RubinReports
Barry Rubin
Israel acceded to a U.S. request to freeze construction on existing Jewish settlements; the Palestinian Authority (PA) refuses even to negotiate or to give anything in exchange for this concession. Who did Europe reward and was the United States able to mobilize praise for the former or criticism for the latter?Need you ask?
It is now confirmed that my analysis of the State Department statement on the construction freeze was correct. It was intended as a statement supporting key Israeli demands—recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and changes in the 1967 borders—while also meeting major Palestinian demands, an independent state based on those borders.
Equally unnoticed, however, is the fact that the United States did not even get its European allies to endorse its new position. Once again, despite all the Obama Administration's apologies, flattery, and concessions, it could not even obtain the smallest things in exchange from those given such rewards.
The main U.S. effort was to get the Quartet of mediators (U.S., Europe Union, Russia, and UN) to endorse the new U.S. stance. The proposed statement would have urged resumed negotiations without preconditions to seek an agreement which:
"would fulfill the Palestinian goal of establishing an independent, viable state, based on the 1967 borders, agreed upon exchanges [of territory], and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect the developments [which occurred on the ground] and which fulfill the Israeli security requirements."
Reportedly, the Russians rejected the Jewish state and reflecting developments on the ground positions. This explains why the Quartet couldn’t issue a statement. But why didn’t the United States obtain the same statement from the European Union alone?
Instead, after making still another unilateral concession, Israel now has to fight off a hostile EU resolution calling for east Jerusalem to be capital of a Palestinian state without any mention of Israeli goals, including mention of west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, an easy way of making the resolution more even-handed.
So once again Israel is given the message, here reinforced by inept U.S. diplomacy, that the reward for making a concession are demands to make more concessions. This is not, however, to underestimate the importance of the new U.S. position as expressed in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement. The question, of course, is how long and whether the Obama Administration will stick to its new set of promises.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Should Jews in the UK support SIOE?
Nowadays it is fashionable among Leftists and jihadists to equate any resistance to jihad and Islamic supremacism with "racism" and "fascism." This Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a Sharia supremacist, equates the Swiss minaret ban with "fascism."In a similar vein, this Jewish group accuses the group Stop the Islamisation of Europe, which is standing for the Jews and all free people against Islamic supremacism, of "fascism" based on a logo that reflects the abundant violence we've seen in mosques in recent years; an attempt at guilt-by-association innuendo based on ties alleged but never documented; and a bland dismissal of the incitement to violence found in Islamic texts and teachings, combined with the dogmatic assumption that all religions are equally likely to move their followers to murderous rage.
Here is SIOE's response:
TO ISRAEL AND JEWS - HOW MANY MORE ENEMIES DO YOU NEED?
To reiterate an earlier statement: SIOE is separate to the English Defence League, Casuals United and other anti-Islamist groups in England
The 13th September "Stop further mosque building" demonstration in Harrow is organised by SIOE. It has been falsely reported that other groups have organised this demonstration.
Efforts are made constantly to link SIOE with the BNP and SIOE is constantly branded as a fascist organisation by some blogs and internet contributors.
SIOE's opponents constantly use "guilt by association" as a means of linking SIOE with racist organisations.
However, its previous actions have shown that SIOE is the most anti-fascist organisation in Europe and serious and knowledgeable anti-fascist groups no longer oppose SIOE's demonstrations.
SIOE has persistently stood up for and spoken about minority groups persecuted by Muslim majorities, for example Copts, which other self-styled anti-fascist groups have neglected.
SIOE always has, and always will, unswervingly condemn racism.
SIOE supports Israel's existence and the right of Jewish people to defend themselves. Palestinian and Muslim groups have declared that every Jew is a legitimate target for jihad (that is murder) regardless of where he/she may live.
However, SIOE's opponents have recently declared their opposition to Israel and therefore Jews.
Israel: Scottish fans urged to wave Palestinian flags at match
SIOE regards this alleged appeal by Scottish TUC spokesperson, David Moxham, to border on anti-Semiticism because Israel has once again been singled out for censure, while nearby Egypt is once again ignored for its genocidal acts against the Copts, for example.
The motive for this selective condemnation might rightly be regarded as being because Jews comprise the majority in Israel.
Our opponents constantly condemn SIOE for not recognizing the difference between Muslim moderates and extremists. Muslim moderates are not protecting Copts in Egypt or Hindus in Malaysia. Muslim moderates are not protecting Jews in Muslim countries. Muslim moderates voted into power Recep Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey, after he'd been imprisoned for reading the Islamic poem about minarets being bayonets, that inspired SIOE's cartoon advertising its "Stop Islamisation" demonstration in Harrow on 13th December.
By wilfully ignoring such persecution while simultaneously focusing on Israel is anti-Semitic in SIOE's considered opinion.
David Moxham is a co-signatory with the UAF and other organisations as well as individuals to this declaration
Therefore, SIOE considers all of these co-signatories to be guilty by association with David Moxham of being selectively anti-Israel and thereby of being selectively anti-Semitic because of David Moxham's alleged statement.
Guilt by association works in both directions. Therefore, any opposition to anti-Semiticism made by the UAF and its associates is now not to be taken seriously, by UAF's own rules.
SIOE welcomes David Moxham and any of his co-signatories to refute SIOE's assertions and will gladly publish any non-abusive statements to the contrary on its website.
In fact we eagerly await any condemnation of any Muslim atrocities perpetrated anywhere. This right to reply is denied SIOE, most recently (today) by the CST.
Stephen Gash
Stop Islamisation Of Europe
SIOE England
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/12/press-release.html
Here is SIOE's response:
TO ISRAEL AND JEWS - HOW MANY MORE ENEMIES DO YOU NEED?
To reiterate an earlier statement: SIOE is separate to the English Defence League, Casuals United and other anti-Islamist groups in England
The 13th September "Stop further mosque building" demonstration in Harrow is organised by SIOE. It has been falsely reported that other groups have organised this demonstration.
Efforts are made constantly to link SIOE with the BNP and SIOE is constantly branded as a fascist organisation by some blogs and internet contributors.
SIOE's opponents constantly use "guilt by association" as a means of linking SIOE with racist organisations.
However, its previous actions have shown that SIOE is the most anti-fascist organisation in Europe and serious and knowledgeable anti-fascist groups no longer oppose SIOE's demonstrations.
SIOE has persistently stood up for and spoken about minority groups persecuted by Muslim majorities, for example Copts, which other self-styled anti-fascist groups have neglected.
SIOE always has, and always will, unswervingly condemn racism.
SIOE supports Israel's existence and the right of Jewish people to defend themselves. Palestinian and Muslim groups have declared that every Jew is a legitimate target for jihad (that is murder) regardless of where he/she may live.
However, SIOE's opponents have recently declared their opposition to Israel and therefore Jews.
Israel: Scottish fans urged to wave Palestinian flags at match
SIOE regards this alleged appeal by Scottish TUC spokesperson, David Moxham, to border on anti-Semiticism because Israel has once again been singled out for censure, while nearby Egypt is once again ignored for its genocidal acts against the Copts, for example.
The motive for this selective condemnation might rightly be regarded as being because Jews comprise the majority in Israel.
Our opponents constantly condemn SIOE for not recognizing the difference between Muslim moderates and extremists. Muslim moderates are not protecting Copts in Egypt or Hindus in Malaysia. Muslim moderates are not protecting Jews in Muslim countries. Muslim moderates voted into power Recep Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey, after he'd been imprisoned for reading the Islamic poem about minarets being bayonets, that inspired SIOE's cartoon advertising its "Stop Islamisation" demonstration in Harrow on 13th December.
By wilfully ignoring such persecution while simultaneously focusing on Israel is anti-Semitic in SIOE's considered opinion.
David Moxham is a co-signatory with the UAF and other organisations as well as individuals to this declaration
Therefore, SIOE considers all of these co-signatories to be guilty by association with David Moxham of being selectively anti-Israel and thereby of being selectively anti-Semitic because of David Moxham's alleged statement.
Guilt by association works in both directions. Therefore, any opposition to anti-Semiticism made by the UAF and its associates is now not to be taken seriously, by UAF's own rules.
SIOE welcomes David Moxham and any of his co-signatories to refute SIOE's assertions and will gladly publish any non-abusive statements to the contrary on its website.
In fact we eagerly await any condemnation of any Muslim atrocities perpetrated anywhere. This right to reply is denied SIOE, most recently (today) by the CST.
Stephen Gash
Stop Islamisation Of Europe
SIOE England
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/12/press-release.html
Collaborators in the War Against the Jews: Richard A. Falk – by Steven Plaut
It is a bit of a shame that Richard A. Falk, professor emeritus of International Law and Practice from Princeton, cannot go back in time in some sort of time machine to right historic wrongs. If he could, there is no doubt at all that he would revise and re-orchestrate the Nuremberg Trials conducted by the Allies after World War II so that the leaders of the United States and Britain were the ones indicted instead. . After all, from 1945 onwards the Allies were guilty of “occupation.” Earlier, they had even dared to use military force against German terrorism, had caused German civilian deaths in their earlier military incursions and air bombing campaigns, and then illegally colonized German territories. If it were up to Falk, the Nuremberg trials would have been devoted to prosecuting the Jews of Europe for causing so much trouble for those poor innocent Germans.
Falk is not only one of the worst collaborators in the academic wars against the Jews, he is also America’s leading practitioner of the Orwellian inversion. For Falk, America is a fascist monstrosity, while the world’s fascist and totalitarian monstrosities are democratic enclaves of freedom. For him, Israel is a terrorist aggressor, while the Arab terrorist aggressors are innocent victims and peace-loving progressives. For him, Israel is a Nazi-like country seeking genocide, while the genocidal Islamofascists of the Hamas and their backers are merely protesters against social inequality inside Israel. For him, terrorist aggression against Jews is really the pursuit of peace, while self-defense by Israel is criminal, terrorist aggression and genocide.
So who exactly is Richard Falk? He is basically an Ivy League version of Ward Churchill. He has described himself as an “assimilationist Jewish with a virtual denial of even the ethnic side of Jewishness.” According to Martin Peretz of the New Republic, “Yes, let me assure you, this hater of Israel is a Jew. And, also yes, this hater of America is an American. “ Falk’s only interest in his Jewish origins is when he can use them as a bludgeon against Israel and other Jews. According to one report, Falk may have converted to the Baha’i religion. Falk’s wife is a Turkish Moslem.
And just what is Falk’s agenda? When addressing an audience of supporters of the anti-Israel organization “Sabeel,” Falk thus spoke: “During a question and answer period after remarks by Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, an audience member urged people to ‘vote the Jewish state out of existence.’ Enthusiastic applause erupted up and down the pews.” For Falk, it goes without saying that Israel must be annihilated. He cannot imagine any form of Middle East “peace” in which the Jews have not been driven into the sea. In his words, “If we are to re-imagine peace, we have to stop thinking of the conventional two-state solution, this idea of two people living in separate states would be a disaster.”
