Akiva Eldar, HAARETZ
[..]
This version will make it difficult for the United States and the Marshall Islands, and even for Israel, to explain their votes against the proposal. Instead of recognizing Palestine within the 1967 borders, it will state that the permanent borders will be determined in negotiations with Israel based on the borders of June 4, 1967. This approach made it possible to enlist the support of leading moderates in Hamas, who claim that recognition of the 1967 borders before the signing of a final-status deal means waiving the claim to the right of return.
Several of those people are signatories to a new strategic position paper, drafted by more than 50 Palestinian government officials, researchers and advisers ? members of the Palestine Strategy Group. This is the forum that in 2008 composed a document recommending that the leadership transfer the conflict to the United Nations.
The new document presents the Palestinian strategy both before and after the UN vote. [..]
Already in the preface, the authors stress that “strategic unity,” now greatly enhanced by the reconciliation process, is a key condition for putting together an effective strategy. The document’s starting point: Given the Israeli government’s intransigence, the option of settling the conflict via bilateral negotiations ? the path pursued by the Palestinian leadership for 20 years ? is no longer available.
Most of the document’s authors support the option of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital and a fair arrangement that will fulfill the right of return and the compensation of the Palestinian refugees. The document rejects the possibility of continuing the status quo, maintaining that the endless negotiations provide cover for expanding the settlements and consolidating the occupation. The authors also erase from the agenda the option of a Palestinian state with temporary borders and limited sovereignty, under effective Israeli control.
If the strategy of a diplomatic struggle for Palestinian independence ? including sanctions, turning to the International Criminal Court and nonviolent resistance as in Egypt and Tunisia ? does not change the situation, the group recommends switching to what the document calls Plan B: dismantling the Palestinian Authority and restoring responsibility for the West Bank’s inhabitants to Israel. The authors are not ignoring the price their public would pay for that, but wonder what honorable option would remain.
If it turns out that this option is unattainable, the authors recommend working toward a model of a binational state or democratic state without distinction between Israel and Palestinian citizens. Another possibility is a confederation between Jordan and the Palestinian state.
No armed struggle
The authors recommend explaining to the Israelis that they must forget the plan for unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank, with restrictions on the movement of Palestinians, and the dream of annexing Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan.
They hope their neighbors will understand that the realistic alternatives to a genuine negotiated settlement will be far worse for Israel’s security.
Most participants in the workshops rejected an armed struggle against a foreign occupation and especially the use of violence against civilians. But the authors warn that a change in strategy from an attempt to achieve political independence to a conflict like the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa will play into the hands of extremists in the region.
“Should this happen, not just Israel’s legitimacy will be under threat, but its very existence, ” they conclude. “And this will have been brought about by Israel itself.”
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Israel's flag back over Cairo Embassy not fit to print in NY Times
Leo Rennert
In its Aug. 30 edition, the New York Times runs a lengthy article about what happened in Cairo since anti-Israel demonstrators pulled down and desecrated the Israeli flag flown over the Israeli Embassy a week ago. But leave it to the Times to omit the most important development -- of which more later ("In Egypt, An Act of Boldness Is Disputed" page A4). The article, reported by no fewer than two Times correspondents in the Egyptian capital -- Heba Afify and Stephen Farrell -- runs the full length of a column on the main international-news page.
It starts off by recounting in great detail the feat of a Spiderman-like protester, who climbed up the side of the Embassy building, ripped away the flag and tossed it down, thus becoming an instant hero. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter took it from there.
"His rebellious ascent thrilled the crowd and many across the nation," Afify and Farrell write. "To them, it seemed to epitomize a new Egyptian boldness." But the jubilation didn't last long. A rival soon emerged claiming to be the real Flagman. He insisted that it was he who got to the flag and tossed it to the other guy a few stories below, who then proceeded to reach bottom first and to falsely claim his moment of glory.
So for the next few days, Egyptian media served up the "Battle of the Flagmen." And now the Times obliges.
But in its fascination with and emphasis on the anti-Israel mood in Cairo, the Times omits an important final act in this bit of political theater -- as of Aug. 29, the day before the Times' went to press with its story, the Israeli flag proudly flew again outside the Cairo Embassy. This was understandably news in both the Egyptian and Israeli media -- but not for the Times and its Cairo correspondents .
An example of Israeli resilience in the face of adversity just doesn't comport with the paper's anti-Israel bent. The Times, which boasts on its front-page masthead that it provides "all the news that's fit to print" did not see fit to print the most recent and most newsworthy development about the Israeli flag proudly fluttering again at the Embassy of the Jewish state in the capital of Egypt.
In its Aug. 30 edition, the New York Times runs a lengthy article about what happened in Cairo since anti-Israel demonstrators pulled down and desecrated the Israeli flag flown over the Israeli Embassy a week ago. But leave it to the Times to omit the most important development -- of which more later ("In Egypt, An Act of Boldness Is Disputed" page A4). The article, reported by no fewer than two Times correspondents in the Egyptian capital -- Heba Afify and Stephen Farrell -- runs the full length of a column on the main international-news page.
It starts off by recounting in great detail the feat of a Spiderman-like protester, who climbed up the side of the Embassy building, ripped away the flag and tossed it down, thus becoming an instant hero. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter took it from there.
"His rebellious ascent thrilled the crowd and many across the nation," Afify and Farrell write. "To them, it seemed to epitomize a new Egyptian boldness." But the jubilation didn't last long. A rival soon emerged claiming to be the real Flagman. He insisted that it was he who got to the flag and tossed it to the other guy a few stories below, who then proceeded to reach bottom first and to falsely claim his moment of glory.
So for the next few days, Egyptian media served up the "Battle of the Flagmen." And now the Times obliges.
But in its fascination with and emphasis on the anti-Israel mood in Cairo, the Times omits an important final act in this bit of political theater -- as of Aug. 29, the day before the Times' went to press with its story, the Israeli flag proudly flew again outside the Cairo Embassy. This was understandably news in both the Egyptian and Israeli media -- but not for the Times and its Cairo correspondents .
An example of Israeli resilience in the face of adversity just doesn't comport with the paper's anti-Israel bent. The Times, which boasts on its front-page masthead that it provides "all the news that's fit to print" did not see fit to print the most recent and most newsworthy development about the Israeli flag proudly fluttering again at the Embassy of the Jewish state in the capital of Egypt.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Israel Walking to the Gallows
Ari Bussel
We sit at a Jewish or Arab film festival, or at a "pro-Israel, pro-peace" or "free Palestine, end the Occupation" event and watch a full feature film about the Occupation Army, the 21st Century manifestation of Nazis (i.e. Israelis). They are building a wall around Palestinians towns, uprooting their olive tree groves, purposely detaining them and denying them movement, treating them as sub-humans while catching their young males to harvest their organs.
A future screening will be of a film titled "Picasso coming to Palestine."
For a Westerner living in a democracy, going to a museum or an art show or other cultural event is part of our lives. Some of us would aspire to visit a major museum in one of the world’s capitals or to have a chance to experience a particular once-in-a-lifetime performance. I remember seeing Jascha Heifetz at UCLA, when I was a student there, and missing one of the very last performances by Yul Brynner because I was a stubborn adolescent and refused to go with the family. Thus, we can easily relate when we hear of a very famous painting being loaned to a local exhibit for a short period of time. Many foundations in the USA loan their collections so the public at large will have access, like the modern art collection of the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation.
Something in a Picasso on loan to Palestinian Authority is so extraordinary that it captured the imagination of a filmmaker and will soon capture our hearts. It is so vile that we must quash the very image while still in its infancy, before I have to sit alongside well-intentioned audiences and deceitful enemies of Israel and the West and suffer through yet another screening that has one aim, and one only: demonize the Jews, delegitimize the Jewish State.
It is in this movie that we will see the craving of the innocent, subjugated Palestinians to have a sense of normalcy, art, culture and some color in their lives.
We will be reminded vividly of a single butterfly in the Ghetto or the child in a red dress against the black and white background in Spielberg's movie Schindler’s List.
It is the Journey of Picasso that will show us how evil the Israelis are. Oh, how easily we will ignore the incitement for terrorism throughout every fiber of the Palestinian existence and turn the most vicious and hideous terrorists into peace-loving angels or Michelangelo’s David.
Mistake not, “Palestinians” are no David. They are the Goliath that wants to destroy Israel and who is using our very system, ideals, morals, history and institutions to fight our modern-day, Western existence.
Rather than bringing a Picasso, possibly it would be more helpful to stop teaching children to hate an Israeli or Jew just because they are Jewish?
Maybe in the quest to inspire peace, it would make more sense to stop promoting the propaganda that every square inch of Israel is an occupied land stolen from the Palestinians?
Peace will arrive neither with Picasso nor with aspirations to annihilate Israel. The mere presence of the painting does not make savages into cultured people or a beast into a beauty.
Last week, the Civil Administration coordinated the return shipment of Pablo Picasso’s famous oil painting “Buste de Femme” (1943) from Ramallah to the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands.
From June 24th to July 21st, the International Academy of Art Palestine (IAAP) in Ramallah exhibited the $4.3 million painting, allowing Palestinians to experience the most valuable work of modern art to have ever been exhibited in the West Bank. [Priceless art, historical and archeological sites are available throughout Judea and Samaria, practically for free.] As part of a larger project, IAAP documented its experience in requesting, transferring, exhibiting and returning the famous work of art.
In a press announcement by the Israel Defense Forces, the Civil Administration said it “was pleased to contribute to this endeavor and will continue to assist in all future artistic and cultural efforts.”
When will Israel stop facilitating her own downfall? Anyone who imagines two states living side-by-side with good neighborly relations would have expected nothing less than a traveling exhibit. As an example, I was promoting a Jordanian movie, Captain Abu Raed. However, Israelis (Jews) are not invited, in fact not permitted and realistically may be murdered if they find themselves in PA-controlled areas.
The Palestinians do not welcome Jews in their midst. Jews (aka Israelis) are unwelcome guests, filth prohibited from defiling the holy Palestinian land.
The Palestinians aspire to have a state of their own and to eliminate their Israeli neighbors. There is no space in the Middle East for a Jewish State or for Jews. The first is a racist idea, the latter an abomination of the good order of the world according to the Quran.
Even from a mere practical approach, they want their own “free and independent Palestine” while millions of their brethren will be able, by law (i.e. a peace agreement by which Israel capitulates to their demands), to immigrate to the Jewish State. Then the notion of Apartheid and Racism will indeed apply, and Israel will have to be erased, once and for all; a blight removed for all eternity from this earth.
So what are Israeli authorities doing? They facilitate normal life and assist the very propaganda machine against Israel. I can only envision the movie about a cultural icon like a Picasso painting being shipped to Ramallah. All the obstacles along the way, juxtaposed for the convenience of the viewer. Road Blocks. Zionist-Nazi-like Soldiers. Ghettos. Walls. Vicious dogs patrolling the open air prison. Chimneys spewing ashes into the air 24 hours a day, black during the day, fire during the night. And a sign (instead of “work is liberating”) reading “Zionist Propaganda: Israel permits a painting for a short visitation.”
How characteristic that the colors of the chosen Picasso’s painting match so very closely those of the Nazi Concentration Camps.
Has no one in Israel sat in or possibly read a report about an event in any major city around the world where such acts of kindness are twisted and presented as the most sophisticated cover-up of the Zionist-Colonialist-Imperialist-Occupier evil deeds?
Imagine a chessboard. There are two armies ready to battle, one white and the other black. One prepared to fight in spirit and in body. The other engaged in a pleasant afternoon high tea dressed in pink.
Picasso, my friends, was used to fight Israel, and Israel is plowing the path to her own demise. Apparently, we once marched like sheep to the slaughter and nothing has changed. Israel will also dig the trench in which she will later be shot and thrown into, but for now she is oblivious. So used is she to insanity and so deeply she craves normalcy, that she refuses to see the obvious and deliberately ignores what is unfolding in front of her very eyes.
Once shot, as the last whisper or silent shout escapes her lips, it will be too late. She will ascend to heaven with an image of Picasso’s painting, reminiscent of Chagall’s goat.
If anything, the gates of Heaven will remain locked, for stupidity must not be excused, not even for God’s Chosen People.
The Director of the International Art Academy in Ramallah, Khaled Hourani, first saw the painting in 2008. The project was more than two years in the making. Hourani says: “This started off as a crazy idea to bring a European masterpiece to a war-zone, but I was only half-joking.”
The Palestinians define the area correctly as a WAR ZONE. What will it take for Israel to recognize the same and behave accordingly?
Until such time, Israel continues to engage in the frivolities of high tea all day long while her enemies have amassed the most magnificent arsenal of conventional and other methods of destruction.
See how efficient their propaganda machine, constantly reaching new heights. Charles Esche, Van Abbemuseum’s director said: “Our Picasso will be changed by its journey to Ramallah. It will take on extra meaning and the story will remain a part of the history of the painting from this moment on.”
Only in the land of a thousand and one Arabian nights can one be so creative as to turn good into evil and make evil seem so innocent.
May Israelis be spared a prolonged destruction, may they suffer little when the day comes. May we all.
The series “Postcards from America—Postcards from Israel” by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager is a compilation of articles capturing the essence of life in America and Israel during the first two decades of the 21st Century.
The writers invite readers to view and experience an Israel and her politics through their eyes, Israel visitors rarely discover.
This point—and often—counter-point presentation is sprinkled with humor and sadness and attempts to tackle serious and relevant issues of the day. The series began in 2008, appears both in print in the USA and on numerous websites and is followed regularly by readership from around the world.
© “Postcards from America — Postcards from Israel,” July, 2011
Contact: bussel@me.com
We sit at a Jewish or Arab film festival, or at a "pro-Israel, pro-peace" or "free Palestine, end the Occupation" event and watch a full feature film about the Occupation Army, the 21st Century manifestation of Nazis (i.e. Israelis). They are building a wall around Palestinians towns, uprooting their olive tree groves, purposely detaining them and denying them movement, treating them as sub-humans while catching their young males to harvest their organs.
A future screening will be of a film titled "Picasso coming to Palestine."
For a Westerner living in a democracy, going to a museum or an art show or other cultural event is part of our lives. Some of us would aspire to visit a major museum in one of the world’s capitals or to have a chance to experience a particular once-in-a-lifetime performance. I remember seeing Jascha Heifetz at UCLA, when I was a student there, and missing one of the very last performances by Yul Brynner because I was a stubborn adolescent and refused to go with the family. Thus, we can easily relate when we hear of a very famous painting being loaned to a local exhibit for a short period of time. Many foundations in the USA loan their collections so the public at large will have access, like the modern art collection of the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation.
Something in a Picasso on loan to Palestinian Authority is so extraordinary that it captured the imagination of a filmmaker and will soon capture our hearts. It is so vile that we must quash the very image while still in its infancy, before I have to sit alongside well-intentioned audiences and deceitful enemies of Israel and the West and suffer through yet another screening that has one aim, and one only: demonize the Jews, delegitimize the Jewish State.
It is in this movie that we will see the craving of the innocent, subjugated Palestinians to have a sense of normalcy, art, culture and some color in their lives.
We will be reminded vividly of a single butterfly in the Ghetto or the child in a red dress against the black and white background in Spielberg's movie Schindler’s List.
It is the Journey of Picasso that will show us how evil the Israelis are. Oh, how easily we will ignore the incitement for terrorism throughout every fiber of the Palestinian existence and turn the most vicious and hideous terrorists into peace-loving angels or Michelangelo’s David.
Mistake not, “Palestinians” are no David. They are the Goliath that wants to destroy Israel and who is using our very system, ideals, morals, history and institutions to fight our modern-day, Western existence.
