Contradictory gov't policies affect West Bank children

Plan to fund armored transport, new schools for West Bank students thwarted by Defense Ministry

Yael Branovsky
YNET News

The moratorium on building in West Bank settlements is already having an effect on pupils in the West Bank. A discussion held Monday in the Knesset Committee on the Rights of the Child revealed that the contradictory policies of the Defense and Education Ministries have blocked budget allocation to armored transportation for pupils living in the West Bank as well as expansion of educational institutions there.

The Education Ministry is claiming that the Defense Ministry has thwarted the building of day care centers and schools in the West Bank.


During Monday’s discussion, Education Ministry representative, Shai Rimsky, said, “Because the Defense Ministry does not recognize certain settlements, the Education Ministry cannot allocate funds for the building of educational institutions. Ultimately, the children suffer.”


According to data from the Knesset Research and Information Center, 75% of building requests submitted in 2009 were given the green light by the Education Ministry prior to receiving necessary and relevant documentation in each case.


Shomron Regional Council Mayor Gershon Mesika said that due to the contradictory policies in the two governmental ministries, 2,450 pupils have not been studying under normal conditions since the start of the school year.


“They are studying in leaky trailers without air conditioning. They can’t stay more than one hour in class. They feel like second class (kids),” said Mesika.


Maaleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel added that the Education Ministry are not the only ones to have encountered problems with the Defense Ministry. According to him, the Welfare Bureau also cannot pass budgets for the West Bank. As a result, there is not budget for funding social workers and day care centers in the region.


“Recently, 35 Ethiopian immigrant families, 220 people, have been absorbed in our city. There is no budget to centralize the absorption process or for employing specialized social workers. The Welfare Bureau does not pass budgets. Since the building freeze, the municipality has no income,” added Kashriel.


Representatives of the Defense Ministry did not attend the committee discussion.


Chairman of the committee, MK Danny Danon (Likud), placed the blame on Defense Minister Ehud Barak of “promoting a political agenda” at the expense of West Bank children.


“The fact that the Defense Ministry did not send a representative to the discussion is a disrespect to this Knesset committee. The children in Judea and Samaria are no less important than the children of foreign workers for whom the State has arranged (proper) educational facilities. The committee calls upon the Prime Minister’s Office to provide a special budget for education in Judea and Samaria.”


Chairperson of the Lobby for Children and Youth at Risk, MK Orly Levi (Yisrael Beiteinu) joined in the criticism leveled at the Defense Ministry, accusing it of denigrating the Knesset’s work.


“The committee is obligated to help the children Judea and Samaria. It is not right that children there feel like second class in the State of Israel,” commented Levi.

The Thirteenth Palestinian Government

Ambassador Blog
Edward Walkwe

From the earliest days, once the Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat forced the United States back in 1978 to take an active role in resolving the Palestinian problem, we have largely focused our efforts on security and the key final status issues like borders and Jerusalem. President Bush embraced the policy of a two state solution, but aside from some discussions in the context of the Autonomy negotiations and in the Oslo process years ago, there has been very little focus on what the Palestinian State will look like, how it will be organized and what are the premises on which it will be based. Presumably, these are questions that the Palestinians will have to answer in due course. But, it is very hard for me to imagine that Israel, or for that matter the United States, is a disinterested party. Will the Palestinian state look like Gaza under Hamas? If that is the expectation then it is not very likely that negotiations on the final status, even if started, would ever result in an agreement.


What we have all known for a long time is that Israel will not accept a hostile, independent state in the West Bank and Gaza and nor should it. If there was ever any doubt of this, all we need to do is to examine the Israeli and US reaction to Hamas' rule over Gaza. The Israelis will have to know who their neighbors are and will have to have a high degree of confidence that once a Palestinian state is established, it will not become a launching pad for attacks on Israel. Without a substantial degree of mutual confidence, issues like security, settlements, borders, Jerusalem and refugees cannot be resolved. This is not only a question of lines on a map. It is also a question of intentions.


Certainly, the Palestinian record thus far does not fill one with confidence. The divided polity, the clinging to rhetoric instead of reality, the record of corruption in the Palestinian National Authority, and failure to govern effectively even in areas where the Authority has sway, creates the expectation of failure, instability, and continued hostility toward Israel as the path of least resistance. Palestinians have been reluctant to take on the hard issues of coming to grips with their internal differences using the excuse that with the Israelis hovering over every decision and intervening at will, the Palestinians cannot determine their own vision or begin the construction of their own state. They have been unwilling to take the difficult steps of forging a common Palestinian vision and policy in the absence of the concrete governmental structure of a State in being - until now.


Now the Palestinian National Authority is advancing a new approach in its program of the thirteenth government entitled "Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State" published in August 2009. This is a document that has received little notice in the media, but which lays out a picture of a Palestinian state that could, if implemented, enable a constructive process of peace making. The document includes a forward by Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister that sets out the objectives of the Government for the next two years as a "full commitment to this state-building endeavor" and emphasizes that such a program is "critical" to the "creation of the independent state of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital." Fayyad's formulation in his cover letter is interesting since it is not found in the document itself. He refers to "East" Jerualem - the document consistently refers to "Jerusalem" without any modifier. The document itself has problems such as repeated references to UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which established the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees to their homes based on their free choice. However, the document assigns responsibility of dealing with the refugees to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and not to the Palestinian Authority or its government.


The agenda that the program of the 13th government has set out is surprisingly detailed, which is unusual for political documents that have to appeal to a broad constituency. What is even more surprising is the level of self-criticism that is implied by the document. Repeated references to the need for auditing government functions would appear to be in response to the heavy criticism of the Authority as being corrupt. It would also tend to indicate that over the 17 years that the Palestinian Authority has been in existence, virtually no reforms have taken place, no strategic plan has been developed, no consensus on goals and vision has been reached, and that there has been little or no effort to establish the foundation for a viable Palestinian state. A lot of the credit for this dysfunctional history has to be laid at the feet of Yasser Arafat whose style of governing was divide, conquer and never decide.


While one could nit-pick the program. Certainly there are aspects that will cause heartburn particularly within the Palestinian community, but also among some Israelis. Furthermore, there is a long distance between statements of intention and facts on the ground. It remains to be seen if Abu Mazen and Salam Fayyad can deliver on the vision and reform. But it is virtually certain, in my view, that without such an effort on the part of the Palestinians, there will be no peace agreement, no Palestinian state, and no respite from terrorism. The program's success is, as Prime Minister Fayyad says, essential if a peace agreement is to be reached. The program is predicated on and designed to help achieve the unification of the Palestinian polity, without which I do not give the peace process a snowball's chance of succeeding. This is the very first time that we have seen a concrete, rational, official Palestinian projection of what a Palestinian state might look like and how it could sustain peace as a democracy based on the rule of law. That has been an important missing ingredient in all the past efforts to concoct a peace between Israelis and the Palestinians. We should give Salam Fayyad our full support and help him make his vision real.

http://www.ambassadorblog.com/2009/09/the-thirteenth-palestinian-government-.html

Can Israel Make Peace with the Palestinians?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/can_israel_make_peace_with_the.html
September 13, 2009
By Richard Baehr

Ambassador Alon Pinkas served as Israel's Consul General in New York from 2000 to 2004, capping a two decade career in Israel's foreign ministry, including work for prime ministers from both Labor and Likud governments. I had the privilege of interviewing Ambassador Pinkas when he visited Chicago this week. As opinion polls in Israel suggest that Israelis believe President Obama is not a friend of Israel (4% of Israelis in a recent survey consider him to be pro-Israel), Ambassador Pinkas and other Israelis are visiting various American cities to emphasize the strength and importance of the US Israeli relationship.

Pinkas sees a sharp difference in tone between Obama and his two predecessors- Bill Clinton and George Bush, but does not believe that Obama is hostile to Israel. Israelis were spoiled a bit by what they perceived as an emotional tie between both Bill Clinton and Israel and George Bush and Israel, a connection that seems missing with Obama. Obama has made it clear that he thinks that the perception that the US stands with Israel in the conflict with the Palestinians was a major reason that the peace process was unsuccessful in recent decades. Obama's conclusion, expressed in a meeting with a group of Jewish leaders two months back, is that peace is more likely to be realized if the US President is perceived by both sides as engaged, but not in either side's corner. This approach by Obama runs counter to long held US policy that Israel is more likely to make concessions, if it feels a secure link with the United States. It has also been generally understood policy that if the US is perceived as pressuring Israel, the Arabs and the Palestinians will become more intransigent, waiting for the US to deliver Israel's concessions to them, offering nothing in return.

Pinkas believes that Israelis are nervous about Obama in part because he has been so openly critical of Israel from the outset of his administration. It could be argued that only Honduras has received more public criticism from this Administration. Israelis do not see the advertised even handedness in the President's actions so far. The insistent public demands on Israel -- for a total freeze of settlement activity beyond the green line, have not been matched by similar cajoling or public pressure on the Palestinians or other Arab nations to make gestures towards Israel. In fact, several Arab nations and the Palestinian Authority have now made public statements that if Israel refuses to commit to a total settlement freeze (including natural growth of settlements) that they are unwilling to offer any gestures or even to meet with Israelis to negotiate. Put simply, why would the Palestinians and the Arab states be more pro-Israel than President Obama? If Obama demands a total settlement freeze as a first step, why should they reciprocate with gestures or negotiations before this occurs?

