The Galilean Word

CJCUC Appoints Dr. Mike Cohen as its Traveling Scholar

2012-01-08T05:27:00.002+02:00

CJCUC Appoints Dr. Mike Cohen as its Traveling Scholar

January 3, 2012

EFRAT/ISRAEL: With the mandate to assist and enhance the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation’s (CJCUC) relations with the Christian communities in North America, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin has appointed Dr. Mike Cohen as the first “CJCUC Traveling Scholar.” Dr. Cohen has served as CJCUC’s Israel faculty member since the Center’s establishment in 2008. He has taken leave of his position at Bar-Ilan University’s Overseas Program in Israel to accept this appointment.

Since Rabbi Riskin’s appearances on Glenn Beck TV during the Restoring Courage events in Israel, the number of Christian clergy and leaders wishing to bring the Rabbi’s message of a Religion of Peace to their congregants has risen dramatically. “I am honored to serve Rabbi Riskin’s vision and help in a small way to facilitate a new dawn in relations between Christians and Jews,” Cohen said. “At a time when Israel appears to be isolated on the international stage, we have learned that Christians worldwide have come to be our stalwart supporters. It is imperative for both ancient biblical faith communities to join hands and bring a prayer of peace and friendship to the world.”

With over two decades of experience in the development of relationships between Christian and Jews, as a political and security strategist, and a veteran officer in Israel’s elite counter-terrorism forces, Dr. Cohen “brings a unique perspective about what the Restoration of Zion means in biblical, theological and modern day terms,” Rabbi Riskin remarked. During Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, Dr. Cohen was assigned as an IDF reserve officer to the National Emergency Response & Negotiation Team in Bethlehem tasked with handling the multifaceted and potentially explosive crisis surrounding the Church of the Nativity’s seizure by terrorists.

“Dr. Cohen and I are friends from our days at the Israeli Consulate in New York, where we both served in different ministries fostering relationships between Israel and the North American Christian communities,” CJCUC’s Executive Director David Nekrutman said. He added, “This appointment gives CJCUC a huge opportunity to expand our network into Asia and Europe, while Dr. Cohen continues to advance the relations in North America that I have developed over the last four years.”

Cohen is a graduate of Yeshiva University and the City University of New York. He is the editor of Ordinary People Extraordinary Spirit and is now working on a project that will highlight the non-Jewish contributions to the rebirth of the Jewish State. To book Dr. Cohen at your place of worship, please contact CJCUC at 516-882-3220.

In U.S., Hopes for Arab-Israeli Peace Still Low, but Up Slightly

2011-05-19T11:32:00.000+03:00

In U.S., Hopes for Arab-Israeli Peace Still Low, but Up Slightly

Eli E. Hertz: Proximity Talks (1)

2010-05-24T18:04:00.003+03:00

"The truth may not always win, but it is always right!" - Eli E. Hertz

Palestinian Arab aggression against the territorial integrity and political independence of Israel cannot and should not be rewarded.

May 24, 2010 | Eli E. Hertz

Professor, Judge Schwebel, the former President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) explains why Israel has the better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem:

"(a) a state [Israel] acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self-defense;

"(b) as a condition of its withdrawal from such territory, that State may require the institution of security measures reasonably designed to ensure that that territory shall not again be used to mount a threat or use of force against it of such a nature as to justify exercise of self-defense;

"(c) Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully [Jordan]; the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense [Israel] has, against that prior holder, better title.

"As between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively, in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has the better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem."

http://www.mythsandfacts.com/

2010-04-14T14:05:00.004+03:00

JTA coverage of AJC Poll leaves out that American Jews overwhelmingly think Arabs want to destroy Israel not get back territories

[Comment by Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: In the recent poll conducted by the American Jewish Committee among American Jews - the answers were as follows:

10. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.”

Agree 75%
Disagree 20%
Not Sure 5%

OK that may not be very PC of them. But isn't it newsworthy?]

2010 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion

http://www.ajc.org/site/c.ijITI2PHKoG/b.5915517/k.D620/2010_Annual_Survey_of_American_Jewish_Opinion.htm
Poll: Obama struggling with Jews, but not on Israel

By Ron Kampeas · Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) · April 12, 2010

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A new survey shows President Obama struggling with American Jews -- but not on Israel-related matters.

The American Jewish Committee poll of U.S. Jews found that Obama's approval rating is at 57 percent, with 38 percent disapproving. That's down from the stratospheric 79 percent approval rating among Jews that Obama enjoyed about a year ago, in May 2009. The AJC poll was conducted March 2-23 and surveyed 800 self-identifying Jewish respondents selected from a consumer mail panel.

Obama's advantage among Jews versus the rest of the population appears to be eroding. The latest Gallup polling shows Obama with a national approval rating of 48, nine points below Jewish polling. Last May, general polling earned him 63 percent approval, 16 points below Jewish polling.

Despite the drop -- and weeks of tensions with the Netanyahu government -- Obama still polls solidly on foreign policy, with a steady majority backing his handling of U.S.-Israel relations, according to the AJC poll.

It is on domestic issues that the president appears to be facing more unhappiness.

Jewish voters are statistically split on how Obama has handled health care reform, with 50 percent approving and 48 disapproving. On the economy he fares slightly better. Jewish voters who favor his policies stand at 55 percent, while 42 percent disapprove.

The last AJC poll on the views of American Jews, released last September, did not address domestic issues, so there's no measure to assess any change in support on the specific issues of health and the economy. Indeed, this is the first poll in at least 10 years in which the AJC has attempted to assess views on the economy and health care. However, Jewish voters in solid majorities describe themselves as Democrats and as liberal to moderate in their views, and traditionally list the economy and health care as their two top concerns in the voting booth.

Matt Brooks, who directs the Republican Jewish Coalition, said the relatively low score on domestic issues underscored what he said was a steady decline in Democratic support among Jewish voters.

"This indicates a serious erosion of support," he said. "It's a huge drop. There's no silver lining" for Democrats.

Ira Forman, the director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, countered that the poll did not account for Jewish voters who might be disappointed with Obama from a more liberal perspective -- for instance, over his dropping from the reform bill of the so-called public option, which would have allowed for government-run health care.

Additionally, much of the AJC polling took place before Obama's come-from-behind victory on March 21, when the U.S. House of Representatives passed health care reform, Forman said. Since then, Democrats have said they see a turnaround in the president's political fortunes. "The narrative was the president was in the tank," Forman said. "This was when it was thought his initiative was dead."

Obama fares strongly with Jews on homeland security, with 62 percent approving and 33 percent disapproving -- a sign that Republican attempts to cast Obama as weak on protecting the nation have had little impact in the Jewish community.

He also scores 55 percent approval on how he handles U.S.-Israel relations, which is virtually unchanged since last September, when his handling of the relationship scored 54 percent approval. At that juncture, the tensions between Washington and Jerusalem were kept at a low bubble and were confined to U.S. insistence on a total freeze of Israeli settlement, and the Netanyahu administration's reluctance to concede.

The latest questions, however, coincided almost exactly with the period when U.S. officials accused the Netanyahu government of "insulting" the United States by announcing a new building start in eastern Jerusalem while Vice President Joe Biden was visiting, and when the president refused to make public gestures of friendship during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's subsequent visit to Washington.

A question on Obama's handling of Iran's nuclear capability showed a statistical dead heat on the approval side between last September -- 49 percent -- and now, at 47 percent. However, disapproval ratings rose moderately, apparently borrowing from the "uncertain" column: Back in September 35 percent disapproved; now 42 percent give a thumbs down.The marks compared favorably, however, with Bush administration figures.

Bush scored 33 percent approval ratings on Iran in 2006, the most recent year that AJC asked the question.

Support for U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran to keep it from making a nuclear bomb appeared to drop slightly. Asked about a U.S. strike, 53 percent said they would support one, and 42 percent were opposed, as opposed to 56 percent and 36 percent last September. On an Israeli strike, 62 percent supported and 33 percent opposed, as opposed to 66 and 28 percent in September.

The only other question in the most recent survey directly addressing Obama's foreign policy also showed strong support for the president: 62 percent of respondents agreed with Obama's decision to deploy an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. This contrasts with the consistently negative Jewish assessments of Bush's handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, except in the period immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Approval of Obama's foreign policies contrasts with increasing uneasiness in the Jewish establishment with the administration’s approach. Several influential pro-Israel organizations have spent months, to little avail, pleading with the administration to confine its disagreements to back rooms.

A handful of prominent Jewish backers of candidate Obama also appear to have had second thoughts. Most pointedly, in a New York Daily News column Monday, Ed Koch, the former New York City mayor and a supporter of Obama during the 2008 general election, said he was "weeping" because the president had "abandoned" Israel.

And Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), perhaps the most influential member of the Senate's Jewish caucus, on Sunday pointedly avoided answering a question on ABC's "This Week" about whether he agreed with a Netanyahu confidante who said Obama was a "strategic disaster" for Israel.

Brooks predicted a tide of defections. "You'll have a number of candidates" in areas with a strong Jewish presence "asking him not to campaign for them," he said.

David Harris, AJC's executive director, cautioned that low approval ratings did not necessarily translate into electoral losses.

Brooks said that he would advise GOP candidates to hammer Democrats hard on foreign policy, particularly in tight races in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Florida, where Jewish voters trended less liberal than on the coasts. "If Republican candidates are smart, they will make Democratic candidates in these races answerable to whether they support Obama's policies of pressuring Israel," the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition said.

Jewish Democrats are already preparing a response strategy of arguing that the relationship remains close on defense cooperation and other matters, despite heightened rhetoric on settlement differences.

Harris suggested that the polling showed that the American Jewish public would prefer to imagine a closeness rather than deal with tensions. Obama and Netanyahu scored similar solid majorities -- 55 percent and 57 percent, respectively -- on how they handled the relationship.

