AIPAC, Israel and the poisonously ambiguous concept of “two states” - by Vic Rosenthal

...AIPAC hoped to fend off attacks from J Street and similar groups without weakening its support from pro-Israel elements, by employing the time honored method of political triangulation. By adopting some of the ideas of its opponents on the Left, it hopes to bring them into the fold, while its supporters on the Right will have nowhere else to go. But this is a poor strategy because the progressives among the Democrats no longer accept AIPAC’s primary objective, which is support for Israel. It’s not that they think, as the Israeli Left does, that “ending the occupation” will be likely to lead to peace, or that their vision of Israel will be more democratic, or that another partition of the Land of Israel will prevent a demographic crisis. They have absorbed the narratives of the international Left and are simply anti-Israel. They are not coming back to AIPAC.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
08 March '18..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2018/03/the-poisonously-ambiguous-concept-of-two-states/

AIPAC CEO Howard Kohr created a stir Sunday when he called for “two states for two peoples: one Jewish with secure and defensible borders and one Palestinian with its own flag and its own future.”

Kohr deliberately echoed the words of Benjamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University in 2009. Netanyahu said then,

In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other. …

I have already stressed the first principle – recognition. Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people.

The second principle is: demilitarization. The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarized with ironclad security provisions for Israel. …

Regarding the remaining important issues that will be discussed as part of the final settlement, my positions are known: Israel needs defensible borders, and Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel with continued religious freedom for all faiths.

Bibi’s statement was a mistake. His enemies on the right pounced on him for giving up his historical opposition to a Palestinian state, while the Arabs and the Left derided him as insincere. He got nothing in return from Obama and lost whatever reputation he still had for principled opposition to concessions for the PLO. Most damaging to Israel was the fact that the Americans and the PLO “pocketed” his statement, making it almost impossible for him or any subsequent Israeli Prime Minister to walk it back. From then on, anyone could say “Israel officially supports a Palestinian state.”

The root of the problem is that the concept of “two states” is poisonously ambiguous. Everyone can understand it to mean something different, up to embracing diametrically opposite ideas.

A Reality v. Democrats’ Israel Debate - by Jonathan Tobin

...To the contrary, rather than encouraging peace, stands such as those of Sanders, and the European countries that he cites as backing up his slurs about the Gaza war, are instead giving the Palestinians the impression that they should redouble their terror efforts rather than make peace. As unrealistic as Sanders’ economic positions may be, his opinions about the Middle East that are being applauded on the left as a refreshing dissent from the bipartisan support for Israel that exists in this country, are based on even greater fantasies.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
18 April '16..

Last week, the split within the Democratic Party was put on display during the debate in Brooklyn between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Given his well-known critical views, Sanders’ full-throated attack against Prime Minister Netanyahu, as well as his re-floating of the smear that Israeli Defense Forces’ efforts to suppress missile fire and terror tunnels from Hamas terrorists in Gaza were “disproportionate,” to say nothing of his statement blaming the continuation of the conflict on Israel rather than, as Clinton pointed, squarely on the Palestinians where it belongs, was hardly surprising. But his willingness to go on the offensive against the pro-Israel community in this way just days before the New York primary illustrated his belief that the liberal base of the party — and a vocal left-wing minority of Jews — agree with him. The problem with his stands though — and that of many in his party as well as the Obama administration — is that they are not so much at variance with Clinton’s beliefs as they are with the reality of the Middle East, as a series of recent events, including today’s Jerusalem bus bombing, illustrate.

Sanders’s stand may not win him as many votes as he thinks since even most liberal New York Jewish voters aren’t that comfortable with his willingness to embrace the “disproportionate” canard even if they also don’t like Netanyahu. But it was widely applauded by veteran Israel-bashers like the New York Times’ Roger Cohen (who also has doubled at times as an apologist for Iran) as well as the left-wing J Street lobby. Though at times it has maintained the pretense that its goal is to replace AIPAC as the voice of the pro-Israel community, the group has a fraction of that mainstream group’s support and influence. Yet it is being propped up by the administration, which is sending both Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry to a J Street event tonight as a signal of its desire to encourage those Jews who are critical of Netanyahu.