But there is so much more! Falk is a conspiracy nut who is involved up to his hairline in the “911 Truth” conspiracy cult, which claims that the Bush Administration was actually behind the 911 attacks on the US. Falk has repeated over and over his “suspicion” that high American officials, conniving with nefarious Jewish neo-conservatives, were the real culprits who organized the attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon. Falk wrote a sycophantic foreword for a conspiracy “book” by one David Ray Griffin, “The New Pearl Harbor.” Falk championed that “book” and helped get it a publisher. Here is Falk’s take on 911:
“As far as I can tell, the real explanation is a widely shared fear of what sinister forces might lay beneath the unturned stones of a full and honest investigation of 9/11. Ever since the assassinations in the 1960s of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X there has been waged a powerful campaign against ‘conspiracy theory’ that has made anyone who dares question the official story to be branded as a kook or some kind of unhinged troublemaker. In this climate of opinion, any political candidate for high office who dared raise doubts about the official version of 9/11 would immediately be branded as unfit, and would lose all political credibility. It is impossible to compete in any public arena in the United States if a person comes across as a ‘9/11 doubter.’”
Writing a in the Middle East Quarterly (Winter 2002), “Professors of Palestine,” Martin Kramer observed that “extracting…ex cathedra rulings from Falk is easy business.” Kramer added: “I hadn’t seen Falk’s authority invoked so reverentially since my own student days at Princeton. Back then, he was the leading campus enthusiast of the Ayatollah Khomeini. ‘The depiction of Khomeini as fanatical, reactionary, and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false,’ he wrote in 1979. ‘Iran may yet provide us with a desperately-needed model of humane government for a third-world country.’ I well recall watching him preside over a ‘teach-in’ in support of the revolution, which was going to end human rights abuses in Iran. And I recall student groupies applauding fanatically, as if in a trance.”
Falk’s publication record is a one-sided indictment of everything Western and a one-sided exoneration of everything anti-Western. He was an early sycophant of the Ayatollah Khomeini, publishing in the New York Times on February 16, 1979 a piece titles “Trusting Khomeini.” The New Republic claims Falk considered the Ayatollah to be the Messiah. Falk also was a cheerleader for the Khmer Rouge. He regularly writes for viciously anti-American and anti-Semitic web sites such as “Counterpunch” and “Znet.”
Kramer adds, “Falk is famous for his one-size-fits-all definition of war crimes and crimes against humanity.” So, “in 1998…he warned officials responsible for implementing the United Nations sanctions against Iraq of their ‘criminal accountability for complicity in the commission of crimes against humanity.’ The persistence of American leaders in carrying out the sanctions regime ‘subjects them to potential criminal responsibility.’”
Naturally, Falk also sees conspiracies being perpetrated by Neo-conservatives (meaning Jews) against far-leftist academics. He opines: “There’s no doubt that there’s a concerted right-wing attempt to intimidate professors who advocate critical views, especially on Middle East issues and on the Bush presidency.” To drive home his point, he served as a cheerleader and apologist for Ward Churchill when the latter dismissed the American victims of 9-11 as “little Eichmanns.”
Falk has been ferociously opposed to the Allied liberation of Iraq. He described the invasion as a “war of aggression” by the United States and its allies, and – naturally – also compares it to the crimes of German Nazis in World War II. Orwellian inversions involving Nazis are Falk’s favorite metaphor, and he seems to compose several before breakfast each day. Elsewhere he has stated, “It is not an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with the criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity.” He compared Attorney General like John Ashcroft to the Nazi conspirators who set the Reichstag on fire.
Falk dismisses the Domestic Security Enhancement Act and the Patriot Act as “sweeping powers” that represent a “slide toward fascism.” He routinely denounces America for being an imperialist power, an empire. In 2003 he published a diatribe, “Will the Empire be Fascist?” There he insists that terror warnings and threat assessments are tools used by the American government to frighten and control the public. He has demanded that American sovereignty be constricted and subjected to a “Global Peoples’ Assembly,” a governing body whose members would “represent the worldwide voice of the people in action and decision making.” You know, people like Hugo Chavez and Muammar Khaddafi, who would decide there what America can and cannot do.
But Falk’s special animosity is reserved for Israel. He has been trying for decades to get Israel obliterated. And that track record qualified him to serve as the special investigator into “Israeli war crimes” on behalf of the United Nations! In 2007 Falk published, “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” in which he wrote that it was not an “irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians (by Israel)” with the “criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity.” His title is a thin plagiarism of the title of a book by Robert Bork, “Slouching Towards Gemorrah.” The article may be Falk’s most openly anti-Semite diatribe. In it, he accuses Israel of mistreating Palestinians on a scale comparable to the Nazi extermination of Jews. He writes:
“Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy. If ever the ethos of ‘a responsibility to protect,’ recently adopted by the UN Security Council as the basis of ‘humanitarian intervention’ is applicable, it would be to act now to start protecting the people of Gaza from further pain and suffering.”
Falk then went on to argue that the plight of the Palestinians is worse than the victims of genocide in Rwanda: “But Gaza is morally far worse (than Rwanda), although mass death has not yet resulted.” That single sentence may be the most telling of all the inanities Falk has ever invented.
Jonathan Kay, writing in the Canadian National Post, dismissed Falk as an anti-Jewish bigot and as “an anti-Israel hit man:”
“Falk accuses Israel of having ‘genocidal tendencies,’ and calls the international response to the situation in Gaza “morally far worse” than its response to the 1994 Rwanda genocide (death toll: 800,000) and Srebrenica — despite the fact that there is not a single recorded instance of Israel implementing a program of deliberately killing civilians in Gaza, let alone mass murder.”
The article concludes by declaring, “To persist with [Israeli policies] is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic whole. It is this prospect that makes appropriate the warning of a Palestinian holocaust in the making, and should remind the world of the famous post-Nazi pledge of ‘never again.’ What a scandal to imagine that this ignorant ideologue is the expert in whom the UNHRC has entrusted its fact-finding in Gaza and the West Bank. In fact, notwithstanding his shrill opinions, Falk clearly doesn’t actually know anything about Gaza and West Bank.” No, Falk is not beneath commandeering every iota of Jewish suffering in history to demonize Israel, even the “Never Again” slogan coined following the Holocaust in World War II.
There is almost no distortion of the truth that Falk will not embrace when he jihads against Israel. He defends the “election” of the Hamas in Gaza as a “fair election.” His evidence? Jimmy Carter said so. He deliberately inverts history in the worst Orwellian manner. The Hamas has been seeking ceasefires with Israel, but Israel keeps violating them, according to the learned oprofessor. Israel and the US are all to blame for the rise of Hamas hegemony in Gaza, opines Falk, because Israel failed to capitulate sufficiently to the heads of the PLO and the US failed to coerce Israel to do so: “This latest turn in policy needs to be understood in the wider context of the Israeli refusal to reach a reasonable compromise with the Palestinian people since 1967.” The reasonable compromise the Palestinians demand of course is Israel’s complete extermination.
In 2001, when he retired from Princeton, the misnamed U.N. Commission on Human Rights decided to send a biased “commission of inquiry” to bash Israel over its supposed violation of human rights. Falk was one of three members chosen. The other two were also anti-Israel: John Dugard, a South African from Leiden University in the Netherlands who considers Israel a racist apartheid-like regime, and Kamal Hussein, former Bangladeshi foreign minister. Alan Dershowitz dismissed Falk as a bigot and as someone who made up his mind long before he began any “investigation.” In Dershowitz’ view, appointing Falk is comparable to the following: “Imagine the UN appointing David Duke to report on how Blacks are victimizing Whites, or Hugo Chavez to report on American foreign policy, or Mohammad Ahmadinejad to investigate whether the Holocaust occurred.”
In 2008 the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) officially appointed Falk to a six-year term as a “United Nations Special Rapporteur” on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” I guess Noam Chomsky wasn’t available. US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton explained why Falk was selected: “He was picked for a reason, and the reason is not to have an objective assessment — the objective is to find more ammunition to go after Israel.”
This new commission reached its conclusions long before it was even convened. In Falk’s words, the purpose of the commission was this: “The central issue is to ask whether Israel has used excessive force in responding to the Palestinian political demonstrations.” Note that he and his sidekicks had no interest in the countless terrorist atrocities and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians launched by Palestinians. In fact, Falk essentially came out in favor of Palestinian terrorism even before the commission began its work: “One is evaluating whether the conditions of occupation are such as to give the Palestinians some kind of right of resistance. And if they have that right, then what are the limits to that right?” The only difference between terrorism and “resistance” depends entirely on whether on not Falk endorses it. Falk used the same opportunity to denounce Israel as a colonialist entity.
In May, 2008, and recalling his early campaigns against Israel on behalf of the UN, Israel refused to allow Falk to enter the country at all as a UN representative. He tried to enter again in December, was detained for 30 hours in Tel Aviv airport and then given the bum’s rush out. Falk joined the tiny club of anti-Semites so extreme that Israel refuses to allow them to enter the country. Of “academics” barred from entering Israel, Falk shares that honor only with Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein, who was evicted from Israel thanks to Finkelstein’s intimate ties to the Hezb’Allah terrorists. (Even Noam Chomsky and numerous other blatant anti-Semites enter Israel all the time with no problem, and many lecture at Israeli universities. Israel only evicts the worst collaborators with terrorism!)
When Falk was evicted, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior explicitly cited Falk’s long record of anti-Israel hate propaganda in its decision to ban his entry. Simona Halperin, the director of Israel’s International Organization and Human Rights department, called Falk “completely unobjective,” citing his comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of Israel’s actions against the Palestinians to the Holocaust. Writing in the Israeli daily Maariv, Uri Yablonka commented on the expulsion of Falk: “It is not every day that the Foreign Ministry decides to ban a senior United Nations emissary from entering Israel, especially when the person involved is a Jewish academic. But in the case of Prof. Richard Falk from the United States, Israel made an exception. This was because in the past Falk voiced support for suicide attacks and compared Israel’s activity with that of the Nazis.” The editor of Maariv dismissed Falk as a repulsive maniac.
When Israel launched its anti-terror campaign in Gaza in 2008, “Cast Lead,” Falk repeatedly and mechanically denounced all Israeli defense operations as “war crimes.” Evidently the only form of Jewish self-defense against Hamas rockets that Falk is willing to approve is total capitulation. Even grabbing ships full of arms bound for Islamofascist terrorists is “criminal,” according to Falk, and an abuse of Palestinian rights. He repeatedly called for Nuremberg-style indictments of Israeli leaders for “war crimes.” Falk is not above outright falsification when it comes to his prettifying the Hamas or demonizing Israel.
As for Falk’s other political associations, Kathy Shaidle lists some of these: “Falk is a prominent member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, which the CIA once characterized as ‘one of the most useful Communist front organizations at the service of the Soviet Communist Party.’ Today Falk chairs the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, whose recommended strategy for combating terrorism is to increase U.S. aid to those countries that act as a breeding ground for terrorists.” The New Republic’s Martin Peretz insists that he “finds human rights abuses Right and Left but on second thought only Right.”
Kathie Shaidle sums Falk up thus: “Were Falk simply an obscure crank, his views about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 could be written off as the rantings of a sadly delusional individual. However, Falk’s enthusiasm for conspiracy theories casts grave doubts about the levels of objectivity and competence he will bring to his new ‘investigative’ position at the United Nations. Unlike the scientific method or other rational methods of deduction, conspiracy theories work backwards from frequently tenuous ‘evidence,’ in order to ‘prove’ the conspiracist’s pre-determined theories. Richard Falk publicly has sided with radical Islam over America and Israel for three decades, with little consideration for facts and evidence. Given that, and his gullible support for bizarre 9/11 ‘revelations,’ critics have good reason to suspect that, as a UN ‘investigator,’ Falk will leave a great deal to be desired.”
