At AIPAC, Biden Disappoints (Part 3)

by Hugh Fitzgerald

“You don’t have to be anti-Palestinian to be pro-Israeli,” Biden told the conference. “Israeli and Palestinian children are equally deserving of safety, security, and an opportunity to pursue their dreams.”

Is Biden suggesting that Israel standing on its rights, both under the Mandate for Palestine, and according to an entirely independent justification for its holding onto the West Bank, U.N. Resolution 242, which guarantees Israel the right to “secure and recognizable boundaries,” is somehow illegitimate? Are “Palestinian” children, who are raised in a culture of extreme violence, who are taught to hate and to want to kill Jews – on Palestinian children’s shows you can see these serious-faced youngsters, ages four to seven, making stabbing notions with their knives as they chant slogans about killing Jews — really the moral equals to Jewish children, who are not taught to hate at all? And when Biden thinks that “Palestinian children are equally deserving of safety, security, and an opportunity to pursue their dreams,” he’s not taking into account what really goes on. It’s the Palestinian terrorist leaders who endanger the lives of Palestinian children, by deliberately placing weaponry in schools, hospitals, and in apartment buildings, in order that children will be killed by incoming Israeli fire. It is the terrorist leaders who deliberately place Palestinian children in the front rank of the marchers during the Great March of Return, hoping they will be wounded or killed and thus become grist for the propaganda mill of Hamas. And what are the “dreams” of these Palestinian children? Their main “dream” is to kill Jews, all the Jews. How does Joe Biden intend to undo their entire upbringing, based as it is on the Qur’an itself, and the more than one hundred verses that command Muslims to engage in endless warfare – to fight, to kill, to smite at the necks of, to strike terror in the hearts of, the Infidels, and especially to fight and to kill the hated Jews, the worst enemies of the Muslims. Biden does not realize the depth of the pathological hatred of Jews among the Palestinians, a hatred based on the immutable Qur’an. When he refers to giving the Palestinian children their “opportunity to pursue their dreams,” he should be made to understand that while an Israeli child’s dream might be to become a pilot, or a journalist, or to work in a high-tech or agricultural start-up, the dreams of the Palestinian children are always to kill as many Jews as they can.

However, Biden said, the Palestinians must take steps to advance peace as well.

“Palestinians need to eradicate incitement on the West Bank,” he said. “They need to end the rocket attacks from Gaza. They need to accept once and for all the reality and the right of a secure democratic and Jewish State of Israel in the Middle East.”

Vaste programme, monsieur – as De Gaulle once answered a heckler who had cried out “Mort aux cons!” (“Death to all dopes!”). The Palestinians are not going to “eradicate incitement on the West Bank.” Whether you are a Slow Jihadist of the Palestinian Authority, or a Fast Jihadist of Hamas, you want the same goal: an end to the Jewish state and its replacement by “Palestine.” Biden assumes that Israel is invincible. Sadly, it isn’t true. The numbers of precision-guided missiles, as many as 140,000, that Hezbollah possesses in southern Lebanon aimed at Israel, the similar stockpile of rockets that Hamas has in Gaza, Iran’s bases both in Iran for long-range missiles that could potentially strike anywhere in Israel and, from closer up, in Syria (though Israel has been carefully destroying them) – these are the unprecedented dangers the Jewish state faces. It cannot be expected to perform miracles; it should not be asked to live with dangers no other country has. Israel requires a minimum of strategic depth, and for that it needs the West Bank.

Biden does not realize the Islamic basis of the pathological hatred for Israel. It cannot be waved away. The Palestinians will never eradicate incitement on the West Bank or — still more unlikely — in Gaza. Why did Biden not mention the threat from Gaza? Was it oversight, or his realization that the terrorists in Gaza, those of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, will never stop such incitement to violence against Israel; it is their reason for being?

