He's a Blinken traitor to Israel: says recognizing a Palestinian state is a rebuke to Hamas

Antony Blinken, once America's top diplomat, has ventured into the quagmire of Middle East politics with a Wall Street Journal op-ed that attempts to thread an impossible needle. He insists that recognizing a Palestinian state is not a reward for Hamas's barbarism but a "rebuke" to it, a claim as idiotic as it is bewildering. Yet, in the same breath, he relegates this grand gesture to the back burner, behind the more pressing matters of freeing hostages, averting famine in Gaza, and ending the war. 

One might ask: if Palestinian statehood is such a noble rebuke, why not prioritize it? The answer, of course, lies in the grim realities the cowardly Blinken dares not fully confront.

"Israel long ago achieved two of its three stated objectives in Gaza," Blinken writes, nodding to the dismantling of Hamas's military machine and the elimination of those behind the October 7 massacre, a slaughter that needs no recapitulation for anyone with a pulse. But the third objective, the return of hostages, remains elusive. And here, Blinken takes aim at Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to occupy Gaza, arguing it will only prolong the conflict and deepen the misery on both sides. 

Fair enough. Occupation is a messy business, and the optics of Israeli tanks rolling through Gaza's ruins are hardly a PR coup. But what, precisely, is the alternative when Hamas still lurks, ready to rearm and reignite? Playing footsie with Hamas will only end in becoming footless. 

Blinken's answer is a familiar diplomatic sleight of hand: dangle the carrot of Palestinian statehood, but only if it meets a laundry list of conditions. 

"No one should expect Israel to accept a Palestinian state that is led by Hamas or other terrorists, that is militarized or has independent armed militias, that aligns with Iran or others that reject Israel’s right to exist, that educates and preaches hatred of Jews or Israel."

A sensible caveat, to be sure. After all, who could argue for a state run by genocidal fanatics or Iran's proxies? Yet the conditions are so stringent they feel less like a pathway than a polite way of saying "never." Blinken suggests a three-year timeline, with the United Nations Security Council, hardly a bastion of impartiality, as the arbiter of Palestinian compliance. "America's veto would reassure Israelis," the dolt adds, as if a U.S. veto in that circus of geopolitics could calm anyone's nerves.

Meanwhile, Blinken urges Israel to play nice: address Gaza's humanitarian crisis, halt settlement expansion in the West Bank, stop demolishing Palestinian homes [that Hamas has booby-trapped], and crack down on extremist violence. Oh, and support the reform of the Palestinian Authority, that creaking relic of Oslo, rather than undermining it. 

Good advice, perhaps, but it sidesteps the inconvenient truth that the PA has been a masterclass in corruption and ineffectuality for decades, and let's not forget their cute "pay to slay" program targeting Jews of all stripes.

The deeper problem with Blinken's vision, aside from the fact that he isn't the brightest bulb in the tool shed. is its refusal to grapple with the mutual delusions at play. "Israel cannot maintain the idea that Palestinians will tolerate being a 'non-people without national rights,'" he writes, and he's not wrong. The status quo is a pressure cooker. But then he adds, "Palestinians must understand that ideas of a state 'from the river to the sea' are unfeasible." 

Here's where the diplomatic sheen cracks. That phrase isn't just a slogan; it's a call for Israel's erasure, chanted by those who see no room for a Jewish state in any configuration. 

Blinken’s response? A platitude: "No one is going anywhere, whatever the delusions of extremists on both sides." Stirring words, but they gloss over the asymmetry of those delusions, one side seeks coexistence, however imperfectly; the other, too often, seeks annihilation.

Blinken's op-ed, at best, is a study in well-meaning futility. He wants Arab states to rebuild Gaza and keep Hamas at bay, but only if there’s a "credible political path toward Palestinian self-determination." 

Saudi Arabia, eyeing normalization with Israel, might nod along, but they're not fools, they know a Palestinian state under current conditions risks becoming another Iranian satrapy. And so we’re left with a paradox: statehood as a rebuke to Hamas, but only if Hamas is already neutered; a path to peace, but only if everyone agrees to play by rules that have never held. It's a vision as earnest as it is detached from the blood-soaked realities of the region. 

One wonders if Blinken believes it himself.

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