But as weak as the arguments in favor of Sanders’ stands were, the bombing in Jerusalem and the discovery of a new terror tunnel were more reminders of how out of touch with reality, the Vermont senator, the administration and their left-wing cheering sections are.

The bombing, which injured 21 people, represented a marked escalation in the conflict just at a time when many in Israel thought a decline in attacks showed that the “stabbing intifada” might be coming to an end. The bombing was applauded by Hamas, which spoke of it as appropriate retaliation for supposed “desecration” of the mosques on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, a lie that has been consistently sounded by the Palestinian Authority, too, as it has both applauded and encouraged terror attacks during the past several months. While there is no telling whether this is an isolated incident or the start of a new terror offensive that will return to more bloody tactics used during the second intifada that took thousands of lives in the last decade, it is nevertheless a troubling development.

The hour of the pro-Israel Democrats by Caroline Glick

...Obama’s policies toward Israel are a radical departure from those of all his predecessors. They are out of line with the bipartisan positions of the American people. They can be defeated by his fellow Democrats while he is still president. And they can certainly be abandoned once he is gone. The Democrats have not abandoned Israel. And now is their time to support it.

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
14 July '15..

It works out that Barack Obama is a multi-tasker. Even as he and Secretary of State John Kerry have been devoting their attention to capitulating to Iran, they still managed to open a new front against Israel by buffeting the anti-Israel boycott movement.

Last week State Department spokesman John Kirby announced a radical new US policy regarding free trade with Israel that paves the way for all of Israel to be placed on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) chopping block. The announcement came against the backdrop of two recent events.

Second, last month Obama signed the Trade Promotion Authority bill. Weeks before he signed it, both houses of Congress added a provision to the bill instructing US trade negotiators to “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel,” by foreign governments. The provision relates both to “business in Israel or in Israeli controlled territories.”

As Prof. Eugene Kontorovich pointed out in a recent article in The Washington Post, Congress’s action was in line with nearly 50 years of US policy.

Kontorovich explained, “US laws have long applied the same economic treatment to all areas under Israeli jurisdiction (including Jerusalem).

For example, the pair of anti-boycott laws passed in the late 1970s treat Israeli companies the same regardless of their location in relation to the Green Line. And the US-Israel Free Trade Implementation Act, first passed in 1985, affords ‘areas under Israeli jurisdiction’ the same treatment as all ‘Israeli’ products for US trade purposes.”

This brings us back to Kirby. On June 30, days after Obama signed the law, Kirby indicated that the administration will be less than aggressive in implementing the anti-BDS provision. To justify this unlawful behavior, Kirby claimed – falsely – that the provision “runs counter to longstanding US policy towards the occupied territories, including with regard to settlement activity....”

Kirby elaborated, again nonsensically and falsely, “The US government has never defended or supported Israeli settlements and activity associated with them, and by extension, does not pursue policies or activities that would legitimize them.”

As Kontorovich noted, there is no connection between supporting settlements and defending free trade. By conflating the two, the US government is now saying that it opposes all economic activity by Jews in areas that the US does not accept as part of sovereign Israel. It doesn’t matter if the business activity is a tourist site – like the Western Wall – in east Jerusalem which Obama visited during his run for the presidency in 2008, or an industrial park in the suburbs of Jerusalem or a winery in Samaria.

Then there is western Jerusalem. Since Obama insists that the US will not recognize that west Jerusalem is part of Israel, it naturally follows that his administration will not defend Jewish economic activity in the city from foreign governments who seek to boycott Jewish businesses and other activities. Since the Knesset is located in Jerusalem, it may very well be the case that the US will not object to parliamentary boycotts of the Knesset.

Given that there is no legal distinction between west Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, since both of them have been under Israeli sovereignty since 1948, it is reasonable to view the administration’s radical (and illegal) policy toward Jewish economic activity in areas the US doesn’t consider part of Israel as a stepping stone toward legitimizing full economic warfare against all Israeli territory.

While the administration’s position is alarming, it is far from clear that Obama will be able to advance his anti-Israel economic agenda.