The Peace Process Is the Process of Blaming Israel
By Daniel Greenfield
Big lies don’t always start out big. They don’t even always start out as lies. They only grow big in the cover-up when the truth has to be beaten off with a stick made out of even bigger lies.
A brief read of the daily newspapers, a quick flick through the cable news networks and an ear cocked to the drive time news minute might give you the idea that Israel is isolated and besieged. Israel is indeed a small country. It’s always been isolated in a Muslim region that is willing to kill even fellow Arab Christians and fellow Arab Shiites over differences of religion.
But contrary to the Peace Lobby sloganeering, Israel isn’t morally bankrupt, the intellectual premises of Zionism aren’t shattered and it’s not a failed state on the verge of destruction.
It’s the Peace Lobby that is frantically struggling to keep its big lie together. Its attacks on Israel are not a show of strength, but a desperate cover-up. From the high chambers where John Kerry suggests Israel is going to be an Apartheid State to the low chambers of failed boycotts against academics and soda companies, the purveyors of the big lie are coming apart at the seams.
The big peace lie started out small. Both sides would shake hands and make peace. And white doves would fly from Jerusalem to Ramallah. To some it wasn’t even a lie; just blind idealism and wishful thinking. It was only when the lie was tried and failed that it truly became a lie and then there were no more idealists, only desperate liars covering up one lie with another.
The entire peace process rested on the lie that the PLO wanted to make peace. Israel had successfully reached peace agreements, including territorial compromises, with its enemies. Its credibility was never in question. The PLO’s credibility was the big question mark and when its willingness to make peace was put to the test and it failed, again and again, the big lie began.
Israel can’t do anything right in the peace process and the PLO can’t do anything wrong. When Abbas blatantly violated his agreements by going to the UN, Secretary of State John Kerry took a seat in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and blamed Israel.
Then Abbas made a unity deal with Hamas, which is committed to destroying Israel, and Kerry told the Trilateral Commission that Israel was on the path to becoming an Apartheid state.
Kerry may be notorious for his terrorist sympathies, but he was following the grand tradition of his predecessors and of the entire Peace Lobby by blaming the peace partner with the most credibility instead of the one with the least credibility because the credibility of the peace process depends on its weakest link. And that is the Palestinian Authority’s Abbas and his PLO terrorists.
If you were trying to negotiate the sale of a home from a seller acting in good faith to a buyer acting in bad faith, you would blame the seller because once you admit that the buyer is acting in bad faith, the credibility of the sale vanishes into thin air. The smart thing for the seller to do is to walk away, but unfortunately Israeli leaders are convinced that they can prove their good faith by eagerly showing up to negotiate.
What they don’t understand is that blaming Israel is a structural part of the peace process.
If the Peace Lobby admits that the PLO is not credible, that Abbas is a manipulative crook, that his henchmen are waiting for his death to begin offing each other, not to continue the great struggle for the nationhood of a nation that never existed, but for the chance to dip their golden buckets in the river of foreign aid that flows from Brussels, Washington and Tokyo, the peace process would collapse.
The only way to keep the peace process going is to blame Israel. The Jewish State can never prove its good faith and the PLO can never demonstrate its bad faith.
The worse the PLO behaves, the harsher the Peace Lobby attacks on Israel become.
If Abbas goes to the UN, Kerry bashes Israel in the Senate. If Abbas goes to Hamas, Kerry calls Israel an Apartheid State. In the Peace Lobby’s version of The Untouchables, if Abbas brings a knife, Kerry shoots Israel in the head.
It makes no moral sense, but it’s an entirely pragmatic response if you’re covering up a big lie by escalating its size and scope. Kerry isn’t a peace negotiator; he’s Peacegate’s cover-up man.
The tragedy of the Peace Lobby is that by tying peace to the PLO, they made peace impossible. When the PLO realized that it couldn’t lose and Israel couldn’t win, it escalated its demands. The more the Peace Lobby covered up for the PLO, the more the PLO acted in ways that made the cover-ups necessary and peace impossible.
The big peace liars escalated the problem they were lying about with their lies. The more they lied to protect the peace process, the more the peace process drew out of reach. Their own lies about the PLO in support of the peace process killed peace.
Now all that’s left is the dirty business of the cover-up. And the cover-up of the biggest Western diplomatic failure of the last two decades may still destroy Israel.
Too many governments and public figures have invested too much in the big lie. Like so many other big lies, the big peace lie has become too big to fail.
If politicians from around the world and across the political spectrum were to admit that they trusted a terrorist group to reform only to see the whole thing blow up in their faces, they would look like idiots. Like John Kerry and Miley Cyrus, they can’t stop. The whole thing has gone on for too long and the longer it goes on, the worse admitting the truth would make them look.
And so the big lie keeps gaining momentum. Its dimensions are swiftly becoming universal as the Peace Lobby claims that all the terrorism in the world and all the instability in the Middle East will be put to rest once the peace process is completed. Before too long, the peace process will offer the cure to cancer, lost socks and global warming. Like every bubble, the only way to prevent it from bursting is by blowing it up even bigger.
And when it does burst, it will take a lot more with it.
Israel can never prove its willingness to make peace to a Peace Lobby whose reputations would be destroyed by that proof. The Peace Lobby allowed the PLO to take the peace process hostage and once that happened any hope for peace became hopeless.
