Accepting our limitations

Caroline B. Glick, Jerusalem Post, August 1, 2003

It's summer camp season. As Israeli Jewish children are learning to macrame and swim, 300 of their Israeli Arab friends in the Galilee are learning other lessons. Channel 10 Wednesday broadcast footage from "Camp Return" by Kabul village in the Western Galilee. The story was picked up Thursday in Ma'ariv.

At Camp Return, children are not taught how to make beaded jewelry and popsicle stick houses. They are taught to aspire to kill Jews in suicide bombings.

Saama Vakim, one of the campers, displayed her new necklace to the TV camera. It is a pendant of the map of Israel embossed with a Palestinian flag. She also showed the reporter the "intifada pendant." It included the image of a boy throwing a stone. Saama explained that Jews have no right to live here and should "go back to where they came from to Poland, to Russia."

Rather than learning stories about animals and plants, children at Camp Return are taught tales of the "heroism" of Palestinian terrorists like "the engineer" Hamas bombmaker Yihye Ayyash, who masterminded the murder of over 60 Israelis in suicide bombings before being killed by Israeli security forces in 1996. The children received booklets with "morale boosting" songs and stories glorifying human bombs and their dispatchers who are called "the heroic martyrs."

Their camp songs have lyrics like, "We don't want flour. We don't want sardines. We want bombs, the rule of the bombs." Another ditty the children sing says, "Lift up your head, recognize your holiness. Defeat to Washington. We don't want ID cards [Israeli citizenship]. We will glorify in the blood of the martyr."

The children bed down in tents named after refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. A camp counselor named Hadi Srair says, "We are living under Israeli occupation in Haifa, in the territories and in Majd el-Kurum. We will continue our struggle until victory and the liberation of Palestine."

What is the source of all of this hatred? How is it that these children, who are born in Israel, go to Israeli schools, and benefit from the freedom of this liberal democracy can so pine for the destruction through genocidal means of their fellow citizens?

Clearly, their cultural influences are not emanating from their Israeli surroundings. As the camp's organizers said, their goal is to clear the children's heads of "the Zionist education system's propaganda."

The children's cultural milieu that teaches them hatred and violence is first and foremost the Palestinian Authority. Since it was established in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in 1994, the PA, under Arafat's lead, has worked to radicalize the Israeli-Arab minority. Before the arrival of Arafat and his minions, most Israeli-Arabs defined themselves as such. Today, the vast majority of Israeli-Arabs define themselves as Palestinians "from the 1948 territories." And, as polling data has shown, 80 percent of Palestinians "from the 1967 territories" believe that they cannot achieve justice as long as Israel continues to exist.

But the Palestinian Authority itself is not the only instigator of this hatred. Yasser Arafat has let it be known that the Palestinian people whom he leads are not an independent actor on the world stage. Three years ago, when he rejected Israel's offer of a Palestinian state in all of Gaza, 95% of Judea and Samaria and the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, he did not do so in the name of the Palestinian people alone. Arafat rejected the offer in the name of the Arab-Islamic nation. He argued that the Palestinians have no right to make concessions of any kind regarding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The offer on the table back then called for Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount and Israeli sovereignty under the Temple Mount.

In so reacting, Arafat was signaling that, far from being a distinct national group that stands or falls on its own, the Palestinians are part of something larger. In naming his war against Israel the "Aksa Intifada" and in naming his Fatah terror cells the "Aksa Martyrs Brigades," he was sending a message to the entire Arab-Islamic world that the war is a pan-Arab and pan-Islamic struggle against the Jewish state.

[PAC Comment: Even the too often-delusional Dennis Ross seems to understand the crucial  role played by broad Arab rejectionism.  But, as IDF Intelligence research chief Brig.-Gen. Yossi Kupperwasser explains, Egypt, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia have been very successful inculcating anti-Semitism in the Arab and Islamic world to insure that there will never be a situation where attacks on Israel are considered illegitimate.]

For its part, the Arab world did not distance itself from Arafat's claims. During the Camp David summit, president Bill Clinton pleaded with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to pressure Arafat to compromise on Jerusalem. Both leaders refused.

Wednesday the police ordered a halt to visits by non-Muslims to the Temple Mount. These visits, the first of their kind in 33 months, had been coordinated with Islamic Wakf officials on the Temple Mount. The order to halt them was another indication of the danger emanating from pan-Arab and Islamic forces arrayed against the country. Just days before Wednesday's announcement, Arafat threatened a renewed terrorist onslaught against Israel in reaction to the limited visits. But Arafat, and his partner PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who called the visits "provocative," were not alone in their threats. Arab League Secretary-General and former Egyptian foreign minister Amr Moussa referred to the visits as "very dangerous" and "an insult to Muslims everywhere."

Many Israelis and our friends in the US have come to understand that for peaceful relations between Israel and the Palestinians to take root, Palestinian society must be transformed. It must abandon its genocidal, authoritarian aspirations and become a liberal democracy. Speaking at the Knesset on Wednesday, US House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay said, "A prerequisite to a lasting peace is the establishment of a genuine Palestinian democracy that serves the Palestinian people."

And yet, understanding that the cultural and political identity of the Palestinians is a product of the Arab and Islamic world must necessarily give pause to our enthusiasm for pushing forward with this goal. Israel cannot take over the madrases from Riyadh to Damascus to Karachi or close down the television stations in Cairo, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar. Because of this, it can exert little influence over the hearts and minds of the Palestinians.

