Jonathan Tobin
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/tobin/73742
The demand issued to the new Israeli ambassador (and former Commentary contributor) Michael Oren this past weekend spoke volumes about the changing nature of the U.S.-Israel alliance. For the past few months, Obama’s Jewish supporters have been saying that the dispute between the two countries over settlements is not about the United States trying to harm Israel but rather a case of Washington seeking to stop “illegal settlements” opposed by many Israelis and most American Jews. But the demand issued to Ambassador Oren was not about some illegal hilltop outpost somewhere deep in the West Bank, in territory that most Israelis concede would be part of a future Palestinian state. Instead, the houses going up are in a section of the capital, albeit a neighborhood that prior to June 1967 was occupied by Jordan and, therefore, off-limits to Jews from 1949 to 1967. The 20-unit housing complex is in Sheik Jarrah, a still predominantly Arab neighborhood but one that, as even the New York Times concedes, is also home to foreign consulates and Israeli government buildings.
To Israel’s credit, its reply was quick and to the point:
I would like to re-emphasize that united Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged; this means — inter alia — that residents of Jerusalem may purchase apartments in all parts of the city.
The Times article goes on to note that Israeli intelligence has pointed out that Hamas is in the process of buying up property in Jerusalem and that the moderates of Fatah “had set up an intelligence network aimed at preventing Palestinians from selling their property to Israelis.” Earlier this year, a Palestinian was accused of selling real estate to Jews. He was sentenced to death by a Palestinian Authority court.
Anyone who has visited Jerusalem in recent years knows there has been a building boom in Arab neighborhoods. But no foreign government has protested the increase in Arab housing in Jerusalem. Nor does anyone think there is anything wrong about Arabs living in predominantly Jewish areas.
But the Obama administration apparently believes th at the prospect of a Jew building a house in his country’s capital is worthy of a diplomatic incident. Let’s be clear about this: It is one thing to oppose building new Jewish towns near Arab towns deep in the West Bank or to question the building of Jewish suburbs near Jerusalem. It is quite another to maintain that Jews may not build or live in parts of their city.
It is a sad fact that no U.S. government has ever formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over a united Jerusalem. But all of them understood that Jerusalem was a separate issue from the dispute over the West Bank and had to be treated delicately, if for no other reason than that the vast majority of Americans supported Israel’s rights in the city. By escalating the dispute over Jerusalem into a major point of disagreement with Israel, the Obama administration has raised the ante in its efforts to pressure Netanyahu’s government. In this case, Obama has overplayed his hand. While Bibi is prepared to bend on some points, no Israeli prime minister would accept such a U.S. fiat over Jerusalem.
This is yet another moment to ask not just the ubiquitous Alan Dershowitz but also the legion of Jews who raised money for Obama, vouched for his pro-Israel bona fides, and then gave him three quarters of the Jewish vote last November: Is this what you wanted? Did the majority of Jewish Democrats who are devoted friends of Israel expect that Obama would seek to create a rift between the U.S. and Israel — not about remote West Bank settlements but over Jewish rights in Jerusalem?
If a statement such as this, which is tantamount to a redivision of Jerusalem and a ban on Jewish life in the sections formally occupied by Jordan, is official U.S. policy, and if this policy is acceptable to such friends of Israel, you have to wonder, what is it that they would find unacceptable? Have they no red lines Obama may not tread over? Or is anything he does kosher by definition because he is a popular liberal Democrat whose good intentions toward the Jewish state may not be questioned?
The silence of Jewish Democrats can only hearten those who wish to blow up the U.S.-Israel alliance. The question is when will these friends of Israel find their voices.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of Commentary magazine. He can be reached via e-mail at: jtobin@commentarymagazine.com.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Dore Gold: J'lem sovereignty obviously not up for discussion
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST
Amid tensions with the US over east Jerusalem construction, former Israeli ambassador to Washington Dore Gold said Friday that "Israel's sovereignty of the Old City and the rest of Jerusalem is obviously not up for discussion." "Our hope is that we can lower tensions between Israel and the US created by headlines and various comments," he said in an interview with Israel Radio.
Gold, one of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's top foreign policy advisers, said there were currently important joint interests between Jerusalem and Washington, particularly the Iranian threat, and also stressed the importance of pursuing partnerships with Arab countries that felt threatened by the Islamic republic's nuclear aspirations.
Gold was circumspect regarding peace talks with Syria and expressed his opposition to withdrawing from the Golan Heights
"We don't know if Syria has decided to leave the terror axis," he said. "Syria doesn't only give refuge to Hamas and Hizbullah, but for many years, it has also given support to Al-Qaida-linked groups in Iraq acting against US and British forces."
"I believe the Golan is Israel's line of defense in the North and must be preserved," he added.
Gold emphasized that he was speaking in his own name, not that of the government.
"We don't ask other factions to recognize Israel because we in Fatah have never recognized Israel"
Will anyone listen? Will Obama abandon plans to create a Palestinian state? Will the oceans flow with Pepsi-Cola?
"'Fatah has never recognized Israel,'" by Khaled Abu Toameh for the Jerusalem Post, July 22 (thanks to Kristian):Fatah has never recognized Israel's right to exist and it has no intention of ever doing so, a veteran senior leader of the Western-backed faction said on Wednesday.
Rafik Natsheh, member of the Fatah Central Committee who also serves as chairman of the faction's disciplinary "court," is the second senior official in recent months to make similar statements regarding Israel.
Natsheh is also a former minister in the Palestinian Authority government who briefly served as Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Earlier this year, Muhammad Dahlan, another top Fatah figure, said that Fatah had never recognized Israel's right to exist despite the fact that it is the largest faction in the PLO, which signed the Oslo Accords with Israel.
Natsheh's remarks came days before Fatah's general assembly that is slated to take place in Bethlehem on August 4.
The assembly, the first in two decades, is expected to bring some 1,500 Fatah delegates together to discuss ways of reforming the faction and holding internal elections.
One of the topics on the conference's agenda is whether Fatah should formally abandon the armed struggle and recognize Israel's right to exist.
"Fatah does not recognize Israel's right to exist," Natsheh said, "nor have we ever asked others to do so." His comments, which appeared in an interview with Al-Quds Al-Arabi, came in response to reports according to which Fatah had asked Hamas to recognize Israel as a precondition for the establishment of a Palestinian unity government.
"All these reports about recognizing Israel are false," Natsheh, who is closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, said. "It's all media nonsense. We don't ask other factions to recognize Israel because we in Fatah have never recognized Israel."
Asked about calls for dropping the reference to armed struggle from Fatah's charter, Natsheh said: "Let all the collaborators [with Israel] and those who are deluding themselves hear that this will never happen. We'll meet at the conference [in Bethlehem]."
Natsheh stressed that neither Fatah nor the Palestinians would ever relinquish the armed struggle against Israel "no matter how long the occupation continues." He said that Fatah, at the upcoming conference, would reiterate its adherence to the option of pursuing "all forms" of an armed struggle against Israel....
Thanks Jihad Watch
"'Fatah has never recognized Israel,'" by Khaled Abu Toameh for the Jerusalem Post, July 22 (thanks to Kristian):Fatah has never recognized Israel's right to exist and it has no intention of ever doing so, a veteran senior leader of the Western-backed faction said on Wednesday.
Rafik Natsheh, member of the Fatah Central Committee who also serves as chairman of the faction's disciplinary "court," is the second senior official in recent months to make similar statements regarding Israel.
Natsheh is also a former minister in the Palestinian Authority government who briefly served as Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Earlier this year, Muhammad Dahlan, another top Fatah figure, said that Fatah had never recognized Israel's right to exist despite the fact that it is the largest faction in the PLO, which signed the Oslo Accords with Israel.
Natsheh's remarks came days before Fatah's general assembly that is slated to take place in Bethlehem on August 4.
The assembly, the first in two decades, is expected to bring some 1,500 Fatah delegates together to discuss ways of reforming the faction and holding internal elections.
One of the topics on the conference's agenda is whether Fatah should formally abandon the armed struggle and recognize Israel's right to exist.
"Fatah does not recognize Israel's right to exist," Natsheh said, "nor have we ever asked others to do so." His comments, which appeared in an interview with Al-Quds Al-Arabi, came in response to reports according to which Fatah had asked Hamas to recognize Israel as a precondition for the establishment of a Palestinian unity government.
"All these reports about recognizing Israel are false," Natsheh, who is closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, said. "It's all media nonsense. We don't ask other factions to recognize Israel because we in Fatah have never recognized Israel."
Asked about calls for dropping the reference to armed struggle from Fatah's charter, Natsheh said: "Let all the collaborators [with Israel] and those who are deluding themselves hear that this will never happen. We'll meet at the conference [in Bethlehem]."
Natsheh stressed that neither Fatah nor the Palestinians would ever relinquish the armed struggle against Israel "no matter how long the occupation continues." He said that Fatah, at the upcoming conference, would reiterate its adherence to the option of pursuing "all forms" of an armed struggle against Israel....
Thanks Jihad Watch
Friday, July 24, 2009
Dump the CEIRPP
Over the years, the United Nations has done its fair share to prolong and exacerbate the Arab-Israel conflict. The explanation for this lies not with the world body conceptually, and certainly not with the ethos of its founders. But the UN can't but reflect the values shared by the bulk of its members, the efforts of an enlightened minority notwithstanding. With the arguable exception of General Assembly Resolution 181, which in 1947 called for the establishment of independent Jewish and Arab states - and which the Arabs rejected out of hand - just about every subsequent UN/GA stand on the conflict has been to Israel's detriment. The most recent pertinent GA resolution, for instance, ES-10/18 of January 2009, basically regurgitated the Palestinian position on Operation Cast Lead, codifying it in international law.
There are now 192 member-states in the UN, most of which maintain diplomatic relations with both the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel. In practice, however, the PLO has a built-in majority for just about any resolution it champions. Start with the 22-member Arab League and add (though allow for some overlap) the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, then throw in "non-aligned" countries such as North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. The result is that one would be hard pressed to come up with a single instance in which the General Assembly sided with Israel against the Arabs. Not once has the GA unequivocally reprimanded the PLO or Hamas for engaging in airline-hijackings, bus bombings and other forms of anti-civilian warfare. Israel, in contrast, is censured at every opportunity.
THE international body sank to its moral nadir on November 10, 1975, when the General Assembly passed the odious Resolution 3379, by a vote of 72 to 35 with 32 abstentions, labeling the national liberation movement of the Jewish people - Zionism - as a form of "racism." The fact that the resolution was revoked in 1991 by no means entirely removes the ethical stain with which the world body remains tarnished.
But perhaps the one single most damaging step the organization took to institutionalize its bias against the Jewish state came with the creation in 1975 of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP).
Unlike the Kurds, Roma, Copts, Uyghur, Tibetans, and others peoples' who plead for international support, only the Palestinian Arabs have a permanent UN-funded body which does nothing but agitate on their behalf.
As part of a revolving door of injustice, each year the GA meets to "discuss" the "Question of Palestine" and each year it passes the recommendations of the CEIRPP. The biases of the committee have metastasized throughout the UN system owing to its ability to poison attitudes toward Israel from within. It is the CEIRPP which came up with the charade known as the "International Solidarity Day with the Palestinian People," held annually on November 29, and which sponsors an array of meetings, seminars and conferences targeting Israel.
The committee - which convenes again today and tomorrow in Geneva - is comprised of Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Cyprus, Guinea, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tunisia, Turkey and Ukraine.
It will not question the Palestinian decision to reject former prime minister Ehud Olmert's magnanimous 2008 peace offer. It will not tell the Palestinians that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's seminal Bar-Ilan speech offers a way forward toward. It will not tell the Palestinians to end their boycott of the peace negotiations. The CEIRPP will never call on Hamas to recognize Israel, end terror and accept previous Palestinian commitments - as demanded by the Quartet.
Of course, the committee will do none of these things - because its raison d'etre is not peace but the vilification of Israel.
That is why this newspaper endorses a campaign initiated by the New York-based the Anti-Defamation League urging UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to dismantle the committee on the grounds that it is the "single most prolific source of material bearing the official imprimatur of the UN which maligns and debases the Jewish state."
The CEIRPP is also an obstacle to peace - it needs to go.
There are now 192 member-states in the UN, most of which maintain diplomatic relations with both the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel. In practice, however, the PLO has a built-in majority for just about any resolution it champions. Start with the 22-member Arab League and add (though allow for some overlap) the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, then throw in "non-aligned" countries such as North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. The result is that one would be hard pressed to come up with a single instance in which the General Assembly sided with Israel against the Arabs. Not once has the GA unequivocally reprimanded the PLO or Hamas for engaging in airline-hijackings, bus bombings and other forms of anti-civilian warfare. Israel, in contrast, is censured at every opportunity.
THE international body sank to its moral nadir on November 10, 1975, when the General Assembly passed the odious Resolution 3379, by a vote of 72 to 35 with 32 abstentions, labeling the national liberation movement of the Jewish people - Zionism - as a form of "racism." The fact that the resolution was revoked in 1991 by no means entirely removes the ethical stain with which the world body remains tarnished.
But perhaps the one single most damaging step the organization took to institutionalize its bias against the Jewish state came with the creation in 1975 of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP).
Unlike the Kurds, Roma, Copts, Uyghur, Tibetans, and others peoples' who plead for international support, only the Palestinian Arabs have a permanent UN-funded body which does nothing but agitate on their behalf.
As part of a revolving door of injustice, each year the GA meets to "discuss" the "Question of Palestine" and each year it passes the recommendations of the CEIRPP. The biases of the committee have metastasized throughout the UN system owing to its ability to poison attitudes toward Israel from within. It is the CEIRPP which came up with the charade known as the "International Solidarity Day with the Palestinian People," held annually on November 29, and which sponsors an array of meetings, seminars and conferences targeting Israel.
The committee - which convenes again today and tomorrow in Geneva - is comprised of Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Cyprus, Guinea, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tunisia, Turkey and Ukraine.
It will not question the Palestinian decision to reject former prime minister Ehud Olmert's magnanimous 2008 peace offer. It will not tell the Palestinians that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's seminal Bar-Ilan speech offers a way forward toward. It will not tell the Palestinians to end their boycott of the peace negotiations. The CEIRPP will never call on Hamas to recognize Israel, end terror and accept previous Palestinian commitments - as demanded by the Quartet.
Of course, the committee will do none of these things - because its raison d'etre is not peace but the vilification of Israel.
That is why this newspaper endorses a campaign initiated by the New York-based the Anti-Defamation League urging UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to dismantle the committee on the grounds that it is the "single most prolific source of material bearing the official imprimatur of the UN which maligns and debases the Jewish state."
The CEIRPP is also an obstacle to peace - it needs to go.
Genocidal Linkage
Kenneth Levin
FrontPageMagazine.com
The world’s media have given scant coverage lately to the ongoing genocide in Darfur, and - despite extensive reporting on Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict - they have likewise offered little on the continuing campaign of genocidal incitement against Israel by her enemies. While seeming very separate issues, the two campaigns, and the choice by media and world leaders largely to ignore both, are, in fact, connected.
On one level, of course, the connection is obvious. Israel-hatred is spearheaded by the Arab world; in virtually every Arab nation, demonizing and delegitimizing of Israel, and often of Jews, is a staple of government-controlled media, schools and mosques. This is true even of the Arab states with which Israel is formally at peace. At the same time, the Arab world is the chief support of fellow Arab leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his Sudanese regime's genocidal assault on the Muslim blacks of Darfur. Illustrative was the Arab League’s unanimous, effusive embrace and defense of al-Bashir at its meeting in Doha, Qatar, in March, shortly after his indictment by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Tunisian human rights activist Mohammed Bechri several years ago argued that to understand Arab support for the genocide in Darfur, one has to recognize the "twin fascisms" - Bechri’s term - that dominate the Arab world: Islamism and Pan-Arabism. The first rejects the legitimacy of any non-Muslim group within what the Arabs perceive as their proper domain; the latter takes the same view towards any non-Arab group. The genocidal rhetoric, and efforts at mass murder, directed at Israel, and the genocidal assault on the Muslim but non-Arab people of Darfur follow from this mindset. (Bechri’s "twin fascisms" also account for the besiegement of Christians across the Arab world and backing for Sudan’s murder of some two million Christian and animist blacks in the south of the country. They help explain as well broad Arab support for the mass murder of Kurds - a Muslim but non-Arab people - in Iraq by Saddam Hussein and for the besiegement of the Kurds of Syria and the Berbers - another non-Arab Muslim group - in Algeria.)
But the connection between animosity towards Israel and coldness towards the victims in Darfur extends beyond the Arab world. It embraces, for example, all those European leaders who bend their consciences to accommodate Arab power - in oil, money and strategic territories - and who may pay lip service to recognizing the murderous incitement and related threats faced by Israel or to deploring the crimes suffered by Darfur but refuse to take serious steps to curb either.