The big peace lie killed the peace it was lying about. And now all that’s left is protecting the lie, no longer for the sake of peace, but for the sake of the liars.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-peace-process-is-the-process-of-blaming-israel/
By Daniel Greenfield
Big lies don’t always start out big. They don’t even always start out as lies. They only grow big in the cover-up when the truth has to be beaten off with a stick made out of even bigger lies.
A brief read of the daily newspapers, a quick flick through the cable news networks and an ear cocked to the drive time news minute might give you the idea that Israel is isolated and besieged. Israel is indeed a small country. It’s always been isolated in a Muslim region that is willing to kill even fellow Arab Christians and fellow Arab Shiites over differences of religion.
But contrary to the Peace Lobby sloganeering, Israel isn’t morally bankrupt, the intellectual premises of Zionism aren’t shattered and it’s not a failed state on the verge of destruction.
It’s the Peace Lobby that is frantically struggling to keep its big lie together. Its attacks on Israel are not a show of strength, but a desperate cover-up. From the high chambers where John Kerry suggests Israel is going to be an Apartheid State to the low chambers of failed boycotts against academics and soda companies, the purveyors of the big lie are coming apart at the seams.
The big peace lie started out small. Both sides would shake hands and make peace. And white doves would fly from Jerusalem to Ramallah. To some it wasn’t even a lie; just blind idealism and wishful thinking. It was only when the lie was tried and failed that it truly became a lie and then there were no more idealists, only desperate liars covering up one lie with another.
The entire peace process rested on the lie that the PLO wanted to make peace. Israel had successfully reached peace agreements, including territorial compromises, with its enemies. Its credibility was never in question. The PLO’s credibility was the big question mark and when its willingness to make peace was put to the test and it failed, again and again, the big lie began.
Israel can’t do anything right in the peace process and the PLO can’t do anything wrong. When Abbas blatantly violated his agreements by going to the UN, Secretary of State John Kerry took a seat in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and blamed Israel.
Then Abbas made a unity deal with Hamas, which is committed to destroying Israel, and Kerry told the Trilateral Commission that Israel was on the path to becoming an Apartheid state.
Kerry may be notorious for his terrorist sympathies, but he was following the grand tradition of his predecessors and of the entire Peace Lobby by blaming the peace partner with the most credibility instead of the one with the least credibility because the credibility of the peace process depends on its weakest link. And that is the Palestinian Authority’s Abbas and his PLO terrorists.
If you were trying to negotiate the sale of a home from a seller acting in good faith to a buyer acting in bad faith, you would blame the seller because once you admit that the buyer is acting in bad faith, the credibility of the sale vanishes into thin air. The smart thing for the seller to do is to walk away, but unfortunately Israeli leaders are convinced that they can prove their good faith by eagerly showing up to negotiate.
What they don’t understand is that blaming Israel is a structural part of the peace process.
If the Peace Lobby admits that the PLO is not credible, that Abbas is a manipulative crook, that his henchmen are waiting for his death to begin offing each other, not to continue the great struggle for the nationhood of a nation that never existed, but for the chance to dip their golden buckets in the river of foreign aid that flows from Brussels, Washington and Tokyo, the peace process would collapse.
The only way to keep the peace process going is to blame Israel. The Jewish State can never prove its good faith and the PLO can never demonstrate its bad faith.
The worse the PLO behaves, the harsher the Peace Lobby attacks on Israel become.
If Abbas goes to the UN, Kerry bashes Israel in the Senate. If Abbas goes to Hamas, Kerry calls Israel an Apartheid State. In the Peace Lobby’s version of The Untouchables, if Abbas brings a knife, Kerry shoots Israel in the head.
It makes no moral sense, but it’s an entirely pragmatic response if you’re covering up a big lie by escalating its size and scope. Kerry isn’t a peace negotiator; he’s Peacegate’s cover-up man.
The tragedy of the Peace Lobby is that by tying peace to the PLO, they made peace impossible. When the PLO realized that it couldn’t lose and Israel couldn’t win, it escalated its demands. The more the Peace Lobby covered up for the PLO, the more the PLO acted in ways that made the cover-ups necessary and peace impossible.
The big peace liars escalated the problem they were lying about with their lies. The more they lied to protect the peace process, the more the peace process drew out of reach. Their own lies about the PLO in support of the peace process killed peace.
Now all that’s left is the dirty business of the cover-up. And the cover-up of the biggest Western diplomatic failure of the last two decades may still destroy Israel.
Too many governments and public figures have invested too much in the big lie. Like so many other big lies, the big peace lie has become too big to fail.
If politicians from around the world and across the political spectrum were to admit that they trusted a terrorist group to reform only to see the whole thing blow up in their faces, they would look like idiots. Like John Kerry and Miley Cyrus, they can’t stop. The whole thing has gone on for too long and the longer it goes on, the worse admitting the truth would make them look.
And so the big lie keeps gaining momentum. Its dimensions are swiftly becoming universal as the Peace Lobby claims that all the terrorism in the world and all the instability in the Middle East will be put to rest once the peace process is completed. Before too long, the peace process will offer the cure to cancer, lost socks and global warming. Like every bubble, the only way to prevent it from bursting is by blowing it up even bigger.
And when it does burst, it will take a lot more with it.
Israel can never prove its willingness to make peace to a Peace Lobby whose reputations would be destroyed by that proof. The Peace Lobby allowed the PLO to take the peace process hostage and once that happened any hope for peace became hopeless.
The big peace lie killed the peace it was lying about. And now all that’s left is protecting the lie, no longer for the sake of peace, but for the sake of the liars.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-peace-process-is-the-process-of-blaming-israel/
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