![\"Tel](\"http:\/\/marcschulman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/DSC_0022.jpg\")
<\/a>Tel Aviv holds a solidarity vigil with Brussels<\/p><\/div>\n
Which brings me to the AIPAC conference.\u00a0 This afternoon Israel time Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke to the convention.\u00a0 Since it was in the midst of the non-stop news from Belgium it was carried live on Israeli TV.\u00a0 In fact, it was shown on split screen with Netanyahu filling a third of the screen and the pictures of the destruction at the airport taking up the rest.\u00a0 Netanyahu\u2019s speech was not all that different from speeches that he has given in the past.\u00a0 This speech \u00a0began with condolences to the victims of today’s attacks.\u00a0 He, of course presented the standard line that the terror attacks in Europe are merely a continuation of the terror attacks against Israel.\u00a0 Terror with no real goals.\u00a0 Usually, I just dismiss that view, and part of it is clearly ridiculous.\u00a0 Regardless of one’s political views, it must be admitted that the Palestinians have a grievance.\u00a0 Does it justify terrorism of course not, but one should not say they have no grievance.\u00a0 On the other hand, I have recently begun to believe there is a greater link between the act of the ISIS and our dispute with the Palestinian then we have understood to date.\u00a0 That tentative link I believe is the difficulty that Islam has in making compromises. After all, we would never have had 70 years of war if the Arab\/Muslims of Palestine had been willing to compromise in 1947.\u00a0 Or if they had been willing to accept their defeat in 1949 and just resettle in new places.\u00a0 I believe we have underplayed the religious element of the conflict. \u00a0 Its been easy in the last few years to say that the window of compromise was closing as the conflict has become more religious and less a secular nationalist conflict.\u00a0 However what if it was always a religious conflict and we just did not recognize it.<\/p>\n
Now finally to Trump, I had no doubt that AIPAC had to invite him.\u00a0 He is after all the most likely Republican candidate for President.\u00a0 I also opposed the walkout for the same reason.\u00a0 On the other hand the enthusiasm that he was received with was stunning and depressing.\u00a0 How a Jewish group could receive a demagogue with such enthusiasm is beyond my understanding.\u00a0 Even more importantly how can anyone believe that Trump is the best candidate for Israel. I say that on two levels.\u00a0 First, his contradictory statements. Who knows what he actually believes.\u00a0 But more importantly, his stated policies for US foreign relations will, without doubt, weaken the United States in the world.\u00a0 The strength of Israel is indirectly tied to the strength of the United States.\u00a0 A Trump presidency would clearly weaken America in the world.<\/p>\n
One final comment on the speech that Bernie Sanders did not give but published, It showed a sophisticated understanding of Israel and the Middle East, but he loses me when he attacks the disproportional Israeli response to the missile fire from Gaza.\u00a0 It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of \u00a0the average Israeli.\u00a0 I am sorry so many people died in Gaza, but all that had to happen to stop the killing was for Hamas to stop firing rockets at us. I am not sorry that \u00a0the missiles that were meant to kill me were intercepted by our anti-missile systems and thus, our response was \u201cdisproportional\u201d\u00a0 .\u00a0 I want all our encounters with our enemies to result in disproportional results.\u00a0 That will end when they fully accept our existence here, there unwillingness to compromise may in fact be indicative of their religious inhibitions to compromise<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I woke up this morning I was planning to write about Trump\u2019s speech at AIPAC last night, it was the last thing I heard as I was going to sleep.\u00a0 By the time I got back home this morning the news alert came across my phone of a bombing in Brussels.\u00a0 Israeli news went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":444,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}