 On behalf of the Godfather himself, his consigliore Saeb Erekat was dispatched to slyly put forth a seemingly new offer, seemingly sensible, seemingly conciliatory, but still an offer that cannot be refused – an ultimatum geared to guarantee the Syndicate the same gains as previous ploys. By one contrivance or another, Don Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) comes out ahead.
Abbas, intoned the consigliore in his role as chief Palestinian negotiator, might forgo unilateral action at the UN General Assembly in September and restart peace talks, “but only if Netanyahu accepts the basis of the 1967 borders, and declares it publicly, in addition to agreeing to freeze construction in the settlements.” Predictably, word is that Judge B. Obama (the mob’s favorite mediator) actively backs the scam, which helps Abbas look good while ceding nothing. The Don might let us off without punishment, return to the bargaining table and palaver as befits his honorable statesman reputation. Abbas has lots invested in that image. It’s his stock in trade, much as it was for Mario Puzo’s Don Vito Corleone. The quintessential Godfather did his darnedest to lend the impression of a legitimate, respectable businessman – an olive oil importer. To all and sundry he was known as a reasonable man, a negotiator. Indeed if his negotiating partners “showed respect” and paid up, peace blossomed. Above all, Corleone desired tranquility. If he got his way, not a hair on any endangered head would be harmed. However, were his interlocutors unwilling to oblige and capitulate to his eminently reasonable demands, “warehouses were burned, truckloads of olive-green oil were dumped to form lakes in the cobbled waterfront streets.” Then came stiffer penalties, like that meted out to the rash wholesaler who “disappeared, never to be seen again, leaving behind, deserted, his devoted wife and three children, who, God be thanked, were fully grown and capable of taking over his business and coming to terms with the Genco Pura Oil Company.” That’s precisely how business is done in our region. Don Abbas is outwardly a respectable statesman, bespectacled, clean-shaven and with better fashion savvy than Mustachio-Yasser, his sophistication-deficient predecessor Mafioso. Abbas purports to be levelheaded, a negotiator, a man of peace – on his terms, of course. And as long as the “mark” – Israel – acquiesces to those terms and makes the required concessions to buy limited cessations of savagery, the Godfather will restrain his hoods. So far, Don Abbas has gained much goodwill thereby. But the facade should fool nobody. The Godfather pays hefty monthly wages to all goons doing time behind bars, including the Itamar butchers. He shells out generous outlays to their families. He glorifies them on every occasion. He names local streets and facilities in their honor. He turns them into acclaimed role models. He agitates for the release of each and every imprisoned hitman – presumably also the slayers of the Fogel children. Don Abbas keeps his thugs sweet and at the ready for the next phase of what in gangland parlance is called a shakedown. You pay mobsters not to torch your business, break your legs or take your life. If you fork over what they dictate, they protect you – from their own arsonists, bone-crushers and contract-killers. If at any point you can no longer afford ever-exorbitant protection-racket fees, they’ll let you have it – Corleone-style. But for now, Don Abbas prefers to keep his threat latent and instead bully Israel with the terrifying prospect of being hauled, shaking and shivering, before the Mafia Families’ general assembly – their kangaroo court. There, at the UN, Abbas is always assured an automatic majority. The General Assembly will, after its own fashion, offer us the classic Godfather choice – either accept Abbas as your self-styled executioner or have your death sentence pronounced by the crime conglomerate. The outcome will be identical. Abbas’s abiding aim is to dismantle the Zionist entity. That mandates disposing of the Jewish majority of the only democracy in the Mideast. Israel is destined for de-Judaization by cynical exploitation of the democratic idiom to undermine its democracy. On the ideological plane this means denying that Jews possess the right to self-determination. At the very most, Israel may be temporarily stomached as “a state for all its citizens.” The next step is to supplant the Jewish majority with an Arab one. The practical prerequisite is shrinking anathema Israel to its untenable 1949-1967 dimensions. That would leave it cripplingly weakened and vulnerably squeezed at its midpoint into a nine-mile waistline. These are what ultra-dove Abba Eban once dubbed the “Auschwitz lines.” All this would be achieved without renouncing the “right of return,” i.e. the right to overrun Israel by millions of hostile Arabs. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN agencies and assorted do-gooder NGOs would all respond to the humanitarian imperative of inundating Israel with its implacable enemies. Eventually, Abbas reckons, Israel will lose the willpower to withstand international pressure or its actual ability to continually barricade itself. After its defenses are breached, the final and fatal process of deconstruction will begin – replete with clashes, “legitimate Arab resistance” and blood in the streets. In rare unison, the Arab states will roar support for their battling brethren – the very states currently unable to vocalize any objection to mass murder in Libya and Syria. With Arabs callously massacring each other, it takes minimal imagination to envisage what they’ll do to the Jews whom they were brainwashed from birth to revile as Satan incarnate. The butchering of the Fogels in Itamar was just a grisly preview of coming attractions. So is the failure of the world to be shocked by that atrocity – not that it’s unexpected. There are never even muffled murmurs of outrage when Israeli towns are rocketed and when Israeli civilians are targeted. However, a deafening cacophony of rebuke arises as soon as Israel dares react. Israeli self-defense is inherently delegitimized and axiomatically equated with war crimes. Adding insult to injury is the pretense that denial of the right of self-defense to Jews – and to them alone – isn’t anti-Semitic. This is the irredeemably biased tribunal of world opinion with which Don Abbas browbeats us. If we submit to his diktat, he’ll magnanimously leave up to us the mechanism by which we’ll be compressed into the Auschwitz lines. It’s either the kangaroo court’s preordained verdict or the Godfather’s preconditions as per the latest offer we can’t refuse – if we play by his rules. |
Bucking the Trend …
Bucking the Trend ... 
Sarah that was as funny as it was scary…!
I very well remember the film and You just have found the perfect mirror for the monstrosities which the Arabs, supported by their Western friends have done to Israel.
A mafiosi cannot be defeated by someone who sticks to the rules invented by the mafia and so the two state solution has to be kicked down the street and has to be replaced by the one state solution, the sovereignty of Israel over Judea and Samaria.
The UN and Hussein Obama can go down to the place, where Luca Brasi once was sent to…
Obama should be seen for what he is-Israel’s Executioner.According to his edicts, Israel will deliver the goods-or else.In fact, IF Israel’s leaders accede to his dictates, it is NO exaggeration to state that they too will be complicit in the destruction of Zion. They too will be our gravediggers, wielding the shovels which will eventually bury us.
Of course, Obama’s merging with the Muslim Mafia/AKA The Brotherhood is in full swing, via the Arab Spring which his own shock troops(hardcore leftist revolutionaries from his past and present)on the ground in the Middle East have initiated.
But no matter.Abbas and his Islamic foot soldiers know the score.They understand that Obama is a ‘made man’, a man who can be counted on to lay the ground for our retreat towards the sea via sundry minefields.
The urgent and open question is – will our leaders,with Bibi at the helm, accommodate their goals, albeit kicking and screaming?
Re: Another Tack: Don Abbas makes an offer
Dear Ms. Honig:
Bravo and bravo encore.
I do not believe anyone will ever succeed in penning a more insightful nor more accurate summation of the present situation now facing the State of Israel.
You have written a literary ‘tour de force’ that strikes the very center of the proverbial bullseye.
I cannot imagine anyone will ever sum up the challenges facing Israel better or with more powerful imagery.
Sometimes in life important truths can be conveyed with more immediacy and greater clarity by doing so using the ‘Arts’ whether via the medium of music, the visual arts or the literary use of words, as you have done here.
Hopefully, if what you have written is brought to the attention of President Obama and his White House staff, they might decide to revisit some of their present positions regarding how the US is conducting its present diplomatic and geo-political efforts.
However I will not be holding my breath.
In that regard I just sent the following letter to the White House requesting they remove me from their official mailing list. I thought they were entitled to the reason I was making such a request. It is self explanatory.
The statement regarding my position might be of interest to others so feel free to publish, share or forward to anyone you wish.
Again, please know that you have written a very unique and extraordinary literary document that will be read and pondered by many, with much interest, for a long time to come.