Ambassador Pinkas is very skeptical about the likelihood of a breakthrough in future talks between the Israelis and Palestinians for two major reasons. Pinkas says the history of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians since the commencement of the Oslo process has clarified that there is not now, and there has not been despite a decade and a half of trying, an intersection between the maximum that Israel is able to offer to end the conflict, and the minimum the Palestinians demand. Pinkas calls the gap unbridgeable, at least for now.

He says the history of the negotiations, has been one where Israel, to some extent, negotiates with itself, continually enhancing its offer, with the Palestinians always holding back for more concessions. The Palestinians always rejected Israel's offers as insufficient. Pinkas says Israel made a substantial offer at Camp David in the summer of 2000, enhanced over the next few months as the second intifada began, and broadened again at Taba. The discussions in 2007 and 2008 between Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert suggests that Obama's claim that the peace process was not pursued during the prior Administration, is not correct. Serious discussions took place during the last two years of the Bush administration, but as with those during the Clinton years, they proved in the end to be unproductive.

Israel had already left Gaza by 2007, and Olmert offered to Abbas well over 90% of the West Bank, with a land exchange of pre-67 Israeli territory to compensate the Palestinians for three settlement blocks that would be incorporated into Israel. Israel also offered a connector between Gaza and the West Bank, a capitol for the Palestinians in the Jerusalem area, and political sovereignty over neighborhoods in the Old City without any formal political subdivision of the Old City. Pinkas says the recent discussions failed in part, because the best that could be accomplished was a shelf agreement, representing the terms for a final peace agreement, were the Palestinians in a position to complete such a deal. The reality is that PA President Abbas has no political control over Gaza, now run by Hamas after their bloody coup against the PA in the summer of 2007. And Hamas has never shown any willingness to accept Israel as a permanent state in the region (a requirement one would think for a two state solution). Hamas, at best, has offered a defined truce period, in which it would not fire rockets, mortars or missiles at Israel. This split among the Palestinians is Pinkas' second argument for why no peace agreement is likely. Significantly Abbas adopted the same posture as Palestinian negotiators in prior discussions, booking each Israeli offer, and asking for more.

The Israelis have also made some demands in negotiations, in addition to offering concessions -- that the Palestinian state be demilitarized, that Israel be allowed to overfly a Palestinian state, that for a defined period of time, Israel would maintain a small military presence in the Jordan Valley, and that few if any of the people classified as Palestinian refugees by the United Nations (in reality, less than 5% of the so-called refugees ever lived within the boundaries of pre-67 Israel, the rest have all been born outside of Israel) could return to Israel. The legal right of return would not have to be relinquished, but with the exception of a few family reunification admits, Palestinians would return, if they chose, only to the new Palestinian state. Israel sought at Camp David, and has demanded since, that any peace agreement on final status issues- Jerusalem, borders, refugees, had to mean an end to Palestinian claims- in other words, the deal was final, not a stage to further negotiations. Pinkas described the negotiations as similar to those leading to a divorce between the two parties- a separation agreement. At the outset of the Oslo process, Pinkas says there were Israelis who believed that a marriage, a new Benelux could be created. Such hopes have now been dashed, though among the Palestinians, there is now growing clamor for a single multinational state, which given higher Arab birth rates, would over time lead to a larger Arab than Jewish population in the single state, and political control.

Ambassador Pinkas is also not sanguine about multinational action against Iran and its near complete nuclear program. Russia and China have not shown any willingness to agree to stepped-up international sanctions at the United Nations. While Rahm Emanuel talked at the annual AIPAC Policy Conference about the linkage between an Israeli settlement freeze and the US garnering support for a new sanctions regime against Iran, the two issues do not appear to be linked. China and Russia are reluctant to agree to stepped-up sanctions for many reasons, but none of them involve whether additional bedrooms are added to Jewish homes close to the green line or near the Old City.

The Iranians responded coldly to President Obama's early outreach and offer to negotiate at the highest levels, like a hard return of a weak second serve in a tennis match. Now the Iranians seem willing to run out the clock until their nuclear program is operational, agreeing to multi party talks, which Pinkas believes will likely be unproductive. Such talks occurred between European nations and Iran for several years, to no avail. Since US military action, or even the threat of such action, is not taken seriously by Iran, if new (crippling?) sanctions are not coming, and new negotiations resemble those of the prior years, this would seem to suggest there may be only one option left to prevent Iran completing its nuclear weapons program. Pinkas says he sees some signs that some people in the Obama administration may have already accepted that Iran will succeed in becoming a nuclear power, so the new policy that is being developed concerns how to deal with that reality.

A corollary to the Administration's Iran strategy has been an attempt to woo Syria away from the Iranian orbit. Pinkas is not convinced that Syria sees much to gain from shifting its strategic alignment, even if it occurred with an Israeli return of the Golan as a goodie to juice the deal. The Syrian regime has lived off is anti-Israel rhetoric and posture for 60 years. Would the Assad family retain its power if it could no longer rely on deflecting domestic opposition with its anti-Israel campaign? Ambassador Pinkas say it is unclear whether Iran or Syria has more impact on Hezbollah activities in Lebanon, though Iran is clearly the financial provider. Given Syrian interests in Lebanon, the alignment with Iran may offer more to Syria in that country.

Pinkas says both President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made some early mistakes in how they calibrated the US-Israel relationship. Netanyahu may not have realized that the November, 2008 election really did constitute the start of a significant change in many domestic and international approaches by the United States. President Obama may not have understood the reality of the coalition that Prime Minister Netanyahu assembled in order to take office, and how much room that allowed him to meet American demands on settlements. Pinkas was unwilling to accept my suggestion that the early and then constant pressure on Israel may have been specifically orchestrated by Rahm Emanuel as a means to bring down the Netanyahu government, calculating that a wide divide between Israel and its closest ally, would worry Israelis, and lead to a collapse of Netanyahu's coalition, and the ascension in new Israeli elections of a more compliant (to US demands) Israeli leader.

While Pinkas believes that the US Israel relationship remains strong, he clearly sees no reason for optimism on any major international front concerning Israel: negotiations with the Palestinians, the Syrian track, or stopping the Iranian nuclear program. On each of these issues, the Obama administration seems to still believe in its transformational ability to make progress. Time will tell on each count, but the history of the modern state of Israel suggests many more disappointments than achievements in its relationship with its Arab neighbors and the Palestinians.

Richard Baehr is chief political correspondent of American Thinker.

In the Middle East, fear trumps popularity

Barry Rubin , THE JERUSALEM POST

When people are very pessimistic, I say to them: Don't worry our enemies will save us. By that I mean that the enemies of peace, progress and democracy - Islamists and radical Arab nationalists, terrorists, neo-Marxist dictators and silly people in the West alike - are so intransigent, prone to lying and dangerously wrong about society that they will convince and force most people to reject them. Even when thrown lifelines, they reject concessions, turn up their nose at compromise, go too far and become astonishingly illogical.

There are many examples.

The relatively soft approaches of the US and Europe gave Iran a great opportunity. Teheran could have feigned flexibility, pretended cooperation and extolled engagement. This would have forestalled sanctions, while it could still have secretly worked on nuclear weapons.

After all, even after a virtual coup by the most hard-line faction, stolen election, repression, show trials of dissidents and appointment of a wanted terrorist as defense minister (that's a pretty amazing list, isn't it?), the West was still willing to deal with the regime.

Instead, Iran produced an "offer" to negotiate so minimal that even the Europeans rejected it. While this doesn't mean all is well - Russia and China will block and sabotage even moderate sanctions and Western Europeans will oppose really harsh ones - at least Iran's last-minute effort to derail the process altogether will fail.

Imagine what the Iranian regime could have done if the ruling establishment had elected someone less extreme than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then claimed this showed what a moderate democratic state it was running. A charm offensive could have defused the nuclear controversy, sanctions would have been taken off the table, and Iran could have built nuclear weapons at a more sedate pace.

NOW TURN to Lebanon. Hizbullah was riding high there. A new government was going to give them both 30 percent of the cabinet seats and veto power over all government policies. But when the March 14 coalition, which won the elections, presented its own list of ministers, the Syrians and their Hizbullah allies rejected it as insufficiently subservient. This pushed March 14, which had been steadily conceding, so hard that it dug in its heels and rejected these demands. Negotiations will now have to start all over again.

The Syrians could have regained most of their former power over Lebanon - Hizbullah was practically in the driver's seat but that wasn't enough for them.

The same applies to eager US attempts to engage Syria. But the Damascus dictatorship wouldn't give an inch to gain a yard. The Syrians weren't willing even to deescalate terrorism in Iraq for a while. Washington is getting annoyed.

Syria could have wiped out US sanctions, gained good relations with Europe and have the Obama administration turn a blind eye to its terror-sponsoring and subversion throughout the region. Instead, it threw away this opportunity.

