Today is a Fast day for Jews. This particular Fast follows immediately after the second day of Rosh Hashanna. It reminds us that a Jewish leader had once been assassinated in Israel--because of a treacherous, murderous betrayal by fellow Jews.
The assassinated leader's name was Gedaliah. He was righteous. He was well-liked by his people in Israel--but hated by those who disagreed with, shall we say, his political affiliations.
He was murdered at approximately the time of the destruction of the First Temple, almost 2,500 hundred years ago. Our Fast today is called, the Fast of Gedaliah.
As I Fast over the betrayal that marks Gedaliah's assassination, I think about our world today. Clearly, the closest association to today would be some treachery or betrayal being plotted against Israel's current leader. But I don't look to such Jewish treachery, at least not today.
Instead, I choose today to think of Gedaliah as, perhaps, a metaphor for today's larger treachery/betrayal--that of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel's supposed 'peace partner' . The treachery/betrayal I think of is the betrayal of the PA against both Israel and the US.
That's a big stretch, I know. But then...
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has made promises over how much it wants peace. Read PA leader Mahmoud Abbas' speeches to the UN in each of the past few Septembers. He's a man of peace, he says. He wants only peace, he says.
But each year, when it came time to 'put the rubber to the road', Abbas balked. He's made trouble, then blamed Israel. He said he wanted to talk peace, then betrayed his peace partner.
So long as Barak Obama was US President, Abbas won every time he pulled such a trick. But today, Obama isn't President.
The man in today's White House is far less patient with such Palestinian duplicity. Saying one think to Trump about peace with Israel and then doing the opposite no longer goes over well at the White House.
It seems that Abbas and his officials may have played their 'yes-no-maybe' game one time too often (here).
As a result of the US's loss of patience with Abbas, the world begins to see Abbas and the PA in a way few outside Israel have seen. As Palestinian essayist Bassam Tawil suggests, the PA's attitude towards the US has suddenly become rather simple--and obvious.
He says that, "In reality, the Palestinians have one main message for the US administration". It is, in essence, a message of 'we aim to betray you'. That message is, "We hate you and incite against you, but we fully expect that you will continue providing us with cash, to the tune of billions of dollars. And, when you do try to help us, we reserve the right to spit in your face" (here).
The PA is expert at this game. For example, Palestinians recently protested in Ramallah. They objected to the Trump plan to cancel US aid to UNRWA, the UN relief agency that has been considered by many as useless for peace but great for promoting anti-US/anti-Israel hate. Trump has announced he will end funding to an UNRWA that acts more like a terror-training organization than a refugee relief agency. To protest that cancellation, protesters in Ramallah burned pictures of Trump, Trump son-in-law and advisor Jason Kushner and David Friedman, US Ambassador to Israel.
For Tawil, the message of this protest was also simple. It was the Palestinian way, he said, to tell the US: "we burn the photos of your president and top officials and we hate you, so kindly continue to give us hundreds of millions of dollars every year" (ibid).
The Palestinians are good at this tactic. They've been doing it for years. With the Obama Presidency, no one in the White House saw anything unseemly about it: the Palestinians spit in the face of the US; then they held out their hand to the US to beg for money.
What was wrong with that? Obama saw nothing wrong with it.
Apparently, Obama thought it was okay for the PA to spit at America even as it took hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Palestinians use another tactic. They say they're willing (kind of) to seek peace with Israel. Then they refuse to engage in what they call 'normalization' (economic cooperation) with Israel.
Given that Israel is the Middle East's economic powerhouse, this Jewish state has a lot to offer a fledgling new state. But the PA hasn't been interested. It spits into Israel's economic face just as it spit into America's face.
The Trump White House apparently understands that this isn't a recipe for success. Instead, it's a foundation for creating a 'Palestine' that's a beggar state, not an economically competent state.
The Palestinians don't care. They aren't after statehood. They don't care about economic security. They want to destroy Israel--and they want 'friends' who will cheer them on.
They know how to win over those friends. While Palestinian protesters were at that recent Ramallah protest to demand that the US reverse its decision to stop funding UNRWA, Abbas's men were blocking a US-sponsored attempt in east Jerusalem to meet Palestinian businessmen to discuss ways to help the Palestinian economy (ibid). For the PA, that is the road to winning friends and influencing people--that is, the kind of people who hate the US.
The PA wants three things. (1) It wants to incite against Israel and the US. (2) It particularly wants anti-US countries to help it destroy the Jewish state. (3) It wants the US to bankroll whatever the PA wants to do.
Obama helped them. So far, Trump says, hell, no.
So the Palestinians move forward. They incite against the US. They continue to spit at the US.
They incite against Israel. They spit into Israel's face.
It works. According to Bassam Tawil, PA incitement has brought to the PA many anti-US/anti-Israel friends. That incitement has helped to make the US a Public Enemy Number One for many Arabs and Muslims around the world (ibid). Its anti-Israel incitement has kept the anti-Israel pot boiling.
This is how the PA plans for its future. What is this called? It's the Palestinian version of 'how to win friends and influence people'. But of course, if peace were the goal, this is the wrong plan--and these would be the wrong friends.
But then, this is the PA we're talking about. It's not interested in peace--with anybody.
It embraces hate and, apparently, loves betrayal. It demands US money, then betrays the goodwill America shows by spitting in America's face.
If, for the Fast of Gedaliah, you're looking for a practical definition of 'betrayal', look no further.
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