Re-Branding the GOP. By John Fonte.

Re-Branding the GOP. By John Fonte. National Review Online, December 16, 2013.

Middle-Class Heroes? By Andrew Stiles. National Review Online, December 31, 2013.


Fonte:

From the party of big business to the party of the little guy.

 

As Sean Trende and others have noted, middle- and working-class voters did not turn out for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election in the numbers that Republican leaders had expected. In the eyes of many of these once-Republican-leaning voters (including former Reagan Democrats), the GOP appears to be too closely linked to “big business.” In response, many conservative thinkers have called for a more populist GOP, oriented toward the middle and working classes and distant from corporate elites.

 

It is time to reexamine the relationship between big business and the American center-right. While corporate America has a close relationship with the Republican party generally, its engagement with American conservatism is fraught with complications. Business leaders and conservatives often join forces for pragmatic gain on significant issues such as Obamacare, taxes, trade policy, cap-and-trade proposals, and other environmental and government regulations. This issue-by-issue alliance is tactically useful to both groups and no doubt will (and should) continue.

 

Republicans as a party, however, and conservatives specifically, should not be subservient to corporate interests on core issues. The American electorate must come to view Republicans as the party of the middle class rather than the courtiers of big business. The GOP “brand” must change. While conservatives and business will remain part of a broad center-right coalition, the key question is: On what terms, and who calls the shots?

 

Let’s review some history. In 1980, as conservatives rallied to Ronald Reagan, many corporate leaders were enthusiastic supporters of former Texas governor John Connolly for the GOP presidential nomination; Connolly was a former conservative Democratic politician who looked and talked like a CEO. Others liked Senator Howard Baker and George H. W. Bush. Mindful of the Goldwater defeat, all these business leaders saw Reagan as too conservative to win. Most CEOs were more comfortable with a mainstream candidate closer to the political center.

 

One of the big internal fights in the Reagan administration pitted business interests against national-security conservatives. In the 1970s, hundreds of major corporations as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers had joined to form a private pro-trade group, the U.S.-USSR Trade and Economic Council (USTEC). While conservative hawks wanted to curb the flow of military-use items to Communist countries, USTEC lobbied to remove barriers to Soviet trade. The group opposed, for example, the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which placed trade limits on certain Communist-bloc countries that restricted emigration, as the USSR did with Jews and Evangelical Christians.

 

Cold War ancient history, you say? Okay, let’s go back to this summer and look at a crucial domestic- and constitutional-policy issue. In July 2013, House Republicans voted to remove some federal mandates in the No Child Left Behind Act and empower the states to formulate their own accountability systems and curricular standards. Strong opposition to this federalism-affirming legislation came from every Democrat in the House, the Obama administration, an array of leftist groups (including the ACLU, the Children’s Defense Fund, the National Education Association, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and the Southern Poverty Law Center) and also from business interests led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. Former Reagan education official Chester Finn Jr. rebuked the two business groups for their stance: “Both . . . joined the left . . . in savaging the Kline [House Republican] bill and demanding more federal regulation and control of education. . . . I suppose this is yet another sad example of corporate America succumbing to big-government-itis.”

 

In fact, since the days of Theodore Roosevelt and Progressive theorist Herbert Croly over a hundred years ago, business has done well enough working with the regulatory forces of the administrative state. As Milton Friedman often remarked, corporate executives are not fans of the free market. They are often involved in “rent-seeking” behavior, lobbying the federal government for special privileges at the expense of others.

 

Not only will corporate America readily depart from conservatives on a matter such as state control of education, it also appears to have little use for the various other constituencies within the conservative coalition. Social conservatives advocating life, pro-family policy, and religious freedom; national-security conservatives defending American sovereignty, arguing for a strong military, and working to meet the challenges of China and radical Islam; national-cohesion conservatives aiming to curb racial, ethnic, and gender preferences and the pernicious ideology of multiculturalism; and free-market conservatives fighting statist measures – all these find that business leaders are often either indifferent to their concerns or lined up on the other side of the barricades, alongside the forces of the leftist establishment. Better to shun supposedly extreme right-wing ideologues than challenge liberal orthodoxy.

 

A major weapon in the Left’s continuing campaign to “fundamentally transform America,” as Candidate Obama so memorably promised to do, is what I call the coercive diversity project. This is the ongoing effort to use federal power to impose proportional representation along race, gender, and ethnic lines in all aspects of American life. If women, for instance, constitute 50 percent of the work force, then 50 percent of engineers, doctors, accountants, etc., should be women. Ensuring that each group is represented in each endeavor in the correct demographic proportion would require a degree of government coercion incompatible with a free society. Yet, with strong support from the business community, the coercive diversity project has advanced steadily for decades. Little by little, race- and gender-based preferences and quotas have replaced the original affirmative-action goal of achieving colorblind and gender-neutral equality of opportunity.

 

Corporate America was present at the creation of the coercive diversity project. Business executives provided funds and political support and collaborated with activists in promoting “diversity.” Most significantly, they helped blunt opposition from principled conservatives.

 

In The Diversity Machine, sociologist Fred Lynch details how corporations teamed up with progressives to fight the Reagan Justice Department’s attempt to end group preferences based on race, ethnicity, and gender. Attorney General Edwin Meese met strong resistance from the business community. The Reagan administration surveyed 127 chief executives of large corporations and found that 95 percent “planned to use numerical objectives to track the progress of women and minorities . . . regardless of government requirements.”

 

When Ward Connerly led a series of successful statewide referenda opposing the use of group preferences in education and employment, business interests fought him at every turn and poured money into the leftist campaigns to stop his efforts. After his successful initiative in the State of Washington in 1998, Connerly wrote: “The most significant obstacle we faced in the Washington campaign was not the media . . . but the corporate world. . . . Boeing, Weyerhaeuser, Starbucks, Costco, Microsoft, and Eddie Bauer all made huge donations to the [opposition]. . . . The fundraising was spearheaded by Bill Gates’ father, Bill Gates, Sr., a regent at the University of Washington whose famous name seemed to suggest that the whole of the high-tech world was solemnly shaking its head at us.”

