Soccer Dad

Cohen's revision

A few years ago, Richard Cohen wrote an article saying that Israel was a mistake. Though I've read that he didn't mean it the way he wrote it, it was still offensive. Today he writes, Time Stands Still in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which, I believe what he was trying to say in that earlier column.

First Cohen observes that despite the pressure President Obama exerted against Israel ...

For Obama, the figures must be disheartening. They strongly suggest that his attempt to woo the Arab world, to convince it that America can be an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians, has dismally failed. In fact, the extent of this failure is most stark in Lebanon. There, 100 percent of Shiite respondents -- in other words, Hezbollah and others -- have no faith in Obama and his good intentions. This may be a setback for Obama, but it is paradoxically a success for American values.

What the Arab world seems to appreciate is that America will never agree to what the Arab world most wants -- an Islamic state where a Jewish one now exists. This entirely reasonable conclusion is based on what has long been American policy -- not what the State Department wanted but what the American people supported. America has always liked the idea of Israel. The Arab world, for totally understandable reasons, has always hated it. Nothing has changed.

I wouldn't describe the hatred of the Arab/Muslim world as understandable, but overall this is pretty accurate.

Towards the end Cohen writes:

This is why Obama's overture to the Arab world, clumsily executed, was never going to succeed. America can please some Arab governments -- Egypt and Jordan, for instance -- but not the Arab people. What they want, and what they have been told repeatedly they deserve, is a return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel and control over all of Jerusalem. These are both out of the question as far as Israel is concerned. It is not willing to give up its capital and, in a relatively short time, its Jewish majority.

Of course if the Arab people weren't fed a steady stream of antisemitic propaganda, this might not be the case. But then Cohen's conclusion doesn't quite match the rest of his op-ed:

This week, Palestinians and Israelis will once again talk peace in Washington. But until both sides, particularly the Arab peoples, give up on what they really want, the clock will remain where it has been. Those Pew polls show that's around 1947.

"Both sides?"