As well, for all its military might, the US is also incapable of forcing such a change. Today, 16 out of the US army's 33 combat brigades are deployed in Iraq. While incoming US Army Chief of Staff General Peter J. Schoomaker told Congress on Tuesday that the US must increase the size of its army, there is no way that the US will ever raise the force necessary to take over the Arab and Islamic worlds even if it had the will to do so which it does not.

Given the size limitations on the US military, regimes like Syria and Iran are now resting more or less assured that the US will not mount operations on the level of Operation Iraqi Freedom to overthrow them. Because of this, the political consequences of the operation have been smaller than was hoped.

The fact that neither Israel nor the US has the wherewithal to transform Palestinian society by forcing a political transformation of the Arab and Islamic world that it feeds on should not lead to the conclusion that we are powerless to enact changes for the better. It simply means that we should not direct our actions towards a goal the establishment of a pacific, liberal democratic Palestinian state that we have no ability to achieve.

Our limited power to change the Palestinians must force us to look at the situation from a new perspective. We cannot wipe out the ideologies that foment terrorism but we can destroy, through military means, the Palestinians' ability to carry out their attacks. We cannot prevent Arab-Israelis from watching al-Jazeera, but we can take legal action against those who act on the station's violent message.

While it is clear that given their annihilatory agenda, the Palestinians cannot be allowed to have sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip, there are other options that will enable them to have political freedoms that will not threaten our survival. Autonomy arrangements, like those suggested by Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, are one option. Another, as suggested by Tourism Minister Benny Elon, would involve the restoration of Jordanian citizenship to Palestinians in Judea and Samaria and its conferral on Gaza residents. This too would work to satisfy the necessity of placating the Palestinians' reasonable need for a political identity separate from Israel.

In the longer run, if the US were to devote the resources necessary to develop alternative fuels to oil, the cultural attraction of authoritarian jihad fueled by Saudi and the Iranian oil wealth would be decisively curtailed. In its wake, perhaps the Arabs and Muslims will finally be willing to revisit their cultural doctrines and guiding assumptions. At the very least, they would lack the financial resources to act on them.

While we wish that our Palestinian neighbors could enjoy the benefits of liberal democracy as we do, we must recognize that the decision to do so is theirs, not ours, to make. Until they do, our policies must be geared towards the achievement of goals we can actually accomplish.

As for Camp Return, the police raided the camp on Thursday and shut it down on suspicion that the organizers were inciting youngsters against the state. Obviously, this is a necessary step.

Israeli-Arabs must understand that they will pay a price for acting in such a maliciously treasonous way. But here too, we must not delude ourselves. As a group, Israeli Arabs can only be expected to embrace their identity as Israelis in response to events that will take place far from the Galilee. And these events will not be influenced by the content of the Israeli educational system.

Few Jordanians Will Mention "Israel" - Rhonda Spivak
As Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary, it is difficult to find people in Jordan who are willing to utter the word "Israel." For the majority of Jordanians I spoke to, all of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River is "Palestine," notwithstanding the existence of a 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan. In Amman and its environs, many tourist shops sell coffee mugs with a map of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as Israel proper, with the word "Palestine" on it. The map has the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Netanya marked on it.
    In the five-star Royal Amman Hotel, Mohammed Alkalq, who is studying hotel management and was raised in Jenin, in the West Bank, said he left Jenin because "there is no tourism in Palestine, because of the war there." When asked who the war is between, he answered, "Between Palestine and the Jews." When asked if he means that there is a war between Palestine and Israel, he refused to use the word "Israel." He answered, "No, between Palestine and the Jews." The relatively few Jordanians I encountered who were willing to use the word "Israel" are not of Palestinian origin. (Canadian Jewish News)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, June 13, 2008]

Poll of Saudis: Don't Like Jews and Christians, Want Israel Destroyed and Saudis to Have Nuclear Weapons - Tom Gross (National Review)
    A telephone survey conducted in Saudi Arabia in Arabic for Terror Free Tomorrow found:
    Opinion of Jews: Favorable 6%, Unfavorable 89%; Opinion of Christians: Favorable 39%, Unfavorable 54%.
    51% agreed that "I oppose any peace treaty recognizing Israel, and I favor all Arabs continuing to fight until there is no Israel in the Middle East"
    30% agreed that "I would favor a peace treaty recognizing the State of Israel, if an independent Palestinian state is established."
    Should Saudi Arabia develop nuclear weapons? Favor 52%, Oppose 31%.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, December 25, 2007]

Paris Book Burning - Editorial (Wall Street Journal)
    One by one, from Morocco to Saudi Arabia to Iran, Muslim governments have signed up for the boycott of the international book fair opening Friday in Paris.
    The reason? It showcases Israeli literature this year - which happens to be the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state.
    The assault on words - merely for being written in Hebrew by writers who happen to carry Israeli passports - adds a revealing wrinkle to a familiar story.
    The coordinated Muslim assault ahead of the book fair expresses a not so latent anti-Semitism.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, March 12, 2008]

Egyptian-Born Journalist: "Arabs Don't Need Land, They Need Tolerance" - Lela Gilbert (Jerusalem Post)

• Nonie Darwish was born in Cairo, and in the early 1950s moved with her family to Egyptian-occupied Gaza, where her father, Lt.-Gen. Mustafa Hafez, was appointed by President Gamal Abdel Nasser to command Egyptian army intelligence. Hafez founded the Palestinian fedayeen units that launched terrorist raids across Israel's southern border. Between 1951 and 1956, the fedayeen killed 400 Israelis. In 1978 Darwish moved to the U.S. During a recent visit to Jerusalem, she said in an interview:

• "Israel really brings hope to the region. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that allows religious freedom. Even though it is the tiniest country in the region, it is not afraid to allow Muslims to have mosques to pray in; it is not afraid to allow Christians all these freedoms. It is really a credit to Judaism that it doesn't have the possessiveness Islam has. You know, it's amazing, with all the land the Muslims have, and all the wealth from oil, and all the armies, that no Arab country is secure in its existence. Why else would 1.2 billion Muslims feel threatened by five million Jews? It says a lot. And I've learned that the fear and hate are by design - of Islam's religious educators, its political leadership and its intellectuals. Hatred for Israel is part of how the Arab world operates. They need an enemy."

