As he sits behind bars awaiting trial, Jared Loughner is undoubtedly relishing every moment of the ruckus that he managed to stir up with his deadly rampage in Tucson.  In addition to murdering six innocent human beings and wounding more than a dozen others in an act of sheer evil, the deranged gunman has set off a media and political frenzy that refuses to abate.

By various accounts, this is precisely what Loughner was hoping for. As his close friend Bryce Tierney told Mother Jones, “I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what’s happening.” Ironically enough, then, many of those now engaged in the shameless finger-pointing are inadvertently advancing the goals of the madman, by fulfilling his desire to create an environment of mayhem in society.

Deploying the most acerbic members of its verbal firing squads, the left has launched volley after volley of vitriol in recent days in an effort to score some political points and paint conservatives as extremists.  But in so doing, they are merely extending the damage inflicted by Loughner into the sphere of public discourse, thereby undermining the very same foundations of civilization that the gunman himself was targeting. (more…)

“Since you, Mr. President and you, the members of the American administration, believe in this (a two-state solution), it is your duty to call for the steps in order to reach the solution and impose the solution (emphasis added) — impose it!“ demanded Fatah and PA Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a speech to leaders of Fatah just last week. “But don’t tell me it’s a vital national strategic American interest … and then not do anything,” he continued.

And so there you have it. Washington’s tongue lashing of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Administration’s breath-taking statements that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is endangering the lives of American troops seems to represent a fundamental shift in America’s strategic thinking.  Abbas’s demand will undoubtedly be remembered as the first of what will most assuredly be a chorus of international support for President Obama’s newly emerging, Mideast policy…a conference at which the terms of peace will be crafted by the United States and imposed on Israel and a new state of Palestine. Over sixty years of Arab intransigence are finally paying off.

And so, we see another ill-fated peace conference on the horizon. Certainly, there have been many American-sponsored peace conferences (both direct and indirect) before.  There was the shuttle diplomacy of the Nixon Administration during which Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shuttled back and forth between Israeli leaders and Arab leaders.  The very dedicated and hard-working Dennis Ross found himself on the same merry-go-round during the Clinton years. Those were known as proximity talks (sound familiar?).  No Arab official or Palestinian leader would sit at the same table with an Israeli representative. The idea was to secure enough concessions from Israel to coax an actual face-to-face meeting into reality.

Then, of course, there was the first Camp David conference, which was made possible by Anwar Sadat’s readiness to permanently end Egypt’s long- standing, state-of-war with Israel in return for Israel returning to Egypt the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured in the 1967 six-day war and retained following the so-called Yom Kippur War of 1973.  Sadat, a courageous and honorable soldier and statesman, was assassinated for his bravery …for his willingness to bring to an end the long-standing, state- of-war between Egypt and Israel.  No Arab or Palestinian leader has since been willing to enter into any agreement with Israel if such an agreement required a clear statement that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would then be resolved and that no further demands were to be made by either party against the other. The Madrid conference brokered by President George H.W. Bush, the Wye River conferences brokered by President Clinton, the second Camp David conference and the failed Annapolis peace conference sponsored by President George W. Bush, all failures because peace, permanent peace, was never on the Arab agenda…not then, and not now.

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I was invited to speak on 21st century missile threats and defenses at the recent 7th annual Jerusalem Conference, 2010, held at the Regency Hotel on Mt. Scopus, in the city of David, but I was pleased as well to hear a wide variety of experts (speeches are delivered in English and Hebrew with convenient wireless earphone translation headsets).

This gathering is rooted in historic Zionism, the meaning of the land of Israel, and the spiritual meaning of Jerusalem. Many Israeli statesman and American political leaders come to address current security crises, as well as existential questions ever-present for the Jewish state still facing war.

The Palestinian Front

On the Palestinian front, many now believe that the idea of a small PLO state within the 1967 borders, to include Gaza, major parts of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, has lost its appeal within Araby.

Radical Islamism, unrealistic expectations, and daily incitement against Israel in mosques, the media, and madrassas, have all added up to another era of Palestinian intransigence and irredentism.

Unfortunately, the drive for Palestinian independence has not been equated with responsible state building leading to the kind of sovereignty that would help the Palestinian people themselves.

Palestinians universally wish to cast Israel off their shoulders, but this does not mean they support a fair division of land, or a desire to live in peaceful coexistence with a Jewish state in the middle east.

Israeli journalist and commentator Ehud Ya’ari stated that the Palestinians have now fully collapsed into the unwilling arms of the Israelis, and that Israel must urgently solve the seemingly unsolvable.

Israel is today faced with a reverse annexation: It is the Palestinians who have decided to annex Israel, because Israel did not annex them first.

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