Writing The Wrongs

'PA incitement is confidence destroying measure'

2012-01-30T07:00:00.000+02:00

HERB KEINON

Israel tells Palestinians its flexibility on territory dependent on their flexibility regarding security requirements.

Description: Prime Minister Binyamin NetanyahuBy Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post

Palestinian Authority incitement is poisoning the atmosphere and is tantamount to “confidence destroying measures,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told visiting Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore on Sunday.

Netanyahu’s comments came just hours after he sounded particularly downbeat in the cabinet regarding the diplomatic process, informing his ministers that signs of progress were not “especially good.”

The Palestinian Authority has threatened not to renew low-level talks that began this month in Jordan betweenNetanyahu’s envoy Yitzhak Molcho and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat unless Israel freezes settlement construction and agrees to the June 4, 1967, lines as the basis for negotiations.Speaking before a meeting with Gilmore, Netanyahu cited the PA’s official television broadcast of a program this week in which the terrorists who murdered five members of the Fogel family in Itamar last March were glorified.

Related:

· Analysis: Low-level talks likely to continue

· A necessary act of futility

The PA television program, he said, portrayed the terrorists as martyrs and heroes, just days after the PA’s mufti in Jerusalemquoted from a Muslim text calling for the murder of Jews.

“I think this is the wrong way to go. We demand a prompt condemnation; I hope you demand a condemnation because the only way to move to peace is to prepare our people for peace and not for brutal terror,” the prime minister said.

Later, during the meeting with Gilmore, Netanyahu said that while many ask Israel to take confidence building measures toward the Palestinians, the type of incitement being aired in the PA was destroying Israel’s confidence.

Netanyahu told his guest that Israel hoped the low-level talks that began this month would continue.

“We’re prepared to continue these talks, we hope the Palestinian Authority decides to resume the talks and back away from terror and glorification of killers,” Netanyahu said.

A similar message was relayed in a meeting later with visiting Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird. At that meeting,Netanyahu said the international community should urge the PA not to form a unity government with Hamas. He also praised President Shimon Peres for saying at the World Economic forum in Davos on Saturday that Turkey was providing Hamas with hundreds of millions of dollars.

“This is a matter of concern for us,” Netanyahu said.

Discussions with both men dealt extensively with thePalestinians.

The prime minister told his cabinet earlier in the day that thePalestinians – who want to see Israel present concrete proposals on the border issues – “refuse to even discuss Israel’s security needs.”

During the five rounds of talks in Jordan between Molcho and Erekat, Israel presented its overriding principles, the first being that it would not take any steps that endangered its security, according to Israeli officials. What that meant, Molcho said, was that if the Palestinians continued to say that there could not be any IDF presence in the Jordan Valley in a peace deal, that would impact Israel’s ability to show flexibility on the territorial issue.

In other words, the more the Palestinians came toward Israel on security issues, the more Israel could be flexible on territorial ones. Israel would not, however, draw a line on a map without first knowing what the security arrangements would be.

Another principle Molcho articulated was that wherever the lines will be drawn, the vast majority of the Jewish population beyond the Green Line in the West Bank will be drawn into Israel, and the vast majority of Palestinians will be inside a future Palestinian state.

Molcho said that because of the historic, religious and emotive nature of Jerusalem, that issue will have to be dealt with separately.

In a related issue, UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday for a two-day visit that will take him to Jerusalem, Ramallah and Gaza.

He is also scheduled to address the 12th-annual Herzliya Conference on Thursday evening.

Diplomatic officials said Ban was not expected to come with any concrete proposal, but rather would be on a fact-finding mission. He visited Lebanon earlier this month.

Last week in New York, while announcing the visit, Ban said he would “encourage both sides to re-engage in earnest and create a positive atmosphere for moving forward.”

Florida Stands with Israel

2012-01-29T05:51:00.003+02:00

The Iconoclast

Florida citizen lobbyists attended a prayer breakfast yesterday at the University Club on the campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee. The prayer breakfast was sponsored by Christian Family Coalition (CFC). Present were representatives of the Southeastern region of the Zionist Organizations of America (ZOA), Christians and Jews United for Israel, Americans for a Safe Israel. Among the speakers at the kickoff of a day of citizen lobbying with Florida legislators were GOP Presidential hopeful former US Senate Majority leader from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum, Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos and House Speaker Dean Cannon. Haridopolos had just come back from a trip to Israel. Santorum is an unabashed friend of Israel from his Congressional Days. While the CFC lobbying was focused on social issues, they also were supporting a Florida Stands with Israel resolution. The Florida resolution is modeled on one authored by State Rep. Alan Clemmons of Myrtle Beach and unanimously passed by the South Carolina legislature last session. The South Carolina support for Israel resolution has sparked controversy over whether its passage will vault support for the Jewish state into a ‘wedge issue’ in the 2012 Presidential and Congressional races. The Democrats have already raised that concern over GOP intentions. The Jewish Week of New York noted this in a recent article, “Dems ‘welcome’ GOP Contenders to Florida:”

Republicans are trying to make Israel a wedge issue among Jewish voters and contributors this year, especially in Florida with its large Jewish population.

In a conference call with the Jewish Week and other reporters from Anglo-Jewish and Israeli media, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), the chair of the Democratic National Committee, and former Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) accused Republicans of “lying and distorting” the President’s record on Israel.

Support for Israel was recently condoned by the Republican National Committee (RNC) at its winter meetings in New Orleans. The group endorsed a resolution introduced by South Carolina RNC Committeewoman, Cindy Costa. That resolution contained language that was criticized by some on the left as effectively supporting a one state solution, the Jewish State of Israel. An article on The Third Way (TTW) website, “GOP Officially Endorses One State Solution”, authored by Mitchell Plitnick, noted this excerpt from the GOP endorsed resolution:

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the members of this body support Israel in their natural and God-given right of self-governance and self-defense upon their own lands, recognizing that Israel is neither an attacking force nor an occupier of the lands of others; and that peace can be afforded the region only through a united Israel governed under one law for all people.

TTW author Plitnick immediately jumped to the conclusion that this meant “there is no interpretation possible other than that the RNC is also advocating complete Israeli annexation of the West Bank, including granting citizenship to the Palestinians living there.” Neither Plitnick nor other critics recognize the legitimate rights of over 650,000 Jews and Christians in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem.

The news has yet to sink in with Plitnick and other pro-Palestinian supporters that the PLO-Fatah and PA President Abbas have effectively abandoned further peace plan discussions following meetings with Israeli officials in Jordan that ended on Wednesday, January 25th. Note this Jewish Press report, “Peace Talks Over, Abbas said:”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared peace talks with Israel over on Wednesday, ending a series of low-level meetings that brought no tangible results despite pressure from the United States, the European Union and the talks’ Jordanian hosts.

[. . .]

Even before the meeting on Wednesday, PA and Israeli officials declared the talks fruitless, with each side trying to portray the other as the recalcitrant one.

GOP Presidential hopeful, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, during the final Florida primary debate in Jacksonville on Thursday, January 26th expressed the concerns of many Floridians captured in this CBS News report:

The former governor said Mr. Obama "disrespected Benjamin Netanyahu," for announcing a major policy change the day before a bilateral meeting in the White House.

"I think he threw Israel under the bus with regards to defining the '67 borders as a starting point of negotiations," Romney said.

“I think he has time and time again shown distance from Israel, and that has created, in my view, a greater sense of aggression on the part of the Palestinians," Romney said. "I will stand with our friend, Israel."

The Florida Stands with Israel Resolution, developed under the auspices of the ZOA, is a hybrid. It is based in part on the original South Carolina proposal authored by State Rep. Alan Clemmons but with attention to the legal rights of the State of Israel under international law.

Given soundings over the past few weeks and a number of co-sponsor ‘dear colleague’ letters that have been signed by both Democratic and Republican Florida State legislators, the Stand with Israel Resolution hopefully may replicate the unanimity displayed by the South Carolina legislature vote last year.

The Florida Stands with Israel resolution (HR 1447/SR 1396) has the following objectives:

To encourage peace by promoting the rule of law within Israel and the international community;
To recognize the legal and historic facts that support Israel’s right to self-determination and self-defense on the entirety of its lands; and,
To recognize that Israel and America share the same values and enemies, and remain the greatest of allies.

The factual basis in support of the Florida Stands with Israel resolution is grounded in recognition of Israel’s sovereignty and self defense under International law. Specifically:

The unanimous support of 52 members of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922;
Concurrent resolutions of both Houses of the US Congress endorsing Israel’s rights passed on June 30, 1922 and signed by President Harding on September 21, 1922; and,
Article 80 of the UN Charter that implicitly recognizes by reference the Mandate for Palestine of the predecessor League of Nations.

Read the full text of the Florida Stands with Israel Senate Resolution SR-1396 introduced by Sen. Alan Hays (Dist 20), here. - http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2012/1396/BillText/Filed/PDF

The citizen lobbyists of the CFC and Jewish Zionist advocates reminded Florida Senators and Representatives that, today, January 27th was International Holocaust Remembrance Day designated by the UN General Assembly in 2005. January 27th is the 67th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp by advancing Russian forces, who found less than 7,000 survivors of the more than 1.4 million Jewish men, women and children murdered by the Nazi SS in unspeakable ways. They noted the comments of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Auschwitz on Yom Ha Shoah April 23, 1998, “at the time the Jews didn’t have a state, nor the political force to protect themselves.”

As the Florida citizen lobbyists reminded their State legislators, “millions of Christians and Jews support the bastion of the Jewish State of Israel”.

The Florida legislature ends its session on March 9th. Let’s hope that the Florida Stands with Israel resolution passes unanimously and becomes a model for adoption by other state legislatures across the US and ultimately, the US Congress.

Into The Fray: A study in impotence

2012-01-28T15:51:00.001+02:00

MARTIN SHERMAN, JPOST

Israel’s diplomatic reaction to recent charges that its water policy is racist exposes a preference for passivity over preemption.
The politics of water in the Middle East By Courtesy
Water reveals a new apartheid in the Middle East. The 450,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank use as much or more water than some 2.3 million Palestinians… even if only a few dare to use the word, all indications are that the Middle East is the scene of a new apartheid…. And in this situation, water is a particular element of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. – Excerpt from the French parliamentary report on “The Geopolitics of Water”

My most recent columns have been devoted to analyzing Israel’s public diplomacy, the reasons for its manifest ineptitude, and the mechanisms that produce this abysmal performance.

Last week, by coincidence, an illustrative example, underscoring precisely what I have been trying to convey, broke into the headlines.

It came in the form of a French parliamentary report on Israel’s water policy, authored by Jean Glavany, a Socialist member of the National Assembly, and accusing Israel of using water as an instrument of apartheid and oppression against the Palestinians. Responses, recriminations, repudiations
The report sent Israeli officialdom into a tizzy.

The media were peppered with responses, repudiations and recriminations. Foreign Ministry officials claimed to have been unaware of the document until several days after its posting on the National Assembly website.

One diplomatic source characterized the report as “a serious mishap that… has seriously damaged Israel’s image in France.” The embassy in Paris was accused of falling asleep on the job for not alerting the Israeli authorities of the impending publication and the malevolent nature of its contents.

Israel robustly repudiated the report. The Foreign Ministry spokesman condemned it – correctly – as “unacceptable,” “loaded with the language of vicious propaganda, far removed from any professional criticism” and tainted with “blatant tendentiousness.”

Moreover, according to official Israeli sources, some members of the working group involved in compiling the report disassociated themselves from its anti-Israel tenor.

However, the damage had already been done. Israel had – once again – been linked to the dreaded “A-word.”

Cyberspace was replete with websites seizing on the report as yet another affirmation of the odious nature of the Jewish state and its dastardly discrimination against the “other.”

Delusional derogatory drivel
Israel’s firm rebuttal of the report was factually correct and morally justified. This was a document that comes as close to unadulterated, uninformed drivel as the written word can get, with accusations as malicious as they were mendacious.

Its allegations range from the highly implausible to the totally impossible. For example, one of its more ludicrous allegations is that Israel’s security barrier – “the wall”– “prevents Palestinian access to the Jordan River.”

However – as the most cursory glance at any map will show – the “wall” is located along, or close to, the 1967 Green Line, so it cannot constitute an impediment of any kind to Palestinian access to the Jordan River.

The river has anyway been reduced to a highly polluted trickle south of the Kinneret.

As such, it has been insignificant as a water source for decades, and access to it – or lack thereof – is irrelevant to Palestinians’ hydrological situation. So contrary to the impression the report creates, it has no bearing on the quantity of water available to them.

Only marginally less absurd is the document’s supposition that avaricious hydrological calculations lay behind the construction of “the wall,” to ensure Israeli supplies and to prevent Palestinians from extracting water from sites in the adjacent “buffer” zone.

In fact, construction of the security barrier was undertaken solely in response to the horrific Palestinian terrorism that took place between 2000 and 2003. It seems that a few “minor” details eluded Monsieur Glavany’s memory when forming his opinion of the function of the security barrier and the events that lead to its construction – such as the Passover massacre at Park Hotel in Netanya, and the carnage at the Sbarro restaurant and the Moment Café (both in Jerusalem), the Dizengoff Center and the Dolphinarium (both in Tel Aviv), and at the Beit Lid and Meggido junctions, to name but a few.

Had it not been for Palestinian terrorism there would have been no barrier. To suggest otherwise is either ignominious or ignorant.

Passivity over preemption
Despite all this, the French hydro-report episode was indeed a diplomatic debacle for Israel, not because of what was done after its publication, but because of what was not done before it.

Once again, Israeli diplomacy was seen to be slamming the stable doors long after the horses had bolted, reacting to events rather than anticipating them. It was a classic illustration of what I described in last week’s column, of “Israeli [diplomatic] endeavors [being] reduced to defensive tactical responses, chasing events rather than preempting them, and doomed to failure.”

There is little room for excuses, particularly when it comes to the water issue.

For while it may not have been possible to predict publication of this particular report at this particular time, the appearance of some similar document from some source or other was a near certainty, which should have been foreseen and preempted.

Sense of déjà vu
The situation that has arisen in the wake of the Glavany report has an eerie sense of déjà vu about it. It was barely two years ago that a similar document was produced by Amnesty International, brandishing similarly baseless accusations berating Israel’s water policy as an instrument of apartheid.

The report immediately became a centerpiece of a US lecture tour by Omar Barghouti, arguably the most prominent leader of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. Flyers billing his talks splashed the title: “Thirsting for Justice: Israel’s control of water as a tool of apartheid and means of ethnic cleansing.”

The Israel diplomatic establishment had ample warning of Barghouti’s appearances.

Despite this, no action was taken on suggestions – including from this writer – to preempt his appearances with the massive distribution of factual material, refuting the cavalcade of distortions, falsehood, exaggerations, omissions and half-truths that comprised his talk.

Lessons unlearned
The lessons of the Amnesty/Barghouti episode remained unlearned.

Rather than adopt an offense strategic initiative to remove Israel’s water policy for the list of topics that can be used to denigrate the country, those charged with the conduct of its public diplomacy have opted for defensive tactical responses to hostile initiatives. Rather than launch an ongoing enterprise to set, a priori, the context in which later events are interpreted/perceived, they have opted to fend off individual accusations and condemnations, made in the inimical context prevailing today.

This is particularly exasperating in the case of water, which is one of the topics most amenable to mounting such an preemptive enterprise.

For while it is always possible to find heartrending anecdotal evidence involving highly localized incidents in which an elderly Palestinian may have been inappropriately treated, or in which the IDF damaged a cistern, these in no way reflect the intent or consequences of Israeli policy. This can only be fairly assessed by the overall impact that policy has had on the Palestinians’ water situation.

Here the facts are unequivocal. They should be used to quash any allegation of discriminatory deprivation, as part on an ongoing proactive initiative to inform opinion-makers, hydro-professionals and the general public, and to create a context in which any accusatory documents are likely to be dismissed with the contempt they richly deserve.

Facts, figures, fabrications
The Palestinians’ hydrological situation improved beyond all recognition under Israeli administration, not only in absolute terms compared to initial pre-“occupation” conditions, but in relative terms compared to that of Israelis.

Whether one focuses on overall consumption of fresh water; per capita consumption of fresh water; consumption of fresh water relative to Israelis; accessibility of running water to households; the area under agricultural cultivation; or the size of the agricultural product, the conditions for the Palestinians have been dramatically enhanced by Israeli rule.

Between 1967 and 2006, the overall annual consumption of fresh water by “West Bank” Palestinians grew by 300 percent, from 60 million cubic meters to 180 m.cu.m. The annual per capita consumption in the same period rose by almost 15%, from 86 cubic meters to 100 cu.m.

Overall consumption by Israel dropped by 15% (from 1,411 m.cu.m. to 1,211 m.cu.m.), while the per capita consumption plummeted by 70% (from 508 cu.m to 170 cu.m.), a remarkable decrease made possible not only by more efficient usage but also by massive replacement of fresh water by recycled sewage for irrigation, and of naturally occurring fresh water by desalinated water for domestic use.

By contrast, the Palestinians have steadfastly refused to undertake agreed-upon sewage purification projects, allowing untreated effluents to endanger “downstream” Israeli supplies.

Palestinian claims that it is Israel which has prevented the construction of recycling plants are preposterous. For what twisted logic could conceivably induce the fiendishly cunning Zionists to oppose the construction of installations that would protect their own water resources from Palestinian pollutants?

The wimpiness of ‘Zionist oppression’?
Moreover, from 1967 to the years just before Oslo, Palestinian household consumption rose dramatically – by almost 600%, significantly higher than the 230% in Israel.

Similarly, water-conveyance to households also increased impressively.

Whereas in 1967 only 10% of the “West Bank” Arab population was connected to a running water system, the figure today stands at 95%. So much for discriminatory deprivation.

Palestinian agricultural performance improved dramatically as well, even though water allocations were not increased. (In recent years Israeli farmers have had their freshwater allocations slashed by 50% and more.) This was facilitated by the introduction of more advanced methods of irrigation and cultivation, resulting in an increase of the area cultivated by about 160% and of the agricultural product by 1,200%.

As world-renowned soil-physicist and hydrologist Daniel Hillel observes, by the 1990s, farming “was transformed from a subsistence enterprise to a commercial industry.”

Furthermore, the inflammatory claims that luscious lawns and shimmering swimming pools in Jewish settlements unfairly and provocatively deprive Palestinians of water are belied by a single statistic: Israel conveys more water (nearly 56 m.cu.m.) from inside the pre-1967 borders into the “West Bank” than the total consumption of the entire Jewish population in the settlements across the “Green Line” (just over 48 m.cu.m.).

In other words, there is a net inflow of water from pre-1967 Israel to the Palestinians which more than compensates for the much-maligned lawns and pools.

Demand – not discrimination
While claims that per-capita consumption of water by Israelis is much higher than that of the Palestinian population are true, this is principally a result of differences in demand – not supply – because of differences in lifestyles. (Clearly, the fact that a millionaire in an opulent penthouse in Manhattan will use far less water than equally affluent owner of a sprawling estate in Bel Air is not a matter of discriminatory deprivation).

Different rates of consumption are found between the Jewish and Arab populations within pre-1967 Israel – and between different socioeconomic groups within the Jewish population – without anyone raising the claim that this is the result of purposeful deprivation.

Interestingly, per-capita consumption in the frequently vilified settlement of Kiryat Arba is 25% lower than in the Beduin city of Rahat – and 90% lower than in up-market Savyon). What perverse discrimination does that indicate?

The perils of PC-diplomacy
These facts and many others should be assertively and proactively inserted into the public discourse, not only as a response to attacks, but as part of an ongoing endeavor to mold public awareness and perception of the realities that pertain to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

One of the principal reasons that this is not occurring is the PC (Palestinian-compliant) perspectives of the Israeli civil society elites, discussed in my previous columns, who exert a dominant influence on the conduct of our public diplomacy.

These entrenched elites cannot permit accurate portrayal of Palestinian society without undermining their own worldview.

(With regard to the water issue, I can attest to this personally.) After all, this would entail exposing the fundamental reasons why the Palestinians find themselves in the miserable state in which they are today: a) a chronic and cavalier disregard for the truth; b) an enduring propensity to blame others for their fate; and c) an obdurate refusal to take responsibility for their own actions – and inaction.

And that is something one does not say in polite company.

Former IDF Chief: Israel Must Prepare for War

2012-01-27T17:08:00.001+02:00

Gavriel Queenann

Former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi warned, Thursday, that Israel could not afford to cut its defense budget and should prepare itself for war.

“In comparison to 10 years ago, the possibility of a conflict is not something that we just need to talk about," Ashkenazi said during a lecture at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

"We never saw it coming. It happened on my watch, so it must be said. But if it's any consolation, Egypt never saw it coming either," Ashkenazi said of the so-called Arab Spring protests that have no turned into an Islamic winter in elections throughout the Arab world. "The Middle East's plates are shifting. What the Egyptian army didn't know, I couldn't have known. (Egypt's) leaders did not know either," he said, adding the ultimate strategic picture was still changing.

Ashkenazi told attendees that confronting Iran's nuclear ambitions required a multi-disciplinary approach that included covert, economic, and potentially military action.

"In my opinion, the strategy vis-à-vis Iran should be to do whatever is possible under the radar coupled with painful and crippling sanctions. However, we should also keep a viable military option on the table," he said.

While Ashkenazi said sanctions were having an effect on Iran, he warned that time was running out since the Iranian nuclear program was moving forward at a rapid pace.

“Our mission now needs to be to slow down the clock and to speed up the clock of sanctions and hope that it works,” he said.

Ashkenazi cautioned that Iran's strategic acumen should not be overestimated, saying Tehran had made some strategic blunders and was threatening to make others as pressure mounts.

"I believe Iran would be making a strategic mistake if it blocks the Strait of Hormuz. Another mistake was trying to kill the Saudi ambassador at a restaurant in the US capital. The Iranians are liable to make more mistakes under pressure," he said.

Ashkenazi served as IDF chief of staff from 2007 until 2011 and certainly played a key role in preparing the military for a possible attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities. A 2007 strike against Syria’s nuclear reactor widely ascribed to Israel also happened on his watch.

Ashkenazi, who oversaw operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, said the new regime in Cairo made a new Gaza incursion a "complex" undertaking.

"The possibility of conducting another extensive operation in Gaza has become more complex following the events of the past year in Egypt and the change of government in that country," he said.

"I think that this government will not act like Mubarak. I do not think he was a Zionist, but you cannot ignore the fact that he was an anchor of stability in the region considering the not-so simple tests he passed – the wars in Lebanon or the intifada."

Gilad Atzmon takes aim at CiF Watch, accusing us of running “a Jewish supremacist site”!

2012-01-26T15:02:00.001+02:00

CiF Watch

Gilad Atzmon takes aim at CiF Watch, accusing us of running “a Jewish supremacist site”!

As I’ve noted previously, merely characterizing Gilad Atzmon as antisemitic doesn’t do him justice. Atzmon advances hateful, demonizing rhetoric about Jews which is on par with the most vile Judeophobic charges ever leveled, and which is often as crude and malevolent as what would be heard at a meeting of neo-Nazis or Islamist extremists.

In brief, he repeatedly refers to Judaism as “supremacist“‘ faith, a term popularized by David Duke, and, indeed Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK has strongly praised Atzmon’s writings. Atzmon also has questioned whether the Holocaust occurred, while simultaneously arguing that, if Hitler’s genocide did occur, it can partly be explained by Jews’ villainous behavior. On this latter note, he claimed that Hitler’s views about Jews may one day be proven right.

Atzmon also explicitly charges that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world, and has endorsed of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, arguing about the document that “it is impossible to ignore its prophetic qualities and its capacity to describe” later Jewish behavior.

The Guardian has brief history with Atzmon, which includes; a 2009 review of his music (Atzmon, is an Israeli born Jazz artist now living in the UK), which barely touched on, as the Guardian’s John Lewis so carefully put it, Atzmon’s ”provocatively anti-Jewish rhetoric”. Additional reviews of Atzmon’s music in the Guardian, in pieces published in 2011, 2006, 2004, 2003 and 2001 virtually ignored his politics altogether.

Then following a CiF essay by Andy Newman last September which including Atzmon in his (rather mild) criticism of leftist antisemitism, the Guardian published a letter by Atzmon in response, defending the ideas in his book, The Wandering Who? – a work which the CST has characterized one of the most antisemitic book published in the UK in years.

Shortly after that incident, CiF Watch discovered and subsequently posted about the fact that the Guardian’s online bookstore was selling Atzmon’s book, which included this chilling synopsis:

“An explosive unique crucial book tackling the issues of Jewish identity Politics and ideology and their global influence.“

Evidently embarrassed, and unable to defend their decision to carry and promote such hate, the book was removed form their site within 24 hours of our post.

The latest incident involving Atzmon involved an essay at CiF by Khaled Diab published last week which positively cited an Atzmon observation in the context of what Diab characterized as Israeli surprise over the alleged Saudi hacking of computers at El Al and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Here’s this passage:

Some commentators went even further. “The Jewish state is pretty devastated by the idea that a bunch of ‘indigenous Arabs’ are far more technologically advanced than its own chosen cyber pirates,” Israeli jazz musician Gilad Atzmon observed wryly on his blog.

After we objected to Guardian editors about both the positive reference to Atzmon, as well as his specific pejorative reference to Jews as “chosen” – which, per the Deborah Orr affair, they had acknowledged was antisemitic – the piece was amended and the passage removed, noting that the language was inconsistent with their standards.

Well, sometime after the piece was amended, Atzmon learned of the incident and wrote about it in his blog, beginning:

Two days ago, I discovered that CIF Watch, a Jewish supremacist site interested solely in cleansing British press of any criticism of Israel and Jewish power, was boasting that the Guardian surrendered to their pressure and removed an Atzmon passage [which included the "chosen" comment]. [emphasis added]

Interesting. While we now only typically check our blogs rankings in Technorati’s world politics categories (where we’ve been consistently ranked within the top 25), it looks like we’d now be wise to similarly check our listings in the evidently new category of “Jewish supremacist blogs” – a blog niche I must admit that I never previously considered!

Atzmon continues:

Shocking but typically, the Guardian surrendered immediately to the Zionist’s demands.

Yes, Guardian editors consistently, and cravenly, succumbing to Zionist demands! What only appears to the untrained eye as a media group viscerally hostile to the Jewish state is, in fact, yet another institution bullied by Jews into Zionist subservience.

Turning to his book, Atzmon writes:

The book attempts to grasp the bizarre continuum between Israeli barbarism…the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign surrender to rabid Zionist bodies and the ‘Guardian’s regulation’. [emphasis added]

In conclusion, Atzmon writes:

I’m not one bit surprised by the surge of Jewish power. I wrote a book about it. But, being intimately familiar with Jewish history, I know exactly where it will lead. Jewish political arrogance has always proved to be, above all, devastatingly dangerous for Jews.

For the sake of peace, both Jews and gentiles must confront the prominence of Jewish identity politics. We should never be afraid to question ideologies and lobbies that impose a threat to peace, our value systems, freedom of thought, humanity and humanism. [emphasis added]

In that comically gratuitous passage lay the rhetorical thread which runs through much of the hardcore antisemitic bravado through the ages – their belief that they are not just criticizing Jews and Judaism, but speaking truth to power, and boldly defending civilization from a dangerous, yet furtive, Jewish onslaught.

CiF Watch may appear to be merely a media watchdog blog, but Atzmon’s piercing intellect sees us for who we really are: a threat to freedom of thought, world peace and humanity itself.

On a shoestring budget, a group of dedicated volunteers, we have managed to become larger than ourselves:

Grassroots pro-Israel activism no more.

The Protocols of the Elders of CiF Watch Zionists have arrived!

Death Threats Against Female Arab.

2012-01-26T15:00:00.000+02:00

Jameel @ The Muqata at 1/26/2012

"A," a female Arab living in the "Triangle" Area of Israel expressed her support on the Migron hilltop community facebook page, writing that in her opinion, Jews are entitled to settle and live anywhere in Judea and Samaria (West Bank).

"You may be surprised, and might even curse me, but I wanted to express my opinion. Yes, I am an Arab and despite that I love the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. I believe in the responsibility of Arabs to be loyal to the State of Israel and I believe that Jews should be able to settle everywhere in Israel, including Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]. After I have read many sources, I have reached this conclusion. My conclusion is that Migron, and all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are a Jewish asset [to Israel]. I am willing to offer support if you want [articles] translated to Arabic or from Arabic to Hebrew. Thank you, and I fully support your struggle." Unfortunately, as the Srugim website reports, within hours of posting her opinion on the Migron Facebook page, "A" was forced to cease all her facebook activity....due to death threats against her life, ostensibly from other Arabs in her community. Such a shame.

I would hope that all the advocates of Rights for Arabs in Israel, including NIF, 972 Mag, Haaretz and Richard Silverstein will all condemn these death threats against this brave Arab woman, and advocate that she be allowed to freely voice her opinion that Jews should be able to live freely, anywhere in the land of Israel.
Don't hold your breathe.

Belatedly Recognizing Heroes of the Holocaust

2012-01-26T06:27:00.002+02:00

HORASHIM, Israel — When 20 people gathered for a modest ceremony in the tranquil cemetery of this kibbutz in central Israel last month, the intimacy and quiet dignity of the event belied the tumultuous historical forces coursing beneath it.

The occasion was the reinterring of the remains of Samuel Merlin, a founder of a small but brazen band of militant Zionists and Holocaust rescue activists who shook America and challenged the Jewish establishment in the 1940s, but who until recently have been largely excluded from official Holocaust history. The activists, known as the Bergson group, have been credited by modern historians with playing a pivotal role in rescuing hundreds of thousands of European Jews.
But the group was rejected by the Jewish establishment it challenged, both in the United States and in Israel, where its militant tactics and right-wing Zionism clashed with the mainstream. Mere mention of the group stirs up old passions and painful questions about what America did or did not do to save European Jewry, and the extent to which schisms within Jewish ranks hampered more effective action.
More recently, prominent historians have begun to recognize the group’s achievements. On July 17, Yad Vashem, the official Holocaust remembrance authority in Jerusalem, which had ignored the Bergson group in its exhibits, held a symposium on it for the first time.
For those attending the reburial of Mr. Merlin a few days earlier, including some widows and children of the group’s members, the event was a symbolic start of a process of reconciliation.
“This is a moment of healing for American Jews and Israeli Jews,” Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, said shortly after reciting Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, over Mr. Merlin’s grave.
The institute, which has been instrumental in promoting the Bergson group’s legacy, co-sponsored the conference at Yad Vashem.
The Bergson group formed in 1940 when about 10 young Jews from Palestine and Europe came to the United States to open a fund-raising and propaganda operation for the Irgun, the right-wing Zionist militia. The group was organized by Hillel Kook, a charismatic Irgun leader who adopted the pseudonym Peter H. Bergson. Mr. Merlin was his right-hand man.
The group began by raising money for illegal Jewish immigration to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine and promoting the idea of an army composed of stateless and Palestinian Jews. But the mission abruptly changed in November 1942 after reports of the Nazi annihilation of two million European Jews emerged. Like earlier reports of the mass killing of Jews, the news barely made the inside pages of major American newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The Bergsonites were appalled by what they saw as the indifference of the Roosevelt administration and the passivity of the Jewish establishment, which staunchly supported the administration and largely accepted its argument that the primary American military objective was to win the war, not to save European Jews. The group embarked on a provocative campaign to publicize the genocide and to lobby Congress to support the rescue of Jews, roaming the hallways of Capitol Hill and knocking on doors, displaying a degree of chutzpah that made the traditional, pro-Roosevelt Jewish establishment uncomfortable.
The group took out a series of fiery, full-page advertisements in The New York Times and other major dailies highlighting the mass murder, soliciting donations at the bottom of each one to pay for the next. With help from celebrity supporters like the director and writer Ben Hecht, the impresario Billy Rose and the composer Kurt Weill, they staged a flamboyant pageant called “We Will Never Die,” filling Madison Square Garden twice before sending the show on the road.
In October 1943, the Bergson group organized a march of 400 Orthodox rabbis on the White House, most of them in traditional black garb, a spectacle the likes of which had never been seen in Washington.
Finally, in January 1944, under heavy pressure from the Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr., President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up the War Refugee Board by executive order, leading to the rescue of 200,000 Jews.
“Without Hillel Kook and the Bergson group,” said David S. Wyman, author of the book “The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945,” which first re-evaluated the role of Bergsonites, “there would have been no War Refugee Board.”
Yet the American Jewish leadership at the time fought the newcomers, saying their tactics would lead only to increased anti-Semitism. Rabbi Stephen Wise, the Jewish community’s chief representative, wrote to a colleague in 1944 that the Bergsonites “are a disaster to the Zionist cause and the Jewish people.”
Jewish American leaders were apparently afraid of making waves, and of losing their own prominence.
“This was an era in which militant civil action was just not done, certainly not by Jews,” said Charley Levine, an Israeli-based international communications and public relations expert who has studied the Bergson group. “This was before Vietnam.”
The Bergson group was no less ostracized by the leaders of Israel after its founding in May 1948. An early showdown came that June when the group dispatched a ship called the Altalena to Israel loaded with weapons for the Irgun in violation of an agreement with the new state to stop independent arms acquisitions.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, ordered his troops to fire on the ship. Sixteen Irgun members and three soldiers were killed in the confrontation. Mr. Merlin, who was on board, was shot in the foot.
Mr. Merlin and Mr. Kook went on to serve as members of Israel’s first Parliament, but the Bergsonites soon had an ideological falling out with their own political leader, Menachem Begin, the Irgun leader who later became Israel’s prime minister. They remained at odds with the left-wing Mapai and Labor leaders who dominated the state for its first 30 years.
The dissension led to the Bergson group’s being blanked out of the early histories of the Holocaust. “My father and his group went against the grain of those writing the narrative of the war,” said Mr. Kook’s daughter, Rebecca Kook, now a political scientist at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.
But with the perspective of time and the opening of additional Holocaust era archives, including Mr. Merlin’s, the Bergson group has begun to be reworked into Jewish history. After years of campaigning by Mr. Medoff and others, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington included a small exhibit on the group in 2008.
Mr. Merlin’s detailed account of the rescue campaign was published posthumously last month. Mr. Merlin died in the United States in 1996.
In a foreword to the book, Seymour D. Reich, a veteran leader of major Jewish organizations, wrote, “The time has come to acknowledge, unequivocally, that Rabbi Wise and his colleagues were wrong.”
Instead of attacking Mr. Bergson, they should have focused on the rescue mission, he wrote, adding, “That was their obligation, and they failed.”

NCJA DEMANDS OFFICIALS CONDEMN PA CALL FOR JEWISH GENOCIDE

2012-01-26T06:25:00.000+02:00

The National Conference on Jewish Affairs joins Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres in condemning the public call to kill Jews made by the supreme religious leader of the Palestinian Authority.

The PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein urged Muslims to ensure Islam's destiny by fighting and killing Jews. He said that “Palestine [sic] in its entirety is a revolution,” that “continues today,” and then quoted from what he decreed is an authoritative statement of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, that while Jews “will hide behind stones or trees,” those objects will say to Muslims: “there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.” The Mufti stated that the trees invoked in the statement are like the modern day trees surrounding current Israeli towns and colonies. He explained that fighting and killing Jews will usher in the Muslim "Hour of Resurrection."
“When an Arab Palestinian leader calls upon his people to kill Jews in order to fulfill Islam’s religious destiny, all people of good will must stand up and denounce the incitement,” said Lori Lowenthal Marcus, NCJA executive committee chair.

