Panicky critics of Israel push fake ‘one state’ bogeyman - by Stephen M. Flatow

...The “one state” threat is a cheap propaganda exercise whose only purpose is to try to scare Israelis and their American Jewish supporters. The irony is that it’s The New York Times and J Street who are the ones that are genuinely scared. They’re scared to death because their dream of setting up a Palestinian state a few miles from Tel Aviv is slipping away.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
09 January '18..

You know that critics of Israel are getting panicky when they start trotting out the old “one state” bogeyman.

“As a 2-State Solution Loses Steam, a 1-State Plan Gains Traction,” a New York Times headline announced on Jan. 5, above an article so palpably absurd that it can only reflect the mad panic among advocates of Palestinian statehood as they see their dream fading away. And the fact that The Times chose to make it page one news says a lot about the fearful mindset among the left-wing news media, Israel-bashing pundits and Jewish peace camp types.

The article was written by David M. Halbfinger, who became The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief six months ago. Before taking up that position, Halbfinger served as one of the newspaper’s Hollywood correspondents and as its New York City metro political editor. It doesn’t sound like those previous posts prepared him very well for understanding Israel and the Palestinians.

On the other hand, sometimes it seems as if the only “qualification” The Times requires for someone to serve as its Jerusalem correspondent (or bureau chief!) is the ability to come up with ways to harangue and smear Israel and to make Palestinians look sympathetic. That’s certainly what Halbfinger seemed to be up to with his “one state” declaration.

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Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Answering John Kerry by Caroline Glick

...At the outset of his remarks, Kerry explained that as far as US Middle East policy is concerned, “Our goal, our strategy is to help ensure that the builders and the healers throughout the region have the chance that they need to accomplish their tasks.” Sadly, this is neither a goal nor a strategy. It is the sort of platitude you’re likely to find inside a Chinese fortune cookie.

Caroline Glick..
Opinion/JPost..
07 December '15..

On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech before the Brookings Institute’s Saban Forum.

Kerry focused on the Palestinian conflict with Israel and sought to draw a distinction between the two-state policy model, which he supports, and the one-state policy model, which he rejects.

To justify his rejection of a policy based on Israeli sovereignty over areas beyond the 1949 armistice lines, Kerry raised a series of questions about what a one-state policy would look like.

I answered all of his questions, as well as many others, in great detail in my book The Israeli Solution: A One- State Plan for Peace in the Middle East. I will do so again here, albeit with the requisite brevity.

But before discussing the specific questions Kerry raised with regard to the one-state model, it is important to discuss the nature of the policies Kerry described in his speech.

Kerry argued Israel should deny civil and property rights to Jews beyond the 1949 armistice lines, and ignore the building and planning laws of both Israel and the military government in Judea and Samaria in order to allow unrestricted Arab construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

Such steps, he argued, will advance the cause of peace because they will pave the way for an Israeli withdrawal from the vast majority of these areas. Such a withdrawal in turn will bring about the desired two-state solution.

Since the two-state solution is supported by the whole world, Kerry argued that once Israel withdraws from the areas, it will gain the support of the world, peace with its Arab neighbors as well as the Palestinians, and become more prosperous and happy than it is today. It will also secure its democracy.

On the other hand, Kerry argued, if Israel respects the civil and property rights of Jews and continues to enforce the law toward Arabs as well as Jews, and if it eventually applies its laws to any or all of Judea and Samaria, Israel will enter a state of perpetual war with the Palestinians and the wider Arab world. Israel will cease to be a democracy. Israel will be impoverished.

Israel will be isolated internationally even more than it is today.

If Kerry’s options were real options, then Israel would have a clear and easy choice, just as he argues it has.

But unfortunately, they aren’t real options. They are fantasies.

Beyond the politics of the moment by Dror Eydar

...Kerry called on us to "see beyond the politics and the pressures of the moment and to look to the future." Exactly right. That is the essence of the return to Zion -- looking past the politics of the moment.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
07 December '15..

Nearly seven years have passed since President Barack Obama took office and, with much fanfare, introduced a new U.S. Middle East policy. What has been achieved during that time? What remains of the vision Obama laid out in his Cairo speech? What is left of the Middle East that existed when Obama came to power (a Middle East which with Secretary of State John Kerry was very familiar)? Very little.

Only one country in the Middle East remains stable -- Israel, thank God. The truth must be told: Israel has remained stable precisely because it has not accepted the advice of the White House, even though this advice was based on a genuine concern for Israel's future as a "Jewish and democratic state."

