Roger, once again your residual enmity towards Israel dictates and controls how you approach the issue. If you had chosen to live here you would understand that the vast majority of us who made that choice, want peace in the worst way possible. No one living here wants war, no one living here wants to drive through checkpoints to get from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, no one living here wants to see the ugly separation that was put in place for protection, and no one living here wants to worry any longer about their husbands, fathers, sons or brothers dying in order to keep this place safe.
But negotiation is a two way street and no party to a negotiation should ever have to make any concessions in order to get the other party to the table, if both are interested in finding solutions to the issues at hand. What is it about that you do not understand? And what is it about this that President Obama and his advisors do not understand?
Israel is prepared to sit down with the Palestinians tomorrow and work on a negotiated final settlement to all of the issues that are roadblocks to peace. Why aren't the Palestinians ready to do the same? Why Mr Cohen, why?
27 years ago when I was still living in Chicago and meeting with my accountant regularly to go over the books of the company, in which he had an investment as well, I once started giving him reasons why we had lost money the month before. His response? Son, if you make money, you can give me reasons. If you lose money, they are just excuses.
Roger, they are just excuses and I don't even want to know the reasons. We are sitting on our side of the table and are ready and willing to talk if someone will sit down on the other side of the table as well. Why doesn't that happen?
Sherwin Pomerantz
Jerusalem
April 23, 2010
________________________________________
April 23, 2010
OP-ED COLUMNIST – NEW YORK TIMES
Israeli Unassailable Might and Unyielding Angst
By ROGER COHEN
JERUSALEM — For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his people are not traumatized by some wild delusion. No, there are facts: the rise of Iran, the fierce projection of Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, and the rockets that have been fired by them.
Netanyahu is firm in his core self-image as the guarantor of threatened Israeli security. Israeli withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza, led only, in his view, to the insecurity of life beneath a rocket threat.
The question he poses himself, contemplating the West Bank, is how to stop this happening a third time.
To enter Israel is to pass through a hall of mirrors. A nation exerting complete military dominance in the West Bank becomes one that, under an almost unimaginable peace accord, might be menaced from there.
A nation whose army and arsenal are without rival in the Middle East becomes one facing daily existential threat. A nation whose power has grown steadily over decades relative to its scattered enemies becomes one whose future is somehow less secure than ever.
It’s not easy to parse fact from fiction, justifiable anxiety from self-serving angst, in this pervasive Israeli narrative. I arrived on Independence Day, the nation’s 62nd birthday. Blue and white flags fluttered from cars on the superhighways. A million festive picnickers were out. “If a war takes place, we will win,” the chief of the Israel Defense Forces assured them. Did annihilation anguish really spice the barbecue?
I guess so. The threat has morphed since 1948 — from Arab armies to Palestinian militants to Islamic jihadists — but not the Israeli condition. The nation “wallows in a sense of existential threat that has only grown with time,” the daily Haaretz commented. Netanyahu, in a 20-minute interview, told me of “the physical and psychological reality” of a nation whose experience is that “concessions lead to insecurity.”
Part of the insecurity right now stems from the troubles with Israel’s ultimate guarantor, the United States. President Obama, for all his assurances about unbending American commitment, has left Israelis with a feeling of alienation, a sense he does not understand or care enough. Has he not visited two nearby Muslim states — Turkey and Egypt — while snubbing Israel?
I think what is really bothering Israelis, the root of the troubles, is that Obama is not buying the discourse, the narrative.
Instead of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with little Israel against the jihadists, he’s talking of how a festering Middle East conflict ends up “costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.” Instead of Iran, Iran, Iran — the refrain here — he’s saying Iran, yes, but not at the expense of Palestine. Instead of Israeli security alone, he’s talking of “the vital national security interests of the United States” and their link to Israeli actions.
This amounts to a sea change. I don’t know if it will box Israel into a defensive corner or open new avenues, but I do know an uncritical U.S. embrace of Israel has led nowhere. For now, Israeli irritation is clear.
