Where is Claude Rains when We Need Him

In the film Casablanca, the local French chief of police is told by the Nazi representative to shut down Rick's Cafe. The police chief, played by Claude Rains, orders the club shut and when asked for a reason why he has issued the order he announce that "I am shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling going on here." At that point, one of the club employees comes over to Rains and hands him some money which he says is Rains gambling winnings. This film snippet is perhaps the most well know example of hypocrisy in American culture.

Well, today, we need Rains to step forward again. The item in question now is the reaction a statement made by Mitt Romney in which he said that Palestinians "have no interest" in peace with Israel but are "committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel." Romney also said that the prospects for a two-state solution to Mideast peace were dim.

To listen to the main stream media, one would think that Romney was advocating nuclear war rather than just stating the obvious. There truly cannot be a sane person, even one in the media, who would disagree with Romney's statement. Remember what happened at Camp David with Bill Clinton meeting with the Israelis and the Palestinians. At that time, the Israeli prime minister offered Yassir Arafat nearly everything that Arafat had asked for. There would be a Palestinian state. It would get about 99% of the land in the West Bank and Gaza that was won by Israel in the 1967 war. Isreal would withdraw from all of that territory and only maintain some small garrisons along the Jordan River. The Moslem holy sites in Jerusalem would be under Palestinian control. Basically, Arafat would get everything that he wanted except that there would be no return by Palestinian refugees to land in Israel itself; in other words, the refugees created by the 1948 war would not return by would settle instead in the Palestinian half of the area. Arafat's answer was a total rejection of the plan. He would not accept any outcome that did not result in the end of the Jewish state.

The late Israeli statesman Abba Eban used to say that "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." He was talking about opportunities for peace. No matter what was offered to them, the Palestinians rejected it. They were and are committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel.

Bravo to Romney for having the courage to speak the truth! America needs to hear that simple truth. The problem in the area is not Israel; it is the Palestinians who are intransigent.

The main stream media ought to be ashamed of itself. Here it is promoting the idea that to tell the truth is a bad thing. America is supposed to move ahead with the fiction that peace is just around the corner when it clearly is not. We have seen where lies like that have gotten us during the last four years of Obama. We do not need more lies.