Its been a while since I wrote a blog piece. For the last month since I stated working for Emerging Market Reports plus started MYIsraelNews I have gone from writing one or two articles top for Newsweek plus a blog piece or two every week, to writing on average ten stories a day. While I am enjoying it and Emerging Markets is helping to pay our bills, writing a blog article which is more writing sometime seems like a mountain too high to climb. Since we are effectively in the midst of a five day weekend in Israel and I cannot imagine there will be any economic news until Wednesday to write about and hopefully no political military news, I thought I would take a few minutes to share some thoughts. Furthermore I am hopeful that this will be a quiet week and my Newsweek article long planned but not yet written will be this week about the Jewish vote in the US. On Wednesday we will have been back in Israel for five year, I hope to reflect on that then, so here are some random thoughts that I did not want to write for Newsweek as a new Jewish year begins
First on the decision of the Joint Arab List not to attend Peres funeral: it was in my mind one of the stupidest things I have seen lately, and while they are not part of the traditional left in this country it is another example of the left committing collective suicide. The Left including the Arabs seem more concerned about being right than accomplishing anything. Accomplishing something is a matter of convincing voters. You do not convince voters this way. You do not convince the average Israelis that is ever a chance at reconciliation when you effectively say that even Peres who spent the last quarter of his life trying to find a way to achieve peace cannot be forgiven for earlier “mistakes” than how do you ever reach peace. It was terrible decision and will effectively delegitimize the Joint List further.
The decision of the White House to correct the Email to the press: I am officially a member of the White House press corp- (because of my section on the web site on the Obama Presidency. ) I along with the rest of the Press Corp received Friday night an Email that corrected an earlier E-mail with Obama remarks at the funeral. The original one said Mt Herzl Jerusalem, Israel the corrected one marked out Israel .One has to keep in mind this has been US policy since Harry TrumanI checked back at all my E mails from the earlier visit and everything said Jerusalem without Israel. My daughters passports say Jerusalem and not Israel as place of birth. The US never officially recognized any de jure borders beyond the 1947 partition plan and Jerusalem was suppose to an international city under that plan, This time it was a mistake that should have just been left alone. President Obama left behind good will with his speech, it was partially undermined by this correction
A few thoughts on the death of President Peres: Israel faces a real crisis. When I was speaking to Herzog on Thursday night he compared it to the US after the Founding Fathers, but I mentioned to him that did not go that well for the US- He agreed and said that was our challenge. It really is a problem for the country, after Netanyahu the other leaders of Likud are not very competent people to say the least. That does not bode well for the future. They say the whole world suffers from a lock of leaders, our suffering is worse than many places.
One comment on the US elections: I am astounded that there are people who are actually planning to vote for Trump. Its seems inconceivable that anyone can think after all we have seen that this man should be in the Oval Office. There has never been someone less prepared and less suited for the Presidency. You can agree or disagree with policy but I am not sure how anyone can disagree about the man fitness to be President. A further issue for Jews remains the fact that he brings out the worse in Americans, including a level of anti-semitism that we may have all thought existed but are shocked to see out in the open the United States
My last thought Before Rosh Hashanah relates to Syria. As an American and as an Israelis I am ashamed. We have been spending the past 70 years saying never again, and yet when it comes down to it, its Never Again only when its easy- or maybe when its Jews, I am not sure which. There are only two countries that could have stopped the at least part of the slaughter in Syria, the US and Israel. The US for reasons I will never fathom did not because of President Obama’s unwillingness to use conventional force, has led to his decision not to even threaten the use of forces, and Israel because it’s not in our interest. From the Israeli perspective we need to stop talking about how the world did not do enough during the World War II to stop the holocaust. It was not in their military interest to do more, even if they could have, which is a highly disputed historic point . It’s not in our national interest to get involved, but if we wanted to we could ground the Syrian air force in a matter of minutes.
