Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Ed Koch su Obama

No, Obama non sta facendo un favore al Partito Democratico, se uno dei
grandi vecchi del partito arriva a scrivere che:
If President Obama does not change his position, I cannot vote for his
reelection. I've already made clear I won't vote for some crazy who
urges we jettison Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as federal
programs. I can stay home.
Da leggere tutto:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/05/24/obamas_hostility_to_israel_continues_109970.html
Obama's Hostility to Israel Continues
By Ed Koch
Not since 1973 and the Yom Kippur War when Egypt and Syria - with
logistical help from other Arab countries -- joined forces in an
attempt to crush Israel has the survival of Israel been in question.
Today, however, Israel is in danger.
In 70 AD, the Jewish nation was sold into slavery by the Romans and
condemned to wander in the Diaspora until David Ben-Gurion, its George
Washington and founding Father, called it back into existence. A
United Nations vote in 1947 called for the creation of two states in
the historic mandate of Palestine, one Jewish and the other
Palestinian.
The Jews accepted the vote; the Arabs did not. The Palestinians with
the aid of the surrounding Arab states of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, declared war on the new state of
Israel.
Thanks to their courage and determination, five hundred thousand Jews
in Israel were somehow victorious against 100 million Arabs. Some
called it a miracle. The Israelis summed it up in the expression "Ein
Breira (no other choice)". Since 1948, every Arab state, except for
Egypt and Jordan, continued in a state of war against Israel. In the
two states that entered into a peace treaty with Israel, it has been a
cold peace with the citizens of both countries continuing to boycott
Israel, not visiting it and those who broke the visiting boycott being
subject to condemnation and loss of professional licenses. Now 63
years later, 500,000 Jews have become almost six million, with 1.6
million Arab citizens of Israel. The surrounding Muslim states now far
exceed 100 million.
The Muslim world has tried at least five times in wars against Israel
- 1948, 1967, 1973 and the more recent wars with Hamas in Gaza and
Hezbollah in Lebanon - to destroy Israel and murder or expel its
entire population.
The peace treaties between Israel and Egypt are in danger as a result
of the removal of President Mubarak by the Egyptian army, a coup that
was urged by President Barack Obama. The treaty with Jordan is in
danger. The King of Jordan, King Abdullah, whose own country is
populated by Palestinians who make up about 60 percent of the
population, is himself in danger. Abdullah's father, King Hussein
slaughtered thousands of supporters of Yasser Arafat then in Jordan on
Black Friday, driving many more out of Jordan who fled to Lebanon from
where they threatened Israel until Israel drove them out. Throughout
the intervening years, efforts have been made to have Israel and the
Palestinians discuss the creation of a Palestinian state. A two-state
solution, which every Israeli prime minister has supported, including
Benjamin Netanyahu and which some Palestinians have supported with
others still seeking the total annihilation of the Jewish state, e.g.,
Hamas, and others seeking not two states, but one state where the
Muslims with their overwhelming birthrate advantage would become the
majority in a future democratic election -- which exists in Israel but
nowhere else in the Arab world.
The question in all of the discussions on peace between the Israelis
and Palestinians has revolved around three major controversial issues:
Jerusalem, with the Palestinians demanding their capital be in that
city; and demanding a return of all Palestinian refugees and their
descendants now numbering 4.5 million to the state of Israel; and the
lines of the new state.
The two pre-Netanyahu prime ministers offered to share the capital of
Jerusalem, giving to the Palestinian state that part of East Jerusalem
in which Muslims now live, retaining for Israel that part of East
Jerusalem in which 250,000 Jews now live and retaining about 3 percent
of the West Bank in which about 300,000 Jews live. And most critical,
requiring all Palestinian refugees seeking to return to be resettled
in the new state of Palestine. The Palestinian leaders, Yasser Arafat
and Mahmoud Abbas, turned down the offers on every occasion. Also,
neither Arab leader has been willing to state that they would
recognize Israel as a Jewish state - they having a Muslim state - if
and when an agreement creating two states was entered into.
And that is the nub of the disagreement in my opinion. Palestinians
and their Arab allies have no intention of ever accepting a Jewish
state in their midst. Many in the Muslim world believe that every
square inch of Israel belongs to Islam and will someday be theirs;
they have no intention of accepting the existence of a Jewish state.
At best, they will accept a temporary truce with an entity called
Israel which they will whittle away at, later overwhelm and absorb in
the future.
Of course there are those who support the state of Israel because they
are Jews by birth or religion both in Israel and the U.S. who have
constantly berated the Israeli government - those in the past and the
current one - for not being more forthcoming to the Palestinians, and
see the latter's terror tactics as understandable. One of the latest
being the killing of an entire Jewish family of three children and the
parents, including an infant, done by two Palestinian youths from the
West Bank, now apprehended; and the indiscriminate shelling of
southern Israel by Hamas with rockets aimed at Jewish cities and even
at a school bus recently killing a Jewish child. These Jews appear
indifferent to the threats of Hamas to expel every Jew who entered the
historic Palestine mandate after 1917. Some of the adherents to this
indifference are part of the Jewish advocate group known as " J
Street." I have no doubt some, had they lived in Nazi Germany, would
have been among the Germans who said Hitler will change. He doesn't
really mean to carry out his threats to destroy us. Those German Jews
learned at a terrible price that they were wrong, and that the world
would sit by and allow Hitler using Adolf Eichmann to adopt and
implement what became known as the Final Solution - the murder of all
Jews. For some, perhaps the image of the Palestinians is that of
Lawrence of Arabia and his Bedouin followers. Do they recall or care
that when Jordan occupied the old walled city of Jerusalem in 1948, it
destroyed every synagogue in the Jewish quarter and removed Jewish
gravestones, thousands of years old from the Mt. of Olives cemetery,
using them to build latrines? Jordan held the West Bank and East
Jerusalem for 19 years before the Six-Day War and never offered to
create a Palestinian state, or a two-state solution.
All of this is by way of historic background to the speech delivered