Rather than bringing a Picasso, possibly it would be more helpful to stop teaching children to hate an Israeli or Jew just because they are Jewish?
Maybe in the quest to inspire peace, it would make more sense to stop promoting the propaganda that every square inch of Israel is an occupied land stolen from the Palestinians?
Peace will arrive neither with Picasso nor with aspirations to annihilate Israel. The mere presence of the painting does not make savages into cultured people or a beast into a beauty.
Last week, the Civil Administration coordinated the return shipment of Pablo Picasso’s famous oil painting “Buste de Femme” (1943) from Ramallah to the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands.
From June 24th to July 21st, the International Academy of Art Palestine (IAAP) in Ramallah exhibited the $4.3 million painting, allowing Palestinians to experience the most valuable work of modern art to have ever been exhibited in the West Bank. [Priceless art, historical and archeological sites are available throughout Judea and Samaria, practically for free.] As part of a larger project, IAAP documented its experience in requesting, transferring, exhibiting and returning the famous work of art.
In a press announcement by the Israel Defense Forces, the Civil Administration said it “was pleased to contribute to this endeavor and will continue to assist in all future artistic and cultural efforts.”
When will Israel stop facilitating her own downfall? Anyone who imagines two states living side-by-side with good neighborly relations would have expected nothing less than a traveling exhibit. As an example, I was promoting a Jordanian movie, Captain Abu Raed. However, Israelis (Jews) are not invited, in fact not permitted and realistically may be murdered if they find themselves in PA-controlled areas.
The Palestinians do not welcome Jews in their midst. Jews (aka Israelis) are unwelcome guests, filth prohibited from defiling the holy Palestinian land.
The Palestinians aspire to have a state of their own and to eliminate their Israeli neighbors. There is no space in the Middle East for a Jewish State or for Jews. The first is a racist idea, the latter an abomination of the good order of the world according to the Quran.
Even from a mere practical approach, they want their own “free and independent Palestine” while millions of their brethren will be able, by law (i.e. a peace agreement by which Israel capitulates to their demands), to immigrate to the Jewish State. Then the notion of Apartheid and Racism will indeed apply, and Israel will have to be erased, once and for all; a blight removed for all eternity from this earth.
So what are Israeli authorities doing? They facilitate normal life and assist the very propaganda machine against Israel. I can only envision the movie about a cultural icon like a Picasso painting being shipped to Ramallah. All the obstacles along the way, juxtaposed for the convenience of the viewer. Road Blocks. Zionist-Nazi-like Soldiers. Ghettos. Walls. Vicious dogs patrolling the open air prison. Chimneys spewing ashes into the air 24 hours a day, black during the day, fire during the night. And a sign (instead of “work is liberating”) reading “Zionist Propaganda: Israel permits a painting for a short visitation.”
How characteristic that the colors of the chosen Picasso’s painting match so very closely those of the Nazi Concentration Camps.
Has no one in Israel sat in or possibly read a report about an event in any major city around the world where such acts of kindness are twisted and presented as the most sophisticated cover-up of the Zionist-Colonialist-Imperialist-Occupier evil deeds?
Imagine a chessboard. There are two armies ready to battle, one white and the other black. One prepared to fight in spirit and in body. The other engaged in a pleasant afternoon high tea dressed in pink.
Picasso, my friends, was used to fight Israel, and Israel is plowing the path to her own demise. Apparently, we once marched like sheep to the slaughter and nothing has changed. Israel will also dig the trench in which she will later be shot and thrown into, but for now she is oblivious. So used is she to insanity and so deeply she craves normalcy, that she refuses to see the obvious and deliberately ignores what is unfolding in front of her very eyes.
Once shot, as the last whisper or silent shout escapes her lips, it will be too late. She will ascend to heaven with an image of Picasso’s painting, reminiscent of Chagall’s goat.
If anything, the gates of Heaven will remain locked, for stupidity must not be excused, not even for God’s Chosen People.
The Director of the International Art Academy in Ramallah, Khaled Hourani, first saw the painting in 2008. The project was more than two years in the making. Hourani says: “This started off as a crazy idea to bring a European masterpiece to a war-zone, but I was only half-joking.”
The Palestinians define the area correctly as a WAR ZONE. What will it take for Israel to recognize the same and behave accordingly?
Until such time, Israel continues to engage in the frivolities of high tea all day long while her enemies have amassed the most magnificent arsenal of conventional and other methods of destruction.
See how efficient their propaganda machine, constantly reaching new heights. Charles Esche, Van Abbemuseum’s director said: “Our Picasso will be changed by its journey to Ramallah. It will take on extra meaning and the story will remain a part of the history of the painting from this moment on.”
Only in the land of a thousand and one Arabian nights can one be so creative as to turn good into evil and make evil seem so innocent.
May Israelis be spared a prolonged destruction, may they suffer little when the day comes. May we all.
The series “Postcards from America—Postcards from Israel” by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager is a compilation of articles capturing the essence of life in America and Israel during the first two decades of the 21st Century.
The writers invite readers to view and experience an Israel and her politics through their eyes, Israel visitors rarely discover.
This point—and often—counter-point presentation is sprinkled with humor and sadness and attempts to tackle serious and relevant issues of the day. The series began in 2008, appears both in print in the USA and on numerous websites and is followed regularly by readership from around the world.
© “Postcards from America — Postcards from Israel,” July, 2011
Contact: bussel@me.com
Dan Margalit
During a televised debate Sunday with MK Miri Regev (Likud), MK Yohanan Plesner (Kadima) revealed an interesting piece of information. Plesner had helped Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Shaul Mofaz draft a report on Israel's preparedness for the upcoming U.N. showdown over Palestinian statehood. Plesner claimed that National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror had worked hard to block publication of the report. The Knesset's ruling coalition followed his example and decided to shelve the report. he report is based on military intelligence and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) assessments, but also on position papers by academics who oppose the current government. While the report is the serious product of 30 meetings, one can't help thinking its conclusions were intended to help Mofaz in his Kadima primaries bid.
At the heart of the report lies the claim that had we engaged in talks with the Palestinians, they would not have launched a statehood bid at the Security Council (where it is destined to fail) or in the General Assembly (where it is guaranteed success). This claim is strengthened by a leaked diplomatic cable obtained by Barak Ravid of Haaretz. In the cable, Israeli U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor says that Israel's efforts to thwart the Palestinian campaign have no chance of success.
But the Palestinians' expected gains must be broken down and examined more closely. One possible resolution would recognize Palestine along the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. It would win a smaller majority than a resolution that leaves room to negotiate the details, which could even garner support from some of Israel's friends. Israel's political opposition has been critical of the government for failing to negotiate. While this argument is valid, it remains unconvincing.
The Palestinians made a strategic choice to avoid talks with Israel while blaming Israel for the diplomatic failure. Recall that they twice rejected Israel's outstretched hand. They turned down Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000 and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2009.
Recall also that when then Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni would not accept the Palestinian “right of return,” negotiator Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala) refused to continue talking to her.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government shares some blame for Israel's problematic circumstances, because he refused to articulate moderate proposals that would have sounded good to Israel's friends and proved to the world who the “bad guy” really was. But now Israel has been labeled the bad guy even though the title is undeserved. Such moderate proposals would have sounded a lot worse than they actually were. A missed Israeli opportunity.
During a televised debate Sunday with MK Miri Regev (Likud), MK Yohanan Plesner (Kadima) revealed an interesting piece of information. Plesner had helped Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Shaul Mofaz draft a report on Israel's preparedness for the upcoming U.N. showdown over Palestinian statehood. Plesner claimed that National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror had worked hard to block publication of the report. The Knesset's ruling coalition followed his example and decided to shelve the report. he report is based on military intelligence and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) assessments, but also on position papers by academics who oppose the current government. While the report is the serious product of 30 meetings, one can't help thinking its conclusions were intended to help Mofaz in his Kadima primaries bid.
At the heart of the report lies the claim that had we engaged in talks with the Palestinians, they would not have launched a statehood bid at the Security Council (where it is destined to fail) or in the General Assembly (where it is guaranteed success). This claim is strengthened by a leaked diplomatic cable obtained by Barak Ravid of Haaretz. In the cable, Israeli U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor says that Israel's efforts to thwart the Palestinian campaign have no chance of success.
But the Palestinians' expected gains must be broken down and examined more closely. One possible resolution would recognize Palestine along the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. It would win a smaller majority than a resolution that leaves room to negotiate the details, which could even garner support from some of Israel's friends. Israel's political opposition has been critical of the government for failing to negotiate. While this argument is valid, it remains unconvincing.
The Palestinians made a strategic choice to avoid talks with Israel while blaming Israel for the diplomatic failure. Recall that they twice rejected Israel's outstretched hand. They turned down Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000 and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2009.
Recall also that when then Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni would not accept the Palestinian “right of return,” negotiator Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala) refused to continue talking to her.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government shares some blame for Israel's problematic circumstances, because he refused to articulate moderate proposals that would have sounded good to Israel's friends and proved to the world who the “bad guy” really was. But now Israel has been labeled the bad guy even though the title is undeserved. Such moderate proposals would have sounded a lot worse than they actually were. A missed Israeli opportunity.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Trying to Manage the Post-Qadhafi Libya While Qadhafi is Still Around
NBC Executive: What’s the premise [of your proposed television show]?
GEORGE: “…Nothing happens on the show….”
NBC executive: “Well, why am I watching it?”
GEORGE: “Because it’s on TV.”
NBC executive: (Threatening) “Not yet.”
–”Seinfeld,” The Pitch episode
By Barry Rubin
The United States has recognized the Transitional National Council (TNC) of Libya as the provisional government of that country. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns addressed the Libyan Contact Group meeting–where else?–in Turkey, the Obama Administration’s favorite Middle East mediator despite that regime being a pro-Iran Islamist government that is turning Turkey into a police state. Turkey as a role model for the Arab world, anyone?
Burns said:
“It is critical that the TNC continue to engage with stakeholders across Libya, including those who have served in the government in Tripoli, to form a new, inclusive interim authority that can ensure civil order, respect human rights, provide essential services to the people, and pave the way for a full democratic transition….
“This new authority must represent all Libyans, from all tribes, regions, and minorities of the country. This demands a true commitment by all parties to national reconciliation—-revenge attacks and reprisals must have no part in the new Libya. Libya’s future will be peaceful only if the leaders and people of Libya reach out to each other to make peace.” Precisely because Burns, a serious professional diplomat, has stated the problems so well, I’m skeptical. For rebel commanders, the TNC is a bunch of corrupt guys with expensive suits, many of whom worked with the dictator, Muammar al-Qadhafi, in an oppressive dictatorship, and lived luxuriously abroad while the rebels were fighting and dying (and looting and burning, too). The rebels are undisciplined; there’s no chain of command; and the tribes in many cases hate each other. Burns describes a utopian situation that I think has very little to do with the reality of Libya.
The Islamists are already calling for the TNC’s overthrow since they–rightly–suspect it from their standpoint of wanting to create a pro-Western government. Let’s see if I am right but I cannot conceive this is going to produce a stable Libya where everyone loves everyone else.
At any rate, Qadhafi is not yet dead or gone. The incompetence of the NATO-supported but not trained rebels; the fact that Qadhafi’s forces know they are fighting to the death; the dictator’s ruthlessness; and his option of retreating to his tribal stronghold has so far shown that reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated. Of course, it might well happen but the story of repression and violence in Libya is far from over.
Meanwhile, however, the Libya issue gives us still another example of what the high-rankers in the West don’t understand about the Middle East. The Western conception assumes order, hierarchy, stability, and moderation are normal. It expects that guys in nice suits and ties will walk in and become Libya’s government because it knows their names, they have severed in high positions previously, and the West recognizes them as the rulers. In addition, the theory is, they will be able to win support with money (through control of the oilfields) and a monopoly on weapons.
But wait a minute! As I said a moment ago (presuming you are reading this article reasonably quickly) The fact that they’ve held high posts previously–under Qadhafi–makes them less trustworthy to the rebels. The fact that they have Western backing makes the rebels more suspicious, as does the fact that these politicians are wearing suits and ties rather than military fatigues. Where were these guys, rebel leaders can well ask, when we were shooting it out? At five-star hotels abroad living it up at the bouffet tables?
As for control of the oilfields, not even the rebels have that yet. And as for a monopoly of violence, well, who’s carrying the AK-47s anyway?
A diplomat asked me, “Who’s the most important leader in Libya? The head of the TNC?”
I started laughing.
Libya is a country badly divided betwee east and west; Arab and Berber; ideology and factions and tribes. It has not had a real political life or any tiny fragment of pluralism for more than four decades. Tunisia has a real chance of democracy; Egypt has a real chance of democratically electing anti-democratic radicals; and Libya is the World West of the Middle East.
GEORGE: “…Nothing happens on the show….”
NBC executive: “Well, why am I watching it?”
GEORGE: “Because it’s on TV.”
NBC executive: (Threatening) “Not yet.”
–”Seinfeld,” The Pitch episode
By Barry Rubin
The United States has recognized the Transitional National Council (TNC) of Libya as the provisional government of that country. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns addressed the Libyan Contact Group meeting–where else?–in Turkey, the Obama Administration’s favorite Middle East mediator despite that regime being a pro-Iran Islamist government that is turning Turkey into a police state. Turkey as a role model for the Arab world, anyone?
Burns said:
“It is critical that the TNC continue to engage with stakeholders across Libya, including those who have served in the government in Tripoli, to form a new, inclusive interim authority that can ensure civil order, respect human rights, provide essential services to the people, and pave the way for a full democratic transition….
“This new authority must represent all Libyans, from all tribes, regions, and minorities of the country. This demands a true commitment by all parties to national reconciliation—-revenge attacks and reprisals must have no part in the new Libya. Libya’s future will be peaceful only if the leaders and people of Libya reach out to each other to make peace.” Precisely because Burns, a serious professional diplomat, has stated the problems so well, I’m skeptical. For rebel commanders, the TNC is a bunch of corrupt guys with expensive suits, many of whom worked with the dictator, Muammar al-Qadhafi, in an oppressive dictatorship, and lived luxuriously abroad while the rebels were fighting and dying (and looting and burning, too). The rebels are undisciplined; there’s no chain of command; and the tribes in many cases hate each other. Burns describes a utopian situation that I think has very little to do with the reality of Libya.
The Islamists are already calling for the TNC’s overthrow since they–rightly–suspect it from their standpoint of wanting to create a pro-Western government. Let’s see if I am right but I cannot conceive this is going to produce a stable Libya where everyone loves everyone else.
At any rate, Qadhafi is not yet dead or gone. The incompetence of the NATO-supported but not trained rebels; the fact that Qadhafi’s forces know they are fighting to the death; the dictator’s ruthlessness; and his option of retreating to his tribal stronghold has so far shown that reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated. Of course, it might well happen but the story of repression and violence in Libya is far from over.
Meanwhile, however, the Libya issue gives us still another example of what the high-rankers in the West don’t understand about the Middle East. The Western conception assumes order, hierarchy, stability, and moderation are normal. It expects that guys in nice suits and ties will walk in and become Libya’s government because it knows their names, they have severed in high positions previously, and the West recognizes them as the rulers. In addition, the theory is, they will be able to win support with money (through control of the oilfields) and a monopoly on weapons.
But wait a minute! As I said a moment ago (presuming you are reading this article reasonably quickly) The fact that they’ve held high posts previously–under Qadhafi–makes them less trustworthy to the rebels. The fact that they have Western backing makes the rebels more suspicious, as does the fact that these politicians are wearing suits and ties rather than military fatigues. Where were these guys, rebel leaders can well ask, when we were shooting it out? At five-star hotels abroad living it up at the bouffet tables?
