BETWEEN THE LINES
TIME FOR A NEW PATH TO MIDDLE EAST PEACE
Exclusive: Joseph Farah asserts last 30 years of U.S. policy has met definition of insanity
What’s the old expression?
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.
That’s what the U.S. and the rest of the global elite have been doing in the Middle East for at least the last 30 years in the pursuit of a very elusive peace.
That’s why it’s long past the time to consider doing some things differently.
The world has deluded itself into believing that the only chance for peace is the roadmap laid out long ago for a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli stalemate.
With that in mind, the slightest change of course in policy toward the one prosperous, free and Jewish state, a nation that bends over backwards to champion human rights, women’s rights, children’s rights and the one country in the region that has consistently embraced and acceded to negotiated settlements with its often hostile neighbors, is perceived as unfair, dangerous and destabilizing.
Take Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, for example.
Recently she wrote an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle explaining why Donald Trump’s nominee for the post of U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Freidman, if approved by her colleagues – which he will be – would “undermine our national security by further inflaming tensions in the region.”
Yet, for 30 years the U.S. has followed Feinstein’s path – and for 30 years the U.S. has been sucked into one Middle East conflict after another – none of which, at the end of the day, has had anything to do with Israel or how nice we tried to be to those who hate the U.S.
In 1979, the U.S. pulled the rug out from under the shah of Iran, a pro-American, pro-Western and pro-Israel leader. Under his leadership, Iranians were prosperous, peaceful and lived in the 20th century. But, when Jimmy Carter sided with the Islamic revolutionaries, how did they thank him? They quickly seized the U.S. Embassy and held American citizens hostage as his reward. For his fecklessness and foolishness, Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan. The hostages, it should be noted, were released as Reagan was sworn in as president in January 1981.
In 1983, a civil war was raging in Lebanon. Reagan sent Marines to Beirut to help keep peace. On Oct. 23, two truck bombs were detonated by Islamic radicals near the Marine barracks, killing 241 U.S. and 58 French peacekeepers.
In 1980, Iraq, under the leadership of a Sunni Muslim tyrant, Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran, by then a Shia Muslim hellhole, living under the nightmare rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini. At least a million people were killed in the gruesome eight-year conflict that included chemical weapons attacks and the use of child soldiers. The U.S. brokered a cease-fire to stop the carnage. But no one sent a thank-you note.
Within two years, Iraq invaded and occupied its neighbor Kuwait with the intent of seizing its oil fields. By January 1991, the U.S. invaded Iraq, obliterated Hussein’s army and liberated Kuwait. The only involvement by Israel in this conflict was being bombarded by Scud missiles from Iraq. The U.S. asked Israel not to respond, so the Jewish state stood by and took it – despite fears those Scuds were armed with chemical weapons.
The U.S. was back in Iraq a decade later following the worst terrorist attack in history and the most costly foreign assault on America, on Sept. 11, 2001, again directed by Islamic radicals, mostly from Saudi Arabia, a U.S. “ally.” The U.S. also invaded Afghanistan. Relentless terrorist attacks in both nations ever since eventually caused the U.S. to withdraw all but token forces there during Barack Obama’s presidency. Today, Iraq and Iran are buddy-buddy.
Suffice it to say the Middle East is a rough neighborhood in which the greatest military in the world has been unable to achieve peace and stability.
This is the neighborhood in which, miraculously, a Jewish state, amid a sea of Jew-haters, has not only survived, but prospered despite constant terror attacks, missile barrages, rocket assaults, full-scale invasions by numerically superior armies working in coordination and threats of total annihilation for nearly 70 years.
Israel won those battles and wars and, in the process, conquered vast amounts of real estate, most of it returned when the belligerents were willing to negotiate land-for-peace deals. But there hasn’t been a land-for-peace deal since 1979, when Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt, ultimately resulting in the death of the peacemaker, Anwar el-Sadat.
Even when Israel offered to give 97 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians in 2000, the offer was incomprehensibly rejected. Nevertheless, a few years later, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, forcing Jewish communities to pull out and turning the land over to Palestinians, who thanked them with nearly unrelenting terror incursions by burrowing into Israel through tunnels and with rocket barrages. Israel, stymied by every attempt to make peace with Palestinians, also granted them autonomy to run their own communities in Judea and Samaria, historically Jewish lands.
This is, apparently the status quo people like Dianne Feinstein think is acceptable. Let me ask her a simple question: How successful have all of the previous U.S. ambassadors to Israel been playing her game? Do we have a track record of success of any kind in the Middle East? Have things been getting better or worse over the last 30-some years?
Of course, I’m not blaming the previous U.S. ambassadors. None of them made policy. But Dianne Feinstein has been shaping Middle East policy since she entered the Senate 25 years ago. Can she point to some successes in that time?
How long can you keep doing the same thing and expect different results?
Maybe this is precisely the time to try something new and permit the new president, with big, bold ideas to select the person he thinks best qualified to be U.S. ambassador – David Friedman.
Maybe it’s time to stop punishing Israel by refusing to honor the capital city, Jerusalem, chosen by its people at its founding 69 years ago.
Maybe it’s time to take Arab Palestinian leaders at their words – that they will never accept the existence of a Jewish state on land that has never, in the history of the world, been anything other than a Jewish state.
Maybe it’s time to be thankful and show full support to the one and only nation in the Middle East that has been a consistent friend an ally of the U.S. and has managed, against all odds, to prosper, respect human rights and promote liberty among its citizens for going on 70 years.
My advice? Quit stalling. Confirm David Freidman as ambassador. Move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
Let Israel worry about the consequences. Let Israel choose its own capital. Let Israel continue to build Jewish communities in and around its capital and anywhere else it determines to do so on land it paid for with blood, sweat and tears.
And let Israel have an ambassador that loves Israel – just as all the other non-Jewish nations of the world have U.S. ambassadors who love and respect the nations where they serve.
See the book trailer for Farah’s “The Restitution of All Things”:
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2017/03/times-for-a-new-path-to-middle-east-peace/#Yo3cfVHm5d3fLtrq.99
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