The same applies to Hamas. It tried a little to pretend moderation and some Western suckers were swallowing the bait, but it couldn't sustain the pretense very long.

The Palestinian Authority offers an even clearer example. Imagine how much it could have gained by playing along with the US president's desperate desire to help. It could have shown flexibility, professed eagerness to establishing a Palestinian state on something approaching reasonable terms.

Its success would have been tremendous. At the very least, the PA could have easily engineered the biggest US-Israel conflict in history. But from the start PA leader Mahmoud Abbas made it clear that he was asking for everything and giving nothing. Their best chance has thrown away.

One more, historic, example: In late 1990 or early 1991 Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein could have cut a great deal - part of Kuwait, billions of dollars and the appeasement of Gulf Arab states. Instead, he refused any agreement, kept his army in Kuwait, and suffered a military defeat.

He did the same in the 2000-2003 period when he could have made a good bargain for stopping his nuclear program in exchange for concessions. Instead, he did the opposite: He pretended to keep the program even when he cut back.

IT IS vital to understand why this patterns repeats itself so often. First, these forces really are radical and extremist. They don't want deals; they want total victory, all disputed land, complete dictatorship, expulsion or extinction of their adversaries.

Second, they believe their own propaganda. They think they can win and assume those on the other side are weak and doomed by deity and history.

Third, they are wedded to brutal methods. Terrorism is the tool of people who exult in deliberate violence against civilians and among whom gunmen and their values rise to the top.

Fourth, they fear internal rivals and their own people who they know have been so conditioned by extremism as to reject moderates as traitors. This is obviously less true in Iranian politics but applies to Palestinian politics.

Equally important, if any individual leader in these circles wanted to follow a more moderate policy, he knows rival leaders would use this against him, to destroy his power and perhaps kill him. All these leaders must continue to ride the tiger or be eaten. The fact that they helped give birth to the tiger in the first place won't save them.

Finally, this is the region's political style: Toughness counts; fear is better than popularity. In contrast to Western viewpoints, to concede or compromise shows weakness which means others will walk all over you. Of course, this is precisely how they view the West's sensitivity and apologies. "Confidence-building" measures become contempt-building measures.

Many Western leaders and much of the Western intelligentsia are like people sleeping through a burglary. Not only are their friends trying to wake them up, so are - however inadvertently - their enemies.
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Forget normalization - Saudi Arabia steps up boycott of Israel

Michael Freund , THE JERUSALEM POST

Despite efforts by Washington in recent years to bring about a normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world, Saudi Arabia has been steadily intensifying its enforcement of the Arab League boycott of Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned. A review of US Commerce Department data conducted by the Post found that the number of boycott-related and restrictive trade-practice requests received by American companies from Saudi Arabia has increased in each of the past two years, rising from 42 in 2006 to 65 in 2007 to 74 in 2008, signifying a jump of more than 76 percent.

The bulk of these requests were related to the companies' or products' relationship to Israel. Typically, Saudi officials ask foreign suppliers to affirm that any goods exported to the desert kingdom are not manufactured in Israel and do not contain any Israeli-made components.

US law bars American companies from complying with such demands, and requires them to report any boycott-related requests to the federal government.

The Commerce Department figures reflect only those requests that have been officially reported to the US government. Figures for 2009 were not yet available.

Contacted by the Post, a US Treasury Department official confirmed that there was ample evidence that the Saudis continued to enforce the boycott.

According to the official, statistics compiled by a number of US government departments and federal agencies all "indicate that American companies continue to receive boycott requests from Saudi Arabia."

Citing figures collected by the Internal Revenue Service, the official said that of the cases that were reported to the IRS, "55% of the boycott requests from Saudi Arabia led to boycott agreements."

Two months ago, the Treasury Department published a list of eight Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, that it says continue to boycott Israel. The list appeared in the Federal Register, the official journal of the US government.

Washington has been attempting to get Riyadh to improve relations with the Jewish state, without success.

On July 31, after talks with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal rejected Washington's efforts, telling reporters, "Incrementalism and a step-by-step approach has not and, we believe, will not lead to peace."

Saudi Arabia's ongoing enforcement of the boycott also appears to violate repeated promises that it gave to Washington in recent years to drop the trade embargo.

In November 2005, the desert kingdom pledged to abandon the boycott after Washington conditioned Saudi Arabia's entry into the World Trade Organization on such a move. A month later, on December 11, Saudi Arabia was granted WTO membership.

The WTO, which aims to promote free trade, prohibits members from engaging in discriminatory practices such as boycotts or embargoes.

The Saudi boycott of Israeli-made goods is part of the decades-old Arab League effort to isolate and weaken the Jewish state.

The league established an Office for the Boycott of Israel in Damascus in 1951, aimed at overseeing implementation of the economic and trade embargo.

In recent years, enforcement of the boycott has waxed and waned. Some Arab League members, such as Egypt and Jordan, ceased applying it after signing peace treaties with Israel, while others, such as Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia do not enforce it. Other Arab states, such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, continue to bar entry of goods made in Israel and those containing Israeli-made components.
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Assaf Ramon to be laid to rest next to his father Ilan

Sep. 14, 2009
Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST

The funeral of Assaf Ramon, who died Sunday afternoon when his Israel Air Force F-16 crashed in the South Hebron Hills, will take place on Monday at 4 p.m. at the military cemetery in Nahalal. He will be buried next to his father, Ilan Ramon, who died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster six years ago. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu postponed a meeting with US Mideast envoy George Mitchell until Tuesday in order to attend the funeral.

Ramon, 20, was promoted to the rank of captain after his death.

The cause of the accident was under investigation and was complicated by the extent of the crash scene, but an initial probe indicated that he blacked out during a sharp turn - possibly at 9 Gs - or experienced vertigo. A less likely possibility is that the plane may have had a mechanical failure that Ramon could not solve, but he was not able to report on his condition.

The debris was spread over a large piece of land near the Pnei Hever settlement, east of Hebron, military officials said.

Ilan Ramon, 48, became the first Israeli in space aboard the Columbia, which exploded during its reentry over Texas in 2003. Ramon was a colonel in the IAF and before joining NASA he held a number of staff positions at the branch's Tel Aviv headquarters.

Assaf Ramon announced his plans to follow in his father's footsteps shortly after the Columbia tragedy. In 2006, he enlisted in the IDF and successfully passed the grueling examinations and trials for the prestigious pilot's course. This past June, he graduated at the top of his class and was chosen as its valedictorian.

On Sunday, Assaf Ramon took off from the Nevatim Air Force base, southeast of Beersheba, in the early afternoon for dogfight training with another plane, flown by a veteran pilot.

The pair managed to practice three dogfights with the single-seater F-16As but then at about 1:45 p.m., as they were flying at around 19,000 feet, the lead pilot lost eye contact with Ramon's plane. He immediately contacted IAF Air Traffic Control, but Ramon's plane had already struck a mountain.

Several months ago, during a routine training flight in an A-4 Skyhawk, Ramon's engine suddenly died. Instead of ejecting, as protocol dictates, Ramon, together with the flight instructor, succeeded in restarting the engine and safely returning to base.

Ramon is survived by his mother, Rona, and three siblings, 19-year-old brother Tal, who is also in the IAF, 17-year-old brother Yiftach, a high school student, and 12-year-old sister Noa.

IAF commander Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan immediately appointed an officer with the rank of colonel to investigate the accident. A large number of military personnel were deployed near the crash site to recover the remains and to study what had caused the accident. Sunday's flight was Ramon's 47th since graduating the pilot's course in June.

"This is a very difficult day for the IAF, especially considering that this is the second time the Ramon family has been struck by a tragedy," said Brig.-Gen. Yohanan Locker, deputy commander of the air force. "The Ramon family lost Ilan, the first Israeli astronaut, and his son Assaf - both exemplary officers and role models for many people in Israel."

The IAF scrambled several helicopters as well as teams from its Unit 669 heliborne medevac extraction force to the scene of the crash, which took almost an hour to locate. Magen David Adom and Israel Police teams also participated in the initial searches, when there was still hope that Ramon had ejected from the plane.

Based on preliminary findings, Ramon did not have time to report any failure and likely was also unable to eject. However, an eyewitness cited on Channel 10 said that a parachute was discovered among the debris, indicating that he may have tried to eject. The fall to the ground from 19,000 feet likely took a matter of seconds. Ramon had participated in a number of training exercises simulating such conditions.

The last fatal F-16 accident in the air force was in March 2000, when pilot Maj. Yonatan Begin, 30 - the grandson of former prime minister Menachem Begin and son of Minister-without-Portfolio Bennie Begin - and his navigator, Lt. Lior Harari, 23, crashed in the Mediterranean Sea, about 20 km. east of Atlit, at the end of a training mission.

Netanyahu issued a statement on Sunday evening saying the entire nation was "draped in sorrow over the death of Assaf, who fell from the skies, like his father Ilan, of blessed memory.

