Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
On January 11, President Bush ended his visit to Israel by visiting Yad Vashem, the country's monumental Holocaust memorial. "I wish as many people as possible would come to this place," Bush said. "It is a sobering reminder that evil exists and a call that when evil exists we must resist it."
That was the day after Bush called for "painful political concessions" from Israel with regard to the Palestinian Arabs, explaining, "There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish a Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people."
Bush is no fool. He recognizes better than any president in recent memory that the Palestinian Arabs do not desire peace -- that they are, in fact, the world's most ardent supporters of anti-Western terrorism. And Bush recognizes that the establishment of a fully operational terrorist state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza would have catastrophic consequences for both Israel and the United States.
So why did Bush abandon his principles and pressure Israel to appease its Islamist enemies? Because four days after Bush's Israel visit, he visited Saudi Arabia and asked OPEC nations to boost their oil output.
The extreme anti-Bush crowd thinks the war in Iraq is about oil. It isn't. But the consistent focus on the Israeli-Palestinian situation is about oil. It has always been about oil. Israel knows it. Bush knows it. And most of all, the Saudis and their Islamist allies know it.
The Saudis have the upper hand with regard to oil. America needs Arab oil more than the Arabs need to sell their oil -- or at least that is what the Arabs would have us believe. And so the Arabs have leverage to push America to force Israel's piecemeal surrender.
And so the Saudis spent a major chunk of time talking to President Bush about how he could put the screws to Israel. "They definitely want [a settlement] to happen," Bush told reporters. "And they questioned the seriousness of the United States to remain in what has been a long and frustrating process. They want to see a deal done. The issue frustrates them."
The Israeli-Palestinian issue frustrates the Saudis in the same way the Jewish issue frustrated the Nazis. The Saudi Arabian government does not even recognize the existence of the State of Israel. Including the Saudis in negotiations regarding Israel is like including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in negotiations regarding the rights of homosexuals in Iran.
And yet President Bush avers that past peace processes have failed because "there wasn't participation by the neighbors." This is the equivalent of stating that the post-marital Simpson relationship was poor because O.J. was too passive.
The destruction of Israel is only one item on the Saudi shopping list. They also desire looser visa restrictions for their citizens -- a return to the sort of laxity that made September 11 possible. And they want smart bomb technology, which would elevate their military capabilities dramatically.
The Saudis remain one of the world's three foremost sponsors of Islamic terrorism, along with Pakistan and Iran. They demand Israel as ransom for their energy resources. And because of America's failure to secure domestic oil production and/or create alternative energy resources, America must kowtow to radicals in robes.
Ben Shapiro is a regular guest on dozens of radio shows around the United States and Canada and author of Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Misplaced Faith
Cal Thomas
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
During his recent trip to Israel, President Bush visited several places that re-affirmed his faith, including Bethlehem and the Sea of Galilee. Then exhibiting far greater faith than believing Jesus could walk on water, he asserted that "peace" could be had between Israel, the Palestinians and her Arab neighbors. One exhibition of faith has some historic roots and witnesses; the other is rooted in fantasy. Since 1937, there have been 18 formal attempts by commissions, conferences, resolutions, summits and other gatherings to persuade the Jewish lamb to lie down with the Arab lion. All have failed. This latest attempt by President Bush, like those of presidents before him, will also fail, no matter the level of rhetoric or pressure on Israel to "do more." As Hillel Halkin writes in the January issue of Commentary magazine, "When time after time a problem cannot be resolved, it is reasonable to suspect that it may be unresolvable, at least in the manner in which it is conceived."
That manner of false conception is that the Palestinian side, in conjunction with Arab and Muslim states, will stop trying to destroy Israel if a new state is created in the region. From such a state, enhanced by a "right of return" that would flood Israel with enemies of Zionism and encourage those committed to Israel's destruction that the end of the Jewish state is at hand would come the final days of Israel's modern existence.
As the president's visit neared, one might have expected the Palestinians, were they interested in peace, to at least tone down anti-Israel rants. According to Palestinian Media Watch, the government-controlled television station instead "intensified its rhetoric calling for the destruction of Israel by advocating the "liberation" of Haifa, Tiberias, Acre and Tel Aviv," cities that do not figure in the debate over Israeli "occupation" of Palestinian land.
Amidst all of this, President Bush suggested more Israeli concessions to the Palestinians might have to be part of a peace agreement (such as dismantling homes on land claimed by Palestinians), while promising a monitoring process that supposedly would police any agreement. The monitors would not be given enforcement powers. The fallacy of such a monitoring process can be seen in previous agreements, which required the Palestinian side to cease terror, stop using television to insight violence against Jews, reform textbooks that teach hatred of Jews and Christians and respect a ceiling in the number of Palestinian police allowed to carry weapons.
The Palestinian government has failed to comply with a single agreement. Rather than acknowledge they are waist deep in the "Big Muddy," the big fools in the Bush administration say to "push on."
There is not a credible statement, action, sermon or policy utterance by anyone in the Arab-Muslim-Palestinian world that gives any hope for a repeal of their expressed goal to destroy Israel and "liberate" Arab land. Honest enemies will say that includes land "occupied," beginning in 1948, when Israel became a state at the behest of the United Nations.
Instead of a credible plan for countering global jihadists and Palestinian "liberationists" committed to Israel's (and America's) destruction, the Bush administration continues to practice a faith rooted in self-deception. If, after all of Israel's concessions, her enemies have failed to take a single step toward peace, what makes anyone think that more concessions will turn a one-way street into a two-lane thoroughfare?
Even if a deal is concluded, the best that can be expected from the Palestinian side is a temporary lull in the violence followed by the creation of a pretext for more violence and demands for new concessions.
President Bush repeated a familiar line in Israel that he believes God's gift of freedom is to every person, not just Americans. If that is so, why don't those in oppressed Arab and Muslim states overthrow their dictatorial leaders? Why don't these "un-free" people support the freedom in those countries to which some flee instead of seeking to undermine them and separate themselves from culture and national life? Their idea of freedom is to be free of our freedom and impose Sharia law on all.
Instead of stepping into this unresolvable (by America) breach, it may be time to step back, let the parties fight it out and - as in Northern Ireland - reach a peace agreement on their own, after both sides are exhausted and sick of fighting.
This latest Bush push for peace can only bring more war and less stability for America's "friend."
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
During his recent trip to Israel, President Bush visited several places that re-affirmed his faith, including Bethlehem and the Sea of Galilee. Then exhibiting far greater faith than believing Jesus could walk on water, he asserted that "peace" could be had between Israel, the Palestinians and her Arab neighbors. One exhibition of faith has some historic roots and witnesses; the other is rooted in fantasy. Since 1937, there have been 18 formal attempts by commissions, conferences, resolutions, summits and other gatherings to persuade the Jewish lamb to lie down with the Arab lion. All have failed. This latest attempt by President Bush, like those of presidents before him, will also fail, no matter the level of rhetoric or pressure on Israel to "do more." As Hillel Halkin writes in the January issue of Commentary magazine, "When time after time a problem cannot be resolved, it is reasonable to suspect that it may be unresolvable, at least in the manner in which it is conceived."
That manner of false conception is that the Palestinian side, in conjunction with Arab and Muslim states, will stop trying to destroy Israel if a new state is created in the region. From such a state, enhanced by a "right of return" that would flood Israel with enemies of Zionism and encourage those committed to Israel's destruction that the end of the Jewish state is at hand would come the final days of Israel's modern existence.
As the president's visit neared, one might have expected the Palestinians, were they interested in peace, to at least tone down anti-Israel rants. According to Palestinian Media Watch, the government-controlled television station instead "intensified its rhetoric calling for the destruction of Israel by advocating the "liberation" of Haifa, Tiberias, Acre and Tel Aviv," cities that do not figure in the debate over Israeli "occupation" of Palestinian land.
Amidst all of this, President Bush suggested more Israeli concessions to the Palestinians might have to be part of a peace agreement (such as dismantling homes on land claimed by Palestinians), while promising a monitoring process that supposedly would police any agreement. The monitors would not be given enforcement powers. The fallacy of such a monitoring process can be seen in previous agreements, which required the Palestinian side to cease terror, stop using television to insight violence against Jews, reform textbooks that teach hatred of Jews and Christians and respect a ceiling in the number of Palestinian police allowed to carry weapons.
The Palestinian government has failed to comply with a single agreement. Rather than acknowledge they are waist deep in the "Big Muddy," the big fools in the Bush administration say to "push on."
There is not a credible statement, action, sermon or policy utterance by anyone in the Arab-Muslim-Palestinian world that gives any hope for a repeal of their expressed goal to destroy Israel and "liberate" Arab land. Honest enemies will say that includes land "occupied," beginning in 1948, when Israel became a state at the behest of the United Nations.
Instead of a credible plan for countering global jihadists and Palestinian "liberationists" committed to Israel's (and America's) destruction, the Bush administration continues to practice a faith rooted in self-deception. If, after all of Israel's concessions, her enemies have failed to take a single step toward peace, what makes anyone think that more concessions will turn a one-way street into a two-lane thoroughfare?
Even if a deal is concluded, the best that can be expected from the Palestinian side is a temporary lull in the violence followed by the creation of a pretext for more violence and demands for new concessions.
President Bush repeated a familiar line in Israel that he believes God's gift of freedom is to every person, not just Americans. If that is so, why don't those in oppressed Arab and Muslim states overthrow their dictatorial leaders? Why don't these "un-free" people support the freedom in those countries to which some flee instead of seeking to undermine them and separate themselves from culture and national life? Their idea of freedom is to be free of our freedom and impose Sharia law on all.
Instead of stepping into this unresolvable (by America) breach, it may be time to step back, let the parties fight it out and - as in Northern Ireland - reach a peace agreement on their own, after both sides are exhausted and sick of fighting.
This latest Bush push for peace can only bring more war and less stability for America's "friend."
WHAT HYPOCRISY!
If there is one nation that has known slavery, degradation, dhimmitude and racism it is the Jewish people. Their epic is based on being liberated by God from slavery in Egypt and in modern times from the raw and cruel anti-Semitism and unbelievable degradation by the Nazis in Europe. It is therefore evil to accuse the Jewish people - now back in their own promised homeland - of apartheid and racism, as Israel's enemies maliciously try repeatedly to do. Our great Rabbi once said: "With the measure you measure you will be measured and with the judgment you judge you will be judged." The hypocrisy of the Muslim Arabs and their cohorts in leveling these false charges against the people of Israel is horrendous.
If there is one nation (or 'umah' as the Islamic nation is called), which to this day considers itself superior to all other religions and people, it is the nation of ISLAM. In the countries comprising this umah, women are enslaved as the property of their husbands and, in some of them, even slavery is practiced and allowed. When this is documented by courageous politicians, filmmakers or journalists, they can end up brutally killed, as was the Dutch filmmaker Van Gogh who sought to expose the plight of many Muslim women. He was simply murdered, stabbed with Koran verses on his chest in front of his house.
Neither Christians nor Jews can freely worship in Saudi Arabia; they cannot bring their Bibles or prayer books with them when they enter that country. While Muslims may freely build their mosques all over the world, Christians cannot build their churches in this land where Islam was born. Christians cannot visit Mecca or Medina, whereas Muslims can and do visit St Paul's Cathedral in London, St Peter's church in Rome and other Christian and Jewish places.
This master race - the Muslims - believe they can wage jihad and terror, and impose boycotts, whenever and wherever it suits them: When the Pope makes a remark about the inherent violent character of ISLAM, or when Danish journalists publish cartoons about Mohammed, Muslims erupt in violence the world over, proving this very point.
They are the Umah, the Master Race, ready and prepared to force the whole world into submission, literally by hook or by crook - by persuasion first and, if necessary, by violence, jihad and terror.
And now they tell the world that it is little Israel which is the racist, dangerous apartheid state, and their shallow-minded Western friends parrot this with them! Israel, which was born out of racism and slavery; Israel, where black, brown, yellow and white are equally accepted and can live together in equality; Israel, which gives citizenship to its often disloyal Arabs, allowing them to speak and demonstrate in favor for Israel's sworn enemies, and despite this giving them permission to organize themselves in political parties that are often hostile to Israel, so obtaining seats in Israel's Parliament and even Cabinet? Who has heard of such magnanimity among the nations?
And so, the Umah of ISLAM goes on conquering in the name of ISLAM, first and foremost the hated and despised Israel, and then eventually the whole world, where those who refuse to become Muslims, can live as dhimmies under the masters of ISLAM!
Recently a White House correspondent explained that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice basically sees the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as comparable to the historic struggle of Blacks against the dominion of Whites. Should Barak Obama be made president of the United States, he may in essence bring this same misunderstanding from the State Department to the White House, given the close connection that already exists between his mentor and the pastor of his Trinity Church of Christ, and louis Farrakhan. It is therefore essential that the above mentioned facts are understood and widely publicized.
Added to this are the amazingly true words which Simon Deng writes in The Jewish Advocate:
Disappearance of Bishop Tutu
By Simon Deng
Friday November 16, 2007
Late last month, I went to hear Bishop Desmond Tutu speak at Boston's Old South Church at a conference on "Israel Apartheid." Tutu is a well respected man of God. He brought reconciliation between blacks and whites in South Africa. That he would lead a conference that damns the Jewish state is very disturbing to me.
The State of Israel is not an apartheid state. I know because I write this from Jerusalem where I have seen Arab mothers peacefully strolling with their families even though I also drove on Israeli roads protected by walls and fences from Arab bullets and stones. I know Arabs go to Israeli schools, and get the best medical care in the world. I know they vote and have elected representatives to the Israeli Parliament. I see street signs in Arabic, an official language here. None of this was true for blacks under Apartheid in Tutu's South Africa.
I also know countries that do deserve the apartheid label: My country, Sudan, is on the top of the list, but so are Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What has happened to my people in Sudan is a thousand times worse than Apartheid in South Africa. And no matter how the Palestinians suffer, they suffer nothing compared to my people. Nothing. And most of the suffering is the fault of their leaders. Bishop Tutu, I see black Jews walking down the street here in Jerusalem. Black like us, free and proud.
Tutu said Israeli checkpoints are a nightmare. But checkpoints are there because Palestinians are sent into Israel to blow up and kill innocent women and children. Tutu wants checkpoints removed. Do you not have doors in your home, Bishop? Does that make your house an apartheid house? If someone, Heaven forbid, tried to enter with a bomb, we would want you to have security people "humiliating" your guests with searches, and we would not call you racist for doing so. We all go through checkpoints at every airport. Are the airlines being racist? No.
Yes, the Palestinians are inconvenienced at checkpoints. But why, Bishop Tutu, do you care more about that inconvenience than about Jewish lives?
Bishop, when you used to dance for Mandela's freedom, we Africans all over Africa joined in. Our support was key in your freedom. But when children in Burundi and Kinshasa, all the way to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and in particular in Sudan, cried and called for rescue, you heard but chose to be silent.
Today, black children are enslaved in Sudan, the last place in the continent of Africa where humans are owned by other humans. I was part of the movement to stop slavery in Mauritania, which just now abolished the practice. But you were not with us, Bishop Tutu.
So where is Desmond Tutu when my people call out for freedom? Slaughter and genocide and slavery are lashing Africans right now. Where are you for Sudan, Bishop Tutu? You are busy attacking the Jewish state. Why?
Simon Deng, a native of the Shiluk Kingdom in southern Sudan, is an escaped jihad slave and a leading human rights activist.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT US AT (617)428-0012
DAVIDPROJECT.ORG
Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
International Christian Zionist Center
If there is one nation (or 'umah' as the Islamic nation is called), which to this day considers itself superior to all other religions and people, it is the nation of ISLAM. In the countries comprising this umah, women are enslaved as the property of their husbands and, in some of them, even slavery is practiced and allowed. When this is documented by courageous politicians, filmmakers or journalists, they can end up brutally killed, as was the Dutch filmmaker Van Gogh who sought to expose the plight of many Muslim women. He was simply murdered, stabbed with Koran verses on his chest in front of his house.
Neither Christians nor Jews can freely worship in Saudi Arabia; they cannot bring their Bibles or prayer books with them when they enter that country. While Muslims may freely build their mosques all over the world, Christians cannot build their churches in this land where Islam was born. Christians cannot visit Mecca or Medina, whereas Muslims can and do visit St Paul's Cathedral in London, St Peter's church in Rome and other Christian and Jewish places.
This master race - the Muslims - believe they can wage jihad and terror, and impose boycotts, whenever and wherever it suits them: When the Pope makes a remark about the inherent violent character of ISLAM, or when Danish journalists publish cartoons about Mohammed, Muslims erupt in violence the world over, proving this very point.
They are the Umah, the Master Race, ready and prepared to force the whole world into submission, literally by hook or by crook - by persuasion first and, if necessary, by violence, jihad and terror.
And now they tell the world that it is little Israel which is the racist, dangerous apartheid state, and their shallow-minded Western friends parrot this with them! Israel, which was born out of racism and slavery; Israel, where black, brown, yellow and white are equally accepted and can live together in equality; Israel, which gives citizenship to its often disloyal Arabs, allowing them to speak and demonstrate in favor for Israel's sworn enemies, and despite this giving them permission to organize themselves in political parties that are often hostile to Israel, so obtaining seats in Israel's Parliament and even Cabinet? Who has heard of such magnanimity among the nations?
And so, the Umah of ISLAM goes on conquering in the name of ISLAM, first and foremost the hated and despised Israel, and then eventually the whole world, where those who refuse to become Muslims, can live as dhimmies under the masters of ISLAM!
Recently a White House correspondent explained that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice basically sees the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as comparable to the historic struggle of Blacks against the dominion of Whites. Should Barak Obama be made president of the United States, he may in essence bring this same misunderstanding from the State Department to the White House, given the close connection that already exists between his mentor and the pastor of his Trinity Church of Christ, and louis Farrakhan. It is therefore essential that the above mentioned facts are understood and widely publicized.
Added to this are the amazingly true words which Simon Deng writes in The Jewish Advocate:
Disappearance of Bishop Tutu
By Simon Deng
Friday November 16, 2007
Late last month, I went to hear Bishop Desmond Tutu speak at Boston's Old South Church at a conference on "Israel Apartheid." Tutu is a well respected man of God. He brought reconciliation between blacks and whites in South Africa. That he would lead a conference that damns the Jewish state is very disturbing to me.