As the Hamas’ point man serving the UN commission, Falk did indeed deliver the goods, as expected.
Friday, December 04, 2009
Attorney to Challenge Construction Freeze on Legal Grounds
Avi Yellin
A7 News
Attorney Akiva Sylvetsky, the legal adviser for the Samaria Regional Council, is convinced that the government’s ban on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria can be successfully challenged through legal action. Sylvetsky told Israel National News that although it is difficult to know the odds for success, an appeal must be made to the High Court of Justice to cancel the discriminatory government edict which so blatantly violates the civil rights of local Jews. The attorney added that the construction ban violates the rights of people to live where they choose and will also severely impact building contractors who will have difficulty working or providing for their families.
Although confident that the law supports the rights of local Jews to live and build in Judea and Samaria, Sylvetsky expressed sobriety regarding the infamous politically biases that exist within the courts. “Although after the precedent of the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif it is difficult to expect that the court will overrule the prime minister and the judges will most likely claim that they do not interfere in political matters, we should still attempt to pursue this course of action. Unfortunately, we have seen and experienced that our courts are reluctant to protect the rights of Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria the way they defend the rights of Arabs in these areas.” Still Sylvetsky asserts that the objective legality of the situation and the transparency of such a blatant injustice against Israeli citizens may force the legal establishment to overcome their political biases and rule against the construction freeze.
National Union: Merger Dependent on Struggle for Eretz Yisrael
Avi Yellin NU MKs
A7 News
Lawmakers from the National Union party on Thursday evening responded to an earlier call from Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home-New National Religious Party) Chairman Daniel Hershkowitz for the two factions to unite by saying that so long as Bayit Yehudi remains in Netanyahu’s coalition during the government’s current ban on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, the National Union cannot justify merging the parties. MK Professor Aryeh Eldad said, “At this moment, Minister Hershkowitz and the NRP are participants in the freeze [on Jewish building in Judea and Sama. Before they initiate renewed unification with the National Union, they need to explain to the public how they are ready to be full responsible partners to the government policy...”
MK Professor Michael Ben-Ari added that “Minister Hershkowitz’s call to the National Union to unite is worthy of discussion after they join the common struggle against the construction freeze on the benches of the opposition.” Referring to the forcible expulsion of Jews from the Gaza region and four northern Samarian communities in 2005, Ben-Ari said, “The National Union will not give the NRP legitimacy to be a participant in another expulsion.”
Although National Union Chairman Ya'akov (Ketzaleh) Katz responded positively to Hershkowitz’s call for unity and said that he was glad to receive Hershkowitz’s letter offering a merger of the two Zionist parties, he added that “The National Union faction, all its members and activists, throughout all of Israel, are busy these days with various activities across Yesha [Judea and Samaria -ed to thwart the racist policies against the 300,000 Jews of Judea and Samaria. After the successful nullification of the evil decrees of Netanyahu and his government, the faction will have the time to discuss the Bayit Yehudi chairman’s request.”
Our Suicidal Impulses
LESLIE'S BLOG: STRENGTH AND TOLERANCE
ImageIs American-born Jewish liberalism pushing us, lemming-like, into the morally opaque sea of self-defeating multiculturalism? This may be the defining question for contemporary American Jewry. That over 75% of Jews voted for Obama, and that in the past the Democratic party generally garnered 70% of the Jewish vote or higher, is no accident. The reasons, however, are many – as well as counter-intuitive. With Abraham, the first Jewish conservative came into being; his belief-bound pragmatism and his quest for the survival of his (newly born) people became basic conservative seeds. In Pharaoh’s Egypt, Jews developed a profound appreciation for freedom and a passion for their homeland, Israel – a passion both amplified and tested by the delayed gratification of 40 wandering years in the desert. There followed a thousand years of Hebrew kingdoms, the codifying of the laws, the writing of the Old Testament and its commentary, the Talmud, the integration of the world’s first monotheism into everyday life. During this period, the Jews seemingly fought everyone (sometimes unsuccessfully) to maintain their independence; the Persians followed the Babylonians, then the Greeks moved in, and of course the Romans burned the Second Temple to the ground and banished most of the Judeans to the four corners of the Diaspora.
Thus, for some 2000 years following Abraham, Jews were intimately tied to conservative ideals, coexisting where possible but ultimately dedicated to preserving their heritage and people-hood for future generations. What’s more, the Jews simultaneously developed the most comprehensive and advanced system of laws and ethics the world had yet witnessed, establishing standards and rules designed to help maintain social stability and morality as well as codify man’s relationship with God.
Then came another 2000 years in exile where anti-Semitism and cruelty were the norm. Herded into ghettos and classified as transient, second-class citizens, Jews learned to practice the arts of invisibility, co-existence among strangers, and pragmatic survival. There was no place, no opportunity for liberalism in these tenuous times. Forbidden from owning land, Jews were forced to be money lenders and petty traders, occupying the lowest rungs of the then agrarian-based economic structures. Universities were forbidden, music and the art excluded. Politics, verboten. So Jews focused inward – on their religion, their culture and their families, always turning towards Jerusalem with hope and undimmed memories.
With the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, modernity arrived with emancipation and enlightenment for Europe’s Jews. No longer endemically repressed or barred from science, the arts, politics, and big business, Jews flourished, with many taking nationalism’s assimilationist bait wholeheartedly, relegating culture and religion to the back-burner. The best of Europe’s Jews began to disproportionately fill the ranks of Nobel Prize winners, and the world opened up as never before. Sigmund Freud, Felix Mendelson, Albert Einstein, Marc Chagall, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Benjamin Disraeli, Leon Trotsky, and so on.
While Hitler and the Holocaust utterly and tragically destroyed the enlightened argument for Jewish assimilation into the nation-states of Europe, liberalism remained a potent force among Jews in the American diaspora.
In the United States – the Goldene Medina – many Jews opted to throw off the yoke of repression and history and determined to reinvent God, religion and culture, dumping intolerance, racism, aggression, selective rights and injustices into the dustbin of history for all time. They wanted distance from the past, and focused on a new future in a new world, born of optimism, hope and ultimately, fantasy. In the effervescence of their new and limitless freedom, these Jews found new religion in every form (including sexual) of expression and in an embrace of multiculturalism, where every people, every culture, and every religion was equal and must be similarly tolerated, irrespective of its tenets or its apparent dangers. In the post-war period, this near-absolute tolerance for all, for everything, infused the universities, the arts and the left-wing of the Democratic party – often with American Jews leading the charge.
Image As a result, many of us Jews have recreated an image of mankind without our invaluable lessons of human history, forgetting man’s fickle bloodlust and his inconsistence justice. We aspire to “world citizenry” and view our national and religious traditions as backwards and tribal. Our bonds to Israel, at the forefront of a struggle against the antithesis of liberalism, become loosened in our over-riding desire to understand and appease the other. Negotiation with and unbridled tolerance towards those who hate us, who wish us ill, is now the sine qua non of much of our most educated set.
This naïve fantasy not only stands in contrast to Jewish history and our current realities; it is also highly dangerous. It risks our ability to save family, country, culture, religion and ultimately Western civilization from the vicissitudes of a venal and jealous world waiting to wrest from us our latest multicolored coat, our inheritance from Joseph. Has the natural evolution of Europe’s old world ghetto conservatism progressed far too deep, far too wide, making our sincere, humanistic and tolerant liberalism incapable of protecting our country, our freedom and our future?
It seems the voting record of America’s Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, deeply myopic, still has a ways to go.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Was Netanyahu's settlement freeze a betrayal?
Isi Leibler
December 3, 2009
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=1925
Many of us were deeply disappointed when our prime minister approved a broader settlement freeze than initially envisaged. It is surely bizarre to impose such harsh restrictions for almost a year on major settlement blocs which even the previous US administration had recognized would always remain within Israel. What makes it even more galling is that the Palestinians refused to make any reciprocal gesture, reinforcing the belief that unilateral concessions embolden rather than moderate the radicals.. But before accusing Binyamin Netanyahu of betrayal, lacking the courage to stand up against American pressure, or challenging his integrity, a dispassionate review of the options he faced is warranted. Politics is, after all, the art of the possible.
In making his decision, Netanyahu was obliged to take into account two cardinal elements. Firstly, we are dependent on the United States for our military and technological superiority, without which we would face an abyss. In addition, in the absence of US global support and employment of its veto at the UN, the Europeans would have a free hand to unilaterally approve a Palestinian state which could soon be appropriated by Hamas. Our adversaries could also impose crippling boycotts and other punitive measures against us.
Secondly, the US is one of the very few remaining countries in which public opinion remains overwhelmingly pro-Israel. Any US administration inclined to adopt policies which would visibly undermine Israel's security would trigger a major backlash from the public.
Yet, despite Netanyahu's repeated denials to the contrary, the "liberal" Obama government is markedly less friendly than recent Democratic and Republican administrations.
That is not to suggest that President Barack Obama hates Israel, as some of his more extreme US critics allege. But he certainly displays a lack of chemistry with Israel. There is also no denying that many of his former intimate political associates and friends were hostile toward Israel. In addition, he has surrounded himself with advisers, some Jewish, whose track records on Israel are disconcerting.
In fact, the Obama administration has been insensitive to some of our most profound concerns and has certainly displayed a penchant to deal much more harshly with Israel than with the Palestinians. Even if motivated by good intentions, this policy has proven to be an abject failure and simply intensified Palestinian intransigence, encouraging them to believe that the US will bring Israel to its knees without requiring any reciprocity on their part. Presumably to impress the Arabs, the administration has also made a point of publicly distancing itself from Israel, even behaving inappropriately toward our prime minister. It is thus no coincidence that Obama's personal standing here is appallingly low. We simply don't have faith in him.
HOWEVER THESE factors and our reliance on the US do not oblige us to behave like a banana republic and accede to every diktat of this administration. We must simply ensure that if we are obliged to resist a particular US demand, it should be over an issue on which Congress and the American people would be inclined to support us.
Alas, the settlement issue has become so convoluted and distorted in the minds of the public that even many American Jews are confused and unable to distinguish between outposts, isolated settlements and the major settlement blocs.
In this environment, in addition to weighing the awesome consequences of a major breakdown with the Americans, Netanyahu was also obliged to take into account the Iranian nuclear threat and the negative fallout from the Goldstone Report.
To his credit, despite walking a diplomatic tightrope, Netanyahu's performance as a statesman has been impeccable - resisting the initially brutal and draconian demands from the US administration while recognizing the danger of being dragged into a confrontation over the settlements which, rightly or wrongly, have become our Achilles' heel among the American public.
In the final arrangement he negotiated, any suggestion that Jerusalem would come under the rubric of settlements was firmly rejected. Housing under current construction would proceed and public requirements such as hospitals, schools, synagogues, etc. would be maintained.
Netanyahu's action should not be viewed in isolation. It is only the first in a highly complex series of negotiations. The ball is now in the Palestinian court. Should they come to their senses and renew negotiations, in their present frame of mind they will undoubtedly be making demands which we will be obliged to reject. These will include the Arab right of return, the status of Jerusalem and possibly a role for Hamas.
A deadlock will also ensue should the Palestinians reject the stipulation in Netanyahu's Bar-Ilan address that Israel retain defensible borders or refuse to undertake that a Palestinian state be demilitarized.
In the immediate short term we must also demand that real action be taken toward dismantling the terrorist entities and ending anti-Semitic incitement. Should the Obama administration try to pressure us to compromise on these issues, we will be obliged to resist and, as a last resort, appeal for support from Congress and the American people. But we would be in a much stronger position to generate public support on such issues than on the settlements.