• "Islamists are blinded by envy and can't understand Israel's success. They say it must be due to conspiracy and not merit....They have forgotten that Jewish success is due to a culture that promotes excellence and is blessed with self-discipline, education, dedication and a drive to leave this world a better place. There is no conspiracy there! If Arabs want to compete with Jews, let them do it in the realm of innovation and education, and not by terrorizing and eliminating the opposition. Arab mistakes are blamed on Israel, the West, past injustice or colonialism. Looking at a map of Israel in relationship to the Arab world tells us that Arabs don't need land; they need tolerance."

• "America's defense of the Muslims against the Serbs, the Afghani Muslims against the Soviet Union, feeding Somali Muslims starved by their own leadership, received no credit in the Muslim world. In fact, the results are just the opposite; the more we try to help stabilize the region, the more we are despised. Muslims do not want to be rescued by infidels. This is a proud culture that is easily shamed by feelings of dependency on non-Muslims."

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, October 30, 2007]

Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades: The Struggle Will Continue Until the Liberation of All of Palestine from the River to the Sea - Yoav Yitzhak (NewsFirstClass-Hebrew)
    The organization that is the terrorist wing of Fatah, headed by Yasser Arafat, distributed an official leaflet about its intentions to conduct a number of attacks during Ramadan, which begins next week.
    The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatens that the struggle will continue until the liberation of all of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
    The Brigades threaten to continue the armed struggle soon with very serious suicide bombings.
    On the connection between the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Arafat, see also What Exactly Does Israel Have on Yasser Arafat? - Eli Kazhdan (ICA/JCPA)

From Daily Alert October 24, 2003 Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in association with Access/Middle East by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

Women are beginning to sign on for jihad in significant numbers, and radical Islamists are deciding that while women may not show their faces in public, they may explode their bodies in order to kill

Reem Salah al-Rayashi, 21, the mother of two small children from Gaza was compelled to blow herself up in a terror strike to atone for having betrayed her husband January 14, 2003 at the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, killing four.  She will not be "the last (attacker) because the march of resistance will continue until the Islamic flag is raised, not only on the minarets of Jerusalem, but over the whole universe," promised Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.

From David Frankfurter: Dear Friends, All children are precious. It doesn't matter if they are boys or girls. Nevertheless, to have both boys and girls is wonderful. I am a father of four girls, and I remember the joy and anticipation that awaited the arrival of our youngest - a son. I have watched with such pride as his four extra 'mothers' have joined Rochelle and myself in bringing him up. We try to convince ourselves that he is not spoilt - just well loved. It is with a special sense of identity and grief that I share the loss of David Hatuel. Yesterday, terrorists shot at the car carrying his wife and four daughters. His wife was pregnant with their fifth - a son.  Then the terrorists went to the car and, at close range, put two bullets into each victim to ensure their 'kill'. . .  The Voice of Palestine called the [event] "an act of heroic martyrdom". . .   Meanwhile, NPR blames the victims for provoking their own murders (CAMERA's report.)

Can you be silent? It is time for all reasonable societies to say 'enough'. There is no excuse for this sickening violence. Any society which does not condemn it and cut itself off from it is tainted with the same sickness.  I ask you to write to your local newspapers, to your church leaders and to your politicians. It is time that we demand that all respectable countries cut all ties - diplomatic and economic - with the Palestinian Authority and their representatives until they fulfill their obligations under treaties they have signed, under the Roadmap, and under the god they pretend to worship to put an immediate and complete end to all forms of terror and incitement to terror.

The terrorists not only murdered the 34-year-old mother of four who was eight months pregnant along with her children, but then ran up to the vehicle and took a video of the results of their actions, filming the young victims as they bled to death.

And, finally -- Palestinian Arabs lay in wait as mourners gathered at the spot where Tali Hatuel and her four daughters were murdered, then opened fire.

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From Beirut to Jerusalem

Caroline B. Glick, Jerusalem Post, August 7, 2003

On Sunday, July 27, just hours after abducted IDF soldier Oleg Shaikhet's body was found, Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah broadcast a call for the kidnapping of more Israelis. [Hizballah: "America is the mother of terrorism"]

Just a few days later, 17-year-old Dana Benett went missing, and then 19-year-old Eliezer Zusia Klughaupt disappeared. Several Israelis have reported attempted kidnappings some at gunpoint from which they were able to escape. Most of these attempted abductions emanated from the same area in the North. All have taken place since Nasrallah's call.

The fact that Benett and Klughaupt disappeared shortly after Nasrallah gave the order to kidnap Israelis naturally lends to the impression that Hizballah has Israeli Arabs working for it who, like al-Qaida members, receive their orders from television broadcasts by their commander.

This week the IDF and the government both fingered Hizballah and its patron, Iran, as the forces behind the Fatah terror cells that have not ceased operations during the hudna. Hizballah is also known to be the source of Hamas's recently acquired ability to increase the range of Kassam rockets and to manufacture them in Samaria as well as the Gaza Strip.