NCJA calls on President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Leadership of the House and Senate and the Chairmen and Ranking Chairmen of the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committee to also condemn this explicit call to murder Jews.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres both called for a criminal investigation into the incident, which was initiated on January 24th. The British Foreign Officer for the Middle East Alistair Burt has joined them in condemning the Grand Mufti’s incitement.

The Mufti gave the speech on January 7, 2012, to supporters of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas who were celebrating the Fatah political movement's 47th anniversary. Abbas appointed Hussein as the Mufti in 2006. The speech was carried on official Palestinian Authority television, and was translated and aired by Palestinian Media Watch.

In response to charges that he was advocating a Jewish genocide, the Mufti and the PA Minister of Religious Affairs, Mahmoud al-Habbash, claimed the Mufti was not engaging in current incitement, but merely repeating theological dictates. “But the Mufti’s invocation of these 'dictates' as the source of a Muslim religious duty to kill Jews is the dictionary definition of incitement,” said Marcus, "he clearly was talking about now, not the past, and not the future, by referring to the trees from the hadith as being the same as those surrounding current Israeli cities and villages," she added.

NCJA also exhorts the Secretary General of the United Nations as well as leaders of all human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to join in this condemnation. Organizations which profess to care deeply about the rights of people in Israel, such as the World Council of Churches, must not miss this opportunity to demonstrate their concern. All peace-loving and all pro-Israel groups must also make public statements strongly denouncing the Mufti's hateful and irresponsible statement.
http://tinyurl.com/75k38tc

Will Mahmoud Abbas Return to Ramallah?

2012-01-25T20:37:00.001+02:00

Challah Hu Akbar

Arabic news sites are buzzing today over a report from a UAE paper that Mahmoud Abbas has decided that he will not return to Ramallah following his European trip, which currently has in him Russia, and will instead rule from abroad.

According to the report, the source is an Israeli MK (Member of Knesset). Rumors are swirling that Ahmad Tibi is the MK.

According to the source, Abbas is not returning to Ramallah because he fears that he will face the same fate as Yasir Arafat.The report seems very skeptical, and has been around for at least a couple of days already.

Nimer Hammad, one of Abbas’ advisers, has denied it saying that “the news about Abbas leaving Palestine due to fear of being targeted by Israel, as happened to Arafat, is not true at all.”

Abbas has been in Russia since Thursday and is scheduled to be there for six days. I guess we will find out whether the report is true after his trip.

The Scourge of Jewish Self-Division

2012-01-25T15:34:00.002+02:00

David Solway on Jan 25th, 2012

I have often written, sometimes bemused, sometimes incensed, about what is surely the strangest fact of Jewish life, namely, its self-division. Since time immemorial, the Jewish people have been at war with themselves, both in the Holy Land and the Diaspora, allowing themselves to succumb to one of history’s most mordant ironies. In turning against themselves, they have effectively collaborated with those who would suppress, conquer or extinguish the Jewish community. The template was already established in the Book of Genesis, where we read how one brother slew another in jealousy and resentment and a group of conspiratorial brothers sold their sibling into slavery. From that point on, the biblical archive presents a saga of recrimination, envy, hatred and fratricidal strife that in different degrees has imperiled the very survival of the Jewish “nation.” The pattern was consolidated in the story of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, the three rebels who “rose up” before Moses and challenged his authority. As the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen these people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people” (Exodus 32:9).

Brother against brother, prophet against people, king and priest, and even nation against nation form an indelible part of the Jewish chronicle. The history of the Two Kingdoms provides a continuingly relevant object lesson. After the death of King Solomon, the Israelite communality broke apart into the two warring monarchies of Israel and Judah. The shedding of kinship blood critically weakened the two kingdoms, leading to the conquest of Israel by the Assyrians and the reduction of Judah first by the Chaldeans, then by the Egyptians, and finally by the Babylonians. The Jewish epic may be described as: divide and be conquered. Indeed, surah 59:14 of the Koran tells us something very true about Jews: “There is much hostility between them: their hearts are divided…” It seems that the wise counsel of Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah has no resonance for the backsliders: “All of Israel and those who are joined to it are to each other like brothers. If brother shows no compassion to brother, who will show compassion to him?”

The fault line in the Jewish sensibility is tectonic in its dimensions and destructive in its effect. Perhaps the single most resonant case study in self-division involves the institutional founder of the Christian faith. The story of St. Paul is too well known to require much in the way of comment, yet it is richly instructive. A rabid persecutor of the followers of Jesus, Saul of Tarsus experienced a blinding conversion to the new faith and was shortly thereafter called by the name of Paul (Acts 13:9). He then became the Apostle of Christianity, considering his Jewish identity a mere rehearsal for a larger identity and at times expressing strong disapproval of Jews who held to their traditional beliefs and identity. (His quarrel with the Desposyni, the “servants of the Lord,” led by James the brother of Jesus who wished to preserve the purity and exclusivity of the original faith, is a matter of historical record.)

But the details of the Apostle’s former activities and subsequent religious convictions are specific to the time. Jews today do not persecute Christians. Indeed, they are the ones who are relentlessly persecuted—by Muslims, by secular antisemites and unhinged fanatics from both sides of the political spectrum (though massively from the Left), and by several Christian denominations associated with The World Council of Churches, replacement and liberation theologians, and the Quaker-Presbyterian axis promoting its BDS campaigns. More to the point, and the most indigestible perversion of all, countless Jews harry and denounce their own congeners. The tendency to a kind of binary kinesis seems inherent in the Jew, whether it is himself he loathes or his own people he reproaches and undermines. It is the psychic split itself, not its local content, that transcends the ages. In this respect, the Saul/ Paul fracture represents a longstanding Jewish archetype.

This history of self-estrangement, political strife and cultural rupture has been played out from the biblical era through the centuries of religious factionalism and reciprocal excommunication culminating in our own epoch. The profound antipathy between assimilated Jews and their irredentist counterparts in Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed and Hebron, as well as the caste-like contempt of Western Jewish intellectuals for the Ostjuden, that is, their assumed “plebeian” and “uneducated” East European brethren, are facts of modern Jewish history. The shame of many of the Jewish Councils in Nazi Europe that collaborated with their murderers (not all, as Gershom Scholem justifiably argues in On Jews and Judaism in Crisis) cannot be forgiven, despite attempts to explain it away as the least of worst alternatives. The legacy of the celebrated Jewish philosopher Martin Buber and the equally acclaimed Jewish political writer Hannah Arendt, who could never forget their German patrimony and were corrosively suspicious of the Zionist project, has been broadly and unambiguously noxious. In the present moment we observe their offspring, that is, left-wing “peace activists,” liberal rabbis and “post-Zionist” intellectuals, who strive to erode the Jewish character of the state of Israel and so deprive it of its legitimacy. The Jewish Left, as it dances around the golden calf of a fictitious peace, represents perhaps the gravest danger to the survival of the country.

Many Jews, as I wrote in Hear, O Israel!, tend to transpose the fight against iniquity and oppression to other nations and communities rather than press for the rights of their own people. Or they believe, “in traditionally Marxist fashion,” as Sol Stern writes in City Journal, “that the way to fight anti-Semitism was through the broader struggle for international socialism.” Thus they pursue their fugitive merit. Like Paul, their main focus falls on the Corinthians and Ephesians et al. of the time. Indifferent to the reality of their own condition—ignoring the rain clouds until they are drenched and catch pneumonia, as the 19th century Jewish philosopher Max Nordau noted—these are the ostensibly benevolent Jews who wish to “repair the world” (Tikkun Olam). That it would be a world in which their place would nevertheless remain precarious escapes them entirely.

The benevolent Jews are bad enough. Their spirit of pharisaic charity, however, is exceeded by that of the reprobate Jews, who take their “idealism” to the next level of unctuous self-effacement. They struggle against injustice by reprehending, for example, not Palestinian terrorists and Hezbollah jihadists but Israeli Jews themselves whose right to national legitimacy they perceive as an affront and do everything in their power to misrepresent. Again, like Paul, they regard their own people as “those who please not God, and are contrary to all men” (1 Thessalonians 2:15).
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"MIGRON in the spotlight"

2012-01-24T20:48:00.001+02:00

Arlene Kushner

My readers have heard from me about Mitzpe Avichai, and now it is time to turn our attention to Migron -- which presents some very serious issues. You will learn things here that it is unlikely you've heard from your mainstream media sources.

Migron is a Jewish community on a hilltop in the Binyamin Regional Council in Samaria, north of Jerusalem. With 49 families, it is the largest of the communities that are frequently referred to as "unauthorized settlements." In order to properly understand the situation of this community, we will need a bit of background, which has been provided by a resident of Migron who serves as a spokesperson:

In 1960, the king of Jordan divided the area where Migron is now located into some 60 plots and gave them to individual families. It was, however, with the proviso that they begin farming within three years, or the land would revert back to the kingdom. No farming was done, not for three years and not for seven years -- which is when the land came under Israeli control.

Land that reverted back to the kingdom should have become Israeli state land. This should have been the end of the story. (As I understand it, to ensure there would be no problem, the Jews who came to establish Migron purchased the land in any event.)

~~~~~~~~~~

In 1999, establishment of Migron began with the set-up of the first caravans. The very first residents were actually part of an archeological expedition in the area, which, it should be noted, provided evidence -- including a winepress -- of an exclusively Jewish presence.

The community, as it grew, worked with a host of government ministries that provided support for phone lines, electricity, water, staff of day care and nursery schools and more.

In point of fact, the government saw a need for a Jewish community in this location for security reasons. A by-pass road had been established at the foot of the hill on which Migron is situated so that Jews would be able to travel -- via route 60 -- while avoiding entry into Ramallah. It was understood that without Jews on this hill, Jews traveling the road below would be at risk. (It is certain that Arabs would be up there, if Jews were not.)

Additionally, from the height of that location Jews are able to overlook the north of Jerusalem and communities situated between Migron and the Dead Sea.

But, for all the sanction the government gave to the establishment of this community, what was missing was the final authorization from the Ministry of Defense. From mid-1999, and for two years subsequent, Ehud Barak was Defense Minister, and so it is possible that he was the one who would have had to sign off on this. (What a surprise!) Or, as these approvals take time, perhaps the very leftist Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who followed him.

This is a common story. It feels rather schizoid -- with one hand not knowing, or approving, what the other is doing. This is a function of the nature of the administration of Jewish communities beyond the Green Line. Were civil law to be applied, the Ministry of Defense would not be involved.

~~~~~~~~~~

In 2006, Peace Now got into the act, going to the High Court and claiming that the land Migron was situated on belonged to Arabs. Ostensibly, Peace Now spoke on behalf of a group of Arab plaintiffs, who were from local villages. Residents of Migron observed that these plaintiffs, who seemed to have been drafted by Peace Now, were "without a clue."

Migron residents, I have been told, have never had a problem with their Arab neighbors, and it seemed to them more than a bit strange that, if the Arab plaintiffs knew that Jews were occupying their land, they would have waited the seven years since Migron had been established before registering a claim.

My Migron source tells me that various documents were provided to the Court that were never taken into consideration. With various legal delays, it was not determined until early last year that Migron was to be demolished by the end of March 2012.

~~~~~~~~~~

In the meantime, the Arabs who were claiming that Migron was on their land brought a suit into the Jerusalem Magistrates Court, demanding that the State provide them with compensation for the years in which they were deprived of their land. (Never mind that in the years before Migron was established they had not in any way utilized this land.) But this court demanded of the plaintiffs that they provide proof of ownership of the land and gave them a deadline, which recently expired.

Just last week, the Jerusalem Magistrates Court ruled that the plaintiffs, as they could not provide proof of land ownership, had to pay compensation to the residents of Migron for their trouble and were forbidden from bringing further lawsuits on this issue.

~~~~~~~~~~

Now, I asked myself, if the Arab plaintiffs that Peace Now was representing could not prove their right to the land of Migron, why is it that the High Court order to demolish Migron stands.

Today I posed that question to a representative of the Legal Forum of the Land of Israel. The answer is stunning:

This issue, I was told, is political, not legal. For the Court did not rule that the government had to demolish Migron. The government volunteered to do it. Let me repeat this: The government volunteered to do it.

What happened is that the Court turned to the government and said, these claims are being made against Migron, how are you going to handle this? And the answer from the government was, we'll demolish Migron by March 31, 2012.

The government said this? Even though government ministries had helped to establish Migron and there was clear recognition on the part of the government that putting a Jewish community on that hill was a wise thing to do from a security perspective?

So I have been advised.

~~~~~~~~~~

If you are totally confused, it is understandable. But I believe I can explain what's happening here.

It is exceedingly unlikely that the government would have taken action against Migron if not for the petition of Peace Now, which acts as the "impetus" in many of these cases.

But once a petition such as this one is filed, the representatives of the government show themselves to be without the courage of their convictions. Or perhaps better put, they have no convictions. That is, they are not guided by a determination to stand by Jewish rights and to fight for those rights. They are guided by pragmatics and not by principle or ideology. They cave, out of fear of being criticized by the international community for taking Arab land, etc. etc.

And fairness to the residents of Migron, who were assisted by government agencies in establishing their community? What does this have to do with anything?

~~~~~~~~~~

Right now this is a very hot political potato, with many incensed at the notion of taking down Migron. Speaker of the Knesset Ruby Rivlin (Likud) has spoken out on this with vehemence. I'm told Shas is with the residents of Migron. And Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman says this is a red line for his party, Yisrael Beitenu, which will leave the coalition if Migron comes down.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, then, is between a rock and a hard place politically, and realizes that if a satisfactory solution is not found for Migron his government is at risk.

Thus, there is an attempt to strike an agreement with Migron residents that would provide an out for the government, which would not have to demolish the community.

~~~~~~~~~~

But even this is a complicated and infuriating matter.

Not long ago, legislation was introduced that to prevent communities in Judea and Samaria from being destroyed unless the Arab(s) claiming ownership produced documentation of that ownership -- and if documentation were produced beyond a certain number of years, there would be monetary compensation instead.

This legislation would protect Migron. But it is frozen in the Ministerial Committee on Legislation at the request of Netanyahu. He, in turn, has done this at the behest of Minister Benny Begin (Likud). If I live to be 100 I will not understand what is driving Begin at this point. He is heading negotiations that the government is holding with the representatives of Migron, regarding a so-called compromise. He doesn't want to see them protected by this legislation; he wants them to feel that they have no choice but to accept what he offers. In light of what I had previously understood to be his political orientation, the fact that he wants this confuses me totally.

The compromise, which is being urged on Migron by Netanyahu, would move the community to the bottom of the hill on to land that is universally acknowledged to be state land. It is better, the residents are being told, than having their community simply demolished.

~~~~~~~~~~

But the community is not buying this. You may have read in recent news reports that a deal was reached. I was told today, however, that there is no deal.

The position of the Migron residents is that they have a right to be where they are, that they are not located on Arab land. If they move to the bottom of the hill, they say, it denies their purpose in having been put (by the government) on the hill for security reasons in the first place, and it ignores the involvement of multiple government ministries in helping them to be established there.

~~~~~~~~~~

The question, then, is whether, when push comes to shove, the prime minister will actually allow the destruction of Migron, as this may bring down his government.

Apparently there are at least a couple of avenues he can take to remedy the situation. He can permit the release of the legislation from committee. Or, I was told by the legal forum, the government can return to the High Court and say that in the light of new evidence it withdraws its commitment to take down the community.

~~~~~~~~~~

I would like to see as many of my readers as possible give a boost to the residents of Migron, as they wait to see if the prime minister blinks.

Please! write to Netanyahu.

Tell him that you are convinced that the residents of Migron are in their current location by right, that they were helped by the government as they were established, that they serve a legitimate security purpose, and that there is absolutely no reason to believe that they are on Arab land.

Tell him that you are watching his government closely in this regard, and that you expect him to do what is honorable and principled, and not what is convenient politically.

Say you expect him to return to the High Court and, based on new information, reverse the commitment to take down Migron. And that you further expect the legislation that is currently frozen in committee regarding the demolishment of communities to be released for vote in the Knesset.

Fax: 02-670-5369 (From the US: 011-972-2-670-5369)

E-mail: Memshala@pmo.gov.il and also pm_eng2@it.pmo.gov.il (underscore after pm) use both addresses

~~~~~~~~~~

Then, please, write to the following Likud ministers and urge them to push the prime minister to take action to remedy the situation in Migron properly. Ask them to remind Netanyahu that the government may fall if he fails to do this.

Keep it simple for yourself. Compose a short message that says "Dear Minister," followed by text, click on each minister's e-mail address in turn, paste in the message and send. Do NOT send a group message; each should be separate.

Minister of Public Diplomacy Yuli Edelstein

yedelstein@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Improvement of Government Services

meitan@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Environmental Protection Gilad Erdan

gerdan@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Welfare Moshe Kahlon

mcachlon@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Transportation Yisrael Katz

yiskatz@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Culture Limor Livnat

llivant@knesset.gov.il

Minister Yosi Peled

ypeled@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Education Gideon Saar

gsaar@knesset.gov.il

Minister of the Development of the Negev Silvan Shalom

sshalom@knesset.gov.il

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz

ysteinitz@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Yaalon

myaalon@knesset.gov.il

~~~~~~~~~~

© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.

The Diplomatic Process

2012-01-24T15:24:00.001+02:00

Ted Belman

Who better than Dennis Ross to explain the diplomatic process as it pertains to the ME.

Ross explains in his Foreign Policy interview just below that “We’re not on the brink of any kind of breakthrough.” and he explains that therefore diplomacy focuses preventing the climate from worsening and possibly improving it.

There’s no such thing as a status quo, particularly in this part of the world. It’s never static. What you can’t afford is to have a stalemate when those who reject the very idea of a two-state solution are able to exploit it to increasingly undermine the prospect of it. I think the premise of your question is right — we’re not on the brink of a breakthrough. And yet it’s important to try to find ways to overcome the stalemate.

Abu Mazen represents the constituency that prefers non-violence and moderation.

If those who believe in nonviolence and coexistence can point to the fact that Israeli control is being reduced and that their way is ultimately going to be the one that produces a state, then there’s a payoff. Thus there is pressure on Israel to encourage belief that a deal is possible so that the Palestinians won’t turn to the UN,which would solve nothing, and don’t turn to violence and the Hamas way.

Evidently Israel accepts the need to provide “gestures” and she even refrains from large scale building except for the odd bone that they give the hawks to appease them and keep they quite more or less.

It was explained to me today by insiders that the the Israeli public and the current government really wants to cut a deal and have peace. But they assured me that Israel won’t compromise on Security. I countered that there was a sizable Israeli public and growing steadily, that they prefer to pursue peace through strength and to keep the land. Why give it up?

They countered that Israel constantly assuages the wrath of the Manin stream Media, the Europen Union and the US. She fears that it could get out of hand and that the US won’t necessarily protect them with a veto. Let’s say Israel provokes them by following some of the policies our commenters espouse, and as a result a resolution is put before the UNSC declaring that sanctions or military force should be used because in their opinion Israel’s actions threaten peace.

Just as Ross says,

There isn’t a Republican or Democratic approach to Israel; there’s an American approach to Israel. I think that’s been consistent,

there is also an Israeli approach, rather than a Labour/Kadima approach v a Likud approach, which has been consistent since the ’67 victory namely, land for peace. This will not change no matter who is in power.

Without a game changer event, this will not change.

When the ruler says to the Jew, teach my camel to talk or I’ll kill you, the Jew says give me a year to do it and the ruler agrees. Another Jew asks how can you agree to that and the Jew says lots of things can happen. Either the ruler dies within the year or I teach him to talk or the camel dies. In the meantime, I bought a year.

And maybe the Palestinians will take over Jorda and invite all Palestinians to move there.

Ancient Jewish scrolls found in north Afghanistan

2012-01-24T05:40:00.000+02:00

Ancient Jewish scrolls found in north Afghanistan

By Amie Ferris-Rotman

KABUL | Mon Jan 23, 2012

(Reuters) - A cache of ancient Jewish scrolls from northern Afghanistan that has only recently come to light is creating a storm among scholars who say the landmark find could reveal an undiscovered side of medieval Jewry. The 150 or so documents, dated from the 11th century, were found in Afghanistan's Samangan province and most likely smuggled out -- a sorry but common fate for the impoverished and war-torn country's antiquities.

Israeli emeritus professor Shaul Shaked, who has examined some of the poems, commercial records and judicial agreements that make up the treasure, said while the existence of ancient Afghan Jewry is known, their culture was still a mystery.

"Here, for the first time, we see evidence and we can actually study the writings of this Jewish community. It's very exciting," Shaked told Reuters by telephone from Israel, where he teaches at the Comparative Religion and Iranian Studies department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The hoard is currently being kept by private antique dealers in London, who have been producing a trickle of new documents over the past two years, which is when Shaked believes they were found and pirated out of Afghanistan in a clandestine operation.

It is likely they belonged to Jewish merchants on the Silk Road running across Central Asia, said T. Michael Law, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford University's Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

"They might have been left there by merchants travelling along the way, but they could also come from another nearby area and deposited for a reason we do not yet understand," Law said.

"SOLD ELSEWHERE FOR TEN TIMES MORE"

Cultural authorities in Kabul had mixed reactions to the find, which scholars say is without a doubt from Afghanistan, arguing that the Judeo-Persian language used on the scrolls is similar to other Afghan Jewish manuscripts.

National Archives director Sakhi Muneer outright denied the find was Afghan, arguing that he would have seen it, but an advisor in the Culture Ministry said it "cannot be confirmed but it is entirely possible."

"A lot of old documents and sculptures are not brought to us but are sold elsewhere for ten times the price," said advisor Jalal Norani, explaining that excavators and ordinary people who stumble across finds sell them to middlemen who then auction them off in Iran, Pakistan and Europe.

"Unfortunately, we cannot stop this," Norani said. The Culture Ministry, he said, pays on average $1,500 for a recovered antique item. The Hebrew University's Shaked estimated the Jewish documents' worth at several million dollars.

Thirty years of war and conflict have severely hindered both the collecting and preserving of Afghanistan's antiquities, and the Culture Ministry said endemic corruption and poverty meant many new discoveries do not even reach them.

Interpol and U.S. officials have also traced looted Afghan antiquities to funding insurgent activities.

In today's climate of uncertainty, the National Archives in Kabul keep the bulk of its enormous collection of documents -- some dating to the fifth century -- under lock and key to prevent stealing.

Instead reproductions of gold-framed Pashto poems and early Korans scribed on deer skin, or vellum, are displayed for the public under the ornate ceilings of the Archives, which were the nineteenth century offices of Afghan King Habibullah Khan.

"I am sure Afghanistan, like any country, would like to control their antiquities... But on the other hand, with this kind of interest and importance, as a scholar I can't say that I would avoid studying them," said Shaked of the Jewish find.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Rob Taylor and Sanjeev Miglani)

Give the ultra-Orthodox some space

2012-01-23T15:05:00.001+02:00

Gabi Avital

Tell the truth: Do you really want thousands of ultra-Orthodox men to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces tomorrow? Do you really intend to have female soldiers sing to them when they finish basic training? This is not the "docile," low-key national religious crowd. These men will leave the hall the first second a woman soldier sings. And what then? Will they be sent straight to the brig? Dear friends: Take a deep breath and give this another thought. The commotion surrounding the extension of the Tal Law (which exempts ultra-Orthodox Jews from mandatory military service but aims to encourage voluntary enlistment) is clearly another part of the recent anti–ultra-Orthodox hate campaign, disguised as enthusiastic Zionism. True, the Tal Law was rejected – it has been a decade since Defense Minister Ehud Barak put it up for a vote – and still, the second thought I am asking for relates to human nature, and to nature.

There are no phenomena, whether man-made or natural, that occur in one fell swoop and cause absolutely no lasting damage. Adaptation and assimilation are by nature gradual processes. Any attempt to accelerate the process of "saving the ultra-Orthodox from themselves" (as the average secular citizen believes) is bound to fail. So many resources and so many good intentions have been invested in gradually integrating ultra-Orthodox soldiers into the Israel Air Force, and with one stupid command (the decision not to exempt ultra-Orthodox soldiers from ceremonies in which female singers perform) all that glorious effort went down the drain.

To those of you still pondering the issue, ask their commanding officers about these national treasures, living not in some far off land but in the next neighborhood or adjacent town. They will tell you that they have nothing but admiration for the ultra-Orthodox soldiers' extraordinary output and their ability to quickly master new skills.

The opponents of extending the law, meaning those who opposed it from the get go, very well may be appalled by their own projection of the future. In their mind's eye they see battalions of soldiers, wearing black or crocheted kippahs, carrying out operations at the borders and, heaven help us, teaching the next generation of soldiers. How unbearable!

But what I find unfathomable is the fact that some military commanders, as well as leaders of the anti-ultra-Orthodox campaign, would rather have an obedient applauding audience at a singing performance than first-rate combat soldiers whose only request was not to be forced to witness a girl prancing on stage.

This is unfathomable because for many years – including during my own personal mandatory service, the service of my two sons and of the sons waiting to be drafted, those of my brothers and sisters – we all dreamed of a military that fulfills its one goal: being a well-oiled war machine, one that banishes the thought of war from our enemies' minds.

Coercing the ultra-Orthodox public to enlist will not advance the goal that I dreamed of and fought for. Let these Jews, the victims of automatic anti-Semitism reminiscent of other times in our history, process Israel's sovereignty at their own pace, and realize that it is a country they can feel allegiance to. An ultra-Orthodox youngster who hears everyone talking about tolerance toward everyone but himself, will distance himself from this hypocrisy.

And if anyone still thinks that this battle – in which the ultra-Orthodox man is given a choice of taking part in anti-religious coercion or joining the draft-dodging camp – will have a positive outcome, they are probably living in a bubble of election-year campaigns. Give the ultra-Orthodox community some space – it is undergoing welcome changes even from its own perspective. We, as Jews, will all benefit.

Dr. Gabi Avital is the chairman of Professors for a Strong Israel.

Arab Illegal Settlement?

2012-01-22T23:20:00.001+02:00

MY Right Word

Arab sources, via IMRA, are reporting:

Israeli forces Sunday handed two Palestinians from Joreish village, south of Nablus notices to evacuate their land and demolish water wells, according to local sources.

Ghassan Daghlas, in charge of the settlements file at the Palestinian Authority in the northern part of the West Bank, said that Israeli soldiers gave the village’s residents 45 day notice to demolish the wells and evacuate the land.Joreish or better, Jourish, is right near Shiloh, north of us.

It's where the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), the United Nations Development Programme/Programme of Assistance to the Palestinian People (UNDP/PAPP) has requested bids from eligible contractors to perform Construction of the Jourish Women Community Center - Jourish Village – Nablus Governorate.

In any case, since Daghlas is an inveterate misconstruer, we'll wait until all the facts are in.

Or at least while the jury on Jurish is out.

After all, could it be that Arabs are engaged in illegal settlement?

United States Guilty By Association and Aloofness

2012-01-22T20:40:00.001+02:00

MY Right Word

Do you remember this item?

...at the same time that the Obama administration is assiduously courting the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime, according to Channel 2, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has refused to meet with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during his upcoming trip to Washington. Channel 2 reported that senior US officials said that “Lieberman is an obstacle to peace. We don’t want our pictures taken with him and with what he represents.”That was in a Caroline Glick column at the Jerusalem Post on January 19.

Well, what you think of photos of Anne Patterson, US Ambassador to Egypt, with top Muslim Brotherhood officials, who just met with Hamas' Meshal and Haniyeh, yesterday and in December?

Check out IsraellyCool.

Here's another photo:

From the official Muslim Brotherhood statement:

...Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said that US Ambassador to Cairo Anne Patterson met with the group’s Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie on Wednesday, and reportedly told her that Sharia law, or Islamic law, “ensures personal freedoms for all.”

...Patterson expressed her gratitude for the meeting and congratulated the group for their political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), victory in the recent parliamentary elections, and stressed that the United States is looking forward to cooperate with “whoever is chosen by the Egyptian people and a democratic government...”The Supreme Guide criticized the successive US administrations and accused them of “controlling people through their support to the dictators,” which made the popularity of the United States decline across the region...Badie explained that the principles of Islamic Sharia law is the m”ain source of legislation and the biggest guarantee of public and private freedoms, as it ensures the freedom of belief, religion and personal rights to all citizens equally.”

For her part, Ambassador Patterson admitted that US administrations have committed some mistakes, but called for overcoming them and to “learn from them to avoid their recurrence in the future.”

She pointed out that democracy always brings stable partners.

Stable?

Stable?!

The Media’s Entrenched Hostility Towards Israel

2012-01-22T18:00:00.001+02:00

Ted Belman

Laura: The fact that a writer can spin her experience receiving superior prenatal care in Israel into a narrative of Israeli society as “racist” and “militaristic”-never mind that she as a gentile foreigner temporarily residing in Israel received the same quality care as Jewish Israeli citizens-just goes to show the inherent anti-Israel and yes even antisemitic bias in leftist media circles. Her column was sheer lunacy. Some supporters of Israel blame the lack of Israeli hasbara for the bad publicity Israel receives worldwide. But no amount of hasbara will be able to counter such entrenched hostility toward the Jewish state. How do you counter the kind of hostility which motivates members of the media to twist even the most positive aspects of Israel into a story representing something dark and sinister about Israeli society?

The Three Rules of Western Discourse and Why The Media Must Always Blame Israel

By Barry Rubin, PJ MEDIA

It is truly astonishing how, it often seems, Western media coverage must blame Israel for everything that “goes wrong” in the Middle East, including murderous hostility to Israel.
Sentences often seem carefully formulated to push this claim and exclude any possibility of balance, much less accuracy. And no matter what the subject, it seems, this message must be snuck in.
Consider these two paragraphs in a Washington Post story about the Egyptian government’s cancellation of a Jewish pilgrimage to a site in Egypt:
The government’s move underscores the changing relationship between Israel and post-Hosni Mubarak Egypt. The former president maintained relations with Israel, as laid out in the 1979 Camp David peace treaty, in part by curbing civil liberties with his expansive police force. Since his ouster last winter, anti-Israeli sentiment driven by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has risen to the surface, and Israeli-Egyptian tensions have grown.

Relations soured further in the fall after a mid-August cross-border attack from Egypt led to the killing of at least five Egyptian border guards as Israeli troops pursued alleged militants. Many activists called for revisions of the peace treaty and protests outside the Israeli Embassy turned violent when some demonstrators stormed the building.

Let’s list the subtle points made in these few sentences:

1. Egyptian resentment toward Israel and the treaty supposedly emerges from the use of repression to maintain it. So is Israel or peace with Israel responsible for the lack of democracy and free speech in Egypt under Mubarak? In fact, of course, there was a huge amount of criticism of the policy toward Israel and the latter country was continually attacked in the strongest language by both opposition and government circles. Since Mubarak was the dictator he could maintain relations with Israel if he wanted to do so. Hence the statement that he maintained them by repression is just false.

2. In fact, the relationship was called a “cold peace” precisely because the Mubarak government limited it (official boycotts of Israelis; harassment of Egyptian firms that wanted to do business with Israel; continual extremist anti-Israel propaganda in the state-controlled Egyptian media; denial of visas to Egyptians — mainly Christian pilgrims — who wanted to go to Israel, etc.)

2. Why has anti-Israel sentiment in Egypt risen in the last year? Because, we are told, Israel treated the Palestinians so badly. What about the ideological changes in Egypt? If Israel had done nothing, the same result would have happened. And how has Israel treated Palestinians badly in the last year? It has been a relatively quiet year actually.

3. No mention of historic levels of hatred toward Israel and Jews in Egypt, or of the emergence of revolutionary Islamist groups that — including the two leading parties in the election — openly call for Israel’s extinction and use extensive antisemitic rhetoric.

4. Eight Israelis, six of them civilians on a bus, were killed by terrorists operating from Egypt. Those terrorists enjoy wide popular support because of the worldview and politics of most Egyptians. But we are to believe that hatred only rose because Israel accidentally killed Egyptian soldiers during the ensuing battle? The terrorists wore Egyptian army uniforms and were being pursued in the same area. Moreover, Israel even hushed up the deliberate murder of an Israeli soldier inside Israel by Egyptian soldiers in order to try to reduce tensions. Incidentally, the article says “at least” five Egyptian soldiers were killed. I don’t think there is any doubt as to the number but it is hinted that there might have been more. What was a terror attack on Israel is thus turned into an Israeli attack on Egypt by the article?

And here is the rest of it.

SHAME ON YOU ED KOCH! Shame On You For Flip-Flopping About Obama

2012-01-22T04:59:00.002+02:00

Yid With Lid

As Mayor of New York, he was a strong "take no prisoners" leader. As he has aged, Ed Koch has become a foolish political hack. Few remember that in early 2008 he blasted then-Senator Obama's anti-Israel stances. But most remember that without any changes in Obama's positions, he helped elect the man who became the most anti-Israel president since 1948 by convincing Jews that Obama would be a friend of Israel.

After three years of criticizing Obama's anti-Israel policies, Koch has once again decided to be an advocate for Obama in the Jewish community. Again with any changes in Obama's positions. During the 2008 Democratic Party primary season Koch worried that a Barack Obama would not be a friend to Israel.

Hillary recently attempted to warn Iran that were it to launch nuclear weapons against Israel, the U.S. “would be able to totally obliterate them.” Hillary’s comments were totally in keeping with the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction which kept the Soviet Union at bay during the Cold War when it threatened its European neighbors and members of NATO.

Instead of joining Hillary in a similar warning to Iran, Senator Obama on “Meet The Press” criticized Hillary stating, “It’s language reflective of George Bush…This kind of language is not helpful.”

Koch concluded:

We now know just how far Senator Obama is prepared to go to defend our friends and allies. It is not far enough.

Just four months later, without any change in Obama's positions, Koch endorsed Barack Obama.

Then he went off to heavily Jewish states convincing many American Jews that Israel should not be an issue in this campaign because Obama and McCain were equal in their support of Israel.

Once Obama was elected and proved to be horrible for America and Israel, Ed Koch became a leading critic of the POTUS and his anti-Israel policies. In March 2010 he wrote a commentary for the progressive Huffington post called Never Again Should We Be Silent.

Now, in my opinion, based on the actions and statements by President Obama and members of his administration, there is grave doubt among supporters of Israel that President Obama can be counted on to do what presidents before him did - protect our ally, Israel. The Arabs can lose countless wars and still come back because of their numbers. If Israel were to lose one, it would cease to exist.

In April 2010 Koch doubled-down, telling Neil Cavuto on Fox News;

"I have been a supporter of President Obama and went to Florida for him, urged Jews all over the country to vote for him saying that he would be just as good as John McCain on the security of Israel. I don't think it's true anymore," Koch told Fox News' Neil Cavuto.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got a chilly reception at the White House last week after Israel announced plans to build 1,600 new apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem during a visit from Vice President Biden. The announcement drew sharp condemnations from Washington and calls to cancel the construction plans – requests that Netanyahu says he will not heed.