As for control of the oilfields, not even the rebels have that yet. And as for a monopoly of violence, well, who’s carrying the AK-47s anyway?
A diplomat asked me, “Who’s the most important leader in Libya? The head of the TNC?”
I started laughing.
Libya is a country badly divided betwee east and west; Arab and Berber; ideology and factions and tribes. It has not had a real political life or any tiny fragment of pluralism for more than four decades. Tunisia has a real chance of democracy; Egypt has a real chance of democratically electing anti-democratic radicals; and Libya is the World West of the Middle East.
I Stand with Glenn Beck
Emmanuel Navon
www.navon.com
The UN and the so-called human rights NGOs “have become bullies and grotesque parodies of the principles they pretend to represent. They criticize free nations and spare the unfree. They denounce nations like Israel and America, who have high standards for freedom, and leave alone nations that have no freedom at all. They are nearly comical in their double-standards. Whatever moral force they once had is spent.”
If those words of truth and common sense had been pronounced by Tzipi Livni, Israel’s mainstream media would be applauding. But since those words were pronounced by Glenn Beck near the Temple Mount during his “Restoring Courage” event last week, we are told that they reflect insanity and constitute an obstacle to peace.
The American NGO “Media Matters for America,” whose declared purpose is to “correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,” has consistently been on Glenn Beck’s case. Among Media Matters’ backers is George Soros who, incidentally, also gives money to J-Street. Media Matters has been instrumental in getting Beck fired from Fox News.
In the US, the likes of Georges Soros are trying to silence Glenn Beck. In Israel, most journalists are at pains to describe him as a wacko who should be ignored.
Jonathan Lis from Ha’aretz called Beck’s event in Jerusalem last week a “circus” and he couldn’t hide his dismay at Beck’s decision to honor Rami Levy and the Mayor of Itamar. Rami Levy was honored because his recently-opened supermarket in Gush Etzion provides a model of coexistence between Jews and Arabs, and because he donates food both to the orphans of the Fogel family and to Muslims during Ramadan. As for the Mayor of Itamar, he was honored because it is in his town that the Fogel family was savagely murdered this past March. But since both Rami Levy’s model of coexistence and generosity and the tragedy of the Fogel family are beyond the “green line,” Ha’aretz has to treat them with scorn.
As for Tal Schneider from Israel’s business daily Globes, he called Beck an “extremist” because Beck opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state as well as the division of Jerusalem, and because he blames radical Islam for many of the world’s ills. Most Israelis oppose the division of Jerusalem. Are they also “extremists”? And was Samuel Huntington an extremist for stating that “Islam has bloody borders”?
Jonthan Lis and Tal Schneider used similar words to express their distaste of Glenn Beck. Lis wrote that “an Israeli crowd would not have identified with Beck’s messages.” As for Schneider, he wrote that “Israelis, even when they tend to be right-wing, are deterred by the extremist messages of a foreign Christian.” What Lis and Schneider mean by “Israeli” is the small social fringe that they represent: liberal, urban, and secular. But most Israelis are not WASPs (White Ashkenazi Sabra Paratroopers), and many of them actually do identify with Beck’s message. Tal Schneider has no problem with “the extremist messages of a foreign Christian” when the latter is named Jimmy Carter.
Jonathan Lis and Tal Schneider are not Glenn Beck’s only Israeli foes, of course. Those foes include strange bedfellows, such as Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv (the recognized leader of Ultra-Orthodox Lithuanian Judaism), and Yariv Oppenheimer (Director of the left-wing “Peace Now” movement). While Rabbi Eliashiv publicly expressed his opposition to Glenn Beck, Yariv Oppenheimer organized a small demonstration against him. By contrast, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin opened Beck’s event with a blessing. Rabbi Riskin’s message was, in substance, the following: Zionism is the realization of God’s promise to the Jewish people and we should welcome Glenn Beck for proclaiming this truth to the world.
And this is precisely why both Rabbi Eliashiv and Yariv Oppenheimer can’t stand Glenn Beck: they don’t believe, and they don’t want to hear, that Zionism has a religious meaning. For Eliashiv, Zionism is a revolt against God. For Oppenheimer, Zionism is worthy of support only if it has nothing to do with God.
For here is what Glenn Beck said: “My Israeli friends, I have a message: You must not lose hope. You must not lose confidence. You must have courage. And you must draw courage from the knowledge that you were led to this land by God. Not by the hand of any man, whether his name is Balfour or Truman, does Israel exist. Israel is here because the God of Abraham keeps His covenants.”
Except for the references to Balfour and Truman, this is, in substance, what Rashi says in his comment of Genesis’ first verse: that when the nations claim that the Jews stole the Land of Israel, the Jew’s only justification, ultimately, is that God created the world and granted the Land of Israel to the Jewish people. This is the bottom line, this is what Glenn Beck said, and this is what really infuriates those who reject this vision.
“Condemn me. Target me” said Beck. “I will stand with Israel.” These are words of courage, which have cost Beck, and continue to cost him, dearly. Standing with Glenn Beck, in Israel, can be costly as well. This is why so many Israeli journalists and academics, out of concern for their reputation and media approval, have been at pains to distance themselves from Beck. I am not judging them, but let me make this clear: I stand with Glenn Beck.
Emmanuel Navon, 28 August 2011
www.navon.com
The UN and the so-called human rights NGOs “have become bullies and grotesque parodies of the principles they pretend to represent. They criticize free nations and spare the unfree. They denounce nations like Israel and America, who have high standards for freedom, and leave alone nations that have no freedom at all. They are nearly comical in their double-standards. Whatever moral force they once had is spent.”
If those words of truth and common sense had been pronounced by Tzipi Livni, Israel’s mainstream media would be applauding. But since those words were pronounced by Glenn Beck near the Temple Mount during his “Restoring Courage” event last week, we are told that they reflect insanity and constitute an obstacle to peace.
The American NGO “Media Matters for America,” whose declared purpose is to “correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,” has consistently been on Glenn Beck’s case. Among Media Matters’ backers is George Soros who, incidentally, also gives money to J-Street. Media Matters has been instrumental in getting Beck fired from Fox News.
In the US, the likes of Georges Soros are trying to silence Glenn Beck. In Israel, most journalists are at pains to describe him as a wacko who should be ignored.
Jonathan Lis from Ha’aretz called Beck’s event in Jerusalem last week a “circus” and he couldn’t hide his dismay at Beck’s decision to honor Rami Levy and the Mayor of Itamar. Rami Levy was honored because his recently-opened supermarket in Gush Etzion provides a model of coexistence between Jews and Arabs, and because he donates food both to the orphans of the Fogel family and to Muslims during Ramadan. As for the Mayor of Itamar, he was honored because it is in his town that the Fogel family was savagely murdered this past March. But since both Rami Levy’s model of coexistence and generosity and the tragedy of the Fogel family are beyond the “green line,” Ha’aretz has to treat them with scorn.
As for Tal Schneider from Israel’s business daily Globes, he called Beck an “extremist” because Beck opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state as well as the division of Jerusalem, and because he blames radical Islam for many of the world’s ills. Most Israelis oppose the division of Jerusalem. Are they also “extremists”? And was Samuel Huntington an extremist for stating that “Islam has bloody borders”?
Jonthan Lis and Tal Schneider used similar words to express their distaste of Glenn Beck. Lis wrote that “an Israeli crowd would not have identified with Beck’s messages.” As for Schneider, he wrote that “Israelis, even when they tend to be right-wing, are deterred by the extremist messages of a foreign Christian.” What Lis and Schneider mean by “Israeli” is the small social fringe that they represent: liberal, urban, and secular. But most Israelis are not WASPs (White Ashkenazi Sabra Paratroopers), and many of them actually do identify with Beck’s message. Tal Schneider has no problem with “the extremist messages of a foreign Christian” when the latter is named Jimmy Carter.
Jonathan Lis and Tal Schneider are not Glenn Beck’s only Israeli foes, of course. Those foes include strange bedfellows, such as Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv (the recognized leader of Ultra-Orthodox Lithuanian Judaism), and Yariv Oppenheimer (Director of the left-wing “Peace Now” movement). While Rabbi Eliashiv publicly expressed his opposition to Glenn Beck, Yariv Oppenheimer organized a small demonstration against him. By contrast, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin opened Beck’s event with a blessing. Rabbi Riskin’s message was, in substance, the following: Zionism is the realization of God’s promise to the Jewish people and we should welcome Glenn Beck for proclaiming this truth to the world.
And this is precisely why both Rabbi Eliashiv and Yariv Oppenheimer can’t stand Glenn Beck: they don’t believe, and they don’t want to hear, that Zionism has a religious meaning. For Eliashiv, Zionism is a revolt against God. For Oppenheimer, Zionism is worthy of support only if it has nothing to do with God.
For here is what Glenn Beck said: “My Israeli friends, I have a message: You must not lose hope. You must not lose confidence. You must have courage. And you must draw courage from the knowledge that you were led to this land by God. Not by the hand of any man, whether his name is Balfour or Truman, does Israel exist. Israel is here because the God of Abraham keeps His covenants.”
Except for the references to Balfour and Truman, this is, in substance, what Rashi says in his comment of Genesis’ first verse: that when the nations claim that the Jews stole the Land of Israel, the Jew’s only justification, ultimately, is that God created the world and granted the Land of Israel to the Jewish people. This is the bottom line, this is what Glenn Beck said, and this is what really infuriates those who reject this vision.
“Condemn me. Target me” said Beck. “I will stand with Israel.” These are words of courage, which have cost Beck, and continue to cost him, dearly. Standing with Glenn Beck, in Israel, can be costly as well. This is why so many Israeli journalists and academics, out of concern for their reputation and media approval, have been at pains to distance themselves from Beck. I am not judging them, but let me make this clear: I stand with Glenn Beck.
Emmanuel Navon, 28 August 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Nationalist MK Suspects Cover-Up of Eilat Terror Attacks
MK Aryeh Eldad asks why witnesses have not been questioned about Egyptian soldiers' alleged involvement in murders.
by Gil Ronen
MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) has filed a parliamentary query in which he asks Defense Minister Ehud Barak why the IDF is ignoring testimony about Egyptian soldiers' involvement in the murderous terror attacks near Eilat.
Several civilian eyewitnesses have said in press interviews that Egyptian soldiers were involved in the attacks. They said that they saw people in military fatigues shooting at them from within the Egyptian military positions, or right next to them. "I would like to know why the IDF has refrained from questioning the civilians," the former IDF Chief Medical Officer wrote, "and whether it is possible that the investigation is being whitewashed and the public is being denied the truth, because of concern over exposing the truth about Egyptian involvement."
One eyewitness said that the terrorists took care to fire at the wheels of the vehicles before they approached them. The terrorists followed this pattern with the vehicle that contained two couples on holiday before shooting them dead at close range, he said. His conclusion was that they wanted to abduct a soldier -- and murdered the four Israelis when they saw that they were civilians in their 50s, for whom they had no use.
The IDF published Friday the results of its investigation of the terror attacks. It found that First Sergeant Moshe Naftali was killed by "friendly fire" from IDF soldiers and not by terrorists.
Yossi, Moshe's father, said the family has no anger toward whoever mistakenly fired the shots that killed his son. "Our son is a hero who fought for the Nation of Israel and the Land of Israel," he said.
by Gil Ronen
MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) has filed a parliamentary query in which he asks Defense Minister Ehud Barak why the IDF is ignoring testimony about Egyptian soldiers' involvement in the murderous terror attacks near Eilat.
Several civilian eyewitnesses have said in press interviews that Egyptian soldiers were involved in the attacks. They said that they saw people in military fatigues shooting at them from within the Egyptian military positions, or right next to them. "I would like to know why the IDF has refrained from questioning the civilians," the former IDF Chief Medical Officer wrote, "and whether it is possible that the investigation is being whitewashed and the public is being denied the truth, because of concern over exposing the truth about Egyptian involvement."
One eyewitness said that the terrorists took care to fire at the wheels of the vehicles before they approached them. The terrorists followed this pattern with the vehicle that contained two couples on holiday before shooting them dead at close range, he said. His conclusion was that they wanted to abduct a soldier -- and murdered the four Israelis when they saw that they were civilians in their 50s, for whom they had no use.
The IDF published Friday the results of its investigation of the terror attacks. It found that First Sergeant Moshe Naftali was killed by "friendly fire" from IDF soldiers and not by terrorists.
Yossi, Moshe's father, said the family has no anger toward whoever mistakenly fired the shots that killed his son. "Our son is a hero who fought for the Nation of Israel and the Land of Israel," he said.
The Lies of Saeb Erekat
Solomonia
Saeb Erekat, where have you been? We have missed your jovial, suntanned, American-accented appearances on TV. Was your finest hour not during the second intifada, when you claimed that 500 Palestinians had been massacred in the Israeli assault on Jenin in 2002? It was then you cemented your reputation for being 'economical with the truth'. So welcome back, Saeb. I see your latest article for CiF, on Dec. 10th, marks the 62nd anniversary of the passing of UN Resolution 194, which you misinterpret as promoting the 'right' of return of the Palestinian Arabs displaced during Israel's war of independence. There is no such right. True to form, you are back with a whole new set of half-truths and omissions.
UN General Assembly resolution 194 calls for Palestinians to return to their homes. This General Assembly resolution was non-binding, unlike Security Council resolutions such as UN resolution 242. In fact all 15 paragraphs were a blueprint for a truce. Only article 11 of Resolution 194 deals with refugees, and does not specify 'Palestinian' refugees. The resolution was equally designed to apply to the Jews expelled from their homes in Jerusalem, Gush Etzion and other regions overrun by the Jordanian Arab Legion in the course of the war. It could also have applied to the thousands of Jews already fleeing pogroms in Arab countries. More about these later.
Erekat omits one other crucial piece of wording: Those refugees wishing to return to their homes must agree to 'live in peace with their neighbors': one surmises that even the drafters of UN resolution 194 would balk at the re-admission of a hostile irredentist population. Article 11 also states that those who do not wish to return would receive compensation from governments and authorities. The plural wording includes Arab governments.
Sixty two years will have passed without this historic resolution being implemented despite being upheld by the UN with nearly universal consensus.
It would surely embarrass our friend Erekat to admit that the resolution fell short of universal consensus because Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraqi, Saudi Arabia and Yemen themselves voted against UN resolution 194. Those Jews driven out of the prospective Palestinian Arab state and from Jerusalem were also deemed refugees, worthy of compensation. The Arabs did not relish their burden of responsibility for them. The Arab states also feared that voting in favour of the UN resolution would confer recognition on Israel as a Jewish state. Not a lot seems to have changed in sixty-two years. Last week on November 27, the Fatah Revolutionary Council (remember, they are the moderate Palestinians) concluded its fifth convention with a declaration refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Palestinian displacement continues to this day. It is not politic for Erekat to mention that Israel did make a substantial repatriation offer during the 1948 negotiations. The government said it would accept 100,000 refugees in a general settlement. This offer the Arab states rejected.
Israel bears responsibility for the creation of the Arab refugees. A moot point, at best. The Arabs rejected the plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state - UN Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947. The Arab refugees were a by-product of the Arab decision to go to war: five Arab armies invaded the newborn state of Israel as soon as it was declared. The Naqba is the catastrophic failure to win that war. The Zionists did not require the expulsion of the Arabs, as the Jewish state allocated by the Partition Plan would already have had a slight Jewish majority. The war saw only a few proven cases of expulsion, notably in Lydda. Most of the land which was to become Israel was state or miri land. The Palestinians did not own '90 percent ' of the land.
