Tag Archives: Israel

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Make peace or deal with Hamas?

Put yourself in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shoes.

You govern a country of some 8,000 square miles surrounded by nations that at one time or another vowed to exterminate you and your constituents. Yes, you’ve made peace with a couple of those nations — Jordan and Egypt. The rest of the region remains iffy.

You’re in the middle of peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and then you learn that the leader of that government has brokered a deal with one of the world’s most ferocious terrorist organizations, Hamas. That organization has orchestrated terrorist attacks on your country from the Gaza Strip, which the Palestinian Authority governs.

The PA now wants to form a “unity government” that includes Hamas.

Do they want peace with Israel or not? Netanyahu has called off peace talks because the PA has formed that arrangement with Hamas, which still vows to exterminate Israel.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-calls-peace-talks-after-palestinian-deal-n88726

Can you really blame the Israeli prime minister? I cannot.

Netanyahu is furious with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for agreeing to the Hamas deal.

Having seen some of the damage that Hamas has inflicted on southern Israel myself, I understand fully why Netanyahu has called off the peace talks. I was part of a group that toured Israel in the spring of 2009 and we saw damage done by rocket fire in Sderot and Ashkelon, near the border with Gaza, which had erupted in violence prior to our arrival in Israel.

It’s a blow to Secretary of State John Kerry, who persuaded the sides to talk to each other after they didn’t speak for five years. Kerry still believes a path to peace is still open, but it’s now been littered by the presence of Hamas in this arrangement with one of the principals in the talks.

“He can’t have it both ways,” Netanyahu said of Abbas. “He has to choose: Peace with Israel or a pact with Hamas.”

Netanyahu is right to be angry.

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Gov. Christie trips over his own mojo

It’s been reported that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has gotten his “mojo” back after a rough few months fighting off reports of possible cover-up in that infamous George Washington Bridge lane-closing kerfuffle.

In a way, he has. He hired a law firm to do an internal investigation of whether the governor knew anything about the lane closure, which reportedly was done to get back at the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., for refusing to endorse the Republican governor’s re-election.

The firm hired by Christie then cleared the guy who hired it of any wrongdoing. Imagine that. Shocking, I tell ya.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/202124-report-christie-apologizes-for-occupied-territories

Then he jets off to Las Vegas to meet with prominent Republican donors where he — oops! — refers to those so-called “occupied territories” now known as Gaza and the West Bank bordering Israel.

Well, it seems that one of those GOP fat cats is one Sheldon Adelson, a big-time Republican donor and a long-time ardent supporter of Israel, where the term “occupied territories” is stricken from the political lexicon.

As The Hill reported: “Many Israelis object to referring to areas where Palestinians live but Israel maintains a military presence as ‘occupied territories’” because they believe the term implicitly suggests that Israeli troops should not be in the area.”

Christie apologized to Adelson, who accepted the governor’s mea culpa.

It just goes to show how politicians need to be sure they don’t let their mojo get in the way of better judgment and use of words.

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Kerry cannot possibly be an anti-Semite

An interesting development has emerged in Secretary of State John Kerry’s difficult struggle to find peace in the Middle East.

It turns out that the angry charges leveled at him by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet members — that Kerry’s promoting “anti-Semitic” notions — cannot possibly be true. Kerry’s family name originally was Kohn and that Kerry’s family has Jewish origins.

Grandpa Kerry/Kohn changed his name and his religion, from Jewish to Catholic, which John Kerry learned shortly before announcing his presidential candidacy in 2003.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/kerrys-brother-johns-not-anti-semitic-were-jewish-n30576

In fact, Cameron Kerry — the secretary of state’s brother — is a practicing Jew to this day, having married a Jewish woman.

Israeli foreign ministry officials, of course, are quite sensitive to any comments they construe to be against their interests. John Kerry said recently that “The risks are very high for Israel” after meeting with Iranian officials about plans to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program. Israeli officials took that to mean Israel needed to watch its step if it continued to threaten Iran with military action.

Naftali Bennett, an industry minister, said, “We expect of our friends in the world to stand by our side against the attempts to impose an anti-Semitic boycott on Israel, and not to be their mouthpiece.”

I understand fully the Israelis’ angst over negotiating with a country that has declared its intention to wipe Israel off the face of the planet. Let us take care, though, to avoid throwing around pejorative terms like “anti-Semitic” where it regards someone whose family roots run deep in the Holy Land.

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Yes, even babies can get a TSA pat-down

We are living in a strange new world, brought to us to by some terrorists who on Sept. 11, 2001 attacked the United States of America by using commercial jetliners as deadly weapons.

Everyone who boards an airplane is subject to potentially intense scrutiny by security agents working for the federal government.

Isn’t that right, Alec Baldwin?

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/alec-baldwin-5-month-old-daughter-selected-tsa-pat-article-1.1593109

Baldwin was returning from a vacation with his wife and five-month-old daughter, Carmen, when Transportation Security Administration agents decided to pat down — gulp! — the baby.

The sometimes-tempestuous actor tweeted about the incident, signing off with the hashtag #travelingUSisadisgrace.