by President Obama on May 19, 2011. Also as background is what
happened in March of 2010 when President Obama displayed his hostility
towards the Jewish state. He demanded that Israel cease all housing
construction in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank in Jewish towns
before talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority could
proceed. Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to a ten-month settlement
construction moratorium on the West Bank. Hillary Clinton, U.S.
Secretary of State praised that action as "unprecedented." Israel's
prime minister refused to stop building residences for Jews in any
part of Jerusalem, Israel's capital. President Obama then had the vice
president Joe Biden - a great friend of Israel - make an
extraordinarily harsh statement denouncing Israel, when on the
previous day, he expressed his personal devotion to Israel, as well as
the Obama administration's "ironclad commitment to Israel's security."
Even more disheartening and threatening were the threats voiced by
Hillary Clinton in a telephone conversation she had with the Prime
Minister, described in The New York Times of March 12, 2010, saying
Israel's plan for new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem sent a
"deeply negative signal about Israeli-American relations." And of
course, we all recall how rudely the Prime Minister was received by
the President at the White House.
There are those who will say how does President Obama's reference to
boundaries differ from that proposed by President Bush. Both referred
to the 1967 lines, actually a reference to the original 1948 lines
"with mutually agreed swaps." President Bush added language referring
to the facts on the ground. But even more important than the phrasing
is the lack of trust. Jews and Christian supporters of Israel in the
U.S. and the Israeli people and their leaders trusted President Bush
with respect to the U.S. commitment to Israel's security and believed
they could rely on the U.S. should Israel be once again attacked by
the Arab nations. Many people, myself included, believing in the two-
state solution also believe Israel will be attacked again and, this
time, Egypt may again be one of the attackers, as it was in 1973
before Sadat made peace with Israel. We do not have confidence that
President Obama's commitment to Israel's security is truly "ironclad."
Today we see the Egyptian army which is the government of Egypt
deposing its President Mubarak, holding him in detention and
threatening to put him on trial, joining with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Many believe Sadat was killed by Egyptians aided by elements of the
Egyptian army for having entered into a peace agreement with Israel.
Egypt has also entered into closer relations with Iran which has said
it will eliminate Israel from the face of the earth, presumably only
awaiting its development of the nuclear bomb to achieve that.
What should President Obama have said to deal with these fears? He
should have first said that Israel will only be called on to negotiate
with the Palestinian Authority when Hamas now an equal partner with
Fatah in the Palestinian governing authority agrees to three
conditions, which the U.S. and the European Union have already stated
on prior occasions, is required for them to recognize Hamas. They are,
one, that Hamas accepts the existence and legitimacy of the state of
Israel; two, that Hamas renounce the use of violence against Israel,
and, three, that Hamas accepts all prior agreements between Israel and
the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. policy has been that it will not
recognize Hamas as a legitimate force unless it performs all three
conditions. Further, President Obama should have required of the
Palestinian Authority a public commitment stated in English, Arabic
and Hebrew that upon conclusion of peace negotiations and the signing
of a peace agreement, the Palestinian Authority will state it
recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, which it has continually refused
to do.
Why is Obama's reference to mutually agreed swaps of land (exchanges)
not adequate? Because the Palestine Authority, particularly Hamas, is
likely to refuse to agree to any exchange. Is that credible? Indeed,
President Sadat when getting back the Sinai in the peace treaty with
Israel was asked to allow the new Israeli city of Yamit built on the
border, but in Sinai refused, declining any exchange of land and
Israel had to agree, the treaty being more important.
President Obama asking Israel to negotiate with Hamas, which seeks its
total destruction, set forth in its basic covenant as important in the
operation of its government in Gaza as are the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence to the American people, would be akin to
F.D.R. telling Winston Churchill that he had to, in World War II
before we entered that war, negotiate a settlement with Adolf Hitler's
Nazi Germany.
On leaving a movie theater over the weekend, a young African-American
man about 40 years old who noticed I looked weary, asked if I would
like to use the wall in front of which he stood to lean against. I
declined with thanks and we struck up a conversation. He said, "What
did you think of President Obama's speech?" I said, "I didn't like the
part on Israel." He said, "Oh, that's too bad. I think he really likes
Jews." I said, "I don't believe he is anti-Semitic, but I do believe
he favors a better relationship with the Muslim countries, even if it
is at Israel's expense."
If President Obama does not change his position, I cannot vote for his
reelection. I've already made clear I won't vote for some crazy who
urges we jettison Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as federal
programs. I can stay home.
President Obama's efforts to reassure supporters of Israel, at the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on May 22 did not
reassure me. Those assurances reported by the Times today "that the
United States commitment to Israel's long term security was ironclad,"
rings hollow, knowing iron breaks and was broken back in March 2010.
Adding to the lack of credibility on this issue of secure borders is
what Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator said, reported in
today's Times, "I am waiting to hear from Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Does he accept the doctrine of two states on the 1967 lines with
agreed swaps or not? (emphasis added). Before we hear that acceptance,
we are just grinding water." And, he is Fatah. Imagine the response of
Hamas.
President Obama's remarks have lifted up the spirits of Palestinians,
who now believe he has given them the upper hand. Supporters of
Israel, Jews and Christians, Democrats and Republicans, now is the
time to make your positions known. Members of Congress, you are not
potted plants. Let the President know you disagree with him. We must
stand strong for Israel in this time of danger.

 we are just grinding water." And, he is Fatah.
e ha ragione al 100%

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