Islamic terrorism reared its ugly head in San Bernardino last week, but Kerry refused to be distracted from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"There will always be a reason not to act," he said on Saturday. In Kerry's view, Israel must "act" now. Why? Have the Arabs in our region changed for the better? No. Syria and Iraq have collapsed into civil wars. Lebanon is a tinderbox set to be ignited by an Iranian-Shiite flame. Egypt went through two revolutions in three years, and Jordan survives only due to Israeli and American assistance. The Islamic State group is spreading across the world. And Turkey is flirting with visions of a new Ottoman empire, which directly clash with Russian President Vladimir Putin's visions of a new Czarist empire. That is not enough craziness? If there was ever a "reason not to act," the current global geopolitical reality provides one.

The Left in Israel and the U.S. speaks about "hope," which actually is despair. Leftists in both countries prefer wishful thinking over a correct reading of reality. Israel has had enough leaders who believed they could change the course of history. "They forgot to be modest," as Albert Camus wrote in his book, "The Plague."

Glick - Let us embrace our friends

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
18 May '12..




Two weeks ago, US Congressman Joe Walsh published an op-ed in the The Washington Times in which he called for the US and Israel to abandon the two-state solution.

After running through the record of Palestinian duplicity, failed governance, terrorism and bad faith, he called for Israel to apply its sovereignty to Judea and Samaria. In his words, Israel should "adopt the only solution that will bring true peace to the Middle East: a single Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is the only country in the region dedicated to peace and the only power capable of stable, just and democratic government in the region."

The evidence that the two-state paradigm has failed is overwhelming. The Palestinians' decision to reject statehood at Camp David in 2000 and launch a terror war against Israel made clear that they had not abandoned their refusal from 1947 to accept partition of the Land of Israel with the Jews.

So, too, the Palestinians' election of Hamas in the 2006 elections, and their missile war against Israel from Gaza in the aftermath of Israel's complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, all made clear that they are not interested in a Palestinian state. Rather, their chief desire is Israel's annihilation.

Consequentially, there is no chance whatsoever that the two state paradigm can work.

Tobin - Nothing Inevitable About a One-State Solution-Part Two

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
09 December '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/09/one-state-solution-israel-inevitable-two/

As I wrote earlier, Peter Beinart and the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg claim Israel must evacuate the West Bank of Jews or be faced with an inevitable scenario in which they will either be forced to accept a one-state solution that means the end of Zionism or be branded an apartheid state. But this is a false choice. The settlements would not prevent a two-state solution if the Palestinians were willing to accept one in the first place. They have repeatedly refused such a deal, and the continuance of the status quo is their fault, not Israel’s.

But is it reasonable to assume, as do Beinart and Goldberg, that eventually Americans will tire of supporting Israel under these circumstances? Will the leftist repetition of the false canard that Israel is a new South Africa wear down the bipartisan coalition that is the foundation of the U.S.-Israel alliance and, sooner or later, force the Israelis to either accept the creation of a Palestinian state — that may or may not be controlled by the Islamists of Hamas — or be abandoned by Washington and American Jewry? The answer is no. Such a notion assumes that Americans–Jews and non-Jews alike–are indifferent to Israel’s security dilemma or ignorant or indifferent to the nature of the Palestinian political culture or their intentions.

In his piece, Goldberg alludes to the security implications of a full withdrawal from the West Bank under the current circumstances. But he assumes that this is merely a factor that must be ignored for the sake of peace or avoiding the apartheid smear. But doing so would inevitably mean replicating what Israel faced when it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza: the creation of a Hamas state that functions as both a safe haven for terrorists and as reminder that the Palestinian goal is not independence but the destruction of Israel. No one in Israel, even on the political left whose parties have been decimated by the failure of the peace process they advocated, wants to see the standoff in Gaza — where rockets routinely fly over the border to hit Israeli towns and villages — repeated next to the main population centers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. So long as that is true, there will never be an Israeli majority for more territorial surrender.

Tobin - Nothing Inevitable About a One-State Solution-Part One

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
09 December '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/09/one-state-solution-israel-inevitable/

It has become a common theme heard on the left that unless Israel radically changes its posture toward the peace process it will be faced with two huge threats to its existence. One is the notion that in a few years, if not sooner, there will be only one option available to resolve the conflict: the so-called “one-state solution” in which Israel is forced to treat Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as Israeli citizens and thus lose its Jewish majority–meaning the end of the Jewish state and Zionism. The other is that if it refuses to accept that grim fate, then it will be branded as the new South Africa, and a Jewish apartheid state would lose the support of both American Jewry and the United States. This means that sooner or later Israel must unilaterally evacuate the West Bank and even parts of Jerusalem as it did in Gaza in 2005 or face the consequences.