I won’t get into Baldwin’s previous run-ins with flight crews and airport security officials, but I feel an odd obligation to defend the TSA in this latest incident.

I’m not sure how I would react if I was traveling, say, with my 11-month-old granddaughter and some TSA agent pulled Emma out of a line and started patting her down. I might express more-than-mild surprise, I suppose.

However, from a distance as it relates to little Carmen getting frisked, I have the luxury of being able to reflect just a bit.

Consider a couple of things here:

The bad guys who killed all those people on 9/11 told the world that virtually any act of evil is possible when flying on an jetliner. We also know that terrorists would use any means necessary — any means at all — to harm others. That means they would be fully capable of arming infants with explosive devices.

What’s more, it is totally plausible that someone seeking to sneak contraband into a country — say, drugs or weapons — might consider stuffing it into a baby’s diaper. Is it possible? The question you have to wonder, though, is its probability. Why take the chance to assume that such a thing cannot happen?

I’ve been aggravated myself by overzealous TSA agents in the years since 9/11. My wife and I have traveled some overseas and we’ve been subjected to intense scrutiny by security agents. You haven’t lived, for example, until you’ve been interrogated by an Israeli airport security guard at David Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv.

One consideration in this Baby Baldwin pat-down caper has to be how the TSA agent handled it. Was he or she discreet? Was the agent courteous and did the agent explain fully why? My wife and I were leaving Venizelos International Airport in Athens in November 2001 — two months after 9/11 — and had every luggage item searched meticulously by an agent, who took the time to apologize profusely for the intrusion.

Should it be routine to frisk every baby who flies on these commercial jetliners? No. I do get, though, the need to take extra precaution, even if it involves an act that seems ludicrous.

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Biden multi-tasks: peace talks with memorial service

Vice President Joe Biden took advantage of a key opportunity today to visit with Israeli President Shimon Peres about the need to keep peace talks going with the Palestinian Authority.

Biden presses Israel on peace talks

Biden went to Israel to attend the memorial service for the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who died over the weekend at age 85.

The VP’s message was that Israel should recognize Palestinian autonomy while seeking guarantees of its own security.

For his part, Peres told Biden that the Palestinians aren’t the “enemy.

“They are our neighbors and our friends,” he said, adding that terrorism is “destroying their fabric.”

That’s a realistic view of life in that terribly troubled region.

“Anytime that you have a leader from the United States as significant as Vice President Biden sitting down with the prime minister of Israel, which Vice President Biden will be doing while we’re here, there’s an opportunity for progress,” she said. “Every time there is an opportunity for progress, for the United States to be in a position to help Israel in the cause of crafting and finalizing a two-state solution, we take that opportunity.”

I’m reminded of what the great Winston Churchill once said about the value of talking. “To jaw-jaw always is better than to war-war,” Churchill said.

Keep jawing.

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Ariel Sharon, the warrior’s warrior

Ariel Sharon was fearless in his belief in Israel.

He fought valiantly for its creation and fought against its enemies when they attacked it. Sharon, who died this week after lying in a coma for years, made no apologies for anything he ever said or did on behalf of his country.

As New York Times essayist Ronen Bergman notes, Sharon could have been the one to make peace with the Palestinians. Somehow he fell short of that noble goal.

I’m kind of reminded of the axiom of how “only Nixon could go to China,” referring to the notable cold warrior President Richard Nixon opening the diplomatic door to the People’s Republic of China, governed by the hated communists. President Nixon made the correct overture in the early 1970s and it changed the geopolitical landscape forever.

Sharon, who served as Israel’s prime minister, also had that kind of credibility is it related to the Palestinians, with whom he fought on the battlefield. He could have been the one to broker a deal with the hated neighbors who have been committed to the destruction of Israel.

As it turned out, it fell to another battle-hardened warrior, Israelis Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, to reach a peace accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader Yasser Arafat. The two men shook hands at the White House in a ceremony moderated by President Bill Clinton.

Two years later, Rabin would die at the hand of a rabid Israeli nationalist assassin who hated him for the deal he reached with Arafat.

Would such a fate have befallen Ariel Sharon? He could have shown additional courage by striking a peace deal. Sadly, he didn’t take fullest advantage of his own Nixon moment.

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Mourning a far-away friend

I am in mourning this evening.

News came in this morning over Facebook of a death that has hit me hard. I feel the need to share briefly why I am grieving.

My friend’s name was Shlomo Bleiberg, who lived in Be’er Sheva, Israel with his wife, Liora. Shlomo was a physician, a big bear of a man and a kind gentleman who opened up his home and his heart to a group of strangers who had come to visit his country for a month in May-June 2009.

I was one of those strangers. I had the honor of leading a Rotary International Group Study Exchange team to Israel more than four years ago. Our flight was late arriving at David Ben-Gurion International Airport, and we were met by our Israeli hosts along with a GSE team from The Netherlands, with whom we would travel through the country for the next month.

We scurried off to Be’er Sheva, our first stop. One of our hosts was Shlomo Bleiberg.