Koch said he believes Obama "orchestrated" what happened in Israel.

"What they did is they wanted to make Israel into a pariah," he said. "It's outrageous in my judgment. "

Koch said he's shocked that Congress, which largely supports Israel hasn't "stood up and said to the president, 'you're wrong on this, Mr. President.'"

Koch went on to say the self-serving Chuck Schumer explained to him he wouldn't speak out against Obama's Israel positions publicly because he was working behind the scenes to get Obama to change is policy (it didn't work). The former mayor continued by saying Schumer promised to speak out against Obama publicly should he not change his policies (Schumer hasn't). He concluded by saying:

"I believe that the Obama administration is willing to throw Israel under the bus in order to please Muslim nations."

Just this past September, Koch was a big part of the GOP victory in the special election to replace Anthony Weiner in NY-9. Koch's reason for supporting the Republican Bob Turner was to send a message to President Obama.

If Jewish New Yorkers and others who support Israel were to turn away from the Democratic Party in that congressional election and elect the Republican candidate to Congress in 2011, it might very well cause President Obama to change his hostile position on the State of Israel and to reestablish the special relationship presidents before him had supported. His own reelection will be decided next year in 2012. The outcome of the 2011 congressional special election in the 9th Congressional District will certainly get his attention.

The former Mayor made this threat to the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave:

But if he doesn't read the tea leaves and change his position, you can be certain I will continue to bang my drum. I will campaign against him not only in New York, but in other parts of the country next year. I'll be loud and clear about what I believe. There are many Floridians who are concerned about the Obama administration's treatment of Israel, and Florida will be crucial to the President's reelection.

This week however, the once strong-minded Mayor made the same flip-flop he made in 2008 as he hosted an Obama fundraising event which raised a half a million dollars from 100 members of the Jewish community.

Koch's change of heart comes the same week as the release of multiple reports of the Obama administration warning Israel not to defend herself against Iran.

President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top officials have delivered a string of private messages to Israeli leaders warning about the dire consequences of a strike. The U.S. wants Israel to give more time for the effects of sanctions and other measures intended to force Iran to abandon its perceived efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Even though I disagreed with many of his positions, Ed Koch was one of my political heroes. He seemed to be a different kind of politician--- one who put convictions in front of party affiliation.

I should have known better. Ed Koch has turned out to be nothing but a political hack, bashing Obama until he sees the election coming and suddenly any backbone is replaced by a wet noodle.

No voter should ever pick a President solely based on their position about Israel, and I could understand if the former Mayor said that other issues were much more important than Israel in the coming election. That is not what happened.

In 2008 he reversed himself lying about Obama to Jewish voters; saying the future President was McCain's equal on the issues of terrorism and Israel. Now he is trying to do it again, first promising "But if he doesn't read the tea leaves and change his position, you can be certain I will continue to bang my drum,"then breaking his promise. Despite the fact that Obama has not budged in his anti-Israel positions, Ed Koch is trying to fool us once again and convince Jews that Obama is a Zionist.

SHAME ON YOU ED KOCH! Shame On You For Flip-Flopping on Obama! When Koch was mayor he used to walk around the NYC saying "How am I doing?" The answer today is.... lousy!

The Case for a United Jerusalem

2012-01-21T15:53:00.001+02:00

Ted Belman

I also responded to the Seidemann article referred to below by writing If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem…

By Nathan Diament, THE ATLANTIC

Dividing the holy city as part of a final-status agreement between Israelis and Palestinians ignores key realities on the ground

Proponents of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often insist that the only way to resolve competing claims over the holy city of Jerusalem is to divide it, with each half respectively serving as the capital of Israel and a future Palestinian state. Those who advocate this approach often try to make it more palatable by asserting, as Terrestrial Jerusalem founder Daniel Seidemann recently wrote in The Atlantic, that while many Israelis speak of Jerusalem being a “united” city since its eastern half came under Israeli sovereignty in 1967, such a perception is a “myth” because, in fact, Jerusalem is divided between largely homogeneous and internally contiguous Jewish and Arab neighborhoods across which the two groups rarely venture. Thus, they argue, a border could be drawn relatively easily along demographic lines, re-dividing the city between the two states. 9-11 Ten Years Later
The reality, however, is that Jerusalem today is a demographically intertwined city. To be sure, there are neighborhoods, particularly east of the security barrier, where Jews seldom venter. But modern-day Jerusalem is far more an interwoven checkerboard of Jewish and Palestinian enclaves. The Arab neighborhood of Beit Safafa, for example, lies between the Jewish neighborhoods of Talpiot and Gilo, while the Arab neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah lies between the Old City and the Jewish neighborhood of French Hill. Separating these neighborhoods between two countries would create an unwieldy and unsustainable border. While creative solutions have been proposed to ensure that a re-divided Jerusalem would remain interconnected, as any urban center must to thrive, experience shows that divided cities, such as Berlin and Baghdad, are fragile at best and combustible at worst.

One significant reason against dividing Jerusalem is that many of the Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem wish to remain under Israeli sovereignty. Recent polling indicates that, despite the fact that municipal resources and services have not been evenly allocated between Jewish and Arab Jerusalem segments of the city, a plurality of Palestinians residing in eastern sections of Jerusalem would move from Palestinian Jerusalem to Israeli Jerusalem, if given the opportunity, should the city be re-divided. According to one of the pollsters:

For most Palestinians who said they wanted to be citizens of Israel, approximately 35 percent said it was practical issues that dominate — freedom of movement, higher income, health insurance, job opportunities, prosperity, more shops…

People were concerned that if they became a citizen of Palestine, they had significant worries about losing employment in Israel, free movement in Israel, Israeli health care, and reduction in city services. …

Three-quarters of east Jerusalem Arabs are at least a little concerned, and more than half are more than a little concerned, that they would lose their ability to write and speak freely if they became citizens of a Palestinian state rather than remaining under Israeli control.

But more contentious than the fate of Jerusalem’s residential neighborhoods is the debate over the fate of the Old City – home to Judaism’s holiest sites and among Islam’s holiest sites. On a practical level, dividing the Old City along demographic lines would put Jewish holy sites on the Palestinian side and Muslim holy sites on the Israeli side. Israelis are understandably cautious about putting these sites solely under Arab control; when Arabs last controlled the Old City, from 1948 to 1967, Jews were barred from access.

To address this concern, numerous groups have proposed “special arrangements,” such as international or joint Israeli-Palestinian administration over the Old City, to ensure protection of and access to these sites. But these proposals rely on international community support and enforcement to guarantee security and access, which Israel has legitimate grounds to doubt given the lackluster performance of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) in the Sinai (who evacuated their posts in the lead-up to the June 1967 War) and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) along Israel’s northern border (who have failed in their mandate to prevent the re-arming of Hezbollah). Furthermore, the international community has consistently shown little regard for the Jewish attachment to holy sites, most recently seen in UNESCO’s 2010 declaration that the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron is “an integral part of the Palestinian territories.”

An additional problem with “special arrangement” proposals is that they tend to require more intimate and extensive cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians rather than granting the “divorce” from one another that both sides seem to be seeking through a peace deal. And this cooperation must succeed in the most sensitive of all locations.

Unlike these untested proposals, Israel has proven over the past four decades that its authority over all of Jerusalem can ensure protection of and access to holy sites. Since Jerusalem was reunited in 1967, pilgrims of all faiths have generally been allowed to visit the holy places of all religions. Muslim mosques, even those built atop the mount where Judaism’s Holy Temple once stood, operate relatively freely – and under Islamic religious oversight. While some might contest that Israel does periodically place security restrictions upon entrance to holy sites, free access is the default policy under Israeli rule.

But resolving the status of the Old City of Jerusalem is not just about geography nor about the practicalities of access to a single site; it is deeply intertwined with questions of national identity, history, and theology. Proposals for joint sovereignty, deferred sovereignty, or even divine sovereignty ignore the deep-rooted significance of the holy city. The search for a “split the difference” compromise also ignores the fact that the Old City of Jerusalem has been the national capital of the Jewish people for the past 3000 years and is Judaism’s holiest site, while it is Mecca that plays that role for Muslims. The international community would never expect the Islamic world to cede sovereignty over Mecca; the Jewish people ought to be accorded no less respect with regard to the Old City of Jerusalem.

One reason peace in the Middle East has not yet been possible is because most efforts to achieve it have been aspirational but untethered from reality. It is clear that re-dividing Jerusalem is neither feasible nor prudent. The international community must take off the table the option of dividing Jerusalem, in the same way that they have ended the debate over a “right of return” to Israel for Palestinian refugees. A sustainable peace can only be achieved with the entirety of Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.

Germany's New Islamic Centers

2012-01-20T16:18:00.000+02:00

Soeren Kern

One of the oldest universities in Germany has opened the country's first taxpayer-funded department of Islamic theology.

The Center for Islamic Theology at the University of Tübingen was inaugurated on January 16 and is the first of four planned Islamic university centers in Germany.

The German government claims that by controlling the curriculum, the school, which is to train Muslim imams and Islamic religion teachers, will function as an antidote to "hate preachers."

Most imams currently in Germany are from Turkey and many of them do not speak German.

German Education Minister Annette Schavan, who attended the opening ceremony, said the Islamic center was a "milestone for integration" for the 4.3 million Muslims who now live in Germany.

But the idea has been fiercely criticized by those who worry the school will become a gateway for Islamists who will introduce a hardline brand of Islam into the German university system. The three professors who will be teaching at the department (eventually there will be six full professorships) had to satisfy an Islamic advisory council that they were devout Muslims.

One of the professors is Omar Hamdan, a Sunni Muslim, says that critical analysis into whether the Islamic Koran was actually written by God is "completely out of the question." Pointing to double standards, some of those opposed to the center say there should be critical distance between text and interpreter, as when Christianity is taught in German universities.

Critics also fear that conservative Islamic organizations will exert their influence over teaching and research at the center. There are only two independent experts on the advisory board of the Tübingen center. The other five individuals belong to groups such as the Turkish-Islamic Union for Islamic Affairs (DITIB), which is a branch of the Turkish government.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan uses DITIB to control over 900 mosques in Germany -- to prevent Turkish immigrants from integrating into German society.

During a trip to Germany in November 2011, Erdogan said that Berlin's insistence that immigrants who want to live in Germany must integrate and learn the German language is "against human rights."

In February 2011, Erdogan told a crowd of more than 10,000 Turkish immigrants: "We are against assimilation. No one should be able to rip us away from our culture and civilization." In 2008, he also said, "assimilation is a crime against humanity" and urged the Turkish immigrants there to resist assimilation into the West.

In March 2010, Erdogan called on Germany open Turkish-language grade schools and high schools, presumably to be controlled by DITIB.

Previously, Erdogan had said: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers..." -- a declaration many interpreted as a call for the Islamization of Europe.

Aside from the center in Tübingen, Islamic theology departments are also set to open in 2012 in Münster/Osnabrück, Erlangen/Nürnberg and Frankfurt/Gießen.

The German government will pay the salaries for professors and other staff at all four Islamic centers for the next five years, at a total cost of €20 million ($25 million).

According to the Education Ministry, over the next few years Germany will have a demand for more than 2,000 teachers of Islam, who will be needed to instruct more than 700,000 Muslim children.

Germany is opening its doors to Islam at a time when its government is also cracking down on those who criticize Muslim immigration and the Islamization of Europe.

Less than a week before the Tübingen Islamic center was inaugurated, it came to light that the German domestic intelligence agency -- the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) -- is looking into whether German citizens who criticize Muslims and Islam are fomenting hate and are thus criminally guilty of "breaching" the German constitution.

The BfV's move marks a significant setback for the exercise of free speech in Germany.

The issue has become part of the larger debate over the question of Muslim immigration and the establishment of a parallel Islamic society in Germany.

In November 2011, the German Federal Ministry of the Family released a 160-page report, "Forced Marriages in Germany: Numbers and Analysis of Counseling Cases," which revealed that thousands of young women and girls in Germany are victims of forced marriages every year. Most of the victims come from Muslim families; many have been threatened with violence and often death.

In September 2011, a new book "Judges Without Law: Islamic Parallel Justice Endangers Our Constitutional State," disclosed that Islamic Sharia courts are now operating in all of Germany's big cities. The book argues that this "parallel justice system" is undermining the rule of law in Germany as Muslim imams are settling criminal cases out of court, without the involvement of German prosecutors or lawyers, before Germany's law enforcement can bring the cases to a German court.

That same month, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich revealed that Germany is home to some 1,000 Islamic radicals who are potential terrorists. He said many of these home-grown Islamists are socially alienated Muslim youths who are being inflamed by German-language Islamist propaganda that promotes hatred of the West. In some instances, the extremists are being encouraged to join sleeper cells and one day to "awaken" and commit terrorist attacks in Germany and elsewhere.

Back in Tübingen, Education Minister Schavan says she is "placing a lot of trust" in the new Islamic center, which she hopes will "contribute to the further development of Islamic theology."

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

How Circumstance Dictates Islamic Behavior

2012-01-20T15:54:00.002+02:00

Raymond Ibrahim
on Jan 20th, 2012

Has there ever been a time when one group of people openly exposes its animosity for another group of people—even as this second group not only ignores the animosity, but speaks well, enables, and legitimizes the first group?

Welcome to the 21st century, where Western politicians empower those Muslims who are otherwise constantly and openly denouncing all non-Muslims as enemies to be fought and subjugated.

Consider this video of Sheikh Yassir al-Burhami, a top-ranked figure in Egypt’s Salafi movement which won some 25% of the votes in recent elections. He makes clear a point that, in a different era, would be thoroughly eye-opening: that all notions of peace with non-Muslims are based on circumstance. When Muslims are weak, they should be peaceful; when strong, they should go on the offensive.

Discussing “the analogy between Egypt’s Christians and the Jews of Medina,” Burhami pointed out that Muslims may make temporary peace with infidels, when circumstance calls for it: The Jews of Medina represent a paradigm—laid by the prophet [Muhammad]—that shows how Muslims should deal with infidels. The prophet’s methods of dealing with infidels are available for Muslims to replicate depending on their situation and their capabilities. The Prophet in Mecca dealt with the infidels in a certain way, so whenever Muslims are vulnerable they should deal with the infidels in this same manner.

Burhami is referring to the famous Mecca/Medina division: when Muhammad was weak and outnumbered in his early Mecca period, he preached peace and made pacts with infidels; when he became strong in the Medina period, he preached war and went on the offensive. This dichotomy—preach peace when weak, wage war when strong—has been instructive to Muslims for ages.

After quoting Koran 4:77, “Refrain from action, uphold prayers, and pay your zakat,” Burhami continues:

In many infidel countries, such as occupied Palestine, we instruct Muslims to do just that [follow Koran 4:77]. Today in Gaza, we do not tell Muslims to launch rockets everyday and so destroy the country, but we tell them “Refrain from action and respect the truce.” When the Prophet first arrived in Medina, he made conciliation with the Jews, conciliation without jizya [i.e., equal-term conciliation without forcing Jews to pay tribute and live as second-class dhimmis]—this is a pattern that can be followed whenever circumstances dictate. However, when they breached the covenant he fought them and ultimately imposed jizya on the People of the Book [Jews and Christians]. Nor is this Sura [Koran 9:29] abrogated; it is acknowledged and agreed upon.
Burhami exposes much here, beginning with the Koran verse he quotes: when weak, Muslims are to “refrain from action”—but “pay your zakat,” which, among other things, funds the jihad. Also, as Muhammad made peace with the Jews of Medina, without making them submit to jizya (tribute to be paid “while utterly subdued”), so too are Palestinians allowed to make temporary peace with Israel. In both cases, circumstance—namely, Muslim weakness—justify it. But, when capability allows, Koran 9:29—which calls for jizya and subjugation, and which Burhami quotes as having abrogated the other peaceful verses—takes over.

Burhami’s conclusion:

Yes we can deal with those Christians [Egypt’s Copts] as the Jews were dealt with in Medina; it is an option. The Prophet made the Hudaybiya Reconciliation with the infidels and held a truce for ten years; that is also an option…. So, it is legitimate to choose from examples set by the Prophet, depending on what suits the situation of Muslims now.

In short, Muslims may be tolerant of Egypt’s Copts now, and not collect jizya and place them in dhimmitude, until they are more capable—just like Palestinians may make peace with Israel now, till they are more capable of waging an offensive. Indeed, Dr. Mohamed Saad Katatni—the secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, which won 40% of the votes—reportedly said that Copts would not pay jizya now, implying that the idea of collecting tribute from subdued “dhimmi” Copts is very much alive among the Brotherhood, only dormant till a more opportune moment.

One may argue that Sheikh Yassir al-Burhami—“one man,” a “radical”—is not representative of “true Islam.” The problem, however, is that all his arguments have been made countless times by countless Muslims, including the most authoritative, throughout the ages. Even the late Yasser Arafatevoked Hudaybiya as representative of “peace” with Israel.

And yet, despite all this—despite the fact that this video is a drop in the bucket of evidence—here is the West, making the way clear for people like Burhami to power in the name of “democracy,” regardless that pacts, smiles, and handshakes over cups of coffee exist solely when circumstance, in this case, Muslim weakness, dictates.

Young Jews are Pro-Israel

2012-01-20T09:06:00.001+02:00

Mitchell Bard

Jerusalem Post

Today, it has become popular to malign young Jews and to suggest that they are turning away from Israel. We hear that they have been turned off to Israel by policies of the Israeli government and have become increasingly supportive of the Palestinians. Those of us who work with students know this is rubbish and now a new poll provides evidence that young Jews feel close to Israel, have little sympathy for the Palestinians, are hawkish on peace issues, and don't believe public criticism of the government advocated by Jews on the far left is helpful.

The nationwide poll of 400 Jewish college students sponsored by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise and The Israel Project found:

90% agree that Israel is the spiritual center of the Jewish people.

83% said caring about Israel is an important part of being Jewish.

73% said American and Israeli Jews share a common destiny.

89% have warm/favorable feelings toward Israel.

78% sympathize with Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinians.

84% think America should support Israel. To further drive a stake in the idea that young Jews feel less connected to Israel than their elders, we can compare our results to the findings of the American Jewish Committee’s latest national poll. The AJC found that 68% of American Jews feel close to Israel and 31% said they feel very close. In the AICE/TIP survey, 66% of college students said they feel close to Israel and 26% answered very close.

Jewish students also have positive associations with Israel. When asked for a word to describe Israel, they chose words such as “Homeland,” “Jewish,” “Home,” “Strong,” and “Beautiful.”

By contrast, young Jews have mostly negative views toward the Palestinians. Only 15% of Jews rated their feelings toward the Palestinians as warm or favorable, only 2% said they sympathize with the Palestinians and only 1% think America should side with the Palestinians.

Jewish students are also relatively hawkish on final status issues. For example,

· 54% oppose a Palestinian state (only 27% support one).
· 62% say Jerusalem should stay under Israeli control; only 11% favor dividing the city.
· 47% favor dismantling some or all of the settlements; however, more Jews say no settlements should be dismantled (32%) than favor dismantling all of them (6%).

Young Jews also do not buy into the far left view that American Jews should express greater criticism of Israel. Nearly half (47%) the Jewish students said American Jews should support Israel and the policies of its democratically elected government and should express their disagreements privately; only 37% thought American Jews should speak out publicly against policies with which they disagree. A majority (58%) agreed that American Jews and Israelis have different experiences, knowledge, responsibilities and audiences and, therefore, criticism of Israeli policy by Israelis does not justify criticism of Israeli policy by American Jews in the United States.

To preempt the charge that the survey was biased toward more conservative Orthodox Jews, a plurality of the sample were Reform (43%) another 29% were Conservative and only 15% said they were Orthodox.

The traditional American Jewish position is that the people of Israel, who must live with the consequences of decisions regarding peace and security, and must send their children to defend the state, should decide their own fate, and that we should respect the views of their elected representatives. Many self-appointed arbiters of Israel’s national interest take the fundamentally anti-democratic view that American Jews have to save Israel from itself because Israeli Jews and their elected representatives are too stupid, immature or otherwise flawed to know what’s good for their country.

Arab lobbyists often claim there is a Jewish conspiracy to silence their sage opinions, when in fact the public and decision makers reject their views as contrary to the national interest. Similarly, Jews on the far left (and often the far right) are frustrated that their minority views are rejected by the overwhelming majority of American Jews, including younger Jews.

Students today are as passionate toward Israel as their parents and identify with traditional pro-Israel groups. If Jews are alienated, it is less likely a result of Israeli policy than ignorance and a lack of a solid Jewish foundation. The Jewish students who went to a Jewish school or camp, were involved in Jewish youth groups, had a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, were involved in a campus organization and visited Israel are the most pro-Israel.

The bottom line is that young Jews are not turning away from Israel. The way to make them feel closer is not to encourage them to criticize their homeland, it is to take them there and to expose them to more Jewish life experiences.

Mitchell Bard is a foreign policy analyst whose latest book is The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the M

So You Want a Revolution...

2012-01-19T16:58:00.001+02:00

Sultan Knish

The lawyer has more in common with the prosecutor than he does with his clients and Republican and Democratic politicians have more in common with each other than they do with the people who come out to support them and vote for them. The hopes of ordinary people for the future, their ability to earn a living and their fears are only a job to the politician.

This doesn't mean that politicians are villains, only that like the police officer and the ER nurse, other people's urgent calls are just another day at work for them. Mediating them and dealing with them day in and day out gives them a different perspective that is detached from the present and rooted in the realities of their profession. The police officer and the nurse know that everything is an emergency, that everyone has problems all the time and that it's never really the end of the world. Cynicism comes with the job. So does seeing they people they encounter as foolish folk who have trouble taking care of themselves and have to come to them for help. That detachment leaves them with more in common with those who walk on the night side of human events than it does with the people who come to them for help.

Professional politics breeds cynicism more thoroughly than spending your nights answering domestic abuse calls or patching together the victims of drunken brawls. Like them politics is a profession founded on idealism, but the idealism in much harder to sustain because it rarely survives the first practice of professional politics. It's possible to work in the ER or patrol the late nights streets of an urban city without losing the belief that medicine and law enforcement are noble professions, but continuing to believe that politics is a noble profession after a year in congress is all but impossible.

Politics is a profession with a practice that runs completely counter to its ideals. The best politicians believe nothing they say. Whatever commitments they make to the voters are left behind once they enter the white halls of government. Like police officers who are forced to become criminals in order to do their job right, they discover that the practice of their profession requires the comprehensive corruption of their ideals. Only by discarding their principles and commitments can they actually get the things they want to do done.

The successful politician does not believe in absolutes except when he is delivering a speech intended for the ears of the voters, what he knows to be true is that everyone has a price at which a bargain can be made. For all that the image of legislators and executives is of men and women standing against marble backgrounds and taking a stand, the real life version is of a bazaar where everyone is trying to make a deal while doing their best to be outraged by the other side's offer.

"Forty billion dollars for clean energy subsidies? Ridiculous. My family will starve and my children will have to beg in the streets! Forty-two billion? Now that's more reasonable. Make it forty-three and I'll give you that cowboy poetry festival and steel tariff you wanted."

Think of Washington D.C. and every state capital and every local bunch of elected officials as a Middle Eastern bazaar and you come close to the truth. And while this system works well enough when stocks are limited, when the merchants can dispose of unlimited assets that they don't own and drive their constituents deep into debt to pay for their latest deals, then the real nightmare arrives.

The right has spent a lot of time trying to win elections and sent a lot of horse traders to Washington, and for the most part missed the point of what the left had done. The left does not win elections all that often and even its prize politicians are generally not as left as they pretend to be. What the left did was take over institutions and set the base exchange price in the bazaar that politicians from both sides had to meet. That base price became the "moderate" consensus that everyone has to abide by.

Shifting the exchange price allows the left to control what deals get made. It takes certain products entirely off the table. Mainstream positions from ten years ago become too extreme even for the GOP and completely unacceptable positions that no mainstream Democrat would have run on ten years ago become the consensus. This doesn't happen because anyone takes a vote. Most votes just push through whatever the consensus is.

Politics is based around a consensus. The left does not operate on a consensus, it is a revolutionary movement and it works by subverting the consensus and presenting its revolutionary position as the new consensus. All that is left for the politicians then is to affirm the new consensus. This has happened over and over again in the lifetimes of even the youngest person reading this article and the process has been accelerating lately because it s a revolutionary process.

There are two types of conservative politicians. Gatekeepers and revolutionaries. The gatekeepers are consensus builders, they talk a great deal about traditional values, and are elected to keep change out. This defensive strategy is a dead end because the real changes are happening outside the direct purview of the gatekeepers, who usually lack the imagination and courage to do anything about them. When the left pushes hard enough, the gatekeepers fold and add the new order of things into their panoply of American values.

The gatekeepers will put up a vigorous show of fighting gay marriage and then ten years later they will proclaim gay marriage as the embodiment of our family values. They will make a great show of fighting Global Warming legislation, and then five years later they will say that our courage to confront climate change is the deepest sign of our values of responsibility for the world around us.

Gatekeepers often don't believe anything they say. They believe some of it, but not very vehemently, and they lack the imagination to think of anything else. Expecting them to intelligently counter the left's cultural warfare is absolutely hopeless. At their best they put on a superior smirk and dismiss it as ridiculous, only to concede it when the debate has flanked them and the voters are no longer firmly in their traditional corner.

The Republican Party is full of gatekeepers. There are a great many of them who have been defending traditional values and will go on defending traditional values, even though they cannot begin to explain what traditional values are and why they defend them except in circular self-defining terms. Traditional values and American exceptionalism are their goal and as the goal posts keep moving, so do they.

Revolutionaries are rarer. They are dangerous and explosive. Sometimes they are erratic. They are full of ideas, determined and unwilling to compromise. They rarely make good politicians, but sometimes they make very explosive ones. Find the political leader whom the rest of the party hates and can't wait to get rid of for his obstructionism and sabotage of the gatekeeper agenda, and you may have found a revolutionary.

The revolutionaries cannot transform this mess or turn back the clock solely through their elected office, but they can dismantle the power bases of the other side and they can support and help create counterbalancing institutions. But their most valuable contribution is a refusal to accept the consensus, they refuse to do business at the exchange price set for them by the left.

There are few things more powerful and liberating than spitting in the face of authority, tearing down the sacred symbols and violation the taboos of those in power. In a democracy political power is based on a consensus. Defying that consensus, trivializing that consensus and walking all over it gets you called an extremist, but if you do it right then you have weakened the psychological power of the establishments over the minds of men.

Defiance is the fundamental virtue of the revolutionary. The left defied the accepted norms and values of America, and that defiance paved the way for a cultural revolution. The power of the left will never be broken until the right defies their values and norms the same way. Until it publicly destroys, mocks and violates everything that they consider sacred in the spirit of revolution.

Revolutions begin as culture wars against the established order and they connect cultural defiance to political change. The fundamental message of every revolution is a defiance of authority and if the revolution succeeds then those in power are forced to give way and accede to change. It can be done. That populist spirit is out there, it is abroad in the Tea Party, it is there in blogs and social media, and even occasionally on talk radio. But all that goes to waste empowering a political establishment of gatekeepers who sometimes talk like revolutionaries, but don't act like revolutionaries.

In a New York Times book review, Sheri Berman wondered, "Why, in an era of extreme unemployment, rising inequality and social dislocation, is it the right rather than the left that generated a movement like the Tea Party? Why are mass protests railing against tax increases rather than demanding more progressive and activist government?"

The answer is transparently obvious. Because it is the left that is in power. Why bother demanding an activist and progressive government when we already have one of those? At most the left can demand a "more" activist and progressive government, but how enthusiastic can protesters be about calling for more authority and more power for the existing system? That is why OWS was basically incoherent, it was little more than a loincloth for the naked emperor already sitting on his throne and looking for the plebes to cry out for more chains.

The revolution of the left is the stratified revolution of Barack Obamas and Elizabeth Warrens, greedy political activists feeding at the watering hole of government and crying out for more. More power. More laws. More chains. Parse the rhetoric and all you get is the powerful demanding that we give them more power. This revolution of the greedy and corrupt would already be dead if it had not used the momentum of its ideological fervor to embed itself into every institution and seize control of the educational system and the cultural dialogue to program succeeding generations to give it even more power.

The time is ripe for a true cultural and political revolution of the right, but that revolution has been hijacked over and over again by the gatekeepers who warn us that it's time to play nice, that we must think of the long game, that some issues have already been lost and we need to fight only for the core issues that matter to them lest we alienate people. The long march never ends in a last stand, only another tactical withdrawal on issue after issue.

The establishment, which does not care about anything but its very narrow agenda of limited deregulation while protecting some forms of spending that benefit them, will win or lose again, without making too much of a difference. Even if it loses then there will be enough votes in congress to get some of what it wants done and the money will be there to try again with an even more content free candidate who will preach a form of American exceptionalism and traditional values absolutely indistinguishable from the political positions of President Clinton, or by then maybe even Obama.

Every time we bow our heads to the consensus, self-censor ourselves to stay within our prison bars and execute another tactical withdrawal to fight for some last vestige of our program that really matters, the power of the left continues to grow.

The power of the left is not political. Its political power is the least of what it is. It leverages its cultural dominance to enforce a political consensus. It uses its grip on power through government and non-governmental institutions to impose regulations and laws that politicians from both parties end up signing on to. It is an establishment, an incarnation of the power and privilege of a fossilized ideology built to destroy the country, but leveraged to give its leading members and some of its base a taste of the really good life while the whole edifice of civilization slides down the cliff.

It is important to elect conservative politicians, even feeble ones, not because they are good for anything, but because at the least they can serve as sandbags against the tide. The sandbags will not stop the tide, but they might slow it down. It is vitally important to elect revolutionary conservatives who don't just deliver platitudes, but show that they have the fire in their bellies to confront the left. And it is even more important to undermine the values and institutions of the left. It can be difficult to undermine institutions, but anyone can undermine the values of the left by saying the politically incorrect thing.

Revolutions begin with an open contempt for and anger at the existing order. The left knows that. It is why it fears talk radio and populism more than it fears the latest set of dapper gatekeepers we send to the Senate. The contempt and anger are here, the more they go public, the more the power of the left is shaken. And the next step is to expand the cultural war to a specific disrespect and hostility for the values and sacred cows of the left. Then to challenge their institutions and regulations. And then real political change can begin with candidates who are revolutionaries because they believe it, or because they are operating under a new paradigm that is outside the left's manufactured consensus.

Most of the elements are already in place. The consensus establishment is making its last stand, but it is fading. It is now a race between shaping public anger into a vehicle for political change and the speed at which the left is transforming and fragmenting the country to prevent a political revolution of the right from ever coming about. May we be swift for if the left wins the race then it is the end of America.

'Muslim Brotherhood site rife with anti-Semitism'

2012-01-19T05:30:00.001+02:00

OREN KESSLER
01/19/2012

Ikhwanonline.com regularly features Holocaust denial, condemnations of Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

The Arabic website of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is rife with anti- Semitic and anti-Israel content, according to a recent report by a USbased media monitoring group.

The report found that the Islamist group’s website, Ikhwanonline.com, regularly features articles denying the Holocaust and warning Muslims against the covetous and exploitative nature of the “Jewish character.” Other articles extol jihad and martyrdom, condemn Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel and denounce negotiations as means for regaining lands lost by Islam. The study was published last week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a non-profit group that monitors and translates Arabic and Farsi media. Based in Washington, it was founded in 1998 by Yigal Carmon, an Israeli former intelligence official, adviser and diplomat.

The Brotherhood has emerged as the biggest winner from the overthrow of former president Hosni Mubarak, taking some 45 percent of votes in recent elections for the lower house of parliament. In the 11 months since Mubarak’s ouster, however, the Brotherhood has issued contradictory signals over its willingness to maintain the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

Early this month Dr. Rashad Bayoumi, its deputy leader, told Arabic media the group would never recognize the Jewish state.

“This is not an option, whatever the circumstances, we do not recognize Israel at all. It’s an occupying criminal enemy.”

A week later, Essam Al-Arian, deputy leader of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), assured The New York Times the party would in fact honor the agreement.

MEMRI’s latest report, however, gives no indication the Brotherhood has changed the virulently anti- Semitic, anti-Western rhetoric that has characterized the movement for more than eight decades.

One common motif on the Brotherhood’s site is “Jewish character” and its supposed history of sowing evil in the world.

In May 2010, following Israel’s Gaza flotilla raid, a writer named Mahmoud Abd Al-Rahman wrote on the website, “For ages, human society has faced the problem of the Zionist Jewish character. All nations and cultures are in agreement over the nature of the disease intrinsic in the Zionist character... namely sanctification of money, sex, robbery, interest and treachery.”

“We saw this in pharaonic Egypt, and in the Canaanite, Amalekite, Babylonian, Persian and Roman [eras],” he wrote. “During the pharaonic era, it was written on the tomb of [the pharaoh] Marnephtah, ‘The Egyptians have annihilated the Zionists.’”

Since Mubarak’s exit the Brotherhood has sought to to position itself to Western media as a moderate, pragmatic movement dedicated to promoting a prosperous, tolerant Egypt. But the last 11 months have seen no appreciable change in tone when addressing their constituents in their native language.

In June of last year, a sermon posted on Ikhwanonline by Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie said, “Allah warned us against the deceit of the Jews and their dangerous role in sparking wars... The war in Sudan and its division are their handiwork; the internal struggle and war among the Palestinians is [part] of their plan.”

Two months later, Muhammad Ali Dabour, a member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) and lecturer at Cairo University, wrote on the website: “Throughout all of history, the Jews have failed to keep their word. They always employ a double standard and act in their own interests, even if it means destroying the entire world.”

“Breaking agreements and treaties is easier for them than drinking water or breathing air. Such are the Jews. Such is Jewish nature. Though they flatter, act hypocritically, and embitter the entire world, we Muslims must not be deceived by them,” Dabour wrote.

Another common theme on the website, the report found, is Holocaust denial.

Fathi Shihab, the official responsible for the Brotherhood’s labor dossier, wrote in 2010 that the Holocaust is a “tale” Israel uses as political leverage. In reference to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, he wrote, “The entire world, and Germany in particular, has become yearly scapegoats of world Zionism, and has capitulated to the greatest political extortion in history.”

The Holocaust, he added, was “invented by the American intelligence apparatuses with the Allies’ collaboration during World War II, in order to harm the image of their German adversaries and justify the great destructive war against the Axis countries’ military and civilian installations.”

The article approvingly cites three French Holocaust deniers – Robert Faurisson, Henri Roques and Roger Garaudy – as well as Norman Finkelstein, the American author of the book The Holocaust Industry.

Ikhwanonline regularly calls for Israel’s destruction. In November, Dr. Abd Al-Rahman Al-Bar, a member of the Brotherhood’s General Guide Office and the International Union of Muslim Scholars, wrote that the Palestinian cause “will remain a prime concern for the ummah [the Arab world], until Allah heralds the end of the racist state of occupation, and until the last of the people of our ummah fights the swindling Jews and their armies and delivers the land from their wickedness.”

That same month Saleh Sultan, head of the IUMS Jerusalem Committee, wrote on the website: “There is nothing to stop the destruction of holy places other than a clear message saying: ‘Kill a Zionist in response to every stone [dismantled] from the honorable Al-Aqsa.’”

