OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JANUARY 2, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
OUR VIEW
‘Resolve to solve’
is the resolution
leaders should make
E
ach year, countless Americans and businesses make reso-
lutions for the coming year, everything from individuals
wanting to lose weight and join a gym to businesses
wanting to be more productive and profitable.
At The Daily Astorian we’ve made ours, and they are cen-
tered on our readers, website visitors and our advertisers rather
than ourselves. We will strive to serve each reader, visitor and
customer better than we have before to meet increasing expecta-
tions in print and on our website, provide excellent customer ser-
vice in all aspects and remain faithful to our core values.
For the coming year we’ve resolved to be even more of an
active and representative regional voice and be a more inclu-
sive advocate for those who live and work throughout Clatsop
County and the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington.
We will also continue to pay special attention to topics that
include: The Housing Crunch, the area’s No. 1 concern; local
and state political dysfunction and the use of scarce tax dol-
lars; children’s well-being in all matters; emergency prepared-
ness, planning and preparation that can save lives; environmental
issues like climate change and natural resources; timber, forestry,
fishing, the oyster industry and waterway issues, all of which
greatly impact our area; mental health treatment and the need
for greater standards of care; and homelessness and the need for
strategies to help those who need it.
‘Resolve to solve’
While those are our resolutions, we hope those in state and
local political leadership make a few and keep them too. They
include:
• For all state and local leaders to adopt a simple motto for
themselves to “resolve to solve” problems.
• For Gov. Kate Brown to resolve to become a more visible,
problem-solving leader for all Oregonians as she was elected to
be. With the next legislative session only weeks away, Brown
needs to step up and be at the forefront of finding and advocating
solutions for longstanding issues. Those include reforms of the
enormously underfunded Public Employees Retirement System;
state taxation and revenue genera-
tion; sustainable funding for educa-
Voters in
tion, transportation and infrastruc-
ture improvements; and raising the bar the last
for the leadership in key state agen-
election
cies to solve performance, personnel
made it
and functionality problems that have
been highlighted in recent state audits. abundantly
Brown has an enormous career oppor- clear
tunity that many in the political arena
they’re
aspire to have but haven’t achieved.
We hope that like an esteemed conduc- tired of
tor of a world-class symphony Brown seeing
is able to rise above past performance
politicians
and be a maestro for the work that
needs to be done.
kick the
• For Oregon state representatives
can down
and senators, who like the governor,
the road.
need to resolve to put their partisan-
ship aside during the upcoming session
and seek solutions. Voters in the last election made it abundantly
clear they’re tired of seeing politicians kick the can down the
road for others to solve sometime in the future while they con-
tinue to push their own personal agendas in the present.
Closer to home
• We hope each of our local governments resolve to work
together more diligently to develop solutions for common prob-
lems like housing, economic development and emergency pre-
paredness that exist on a regional basis. Individually and collec-
tively, they need to be thinking strategically and comparing notes
to get results that can raise the quality of life throughout the
region. We also hope that in-fighting and grandstanding between
members of some of those entities — and between some of the
entities themselves — comes to an end. They need to stop wast-
ing the public’s time and to show far more professionalism and
civility in their interactions with each other. They also need to
remember that their duty is to serve the public rather than them-
selves. The premise that when interests conflict individual mem-
bers of some of those boards resort to lobbing insults at each
other or at staff rather than working together, or that some of
those entities would use scarce tax dollars and human resources
to pursue litigation against each other rather than negotiate set-
tlements isn’t in anybody’s best interest.
• And finally, for taxpayers to resolve to hold our leaders at
all levels more accountable, and to mandate that they put perfor-
mance above partisanship when making decisions on the issues
that impact each of our lives.
President Obama’s final,
shameful legacy moment
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
President Barack Obama addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual Policy Con-
ference opening plenary session in 2012 in Washington. “When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
“When the chips are down, I
have Israel’s back.”
— Barack Obama,
AIPAC conference
March 4, 2012
W
ASHINGTON — The
audience — overwhelm-
ingly Jewish, passion-
ately pro-Israel and supremely gull-
ible — applauded
wildly. Four years
later — his last
election behind
him, with a month
to go in office and
with no need to
fool Jew or gentile again — Obama
took the measure of Israel’s back
and slid a knife into it.