 

In the most significant Supreme Court case on the coercive diversity project, Grutter v. Bollinger, in 2003, corporate America weighed in heavily on the side of mandated proportional representation and racial preferences. Sixty-five Fortune 500 companies (including Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Eli Lilly, Intel, Johnson and Johnson, Procter and Gamble, Sara Lee, Texaco, Microsoft, Eastman Kodak, Pfizer, and United Airlines) submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative-action admissions program, which was being challenged by Barbara Grutter, a white woman whose law-school application the school had denied. The majority (5–4) decision, written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, cited the Fortune 500 brief as evidence that major American businesses had made it clear that they supported the diversity project.

 

I have been using the term “corporate America,” but this moniker is something of a misnomer in an age when executives are increasingly “post-American” and major businesses almost always identify themselves as global ventures. Not untypical are comments from the vice president of Coca-Cola, who said in a speech in 2005, “We are not an American company,” and from a top Colgate-Palmolive executive, who in 1989 said, “There is no mindset [at Colgate] that puts this country [the United States] first.”

 

Speaking to Atlantic reporter Chrystia Freeland in 2011, a U.S.-based CEO of one of the world’s largest hedge funds described an internal debate at his company. One of his senior colleagues had suggested that the “hollowing out of the American middle class didn’t really matter,” the CEO told Freeland, adding: “His point was that if the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and [that] meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that’s not such a bad trade.” Almost a decade ago, Samuel Huntington identified this trend as the “de-nationalization” of American corporate elites. The new “economic transnationals,” he said, are the “nucleus of an emerging global superclass.”

 

Not surprisingly, the Chamber of Commerce and leading corporations are currently supporting the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a treaty strongly opposed by Senate conservatives, who argue that UNCLOS would undermine American sovereignty and establish a global regulatory system in which the U.N. would receive direct tax revenues for the first time. Corporate elites approve the global regulations in the treaty because these regulations, they believe, would be good for business.

 

All too often, the interests of corporate elites overlap with those of high-profile Republican donors and lawmakers. The foremost example of this connection is Carlos Gutierrez, George W. Bush’s former secretary of commerce and the ex-CEO of the Kellogg Company. With fundraiser Charlie Spies, Gutierrez has founded a super PAC, Republicans for Immigration Reform, and through TV appearances and op-eds he has become a major spokesman for the push for amnesty and low-skilled mass immigration. Gutierrez fits Huntington’s “economic transnational” profile rather well. As Bush 43’s commerce secretary, he was the major proponent of the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), which sought to increase “economic integration” between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The SPP also called for the “harmonization” of security and customs regulations “in all three countries” in order to speed up border crossings – which would have made American border security dependent on Mexican and Canadian personnel and practices.

 

Today, Carlos Gutierrez is vigorously campaigning for the mass immigration of low-skilled workers. A few years ago, however, his goal was equally globalist: a transnational labor force for North America. Under Gutierrez’s leadership, the SPP in March 2006 included in its list of priorities the effort “to formalize a transnational technical labor force that could work in any North American country on a temporary basis.” Understanding the effect this would have on the standard of living of American blue-collar and white-collar workers was not then, and is not now, on the high-priority list set by Gutierrez and his colleagues in the corporate–Republican alliance.

 

American conservatism has in the past few decades become an ever more robust coalition of populist “non-conformist dissenters”: free marketers, social conservatives, national-security hawks, national-cohesion conservatives, patriotic libertarians, etc. Analogous to 18th-century British Whigs, these dissenters are united in their non-conformity to the “established church” of 21st-century America and its prevailing progressive orthodoxy. On the other hand, American business and its GOP allies who do not look beyond “economic man” either silently accept or actively approve the dogmas of progressive orthodoxy – the diversity project, multiculturalism, radical feminism, globalism, mass immigration, environmentalism, and all of the progressive social issues.

 

Immigration politics is at the heart of the divide between conservative populist groups, on one side, and corporate elites within the GOP on the other. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama wrote a memo in July to his fellow Republican lawmakers, calling on them to “flip the immigration debate on its head.” At National Review Online, Sessions urged the GOP to “adopt a humble and honest populism” and distance itself from “the corporate titans who believe the immigration policy for our entire country should be modeled to pad their bottom line.”

 

The GOP lost the 2012 election, Sessions said, “because it hemorrhaged support from middle and low-income Americans of all backgrounds,” and the party must now mount an “unapologetic defense of working Americans.” He noted that Americans oppose by a two-to-one margin increasing low-skilled immigration and also strongly oppose any legalization of illegal immigrants before border security is in place. Sessions made the key political point that Republicans have a golden opportunity to appeal once again to Reagan Democrats, who are, as John O’Sullivan put it in a statement lauding Sessions, an “electoral bloc that dwarfs any other in numerical terms.”

 

Two preconditions of populist ascendancy are already emerging in embryonic form: first, a Sister Souljah–style rebuke of corporate elites and, second, the development of policy measures aimed specifically at supporting the middle and working classes. To the first point, Sessions on Labor Day chided pro-immigration-reform business groups and pointedly raised the issue of American patriotism, asking, “What is the loyalty a nation owes to its own citizens?” On the second point, conservative policy intellectuals as well as elected officials such as Senator Mike Lee of Utah are beginning to formulate policy initiatives focused on strengthening the middle and working classes.