Nor are American leaders entirely free of similar predilections. President Bush (43) was certainly sympathetic to Israel’s predicament. But he sought to assuage Arab opinion by pushing for rapid movement towards a Palestinian state and endorsing Machmoud Abbas as Israel’s "peace" partner, even as Abbas refused to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, consistently praised anti-Israel terror and stood fast in demanding a "right of return" that would turn Israel into yet another Arab-dominated entity. (On Darfur, the "moderate" Abbas responded to the ICC indictment by declaring, "We must also take a decisive stance of solidarity alongside fraternal Sudan and President Omar al-Bashir.") Regarding Darfur, President Bush led the way in condemning Sudan’s campaign of mass murder and rape and first calling it a genocide. But - already attacked for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - he was not prepared to act aggressively against a third Muslim nation, even though doing so would have been aimed at saving hundreds of thousands of Muslim lives.
President Obama has adopted winning over Arab and broader Muslim opinion as a foreign policy priority and he has shown little interest in according more than verbal acknowledgment to the threats facing Israel. At the same time, those in the Muslim world whose good opinion he is most seeking to win are not the Muslims of Darfur but rather Darfur’s oppressors and their supporters. Some of President Obama’s ardent backers have expressed dismay, and have been openly critical of him, for what they see as his reneging on campaign pledges to put Darfur at the top of his agenda. (For example, Kirsten Powers, "Bam’s Darfur Sins," in the New York Post, May 11, 2009). But given his focus on appeasing Muslims hostile to America, his inaction on Darfur should not surprise.
In major Western media as well, deference to Arab opinion vis-a-vis Israel has generally been accompanied by silence on the central role of the Arab world in providing support for Sudan’s actions in Darfur. While the Arab League’s embrace in Doha of Sudanese President al-Bashir was widely reported, few major outlets offered editorial criticism of the Arab stance - The Washington Post being a notable exception. The New York Times, which for decades has used both "news stories" and editorials to argue that Israeli concessions are the key to peace and has refused to cover the genocidal incitement against Israel and Jews endemic in Palestinian and broader Arab media, mosques and schools, offered no editorial opinion on the Doha meeting.
Several years ago, the Times’ Nicholas Kristof won a Pulitzer Prize for his op-ed coverage of the slaughter in Darfur. Kristof is a constant critic of Israel and, like his bosses, avoids the issue of rejection of Israel’s legitimacy, and promotion of genocidal hatred towards the Jewish state, by its Arab neighbors. In a similar vein, for all his extensive writing on Darfur, he generally avoided the Arab role in supporting the genocide. In some forty op-eds on Darfur published between March, 2004, and April, 2006, shortly after he won the Pulitzer, Kristof devoted only five sentences to Arab backing of the Sudanese regime, and that in an article focused on China’s shameful complicity in Darfur.
But if all this not is very surprising, there are also more curious aspects to the convergence of animosity, often of murderous dimensions, towards Israel and sympathy for, or at least indulgence of, those who perpetrate the genocide in Darfur.
For example, while Egypt has not overtly broken with the unanimous Arab League support for al-Bashir, Egyptian President Mubarak chose not to attend the Doha conference, and he and some other Arab leaders have been worried about the Islamist Sudanese regime’s close ties to Iran and to Iran’s radical Arab allies, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. Yet a number of Western leaders, who advocate "dialogue" with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, prefer to ignore their genocidal agenda towards Israel and their leading role in aiding Sudan’s genocidal government - in effect, outpacing Egyptian backing of al-Bashir by soft-pedaling the role in Sudan of those most supportive of al-Bashir’s murderous regime.
Iran has long given extensive financial assistance to the Sudanese government, has provided its forces with weapons and training and has underwritten Chinese provision of arms to al-Bashir. Sudan, again with Iran serving as financier and mid-wife, has also been a training ground for Hamas, fostering as well an ongoing cross-fertilization between Hamas and the militias responsible for the Darfur genocide. Hezbollah and Syria have likewise been in the forefront of Sudan’s supporters and enablers.
Following the International Criminal Court’s action against al-Bashir, a delegation of his radical allies quickly arrived in Khartoum in a show of solidarity with their indicted brother. It included the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk, Syrian parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Abrash and an official of Hezbollah. Hamas also sponsored a large pro-Sudan march in Gaza.
But inevitably, Khartoum’s allies’ contributions to the Darfur genocide, like their promotion of genocide vis-a-vis Israel, are ignored by those eager for diplomatic engagement with them.
Also in early March, around the time of the ICC indictment, the British Foreign Office, led by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, announced its agreement to talks with Hezbollah. More recently, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner have met with Hezbollah representatives. Hezbollah head Nasrallah’s commitment to the murder of all Jews - as in his 2002 statement that "if [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide" (in the past Hezbollah has gone after them as far afield as in Argentina) - was hardly something Miliband and the Foreign Office, or the Quai D’Orsay, or Solana and the European Union, or those British and continental media sympathetic to Hezbollah, were about to note. Nor were they going to note Hezbollah’s support for Sudan’s policies in Darfur.
Similarly, those many European leaders promoting engagement with Hamas typically avoid acknowledging Hamas’s call in its charter for the slaughter of all Jews, its teaching Palestinian children - in its schools and on children’s television - that Jews are eternal enemies of Islam and must be annihilated, and its other purveying of genocidal Jew-hatred. In April, the Dutch Labor party demanded that the European Union sanction Israel if it refuses to accept Hamas as a negotiating partner. Dutch Labor party leaders and like-minded European politicians, in their efforts to push acceptance of Hamas, soft-pedal its aims regarding Israelis and Jews and likewise say little about Hamas’s support of and contributions to Sudan’s genocidal assault on the blacks of Darfur.
European media that are hostile to Israel also virtually ignore Hamas’s genocidal policies and actions regarding both Israel and Darfur. British news outlets such as The Guardian and The Independent, which had barely covered years of Hamas rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli communities, or Hamas use of civilians and civilian facilities as shields for its attacks, but excoriated Israel when it responded with its assault on Hamas beginning in December, 2008, are likewise essentially silent regarding Hamas’s promotion of mass murder in Israel and support for mass murder in Darfur. The same is true for myriad news outlets on the Continent.
Most American political leaders have shunned Hamas for its commitment - in words and deeds - to Israel’s destruction and for its genocidal agenda. (There are some notable exceptions such as Jimmy Carter, who has met with Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal and urged including Hamas in "peace" talks.) But many American media organizations, particularly those, like the New York Times, most committed to portraying Israeli policy as the major obstacle to peace, have followed their European counterparts in saying little of Hamas’s genocidal policies regarding Jews or of its support for Sudan’s genocidal policies in Darfur.
One might expect Western university campuses, often in the forefront of humanitarian activism, to take the lead in rallying opposition to the genocide in Darfur and in demanding intervention to stop the killing. But the current fashion on campuses both in Europe and the United States, driven by Muslim and far Left student organizations and their faculty sympathizers, is intense hostility to Israel, and this has served to preclude attention either to murderous Arab incitement against Jews or to broad Arab complicity - and more particularly that of organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas - in the Darfur genocide. When campus political discourse favors standing truth on its head, as in the University of California-Irvine’s recent week-long program entitled, "Israel: The Politics of Genocide," which essentially entailed speaker after speaker accusing Israel of genocidal actions against the Palestinians, there is hardly inclination to challenge those, including Palestinian organizations, genuinely pursuing genocide, whether targeting Jews or the population of Darfur.
Even people whom one might expect to identify most closely with the victims of the Darfur genocide often do nothing, or limit their actions to words, or actually lend support to the perpetrators, in large part because of pro-Arab sympathies or hostility to Israel. Congress has one Muslim black representative, Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, and Ellison has at times spoken out against the Darfur genocide. In April, for example, he joined a protest at the Sudanese embassy in Washington and was arrested along with other demonstrators. But Ellison has consistently supported pro-Hamas groups in America. He also aggressively embraced the Hamas line in last winter’s Gaza War in terms of alleged civilian casualties and Israeli misdeeds while remaining silent on Hamas use of civilians and civilian facilities as shields for attacks on Israel. Ellison has likewise never publicly addressed Hamas’s alliance with Sudan and its backing of Sudanese policies in Darfur. Alignment with those arrayed against Israel seems to trump criticism of those arrayed against Darfur for the Minnesota congressman.
Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American writer Alice Walker, like Ellison, visited Gaza after the recent hostilities, followed the Hamas line on events there, and was silent on the thousands of Hamas rocket and mortar attacks against Israel as well as on the Islamist organization’s use of civilian shields as a strategic weapon in its war to destroy the Jewish state. Before arriving in Gaza, Walker pronounced, sanctimoniously and apparently without intended irony, that "I love children and I feel that the Palestinian child is just as precious as the African-American child, or the Jewish child." Neither while a guest of Hamas in Gaza nor at any other time has she publicly objected to the organization’s use of Palestinian children as human shields, or to its declared objective of killing all Jews, including Jewish children, or to its intentional targeting of children in terror attacks. Nor has she taken issue with Hamas’s support for Sudan’s mass murder of the children of Darfur.
No less perverse has been the stance of some Jewish organizations. In general, Jewish groups, and Jewish individuals, have taken to heart the injunction "never again" vis-a-vis any acts of genocide and have played a leading role in speaking out against the mass murder in Darfur and urging intervention to stop the slaughter. Their role has led Arab and other apologists for the Sudanese regime to complain that the claims of massacres in Darfur are a "Zionist plot."
But some far Left Jewish institutions and organizations, both in Israel and America, in their eagerness to promote the thesis that sufficient Israeli concessions will win peace, choose to ignore the indoctrination to Israel’s destruction and to genocide that pervades Palestinian and broader Arab media, mosques and schools. Whether they do so out of wishful thinking, not wanting to recognize the annihilationist agenda of Israel’s neighbors, or do so to ingratiate themselves with anti-Israel circles in the West, the refusal to address the genocidal intent of Israel’s enemies leads inevitably to these groups downplaying as well the role of Israel’s enemies in supporting Sudan’s crimes in Darfur.
For example, the editors of Israel’s far Left Haaretz, the newspaper of Israel’s elites, have repeatedly called for Israel to negotiate with Hamas and declared that Israel’s refusal to do so and make sufficient concessions is prolonging the Israeli-Arab conflict. In keeping with this line, Haaretz’s editors rarely address Hamas’s charter and downplay the organization’s other declarations calling for the extermination not only of Israel but of all Jews. Consistent with this whitewashing of Hamas, Haaretz’s editors have had little to say about its support for the genocide in Darfur. Indeed, consistent with its failure to address murderous delegitimization and demonization of Israel in the Arab world more broadly, Haaretz has also had little to say of Muslim Arabs’ targeting of other minorities living amongst them, including the Muslim blacks of Darfur.
The same perverse pattern can be seen among various left-leaning Jewish American groups and their followers. "J Street" was established by people who construe other Jewish American organizations as too hardline in their approach to the Israeli-Arab conflict. It advocates exclusive focus on negotiations, and it lobbies for greater American engagement in pushing for rapid agreement on a "peace" accord. During last winter's Gaza War, J Street's stance was one of even-handedness, emphasizing that "neither Israel nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right or wrong" and that there are "elements of truth on both sides." J Street's tack entails largely ignoring realities that run counter to its promotion of moral equivalence. It essentially ignores the incitement to Israel's destruction and mass murder of its people that is a fixture of Palestinian media, mosques and schools, and, more particularly, the agenda of a religious obligation to annihilate all Jews that is promoted by Gaza's Hamas government. Of course, J Street is likewise silent on Hamas's support for Sudan's genocidal assault on the people of Darfur.
Israel Policy Forum, which advocates positions similar to J Street's, has long called for including Hamas in the "peace" process. In an April, 2008, article entitled "Finding a Way to Bring Hamas In," IPF leaders Seymour Reich and Geoffrey Lewis argued that the fact of Hamas being "the most violent actor" renders all the more crucial its not being left out of negotiations. In April, 2009, IPF welcomed a softening of the American position on Hamas whereby the Obama administration is no longer requiring Hamas to recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by previous agreements before it would deal with and extend aid to a joint PA-Hamas government. Israel Policy Forum, in its lobbying for engagement with Hamas, is another group that avoids noting Hamas's genocidal agenda vis-a-vis Israel and Jews generally, and predictably does the same vis-a-vis the organization's backing of Sudan's genocide in Darfur.
There is little reason to believe that the leaders and supporters of J Street, Israel Policy Forum and other Jewish organizations that share their political predilections are any less appalled by the genocide in Darfur than Jews generally, including those who have led efforts to spur intervention aimed at ending the suffering in Darfur. But it is a peculiar, rather unwholesome, reality of Jewish communal life that there are some Jewish organizations and their supporters that can be counted on to be outspoken in condemning genocidal policies promoted by any entity, whatever its targeted group, unless that entity happens also to promote genocidal assaults on Jews.
In any case, the delusion by some Jews that sufficient concessions will appease Israel's enemies and critics, and the consequent embrace of an unethical silence on the genocidal aims - whether in Israel or Darfur - of her enemies, can be added to the other factors noted as contributing to the same outcome. The major force driving genocidal agendas toward Israel and Darfur is, again, Arab supremacism. It is abetted in the wider world by power politics, as well as by, in many quarters, a twisted ideological allegiance whose credo requires that hostility to the Jewish state and consequent sympathy for, or prettifying of, those dedicated to her destruction trumps sympathy for Darfur and criticism of those participating in its people's annihilation. The overall result is that powerful links between murderous hatred towards Israel and support for, or at least accommodation of, genocide in Darfur are a fixture of today's geopolitics and go largely unchallenged.
Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist and historian and author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege (Smith and Kraus, 2005; paperback 2006).
FrontPageMagazine.com
The world’s media have given scant coverage lately to the ongoing genocide in Darfur, and - despite extensive reporting on Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict - they have likewise offered little on the continuing campaign of genocidal incitement against Israel by her enemies. While seeming very separate issues, the two campaigns, and the choice by media and world leaders largely to ignore both, are, in fact, connected.
On one level, of course, the connection is obvious. Israel-hatred is spearheaded by the Arab world; in virtually every Arab nation, demonizing and delegitimizing of Israel, and often of Jews, is a staple of government-controlled media, schools and mosques. This is true even of the Arab states with which Israel is formally at peace. At the same time, the Arab world is the chief support of fellow Arab leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his Sudanese regime's genocidal assault on the Muslim blacks of Darfur. Illustrative was the Arab League’s unanimous, effusive embrace and defense of al-Bashir at its meeting in Doha, Qatar, in March, shortly after his indictment by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Tunisian human rights activist Mohammed Bechri several years ago argued that to understand Arab support for the genocide in Darfur, one has to recognize the "twin fascisms" - Bechri’s term - that dominate the Arab world: Islamism and Pan-Arabism. The first rejects the legitimacy of any non-Muslim group within what the Arabs perceive as their proper domain; the latter takes the same view towards any non-Arab group. The genocidal rhetoric, and efforts at mass murder, directed at Israel, and the genocidal assault on the Muslim but non-Arab people of Darfur follow from this mindset. (Bechri’s "twin fascisms" also account for the besiegement of Christians across the Arab world and backing for Sudan’s murder of some two million Christian and animist blacks in the south of the country. They help explain as well broad Arab support for the mass murder of Kurds - a Muslim but non-Arab people - in Iraq by Saddam Hussein and for the besiegement of the Kurds of Syria and the Berbers - another non-Arab Muslim group - in Algeria.)
But the connection between animosity towards Israel and coldness towards the victims in Darfur extends beyond the Arab world. It embraces, for example, all those European leaders who bend their consciences to accommodate Arab power - in oil, money and strategic territories - and who may pay lip service to recognizing the murderous incitement and related threats faced by Israel or to deploring the crimes suffered by Darfur but refuse to take serious steps to curb either.
Nor are American leaders entirely free of similar predilections. President Bush (43) was certainly sympathetic to Israel’s predicament. But he sought to assuage Arab opinion by pushing for rapid movement towards a Palestinian state and endorsing Machmoud Abbas as Israel’s "peace" partner, even as Abbas refused to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, consistently praised anti-Israel terror and stood fast in demanding a "right of return" that would turn Israel into yet another Arab-dominated entity. (On Darfur, the "moderate" Abbas responded to the ICC indictment by declaring, "We must also take a decisive stance of solidarity alongside fraternal Sudan and President Omar al-Bashir.") Regarding Darfur, President Bush led the way in condemning Sudan’s campaign of mass murder and rape and first calling it a genocide. But - already attacked for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - he was not prepared to act aggressively against a third Muslim nation, even though doing so would have been aimed at saving hundreds of thousands of Muslim lives.
President Obama has adopted winning over Arab and broader Muslim opinion as a foreign policy priority and he has shown little interest in according more than verbal acknowledgment to the threats facing Israel. At the same time, those in the Muslim world whose good opinion he is most seeking to win are not the Muslims of Darfur but rather Darfur’s oppressors and their supporters. Some of President Obama’s ardent backers have expressed dismay, and have been openly critical of him, for what they see as his reneging on campaign pledges to put Darfur at the top of his agenda. (For example, Kirsten Powers, "Bam’s Darfur Sins," in the New York Post, May 11, 2009). But given his focus on appeasing Muslims hostile to America, his inaction on Darfur should not surprise.