With profound respect for your insightful wisdom, vast literary talent and considerable courage,
Kind regards,
David Pakter
New York
___________________________________
Letter to the White House
I strongly campaigned for and worked for President Obama to help get him elected.
I contributed financially, over and over again, repeatedly and far beyond my personal budget allowed, because I believed he was a man of rare intellect and that he believed in Justice for all people in every part of the world regardless of skin color, religion or ethnicity.
I have been sorely disappointed by President Obama especially in his clearly apparent lack of understanding of the factual history and issues pertaining to the Middle East.
At best, perhaps he means well but is gravely misinformed and has been poorly advised by others.
At worst, perhaps he wants to prove to the Arabs and the Muslim world that he is determined to do whatever is necessary to satisfy their demands and placate their wishes.
It is abundantly clear at this point that Obama will never stand up and call a spade a spade and not a perfumed shovel.
Why has this President never once publicly stated to the entire world that before he will make any effort to improve the chances for peace in the Middle East, representatives of Iran, Syria, Hamas and all their allies, supporters and friends, et al., must come to the White House and assure the President of the United States, in signed, written statements that they fully accept and forever Recognize the State of Israel and Israel’s Eternal right to exist.
But President Obama’s empty poetic statements regarding the Middle East, and his perpetual platitudes repeated ad nausea, fool no one who really knows history and understands that as tragic as it may be, the adversaries of the State of Israel will never accept Israel’s presence in the Middle East nor Israel’s Right to Exist.
Recent events reflect what a poor understanding President Obama possesses of the issues in the Mid East conflict.
It is clear he never will or never has any intention of letting the facts get in the way of his personal agenda regarding the Middle East.
It is a true tragedy that Obama entered the White House with such factual deficiencies and experiential deficits re the already troubled Middle East.
Obama truly might have become one of America’s greatest Presidents.
But based on recent events I cannot ever imagine that happening.
I have never voted for a Republican for President and never will and for all the same reasons that no lifetime supporter of the Democratic Party, including President Obama himself, would not vote for a Republican. It is not necessary to elaborate on this point.
This means I will be hard put to know what to do come the next election and dread the thought I might have to vote for a Party for whom I hold very great differences of opinion on a multitude of issues.
I believe I am only one of many millions of Americans who share my disappointment with how President Obama perceives the issues with regard to the Middle East.
Needless to say both President Obama and his ‘advisors’ will write people like me off as a small minority of voters whose opinion/s will not diminish his chance/s to be re-elected.
More is the pity.
In any case, I attach hereto some incontrovertible historical facts regarding the Middle East which President Obama, as an honest man wishing to learn and know the facts- should read- and then insist his entire White House staff read- and then read- and then read again every day.
These facts were penned by the distinguished David Harris. What follows is not opinion nor hypothetical conjecture but purely historical facts written and presented in the precise chronological order in which they occurred.
President Obama and his staff can like these facts or hate these facts but they can never and will never- be able to dispute them or refute these facts.
I will always remember how full of hope I was when Obama declared he would run for the White House.
And his being a man of ‘color’ added to my sense of euphoria that he would make history and show the world that in the United States of America, any man or woman can rise as far and as high as their innate human abilities, intellect and talents, allow.
I will go to my grave haunted by what- at least for myself and my personal hopes and dreams- might have been.
Sincerely,
With kindest regards,
David L. Pakter
900 Park Ave.
New York City
16 June 2011
__________________________________________________
Remarks of David A Harris
Why the Six-Day War Still Matters
David A. Harris
aish.com
12 June ’11
http://www.aish.com/jw/me/Why_the_Six-Day_War_Still_Matters.html
Ten crucial lessons that resonate to this day.
Mention the word “history” and it can trigger a roll of the eyes.
Add “Middle East” to the equation and folks might start running for the hills, unwilling to get caught up in the seemingly bottomless pit of details and disputes.
But without an understanding of what happened, it’s impossible to grasp where we are — and where we are has profound relevance for the region and the world.
Forty-four years ago this week, the Six-Day War broke out.
While some wars fade into obscurity, this one remains as relevant today as in 1967. Many of its core issues remain unresolved and in the news.