During its war against Israel in Lebanon, Hizballah operated on three levels simultaneously.

It conducted a guerrilla war of attrition against IDF forces in Lebanon; it conducted a terrorist war by shooting Katyusha rockets at the North; and it conducted psychological-warfare operations. Each of these operational tactics complemented the others, and together they brought about the achievement of Hizballah's short-term objective IDF withdrawal from Lebanon without Hizballah's dismantlement or disarmament. Hizballah's long-term objective the destruction of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic state was advanced during those years mainly through its attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe and South America.

Another important aspect of Hizballah's strategy against Israel in Lebanon involved the interruption of its guerrilla and terror operations with limited cease-fires. These cease-fires worked to force Israel to restrain its counterterror operations against Hizballah, while placing no effective limitations on Hizballah itself.

Hizballah's actions against Israel were informed by its awareness of our diplomatic isolation. Understanding that Israel has no allies other than the US, Hizballah could be certain that no international body, NGO, or alliance would back Israel's right to defend itself in Lebanon.

With Israel's precipitous unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, Hizballah achieved its short-term goal. Since then it has been moving forward with its long-term goal of destroying Israel itself. Its refusal to recognize the international border set the international context of its continued aggression. The UN's unwillingness to stand up for Israel on the issue of borders proved Hizballah's assumption that Israel has no international support regardless of its actions was correct. Its current cooperation with Palestinian terrorist organizations and the Palestinian Authority and its employment of Israeli Arab operatives within Israel allow Hizballah to work toward its objective from its safe base in Lebanon.

There it continues to arm itself with tens of thousands of rockets now capable of hitting Haifa. The presence of this rocket arsenal gives Hizballah an ever increasing military deterrent against Israel.

For their part, the Palestinians have from the beginning of their war against Israel three years ago invoked the Hizballah precedent. On every score, on every level they have repeated Hizballah's strategy. On the guerrilla-warfare front, the PA has deployed its security forces in limited shooting attacks against IDF soldiers.

Then too, armed militias working with PA security forces have been involved in other guerrilla operations against IDF forces, like planting roadside bombs against tanks and firing at IDF outposts along the border with Egypt to prevent the uncovering of weapons smuggling tunnels.

Ambushes of forces manning roadblocks have been conducted in Judea and Samaria to great effect.

On the terror front, terror cells have vastly increased the lethality of their attacks. If a decade ago such attacks were characterized mainly by shooting and stabbing incidents, today the suicide bomber has become the chosen weapon. And aping Hizballah again, the Palestinians have acquired remote access to Israeli civilian targets by developing the Kassam rockets.

From the perspective of psychological operations, the Palestinians are of course operating with distinct advantages over Hizballah. Not only do the Palestinians have a large constituency of Israeli supporters for their operations against Israel, they have the legitimacy of the entire international community, including the US, for their phase-one goal the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza with its capital in Jerusalem and the expulsion of Jews from the areas under its control. The US is even unwilling openly to oppose the Palestinian demand for the transfer of millions of Palestinian refugees into Israel.

The Palestinians have succeeded in their campaign to convince both Israel and the rest of the world that their declared intention to destroy Israel is simply rhetoric. As well, through the road map, they have achieved their most stellar success. The road map grants them their phase-one goal without their even having to negotiate an accord with Israel. The road map dictates that the international community, not Israel, will be the granter of Palestinian sovereignty and the arbiter of when the Palestinians will be accorded such sovereignty.

Through their actions today, the Palestinians have shown that like Hizballah, they intend to achieve their phase-one goal without disarming or disengaging from their military campaign against Israel. Like Nasrallah, Mahmoud Abbas has made clear that he will not lift a finger against Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, or any other terror group that is or may begin operating from the territory the PA controls.

By maintaining their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, their insistence on the "right of return" and their identification of Israeli Arabs as Palestinians, the Palestinians are setting the context for the next phase of their campaign against Israel, which will begin immediately after they are granted statehood.

Already in the present phase of their campaign, Palestinian terror groups have utilized Israeli Arabs to carry out attacks against Israel. Through its alliance with the Islamic Movement, Hamas has made official inroads into the Israeli-Arab community. For its part, the PA has its representatives in the Knesset, from Ahmed Tibi to Azmi Bishara, who wage a continuous campaign to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

Neither the Palestinians nor Hizballah have made any real attempt to hide their actions or intentions. The actions of both the Israeli and US governments have shown that there is no reason for them to bother. Where Hizballah is concerned, both Israel and the US have made concerted efforts since May 2000 to ignore the fact that the group is involved in achieving its long-term goal of destroying Israel.

Its sporadic and deadly attacks against the Northern have gone unanswered. Who recalls Ehud Barak's promise that the minute Hizballah tried to act against Israel, the IDF would return to Lebanon and destroy the organization? What price has Syria been forced to pay for its direct armament of Hizballah and its continued refusal to allow the Lebanese army to deploy to the border with Israel?

As for the Palestinians, both Israel and the US are pretending that by repeating the exact policy adopted with such abysmal result toward Hizballah, the opposite result will be achieved. Both claim that by granting legitimacy to the PA, it will somehow be magically transformed from a terrorist actor to a peaceful neighbor.

The toll this irrational policy will take on US national security interests will be indirect. The decision to embrace a terror regime will no doubt erode America's deterrence against the terror groups it is actively fighting. But for Israel, the decision to repeat the strategic catastrophe of Lebanon with the Palestinians puts the future of the country itself in jeopardy.