Today Palestinian refugees number more than 7 million people. It is a curious phenomenon that a baby born in a 'Palestinian refugee camp' (actually a permanent township) in Lebanon is entitled to call himself a refugee without ever having been to Palestine. Unique among refugees, four generations of Palestinians have been living off international largess as clients of the UN agency dedicated exclusively to their needs, UNWRA.
After a succession of little lies, Erekat's biggest lie is by omission: More Jews were driven out of Arab countries than the original 700,000 Palestinians who left Israel. They lost fifty percent more in assets.
By December 1947, a year before the passing of resolution 194, crowds in Bahrain began looting Jewish homes and shops and destroyed the synagogue. Two were killed. In Aleppo, Syria, the Jewish community was devastated by rioting: at least 150 homes, 50 shops, all 18 synagogues, five schools, an orphanage and a youth club were destroyed. Many Jews were killed, although the exact figure is not known. Over half the city's 10,000 Jews fled. In riots in Aden, 82 Jews were killed and hundreds of Jewish-owned shops destroyed. In Libya, 4,000 Jews had been made homeless by rioting two years earlier in which 130 Jews were murdered. In the summer of 1948, hundreds of Jewish civilians were murdered in Egypt and 48 in Morocco.
Before a single Palestinian had been made a refugee the same Arab states which embarked on war against Israel had declared a war against their own innocent Jewish citizens living hundreds of miles away from the battlefield. Even The Guardian (yes, you read that right), in an editorial in December 1947 entitled 'Hostages', deplored inflammatory statements made by Arab leaders and threats against their Jewish minorities.
Without playing down the suffering of Palestinian refugees, it is important to note that they were, unlike Jews in Arab lands, victims of war, not ethnic cleansing. The proof is that 160,000 Arabs remained in Israel, and over a million live there today, while 0.5 percent of the 1948 Jewish population remain in Arab countries. The Palestine Post of 22 December 1947 carried a report about harsh measures that the Arab League was planning against Jews in Arab lands. These Nuremberg-style measures, aspects of which were adopted by individual states, would first denaturalise the Jews, confiscate their property, freeze their bank accounts and treat them as enemy aliens. " It is significant and tragic that such a document should have been drafted," the editorial lamented. "It is easy for them to play the bully and to keep a sword hanging over the heads of many hundreds of thousands of Jews who are at their mercy."
As soon as they could, three-quarters of the million Jews living in Arab countries sought refuge in Israel, which absorbed them at great cost. A number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries roughly equal to the Palestinian refugees (two-thirds of whom were internally displaced within historic Palestine) exchanged places. Such exchanges of populations occurred after the wars between Greece and Turkey and India and Pakistan.
To achieve a lasting peace settlement based on justice, one cannot acknowledge a one-sided 'right of return' for Arab refugees to Israel if a similar right is not granted to Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
There's the rub. The Jews, now fully fledged citizens living in freedom in Israel and the West, do not want to return to the countries which persecuted and ethnically cleansed them. They want only compensation for lost property and human rights abuses. Whatever Erekat may say, there is no precedent for a return of refugees of any sort after sixty-two years. Far better to admit the de-facto exchange of refugee populations; far more humanitarian for the Palestinian refugees in the Arab world to be granted compensation for their losses and the civil rights their host Arab countries currently deny them.
Saeb Erekat's argument, echoed by Mahmoud Abbas, makes it plain as day that in spite of western and Obaman efforts to blame settlements or the absence of a Palestinian state for the absence of peace, the Palestinians will not end the conflict unless Israel consents to become a 23rd Arab-Muslim state by opening the floodgates to seven million so-called refugees. Sixty-two years on, the Arabs still view the ideological crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict as the 'right of return' of the Arab refugees. On this matter at least, we should commend Saeb Erekat and the Palestinian leadership for their candour.
Lauren Booth: “Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt must liberate Jerusalem”.
Richard Millet's Blog
“It is time, Brothers and Sisters, for Al Quds to be liberated. For Islam and people of the world who wish to pray there to the one God. And we say here today to you Israel, we see your crimes and we loathe your crimes. And to us your nation does not exist, because it is a criminal injustice against humanity. We want to see Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt go to the borders and stop this now. Liberate Al Quds! March to Al Quds!”
These were the words spoken by Lauren Booth (Tony Blair’s half-sister-in-law) at the Al Quds Day terror rally organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission in London’s Trafalgar Square yesterday. She had just pledged her support for Hamas. See clip: “You can’t take an army, which is a nation’s army, a terrorist nation’s army, and defeat it with sincere small fighters. It needs some of those states around to release their armies to burn that land and then that region will see peace like it had in the past. Because the only time that land has seen peace between Muslim, Christian and Jew living side by side was when sincere Islamic rulers ruled with justice.”
Here’s the clip:
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011: www.richardmillett.wordpress.com
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011: www.richardmillett.wordpress.com
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Al Quds Day was creatively subtitled “End the Siege, End the Occupation, End the Israeli Apartheid”, but for brevity they might just have subtitled it “End Israel”.
Placards, see below, were held up which read:
Israel Your Days are Numbered
Death to Israel
Down down Israel
For World Peace Israel Must Be Destroyed
The World Stopped Nazism, The World Must Stop Zionism
We Are All Hizbollah
Yellow Hezbollah flags were everywhere with the flag’s usual gun emblem, which is especially menacing considering that the head of Hizbollah has said that Jews are descended from pigs and apes and that if all the Jews in the world gathered in Israel it would save Hizbollah the trouble of going after them elsewhere.
I felt that the rhetoric and placards were nothing short of incitement to racial hatred and violence, not just against Israel and its citizens, but against the many Israeli tourists and residents in the UK as well as British Jews, and non-Jews, who wish to express support for Israel.
Had similar threats been made against Britain the police would have acted. They can still act as they were recording footage.
But there is no point filming and doing nothing. When will we start to see arrests for incitement?
More photos from yesterday:
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
Trafalgar Square, London, 21st August 2011
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Posted in anti-Semitism, Israel, Jews, UK
Tagged Al Quds Day, Hizbullah, Israel, lauren booth, palestine, Trafalgar Square, zionism
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Saturday, August 27, 2011
Obama and the 'myth of linkage'
Israel Matzav
Noah Pollak, who inspired my very first post about Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama's foreign policy team, and who first alerted me to the existential danger this man poses to the State of Israel, has written a piece on Commentary's Contentions blog in which he shows how Obama has adopted what Pollak calls the 'myth of linkage.' Linkage is the notion that if only the 'Palestinian problem' were 'solved' (How? By ending the existence of the State of Israel?), the Arab world in its entirety would suddenly support American foreign policy goals. But 'linkage' is nothing but a mirage that is promoted by the Arab world and the US State Department to accomplish by diplomacy what they could not accomplish on the battlefield: Israel's destruction (Hat Tip: Hot Air). In this worldview, the ineffectiveness of Arab states as U.S. allies is due primarily to genuine — as opposed to claimed — objections over the lack of American involvement in the conflict, as if America’s failure to “create” a Palestinian state is because 15 years of Madrid, Oslo, Camp David, the Road Map, Annapolis, and billions of dollars in foreign aid represent an insufficient dedication of resources to the conflict. In this worldview, Iran “uses” Hamas and Hezbollah to “stir up mischief,” a state of affairs which can be changed through a peace process. Obama apparently doesn’t believe that Hamas and Hezbollah are allied with Iran because all three share a very clear and unappeasable goal: ridding the Middle East of Israel and America. Does Obama really believe that Hamas and Hezbollah can be co-opted by a peace process?
Given that the hopelessly naive Obama still believes he can talk Iran out of continuing their nuclear enrichment program, it is entirely possible that he is foolish enough to believe that Hamas and Hezbullah can be co-opted by a 'peace process.'
Noah Pollak, who inspired my very first post about Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama's foreign policy team, and who first alerted me to the existential danger this man poses to the State of Israel, has written a piece on Commentary's Contentions blog in which he shows how Obama has adopted what Pollak calls the 'myth of linkage.' Linkage is the notion that if only the 'Palestinian problem' were 'solved' (How? By ending the existence of the State of Israel?), the Arab world in its entirety would suddenly support American foreign policy goals. But 'linkage' is nothing but a mirage that is promoted by the Arab world and the US State Department to accomplish by diplomacy what they could not accomplish on the battlefield: Israel's destruction (Hat Tip: Hot Air). In this worldview, the ineffectiveness of Arab states as U.S. allies is due primarily to genuine — as opposed to claimed — objections over the lack of American involvement in the conflict, as if America’s failure to “create” a Palestinian state is because 15 years of Madrid, Oslo, Camp David, the Road Map, Annapolis, and billions of dollars in foreign aid represent an insufficient dedication of resources to the conflict. In this worldview, Iran “uses” Hamas and Hezbollah to “stir up mischief,” a state of affairs which can be changed through a peace process. Obama apparently doesn’t believe that Hamas and Hezbollah are allied with Iran because all three share a very clear and unappeasable goal: ridding the Middle East of Israel and America. Does Obama really believe that Hamas and Hezbollah can be co-opted by a peace process?
Given that the hopelessly naive Obama still believes he can talk Iran out of continuing their nuclear enrichment program, it is entirely possible that he is foolish enough to believe that Hamas and Hezbullah can be co-opted by a 'peace process.'
Friday, August 26, 2011
Legal opinion challenges PLO statehood bid
Palestinians risk losing their rights under the new bid, as representation is called into question, legal expert says.
Guy Goodwin Gill
A legal opinion highlighting the challenges and risks facing the Palestinian people in their quest for statehood has been obtained by Al Jazeera, in the lead up to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's bid at the United Nations in September.
The opinion, written by Guy Goodwin-Gill, a professor of public international law at Oxford University and a member of the legal team representing Jordan's government in 'The Wall' case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in 2004, tackles the issues of Palestinian rights, representation, and the right of return, which may all be seriously affected by the outcome of the bid. Al Jazeera's Nour Samaha conducted an interview with Professor Goodwin-Gill to get a clearer picture of the dangers the Palestinian people may potentially face with the bid. His entire legal judgment on the problems with the current Palestinian bid for statehood can be accessed here.
How will the transfer of representation from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) to a state terminate/lose the authority to represent the Palestinian people?
What we have here, it seems to me, is a moment in which certain matters have just not been thought through. Historically, the PLO has been the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, internationally and within the United Nations [UN]. Now it is to be the state. Who, though, is the state, and what are the democratic links between those who will represent the state in the UN and the people of Palestine? An abstract entity – a state – is proposed, but where are the people?
Why would the creation of a state not represent Palestinian rights?
Traditionally, a state for the purposes of international law presupposes territory, population, government and the capacity to enter into international relations. But we have moved beyond that, particularly where representation in the UN is concerned. Today's world expects more – that a state should be representative of the people for whom it speaks and directly accountable to them.
One way to establish representative democracy is by elections, though elections also should meet certain international standards. But states which are imposed, top-down, or which are crated without an exercise of the popular will are, by definition, not representative. And as recent events remind us, the lack of representative and accountable government is a sure-fire recipe for disaster.
If the 'state of Palestine' is meant to replace the 'PLO', does this not just mean a transfer of authorities from one to the other? Similar to an official name-change?
As I understand the present proposal, the state of Palestine may replace the PLO as the representative of the people of Palestine at the United Nations. But we need to ask, what is the legitimate basis for such representation? I am not saying that it cannot be done, for of course it can. But only that I do not see the hallmarks of democratic, representative and accountable statehood – something in turn which depends on an exercise of the popular will. Shouldn't this come first?
How does the idea of Palestine statehood affect the role of the Palestinian National Council, and the Palestinian National Charter?
These are internal constitutional matters on which I am not competent to judge, but which again would seem to engage the will of the people.
You tackle three specific issues; constitutional, statehood, and representation. Starting on the issue of constitutional, you are saying the Palestinian Authority (PA) is a subsidiary body, formed by the PLO, as an administrative entity, and that "it does not have the capacity to assume greater powers, to ‘dissolve’ its parent body, or otherwise establish itself independently of the Palestinian National Council and the PLO". What does this mean, both for the quest for statehood, and subsequently for the Palestinians if statehood is granted?
On the legal standing and capacity of the Palestinian Authority, I was applying non-controversial legal principles regarding the powers and competence of subsidiary bodies. Does the PA have the power to move the issue of statehood ahead, and if so, what are the origins and parameters of that power? Have the people of Palestine, through their representative - the PLO - granted such power? I recognise that there is an urgent, pressing need for statehood, particularly in the face of the intransigence of other parties, but I am also concerned that the essentials of modern statehood – democracy, representative government and accountability – may be sidelined, if not sacrificed, perhaps to the long-term disadvantage of the people at large.
One issue here is that the majority of Palestinians are refugees living outside of historic Palestine, and they have an equal claim to be represented, particularly given the recognition of their rights in General Assembly resolution 194 (III), among others. It is not clear that they will be enfranchised through the creation of a state, in which case the PLO must continue to speak for their rights in the UN until they are implemented.
With regards to statehood, you say that as an observer state in the UN, Palestine would 'fall short of meeting the internationally agreed criteria of statehood', which would have serious implications for Palestinians at large, especially for the diaspora. How so?
What concerns me is that insufficient attention has been given so far to representation of the Palestinian people at large – that is, to the diaspora also, for whom both self-determination and the right of return are basic human rights and crucial elements in national identity.
With regards to representation, you state that the 'PLO's mandate thus encompasses the totality of issues arising from the continuing displacement of Palestinians and the struggle for self-determination – this includes, among others, the questions of return and compensation'. In what way will the creation of a state challenge this?
I'm afraid I will end up repeating myself – the question is, whether a state will in fact be truly representative of the popular will of all the people of Palestine, or whether the change in representation will in fact undermine their ability to claim their rights.
Who has your opinion been presented to, and when were they made aware of the issues you highlighted?
I understand that the Opinion has been given to all relevant officials of the PLO and party leaderships concerned with the diplomatic initiative on statehood. Obviously, such a decision to change the form of representation in the United Nations so dramatically is a matter which concerns all the Palestinian people. For this reason, I am happy that Al Jazeera are publishing it in full, as this will allow the proper and extensive discussion and debate which these issues require.
Guy Goodwin Gill is a professor of public international law at Oxford University.
Guy Goodwin Gill
A legal opinion highlighting the challenges and risks facing the Palestinian people in their quest for statehood has been obtained by Al Jazeera, in the lead up to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's bid at the United Nations in September.
The opinion, written by Guy Goodwin-Gill, a professor of public international law at Oxford University and a member of the legal team representing Jordan's government in 'The Wall' case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in 2004, tackles the issues of Palestinian rights, representation, and the right of return, which may all be seriously affected by the outcome of the bid. Al Jazeera's Nour Samaha conducted an interview with Professor Goodwin-Gill to get a clearer picture of the dangers the Palestinian people may potentially face with the bid. His entire legal judgment on the problems with the current Palestinian bid for statehood can be accessed here.
How will the transfer of representation from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) to a state terminate/lose the authority to represent the Palestinian people?
What we have here, it seems to me, is a moment in which certain matters have just not been thought through. Historically, the PLO has been the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, internationally and within the United Nations [UN]. Now it is to be the state. Who, though, is the state, and what are the democratic links between those who will represent the state in the UN and the people of Palestine? An abstract entity – a state – is proposed, but where are the people?
Why would the creation of a state not represent Palestinian rights?
Traditionally, a state for the purposes of international law presupposes territory, population, government and the capacity to enter into international relations. But we have moved beyond that, particularly where representation in the UN is concerned. Today's world expects more – that a state should be representative of the people for whom it speaks and directly accountable to them.