American Jews "don't want to be forced to choose," Harris said. "They would rather say a blessing on both your houses than a pox on both your houses."

According to the survey, 64 percent of Jews think Israel should, as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians, be willing to remove at least some of the settlements in the West Bank. But 61 percent rejected the idea that Israel should be willing to "compromise on the status of Jerusalem as a united city under Israeli jurisdiction."

The poll had a margin of error of plus/minus 3 percentage points. Interviews were conducted by the firm Synovate, formerly Market Facts.

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/04/12/1011547/ajc-poll-obama-struggling-with-jews-but-not-on-israel

Great Britain: Western Wall Not in Israel!!

2010-04-14T13:55:00.006+03:00

Israeli tourism ad banned for using photo of East Jerusalem Advertising Standards Authority rules poster showing Western Wall and Dome of the Rock 'likely to mislead'.

By Mark Sweney Wednesday, 14 April 2010

An Israeli tourist office press campaign has been banned by the UK advertising regulator for including pictures of East Jerusalem, part of the Palestinian occupied territories.

The Israeli Government Tourist Office (IGTO) press ad stated that a tourist can "travel the entire length of Israel in six hours" and featured a range of photos of destinations in Israel including a picture of Jerusalem.

A complaint was received by the Advertising Standards Authority that the image showed the Western Wall of the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock, both of which are in East Jerusalem and part of the occupied territories of the West Bank.

The ASA said that readers of the ad were likely to assume that all the places featured in the ad were within the state of Israel.

"The status of the occupied territory of the West Bank [is] the subject of much international dispute, and because we considered that the ad implied that the part of East Jerusalem featured in the image was part of the state of Israel, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead," added the ASA.

The ASA banned the ad and told the IGTO not to imply that places in the occupied territories were part of the state of Israel.

Replying on behalf of the IGTO, the State of Israel Ministry of Tourism (SIMT) said the ad provided "basic, accurate information to a prospective UK traveller who wanted to know what to expect in Israel".

The SIMT said that the present legal status of Jerusalem was irrelevant unless there was an unnecessary attempt to "interpret the straightforward message of the ad in a manner that went beyond what consumers were likely to understand from the ad".

Last year an IGTO ad campaign was banned by the ASA after 442 complaints for showing a map of Israel that included the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk

IMRA Poll: Israelis Oppose Obama Plans

2010-04-14T13:31:00.007+03:00

Maagar Mochot Poll: Israelis oppose Obama imposed deal, division of Jerusalem and relying on American guarantees in deal with Palestinians

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 14 April 2010

Israeli Jews overwhelmingly oppose (83%:8%) President Obama imposing a Palestinian-Israeli agreement and also oppose (70%:19%) freezing construction in Jerusalem according to a telephone poll of a representative sample of 503 adult Israeli Jews, by Maagar Mohot Survey Institute (headed by Professor Yitzchak Katz) carried out 11-12 April.

The poll, that was commissioned by Independent Media Review & Analysis (IMRA), also found that respondents believe (69%:13%) that the division of Jerusalem with international control of the Old City would lead to ongoing conflict rather than peace for generations.

Israeli Jews overwhelming (79%:9%) support Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's position that Israel must control the Jordan Valley in any arrangements with the Palestinians.

The poll also found consistent rejection of relying on American guarantees in arrangements with the Palestinians. Respondent overwhelmingly (80%:12%) reject the proposal that the U.S. could deliver on a guaranty that a Palestinian state would remain demilitarized. Israeli Jews also reject (69%:22%) the suggestion that Israel could relinquish territories that are today considered critical for its security if the U.S. signed a defense pact with Israel.

Respondents also consider it improper (68%:16%) for Israelis who support plans opposed by Netanyahu to encourage President Obama to impose their plans.

Complete Results:

Telephone poll of a representative sample of 503 adult Israeli Jews, by Maagar Mohot Survey Institute (headed by Professor Yitzchak Katz) carried out 11-12 April 2010.

Poll commissioned by Independent Media Review & Analysis (IMRA).
Survey error of +/- 4.5 percentage points.

#1 In your opinion, should Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agree to the demand of President Obama, according to which Israel should freeze construction in Jerusalem for an unlimited period of time?

Yes 19%
No 70%
Don’t know/other replies 11%

#2 How would you describe the physical situation existing today in Jerusalem?

31% There is separation between western Jerusalem that is composed of Jewish
neighborhoods and eastern Jerusalem that is composed of Arab neighborhoods.

52% Jerusalem is a mosaic of Jewish and Arab neighborhood that are located very close to each other.

17% Don’t know/other replies

#3 One of the proposals for a peace arrangement is the proposal to divide Jerusalem between Jewish neighborhood under Israeli sovereignty, Palestinian neighborhoods under the sovereignty of a Palestinian state and the Old City under international administration. Would this arrangement bring peace for generations or ongoing conflict?

Peace for generations 13%
Ongoing conflict 69%
Don’t know/other replies 18%

#4 Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu argues that Israeli must make sure that in any arrangement with the Palestinians Israel controls the Jordan Valley in order to prevent the transfer of rockets and missiles to the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The Palestinians also demand control of the Jordan Valley and part of the Dead Sea. Should Israel insist that Israel control this area in any arrangement with the Palestinians?

Yes 79%
No 9%
Don’t know/other replies 12%

#5 There are those who claim that if the United States guarantees that the Palestinian State will not be armed that Israel can be certain that the Palestinian State really won’t arm itself with weapons. Do you agree with this claim?

Yes 12%
No 80%
Don’t know/other replies 8%

#6 There are those who claim that Israel can forego territories that today are considered critical for its security if Israel signs a peace pact with the United States. Do you agree?

Yes 22%
No 69%
Don’t know/other replies 9%

#7 According to various reports, President Obama will try to impose an arrangement on the sides according to which, among other things, Israel does not control the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem is divided. Do you want President Obama to impose his plan on the parties?

Yes 8%
No 83%
Don’t know/other replies 9%

#8 Is it proper for Israelis who support arrangements with the Palestinians that do not agree with Binyamin Netanyahu’s position to encourage President Obama to impose their positions on the parties?

Proper 16%
Improper 68%
Don’t know/other replies 16%

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il

Travel&Leisure Magazine: Jerusalem among the top cities in the world

2010-04-13T18:55:00.003+03:00

Travel & Leisure Magazine: Jerusalem among the top cities in the world

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

According to the prestigious Travel+Leisure Magazine, Jerusalem is ranked as one of the top destinations in the world by their discerning readers. In an annual poll of its online readers published earlier this week, the capital was ranked 17th in the ‘World’s Best Cities – Overall’ list, ahead of popular destinations such as London, Paris and Barcelona. Among the cities in the Middle East, Jerusalem was ranked third (behind Cape Town and Fez, Morocco). Tel Aviv did not make the top 20 list, though it did rank seventh among cities in the Middle East and Africa.

Jerusalem attracts over two million tourists a year, with about 80% of all tourists visiting the holy city. The city also contains within it the most visited sites in Israel, including the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Via Dolorosa, Yad Vashem and the Mount of Olives.

The first design-led luxury lifestyle hotel in Jerusalem and Israel

Mamilla Hotel, Jerusalem, enters Conde Nast Traveller UK edition’s Hot List 2010

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Mamilla Hotel in Jerusalem has entered UK Conde Nast Traveller’s 2010 Hot List - one of the international travel industry’s most prestigious selections of the best new hotels of the past twelve months. The Mamilla opened in June 2009 as the first design-led luxury lifestyle hotel in Jerusalem and Israel.

Hot List
The Hot List is the annual barometer of the premium hotel market, awarding properties based on critieria such as design, facilities, innovation and service. Published in the May issue of the UK edition of Conde Nast Traveller magazine - the leading luxury travel publication in the UK and an authoritative voice in the travel industry globally and online - the Hot List is based on anonymous hotel reviews from experts across the world, who heed the magazine’s ‘Truth in Travel’ policy by paying room rates and not accepting ‘freebies’. The result is a powerful snapshot of current trends, developments and key players in the increasingly competitive high-end hotel industry.

The Mamilla Hotel combines spectacular design (by Moshe Safdie and Piero Lissoni), a prime position just minutes from the historic wonders and profound beauty of the Old City of Jerusalem, luxury accommodations, a world-class Rooftop restaurant and – above all – a pioneering approach to service and hospitality that offers something distinct and new to the hotel market in Jerusalem and Israel. The hotel concentrates on providing a lifestyle experience for guests that immediately appeals to the emotional needs of a well-travelled, demanding and in-the-know clientele, be it through design, food & drink, physical and spiritual engagement in the Holistic Wellbeing retreat, or the powerful, uplifting effects of this magical city.

The hotel is delighted to be included in the 2010 Hot List, as Massimo Ianni, COO of Alrov Luxury Hotels, says: "From the outset our goal was to open in Jerusalem a truly modern, world-class hotel that will be adopted and enjoyed by a global, well-travelled audience. Our hotel should act as a story-teller - a window through which guests can see and experience the very best of Jerusalem - and this wonderful acknowledgement by Conde Nast Traveller will spur us to continue to work towards this, and to do it with pride.”

Opening-up Jerusalem
The Hot List accolade comes soon after February’s announcement that the Mamilla has become the first hotel in Israel to join leading international hotel marketing company Design Hotels. The inclusion in the 2010 Conde Nast Traveller Hot List is an exciting development in furthering the hotel’s commitment to opening up Jerusalem to a wider audience and to providing a new, pioneering hospitality experience in Israel and beyond.

Barry Rubin: Palestinian Poke Obama in the Eye!

2010-04-13T18:40:00.000+03:00

Palestinian Leaders Do It Again!
Throw Away Opportunity Obama is Giving Them and Poke Him in the Eye

By Barry Rubin*
April 13, 2010

http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/04/palestinian-leaders

With their unerring skill at erring, Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders are throwing away still another opportunity President Barack Obama is giving them. If Obama is the most pro-Palestinian president in history, his counterparts don't seem to appreciate it very much. It is the Palestinian leadership, not Israel, that will ultimately make Obama look like and be a failure in all of his peace process efforts.

