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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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March 1, 2008 Dear Senator McCain by Gerald A. Honigman
As an independent thinker, I've related to your willingness to espouse positions even when they clashed with those of the majority of your political party. Among many other things (like your positive approach to dealing with real or potential environmental concerns), your willingness to take on campaign finance reform and lobbyists has also been admirable--regardless of the recent New York Times unfounded assertions. So, here's my dilemma. Coming home from work today, I heard on the news that former Secretary of State, James Baker III, has endorsed your candidacy. No shock here, since you're both Conservative Republicans and self-proclaimed admirers of President Ronald Reagan. The problem emerges from your end of this story. Rather than reinventing the wheel, please read these excerpts from a Jason Maoz article which appeared back on May 12, 2006 in JewishPress.com: McCain told Haaretz that as president, he would "micromanage" U.S. policy toward Israel and the Palestinians and would dispatch "the smartest guy I know" to the region, presumably to jump-start a new push for a comprehensive accord. Asked who that "smartest guy" might be, McCain responded: "Brent Scowcroft, or James Baker, though I know that you in Israel don't like Baker." McCain foresaw "concessions and sacrifices by both sides" and indicated that Israel would be expected to "Defend itself and keep evacuating." Asked whether that meant "movement toward the June 4, 1967 armistice lines, with minor modifications," McCain, reported Haaretz, "nodded in the affirmative." Before dealing with that last paragraph above, there's something else that's even more troublesome. Imagine, for one moment, the public response if you suggested appointing someone for a sensitive, high position in your administration who openly stated, "f_ _ k the Blacks, they don't vote for us anyway" and who referred to Black employees and colleagues as his "Black Boys." A nauseating and disastrous thought, not so? Well, Senator McCain, Baker has said just those very same things about Jews. While many are taking Barack Obama to task for his ties to Black racists and anti-Semites, Baker--your buddy--is cut from this same mold. While you distance yourself from The New York Times' unfair allegations regarding lobbyists, is it wise to embrace the man who most epitomizes the Big Oil and Arab oil potentate petrodollar lobby in America, James Baker III (the lobby that makes AIPAC laughable)? Baker's law firm represents Saudi and other Arab interests and has made G_d only knows how many millions of dollars off of them. His law partner is U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and his firm represents the latter against American 9/11 victims...! As President George H. W. Bush's Secretary of State, Baker promised Iraq's Saddam Hussein's Syrian Arab twin butcher, Hafez al-Assad, a total withdrawal from the Golan Heights...without consulting Israel. The Golan was lost as a result of repeated Syrian attacks against Israel launched from the Heights and was ruled by many different peoples--including Jews--throughout history. Indeed, before some imperialist trading after World War I between the Brits and the French, the Heights were to be part of the Mandate of Palestine. Please visit http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/GeraldHonigman51107.htm for further elaboration on this. Nations who repeatedly attack neighbors have often lost lands they launched aggression from. Let's return to your claim in the quote above that you'd expect Israel to return to its 1949, 9-mile wide, Auschwitz/armistice line existence--the one which requires a magnifying glass to find it on a map. As a naval aviator, you were shot down defending America's interests many thousands of miles away from home. Recall that America has acquired territories and bases as a result of past wars fought all over the world. Not to mention America's own southwest (in the President's and your own neck of the woods)--which used to be Mexico. Israel is not three thousand miles wide as America is, does not have a population of some three hundred million, and is not separated from its enemies by two vast oceans. The wars Israel is forced to fight are not about projecting influence or protecting interests thousands of miles away, but are fought for its very survival and against murderous enemies who deliberately target the most innocent right in its own backyard...on land on which Jews have lived for thousands of years. Senator, while it's now become proper for you and others to speak of the al-Qaida bogeyman, long before the latter existed, other Arab organizations just like it were disemboweling Jewish kids. By your statement above, you apparently expect Jews to once again expose the necks of their children to such folks. Neither the alleged good cop Fatah of Abbas and his latter day, necktied Arafatians, nor the more honest bad cops of Hamas are willing to accept a Jewish (as in Polish, Danish, Irish, etc.) State of Israel. Go to their websites, see their textbooks, hear their imams, and listen to what both tell their own people. Israel was promised, in the wake of the '67 War, that it would not be expected to return to the Auschwitz lines. The final draft of UNSC Resolution 242 called for