It's the settlements, stupid!

set⋅tle⋅ment
  /ˈsɛtlmənt/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [set-l-muhnt] Show IPA
–noun
1. the act or state of settling or the state of being settled.
2. an arrangement or adjustment, as of business affairs or a disagreement.
3. an agreement signed after labor negotiations between union and management.
4. the settling of persons in a new country or place.
5. a colony, esp. in its early stages.
6. a small community, village, or group of houses in a thinly populated area.

Netanyahu and Obama!

No-holds-barred, no disqualifications, in a STEEL cage ONLY on PAY-PER-VIEW!!!!

Or at least that's how it seemed like last week's meeting between the two leaders was billed in the media. It was the "fateful encounter of two world leaders since Kennedy met Khrushchev" according to noted Israel-basher Professor Juan Cole (Guess who is Khrushchev in this analogy).

Jerusalem Post columnist David Horovitz, noted in his analysis of the meeting that:

Don King himself would have been hard-pressed to outdo the pugilistic hype...ahead of Monday's first White House meeting between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu. Viewers and readers would have been forgiven for anticipating anything up to and including fisticuffs in the Oval Office...

Even our insane conspiracy theorist friends from last month got into the fun. So after a week that saw our friend the president declare his undying love for the Jewish people, who did Obama pin the blame on for the continuing never-ending violence in the Middle East? Was it:

a) The Muslims

b) The Jews

c) Hamas

or

d) Sally Struthers

From the aforementioned David Horovitz article:

Undaunted by past failures, Obama is reportedly setting up a hugely ambitious sequence - Israel freezes settlement building, the Arab world begins normalizing relations with Israel, and Israel and the Palestinians then enter substantive talks.

Number 1 on the agenda? Why those evil, dirty, sneaky Jew settlers of course!

Not to be outdone, Hilary Clinton (another recipient of undying affection from "liberal" Jews) echoed her former hated rival's instructions for Netanyahu:

"We want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth - any kind of settlement activity"

Right. Of course. Stop the settlements and everything starts to work out! No settlers in the West Bank = peace. So sayeth the administration of hope and change.

Oh and another thing Benjy my man...about that city you thought was your capital...you know where two Jewish Temples stood almost a thousand years before Muhammad was even born...yeah that place...you know, Jerusalem:

"Jerusalem is a final status issue. Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to resolve its status during negotiations. We will support their efforts to reach agreements on all final status issues," a State Department spokesman said when asked to respond to Netanyahu's proclamation that Jerusalem would always remain under Israeli sovereignty.

But then, it's not like anything readers of this blog haven't known since December of 2007. Obama blames the Jews.

Or is it just the settlers? This goes back to the anti-Zionist/anti-Jewish debate that was the very basis for this blog's formation. Can you be pro-Israel and anti-settler? Well, in theory you can be but first we need to establish that the settlers cause Israel more harm than they do good. The most common example of this is that, like Obama (and Hillary) says...remove the settlements and you remove the barrier to peace. Less settlements = less war (and therefore less dead Israelis). More settlements = more war (and therefore more dead Israelis).

Well let's look at some history.

Before 1967 there were no settlers at all. The Jewish population of Gaza, Judea and Samaria was zero between 1948 and 1967. Israel fought three wars with its Arab neighbors. And before that, Jews had been hunted across the world for millennia. There were Holocausts and Crusades and pogroms and Inquisitions and riots.

Then the evil settlers came.

Israel has not fought a war against its neighbor states since 1973. The Jewish state has not been faced with a true existential war since that time. IDF military operations have consisted mostly of defensive incursions and riot control instead of full-scale military operations against states. Israel has seen a dramatic increase in American Jewish immigration as well as immigration from other Western countries. Oh and those evil settlers? They (along with other Orthodox Israelis) are the ones primarily responsible for staving off the "demographic time bomb" that was supposed to end Israeli democracy or end Israel within a few generations.

Now let's look at historical examples of post-settlement reality.

Well, Israel evacuated the Sinai settlement of Yamit after the 1978 Camp David Accords and returned the land to Egypt. Technically, the two states are now at peace so that's nice. Still no Palestinian state though.

The other case is Gaza. Before there were any Jewish settlers in the Gaza strip Palestinian fedayeen forces regularly used the territory to conduct attacks on sovereign Israeli soil. After 1967 (and subsequent settlement establishment in Gaza) these attacks became a thing of the past. I don't think I need to remind you what happened after the Gaza settler evacuation in 2005. In case you don't feel like reliving the past few years - here's a chart showing the documented cases of rocket attacks emanating from the Gaza Strip:



You see those gigantic spikes from 2006 and on? What do you think they coincide with? Ariel Sharon visiting the Temple Mount? New Gaza settlement construction? Another Muhammad cartoon hitting the press?

Well, in August/2005 Israel committed the awful crime against humanity of daring to give the Palestinians what they wanted...






The Gaza settlements along with several West Bank settlements were evacuated.

Families were ripped out of their homes in a show of good faith to the Palestinians despite their continuing terror campaign against Israeli women and children.

And so what happened the following year?

A 30% INCREASE in rocket attacks over the previous FIVE YEARS COMBINED. If (as Obama says) the obstacle to peace is the settler movement...but then the settlers are removed in tear-jerking, heart-wrenching fashion and the result is not only war but exponentially MORE war then before...

Well then the settlers are NOT the problem.

The SETTLEMENTS are.

The Oslo settlement. (1993)

The Wye River settlement. (1998)

The Camp David settlement. (2000)

The Taba settlement. (2001)

The "Road Map" settlement. (2003)

And finally the "End of the Gaza settlers" settlement. (2005)

Every time without fail the blame falls on the settlers. The blame falls on Israel. The blame falls on the Jews. And we offer more concessions to placate the Obamas of the world because that's what we do.

But what has it brought us exactly? Nothing but rockets, according to peace-process-believing, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

Tired of being asked for concessions, Peres told his guests that the side making concessions was Israel, which was not getting anything in return from the Palestinians other than the rockets and mortar shells being fired from Gaza.

It's not the settlers. It's the concessions. It's the retreats. It's the surrenders. It's the settlements.

At the same time, the most popular leader in the Arab world is ruthless dictator Bashar-al-Asad. In third place is notorious terrorist Hassan Nasrallah. Two men who are essentially glorified mass-murderers of both Arabs and Jews. Oh and our friends the Egyptians who received their permanent settlement back in 1978? Well they're stripping the citizenships of any Egyptians who dare to marry an Israeli citizen. Even ARAB Israeli citizens. How enlightened. How peace-loving.

To say nothing of the Hamas "leadership" that just can't get through a week without killing their Palestinian brothers or the supposedly "more moderate" Fatah "leadership" that is still naming computer centers and schools after a person who murdered 37 civilians (including 12 children). Because of settlers?

No my friends, it's because of SETTLEMENTS. Not settlers.