The State of Israel is not an apartheid state. I know because I write this from Jerusalem where I have seen Arab mothers peacefully strolling with their families even though I also drove on Israeli roads protected by walls and fences from Arab bullets and stones. I know Arabs go to Israeli schools, and get the best medical care in the world. I know they vote and have elected representatives to the Israeli Parliament. I see street signs in Arabic, an official language here. None of this was true for blacks under Apartheid in Tutu's South Africa.
I also know countries that do deserve the apartheid label: My country, Sudan, is on the top of the list, but so are Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What has happened to my people in Sudan is a thousand times worse than Apartheid in South Africa. And no matter how the Palestinians suffer, they suffer nothing compared to my people. Nothing. And most of the suffering is the fault of their leaders. Bishop Tutu, I see black Jews walking down the street here in Jerusalem. Black like us, free and proud.
Tutu said Israeli checkpoints are a nightmare. But checkpoints are there because Palestinians are sent into Israel to blow up and kill innocent women and children. Tutu wants checkpoints removed. Do you not have doors in your home, Bishop? Does that make your house an apartheid house? If someone, Heaven forbid, tried to enter with a bomb, we would want you to have security people "humiliating" your guests with searches, and we would not call you racist for doing so. We all go through checkpoints at every airport. Are the airlines being racist? No.
Yes, the Palestinians are inconvenienced at checkpoints. But why, Bishop Tutu, do you care more about that inconvenience than about Jewish lives?
Bishop, when you used to dance for Mandela's freedom, we Africans all over Africa joined in. Our support was key in your freedom. But when children in Burundi and Kinshasa, all the way to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and in particular in Sudan, cried and called for rescue, you heard but chose to be silent.
Today, black children are enslaved in Sudan, the last place in the continent of Africa where humans are owned by other humans. I was part of the movement to stop slavery in Mauritania, which just now abolished the practice. But you were not with us, Bishop Tutu.
So where is Desmond Tutu when my people call out for freedom? Slaughter and genocide and slavery are lashing Africans right now. Where are you for Sudan, Bishop Tutu? You are busy attacking the Jewish state. Why?
Simon Deng, a native of the Shiluk Kingdom in southern Sudan, is an escaped jihad slave and a leading human rights activist.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT US AT (617)428-0012
DAVIDPROJECT.ORG
Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
International Christian Zionist Center
ZOA CRITICAL OF BUSH STATEMENTS ON ISRAELI "OCCUPATION,"
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized statements made by President George W. Bush in his speech in Jerusalem late last week during his tour of the Middle East in which he called for Israel to end the occupation that began in 1967 rather than the conditions of Arab rejection and violence which produced it; reiterated his praise for the 2002 so-called Arab League Peace Initiative which seeks massive concessions from Israel in return only for ambiguous Arab statements that it will then accept Israel ; and lauds the PA leadership of Mahmoud Abbas as peace-loving and moderate when it is in fact neither.President Bush also urges huge Israeli concessions to Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority (PA) despite the continuing non-fulfillment of Palestinian Arab commitments under the signed Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan, including the failure to jail terrorists, confiscate their illegal weapons, and to end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps that feeds terror ( President Bush Discusses Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, King David Hotel , Jerusalem, January 10, 2008). The ZOA is also troubled by additional statements made by President Bush the same day in his joint press conference in Ramallah with Abbas ( President Bush and Palestinian Authority President Abbas Participate in Joint Press Availability , Muqata, Ramallah, January 10, 2008).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein, ZOA Center for Middle East Policy Director Dr. Daniel Mandel and Daniel Pollak and Josh London of the ZOA Department of Government Relations have provided the following in-depth analysis of Bush's remarks (all from his Jerusalem statement, unless otherwise indicated):
· "There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967" : This statement ignores the fact that the territory in question is unallocated territory under international law and did not belong to the unlawful occupiers, Jordan and Egypt, from whom Israel captured Judea /Samaria and Gaza respectively in a war of self-defense. Only two Jordanian allies, Britain and Pakistan, recognized Jordan's unlawful annexation of Judea and Samaria and even Jordan officially rescinded its claim to the territory in 1988. Moreover, religiously, legally and historically, Israel has a better claim to the territory in question on the basis of past Jewish history and connection to the land and the League of Nations mandate which designated this territory for the development of a Jewish National Home. Therefore, no unlawful Israel occupation has ever existed. Consequently, this statement by President Bush (which echoes earlier ones by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) points to one of the major shortcomings in the policy of this Administration towards the Arab war on Israel: it has accepted the false and misleading Arab claim that the issue is Israeli occupation of Palestinians. Consequently, the Bush Administration's emphasis is on ending Israeli control, whereas the emphasis should be on ending the conditions that gave rise to Israeli conquest in the first place and which remain operative – Arab refusal to accept Israel's existence as a Jewish state; Arab support for terrorism against Israeli civilians; Arab demonization of Jews, Judaism and Israel. It is these which created and fuel the conflict and which led to major wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967 – not Israeli control of these territories, which were then firmly under Arab control. Moreover, there is presently virtually no Israeli control of these territories, as all of Gaza and half of Judea and Samaria, along with 95% of the Palestinian Arab inhabitants of these territories, have been transferred to the control of the PA.
· "I reiterate my appreciation for the Arab League peace initiative" : By once again welcoming the 2002 so-called Arab League Peace Initiative, President Bush is continuing to depart from long-standing American support for 1967 United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSC) 242 as the framework for peace-making. UNSC 242 calls only for "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" not "full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories " as demanded by the Arab Initiative, including from non-existent "remaining occupied territories" in Lebanon. Embracing the Arab initiative thus represents a serious erosion of American support for Israel's legitimate interests as expressed in UNSC 242, which was previously upheld by every administration, whether Republican or Democrat. This initiative also demands the so-called 'right of return' which would inundate Israel with tens of thousands of Palestinian Arab refugees of the 1948-49 war and their millions of descendents, thereby putting an end to Israel's continued existence as Jewish state, which President Bush has pledged on this occasion and on others to uphold. Furthermore, this Plan demands irreversible Israeli concessions before the Arab states will even consider taking steps to end hostilities with Israel.
· "I share with these two leaders [Olmert and Abbas] the vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. Both of these leaders believe that the outcome is in the interest of their peoples and are determined to arrive at a negotiated solution to achieve it" : As the ZOA has noted on numerous occasions, the Bush Administration has persistently and wrongly credited Mahmoud Abbas, his Fatah-controlled PA and the majority of the Palestinian Arab population with a simply non-existent moderation , interest in peace-making and a detestation of terrorism. Abbas has told Arab audiences in Arabic that "it is not required of Hamas, or of Fatah, or of the Popular Front to recognize Israel" (Al-Arabiya [Dubai] and PA TV, October 3, 2006); that Palestinian Arabs have a "legitimate right to direct our guns against Israeli occupation ... Our rifles, all our rifles are aimed at The Occupation" ( Jerusalem Post, January 11, 2007; Independent Media & Review Analysis, January 12, 2007); that " The sons of Israel are corrupting humanity on earth" ( World Net Daily, January 11, 2007); that Israel is "the Zionist enemy" (Associated Press, January 4, 2005; CNN.com , January 7, 2005); that wanted Palestinian terrorists are "heroes fighting for freedom" ( Age [Melbourne], January 3, 2005); that jailed Palestinian terrorists as "our heroes." ( Israel National News, May 26, 2006), and that "Israel calls them murderers, we call them strugglers" ( Jerusalem Post, December 25, 2004). Additionally, he has described Palestinian terrorist leaders Yasser Arafat, Hamas' Ahmad Yasin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Palestinian Islamic Jihad's Fathi Shikaki as "martyrs" ( Palestinian Media Center , September 9, 2005); declared that " We must unite the Hamas and Fatah blood in the struggle against Israel as we did at the beginning of the intifada. We want a political partnership with Hamas" ( Jerusalem Post, February 5, 2007), insisted that "It is our duty to implement the principles of Yasser Arafat" ( Haaretz, January 3, 2005) and that "The Palestinian leadership won't stray from Arafat's path" ( Yediot Ahronot, November 11, 2006). He has also refused to disarm Palestinian terrorists, calling that a "red line" that must not be crossed ( Washington Times, January 3, 2005). He has also declared of the legally and morally baseless so-called Palestinian 'right of return' that "The issue of the refugees is non-negotiable" ( Jerusalem Post, January 11, 2007). In addition to having written a PhD thesis and published a book denying the Holocaust, co-founding with arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat the terrorist group Fatah, whose Constitution to this day calls for the destruction of Israel (Article 12) and the use of terrorism against Israelis as an indispensable part of the struggle to achieve that goal (Article 19), he has refused to implement the signed Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan which requires him to fight, arrest, extradite and jail terrorists and confiscate their weaponry and end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps that feeds terror. In May 2006, he endorsed the so-called 'Prisoners' Plan', a document produced by jailed Palestinian terrorists, that endorses continued terrorism against Israel, legitimizes the murder of Jews, does not accept Israel's existence as a Jewish state, abrogates Palestinian obligations under the signed Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan, and insists on the 'right of return.' In December 2005, he approved legislation mandating financial benefits to be paid to families of killed Palestinian terrorists while in March 2007, he formed a unity government with Hamas under the Mecca Agreement that called for more violence, not peace and reconciliation with Israel. Only in the last week, in celebration of Fatah's 43 rd anniversary, Fatah produced a new map of the region which showed Israel in Fatah colors labeled 'Palestine' alongside a photo of Yasser Arafat. This record gives, much of it from the period of Abbas seeking election as PA president, totally undermines the President's claim in his Ramallah press conference that, " President Abbas was elected on a platform of peace. In other words, he just wasn't somebody who starts talking about it lately, he campaigned on it."
· "Both sides need to fulfill their commitments under the road map." This statement asserts a false equivalence in the efforts of the two parties to comply with their road map commitments whereas, in fact, Israel has regularly complied with its Oslo and Roadmap obligations while the PA has shown no interest in fulfilling any of its commitments under any of the previously signed peace agreements, including those commitments that are under the PA's complete control to fulfill, such as ending the incitement of hatred and murder in official PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps, arresting terrorists, confiscating illegal weapons and outlawing terrorist groups.
· "The Palestinians need to build their economy and their political and security institutions. And to do that, they need the help of Israel, the region, and the international community" : By trying to induce moderation from the PA by rewarding it, instead of demanding the implementation of agreements and reforms before offering any rewards and concessions, the Bush Administration is only reinforcing the PA's resistance to moderation and peace-making. Why would Abbas and Fatah fulfill any agreements or make any genuine moves towards peace if they have had it proved to them, time and again over 14 years, that they will receive praise, support and funds from America without fulfilling a single one of their obligations under signed agreements ? This effort to promote further international handouts to subsidize continued PA mismanagement and corruption shows that President Bush is failing to learn from past mistakes. The Palestinian Arabs are already the largest per capita recipients of international aid and have been the recipients of more financial assistance from the international community than virtually any other single political entity in recorded history, yet such largess has not produced healthy civil society or good governance institutions. A 2005 Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report noted, for example, that " U.S. economic aid to the Palestinians has averaged about $85 million per year since 1993," while a 2006 CRS Report indicates that the PA received a record $1.5 billion in total foreign assistance in 2006. By promising additional and ongoing support independent of verified compliance, President Bush is repeating the terrible mistake made by both Israel and the U.S. when they falsely stated that Yasser Arafat was a moderate peacemaker, and on that false premise made concessions to his Fatah regime which resulted in a surge of terrorism, the loss of thousands of innocent lives, and placed Israel in greater danger. Much of these funds have been stolen by PA leaders and much has also been used to purchase weapons.
· "These negotiations must ensure that Israel has secure, recognized, and defensible borders. And they must ensure that the state of Palestine is viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent. It is vital that each side understands that satisfying the other's fundamental objectives is key to a successful agreement. Security for Israel and viability for the Palestinian state are in the mutual interests of both parties" : Even if the Fatah/PA was truly a peace-loving moderate regime, which it is not, no discussion of a Palestinian state is warranted given that Gaza, with over a million Palestinian Arabs is under Hamas control, while Judea and Samaria is only tenuously under Fatah's control . A Palestinian state on Israel's border is not in Israel's best interest. Under current conditions, a new Palestinian state would be a threat to Israel's survival from the day it is established. It would be inherently unstable, inherently Jihadist, and inherently hostile to American interests in the region. Even if its founders agree for tactical reasons to keep it demilitarized, that limitation on sovereignty will be problematic, especially since the PA possesses an army in all but name, including tens of thousands of men under arms. Iranian and fundamentalist domination of that state will always be a threat as long as Hamas exists. The extension of Iranian influence to a client state Palestinian state could well serve as a spark to ignite war in the entire region. President Bush has clearly failed to understand, or at any rate to acknowledge, that the fundamental objective of the PA is to destroy Israel, not live peaceably alongside it. This is why the PA cannot even bring itself to end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps. Fatah recently distributed a poster of a map that depicts all of Israel as Muslim Arab Palestine, with no recognition whatsoever of the Jewish State. While the Palestinian Authority announces in English its demand for a two-state solution, to its own people in Arabic it continues to define all of Israel as "Palestine," and to promise Israel's destruction. The Arab war on Israel is not about borders or the creation or promotion of a Palestinian state, which Palestinians have been repeatedly offered yet explicitly rejected every time one was proposed – by the Peel Royal Commission in 1937, by the UN General Assembly in 1947, or by President Clinton in 2000 . The Palestinian choice has consistently been to prefer Israel's destruction over any solution encompassing Palestinian statehood that includes the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Following the Annapolis meeting, for example, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad said: "Israel can define itself as it likes, but the Palestinians will not recognize it as a Jewish state."
· "I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous" : By insisting that any and all border adjustments must be "mutually agreed upon" during negotiations, President Bush is nullifying his April 2004 written commitment to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Israel should retain at least all the areas with major Jewish populations in Judea and Samaria. As President Bush wrote in that letter, "The United States appreciates the risks leaving Gaza represents. I therefore want to reassure you … In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949…" Moreover, creating a contiguous Palestinian state would require, among other things, cutting Israel in two in order to create a passage between Gaza and Judea/Samaria.
· "I believe we need to look to the establishment of a Palestinian state and new international mechanisms, including compensation, to resolve the refugee issue" : It is only the descendants of Palestinian refugees who are considered refugees, something that has not occurred in respect of any other refugee population in the world. While President Bush provided an indication of his preferred method of dealing with the issue of Palestinian refugees, he failed to make it clear that the U.S. rejects the 'right of return.' In any event, the flight of Palestinians in 1948-49 was the direct result of the Palestinians own decision to wage war on Israel . There would have been no refugees from the region if Arab countries had refrained from invasion and chosen peace. As Abba Eban said at the time, "Once you determine the responsibility for that war, you have determined the responsibility for the refugee problem." Moreover, the 'right of return' is incompatible with Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state. Also, President Bush again failed to even mention the corresponding flood of Jewish refugees created at the same time by Arab violence against Jews in Arab lands . This failure can only lead to a lack of balance in the negotiations over compensation for the non-Arab refugees.
· "Neither party should undertake any activity that contravenes road map obligations or prejudices the final status negotiations. On the Israeli side that includes ending settlement expansion and removing unauthorized outposts. On the Palestinian side that includes confronting terrorists and dismantling terrorist infrastructure" : President Bush's ominously vague call for the PA to "confront" terrorists is a marked deviation from and weakening of the Palestinian obligation to disarm, arrest and jail terrorists and outlaw terrorist groups, as required in the Oslo agreements. While President Bush at least referred to Palestinian road map obligations to deal with terrorists, he neglected to mention Palestinian obligations to end incitement to murder, hatred and violence in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps. Palestinian clerics continue to condemn Jews as "the sons of monkeys and pigs" or as being akin to the AIDS virus; Palestinian TV continues to glorify suicide attacks on Israelis; in April 2007 the acting parliamentary speaker called for the murder of Americans and Jews; streets, schools and colleges have been named in honor of suicide bombers; armed terrorists operate openly in public and wanted terrorists have been shielded in the PA presidential compound. The PA has not even attempted any demonstrable, sustained, or meaningful effort to end such incitement or retard this terrorism saturated, blood-stained culture. Moreover, it is deeply concerning that President Bush implies that Israeli construction of homes in Jewish communities beyond the green line, something Israel never pledged to desist from doing in any of the Oslo agreements, is in some way comparable to Palestinian terrorism and incitement or an obstacle to peace.
· "I know Jerusalem is a tough issue. Both sides have deeply felt political and religious concerns" : Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and the heart of Jewish state and of the Jewish people. Further, it was established as such more than three thousand years ago and remains the focus of Jewish prayer, unity and aspirations for millennia. It has never served as the capital of any other nation, Arab or otherwise. Only once Jerusalem was liberated, unified, and brought under Israeli sovereignty and security, have people of all faiths been allowed freely and securely to visit and worship at their holy sites. Jerusalem is mentioned over 600 times in the Bible, but not even once in the Quran. During the period 1948-67, when the eastern half of the city, with its religious shrines, was under Jordanian control, no Arab ruler other than Jordanian King Hussein visited it. Also, under Jordanian rule, thousands of Jewish gravestones were desecrated and used to make Jordanian army latrines while all the synagogues in the city were deliberately destroyed. Jerusalem became a backwater under Jordanian rule, which maintained its capital in Amman. President Bush's elevation of Palestinian claims to the city to a level of parity with Jewish claims shows little understanding of history or present conditions.
· "The establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it. And it will enhance the stability of the region, and it will contribute to the security of the people of Israel" : In fact, the Palestinian people's repeated and ongoing rejection of peace and support for terrorism is the primary cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict and is scarcely confined to an extremist fringe in Palestinian society as Bush has often contended. An October 2006 poll showed that two-thirds of Palestinians supported Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel. According to recent polling data compiled by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), over 70% believe armed attacks against Israel will continue while the "negotiations" following Annapolis are in progress. And less than half of the respondents, (49%), stated they would be willing to recognize the Jewish state following negotiations that resulted in a Palestinian state. This means that even with a capital in Jerusalem and a "right of return," most Palestinians would still have a problem with the existence of Israel. This record strongly repudiates President Bush's comment in Ramallah that "He [ Abbas] knows that a handful of people want to dash the aspirations of the Palestinian people by creating chaos and violence." A people that has rejected statehood in favor of continued war, voted into power a genocidally-inclined movement like Hamas, insisted on mechanisms to subvert Jewish statehood like the 'right of return', glorified terrorism and suicide murder and embraced nationalist and religious extremism does not deserve statehood until it abandons the hatred and violence that Germans and Japanese had to repudiate before they again enjoyed statehood and independence. Under current conditions, a Palestinian state would be just another hateful terrorist state. Statehood does not induce moderation – Syria, Iran and North Korea are all states, yet none of these countries are peaceful and moderate. To the contrary, statehood enhances the capacity of such societies to further their irredentist and violent agendas.