Today, at the end stages of the PA's phase one, the Palestinians are developing rocket and artillery capabilities in Judea and Samaria. These capabilities will of course cancel any military value accrued by the defensive fence, which is being built to protect against phase one attacks Palestinian bombers. The minute the Palestinians achieve statehood, they will no doubt use their territory as a training ground for Arabs who live on the Israeli side of the fence. Their rocket and artillery arsenals will allow them to attack from a safe distance.

Just as in Lebanon, the government claims that if the Palestinians attack after they receive a state, the IDF will be free to go in and destroy their military capabilities.

But given the unconditional support the Palestinians now receive from the international community headed by the US, it is difficult to imagine that Israel will have more international backing for such a move in the future than it has today. Just as in Lebanon, we will sit on our side of the fence, worriedly count the number of rockets the Palestinians are building, and do nothing.

One needs to wonder what is motivating Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who in 1982 had the strategic vision to understand that a PLO base in Lebanon was an unacceptable risk to the security of the state. How is it that he is financing and building Fatahland in Israel's heartland? Ma'ariv investigative reporter Yoav Yitzhak reported last Friday that Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein has been delaying his investigation into alleged bribery charges against Sharon to allow him to advance in his peace bid.

One would hate to think that given the precarious nature of Israel's situation, an unelected civil servant is gearing up to push Sharon into further imperiling the security of the state.

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Victory is the only option

Caroline B. Glick, Jerusalem Post, August 22, 2003

Reacting to the IAF's strike in Gaza that took out Hamas terrorist Ismail Abu Shanab yesterday afternoon, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas minced no words. The man who had cautiously explained Tuesday that the massacre of children and their parents traveling on a bus on their way home from the Western Wall "did not serve the national interests" of the Palestinians, referred to the killing of Shanab, a murderer, as "a heinous crime." PA spokesmen were quick to add that, as a result of Israel taking out a military target, the PA would take no action against its brothers in Hamas a genocidal organization dedicated to the physical destruction of the Jewish state and its citizenry.

In responding in this manner to the IAF's action, Abbas was nothing if not revealing. Abbas is not Israel's partner in peace. Abbas is Hamas's partner in war. That is, he is an enemy of the State of Israel.

Abbas's security chief, Muhammad Dahlan, did not even need the strike on Shanab to make this point clear. On Wednesday, he sent his spokesman out to explain what his policies would be toward Hamas following its massacre of 20 Israelis. The spokesman explained that Israel was to blame for the situation, because Israel had violated the hudna (cease-fire). At the same time, he explained, Palestinian factions (as he euphemistically referred to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah), were taking provocative actions that were unhelpful. Still, Israel was first and foremost to blame.

Later in the day the PA announced, after theatrical debates in Gaza and further dramatic rumination in Ramallah, that it was going to take action against "the factions" that were harming the PA's national interest.

What actions would they take? Well, they decided that Islamic Jihad and Hamas spokesmen wouldn't be allowed to give interviews on television anymore. Unfortunately, al-Jazeera apparently didn't hear about the stunning move, since Thursday the station interviewed Islamic Jihad leader Muhammad al-Hindi on its morning broadcast. Then, too, the PA decided that no one outside of its own CIA-trained militias would be allowed to walk around in public with weapons.

The one move that the Abbas-Dahlan (Arafat) junta has made since ascending to international celebrity is the PA's sponsorship of the hudna. Over the past two months, every time that they were asked about their moves to dismantle the Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah terror organizations, they pointed to the hudna and said that this was all that was necessary to bring peace. Initially, Israel decried the hudna as a farce. But once Hamas and its friends in Islamic Jihad and the PA announced its implementation six weeks ago, the government immediately began to play ball.

The media also got taken in by the hudna. The day after 20 Israeli children and their parents were disemboweled and scorched in Jerusalem, the question that dominated the papers was: Is the hudna over? Even after Hamas announced yesterday the hudna was off, Israeli commentators continued to ask whether Hamas was serious about "restarting" its terrorist slaughter.

In none of these discussions was mention ever made of what the hudna actually was. Since it was declared, it has been taken for granted that the hudna is a good thing for Israel, something that must be defended and preserved. Nothing could be further from the truth.

What, really, was this hudna? The hudna was a plan that was concocted by Egypt, the EU, the PA, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Its declared purpose was to allow terrorist organizations to flourish, operate, and grow unmolested by IDF counterterror operations. The hudna was also geared toward enabling Abbas to continue to exact concessions from Israel, including statehood, without its ever lifting a finger against terrorist groups. That is, the hudna aimed to establish a Palestinian terrorist state run jointly by the PA, Hamas, Fatah, and Islamic Jihad under the tutelage of Egypt and the sponsorship of the EU.

The hudna's architects never claimed that it involved a complete cessation of terrorist operations against Israel. Because of this, it is not at all strange that, after the Jerusalem massacre both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who jointly claimed credit for murdering Jewish babies and parents, announced that they would continue to adhere to their hudna. There is no contradiction between attacks like the bus bombing and the hudna. The only side whose actions are constrained by the hudna is Israel.

This constraint on Israel's operations, of course is a decade old. Last Thursday I found myself engaged in conversation with a young IDF officer. A commander in one of the IDF's elite counterterror units, the officer contrasted the goal of the IDF with the goal of the US army in Iraq. "They are there to win," he said of the US army. "We are not supposed to win. Our goal is just to survive," he told me.

