Posted on 04/02/2009 1:04:54 AM PDT by goldstategop
Avigdor Lieberman became foreign minister of Israel yesterday. He celebrated his inauguration with a maiden speech that news reports indicate left his listeners grimacing, squirming, and aghast. The BBC, for example, informs us that his words prompted “his predecessor Tzipi Livni to interrupt and diplomats to shift uncomfortably.”
Too bad for them – the speech leaves me elated. Here are some of the topics Lieberman covered in his 1,100-word stem-winder:
The world order: The Westphalia order of states is dead, replaced by a modern system that includes states, semi-states, and irrational international players (e.g., Al-Qaeda, perhaps Iran).
World priorities: These must change. The free world must focus on defeating the countries, forces, and extremist entities “that are trying to violate it.” The real problems are coming from “the direction of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq” – and not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Egypt: Lieberman praises Cairo as “a stabilizing factor in the regional system and perhaps even beyond that” but puts the Mubarak government on notice that he will only go there if his counterpart comes to Jerusalem.
Repeating the word “peace”: Lieberman poured scorn on prior Israeli governments: “The fact that we say the word ‘peace’ twenty times a day will not bring peace any closer.”
The burden of peace: “I have seen all the proposals made so generously by Ehud Olmert, but I have not seen any result.” Now, things have changed: “the other side also bears responsibility” for peace and must ante up.
The Road Map: The speech’s most surprising piece of news is Lieberman’s focus on and endorsement of the Road Map, a 2003 diplomatic initiative he voted against at the time but which is, as he puts it, “the only document approved by the cabinet and by the Security Council.” He calls it “a binding resolution” that the new government must implement. In contrast, he specifically notes that the government is not bound by the Annapolis accord of 2007 (“Neither the cabinet nor the Knesset ever ratified it”).
Implementing the Road Map: Lieberman intends to “act exactly” according to the letter of the Road Map, including its Tenet and Zinni sub-documents. Then comes one of his two central statements of the speech:
I will never agree to our waiving all the clauses - I believe there are 48 of them - and going directly to the last clause, negotiations on a permanent settlement. No. These concessions do not achieve anything. We will adhere to it to the letter, exactly as written. Clauses one, two, three, four - dismantling terrorist organizations, establishing an effective government, making a profound constitutional change in the Palestinian Authority. We will proceed exactly according to the clauses. We are also obligated to implement what is required of us in each clause, but so is the other side. They must implement the document in full.
The mistake of making concessions: He notes the “dramatic steps and made far-reaching proposals” of the Sharon and Olmert governments and then concludes, “But I do not see that [they] brought peace. To the contrary. … It is precisely when we made all the concessions” that Israel became more isolated, such as at the Durban Conference in 2001. Then follows his other central statement:
We are also losing ground every day in public opinion. Does anyone think that concessions, and constantly saying “I am prepared to concede,” and using the word “peace” will lead to anything? No, that will just invite pressure, and more and more wars. “Si vis pacem, para bellum” - if you want peace, prepare for war, be strong.
Israeli strength: Lieberman concludes with a rousing call to fortitude: “When was Israel at its strongest in terms of public opinion around the world? After the victory of the Six Day War, not after all the concessions in Oslo Accords I, II, III and IV.”
Comments:
(1) I have had reservations about Lieberman and still do, but this speech has him off to a great start. Put as briefly as possible, he announced that “Israel is back.”
(2) Given that the formal name of the Road Map is “A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” I confess myself puzzled by the news reports (such as the one headlined in the Los Angeles Times, “Foreign minister says Israel not bound to follow two-state path”) declaring that Lieberman has pronounced the end of the two-state solution.
(3) There is much irony in Lieberman now championing the Road Map, an initiative he and many others of his outlook condemned at the time. For an authoritative discussion at the time of its origins, flaws, and implications, see the analysis by Daniel Mandel, “Four-Part Disharmony: The Quartet Maps Peace.”
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Lieberman is someone to watch.
His haters are numerous which makes him all the more intriguing and interesting like Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin.
WoW!
I’m really starting to warm up to this guy :-)
He probably quite correctly, based on experience to date, proposes that his expectation is that the Palestinians and their instigators never intend to honor and successfully execute a two-state solution whether the US and its’ State Dept. insists on it or not. Their game plan is and will adamantly remain, the destruction of Israel PERIOD. Israel will follow the letter of the agreements expecting non-compliance to continue. Taqiya is invoilate to the other side. He is correct that the Palestinian/Israeli quagmire is an effective cover and distraction diverting the West from effectively confronting the forces that are aiming for its’ jugular. Impressive speech. By comparison, US State Dept. policies and directives seem quite delusional...e.g. Clintons’ statement that the number one foreign policy priority of the US is ‘reproductive rights’!
The foreign minister gets it like no other, except maybe Benjamin Netanyahu. Now that’s saying a mouthful. I like the truth. Tell me the truth and let me deal with it. This has been sorely needed in this multi-decade long war between Israel and the PLO terrorists.
"The mistake of making concessions: He notes the “dramatic steps and made far-reaching proposals” of the Sharon and Olmert governments and then concludes, “But I do not see that [they] brought peace. To the contrary. … It is precisely when we made all the concessions” that Israel became more isolated, such as at the Durban Conference in 2001. Then follows his other central statement:
" We are also losing ground every day in public opinion. Does anyone think that concessions, and constantly saying “I am prepared to concede,” and using the word “peace” will lead to anything? No, that will just invite pressure, and more and more wars. “Si vis pacem, para bellum” - if you want peace, prepare for war, be strong."
