Cohen, and Olmert, seem to be slowly coming around to the two-state solution "including Jerusalem." It's nice to see this change of heart, but why did it have to come so late? Liberal Jews and Israelis have been proposing exactly this for the last twenty years. That's twenty years of war and death and lack of communication.What Olmert, who appears on the verge of indictment for fraud, did say in his “soul searching on behalf of the nation of Israel” was that he had made “mistakes” as a former right-wing hard-liner and that military power will not deliver his 60-year-old country from existential anguish.
“We could contend with any of our enemies or against all our enemies combined and win,” Olmert said. “The question that I ask myself is, what happens when we win? First of all, we’d have to pay a painful price. And after we paid the price, what would we say to them? ‘Let’s talk.’ ”
Speaking of lack of communication, there's a good NPR "Talk of the Nation" piece about US and Israeli relations with Iran. It features Ted Koppel and Zbigniew Brezinski. Brezinski quotes Rabin, who noted over ten years ago that Iran and Israel are natual allies. This is another area where conservatives are slowly coming around to a position first advanced by liberals such as Barack Obama.
The unfortunate reality is that nuclear technology is already over fifty years old and actually quite easy to come by these days. Israel's had nukes for what, thirty years? I knew a guy in yeshiva whose uncle was the spy who stole the plans from the US. It's only a matter of time before Iran and Pakistan get there, too. North Korea already has nukes and could hand them to terrorists in a heartbeat. If we are truly worried about this possibility, the best insurance policy is peace now and a lot of communication. Not to make light of a very serious tragedy, but one nuclear detonation could make what happened in India last week - or even 9/11 - look like a tea party.
PS My girlfriend, who is from PRC, tells me that Olmert's dad grew up in China and spoke fluent Mandarin. Who knew?
2 comments:
>Brezinski quotes Rabin, who noted over ten years ago that Iran and Israel are natual allies.
When did Rabin say this?
Olmert's dad, like many Jews escaping Siberia, lived (and is buried in) Harbin, China, which is the northernmost tip of China. There was a big Jewish community there during and after WW2, and when I was there last summer the local English newspaper did a piece on how relations between Harbin and Israel are so strong because of it.
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