Brief history:

--Last spring, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas in his first visit to Washington made it clear he wasn't interested in a negotiated solution but just planned to wait for the West to force Israel to give him everything he wanted.

--In September, Abbas stood nearby as Obama said he wanted serious final negotiations within two months, then refused while Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was ready to talk right away.

--Shortly thereafter, Obama asked Abbas not to push the Goldstone report as a sponsor in the UN. Abbas agreed, then broke his word within 48 hours under internal pressure.

--At the end of last October, Obama's Administration made a deal in which Israel would stop all construction on West Bank settlements though it could continue in east Jerusalem. While Obama hoped this would get talks going, Abbas demanded an end to construction in Jerusalem, too, which he knew Israel would not accept. Indeed, he demanded it precisely because he knew Israel wouldn't accept it.

--Finally, Abbas agreed to indirect talks but was "saved" when suddenly the U.S. government accepted the PA's position on Jerusalem construction. Yet even that has not been enough to make the PA support Obama's policy despite the fact that it was so slanted in their favor.

Of course, the U.S. criticism of Israel and the crisis following the announcement of some future Jerusalem construction have been the main news. But that's because the Obama Administration is ready (sometimes it seems, eager) to criticize Israel but did ot ever criticize the PA during its own fifteen months in office. This last point--which I have repeatedly pointed out--has become so embarassingly obvious that finally the State Department made a small peep. [See note at end of article.]

So it is easy to miss the fact that by their behavior the Palestinian leadership has lost any possible material gain from the administration's attitude.

Now, here we are in the biggest crisis of U.S.-Israel relations in more than a quarter-century, arguably the biggest crisis in a half-century, since the Eisenhower Administration pressured Israel to withdraw from Sinai in 1957. Not only is the administration really angry at Israel, but it is considering a plan--though this might never happen--to try to impose a solution.

So what's the PA stance? To denounce the idea of an imposed solution! Such a plan according to press reports would give them a lot of what they want--1967 borders, a quick state, minimal conditions, all of pre-1967 Jordanian-controlled Jerusalem. Not bad, eh? But the Palestinians would have to make some concessions, like settling refugees in the state of Palestine rather than flooding Israel with Palestinian Arabs in an effort to paralyze and destroy its society.

On the PA's radio, chief negotiator Saib Arikat (choose your transliteration) said--what a delicious Freudian slip this is--that the Palestinians "don't want new ideas." His proposal is that the United States just recognizes Palestine as a state immediately and urges the UN to accept it as such, followed no doubt by huge international pressure for an immediate unconditional Israeli withdrawal from everywhere in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

This isn't going to happen, of course. But once again it signals U.S. officials, if they bothered to look, that they will get no cooperation, not even the tiniest concession, and the barest minimum of kind words from the PA. This also makes clear why a solution is impossible and why it would not solve all U.S. problems in the Middle East.

Because even if--this is just for the sake of explanation--the Obama Administration were to give the Palestinian leadership 99 percent of what it wants, it would still have to force it to concede 1 percent. Also it wojld forecolose--at least in theory--wiping Israel off the map. That would lead to the political settlement being denounced by all Islamists, all militant Arab nationalists, and many Arab governments.

I'm not even sure if the Egyptian and Jordanian media would applaud Obama. The latest Palestinian poll (Palestinian Public Opinion Poll no. 40, Center for Opinion Polls and Survey Studies at An-Najah National University, pril 8-10, 2010) asked:

"Do you accept the creation of a Palestinian state on the area of the 1967 borders as a final solution for the Palestinian problem?"

Of those polled, 44.7 percent (and this is after 17 years of supposed moderate policies by the PLO following the Oslo agreement) said "no." While 51.7 percent said "yes," remember that they were almost certainly assuming the Palestinians would get the precise pre-1967 borders plus the right to move to Israel for almost anyone who wanted to do so.

And so if Obama were to implement any conceivable negotiated solution--even an extremely pro-Palestinian one by Western standards--he'd be labelled as the man who sold out the Palestinians and go down in history as a betrayer and Zionist imperialist. I'd bet money on being able to collect a considerably large set of clippings denouncing him as worse--more "anti-Muslim" and "anti-Arab"--than George W. Bush! And if you think that isn't likely then, forgive me for saying so, you don't really understand how Middle East politics work.

The United States would not be portrayed as a hero because it created Palestine but a villain because it robbed the Arabs of getting everything some day. Terrorism against American targets would go up, as it would argued that the Americans had forever destroyed the chance of wiping Israel off the map. Of course, terrorism against any Palestinian leaders who agreed to such terms would also break out. Abbas's knowing this is one of the reasons he will say "no" to everything.

And don't ever forget that little detail: If Palestine is proclaimed a state, presumably Hamas is the legal government of about half of it, despite the fact that it is a terrorist, antisemitic, genocide-seeking client of Iran which won't even accept the agreement that makes Palestine a state. Here's one example of the ridiculous situation that would prevail: If the Hamas government wanted to import long-range missiles from Iran and Israel tried to stop it by intercepting them with its navy, would the UN then be able to accuse Israel of an act of aggression against a sovereign state?

Again, nothing is going to happen, not because of Israel but because the PA will torpedo any U.S. effort to solve the issue no matter how bad the terms seem for Israel. Meanwhile U.S. policymakers will pretend this isn't happening, that the United States isn't constantly being insulted by the PA.

Unless you understand the above, the whole story of the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian conflict makes no sense.

Question 1: During the four years of the Obama Administration's term in office, will his officials ever publicly criticize the PA for anything it does, including honoring terrorists who killed Americans? Prediction: No it won't.

Question 2: During the four years of the Obama Administration's term in office, will the Palestinians make any material gain due to his being so supportive of them? Prediction: No they won't because the extremist goals and intransigence of their leadership will prevent thus.

Note: At last the State Department issues a very mild criticism of the PA, after ignoring for almost two weeks the issue in question. On April 8, it made the following statement:

"Regarding the Middle East, we are disturbed by comments of Palestinian Authority officials regarding reconstruction and refurbishing of Jewish sites in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. Remarks by the Palestinian ministry of information denying Jewish heritage in and links to Jerusalem undermine the trust and confidence needed for substantive and productive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. We also strongly condemn the glorification of terrorists honoring terrorists who have murdered innocent civilians either by official statements or by the dedication of public places hurts peace efforts and must end. We will continue to hold Palestinian leaders accountable for incitement. "

But this isolated statement seems to have been made for form's sake and when compared to the administration's outrage at Israel looks quite limited. I predict we won't be hearing about any follow-up to these issues.

What makes this particularly ridiculous is that the PA named a square in honor of a terrorist who murdered both Israelis and Americans--for more on this issue see HERE--during Vice-President Joe Biden's visit yet there was no talk about the United States being insulted nor was there any major crisis with the PA declared by the U.S. government. Indeed, well after the affair happened, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was insisting that the deed had been done by Hamas, an absurd error which--to my knowledge--has never been formally corrected by her office.

* Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books, go to http://www.gloria-center.org/.

IDF: Terrorists Were Heavily Armed

2010-04-13T18:34:00.001+03:00

IDF Spokesperson April 13th, 2010

Four Terrorists Targeted This Morning were Heavily Armed

IDF searches following this morning's incident near the central Gaza Strip security fence, turned up the bodies of terrorists associated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization. The IDF found explosive devices, assault rifles, hand grenades and additional weaponry on the bodies.

Earlier this morning, an IDF force identified a number of suspicious persons planting explosives along the security fence in the central Gaza Strip. The force fired at the suspects, and confirmed direct hits. Four militants were
apparently killed and two injured as a result of the shooting.

The presence of Palestinian civilians in the area adjacent to the security fence in Gaza is used by terrorist organizations as cover for their activities, including planting explosive devices, planning terrorist attacks and attempts to kidnap IDF soldiers. For this reason, the IDF considers this a combat zone.

On March 26th, an IDF officer and an IDF soldier were killed and two soldiers were injured, during an exchange of fire with terrorists who were planting explosive devices along the security fence.

Approximately 350 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip since Operation Cast Lead last year.

The IDF operates defensively on both sides of the Gaza Strip security fence on a routine and daily basis, in order to locate and thwart terrorist efforts and to ensure the safety of Israeli residents in the area.

The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm the citizens of the State of Israel and will continue to operate resolutely against anyone who uses terror against it. The IDF holds Hamas as solely responsible for maintaining peace and quiet in the Gaza Strip and its surrounding area.

IDF: Gaza Terror Attack Thwarted

2010-04-13T12:29:00.001+03:00

IDF Spokesperson April 13th, 2010

IDF Thwarts Attack Along Gaza Security Fence

Earlier this morning, an IDF force identified a number of suspects planting
explosives along the security fence in the central Gaza Strip.

The force fired at the suspects, identifying direct hits.

TGI NOTE: Please take note of the media bias in the following Reuters report:

Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Gunman In Gaza
By REUTERS
Published: April 13, 2010

GAZA (Reuters) - A Palestinian gunman was killed and three were wounded in Israeli military strikes in the Gaza Strip Tuesday, Palestinian medics and the Israeli army said.

The Palestinian death was the first in the Islamist Hamas-ruled territory since three gunmen and two Israeli soldiers were killed more than two weeks ago in the most serious clash between the two sides in 14 months.

A spokesman for the Islamic Jihad militant group said Israeli tanks fired shells and a helicopter launched a missile at its men east of the al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said: "An Israeli force identified a number of suspects planting explosives along the security fence (with Gaza). It fired at the suspects, identifying direct hits."

A Palestinian hospital source said the three wounded men were in serious condition.

