On March 22, 2010 AIPAC held a meeting in Washington, DC and they invited the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton as well as the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu to speak at the gathering. When you acquaint yourself with the content of the two speeches, you gain an insight as to the absurdity of the relationship that exists between the two countries, an insight that goes beyond what the speechwriters intended to reveal.
This is because every story, be it a short anecdote or a long epic, has a punch line. It is what comes at the end of the story and sums up the essence of the narrative. But what happened on that day was that Hillary Clinton used the wrong punch line at the end of her story. Yes, the last paragraph contains a rising crescendo that gives the impression of a fiery ending but this is a contrived structure telling an artificial story that leaves you cold despite the fake passion expressed at the end. As for the Netanyahu speech, well, it is the same old Talmudic quackery which was given a new twist to suit the occasion.
What seems to have happened was that Hillary Clinton asked the folks at AIPAC or their operatives who swarm the State Department to write the speech they wanted her to give at their gathering. These folks wrote the speech complete with a punch line that must have matched the narrative. But then Clinton called on her American speechwriters to modify a few things so as to convey America’s position to the folks at AIPAC in Washington and to the leaders who rule Israel. These speechwriters did as they were told which modified the storyline of the narrative but they neglected to modify the punch line. Now a hybrid of the two groups of writers, the speech ended up containing a punch line that is demonstrably out of whack with the new storyline.
You can see this clearly when you put back to back two sentences that you will find far apart in the speech. Early on you see this: “…something else I want you to know, more than 1,000 United States troops participated in the Juniper Cobra ballistic missile defense exercises last fall, the largest such drill ever held.” And later on you see this: “…But advances in rocket technology mean that Israeli families are now at risk far from those borders. Despite efforts at containment, rockets with better guidance systems, longer range, and more destructive power are spreading across the region.” Hillary Clinton is here saying this: We want to defend you like you want us to do but we can no longer do it. Moreover, things will get worse for you because time is not on your side.
To reinforce this view she later says this: “And there is, I think, a belief among many that the status quo can be sustained. But the dynamics of demography, ideology, and technology make this impossible.” And also this: “during the 1990s, it was rare that people in places far from the Middle East ever mentioned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now, when I started traveling as Secretary of State and I went to places that were so far from the Middle East, it was the first, second, or third issue that countries raised.” Then she says the same thing but more bluntly this time: “And then finally, we must recognize that the ever-evolving technology of war is making it harder to guarantee Israel's security.”
Having gone this far warning the AIPAC audience and Israel of what lay ahead, Hillary Clinton now wants to be conciliatory. But knowing that when you talk to these people, you can be conciliatory only by insulting the Arabs and blaming them for everything, she did just that. She took up the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli line and gave the same warning in a language they are more familiar with: “…but failure to do so gives the extremist foes a pretext to spread violence, instability, and hatred. In the face of these unforgiving dynamics of demography, ideology, and technology, it becomes impossible to entrust our hopes for Israel's future in today's status quo.”
True to her programming, the points she is repeating here are to the effect that to throw a stone at a tank is an act more violent than when the tank fires at people because it is the Palestinians who throw the stones and the Israelis who drive the tanks. Worse, the Palestinians breed more than the Jews which means they will overwhelm the Jews whose only crime is that they want to keep the place clean of unworthy races. And with a Jewish ideology as superior as this, America must protect it from being contaminated by the fast breeding Arabs who will someday, in addition to all this, master the technologies of war and make the tanks that will stand up to the tanks that America gives to the Jews. What a horror story in the making!
Hillary Clinton then comes up with an explosive thought that should have been her punch line but was not. It is this: “New construction … exposes daylight between Israel and the United States…” What she is saying is that if Israel continues to misbehave, America will distance itself from that country because if America cannot protect Israel, it will not be able to protect itself from the consequences of Israel’s misbehavior. Realizing that this is a blow to the sense of self worth of the audience, she softens the blow by insulting the Arabs and blaming them for what they will do following the appearance of daylight between America and Israel. Thus, she goes on to say this: “…daylight … that others in the region hope to exploit.” The point she is making here is that America would have allowed Israel to misbehave if the others in the region were not so bad as to exploit the consequences of that misbehavior.
By now Clinton realizes that the language these people understand is the language of small children and so she talks to them like children. She tells them that America is being hard on Israel not because America wants to abandon or to hurt Israel but because America wants to do what is good for Israel. Here is how she puts it: “We objected to this announcement [build homes in Jerusalem] because we are committed to Israel and its security.”
And then, out of the blue, comes the ending that does not match the now hybridized narrative. This is what Clinton says: “…the United States and the American people will stand with you. We will share the risks and we will shoulder the burdens…” Thus, after warning that they are on their own because America can no longer defend them, she ends the speech by promising that America will share the risks and will defend them. And it all sounds like a false promise.