· "Bush also stated in his Ramallah press conference that "my message to the Israelis is that they ought to help, not hinder, the modernization of the Palestinian security force. It's in their interests that a government dedicated to peace and understanding the need for two states to live side by side in peace have a modern force … And to the extent that Israeli actions have undermined the effectiveness of the Palestinian force, or the authority of the state relative to the average citizen, is something that we don't agree with and have made our position clear" : Quite apart from the fatuity of speaking of moderate Palestinian leadership, President Bush suggests that Israel share his own heedless confidence in the integrity and reliability of Palestinian security forces, all of which have actually been complicit in terrorism against Israel. Worse, he criticized Israel for failing to empower these security services, all of which detracts from other statements he made at the same press conference about the legitimate need for Israeli security measures, including the roadblocks that inconvenience Palestinians.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein, ZOA Center for Middle East Policy Director Dr. Daniel Mandel and Daniel Pollak and Josh London of the ZOA Department of Government Relations have provided the following in-depth analysis of Bush's remarks (all from his Jerusalem statement, unless otherwise indicated):
· "There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967" : This statement ignores the fact that the territory in question is unallocated territory under international law and did not belong to the unlawful occupiers, Jordan and Egypt, from whom Israel captured Judea /Samaria and Gaza respectively in a war of self-defense. Only two Jordanian allies, Britain and Pakistan, recognized Jordan's unlawful annexation of Judea and Samaria and even Jordan officially rescinded its claim to the territory in 1988. Moreover, religiously, legally and historically, Israel has a better claim to the territory in question on the basis of past Jewish history and connection to the land and the League of Nations mandate which designated this territory for the development of a Jewish National Home. Therefore, no unlawful Israel occupation has ever existed. Consequently, this statement by President Bush (which echoes earlier ones by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) points to one of the major shortcomings in the policy of this Administration towards the Arab war on Israel: it has accepted the false and misleading Arab claim that the issue is Israeli occupation of Palestinians. Consequently, the Bush Administration's emphasis is on ending Israeli control, whereas the emphasis should be on ending the conditions that gave rise to Israeli conquest in the first place and which remain operative – Arab refusal to accept Israel's existence as a Jewish state; Arab support for terrorism against Israeli civilians; Arab demonization of Jews, Judaism and Israel. It is these which created and fuel the conflict and which led to major wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967 – not Israeli control of these territories, which were then firmly under Arab control. Moreover, there is presently virtually no Israeli control of these territories, as all of Gaza and half of Judea and Samaria, along with 95% of the Palestinian Arab inhabitants of these territories, have been transferred to the control of the PA.
· "I reiterate my appreciation for the Arab League peace initiative" : By once again welcoming the 2002 so-called Arab League Peace Initiative, President Bush is continuing to depart from long-standing American support for 1967 United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSC) 242 as the framework for peace-making. UNSC 242 calls only for "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" not "full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories " as demanded by the Arab Initiative, including from non-existent "remaining occupied territories" in Lebanon. Embracing the Arab initiative thus represents a serious erosion of American support for Israel's legitimate interests as expressed in UNSC 242, which was previously upheld by every administration, whether Republican or Democrat. This initiative also demands the so-called 'right of return' which would inundate Israel with tens of thousands of Palestinian Arab refugees of the 1948-49 war and their millions of descendents, thereby putting an end to Israel's continued existence as Jewish state, which President Bush has pledged on this occasion and on others to uphold. Furthermore, this Plan demands irreversible Israeli concessions before the Arab states will even consider taking steps to end hostilities with Israel.
· "I share with these two leaders [Olmert and Abbas] the vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. Both of these leaders believe that the outcome is in the interest of their peoples and are determined to arrive at a negotiated solution to achieve it" : As the ZOA has noted on numerous occasions, the Bush Administration has persistently and wrongly credited Mahmoud Abbas, his Fatah-controlled PA and the majority of the Palestinian Arab population with a simply non-existent moderation , interest in peace-making and a detestation of terrorism. Abbas has told Arab audiences in Arabic that "it is not required of Hamas, or of Fatah, or of the Popular Front to recognize Israel" (Al-Arabiya [Dubai] and PA TV, October 3, 2006); that Palestinian Arabs have a "legitimate right to direct our guns against Israeli occupation ... Our rifles, all our rifles are aimed at The Occupation" ( Jerusalem Post, January 11, 2007; Independent Media & Review Analysis, January 12, 2007); that " The sons of Israel are corrupting humanity on earth" ( World Net Daily, January 11, 2007); that Israel is "the Zionist enemy" (Associated Press, January 4, 2005; CNN.com , January 7, 2005); that wanted Palestinian terrorists are "heroes fighting for freedom" ( Age [Melbourne], January 3, 2005); that jailed Palestinian terrorists as "our heroes." ( Israel National News, May 26, 2006), and that "Israel calls them murderers, we call them strugglers" ( Jerusalem Post, December 25, 2004). Additionally, he has described Palestinian terrorist leaders Yasser Arafat, Hamas' Ahmad Yasin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Palestinian Islamic Jihad's Fathi Shikaki as "martyrs" ( Palestinian Media Center , September 9, 2005); declared that " We must unite the Hamas and Fatah blood in the struggle against Israel as we did at the beginning of the intifada. We want a political partnership with Hamas" ( Jerusalem Post, February 5, 2007), insisted that "It is our duty to implement the principles of Yasser Arafat" ( Haaretz, January 3, 2005) and that "The Palestinian leadership won't stray from Arafat's path" ( Yediot Ahronot, November 11, 2006). He has also refused to disarm Palestinian terrorists, calling that a "red line" that must not be crossed ( Washington Times, January 3, 2005). He has also declared of the legally and morally baseless so-called Palestinian 'right of return' that "The issue of the refugees is non-negotiable" ( Jerusalem Post, January 11, 2007). In addition to having written a PhD thesis and published a book denying the Holocaust, co-founding with arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat the terrorist group Fatah, whose Constitution to this day calls for the destruction of Israel (Article 12) and the use of terrorism against Israelis as an indispensable part of the struggle to achieve that goal (Article 19), he has refused to implement the signed Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan which requires him to fight, arrest, extradite and jail terrorists and confiscate their weaponry and end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps that feeds terror. In May 2006, he endorsed the so-called 'Prisoners' Plan', a document produced by jailed Palestinian terrorists, that endorses continued terrorism against Israel, legitimizes the murder of Jews, does not accept Israel's existence as a Jewish state, abrogates Palestinian obligations under the signed Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan, and insists on the 'right of return.' In December 2005, he approved legislation mandating financial benefits to be paid to families of killed Palestinian terrorists while in March 2007, he formed a unity government with Hamas under the Mecca Agreement that called for more violence, not peace and reconciliation with Israel. Only in the last week, in celebration of Fatah's 43 rd anniversary, Fatah produced a new map of the region which showed Israel in Fatah colors labeled 'Palestine' alongside a photo of Yasser Arafat. This record gives, much of it from the period of Abbas seeking election as PA president, totally undermines the President's claim in his Ramallah press conference that, " President Abbas was elected on a platform of peace. In other words, he just wasn't somebody who starts talking about it lately, he campaigned on it."
· "Both sides need to fulfill their commitments under the road map." This statement asserts a false equivalence in the efforts of the two parties to comply with their road map commitments whereas, in fact, Israel has regularly complied with its Oslo and Roadmap obligations while the PA has shown no interest in fulfilling any of its commitments under any of the previously signed peace agreements, including those commitments that are under the PA's complete control to fulfill, such as ending the incitement of hatred and murder in official PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps, arresting terrorists, confiscating illegal weapons and outlawing terrorist groups.
· "The Palestinians need to build their economy and their political and security institutions. And to do that, they need the help of Israel, the region, and the international community" : By trying to induce moderation from the PA by rewarding it, instead of demanding the implementation of agreements and reforms before offering any rewards and concessions, the Bush Administration is only reinforcing the PA's resistance to moderation and peace-making. Why would Abbas and Fatah fulfill any agreements or make any genuine moves towards peace if they have had it proved to them, time and again over 14 years, that they will receive praise, support and funds from America without fulfilling a single one of their obligations under signed agreements ? This effort to promote further international handouts to subsidize continued PA mismanagement and corruption shows that President Bush is failing to learn from past mistakes. The Palestinian Arabs are already the largest per capita recipients of international aid and have been the recipients of more financial assistance from the international community than virtually any other single political entity in recorded history, yet such largess has not produced healthy civil society or good governance institutions. A 2005 Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report noted, for example, that " U.S. economic aid to the Palestinians has averaged about $85 million per year since 1993," while a 2006 CRS Report indicates that the PA received a record $1.5 billion in total foreign assistance in 2006. By promising additional and ongoing support independent of verified compliance, President Bush is repeating the terrible mistake made by both Israel and the U.S. when they falsely stated that Yasser Arafat was a moderate peacemaker, and on that false premise made concessions to his Fatah regime which resulted in a surge of terrorism, the loss of thousands of innocent lives, and placed Israel in greater danger. Much of these funds have been stolen by PA leaders and much has also been used to purchase weapons.
· "These negotiations must ensure that Israel has secure, recognized, and defensible borders. And they must ensure that the state of Palestine is viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent. It is vital that each side understands that satisfying the other's fundamental objectives is key to a successful agreement. Security for Israel and viability for the Palestinian state are in the mutual interests of both parties" : Even if the Fatah/PA was truly a peace-loving moderate regime, which it is not, no discussion of a Palestinian state is warranted given that Gaza, with over a million Palestinian Arabs is under Hamas control, while Judea and Samaria is only tenuously under Fatah's control . A Palestinian state on Israel's border is not in Israel's best interest. Under current conditions, a new Palestinian state would be a threat to Israel's survival from the day it is established. It would be inherently unstable, inherently Jihadist, and inherently hostile to American interests in the region. Even if its founders agree for tactical reasons to keep it demilitarized, that limitation on sovereignty will be problematic, especially since the PA possesses an army in all but name, including tens of thousands of men under arms. Iranian and fundamentalist domination of that state will always be a threat as long as Hamas exists. The extension of Iranian influence to a client state Palestinian state could well serve as a spark to ignite war in the entire region. President Bush has clearly failed to understand, or at any rate to acknowledge, that the fundamental objective of the PA is to destroy Israel, not live peaceably alongside it. This is why the PA cannot even bring itself to end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps. Fatah recently distributed a poster of a map that depicts all of Israel as Muslim Arab Palestine, with no recognition whatsoever of the Jewish State. While the Palestinian Authority announces in English its demand for a two-state solution, to its own people in Arabic it continues to define all of Israel as "Palestine," and to promise Israel's destruction. The Arab war on Israel is not about borders or the creation or promotion of a Palestinian state, which Palestinians have been repeatedly offered yet explicitly rejected every time one was proposed – by the Peel Royal Commission in 1937, by the UN General Assembly in 1947, or by President Clinton in 2000 . The Palestinian choice has consistently been to prefer Israel's destruction over any solution encompassing Palestinian statehood that includes the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Following the Annapolis meeting, for example, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad said: "Israel can define itself as it likes, but the Palestinians will not recognize it as a Jewish state."
· "I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous" : By insisting that any and all border adjustments must be "mutually agreed upon" during negotiations, President Bush is nullifying his April 2004 written commitment to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Israel should retain at least all the areas with major Jewish populations in Judea and Samaria. As President Bush wrote in that letter, "The United States appreciates the risks leaving Gaza represents. I therefore want to reassure you … In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949…" Moreover, creating a contiguous Palestinian state would require, among other things, cutting Israel in two in order to create a passage between Gaza and Judea/Samaria.
· "I believe we need to look to the establishment of a Palestinian state and new international mechanisms, including compensation, to resolve the refugee issue" : It is only the descendants of Palestinian refugees who are considered refugees, something that has not occurred in respect of any other refugee population in the world. While President Bush provided an indication of his preferred method of dealing with the issue of Palestinian refugees, he failed to make it clear that the U.S. rejects the 'right of return.' In any event, the flight of Palestinians in 1948-49 was the direct result of the Palestinians own decision to wage war on Israel . There would have been no refugees from the region if Arab countries had refrained from invasion and chosen peace. As Abba Eban said at the time, "Once you determine the responsibility for that war, you have determined the responsibility for the refugee problem." Moreover, the 'right of return' is incompatible with Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state. Also, President Bush again failed to even mention the corresponding flood of Jewish refugees created at the same time by Arab violence against Jews in Arab lands . This failure can only lead to a lack of balance in the negotiations over compensation for the non-Arab refugees.
· "Neither party should undertake any activity that contravenes road map obligations or prejudices the final status negotiations. On the Israeli side that includes ending settlement expansion and removing unauthorized outposts. On the Palestinian side that includes confronting terrorists and dismantling terrorist infrastructure" : President Bush's ominously vague call for the PA to "confront" terrorists is a marked deviation from and weakening of the Palestinian obligation to disarm, arrest and jail terrorists and outlaw terrorist groups, as required in the Oslo agreements. While President Bush at least referred to Palestinian road map obligations to deal with terrorists, he neglected to mention Palestinian obligations to end incitement to murder, hatred and violence in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps. Palestinian clerics continue to condemn Jews as "the sons of monkeys and pigs" or as being akin to the AIDS virus; Palestinian TV continues to glorify suicide attacks on Israelis; in April 2007 the acting parliamentary speaker called for the murder of Americans and Jews; streets, schools and colleges have been named in honor of suicide bombers; armed terrorists operate openly in public and wanted terrorists have been shielded in the PA presidential compound. The PA has not even attempted any demonstrable, sustained, or meaningful effort to end such incitement or retard this terrorism saturated, blood-stained culture. Moreover, it is deeply concerning that President Bush implies that Israeli construction of homes in Jewish communities beyond the green line, something Israel never pledged to desist from doing in any of the Oslo agreements, is in some way comparable to Palestinian terrorism and incitement or an obstacle to peace.
· "I know Jerusalem is a tough issue. Both sides have deeply felt political and religious concerns" : Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and the heart of Jewish state and of the Jewish people. Further, it was established as such more than three thousand years ago and remains the focus of Jewish prayer, unity and aspirations for millennia. It has never served as the capital of any other nation, Arab or otherwise. Only once Jerusalem was liberated, unified, and brought under Israeli sovereignty and security, have people of all faiths been allowed freely and securely to visit and worship at their holy sites. Jerusalem is mentioned over 600 times in the Bible, but not even once in the Quran. During the period 1948-67, when the eastern half of the city, with its religious shrines, was under Jordanian control, no Arab ruler other than Jordanian King Hussein visited it. Also, under Jordanian rule, thousands of Jewish gravestones were desecrated and used to make Jordanian army latrines while all the synagogues in the city were deliberately destroyed. Jerusalem became a backwater under Jordanian rule, which maintained its capital in Amman. President Bush's elevation of Palestinian claims to the city to a level of parity with Jewish claims shows little understanding of history or present conditions.
· "The establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it. And it will enhance the stability of the region, and it will contribute to the security of the people of Israel" : In fact, the Palestinian people's repeated and ongoing rejection of peace and support for terrorism is the primary cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict and is scarcely confined to an extremist fringe in Palestinian society as Bush has often contended. An October 2006 poll showed that two-thirds of Palestinians supported Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel. According to recent polling data compiled by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), over 70% believe armed attacks against Israel will continue while the "negotiations" following Annapolis are in progress. And less than half of the respondents, (49%), stated they would be willing to recognize the Jewish state following negotiations that resulted in a Palestinian state. This means that even with a capital in Jerusalem and a "right of return," most Palestinians would still have a problem with the existence of Israel. This record strongly repudiates President Bush's comment in Ramallah that "He [ Abbas] knows that a handful of people want to dash the aspirations of the Palestinian people by creating chaos and violence." A people that has rejected statehood in favor of continued war, voted into power a genocidally-inclined movement like Hamas, insisted on mechanisms to subvert Jewish statehood like the 'right of return', glorified terrorism and suicide murder and embraced nationalist and religious extremism does not deserve statehood until it abandons the hatred and violence that Germans and Japanese had to repudiate before they again enjoyed statehood and independence. Under current conditions, a Palestinian state would be just another hateful terrorist state. Statehood does not induce moderation – Syria, Iran and North Korea are all states, yet none of these countries are peaceful and moderate. To the contrary, statehood enhances the capacity of such societies to further their irredentist and violent agendas.
· "Bush also stated in his Ramallah press conference that "my message to the Israelis is that they ought to help, not hinder, the modernization of the Palestinian security force. It's in their interests that a government dedicated to peace and understanding the need for two states to live side by side in peace have a modern force … And to the extent that Israeli actions have undermined the effectiveness of the Palestinian force, or the authority of the state relative to the average citizen, is something that we don't agree with and have made our position clear" : Quite apart from the fatuity of speaking of moderate Palestinian leadership, President Bush suggests that Israel share his own heedless confidence in the integrity and reliability of Palestinian security forces, all of which have actually been complicit in terrorism against Israel. Worse, he criticized Israel for failing to empower these security services, all of which detracts from other statements he made at the same press conference about the legitimate need for Israeli security measures, including the roadblocks that inconvenience Palestinians.
Undivided Jerusalem is the Basic Law.
Hillel Fendel.
Two Jerusalem organizations have sent a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, reminding him that discussions with US President Bush or PA Chairman Abbas regarding a possible division of Jerusalem are in violation of Israeli law. Clauses 5 and 6 of one of Israel's cardinal laws - Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel - mean that Jerusalem 's status as the united and sole capital of Israel may not be compromised. The first clause of the law in question, passed in 1980 under Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Yitzchak Navon, states, " Jerusalem, whole and united, is the capital of Israel." Clause 5 stipulates the precise area of Jerusalem, while Clause 6 states, "No authorities relating to the area of Jerusalem and that is in the legal purview of the State of Israel or the Municipality of Jerusalem shall be transferred to any foreign political or governmental element, whether permanently or for a set period."