Barack Obama’s most effective campaign argument in 2012 was that Romney represented corporate America while the president and his party were fighting for ordinary Americans. Immigration is the first issue on which to turn this accusation back against Democrats and seize the moral high ground by speaking up for the real underdog, the American worker. Let us begin the re-branding, as Jeff Sessions suggests, with conservatives and the GOP vigorously and unapologetically opposing all legislation that increases low-skilled immigration and denouncing “comprehensive immigration reform” for what it is: class warfare waged by an unholy alliance of Obama, progressive elites, and big business against the well-being and way of life of the American middle and working classes.

 

 

MIdeast Man of the Year: Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. By Ariel Ben Solomon.

Person of the Year in Regional Affairs: Gen Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. By Ariel Ben Solomon. Jerusalem Post, December 31, 2013.

Ben Solomon:

Nasser’s pan-Arabism mesmerized the Arab masses, and Egypt’s union with Syria, forming the United Arab Republic from 1958 until 1961, was a result of such forces. Pan-Arabists argued that the mandate system imposed by Britain and France after World War I had divided the Arab nation, and they demanded that it be rejoined.

 

However, as Fouad Ajami wrote in his famous “The End of Pan-Arabism,” it took the dramatic loss to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War to bring about its dissolution. The ideology had crumbled under the weight of reality, where military men, religious ideologues, tribes and ethnic factions jockeyed for power in the security state.

 

Sisi seemed to recognize this in a 2006 paper titled “Democracy in the Middle East,” which he wrote while studying at the US Army War College.

 

In it he argues that “existing conflict and tension needs to be resolved before democracy can be more fully accepted by the people of the area.” He goes on to note that the challenge today is similar to that faced at the beginning of Islam: uniting “these tribal and ethnic factions.”

 

“On the surface, many of the autocratic leaders claim that they are in favor of democratic ideals and forms of government, but they are leery of relinquishing control to the voting public of their regimes,” writes Sisi, echoing perhaps his own thoughts and his reluctance to cede power.

 

He then justifies a strong dictatorial ruler.

 

“There are some valid reasons for this. First, many countries are not organized in a manner to support a democratic form of government. More importantly, there are security concerns both internal and external to the countries.”

 

He also refers to Iraq as a “benchmark for testing democracy in the Middle East.”

 

Going into 2014, it is overwhelmingly clear to many observers, and to Sisi himself, that democratic state-building by the US failed in Iraq as sectarian tensions proved too difficult to bridge. If he is following his own advice, the Egyptian ruler likely sees the Iraqi example as a good reason for resistance to American pressure, a strong crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and establishment of a secure military-backed regime.

 

“Is transitioning to democracy in the best interest of [the] United states, or is it in the interest of the Middle Eastern countries?” he writes in the paper, adding that the emergence of democracy is not likely if it “is perceived as a move by the United States to further her own self-interest.”

What Will the Next 50 Years Be Like? By Paul Wolfowitz.

A Good Half-Century and a Bad One: What Will the Next 50 Years Be Like? By Paul Wolfowitz. The American, January 1, 2014.

Our World in the Last 100 Years. By Paul Wolfowitz. Video. Oxford Union, December 2, 2013. YouTube.

My Jewish State. By Roger Cohen.

My Jewish State. By Roger Cohen. New York Times, December 31, 2013.

Israel Must Seize the Day. By Ami Ayalon. New York Times, January 1, 2014.

Bill de Blasio’s Brave Blue World. By Walter Russell Mead.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio blew a kiss to the crowd gathered outside his Brooklyn home for his midnight swearing-in ceremony.
NYT pool photo by Seth Wenig.

De Blasio’s Brave Blue World. By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, January 1, 2014.

De Blasio Draws All Liberal Eyes to New York City. By Michael M. Grynbaum. New York Times, December 31, 2013.

“Will Not Wait” on Inequality, de Blasio Tells New York. By Thomas Kaplan. New York Times, January 1, 2014.

Text of Bill de Blasio’s Inauguration Speech. New York Times, January 1, 2014.

Bill de Blasio Inauguration: “March Toward a Fairer, More Just, More Progressive Place.” (Transcript, Audio, Video). WNYC News, January 1, 2014. YouTube.


Mead:

The New York Times has a long piece out today calling Bill De Blasio’s mayorship as the cutting edge of a new wave of liberal progressivism sweeping through American cities:

The elevation of an assertive, tax-the-rich liberal to the nation’s most prominent municipal office has fanned hopes that hot-button causes like universal prekindergarten and low-wage worker benefits — versions of which have been passed in smaller cities — could be aided by the imprimatur of being proved workable in New York.

Yet the Times does not refer even once to the gravest challenge that the liberal agenda faces in urban America: the conflict of interest between unionized workers and the consumers of the services they provide.

 

This conflict manifests itself in all kinds of ways: the rising cost of operating transit systems, of infrastructure improvements, of school quality and governance and perhaps most fundamentally in the tradeoff between paying the unrealistic pensions negotiated in past years and funding services ranging from police to education for current residents.

 

We wish Mayor De Blasio every success, but we hope he is smarter about the problems he faces than the cocoon-spinning NYT.


Inauguration speech starts at 1:01:40 in video.




De Blasio excerpts:

From Jacob Riis to Eleanor Roosevelt to Harry Belafonte — who we are so honored to have with us here today — it was New Yorkers who challenged the status quo, who blazed a trail of progressive reform and political action, who took on the elite, who stood up to say that social and economic justice will start here and will start now.

 

It’s that tradition that inspires the work we now begin. A movement that sees the inequality crisis we face today, and resolves that it will not define our future. Now I know there are those who think that what I said during the campaign was just rhetoric, just “political talk” in the interest of getting elected. There are some who think now, as we turn to governing – well, things will just continue pretty much like they always have.

 

So let me be clear. When I said we would take dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities, I meant it. And we will do it. I will honor the faith and trust you have placed in me. And we will give life to the hope of so many in our city. We will succeed as One City. We know this won’t be easy; It will require all that we can muster. And it won’t be accomplished only by me; It will be accomplished by all of us — those of us here today, and millions of everyday New Yorkers in every corner of our city.