The Gaza Strip is controlled by the Hamas movement, which wrested control of the coastal enclave from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction in 2007.

Hamas has largely held its fire since a costly three-week war with Israel in the opening days of 2009 in which some 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and 13 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed.

But smaller factions like Islamic Jihad have ignored the de facto truce by firing rockets and mortar shells into Israel.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Ralph Gowling)

Copyright 2010 Thomson Reuters

Prof. Efraim Karsh - Palestine Betrayed

2010-04-13T02:36:00.000+03:00

"A brave and exceedingly important piece of work."-David Vital, author of A People Apart

"With Isaiah Friedman, Efraim Karsh is the preeminent scholar-spokesman of the Revisionist (politically-rightist) Movement in Zionism. I consider this latest of Karsh''s books, Palestine Betrayed, a work of meticulous, even exhaustive scholarship which must be taken with the greatest seriousness and respect by historians of diverse points of view. Indeed, any student of modern Israel will ignore at their peril its sheer cornucopia of factual revelations." - Howard Sachar

About Palestine Betrayed

The 1947 UN resolution to partition the British Mandate over Palestine irrevocably changed the political landscape of the Middle East, giving rise to six full-fledged wars between Arabs and Jews, countless armed clashes, blockades, and terrorism, as well as a profound shattering of Palestinian Arab society. Its origins, and that of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, are deeply rooted in Jewish-Arab confrontation and appropriation in Palestine. But the isolated occasions of violence during the British Mandate era (1920–48) suggest that the majority of Palestinian Arabs yearned to live and thrive under peaceful coexistence with the evolving Jewish national enterprise. So what was the real cause of the breakdown in relations between the two communities?

In this brave and groundbreaking book, Efraim Karsh tells the story from both the Arab and Jewish perspectives. He argues that from the early 1920s onward, a corrupt and extremist leadership worked toward eliminating the Jewish national revival and protecting its own interests. Karsh has mined many of the Western, Soviet, UN, and Israeli documents declassified over the past decade, as well as unfamiliar Arab sources, to reveal what happened behind the scenes on both Palestinian and Jewish sides. It is an arresting story of delicate political and diplomatic maneuvering by leading figures—Ben Gurion, Hajj Amin Husseini, Abdel Rahman Azzam, King Abdullah, Bevin, and Truman —over the years leading up to partition, through the slide to war and its enduring consequences. Palestine Betrayed is vital reading for understanding the origin of disputes that remain crucial today.

About the Author
Efraim Karsh is professor and head of the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies Programme, King’s College London. His books include Islamic Imperialism: A History; The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War, 1948; Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography; and Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789–1923.

IDF: 17 Explosive Devices Uncovered Near Tul Karem

2010-04-12T12:29:00.001+03:00

IDF detonates 17 explosive devices near Tul Karem uncovered by PA forces

IDF Spokesperson 11 April 2010 , 14:57

http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/10/04/1103.htm

Palestinian security forces uncovered 17 explosive devices near Tuk Karem area and transferred them to the IDF. Military sappers detonated the explosives in a controlled manner.

Despite the relative calm in the area, terrorist attempts by Hamas and Hezbollah continue in Judea and Samaria region. The move however, indicates a positive cooperation between the Palestinian security apparatus and the Israeli security forces.

Earlier this month, Palestinian forces transferred an explosive device weighing 12 kilograms attached to a gas ballon in Jenin. The IDF forces detonated the explosive in a controlled manner causing no casualties or damage.

IDF: Chief of the General Staff Expresses Condolences to Polish Military

2010-04-12T12:09:00.001+03:00

IDF Chief of the General Staff Expresses Condolences to Polish Military

IDF Spokesperson April 10th, 2010

The IDF Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi expressed his deepest condolences to the Polish military this evening, to its General Staff and to the family of the Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, General Franciszek Gagor who was killed in the devastating plane crash today, April 10th 2010

The Chief of the General Staff said: "Over the past three years, I met with the Chief of Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, General Gagor, a number of times, during personal meetings that took place between us, during a NATO conference in Brussels and in Warsaw, where he hosted me during the March of the Living. I met a commander, an amazing military man, who integrated his army in the NATO pact.

It especially touched my heart, his great interest in the journey of military officers to concentration camps in Poland in the framework of the Witnesses in Uniform program. We discussed this at length and it was very important to him that young IDF officers meet with young officers in the Polish Armed Forces and get to know the new generation who is educated about the Holocaust.

In the name of the Israel Defense Forces, in the name of the General Staff and myself, I share the grief felt by the Polish nation and the grief of the Polish military and its commanders."

IDF: General Staff Honors Holocaust Victims at Yad Vashem

2010-04-11T12:12:00.001+03:00

IDF General Staff Holds Special Day of Activities in Honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem Museum

IDF Spokesperson April 11, 2010

The IDF General Staff, headed by the Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, is to hold a special day of activities, today, April 11th, 2010, in honor of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Yad Vashem Museum.

The special commemoration day, which has become a tradition within the IDF, will be opened by the chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, Mr. Avner Shalev and will focus on "Jewish communities during the Holocaust". Throughout the day, the General Staff members will hear lectures by different experts on the subject and will discuss the meaning of the term "community" in modern-day Israel.

The General Staff will also tour the Valley of Communities memorial, listen to survivors' testimonies and will hold an official memorial ceremony in the Museum's Bulgarian Garden . There, the IDF Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, will deliver a speech and light the memorial torch.

Obama bans terms such as Islam, jihad from U.S. security strategy

2010-04-08T12:05:00.001+03:00

Obama bans terms such as Islam, jihad from U.S. security strategy
Wednesday 07th April, 02:15 PM JST

WASHINGTON — Associated Press: President Barack Obama’s advisers will remove religious terms such as “Islamic extremism” from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.”

The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document still was being written, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document will be the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, like his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used.

The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.

That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo, Egypt, and promised a “new beginning” in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terror and winning the war of ideas.

“You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, ‘We’re building you a hospital so you don’t become terrorists.’ That doesn’t make much sense,” said National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy.

Ramamurthy runs the administration’s Global Engagement Directorate, a four-person National Security Council team that Obama launched last May with little fanfare and a vague mission to use diplomacy and outreach “in pursuit of a host of national security objectives.” Since then, the division has not only helped change the vocabulary of fighting terror but also has shaped the way the country invests in Muslim businesses, studies global warming, supports scientific research and combats polio.

Before diplomats go abroad, they hear from the Ramamurthy or his deputy, Jenny Urizar. When officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration returned from Indonesia, the NSC got a rundown about research opportunities on global warming. Ramamurthy maintains a database of interviews conducted by 50 U.S. embassies worldwide. And business leaders from more than 40 countries head to Washington this month for an “entrepreneurship summit” for Muslim businesses.

“Do you want to think about the U.S. as the nation that fights terrorism or the nation you want to do business with?” Ramamurthy said.

To deliver that message, Obama’s speechwriters have taken inspiration from an unlikely source: former President Ronald Reagan. Visiting communist China in 1984, Reagan spoke to Fudan University in Shanghai about education, space exploration and scientific research. He discussed freedom and liberty. He never mentioned communism or democracy.

“They didn’t look up to the U.S. because we hated communism,” said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, Obama’s foreign policy speechwriter.

Like Reagan in China, Obama in Cairo made only passing references to terrorism. Instead he focused on cooperation. He announced the United States would team up to fight polio with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, a multinational body based in Saudi Arabia. The United States and the OIC had worked together before, but never with that focus.

“President Obama saw it as an opportunity to say, `We work on things far beyond the war on terrorism,’” said World Health Organization spokeswoman Sona Bari.

Polio is endemic in three Muslim countries—Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan—but some Muslim leaders have been suspicious of vaccination efforts, which they believed to be part of a CIA sterilization campaign. Last year, the OIC and religious scholars at the International Islamic Fiqh Academy issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that parents should have their children vaccinated.

“We’re probably entering into a whole new level of engagement between the OIC and the polio program because of the stimulus coming from the U.S. government,” said Michael Galway, who works on polio eradication for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Centers for Disease Control also began working more closely with local Islamic leaders in northern Nigeria, a network that had been overlooked for years, said John Fitzsimmons, the deputy director of the CDC’s immunization division.

Though health officials are reluctant to assign credit to any one action, new polio cases in Nigeria fell from 83 during the first quarter of last year to just one so far this year, Fitzsimmons said.

Public opinion polls also showed consistent improvement in U.S. sentiment within the Muslim world last year, although the viewpoints are still overwhelmingly negative, however.

Obama did not invent Muslim outreach. President George W. Bush gave the White House its first Quran, hosted its first Iftar dinner to celebrate Ramadan, and loudly stated support for Muslim democracies like Turkey.

But the Bush administration struggled with its rhetoric. Muslims criticized him for describing the war against terror as a “crusade” and labeling the invasion of Afghanistan “Operation Infinite Justice”—words that were seen as religious. He regularly identified America’s enemy as “Islamic extremists” and “radical jihadists.”

Karen Hughes, a Bush confidant who served as his top diplomat to the Muslim world in his second term, urged the White House to stop.

“I did recommend that, in my judgment, it’s unfortunate because of the way it’s heard. We ought to avoid the language of religion,” Hughes said. “Whenever they hear ‘Islamic extremism, Islamic jihad, Islamic fundamentalism,’ they perceive it as a sort of an attack on their faith. That’s the world view Osama bin Laden wants them to have.”

Hughes and Juan Zarate, Bush’s former deputy national security adviser, said Obama’s efforts build on groundwork from Bush’s second term, when some of the rhetoric softened. But by then, Zarate said, it was overshadowed by the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and a prolonged Iraq war.

“In some ways, it didn’t matter what the president did or said. People weren’t going to be listening to him in the way we wanted them to,” Zarate said. “The difference is, President Obama had a fresh start.”

Obama’s foreign policy posture is not without political risk. Even as Obama steps up airstrikes on terrorists abroad, he has proven vulnerable to Republican criticism on security issues at home, such as the failed Christmas Day airline bombing and the announced-then-withdrawn plan to prosecute 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York.

Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist and former Bush adviser, is skeptical of Obama’s engagement effort. It “doesn’t appear to have created much in the way of strategic benefit” in the Middle East peace process or in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he said.

Obama runs the political risk of seeming to adopt politically correct rhetoric abroad while appearing tone deaf on national security issues at home, Feaver said.

The White House dismisses such criticism. In June, Obama will travel to Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, and is expected to revisit many of the themes of his Cairo speech.

“This is the long-range direction we need to go in,” Ramamurthy said.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

IDF: Redistribution of "Protection Kits" Begins

2010-04-06T12:23:00.000+03:00

Home Front begins nationwide distribution of protection kits
Jonathan Urich IDF Spokesperson's Office 6 April 2010

http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/10/04/0601.htm

The IDF Home Front Command and the Israel Postal Authority are launching their national protection kit distribution. In the coming days distribution stations will open in the cities of Ashdod and Rishon LeZion.

In accordance with a recent experiment conducted in recent weeks concerning the distribution arrangements between the Israel Postal Authority and the IDF Home Front Command, a nationwide distribution of protection kits to all residents of Israel will begin on Tuesday (Apr. 6).

The distribution will be carried out in one of two ways: direct mail through the Israel Post Authority, or through distribution stations which will gradually open up throughout the country.

This is the first time a direct postal distribution will be executed. Anyone interested in receiving protection kits to their home is required to call the Israel Postal Authority's 171 hotline and coordinate an appointed time for delivery. This delivery service will cost 25 NIS per household.

As mentioned before, a few weeks ago the Home Front Command and the Israel Postal Authority conducted an experiment in the Bikat Ono area, in which they have distributed up until now about 70 thousand protection kits to residents of the area.

The high satisfaction with the Home Front Command's service regarding the distribution time and according to the terms of the agreement with the Israel Post, has brought further cooperation with them on a national level.

Similarly, distribution stations of protection kits are expected to open gradually throughout Israel. In the coming days distribution stations will open in the cities of Ashdod and Rishon LeZion, and shortly after that eight additional stations are expected to open up in the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area, Jerusalem, Beer Sheva, Haifa and its surrounding areas. The Home Front Command reported that according to the agreement additional distribution stations will be established later.

Meanwhile, a television campaign will be launched on Tuesday evening (Apr. 6) to encourage Israeli citizens to equip themselves with the protection kits; later on billboards will also be put up at local authorities.

Dr. Emmanuel Navon: Liberal Conventional Wisdom

2010-04-05T23:36:00.003+03:00

Ne Cherchez pas la Femme

The latest Middle-East conventional wisdom in liberal newspapers and Western chancelleries is that, in order for peace to prevail between Israel and the Palestinians, Benjamin Netanyahu must trade the conservative parties of his current coalition for Kadima. Were Tzipi Livni to return to her previous job as Foreign Minister, the argument goes, the Israeli Government would finally be able to agree to what everyone knows [sic] is the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

One wonders were the proponents of this theory have been for the past four years. When Tzipi Livni was Foreign Minister, her Government did agree to the "solution known by everyone." Ehud Olmert offered Mahmoud Abbas the entire West Bank (with land swaps), a shared sovereignty over Jerusalem, and an agreed-upon mechanism for the compensation of Palestinian refugees (as well as the "return" of a symbolical number to Israel). Abbas turned down the offer and declared a few months later to The Washington Post that the gap is huge" between what Olmert offered and what the Palestinians are willing to accept.

So why would re-enacting the Olmert proposal now (under a hypothetical Netanyahu-Livni government) make a difference? Claiming that Abbas turned down Olmert’s offer because the latter was a lame-duck at the time is a dishonest or ignorant way (or both) of refusing to face the bitter truth: for the Palestinians, the conflict is not about 1967 but about 1948 (hence their uncompromising stance on the so-called "right of return"). And yet, the current US Administration is pressuring Israel to "accept" a deal which the Palestinians have rejected in the recent past and still adamantly refuse today.

Advocates of the "keep trying" method are generally skeptical about the prospects of having the Palestinians agree to the two-state solution. And yet, because maintaining the status-quo would eventually render this solution moot, they choose compulsiveness out of despair. This is because, their punching line and ultimate argument goes, the status-quo is untenable. But untenable for whom? Only for Israel. For the Palestinians, the status quo is actually quite tenable. They reasonably see it as the only way to use what they’ve always considered their best weapon against Israel: demography. Their dream is Israel’s nightmare. And so it is naïve and absurd to expect them to save us from their trap. Yet when Israelis beg the Palestinians to agree to a two-state solution, they do just that: they ask the Palestinians to care more about the Israeli nightmare than about the Palestinian dream.

Most Israeli experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict agree that this conflict is both unsolvable and unsustainable under the present circumstances. Benny Morris, for example, sees no alternative to the two-state solution but also sees no reasonable prospect of implementing it (he utterly blames the Palestinians for that). He suggests the revival of the "Jordanian Option," but this doesn’t wash: with whom, exactly, is Israel supposed to close such a deal? As for Ehud Yaari’s recent article in Foreign Affairs, it just repeats the delusional mistake that because Israel simply cannot afford to see the two-state solution progressively wither, the Palestinians must be either sweet-talked or coerced into accepting it.

The only way out of that imbroglio is for Israel to unilaterally and physically make the one-state solution impossible by completing the construction of the separation fence, by withdrawing from about 90% of the West Bank and by annexing the settlement blocs. The West Bank would undoubtedly turn into another Gaza, but Israel is better off fighting the enemy form without than from within. On balance, bombarding Gaza and the West Bank on a regular basis is still preferable to letting Israel turn into anther Lebanon. Implementing unilateralism without Ahamdinejad and Goldstone in the background would obviously be preferable, but we are talking here about the least bad option in purely Realpolitik terms.

I abhor this scenario emotionally but swallow it intellectually. Dan Schueftan has been advocating it for years, to his credit. When I told him at the end of his panel debate at the last Herzliya Conference that he is the only one who doesn’t talk nonsense, he said he agrees with me. I agree with myself too.

http://www.navon.com

Richard Holbrooke: Washington's Battle Over Israel's Birth

2010-04-04T12:10:00.002+03:00

From the GI Archives

Washington's Battle Over Israel's Birth
By Ambassador Richard Holbrooke
Wednesday, May 7, 2008

In the celebrations next week surrounding Israel's 60th anniversary, it should not be forgotten that there was an epic struggle in Washington over how to respond to Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. It led to the most serious disagreement President Harry Truman ever had with his revered secretary of state, George C. Marshall -- and with most of the foreign policy establishment. Twenty years ago, when I was helping Clark Clifford write his memoirs, I reviewed the historical record and interviewed all the living participants in that drama. The battle lines drawn then resonate still.

The British planned to leave Palestine at midnight on May 14. At that moment, the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, would proclaim the new (and still unnamed) Jewish state. The neighboring Arab states warned that fighting, which had already begun, would erupt into full-scale war at that moment.

The Jewish Agency proposed partitioning Palestine into two parts -- one Jewish, one Arab. But the State and Defense departments backed the British plan to turn Palestine over to the United Nations. In March, Truman privately promised Chaim Weizmann, the future president of Israel, that he would support partition -- only to learn the next day that the American ambassador to the United Nations had voted for U.N. trusteeship. Enraged, Truman wrote a private note on his calendar: "The State Dept. pulled the rug from under me today. The first I know about it is what I read in the newspapers! Isn't that hell? I'm now in the position of a liar and double-crosser. I've never felt so low in my life. . . ."

Truman blamed "third and fourth level" State Department officials -- especially the director of U.N. affairs, Dean Rusk, and the agency's counselor, Charles Bohlen. But opposition really came from an even more formidable group: the "wise men" who were simultaneously creating the great Truman foreign policy of the late 1940s -- among them Marshall, James V. Forrestal, George F. Kennan, Robert Lovett, John J. McCloy, Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson. To overrule State would mean Truman taking on Marshall, whom he regarded as "the greatest living American," a daunting task for a very unpopular president.

Beneath the surface lay unspoken but real anti-Semitism on the part of some (but not all) policymakers. The position of those opposing recognition was simple -- oil, numbers and history. "There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other," Defense Secretary Forrestal told Clifford. "Why don't you face up to the realities?"

On May 12, Truman held a meeting in the Oval Office to decide the issue. Marshall and his universally respected deputy, Robert Lovett, made the case for delaying recognition -- and "delay" really meant "deny." Truman asked his young aide, Clark Clifford, to present the case for immediate recognition. When Clifford finished, Marshall, uncharacteristically, exploded. "I don't even know why Clifford is here. He is a domestic adviser, and this is a foreign policy matter. The only reason Clifford is here is that he is pressing a political consideration."

Marshall then uttered what Clifford would later call "the most remarkable threat I ever heard anyone make directly to a President." In an unusual top-secret memorandum Marshall wrote for the historical files after the meeting, the great general recorded his own words: "I said bluntly that if the President were to follow Mr. Clifford's advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President."

After this stunning moment, the meeting adjourned in disarray. In the next two days, Clifford looked for ways to get Marshall to accept recognition. Lovett, although still opposed to recognition, finally talked a reluctant Marshall into remaining silent if Truman acted. With only a few hours left until midnight in Tel Aviv, Clifford told the Jewish Agency to request immediate recognition of the new state, which still lacked a name. Truman announced recognition at 6:11 p.m. on May 14 -- 11 minutes after Ben-Gurion's declaration of independence in Tel Aviv. So rapidly was this done that in the official announcement, the typed words "Jewish State" are crossed out, replaced in Clifford's handwriting with "State of Israel." Thus the United States became the first nation to recognize Israel, as Truman and Clifford wanted. The secret of the Oval Office confrontation held for years, and a crisis in both domestic politics and foreign policy was narrowly averted.

