WHAT OBAMA MISSED - by Award-winning screenwriter - Dan Gordon, Captain, I.D.F.

WHAT OBAMA MISSED
A Guest Blog
by
Award-winning screenwriter
Dan Gordon, Captain, I.D.F.  

      On May 19, 2011, there was an opportunity for an historic speech addressed to, and about, the Middle East and the Arab Spring, which the President tragically missed. 

      It could have been a game changer. 

      Instead it will be remembered as another Obama misstep vis-à-vis Israel and the Palestinians.  He began it well enough with a sense of poetry and empathy about the desperate act of a Tunisian street vendor as he described the Arab street demonstrations that have flared from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. He omitted, of course, America's tepid response to the demonstrations of the Green movement in Iran, which no doubt inspired the Arab street to rise up against the dictators that oppress them, as his own administration chose to "engage" with dictatorial regimes such as Iran and Syria, rather than support the people whom they oppress.
       But, what the hay, you can fudge a little history when you're trying to be what Fareed Zakaria (Newsweek editor and CNN host) called, "The Educator in Chief".

        Unfortunately, however, The Educator In Chief became The Enabler In Chief. The historic moment that he chose to ignore was the opportunity to ask those who demonstrated "square by square, town by town" if they had noticed that Israel, the great bogeyman of the Middle East for the last sixty years, was not only NOT the cause of their ills, but was instead the tool with which their own oppressors had manipulated them. 

       The Arab Spring was marked by demonstrations for basic human rights; for democracy and economic opportunity; quite simply for a brighter future. Israel wasn't the reason their demands for freedom of speech were met by batons and bullets.  Indeed, when the people took to the streets to demand the kinds of freedoms which, ironically, Israeli Arabs have always enjoyed, they were called "Israeli spies and provocateurs" by the very dictators against whom they were demonstrating.

       The truth, which the Educator in Chief should have pointed out, was that for sixty years Arab dictators have used Israel as a means of deflecting their own people's attention from the misery of their lives and the corruption of their leaders. 

       Obama alluded to this fact in one sentence, and then ran from it, lest he be forced by his own logic to follow the thread that leads to another inescapable conclusion: The path to prosperity (if there is to be one for the new Arab democracies…if there are to be those as well) is peace and a regional co-operation that includes ALL the states in the Middle East, including the Jewish one. 

        He could have said: “It is time once and for all to throw off the lie that has bound you for six decades, which is that all your ills are the fault of the existence of a Jewish State in your midst.” He could have said that if the Children of Tahrir Square, and Tunis, and Benghazi were bold enough to face that historic truth, then the U.S. would act to enlist NATO and the oil rich Gulf states in a new Marshal Plan for the Middle East. Such a move would translate Regional Peace to Regional Prosperity. 

       Obama could have said it will be predicated upon the linking of Israeli technology with Arab mineral and human resources with incentives to global markets. 

       He could have outlined a vision for the future that would have made him worthy of the Nobel Prize he received in advance of it.

Instead he vamped with platitudes until he got to the headline maker: It was now the policy of the United States that the so called 1967 lines would be the basis for any future borders between Israel and Palestine, with mutually agreed land swaps.

And this sweeping statement was NOT because Congress had debated and endorsed it; NOT because it provided continuity with past American policy (Indeed it directly contradicted a commitment made by the U.S only seven years ago, and which was part of the guarantee in return for Israel's unilateral withdrawal from all of Gaza), but simply because the Educator in Chief had decreed it. 

       In so doing, Obama sidestepped not only the question of Jerusalem and the Palestinians' demands to settle five million of their people INSIDE Israel, but also one more apparently insignificant detail.

      Hamas--the dominant half of the new Palestinian government with which Israel was to negotiate the few troubling particulars left out of Obama's speech--is proudly and publicly committed not only to the destruction of the State of Israel but to the annihilation of the Jewish people as whole.

       The Enabler-in-Chief, in one sentence, undercut virtually every legitimate Israeli security concern ie. having a potential Hamas-led, Iranian proxy terrorist state on its borders. Put in the simplest terms, Mr. Obama affirmed Israel's right to self-defense in a country that would be eight miles wide, with those sworn to its destruction firmly in control of the most strategically important geography.

       It's like saying you have a right to self-defense ...as long as you're buried up to your neck. 

       I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to deal with the fact that my ‘negotiating partner’ wants to kill me, BEFORE I decide on the borders from which he'll try to do it.

       What Obama could and should have closed with is the simple historical fact that there is only one issue in the Israel/Palestinian conflict from which all others flow. During the recent Syrian/Iran/ Hamas/Hezbollah-orchestrated demonstrations, when Arab dictators once again sought to deflect their own people's demands for freedom with "Nakba Day" protests, the object of the protest was not the LACK of the creation of a Palestinian state; it was the historical fact of the establishment of a Jewish one.

       What Obama could and should have said is that the time has come for all the peoples of the region, including the Palestinians, to recognize that the Jewish People have a moral, historical, and legal right to a state somewhere inside the historical Land of Israel. Once that is done, every other issue will be made easier, including borders that will have to be negotiated by the parties themselves. 

       Otherwise, here’s all that remains: The only thing you can negotiate with a person who is committed to your destruction is the method of your demise.