 

You must continue to make your voices heard. You must be at the center of this debate. And our work begins now.

. . . .

 

We will reform a broken stop-and-frisk policy, both to protect the dignity and rights of young men of color, and to give our brave police officers the partnership they need to continue their success in driving down crime. We won’t wait. We’ll do it now.

. . . .

 

Of course, I know that our progressive vision isn’t universally shared. Some on the far right continue to preach the virtue of trickle-down economics. They believe that the way to move forward is to give more to the most fortunate, and that somehow the benefits will work their way down to everyone else. They sell their approach as the path of “rugged individualism.”

 

But Fiorello La Guardia — the man I consider to be the greatest Mayor this city has ever known — put it best. He said: “I, too, admire the ‘rugged individual,’ but no ‘rugged individual’ can survive in the midst of collective starvation.”

 

So please remember: we do not ask more of the wealthy to punish success. We do it to create more success stories. And we do it to honor a basic truth: that a strong economy is dependent on a thriving school system. We do it to give every kid a chance to get their education off on the right foot, from the earliest age, which study after study has shown leads to greater economic success, healthier lives, and a better chance of breaking the cycle of poverty.

 

We do it to give peace of mind to working parents, who suffer the anxiety of not knowing whether their child is safe and supervised during those critical hours after the school day ends, but before the workday is done. And we do it because we know that we must invest in our city, in the future inventors and C.E.O.s and teachers and scientists, so that our generation – like every generation before us – can leave this city even stronger than we found it.

 

Our city is no stranger to big struggles — and no stranger to overcoming them.

 

New York has faced fiscal collapse, a crime epidemic, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters. But now, in our time, we face a different crisis – an inequality crisis. It’s not often the stuff of banner headlines in our daily newspapers. It’s a quiet crisis, but one no less pernicious than those that have come before.

 

Its urgency is read on the faces of our neighbors and their children, as families struggle to make it against increasingly long odds. To tackle a challenge this daunting, we need a dramatic new approach — rebuilding our communities from the bottom-up, from the neighborhoods up. And just like before, the world will watch as we succeed. All along the way, we will remember what makes New York, New York.

 

A city that fights injustice and inequality — not just because it honors our values, but because it strengthens our people. A city of five boroughs — all created equal. Black, white, Latino, Asian, gay, straight, old, young, rich, middle class, and poor. A city that remembers our responsibility to each other — our common cause — is to leave no New Yorker behind.

 

That’s the city that you and I believe in. It’s the city to which my grandparents were welcomed from the hills of Southern Italy, the city in which I was born, where I met the love of my life, where Chiara and Dante were raised.

 

It’s a place that celebrates a very simple notion: that no matter what your story is – this is your city. Our strength is derived from you. Working together, we will make this One City. And that mission — our march toward a fairer, more just, more progressive place, our march to keep the promise of New York alive for the next generation. It begins today.

 

Thank you, and God bless the people of New York City!

Has John Kerry Lost His Mind? By Eitan Haber.

Has Kerry lost his mind? By Eitan Haber. Ynet News, December 31, 2013.

US secretary of state is determined to end Mideast conflict. What if he succeeds?

John Kerry: Persona non grata. By Guy Bechor. Ynet News, November 22, 2013.

After betraying Israel, can Kerry be trusted as “loyal” mediator in peace talks with Palestinians?

Why Putin and Xi Must Be More Like Bismarck. By Dominique Moisi.

Why Putin and Xi Must Be More Like Bismarck. By Dominique Moisi. Real Clear World, December 30, 2013. Also at Worldcrunch.

Russia and China risk setting off global conflicts for the sake of national pride. A century later, the lessons of Otto von Bismarck are being ignored again.

How Peter Beinart Defends the Repulsive Views of the Antisemitic Jew Max Blumenthal. By Ron Radosh.

How Peter Beinart Defends the Repulsive Views of the Antisemitic Jew Max Blumenthal. By Ron Radosh. PJ Media, December 31, 2013.

Why Open Zion is Closing. By Peter Beinart.

Why Open Zion is Closing. By Peter Beinart. The Daily Beast, November 5, 2013.

Ten Roadblocks to Mideast Peace. By Peter Berkowitz.

10 Roadblocks to Mideast Peace. By Peter Berkowitz. Real Clear Politics, December 31, 2013.

Oversimplifying Israel. By Peter Berkowitz. The National Interest, June 11, 2013.

Implications of Israel’s Fraying Image. By Chas Freeman. The National Interest, June 10, 2013.

Israel’s Fraying Image. By Jacob Heilbrunn. The National Interest, No. 125 (May/June 2013).

Ellie Goulding: Burn.

Ellie Goulding; Burn. Video. EllieGouldingVEVO, July 7, 2013. YouTube.

The Tragedy of Palestinian Revisionism. By Ben Caspit.

The Tragedy of Palestinian Revisionism. By Ben Caspit. Al-Monitor, November 5, 2013.

Palestinians Protest Israeli Gentrification in Acre. By Linah Alsaafin. Al-Monitor, October 22, 2013.

Al-Monitor’s Money Wasted on Zionist Myths. By Jonathan Cook. Jonathan-Cook.net, November 6, 2013.


Caspit:

For those asking themselves how it can be that in 2013 the Palestinians still do not have an independent state, I would recommend reading Linah Alsaafin’s article about Acre. An intelligent read of that article might provide a telling answer to this question and optimally explain the entire Palestinian tragedy.

 

Let’s start with the “ethnic cleansing” which, the writer contends, befell the Arabs in Acre in 1948. So here’s a short reminder: In 1947, the United Nations adopted a historic decision to partition the land of Israel between Arabs and Jews. The Jews thought that the resolution was very bad and unacceptable, creating a Jewish state divided into three narrow cantons that were barely contiguous and also indefensible and unmanageable.

