My reply to the Philly Inquirer's Dick Pollman

The Philadelphia Inquirer published my letter the other day - a reply to Dick Pollman's piece about what he feels is the Republicans' increasing irrelevance to a majority of Americans - but they decided to edit out a key passage in which, while disagreeing strongly with Pollman's insinuation that the Republican's opposition to gay marriage is the cause of this decline in popularity, I express my support for gay marriage. Here's the original letter that I submitted to the Inquirer.

Dick Pollman's diatribe about how out of touch and irrelevant the GOP is (This Party's Over, 5/3) presents, as exhibit A, the party's opposition to gay marriage, and further argues that young people flocked to the Democratic party in the last Presidential election due, in large measure, to this issue, which renders the GOP in their eyes as " intolerant and exclusionary."

Yet, this explanation totally ignores the fact that Barak Obama himself, both as a candidate and now as President, is consistently on record as being in opposition to gay marriage - and has been very clear in his support of defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Further, with polls showing Americans pretty much evenly split on the issue - and with liberal states such as California voting against a gay marriage amendment - it is incorrect to argue that there is anything approaching a majority consensus on the issue.

While I happen to be a Republican who supports gay marriage, on both moral and more libertarian principles, I don't think that its fair of Pollman to characterize the many decent Americans, both Republicans or Democrats, who are on the other side of this difficult issue as backwards and reactionary. The fact is that, for many people on the Left (such as Pollman), the tolerance they so passionately advocate interestingly doesn't include tolerance for those on the other side of the political fence.

On the Hamas "Peace Plan" (or, Hope over Reality)

Below is a spot on take-down of the, at times, unintentionally hilarious recent NY Times piece on the "Hamas peace plan", by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. Only the Times could conduct a full-length interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and argue, with a straight face, that he seeks peace. One of the most tragic aspects of the devolution of left-wing thought is their propensity to project their own values, of tolerance and accomodation, on governments and cultures who continually make clear, by word and by deed, their opposition to such democratic mores. While there clearly are some grey areas, Hamas is not one of them. Their malicious intent against Jews and Israelis has been annunciated countless times - including being codified in their founding charter, which actually quotes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to "prove" that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world - and has been demonstrated in deed in the form of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilians since their rise to power in Gaza in 2007.

At its core, the left-wing propensity to argue that Hamas is willing to make peace with Israel seems to be motivated by a wish to legitimize their hope in the "peace process" - a process and a goal which most Israelis, and most of Israel's supporters in the West, view with increasing suspicion in light of what's occurred after the Israeli withdraw of Gaza, and the horrid possibility that a Palestinian state in the West Bank will eventually be ruled by Hamas - despite overwhelming evidence that the presence of Hamas (not to mention Hezbollah) and other radical elements within Palestinian society make such a process futile at best.

The only way to get to an effective two-state solution is for Palestinians to rid their political culture of such radicalism, and build a democratic culture and institutions of government capable of actually implementing an eventual peace deal. In short, peace can not be dictated from above (by the U.S., the E.U., the Quartet, etc.), but must be created from below.

The Hamas 'Peace' Gambit

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 8, 2009

"Apart from the time restriction (a truce that lapses after 10 years) and the refusal to accept Israel's existence, Mr. Meshal's terms approximate the Arab League peace plan . . ."

-- Hamas peace plan, as explained by the New York Times

"Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

-- Tom Lehrer, satirist

The Times conducted a five-hour interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal at his Damascus headquarters. Mirabile dictu, they're offering a peace plan with a two-state solution. Except. The offer is not a peace but a truce that expires after 10 years. Meaning that after Israel has fatally weakened itself by settling millions of hostile Arab refugees in its midst, and after a decade of Hamas arming itself within a Palestinian state that narrows Israel to eight miles wide -- Hamas restarts the war against a country it remains pledged to eradicate.

There is a phrase for such a peace: the peace of the grave.

Westerners may be stupid, but Hamas is not. It sees the new American administration making overtures to Iran and Syria. It sees Europe, led by Britain, beginning to accept Hezbollah. It sees itself as next in line. And it knows what to do. Yasser Arafat wrote the playbook.

With the 1993 Oslo accords, he showed what can be achieved with a fake peace treaty with Israel -- universal diplomatic recognition, billions of dollars of aid, and control of Gaza and the West Bank, which Arafat turned into an armed camp. In return for a signature, he created in the Palestinian territories the capacity to carry on the war against Israel that the Arab states had begun in 1948 but had given up after the bloody hell of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Meshal sees the opportunity. Not only is the Obama administration reaching out to its erstwhile enemies in the region, but it begins its term by wagging an angry finger at Israel over the Netanyahu government's ostensible refusal to accept a two-state solution.

Of all the phony fights to pick with Israel. No Israeli government would turn down a two-state solution in which the Palestinians accepted territorial compromise and genuine peace with a Jewish state. (And any government that did would be voted out in a day.) Netanyahu's own defense minister, Ehud Barak, offered precisely such a deal in 2000. He even offered to divide Jerusalem and expel every Jew from every settlement remaining in the new Palestine.

The Palestinian response (for those who have forgotten) was: No. And no counteroffer. Instead, nine weeks later, Arafat unleashed a savage terror war that killed 1,000 Israelis.

Netanyahu is reluctant to agree to a Palestinian state before he knows what kind of state it will be. That elementary prudence should be shared by anyone who's been sentient the last three years. The Palestinians already have a state, an independent territory with not an Israeli settler or soldier living on it. It's called Gaza. And what is it? A terror base, Islamist in nature, Iranian-allied, militant and aggressive, that has fired more than 10,000 rockets and mortar rounds at Israeli civilians.

If this is what a West Bank state is going to be, it would be madness for Israel or America or Jordan or Egypt or any other moderate Arab country to accept such a two-state solution. Which is why Netanyahu insists that the Palestinian Authority first build institutions -- social, economic and military -- to anchor a state that could actually carry out its responsibilities to keep the peace.

Apart from being reasonable, Netanyahu's two-state skepticism is beside the point. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, worshiped at the shrine of a two-state solution. He made endless offers of a two-state peace to the Palestinian Authority -- and got nowhere.

Why? Because the Palestinians -- going back to the U.N. partition resolution of 1947 -- have never accepted the idea of living side by side with a Jewish state. Those like Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who might want to entertain such a solution, have no authority to do it. And those like Hamas's Meshal, who have authority, have no intention of ever doing it.

Meshal's gambit to dress up perpetual war as a two-state peace is yet another iteration of the Palestinian rejectionist tragedy. In its previous incarnation, Arafat lulled Israel and the Clinton administration with talk of peace while he methodically prepared his people for war.

Arafat waited seven years to tear up his phony peace. Meshal's innovation? Ten -- then blood.