While it’s no surprise a lightweight leftist like Peter Beinart would promote this sort of false choice, it’s disappointing to see Jeffrey Goldberg endorse this prediction. Writing in the Atlantic, Goldberg claims that while he doesn’t entirely agree with Beinart, he thinks his thesis is logical. But despite their claim that it is inevitable, neither conclusion is remotely likely even if, as is almost certain, the peace process remains stalled for the foreseeable future.

(Video) Eye on Zion - One State or Two?

Middle East Panel - One State or Two? Host Leland Vittert - Fox News Live




EyeOnZionTV
Uploaded on
Sep 28, 2011

This was a very lively panel discussion with Yishai Fleisher (radio host and director of Eye On Zion Media), Dimitri Diliani (Fatah Revolutionary Council), and Alan Baker (retired Israeli Ambassador to Canada). It took place 22 September '11, and was moderated by Leland Vittert, who is based in Jerusalem for Fox News

The 18 minute edited version of this program presented here was prepared by Eye On Zion Media which is an education and outreach project of the non-profit organization Kumah. www.kumah.org



Leland Vittert is based in Jerusalem for Fox News.
foxnewsinsider.com/​author/​leland-vittert/​
Fox News is the owner of the original content.

A 34 minute version of this program is available on request. Please email shalom@kumah.org to request the long version.

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
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Give the Middle East to the Jews: Klavan's One-State Solution

Pajamasmedia
02 June '11



In an effort to bring peace to the Middle East, President Barack Obama has proposed that Israel should return to its 1967 borders in exchange for being annihilated by its enemies. PJTV's Andrew Klavan has a better idea.



If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
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A Sense of Purpose

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
31 December 09

To end the Year 2009 on an upbeat note, I would recommend the reading of two recently published books: One State, Two States by Benny Morris, and Start-Up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer –provided you read them in that order.

Morris has gone a long way since his self-appointment as a "new historian" poised to question Israel's historical narrative and "myths." In January 2004, he surprised –and shocked- many by declaring to Ari Shavit that "when the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy;" that "there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing;" that it was necessary to uproot the Palestinians in 1948; that Ben-Gurion "had carried out a full expulsion –rather than a partial one- he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations;" that "the non-completion of the transfer was a mistake;" that in circumstances which "are liable to be realized in five or ten years … acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential;" that "there is not going to be peace in the present generation;" that "we are doomed to live by the sword;" that "something like a cage has to be built" for the Palestinians; that all Israelis can do at this point is "to be vigilant, to defend the country;" and that "the Arab world as it is today is barbarian" ("Survival of the Fittest," Haaretz, 9 January 2004).

In One State, Two States, Morris shows that the Zionist movement accepted the principle of partition out of political realism from the time it was first proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have systematically rejected the idea, and Arafat only deceived Israel with the Oslo Agreements to implement the "phased strategy." With the steady radicalization and islamization of Palestinian society today, Morris argues, chances of implementing the two-state solution are null.

Morris also shows, no less convincingly, that the alternatives to the two-state solution (including an Arab-dominated bi-national state) are unrealistic and undesirable (as far as Israel is concerned, at least). So there is no alternative to a solution that doesn't work. Great.

Morris is a realist. He realizes that Israel is in a catch-22 type of situation. Probably because he didn't want to end his book on a bleak note, he does suggest a way out by proposing the revival of the "Jordanian option." Nice try, but it doesn't wash. Jordan doesn't want it and, as Morris himself explains at length, the Palestinians will never sign a deal that leaves a sovereign Jewish state in the equation.

Despite his unconvincing attempt to sound optimistic in the last two pages of his book, Morris makes a compelling case: There is no solution.

(Continue reading article)
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Neither a bi-national state nor a two state solution

Ted Belman
Israpundit
07 November 09

Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed Hussein Ibish the author of “What’s Wrong With the One-State Agenda?” on The Fantasy World of One-Staters. Ibish was one of the speakers at the J Street Convention.

Ibish thought that the J Street tent was too big to find a consensus and it would have to create some cohesion and a central message before it could be effective.

(Ibish) I mean people ranging from the sort of centrist-center left, all the way to post-Zionists, anti-Zionists, who were there, too. It’s not ultimately a group that’s going to form, I think, a functional coalition. Right now, they’re finding their feet. This is normal, it’s inevitable — but at a certain point, I think they have to clarify what they are, who their constituency is, what they stand for, who they are, who they’re not. They’ve been more successful in creating a space for themselves as a new voice that is compelling, but at other moments it’s looked like where they were simply positioning themselves as the alternative to AIPAC. And my sense of things is that, initially, that they would look too much to their rivals. But sooner rather than later, they’re going to have to just move on and start to define themselves in a much more coherent and pro-active way, not just in contrast to the traditional Jewish organizations but also to distinguish themselves from people in the Jewish community whose criticism of Israel makes them anathema to the mainstream of the community. They can’t go there and I think they’ve tried not to go there.