 

The area that was awarded to the Jews was much smaller than the area of the historic land of Israel, where the Jewish people were born and thrived according to the three religions. (After all, the Muslims also believe in the Jewish prophets and the history that preceded Muhammad).

 

David Ben Gurion, the leader of the Jewish Yishuv (community) in the land who later became Israel’s first prime minister, had to make a decision. He was under heavy pressure to reject the UN resolution. The Provisional State Council, which was to vote on the resolution, came to a draw. Realizing the momentous occasion and that pressure had to be brought to bear, Ben Gurion backed the resolution and declared, against all odds, the establishment of the state in 1948. He said, “Yes.”

 

If the Arabs had said “Yes” back in the day, what we would have seen today is a prosperous Palestinian state over more than half the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. But Arabs — as they invariably do — said, “No.” One day after Israel declared its independence, seven regular Arab armies invaded the land where some 600,000 practically defenseless Jews were living. The military force of the fledgling Israel was negligible. It had neither weapons nor soldiers. It didn’t have world powers to provide assistance. But Israel nevertheless was able to vanquish its enemies and even expand the areas under its control. The 1949 armistice lines became the “Green Line” which — to this day — is the consensual international reference point to the separation between Palestinians and Jews.

 

This was the Arabs’ first fatal mistake. Incidentally, even under the 1947 UN “partition borders,” Acre was part of Israel. When Linah Alsaafin calls it a “northern Palestinian coastal city of Acre” she talks in fantasies. Not facts. Palestine is a state that has never existed, and therefore there is no north Palestine. Before the establishment of the state of Israel there was no Palestine, only the British Mandate. The areas that were to be handed over to the Arabs were given to the Hashemite kingdom, to wit, the Jordanian kingdom, which held onto the West Bank until 1967.

 

The Palestinian people and the Palestinian state are a modern invention inspired by Israel. It has no precedent, it has no history. There were never such a people and such a state. Now, thanks to the Israeli occupation, there are.

 

Like many of Israel’s citizens, I fully recognize the existence of the Palestinian people, their right for independence, a sustainable state and prosperity. The problem, however, is that Linah Alsaafin does not recognize my right to have the same. This creates a tragic asymmetry that mars the attempts to resolve the conflict.

 

Now, let’s have a crash course in history. I am honestly unaware of the story of Khan al-Umdan. Israel — indeed the whole world — is rife with historic sites turned into boutique hotels. These tensions between progress and tourism and tradition and history rage everywhere. I would like to speak about Acre itself. It is not considered a run-of-the-mill Jewish city. Nor is it a typical Muslim city. In fact, it started out as a Hellenic city.

 

In 165 B.C., it was besieged by Simon Thassi, a Jewish leader, who triumphed over the Seleucid that controlled it, yet he could not conquer it. Jonathan Apphus, a member of the venerated dynasty of Jewish warriors, was murdered there 20 years later. At least two Hasmonean warriors are buried in Acre. This happened 600 years before the emergence of Muhammad — the founder of Islam — into history. Herod the Great, the Jewish king, built many public buildings in the city. The Jewish dignitaries in Acre begged the representative of the Roman Emperor Caligula not to foul the temple.

 

One can go on and on with the Jewish history of Acre, but I think that the point is clear. The Arabs conquered Acre in 638, but history’s pendulum swayed in the other direction in 1104 when the city was conquered by the Crusaders, later becoming the capital of the Crusaders’ Kingdom of Jerusalem. Later the Ottomans arrived, followed by the British. Then the state of Israel was founded, with Acre being part of it, according to the said United Nations’ partition plan.

 

One can also discuss the “ethnic cleansing” that Alsaafin ascribes to Israel, but I believe this discussion would be unnecessary and offensive. Had the seven Arab states not attacked our young country in 1948, tens of thousands of Arabs would not have had to flee anywhere. Some fled because they were scared; others were encouraged to escape. That’s what happens in wars, especially if it’s a war of existence that is imposed on you by many, much stronger enemies. You fight for your life, against all odds. The victor, in this case, wins the jackpot.

 

However, we must bear in mind that most of Israel’s Arabs stayed put. They were issued Israeli ID cards and today they’re full-fledged citizens, enjoying full equality before the law. The Israeli Supreme Court, in its famous Kaadan ruling, stated that the allotment of plots in a certain locality only to Jews was wrongful discrimination. Arab Israelis can settle and live anywhere they want.

 

However, that’s not the case for Israeli Jews. There are many mixed cities in Israel: Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, Lod and Ramla, where there is a clear Jewish majority and an Arab minority. The reverse doesn’t exist. In the Arab towns in Israel not a single Jew can be found. No Jew would dare live in Umm al-Fahm, Tayibe or Sakhnin. These are Israeli towns for all intents and purposes but to Jews are off limits. Now they’re already calling themselves Palestinians. They enjoy the bountifulness of the thriving Jewish state and the benefits of democracy, while watching their brethren being massacred in the hundreds of thousands in the surrounding countries. They enjoy the best of all worlds.

 

Yes, Arab Israelis are somewhat discriminated against. There are also manifestations of racism. Life in Israel isn’t perfect. Being a minority is hard and when it comes to that Jews can go to the front of the line. It’s hard to be black in America, a Muslim in Italy or a Christian in Egypt, etc. But Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy full protection under the law and under the state’s law enforcement agencies.

 

They also enjoy some privileges. Unlike the Jews and the Druze (and some of the Bedouins), they do not serve in the military. They are not forced to give the state the best three years of their lives. They can go to university at 18 rather than wait until they turn 21. When you look around at the Middle East and the neighboring countries, when you check the numbers and statistics, there is no doubt that Arab Israelis enjoy a quality of life, a standard of living, security and rights that are a thousandfold better compared with all the Arabs throughout the Middle East.

