Israel erased from map
Israel erased from mapfrom Palestine-net.com
It was a rather remarkable story. Although quite minor in scope and importance, it was newswire story that appeared last week, and which captured our attention if only for a few fleeting moments. Perhaps because it was so absurd. So irrational. So illogical. And it seems, so laughable – that it conveniently traveled from the newspapers’ front page to its last in no time. But it was worth noting.

Here’s the short version: In the United States, a Baltimore, Maryland convict and community activist, Tyree Moorehead, who spent 18 years in prison for second degree murder, has come up with what he says is “a solution to the city's soaring murder rate – paying killers not to shoot people.”

Not exactly novel, we find out. Deserving nothing but ridicule, this radical strategy had been contemplated before, in 2016, when officials in Richmond, California, tested a program where they paid young offenders for staying out of trouble (read: to lower that city’s murder rate).

Rational minds would readily dismiss such nonsense. And yet – on a much grander scale – this thinking is one of two central philosophical cornerstones that underscores the argument made by so many for the establishment of a state of Palestine.

One doesn’t have to be MENSA-eligible to understand that 1964 preceded 1967 chronologically. That the establishment of the PLO – three years before Israel “occupied” (their term, not ours) the territories is evidence enough...
First, let us dismiss the other “cornerstone” – that Palestinian Arabs “deserve” a state of their own. Without offering a long-winded historical treatise of the various embryonic territorial divisions of Mandatory Palestine dating back to San Remo in 1920, the Peel Commission in 1937, and the 1947 UN Partition Plan – and the obvious “Jordan is Palestine” argument that follows – we recall that the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded before Israel was an “occupying” state.

That is not inconsequential, but it is quite readily – willingly and willfully – ignored. A truthful translation: the PLO, ostensibly representing the Palestinian nationalist movement, was not founded in 1964 to establish Palestine but quite clearly to nullify the existence of Israel.

As evidenced by the fact that “the territories” were occupied by Jordan between 1948 and 1967, with no tangible undertaking to fulfill the aspirations to establish Palestine, it was axiomatically quite clear: it was about ending Israel.

So, let’s not pretend. Those who call for the implementation of a 2-State solution – and they are the majority throughout the world – are made up of two camps. The first is composed of the combination of elements that can be accurately categorized as the enemies of Israel. Those who know exactly what the real implications portend. A Jewish State, truncated territorially and rendered less defensible in any future military engagement with its neighbors. It would be an Israel that would be reduced to some version of the pre-1967 borders; yes, the infamous “Auschwitz borders” as Abba Eban had referred to these 1949 Armistice lines. They are one and the same.

The second camp is made up of those who are the so-called friends of Israel, who unwittingly aid the aforementioned camp. They are found everywhere, primarily throughout the Western world. By aligning themselves with a formula that adopts the fraudulently myopic view that the conflict is “Israeli-Palestinian”, they have accepted a 2-State illusion that the core of the conflict is territorial. It is not.

We are being lied to. And Israel, to its own detriment, too-often participates in the deceit.

One doesn’t have to be MENSA-eligible to understand that 1964 preceded 1967 chronologically. That the establishment of the PLO – three years before Israel “occupied” (their term, not ours) the territories – was evidence enough to file this under “genocidal ideology.” Those still challenged by this conspicuously self-evident fact can consult the PLO Charter. The Arabs prefer to call it the PLO Covenant (the original in 1964 and slightly modified in 1968). One can also look up the definition of covenant.

And contrary to those looking for that unattainable quixotic solution that is the 2-State formula – no, the Palestinian Arab leadership has not abrogated this charter. That is more of a lie than Elizabeth Taylor telling her first seven husbands that they are “forever” – because she might have meant it. The PLO, and its Palestinian Authority facelift, do not. Do not be fooled by their occasional statements made for foreign consumption; read instead what they offer for domestic consumption. The Charter/Covenant remains intact. And ignored.

It’s rather quite remarkable how seemingly intelligent people – are so often not. In the same spirit, it is also rather incredible that otherwise reasonable thinking people are unable to reason. Correction: so unwilling to reason. Devoid of any ability to engage in critical thinking – even in its most elementary form – rational thought is conveniently sacrificed on the altar of politics.

Correction: of political expedience. And political expedience is often best demonstrated by the utter inability to connect the dots that just beg to be connected. After all, too many have a political agenda that needs to be driven home. They are the ones who have authored the playbook.

September 13, 1993. The Oslo Accords. The darkest day in the history of modern Israel. The day that was the culmination of a series of events that found Israel accepting the unmitigated lie that an implacable enemy had become a “peace partner.” Yasir Arafat became a Peace Prize laureate – because he promised to stop murdering Jews. It was a lie that we still live today. Arafat was simply channeling Benjamin Disraeli – diplomacy can be a weapon of war. In retrospect, such duplicity might have been foreseeable. What was not, was the glee that the Israelis displayed in allowing the charade.

Here’s the truth. The Palestinian Arab offer then (as it is today) was as obscene as it was disingenuously clear. We will stop murdering Jews if you give us a state of our own. Tyree Moorehead, the convict and community activist could well understand the brilliance of such an offer; while the very underpinnings that connected Ramallah and Baltimore are ignored. By those too ignorant to see the comparison, and the immorality.

That Palestinian Authority’s offer was made again, and again, in subsequent peace negotiations with Israel. Even while the unparalleled escalation of post-Oslo murders of Jews offered the deadly statistical proof of the madness of the formula: we will stop murdering Jews if you pay us. The currency – a Palestinian state.

This insanity remains the foundation of the 2-State solution. The Palestinian leadership is quite blunt: “Reward us with a state even while we pay the terrorists to continue to murder you.” The lesson is clear, but most will refuse to accept it. Those who read that seemingly insignificant story that some moronic community activist suggested that we pay murderers to stop murdering – and who rolled their eyes in a contemptuous ‘are you kidding?’ – are very likely the same who support giving the murderous PA a state so they might stop murdering Jews. Not because they deserve it, but because it might appease them.

Intellectual dishonesty has led the well-intentioned to join those not-so-inclined to believe that a workable peace agreement can be found by offering Israel’s adversaries a neighboring state that will be both ‘viable and democratic’ as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered this past week. Twice. It is a misbegotten endeavor to engage in nation-building by foreign policy experts bereft of the necessary expertise in understanding the very fundamentals of the conflict, and the Muslim enemy. It is political naiveté that remains unchecked.

All the while, proponents of a 2-State solution are on the sidelines cheering on.

Lawrence J. Peter, author of The Peter Principle, offered us this memorable quote: “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

Tyree Moorehead joins Mahmoud Abbas in banking on it being the latter.

Meir Jolovitz is a past national executive director of the Zionist Organization of America, and formerly associated with the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.