With all that's been going on in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the situation in Iraq, worries about Iranian nukes and thousands of Hizbullah rockets in Lebanon aimed, just a stone's throw away, at northern Israel, the Syrian front had been pushed to the back burner for the time being. This, of course, was possible due to Syria's expulsion from much of the Golan Heights since the 1967 Six Day War. While Syria still continues to stir the cauldron via its Hizbullah proxies, it has very good reasons to not want to see the pot boil over.
Enter the controversy over former President Bill Clinton's new book.
Clinton claims that he received repeated pledges from Israeli prime ministers, including Benjamin Netanyahu, for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Heights. Bibi denies this.
And so, the issue of this strategic area again is making news. It is time to reconsider it and the Syrian front in the broader perspective of what should and should not be expected of Israel vis-a-vis the occupied, or disputed, territories.
An American president -- the first since Harry Truman in 1948 -- finally took a political stance, in April 2004, that might, in the long run, actually further the peace process in the Middle East between Arab and Jew - if given half a chance.
Regardless of some serious potential drawbacks, President George W. Bush's public announcement that Israel should not be expected to slit its own throat by absorbing millions of real or fudged descendants of Arab refugees, nor have to return to the UN-imposed Auschwitz/armistice lines of the post-1948 fighting is a positive development.
While the precise wording of the final draft of UN Security Council Resolution 242 has been known for quite some time, the State Department had spent decades trying to distort the interpretation of it to require Israel to make a full withdrawal from the territories and return to its pre-'67, nine-mile wide armistice line existence.
The main problem that followed in the wake of the president's announcement has been all the derriere-kissing and pandering to the predictable Arab "rage" by the media, anti-Israel academia, and others as well.
The Arabist Foggy Folks quickly began to muddy the waters as well with doublespeak and the like. No surprise here. They opposed Truman's recognition of Israel in the first place, and not a few multinational oil and other big business folks, with lucrative ties to the Arab oil sheikhs, have made it into the highest ranks of the State Department.
Faced, at long last, with the reality that America's policy will not reincarnate that of Allied Europe, when Czechoslovakia was sacrificed by its "friends" at Munich in 1938 over a heavily German-populated Czech Sudetenland, the Arabs will likely have to either fish or cut bait if they expect to ever gain anything beyond simply murdering Jews. Again, that is only if the Foggy Folks don't emasculate the potential here -- and that's very much a possibility.
Some time ago, President Bush spent the New Year holiday hunting quail with George Sr. and James Baker, a close family friend. Chances are pretty good that they traveled farther to do this than the State of Israel is in width.
Now, I have nothing against hunting per se, as long as it's done in a sustainable way to put food on the table. Furthermore, while I voted for the other guy the last time around, I'm no Bush-basher either (although I have problems with the family's oil ties and related worrisome environmental record). In fact, there's a good possibility that I'll wind up voting for Dubya this November.
So what bothers me here isn't the quail that are being hunted, nor the hunters.
My problem lies with the influence James (" _ _ _ _ the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway.") Baker continues to have on the presidential family, and an even more bothersome worry that the family shares many of these same ideas with or without his influence. I have a feeling that Daddy and James are peas of the same pod, but I was hoping, despite the odds, for something better from the son. Dubya quotes, after all, from Joshua in the Hebrew Bible, but then (up until his fleeting April announcement) apparently espouses Judea becoming mostly Judenrein in the next breath.
To anyone concerned about Israel not being shortchanged in terms of justice, it is indeed worrisome to see the reemergence of James Baker III on the political scene. He has evidently been appointed as the president's personal envoy to the Middle East, and if Mr. Bush gets reelected in November, anything goes. He will have nothing to lose in terms of angering a large segment of his supporters (Evangelical Christians, that is) if he follows Baker's and Foggy Bottom's lead since this will be his last term in office.