In major Western media as well, deference to Arab opinion vis-a-vis Israel has generally been accompanied by silence on the central role of the Arab world in providing support for Sudan’s actions in Darfur. While the Arab League’s embrace in Doha of Sudanese President al-Bashir was widely reported, few major outlets offered editorial criticism of the Arab stance - The Washington Post being a notable exception. The New York Times, which for decades has used both "news stories" and editorials to argue that Israeli concessions are the key to peace and has refused to cover the genocidal incitement against Israel and Jews endemic in Palestinian and broader Arab media, mosques and schools, offered no editorial opinion on the Doha meeting.
Several years ago, the Times’ Nicholas Kristof won a Pulitzer Prize for his op-ed coverage of the slaughter in Darfur. Kristof is a constant critic of Israel and, like his bosses, avoids the issue of rejection of Israel’s legitimacy, and promotion of genocidal hatred towards the Jewish state, by its Arab neighbors. In a similar vein, for all his extensive writing on Darfur, he generally avoided the Arab role in supporting the genocide. In some forty op-eds on Darfur published between March, 2004, and April, 2006, shortly after he won the Pulitzer, Kristof devoted only five sentences to Arab backing of the Sudanese regime, and that in an article focused on China’s shameful complicity in Darfur.
But if all this not is very surprising, there are also more curious aspects to the convergence of animosity, often of murderous dimensions, towards Israel and sympathy for, or at least indulgence of, those who perpetrate the genocide in Darfur.
For example, while Egypt has not overtly broken with the unanimous Arab League support for al-Bashir, Egyptian President Mubarak chose not to attend the Doha conference, and he and some other Arab leaders have been worried about the Islamist Sudanese regime’s close ties to Iran and to Iran’s radical Arab allies, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. Yet a number of Western leaders, who advocate "dialogue" with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, prefer to ignore their genocidal agenda towards Israel and their leading role in aiding Sudan’s genocidal government - in effect, outpacing Egyptian backing of al-Bashir by soft-pedaling the role in Sudan of those most supportive of al-Bashir’s murderous regime.
Iran has long given extensive financial assistance to the Sudanese government, has provided its forces with weapons and training and has underwritten Chinese provision of arms to al-Bashir. Sudan, again with Iran serving as financier and mid-wife, has also been a training ground for Hamas, fostering as well an ongoing cross-fertilization between Hamas and the militias responsible for the Darfur genocide. Hezbollah and Syria have likewise been in the forefront of Sudan’s supporters and enablers.
Following the International Criminal Court’s action against al-Bashir, a delegation of his radical allies quickly arrived in Khartoum in a show of solidarity with their indicted brother. It included the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk, Syrian parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Abrash and an official of Hezbollah. Hamas also sponsored a large pro-Sudan march in Gaza.
But inevitably, Khartoum’s allies’ contributions to the Darfur genocide, like their promotion of genocide vis-a-vis Israel, are ignored by those eager for diplomatic engagement with them.
Also in early March, around the time of the ICC indictment, the British Foreign Office, led by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, announced its agreement to talks with Hezbollah. More recently, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner have met with Hezbollah representatives. Hezbollah head Nasrallah’s commitment to the murder of all Jews - as in his 2002 statement that "if [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide" (in the past Hezbollah has gone after them as far afield as in Argentina) - was hardly something Miliband and the Foreign Office, or the Quai D’Orsay, or Solana and the European Union, or those British and continental media sympathetic to Hezbollah, were about to note. Nor were they going to note Hezbollah’s support for Sudan’s policies in Darfur.
Similarly, those many European leaders promoting engagement with Hamas typically avoid acknowledging Hamas’s call in its charter for the slaughter of all Jews, its teaching Palestinian children - in its schools and on children’s television - that Jews are eternal enemies of Islam and must be annihilated, and its other purveying of genocidal Jew-hatred. In April, the Dutch Labor party demanded that the European Union sanction Israel if it refuses to accept Hamas as a negotiating partner. Dutch Labor party leaders and like-minded European politicians, in their efforts to push acceptance of Hamas, soft-pedal its aims regarding Israelis and Jews and likewise say little about Hamas’s support of and contributions to Sudan’s genocidal assault on the blacks of Darfur.
European media that are hostile to Israel also virtually ignore Hamas’s genocidal policies and actions regarding both Israel and Darfur. British news outlets such as The Guardian and The Independent, which had barely covered years of Hamas rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli communities, or Hamas use of civilians and civilian facilities as shields for its attacks, but excoriated Israel when it responded with its assault on Hamas beginning in December, 2008, are likewise essentially silent regarding Hamas’s promotion of mass murder in Israel and support for mass murder in Darfur. The same is true for myriad news outlets on the Continent.
Most American political leaders have shunned Hamas for its commitment - in words and deeds - to Israel’s destruction and for its genocidal agenda. (There are some notable exceptions such as Jimmy Carter, who has met with Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal and urged including Hamas in "peace" talks.) But many American media organizations, particularly those, like the New York Times, most committed to portraying Israeli policy as the major obstacle to peace, have followed their European counterparts in saying little of Hamas’s genocidal policies regarding Jews or of its support for Sudan’s genocidal policies in Darfur.
One might expect Western university campuses, often in the forefront of humanitarian activism, to take the lead in rallying opposition to the genocide in Darfur and in demanding intervention to stop the killing. But the current fashion on campuses both in Europe and the United States, driven by Muslim and far Left student organizations and their faculty sympathizers, is intense hostility to Israel, and this has served to preclude attention either to murderous Arab incitement against Jews or to broad Arab complicity - and more particularly that of organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas - in the Darfur genocide. When campus political discourse favors standing truth on its head, as in the University of California-Irvine’s recent week-long program entitled, "Israel: The Politics of Genocide," which essentially entailed speaker after speaker accusing Israel of genocidal actions against the Palestinians, there is hardly inclination to challenge those, including Palestinian organizations, genuinely pursuing genocide, whether targeting Jews or the population of Darfur.
Even people whom one might expect to identify most closely with the victims of the Darfur genocide often do nothing, or limit their actions to words, or actually lend support to the perpetrators, in large part because of pro-Arab sympathies or hostility to Israel. Congress has one Muslim black representative, Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, and Ellison has at times spoken out against the Darfur genocide. In April, for example, he joined a protest at the Sudanese embassy in Washington and was arrested along with other demonstrators. But Ellison has consistently supported pro-Hamas groups in America. He also aggressively embraced the Hamas line in last winter’s Gaza War in terms of alleged civilian casualties and Israeli misdeeds while remaining silent on Hamas use of civilians and civilian facilities as shields for attacks on Israel. Ellison has likewise never publicly addressed Hamas’s alliance with Sudan and its backing of Sudanese policies in Darfur. Alignment with those arrayed against Israel seems to trump criticism of those arrayed against Darfur for the Minnesota congressman.
Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American writer Alice Walker, like Ellison, visited Gaza after the recent hostilities, followed the Hamas line on events there, and was silent on the thousands of Hamas rocket and mortar attacks against Israel as well as on the Islamist organization’s use of civilian shields as a strategic weapon in its war to destroy the Jewish state. Before arriving in Gaza, Walker pronounced, sanctimoniously and apparently without intended irony, that "I love children and I feel that the Palestinian child is just as precious as the African-American child, or the Jewish child." Neither while a guest of Hamas in Gaza nor at any other time has she publicly objected to the organization’s use of Palestinian children as human shields, or to its declared objective of killing all Jews, including Jewish children, or to its intentional targeting of children in terror attacks. Nor has she taken issue with Hamas’s support for Sudan’s mass murder of the children of Darfur.
No less perverse has been the stance of some Jewish organizations. In general, Jewish groups, and Jewish individuals, have taken to heart the injunction "never again" vis-a-vis any acts of genocide and have played a leading role in speaking out against the mass murder in Darfur and urging intervention to stop the slaughter. Their role has led Arab and other apologists for the Sudanese regime to complain that the claims of massacres in Darfur are a "Zionist plot."
But some far Left Jewish institutions and organizations, both in Israel and America, in their eagerness to promote the thesis that sufficient Israeli concessions will win peace, choose to ignore the indoctrination to Israel’s destruction and to genocide that pervades Palestinian and broader Arab media, mosques and schools. Whether they do so out of wishful thinking, not wanting to recognize the annihilationist agenda of Israel’s neighbors, or do so to ingratiate themselves with anti-Israel circles in the West, the refusal to address the genocidal intent of Israel’s enemies leads inevitably to these groups downplaying as well the role of Israel’s enemies in supporting Sudan’s crimes in Darfur.
For example, the editors of Israel’s far Left Haaretz, the newspaper of Israel’s elites, have repeatedly called for Israel to negotiate with Hamas and declared that Israel’s refusal to do so and make sufficient concessions is prolonging the Israeli-Arab conflict. In keeping with this line, Haaretz’s editors rarely address Hamas’s charter and downplay the organization’s other declarations calling for the extermination not only of Israel but of all Jews. Consistent with this whitewashing of Hamas, Haaretz’s editors have had little to say about its support for the genocide in Darfur. Indeed, consistent with its failure to address murderous delegitimization and demonization of Israel in the Arab world more broadly, Haaretz has also had little to say of Muslim Arabs’ targeting of other minorities living amongst them, including the Muslim blacks of Darfur.
The same perverse pattern can be seen among various left-leaning Jewish American groups and their followers. "J Street" was established by people who construe other Jewish American organizations as too hardline in their approach to the Israeli-Arab conflict. It advocates exclusive focus on negotiations, and it lobbies for greater American engagement in pushing for rapid agreement on a "peace" accord. During last winter's Gaza War, J Street's stance was one of even-handedness, emphasizing that "neither Israel nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right or wrong" and that there are "elements of truth on both sides." J Street's tack entails largely ignoring realities that run counter to its promotion of moral equivalence. It essentially ignores the incitement to Israel's destruction and mass murder of its people that is a fixture of Palestinian media, mosques and schools, and, more particularly, the agenda of a religious obligation to annihilate all Jews that is promoted by Gaza's Hamas government. Of course, J Street is likewise silent on Hamas's support for Sudan's genocidal assault on the people of Darfur.
Israel Policy Forum, which advocates positions similar to J Street's, has long called for including Hamas in the "peace" process. In an April, 2008, article entitled "Finding a Way to Bring Hamas In," IPF leaders Seymour Reich and Geoffrey Lewis argued that the fact of Hamas being "the most violent actor" renders all the more crucial its not being left out of negotiations. In April, 2009, IPF welcomed a softening of the American position on Hamas whereby the Obama administration is no longer requiring Hamas to recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by previous agreements before it would deal with and extend aid to a joint PA-Hamas government. Israel Policy Forum, in its lobbying for engagement with Hamas, is another group that avoids noting Hamas's genocidal agenda vis-a-vis Israel and Jews generally, and predictably does the same vis-a-vis the organization's backing of Sudan's genocide in Darfur.
There is little reason to believe that the leaders and supporters of J Street, Israel Policy Forum and other Jewish organizations that share their political predilections are any less appalled by the genocide in Darfur than Jews generally, including those who have led efforts to spur intervention aimed at ending the suffering in Darfur. But it is a peculiar, rather unwholesome, reality of Jewish communal life that there are some Jewish organizations and their supporters that can be counted on to be outspoken in condemning genocidal policies promoted by any entity, whatever its targeted group, unless that entity happens also to promote genocidal assaults on Jews.
In any case, the delusion by some Jews that sufficient concessions will appease Israel's enemies and critics, and the consequent embrace of an unethical silence on the genocidal aims - whether in Israel or Darfur - of her enemies, can be added to the other factors noted as contributing to the same outcome. The major force driving genocidal agendas toward Israel and Darfur is, again, Arab supremacism. It is abetted in the wider world by power politics, as well as by, in many quarters, a twisted ideological allegiance whose credo requires that hostility to the Jewish state and consequent sympathy for, or prettifying of, those dedicated to her destruction trumps sympathy for Darfur and criticism of those participating in its people's annihilation. The overall result is that powerful links between murderous hatred towards Israel and support for, or at least accommodation of, genocide in Darfur are a fixture of today's geopolitics and go largely unchallenged.
Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist and historian and author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege (Smith and Kraus, 2005; paperback 2006).
Zionist ship in danger
Number of citizens committed to original Zionist vision keeps on declining
Yaron London
YNET News
Recently, the decision was made to indict a dozen Shfaram residents over the killing of Jewish terrorist Natan Zada. They pushed away the police officers protecting the handcuffed man and killed him with stones and blows. The town of Shfaram was outraged. Arab public figures complained that the dozen would not be facing justice had the murderer been Arab and the avengers Jewish. The root of the controversy stems from a similar moral dilemma that emerged in the trial of Shai Dromi, the southern farmer who shot to death an Arab burglar: What rights does a person who killed an attacker have? In Shfaram, a murderer was killed, while Dromi fired at burglars who he felt endangered his life. It appears that the line of defense adopted by the accused from Shfaram is thinner, because the danger was long gone before they assaulted and killed the attacker.
Yet these nuances are of no interest to Arab community leaders. Dromi’s acquittal promoted them to utter the oh-so-predictable response: The court gave license to fire at Arab citizens.
This is the case in almost any controversial affair involving the State and Arab citizens. The confiscation of land for public purposes is immediately suspected as being the continuation of a land robbery tradition. The National Service initiative for Arabs is perceived as a ploy to make it easier for the Jews to kill Palestinians. The erection of a cellular antenna in an Arab village is meant to make its residents ill.
These claims are infuriating, but we should not be complaining that Israel’s Arab citizens doubt the motives of authorities; they have accumulated bitter experience.
On the other hand, the experience of another rebellious sector is incredibly positive – the ultra-Orthodox. The State does not discriminate against them and grants them an exemption from military service and educational autonomy. Yet their decent status does not tone down their suspicions. Their isolationism is entrenched in well-formulated ideology, and their boldness is much greater than the audacity of Arab citizens.
The haredi pamphlets charging the Zionists with ongoing efforts to exterminate the Jewish people are as grave as the Palestinian expressions about the “Nakba” and “genocide.”
Sandbanks are lying in wait
Yet while the claims made by Arab Israelis are not completely unfounded, the haredi claims are almost entirely pure inventions. Last week we saw their masses rioting in Jerusalem. They knew that if Arabs blocked the Wadi Ara area to traffic they would be met with bullets. Yet those who block major roads in Israel’s capital are met with water cannons.
The Arabs and Orthodox make up roughly one third of the country’s population. In addition to them, there is a significant group of citizens who are not parties to the vision of a democratic, secular, modern, liberal, and open republic with a Jewish majority.
In my view, only espousal of this vision will enable the state to exist, yet the number of those who support it is increasingly declining. It may have dropped below 50% of the population by now. There is no other stable country in the world whose spinal cord is so thin. The nation’s skeleton has not yet disintegrated and its internal organs have not yet spread out in all directions only because our enemies are pressing us on all sides.
History is now showing its sense of humor. Zionism is a bold enterprise initiated by individual members of the educated Jewish middle-class in Eastern Europe. Most Jews rejected this vision, yet the tiny minority was successful. The proud Zionist ship brought whoever wished to join it onboard and set sail through rough seas.
Yet years have passed and the nature of the passengers has changed. Each faction wishes to sail to a different destination. Meanwhile, the sandbanks are lying in wait.
Yaron London
YNET News
Recently, the decision was made to indict a dozen Shfaram residents over the killing of Jewish terrorist Natan Zada. They pushed away the police officers protecting the handcuffed man and killed him with stones and blows. The town of Shfaram was outraged. Arab public figures complained that the dozen would not be facing justice had the murderer been Arab and the avengers Jewish. The root of the controversy stems from a similar moral dilemma that emerged in the trial of Shai Dromi, the southern farmer who shot to death an Arab burglar: What rights does a person who killed an attacker have? In Shfaram, a murderer was killed, while Dromi fired at burglars who he felt endangered his life. It appears that the line of defense adopted by the accused from Shfaram is thinner, because the danger was long gone before they assaulted and killed the attacker.
Yet these nuances are of no interest to Arab community leaders. Dromi’s acquittal promoted them to utter the oh-so-predictable response: The court gave license to fire at Arab citizens.
This is the case in almost any controversial affair involving the State and Arab citizens. The confiscation of land for public purposes is immediately suspected as being the continuation of a land robbery tradition. The National Service initiative for Arabs is perceived as a ploy to make it easier for the Jews to kill Palestinians. The erection of a cellular antenna in an Arab village is meant to make its residents ill.
These claims are infuriating, but we should not be complaining that Israel’s Arab citizens doubt the motives of authorities; they have accumulated bitter experience.
On the other hand, the experience of another rebellious sector is incredibly positive – the ultra-Orthodox. The State does not discriminate against them and grants them an exemption from military service and educational autonomy. Yet their decent status does not tone down their suspicions. Their isolationism is entrenched in well-formulated ideology, and their boldness is much greater than the audacity of Arab citizens.
The haredi pamphlets charging the Zionists with ongoing efforts to exterminate the Jewish people are as grave as the Palestinian expressions about the “Nakba” and “genocide.”
