While I can understand disagreeing with the vision outlined in President Obama's recent Middle East speeches, I do not understand using them as a basis to call him anti-Israel. In them, he has reaffirmed Israel's right to exist, the strong bonds between the US and Israel, a commtiment to Israeli security and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, and condemned the Hamas-Fatah unity while stating that Israel can not be expected to negotiated with a terrorist group callng for its destruction, that a Palestinian state must be de-militarized, and opposing the PA's move to seek statehood at the UN.
Furthermore, it seems to me that the entire concept of land-for-peace is based on the ceding most post-67 terriotires - ie, basing it off of the 1967 borders, though not necessarily going back to the exact borders of 48 - which is exactly what Obama has stated, as he clarified today what he meant by :67 borders with mutually agreed upon landswaps, and has been the policy of both every Israeli and every American administration since the days of Rabin and Clinton. To expect Obama to be more "pro-Israe;" ie, right-wing, than that, woild be expecting him to essentially endorse a one-state solution, and be more right-wing than any of his predecessors, as well as large swathes of the Israeli public.
Most people complain about Obama's "tone", which is a very vague term. Others point to his stormy relationship with Netanyahu, however, Netanhyahu, while brilliant, is a rather tempermental man whom it is hard not to have a stormy relationship with. Furthermore, from day one, both the American and Israeli Jewish publics have perceived Obama as anti-Israel, and every positive overture of his has gone unnoticed, while any even slightly leftwing remark has garnder dispropoprtionate outrage. It is no wonder Obama is not moree pro-Israel: A relatinship with a people who had you pegged as an enemy from day one, and do not seem open to changing their mind, who show disgrattitude at any positive overture but complain heavily at any misstep and offer no forgiveness, must by definition be a hard relationship, and at a certain point efforts at appeasing them may seem futile, causing you to give up. It is to President Obama's credit that he has not done so.
President Obama is president of the US, not of Israel. While we, as American Jews, have a right to advocate on behalf of Israel - that is one of the beauty's of democracy, that different minority groups can advocate for different causes - we must keep in mind that ultimately, his mandate is to protect the best interests of the United States, and he can only be as pro-Israel as that mandate allows him to be. If we want a government tasked with the mandate of protecting the best interests of Jews first, then we should move to Israel.
Lastly, a question to friends who do reject land for peace: What do you see as the solution? The only solution I can see, aside from land for peace, is the status quo: Israel ruling over a large population of Palestinians who are not citizens, turning it into a country whose military occupation becomes part of its national fabric - something that i beleive is bad for civil society, and ultimately dangerous, since occupied peoples will rise up, and history shows that when they do, they might not play fair and might target civilians. This is a case in which the threat of a Palesitnian-Israeli official war, scary as it is, almost pales beneath the threat of terror. The other solution is for Israel to become apartheid: A state in which the Palestinians in certain areas of the country are denied citizenship and basic human rights, not as part of a temporary military occupation until a peaceful solution can be worked out, but as part of the permanent status quo. Neither of these "solutions" is acceptable to me, since I beleive they violate the concept of Jewish democracy that is one of the foundations of Zionism as laid out by David Ben Gurion in Israel's Declaration of Independence, and since I beleive occupation and apartheid both rot away a society at the roots, thus harming even the "privileged" groups.
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