Who can blame this 22-year-old officer for thinking this way? Since he was 12 years old his government has abandoned the notion of victory, let alone the provision of physical security to the citizens of the State of Israel as a national goal. Since the onset of the Oslo process, the policy of the governments of Israel has been to transfer responsibility for the security of Israelis to our sworn enemy Yasser Arafat and his PA and his strategic partners Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah.

This policy, which was completely discredited three years ago with the collapse of the Camp David summit, has been maintained and upheld by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in spite of the fact that he was twice elected by a landslide for the direct purpose of reinstating Israel's security that is, victory over our enemies as the goal of his government. The price of this policy has been steep. Over 400 Israelis were murdered from 1993-2000 and another 900 have been murdered since then.

This young officer fought with his men in Operation Defensive Shield last year. In the build-up to the offensive, senior IDF commanders told the soldiers and officers that they were going in to destroy the terrorists and would emerge victorious. The energy and excitement of the men, joined by an army of reservists, was palpable and real. For the first time, after a year and a half of sitting by and watching those they are charged with protecting being slaughtered, the army was finally receiving the order to do its job. And yet within a month they were told to move out. For the past 18 months, as they man their outposts and roadblocks, they stand by and watch the terrorists rebuild their strength and carry out still more massacres. In spite of what they accomplished in April 2002, they are told by their political leaders that their work is insignificant, because "there is no military solution." Israel cannot win.

Thus, even as Tuesday's massacre is described by the government as a "strategic attack," the response so far has only been tactical in nature. Even as Sharon refers to the PA's rhetoric as "a web of lies" he continues to finance it. Even as Abbas and Dahlan continue to make a mockery of Israel's demand that they destroy Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Sharon continues to pretend that Israel's real enemy the PA itself is his partner in peace negotiations.

It must be wonderful to be Abbas and Dahlan and Arafat. They can stand before the world and be embraced as peacemakers while making war on Israel. No matter what they do, no matter what atrocities they enable or conduct, they will never be blamed. Patience with them will never run out.

Israel's military successes during Defensive Shield and even the successful operations undertaken yesterday in Nablus, Jenin, and Ramallah make clear that if our leaders would just muster up the will to win, our armed forces will deliver the victory.

A decision to kill, deport, or arrest Arafat and try him for crimes against humanity in an Israeli court of law would be an immediate catalyst for a military operation that would in fact bring this country victory and the security that would ensue. Why is this? Because the only way to win a war is to identify who the enemy is. After 10 years of lying to ourselves, the blood on the streets of our capital city calls out the truth. Hamas and Islamic Jihad could never operate if it weren't for the PA and Arafat and his new straw men Abbas and Dahlan. The longer our leaders dither and deceive us, the longer our army officers will believe that their work is meaningless and the longer our lives will be at the mercy of our enemies.

Our future lies in the hands of our leaders. Victory is the only option. What will it take for them to find the will to lead us to it?

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Arafat Dead -- November 11, 2004 (and Nov 12)

Melanie Phillips: The reaction of the free world to Arafat's death, along with the opprobrium heaped daily upon his victims in Israel, illustrates the decadence that now rewards evil and punishes those whom it terrorizes. It is a horrifying indication of a world that has simply lost its fundamental understanding of right and wrong. All who value life, liberty and justice should take careful note and shudder at this moral -- and mortal -- sickness. This is the way a civilization dies.

U.S. Palestinians -- our neighbors -- grieve for the Monster who was the inspiration for Osama bin Laden.   Having wrought international terrorism on a scale previously unknown, Arafat proved that terrorism works and that terrorists can be praised and rewarded by a craven world.

In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. Arafat brought modern terrorism to the world and inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich.

David Warren: [T]he person who spits at the mention of George W. Bush, but weeps for Arafat, is beyond twitting. Such a person is sick in the head. He represents a form of judgment so totally inverted as to be indistinguishable from madness. And yet among our intellectuals, this inversion is commonplace.

Not One Thin Dime for Abbas - Andrew C. McCarthy
On Monday, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed three innocents in Eilat in an operation carried out by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, working in conjunction with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Aqsa Brigades are the terror wing of Fatah, led by Mahmoud Abbas, which is regarded as the "moderate" Palestinian faction. There is nothing moderate about them. Peace would require two sides desirous of coexistence. We're one short. Palestinians do not seek to coexist with Israel. They seek to destroy Israel. The Fatah constitution still calls for the "eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence" through an "armed revolution" which is to be the "decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence."
    Fatah may occasionally say it will live with Israel, but it has demonstrated repeatedly that it will never agree to the commonsense requirements of coexistence: It not only demands land and Jerusalem as its national capital; it refuses to disarm terrorist militias and insists on a refugee "right of return" - an influx of well over a million Palestinians that would effectively destroy the tiny Jewish state from within. Before Congress gives Abbas a dime, let's first hear him unambiguously condemn the Aqsa Brigades and purge them from Fatah. (National Review)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, Feb 1, 2007]

Abbas, January 11, 2007: "Let a thousand flowers bloom and let our rifles, all our rifles, all our rifles, be aimed at the occupation." At the very same time, Israel transfers $100 million to Abbas to help prop him up.

Classical Anti-Semitism from Abbas' Media - Yaakov Lappin
A new article blaming Jews for "fanning the flames of evil and provoking wars" has appeared in the official PA newspaper Al Hayat Al Jadida, written by Muhammad Khalifa, Executive Director of the United Arab Emirates-based Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up. Itamar Marcus, Director of Palestinian Media Watch, described the piece: "It's pure classical anti-Semitism, and a perfect example of the type of incitement to hatred that is regular." "Al Hayat Al Jadida is a paper owned by the Palestinian Authority and controlled by Fatah....This is coming from Mahmoud Abbas. This isn't coming from Hamas."