One way to establish representative democracy is by elections, though elections also should meet certain international standards. But states which are imposed, top-down, or which are crated without an exercise of the popular will are, by definition, not representative. And as recent events remind us, the lack of representative and accountable government is a sure-fire recipe for disaster.
If the 'state of Palestine' is meant to replace the 'PLO', does this not just mean a transfer of authorities from one to the other? Similar to an official name-change?
As I understand the present proposal, the state of Palestine may replace the PLO as the representative of the people of Palestine at the United Nations. But we need to ask, what is the legitimate basis for such representation? I am not saying that it cannot be done, for of course it can. But only that I do not see the hallmarks of democratic, representative and accountable statehood – something in turn which depends on an exercise of the popular will. Shouldn't this come first?
How does the idea of Palestine statehood affect the role of the Palestinian National Council, and the Palestinian National Charter?
These are internal constitutional matters on which I am not competent to judge, but which again would seem to engage the will of the people.
You tackle three specific issues; constitutional, statehood, and representation. Starting on the issue of constitutional, you are saying the Palestinian Authority (PA) is a subsidiary body, formed by the PLO, as an administrative entity, and that "it does not have the capacity to assume greater powers, to ‘dissolve’ its parent body, or otherwise establish itself independently of the Palestinian National Council and the PLO". What does this mean, both for the quest for statehood, and subsequently for the Palestinians if statehood is granted?
On the legal standing and capacity of the Palestinian Authority, I was applying non-controversial legal principles regarding the powers and competence of subsidiary bodies. Does the PA have the power to move the issue of statehood ahead, and if so, what are the origins and parameters of that power? Have the people of Palestine, through their representative - the PLO - granted such power? I recognise that there is an urgent, pressing need for statehood, particularly in the face of the intransigence of other parties, but I am also concerned that the essentials of modern statehood – democracy, representative government and accountability – may be sidelined, if not sacrificed, perhaps to the long-term disadvantage of the people at large.
One issue here is that the majority of Palestinians are refugees living outside of historic Palestine, and they have an equal claim to be represented, particularly given the recognition of their rights in General Assembly resolution 194 (III), among others. It is not clear that they will be enfranchised through the creation of a state, in which case the PLO must continue to speak for their rights in the UN until they are implemented.
With regards to statehood, you say that as an observer state in the UN, Palestine would 'fall short of meeting the internationally agreed criteria of statehood', which would have serious implications for Palestinians at large, especially for the diaspora. How so?
What concerns me is that insufficient attention has been given so far to representation of the Palestinian people at large – that is, to the diaspora also, for whom both self-determination and the right of return are basic human rights and crucial elements in national identity.
With regards to representation, you state that the 'PLO's mandate thus encompasses the totality of issues arising from the continuing displacement of Palestinians and the struggle for self-determination – this includes, among others, the questions of return and compensation'. In what way will the creation of a state challenge this?
I'm afraid I will end up repeating myself – the question is, whether a state will in fact be truly representative of the popular will of all the people of Palestine, or whether the change in representation will in fact undermine their ability to claim their rights.
Who has your opinion been presented to, and when were they made aware of the issues you highlighted?
I understand that the Opinion has been given to all relevant officials of the PLO and party leaderships concerned with the diplomatic initiative on statehood. Obviously, such a decision to change the form of representation in the United Nations so dramatically is a matter which concerns all the Palestinian people. For this reason, I am happy that Al Jazeera are publishing it in full, as this will allow the proper and extensive discussion and debate which these issues require.
Guy Goodwin Gill is a professor of public international law at Oxford University.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
For Israel, The Old Rules Don't Apply
Daled Amos
At the height of the "Arab Spring" those who consistently recommended Israeli concessions for peace decided that this new unique situation demanded a novel, brave and dynamic approach--Israeli concessions.
In an editorial in Haaretz, Moshe Arens notes that the "Arab Spring" at this point offers not so much an opportunity, as a lesson:
It is now 34 years since Israel agreed to turn the Sinai peninsula over to Egypt as part of the peace treaty signed by Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. Although many do not like to be reminded of it, Sadat was a dictator. The peace treaty survived his assassination four years later, when he was replaced by Mubarak. Whether it will survive the downfall of Mubarak is not clear at the moment.
When it was signed, Arab dictatorships were considered to be a permanent feature of the Middle East. It seemed obvious that Israel had to make peace with Arab dictators, and that the formula for making peace with them was "territories for peace" - giving up territorial strategic assets for peace with a dictator.
That peace is security was considered a tautology. Dictators were famous for their ability to enforce their will upon the people. When they signed a peace treaty you could depend on them. As a democracy, Israel welcomes the fall of dictators, but in view of the special conditions in the Middle East--for all the evils of dictatorships, dictators assured a status quo when it came to agreements. And a degree of status quo in the tumultuous Middle East can be a rare and precious thing.
Just look at the anarchy in Egypt and how it has now affected Israel's security--
And imagine "what if" Israel had returned the Golan Heights to Assad as part of a peace agreement.
Bottom line:
It is time for a reappraisal of pre-conceived ideas.
This is not a time to throw caution to the wind. This is not a time to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines. It is not a time for "daring political initiatives." It is a time for watching and waiting to see how things are going to turn out. It is a time to think how we are going to assure the security of Israel's citizens in the southern part of the country from daily rocket attacks, and make sure that those living in the north and the center of the country do not share their fate.
Iron Dome is a great technological achievement but it alone cannot do the job.
It is a time to put away the placards calling for "Peace Now" and "An End to the Occupation." It may be the time for those demanding "social justice" for the "middle class" to fold their tents.
Sounds logical--but don't bet on either of those 2 happening.
But Israelis in general are aware that this is a new playing field--with new players and new rules, many of which are not even clear yet.
At the height of the "Arab Spring" those who consistently recommended Israeli concessions for peace decided that this new unique situation demanded a novel, brave and dynamic approach--Israeli concessions.
In an editorial in Haaretz, Moshe Arens notes that the "Arab Spring" at this point offers not so much an opportunity, as a lesson:
It is now 34 years since Israel agreed to turn the Sinai peninsula over to Egypt as part of the peace treaty signed by Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. Although many do not like to be reminded of it, Sadat was a dictator. The peace treaty survived his assassination four years later, when he was replaced by Mubarak. Whether it will survive the downfall of Mubarak is not clear at the moment.
When it was signed, Arab dictatorships were considered to be a permanent feature of the Middle East. It seemed obvious that Israel had to make peace with Arab dictators, and that the formula for making peace with them was "territories for peace" - giving up territorial strategic assets for peace with a dictator.
That peace is security was considered a tautology. Dictators were famous for their ability to enforce their will upon the people. When they signed a peace treaty you could depend on them. As a democracy, Israel welcomes the fall of dictators, but in view of the special conditions in the Middle East--for all the evils of dictatorships, dictators assured a status quo when it came to agreements. And a degree of status quo in the tumultuous Middle East can be a rare and precious thing.
Just look at the anarchy in Egypt and how it has now affected Israel's security--
And imagine "what if" Israel had returned the Golan Heights to Assad as part of a peace agreement.
Bottom line:
It is time for a reappraisal of pre-conceived ideas.
This is not a time to throw caution to the wind. This is not a time to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines. It is not a time for "daring political initiatives." It is a time for watching and waiting to see how things are going to turn out. It is a time to think how we are going to assure the security of Israel's citizens in the southern part of the country from daily rocket attacks, and make sure that those living in the north and the center of the country do not share their fate.
Iron Dome is a great technological achievement but it alone cannot do the job.
It is a time to put away the placards calling for "Peace Now" and "An End to the Occupation." It may be the time for those demanding "social justice" for the "middle class" to fold their tents.
Sounds logical--but don't bet on either of those 2 happening.
But Israelis in general are aware that this is a new playing field--with new players and new rules, many of which are not even clear yet.
Should Israel Embrace Glenn Beck?
CG
I attended the Glenn Beck program yesterday at the Safra Square screening from the Old City, sat among Christians who had come for this and were thrilled to be here. They said that they had learned so much positive about Israel during this trip. appreciating everything that the country is - this news so lacking in the States. In fact, they felt that what is reported there is often the opposite of our reality and harmful to Israel - even from our supporters there. After all. if a Jewish person faults Israel it must be so.
I cannot understand why some of the criticism of Israel is 'acceptable' by our own yet when someone else stands up to defend us it's a 'no-no'. If a person were being shunned and slanderized by a gang of hooligans and others saw this and came to help, should any sane human being reject that support?
I have friends in the States who consider themselves 'liberals', could vote only for a Democrat although they admitted to me that they feared much of what Obama said and his years-long associations and activities with questionable people. Some favored Obama's anti war statements; others wanted acceptance by their 'friends' and agreed with them without knowing what it was all about or did not want to be bothered with a country so far away; Israel did not rate high in their 'Jewishness'.
Along comes Glenn Beck who admits that he did not know much about this but the more he heard the more he realized what had to be done; there were enough people against Israel and he was willing to oppose them because he saw the raw reality. Those who hate* Beck may be feeling uncomfortable that a non-Jew dares to express feelings about Israel that they do not share.
My answer to them is, "Too bad, guys; he's got it and it does not make a difference that his is of a different faith. It is not about one's religion; the fight is about the good people who simply believe in 'live and let live' ". Today the world is at war between 'good' and 'evil' and Beck gets it. The neighborhood in which we live is not 'good' politically but there is a basic 'goodness' here and no other place that I would want to be.
Chana
in beloved Jerusalem, the united capital of the Jewish State of Israel
*I have been shocked by hearing some of my friends use the word HATE re not only Beck but the 'tea party', the 'Republicans', and anyone who does not agree with them! These are folks who call themselves 'liberals'.
Below is an article by Dershowitz ; I do not always agree with him, even in some of what he says here but do not harbor strong feelings against him.
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Israel-Glenn-Beck-Jewish/2011/08/23/id/408321?s=al&promo_code=CE74-1
Should Israel Embrace Glenn Beck?
Tuesday, 23 Aug 2011 11:08 AM
By Alan Dershowitz
More ways to share...
All decent people, whether on the left or the right, should support Israel’s right to exist as the democratic nation state of the Jewish people.
All decent people should support Israel’s right to defend its civilians from terrorist attacks. All reasonable people should favor a just peace that assures Israel’s ability to thrive in a dangerous neighborhood and to defend its borders.
These issues should not divide decent people along ideological or political lines. Israel’s existence and right to defend itself should be bipartisan issues, not only in the United States, but in all democratic countries of the world.
The reality, however, is very different. The Jewish state is demonized by the hard left in America, by virtually the entire left in much of Europe, and by most of the left and right in Ireland, Norway, and Sweden. Its right to exist is denied by a high proportion of Arabs and Muslims, and most of the Arab and Muslim nations do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
In many circles, anti-Zionism easily morphs into anti-Semitism, and in some countries Jews are afraid to walk the streets wearing any clothing or symbols that identify them as Jewish.
The general assembly of the United Nations has become the world’s new Der Sturmer, whose podium hosts, and many of whose audience members cheer, virulent anti-Semites such as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Defenders of Israel, even those critical of some of Israel’s policies, are banned from speaking at universities, are attacked personally by the hard-left media and are treated as pariahs by their academic colleagues.
It is against this sad and increasingly dangerous background that one must evaluate Glenn Beck’s visit to Israel. I disagree with much of Beck’s politics and with virtually all of his conspiracy theorizing. Yet I admire his courage in putting his body in the line of fire. I believe him when he says:
If the world goes down the road of dehumanizing Jews again, “then count me a Jew and come for me first.”
At a time when old friends and allies who should be supporting the Jewish state are abandoning it in droves, Beck’s willingness to stand up for Israel must be accepted with gratitude. I, for one, do not question his motives. I believe they are genuine.
One need not accept all of Beck’s positions on Israel — and I certainly do not — in order to agree with him that support of Israel is one of the great moral issues of the 21st century.
Those who thoughtlessly attack Israel no matter what it does and thoughtlessly defend Israel’s enemies regardless of what they do, are making peace far more difficult. They incentivize terrorism by Israel’s enemies and disincentivize compromise on all sides.
I will wait to hear precisely what Glenn Beck says during his visit to Israel before I evaluate it. Just as I feel free to criticize the Israeli government when I think it is wrong, I certainly feel free to criticize defenders of Israel when I think they are wrong. But I will not prejudge Beck until he is given a full opportunity to express his views.
I certainly admire Beck’s decision to go to Israel far more than the decision of so many so-called artists and intellectuals who call for a boycott against the Jewish state without even bothering to go there and see for themselves.
I welcome the support of religious Christians who love Israel for religious reasons. I abhor the ignorant and misguided efforts of other Christians, such as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, who misuse their faith against the Jewish state.
I hope that more Christians will follow in Beck’s footsteps and take the time to visit Israel. They will see Christianity thriving in Israel while at the same time being dismantled and destroyed in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Egypt, and in other areas in which Islamic fundamentalists have taken over.
Christian religious sites are preserved in Jerusalem and other areas under Israeli control. When the Jordanian government controlled parts of Jerusalem, it destroyed many historic religious sites sacred to both Jews and Christians.
Nation states are entitled to engage in Realpolitik so long as they do so within the limits of acceptable morality. Realpolitik requires accepting support from, and sometimes giving support to, nations and people who are not in complete agreement over policies.
Consider Nelson Mandela’s alliances with some of most brutal dictatorships (Libya, Cuba, Syria) and supporters of terrorism (P.L.O., Iran) while he was engaged in his just struggle against the evils of apartheid.
I do not recall the left condemning Mandela for doing what he had to do. But the same left was unforgiving in Israel when it was forced to make some strategic military deals with South Africa, while strongly opposing its apartheid policies.
I do not mean to compare dictatorial, terrorist, or apartheid regimes with Glenn Beck, only to make the point that the Jewish state is often subjected to a double standard when it comes to the support it receives or gives.
Many Israelis will welcome Glenn Beck’s support. Some will oppose it. Others will wish his views were more consistent with their own. This is as it should be in a democracy.
The fact is that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that would allow Glenn Beck to express his views, without censoring them or even knowing in advance what he was going to say. This too is as it should be in a democracy.
© Newsmax. All rights reserved.
I attended the Glenn Beck program yesterday at the Safra Square screening from the Old City, sat among Christians who had come for this and were thrilled to be here. They said that they had learned so much positive about Israel during this trip. appreciating everything that the country is - this news so lacking in the States. In fact, they felt that what is reported there is often the opposite of our reality and harmful to Israel - even from our supporters there. After all. if a Jewish person faults Israel it must be so.
I cannot understand why some of the criticism of Israel is 'acceptable' by our own yet when someone else stands up to defend us it's a 'no-no'. If a person were being shunned and slanderized by a gang of hooligans and others saw this and came to help, should any sane human being reject that support?
I have friends in the States who consider themselves 'liberals', could vote only for a Democrat although they admitted to me that they feared much of what Obama said and his years-long associations and activities with questionable people. Some favored Obama's anti war statements; others wanted acceptance by their 'friends' and agreed with them without knowing what it was all about or did not want to be bothered with a country so far away; Israel did not rate high in their 'Jewishness'.
Along comes Glenn Beck who admits that he did not know much about this but the more he heard the more he realized what had to be done; there were enough people against Israel and he was willing to oppose them because he saw the raw reality. Those who hate* Beck may be feeling uncomfortable that a non-Jew dares to express feelings about Israel that they do not share.
