Fareed Zakaria's Omissions & Revisionism About Israel - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Fareed Zakaria’s Omissions & Revisionism About Israel
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I just read a laughable article by Fareed Zakaria in which he makes the case that President Obama is appealing to Israel’s conscience to attain Palestinian statehood. But this isn’t what’s laughable about the article. What’s laughable is Zakaria’s omissions and revisionism concerning Israel.

Zakaria argues that the reality on the ground has changed. According to Zakaria, Israel no longer faces large Arab armies like that of Iraq and Syria which were funded by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is dead, Iraq and Syria are no more and the Arab Spring has made these countries “focused on internal issues of power, legitimacy and struggle. The last thing that any of them can afford is a confrontation with the country which has become the region’s dominant power,” writes Zakaria.

Yet curiously he makes no specific mention of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt which may very well abrogate the 1977 Camp David Accords thus renewing hostilities between old adversaries. Let’s not forget that when the 2010 video surfaced of President Morsi calling Jews “apes and pigs”, he told several U.S. Senators this past January that the story was cooked up by the ‘Jewish controlled media.’ Not that it stopped the Obama Administration from giving F-16s to Morsi.

Zakaria also does not see fit to mention threats to Israel from the non-Arab Muslim world namely Iran and the increasingly belligerent Turkey which has made no secret of its support for Hamas in Gaza. Indeed, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is reportedly planning to visit Gaza later this month in the wake of Israel’s apology of its handling of the Mavi Marmara incident nearly three years ago. This visit will not only aggravate tensions between Israel and Turkey but it will make Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apology look foolish. President Obama will also look foolish for having pushed Netanyahu into making the apology in the first place.

Then there’s this doozy. Zakaria writes, “Israel has ruled millions of Palestinians without offering them citizenship or a state for 40 years.”

I guess Zakaria was away from planet Earth when Israel made formal offers of Palestinian statehood in 2000, 2001 and 2008 – all of which were rejected by the Palestinians. Besides does Zakaria honestly think the Palestinians would want Israeli citizenship?

As I have argued previously, the Palestinians aren’t looking so much to establish a state as they are to destroy an existing one, namely Israel. But let’s say that Zakaria is right and that Obama is appealing to Israel’s conscience. But given Israel’s previous efforts at offering Palestinian statehood it isn’t Israel’s conscience that Zakaria (and Obama) should be worried about. Indeed, President Obama’s appeals to Israel’s conscience are meaningless without taking into account the Palestinian conscience or lack thereof.

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