rabbijaffe

The last few weeks have been very frustrating for me.

I’ve sat by and watched very important people make very fancy speeches…

And I’ve watched the world think something is different now.

Barack Obama dazzled the world with his beautiful speech in Cairo, Egypt. Beautiful, but laden with inaccuracies, exaggerations, and misunderstandings.

People clapped. A lot. And now there are some who think millenia of angst, religious dogma, and ignorance have started the process of dissipating away.

I think our fearless leader, President Obama, and the world at large, need to get real and peer a little more intensely at the history of the world. The Muslim world, since it came into existence over a millenium ago, has violently and aggressively controlled its region. This is certainly not the first time there have been battles over the land of Israel. The Crusades alone lasted for hundreds of years! 

Radical Islam will not go away. There are literally millions (perhaps billions) of people in this world who believe that God Himself has dictated to them that the Jews and the West are the enemy. No speech or conversation will ever change this.

War happens. War will always happen. It will happen because of large things and small things, it will happen offensively, defensively, and preventatively. We will never rise to a stage in history where all countries will be able to talk through their differences.

It sounds nice. But it’s not reality.

Barack Obama stood in front of the world. He shook a finger in kindergarten teacher fashion at anyone who has acted in a way for which he disapproves.

Binyamin Netanyahu responded. He accepted the concept of a Palestinian State.

The world cheered. 

His acceptance was accompanied with demands that anyone who has been a careful watcher of the Middle East KNOWS will never be accepted by the Arab states.

I don’t blame him.

I thought he successfully appeased America while making commitments he will unlikely be held to.

Netanyahu was responding to unreasonable demands. No more settlement expansion is as reasonable as the White Paper’s restriction of Jewish immigration to Israel after World War II. Barack Obama does not know what a settlement is or what it means to be a settler. He likely never will.

And equating the status of the Jews during the Holocaust with the status of the Palestinians vis-a-vis Israel is thoroughly inaccurate, and hurtful at best. Every time I hear such comparisons they make me ill. They are based on ignorance and lies.

What I’m trying to say is:

Peace in the Middle East would be a very nice thing.

But the world should brace itself for disappointment.

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