My answer to them is, "Too bad, guys; he's got it and it does not make a difference that his is of a different faith. It is not about one's religion; the fight is about the good people who simply believe in 'live and let live' ". Today the world is at war between 'good' and 'evil' and Beck gets it. The neighborhood in which we live is not 'good' politically but there is a basic 'goodness' here and no other place that I would want to be.
Chana
in beloved Jerusalem, the united capital of the Jewish State of Israel
*I have been shocked by hearing some of my friends use the word HATE re not only Beck but the 'tea party', the 'Republicans', and anyone who does not agree with them! These are folks who call themselves 'liberals'.
Below is an article by Dershowitz ; I do not always agree with him, even in some of what he says here but do not harbor strong feelings against him.
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Israel-Glenn-Beck-Jewish/2011/08/23/id/408321?s=al&promo_code=CE74-1
Should Israel Embrace Glenn Beck?
Tuesday, 23 Aug 2011 11:08 AM
By Alan Dershowitz
More ways to share...
All decent people, whether on the left or the right, should support Israel’s right to exist as the democratic nation state of the Jewish people.
All decent people should support Israel’s right to defend its civilians from terrorist attacks. All reasonable people should favor a just peace that assures Israel’s ability to thrive in a dangerous neighborhood and to defend its borders.
These issues should not divide decent people along ideological or political lines. Israel’s existence and right to defend itself should be bipartisan issues, not only in the United States, but in all democratic countries of the world.
The reality, however, is very different. The Jewish state is demonized by the hard left in America, by virtually the entire left in much of Europe, and by most of the left and right in Ireland, Norway, and Sweden. Its right to exist is denied by a high proportion of Arabs and Muslims, and most of the Arab and Muslim nations do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
In many circles, anti-Zionism easily morphs into anti-Semitism, and in some countries Jews are afraid to walk the streets wearing any clothing or symbols that identify them as Jewish.
The general assembly of the United Nations has become the world’s new Der Sturmer, whose podium hosts, and many of whose audience members cheer, virulent anti-Semites such as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Defenders of Israel, even those critical of some of Israel’s policies, are banned from speaking at universities, are attacked personally by the hard-left media and are treated as pariahs by their academic colleagues.
It is against this sad and increasingly dangerous background that one must evaluate Glenn Beck’s visit to Israel. I disagree with much of Beck’s politics and with virtually all of his conspiracy theorizing. Yet I admire his courage in putting his body in the line of fire. I believe him when he says:
If the world goes down the road of dehumanizing Jews again, “then count me a Jew and come for me first.”
At a time when old friends and allies who should be supporting the Jewish state are abandoning it in droves, Beck’s willingness to stand up for Israel must be accepted with gratitude. I, for one, do not question his motives. I believe they are genuine.
One need not accept all of Beck’s positions on Israel — and I certainly do not — in order to agree with him that support of Israel is one of the great moral issues of the 21st century.
Those who thoughtlessly attack Israel no matter what it does and thoughtlessly defend Israel’s enemies regardless of what they do, are making peace far more difficult. They incentivize terrorism by Israel’s enemies and disincentivize compromise on all sides.
I will wait to hear precisely what Glenn Beck says during his visit to Israel before I evaluate it. Just as I feel free to criticize the Israeli government when I think it is wrong, I certainly feel free to criticize defenders of Israel when I think they are wrong. But I will not prejudge Beck until he is given a full opportunity to express his views.
I certainly admire Beck’s decision to go to Israel far more than the decision of so many so-called artists and intellectuals who call for a boycott against the Jewish state without even bothering to go there and see for themselves.
I welcome the support of religious Christians who love Israel for religious reasons. I abhor the ignorant and misguided efforts of other Christians, such as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, who misuse their faith against the Jewish state.
I hope that more Christians will follow in Beck’s footsteps and take the time to visit Israel. They will see Christianity thriving in Israel while at the same time being dismantled and destroyed in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Egypt, and in other areas in which Islamic fundamentalists have taken over.
Christian religious sites are preserved in Jerusalem and other areas under Israeli control. When the Jordanian government controlled parts of Jerusalem, it destroyed many historic religious sites sacred to both Jews and Christians.
Nation states are entitled to engage in Realpolitik so long as they do so within the limits of acceptable morality. Realpolitik requires accepting support from, and sometimes giving support to, nations and people who are not in complete agreement over policies.
Consider Nelson Mandela’s alliances with some of most brutal dictatorships (Libya, Cuba, Syria) and supporters of terrorism (P.L.O., Iran) while he was engaged in his just struggle against the evils of apartheid.
I do not recall the left condemning Mandela for doing what he had to do. But the same left was unforgiving in Israel when it was forced to make some strategic military deals with South Africa, while strongly opposing its apartheid policies.
I do not mean to compare dictatorial, terrorist, or apartheid regimes with Glenn Beck, only to make the point that the Jewish state is often subjected to a double standard when it comes to the support it receives or gives.
Many Israelis will welcome Glenn Beck’s support. Some will oppose it. Others will wish his views were more consistent with their own. This is as it should be in a democracy.
The fact is that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that would allow Glenn Beck to express his views, without censoring them or even knowing in advance what he was going to say. This too is as it should be in a democracy.
© Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Wikileaks: Child marriage in Israel (updated)
Elder of Ziyon
Last night, Wikileaks released some 35,000 new cables.
Most of them are incredibly boring, very few are classified or secret.
Here's an unclassified 2005 cable that is interesting, though:
The Executive Director of the NCC described early marriage as "not a significant problem in the general Israeli population," but "significant" among minority groups such as Muslims, certain ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects, and new immigrants from Ethiopia and the Islamic states in the FSU. According to the Government's Central Bureau of statistics, 47 boys 17 years of age or younger married in 2002, 30 from the Jewish sector and 17 from the Muslim sector. ... During the same year, there was a total of 196 "child brides" under the age of 17, with 29 from the Jewish sector, 165 from the Muslim sector, and one from the Christian sector. The Central Bureau of Statistics highlighted that the ratio of girls in the Muslim sector who married under the age of 17 increased from 1.3 girls per 1,000 in 1995, to 6 girls per 1,000 in 2001. The ratio for girls in the Jewish sector who married under the age of 17 remained stable at 0.3 girls per 1,000. In the view of the NCC, child marriage has an adverse effect in that it influences the child's ability to continue his or her education and impedes the child's proper development. Ivri was not aware of any specific government office that is working on this issue.
No U.S.-funded initiatives exist in Israel to reduce the incidence or address the negative affects of child marriage. The NCC endorses implementation of new educational programs that target the specific at-risk populations cited above.
The highlighted statistic is incredible - a fourfold increase in Muslim child brides in only six years?
Could it be that after Oslo there was a rush to marry girls between those living in Israel and the territories so the latter could gain Israeli citizenship? I cannot imagine that this huge jump was not related to political issues as (at the time) a Palestinian Arab state seemed increasingly likely.
UPDATE: Commenter akibigman notes that during Oslo, some 130,000 Palestinian Arabs received Israeli citizenship by marrying Israeli Arabs, so my supposition makes sense.
Last night, Wikileaks released some 35,000 new cables.
Most of them are incredibly boring, very few are classified or secret.
Here's an unclassified 2005 cable that is interesting, though:
The Executive Director of the NCC described early marriage as "not a significant problem in the general Israeli population," but "significant" among minority groups such as Muslims, certain ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects, and new immigrants from Ethiopia and the Islamic states in the FSU. According to the Government's Central Bureau of statistics, 47 boys 17 years of age or younger married in 2002, 30 from the Jewish sector and 17 from the Muslim sector. ... During the same year, there was a total of 196 "child brides" under the age of 17, with 29 from the Jewish sector, 165 from the Muslim sector, and one from the Christian sector. The Central Bureau of Statistics highlighted that the ratio of girls in the Muslim sector who married under the age of 17 increased from 1.3 girls per 1,000 in 1995, to 6 girls per 1,000 in 2001. The ratio for girls in the Jewish sector who married under the age of 17 remained stable at 0.3 girls per 1,000. In the view of the NCC, child marriage has an adverse effect in that it influences the child's ability to continue his or her education and impedes the child's proper development. Ivri was not aware of any specific government office that is working on this issue.
No U.S.-funded initiatives exist in Israel to reduce the incidence or address the negative affects of child marriage. The NCC endorses implementation of new educational programs that target the specific at-risk populations cited above.
The highlighted statistic is incredible - a fourfold increase in Muslim child brides in only six years?
Could it be that after Oslo there was a rush to marry girls between those living in Israel and the territories so the latter could gain Israeli citizenship? I cannot imagine that this huge jump was not related to political issues as (at the time) a Palestinian Arab state seemed increasingly likely.
UPDATE: Commenter akibigman notes that during Oslo, some 130,000 Palestinian Arabs received Israeli citizenship by marrying Israeli Arabs, so my supposition makes sense.
GLENN BECK: RESTORING COURAGE SPEECH
Comment by Ted Belman
Glen Beck gave a blockbuster of a speech on Wednesday in Jerusalem against the backdrop of the southern wall of the Old City. He talked about faith, truth, responsibility and courage. He said he had nothing to say to Israel about courage but that he and the world had a lot to learn from Israelis about courage.
He excoriated the UN and the Human Rights advocates for calling good, evil and for ignoring true evil. He said “Human rights was once a cry for justice. Now it’s used as a threat.” Beautifully said. It’s not that many advocates for Israel haven’t been complaining about the same thing for years. They have. But to have a man with such a huge megaphone say the things that the Whitehouse, the E.U. and the U.N. never say was very uplifting. Beck speaks truth to power.
He praised the Jewish people for teaching mankind that “every individual life has dignity, that every life is sacred”.
Beck entreated people to take responsibility. “Today I propose a new path. I propose a path led by you – the individual, linked in arms with other individuals. A path where governments and so-called human rights organizations get out of the way and people come together to solve our problems. “
To this end he is travelling to South Africa tonight to broadcast from Capetown that Israel is not apartheid. A most welcome initiative weeks before Durban III. Then he is slated to talk to 5000 leaders in South America and subsequently 5000 people in Texas to challenge them to join him in standing up for Israel.
To Glenn, I say “Thank you and Godspeed. You are doing God’s work.”.
Today, I ask you turn your eyes to Israel and restore courage.
I have been asked: What can you teach Israel about Courage? My answer is simple. Nothing.
Then they ask: Why are you coming to Israel? Because, I say: In Israel, you see courage.
In Israel, there is more courage in one square mile than in all of Europe. In Israel, there is more courage in one soldier than in the combined and cold hearts of every bureaucrat at the United Nations. In Israel, you can find people who will stand against incredible odds… against the entire tide of global opinion, for what is right and good and true. Israel is not a perfect country. No country is perfect. But it tries… and it is courageous.
Today, the world needs courage more than ever.
We need it because whether you live here in Jerusalem, or in London, or in Athens, or in Washington, D.C., you know – we all know — the world is changing, the world is burning, and whatever we have known… whatever we’ve thought would never change… whatever we’ve grown to think is solid and strong and durable … is under siege.
You don’t have to be a prophet to know that things are not going well in the world. The threats are mounting. Darkness is falling.
Far too many politicians are willing to look away. The shape shifters are at work. They have turned day into night, good into evil. They have changed the very meaning of words.
In New York, the so-called leaders of the world talk about abuses of human rights. But what they will do is abuse the very meaning of the phrase “human rights.”
“Human rights,” they say. But who will they focus on? Libya? Syria? North Korea? No.
They will condemn Israel. Tiny Israel. Democratic Israel. Free Israel. Israel, which values life above all other things.
Israel, as usual, is the exception.
——-
The world is adrift. The world is confused.
In Europe, the great nations of the past – Greece, Italy, Spain, Britain – are falling into chaos and violence.
We have raised up a generation who cannot tell the difference between what they owe society and what society owes them.
They interviewed the rioters in England. Why, they were asked, are you stealing shoes or televisions. “Because,” the rioters said in response, “because we deserve them.”
We may think: Oh, how different are today’s youth! But the young merely imitate their parents. They have seen how the world reacts to evil – with indifference. They watch, they learn, they imitate. What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.
When the Fogel family was killed in their sleep the world barely took note. The grand councils of earth condemn Israel. Across the border, Syria slaughters its own citizens. The grand councils are silent. It’s no wonder children light their streets on fire.
These international councils, these panels of so-called diplomats, condemn Israel not because they believe Israel needs to be corrected. They do so because it is convenient.
Everyone does it. In some countries, it’s a crime not to.
The diplomats are afraid, and so they submit. They surrender to falsehood. The truth matters not. To the keepers of conventional wisdom, a sacrifice of the truth is a small price to pay. What difference does it make if we beat up on little Israel? These are the actions of the fearful and cowards.
But I stand here to tell you this: Fear is the pathway to surrender. And to overcome fear, we must have courage.
This is hard to do. Especially here. Especially now.
The plotters plot. The schemers scheme. And it is easy to tremble with doubt.
Even Israelis – the most courageous people on earth – doubt themselves. “Did we do something to deserve this? Perhaps if we just do something else, it will all go away!”
My Israeli friends, I have a message: You must not lose hope. You must not lose confidence. You must have courage.
And you must draw courage from the knowledge that you were led to this land by God. And in the affairs of mankind, God is not a stranger to the children of Abraham.
He promised that Israel would rise again. For two thousand years the Jewish people held on to this promise. We have seen the promise fulfilled.
Israel, we have witnessed the dawn of your redemption.
We live in an age of man made, technological miracles. But these are the days of divine miracles.
Not by the hand of any man, whether his name is Balfour or Truman, does Israel exist. Israel is here because the God of Abraham keeps His covenants.
In synagogues just over a week ago, they read the words of the prophet Isaiah:
“Comfort, oh comfort My people,
Says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
And declare to her
Her term of hard service is over . . .”
And look at us! Here we are – in Jerusalem united. Jerusalem rebuilt.
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not neutral in the affairs of mankind. God is not indifferent to Israel. He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant he made with your forefathers.
—–
In the 40 years of wandering in the desert, the ancient Hebrews were led through the dark of night by a pillar of fire.
Courage is the act of walking into the darkness, and knowing that each step would be guided and protected by the pillar of fire, if we follow it. God is with us.
I will admit, I did not know this, until very recently.
For the first half of my life I did very little. I was the stereotypical American that believed two oceans would forever shelter me.
As a radio and TV commentator, my job was little more than pointing out the problems. And I did. I saw what I thought were obvious things, and I made obvious observations.
I saw the interviews of Osama bin Laden, and so in 1999, I said he will attack New York again. He did.
I saw the unreal expectations of ordinary Americans in 2006, and so I said – there will be a crash in the housing market. It can’t keep going up. And it crashed.
I saw the global financial markets ready to seize up in 2007… I saw the coming unrest and riots in Europe in 2008.
It didn’t take a prophet to see these things – all you had to do was recognize that evil exists and evil was going unopposed.
And so this year, when I saw Tunisia’s and Egypt’s rulers crack and fall and the world called it the Arab Spring, I said: Where could this be going? And behind these revolutions was a familiar force, a force that will place those nations under a new pharaoh. And that force, I said, would come up to the borders of Israel. And so it has.
We are not at the mercy of these events. We can alter the course of history. We can stand against the dangerous arc of this story.
But we need people who are willing to speak truth. We need inspiration. We need a model to follow.
The last century was a century of genocide. A century where evil rose up again and again… swallowing up the lives of millions.
But evil met its match. Goodness eventually prevailed. People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr. and Lech Walesa and Mother Theresa and Henrietta Szold awoke the world.
They gave their lives to the pursuit of human rights. They took the side of justice against injustice, they held aloft the torch of freedom to push out the darkness of hate.