It was to be expected that the settlers, concerned about their homes and livelihoods, and others would be deeply distressed and would fiercely criticize Netanyahu. However they must resist indulging in character assassination and defamation of the prime minister or fanning hysteria among those who do not comprehend the highly complex issues at stake.
DESPITE UNDERSTANDABLE bitterness and frustration, opponents of the freeze should take into account that Netanyahu's action is not unprecedented. Menachem Begin also introduced a three-month freeze on settlement construction when he initiated negotiations with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. They should also ask themselves why men of principle from the national camp like Moshe Ya'alon and Bennie Begin have endorsed Netanyahu. And opponents of the freeze should be wary and remember how their predecessors undermined a previous politically moderate government, which led to disastrous consequences for the entire nation.
It has frequently been stated that Israel will only be able to make peace under a right-wing government. The fact that despite this painful decision, Netanyahu enjoys the support of the vast majority of the population is an affirmation of this adage.
But there are difficult days ahead. The prospects for a Palestinian state which would genuinely make peace with us are more remote than ever. If the Palestinians once again shoot themselves in the foot and refuse to negotiate, the suspension of the freeze should be reviewed and the Obama administration will hopefully cease pressuring us for more unilateral concessions.
On the other hand, if negotiations are resumed and the Obama administration backs Palestinian demands which undermine our long-term security, our resolve and ability to stand firm will be put to the test. Ideally, such a situation would warrant a unity government. However if our dysfunctional political system inhibits this, we the people should seek to empower our government by enabling it to demonstrate that it enjoys the support of the bulk of the nation.
ileibler@netvision.net.il
Barak tries to reassure settlers
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST
Defense Minister Ehud Barak tried to quell tensions with the settler community Wednesday evening, telling two of its leaders the settlement blocs would remain in Israeli hands when a final-status agreement was reached with the Palestinians.
"Settlement blocs will be an integral part of Israel in any future negotiations with the Palestinians. The Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea are regions that are dear to my heart," Barak said. But his words fell on mainly deaf ears, as the bulk of the settler leaders boycotted the meeting, which came after civil administration inspectors forced their way into settlements for the third day in a row to enforce the 10-month moratorium on new Jewish construction projects in the West Bank.
Settlers sent out a message to the media to make sure that it was understood that they had no interest in speaking with Barak and that their focus now was on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is expected to meet with them on Thursday.
It will be Netanyahu's first formal meeting with the settlers since he took office in March.
The meeting comes as tensions between settlers, the IDF and the government have reached a fever pitch.
Even moderate settler leader Avi Na'im agreed to stand with protesters at the gates of the Beit Arye settlement, as residents blocked the path of civil administration inspectors who arrived to check if construction in the community complied with the moratorium.
Police arrested Na'im, who is a member of the Likud Party, but quickly released him. As the inspectors pushed their way into some 30 settlements and handed out 12 stop-work orders, they were greeted in many cases by either a closed gate, or settlers who blocked their path.
Four other settlers were arrested and one was detained. In total, inspectors have handed out more than 70 stop-work orders in the past three days, and have visited most of the settlements.
In a move that was seen as a gesture of appeasement to settlers, the civil administration on Wednesday evening issued a statement which said that work could continue on 84 homes that had originally been frozen.
In his meeting with the two settler leaders who would speak with him, Eliezer Hisdai of Alfei Menashe and Dahan Mordechai of Megilot, Barak told them the measure, which was hard for them to swallow, was necessary. He said "the connection and coordination with the US are essential to Israel from political and security points of view.
"I know that this step is a difficult one, but this is a step essential to the State of Israel today," he continued.
"Part of all of our duties as leaders of the country and public is to show responsibility and fulfill the government's decisions and the state's laws. The leadership of Judea and Samaria is responsible, and I am sure it will act within the boundaries of the law," Barak said.
But the settler leadership has vowed to fight the measure.
In a defiant gesture the heads of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip (the Yesha Council) laid a cornerstone for a new synagogue in Efrat on Wednesday.
Stretched across the entryway to the settlement was a sign that said, "No entry to Bibi's inspectors."
As the settler leaders stood next to wet concrete on the synagogue's foundation, they wore T-shirts that read, "In Efrat we are defrosting the freeze."
"We came here to continue building and to demonstrate that in a democracy it is unacceptable to impose a military edict on civilians," said Gush Etzion Regional Council head Shaul Goldstein.
Yesha Council head Dani Dayan later told The Jerusalem Post that in his meeting with Netanyahu on Thursday he planned to tell him that the settler leadership did not intend to cooperate in any way.
Late Wednesday afternoon the Yesha Council held its fourth emergency meeting in the past eight days.
Senior government sources said that while the government expected ideological resistance to the moratorium on housing starts in Judea and Samaria, they admitted that some of the practical issues that have come up were not anticipated.
According to the sources, any decision made on a law that impacted on "real people" did not always take into consideration all the "intricacies."
"Things will be made clearer in the coming days," the official said, adding his belief that the initial problems involved in implementing the moratorium would get ironed out.
For instance, earlier in the week the civil administration inspectors went to the settlement of Kedar to deliver a stop-work order to people who should not have gotten one, the official said.
The Prime Minister's Office has also received a number of calls from people saying they had been told they can't close in a porch, build a pergola or install an air conditioner.
Another official speculated that the supervisors rushed out to issued the stop-work orders immediately because of concern that if they had given a week's notice, work would have begun on innumerable projects in the settlements.
Government officials deflected the argument that in Israel there was "nothing as permanent as a temporary arrangement," saying that extending the moratorium throughout the West Bank - including in the large settlement blocs like Ma'aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion - showed that the Prime Minister meant what he said on Tuesday: that the building would continue once the 10-month moratorium period was up.
"The very fact that the work is stopping inside the large blocs sends the signal that the moratorium is temporary, because everyone knows that Israel will continue to build in those areas, it is obvious," one official said.
Barak, who met Netanyahu to discuss implementation of the moratorium, said that he issued directives to establish an "exceptions committee," and that a directive would also be issued saying the moratorium order did not relate to "air conditioners, windows or closing in a porch".
"The same is true of a sewage installation," Barak said on Israeli Radio. "If it is an installation connected to an existing, established project, it will be judged on its own merits. But if it is connected to a project that has not begun, then the order prevents its building for 10 months."
Regarding the settlement blocs, Barak said that in the government's eyes "there is a clear difference between settlement blocs like Gush Etzion, Efrat, Ma'aleh Adumim, Givat Ze'ev, Ariel/Kedumim, and the small settlements close to the border. Those blocs will be part of the State of Israel in any final agreement we see.
"The fate and future of the isolated settlements on the other side of the barrier or fence will be determined in the negotiations, when the final agreement will be discussed."
Barak also warned of the damage slack enforcement of the moratorium could cause, saying "any split-second wavering in implementing the security cabinet's decision will cause political damage to the State of Israel."
But settlers claimed it was Barak who was damaging the state.
In the afternoon, settlers blocked the path of inspectors in Har Bracha, and in Avnei Hefetz, a group of women and children held inspectors at bay for several hours.
In Elon Moreh, some 60 settlers tried to block the inspectors from entering, but police managed to disperse the crowds.
Two people were arrested in Tzomet Hatamar in Samaria for throwing rocks at security personnel.
"We are prepared to do all that is necessary to carry out our duties," the Judea and Samaria Police spokesman added.
A civil administration spokesman said, "We are working closely with security forces to make sure that the inspections go smoothly. We are working to ensure that the government's decisions are implemented."
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1259243060515&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
"A Glimmer of Sanity"
Arlene Kushner
Just a glimmer. But I'm grateful for every good thing.
Yesterday, there was a program held in the Knesset under the auspices of NGO-monitor (www.ngo-monitor.org) to examine the issue of European funding provided to Israeli NGOs. Involved are close to 20 NGOs, many of which represent themselves as human rights organizations: Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, B'Tselem, Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual, etc. The situation here is extraordinary, outrageous, and completely unacceptable. As Gerald Steinberg, director of NGO-Monitor has written:
"The nature and scale of European influence is unique - in no other case do democratic countries use taxpayer money to support opposition groups in other democracies. Imagine the French response to U.S. government financing for radical NGO anti-abortion campaigns in Paris, or for promoting Corsican separatists under the guise of human rights. Would Spain tolerate foreign government funding of NGO campaigns involving the violent Basque conflict? But here, as in other areas, Israel is singled out and subject to different rules."
Needless to say, the organizations being funded do not represent genuine Israeli interests. but, rather, the political interests of the funding European nations, which tilt towards the Palestinian Arabs. They have done us enormous damage, most particularly in the international arena, where we are fighting delegimization.
"This often hidden support helps pay for expensive newspaper advertisements, such as those recently announcing B'Tselem's 20th anniversary; the salaries of lawyers involved in dozens of High Court cases about the security barrier, treatment of Palestinian terrorists, etc.; the Geneva Initiative's conferences and booklets; and a flood of statements submitted to the United Nations condemning Israeli policies. Recipient NGOs have a major influence on many issues in our lives, and on the decisions of our democratically elected government."
Between 2006 and 2009, 16 Israeli NGOs received a total of 31.5 million shekels in European funding.
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/manipulating_the_marketplace_of_ideas
~~~~~~~~~~
Make your blood boil? It should.
This is just one of many ways in which Israel is treated differently, and (to put it mildly) less respectfully, than other nations in the world community. It's as if we are not seen as a sovereign nation. The only proper response is a tough one that establishes our national integrity.
As Steinberg wrote:
"Taken together, the large sums provided to NGOS by European governments through secret processes constitute a major effort to manipulate the Israeli marketplace of ideas. This is inherently colonialistic, undermining the goals of Zionism and Jewish sovereign equality."
~~~~~~~~~~
Not only was this issue discussed in the Knesset for the first time yesterday, the point is that legislation is being proposed to address it. The law being proposed would require full transparency with regard to foreign funds that are accepted. If, we must fervently hope, this passes, the next step may be requirement that the NGOs register as foreign agents.
Then there is one other issue to be addressed: Our legal system is liberal in the extreme. There is a principle known as b'gatz, which permits any individual or group here in Israel to go before the High Court and petition it with regard to anything. In most, if not all, democracies -- certainly in the US -- the petitioning party must have standing in the case or the court will not hear it. Not so here.
So, we've had ludicrous and damaging situations in which, say, Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) has gone to the court and said that such and such a group is building an "illegal" outpost on land that shouldn't be used for that purpose, and it demands that something be done about it. Shalom Achshav may be totally off base in its claims, and yet succeed in making trouble for the group doing the building. And when you consider that Shalom Achshav has no standing in the case -- it doesn't, for example, own the land that building is being done on -- and that it is receiving foreign funds to pay for its lawyers, you understand how intolerable and damaging this situation is.
The ultimate -- and most appropriate -- final goal legally would be to prevent any group that receives foreign funds from being permitted b'gatz.
We are only now at the beginning of a process, but I have some hope that this represents a step towards standing up for ourselves as a nation and taking back the authority that is rightfully ours. And I pray that this attitude may extend to other issues as well.
~~~~~~~~~~
It's painful -- seeing the tensions within the nation with regard to that building freeze. We've got enough to fight on the outside without fighting each other. And yet this is the situation that has been created: Residents and aspiring residents of communities in Judea and Samaria are legitimately furious, and feelings are high when inspectors come to check on whether building has been halted. (Note: The rule of thumb is supposed to be that construction is being halted if a foundation isn't in place.)
