Did Obama never understand why the Jewish State is in Palestine and not, say, Madagascar?

Reactions in Israel

First, there is and has been all along the purely religious conviction of an ancient, divine land grant that justified conquest, genocide, and religious tyranny at the time and justifies forcible re-possession today.

Second, there is and has been all along a secular, moral conviction that a national state more than 2,000 years in the past justifies forcible re-creation of another for the same nation in the same territory, even at the cost of conquest and forcible removal of a civilized community established some 1300 years ago.

And, last, there is and has been since the end of The Second World War a conviction abroad in America mightily encouraged by American liberals and especially Jewish American liberals that gentile Europe and America have a moral obligation to support and defend Israel because of the Holocaust that much of Europe joined Germany in perpetrating and the rest, along with America, failed to prevent.

The first two define the enterprise of Zionism, and have done so from the beginning.

The last is the hook still in the mouths of America, the nations of Western Europe, and Germany.

The Jewish conquest of Palestine began at the end of the 19th Century and has continued since then without interruption.

Those who support Israeli expansion today are only supporting continuation of a process that was not even significantly interrupted, let alone ended or completed, with the UN creation of Israel in 1948.

In the nature of the case, that process can end only with the complete establishment of a Jewish State extending over pretty much the whole territory of the ancient Jewish state, at its high point.

However much Israel has in common with the general run of European settler states created by the wave of European colonialism and imperialism that began in the Age of Columbus, it's really something different in important ways.

And it's that difference that is the basis for an Israeli intransigence putting in the shade the comparatively flaccid wills of the French in Algeria, the Brit colonists in Kenya, or the white tribe of South Africa.

All the same, Americans and others who pin their hopes on partition and establishment of a Palestinian state in the belief that the so-called two-state solution might actually solve anything and end the conflict, bringing about Muslim acceptance of the Jewish State and real peace in the region do not understand the issue.

The Muslims vis-à-vis the Jewish State are in the position of the Muslims vis-à-vis French Algeria, or the local Africans vis-à-vis English settler Kenya or white South Africa.

They did not aim at partition but at re-conquest of settler states by the local peoples.

Israel’s Muslim opponents don’t aim at partition, now, but at the re-conquest and erasure of the Jewish State.

Still, though I would obviously not be pleased to see the Jewish people of Israel wiped out or driven into the sea by genocidal Muslim irredentists in a reversal of the Spanish Reconquista, I don't see how any of this is really our problem.

Truman was wrong to endorse the creation of Israel and he was wrong to commit the US to its defense.

America is wrong today to waste its treasure and its blood trying to make the Middle East safe for this anachronistic renewal of the ancient Jewish State.

We should end all our guarantees to Israel and all our aid.

If the EU or the UN or anyone else wants to step in and support Israel in our place, let them do so.

Not our problem.

No more than Rwanda.

Oh, and I would likewise not agree with any demands that America somehow undo establishment of the State of Israel, join in its destruction, assist in removal of the Jews from Palestine, or ever pay a penny in so-called compensation or reparations for our support of Israel for all this time.

Assuming we aren’t somehow blackmailed or bullied into it.