Sandbanks are lying in wait
Yet while the claims made by Arab Israelis are not completely unfounded, the haredi claims are almost entirely pure inventions. Last week we saw their masses rioting in Jerusalem. They knew that if Arabs blocked the Wadi Ara area to traffic they would be met with bullets. Yet those who block major roads in Israel’s capital are met with water cannons.
The Arabs and Orthodox make up roughly one third of the country’s population. In addition to them, there is a significant group of citizens who are not parties to the vision of a democratic, secular, modern, liberal, and open republic with a Jewish majority.
In my view, only espousal of this vision will enable the state to exist, yet the number of those who support it is increasingly declining. It may have dropped below 50% of the population by now. There is no other stable country in the world whose spinal cord is so thin. The nation’s skeleton has not yet disintegrated and its internal organs have not yet spread out in all directions only because our enemies are pressing us on all sides.
History is now showing its sense of humor. Zionism is a bold enterprise initiated by individual members of the educated Jewish middle-class in Eastern Europe. Most Jews rejected this vision, yet the tiny minority was successful. The proud Zionist ship brought whoever wished to join it onboard and set sail through rough seas.
Yet years have passed and the nature of the passengers has changed. Each faction wishes to sail to a different destination. Meanwhile, the sandbanks are lying in wait.
PM Netanyahu’s Conference Call with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
Strengthening the connection of the Jewish communities around the world, especially in the United States, to Israel is something that is important both to my government and to me personally. It’s also important for the people of Israel. I look forward to working with all of you and also with Natan Sharansky. Natan is on the line, and will join us after I make a few remarks. I want to work with him and with the Conference of Presidents, with all of you, to advance our common goals. And these are broad, they encompass a lot. They encompass aliyah and Jewish education and the strengthening of Jewish identity, and the broader and pressing questions of peace and security. And I hope that this will be the first of many conversations that we’ll have in the months and years ahead. So, view this as a pioneering effort. Let’s do it often.Now, before I take your questions today, I wanted to focus on two pivotal issues: the situation with Iran and the question of peace with the Palestinians.
[Iranian threat]
First on Iran – very simply put, if the Iranian regime acquires nuclear weapons, I think this would be a hinge of history. It would present a grave threat to Israel, to the Middle East and to the world at large. The reason I say that is because the recent elections have unmasked the true character of this regime. This is a regime that brutally represses its own people; it sponsors terrorism – not only sponsors it, it supplies the terrorists, it directs them, it finances them, it gives them missiles, it gives them everything – and it’s also determined to acquire nuclear weapons.
Understand that a nuclear-armed Iran could provide a nuclear umbrella to terrorists, and it could possibly provide nuclear weapons to terrorists. I think for the sake of the peace of the world and the security of my own country and that of the United States, this must not be allowed to happen. It’s important for me to stress to you that the Iranian people are not our enemies. We remember a time when Israel and Iran had an excellent relationship, better than good, and we know that the Iranian people would like nothing better than to rid themselves of this horrible regime.
When I was in Washington a few months ago, President Obama and I had extensive discussions about this threat. The President has repeatedly stated that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, and that all options must remain on the table in dealing with this threat. And of course this is a position that we support. I also think there’s an increasing international understanding about the true nature of this regime and I think there is a growing resolve to thwart the regime’s effort to attain a military nuclear capability. I think this is not merely an Israeli interest; I think it is now the stated interest not merely of our two countries, but I think this ought to be the interest and is the interest of anyone interested in preserving the peace of the world. Because a nuclear-armed Iran threatens the peace of us all.
[Peace with the Palestinians – 5 Principles]
The second point I wanted to raise is the quest for achieving peace with the Palestinians, a genuine peace. The simplest thing is to begin peace talks, unconditionally. I have offered that, I offer that again. In fact I say that to you tonight. We seek unconditional peace talks with the Palestinians. We’re prepared to begin those talks immediately, and I’m prepared to work with the Palestinians, and of course with President Obama, towards advancing peace with the Palestinians, and towards advancing the President’s idea of a broader peace in the region.
I think that we have to work on five principles that are not preconditions for beginning peace talks, but I think they are clear foundations for a successful completion of peace talks.
[Recognition]
The first principle is recognition. We are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people. I think that it’s necessary and elementary that the Palestinians be asked to recognize the nation-state of the Jewish people. I think that the absence of the recognition of Israel’s right, or of the Jewish people’s right to a state of their own, was and remains the source, the root of this conflict. I don’t think we should be myopic about this. I think we have to be very, very clear. The Palestinians so far do not say simply, unequivocally and clearly that they recognize Israel as the Jewish state, a Jewish state not in the religious sense, but a Jewish state as the nation-state of the Jewish people. I think this is not a semantic insistence; it’s a substantive insistence of which there is an immediate derivative, which is the second principle – and that is that the problem of Palestinian refugees will be resolved outside the State of Israel.
[Refugees]
You cannot say that you are prepared to make peace with Israel when you don’t recognize Israel as the state of the Jews, and when you insist that this state will be flooded by Palestinian refugees. It just doesn’t make sense. So the first principle is recognition. The second principle is that the problem of the refugees will be resolved outside the State of Israel.
[Ending the conflict]
The third point ought to be obvious, too, but I make it here – it all relates to the question of ending the conflict. And that is that a peace treaty actually ends the conflict. It’s not an interim peace treaty from which the conflict is pursued from the Palestinian state that will be established. It’s the end of the conflict. That is, the Palestinians, upon the signing of a peace treaty, have to say unequivocally that they have no more claims – no more claims either on the question of refugees or on the question of borders or on the question of irredentist claims.
So the first three points that I raised relate to legitimacy, to Israel’s permanent legitimacy: recognition of a Jewish state, the resolution of the refugee problem outside the borders of the Jewish state and the end of claims, the finality of conflict.
[Demilitarization]
The other two points that I wanted to make relate to security. It’s clear that the Palestinian state established should be one that doesn’t threaten the State of Israel. The only way that that will be achieved is by effective demilitarization – this is the fourth point. We need effective measures of demilitarization. I’ll tell you what ineffective measures of demilitarization are: Gaza is an example; Lebanon is an example. There is no effective demilitarization in either place and, in fact, the arrangements that have been put in place, either in the Philadelphi Corridor or in South Lebanon, have produced a highly ineffective arrangement where these two places are used as a launching ground for thousands of missiles that have been hurled against us. Now, in South Lebanon, tens of thousands of missiles are in place, and in Gaza many, many missiles are being piled up and smuggled inside that area to be launched again. We want effective means of demilitarization. I think this is the fourth point – absolutely essential.
[International guarantees]
And the fifth point is that whatever arrangements are undertaken in a peace arrangement, in a peace treaty, have to be guaranteed by the international community, led by the United States. That is, we want to have clear demilitarization means and a clear commitment by the international community about the validity and the robustness of these security arrangements. And I don’t seek the international community to actually provide the means of demilitarization. I do seek the international community’s support for those arrangements that will be put on the ground – political support, that is.
So these are the five points: recognition, the question of refugees, the end of claims, effective demilitarization means and international political guarantees for those arrangements. These are the five points that have a vast consensus in Israel. And the reason they enjoy vast consensus – and I found this out after I spoke in Bar-Ilan; I knew they enjoyed support, but I didn’t understand they enjoyed such broad support – is because they’re fair and because they’re necessary. And because anybody who has a commonsense and decent approach to the question of peace understands that these are the five foundations, the five prerequisite foundations for completing a genuine peace treaty.
[The Element of Prosperity]
I would add one other which is not in the form of a condition that we put for ending the conflict, but one that I think, at least from experience, could help push along a solution and stabilize it – and that is prosperity. Up to now, I spoke about three conditions that relate to legitimacy: recognition, refugees and the end of claims; and two points that relate to security: demilitarization and international guarantees for demilitarization. But there is a third element, and that is what we can do to push forward the spread of prosperity. I’m not merely talking about us – we can do that, and we are doing that in our own economy – but advancing prosperity in the Palestinian economy. We’ve been doing that. We’ve taken steps that have begun to be recognized a bit in the international community, actually far-reaching steps of liberalizing movement and enabling movement in the West Bank; removing barriers and checkpoints. I’ve recently asked our security establishment to open up the Allenby Bridge so that it is opened for additional hours for movement. I personally head a ministerial committee to unblock several economic projects that have been held up that I think could advance the Palestinian economy. I think we can do an enormous amount to advance tourism and investments, and we’re prepared to do that.
This idea of advancing the economic peace is not a substitute for achieving the political peace that I discussed. It’s a way to facilitate it. It helps achieving the peace, and it’s something that we are moving along independently; whether or not the Palestinians collaborate on it is, of course, up to them. But if they do join with us and participate with us, we could move the West Bank economy way up very rapidly, and what this does is help peace. Because, obviously, if young Palestinians have a job, if investments are made in Ramallah, if restaurants open in Jenin, if businesses flourish in Hebron, this makes peace more possible and more worthwhile for the Palestinians, as opposed to the radical Islamist projection of misery and conflict. And so I think that prosperity is the other element.
[Legitimacy, Security and Prosperity]
So I advocate legitimacy, security and prosperity by advancing recognition of the Jewish state, the settlement of the refugees outside Israel, the end of claims and the end of conflict, effective demilitarization measures and political international guarantees for these matters; but in addition to that, also the advancement of prosperity and economic cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians with the support of the United States and others in the international community. I think there is overwhelming consensus in Israel for this, and I am sure that this is something that could be helped by you, all of you, and everyone else interested in achieving peace.
מח' מידע ואינטרנט – אגף תקשו
23.07.2009
[Iranian threat]
First on Iran – very simply put, if the Iranian regime acquires nuclear weapons, I think this would be a hinge of history. It would present a grave threat to Israel, to the Middle East and to the world at large. The reason I say that is because the recent elections have unmasked the true character of this regime. This is a regime that brutally represses its own people; it sponsors terrorism – not only sponsors it, it supplies the terrorists, it directs them, it finances them, it gives them missiles, it gives them everything – and it’s also determined to acquire nuclear weapons.
Understand that a nuclear-armed Iran could provide a nuclear umbrella to terrorists, and it could possibly provide nuclear weapons to terrorists. I think for the sake of the peace of the world and the security of my own country and that of the United States, this must not be allowed to happen. It’s important for me to stress to you that the Iranian people are not our enemies. We remember a time when Israel and Iran had an excellent relationship, better than good, and we know that the Iranian people would like nothing better than to rid themselves of this horrible regime.
When I was in Washington a few months ago, President Obama and I had extensive discussions about this threat. The President has repeatedly stated that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, and that all options must remain on the table in dealing with this threat. And of course this is a position that we support. I also think there’s an increasing international understanding about the true nature of this regime and I think there is a growing resolve to thwart the regime’s effort to attain a military nuclear capability. I think this is not merely an Israeli interest; I think it is now the stated interest not merely of our two countries, but I think this ought to be the interest and is the interest of anyone interested in preserving the peace of the world. Because a nuclear-armed Iran threatens the peace of us all.
[Peace with the Palestinians – 5 Principles]
The second point I wanted to raise is the quest for achieving peace with the Palestinians, a genuine peace. The simplest thing is to begin peace talks, unconditionally. I have offered that, I offer that again. In fact I say that to you tonight. We seek unconditional peace talks with the Palestinians. We’re prepared to begin those talks immediately, and I’m prepared to work with the Palestinians, and of course with President Obama, towards advancing peace with the Palestinians, and towards advancing the President’s idea of a broader peace in the region.
I think that we have to work on five principles that are not preconditions for beginning peace talks, but I think they are clear foundations for a successful completion of peace talks.
[Recognition]
The first principle is recognition. We are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people. I think that it’s necessary and elementary that the Palestinians be asked to recognize the nation-state of the Jewish people. I think that the absence of the recognition of Israel’s right, or of the Jewish people’s right to a state of their own, was and remains the source, the root of this conflict. I don’t think we should be myopic about this. I think we have to be very, very clear. The Palestinians so far do not say simply, unequivocally and clearly that they recognize Israel as the Jewish state, a Jewish state not in the religious sense, but a Jewish state as the nation-state of the Jewish people. I think this is not a semantic insistence; it’s a substantive insistence of which there is an immediate derivative, which is the second principle – and that is that the problem of Palestinian refugees will be resolved outside the State of Israel.
[Refugees]
You cannot say that you are prepared to make peace with Israel when you don’t recognize Israel as the state of the Jews, and when you insist that this state will be flooded by Palestinian refugees. It just doesn’t make sense. So the first principle is recognition. The second principle is that the problem of the refugees will be resolved outside the State of Israel.
[Ending the conflict]
The third point ought to be obvious, too, but I make it here – it all relates to the question of ending the conflict. And that is that a peace treaty actually ends the conflict. It’s not an interim peace treaty from which the conflict is pursued from the Palestinian state that will be established. It’s the end of the conflict. That is, the Palestinians, upon the signing of a peace treaty, have to say unequivocally that they have no more claims – no more claims either on the question of refugees or on the question of borders or on the question of irredentist claims.
So the first three points that I raised relate to legitimacy, to Israel’s permanent legitimacy: recognition of a Jewish state, the resolution of the refugee problem outside the borders of the Jewish state and the end of claims, the finality of conflict.
[Demilitarization]
The other two points that I wanted to make relate to security. It’s clear that the Palestinian state established should be one that doesn’t threaten the State of Israel. The only way that that will be achieved is by effective demilitarization – this is the fourth point. We need effective measures of demilitarization. I’ll tell you what ineffective measures of demilitarization are: Gaza is an example; Lebanon is an example. There is no effective demilitarization in either place and, in fact, the arrangements that have been put in place, either in the Philadelphi Corridor or in South Lebanon, have produced a highly ineffective arrangement where these two places are used as a launching ground for thousands of missiles that have been hurled against us. Now, in South Lebanon, tens of thousands of missiles are in place, and in Gaza many, many missiles are being piled up and smuggled inside that area to be launched again. We want effective means of demilitarization. I think this is the fourth point – absolutely essential.
[International guarantees]
And the fifth point is that whatever arrangements are undertaken in a peace arrangement, in a peace treaty, have to be guaranteed by the international community, led by the United States. That is, we want to have clear demilitarization means and a clear commitment by the international community about the validity and the robustness of these security arrangements. And I don’t seek the international community to actually provide the means of demilitarization. I do seek the international community’s support for those arrangements that will be put on the ground – political support, that is.
So these are the five points: recognition, the question of refugees, the end of claims, effective demilitarization means and international political guarantees for those arrangements. These are the five points that have a vast consensus in Israel. And the reason they enjoy vast consensus – and I found this out after I spoke in Bar-Ilan; I knew they enjoyed support, but I didn’t understand they enjoyed such broad support – is because they’re fair and because they’re necessary. And because anybody who has a commonsense and decent approach to the question of peace understands that these are the five foundations, the five prerequisite foundations for completing a genuine peace treaty.
[The Element of Prosperity]
I would add one other which is not in the form of a condition that we put for ending the conflict, but one that I think, at least from experience, could help push along a solution and stabilize it – and that is prosperity. Up to now, I spoke about three conditions that relate to legitimacy: recognition, refugees and the end of claims; and two points that relate to security: demilitarization and international guarantees for demilitarization. But there is a third element, and that is what we can do to push forward the spread of prosperity. I’m not merely talking about us – we can do that, and we are doing that in our own economy – but advancing prosperity in the Palestinian economy. We’ve been doing that. We’ve taken steps that have begun to be recognized a bit in the international community, actually far-reaching steps of liberalizing movement and enabling movement in the West Bank; removing barriers and checkpoints. I’ve recently asked our security establishment to open up the Allenby Bridge so that it is opened for additional hours for movement. I personally head a ministerial committee to unblock several economic projects that have been held up that I think could advance the Palestinian economy. I think we can do an enormous amount to advance tourism and investments, and we’re prepared to do that.
This idea of advancing the economic peace is not a substitute for achieving the political peace that I discussed. It’s a way to facilitate it. It helps achieving the peace, and it’s something that we are moving along independently; whether or not the Palestinians collaborate on it is, of course, up to them. But if they do join with us and participate with us, we could move the West Bank economy way up very rapidly, and what this does is help peace. Because, obviously, if young Palestinians have a job, if investments are made in Ramallah, if restaurants open in Jenin, if businesses flourish in Hebron, this makes peace more possible and more worthwhile for the Palestinians, as opposed to the radical Islamist projection of misery and conflict. And so I think that prosperity is the other element.
[Legitimacy, Security and Prosperity]
So I advocate legitimacy, security and prosperity by advancing recognition of the Jewish state, the settlement of the refugees outside Israel, the end of claims and the end of conflict, effective demilitarization measures and political international guarantees for these matters; but in addition to that, also the advancement of prosperity and economic cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians with the support of the United States and others in the international community. I think there is overwhelming consensus in Israel for this, and I am sure that this is something that could be helped by you, all of you, and everyone else interested in achieving peace.
מח' מידע ואינטרנט – אגף תקשו
23.07.2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Obama Boomerang: Demand for Building Freeze Spurs Rush to Buy
Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu 'Obama Buying Boom' in Israel
U.S. President Barack Obama’s attempt to freeze building for Jews in Judea and Samaria appears to be backfiring as real estate agency report a boom in new home sales in Maaleh Adumim, located several minutes east of Jerusalem.The result is a further increase in the number of Jews living in Judea and Samaria, countering the intentions of the new American government.