On this same issue, the Democrats are even worse. Mr. Peanut is likely their future main man in the Middle East. Jimmy Carter has never met an Arab disemboweler of Jewish babes and grandmas that he didn't blame the Jews themselves for, and John Kerry's wife is evidently a big financial supporter of some blatantly anti-Israel organizations. Not to mention Kerry's own waffles on the issues.
Headaches... big-time.
Baker has been in the background for decades, especially since his close friends, the Bushes, gained ascendancy in American politics. His law firm represents Saudi Arabian interests in this country and typifies how people move through the revolving doors of businesses tied to Arab interests back and forth into government positions -- especially those in Foggy Bottom. Baker's law partner, Robert Jordan, was appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia by President Bush in 2001. Casper Weinberger and many others have been through these lucrative doors as well. Most often, their influence has spelled trouble for an Israel trying to get a fair hearing.
While Bush the First was at the helm, widespread published reports circulated that Secretary of State Baker promised Syria's Hafez Al-Assad the same deal on the Golan Heights as Egypt's Sadat received in the Sinai Peninsula -- a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces. And this was prior to negotiations between the parties themselves.
In a Time magazine article on February 13, 1989, Baker spoke of Israel as being a turkey to be hunted and carefully stalked. He has referred to Jews working for him and doing his bidding (including the current American Ambassador to Israel) as his "Jew boys." But I'm getting sidetracked....
What most folks don't know is that the Golan was a hotly contested region ruled by many different peoples -- including Jews -- over the millennia. Furthermore, it was part of the original Mandate of Palestine Britain received after World War I until imperial politics prompted a trade off with France in 1924.
Presidents Bush and Baker know full well how Syria used its acquisition and position on the Golan prior to '67 to rain death on Israeli kibbutzim and fishermen in the Sea of Galilee below. And they also know the heavy losses Israel took to end that state of affairs when war was forced upon it -- largely via Syria's instigation and game-playing with Nasser's Egypt -- in 1967.
A bit later, had it not been for Israeli forward positions on the Golan, it was an easy downhill assault into Israel proper when Syria attacked in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. And if you believe that Israel was victimized to simply retrieve "occupied lands," I have two bridges to sell you.
The passes Israel now controls greatly prevent a renewed Syrian assault. Additionally, much of Israel's water supply originates in this area - a vulnerability Syria is well aware of and has tried to cash in on in the past. Indeed, when Israel, in fact, later did offer almost a complete retreat from the Heights, negotiations broke down because of Syria's insistence that it still be allowed to hold Israel captive this way.
What's particularly even more worrisome is that if Syria had not blundered into supporting Saddam against America in Iraq, the current Bush Administration -- with Baker's and Foggy Bottom's active prodding -- would be all set to turn the screws on Israel vis-a-vis the Golan, as well.
So what gives here?
Up until now, it looked like our President was able to distance himself from the troublesome record of the past. His Dad's venomous attack against Israel, when the latter launched its surgical strike against Saddam's Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, still haunts my memory. It angered too many of his Arab oil buddies and their State Department allies.
But as the months progressed after the toppling of Saddam in Iraq, Dubya's line in the Middle East sounded more and more like the same one constantly pushed by Daddy, Baker and Foggy Bottom: Justice for Arabs and the hell with everyone else. Has anyone heard of a Roadmap, for instance, for some thirty million stateless Kurds - America's best friends in Iraq, and the folks whom the Arabs are likely to slaughter again when America finally withdraws? Arabs must have some two dozen states, but Kurds are forbidden even one. What's wrong with this picture? Nauseating, but "justice", Foggy Bottom style.
While Mr. Bush's April remarks were promising, as we have seen, there already appears to be very serious backsliding regarding them. Nothing he said, after all, was even legally binding. The Foggy Folks were quick to point that out. Additionally, Israel had received promises before from American presidents in return for important concessions it was coerced into making, only to see them evaporate when they were needed.
