Jewish Settlements a hinderance to peace!

Daniel Gordis is a writer for that former Conrad Black paper The Jerusalem Post and sometimes I whole heartily agree with him, and sometimes not.

This time I happen to agree!

Here is an excerpt from today's column.

Guest post by Daniel Gordis, The Jerusalem Post;

Barack Obama, Joseph Biden and Hillary Clinton are all justifiably incensed by the embarrassment caused to Biden by the sheer buffoonery of Israel's elected officials. But their ire says nothing about the substance of the issue, which is once again being addressed with a stridency born of the fact that everyone believes that there is absolutely no merit to the position of the other.

LIVING IN Jerusalem, you don't have to be prime minister to have periodic bouts of settlement whiplash. Life in the Jewish capital is sometimes comprised of conversations so surprising that you wonder whether to believe your ears.

I was sitting at one of those ubiquitous cafés on Rehov Emek Refaim, chatting with a lay leader from New York. Biblical claims to the land no longer matter, he was telling me. Nor do picayune legalistic arguments about why this family or that has the right to inhabit this building or that. All of that, he insisted, is now irrelevant.

"You're losing us," he explained. "Lots of deeply committed American Jews have just had it with Israel. They want to care, but they can't. Ninety percent of America's Jews are Reform and Conservative Jews, but the Jewish state spits on them, and then expects us to pretend that it's rain.

You never elect a prime minister with the guts to stand up to those thugs called chief rabbis. You really expect us to be loyal third-class citizens?"

And he took a deep breath. "But then, you make us not only angry, but ashamed.

Doesn't anyone here give any consideration at all to how Israel's policies play in our community?

How are we supposed to defend policies that push the Palestinians off of more land and out of more neighborhoods, when the world's decided that that's simply abhorrent?

And have you got a strategy?

Do you want a two-state solution? Because if you do, you'd better start leaving them some land on which to create one.

And if you don't want a two-state solution, what do you plan to do with those millions of Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank? Kick them out? Make them non-citizens forever, and then prove that Jimmy Carter was right about the apartheid accusation all along?

Are you still going to expect us to watch your backs then? Really, do you guys ever actually think?"

He makes a valid point in this article.

The last thing Israel wants to do is alienate American Jews, so they have a very thin line to walk in their policies concerning the Palestinians.

Especially since they have become the darlings of the left wing.

Just like everything else over there.......... nothing is simple! But it might do the Israeli leadership some good to put more weight on American public opinion since the dollars could dry up, and where would they be then?


Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available as an E-Book H E R E! and H E R E! And as a paperback H E R E ! and H E R E !