime access to trading routes with Asia and Africa. This step was regarded as an act of war by Jerusalem. The United States spoke about joining with other countries to break the blockade, but did not act.
Ninth, France, which had been Israel's principal arms supplier, announced a ban on the sale of weapons on the eve of the June war. That left Israel in potentially grave danger if a war were to drag on and require the resupply of arms. It was not until the next year that the U.S. stepped into the breach and sold vital weapons systems to Israel.
Tenth, And finally, after winning the war of self-defense, Israel hoped that its newly-acquired territories, seized from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, would be the basis of a land-for-peace accord. Feelers were sent out. The formal response came on September 1, 1967, when the Arab Summit Conference famously declared in Khartoum "No peace, no recognition, no negotiations" with Israel.
Today, there are those who wish to rewrite history.
They want the world to believe there was once a Palestinian state. There was not.
They want the world to believe there were fixed borders between that state and Israel. There was only an armistice line between Israel and the Jordanian-controlled West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
They want the world to believe the 1967 war was a bellicose act by Israel. It was an act of self-defense in the face of blood-curdling threats to vanquish the Jewish state, not to mention the maritime blockade of the Straits of Tiran, the abrupt withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces, and the redeployment of Egyptian and Syrian troops.
All wars have consequences; this one was no exception. But the Arab aggressors have failed to take responsibility for the actions they instigated.
They want the world to believe post-1967 Israeli settlement-building is the key to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Six-Day War is proof positive that the core issue is, and always has been, whether the Arab world accepts the Jewish people's right to a state of their own. If so, all other contentious issues, however difficult, have possible solutions.
And they want the world to believe the Arab world had nothing against Jews per se, only Israel, yet trampled with abandon on sites of sacred meaning to the Jewish people.
In other words, when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, dismissing the past as if it were a minor irritant at best, irrelevant at worst, won't work.
Can history move forward? Absolutely. Israel's peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 prove the point. At the same time, though, the lessons of the Six-Day War illustrate just how tough and tortuous the path can be.
David A. Harris
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