From The Editor by Larry Gordon BIG DECISIONS, LITTLE INFO The US Congress is a very busy place. In fact t is dizzyingly busy. There are long lines of people each morning marching through the metal detectors and through the security personnel at the front door screening those who want to meet or speak to the Congressional representative or Senator about one matter or another. I chose this week to spend these few days in DC to lobby Congress along with a half dozen men who reside in the hills of the Shomron in Israel and who work with the Shomron Regional Council. And this event arrived at an auspicious time as Secretary of State was once again trying to piece together the details of an agreement to get Israeli’s and Arabs to sit at a table and negotiate after a three year hiatus. Why this is so important to Mr. Kerry and President Obama is not really a great mystery. It is essentially about a miserably failed and failing presidency that is tapping around to find a positive achievement somewhere, even anywhere in the world and for some reason Israel is a traditional and comfortable target. In two and a half days we did a lot of things, met a lot of people and attended some extraordinarily fascinating meetings. The two sessions that I want to shed some light on today took place on Tuesday morning in the Rayburne Congressional Office building in the shadow of the Capitol. The members of the delegation that included Gershon Mesika, the Governor of the Shomron, Yossi Dagan, his deputy governor and David Ha’Ivri one of his aides and spokesman brought some new issues to life for me. The first meeting was with Congressman Pete Sessions, R-Texas and following that encounter we met with Congresswoman Michel Bachman, a former candidate for President and a Republican representative from Minnesota. And here’s the news that was brought home to me as I sat in on these meetings. Big decisions are made routinely in Washington with either very skimpy or very minimal amounts of information. And guess what---it is not the fault of the decision makers because they are overwhelmed with issues that need to be decided upon sometimes under the most trying of circumstances. Mr. Sessions and Ms. Bachman are smart and accomplished individuals, but we cannot expect them to grasp every aspect of every issue in its entirety. Perhaps this is not a surprise or big news---but the President does not have a great grasp of many of the important issue of the day either. As you recall a few years ago when it came to the 2,700 page Obamacare bill in the Congress and what the was actually composed of and constituted, then Democratic Majority Leader, Nancy Perlosi, D-CA, said, “We will have to pass the legislation in order to find out what’s in it.” That today seems to be the clarion call in Washington and that is true even about the life and death and war and peace matter that so intimately affect Israel and all Jews residing in the Jewish state. So Pete Sessions is a smooth and glib man who obviously enjoys being engaged in meeting with a cross section of people. He is a Republican leader and a great and important friend of Israel in Congress. The delegation from the Shomron are trying to make the following point---we are the people on who’s land the world, that is the US and the Europeans say---are living on “occupied territory,” that should be given to the Palestinians as part of their new country if these two state madness ever comes to reality. The gentleman from the Shomron eloquently explain to Congressman Sessions that they are a group that represents over eighty Jewish communities and that in Judea and Samaria as well as in East Jerusalem that the Arab world and the US State Department along with the United Nations and the European Union along with the recently deceased journalist Helen Thomas says that the Jews have to vacate, reside over 700,000 people. More at 5TJT.COM
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 11:22:11 +0000
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