The news of the death of Britain’s Iron Lady, Baroness Thatcher, prompted me to recall my favourite story about her. In 1980, in the first of her three terms as prime minister, she said in a speech to her Conservative Party’s Conference: “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.” Because I was personally engaged with her at the time, I know that she performed her first U turn in her first 48 hours of being prime minister.
My answer is “No” but I think the question needs to be asked. It was provoked in my mind by a recent Ynet op-ed article by Ziv Lenchner, described as a left-leaning, Jewish Israeli artist. The headline over his piece was Israelis to Obama – we don’t care, don’t bother us.
Is Obama thinking to himself “I wish I could push you under a bus”?
We now know that President Obama believes there is little or no prospect for peace in the Middle East unless enough Israeli Jews, in particular the young to whom he appealed directly, understand that the only way for Israel to survive as a Jewish and democratic state is “through the realization of a viable and independent Palestine” and then insist that their government commits itself in negotiations to ending the occupation of the West Bank (now well into in its 45th year).
By implication Obama has acknowledged that he does not have the will to confront the Zionist lobby in Washington D.C. and an Israeli government committed to ever expanding settlement, even when doing so is necessary to best protect America’s own interests.
The headline over a recent op-ed article in the New York Times by Rashid Khalidi was Is Any Hope Left for Mideast Peace? The answer to that question might or might not be clear beyond dispute when the curtain comes down on President Obama’s performance in Israel-Palestine. (He’ll be on stage there on Wednesday for two days, mainly, it seems, to tell Israeli Jews what they want to hear, not what they need to hear).
I find myself wondering how many of our present day leaders, President Obama in particular, are aware of what happened in Palestine that became Israel on 10 March 65 years ago today.
On that day in 1948, two months before Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence in defiance of the will of the organized international community as it then was at the UN, Zionism’s in-Palestine political and military leaders met in Tel Aviv to formally adopt PLAN DALET, the blueprint with operational military orders for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
