http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-fray-The-deconstruction-of-Israel-309562
Into the fray: Last week I warned of the sinister subtext of Obama’s visit. This week, that subtext is emerging as headline news.
I am opposed to an independent Palestinian state, because in my own judgment and in the judgment of many leaders in the Middle East, including Arab leaders, this would be a destabilizing factor… and would certainly not serve the United States interests.
– Jimmy Carter, February 25, 1980
The only way for Israel to endure… as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine.
–Barack Obama, March 21, 2013
We oppose the creation of an independent Palestinian state…. Nothing will deflect us from these fundamental… commitments.
– Jimmy Carter, March 23, 1980
We continue to believe in the two-state solution on the 1967 borders.
– Barack Obama, March 21, 2013
Being a proverbial – and some would say, perennial – “prophet of doom” is neither easy nor fashionable in Israel today. After all, there is so much evidence of burgeoning power and prosperity that pessimism seems positively perverse: Surging GDP per capita, amazing advances in science and technology, massive gas finds and the prospect of soon-to-be-attained energy independence…
Like “Chicken-Licken”?
Unless you happen to be warning about the starkly incontrovertible dangers, immanent in Iranian nuclear ambitions, you tend to be dismissed as a paranoid “Chicken- Licken,” mongering irrational fears as to the imminent fall of the firmament.
This is particularly true for anyone who keeps harping on the perils entailed in what is misleadingly dubbed “the peace process,” and in the doctrine of political appeasement/territorial retreat on which it is based. But these perils can be just as pernicious – indeed, perhaps even more so – than distinctly discernible dangers, however daunting, such as those emanating from Tehran.
It is precisely because the mechanism by which they inflict damage is surreptitious, incremental and gradual that the accumulated level of menace grows almost imperceptibly, until it reaches potentially devastating levels. At any given point, it is easy to misperceive them as innocuous, and denigrate calls for caution as alarmist.
“The death of a frog” revisited
Several years ago I published an article, titled “The death of frog” (November 29, 2010), in which I cited an excerpt from Daniel Quinn’s novel The Story of B, describing how if a frog is placed “in a pot of tepid water…, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor…
and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.”
I warned that this was eerily reminiscent of the unfolding political realities in Israel: “Given the ongoing attrition in Israeli position… its continual acquiescence to expose itself to ever-escalating risks, and the accumulating string of concessions agreed to, the trenchant question that must be raised is: When will the lethal boiling point be reached?”