HERB KEINON
The 'Jerusalem Post’s' diplomatic correspondent examines the reasons certain decisions were made and the success of the visit.
WASHINGTON – When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu fired off an unprecedentedly sharp response to US President Barack Obama’s Middle East speech last Thursday night just two hours before boarding a plane to meet the president, it was clear this prime minister’s five-day trip to the American capital was going to be unlike any other.
And, indeed, it was. From the pre-boarding surprises that included Obama’s reference to a return to the 1967 borders and Netanyahu’s angry reaction, to the astonishing media session after their meeting in which Netanyahu essentially told Obama he was wrong; to Obama’s clarifications at AIPAC and his dig that Netanyahu was misrepresenting what he said; to the overwhelmingly warm reception Netanyahu received in Congress – this trip was exceptional. nd yet it remains full of questions. In the world of diplomacy, things don’t generally just happen. They are thought out, considered, weighed. And they have reasons. As such – when reviewing the major events of Netanyahu’s 2011 Washington trip – it’s instructive to ask one simple question: Why?
Why did Obama surprise Netanyahu with a speech that clearly stated the 1967 lines as the negotiation baseline?
Of all the “why” questions, this is perhaps the most difficult to answer, especially since sources close to the prime minister had been saying for days prior to the trip that there was close coordination between the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office regarding the substance of both Obama’s speech and Netanyahu’s address to Congress.
In the final analysis, there wasn’t. Close coordination would have prevented the unpleasant surprises.
Yet Obama’s speech was full of them: In addition to the 1967 reference, there was also a failure to rule out talks with a PA government that includes Hamas, and an unwillingness to lay down a clear marker on the refugee issue and say – as George W. Bush once did – that the descendants of 1948 Palestinian refugees would return to a Palestinian state, not to Israel.
One reason proffered for the surprise was a White House fear that if the information were shared with the Prime Minister’s Office a number of days, not hours, before the speech’s delivery, then it would have been leaked, triggering a chain of events that would have altered the content of the speech – content that Obama believes in.
According to one senior diplomatic source, the White House views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the following prism: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has the will to make peace, but not the power; Netanyahu has the power, but not the will.
The presidential tactics, therefore, are informed by that overall assumption. How to give Abbas the power, and Netanyahu the will.
Well, one way to give Abbas the power is not to undercut him in the eyes of his public – which an unequivocal “no” to the refugee issue would have done. Another way is not to completely rule out Hamas, especially when the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation is so popular on the Palestinian street.
A third way to give Abbas power is to raise his stature among his people – something that is done by adopting a position he has put forward for months: a return to the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed swaps, as the basis for negotiations.
And how, if you are Obama, do you give Netanyahu the will to make peace? Show him where the US stands; box him into a corner, force his hand.
Which is what Obama did. The time to procrastinate is over, Obama seemingly said Thursday night; “I want to see action now” – and then he laid out in what direction he wanted to see the action. This, he thought, would inject some will into a Netanyahu he viewed as recalcitrant.
Since taking office in January 2009, Obama’s policies on Israel seem infused by the assumption – long popular among some Israeli pundits and opposition leaders – that the Israeli public would never tolerate a direct confrontation with a US president, and if it came to that, the public would rally around the president, rather than their prime minister, so as not to risk the vital US-Israel relationship.
With that as an assumption, the president had no problem surprising Netanyahu – almost daring the prime minister to take him on. Obama apparently thought, mistakenly, that if Netanyahu did pick a fight, he would lose politically in Israel.
Why did Netanyahu choose to pick a fight with Obama, issuing an extremely tough response to the president’s Mideast speech?
The speech Obama delivered Thursday night was complex.
It is probably fair to state that for most people watching on television or listening on the radio, it did not seem that egregious.
The casual listener heard Obama come out against the delegitimization of Israel and the planned PA end-around run to the UN in September seeking recognition; restate his commitment to the country’s security; and acknowledge that the Fatah-Hamas agreement raised “profound and legitimate” questions for Israel.
Sure, the casual listeners also heard the reference to the 1967 lines, with mutual agreed swaps, and that Jerusalem and the refugee issue must be deferred down the line.
But, many probably thought, that has all been said many times before.
Indeed, one could – after hearing and reading that speech – choose to emphasize either the good or the bad, to find the cup half full or half empty. Netanyahu took a calculated decision to focus on the half-empty part of the cup.
Why? First of all, because he was genuinely angered, as was apparent in a furious phone call he had with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after he was informed of what would be placed in the speech. Netanyahu felt ambushed, as he felt during his first visit to the White House in May 2009 when the president sprung on him – unannounced – a demand for a complete settlement freeze.
Second, Netanyahu saw an opportunity to rally political support. As one of his aides put it on the plane to Washington early Friday morning, soon after Netanyahu’s sharp retort, “If I had to give the response a headline, I’d say the prime minister restored national pride.”
Netanyahu went to the US wanting to stand up to the president – feeling that following the pictures last Sunday of hundreds of Palestinians rushing the country’s northern borders, there would be huge public backing for saying clearly to the president that Israel could not return to the 1967 lines or tolerate any wishy-washy language on Hamas or the refugee issue.
Obama, the aide said, simply does not understand the Israeli psyche, and his failure to address the refugees – saying this would be dealt with later – just a few days after refugees rushed the Israeli borders, showed the degree to which he is tone deaf to the Israeli public.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, understands the public very well, and crafted his comments to align with the vulnerability much of the country feels. Indeed, a Haaretz poll Thursday showed that Netanyahu’s popularity skyrocketed as a result of the Washington trip.
Why, after issuing this response, did Netanyahu feel the need to cross swords with Obama when they issued joint statements after their Friday meeting?
According to Israeli sources, the Friday meeting was divided into two parts. The first part was a one-on-one meeting of about 90 minutes, followed by the public statements. The second part was an additional 30- minute talk, followed by a walk on the White House lawn.
According to one version of events, when Obama failed to clarify to the degree Netanyahu thought necessary what he meant about the 1967 lines, Hamas and the refugees, Netanyahu decided to challenge him publicly – saying that his call the night before about a return the 1967 lines would not happen, and reiterating that a return of refugee descendants or talks with Hamas was also nowhere in the cards.
Yet even before that meeting, Netanyahu had made clear during private conversations that his statement following his meeting with the president would be very important – an indication even before the meeting that he was going to publicly challenge Obama over his speech. And indeed, it was extraordinary watching him do so even as Obama was hosting and sitting next to him.
The statement, together with the meeting, had an obvious impact, as Obama then felt compelled to clarify what he meant during his AIPAC speech – clarifications that brought his positions more in line with those of Israel.
Why did Obama decide to speak before AIPAC, and why did he say what he said?
Obama’s decision to speak at AIPAC three days after delivering a major Middle East address echoed his decision in 2009 to go to Buchenwald after delivering his landmark address to the Arab world in Cairo.
A pattern is emerging: Deliver a speech to the world that is difficult to Israeli ears in one forum, and follow up with a speech geared toward American Jews in another, seemingly designed to reduce the fallout.
While Obama’s visit to Buchenwald in 2009 resonated with American Jews who were touched by the symbolism of an American president visiting the concentration camp, it did not strike any chord with Israelis.
Likewise, in his AIPAC speech, Obama seemed to be trying to pave over, for American Jews, the pot-holes he had created in his Mideast speech.
And of course, a speech to AIPAC makes good political sense. Obama can tell his critics on the Left that he had the “courage” to stand before 10,000 passionate Israel supporters and speak forthrightly about what was needed to forge Middle East peace.
But at the same time, he can tell Jewish critics of his Israel policies that he went to AIPAC and explained fully what he meant. To the world, he didn’t call Hamas a terrorist organization; to the Jews, he did. To the world, he didn’t say that settlement blocs would remain inside Israel; to the Jews, he hinted that they would. To the world, he didn’t rule out once and for all any Palestinian refugee return; to the Jews, he stepped closer in that direction.
Obama, for all his bluster during the speech about not taking the easy path and avoiding controversy, knows that he is going to need Jewish support in the next elections: both financial support and the votes. He also knows that with his Israel policy, he risks losing a few percentage points of the 78% of the Jewish vote he garnered in 2008, and that those percentage points, in key battleground states like Florida and Ohio, could be critical in a close presidential race.
Or, as Ari Fleischer, former spokesman to president George Bush, said at a panel at the AIPAC conference, if Obama wins over the Jews 4:1, as he did last time, he wins the next election; if he only takes the Jews 3:1, he’s in trouble.
Obama went to AIPAC and made his policy clarifications with those considerations obviously in mind.
Why was Netanyahu’s speech to Congress important, especially since he did not chart any radically new course?
While Netanyahu’s speech Tuesday did not detail a new Israeli program, it did set down basic markers that are not irrelevant. Or, as Netanyahu himself said in private conversations, what he was trying to do was pound some policy stakes into the ground that would not be moved by the swirling winds in the region.
And those stakes are: No return to 1967, no refugees, no Hamas, and the absolute necessity of the Palestinians recognizing Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Yet there were some other elements of the speech that deserve notice.
The first is that Netanyahu signaled flexibility – that he said he was willing to be “generous” if the Palestinians uttered six key words: “We will accept a Jewish state.”
Second, it is important to notice that Netanyahu never speaks of dismantling, destroying or uprooting settlements.
Instead, as he said to Congress, “in any real peace agreement, in any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders.”
Close aides to Netanyahu have said in the past that if a million Arabs live in Israel, there is no reason in the world why a Palestinian state must be cleansed of all Jews.
Third, when talking about a future Palestinian state – saying that Israel will be generous about the size but firm on where the border is put so the lines are defensible – Netanyahu never used the word “contiguity.” This was not an oversight, and it is not clear how exactly he envisions a link between the West Bank and Gaza.
And fourth, he indicated – for the first time publicly – some wiggle room on Jerusalem, saying that while it “must remain the united capital of Israel,” he also believed that “with creativity and with goodwill a solution can be found.”
Although these points are significant, they don’t give the speech its importance. That comes from the reception the address received. That Israel’s prime minister received a rock-star ovation from both sides of the aisle of both houses of Congress sends an important message of support to both friend and foe alike.
Netanyahu knows this, and he knew it before walking into the House chamber. He knew the symbolic value of a speech by a foreign leader to a joint meeting of Congress, something that only happens about four times a year. He knew that he had the rhetorical abilities to get the congressmen on their feet repeatedly.
He knew that the speech, and its reception, would fill many of his countrymen – and Jews around the world – with pride, and would boost his popularity at home.
And even if he knew Obama was probably not applauding either the content of the speech, or the fact that he went to Congress to deliver it, he gambled that in the long run, both he and the country would gain more by – in his mind – “speaking truth to power.”
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Obama’s Malignant Obsession with Jews and Israel
Joan Swirsky
Jew hatred comes in many forms, all of them irrational and unsupported by empirical fact, but all of them powerful and largely effective in deflecting personal and political failures onto a tiny people which by their mere existence highlight the glaring deficiencies that exist in their adversaries. Like a deadly systemic infection, be it viral or bacterial, Jew hatred comes in many strains.
STRAIN #1—THE DUMB FACTOR
This strain is based mostly on ignorance. In short, a dim-witted parent, family member, friend, teacher or coach—who was “schooled” by another dimwit—tells an innocent child that everything that is wrong with his or her life is because of “the Jew” who lives down the street or employs his or her parent or publishes the local newspaper whatever.
“They may look like you and me,” the critic says, “but underneath that head of hair are horns, and by the way they bake their Passover holiday bread-substitute with the blood of kids like you and your sister, and you should know that they control all the money in the world, and never forget that they killed Jesus.” Then the kid gets older and his actual life experience contradicts what he’s heard as he or she studies or socializes or works with Jews and sometimes falls in love and marries one. But the Dumb Strain, it seems, never quite dissipates as even “reformed” Jew haters brag with genuine pride that their doctors and lawyers and accountants are Jewish! They want other people to consider them intelligent enough to pick “the best” professionals, while they’re also boasting that the last bargain they got was a result of “Jewing down” the store manager. As I said, dumb.
But dumb anti-Semitism is still anti-Semitism, just like dumb stereotypes about tap-dancing blacks or whiskey-guzzling Irish people or can’t-screw-in-a-light-bulb Poles or Mambo-obsessed Hispanics or kemo-sabe-spouting American Indians are still destructive to a decent and respectful social order.
The only difference is that malevolently stereotyping Jews—and, today, Christians—has once again become acceptable, whereas defaming other groups is strictly taboo among the fetishists of political correctness and multiculturalism, selective as they are in what offends their very delicate sensibilities.
Say something even mildly negative about women, gays, Muslim terrorists, or the above-mentioned ethnic groups and the leftists among us go into an orgy of frenzied outrage. But slander a Jew—or murder a Jew—no problem.
Glaring examples emanate daily from the Middle East, where “Palestinian” jihadists not only slit the throats of Israeli babies, but vow to destroy the Jewish state, while the craven Western media scramble to rationalize their bestial acts or, predictably, blame the victims.
But how to explain the Jew hatred that has come to our shores, in, for instance, the egregious non-action of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City, which this month stopped a plot by two terrorists to bomb the largest synagogue in the Big Apple, but decided not to press charges—to let the jihadists go—because the incident was probably “mischief”?
And that’s only an infinitesimal part of the ongoing and deliberate attempt to marginalize not only Jews in general but the sovereign State of Israel, our most trusted and only democratic ally in the entire Middle East.
STRAIN #2—THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR
There are legions of highly intelligent people—in terms of IQs, advanced college degrees, professional accomplishments, published books, and fancy titles—who are nonetheless driven almost exclusively by their feelings. Ironic that they’ve spent lifetimes honing their razor-sharp intellects, refining their debating skills, priding themselves on scrupulous research—but still, emotion prevails. This is no surprise because, simply, emotions are stronger than the intellect. On PET scans of the brain, anger and fear “light up” significantly more than the higher cognitive processes of reasoning and logic.
The emotional anti-Semite is one into whose brain the thorn of Jew hatred gets stuck, and no amount of rationalizing or higher-center thought can excise it. Even the one who harbors the feelings may wonder about the dissonant “reasoning” that inspires this hatred. But like the Mark of Cain, it’s there for life.
In a very real way, Jew hatred is consoling to this species, analogous to the Xanax that so many people take to alleviate anxiety. Have a problem that is unbearably agitating? It’s the Jews! Aahhh, I feel better. Feeling depressed? I don’t need an anti-depressant like Celexa or Lexapro, it’s the Jews! Aahhh, I feel better.
This type of anti-Semitism is the default position of people who are “smart” enough to reinvent objective history and who purposefully invent events such as the Al Dura hoaxor deny that the Holocaust ever existed in order to create an anti-Semitic “reality” out of whole cloth, one that invariably gibes with their intractable, all-consuming hatred of Jews.
Think of a person with childhood-onset diabetes or a seizure disorder. No amount of hoping the condition away has any effect. It’s simply there, deep within, with symptoms that must be treated constantly in order to stem the horrible symptoms that ensue if the condition is not attended to. Emotion-driven anti-Semitism is in this category, incurable but, unlike diabetes, unfortunately untreatable.
STRAIN #3—THE SELF-HATE FACTOR
Okay, you may say, people of other religions may hate Jews, but how is it possible for Jews themselves to hate Jews? Surprisingly, the answer is rather simple: It’s hard to be a Jew, and most people simply aren’t up to it. Yes, they can be proud of their brains and talents, but when it comes to their backbones—that’s another story.
The most universal desire in the world is to be liked and accepted, starting with pre-verbal babies who know by the smiles of strangers that the world is a friendly and welcoming place, and extending to full-grown adults who continue to seek acceptance in intimate relationships as well as in groups, including in the workplace, in recreational activities, and in politics.
