I cannot understand why our secretary of state visited Egypt and handed over a check of $250 million at a time we are closing the White House to tours. That makes no sense at all. Why did he give F16s and Abram tanks to a country whose elected president is associated with a terrorist organization and has publicly called Jews bloodsuckers and the descendants of apes and pigs? Why would you reward someone like that?
During his Senate confirmation hearing Mr. Kerry said the Egyptians would be held accountable. Dear Mr. Secretary, please hold me accountable because I’d like $250 million too. If being held accountable means one can make radical, ridiculous, offensive and inexcusable statements and still get millions, we should all share in the spoils. Talk about absurd!
That’s why I believe with all my heart that when President Obama goes to Israel next week, it is important that the American people give him a message rather than he give Israelis a message.
And that message is this: “Mr. President, Americans stand with Israel because it is a mirror image of our own freedom and democracy. And we suggest that before you make any demands of the Israelis to give up anything, you sit down and look the Palestinians in the face and ask them what they have given up.”
And Mr. Obama should do something I would love to do if I were making that trip as the president of the United States: Tell the Israelis to build as rapidly as they can and as much as they can. And tell the Palestinians that if they don’t like it, the way they can fix it is to sit at the peace table and sign an agreement that they recognize the right of Israelis to exist, safely and securely, within the borders God gave them.
That will probably never happen, so I say: Pour the concrete, build the houses, and let Israel be strong!
This essay is adapted from his keynote address to the Gush Katif Museum Dinner on March 9 at the Razag ballroom in Brooklyn.