Sultan continued: “Together, we will all expose the facts of the Judaization of Jerusalem and the plan to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and we will get ready to say: ‘Kill a Zionist for every stone of Al-Aqsa.’”

Finally, the study found Ikhwanonline replete with denunciations of negotiations with non-Muslims and calls for martyrdom and jihad.

In October a writer named Dr. Muhammad Abd Al-Rahman Al- Masri wrote that the conflict between Muslims and Israel is, at heart, religious and that jihad must be waged wherever Islamic land is occupied: “The conflict between the Zionist state and the Muslim ummah is not like the fight between a landowner and a plundering occupier. This fight is, in essence, a struggle of faith, a cultural struggle [over] fate and existence...The Koran indicates this fight [will continue] until the Day of Judgment.”

In an article published following the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange, Al-Bar exalted jihad and martyrdom as the path to liberating Palestine – from “the sea to the river” – as opposed to negotiations, which had consistently failed to yield results.

Al-Bar describe the attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo as one of the milestones of Egyptian revolution: “Egypt’s popular position stressed a clear resistance to any Zionist diplomatic presence on its soil. This great achievement was one of the expressions of the blessed Egyptian revolution and a clear sign of the progress of the Arab-Islamic enterprise for liberation, at the expense of the Zionist enterprise, which is breaking apart from day to day.

“Do not say: ‘The sower has sowed, and the oppressor has reaped; Al-Aqsa is gone; our Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa and Safed are lost.’ Victory for Allah is at hand. The enemies of Allah will receive no help from Him. The aggressor will never achieve his aim in Jerusalem, as long as we have one child in it.

“Oh brothers, Allah has granted the ummah, which excels at producing death and knows how to die honorably, dear life in this world and eternal bliss in the next. The weakness that leads to our humiliation is love for this world and hatred of death.”

He continued with praise for martyrdom: “Prepare your souls for a great deed. Work toward death; it is then that you will be granted life. Act toward honorable death, and you will earn complete happiness.”

Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism?

2012-01-18T15:40:00.001+02:00

Michael Brown

Appearing at Harvard University shortly before his death in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. responded to an apparently hostile question from an audience member about Zionism, saying, “When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism.”

Is this universally true? Does criticism of Zionism always equal anti-Semitism?

On the one hand, the answer is no, criticism of Zionism does not always equal anti-Semitism. There are Israeli Jews and American Jews who are critical of the modern State of Israel, and they can hardly be called anti-Semites (unless we are willing to brand all of them self-hating Jews). Similarly, there are Christians who love the Jewish people and believe that, in a unique way, God is with them, and yet take strong exception to many Israeli policies. They too can hardly be called anti-Semites. On the one hand, the answer is no, criticism of Zionism does not always equal anti-Semitism. There are Israeli Jews and American Jews who are critical of the modern State of Israel, and they can hardly be called anti-Semites (unless we are willing to brand all of them self-hating Jews). Similarly, there are Christians who love the Jewish people and believe that, in a unique way, God is with them, and yet take strong exception to many Israeli policies. They too can hardly be called anti-Semites.

On the other hand, it is quite often true that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are two sides of the same ugly coin, especially in the Muslim world. The recent comments of Mufti Muhammad Hussein, the religious leader of the Palestinian Authority, serve as a stark reminder of just how deeply anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are often intertwined.

In a speech celebrating the 47th anniversary of Fatah and aired on Palestinian Authority TV on January 9th, the Mufti cited a well-known Hadith (an Islamic tradition attributed to Muhammad): “The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” (As reported by Palwatch.org, a July, 2011 poll sponsored by the Israel Project indicated that a staggering 73% of Palestinians “believe” this Hadith.)

These sentiments are enshrined in the Hamas charter, with Article 7 citing the identical anti-Semitic Hadith, prefaced by this comment: “Hamas has been looking forward to implementing Allah’s promise [to annihilate the Jews], whatever time it might take.”

In the Mufti’s speech, and in keeping with Islamic tradition, Hussein also stated that the only tree behind which a Jew will be able to hide himself is the Gharqad tree (since it will keep silent). “Therefore,” he explained, “it is no wonder that you see Gharqad [trees] surrounding the [Israeli] settlements and colonies.” (We can assume that the Mufti actually believes this.)

So, the hostility expressed towards the Israelis is simply the continuation of historic, Islamic anti-Semitism.

The moderator who introduced the Mufti stated (with passion) that, “Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs [meaning the Jews] is a war of religion and faith,” basing himself on another anti-Semitic tradition found in Islam, a tradition often cited by contemporary Muslim leaders.

For example, “in a weekly sermon in April 2002, Al-Azhar Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, [then] the highest-ranking cleric in the Sunni Muslim world, called the Jews ‘the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs’,” while in 2001, “Saudi sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, imam and preacher at the Al-Haraam mosque – the most important mosque in Mecca – beseeched Allah to annihilate the Jews. He also urged the Arabs to give up peace initiatives with them because they are ‘the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.’”

Similar examples, from recent years and from past centuries, could easily be multiplied. In fact, the Nazis were able to exploit the Jew-hatred found in many Islamic traditions in forming a coalition with prominent leaders in the Arab world, the most important being the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. (Remember that this predates the reestablishment of Israel in 1948.)

This deep, historic hatred of the Jews continues to fuel anti-Zionism in the Muslim world today. And so, during the demonstrations in Egypt’s Tahrir Square in last year’s so-called Arab Spring, Yehudit Barsky noted that protestors brandished pictures of former President Hosni Mubarak with a Star of David on his forehead, invoking the “image of a conspiracy by Jews to control world leaders, including their own.”

The alleged conspiracy Barsky refers to is, of course, the notorious anti-Semitic forgery known as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The book remains a perpetual bestseller in the Muslim world and has also been dramatized for Islamic viewers, most notably in the 41-part series titled “Horseman Without a Horse,” broadcast on Egyptian state television in 2002. In the final episodes of the series, “the Jews are portrayed as leading a conspiracy to form a Zionist state in Palestine while taking the lives of anyone who stands in the way. The series comes to a close with an inscription: ‘Who fights the occupation is not a terrorist’ and contains other thinly veiled political comment on the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Whole books could easily be written on this subject with almost endless examples cited, but the lesson should be clear: While not all anti-Zionism can be fairly equated with anti-Semitism, in the religious Muslim world, the two are deeply intertwined.

The White House’s Israel-bashing pals

2012-01-18T15:37:00.001+02:00

ALANA GOODMAN

Last Updated: 12:11 AM, January 18, 2012

Last December, a top anti-Semitism watchdog group accused the Center for American Progress, a prominent Washington think tank, of peddling anti-Israel and borderline anti-Semitic material on its Web site and Twitter feeds. Six days later, President Obama met for coffee with the man who oversaw the offending content — Faiz Shakir, the site’s editor-in-chief.

That the president met with Shakir amid the ballooning scandal illustrates just how close the administration is with CAP. Now that association may come back to haunt the White House, as three leading Jewish groups — the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal Center — have accused CAP and its staff of publishing “anti-Israel,” “hateful” and “toxic anti-Jewish” material. The Jewish organizations’ ire is directed even more strongly at Media Matters for America — another influential, activist liberal Washington group. But CAP’s failings are more significant, because it has been a revolving door to the administration.

CAP founder John Podesta piloted Obama’s 2008 presidential transition team and now holds a State Department advisory role; founding board member Carol Browner served as Obama’s energy czar. CAP Action Fund President Jennifer Palmieri just joined the White House as deputy communications director.

And Shakir has had multiple meetings with White House officials, including one last August with the National Security Council’s Quintan Wiktorowicz.

Making these close ties to the administration especially troubling is CAP’s intensely anti-Israel slant.

Speaking with the Jerusalem Post recently about CAP and Media Matters, the American Jewish Committee’s Jason Isaacson said, “Think tanks are entitled to their political viewpoints — but they’re not free to slander with impunity . . . References to Israeli ‘apartheid’ or ‘Israel-firsters’ are so false and hateful they reveal an ugly bias no serious policy center can countenance.”

The Wiesenthal Center found the writers “are guilty of dangerous political libels resonating with historic and toxic anti-Jewish prejudices.” The ADL noted: “Most of their blogs come from a perspective of blaming Israel for the lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian affairs and minimizing or rationalizing the Iranian threat.”

The controversy reached a new height over the use of the term “Israel firster.” The phrase, popularized in White Power newsletters in the 1970s and ’80s, accuses American supporters of Israel of being more loyal to the Jewish state than to their own country. Later adopted by fringe pro-Palestinian groups, the slur has since become common on extremist white supremacist and anti-Israel Web forums.

Then it surfaced in writings put out by Media Matters and CAP. “Waiting 4 hack pro-Dem blogger to use this [link] 2 sho Obama is still beloved by Israel-firsters and getting lots of their $$” wrote Zaid Jilani, a reporter for CAP’s site, on Twitter last July.

At Media Matters, Senior Fellow MJ Rosenberg openly delights in using the term. “Cool. A major journalist, who I won’t name, gives me credit for making term ‘Israel Firster’ acceptable. I wish. But I’ll do my best,” he wrote on Twitter.

While Rosenberg continues to use the term, the uproar prompted CAP’s Jilani to apologize, saying he hadn’t realized the connotations. CAP’s blog avowed, “We don’t endorse the term ‘Israel firsters’ or demonize the Jewish state on ThinkProgress. Further, there is no anti-Semitic or anti-Israel ‘hate speech’ written anywhere on this blog.”

But American Jewish groups disagreed. The ADL pointed to a CAP article that suggested the Israel lobby had pushed America into war with Iraq. In another, its Middle East Progress director, Matt Duss, called “the entire Israeli occupation” of Gaza “a moral abomination” like the Jim Crow South.

The AJC noted the odious “Israeli apartheid” references, such as a Jilani tweet: “So DC ‘liberals’ are going to spend a lot of time defending Obama against the charge that he’s not supportive enough of Israeli apartheid.”

CAP hasn’t distanced itself from these comments or even acknowledged that they’re anti-Israel. If it deems them acceptable public comment, one wonders what the internal dialogue is like at the think tank — and among the alumni who have gone on to the Obama administration.

At a minimum, the controversy highlights how progressive groups are working to undermine traditional Democratic support for Israel. Whatever problems Republicans had with demagogues like Pat Buchanan back in the ’90s, such fringe ideas are increasingly unwelcome in the GOP. Will the Democratic Party similarly reject these ideas now — or tolerate anti-Semitic canards and the demonizing of Israel by its top institutions?

Alana Goodman is the assistant online editor of Commentary.

--

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Blog: http://www.mererhetoric.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mererhetoric

Likud 'Feinschmekers' Oppose Authorization Bill

2012-01-17T15:04:00.000+02:00

The Likud ministers who opposed limiting leftist funding come out against allowing Migron to survive.

By Gil Ronen

Likud ministers Michael Eitan, Benny Begin and Dan Meridor came out strongly against the bill that would authorize Judea and Samaria outposts, in the Likud ministers' meeting Sunday morning.

The same ministers opposed the establishment of commissions of inquiry last year into the sources of funding for radical leftist NGOs. At the time, they were dubbed "the feinschmekers" by Yisrael Beitenu head Avigdor Lieberman. The term is a Yiddish word that refers to a holier-than-thou, snobbish personality. Eitan, Meridor and Begin called upon Netanyahu to raze Migron in accordance with the instructions of the High Court. Begin said that passage of the bill would ruin the chances of reaching a compromise with the residents of Migron, according to which they would consent to relocating the community to another, recognized site not far from the original one.

The bill determines that if a land owner in Judea and Samaria does not take legal action within four years of the time a neighborhood is built upon his land, the structures will not be torn down. Instead – he will receive other forms of compensation.
MK Zevulun Orlev of the Jewish Home faction repeated Sunday that his faction would leave the ruling coalition if Migron is destroyed.

The citizenship law and demographics

2012-01-16T17:26:00.001+02:00

Nadav Shragai

Palestinians have taken advantage of Israeli citizenship laws to realize "the right of return.”

For almost 40 years, Palestinians have taken advantage of the Israeli Citizenship Law, using a path paved for them by the government to realize their "right of return," to "reunite" with fellow Arabs inside Israel and to become Israeli citizens. Since Israel's establishment, more than 350,000 Palestinian Arabs have utilized the law to become Israelis.

It was the Bedouin who became experts at invoking the citizenship law, some of them "uniting" with more than one wife. Yet, according to the law, applicable to Bedouin and all other Israelis, a man is allowed to be married to only one woman. Some Bedouin have sent their pregnant second or subsequent wives to hospitals to give birth using identity cards belonging to their first, legal Israeli wives.The National Insurance Institute of Israel statistics center became aware of the phenomenon when it began to notice that a single Bedouin woman might have had three, four or even five births attributed to her in a single year. Such a thing is of course unfathomable. Many Bedouin apparently took this course in an effort to secure additional child stipends from the National Insurance Institute.

In almost all cases, the unification took place on the Israeli side and not the Palestinian side, as it made more financial sense to unite in Israel. It was a year ago that Israel Hayom's weekend political supplement exposed this ongoing phenomenon.

There have also been instances in which "united" individuals took advantage of their newly granted Israeliness to harm us and our security. The most prominent case is that involving Shadi Tobassi, a suicide bomber who killed 15 Israelis during the attack on the Matza restaurant in Haifa nine years ago.

After that attack, an amendment was made to the Citizenship Law allowing the state to block this easy road to citizenship, permitting it to withhold the granting of residency or citizenship to those coming from enemy states or hostile regions.

In 2005, the High Court rejected, for the first time, the petition but forth by the Adalah organization (the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel) which called for the amendment to be repealed.

Judge Mishael Cheshin voiced his objection to the petition, siding with the majority. Court President Justice Aharon Barak was part of the minority group that agreed with the petition.

In order to explain his ruling, Cheshin took the court on a virtual trip to visit Thomas More, the English philosopher who coined the term "utopia." Cheshin imagined himself and Barak arriving at an island far out at sea and being greeted by a venerable More. "What is this place?" the judges asked. "We are in the state of Utopia," answered More. "Is the legal system of the state of Utopia similar to that in Israel?" the judges asked.

More smiled and replied, "I am sorry, but there are profound differences between the two legal systems and will be a long time before Israel is able to reach the level of Utopia. You are fighting for your lives, for the existence of your state, for the ability of the Jewish people to manage a communal and national life, a condition that occurs naturally in all other nations. The laws of Utopia in your situation ... are not well-suited for you ... take care of yourselves ... and stay alive."

Cheshin's successors may have been far less poetic, but fortunately they adopted his position.

Yet now, as happened six years ago, the High Court continues to hide behind the discourse concerning human rights and security. It does so at a time when the real discourse, though it may not be politically correct, is a national-demographic discourse.

The question of whether a woman from Sakhnin and a man from Nablus who marry will be permitted to live together in Israel is an important one to ask -- and especially so if the man is a potential terrorist. But it is no less critical to ask how many dispersed Palestinians will use the citizenship path to realize "the right of return" through the back door.

Justice and the Release of Terrorists

2012-01-16T06:10:00.000+02:00

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Justice is no longer at home in Israel, and if it is not restored, the Jews will lose this land.

Aside from very rare exceptions, justice is trampled when Israeli prime ministers release Arab terrorists. Prima facie, this is not only a violation of Jewish law; it is also a violation of international law, as brilliantly demonstrated by Purdue University professor of political science and international law Rene Louis Beres. Terrorists must be punished.

Arab terrorists have murdered or maimed thousands of Jewish men, women, and children. Yet thousands of these terrorists have been released by Israeli prime ministers, including Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert. Many of the released terrorists have predictably gone on to murder more Jews. Although there may be exceptional occasions when it would not be inconsistent with Jewish law and justice to release terrorists to save Jewish lives, such occasions should be distinguished from the release of terrorists as a “good will” or “confidence-building” gesture in the so-called peace process. The latter is yielding to evil. It is also a fraud, confirmed year after year since Oslo 1993, a fraud perpetrated by Israeli prime ministers trapped in a labyrinth of their own making.

These prime ministers have betrayed our Jewish dead. They have betrayed the soldiers who died fighting in the cause of Israel. They have sold their moral judgment to evil-doers like Yasser Arafat and his successor Mahmoud Abbas.

By releasing terrorists and even murderers, Israeli prime ministers have murdered the sense of justice, and justice is being buried in the process . What is the significance of this state of affairs?

To the extent that justice has been murdered in Israel, then to that extent Israel is forfeiting its right to exist. This axiomatic principle takes precedence over any other consideration. Right-minded people will accomplish nothing until they restore the sense of justice in this country. But to do this they must arouse the moral outrage and condemn those who have murdered justice by releasing Arab murderers. One should not be polite in this matter. Those who release terrorists are themselves prima facie criminals, in some cases accessories to murder.

Releasing Arab terrorists as a “good will measure” is not only immoral; it is an act of stupidity bordering on madness, and madness—triggered either by cowardice and perverse cleverness—seems to have invaded Israel’s political echelon.

If, God-forbid, your loved-ones are murdered by a released Arab terrorist who had previously been given an M-16 rifle under orders of the Minister of Defense as directed by the Prime Minister, then the two are accomplices to murder. The Prime Minister may say: “I was adhering to the terms of the Oslo agreement and acting for the sake of peace.” But no agreement that rewards terrorists is valid.

Besides, it was evident from the outset, except to fools, that Yasser Arafat did not want peace. He even declared, “For us, peace means the destruction of Israel!”

So what shall we think of prime ministers that consorted with this villain or Mahmoud Abbas? What shall we think of those that foisted the “peace process” on the people of Israel—have lied to them again and again over the past 18 years about this peace process? Is it not obvious that these prime ministers lacked the wisdom and courage to deal effectively with Israel’s enemies? Did not the Prophet Isaiah say: “I will give children to be your rulers”?

So what should right-minded people say and do when their prime ministers mislead and betray them? What should right-minded people say and do when their prime ministers talk peace and arm the enemies of peace? What should they say and do if, for example, prime minister Netanyahu may release Arab terrorists to induce Abbas to return to the “negotiating table”—although, bear in mind that that the release of terrorists may be crafted to occur some period after the resumption of negotiations to mislead the public!

First, every critic and protester of the Oslo “peace process” should ask: “Does my criticism or protest go to the heart of the matter? Does it vividly expose and denounce those who have betrayed our dead? Does it admonish our people that justice has been murdered by six Israeli prime ministers, and that justice must be restored in the Land of Israel if we are not to be expelled from this land by our ever-encroaching enemies?”

Second, the critics and protesters should ask: “What enables these prime ministers and members of their cabinet to gain and remain in power despite their timidity and incompetence? Is there something fundamentally wrong with Israel’s system of education—some teaching or doctrine like moral relativism that erodes the sense of justice?”

Third, the critics and protesters should ask: “Is there something wrong with Israel’s system of governance, something that undermines personal accountability and the rule of law?”

Finally, the critics and protesters should ask: “Was the State of Israel, notwithstanding its great accomplishments, ill-designed both from an institutional and Jewish perspective? Were the political Zionists that established this state lacking vital aspects of political wisdom? And if this is the case—and despite the present turmoil—should we not begin to think about reconstructing the State of Israel using time-tested political principles?”

One last word. Justice is not only a moral virtue. Justice requires a proper distribution of power between governors and the governed.

As I have elsewhere shown, Israel’s system of governance has effectively disempowered the people of Israel, who have had nothing to say about releasing Arab terrorists and murderers. Israel’s ruling elites have thus been able to ignore the will of the people with impunity and to murder justice in the process.◘

___________

For more by the writer, whose expertise is “how to make Israel more democratic by Jewish principles, and how to make Israel more Jewish by democratic principles", see Israel-America Renaissance Institute www.I-ari.org

67 percent of murder cases in 2011 involved Israeli Arabs

2012-01-15T17:34:00.001+02:00

Joint effort by Public Security Ministry and police aims to improve individual and communal safety in the non-Jewish sector • Special police units stationed in predominantly Arab towns of Taybeh and Nazareth.
Itzik Saban

In 2011, Israeli Arabs were in involved in 67 percent of Israel's murder cases, even though the Arab sector comprises only 20% of Israel's population.

Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch (Yisrael Beitenu) was to present this statistic to the Cabinet on Sunday as part of a long-term strategy – a joint effort by the police and Public Security Ministry - aimed mainly at improving individual and communal safety in the non-Jewish sector.The plan, which was presented to the prime minister a few days ago, was to be shown to the rest of the Cabinet on Sunday. Aharonovitch was also to present the recent efforts made on the civilian front as well as by law enforcement agencies to minimize the phenomenon.

Within the framework of the plan, special units were created and stationed in the predominantly Arab towns of Taybeh and Nazareth, while an effort was made to reinforce and strengthen local and municipal police forces.

Israeli Arab MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad) told Israel Hayom, "I lament the fact that the Cabinet has chosen to focus on the police issue, though it is one of the most pressing issues [facing the Israeli-Arab sector]. The issue of crime cannot be resolved without a comprehensive program involving education, employment, sport, welfare etc."

"The police issue is the most pressing because the Israel Police are neglecting the problem of crime in the Arab sector. There is discrimination: a murder in [the Arab village of] Umm al-Fahm is not treated the same as a murder in Tel Aviv. The situation is dire and constantly deteriorating. Specific and rapid action is required. Just as the police were able to eradicate the crime in [the Jewish city of] Netanya, they can also eradicate it in Israeli-Arab communities," he added.

"A political decision must be made, and for that reason this issue is on [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's agenda, for him to make a decision. I hope that he will decide that the current situation is unbearable," he continued.

"If the Cabinet makes a decision, the Arab leadership will be there to support it, but if we're talking about nothing more than more deception, we won't be there. Israel's Arab society is entrenched in deep crisis due to the widespread crime. The tools we [Israeli-Arab politicians] possess to combat this problem are few and weak. All the effective tools are in the government's hands. They need to give the tools, in the form of jurisdiction and budgets, to the local authorities. There are ways to combat crime in the Arab sector, and it is time to do it," he concluded.

Droning on about the Drone

2012-01-15T08:44:00.000+02:00

Norma Zager

“It’s especially troublesome when the very people who are supposed to protect children put them in harm.” Jennifer Andary

My children accuse me of being an overprotective mother.

Guilty as charged.

But what is overprotective and what is good common sense? And do the same rules apply to mothers as to other humans?

When my children were small, there was a child murderer preying on children throughout the area. He was never caught. We all kept our eyes on our own and our neighbors’ kids constantly. Does it make sense for parents to be cavalier when the facts of life stare them in the face like Bogie stared down Col. Strasser?

What good can ever come of ignoring the obvious?

I had to laugh when I heard President Obama’s response to the Iran capture of a spy drone.

“Please give it back.”

Are you kidding me? That’s like saying to a schoolyard bully, “Please give my lunch money back.”

Seriously, who is that stupid?

At first I was furious. Not since Neville Chamberlain has a world leader been so naïve about evil staring him in the face.

Then I thought, I will give the president the benefit of the doubt, he can’t possibly be so naïve at this late date. And what of the CIA and all his other advisors? Does he not care what they say? Or are they even communicating at all?

I thought any minute we would hear the drone blew up and took all of Iran’s scientists with it. Or the CIA used it as a weapon. Perhaps Mossad is planning to use it for something; like Stuxnet or Iranian piñata.

I couldn’t imagine in a million lifetimes that a technology so advanced could be so recklessly disregarded. Americans paid for that, and it wasn’t a Kmart blue light special, either!

I simply could not believe a sitting president of the United States could ever be so cavalier about American security. Until I remembered Jimmy Carter and suddenly had a “I could’ve had a V-8 moment.”

Okay, so I guess it can happen again.

Still, isn’t the number one job of the President to protect the people of this country? Even Jed Bartlett in the West Wing, when faced with a similar situation, told the Premier of Russia he would blow up a spy plane if the Russians attempted to even touch it.

And I actually thought Art imitated life. Another thing I was wrong about. Add it to my ever-expanding list.

In this White House Art doesn’t even enter into it.

Watch the show, Mr. President, and you will see how a real president should act toward an enemy.

Back to reality, so now we see that the pretty please didn’t work.

By now Iran has had a giant Tupperware party and invited Russia, North Korea and every evil empire on the planet.

Along with the pita, hummus and baklava they took apart our spy technology and will soon use it against us.

Can we finally admit ignoring Iran’s evil agenda all these years is a total failure and, like Hitler who was allowed to rearm Germany until it was too late to avoid the consequences, we will soon pay a high price?

The United States eliminated Mubarak in Egypt paving the way for the Muslim Brotherhood. In case anyone has forgotten who these people are, they are the ones who murdered Anwar Sadat after he made peace with Israel.

Moderate? I think not.

Now they have a foothold in Egypt and Libya and soon they will join with Iran to create the caliphate they seek – in the Middle East and beyond.

There is only one little thing standing in their way, Israel.

Our State Department claims they have assurances the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt will maintain a peace treaty with Israel, even as they publically deny they will allow Israel to exist.

Hmmm. Should we believe a radical Islamic group will keep its word? Let’s ask Jimmy Carter?

Hey, President Carter how are those Mullahs working out for you instead of the Shah you had such a problem with?

Even Daffy Duck, high on Crack, wouldn’t miss such an obvious agenda.

I am shocked at how foolish the U.S. has become. Our country acts like a mother who hears a dangerous pedophile moved next door and allows her children to play in the unfenced yard alone.

Is this tempting fate or merely stupidity?

Being overprotective gets a bad rap.

It doesn’t exist.

Whether it’s a parent protecting her child from the crazies of this world, or a president protecting his citizens from the evils of the world, there is no such thing as over protective.

There is only good-old-fashioned American horse sense.

Where there is evil present, do not tread.

Where there is danger, stay far away.

When an enemy seeks to destroy you, there is never enough protection.

For who are these citizens of the United States we seek to protect after all?

The children.

It is long past time we had an overprotective Jewish Mother in the white house. Someone annoying, nagging and always cajoling the children to come inside, to stay where she can watch them.

If I didn’t so sharply feel President Obama’s negative attitude toward Jewish people, I would happily offer to teach him how to be an over- protective Jewish mother.

My children can vouch for my expertise.

“Yep, our Mom is crazy and she watches us like a hawk, even now. If she could plant a body guard outside our doors, she would.”

We want a president who will go to the ends of the earth to protect our children and his own.

I remind you Mr. Obama, your kids live here, also.

Iran’s bombs won’t give a damn what or whom they kill.

Maybe it’s high time you did.

The series “Postcards from America—Postcards from Israel” by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager is a compilation of articles capturing the essence of life in America and Israel during the first two decades of the 21st Century.

The writers invite readers to view and experience an Israel and her politics through their eyes, Israel visitors rarely discover and Israelis often ignore.

"Here we go again"-misguide and here is a response

2012-01-14T23:23:00.001+02:00

Alan Stein

Please consider the
following submission for publication.

Please note that I am currently in Israel. If you wish to verify my
submission by phone, calling my home number in Connecticut won't work
but I can be reached in Israel by dialing 011-972-50-869-5035.

Thank you for considering this submission.

Thank God We're Not Spending Tens of Billions to Have American Soldiers
Defend Israel

Whoever wrote "Here we go again," published January 10, complains that
Israel hasn't "contributed one dime … for an American base in Israel."
That person clearly doesn't have a clue.

When we build American bases in other countries, those countries don't
pay us - we pay them and then, on top of that, spend countless billions
in endeavors that protect them far more than they protect America. In contrast, Israel defends itself and, in the process, protects the
shared interests with America while risking Israeli rather than American
lives. Its ports also provide a welcome respite for Americans serving
overseas in a generally - except for Israel - unfriendly area.

Israel's friendship has also benefitted America in immense and generally
unappreciated ways. For example, during the Cold War, Israel managed to
obtain a Soviet MIG, completely intact, and gave our American
intelligence community full access to it. The benefit of just that
friendly act, one of many, was enormous and had a value that could not
be measured in dollars.

It can, and has, been reasonably argued that Israel's surprise victory
over the Soviet-armed Arab armies in the 1967 war was the catalyst
setting off the chain of events that led to the disintegration of the
Soviet Union and America's victory in the Cold War.

On the other hand, that might be considered a mixed blessing, since many
also believe, with good reason, that the extreme Islamism that has been
rising in its place poses a far greater threat to the civilized world
than the Soviet Union ever did.

--

Alan Stein, Ph.D.
President, PRIMER-Connecticut
Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting
www.primerct.org

Comprehending the incomprehensible – Part I

2012-01-14T17:04:00.000+02:00

Ted Belman. Sherman works from the premise that Israel’s problem is that she has lost the battle for hearts and minds because she didn’t try to win it. I disagree.

Right from the oil embargo in the seventies, her situation took a turn for the worse because of oil and interests. The world needed energy and did not want to alienate the Muslim world for a few measly Jews. The Saudis got all our African friends to back away from us and began the Eurabia project in which Europe agreed to turn its back on Israel. The US, from 1970 was trying to force Israel to return to the ’67 lines. Then the Muslim countries combined with the non-aligned countries, as part of the cold war, and took over the UN. All this in a half a dozen years.

A bigger hasbara budget would not have changed any or this. It may though have kept a few more Europeans from hating us.

By MARTIN SHERMAN, JPOST

Into The Fray: The first of a two-part analysis of why Israel is losing the international battle for hearts and minds.

Israel has made itself defenseless. Israel has vacated the battleground of the mind. Israeli ‘hasbara’ is a JOKE! –
British columnist Melanie Phillips, IBA Television, 2011

One of the gravest strategic threats facing Israel is its accelerating international delegitimization. This is developing into a strategic constraint that is increasingly curtailing the nation’s ability to protect itself and its citizens. Even more troubling, it is undermining international recognition of Israel’s right to exercise self-defense, even in the most blatant cases of aggression against it. Strategic debacle
Without wishing to diminish the significance of innate hostility towards Israel and the Jews from many sources in the international system, the present dismal and untenable situation has arisen in large measure because of the abysmal job the Israeli leadership has done in conducting – or more accurately, misconducting – its public diplomacy.

Indeed, Prof. Eitan Gilboa, a well-known authority on public diplomacy, warns: “The lack of an adequate PD [public diplomacy] program has significantly affected Israel’s strategic outlook and freedom of action. Any further neglect of PD would not only restrict Israel’s strategic options, it would be detrimental to its ability to survive in an increasingly intolerant and hostile world.”

Many find it puzzling why Israel – with its proven record of extraordinary achievement in so many other fields of human endeavor – does such a poor job in presenting its case to the world.

An inescapable truth
For anyone seeking the principal reason why Israel is losing the public diplomacy war, the answer is difficult to accept, yet very easy to prove.

Israel is losing the battle because it doesn’t want to win.

Or to put it differently: The people charged with the nation’s public diplomacy have a worldview that prevents them from adopting a winning strategy. Indeed, this chronic malaise was aptly diagnosed by Daniel Pipes when he observed: “No one at the upper echelons of Israel’s political life articulates the imperative for victory.” (More on this later).

Although difficult to accept, the lack of will to win is easy to prove. In gauging the motivation of any organization to achieve an objective, one of the most important indicators is the resources it allots for to achieve it.

Clearly, if the objective is considered important, more resources will be allotted, and vice-versa.

Surrender syndrome
Israel’s public diplomacy budget is ludicrously small.

Indeed, as one government minister bemoaned: “It is dreadful to hear that Bamba (a snack produced by the Osem corporation), has a promotional budget two to three times the size of the total state budget for public diplomacy.”

This frugality is not dictated by a lack of resources. Indeed, when Israel has desired to achieve an un-budgeted objective, money has rarely been an obstacle.

For example, when billions of shekels were needed for the construction of the West Bank security barrier, that was no problem; when billions of dollars were needed for the Gaza disengagement, that was no problem either.

Likewise, the tens of billions of dollars required for the planned “convergence” (i.e. withdrawal) from Judea and Samaria were not considered an insurmountable obstacle, even though it was clear the money would not be coming from the American taxpayer.

In last week’s column, I pointed out that if a small fraction of 1 percent of GDP were devoted to public diplomacy, this would generate a budget of $1 billion – rather than the paltry sums provided today.

So if the Israel leadership chooses not to allot available resources to assertively promote Israel’s case abroad, to resolutely defend its international image, to explain its operational constraints and security imperatives, to elucidate why certain measures are indispensable for the safety of its citizens, it must mean that – for one reason or another – it does not wish to. There is no other rational explanation.

How can one account for this syndrome of submissive surrender?

The key to the conundrum
This is a conundrum that cannot be deciphered without a firm grasp of the sociological – rather than the political – topography of country in general, and of the priorities and preferences of powerful civil society elites in particular.

Without this insight it is impossible to understand the dramatic and disturbing events that have taken place in Israel over the past two decades. Without it, it is impossible to understand:

• Why a country that displays such technotactical brilliance is afflicted by such strategic imbecility;
• Why hawkish candidates consistently win elections, but then immediately adopt the failed policy of their defeated dovish rivals;
• Why the doctrine of political appeasement and territorial concessions is repeatedly and consistently disproven, but somehow
never discredited – and certainly never discarded;
• Why the Israeli political establishment has not embraced more appreciatively and mobilized more effectively the huge potential in the support of communities such as the Evangelical Christians across the world, and particularly in the US, as a strategic asset.

None of these phenomena makes any sense unless one understands the decisive role that civil society elites have in setting the direction of the country’s strategic agenda – no matter who gets elected. As will become clear later, understanding this role is also the key to deciphering the riddle of Israel’s dismal public diplomacy performance.

Detrimental, dysfunctional, disloyal
Sadly, this is a role that is not only decisive, but also in many ways detrimental, dysfunctional and at times disloyal.

If to some this uncharitable description appears excessively harsh, consider the following examples and decide for yourselves how to characterize the conduct of civil society elites in the media, the academia and the legal establishment, who

(a) accuse Israel of being an “apartheid state” and support international boycott and sanctions against their own county, such as Prof. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University, who declared: “Israel today is an apartheid state. I have decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement… launched by Palestinian activists.”

(b) portray Israel as a bloodthirsty, intolerant nation bent on the persecution of minorities, such as Prof. Aeyal Gross of Tel Aviv University, who characterized Israel as “a society where shooting at children of the ‘other’ is the norm” and the Israeli public as “indifferent or worse to Israel’s widespread killing of Palestinian youth?” (c) condemn Israeli policies as being on a par with or worse than those of the apartheid regime in South Africa, such as the poet, writer and lecturer, Yitzhak Laor, who alleged that “Israel’s apartheid is worse… more ruthless than that seen in South Africa…. We have to get rid of Zionism. What lies behind Zionism are interests and a huge army hungering to justify its existence.”

(d) condone – and indeed appear to endorse – Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians, such as Prof. Oren Yiftachel of Ben-Gurion University, who suggested that “Palestinian shelling from Gaza should be perceived as a prison uprising… suppressed with terror by the Israeli state.”

(e) deny the legitimacy of Israel preventative measures to ensure the security of the country and the safety of its citizens, such as journalist Gideon Levy, who in an article titled “The neighborhood bully strikes again,” written at the outset of the retaliatory Operation Cast Lead, undertaken to quell the firing of thousands of rockets at civilian communities, decried “Israel’s violent responses [which] cross every red line of… morality, international law,” asserting, “What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime,” and such as Prof. Fania Oz-Salzberger of the University of Haifa, who following the Gaza Flotilla episode, when Israeli commandos were forced to defend themselves against a mob endeavoring to disembowel them, endorsed the international censure of Israel in a hastily published article titled “Ashamed of My Country,” proclaiming that “the almost-unanimous condemnation is spot on. I am ashamed,” and elsewhere asserting that “the true-blue pirates were the uniformed Israeli commandos.”

