Cohen the Coverslut

According to Jeffrey Kacrick's "The Word Museum", one of several books on English I possess, a cover-slut, p. 49, is "something that covers sluttishness" (and not this girl band). Yes, Roger Cohen is at it again.

In an op-ed entitled "Clinton’s Mideast Pirouette", he takes absolute delight that "The sparring between the United States and Israel has begun, and that’s a good thing".

He claims "I hear that Clinton was shocked by what she saw on her visit last month to the West Bank...If Clinton cares about one thing, it’s human suffering" and then asserts:

In fact, you don’t so much drive into the Palestinian territories these days as sink into them. Everything, except the Jewish settlers’ cars on fenced settlers-only highways, slows down. The buzz of business gives way to the clunking of hammers.

The whole desolate West Bank scene is punctuated with garrison-like settlements on hilltops. If you’re looking for a primer on colonialism, this is not a bad place to start.

Clinton witnessed it. She was, I understand, troubled by the humiliation around her.

Well, I'm shocked, too.

To the extent that the area is desolate, and we'll exclude the actual desert of the eastern portions of the Samarian Hills as well as the Judean Desert, whose fault is that if not the Arabs? But, of course, desolation is a subjective term. The grapes, the olive trees are not signs of desolation and in any case, we Jews are doing our best to make things bloom.

And as for those "garrisons", if it weren't for Arab terror, who would need to assume a defensive position?

But the reality is that except for a few isolated outposts, areas such as Efrat, Alon Shvut, Maaleh Adumin, Ariel, Alfei Menasheh and others, were thousands and even tens of thousands live give the lie to Cohen's description.

He then goes off on his Iran tangent, misinforming us:

At Madrid, at Oslo and at Annapolis, over a 16-year span, attempts were made to advance peace while excluding Iran. That doesn’t work; it won’t work now. The trick is to usher Israel-Palestine peace efforts and the quest for a U.S.-Iran rapprochement along in parallel.

He actually expected Khomeini to make peace with Israel?

and adds

No peace can be made by pretending Hamas does not exist, which is why advancing Palestinian unity must be a U.S. priority.

Yes, dear Roger, but is it not Hamas which "pretends" that Israel doesn't exist? Or is it not you that pretends that Arab terror, faith-based animosity and Islamic antisemitism doesn't exist?

You're such a cover-slut.

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From a comment found there later:

...I would argue that we cannot delay any more. Israel must immediately end its military occupation of these lands and apply Israeli law thereto, granting full economic and social rights to the inhabitants of these lands, Jew and Arab alike. The One State solution is the only solution.

Mr. Cohen’s excesses are also evident when he refers to continued Israeli settlement of these areas as a “primer on colonialism”. Colonialism, as understood during the period from the 15th to 20th century refers to a system of building colonies by one people, in the territory of another, for profit, to expand the power of the metropole, to escape persecution in the metropole, or to convert the indigenous population to the colonists' religion. None of the above applies in the West Bank.

Additionally, there is no support for the argument that the West Bank is the land of another. The land that comprises the West Bank was Israeli, Roman, Ottoman, British, Jordanian, and now under Israel military occupation. The term Colonialism therefore has no application in the West Bank except to support the arguments of those desperate to support the Two-State solution and de-legitimize Jewish development of the land in conformity with Israel and International Law.

Finally and most frustrating for this writer, is reading claims that Israel must work with Hamas or other Islamic fundamentalist elements operating in the Middle East to achieve peace while the United States and other Western powers spend their time bombing or working to isolate such Islamic movements in Afghanistan (Taliban), Pakistan, Iraq (Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia), Iran, and elsewhere. Maybe if Western powers started negotiating with these movements with success, it could pressure Israel to do the same. Until then, Mr. Cohen should find something else to do with his free time.

— A. Gareleck, Binyamin, Israel

And now my one comment is up as is also my second comment.