In a blog post last week, I suggested than President Obama''s visit and specifically, his visit to the Israel Museum''s Dead Sea Scrolls, was, in a sense, a reconfirmation of the League of Nations Mandate decision which was predicated on recognizing the Jewish people''s historical claims to the Land of Israel as the Jewish homeland and its natural and legal right to reconstitute that homeland.
I am confirmed.
Well, here''s the take of the Washington Post:
...As he embarks Tuesday on his first presidential trip to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Obama will seek to clarify his support for the Jewish state’s theory of its historical roots — addressing one of several subtle, but essential, missteps he is attempting to fix in his second term. The trip is a mission of remedial diplomacy, rather than the kind of specific peace initiative common for previous presidential visits.
And this:
...Among the landmarks the Israeli government asked President Obama to visit during his trip to Jerusalem this week is the hilltop tomb of Theodor Herzl, the chief theoretician of Zionism, who died decades before his fears of growing anti-Semitism were borne out by the Holocaust.The site’s symbolic weight has prompted other foreign leaders to avoid it. But Obama agreed — part of a series of carefully considered moves aimed at repairing relations with America’s primary Middle East ally. For many Israelis, Herzl’s grave represents an ancient Jewish claim, rather than one rooted in the Holocaust, to the slice of land that comprises their modern state.
Of course, that view has been the traditional American one from John Quincy Adams who believed in the "rebuilding of Judea as an independent nation", on to Wilson and Harding and on down to today and we are all glad President Obama has finally realized he cannot avoid the truth.
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