(f) ignore or obscure the fact that Israel policy towards the Palestinians is not driven by a discriminatory doctrine of racial superiority but by proven security concerns, such as columnist Akiva Eldar, who, in an article titled “Are Israel and apartheid South Africa really different?” dismissed the security realities, declaring: “As far as discriminatory practices are concerned, it’s hard to find differences between white rule in South Africa and Israeli rule,” or such as former attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair, who charged that Israel “enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society engaging in theft…. We established an apartheid regime.”

THIS IS but a small sampling of the assault on Israeli legitimacy from within its own civil society elites. Many examples abound of similar distortions, misrepresentations and exaggerations, of similar half-truths, non-truths and full-blooded fabrications from many other “intellectuals,” whether self-professed radical post-Zionists, or self-proclaimed “liberal” pro-Zionists.

The noxious nexus
But more than a expression of the political predilections of those who articulate them, these derogatory attitudes towards Israel reflect a socio-cultural milieu, in which the personal and professional interests of its members impose a code of conformity to political correctness – irrespective of any divergence this may have from the facts. It is a code strictly enforced – not by any formal fiat, but by the consequences of any violation.

No deviation beyond “acceptable” limits is brooked, and any such “delinquency” is likely to have grave repercussions in terms of livelihood, promotion and even social acceptability of the “perpetrator.”

This brings us to the nexus between the role of Israeli civil society elites and government policy in general and public diplomacy in particular. This is a topic which I shall elaborate on in detail in next week’s column (Part II).

In it, I will show how the combination of their unelected positions of power and privilege in the media, academia and legal establishment, on the one hand, and the nature of their personal and professional interests, on the other, confers on these elites both the ability and the motivation to determine the direction of the strategic agenda of the nation.

Naturally, this is a direction that reflects the worldview of the socio-cultural milieu they belong to, and which they can impose on the government no matter who prevails at the polls. This neutralizes voter preferences in the governance of the nation and dangerously undercuts the underpinnings of the democratic system.

This also impinges on the formulation and implementation of Israel’s public diplomacy.

After all, the senior professionals charged with conducting the county’s public diplomacy are drawn from – and interface with – the elites discussed previously.

In effect, this precludes them from adopting any strategy that would undermine their own worldview and dooms Israeli efforts to failure. But more on that next week.

No conspiracy
In closing, it is important to underscore that what is set out here is not a theory of a conscious conspiracy, contrived by some purposely malevolent elitist cabal. Rather, it is the elucidation of a mechanism comprising the accumulated consequences of individual decisions and actions driven by the short-term pursuit of prestige and profit of a group of empowered individuals, and which trump considerations of the long-term interest of the wider collective.

It is essential to understand this mechanism.

Otherwise, it will be impossible to “comprehend the ncomprehensible,” to understand why “Israel has made itself defenseless,” why Israel has “vacated the battleground of the mind” and why Israeli hasbara is an ineffective joke.

More important, without such an understanding it will be impossible to formulate any remedies.

What does it mean to be pro-Israel today?

2012-01-13T19:25:00.001+02:00

Elder of Ziyon

Moment magazine has a very interesting (and somewhat puzzling) list of people answering the question "What does it mean to be pro-Israel today?"

I would answer it a bit differently than the esteemed contributors.

An important Jewish concept is to be "dan l'chaf zechut," to give the benefit of the doubt. And if there is a distinction to be made between the pro-Israel and the anti-Israel crowd, it is that the former practices this dictum with respect to Israel and the latter tramples upon it.

When anything happens in Israel that looks bad on the surface, the vast majority of the time it can be shown to have been misunderstood or even fabricated. The psyche of Israelis is one of morality; while there might be exceptions one cannot fairly say that Israel is an immoral country. There is always another side to the story, one that sadly does not get the publicity of the seemingly bad one. To be pro-Israel is to start with the assumption that Israel is right, and to be skeptical when things look otherwise. In the end, perhaps the explanation will not be satisfactory, but one needs to make the effort to at least find out what it is. If you are truly pro-Israel you would first do everything possible to find out the truth. That is what support means.

In short, being pro-Israel means treating it the way you would treat your own loving family.

It is a shame that some people who call themselves "pro-Israel" do the exact opposite - they take every sensationalist story out of the region as a priori proof that Israel is in the wrong. That is not "pro-Israel" by any definition. The excuse that they are doing it "for Israel's good" rings hollow when their antipathy is so consistent.

Being pro-Israel means that you are willing to be dan l'chaf zechut towards the Jewish nation.

Strategic Realignment and Energy Security in the Eastern Mediterranean

2012-01-13T16:10:00.000+02:00

Dr. Alexander Murinson
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 159, January 9, 2012

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Since the cooling of relations with Ankara in 2010, Israel has sought alternative allies in the Mediterranean region, courting Greece and Cyprus. An economic and security partnership between the three non-Muslim countries in the eastern Mediterranean benefits all. The most urgent strategic issue that unites them, however, is their need for energy security. The recent discovery of substantial natural gas fields in the Israeli and Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) challenge Turkey’s claim as the central energy hub for Europe. Turkey is employing threatening rhetoric as well as its navy to deter and harass Cypriot and Israeli exploration efforts. Greece, Israel and Cyprus should increase their strategic cooperation in order to contain such Turkish hostility. Introduction
The eastern Mediterranean is becoming the focus of a growing geopolitical tectonic shift. Today, Turkey, emboldened by the ouster of pro-Western leaders in the region, such as Egyptian President Mubarak, envisions itself as a revitalized master of the region once ruled by its Ottoman predecessors prior to the dissolution of the Empire. This predominantly Sunni regional bloc includes Egypt, Jordan and the Maghreb countries. As the fall of the Alawite regime in Syria seems imminent, Syria and Lebanon are likely to join the Turkey-inspired bloc.
Turkey’s ruling AKP party has reoriented its foreign policy, moving away from Kemal Ataturk’s ideal and founding principle of Turkey as a part of

Western civilization. Instead, it is forging strategic ties with its Arab neighbors and terrorist organizations like Hamas. The Mavi Marmara incident in May 2010 served as a pretext for the official demotion in diplomatic relations with Israel. Rather than being a cause for the dramatic breakdown of the strategic understanding between the two regional powers, it was a mere symptom of existing ill will.
This Turkish ambition is a logical extension of the “Strategic Depth” doctrine promulgated by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu who, since 2002, has served as chief foreign policy advisor to AKP leader and current Prime Minister Recep Tayiip Erdogan. In this vision, Turkey’s domination of the Mediterranean waters, including its sea routes and marine resources, plays an essential role.
Natural Gas: An Increasingly Critical Energy Source for Israel
Turkey’s enthusiastic flaunting of its Islamist credentials, especially in the context of the Arab Spring, has precipitated a freezing of the strategic partnership between Israel and Turkey. As a result, Israel has actively sought out new allies in the neighborhood, courting Greece and Cyprus.
One of the critical issues in the emerging balance of power is the growing importance of energy security in global affairs.
For Israel, gas is increasingly becoming an important fuel source for generating electricity. It currently relies on gas to meet around 36 percent of its electricity needs (compared to zero reliance in 2004). Energy forecasts evaluate that this could rise to around 70 percent by 2020, making gas imports from Egypt an increasingly important source of energy for Israeli firms and households. Egypt remains an important supplier of natural gas to Israel, although there have been significant interruptions in supply over the past six months. There are compelling reasons – economic and energy-security related – for Egypt and Israel to continue their energy trade. However, in the long- term, Israel must develop its domestic gas sources and move away from this unreliable provider. The outcome will also largely be influenced by the trajectory of the broader Israeli-Egyptian relationship. It seems unlikely that Egyptian popular opposition to exporting gas to Israel will wane, though a price hike could assuage some critics.
Since the end of the Cold War,
Turkey has promoted itself as the indispensable energy hub for Europe and
Israel. A joint gas exploration between Israel and Cyprus has been met by
hostility from Erdogan's government. The natural gas fields are situated in the
Mediterranean Sea shelf of the Republic of Cyprus and their ownership is
strongly contested by Turkey.
Since 2008, Egypt has supplied Israel with gas through a 100-kilometer undersea pipeline between El-Arish in the northern Sinai and a gas import facility in Ashkelon on Israel’s Mediterranean coast. The pipeline is an artery of the larger Arab Gas Pipeline (AGP), which pumps Egyptian gas to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The pipeline has been blown up by militants in Sinai five times over the past six months, sending energy prices in Israel skyrocketing.
Prior to the pipeline explosions, Egyptian exports accounted for around 40 percent of Israel’s gas consumption. In 2010, Egypt’s Eastern Mediterranean Gas Company (EMG) supplied Israel’s state-owned Israel Electric Corporation with around 2.5 bcm (billion cubic meters). Israel’s domestic consumption that year was around 5.2 bcm. The remainder of Israel’s gas comes from its offshore Mari-B field, which is expected to be depleted by 2013.
In recent years, Israel and Cyprus have increasingly sought independent sources of energy on their Mediterranean marine shelves. In December 2010, the governments of Israel and Cyprus signed an agreement which delineated the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of both countries. The clarification of the borderline is essential in protecting Israel's rights to oil and underwater gas reservoirs. In the last three years, Israel has made discoveries at the Tamar and Leviathan fields, which hold around 184 bcm and 453 bcm, respectively. After 2013, Israel will rely on production from these recently discovered gas fields.
The American oil and gas company Noble Energy has been leading these exploration and exploitation efforts in the Israeli and Cypriot EEZ since 2009. Shares in the US company are held by the Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority, Cyprus' national energy company, and by Israel's Delek Drilling LP and Avner Oil Exploration LLP. The May 2011 Oil and Investor Journal described the Leviathan gas field in the Israeli EEZ as the largest natural gas find in the world over the last year. Noble Energy also discovered a gas field called Bloc 12 near the Cyprus littoral that might produce as much as 280 bcm.
Challenges by Turkey and Lebanon to Israeli Gas Discoveries
In mid-September, Turkey sent three naval ships to “protect” the Norwegian boat hired by the Turkish government to conduct gas explorations in the territorial waters of the Republic of Cyprus.
In September 2011, Prime Minister Erdogan said that Turkey "will take
appropriate steps" and "prevent unilateral exploitation by Israel of natural
resources of the eastern Mediterranean.”
Under Turkish pressure, the government in Nicosia agreed to share the future gas resources with its northern neighbor.
Lebanon has also indicated its antagonism to the newly discovered natural gas fields in the Israeli Exclusive Economic Zone. Beirut attempted to file an appeal to the UN regarding the current demarcation of the maritime boundaries between the two countries, which remain formally at war. The Lebanese authorities claim that at least part of the gas reserves is located in Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic Zone. The Israeli side believes otherwise. According to an Israeli official statement, "...The border that Lebanon presented to the UN was much farther south than the one proposed by Israel. The proposed boundary is also contrary to the treaty which Lebanon concluded with Cyprus in 2007."
On December 21, 2011, Turkish warships demonstratively shelled the strip of water dividing the Israeli Leviathan and Cyprian Bloc 12 gas fields. Both of these exploration fields contain large amounts of natural resources vitally important to the energy security of these two small Mediterranean nations.
Cypriot and Israeli Responses
Turkey's recent hostile actions prompted a warning by Cypriot President Demetris Christofias to desist from such behavior in the future and the demand that Turkey discontinue the shelling by its warships. On December 23, Christofias said: "If Turkey does not change its gunboat diplomacy and stop playing the part of regional police officer, there will be consequences which, for sure, will not be good – either for the whole region or the Turkish people and first and foremost for Turkish Cypriots.”
Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, who visited Washington in the third week of December, conveyed her concerns about the Turkish provocations to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Kozakou-Marcoullis left feeling encouraged to continue with the gas drilling and to ignore Turkish harassment.
In a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Kozakou-Marcoullis called Turkey "the neighborhood bully," adding that a
On November 23, Turkish Energy
Minister Taner Yildiz stated that Israeli and Cyprian gas and oil explorations
in the eastern Mediterranean were illegal and called into question the agreed
upon demarcation of the Exclusive Economic Zones between Israel and
Cyprus. He demanded that an agreement be signed among all parties, including Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), and
that the resources be shared equally.
Turkey "whose foreign minister once promoted a policy of 'zero problems' with its neighbors is now pursuing a policy of 'only problems.'" She added, "The tensions with Israel were just the beginning of a concerted effort by Ankara to delegitimize others in order to legitimize its actions."
In response to the Turkish naval demonstrations near the Israeli gas installations, Uzi Landau, Israel's Minister of Energy, stated that Israel "will continue to construct its gas platforms and will defend them." More importantly, Israeli authorities declared that for the safeguarding of its drilling platforms, they will use unmanned marine vehicles, equipped with night vision devices, radars and multiple launch rocket systems.
According to some Israeli military sources, the cancellation on December 22 of the $90 million sale to the Turkish Air Force of Elbit's hi-tech surveillance system was timed to send a signal to Turkey to desist from its campaign of harassment in and around Israel's gas fields.
Conclusion
Turkey's recent international behavior is a clear indication that its leadership, motivated by a neo-imperial syndrome, is leading the country's foreign policy into perilous waters. The conflict over energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean only further exacerbates already strained Turkish-Israeli relations.
In view of increasing global competition for energy resources, Israel should accelerate the development of new gas fields in its Exclusive Economic Zone. As Israel plans to export its gas to Europe and, as has been recently disclosed, to its new strategic partner, India, Israel must demonstrate the legitimacy and security of its gas and marine installations. Therefore, Israel should pursue a diplomatic campaign to maintain its hold on its EEZ on par with other countries. Moreover, Israel should increase its naval presence in its EEZ in order to protect its access to its resources. Finally, Israel should enhance its cooperation with friendly countries in the eastern Mediterranean, such as Greece and Cyprus, in order to maintain energy security and construct pipelines for energy exports to Europe.
Alexander Murinson, an independent researcher who holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of Turkey's Entente with Israel and Azerbaijan: State Identity and Security in the Middle East and Caucasus.
BESA Perspectives is published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

Friedman Cheers as Egyptians are Enslaved

2012-01-12T20:36:00.000+02:00

Professor: [As the Martian ambassador starts disintegrating Congressmen with his ray gun]: "Mr. Ambassador, please! What are you doing? This doesn't make sense! It's not logical! It's not !" --"Mars Attacks"

By Barry Rubin

It is distasteful when Western intellectuals, politicians, and journalists who pride themselves on their enlightened humanitarian views watch people abroad fall subject to ruthless forces of dictatorship and dogma. When these same people actually cheer the new tyrannies, put their arms around the shoulders of those who despise them, and tell everyone else that there's nothing to worry about, that's actively disgusting.
Many in the West have so acted toward Egypt during the last year. They have also and previously done so for the Gaza Strip, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. Thomas Friedman has been one of them but perhaps no one else has been louder and more enthusiastic. In doing so, of course, he has echoed U.S. government policy.

Now, Friedman goes all-out to explain that the Muslim Brotherhood isn't radical, isn't a threat, in fact is a good thing, and will only become eve more moderate once it is in power.

In a column entitled, “Watching Elephants Fly,” obviously a reference to seeing something impossible happen, Friedman writes: “Here is what was so striking: virtually all the women we interviewed after the voting — all of whom were veiled, some with only slits for their eyes — said that they had voted for either the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafists. But almost none said they had voted that way for religious reasons.

“Many said they voted for Islamists because they were neighbors, people they knew, while secular liberal candidates had never once visited. Some illiterate elderly women confided that they could not read the ballot and just voted where their kids told them to. But practically all of them said they had voted for the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafist candidates because they expected them to deliver better, more honest government — not more mosques or liquor bans.”

My reaction is, “So what?” They voted for an authoritarian, Sharia regime (and let’s remember a hardline interpretation of Sharia, not the interpretation of Sharia offered by New York Times reporters). That's what's important. People also had diverse reasons for supporting Communism, Fascism, and Nazism. Indeed, they always voted for such regimes because “they expected them to deliver better, more honest government.” Hasn’t Friedman ever heard that Mussolini made the trains run on time, Hitler built the autobahns, and the Communists promised to give land to the peasants?

But there’s even more irony here. These women are already living lives governed by Sharia and, as traditionalists, are happy (and told to be happy) with that situation. Thus, they have ample reason for supporting Islamists. There is nothing surprising in their political behavior, except to people like Friedman who predicted last year they would back liberal Westernized Facebook kids.

Once again, Friedman shows a striking inability to think logically. If women were voting on the basis of family orders (I'd bet on the husbands and fathers rather than the children so instructing them) how can he then say that they voted out of specific personal motives or--after reporting they were told what to do!--claim that their vote is a sign of freedom?
Why are all their neighbors Islamists? Because there are so few secular liberals they’ve never actually met one. A large portion of the voters for non-Islamist parties were Christians, who they’d never socialize with. And their Brotherhood and Salafist neighbors want an Islamist dictator?

As for “more mosques” being the supposed Islamist demand that they “reject” it shows ignorance on the author’s part. Egypt has plenty of mosques and the Brotherhood and Salafists don’t make mosque-building a top priority. The question is what will be taught in those mosques and how it will direct society.

Why is Friedman dishonest? Because if he claimed that these women weren’t interested in enforcing an “Islamic” lifestyle or destroying Israel or spreading Islamism elsewhere or enforcing on all Egyptian women the dress code they follow, then readers would see through such an argument as ridiculous. So he must create silly demands for the Islamists so he can claim that the people don’t want those things.

The same point applies on the supposed disinterest in bans on liquor sales. How many of these people have ever seen a liquor store? There are already proportionately few in Egypt and they cater overwhelmingly to Christians and tourists. Such a ban would not affect their lives but would make them feel that Egypt was a moral, Islamically corect county.

Again, these are trivial issues. We can all think of far more serious ones that the Islamists and their supporters do focus on.

An aspect of Friedman’s work that makes it so popular is that he constantly invents simple new theories and catch phrases to explain Middle East politics. After reading his column it is possible to believe that one has easily achieved understanding of the region. Of course, the reason that he must come up with so many theories is that they almost always fail.

Now he has a new, materialistic explanation for why Islamists will become moderate: they need the money. He cites how Egyptian Islamists have issued conflicting statements about allowing tourists to have alcohol and bikinis as proving that they must make lots of accommodations with reality. No oil money, you see.

But I heard similar things about Iran in the late 1970s — they’ll have to be moderate because they need to sell the oil — and about Yasir Arafat at the start of the peace process in the early 1980s — he’ll have to be moderate because the Palestinians he rules will demand garbage collection and decent schools. One might just as well have posited that the Turkish government would never turn against Israel because Israeli tourists brought in so much money.

There have been many examples of the Friedman theory since Karl Marx first wrote that the means of production detemined the shape of society. When Lenin invoked the New Economic Policy to get the new-born USSR through its tough, post-World War I period, naive Westerners announced that Communism had been tamed. My relatives and their neighbors in Poland — I can document this — comforted themselves by thinking the Germans wouldn’t kill them because the Nazis needed their forced labor.

It is awesome how our political geniuses simply don’t learn from history.

The tourism problem is simple. Visitors will be segregated into specific areas like beach resorts where they can drink, party, and bikini away without contact with many Egyptians. The same applies to the up-the-Nile cruises to antiquities sites. Problem solved, except perhaps for the occasional Salafist terrorist attack.

I vividly remember the moment 30 years ago when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gave his own response to Friedman’s “new” theory. Allow me to paraphrase: Western observers don’t understand Iran’s revolution. They think it is about lowering the price of watermelons (i.e., material well-being) but it is about invoking the will of Allah. Once you have enough people who think this way, forget about Western-style materialistic pragmatism.

Much of the Western intelligentsia cannot conceive that there are many people who don’t think like them in other parts of the world. So much for cosmopolitan international sophistication. (Of course, they often make the same mistake about their own fellow countrymen, too.)

All of this, however, is standard Friedman and standard Western media. That’s not why what Friedman is doing now might be described as his Jane Fonda moment.

The first reason is his shocking enthusiasm for the Brotherhood, summed up in his reported phrase: “The Muslim Brotherhood is a legitimate, authentic, progressive alternative.” Mr. Friedman has responded that he was referring not to the Brotherhood but instead meant to say, “the Egyptian elections produced, for the first time, were legitimate, authentic, liberal, secular, nationalist, progressive alternatives to the Muslim Brotherhood and now the Brotherhood would have to compete with such alternatives — for the first time.”

If that is what he meant it is not very impressive. “Nationalist” alternatives to the Brotherhood have been running Egypt since 1952, after all, and “liberal, secular” movements were very active in the latter Mubarak years. I wonder who Friedman is referring to as “progessive,” the radical nationalist-Marxist parties? Moreover, under Egyptian law, the Brotherhood was outlawed and while it did function it was weak compared to now. So to act as if alternatives to the Brotherhood have now arisen is like saying after the fall of the czar and the Russian revolution that things were better because now there was an alternative to the Bolsheviks.

Friedman has never written anything critical about the Brotherhood and Salafists. He certainly didn’t say, “Great election, too bad about the result.” And so he and many others including the U.S. government have given not just grudging acceptance but absolute approval to a party with a long history down to the present day of anti-Americanism, antisemitism, and support for terrorism, as well as the desire to transform Egypt into a repressive society and a political dictatorship.

But since even Friedman agrees that he used such words, let’s examine them:

– “Legitimate.” Does “legitimate” merely mean here that a lot of Egyptians accept the Brotherhood as their leader? But by this definition Stalinism, Nazism, fascism, and Japanese racist militarism were all “legitimate” doctrines. What is an “illegitimate” doctrine? I suppose nowadays only Zionism gets presented as such. Friedman, who is never short of criticisms on Israel, finds revolutionary Islamism more to his taste.

On the other hand, it is not at all clear that secular and liberal groups are now “legitimate” since they have been overwhelmingly rejected by the voters and are likely to face significant harassment from the army, Brotherhood, and Salafists.

On broader grounds, Western leftist intellectuals cannot understand how a dictatorship can be popular and yet still be a dictatorship that those who believe in democracy and freedom should criticize. This was the basis of the great divide among leftist and liberal intellectuals of earlier generations over the Soviet Union and other left-wing dictatorships. Since real liberals today have been, at least temporarily, wiped out, few are left other than conservatives to make this point.

–”Authentic.” That usually means something arising from one’s society and properly fitting into it. But here’s a problem. Today, democracy as known in the West is not an “authentic” doctrine for Egyptians. It is seen as an import and doesn’t have a strong cultural, intellectual, political, economic, or religious basis. And since liberal parties didn’t get many votes, that tends to indicate that liberty, equality for women, tolerance, and all the other elements of a real democracy also aren’t “legitimate” in Egypt either.

–”Progressive.” In recent years, “progressive” has become a false flag for extreme left-wing movements in the West. Friedman says he did not apply that word to the Brotherhood, so let’s leave him out of it personally. Still, though, there is no doubt that many people who consider themselves “progressive” are also enthusiastic about the Brotherhood. In fact, I’ve never heard any such person criticize the group, or Islamists generally for that matter.

So “progressives” see revolutionary Islamism as the proper Middle East counterpart of the Western left. Observers often ask how these two forces can work together when their views and values are apparently so different. Here’s the answer: many or most Western leftists do view Islamism as a kindred movement. In part, that’s because they don’t understand Islamism; and in part they don’t understand Islamism because when they see it they shout not, “Down with the reactionary clerical-fascists!” but rather: “Comrade!”

Unfortunately, the Islamists don’t reciprocate this love.

Isn’t Friedman aware that real Egyptian democrats are rushing to get visas and leave the country? That many Christians are getting out and the rest are trembling?

Within hours of the Friedman statement, the Free Egyptians Party — the most “authentic” liberal party in Egypt — declared a boycott of the remaining elections, claiming electoral fraud. Personally, I don’t think electoral fraud was a major factor but, rather, the party is reacting out of hopelessness, knowing that an open democratic society has no chance now in Egypt and that it cannot depend on any help from Western governments, which support its enemies.

The real moderates and democrats are in despair, knowing what they will be living under. And Friedman cheers their oppressors and says there is nothing to worry about. How is this better than becoming a booster for some Latin American military dictator or African tyrant or ruthless Communist oligarchy?

In playing these games, Friedman and the U.S. government ignore the mature adult way to handle such issues. A foreign policy professional should say something like this:

The Muslim Brotherhood won elections and clearly enjoys support from many Egyptians. It is now up to the Brotherhood to live up to those hopes and fulfill the promise of true democracy. To do so, the Brotherhood will have to break with past beliefs and policies. We all hope this change does indeed happen. But we will be watching closely and never hesitate to point out when it acts in a different manner. The Brotherhood will have to prove, to Egyptians and the world alike, that it truly is now moderate and democratic. Only then would we accept such a claim.

You see the difference? My version says: We have an open mind, we are willing to work with you, but the burden is on you to prove your claims. We know enough about you to be skeptical and we will not be fooled.

His version says: Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Brotherhood! Brotherhood! yay, Brotherhood!

The second thing that disgusts me is Friedman’s attempts to win applause by sucking up to his Egyptian audience. He tells them that the U.S. Congress is profoundly corrupt. Aside from demeaning his own country and civilization, the signal that statement sends is: Hey, democracy doesn’t really work!

And what does an Egyptian audience think of when it hears this line about money ruling? Not insider stock-trading but rather the old Arab assertion that the Zionist lobby directs U.S. policy, that’s what.

If Friedman actually was knowledgeable on the Middle East he would have understood the message he is conveying and have avoided such statements. Oh, wait, Friedman himself has made such a charge, saying that the Jewish lobby bought Congress’s enthusiastic reception of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, being saved from accusations of antisemitism only because he is the son of Jewish parents.

“Money will kill your democracy like it did ours,” said Friedman. So Egypt is now a democracy but America isn’t? And, again, who do Arab ideologues identify with using “money” to control politics? Answer: Not Tony Rezko.

Friedman calls Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum an example of an American extremist. This tells Egyptians: We have no right to criticize you! You now have leaders who openly call for genocide against Jews. Well, we have people who don’t favor gay marriage!

Friedman (and Obama) can’t think a move ahead. If (ok, when) the Brotherhood starts to crack down and at some point even Obama might feel inclined to criticize its repression, Egyptian leaders and writers will respond: How dare you criticize us! According to your own Friedman you are ruled by money, don’t have proper democracy, and are full of extremists. So mind your own business.

And yet at the end of his lecture in Cairo the audience was still reportedly critical of Friedman, one more proof that you cannot win over those who hate you on the basis of a seriously constructed worldview by flattering them and bashing your own side.

I’m almost done but there’s one more thing important for you to know. It’s from a column I wrote a year ago, in the midst of the revolution. The radical blogger Angry Arab made fun of Friedman back then. Referring to Friedman as a “Zionist,” the blogger mocked him for claiming that the revolution would produce a moderate pro-American Egypt ready to keep the peace with Israel. Every Arab understood, said Angry Arab, that the exact opposite would happen.

A humorous example of Friedman’s lack of self-awareness is the fact that he called his column, “Watching Elephants Fly.” Can many Americans hear that phrase and not think of a certain famous animated film by Walt Disney?

"ABO"

2012-01-12T06:03:00.000+02:00

Arlene Kushner

That means "Anyone But Obama," although I might qualify that with "almost."

Perhaps it's in the nature of the game, but as I watch from Jerusalem while the candidates vying for the Republican nomination go at each other, I am unsettled. Especially as sometimes accusations are over the top. In the end, of course, the Republicans will settle on one of those currently vying for the nomination. But we must hope that, by that time, the competition that preceded it will not have so tarnished his image that his capacity to beat Obama at the polls has been compromised.

Be it Romney or Santorum or Gingrich, any of these serving as president would be far better for America, and Israel and the Western world than Obama is. And in the end, I hope that is what Republicans in the US will remember, rallying in strength and with genuine enthusiasm behind the victor. This election, in the main, is not Obama's to win -- his credentials are down the tubes -- so much as it is the Republicans to lose. At the moment, it's looking like Romney. And if it is, he'll have a tough fight on his hands.

Bill Daley, who took over from Rahm Emanuel as Obama's chief of staff, has resigned after a one-year stint. Obama has now replaced him with Jacob (Jack) Lew, who has been serving as Director of Management and Budget.

Former White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew on Nov. 8, 2011. Photo by REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Lew Source:Reuters

What has been broadly announced is that he is an "Orthodox Jew." According to the Forward, this means he "keeps an observant lifestyle, eats kosher food and does not drive on the Sabbath. He does not wear a kippa (traditional Jewish skullcap) in his daily life."

I know nothing about him (other than what I just wrote above)...yet. But I confess to pondering long and hard how he can be comfortable working for Obama.

And you'd have a very hard time convincing me that this particular appointment is just a coincidence, when Obama is so vigorously courting the Jewish community.

~~~~~~~~~~

So now it's Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, Iranian professor and department head of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, who has been blown to kingdom-come (with or without the 72 virgins), in this case by a magnetic car bomb, in Teheran.

I'm am not prepared to say that Israel did it -- although this is the working assumption in many quarters. This likelihood was fueled by a comment by Chief of Staff Benny Gantz yesterday, before Ahmadi-Roshan was hit, regarding the fact that in 2012 Iran can expect more "unnatural" events.

There are suggestions that rebels from inside Iran are responsible for some of these attacks. Or, as one blogger citing unnamed sources claims, the Mossad working with Iranians from inside. A plausible possibility.

Ahmadi-Roshan, is, I believe, the third Iranian scientist to have been taken out.

What makes these operations effective is not just the elimination of experts needed by Iran, but the uneasy and underlying anxiety that is generated.

~~~~~~~~~~

I wrote recently about how difficult predictions are because of constantly shifting dynamics. Now Khaled Abu Toameh has written a piece, "The many contradictions of Mahmoud Abbas," which addresses precisely this with regard to the PA president:

"Seven years have passed since Mahmoud Abbas was elected to succeed Yasser Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority, and many Palestinians appear to be as confused as ever regarding their leader’s true intentions."

Abbas has offered conflicting messages with regard to policy, unity, reelections, peace talks and a third intifada.

http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=252912

My question is whether Abbas is himself conflicted, or, as I would suggest, there is method to his madness (or indecision).

~~~~~~~~~~

I'm beginning to see suggestions once again -- which make me furious once again -- regarding the need for Israel to "make a gesture of good faith" to keep the Palestinian Arabs sitting at the table. But this is precisely what Abbas and company hope for: They confess to a burning desire to make peace, and reveal with tears in their eyes that it is being thwarted by the Israelis' refusal to freeze settlements, etc.

A gullible, appeasing world is quite happy to lean on Israel -- once again -- in the deluded hope that maybe one more concession will make a difference. Heaven forbid Israel should budge in this regard!

Here I want to refer to one specific suggestion, which I consider particularly foolish and dangerous. Perhaps, it is being said, we should give the PA more control of certain areas, ceasing IDF operations. What is ignored when such suggestions are made is that it is the IDF, operating nightly, that stops terrorists, finds weapons caches, and the like. The PA so-called security forces will not do this. To make this suggestion is to ever so casually and ignorantly suggest putting innocent Israelis at risk.

~~~~~~~~~~

Guilio Meotti has written an insightful, indeed fascinating, thought-piece, "Israel, the Pistol Nation":

"In Israel, war and democracy have made an unusual marriage to create a Jew fit to survive in continuous sacrifice. It is not about gargantuan deeds by superhuman champions; it is family-and home-oriented, and rather intimate in tone.

"The militarization of the Jew, which is the burden and the salvation at the same time, has been the most dramatic psychological transformation of the Zionist revolution. Where once Jews were mocked for being 'cowards' and 'parasites,' today they are condemned by the world for being 'aggressors.'

"...That’s the Jewish revolution, which the West can’t accept, the most admirable Israeli phenomenon: A people still able to defend itself against the forces of evil."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4174273,00.html

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A 1,500 year old ceramic stamp bearing the image of a menorah has been found during Israel Antiquities Authorities excavations near the city of Akko. It has been identified as coming from the Byzantine period (6th century CE), and is a "bread stamp": It was used to certify that baked goods were kosher.

