I sure do miss the days when George W. Bush went to the UN, gritting his teeth and delivering speeches that appalled the representatives of despotic regimes. As one wit put it, he treated them as if they were mental patients or overly exuberant fans — keep your distance, get out quickly, and don’t take anything in writing from them. But alas, we have the president from Harvard by way of Hyde Park. The UN folks are his kind of people. He shares his bon mots with them. He shares his fondness for paper agreements and platitudes. Reality need play no role. He is in his element.

The Dodgers have long since departed Brooklyn, but the borough now is home to an even more entertaining figure. “Brooklyn Boy” observes of Obama’s nonsensical remarks (“If an agreement is not reached, Palestinians will never know the pride and dignity that comes with their own state. Israelis will never know the certainty and security that comes with sovereign and stable neighbors who are committed to co-existence”):

Why is it that Israel will ‘never’ know security until there is an agreement? Why is it just assumed that Palestinians will always seek to murder Jews until one day they magically have a state for themselves? … What he is saying might be true—that the Palestinians today will always seek to harm Israelis—but he’s missing the corollary fact: that neither security nor certainty will come from a paper document, least of all one signed by people whose ravening hatred would have to be, in his theory, hemmed in by a signature on a dotted line.

With every riot and every murder of Jews, it becomes harder and harder to subscribe to the view that we should “give the peace process a chance.” Actually, not. It encourages violence and perpetuates the charade that if it weren’t for border squabbles, we’d have peace in our time. It also postpones the hard work Palestinians must undertake to obliterate that “ravening hatred.” I’d support the “peace process” if I thought it productive. I’d be out cheerleading for the two-state solution if I thought it would be a solution and not a rest-stop in the battle for a one-state solution. But outside Turtle Bay and the imagination of our president, there’s no sign that these thing are possible. And, to be blunt, it is going to be years before peace is obtainable. Maybe by the time Marco Rubio completes his second term in the White House. But not now.

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