Other nations can acquire, conquer, land, and manipulate or topple governments in the name of their own national security interests, but how dare Israel build a fence to keep Arab bombers from blowing up its kids. How dare Israel insist that a compromise is in order to assure that Baby Assad doesn't follow in Papa's footsteps. Right now, he has an incentive not to do so: Israeli long-range artillery on the Golan are in a position to potentially do unto Damascus what Damascus actually did unto Jews for two decades prior to '67. Think of all the shameful flak Israel has caught over these issues.
Regarding the Syrian front, every military expert who has visited the Golan from abroad has given the same advice: Israel would have to be insanely suicidal to return to the status quo ante here. Israel doesn't have the wriggle room on the Golan or in Judea and Samaria that it had in the Sinai. Yet reports have resurfaced that Washington is concerned that Israel is solidifying its position on the Golan and will eventually put the squeeze on, as it has done vis-a-vis the West Bank.
Of course, one could hope that if Mr. Bush stands by his earlier words regarding Israel being entitled to territorial compromise on the West Bank, he'll also take the same position regarding the Golan. Only time will tell here. But, meanwhile, there's plenty to be concerned about. Gaza, after all, since the days of the Pharaohs, has been historically used as an invasion route into Israel proper and is currently a rejectionist terrorist stronghold. And it still remains to be seen just how much of the strategically important West Bank Israel will actually be allowed to retain.
All of this has the potential of another Baker/State "done deal" scheme in the making, with G-d knows what kind of behind-the-scenes pressure exerted on Ariel Sharon.
Again, think about what might very likely be going on right now if the Syrians weren't acting so stupidly. And think about what might happen if things go even more sour for America in Iraq.
The Iraqi prison abuse news broke right after the President made those earlier welcome comments. It didn't take long for the Administration, with State's prodding, to then try to retrieve some good standing with Arabs at the Jews' expense. So what else is new? Israel will continue to be the likely sacrificial offering of the Foggy Folks to improve relations with Arab states.
One more time - the problem has nothing to do with quail. But it is about demanding that Israelis remain forever as sitting ducks, for that is what a return to the pre-'67 armistice lines amounts to -- whether in Judea, Samaria, on the Golan, or wherever. It is about justice in the region for somebody other than Arabs for a change. Hopefully, despite the setbacks, this message has finally started to sink in with Mr. Bush, and he'll deal appropriately with those who still haven't absorbed it yet.
Enter the controversy over former President Bill Clinton's new book.
Clinton claims that he received repeated pledges from Israeli prime ministers, including Benjamin Netanyahu, for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Heights. Bibi denies this.
And so, the issue of this strategic area again is making news. It is time to reconsider it and the Syrian front in the broader perspective of what should and should not be expected of Israel vis-a-vis the occupied, or disputed, territories.
An American president -- the first since Harry Truman in 1948 -- finally took a political stance, in April 2004, that might, in the long run, actually further the peace process in the Middle East between Arab and Jew - if given half a chance.
Regardless of some serious potential drawbacks, President George W. Bush's public announcement that Israel should not be expected to slit its own throat by absorbing millions of real or fudged descendants of Arab refugees, nor have to return to the UN-imposed Auschwitz/armistice lines of the post-1948 fighting is a positive development.
While the precise wording of the final draft of UN Security Council Resolution 242 has been known for quite some time, the State Department had spent decades trying to distort the interpretation of it to require Israel to make a full withdrawal from the territories and return to its pre-'67, nine-mile wide armistice line existence.
The main problem that followed in the wake of the president's announcement has been all the derriere-kissing and pandering to the predictable Arab "rage" by the media, anti-Israel academia, and others as well.
The Arabist Foggy Folks quickly began to muddy the waters as well with doublespeak and the like. No surprise here. They opposed Truman's recognition of Israel in the first place, and not a few multinational oil and other big business folks, with lucrative ties to the Arab oil sheikhs, have made it into the highest ranks of the State Department.
Faced, at long last, with the reality that America's policy will not reincarnate that of Allied Europe, when Czechoslovakia was sacrificed by its "friends" at Munich in 1938 over a heavily German-populated Czech Sudetenland, the Arabs will likely have to either fish or cut bait if they expect to ever gain anything beyond simply murdering Jews. Again, that is only if the Foggy Folks don't emasculate the potential here -- and that's very much a possibility.