Clause 7 states that Clauses and 5 and 6 may not be changed except if another Basic Law is accepted by the majority of the Knesset. Therefore, the negotiate with Israel's enemies - including Mr. Abu Mazen, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority - regarding the re-division of Jerusalem and the ceding of parts of the city - in violation of the Basic Law.
Attorney Ben-Yosef explains why his warning is timely: "Given that you and/or ministers in your government are liable to wage such negotiations during and after the visit of US President Bush, you are hereby required to declare immediately that you will observe the Basic Law and that you will not wage any negotiations over the future of Jerusalem while the above law and/or its clauses are still in effect."
Two Jerusalem organizations have sent a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, reminding him that discussions with US President Bush or PA Chairman Abbas regarding a possible division of Jerusalem are in violation of Israeli law. Clauses 5 and 6 of one of Israel's cardinal laws - Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel - mean that Jerusalem 's status as the united and sole capital of Israel may not be compromised. The first clause of the law in question, passed in 1980 under Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Yitzchak Navon, states, " Jerusalem, whole and united, is the capital of Israel." Clause 5 stipulates the precise area of Jerusalem, while Clause 6 states, "No authorities relating to the area of Jerusalem and that is in the legal purview of the State of Israel or the Municipality of Jerusalem shall be transferred to any foreign political or governmental element, whether permanently or for a set period."
Clause 7 states that Clauses and 5 and 6 may not be changed except if another Basic Law is accepted by the majority of the Knesset. Therefore, the negotiate with Israel's enemies - including Mr. Abu Mazen, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority - regarding the re-division of Jerusalem and the ceding of parts of the city - in violation of the Basic Law.
Attorney Ben-Yosef explains why his warning is timely: "Given that you and/or ministers in your government are liable to wage such negotiations during and after the visit of US President Bush, you are hereby required to declare immediately that you will observe the Basic Law and that you will not wage any negotiations over the future of Jerusalem while the above law and/or its clauses are still in effect."
Inside Qaeda's 'MySpace' Internet Sites
ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 15, 2008
WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda-operated Web forums are bringing young men into the terrorist movement, including some who are turning into suicide bombers in Iraq, says a new paper for the American military's think tank on the war against Islamic terrorism. The paper will be released Thursday in the monthly journal, Sentinel, of West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. It delves into what its author, Evan Kohlmann, calls Al Qaeda's "MySpace," the jihadi Web forums that have in some ways overtaken the role of Qaeda's physical training camps.
The paper examines Al Qaeda's first user-participatory Web forum, developed in 2004, known as Muntada al-Ansar, and it traces through the posts and subsequent eulogies on the site, how aspiring jihadis not only joined Al Qaeda, but traveled thousands of miles to detonate themselves in the battle of Iraq.
One case is a Sudanese man named Zaman al-Rahman, whose web nickname was Zaman al-Hawan, or era of Shame. He first started writing on the Muntada al-Ansar forum in April 2004. By November of that year, he stopped posting and in March 2005 the site published eulogies to him, claiming he had killed himself in the second battle for Falluja.
Today the Muntada al-Ansar forum is defunct, after the arrest, at age 21, of its founder, Younis Tsouli, who was known on the internet as "Terrorist 007." But the model for recruitment remains with the proliferation of other Qaeda Web sites, most notably the Ekhlaas forum, a key portal America's counterterrorism community uses to watch Al Qaeda online.
Mr. Kohlmann, who has worked as a consultant on terrorism for both the American and British governments, concludes that the Web forums for Al Qaeda in many ways replace the training camps the organization used to create terrorists in the 1990s.
"In the same way that traditional terrorist training camps once served as beacons for would-be jihadists, online support forums such as Muntada al-Ansar and al-Ekhlaas now operate as black holes in cyberspace, drawing in and indoctrinating sympathetic recruits, teaching them basic military skills and providing a web of social contacts that bridges directly into the ranks of Al Qaeda," he writes. "Rather than simply using the web as a weapon to destroy the infrastructure of their enemies, Al Qaeda is using it instead as a logistical tool to revolutionize the process of terrorist enlistment and training."
A senior editor at the Combating Terrorism Center, Erich Marquardt, yesterday said Mr. Kohlmann's paper discloses the connection between what might be called arm chair jihadists in cyberspace and the actual members of Al Qaeda. "There has always been a question as to whether forum participants are merely arm chair enthusiasts or actual jihadist linked fighters," Mr. Marquardt said. "Not only are these people deciding to pick up arms after spending time on the forums, you also have hard-core Qaeda operatives who are participating in the forums."
Thus far the only candidate for president from either major party to highlight the need for a comprehensive policy to deter online recruitment to Al Qaeda is Mayor Giuliani. On January 3, the Republican from New York tied the threat in part to Qaeda's fund raising, saying, "We have to be more aggressive about ending illegal terrorist propaganda, and we have to go after the money, remember how effective that was with the Mafia, right?" In an interview with The New York Sun before that speech, Mr. Giuliani's chief foreign policy adviser, Charles Hill said the Qaeda Web sites would be a priority issue for the campaign in the coming weeks.
The Bush administration has shut down some Web forums based in America, but has been less focused on those based on servers in foreign countries in part because of jurisdiction issues and also because the Web forums are monitored by intelligence agencies to track Qaeda's recruitment, propaganda and its global operations.
Mr. Kohlmann said yesterday in an interview, "Heretofore, the discussion has been limited because we want to get information about Al Qaeda that we never had. The kind of inside information, maybe there has not been an explicit awareness as long as we leave these Web sites online." But Mr. Kohlmann said the web forums were an immediate threat that must be aggressively countered.
"These are the new dark rooms where guys are planning trips and operations," Mr. Kohlmann said. "This is where people are teaching themselves to be terrorists online. It used to be you went to Afghanistan and this whole process took months and you had to travel thousands of miles.
What Al Qaeda has done is to simplify and franchise out the process, so that now someone can teach themselves to be a terrorist and can literally find their own way to the front line much more quickly."
January 15, 2008
WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda-operated Web forums are bringing young men into the terrorist movement, including some who are turning into suicide bombers in Iraq, says a new paper for the American military's think tank on the war against Islamic terrorism. The paper will be released Thursday in the monthly journal, Sentinel, of West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. It delves into what its author, Evan Kohlmann, calls Al Qaeda's "MySpace," the jihadi Web forums that have in some ways overtaken the role of Qaeda's physical training camps.
The paper examines Al Qaeda's first user-participatory Web forum, developed in 2004, known as Muntada al-Ansar, and it traces through the posts and subsequent eulogies on the site, how aspiring jihadis not only joined Al Qaeda, but traveled thousands of miles to detonate themselves in the battle of Iraq.
One case is a Sudanese man named Zaman al-Rahman, whose web nickname was Zaman al-Hawan, or era of Shame. He first started writing on the Muntada al-Ansar forum in April 2004. By November of that year, he stopped posting and in March 2005 the site published eulogies to him, claiming he had killed himself in the second battle for Falluja.
Today the Muntada al-Ansar forum is defunct, after the arrest, at age 21, of its founder, Younis Tsouli, who was known on the internet as "Terrorist 007." But the model for recruitment remains with the proliferation of other Qaeda Web sites, most notably the Ekhlaas forum, a key portal America's counterterrorism community uses to watch Al Qaeda online.
Mr. Kohlmann, who has worked as a consultant on terrorism for both the American and British governments, concludes that the Web forums for Al Qaeda in many ways replace the training camps the organization used to create terrorists in the 1990s.
"In the same way that traditional terrorist training camps once served as beacons for would-be jihadists, online support forums such as Muntada al-Ansar and al-Ekhlaas now operate as black holes in cyberspace, drawing in and indoctrinating sympathetic recruits, teaching them basic military skills and providing a web of social contacts that bridges directly into the ranks of Al Qaeda," he writes. "Rather than simply using the web as a weapon to destroy the infrastructure of their enemies, Al Qaeda is using it instead as a logistical tool to revolutionize the process of terrorist enlistment and training."
A senior editor at the Combating Terrorism Center, Erich Marquardt, yesterday said Mr. Kohlmann's paper discloses the connection between what might be called arm chair jihadists in cyberspace and the actual members of Al Qaeda. "There has always been a question as to whether forum participants are merely arm chair enthusiasts or actual jihadist linked fighters," Mr. Marquardt said. "Not only are these people deciding to pick up arms after spending time on the forums, you also have hard-core Qaeda operatives who are participating in the forums."
Thus far the only candidate for president from either major party to highlight the need for a comprehensive policy to deter online recruitment to Al Qaeda is Mayor Giuliani. On January 3, the Republican from New York tied the threat in part to Qaeda's fund raising, saying, "We have to be more aggressive about ending illegal terrorist propaganda, and we have to go after the money, remember how effective that was with the Mafia, right?" In an interview with The New York Sun before that speech, Mr. Giuliani's chief foreign policy adviser, Charles Hill said the Qaeda Web sites would be a priority issue for the campaign in the coming weeks.
The Bush administration has shut down some Web forums based in America, but has been less focused on those based on servers in foreign countries in part because of jurisdiction issues and also because the Web forums are monitored by intelligence agencies to track Qaeda's recruitment, propaganda and its global operations.
Mr. Kohlmann said yesterday in an interview, "Heretofore, the discussion has been limited because we want to get information about Al Qaeda that we never had. The kind of inside information, maybe there has not been an explicit awareness as long as we leave these Web sites online." But Mr. Kohlmann said the web forums were an immediate threat that must be aggressively countered.
"These are the new dark rooms where guys are planning trips and operations," Mr. Kohlmann said. "This is where people are teaching themselves to be terrorists online. It used to be you went to Afghanistan and this whole process took months and you had to travel thousands of miles.
What Al Qaeda has done is to simplify and franchise out the process, so that now someone can teach themselves to be a terrorist and can literally find their own way to the front line much more quickly."
Monday, January 14, 2008
Last Chance For a Legacy
YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
January 14, 2008
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/69448
President Bush will return empty-handed from his first voyage to some dicey Arab countries — including Saudi Arabia, the world's prime purveyor of Islamofascism. The Saudis will be able to buy more advanced weapons, and they will get a free pass to export Islamist terror as well as oil.
America should lead a sweeping transformation of the West's hesitant prosecution of the war on Islamofascist terror. With teeming armies of boorish fanatics on call, an assembly line of suicide bombers, bearded commissars at their pulpits, and feudal lords reeking of oil money, Islamofascists are the 21st-century enemy that communism was in the last century. Mr. Bush has one year left to do some lasting good and leave a legacy. He needs to issue the following directives:
• All American instruments of policy — including the National Security Council, the State Department, the Pentagon, and frontline embassies — should enunciate a clear demarcation line between Islam, a religion among others, and those who promote an extremist version of the faith in thousands of madrassas and mosques across Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Islamist countries, from the Saudi feudal regime of Riyadh and its satellites all the way to Pakistan, should not to benefit from American military and political alliances.
• Reform cannot remain a distant slogan proffered for convenience in places such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Real reform must be measured and tied to policy and military aid. America should demand an overhaul of educational systems and theological institutions, demanding the elimination discrimination against women and people of other faiths, and doing away with the rote learning and harrowing anti-Americanism dispensed by the state-owned Arab press.
• The Pentagon's top policy circles need to be reconfigured. Those who advocate abject submission to Islamic fundamentalism need to leave. In the latest dumbfounding episode, the office of the deputy secretary of defense, Gordon England, fired Major Stephen Coughlin, a lawyer and reserve military intelligence officer who has been the Pentagon's vigilant specialist on Islamic law and jihadist ideologies. His failing was being "insensitive." As the Washington Times reported, the major ran afoul of an increasing number of Muslim Arab advisers in the Pentagon's circles, particularly Mr. England's special assistant for international affairs, the Egyptian-born Hesham Islam. Amazingly, the secretary of defense appears to concur. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
• An urgent reform, indeed purge, is needed at Al Hurra, the American government-sponsored Arabic-language television network, and Radio Sawa, its radio counterpart. Out with Islamist sensitivity gurus. In with serious anti-Islamofascists who are not confused about who the enemy is. I have listened and watched these two instruments of American foreign diplomacy for years, in shock at the their shallowness and desire to be more Muslim than Muslims themselves. America's war on terror is premised on the rejection of religious tyranny and the separation of mosque and state. These principles must be translated into Arabic programming in America's official voices.
• Reform should also occur in international forums. There is no reason to allow Saudi, Libyan, or Sudanese teams of athletes into the Olympic games as long as those countries ignore women's rights, persecute minorities, and perpetrate massacres and mayhem in the name of religion. Civilization has a set of minimum requirements. Those who do not meet the standards cannot remain in the club. Thus we should kick Saudi Arabia out, as the writer Mona Eltahawy recently argued in a compelling commentary in the International Herald Tribune about the infamous story of the Saudi girl from Qatif who was condemned to 200 lashes by a religious court after being raped. We applied similar standards to the apartheid regime of South Africa for years. No decency, no go. The idea of allowing Muammar Gadhafi's Libya, a regime founded on murder, abduction, and terror, to head human-rights committees in U.N. circles is absurd.
"Change" has become the keyword in the American presidential race. America has the right to dream again about world leadership — not in Iraq, not in the mired mess of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and not in mediating endless struggles among barbarians, but in setting standards for modernity, freedom of expression, and beliefs.
Only when it becomes policy will the war on Islamofascism become Mr. Bush's legacy, too.
January 14, 2008
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/69448
President Bush will return empty-handed from his first voyage to some dicey Arab countries — including Saudi Arabia, the world's prime purveyor of Islamofascism. The Saudis will be able to buy more advanced weapons, and they will get a free pass to export Islamist terror as well as oil.
America should lead a sweeping transformation of the West's hesitant prosecution of the war on Islamofascist terror. With teeming armies of boorish fanatics on call, an assembly line of suicide bombers, bearded commissars at their pulpits, and feudal lords reeking of oil money, Islamofascists are the 21st-century enemy that communism was in the last century. Mr. Bush has one year left to do some lasting good and leave a legacy. He needs to issue the following directives:
• All American instruments of policy — including the National Security Council, the State Department, the Pentagon, and frontline embassies — should enunciate a clear demarcation line between Islam, a religion among others, and those who promote an extremist version of the faith in thousands of madrassas and mosques across Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Islamist countries, from the Saudi feudal regime of Riyadh and its satellites all the way to Pakistan, should not to benefit from American military and political alliances.
• Reform cannot remain a distant slogan proffered for convenience in places such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Real reform must be measured and tied to policy and military aid. America should demand an overhaul of educational systems and theological institutions, demanding the elimination discrimination against women and people of other faiths, and doing away with the rote learning and harrowing anti-Americanism dispensed by the state-owned Arab press.
• The Pentagon's top policy circles need to be reconfigured. Those who advocate abject submission to Islamic fundamentalism need to leave. In the latest dumbfounding episode, the office of the deputy secretary of defense, Gordon England, fired Major Stephen Coughlin, a lawyer and reserve military intelligence officer who has been the Pentagon's vigilant specialist on Islamic law and jihadist ideologies. His failing was being "insensitive." As the Washington Times reported, the major ran afoul of an increasing number of Muslim Arab advisers in the Pentagon's circles, particularly Mr. England's special assistant for international affairs, the Egyptian-born Hesham Islam. Amazingly, the secretary of defense appears to concur. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
• An urgent reform, indeed purge, is needed at Al Hurra, the American government-sponsored Arabic-language television network, and Radio Sawa, its radio counterpart. Out with Islamist sensitivity gurus. In with serious anti-Islamofascists who are not confused about who the enemy is. I have listened and watched these two instruments of American foreign diplomacy for years, in shock at the their shallowness and desire to be more Muslim than Muslims themselves. America's war on terror is premised on the rejection of religious tyranny and the separation of mosque and state. These principles must be translated into Arabic programming in America's official voices.
• Reform should also occur in international forums. There is no reason to allow Saudi, Libyan, or Sudanese teams of athletes into the Olympic games as long as those countries ignore women's rights, persecute minorities, and perpetrate massacres and mayhem in the name of religion. Civilization has a set of minimum requirements. Those who do not meet the standards cannot remain in the club. Thus we should kick Saudi Arabia out, as the writer Mona Eltahawy recently argued in a compelling commentary in the International Herald Tribune about the infamous story of the Saudi girl from Qatif who was condemned to 200 lashes by a religious court after being raped. We applied similar standards to the apartheid regime of South Africa for years. No decency, no go. The idea of allowing Muammar Gadhafi's Libya, a regime founded on murder, abduction, and terror, to head human-rights committees in U.N. circles is absurd.
"Change" has become the keyword in the American presidential race. America has the right to dream again about world leadership — not in Iraq, not in the mired mess of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and not in mediating endless struggles among barbarians, but in setting standards for modernity, freedom of expression, and beliefs.
Only when it becomes policy will the war on Islamofascism become Mr. Bush's legacy, too.
Arab lecturer forbids student from wearing Star of David
Arab lecturer forbids student from wearing Star of David
Sapir College instructor who gained notoriety when he refused to teach a student wearing an IDF uniform in spotlight once more after student claims he barred display of Israeli flag in his classroom, berated her for wearing Star of David necklace`Cinematography lecturer Nizar Hassan is still on suspension from him academic duties at the Sapir College in southern Israel pending a hearing on his divisive decision to bar a student wearing an IDF uniform from his class - but a new controversy has already reared its head and is further threatening the Hassan's future at the institute.
The letter, penned by a third-year student who attended a director's
workshop taught by Hassan, was sent to the committee investigating the
reserve soldier's case and may be used to prove the lecturer's behavior
towards the reserve soldier was not an isolated incident.
According to the unnamed student identified only as A', she arrived at one
of Hassan's classes with a backpack embroidered with the Israeli flag and
was promptly asked by the lecturer to turn the bag so that the flag would
not be facing him.
"I told him I would not do that - and then he approached me, grabbed the bag
and forcefully turned it around," writes A' in her letter, which was also
sent to College President Prof. Ze'ev Tzahor.
"When Hassan went back to the front of the class, I returned the bag to its
original position, he then came back and turned it again. I picked the bag
up a last time and spun it around.
