A Note From Brooklyn Boy

“Here is a line from Obama’s UN speech:

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.

“Let’s say statement No. 1 is true—the Ps won’t get to have a state until they have a state. Fair enough.

“But what about statement No. 2? 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? It’s not the threat of the law that keeps most people from committing acts of murder—it is the knowledge of human origins or human rights that keeps us straight, and that is given expression in the law. 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.”

To which Bad Rachel will only add that that knowledge of human origins and human rights of which Brooklyn Boy speaks emanates from God—the God of the Hebrew Bible—and end by saying amen v’amen.