Who Needs a Jewish State?

EDITORIAL, Los Angeles Times, October 10, 2004

The second intifada, or Palestinian war on Israel, is 4 years old. Although it has featured guns and suicide bombs, it has failed just like the first intifada, in 1987-93, which featured rocks and Molotov cocktails. For every dead Israeli, there are three dead Palestinians. Thousands have been injured. Thousands more have been turned into refugees by Israel's unsubtle policy of avenging suicide bombs by destroying the houses of the bombers' relatives. The Palestinian economy — near totally dependent on wages from jobs in Israel — is a shambles, as Israel quite understandably has become choosier about who it lets in.

The headlines have obscured one remarkable positive development: Israel's acceptance in principle of a Palestinian state. Even Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — the most anti-Arab of all Israeli politicians — accepts it, in principle. In fact, he is building a barrier that looks like his idea about where Israel's border with this state should be.

Palestinian leaders are flummoxed. And some of them are abandoning the two-state solution — Israel and Palestine, side by side — in favor of a one-state solution: a single, secular state in which Jews and Arabs would live in democratic harmony. This idea is percolating through the Western intelligentsia and even into left-wing circles in Israel.

So what is the problem? It's that such a state would not be Jewish. The premise of Zionism — the premise of Israel — is that Jews need and deserve their own state. Israel has always been slightly disingenuous about this, boasting that Arabs living in Israel proper (i.e., not the disputed territories) enjoy full civil equality. This is possible only because so many Arabs fled or were driven out when the Jewish state was declared in 1948.

A single state encompassing Israel and the disputed territories would reinvent this problem. It would bring the descendants of many 1948 refugees back into the fold, along with other Arabs. The higher Arab birthrate would make Jews a shrinking minority.

Many Americans might ask, so what? The United States prides itself on being a melting pot of different races, ethnicities and religions. But most countries are more like Israel. They define themselves ethnically or religiously or (like the surprising new states that popped up out of the dying Soviet empire) by some ancient and long-suppressed geographical chauvinism. Nations are, in political scientist Benedict Anderson's memorable phrase, "imagined communities," and the imagination takes many forms.

Good fences make good neighbors, as Robert Frost famously put it. In 1947, the same year Britain abandoned Palestine, it also left the Indian subcontinent. But first Britain divided the area into two nations: India for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslims. The result hasn't been blissful. But there hasn't been an all-out war for 33 years. A one-state solution would have been nastier.

Israel must remain a Jewish state, and to do that and be a democracy as well, it must always have a Jewish majority. That has been a limit on the imperial ambitions of some of Israel's less-attractive leaders. It is also a limit on what the world and the Palestinians can expect Israel to accept.

It took the Israelis decades to accept the idea of a Palestinian state next door. They saw it as a staging ground for conquest and elimination of the Jewish state. The "single-state" solution would achieve that same illegitimate goal by more decorous means.
 

[Also see: "Israel, Too, Has A Right To Self-Determination," By Amnon Rubenstein, Jerusalem Post, March 29, 2005]
 

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The new anti-Semitism

Clifford D. May, Washington Times, October 10, 2004
 

In the early 1940s, genocidal anti-Semitism expressed itself in the Holocaust: 6 million Jews rounded up and exterminated.

In 1948, genocidal anti-Semitism took the form of five Arab armies attempting to drive Israeli Jews into the sea.

In 1967, a second conventional war was led by Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. The "Voice of the Arabs" radio station declared the goal: "extermination" of Israel. Ahmed Shuqayri, the first leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, added: "We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants."

Since the collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000 -- when Yasser Arafat turned down an independent Palestinian state on 93 percent of the West Bank and Gaza -- radical anti-Semitism has taken the form of suicide bombings in Israel's streets, shops and restaurants.

Former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Abu Mazen said this month many of those responsible believed "after the killing of 1,000 Israelis in the Intifada, Israel would collapse." Well, about 1,000 Israelis have been slaughtered, but Israel has not collapsed. Instead, the Israelis are demonstrating terrorism can be defeated.

So genocidal anti-Semitism is taking another form. This week, the New York Times gave Michael Tarazi, an American lawyer who advises the Palestine Liberation Organization, space on its Op-Ed Page to make this audacious argument: Having failed to eradicate Israel with tanks and terrorism, Palestinian leaders are now "being forced to consider a one-state solution."

Yes, "forced" to consider demanding a "right" to flood Israel with people who hate Israelis, people loyal to such terrorist organization such as Hamas, and who want to replace Israel with a radical Islamist state.

And if Israelis refuse to willingly become a despised minority in their own country, ruled by people who have waged genocidal campaigns against them, that will demonstrate, Mr. Tarazi declares, "Christians and Muslims, the millions of Palestinians under occupation are not welcome in the Jewish state." "Not welcome." Imagine that. The nerve. The chutzpah.

As Mr. Tarazi well knows but neglects to mention, there is only one Jewish state on the planet. It's about the size of New Jersey. By contrast, there are 22 Arab nations and more than 50 predominantly Muslim countries, covering an area larger than the United States and Europe combined.

In these lands, Jews are, to varying degrees, conspicuously unwelcome. In Jordan, a relatively liberal country that has diplomatic relations with Israel, Jews are denied citizenship. In Saudi Arabia, no synagogue or church may be built.

Mr. Tarazi forgets to note, too, that half of Israel's Jews have their roots in such places as Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and Iran -- but that after intense persecution they fled what had been their families' homes for centuries. Similarly, Christians have fled Syrian-controlled Lebanon and from Bethlehem and Nazareth since those cities came under Yasser Arafat's control.

January 2007 Update:

Bethlehem Christians Describe Muslim Persecution - Khaled Abu Toameh

A number of Christian families have described Muslim persecution of the Christian minority in Bethlehem after increased attacks over the past few months. Samir Qumsiyeh, owner of the Beit Sahur-based Shepherd TV station, said he has documented more than 160 attacks on Christians in recent years. He said thieves have targeted the homes of many Christian families and a "land mafia" has seized vast areas of land belonging to Christians.
    One Christian businessman said the conditions of Christians in Bethlehem had deteriorated ever since the area was handed over to the PA in 1995. "People are running away because the Palestinian government isn't doing anything to protect them and their property against Muslim thugs. Of course not all the Muslims are responsible, but there is a general feeling that Christians have become easy prey." (Jerusalem Post) [Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, Jan 25, 2007]

Nor does Mr. Tarazi appear to recall that almost 15 percent of Israel's citizens are Muslims. They enjoy more rights and freedoms than Muslims elsewhere in the Middle East -- including the right to free speech, to vote and to worship as they choose. You do not see graffiti on mosques in Israel.

Israeli Arabs have been elected to Israel's parliament and serve on its supreme court. The CNN cameraman recently taken hostage in Gaza is an Israeli citizen. That was not mentioned in much of the coverage because it was thought that those who took him captive might not know, and it would go better for him if they didn't. Israeli Muslim Bedouins and Druze even serve in Israel's armed forces -- and many have given their lives to defend their country.

But Mr. Tarazi believes he can convince "the international community" that if Israelis are unwilling to open their doors to millions of people who have been indoctrinated to believe butchering Jews is a form of "martyrdom," it is the Israelis who are the bigots and oppressors.

If I'm wrong about this, there's a simple way for Mr. Tarazi to prove it. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has pledged to remove all Jewish settlements from Gaza. Mr. Tarazi should tell him not to bother. Mr. Tarazi should advise the Palestinian Authority to "welcome" the Jews living in the Gaza -- and the West Bank, as well.

If and when a Palestinian state is created, those Jews would comprise only a small percentage of the population -- much smaller than Muslims in Israel. This way, Mr. Tarazi could show he sincerely wants to see "all faiths and ethnicities live together as equals."

But Mr. Tarazi is not sincere. He wants Gaza and the West Bank judenrein. And eventually he wants what is now Israel to become "jew-free" as well -- by whatever means. He really isn't choosy.

In 2004, this is the form genocidal anti-Semitism takes. In the long run, anti-Semites seek a world free of Jews. In the short run, a world free of a Jewish state will do.

If they can disguise such extremism as a fight against bigotry, a "struggle for equal citizenship" and against "apartheid," and if they can push such boldly Orwellian propaganda on the pages of the New York Times, they would be crazy not to.

But people such as Mr. Tarazi are not crazy. They know exactly what they are doing. They just hope people like you won't be able to figure it out until it's too late.
    
Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an institute focused on terrorism. This article was distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.
 

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Settlements and International Law - Eugene Kontorovich
The international law said by Israel's critics to prohibit Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank is Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The article provides that "the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies." "Occupation," as used in the treaty, seems to mean seizing territory belonging to another country. The West Bank, however, was not part of Jordan's territory when Israel took it in 1967. At the time, the area was not recognized as the territory of any nation.
    What is clear is that the Convention specifically bars action only by the "occupying power" - in other words, the government and public authorities of the country. It does not apply to the movements and real estate decisions of private individuals. Various other parts of the Convention distinguish between "nationals of the occupying Power" and "the occupying power" itself; the prohibitions of Article 49 fall exclusively on the latter. Certainly the Geneva Convention is not a zoning law, or a Jim Crow ordinance preventing people of a certain nationality from living where they choose.
    The Palestinian Authority insists that the price of any deal be not only the withdrawal of Israeli sovereign force, but also the expulsion of all Jews from the area. The Geneva Convention was designed to protect against governmental efforts to forcibly change the ethnic make-up of an area, efforts of the kind that occurred in World War II. It would be a bitter irony if it were misread as requiring that any territory be kept free of Jews, or any ethnic group. The writer is a professor at Northwestern University Law School, where he teaches international and constitutional law. (New York Sun)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, February 15, 2008]

Adieu, Yasser Arafat - Uri Dromi (Forward)

• Though I am now one of the many Israelis who has become disillusioned by the outbreak of the second intifada, back then I was fully committed to the Oslo Accords and, as Rabin's spokesman, I played a role in painting a more positive picture of the peace process.

• A few days after the signing ceremony of the Cairo Accords in May 1994 handing over Gaza and Jericho to the Palestinians, Arafat gave a speech in Johannesburg at a local mosque. Believing he was among friends only, he talked about the agreement he had just signed: "This agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Muhammad and Qureish."

• For those not versed in Islamic history, the agreement, also known as the al-Khudaibiya agreement, was a 10-year peace treaty between Mohammad and the tribe of Qureish. After two years, when Mohammad had improved his military position, he tore up the agreement and slaughtered the Qureishites.

• Now that Arafat seems to be on the way out, the big question is whether he has been the sole obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, or whether he simply has been representing a phenomenon common to all Palestinian leaders.

• Can we at last sit down with people who, instead of double-talking, will for once keep their word? Personally, I'm not holding my breath.

  The writer is director of international outreach at the Israel Democracy Institute.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, November 4, 2004]

The New York Times and The Jews

Stay on offense

Caroline B. Glick, Jerusalem Post, May 14, 2004

Monday The New York Times ran an op-ed by the PLO's lawyer, Michael Tarazi, under the headline "Two Peoples, One State." In the essay, Tarazi argued that the world must move beyond the "two-state" solution to the Palestinian conflict with Israel to a "one-state" solution that would end Israel's existence as a Jewish state.

Since the destruction of Israel has been the aim of the PLO since its founding in 1964, it is not clear why the Times felt the fact that the PLO remains committed to its 40-year-old official policy is noteworthy.

Indeed, the Times's decision to run Tarazi's op-ed tells us more about America's paper of record than it tells us about the PLO. In his article, Tarazi libelously attacks Israel, referring to it as an apartheid state and arguing mendaciously that the Jewish state allocates rights on the basis of ethnicity. In Tarazi's words, "Palestinian Christians and Muslims are denied the same political and civil rights as Jews." This of course, is a complete lie. Israel does not provide or deny rights on the basis of religion or ethnicity, but on the basis of citizenship. Palestinian Christians and Muslims comprise 20 percent of Israel's citizenry and have the same political and civil rights as Israel's Jewish citizens. And The New York Times knows this.

In enabling these lies to be printed, the Times is not simply advancing the cause of the destruction of the Jewish state. It is also serving as a forum in which the cause of Palestinian racial absolutism is championed, given the PLO's demand that all land that will form the basis of the State of Palestine must be completely free of Jews.

The fact that the Times would provide a stage for an author who seeks to baselessly criminalize the Jewish state, while ignoring the racist agenda of the writer himself, is not really news. The Times's record in covering the Middle East in general and Israel in particular for the past several decades has made clear that from the Gray Lady's perspective, Israel is not to receive fair coverage. Just this week, the paper did not devote a specific, full article to two major stories – either on its news or editorial pages – that would provide its readers with important information about what Israel is up against.

The first of these was that, in a major interview, former PA prime minister Mahmoud Abbas – who is consistently championed by the Times as a "reformer" – said that, at the Camp David talks in 2000, he had protested Israel's decision to cancel the Absentee Property Fund for reparations to Palestinian "refugees" with a retort to the effect that the Holocaust was justified. In his words, he told Elyakim Rubinstein: "If that's the case, then Hitler's decisions were right." (The Jerusalem Post reprinted the Abbas interview on Wednesday.)

The second is the IDF's controversial allegations that UNRWA personnel are involved in Palestinian terror operations against Israel and that UNRWA chief Peter Hansen gave an interview to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in which he admitted that UNRWA workers are members of Hamas.

On the positive side, this week's events seem to indicate that for its part, Israel has finally stopped caring what The New York Times does or does not do. This in itself is a major development. Understanding that the Times's focus often dictates the network news coverage and therefore determines to a large extent the substance of the US news cycle, the IDF and the Foreign Ministry have for years assiduously yet fruitlessly attempted to influence the Times's coverage of Israel.

So it was that when, during Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002, the IDF uncovered a treasure trove of documents in PA headquarters in Judea and Samaria unequivocally linking PLO chairman Yasser Arafat to terrorist attacks, the army decided that the best way to get the story out was by giving the Times exclusive use of the documents.

The Times, with its exclusive rights to this paradigm-shattering scoop, proceeded to downplay the story. This decision made sense from the paper's perspective. Why would the Times, which for years has been arguing that the PLO is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians, give appropriate coverage to documents that proved unequivocally that the PLO, from Arafat on down, was directly involved in the terror war against Israeli civilians? This week, when the IDF again had a major story, it did not wait for the Times, but ran with it itself and, in so doing, scored a major victory in the information war; a victory which may well have positive policy implications for Israel in the long term.

Despite the subsequent doubts over the IDF's allegation that UNRWA employees had been caught red-handed on videotape transporting what appeared to be a Kassam rocket in a UN ambulance, the IDF's decision to release the footage and the story was an immensely important undertaking. This is the case because UNRWA is not simply yet another Palestinian organization linked to terrorism. UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for eternalizing the plight of Palestinians who left Israel in 1948 and their foreign-born descendants by ensuring that they will never be naturalized in the countries where they have lived for the past three generations, is funded mainly by the US, Canada and the EU – all of which profess to be working to curb terrorist funding.

The US annually hands UNRWA a check for $100 million. EU member states donate even more and Canada gives UNRWA $10 million each year. This financing has continued unabated year after year, in spite of the fact that UNRWA has played a role in the Palestinian terror war against Israel for the last four years.

According to a document drawn up by the Israeli defense establishment last year, UNRWA employees like Nahed Attalah and Nidal Nazzal have admitted that they have used their UN vehicles to ferry weapons, explosives and terrorists, while Alaa Muhammad Ali Hassan, a PLO terrorist, has admitted that he carried out sniper attacks against Israelis from an UNRWA school in an UNRWA camp in Nablus.

UNRWA schools have been used as indoctrination centers for Palestinian children. UNRWA camps, from Jenin to Jabalya to Ein Hilweh in Lebanon, have been used as operational bases, mobilization and training centers and weapons storage facilities for terrorists. All of this has been documented. And yet, to date neither UNRWA nor the UN has been forced to account for the actions.

So the footage of the UNRWA employees at the scene of an operation where terrorists were laying a large explosive mine along what they hoped would be the route of an IDF armored vehicle, followed by UNRWA personnel placing what appeared to be a Kassam rocket in their UN ambulance, was an important story because it put an indefensible UN agency on the defensive.

Serendipitously, the IDF's aggressive information offensive against UNRWA came just as UNRWA's director Peter Hansen told CBC, "I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll."

Hansen denied the IDF's charges, claiming that the UN personnel photographed by the IDF's drone were simply carrying a stretcher. This may or may not be the case. Given the context of the video – a terrorist mine-laying operation, as well as the rich history of UNRWA involvement in terror – the IDF charge remains more credible than Hansen's denial.

Allowing for the chance that Hansen may be correct, the IDF removed the incriminating video from its Web site. But it remained on the offensive, with OC Operations Maj.-Gen. Yisrael Ziv announcing that the army has arrested and will soon indict 13 UNRWA employees in Gaza for their involvement in terror activities.

The local press has been quick to harshly judge the IDF for aggressively pursuing the story. Haaretz's editorialist alleged Wednesday that "Israel behaved with reckless haste and injured its pretensions to superiority over the Palestinians with regard to credibility." But this is not the case.

The IDF does not run stories that have no circumstantial, contextual and factual grounding, the way the Palestinians do. And because of this, neither the IDF nor the Foreign Ministry should be swayed by such recriminations. The IDF may have phrased its statements against UNRWA too coarsely, but the essence of the allegations remains unassailable: UNRWA employees are today, and have for years been, directly involved in terror operations against Israel, and for this the agency must be called to account.

Given the convergence of the IDF footage and Hansen's impervious admission to CBC that his group employs people associated with a genocidal terrorist organization, Canada's government has already announced that it is reviewing its support of UNRWA. US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who was personally briefed on the issue this week, has demanded an accounting by the UN for the actions of its employees.

For too long, the IDF has surrendered the information offensive to Palestinian flacks proffering lies like Tarazi and Saeb Erekat and their media allies at places like The New York Times, with devastating results for Israel's international reputation. The international consequences of the IDF's self-marketed scoop have proven the army's ability to move important stories without winning over biased news organizations. And just as importantly, the impact of the footage has shown that it is far better to err slightly on the side of overzealousness, when backed up by fact, context and circumstance, than to surrender the stage to lies for fear of being only 95 percent right.

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