People don’t quite understand
the damage done to Israel by the
U.S. abstention that permitted pas-
sage of a Security Council resolu-
tion condemning Israel over settle-
ments. The administration pretends
this is nothing but a restatement of
long-standing U.S. opposition to
settlements.
Nonsense. For the last 35 years,
every administration, including a
re-election-seeking Obama him-
self in 2011, has protected Israel
with the U.S. veto because such a
Security Council resolution gives
immense legal ammunition to
every boycotter, anti-Semite and
zealous European prosecutor to
penalize and punish Israelis.
A pariah
An ordinary Israeli who lives or
works in the Old City of Jerusalem
becomes an international pariah, a
potential outlaw. To say nothing of
the soldiers of Israel’s citizen army.
“Every pilot and every officer and
every soldier,” said a confidant
of Palestinian leader Mahmoud
Abbas, “we are waiting for him at
The Hague.” I.e., the International
Criminal Court.
Moreover, the resolution under-
mines the very foundation of a
half-century of American Middle
East policy. What becomes of “land
for peace” if the territories Israel
was to have traded for peace are, in
advance, declared to be Palestinian
land to which Israel has no claim?
The peace parameters enunci-
ated so ostentatiously by Secretary
of State John Kerry on Wednesday
are nearly identical to the Clinton
parameters that Yasser Arafat was
offered and rejected in 2000 and
that Abbas was offered by Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008.
Abbas, too, walked away.
Kerry mentioned none of
this because it undermines his
blame-Israel narrative. Yet Pal-
estinian rejectionism works. The
Security Council just declared the
territories legally Palestinian —
without the Palestinians having to
concede anything, let alone peace.
uty national security adviser Ben
Rhodes: “When we see the facts
on the ground, again deep into the
West Bank, beyond the separation
barrier, we feel compelled to speak
up against those actions.”
This is a deception. Every-
one knows that remote outposts
are not the issue. Under any peace,
they will be swept away. Even the
right-wing Defense Minister Avig-
dor Lieberman, who lives in one of
these West Bank Settlements, has
stated publicly that “I even agree
to vacate my settlement if there
really will be a two-state solution.”
Where’s the obstacle to peace?
Obstacle to peace
The Temple
Mount is the
most sacred
site in all of
Judaism. That
it should be
declared foreign
to the Jewish
people is as if
the Security
Council
declared Mecca
and Medina to
be territory to
which Islam has
no claim.
The administration claims a
kind of passive innocence on the
text of the resolution, as if it had
come upon it at the last moment.
We are to believe that the ostensi-
ble sponsors — New Zealand, Sen-
egal, Malaysia and a Venezuela
that cannot provide its own people
with toilet paper, let alone food —
had for months been sweating the
details of Jewish housing in East
Jerusalem.
Nothing new here, protests dep-
A second category of settlement
is the close-in blocs that border
1967 Israel. Here, too, we know in
advance how these will be disposed
of: They’ll become Israeli territory
and, in exchange, Israel will swap
over some of its land to a Palestin-
ian state. Where’s the obstacle to
peace here?
It’s the third category of “set-
tlement” that is the most conten-
tious and that Security Council res-
olution 2334 explicitly condemns:
East Jerusalem. This is not just
scandalous; it’s absurd. America
acquiesces to a declaration that, as
a matter of international law, the
Jewish state has no claim on the
Western Wall, the Temple Mount,
indeed the entire Jewish Quar-
ter of Jerusalem. They belong to
Palestine.
The Temple Mount is the most
sacred site in all of Judaism. That
it should be declared foreign to the
Jewish people is as if the Secu-
rity Council declared Mecca and
Medina to be territory to which
Islam has no claim. Such is the
Orwellian universe Israel inhabits.
At the very least, Obama should
have insisted that any reference to
East Jerusalem be dropped from
the resolution or face a U.S. veto.
Why did he not? It’s incomprehen-
sible — except as a parting shot of
personal revenge on Benjamin Net-
anyahu. Or perhaps as a revelation
of a deep-seated antipathy to Israel
that simply awaited a safe political
interval for public expression.
Another legacy moment for
Barack Obama. And his most
shameful.