No one in their right mind or with an IQ above tapioca could be thinking about handing the Palestinians statehood after October 7th, regardless of whether they’re Israelis. Those exemptions certainly cover Joe Biden and Antony Blinken, who continue to press the issue with Israel and demand a commitment to a “two-state solution” while one of the proposed states keeps celebrating the mass rape, kidnapping, and slaughter three months ago.
Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet have tried to diplomatically sidestep the issue in order to keep from embarrassing their key ally. Israeli president Isaac Herzog, more of a center-left moderate, blasted those demands today at the World Economic Forum. Israelis would be crazy to offer Palestinians statehood after these attacks under their current leadership, Herzog told the forum, especially since the world “didn’t give a damn” about Israeli security before the attacks — or afterward:
“If you ask an average Israeli now about his or her mental state, nobody in his right mind is willing now to think about what will be the solution of the peace agreements,” he said in an interview on the WEF main stage, “because everybody wants to know: Can we be promised real safety in the future?”
After the unprecedented slaughter in southern Israel by Hamas terrorists on October 7, “every Israeli wants to know that he will not be attacked in the same way from north or south or east,” Herzog said. …
“Israel lost trust in the peace processes because they see that terror is glorified by our neighbors,” said Herzog.
Herzog clearly meant this as a direct rebuke to Blinken. Just yesterday, the US Secretary of State declared at the WEF that ‘genuine security’ for Israel requires a two-state solution … all evidence to the contrary over the last three-plus months. In fact, Blinken appeared to blame Israel for the extremism for not partnering fully enough with the corruptocratic Palestinian Authority:
Blinken reiterated the need for a “pathway to a Palestinian state.”
“You’re not going to get the genuine security you need absent that. And, of course, to that end as well, a stronger, reformed Palestinian Authority that can more effectively deliver for its own people has to be part of the equation,” Blinken said.
An effective PA can only operate “with the support, with the help, of Israel, not with its active opposition,” Blinken said.
“Even the most effective Authority is going to have a lot of trouble if it’s got the active opposition of any Israeli government,” he said.
The Palestinians had pathways to their own state at multiple times in the past. The Israelis made serious and concrete offers at Oslo and Wye River to establish a Palestinian state on the basis of current borders. Both times, the Palestinians rejected it, and the second time launched an intifada war after refusing the Wye River plan in 1998. And that came by order of Yasser Arafat, who ran the Palestinian Authority at that time. The PA’s position on Israel hasn’t changed since his death.
Even the Saudis have grown tired of this argument. In 2020, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz scoffed at the Palestinians’ complaints in a groundbreaking interview on Saudi television. In a second episode, Bandar engaged in an eye-opening history lesson from the Saudi perspective that exposed Palestinian leadership as charlatans and death-cultists. As I wrote at the time:
In it, he describes how Yasser Arafat repeatedly betrayed the Saudis, as well as the Jordanians and Lebanese, and sabotaged peace again and again. This is a remarkable narrative, especially from the Saudis. “You have never heard a Saudi official discuss it,” Bandar says. The fact they’re discussing it now means they have clearly had it with the Palestinians, or at least their leadership.
The Palestinians don’t want a two-state solution. They have made clear, through both the PA and Hamas, that they want a one-state solution by seizing Israel “from the river to the sea” and killing or deporting every Jew within it. Gazans elected Hamas to govern them in 2006 based on that mission. To pretend otherwise is either stupidity or insanity, as Herzog pointedly replied to Blinken’s idiocy.
To make this argument in the wake of the brutality inflicted by the Gazans demonstrates a warped moral and value system. Demanding that Israel recognize a Palestinian state while Hamas still holds 136 hostages kidnapped on October 7, including women and children, shows just how far we’ve declined. The paroxysm of anti-Semitism that has been fostered and protected by our cultural elites in government and Academia make the nature of that perversion abundantly clear.
As my friend John Ondrasik declares in his latest song and video, we are not okay — and now is a time for choosing indeed:
This is a time for choosing…
New Song/Music Video – “OK”#WeAreNotOK pic.twitter.com/prBgT55ZqR
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) January 18, 2024
John issued a statement this morning:
“On October 10th, 2023, the Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, made a powerful speech, decrying the celebrations of Hamas massacres across New York City. His words of conscience “We Are Not Alright” begin my new song and music video “OK,” which addresses the barbaric Hamas October 7 attacks in Israel, and the global fallout that resulted. Such is the theme of this song. In short, “We Are Not OK.”
We Are Not OK as a nation when certain members of Congress refuse to condemn terrorists who kidnap and decapitate babies.
We Are Not OK as a world when the United Nations General Assembly rejects a motion to condemn Hamas and U.N. General Secretary Antonio Guterres seeks to “contextualize” the brutal rapes, murders, kidnappings and terrorism of October 7.
We Are Not OK when legacy women’s rights groups and global organizations supposedly devoted to women’s human rights have little to no comment after grandmothers, women, and young girls are raped, tortured, and murdered.
We Are Not OK when concertgoers celebrating in the desert are raped, massacred, and kidnapped at a festival for peace – and the majority response from music industry executives, artists, and Hollywood are lawyered statements loaded with cowardly apathy.
We Are Not OK when our flagship universities become harbors for gross anti-Semitism and radicalization, headed by presidents, boards, and faculty steeped in moral and intellectual corruption, who lack the spine to simply declare right from wrong.
We Are Not OK when leading media platforms seem more focused on creating narratives of moral equivalency between the actions of Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas, rather than denouncing the barbarity and terrorism on Oct 7th and ignoring Palestinian innocents being used as human shields in hospitals and schools, built over terrorist tunnels, funded by international aid.
And on and on…
Clearly, the causes of the moral decline on our campuses, in our culture, and institutions have been growing and metastasizing for decades. An inability to clearly call out the horrors of Hamas’ terrorist atrocities is not the root of the problem; it is the symptom of a deeper decay.
We can look away no longer. Evil is on the march and wears many faces.
This is a time for choosing.
We Are Not OK.