Before meeting Netanyahu, I spoke with Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. “We are the ones suffering most in terms of blood and treasure,” he told me, reprising the Obama line. “This is the difference, we are the ones that have to live through an agreement and survive afterward. Of course we want peace but not at the price of our existence.”
He dismissed as “totally false” the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict feeds an environment inimical to U.S. interests. On the contrary, he said, “We pay the price for defending U.S. values in this area.”
For Ayalon, the proximity talks with the Palestinians that the Obama administration is struggling to revive are a “waste of time” and should be replaced by direct talks without preconditions. As for Obama’s demands, believed to include a complete Israeli building freeze in Jerusalem, Ayalon said, “Any demand without a quid pro quo is a mistake. Why should the Palestinians negotiate if others negotiate for them?”
So here we are, 62 years on, negotiating about negotiations whose
prospects of leading anywhere seem fantastically remote. I think Ayalon’s right about getting to the table, but peace involves embracing risk over fear, no getting around that, and with the Iranian nuclear program rumbling, Israelis look more risk-averse than I’ve ever seen them. Life’s not bad in affluent, barrier-bordered Israel even if threats loom.
The prime minister insists that he is ready to move forward, that he will not use the Iran threat as a delaying tactic, and that he and Obama respect each other’s intelligence.
What is imperative for him right now is that the United States and Israel talk to each other.
But about what exactly? The trauma of 9/11 bound the Israeli and American narratives. They have now begun to diverge with putative Palestine hanging in limbo between them.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Elements of a Palestinian State
Elements of a Palestinian State
Earlier today I received the Winter 2010 issue of the Rawabi Home Magazine, which is the official publication relating to the construction of the new Palestinian city of Rawabi north of Ramallah. Rawabi will be the first ever Palestinian municipality built according to a master plan which, when completed, will provide housing, work and recreation for 40,000 people.
Receiving the publication was no surprise as I am familiar with the project and its positive ramifications for those interested in seeing the development of responsible Palestinian governmental leadership.
What I was not prepared for, and what hit my eye immediately, was the postage on the envelope. The philately was a 500 Fils stamp of the Palestinian Authority with an artistic rendering of Mother Mary and her child with the words “Bethlehem 2000” on the side of the stamp. First of all, I was not aware that the Palestinian Authority is issuing postage. Secondly, it was interesting to see that the postage is denominated in Jordanian currency (i.e. 500 Fils is ½ of a Jordanian Dinar). My guess is that the Government of Israel is complicit in the issuance of such postage and that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has given approval to the use of their currency as well.
Many of the readers of this blog may be surprised as well on both issues but for reasons other than those that made me look again at the envelope. My guess is that many people are not even fully aware of the extent to which the elements of statehood are being developed within areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The planned City of Rawabi is a major undertaking of the Palestinian leadership funded in great part by the Qatari government through one of its real estate arms. The issuing of postage, while it may seem innocuous enough, is yet another example of the march towards statehood. Israel’s readiness to deliver such mail with stamps issued by a non-state also speaks loudly to the potential emergence of a real country next door (read: facts on the ground).
People who know me well are aware that I believe the only long term political solution that will ensure the eternal viability of the enterprise known as Israel, is for our “cousins” to have a state of their own, side by side with Israel, with true peace and harmony between us. I am not making a statement here that this is possible. I am only saying that if it could be achieved it would be in the long term interests of both of us.
But what is important to note is that while our politicians debate the pros and cons of the situation, two dramatic things are happening as we speak. First, the trappings of Palestinian statehood are being developed before our eyes. Second, the world is supportive of this concept and will most probably recognize such a state whether it is declared unilaterally (as Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad promises to do next year) or as part of an agreement with us.
Given these facts our government needs to do whatever it can to ensure that the outcome of all of this activity will be peace not conflict, reconciliation not war, progress not recidivism…life not death.
Elie Wiesel has said “Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give to each other.” And we may add: it is our lifeblood as well.
