The left's ugly Israel freakout

Of course the Arafat analogy is particularly pernicious, not only because it is untrue, but because it compares an elected prime minister of Israel, a man who represents a government that is formed with consent of the people (including many Arabs) with an autocrat and founding father of modern-day terrorism who, on many occasions, killed or targeted Americans. A person who believes this is a clever point of comparison might best be understood as a person who’s lost his sense of moral perspective about the situation.

But even if we take Chait’s comparison in the narrowest possible terms, it still doesn’t work. Arafat was offered deal to create a Palestinian state. Arab intermediaries and the American delegation begged him to accept this offer because they knew there would likely never be one as conciliatory. But he refused. Netanyahu has never been offered any conceivable path towards a peace deal. Nor has he made any “maximal demands” in Hebrew that he hasn’t offered in English. Israel has an open and vigorous press, in both languages.

There is no arguing that Israel’s best future would feature a stable Palestinian state next door. But Gaza is already a semiautonomous mini-terror state that has no bearing on Israel’s democracy – other than perhaps insuring Likud victories with every missile barrage. Neither will the West Bank. Yet one of the most widely used fearmongery arguments we’ve heard lately is that Israel’s democratic makeup is bound to crumble if it doesn’t give the new PLO its own state before Obama’s term is up.