IT'S ABOUT OIL, STUPID and ALL THE SLICK PLAYERS

Rest assured that many Jews, American and Israeli, were thrilled when they learned that President-elect Barack Obama had picked Jewish Rahm Emanuel to be his chief-of-staff.

Notwithstanding the fact that Barack Obama, far from stupid, picked Rahm Emanuel at an opportune moment, just as the election was about to take place and Obama, who needed the Jewish vote, was having a difficult time closing the deal.

Emanuel, also not stupid, had worked for Bill Clinton and had been a Hillary supporter. And although Emanuel and Obama are both part of the Chicago gang, Emanuel stayed with Hillary until it was clear she wasn't going to be the Democratic Party's nominee. He's a most loyal fellow that Rahm Emanuel.

So about Emanuel and loyalty and influence. One wonders of the meshuganah position taken by the Obama administration on the issue of the Middle East. Was the new approach to Israel Obama’s idea and Emanuel was being the loyal soldier? Or was Emanuel part and parcel of the stupid, tough new approach to Israel? For that matter, how much of a hand did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have in the failed approach? We'll have to wait to see, I guess, for one or the others' memoirs.

But here we are today, and the situation in the Israel vs. Palestinian long saga is a stupid mess. The Obama-Emanuel-Clinton approach to put the pressure on Israel backfired, although PM Bibi Netanyahu now insists that Israel's relationship with Washington isn't as bad as the press reports it is. I would guess the White House asked Netanyahu to push this stupid new meme in consideration for something else.
Because we all know that there is no love lost between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration. Whatever, another memoir is in the making.

So, here we are in this stupid mess. Obama's hapless foray into Middle East politics has only made matters worse. The Arabs are mad at us again, the Palestinian Authority’s President, Mahmud Abbas, is truly threatening to leave  (I say, truly, because Abbas has  said this before). But this time, his departure could leave a vacuum and give the stupid terrorist organization Hamas exactly what it wants, more power over the unfortunate Palestinian people than before.

So what next? NY Times reporter Tom Friedman suggests that it is time to back off from trying to get negotiations back on track as the two parties themselves seem disinterested in reaching peace.

Other scholars advocate helping the Palestinians economically so they will have an infrastructure from which to build a future and with it the psychological consequence of being proud of that structure, not to mention the base from which to form a nation.

I heartily agree with both approaches, particularly the last. The people who call themselves Palestinians, unlike the Jewish émigrés to the territory that is now Israel, seem incapable of understanding the need to build their infrastructure for their future state on their own, and sadly, are too often thwarted by their own (Hamas).
Where a true difference can be made, I suggest, is not by a U.S. intervention between the Israelis and Palestinians. but instead, by the real source of power in the region, the Arab nations.

The Arabs insist that they want a homeland for the Palestinians and that they want peace between the two old foes. Yet, they do nothing but offer stupid talk and insist upon Israel making all the sacrifices both in her land and in her security.

Why haven’t the allies ever asked the Arab nations to stand up and take responsibility for the Palestinians? There is an easy answer. The great and powerful United States and the other super powers are afraid to, stupidly intimidated by the oil rich nations who hold oil over us all, their weapon of mass destruction.

In fact, let’s call it what it is: the U.S. and its allies are engaged in an undeclared economic war with the oil rich Arabs. 9/11 was one of the battles of that war. Our strike on Iraq, a lame counter-move. The rise in oil prices in 2007/2008 an economic lob by OPEC and our current economic downturn the collateral damage of the last OPEC salvo.

The truth is that the Palestinians are their people, and the Arab Nations should have the responsibility of helping them have their own homeland, either by absorbing them within the borders of one of their countries, or giving them their own plot of land.
The West Bank is not the place for a Palestinian homeland; it simply isn’t going to work there and to think it ever will is just plain stupid.

For purely economic reasons, no American president wants to pressure the Arabs, even President Obama the man who got himself elected by promising us change we can believe in.

Instead, Rahm Emanuel and his President Obama have in their zealousness to try something new, victimized the victims, the Israeli’s, and missed the point entirely. New for the sake of new is meaningless. More importantly, did they really miss the point? Or are they, like their predecessors, too cowardly to address the reality?

And, by the way, forget health care for now. With 17.5% of Americans unemployed, why hasn’t Obama made job creation the number one issue on his plate, and the creation of a project to end our dependency on Arab oil, which would create new and sustainable jobs part of a jobs plan? This is not a stupid question.

There are TWO victims in this mess created by selfish heads of state and the Arab nations. Thanks to Mr. Obama and Rahm Emanuel’s tactics, we are all aware that one is the Palestinians. Their plight is the result of the world trying to right its wrong against the FIRST victims, the Jews and their struggle against Anti-Semitism.

It was the Jew’s victimization at the hands of anti-Semites as well as world guilt, that resulted in the people who call themselves Palestinians plight, leaving them with choices they were unwilling to make, including being magnanimous to a people long mistreated by the world.

Still, all of the history ignores the current fact that the Israeli’s are still victims, despised world-wide and by surrounding nations that refuse to recognize their existence. And with the equal goal of destroying The Jewish State.

Are Israeli's better off than the Palestinians? I’m not sure. Compare them to the kid who lives in a mansion and from the outside looks like she has it all. Only inside she’s being terrorized by an abusive father.

Which leaves us to the reality that the Palestinian’s own people, the Arabs, have only nominally stood up for their own and in many ways have contributed to their dilemma by refusing to offer those who don’t want to live in Israel a place in their rightful world.

Lately, the Saudi’s, the Jordanians and the Egyptians have been offering lip service to President Obama pretending to want to be a party in the solution of the Palestinian issue.

Of course, it’s all oil-derrick smoke and mirrors. Until we start putting the OIL-pressure on the Arabs nothing will change. What’s that old saying? If you keep on doing the same old thing the same old way you get the same old STUPID result.

As I said, it’s about oil, STUPID. President Obama and Rahm Emanuel know this because neither of the two men are, in fact, stupid?