Hoo boy. It’s going to be a real ultra-Zionist lovefest in New York City Tuesday as GOP luminaries, Likud machers and members of the Israel lobby convene at 10am at the W Hotel near Union Square. Their rally/press conference will be led by Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry and Knesset Member Danny Danon. From The Jerusalem Post:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry will hold a press conference with American and Israeli-Jewish leaders in New York on Tuesday in which he is expected to address the upcoming deliberations at the United Nations, MK Danny Danon (Likud), said on Saturday night. Danon, who will participate at the press conference, said he would ask Perry ahead of the conference to adopt the initiative the MK is advancing to annex Judea and Samaria in response to the unilateral Palestinian moves at the UN.

Danon, already in the U.S. to speak at nationwide Zionist fundraisers and rallies prior to the UN vote, has proposed an “Annexation for Declaration Initiative,” which would “establish full sovereignty over the Jewish communities of the West Bank . . . our historic homeland of Judea and Samaria:”

“Under [my] three-state solution, Arab-Israelis residing within Israel would be welcome to join the official new State of Israel. The remaining enclaves of Palestinian towns and villages in Judea and Samaria would become part of either Egypt or Jordan, and the Egyptian and Jordanian borders would extend accordingly to these designated towns.” [Snip] “Both Jordan and Egypt have expressed strong support and concern for Palestinians living in the West Bank. If they truly care so much, then they should readily agree to a three-state solution and incorporate the Palestinian towns located adjacent to their current borders.”www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx

The Israeli annexations would include the settlements “as a start,” and expand to encompass the “empty land” of Area C, a zone that includes almost 60% of total West Bank territory, though only 10% of the West Bank’s Palestinian population. This is partly because “about 70 percent of Area C is [already] classified as a firing zone, settlement areas, or nature reserves, and is inaccessible to Palestinians.”

Danon argues that all this is right and proper because the land constitutes what was “Judea and Samaria”: there’s no Palestine, he insists, never was and certainly won’t be on the Jews’ God-given property. So while it is right for South Sudan to pursue statehood, in Danon’s opinion — “just like Israel, its people live with a sense of resolve and confidence that their existence is a God-given right,” he has said, and “the creation of this new nation deserves the attention and admiration of the entire international community” — it is not right, not God-given and certainly not admirable for the Palestinians to attempt to do so now or ever, as it will just lead to the establishment of an Iranian-backed “terrorist state” like Gaza.

All this will no doubt garner a robust “Amen” from Perry tomorrow, since he is all too happy to project past onto present, Israel onto Texas, Arabs onto Mexicans, and the “struggles” of Texan pioneers in the 1830s and 40s onto the “struggles” of Israeli settlers in the the 21st century. As he rather famously wrote in The Jerusalem Post last week: “historian T.R. Fehrenbach once observed that my home state of Texas and Israel share the experience of civilized men and women thrown into new and harsh conditions, beset by enemies.”

So it’s exactly the same – except for the part where Texans actually participated in a referendum over their annexation by the U.S. (granted, it was a referendum that whoeheartedly endorsed slavery). The non-Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria will presumably not have the luxury these (white) Texans did, though they will certainly be welcome to vote with their feet on whether they remain in Greater Israel or not.

Yet, as Max Blumenthal has pointed out, Perry’s remarks are in fact, too clever by half. According to Blumenthal, what Fehrenbach actually said in his work Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans was this:

“The Texan’s attitudes, his inherent chauvinism and the seeds of his belligerence, sprouted from his conscious effort to take and hold his land. It was the reaction of essentially civilized men and women thrown into new and harsh conditions, beset by enemies they despised. The closest 20th-century counterpart is the State of Israel, born in blood in another primordial land.”

With that in mind, Danon is even more deserving than Glenn Beck of the honorary Texan citizenship Rick Perry is so fond of bestowing on deserving wing-nuts. Hell, he might just make him an honorary Texas Ranger. Make everyone in Likud (among other parties) an honorary Texas Ranger. They could then do some whistlestop campaigning in the West Bank wearing official badges.

Yisrael Beitenu’s Avigdor Lieberman would probably look good in a bolo tie, and spurs would not look out of place on Im Tirtzu jackboots. But I shudder to think what Perry would wear to such a West Bank rally . . . especially as a U.S. president.