These men and women lived difficult lives. They often lived shortened lives. They were often born to relative privilege, but willing to take on suffering. They did want not to martyr themselves. They would have happily lived to the end of their natural lives in comfort… but to the righteous, there is no comfort when evil has taken root.
But the cause of human rights has been taken over by organizations who share little with the individuals who led the movement. Human rights was once a cry for justice. Now it used as a threat.
These organizations have become bullies and grotesque parodies of the principles they pretend to represent. They criticize free nations and spare the unfree. They denounce nations like Israel and America, who have high standards for freedom, and leave alone nations that have no freedom at all. They are nearly comical in their double-standards. Whatever moral force they once had is spent. Their time is up. And so, we dismiss them.
Today, we take back the phrase “human rights” and place it where it belongs, as the first half of God’s plan for humanity. The second half is responsibility.
If we want to be endowed with rights – real human rights, we have to act with responsibility. We must not be comfortable with rights. We must be comfortable with responsibility. We cannot use our few short years on this planet enjoying our rights… we must do everything we can living by our responsibilities to our fellow man. Rights and responsibilities. The two go hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm, together.
Nowhere in the Torah or the Christian Scriptures do you see the phrase words “human rights.” But there is a lot in there about responsibilities.
Everything we know about human rights and civilization came from this place. Whether you live by 613 commandments or 10 or just one golden rule, they all came from here. This throne of the Lord.
When the world turns its back on Israel and the Jewish people, the world turns its back on the source of all human rights. Without the Jewish people, humanity would not know that every individual life has dignity, that every life is sacred, that God names every star and knows every soul. That was God’s message to Abraham and Moses. It is the message of the Jewish people to the world, and by their very existence they teach it to us.
Today I propose a new path. I propose a path led by you – the individual, linked in arms with other individuals. A path where governments and so-called human rights organizations get out of the way and people come together to solve our problems. As God intended.
Some may ask: Why not leave this work up to others – the well-connected and well-educated and well-heeled, our political leaders or the media?
Well, I ask you: Whom do you trust to do this sacred work?
Who will protect your rights better? A king, president or you?
Who will protect the truth? A reporter, producer or you?
Who will protect and teach your children to seek truth? A textbook committee, an education bureaucrat, or you?
Did a commission of wise men stop the Holocaust? Did a committee of Congress end Jim Crow?
No. In each case, the work was done by individuals who would not abide convenient lies. They saw injustice and they called it out. They saw their nation wage war against a single group and they said “Not in My Name.” They didn’t wait for the conventions of society to catch up to God’s laws. They pushed. They pressed. And they were victorious.
This spirit lives within us. I believe that you will link arms with others and stand with courage, and walk behind the pillar of fire.
—–
You see evil rear its head in our time. You see the signs again. The swastikas are on display in the street marches. This week they’re holding up signs in Cairo that say: We’re building the gas chambers. They dress their children in suicide belts. They are given the choice, and they choose death.
Let us have the courage to choose life. No more incitement. No more threats. No more terror. No more talk of genocide. No more hate. No fear. No more lies.
We can read their signs, listen to their speeches. So we know that they say what they mean and mean what they say.
Well: So do we.
And I know we will be victorious. Because while their conviction is rooted in hate, our conviction is rooted in love. And love always wins.
When Naomi and her daughters in law lost their husbands, Naomi knew that their future would be far brighter if they went back to their families, to start over. But her daughter in law Ruth would have none of it. She said,
“Entreat me not to leave thee,
or to return from following after thee:
for whither thou goest, I will go;
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge:
thy people shall be my people,
and thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.”
And so I say that if the world decides it must know who will stand with Israel, who will stand with the Jewish people, so they know exactly who to condemn, who to target, let them know this.
Condemn me. Target me. I will stand with Israel. I will stand with the Jewish people. And if they want to round us up again, I will proudly raise my hand and say “Take me first.”
—–
There is courage in our time. It is here in this space. It is found everywhere God resides in the hearts of man. It is found in Joplin Missouri. Joplin was devastated by a tornado a mile wide. They lost their hospital and their school. Joplin looked more like a moonscape than the pleasant town it was.
But this is a town not looking to take help but to offer it. They began to gather early this morning. Many are taking the day off from work to show their dedication and love of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.
Our problems demand more than checkbook courage. It’s easy to write a check. But we can’t outsource love and truth and courage. We must do it ourselves. We must roll up our sleeves to make a lasting difference.
We will find hope. We will renew ourselves. We will be the first to regain what many of us have lost … Our faith. Together, we will begin to change the world.
We won’t find the answers in some global body halfway around the world…but in ourselves. We won’t find purpose in the drumbeat of destruction and disobedience we hear in the West, but in a mission of building and honor and courage.
In people like Rami Levi. In people like Tamar Fogel. In the owners, one a Jew the other an Arab, who built and reopened the Maxim restaurant after it was bombed. Each made a decision on their own to build.
The prophets and sages promise us, that by small and simple things do great things come to pass… and small means will confound the wise. Let us confound the world.
This will be a movement of honor…. courage… and responsibility.
God has made man in His image and after His likeness. He has endowed us with great privileges and rights. And He has given us purpose on this earth. His blessings are our rights. His purpose is our responsibility.
Because we have a right to worship freely, let us declare: We have a responsibility to fight for the rights of others to worship freely.
Because we have a right to pursue happiness, we have a responsibility to be thankful for our blessings and to comfort the needy.
Because we have a right to knowledge and truth, we have a responsibility to pursue it, and to fight falsehood.
These declarations of responsibility, and others, are being posted at www.glennbeck.com. In the coming days, I want each of you to print them, read them, carry them, and make them a part of your lives. Share them with your family and friends. Remember all that God has done for you, teach these lessons to your children, and obey God’s word. And join me on a historic march towards human responsibility.
Evil is counting on us to do nothing. Evil is counting on us to be afraid. But evil has misjudged us.
Evil has misjudged us as it has misjudged the Jewish people. The last line of a Jewish prayer is…
Adonai li, v’lo ira
God is with me, I fear not.
Those two lines have been uttered for centuries. Through crusades. Through progroms. Through the gas chambers. At the hands of butchers.
In every generation, they rise up to kill Jews. And in every generation, the answer is the same.
LO IRA. I fear not.
I will wait for someone else to rise no more. This time, we are the ones who say – LO IRA.
—–
Let us begin here: some people call Israel an apartheid state. I reject that. And so immediately following this program I will fly to South Africa, which is where apartheid actually existed. I will broadcast from Cape Town tomorrow morning to remind the world what the evil of apartheid really looked like.
And I will learn from the people who conquered the hatred, ignorance and bigotry and who chartered a peaceful course for a new South Africa.
Then on Friday I will fly to South America to plead the case of human responsibility to a group of nearly 5,000 local leaders from all over the continent and ask them to join me in standing in defense of Israel, the Jewish people and responsibility.
Finally on Sunday, I will speak to 5,000 Americans in Dallas, Texas. I have chosen to end my week in the town where I will headquarter the charitable division of my company, Mercury One. Dedicated to the idea that one man, inspired by one God, makes a difference. This trip will end where a global moment begins.
This won’t be easy for me, and it won’t be easy for you.
Others will say, “come with us, over the horizon.” But that horizon is a cliff. And when you don’t go along, you will stand out. You will be mocked and in some cases your life may be in danger.
So you must remember to say: LO IRA. I fear not.
No one wants to be on the point, the person that sticks out. My first death threat came in 2002 after my first visit to Israel and my declaration of support of the Jewish people and state. My latest death threat was today.
And so I say: LO IRA. I fear not.
Many of us may fall along the way. Some will have their reputation destroyed or business or career ended and others still may pay the ultimate price.
But let us link arms and make the journey together and if one shall fall, let 10 join our ranks.
You were not born so someone else could rule over you. God did not create you, endow you with rights so you could remain silent while injustice and evil grow. You have a purpose and it is rooted in love, compassion and responsibility.
There are many reasons to hear my words, leave here and do nothing. We all have been trained to believe that we are not strong enough, smart enough or powerful enough.
Abraham was old, Moses was slow of speech, Ruth was a widow, David was a little boy, Joseph was in prison, and Lazarus was dead. What is your excuse?
You were born for a time such as this. Begin by declaring that this is why you were placed on this earth. It doesn’t matter how you’ve spent your years on this planet. What matters is what you do now from here.
I cannot promise you safety, prosperity or comfort.
But I can promise you this. One day, your children and grandchildren will ask you: “What did you do when the world was on the edge again? What did you say when the West, Israel and the Jews were blamed again?”
You will look them in the eye and say: I had courage. And on the 24th of Av, I committed to stand with courage… to walk… to march… arm in arm… behind God’s pillar of fire.
Adonai li v’Lo Ira.
God is with me, I fear not.
Posted by Ted Belman
Glen Beck gave a blockbuster of a speech on Wednesday in Jerusalem against the backdrop of the southern wall of the Old City. He talked about faith, truth, responsibility and courage. He said he had nothing to say to Israel about courage but that he and the world had a lot to learn from Israelis about courage.
He excoriated the UN and the Human Rights advocates for calling good, evil and for ignoring true evil. He said “Human rights was once a cry for justice. Now it’s used as a threat.” Beautifully said. It’s not that many advocates for Israel haven’t been complaining about the same thing for years. They have. But to have a man with such a huge megaphone say the things that the Whitehouse, the E.U. and the U.N. never say was very uplifting. Beck speaks truth to power.
He praised the Jewish people for teaching mankind that “every individual life has dignity, that every life is sacred”.
Beck entreated people to take responsibility. “Today I propose a new path. I propose a path led by you – the individual, linked in arms with other individuals. A path where governments and so-called human rights organizations get out of the way and people come together to solve our problems. “
To this end he is travelling to South Africa tonight to broadcast from Capetown that Israel is not apartheid. A most welcome initiative weeks before Durban III. Then he is slated to talk to 5000 leaders in South America and subsequently 5000 people in Texas to challenge them to join him in standing up for Israel.
To Glenn, I say “Thank you and Godspeed. You are doing God’s work.”.
Today, I ask you turn your eyes to Israel and restore courage.
I have been asked: What can you teach Israel about Courage? My answer is simple. Nothing.
Then they ask: Why are you coming to Israel? Because, I say: In Israel, you see courage.
In Israel, there is more courage in one square mile than in all of Europe. In Israel, there is more courage in one soldier than in the combined and cold hearts of every bureaucrat at the United Nations. In Israel, you can find people who will stand against incredible odds… against the entire tide of global opinion, for what is right and good and true. Israel is not a perfect country. No country is perfect. But it tries… and it is courageous.
Today, the world needs courage more than ever.
We need it because whether you live here in Jerusalem, or in London, or in Athens, or in Washington, D.C., you know – we all know — the world is changing, the world is burning, and whatever we have known… whatever we’ve thought would never change… whatever we’ve grown to think is solid and strong and durable … is under siege.
You don’t have to be a prophet to know that things are not going well in the world. The threats are mounting. Darkness is falling.
Far too many politicians are willing to look away. The shape shifters are at work. They have turned day into night, good into evil. They have changed the very meaning of words.
In New York, the so-called leaders of the world talk about abuses of human rights. But what they will do is abuse the very meaning of the phrase “human rights.”
“Human rights,” they say. But who will they focus on? Libya? Syria? North Korea? No.
They will condemn Israel. Tiny Israel. Democratic Israel. Free Israel. Israel, which values life above all other things.
Israel, as usual, is the exception.
——-
The world is adrift. The world is confused.
In Europe, the great nations of the past – Greece, Italy, Spain, Britain – are falling into chaos and violence.
We have raised up a generation who cannot tell the difference between what they owe society and what society owes them.
They interviewed the rioters in England. Why, they were asked, are you stealing shoes or televisions. “Because,” the rioters said in response, “because we deserve them.”
We may think: Oh, how different are today’s youth! But the young merely imitate their parents. They have seen how the world reacts to evil – with indifference. They watch, they learn, they imitate. What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.
When the Fogel family was killed in their sleep the world barely took note. The grand councils of earth condemn Israel. Across the border, Syria slaughters its own citizens. The grand councils are silent. It’s no wonder children light their streets on fire.
These international councils, these panels of so-called diplomats, condemn Israel not because they believe Israel needs to be corrected. They do so because it is convenient.
Everyone does it. In some countries, it’s a crime not to.
The diplomats are afraid, and so they submit. They surrender to falsehood. The truth matters not. To the keepers of conventional wisdom, a sacrifice of the truth is a small price to pay. What difference does it make if we beat up on little Israel? These are the actions of the fearful and cowards.
But I stand here to tell you this: Fear is the pathway to surrender. And to overcome fear, we must have courage.
This is hard to do. Especially here. Especially now.
The plotters plot. The schemers scheme. And it is easy to tremble with doubt.
Even Israelis – the most courageous people on earth – doubt themselves. “Did we do something to deserve this? Perhaps if we just do something else, it will all go away!”
My Israeli friends, I have a message: You must not lose hope. You must not lose confidence. You must have courage.
And you must draw courage from the knowledge that you were led to this land by God. And in the affairs of mankind, God is not a stranger to the children of Abraham.
He promised that Israel would rise again. For two thousand years the Jewish people held on to this promise. We have seen the promise fulfilled.
Israel, we have witnessed the dawn of your redemption.
We live in an age of man made, technological miracles. But these are the days of divine miracles.
Not by the hand of any man, whether his name is Balfour or Truman, does Israel exist. Israel is here because the God of Abraham keeps His covenants.
In synagogues just over a week ago, they read the words of the prophet Isaiah:
“Comfort, oh comfort My people,
Says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
And declare to her
Her term of hard service is over . . .”
And look at us! Here we are – in Jerusalem united. Jerusalem rebuilt.
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not neutral in the affairs of mankind. God is not indifferent to Israel. He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant he made with your forefathers.
—–
In the 40 years of wandering in the desert, the ancient Hebrews were led through the dark of night by a pillar of fire.
Courage is the act of walking into the darkness, and knowing that each step would be guided and protected by the pillar of fire, if we follow it. God is with us.
I will admit, I did not know this, until very recently.
For the first half of my life I did very little. I was the stereotypical American that believed two oceans would forever shelter me.
As a radio and TV commentator, my job was little more than pointing out the problems. And I did. I saw what I thought were obvious things, and I made obvious observations.
I saw the interviews of Osama bin Laden, and so in 1999, I said he will attack New York again. He did.
I saw the unreal expectations of ordinary Americans in 2006, and so I said – there will be a crash in the housing market. It can’t keep going up. And it crashed.
I saw the global financial markets ready to seize up in 2007… I saw the coming unrest and riots in Europe in 2008.
It didn’t take a prophet to see these things – all you had to do was recognize that evil exists and evil was going unopposed.
And so this year, when I saw Tunisia’s and Egypt’s rulers crack and fall and the world called it the Arab Spring, I said: Where could this be going? And behind these revolutions was a familiar force, a force that will place those nations under a new pharaoh. And that force, I said, would come up to the borders of Israel. And so it has.
We are not at the mercy of these events. We can alter the course of history. We can stand against the dangerous arc of this story.
But we need people who are willing to speak truth. We need inspiration. We need a model to follow.
The last century was a century of genocide. A century where evil rose up again and again… swallowing up the lives of millions.
But evil met its match. Goodness eventually prevailed. People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr. and Lech Walesa and Mother Theresa and Henrietta Szold awoke the world.
They gave their lives to the pursuit of human rights. They took the side of justice against injustice, they held aloft the torch of freedom to push out the darkness of hate.
These men and women lived difficult lives. They often lived shortened lives. They were often born to relative privilege, but willing to take on suffering. They did want not to martyr themselves. They would have happily lived to the end of their natural lives in comfort… but to the righteous, there is no comfort when evil has taken root.
