- What do you call 5 million Jews...

What do you call 5 million Jews living inside Arab artillery range? If you're Barak Obama, you apparently call it 'a good start'. That's what a return to the 'pre-67' borders would mean to Israel, and it's also why they won't consider it - no matter who demands it. Bibi Netanyahu (thankfully) is no Barak Obama. And he'll see to it that Israelis remain as safe as he can make them. No delusional 'talk' from Obama is going to change that.

Obama is an academic, and I mean that with all the inherent incompetence, self congratulation, and delusional arrogance that it implies. The academic leftist view has always been that the reason there is no peace in the middle east is because of the Jews. Israel has adopted a winning strategy, so according to the leftist worldview, it's they who must be willing to sacrifice to make things whole. Personally, I think that's nuts.

My dad reminded me of a story recently that happened when I was 13 years old. I came home one day all banged up and bruised. When he demanded to know what happened, I told him that a bunch of kids were making fun of my friend Mark for being Jewish, so I got in a fight. The fight was a draw as I recall, but that didn't matter to my dad.

According to my dad's value system, winning or losing the fight didn't matter nearly as much as the willingness to get into it in the first place. In his view, nothing was more important than a willingness to put yourself in harms way for people you care about. It meant that you honor them and deserve their affection - that you're worthy of it. So in the intervening 30 (something) years, he's told that story with great pride to hundreds of people.

So if I'm typical of free market conservatives (and in many ways I think I am) then how can American Jewry support Barak Obama? On one hand they have friends who will be willing to place themselves in harms way for the sake of their friendship, and on the other hand they have an academic who seems to believe that the problem with Israel, is that it's full of Jews.

I hope they remember all this come the election.




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you know it's bad when Democrat activists have to come out and say stuff like this:

"We cannot allow Israel to become a wedge issue that divides our community and dilutes its strength"

Yes - American Jews should never allow the fact that one of our two political parties is demanding that Israel return to totally indefensible borders in exchange for absolutely nothing from a group that has Israel's abolition as it's founding principle, be a wedge issue.

"We cannot allow the politics of the moment to distract us and to interfere with our success," warned Solow.

This is the global politics version of the Timothy Treadwell story. Over time, you would think guys like this would simply be eaten by the bears.