"This is a horrible tragedy for Rona and the entire Ramon family. It is a tragedy for the people of Israel. I was moved when Ilan, the youngest of the pilots who destroyed the death generator in Iraq, took with him into space a reminder of the destruction of the Holocaust," the prime minister said, referring to a tiny Torah that survived Bergen-Belsen that Ilan Ramon took with him on the ill-fated Columbia mission, and to the fact that in 1981, he took part in the bombing of Iraq's unfinished Osirak nuclear reactor.

"I was again moved deeply when Assaf continued in the path of his father and completed the pilot's course with distinction. The loss of one of these wonderful people, father and son, is a tragedy by itself. The loss of both brings with it unbearable pain. There is no consolation for Rona and the Ramon family, no consolation for the people of Israel. There are only tears."

President Shimon Peres had this to say:

"What happened today is more than a tragedy. In our worst nightmares we could never had imagined such a heart-breaking accident," Peres said in a statement.

He went on to praise both Assaf's father and Assaf himself.

"I knew them both, father and son - Ilan and Assaf, fighters, scholars, courageous men, dreamers… As a family they are a symbol for all that is great in Jewish history, all that is courageous in the Jewish state," the president said.

Herb Keinon and jpost.com staff contributed to this report.
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Call Obama's bluff

Confronting Obama menace critical for Israel’s future, Bibi's real test
Moshe Dan
YNET News

President Barack Hussein Obama has threatened dire consequences if Israel refuses his demands to prevent Jews from building in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.



His plan is yet another disastrous form of Israeli unilateral withdrawal.

This unprecedented challenge to Israel's sovereignty and strategic needs must be met firmly. At stake are not only simple human needs, but the integrity of the State of Israel and a 60-year old alliance.



Israel is an American ally, not an enemy; a partner in the struggle against terrorism, not a perpetrator. Did Obama forget? Is he confused, or didn't he ever know?



Whose side is he on?



Confronting the Obama menace is difficult, but essential; it's critical for Israel's future.



If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu capitulates, he will undermine Israel's independence and set a dangerous precedent: not if Israel's national and strategic interests will be sacrificed, but when.



That will simply invite even more pressure for Israel to surrender to sworn enemies.



Paradoxically, it's not weakness and appeasement that have deterred Israel's opponents, but a strong defense based on security needs and realistic assessments of consequences.



An imposed dictated "solution" that does not resolve core issues and is unacceptable to those dedicated to violence has never succeeded - ever - without their total and complete destruction.


Policy of defeatism

PM Netanyahu did not accept his job reluctantly; he campaigned for it. He asked Israelis to vote for him and his party because he promised to represent their interests. He formed a coalition that reflects a consensus. He formulated a policy based on the expectations of his supporters.



If he now feels that he cannot fulfill his promises and those expectations, if he cannot stand up to Obama's onslaught, he should retire gracefully and turn over the leadership of the country to someone who can.



Cast in the unenviable role of challenging Obama's policies, Netanyahu must decide between expediency, to satisfy Obama and hope that things will improve, and resolute determination to protect Israel's national interests.



No stranger to this dilemma, Netanyahu understands the limitations and excesses of power. These aren't the choices he'd like, but it's the job he wanted, and for which he was elected.



Now he's on the line, not only for himself, but for all of us. It's what every politician lives for, and dreads. It's the mark of greatness, or mediocrity.

Before making any decisions, Netanyahu must ascertain what will happen when Obama's plan doesn't work out, especially when Hamas and more radical elements take over.


Agreeing to stop Jews from building without any concessions from Palestinians gives away Israel's most valuable asset without gaining a single benefit.


And each surrender makes the next stage of negotiations more difficult. This is a policy of defeatism and despair, not of hope.



Only by standing up to Obama will Netanyahu prove himself equal to the position to which he was elected.



It's show time! Come on, Bibi. Make us proud.



The author, a former assistant professor of History, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem

Dilemma of Palestinian settlement builders -example of BBC bias

Heather Sharp
BBC News, Maale Adumim

"I feel like a slave," says 21-year-old Palestinian Musanna Khalil Mohammed Rabbaye.

"But I have no alternative," he says, as he waits among a group of sun-beaten men in dusty work boots outside the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim. The phrase comes up again and again as the labourers try to explain why they spend their days hammering and shovelling to help build the Jewish settlements eating into the land they want for a future state of Palestine.

Mr Rabbaye wants to be a journalist and is trying to fund his studies.

Jaffar Khalil Kawazba, 24, says he is supporting his 10 brothers and sisters as his father is too ill to work. Fahd Sayara, 40, is trying to fund treatment for his disabled child.


Hossam Hussein, labourer in Maale Adumim
It's a very bad feeling - you can see how we're losing our land, bit by bit
Hossam Hussein
Palestinian labourer

"I'm not the only one. My whole village works in the settlements," says Mr Rabbaye.

"Everything, all the settlements - even most of the Wall - was built by Palestinians," he says, referring to the separation barrier, detested by the Palestinian population, that Israel is building in and around the West Bank.

The settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank are illegal under international law.

The Palestinian Authority is refusing to negotiate unless Israel heeds US pressure to stop all construction in the settlements.

Israel says it wants to keep building, at the very least to provide homes for the "natural growth" of the 450,000-strong Jewish settler population in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Job shortage

But with about 30% of West Bank Palestinians out of work, and average earnings in the territory little more than half Israel's minimum wage, labouring in the settlements has its appeal for Palestinians.

Some 12,000 Palestinian construction workers get Israeli permits to work in the settlements each year.

Salesman Meir Levi, Maale Adumim
Mr Levi says prices have gone up amid international pressure for a freeze

"We do not condone it, we would like them to stop," says Bassam Khoury, the Palestinian Authority's Economy Minister.

"But as a human being I cannot tell them 'Go hungry' at a time when I am not able to provide them with jobs," he says.

The West Bank economy is heavily reliant on aid, long crippled by checkpoints, roadblocks and other restrictions which Israel says are for its citizens' security.

Mr Khoury says these are largely designed to protect the settlements.

"The first thing we need to do is to stop settlements, stopping settlements will break the shackles the Israelis are putting on the Palestinian economy and as a result we will jumpstart the Palestinian economy and then we can find jobs for those people," he explains.

But the Israelis, who have eased several key checkpoints in recent months as part of a plan to boost what they term "economic peace", accuse the Palestinians of failing to co-operate and attract investment.

And some of the Palestinian workers blame their own leaders. Mr Rabbaye says simply: "Our president should give us jobs."

'Very low wages

The Palestinian workers "will be the first to be hurt" if construction stops, says Israeli salesman Meir Levi, as he leafs through brightly-coloured plans of five-room family villas.

No new projects are being approved, he says, and prices have already gone up 10-15% in the past three months as buyers forecast a squeeze on supply.

Jaffar Khalil Kawazba, Palestinian worker in Maale Adumim
Mr Kawazba says he is supporting 10 siblings with his wages

Mr Levi has worked in construction for about two decades and remembers the days when tens of thousands of workers came from the Gaza Strip and West Bank to build homes right across Israel.

"The salary was very good, they used to build their houses, have cars, make very good progress for their families," he said.

But since the intifada that began in 2000 brought a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, the number of workers allowed into Israel has plummeted, along with the wages they are paid.

"Now the price is very low," he says. "They get paid 150 shekels a day, but I remember in the 1990s I used to pay 200 shekels for a very simple worker".

Several of the labourers I interviewed said they were paid even less - 100 or 110 shekels ($26 or $29) per day - below the Israeli minimum wage of 150 shekels ($40).

Salwa Alenat of Israeli workers' rights organisation Kav LaOved
Ms Alenat is keen to explain to the workers their legal rights

Israeli law has applied to Palestinians working in the settlements since a 2007 Supreme Court decision.

Salwa Alenat, an Israeli-Arab labour activist with the organisation Kav LaOved, says paying less than the minimum wage is illegal - despite the fact that workers are in many cases hired through a chain of subcontractors, sometimes West Bank-based Palestinian companies.

"There is no enforcement. It's like a jungle… the employer can pay whatever he wants, the subcontractor can get whatever he wants, and the workers lose," says Ms Alenat.


Palestinian labourer Musanna Khalil Mohammed Rabbaye
We should go on strike
Musanna Khalil Mohammed Rabbaye
Palestinian labourer

The Israeli authorities say Palestinians have redress through the courts, and that few complaints have been lodged.

But Ms Alenat says they fear losing their jobs and also their work permits, which are often obtained through the contractors.

So the workers keep coming, and the settlements keep growing - though many people believe Maale Adumim will end up in Israel under an eventual peace deal.

"It's hard to describe the feeling, it's a very bad feeling - you can see how we're losing our land, bit by bit," says Hossam Hussein, 26, as he mixes mortar to put the finishing touches to a home with sweeping views from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea hills.

All the workers I spoke to said they wanted a settlement freeze, even if it meant losing their jobs, although none seemed to have a clear alternative plan.

But most did not believe it would happen.

"We should go on strike," said Mr Rabbaye.

But an older labourer quickly interjected: "And then what are you going to live on?"