But the cause of human rights has been taken over by organizations who share little with the individuals who led the movement. Human rights was once a cry for justice. Now it used as a threat.
These organizations have become bullies and grotesque parodies of the principles they pretend to represent. They criticize free nations and spare the unfree. They denounce nations like Israel and America, who have high standards for freedom, and leave alone nations that have no freedom at all. They are nearly comical in their double-standards. Whatever moral force they once had is spent. Their time is up. And so, we dismiss them.
Today, we take back the phrase “human rights” and place it where it belongs, as the first half of God’s plan for humanity. The second half is responsibility.
If we want to be endowed with rights – real human rights, we have to act with responsibility. We must not be comfortable with rights. We must be comfortable with responsibility. We cannot use our few short years on this planet enjoying our rights… we must do everything we can living by our responsibilities to our fellow man. Rights and responsibilities. The two go hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm, together.
Nowhere in the Torah or the Christian Scriptures do you see the phrase words “human rights.” But there is a lot in there about responsibilities.
Everything we know about human rights and civilization came from this place. Whether you live by 613 commandments or 10 or just one golden rule, they all came from here. This throne of the Lord.
When the world turns its back on Israel and the Jewish people, the world turns its back on the source of all human rights. Without the Jewish people, humanity would not know that every individual life has dignity, that every life is sacred, that God names every star and knows every soul. That was God’s message to Abraham and Moses. It is the message of the Jewish people to the world, and by their very existence they teach it to us.
Today I propose a new path. I propose a path led by you – the individual, linked in arms with other individuals. A path where governments and so-called human rights organizations get out of the way and people come together to solve our problems. As God intended.
Some may ask: Why not leave this work up to others – the well-connected and well-educated and well-heeled, our political leaders or the media?
Well, I ask you: Whom do you trust to do this sacred work?
Who will protect your rights better? A king, president or you?
Who will protect the truth? A reporter, producer or you?
Who will protect and teach your children to seek truth? A textbook committee, an education bureaucrat, or you?
Did a commission of wise men stop the Holocaust? Did a committee of Congress end Jim Crow?
No. In each case, the work was done by individuals who would not abide convenient lies. They saw injustice and they called it out. They saw their nation wage war against a single group and they said “Not in My Name.” They didn’t wait for the conventions of society to catch up to God’s laws. They pushed. They pressed. And they were victorious.
This spirit lives within us. I believe that you will link arms with others and stand with courage, and walk behind the pillar of fire.
—–
You see evil rear its head in our time. You see the signs again. The swastikas are on display in the street marches. This week they’re holding up signs in Cairo that say: We’re building the gas chambers. They dress their children in suicide belts. They are given the choice, and they choose death.
Let us have the courage to choose life. No more incitement. No more threats. No more terror. No more talk of genocide. No more hate. No fear. No more lies.
We can read their signs, listen to their speeches. So we know that they say what they mean and mean what they say.
Well: So do we.
And I know we will be victorious. Because while their conviction is rooted in hate, our conviction is rooted in love. And love always wins.
When Naomi and her daughters in law lost their husbands, Naomi knew that their future would be far brighter if they went back to their families, to start over. But her daughter in law Ruth would have none of it. She said,
“Entreat me not to leave thee,
or to return from following after thee:
for whither thou goest, I will go;
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge:
thy people shall be my people,
and thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.”
And so I say that if the world decides it must know who will stand with Israel, who will stand with the Jewish people, so they know exactly who to condemn, who to target, let them know this.
Condemn me. Target me. I will stand with Israel. I will stand with the Jewish people. And if they want to round us up again, I will proudly raise my hand and say “Take me first.”
—–
There is courage in our time. It is here in this space. It is found everywhere God resides in the hearts of man. It is found in Joplin Missouri. Joplin was devastated by a tornado a mile wide. They lost their hospital and their school. Joplin looked more like a moonscape than the pleasant town it was.
But this is a town not looking to take help but to offer it. They began to gather early this morning. Many are taking the day off from work to show their dedication and love of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.
Our problems demand more than checkbook courage. It’s easy to write a check. But we can’t outsource love and truth and courage. We must do it ourselves. We must roll up our sleeves to make a lasting difference.
We will find hope. We will renew ourselves. We will be the first to regain what many of us have lost … Our faith. Together, we will begin to change the world.
We won’t find the answers in some global body halfway around the world…but in ourselves. We won’t find purpose in the drumbeat of destruction and disobedience we hear in the West, but in a mission of building and honor and courage.
In people like Rami Levi. In people like Tamar Fogel. In the owners, one a Jew the other an Arab, who built and reopened the Maxim restaurant after it was bombed. Each made a decision on their own to build.
The prophets and sages promise us, that by small and simple things do great things come to pass… and small means will confound the wise. Let us confound the world.
This will be a movement of honor…. courage… and responsibility.
God has made man in His image and after His likeness. He has endowed us with great privileges and rights. And He has given us purpose on this earth. His blessings are our rights. His purpose is our responsibility.
Because we have a right to worship freely, let us declare: We have a responsibility to fight for the rights of others to worship freely.
Because we have a right to pursue happiness, we have a responsibility to be thankful for our blessings and to comfort the needy.
Because we have a right to knowledge and truth, we have a responsibility to pursue it, and to fight falsehood.
These declarations of responsibility, and others, are being posted at www.glennbeck.com. In the coming days, I want each of you to print them, read them, carry them, and make them a part of your lives. Share them with your family and friends. Remember all that God has done for you, teach these lessons to your children, and obey God’s word. And join me on a historic march towards human responsibility.
Evil is counting on us to do nothing. Evil is counting on us to be afraid. But evil has misjudged us.
Evil has misjudged us as it has misjudged the Jewish people. The last line of a Jewish prayer is…
Adonai li, v’lo ira
God is with me, I fear not.
Those two lines have been uttered for centuries. Through crusades. Through progroms. Through the gas chambers. At the hands of butchers.
In every generation, they rise up to kill Jews. And in every generation, the answer is the same.
LO IRA. I fear not.
I will wait for someone else to rise no more. This time, we are the ones who say – LO IRA.
—–
Let us begin here: some people call Israel an apartheid state. I reject that. And so immediately following this program I will fly to South Africa, which is where apartheid actually existed. I will broadcast from Cape Town tomorrow morning to remind the world what the evil of apartheid really looked like.
And I will learn from the people who conquered the hatred, ignorance and bigotry and who chartered a peaceful course for a new South Africa.
Then on Friday I will fly to South America to plead the case of human responsibility to a group of nearly 5,000 local leaders from all over the continent and ask them to join me in standing in defense of Israel, the Jewish people and responsibility.
Finally on Sunday, I will speak to 5,000 Americans in Dallas, Texas. I have chosen to end my week in the town where I will headquarter the charitable division of my company, Mercury One. Dedicated to the idea that one man, inspired by one God, makes a difference. This trip will end where a global moment begins.
This won’t be easy for me, and it won’t be easy for you.
Others will say, “come with us, over the horizon.” But that horizon is a cliff. And when you don’t go along, you will stand out. You will be mocked and in some cases your life may be in danger.
So you must remember to say: LO IRA. I fear not.
No one wants to be on the point, the person that sticks out. My first death threat came in 2002 after my first visit to Israel and my declaration of support of the Jewish people and state. My latest death threat was today.
And so I say: LO IRA. I fear not.
Many of us may fall along the way. Some will have their reputation destroyed or business or career ended and others still may pay the ultimate price.
But let us link arms and make the journey together and if one shall fall, let 10 join our ranks.
You were not born so someone else could rule over you. God did not create you, endow you with rights so you could remain silent while injustice and evil grow. You have a purpose and it is rooted in love, compassion and responsibility.
There are many reasons to hear my words, leave here and do nothing. We all have been trained to believe that we are not strong enough, smart enough or powerful enough.
Abraham was old, Moses was slow of speech, Ruth was a widow, David was a little boy, Joseph was in prison, and Lazarus was dead. What is your excuse?
You were born for a time such as this. Begin by declaring that this is why you were placed on this earth. It doesn’t matter how you’ve spent your years on this planet. What matters is what you do now from here.
I cannot promise you safety, prosperity or comfort.
But I can promise you this. One day, your children and grandchildren will ask you: “What did you do when the world was on the edge again? What did you say when the West, Israel and the Jews were blamed again?”
You will look them in the eye and say: I had courage. And on the 24th of Av, I committed to stand with courage… to walk… to march… arm in arm… behind God’s pillar of fire.
Adonai li v’Lo Ira.
God is with me, I fear not.
Posted by Ted Belman
Rocket hurts baby; IDF hits Gaza arms depot
IDF says it struck Gaza arms depot, more than 20 Palestinian casualties reported; sources in Strip say bombed site an Islamic Jihad social club; earlier, Israeli baby wounded as rocket barrages continue to hit south
Ynet reporters
Israel News
At least 20 rockets were fired at Israel's southern communities on Wednesday with calm nowhere in sight.
A rocket fired at Ashkelon Wednesday evening exploded near a house in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council. A 9-month-old baby was hit by glass splinters and sustained light to moderate wounds. He was taken to the Barzilai Medical Center. A vehicle caught fire and damage was also caused to several structures. The IDF responded in force early Thursday, killing two Palestinians and wounding at least 20 in an airstrike on what the army said was an arms depot in the northern Gaza Strip. Earlier, Palestinian sources said the site hit in the strike was an Islamic Jihad social club.
"We heard the rocket's impact, ran to the fortified shelter and only then noticed that the baby had been wounded by the glass debris," family members of the nine-year-old baby said.
"The family was home but did not hear the alarm. It was very frightening. We hope it will be the last attack in our community," one family member said.
The baby was hurt when he was in his room while the other children were in the fortified shelter. "One cannot be in the fortified shelter all the time. It's not a matter of not being responsible," he said.
Earlier, another rocket exploded inside the local council and a third hit Ashkelon's southern industrial zone. No injuries or damage were reported. The Iron Dome system intercepted a fourth rocket fired at Ashkelon. Additional Grad rockets were fired at Beersheba shortly after midnight. One landed north of the city around 2 am, causing no damage or injuries.
סגורסגור
שליחה לחבר
כתובת דוא''ל של החבר שמך כתובת הדוא''ל שלך נושא
הקלידו את הקוד המוצג
תמונה חדשה
שלח
הסרטון נשלח לחברך
סגורסגור
הטמעת הסרטון באתר שלך
קוד להטמעה:
Watch baby being evacuated to hospital (video: Roi Idan)
In addition, a rocket fired at Beersheba was intercepted by the Iron Dome system prompting a loud blast. Two mortar shells landed in an open field at the Eshkol Regional Council. No injuries or damage were reported.
Several minutes later, Palestinians reported that the IDF hit a cell launching rockets east of Shuja'iyya in the Gaza Strip. Several victims were taken to hospital as the IDF mounted its third strike in Gaza in less than 24 hours.
After midnight, Gaza sources said the Air Force struck a Rafah smuggling tunnel, wounding several people seriously. The army later confirmed the report, adding that it also struck an arms production facility in the area.
סגורסגור
שליחה לחבר
כתובת דוא''ל של החבר שמך כתובת הדוא''ל שלך נושא
הקלידו את הקוד המוצג
תמונה חדשה
שלח
הסרטון נשלח לחברך
סגורסגור
הטמעת הסרטון באתר שלך
קוד להטמעה:
Iron Dome intercepts Grad in Beersheva (video: Roman Girshberg)
Following the latest bout of rocket fire on the city, Beersheba Mayor Beersheba Mayor Rubik Danilovitch appealed to local residents to "continue showing vigilance, listen to directives and not rely on the Iron Dome system which managed to intercept the rocket this time around. We are in a situation where terror is being carried out against residents of the south, something we cannot agree to and cannot accept as routine."
Meanwhile, political officials told Ynet after discussing the preparation for September's UN vote and the declaration of a Palestinian state, the cabinet estimated that the Palestinian Authority is not interested in violence and riots ahead of the declaration.
The same officials added that the Palestinians are sending messages of calm, claiming they are not interested in an escalation. Nonetheless, the defense establishment believes that in spite of these messages it is impossible to foresee developments and there are concerns of loss of control, riots and violent protests.
Ynet reporters
Israel News
At least 20 rockets were fired at Israel's southern communities on Wednesday with calm nowhere in sight.
A rocket fired at Ashkelon Wednesday evening exploded near a house in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council. A 9-month-old baby was hit by glass splinters and sustained light to moderate wounds. He was taken to the Barzilai Medical Center. A vehicle caught fire and damage was also caused to several structures. The IDF responded in force early Thursday, killing two Palestinians and wounding at least 20 in an airstrike on what the army said was an arms depot in the northern Gaza Strip. Earlier, Palestinian sources said the site hit in the strike was an Islamic Jihad social club.
"We heard the rocket's impact, ran to the fortified shelter and only then noticed that the baby had been wounded by the glass debris," family members of the nine-year-old baby said.
"The family was home but did not hear the alarm. It was very frightening. We hope it will be the last attack in our community," one family member said.
The baby was hurt when he was in his room while the other children were in the fortified shelter. "One cannot be in the fortified shelter all the time. It's not a matter of not being responsible," he said.
Earlier, another rocket exploded inside the local council and a third hit Ashkelon's southern industrial zone. No injuries or damage were reported. The Iron Dome system intercepted a fourth rocket fired at Ashkelon. Additional Grad rockets were fired at Beersheba shortly after midnight. One landed north of the city around 2 am, causing no damage or injuries.
סגורסגור
שליחה לחבר
כתובת דוא''ל של החבר שמך כתובת הדוא''ל שלך נושא
הקלידו את הקוד המוצג
תמונה חדשה
שלח
הסרטון נשלח לחברך
סגורסגור
הטמעת הסרטון באתר שלך
קוד להטמעה:
Watch baby being evacuated to hospital (video: Roi Idan)
In addition, a rocket fired at Beersheba was intercepted by the Iron Dome system prompting a loud blast. Two mortar shells landed in an open field at the Eshkol Regional Council. No injuries or damage were reported.
Several minutes later, Palestinians reported that the IDF hit a cell launching rockets east of Shuja'iyya in the Gaza Strip. Several victims were taken to hospital as the IDF mounted its third strike in Gaza in less than 24 hours.
After midnight, Gaza sources said the Air Force struck a Rafah smuggling tunnel, wounding several people seriously. The army later confirmed the report, adding that it also struck an arms production facility in the area.
סגורסגור
שליחה לחבר
כתובת דוא''ל של החבר שמך כתובת הדוא''ל שלך נושא
הקלידו את הקוד המוצג
תמונה חדשה
שלח
הסרטון נשלח לחברך
סגורסגור
הטמעת הסרטון באתר שלך
קוד להטמעה:
Iron Dome intercepts Grad in Beersheva (video: Roman Girshberg)
Following the latest bout of rocket fire on the city, Beersheba Mayor Beersheba Mayor Rubik Danilovitch appealed to local residents to "continue showing vigilance, listen to directives and not rely on the Iron Dome system which managed to intercept the rocket this time around. We are in a situation where terror is being carried out against residents of the south, something we cannot agree to and cannot accept as routine."
Meanwhile, political officials told Ynet after discussing the preparation for September's UN vote and the declaration of a Palestinian state, the cabinet estimated that the Palestinian Authority is not interested in violence and riots ahead of the declaration.
The same officials added that the Palestinians are sending messages of calm, claiming they are not interested in an escalation. Nonetheless, the defense establishment believes that in spite of these messages it is impossible to foresee developments and there are concerns of loss of control, riots and violent protests.
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