We weren’t with Shlomo for very long, just a few days. But in that time he endeared himself to us forever. He was a kind man. It turned out we were fortunate he had extensive medical training, as one of our GSE team members, Shirley Davis of Levelland, suffered a sprained ankle on the second or third day of our trip. Shlomo treated it, wrapped it and told Shirley to take it easy on the tender ankle.

He would take us swimming in the Dead Sea and would accompany us to Masada, two of the most popular sites in the Holy Land.

Now he’s gone. I think I can speak for all of our team members that we wish we could be there for Liora. All that’s left is to mourn our friend.

I mention this because these exchanges sponsored by Rotary International routinely produce the kind of friendships and warmth that last long after we part company. Indeed, part of Rotary’s famed Four Way Test compels us to act in ways that “build good will and better friendships.”

Our time spent in a far away country did all of that for us who had the honor of taking part in this grand adventure.

Shlomo Bleiberg was a big part of an experience that changed all of us.

Rest in peace, Shlomo.

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Looking back on an incredible journey

The world, or at least about a fourth of it — the Christians among the world’s people — is getting ready to celebrate the birth of a baby who would come to symbolize salvation, grace and victory over death.

My own thoughts at Christmas every year since, oh, 2009, have turned to an amazing journey I was honored to take through the Holy Land. I was given the honor in May-June 2009 of accompanying four young people on a Rotary International Group Study Exchange trip through virtually all of Israel. Fernando, Aida, Shirley and Katt have become four of my closest friends and I cherish them more than they know.

We spent four weeks there traveling from Nahariya to Eilat, to Tel Aviv, Sderot and Ashkelon, to Nazareth and Caesarea, the Dead Sea and Masada. It was an amazing time. Then, after the exchange had concluded, I spent another week with my wife who had flown over to join me as a tourist. We spent the bulk of our time in Jerusalem, visiting holy sites.

But I think of that journey now every year at Christmas time and remember the things we saw along the way.

* Nazareth and the Church of the Annunciation, where the angel told Mary she would give birth to the Son of God.

* Bethlehem, where my wife and I visited the Church of the Nativity and the Shepherds Field.

* The Temple Mount, where Jesus preached.

* The Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem and Via do lo Rosa where Jesus walked.

Easter, of course, marks the end of Jesus’s life on Earth and the resurrection we celebrate.

This day, though, is to remember his birth.

I’ve believed my entire life in all that is holy about this holiday. However, being able to see those places up close and to walk the paths trod by Jesus himself makes it special beyond all measure.

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Cornyn offers insulting tweet on Iran deal

I’ve long thought that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn was a serious man.

Then came this response to the deal brokered over the weekend involving Iran’s nuclear development program.

“Amazing what WH will do to distract attention from O-care”

http://blogs.star-telegram.com/politex/2013/11/sen-cornyns-iran-tweet-sparks-reaction-in-twitter-sphere.html

Huh? That was the response from the senior U.S. Republican senator from the great state of Texas?

So, in Cornyn’s mind an agreement that seeks to guide Iran toward a dismantling of its nuclear program, protect Israel — our nation’s most stalwart Middle East ally — and restore some semblance of stability in one of the world’s most explosive regions is a mere “distraction”?

Cornyn’s tweet drew some harsh response, some of which was equally unfair.

My larger point, though, is that Sen. Cornyn should know better than to suggest an intense negotiation involving the United States, Iran and several other great world powers is some kind of political feint to take interest away from an unrelated domestic policy dispute.

Ridiculous.

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Iran must pay huge price for non-compliance

Congress is going to step into the Iranian nuclear program dismantling discussion if the need arises.

Go for it, lawmakers.

http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-eastnorth-africa/191416-congress-prepares-to-punish-tehran

The deal hammered out over the weekend between several of the great powers and Iran calls for the mullahs to take down its nuclear program over time. They must not develop a nuclear weapon. In return Iran will see a partial lifting of economic sanctions that have punished that country’s economy — and which, in my view, have helped bring the Iranians to the negotiating table after years of refusing to discuss their nuclear development program.

Iran has six months to make good on its promises. If it doesn’t, or if it reneges on any element of the agreement, then Congress is going to take action to clamp down even tighter on the Islamic Republic.

The decision to take action if Iran doesn’t comply forestalls any effort to derail the agreement brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry and the Iranian foreign minister. Yes, the agreement has drawn heavy fire from congressional Republicans and Democrats, not to mention from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who calls the agreement a “historic mistake.”

Israel remains prepared to take unilateral military action against Iran if it feels threatened. Who can blame the Israelis, given the constant battles they fight with many of their neighbors who are intent on destroying Israel?

The agreement might not be perfect, but Iran has paid a heavy price already for its refusal to talk — until now — with the rest of the world about its nuclear intentions. As for Israel’s security, Kerry says our nation’s key Middle East ally will remain secure and that the United States will continue to stand foursquare behind it.

Meanwhile, Congress is right to prepare a punishment option to have ready in the event Iran doesn’t comply with the agreement.

The task now is to persuade the Iranians that additional suffering makes it necessary for them to follow through.