Comment: I posted this story to once again point out the bias in the story and what we deal with every day. First, the workers are always portrayed as the victim-this story is riddled with such descriptors. Second, notice they have work provided by Israel -no mention of the fact that their own leadership has not seen fit in 60 years to develop any form of infra-structure, has not taken seriously the notion of creating a functioning economy. Now before you critics jump on this statement, do your homework. No, it is not Israel's fault they have not created such an environment-fact is Israel has created economic free zones only to be attacked and murdered. Tell my readers the truth about how the "construction business" really works here-expose the sub-contractors who take advantage of and use their own people to line their own pockets. Perhaps, if the BBC would return to investigative journalism and not begin with a preconceived notion the truth might finally be told. However, we know this is not likely to happen as their reporters then would be barred from access-why not tell the world how thissystem works while you are at it BBC.

Things to keep in mind

Hanoch Daum
YNET News

Peace Now members must keep in mind where they live. It’s ok to object to the settlements; this is a completely acceptable opinion. However, the manner in which they produce dramas over wholly legitimate neighborhoods, and mostly the manner in which they portray Israel in the world as an illegal outpost machine, is quite annoying.


Minister Hershkowitz told me this week that he intends to approach media outlets and demand that they change their terminology: “Outposts whose permits have not yet been finalized” sounds more logical than “illegal outposts.” After all, we are not dealing with illicit drugs or illegal acts. We are talking about the homes of law-abiding citizens who pay their taxes and serve in combat units, and who got a mortgage from the State, but the official registration of their property – as is the case in countless locations in Israel – has not yet been sorted out.



Peace Now members feel that they do holy work through the snitching unit they deploy across Judea and Samaria. I suggest that they think again.


Let’s be wise

Meanwhile, the settlers must keep in mind that they are not the only ones living in this world. They also must keep in mind that at the end of the day, a rightist prime minister is better for them than any other prime minister (who will not only freeze settlement construction, but also unilaterally withdraw without any reason.)



The settlers must enter the current struggle with a clear insight whereby the attitude of all or nothing won’t help. They need to make, by themselves, the distinction between neighborhoods located in the settlement blocs and remote hills that mostly feature some huts and a goat.



The settlers also have to understand the difference between homes located on State-owned lands that have not yet been approved and homes located on Palestinian land. With all due respect to the Greater Israel vision, robbery is still a severe offence, which is forbidden in respect to non-Jews as well.



Some of what we call outposts are communities just like any other, located in areas where they will stay in Israel’s hands even according to the Geneva Initiative. The settlers must fight for the rights of these communities. There is no reason to evacuate communities just for the hell of it, because of Obama.



But where is the sensitivity, for heaven’s sake? Where is the understanding that there is a dance here that needs to be danced, and that some concessions have to be made? Let’s be wise and give away a little, in order to salvage much more.

Comment: Clarity is crucial. These individuals are Israeli citizens living in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria.

Sarah Palin responds to Barack Obama’s Health Care Speech

II Detroit News Commentary on the speech

Response:

After all the rhetoric is put aside, one principle ran through President Obama’s speech tonight: that increased government in health care can solve its problems. Many Americans fundamentally disagree with this idea. We know from long experience that the creation of a massive new bureaucracy will not provide us with “more stability and security,” but just the opposite. It's hard to believe the President when he says that this time he and his team of bureaucrats have finally figured out how to do things right if only we’ll take them at their word.

Our objections to the Democrats’ health care proposals are not mere “bickering” or “games.” They are not an attempt to “score short term political points.” And it’s hard to listen to the President lecture us not to use “scare tactics” when in the next breath he says that “more will die” if his proposals do not pass. In his speech the President directly responded to concerns I’ve raised about unelected bureaucrats being given power to make decisions affecting life or death health care matters. He called these concerns “bogus,” “irresponsible,” and “a lie” -- so much for civility. After all the name-calling, though, what he did not do is respond to the arguments we’ve made, arguments even some of his own supporters have agreed have merit.

In fact, after promising to “make sure that no government bureaucrat gets between you and the health care you need,” the President repeated his call for an Independent Medicare Advisory Council -- an unelected, largely unaccountable group of bureaucrats charged with containing Medicare costs. He did not disavow his own statement that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost ... the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives....” He did not disavow the statements of his health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, and continuing to pay his salary with taxpayer dollars proves a commitment to his beliefs. The President can keep making unsupported assertions, but until he directly responds to the arguments I’ve made, I’m going to call him out too.

It was heartening to hear the President finally recognize that tort reform is an important part of any solution. But, this concession shouldn’t lead us to take our eye off the ball: the Democrats’ proposals will not reduce costs, and they will not deliver better health care. It’s this kind of “healthy skepticism of government” that truly reflects a “concern and regard for the plight of others.” We can’t wait to hear the details on that; we look forward to working with you on tort reform.

Finally, President Obama delivered an offhand applause line tonight about the cost of the War on Terror. As we approach the anniversary of the September 11th attacks and honor those who died that day and those who have died since in the War on Terror, in order to secure our freedoms, we need to remember their sacrifices and not demonize them as having had too high a price tag.

Remember, Mr. President, elected officials work for the people. Forcing a conclusion in order to claim a “victory” is not healthy for our country. We hear you say government isn’t always the answer; now hear us -- that’s what we’ve been saying all along.

US Pressure – A Guide for the Perplexed

Yoram Ettinger, "News 1st Class,"

Fact: In 1950, the US Administration pressured Israel to refrain from Jewish construction in Jerusalem and from declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel – Prime Minister Ben Gurion built, relocated government agencies and thousands of immigrants to Jerusalem and declared Jerusalem the capital of the Jewish State.In 1967, the US Administration pressured against annexation of East Jerusalem – Prime Minister Eshkol annexed, reunited Jerusalem, and built the formidable Ramat Eshkol neighborhood. In 1970, the US Administration pressured Israel to relinquish control over parts of Jerusalem – Prime Minister Golda Meir constructed the neighborhoods of Gilo, Ramot and Neveh Yaakov (current population over 100,000!). The US Administration pressured, Israel constructed, Jerusalem expanded and the Jewish State earned strategic respect.



Fact: In 1948, the US Department of State, Pentagon and CIA pressured Ben Gurion to avoid a declaration of independence. In 1961, President Kennedy pressured to stop the construction of Israel's nuclear reactor. In 1967, President Johnson pressured against pre-empting the Egypt-Syria-Jordan military offensive. In 1977, President Carter pressured Prime Minister Begin to abstain from direct negotiation with President Sadat and participate – instead – in an international conference, focusing on the Palestinian issue and Jerusalem. In 1981, President Reagan pressured Prime Minister Begin against bombing Iraq's nuclear reactor. Defiance of pressure entails short-term cost but enhances long-term national security. Submission to pressure exacerbates pressure. Fending off pressure is required, in order to attain strategic goals. Avoiding pressure – through concessions - leads to departure from strategic goals.



Fact: US public and Congressional support of Israel is robust. "The Rasmussen Report" documents a 70% support (Aug. 10, 2009) and "Gallup" ranks Israel as the fourth-favored ally (March 3, 2009). 71 Senators signed an August 10, 2009 letter calling upon President Obama to shift pressure from Israel to Arab countries. The Democratic Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Howard Berman, called upon Obama to end his preoccupation with settlements. The Democratic Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, resents Obama's opposition to Jewish construction in East Jerusalem. The strongest (Democratic) Senator, Daniel Inouye, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, is the most effective supporter of the US-Israel connection since 1948. Obama cannot get his legislative agenda without Inouye's support. While Congress has reservations about Israel's settlements policy, Congress opposes sanctions against Israel.



Fact: Following the 1991 Gulf War, Israel asked for emergency assistance, which Bush/Baker rejected, Congress supported and Israel received $650MN in cash and $700MN in military systems. In 1990, Bush/Baker attempted to cut 5% of the foreign aid to Israel, on account of Israel's settlements activity. Congress opposed and the initiative was rescinded. The Legislature and the Executive are equal-in-power and fully independent of each other. The US Congress has been a systematic bastion of support of the Jewish State since before 1948.



Fact: President Obama has been transformed from a coattail President to an anchor-chained President, taking a dive from a 65% approval rating in January to less than 50% in September, the sharpest decline in recent decades, other than President Ford's (due to his pardon of Nixon). Thus, Democratic House candidates/members are experiencing the lowest ebb in two years, while Republicans enjoy a systematic edge. Obama is confronted by an effective Blue Dog Democratic opposition.



Fact: President Obama exercises psychological pressure against Israel. He cannot exert an effective tangible pressure. He was not elected to uproot Jewish settlements and prevent Jewish construction in Jerusalem. His political future – and that of Democratic legislators – does not depend on these issues. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not among Obama's top priorities, and his position on Israel is not compatible with most Democrats. Obama needs the support of Israel's friends on Capitol Hill, in order to advance his primary domestic and national security/international agendas.

