Barack, Mate
It’s your best buddy Israel here, you know, the Country who you call your rock solid friend. I haven’t been able to talk to you much over the past few months as you have been too preoccupied with your own ego, so I thought I’d write down what I have to say instead.
Apparently you reckon that there are some occasions when “friends disagree with each other”. Nice cliché isn’t it?
Here are some other cliche’s
– A friend in need is a friend indeed
– A friend is someone who dances with you in the sunlight and walks beside you in the shadows
– Everyone hears what you say, Friends listen to what you say
– With friend’s like you who needs enemies?
– Real friends don’t sell out their mates and frame the victims into looking like victimisers.
Actually, that last one is not a common cliché, its just a statement that I made up. But it sums up the situation between you and me ever since you moved into your flash new white house.
I’ve been thinking about the way you have treated me over the past year and half, and I’ve reached the conclusion that at the moment, I don’t think that I want to be your friend. It’s because you have been a schoolyard bully and sold me out to the thugs who want to kill me. Don’t sweat too much, but you can be sure that if I do disappear from the scene then they are going to come after you as well.
There’s a bigger picture out there, and several thousand years of history show that it is I and my people who will prevail over you and your people. By choosing to stand on the wrong side of history as you have demonstrated with your every attempt to deny me my legitimate rights, your empire will come crashing down. You will be President for four years, I have been a homeland to my people for 4000.
I have a long memory. I have not forgotten how you called for Jerusalem to be my undivided capital city when you campaigned for President. Nor have I forgotten that you “clarified” your comment by denying that position only a few days later as you pandered to a different audience.
I have not forgotten the chutzpah that you included in your speech in Cairo after you became President, where you tried to make peace with my enemies at my expense (and believe me they will not respect you for that). I was upset when you claimed that my “right to exist” comes from the ashes of the Holocaust. You should know that my right to exist comes from thousands of years of heritage and from the covenant between God and my people. If you would like, you can come and see for yourself. Since you have not had the courtesy to visit me since you became President, you wouldn’t really know at the moment just how bruised I am because of my neighbours. I’ve told both them and you many times that I’m quite happy to make peace. But they don’t want to listen to me. They make it quite clear to both you and I that they will not rest so long as I am alive and kicking.
Buddy, did you think that I wasn’t being totally genuine in my response when you said in September 2009 you wanted serious final negotiations within two months. I said yes. My enemy said no. You then went to my enemies leader, Abbas, and asked him not to sponsor the morally bankrupt report of Goldstone. He agreed to your request and sold you out with the space of two days.
What about the settlement freeze I agreed to, the one that excluded Jerusalem? You endorsed it and said at the time “it will do so much for the peace process”. We are not yet half way through that period, and suddenly it’s not good enough? You want me to give away my eternal home, the one that I liberated in the face of an existential attack and lay a just and right claim to?
On what basis do you think the Palestinian people will be the moderate state-deserving administration you delude yourself into believing? Did you hear the fury of Abbas at the Annapolis Summit where he decried that he would never recogise Israel as a Jewish State? Have you read the Fatah Constitution or the Palestine National Charter? Would you regard the custodians of documents such as these to be partners in peace?
Barack, mate, friendship is a two way process. Friends rely on each other and don’t sell each other out. Friends are responsible for each others interests, but don’t make decisions on their behalf or interfere when they have no right to. In particular, those friends who I have that believe in freedom and democracy should know better than to shun my loyalty and act with such disrespect. My voters chose my Government, whether you like that or not.
So, you can throw your toys out of the cot as much as you like. I love your people and your nation, but as far as you and your administration are concerned, I don’t want to be your friend anymore. Yeah, I know that you will claim it will hurt me more than it will hurt you. But lets face it, you have already stopped the flow of arms and already made it clear that our current relationship is all take and no give from your part. I only hope you desparately need some of my science, technology, military intelligence or technical innovation in the near future. Maybe you will then miss all those things that I bring to our friendship and you might even see that I have something to give after all. Maybe some of my timeless and universal values will be sorely needed by your discerning decision makers in the near future.
I’m happy to kiss and make up if you change your mind. But at the moment, you just don’t get it. Or maybe you do, but you just don’t care. Either way, if you can’t respect my soveriegn right to build my soveriegn nation then we have lost our common bond of trust and goodwill.
When you are elected out of office in a couple of years, I look forward to embracing your successor. I’m sure that she will do all she can to defend my right to exist like a real friend should. But until then, I guess we will have to continue our disagreements. Frankly, based on your performance to date, it is far more deserving that these disagreements are not patronised by your cronies as “disagreement’s between friends”. They are disagreements far beyond those that the obligation of friendship entails, or can indeed legitimately endure.
Yours, with an expression of glowing pride on the occasion of my 62nd birthday,
Israel