Biden should say something like this:

“Look, here’s the deal: Israel is the only state the Jewish people have. They have lived in the Land of Israel for more than 3000 years. It came into existence against all odds. It was the refuge that took in hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors of the Nazi camps. A little later, Israel took in 800,000 penniless Jews who had fled or been expelled from Arab countries. It managed to fight, and win, three major wars for its survival. It has fought, and won, many smaller campaigns as well against the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The Arabs already have 22 states. They are, in fact, more richly endowed with states than any other people in the world. That matters. They’ve proven to be masters of propaganda. The Arabs, with some help from Soviet experts in disinformation, deliberately created the ‘Palestinian people’ in the 1960s and managed to convince the world that the local Arabs were this separate people, so that the lopsided war of the Arabs against on Israel could be presented merely as a conflict between ‘two tiny peoples, each wanting its homeland.’ There was nothing to distinguish ‘Palestinian’ Arabs from other Arabs in the same region. Not language, not religion, not customs, not anything. Zuheir Mohsen, a leader of the Palestinian terrorist group As Saiqah, succinctly explained – and please listen closely because it’s important, and I just wish Bernie was here to hear it — ‘The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.’

“Now – and here’s my other point – it’s not just the Mandate for Palestine that gives Israel the right, should it wish, to hold onto, and allow Jews to settle on, the West Bank. All of the West Bank. There is U.N. Resolution 242. Any of you remember it? Well, it’s very important. It’s the Resolution that was passed by the General Assembly in the fall of 1967. And it gave Israel the right to retain territories it won ‘in the recent conflict’ – the Six-Day War – if it was necessary for its security. The phrase used was to assure Israel it would have ‘secure and recognizable boundaries.’ Now back in 1967, President Johnson had the Joint Chiefs send some military experts to Israel to report on what territories Israel would have to keep for defensive reasons. And they came back the report – I read it recently – that said that in the West Bank, the Israelis would have to keep, at an absolute minimum, the Jordan Valley, so as to protect against invasion from the East. At a minimum. That’s what they said. And Israel’s military has no intention of giving up control of the West Bank. You have to see Israel, as I have –see how very small it is, and how much it needs the West Bank in order to survive.

“Lord Caradon, the British ambassador to the U.N. who was the main author of Resolution 242, when subsequently interviewed explained that the Arabs kept trying to change a particular phrase in that Resolution, which calls for Israeli withdrawal ‘from territories’ won in the recent conflict. The Arabs kept trying, and kept failing, to have that phrase changed to ‘all the territories.’ They never got it. And so, reinforcing the Mandate for Palestine, there is U.N. Resolution 242, which gives Israel an independent right on which to stake its claim to the West Bank.

“Look, the Palestinians have an offer: a state of their own, with a capital in a suburb of East Jerusalem, and what’s more, $50 billion in aid. $50 billion! Think of what they could do with that money. I don’t agree with President Trump on almost anything. But his peace initiative is worth a try. A half-dozen Arab countries – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain, Oman – gave it their initial approval, as a starting point. They had to vote with all the others against the plan at the Arab League, and the O.I.C. Nobody wants to stand out. It was a pro-forma protest. But it’s pretty clear to me that many of them are tired of the whole Palestinian business. They’ve got civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. They’ve got problems with the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State remnants around the Middle East. Egypt is in a water war with Ethiopia. Lebanon’s economy is cratering, and Hezbollah has taken over the whole shebang. And above all, they’ve got to worry about an aggressive Iran, which is in Yemen, and Iraq, and Syria, and Lebanon, causing as much mischief as it can. That’s gotta be more important than whatever Mahmoud Abbas wants.

“The time is ripe for the Palestinians to realize that this is the last, best deal they’re going to be offered. It’s not just me saying that. Not just Joe Biden. It’s the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Bahrainis, the Egyptians. That’s the difference between me and Bernie on the Middle East. He’s just got it in for Israel. It’s weird. He thinks Netanyahu is a ‘racist.’ He thinks Israel is a ‘racist’ state. He might even move the Embassy back to Tel Aviv. I think he’s nuts. My position is clear: I want the Israelis to stay safe, to have their IDF always able to deter any would-be aggressors, and to keep the territory it needs – it’s Israel’s decision, not ours — to make that deterrence credible. There’s a lot I didn’t know before. But now I’ve read the Mandate, and Resolution 242, and a lot else besides. So let’s stop talking about ‘occupied Palestinian lands’ and have Israel’s rights to the West Bank — the whole West Bank — recognized. And let Israel take it from there.”

Yes, I know. A fantasy. Feel free to send that fantasy to the Biden campaign. Someone just might persuade him to read it. Stranger things have been known to happen.

First published in Jihad Watch.