Some residents try to block entry of inspectors onto construction sites. Others declare that they will not obey orders when papers are handed to them. There is the feeling that what is happening is not legal. As each person having construction done went through a bureaucratic legal process to secure permission to build, it is said that these procedures now must be honored.
~~~~~~~~~~
There is one way in which this can also be seen as a positive. There would not be passive acceptance of any government decision to pull out of Judea and Samaria. Let the government and the world be put on notice.
~~~~~~~~~~
Mindful of the anger of residents of these communities, PM Netanyahu last night made a statement on the issue during the course of a talk he was giving at an economics conference near Ben Gurion Airport:
"This is a one-time and temporary decision. Just as was written in the security cabinet decision, and just as I have made clear in both public and private meetings. We will go back to building at the end of the suspension."
The future of communities in Judea and Samaria, he said, would be determined only via final status negotiations, and "not one day sooner."
~~~~~~~~~~
Well, you've got me, in terms of what this accomplishes. If the goal is to bring the PA to the table -- and oh! Netanyahu continues to implore them fervently to come -- then saying we'll start building again in 10 months just about guarantees that they will not come. (Isn't this blatantly obvious?)
Or, conversely, in the extremely unlikely even that they did start serious negotiations, then he is kidding himself -- and more importantly those to whom he is giving his word -- if he thinks he would be able to easily start building again.
This, presumably, is being done for Obama. But what the American president gains here, if it's being stated up front that the halt in building is only temporary, is not clear either. Power politics? Showing he can get the Israelis to cave? Maybe. One source maintains that Abbas had given Obama a commitment to come to the table, and is now reneging.
With it all, Netanyahu is lending the impression to the world that "settlements" are a key to peace, and is angering some very good Israelis in the process. He took the time to praise them last night, as part of his strategy of mollifying them: "they are an integral part of our people -- they contribute, they serve in the army, they volunteer, they are our brothers and sisters."
~~~~~~~~~~
That's nice. One "sister" in Tekoa, who had just received a permit to build -- after she and her husband had waited two years -- and was excited because the contractor had just brought a tractor onto the site, saw work summarily and abruptly stopped, and the tractor confiscated. She told the Post: "It's a shame that the nation which we feel an allegiance to has treated us in this way."
Activist Eve Harrow, of the Judea community of Efrat, speaking on IBA news last night, said that residents of Judea and Samaria are additionally incensed because there is a double standard: Arabs are not being required to stop building.
Harrow also raised an issue that had been raised earlier to me privately by a reader (thanks, Doris M.): It is also Arabs in Judea and Samaria who are suffering because they hire on for the building projects and need the money to provide for families. Many are hurting because their source of income has been halted.
~~~~~~~~~~
It was announced yesterday that the European Union, at a meeting of its ministers in Brussels next week, will entertain a proposal to take a stance on Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. This would be advanced by Sweden, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU.
While Britain backs this, a number of nations -- including Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland and Slovenia -- do not, and so it is not clear what form a final resolution would take.
The reaction from members of the Knesset across the political spectrum was strong, and Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin delivered a statement saying that Jerusalem will never be divided no matter what the EU plans.
~~~~~~~~~~
Members of our government are incensed by this proposal -- which, for the first time, refers to "Palestine." One senior diplomatic official cited by the Post said:
"This resolution shows that what Israel does is never enough, and the onus is only on us. It shows that the Palestinians want to get an agreement without having to go through negotiations."
Noting that the draft proposal represented "a near-full acceptance of the Palestinian narrative," that does not take Israel's needs into consideration, he remarked that, "They don't mention our issues, and when we bring them up, they say only that these will be dealt with during the negotiations. However, the Palestinian issues they put in the conclusions - those issues don't have to be negotiated."
What's happening here is that Abbas is reinforced in his impression that he can get it all without negotiations. Others seem to be doing it for him. This proposal, thus, actually makes it even less likely that the PA will come to the table.
~~~~~~~~~~
Finally, the offical lamented that while Netanyahu "went the extra mile" in declaring the freeze, the Europeans, instead of praising us, put all the pressure on us.
That final statement should be embroidered in large letters and put up in a frame on the wall of the Foreign Ministry, or, better, the Prime Minister's Office. If this doesn't finally teach us a lesson, what will?
~~~~~~~~~~
Iran is continuing to be defiant, and now today the word is that -- forget China -- Russia is likely on board for sanctions. Don't know what tomorrow's word will be. It's all so qualified.
A great deal will depend in coming weeks on the new, incoming head of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, of Japan.
~~~~~~~~~~
Barry Rubin wrote the other day about the gradual takeover in Iran by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
"The Iranian government has generally been radical since the revolution, 30 years ago. But now the most extremist faction of all has taken over, pushing out its rivals...
"The IRGC is the most fanatical and risk-taking part of the regime. It is very much committed to expanding the revolution and maintains the regime’s links with foreign revolutionary and terrorist groups.
"Oh, and it will also be the institution that will have actual possession of Iran’s long-range missiles and nuclear weapons.
"Not only are these people nobody can make a deal with, but they are also the ones most likely to make a war some day...
"Judging from his statements, President Obama seems to have the following picture of Iran:... Iran should be judged by its past record, which has often shown caution. In this conception, it is possible to engage Iran, appeal to its interest, and find some relative moderates or pragmatists who will make a deal.
"One could argue this position two years, perhaps even a year ago. But it no longer applies. The Iranian regime has changed to become far more hardline and risk-taking."
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2009/11/coup-in-iran-and-what-it-means.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Rubinreports+%28RubinReports%29
This was shared by a reader, Sandra K, whose roots are in Iran. When she sent me this Rubin piece, she wrote:
"Barry Rubin, I'm afraid to say from first hand experience of my own, has very well understood the real danger in this group, and I am there to confirm that they were number one on my list of who was most likely to make the revolution last it its very outset..."
Do you think Obama has been told the truth?
~~~~~~~~~~
"The Good News Corner"
Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva have developed the Optical Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging (OSPI) instrument, which permits detection of skin cancer at an earlier stage than has been possible until now. Most of the time dermatologists and surgeons diagnose skin cancers with the naked eye.
__________
An Israeli company, Agrotop, has developed a revolutionary "henhouse of the future," that addresses both the comfort of the hens and various ecological issues.
Chickens will have adequate room to move around, access to sunlight and fresh air, artificial grass, and a comfortable "cushion" to rest on. Wind and solar power will be used to generate electricity, wastewater will be recycled and chicken waste will be processed.
~~~~~~~~~~
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
Just a glimmer. But I'm grateful for every good thing.
Yesterday, there was a program held in the Knesset under the auspices of NGO-monitor (www.ngo-monitor.org) to examine the issue of European funding provided to Israeli NGOs. Involved are close to 20 NGOs, many of which represent themselves as human rights organizations: Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, B'Tselem, Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual, etc. The situation here is extraordinary, outrageous, and completely unacceptable. As Gerald Steinberg, director of NGO-Monitor has written:
"The nature and scale of European influence is unique - in no other case do democratic countries use taxpayer money to support opposition groups in other democracies. Imagine the French response to U.S. government financing for radical NGO anti-abortion campaigns in Paris, or for promoting Corsican separatists under the guise of human rights. Would Spain tolerate foreign government funding of NGO campaigns involving the violent Basque conflict? But here, as in other areas, Israel is singled out and subject to different rules."
Needless to say, the organizations being funded do not represent genuine Israeli interests. but, rather, the political interests of the funding European nations, which tilt towards the Palestinian Arabs. They have done us enormous damage, most particularly in the international arena, where we are fighting delegimization.
"This often hidden support helps pay for expensive newspaper advertisements, such as those recently announcing B'Tselem's 20th anniversary; the salaries of lawyers involved in dozens of High Court cases about the security barrier, treatment of Palestinian terrorists, etc.; the Geneva Initiative's conferences and booklets; and a flood of statements submitted to the United Nations condemning Israeli policies. Recipient NGOs have a major influence on many issues in our lives, and on the decisions of our democratically elected government."
Between 2006 and 2009, 16 Israeli NGOs received a total of 31.5 million shekels in European funding.
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/manipulating_the_marketplace_of_ideas
~~~~~~~~~~
Make your blood boil? It should.
This is just one of many ways in which Israel is treated differently, and (to put it mildly) less respectfully, than other nations in the world community. It's as if we are not seen as a sovereign nation. The only proper response is a tough one that establishes our national integrity.
As Steinberg wrote:
"Taken together, the large sums provided to NGOS by European governments through secret processes constitute a major effort to manipulate the Israeli marketplace of ideas. This is inherently colonialistic, undermining the goals of Zionism and Jewish sovereign equality."
~~~~~~~~~~
Not only was this issue discussed in the Knesset for the first time yesterday, the point is that legislation is being proposed to address it. The law being proposed would require full transparency with regard to foreign funds that are accepted. If, we must fervently hope, this passes, the next step may be requirement that the NGOs register as foreign agents.
Then there is one other issue to be addressed: Our legal system is liberal in the extreme. There is a principle known as b'gatz, which permits any individual or group here in Israel to go before the High Court and petition it with regard to anything. In most, if not all, democracies -- certainly in the US -- the petitioning party must have standing in the case or the court will not hear it. Not so here.
So, we've had ludicrous and damaging situations in which, say, Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) has gone to the court and said that such and such a group is building an "illegal" outpost on land that shouldn't be used for that purpose, and it demands that something be done about it. Shalom Achshav may be totally off base in its claims, and yet succeed in making trouble for the group doing the building. And when you consider that Shalom Achshav has no standing in the case -- it doesn't, for example, own the land that building is being done on -- and that it is receiving foreign funds to pay for its lawyers, you understand how intolerable and damaging this situation is.
The ultimate -- and most appropriate -- final goal legally would be to prevent any group that receives foreign funds from being permitted b'gatz.
We are only now at the beginning of a process, but I have some hope that this represents a step towards standing up for ourselves as a nation and taking back the authority that is rightfully ours. And I pray that this attitude may extend to other issues as well.
~~~~~~~~~~
It's painful -- seeing the tensions within the nation with regard to that building freeze. We've got enough to fight on the outside without fighting each other. And yet this is the situation that has been created: Residents and aspiring residents of communities in Judea and Samaria are legitimately furious, and feelings are high when inspectors come to check on whether building has been halted. (Note: The rule of thumb is supposed to be that construction is being halted if a foundation isn't in place.)
Some residents try to block entry of inspectors onto construction sites. Others declare that they will not obey orders when papers are handed to them. There is the feeling that what is happening is not legal. As each person having construction done went through a bureaucratic legal process to secure permission to build, it is said that these procedures now must be honored.
~~~~~~~~~~
There is one way in which this can also be seen as a positive. There would not be passive acceptance of any government decision to pull out of Judea and Samaria. Let the government and the world be put on notice.
~~~~~~~~~~
Mindful of the anger of residents of these communities, PM Netanyahu last night made a statement on the issue during the course of a talk he was giving at an economics conference near Ben Gurion Airport:
"This is a one-time and temporary decision. Just as was written in the security cabinet decision, and just as I have made clear in both public and private meetings. We will go back to building at the end of the suspension."
The future of communities in Judea and Samaria, he said, would be determined only via final status negotiations, and "not one day sooner."
