(Akiit.com) Last week during a long-awaited speech in Egypt televised to most of the Arab world, President Obama called for “a new beginning” in the relationship between the United States and Muslims. He declared that the “cycle of distrust and discord must end.”
The president’s speech sounded good. It was sorely needed after eight years of hostility from the Bush administration. And, indeed, it was politely received by most Islamic leaders including the heads of radical organizations such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
However, everything the president said will be for naught and the situation in the Middle East will get even worse if the Obama administration does not get tough with Israel and stop the Jewish state from continuingly doing the very things which for years have made peace in the region impossible.
There is a pro-Israel bias in most of the major American media. As a result, most Americans have been led to believe that the core problems in the Middle East are the Arab refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist and terrorist acts by Palestinians who hate Israelis for reasons the media never bothers to explain.
The picture painted by most U.S. news organizations is simply false.
The core problems preventing peace in the Middle East are threefold:
- 1) The state of Israel was created in 1948 on land which the Palestinians feel was taken from them and for which they have never received just compensation;
2) In wars which have followed the creation of Israel, especially the 1967 war, Israel has seized additional Arabs lands and refuses to relinquish them; and
3) Israel oppresses the Palestinian people and continues to insult them by establishing even more Jewish settlements on lands which it knows belongs to the Palestinians.
During the recent U.S. meeting with newly elected, hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama and Vice President Biden made it clear that the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands had to stop and that there had to be a so-called “two-state solution” in which the Arabs would recognize Israel’s right to exist and the Palestinians would be allowed to come out from under Israeli oppression and build a nation of their own.
Within a week of leaving Washington and returning to Tel Aviv, Netanyahu, in effect, slapped Obama in the face by announcing even more Jewish settlements to be built on Arab lands and appearing to reject the “two-state solution.”
It is this type of lawlessness by the Israelis that Obama must bring to an end. Israel operates as a law unto itself in the Middle East. It bombs and invades other nations when it pleases. It seizes land and establishes Jewish settlements in clear violation of international law. In addition, it kills just about anyone it pleases simply by labeling him a terrorist. It never provides proof nor does it go through the formality of a trial. It simply assassinates.
These are the reasons the Islamic world says it is waiting on Obama’s actions not just his words. They know the U.S. is Israel’s primary backer and benefactor with billions of dollars in support each and every year. Thus, the U.S. is in a position to bring Israel to heel but has not.
If Israel cannot be curtailed and forced to obey international law, there will never be peace in the Middle East. No speech can change that fact.
Written By Robert Taylor