Menorah stamp

~~~~~~~~~~

© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.

See my website at www.arlenefromisrael.info Contact Arlene at akushner@netvision.net.il

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Knesset Approves Infiltration Law

2012-01-11T15:56:00.000+02:00

Elad Benari
YNET News

The Knesset approved late Monday night the law that would prevent infiltrations into Israel, Channel 2 News reported.

The law allows for the arrest and detention of infiltrators for a period of three years. It also includes a provision that permits imposing a life sentence on any infiltrator convicted of property related crimes. Another provision in the law allows for punishment of five to 15 years for anyone convicted of helping infiltrators.

Channel 2 reported that 37 MKs supported the proposal and eight MKs opposed it. During the debate, objections were presented by MKs from the Meretz and Hadash parties. The objections were rejected. The legislation is part of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s plan for dealing with illegal work infiltrators. The plan also calls for the completion of the Egypt-Eilat border fence using a budget of 280 million shekels being allocated for this purpose, as well as the expansion of the Saharonim facility at Ketziot, where infiltrators are being held, from 2,200 places to 5,500.

Recent statistics showed that infiltrations of Africans into Israel reached a dizzying pace. The infiltrations grow month by month, but the Population and Immigration Authority has said that it cannot prevent the infiltrators from going to urban areas and being employed illegally, because they do not have a facility in which to keep them until possible deportation. Tens of thousands have remained in Israel, which often does not deport them and instead allows them to remain in the country.

The Population and Immigration Authority said last week that 2,931 people entered Israel illegally through its border with Egypt in December, a record number.

Egypt: Israeli pilgrimage 'impossible' this year

2012-01-11T15:25:00.001+02:00

Egypt: It would not be "appropriate" for Israeli pilgrims to make an annual visit to the tomb of a 19th-century Jewish holy man in the Nile Delta • Activists mobilize to block the pilgrimage route • Simon Wiesenthal Center denounces the attempts to block pilgrimage, accuses Muslim Brotherhood of trying to "curb religious freedom of Jews."
The Associated Press

CAIRO — Egypt's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it had told Israel that it would not be "appropriate" for Israeli pilgrims to make an annual visit to the tomb of a 19th-century Jewish holy man in the Nile Delta, as activists mobilized to block the pilgrimage route.

Ceremonies at the tomb of Rabbi Yaakov Abu Hatizra have triggered yearly political sparring in Egypt throughout most of the last decade, with Islamists, nationalists, and others claiming that the government by allowing the pilgrimage is pursuing an unpopular policy of normalization with the country's former enemy. Egypt notified Israel two months ago that it would be "impossible to hold the annual ceremony because of the political and security situation in the country," the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

An Islamist politician involved in organizing protests against the march meanwhile said that visiting Abu Hatzira's gravesite in the village of Daymouta, 180 kilometers (112 miles) north of Cairo would be a "suicide mission" for Israelis, because of popular opposition to their presence in Egypt.

"Normalization (of relations) with Israel is forced on the people, and the visits too come against the will of the people and despite popular rejection," said Gamal Heshmat of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's best organized political group.

Heshmat said that activists planned to stage sit-ins and other protests to block the route as soon as they hear the pilgrims are on their way. Egypt's daily Al-Ahram newspaper reported Tuesday that 31 parties and groups had joined this year's campaign.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, denounced the attempts to block the pilgrimage. In a Tuesday statement, the center's Abraham Cooper accused the Brotherhood of trying to "curb religious freedom of Jews."

"In their worldview, there is no respect for the traditions for Jews, dead or alive," he said.

A son to a chief rabbi of Morocco, Abu Hatzira was revered by some Jews as a mystic renowned for his piety and for performing miracles. The elderly rabbi was making his way from his native Morocco to the Holy Land in 1879 when he fell ill and died in the Egyptian city of Damanhour near Alexandria.

According to tradition, his followers tried to move his tomb three times, and three times heavy storms prevented them.

After Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979, Jewish devotees — mostly of Moroccan origin — have traveled annually to the site. But Egypt has limited the numbers of pilgrims.

In 2001 and 2004, two court orders banned the ceremony after opponents filed legal challenges.

Since then, both Delta residents and activist groups have denounced the ceremony. The residents complain of harassment by security forces deployed to protect the pilgrims. Activists oppose the normalization of relations with a country that Egypt fought in four wars between 1948 and 1973, and also see the defiance of the court order as part of the Mubarak regime's general trampling of the rule of law.

In 2009, Egypt officially denied the pilgrims entry because the anniversary fell while Israel was conducing an offensive in Gaza.

A year later, the Israeli press reported that Mubarak accepted a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lift the limits on the number of pilgrims.

The tomb is a vestige of Egypt's once-prosperous Jewish community, which at the time of the first war with Israel in 1948 numbered about 80,000 people.

But the Arab-Israeli wars, and the resentment and expulsions that they engendered, have reduced the number of Egypt's Jews to about 60 individuals, according to the Israeli embassy.

Obama's Arrogant Authoritarianism

2012-01-10T20:35:00.000+02:00

Lachlan Markay

January 10, 2012

Last week, President Barack Obama took the latest step on his road toward an arrogant, new authoritarianism with four illegal appointments that entirely trampled on the Constitution’s requirements. More troubling still, the President chose to shred the Constitution all in the name of serving his Big Labor agenda while killing jobs in the process.

The President’s actions once again gave voice to his animating view of governing: doing so is much easier when one isn’t constrained by the Constitution and its checks and balances. “We can’t wait,” the President exclaimed after unilaterally appointing Richard Cordray as director of the newly inaugurated Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). He also appointed three officials to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), two of whom had been nominated less than a month before. The policy implications of the President’s appointments? The CFPB will now have unmitigated authority to issue regulation upon regulation, contributing to the already-crippling red tape that is strangling business in America. And the NLRB will have the power to advance the President’s agenda to bolster unions across the country at the expense of job growth in a smarting economy.

For what, exactly, can’t the President wait? Quite simply, constitutional republicanism — the system of checks and balances integral to American government and political freedom. He grew impatient with the delays that inevitably accompany any legislative action an acted outside the Constitution’s mandated process. But the American people should ask, “Is such action really preferable to a deliberative, if slower-moving, constitutional republic?”

The President’s appointments last week, troubling as they are, are but the next steps on the road to a despotic form of governance that has come to characterize his Administration — and all of liberalism in America today — what authors Fred Siegel and Joel Kotkin termed in City Journal this week Obama’s “New Authoritarianism.” Frustrated by the unwillingness of the people’s representatives to enact his agenda wholesale, Obama has, from early in his Administration, sought to enact a series of proposals through administrative fiat, not the legislative process:

The Democrat-controlled Senate rejected his cap-and-trade plan, so Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency classified carbon dioxide, the compound that sustains vegetative life, as a pollutant so that it could regulate it under the Clean Air Act.
After Congress defeated his stealth-amnesty immigration proposal, the DREAM Act, the Department of Homeland Security instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to “adopt enforcement parameters that bring about the same ends as the DREAM Act,” as Heritage’s Mike Brownfield explained.
When the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act–explicitly designed to bolster labor unions’ dwindling membership rolls–was defeated by Congress, the NLRB announced a rule that would implement “snap elections” for union representation, limiting employers’ abilities to make their case to workers and virtually guaranteeing a higher rate of unionization at the expense of workplace democracy.
After an innovation-killing Internet regulation proposal failed to make it through Congress, the Federal Communications Commission announced — on Christmas Eve, no less — that it would regulate the Web anyway, despite even a federal court’s ruling that it had no authority to do so.
In its push for national education standards, the Education Department decided to tie waivers for the No Child Left Behind law to requirements that states adopt those standards, shutting Congress out of the effort.
Rather than push Congress to repeal federal laws against marijuana use, the Department of Justice (DOJ) simply decided it would no longer enforce those laws.
DOJ made a similar move with respect to the Defense of Marriage Act: rather than seeking legislative recourse, DOJ announced it would stop enforcing the law.

While these efforts are all aimed at circumventing the legislative process, none was so brazen as his four illegal appointments. Last week, Obama went one step further: He violated not just the spirit of the Constitution, which vests in Congress the power to make laws, but the letter of the law as well.

The move is “a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers,” explain former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese and Heritage colleague Todd Gaziano, a former attorney in DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, in a Washington Post column. “[N]ever before has a president purported to make a ‘recess’ appointment when the Senate is demonstrably not in recess,” they note. “That is a constitutional abuse of a high order.”

Dr. Matthew Spalding, vice president of American Studies and director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics at The Heritage Foundation, explains that this “new despotism” — a government where regulations and unilateral actions replace republican governance — runs entirely counter to the Founders’ vision of America:

The greatest political revolution since the American Founding has been the shift of power away from the institutions of constitutional government to an oligarchy of unelected experts. They rule over virtually every aspect of our daily lives, ostensibly in the name of the American people but in actuality by the claimed authority of science, policy expertise, and administrative efficiency.

If this regime becomes the undisputed norm — accepted not only among the intellectual and political elites, but also by the American people, as the defining characteristic of the modern state — it could well mark the end of our great experiment in self-government.

President Obama’s actions are exactly the kind that the Founders feared and sought to guard against. His illegal appointments usurp power from the American people’s duly elected representatives, and the regulations they will promulgate will, undoubtedly, contribute to the unabated growth of the undemocratic administrative state.

Now that the President has crossed the threshold of constitutionality, there really is no telling where he may stop. There is a clear trend here, however, and it leads further and further from the constitutional order. With these illegal appointments, the President has taken to new heights his disdain for the separation of powers. Whether it will stop here depends on Congress — Will lawmakers of both parties reassert the legislature’s constitutional authority and take a stand against Obama’s arrogant new authoritarianism?

Quick Hits:

Voters in New Hampshire head to the polls today in the “first in the nation” primary for the 2012 presidential election. A record turnout is projected.
White House chief of staff William M. Daley resigned on Monday nearly a year earlier than expected, with budget chief Jacob Lew set to fill the position. The President has had four chiefs of staff in only 16 months.
Sami Osmakac, a 25-year-old U.S. citizen from the former Yugoslavia, was arrested on Monday for planning a bombing and shooting rampage in Florida. The arrest marks the 44th known terrorist plot against the United States that has been averted.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad yesterday lashed out at the media and blamed “outside planning” for the uprising against his government. Despite an ongoing revolt, Assad vowed to continue his rule.
The NFL Players Association just came out against Indiana’s proposed right-to-work law. Find out why this isn’t surprising, all on Foundry.org.

Who’s threatening democracy?

2012-01-10T15:22:00.000+02:00

Isi Leibler
January 10, 2012
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=3847

The collapse of the Palestinian initiative to achieve unilateral independence and the widespread consensus within Israel concerning the principal threats confronting us, have deeply frustrated marginalized far left groups. Their response has been to launch a global campaign portraying us as a State losing its democratic ethos and adopting fascism - a theme eagerly endorsed by much of the Western media.

The religious zealots, whose revolting behavior towards women dominated the Israeli media over the past month, are portrayed as harbingers of a medieval theocratic State. Most of the media ignored the fact that the President, Prime Minister and the vast majority of the public, including many of the ultra-Orthodox and their rabbis, vigorously condemned the behavior and demanded prompt action to punish the hoodlums with the full severity of the law. Another cynical spin to discredit democracy is the suggestion that the government’s reluctance to subsidize a bankrupt TV channel represented an effort by Netanyahu to restrict freedom of expression and take control of the left leaning media.

The legislation relating to NGOs currently under review in the Knesset has also been distorted and presented as a conspiracy to deny freedom of expression.

Yet there are genuine grounds for remedial action to minimize the harm NGOs inflict upon the State. It was only after the publication of the Goldstone Report that Israelis became aware of the full extent to which these organizations, purporting to promote human rights, were instigating global campaigns to boycott, divest, and delegitimize their country.

What particularly infuriated Israelis was that some NGOs are funded (usually furtively) by foreign - often hostile – governments, to the tune of nearly NIS 30 million per annum. Organizations like B’tselem and Breaking the Silence which receive respectively 62% and 73% of their budgets from foreign governments, frenziedly accuse Israel of “devotion to Nazi values” and “committing humanity’s worst atrocities”.

It is surely inconceivable for a democratic country under siege to tolerate organizations, funded by foreign governments, engaging in unbridled defamatory campaigns which seriously damage national interests.

That is not to dispute that there are legitimate grounds for disagreeing with some aspects of the proposed draft legislation which could be deemed discriminatory.

However, the legislation that will be passed is likely to be non-discriminatory, modeled along similar lines to the NGO Funding Transparency Law adopted by the Knesset in February 2011. This emulates the US precedent, making it obligatory for all NGOs receiving funds from abroad to register as foreign agencies. That would impose transparency, enabling the government to monitor activity and take action if a NGO breaches the law. If paralleled by diplomatic pressure on foreign governments to desist from interfering in our internal affairs, it would almost certainly neutralize their more nefarious interventions.

The most vexatious issue is Israel's Supreme Court, which many Israelis today regard as elitist and dominated by left–wing attitudes.

It is widely recognized that the Supreme Court became excessively interventionist from the time that Aaron Barak served as its president. It abrogated Knesset supremacy in a country without a written constitution, basing itself on a few ambiguous words such as "human dignity" as contained in a Basic Law adopted by the Knesset which failed to anticipate the extent to which it would be abused. In addition, unlike the US Supreme Court, the Israeli Court usually rejects Government contentions that certain issues should be settled in the Knesset domain.

The Israeli Supreme Court also differs from other courts in accepting thousands of petitions annually against the Government or a public servant - on any subject from anyone - with no requirement to show a direct interest of the petitioner to the issue. This reduces time available to deal with ongoing criminal or civil appeals which remain unresolved for years.

It is understandable that tensions increase in a climate in which public attitudes are undergoing changes and conflict with the prevailing left outlook of those currently occupying positions on the Supreme Court. From the perspective of frustrated legislators, the Supreme Court, unlike courts in the US or any other democratic country, is flippantly vetoing the will of the Knesset majority over non-judicial issues, thus ignoring the elementary principle of separation of powers between the three branches of government. This is manifested by the Court frequently intruding in matters which are not a question of law but an expression of political bias.

Regrettably, the far-left have succeeded in creating the perception, especially amongst Diaspora Jews, that any reform would breach the fundamental rights of minorities and represent a genuine threat to the democratic ethos of our society.

That is ridiculous. There is, at the very least, a desperate need to reform the prevailing undemocratic process for selecting new judges which enables incumbent judges to effectively veto a candidate for any reason. For example, in 2005 Ruth Gavison, an outstanding candidate, was blackballed by the then Supreme Court President Aaron Barak, who claimed she had an “agenda” – i.e. she lacked the “progressive” outlook of other members of the Court. More recently it was reflected in a negative attitude displayed towards the candidature of Judge Noam Solberg (who was subsequently elected, but only as a result of unseemly horse-trading) because he is a “settler” living in Alon Shvut and had therefore been depicted in the media as “right wing”.

The current system ensures the perpetuation of the prevailing ideological composition of the Court, denying entry to candidates with different social and political outlooks. Dispensing with such a veto democratizes the selection process and avoids discrimination. Despite its weaknesses, the US system is far more democratic, avoids judicial cronyism, and ensures that the composition of the Court reflects changes in public attitudes. Candidates for the US Supreme Court are nominated by the President and undergo parallel congressional scrutiny and those with questionable or controversial backgrounds are excluded.

The Prime Minister should ignore the political diatribes of Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch who described proposed amendments as “inciting against the judges” and an effort to destroy “the democracy upon which our society stands”. There is no other High Court in the Western world in which sitting judges are able to effectively veto candidates who may not share their views. Even though public pressure resulted in a more balanced selection of judges this time, Netanyahu should proceed with reforms to democratize the selection process of judges. Once implemented, the Supreme Court will begin to reflect the changes within society without compromising its judicial role.

Of course, The Knesset must take care not to throw out the baby with the bathwater and must therefore avoid compromising the balance of powers between the legislature and the courts and retain

In the broader context, Prime Minister Netanyahu should not allow himself to be intimidated by those falsely portraying themselves as guardians of civil rights. They are merely attempting to forestall a genuine extension of democracy and should be exposed as hypocrites and purveyors of Orwellian double-talk.

We should take great pride in the fact that despite being the only country in the world facing continuous existential threats from its neighbors, Israel is and will remain an oasis of thriving democracy in a cruel region in which autocracy, denial of human rights and Islamic fanaticism are the order of the day.

The writer’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com

He may be contacted at ileibler@netvision.net.il

This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post

"Finally"

2012-01-09T04:25:00.000+02:00

The Shamgar Committee, which had been charged with establishing guidelines on how the government should respond if terrorists abduct Israelis in the future, has completed its work and submitted its report to Defense Minister Barak last Thursday. It is being said that the goal of the protocol that is recommended is to guide Israelis to abide by a "national moral code," as well as to send a message to the enemy that it will not be profitable to kidnap Israelis.

Shamgar
Credit: YNet

According to Israel Radio, the report is currently classified "top secret," and while parts of it may remain confidential, parts may ultimately be published.

Apparently the entire issue was examined, including everything from deterrence to how much should be paid for an abductee. What is known about the recommendations is that they call for a toughening of the stance of the government:

Explained Meir Shamgar, the former High Court president who headed the committee, "We didn't only discuss the question of how to conduct negotiations over prisoner swaps, but also the question of whether to hold negotiations at all, and who should be the one to lead them. We recommend that the issue of saving hostages be under the rule of the defense minister, the prime minister and the government." There is informed speculation that the Committee recommended appointing a permanent committee to deal with abductions and that special envoys no longer be utilized.

"The issue of secrecy is an integral component of our recommendations," said Shamgar. "It is preferable to keep certain things secret, so information will not be leaked to hostile elements."

~~~~~~~~~~

After receiving the report, Barak said:

"It's important that we have solidarity, that we see that we are able to pay a heavy price when necessary and, most importantly, that we have set guidelines and expectations from the beginning so that this can impact the expectations of the other side."

Not quite sure what he has in mind when he refers to "a heavy price when necessary," but the issue of solidarity that he mentions is of considerable importance. There's no question in my mind that the price for Shalit went up because people in Israel eager to see him released were publicly lobbying the prime minister. The members of Hamas are not fools -- they saw the pressure Netanyahu was under.

And the existence of guidelines -- which, in broad terms, must be public knowledge -- are critical. Potential terrorist-captors must know before the fact that what Israel will offer in return for a hostage -- if anything at all -- has a very definite limit.

~~~~~~~~~~

Apparently Barak will now discuss these guidelines with the prime minister. He will then either institute what is recommended or go to the Knesset to seek appropriate legislation.

I'm all for that legislation, so that negotiators are bound by law and cannot suddenly concede more than is wise when under pressure.

~~~~~~~~~~

According to a report from Israel Hayom at the very end of December, the Forum of Eight (senior ministers, including the prime minister, foreign minister and defense minister) decided unanimously that if another soldier is abducted Israel will go to war.

"The era of self-restraint is over," one senior government official said. "Anyone who kidnaps an Israeli will have to pay, possibly with the end of his rule."

Observed Netanyahu, "Reality is forcing us to change the rules of the game."

At about the same time, MK Zevulun Orlev (Bayit Yehudi) declared that many MKs and ministers now regret having released so many terrorists for Shalit. He announced intention to introduce legislation that would limit the authority of the government to abrogate the sentences of terrorists for the sake of a policy objective.

~~~~~~~~~~

This is a switch that merits a "finally," as well, I think:

Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz recently addressed "the rising potential for a multi-arena event" -- by which is meant war on several fronts. "Facing in several directions as we are...we can't afford to stay on the defensive and must come up with offensive measures."

About time it was said!

~~~~~~~~~~

I'd like to say "finally" about this, too, but I don't know that I can:

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey gave an interview to CBS News; it was intended to demonstrate how rough and tough the US will remain in spite of military cuts made by Obama that are both horrendous and exceedingly ill-advised.

Declared Panetta, "our red line to Iran is to not develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us."

That should be a "finally," a badly needed definitive statement. However...

General Dempsey, when asked how difficult it would be to take out Iran's nuclear capacity, answered:

"I'd rather not discuss the degree of difficulty and in any way encourage them to read anything into that."

That merits a groan. Why didn't he say that it doesn't matter how difficult it is, because the US military can do it? Instead, he explained:

"But I will say that -- our -- my responsibility is to encourage the right degree of planning to understand the risks associated with any kind of military option... in some cases to position assets, to provide those options... in a timely fashion. And all those activities are going on."

Talk about a statement lacking in certainty and clarity! And this wasn't the end.

When asked about whether the US could take out the Iranian nuclear capacity without using nuclear weapons, Dempsey replied:

"I certainly want them to believe that that's the case."

He actually SAID this on national TV? This is a direct quote, provided by YNet. Hey guys, if the leaders of Hamas are not stupid, neither are the leaders in Iran.

Sorry -- spin this as you may, as deliberate disinformation or whatever -- I am underwhelmed, and definitely not reassured.

~~~~~~~~~~

Let's look for just a moment at our "peace partners" in the PA/PLO:

Last week, after the meeting in Amman, I reported that, while the PA negotiators had submitted their proposals, the Israeli proposals for borders and security requirements that had been requested by the Quartet had still not been submitted.

According to Herb Keinon, who cited "Western diplomatic officials" in the JPost last Thursday, Israel did submit something. However, "the document...is just a rough outline of issues that need to be discussed, and did not present in any detail Israel’s position on the matters."

Another meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. An adviser to Abbas said they will respond to this outline at the meeting.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ehud Barak, who is always pumping for a "peace process," now readily concedes that the chances are very slight that any significant progress will be made during these talks.

However, he sees the talks as having benefit, none-the-less:

"Good faith negotiations with the Palestinians can impede attempts to isolate Israel. It's important that it be clear that Israel is active in a real way. It can hinder the effectiveness of attempts to isolate us internationally."

Is Netanyahu taking his cues from his buddy Barak? This is his "play-the-game" policy.

~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, speaking of playing a game, Mahmoud al-Aloul, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, said in a speech on behalf of Abbas in Ramallah that the first meeting in Amman was very disappointing because the Israelis came without any new proposals. Of course, the PA proposal, that demanded negotiations based on the '67 line, was just loaded with new ideas, right?

Just listen:

"The Palestinian leadership has spared no effort to seek peace and has complied with all initiatives. But all our efforts have been in vain...The Israelis are not prepared for any solutions."

The Israeli response? That it had been decided at the meeting that neither side would make statements about the negotiations and that the Jordanians would be the spokespersons. In other words, al-Aloul was out of line.

~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, according to the reliable Middle East Newsline, Fatah is currently wracked by infighting because of Abbas's failure to succeed at the UN. This faction is definitely not of one mind with regard to the Amman meetings. Even if there were no other problems with regard to the "negotiations," the ambivalence of Fatah would be the kiss of death.

~~~~~~~~~~

There continue to be events in this part of the world that are shifting so rapidly that I wonder if I need a spread sheet to keep track of it all. I've said this before: these are extraordinary times, with shifting alliances, roiling dynamics. Truly impossible to adequately call very much of what will happen -- events can only be monitored as they unfold. A couple of mentions here will suffice for now:

Last Thursday, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland stated that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had given the US assurances that it would honor Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. Various parties have given "good guarantees," she said.

On Saturday, Essam al-Erian, deputy head of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party, speaking to Al-Hayat, an Arabic paper in London, said that the accords "are under the responsibility of the people and state institutions, and it would not be right for anyone to speak on behalf of the Egyptian people....We are not in a position to give assurances."

By that point, Rashad al-Bayoumi, the Brotherhood's second in command, had already told Al-Hayat that "the Muslim Brotherhood will not recognize Israel under any circumstances and might put the peace treaty with the Jewish state up to a referendum.

"[The Brotherhood] did not sign the peace accords… We are allowed to ask the people or the elected parliament to express their opinion on the treaty...We will take the proper legal steps in dealing with the peace deal. To me, it isn't binding at all. The people will express their opinion on the matter."

But at almost the same time that al-Erian's statement was published, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon made a statement on the subject: "The peace treaty with Egypt is not in danger." All the main players in Egypt understand the benefits of retaining the treaty, he maintains.

Could be. Could be that the hedging by the Brotherhood is just political blather, or that their representatives are covering their rears because they intended their reassurances -- that Nuland so blithely announced -- to be kept quiet.

Could also be that the Brotherhood itself isn't sure yet what it will do.

~~~~~~~~~~

I have not been tracking the horrendous situation in Syria, in which some 5,000 have been killed by the government in the last 10 months, but this is another case in point: Will Assad come down soon or not? In spite of everything it is not at all certain that he will.

On Friday, Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby met in Cairo with Hamas politburo head Khaled Mashaal, and asked him to appeal to the Syria government to halt the violence. Mashaal cannot have been happy with this assignment -- Hamas is in a bit of a tight situation in Syria and, as I have indicated, is seeking a home elsewhere. Not sure how much clout Hamas has with Assad at this point.

And how does the situation in Syria impinge upon Hezbollah? Right now there is less assistance to that terrorist group because Assad is drained and otherwise occupied. And if a new regime enters the picture? Muslim Brotherhood in Syria refused assistance from Iran because it has been a supporter of the Assad regime. Losing the Assad connection could be a big blow Iran's goals in this area.

Watch it play out...

~~~~~~~~~~

Iran is obviously hurting, as sanctions squeeze its economy -- its currency rate is at a record low. But will those sanctions be levied with enough seriousness to do the trick?

Is Ahmadinejad's threat to close the Straits of Hormuz more than a threat? Should he actually do so, it might be seen as a casus belli in the West.

More to watch...

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Please see this excellent piece, "Israel is our land," by Naftali Bennett, Director General of the Yesha Council.

"...As long as we keep on utilizing practical arguments while leaving the arena of justice to the Palestinians, we shall lose. The time has come for the Israeli government to go back to the simple truth: The Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4172316,00.html

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And just up on YouTube: A flash mob in Beit Shemesh on Friday: 250 women dancing in the old city square -- an open expression of their refusal to be barred from the public domain by ultra-Orthodox. What fun. Three of my granddaughters danced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZd0kLWP01c

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© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.

See my website at www.arlenefromisrael.info Contact Arlene at akushner@netvision.net.il

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Terrorist Attack Foiled; 12 Pipe Bombs Found at Checkpoint

2012-01-08T18:03:00.000+02:00

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
A7 News

Border Police Sunday morning foiled large-scale terrorist attacks by Palestinian Authority Arabs who carried pipe bombs and an 8-inch commando knife when they were searched at a security fence checkpoint in Samaria.

Border Police arrested four terrorists from the village of Balata, near Shechem in central Samaria. In addition to the bombs and knife, police discovered the terrorists were carrying an improvised revolver and ammunition.

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) is questioning the men. The planned attack is one of the latest in a growing number of terrorist threats that have been attributed to the release of more than 1,000 terrorists in exchange for the return of kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, and to the Palestinian Authority bid for United Nations recognition instead of returning to direct talks with Israel.

Last week, authorities released for publication the information that two Israeli Arabs were arrested last month on charges of helping the Hamas terrorist organization. The two men, who are brothers, admitted that they were in contact with Hamas terrorists in Judea and Samaria, who asked them to cooperate in helping to attack Israeli Jews.

Ever since I can remember, I have always been a Zionist

2012-01-08T08:15:00.001+02:00

http://www.voiceofthecopts.org/op-eds/ever-since-i-can-remember-i-have-always-been-a-zionist/
Ever since I can remember, I have always been a Zionist

liberatednow

Ever since I can remember, I have always been a Zionist. To understand this, we have to go back to my childhood, in fact my school days. I have always heard an extremely negative and detrimental description about the Jewish people, that they are the most cunning, mean, ruthless, selfish, self centered, conniving, greedy and sick people. I always used to counter-question those in authority about why are they supposed to be so bad, and I always got very petty reasons, saying because they killed innocent Muslims and still are killing so many innocent Muslims in Palestine, and mainly because they killed so many prophets. I had never personally met a Jew in my life (actually I still have not met any), but from what I had seen, heard and read in the media, they seemed like pretty normal people with two hands, two feet, two eyes, two ears and a nose, and they definitely do not have horns on their heads. It was only recently that I discovered that the Jews are actually the oppressed and not the oppressor as otherwise claimed by the Arabs. To understand my point of view, it is very vital that you all know the true historical background of Israel and the Jews. This lesson in history is especially imperative for the ignorant and misinformed Muslims who are totally oblivious to the facts, so here it goes.

1. Israel became a nation in 1312 BCE, two thousand years before the rise of Islam. 2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BCE, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years, with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 CE lasted no more than 22 years.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.

9. In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution, and slaughter.

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.

12. Arab refugees were intentionally not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own people’s lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

13. The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.

14. The PLO’s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.

15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

16. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.

17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.

18. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.

19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

20. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
If you consider the above facts, you will see that the state of Palestine never existed in history. When the Romans changed the name of Israel to Palestine, the people living there at the time were Jews, not Arabs. If there had been a “Palestinian People,” which there never was, they would have been Jews. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza belonged to Egypt, and there were no “Palestinians” then. The West Bank belonged to Jordan, and there were no “Palestinians” then. The only reason that Muslims want Israel is because of their hatred toward Jews, Judaism, and anything that is not Muslim.

Muslims believe in only one thing, that is, hatred. They hate everyone, whether they are Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists or anyone who is not a Muslim. Because of the hate-filled teachings of Muhammad, Islam is in a constant state of war with every religion on the planet. But did you notice? None of these other religions are at war with each other, at least not in the current state of affairs.

They even hate Muslims who are not from the same sect, that is, Shias hate Sunnis and vice versa. Mohammed indeed created a monster, and that is Islam. Even after 14 centuries, that monster continues to haunt us and will continue to do so unless and until we do something to stop it.

To be or not to be – that is the question

2012-01-07T16:15:00.001+02:00

MARTIN SHERMAN

Into the Fray: It is time to have a clear-headed, hard look at reality: The two state solution is dead.

The maximum any Israeli government can offer is less than the minimum any Palestinian leader can accept. The real gap between both sides is much greater than perceived, and that gap is growing – Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, former head of the National Security Council, 2009

The land-for-peace idea has now collapsed. We have to find another way, and a new concept is urgently needed – Maj.-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan, former head of the National Security Council, 2007

It is time to have a clear-headed, hard look at reality: The two state solution is dead. Where do we go from here? – Prof. Carlo Strenger, columnist for Haaretz, 2011 It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Even if one strongly disagrees with his ideological predilections, Jerusalem Post columnist Gershon Baskin was nonetheless correct in assessing the magnitude and urgency of the emerging danger when he recently stated, “We have a very short period of time remaining before we come to the conclusion that there is no longer any resolution to this conflict that enables us to have a Jewish nationstate in the Land of Israel. If this happens, it will be the end of the Zionist dream that so many have worked so hard for so long to create and sustain.”

Approaching crossroads

The Jewish people is rapidly approaching a crucial juncture. It will soon have to decide whether or not it is willing to maintain its nation-state; whether it is willing to forgo over a century of unparalleled sacrifice, effort and achievement to satisfy the cynical and hypocritical dictates of political correctness; whether it is prepared to surrender substance for form; to forsake real national freedoms for the artificial facade of feigned individual equality.

As the infeasibility of the two-state paradigm becomes increasingly apparent, even to the staunchest of its erstwhile supporters, the need to formulate a cogent alternative that will preserve the Jewish nation-state is becoming increasingly pressing.

It is not only the disillusioned among the Israeli Left who are expressing ever-more despair at the prospect of implementing the two-state solution. It is increasingly being dismissed as a realistic – or even desirable – aspiration by Palestinians, and not only radical Islamists who reject it because it entails recognizing a Jewish state. Thus for example, in his recent book, What is a Palestinian State Worth?, even Sari Nusseibeh, a show-case “moderate,” expresses “heretical” doubts as to whether the struggle for statehood merits the effort.

Significant shifts

This should be seen against the shift in the general Palestinian attitude toward the twostate principle, reflected in a strangely underreported and grossly misreported poll conducted recently for The Israel Project by Stanley Greenberg together with Palestinian Center for Public Opinion.

According to the poll, there was a “huge drop in acceptance of a two-state solution.” Fifty-two percent said they would not accept such a solution – up from 36% less than a year previously – while two-thirds rejected the principle that one of the states should be a Jewish homeland.

A similar proportion said, “The real goal should be to start with two states but then move to it all being one Palestinian state,” and 84% said that “Over time Palestinians must work to get back all the land for a Palestinian state.”

Only the grossly undiscerning will fail to notice the tangible change in official Palestinian negotiating strategy in recent years. The pursuit of a two-state solution has become a leisurely distraction rather than a seriously sought after end-of-conflict arrangement. Far-reaching concessions – difficult for Israel to accept even as part of a final agreement – are being presented as conditions for merely resuming negotiations, delaying them for extended periods – hardly a rational tactic for a people eager to extricate themselves from onerous “occupation.”

Facing the inevitable

In view of accumulating evidence, it would be imprudent for Israel to continue deluding itself that Palestinians entertain any serious intentions as to the two-state solution – other than in the two-stage sense. Indeed, the accelerating erosion of support for the idea makes the formulation of operational alternatives a pressing imperative.

The alternatives that have been discussed most often fall into two categories. Those which entail: (a) conferring Israel citizenship on the Palestinians – i.e. various versions of the one-state approach; and (b) transferring civilian rule over the Palestinians to some non-Palestinian Authority Arab administration – such as Jordan or prominent local clan-leaders traditionally well-disposed to Israel, who would preside over scattered enclaves.

For a variety of reasons, neither of these offers a stable long-term formula. As a detailed critique of these alternatives is beyond the scope of this article, I will restrict myself to the following observations.

Fatal flaws

Regarding the first category, the inclusion of the Palestinian Arab population across the 1967 Green Line into Israel as fully fledged citizens would create an unbearable socioeconomic burden on the country that would not only jeopardize its character as a Jewish state but as an advanced Western democracy as well – a problem many EU countries are beginning to experience, even with proportionately far smaller “discordant” populations.

It is a measure that would create difficulties far more complex and profound than could be dealt with – as some naively hope – by adopting a regional electoral system and gerrymandering the boundaries of the constituencies to minimize the impact of non- Jewish voters. Quite apart from the legal challenges – before an inherently amenable Supreme Court – as to the equity of such an arrangement, and possible mass relocation of voters to other constituencies, the cultural and economic disparities would tear society apart.

Regarding the second category, it is wishful thinking – especially in the wake of the Arab Spring – to hope that any “traditional” regime would consent to be seen as “pulling the Zionists’ chestnuts out of the fire.”

It is more than doubtful that any Arab ruler – whether a clan leader or the Jordanian monarch – would be willing, or indeed able, to function for any length of time as what would certainly be perceived as a perfidious “prison warder.”

Moreover, in light of the instability in the region, it would irresponsible to adopt a long-term policy based on the assumption that the regime in Amman would not be replaced or at least dominated by elements inimical to any cooperation with Israel.

In both cases, the consequences of these alternatives are liable to be worse than those they are designed to avoid.

The humanitarian paradigm

These factors – the eroding relevance of the two-state paradigm, the ominous emergence of the one-state paradigm and the inadequacy of proffered alternatives – led to the proposal in my two preceding columns of the humanitarian paradigm, which addressed the fate of the Palestinian Arabs in a comprehensive, non-coercive manner. Operationally it comprised three constituent elements.

• Ending discriminatory treatment of the Palestinian refugees by abolishing/transforming UNRWA.

• Ending discrimination against Palestinians in the Arab world and the prohibition on their acquiring citizenship of countries in which they have been resident for decades.

• Providing generous relocation finance directly to individual Palestinian breadwinners to allow them to build better futures for themselves in third countries of their choice.

Unsurprisingly, numerous reservations were raised as to the feasibility of the proposal. These will now be addressed – at least in part.

The feasibility factor – I

The proponents of the Oslowian two-state principle are the last who can invoke feasibility as a precondition for the admissibility of an operational proposal –at least as an item on the agenda of public debate.

After all, this is a formula that has been tried for almost two decades, and despite massive international endorsement and financial support, has wrought nothing but death, destruction and despair. Surely a proposal that has proved so disastrous should by any rational yardstick be branded unworkable and hence unfeasible.

And if the demonstrable infeasibility/ futility/failure of the two-state paradigm has not disqualified it as meriting serious consideration, why should a conceptually consistent, untried humanitarian paradigm not be accorded the same opportunity – at least as a legitimate topic for debate.

The feasibility factor – II

Inevitably, any radical departure from long-established conventional wisdom will be met with stiff resistance. However, the existing configuration of public opinion should not be considered immutable.

Indeed, imagine how hopeless the notion of a Palestinian state was in the late 1960s in the wake of Israel’s sweeping Six Day War victory. Even in the late 1980s the idea was dismissed as unrealistic, unreasonable radicalism by all but a minuscule albeit determined minority on the far Left.

However, it was a minority that managed to enlist the resolve, resources and resourcefulness to transform the marginal into mainstream in remarkably short order.

Given the paltry funding and the puny efforts that have characterized Israel’s public diplomacy in the past two decades, the current public perception can hardly be taken as persuasive gauge of what might be achieved with adequate financing and appropriate focus. Today the entire public diplomacy budget is reportedly of the order of magnitude of what a medium-to-large Israeli corporation spends on promoting fast-food or snacks. If one does not invest in winning hearts and minds, it is no wonder that they are not won.

The feasibility factor – III

According to the IMF, Israel’s GDP is approaching a quarter trillion dollars. If it were to allot less than one half of 1% of GDP to public diplomacy, that would be over $1 billion – enough to swamp anything the George Soroses of the world devote to Israel’s delegitimization.

Given the nation’s achievements in nearly every other field of human endeavor, one can only surmise what impact a determined assault on the authenticity and legitimacy of the Palestinian narrative, financed by an annual $1b. budget over two decades – the length of the post- Oslowian era – might have on the acceptability of a humanitarian rehabilitation of Palestinian Arabs, cruelly misled by their leaders for decades.

