beyondzerosum

A good friend, Dan Sabol, President of the Chicago Chapter of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce, asked me to comment on Podhoretz’ recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal,  Pity the Palestinians? Count Me Out found here:  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304640104579487444112949138?mg=reno64-wsj   In the piece, Podohoretz excoriates the Palestinians with gleeful delight – but fails to address the real issues.  Here is what I wrote to Dan:

This op-ed is pure, unadulterated tripe.  Mr. Podhoretz is known for his Israel right-or-wrong viewpoint, which he promotes vociferously and acrimoniously via Commentary.

He shows his bias from the very first paragraph when he labels John Kerry’s diplomacy as “farcical”.

Provoked by the predictable collapse of the farcical negotiations forced by Secretary of State John Kerry on the Palestinians and the Israelis, I wish to make a confession: I have no sympathy—none—for the Palestinians. Furthermore, I do not believe they deserve any.

I agree that many did predict that the talks would collapse – so therefore the failure was “predictable”.  And even more, probably most, while not “predicting collapse”, gave the chance of success as low.  But certainly folks said the same thing about George Mitchell in Ireland.  As Mitchell so famously said:  “We had 700 days of failure and one day of success”.  By inference, I assume that Mr. Podhoretz also found Mitchell’s work in Ireland to be farcical as well.

Further, in virtually every paragraph he says something that is either factually incorrect, incomplete or biased in interpretation. [Which I don’t have the time nor desire to go into here – but certainly can]

All this is fine.  But there are two things that aren’t.

First, his attitude, which is gleefully acrimonious, tendentious and supercilious.

But my biggest issue with this article is that he does not really address the problem.  I, too, have no sympathy for the Palestinians that want to destroy Israel and even less (I don’t know if you can have less than no sympathy, but I do) for those who want to kill all of the Jews.  But what Mr. Podhoretz does not address is that while blaming the Palestinians might make us fell righteous and good, the occupation is really our problem – no matter what the Palestinians do.  Nor is how other Arab states treat the Palestinians or their citizens relevant to our problem.  As a Jew, what I care about is how Jews treat other people.  I believe we Jews choose to hold ourselves to Jewish values – higher values.  The Occupation endangers Israel remaining both a Jewish and democratic state.  That is our problem as Jews.  We need to find a creative way to end it.