"Nizar stopped the class, walked up to me, forcibly took the bag away from
me and stuffed it into his desk."
But the heated battle over the flag was not A's only complaint. According to
her letter, she met in private with Hassan some time later to discuss a
documentary film she intended to direct. During the meeting the lecturer
commented on the Star of David necklace A' was wearing.
"He asked me why I would even wear something like that. I answered that I
view it as a Zionist matter. He then told me that he refused to see me
wearing the necklace during the meeting," she wrote.
A' notes in her letter that prior to the aforementioned incidents she held
Hassan in the highest respect and had a great affinity for his classes.
"Hassan, with his charisma, was a great influence on me. Sometimes he would
call me after classes to ask how the lecture had gone and he always praised
me and my abilities. I remember several occasions where I sat with Nizar and
he would analyze my personality instead of my work," she says.
But speaking with Yedioth Aharonoth on Thursday evening, A' sounded
outraged. "I don't understand why he isn't kicked out of the college, I
sincerely hope that they understand that he has no business teaching there
because he crossed the line. He must not be allowed to come back."
The Sapir College said in response that the student's complaint is being
dealt with by the school's disciplinary committee. Hassan declined to
comment on the allegations.
Sapir College instructor who gained notoriety when he refused to teach a student wearing an IDF uniform in spotlight once more after student claims he barred display of Israeli flag in his classroom, berated her for wearing Star of David necklace`Cinematography lecturer Nizar Hassan is still on suspension from him academic duties at the Sapir College in southern Israel pending a hearing on his divisive decision to bar a student wearing an IDF uniform from his class - but a new controversy has already reared its head and is further threatening the Hassan's future at the institute.
The letter, penned by a third-year student who attended a director's
workshop taught by Hassan, was sent to the committee investigating the
reserve soldier's case and may be used to prove the lecturer's behavior
towards the reserve soldier was not an isolated incident.
According to the unnamed student identified only as A', she arrived at one
of Hassan's classes with a backpack embroidered with the Israeli flag and
was promptly asked by the lecturer to turn the bag so that the flag would
not be facing him.
"I told him I would not do that - and then he approached me, grabbed the bag
and forcefully turned it around," writes A' in her letter, which was also
sent to College President Prof. Ze'ev Tzahor.
"When Hassan went back to the front of the class, I returned the bag to its
original position, he then came back and turned it again. I picked the bag
up a last time and spun it around.
"Nizar stopped the class, walked up to me, forcibly took the bag away from
me and stuffed it into his desk."
But the heated battle over the flag was not A's only complaint. According to
her letter, she met in private with Hassan some time later to discuss a
documentary film she intended to direct. During the meeting the lecturer
commented on the Star of David necklace A' was wearing.
"He asked me why I would even wear something like that. I answered that I
view it as a Zionist matter. He then told me that he refused to see me
wearing the necklace during the meeting," she wrote.
A' notes in her letter that prior to the aforementioned incidents she held
Hassan in the highest respect and had a great affinity for his classes.
"Hassan, with his charisma, was a great influence on me. Sometimes he would
call me after classes to ask how the lecture had gone and he always praised
me and my abilities. I remember several occasions where I sat with Nizar and
he would analyze my personality instead of my work," she says.
But speaking with Yedioth Aharonoth on Thursday evening, A' sounded
outraged. "I don't understand why he isn't kicked out of the college, I
sincerely hope that they understand that he has no business teaching there
because he crossed the line. He must not be allowed to come back."
The Sapir College said in response that the student's complaint is being
dealt with by the school's disciplinary committee. Hassan declined to
comment on the allegations.
Al-Qaeda cell in Egypt included army officers, plotted Israel attacks
Robert spencer
At least a few Army officers in Egypt apparently want to pursue the jihad against Israel, and the Camp David Accords can take the hindmost. "Al-Jazeera: Egyptian cell plotted Israel attack," from the Jerusalem Post (thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater): Egyptian authorities arrested approximately two months ago a 14-member terror cell comprised of engineers and army officers that was planning to carry out terror attacks against Israel under the auspices of al-Qaeda, Al-Jazeera reported Saturday.
The cell-members were planning to assemble an unmanned aircraft to attack targets inside Israel, the report said, quoting Egyptian defense officials.
The cell allegedly manufactured rockets similar in design to those used by Palestinian terror groups. According to the report, the head of the cell - an engineer from the University of Alexandria - visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and met with a number of Afghan men, allegedly members of al-Qaeda.
At least a few Army officers in Egypt apparently want to pursue the jihad against Israel, and the Camp David Accords can take the hindmost. "Al-Jazeera: Egyptian cell plotted Israel attack," from the Jerusalem Post (thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater): Egyptian authorities arrested approximately two months ago a 14-member terror cell comprised of engineers and army officers that was planning to carry out terror attacks against Israel under the auspices of al-Qaeda, Al-Jazeera reported Saturday.
The cell-members were planning to assemble an unmanned aircraft to attack targets inside Israel, the report said, quoting Egyptian defense officials.
The cell allegedly manufactured rockets similar in design to those used by Palestinian terror groups. According to the report, the head of the cell - an engineer from the University of Alexandria - visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and met with a number of Afghan men, allegedly members of al-Qaeda.
Sderot families sue Egypt for Kassams
Dan Izenberg
Ten Sderot families are suing the Egyptian government for NIS 260 million in damages for family members who were killed or seriously wounded by Kassam rockets fired at the town from the Gaza Strip. The families, represented by attorney Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, hold Egypt responsible for the casualties in a lawsuit filed Monday in Beersheba District Court.
They wrote that the transfer of weapons, money and fugitives into Gaza had become an industry "under the patronage and encouragement of Egypt, in full cooperation between the Egyptian armed forces and the terrorist organizations, in which Egypt has granted clear and highly valuable logistical help to the terrorist organizations."
As a result of this help, Darshan-Leitner said, the terrorist organizations had smuggled into Gaza hundreds of tons of explosives, tens of thousands of automatic rifles, millions of bullets and other ammunition, hundreds of rockets, including those with a longer range than the rockets produced in the Gaza Strip itself, such as the Grad, which can reach 20 km., rocket-propelled grenades and launchers, hundreds of armor-piercing rockets and dozens of anti-aircraft missiles.
Egypt was therefore "directly, deliberately and maliciously responsible for the terrorist attacks and for the harm done to the plaintiffs as a result of these attacks," Darshan-Leitner said.
She wrote that since becoming responsible for patrolling the Philadelphi Corridor following Israel's disengagement for the Gaza Strip in 2005, Egypt had provided "free passage" for terrorists across the 12 km.-long corridor that constitutes the border between Sinai and Gaza. As a result, the terrorist organizations have been able to create a military infrastructure, dispatched terrorists into Israel via Sinai and smuggled terrorist experts via the Philadelphi Corridor into Gaza.
Darshan-Leitner referred to "conservative estimates" of 28 tons of dynamite having been smuggled from Egypt into Gaza in 2006, compared with six tons in 2005, when the IDF patrolled the border until it withdrew from the Strip late in the year.
Fourteen thousand rifles were smuggled into Gaza in 2006, compared with 9,300 the previous year, she said.
These figures indicate that what is going on is far more than simple smuggling, wrote Darshan-Leitner. "It involves such complex and huge-scale logistics that it cannot be considered mere smuggling," she wrote, and therefore could not be done without Egyptian complicity.
Ten Sderot families are suing the Egyptian government for NIS 260 million in damages for family members who were killed or seriously wounded by Kassam rockets fired at the town from the Gaza Strip. The families, represented by attorney Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, hold Egypt responsible for the casualties in a lawsuit filed Monday in Beersheba District Court.
They wrote that the transfer of weapons, money and fugitives into Gaza had become an industry "under the patronage and encouragement of Egypt, in full cooperation between the Egyptian armed forces and the terrorist organizations, in which Egypt has granted clear and highly valuable logistical help to the terrorist organizations."
As a result of this help, Darshan-Leitner said, the terrorist organizations had smuggled into Gaza hundreds of tons of explosives, tens of thousands of automatic rifles, millions of bullets and other ammunition, hundreds of rockets, including those with a longer range than the rockets produced in the Gaza Strip itself, such as the Grad, which can reach 20 km., rocket-propelled grenades and launchers, hundreds of armor-piercing rockets and dozens of anti-aircraft missiles.
Egypt was therefore "directly, deliberately and maliciously responsible for the terrorist attacks and for the harm done to the plaintiffs as a result of these attacks," Darshan-Leitner said.
She wrote that since becoming responsible for patrolling the Philadelphi Corridor following Israel's disengagement for the Gaza Strip in 2005, Egypt had provided "free passage" for terrorists across the 12 km.-long corridor that constitutes the border between Sinai and Gaza. As a result, the terrorist organizations have been able to create a military infrastructure, dispatched terrorists into Israel via Sinai and smuggled terrorist experts via the Philadelphi Corridor into Gaza.
Darshan-Leitner referred to "conservative estimates" of 28 tons of dynamite having been smuggled from Egypt into Gaza in 2006, compared with six tons in 2005, when the IDF patrolled the border until it withdrew from the Strip late in the year.
Fourteen thousand rifles were smuggled into Gaza in 2006, compared with 9,300 the previous year, she said.
These figures indicate that what is going on is far more than simple smuggling, wrote Darshan-Leitner. "It involves such complex and huge-scale logistics that it cannot be considered mere smuggling," she wrote, and therefore could not be done without Egyptian complicity.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Olmert Agrees to Allow in 50,000 Arab 'Refugees'
Hillel Fendel
The issue of "Arab refugees" has long been a matter of widespread consensus in Israel, with even left-wing parties declaring that allowing them into Israel would endanger its very existence as a Jewish state. Nevertheless, the subject does not appear to be going away. Reports are that Prime Minister Olmert has now agreed to allow 50,000 Arabs who left Israel in 1948 - or are descendants of those who did - to enter and live in Israel.Channel Ten reported Thursday night that in a private meeting between Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen, the two agreed that in the final-status agreement, Israel would withdraw from 92% of Judea and Samaria, including all the non-Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem. It was also agreed that 50,000 "refugees from 1948" would enter and live in the State of Israel.
Staffers in Olmert's office did not deny the report, and even hinted that it was at least partially accurate.
Olmert Went Further than Bush
U.S. President George Bush summed up his three-day visit to Israel on Friday by saying that a new Palestinian state, together with financial compensation, would be the solution to the refugee problem. The implication is that the refugees need not enter Israel.
"There must be an end to Israel's occupation [sic] that began in 1967," Bush said. "Palestine must serve as a national home for the Palestinians, and Israel - for the Jews."
Israel liberated Judea and Samaria during the Six Day War in 1967, capturing it, essentially, from no one. No country in the world, other than Great Britain and Pakistan, recognized Jordan's control over Judea and Samaria between 1948 and 1967.
Lebanon: Return, Not Money
Lebanon's Prime Minister Fuad Seniora does not accept Bush's position on the refugees. Seniora said that money alone is not enough, and that his country will continue to refuse to grant citizenship to the 400,000 refugees living within its borders. The number of Arabs who left Israel in 1948 has been estimated to be roughly a half-million, but millions now claim the 'right to return.'
Hamas, too, refuses to accept any solution other than the "return" to Israel of the millions of Arabs who claim that they themselves, or their ancestors, were forced to leave Israel in 1948. The Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said that Bush will soon leave the political arena, while the Hamas demands will remain forever: "A Palestinian state in the pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, the destruction of all the settlements, the release of all the Palestinian prisoners, the 'right of return' of all the Palestinian refugees, and continued adherence to the strategy of not giving up on even one inch of all of Palestine."
Arabs Denied Refugee Problem
Oft-forgotten is the fact that the refugee problem was not caused by Israel, but by the Arab states. "The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies," according to the Jordanian newspaper Filastin (February 19, 1949).
Joan Peters, in her classic work "From Time Immemorial," quotes (on page 13) an Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies finding that "the majority" of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, and that 68% left without seeing an Israeli soldier.
On April 27, 1950, the Arab National Committee of Haifa informed the Arab States: "The removal of the Arab inhabitants... was voluntary and was carried out at our request... The Arab delegation proudly asked for the evacuation of the Arabs and their removal to the neighboring Arab countries."
Zuheir Muhsein, the late Military Department head of the PLO and member of its Executive Council, told the Dutch daily Trouw, March 1977, "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity... Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people... to oppose Zionism."
The issue of "Arab refugees" has long been a matter of widespread consensus in Israel, with even left-wing parties declaring that allowing them into Israel would endanger its very existence as a Jewish state. Nevertheless, the subject does not appear to be going away. Reports are that Prime Minister Olmert has now agreed to allow 50,000 Arabs who left Israel in 1948 - or are descendants of those who did - to enter and live in Israel.Channel Ten reported Thursday night that in a private meeting between Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen, the two agreed that in the final-status agreement, Israel would withdraw from 92% of Judea and Samaria, including all the non-Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem. It was also agreed that 50,000 "refugees from 1948" would enter and live in the State of Israel.
Staffers in Olmert's office did not deny the report, and even hinted that it was at least partially accurate.
Olmert Went Further than Bush
U.S. President George Bush summed up his three-day visit to Israel on Friday by saying that a new Palestinian state, together with financial compensation, would be the solution to the refugee problem. The implication is that the refugees need not enter Israel.
"There must be an end to Israel's occupation [sic] that began in 1967," Bush said. "Palestine must serve as a national home for the Palestinians, and Israel - for the Jews."
Israel liberated Judea and Samaria during the Six Day War in 1967, capturing it, essentially, from no one. No country in the world, other than Great Britain and Pakistan, recognized Jordan's control over Judea and Samaria between 1948 and 1967.
Lebanon: Return, Not Money
Lebanon's Prime Minister Fuad Seniora does not accept Bush's position on the refugees. Seniora said that money alone is not enough, and that his country will continue to refuse to grant citizenship to the 400,000 refugees living within its borders. The number of Arabs who left Israel in 1948 has been estimated to be roughly a half-million, but millions now claim the 'right to return.'
Hamas, too, refuses to accept any solution other than the "return" to Israel of the millions of Arabs who claim that they themselves, or their ancestors, were forced to leave Israel in 1948. The Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said that Bush will soon leave the political arena, while the Hamas demands will remain forever: "A Palestinian state in the pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, the destruction of all the settlements, the release of all the Palestinian prisoners, the 'right of return' of all the Palestinian refugees, and continued adherence to the strategy of not giving up on even one inch of all of Palestine."
Arabs Denied Refugee Problem
Oft-forgotten is the fact that the refugee problem was not caused by Israel, but by the Arab states. "The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies," according to the Jordanian newspaper Filastin (February 19, 1949).
Joan Peters, in her classic work "From Time Immemorial," quotes (on page 13) an Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies finding that "the majority" of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, and that 68% left without seeing an Israeli soldier.
On April 27, 1950, the Arab National Committee of Haifa informed the Arab States: "The removal of the Arab inhabitants... was voluntary and was carried out at our request... The Arab delegation proudly asked for the evacuation of the Arabs and their removal to the neighboring Arab countries."
Zuheir Muhsein, the late Military Department head of the PLO and member of its Executive Council, told the Dutch daily Trouw, March 1977, "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity... Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people... to oppose Zionism."
Bush Alters Stand on Palestinians
Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writers
JERUSALEM, Jan. 10 -- President Bush said Thursday that Palestinian refugees should receive compensation for the loss of homes they fled or were forced to flee during the establishment of Israel and declared that there should be an end to Israel's "occupation" of lands seized in war four decades ago.
Bush made his comments after becoming the first U.S. president to visit Ramallah, the West Bank city that is the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, in an effort to invigorate negotiations aimed at securing a peace accord before the end of his presidency. While Bush has previously used language describing Israel's presence in the West Bank as an "occupation," his words Thursday seemed a pointed prod at the Israeli government, coming on his first trip to the country during his presidency. Palestinians have long seen Bush as a partisan of Israel, but some welcomed parts of his statement.
At the same time, Bush restated his past formulation that Israel cannot be expected to give up all the land captured during the 1967 war, parts of which now have large Israeli settlements, and that the two sides must make territorial compromises that reflect "current realities."
"There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967," Bush told reporters, referring to the Middle East war during which Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights. The third territory was seized from Syria, but a senior White House official said Thursday that Bush intended to refer only to the Palestinian areas.
"The agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people," Bush added. "These negotiations must ensure that Israel has secure, recognized and defensible borders. And they must ensure that the state of Palestine is viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent."
Throughout his visit to Jerusalem and the West Bank, Bush has sought to address the cynicism of Israelis and Palestinians, some of whom have accused him of merely mouthing rhetoric in his final-year drive for a peace deal.
As part of this effort, Bush named Air Force Lt. Gen. William M. Fraser III, assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to monitor the two sides' progress in meeting their obligations under the so-called road map, including Israeli promises to freeze settlement activity in the West Bank and Palestinian pledges to crack down on armed attacks against Israel. Earlier U.S. efforts to induce the two sides to implement the road map have been unsuccessful.
[Departing Israel on Friday en route to Kuwait on an extended Mideast swing, Bush said he would return in May to check on progress and participate in ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding as a modern state.
[Before leaving, Bush visited Capernaum, a site where Jesus is said to have performed miracles, toured the site of an ancient synagogue and visited with nuns outside the Church of the Beatitudes, a place where Jesus is believed to have delivered his famed "Sermon on the Mount," the Associated Press. Earlier in the day, Bush became misty-eyed as he toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. He called the memorial a "sobering reminder that evil exists and a call that when we find evil we must resist it."
[In Kuwait, Bush plans to meet Saturday with Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to to discuss conditions in Iraq. He plans to visit several other Gulf countries, then meet Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in Sharm el-Sheikh next Wednesday. ]
After a day spent with the Israelis, Bush devoted much of Thursday to the Palestinians. To reach Ramallah, Bush's motorcade crossed one of the Israeli security checkpoints that have inhibited freedom of movement and much economic activity in the West Bank.
At a news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Bush said he could "understand why the Palestinians are frustrated driving through checkpoints." He added, "I can also understand that until confidence is gained on both sides, why the Israelis would want there to be a sense of security."
Washington Post Staff Writers
JERUSALEM, Jan. 10 -- President Bush said Thursday that Palestinian refugees should receive compensation for the loss of homes they fled or were forced to flee during the establishment of Israel and declared that there should be an end to Israel's "occupation" of lands seized in war four decades ago.
