Israeli “Settlements” Not The Issue

The left’s short-sighted preoccupation with Israeli “settlements” ignores the historic and strategic rationale behind them. For hundreds of years, Israel has traded land for peace; it has never worked. President Obama attempted to pressure the Israeli’s to end the development of these settlements. Many experts not only predicted that this policy would be a failure, but also questioned Obama’s naïveté.

The American Thinker touched on this topic quite well:

The other day, an Israeli archeologist presented a discovery of Biblical coins going back to the fall of Jerusalem in 67-70 C.E. It was the Roman Emperor-to-be Titus Flavius Vespasianus who conquered Jerusalem that year and razed it to the ground.

That was a long time ago, you say. But in Jerusalem, it’s right there in a never-ending flow of archeological discoveries. It’s here and now. Most of those Second Temple shekels went molten in the fire that swept the city when the Romans finally brought down the walls, killing innumerable Jews. Genocide was official Roman policy for rebels against Rome. In the city of Rome today you can still see the triumphal arch Titus built for himself, depicting his celebratory parade followed by the defeated Jews in chains. They are carrying an enormous Menorah carved in the marble on the top of Titus’ triumphal arch.

American military people can still understand that, but most American civilians can’t. We live only in the present. The average American has forgotten even Pearl Harbor, not to mention all the other bloody American sacrifices that still make us safe today. Third-world Socialists like Obama can never, ever understand it. Obama was quoted sanctimoniously honking that “more settlement-building doesn’t make Israel safer.” That lofty and typically arrogant platitude is contradicted for Israelis when they look at those rows upon rows of Jerusalem stone buildings, every row another fortification against an enemy that has never stopped attacking. The “settlers” are those people putting their bodies — and their children’s bodies — on the line of defense.