 

When the October 2000 riots broke out, the Arab residents of Wadi Ara area in northern Israel blocked this important arterial road, breaking, smashing, destroying and torching any state symbol they came across, while chanting “Death to Israel!” and calling for its destruction. The police were forced to act, as a result of which 13 Arab citizens were killed. This was a formative event in our history, which brought about the establishment of a national commission of inquiry. In similar events in the United States or Russia, many more citizens would have been killed. In a similar event in Syria or Egypt, thousands would have been killed.

 

When you look at the events in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Iran and in fact all around us, we realize the Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy total democracy, total freedom, equal rights, a modern, open, developed, prosperous state that provides a peaceful, carefree life. Truth be told, the road to full equality is still long, but let’s try imagining what would have happened if the situation had been the reverse — if the Arabs had won that war of independence and the Jews had been a minority in their country.

 

And here’s some more food for thought: When Israel was established, hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to leave their home in the various Arab states and flee to Israel. They were subjected to pogroms, persecution and dispossession. If they had stayed any longer in their native countries, their lives would have been in danger. Fighting tooth and nail for its existence, Israel was barely able to take them in. To this day, this trying immigration endeavor is still evident.

 

So what — did we set up refugee camps for them? Did we demand the world to return them to their original homes?

 

The Palestinian refugees that fled Israel during the war became a living monument of the Arab tragedy. This monument is alive and the Arabs have only themselves to blame. These refugees could have been rehabilitated many times over if there had been a genuine desire to do so. When they continue to call an Israeli town a “northern Palestinian coastal city,” they do not recognize Israel’s right to exist. They recognize no history but their own. They whine, perpetuating their tragedy and misfortune instead of ending it.

 

All they need to do is to finally establish the Palestinian state. Former Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert already made them an offer to get back 95% of the area that was occupied in 1967. Their response was either negative or was not given at all — because they don’t want to end this saga. They want to continue it until the Jews tire out and leave. And that’s the sad truth.

 

I am part of the ever-shrinking Israeli majority that is willing to give back all the territories, sign the Geneva Initiative as is, divide Jerusalem and sacrifice our most scared values for a comprehensive peace. Unfortunately, there aren’t many on the other side willing to take this up. The belief that millions of refugees could one day return to Israel sabotages a priori any attempt to reach an arrangement.

 

When Arab Israeli citizens call Acre a “northern Palestinian coastal city,” I understand, sadly, that the chances that the window of opportunity for peace will be used in the little time that’s left until it shuts is not high (given that in demographical terms, Israel turns each year more religious and more extreme). What a shame.

Two Peoples, Two Standards. By Asher Susser.

Two peoples, two standards. By Asher Susser. Toronto Star, May 19, 2011.

The Two-State Solution: Getting from Here to There. By Asher Susser. Foreign Policy Research Institute, October 28, 2012. Also at Blue White Future.

Review of Jacob Lassner and S. Ilan Troen, Jews and Arabs in the Muslim World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined. By Asher Susser. The Journal of Israeli History, Vol. 28, No. 1 (March 2009).

Susser [Two peoples]:

Much of the commentary on the Middle East by outsiders is based on a skewed analytical prism. For reasons that defy rational explanation, pundits do not treat Israelis and Arabs as equals. While it is widely accepted, as it should be, that Israelis and Arabs, including the Palestinians, have equally valid rights to self-determination and statehood, Israelis and Palestinians, in the eyes of these observers, do not share a similar measure of agency or responsibility for their actions.

 

Much of the analysis on the recent Fatah-Hamas reconciliation is a good example of this faulty paradigm. After years of mutual hostility, Hamas and Fatah have essentially papered over their differences to pave the way for the creation of a unity government that will make it easier for the international community to recognize Palestinian independence. This is a move directed at the UN General Assembly and is not even intended for Israel. No one on the Palestinian side, neither in Fatah nor in Hamas, would seriously regard the inclusion of Hamas in a Palestinian government as a gesture of goodwill toward Israel, or to the U.S. for that matter.

 

The agreement is a reflection of Fatah’s increasing weakness after the demise of its greatest Arab ally, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. The new post-Mubarak Egypt is one in which the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent movement of Hamas, is widely expected to be a dominant player. This is wind in the sails of Hamas as much as it is the deflation of Fatah. It is also reason for Israeli concern about the future of the peace treaty with Egypt, to which the Muslim Brotherhood were and are firmly opposed.

 

Since the agreement with Fatah, spokesmen for Hamas have given no indication of any change in their position toward Israel. They still say they will continue the fight against Israel after the creation of a Palestinian state, and they do not have any intention of recognizing the Jewish state. They are willing to accept a two-state solution subject to a referendum, they say. But this referendum is to be held not only among all the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza but in the diaspora, too. This is intended to place the issue of large-scale Palestinian refugee return to Israel at the top of the agenda.

 

No one in Hamas really expects the Palestinian diaspora to endorse a two-state solution without such refugee return. This was and is a non-starter for Israel and is a Hamas ploy to base the “solution” on what is no more than a euphemism for dismantling Israel as the state of the Jewish people. This is not even intended as the basis for an agreement, but only as a design for endless conflict. It is precisely the refugee issue, more than any other, that has made Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking so elusive. The recent violent incidents of “Nakba Day” on Israel’s borders, focusing on the rejection of Israel’s very creation in 1948, rather than on its withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, is as clear an indication as any of where the real obstacles lie.

 

Israel has offered statehood to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, with the Palestinian capital in Arab Jerusalem and a corridor linking the territory of the West Bank with Gaza. But Israel’s offer was rebuffed twice, in 2000 and again in 2008, even though the Israelis had increased their proposed withdrawal from some 95 per cent of the West Bank to 100 per cent (with land swaps). Israel’s initial proposal was met with an onslaught of suicide bombers sent by Hamas and Fatah too, not to mention the rocketry from Gaza even after Israel’s complete withdrawal from the territory in 2005. In their 2006 parliamentary elections the Palestinians gave Hamas a whopping majority. Henceforth, Fatah could not deliver without Hamas. The problem is, however, that Fatah cannot deliver with Hamas, either.