Bush made his comments after becoming the first U.S. president to visit Ramallah, the West Bank city that is the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, in an effort to invigorate negotiations aimed at securing a peace accord before the end of his presidency. While Bush has previously used language describing Israel's presence in the West Bank as an "occupation," his words Thursday seemed a pointed prod at the Israeli government, coming on his first trip to the country during his presidency. Palestinians have long seen Bush as a partisan of Israel, but some welcomed parts of his statement.
At the same time, Bush restated his past formulation that Israel cannot be expected to give up all the land captured during the 1967 war, parts of which now have large Israeli settlements, and that the two sides must make territorial compromises that reflect "current realities."
"There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967," Bush told reporters, referring to the Middle East war during which Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights. The third territory was seized from Syria, but a senior White House official said Thursday that Bush intended to refer only to the Palestinian areas.
"The agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people," Bush added. "These negotiations must ensure that Israel has secure, recognized and defensible borders. And they must ensure that the state of Palestine is viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent."
Throughout his visit to Jerusalem and the West Bank, Bush has sought to address the cynicism of Israelis and Palestinians, some of whom have accused him of merely mouthing rhetoric in his final-year drive for a peace deal.
As part of this effort, Bush named Air Force Lt. Gen. William M. Fraser III, assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to monitor the two sides' progress in meeting their obligations under the so-called road map, including Israeli promises to freeze settlement activity in the West Bank and Palestinian pledges to crack down on armed attacks against Israel. Earlier U.S. efforts to induce the two sides to implement the road map have been unsuccessful.
[Departing Israel on Friday en route to Kuwait on an extended Mideast swing, Bush said he would return in May to check on progress and participate in ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding as a modern state.
[Before leaving, Bush visited Capernaum, a site where Jesus is said to have performed miracles, toured the site of an ancient synagogue and visited with nuns outside the Church of the Beatitudes, a place where Jesus is believed to have delivered his famed "Sermon on the Mount," the Associated Press. Earlier in the day, Bush became misty-eyed as he toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. He called the memorial a "sobering reminder that evil exists and a call that when we find evil we must resist it."
[In Kuwait, Bush plans to meet Saturday with Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to to discuss conditions in Iraq. He plans to visit several other Gulf countries, then meet Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in Sharm el-Sheikh next Wednesday. ]
After a day spent with the Israelis, Bush devoted much of Thursday to the Palestinians. To reach Ramallah, Bush's motorcade crossed one of the Israeli security checkpoints that have inhibited freedom of movement and much economic activity in the West Bank.
At a news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Bush said he could "understand why the Palestinians are frustrated driving through checkpoints." He added, "I can also understand that until confidence is gained on both sides, why the Israelis would want there to be a sense of security."
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Our Ambitions for the Middle East
MOHAMMED BIN RASHID AL MAKTOUM
January 12, 2008; Page A9
During President Bush's visit to Dubai on Monday, he will find a big city like no other that has risen from the Arabian desert. The joke making the rounds here is that the crane should be designated as Dubai's national bird, so extensive is the engineering activity. We also plan to keep on investing in markets and businesses abroad, including in our own neighborhood, where economic development has long been uneven. Our plans do not flow from mere ambition; they are a necessity. Consider that only 3% of our revenue is from exports of diminishing crude-oil reserves; 30% is from tourism, and there's increasing revenue from manufacturing and other sectors such as hospitality, technology and transportation.
[Dubai Photo]
The Burj Dubai tower rises in Dubai. The world's tallest building since July 2007, it has also become the tallest free-standing structure on earth.
But to term our emirate "Dubai Inc.," as some do, suggests that commerce, more than anything else, is our leitmotif. It is true, of course, that Dubai has been a trading port and a commercial hub for several centuries . But the ethos of Dubai was, and is, all about building bridges to the outside world; it was, and is, about creating connections with different cultures.
As a child, I learned how important it was to establish an enabling economy where the government provided incentives and an ethics-based regulatory environment, but left it to the inventiveness and energy of the private sector to expedite economic growth.
I learned my capitalism in the bazaars and boardwalks of Dubai. And perhaps the fundamental question that I learned to always ask was: How can we serve as agents of positive change? That's why I prefer to call Dubai "Catalyst Inc."
We live in a tough neighborhood. We live in a country that has been surrounded by difficult issues for several decades -- the Iraq-Iran war, the invasion of Kuwait, the current war in Iraq. Despite all that, Dubai has learned how to reinvent itself and cope.
We believe that helping to build a strong regional economy is our best opportunity for lasting social stability in the Middle East. That's why, for instance, we strongly support the new Gulf Common Market , which was launched on Jan. 1 and which will eventually lead to more regional economic integration, enhanced intra-Gulf trade, and a common currency for the six countries that form the Gulf Cooperation Council -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
There are more initiatives underway, many of which are aimed at ensuring prompt payment of salaries, and improvements in working conditions for unskilled foreign workers. While capitalism doesn't always create egalitarian societies, I like to think that in Dubai we are making the effort to cast the net wide when it comes to sharing prosperity.
I also like to think that we in Dubai also learn from our mistakes. We have had some object lessons. The Dubai Ports episode in the U.S. last year was one.
We analyzed our experiences, and we now approach our international investments in a much more holistic manner. We take the time to analyze the social, political and economic landscape, identify the stakeholders, and then carefully prepare the way by ensuring that the concerns of all parties are properly addressed. When disputes occur, we generally find a way to work through them.
When there was resistance to our investment in some European bourses, we listened carefully to various arguments and then successfully negotiated our way through the situation. As with CEOs in corporate boardrooms, leaders of sovereign nations need to act collaboratively in order to engender progress.
It doesn't take the visit of a capitalism-boosting American president for this region to freshly understand that it needs to accelerate economic progress.
When you look at the region, there are parts that are behind compared to the rest of the world -- behind when it comes to the economy, business and social development. We would like these less-developed parts of the region to be like Europe, Japan, Singapore and the rest of the industrialized world.
Nearly 1.5 billion people live in our neighborhood, and more than 50% of them are under the age of 25. In the Arab world alone, some 80 million young people -- out of a total population of 300 million -- are seeking jobs. I look at these young people as extraordinary resources for nation-building. If we can take our vision beyond Dubai, I think we can save a lot of young people from humiliating unemployment, from becoming extremists.
Education and entrepreneurship are the twin underpinnings for building a safer world. With these two institutions, we'll have fewer angry young people, fewer frustrated youths ready to embrace radicalism because they have nowhere else to turn.
I am often asked, "What does Dubai really want?" Well, here's my answer: What we want is the continuation of a journey that began with my forebears. I truly believe that human beings have a tremendous capability of changing and improving their lot. Change and modernization are inevitable in this age of galloping globalization. But we in the Middle East need to continually and carefully calibrate that change in the public interest.
I am also often asked, "What are Dubai's political ambitions?" Well, here's my answer: We don't have political ambitions. We don't want to be a superpower or any other kind of political power. The whole region is over-politicized as it is. We don't see politics as our thing, we don't want it, we don't think this is the right thing to do.
We are engaged in a different type of war that's really worth fighting -- fighting to alleviate poverty, generating better education, creating economic opportunity for people, and teaching people everywhere how to be entrepreneurs, to believe in themselves.
Humility and tolerance run deep in the Maktoum family and are very important in trying to serve one's people. I am anchored in that tradition, which is why my favorite activity is listening .
I always ask: How can I help? What can I do for people? How can I improve people's lives? That's part of my value system. It's too late for me to change that system, but it isn't too early for me to say to the world that the Dubai narrative is all about changing people's lives for the better through smart capitalism, willpower and positive energy.
Sheikh Mohammed completed two years as ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, and vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, earlier this week. His memoir will be published later this year.
Comment: This piece on behalf of Dubai talks about building bridges to the international community and becoming a Japan, Singapore, etc. However, it ignores that it boycotts Israel and has no plans to include the progressive economy of Israel in its efforts to reach the outside world.
Aggie
January 12, 2008; Page A9
During President Bush's visit to Dubai on Monday, he will find a big city like no other that has risen from the Arabian desert. The joke making the rounds here is that the crane should be designated as Dubai's national bird, so extensive is the engineering activity. We also plan to keep on investing in markets and businesses abroad, including in our own neighborhood, where economic development has long been uneven. Our plans do not flow from mere ambition; they are a necessity. Consider that only 3% of our revenue is from exports of diminishing crude-oil reserves; 30% is from tourism, and there's increasing revenue from manufacturing and other sectors such as hospitality, technology and transportation.
[Dubai Photo]
The Burj Dubai tower rises in Dubai. The world's tallest building since July 2007, it has also become the tallest free-standing structure on earth.
But to term our emirate "Dubai Inc.," as some do, suggests that commerce, more than anything else, is our leitmotif. It is true, of course, that Dubai has been a trading port and a commercial hub for several centuries . But the ethos of Dubai was, and is, all about building bridges to the outside world; it was, and is, about creating connections with different cultures.
As a child, I learned how important it was to establish an enabling economy where the government provided incentives and an ethics-based regulatory environment, but left it to the inventiveness and energy of the private sector to expedite economic growth.
I learned my capitalism in the bazaars and boardwalks of Dubai. And perhaps the fundamental question that I learned to always ask was: How can we serve as agents of positive change? That's why I prefer to call Dubai "Catalyst Inc."
We live in a tough neighborhood. We live in a country that has been surrounded by difficult issues for several decades -- the Iraq-Iran war, the invasion of Kuwait, the current war in Iraq. Despite all that, Dubai has learned how to reinvent itself and cope.
We believe that helping to build a strong regional economy is our best opportunity for lasting social stability in the Middle East. That's why, for instance, we strongly support the new Gulf Common Market , which was launched on Jan. 1 and which will eventually lead to more regional economic integration, enhanced intra-Gulf trade, and a common currency for the six countries that form the Gulf Cooperation Council -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
There are more initiatives underway, many of which are aimed at ensuring prompt payment of salaries, and improvements in working conditions for unskilled foreign workers. While capitalism doesn't always create egalitarian societies, I like to think that in Dubai we are making the effort to cast the net wide when it comes to sharing prosperity.
I also like to think that we in Dubai also learn from our mistakes. We have had some object lessons. The Dubai Ports episode in the U.S. last year was one.
We analyzed our experiences, and we now approach our international investments in a much more holistic manner. We take the time to analyze the social, political and economic landscape, identify the stakeholders, and then carefully prepare the way by ensuring that the concerns of all parties are properly addressed. When disputes occur, we generally find a way to work through them.
When there was resistance to our investment in some European bourses, we listened carefully to various arguments and then successfully negotiated our way through the situation. As with CEOs in corporate boardrooms, leaders of sovereign nations need to act collaboratively in order to engender progress.
It doesn't take the visit of a capitalism-boosting American president for this region to freshly understand that it needs to accelerate economic progress.
When you look at the region, there are parts that are behind compared to the rest of the world -- behind when it comes to the economy, business and social development. We would like these less-developed parts of the region to be like Europe, Japan, Singapore and the rest of the industrialized world.
Nearly 1.5 billion people live in our neighborhood, and more than 50% of them are under the age of 25. In the Arab world alone, some 80 million young people -- out of a total population of 300 million -- are seeking jobs. I look at these young people as extraordinary resources for nation-building. If we can take our vision beyond Dubai, I think we can save a lot of young people from humiliating unemployment, from becoming extremists.
Education and entrepreneurship are the twin underpinnings for building a safer world. With these two institutions, we'll have fewer angry young people, fewer frustrated youths ready to embrace radicalism because they have nowhere else to turn.
I am often asked, "What does Dubai really want?" Well, here's my answer: What we want is the continuation of a journey that began with my forebears. I truly believe that human beings have a tremendous capability of changing and improving their lot. Change and modernization are inevitable in this age of galloping globalization. But we in the Middle East need to continually and carefully calibrate that change in the public interest.
I am also often asked, "What are Dubai's political ambitions?" Well, here's my answer: We don't have political ambitions. We don't want to be a superpower or any other kind of political power. The whole region is over-politicized as it is. We don't see politics as our thing, we don't want it, we don't think this is the right thing to do.
We are engaged in a different type of war that's really worth fighting -- fighting to alleviate poverty, generating better education, creating economic opportunity for people, and teaching people everywhere how to be entrepreneurs, to believe in themselves.
Humility and tolerance run deep in the Maktoum family and are very important in trying to serve one's people. I am anchored in that tradition, which is why my favorite activity is listening .
I always ask: How can I help? What can I do for people? How can I improve people's lives? That's part of my value system. It's too late for me to change that system, but it isn't too early for me to say to the world that the Dubai narrative is all about changing people's lives for the better through smart capitalism, willpower and positive energy.
Sheikh Mohammed completed two years as ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, and vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, earlier this week. His memoir will be published later this year.
Comment: This piece on behalf of Dubai talks about building bridges to the international community and becoming a Japan, Singapore, etc. However, it ignores that it boycotts Israel and has no plans to include the progressive economy of Israel in its efforts to reach the outside world.
Aggie
Fitzgerald: Bush, a "Palestinian" state, and "Palestinian" propaganda
“Viable"..."contiguous" -- words used by President Bush to describe a "Palestinian" state
A "Palestinian" state is not "viable." It has no natural resources and no human resources. It would have far too many people, because of the fantastic size of Arab families, an overbreeding that is deliberately encouraged in order to swamp, so it is hoped, the Infidel enemy. It can only exist on the basis of permanent handouts from others. Let those handouts come from other Arabs, and stop the payments from the Infidels.
As for a state that is "contiguous," that would mean that Gaza and the West Bank would somehow meet through a corridor of land. But such a corridor of land would cut Israel in two. Israel would no longer be "contiguous."
Does Bush know the terms of the Mandate for Palestine, or what that Mandate (one of many mandates planned, though all the others resulted in four Arab states, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan -- four of the present twenty-two members of the Arab League) was supposed to achieve? Does he know what its dimensions were supposed to be? Does he know anything about the history of the Ottoman vilayets that came to constitute Mandatory Palestine? Does he know about land ownership -- with 90% of the land being owned by the Ottoman state, then passing to the Mandatory Authority, and then to its intended and rightful successor, the state of Israel? Does he know anything about the massive infusion of Arabs, chiefly from Egypt and Mesopotamia, on top of those who had arrived in the 1840s, as veterans of Abd el-Kabir's campaign in Algeria, or with Mehmet Ali, and who, along with the later arrivals, are now depicted as having been there "since time immemorial"? No, I don't see how someone so ignorant and so dumb could, since almost no one, including the very intelligent, know much or anything about that.
And the Israeli government seems peopled with those who have never learned, or chosen to forget, everything I have mentioned, and a good deal else I might have mentioned, and would have, had I not been concerned for my own health, and the effect on it of my own fury.
And speaking of those who have never learned, a Jihad Watch reader recently claimed that “a substantial percentage of Robert's fans are fundamentalist Christians who are simply to eager to bash another major religion they deem to be ‘wrong.’ Rather than have peace established in the Middle East and deprive Islamic Supremacist of their complaint that US unfairly supports Israel, you would keep the status quo because of your BIBLE. How is that far removed from the actions of Islamic Supremacists?"
Actually, there are quite a few atheists in this particular foxhole. Atheists who happen to know the history of the treatment, or mistreatment, of Jews and other non-Muslim (and non-Arab) minorities in the Middle East. Atheists who know the history of the Jews, including what happened in "Palestine" after the Muslim invasion. Atheists willing to do research into the cadastral (land ownership) records, and the demographic records, of that dusty part of the Ottoman Empire that, split between several vilayets and the separate sanjak of Jerusalem, did not have more than 100,000 people in the mid-19th century, with 15,000 in Jerusalem -- a plurality of them, even then, Jews. Atheists who know perfectly well why Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Jan Christiaan Smuts, and others who founded the League of Nations found it right, found it proper, found it just, to establish a Jewish State, among the various mandates. Four Arab countries came out of those mandates, while the Kurds and the Armenians never had the promises made to them fulfilled, and the Jews received a dimidiated territory -- only historic "Palestine" west of the Jordan.
And that, of course, is precisely the territory that everyone should know perfectly well that the Arabs and Muslims have no intention of letting the Israelis permanently possess, no matter how many further territorial and other absurd concessions the Israelis are forced to make. Their entire negotiating history for the past 59 years has been to give up, give up, give up, tangible gains for promises that are always and everywhere eventually breached. This should come as no surprise for those who follow the Treaty of Al Hudaibiyya, and as Majid Khadduri points out in War and Peace in the Law of Islam, Muhammad's example in that treaty, the 10-year hudna with the Meccans, broken by him after 18 months, is normative for Muslims.
Yes, there are plenty of atheists, Protestants and Catholics too, and Hindus and Buddhists, who realize all this. And would you believe it? There are even Muslims of the Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only variety, and certainly every Muslim apostate I have ever met, who are deeply worried about, concerned about, the State of Israel, and who refuse to contemplate any further surrenders to the Lesser Jihad that will forever be conducted against it.
Not everyone who supports Israel, contrary to the silly stereotype, is a holy-roller Bible-thumper. In fact, it only takes two things. It takes specific historical knowledge, and moral sense. And even if one lacks that knowledge, and that sense, one should know that any further triumphs by Arab Muslims, either by pressuring Israel into still more idiotic and dangerous concessions, or by accepting the Arab narrative that attempts to disguise the Lesser Jihad as a "nationalist struggle" of that recently-invented (circa late 1967) "Palestinian people" (see Zohair Mohsen on this), will only whet, not sate, the Muslim appetite. In other words, all you have to know, now, if you are a non-Muslim, is that any concession, anywhere, to Muslim demands by any non-Muslim people or state, will be bad for all non-Muslims.
That is what many Infidels are coming to recognize. And in so doing, all the hard work of all those Arab, Muslim, and "Palestinian" propagandists over the past forty years is coming unraveled, coming undone.
A "Palestinian" state is not "viable." It has no natural resources and no human resources. It would have far too many people, because of the fantastic size of Arab families, an overbreeding that is deliberately encouraged in order to swamp, so it is hoped, the Infidel enemy. It can only exist on the basis of permanent handouts from others. Let those handouts come from other Arabs, and stop the payments from the Infidels.