secure and recognized borders to replace those lines; and any withdrawal at all was to be made in the context of real peace treaties--not Arabs' hudna ceasefire bull manure, designed only to gain the latter time to strengthen themselves. Here's what President Reagan, whom you and Baker supposedly admire, had to say about this same subject on September 1, 1982: In the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely 10-miles wide...the bulk of Israel's population within artillery range of hostile armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again. In 1988, Secretary of State George Shultz declared, "Israel will never negotiate from or return to the 1967 borders." As Ambassador Dore Gold and others continued to also point out, right after hostilities subsided, President Lyndon Johnson summarized the situation this way on June 19, 1967: A return to the situation on June 4 (the day before outbreak of war) was not a prescription for peace but for renewed hostilities." He then called for "new recognized boundaries that would provide security against terror, destruction, and war." Johnson was then backed up by General Earle Wheeler of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and many others as well. Here's a brief excerpt from Wheeler's Pentagon document prepared for Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on June 29, 1967: ...Israel would require retention of some captured Arab territory to provide militarily defensible borders. Keep in mind that in 1967, in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Israel took these lands in a defensive war from an illegal occupant--Transjordan--which subsequently renamed itself Jordan as a result of its 1949 illegal acquisition of non-apportioned lands of the original 1920 Mandate west of the Jordan River that Jews as well as Arabs were legally entitled to live on. Indeed, Jews have thousands of years of history connecting them to these lands and owned property and lived there up until their massacres by Arabs in the 1920s and 1930s. Also recall that Transjordan was itself created by the Brits in 1922 on some 80% of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine. The 22nd Arab state the world insists upon--while ignoring the continued plight of 35 million used and abused stateless Kurds--will be the Arabs' second one in Palestine--not their first. Additionally, many, if not most, of the Arabs themselves were relative newcomers, pouring in--as The Records of the Permanent Mandates Commission and other documentation show--from Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere in the region. General Wheeler's document also envisioned Israel acquiring an adequate buffer zone atop the West Bank mountain ridge, in command of the high ground, giving it at least some semblance of in depth defense. Surely, as a military man who asserts America's right to fight all around the world on behalf of our own interests (which I largely agree with), your position regarding a miniscule Israel's right to some semblance of defensible borders is a source of serious confusion...especially given the nature of the enemy Israel faces. After its total withdrawal from Gaza over two years ago, Israel has been attacked daily anyway--Sderot bearing most of the brunt of the death and destruction. This is precisely what Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and so forth can look forward to if Israel is forced into an updated Chamberlain/Munich-style "peace" with either the good cop or bad cop Arab rejectionists. Would an America led by President McCain expose itself this way? If not, then why bully Israel so? Arafat's hand-picked chief lieutenant, the "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas, heads an organization with at least as much Jewish blood on its hands as Hamas has. He simply sweet talks an all-too-willingly gullible West better. Billions of dollars are at stake, and Arafat's foreign bank accounts are legendary. Folks like James Baker indirectly cash in on this too. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice already has an oil tanker named after her, not to mention the Bush family's own substantial Arab petrodollar connections. And fear not, the Arabs have not ignored their Democrat buddies either, as Jimmy Apartheid Israel Carter and Bill Clinton can testify to. Millions of dollars were contributed to the latter's library not long after he had Arafat to the White House repeatedly. The coming presidential election promises to be a close one. There are many qualified folks who are not tainted the way Baker and his ilk are. All it will take is for folks who are upset with the above (and many besides Jews are) to stay home rather than vote at all to assure a Republican defeat. While some, if not many, will not vote for Obama or Clinton, they will also not be able to vote for Senator John McCain either. And that, in my opinion, would be a shame. Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has done extensive doctoral studies in Middle Eastern Affairs. He has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated many Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in dozens of newspapers, magazines, academic journals and websites all around the world. Visit his website at http://geraldahonigman.com/.
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I
have followed your career fairly closely over the
years, often with pride.
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