    "The media is in the hands of Mahmoud Abbas. Right after the (Palestinian) elections, he transferred the control of the newspaper and television to the office of the president....And we have seen an increase in incitement to hatred." Such programming ensured the conflict will continue, and "wouldn't be happening if there was any intention of bringing about peace," Marcus added. "Right now, it's not in the interest of Abbas to have violence, so he's stopping the (incitement to) violence, but he doesn't want the violence to disappear from the mentality, so he's keeping up the (incitement to) hatred. There is no indication of any change in the long-term policy." (Ynet News)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, Nov 1, 2006]

The Abbas "Peace" Proposal - Zalman Shoval

Mahmoud Abbas has called for a referendum on a document drafted by terrorist leaders of both Hamas and Fatah that gives the go-ahead to armed violence against Israeli civilians - though only in the territories - and also pretends implicitly to recognize the State of Israel. The precondition would be a full Israeli withdrawal to the vulnerable pre-1967 armistice lines, including eastern Jerusalem and all the Jewish neighborhoods surrounding the city, as well as relinquishing the strategically vital major population centers on the West Bank, referred to in President Bush's famous letter to former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon. The document also requires Israel to allow millions of Palestinian "refugees" to enter the Jewish state.

Whenever the occasion arises, Abbas will also talk about the international Quartet's Roadmap, conveniently forgetting that the PA under his leadership had consistently refrained from complying with even the first phase of the Roadmap, which called for an absolute end to terror and for breaking up the terrorist infrastructure. Abbas claims that peace could be achieved "within weeks," cavalierly overlooking his own history of noncompliance with previous commitments. Different Israeli governments over the last 13 years conducted ongoing negotiations with the Palestinian leadership, the only result being terror and more terror and growing intransigence on the Palestinian side. (Washington Times)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, June 19, 2006]

Abbas' Comeback Plan Is a Dead End - Aaron David Miller (Los Angeles Times)

• If you had a headache, even a migraine, would you shoot yourself in the head to get rid of it? That's precisely what PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is doing in his current gambit to corner Hamas by forcing a referendum on the future of the two-state solution. If he succeeds, it will not help his cause, but it will undermine his credibility and set the Palestinian national movement back twenty years.

• The problem is that the document that Abbas sees as the vehicle of his deliverance will only muddy the clarity of his own stand against terrorism and for negotiations - the very positions that make him credible with Israel and the U.S. The document endorses armed resistance in the West Bank and Gaza, urges Palestinians to free prisoners by any means, and gives preeminence to the Palestinian right of return.

• The fact that it may represent an advance over Hamas' maximalist goals cannot hide the fact that it is a serious retreat from Fatah's more moderate objectives. Indeed, it reopens vital questions about Israel's right to exist and about Palestinian endorsement of terrorism and violence that should have been laid to rest by now.

• Abbas risks locking himself into positions that raise serious doubts about his own moderate intentions and could formally link him to prospective partners and committees (the document calls for the creation of a committee to direct resistance in the occupied territories) that will undermine his own approach toward negotiations.

• Abbas' approach may play well in the Palestinian Peoria, but it will do little to advance his case in Washington and Jerusalem. In the end, his success or failure will be determined by his capacity to create a process that replaces the occupation with statehood - something that can only be achieved with Israeli and American support.

  The writer, a former senior State Department Middle East negotiator, is a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, June 14, 2006]

With Rise of Hamas, Abbas' Fatah Brigades Vow to Become Primary Attackers of Israelis (WorldNetDaily)
    After Hamas' rise to power, Fatah and its "military offshoot," the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, will become the most active Palestinian terror group, senior Brigades leader Abu Nasser said in an interview.
    He said Abbas' party supports the Brigades' terror attacks against Israeli civilians and approves of a massive violent offensive he warned will soon be launched against the Jewish state, in part to revolt against Hamas.
    He said the Brigades will not respect any cease-fire agreed to by Hamas.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, Feb 17, 2006]

PA TV: "Annihilate the Infidels" - Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook (Palestinian Media Watch)
    Less than 24 hours after the July 7 terrorist bombings in London, a Palestinian Authority Television sermon called for the extermination of every single Infidel:
    "Annihilate the Infidels and the Polytheists! Your [i.e. Allah's] enemies are the enemies of the religion! Allah, disperse their gathering and break up their unity, and turn on them, the evil adversities. Allah, count them and kill them to the last one, and don't leave even one."
    (Suleiman Al-Satari, PA TV, July 8, 2005)
    View an excerpt of this sermon.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, July 15, 2005]

What Cease-Fire? - Barry Rubin
There has been a formal cease-fire since February 2005, but the Palestinian terror war against Israel continues. In the five months between February 8 and July 8, Palestinians carried out 812 attacks on Israeli targets. In thousands more cases attacks were disrupted by Israeli arrests or defensive operations. Nearly half (47%) of these attacks have been claimed by Fatah, the ruling group in the PA, into whose hands the international community now proposes to place $3 billion in aid.