As for a state that is "contiguous," that would mean that Gaza and the West Bank would somehow meet through a corridor of land. But such a corridor of land would cut Israel in two. Israel would no longer be "contiguous."
Does Bush know the terms of the Mandate for Palestine, or what that Mandate (one of many mandates planned, though all the others resulted in four Arab states, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan -- four of the present twenty-two members of the Arab League) was supposed to achieve? Does he know what its dimensions were supposed to be? Does he know anything about the history of the Ottoman vilayets that came to constitute Mandatory Palestine? Does he know about land ownership -- with 90% of the land being owned by the Ottoman state, then passing to the Mandatory Authority, and then to its intended and rightful successor, the state of Israel? Does he know anything about the massive infusion of Arabs, chiefly from Egypt and Mesopotamia, on top of those who had arrived in the 1840s, as veterans of Abd el-Kabir's campaign in Algeria, or with Mehmet Ali, and who, along with the later arrivals, are now depicted as having been there "since time immemorial"? No, I don't see how someone so ignorant and so dumb could, since almost no one, including the very intelligent, know much or anything about that.
And the Israeli government seems peopled with those who have never learned, or chosen to forget, everything I have mentioned, and a good deal else I might have mentioned, and would have, had I not been concerned for my own health, and the effect on it of my own fury.
And speaking of those who have never learned, a Jihad Watch reader recently claimed that “a substantial percentage of Robert's fans are fundamentalist Christians who are simply to eager to bash another major religion they deem to be ‘wrong.’ Rather than have peace established in the Middle East and deprive Islamic Supremacist of their complaint that US unfairly supports Israel, you would keep the status quo because of your BIBLE. How is that far removed from the actions of Islamic Supremacists?"
Actually, there are quite a few atheists in this particular foxhole. Atheists who happen to know the history of the treatment, or mistreatment, of Jews and other non-Muslim (and non-Arab) minorities in the Middle East. Atheists who know the history of the Jews, including what happened in "Palestine" after the Muslim invasion. Atheists willing to do research into the cadastral (land ownership) records, and the demographic records, of that dusty part of the Ottoman Empire that, split between several vilayets and the separate sanjak of Jerusalem, did not have more than 100,000 people in the mid-19th century, with 15,000 in Jerusalem -- a plurality of them, even then, Jews. Atheists who know perfectly well why Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Jan Christiaan Smuts, and others who founded the League of Nations found it right, found it proper, found it just, to establish a Jewish State, among the various mandates. Four Arab countries came out of those mandates, while the Kurds and the Armenians never had the promises made to them fulfilled, and the Jews received a dimidiated territory -- only historic "Palestine" west of the Jordan.
And that, of course, is precisely the territory that everyone should know perfectly well that the Arabs and Muslims have no intention of letting the Israelis permanently possess, no matter how many further territorial and other absurd concessions the Israelis are forced to make. Their entire negotiating history for the past 59 years has been to give up, give up, give up, tangible gains for promises that are always and everywhere eventually breached. This should come as no surprise for those who follow the Treaty of Al Hudaibiyya, and as Majid Khadduri points out in War and Peace in the Law of Islam, Muhammad's example in that treaty, the 10-year hudna with the Meccans, broken by him after 18 months, is normative for Muslims.
Yes, there are plenty of atheists, Protestants and Catholics too, and Hindus and Buddhists, who realize all this. And would you believe it? There are even Muslims of the Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only variety, and certainly every Muslim apostate I have ever met, who are deeply worried about, concerned about, the State of Israel, and who refuse to contemplate any further surrenders to the Lesser Jihad that will forever be conducted against it.
Not everyone who supports Israel, contrary to the silly stereotype, is a holy-roller Bible-thumper. In fact, it only takes two things. It takes specific historical knowledge, and moral sense. And even if one lacks that knowledge, and that sense, one should know that any further triumphs by Arab Muslims, either by pressuring Israel into still more idiotic and dangerous concessions, or by accepting the Arab narrative that attempts to disguise the Lesser Jihad as a "nationalist struggle" of that recently-invented (circa late 1967) "Palestinian people" (see Zohair Mohsen on this), will only whet, not sate, the Muslim appetite. In other words, all you have to know, now, if you are a non-Muslim, is that any concession, anywhere, to Muslim demands by any non-Muslim people or state, will be bad for all non-Muslims.
That is what many Infidels are coming to recognize. And in so doing, all the hard work of all those Arab, Muslim, and "Palestinian" propagandists over the past forty years is coming unraveled, coming undone.
Friday, January 11, 2008
MR. PRESIDENT, YOU’VE BEEN MISLED!
President G.W. Bush: “One of the interesting breakthroughs has been that the Israelis have come to believe, that it's in their long-term interest that we work toward a Palestinian democracy [state], otherwise, the demographics will overwhelm the Israeli democracy.” (Oct. 3, 2007, Lancaster, PA Chamber of Commerce). President Bush echoed that message at GOP fundraisers in Texas and NY. However, the assumption that Jews are doomed to become a minority, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, defies demographic reality, as documented by the World Bank, the Palestinian Health and Education Ministries, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS), Gallup and the groundbreaking study by the Zimmerman-led American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG):
1. Israel’s Jewish fertility rate (2.8 children per woman) is the highest in the industrialized world and trending upward.
2. Israel’s Jewish-Arab fertility gap has been reduced from 6 children in the 1960s to 0.8 child in 2007. Arab fertility has declined 20 year faster than projected by the ICBS.
3. A 36% increase in the annual number of Israeli Jewish births – between 1995 and 2007 – while the number of annual Israeli Arab births has stabilized at 39,000. The one million Olim (Jewish immigrants) from the USSR have contributed significantly to the robust increase: They arrived with a typical Russian fertility rate of 1 child per woman, and are speedily catching up with the secular Jewish fertility: 3, 2 or 1 children per woman.
4. The World Bank documents a decrease in Palestinian fertility rate (a 32% gap between Palestinian projection and actual documentation of six year old youth!) and acceleration of Palestinian net-emigration.
5. Reduced population growth rate in Judea & Samaria has been caused by: high emigration (since the 1950 Jordanian occupation, accelerating since the 2000 2nd Intifadah and further escalation since the 2006 Hamas victory) and declining fertility. Fertility decline has been triggered by reduced teen-pregnancy (which is a key Arab demographic competitive edge), all-time-high divorce rate, unprecedented use of contraceptives, transformation from rural society (70% in 1967) – where each child is a helping hand - to urban society (60% in 2007) and expanded higher education, especially for women (higher median wedding age).
6. According to a March 17, 2006 Gallup study, Arab women – in Gaza, Judea & Samaria and the “Green Line” – prefer less children, while Jewish women prefer additional children. Prior Gallup studies suggest that actual fertility tend to converge with fertility preference.
7. The number of Judea & Samaria Arabs has been inflated by 70% (1.5 million and not 2.5 million!), by counting overseas residents, including Jerusalem’s Israeli Arabs, over-projecting birth, projecting net-immigration, etc. The Jewish majority west of the Jordan River has been robust and long-term since the 1960s – 67% without Gaza and 60% including Gaza, compared with a 33% minority in 1947 and an 8% minority in 1900. Since 1882 – the beginning of modern day Aliya (Jewish immigration to Israel) – the Jewish population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean has grown 164 times, while the Arab population grew 6 times. Since 1949, the Jewish population grew 9 times, while the Arab population grew 3 times.
8. President Bush’s Israeli advisors have misled him: Demography constitutes a strategic asset, not a liability, for the Jewish State. Anyone contending that there is a demographic machete at the throat of the Jewish State is either drastically mistaken or outrageously misleading!
1. Israel’s Jewish fertility rate (2.8 children per woman) is the highest in the industrialized world and trending upward.
2. Israel’s Jewish-Arab fertility gap has been reduced from 6 children in the 1960s to 0.8 child in 2007. Arab fertility has declined 20 year faster than projected by the ICBS.
3. A 36% increase in the annual number of Israeli Jewish births – between 1995 and 2007 – while the number of annual Israeli Arab births has stabilized at 39,000. The one million Olim (Jewish immigrants) from the USSR have contributed significantly to the robust increase: They arrived with a typical Russian fertility rate of 1 child per woman, and are speedily catching up with the secular Jewish fertility: 3, 2 or 1 children per woman.
4. The World Bank documents a decrease in Palestinian fertility rate (a 32% gap between Palestinian projection and actual documentation of six year old youth!) and acceleration of Palestinian net-emigration.
5. Reduced population growth rate in Judea & Samaria has been caused by: high emigration (since the 1950 Jordanian occupation, accelerating since the 2000 2nd Intifadah and further escalation since the 2006 Hamas victory) and declining fertility. Fertility decline has been triggered by reduced teen-pregnancy (which is a key Arab demographic competitive edge), all-time-high divorce rate, unprecedented use of contraceptives, transformation from rural society (70% in 1967) – where each child is a helping hand - to urban society (60% in 2007) and expanded higher education, especially for women (higher median wedding age).
6. According to a March 17, 2006 Gallup study, Arab women – in Gaza, Judea & Samaria and the “Green Line” – prefer less children, while Jewish women prefer additional children. Prior Gallup studies suggest that actual fertility tend to converge with fertility preference.
7. The number of Judea & Samaria Arabs has been inflated by 70% (1.5 million and not 2.5 million!), by counting overseas residents, including Jerusalem’s Israeli Arabs, over-projecting birth, projecting net-immigration, etc. The Jewish majority west of the Jordan River has been robust and long-term since the 1960s – 67% without Gaza and 60% including Gaza, compared with a 33% minority in 1947 and an 8% minority in 1900. Since 1882 – the beginning of modern day Aliya (Jewish immigration to Israel) – the Jewish population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean has grown 164 times, while the Arab population grew 6 times. Since 1949, the Jewish population grew 9 times, while the Arab population grew 3 times.
8. President Bush’s Israeli advisors have misled him: Demography constitutes a strategic asset, not a liability, for the Jewish State. Anyone contending that there is a demographic machete at the throat of the Jewish State is either drastically mistaken or outrageously misleading!
Bush Brands Israel As Aggressor
This afternoon President Bush made a public statement on the "peace process" at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
His statement is making headlines that are damaging to the State of Israel.
For example, he said, "The point of departure for permanent status negotiations...seems clear: There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967." By making this point, President Bush has let the Palestinians off the hook. While the President refers to the "Roadmap" he is simply giving the Palestinians a free pass on the central provision that the first stage of the Roadmap is the successful end to terror strikes against Israel.
This, everyone knows, has never happened.
Instead Israel is now the aggressor that must make the most important concessions. Israel must move its defense forces out of what Bush calls the occupied territories. Israel security concerns are skimmed over with statements calling on the Palestinians to control terror. Something they have never done.
And to add insult to injury Bush clearly states that he believes Israel must loosen its control of Jerusalem.
The Bush Administration has gone from treating Israel as an ally against our nation's common enemies to pressuring Israel to make dangerous concessions when there is no partner for peace.
Little Green Footballs calls Bush's initiatives The State of Delusion.
Bush's change of course can not go unanswered. If you have not signed our petition to save a united Jerusalem please do so and pass it along for others to sign and circulate. From the same web-page you can send letters to Olmert and Bush.
While we are disappointed by President Bush's tone we are not defeated in our campaign to save Jerusalem and Israel.
This past week we sponsored a Human Chain around Jerusalem that demonstrated Israel's commitment to a united Jerusalem. Our efforts in Israel have educated tens of thousands of people to the dangers facing Jerusalem. We will continue these efforts.
Bush Bashed: While President Bush was forcefully interjecting himself into Israeli domestic politics (lecturing members of the government coalition to support Olmert's lead) Eli Yishai of Shas told the President that it is ridiculous to sign a peace accord with Abbas since he only controls half of the Palestinian land and that Jerusalem can not be divided. While Shas should not be in this government with those views Yishai deserves credit for confronting the President with some truths.
And in a private meeting, Netanyahu also told Bush to lay off Jerusalem and to abandon this dangerous peace initiative he is currently pursuing.
His statement is making headlines that are damaging to the State of Israel.
For example, he said, "The point of departure for permanent status negotiations...seems clear: There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967." By making this point, President Bush has let the Palestinians off the hook. While the President refers to the "Roadmap" he is simply giving the Palestinians a free pass on the central provision that the first stage of the Roadmap is the successful end to terror strikes against Israel.
This, everyone knows, has never happened.
Instead Israel is now the aggressor that must make the most important concessions. Israel must move its defense forces out of what Bush calls the occupied territories. Israel security concerns are skimmed over with statements calling on the Palestinians to control terror. Something they have never done.
And to add insult to injury Bush clearly states that he believes Israel must loosen its control of Jerusalem.
The Bush Administration has gone from treating Israel as an ally against our nation's common enemies to pressuring Israel to make dangerous concessions when there is no partner for peace.
Little Green Footballs calls Bush's initiatives The State of Delusion.
Bush's change of course can not go unanswered. If you have not signed our petition to save a united Jerusalem please do so and pass it along for others to sign and circulate. From the same web-page you can send letters to Olmert and Bush.
While we are disappointed by President Bush's tone we are not defeated in our campaign to save Jerusalem and Israel.
This past week we sponsored a Human Chain around Jerusalem that demonstrated Israel's commitment to a united Jerusalem. Our efforts in Israel have educated tens of thousands of people to the dangers facing Jerusalem. We will continue these efforts.
Bush Bashed: While President Bush was forcefully interjecting himself into Israeli domestic politics (lecturing members of the government coalition to support Olmert's lead) Eli Yishai of Shas told the President that it is ridiculous to sign a peace accord with Abbas since he only controls half of the Palestinian land and that Jerusalem can not be divided. While Shas should not be in this government with those views Yishai deserves credit for confronting the President with some truths.
And in a private meeting, Netanyahu also told Bush to lay off Jerusalem and to abandon this dangerous peace initiative he is currently pursuing.
Libyan Envoy Sparks Criticism at Security Council
BENNY AVNI - Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 10, 2008
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/69292
UNITED NATIONS—Libya stopped the Security Council from criticizing Sudan yesterday and prevented the condemnation of a rocket attack against Israel, sparking criticism of the North African nation's ability to function as a responsible member of the U.N.'s most important body. According to two senior Western diplomats, the Libyan ambassador to the United Nations, Giadalla Ettalhi, resisted in closed-door negotiations the adoption of a statement publicly criticizing Libya's ally, Sudan, and condemning an attack against Israel. Mr. Ettalhi, the diplomats said, must have been "well aware" that it would be expected to do this as one of his first acts as president of the Security Council.
Asked about the issue, Mr. Ettalhi, citing diplomatic protocol, said he would not comment on internal council consultations.
Libya assumed a temporary seat on the 15-member council on January 1, wherein Mr. Ettalhi immediately became its rotating president. After council statements are agreed upon, they are customarily read by the U.N. body's president in front of television cameras, and they are widely available.
Yesterday's disagreement came after the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, briefed the council, accusing Sudan of obstructing the deployment of a joint U.N.-African Union force in Darfur to protect civilians subjected to atrocities, which America has defined as genocide. Mr. Guéhenno also said member states were slow in contributing troops and material to the force. Sweden and Norway announced yesterday that they would not send 400 troops to join the force. Mr. Guéhenno also told the council that a local Sudanese army commander had made a phone call to U.N. officials, confirming that his troops were responsible for an armed attack against a U.N. convoy in Darfur on Monday. Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, however, told The New York Sun yesterday that the phone call could have been faked. He denied Sudan's involvement in the attack, placing the blame instead on rebel leaders and troops of the armed forces of neighboring Chad.
Separately, Mr. Guéhenno detailed to the council events surrounding the firing of two rockets Tuesday on the Israeli town of Shlomi, near the border with Lebanon. Because of a thunderstorm, Mr. Guéhenno told reporters that the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon — the largest U.N. peacekeeping operation — was unable to detect the firing of the rockets. After two days of hand-wringing, a U.N. spokesman released a statement last night that read: "If it is determined that there was firing from within Lebanon, the incident would be a serious violation" of the Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
After the State Department yesterday announced a plan to introduce new arms sanctions against Sudan, America tried to sponsor a council statement condemning the attack on the U.N. force in Darfur. But China, Russia, and Libya resisted any reference to Sudan's complicity in the attack. Libya was the only member later that resisted a separate, French-proposed statement that would have "strongly condemned" the rocket attack against Israel.
"If a country today asked the Security Council not to condemn anymore any attacks against Israel, then we will have a problem," the French U.N. ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said. "It will be a setback." He added that the proposed statement on Lebanon was "balanced."
January 10, 2008
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/69292
UNITED NATIONS—Libya stopped the Security Council from criticizing Sudan yesterday and prevented the condemnation of a rocket attack against Israel, sparking criticism of the North African nation's ability to function as a responsible member of the U.N.'s most important body. According to two senior Western diplomats, the Libyan ambassador to the United Nations, Giadalla Ettalhi, resisted in closed-door negotiations the adoption of a statement publicly criticizing Libya's ally, Sudan, and condemning an attack against Israel. Mr. Ettalhi, the diplomats said, must have been "well aware" that it would be expected to do this as one of his first acts as president of the Security Council.
Asked about the issue, Mr. Ettalhi, citing diplomatic protocol, said he would not comment on internal council consultations.
Libya assumed a temporary seat on the 15-member council on January 1, wherein Mr. Ettalhi immediately became its rotating president. After council statements are agreed upon, they are customarily read by the U.N. body's president in front of television cameras, and they are widely available.
Yesterday's disagreement came after the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, briefed the council, accusing Sudan of obstructing the deployment of a joint U.N.-African Union force in Darfur to protect civilians subjected to atrocities, which America has defined as genocide. Mr. Guéhenno also said member states were slow in contributing troops and material to the force. Sweden and Norway announced yesterday that they would not send 400 troops to join the force. Mr. Guéhenno also told the council that a local Sudanese army commander had made a phone call to U.N. officials, confirming that his troops were responsible for an armed attack against a U.N. convoy in Darfur on Monday. Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, however, told The New York Sun yesterday that the phone call could have been faked. He denied Sudan's involvement in the attack, placing the blame instead on rebel leaders and troops of the armed forces of neighboring Chad.
