Friday, January 25, 2013

What Difference Does It Make?

The problem Israel has with a good part of the world can be highlighted in these remarks made by outgoing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, attempting to defend herself in the Senate Committee reviewing the Administration's behavior after the Benghazi attack:


“It is, from my perspective, less important today looking backward as to why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice,” she said.

Wait, history, background, the past has little or less or perhaps no importance?

“It is, from my perspective, less important today looking backward..."

Well, if Arabs conquered and occupied  the Land of Israel in 638 CE coming from the Arabian Peninsula (and not being the descendants of Canaanites or Jebusites), if the League of Nations decided, due to the Jewish people's historic connection to our homeland that we should reconstitute it, that the Arabs refused all compromises from 1920 on but we yielded up Transjordan and then accepted a further partition, that they ethnically cleansed Jews from locations of residency where they had been for many centuries before 1948, that the PLO was founded in 1964 and it was Israel in its pre-1967 borders that was slated for "liberation", and on and on...that is an impugning immoral philosophical, political, legal and cultural position to take (Peter Whener terms it: "What a perfectly post-modern approach to things").

Of course, for America, I feel sorry.  If it leading politicians and policy makers really don't care about looking backward, I can assure that country's citizens that you'll never know what could be coming at you even if you are looking at it front and forward.

And that has implications for us, too.

______________

Barry Rubin just sent me his thoughts:

...the motive of an attack is always important...the motive is somewhat different and extraordinarily important:

--To promote Islamist revolution by hitting at the United States, thus showing America is weak and can be defeated as a way to inspire more to engage in violence and revolutionary activity...
 --To show that terrorism works in injuring the enemy and thus is superior to what others do, including the political maneuvering and mass base building...

...The Obama Administration wants to bury this analysis because it calls attention to the threat of revolutionary Islamism and, in the last case, to the negative aspects of its own Libya policy...

....apologies and concessions will only persuade the Islamists and a large sector of the local population that the United States is weak, can be defeated, and therefore attacks should be escalated.


 

^

1 comment:

Seth said...

I wonder if their stance would change if, by some bizarre chain of events, the Pals decide to play ball and accept the annexation of large blocs such as Ariel into Israel in exchange for a state. I also wonder what these same professors would say if an Arab member of the University of Ariel wanted to make a post on the listserve.