~~~~~~~~~~
Well, you've got me, in terms of what this accomplishes. If the goal is to bring the PA to the table -- and oh! Netanyahu continues to implore them fervently to come -- then saying we'll start building again in 10 months just about guarantees that they will not come. (Isn't this blatantly obvious?)
Or, conversely, in the extremely unlikely even that they did start serious negotiations, then he is kidding himself -- and more importantly those to whom he is giving his word -- if he thinks he would be able to easily start building again.
This, presumably, is being done for Obama. But what the American president gains here, if it's being stated up front that the halt in building is only temporary, is not clear either. Power politics? Showing he can get the Israelis to cave? Maybe. One source maintains that Abbas had given Obama a commitment to come to the table, and is now reneging.
With it all, Netanyahu is lending the impression to the world that "settlements" are a key to peace, and is angering some very good Israelis in the process. He took the time to praise them last night, as part of his strategy of mollifying them: "they are an integral part of our people -- they contribute, they serve in the army, they volunteer, they are our brothers and sisters."
~~~~~~~~~~
That's nice. One "sister" in Tekoa, who had just received a permit to build -- after she and her husband had waited two years -- and was excited because the contractor had just brought a tractor onto the site, saw work summarily and abruptly stopped, and the tractor confiscated. She told the Post: "It's a shame that the nation which we feel an allegiance to has treated us in this way."
Activist Eve Harrow, of the Judea community of Efrat, speaking on IBA news last night, said that residents of Judea and Samaria are additionally incensed because there is a double standard: Arabs are not being required to stop building.
Harrow also raised an issue that had been raised earlier to me privately by a reader (thanks, Doris M.): It is also Arabs in Judea and Samaria who are suffering because they hire on for the building projects and need the money to provide for families. Many are hurting because their source of income has been halted.
~~~~~~~~~~
It was announced yesterday that the European Union, at a meeting of its ministers in Brussels next week, will entertain a proposal to take a stance on Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. This would be advanced by Sweden, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU.
While Britain backs this, a number of nations -- including Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland and Slovenia -- do not, and so it is not clear what form a final resolution would take.
The reaction from members of the Knesset across the political spectrum was strong, and Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin delivered a statement saying that Jerusalem will never be divided no matter what the EU plans.
~~~~~~~~~~
Members of our government are incensed by this proposal -- which, for the first time, refers to "Palestine." One senior diplomatic official cited by the Post said:
"This resolution shows that what Israel does is never enough, and the onus is only on us. It shows that the Palestinians want to get an agreement without having to go through negotiations."
Noting that the draft proposal represented "a near-full acceptance of the Palestinian narrative," that does not take Israel's needs into consideration, he remarked that, "They don't mention our issues, and when we bring them up, they say only that these will be dealt with during the negotiations. However, the Palestinian issues they put in the conclusions - those issues don't have to be negotiated."
What's happening here is that Abbas is reinforced in his impression that he can get it all without negotiations. Others seem to be doing it for him. This proposal, thus, actually makes it even less likely that the PA will come to the table.
~~~~~~~~~~
Finally, the offical lamented that while Netanyahu "went the extra mile" in declaring the freeze, the Europeans, instead of praising us, put all the pressure on us.
That final statement should be embroidered in large letters and put up in a frame on the wall of the Foreign Ministry, or, better, the Prime Minister's Office. If this doesn't finally teach us a lesson, what will?
~~~~~~~~~~
Iran is continuing to be defiant, and now today the word is that -- forget China -- Russia is likely on board for sanctions. Don't know what tomorrow's word will be. It's all so qualified.
A great deal will depend in coming weeks on the new, incoming head of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, of Japan.
~~~~~~~~~~
Barry Rubin wrote the other day about the gradual takeover in Iran by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
"The Iranian government has generally been radical since the revolution, 30 years ago. But now the most extremist faction of all has taken over, pushing out its rivals...
"The IRGC is the most fanatical and risk-taking part of the regime. It is very much committed to expanding the revolution and maintains the regime’s links with foreign revolutionary and terrorist groups.
"Oh, and it will also be the institution that will have actual possession of Iran’s long-range missiles and nuclear weapons.
"Not only are these people nobody can make a deal with, but they are also the ones most likely to make a war some day...
"Judging from his statements, President Obama seems to have the following picture of Iran:... Iran should be judged by its past record, which has often shown caution. In this conception, it is possible to engage Iran, appeal to its interest, and find some relative moderates or pragmatists who will make a deal.
"One could argue this position two years, perhaps even a year ago. But it no longer applies. The Iranian regime has changed to become far more hardline and risk-taking."
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2009/11/coup-in-iran-and-what-it-means.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Rubinreports+%28RubinReports%29
This was shared by a reader, Sandra K, whose roots are in Iran. When she sent me this Rubin piece, she wrote:
"Barry Rubin, I'm afraid to say from first hand experience of my own, has very well understood the real danger in this group, and I am there to confirm that they were number one on my list of who was most likely to make the revolution last it its very outset..."
Do you think Obama has been told the truth?
~~~~~~~~~~
"The Good News Corner"
Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva have developed the Optical Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging (OSPI) instrument, which permits detection of skin cancer at an earlier stage than has been possible until now. Most of the time dermatologists and surgeons diagnose skin cancers with the naked eye.
__________
An Israeli company, Agrotop, has developed a revolutionary "henhouse of the future," that addresses both the comfort of the hens and various ecological issues.
Chickens will have adequate room to move around, access to sunlight and fresh air, artificial grass, and a comfortable "cushion" to rest on. Wind and solar power will be used to generate electricity, wastewater will be recycled and chicken waste will be processed.
~~~~~~~~~~
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Reservists will 'Freeze' Service Until Freeze Ends
Gil Ronen
A7 News
Reservist officers and non-commissioned soldiers have begun circulating a letter in which they declare that they will cease going on reserve duty stints for the duration of the freeze on construction in Judea and Samaria. he letter, which organizers say has been signed by several dozen soldiers, reads thus:On Thursday, 9 Kislev, November 26 2009, the Cabinet decided to freeze construction in the settlements, to strip all of the local authorities in Judea and Samaria of the authority to grant construction permits to hundreds of thousands of tax-paying citizens, who serve in the reserves and see themselves as an integral part of the State of Israel. We see this as a racist decision that infringes on our human rights and our rights as citizens, contradicts the rights of the Jewish nation to its land, and goes against morality and justice.
There is reason to fear that the freeze decree also involves the destruction, demolition and expulsion of residents from 23 new communities known as 'outposts'. In view of the cold shoulder which the government and the institutions of state have turned to hundreds of thousands of their citizens; in view of the hardheartedness of the High Court in all matters pertaining to the rights of Jews to their land and country, we have no choice but to take a unilateral step: to freeze our active reserve duty for the duration of the 'freeze.' Once construction is thawed again, and we go back to being citizens with equal rights, we will return to seeing ourselves as citizens with equal duties as well.
This is not an easy step; it is a painful one, and we take it out of wide national considerations, in order to preserve Jewish sovereignty on the territory of the Land of Israel.
Signed,
Officers and soldiers in active reserve duty, lovers of the Land of Israel
Comment: This is only the beginning of a strategy to pit Israeli against Israeli. Divide and conquer. where are the Israeli government voices shouting, "We are all Israeli citizens, we must stand united and stop fighting against one another"-if this does not happen and soon, I fear for the worst outcome.
Exclusive: Our Suicidal Impulses
Leslie Sacks
Is American-born Jewish liberalism pushing us, lemming-like, into the morally opaque sea of self-defeating multiculturalism? This may be the defining question for contemporary American Jewry. That over 75 percent of Jews voted for Obama, and that in the past the Democrat party generally garnered 70 percent of the Jewish vote or higher, is no accident. The reasons, however, are many – as well as counter-intuitive.With Abraham, the first Jewish conservative came into being; his belief-bound pragmatism and his quest for the survival of his (newly born) people became basic conservative seeds. In Pharaoh's Egypt, Jews developed a profound appreciation for freedom and a passion for their homeland, Israel – a passion both amplified and tested by the delayed gratification of 40 wandering years in the desert. There followed a thousand years of Hebrew kingdoms, the codifying of the laws, the writing of the Old Testament and its commentary, the Talmud, the integration of the world's first monotheism into everyday life. During this period, the Jews seemingly fought everyone (sometimes unsuccessfully) to maintain their independence; the Persians followed the Babylonians, then the Greeks moved in, and of course the Romans burned the Second Temple to the ground and banished most of the Judeans to the four corners of the Diaspora.
Thus, for some 2,000 years following Abraham, Jews were intimately tied to conservative ideals, coexisting where possible but ultimately dedicated to preserving their heritage and people-hood for future generations. What's more, the Jews simultaneously developed the most comprehensive and advanced system of laws and ethics the world had yet witnessed, establishing standards and rules designed to help maintain social stability and morality as well as codify man's relationship with God.
Then came another 2,000 years in exile where anti-Semitism and cruelty were the norm. Herded into ghettos and classified as transient, second-class citizens, Jews learned to practice the arts of invisibility, co-existence among strangers, and pragmatic survival. There was no place, no opportunity for liberalism in these tenuous times. Forbidden from owning land, Jews were forced to be money lenders and petty traders, occupying the lowest rungs of the then agrarian-based economic structures. Universities were forbidden, music and the art excluded. Politics, verboten. So Jews focused inward – on their religion, their culture and their families, always turning toward Jerusalem with hope and undimmed memories.
With the late 18th and 19th centuries, modernity arrived with emancipation and enlightenment for Europe's Jews. No longer endemically repressed or barred from science, the arts, politics, and big business, Jews flourished, with many taking nationalism's assimilationist bait wholeheartedly, relegating culture and religion
to the back-burner. The best of Europe's Jews began to disproportionately fill the ranks of Nobel Prize winners, and the world opened up as never before. Sigmund Freud, Felix Mendelson, Albert Einstein, Marc Chagall, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Benjamin Disraeli, Leon Trotsky, and so on.
While Hitler and the Holocaust utterly and tragically destroyed the enlightened argument for Jewish assimilation into the nation-states of Europe, liberalism remained a potent force among Jews in the American diaspora.
In the United States – the Goldene Medina – many Jews opted to throw off the yoke of repression and history and determined to reinvent God, religion and culture, dumping intolerance, racism, aggression, selective rights and injustices into the dustbin of history for all time. They wanted distance from the past, and focused on a new future in a new world, born of optimism, hope and ultimately, fantasy. In the effervescence of their new and limitless freedom, these Jews found new religion in every form (including sexual) of expression and in an embrace of multiculturalism, where every people, every culture, and every religion was equal and must be similarly tolerated, irrespective of its tenets or its apparent dangers. In the post-war period, this near-absolute tolerance for all, for everything, infused the universities, the arts and the left-wing of the Democrat Party - often with American Jews leading the charge.
As a result, many of us Jews have recreated an image of mankind without our invaluable lessons of human history, forgetting man's fickle bloodlust and his inconsistence justice. We aspire to "world citizenry" and view our national and religious traditions as backwards and tribal. Our bonds to Israel, at the forefront of a struggle against the antithesis of liberalism, become loosened in our overriding desire to understand and appease the other. Negotiation with and unbridled tolerance towards those who hate us, who wish us ill, is now the sine qua non of much of our most educated set.
