Notice How Kadima Get's Into the Ambassador's Statement

In early 1971, for almost half a year, I was Sallai Meridor's youth movement leader, in Hebrew: madrich. He was maybe 15 or so then.

Here's Sallai's statement, as Israel's Ambassador to the United States, on the Mitchell appointment:

As the United States and Israel continue to work jointly on achieving peace and stability in the Middle East, and of countering the common threat of terrorism and state sponsors of terror from acquiring nuclear weapons, we warmly welcome and congratulate Senator George Mitchell on his appointment as special envoy for Middle East peace.

“Israel holds Senator Mitchell in high regard and looks forward to working with him on taking the next steps towards realizing a future of peace and security for Israel and her neighbors.

Looking forward, in Hebrew is מסתכלים קדימה or mistaklim kadima.

Kadima?

And by the way, I wouldn't be so excited and anxious about his mission.

And neither is Daniel Pipes:

First, how can one hold in high regard someone who came out with the wretched Sharm El-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee Report also known as the "Mitchell Report" of April 2001? I did an analysis of it when it appeared at "Mitchell report missed it." I called it "a great disappointment." A couple of excerpts:

it reveals the would-be peacemaker´s typical unwillingness to judge right and wrong.… Not wanting to offend, in other words, creates an illusionary balance of blame ("Fear, hate, anger, and frustration have risen on both sides," says the report) that makes it impossible to distinguish between aggressor and victim, between right and wrong.

the Mitchell report suggests that Israel "should freeze all settlement activity" to mollify the Palestinians. This is a step the Israelis never agreed to, even when negotiations were under way. To do so now rewards the Palestinians for engaging in violence, something objectionable in principle and ineffectual in practice.

the report emphasizes getting the two parties back to the negotiating table, as though this were an end in itself. It seems oblivious to the important fact that negotiations over the past eight years did not bring the parties closer to a settlement but, to the contrary, exacerbated differences and had a role in the outbreak of violence.

I found that Mitchell and his committee were "myopically unaware of the real issue at hand, which is not violence, or Jewish settlements, or Jerusalem. It is, rather, the enduring Arab reluctance to accept the existence of a sovereign Jewish state." I suggested that, the real solution "lies not in getting the parties back as fast as possible to diplomacy, but in instilling in the Palestinians an awareness of the futility of their use of violence against the Jewish state."