    Continuing casualties on the Palestinian side are due to the continuing war conducted by Palestinian political organizations. If the Palestinians stopped all attacks on Israel, Israel would not conduct any operations against the Palestinians. But even when Israel stops all military operations against the Palestinians, the attacks continue. (Jerusalem Post)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, July 20, 2005]

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, 5/9/05: No less a dove than Shlomo Ben-Ami, Ehud Barak's foreign minister, has written that Abu Mazen "is moderate in his strategy, not his goals, which are no different from Arafat's goals." Abu Mazen's commitment to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad has become a bad joke.  June 11, 2005: PA Foreign Minister Nasser al-Kidwa declares that the PA has no intention of disarming Palestinian militias as demanded by the road map.  July 17, 2005: The masterminds behind last week's Palestinian suicide bombing in Netanya are being protected by the Palestinian Authority at a government compound in Tulkarm.  July 7, 2005: In new school textbooks published by the Palestinian Authority, Zionism is depicted as a racist movement with a strong connection to Western imperialism.  The infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion is treated as a historical document, described as the confidential resolutions of the first Zionist Congress.
 

The Intifada Will Resume in the Fall [2005] - Alex Fishman (Yediot Ahronot-Hebrew, 1Apr05)  Right after the Gaza disengagement, according to military assessments, the cessation of terrorist attacks will end.
    The theater of operations will be Judea and Samaria.
   
 

Abbas declares his election win: "[A] victory for Yasser Arafat . . . the small jihad is over and the big jihad has begun . . ."

(Courtesy Cox & Forkum Editorial Cartoons)

March 2, 2005: Sunday's front-page coverage of Friday night's terror attack on a beachfront Tel Aviv night club in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda featured a giant color photo of the terrorist at the top of the page glorifying the bomber in  as a shahid (martyr who died for Allah) - the highest level of human achievement for a Muslim.  Condemnations of the suicide attack within the Palestinian-controlled media have focused on the "poor timing" and the fact that the attack was a violation of the agreement between Abbas and Hamas. The killings were detrimental to PA policy - nothing more. As in the Arafat years, the act itself was not portrayed as immoral or wrong.

Feb. 4, 2005: on the eve of the Sharm el-Sheik summit, senior Palestinian religious figure Ibrahim Mudyris delivered the official Friday sermon broadcast on PA television:  "We shall return to the 1967 borders, but it does not mean that we have given up on Jerusalem and Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramla, Netanya [Al-Zuhour], and Tel Aviv [Tel Al-Rabia]. Never.  Our approval to return to the 1967 borders is not a concession for our other rights. No!  This generation might not achieve this stage, but generations will come, and the land of Palestine...will demand that the Palestinians will return the way Muhammad returned there, as a conqueror."

Rep. Tom Lantos, the senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, 2/10/05: Mahmoud Abbas, "will have to show backbone'' by dismantling terror groups. "He will either defeat them, or they will defeat him,'' Lantos said. Kissinger added, "there can be no solution without a tremendous change in attitude, particularly propaganda,'' in Arab countries in the region.
 

The two men set to take over for Arafat - Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qureia (not even to mention Marwan Barghouti) were, respectively, the underboss and consigliere for his terrorist enterprise. They were with him on the mattresses, they were there when he killed the Olympic athletes in Munich, they were in the siege of Beirut, and they lived with him in Ramallah at the end. To say that these guys are moderates, that they are the hope of the future, is to say that when Carlo Gambino died, John Gotti was a peacemaker.

Abu Mazen (aka Abbas), Holocaust-denier: “They [the Jews] claim that 2000 years ago they had a Temple. I challenge the claim that this is so.” He continues to demand the right of return of some four million refugees and their descendants.  Abu Mazen:  Israel's partner for peace?  If stopping the violence against Israel best serves his goal of eliminating the sovereign Jewish state, that is his program.  As someone who can realistically appraise circumstances and quietly respond to them, he is potentially a far more formidable enemy to Israel than the one-note, blindly violent, and flamboyantly evil Arafat.

In any case, these "moderates" are the weakest faction among the Palestinian nationalists. A pragmatic point of view is unpopular among activists who have been indoctrinated to glorify violence, hate Israel, and define moderation as treason. They also face the movement's dominant ideology, which still hinges on Israel's destruction, and the men with guns.  Farouq Qaddumi, the new leader of Fatah is an al-Qaida sympathizer with close ties to such terrorist sponsors as Iran and Syria:  "Guerilla war is like commerce.  As Mao Zedong said, we trade when trade is profitable and stop when it's not."

1/15/05: The so-called “armed wing” of Mahmoud Abbas/Abu Mazen’s Fatah party, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, murders suspected  “collaborator” in a public square after Friday prayers.  Meanwhile, Abbas has issued instructions to recruit gunmen belonging to Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, into the PA security forces. "These men will play a role in building the PA and its institutions," he said, referring to scores of Fatah gunmen wanted by Israel for their involvement in terrorism. However, a spokesman for the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in Nablus rejected the offer, saying his men would continue to fight against Israel.
 

11/29/2004: PLO Foreign Minister, Farouk Kadumi [Farouq Qaddumi] reaffirms the PLO's 1974 "destroy Israel" program, commonly known as the Phased Plan

Gaza City, 1/3/05: Mahmoud Abbas said Palestinian refugees and their descendants from the two-year war that followed Israel's creation in 1948 have the right to return to their original homes. "The day will come when the refugees return home," Abbas told the cheering crowd. The refugees and their descendants total about 4 million people.

Edward Abington, a former U.S. consul-general in Jerusalem and a registered lobbyist in Washington for the Palestinian Authority, said Abbas' campaign platform should come as no surprise. "Those are Palestinian positions, not Arafat's positions," he said. "It is a mistake to think that because Arafat is dead that there is going to be sudden change in the Palestinian views." 

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, January 4, 2005]

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