Erev Election: Infallible TDS Test was Developed Right Here Last Week; GOP or Dem Voter, Come See If Your Mind’s Been Infected
In last week’s #1031, spurred by a poll that a majority of American Jews believe Biden “better suited to strengthen U.S.-Israel relations” than Trump, I invited you Gentle Readers to do a “thought experiment,” to see yourself addressing one paragraph each to Trump and to Biden, referencing U.S. Mideast policy among other issues influencing American voters’ decision.
I offered my own, no secret, pro-Trump paragraphs as an example. I “told” the President that I agreed with him on manufacturing, energy independence, secure borders, etc., but that I particularly appreciated his being the first American president not to have lied to us about recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the embassy.
I put to former VP Biden that there appears to be electronic evidence, unlikely put out there by Russia, of his knowledge and possibly involvement in family members profiting from influence-seeking foreigners from his position as VP, and, drawing on old baseball lore (as did pundit Daniel Greenfield this week), I pleaded with former Vice President Biden, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
On governmental issues, I “asked” former VP Biden about rumors the Dems would end the Senate filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, abolish the Electoral College, and create additional states. As this last seemed to me the most permanently consequential politically, I carried it, I thought utterly obviously, reductio ad absurdum. Given that they’ve been talking about Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and someplace in the Pacific (I think Guam), I thought I’d reference their first two, followed by the most unlikely place in the Pacific, followed by the most unlikely place on the planet: “making D.C., Puerto Rico, Guadalcanal and the Gaza Strip states.”
But, given Trump Derangement Syndrome’s devastating destruction of the mind clarity of everyone, political party shmarty, who comes into contact with it, actually catch it or not, it seems that I set that far horizon not quite far enough: An irate Democrat emailed me, “We didn’t say ‘Gaza Strip.’” A Republican asked, “Where did you read ‘Gaza Strip’?” So, ok, that “Gaza Strip” version’s “no longer operative.” How’s this? “D.C., Puerto Rico, Guadalcanal, the two moons of Mars, and a couple Andromeda Galaxy planets.”
There are two key things about the “Abraham Accords” which Jews who’ve not yet voted should carry with them into the voting booth. One’s embodied in that name “Abraham Accords,” an agreement between Arab Muslims and Israeli Jews, at least half of whom are Mizrahi (descended from Jews long living in the Mideast and North African lands), acknowledging both peoples as indigenously Middle-East. Arab open acknowledgment that Israel belongs there, and is not a colonial European implant, is a breakthrough of canard-shattering significance. It cannot, I think, be credibly unsaid.
The second key thing, which can be reversed and I fear will be if Trump loses, is that the Abraham Accords mark a total directional shift in working toward Arab-Israeli peace, from an approach of peace between Israel and “the Palestinians” being a prerequisite to peace between Israel and Arab states, which has not succeeded, to one of separation of the two tracks. My view: It may be that the prospect of acquiring American F-35 fighter planes, etc., helped nudge Gulf states towards peace, but even if this is so, it’s a result of the prime motivation, realization that Iran and Turkey will fight “the Zionist entity” to the last drop of Arab blood. Still, this movement toward peace did not occur spontaneously, and the Trump administration deserves catalyst credit.
As positive a thing toward peace as the Abraham Accords is, it is not a substitute for the Israeli claim to Judea-Samaria, for either military security or Jewish homeland meaningfulness reasons. It was good to see this week in the Jewish Voice a World Israel News article quoting White House Trump advisor Avi Berkowitz that was headlined “Trump Advisor: Sovereignty ‘Is Not Off the Table, Just Pushed Off For Now.’” To the same effect this week is a posting on her site by Israeli commentator Arlene Kushner, “The Shift is Radical,” in which she cites both statements and events on the ground as evidencing that applying sovereignty in Judea-Samaria is postponed, not abandoned.
Random Thoughts
I read someplace this week that the Jewish population of Europe has fallen to its lowest in almost a millennium. Europeans must decide for themselves whether this is a good or bad thing or neither for them, but for our people I count it as good. The Holocaust was no anomaly. We were never “at home” there. Over the centuries, every device of ethnic cleansing – Pale of settlement, ghetto, Holocaust, Inquisition, pogrom – was devised in good old Christian Europe, heartland of western civilization, specifically for us. The British White Paper continued on after the War into 1948. The British were fine with the Egyptian army marching up Israel’s coast to within 20 miles of Tel Aviv, but the moment the Israeli army set foot in 1948 into Sinai, Britain threatened to intervene militarily on Egypt’s side if Israel didn’t get out (which it did). And now it was Germany – Germany! – that led the European opposition to America recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Reflect on European involvement in UNSC 2334 and the EU wine bottle labeling decree calling Judea-Samaria and even historic Jerusalem “occupied Palestinian territory.”
I read as well this week about the estrangement between Israelis and American Jews – how deep it is, and prospects for its amelioration. This estrangement seems to me very deep, extending down to difference on the delineation of the sovereign Jewish homeland itself. The American Reform and Conservative Jewish movements, not through ignorance, call the 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines Israel’s “1967 borders,” and call for a “two-states solution’s” borders that “hew precisely” thereto save for any agreed “territorial adjustments.” They label application of Israeli sovereignty in Judea-Samaria beyond them as Israeli “annexation” in “the West Bank,” as though these parts of the Jewish national home as defined in the San Remo treaty and Palestine Mandate were instead the territory of a different sovereign state. These “1967 borders” leave not just Judea and Samaria but historic Jerusalem (Temple Mount, Western Wall, City of David and all) , all now within Israel for half-a-century, outside our sovereign homeland, rendering it nine-miles-wide in the lowland middle, militarily indefensible and Jewishly meaningless. That Israel would meekly walk out of Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem is not realistic to most Israelis, and as long as American Jews hew to this position, amelioration of the estrangement between American and Israeli Jews seems to me unlikely.