The price of a three-bedroom apartment in Maaleh Adumin was $215,000 before President Obama’s campaign against Israel. The price for the same unit now is $244,000.
The city’s mayor Benny Kashriel said that all 450 apartment that are under construction, with previous government approval, are almost sold out. He vowed that Israel will not bow to American pressure against continued development. He told the American National Public Radio that “280,000 people in Judea and Samaria will be together against him, will demonstrate together and will not let our government compromise with him.”
Maaleh Adumim resident and American native Beth Gordon, who has been discussing buying property for her children, laughed at President Obama’s description of the city as a settlement.
“I ask people in the States, 'What do you think a settlement is?' And they say, 'I picture a caravan [mobile home without wheel on a hill.' And I say, 'You have to come to Maaleh Adumim and visit us!' “she told NPR. Her desire for her children to live nearby is part of the “natural growth” that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has decried.
The bottom line for most people is money. The cost of housing in Maaleh Adumim and other communities in Judea and Samaria is far less than in Jerusalem, where the housing market is way beyond the reach of the average Israeli.
Real estate agent Ayalon Cohen told NPR the he is selling six to 10 units a month, comparable to the fastest-growing areas in Israel. "There's a lot of
Obama's Assistant Attorney General Tells Senate: Terrorists Captured on Battlefield Have Constitutional Rights
Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) – At a Senate hearing Tuesday on the use of military commissions to prosecute terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay, some members of the Armed Services Committee took offense at the Obama administration’s view that the detainees should have the same legal protections under the Constitution as U.S. citizensRanking member Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) questioned Assistant Attorney General David Kris about his remarks on the appropriateness of administering the Miranda warning to terrorist suspects captured abroad. "It is the administration's view that there is a serious risk that courts would hold that admission of involuntary statements of the accused in military commission proceedings is unconstitutional," Kris said in his opening statement.
“Does that infer that these individuals have constitutional rights?” McCain asked Kris.
“Ah, yes,” Kris answered.
“What are those constitutional rights of people who are not citizens of the United States of America, who were captured on a battlefield committing acts of war against the United States?” McCain asked.
“Our analysis, Senator, is that the due process clause applies to military commissions and imposes a constitutional floor on the procedures that the government sets on such commissions …” Kris said.
“So you are saying that these people who are at Guantanamo, who were part of 9/11, who committed acts of war against the United States, have constitutional rights under the Constitution of the United States of America?” McCain asked.
“Within the framework I just described, the answer is yes, the due process clause guarantees and imposes some requirements on the conduct of (military) commissions,” Kris said.
“The fact is they are entitled to protections under the Geneva Convention, which apply to the rules of war,” McCain said. “I do not know of a time in American history where enemy combatants were given rights under the United States Constitution.”
Jeh C. Johnson, general counsel, Department of Defense (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
Kris and Jeh C. Johnson, general counsel for the Department of Defense, said that military commissions were a viable “alternative” but that prosecuting terror suspects as criminals in U.S. federal courts was preferable – a position Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) took issue with at the hearing.
“Why would anyone prefer to try people apprehended for violations of the law of war?” Lieberman asked. “The fact is that from the beginning of our country, from the Revolutionary War, we’ve used military tribunals to try war criminals, or people we have apprehended, captured for violations of the law of war.
“Again, I think the unique circumstances of this war on terrorists, against the people who attacked us on 9/11, have taken us down, including the Supreme Court, some roads that are not only to me ultimately unjust but inconsistent with the long history of military commissions,” Lieberman said.
“Why would you say the administration prefers to bring before our federal court system instead of military commissions that are really today’s version of the tribunals that we’ve used throughout our history to deal in a just way with prisoners of war?” Lieberman asked.
“I applaud this committee’s initiative to reform the military commission act. I think the military commission should be a viable ready alternative for national security reasons to deal with those who violate the laws of war, and I’m glad we’re having this discussion right now, and I thank the committee,” Johnson said.
“When you’re dealing with terrorists whose, and I’m going to say this on behalf of the administration, one of their fundamental aims is to kill innocent civilians, and so it is the administration’s view that direct violence on innocent civilians, let’s say in the continental United States, it might be appropriate that that person be brought to justice in a civilian public forum in the continental United States,” Johnson said.
“Because the act of violence that was committed here was a violation of Title 18 (federal criminal law), as well as the law of war, so we feel strongly that both alternatives should exist,” Johnson added.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
“Well, I respectfully disagree,” Lieberman said. “These are people we believe are war criminals; that’s why we captured them. The greater legal protections of the terrorists because they have chosen to do something that pretty much has not been done before in our history to attack Americans, to kill people here in America, as they did on 9/11, civilians, innocents, it doesn’t matter, and to do it outside of uniform.
“So it puts us in a very odd position, giving these terrorists greater protections in our federal courts than we’ve given war criminals in any other time throughout our history, even though, in my opinion, they are at least as brutal and inhumane, probably more brutal and inhumane than any war criminals,” Lieberman said.
“Yes, it might also be an act of murder that killed people who were in the Trade Towers on 9/11, but it was an act of war,” Lieberman said. “And the people who did that do not deserve the same constitutional protections of those accused of murder in New York City.”
The hearing focused on the military commissions portion of the National Defense Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2010, which includes changes to the Military Commission Act of 2006.
Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) summarized the changes in his opening statement.
* Relative to the admissibility of coerced testimony, the provision in our bill would eliminate the double standard in existing law, under which coerced statements are admissible if they were obtained prior to Dec. 30, 2005.
* Relative to the use of hearsay evidence, the provision in our bill would eliminate the extraordinary language in the existing law which places the burden on detainees to prove that hearsay evidence introduced against them is not reliable and probative.
* Relative to the issue of access to classified evidence and exculpatory evidence, the provision in our bill would eliminate the unique procedures and requirements which have hampered the ability of defense teams to obtain information and led to so much litigation.
We would substitute more established procedures based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), with modest changes to ensure that the government cannot be required to disclose classified information to unauthorized persons.
“Of great importance, the provision in our bill would reverse the existing presumption in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that rules and procedures applicable to trials by courts martial would not apply,” Levin said.
“Our new language says, by contrast, that ‘Except as otherwise provided ... the procedures and rules of evidence applicable in trials by general courts-martial of the United States shall apply in trials by military commission under this chapter.’ The exceptions to this rule are, as suggested by the Supreme Court, carefully tailored to the unique circumstances of the conduct of military and intelligence operations during hostilities.”
Despite the ongoing debate, on June 25 the committee voted unanimously to send the bill to the full Senate for consideration. Staff at the Armed Services Committee press office could not say when the Senate will take up the bill.
(CNSNews.com) – At a Senate hearing Tuesday on the use of military commissions to prosecute terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay, some members of the Armed Services Committee took offense at the Obama administration’s view that the detainees should have the same legal protections under the Constitution as U.S. citizensRanking member Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) questioned Assistant Attorney General David Kris about his remarks on the appropriateness of administering the Miranda warning to terrorist suspects captured abroad. "It is the administration's view that there is a serious risk that courts would hold that admission of involuntary statements of the accused in military commission proceedings is unconstitutional," Kris said in his opening statement.
“Does that infer that these individuals have constitutional rights?” McCain asked Kris.
“Ah, yes,” Kris answered.
“What are those constitutional rights of people who are not citizens of the United States of America, who were captured on a battlefield committing acts of war against the United States?” McCain asked.
“Our analysis, Senator, is that the due process clause applies to military commissions and imposes a constitutional floor on the procedures that the government sets on such commissions …” Kris said.
“So you are saying that these people who are at Guantanamo, who were part of 9/11, who committed acts of war against the United States, have constitutional rights under the Constitution of the United States of America?” McCain asked.
“Within the framework I just described, the answer is yes, the due process clause guarantees and imposes some requirements on the conduct of (military) commissions,” Kris said.
“The fact is they are entitled to protections under the Geneva Convention, which apply to the rules of war,” McCain said. “I do not know of a time in American history where enemy combatants were given rights under the United States Constitution.”
Jeh C. Johnson, general counsel, Department of Defense (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
Kris and Jeh C. Johnson, general counsel for the Department of Defense, said that military commissions were a viable “alternative” but that prosecuting terror suspects as criminals in U.S. federal courts was preferable – a position Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) took issue with at the hearing.
“Why would anyone prefer to try people apprehended for violations of the law of war?” Lieberman asked. “The fact is that from the beginning of our country, from the Revolutionary War, we’ve used military tribunals to try war criminals, or people we have apprehended, captured for violations of the law of war.
“Again, I think the unique circumstances of this war on terrorists, against the people who attacked us on 9/11, have taken us down, including the Supreme Court, some roads that are not only to me ultimately unjust but inconsistent with the long history of military commissions,” Lieberman said.
“Why would you say the administration prefers to bring before our federal court system instead of military commissions that are really today’s version of the tribunals that we’ve used throughout our history to deal in a just way with prisoners of war?” Lieberman asked.
“I applaud this committee’s initiative to reform the military commission act. I think the military commission should be a viable ready alternative for national security reasons to deal with those who violate the laws of war, and I’m glad we’re having this discussion right now, and I thank the committee,” Johnson said.
“When you’re dealing with terrorists whose, and I’m going to say this on behalf of the administration, one of their fundamental aims is to kill innocent civilians, and so it is the administration’s view that direct violence on innocent civilians, let’s say in the continental United States, it might be appropriate that that person be brought to justice in a civilian public forum in the continental United States,” Johnson said.
“Because the act of violence that was committed here was a violation of Title 18 (federal criminal law), as well as the law of war, so we feel strongly that both alternatives should exist,” Johnson added.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
“Well, I respectfully disagree,” Lieberman said. “These are people we believe are war criminals; that’s why we captured them. The greater legal protections of the terrorists because they have chosen to do something that pretty much has not been done before in our history to attack Americans, to kill people here in America, as they did on 9/11, civilians, innocents, it doesn’t matter, and to do it outside of uniform.
“So it puts us in a very odd position, giving these terrorists greater protections in our federal courts than we’ve given war criminals in any other time throughout our history, even though, in my opinion, they are at least as brutal and inhumane, probably more brutal and inhumane than any war criminals,” Lieberman said.
“Yes, it might also be an act of murder that killed people who were in the Trade Towers on 9/11, but it was an act of war,” Lieberman said. “And the people who did that do not deserve the same constitutional protections of those accused of murder in New York City.”
The hearing focused on the military commissions portion of the National Defense Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2010, which includes changes to the Military Commission Act of 2006.
Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) summarized the changes in his opening statement.
* Relative to the admissibility of coerced testimony, the provision in our bill would eliminate the double standard in existing law, under which coerced statements are admissible if they were obtained prior to Dec. 30, 2005.
* Relative to the use of hearsay evidence, the provision in our bill would eliminate the extraordinary language in the existing law which places the burden on detainees to prove that hearsay evidence introduced against them is not reliable and probative.
* Relative to the issue of access to classified evidence and exculpatory evidence, the provision in our bill would eliminate the unique procedures and requirements which have hampered the ability of defense teams to obtain information and led to so much litigation.
We would substitute more established procedures based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), with modest changes to ensure that the government cannot be required to disclose classified information to unauthorized persons.
“Of great importance, the provision in our bill would reverse the existing presumption in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that rules and procedures applicable to trials by courts martial would not apply,” Levin said.
“Our new language says, by contrast, that ‘Except as otherwise provided ... the procedures and rules of evidence applicable in trials by general courts-martial of the United States shall apply in trials by military commission under this chapter.’ The exceptions to this rule are, as suggested by the Supreme Court, carefully tailored to the unique circumstances of the conduct of military and intelligence operations during hostilities.”
Despite the ongoing debate, on June 25 the committee voted unanimously to send the bill to the full Senate for consideration. Staff at the Armed Services Committee press office could not say when the Senate will take up the bill.
PM Netanyahu’s Conference Call with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
Prime Minister’s Opening Statement
Strengthening the connection of the Jewish communities around the world, especially in the United States, to Israel is something that is important both to my government and to me personally. It’s also important for the people of Israel. I look forward to working with all of you and also with Natan Sharansky. Natan is on the line, and will join us after I make a few remarks. I want to work with him and with the Conference of Presidents, with all of you, to advance our common goals. And these are broad, they encompass a lot. They encompass Aliyah and Jewish education and the strengthening of Jewish identity – to the broader and pressing questions of peace and security. And I hope that this will be the first of many conversations that we’ll have in the months and years ahead. So, view this as a pioneering effort. Let’s do it often.
Now, before I take your questions today, I wanted to focus on two pivotal issues: the situation with Iran and the question of peace with the Palestinians. First on Iran – very simply put, if the Iranian regime acquires nuclear weapons, I think this would be a hinge of history. It would present a grave threat to Israel, to the Middle East and to the world at large. The reason I say that is because the recent elections have unmasked the true character of this regime. This is a regime that brutally represses its own people; it sponsors terrorism – not only sponsors it, it supplies the terrorists, it directs them, it finances them, it gives them missiles, it gives them everything – and it’s also determined to acquire nuclear weapons. Understand that a nuclear-armed Iran could provide a nuclear umbrella to terrorists, and it could possibly provide nuclear weapons to terrorists. I think for the sake of the peace of the world and the security of my own country and that of the United States, this must not be allowed to happen. It’s important for me to stress to you that the Iranian people are not our enemies. We remember a time when Israel and Iran had an excellent relationship, better than good, and we know that the Iranian people would like nothing better than to rid themselves of this horrible regime.
When I was in Washington a few months ago, President Obama and I had extensive discussions about this threat. The President has repeatedly stated that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, and that all options must remain on the table in dealing with this threat. And of course this is a position that we support. I also think there’s an increasing international understanding about the true nature of this regime and I think there is a growing resolve to thwart the regime’s effort to attain a military nuclear capability. I think this is not merely an Israeli interest; I think it is now the stated interest not merely of our two countries, but I think this is ought to be the interest and is the interest of anyone interested in preserving the peace of the world. Because a nuclear armed Iran threatens the peace of us all.
The second point I wanted to raise is the quest for achieving peace with the Palestinians, a genuine peace. The simplest thing is to begin peace talks, unconditionally. I have offered that, I offer that again. In fact I say that to you tonight. We seek unconditional peace talks with the Palestinians. We’re prepared to begin those talks immediately, and I’m prepared to work with the Palestinians, and of course with President Obama, towards advancing peace with the Palestinians, and towards advancing the President’s idea of a broader peace in the region.
I think that we have to work on five principles that are not preconditions for beginning peace talks, but I think they are clear foundations for a successful completion of peace talks. The first principle is recognition. We are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people. I think that it’s necessary and elementary that the Palestinians be asked to recognize the nation-state of the Jewish people. I think that the absence of the recognition of Israel’s right or of the Jewish people’s right to a state of their own was and remains the source, the root of this conflict. I don’t think we should be myopic about this. I think we have to be very, very clear. The Palestinians so far do not say simply, unequivocally and clearly that they recognize Israel as the Jewish state, a Jewish state not in the religious sense, but a Jewish state as the nation-state of the Jewish people. I think this is not a semantic insistence; it’s a substantive insistence of which there is an immediate derivative, which is the second principle – and that is that the problem of Palestinian refugees will be resolved outside the State of Israel.
You cannot say that you are prepared to make peace with Israel when you don’t recognize Israel as the state of the Jews, and when you insist that this state will be flooded by Palestinian refugees. It just doesn’t make sense. So the first principle is recognition. The second principle is that the problem of the refugees will be resolved outside the State of Israel.
The third point ought to be obvious too, but I make it here too – it all relates to the question of ending the conflict. And that is that a peace treaty actually ends the conflict. It’s not an interim peace treaty from which the conflict is pursued from the Palestinian state that will be established. It’s the end of the conflict. That is, the Palestinians upon the signing of a peace treaty have to say unequivocally that they have no more claims – no more claims either on the question of refugees or on the question of borders or on the question of irredentist claims.
So the first three points that I raised relate to legitimacy, to Israel’s permanent legitimacy: recognition of a Jewish state, the resolution of the refugee problem outside the borders of the Jewish state and the end of claims, the finality of conflict.
The other two points that I wanted to make relate to security. It’s clear that the Palestinian state established should be one that doesn’t threaten the State of Israel. The only way that that will be achieved is by effective demilitarization – this is the fourth point. We need effective measures of demilitarization. I’ll tell you what ineffective measures of demilitarization are: Gaza is an example; Lebanon is an example. There is no effective demilitarization in either place, and in fact, the arrangements that have been put in place, either in the Philadelphi Corridor or in South Lebanon have produced a highly ineffective arrangement where these two places are used as a launching ground for thousands of missiles that have been hurled against us – now in South Lebanon, tens of thousands of missiles are in place, and in Gaza many, many missiles that are being piled up and smuggled inside that area to be launched again. We want effective means of demilitarization. I think this is the fourth point – absolutely essential.