Indeed, important elements of the humanitarian paradigm are already gaining international legitimacy. The anomalous and detrimental role of UNRWA – a pivotal element in the proposal – has been recognized by countries such as Canada and the Netherlands which have either curtailed their funding to the organization or are considering doing so. It is distinctly plausible that the US could be convinced – especially in these days of austerity – to terminate its funding for this wasteful and counter-productive body which perpetuates the Palestinians’ dependency and statelessness.

Likewise, the brutal discrimination against Palestinians in Arab states, allegedly to “help preserve their identity,” is also the subject of increasing international attention and censure. Pressure should – and could – be brought to bear on Arab regimes to end this unacceptable practice, even if it means temporarily channeling budgets formerly allotted to UNRWA to facilitate their integration as citizens of the countries of their longstanding residence.

These elements cannot be detached from the overall thrust of the humanitarian paradigm, which is to focus on ameliorating the situation of the individual Palestinian rather than promoting the nefarious goals of an invented national entity.

Estimating costs

The estimated cost of implementation is strongly dependent on the level of compensation and the size of the Palestinian population in the “territories,” which is the subject of intense debate.

A few years ago, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted a survey on the level of compensation Palestinian refugees considered fair to forgo the “right of return.” If we take more than double the minimum amount specified by most pollees as fair compensation for relocation/rehabilitation, and if we adopt a high-end estimate of the Palestinian population, the total cost would be around $150b. for the West Bank Palestinians (and $250b. if Gaza is included). This is a fraction of the US expenditure on its decade-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have produced results that are less than a resounding success.

Spread over a period equivalent to the current post-Oslo era, this sum would comprise a yearly outlay of no more than a few percentage points of current GDP – something Israel could well afford on its own.

If additional OECD countries were to contribute, the total relocation/rehabilitation of the Palestinian Arabs could be achieved with an almost imperceptible economic burden.

From Hamlet to Herzl

I began this column on the humanitarian paradigm with a short excerpt from Hamlet – to convey why it is needed.

It is perhaps appropriate that I end it with one from Herzl – to convey why it is feasible: If you will it, it is no fantasy.

How to Punish Iran’s Despots

2012-01-07T04:33:00.000+02:00

Benjamin Weinthal

Berlin — In a few weeks’ time, the European Union’s foreign ministers will gather in Brussels to discuss a common response to Iran’s ongoing nuclear activities. To its credit, the EU reached a tentative agreement on Wednesday to impose an oil embargo on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet the EU can inflict still more economic and diplomatic pain on Iran’s rogue regime. In November, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published a report confirming that Tehran is developing nuclear weapons. The U.K. responded to the IAEA report by blacklisting the Central Bank of Iran, which conducts vital energy transactions for the Islamic Republic. Sanctioning the CBI will deny Iran funds for its nuclear-weapons program and its primary terror proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

If the rest of the EU were to follow the lead of Britain — and U.S. legislation banning transactions with the CBI — Iran would lose billions in desperately needed revenue. Last year, Iran garnered about $73 billion in energy profits, making its gas and oil sector account for more than half its national budget.

In November — just a little over a week before Iran’s regime ordered a militia group to overrun the British Embassy in Tehran — the German media reported that the country’s defense ministry had made Europe’s most bizarre end run around international sanctions to date by selling Chancellor Merkel’s official jet to the sanctioned Iranian airline Mahan.

The deal, made through a Ukrainian middleman, demonstrates Germany’s reluctance to take any measures that might compromise its roughly €4 billion annual bilateral trade volume with Iran. EU leaders may soon witness the absurd spectacle of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other sanctioned officials arriving at world capitals in Merkel’s old ride.

In early December, Iranian oil minister Rostam Ghasemi arrived at an OPEC meeting in Vienna despite an international travel ban. The EU, the United States, and Australia have all sanctioned Ghasemi for his involvement with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In December, an Austrian foreign ministry official called me, insisting that Vienna must honor its international agreements regarding OPEC, which has its seat there. Yet Austria and its EU partners have granted unnecessarily wide travel latitude to unsavory Iranian officials, including Atomic Energy Organization head Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, who delivered a talk at the Vienna-based IAEA’s general conference in September. The Wall Street Journal rightly refers to Abbasi-Davani as a “dangerous man,” and according to the U.N. sanctions list, he is deeply involved in Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The Austrians welcome him nonetheless.

Meanwhile Germany, Europe’s main economic engine, has proven equally lax toward Iran’s top representatives. In October, the German Council on Foreign Relations, one of Germany’s leading think tanks — and a recipient of German foreign ministry funding — hosted Iranian deputy finance minister Muhammad Reza Farzin for a talk about promoting business ties with Iran and why EU sanctions against Tehran are futile.

The Free Democratic Party foreign-policy spokesman and Bundestag MP Rainer Stinner facilitated the Farzin visit. Stinner has previously stated his opposition to sanctioning Iran’s IRGC, on the grounds that it controls the majority of Iran’s economy and could endanger trade relations. (The Bush administration sanctioned the IRGC in 2007 because of its global terror activities.) Only four months earlier, Ruprecht Polenz, the head of the Bundestag foreign-affairs committee, welcomed members of the Iranian parliament, declaring that “sanctions do not rule out talks” with Iran.

The vulnerability of Iran’s economy cannot be overstated. Iranian deputy oil minister Ahmad Qalebani said in December that sanctions were making an impact, telling the regime-controlled Iranian Students’ News Agency that the country’s crude-oil production fell in 2011 “due to lack of investment in oil field development.”

If Iran’s leaders conclude that the world will not simply accept their nuclear program but will impose real costs if Iran continues its advances, they might rethink their calculations.

— Benjamin Weinthal is a Berlin-based fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Report on Biased Textbooks Goes to 500 Superintendents

2012-01-06T17:54:00.001+02:00

FrontPageMag

The Christian Action Network has sent 500 school superintendents a report showing that many textbooks are biased against Israel and the West while whitewashing radical Islam. The report, authored by Citizens for National Security, examines 200 quotes from 30 textbooks used in Florida.

“[Students] aren’t being taught about the theological motivations behind radical Islam,” said Martin Mawyer, President of the Christian Action Network.

“The impression students are given is that terrorists are misguided fighters against Western imperialism and aggression, who are only wrong in their approach. It was amazing how many times the word ‘Palestine’ was used, making it sound like Israel was built on top of a conquered country,” he said. The report lists several quotes from textbooks teaching students that the 9/11 attacks were a response to U.S. foreign policy. For example, one book says, “What were the sources of Muslim anger?…bin Laden declared that the attacks were a response to the ‘humiliation and disgrace’ that have afflicted the Islamic world for over eighty years.”

Another teaches that Bin Laden was motivated by the “military presence of the sacred soil of the Arabian peninsula and its support for Israel’s hostility to Palestinian nationalism.” The ideology of radical Islam is not discussed. While Bin Laden’s statements about the West’s foreign policies are mentioned, quotes about his ideology are not. For example, Raymond Ibrahim in “The Al-Qaeda Reader” brings to light this quote from Osama Bin Laden:

“In fact, Muslims are obligated to raid the lands of the infidels, occupy them, and exchange their systems of governance for an Islamic system, barring any practice that contradicts the sharia from being publicly voiced among the people, as was the case at the dawn of Islam.”

The texts also are also unfavorable to Israel. One textbook states, “Angered over the loss of their territory to Israel, some militant Palestinians responded with a policy of terrorist attacks.” In discussing the 1948 war, one textbook just says that “war soon broke out” without explaining that the Arabs invaded Israel with the objective of destroying it.

It then says, “By the end of the 1948 war, Israel controlled almost three fourths of Palestine, including land in the Negev Desert and half of Jerusalem. Jordan and Egypt divided the rest of Palestine between them.” Coupled together, it sounds if the war was one of conquest by Israel.

The report documents numerous instances where Islam is treated more favorably than Christianity. For example, one textbook states, “The Quran permitted fair, defensive war as jihad, or ‘struggle in the way of God,” and says that is how Islam expanded. Another selected quote is that Jews and Christians “have historically enjoyed religious freedom in many Muslim societies.”

“[Islamic forces] rarely imposed their religion by force on the local population…By contrast, Christian monks motivated by missionary fervor, converted many of the peoples of central and eastern Europe,” is another textbook excerpt included in the report.

Some textbooks took a blatantly skeptical stance towards the historical accuracy of Judaism and Christianity.
“A few loyal followers of Jesus spread the story that Jesus had overcome death,” is how one describes the birth of Christianity. As for the history of the Jews, “Many scholars today doubt that the early books of the Hebrew Bible reflect the true history of the early Israelites.”

The full report can be found at the Christian Action Network’s website here.

Two other incidents since 2010 showed how pervasive biased education is. In Georgia Campbell Middle School, students in a seventh grade class had to complete an assignment that included a fictional letter from a Saudi woman advocating Sharia Law.

“Women in the West do not have the protection of the Sharia as we do here. If our marriage has problems, my husband can take another wife rather than divorce me, and I would still be cared for…I feel very fortunate that we have the Sharia,” the text reads.

In September 2010, FrontPage covered how New York’s statewide high school Regents exam required students to read outrageously biased essays about history. According to one reading, “Wherever they went, the Moslems brought with them their love of art, beauty and learning. From about the eighth to the eleventh century, their culture was superior in many ways to that of western [sic] Christendom.”

Guest speakers on current events at schools are also a problem. In 2010, controversy erupted at Clarence High School in New York because of a guest speaker named Hassan Shibly. I interviewed him extensively and reviewed his Facebook page and published the results. He denied that Hezbollah is a terrorist group, instead calling it a “resistance organization.” Since then, he has joined the Council on American-Islamic Relations as the Executive Director of its Tampa chapter. He recently was a guest speaker in over a dozen high school classes in the area, addressing about 500 students.

The next generation will one day lead this country and decide its fate. Its education must be taken with the utmost seriousness. If today’s aspiring leaders are incorrectly taught about our values and security, then they will incorrectly lead on values and security.

The coming war with Iran

2012-01-06T17:32:00.000+02:00

Regional chaos might count as a win for the mullahs

By Reza Kahlili, The Washington Times

Iran’s tyrannical leaders, determined to make the Islamic regime a nuclear-armed state, are preparing for war. That’s exactly what the United States and Israel might have to deliver, and soon. @-Text.rag:Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the Revolutionary Guards in May to speed up the regime’s nuclear-bomb program and arm its missiles with nuclear warheads. Now, sources reveal, Ayatollah Khamenei has ordered the guards to prepare for war.

In a recent meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, it was decided that the possibility of an attack by Israel or America in 2012 is real and that the country’s forces need to prepare several contingencies for war. It also was concluded that in case of war, the regime could be victorious, though the cost would be high, but it would emerge as the one and only champion of the Islamic cause in the world.

The radicals ruling Iran have long believed that obtaining the nuclear bomb will make them untouchable and will facilitate the expansion of the Islamic movement in the region and the world in bringing the West to its knees. They also have concluded that because of the troubles in the world’s economy and financial troubles in America, even a limited confrontation with America would benefit the Islamic regime. ust as Hezbollah outfought Israel in the 2006 war, Iran can claim victory against the U.S. in such a conflict, which could include attacking Israel from several fronts. But the real prize for the criminal mullahs would be that it would help the regime bring down the monarchy in Bahrain, create instability in Saudi Arabia and, most important, help the Islamists in Egypt undermine military rule. All this would occur by inciting uprisings for a war of Islam against infidels and Zionists.

The guards in their preparations have mapped out several options. One would be to disrupt the oil flow from the Persian Gulf. They know that about 40 percent of the world’s oil and the majority of oil exports of eight countries in the Persian Gulf pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that could be blocked by the regime’s forces.

The guards’ navy of speedboats armed with cruise missiles, Iran’s submarines and, most important, the guards’ missiles of various kinds could be launched from deep within Iran and still target the narrow strait.

The guards also have mapped out an extensive list of U.S. bases in the Middle East to attack with their missiles, disrupting the movement of U.S. forces and the operation of the Air Force, which the guards believe will be the main thrust of any attack by America.

For that purpose, several U.S. bases have been identified that could be attacked either by short-range rockets with a range of up to 140 miles or with ballistic missiles with a range of more than 1,250 miles. The two air bases in Kuwait, Ali Al Salem and Ahmed Al Jaber, are less than 85 miles from Iran. In Kuwait, the U.S. camps of Buehring, Spearhead, Patriot and Arifjan, with distances of 65 to 80 miles, are all within reach of the guards’ various missiles.

The guards also are targeting four U.S. air bases in Afghanistan as the main launching pads for any attacks on Iran. The Bagram Air Base, home to most of the U.S. Air Force presence in Afghanistan, is just 450 miles from the Iranian borders and within range of all of Iran’s ballistic missiles. Other air bases in Afghanistan that would be attacked by the guards in case of war are in Kandahar, Shindand and Herat.

The super U.S. base, Al Adid in Qatar, which is home to a variety of U.S. bombers and fighters, is within 175 miles of Iran and a prime target for the guards, though because of favorable relations of the Islamic regime with the government in Qatar, the guards are not sure America can use that air base for its attack and therefore will be much more likely to use its other superbase at Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates, also within range of various Iranian missiles. Other U.S. targets of the guards are the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain and Thumrait Air Base in Oman.

The guards also have drawn up plans to confront any uprising from within should one occur after the breakout of war and have mobilized tens of thousands of Basijis ready to put down any unrest against the regime.

The Islamic regime in Iran also counts on Russia and China, with which it has close relations, to come to its help and facilitate an end to war in time to save the regime. China, which holds billions of dollars in contracts and is said to have more than 11,000 contractors, mostly of a military nature, in Iran, has the most to lose in the downfall of the Islamic regime, and its officials already have stated openly that China will aid the Iranian regime in case of war.

Though the Islamic regime never should have been allowed to continue with its suppression of its people, its terrorist activities worldwide and its continuation of its missile and nuclear programs despite U.N. sanctions, one cannot imagine a world with nuclear arms in the hands of the jihadists in Iran.

With officials from both Israel and the U.S. calling a nuclear-armed Iran a red line, leaving the possibility of a military option on the table, we must realize that the only possible solution to this dilemma is a regime change in Iran, which a majority of Iranians support. The price we pay today to save world peace and security will be minuscule to what the world will pay in the not-so-distant future.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of “A Time to Betray” (Threshhold Editions, Simon & Schuster, 2010) He is a fellow with EMPact America and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).
Thanks to Ted Belman

Muslim Brotherhood Realities New and Old

2012-01-05T19:19:00.001+02:00

Steven Emerson
IPT News
January 5, 2012

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3365/muslim-brotherhood-realities-new-and-old

The votes still aren't fully counted in Egypt, but the Obama administration has seen enough to reverse long-standing and well-rooted policies to shun the theocratic, global Caliphate-minded Muslim Brotherhood, whose philosophy spawned terrorist movements from Hamas to al-Qaida.

High level meetings between American and Brotherhood officials reflect a "new political reality here [in Egypt], and indeed around the region," the New York Times reported in a front-page article Wednesday, "as Islamist groups come to power.". What is astounding and dangerous about the new U.S. recognition is the fact that Brotherhood leaders became more openly radical and militant once Mubarak was thrown out, issuing incendiary speeches calling for "martyrdom" operations against Israel and aligning with Hamas and other terrorist groups. Yet as the New York Times wrote, the Obama administration accepts as truthful "the Brotherhood's repeated assurances that its lawmakers want to build a modern democracy that will respect individual freedoms, free markets and international commitments, including Egypt's treaty with Israel," the Times reported.

But there's another reality that seems overlooked. And that's the Brotherhood's history of deception and duplicity, policies that reflect its modus operandi in gaining legitimacy in Egypt and around the world but still promoting a militant agenda. While some MB officials may tell American officials they will respect individual liberties and honor Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, it's not hard to find massive evidence that paints a different and more disturbing picture.

As we reported last week, the Brotherhood is poised to dominate the next Egyptian government after vowing last spring that it sought no such power. The group's deputy chief says the Brotherhood "will not recognize Israel under any circumstances" and may place the peace treaty before voters in a referendum.

Earlier this year, it tried to hide its bylaws and their calls for "need to work on establishing the Islamic State" from English-reading audiences, striking them from its website. Last week, however, Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie gave an address reminding followers of the agenda laid out by Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna. "It begins with the reform of the individual and then to start building the family and society, then the government; then the rightly guided caliphate, then instructing the world; instructing guidance, wisdom, truth and justice."

Brotherhood members must see their electoral success as a huge step in the direction of creating "the rightly guided caliphate." The United States would be foolish to differ.

It also would be foolish to overlook the Brotherhood's record.

After American commandos killed Osama bin Laden, the Brotherhood told English language audiences "one of the reasons for which violence has been practised in the world has been removed," Reuters reported. In Arabic, however, they referred to the mass-murdering al-Qaida founder with the honorary term of Sheikh and called him a shaheed, or martyr. The statement also criticized the American attack as an assassination.

Despite their reputations among some in the West as supposed moderates, Brotherhood officials routinely endorse terrorism. Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group in control of Gaza, declares itself to be the Brotherhood's Palestinian branch. Its peaceful intent includes recent reiterations of its commitment to violent jihad and its vow never to accept the state of Israel's right to exist.

"Our presence with the Brotherhood threatens the Israeli entity," Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said last month.

For all the talk of the Brotherhood renouncing violence, the Associated Press noted that "it supports Hamas in its 'resistance' against Israel."

But the Brotherhood's threat of violence is not limited to actions against Israel. Influential Brotherhood theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi endorsed kidnapping and killing American civilians in Iraq in 2004 as an "obligation so as to cause them to leave Iraq immediately."

More recently, Qaradawi has called on Muslims to acquire nuclear weapons "to terrorize their enemies" and sanctioned killing Israeli women because they serve in the army. He has prayed to be martyred while killing a Jew.

Incredibly, there has been no American confirmation or denial of an Indian newspaper report last week which indicated Qaradawi is helping broker peace talks between the United States and the Taliban, which itself is scandalous.

But this is the same administration whose Director of National Intelligence called the Brotherhood "a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence," during a February congressional hearing. James Clapper tried to walk this back in subsequent statements, but his assessment flew in the face of all the Brotherhood has said about itself since its founding in 1928, beginning with its motto:

"God is our goal, the Quran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our way, and death in the service of God is the loftiest of our wishes."

There are good reasons why the United States does not deal with Iran or recognize Hamas government in Gaza: Granting unilateral recognition to totalitarian political movements or governments only emboldens their terrorist ideologies. Shunning, boycotting and ostracizing totalitarian movements and regimes that still promote violent ideologies and policies is the only proven way of undermining their legitimacy and containing them, short of military action. The Brotherhood, which supports the terrorist Hamas, can mouth to the West all the platitudes about peace it can muster. But the record of its actions and its statements in Arabic shows the emptiness of such words.

Here is Badie, the supreme guide, in October, following Israel's decision to release more than 1,000 prisoners, many of them Hamas killers, in exchange for kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit: "The deal also proved that Israel only understands the language of force and resistance. This language is able, with God's permission, to liberate the Palestinian people suffering under the captivity of the Zionists."

Deception is part of the Brotherhood's modus operandi in America as well. Evidence in the largest terror-financing trial in U.S. history shows the Muslim Brotherhood created a network of Hamas-support organizations here, operating as the "Palestine Committee."

One exhibit, a 1991 "Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America," described the Brotherhood's work in the United States as a "kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all religions."

Court records provided "ample evidence" placing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its founders in the Palestine Committee, but CAIR refuses to acknowledge those connections. The evidence prompted the FBI to cut off communication with CAIR, but plenty of U.S. politicians and policymakers continue to engage the group.

Even if U.S. government officials accept the premise that the Brotherhood is a new reality in international relations, it is profoundly troubling that the U.S. would unilaterally grant new-found legitimacy without extracting demonstrable concessions that the Brotherhood has truly changed its policies. We still carry great leverage, supporting Egypt with $1.3 billion in military aid each year and through economic support from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Beyond the leverage of financial support, there are many options for the U.S. to pursue, as it did through an international boycott organized against South Africa when it existed as an apartheid state.

In legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood more than any other previous administration, the U.S. undermines genuine secular and pluralist parties, admittedly in the minority in Egypt, but which hold out the only hope for alternatives to the empowerment of authoritarian policies of Islamist regimes. In the entire history of Islamist regimes taking over or winning by elections, there has never been an Islamist regime that has ever given up power peacefully.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration's embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt parallels its embrace of Muslim Brotherhood American branches and front groups whose officials say nice things on American television, yet continue to covertly spread the ideology of, and in many cases funded, Islamic militancy and terrorism. Throughout its history, Brotherhood groups and leaders around the world starting with al-Banna, its founder, in Egypt, have spread the incendiary conspiratorial doctrine that the West, Christians, Jews and infidels have secretly conspired to suppress Islam since 1095, the year of the first Crusade. And in the age of instant worldwide communications, this delusional paranoia that non-Muslims – especially the West, Jews and Christians are waging a war against Islam – has become the No. 1 factor in motivating Islamic terrorists to carry out their attacks. In Egypt as in the United States and Europe, Brotherhood leaders blamed Israel, Jews and the United States for the 9/11 attacks. Nearly every Islamic terrorist arrest in the United States has been described by Islamist leaders as evidence of a "war against Islam."

The Muslim Brotherhood, where ever it is around the world, from Cairo to Chicago, seeks to gain legitimacy thru a campaign of deception and penetration of western regimes and institutions. It defies common sense to grant unilateral legitimacy to the Brotherhood without demanding concrete actions to openly disavow its support for Islamic terrorist groups or stopping the spread of its mass incendiary message that there is a war against Islam.

Wittingly or unwittingly, the United States has now become a de facto enabler of a militant ideology that ultimately seeks the destruction of our own way of life..

| No news from Amman

2012-01-05T15:28:00.001+02:00

Zalman Shoval

The Jordanian-sponsored meeting in Amman between Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho and his Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erekat did not, and could not, produce any real breakthrough in the renewal of peace talks. At this stage, the parties have agreed to hold additional discussions, some behind the scenes, and this is a welcome development. However, no real progress will be made as long as the Palestinians refuse to return to negotiations without preconditions. The Palestinians have clarified they will continue to demand that Israel commit to freezing construction beyond the Green Line, including in Jerusalem, and agree that any future border between Israel and a Palestinian state be based on June 1967 lines.

The Quartet -- the U.S., EU, U.N. and Russia -- helped initiate this latest meeting, as it wants to maintain momentum for its framework for peace talks, although it is certainly aware that this momentum is largely imaginary. As opposed to the Palestinians, Israel welcomed the Quartet's framework in its entirety, and accepted King Abdullah of Jordan's initiative while not harboring too many illusions. Israel recognizes the importance of appeasing Jordan, which plays a crucial role both in terms of routine security and as a strategic buffer zone between Israel and threats from the east. Israel and Jordan also have a mutual interest in thwarting Hamas.

The Palestinians want to give the impression they are interested in renewing the peace process, yet they actually have no intention of abandoning their strategy to deal with the conflict in the international arena rather than at the negotiating table. Their new "diplomatic blitz," as it has been called, includes pushing for implementation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which bans the construction of communities and transfer of populations in occupied territory, in Judea and Samaria. This would retroactively transform sovereign territory into occupied territory, rendering almost every Israeli civil action there illegal according to international law.

The Palestinians also have not renounced their effort to seek unilateral recognition of statehood at the U.N. Security Council, and continue to try to persuade the council to condemn Israeli construction in Jerusalem and the settlements. The Palestinians are well aware that the U.S. would veto such initiatives, but that doesn't matter, as long as they succeed in creating obstacles for Israel and the U.S. in the international community.

The Americans, as is known, also oppose Israeli construction beyond the Green Line, but have stopped short of calling it illegal. At the same time, they support negotiations without preconditions. Jerusalem and Washington maintain regular contact on this and various other issues.

The Europeans, meanwhile, have continued to express vocal opposition to Israeli construction beyond the Green Line, almost to the point that it has become a ritual any time Israel announces this or that construction plan. Whether or not it is their intention, by doing so the Europeans reinforce the Palestinians' refusal to negotiate a lasting peace. Their objections are also frequently accompanied by the misguided notion that Israeli construction is an obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state ("There won't be enough land left," Israel's critics say). Yet a persuasive answer to this claim came from none other than Saeb Erekat, who confirmed in an interview with Haaretz that Israeli construction in the "settlements," including in parts of Jerusalem, covers no more than 1.1 percent of territory in the "West Bank.”

We must remind the world, and sometimes even ourselves, that we have every right to build in and around the outer neighborhoods of Jerusalem. This is not just our right, but also our duty, particularly when it comes to security. Today few people recall that up until 1967, anyone who went to Jerusalem was exposed to repeated sniper attacks from Nabi Samwil, and that in 1948 the city only narrowly survived being disconnected from the rest of the country. As a result, since the Six-Day War, the strategy of successive Israeli governments has been to reinforce the physical Jewish presence throughout the city and areas bordering it to the north, south, east and west. We must prevent the city's isolation and banish the thought of ever returning to the situation that existed before 1967.

PCBS: Mortality and Fertility Rates Decline in 2011

2012-01-05T04:03:00.000+02:00

RAMALLAH, September 12, 2011 (WAFA) – Infant mortality rate in the Palestinian Territory in 2010 declined by almost 20% in the last decade, Monday said the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

Infant mortality rate was calculated at 20.6 per 1000 live births in the Palestinian Territory - 18.8 in West Bank and 23.0 in Gaza Strip. Infant mortality rate in 2000 was 25.5 per 1000 live births and has declined by 19.2% since that date, said the PCBS.

The mortality rate among those under five years of age is 25.1 per 1000 live births in the Palestinian Territory - 22.1 in West Bank and 29.2 in Gaza Strip. The rate in the Palestinian Territory has declined by 13% from 28.7% in 2000. Fertility rate has also declined by 28.8% during the past 10 years, where it was 5.9 births per woman in the year 2000 it dropped to 4.2 births per woman in 2010 - 3.8 births per woman in West Bank and 4.9 births per woman in Gaza Strip.

In 2010, 8.4% of married women aged 15-49 in the Palestinian Territory reported infertility; 8.4% in West Bank and 8.3% in Gaza Strip. Of those 4.8% were reported as having primary infertility; 4.5% in the West Bank and 5.2% in Gaza Strip.

The rate of secondary infertility among married women is 3.6% in the Palestinian Territory: 3.9% in the West Bank compared to 3.1% in Gaza Strip.

It showed that 18.2% of persons aged 18 years and above in the Palestinian Territory in 2010 suffer from at least one chronic disease compared to 11.5% in 2000; thus marking an increase by 58.2% since then. A total of 16.3% of males aged 18 years and above suffer from at least one chronic disease compared to 20.2% of females.

On the other hand, 2.8% of youth aged 15-29 years in the Palestinian Territory suffer from at least one chronic disease; 3.3% for males and 2.3% for males. While 70.6% of the elderly aged 60 years and over in the Palestinian Territory suffer from at least one chronic disease.

The report said that 75.1% of elderly females suffer from at least from one chronic disease compared to 64.7% for males. The percentage of elderly with at least one chronic disease has increased by 51.8% since the year 2000 when it was reported at 46.5%.

It showed that 22.5% of persons aged 18 years and above in the Palestinian Territory in 2010 are reported as smokers, 26.9% in West Bank while 14.4% in Gaza Strip.

The percentage of smokers among persons 18 years and above was 27.5% in 2000 and declined by 21.0% during the last 10 years. A total of 15.8% of youth aged 15-29 years in the Palestinian Territory used to smoke; 30.3% for males and 0.8% for females.

On the other hand about 15% of elderly in the Palestinian Territory practice smoking with 30.1% for males and 2.7% for females. Smoking among the elderly has declined by 19.7% since the year 2000 when it was 18.2%.

In 2010, 26.7% of pregnant women aged 15-49 in the Palestinian Territory were anemic: 15.4% in West Bank and 39.1% in Gaza Strip, compared with 31.1% overall in 2002. The highest percentage was reported at 55.9% in Khan Younis governorate in the Gaza Strip.

Moreover, in 2010, 21.6% of non-pregnant women aged 15-49 in the Palestinian Territory suffered from anemia compared to 34.8% in 2002: 29.3% in Gaza Strip and 16.8% in West Bank. The highest percentage was reported at 36.9% in Gaza governorate.

Moreover, In 2010, 52.5% of married women aged 15-49 in the Palestinian Territory were using a form of family planning; 55.1% in West Bank and 48.1% in Gaza Strip. Bethlehem governorate reported the highest use of family planning at 65.2%, while Rafah governorate reported the lowest at 43.1%. The use of forms of family planning increased by 2.1% during the past 10 years in the Palestinian Territory compared to 51.4% in 2000.

The report said, 19.3% of married women aged 15-49 in the Palestinian Territory reported unmet needs for family planning (10.2% for spacing and 9.1% for limiting) in 2010: 18.7% in West Bank and 20.4% in Gaza Strip. This percentage increased by 55.6% over the past 10 years compared to 12.4% in 2006.

Only 0.7% of home birth deliveries in 2010 were reported in the Palestinian Territory: 1.1% in West Bank and 0.2% in Gaza Strip. The highest reports of unsafe births were reported in Jenin governorate in the West Bank at 4.5%. The percentage of reported unsafe births was 5.2% in 2000 and has fallen by 86.5% since then.

In 2010, 84.8% of birth deliveries were reported as normal: 82.3% in West Bank and 88.4% in Gaza Strip, while 15.2% of deliveries were reported as cesarean section deliveries: 17.7% in the West Bank and 11.6% in Gaza Strip.

The highest percentage of cesarean birth deliveries was reported in Tubas governorate in the West Bank with 37.0% while the lowest was in Hebron governorate, also in the West Bank, with 7.9%. The number of cesarean birth deliveries in the Palestinian Territory has increased by about 72% during the last 10 years from 8.8% in 2000.

A percentage of 19.4% of children aged 6-59 months in the Palestinian Territory were anemic in 2010: 13.4% in West Bank and 25.6% in Gaza Strip. The highest reported percentage was in Deir Al-Balah governorate in Gaza with 41.4%. In 2002, the rate was 38.0%: 35.5% in West Bank and 41.6% in Gaza Strip.

In 2010, 26.6% of children aged 0-5 months in the Palestinian Territory were exclusively breastfed: 27.3% in West Bank and 25.6% in Gaza Strip. The percentage has increased by about 59.2% since 2000 when it was reported at 16.7%.

In 2010, 10.6% of children under the age of five in the Palestinian Territory suffered from stunting: 11.3% in the West Bank and 9.9% in Gaza Strip. The highest percentage was 16.9% in Hebron governorate. Stunting has increased by 41.3% since 2000 when it was reported at 7.5%.

The results of the family survey 2010 were implemented in coordination and cooperation with the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and with financial and technical support from UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

M.H./M.S.

IDF gearing up to combat, and wage, cyber warfare

2012-01-04T14:58:00.001+02:00

Day after Saudi hackers leak thousands of Israelis' credit card information, IDF voices concern over possible leaks of sensitive military information • IDF's computer service branch tasked with defense against cyber attacks, and intelligence branch assigned to carrying out cyber offensives.
Lilach Shoval

A day after Saudi hackers leaked the credit card information of some 15,000 Israelis to the Internet, the IDF voiced concern over possible leaks of sensitive military information. The IDF has recently begun taking measures to combat cyber warfare, with the Computer Service Directorate responsible for defense against cyber attacks and the Directorate of Military Intelligence assigned to carrying out cyber offensives.

The IDF's internal computer network is a self-contained network separated completely from the civilian network. In recent years, in efforts to increase security, information can only be imported into the military network at designated "laundering" terminals – otherwise nothing goes in or out. This means that information security personnel can track the import or export of any and all information via external disks and thus monitor sensitive information. Another IDF concern involves the recent integration of the Ground Forces Digitalization program (ZAYAD), which allows commanders to view real-time battlefield and unit parameters. The main concern is that the enemy would either gain possession of the devices that comprise the system, or alternately gain access to the information on them, and would consequently be privy to classified information on the location of IDF troops and other top secret data.

According to the IDF, the ZAYAD system - manufactured by Elbit Systems - is capable of disconnecting devices from the network if they are suspected of having fallen into enemy hands. However, the recent computer hacking incidents are sure to raise red flags among information security and computer services personnel.

The Coming Collapse of the European Union

2012-01-03T15:47:00.000+02:00

Guy Millière • January 3, 2012

How could so many clever people get it so wrong? The question was recently asked by the British politician Daniel Hannan in an article on the collapse of the euro; in the coming months, the same question will be asked more and more often about Europe itself.

Europe as it has been built may appear at best a huge error, and at worst a crime against the spirit of liberty that was supposed to be the initial source of inspiration for the whole edifice.

The idea that it is possible to build a society based on abstract principles -- without considering historical, social and economic realities, as if its members were infinitely malleable – has often led to disaster; this time is no different.

The formation of this error began in the aftermath of World War II. Looking at the ruins left by Nazism and Fascism, politicians from various European countries fabricated a project meant to erase all past mistakes committed on the continent. They only repeated the mistakes. Believing that nations, identities, and differences were the essential source of troubles, they decided to make a clean sweep and build an entirely new society, inhabited by new human beings modeled from the top down: Europeans.

Realizing that democracy can be dangerous -- it had brought to power the likes of Adolph Hitler -- they developed institutions to place it under close supervision. Deducing from their readings and their world view that a strong economy should be a command economy, they introduced instruments of planning in the production of coal and steel, then in agriculture.

This resulted in the creation of supranational structures that were added to each other over time, in a form of cumulative stacking, until, in 1957, a committee made up of unelected people was established in Brussels and charged with producing regulations for businesses and aspects of everyday life : the «efficient use» of water or the «appropriate shape» of waste containers, the «normal curvature» of bananas and cucumbers or the «harmonized definition of yoghurt». Meetings of Heads of States and Governments -- a group that later became the European Council -- were held out of sight to make key decisions , such as subsidies to industries, price-support mechanisms, decisions about enlargement, the reform of institutions, and the extension of powers. A European Parliament was created, but was given no power.

While the structures piled up, the edifice expanded: after the collapse of the Soviet empire, a group that had started with six countries became 27 member countries. Its name changed : formerly known as European Economic Community, it became European Union. While at first it seemed to be an economic edifice, it has proven to be a political edifice.

It might look like a State, but it is not a State. It is supposed to be composed of independent countries, but countries that are part of it have a sovereignty that more and more limited. It now has two presidents, one is the head of the Commission, the other is the head of the Union, but neither is the holder of any executive office. As the parliament essentially has an « advisory » role, the real power is exercised by the members of the Commission, a bureaucracy of technocrats, and by the European Council, a small political elite.

People still vote in each country, preserving the illusion that national governments have a voice, but 70% of the laws and guidelines in today's Europe are issued at levels that are unattainable for national governments. When elections are held on «Europe», voters are entirely free to voice their opinions, but only on the strict condition that their final answer is Yes.

The introduction of the single currency was designed to move towards a fuller political, fiscal and social unity, and a more complete abolition of the last vestiges of democracy. The unity in question has not emerged. The euro was supposed to be the currency of all Europe ; it is the currency of only 17 countries.