Some time ago, President Bush spent the New Year holiday hunting quail with George Sr. and James Baker, a close family friend. Chances are pretty good that they traveled farther to do this than the State of Israel is in width.
Now, I have nothing against hunting per se, as long as it's done in a sustainable way to put food on the table. Furthermore, while I voted for the other guy the last time around, I'm no Bush-basher either (although I have problems with the family's oil ties and related worrisome environmental record). In fact, there's a good possibility that I'll wind up voting for Dubya this November.
So what bothers me here isn't the quail that are being hunted, nor the hunters.
My problem lies with the influence James (" _ _ _ _ the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway.") Baker continues to have on the presidential family, and an even more bothersome worry that the family shares many of these same ideas with or without his influence. I have a feeling that Daddy and James are peas of the same pod, but I was hoping, despite the odds, for something better from the son. Dubya quotes, after all, from Joshua in the Hebrew Bible, but then (up until his fleeting April announcement) apparently espouses Judea becoming mostly Judenrein in the next breath.
To anyone concerned about Israel not being shortchanged in terms of justice, it is indeed worrisome to see the reemergence of James Baker III on the political scene. He has evidently been appointed as the president's personal envoy to the Middle East, and if Mr. Bush gets reelected in November, anything goes. He will have nothing to lose in terms of angering a large segment of his supporters (Evangelical Christians, that is) if he follows Baker's and Foggy Bottom's lead since this will be his last term in office.
On this same issue, the Democrats are even worse. Mr. Peanut is likely their future main man in the Middle East. Jimmy Carter has never met an Arab disemboweler of Jewish babes and grandmas that he didn't blame the Jews themselves for, and John Kerry's wife is evidently a big financial supporter of some blatantly anti-Israel organizations. Not to mention Kerry's own waffles on the issues.
Headaches... big-time.
Baker has been in the background for decades, especially since his close friends, the Bushes, gained ascendancy in American politics. His law firm represents Saudi Arabian interests in this country and typifies how people move through the revolving doors of businesses tied to Arab interests back and forth into government positions -- especially those in Foggy Bottom. Baker's law partner, Robert Jordan, was appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia by President Bush in 2001. Casper Weinberger and many others have been through these lucrative doors as well. Most often, their influence has spelled trouble for an Israel trying to get a fair hearing.
While Bush the First was at the helm, widespread published reports circulated that Secretary of State Baker promised Syria's Hafez Al-Assad the same deal on the Golan Heights as Egypt's Sadat received in the Sinai Peninsula -- a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces. And this was prior to negotiations between the parties themselves.
In a Time magazine article on February 13, 1989, Baker spoke of Israel as being a turkey to be hunted and carefully stalked. He has referred to Jews working for him and doing his bidding (including the current American Ambassador to Israel) as his "Jew boys." But I'm getting sidetracked....
What most folks don't know is that the Golan was a hotly contested region ruled by many different peoples -- including Jews -- over the millennia. Furthermore, it was part of the original Mandate of Palestine Britain received after World War I until imperial politics prompted a trade off with France in 1924.
Presidents Bush and Baker know full well how Syria used its acquisition and position on the Golan prior to '67 to rain death on Israeli kibbutzim and fishermen in the Sea of Galilee below. And they also know the heavy losses Israel took to end that state of affairs when war was forced upon it -- largely via Syria's instigation and game-playing with Nasser's Egypt -- in 1967.
A bit later, had it not been for Israeli forward positions on the Golan, it was an easy downhill assault into Israel proper when Syria attacked in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. And if you believe that Israel was victimized to simply retrieve "occupied lands," I have two bridges to sell you.