This naïve fantasy not only stands in contrast to Jewish history and our current realities; it is also highly dangerous. It risks our ability to save family, country, culture, religion and ultimately Western civilization from the vicissitudes of a venal and jealous world waiting to wrest from us our latest multicolored coat, our inheritance from Joseph. Has the natural evolution of Europe's old world ghetto conservatism progressed far too deep, far too wide, making our sincere, humanistic and tolerant liberalism incapable of protecting our country, our freedom and our future?
It seems the voting record of America's Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, deeply myopic, still has a ways to go.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Leslie Sacks is an art dealer and gallerist in Los Angeles. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
PM: Settlement freeze a one-time offer
Dec. 2, 2009
TOVAH LAZAROFF and HERB KEINON , THE JERUSALEM POST
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared Tuesday evening that the 10-month moratorium on new housing starts in the West Bank is a one-time, temporary deal, and that building will begin anew once this period ends.
He spoke as civil administration inspectors spread across the West Bank for the second day in a row to enforce the building freeze declared last week. Since Monday, the inspectors have visited 90 settlements and handed out 64 stop-work orders. The moratorium has infuriated the settlers, who fear it is a death knell to the future of their communities in Judea and Samaria.
Addressing an economics conference at Airport
City near Ben-Gurion Airport, Netanyahu sought to assuage settler fears.
"This is a one-time and temporary decision," he said. "Just as was written in the security cabinet decision, and just as I have made clear in both public and private meetings, we will go back to building at the end of the suspension."
Netanyahu said that the future of the settlements in Judea and Samaria would be determined only through final-status peace negotiations, "and not one day sooner. We need to start the peace negotiations in order to complete them, and I hope the Palestinians will stop their refusal to begin talks. They need this peace no less than we do."
The prime minister, who has come under sharp criticism from the settlement leadership and those on the right within his own party, took the opportunity to praise the Jews living beyond the Green Line, saying "they are an integral part of our people - they contribute, they serve in the army, they volunteer, they are our brothers and our sisters."
Netanyahu said the decision to suspend construction, except for public structures and some 3,000 units already underway, was taken with the "widest national interests" in mind, as well as with the hope that this would re-start peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat immediately rejected Netanyahu's statements.
"Netanyahu never stopped building settlements so nothing has changed," he told The Associated Press.
But even as he lauded the settlers, Netanyahu has yet to reschedule a meeting with them initially set for Tuesday. It was canceled due to his brief illness, which also forced him to bow out of a trip to Germany this week, and as of press time, had not yet been rescheduled.
Netanyahu has not held a formal meeting with the heads of the (Yesha) Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip since he took office at the end of March.
Some settler leaders did meet Tuesday with the cabinet secretary and the director-general of the Prime Minister's Office.
Earlier this week, Uzi Keren, who had served as the settlement adviser under former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon, quit.
It had been expected that he would leave with Olmert, but he had agreed to stay on until Netanyahu found a replacement for him. When that process dragged on, Keren decided to step down. The post is vacant at this time and the Prime Minister's Office could not say when it would be filled.
In a farewell interview Keren gave to Army Radio on Tuesday, he said he believed that evacuations would eventually follow the freeze.
Netanyahu, he said, had no choice but to issue the freeze.
"It's a tactical maneuver, not a strategic one," said Keren. "You cannot sit on every hilltop. You have to have two states for two peoples."
The moment that Netanyahu spoke of recognizing a Palestinian state, a freeze had to follow, he said. Still, he said, the government should have been more selective and imposed a moratorium only in places that it knew it must relinquish in a final-status arrangement with the Palestinians. For example, he said, the government should have refused to halt building in Gush Etzion.
Keren warned that the more time dragged on, the harder it would become to evacuate settlers from their homes.
The 2005 withdrawal from Gaza was difficult, he said, and the demolition of nine homes at the Amona outpost in 2006 was even harder.
He urged the government to find a way to come
to an agreement with the settlers with regard to the measures it must now take in Judea and Samaria.
But far from looking to engage in dialogue, settlers have sworn to fight the moratorium.
The settlers' council on Monday urged the settlements to bar inspectors from entering their communities and not to cooperate with them.
It reissued this message on Tuesday, as inspectors visited 40 West Bank settlements, angering their residents.
Gush Etzion Regional Council head Shaul Goldstein sped to the Har Gilo settlement when he heard that the inspectors were on their way. His plan to keep the gate locked was thwarted when the inspectors failed to arrive.
"Had they come," he warned, "we would not have let them in."
He said that the construction in the small
community located near Jerusalem was legal and that what was illegal was the moratorium which was approved only by the security cabinet, but not by the government or the Knesset.
Binyamin Regional Council head Avi Ro'eh, who met the civil administration inspectors at the gates of the Kochav Ya'akov settlement, said that what upset him was that the policy targeted Jews only - a move that reminded him of the nation's long struggle with anti-Semitism. Palestinians in the West Bank may continue building, but only Jews may not, he complained.
After they were held up at the entrance to Kochav Ya'akov for some 15 minutes, the inspectors were, nevertheless, allowed into the settlement.
They were able to access most of the communities even though they were met with some resistance in Kiryat Arba, Karnei Shomron, Shavei Shomron, Revava and Tapuach.
Settlers claimed they had blocked the inspectors from entering Har Bracha, Yitzhar, Itamar and Elon Moreh.
Fourteen stop-work orders were issued in the settlements of Mitzpe Yericho, Mitzpe Shalem, Beit Horon, Halamish, Kochav Ya'akov, Nahliel, Psagot, Givat Ze'ev, Carmel, Pnei Hever, Ma'aleh Shomron, Karnei Shomron, and Peduel.
David Ha'ivri, director of the Shomron Liaison Office said: "We have been receiving calls from supporters from around the world who are interested in investing in building homes in Samaria to show their support and to make a clear statement to the world that the Land of Israel is for the Jewish people and will stay in our hands forever."
As part of the settlers' continued efforts to combat the moratorium, a group which calls itself "Mothers for a Normal Life" plans to hold a conference to protest the freeze in Efrat on Wednesday evening.
In spite of the protests, Defense Minister Ehud Barak stressed on Tuesday that the moratorium would be fully implemented.
"Government decisions must be obeyed and will be fully implemented, in a way that will ensure as much dialogue with the settlers as possible," Barak said.
He spoke after meeting with reservists at the Judea and Samaria Division headquarters ahead of a session with the IDF commanders charged with reinforcing the edict to halt building.
"The Judea and Samaria leadership is responsible, patriotic and Zionist, and has withstood many ordeals. I believe and hope we shall overcome this ordeal, while executing the government's decisions," Barak added.
AP contributed to this report.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1259243057197&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
Plea to Supreme Court: What About Illegal Arab Construction?
Hillel Fendel
http://www.israelnationalnews.com
The Regavim Movement for the Preservation of the Nation’s Lands filed three petitions with the Supreme Court on Monday, demanding the enforcement of construction laws on illegal Arab building in various places throughout Judea and southern Samaria. The illegal construction cited in the petitions is located outside Migron, Beit El, and Givat Assaf in the Binyamin region, as well as near Taibe, N’vei Daniel, located near Efrat, the Yakir Junction in northern Samaria and elsewhere.
Givat Assaf, For Instance
Givat Assaf is one example of Jewish homes coming under the threat of demolition while neighboring illegal Arab buildings remain standing. Givat Assaf was a large, empty expanse of land until just over 10 years ago, when the Ramallah-bypass highway was paved between Jerusalem and Beit El. Shortly afterwards, a continuation of the road was paved towards Ofrah, and the route towards Beit El became just a “turnoff” along the new highway. In order to create a Jewish presence at that critical juncture, an old bus was placed there and Torah studies were conducted. Gradually, the site became a full-fledged neighborhood, with 20 families now living there in small caravans under constant threat of demolition and evacuation.
At the same time, however, the open expanse towards the east gradually became dotted with huge Arab mansions – illegal and threatening Jewish control of the area but facing no danger of demolition.
It is this phenomenon that Regavim is seeking to stop. It asks the Supreme Court to enforce its own guideline, according to which the government may not claim it is enforcing illegal-building laws according to “priorities” where it is clear that no attempt was ever made to enforce the law.
The above guideline was established by the Supreme Court in a recent case regarding the Jewish outpost neighborhood of Haresha. It stipulates that the State must set a clear timetable for enforcing building laws in places where it is undisputed that the construction was carried out illegally.
This past month, in the framework of its activities on behalf of keeping Israeli land Jewish, Regavim filed another court suit against an illegal Arab “outpost” near Haresha and has protested against illegal Bedouin encampments in the Negev.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com
The Regavim Movement for the Preservation of the Nation’s Lands filed three petitions with the Supreme Court on Monday, demanding the enforcement of construction laws on illegal Arab building in various places throughout Judea and southern Samaria. The illegal construction cited in the petitions is located outside Migron, Beit El, and Givat Assaf in the Binyamin region, as well as near Taibe, N’vei Daniel, located near Efrat, the Yakir Junction in northern Samaria and elsewhere.
Givat Assaf, For Instance
Givat Assaf is one example of Jewish homes coming under the threat of demolition while neighboring illegal Arab buildings remain standing. Givat Assaf was a large, empty expanse of land until just over 10 years ago, when the Ramallah-bypass highway was paved between Jerusalem and Beit El. Shortly afterwards, a continuation of the road was paved towards Ofrah, and the route towards Beit El became just a “turnoff” along the new highway. In order to create a Jewish presence at that critical juncture, an old bus was placed there and Torah studies were conducted. Gradually, the site became a full-fledged neighborhood, with 20 families now living there in small caravans under constant threat of demolition and evacuation.
At the same time, however, the open expanse towards the east gradually became dotted with huge Arab mansions – illegal and threatening Jewish control of the area but facing no danger of demolition.
It is this phenomenon that Regavim is seeking to stop. It asks the Supreme Court to enforce its own guideline, according to which the government may not claim it is enforcing illegal-building laws according to “priorities” where it is clear that no attempt was ever made to enforce the law.
The above guideline was established by the Supreme Court in a recent case regarding the Jewish outpost neighborhood of Haresha. It stipulates that the State must set a clear timetable for enforcing building laws in places where it is undisputed that the construction was carried out illegally.
This past month, in the framework of its activities on behalf of keeping Israeli land Jewish, Regavim filed another court suit against an illegal Arab “outpost” near Haresha and has protested against illegal Bedouin encampments in the Negev.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
The Hebron Fund Dinner - 2009
David Wilder
Dinners, as dinners go, can be terribly boring. No, not our evening family meals together, rather the annual fund-raising events hosted by dozens of non-profit organizations. Getting hundreds of people together, providing good food, while honoring a few worthy people or families is a wonderful excuse to ask for money.But, I must say, (even if I'm not, in this case, the most objective person around), that this year's Hebron Fund dinner was far from being boring. To the contrary, it was a wonderfully enjoyable event.
First of all, I must offer much gratitude to Abdalah – New York, for assisting to make this event the success it was. It is no secret that the financial meltdown, together with the Medoff fiasco, has caused many a crisis in numerous organizations. Donations are down and it's not as easy today to get people out to 'dinners' as it once was.
But, we had help. Abdalah-New York decided to actively protest against the New York Mets' decision to rent the Hebron Fund the Ceasar's Club for the dinner. Their protest made the news, and as a result, the Hebron Fund received lots of free publicity, in newspapers and on the internet.
Of course, their protests failed and the event took place as scheduled. I have no doubt that their 'assistance' backfired, bringing out people who might otherwise have stayed home.