In the evening of that same day the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke at the same gathering and he had ideas of his own. He began the speech by saying that the Jews have been savagely attacked in Europe throughout the centuries because they had no means to defend themselves but now that there is an Israel, the Jews have developed those means. Having thus linked the Jews with Israel because it suited his argument, he now wants to have it both ways a la Talmud and argue that no one else can make that linkage. He says this: “In recent decades the hatred of the Jews has reemerged with increasing force, but with an insidious twist. It is not merely directed at the Jewish people but increasingly at the Jewish state.” What he does not realize is that the linkage was made insidiously by those like him who have argued for decades that to criticize Israel is to hate the Jews. But now that the linkage is out in the open and most people have accepted it, it is not an insidious exercise to point it out. Thus, he can complain all he wants but he has only himself and his kind to blame. He should also blame the book that teaches them this faulty logic.
And with this logic, he explains that one of the reasons for that hatred is that people see the Jews who come from around the world to steal Palestinian land as colonialists but he adds this is one of the great lies of modern times. And he reassures the audience that the Jews have the right to do what they do because his name is Benjamin Netanyahu and both of these names are Jewish. Get it? Benjamin is Jewish and Netanyahu is Jewish therefore: “The connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel cannot be denied. The connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem cannot be denied.” Thus, Israel can build homes for Jews in Arab Jerusalem. With logic like this, he fails to see why people have a hard time loving Israel or the Jewish mentality.
And because he firmly believes in his logic, he says that he spoke last year: “…of a vision of peace in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state. Just as the Palestinians expect Israel to recognize a Palestinian state, we expect the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish state.” What he does not say is that the Palestinians never asked for Israel to be demilitarized and never asked Israel to recognize Palestine as an Islamo-Christian state. Yes, some states do proclaim themselves to adhere to one religion or another but they do not require that the others recognize them as such.
The Palestinian Authority has recognized Israel’s right to exist as a political state a while ago amid objections voiced by people who predicted that by giving the Israelis a finger before the entire question of Palestine was resolved, the Palestinians were inviting the Israelis to ask for the whole arm. What happened was that Israel got the political recognition it sought, the result has been that it gave nothing in return and now Netanyahu wants something that no one has anywhere else on this planet; he wants a Palestine that is not yet formed to recognize Israel as a politico-theocratic state.
As for the part which calls for Palestine to be demilitarized, just listen to Netanyahu talk: “In the past year, my government has removed hundreds of roadblocks, barriers and checkpoints in the West Bank. As a result, we have helped spur a fantastic economic boom there. Finally, we announced an unprecedented moratorium on new Israeli construction … This is what my government has done for peace. What has the Palestinian Authority done for peace? Well, they have placed preconditions on peace talks, waged a relentless international campaign to undermine Israel’s legitimacy, and promoted the notorious Goldstone Report that falsely accuses Israel of war crimes … Peace requires reciprocity.”
First he gives Israel credit for the fantastic boom that the Palestinians gave themselves when the Israelis stopped raping their land. He says he removed the hundreds of roadblocks, barriers and checkpoints which the Israelis said for decades were only a handful and were not a problem; and now he wants to be kissed and hugged for removing them. Yes, in the same way that they now have mouthpieces run around to say that the settlements are not a problem, the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli axis had mouthpieces run around in the past to say that the roadblocks, barriers and checkpoints were not a problem. And in the same way that he now wants to be kissed and hugged for removing the roadblocks and the rest, he will want to be hugged and kisses in the future when he will stop building on stolen land -- if he’ll ever do that. Nothing can be more Talmudic than a fantastically twisted logic.
And just look at what Netanyahu says after that. Referring to the 10 months moratorium he announced on new construction in Jerusalem, he says he did so in the name of peace. Of course, someone like him who is well versed in the teachings of the Talmud and virtually nothing else will never realize that this is like saying: I’ll refrain from raping your child for 10 months because I expect you to sign away your wife by the end of the period or I shall resume the rape of the child and you will be held responsible for the horror.
Netanyahu then wonders: What has the Palestinian Authority done for peace? And he answers his own question: Well, they have placed preconditions on peace talks… But when you look to see what these preconditions may be, you find that he lists none. Instead, he expresses dismay at the fact that the Palestinians are asking for the implementation of the rule of law. There is a report called the Goldstone Report and the Palestinians want it to take its natural course through the international legal system. No, says Netanyahu. And why is that? Because: “Peace requires reciprocity” he says. This guy is so low on the intelligence scale, he does not realize he is asking the world to do to the Jews what the Jews are doing to the Palestinians.
When this happens, don’t come and cry on my shoulder, Bibi.