And the fifth point is that whatever arrangements are undertaken in a peace arrangement, in a peace treaty, have to be guaranteed by the international community, led by the United States. That is, we want to have clear demilitarization means and a clear commitment by the international community about the validity and the robustness of these security arrangements. And I don’t seek the international community to actually provide the means of demilitarization. I do seek the international community’s support for those arrangements that will be put on the ground, political support that is.
So these are the five points: recognition, the question of refugees, the end of claims, effective demilitarization means and international political guarantees for those arrangements. These are the five points that have a vast consensus in Israel, not broad consensus, not the majority – vast consensus. And the reason they enjoy vast consensus, and I found this out after I spoke in Bar-Ilan – I knew they enjoyed support, but I didn’t understand they enjoyed such broad support – is because they’re fair and because they’re necessary. And because anybody who has a commonsense and decent approach to the question of peace understands that these are the five foundations, the five prerequisite foundations for completing a genuine peace treaty.
I would add one other which is not in the form of a condition that we put for the end of the conflict, for ending the conflict, but one that I think, at least from experience, could help push along a solution and stabilize it – and that is prosperity. Up to now, I spoke about three conditions that relate to legitimacy: recognition, refugees and the end of claims; and two points that relate to security: demilitarization and international guarantees for demilitarization. But there is a third element, and that is what we can do to push forward the spread of prosperity. I’m not merely talking about us. We can do that, and we are doing that in our own economy, but advancing prosperity in the Palestinian economy. We’ve been doing that. We’ve taken steps that have begun to be recognized a bit in the international community, actually far-reaching steps of liberalizing movement and enabling movement in the West Bank; removing barriers and checkpoints. I’ve recently asked our security establishment to open up the Allenby Bridge so that it is opened for additional hours for movement. I personally head a ministerial committee to unblock several economic projects that have been held up that I think could advance the Palestinian economy. I think we can do an enormous amount to advance tourism and investments, and we’re prepared to do that. This idea of advancing the economic peace is not a substitute for achieving the political peace that I discussed. It’s a way to facilitate it. It helps achieving the peace, and it’s something that we are moving along independently, whether or not the Palestinians collaborate on it is, of course, up to them. But if they do join with us and participate with us, we could move the West Bank economy way up very rapidly, and what this does is help peace. Because obviously if young Palestinians have a job, if investments are made in Ramallah, if restaurants open in Jenin, if businesses flourish in Hebron, this makes peace more possible and more worthwhile for the Palestinians, as opposed to the radical Islamist projection of misery and conflict. And so I think that prosperity is the other element.
So I advocate legitimacy, security and prosperity by advancing recognition of the Jewish state, the settlement of the refugees outside Israel, the end of claims and the end of conflict, effective demilitarization measures and political international guarantees for these matters; but in addition to that, also the advancement of prosperity and economic cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians with the support of the United States and others in the international community. I think there is overwhelming consensus in Israel for this, and I am sure that this is something that could be helped by you, all of you, and everyone else interested in achieving peace.
http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/PMSpeaks/speechjeworga210709.htm
Strengthening the connection of the Jewish communities around the world, especially in the United States, to Israel is something that is important both to my government and to me personally. It’s also important for the people of Israel. I look forward to working with all of you and also with Natan Sharansky. Natan is on the line, and will join us after I make a few remarks. I want to work with him and with the Conference of Presidents, with all of you, to advance our common goals. And these are broad, they encompass a lot. They encompass Aliyah and Jewish education and the strengthening of Jewish identity – to the broader and pressing questions of peace and security. And I hope that this will be the first of many conversations that we’ll have in the months and years ahead. So, view this as a pioneering effort. Let’s do it often.
Now, before I take your questions today, I wanted to focus on two pivotal issues: the situation with Iran and the question of peace with the Palestinians. First on Iran – very simply put, if the Iranian regime acquires nuclear weapons, I think this would be a hinge of history. It would present a grave threat to Israel, to the Middle East and to the world at large. The reason I say that is because the recent elections have unmasked the true character of this regime. This is a regime that brutally represses its own people; it sponsors terrorism – not only sponsors it, it supplies the terrorists, it directs them, it finances them, it gives them missiles, it gives them everything – and it’s also determined to acquire nuclear weapons. Understand that a nuclear-armed Iran could provide a nuclear umbrella to terrorists, and it could possibly provide nuclear weapons to terrorists. I think for the sake of the peace of the world and the security of my own country and that of the United States, this must not be allowed to happen. It’s important for me to stress to you that the Iranian people are not our enemies. We remember a time when Israel and Iran had an excellent relationship, better than good, and we know that the Iranian people would like nothing better than to rid themselves of this horrible regime.
When I was in Washington a few months ago, President Obama and I had extensive discussions about this threat. The President has repeatedly stated that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, and that all options must remain on the table in dealing with this threat. And of course this is a position that we support. I also think there’s an increasing international understanding about the true nature of this regime and I think there is a growing resolve to thwart the regime’s effort to attain a military nuclear capability. I think this is not merely an Israeli interest; I think it is now the stated interest not merely of our two countries, but I think this is ought to be the interest and is the interest of anyone interested in preserving the peace of the world. Because a nuclear armed Iran threatens the peace of us all.
The second point I wanted to raise is the quest for achieving peace with the Palestinians, a genuine peace. The simplest thing is to begin peace talks, unconditionally. I have offered that, I offer that again. In fact I say that to you tonight. We seek unconditional peace talks with the Palestinians. We’re prepared to begin those talks immediately, and I’m prepared to work with the Palestinians, and of course with President Obama, towards advancing peace with the Palestinians, and towards advancing the President’s idea of a broader peace in the region.
I think that we have to work on five principles that are not preconditions for beginning peace talks, but I think they are clear foundations for a successful completion of peace talks. The first principle is recognition. We are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people. I think that it’s necessary and elementary that the Palestinians be asked to recognize the nation-state of the Jewish people. I think that the absence of the recognition of Israel’s right or of the Jewish people’s right to a state of their own was and remains the source, the root of this conflict. I don’t think we should be myopic about this. I think we have to be very, very clear. The Palestinians so far do not say simply, unequivocally and clearly that they recognize Israel as the Jewish state, a Jewish state not in the religious sense, but a Jewish state as the nation-state of the Jewish people. I think this is not a semantic insistence; it’s a substantive insistence of which there is an immediate derivative, which is the second principle – and that is that the problem of Palestinian refugees will be resolved outside the State of Israel.
You cannot say that you are prepared to make peace with Israel when you don’t recognize Israel as the state of the Jews, and when you insist that this state will be flooded by Palestinian refugees. It just doesn’t make sense. So the first principle is recognition. The second principle is that the problem of the refugees will be resolved outside the State of Israel.
The third point ought to be obvious too, but I make it here too – it all relates to the question of ending the conflict. And that is that a peace treaty actually ends the conflict. It’s not an interim peace treaty from which the conflict is pursued from the Palestinian state that will be established. It’s the end of the conflict. That is, the Palestinians upon the signing of a peace treaty have to say unequivocally that they have no more claims – no more claims either on the question of refugees or on the question of borders or on the question of irredentist claims.
So the first three points that I raised relate to legitimacy, to Israel’s permanent legitimacy: recognition of a Jewish state, the resolution of the refugee problem outside the borders of the Jewish state and the end of claims, the finality of conflict.
The other two points that I wanted to make relate to security. It’s clear that the Palestinian state established should be one that doesn’t threaten the State of Israel. The only way that that will be achieved is by effective demilitarization – this is the fourth point. We need effective measures of demilitarization. I’ll tell you what ineffective measures of demilitarization are: Gaza is an example; Lebanon is an example. There is no effective demilitarization in either place, and in fact, the arrangements that have been put in place, either in the Philadelphi Corridor or in South Lebanon have produced a highly ineffective arrangement where these two places are used as a launching ground for thousands of missiles that have been hurled against us – now in South Lebanon, tens of thousands of missiles are in place, and in Gaza many, many missiles that are being piled up and smuggled inside that area to be launched again. We want effective means of demilitarization. I think this is the fourth point – absolutely essential.
And the fifth point is that whatever arrangements are undertaken in a peace arrangement, in a peace treaty, have to be guaranteed by the international community, led by the United States. That is, we want to have clear demilitarization means and a clear commitment by the international community about the validity and the robustness of these security arrangements. And I don’t seek the international community to actually provide the means of demilitarization. I do seek the international community’s support for those arrangements that will be put on the ground, political support that is.
So these are the five points: recognition, the question of refugees, the end of claims, effective demilitarization means and international political guarantees for those arrangements. These are the five points that have a vast consensus in Israel, not broad consensus, not the majority – vast consensus. And the reason they enjoy vast consensus, and I found this out after I spoke in Bar-Ilan – I knew they enjoyed support, but I didn’t understand they enjoyed such broad support – is because they’re fair and because they’re necessary. And because anybody who has a commonsense and decent approach to the question of peace understands that these are the five foundations, the five prerequisite foundations for completing a genuine peace treaty.
I would add one other which is not in the form of a condition that we put for the end of the conflict, for ending the conflict, but one that I think, at least from experience, could help push along a solution and stabilize it – and that is prosperity. Up to now, I spoke about three conditions that relate to legitimacy: recognition, refugees and the end of claims; and two points that relate to security: demilitarization and international guarantees for demilitarization. But there is a third element, and that is what we can do to push forward the spread of prosperity. I’m not merely talking about us. We can do that, and we are doing that in our own economy, but advancing prosperity in the Palestinian economy. We’ve been doing that. We’ve taken steps that have begun to be recognized a bit in the international community, actually far-reaching steps of liberalizing movement and enabling movement in the West Bank; removing barriers and checkpoints. I’ve recently asked our security establishment to open up the Allenby Bridge so that it is opened for additional hours for movement. I personally head a ministerial committee to unblock several economic projects that have been held up that I think could advance the Palestinian economy. I think we can do an enormous amount to advance tourism and investments, and we’re prepared to do that. This idea of advancing the economic peace is not a substitute for achieving the political peace that I discussed. It’s a way to facilitate it. It helps achieving the peace, and it’s something that we are moving along independently, whether or not the Palestinians collaborate on it is, of course, up to them. But if they do join with us and participate with us, we could move the West Bank economy way up very rapidly, and what this does is help peace. Because obviously if young Palestinians have a job, if investments are made in Ramallah, if restaurants open in Jenin, if businesses flourish in Hebron, this makes peace more possible and more worthwhile for the Palestinians, as opposed to the radical Islamist projection of misery and conflict. And so I think that prosperity is the other element.
So I advocate legitimacy, security and prosperity by advancing recognition of the Jewish state, the settlement of the refugees outside Israel, the end of claims and the end of conflict, effective demilitarization measures and political international guarantees for these matters; but in addition to that, also the advancement of prosperity and economic cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians with the support of the United States and others in the international community. I think there is overwhelming consensus in Israel for this, and I am sure that this is something that could be helped by you, all of you, and everyone else interested in achieving peace.
http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/PMSpeaks/speechjeworga210709.htm
Improving Palestinian Quality of Life - Update
22 July 2009
Israel has taken further steps to improve the quality of life of Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), as well as in the Gaza Strip, and to encourage the development of these areas. As detailed in the previous report of 9 July, the government's decision to remove many of the check points in Judea and Samaria and to ease travel restrictions has served to advance the economy and enhance living conditions in the West Bank.
Israel decided to extend the hours of operation of the Allenby Bridge border terminal with Jordan, so as to facilitate the transfer of goods. Prime Minister Netanyahu convened (8 July 2009) the Ministerial Committee on Improving the Economic Situation of the Palestinian Residents of Judea and Samaria and instructed the relevant officials to immediately and significantly extend the Allenby Border Terminal's hours of operation, in cooperation with Jordan, until midnight every day. These extended hours of operation are designed to increase the import and export of goods, which should boost the volume of commercial activity in the West Bank and improve the Palestinian population's quality of life. The implementation of these instructions will be overseen by the Israel Airports Authority which operates the Allenby Border Terminal.
The Joint Israeli-Palestinian Subcommittee for Postal Affairs met for the first time on 28 June, and discussed alternatives for solving the problems of delays in postal delivery from Jordan to the Palestinian Authority via the Allenby Bridge. In addition, both sides agreed on measures to facilitate the transfer of a postal stamp shipment destined for the Palestinian Authority that has been delayed for some time in Jordan, and to maintain a channel between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for direct postal transfers of mail originating in and destined for both sides.
Israel is also taking steps to improve the situation in the Gaza Strip.
One positive aspect is on the issue of social security. Ongoing negotiations are moving forward with the Palestinians on transferring Israeli social security funds to Palestinian beneficiaries in the Gaza Strip. It was decided that from now on the Palestinian Authority will be responsible for transferring the funds. This will greatly ease the economic situation in the Gaza Strip, as limitations on cash transfers prevented social security beneficiaries there from enjoying the monthly stipend to which they were entitled.
Granting the Palestinian Authority responsibility for transferring the funds will serve to strengthen the governing ability of the PA. Israel's National Insurance Institute [Social Security] will transfer the funds to the Palestinian Authority, which, in turn, will ensure their transfer to bank accounts of beneficiaries opened for that purpose in Ramallah. The Israeli side will commit itself to increase accordingly the sums of cash transferred to the Gaza Strip, in order to cover the amounts that will be transferred to the social security beneficiaries there.
In addition, a special convoy of 17 trucks bearing humanitarian aid from Saudi Arabia crossed into the Gaza Strip, in coordination with Egypt, through the Kerem Shalom crossing point on July 7. This was the first such transfer of assistance from Saudi Arabia, and it is hoped that it will be followed by others from that country.
Since the end of the IDF operation in Gaza (18 Jan 2009), about 408,014 tons of aid and over 55.034 million liters of fuel have been delivered to the Gaza Strip.
During the week 12-17 July 2009, the following supplies were transferred:
- 470 truckloads (9839 tons) of humanitarian aid were transferred to the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom cargo terminal and the Karni conveyor belt.
- 2.077 million liters of heavy duty diesel for the Gaza power station, 250,000 liters of fuel for transportation, 20,000 liters of gasoline, and 1136 tons of gas for domestic use were delivered via Nahal Oz fuel depot.
Additionally, 347 Gaza residents entered Israel via Erez Crossing for medical and humanitarian reasons.
מח' מידע ואינטרנט – אגף תקשורת
Israel has taken further steps to improve the quality of life of Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), as well as in the Gaza Strip, and to encourage the development of these areas. As detailed in the previous report of 9 July, the government's decision to remove many of the check points in Judea and Samaria and to ease travel restrictions has served to advance the economy and enhance living conditions in the West Bank.
Israel decided to extend the hours of operation of the Allenby Bridge border terminal with Jordan, so as to facilitate the transfer of goods. Prime Minister Netanyahu convened (8 July 2009) the Ministerial Committee on Improving the Economic Situation of the Palestinian Residents of Judea and Samaria and instructed the relevant officials to immediately and significantly extend the Allenby Border Terminal's hours of operation, in cooperation with Jordan, until midnight every day. These extended hours of operation are designed to increase the import and export of goods, which should boost the volume of commercial activity in the West Bank and improve the Palestinian population's quality of life. The implementation of these instructions will be overseen by the Israel Airports Authority which operates the Allenby Border Terminal.
The Joint Israeli-Palestinian Subcommittee for Postal Affairs met for the first time on 28 June, and discussed alternatives for solving the problems of delays in postal delivery from Jordan to the Palestinian Authority via the Allenby Bridge. In addition, both sides agreed on measures to facilitate the transfer of a postal stamp shipment destined for the Palestinian Authority that has been delayed for some time in Jordan, and to maintain a channel between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for direct postal transfers of mail originating in and destined for both sides.
Israel is also taking steps to improve the situation in the Gaza Strip.
One positive aspect is on the issue of social security. Ongoing negotiations are moving forward with the Palestinians on transferring Israeli social security funds to Palestinian beneficiaries in the Gaza Strip. It was decided that from now on the Palestinian Authority will be responsible for transferring the funds. This will greatly ease the economic situation in the Gaza Strip, as limitations on cash transfers prevented social security beneficiaries there from enjoying the monthly stipend to which they were entitled.
Granting the Palestinian Authority responsibility for transferring the funds will serve to strengthen the governing ability of the PA. Israel's National Insurance Institute [Social Security] will transfer the funds to the Palestinian Authority, which, in turn, will ensure their transfer to bank accounts of beneficiaries opened for that purpose in Ramallah. The Israeli side will commit itself to increase accordingly the sums of cash transferred to the Gaza Strip, in order to cover the amounts that will be transferred to the social security beneficiaries there.
In addition, a special convoy of 17 trucks bearing humanitarian aid from Saudi Arabia crossed into the Gaza Strip, in coordination with Egypt, through the Kerem Shalom crossing point on July 7. This was the first such transfer of assistance from Saudi Arabia, and it is hoped that it will be followed by others from that country.
Since the end of the IDF operation in Gaza (18 Jan 2009), about 408,014 tons of aid and over 55.034 million liters of fuel have been delivered to the Gaza Strip.
During the week 12-17 July 2009, the following supplies were transferred:
- 470 truckloads (9839 tons) of humanitarian aid were transferred to the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom cargo terminal and the Karni conveyor belt.