Clifford insisted to me and others in countless discussions over the next 40 years that politics was not at the root of his position -- moral conviction was. Noting sharp divisions within the American Jewish community -- the substantial anti-Zionist faction among leading Jews included the publishers of both The Post and the New York Times -- Clifford had told Truman in his famous 1947 blueprint for Truman's presidential campaign that "a continued commitment to liberal political and economic policies" was the key to Jewish support.

But to this day, many think that Marshall and Lovett were right on the merits and that domestic politics was the real reason for Truman's decision. Israel, they argue, has been nothing but trouble for the United States.

I think this misses the point. Israel was going to come into existence whether or not Washington recognized it. But without American support from the very beginning, Israel's survival would have been at even greater risk. Even if European Jewry had not just emerged from the horrors of World War II, it would have been an unthinkable act of abandonment by the United States. Truman's decision, although opposed by almost the entire foreign policy establishment, was the right one -- and despite complicated consequences that continue to this day, it is a decision all Americans should recognize and admire.

Richard Holbrooke was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1999 to 2001 and chief architect of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement. He is currently Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Obama administration.

Prof. Efraim Inbar: Netanyahu Can Say "No"

2010-04-04T10:00:00.007+03:00

BESA Center Perspectives Papers No. 103, March 25, 2010

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Obama administration's attempt to force Israel to accept the division of Jerusalem as a prerequisite for peace talks is astonishing. Despite the obvious reluctance to confront an American president, Prime Minister Netanyahu can effectively resist such American pressure on Jerusalem. In fact, Jerusalem is the issue on which Netanyahu can best make a stand against Obama.

President Barack Obama capitalized on a minor Israeli glitch - the announcement of Israel's plans to build in Ramat Shlomo - to fabricate a crisis in US-Israeli relations. Obama seeks to renegotiate the agreement reached for starting proximity talks with the Palestinians and to extract additional concessions from Israel. Most striking and central is the administration's effort to force Israel into accepting the division of Jerusalem even before the talks start.

The White House expects that the Israeli prime minister will bend under pressure to its wishes. While in the past Netanyahu has proven susceptible to such pressure, the administration may be overplaying its hand on the issue of Jerusalem. Despite the obvious reluctance to confront an American president, Prime Minister Netanyahu can effectively resist American pressure. In fact, this is the issue on which Netanyahu can best take a stand against Obama.

The division of the city is opposed by the current democratically-elected Israeli government and (according to polls that I have directed) by over 70 percent of the Jews in Israel. Few issues in Israel command such a large and clear majority.

The timing of the crisis also serves Israel well. A few days before Passover when Jews repeat a 2,000-year-old text pledging, "Next year in Jerusalem," Netanyahu can say no to American demands for concessions in Jerusalem. Rejection of the division of Jerusalem expresses the deepest wishes of an overwhelming number of Jews living both in Israel and the Diaspora.

In contrast to parts of Judea and Samaria, the Israeli need to maintain the status quo in Jerusalem is easiest to explain. The Palestinian claim to Jerusalem is weak. There was never a Palestinian state and the Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem for the past 150 years. Jerusalem has never been a capital of any political entity, except that of a Jewish State.

Moreover, the Arab residents of Jerusalem, if given a choice, would in all probability prefer to live under Israeli sovereignty than become part of a failed Palestinian state. Finally, dividing a city makes very little urban or political sense.

Netanyahu has the rhetorical power to galvanize widespread Jewish support for continued and unrestrained Israeli rule in Jerusalem. In 1967, the Jews were fortunate to liberate Jerusalem, their ancient capital, and particularly the Temple Mount, their holiest site. The fortunes of the eternal city strike an emotional chord for every Jew. Even many non-Jews share the same sensitivity.

Israel can reject the Obama demands for additional confidence-building measures by pointing to Obama's unfairness toward Israel. Netanyahu's already significant concessions have been belittled by the American administration and rejected as a sign of Israeli seriousness entering into peace talks. Netanyahu's acquiescence to the two-state paradigm was coolly received in Washington. A partial freeze in Judea and Samaria, an unprecedented concession by an Israeli government, was welcomed only as a "step in the right direction." Agreeing to proximity talks instead of insisting on direct negotiations - another significant Israeli concession - also is not good enough for the Obama White House.

In contrast, Obama appears to relish humiliating and bullying Netanyahu, the prime minister of a democratic, embattled state. This appears to fit Obama's overall foreign policy approach of estranging democratic allies while appeasing anti-American dictators.

Israel's prime minister is acutely aware of the need for American support and friendship and has gone a long way to dispel skepticism about his sincere pursuit of peace. Israelis are frustrated with Obama for favoring the Palestinians, who continue to deny the right of Jewish self-determination and who continue to glorify terrorists that kill Jews.

The US, under Obama, ignored the fact that the offers by Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert to cede virtually all of the disputed territories were respectively rejected by Arafat in 2000 and ignored by his successor, Abbas, in 2008.

Moreover, in 2000 the Palestinians launched a campaign of terror and recently they have threatened to renew it. Similarly, after the Sharon government unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and dismantled all settlements in 2005, the Gaza Strip was converted into a launching pad for intensified missile attacks. Nowadays, it is the Palestinians that are dragging their feet, hoping that the US will force Israel to accept their preconditions.

Flagrant conflict with the US is not something an Israeli leader prefers, but sometimes the asymmetry between a great power and its small ally is not compelling. The Israeli interest in keeping Jerusalem united is more intense than the Obama desire for a foreign policy success. The balance of determination tilts in Israel's favor. Moreover, Israel has some leverage by its nuisance value; that is, it can do things that the US does not like. One clear example is an attack on Iran. Another source of Israeli influence is the character of the American political system, which is susceptible to lobbies and popular sentiment.

Fortunately, the level of public support for Israel in the US is at a record high. Over two-thirds of Americans view Israel favorably and prefer the Jewish State to the Palestinians. Congress reflects such widespread attitudes. Since the President is not in sync with a huge majority of Americans on this issue, Israel has a good chance of convincing the American people that their president is unfair to the Jewish State and is wrong in trying to impose his views on democratic Israel. We already see American voices in the media and in Congress expressing criticism of Obama for not treating Netanyahu properly.

At stake is not just a policy issue. Hanna Arendt in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, points out that attitude toward Jews is the litmus test for measuring democratic retrogression. This is true of the attitude toward the Jewish state as well. The unwavering American commitment to democracy incorporates respect for choices made by other democracies. Israel can convince Americans that its democratically-elected government has every right to determine its future.

If Obama continues to insist on freezing construction in Jerusalem, Israel's prime minister has the option to tell the US and the world that the Jews have returned to where King David established his capital 3,000 years earlier and that they intend to stay there. The text of such a response is easily available:

"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither. Let my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy"
(Psalms 137, 5-7).

Once in a while such words have great power.

Prof. Efraim Inbar is director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, and professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. BESA Perspectives is published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family.

Courtesy: BESA

JINSA Flag & General Officers Statement

2010-04-03T20:31:00.004+03:00

JINSA Note: When U.S.-Israel relations hit a rough patch, there are those who quickly blame Israel for America's difficulties abroad. Israel has outrageously been blamed for endangering American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, and erroneously been blamed for preventing the formation of an Arab coalition to work with the US to contain Iran. While we recognize, as Gen. Petraeus did, that American support for Israel is used by our adversaries to foment anti-Americanism, we also recognize that the important countries of the region won't like us any better if we shed Israel as an ally. They will wonder how quickly we will shed THEM when they are inconvenient. The correct response to those who denigrate the U.S.-Israel relationship, is to note that Israel is a friend by virtue of shared civic and political values and a security asset upon which the United States can rely.

For nearly 30 years, JINSA has been taking recently retired American Admirals and Generals to Israel to better understand the threats Israel faces, the resources it brings to its own defense and ways in which the U.S. and Israel can cooperate on common security issues. Their understanding of the role of Israel is in the ad below. JINSA is working to place the ad in newspapers (Jewish and other) around the country to ensure that Americans (Jewish and other) hear these voices.

You too can help spread the word by making a contribution to JINSA.

We, the undersigned, have traveled to Israel over the years with The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). We brought with us our decades of military experience and, following unrestricted access to Israel's civilian and military leaders, came away with the unswerving belief that the security of the State of Israel is a matter of great importance to the United States and its policy in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. A strong, secure Israel is an asset upon which American military planners and political leaders can rely. Israel is a democracy - a rare and precious commodity in the region - and Israel shares our commitment to freedom, personal liberty and rule of law.

Throughout our travels and our talks, the determination of Israelis to protect their country and to pursue a fair and workable peace with their neighbors was clearly articulated. Thus we view the current tension between the United States and Israel with dismay and grave concern that political differences may be allowed to outweigh our larger mutual interests.

As American defense professionals, we view events in the Middle East through the prism of American security interests.

The United States and Israel established security cooperation during the Cold War, and today the two countries face the common threat of terrorism by those who fear freedom and liberty. Historically close cooperation between the United States. and Israel at all levels including the IDF, military research and development, shared intelligence and bilateral military training exercises enhances the security of both countries. American police and law enforcement officials have reaped the benefit of close cooperation with Israeli professionals in the areas of domestic counter-terrorism practices and first response to terrorist attacks.

Israel and the United States are drawn together by shared values and shared threats to our well-being.

The proliferation of weapons and nuclear technology across the Middle East and Asia, and the ballistic missile technology to deliver systems across wide areas require cooperation in intelligence, technology and security policy. Terrorism, as well as the origins of financing, training and executing terrorist acts, need to be addressed multilaterally when possible. The dissemination of hatred and support of terrorism by violent extremists in the name of Islam, whether state or non-state actors, must be addressed as a threat to global peace.