I think he is entirely wrong in this because he assumes that the goal of J Street is to attract a substantial number of Jews and thus speak for a major segment of the Jewish community. But what they really want to do is undermine the Jewish state. They are not pro-Israel they are anti-Israel. They will never compromise their ideology to get more support.
But I was more interested in what he had to say about the fantasy of the one state solution that some are touting now. He thought it was a fantasy because hardly any Israelis would agree to it.
He totally rejected the belief “that through the application of what they (the one staters) call BDS - Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions - globally that they can crush the will of the Israelis and break the Zionist movement.”

Anyone who thinks that is plausible in the foreseeable future doesn’t understand the nature of the American relationship with Israel. The commitment of the U.S., not just the government but American society, is to the survival and security of the Israeli state. And then there’s another aspect, which is the extent to which Israeli institutions, organizations and corporations are interwoven at a very fundamental level with many of those in the U.S.I’m talking about corporate, governmental, intelligence, military, industrial, scientific ties. The point is that you can only take talk of boycott and sanctions seriously if you really don’t understand any of this. And if you don’t understand any of this, then you’re living in a fantasy world.

Furthermore, he says, the world has moved on.

These people are trapped in the language of the Fifties and Sixties. You’re talking about a worldview is anachronistic in the most fundamental sense. It doesn’t recognize any of the changes that have taken place since then. For example, the strategic situation that’s emerged in the Middle East, where the Arab states and the Arabs generally have a lot of other things to worry about other than Israel. This is a world in which a lot of Gulf states are extremely concerned about Iraq, and where there are Arab states — Jordan and Egypt — that have treaties with Israel, where Syria has a motive to be civil with Israel that is unpleasant but completely stable, and where it’s a very different environment than simply the Arabs and Israelis are enemies.The other thing that they’ve missed completely, and this is sort of the amazing thing, is the total transformation in American official policy toward the Palestinians over the past 20 years. Twenty-one years ago, there was no contact ever between the U.S. and the PLO. No contact, zero, and no Palestinian statehood is the consensus American foreign policy and it is a national security priority under Obama. People in the House, key positions like the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Howard Berman, chair of the Subcommittee on the Middle East, Gary Ackerman, Nita Lowey on Appropriations - all of them Jewish American members of Congress, stalwart supporters of Israel, and all of them committed to peace based on two states. And all of them, by the way, who were on the host committee of the American Task Force on Palestine gala last week.

It is easy to understand why these supporters of Israel and a two state solution would consider the expansion of settlements an obstacle to the two state solution. That’s why they supported Obama’s demand for a freeze, in part, if not in whole. But what about Israel. Israelis are in favour of building in Jerusalem but less supportive of building in the rest of Judea and Samaria. Those who support continued construction do not support a two state solution save for those who firmly believe that only through such construction can the Arabs be forced to make a deal. Time would not be on the side of the Arabs. If construction were to stop entirely, the Arabs could wait another hundred years to destroy Israel. Our American friends should understand this.
Israel should too. Israel can’t have it both ways. She can’t favour a two state solution and at the same time expand the settlement endeavour. Perhaps the Netanyahu government has come to this conclusion and therefor has frozen all new construction in favour of renewed negotiations. But the opposition to such a freeze is very strong. The opposition to withdrawing from Judea and Samaria is even stronger.
Netanyahu’s current policy is not aimed at the same end result as envisioned by Israel’s friends in the US, namely two states living in peace. He doesn’t believe it is possible. Netanyahu is aiming for limited sovereignty, only, for the Arabs, otherwise known as autonomy.
I would argue that the two staters are also pursuing a fantasy. To believe that such a solution is possible is to ignore that neither party wants to make the necessary compromises. It also ignores how intractable the problems are.
What is missing from the predominant view is a third possibility, namely, one where the one state is not a bi-national state but a Jewish state with a Jewish majority.
If Israel were to annex Judea and Samaria, the Jewish residents in the expanded Israel, would outnumber the Arab residents, 2:1 for the foreseeable future. (See AIDRG and One Jewish State .) Jewish citizens would exceed Arab citizens by even a greater majority. The Arabs would be granted citizenship over time according to western norms e.g. they must speak the language, swear loyalty, do national service and so on.
Basic Laws would be passed to ensure that Israel remain a Jewish state. This would not be unusual as many states affilliate with Christianity or Islam in their constitutions. The Arab citizens would simply have to accept that.
It is either that or autonomy only, over Area “A” only. This is about 40% of Judea and Samaria.
Pursuing such alternate solutions would have the best chance of success if the US committed to it.

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