Politicians, diplomats, and journalists continue to grapple with the consequences of that war, but rarely provide context. Yet without context, some critically important things may not make sense.
First, in June 1967, there was no state of Palestine. It didn’t exist and never had. Its creation, proposed by the UN in 1947, was rejected by the Arab world because it also meant the establishment of a Jewish state alongside.
Second, the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem were in Jordanian hands. Violating solemn agreements, Jordan denied Jews access to their holiest places in eastern Jerusalem. To make matters still worse, they destroyed many of those sites.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control, with harsh military rule imposed on local residents.
And the Golan Heights, which were regularly used to shell Israeli communities far below, belonged to Syria.
Third, the Arab world could have created a Palestinian state in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip any day of the week. They didn’t. There wasn’t even discussion about it. And Arab leaders, who today profess such attachment to eastern Jerusalem, rarely, if ever, visited. It was viewed as an Arab backwater.
Fourth, the 1967 boundary at the time of the war, so much in the news these days, was nothing more than an armistice line dating back to 1949 — familiarly known as the Green Line. That’s after five Arab armies attacked Israel in 1948 with the aim of destroying the embryonic Jewish state. They failed. Armistice lines were drawn, but they weren’t formal borders. They couldn’t be. The Arab world, even in defeat, refused to recognize Israel’s very right to exist.
Fifth, the PLO, which supported the war effort, was established in 1964, three years before the conflict erupted. That’s important because it was created with the goal of obliterating Israel. Remember that in 1964 the only “settlements” were Israel itself.
Sixth, in the weeks leading up to the Six-Day War, Egyptian and Syrian leaders repeatedly declared that war was coming and their objective was to wipe Israel off the map. There was no ambiguity. Twenty-two years after the Holocaust, another enemy spoke about the extermination of Jews. The record is well-documented.
The record is equally well-documented that Israel, in the days leading up to the war, passed word to Jordan, via the UN and United States, urging Amman to stay out of any pending conflict. Jordan’s King Hussein ignored the Israeli plea and tied his fate to Egypt and Syria. His forces were defeated by Israel, and he lost control of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
Seventh, Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded that UN peacekeeping forces in the area, in place for the previous decade to prevent conflict, be removed. Shamefully, the UN complied. That left no buffer between Arab armies being mobilized and deployed and Israeli forces in a country one-fiftieth the size of Egypt — and just nine miles wide at its narrowest point.
Eighth, Egypt blocked Israeli shipping lanes in the Red Sea, Israel’s only maritime access to trading routes with Asia and Africa. This step was regarded as an act of war by Jerusalem. The United States spoke about joining with other countries to break the blockade, but did not act.
Ninth, France, which had been Israel’s principal arms supplier, announced a ban on the sale of weapons on the eve of the June war. That left Israel in potentially grave danger if a war were to drag on and require the resupply of arms. It was not until the next year that the U.S. stepped into the breach and sold vital weapons systems to Israel.
Tenth, And finally, after winning the war of self-defense, Israel hoped that its newly-acquired territories, seized from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, would be the basis of a land-for-peace accord. Feelers were sent out. The formal response came on September 1, 1967, when the Arab Summit Conference famously declared in Khartoum “No peace, no recognition, no negotiations” with Israel.
Today, there are those who wish to rewrite history.
They want the world to believe there was once a Palestinian state. There was not.
They want the world to believe there were fixed borders between that state and Israel. There was only an armistice line between Israel and the Jordanian-controlled West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
They want the world to believe the 1967 war was a bellicose act by Israel. It was an act of self-defense in the face of blood-curdling threats to vanquish the Jewish state, not to mention the maritime blockade of the Straits of Tiran, the abrupt withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces, and the redeployment of Egyptian and Syrian troops.
All wars have consequences; this one was no exception. But the Arab aggressors have failed to take responsibility for the actions they instigated.
They want the world to believe post-1967 Israeli settlement-building is the key to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Six-Day War is proof positive that the core issue is, and always has been, whether the Arab world accepts the Jewish people’s right to a state of their own. If so, all other contentious issues, however difficult, have possible solutions.