 

Palestinian rejection notwithstanding, Israel is still expected to reach out to the Palestinians and repeat these same offers as if nothing has happened in the interim. As if all the attacks and ongoing upheaval and rising levels of overt hostility toward Israel in the Arab world had never occurred, as if what the Arabs say and do is totally immaterial.

 

The Israelis should, indeed, show moderation and reach out to the Palestinians. There is no question that Israelis, for their own good, should never miss even the slimmest opportunity for peace. But shouldn’t the Palestinians, and Hamas in particular, be expected to reach out to the Israelis, too, to offer recognition, to stop firing rockets into Israeli towns, to cease referring to the Jews as “the sons of pigs and monkeys?” Surely they are also accountable for their deeds and misdeeds. Surely they have a role, too. Or don’t they? Israelis will forever be baffled by this warped logic whereby it is they alone who bear all the responsibility for the fate of their neighbourhood.



Susser [Two-State Solution]:

For Israelis and for Palestinians, the two-state issue is always relevant no matter what is happening in the Middle East.  Those of us who wish to see Israel remain as the nation-state of the Jewish people – which after all is the historical objective of the whole Zionist enterprise – must not give up on the two-state solution. There is no future for Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people outside the framework of a two-state solution. Recalling the history of Palestine, it is the Jews who wanted partition all the time, not the Arabs. The Arabs didn’t need partition and today probably need partition less than the Jews do. But over the years both sides have concluded that they must support the two-state solution; yet, despite the fact that both sides support a two-state solution and have conducted negotiations for twenty years, we have failed to get there. I would venture to guess that we are probably not going to get there any time soon through the vehicle of negotiation.

 

I would like to explain why we haven’t got there, why the one-state solution is not a solution, and what we should and can do to get there.

 

WHY WE HAVE FAILED TO ACHIEVE A TWO-STATE SOLUTION

 

First, why have we failed? The negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, like the negotiations between Israel and the Arab states, have been based on U.N. Resolution 242. I would argue that’s the problem. 242 is a resolution that came into being in the aftermath of the 1967 six-day war. It was a resolution designed to solve the problems created by the six-day war through the equation of land for peace. Israel would return the land it occupied in 1967 in exchange for peace with the Arab states from which this land was taken. The Palestinians were not part of that resolution. They’re not even mentioned in the resolution; nor does the word “Palestine” appear there. The thought was that Israel would return Sinai to Egypt, the Golan to the Syrians and the West Bank to the Jordanians. Where exactly Gaza would go wasn’t quite clear, perhaps with the West Bank to the Jordanians. 242 is a resolution which works very well between Israel and the Arab states, and two of the three Arab states, in fact, have made peace with Israel on the base of that resolution. Jordan without the West Bank and Egypt have made peace with Israel, and we were not very far from a peace treaty with Syria as well in the 1990s.

 

But 242 has inherent deficiencies when it comes to the Palestinians. The Palestinians have two major grievances with Israel. One is the product of the 1967 war, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but the main grievance is a result of Israel’s creation in 1948 and the Palestinian refugee question that results from 1948. There are no Palestinians who think that the problem with Israel began in 1967. If you talk to the Palestinians about “end of conflict,” which is what the Israelis did, you are forcing the 1948 questions to the surface. There are two sets of issues that we have with the Palestinians. The West Bank and Gaza and the settlements and the borders and Jerusalem are only a part of the problem; they are the “1967 file,” as I call it. 242 does not relate at all to the 1948 file, which is the Palestinians’ real problem. With the Arab states we don’t have a 1948 file; there is only a 1967 problem.

 

The dynamic created by the Oslo Accords seemed to narrow down the whole issue of Palestine to the 1967 questions. The Palestinian authority had elected institutions, the Presidency and Parliament, both of which were elected only by the people in the West Bank and Gaza, and the Palestinian authority represented only the West Bank and Gaza, as opposed to the PLO, which represented all Palestinians everywhere. The Israelis saw this Oslo dynamic as reducing the issue of Palestine to the 1967 questions and we saw that as a very positive development. This was going to create the basis for a two-state solution, and it was on that basis that the Israelis went to Camp David in 2000. The Israelis had in their mind a tradeoff. Israel would concede on the bulk of the 1967 issues including Jerusalem, and the Palestinians would close the file of 1948 in exchange and that would end the conflict. But the Palestinians never agreed to such a tradeoff and would not agree to close the file of 1948, which is the refugee question.

 

On territory where the Israelis were looking for a compromise on the West Bank, the Palestinians found the idea of compromise very difficult to accept. The Israelis understood that the Palestinians as wanting all or nothing - 100 percent of the West Bank. But what the Israelis didn’t understand was that, from the Palestinian point of view, to retrieve all of the West Bank was to retrieve only 22 percent of historical Palestine. Israelis already had 78 percent. So the argument the Palestinians made on territory was in effect to say we want all of the West Bank back and how can you quibble with us on the 22 percent that is left? So both on the 1967 territorial issues and particularly on refugees, Camp David failed.

 

The Israeli response to this recognition of the centrality of the 1948 questions was to demand of the Palestinians since Camp David to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. That is Israel’s counterweight to continuing Palestinian demands on 1948. Israelis believe that if they can get the Palestinians to recognize that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, there will be no refugee return to the state of Israel. This makes sense from the Israeli point of view. But the Palestinians will not recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, for to do so would be asking the Palestinians to recognize that Palestine is Jewish, and they won’t. So when it comes to these 1948 questions, there has been no progress between Israel and Palestine.