The passes Israel now controls greatly prevent a renewed Syrian assault. Additionally, much of Israel's water supply originates in this area - a vulnerability Syria is well aware of and has tried to cash in on in the past. Indeed, when Israel, in fact, later did offer almost a complete retreat from the Heights, negotiations broke down because of Syria's insistence that it still be allowed to hold Israel captive this way.
What's particularly even more worrisome is that if Syria had not blundered into supporting Saddam against America in Iraq, the current Bush Administration -- with Baker's and Foggy Bottom's active prodding -- would be all set to turn the screws on Israel vis-a-vis the Golan, as well.
So what gives here?
Up until now, it looked like our President was able to distance himself from the troublesome record of the past. His Dad's venomous attack against Israel, when the latter launched its surgical strike against Saddam's Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, still haunts my memory. It angered too many of his Arab oil buddies and their State Department allies.
But as the months progressed after the toppling of Saddam in Iraq, Dubya's line in the Middle East sounded more and more like the same one constantly pushed by Daddy, Baker and Foggy Bottom: Justice for Arabs and the hell with everyone else. Has anyone heard of a Roadmap, for instance, for some thirty million stateless Kurds - America's best friends in Iraq, and the folks whom the Arabs are likely to slaughter again when America finally withdraws? Arabs must have some two dozen states, but Kurds are forbidden even one. What's wrong with this picture? Nauseating, but "justice", Foggy Bottom style.
While Mr. Bush's April remarks were promising, as we have seen, there already appears to be very serious backsliding regarding them. Nothing he said, after all, was even legally binding. The Foggy Folks were quick to point that out. Additionally, Israel had received promises before from American presidents in return for important concessions it was coerced into making, only to see them evaporate when they were needed.
Other nations can acquire, conquer, land, and manipulate or topple governments in the name of their own national security interests, but how dare Israel build a fence to keep Arab bombers from blowing up its kids. How dare Israel insist that a compromise is in order to assure that Baby Assad doesn't follow in Papa's footsteps. Right now, he has an incentive not to do so: Israeli long-range artillery on the Golan are in a position to potentially do unto Damascus what Damascus actually did unto Jews for two decades prior to '67. Think of all the shameful flak Israel has caught over these issues.
Regarding the Syrian front, every military expert who has visited the Golan from abroad has given the same advice: Israel would have to be insanely suicidal to return to the status quo ante here. Israel doesn't have the wriggle room on the Golan or in Judea and Samaria that it had in the Sinai. Yet reports have resurfaced that Washington is concerned that Israel is solidifying its position on the Golan and will eventually put the squeeze on, as it has done vis-a-vis the West Bank.
Of course, one could hope that if Mr. Bush stands by his earlier words regarding Israel being entitled to territorial compromise on the West Bank, he'll also take the same position regarding the Golan. Only time will tell here. But, meanwhile, there's plenty to be concerned about. Gaza, after all, since the days of the Pharaohs, has been historically used as an invasion route into Israel proper and is currently a rejectionist terrorist stronghold. And it still remains to be seen just how much of the strategically important West Bank Israel will actually be allowed to retain.
All of this has the potential of another Baker/State "done deal" scheme in the making, with G-d knows what kind of behind-the-scenes pressure exerted on Ariel Sharon.
Again, think about what might very likely be going on right now if the Syrians weren't acting so stupidly. And think about what might happen if things go even more sour for America in Iraq.
The Iraqi prison abuse news broke right after the President made those earlier welcome comments. It didn't take long for the Administration, with State's prodding, to then try to retrieve some good standing with Arabs at the Jews' expense. So what else is new? Israel will continue to be the likely sacrificial offering of the Foggy Folks to improve relations with Arab states.
One more time - the problem has nothing to do with quail. But it is about demanding that Israelis remain forever as sitting ducks, for that is what a return to the pre-'67 armistice lines amounts to -- whether in Judea, Samaria, on the Golan, or wherever. It is about justice in the region for somebody other than Arabs for a change. Hopefully, despite the setbacks, this message has finally started to sink in with Mr. Bush, and he'll deal appropriately with those who still haven't absorbed it yet.