Rather than becoming closer, these countries have gradually moved away from each other, and divisions and disparities have intensified, leading to increasing dysfunctions. Neither Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, nor even France, has seen their economies and societies come to resemble German or Scandinavian economies and societies. Differences in productivity have only widened. Interest rates appropriate for some economies have proven inadequate for other economies. The exchange rate of the euro became too high for some countries, and if devaluation was impossible, the only remaining variables able to be adjusted were unemployment, budget deficits, and debts. On behalf of the construction of the new society, massive financial transfers were conducted from richer countries to poorer countries, while people living in the poorer countries enjoyed for a time the illusion of becoming wealthier without having either to work harder or become more efficient and disciplined.

Other factors played their part: The countries of Europe created welfare states that claimed to support people from the cradle to the grave; they developed economic systems of redistribution that have created in people an appetite for passivity and dependence, leading to a growing number of people who think the government owes them a means of subsistence. As welfare rolls and subsidies have increased, the number of those who contribute to them financially has steadily declined. European nations' borrowing power has gradually diminished, and the redistribution systems have been left unfunded. As the birthrate of native Europeans has fallen sharply, its aging population increases even further the financial burden on those who pay out to it. Immigrants from poor countries have flowed in, most of whom are Muslims who have not integrated, and have ended up living in separate enclaves of lawlessness and resentment. These conditions, coupled with economic decline, have created ghettos ever ready to riot and explode.

A collapse is near. Some EU countries are already in a state of bankruptcy, even if it is kept under wraps. Doubts hang over the medium-term strength of the nations who seem in better shape: the interdependencies that have developed appear difficult to break without causing even greater financial problems, and the health of healthier countries is merely relative. Germany's debt is 83% of its gross domestic product, and it has the lowest birthrate in Europe,1.36 children per woman. Italy, by comparison, has a debt of 118% and a birthrate of 1.40.

The agreement of December 9, described as the "Last Chance Agreement," will hold for a few months, but probably not more. Its goal is to give the high European authorities the power to ratify all countries' budgets in the eurozone, an approach that means guardianship by the unelected bureaucracy of technocrats and the political elite. The same causes will produce the same effects: the countries already in bankruptcy will continue to sink because their economies are not viable with, and often without, the current exchange-rate of the euro. The unelected bureaucracy of technocrats and the political elite will ask for sacrifices. The standard of living will continue to fall throughout the entire eurozone, and deficits will continue to widen. The recession in the countries already in bankruptcy will become permanent. As Germany is unable to bail out these countries indefinitely, they will be doomed sooner or later actually to file for bankruptcy. Germany no longer finding a buyer for its debt. Who will purchase Greek or Italian debt? The Financial Stability Mechanism will be fed for some time by the IMF and its main contributors. What country could be expected to continue endless assistance, given that difficulties appear more and more serious and will not stop?

The stated aim of the agreement is political, fiscal and social unity. The real aim is to give the unelected bureaucracy and the political elite the authority to implement this unity, at all costs. The argument used is always the same: the union of Europe is the only guarantee of peace and prosperity ; without it there will be chaos.

The reality may be very different. There could be chaos precisely because of the European union as it was implemented.

In a book published a few years ago, the former dissident Vladimir Bukovsky compared the former Soviet Union, or USSR, to the European Union, which he called the EUSSR. Immediately prior to the Soviet Union's falling apart, its leaders were trying to clog the holes and persuade themselves that the Union would last. Although the European leaders are also now clogging the holes and trying to persuade themselves that the European Union will last, these measures will not prevent it from falling apart.

No one can know, of course, what Europe will look like in ten years. The only prediction that seems assured is that it will be poorer, more divided, more confrontational, more violent, and that the European Union will look like a shattered dream.

The «European dream,» as Jeremy Rifkin called it seems to have called it, seems to have crumbled, ironically just at the time when its US followers -- and the very politicians who want the United States to resemble Europe -- are in power.

Laor's Looney Left Lashing

2012-01-03T07:59:00.001+02:00

My Right Word

One never knows from whence comes salvation.

In this case, a sensible contribtuion from radical poet Yitzhak Laor who doesn't yield on his anti-nationalist camp prejudices but inbetween, he has some wonderful points in these excerpts from:

Israel's suicidal left
Israel's suicidal left

For example:

...Every few months, the Israeli anti-Semitism comes out of the closet and takes the form of what sociologists call "moral panic," which seems to give people license to distort and confuse various issues, especially when you add the beards and traditional dress of ultra-Orthodox men into the mix. Those who are especially meticulous even make sure to give the Jew-boy in their cartoons a hooked nose. This isn't the first time this has happened...The fact that ultra-Orthodox women work in professions including teaching, social work and occupational therapy while the men are increasingly cooking and taking care of the children - even those alternative gender roles are thrown into the distorting pot of incitement.

The enlightened revolutionaries demand a single set of standards for everyone - their own standards. "How much are they costing us?" ask the learned professors, who enjoy financial benefits that no yeshiva head (or professor in France or Germany ) gets.

...It should be no surprise, then, that the periodic incitement against the Haredim leads to right-wing extremism. Incitement always ends up with adoration of the state. Thus, Meretz's efforts in the 1990s to make Ashkenazim scared of Shas gave birth to the centrist and secularist Shinui party, which swallowed up the left-wing Meretz party...It's about time that the average liberal acquired some historical perspective and asked himself, "What are we really doing when we pursue Haredim and make believe we are battling the right wing?"

There are indeed thugs in Beit Shemesh, and there are a few bus lines that have come to represent those territorial battles - characteristic of all the Jewish contradictions of the Zionist project - that exist between the Haredi minority and other parts of the population. But what does this have to do with the "social protest"?

...the question isn't who needs the constant incitement against "the Haredim." There are different interested parties at different times, and television, for its part, needs to have a steady target so it can glorify freedom of the press - and promote equality for women, as espoused by beautiful female broadcasters who will be tossed as soon as they show a few wrinkles.

The question is, how does this periodic panic succeed in becoming anti-Semitic psychosis?...

Thank you Laor.

Enhancing Israel-Asia relations

2012-01-02T15:17:00.000+02:00

COLIN RUBENSTEIN, JPOST

President Shimon Peres’s groundbreaking visit to Vietnam in November with a delegation of more than 60 prominent Israelis, including two government ministers and leading figures in finance, industry, agriculture and defense was a landmark event. The delegation was given a rousing welcome, including a dinner with all the members of the Vietnamese government in which Peres’s hosts surprised him with a group of Vietnamese singers who had prepared renditions of Israeli songs in excellent Hebrew.

The visit is a symbol of the many opportunities for Israel and the wider Jewish world in Asia, not only in Vietnam, but also in Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, India, China and even Indonesia. In all these countries, democratic “start up nation” Israel – excelling in water, irrigation, agriculture, medicine, communications and hi-tech – retains an aura of fascination.

Israeli experts and businessmen across a wide spectrum of industries are already well-known as they engage in extensive investment, R&D, innovation and collaboration. Security contacts and exchanges are also important in some of these nations. Diplomatic and political contacts have not developed as quickly, but the Peres visit was part of a growing program of awareness of and purposeful engagement with Asia among Israeli political leadership. This new diplomatic focus on Asia is important and timely, even if somewhat overdue. Most international affairs experts have speculated that the 21st century is likely to be the “Pacific Century” in which a major focus of world events moves away somewhat from the Atlantic – the relations between North America and Europe – and increasingly centers on North America and East and Southeast Asia, and the relations between them.

Moreover, Asia may be a key to countering the growing international campaign of delegitimization against Israel. It is true that Asian voting records within international bodies have not in general been positive on questions related to Israel. This is in part a function of solidarity with the Arab-dominated Non-Aligned Movement, but also reflects a lack of awareness in these countries of the true situation and context of the Israeli-Palestinian and wider Islamist-Israel conflicts. Further, more Asian states adhere to a robust view of state and national sovereignty, which provides for strong rights of national selfdefense and frowns on excessive outside oversight of measures taken within states to counter terrorism or other forms of violent unrest. Given these predilections, many elite opinionleaders and policy-makers from Asia have the potential to be quite sympathetic to Israel’s dilemmas in confronting terrorism, Islamist extremism and international delegitimization, if exposed to the factual realities of her predicament.

At the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), we have been co-sponsoring a program that we believe has contributed to building these growing ties. Together with the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange, AIJAC’s Rambam study visit program has for several years been sponsoring a series of week-long study visits to Israel for journalists, academics, government officials, Muslim leaders, Bollywood movie producers and counter-terrorism experts among others from Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, India and Indonesia.

The positive effects of these short study visits on key Asian opinion leaders cannot be over-estimated. For example, most recently I accompanied a group of leading Indonesian journalists to Israel in September – the third such group of senior Indonesian media figures we have taken. Indonesia is, of course, an overwhelmingly Muslim country and sympathy there naturally lies with the Palestinians. But when exposed to the realities on the ground, most Indonesians quickly recognize that a two-state resolution is what is needed, and Israel is not the only party preventing this outcome from eventuating. And they go back home and unhesitatingly tell their publics – exposing them to views and information they rarely see in the Indonesian media.

For instance, Kartika Sari, one of the journalists on our recent visit, is an upand- coming young journalist working for Rakayat Merdeka – a Bahasa-language paper which has a circulation of more than 600,000 per day. She published no fewer than 15 stories directly reporting on her trip to Israel – most of which appeared on the front page accompanied by attractive photos. These included a positive interview and profile with Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, a plea from Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev for Indonesia to seek to play a more engaged role in the peace process and serve as a model of democratic governance for the Palestinians and the region, stories on the reality of life for Israeli Arabs and the scope and intensity of rocket attacks on southern towns like Sderot, which the group visited.

Other Indonesian journalists, in print and electronically, have also produced stories presenting a whole new side of Israel and the broader regional conflicts to Indonesian readers and viewers as a result of these study visit programs.

The Australian Jewish community has some unique strengths and areas of comparative advantage in assisting the quest for a secure Israel at peace with its neighbors – including the contacts, business links and relationships many Australians have with our Asian neighbors. And obviously this also applies to the American Jewish community. But much greater value would be added to these efforts if Israeli opinion leaders focused more on the political and diplomatic opportunities in Southeast Asia, a region which is only going to grow in global significance over coming decades.

In addition to the escalating economic and strategic importance of the Asian region, countries like Indonesia – the world’s largest Muslim country – have a unique ability to help shape the Middle East in a positive way by serving as a role model of Islamic democracy and economic development and gradually improving human rights and personal liberty and encouraging conflict reconciliation in the region.

As the Asian component of our Rambam/ Project Interchange program has repeatedly demonstrated, this burgeoning region is open to learning about the realities of the Middle East. It is seeking ways to play a more positive role in enhancing economic and political development in Israel’s neighborhood and in developing mutually beneficial and constructive ties with Israel. It’s up to both Israeli and Diaspora Jewish leaders to continue devoting the time and resources to make sure our collective opportunities and capacities to encourage these positive trends are not squandered.

The writer is executive director of The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council in Melbourne.
Courtesy Ted Belman

A nasty and despicable trick

2012-01-02T14:58:00.001+02:00

Lior Alperovitch

One Shabbat, Rabbi Amram Blau, founder of the [anti-Zionist sect] Neturei Karta and one of the more militant figures in the ultra-Orthodox world, walked out of his synagogue accompanied by a friend wrapped in a tallit [prayer shawl]. Blau suddenly turned to his companion and started to mock him for considering himself a Zionist. The stunned friend did not understand why. "In Russia, you would not dare walk the streets with a tallit on like that," Blau explained. "But here you think the Zionists will not harm you; you rely on their protection. So as far as I am concerned, you are a Zionist!" This story illustrates, to a great extent, the idea behind the cynical display that took place Saturday night in Mea Shearim, where dozens of Neturei Karta members donned striped prison attire while their children wore yellow Star of David badges. A few details should be added to this story. First, the secular public needs to distinguish between Neturei Karta and other ultra-Orthodox Jews. The Neturei Karta are a radical fringe group that is not a new phenomenon. Yet recently, hundreds of thousands of innocent Haredim [ultra-Orthodox Jews] have been attacked for a few esoteric events that some of them have nothing to do with – for example, the issue of listening to women sing in the army. However, many Haredim do not even serve in the army, so how did an entire group become associated with an incident that happened at an IDF base?

I might also add that this nasty and despicable trick – in which the Holocaust and its symbols have become the ultimate tool for shocking the Israeli public – was not invented by the Neturei Karta. They simply enhanced it in their own way. Exploiting the Holocaust, its symbols and survivors for political gain is something that dates back to Israel's earliest days. Left-wing demonstrators have called IDF soldiers "Nazis" as have right-wing settlers who have clashed with them.

This is actually the problem. Every sector of society has a right to protest. Yet the ultra-Orthodox, like other sectors, cannot exploit the freedoms granted by the state. Freedom of expression provides extensive room for various forms of protest, provided people maintain boundaries – not politically, but morally.

Morality also provides the second reason the Neturei Karta or any other group should be prohibited from using Holocaust symbolism at demonstrations.

At the end of the day, anyone who compares what is happening in Israel to what happened under the Third Reich, no matter in what terms, is committing an act that borders on Holocaust denial. Any attempt to compare the public discourse in Israel, and the conduct of law enforcement authorities here, with those in the Third Reich is an outrageous distortion, historically and morally.

Even if some political and ideological groups think Israel is the worst country in the world, there are still no concentration camps here where dissidents are detained or where the prisoners share a particular ethic origin. Here we do not burn synagogues with its worshippers trapped inside, we do not shoot school-children and we do not pave the streets with shattered tombstones.

The ultra-Orthodox demonstrations are legitimate, but the nature of their protest is improper and indecent. There is nothing in our politics, society or media even remotely reminiscent of the atmosphere that European Jews lived in throughout the Third Reich's years of occupation.

Israeli, Palestinian negotiators to meet face-to-face in Jordan

2012-01-02T14:56:00.001+02:00

Move marks first time sides meet since direct talks broke down in September 2010 • Yitzhak Molcho to lead Israeli team, Saeb Erekat to head Palestinian delegation • Quartet envoys hope to convince sides to arrange direct meeting between Netanyahu, Abbas.
Shlomo Cesana, Daniel Siryoti, and The Associated Press

Israelis and Palestinians are scheduled to meet on Tuesday for the first peace talks in over a year, this time under Jordanian mediation.

The meeting will mark the first time the two sides have met for official talks since direct negotiations broke down in September 2010 because of a dispute over Israel's expansion of settlements in Judea and Samaria and east Jerusalem.

It also comes in the backdrop of progressing unity talks between Hamas and Fatah as well as repeated warnings by Israeli officials that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' overtures to Hamas have hurt chances for peace with Israel.Last month, the rival Palestinian factions took a significant step toward reconciliation as Hamas said it planned to join Western-backed Abbas' Palestinian Liberation Organization and both sides agreed to allow elections to go ahead in Gaza and the West Bank in 2012.

The move came despite calls by Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev not to grant Hamas legitimacy or recognition. "Hamas is not a political organization that conducts terrorism. Hamas is a murderous, genocidal terrorist organization to the core," Regev said.

Quartet representatives (the U.S., EU, U.N. and Russia), which have tried repeatedly to resume negotiations, plan to use the meeting in Amman on Tuesday as an opportunity to convince the Palestinians to arrange, without preconditions, a direct meeting between Abbas and Netanyahu.

However, Palestinian sources told the Al Quds newspaper on Monday that the purpose of the Amman meeting is to allow Israel to present its position on the issues of borders and security arrangements, as the Quartet requested three months ago, according to Israel Radio.

The Palestinian sources told Al Quds that the PA had already presented its position on the said issues, but that Israel insisted on stating its positions only in the presence of Palestinian officials.

The Jordanian Foreign Ministry confirmed on Sunday that Israeli and Palestinian representatives are set to meet for direct talks in the framework of the Quartet's meetings with the negotiating teams of both sides. The Quartet has set a January 26 deadline for the resumption of talks.

"The upcoming meeting is part of serious and continuous efforts to reach a common ground to resume the direct negotiations," said Jordanian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammed Kayed.

Attorney Yitzhak Molcho, Netanyahu's special envoy for negotiations with the Palestinians, will lead the Israeli delegation for the meeting in Amman. In Ramallah, officials predicted on Sunday that chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat will head the Palestinian delegation, and will even hold a direct meeting with Molcho.

Senior officials from Abbas's office confirmed to Israel Hayom that efforts to rekindle talks will be conducted under the aegis of Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who will host the meeting between the two negotiating teams.

Judeh is expected to hold a separate meeting with the Israelis and Palestinians, Kayed said.

Ahead of Tuesday's scheduled meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed the Quartet's initiative.

"We are hopeful that this direct exchange can help move us forward on the pathway proposed by the Quartet," she said in an official statement. "The status quo is not sustainable and the parties must act boldly to advance the cause of peace."

Following the Jordanian announcement of the meeting, Abbas told Palestinian media sources that if the Quartet is not able to forge a new peace plan by the end of the month, "the Palestinian leadership must meet and make a bold decision over the future of the Palestinian Authority."

Meanwhile, officials in Ramallah on Sunday stressed that the Palestinian leadership was not optimistic about Tuesday's meeting in Amman.

Ashraf al-Ajrami, a former PA minister, told Israel Radio on Monday that the Palestinians are not putting great weight on the meeting, and stressed that this will be the last attempt at resuming negotiations before the Quartet's initiative is declared a failure. He added that there was no point in negotiations so long as settlement construction continues.

Officials from Netanyahu's office also expressed doubt about the chances of reaching a breakthrough as "[Mahmoud Abbas] just isn't interested in peace because he is not interested in compromising," one official said.

Head of the National Information Directorate Yoaz Hendel issued a statement saying, nevertheless, "We are grateful to King Abdullah II and to Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh for their initiative in convening the sides in accordance with the Quartet outline."

In a more positive tone regarding the Amman meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor [Likud] on Monday called the move a "positive development" and expressed hope that it would lead to the resumption of negotiations.

Meridor told Israel Radio that he hoped the Palestinians would stop their unilateral moves in the international arena, adding that the conflict cannot be solved through U.N. resolutions.

The deputy prime minister also rejected the Palestinians' demand for a halt to settlement construction in east Jerusalem as a precondition for resuming negotiations.

The Amman meeting comes about six weeks after Jordan's King Abdullah II made a rare visit to the West Bank for talks with the Palestinians. Abdullah, who often serves as a mediator, hosted President Shimon Peres the following week.

In a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday in Ankara, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said that "negotiations over the end of the conflict and Israeli occupation will only be made possible with Hamas's cooperation."

Jewish American Community in Danger

2012-01-02T06:05:00.001+02:00

Caroline Glick

This year at Jewish Federations of North America's annual General Assembly, they invited the newly minted anti-Israel activist Peter Beinhart to speak. They also showcased the Boston Globe's resident anti-Israel columnist James Carroll. These moves as well as much of the program of the 3-day conference which presented several panels discussing whether anti-Zionists should be embraced by the community are indicative of the advanced suicidal tendencies of the American Jewish community.

This is a community that has for generations seamlessly merged its definition of Judaism with leftist politics. And now that this generation of leftists has cast its lot with the anti-Semites, the young American Jews coming of age have embraced anti-Semitism to show their moral purity. It may have once gone without saying, but apparently it is no longer obvious that this embrace of Jew hatred by young American Jews is a death embrace for the community.

The only way to deal with this is head on.

But who among the well-funded American Jewish leadership has the courage to tell these young people that they are deranged? Who has the courage to tell their children that they have embraced evil and ought to be ashamed of themselves?

If you think I am overreacting, take a look at the following video of Jewish American Birthright Alumni taking over a Birthright meeting in solidarity with the Jew-hating Arabs and the Jew-hating Occupy Wall Street mobs. Watch this and tell me I am overreacting. I'd love to be proved wrong because this is not only dangerous, it's disturbing.

It's one thing for the Spanish to embrace the cause of genocidal Jew haters. It is quite another for Jews to do so.

Thanks to Pamela Geller from Atlas Shrugs for sending me this video. While watching it ruined my day, we have a duty to know the truth. Denial is not an option.
Guest Comment: Anonymous on November 11, 2011 2:39 PM

This is not overreacting at all. There is a steady, constant errosion of sanity and a large percentage (majority?) of Jews are heading down a suicidal path. In so doing, they will bring every single one of us down. It's shocking to think that evangelical Christians are more supportive of Jews and Israel than many Jews appear to be. (And, for what it's worth, how long can we expect them to champion us if we cannot champion ourselves.) For years I have scratched my head in wonder at this frightening trend. I simply cannot explain it. All I know is that we need to be bold and brave, doing every single thing in our power to survive. Because at the rate things are going, a second Holocaust is going to overwhelm us. Sometimes it feels completely surreal to witness this unfolding....Thank G-d for Caroline Glick, Pamela Geller, and others for putting themselves on the front lines every day in this battle for our survival (which ultimately, may well be a survival for the West).

Al-Qaeda Relocates to Africa

2012-01-01T16:07:00.000+02:00

Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Nigerian Christians are under attack. On Christmas day, the Islamist group Boko Haram targeted churches in Nigeria's capital, killing 40 innocent people. Boko Haram -- literally "Western Education is a Sin " -- opposes whatever comes from the West, such as education, culture and science, and considers Christians as an obstacle to building an Islamic caliphate.

Boko Haram has recently increased its attacks against Christian Nigerians, who make up 48.2% of the country's population. Last November, of Boko Haram killed 150 Christians and bombed 11 churches. "It was a direct attack against Christians. Members of Boko Haram asked: 'Are you a Christian or a Muslim' If you said you were a Christian, they killed you. […] I saw someone who was slaughtered like a lamb in front of a church,"said a representative of the Christian Association of Nigeria. According to the Nigerian newspaper, Sunday Tribune, Nigerian intelligence believes that the intensification in the activities of Boko Haram is aimed at putting the group in advantageous position to secure the leadership of "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula." A report in the hands of the Nigerian government allegedly confirms that after the killing of the U.S.-born Al-Qaeda top leader ,Anwar Al-Awlaki, in an air strike in Yemen by a joint CIA-U.S. military operation, Al-Qaeda is seeking to relocate from the Arabian Peninsula to Africa.

"International and local intelligence agencies indicate that the activities of Boko Haram in recent weeks were aimed at getting the attention of the Al-Qaeda organizations and securing the headquarters," the Sunday Tribune reports, adding that Al-Awlaki's replacement will be chosen from among the African terrorist group that have the most impressive record of terror acts. The Nigerian newspapers mention that several terrorist groups based on the African continent hope to take over Al-Qaeda's leadership to be able to access more financial aid. "The contest is hot," states the Sunday Tribune.

According to Nigerian media, despite the competition, Boko Haram has strong ties to[N the Africa-based Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb [North Africa],and with the Shabaab rebel group in Somalia. As this alliance could transform the central belt of Africa into an immense operational ground for terrorist operations, it is -- or should be -- of major concern.

Washington does appear to be worried about Boko Haram's activities, probably fearing that the Nigerian group might attack U.S. interests. Recently, The Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security had a hearing on emerging threats to the U.S. posed by Boko Haram. The subcommittee stressed that Boko Haram has evolved quickly, and can be a threat to U.S. interests and to the U.S. homeland. "Boko Haram has the intent and may be developing capability to coordinate on a rhetorical and operational level with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Shabaab," the subcommittee concluded, adding that "Boko Haram's evolution in targeting and tactics closely tracks that of other Al Qaeda affiliates that have targeted the U.S. Homeland".

The subcommittee further revealed the need for the collection of more intelligence on Boko Haram, as the U.S. Intelligence Community has until now wrongly underestimated the capabilities of the Nigerian terrorist group to target the U.S. homeland . The U.S – commented the subcommittee - incorrectly assessed that Boko Haram had only regional ambitions and that threats against the U.S. homeland were merely "aspirational." Nigerian sources confirm, however, that if Boko Haram will not be stopped in time, it could shake the entire African region, targeting U.S. embassies and American civilians, and that it could recruit can recruit Boko Haram's Nigerian sympathizers in the U.S.. Last August, Boko Haram had already claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on a U.N. headquarters in Nigeria that killed 23 people.

In light of Boko Haram's violent escalation, it is urgent first of all officially to designate it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The U.S. should also cooperate with the government of Nigeria to counter Boko Haram. The U.S. security subcommittee further recommended that it is especially necessary to increase the U.S. Intelligence Community collection of human intelligence on Boko Haram, by gathering information on the ground through interpersonal contacts with Boko Haram's members the better to combat the threat posed by the terrorist group to both Nigerian and U.S. interests.

The Taliban Geniza?

2012-01-01T15:54:00.000+02:00

Jameel @ The Muqata at 1/01/2012

Everyone is familiar with the concept of the "lost tribes" of Israel that were scattered to the ends of the globe. This has led many over the past few hundred years in a quest to find them; India, China, Japan...(even organizations like Shavei Yisrael that are dedicated to finding these tribes and bringing them home to Israel).

This past Friday, Israel Channel 2 news reported a startling discovery; a cave in Afghanistan, with buried scrolls, manuscripts and fragments -- of Jewish origin.

The importance of this find could even rival that of the Cairo Geniza. (The earliest example of Yiddish writing was found in the Cairo Geniza). The JPost has the scoop:

The scholarly world is abuzz over the discovery of ancient Jewish scrolls in a cave in Afghanistan’s Samangan province.

If the scrolls are authenticated, they may be the most significant historical finding in the Jewish world since that of the Cairo Geniza in the 19th century, Channel 2 Arab affairs correspondent Ehud Ya’ari reported Friday.

“We know today about a couple of findings,” Haggai Ben- Shammai, professor emeritus of Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was quoted as saying.

“In all, in my opinion, there are about 150 fragments. It may be the tip of the iceberg.”

The scrolls, which were part of a geniza – a burial site for sacred Jewish texts – date from around 1,000 years ago and are in Arabic, Judeo-Arabic and ancient Persian.

One scroll, a replica of which was shown to the cameras, was apparently a dirge written for an important person whose identity has not been determined.

“Where has he gone?” reads the text. “His family members are now alone.”

Other texts said to have been found include an unknown history of the Kingdom of Judea, passages from the Book of Isaiah and some of the works of 10th-century sage Rabbi Sa’adia Gaon.

In addition, rings with names such as Shmuel Bar-Yosef inscribed in Hebrew on them have surfaced.

The area in which the scrolls were discovered is on the Silk Road, a trade route that connected eastern Asia with the Middle East and Europe, and that Jewish merchants often traveled.

Ya’ari quoted sources as saying the scrolls had first been moved to Pakistan’s Peshawar province, and from there been sold to antiquities dealers in Geneva, London, Dubai and Jerusalem. (JPost)

The analysis of the scrolls and remnants will help determine in what time frame they were buried -- is this the work of lost tribes? Travelers along the silk route to the Orient? Where did the Jewish community that buried those fragments end up?

How Israeli Spies Were Betrayed By Their Cell Phones

2012-01-01T04:01:00.001+02:00

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/11/21/how-israeli-spies-were-betrayed-by-their-cell-phones/?partner=obtech

Kashmir Hill, Forbes Staff

As we all know by now (I hope), phones are very effective tracking devices. Location data from those phones can be valuable to advertisers, to law enforcement (ideally with a warrant) and to spy hunters. The AP reports how Hezbollah used cell phone data to sniff out spies:

Using the latest commercial software, Nasrallah’s spy-hunters unit began methodically searching for traitors in Hezbollah’s midst. To find them, U.S. officials said, Hezbollah examined cellphone data looking for anomalies. The analysis identified cellphones that, for instance, were used rarely or always from specific locations and only for a short period of time. Then it came down to old-fashioned, shoe-leather detective work: Who in that area had information that might be worth selling to the enemy? via News from The Associated Press.

That led to the arrest of over 100 Israeli spies in 2009, reports the AP.

Back at CIA headquarters, the arrests alarmed senior officials. The agency prepared a study on its own vulnerabilities, U.S. officials said, and the results proved to be prescient. The analysis concluded that the CIA was susceptible to the same analysis that had compromised the Israelis, the officials said.

via News from The Associated Press.

The lessons the CIA learned did not prevent their own spies from getting caught. Though they may have been more clever about how they used their cell phones, they weren’t very clever in coming up with code words. According to ABC News, CIA agents were using “pizza” as a codeword for their secret rendezvous spot with spies, which Hezbollah deduced was a Pizza Hut in Beirut. According to unnamed government officials who spoke with ABC, monitoring the Pizza Hut delivered the identities of the Lebanese spies working with the CIA.

The Arab revolt in retrospect

2011-12-31T16:21:00.001+02:00

Bret Stephens

from Wall Street Journal
republished Wednesday December 28, 2011

In my first column of 2011, I wrote that Egypt "resembles nothing so much as Iran in the waning days of the Shah, in which a comparatively moderate regime led by a sickly despot confronts a restive and radical public." This was several weeks before the demonstrators arrived in Tahrir Square and Hillary Clinton reflexively judged the Mubarak regime "stable."

You don't have to be particularly clever to point out the relatively obvious. But what does it say of the State Department that it failed to reach the same conclusion? This has been the year of Arab upheaval, but upheaval needn't mean surprise. In Egypt, there was an 82-year-old dictator, 29 years in power, seeking a sixth presidential term via another rigged election while scheming to hand off power to his unpopular son. This was never going to go down well, with or without prior turmoil in Tunisia. And it could all be seen coming for years.

Here was another one from the Dept. of the Obvious: Islamists would run away with the elections. In February, I wrote that the Muslim Brotherhood would get as much as 40% of the vote in Egypt. That prediction was hotly denied by various experts who were sure the secular groups that had driven the demonstrations in their early days would be their prime political beneficiaries. So far, the Brotherhood has taken about 40% of the vote in rolling parliamentary elections, while the more fanatical Salafists have taken another 25%.

I don't pretend to be clairvoyant. I got some things wrong, too, like thinking Mr. Mubarak would hold on longer than he did. But it's worth wondering why so few people saw the Arab revolts coming, and why—once they began—so many misunderstood what they were and where they were going.
gloview1227

Tahrir Square on the day Hosni Mubarak stepped down, Feb. 11, in Cairo.

The short answer to the first question is that it's easy to mistake inertia for inertness. Egypt had been politically static for nearly 60 years; Tunisia for more than 50; Syria and Libya for about 40 apiece. Why not another few decades of the same? Besides, the Arab world had supposedly been spooked by Iraq as an object lesson in what happens when the strongman falls. The early wisdom of the Obama administration was to deal with the Arab world as it was, and not—as the Bush administration had sometimes sought—as it might be.

As for the second question, maybe the best answer is that hope and change are two words best kept far apart. Beginning in January, an unreasoning pessimism about the Arab world's capacity for change abruptly gave way to an unreasoning euphoria. Fourteen centuries of conservatism were supposedly collapsing in the face of Twitter's 140 revolutionary characters. The term "Arab Spring" became common parlance with no consideration for the change of seasons. People like Egyptian Google executive Wael Ghonim emerged out of nowhere to play the part of Lech Walesa. It was 1989 again at last.

But 1989 was the wrong template. The Arab world had revolted against unpopular overlords before: the Ottomans during the First World War; the British in the 1920s and '30s; the weak monarchies of Farouk in Egypt, Faisal in Iraq, and Idris in Libya. What happened in 2011 was another such revolt, this time against secular autocrats. Someday it will be known as the Fourth Arab Revolt.

A revolt is not always a bad thing. Moammar Gadhafi richly earned his fate, and Syria's Bashar Assad deserves (and will probably get) something similar. Nobody will shed tears for Mr. Mubarak or Tunisia's Ben Ali or Yemen's Saleh. To the extent that 2011 serves a warning to those who aspire to rule forever, whether in Cairo or Moscow, so much the better.

But 2011 is also a reminder of Edmund Burke's famous observation that while it's easy to make a government and even easier to give a people freedom, to make a free government—"to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work"—is the hardest task of all. Egyptians are failing conspicuously at it. We'll see if the Tunisians, Libyans, Syrians and Iraqis can do any better.

The challenge now before the Arab world is whether it can reach toward liberalism through the mechanisms of democracy. The broad experience of the West is that democratic institutions emerged over time from cultures already at home with the ideas of Locke, Spinoza, Smith and Voltaire. Does it work in the opposite direction?

The limited experience of democracy in the Arab world (and in Turkey) is that it's a handy vehicle for Islamist parties with illiberal ideas and unscrupulous methods to gain and keep power. Whether democracy tames and tempers those parties over time—or they tame, temper and ultimately destroy democracy—remains an open question. The record of illiberal democracy, from Hitler to Chávez to Putin, isn't exactly inspiring.

With the honorable (if reluctant) exception of Libya, the U.S. has mainly been a bystander in all this, partly by necessity, largely by administration choice. This too may come to be remembered as one of the lasting lessons of 2011: Freedom can't succeed without a tutor's strong and guiding hand. Or, to put it another way, to expect change to succeed without experience is the triumph of hope over experience.

PLO Plans to 'Disengage' From Israel

2011-12-30T15:29:00.000+02:00

Gavriel Queenann

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) officials said Friday their decision to return to 'popular resistance' is aimed at 'disengaging' from Israel.

PLO Executive Committee member Tayseer Khalid said the new unified Fatah-Hamas strategy will be based on 'popular resistance' which will spread into PA enclaves in Judea and Samaria.

"The popular resistance will reshape the Palestinian relationship with Israel... to reach total disengagement with Israel," Khalid said.

"We will never accept to be an agent for the Israeli occupation," he added.

Khalid's statements are only the latest in the intransigent unilateralist mantra coming out of Ramallah and have led analysts to suggest that Fatah has decided to turn the PA enclaves in Judea and Samaria into a second Gaza. Last week PLO officials officially adopted a strategy based on "continuous efforts along with the international community to secure full recognition and full United Nations membership, pursuing internal reconciliation, and keeping up the popular resistance."

They have also threatened to end economic and security ties with Israel.

Israeli officials have said the unilateral track adopted by their counterparts in Ramallah are a direct violation of the bilateral 1993 Oslo Accords - and warn unilateral moves on final status issues by PA officials will result in Israel making unilateral moves of its own.

It remains unclear what PA officials believe is to be gained by cutting all ties with Israel and returning to an all-or-nothing unilateral path.

PA security officials expressed concern earlier this year that a direct confrontation with Israel could have disasterous consequences, while Ramallah's senior economic advisers have warned discontinued Israeli participation in the PA economy would lead to fiscal insolvency.

A recent and short-lived decision to halt tax revenue transfers to the PA by Jerusalem sent Ramallah into a fiscal tail spin.

In addition, Israeli leaders have made it clear that attempts to realize territorial claims by force would result in Israel moving to secure its own communities in Judea and Samaria and could trigger Israel's annexing areas it prefers to retain in future negotiations.

Israel provides all critical infrastructure to Ramallah's enclaves, including electricity, water, telecommunications, and Internet.

Nonetheless, PA officials seem bent on confronting Israel while fomenting 'popular resistance.' While ostensibly non-violent, the so-called ‘popular resistance’ resulted in two violent Intifadas which and were accompanied by a spike in terror attacks that resulted in thousands of Israelis being killed.

Regional observers note Article 9 of the PLO charter continues to assert, "Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase.”

It also maintains “Palestine” is defined by the British Mandate and is “indivisible” – thus leaving no room for Israel to exist at all.

With Israeli military leaders saying Israel can "not escape" a major operation in Hamas-run Gaza saying such a move is fast becoming "essential" – some observers say the PLO is making a dramatic strategic blunder.