I must add that Citi Stadium was a wonderful choice of venue. The hall itself was beautiful, and the other accommodations just right. There was lots of free parking, and the location was about 20 minutes to a half hour from where almost everyone who attended lived, so what could be better than that?! Kudos to the Mets!
The event, was, as earlier stated, not boring at all. The meal was buffet, with a choice of just about anything your heart, or stomach, could desire. Sushi, meat, salads, chicken, you name it and it was there, and it was scrumptious. The hall provided small tables, as well as 'coffee corners' with sofas and chairs, for all those who preferred to sit. Other could wander around, meeting old friends who perhaps they hadn't seen in quite some time. Of course, all attending had at least one thing in common: all were friends and supporters of Hebron!
After about an hour and a half, the official program began. I won't go into all the gory details about the guests-of-honor, except to say that they included: Josh and Sherrie Miller, Bernie and Debbie Thau, Daniel and Tova Lieberman, Rabbi Aaron and Karen Goldscheider, and our own Noam Arnon, who was also awarded this year's Moskowitz Prize for Zionism. Anyone interested in photos and short 'guest-of-honor videos' are invited to peak in at: http://www.hebron.com/english/gallery.php?id=303. Take a look – the videos, or perhaps better put, the people in the videos, are really very inspiring.
The program included some prayers for our soldiers and for Israeli POWS. Participating from Hebron were Avraham Ben Yosef, Noam Arnon, Yoni Bleichbard, Rabbi Simcha Hochbaum, Rabbi Danny Cohen and yours truly. The man who put it all together is Yossi Baumol, Executive Director of Hebron Fund, who worked very very hard to make the evening the success that it was. Many others participated in putting the event together, and if I start naming names, I'll inevitably forget someone, so I'll just add a blanket 'thank you' from all of us here in Hebron to all the wonderful people who invested so much time (and money) to bring the evening to fruition.
So, you might now ask, 'well, it sounds like a fairly normal, 'everyday' kind of fund-raising dinner. What made this one so 'special?'
Very simple. It's not easy to describe in words – I guess you had to have been there – but the atmosphere, the warmth, the electricity present for those few hours, was really unique. I've attended many such events, but don't remember one as pleasant and as memorable as this one. And I have proof: Usually, as dinners draw to and end, not too many people are still hanging around; they've eaten, watched the show, had dessert, paid their donation, and left. But this time around, people were literally requested to leave and were shown to the door, before the witching hour for which we had rented the hall, struck twelve. I don't ever before recall guests being asked to leave.
As I said, a really really enjoyable evening. I can honestly say that anyone not there missed a worthwhile, meaningful and pleasant evening. But don't despair. They'll be another one next year. And whoever would like to still show some tangible support for Hebron can, at: www.hebrontruma.com.
Until next time…..
With blessings from Hebron.
Reality Check: A change of heart? Not likely
JEFF BARAK (former editor of the Jerusalem Post)
Perhaps Bennie Begin was right after all when he said that Binyamin Netanyahu had changed over the past decade. The often hesitant Netanyahu of the past nine months bears little resemblance to the impulsive Bibi of old, while the prime minister's major policy announcements are tantamount, at least at first glance, to a rejection of his previously deeply held beliefs. Last week's security cabinet decision to announce a 10-month freeze on private building in the West Bank certainly marks a declarative change of direction for Netanyahu, who until now had steadfastly insisted that he would not halt "natural growth" construction in the settlements. Coupled with his Bar-Ilan speech in which he became the first right-wing leader to utter the words "two states for two peoples," the Likud leader has now gone down in history as the first prime minister, from any party, to order a settlement freeze in the West Bank.
Interestingly, Netanyahu has not received a thing from the Palestinians in return. The "reciprocity" mantra of his first term in office has disappeared as Israel finds itself making unilateral concessions to the Palestinians to stave off an increasingly hostile international diplomatic environment.
And in between recognizing the Palestinian right to statehood and freezing Jewish construction in the West Bank, Netanyahu has also been negotiating a prisoner exchange with Hamas for Gilad Schalit, agreeing, as far as one can tell, to the serial release of deadly terrorists, responsible for the murder of hundreds of Israelis, and proving more flexible in his determination to get a deal than Ehud Olmert during his final days in office.
This particular surrender to terrorism is definitely not reminiscent of the young Netanyahu, who first came to fame as an anti-terror expert. While Israel's ambassador to the UN in 1985, Netanyahu wrote to foreign minister Yitzhak Shamir complaining that the Jibril deal, in which 1,150 Palestinian detainees were released in return for three IDF soldiers, would only endanger the lives of more Israelis in the future.
A decade later, in his book A Place Under the Sun, Netanyahu joined those who argued that this prisoner release helped spark the flames of the first intifada that broke out a couple of years later.
It's hard to know how Netanyahu justifies his change of approach to a prisoner release because he has successfully avoided discussing the Schalit case. In this, he has been helped by the heavy-handed use of military censorship to prevent details of which Palestinian terrorists stand to regain their freedom, which has further dampened any public discussion of the deal.
BUT HAS Netanyahu really changed as some media commentators insist or, particularly with regard to the peace process, is he just seeking to buy time and appease Washington - not the Palestinians - by minor gestures? Again, it's worth looking at what MK Begin has to say and he is undoubtedly right when he notes that the 10-month settlement freeze will not change the reality of construction work in the West Bank in any meaningful way.
The settlers knew what was coming and prepared accordingly. According to Defense Ministry data, around 2,500 housing units are presently under construction and so will not be affected by the freeze, which only refers to new building starts. On top of this, Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently approved the construction of another 490 units, which will also escape the freeze. The security cabinet's decision also permits the building of public facilities such as schools and synagogues, as opposed to private housing, and almost immediately after the security cabinet vote, Barak authorized the construction of 28 new public facilities in the settlements.
So, as Begin said in a television interview following Netanyahu's announcement, whoever thinks he won't be seeing tractors and bulldozers working in Judea and Samaria over the next 10 months is deluding himself. Furthermore, east Jerusalem, the most sensitive of all areas in the territories, has not been included in the settlement freeze.
BEGIN IS a rarity in Israeli politics, a true man of principle. If he could bring himself to vote in favor, and later enthusiastically defend, a cabinet decision announcing a settlement freeze, it's clear that he does not view this decision as weakening Jewish settlement in the West Bank in any substantive manner. Ten months, as Begin further remarked, is not a particularly long period of time, and after this date the government is not committed to anything.
Netanyahu has shown great political skill in establishing and maintaining his coalition, but he is still failing to communicate exactly where this government is heading. If he was that anxious to kick-start the peace process with the Palestinians, there was no need for him to have waited this long before announcing a settlement freeze.
Imagine how much stronger the impact of his Bar-Ilan speech would have been had he announced then his support for a two-state solution, coupled with a freeze on all settlement construction. Such a speech would not have left him in the position he found himself earlier this month, begging for a White House meeting.
But given that Netanyahu is not explaining himself to the Israeli people, it seems that we will have to use Bennie Begin as the bellwether of the prime minister's intentions. And as long as Begin is in the government, one can conclude that Netanyahu is not serious about reaching a deal with the Palestinians based on two states for two people.
The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259243034206&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Perhaps Bennie Begin was right after all when he said that Binyamin Netanyahu had changed over the past decade. The often hesitant Netanyahu of the past nine months bears little resemblance to the impulsive Bibi of old, while the prime minister's major policy announcements are tantamount, at least at first glance, to a rejection of his previously deeply held beliefs. Last week's security cabinet decision to announce a 10-month freeze on private building in the West Bank certainly marks a declarative change of direction for Netanyahu, who until now had steadfastly insisted that he would not halt "natural growth" construction in the settlements. Coupled with his Bar-Ilan speech in which he became the first right-wing leader to utter the words "two states for two peoples," the Likud leader has now gone down in history as the first prime minister, from any party, to order a settlement freeze in the West Bank.
Interestingly, Netanyahu has not received a thing from the Palestinians in return. The "reciprocity" mantra of his first term in office has disappeared as Israel finds itself making unilateral concessions to the Palestinians to stave off an increasingly hostile international diplomatic environment.
And in between recognizing the Palestinian right to statehood and freezing Jewish construction in the West Bank, Netanyahu has also been negotiating a prisoner exchange with Hamas for Gilad Schalit, agreeing, as far as one can tell, to the serial release of deadly terrorists, responsible for the murder of hundreds of Israelis, and proving more flexible in his determination to get a deal than Ehud Olmert during his final days in office.
This particular surrender to terrorism is definitely not reminiscent of the young Netanyahu, who first came to fame as an anti-terror expert. While Israel's ambassador to the UN in 1985, Netanyahu wrote to foreign minister Yitzhak Shamir complaining that the Jibril deal, in which 1,150 Palestinian detainees were released in return for three IDF soldiers, would only endanger the lives of more Israelis in the future.
A decade later, in his book A Place Under the Sun, Netanyahu joined those who argued that this prisoner release helped spark the flames of the first intifada that broke out a couple of years later.
It's hard to know how Netanyahu justifies his change of approach to a prisoner release because he has successfully avoided discussing the Schalit case. In this, he has been helped by the heavy-handed use of military censorship to prevent details of which Palestinian terrorists stand to regain their freedom, which has further dampened any public discussion of the deal.
BUT HAS Netanyahu really changed as some media commentators insist or, particularly with regard to the peace process, is he just seeking to buy time and appease Washington - not the Palestinians - by minor gestures? Again, it's worth looking at what MK Begin has to say and he is undoubtedly right when he notes that the 10-month settlement freeze will not change the reality of construction work in the West Bank in any meaningful way.
The settlers knew what was coming and prepared accordingly. According to Defense Ministry data, around 2,500 housing units are presently under construction and so will not be affected by the freeze, which only refers to new building starts. On top of this, Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently approved the construction of another 490 units, which will also escape the freeze. The security cabinet's decision also permits the building of public facilities such as schools and synagogues, as opposed to private housing, and almost immediately after the security cabinet vote, Barak authorized the construction of 28 new public facilities in the settlements.
So, as Begin said in a television interview following Netanyahu's announcement, whoever thinks he won't be seeing tractors and bulldozers working in Judea and Samaria over the next 10 months is deluding himself. Furthermore, east Jerusalem, the most sensitive of all areas in the territories, has not been included in the settlement freeze.
BEGIN IS a rarity in Israeli politics, a true man of principle. If he could bring himself to vote in favor, and later enthusiastically defend, a cabinet decision announcing a settlement freeze, it's clear that he does not view this decision as weakening Jewish settlement in the West Bank in any substantive manner. Ten months, as Begin further remarked, is not a particularly long period of time, and after this date the government is not committed to anything.
Netanyahu has shown great political skill in establishing and maintaining his coalition, but he is still failing to communicate exactly where this government is heading. If he was that anxious to kick-start the peace process with the Palestinians, there was no need for him to have waited this long before announcing a settlement freeze.
Imagine how much stronger the impact of his Bar-Ilan speech would have been had he announced then his support for a two-state solution, coupled with a freeze on all settlement construction. Such a speech would not have left him in the position he found himself earlier this month, begging for a White House meeting.
But given that Netanyahu is not explaining himself to the Israeli people, it seems that we will have to use Bennie Begin as the bellwether of the prime minister's intentions. And as long as Begin is in the government, one can conclude that Netanyahu is not serious about reaching a deal with the Palestinians based on two states for two people.
The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259243034206&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull