Pres. Bush's
Final Push For A Palestinian State
Why Is the West Funding Abbas' Hate TV?
- Itamar Marcus (Jerusalem Post)
-
There has never been a period of such
intense demonization of Israel, continuous hate promotion, and denial of
Israel's existence by the PA (Fatah)-controlled media as during the 11
months since the Annapolis Conference.
-
Jews and Israelis are being demonized by the
PA through malicious libels - including the lies that Israel
intentionally spreads AIDS and drugs among Palestinians, conducts
Nazi-like medical experiments on Palestinian prisoners, took Palestinian
babies in 1948 to bring up as Jews, and is planning to destroy the Al-Aksa
Mosque. Israel is even said to be breeding supernatural rats to chase
Arabs who live in Jerusalem.
-
Abbas' TV is no different than Hamas TV -
unequivocally denying Israel's existence and right to exist. Recent TV
shows included numerous examples of young Palestinian children repeating
that Israel is "occupied Palestine," eventually to be "returned."
-
The world was incensed when Iranian
President Ahmadinejad announced his vision of a world without Israel.
Yet when Abbas' TV teaches Palestinian children the identical vision of
a world without Israel, Western countries run for their checkbooks to
keep funding him.
The writer is director of Palestinian Media
Watch.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
October 28, 2008]
Abbas: No Resettlement of Palestinians in
Lebanon - Bassem Mroue
About 400,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants live in a dozen
refugee camps in Lebanon, which were set up in 1948. On a visit to Beirut
on Thursday, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said, "The refugees should
have the right of return to their homeland and we are negotiating this
with the Israelis....We are against permanent resettlement" of Palestinian
refugees in Lebanon. (AP/Washington Post)
[Courtesy --
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American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
August 29, 2008]
EU Aid to Palestine Is Funding the Conflict
- Daniel Hannan (Telegraph -- UK)
The EU is to increase its aid to the
Palestinian Authority by €40 million, in order to pay the salaries of
government employees. The EU's generosity with our money - it has paid
the Palestinian Authority €256 million so far this year - creates two
problems. First, the PA in Gaza is run by Hamas, which is on the EU's
list of designated terrorist operations. Under Brussels rules, funding
such an organization is a criminal offence. Euro-lawyers have sought to
circumvent the letter of the law by funneling aid money through NGOs,
but this is sheer sophistry.
Second, it is becoming increasingly clear
that overseas aid is arresting a political settlement in the region.
Palestinians receive more assistance, per capita, than any other people
on Earth, and live in one of its most violent spaces. The two facts are
connected.
The idea that aggression can be buried under
a landslide of euros sounds reasonable, but it is based on a false
premise, namely that political violence is caused by economic
deprivation.
Palestinians are a naturally enterprising
people who, in other Arab states, often form the professional and
administrative class. A capitalist Palestine, in which citizens looked
to themselves rather than to the state, would be more stable. Its
propertied classes would have a stake in civil order. Its businessmen
would have an incentive to remain on cordial terms with their customers,
including those in Israel.
None of this will happen, however, as long
as Palestinians remain trapped in the squalor of dependency. The author
is a Conservative Member of the European Parliament.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
August 25, 2008]
Cotler: "Peace Partners" Promote Hate
- Joel Goldenberg
The Palestinian Authority, usually referred to as Israel's "peace
partner," is engaged in the promotion of hate and incitement against
Israel and Jews in general, says MP Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian
justice minister. "I'm not talking about Hamas - their charter with its
genocidal objective, anti-Semitic ideology and terrorist instrumentality,
is known. I'm talking about the Palestinian Authority. I regret to say, as
a result of my own work this summer, there are many items that constitute
a culture of incitement, not a culture of peace." "If you have a culture
of incitement and hate, you're going to create a culture of hate that is
pervasive in Palestinian society itself." He said those guilty of this
include academics and the government-controlled broadcasting system.
"When I was there, I was shocked to see on their own television
references to Israel's conducting of Nazi-like experiments on Palestinian
prisoners." Cotler said the most disturbing and ignored incitement comes
from the Palestinian leadership itself, including Mahmoud Abbas.
"People don't realize that Abbas signed a law, on the very day there was a
suicide terrorist attack in December 2005 against Israel, providing
monthly stipends for the families of suicide bombers. In January 2007,
Abbas addressed a large crowd that was estimated as being over 100,000, in
which he said 'the sons of Israel are mentioned in the Koran as those who
are corrupting humanity on Earth.' Abbas has never recognized Israel's
legitimacy as a Jewish state." (The Suburban-Canada)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
August 22, 2008]
The Syrian Gambit: Russia Should Not Pretend
It Can Drag the Middle East Back to the Cold War
- Editorial
The ripples created by the crisis in the Caucasus are spreading fast, and
there is
a risk that a wholesale realignment of the Middle East along Cold
War lines could follow. Russia's reasons for seeking to draw Syria back
into its orbit are clear: strategically, the Russian Navy gains the
prospect of access to two Syrian warm-water ports just as Ukraine attempts
to rewrite its rules for Russian use of bases in Crimea. Moscow has also
been able to announce the dispatch of Russian air defense systems to Syria
on the very day that the U.S. signed a missile defense pact with Poland.
Diplomatically, a rapprochement (after years of strained relations because
of unpaid Syrian debts) sends a signal to NATO that containing the new
Russia will take more than merely co-opting its neighbors. (Times-UK)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
August 21, 2008]
Violence Dashes Hopes for Palestinian State
- Jason Koutsoukis (Sydney Morning Herald-Australia)
-
Rescue workers began sifting through the
rubble of a three-storey apartment block, the stronghold of the Hilles
clan aligned to Fatah, which was destroyed by Hamas on Saturday. It is
believed Hamas militants fired 300 mortar shells and dozens of
rocket-propelled grenades into the Sajaiya neighborhood in Gaza City.
Hamas marksmen positioned themselves on the minarets of several mosques
and fired at anyone who came into the street.
-
Mohammad Darawshe, co-director of the
Abraham Fund, said, "Hamas might win the battle, but this behavior makes
it so much harder to win international support to create an independent
state. This is
the behavior of a brutal dictatorship, not a political
party working towards advancing the interests of its people."
-
Gabriel Motzkin, a professor of philosophy
at Hebrew University, said the infighting had extinguished any chance of
success in this round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. "It is beyond
doubt that there are now
two separate Palestinian territories,
so who does Israel deal with? Mahmoud Abbas does not speak for
Palestinians in Gaza. And Hamas is not interested in any negotiations
with Israel at all. This civil war makes a permanent solution impossible
to negotiate."
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
August 5, 2008]
See more:
Fatah Gaza refugees flee Hamas to Israel
PA Leaders: Kuntar a Hero
- Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook (Palestinian Media Watch)
According to the Palestinian Authority leadership,
Samir Kuntar
epitomizes the ideal. Kuntar,
who crushed the head of four-year-old Eynat Haran with his rifle, is
serving four life sentences for murder in an Israeli prison, but is almost
certain to be freed in a prisoner swap with Hizbullah.
Kuntar also killed Eynat's father Danny Haran and two policemen in the
1979 attack in Nahariya.
PA TV, controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, broadcast a picture honoring
Kuntar, depicted beside a map of Israel completely covered by the
Palestinian flag.
Recent comments by PA leaders include: "The brave warrior, Samir
kuntar." "The Palestinian people and the Palestinian leadership are
standing behind you." "Your patience and strength
are
a lesson for us."
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
July 4, 2008]
A Measure of the Distance to Peace
- Barry Rubin
For the Arabic-speaking world, the true heroes are still the
terrorists. What horrified me most are not radicals cheering terrorist
Samir Kuntar but that most relative moderates feel compelled to do so. At
the airport to greet him were leaders of Lebanon's anti-Syrian,
anti-Iranian Druze and Christian groups as well as the ambassadors from
Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Morocco. To avoid being discredited, relative
moderates must affirm that anyone who murders Israeli children is a hero.
That's the measure of how far the region is from Arab-Israeli peace.
[Courtesy --
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Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
July 25, 2008]
IDF: Jenin Forces Not Fighting Terror
- Yaakov Katz
On Sunday, top Israeli defense officials and IDF officers slammed two
American-backed initiatives to deploy additional Palestinian forces in the
West Bank, saying they are allowing terrorism to flourish. Defense
officials say that since 600 PA soldiers trained by U.S. defense
contractors in Jordan were allowed to deploy in Jenin last month, there
has been an increase in terrorist activity in the city. On Sunday, a
20-kg. bomb detonated next to an IDF force in Jenin without causing any
casualties. Terror suspects arrested by PA forces were usually released in
a few days or just hours later, one defense official said. Weapons
provided by the U.S. to the PA are finding their way to Hamas and Islamic
Jihad terrorists in Jenin as well as in Nablus, a top officer in the IDF
Central Command said. In addition, terrorists have infiltrated the ranks
of the PA police and military. (Jerusalem Post)
[Courtesy --
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American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
June 16, 2008]
Jordan Fears New Pressure to Merge with West
Bank - Randa Habib (AFP)
Jordanian officials fear renewed proposals for a merger with part of
the West Bank. "To get half or less of the West Bank with all the
Palestinian population would be suicide," a senior Jordanian official
said.
A significant proportion of Jordan's 5.8 million inhabitants are
already of Palestinian origin and officials worry that the addition of the
West Bank's Palestinians would fundamentally alter the population balance.
"We would prefer to be at war with Israel rather than accept such a
situation, which would be a security nightmare and which would in the long
term cause Jordan to lose its identity," the Jordanian official said,
adding that such a move would allow the Palestinians control of Jordanian
politics.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
June 12, 2008]
PA Representative in Lebanon: We Act According
to the Phased Plan. Once We Get Jerusalem, We Will Drive Israelis Out of
All of Palestine
Abbas Zaki, PA representative in Lebanon, told Lebanon's NBN TV on
April 9, 2008: The PLO "has not changed its platform even one iota....When
the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the
Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to
progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of
all of Palestine." (MEMRI)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
April 14, 2008]
Palestinian Terrorism Created Need for
Roadblocks, Expert Says - Julie
Stahl
Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, the former commander of the Israeli
army's National Defense College, said West Bank
roadblocks wouldn't exist
if the Palestinians hadn't started using terrorism. Because terrorists
cannot be distinguished from civilians, the only way to block an
infiltration into Israel is by using physical barriers, he said. The point
is to capture would-be terrorists long before they approach Israel's
borders or have time to amass bomb-making components. In the 1970s,
there was not a single roadblock in the West Bank. Hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians worked freely inside Israel every day without passing any
checkpoints, he said. "[The roadblocks] were needed only after
Oslo,
when the Palestinians became rulers of themselves,
[as a] consequence of the way they acted." (CNS News)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
April 1, 2008]
Abbas' Address to the Arab League in Damascus
- Jonathan D. Halevi
Mahmoud Abbas' speech at the Arab League meeting in Damascus on March 29
was no different from those of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, neither in
accepting Israel's existence nor in recognition of the historical
connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, nor even in a
denunciation of terror. (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs-Hebrew)
[Courtesy --
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American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
March 31, 2008]
U.S. AID for Terror
- Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen (FrontPageMagazine)
Since 1994, the CIA armed and trained thousands of Palestinian
"security forces," who subsequently joined every Palestinian terrorist
organization.
CIA Palestinian training success is best described by a member of the
PA chairman's own security unit - Force 17 - officer Abu Yusef:
"The operations of the Palestinian resistance would [not] have been
so successful and would not have killed more than 1,000 Israelis since
2000, and defeated the Israelis in Gaza without [American military]
training," he boasted in August 2007.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
March 25, 2008]
PA Security Forces Coordinate with
Terrorists in Nablus - Barak
Ravid (Ha'aretz-Hebrew)
Israel recently authorized the deployment of 500 PA police in
Nablus. According to a report that reached Defense Minister Barak,
these forces are working in coordination with local terrorists.
The terrorists neutralize the bombs they have prepared when the PA
police enter the Casbah, and hook them up again when they leave.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
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Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
March 31, 2008]
A Skewed Process
- Editorial (Jerusalem Post)
-
Israel is reportedly bracing
for a "skewed" report from Lt.-Gen. William Fraser on Israeli and
Palestinian implementation of their Roadmap obligations. What is likely
"skewed," however, is the whole U.S. approach to achieving Arab-Israeli
peace. Since the government recently announced it would expand a
settlement inside the security barrier near Jerusalem, Israel expects to
be criticized in the Fraser report. The problem with this approach is
that there is no symmetry between settlements and terrorism, on either
the moral or strategic levels. It is a moral travesty that building
homes is compared to murdering innocents.
-
But even if settlement
expansion can be seen as problematic, it makes little sense to treat all
settlements equally, as if there were no difference between expanding
existing towns that are contiguous with Israel and inside the security
barrier, and settlements situated amidst the Palestinian population. A
clear distinction should be made over settlements that are entirely
consistent with a two-state solution.
-
But all this is trivial
compared to the macro problem, which is that the U.S. makes no
distinction between
the respective distances Israel and the Palestinians
are from making the two-state approach work. Since the Oslo Accords were
signed in 1993, the Israeli public and political system have moved
dramatically to a broad consensus that regards a Palestinian state as
acceptable, even a necessity. At the same time, the Palestinians have,
if anything, become more radicalized since 1993, and have not begun to
prepare themselves for a two-state approach, let alone embrace it.
-
Almost no Palestinian
will accept that the Jewish people have any national or historical
rights to a state alongside Palestine. This is what prevents peace.
Pretending that Israelis and Palestinians are equally to blame for the
lack of peace is not just misleading and unfair, it is actively harmful
to the cause of peace, because it lets those who are obstructing peace
off the hook.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
March 14, 2008]
Thousands in Gaza Celebrate Jerusalem Terror
Attack, Palestinians Distribute Sweets
- Ali Waked
Gaza's streets filled with joyous crowds of thousands on Thursday evening
following
the terror attack at a Jerusalem school
in which
eight people were killed. In mosques in Gaza City, many residents
went to perform the prayers of thanksgiving. Armed men fired in the air in
celebration and others passed out sweets to passersby. Hamas issued a
statement saying it "blesses the (Jerusalem) operation." (Ynet News)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
March 7, 2008]
Poll: Palestinians Support Rocket Attacks and
Want Peace Talks to End - Ethan
Bronner
A new poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey
Research shows that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians - 84% -
support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that
killed eight young men, most of them teenagers. The survey also shows
that 64% support the firing of rockets on Israeli towns from Gaza and 75%
support the end of peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli
leaders. The poll also showed that the militant Islamist group Hamas is
gaining popularity in the West Bank while its American-backed rival, Fatah,
is losing ground. (New York Times)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
March 19, 2008]
Showdown on Palestinian Funding?
- Joel Mowbray
In an interview with
the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dastur last week, Abbas spoke with pride of
violence he had waged in his past, suggested that terrorism could start anew
in the future, and essentially backed away from repeated statements that he
"recognizes" Israel's right to exist. A top congressional appropriator,
Foreign Operations Chairwoman Nita Lowey, said flatly, "Abbas' recent
statements cast doubt on his willingness to take the steps necessary for
peace with Israel." (Washington Times)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
March 10, 2008]
Israel's War on Terror in the West Bank
- Tim McGirk (TIME)
Just because fewer Palestinian terrorists are slipping into Israel
from the West Bank doesn't mean that they have stopped trying.
Says an officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF): "Our people sleep
comfortably in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv because the IDF is putting in a huge
effort, day and night, in the West Bank to prevent terror."
Last year more than 6,650 suspected Palestinian militants were rounded
up, among them, claim Israeli intelligence officers, 279 potential suicide
bombers.
IDF troops, in effect, prop up Mahmoud Abbas. Without the presence of
Israeli troops, his advisers concede, the West Bank would soon fall to
Hamas militants, just as Gaza did last June.
Israel's domestic intelligence service, Shin Bet, claims that in 2007
it foiled 29 suicide attacks.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
March 10, 2008]
Annapolis - Road to Nowhere
- Zalman Shoval
In an unimplementable "shelf agreement," Israel will be seen to have
committed itself to certain far-reaching steps that it has not
implemented. On the one hand, this will be seen as the starting point for
any future negotiations, and on the other hand, it will invite increasing
pressure on Israel, with the added element of ongoing terror.
When Israel originally accepted the
Roadmap,
it was stipulated that there would be no negotiations on the permanent
status of the West Bank and Gaza (Phases 2 and 3) until the Palestinians
first fulfill their security commitments in accordance with Phase 1. If
those pre-conditions for negotiations from 2003 have already melted away
four years later, then why shouldn't Annapolis pre-conditions for
implementation of the "shelf agreement" melt away four years from now?
The writer served as Israel's ambassador to the Washington (1990-93,
1998-2000). (Institute for Contemporary Affairs/Jerusalem Center for
Public Affairs)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
February 13, 2008]
PA Glorifies Dimona Terrorists
- Yadid Berman (Jerusalem Post)
The terrorists who
perpetrated Monday's suicide bombing
in Dimona
were glorified in three newspapers controlled by the PA, including the
official Al-Hayat al-Jadida, controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian
Media Watch reported Wednesday.
"The perpetrators of the operation died as shahids (glorious
martyrs)," Al-Hayat al-Jadida reported on Feb. 5.
The Palestinian dailies Al-Iyam and Al-Quds also defined the bombers
as shahids.
Also described as shahids in the Palestinian media were two
Palestinians who attempted to murder Israelis in Kfar Etzion's Makor Haim
High School several weeks ago.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
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Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
February 7, 2008]
Palestinian Media Continue Incitement Against
Israel in Contravention of Roadmap
(Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center)
In the months that preceded the Annapolis meeting, the Palestinian
media carried larger amounts of anti-Israel incitement than usual, which
continued and even increased afterwards.
Often woven into it were anti-Semitic symbols and images.
Even the PA media, controlled by Abbas and Fatah, were methodical in
their vicious anti-Israeli incitement.
[Courtesy --
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American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
January 23, 2008]
Needed: A Strategy for Ending the Jihad
Against Zion - Marty Peretz
How many times have I heard this refrain? "This president is the best
friend Israel has ever had." Hundreds of times. About Ronald Reagan. About
Bill Clinton. And now about George Bush. I suppose, it is true in a
certain abstract sense about each of them. They probably also understood
that the prime impediment to a peace between the Israelis and those who
now call themselves Palestinians (this nomenclature is relatively new to
the Arabs of Palestine) is
fanatic resistance to the non-negotiable
reality of a Jewish state in the Holy Land.
America is the only country
with the power to induce Israel to make
perilous concessions and, therefore, it is the only country whose
government Arabs - both in Palestine and in the surrounding countries -
are motivated to influence.
Yet there are some
realities that neither the American president
nor the best laid plans of other mice and men can influence or affect. You
can force this bloc of
settlements
to close down and draw the border here rather than there and even color
code Jerusalem to allow the Arabs to control the
Temple
Mount (which would be a
terrible affront to Jewish history that the Muslims want especially to
affront) and to hand sovereignty over Palestinian neighborhoods in the
city to the Palestinians and contrive some cynical and unprecedented
formula for allowing some
"refugees"
(they are almost all dead actually) to "return" and creating a fund for
compensation of zillions of dollars (to which Israel should not contribute
because it has absorbed since 1948 a larger number of true
Jewish
refugees from the Islamic world)
- yet not even all of this would end the jihad against Zion.
The fact is that the great impediment to peace with Israel is the
fanatic obstinacy of the Palestinians. Does anyone have a strategy for
negotiating with that? (New Republic)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
January 11, 2008]
Involvement of PA Security Forces in Murder of
Israelis to be Raised During Bush Visit
- Herb Keinon
The involvement of Palestinian security forces in the murder of Israelis
in terrorist attacks will be raised when Prime Minister Olmert meets
President Bush next week, according to Israeli diplomatic officials. PA
security forces were responsible for Friday's
murder in the Hebron Hills
of off-duty soldiers David Rubin and Ahikam Amihai, and for the
murder in November
of Ido Zoldan near Kedumim. "There are rogue, extremist elements inside
the Fatah machine and the Palestinian security apparatus who have been
responsible for not one or two, but a series of attacks," said Olmert's
spokesman Mark Regev. "If this [diplomatic] process is going to
succeed, the Palestinians must put their security house in order," Regev
said. Bush is scheduled to arrive next Wednesday afternoon, and leave on
Friday. (Jerusalem Post)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
January 3, 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]
"Everyone Knows What a Peace Deal Looks Like" - Evelyn Gordon
One of the most widespread misconceptions about Israeli-Palestinian talks
is that "everyone knows what a deal looks like." As the New York Times put
it in an editorial last month, "The broad outlines of a deal...have been
apparent since President Clinton's 2000 push." Yet according to a summary
of the Taba talks prepared by negotiator Gilad Sher after they collapsed,
the Palestinians objected to Israel keeping
the settlement blocs -
one of Israel's main reasons for wanting territorial exchanges - and
generally insisted that any swaps total no more than 2.3% of the West
Bank, well short of the 6 to 8% needed for the blocs. They refused to
let Israel keep Latrun, which dominates the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem
highway. And they insisted that the "safe passage" connecting Gaza and the
West Bank be under Palestinian sovereignty, thereby effectively severing
Israel in two.
On the Temple Mount in
Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest site, the
Palestinians insisted that the mount be entirely theirs, with Israel
having no rights whatsoever. The Palestinians also demanded recognition of
the "right" of all
refugees and their descendants to relocate to
Israel. The Palestinians
adamantly refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish
nation-state. In short, not only is there no agreement on what a deal
looks like, there is no agreement even on the fundamental premise that
must underlie any deal - namely, the establishment of two states for two
peoples. (Jerusalem Post)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
December 21, 2007]
There'll Be No Peace in Our Time
- Greg Sheridan
Even in the West Bank, the real power of the Palestinian Authority is very
limited. Several West Bank cities are ruled by warlords, not the
Authority. Indeed, Palestinian leaders cannot travel safely in all
their own cities and are not ready to take over security in most of their
cities from Israeli security forces. In truth, the PA does not have
functioning state institutions. Two years ago, Israel did pull out of Gaza
- and the result was that Hamas took over.
Every
day now, terrorists fire rockets - aimed at civilians - from Gaza into
Israel. Eventually, one of
these rockets will kill a large number of Israeli civilians and there will
be a huge Israeli military response inside Gaza.
The Annapolis process requires the fulfillment of the conditions of
the Roadmap, the very first of which is that the Palestinians stamp out
terrorism and stop attacks on Israeli civilians. There is no sign the PA
can do this, or even that it really wants to.
Its educational materials
are full of hatred against Israel and
incitement
to terrorism. And that is the fundamental problem. Neither the
Palestinian
leadership, nor most of the surrounding Arab states, have really come to
grips with
Israel's right to exist at peace
behind secure borders. Until that happens, no agreement is likely to work
on the ground.
The writer is foreign editor of The
Australian. (Sunday Telegraph-Australia)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
December 19, 2007]
International Aid to PA No Guarantee for
Boosting Moderates - Khaled Abu
Toameh
Since its establishment in 1994, the PA has received nearly $6.5
billion in international aid. The assumption was that economic prosperity
would weaken radicals and boost the moderates among the Palestinians. But
hundreds of millions of dollars went into secret bank accounts or to build
villas for senior PA officials.
The international community that was pouring money on the PA did not seem
to care about the stories of financial corruption and embezzlement. Nor
did the donors pay attention to the fact that Arafat was
inciting his people not only
against Israel, but also against the same "infidels" who were signing his
checks.
While the billions of dollars promised at the Paris conference on
Monday are likely to improve the living conditions of the Palestinians and
strengthen their economy, there is no guarantee that the financial aid
would have a moderating effect on many of them. This money is mainly
designed to keep Fatah in power and prevent Hamas from taking over the
West Bank. Unless the PA changes its rhetoric and starts promoting real
peace and coexistence with Israel, the millions of dollars are not going
to create a new generation of moderate Palestinians. The only way to
undermine Hamas is not by channeling billions of dollars to the PA
leadership, but by offering the Palestinians a better alternative to the
Islamist movement. (Jerusalem Post)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
December 18, 2007]
Israel Delays Transfer of Armored Personnel
Carriers to Abbas (AP/Ha'aretz)
Israel has delayed a planned transfer of 25 armored personnel carriers
from Russia to the Palestinian Authority, planned for this week,
because the Palestinians want to have them
mounted with machine guns, security
officials said Monday.
Housing Minister Zeev Boim said Israel feared that the equipment and
weapons could fall into Hamas' hands.
"We do need to strengthen Abbas' security forces," Boim said. "But
it's way too early for them to have APCs with mounts for heavy weapons."
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
December
30, 2007]
Jerusalem's Jewish Roots Must Be Acknowledged
- Nathan J. Diament
Jerusalem is hardly a real estate issue. It is at the heart of the
Israel-Arab impasse, for it relates fundamentally to history, theology and
national identity. Jerusalem is at the heart of religious identity for
Jews - we pray each day toward Jerusalem and for its welfare, we regularly
read the biblical accounts of our forefathers that take place in the
city's environs, and we conclude our holiest days with the prayer that
next year we will celebrate in Jerusalem. Historically,
King David made
Jerusalem his capital 3,000 years ago, and since then Jerusalem has been
the national capital of the Jewish people; only brute force has kept them
out.
From 1948-1967, when the Old City and eastern parts of Jerusalem
fell under Jordanian rule, Jews were barred entry to the Old City, denied
worship at the Western Wall at the foot of the Temple Mount, and denied
access to the ancient cemeteries on the Mount of Olives and Mount Zion.
Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel recaptured and unified the entire
city and opened the holy sites of all faiths to all people. The writer is
director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations
of America. (Baltimore Sun)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
November 30, 2007]
Olmert: Arabs Should Open Consular Offices in
Israel Following Annapolis Meeting
- Barak Ravid
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on
Tuesday that he
expects Arab states to open consular offices
in Israel following the
Annapolis summit. Olmert told Ban that "every Arab or Muslim state
which participates in the Annapolis summit should demonstrate its support
of the process in this way." (Ha'aretz)
General Security Services Head Diskin and
Military Intelligence Chief Yadlin: Timetable for Permanent Status
Agreement with Palestinians Endangers Israel - Itamar Eichner and Itzik
Saban
The head of the General Security Services (Shabak), Yuval Diskin, and
the head of Israeli Military Intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, warned
the political echelon that the timetable which the Americans seek to
dictate to Israel and the Palestinians - to reach a permanent status
agreement in a year -
endangers Israel. In the course of the security
cabinet meeting, the two officials warned that
Abbas is weak and is not
yet ready to implement a peace agreement with Israel; his operational
capabilities approach zero. (Yediot Ahronot-Hebrew, 26Nov07)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Nov 27, 2007]
Appointment in Annapolis
- Editorial, Washington Post
The Annapolis meeting may yet serve the modest purpose of providing an
international blessing for the first formal Mideast peace process in seven
years. But events of the past few weeks have tested Ms. Rice's notion that
conditions in the region now favor the two-state settlement that President
Bush has endorsed. In practice, the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating
teams have bogged down in the decades-old disputes that have blocked every
previous peace process, such as sovereignty over Jerusalem and
whether Palestinian refugees
will be allowed to settle in Israel.
The response of the "mainstream" Arab governments that Ms. Rice
hoped to marshal has been disappointing. Saudi Arabia, which claims the
Palestinian cause is a top priority, has persistently declined to support
the new U.S. effort, either through substantial support for
Mr. Abbas'
government or overtures to Israel. Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal
announced his attendance at Annapolis only on Friday - and then only after
making clear that he would not speak or shake hands with Israeli
attendees. The breakthrough that Ms. Rice thought was possible still looks
remote.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Nov 26, 2007]
The Historical Fact of Israel
- David Warren
The Palestinian side has declared that, while Arafat "recognized" the
"State of Israel" as part of the "Oslo accords" in September 1993, neither
he then, nor they today, recognize it as a "Jewish state." Israel is
there, by the fact of history. And it is also there as the only reliably
free, democratic, pro-Western state in a dark region where the most open
societies (Jordan, Egypt) are arbitrarily ruled by moderate tyrants, and
the worst are unspeakable. There are today more than five million Jews
living in Israel, who have no citizenship anywhere else. The overwhelming
majority were born there. This is what I mean by an historical fact.
There may well be as many Palestinians scattered through the region
under subsidy from the UN, who claim the
"right of return" to what is now
Israeli territory, but who were not born there. It should be remembered,
constantly, that they descend from Palestinian ancestors who were one half
of a population exchange that happened in the 1940s.
And that
an approximately equal number of Jews were uprooted from their homes
throughout the Arab world - under
pressure of both the state and the mob - many of whom found refuge in
Israel. The Palestinians are ill served by the failure of Ms. Rice and all
other diplomatic authorities in the West to remind them of the facts,
plainly. (Ottawa Citizen)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Nov 23, 2007]
The Perils of Engagement
- Jeff Robbins (Wall Street Journal)
-
If history is any guide, next week's meeting
in Annapolis will yield unsatisfactory results, Israel will be blamed
for failing to make the requisite concessions, and the Bush
administration will be criticized for its "failure to engage." The
problem is that all too often, those who blame the U.S. for failing to
deliver Mideast peace are some of the world's most culpable enablers of
Mideast violence - and those who are themselves actually responsible for
erecting the fundamental roadblocks to a resolution of the conflict.
-
It was the Arab bloc, including the
Palestinian leadership, that decided to reject the UN's 1947
partition of Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, living side
by side. Instead it invaded the nascent Jewish state rather than coexist
with it, spawning the conflict that has so burdened the world for the
last 60 years.
-
We are also not responsible for the Arab
world's choice not to create a Palestinian Arab state in East Jerusalem,
Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, when it easily could
have done so - before there were any
Jewish settlements there to
serve as the public object of Arab grievance.
-
Nor can the U.S. government under
President Clinton be criticized for failing to pursue Yasser Arafat
with sufficient solicitude between 1993 and late 2000. The Clinton
administration was, after all, the most ardent of suitors of the
Palestinian leader - only to be forced to watch Arafat reject an
independent Palestinian state in all of Gaza and virtually all of the
West Bank.
-
It was the Palestinian leadership, not the
U.S., that decided in the fall of 2000 that, rather than accept
an independent Palestinian state, its wiser course was to launch a
four-year bombing campaign against Israel's civilian population. The
result was not merely over 1,100 Israeli civilians killed, but several
thousand Palestinians dead, as well as a shattered Palestinian economy
and the decision by Israel to begin construction of a security barrier
in July 2002.
-
When Israel withdrew from all of Gaza in
2005, the Arab world had the opportunity for a fresh start there -
to create a measure of hope for a population whose suffering long
predated any Israeli presence. Instead, the Hamas-dominated Palestinian
leadership opted to begin and then intensify an aggressive
missile-launching campaign against Israeli civilian centers.
-
Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, whose
treasuries overflow with petrodollars, are in a position to
invest heavily in Gaza, create economic opportunities for its destitute
population, and dilute the toxin-filled atmosphere there. They have not
done so. The Egyptians are in a position to act decisively to stop the
flow of rockets, bombs and other arms from Egypt into Gaza, where they
are used to attack Israeli civilians. They have not done so.
The writer was a U.S. Delegate to the UN
Human Rights Commission during the Clinton administration.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Nov 21, 2007]
The Annapolis Fiasco
- Brett Stevens
"Annapolis" was conceived earlier this year by the Bush administration as
a landmark conference that would revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks
and lead to a final settlement by January 2009. Today, the operative
theory is that Israel's neighbors, fearful of Iran's growing regional
clout, have a newfound interest in putting the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict to rest. Few Israelis take seriously the view that the creation
of a Palestinian state offers a solution to their concerns about Iran. On
the contrary, they fear that such a state would become yet another finger
of the Islamic Revolution, just as Hizbullahstan is to their north in
Lebanon, and Hamastan is to their south in Gaza. Among the principles
sharply in dispute is whether Israel is a Jewish state. One would have
thought the question of Israel's Jewishness was settled 60 years ago by a
UN partition plan that speaks of a "Jewish state" some 30 times. (Wall
Street Journal)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Nov 20, 2007]
Israeli Confidence-Building Measures Toward
the Palestinians
Israel has recently taken practical steps to assist the Palestinian
government of Mahmoud Abbas. Approximately $250 million in withheld PA tax
and customs revenue has already been transferred to the PA, with the
remaining $250 million to be transferred by the end of the year. 25
roadblocks and checkpoints were removed in the West Bank. About 170 wanted
Fatah terrorists were offered amnesty in exchange for renunciation of
terrorism and surrendering of weapons. About 350 prisoners were released
on 20 July and 1 October, with a third release now being contemplated.
Israel recently consented to the transfer of supplies and equipment to the
PA Security Forces, above and beyond that called for in the
Israel-Palestinian agreements. (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
Palestinians Harden Refusal to Accept a
"Jewish State"
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated on Wednesday that there could be no
substantive peace negotiations without explicit Palestinian recognition of
Israel as a Jewish state. Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat told
Al-Arabiya Wednesday that "the Palestinians will never acknowledge
Israel's Jewish identity." PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad was also quoted
by Israel Radio as rejecting Olmert's demand. (Jerusalem Post)
Is Israel a Jewish State?
- Jeff Jacoby
Israeli Prime Minister Olmert announced that he expects the Palestinian
Authority to finally acknowledge Israel's existence as a Jewish state. If
the more than 55 countries that make up the Organization of the Islamic
Conference are entitled to recognition as Muslim states, and if the 22
members of the Arab League are universally accepted as Arab states, why
should anyone balk at acknowledging Israel as the world's lone Jewish
state? There are many countries in which national identity and religion
are linked. Argentinian law mandates government support for the Roman
Catholic faith. Queen Elizabeth II is the supreme governor of the Church
of England. In the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, the constitution proclaims
Buddhism the nation's "spiritual heritage." "The prevailing religion in
Greece," declares Section II of the Greek Constitution, "is that of the
Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ."
In no region of the world do countries so routinely link their
national character to a specific religion as in the Muslim Middle East.
The flag of Saudi Arabia features the Islamic declaration of faith; on the
Iranian flag, the Islamic phrase "Allahu Akbar" (God is great") appears 22
times. In the Palestinian Authority's Basic Law, Article 4 provides that
"Islam is the official religion in Palestine." The refusal of the
Palestinian Authority to acknowledge Israel as a legitimate Jewish state
isn't a denial of reality; it is a sign of their determination to change
that reality. Like Arab leaders going back a century, they seek not to
live in peace with the Jewish state, but in place of the Jewish state.
(Boston Globe)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Nov 15, 2007]
The Missing Arab Psychological Shift
- Editorial
For years, the notion of creating a Palestinian state was rejected by most
Israelis and even by the U.S. government. The U.S. and Israeli positions
have changed beyond recognition in this respect, and this sea change in
Israel has permeated the public and transformed our politics. By contrast,
no Arab or
Palestinian leader has uttered the
words "Jewish state." Defending the notion of Jewish national rights in
any part of "Palestine" is still taboo. It is on creating this
"psychological shift"
on the Palestinian/Arab side that international
diplomacy must explicitly focus, rather than continuing to pretend that it
has already happened. Such an Arab shift would directly dismantle the
obstacle at the heart of the conflict. (Jerusalem Post)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Nov 8, 2007]
Defining Down the Roadmap - Rick
Richman
PA officials said they plan to deploy 500 security forces in Nablus, the
largest city in the West Bank, in an effort to end the anarchy there. U.S.
security coordinator Gen. Keith Dayton was quoted as saying, "This is
where the Palestinian state will get its first real test." Actually,
this will be the fourth "real test"
for the PA security forces. They have already had at least three such
tests in the past two years, and flunked them all.
In September 2005, after Israel
withdrew from Gaza, the PA security
forces stood by as the former Israeli synagogues, which could have been
used as schools, were burned and as Israeli greenhouses, which could have
provided jobs, were looted. Security at the Gaza-Egyptian border collapsed
within three days.
Over the succeeding two years,
the PA forces proved unable to prevent massive smuggling of weapons and
terrorists across the border from Egypt, or stop the daily firing of
rockets into Israel from Gaza, or prevent tunneling under the border and
the kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers. Finally, in June 2007, the
PA forces were routed from Gaza
by Hamas forces they outnumbered.
Secretary of State Rice is seeking to convene a conference to
negotiate a Palestinian state "as soon as possible," even though the
PA
has been unable to enforce basic civic order, much less meet its Phase I
Roadmap obligation to engage in "sustained, targeted, and effective
operations" to dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. Gen.
Dayton's "test" for the PA reflects the continuing process of defining
down the conditions for a Palestinian state, consistent with Secretary
Rice's waiver of Palestinian compliance with Phase I and II obligations as
a precondition to Phase III final status negotiations. (New York Sun)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Nov 2, 2007]
PA TV Sings to Israel's Destruction
- Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook (Palestinian Media Watch)
While the PA announces in English its demand for a two-state
solution, in Arabic it continues to define all of Israel as "Palestine,"
and to promise Israel's destruction.
A new video clip, broadcast numerous times daily since it first
appeared on Fatah-controlled TV last week, passionately promises that
every Israeli city will be "liberated," including Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa,
Beersheba and Tiberias.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Oct 30, 2007]
Rules of the Game, Palestinian-Style
- Barry Rubin (Jerusalem Post)
-
Several Fatah security force officers
assigned to protect Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as he went to meet with
PA head Mahmoud Abbas, at the end of June,
planned to assassinate him
instead. There is a supposedly moderate leadership running the PA and
Fatah, and this kind of thing is still happening.
-
The would-be
assassins were Fatah - not Hamas, and
they were quickly released by PA
authorities before outside pressure forced their re-arrest. The PA has
never really punished anyone for murdering or trying to kill an Israeli
or for attacking Israel.
-
The rules of Palestinian politics are fatal
to the hope of getting a Palestinian state, of the Palestinian polity
becoming more moderate, of ending terrorism, or stopping even officially
sponsored PA incitement. The rules are:
-
Palestinians cannot stop other
Palestinians from attacking Israel. To do so would be betraying the
cause, becoming Israel's lackey.
-
He who is most militant is always right.
Extremism equals heroism. This is one reason why Fatah has such a
difficult time competing with Hamas.
-
More violence is good and a "victory" if
it inflicts casualties or damage on Israel.
-
No Israeli government can do anything
good. Olmert is no better than anyone else even as he offers to accept
a Palestinian state.
-
Since Palestinians are the perpetual
victim they are entitled to everything they want and never need to
give anything in exchange for Israeli concessions.
-
Wiping Israel off the map is morally
correct.
-
It is more important to be steadfast and
patient with a terrible status quo than to make big gains by ending
the conflict forever.
-
These are some of the reasons why the
Palestinian side cannot - and will not - reach for peace or keep
existing commitments very well. Even if a handful of top Palestinians
want to reach agreement with Israel, they cannot - and dare not -
violate these commandments.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Oct 31, 2007]
What Will Happen
after Bush? - Itamar Rabinovich
A letter signed by eight famous individuals including Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Lee Hamilton, Brent Scowcroft, and Thomas Pickering holds that the
Annapolis conference must deal with "the substance of a permanent peace"
and that it should adopt the outlines of a permanent status agreement. If
Israelis and Palestinians do not manage to reach such an agreement, the
Middle East Quartet will have to propose a formulation of its own for an
agreement based on the partition into two states on the basis of the June
4, 1967 lines.
The importance of this letter must be sought in the effort to shape
the American agenda on "the day after" the presidential elections. The day
after the elections will see an increase in the efforts to convince the
new president that there is no better way to shake off Bush's legacy than
by bringing about a far-reaching change in U.S. Middle East policy.
Another context is the continuing erosion of Israel's standing in the
U.S. This does not manifest itself in public opinion polls and in votes in
Congress, but rather in the loss of the "moral horizon," the change that
has occurred in the standing of Israel, which used to be regarded as an
attractive and just state. A clear expression of this is the recent
reception of Jimmy Carter's book and of the book written by John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt about the Israeli lobby. These books are
making waves and their authors are appearing throughout the U.S. The
"letter of the eight" is another link in this chain. The author is a
former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. (1993-96). (Ha'aretz)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Oct 29, 2007]
Jerusalem Arabs Wary of Talk of Future PA Rule - Joshua Mitnick
Many Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are less than eager for an end to
Israeli rule. Some 250,000 people could find themselves under Palestinian
rule if the idea of
ceding parts of Jerusalem to a new Palestinian state
goes forward. "If they put a border here, we'll move to Haifa and Tel
Aviv. You'll have 50,000 people who live here leaving East Jerusalem in
minutes," said Jamil Sanduqa, head of the popular committee that governs
the Shuafat neighborhood. Many of the city's Palestinian residents openly
worry about being cut off from jobs, unemployment insurance and medical
care. (Washington Times)
Security of Jerusalem Holy Sites Threatened - Mike Seid
Dr. Ikrema Sabri, former mufti of Jerusalem, says, "Islam said the
city was to be under the authority of Muslims because it is a Muslim
city." Despite this week's findings of First Temple remains on the Mount
by the Muslim Wakf, Sabri argues, "There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa
and there is no proof that there was ever a temple." Similarly, Sabri
maintains that the Western Wall "is not part of the Jewish temple, it is
just the Western Wall of the mosque," he says. "There is not a single
stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews." Islamic
leaders were not always so certain. The Supreme Muslim Council in 1930
wrote that the Temple Mount's "sanctity dates from earliest times. Its
identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute." (Jerusalem
Post)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Oct 26, 2007]
Let's Not Make a Deal
- Barry Rubin
The West is more concerned over the suffering of Arabs than the Arabs' own
governments or leaders. The West is desperate to get the Palestinians a
state, while both Hamas and Fatah want only an independent country on
their own terms. Hamas wants total victory and Israel's eradication; most
of Fatah merely wants an agreement to move that dream closer to reality.
Why is this? Because they: think they are winning; fail to comprehend
the concept of compromise; embrace a culture of patience in which
steadfastness wins versus what they perceive to be a Western culture of
instant gratification; use militancy as a demagogic substitute for peace
or prosperity; understand that he who says no gains bargaining leverage;
hold such extreme goals that they cannot be satisfied by any conceivable
deal with Israel, America, or the West.
The West assumes that the Palestinian leadership will be grateful if
it is given a state, when it wants to be given all of Israel; that Iran
merely need feel secure from U.S. power, when it wants to throw America
out of the region; that the Iraqi insurgents want more of a voice for the
Sunni minority, when they want to chop the head off the Shi'ite majority;
or that Syria just wants the Golan Heights when it desires Lebanon
enslaved and Israel destroyed. Or that the Muslim Brotherhood wants a
reformed democratic state when it prays for an Islamist theocracy. There
are very good reasons why Western efforts at engagement are never followed
by marriage, and why endless confidence-building measures, peace plans,
aid packages, and summit conferences keep failing. (Jerusalem Post)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Oct 13, 2007]
Abbas Aide: Western Wall Is Ours
(JTA)
Adnan Husseini, an adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, said Thursday that
Palestinian
demands for Israel to cede eastern Jerusalem
under any peace
accord also include the Western Wall.
"This is part of Islamic heritage that cannot be given up, and it must
be under Muslim control," Husseini told Israel's NRG Web site, adding that
all of Jerusalem's Old City should be part of a future Palestinian state.
The Western Wall is a last vestige of the Second Temple, which was
razed by the Romans in 70 CE.
Husseini's statements appeared to contradict several past
land-for-peace proposals that had called for Israel to retain control of
the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City.
Major Diplomatic Assets Such as Road Map and
Bush's Letter Must Be Defended -
Dov Weisglass (Ynet News)
-
The
Road Map
conditioned a final-status agreement with the Palestinians on, among
other things, the reorganization of the PA in a way that would prevent
terror as much as possible.
-
President Bush's letter
to Prime Minister Sharon set out, among other things, the American
administration's position on two issues pertaining to a final-status
agreement: There will be no withdrawal to the 1967 borders and large
Jewish settlement blocs will remain in Israeli hands; and there will be
no return of refugees to Israel.
-
The Road Map - and the inherent principle of
ending terror as a condition for engaging in diplomatic talks - is a
diplomatic document accepted by all nations, and was validated by a
Security Council resolution. It was also approved with a binding
decision by the Israeli government.
-
The president's letter to the prime minister
is an integral part of the disengagement plan, which was approved by a
government resolution. In the U.S., the president's letter was approved
by a vast majority in Congress.
-
These are important diplomatic assets. The
Palestinian argument widely voiced ahead of the upcoming international
conference completely ignores this.
The writer was former Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's bureau chief and senior adviser.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Oct 12, 2007]
Rice's Road Map - Rick Richman
Over the last year, Secretary of State Rice has transformed U.S. policy
from (a) support for a Palestinian state conditioned on compliance with
Phase I and II of the Roadmap, to (b) support for Phase III final status
negotiations to establish a Palestinian state "as soon as possible," even
though the Palestinians have not complied with either Phase I or II. Under
the Roadmap, final status negotiations were to occur only after a
sustained and effective effort by the PA to dismantle terrorist
capabilities and infrastructure - Phase I. The PA has yet to dismantle a
single terrorist organization, or arrest a terrorist leader, in the four
years since the Palestinians accepted the Roadmap. In the same period,
Israel dismantled 25 settlements, withdrew from Gaza, and released
hundreds of prisoners. (New York Sun)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Oct 11, 2007]
Removing the Time Cap - Hillel
Halkin
Summits, as is well known in the diplomatic trade, should never be counted
on to negotiate anything. Indeed the only good reason for summits, as the
diplomats also know, is to provide gala occasions for celebrating what
negotiations have already concluded. Negotiating and deadlines do not go
well together. When two sides negotiate under time pressure, time itself
inevitably becomes a weapon in the hands of one, if not both, and is used
to bludgeon the other into submission. The Palestinians are telling
Israel that they are not coming to the conference at all unless agreement
has been reached on the core issues "in principle," if not in precise
detail. And if Israel doesn't agree, concede, or accept? Then, say the
Palestinians, we're not coming to the Annapolis party - and George and
Condi aren't going to like that one bit. The Palestinians also demand that
Israel must agree in advance to set a six-month time limit on how long
negotiations will take. And if negotiations take longer? Presumably, we
then can have the pleasure of another intifada. (New York Sun)
See also
Annapolis Conference a Failure Foretold
- Yossi Alpher
I have supported a negotiated two-state solution for the past 20 years.
Why, then, do I remain skeptical - nay, fearful - regarding the outcome of
the American-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian conference to be held in
Annapolis? Everything points to a failure foretold. The Palestinian
leadership under Mahmoud Abbas lacks the authority to enforce its writ. It
has lost Gaza and only manages to control the West Bank thanks to Israeli
military backing. It is in no position to make constructive concessions on
the major issues of territory, refugees and Jerusalem, let alone deliver
on them in terms of public support. It is not significantly reforming its
corrupt and inept institutions - the definitive step that must precede
progress toward peace.
Better to postpone Annapolis and concentrate first on building
Palestinian security and governmental institutions and rebuilding
confidence between Israelis and Palestinians. That's what the Quartet
appointed Tony Blair to do. (bitterlemons.org)
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Oct 9, 2007]
Is the Israel-Palestine Conflict about the
Size of Israel, or About Its Existence?
- Bernard Lewis (Wall Street Journal, 26Nov07)
-
PLO and other Palestinian spokesmen have,
from time to time, given formal indications of recognition of Israel in
their diplomatic discourse in foreign languages. But that's not the
message delivered at home in Arabic, in everything from primary school
textbooks to political speeches and religious sermons. Here the terms
used in Arabic denote, not the end of hostilities, but an armistice or
truce, until such time that the war against Israel can be resumed with
better prospects for success. Without genuine acceptance of Israel's
right to exist as a Jewish state, as the more than 20 members of the
Arab League exist as Arab states, or the much larger number of members
of the Organization of the Islamic Conference exist as Islamic states,
peace cannot be negotiated.
-
A good example of how this problem affects
negotiation is the much-discussed refugee question. During the fighting
in 1947-1948, about three-fourths of a million Arabs fled or were driven
(both are true in different places) from Israel and found refuge in the
neighboring Arab countries. In the same period and after, a slightly
greater number of Jews fled or were driven from Arab countries, first
from the Arab-controlled part of mandatory Palestine (where not a single
Jew was permitted to remain), then from the Arab countries where they
and their ancestors had lived for centuries, or in some places for
millennia. Most Jewish refugees found their way to Israel.
-
What happened was thus, in effect, an
exchange of populations not unlike that which took place in the Indian
subcontinent in the previous year, when British India was split into
India and Pakistan. Millions of refugees fled or were driven both ways -
Hindus and others from Pakistan to India, Muslims from India to
Pakistan. Another example was Eastern Europe at the end of World War II,
when the Soviets annexed a large piece of eastern Poland and compensated
the Poles with a slice of eastern Germany. This too led to a massive
refugee movement - Poles fled or were driven from the Soviet Union into
Poland, Germans fled or were driven from Poland into Germany.
-
The government of Jordan granted Palestinian
Arabs a form of citizenship, but kept them in refugee camps. In the
other Arab countries, they were and remained stateless aliens without
rights or opportunities, maintained by UN funding. Paradoxically, if a
Palestinian fled to Britain or America, he was eligible for
naturalization after five years, and his locally-born children were
citizens by birth. If he went to Syria, Lebanon or Iraq, he and his
descendants remained stateless, now entering the fourth or fifth
generation.
-
The reason for this has been stated by
various Arab spokesmen. It is the need to preserve the Palestinians as a
separate entity until the time when they will return and reclaim the
whole of Palestine; that is to say, all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip
and Israel. The demand for the "return" of the refugees, in other words,
means the destruction of Israel. This is highly unlikely to be approved
by any Israeli government.
-
Which brings us back to the Annapolis
summit. If the issue is not the size of Israel, but its existence,
negotiations are foredoomed. And in light of the past record, it is
clear that is and will remain the issue, until the Arab leadership
either achieves or renounces its purpose - to destroy Israel. Both seem
equally unlikely for the time being.
The writer, professor emeritus at Princeton,
is the author, most recently, of From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting
the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2004).
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Nov 26, 2007]
The New Anti-Semitism
By Denis MacShane
Tuesday, September 4, 2007; A17, Washington Post
Hatred of Jews has reached new
heights in
Europe
and many points south and east of the old continent. Last year I chaired a
blue-ribbon committee of British parliamentarians, including former
ministers and a party leader, that examined the problem of
anti-Semitism in Britain.
None of us are Jewish or active in the unending debates on the
Israeli-Palestinian question.
Our
report
showed a pattern of fear among a small number of British citizens -- there
are around 300,000 Jews in Britain, of whom about a third are observant --
that is not acceptable in a modern democracy. Synagogues attacked. Jewish
schoolboys jostled on public transportation. Rabbis punched and knifed.
British Jews feeling compelled to raise millions to provide private
security for their weddings and community events. On campuses, militant
anti-Jewish students fueled by Islamist or far-left hate seeking to
prevent Jewish students from expressing their opinions.
More worrisome was what we
described as anti-Jewish discourse, a mood and tone whenever Jews are
discussed, whether in the media, at universities, among the liberal media
elite or at dinner parties of modish
London.
To express any support for
Israel
or any feeling for the right of a Jewish state to exist produces
denunciation, even contempt.
Our report sent a shock wave
through the British government.
Tony Blair
called us in and told his staff to fan out throughout government
departments and produce answers to the problems we outlined. To Britain's
credit, the Blair administration produced a formal government response
setting out tough new guidelines for the police to investigate
anti-Semitic attacks and for universities to stop anti-Jewish ideology
from taking root on campuses. Britain's Foreign Office has been told to
protest to Arab states that allow anti-Jewish broadcasts.
We made clear that criticism
of actions of Israeli politicians was not off-limits. On the contrary, we
noted that some of the strongest criticisms of Israeli policy come from
Israeli campuses, journalists and political activists, and from the Jewish
intellectual elite of many countries. American universities have provided
a base for Noam Chomsky and the late Edward Said, among others, to launch
campaigns of criticism against Israel, and the bulk of the West's
university intelligentsia remains hostile to the Jewish state.
Tony Blair's successor as
British prime minister,
Gordon Brown,
recently said in London that he stood with Israel "in bad times as well as
good times," and one of the remarkable turnarounds of the new Labor
leadership that governs Britain is a strong support for Israel and its
commitment to combating anti-Semitism. The problem is worse in other
European countries. The Polish politician, Maciej Marian Giertych,
recently published a pamphlet under the auspices of the
European Parliament
that attacked Jews. No action has been taken against him.
France
and
Germany
have seen anti-Jewish attacks. Some references to Jews in the Lithuanian
press do not bear translating.
Europe is reawakening its old
demons, but today there is a difference. The old anti-Semitism and
anti-Zionism have morphed into something more dangerous. Anti-Semitism
today is officially sanctioned state ideology and is being turned into a
mobilizing and organizing force to recruit thousands in a new crusade --
the word is chosen deliberately -- to eradicate Jewishness from the region
whence it came and to weaken and undermine all the humanist values of rule
of law, tolerance and respect for core rights such as free expression that
Jews have fought for over time.
The president of
Iran is
the most odious example of this new state-sanctioned anti-Semitism. But
from the Egyptian Writers Union to the notorious anti-Jewish articles in
the charters of
Hamas
and
Hizballah,
hatred of Jews is an integral element of a new ideology rising to
prominence in many regions of the world.
Democracies always take their
time, often too much time, to recognize and face a totalitarian threat
when it is posed in ideological terms. In prewar Europe, conservatives
were soft on right-wing ideologies because they were seen as being
anti-communist and anti-labor. In postwar Europe, socialists were soft on
the
Soviet Union
because the communists appeared to challenge capitalism and imperialism.
Today there is still denial about the universal ideology of the new
anti-Semitism. It has power and reach, and it enters into the soft
underbelly of the Western mind-set that does not like Jews or what Israel
does to defend its right to exist.
A counterattack is being
organized. My own House of Commons has led the way with its report. The
47-nation
Council of Europe,
on which I sit as a British representative, has launched a lengthy inquiry
into combating anti-Semitism in Europe. The
European Union
has produced a directive outlawing Internet hate speech originating within
its jurisdiction.
We are at the beginning of a
long intellectual and ideological struggle. It is not about Jews or
Israel. It is about everything democrats have long fought for: the truth
without fear, no matter one's religion or political beliefs. The new
anti-Semitism threatens all of humanity. The Jew-haters must not pass.
The writer is a Labor
member of the British House of Commons and has served as Britain's Europe
minister.
For Palestinians, a coherent body politic is
wanting
Shlomo Avineri,
Wednesday, July 18, 2007, The Daily Star
Every week,
it seems, brings another backward step for Palestine. President Mahmoud
Abbas' failure to convene the Palestinian Legislative Assembly, due to a
Hamas boycott, may lead inexorably to the final breakdown of the political
structures created under the Oslo Accords. Sadly, this is only the latest
chapter in the Palestinians' tragic history of failed attempts to create a
nation-state.
Palestinians
see their history as one of struggle against Zionism and Israel. But the
reality is more complicated, and marked by repeated failures to create a
coherent body politic, even when historical opportunities beckoned. Perhaps
the first failure occurred in the 1920s, when the British Mandatory
government in Palestine encouraged the two national communities - Jewish and
Arab - to establish communal institutions of self-government to look after
education, welfare, housing, and local administration.
The Jews -
then less than 20 percent of British Palestine's population - set up what
became known as the National Committee (Vaad Leumi), based on an elected
body, the Representative Assembly of Palestinian Jews. Regular elections to
this assembly took place, sometimes with more than a dozen parties
competing.
This
autonomous institution became the forerunner of the political structure of
the nascent Jewish state, and its leaders - David Ben-Gurion among them -
emerged as Israel's future political elite. Israel succeeded as a nation,
with a vibrant and sometimes obstreperous parliamentary life, precisely
because its leaders used this opportunity.
The
Palestinians, however, never created similar embryonic state structures: an
Arab Higher Committee was established, made up of regional and tribal
notables, but no elections ever took place. The mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj
Amin al-Husseini, became its chairman, but it never succeeded in creating a
generally accepted national leadership or in providing the Arab community
the panoply of educational and welfare services offered to the Jewish
community by its elected institutions.
The second
failure occurred during the Arab Revolt against British rule in Palestine in
1936-1939, which was accompanied by attacks against Jewish civilians. The
revolt itself was brutally suppressed by the British army, but not before a
split within the Palestinian community resulted in two armed militias - one
based on the Husseini clan, the other on the more moderate Nashashibis -
that turned on each other. More Palestinians were killed by contending
militias than by the British or Jewish forces.
The third
failure - even more tragic - occurred in 1947-1948, when Palestinian Arabs
rejected the United Nations partition plan, which envisaged separate Arab
and Jewish states after the departure of the British. While Jews accepted
this compromise, the Palestinian Arabs, supported by the Arab League
countries, rejected it and went to war against the emerging state of Israel.
The
Palestinian Arab defeat in this endeavor, and the resulting refugee problem,
was a defining moment for Palestinians. But what sometimes gets lost in this
narrative is that, while practically all sectors of Palestinian Arab society
rejected the UN plan, Palestinians were unable to devise coherent political
institutions and a unified military command with which to confront the much
smaller Jewish community. By contrast, the besieged Jewish community, under
Ben-Gurion and the Jewish self-defense force (the Haganah) was able to
mobilize, through its democratic institutions and with only marginal
dissent, the resources needed for a successful military campaign.
Indeed, many
Palestinian political leaders absconded to Beirut or Cairo once violence
broke out. The Husseini clan set up its militia in the Jerusalem area. Near
Tel Aviv, in adjoining Jaffa, a competing militia under Hassan Salameh, took
control. In the north of the country, a Syrian-based militia, under Fawzi
al-Kaukji, attacked Jewish villages. The more moderate Haifa Arabs tried,
not very successfully, to stay out of the fray.
Disunity
made the Arab defeat almost inevitable. Moreover, the scars of the 1930s
virtual civil war have still not healed: mutual suspicion and memories of
internecine massacres vitiated cooperation and trust.
The last
failure occurred when the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine
Liberation Organization set up the autonomous Palestinian Authority under
Yasser Arafat. Instead of creating the infrastructure of the future
Palestinian state, with various functions slowly transferred from the
Israeli Army to the Palestinian Authority, Arafat created a security state.
Arafat and
his Fatah-based supporters established almost a dozen competing security
services - sometimes indistinguishable from clan-based militias - which
consumed more than 60 percent the Palestinian Authority's budget, at the
expense of education, housing, welfare, and refugee rehabilitation. Into
this vacuum burst Hamas, with its network of schools, welfare services,
community centers, and support organizations. The Hamas takeover of Gaza was
but the latest step in this development.
It is easy
to blame the current Palestinian crisis on individuals - be it Arafat or
Abbas. It is even easier to blame the Israeli occupation or American
policies. To be sure, there is a lot of blame to go around. But all national
movements - the Greek as well as the Polish, the Jewish as well as the
Kurdish - begin in adversity.
The
Palestinians have a difficult history to overcome. They now stand again at a
crossroads, and whether they will be able to transcend their tragic heritage
depends on their own actions. No one can help them if they cannot come up
with a coherent, consensual, and reasonably united leadership - what Abbas
himself calls "one law, one authority, one gun."
Shlomo Avineri is a professor of political science at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem and a former director-general of Israel's Foreign
Ministry. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in
collaboration with Project Syndicate (c) (www.project-syndicate.org)
Israel judged by double standard,
Ezra Levant, Calgary Sun, August 5, 2007
Lebanese attack Muslim guerrillas with no
concerns about Western public opinion
TEL AVIV -- A Western ally in
the Middle East, armed with U.S. weapons, attacked Muslim guerrillas in a
Palestinian refugee camp last week, killing seven.
Is that big news?
The answer, this time, is "no".
No Western newspaper has run a
banner headline about a "massacre," no emergency meetings of the United
Nations have been convened, and Canada's deep thinkers on human rights,
Michael Ignatieff and Louise Arbour, have not declared the military action
to be a war crime.
That's because the Western ally
rooting out terrorists was Lebanon, not Israel.
Since May 20,
Lebanon has been engaged in a mini-civil war
against Fatah al-Islam, which is just what it sounds like -- a Muslim
terrorist group, holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp called Narh
el-Bared.
Killing Palestinians, including
Palestinian terrorists, is normally fodder for at least half a dozen UN
resolutions, investigations and accusations, and plenty of harrumphing from
the CBC, BBC and Globe and Mail.
But only if the ones rooting out
the terrorist are Israelis -- that is, Jews.
Lebanon's army is no different
in any respect, other than that one fact.
Like Israel, it is a democratic
state that is threatened by Muslim terrorists.
Like Israel, Lebanon is backed
by the West.
It has recently received
military aid from the U.S.
Lebanon's military action has
been less careful than Israel, which would never have used artillery to root
out terrorists from populated areas like refugee camps as Lebanon has done.
The Lebanese are not as
concerned about the niceties of Western public opinion -- and the yawning
silence of the West's scolds in the face of 200 casualties shows that
Lebanon's assessment of the fickle nature of the media and the UN is
accurate.
What a difference from Israel's
invasion of Lebanon 12 months ago to expurgate Hizballah, the
Iranian-financed and Syrian-backed terrorist group.
Lebanon's own army wasn't strong
enough to do the job, so Israel did the dirty work, provoked by Hizballah
sneak attacks across the border in Israel.
It was the top news item in the
West for weeks -- and the subject of much gnashing of teeth amongst Western
intellectuals.
Every day, the world's media
inspected Israel's attacks, subjecting every military move to exquisite
inspection.
Was a bombing raid too close to
civilian targets -- even though Hizballah deliberately hid amongst
civilians?
Did the Israelis give enough
warning to civilians?
What did international law have
to say about this bomb or that bullet?
Though Israel was doing
everyone's anti-terrorist dirty work, it was still too much for the faint
hearts of the West.
Or rather, because it was
Israel, it was too much.
So, why the double standard?
Why are military strikes by
Israel news, but not those by Lebanon?
Why is an Arab killed by a Jew
news, but not an Arab killed by an Arab?
Why did the UN intervene to save
Hizballah from Israel, but the world shrug in apathy -- no, actually send
arms -- to support Lebanon against another terrorist group?
There can be no other
explanation beside an anti-Israel bias in the newsrooms and diplomatic
salons of the world.
This is no revelation; reading
the speeches of Arab diplomats at the UN, or the official press of a dozen
Muslim dictatorships is like reading old Nazi propaganda.
That explains the bias of the
UN, Arabia and its shills.
But it surely cannot explain the
double standard here at home of a hundred Canadian newspaper editors and TV
producers.
Can it?
A sovereign Palestine? No chance,
The Sydney Morning Herald
January 1, 2007
Paul Sheehan puts away prejudices and
preconceptions to consider the viability of a Palestinian state.
Three young brothers, Salam, 4, Ahmed, 7,
and Osama, 9, were gunned down outside their school on the morning of
December 11. They had just arrived by car when they and the driver died in
a wild spray of gunfire. Four other schoolboys who happened to be nearby
were wounded.
It was an assassination
attempt, and it failed. The target was the boys' father, Bala Ba'lousheh,
but he wasn't in the car. He was a senior Fatah official with the
Palestinian Authority's intelligence service in Gaza City, and his
would-be assassins were almost certainly from Hamas, the rival Palestinian
political party which won power in last year's election. After the
shootings, demonstrations erupted in the West Bank and Gaza. Within 48
hours, a prominent Hamas leader was shot to death in the Gaza Strip.
The level of conflict between
the Palestinian parties simmers just below the level of civil war, even as
the spoils keep shrinking. The open wound inspires strong reactions among
millions of people around the world with no direct stake in the problem.
For the sake of reality, let's
put aside whatever views and prejudices you may hold on the Palestinian
question. Put aside any animosity about grasping Jews or murderous Arabs.
Put aside the Holocaust, and Muslim anti-Semitism. Put aside hopes and
judgements. Simply look at what has happened on the ground. Stripped of
all emotion and prejudice, right and wrong, one reality becomes clear:
there is no chance of a sovereign, autonomous Palestinian state. Not
within our lifetimes. No chance. None.
Not only won't there be a
sovereign Palestinian state, there can't be.
It's no longer viable. At
every historic juncture since Israel was created in 1948, rhetoric has
taken precedence over pragmatism in the Arab world. As a result, every one
of these historic junctions has resulted, without exception, in material
defeat for the Palestinians.
In 1948, roughly 700,000
Palestinian Arabs - the number remains contested and inexact - heeded
calls from the Arab world and fled their homes in the newly proclaimed
Israel. The result? The Palestinian position of 1948 now looks infinitely
superior to the Palestinian position of today.
In 1967, Israel was invaded by
its Arab neighbours in the
Six Day War. The result? The Arabs lost control
of the holy city of Jerusalem and the Palestinians went from Arab rule to
Israeli control.
In 1982, after the
Palestinians sparked a civil war in Lebanon, Israel invaded Lebanon and
Jordan's army attacked the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The result?
The Palestinians were crushed in Lebanon and Jordan and Israel fortified
its position in the West Bank.
In 1987, the first Palestinian
intifada began at the instigation of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and suicide
bombings came to Israeli life. It lasted almost five years. The result?
Israel again fortified and expanded its positions and the West Bank was
divided into military-controlled subdivisions.
In 2000, Arafat launched the
second intifada, his response to Israel's final offer in the Oslo peace
accords. It lasted six years. The result? What the Palestinians were
offered in 2000 is now impossible today, because Israel has since
encircled Jerusalem with settlements housing 100,000 Jewish settlers. And
Israel began building the Wall.
In 2006, Hizballah attacked
Israel, in the cause of Palestine, and Hamas and other militant elements
fired rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, as political opposition was
Islamicised. The result? Some 175 Israelis were killed by Hizballah, for
which Lebanon paid with more than 1500 dead, and Hizballah lost its
military control of southern Lebanon. It thus lost its strategic forward
position for no strategic gain.
In the West Bank, the dividing
fence and wall became a reality, effectively halting suicide bombings but
also annexing more sections of the West Bank. Israeli military control
became more intense. According to B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre
for Human Rights in the
Occupied Territories, 1065 Palestinians were
killed by Israeli security forces in 2006, while 23 Israelis were killed
by Palestinians.
Everyone I spoke to while
visiting Israel recently hates the wall. One prominent Palestinian
moderate, Khaled Abu Toameh, who once worked for the PLO and now writes
for The Jerusalem Post, told me in Jerusalem: "The wall is a
tragedy. The wall is bad. It is the direct result of Yasser Arafat's
intifada. It will become the wailing wall for both sides. I'm not
optimistic. Not at all."
A conspicuous critic of the
wall is the former US president Jimmy Carter, who, in his new book,
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, writes: "An enormous imprisonment wall
is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to
encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, it is
more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during
apartheid."
Compare this fenced-off
community of today with 20 years ago, before the intifadas. The
Palestinian workforce was integrated into the Israeli economy, with
relatively free movement into Israel. Education and health systems were
built, universities opened, local governments were functioning, corruption
was minimal, and life expectancy had soared from 47 under Arab rule to 68.
Then came Yasser Arafat and Fatah.
"Fatah is the mafia," Abu
Toameh told me. "It is responsible for most of the anarchy on the West
Bank. Fatah is a monster." Nor does he think much of Hamas, though he
thinks it is much less corrupt, much more competent, and more pragmatic.
He believes the West erred shockingly in trusting and subsiding Fatah and
has now mishandled the transition to Hamas.
"But on the Muslim side, the
message has always been 'No', and 'No', and 'No'. They quote the Koran:
God is on the side of the patient . . .
"And what is the West Bank
now? It is six Arab cities, two refugee camps, 150 villages. A series of
cantons, with no economic base. And Gaza? An awful place."
And Israel? Through all the
wars, terrorist bombings and threats of annihilation, and despite intense
internal divisions, Israel has grown into a muscular economy of almost 7
million, with a per capita gross domestic product far higher than any Arab
neighbours, including Saudi Arabia. The Jewish population has grown from
600,000 to 5.3 million, with a birthrate higher than those in Western
Europe. Per capita, Israel has the most engineers and the most high-tech
economy in the world.
Untold damage would be done to
this economy if one anti-aircraft missile, fired from the West Bank,
brought down an airliner flying out of the futuristic new Ben Gurion
International Airport. Israel can't afford to let this happen.
Sixty years of years of "No"
has put an end to a sovereign Palestinian state, indefinitely. This pawn
has been sacrificed in a much larger game.
Arabs vs Israel,
The International News, January 2007
By Farrukh Saleem
Imam Ali Ibn Abi Taleb: "If God were to humiliate a human being He would
deny him knowledge"
The League of Arab States has 22 members. Of the 22, Saudi Arabia, Morocco,
Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain,
Qatar and Oman are 'traditional monarchies'. Of the
22, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria and Somalia are 'Authoritarian
Regimes' (Source: www.freedomhouse.org). Of the 22, Saudi Arabia, Libya,
Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Morocco and Somalia are among the 'world's most
repressive regimes' (Source: A special report to the 59th session of the UN
Commission on Human Rights). Of the 330 million Muslim men, women and
children living under Arab rulers a mere 486,530 live in a democracy (0.15
per cent of the total).
A mere two hundred and fifty miles from the 'League of Dictators' HQ in
Cairo is the only 'parliamentary democracy' in the region; universal
suffrage, multi-party, multi-candidate, competitive elections. Israel's
6,352,117 residents are 76 per cent Jewish and 23 per cent non-Jewish
(mostly Arab).
Israel spends $110 on scientific research per year per person while the same
figure for the Arab world is $2. Knowledge makes Israel grow by 5.2 per cent
a year while "rates of productivity (the average production of one worker)
in Arab countries were negative to a large and increasing extent in
oil-producing countries during the 1980s and 90s (World Bank; Arab
Development Report)."
Facts cannot be denied: The state of Israel now has six universities ranked
as among the best on the face of the planet. Hebrew University Jerusalem is
in the top-100. Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University
and Weizmann Institute of Science are in the top-200. Bar Ilan University
and Ben Gurion University are in the top-300. The Arab League does not have
a single university in the top-400 (http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm). One
in two Arab women can neither read nor write (remember, "If God were to
humiliate a human being He would deny him/her knowledge").
Israel's universities are producing knowledge. Israeli society is applying
that knowledge plus diffusing knowledge produced by others. On the other
hand, within the Arab League, repressive regimes have erected religious,
social and cultural barriers to the production as well as diffusion of
knowledge.
Look at how knowledge is abandoning the Arab world: Between 1998 and 2000
more than 15,000 Arab physicians migrated. According to the World Bank,
"roughly 25 per cent of 300,000 first degree graduates from Arab
universities emigrated. Roughly 23 per cent of Arab engineers, 50 per cent
of Arab doctors and 15 per cent of Arab BSc holders had emigrated."
Israel, on the other hand, has more engineers and scientists per capita than
any other country (for every 10,000 Israelis there are 145 engineers or
scientists). Israel ranks among the top-7 countries worldwide for patents
per capita.
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Israel's pharmaceutical giant, is the
world's largest producer of antibiotics (Teva developed Copaxone, a unique
immunomodulator therapy for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, the only
non-interferon agent available).
Facts are hard to deny: Most members of the Arab League grant Muslim women
fewer rights -- with regards to marriage, divorce, dress code, civil rights,
legal status and education. Israel does not. Spain translates more books in
a year than has the Arab world in the past thousand years (since the reign
of Caliph Mamoun; Abbasid, caliph 813-833).
Six million Israelis buy 12 million books every year making them one of the
highest consumers of books in the world. Israel has the highest number of
university degrees per capita in the world; the Arab world has the lowest.
Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other country
(109 per 10,000 Israelis); the Arab world -- next to nothing.
Results are for everyone to see: The average per capita income in Israel is
$25,000 while the average income within the League of Arab States is $5,000.
The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com
Israel is the Only Middle East Ally for
Americans, December 30, 2006
Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) -
Many adults in the U.S. believe Israel is a partner, according to a poll
by Opinion Research Corporation released by CNN. 42 per cent of
respondents describe Israel as
an ally of the United States.
Conversely, 40 per cent of
respondents believe Saudi Arabia is friendly to the United States. In
addition, 77 per cent of respondents think Iran is either unfriendly or an
enemy of their country, and 57 per cent feel the same way about Syria.
In July and August, Israel
waged war against Lebanon-based Hizballah militants. On Aug. 18, U.S.
president George W. Bush discussed the ceasefire in the Middle East,
saying, "The issue is broader than just Hizballah. The issue is also Syria
and Iran, two nations that supported Hizballah in its attempts to create
enough havoc. I guess people feel like they could take political advantage
of the situation, we just can’t let them do it."
In April 2005, Bush met with
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah in Texas. The two leaders issued a
joint statement, where their two nations re-committed to "fostering values
of understanding, tolerance, dialogue, co-existence, and the rapprochement
between cultures (and) fighting any form of thinking that promotes hatred,
incites violence, and condones terrorist crimes which can by no means be
accepted by any religion or law."
On Dec. 6, the Iraq Study
Group—a bipartisan panel of experts—presented its findings on how to deal
with the situation in Iraq. The ten members called for a quicker process
to train Iraqi forces, engaging with Iran and Syria in a dialogue aimed at
stabilizing Iraq, and pulling back U.S. combat troops by early 2008.
Polling Data
For each of the following
countries, please say whether you consider it an ally of the United
States, friendly but not an ally, unfriendly, or an enemy of the United
States.
| |
Ally |
Friendly |
Unfriendly |
Enemy |
| Israel |
42% |
39% |
8% |
5% |
| Saudi Arabia |
18% |
40% |
18% |
18% |
| Iran |
4% |
14% |
29% |
48% |
| Syria |
8% |
23% |
29% |
28% |
Source: Opinion Research Corporation / CNN
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,019 American adults, conducted
from Dec. 15 to Dec. 17, 2006. Margin of error is 3 per cent.
Supreme U.S. Commander in Europe Calls Israel
America's Closest Ally in the Middle East
- Amir Oren (Ha'aretz)
The supreme commander of NATO operations in Europe and head of the U.S.
European Command (EUCOM), John Craddock, speaking before the U.S. House
Armed Services Committee in Washington Thursday, called Israel America's
closest ally in the Middle East.
He said Israel consistently and directly supported U.S. interests by
means of security cooperation in the region, and was a model state that
encouraged democratic ideals and pro-Western values and economics.
[Courtesy --
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Daily Alert,
Mar 19, 2007]
Has Carter crossed the line?
Alan Dershowitz, The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 21,
2006
Have former US president Jimmy
Carter's recent statements crossed the line from legitimate criticism of
Israel to illegitimate anti-Semitism? In his book, Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid, Carter unfairly, one-sidedly, a historically - even indecently -
condemns Israeli policies, but in my view he does not cross the line into
overt anti-Semitism. His book is riddled with factual errors, virtually of
them unfavorable to Israel. His history is all wrong.
He claims that Israel launched a
preemptive attack against Jordan. Historians all agree that Jordan attacked
Israel first.
Israel tried desperately to
persuade Jordan to remain out of the war with Egypt and Syria, and Israel
counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing
missiles into the center of the city. Israel then captured the West Bank,
which had been occupied by Jordan for nearly 20 years, and which Israel was
willing to return in exchange for peace and recognition from Jordan.
Carter repeatedly condemns
Israel for refusing to comply with Security Council Resolution 242, which
called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition
and secure boundaries, but he ignores that Israel accepted and all the Arab
nations and the Palestinians rejected this resolution. The Arabs met in
Khartoum and issued their three famous noes: "No peace, no recognition, no
negotiation." But you wouldn't know that from reading the Carter version of
history.
Carter faults Israel for its
"air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor" without mentioning that
Iraq had threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons if it succeeded in
building a bomb and that the UN refused to intercede
Carter, who thinks Israel isn't
religious enough, faults Israel for its administration of Christian and
Muslim religious sites, when in fact Israel is scrupulous about ensuring
those of every religion the right to worship as they please - consistent, of
course, with security needs. He fails to mention that between 1948 and 1967,
when Jordan occupied the West Bank and east Jerusalem, it destroyed and
desecrated Jewish religious sites and prevented Jews from praying at the
Western Wall. He also never mentions Egypt's brutal occupation of Gaza
between 1949 and 1967.
Carter blames Israel for the
"exodus of Christians from the Holy Land," totally ignoring the Islamization
of the area by Hamas and the comparable exodus of Christian Arabs from
Lebanon as a result of the increasing influence of Hizbullah and the
repeated assassination of Christian leaders by Syria.
Carter blames Israel, and
exonerates Yasser Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal to accept statehood on
95 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza pursuant to the Clinton-Barak
offers at Camp David and Taba in 2000-2001. He accepts the Palestinian
revisionist history, rejects the eyewitness accounts of president Bill
Clinton and Dennis Ross and ignores Saudi Prince Bandar's accusation that
Arafat's rejection of the proposal was "a crime" and that Arafat's account
"was not truthful" - except, apparently, to Carter. The fact that Carter
chooses to believe Arafat over Clinton speaks volumes.
Carter also uses maps derived
from Dennis Ross's book The Missing Peace without attribution. He mislabels
one of the maps as representing "the Israeli interpretation" of the December
2000 Clinton parameters, when in fact the map represents the actual US
proposal, as drawn up by Ross, which was understood by all parties, accepted
by the Israelis and rejected by the Palestinians.
THESE ARE all grievous and
one-sided errors, especially for a former president who has easy access to
the historical facts. And there are more - too many to list here. Yet they
do not qualify as anti-Semitic.
Since the publication of the
book, however, Carter has been on a whirlwind tour featuring television,
radio and print appearances. In his interviews - and without the benefit of
the kind of reflection and self-restraint that comes with the writing and
editing process - Carter has gone well beyond what he says in his book and
may have crossed the line into bigotry. I will lay out the facts and leave
it to the readers to decide.
First, Carter has strongly
implied - based on an entirely false factual premise - that Jews control the
media, academic and political process in the United States. In interview
after interview, he has stated - quite categorically and quite falsely -
that the plight of the Palestinians in the West Bank is "not something that
has been acknowledged or even discussed in this country... You never hear
anything about what is happening to the Palestinians by the Israelis."
This, of course, is entirely
false. The situation with regard to the Palestinians has become the number
one human right issue on American university campuses - exceeding the
attention paid to Rwanda, Darfur, the former Yugoslavia, Tibet, Chechnya and
other places where actual genocide has taken place. The West Bank and Gaza
are regularly and extensively covered by all major US newspapers. The
indisputable fact is that more space per capita is devoted to the
Palestinians than to any other occupied or victimized group in the world.
Why, then, would Carter promote
this canard? There is only one answer: to play into the old anti-Semitic
stereotype of Jewish control of the media. When Carter has been asked why
does he think there has been no media attention paid to the Israeli
aggression against the Palestinians, he smiles and says, "I don't know," but
goes on to say that he has "witnessed and experienced the severe restraints
on any free and balanced discussion of the facts" - thus implying that
someone or some group is restraining free discussion. In his appearance on
Meet the Press, Carter pointed to "the Jewish lobby" as "part" of the
problem. What exactly the "Jewish" lobby - as contrasted with the Israel
Lobby - is, Carter, never explains.
In a recent op-ed article,
Carter was even more specific - and more nonfactual: "Book reviews in the
mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish
organizations..." Again, total nonsense. Whose reviews is he referring to?
Certainly not mine, which was among the first to appear and which has been
used by several interviewers to challenge Carter. I am not a "representative
of Jewish organizations." I am a longtime supporter and admirer of Jimmy
Carter, and I speak for no one but myself.
Nor are the other reviewers, who
have blasted his book as "moronic" (Michael Kinsley, Slate) and "cynical...
anti-historical" (Jeffrey Goldberg, The Washington Post), representatives of
any Jewish organizations - except in the warped eyes of Jimmy Carter.
Despite its demonstrable falsity, Carter has repeated this claim about
"Jewish organizations" on recent talk shows.
CARTER GOES on to complain about
Jewish control - this time over universities:
He is referring there to
Brandeis University, whose president said he could speak if invited by a
faculty member or student group - which he has been - and that the president
of Brandeis would extend an invitation if Carter would agree to discuss his
book publicly with a knowledgeable critic. Carter declined, insisting on
speaking alone with no one presenting an opposing view. Why would Carter
distort the truth of this conversation? To make a point about Jewish control
over academic freedom at universities "with high Jewish enrollment"?
Carter then moves on to the
political process, where he overstates the reality even more:
It would be almost politically
suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between
Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law
or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few
would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus,
Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents.
Again this is total nonsense.
Many American political figures have visited Palestinian cities. I know. I
have seen them and spoken to them about their visits. Why would Carter so
overstate the truth and play into the stereotype of undue Jewish influence
over the political process?
By promoting these false
stereotypes - Jewish control over the media, academia and politics - Carter
has contributed to the growing acceptability of anti-Semitism around the
world. But he does even worse. By exaggerating the evils of the Israeli
occupation and casting the blame for Palestinian suffering almost
exclusively on Israel, he has legitimated the comparison - often made by the
most extreme anti-Semites - between the Jewish state and the world's worst
human rights offenders.
Asked whether he believed that
Israel's "persecution" of Palestinians was "[e]ven worse... than a place
like Rwanda," Carter answered, "Yes. I think - yes." The comparison is
absurd. Hutu militias slaughtered an estimated 800,000 Tutsis (and raped
thousands) in an attempt to eradicate those people from the country. During
any comparable period, the number of Palestinian casualties has never
exceeded the hundreds, and for the most part, they have been either
combatants, human shields or civilians inadvertently killed in efforts to
kill combatants.
Further, the Tutsis never had a
chance to prevent their slaughter, whereas the Palestinians initiated the
violence against Israel and repeatedly refused - and continue to refuse - to
agree to any sort of peace agreement, be it the Peel Commission, the UN
partition plan or the 2000 Camp David proposals.
The idea of uttering Israel and
Rwanda in the same sentence - and citing Israel as the greater offender of
human rights - is obscene. It is also deeply insulting to the memory of
those Rwandans who were murdered, raped and mutilated in what could only be
characterized as genocide.
This is precisely the sort of
exaggeration that caused Congressman John Conyers, a founding member of the
Congressional Black Caucus, to take Carter to task for using the word
"apartheid" in the title of his book, thereby belittling the horror of real
racial discrimination and apartheid. As Conyers said, accusing Israel of
apartheid "does not serve the cause of peace, and the use of it against the
Jewish people in particular, who have been victims of the worst kind of
discrimination, discrimination resulting in death, is offensive and wrong."
(By the way, Conyers does not represent any "Jewish organizations," to my
knowledge.)
To be sure, Carter seems to have
backed away from his comparison to Rwanda, just as he did with the
comparison to apartheid - but only after first making a splash. He said he
doesn't want to go "back into ancient history about Rwanda." But this is
disingenuous. Rwanda, when invoked in the context of a human rights
discussion, stands for genocide, just like apartheid stands for the
oppressive discriminatory and segregationist practices in pre-1990 South
Africa. Everyone understands these symbols, and Carter recklessly traffics
in them, until someone calls him out and he's forced to backtrack.
HE ALSO claims, despite his
book's title, that there is no apartheid in Israel, only in the Palestinian
territories, but that is not the impression the reader gets, nor the one
apparently intended by the author's invocation of this powerful symbol of
oppression. And, in fact, in a recent PBS interview, Carter re-avowed the
canard: "I would say, in many ways [Israel's treatment of Palestinians is]
worse than the treatment of black people under apartheid. It's worse!"
At any rate, the important point
is that Carter's immediate answer - his true instinct - is to accuse Israel
of crimes worse than those committed in Rwanda. Carter has become so
unhinged in his campaign against the Jewish state that he is now parroting -
and legitimizing - the campus activists who delight in calling Israel a
genocidal terrorist state and comparing it to Nazi Germany and apartheid
South Africa.
In my book, The Case for Peace,
I argued that criticism of Israel - even unfair and strident criticism -
should not be equated with anti-Semitism. I went on to list a series of
criteria for determining whether the line had been crossed into the abyss of
anti-Semitism. Among these criticisms are:
* Employing stereotypes against
Israel that have traditionally been directed against "the Jews."
* Characterizing Israel as "the
worst," when it is clear that this is not an accurate comparative
assessment.
* Singling out only Israel for
sanctions for policies that are widespread among other nations, or demanding
that Jews be better or more moral than others because of their history as
victims.
* Emphasizing and stereotyping
certain characteristics among supporters of Israel that have traditionally
been used in anti-Semitic attacks, for example, "pushy" American Jews, Jews
"who control the media" and Jews "who control financial markets."
* Accusing Jews and only Jews of
having dual loyalty.
* Blaming Israel for the
problems of the world and exaggerating the influence of the Jewish state on
world affairs.
* Falsely claiming that all
legitimate criticism of Israeli policies is immediately and widely condemned
by Jewish leaders as anti-Semitic, despite any evidence to support this
accusation.
* Seeking to delegitimate Israel
precisely as it moves toward peace.
* Circulating wild charges
against Israel and Jews.
I invite you, the readers, to
review these factors and to decide for yourselves whether you believe
Carter's post-publication remarks have crossed the line from legitimate
criticism of Israel to illegitimate anti-Semitism.
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