Supreme Court: Three in a Row

in a Row
by Hillel Fendel
A7 News

The Supreme Court issued three rulings this week that gladdened the hearts of the nationalist camp. The first one ordered the government to find a solution within 45 days ensuring that several dozen expelled Gush Katif residents not be expelled yet again. The next day, the Court ruled that the State must submit a schedule for the destruction of 77 illegal Arab structures in Jesha. Finally, on Friday, the High Court ruled that the police may not discriminate against religious Jews who wish to visit the Temple Mount.

“This is the best Temple Mount ruling that has ever been handed down by the Supreme Court. For the first time, the Court has given practical meaning to Jewish civil rights on the Temple Mount.”



Expellees Must Not Be Expelled Yet Again

The first case dealt with former residents of Elei Sinai and other destroyed Gush Katif towns who moved to Kibbutz Carmiya, just north of the Gaza Strip. The government’s Disengagement Authority, known as Sela, is responsible for ensuring that the residents have permanent housing – but today, more than four years later, for those living in Carmiya and elsewhere, this is still far from the case.

Over five months ago, fearing action by the kibbutz members, the Carmiya residents sued the government to make sure that they would not have to be relocated once again. The State had promised Kibbutz Carmiya that it would unfreeze lands, as well as give them benefits and loans, on condition that it allow the residents to live on their property for two years. The two years have passed, the State did not fulfill its promises, an agreement was reached for two more years, again the State did not fulfill its promises, and now the kibbutz wants the residents out.

“You should not be sleeping at night” and “Who prevented you from figuring out what to do until now?” were some of the harsh comments uttered by the Supreme Court justices to a Sela government representative during the hearing.

The State offered to pay for alternate housing for the Gush Katif residents, but the judges said no. “You have 45 days to find a solution for the residents to continue to live in Carmiya until you find them permanent housing,” the judges told the State.

Equal Enforcement of the Law

In the second ruling, handed down on Wednesday, the Supreme Court instructed the State to submit schedules for the razing of 77 illegal Arab structures in the villages of Yatma and Asawiya. Judges Rubenstein, Arbel and Meltzer sharply criticized the government for its blatant lack of enforcement of building laws against PA Arab violators.

Here, as well, the Court gave the State 45 days to comply. The original suit was filed by Regavim, an association that aims to preserve national lands.

No Temple Mount Discrimination Against Religious Jews

On Friday, the Court ordered the police to stop discriminating against religious Jews at the entrance to the Temple Mount. The ruling judges were Rubenstein, Meltzer, and Salim Jubran.

Yehuda Glick, a long-time Temple Mount activist, had filed a suit against the "special treatment" given to religious Jews who wish to visit the holy site. While other visitors are merely checked for weapons, religious Jews must show their identity cards, have the number entered into the police computer for tracking, and are not permitted to walk around the Mount without a police and Waqf escort. In addition, they are often not allowed to enter the site at all until other religious Jews who arrived earlier complete their visit.

Based on affidavits attesting to the above by various rabbis and other religious visitors, the judges ruled that the discrimination must stop. All evidence of discrimination must be shown to the authorities, and if the practice continues, the court will once again address the issue.

Glick’s counsel, Attorney Aviad Visouly, said, “This is the best Temple Mount ruling that has ever been handed down by the Supreme Court. For the first time, the Court has given practical meaning to Jewish civil rights on the Temple Mount.”

Visouly said the ruling certainly stems from the ongoing increase of Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site in the world. In the past year, police statistics show that 7,000 religious Jews visited, up 30% from the year before. “Credit goes to the Temple Institute, the Movement for the Establishment of the Temple, El Har HaMor, Manhigut Yehudit, the Sanhedrin, and the political activities of MKs Urei Ariel, Aryeh Eldad, and Michael Ben-Ari, all of the National Union," Glick said.

Entry to the Temple Mount is a matter of controversy among Orthodox rabbis. Most frown upon it, but others permit it after precautions such as immersion in a ritual bath and study of the exact route, and more, are taken.

Egypt, Jordan Join Arab League in Resisting Normalization

Maayana Miskin
A7 News

Recently, the Arab League declared that Arab countries would not normalize ties with Israel until Israel gives in to Arab demands. Senior officials in Egypt and Jordan have made it clear that their countries – both of which have signed peace deals with Israel – would resist normalization as well.In Jordan, professional associations representing more than 150,000 Jordanians were thrown into turmoil by reports that a Jordanian media delegation had visited Jerusalem. Association heads accused the journalists of normalizing ties with Israel – a step that Arab League head Amr Moussa warned last week could be met with violence.

The Jordanian Committee for Anti-Normalization called to expel the journalists from the country's press association.

On Wednesday, the Jordan Press Association slammed critics of the visit, saying their worry was premature. “The visit is not an act of normalization at all,” said JPA President Abdul Zgheilat. The journalists were in Jerusalem to study Jordanian achievements in the city, including the preservation of Muslim and Christian holy sites, he said.

Egypt: 'No Cultural Exchange'

Also this week, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) made available an interview shown on Egyptian television in late July. In the interview, Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouq Husni states, “Our relationship with Israel is at a complete standstill as long as there is no lasting peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.”

Husni further clarified that there can be “no cultural exchange” with Israel until Israel signs a final status agreement with the PA.

The interviewer then asked Husni how he could invite Daniel Barenboim - “the Israeli conductor Barenboim” - to visit Egypt. Barenboim holds Israeli citizenship, and the interviewer implied that his visit was a form of normalization with Israel.

While Barenboim holds Israeli citizenship, Husni said, he also holds a PA passport. As such, Barenboim was invited to Egypt “as a Palestinian,” he said, and not as an Israeli.

2 Katyusha rockets from Lebanon land near Nahariya

Sep. 11, 2009
AP and jpost.com staff , THE JERUSALEM POST

Large forces of police, firefighters and Magen David Adom paramedics were dispatched on Friday afternoon, as two Katyusha rockets fired from southern Lebanon landed in open areas in the western Galilee.

No casualties or damage were reported in the incident, which marked the fourth such attack this year.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that one of the rockets was located near Nahariya, and the IDF said that the rockets were apparently 122 millimeters in diameter. A senior Lebanese military official said that the rockets were fired from the town of Qlaileh, near the Lebanese port city of Tyre.

Lebanese security officials said IDF troops promptly fired at least two rockets back, which landed near Qlaileh. Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported that nine Israeli artillery shells fell near the town, but there were no reports of casualties or damage.

The IDF said it fired artillery at the source of rocket fire. The military "views this incident very severely and we hold the government of Lebanon responsible," a statement said.

No group took immediate responsibility for the cross-border attack, which came after recent exchanges of threats between Israel and Hizbullah, though the guerrilla group was not believed to have been involved in the incident.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804548485&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

No real quid pro quo

Cal Thomas
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/09/no-real-quid-pro-quo//print/

HBO showed the film "Schindler's List" last week. The 1993 Steven Spielberg movie never ceases to arouse my deepest emotions. The perennial question put forth in the film remains: How could people wantonly kill so many others as a matter of state policy? This is more than history, however. There are those who would gladly "finish the job" the Nazis started. The Obama administration -- like previous administrations -- is pressuring Israel in ways that, if the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succumbs, will effectively give Israel's modern enemies the opportunity to destroy its people. Next time it is unlikely there will be an Oskar Schindler to save even a remnant.

There are other questions related to the pressure the Obama administration is applying to Israel to stop building settlements, which supposedly will persuade that nation's sworn enemies to stop killing Jews. They are linked to the false premise that it's only what Israel does, or doesn't do, that affects the so-called peace process. If peace doesn't happen, blame it on the Jews. It's always their fault.

Those questions include: What could the Jews have done seven decades ago to dissuade Adolf Hitler from his Final Solution? What can modern Israelis do today to keep from being murdered by those who continue to hate Jews simply for being Jews? The answer to both questions is: nothing. Jews were murdered then and now, not for anything they did, but simply for being Jewish.

The notion that modern Israel, which was created out of the ashes of the Holocaust precisely because much of the world (the Arab world excepted) did not want another Holocaust, could have done something to prevent the killings has been the fundamental flaw in American foreign policy for decades.

The Latin phrase "quid pro quo" means "something for something." Israel has given lots of quid, but has received little quo. The Obama administration is again pressing Israel to stop building homes on its historic territory.

The political geniuses believe this will magically cause Israel's enemies to either reciprocate with a peaceful act, or at least suspend the terrorism for a while in order to give the administration political cover for another sellout of the Jews. But as Middle East commentator Yoram Ettinger writes on his Web site, "Israeli policy-makers and public opinion molders tend to accept U.S. administrations as top authorities on the Middle East."

Mr. Ettinger lists numerous instances -- beginning with the founding of Israel in 1948 -- that remind how they have been consistently wrong in their judgments.

George Mitchell, the administration's Middle East envoy, is visiting Israel this week to continue "negotiations." These are not real negotiations because only one side is expected to give anything and the other side is never held accountable for failing to live up to its promises.

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, has conditioned any new peace talks on the cessation of Israeli settlements in the "occupied Palestinian territories." No one asks Mr. Abbas what he would give in return for putting Israeli construction on hold, other than more talks that would bring more empty promises.