In the Middle East, a volatile region so vital to U.S. interests, it would be foolish to disengage - or denigrate - an ally such as Israel.

Rear Admiral Charles Beers, USN (ret.)
General William Begert, USAF (ret.)
Rear Admiral Stanley W. Bryant, USN (ret.)
Lieutenant General Anthony Burshnick, USAF (ret.)
Lieutenant General Paul Cerjan, USA (ret.)
Admiral Leon Edney, USN (ret.)
Brigadier General William F. Engel, USA (ret.)
Major General Bobby Floyd, USAF (ret.)
Major General Paul Fratarangelo, USMC (ret.)
Major General David Grange, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Tom Griffin, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Earl Hailston, USMC (ret.)
Lieutenant General John Hall, USAF (ret.)
General Alfred Hansen, USAF (ret.)
Rear Admiral James Hinkle, USN (ret.)
General Hal Hornburg, USAF (ret.)
Major General James T. Jackson, USA (ret.)
Admiral Jerome Johnson, USN (ret.)
Rear Admiral Herb Kaler, USN (ret.)
Vice Admiral Bernard Kauderer, USN (ret.)
General William F. Kernan, USA (ret.)
Major General Homer Long, USA (ret.)
Major General Jarvis Lynch, USMC (ret.)
General Robert Magnus, USMC (ret.)
Lieutenant General Charles May, Jr., USAF (ret.)
Vice Admiral Martin Mayer, USN (ret.)
Major General Fred McCorkle, USMC (ret.)
Rear Admiral Mark Milliken, USN (ret.)
Major General William Moore, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Carol Mutter, USMC (ret.)
Major General Larry T. Northington, USAF (ret.)
Lieutenant General Tad Oelstrom, USAF (ret.)
Major General James D. Parker, USA (ret.)
Vice Admiral J. T. Parker, USN (ret.)
Major General Robert Patterson, USAF (ret.)
Vice Admiral James Perkins, USN (ret.)
Rear Admiral Brian Peterman, USCG (ret.)
Lieutenant General Alan V. Rogers, USAF (ret.)
Rear Admiral Richard Rybacki, USCG (ret.)
General Crosbie Saint, USA (ret.)
Rear Admiral Norm Saunders, USCG (ret.)
Major General Sid Shachnow, USA (ret.)
Rear Admiral Jeremy Taylor, USN (ret.)
Major General Larry Taylor, USMCR (ret.)
Lieutenant General Lanny Trapp, USAF (ret.)
Vice Admiral Jerry O. Tuttle, USN (ret.)
General Louis Wagner, USA (ret.)
Rear Admiral Thomas Wilson, USN (ret.)
Lieutenant General Robert Winglass, USMC (ret.)
Rear Admiral Guy Zeller, USN (ret.)

- signatures as of April 1, 2010

- Courtesy of JINSA

Caroline Glick: Has Obama Done Netanyahu A Favor?

2010-04-02T14:40:00.002+03:00

Caroline B. Glick: Exploiting the Crisis

Actually, Obama may have done Israel and Netanyahu a favor

There is an element of irony in the current crisis of relations between the Obama administration and Israel. On the one hand, although US President Barack Obama and his advisors deny there is anything wrong with US-Israel relations today, it is easy to understand why no one believes them.

On the other hand on most issues, there is substantive continuity between Obama's Middle East policies and those his immediate predecessor George W. Bush adopted during his second term in office. Yet, whereas Israelis viewed Bush as Israel's greatest friend in the White House, they view Obama as the most anti-Israel US president ever. This contradiction requires us to consider two issues. First, why are relations with the US now steeped in crisis? And second, taking a page out of Obama's White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel's playbook, how can Israel make sure not to let this crisis go to waste?

The reason relations are so bad of course is because Obama has opted to attack Israel and its supporters. In the space of the past ten days alone, Israel has been subject to three malicious blows courtesy of Obama and his advisors. First, during his visit to the White House last Tuesday, Obama treated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu like a two-bit potentate. Rather than respectfully disagree with the elected leader of a key US ally, Obama walked out in the middle of their meeting to dine with his family and left the unfed Netanyahu to meditate on his grave offense of not agreeing to give up Israel's capital city as a precondition for indirect, US-orchestrated negotiations with an unelected, unpopular Palestinian leadership that supports terrorism and denies Israel's right to exist. Next, there was the somewhat anodyne — if substantively incorrect — written testimony by US Army General David Petreaus to the Senate about the impact of the Arab world's refusal to accept Israel's right to exist on US-Arab relations. In the event, the administration deliberately distorted Petreaus's testimony to lend the impression that the most respected serving US military commander blames Israel for the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. After Petreaus rejected that impression, his boss Defense Secretary Robert Gates repeated the false and insulting allegation against Israel in his own name.

Finally there is was the report this week in Politico in which nameless administration sources accused National Security Council member Denis Ross of "dual loyalties." Ross of course has won fame for his career of pressuring successive Israeli governments into giving unreciprocated concessions to Palestinian terrorists.

Still, in the view of his indignant opponents in the Obama White House, due to his insufficient hostility to the Israeli government, Ross is a traitor. If Ross wants to be treated like a real American, he needs to join Obama in his open bid to overthrow the elected government of Israel.

These moves would be sufficient to throw US-Israel relations into a tailspin. When combined with the administration's ultimatum demanding a moratorium on Jewish construction in Jerusalem and its threat to coerce Israel into accepting an Obama plan for Palestinian statehood that will imperil Israel's security, it becomes abundantly clear that there is no way to make this crisis go away. There is a crisis in US relations with Israel today because the President of the United States has very publically taken a torch to those relations and he responds to any sign that the flames are waning by dousing fresh kerosene on the fire.

And yet, when Obama's personal animus is set aside and one examines the substance of his actual policies, ironically, there is little difference between the current administration's policies and those of its immediate predecessor.
In his second term in office, Bush ignored the significance of Hamas's electoral victory in January 2006 and its takeover of Gaza in June 2007. The US expanded its training program for the Palestinian armed forces and pushed Israel to accept a framework for Palestinian statehood that would more or less push it back to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines.

From 2004, the Bush administration sought to appease Iran into giving up its nuclear program — first indirectly through the negotiations that France, Britain and Germany conducted with Teheran. Then in 2006, the administration began direct negotiations with the mullahs.

Bush personally rejected repeated Israeli requests to purchase refueling aircraft and bunker buster bombs necessary for attacking Iran's hardened nuclear facilities. And he refused to back Israeli plans to attack Iran's nuclear installations. So too, Bush stopped calling for regime change in Iran. After the November 2007 publication of the falsified National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program, Bush discarded the possibility of a US military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities altogether.
In the 2006 war between Israel the Iranian and Syrian-proxy force Hizbullah, ignoring Hizbullah's membership in the Lebanese government and the Lebanese military's active support for Hizbullah's war effort, Bush forbade Israel from attacking Lebanese government targets. In so doing, he forced Israel to fight a regional foe as if it were a local street gang and so rendered the ultimate result of that war — Israel's first strategic military defeat — a foregone conclusion.

Despite Syria's open sponsorship of the insurgency in Iraq, its strategic alliance with Iran, as well as its sponsorship of Hizbullah, Hamas and al Qaida in Iraq and Lebanon, the Bush administration sought to prevent Israel from destroying Syria's Iranian-financed, North Korean-built nuclear facility. After Israel destroyed the installation in Sept. 2007, the Bush administration demanded that Israel keep silent about the significance of Iranian-North Korean-Syrian nuclear alliance.

Finally, the Bush administration denied the inherent hostility of the Islamist government in Turkey. Instead it cultivated the fantasy that this anti-American, anti-Israel, Hamas, Syria and Iran-supporting regime is a trustworthy ally.
Israel went along with all of these US policies despite their strategic madness because Israel wanted to be a team player. The Sharon and Olmert governments and the Israeli public as a whole believed that Israel had an ally in the Bush administration and that when push came to shove, the massive risks Israel took supporting the US's policies on Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and the Palestinians would be rewarded.

With Obama of course, things are different. Probably if Obama treated Israel with the same friendliness his predecessor showered on its leaders, Netanyahu would have been willing to walk the plank just as Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon did, in the interests of helping his team. But what Obama has made clear in his mistreatment of Israel is that he doesn't want Netanyahu to walk the plank for the team. He wants Israel off the team.

Although unsettling, this dismal state of affairs has a bright side. It provides Israel with a rare opportunity to stop acceding to US policies that are bad for Israel and the US alike. After all, if the US is willing to instigate a crisis in its relations with Israel over plans to zone for housing units in Jerusalem neighborhoods like Ramat Shlomo and French Hill, then clearly Israel can do no right. And if Israel can do no right in the eyes of the administration, then there is no point in bending to its will. Instead, Israel must simply do what it must to secure its interests.
In the hope of winning over the Obama administration, Israel has kept the Iranian opposition at arm's length. This should end. Israel should employ covert and overt means to help Iran's Green Movement destabilize with the aim of toppling the Iranian regime. At the same time, Israel should employ covert and overt means to destroy Iran's nuclear installations.

This week Senator John Kerry travelled to Lebanon and Syria to raise the prospects of peace talks between Israel and both countries. Rather than applaud his efforts, Israel should point out that Hizbullah controls the Lebanese government and that US support for the Lebanese military and government strengthens Hizbullah. So too, Israel should make clear that since Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Arab water boy, it is preposterous to call for Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to his regime. Instead of rehashing the same nonsense, Israel should actively support Syria's Kurds in their bid for autonomy and champion the cause of political prisoners languishing in Syrian jails.

Turkey's announcement this week that it supports Iran's nuclear ambitions should be recognized for what it was: An announcement that the NATO member state has joined the Iranian axis with Syria, Lebanon, Hamas and Hizbullah. Israel should respond to Turkey's announcement by announcing a moratorium on weapons sales to Turkey and so end its counterproductive attempts to paper over the fact that its former strategic ally has become its enemy.

