Friday, June 12, 2009

Appalling Obama Is

George F. Will at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, in celebration of the Claremont Review of Books. He took a few questions, including one that led him to reflect on President Obama’s apparent belief that disharmony among nations results from misunderstandings that can be cured by dialogue and communication.

And he said (clip here)

We’ve seen this in his treatment of Israel in that remarkable speech, the atmospherics of which were fine, the specifics appalling...How many Americans understand that when Israel was founded in 1948, no Palestinian state was invaded, no Palestinian state was destroyed? There had not been a Palestinian geographic entity since between the departure of the Romans and the arrival of British rule.

How many know that the West Bank, referred to by the President as “occupied territory,” inferentially as occupied Palestinian territory, is under international law unallocated portion of the Palestine Mandate rightfully occupied by Israel, because it occupied it in repelling aggression that came from that territory in 1967...

How the President believes that if we return to the 1967 borders, the antipathy to Israel, which predated the 1967 borders, will disappear, I do not know.

...It is unworthy of the United States to aspire to be even-handed between those who would destroy and those who would preserve the only democracy in that region...

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