As Israel is pressured to stop building, Palestinian construction continues unabated. A new Palestinian housing project has begun in Ramallah. It is expected to provide 2,000 housing units, accommodating 10,000 people. Thousands of Arabs are moving into Jewish areas of Jerusalem, but don't look for Mr. Mitchell to suggest they live elsewhere. Only Israel is not allowed to determine where it's own people live.

Can anyone doubt the goal? It is to overwhelm the Jewish population and eventually eliminate all Jews from the land, not just land that is in dispute and which Israel holds onto because of its legitimate fear that Arab and Muslim nations, having started five wars, might go for number six if they believe they can win the next one. Only a fool would believe otherwise, given their repeatedly stated intentions and behavior.

In the Middle East and in Washington, there is a surplus of fools.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.

The Islamization of anti-Semitism

Micha Odenheimer
YNET News

Anti-Semitism infiltrated the Islamic world in the 19th century as Muslims came into contact with the Christian West. The founding of the State of Israel intensified the power and importance of anti-Semitism ideas in the Middle East. The Oslo Accords, instead of diminishing anti-Semitism, actually seemed to have had the opposite effect. Israel had become the agent of Western imperialism Soon after the September 11 terror attack on the twin towers, Sheikh Muhammad al-Gamei'a, Imam of the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of New York City suddenly decided to return to Egypt. In his role as a New York Imam, al- Gamei'a had participated in scores of interfaith meetings together with Christian and Jewish clergy, and had been a genteel presence, expressing moderate views. That is why, a few days after his hasty departure, friends and colleagues in New York City were astounded to hear of an interview with al-Gamei'a in which he accused "the Jews" of having engineered the September 11 attacks in order to discredit Islam.


The interview, which had been posted on the unofficial web-site of Al Azhar, the Islamic world's premier institute of higher learning, revealed a world view based on the notorious "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" read with Islamic-tinted glasses. Al-Gamei'a claimed that Americans "knew very well that the Jews were behind this ugly act," but could not talk about it openly because "the Zionists control everything, the political decision-making, the big media organizations, and the financial and economic institutions. The Jewish element is as Allah described it," he continued, "They disseminate corruption in the land..." They have always unjustly broken agreements, murdered the prophets and betrayed the faith... all the time, disseminating corruption, heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, drugs. They do this to impose their hegemony and colonialism on the world."


For al-Gamei'a, anti-Semitism was not merely an intuitive distrust of Jews, but a fully fleshed out theory of history. "These people always seek out the superpower of the generation and develop a symbiotic relationship with it. Before this, they rode on the back of England and on the back of the French empire. After that, they rode on the back of Germany. But Hitler annihilated them, because they betrayed him and violated their contract with him."


Al-Gamei'a's "proof" that the Jews were behind the attacks was an odd mixture of Arab feelings of inferiority and inflated estimations of Jewish power: "If we look closely at the incident we find that only the Jews are capable of planning such an incident, because it was planned with great precision of which Osama bin Laden or any other Islamic organization or intelligence apparatus is incapable."


Al-Gamei'a's turn to a virulent form of anti-Semitism upon his return to Egypt is far from an isolated occurrence. In the wake of September 11, with the eyes of the media, perhaps for the first time, focused on the Islamic world, wild anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have been consistently reported as a staple component of public opinion. Israelis have long been vaguely aware of the existence of Arab anti-Semitism - most of us have seen reproductions of the Der Sturmer-like caricatures that are often published in Egyptian newspapers. But the intifada al-Aqsa (the second intifada), and perhaps even more so the September 11 attacks, have clarified for many of us the extent and danger of this phenomenon.


One important lesson of the past year is that Israel should have taken the Palestinian incitement to hatred seriously, and America should have paid more attention to bin Laden's declaration of war against the West. Words count. Portraying Jews as a demonic people aimed at destroying Islam and enslaving mankind may be a warning that the deployment of weapons of mass destruction against Israel is not an unimaginable next step.


For hundreds of years, the virulent form of anti-Semitism that is now endemic in the Islamic world has been the heritage of the Christian West. In Christianity, the Jews had a starring role: they were the killers of Christ, and some Christians believed that they reenacted this ultimate evil by drinking Christian blood every Passover. In Islam, the Jews were more like shlemeils than God-slayers: the Jewish tribes in Arabia opposed Muhammad, but he easily defeated them. Although the Koran contains numerous harsh statements about Jews, the bottom line in Islam was that Jews were protected under Islamic law as long as they accepted Islamic political authority and the social and political limitations this imposed. Prejudice against Jews existed, and at periods of turmoil this prejudice sometimes turned violent, but eras of cooperation and relative peace were also often characteristic of Jewish life under Islam.


Threatened and defensive

Anti-Semitic ideas infiltrated into the Arab world, according to Bernard Lewis, one of the greatest living scholars of Islamic history, as Islam expanded into the West. Christian converts to Islam and Greek Orthodox Christians who found themselves living under Islamic rule introduced anti-Semitism, including the notion of the blood libel, into the Middle East. In the first half of the 19th century, Christian Arabs, who were in continuous contact with Western Christians, brought numerous blood libel charges against Jews living in the Ottoman Empire. Often, money was at the root of this evil. In many cases, the Jews were the Christians' business competitors. Attempts to inflame Arab passions against the Jewish minority "were actively encouraged by Western emissaries of various kinds, consular, commercial, priests and missionaries," writes Lewis, in his book "Semites and anti-Semites", and blood libels were often accompanied by calls for commercial boycotts. In the 1840 Damascus blood libel, the most famous of such cases in the Arab world, it was Capuchin monks who made the false accusation, backed energetically and vociferously by the French consul. Interestingly, Islamic political authorities often attempted to quell the blood libel accusations, and Islamic intellectuals attacked Christian prejudice on the pages of newspapers and journals.


The translation of European anti-Semitic tracts into Arabic began in the second half of the 19th century. Most of the tracts were written in French; all were translated and published by members of the Christian Arab community. The first such translation, published in Beirut in 1869, was a forgery that purported to be the confessions of a Moldavian rabbi who had converted to Christianity; in the tract, he told of the horrors of the Jewish religion. In 1890, under the influence of the Dreyfus Affair, a Christian author named Habib Faris published a book in Cairo called "The Talmudic Human Sacrifices," an anthology of material culled from European sources. The notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion," concocted in 1895 in Paris apparently by the Russian Czar's secret police, was translated into Arabic for the first time by an Arab Christian, and published in the journal of the Latin community in Jerusalem in 1926. It was not until 1951, in Cairo, that a Muslim translated the Protocols, which, according to a journalist recently returned from Jordan, is now being sold in English translation in every hotel she stayed in.


From the beginning of the 20th century, pressures mounted that would eventually result in the creation of an authentically Islamic anti-Semitism. Large swathes of the Arab world were beginning to fall under the domination of European colonial powers; Islam began to feel threatened and defensive. When the secularizing Young Turks overthrew Sultan Abdul Hamid II, ruler of the Ottoman Empire, in 1908, their opponents accused the Young Turks of being supported by Jews.


Gradually, anti-Zionism became a major concern for some Arab writers and journalists, and ideas emerged that prepared the way for the merging of anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic themes. As early as 1909, an influential Turkish journalist named Yunus Nadi published an article called "Down with Zionism Always and Forever" in which he claimed that Zionists were plotting to create "an Israelite Kingdom comprising the ancient states of Babel and Nineveh with Jerusalem at its center." At the apparent prompting of the French consul, he added that Jews were doing this to serve as the vanguard of German influence in the Middle East. As Bernard Lewis writes: "The theory that Zionism aimed not at a Jewish National Home but at a Jewish Empire was often repeated by later polemicists; the argument that Zionism and the Jewish National Homes were puppets or agents of one or the other imperial powers also became commonplace." First, the Zionists were accused of serving the Germans or the French, afterwards the British or the Soviets, and finally the Americans.


In the 1930s, nearly two decades after the Balfour declaration aroused further Arab suspicions and hostilities, a growing convergence of German and Arab enmities allowed Nazi-style anti-Semitism to penetrate the Arab world. Although technically the Arabs were also "Semites" disdained by the Nazis, both the Germans and Arabs had hatred of the British and the French in common. To the top of this list was added the Jews. Although early in the Third Reich, a Jewish homeland in Palestine was, in fact, thought of as a convenient dumping ground for Europe's Jews, soon, a covenant between anti-Zionist Arab leaders and the Nazis began to emerge. Leaders on both sides chose to finesse or ignore the implications of the kind of anti-Semitism featured in "Mein Kampf". An article in the Nazi Party newspaper, published in 1937, explained that Arabs had been at least partly "Aryanized" through mixing with Armenians and Circassians. While some Nazis even argued that "Mein Kampf" should be emended to make clear that only Jews and not Arabs were meant as objects of Hitler's rage and disdain, the sacred text did not bear emendation.


The Nazis used radio broadcasts to propagandize in the Arab world. Attacks on their common enemy, the Jews, were a major feature of these broadcasts. At the same time, Hajj Amin al Husayni, the mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, obsessively pursued links with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and lived out the war years in the Axis countries. Amin's long term goal, he said, after preventing Jewish settlement of Palestine, was to lead, in alliance with Germany, a Holy War of Islam against world Jewry that would result in the final solution to the Jewish problem.


