Jacoby: Peace process is a myth

Boston Globe op-ed columnist Jeff Jacoby denied the viability of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine in McCosh 28 yesterday.

Jacoby included the two-state solution as one of his “Four Big Myths” in a lecture titled “The ‘Peace Process’ and Other Middle East Myths.” Jacoby listed the four myths as the plausibility of a co-existence of Israel and Palestine, the idea that peace should be made between enemies, the notion that “terrorists want to derail the peace process” and the belief that “anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism.”

Throughout history, and “every time [the idea of a two-state solution] has been on the table, Palestin[ian]s have refused it,” Jacoby said. Citing specific instances in 1947, 1967 and 2000, he concluded that no two-state solution would ever resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“Arabs don’t want ... Jews to have their own state,” he said.

Jacoby said terrorists had no wish to ruin peace talks between Palestine and Israel. “Palestinian terrorists are trying to accelerate the [peace] process ... [and] make Israelis so demoralized and disgusted ... that they’ll make deeper concessions to get a deal to be made with enemies,” Jacoby said.

The only way that peace would emerge in the Middle East is if there were an “end to appeasement [and if] Israel returned to a policy of deterrence,” he explained.

The lecture was sponsored by Tigers for Israel, Princeton Chabad, The David Project, the James Madison Program and the Center for Jewish Life.

Jacoby is the first speaker in an Israel ambassador series that members of Chabad are looking to expand. Addie Lerner ’11 has worked with Chabad Director Rabbi Eitan Webb, Tigers for Israel president David Levit ’10 and Sam Siegel ’09 to explore pro-Israel activism by bringing in various speakers.

“[The] goal is to have [the] community exposed to views [that they otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to],” Levit said.

It is “important for students especially to hear both sides of the argument, and often this is a side that doesn’t get presented very often,” Webb said. “Israel must have a right to defend itself because it is a sovereign nation, and to suggest otherwise is highly problematic to my mind.”

Jacoby graduated from George Washington University in 1979 and Boston University Law School in 1983. In 1999, he was the first recipient of the Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism.

After hosting the weekly television program, “Talk of New England” and frequently appearing as a panelist on WCVB-TV’s “Five on Five,” he became a chief editorial writer at the Boston Herald in 1987. In 1994, he became an op-ed columnist for the Boston Globe when the newspaper decided to hire a conservative writer to balance its many liberal ones.