STEPHENS VS. MAKOVSKY
by David Basch
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
January 18, 2011
"Makovsky titillated the primarily religious,
right wing OU audience with seeming insider,
off-the-record, information that allegedly
showed that currently unelected Arab leaders
secretly want peace with Israel."
"I gathered from the session that peace for Israel
is difficult indeed since even Bret Stephens could
not chart a safe and secure path to such a future ..."
On Sunday, January 16, at the yearly OU convention, Bret Stephens, a
senior editor at Wall Street Journal, faced off against kippah wearing
David Makovsky, a former, journalist, now a member of some U.S.
affiliated, foreign policy think tank, on US policy concerning Israel.
(Makovsky would say his organization is independent but we know better
-- more about that later.)
Stephens was great. He presented in depth the why-s and wheres of
mistaken Obama policy on Israel. In general, Stephens observed that
the Arab side has over many prior decades shown no willingness to make
peace and isn't turning over a new leaf today; Israel should be wary
about letting its guard down since any tamping down of hostilities is
the result of Israeli actions and policies, not Arab; Obama yet
presses Israel to not build its communities on its lands beyond the
unofficial, so-called "green line" as somehow against peace; this
while the Arabs keep moving aggressively against Israel at every turn;
etc, etc.
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