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http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/klein-and-time-ride-to-obama�s-rescue/

Klein and Time Ride to Obama�s Rescue
Who else?
June 1, 2011 - 12:00 am - by Abraham H. Miller

When Obama spoke to AIPAC on May 22, 2011, trying to control the damage 
done by his announcement that Israel return to the 1967 armistice lines, 
those who weren�t buying his �explanation� sat conspicuously in their 
chairs and on their hands. In contrast, most others jumped up to 
enthusiastically applaud and re-embrace the president. The Jewish community 
was visibly fracturing.

One attendee who was not accepting Obama�s explanation volunteered what 
many of us thought: if Obama nuked Tel Aviv, he�d lose 8% of the Jewish 
vote.

So it was not surprising that some �court Jew� would be found to take 
Benjamin Netanyahu to task for the  public shellacking of the president who 
called upon Israel to return to the Auschwitz lines of 1967. And at what 
better place than Time magazine? Its anti-Semitism knows few limits. In 
September of 2010, its cover story was titled �Why Israel Doesn�t Care 
About Peace.� The answer? Because Israelis are more concerned about money. 
Of course!

Joe Klein, Time columnist and well-known liberal, asserts that Netanyahu 
purposely misrepresented Obama�s statement. The president did not say 
Israel�s borders needed to be renegotiated. According to Klein, what Obama 
said was that a two-state solution �should be based on pre-1967 borders, 
with mutually agreed upon land swaps that would enable Israel to 
incorporate the vast majority of � dare I say � its illegal settlements 
into its territory [...].�

Klein�s mixture of deception and disingenuousness goes on. He proclaims 
that the swapping of land around these borders was a fixture in past 
negotiations between the Arabs and Israelis.

As a seasoned journalist, Klein must know that diplomacy is about nuance. 
There are profound differences concerning where one begins negotiations, 
where one finishes, and what corollary arrangements are appended to the end 
products. There is a difference between outcomes that parties achieve 
through the process of compromise, conciliation, and hard-fought exchanges, 
and ones the president of the United States imposes as a starting point. In 
this case, that starting point is nothing less than the Palestinian 
position.

The president announced to the Muslim world what the Israelis must give up. 
He said absolutely nothing about what the Palestinians should do about the 
important issues of the �Palestinian demand to return millions of refugees 
to Israel proper and overrun it,� or the �status of Jerusalem� � which, in 
his 2008 AIPAC speech, then-candidate Obama called �indivisible.�

By failing to restate the �indivisibility� of Jerusalem, Obama made the 
omission conspicuous, underscoring the gravity of his commitment to the 
idea of Israel withdrawing to the 1967 armistice lines.

Klein fabricated his assertion that the president proposed that the land 
swaps would actually permit Israel to incorporate most of its settlements. 
Obama merely said that land swaps would take into consideration Israel�s 
settlements, a statement as vague as it is meaningless.

As for Klein�s statement that the settlements are illegal, that is mere 
posturing. The legality or illegality of the settlements is a complex 
matter of international law. Just because you write for Time and proclaim 
something is illegal doesn�t make it so.

It is no secret that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has long denied 
any relationship between the Jews and the land of Israel, repudiating both 
Jewish history and any foundation for a Jewish claim to the land. The Jews, 
according to Abbas, whose doctoral dissertation is a Holocaust-denying 
tome, have no history in Israel. In contrast, the Palestinians, he asserts, 
are the direct descendants of the Canaanites. Abbas, as Barry Rubin so 
carefully documents, never had any interest in land swaps.

The immediate Palestinian reaction to Obama�s speech was predictable and 
represented what Netanyahu and Obama�s critics expected. Saeb Erekat, the 
chief Palestinian negotiator, said that Israel must now recognize the 1967 
armistice lines.

Nabil Abu Rudaineh, speaking on behalf of Abbas, said flat out that the 
Palestinian Authority won�t agree to any Israeli presence in Palestine 
beyond the 1967 lines. So much for Klein�s assertion that Obama�s proposal 
would permit Israel to keep large blocs of its settlements!

Days later, Abbas himself praised Obama for the �parameters� he had 
outlined.

Clearly, Joe Klein�s deception cannot hide that Obama�s narcissism and 
arrogance have jeopardized meaningful negotiations. The Palestinians intend 
to start from Obama�s position, ignoring any reference to the land swaps. 
This means that the Wailing Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, will be on 
the Palestinian side of the line, and Jerusalem will be a divided city. 
What then is there to negotiate? Whether Palestinians who are the 
grandchildren and great grandchildren of the original refugees can live in 
Israel?

Maybe the Palestinians, having started with Obama�s �parameters,� will 
negotiate the boundaries of Tel Aviv and Haifa, or whether only Jews who 
lived in the British Mandate before 1948 will be permitted to stay in 
Palestine (as dhimmi). This is a proposal I have heard, for decades, made 
in all seriousness at university debates on the Palestinian/Israeli 
conflict. This is considered the moderate position. The more extreme is 
whether the Jews should be pushed into the sea or forcibly repatriated to 
Europe. Whatever position the Palestinians choose, the Jews will first have 
to apologize to the Palestinians � even if it is during a prelude to 
another Holocaust.

Now that Abbas and Erekat have predictably removed land swaps from Obama�s 
position, should we anticipate another essay by Joe Klein on how President 
Obama detests how the Palestinians are, as he said of Netanyahu, �twisting 
and oversimplifying his words�?



-- 
"Without America there is no "Free World"."

The reason that Progressivism-Socialism-Communism always fail, is that you 
eventually run out of other peoples' money.

Obama and the Democrats: continuing the Cloward-Piven "Progressive" 
socialist agenda of borrowing, taxing and insanely spending the country 
into collapse and global socialism.

To be a good democrat, you have to believe that businesses create 
oppression and governments create prosperity.

"The one thing that's being pushed in this country, is the motto: The 
harder I work, the more I owe society. The less I work, the more society 
owes me. We  can't be a great country with that motto." - Charles Payne.

All forced-collectivist societies can be roughly divided between the Makers 
( producers of goods and services ) and the Takers ( moochers and looters 
who get the government to initiate force against the Makers by proxy, to 
supply their alleged needs. )