‘Pushing’ Against an Open Door

TO ALL AM ISRAEL

President Obama, no nation in history has brought more sacrifices to the altar of peace than Israel.

Our military cemeteries are filled with thousands of precious young lives cut short in testament to that goal. We need no “pushing” by anyone in the pursuit of peace. We’ve been at it for 60 years.

You have declared the forging of a peace settlement between us and our Arab neighbors to be the top priority of your administration’s foreign policy. That’s commendable. What you have not given us, however, is a clear articulation of the peace you envision.

Does that vision insure the defensibility of Israel’s borders and whatever means may be required to defend them – borders that will render any further aggressive fantasies on the part of our neighbors strategically unthinkable?

Does it look toward a continued undivided Jerusalem, unthreatened by the presence of terrorist gunmen on its streets?

Does it presage a meaningful change in the media, the educational system and the politics of a culture that regards the return of the Jewish people to the land of their fathers as a capital crime?

Does it rule out any notion of a demographic assault on Israel through the infiltration of massive numbers of Muslim Arabs into its borders?

Finally, does it indelibly and unequivocally stamp Israel as a “Jewish state,” the legally constituted national homeland of the Jewish people?

Israel is in the process of installing a new, democratically elected government. If its efforts toward a settlement with its neighbors are to have any chance of success, they will need straight answers to these questions from the West, most particularly from the United States. In the absence of those answers, phrases like “pushing for peace.” “jump-starting peace” and “moving toward a more activist peace agenda” have the all too-familiar ring of previous calls for Israel’s surrender of its rights –geographic and historic – to a land sanctified with its dreams and the blood of its sons.

There is no Israeli government, whatever its political coloration, that can ever accede to such terms!

Comments

[Barbara Miller-Day]

I Totally Agree!!