- 2.077 million liters of heavy duty diesel for the Gaza power station, 250,000 liters of fuel for transportation, 20,000 liters of gasoline, and 1136 tons of gas for domestic use were delivered via Nahal Oz fuel depot.
Additionally, 347 Gaza residents entered Israel via Erez Crossing for medical and humanitarian reasons.
מח' מידע ואינטרנט – אגף תקשורת
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
B’Tselem Retracts War Crimes Accusations against IDF
Avraham Zuroff
A7 News
An Israeli human rights group quietly retracted its inaccurate coverage in which it accused the IDF of killing innocent Arab civilians, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs reports. Middle East expert and terror researcher Lt.-Col. (res.) Yehonatan Dahoah-Halevy exposed two conflicting reports that the B’Tselem-Israeli Information Center for Human Rights organization published on the group’s website. The group, which initially accused the IDF of war crimes by “butchering innocent Arabs,” has now changed its reportage of an incident that took place nearly five years ago as a legitimate “attack on a military target.” However, the group hasn’t yet officially apologized to the IDF for its slanderous statement.
The first version of the B’Tselem group’s story reported that the IDF killed 14 Palestinian Authority Arabs “not engaged in fighting” during an Israel Air Force aerial attack on a Hamas community center on September 7, 2004. Ostensibly, Arab civilians were wrongly killed while engaging in a harmless cultural activity. The casualties were included in B’Tselem’s database of Arab civilians killed by the IDF.
Now, nearly five years later, B’Tselem reports that the Arabs were “engaged in fighting” and “were stationed at a Hamas training camp.”
Dahoah-Halevy notes that on the very day of the attack, Hamas itself made an official announcement stating that the bombed target was a training camp and that the 14 Arabs that were killed were members of the Al-Kassam military brigade of Hamas.
Local and international media likewise covered the event and published the IDF’s version of the story, namely, that Hamas terrorists were killed near Jebalya at a training camp on a soccer field named after the former Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The IDF stated that the terrorists were being trained in detonating explosive devices, launching rockets, and infiltrating into Israeli communities and military posts. The IDF added that senior Hamas members involved in deadly terror attacks against Israel had been carrying out the training.
In contrast, B’Tselem has not published an official apology or explained why it took the organization nearly five years to change the story. Dahoah-Halevy concludes that the incident reiterates the lesson that B’Tselem reports need not be blindly believed. He additionally states that the organization’s constant inaccuracy in its reportage undermines its credibility.
IDF Considers Legal Action
Israel National News asked the IDF spokesperson’s bureau whether any actions against B’Tselem have been taken in light of its inaccurate report. The IDF responded that it is currently consulting with its legal authorities on this matter.
Jerusalem Heartburn
David Hazony - 07.20.2009 - 4:32 PM
We knew it would come to this. Over the weekend, the Obama administration showed just how radical the shift in U.S. policy toward Israel has been. It has demanded that the Israeli government withdraw the municipal approval of a building project in the Eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The land that houses the old, run-down Shepherd Hotel, which is to be replaced by an apartment building, was lawfully purchased by Jews. No matter: That part of town is seen by Washington as a “settlement.” Today, U.S. officials made it even clearer when they reportedly told both sides that they see no difference between Eastern Jerusalem and rogue settler outposts in the middle of the West Bank. Understandably, the Israeli government has rejected the directive, and some reports suggest that the Israelis may have deliberately leaked the demand, for it plays to Netanyahu’s image as standing tall against American pressure.
Washington has a longstanding tradition of doublespeak when dealing with Jerusalem. On the one hand, Obama himself couldn’t help but declare his commitment (subsequently retracted) to a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty while campaigning for office — and he even promised to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv, which is not the capital by any definition of the term, to Jerusalem.
At the same time, he is not the first presidential candidate to make that promise, nor the first one to forget about it when in office, in the process ignoring the express will of Congress. It’s those pesky State Department folks, you see, who keep advising successive presidents that now is not the right time. For 60 years, Israel’s executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government have found their seat in Jerusalem, and Israel’s “closest ally” still keeps its embassy by the beach. At least we Jerusalemites don’t have to worry about all those diplomat vehicles taking our precious parking spots.
It gets weirder. As I have pointed out before, the United States does not appear to recognize Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem — West or East. A federal-court ruling earlier this month underscores the simple fact that any American citizen born in Jerusalem, regardless of where he lives, gets a U.S. passport with the country listed as simply “Jerusalem.” U.S. citizens living in Jerusalem cannot get help at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv; they are directed to the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, which answers directly to Washington, rather than to the embassy.
Again, this stuff has been going on for a long time. It begins with a fundamental attitude on the part of successive American administrations, really dating back to the 1947 UN partition plan putting the city under “universal” governance. The point is, the reasoning goes, we don’t fully see the logic in giving Israel full sovereignty of Jerusalem. It’s not just about placating the Arabs, although that’s a big part of it; it is, after all, a city of international importance. Why should only Israel have it?
So in the interest of fostering a constructive dialogue with an American diplomatic universe that seems to have no interest whatever in Israel’s position on the subject, I’d like to toss out a few brief reminders.
1. Israel should have Jerusalem, first of all, because it already does. Jews have been a majority of the city consecutively since the middle of the 19th century. There is no issue here of occupation a Jewish minority displacing Palestinians in their land. Over the past century and a half, the city was divided for 19 years by an accident of war, split between Israel and Jordan, neither of which occupations having earned international recognition; and then it was reunited.
Thus was born the infamous and irrelevant “Green Line,” something that today exists on maps only. The Jordanians cleansed the eastern city of its Jews and burned down its synagogues. Then the Jews came back in 1967 and gave the city a greater degree of not only economic success but also religious, cultural, and political freedom than it has ever enjoyed under any of the different Muslim, Christian, and pagan regimes that preceded them. Consider, by contrast, the treatment of Jewish holy sites under Palestinian rule: Joseph’s Tomb, for example, was immediately set on fire, as were all the synagogues of the Gaza Strip. At the risk of “prejudicing” the outcome of negotiations through the employment of argument, why on earth should it not be Israel’s?
2. Israel should have Jerusalem because it is more important to Jews than it is to Muslims (or Christians, or anyone else). This may sound vaguely discriminatory or religionist or unpopularly theological or just unfunny, but the fact is that there is a difference between the “most important” holy city and the “third most important” city that is far more than quantitative. This is the geographical heart of biblical Israel, the focus of its golden age of David and Solomon, the political-messianic-metahistorical dream focus of three millennia of Jewish prayer. This is the heart of everything, and that heart beats not on Herzl Boulevard or Jaffa Road by the Central Bus Station but in Eastern Jerusalem, at the site where the First and Second Temples stood for about a thousand years before the glorious Romans burned them down.
3. Israel should have Jerusalem because there is no practical way to divide the city that would satisfy both sides. Never mind the bizarre MTA-subway-style map that would ensue, intertwining all the Jewish and Arab neighborhoods in the city. The real problem is that Israelis and Palestinians have totally irreconcilable views as to how such a division would work in practice — a difference so wide as to make the entire endeavor a pipe dream.
Israelis see any separation as similar to the one Israel has with Egypt and Jordan: a full border, with strict crossings and a fundamental divorce of economic life. This is essential to any deal — the entire idea of giving up land in exchange for peace comes with the heavy baggage of decades of terror attacks. But such a separation, we have been told repeatedly, is anathema to the Palestinians themselves, who rely heavily on Israeli jobs for their living and see any real separation a form of “siege” — turning their territory into a “prison.” (If you don’t believe this, ask yourself how the Gazans would react if Israel were to lift the sea and air restrictions on the Strip: Would they say “we are now free” or “we are still under siege”?) This problem is little discussed but will become a deal breaker the moment anyone starts talking seriously about borders or dividing the city.
Jerusalem is not just a consensus issue in Israel but also a deeply personal one. There is no erasing the thousands of years of yearning for Jerusalem in Jewish texts, nor the heart-wrenching failure of Jewish forces to capture East Jerusalem in 1948, nor the national catharsis of its reunification in the Six Day War, nor over four decades of astonishing development and construction and tourism and flourishing of religious life for all faiths since then. The idea that now, suddenly, a new American president, speaking of “settlements,” will change this reality is not simply offensive and alienating to Israelis only but also to Jews the world over. Rather than recognize his failure in the Middle East so far, Obama is exacerbating it. Israelis do not like to be bullied, and this is far more likely to steel the Israeli public’s resolve against American pressure than weaken it.
__________________________\
http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11275745.html
There was Obama's AIPAC speech where he supported an undivided Jerusalem, which liberal Jewish groups immediately printed on literally millions of pamphlets and sent to low-information Jewish voters looking for an excuse to vote Democratic. Then there was Obama's immediate flip-flop when he came under "Palestinian pressure," which for some reason didn't get as much public attention.
But then there was the reversal of the reversal a few days later, where the campaign insisted that Obama would not interfere with Jerusalem, that "Israel has a legitimate claim on" the Old City, and that "no one should want or expect [Jerusalem] to be redivided:"
In an interview today with CNN's Candy Crowley, Obama said of Jerusalem, "obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations." Of his feelings about dividing Jerusalem, Obama said: "As a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute. And I think that it is smart for us to -- to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city."...
The Obama campaign put a reporter in immediate contact with Rep. Robert Wexler... who told ABC News, "that is not backtracking." "His position has been the same for the past 16 months," Wexler said. "He believes Jerusalem should be an undivided city and must be the capital of a Jewish state of Israel. He has also said... that Jerusalem is of course a 'final status' issue," meaning it would be one of the key and final points of negotiation for a Palestinian state. "And Sen. Obama as president would not dictate final status issues. He will permit the Palestinians and Israel to negotiate, and he would respect any conclusion they reach."...
And in these answers to questions from the American Jewish Committee, Obama wrote that the U.S. "cannot dictate the terms of a final status agreement. We should support the parties as they negotiate these difficult issues, but they will have to reach agreements that they can live with. In general terms, clearly Israel must emerge in a final status agreement with secure borders. Jerusalem will remain Israel's capital, and no one should want or expect it to be redivided."
Obama's new approach of counting East Jerusalem as a settlement is a break with previous administrations. It's not that the US explicitly recognized Israel's rights to an undivided capital, though Obama obviously promised as much during the campaign. It's just that the status of the Old City - which had been cleansed of thousands of Jews by the Jordanians before Israel captured it and let them return - was never an issue. The State Department doesn't even count those neighborhoods when they tabulate settlements. It's just never been a thing before now. Obama just made it up.
Netanyahu, for his part, has had enough:
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, responding to the reports that Washington had asked Israel not to build 20 apartments in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in east Jerusalem, near Mount Scopus and the National Police headquarters, said, "I would like to reemphasize that united Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel. Our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged; this means - inter alia - that residents of Jerusalem may purchase apartments in all parts of the city. "This has been the policy of all Israeli governments and I would like to say that it is indeed being implemented because in recent years hundreds of apartments in Jewish neighborhoods and in the western part of the city have been purchased by - or rented to - Arab residents and we did not interfere," he said.
The original article had Netanyahu quite a bit more piqued, talking about how Obama had crossed a "red line" by denying Jewish sovereignty over its ancient capital.
One last flashback:
There is no doubt US President-elect Barack Obama could work well with Likud head Binyamin Netanyahu... Congressman Robert Wexler, one of Obama's most prominent early supporters in the Jewish community, told The Jerusalem Post... Wexler said, "I know that Obama and Netanyahu have met on at least two occasions... I am confident that should he become the prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu would get along very well with Barack Obama, and the two of them would work in concert toward the achievement of mutual interests. I have no doubt about that."
So while some people might be inclined to blame Wexler for intentionally lying about how Obama supports an undivided Jerusalem, this last quote suggests that it's not his fault. He might just be a moron.
______________________
http://www.web-view.net/Show/0XDB82BE4523A16440FDBD4EDE4475281F6BDA9DDAACE21598CA7CC5A36F3EAB7A.htm#0_132492
1. Jews to Reclaim Land in Jordan?
by Maayana Miskin
The Israel Land Fund, a group dedicated to restoring Jewish property in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, is reportedly looking east. According to AFP, the organization plans to begin buying historically Jewish properties in Jordan as well.
Many Jews purchased land in what is now Jordan during the British Mandate, when such land was seen primarily as part of the greater Land of Israel. In 1946 Jordan declared independence as an Arab, Muslim country. Two years later, the state of Israel declared independence, and Jordan's rulers confiscated Jewish-owned land in their own country for state use.
Israel Land Fund chairman Aryeh King told AFP that his organization has proof that thousands of properties in present-day Jordan were historically Jewish, adding, "We have records of the ownership."
The plan is in its early stages, and no properties in Jordan have been bought to date. Purchasing would likely take place with the help of Jews in Europe, King said, as Israelis are prohibited from buying land in Jordan under Jordanian law.
The same Jordanian law is enforced by the Palestinian Authority, which views the sale of land to Jews or Israelis as a capital offense. The Land Fund manages to circumvent PA law by buying land through middlemen. In many cases, the group also helps Arab sellers to flee the country in order to avoid PA retribution.
Jewish properties bought or reclaimed by the Israel Land Fund in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria are guarded and used to build homes for Jewish activists. It was not clear what would be done with property reclaimed in Jordan.
AFP noted that if the plan were to succeed, it could cause anger in Jordan, where anti-Israel sentiment runs high despite a 1994 peace treaty.
Guest Comment: Here is a recap of the US longstanding record on Jerusalem and Obama's divergence from it, on more than one occassion. Now there is news that the Israel Land Fund is looking into purchasing land in Jordan which had been bought by Jews during the Mandate of Palestine, but was later confiscated by the Jordanian monarchs. In fact, Jordanian law makes it illegal to sell land to Israelis. How racist is that?
Although ownership of the land is documented, it will be paid for twice: Once by the original purchaser and again to the current owner. Will Obama interfere with this plan too?
--
Best,
Aggie
We knew it would come to this. Over the weekend, the Obama administration showed just how radical the shift in U.S. policy toward Israel has been. It has demanded that the Israeli government withdraw the municipal approval of a building project in the Eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The land that houses the old, run-down Shepherd Hotel, which is to be replaced by an apartment building, was lawfully purchased by Jews. No matter: That part of town is seen by Washington as a “settlement.” Today, U.S. officials made it even clearer when they reportedly told both sides that they see no difference between Eastern Jerusalem and rogue settler outposts in the middle of the West Bank. Understandably, the Israeli government has rejected the directive, and some reports suggest that the Israelis may have deliberately leaked the demand, for it plays to Netanyahu’s image as standing tall against American pressure.
Washington has a longstanding tradition of doublespeak when dealing with Jerusalem. On the one hand, Obama himself couldn’t help but declare his commitment (subsequently retracted) to a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty while campaigning for office — and he even promised to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv, which is not the capital by any definition of the term, to Jerusalem.
At the same time, he is not the first presidential candidate to make that promise, nor the first one to forget about it when in office, in the process ignoring the express will of Congress. It’s those pesky State Department folks, you see, who keep advising successive presidents that now is not the right time. For 60 years, Israel’s executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government have found their seat in Jerusalem, and Israel’s “closest ally” still keeps its embassy by the beach. At least we Jerusalemites don’t have to worry about all those diplomat vehicles taking our precious parking spots.
It gets weirder. As I have pointed out before, the United States does not appear to recognize Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem — West or East. A federal-court ruling earlier this month underscores the simple fact that any American citizen born in Jerusalem, regardless of where he lives, gets a U.S. passport with the country listed as simply “Jerusalem.” U.S. citizens living in Jerusalem cannot get help at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv; they are directed to the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, which answers directly to Washington, rather than to the embassy.
Again, this stuff has been going on for a long time. It begins with a fundamental attitude on the part of successive American administrations, really dating back to the 1947 UN partition plan putting the city under “universal” governance. The point is, the reasoning goes, we don’t fully see the logic in giving Israel full sovereignty of Jerusalem. It’s not just about placating the Arabs, although that’s a big part of it; it is, after all, a city of international importance. Why should only Israel have it?
So in the interest of fostering a constructive dialogue with an American diplomatic universe that seems to have no interest whatever in Israel’s position on the subject, I’d like to toss out a few brief reminders.
1. Israel should have Jerusalem, first of all, because it already does. Jews have been a majority of the city consecutively since the middle of the 19th century. There is no issue here of occupation a Jewish minority displacing Palestinians in their land. Over the past century and a half, the city was divided for 19 years by an accident of war, split between Israel and Jordan, neither of which occupations having earned international recognition; and then it was reunited.
Thus was born the infamous and irrelevant “Green Line,” something that today exists on maps only. The Jordanians cleansed the eastern city of its Jews and burned down its synagogues. Then the Jews came back in 1967 and gave the city a greater degree of not only economic success but also religious, cultural, and political freedom than it has ever enjoyed under any of the different Muslim, Christian, and pagan regimes that preceded them. Consider, by contrast, the treatment of Jewish holy sites under Palestinian rule: Joseph’s Tomb, for example, was immediately set on fire, as were all the synagogues of the Gaza Strip. At the risk of “prejudicing” the outcome of negotiations through the employment of argument, why on earth should it not be Israel’s?