Sherwin Pomerantz
Jerusalem, April 21, 2010
Earlier today I received the Winter 2010 issue of the Rawabi Home Magazine, which is the official publication relating to the construction of the new Palestinian city of Rawabi north of Ramallah. Rawabi will be the first ever Palestinian municipality built according to a master plan which, when completed, will provide housing, work and recreation for 40,000 people.
Receiving the publication was no surprise as I am familiar with the project and its positive ramifications for those interested in seeing the development of responsible Palestinian governmental leadership.
What I was not prepared for, and what hit my eye immediately, was the postage on the envelope. The philately was a 500 Fils stamp of the Palestinian Authority with an artistic rendering of Mother Mary and her child with the words “Bethlehem 2000” on the side of the stamp. First of all, I was not aware that the Palestinian Authority is issuing postage. Secondly, it was interesting to see that the postage is denominated in Jordanian currency (i.e. 500 Fils is ½ of a Jordanian Dinar). My guess is that the Government of Israel is complicit in the issuance of such postage and that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has given approval to the use of their currency as well.
Many of the readers of this blog may be surprised as well on both issues but for reasons other than those that made me look again at the envelope. My guess is that many people are not even fully aware of the extent to which the elements of statehood are being developed within areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The planned City of Rawabi is a major undertaking of the Palestinian leadership funded in great part by the Qatari government through one of its real estate arms. The issuing of postage, while it may seem innocuous enough, is yet another example of the march towards statehood. Israel’s readiness to deliver such mail with stamps issued by a non-state also speaks loudly to the potential emergence of a real country next door (read: facts on the ground).
People who know me well are aware that I believe the only long term political solution that will ensure the eternal viability of the enterprise known as Israel, is for our “cousins” to have a state of their own, side by side with Israel, with true peace and harmony between us. I am not making a statement here that this is possible. I am only saying that if it could be achieved it would be in the long term interests of both of us.
But what is important to note is that while our politicians debate the pros and cons of the situation, two dramatic things are happening as we speak. First, the trappings of Palestinian statehood are being developed before our eyes. Second, the world is supportive of this concept and will most probably recognize such a state whether it is declared unilaterally (as Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad promises to do next year) or as part of an agreement with us.
Given these facts our government needs to do whatever it can to ensure that the outcome of all of this activity will be peace not conflict, reconciliation not war, progress not recidivism…life not death.
Elie Wiesel has said “Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give to each other.” And we may add: it is our lifeblood as well.
Sherwin Pomerantz
Jerusalem, April 21, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Of Loneliness and a World Gone Mad
The Tel Aviv stock exchange reached its highest level ever immediately after the Passover holiday. Not typically a symptom of country under a seemingly ever-growing cloud of existential threat. And in spite of news that seems to grow more worrying by the day, Israelis and foreigners alike continue to fork over millions for towering apartments in range of ever more powerful missiles from an ever widening array of hostile powers which threaten daily to unleash them. Multinationals continue to invest and to build and though perhaps not in masses, new immigrants arrive daily from prosperous and relatively quiet countries. Rare are the voices that suggest that perhaps Nero is fiddling while Rome burns. And yet, one wonders if even the citizens of Czechoslovakia in 1938 felt the same deep sense of abandonment that many Israelis feel today. Did they feel as deeply misunderstood by a topsy-turvy world in which right is wrong and political expediency (to say nothing of a unquenchable thirst for oil) replaces any semblance of morality? The Jordanian monarch is probably right when he states publicly that Israel is more isolated than North Korea. Why shouldn't this be so in a world in which Libya can chair the UN Human Rights Commission and in which Israel's medical mission to earthquake stricken Haiti can be accused by supposedly reputable people of harvesting organs?
