Acting against intelligence

Mr. Obama’s diktat  that Israel return to its 1967 borders is a trenchant repudiation of the skilled military assessments upon which American presidents are meant to rely.

Lt.-Gen. Thomas Kelly, director of operations for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Gulf War, said: “It is impossible to defend Jerusalem unless you hold that high ground [in Judaea-Samaria]. I look out from those heights and look onto the West Bank and say to myself, ‘If I’m the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, I cannot defend this land without that terrain.’ ” (Jerusalem Post, Nov. 7, 1991)

General Kelly was reiterating what previous Joint Chiefs had determined. A study by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in June 1967 concluded: “From a strictly military point of view Israel would require the retention of some captured Arab territory in order to provide militarily defensible borders … [including] control of the prominent high ground running north-south through the middle of West Jordan [Judaea-Samaria],” as well as the entire Gaza Strip and the entire Golan Heights.

In an interview with a German news magazine, Abba Eban, the late South African-born, English-educated man who became Israel’s Foreign Minister said it best:

“We have openly said that the map will never again be the same as of June 4, 1967. For us, this is a matter of security and of principles. The June map is for us equivalent to insecurity and danger. I do not exaggerate when I say that it has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz. We shudder when we think of what would have awaited us in the circumstances of June, 1967, if we had been defeated; with Syrians on the mountain and we in the valley, with the Jordanian army in sight of the sea, with the Egyptians who hold our throat in their hands in Gaza. This is a situation which will never be repeated in history.” (Der Spiegel, Nov. 5, 1969)

Acting against intelligence assessments from previous Joint Chiefs of Staff, the will of the Congress in 2004 and Israel’s own long-standing assessments, Mr. Obama becomes comforter of and collaborator with brutalists who espouse a 7th Century-mindset. Arafat, Hamas, Hezbollah, et al. literally have the blood of Jewish innocents on their hands.

Israel’s “peace partner” Hamas’ recent outrage, the cold-blooded killing of the Fogel family, proves the point. Father Udi, 37; mother Ruth, 36; 10-year-old Yoav; 4-year-old Elad; and 3-month-old Hadas were all butchered. Hamas did not ‘merely’ stab and slay wee Hadas, they severed her head.

Perhaps The White House doesn’t read the world’s press. More likely, it just doesn’t give a damn about either Israel or the Jewish people. 

J. Scott Brown

Leawood, Kan.