RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s a phrase endlessly repeated since 1989. It’s been on the lips of Western diplomats, especially our own State Department types, for a quarter century: “Two-State Solution.” We must have a Roadmap to Peace and that destination must embrace a state for the Israelis and a state for the Arabs of Palestine. Anyone who questions that formulation is in danger of being marginalized. How can you oppose what Secretaries of State of both great American political parties have embraced? How can you say there are any people on earth who are not entitled to a state?

Are the Druze entitled to a state? Are the Kurds entitled to a state? How about the Chaldean or Assyrian Christians? It would seem that the state of Syria, ruled by the minority Alawites, is falling apart. What else do most Arab “states” in that region do?

The Libyans have a state. How does their state look these days? Everything would be better, they said, if only that bad man, Qaddafi, were overthrown. Hillary Clinton famously cackled on national TV when Qaddafi was killed by a vengeful mob of his fellow Libyans in 2011. Qaddafi was behind the terrorist bombing of an American airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. But the junta that replaced Qaddafi in Tripoli announced that Qaddafi had been wrong to turn over to Scottish authorities the man who actually planted that bomb. Do Qaddafi’s even worse successors deserve a state? It would seem now, three and a half years after Qaddafi’s bloody death, that Libya is falling apart.

Yemen is a state. Or was. Once touted by President Obama as a notable success, the situation in Yemen is so out of control that even liberal journalists have trouble keeping a straight face when White House Spokesman Josh Earnest spins his message. He delivered an “astounding” statement that Mr. Obama still claims Yemen as a success for his Mideast policy. Hat tip to Jon Karl, ABC News White House Correspondent, for not swallowing that particular camel.

Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strong re-election, official Washington has been in an uproar over what this might mean for the hallowed “Two-State Solution.” The talking heads fret endlessly about jeopardizing what is fancifully called the “Mideast Peace Process.”

The reason we have gone nowhere in the past quarter century has everything to do with the nature of the regimes that Israel is facing. PLO boss Mahmoud Abbas was right-hand man to Yasser Arafat for decades. Abbas has no legitimacy among his own fellow Arabs. His Fatah organization was defeated by the terrorist gang, Hamas, in elections in Gaza. Then, some years later, he cancelled elections on the West Bank because he would surely have lost to Hamas. So, the discredited Abbas formed a “unity” government with Hamas.

Even our ever-surprised, ever-unready State Department still manages to list Hamas as a terrorist outfit. So, Abbas and the PLO are openly aligned with Hamas terrorists. Doesn’t that make them parties to, in cahoots with, and abettors of terrorism?

President Obama’s administration should drop the mask of ignorance. We know that Arafat ordered the assassination of our Ambassador Cleo Noel in Khartoum, in the Sudan, in 1973. We have telephone intercepts of Arafat giving the kill order. Abbas was Arafat’s accomplice throughout the long years of his apprenticeship. Arafat invented airline hijacking for terror purposes.

Why should Israel negotiate with Abbas? With Hamas? With Iran? With ISIS? Or with any of her neighbors who have tried for nearly 70 years to wipe Israel off the map? They have wiped Israel off their own maps. All of the official documents of these groups show maps of the Mideast without Israel.

Israel’s neighbors want to annihilate the Jews. These enemies are encouraged by Mr. Obama’s State Department, which continues to deny that Israel’s capital is Jerusalem.

What other people, what other nation ever named Jerusalem as its capital?  By refusing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, President Obama is feeding into the annihilationist views of Israel’s enemies.

Thus, this administration is saying, Israel is different from every other member state in the UN. The U.S. embassy in Bonn, Federal Republic of Germany, joined scores of other nations in 1999 in packing up and quietly moving to Berlin. Why? Because the new unified German government had declared Berlin their new capital. There was no debate. No argument. No foreign embassy refused to move from Bonn.

The United States State Department recognized Berlin because we valued Germany as an ally and because we believe a nation has a right to designate its own capital.

About the Arabs of Palestine, we need to ask ourselves some hard questions. Mahmoud Abbas’ PLO faction is Number 22 of the 22 members of the Arab League. All other members of the Arab League have seats in the UN. Of these, how many are free? None. How many are friendly to the U.S.? Two or three? How many are willing to let Israel exist as a Jewish state? One?

Given this state of affairs, why is it in America’s interest to press for a twenty-second member of the Arab League? Why do we need another vote against the U.S. in the UN?

Why should we reward people who cheered, fired rifles in the air, danced in the streets and gave candy to their children when the Twin Towers collapsed in flames?

The Arabs of Palestine have done nothing to gain the backing of the American people. It is only the State Department apparatchiks, liberal journalists, and dreamy academics who think granting statehood to people so obviously friendly to terrorists and hostile to us would be a good idea.

Years ago, Prime Minister Menachem Begin took questions from Washington group of supporters of Israel. One well-dressed gentleman boldly challenged the Israeli leader. “Do you always have to put Israel’s case in such negative terms? Can’t you ever be for something? I’m in public relations and I can assure you, saying Yes is better than always saying No.”

The prime minister stroked his chin thoughtfully and smiled. He thanked the PR Exec for his support for the Jewish State. He promised to consult his Cabinet colleagues.

Then he said: “Yes, I appreciate what you have said. But you will grant me this much, sir, in our region of the world, there are certain honorable precedents for ‘Thou shalt not!” When it comes to setting up another Hamastan, another Terrorist State with a UN Seat, Begin’s advice is best: Thou Shalt not.

Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison are senior fellows at the Family Research Council, in Washington, D.C.