And they want the world to believe the Arab world had nothing against Jews per se, only Israel, yet trampled with abandon on sites of sacred meaning to the Jewish people.
In other words, when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, dismissing the past as if it were a minor irritant at best, irrelevant at worst, won’t work.
Can history move forward? Absolutely. Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 prove the point. At the same time, though, the lessons of the Six-Day War illustrate just how tough and tortuous the path can be.
David A. Harris
___________________________
And another thing-JPost,as well as other Israeli headlines, described yesterday’s rocket attack via Hamas as merely an interruption to what been a relatively ‘quiet’ period.Huh?
The outrageous part of the reporting was their emphasis on a two month period of ‘quiet’, as if Zionists should be grateful that they enjoyed a 2 month reprieve, instead of headlines blaring the opposite-that NO normal nation should EVER tolerate their citizens being rocketed, regardless of how many ‘lulls’ there are!!
It is as if this latest terror attack was an aberration of a basically friendly neighbor, therefore, nothing to see….moving right along….NO need for IDF retaliation to END this madness!!
Sarah,
after reading your exposé about Don Abbas et al, I am now more than ever convinced that the [real] Mafia are the good guys.
Now Seriously, as in trademark quip of the late longtime Jerusalem Post columnist and author “Sam” Orbaum.
In addition to the equally longtime and seemingly perennial problems that we have to confront in Israel, with the added twist of what is euphemistically dubbed the Arab Spring, we are at clear disadvantage: our leadership (generic term) lacks the wits, creativity and resolve of the likes of Don Corleone, Tom Hagen and Michael Corleone.
Not that I advocate to emulate those unsavory characters, but some inspiration might help.
Chanting “we shall overcome” is not enough. We HAVE to overcome.
Shabat Shalom.
So just to recap: Fatah and Hamas reconcile and signal an intention to form a unity government, a call from various international players goes out to the effect that the Palestinian Authority has to ensure that Hamas will abide by the principles of the Quartet, among which are the renunciation of violence and recognition of Israel’s right to exist, but despite having received no such assurance, Quartet member Russia continues stand by its intention to vote in favour of the U.N. resolution – the U.N., mind, is that organisation whose charter affirms that it is “open to all peace-loving States” – on Palestine in September, and various individual governments of fellow Quarter member EU are poised to follow suit.
For the answer, turn to the back of the book.
The increasingly frequent references to the “armed wing” as opposed to the “political wing” of Hamas (a fresh example is seen in reports on the latest Merkl-Sarkozy attempt to free Schalit) seem to me an invocation of the Sinn Fein/IRA association of yore, a subtle laying of a foundation for the acceptance of Hamas as part of a Palestinian government, the subtext being that just as a deal was eventually struck to end the Troubles in Northern Ireland, so too can one be with Fatah/Hamas. Curiosity prompted me to read up to see if there was perhaps a mitigating parallel in the two cases, and an admittedly preliminary search lead to an interesting wiki quote of an msnbc article: “In March 2005, Mitchell Reiss, the United States special envoy to Northern Ireland, condemned [Sinn Fein]’s links to the IRA, saying “it is hard to understand how a European country in the year 2005 can have a private army associated with a political party.” Evidently the European countries intending to vote in favour see nothing “hard to understand” about consigning Israel to the fate of dealing with such an entity in 2011 by not firmly setting and enforcing preconditions for their September support in the face of these new facts on the ground (at least publicly, to date.) Perhaps the terror-once-removed element furnished by “armed” versus “political” references is seen as a legitimization of Fatah’s pact with Hamas, or far likelier at least excuse enough to not engage in time- and energy-consuming efforts to ensure that their own stated demands are met.
Maybe I’m just not politically astute enough to comprehend that this is a minor detail that can be worked out after September through the diplomatic skill of the likes of Sergei Lavrov. But seriously, I’m afraid that the analogy that Sarah has drawn between the characters of The Godfather and the various players on today’s international political scene is all too accurate.
“Judge B. Obama (the mob’s favorite mediator)” has been called “a Chicago thug” by some US commentators. One can’t help wondering…