 

When Ehud Olmert and Abu Mazen conducted their negotiations in 2008 the differences were narrowed down very significantly on the 1967 issues on territory, even on Jerusalem, but not on refugees. Olmert offered Abu Mazen the return of 5,000 refugees in five years, that is 1,000 a year for five years.  The Palestinians in their private conversations with the Israelis spoke about the return of 100,000 or 150,000, which was 20 or 30 times more than what the Israelis were offering. And when these numbers were leaked – 100,000-150,000 were leaked by WikiLeaks - the Palestinians denied them and Palestinian public was unwilling to accept even the 100,000-150,000 limitation. There is no possibility in the foreseeable future that the Israelis and the Palestinians will come to an agreement that will include the 1948 issues.

 

WHY NOT ONE STATE?

 

So if it is so difficult to arrive at a solution of end of conflict, why not have one state? Because the one-state cure is the proverbial cure that kills the patient. I cannot think of any place on earth where two nations locked in conflict for over 100 years are offered a solution to be thrust together in a boiling pot of coexistence that would end no doubt in mutual destruction. Communities with less historical hostility have fallen apart in recent years – Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Belgium is on and off, Sudan, the Soviet Union, even devolution in the United Kingdom.

 

Some illustrations may be helpful: When Andy Murray won the U.S. Open, I saw an interview on the BBC with someone saying, “This is not an English victory, it’s Scottish.” Some years ago, I was in Norway and was asked how long I thought it would take until Israel and Palestine merged into one state. I replied “I bet I can give you a precise answer. It will be 24 hours after Norway and Sweden merge together in one state.” They didn’t laugh. It is amazing how people expect us to do things that they would never imagine doing themselves!

 

Mainly I would say the reason why this is a bad idea is because most Jews in Israel and most Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza don’t want it. There are people in the Diaspora who may wish for such a solution, but they won’t face the music and probably couldn’t care less about it. A one-state solution, if there were to be such a thing, would with time transform the Jews in this future Palestinian state into a minority. Looking around the Middle East today, the most unhealthy position one could wish to be in is that of a minority in any one of the Middle Eastern states. It is not a privileged position to be in.  The Jews as a minority in Palestine? I hate to think of their ultimate fate without their own state being there to protect them.

 

THE CASE FOR “COORDINATED UNILATERALISM”

 

If a two-state solution is unattainable by negotiation and a one-state solution is not a solution, what do we do? We have to begin by recognizing the limitations of the negotiating process and the limitations of Resolution 242. We, the Israelis, have to come to terms with the fact that we may have to withdraw for less than peace, that land for peace may be desirable, but not necessarily fully attainable. Why should we withdraw in the absence of full peace? If we don’t, we are allowing those who resist the idea of peace with Israel, like Hamas and company, to dictate to Israel what kind of country we will live in in 10, 20 or 30 years’ time.

 

If the prime objective is to preserve Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, we have to cut our suit according to the amount of cloth we have. There are nearly 6 million Jews in Israel and an Arab population in British Mandatory Palestine which is now more or less equal. There are arguments about the numbers and there is one particular source that keeps on promoting the idea that there are fewer Palestinians in the West Bank than everybody else seems to claim, but I know of no Israeli demographers, government or otherwise, who accept the figures of the minimizers.

 

By maintaining the status quo, Israel is undermining its long-term capability to remain the nation-state of the Jews, and if we are not the nation-state to the Jewish people, what’s the point of the exercise? What have we been fighting for the last 120 years? To become a minority in Palestine? We can be a minority in California. That would be preferable to being a minority stuck out there in the Mediterranean. It’s about being a majority. It is about being in that one place on earth where we are the majority, and if this cannot be obtained by a negotiation, then we have to think of unilateralism again. Now I know people will say, “Well, have you lost your marbles? Don’t you know what happened in Gaza after Israel withdrew?” I know what happened in Gaza. Life is about alternatives, not about the ideal.

 

What we have to improve is the manner in which we conduct the unilateral approach; we can’t just walk out of the territories without any coordination with the Palestinians. We should have what I call “coordinated unilateralism.” It sounds like an oxymoron, but it isn’t. Coordinated unilateralism presumes the United States is the coordinator, and that the Palestinians have their unilateral process as well. Regarding the Palestinian approach to the international community to recognize Palestinian statehood, I don’t think Israel should object, so long as the prospective UN resolution indicates that the precise borders and the status of Jerusalem and the refugee question are subject to eventual negotiation between Israel and Palestine. And as the Palestinians proceed to build the institutions of their state, we should withdraw from considerable territories in the West Bank, gradually – withdraw settlements, particularly – leave the military in many places where we still need them. Thereby we will create the possibility of what I call a “two-state dynamic” - instead of what we are presently creating ourselves, which is a one-state dynamic, which is working against our own long-term interests.

 

This unilateral dynamic will create a two-state reality, not peace in our time. It will look a lot more like an armistice than a peace treaty, but if you look around our relations with the other Arab states today, we are going in that direction with them too. Our relations with Egypt are beginning to look much more like an armistice than a peace treaty. The relations with Syria never were more than armistice, and in Jordan, as in Egypt, the peace treaty never resulted in full, warm relations. This two-state reality would not require a written agreement between the parties, just understandings. No written agreements would mean that neither side would have to give up their historical narratives and we would have a two-state reality on the basis of which or from which eventually negotiations will be held between the state of Palestine and the state of Israel on the outstanding issues like borders and Jerusalem and, eventually, refugees. This is the only realistic alternative to sliding down the slippery slope of an irreversible one-state reality.

 

Yes, the Middle East around us is falling apart, but even though that is the case, we must not allow ourselves to lose sight of what our historical objective always was. I fear for the moment where we, the Israeli Jews, will wake up in 10 or 15 years’ time and say, “The reality is irreversible, and we have lost it.” That we cannot allow to happen. It’s not in our self-interest.