For many Jews, being a member of the world’s most historically vilified minority is just “too much” to cope with. In fact, to withstand the relentless onslaught would require them to have an accurate knowledge of Jewish history, a history that the spineless set has abandoned teaching their children. It would require a willingness to correct the constant blitz of misinformation that an anti-Semitic world never tires of perpetuating. It would require a willingness to stand on principle when the entire world is substituting propaganda and violence for righteousness. And it would require a belief that the land of Israel was indeed bequeathed to the Jews by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that their return to Zion after Hitler incinerated six million of their brethren during the Holocaust was the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and that, perversely and for the first time in world history, they should return the lands won in the belligerent wars waged against them by anti-Semitic Arabs who remain intractably so to this day.
Liberal Jews are not psychologically up to any of these challenges, hence their pathetic over-eagerness to “understand” the people who hate them, to accommodate themselves to the enemies of Israel (which means all Jews), to capitulate to the ever-escalating and invariably-one-sided demands for “compromise,” to slavishly follow Jews like linguist Noam Chomsky and financier George Soros and playwright Tony Kushner who are so suffused with Jew hatred that their entire lives have been devoted to amputating any vestige of Jewish identity from their beings, to vote year after year after year for Israel-loathing leftists like Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and to stand up and applaud Obama at an AIPAC conference not 48 hours after he announced his intention to plunge Israel back to what then-Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban referred to as “the Auschwitz borders” of 1967!
As Boris Shusteff, a Russian immigrant to the United States and a research associate at the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, writes: “The simple truth is that under the facade of their `progressiveness` there is always a subconsciously hidden attempt to escape from their Jewishness. They use beautiful words and convincing arguments to prove the necessity of fighting for somebody else’s abstract rights instead of proudly defending their own. They say that they ennoble the world community by defending the interests of other nations, while disregarding the fate of their brethren. They rush to a cosmopolitan universe, where all the uniqueness of the nations disappears and where they can call themselves citizens of the universe.”
Aha, the famous “one world order” the progressives among us have embraced, while they demonize Jews like me—and there are millions of us—who prefer not to have their identities blended and bastardized into some amorphous tasteless valueless Godless gruel!
STRAIN #4—THE MOTHER’S MILK FACTOR
This variant is infused into tabula rasa embryos by a loathing so systemic it suggests a DNA aberration. After delivery, infants literally imbibe a particularly toxic brew of anti-Semitism flowing either from their mothers’ breast milk or worldview. And when they have been sufficiently intoxicated, they enter into a family and “culture” that makes the hatred of Jews their entire raison d’v™tre.
This strain has been on vivid display in the Arab world for decades—actually centuries—where toddlers are taught to echo the Jew hatred drummed daily into their developing brains, instead of being taught how to play the piano or play ball or play with dolls, and where young children are taught by the time they’re three-years-old how to strap suicide bombs onto their young bodies.
It is in this “culture,” which has not changed significantly since the seventh century, that “leaders” keep the abhorrence going by inflaming the masses they have purposefully kept poor and ignorant, the better to energize them not by jobs and creativity but by the adrenaline fueled by hatred. These palace-dwelling leaders generously pay the media to perpetuate the hate, and also endlessly “play” the United States of America like a Stradivarius by extorting billions every year to keep a so-called reasonable lid on their Jew hatred.
No wonder Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974, said: “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
But it’s not just Arabs and Muslims who make the hatred of Jews the virtual centerpiece of their lives. There is the full-blown return of anti-Semitism in Europe, as Guy Milliv®rewrites, where citizens have now been effectively Islamized and the entire region is on the way again to being Judenrein, or “cleansed of Jews.” In fact, anti-Semitism has now reached pandemic proportions, right in time for an American “president” to help orchestrate the so-called spontaneous “pro-democracy” uprisings throughout the Arab world, from Tunisia to Yemen to Egypt to Lebanon to Jordan to Syria to Bahrain, on and on.
Yes, orchestrate! And while he’s at it, make a practice out of de facto condoning the butchery and hatred of America’s and Israel’s enemies Iran and Syria, while at the same time punishing America’s longtime allies and Israel’s longtime “cold peace” partners Egypt and Libya.
To what end? Certainly not to encourage democracy, of which the entire world has seen not a hint since this smoke-and-mirrors travesty began, but rather to ferret in the real new world order, in which the virulently anti-Semitic, Nazi-inspired Muslim Brotherhood will reign, with its oft-stated intentions of obliterating Israel and every last Jew who breathes on its land. (During World War II, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt allied himself with Hitler and was active in recruiting Arabs for the Waffen SS).That’s the same Muslim Brotherhood whose terrorist branch Hamas has launched over 12,000 missiles at Israeli civilians. The same Muslim Brotherhood—in Egypt—that condemned Bin Laden’s death and wants to end the peace accord with Israel. The same Muslim Brotherhood that, according to Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, citing an AP report, is about to receive $1 billion from Obama! As Hoft says, “Obama wants to reward them.”
STRAIN #5—THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER FACTOR
According to author and columnist Dennis Prager, the reason that “for thousands of years there has been so much attention paid to Jews and why, today, to Israel, the one Jewish state is that Jews are God’s Chosen People.
Atheists are exempted from this theory, Prager says, because “they don’t believe in a Chooser, so they cannot believe in a Chosen. But for most believing Jews and Christians (most particularly the Founders who saw America as a Second Israel, a second Chosen People), Jewish Chosen-ness has been a given.”
Prager says the proof of this “chosen-ness” is that “evil has consistently targeted the Jews,” for instance:
· Nazi Germany was more concerned with exterminating the Jews than with winning World War II.
· Throughout its 70-year history, the Soviet Union persecuted its Jews and tried to extinguish Judaism.
· The United Nations has spent more time discussing and condemning the Jewish state than any other country in the world.
· Much of the contemporary Muslim world—and nearly all the Arab world—is obsessed with annihilating the one Jewish state.
This obsession, he says, “can be best explained only in transcendent terms, namely that God, for whatever reason, chose the Jews.”
But I think of an equally visceral kind of jealousy when I contemplate the Greatest Hatred Ever Known. I think of what it must be like for a huge population of well over 300-million Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East to watch as the straggling remnants of European Jewry—cadaverous, hungry, heartbroken, stupefied by the cruelty they had endured and witnessed—rose up to repel the savage Arab armies of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria (backed by Saudi Arabia and Yemen)—that tried to annihilate the nascent Jewish State in 1948 and then to defeat them again and again in the many wars the Arabs continued to initiate.
And what must it be like for the immensely wealthy Arab potentates , as well as their serfs, to not only lose war after war to the Jews, but to see the people they call “pigs” literally make long-barren deserts bloom, to have the world’s only thriving economy, to lead the world in technology and science, to create magnificent symphonies and athletic teams and life-saving medical remedies, et al, while the most the Arab world has ever accomplished in the last six decades is to “create” terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and of course those itty bitty suicide bombers.
And further imagine what it must be like to live in these feudal swamps and to know that big bad America—which has sent trillions of dollars to the Arab countries over the years—continues to support the sole democracy in the Middle East, Israel.
It must be eerily like what the black citizens of America and their leftist leaders think when they contemplate the wealth of our country and realize that every program—in education and job-equality and equitable healthcare that the liberals-cum-progressives have magnanimously funded and enacted for over half a century—has failed thunderously.
What do these two things have in common? Again, the answer is so simple—rage and envy. The same things that the Arabs don’t “get” about the roots of genuine success and empowerment are the same things that community organizers—and for that matter the Resident in the White House—don’t “get,” is that self-actualization, certainly for Americans, is not based on a mind-set of victimhood and lifelong entitlement but rather on the reality of plain old nose-to-the-grindstone hard work, resilience in the face of adversity, the strength of family ties, a devotion to the U.S. Constitution, and a belief in the overriding Judeo-Christian ethos that has blessed our country with benevolence and guidance for nearly 235 years.
WHO IS BEHIND OBAMA’S OBSESSION?
That is, his malignant obsession with Jews and with Israel!
Untold numbers of words have been written about the woman and man Obama claims were his mother and father, the far-left Stanley Ann Dunham and the Kenyan-born Marxist, Barack Obama Sr. Then there is the couple he claims were his grandparents, the far-left Madelyn Dunham and Stanley Armour Dunham. I say “claims” because there is still no certifiable birth certificate that attests either to Obama’s parentage or citizenship. But we do know that these people “raised” Obama and along with Frank Marshall Davis, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Louis Farrakhan, et al, profoundly influenced his hate-whitey, anti-American, and anti-Israel world view.
Last year, to the month, I wrote Obama’s Jewish Problem, in which I remarked that “to prepare for his meeting on May 18 with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama prepared a menu of poison pills—the kind given to people with the same Hobson’s Choice that Mafia attorney Tom Hagen gave to the imprisoned and about-to-testify-before-Congress Frankie Pentangeli in `Godfather Two`—either commit suicide or we’re going to kill you.” Sound familiar?!
In that article, I listed the people—more accurately, collaborators—who aid and abet what Mona Charen calls Obama’s “genocidal hostility toward Israel.” The following is the short list:
· Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who according to Dick Morris has had “relationships with terrorists began in the mid-1980s when she served on the Board of the New World Foundation, which gave funds to the Palestine Liberation Organization the PLO was officially recognized by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.”
· Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who has advocated ending all U.S. military aid to Israel and has inspired dozens of articles with titles like these in Commentary: Susan Rice Is Doing Something at the UN: Targeting Israel and What Was Susan Rice’s Embarrassing Anti-Israel Tirade Supposed to Accomplish?
· Lee Hamilton, who Ed Lasky calls the eminence grise of Obama’s Mideast policy and who has suggested that the U.S. should pressure Israel to surrender the Golan Heights and leave the West Bank—but not a word about dismantling Hamas or Hezbollah!
· Zbigniew Brzezinski, longtime Israel loather, who suggested that the Obama administration should tell Israel that the U.S. will attack Israeli jets if they try to attack Iran.
· John Brennan, Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security,suggests, among other egregious things, that Obama & Co. “reach out” to Hezbollah.
· Samantha Power, now on Obama’s National Security Council, has advocated ending all U.S. military aid to Israel and written of her willingness to “alienate a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import …” She has also advocated, Ed Lasky writes, “that America send armed military forces,” “a mammoth protection force” and an “external intervention” to” impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.”
· Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s Senior Advisor. According to Ulsterman, the by-nowinfamous Washington Insider, “weeks after widespread Middle East chaos first erupted, and with a growing number of nations now poised to join the likes of Egypt and Libya into all out rebellion, some are finally questioning the role played by the Obama White House in helping to hasten these events. Of primary concern is the reasoning behind Barack Obama’s quick repudiation of Egypt’s Mubarak, and near silence regarding Libya’s Gaddafi. Why such a disparity in tone between one uprising vs another? …Perhaps the answer to this disparity can be found with President Obama’s closest and most powerful adviser—[Iranian-born Muslim] Valerie Jarrett
In addition, according to Ryan Mauro, founder of WorldThreats.com: “The “most influential Muslim” in the White House is Dalia MogahedShe is a close colleague ofJohn Esposito, a staunch defender of the Muslim Brotherhood and a witness for the defense during the Holy Land Foundation trial. Officials from the Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration, have made a concerted effort to court these Brotherhood affiliates, including senior advisor Valerie Jarrett; chief counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan; Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano; Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough and many other lower-level government officials”
And that is not to omit the aforementioned George Soros, the man who is running not only Barack Obama but just about the entire American media. According to Dan Gainor, Soros “spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004 has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets—including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.”
I can’t think of one of Obama’s advisors, czars, even Court Jews who is not floridly anti-Israel, in both word and deed. The belief, indeed conviction, that all of these people have in common is that everything wrong with their lives and with the world would magically disappear if only those damned Jews and their damned country Israel were destroyed. Hence the salami tactics to whittle away territory until Israelis simply cannot defend themselves and so perish at the hands of neighbors who have been promising nothing less than annihilation for decades.
This is Obama’s malignant intention, as well. Hence the 1967 lines!
THE BETRAYAL UNMASKED
This is the title of an article by Paul Schnee, in which he says that the Obama speech “confirmed in the starkest terms why his long held prejudices, cloaked as a foreign policy, have made his Oval Office not only the graveyard for any peace and justice in the Middle East but also the incubator for the next great conflict there.
“Obama’s intentions towards Israel have never been good,” Schnee adds, “but yesterday he proved just how hostile he is to the Jewish state of Israel. One of the most perverse forms of anti-Semitism is to expect Jews to die meekly His speech was a shameful act in a career of shameful acts”
Victor Sharpe, author of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish State, agrees. “Obama parrots the Arab policy of `stages` whereby Israel is forced to commit national suicide through the diabolical euphemism called `land for peace.‘Obama embraces the darkness of the Arab world and chooses—not from ignorance but from hatred—to enact under his watch the eventual annihilation of the Jewish state.”
Is there any light in this bleak picture? According to Professor Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, “Israel is not going to allow a president with no credibility, who clearly doesn’t understand what’s at stake, fails to support his Arab allies, is soft on his Iranian and Syrian enemies, doesn’t learn from his past errors, is sacrificing U.S. interests in the region, and pays no attention to what’s happening in Egypt, to determine its future.”
But the last word (at least of this article) has to go to writer and Army veteran J.D. Longstreet, who cites Amos and Jeremiah and Ezekiel in “America’s Betrayal of Israel,”in which he states:
“Let me be very clear here: ISRAEL WILL NOT LOSE. Its enemies WILL lose…as a result of the Obama’s announced policy demanding that Israel return to the pre-1967 war borders.
What Obama, and Israel’s other enemies, fail to understand (or understand it and choose to ignore it) is this: That of all the dry land on this planet earth, there is only one tiny little piece of geography that God, Himself, has designated as belonging to a single people—ISRAEL.
What the evangelical Christian Americans rightly understand is this: When God brought the people of Israel, His people, home and gave them a “state,” a nation, in May of 1948, God had already made it as plain as possible that Israel would never be moved from that land again—forever.
Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel
972 (0)54 441 3252
Jew hatred comes in many forms, all of them irrational and unsupported by empirical fact, but all of them powerful and largely effective in deflecting personal and political failures onto a tiny people which by their mere existence highlight the glaring deficiencies that exist in their adversaries. Like a deadly systemic infection, be it viral or bacterial, Jew hatred comes in many strains.
STRAIN #1—THE DUMB FACTOR
This strain is based mostly on ignorance. In short, a dim-witted parent, family member, friend, teacher or coach—who was “schooled” by another dimwit—tells an innocent child that everything that is wrong with his or her life is because of “the Jew” who lives down the street or employs his or her parent or publishes the local newspaper whatever.
“They may look like you and me,” the critic says, “but underneath that head of hair are horns, and by the way they bake their Passover holiday bread-substitute with the blood of kids like you and your sister, and you should know that they control all the money in the world, and never forget that they killed Jesus.” Then the kid gets older and his actual life experience contradicts what he’s heard as he or she studies or socializes or works with Jews and sometimes falls in love and marries one. But the Dumb Strain, it seems, never quite dissipates as even “reformed” Jew haters brag with genuine pride that their doctors and lawyers and accountants are Jewish! They want other people to consider them intelligent enough to pick “the best” professionals, while they’re also boasting that the last bargain they got was a result of “Jewing down” the store manager. As I said, dumb.
But dumb anti-Semitism is still anti-Semitism, just like dumb stereotypes about tap-dancing blacks or whiskey-guzzling Irish people or can’t-screw-in-a-light-bulb Poles or Mambo-obsessed Hispanics or kemo-sabe-spouting American Indians are still destructive to a decent and respectful social order.
The only difference is that malevolently stereotyping Jews—and, today, Christians—has once again become acceptable, whereas defaming other groups is strictly taboo among the fetishists of political correctness and multiculturalism, selective as they are in what offends their very delicate sensibilities.
