RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Palestinian Authority’s new unity pact with Hamas “surprised officials in Washington,” The New York Times reports. The Obama administration was “apparently taken unawares” by the P.A.’s move, according to the Washington Post.

It’s hardly the first time.

In December 1988, the incoming George H.W. Bush administration announced that recent statements by Yasser Arafat were sufficiently “moderate” to warrant U.S. negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Eighteen months later, the Palestine Liberation Front, a PLO constituent group, launched a major terrorist attack against Israel and Arafat refused to condemn it. Surprise, surprise. The shocked Bush administration ended its dealings with the PLO.

In 2000-2001, during the wholesale terror of the “second intifada,” the George W. Bush administration insisted that Arafat and his Palestinian Authority were peace-loving moderates and repeatedly pressured Israel to make more concessions to the P.A. Israel warned that Arafat had never changed his terrorist ways, but nobody listened. Until January 2002, that is, when Arafat was caught red-handed after Israel intercepted the Karine-A, a ship loaded with several tons of rockets, mines, assault rifles, explosives and ammunition that Arafat bought from Iran. Once again, the White House was shocked.

In 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice thought that having Palestinian elections in the Gaza Strip would be a great idea. It turned out that democratic elections do not always produce democratic leaders: Gazans voted to install a Muslim Brotherhood-style theocracy headed by the Hamas terrorists. The White House was surprised. Israel got stuck with the consequences, in the form of rockets fired daily at the kindergartens and synagogues of Sderot, including several last week on the last day of Passover.

Now Israel’s “peace partner” Mahmoud Abbas walks away from nine months of negotiations relentlessly pursued by John Kerry and signs a unity deal with Hamas.

The question is: Why are U.S. officials always so surprised by Palestinian actions?

Mountain Man News has been accused of occasional bouts of sarcasm, and recently one of our gentlest readers suggested that I engaged in reductio ad absurdum (which I had always thought was the name of Paraguay’s foremost nuclear physicist). The truth is that we have striven (boy that doesn’t sound right) to be a purveyor of truth. Like Fox and CNN, MMN always uses facts when nothing else is available. I must share with you a secret longing. For years I have coveted a particular award. I really, really want a Pullitoff Prize for Journalism.

As most of you know the Pullitoff Prize is the highest award for journalists. Nicholas Kristof and Tom Friedman have so many of these, that when their families get together for a picnic lunch on Yom Kippur, they use them as frisbees. They deserve even more of them. Kristof got one for assuring the Chinese protestors at Tienanmen that they would be safe as long as the NY Times was covering the event. Of course, he didn’t know the difference between the Beijing militia and the Chinese Army. The former consisted of local merchants, and the latter consisted of peasant soldiers. Chinese peasants love students (in order to test their shooting skills). Kristof also told us that China was well on its way toward democracy. Kristof was right on target (though not as much as the Chinese soldiers). I was surprised that he only got one Pullitoff Prize for his acumen.

Friedman is uncanny in his predictions. He guaranteed that Yasser Arafat was honest and trustworthy, which was a blessing for the European bankers who then stored the hundreds of millions of dollars that Arafat stole. As Snopes often points out, Friedman’s love affair with Saudi Arabia is truly heartwarming. Even Friedman’s books are loaded with prescience. In the “World is Flat” he assured us that the combination of fiber optics and Walmart as a model, would bring prosperity to all of us. Later, he would explain that what he meant was that Walmart’s selling of fiber products would bring regularity to the world, and his intended title was “The World is Flatulant.” Friedman’s reporting on the Middle East and his opinion pieces are so uncannily inaccurate that he deserves many, many awards. If nothing else, his “what I really said” articles also merit Edgar awards for mystery fiction.

I have used these two eminent journalists as my model. Their ability to be so wrong so frequently and yet be considered as sages, is nothing short of admirable. What really sets them apart, however, is their ability to act like politicians but talk like scholars. Hard to keep getting it wrong but to assure everyone that they got it right, They do always pull it off, which I guess is why they get that award. But I deserve it as well.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-envoy-to-resign-after-blaming-settlements-for-talks-failure/#ixzz30r4Quj3O
‘US envoy to resign after blaming settlements for talks failure’
Martin Indyk cited as member of Kerry team who warned, in anonymous account of negotiations at weekend, that Palestine will rise ‘whether through violence or via int’l organizations’

Martin Indyk, US special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, reportedly will resign from his position following the recent failure of the US-backed talks.

The Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported that Indyk is considering resigning in light of President Barack Obama’s intention to suspend US involvement in seeking a negotiated end to the conflict, citing unnamed Israeli officials “who are close to the matter.” Indyk has informed the Brookings Institute that he will soon return to his vice president post, from which he took a leave of absence during the negotiations, Haaretz reported.

It also said Indyk is being identified in Jerusalem as the anonymous source in a report by Yedioth Aharonoth columnist Nahum Barnea on Friday in which unnamed American officials primarily blamed Israel for the failure of the peace talks.

“There are a lot of reasons for the peace effort’s failure, but people in Israel shouldn’t ignore the bitter truth – the primary sabotage came from the settlements,” the official told Barnea. “The Palestinians don’t believe that Israel really intends to let them found a state when, at the same time, it is building settlements on the territory meant for that state. We’re talking about the announcement of 14,000 housing units, no less. Only now, after talks blew up, did we learn that this is also about expropriating land on a large scale. That does not reconcile with the agreement.

“At this point, it’s very hard to see how the negotiations could be renewed, let alone lead to an agreement. Towards the end, [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas demanded a three-month freeze on settlement construction. His working assumption was that if an accord is reached, Israel could build along the new border as it pleases. But the Israelis said no.”

The official said the world community pays more attention to Israel’s actions than other countries because “(I)t was founded by a UN resolution. Its prosperity depends on the way it is viewed by the international community.”