The foreign minister gets it like no other, except maybe Benjamin Netanyahu. Now that’s saying a mouthful. I like the truth. Tell me the truth and let me deal with it. This has been sorely needed in this multi-decade long war between Israel and the PLO terrorists.
>>Clintons’ statement that the number one foreign policy priority of the US is ‘reproductive rights’!
Did she really say that? Oh, just damn, just shoot me now.
What a bunch of blissninny horsepoop.
Yup. Here is the FRP link...http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2218146/posts
First foreign policy priority of US is ‘reproductive rights’
I think Hans Christian Andersen would have been able to put Lieberman’s speech to music. He did it for a similar situation.
“The streets were lined thousands and thousands who all knew about the magic suit and not wishing to appear to be fools, cheered wildly as the king went by. But one little boy hadn’t heard about the magic suit so when the king came by he looked, and looked, and then uttered, as innocently as could be—
Look at the king! Look at the the king ! Look at the king, the king, the king !
The king is in the altogether
But altogether the altogether
He’s altogether as naked as the day that he was born.
The King is in the altogether
But altogether the altogether.
It’s altogether the very least the King has ever worn.”
If the goal of Israeli policy was to eliminate the guilt of younger voters elsewhere for their grandparents having produced a world that produced the Holocaust, that policy would look a lot like this one.
Bingo!
I’ll take ‘Steel Clankers’ for $1,000, Alex.
To the Palestinians and the Arabs, the two-state solution is just a stepping-stone to the one-state solution, that one state being Palestine with no Israel.
We are also losing ground every day in public opinion. Does anyone think that concessions, and constantly saying “I am prepared to concede,” and using the word “peace” will lead to anything? No, that will just invite pressure, and more and more wars. “Si vis pacem, para bellum” - if you want peace, prepare for war, be strong.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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If the goal of Israeli policy was to eliminate the guilt of younger voters elsewhere for their grandparents having produced a world that produced the Holocaust, that policy would look a lot like this one.
Israel’s international legitimacy - and I’d say thus its long-term viability - rests on the assumption that the establishment of Israel was a justified exception to the post-World War II European withdrawal from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, and that the justification for this exception was that the Holocaust demonstrated that the Jews would require their own state in order to guarantee their survival.
In this sense Israel dilemma is an example of historically unfortunate timing: Israel was established early enough so that Britain and France still believed that the colonial enterprise with sustainable, but late enough so that within a few years of its establishment Israel’s legitimacy was increasingly judged by the standards of the post-colonial era - by which of course the establishment of such a state was illegitimate.
(Please note that I’m not speaking here from a theological standpoint (arguments over who did God gave the land to), or from the historical antecedents (arguments about who occupied this part of the Middle East when, and what that means about who has title to it today), or about the relative moral standing of the various parties to the dispute (one side or the other as a right to exist as an independent state on its own territory because it represents a more desirable political and social arrangement) but from a strictly practical standpoint: a state established largely by a massive post WWII European immigration into an area which is largely Muslim will perhaps never “be at peace with its neighbors”).
In response, Israel has undertaken a long course of attempting to establish legitimacy by creating irrefutable “facts on the ground”, but this only increases the difficulty of establishing legitimacy.
Israel’s trump card to date has been the Holocaust: what has happened us is so terrible that it must never be allowed to happen again, and we have absolute moral right to set the conditions under which we will avoid it; this is the lever which is been used to move public opinion - especially in Europe and the United States - contrary to the general direction of history post-World War II.
However the political usefulness of the Holocaust is being eroded by the passage of time and the increasing difficulty of maintaining territorial integrity in the midst of a hostile population: “The Holocaust” is increasingly seen not as uniquely terrible event, but one of several such events during the 20th century, and its centrality to defining the history of that era and the responsibility imposed on our own becomes less certain, inevitably the cost of maintaining “security” is the use of what the rest of the world increasingly sees as disproportionate military force, and the paradoxes of the situation - for example that you can “preserve your own territorial integrity” only at the cost of violating that of your neighbors (as for example in the case of the West Bank settlement program) inevitably invites unflattering comparisons of current Israeli behavior with that of European anti-Semitism.
So, as memory of the Holocaust fades and is placed in historical perspective, and as it becomes increasingly clear that peace with Israel’s neighbors is likely impossible, Israel will inevitably (in my opinion) increasingly come to be seen as an archaic remnant of European colonialism rather than a noble and just response to an enormous tragedy.
And one of the most potent ways to accelerate that process, IMO, is to have your foreign policy conducted by someone like the new foreign minister.
Warning to Obama" Chicago-like intimidation is not likely to work. Not when our Top Two don't measure up to the Top Two in Israel.
I agree with much of what you said, but you are also making my point for me. The Holocaust as a basis for legitimacy is not going to last forever—like a radioactive isotope, it has decayed and will decay further. Events may accelerate that, but will not change the final outcome. The sad truth is that Israel is never going to be popular and loved—they Jews are too few and the Arabs too many. The best stategy IMHO is to be like Sparta, a warrior state that doesn’t take any crap and is feared & respected rather than loved. Many Americans hate the idea that there are people in the world who don’t love us and may find such a situation intolerable & unsustainable; however, we have luxuries the Israelis don’t.
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