Say something even mildly negative about women, gays, Muslim terrorists, or the above-mentioned ethnic groups and the leftists among us go into an orgy of frenzied outrage. But slander a Jew—or murder a Jew—no problem.
Glaring examples emanate daily from the Middle East, where “Palestinian” jihadists not only slit the throats of Israeli babies, but vow to destroy the Jewish state, while the craven Western media scramble to rationalize their bestial acts or, predictably, blame the victims.
But how to explain the Jew hatred that has come to our shores, in, for instance, the egregious non-action of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City, which this month stopped a plot by two terrorists to bomb the largest synagogue in the Big Apple, but decided not to press charges—to let the jihadists go—because the incident was probably “mischief”?
And that’s only an infinitesimal part of the ongoing and deliberate attempt to marginalize not only Jews in general but the sovereign State of Israel, our most trusted and only democratic ally in the entire Middle East.
STRAIN #2—THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR
There are legions of highly intelligent people—in terms of IQs, advanced college degrees, professional accomplishments, published books, and fancy titles—who are nonetheless driven almost exclusively by their feelings. Ironic that they’ve spent lifetimes honing their razor-sharp intellects, refining their debating skills, priding themselves on scrupulous research—but still, emotion prevails. This is no surprise because, simply, emotions are stronger than the intellect. On PET scans of the brain, anger and fear “light up” significantly more than the higher cognitive processes of reasoning and logic.
The emotional anti-Semite is one into whose brain the thorn of Jew hatred gets stuck, and no amount of rationalizing or higher-center thought can excise it. Even the one who harbors the feelings may wonder about the dissonant “reasoning” that inspires this hatred. But like the Mark of Cain, it’s there for life.
In a very real way, Jew hatred is consoling to this species, analogous to the Xanax that so many people take to alleviate anxiety. Have a problem that is unbearably agitating? It’s the Jews! Aahhh, I feel better. Feeling depressed? I don’t need an anti-depressant like Celexa or Lexapro, it’s the Jews! Aahhh, I feel better.
This type of anti-Semitism is the default position of people who are “smart” enough to reinvent objective history and who purposefully invent events such as the Al Dura hoaxor deny that the Holocaust ever existed in order to create an anti-Semitic “reality” out of whole cloth, one that invariably gibes with their intractable, all-consuming hatred of Jews.
Think of a person with childhood-onset diabetes or a seizure disorder. No amount of hoping the condition away has any effect. It’s simply there, deep within, with symptoms that must be treated constantly in order to stem the horrible symptoms that ensue if the condition is not attended to. Emotion-driven anti-Semitism is in this category, incurable but, unlike diabetes, unfortunately untreatable.
STRAIN #3—THE SELF-HATE FACTOR
Okay, you may say, people of other religions may hate Jews, but how is it possible for Jews themselves to hate Jews? Surprisingly, the answer is rather simple: It’s hard to be a Jew, and most people simply aren’t up to it. Yes, they can be proud of their brains and talents, but when it comes to their backbones—that’s another story.
The most universal desire in the world is to be liked and accepted, starting with pre-verbal babies who know by the smiles of strangers that the world is a friendly and welcoming place, and extending to full-grown adults who continue to seek acceptance in intimate relationships as well as in groups, including in the workplace, in recreational activities, and in politics.
For many Jews, being a member of the world’s most historically vilified minority is just “too much” to cope with. In fact, to withstand the relentless onslaught would require them to have an accurate knowledge of Jewish history, a history that the spineless set has abandoned teaching their children. It would require a willingness to correct the constant blitz of misinformation that an anti-Semitic world never tires of perpetuating. It would require a willingness to stand on principle when the entire world is substituting propaganda and violence for righteousness. And it would require a belief that the land of Israel was indeed bequeathed to the Jews by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that their return to Zion after Hitler incinerated six million of their brethren during the Holocaust was the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and that, perversely and for the first time in world history, they should return the lands won in the belligerent wars waged against them by anti-Semitic Arabs who remain intractably so to this day.
Liberal Jews are not psychologically up to any of these challenges, hence their pathetic over-eagerness to “understand” the people who hate them, to accommodate themselves to the enemies of Israel (which means all Jews), to capitulate to the ever-escalating and invariably-one-sided demands for “compromise,” to slavishly follow Jews like linguist Noam Chomsky and financier George Soros and playwright Tony Kushner who are so suffused with Jew hatred that their entire lives have been devoted to amputating any vestige of Jewish identity from their beings, to vote year after year after year for Israel-loathing leftists like Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and to stand up and applaud Obama at an AIPAC conference not 48 hours after he announced his intention to plunge Israel back to what then-Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban referred to as “the Auschwitz borders” of 1967!
As Boris Shusteff, a Russian immigrant to the United States and a research associate at the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, writes: “The simple truth is that under the facade of their `progressiveness` there is always a subconsciously hidden attempt to escape from their Jewishness. They use beautiful words and convincing arguments to prove the necessity of fighting for somebody else’s abstract rights instead of proudly defending their own. They say that they ennoble the world community by defending the interests of other nations, while disregarding the fate of their brethren. They rush to a cosmopolitan universe, where all the uniqueness of the nations disappears and where they can call themselves citizens of the universe.”
Aha, the famous “one world order” the progressives among us have embraced, while they demonize Jews like me—and there are millions of us—who prefer not to have their identities blended and bastardized into some amorphous tasteless valueless Godless gruel!
STRAIN #4—THE MOTHER’S MILK FACTOR
This variant is infused into tabula rasa embryos by a loathing so systemic it suggests a DNA aberration. After delivery, infants literally imbibe a particularly toxic brew of anti-Semitism flowing either from their mothers’ breast milk or worldview. And when they have been sufficiently intoxicated, they enter into a family and “culture” that makes the hatred of Jews their entire raison d’v™tre.
This strain has been on vivid display in the Arab world for decades—actually centuries—where toddlers are taught to echo the Jew hatred drummed daily into their developing brains, instead of being taught how to play the piano or play ball or play with dolls, and where young children are taught by the time they’re three-years-old how to strap suicide bombs onto their young bodies.
It is in this “culture,” which has not changed significantly since the seventh century, that “leaders” keep the abhorrence going by inflaming the masses they have purposefully kept poor and ignorant, the better to energize them not by jobs and creativity but by the adrenaline fueled by hatred. These palace-dwelling leaders generously pay the media to perpetuate the hate, and also endlessly “play” the United States of America like a Stradivarius by extorting billions every year to keep a so-called reasonable lid on their Jew hatred.
No wonder Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974, said: “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
But it’s not just Arabs and Muslims who make the hatred of Jews the virtual centerpiece of their lives. There is the full-blown return of anti-Semitism in Europe, as Guy Milliv®rewrites, where citizens have now been effectively Islamized and the entire region is on the way again to being Judenrein, or “cleansed of Jews.” In fact, anti-Semitism has now reached pandemic proportions, right in time for an American “president” to help orchestrate the so-called spontaneous “pro-democracy” uprisings throughout the Arab world, from Tunisia to Yemen to Egypt to Lebanon to Jordan to Syria to Bahrain, on and on.
Yes, orchestrate! And while he’s at it, make a practice out of de facto condoning the butchery and hatred of America’s and Israel’s enemies Iran and Syria, while at the same time punishing America’s longtime allies and Israel’s longtime “cold peace” partners Egypt and Libya.
To what end? Certainly not to encourage democracy, of which the entire world has seen not a hint since this smoke-and-mirrors travesty began, but rather to ferret in the real new world order, in which the virulently anti-Semitic, Nazi-inspired Muslim Brotherhood will reign, with its oft-stated intentions of obliterating Israel and every last Jew who breathes on its land. (During World War II, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt allied himself with Hitler and was active in recruiting Arabs for the Waffen SS).That’s the same Muslim Brotherhood whose terrorist branch Hamas has launched over 12,000 missiles at Israeli civilians. The same Muslim Brotherhood—in Egypt—that condemned Bin Laden’s death and wants to end the peace accord with Israel. The same Muslim Brotherhood that, according to Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, citing an AP report, is about to receive $1 billion from Obama! As Hoft says, “Obama wants to reward them.”
STRAIN #5—THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER FACTOR
According to author and columnist Dennis Prager, the reason that “for thousands of years there has been so much attention paid to Jews and why, today, to Israel, the one Jewish state is that Jews are God’s Chosen People.
Atheists are exempted from this theory, Prager says, because “they don’t believe in a Chooser, so they cannot believe in a Chosen. But for most believing Jews and Christians (most particularly the Founders who saw America as a Second Israel, a second Chosen People), Jewish Chosen-ness has been a given.”
Prager says the proof of this “chosen-ness” is that “evil has consistently targeted the Jews,” for instance:
· Nazi Germany was more concerned with exterminating the Jews than with winning World War II.
· Throughout its 70-year history, the Soviet Union persecuted its Jews and tried to extinguish Judaism.
· The United Nations has spent more time discussing and condemning the Jewish state than any other country in the world.
· Much of the contemporary Muslim world—and nearly all the Arab world—is obsessed with annihilating the one Jewish state.
This obsession, he says, “can be best explained only in transcendent terms, namely that God, for whatever reason, chose the Jews.”
But I think of an equally visceral kind of jealousy when I contemplate the Greatest Hatred Ever Known. I think of what it must be like for a huge population of well over 300-million Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East to watch as the straggling remnants of European Jewry—cadaverous, hungry, heartbroken, stupefied by the cruelty they had endured and witnessed—rose up to repel the savage Arab armies of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria (backed by Saudi Arabia and Yemen)—that tried to annihilate the nascent Jewish State in 1948 and then to defeat them again and again in the many wars the Arabs continued to initiate.
And what must it be like for the immensely wealthy Arab potentates , as well as their serfs, to not only lose war after war to the Jews, but to see the people they call “pigs” literally make long-barren deserts bloom, to have the world’s only thriving economy, to lead the world in technology and science, to create magnificent symphonies and athletic teams and life-saving medical remedies, et al, while the most the Arab world has ever accomplished in the last six decades is to “create” terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and of course those itty bitty suicide bombers.
And further imagine what it must be like to live in these feudal swamps and to know that big bad America—which has sent trillions of dollars to the Arab countries over the years—continues to support the sole democracy in the Middle East, Israel.
It must be eerily like what the black citizens of America and their leftist leaders think when they contemplate the wealth of our country and realize that every program—in education and job-equality and equitable healthcare that the liberals-cum-progressives have magnanimously funded and enacted for over half a century—has failed thunderously.
What do these two things have in common? Again, the answer is so simple—rage and envy. The same things that the Arabs don’t “get” about the roots of genuine success and empowerment are the same things that community organizers—and for that matter the Resident in the White House—don’t “get,” is that self-actualization, certainly for Americans, is not based on a mind-set of victimhood and lifelong entitlement but rather on the reality of plain old nose-to-the-grindstone hard work, resilience in the face of adversity, the strength of family ties, a devotion to the U.S. Constitution, and a belief in the overriding Judeo-Christian ethos that has blessed our country with benevolence and guidance for nearly 235 years.
WHO IS BEHIND OBAMA’S OBSESSION?
That is, his malignant obsession with Jews and with Israel!
Untold numbers of words have been written about the woman and man Obama claims were his mother and father, the far-left Stanley Ann Dunham and the Kenyan-born Marxist, Barack Obama Sr. Then there is the couple he claims were his grandparents, the far-left Madelyn Dunham and Stanley Armour Dunham. I say “claims” because there is still no certifiable birth certificate that attests either to Obama’s parentage or citizenship. But we do know that these people “raised” Obama and along with Frank Marshall Davis, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Louis Farrakhan, et al, profoundly influenced his hate-whitey, anti-American, and anti-Israel world view.
Last year, to the month, I wrote Obama’s Jewish Problem, in which I remarked that “to prepare for his meeting on May 18 with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama prepared a menu of poison pills—the kind given to people with the same Hobson’s Choice that Mafia attorney Tom Hagen gave to the imprisoned and about-to-testify-before-Congress Frankie Pentangeli in `Godfather Two`—either commit suicide or we’re going to kill you.” Sound familiar?!
In that article, I listed the people—more accurately, collaborators—who aid and abet what Mona Charen calls Obama’s “genocidal hostility toward Israel.” The following is the short list:
· Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who according to Dick Morris has had “relationships with terrorists began in the mid-1980s when she served on the Board of the New World Foundation, which gave funds to the Palestine Liberation Organization the PLO was officially recognized by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.”
· Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who has advocated ending all U.S. military aid to Israel and has inspired dozens of articles with titles like these in Commentary: Susan Rice Is Doing Something at the UN: Targeting Israel and What Was Susan Rice’s Embarrassing Anti-Israel Tirade Supposed to Accomplish?
· Lee Hamilton, who Ed Lasky calls the eminence grise of Obama’s Mideast policy and who has suggested that the U.S. should pressure Israel to surrender the Golan Heights and leave the West Bank—but not a word about dismantling Hamas or Hezbollah!
· Zbigniew Brzezinski, longtime Israel loather, who suggested that the Obama administration should tell Israel that the U.S. will attack Israeli jets if they try to attack Iran.
· John Brennan, Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security,suggests, among other egregious things, that Obama & Co. “reach out” to Hezbollah.
· Samantha Power, now on Obama’s National Security Council, has advocated ending all U.S. military aid to Israel and written of her willingness to “alienate a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import …” She has also advocated, Ed Lasky writes, “that America send armed military forces,” “a mammoth protection force” and an “external intervention” to” impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.”
· Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s Senior Advisor. According to Ulsterman, the by-nowinfamous Washington Insider, “weeks after widespread Middle East chaos first erupted, and with a growing number of nations now poised to join the likes of Egypt and Libya into all out rebellion, some are finally questioning the role played by the Obama White House in helping to hasten these events. Of primary concern is the reasoning behind Barack Obama’s quick repudiation of Egypt’s Mubarak, and near silence regarding Libya’s Gaddafi. Why such a disparity in tone between one uprising vs another? …Perhaps the answer to this disparity can be found with President Obama’s closest and most powerful adviser—[Iranian-born Muslim] Valerie Jarrett
In addition, according to Ryan Mauro, founder of WorldThreats.com: “The “most influential Muslim” in the White House is Dalia MogahedShe is a close colleague ofJohn Esposito, a staunch defender of the Muslim Brotherhood and a witness for the defense during the Holy Land Foundation trial. Officials from the Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration, have made a concerted effort to court these Brotherhood affiliates, including senior advisor Valerie Jarrett; chief counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan; Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano; Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough and many other lower-level government officials”
And that is not to omit the aforementioned George Soros, the man who is running not only Barack Obama but just about the entire American media. According to Dan Gainor, Soros “spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004 has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets—including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.”
I can’t think of one of Obama’s advisors, czars, even Court Jews who is not floridly anti-Israel, in both word and deed. The belief, indeed conviction, that all of these people have in common is that everything wrong with their lives and with the world would magically disappear if only those damned Jews and their damned country Israel were destroyed. Hence the salami tactics to whittle away territory until Israelis simply cannot defend themselves and so perish at the hands of neighbors who have been promising nothing less than annihilation for decades.
This is Obama’s malignant intention, as well. Hence the 1967 lines!
THE BETRAYAL UNMASKED
This is the title of an article by Paul Schnee, in which he says that the Obama speech “confirmed in the starkest terms why his long held prejudices, cloaked as a foreign policy, have made his Oval Office not only the graveyard for any peace and justice in the Middle East but also the incubator for the next great conflict there.
“Obama’s intentions towards Israel have never been good,” Schnee adds, “but yesterday he proved just how hostile he is to the Jewish state of Israel. One of the most perverse forms of anti-Semitism is to expect Jews to die meekly His speech was a shameful act in a career of shameful acts”
Victor Sharpe, author of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish State, agrees. “Obama parrots the Arab policy of `stages` whereby Israel is forced to commit national suicide through the diabolical euphemism called `land for peace.‘Obama embraces the darkness of the Arab world and chooses—not from ignorance but from hatred—to enact under his watch the eventual annihilation of the Jewish state.”
Is there any light in this bleak picture? According to Professor Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, “Israel is not going to allow a president with no credibility, who clearly doesn’t understand what’s at stake, fails to support his Arab allies, is soft on his Iranian and Syrian enemies, doesn’t learn from his past errors, is sacrificing U.S. interests in the region, and pays no attention to what’s happening in Egypt, to determine its future.”
But the last word (at least of this article) has to go to writer and Army veteran J.D. Longstreet, who cites Amos and Jeremiah and Ezekiel in “America’s Betrayal of Israel,”in which he states:
“Let me be very clear here: ISRAEL WILL NOT LOSE. Its enemies WILL lose…as a result of the Obama’s announced policy demanding that Israel return to the pre-1967 war borders.
What Obama, and Israel’s other enemies, fail to understand (or understand it and choose to ignore it) is this: That of all the dry land on this planet earth, there is only one tiny little piece of geography that God, Himself, has designated as belonging to a single people—ISRAEL.
What the evangelical Christian Americans rightly understand is this: When God brought the people of Israel, His people, home and gave them a “state,” a nation, in May of 1948, God had already made it as plain as possible that Israel would never be moved from that land again—forever.
Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel
972 (0)54 441 3252
An Anti-Israel President
Bret Stephens
The president's peace proposal is a formula for war.
Say what you will about President Obama's approach to Israel—or of his relationship with American Jews—he sure has mastered the concept of chutzpah.
On Thursday at the State Department, the president gave his big speech on the Middle East, in which he invoked the claims of friendship to tell Israelis "the truth," which to his mind was that "the status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace." On Friday in the Oval Office, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his version of the truth, which was that the 1967 border proposed by Mr. Obama as a basis for negotiating the outlines of a Palestinian state was a nonstarter.
Administration reaction to this reciprocal act of friendly truth-telling? "That was Bibi over the top," the New York Times quoted one senior U.S. official, using the prime minister's nickname. "That's not how you address the president of the United States." Maybe so. Then again, it isn't often that this or any other U.S. president welcomes a foreign leader by sandbagging him with an adversarial policy speech a day before the visit. Remember when the Dalai Lama visited Mr. Obama last year? As a courtesy to Beijing, the president made sure to have the Tibetan spiritual leader exit by the door where the White House trash was piled up. And that was 11 months before Hu Jintao's state visit to the U.S.
When this president wants to make a show of his exquisite diplomatic sensitivity—burgers with Medvedev, bows to Abdullah, New Year's greetings to the mullahs—he knows how. And when he wants to show his contempt, he knows how, too.
The contempt was again on display Sunday, when Mr. Obama spoke to the Aipac policy conference in Washington. The speech was stocked with the perennial bromides about U.S.-Israeli friendship, which brought an anxious crowd to its feet a few times. As for the rest, it was a thin tissue of falsehoods, rhetorical legerdemain, telling omissions and self-contradictions. Let's count the ways.
For starters, it would be nice if the president could come clean about whether his line about the 1967 line—"mutually agreed swaps" and all—was pathbreaking and controversial, or no big deal. On Sunday, Mr. Obama congratulated himself for choosing the hard road to Mideast peace as he prepares for re-election, only to offer a few minutes later that "there was nothing particularly original in my proposal."
View Full Image
gloview0524
Associated Press
President Barack Obama arrives to speak at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention.
Yet assuming Mr. Obama knows what he's talking about, he knows that's untrue: No U.S. president has explicitly endorsed the '67 lines as the basis for negotiating a final border, which is why the University of Michigan's Juan Cole, not exactly a shill for the Israel lobby, called it "a major turning point."
Mr. Obama would also know that in 2009 Hillary Clinton had described this formula as "the Palestinian goal." Now it's Mr. Obama's goal as well, even as he insists that "no peace can be imposed."
Then there was Mr. Obama's use of his favorite professorial trope: "Let me repeat what I actually said." What followed was a rehearsal of what he supposedly said on Thursday.
But Mr. Obama's problem isn't, as he supposes, that people aren't paying close enough attention to him. On the contrary, they've noticed that on Thursday Mr. Obama called for Israel to make territorial concessions to some approximation of the '67 lines before an agreement is reached on the existential issues of refugees and Jerusalem. "Moving forward now on the basis of territory and security," he said, "provides a foundation to resolve these two issues in a way that is just and fair, and that respects the rights and aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians."
Mr. Obama neglected to mention these points on Sunday, hence the telling omission. But the essence of his proposal is that Israel should cede territory, put itself into a weaker position, and then hope for the best. This doesn't even amount to a land-for-peace formula.
That's not all. Mr. Obama got some applause Sunday by calling for a "non-militarized" Palestinian state. But how does that square with his comment, presumably applicable to a future Palestine, that "every state has a right to self-defense"? Mr. Obama was also cheered for his references to Israel as a "Jewish state." But why then obfuscate on the question of Palestinian refugees, whose political purpose over 63 years has been to destroy Israel as a Jewish state?
And then there was that line that "we will hold the Palestinians accountable for their actions and their rhetoric." Applause! But can Mr. Obama offer a single example of having done that as president, except perhaps at the level of a State Department press release?
What, then, would a pro-Israel president do? He would tell Palestinians that there is no right of return. He would make the reform of the Arab mindset toward Israel the centerpiece of his peace efforts. He would outline hard and specific consequences should Hamas join the government.
Such a vision could lay the groundwork for peace. What Mr. Obama offered is a formula for war, one that he will pursue in a second term. Assuming, of course, that he gets one.
The president's peace proposal is a formula for war.
Say what you will about President Obama's approach to Israel—or of his relationship with American Jews—he sure has mastered the concept of chutzpah.
On Thursday at the State Department, the president gave his big speech on the Middle East, in which he invoked the claims of friendship to tell Israelis "the truth," which to his mind was that "the status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace." On Friday in the Oval Office, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his version of the truth, which was that the 1967 border proposed by Mr. Obama as a basis for negotiating the outlines of a Palestinian state was a nonstarter.
Administration reaction to this reciprocal act of friendly truth-telling? "That was Bibi over the top," the New York Times quoted one senior U.S. official, using the prime minister's nickname. "That's not how you address the president of the United States." Maybe so. Then again, it isn't often that this or any other U.S. president welcomes a foreign leader by sandbagging him with an adversarial policy speech a day before the visit. Remember when the Dalai Lama visited Mr. Obama last year? As a courtesy to Beijing, the president made sure to have the Tibetan spiritual leader exit by the door where the White House trash was piled up. And that was 11 months before Hu Jintao's state visit to the U.S.
When this president wants to make a show of his exquisite diplomatic sensitivity—burgers with Medvedev, bows to Abdullah, New Year's greetings to the mullahs—he knows how. And when he wants to show his contempt, he knows how, too.
The contempt was again on display Sunday, when Mr. Obama spoke to the Aipac policy conference in Washington. The speech was stocked with the perennial bromides about U.S.-Israeli friendship, which brought an anxious crowd to its feet a few times. As for the rest, it was a thin tissue of falsehoods, rhetorical legerdemain, telling omissions and self-contradictions. Let's count the ways.
For starters, it would be nice if the president could come clean about whether his line about the 1967 line—"mutually agreed swaps" and all—was pathbreaking and controversial, or no big deal. On Sunday, Mr. Obama congratulated himself for choosing the hard road to Mideast peace as he prepares for re-election, only to offer a few minutes later that "there was nothing particularly original in my proposal."
View Full Image
gloview0524
Associated Press
President Barack Obama arrives to speak at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention.
Yet assuming Mr. Obama knows what he's talking about, he knows that's untrue: No U.S. president has explicitly endorsed the '67 lines as the basis for negotiating a final border, which is why the University of Michigan's Juan Cole, not exactly a shill for the Israel lobby, called it "a major turning point."
Mr. Obama would also know that in 2009 Hillary Clinton had described this formula as "the Palestinian goal." Now it's Mr. Obama's goal as well, even as he insists that "no peace can be imposed."
Then there was Mr. Obama's use of his favorite professorial trope: "Let me repeat what I actually said." What followed was a rehearsal of what he supposedly said on Thursday.
But Mr. Obama's problem isn't, as he supposes, that people aren't paying close enough attention to him. On the contrary, they've noticed that on Thursday Mr. Obama called for Israel to make territorial concessions to some approximation of the '67 lines before an agreement is reached on the existential issues of refugees and Jerusalem. "Moving forward now on the basis of territory and security," he said, "provides a foundation to resolve these two issues in a way that is just and fair, and that respects the rights and aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians."
Mr. Obama neglected to mention these points on Sunday, hence the telling omission. But the essence of his proposal is that Israel should cede territory, put itself into a weaker position, and then hope for the best. This doesn't even amount to a land-for-peace formula.
That's not all. Mr. Obama got some applause Sunday by calling for a "non-militarized" Palestinian state. But how does that square with his comment, presumably applicable to a future Palestine, that "every state has a right to self-defense"? Mr. Obama was also cheered for his references to Israel as a "Jewish state." But why then obfuscate on the question of Palestinian refugees, whose political purpose over 63 years has been to destroy Israel as a Jewish state?
And then there was that line that "we will hold the Palestinians accountable for their actions and their rhetoric." Applause! But can Mr. Obama offer a single example of having done that as president, except perhaps at the level of a State Department press release?
What, then, would a pro-Israel president do? He would tell Palestinians that there is no right of return. He would make the reform of the Arab mindset toward Israel the centerpiece of his peace efforts. He would outline hard and specific consequences should Hamas join the government.
Such a vision could lay the groundwork for peace. What Mr. Obama offered is a formula for war, one that he will pursue in a second term. Assuming, of course, that he gets one.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Abbas - Rewriting Middle East History
"Repeat a lie often enough and people will begin to believe it."
Nazi propaganda master Joseph Goebbels
�
ABBAS: In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered
in the affirmative.
FACT:�SIXTY-FOUR years ago, just before Israel's War of Independence in 1948, Palestinian Arabs launched a series of riots, pillaging, and bloodletting. This was followed by the invasion into Jewish Palestine of seven Arab armies
from neighboring states attempting to prevent by force the establishment of
a Jewish state in accordance with UN Resolution 181, known also as the 1947
Partition Plan. The Arab nations denounced the plan on the General Assembly
floor and voted as a bloc against Resolution 181 promising to defy its implementation
by force. To resuscitate Resolution 181 more than six decades after Palestinian Arabs
rejected it "as if nothing had happened" are a baseless ploy designed to use
Resolution 181 as leverage to bring about a greater Israeli withdrawal from
parts of western Palestine and to gain a broader base from which to continue
to attack Israel with even less defendable borders.
Ironically, in Article 19 of the PLO CHARTER, Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the
Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] contradict himself when he makes it
clear - that the UN Partition Plan is "illegal."
"Article 19: The Partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the
state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time ..."
"Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything
that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical
or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of
history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being
a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single
nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which
they belong."
ABBAS: key focus of negotiations will be reaching a just solution for Palestinian
refugees based on Resolution 194, which the General Assembly passed in 1948.
FACT: Resolution 194, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 11, 1948,
addressed a host of issues, but only one paragraph out of 15 dealt with refugees
created by the conflict. Resolution 194 attempted to create the tools required
to reach a truce in the region. It established a conciliation commission with
representatives from the United States, France and Turkey to replace the UN
mediator. The commission was charged with achieving "a final settlement of
all questions between ... governments and authorities concerned." The Resolution's
"refugee clause" is not a standalone item, as the Arabs would have us think,
nor does it pertain specifically to Palestinian Arab refugees.
Of the 15 paragraphs, the first six sections addressed ways to achieve a truce;
the next four paragraphs addressed the ways that Jerusalem and surrounding
villages and towns should be demilitarized, and how an international zone or
jurisdiction would be created in and around Jerusalem. The resolution also
called on all parties to protect and allow free access to holy places, including religious buildings.
One paragraph has drawn the most attention: Paragraph 11, which alone addressed
the issue of refugees and compensation for those whose property was lost or
damaged. Contrary to Arab claims, it did not guarantee a Right of Return and
certainly did not guarantee an unconditional Right of Return - that is the
right of Palestinian Arab refugees to return to Israel. Nor did it specifically
mention Arab refugees, thereby indicating that the resolution was aimed at
all refugees, both Jewish and Arab. Instead, Resolution 194 recommended that
refugees be allowed to return to their homeland if they met two important conditions:
1. That they be willing to live in peace with their neighbors
2. That the return takes place "at the earliest practicable date"
The resolution also recommended that for those who did not wish to return,
"Compensation should be paid for the property ... and for loss of or damage
to property" by the "governments or authorities responsible."
Although Arab leaders point to Resolution 194 as proof that Arab refugees have
a right to returnor be compensated, it is important to note that the Arab States:
Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen voted against Resolution
194. Israel is not even mentioned in the resolution. The fact that plural wording
also is used - "governments or authorities" - suggests that, contrary to Arab
claims, the burden of compensation does not fall solely upon one side of the
conflict. Because seven Arab armies invaded Israel, Israel was not responsible
for creating the refugee problem. When hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews,
under threat of death, attack and other forms of persecution, were forced to
flee Arab communities, the State of Israel absorbed the overwhelming majority
of them into the then-fledgling nation.
ABBAS: Palestine "our historic homeland"
FACT: What Abbas wants the world to forget is the content of the "Mandate for
Palestine," an historical League of Nations document that laid down the Jewish
legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan
River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international
law.
The "Mandate for Palestine" was not a naive vision briefly embraced by the
international community. Fifty-one member countries-the entire League of Nations-unanimously declared on July 24, 1922:
"Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish
people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national
home in that country."
It is important to point out that political rights to self-determination as
a polity for Arabs were guaranteed by the same League of Nations in four other
mandates-in Lebanon and Syria [The French Mandate], Iraq, and later Trans-Jordan
[The British Mandate].
Any attempt to negate the Jewish people's right to Palestine-Eretz-Israel,
and to deny them access and control in the area designated for the Jewish people
by the League of Nations is a serious infringement of international law.
ABBAS: Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs
FACT: The Arab League's April 10, 1948 decision to invade Jewish Palestine
on May 14 to "save Palestine," as the British Mandate ended, marked a watershed
event, for it changed the rules of the conflict. Accordingly, Israel bears
no moral responsibility for deliberately banishing Palestinian Arabs in order
to "consolidate defense arrangements" in strategic areas, as the Jewish people
organized to battle seven well-equipped and well-trained aggressor armies.
With the pending invasion following Israel's declaration of independence, it
is no exaggeration to say the new Jewish state's very existence hung in the
balance.
The Palestinians were responsible for escalating the war - a move that cost
the Jews thousands of lives and Palestinians their homes. By their own behavior,
Palestinians assumed the role of belligerents in the conflict, invalidating
any claim to be hapless victims. Explains scholar Benny Morris:
"One of the characteristics of the Palestinian national movement has been the
Palestinians' view of themselves as perpetual victims of others: Ottoman Turks,
British officials, Zionists, Americans - and never to appreciate that they
are, at least in large part, victims of their own mistakes and iniquities."
ABBAS: Our territory is recognized as the lands framed by the 1967 border,
though it is occupied by Israel.
FACT: Political figures and international jurists have discussed the existence
of "permissible" or "legal occupations." In a seminal article on this question,
entitled What Weight to Conquest Professor, Judge Schwebel, a former president
of the International Court of Justice, wrote:
"A state [Israel] acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may
seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are
necessary to its self-defense. ... Where the prior holder of territory had
seized that territory unlawfully [Jordan], the state which subsequently takes
that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior
holder, a better title.
"As between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and
her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively, in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel
has the better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the
whole of Jerusalem, than do Jordan and Egypt." (emphasis added)
�
Response to Abbas editorial, May 17, 2011, at The NY Times
�
�Find it on the web at: http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=205
If you'd like to unsubscribe from this newsgroup click here:
http://varimail.com/member/removeme.asp?sRemove=true&gid=ilist&email=mhardstark@hotmail.com
___________________________________________________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/19/mahmoud-abbas-palestinian-territories/print
Mahmoud Abbas and the persistence of Palestinian mythology
How depressing that, even as the plates are shifting in the Middle East, the PA president is still peddling a wornout narrative
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, signed a reconciliation agreement earlier this month. Photograph: EPA
In the week that President Obama makes a major new statement on US policy towards the Middle East, and prepares to meet Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, the New York Times provided Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas with a platform to unveil his new strategy. In his 17 May op-ed article in the Times, "The Long Overdue Palestinian State", Abbas laid out his plan to request international recognition of the "State of Palestine" along the Green Line that is commonly referred to as the pre-June 1967 border – that is, to achieve statehood without negotiating with Israel.
Thus, it is his recipe to circumvent negotiations, form a state and retake Jerusalem, without grappling with Palestinian mythology or compromising in any way. In laying out the ingredients of his plan, Abbas reveals that, at the core, the Palestinian struggle is not actually about borders but about Israel's existence. It is the quest for a Palestinian sense of justice at the expense of a negotiated end to the conflict.
In order to make his case, Abbas needed to disguise the historical record for it to resonate with western audiences. Take, for example, his narrative of Israel's independence, which he and most Palestinians today refer to as al-Nakba, the catastrophe. He explains that when the question of Palestinian statehood last took centre stage at the United Nations general assembly, it was to vote on whether the Palestinian homeland should be partitioned into two states. Abbas writes:
"In November 1947, the general assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued."
Cleverly, Abbas has removed Palestinians from the stage of responsible actors. According to him, they played no role whatsoever – they were merely the victims of Israeli actions. Of course, the inconvenient truth is that Israel accepted the partition plan while the Palestinians and Arab states rejected it and, instead, launched a war against the nascent state of Israel. The Palestinian refugee problem – whose fate is central to Abbas's perception of justice – is a direct result of that war.
His careful wording, "War and further expulsions ensued," is remarkably passive. Egypt, Jordan and Syria forced the 1967 war upon Israel, while the former two occupied what is today called the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But Palestinians were not then clamouring for an independent state alongside Israel or freedom from Arab occupation during the two decades between 1948 and 1967. Instead, in the wake of the 1967 war, the eight Arab heads of state released the Khartoum resolutions that formally declared: "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it…" In fact, two more decades would pass before the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) would recognise, at least rhetorically, Israel's right to exist (but not as a Jewish state), renounce terrorism and accept UN security council resolution 242. Indeed, it took 40 years after Israel's creation for the PLO to make the decision to seek negotiations with Israel, as opposed to openly seeking its destruction. But this game of words was merely a change in tactics; the goal remained the same.
To pick up on Abbas's selective historical prism: further rejections ensued. Even Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan realised it was time to say yes to a Palestinian state when he met with Yasser Arafat a few hours before the Palestinian leader's Oval Office meeting with President Clinton on 2 January 2001. That meeting in the White House was designed for Arafat to either accept or reject the now famous Clinton Parameters that contained the contours of a final settlement. Prince Bandar asked Arafat (pdf):
"Since 1948, every time we've had something on the table we say no. Then we say yes. When we say yes, it's not on the table anymore. Then we have to deal with something less. Isn't it about time we said yes?"
But again, Arafat said no. This is not the Palestinian narrative that Abbas would like to the world to hear because it would mean that as active actors in their struggle either against Israel or for statehood, Palestinians themselves bear much responsibility for their plight.
Historical distortions aside, the most telling aspect of Abbas's op-ed in the New York Times is his concentration on the Palestinian refugee issue. Indeed, securing the unlimited return of Palestinian refugees to Israel remains a Palestinian strategic principle, not a negotiating tactic. Abbas begins his article with the story of his expulsion from Safed during the 1948 war. While employing the third person narrative, he explains, "Though he and his family wished for decades to return to their homeland, they were denied that most basic human right." Yet Safed is in pre-1967 Israel and not a part of the territory he currently demands for a Palestinian state. Instead, he is demanding a so-called right of return of an estimated 4.8 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel, a country with just over 7 million people, 20% of whom are Arabs. In essence, the "moderate" leader of the Palestinian National Authority isn't just asking the international community for a Palestinian state, he is asking for the Israeli state to boot.
If this plan sounds familiar, that is because it is the phased approach to Israel's destruction that is currently and publicly endorsed by Hamas. But gaining statehood is not enough for Abbas or his Fatah organisation either. He explains that UN recognition of Palestinian statehood, "would pave the way for the internationalisation of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice." So, beyond gaining statehood and strangling Israel with millions of Palestinian refugees, the Abbas plan is then to sue Israel and "pursue claims" in any international forum that will listen. Such motives do not bespeak the "peace-loving nation" that would be a Palestinian state.
Given both Fatah's and Hamas's long-term goal vis-à-vis Israel, it is no wonder they recently formed a unity government. The fact is that the main difference today between Fatah and Hamas is over the questions of what role Islam should play and the extent to which terrorist bombings, missile attacks and kidnappings should play a part in realising their dream of statehood. And while Abbas may want the US and the west to believe he is serious when he claims, "Negotiations remain our first option," the truth is that it is Abbas himself who walked away from the negotiating table and who continues to refuse to negotiate with Israel.
Abbas's unilateral plan makes crystal clear that, for the PA, the issue today is not 1967 and a question of borders, but rather 1948 and Israel's existence. After all, according to the Palestinian narrative as conveyed by Abbas, it is Israel's existence that is the Palestinian nakba, or catastrophe, not the Israeli occupation of the West Bank that began in 1967.
If the Palestinians had accepted the November 1947 UN general assembly partition plan, they could be celebrating their 63rd year of independence alongside Israel. There would have been no war and no Palestinian refugees. But that ship has sailed. Contrary to Abbas's plan, today the only pathway forward is at the negotiating table with Israel. And those negotiations are doomed to fail until Palestinian leaders compromise with their own mythology and accept a solution that provides for both a Palestinian Arab state and Israeli Jewish state living side by side in peace.
• Commenting on this article will remain open for 24 hours and may be closed overnight
* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
Nazi propaganda master Joseph Goebbels
�
ABBAS: In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered
in the affirmative.
FACT:�SIXTY-FOUR years ago, just before Israel's War of Independence in 1948, Palestinian Arabs launched a series of riots, pillaging, and bloodletting. This was followed by the invasion into Jewish Palestine of seven Arab armies
from neighboring states attempting to prevent by force the establishment of
a Jewish state in accordance with UN Resolution 181, known also as the 1947
Partition Plan. The Arab nations denounced the plan on the General Assembly
floor and voted as a bloc against Resolution 181 promising to defy its implementation
by force. To resuscitate Resolution 181 more than six decades after Palestinian Arabs
rejected it "as if nothing had happened" are a baseless ploy designed to use
Resolution 181 as leverage to bring about a greater Israeli withdrawal from
parts of western Palestine and to gain a broader base from which to continue
to attack Israel with even less defendable borders.
Ironically, in Article 19 of the PLO CHARTER, Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the
Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] contradict himself when he makes it
clear - that the UN Partition Plan is "illegal."
"Article 19: The Partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the
state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time ..."
"Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything
that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical
or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of
history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being
a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single
nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which
they belong."
ABBAS: key focus of negotiations will be reaching a just solution for Palestinian
refugees based on Resolution 194, which the General Assembly passed in 1948.
FACT: Resolution 194, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 11, 1948,
addressed a host of issues, but only one paragraph out of 15 dealt with refugees
created by the conflict. Resolution 194 attempted to create the tools required
to reach a truce in the region. It established a conciliation commission with
representatives from the United States, France and Turkey to replace the UN
mediator. The commission was charged with achieving "a final settlement of
all questions between ... governments and authorities concerned." The Resolution's
"refugee clause" is not a standalone item, as the Arabs would have us think,
nor does it pertain specifically to Palestinian Arab refugees.
Of the 15 paragraphs, the first six sections addressed ways to achieve a truce;
the next four paragraphs addressed the ways that Jerusalem and surrounding
villages and towns should be demilitarized, and how an international zone or
jurisdiction would be created in and around Jerusalem. The resolution also
called on all parties to protect and allow free access to holy places, including religious buildings.
One paragraph has drawn the most attention: Paragraph 11, which alone addressed
the issue of refugees and compensation for those whose property was lost or
damaged. Contrary to Arab claims, it did not guarantee a Right of Return and
certainly did not guarantee an unconditional Right of Return - that is the
right of Palestinian Arab refugees to return to Israel. Nor did it specifically
mention Arab refugees, thereby indicating that the resolution was aimed at
all refugees, both Jewish and Arab. Instead, Resolution 194 recommended that
refugees be allowed to return to their homeland if they met two important conditions:
1. That they be willing to live in peace with their neighbors
2. That the return takes place "at the earliest practicable date"
The resolution also recommended that for those who did not wish to return,
"Compensation should be paid for the property ... and for loss of or damage
to property" by the "governments or authorities responsible."
Although Arab leaders point to Resolution 194 as proof that Arab refugees have
a right to returnor be compensated, it is important to note that the Arab States:
Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen voted against Resolution
194. Israel is not even mentioned in the resolution. The fact that plural wording
also is used - "governments or authorities" - suggests that, contrary to Arab
claims, the burden of compensation does not fall solely upon one side of the
conflict. Because seven Arab armies invaded Israel, Israel was not responsible
for creating the refugee problem. When hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews,
under threat of death, attack and other forms of persecution, were forced to
flee Arab communities, the State of Israel absorbed the overwhelming majority
of them into the then-fledgling nation.
ABBAS: Palestine "our historic homeland"
FACT: What Abbas wants the world to forget is the content of the "Mandate for
Palestine," an historical League of Nations document that laid down the Jewish
legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan
River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international
law.
The "Mandate for Palestine" was not a naive vision briefly embraced by the
international community. Fifty-one member countries-the entire League of Nations-unanimously declared on July 24, 1922:
"Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish
people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national
home in that country."
It is important to point out that political rights to self-determination as
a polity for Arabs were guaranteed by the same League of Nations in four other
mandates-in Lebanon and Syria [The French Mandate], Iraq, and later Trans-Jordan
[The British Mandate].
Any attempt to negate the Jewish people's right to Palestine-Eretz-Israel,
and to deny them access and control in the area designated for the Jewish people
by the League of Nations is a serious infringement of international law.
ABBAS: Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs
FACT: The Arab League's April 10, 1948 decision to invade Jewish Palestine
on May 14 to "save Palestine," as the British Mandate ended, marked a watershed
event, for it changed the rules of the conflict. Accordingly, Israel bears
no moral responsibility for deliberately banishing Palestinian Arabs in order
to "consolidate defense arrangements" in strategic areas, as the Jewish people
organized to battle seven well-equipped and well-trained aggressor armies.
With the pending invasion following Israel's declaration of independence, it
is no exaggeration to say the new Jewish state's very existence hung in the
balance.
The Palestinians were responsible for escalating the war - a move that cost
the Jews thousands of lives and Palestinians their homes. By their own behavior,
Palestinians assumed the role of belligerents in the conflict, invalidating
any claim to be hapless victims. Explains scholar Benny Morris:
"One of the characteristics of the Palestinian national movement has been the
Palestinians' view of themselves as perpetual victims of others: Ottoman Turks,
British officials, Zionists, Americans - and never to appreciate that they
are, at least in large part, victims of their own mistakes and iniquities."
ABBAS: Our territory is recognized as the lands framed by the 1967 border,
though it is occupied by Israel.
FACT: Political figures and international jurists have discussed the existence
of "permissible" or "legal occupations." In a seminal article on this question,
entitled What Weight to Conquest Professor, Judge Schwebel, a former president
of the International Court of Justice, wrote:
"A state [Israel] acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may
seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are
necessary to its self-defense. ... Where the prior holder of territory had
seized that territory unlawfully [Jordan], the state which subsequently takes
that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior
holder, a better title.
"As between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and
her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively, in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel
has the better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the
whole of Jerusalem, than do Jordan and Egypt." (emphasis added)
�
Response to Abbas editorial, May 17, 2011, at The NY Times
�
�Find it on the web at: http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=205
If you'd like to unsubscribe from this newsgroup click here:
http://varimail.com/member/removeme.asp?sRemove=true&gid=ilist&email=mhardstark@hotmail.com
___________________________________________________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/19/mahmoud-abbas-palestinian-territories/print
Mahmoud Abbas and the persistence of Palestinian mythology
How depressing that, even as the plates are shifting in the Middle East, the PA president is still peddling a wornout narrative
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, signed a reconciliation agreement earlier this month. Photograph: EPA
In the week that President Obama makes a major new statement on US policy towards the Middle East, and prepares to meet Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, the New York Times provided Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas with a platform to unveil his new strategy. In his 17 May op-ed article in the Times, "The Long Overdue Palestinian State", Abbas laid out his plan to request international recognition of the "State of Palestine" along the Green Line that is commonly referred to as the pre-June 1967 border – that is, to achieve statehood without negotiating with Israel.
Thus, it is his recipe to circumvent negotiations, form a state and retake Jerusalem, without grappling with Palestinian mythology or compromising in any way. In laying out the ingredients of his plan, Abbas reveals that, at the core, the Palestinian struggle is not actually about borders but about Israel's existence. It is the quest for a Palestinian sense of justice at the expense of a negotiated end to the conflict.
In order to make his case, Abbas needed to disguise the historical record for it to resonate with western audiences. Take, for example, his narrative of Israel's independence, which he and most Palestinians today refer to as al-Nakba, the catastrophe. He explains that when the question of Palestinian statehood last took centre stage at the United Nations general assembly, it was to vote on whether the Palestinian homeland should be partitioned into two states. Abbas writes:
"In November 1947, the general assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued."
Cleverly, Abbas has removed Palestinians from the stage of responsible actors. According to him, they played no role whatsoever – they were merely the victims of Israeli actions. Of course, the inconvenient truth is that Israel accepted the partition plan while the Palestinians and Arab states rejected it and, instead, launched a war against the nascent state of Israel. The Palestinian refugee problem – whose fate is central to Abbas's perception of justice – is a direct result of that war.
His careful wording, "War and further expulsions ensued," is remarkably passive. Egypt, Jordan and Syria forced the 1967 war upon Israel, while the former two occupied what is today called the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But Palestinians were not then clamouring for an independent state alongside Israel or freedom from Arab occupation during the two decades between 1948 and 1967. Instead, in the wake of the 1967 war, the eight Arab heads of state released the Khartoum resolutions that formally declared: "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it…" In fact, two more decades would pass before the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) would recognise, at least rhetorically, Israel's right to exist (but not as a Jewish state), renounce terrorism and accept UN security council resolution 242. Indeed, it took 40 years after Israel's creation for the PLO to make the decision to seek negotiations with Israel, as opposed to openly seeking its destruction. But this game of words was merely a change in tactics; the goal remained the same.
To pick up on Abbas's selective historical prism: further rejections ensued. Even Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan realised it was time to say yes to a Palestinian state when he met with Yasser Arafat a few hours before the Palestinian leader's Oval Office meeting with President Clinton on 2 January 2001. That meeting in the White House was designed for Arafat to either accept or reject the now famous Clinton Parameters that contained the contours of a final settlement. Prince Bandar asked Arafat (pdf):
"Since 1948, every time we've had something on the table we say no. Then we say yes. When we say yes, it's not on the table anymore. Then we have to deal with something less. Isn't it about time we said yes?"
But again, Arafat said no. This is not the Palestinian narrative that Abbas would like to the world to hear because it would mean that as active actors in their struggle either against Israel or for statehood, Palestinians themselves bear much responsibility for their plight.
Historical distortions aside, the most telling aspect of Abbas's op-ed in the New York Times is his concentration on the Palestinian refugee issue. Indeed, securing the unlimited return of Palestinian refugees to Israel remains a Palestinian strategic principle, not a negotiating tactic. Abbas begins his article with the story of his expulsion from Safed during the 1948 war. While employing the third person narrative, he explains, "Though he and his family wished for decades to return to their homeland, they were denied that most basic human right." Yet Safed is in pre-1967 Israel and not a part of the territory he currently demands for a Palestinian state. Instead, he is demanding a so-called right of return of an estimated 4.8 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel, a country with just over 7 million people, 20% of whom are Arabs. In essence, the "moderate" leader of the Palestinian National Authority isn't just asking the international community for a Palestinian state, he is asking for the Israeli state to boot.
If this plan sounds familiar, that is because it is the phased approach to Israel's destruction that is currently and publicly endorsed by Hamas. But gaining statehood is not enough for Abbas or his Fatah organisation either. He explains that UN recognition of Palestinian statehood, "would pave the way for the internationalisation of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice." So, beyond gaining statehood and strangling Israel with millions of Palestinian refugees, the Abbas plan is then to sue Israel and "pursue claims" in any international forum that will listen. Such motives do not bespeak the "peace-loving nation" that would be a Palestinian state.
Given both Fatah's and Hamas's long-term goal vis-à-vis Israel, it is no wonder they recently formed a unity government. The fact is that the main difference today between Fatah and Hamas is over the questions of what role Islam should play and the extent to which terrorist bombings, missile attacks and kidnappings should play a part in realising their dream of statehood. And while Abbas may want the US and the west to believe he is serious when he claims, "Negotiations remain our first option," the truth is that it is Abbas himself who walked away from the negotiating table and who continues to refuse to negotiate with Israel.
Abbas's unilateral plan makes crystal clear that, for the PA, the issue today is not 1967 and a question of borders, but rather 1948 and Israel's existence. After all, according to the Palestinian narrative as conveyed by Abbas, it is Israel's existence that is the Palestinian nakba, or catastrophe, not the Israeli occupation of the West Bank that began in 1967.
If the Palestinians had accepted the November 1947 UN general assembly partition plan, they could be celebrating their 63rd year of independence alongside Israel. There would have been no war and no Palestinian refugees. But that ship has sailed. Contrary to Abbas's plan, today the only pathway forward is at the negotiating table with Israel. And those negotiations are doomed to fail until Palestinian leaders compromise with their own mythology and accept a solution that provides for both a Palestinian Arab state and Israeli Jewish state living side by side in peace.
• Commenting on this article will remain open for 24 hours and may be closed overnight
* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Israeli professor's speech at UQAM..
Emmanuel Navon (www.navon.com)
Last week, Montréal University (l’Université du Québec à Montréal, or UQÀM) made me feel good: After I delivered my lecture there, I was surrounded by four bodyguards that rushed me through a backdoor and then into a car that drove off speedily. What fun: I felt like a head of State kept away from the mob or like James Bond narrowly escaping a Soviet trap. Alas for my ego, the true reason for this drama is that I am Israeli.
Although I was invited to give a talk on a non-controversial issue (the geopolitics of energy), what made my presence controversial is that I am Israeli. Some students and their representatives demanded the cancellation of my invitation on the grounds that hosting an Israeli would be an affront to the University, since Israel is “committing genocide in Palestine.” The faculty did not reject the demand outright. Rather, it organized a vote on the issue (a majority of professors rejected the cancellation of my lecture). Those students who unsuccessfully tried to prevent me from speaking at UQÀM posted around the campus a picture and a quote of mine with the purpose of discrediting me. But both the picture and the quote they picked actually made me proud. The picture (downloaded from my website) shows me in my IDF uniform. As for the quote (also taken from my website), it goes like this: “Saying that you are anti-Zionistic but not anti-Semitic is like saying that you have nothing against the Jews as long as they are vulnerable.” As a Jew, I am proud to be a reserve soldier in the IDF. And as a public speaker and author, I like it when people quote my favorite punch lines.
After I finished my talk, the “questions” from the audience were mostly hysterical (and long) tirades on the “crimes of Zionism.” One student accused me of being a “war criminal” because of my affiliation with Bar-Ilan University (I’m a fellow at BIU’s Center for International Communication). Since BIU runs a couple of programs at the Ariel Academic College, that makes me a war criminal. To which I replied that the Ariel Academic College, as opposed to the Tel-Aviv University campus (where I teach), is not built on the ruins of an Arab village, and that as opposed to my Arab colleagues in Israeli universities, I as a Jew cannot become a professor in an Arab country.
I kept going on with more embarrassing facts that made my accusers look silly. To the point, indeed, that they simply left the room –only to come back later on to scream out “Zionists, Murderers!” with loudspeakers.
“Anti-Semitism is the snobbism of the poor” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in his Réflexions sur la question juive. Today, anti-Zionism is the snobbism of the ignorant. On many campuses, all you need in order to acquire “respectability” without knowledge is to adopt an outraged attitude on Israel.
The audience at UQÀM was not only composed of Arab inciters and native simpletons. In fact, dozens of people came to me at the end of my talk (and Q&A session) to shake my hand and say thank you. Some were Jews, many were Christians. They all said the same thing to me: “Thank you for saying the truth, thank you for restoring our pride, thank you for giving us hope.”
Those people know that their freedom is at stake. So do more and more Europeans and Americans. They realize that the intellectual terrorism, irrationality and hypocrisy that characterize the treatment of Israel in the West are ultimately a threat to the West itself.
The list of résistants is growing by the day. It includes Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper who declared recently that “those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are a threat to all of us;”
Former Spanish Prime Minister José Mariá Aznar, who says that “Israel’s struggle is our struggle;” Spanish liberal journalist Pilar Rahola, who has written that “if Israel is destroyed, our freedom, modernity and culture will be destroyed;”
Italian member of parliament Fiama Nirenstein, who has declared that “the libelous accusations against Israel are an embarrassment to the world;”
French Socialist senator Jean-Pierre Plancade, who implores Israel to win for the sake of his freedom; former German Social-democrat senator Thilo Sarrazin, who claims that Islam is overtaking Germany; and British journalist Melanie Philips who shows how Britain is sinking into irrationality.
When de Gaulle exclaimed « Vive le Québec libre! » from a balcony at the Montréal City Hall on July 24, 1967, he meant « freedom » from Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Today, Québec’s freedom, and indeed the freedom of the West, is once again threatened by the hatred and irrationality of which the Jews are always the first, but not last, victims in line. Now that we Jews are sovereign and free, our former oppressors expect us to prevail for their own sake. What an irony –and what a responsibility.
Emmanuel Navon
6 April 2011
--
Last week, Montréal University (l’Université du Québec à Montréal, or UQÀM) made me feel good: After I delivered my lecture there, I was surrounded by four bodyguards that rushed me through a backdoor and then into a car that drove off speedily. What fun: I felt like a head of State kept away from the mob or like James Bond narrowly escaping a Soviet trap. Alas for my ego, the true reason for this drama is that I am Israeli.
Although I was invited to give a talk on a non-controversial issue (the geopolitics of energy), what made my presence controversial is that I am Israeli. Some students and their representatives demanded the cancellation of my invitation on the grounds that hosting an Israeli would be an affront to the University, since Israel is “committing genocide in Palestine.” The faculty did not reject the demand outright. Rather, it organized a vote on the issue (a majority of professors rejected the cancellation of my lecture). Those students who unsuccessfully tried to prevent me from speaking at UQÀM posted around the campus a picture and a quote of mine with the purpose of discrediting me. But both the picture and the quote they picked actually made me proud. The picture (downloaded from my website) shows me in my IDF uniform. As for the quote (also taken from my website), it goes like this: “Saying that you are anti-Zionistic but not anti-Semitic is like saying that you have nothing against the Jews as long as they are vulnerable.” As a Jew, I am proud to be a reserve soldier in the IDF. And as a public speaker and author, I like it when people quote my favorite punch lines.
After I finished my talk, the “questions” from the audience were mostly hysterical (and long) tirades on the “crimes of Zionism.” One student accused me of being a “war criminal” because of my affiliation with Bar-Ilan University (I’m a fellow at BIU’s Center for International Communication). Since BIU runs a couple of programs at the Ariel Academic College, that makes me a war criminal. To which I replied that the Ariel Academic College, as opposed to the Tel-Aviv University campus (where I teach), is not built on the ruins of an Arab village, and that as opposed to my Arab colleagues in Israeli universities, I as a Jew cannot become a professor in an Arab country.
I kept going on with more embarrassing facts that made my accusers look silly. To the point, indeed, that they simply left the room –only to come back later on to scream out “Zionists, Murderers!” with loudspeakers.
“Anti-Semitism is the snobbism of the poor” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in his Réflexions sur la question juive. Today, anti-Zionism is the snobbism of the ignorant. On many campuses, all you need in order to acquire “respectability” without knowledge is to adopt an outraged attitude on Israel.
The audience at UQÀM was not only composed of Arab inciters and native simpletons. In fact, dozens of people came to me at the end of my talk (and Q&A session) to shake my hand and say thank you. Some were Jews, many were Christians. They all said the same thing to me: “Thank you for saying the truth, thank you for restoring our pride, thank you for giving us hope.”
Those people know that their freedom is at stake. So do more and more Europeans and Americans. They realize that the intellectual terrorism, irrationality and hypocrisy that characterize the treatment of Israel in the West are ultimately a threat to the West itself.
The list of résistants is growing by the day. It includes Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper who declared recently that “those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are a threat to all of us;”
Former Spanish Prime Minister José Mariá Aznar, who says that “Israel’s struggle is our struggle;” Spanish liberal journalist Pilar Rahola, who has written that “if Israel is destroyed, our freedom, modernity and culture will be destroyed;”
Italian member of parliament Fiama Nirenstein, who has declared that “the libelous accusations against Israel are an embarrassment to the world;”
French Socialist senator Jean-Pierre Plancade, who implores Israel to win for the sake of his freedom; former German Social-democrat senator Thilo Sarrazin, who claims that Islam is overtaking Germany; and British journalist Melanie Philips who shows how Britain is sinking into irrationality.
When de Gaulle exclaimed « Vive le Québec libre! » from a balcony at the Montréal City Hall on July 24, 1967, he meant « freedom » from Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Today, Québec’s freedom, and indeed the freedom of the West, is once again threatened by the hatred and irrationality of which the Jews are always the first, but not last, victims in line. Now that we Jews are sovereign and free, our former oppressors expect us to prevail for their own sake. What an irony –and what a responsibility.
Emmanuel Navon
6 April 2011
--
Jerusalem is Mostly Pre-67 Lines, Mr. President
My Right Word
Just got off the phone with an American seeking out "perspective".
One point I made was that Obama, in fixing the '67 lines, then to be followed by Jerusalem doesn't make sense and is illogical. It hurts the entire peace process from an American standpoint (don't worry, I made other points regarding Yesha).
"Don't you grasp," says I, "that he's not only prejudging but he's telling the Arabs all of post-'67 Jerusalem goes to the Arabs and all that's left is to discuss 'arrangements' of getting to the Western Wall, the times of prayer, whether Hebrew U. can stay, if Hadassah can heal, etc.? Why should the Arabs not take advantage of that opening position given them?"
Not only prejudged but ripped Jerusalem out of Israel and is going head-to-head with the majority of the Jewish people.
Pinpointing final status as the 1967 lines awards Arab agression as there's not demand for any territorial compromise on their part.
^
Posted by YMedad at 12:44 PM
Labels: 1967 lines, Jerusalem
5 comments:
Morey Altman said...
I haven't tried working out the square dunams, but I have a feeling that if a Palestinian state ever came into being, with Israel retaining all of modern Jerusalem including built up Jewish neighbourhoods, the Palestinians would still retain half of the Corpus Seperatum from the Partition plan (1947). The other option would be to implement the plan's recommendation of a vote by Jews and Arabs within the Corpus Seperatum regarding the future of Jerusalem. My guess would be that the vast majority, including Palestinian Arabs in and around Bethlehem, would vote to incorporate the whole area into Israel. Now what would the UN think of THAT?
moreyaltman.blogspot.com
Sun May 22, 11:53:00 AM
YMedad said...
go here to see the land mass and make a call
Sun May 22, 01:04:00 PM
Morey Altman said...
To my eye, it would be a pretty fair split. We might owe them a dunam or two. Assuming they actually want to use UN resolution 242 as a starting point. Of course, it's an absurd idea.
"Hi, my grandfather was once a tenant in this building. He was offered a chance to buy his apartment for $25,000 in 1948 but he adamantly refused, and stormed out. So now I'd like the whole building, for the SAME price, and if you don't let me have it, I'll smash all your windows and threaten your family." Sound about right?
Sun May 22, 01:28:00 PM
Eliyahu m'Tsiyon said...
Morey, there were negotiations between Elias Freij, Christian mayor of Bethlehem before and after 1967, and Israeli officers with the purpose of annexing Bethlehem to Jerusalem [as it was part of the UN GA-proposed Jerusalem enclave, as you know]. Freij and many of his fellow Christian townsmen seem to have preferred being part of Israel with some sort of special status for Bethlehem [& maybe Beyt Sahur & Beyt Jallah too] to being part of an Arab Muslim state. But the State Dept got wind of these talks and shot them down. Since arafat took over Beyt Lehem in 12/1995, the Christian majority there has become a decided minority. Isn't peace wonderful?? Anyhow, I'm not sure that the present Muslim majority there would want to join Israel. Maybe you could suggest that the Christian emigrants from the town should be able to vote on its future as part of Greater Jerusalem.
Sun May 22, 03:12:00 PM
Just got off the phone with an American seeking out "perspective".
One point I made was that Obama, in fixing the '67 lines, then to be followed by Jerusalem doesn't make sense and is illogical. It hurts the entire peace process from an American standpoint (don't worry, I made other points regarding Yesha).
"Don't you grasp," says I, "that he's not only prejudging but he's telling the Arabs all of post-'67 Jerusalem goes to the Arabs and all that's left is to discuss 'arrangements' of getting to the Western Wall, the times of prayer, whether Hebrew U. can stay, if Hadassah can heal, etc.? Why should the Arabs not take advantage of that opening position given them?"
Not only prejudged but ripped Jerusalem out of Israel and is going head-to-head with the majority of the Jewish people.
Pinpointing final status as the 1967 lines awards Arab agression as there's not demand for any territorial compromise on their part.
^
Posted by YMedad at 12:44 PM
Labels: 1967 lines, Jerusalem
5 comments:
Morey Altman said...
I haven't tried working out the square dunams, but I have a feeling that if a Palestinian state ever came into being, with Israel retaining all of modern Jerusalem including built up Jewish neighbourhoods, the Palestinians would still retain half of the Corpus Seperatum from the Partition plan (1947). The other option would be to implement the plan's recommendation of a vote by Jews and Arabs within the Corpus Seperatum regarding the future of Jerusalem. My guess would be that the vast majority, including Palestinian Arabs in and around Bethlehem, would vote to incorporate the whole area into Israel. Now what would the UN think of THAT?
moreyaltman.blogspot.com
Sun May 22, 11:53:00 AM
YMedad said...
go here to see the land mass and make a call
Sun May 22, 01:04:00 PM
Morey Altman said...
To my eye, it would be a pretty fair split. We might owe them a dunam or two. Assuming they actually want to use UN resolution 242 as a starting point. Of course, it's an absurd idea.
"Hi, my grandfather was once a tenant in this building. He was offered a chance to buy his apartment for $25,000 in 1948 but he adamantly refused, and stormed out. So now I'd like the whole building, for the SAME price, and if you don't let me have it, I'll smash all your windows and threaten your family." Sound about right?
Sun May 22, 01:28:00 PM
Eliyahu m'Tsiyon said...
Morey, there were negotiations between Elias Freij, Christian mayor of Bethlehem before and after 1967, and Israeli officers with the purpose of annexing Bethlehem to Jerusalem [as it was part of the UN GA-proposed Jerusalem enclave, as you know]. Freij and many of his fellow Christian townsmen seem to have preferred being part of Israel with some sort of special status for Bethlehem [& maybe Beyt Sahur & Beyt Jallah too] to being part of an Arab Muslim state. But the State Dept got wind of these talks and shot them down. Since arafat took over Beyt Lehem in 12/1995, the Christian majority there has become a decided minority. Isn't peace wonderful?? Anyhow, I'm not sure that the present Muslim majority there would want to join Israel. Maybe you could suggest that the Christian emigrants from the town should be able to vote on its future as part of Greater Jerusalem.
Sun May 22, 03:12:00 PM
Sunday, May 22, 2011
PA to pay salaries to all terrorists in Israeli prisons
Your taxpayer dollars at work, America! Yes, lets finance our executioners while burying our only ally in the region. That's sound foreign policy.
PA to pay salaries
to all terrorists in Israeli prisons
Financial aid from many donor countries
goes directly to PA budget from which salaries are paid
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
A law published in the official Palestinian Authority Registry last month grants all Palestinians and Israeli Arabs imprisoned in Israel for terror crimes a monthly salary from the PA. The Arabic word the PA uses for this payment is "ratib," meaning "salary." Palestinian Media Watch has reported numerous times on Palestinian Authority glorification of terrorists serving time in Israeli prisons. Following the signing of this new law, the PA is now paying a salary to these prisoners.
The PA has defined by law which Palestinians would be considered "prisoners."
"Anyone imprisoned in the occupation's [Israel's] prisons as a result of his participation in the struggle against the occupation."
[Ch. 1 of Law of Prisoners, 2004/19, passed and published by the PA Chairman and Government, December 2004.
The Prisoners' Centre for Studies,www.alasra.ps Accessed May 9, 2011] In other words, all Palestinians in Israeli prisons for terror crimes officially join the PA payroll. According to the definition in the PA law, Palestinian car thieves in Israeli prisons will not receive a salary, but Hamas and Fatah terrorist murderers will.
The PA also gives a salary to Israeli Arabs convicted of terror crimes against Israel - the country of which they are citizens. PA benefits to Israeli Arab terrorists, in fact, are greater than the ones extended to Palestinian terrorists.
Those serving more than 20-year sentences will receive a greater PA salary than prisoners serving shorter sentences, the new PA law establishes. Salaries are to be paid from the day of arrest until release.
More than 6,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently serving time in Israeli prisons for terror-related offenses. Among those now eligible are Abdullah Barghouti, serving 67 life sentences; Hassan Salameh, serving 38 life sentences; and Jamal Abu Al-Hijja, serving nine life sentences, all of whom are imprisoned for planning suicide bombings. These three terrorists were recently called "heroic" by the official PA daily (see full article below.)
Funding by donor nations could enable payment of salaries to terrorists
The new PA law stipulates that payment of salaries "will be implemented... on the basis of available sources of funding." Accordingly, when the PA is short of cash for salaries, the salaries to the prisoners will be cut.
The PA has reported that the US, the EU, France, Britain, Ireland, Norway, Japan, India and the World Bank have all given money to the PA for its general budget in 2010-2011 (see donor country chart with amounts below).
Such direct funding could be part of the "available sources" for terrorist salaries, or could free money elsewhere in the PA budget that could be used for these salaries.
The list is not exclusive as it relies solely on reports in the official PA daily. The PA receives financial aid from many other donors as well.
Recently, the EU announced the transfer of 45 million euros to the PA for salaries:
"Some EUR 45 million of the funds from today's decision will go towards salaries and pensions of vital workers, mainly doctors, nurses and teachers."
[http://www.eu-un.europa.eu/articles/en/article_11009_en.htm
Accessed May 9, 2011]
In November 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the transfer of an additional grant to the PA's general budget:
"After the transfer of the $150 million, the sum which the American administration will have transferred as direct budgetary aid to the PA for 2010 totals $225 million."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 11, 2010]
Although the EU, US and other donors are not intentionally funding salaries for terrorists, their funding of other PA salaries and the budget makes money available in the general budget to pay terrorist salaries.
This Palestinian Authority law was enacted before the recent Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement. It was published in the official PA Registry on April 13, 2011.
The purpose of the PA salary:
1- A monthly salary to the prisoners while in prison "to provide for the needs of prisoners within Israeli prisons"
2- Additional benefits for released prisoners
3- Additional benefits for prisoners' families
4- Additional clause mandates funding "for the prisoners' legal needs"
Recipients: All prisoners involved in terror:
- All prisoners no matter what their crime or what their political/terror group affiliation receive the same monthly base salaries from the PA. Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners serve multiple life-sentences for murder. They all now receive a PA salary.
- The salary goes directly to the terrorist or the terrorist's family.
- The prisoners receive their salary from the time of arrest.
Additional salary:
- Married prisoners receive additional pay, as well as those with children.
- Arabs from Jerusalem and Israeli Arabs who are imprisoned for terror offenses, get an additional supplement of 300 Israeli Shekels (NIS) and 500 NIS respectively.
Funding:
- The PA law stipulates that the salaries are dependent on the PA having available cash.
The following is the article in the PA daily describing the new law:
"[Ali Abu Diak,] Secretary of the Central Bureau of the Prisoners' Movement, presented a concise review of the laws [concerning prisoners] published in vol. 90 of the official PA [Government] Registry, published on April 13, as follows:
1. Government resolution #19 of 2010...:
A released prisoner will be exempt from tuition fees at government schools and universities if he served a period of five years or more in prison. A released female prisoner who served at least three years in prison will be exempt from tuition fees at government schools and universities. These prisoners are entitled to transfer the exemption to one of their children, or to their spouse...
The Palestinian Authority is committed to providing the opportunity for academic study for prisoners in Israeli prisons, by covering all study expenses for all stages of university study available to prisoners.
A prisoner's children will be exempt from 80% of academic tuition fees if the prisoner was sentenced to at least 20 years and has been in prison for at least 5 years. Children of a female prisoner will be exempt from 80% of university tuition fees if the prisoner was sentenced to at least 10 years, and has served as least 3 years.
Every released prisoner will be exempt from governmental health insurance if he served at least 5 years in prison, and for female prisoners - at least 3 years. ...
2. Government resolution #21 of 2010, concerning the amendment to provide for the needs of prisoners within Israeli prisons:
a. Every prisoner will be paid a uniform sum linked to the cost of living index, as a monthly expenditure ...
b. Every prisoner will be paid a uniform sum of 400 [Israeli] Shekels for clothing. The sum will be paid twice a year, and will be added to the prisoner's salary...
3. Government resolution # 22 of 2010, concerning the amendment to provide for the prisoners' legal needs...
4. Government resolution # 23 of 2010 concerning the amendment on payment of a monthly salary to the prisoner:
Every prisoner will be granted a monthly salary, to be paid to him or to his family, on condition that he does not receive a salary from a [different] governmental or semi-governmental body or official institution... The salary will be paid to the prisoner from the date of his arrest, and a special supplement will be paid to prisoners from Jerusalem and from the Interior [i.e., Israeli Arabs]; a spousal supplement will be paid, and a special supplement for children up to the age of 18...
The minimum salary for a prisoner, to be paid to him from the beginning of his detention and for up to 3 years, is 1400 Shekels. Prisoners who have been imprisoned between 3 and 5 years will receive 2,000 Shekels. Those imprisoned between 5 and 10 years will receive 4,000 Shekels. Those imprisoned between 10 and 15 years will receive 6,000 Shekels. Those imprisoned between 15 and 20 years will receive 7,000 Shekels. Those imprisoned between 20 and 25 years will receive 8,000 Shekels. Those imprisoned between 25 and 30 years will receive 10,000 Shekels. Those who have been imprisoned 30 years or more will receive 12,000 Shekels.
A supplement of 300 Shekels will be added to the salary of every married prisoner, as well as a supplement for children up to the age of 18 in the amount of 50 Shekels for every boy or girl, in addition to a supplement for prisoners from Jerusalem in the amount of 300 Shekels, and a supplement for prisoners from the Interior [i.e., Israeli Arabs] in the amount of 500 Shekels ...
These regulations will be implemented from Jan. 1, 2011, on the basis of available sources of funding."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 15, 2011]
List of donor countries who contribute to PA's general budget
The list includes only those contributions reported in the PA press, and which were designated to the PA's general budget in 2010 or 2011. The list does not include the many other contributions made to the PA by these and other donor countries:
Donor Amount Source
�European Union �158.5 million euros �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, January 20, 2010
�Britain �60 million British pounds �Al-Ayyam, February 11, 2010
�India �10 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, April 26, 2010
�Norway �53 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, June 18, 2010
�France �19 million euros �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, June 22, 2010
�World Bank �40 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, October 1, 2010
�Japan �18.5 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, October 25, 2010
�European Union �41.4 million euros �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, October 28, 2010
�Britain �30 million British pounds �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, October 28, 2010
�United States �225 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, November 11, 2010
�Ireland �1.5 million euros �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, November 15, 2010
�Japan �11.9 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, December 28, 2010
The following is the report in the official PA daily calling prisoners "heroic":
"Family members of prisoners expressed heartfelt thanks to the directorate and staff of Voice of the Prisoners Radio, via the program 'On Birds' Wings', which is broadcast on Voice of the Prisoners. This [thanks] was due to the significant positive effect [of the station] on the mental state of the prisoners and their families, and especially the family members of prisoners who are not allowed visits. The families of the prisoners told the Prisoners' Centre for Studies that Voice of the Prisoners, [at] FM 107.9, represents an extremely important struggle and breaks the will of the prison guard in the face of the determination of the Palestinian people, which invents all methods of resistance, first and foremost the role of the media, considering the occupation's violations against the prisoners, and especially the withholding of visits for more than four years. The families of prisoners in solitary confinement, first and foremost the family of the prisoner Commander Ahmad Sa'adat, and the heroic prisoners Abbas and Abdallah Barghouti, Mahmoud Issa, Jamal Abu Al-Haija, Hassan Salameh and others, said that their sons wait for the program 'On Birds' Wings'."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 13, 2011]
Abdallah Barghouti - sentenced to 67 life sentences for involvement in terror attacks in which 66 Israelis were murdered - Sbarro restaurant (Aug. 9, 2001), Moment Caf� (March 9, 2002), and the triple attack at the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall (Dec. 1, 2001).
Jamal Abu Al-Hijja - 9 life sentences for involvement in suicide attacks in Hadera shopping mall (Oct. 26, 2005) and at Herzl Street in Netanya (Dec. 5, 2005)
Hassan Salameh - 38 life sentences. Was head of the terror infrastructure which carried out 2 attacks on no. 18 buses in Jerusalem (First attack on Feb. 25, 1996. Second attack on March 3, 1996), and the attack at the Ashkelon Junction hitchhike point (Feb. 25, 1996).
Mahmoud Issa - serving 3 life sentences. Member of the squad that kidnapped and murdered Israeli soldiers, including Nissim Toledano (Dec. 13, 1992).
PMW has not been able to find any information concerning Abbas Barghouti.
Excerpt from EU's announcement of additional aid to the PA:
"EU Commission approves additional � 85 million in support for Palestinian people in 2011"
"Summary: The European Commission has today decided to provide an additional financial package worth EUR 85 million for the occupied Palestinian territory under the 2011 budget. This comes in addition to the � 100 million already approved from European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument.
...
Some EUR 45 million of the funds from today's decision will go towards salaries and pensions of vital workers, mainly doctors, nurses and teachers. A further EUR 40 million will be allocated for social allowances to vulnerable Palestinian families. These funds come in addition to the EUR 60 million provided to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the EUR 40 million provided to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) at the beginning of the year. At the request of Prime Minister Fayyad these funds have been advanced by an accelerated procedure in order to meet the Authority's urgent financial needs and to respect the EU's commitment to being a regular and reliable donor."
[http://www.eu-un.europa.eu/articles/en/article_11009_en.htm
Accessed May 9, 2011
PA to pay salaries
to all terrorists in Israeli prisons
Financial aid from many donor countries
goes directly to PA budget from which salaries are paid
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
A law published in the official Palestinian Authority Registry last month grants all Palestinians and Israeli Arabs imprisoned in Israel for terror crimes a monthly salary from the PA. The Arabic word the PA uses for this payment is "ratib," meaning "salary." Palestinian Media Watch has reported numerous times on Palestinian Authority glorification of terrorists serving time in Israeli prisons. Following the signing of this new law, the PA is now paying a salary to these prisoners.
The PA has defined by law which Palestinians would be considered "prisoners."
"Anyone imprisoned in the occupation's [Israel's] prisons as a result of his participation in the struggle against the occupation."
[Ch. 1 of Law of Prisoners, 2004/19, passed and published by the PA Chairman and Government, December 2004.
The Prisoners' Centre for Studies,www.alasra.ps Accessed May 9, 2011] In other words, all Palestinians in Israeli prisons for terror crimes officially join the PA payroll. According to the definition in the PA law, Palestinian car thieves in Israeli prisons will not receive a salary, but Hamas and Fatah terrorist murderers will.
The PA also gives a salary to Israeli Arabs convicted of terror crimes against Israel - the country of which they are citizens. PA benefits to Israeli Arab terrorists, in fact, are greater than the ones extended to Palestinian terrorists.
Those serving more than 20-year sentences will receive a greater PA salary than prisoners serving shorter sentences, the new PA law establishes. Salaries are to be paid from the day of arrest until release.
More than 6,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently serving time in Israeli prisons for terror-related offenses. Among those now eligible are Abdullah Barghouti, serving 67 life sentences; Hassan Salameh, serving 38 life sentences; and Jamal Abu Al-Hijja, serving nine life sentences, all of whom are imprisoned for planning suicide bombings. These three terrorists were recently called "heroic" by the official PA daily (see full article below.)
Funding by donor nations could enable payment of salaries to terrorists
The new PA law stipulates that payment of salaries "will be implemented... on the basis of available sources of funding." Accordingly, when the PA is short of cash for salaries, the salaries to the prisoners will be cut.
The PA has reported that the US, the EU, France, Britain, Ireland, Norway, Japan, India and the World Bank have all given money to the PA for its general budget in 2010-2011 (see donor country chart with amounts below).
Such direct funding could be part of the "available sources" for terrorist salaries, or could free money elsewhere in the PA budget that could be used for these salaries.
The list is not exclusive as it relies solely on reports in the official PA daily. The PA receives financial aid from many other donors as well.
Recently, the EU announced the transfer of 45 million euros to the PA for salaries:
"Some EUR 45 million of the funds from today's decision will go towards salaries and pensions of vital workers, mainly doctors, nurses and teachers."
[http://www.eu-un.europa.eu/articles/en/article_11009_en.htm
Accessed May 9, 2011]
In November 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the transfer of an additional grant to the PA's general budget:
"After the transfer of the $150 million, the sum which the American administration will have transferred as direct budgetary aid to the PA for 2010 totals $225 million."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 11, 2010]
Although the EU, US and other donors are not intentionally funding salaries for terrorists, their funding of other PA salaries and the budget makes money available in the general budget to pay terrorist salaries.
This Palestinian Authority law was enacted before the recent Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement. It was published in the official PA Registry on April 13, 2011.
The purpose of the PA salary:
1- A monthly salary to the prisoners while in prison "to provide for the needs of prisoners within Israeli prisons"
2- Additional benefits for released prisoners
3- Additional benefits for prisoners' families
4- Additional clause mandates funding "for the prisoners' legal needs"
Recipients: All prisoners involved in terror:
- All prisoners no matter what their crime or what their political/terror group affiliation receive the same monthly base salaries from the PA. Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners serve multiple life-sentences for murder. They all now receive a PA salary.
- The salary goes directly to the terrorist or the terrorist's family.
- The prisoners receive their salary from the time of arrest.
Additional salary:
- Married prisoners receive additional pay, as well as those with children.
- Arabs from Jerusalem and Israeli Arabs who are imprisoned for terror offenses, get an additional supplement of 300 Israeli Shekels (NIS) and 500 NIS respectively.
Funding:
- The PA law stipulates that the salaries are dependent on the PA having available cash.
The following is the article in the PA daily describing the new law:
"[Ali Abu Diak,] Secretary of the Central Bureau of the Prisoners' Movement, presented a concise review of the laws [concerning prisoners] published in vol. 90 of the official PA [Government] Registry, published on April 13, as follows:
1. Government resolution #19 of 2010...:
A released prisoner will be exempt from tuition fees at government schools and universities if he served a period of five years or more in prison. A released female prisoner who served at least three years in prison will be exempt from tuition fees at government schools and universities. These prisoners are entitled to transfer the exemption to one of their children, or to their spouse...
The Palestinian Authority is committed to providing the opportunity for academic study for prisoners in Israeli prisons, by covering all study expenses for all stages of university study available to prisoners.
A prisoner's children will be exempt from 80% of academic tuition fees if the prisoner was sentenced to at least 20 years and has been in prison for at least 5 years. Children of a female prisoner will be exempt from 80% of university tuition fees if the prisoner was sentenced to at least 10 years, and has served as least 3 years.
Every released prisoner will be exempt from governmental health insurance if he served at least 5 years in prison, and for female prisoners - at least 3 years. ...
2. Government resolution #21 of 2010, concerning the amendment to provide for the needs of prisoners within Israeli prisons:
a. Every prisoner will be paid a uniform sum linked to the cost of living index, as a monthly expenditure ...
b. Every prisoner will be paid a uniform sum of 400 [Israeli] Shekels for clothing. The sum will be paid twice a year, and will be added to the prisoner's salary...
3. Government resolution # 22 of 2010, concerning the amendment to provide for the prisoners' legal needs...
4. Government resolution # 23 of 2010 concerning the amendment on payment of a monthly salary to the prisoner:
Every prisoner will be granted a monthly salary, to be paid to him or to his family, on condition that he does not receive a salary from a [different] governmental or semi-governmental body or official institution... The salary will be paid to the prisoner from the date of his arrest, and a special supplement will be paid to prisoners from Jerusalem and from the Interior [i.e., Israeli Arabs]; a spousal supplement will be paid, and a special supplement for children up to the age of 18...
The minimum salary for a prisoner, to be paid to him from the beginning of his detention and for up to 3 years, is 1400 Shekels. Prisoners who have been imprisoned between 3 and 5 years will receive 2,000 Shekels. Those imprisoned between 5 and 10 years will receive 4,000 Shekels. Those imprisoned between 10 and 15 years will receive 6,000 Shekels. Those imprisoned between 15 and 20 years will receive 7,000 Shekels. Those imprisoned between 20 and 25 years will receive 8,000 Shekels. Those imprisoned between 25 and 30 years will receive 10,000 Shekels. Those who have been imprisoned 30 years or more will receive 12,000 Shekels.
A supplement of 300 Shekels will be added to the salary of every married prisoner, as well as a supplement for children up to the age of 18 in the amount of 50 Shekels for every boy or girl, in addition to a supplement for prisoners from Jerusalem in the amount of 300 Shekels, and a supplement for prisoners from the Interior [i.e., Israeli Arabs] in the amount of 500 Shekels ...
These regulations will be implemented from Jan. 1, 2011, on the basis of available sources of funding."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 15, 2011]
List of donor countries who contribute to PA's general budget
The list includes only those contributions reported in the PA press, and which were designated to the PA's general budget in 2010 or 2011. The list does not include the many other contributions made to the PA by these and other donor countries:
Donor Amount Source
�European Union �158.5 million euros �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, January 20, 2010
�Britain �60 million British pounds �Al-Ayyam, February 11, 2010
�India �10 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, April 26, 2010
�Norway �53 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, June 18, 2010
�France �19 million euros �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, June 22, 2010
�World Bank �40 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, October 1, 2010
�Japan �18.5 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, October 25, 2010
�European Union �41.4 million euros �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, October 28, 2010
�Britain �30 million British pounds �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, October 28, 2010
�United States �225 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, November 11, 2010
�Ireland �1.5 million euros �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, November 15, 2010
�Japan �11.9 million dollars �Al-Hayat Al- Jadida, December 28, 2010
The following is the report in the official PA daily calling prisoners "heroic":
"Family members of prisoners expressed heartfelt thanks to the directorate and staff of Voice of the Prisoners Radio, via the program 'On Birds' Wings', which is broadcast on Voice of the Prisoners. This [thanks] was due to the significant positive effect [of the station] on the mental state of the prisoners and their families, and especially the family members of prisoners who are not allowed visits. The families of the prisoners told the Prisoners' Centre for Studies that Voice of the Prisoners, [at] FM 107.9, represents an extremely important struggle and breaks the will of the prison guard in the face of the determination of the Palestinian people, which invents all methods of resistance, first and foremost the role of the media, considering the occupation's violations against the prisoners, and especially the withholding of visits for more than four years. The families of prisoners in solitary confinement, first and foremost the family of the prisoner Commander Ahmad Sa'adat, and the heroic prisoners Abbas and Abdallah Barghouti, Mahmoud Issa, Jamal Abu Al-Haija, Hassan Salameh and others, said that their sons wait for the program 'On Birds' Wings'."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 13, 2011]
Abdallah Barghouti - sentenced to 67 life sentences for involvement in terror attacks in which 66 Israelis were murdered - Sbarro restaurant (Aug. 9, 2001), Moment Caf� (March 9, 2002), and the triple attack at the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall (Dec. 1, 2001).
Jamal Abu Al-Hijja - 9 life sentences for involvement in suicide attacks in Hadera shopping mall (Oct. 26, 2005) and at Herzl Street in Netanya (Dec. 5, 2005)
Hassan Salameh - 38 life sentences. Was head of the terror infrastructure which carried out 2 attacks on no. 18 buses in Jerusalem (First attack on Feb. 25, 1996. Second attack on March 3, 1996), and the attack at the Ashkelon Junction hitchhike point (Feb. 25, 1996).
Mahmoud Issa - serving 3 life sentences. Member of the squad that kidnapped and murdered Israeli soldiers, including Nissim Toledano (Dec. 13, 1992).
PMW has not been able to find any information concerning Abbas Barghouti.
Excerpt from EU's announcement of additional aid to the PA:
"EU Commission approves additional � 85 million in support for Palestinian people in 2011"
"Summary: The European Commission has today decided to provide an additional financial package worth EUR 85 million for the occupied Palestinian territory under the 2011 budget. This comes in addition to the � 100 million already approved from European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument.
...
Some EUR 45 million of the funds from today's decision will go towards salaries and pensions of vital workers, mainly doctors, nurses and teachers. A further EUR 40 million will be allocated for social allowances to vulnerable Palestinian families. These funds come in addition to the EUR 60 million provided to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the EUR 40 million provided to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) at the beginning of the year. At the request of Prime Minister Fayyad these funds have been advanced by an accelerated procedure in order to meet the Authority's urgent financial needs and to respect the EU's commitment to being a regular and reliable donor."
[http://www.eu-un.europa.eu/articles/en/article_11009_en.htm
Accessed May 9, 2011
What Does Obama Gain by Snubbing Israel?
Lowell Ponte
American politics underwent a tectonic shift this week, a change that apparently reflects a huge shift in political money and global power.
Breaking with more than half a century of bipartisan U.S. policy on the Middle East, President Barack Obama appeared to turn against our longtime ally Israel.
He called for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be based on Israel retreating to its pre-1967 borders, a boundary to be altered only by "a few swaps" of land between the parties.
To those of us who have stood near the old Syrian cannon emplacements on the Golan Heights looking down on the Galilee and Tiberius, or who have landed at Israel's international airport within 3 miles of the pre-1967 border, or who understand that this would produce an indefensible Israel only 8 miles wide at its narrowest point, Obama's proposal seems bizarre. As recently as 2005, President George W. Bush promised Israel, in exchange for new concessions, that the United States would not press Israel to return to the 1967 borders.
This week President Obama broke that pledge by our government.
Obama's new pressure on Israel, he knows, will alienate many American Jews. Jews comprise only about 2 percent of America's population, but this mostly-Democratic bloc turns out to vote, and 80 percent in 2008 voted for him.
President Obama, I believe, would have risked losing a large share of Jewish support only if he believed it could be offset elsewhere.
In 2008 he had an active outreach to America's Muslim community. One of his campaign workers stirred brief controversy by attending a gathering of radical Islamist Muslims. The number of American Muslims is growing.
A greater concern, however, is the mountain of cash an American president who turned against Israel might harvest from donors in oil-rich Muslim nations.
Obama is not the first Democratic presidential candidate to pander for Muslim petrodollars.
Sen. John Kerry during his 2004 presidential campaign received more than $180,000, from Hassan Nemazee. This Iranian-American investor raised a cool $250,000 for Al Gore in November 1995, and he and his family provided another $150,000 to Democrats during the mid-1990s.
Six Nemazee family members and friends (including the caretaker of his 12-acre Katonah, N.Y., estate) donated a total of $60,000 — the maximum legally allowed — to President Bill Clinton's legal defense fund.
In the closing days of 1998, Clinton named Nemazee his ambassador-designate to Argentina. Hillary Clinton embraced the Muslim moneyman at a January 1999 White House celebration of the Islamic holiday Eid.
The Senate refused to confirm the controversial nominee after a Forbes magazine investigation exposed Nemazee's questionable business dealings.
The Forbes investigation documented how, in order to get his hands on public-employee pension fund monies allocated for minority managers, the U.S.-born Nemazee had falsely claimed to be a Hispanic of Venezuelan background and, on another occasion, an Asian-Indian.
Nemazee's cynical lust for money could be frightening as well as laughable. He is a founding board member of the Iranian American Political Action Committee (IAPAC), which seeks to create friendly and lucrative business relationships with the medieval theocratic dictatorship now ruling Iran.
Iran is, of course, an "axis of evil" nation that seeks to acquire nuclear weapons and is on our State Department's official list of nations that support terrorism. Nemazee sought to enrich himself by further enriching the power-mad Mullahs ruling Iran.
"The founding member of this group is Mr. Hassan Nemazee, an American of Iranian origin and one discredited, and well-known agent of the Islamic Republic, within the Iranian community in the United States," wrote opponent of the Iran regime Aryo B. Pirouznia of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran. "Their [IAPAC's] agenda in their own words is, 'how relations between the Islamic Republic and the United States can be restored in support of the Islamic Republic and the revolution.'"
From now until 2012 President Obama aims to raise $1 billion for his re-election. In 2008 the Obama campaign raised more than $450 million, with nearly half coming in contributions of less than $200 that were not required to be reported by the donor's name.
In some instances Obama staffers reportedly held handfuls of identical envelopes full of such campaign contributions.
In 2012, do not weep over how much Jewish money the president might have lost. Instead, watch to see how much Islamist and Muslim money Obama might gain by turning against Israel.
Lowell Ponte is co-author, with Craig R. Smith, of "The Inflation Deception: Six Ways Government Tricks Us, and Seven Ways to Stop It," in bookstores this June.
© Newsmax. All rights reserved.
American politics underwent a tectonic shift this week, a change that apparently reflects a huge shift in political money and global power.
Breaking with more than half a century of bipartisan U.S. policy on the Middle East, President Barack Obama appeared to turn against our longtime ally Israel.
He called for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be based on Israel retreating to its pre-1967 borders, a boundary to be altered only by "a few swaps" of land between the parties.
To those of us who have stood near the old Syrian cannon emplacements on the Golan Heights looking down on the Galilee and Tiberius, or who have landed at Israel's international airport within 3 miles of the pre-1967 border, or who understand that this would produce an indefensible Israel only 8 miles wide at its narrowest point, Obama's proposal seems bizarre. As recently as 2005, President George W. Bush promised Israel, in exchange for new concessions, that the United States would not press Israel to return to the 1967 borders.
This week President Obama broke that pledge by our government.
Obama's new pressure on Israel, he knows, will alienate many American Jews. Jews comprise only about 2 percent of America's population, but this mostly-Democratic bloc turns out to vote, and 80 percent in 2008 voted for him.
President Obama, I believe, would have risked losing a large share of Jewish support only if he believed it could be offset elsewhere.
In 2008 he had an active outreach to America's Muslim community. One of his campaign workers stirred brief controversy by attending a gathering of radical Islamist Muslims. The number of American Muslims is growing.
A greater concern, however, is the mountain of cash an American president who turned against Israel might harvest from donors in oil-rich Muslim nations.
Obama is not the first Democratic presidential candidate to pander for Muslim petrodollars.
Sen. John Kerry during his 2004 presidential campaign received more than $180,000, from Hassan Nemazee. This Iranian-American investor raised a cool $250,000 for Al Gore in November 1995, and he and his family provided another $150,000 to Democrats during the mid-1990s.
Six Nemazee family members and friends (including the caretaker of his 12-acre Katonah, N.Y., estate) donated a total of $60,000 — the maximum legally allowed — to President Bill Clinton's legal defense fund.
In the closing days of 1998, Clinton named Nemazee his ambassador-designate to Argentina. Hillary Clinton embraced the Muslim moneyman at a January 1999 White House celebration of the Islamic holiday Eid.
The Senate refused to confirm the controversial nominee after a Forbes magazine investigation exposed Nemazee's questionable business dealings.
The Forbes investigation documented how, in order to get his hands on public-employee pension fund monies allocated for minority managers, the U.S.-born Nemazee had falsely claimed to be a Hispanic of Venezuelan background and, on another occasion, an Asian-Indian.
Nemazee's cynical lust for money could be frightening as well as laughable. He is a founding board member of the Iranian American Political Action Committee (IAPAC), which seeks to create friendly and lucrative business relationships with the medieval theocratic dictatorship now ruling Iran.
Iran is, of course, an "axis of evil" nation that seeks to acquire nuclear weapons and is on our State Department's official list of nations that support terrorism. Nemazee sought to enrich himself by further enriching the power-mad Mullahs ruling Iran.
"The founding member of this group is Mr. Hassan Nemazee, an American of Iranian origin and one discredited, and well-known agent of the Islamic Republic, within the Iranian community in the United States," wrote opponent of the Iran regime Aryo B. Pirouznia of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran. "Their [IAPAC's] agenda in their own words is, 'how relations between the Islamic Republic and the United States can be restored in support of the Islamic Republic and the revolution.'"
From now until 2012 President Obama aims to raise $1 billion for his re-election. In 2008 the Obama campaign raised more than $450 million, with nearly half coming in contributions of less than $200 that were not required to be reported by the donor's name.
In some instances Obama staffers reportedly held handfuls of identical envelopes full of such campaign contributions.
In 2012, do not weep over how much Jewish money the president might have lost. Instead, watch to see how much Islamist and Muslim money Obama might gain by turning against Israel.
Lowell Ponte is co-author, with Craig R. Smith, of "The Inflation Deception: Six Ways Government Tricks Us, and Seven Ways to Stop It," in bookstores this June.
© Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)