 What I Would Ask President Bush |
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World
Howard Linett January 10, 2008 |
Print version sponsored by Precision Payroll of America, LLC |
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President Bush arrived in Israel Wednesday on a
forty-eight hour visit. He will be staying at the historic King David Hotel in
Jerusalem. The residents of Israel’s capitol have been warned. From Wednesday
morning until Friday noon, large portions of Jerusalem will be off-limits to
vehicular traffic and the rest of the city will be gridlock. The Municipality of
Jerusalem has announced it is displaying American Flags the length of all the
roads the President will travel. The message is clear, if you see flags flying
on Tuesday, you know that the road will be closed Wednesday through Friday.
Many employers, the Municipality included, are considering cancelling work Wednesday and Thursday (Friday isn’t a workday) because employees will be unable to get to their workplaces downtown or get around in town if they manage to make it to work. There is not a hotel room to be rented in the entire city. The Foreign Press alone took a thousand rooms just last week. I even put up a notice on the bulletin board at the Government Press Office: Two Rooms for Rent in the Jerusalem Apartment of a Journalist during the Presidential Visit – Must Like Dogs! My in-laws will be away all this week and have a house within walking distance of the King David Hotel. That is a moneymaking idea! I have lived in Israel on and off since 1969. I have been an Israeli citizen since 1976. I served in the IDF. I volunteered (still do) hundreds of hours instructing the members of the Police Civil Guard and special Border Guards and IDF units. But because I write mostly in English, for primarily American media entities, I am considered "foreign press.” That is a derogatory term in Israel. Members of the Foreign Press are second class. Since I am neither a familiar face on a major non-Israel TV network nor a famous name from a major non-Israeli newspaper or magazine, I am barely third class. I do not register at all on an Israeli government spokesman’s radar. Such is the plight of the freelancer in Israel. Hell, we have even started our own support group, the Jerusalem Freelancers! So I do not expect to be able to even find Standing Room Only space for myself at a Presidential Press Conference. That is OK. I did not want to spend endless frustrating hours trapped in traffic trying to get to and from a Presidential Event. Still there are some questions that I would pose to President Bush if I were afforded the opportunity to interview him. Here is what I would ask: Good morning Mr. President and thank you for allowing me to interview you. I believe this is your first visit to Israel as President. What took you so long to get here? If I am not mistaken during the campaign for your first term as President you spoke of, if not promised to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Israel’s Capitol. Whether or not a campaign promise, why 8 years later does our Embassy remain in Tel Aviv and not even a ground-breaking ceremony has taken place for the Jerusalem Embassy building? Palestinian security services personnel planned to assassinate Prime Minster Olmert this summer. The attempt did not take place because "reportedly” fortuitously, the Israeli Prime Minister’s trip to the Palestinian Authority controlled city of Jericho was cancelled at the last moment. Since then members of those official Palestinian security services have carried out two ambushes, attacks they carried out in cold blood, shooting to death three innocent Israelis. These terrorists - come lately Palestinian Police - have been recruited, trained and armed per United States Department of State fiat. They are murdering Israelis with the guns and the bullets with which the United States saw they were supplied. Mr. President are you today willing to acknowledge that building this "police force,” including the reportedly American trained specials units whose training is akin to military infantry, not civilian policing, has been a failure? In retrospect would you agree that really the only accomplishment was enhancing the terrorists capabilities? Staying with terrorism for a moment, Fatah, Palestinian President Abbas’s own political party, continues to do little to bring about peace. Members of Fatah constitute the vast majority the Palestinian security service personnel. These Fatah members planned to assassinate Prime Minister Olmert and murder Israelis. Fatah controls the official Palestinian print and broadcast media and educational system. They continue to publish, broadcast and teach incitement. They are not preparing their people for peace. They are preparing their next generation to continue an armed conflict the goal of which is the destruction of Israel. I can give you three examples of "official” Fatah incitement just from the past few weeks. Can you give me three examples of Fatah taking meaningful, concrete steps preparing for peace? It seems clear that the Palestinian People rejected Fatah, ejecting that party from control of the Palestinian legislature. At best, perhaps simply fed-up with too much Fatah corruption, worse because of their belief in the destruction of Israel, the Palestinians elected Hamas as the clear majority and controlling party in the Palestinian Parliament. The U.S. Department of State considers Hamas, premeditated murderers of American security personnel, a terrorist organization. President Abbas (Fatah) is considered by his own electorate to be little more than "the Mayor of Ramallah.” He may be the only politician in the Middle East who enjoys less support from his own countrymen than does Prime Minister Olmert. Other than "he is all there is,” how can you justify your activism on his behalf? Doesn’t his continued rejection of Israel as a Jewish State demonstrate his rejection of your Two State concept? And speaking of Middle Eastern politicians who do not enjoy the support of their own countrymen, reports say perhaps as few as 10 percent of the Israeli population favor and support Prime Minister Olmert and his government. He is the personification of the proverbial "man who could not even get elected dogcatcher.” So why now Mr. President, why are you visiting now? Is it mere coincidence that the final report of the Winnograd Committee was until very recently scheduled to be published this week. That is the Committee charged with examining Israel’s loss of the July/August 2006 Second Lebanon War to the Hezbollah terrorists. Many Israelis believe your visit, because of its timing, is thinly disguised support for your friend Prime Minister Olmert, designed to fill the Israeli media with coverage of President Bush. Thus the Winnograd Committee’s castigation of Prime Minister Olmert and the renewed, louder than ever calls for his resignation, would be relegated to a minor item on page 19 of the newspaper and a one-time 20 second mention on the 06:00 news. Causing such happenstances is one of Prime Minister Olmert’s signature political tactics. Lastly, Mr. President aren’t you tired of supporting men who are politicians, not leaders or statesmen, men who do not have the support, and deservedly so, of their own countrymen?
Thank you Mr. President. I voted for you – twice. |
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| Howard Linett is an attorney, an independent journalist, a lecturer, sniper instructor in the Israeli Police Civil Guard and the author of "Living With Terrorism: Survival Lessons from the Streets of Jerusalem." The author's blog is www.howardlinett.com. | |
