George F. Will was the featured speaker at the dinner Monday evening at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in
Santa Monica, in celebration of the Claremont Review of Books. Will received the Salvatori Prize in the American Founding, and gave a masterful speech that included a mixture of political insight, conservative philosophy, humor and baseball stories.
After the speech, he took a few questions, including one that led him to reflect on President Obama’s apparent belief that disharmony among nations results from misunderstandings that can be cured by dialogue and communication (and the force of his own personality) — a view that Will characterized as reflecting a 1930s approach to foreign policy:
We’ve seen this in his treatment of
Israel in that remarkable speech, the atmospherics of which were fine, the specifics appalling.
I mean, in the 61 years since
Israel was founded on one-sixth of one percent of land in that area described as land of the Arab world, there has not been a moment of peace for
Israel, not as peace is properly understood.
How many Americans understand that when
Israel was founded in 1948, no Palestinian state was invaded, no Palestinian state was destroyed? There had not been a Palestinian geographic entity since between the departure of the Romans and the arrival of British rule.
How many know that the West Bank, referred to by the President as “occupied territory,” inferentially as occupied Palestinian territory, is under international law [an] unallocated portion of the
Palestine Mandate rightfully occupied by
Israel, because it occupied it in repelling aggression that came from that territory in 1967. [Applause].
How the President believes that if we return to the 1967 borders, the antipathy to
Israel, which predated the 1967 borders, will disappear, I do not know.
It would help if he . . . spent some time [there]. George W. Bush, for all his defects, went to
Israel shortly before he was elected and was squired around by another rancher named Arik Sharon. He took him up in a helicopter, to where
Israel was at one point nine miles wide, and George W. Bush came home and said “My God, in
Texas we have driveways longer than that.” [Laughter]. He sort of got the picture.
I remember — if I could go back to an autobiographical moment — in 1979 I was invited to talk to the B’nai Brith of
Beverly Hills – not a nest of conservatives – and they said “Who should be the Republican nominee?” And I said, pick Howard Baker, George Bush, Ronald Reagan. And they said “Well, who would be best for
Israel?” And I responded “Of course it would be Ronald Reagan.” They said “Why?”
I said — “Two reasons: he believes in aircraft carriers. He believes in the projection of American power. Second, he is a romantic. He’s got the story of
Israel, plucky little
Israel.”
You need both. You need aircraft carriers and you need to appreciate the fact that
Israel is an embattled salient of our values in a bad neighborhood. [Applause]. It is unworthy of the
United States to aspire to be even-handed between those who would destroy and those who would preserve the only democracy in that region. [Applause].
Will was speaking extemporaneously, without notes, to an unanticipated question. His comments are worth listening to, and you can do so here.
