The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : The Blame Israel First Crowd

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Roger Cohen urges presumed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to show "tough love" toward Israel in his latest column. His argument rests on the premise that if only Israel compromises more --withdraws from the West Bank and East Jerusalem -- there can be peace. The article is based around some comments made by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose administration was an abject failure and whose approval ratings were in the single digits even before it was rocked by scandal that will likely lead to his indictment. If making peace were as simple as this, then we would have had it 40 years ago, but the problem has always been that a large enough segment of the Palestinian people do not want to accept any Israeli state at all. As I wrote a few weeks ago, no matter how earnest you assume that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is in his desire for peace, as long as he exerts no influence over Hamas in Gaza, there can be no security for Israelis, and thus, no peace. Cohen does not even bother mentioning Hamas.

Throughout his column, Cohen repeats several times that Israelis have to be willing to give up parts of Jerusalem, as if this were a bold new suggestion. But we've already been down this road before. The 2000 peace offer made by Ehud Barak divided Jerusalem, giving the Palestinians the eastern part of the city, and the Palestinians rejected it. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as merely dividing up Jerusalem. The most contentious area comes when you get to the holy sites, and when you visit the city and see how the competing holy sites are physically on top of and intertwined with each other, you get a good sense of why peace has been so elusive.

Let me be clear about something: I'm not one of those dead-enders who believes that Israel should never give up an inch of land. I think a two-state solution with Palestinians in control of the West Bank and Gaza is the best of many imperfect alternatives. But I also recognize that getting there is a lot easier said than done. And I have little patience when writers such as Cohen completely oversimplify everything, especially by arguing that peace would be at hand if only Israel does exactly what it tried to do eight years ago.

View all comments (9) | Leave a comment

Jack| 12.1.08 @ 11:55AM

Gimme a break! Palestinians have been made to pay for the sins of The Third Reich and it is way past time for the world to WAKE UP from the holocaust hangover that has allowed America's best friend in the world to become the biggest bully on the planet.

International Law demands that occupation is to be temporary, maintain the status quo, not pilfer the resources of the occupied, nor transfer the occupier's population into occupied territory. But Israel does not adhere to international law; they follow the law of the jungle.

WendyG| 12.1.08 @ 12:00PM

Despicable. And is Cohen a Jew, as his name sounds? God save the Jewish people from such Jews.

Dai Alanye| 12.1.08 @ 2:23PM

A realist must see that the only hope for peace from Palestine is to break the will of the Palestinians. All talk of peace by them is merely to mislead us, and all talk of peace by us (Americans and Israelis) is considered a signal of weakness by them.

The best strategy, I feel, would be for Israel to take more Palestinian territory in response to each attack, demonstrating the futility of violence in concrete terms. Merely killing a few of the perpetrators is like kicking over the milk pail each morning. Instead, we need to start punishing the cow.

Alan Brooks| 12.1.08 @ 4:34PM

"Jack", Israel is the biggest bully on the planet? oh, I thought America was the biggest bully, or Halliburton or the Queen of England or the JFK assassins or those who controlled-demolitioned the WTC, or the Mossad, who warned Jews in Manhattan not to go to work at the twin towers on the morning of 9-11.
The last is the most important of all.
Blame the crook-legged international wire pulling international poisoner of peoples. The fission fungi who want to spread Zionism to every nation in the Mideast.
You thought operation Barbarossa was daring? what about 'Operation Chicken Soup'? --
to feed Palestinian children rich chicken soup in fattening them up to slaughter them so as to use their blood in matzoh dishes!
But the muslim terrorists in India? that's different, right? they ought to leave the Aryan Indians alone;

Indians aren't KIKES! they're not SHEENIES!

Jack| 12.1.08 @ 7:15PM

Imagine the vicious cries of anti-Semitism that would have Cohen's article had it been written by a non-Jew, such as I. (I agree with Cohen, needless to say).

WendyG| 12.2.08 @ 9:14AM

Jack, there are anti-semitic Jews. And Jews such as I will call them out, as I did above.

It's amazing, that as Jews were being specifically singled out for savage murder in India, this ugly screed by Cohen was being published.

Cohen, and anyone who agrees with, IMO has no real knowledge of ME history, and yes, is most likely an anti-semite.

Robert| 12.2.08 @ 1:14PM

Israel is the only entity in the world which had at one time illegally occupied territories of all its neighbours namely Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. So who is the invader? Who is the threat to the region? Who has the nuclear bomb? Who has the chemical and biological weapons? The entire world knows that it is Israel but the US prefers to look the other way when it comes to the Zionist regime.

This situation allows criminal states like Israel to coerce and bully other states and other peoples and even blackmail the entire world. It allows Israel to bomb Tunis, Baghdad, Syria and threaten to bomb the Egyptian Aswan Dam and then tell the helpless victims “hit me back if you dare.”

Michael Dooley| 12.2.08 @ 1:20PM

Jack. It is an interesting parlor game to argue over who did what to whom and when was it done. There is also the more vicious game of Just-Because-I-Say-"X"-About-Israel-Doesn't-Mean-I-Am-Anti-Semite".(The latter not fit to be discussed in the presence of mixed company.) All these do nothing to address the point of Mr. Klien’s article.

What are we to do now? Mr. Klien argues that returning the occupied territories and parts of Jerusalem will not lead to anything close to peace or even to an imperfect cessation of hostilities. Israel and her neighbors were in a constant state of belligerence long before the Six Day War in the 1960’s. So how do we find or construct peace in the Middle East?
For what it’s worth, I am not optimistic. For the time being, the problem is intractable. In the final analysis, peace will not come until one side is utterly defeated. Anything less than that, if the defeated still have access to weaponry, the fight was go on.

I have one thing to say to the Palestinians (it could easily to said to the Israelites). Your people cry out to God and to the nations for justice. But just how much justice can you afford? I tell you that justice is s jealous, bitch goddess that devours everything and scours ever crevice. Followed to its logical end, it will release the hounds of unquenchable war. There is not enough blood in the entire world to satisfy justice.

John Dietrich| 11.7.10 @ 4:34PM

I'm a white straight male, and I'm just thankful to the Jews that they allow me to keep my house and that I have a full belly. Whatever happens, I will go along to get along.