2. Israel should have Jerusalem because it is more important to Jews than it is to Muslims (or Christians, or anyone else). This may sound vaguely discriminatory or religionist or unpopularly theological or just unfunny, but the fact is that there is a difference between the “most important” holy city and the “third most important” city that is far more than quantitative. This is the geographical heart of biblical Israel, the focus of its golden age of David and Solomon, the political-messianic-metahistorical dream focus of three millennia of Jewish prayer. This is the heart of everything, and that heart beats not on Herzl Boulevard or Jaffa Road by the Central Bus Station but in Eastern Jerusalem, at the site where the First and Second Temples stood for about a thousand years before the glorious Romans burned them down.
3. Israel should have Jerusalem because there is no practical way to divide the city that would satisfy both sides. Never mind the bizarre MTA-subway-style map that would ensue, intertwining all the Jewish and Arab neighborhoods in the city. The real problem is that Israelis and Palestinians have totally irreconcilable views as to how such a division would work in practice — a difference so wide as to make the entire endeavor a pipe dream.
Israelis see any separation as similar to the one Israel has with Egypt and Jordan: a full border, with strict crossings and a fundamental divorce of economic life. This is essential to any deal — the entire idea of giving up land in exchange for peace comes with the heavy baggage of decades of terror attacks. But such a separation, we have been told repeatedly, is anathema to the Palestinians themselves, who rely heavily on Israeli jobs for their living and see any real separation a form of “siege” — turning their territory into a “prison.” (If you don’t believe this, ask yourself how the Gazans would react if Israel were to lift the sea and air restrictions on the Strip: Would they say “we are now free” or “we are still under siege”?) This problem is little discussed but will become a deal breaker the moment anyone starts talking seriously about borders or dividing the city.
Jerusalem is not just a consensus issue in Israel but also a deeply personal one. There is no erasing the thousands of years of yearning for Jerusalem in Jewish texts, nor the heart-wrenching failure of Jewish forces to capture East Jerusalem in 1948, nor the national catharsis of its reunification in the Six Day War, nor over four decades of astonishing development and construction and tourism and flourishing of religious life for all faiths since then. The idea that now, suddenly, a new American president, speaking of “settlements,” will change this reality is not simply offensive and alienating to Israelis only but also to Jews the world over. Rather than recognize his failure in the Middle East so far, Obama is exacerbating it. Israelis do not like to be bullied, and this is far more likely to steel the Israeli public’s resolve against American pressure than weaken it.
__________________________\
http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11275745.html
There was Obama's AIPAC speech where he supported an undivided Jerusalem, which liberal Jewish groups immediately printed on literally millions of pamphlets and sent to low-information Jewish voters looking for an excuse to vote Democratic. Then there was Obama's immediate flip-flop when he came under "Palestinian pressure," which for some reason didn't get as much public attention.
But then there was the reversal of the reversal a few days later, where the campaign insisted that Obama would not interfere with Jerusalem, that "Israel has a legitimate claim on" the Old City, and that "no one should want or expect [Jerusalem] to be redivided:"
In an interview today with CNN's Candy Crowley, Obama said of Jerusalem, "obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations." Of his feelings about dividing Jerusalem, Obama said: "As a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute. And I think that it is smart for us to -- to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city."...
The Obama campaign put a reporter in immediate contact with Rep. Robert Wexler... who told ABC News, "that is not backtracking." "His position has been the same for the past 16 months," Wexler said. "He believes Jerusalem should be an undivided city and must be the capital of a Jewish state of Israel. He has also said... that Jerusalem is of course a 'final status' issue," meaning it would be one of the key and final points of negotiation for a Palestinian state. "And Sen. Obama as president would not dictate final status issues. He will permit the Palestinians and Israel to negotiate, and he would respect any conclusion they reach."...
And in these answers to questions from the American Jewish Committee, Obama wrote that the U.S. "cannot dictate the terms of a final status agreement. We should support the parties as they negotiate these difficult issues, but they will have to reach agreements that they can live with. In general terms, clearly Israel must emerge in a final status agreement with secure borders. Jerusalem will remain Israel's capital, and no one should want or expect it to be redivided."
Obama's new approach of counting East Jerusalem as a settlement is a break with previous administrations. It's not that the US explicitly recognized Israel's rights to an undivided capital, though Obama obviously promised as much during the campaign. It's just that the status of the Old City - which had been cleansed of thousands of Jews by the Jordanians before Israel captured it and let them return - was never an issue. The State Department doesn't even count those neighborhoods when they tabulate settlements. It's just never been a thing before now. Obama just made it up.
Netanyahu, for his part, has had enough:
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, responding to the reports that Washington had asked Israel not to build 20 apartments in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in east Jerusalem, near Mount Scopus and the National Police headquarters, said, "I would like to reemphasize that united Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel. Our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged; this means - inter alia - that residents of Jerusalem may purchase apartments in all parts of the city. "This has been the policy of all Israeli governments and I would like to say that it is indeed being implemented because in recent years hundreds of apartments in Jewish neighborhoods and in the western part of the city have been purchased by - or rented to - Arab residents and we did not interfere," he said.
The original article had Netanyahu quite a bit more piqued, talking about how Obama had crossed a "red line" by denying Jewish sovereignty over its ancient capital.
One last flashback:
There is no doubt US President-elect Barack Obama could work well with Likud head Binyamin Netanyahu... Congressman Robert Wexler, one of Obama's most prominent early supporters in the Jewish community, told The Jerusalem Post... Wexler said, "I know that Obama and Netanyahu have met on at least two occasions... I am confident that should he become the prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu would get along very well with Barack Obama, and the two of them would work in concert toward the achievement of mutual interests. I have no doubt about that."
So while some people might be inclined to blame Wexler for intentionally lying about how Obama supports an undivided Jerusalem, this last quote suggests that it's not his fault. He might just be a moron.
______________________
http://www.web-view.net/Show/0XDB82BE4523A16440FDBD4EDE4475281F6BDA9DDAACE21598CA7CC5A36F3EAB7A.htm#0_132492
1. Jews to Reclaim Land in Jordan?
by Maayana Miskin
The Israel Land Fund, a group dedicated to restoring Jewish property in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, is reportedly looking east. According to AFP, the organization plans to begin buying historically Jewish properties in Jordan as well.
Many Jews purchased land in what is now Jordan during the British Mandate, when such land was seen primarily as part of the greater Land of Israel. In 1946 Jordan declared independence as an Arab, Muslim country. Two years later, the state of Israel declared independence, and Jordan's rulers confiscated Jewish-owned land in their own country for state use.
Israel Land Fund chairman Aryeh King told AFP that his organization has proof that thousands of properties in present-day Jordan were historically Jewish, adding, "We have records of the ownership."
The plan is in its early stages, and no properties in Jordan have been bought to date. Purchasing would likely take place with the help of Jews in Europe, King said, as Israelis are prohibited from buying land in Jordan under Jordanian law.
The same Jordanian law is enforced by the Palestinian Authority, which views the sale of land to Jews or Israelis as a capital offense. The Land Fund manages to circumvent PA law by buying land through middlemen. In many cases, the group also helps Arab sellers to flee the country in order to avoid PA retribution.
Jewish properties bought or reclaimed by the Israel Land Fund in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria are guarded and used to build homes for Jewish activists. It was not clear what would be done with property reclaimed in Jordan.
AFP noted that if the plan were to succeed, it could cause anger in Jordan, where anti-Israel sentiment runs high despite a 1994 peace treaty.
Guest Comment: Here is a recap of the US longstanding record on Jerusalem and Obama's divergence from it, on more than one occassion. Now there is news that the Israel Land Fund is looking into purchasing land in Jordan which had been bought by Jews during the Mandate of Palestine, but was later confiscated by the Jordanian monarchs. In fact, Jordanian law makes it illegal to sell land to Israelis. How racist is that?
Although ownership of the land is documented, it will be paid for twice: Once by the original purchaser and again to the current owner. Will Obama interfere with this plan too?
--
Best,
Aggie
Drowning in Quicksand
Ari Bussel
Many of the best PR firms in New York are Jewish-owned, but Israel is yet to master the skill set necessary to present her case in the court of public opinion. If one only realized the critical importance of public diplomacy, all these firms would have joined forces to create a super think tank to save the drowning Israel. If the true nature of the threat and the need were properly understood, the IDF would have created a new front, like the Home Front or the Northern, Central or Southern Commands. Israelis themselves, led by cues from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Netanyahu’s top advisers, believe that Israel is doing quite well on the public diplomacy front. The task is formidable, they may admit but then proceed to recount a long list of successes. Necessary but insufficient, these are made in comparison to previous utter failures.
Israel’s enemies become emboldened with every passing hour. For example, Palestinian Media Watch just reported an interview of a Fatah activist on Palestinian Authority TV: "It has been said that we are negotiating for peace, but our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; the goal is Palestine." Israelis in the meantime respond by contemplating the “settlements” in Judea and Samaria, the latest so-called “obstacle to peace.”
Why can Israel not speak with like convictions and an equally clear message? She is too busy solving the world’s problems in and among her citizens. There are those who teach us of the Nakba (“the disaster” of the creation of the Jewish State). There are others who disguise themselves as “human rights” activists, yet do nothing to better the conditions of fellow human beings. There are even some “big believers in a state of all its citizens” in Israel’s midst who are quick to point out Israelis “are for equality and [simultaneously] for kicking the Arabs out.”
Israelis have forgotten or neglected to pay due attention to their surroundings. They are deep in the quicksand, each movement hastens their demise. There used to be redlines. All have been erased long ago.
Israel has advanced from its miserable disappointment of the Second War in Lebanon, just three years ago. Yet, the enemy is light years ahead. It is sophisticated, driven, well organized and coherent, and has focused, very-well defined and equally very-well articulated goals and aspirations. Earlier this week, a group of Hizbollah penetrated Israel from Lebanon. It was a reminder they can do as they please, as they did three years ago when they entered Israel, kidnapped two soldiers for whose bodies they later ticked off another victory, freeing terrorists from Israeli prisons.
The enemy has a vision to destroy Israel. It states so over the loudspeakers of the mosques, in public places where a map of Palestine and a picture of Arafat hang, on the Palestinian Authority’s radio and television programs, in the Hamas Charter and the Iranian President’s constant diatribes.
Israel listens, sees and allows it to continue. Rather than prohibiting hate speech and incitement on Friday sermons and closing down broadcasting stations that indoctrinate children to hatred and terror, there is no action, cost extracted or reaction; there are no consequences.
Gaining strength and accelerating, the attacks against the Jewish People and the Jewish Homeland have intensified to the point where recently the Jews of the Diaspora have started feeling the pinch, awakening to the seriousness of the situation. Their tens and hundreds of millions of hard earned and collected-with-ever-increasing-difficulty charitable donations, no longer work. The Jews in the Diaspora are able to see what Israel fails to acknowledge. The situation is becoming more threatening, the clouds of an impeding war are gathering.
A major storm is soon to hit. The Jews of Venezuela have fled from their home country. The first signs of the Great Migration of the 21st Century can be tracked. As we look forward to the next nine decades of this century, the migration patterns will expand, the numbers of those traveling the routes will grow, and the predatory attacks will intensify in both number and strength. Where will all the refugees go?
Where can we all end up? Some sixty-four years ago we vowed “Never Again” to concentration camps and ovens in which humans were turned to ashes. Today we are reliving the pre-World War II years.
The flow of Jews has only one shelter, one goal and one destination: THE JEWISH HOMELAND. Israel needs to start preparing herself for this eventuality rather than worry about a “homeland” for people who until two decades ago did not exist nor had any identity, history or recognition of any sorts.
President Hussein Obama is very concerned about America’s image in the Muslim world. He convened, lately, the heads of 14 Jewish organizations, and related a very strong message: It has to be his way. Middle Eastern culture, the real threat and facts on the ground notwithstanding, Jews in America must follow the President’s vision or else…
Deep in our hearts we feel something is wrong and yet we have convinced ourselves we are to blame for the situation. We look to ourselves to provide solutions subject to the same faulty reasoning. We need a new regime. We need brand new thinking. We must look at the enemy, learn and implement their successful methods. We should also stop and evaluate our allies’ position. At the end of the road, as one is sent to forced labor in a concentration camp or to the line to the showers, allies and foes alike will not matter. What will matter will be the failure of our ancient promise, “Never Again.”
I have no doubt we can improve and develop an effective get-well plan, but it is crucial we start immediately. Unless we act, with every passing minute, we sink further into this quicksand, until one day not so far from now, our cries for help will be heard no more.
Many of the best PR firms in New York are Jewish-owned, but Israel is yet to master the skill set necessary to present her case in the court of public opinion. If one only realized the critical importance of public diplomacy, all these firms would have joined forces to create a super think tank to save the drowning Israel. If the true nature of the threat and the need were properly understood, the IDF would have created a new front, like the Home Front or the Northern, Central or Southern Commands. Israelis themselves, led by cues from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Netanyahu’s top advisers, believe that Israel is doing quite well on the public diplomacy front. The task is formidable, they may admit but then proceed to recount a long list of successes. Necessary but insufficient, these are made in comparison to previous utter failures.
Israel’s enemies become emboldened with every passing hour. For example, Palestinian Media Watch just reported an interview of a Fatah activist on Palestinian Authority TV: "It has been said that we are negotiating for peace, but our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; the goal is Palestine." Israelis in the meantime respond by contemplating the “settlements” in Judea and Samaria, the latest so-called “obstacle to peace.”
Why can Israel not speak with like convictions and an equally clear message? She is too busy solving the world’s problems in and among her citizens. There are those who teach us of the Nakba (“the disaster” of the creation of the Jewish State). There are others who disguise themselves as “human rights” activists, yet do nothing to better the conditions of fellow human beings. There are even some “big believers in a state of all its citizens” in Israel’s midst who are quick to point out Israelis “are for equality and [simultaneously] for kicking the Arabs out.”
Israelis have forgotten or neglected to pay due attention to their surroundings. They are deep in the quicksand, each movement hastens their demise. There used to be redlines. All have been erased long ago.
Israel has advanced from its miserable disappointment of the Second War in Lebanon, just three years ago. Yet, the enemy is light years ahead. It is sophisticated, driven, well organized and coherent, and has focused, very-well defined and equally very-well articulated goals and aspirations. Earlier this week, a group of Hizbollah penetrated Israel from Lebanon. It was a reminder they can do as they please, as they did three years ago when they entered Israel, kidnapped two soldiers for whose bodies they later ticked off another victory, freeing terrorists from Israeli prisons.
The enemy has a vision to destroy Israel. It states so over the loudspeakers of the mosques, in public places where a map of Palestine and a picture of Arafat hang, on the Palestinian Authority’s radio and television programs, in the Hamas Charter and the Iranian President’s constant diatribes.
Israel listens, sees and allows it to continue. Rather than prohibiting hate speech and incitement on Friday sermons and closing down broadcasting stations that indoctrinate children to hatred and terror, there is no action, cost extracted or reaction; there are no consequences.
Gaining strength and accelerating, the attacks against the Jewish People and the Jewish Homeland have intensified to the point where recently the Jews of the Diaspora have started feeling the pinch, awakening to the seriousness of the situation. Their tens and hundreds of millions of hard earned and collected-with-ever-increasing-difficulty charitable donations, no longer work. The Jews in the Diaspora are able to see what Israel fails to acknowledge. The situation is becoming more threatening, the clouds of an impeding war are gathering.
A major storm is soon to hit. The Jews of Venezuela have fled from their home country. The first signs of the Great Migration of the 21st Century can be tracked. As we look forward to the next nine decades of this century, the migration patterns will expand, the numbers of those traveling the routes will grow, and the predatory attacks will intensify in both number and strength. Where will all the refugees go?
Where can we all end up? Some sixty-four years ago we vowed “Never Again” to concentration camps and ovens in which humans were turned to ashes. Today we are reliving the pre-World War II years.
The flow of Jews has only one shelter, one goal and one destination: THE JEWISH HOMELAND. Israel needs to start preparing herself for this eventuality rather than worry about a “homeland” for people who until two decades ago did not exist nor had any identity, history or recognition of any sorts.
President Hussein Obama is very concerned about America’s image in the Muslim world. He convened, lately, the heads of 14 Jewish organizations, and related a very strong message: It has to be his way. Middle Eastern culture, the real threat and facts on the ground notwithstanding, Jews in America must follow the President’s vision or else…
Deep in our hearts we feel something is wrong and yet we have convinced ourselves we are to blame for the situation. We look to ourselves to provide solutions subject to the same faulty reasoning. We need a new regime. We need brand new thinking. We must look at the enemy, learn and implement their successful methods. We should also stop and evaluate our allies’ position. At the end of the road, as one is sent to forced labor in a concentration camp or to the line to the showers, allies and foes alike will not matter. What will matter will be the failure of our ancient promise, “Never Again.”
I have no doubt we can improve and develop an effective get-well plan, but it is crucial we start immediately. Unless we act, with every passing minute, we sink further into this quicksand, until one day not so far from now, our cries for help will be heard no more.