The meaning of words often becomes muted when they fall out of common usage. So while I knew the general sense of the word, “apartheid” I refreshed my understanding with this definition from Wikipedia:

Apartheid an Afrikaans (Dutch-German) word meaning “the state of being apart.” literally “apart-hood” … a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party governments, the ruling party from 1948 to 1994, under which the rights of the majority black inhabitants were curtailed and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained. Apartheid sparked significant internal resistance and violence … Since the 1950s, a series of popular uprisings and protests was met with the banning of opposition and imprisoning of anti-apartheid leaders [Nelson Mandela among them]. As unrest spread and became more effective and militarized, state organizations responded with repression and violence.

Two weeks ago Secretary of State John Kerry gave a closed-door briefing of the Israel-Palestine conflict in which he said,

If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state” … A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens – or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state …

The modern state of Israel is home to about as many Jews as the Nazis destroyed in the Holocaust. Few more inflammatory metaphors could have chosen by the bumbling Kerry to label the Israeli position in the Palestinian conflict than “apartheid state.” No other ethnic group has been victimized more by racial hatred for over 2,000 years. Was this a Freudian slip? It made me wonder what sub-conscious anti-Semitic prejudices Kerry may be harboring.

Predictably the outcry was loud and immediate. And just as predictably the Kerry State Department issued a denial that he’d said what he’d said.

“The Secretary … did not state publicly or privately that Israel is an apartheid state …,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. Unfortunately, Kerry had been taped so there was no denying what he said. Hmmm. No doubt smoke poured from Ms. Psaki’s ears as she pondered the dilemma. Then she came up with this beaut:

“He certainly didn’t say ‘is.’”

This sort of rhetorical silliness is reminiscent of Clinton’s obstruction of justice word-parsing: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” and Kerry’s, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it.”

Not to be outdone by her boss in the monthly State Department “Foot in the Mouth” contest, Spokeswoman Psaki was quick to assert the “some of his best friends are Jewish,” defense. Well, la-dee-da!

“…If I could rewind the tape,” Kerry later told his critics, “I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two state solution.”

Israel is a country smaller than the state of New Jersey. At one place, it is only nine miles wide. Its population is eight million people, of whom six million are Jews. The rest are non-Jewish immigrants related to Jews, Israeli Arabs, Christians, and Druze. The Arabs participate in and are protected by Jewish law and democratic processes. It appears to me that some non-Jewish groups are already living side-by-side with the Jews as Uncle Kerry and Papa Obama want.

It’s their neighbors living in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Lebanon, however, that are the troublemakers. Hamas and the PLO have launched 10,000 rockets into Israel hitting homes, synagogues, hospitals, schools, and villages. It’s not the sort of place that John and Teresa Heinz Kerry or Barry and Michelle would choose to live. But Team Obama/Kerry have no qualms about telling the Jews how they should live. Both have asked the Israeli government to give up more land and move in a little tighter. It does make the Jews an easier target, don’t you think?

The Palestinians hate Jews so much they won’t take sovereign control of any territory ceded to them unless all Jews are expelled – just abandon your home and move in with other Jews, like you did in the Polish ghettos when the Nazis wanted you out of designated Aryan territories. Remember Schindler’s List? Kerry and Obama say this would pave the road to peace.

Conveniently ignored by Kerry and Obama is the Clinton-engineered 2000 Camp David Summit which Yasser Arafat, the Soviet-trained terrorist, scuttled. Clinton later wrote in his book My Life that Arafat complimented him saying, “You are a great man,” to which Clinton responded, “I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you made me one.” Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross also later wrote that Arafat shot down the peace solution because he didn’t want to shut off the ability to make more demands later, especially the “right of return.” Arafat wanted a one-state solution, not a two-state side-by-side solution. Until there was a single Arab state encompassing all of the historic Palestinian territory, there would be no solution on Arafat’s terms. In other words, no Jews allowed in the Middle East.

Also conveniently ignored is the fact that days before Kerry’s “apartheid” blunder, the 79-year old President of the laughingly named Palestinian Authority, aka the PLO, signed a unity deal with Hamas, their rival terror group, to join forces in destroying Israel. President Mahmoud Abbas of the PA had two choices: break off peace negotiations or be assassinated. The elected Arab mayors of communities in the West Bank, Samaria, and Judea who were trying to live in peace with Israel were knee-capped by Abbas goons. Why isn’t this stuff reported?

The only “apartheid” state in this explosive area is the Arab areas insisting on ethnic cleansing of the 650,000 Jews living in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem – the terrorists whose cause Kerry and Obama are championing.

A question for the geniuses in Foggy Bottom: what does the economy of the Palestinian Arab territories produce – i.e. what are its main industries? The economy of Israel mirrors the modern world as evidenced by its GDP per capita of $32,000. The GDP of the Palestinian-controlled territories is less than $2,000 per capita, a third of which is foreign aid, since the Palestinians are the world’s largest per capita recipients of it. It’s a welfare society. Why? Because a significant part of its human capital is not deployed into productive work. It’s engaged in violence – fighting its neighbors, the Jews. Since the creation of modern Israel in 1948, generations of Palestinians have known no other enterprise except fighting. Most notably this is true among Arafat’s PLO fighters. War is the main industry of the Palestinians.

It’s a fool’s errand to debate whose land it is. That’s not the issue. Civilizations had occupied it before Joshua’s conquest of the Canaanites around 1300 BC and civilizations occupied it up to the Ottoman Empire, which lost it in WW I. Someone has always taken it from someone else. But it’s always been God’s land in my book. The land dispute is what it is. Is a peaceful resolution possible?

If a peaceful resolution isn’t possible, and it doesn’t appear it is in current circumstances, then the contestants must fight until there is a winner. That’s the way most disputes are resolved absent a peaceful solution. It wouldn’t be my choice, but I don’t live there. Neither do Kerry and Obama.

Although Kerry hasn’t said so directly, he has implied that no resolution is possible with the current leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Kerry said if “there is a change of government or a change of heart, something will happen.” But I’m not sure that dog hunts. Over the history of the conflict, Israel has been led by governments on the right, left, and center – all of which negotiated unsuccessfully with the Palestinian representative of their time. Not so with the Palestinians who have always been led from the left and negotiated accordingly. The problem isn’t Netanyahu.

But if regime change is what Kerry thinks is needed, I’d agree. Get rid of Kerry and Obama. Kerry’s Manichean world exists nowhere, least of all in this part of the world. And Obama doesn’t like Netanyahu, has no respect for Israel or its historic relationship to the land, and sees no advantage to a democratic island in the Middle East. If anything, Obama and the Clinton/Kerry State Department would like nothing less than an isolated, humiliated Israel. Getting rid of Obama and Kerry would be progress because no one could be worse for Israel than theses two.

Obama has destroyed any sense of this country’s historic support of Israel, support which poll after poll confirms. What I can’t understand is why 80% of American Jews keep voting for Democrats who don’t support the nation of Israel. Good grief, the Jews in Congress, 99% of them Democrats, don’t support the nation of Israel!

So, yes; let regime change happen – in 2016!