In spite of constant attacks and censures from even those whom we considered to be level-headed friends, most Israelis somehow continue to remain reasonably secure in their footing on the moral high ground. Most of us are not so blind or arrogant as to be unable to admit that perhaps we might have made some mistakes, done some things differently and that tragic errors do occur. At the very least we might have explained ourselves better. Not that any of it would have made much difference in a world which seems to have decided that Israel is guilty no matter what it has or has not done, but it might have made those whose faith has begun to wane believe more strongly in the justice of our cause
This is not a matter of some kind of double standard. Israelis probably wouldn't mind very much being held to a higher standard than the rest of the world. It should be our raison d'être to be "state of the art" in morality as well as in technology and I think we should stop complaining about that. It is or should not be a double standard that troubles us, but the lack of any moral standards at all that contributes to a profound loneliness. True, at times that standard goes to absurd lengths as where building apartments on disputed land somehow becomes more heinous than all of the wonderful human rights accomplishments of some of our neighbors like raping condemned women, to say nothing of condemning them to death for frequently fabricated crimes, or hanging homosexuals or executing heretics for the practice of any religion but that of Islam (and perhaps only one variant of that). Or when atrocities which never happened are reported on page one and retractions, if there are any, may find themselves buried on page 46. Everyone remembers the reports of the Jenin massacre and of the countless other fabricated massacres. Who remembers the subsequent corrections? Probably very few people, since generally they aren't even published.
We have little choice but to continue to do what we believe is right and to build our lives, our land, and our future and to try as far as is humanly possible to so in a manner that will at the very least contribute our own belief in ourselves and the justice of what we are doing here.
Ben Dansker
Vice President, Atid EDI
The Tel Aviv stock exchange reached its highest level ever immediately after the Passover holiday. Not typically a symptom of country under a seemingly ever-growing cloud of existential threat. And in spite of news that seems to grow more worrying by the day, Israelis and foreigners alike continue to fork over millions for towering apartments in range of ever more powerful missiles from an ever widening array of hostile powers which threaten daily to unleash them. Multinationals continue to invest and to build and though perhaps not in masses, new immigrants arrive daily from prosperous and relatively quiet countries. Rare are the voices that suggest that perhaps Nero is fiddling while Rome burns. And yet, one wonders if even the citizens of Czechoslovakia in 1938 felt the same deep sense of abandonment that many Israelis feel today. Did they feel as deeply misunderstood by a topsy-turvy world in which right is wrong and political expediency (to say nothing of a unquenchable thirst for oil) replaces any semblance of morality? The Jordanian monarch is probably right when he states publicly that Israel is more isolated than North Korea. Why shouldn't this be so in a world in which Libya can chair the UN Human Rights Commission and in which Israel's medical mission to earthquake stricken Haiti can be accused by supposedly reputable people of harvesting organs?
In spite of constant attacks and censures from even those whom we considered to be level-headed friends, most Israelis somehow continue to remain reasonably secure in their footing on the moral high ground. Most of us are not so blind or arrogant as to be unable to admit that perhaps we might have made some mistakes, done some things differently and that tragic errors do occur. At the very least we might have explained ourselves better. Not that any of it would have made much difference in a world which seems to have decided that Israel is guilty no matter what it has or has not done, but it might have made those whose faith has begun to wane believe more strongly in the justice of our cause
This is not a matter of some kind of double standard. Israelis probably wouldn't mind very much being held to a higher standard than the rest of the world. It should be our raison d'être to be "state of the art" in morality as well as in technology and I think we should stop complaining about that. It is or should not be a double standard that troubles us, but the lack of any moral standards at all that contributes to a profound loneliness. True, at times that standard goes to absurd lengths as where building apartments on disputed land somehow becomes more heinous than all of the wonderful human rights accomplishments of some of our neighbors like raping condemned women, to say nothing of condemning them to death for frequently fabricated crimes, or hanging homosexuals or executing heretics for the practice of any religion but that of Islam (and perhaps only one variant of that). Or when atrocities which never happened are reported on page one and retractions, if there are any, may find themselves buried on page 46. Everyone remembers the reports of the Jenin massacre and of the countless other fabricated massacres. Who remembers the subsequent corrections? Probably very few people, since generally they aren't even published.
We have little choice but to continue to do what we believe is right and to build our lives, our land, and our future and to try as far as is humanly possible to so in a manner that will at the very least contribute our own belief in ourselves and the justice of what we are doing here.
Ben Dansker
Vice President, Atid EDI
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