We must not let the time pass without commenting on what, in the last month, has transpired in the Middle East. Our Caesar Disgustus has come to the rescue of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by recognizing the annexation by Israel of the Golan Heights. Our Disgustus did this without consulting our allies, the Congress, or even the U.S. State Department. It was yet another example of government by tweeting. Only a birdbrain tweets.
This, of course, is a complete reversal of U.S. and allied policy toward Israel which not only gives credence to Israel's illegitimate claims upon the territory and further emboldens Israel's truculent behavior, but further isolates the United States in the international community.
It is time for the United States to face facts. The Israeli's have never been serious about negotiating with the Palestinians. They have, since the six-day war, used whatever peace processes were imposed upon them to delay and obstruct in order to continue their policies of ethnic cleansing and occupying the seized territories. I remember my late mother-in-law returning from a trip to the region with a map as a souvenir in which Israel was drawn including territories they called Judea and Samaria, that is, the occupied west bank. And indeed, the practice of fracturing the territory by building settlements pell-mell in the region, building "Jews Only" highways connecting them and further fracturing the territory, and establishing hundreds of check points to protect this infrastructure within the region assured that a future Palestine, had it ever been recognized, would have looked like Swiss cheese and been nothing but an Israeli colony.
Jimmy Carter understands what has happened. In the wake of the Camp David accords, Israel used the agreement to trade territory that is largely useless to them in exchange for dividing the Arab world, a division that cost Egyptian President Anwar Sadat his life, after which for Israel it became business as usual. Israel treated the agreement as just another stratagem and went about the real business of annexation. Carter, seeing this has, for good reason, become a critic of Israel.
The United States has never been, despite it's international posturing, even-handed in this. The U.S. has always come down, in the end, on the side of the Israeli's. Oh, one protests, what about this rebuke or that in the last half-century? They have been mere slaps upon the wrist, mere admonitions, as we look the other way. How else does one explain our constant condemnation of Palestinian resistance and "terror" when we never condemn Israel for provoking it? How else does one explain our incessant pre-occupation with developing nuclear capability in Iran (or Iraq when Saddam Hussein ran amok U.S. policymakers), while never calling out the Israeli's and demanding that they give up their nuclear weapons? How else to explain going to war with Iraq for violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions while standing stone silent in the face of over two dozen Israeli violations of the same? All of this is lost on the ignorant American population but none of this is lost on the residents of the region.
It is also time to face the fact that the "two-state solution" is dead. If we are to be compelled to recognize, in the end, the annexation of the occupied territory then we must demand a "One-State" solution, wherein everyone within what now amounts to "greater Israel" is accorded citizenship and voting rights. The West must demand that every Palestinian be recognized as a voting citizen, that there will be--as in South Africa and elsewhere--no apartheid. This will, effectively, end the concept of the Jewish State and force Israel to join the rest of humanity. In such a state, walls are unnecessary.
Netanyahu was in a tight race and the prospects were good that he would have been replaced had not Disgustus raced to his rescue. By negotiating the Faustian bargain Netanyahu, himself under indictment for corruption, won another term, but he did it by destroying his country. As Thomas Freidman, long an observer of the region, has observed, annexation means the end of Israel as it was founded. It is time for the West to recognize it and demand full participation of the indigenous population.
But for our immediate purposes other questions linger in the mist: just what did tRUMP and Kushner get from this slavish devotion to Netanyahu and his coalition? The ReSCUMlickans have long been playing footsie with Israel's wrong-wing, but why suddenly are we moving so swiftly on their behalf? Oh, the religious wrong in this country support such moves so that the ancient "kingdom" of Israel, once established, would then re-build the temple and bring about the second coming of the great sky-god, but we all know tRUMP believes none of it. There must be some transactional consideration--some form of remuneration--for Disgustus is nothing, if not transactional. Could it be another monument or two to himself? A tRUMP tower here or there? Tel-Aviv, Jericho, Bethlehem, Nazareth, or perhaps looming over the new temple on the mount itself. Already the Israeli's have announced a new settlement named in his honor. But this means nothing to Disgustus, what he wants is money.
And, so for thirty pieces of silver Netanyahu has sold out his country, and Donald J. tRUMP has done likewise, further isolating both Israel and the United States in the world community, further undermining the authority and legitimacy of international organizations, further destabilizing the region, and further opening the door to Russian influence. It is clear now for all the world to see: the United States is no longer an honest broker in the region and the world will no longer look to Washington for guidance. That role will go elsewhere, perhaps Moscow.
This is what happens when a birdbrain "tweets".
"An Br'er Putin, he jus laugh and laugh"
Impeach and Imprison.
