So ’tis the season for policymakers and politicians to steer public opinion their way, via books. We know one is on the way from Cheney. Former President George W. Bush, too. And we’re really hoping that when Bush publishes his “decision” book that he includes some guidance as to how he decided to pitch former French President Jacques Chirac on the war with Iraq…by citing Gog and Magog.
According to a new book by Chirac (Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai–If You Repeat it, I Will Deny) to be published next March, Bush told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
Chirac had no clue what Bush was talking about, so his staff asked Swiss theologian Thomas Roemer of the University of Lausanne to explain. We went to Wiki.
"I simply have no idea what on earth you are talking about."
Ah, the settlements. We’re not sure how that particular word got chosen for massive housing tracts that more closely resemble Southern California suburbs (if those suburbs were, say, plunked down on land that technically belonged to someone else), but still, homes inhabited by Israelis that are built in the West Bank are referred to by a term usually used to denote pioneers, like Laura Ingalls Wilder or Davey Crockett.
President Obama, following the Mitchell Plan of 2001 (which identified settlements as a flashpoint and advised an immediate freeze), has now drawn the ire of Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defemation League–the ADL coughed up money for a full-page ad in the New York Times to say so. The takeaway is this: “the problem isn’t settlements, it’s Arab rejection.”
J Street, having none of it, published an open letter on August 4, retorting, “The problem isn’t just settlements, nor Arab rejection. And a lasting resolution to this decades old conflict – a goal which I know you and your organization supports – isn’t advanced by pointing fingers at either side.”
And the ADL fired back with it’s own open letter, to J Street, criticizing the “exaggerated emphasis on the settlement issue.”
J Street’s Isaac Luria sat down with us to discuss the settlements earlier this year.
