Roger Cohen Lectures Israel Again

Roger Cohen lectures Israel again.

Hard Mideast Truths

By ROGER COHEN
Published: February 11, 2010

NEW YORK — For over a century now, Zionism and Arab nationalism have failed to find an accommodation in the Holy Land. Both movements attempted to fill the space left by collapsed empire, and it has been left to the quasi-empire, the United States, to try to coax them to peaceful coexistence. The attempt has failed.

President Barack Obama came to office more than a year ago promising new thinking, outreach to the Muslim world, and relentless focus on Israel-Palestine. But nice speeches have given way to sullen stalemate. I am told Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have a zero-chemistry relationship.

Domestic U.S. politics constrain innovative thought — even open debate — on the process without end that is the peace search. As Aaron David Miller, who long labored in the trenches of that process, once observed, the United States ends up as “Israel’s lawyer” rather than an honest broker. The upside for an American congressman in speaking out for Palestine is nonexistent.

I don’t see these constraints shifting much, but the need for Obama to honor his election promise grows. The conflict gnaws at U.S. security, eats away at whatever remote possibility of a two-state solution is left, clouds Israel’s future, scatters Palestinians and devours every attempt to bridge the West and Islam.

Here’s what I believe. Centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust created a moral imperative for a Jewish homeland, Israel, and demand of America that it safeguard that nation in the breach.

But past persecution of the Jews cannot be a license to subjugate another people, the Palestinians. Nor can the solemn U.S. promise to stand by Israel be a blank check to the Jewish state when its policies undermine stated American aims.

People like Cohen just won't accept the fact that it isn't Israel preventing a "palestinian" state, it is the "palestinians" who continuously reject statehood because it is not a two-state solution they seek. What they really want is the obliteration of the Jewish state. So They will not accept a state as long as it means the continued existence of Israel, regardless of the borders. Why is that so hard for the Roger Cohens of the world to grasp?

How do you begin to dialogue with people who continue to teach their children in schools, mosques and the media to hate Jews and make heroes out of so-called "martyrs" who murder Israelis? It is not possible. Yet supposedly intelligent people like Cohen persist in pushing negotiations and then blame Israel for their failure.