Separately, Mr. Guéhenno detailed to the council events surrounding the firing of two rockets Tuesday on the Israeli town of Shlomi, near the border with Lebanon. Because of a thunderstorm, Mr. Guéhenno told reporters that the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon — the largest U.N. peacekeeping operation — was unable to detect the firing of the rockets. After two days of hand-wringing, a U.N. spokesman released a statement last night that read: "If it is determined that there was firing from within Lebanon, the incident would be a serious violation" of the Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
After the State Department yesterday announced a plan to introduce new arms sanctions against Sudan, America tried to sponsor a council statement condemning the attack on the U.N. force in Darfur. But China, Russia, and Libya resisted any reference to Sudan's complicity in the attack. Libya was the only member later that resisted a separate, French-proposed statement that would have "strongly condemned" the rocket attack against Israel.
"If a country today asked the Security Council not to condemn anymore any attacks against Israel, then we will have a problem," the French U.N. ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said. "It will be a setback." He added that the proposed statement on Lebanon was "balanced."
Ms. Magazine Blocks Ad on Israeli Women
January 10, 2008 ― Ms. Magazine has long been in the forefront of the fight for equal rights and equal opportunities for women. Apparently that is not the case if the women happen to be Israeli.
The magazine has turned down an AJCongress advertisement that did nothing more controversial than call attention to the fact that women currently occupy three of the most significant positions of power in Israeli public life. The proposed ad ( The Ad Ms. Didn't Want You To See) included a text that merely said, "This is Israel," under photographs of President of the Supreme Court Dorit Beinish, Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik. "What other conclusion can we reach," asked Richard Gordon, President of AJCongress, "except that the publishers － and if the publishers are right, a significant number of Ms. Magazine readers － are so hostile to Israel that they do not even want to see an ad that says something positive about Israel?"
When Director of AJCongress' Commission for Women's Empowerment Harriet Kurlander tried to place the ad, she was told that publishing the ad "will set off a firestorm" and that "there are very strong opinions" on the subject － the subject presumably being whether or not one can say anything positive about Israel. Ms. Magazine publisher Eleanor Smeal failed to respond to a signed-for certified letter with a copy of the ad as well as numerous calls by Mr. Gordon over a period of weeks.
A Ms. Magazine representative, Susie Gilligan, whom the Ms. Magazine masthead lists under the publisher's office, told Ms. Kurlander that the magazine "would love to have an ad from you on women's empowerment, or reproductive freedom, but not on this." Ms. Gilligan failed to elaborate what "this" is.
"The only conclusion that one can reach from this behavior is that Ms. Magazine feels that an ad highlighting the accomplishments of three incredibly talented and dedicated women would offend their readership. Since there is nothing about the ad itself that is offensive, it is obviously the nationality of the women pictured that the management of Ms. fears their readership would find objectionable . For a publication that holds itself out to be in the forefront of the Women's Movement, this is nothing short of disgusting and despicable," stated Mr. Gordon.
Ms. Magazine has a long record of publishing advertisements rallying readers to support reproductive choice; opposing the Religious Right; highlighting the fragility of the pro-Roe v. Wade majority on the Supreme Court; charging that "Pat Robertson and his Religious Right cohorts don't like individual freedom;" announcing support for the "struggle for freedom and human rights;" opposing the Bush administration's campaign to fill federal courts with judges who "will reverse decades of progress on reproductive rights and privacy, civil rights, religious liberty, environmental protection and so much more;" as well as accusing the Bush administration of being "bent on rewarding big corporations and the rich, turning back the clock on women's rights and civil rights, and promoting a U.S. empire abroad."
"This flagship publication of the American women's empowerment movement publishes ads that are controversial in the general culture but not so among its readership," Ms. Kurlander said. "Obviously, Ms. believes our ad would enflame a significant portion of their readers."
Mr. Gordon added, "What really amazes me is that just recently, in their Winter 2007 issue, Ms. ran a cover story with a picture of Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi with the heading in big letters: "This is What a Speaker Looks Like." While Ms. has every reason to be proud of Speaker Pelosi and her accomplishments, as are we, the only discernable difference between Speaker Pelosi and Speaker Itzik apparently is that Speaker Pelosi is not Israeli."
Mr. Gordon noted that while Israel was apparently too hot to handle, Ms. Magazine did not extend that taboo to Arab and Moslem women. "What is even more amazing is that, while refusing to publish a simple ad praising three very notable women, women who embody the ideal that Ms. Magazine seemingly espouses, Ms. has run a cover article in the Fall 2003 issue on Queen Noor of Jordan, has featured a number of articles on Muslim women, and even ran an article in the Winter 2004 issue entitled, 'Images of Palestine,' which discussed the Ramallah Film Festival and gave sympathetic reviews to films concerning 'the liberation of South Lebanon' from Israel as well as numerous films which portrayed terrorism as legitimate 'revolutionary' activity against Israel and miscast Israel's activities to counter terrorism as 'oppressive.'"
"Clearly Ms. has changed a great deal from the days when AJCongress members and leaders of the AJCongress' Commission for Women's Equality － including Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Ms. co-founder Letty Pogrebin － were at the forefront of the Women's Movement that led to the creation of Ms. Magazine."
AJCongress President Gordon concluded, "Ms. has the right to turn down our ad. But in exercising that right, it has spoken loudly about itself and its readership, and their lingering hostility to Israel."
Mr. Gordon and Ms. Kurlander are available for further comment. Contact David Twersky at (212) 360-1586 or dtwersky@ajcongress.org.
The magazine has turned down an AJCongress advertisement that did nothing more controversial than call attention to the fact that women currently occupy three of the most significant positions of power in Israeli public life. The proposed ad ( The Ad Ms. Didn't Want You To See) included a text that merely said, "This is Israel," under photographs of President of the Supreme Court Dorit Beinish, Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik. "What other conclusion can we reach," asked Richard Gordon, President of AJCongress, "except that the publishers － and if the publishers are right, a significant number of Ms. Magazine readers － are so hostile to Israel that they do not even want to see an ad that says something positive about Israel?"
When Director of AJCongress' Commission for Women's Empowerment Harriet Kurlander tried to place the ad, she was told that publishing the ad "will set off a firestorm" and that "there are very strong opinions" on the subject － the subject presumably being whether or not one can say anything positive about Israel. Ms. Magazine publisher Eleanor Smeal failed to respond to a signed-for certified letter with a copy of the ad as well as numerous calls by Mr. Gordon over a period of weeks.
A Ms. Magazine representative, Susie Gilligan, whom the Ms. Magazine masthead lists under the publisher's office, told Ms. Kurlander that the magazine "would love to have an ad from you on women's empowerment, or reproductive freedom, but not on this." Ms. Gilligan failed to elaborate what "this" is.
"The only conclusion that one can reach from this behavior is that Ms. Magazine feels that an ad highlighting the accomplishments of three incredibly talented and dedicated women would offend their readership. Since there is nothing about the ad itself that is offensive, it is obviously the nationality of the women pictured that the management of Ms. fears their readership would find objectionable . For a publication that holds itself out to be in the forefront of the Women's Movement, this is nothing short of disgusting and despicable," stated Mr. Gordon.
Ms. Magazine has a long record of publishing advertisements rallying readers to support reproductive choice; opposing the Religious Right; highlighting the fragility of the pro-Roe v. Wade majority on the Supreme Court; charging that "Pat Robertson and his Religious Right cohorts don't like individual freedom;" announcing support for the "struggle for freedom and human rights;" opposing the Bush administration's campaign to fill federal courts with judges who "will reverse decades of progress on reproductive rights and privacy, civil rights, religious liberty, environmental protection and so much more;" as well as accusing the Bush administration of being "bent on rewarding big corporations and the rich, turning back the clock on women's rights and civil rights, and promoting a U.S. empire abroad."
"This flagship publication of the American women's empowerment movement publishes ads that are controversial in the general culture but not so among its readership," Ms. Kurlander said. "Obviously, Ms. believes our ad would enflame a significant portion of their readers."
Mr. Gordon added, "What really amazes me is that just recently, in their Winter 2007 issue, Ms. ran a cover story with a picture of Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi with the heading in big letters: "This is What a Speaker Looks Like." While Ms. has every reason to be proud of Speaker Pelosi and her accomplishments, as are we, the only discernable difference between Speaker Pelosi and Speaker Itzik apparently is that Speaker Pelosi is not Israeli."
Mr. Gordon noted that while Israel was apparently too hot to handle, Ms. Magazine did not extend that taboo to Arab and Moslem women. "What is even more amazing is that, while refusing to publish a simple ad praising three very notable women, women who embody the ideal that Ms. Magazine seemingly espouses, Ms. has run a cover article in the Fall 2003 issue on Queen Noor of Jordan, has featured a number of articles on Muslim women, and even ran an article in the Winter 2004 issue entitled, 'Images of Palestine,' which discussed the Ramallah Film Festival and gave sympathetic reviews to films concerning 'the liberation of South Lebanon' from Israel as well as numerous films which portrayed terrorism as legitimate 'revolutionary' activity against Israel and miscast Israel's activities to counter terrorism as 'oppressive.'"
"Clearly Ms. has changed a great deal from the days when AJCongress members and leaders of the AJCongress' Commission for Women's Equality － including Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Ms. co-founder Letty Pogrebin － were at the forefront of the Women's Movement that led to the creation of Ms. Magazine."
AJCongress President Gordon concluded, "Ms. has the right to turn down our ad. But in exercising that right, it has spoken loudly about itself and its readership, and their lingering hostility to Israel."
Mr. Gordon and Ms. Kurlander are available for further comment. Contact David Twersky at (212) 360-1586 or dtwersky@ajcongress.org.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Bush in Jerusalem : An Intellectual and Moral Travesty
Prof . Paul Eidelberg
The government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has assigned some 10,000 police and security personnel to protect President George W . Bush, who has come to Israel to promote peace between Jews and Arab Palestinians . What an absurdity!
The Olmert government has ordered Israeli security forces to close all entries from Judea, Samaria , and Gaza to prevent Palestinian terrorists in these areas from killing the American President, who is committed to establishing in these same areas a Palestinian state . Can anything be more absurd? Apart from those living in the world of make-believe, no one really expects genuine peace between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East . Even Middle East expert Dr, Daniel Pipes, who supported the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of March 1979, has admitted the treaty has been a failure . Let me review his November 21, 2006 article "Time to Recognize Failure of Israel-Egypt Treaty".
To begin with: Ninety-two percent of respondents in a recent poll of one thousand Egyptians over 18 years of age called Israel an enemy state . In contrast, a meager 2% saw Israel as a friend to Egypt. [Meanwhile, their Palestinian brethren are openly committed to Israel's annihilation, in evidence of which, enough to mention the election of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya as the Palestinian Authority's prime minister two years ago . ]
In Egypt , hostile sentiments express themselves in many ways, including a popular song titled I Hate Israel , venomously antisemitic political cartoons and terrorist attacks against visiting Israelis . Egypt's leading democracy movement, Kifaya, recently launched an initiative to collect a million signatures on a petition demanding the annulment of the March 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty!
Moreover, the Egyptian government has permitted large quantities of weapons to be smuggled into Gaza to use against Israeli border towns . Yuval Steinitz, an Israeli legislator specializing in Egypt-Israel relations, estimates that fully 90% of PLO and Hamas explosives come from Egypt .
Cairo may have no apparent enemies,says Pipes, but the impoverished Egyptian state sinks massive resources into a military build up . According to the Congressional Research Service, it purchased $6 . 5 billion worth of foreign weapons in the years 2001-2004, more than any other state in the Middle East . [In fact] Egypt has the tenth largest standing army in the world, well over twice the size of Israel's!
Dr . Pipes avows that the Israel-Egypt treaty harmed Israel in two ways . First, it made sophisticated American arms available to Egypt . Second, it intensified anti-Zionism . Pipes lived nearly three years in Egypt in the 1970s, before Anwar Sadat's dramatic trip to Jerusalem in late 1977 . He notes that although Israel was plastered all over the news, anti-Zionism hardly figured in conversations. Egyptians seemed happy to delegate this issue to their government. Only after the treaty, which many Egyptians saw as a betrayal, did they themselves take direct interest . The result was the emergence of a more personal, intense, and bitter form of anti-Zionism.
Pipes then points out that the same pattern of hostility was replicated in Jordan, where the 1994 treaty with Israel soured popular attitudes . To a lesser extent, the 1993 [PLO-] Palestinian accords [with Israel ] and even the aborted 1983 Lebanon treaty prompted similar responses . In all four of these cases, diplomatic agreements prompted a surge in hostility toward Israel.
Defenders of the peace process, answer that, however hostile Egyptians' attitudes and however large their arsenal, the treaty has held; Cairo has in fact not made war on Israel since 1979 . However frigid the peace, peace it has been.
To this Pipes replies: "If the mere absence of active warfare counts as peace, then peace has also prevailed between Syria and Israel for decades, despite their formal state of war, Damascus lacks a treaty with Jerusalem, but it also lacks modern American weaponry." Does an antique signature on a piece of paper offset Egypt's Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets, and Apache attack helicopters?
"I think not", says Pipes . In retrospect, it becomes apparent that multiple fallacies and wishful predictions fueled Arab-Israeli diplomacy:
* Once signed, agreements signed by unelected Arab leaders would convince the masses to give up their ambitions to eliminate Israel .
* These agreements would be permanent, with no backsliding, much less duplicity .
* Other Arab states would inevitably follow suit .
* War can be concluded through negotiations rather than by one side giving up .
"The time has come", says Pipes, to recognize the Egypt-Israel treaty usually portrayed as the glory and ornament of Arab-Israel diplomacy as the failure it has been, and to draw the appropriate lessons in order not to repeat its mistakes.
No wonder Dr . Pipes is no longer a member to the Institute of Peace to which he was appointed by President Bush a few years ago . His assessment of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty makes utter nonsense of the President's current peace mission to Israel . This mission may secure Ehud Olmert's job as prime minister despite the Winograd Report. Most assuredly, it will not bring peace to Israel .
To the contrary, the intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice underlying the collaboration of the Mr . Bush and Mr . Olmert can only endanger Israel's existence .
The government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has assigned some 10,000 police and security personnel to protect President George W . Bush, who has come to Israel to promote peace between Jews and Arab Palestinians . What an absurdity!
The Olmert government has ordered Israeli security forces to close all entries from Judea, Samaria , and Gaza to prevent Palestinian terrorists in these areas from killing the American President, who is committed to establishing in these same areas a Palestinian state . Can anything be more absurd? Apart from those living in the world of make-believe, no one really expects genuine peace between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East . Even Middle East expert Dr, Daniel Pipes, who supported the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of March 1979, has admitted the treaty has been a failure . Let me review his November 21, 2006 article "Time to Recognize Failure of Israel-Egypt Treaty".
To begin with: Ninety-two percent of respondents in a recent poll of one thousand Egyptians over 18 years of age called Israel an enemy state . In contrast, a meager 2% saw Israel as a friend to Egypt. [Meanwhile, their Palestinian brethren are openly committed to Israel's annihilation, in evidence of which, enough to mention the election of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya as the Palestinian Authority's prime minister two years ago . ]
In Egypt , hostile sentiments express themselves in many ways, including a popular song titled I Hate Israel , venomously antisemitic political cartoons and terrorist attacks against visiting Israelis . Egypt's leading democracy movement, Kifaya, recently launched an initiative to collect a million signatures on a petition demanding the annulment of the March 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty!
Moreover, the Egyptian government has permitted large quantities of weapons to be smuggled into Gaza to use against Israeli border towns . Yuval Steinitz, an Israeli legislator specializing in Egypt-Israel relations, estimates that fully 90% of PLO and Hamas explosives come from Egypt .
Cairo may have no apparent enemies,says Pipes, but the impoverished Egyptian state sinks massive resources into a military build up . According to the Congressional Research Service, it purchased $6 . 5 billion worth of foreign weapons in the years 2001-2004, more than any other state in the Middle East . [In fact] Egypt has the tenth largest standing army in the world, well over twice the size of Israel's!
Dr . Pipes avows that the Israel-Egypt treaty harmed Israel in two ways . First, it made sophisticated American arms available to Egypt . Second, it intensified anti-Zionism . Pipes lived nearly three years in Egypt in the 1970s, before Anwar Sadat's dramatic trip to Jerusalem in late 1977 . He notes that although Israel was plastered all over the news, anti-Zionism hardly figured in conversations. Egyptians seemed happy to delegate this issue to their government. Only after the treaty, which many Egyptians saw as a betrayal, did they themselves take direct interest . The result was the emergence of a more personal, intense, and bitter form of anti-Zionism.
Pipes then points out that the same pattern of hostility was replicated in Jordan, where the 1994 treaty with Israel soured popular attitudes . To a lesser extent, the 1993 [PLO-] Palestinian accords [with Israel ] and even the aborted 1983 Lebanon treaty prompted similar responses . In all four of these cases, diplomatic agreements prompted a surge in hostility toward Israel.
Defenders of the peace process, answer that, however hostile Egyptians' attitudes and however large their arsenal, the treaty has held; Cairo has in fact not made war on Israel since 1979 . However frigid the peace, peace it has been.
To this Pipes replies: "If the mere absence of active warfare counts as peace, then peace has also prevailed between Syria and Israel for decades, despite their formal state of war, Damascus lacks a treaty with Jerusalem, but it also lacks modern American weaponry." Does an antique signature on a piece of paper offset Egypt's Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets, and Apache attack helicopters?
"I think not", says Pipes . In retrospect, it becomes apparent that multiple fallacies and wishful predictions fueled Arab-Israeli diplomacy:
* Once signed, agreements signed by unelected Arab leaders would convince the masses to give up their ambitions to eliminate Israel .
* These agreements would be permanent, with no backsliding, much less duplicity .
* Other Arab states would inevitably follow suit .
* War can be concluded through negotiations rather than by one side giving up .
"The time has come", says Pipes, to recognize the Egypt-Israel treaty usually portrayed as the glory and ornament of Arab-Israel diplomacy as the failure it has been, and to draw the appropriate lessons in order not to repeat its mistakes.
No wonder Dr . Pipes is no longer a member to the Institute of Peace to which he was appointed by President Bush a few years ago . His assessment of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty makes utter nonsense of the President's current peace mission to Israel . This mission may secure Ehud Olmert's job as prime minister despite the Winograd Report. Most assuredly, it will not bring peace to Israel .
To the contrary, the intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice underlying the collaboration of the Mr . Bush and Mr . Olmert can only endanger Israel's existence .
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