Murderous anti-Jewish riots in Iraq in 1941, in Egypt, Syria and Libya in 1945, and massacres in Aleppo and Aden in 1947 demonstrated how the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Nazis, the activism of the Mufti, and increasing tension over the emergence of a Jewish state in Palestine combined to completely erase the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. New forms of Arab nationalism also left less room for the tolerance of minority groups than had existed in the Ottoman Empire. In addition, the odd relationship that had developed between the Nazis and some Arab countries continued after the war. Egypt, for one, became a magnet for ex-Nazis. Nazi war criminal Johannes von-Lirs, an expert in anti-Semitic literature, was one of a number of Nazis welcomed warmly by Egypt for their "expertise in Jewish affairs". Von-Lirs was greeted by none other than Mufti Hajj Amin al Husayni. In his speech welcoming Von-Lirs, Husayni remarked: "We thank you for venturing to take up the battle with the powers of darkness that have become incarnate in world Jewry."


Central trauma

After the formation of the State of Israel, the ongoing conflict with the Arab nations continued to produce a spate of anti-Semitic literature of many different kinds. With the Soviet penetration into the Middle East in the1950s, attacks on Zionism and Judaism in Arab countries in the Soviet sphere often focused on racism. Judaism was portrayed as a racist religion. Jews had always been "racists," learned tracts proved, perhaps even genetically so. But alongside the "secular" charge of Jewish racism, another trend had been quietly developing: the Islamization of anti-Semitism. The Koran and Hadith (Muhammad's oral teachings) were reread in a new light, in order to highlight and emphasize potential anti-Semitic themes. The conflict between Muhammad and the Jewish tribes, a minor incident in traditional Islamic teachings, was transformed by Islamic scholars in Egypt and elsewhere into a central trauma and an indication of the continuous Jewish attempts to undermine Islam which were to come.


Israel's humiliating defeat of the Arabs in 1956 and 1967 intensified Arab anti-Semitism. The defeats could only be explained by elevating the Jews, as some Christians had already done, to the status of representatives of cosmic evil. Thus, the appeal of the Protocols, which purports to reveal an international Jewish conspiracy already quite advanced, to take over the world. Starting in the 1950s, the Protocols began to be published in innumerable editions in the Arab world. Ironically enough, it was the PLO research center that often served as the voice of sanity during the 60s and 70s, castigating Arab writers for relying on known forgeries or distortions in attacking Judaism and the Jews.


An 'invented tradition'
For many years, Arab anti-Semitism was virtually ignored as a subject of serious research in Israel. Except for Yehoshafat Harkabi's groundbreaking work on Arab attitudes towards Israel, little was written about Arab anti-Semitism. Ten years ago, this lacuna was at least partly remedied by the opening of the Center for Research into Anti-Semitism at Tel Aviv University, which launched a special project on anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Esti Webman has been working on this project since its inception, and is collaborating with Dr. Meir Litvak of the Dayan Center in researching Arab Holocaust denial.


One of the startling things about the contemporary Arab world, according to both Webman and Litvak, is that the Oslo accords, instead of diminishing anti-Semitism, actually seemed to have the opposite effect. Although some leaders toned their anti-Semitic rhetoric down after Oslo, in Friday afternoon sermons in the mosque and in the popular press, Shimon Peres' vision of "a new Middle East" served to reinforce the idea that Israel was the spearhead of a drive for global Jewish domination. The growing reality of economic globalization in the 1990s also became a factor in the spread of anti-Semitism. Some Arab thinkers saw Israel as the regional policeman of an America bent on global economic control. Others saw things in reverse: it was the Jews who were using the United States in order to spread a Jewish-controlled economic order across the globe. Either way, economic globalization and global consumer culture was seen as a threat to Islam. Islamic feelings of anxiety at the notion of an Arab world opened to Western culture were directed against the peace process and against Jews. With the notion that the Jews controlled America's finances and media already deeply rooted in much of the Arab world, globalization was seen as proof that the Protocols were real, that Jews were indeed taking over the world.


For the Palestinians specifically, says Webman, the Oslo accords often meant decreased freedom of movement as the West Bank was cut up into areas A, B, and C. The average Palestinian saw no economic benefits from the accords, despite the hopes that had been raised. Oslo itself came to be viewed by many Palestinians as proof of a conspiratorial reality, where the truth was the opposite of what met the eye. In the guise of an historic peace treaty, Oslo was in actuality a form of surrender to Israel and the United States.


Even before opposition to the Oslo accords, the Hamas Covenant had ruled out any compromise with Israel. At stake in the Middle East conflict was not just the future of Palestine, but the outcome of a cosmic battle between the Jews and Islam. Article 22 of the Hamas Charter, as quoted by Litvak in an article called "The Islamization of the Palestinian Israeli Conflict" is openly based on the Protocols. The Covenant describes how the Jews control the world media with their money and have established secret organizations throughout the world - such as the Freemasons and the Rotary Club "for the destruction of societies and the fulfillment of Zionism." They have "caused revolutions all over the world in order to fulfill their goal". But God, according to Hamas, has other plans. Ibrahim Quqa, one of the founders of Hamas, formulated God's plan in a most chilling way. God brought the Jews back to Palestine, Ququ contended, "not in order that it would be a home and land for them, but to serve as their graveyard, so that he would rid the whole world from this pest."


Reformulating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a religious war between good and evil also meant de-legitimizing any option of ultimate compromise. Palestine, according to Hamas, is a "waqf," a religious trust belonging to the entire nation of Islam until resurrection, which cannot be negotiated away by one generation or one part of the Islamic whole. This depiction of Palestine is "invented tradition", according to Litvak and has no basis in the Sharia (Islamic religious codex).


Another "discovery" of Arab anti-Semitism has been Holocaust denial. As early as 1945, representatives of the Arab League were claiming that "Jews had not suffered more than anyone else" during World War II. Holocaust denial has been a continuous feature of mainstream Arab culture since then, with major figures such as Gamal Abdul Nasser and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia taking an active part in disseminating that the Holocaust was a lie or a gross exaggeration. The Islamic movements among the Palestinians have alternated between applauding Hitler for killing the Jews and denying the Holocaust ever took place. The current mufti of Jerusalem made remarks along similar lines last year: "Six million died?" Let us desist from this fairy tale exploited by the Jews to buy international solidarity for Israel." The PLO - or at least some of its prominent members - has taken another kind of tack, arguing that the Zionists and the Nazis together planned the Holocaust. Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen), of Beilin - Abu Mazen; fame wrote his PhD thesis for the University of Moscow in 1982 on the Zionist collaboration with the Nazis in the extermination of European Jewry. Asked recently on a Palestinian TV talk show whether he wished to retract his views on this matter, he held fast to his thesis.


The myth has become reality
The September 11 attacks and their aftermath have melded Islam together with the most virulent, conspiratorial form of anti-Semitism as never before. The process which began with the translation of French anti-Semitic tracts into Arabic by Christian Arabs has now been completed. Bin Laden has succeeded in starting, in the mind of the Islamic masses, a war between Islam and the global forces of evil. In order to coat the West with the color of evil, and at the same time not to alienate potential sympathizers among European Christians, bin Laden's apologists have offered the explanation that this war of the worlds is not directed against the West, but against Western support for the Jewish state, and that it is the Jews, in fact, who are pushing the West to war. In other words, Islam, no longer impotent, is fighting against the Elders of Zion, who are riding the back of the United States. The myth has become reality.


What can one do in the face of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the Arab world? First of all, it is important to remember that there have always been pockets of resistance to anti-Semitism within the Arab world. Secondly, it is comforting to remember the relative shallowness of the Islamic anti-Semitic tradition. If the right catalyst existed, memories of Islamic tolerance could conceivably replace the current poison, for rabid Islamic anti-Semitism is less than one hundred years old.


Perhaps most importantly, Israel and the Jews must stop being passive in the face of anti-Semitism. Words must be taken seriously, for they do matter. Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial must be combated aggressively and unashamedly. Anti-Semitic practices, like the Saudi Arabian denial of entry to all Jews, whichever passports they bear, are unacceptable and should be exposed as racist.


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But all this, on its own, is not enough. The anti-Semitism that has infected much of the European and Third World Left, as well as the Arabs, is at least partly the result of a vacuum of meaning. Thus far, this vacuum has been filled by the fantastical imaginings of our worst enemies. The return of the Jews to the land of Israel is an historic act of great significance to the family of nations. That the people of the Bible has been resurrected as a sovereign country - a claim we make just by calling ourselves Israel - is something that resonates in the collective unconscious of humanity, demanding interpretation. If we do not provide an interpretation, if we don't fill Israel with a meaning for humanity, beyond our internal myth of Holocaust and redemption, we risk having the rich significance of Jewish return cannibalized by the forces of evil.


Rabbi Micha Odenheimer is a social activist and a contributing editor for Eretz Acheret Magazine