As to the Palestinians, rather than succumb to US demands in the interest of starting doomed-to-fail negotiations with Fatah, Israel should tell the truth. It has nothing to negotiate about and no one to negotiate with. Fatah's leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad reject Israel's right to exist. They support terrorism. They already rejected a "two-state solution" less than two years ago. Aside from that, they lack the support of their own electorate which prefers Hamas's more direct approach to destroying Israel.

Instead of pretending that begging these impotent adversaries for peace serves its interests, Israel should get off its knees and adopt policies that will enhance its interests. For instance, given that the Obama administration views Ramat Shlomo as the equivalent of Eli and E-1, Israel should build up the neighborhood in Eli that was home to fallen IDF commanders Majors Ro'i Klein and Eliraz Peretz and implement its construction plans for E-1.

Ironically, all of these policies are consonant not only with Israel's strategic needs, but with the US's own strategic interests. And since Obama's hostility towards Israel is not subject to change, rather than focus on winning over the White House, the Netanyahu government should devote its energies to selling its policies to the American people.

Repeated polls have shown that the American public supports an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. By the same token, commonsense policies towards the likes of Fatah, Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Turkey, combined with the unapologetic assertion of Israel's rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria will find a strong core of support in the US that can offset some of the damage Obama is doing to US ties with Israel.

Although much maligned, Emmanuel's call not to let a good crisis go to waste can be taken as a crass way of saying that every cloud has a silver lining. Israel did not ask for this fight with Obama. It would have been willing to keep up the fantasy that Bush's second-term policies made sense. But since a fight is what it got, Israel has no choice other than to strike out on its own. As it happens, if Israel does so, not only will it protect itself, it will protect the US from the dangerous policies its leader has opted to pursue.

Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the senior contributing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

Caroline Glick: Israel's Unwavering Guardsmen

2010-04-01T14:45:00.005+03:00

March 26, 2010, 11:20 AM

As the local and international press corps converged on Jerusalem's Old City to cover the Arab riots at the Temple Mount two weeks ago, little mention was made of the fact that Jerusalem was not the only flashpoint. In Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israeli Arab rioters supported by far-left protesters stoned buses. Israeli Arabs firebombed motorists on Highway 443 and on the roads to Beersheba. In the North, cars were stoned.

These little-reported attacks are the consequence of one of the most dangerous emerging threats to Israel's national survival: the rapidly escalating radicalization of Israel's Arab citizens.

Over the past decade and at a frenzied pace since the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, acting at least partially at the direction of the Israeli Islamic Movement and with the active support of the far left, Israeli Arabs and Beduin have launched a massive assault on the state. The relevant national authorities including the courts, the state prosecution, the police, the IDF, the Jewish National Fund, the Israel Lands Authority and the Ministry of Interior have failed to defend against it.

Firebombing Jewish-owned vehicles is small potatoes in comparison to developments at the center of mass of the Israeli Arab onslaught: state land. Over the past decade, Israeli Arabs have seized millions of dunams of state land.

The dimensions of this phenomenon were spelled out in last year's State Comptroller's Report. While the local and international Left pillories Israel when the state tries to demolish a handful of the thousands of illegal Arab buildings in Jerusalem, what goes unmentioned is that by the end of 2007 there were more than 100,000 illegally built structures in Israel. The overwhelming majority were constructed on state land seized by Arab land thieves in the Negev and the Galilee. By the end of 2009, the number of illegal buildings grew to an estimated 150,000. The scope of the theft is so vast that the Comptroller's Report referred to it as a "national scourge."

Most of the open land in Israel is owned by the state and administered by farmers, ranchers and the IDF. Farmers and ranchers - particularly in the North and the South, but in areas around Jerusalem as well - are daily terrorized by neighboring Arab thieves. The thieves destroy their fences, steal and slaughter their livestock and threaten to murder them if they raise any objections, mend their fences or install surveillance cameras. Many farmers and ranchers - like most business owners around Beersheba and Upper Nazareth - are coerced into paying protection money to the same Arab gangs who target their fields.

As the Comptroller's Report makes clear, the threatened and abused farmers have no official body to turn to for help. While incidence of land theft has increased more than 50 percent in recent years, enforcement measures at all levels have decreased by 81%. In 2007, courts issued just 5,400 judgments on illegal construction. Of these, only 193 led to demolition orders. And just a handful of those orders were carried out.

Israel has no official policy for contending with the problem. A police unit formed specifically to enforce land laws has only recruited 55% of its allotted personnel and most of those 64 policemen devote their energies to routine policing duties.

The absence of state protection has led farmers and ranchers to abandon their lands. For instance, continuous harassment by Arabs from the village of Tuba Zangaria forced Kibbutz Kfar Hanassi just east of Rosh Pinna to abandon 4,000 dunams (400 hectares) of land. Neighboring Kibbutz Amiad abandoned 13,000 dunams. Upper Nazareth is poised to abandon 20,000 dunams. The police refuse to even escort Upper Nazareth's Mayor Shimon Gafsou to threatened areas.

In the South, the situation is no different. Illegal Beduin squatters from the Taarbiya tribe that migrated to Israel from Sinai have gone to war against the Omer Local Council for trying to build a new neighborhood on land they illegally seized. They have shot at contractors, attacked police escorts. They burned down an electrical transformer station, leaving the area with no electricity for over a week, and then burned down a replacement station.

Omer Council Chairman Pini Badash has been the target of repeated attacks. Badash bought an airplane to document the illegal construction as part of his efforts to force the state to act. The Beduin burned his plane. They burned his wife's car in front of her and have repeatedly threatened to kill him.

LIKE THE farmers and local councils, the army has simply given up. The IDF has abandoned training areas throughout the North and South. For instance, the Nevetim Air Force base has abandoned 17,000 dunams stolen by Beduin. According to the Comptroller's Report, 220-250 families have squatted on the land and built approximately 800 illegal buildings. Between 2004 and 2008, there was a 53% increase in the number of illegally built structures.

Rather than defend its bases and the surrounding areas, the IDF has limited the movement of its own officers. The IAF has prohibited its fighter pilots (!) from traveling alone on the highway linking Tel Arad with Beersheba via the Shoket junction. Due to repeated shooting attacks on Jewish-owned vehicles, the pilots who protect our skies are required to travel in convoys of no less than four vehicles.

Just as its grantees played a lead role in the formation of the UN's Goldstone Commission and the drafting of its defamatory accusations against Israel, organizations supported by the New Israel Fund have played a large role in abetting the Israeli Arab theft of state lands. NIF- and EU-supported groups like Adallah, the Regional Council of Unrecognized Arab Villages, Um Batin and The Steering Committee for Planning and Protection of Arab Rights in the Negev have waged a political and legal assault on Israel to prevent the state from protecting itself and its citizens from Beduin and Arab land crimes.

Cowed by the twin forces of the Red-Green alliance, successive governments have tried to solve the problem by buying off the Arabs. The Olmert government built a village for the Taarbiya Beduin outside of Omer and gave each family NIS 180,000 to leave the illegal structures they had built on state land and accept free houses. Most agreed to relocate, but the 50 families who remained in place stepped up their assaults on Omer while demanding to receive ownership rights for the land they stole.

Just this past Sunday the cabinet unanimously approved a multi-year program to transfer NIS 800 million to 12 Beduin and Arab communities. The government touted the move as a "stimulus plan."

LUCKILY FOR Israel, the leadership vacuum created by successive governments is beginning to be filled today by a group of law abiding, idealistic young Israelis. The New Israeli Guardsman is a voluntary organization formed two years ago by the sons and daughters of distressed farmers and ranchers.

Yoel Zilberman was an officer in one of the IDF's elite commando units who got tired of watching his father - a farmer at Moshav Tzipori in the Western Galilee - despair as Arab gangs from surrounding villages cut his fences, stole his livestock and wrecked his crops. During his furloughs, Zilberman began carrying out night time patrols of his father's fields and repeatedly intercepted thieves as they infiltrated his land.

Over time, Zilberman realized that it wasn't enough for him to guard his father's land. His efforts just deflected the problem onto his neighbors. So he organized his friends, the sons and daughters of other farmers in the area, and formed the New Israeli Guardsmen, named after the original Guardsmen - the first Jewish self-defense organization in the Land of Israel in the modern era, which was formed a hundred years ago.

The New Israeli Guardsmen - which today operates throughout the Galilee and the Negev - fields more than 650 volunteers who devote up to 20 days a year to guarding land or mending vandalized farm equipment and fences.

Recognizing that the long-term solution to the problem is to increase the public's dedication to classic Zionist ideals of Jewish control over the Land of Israel, in addition to building and manning guard posts, the Guardsmen organize courses and lectures on Jewish history, Zionism, Jewish philosophy and other relevant topics at their guard posts for the general public.

Next year, 30 young men carefully vetted from a pool of 300 volunteers will receive a yearlong deferral of their military service to serve with the Guardsmen. They will be split into three groups of 10 and man three guard posts in the Galilee and the Negev. Each guard station controls between 5,000 and 20,000 dunams. In addition to their guard duties, the young men will receive agricultural training and study Jewish history, Talmud, philosophy and Arab history. Zilberman hopes that the program will inspire its participants to choose farming as their vocation after they finish their army service.

The Guardsmen operate on a shoestring budget scraped together from private donors. Contingent on raising the necessary funds, the group intends to increase its corps of volunteers tenfold by 2013. If it meet its goals, 6,000 volunteers and 300 national service program members will operate from 30 guard stations in the Galilee and the Negev and protect between 400,000 and 600,000 dunams of state land. They also hope to reach out to Jews in the Diaspora and encourage them to come to Israel and volunteer for the Guardsmen, to bring them closer to the story and fate of the State of Israel.

Zilberman believes that the success of the Guardsmen will empower the state to take the necessary action to enforce Israel's laws and so defeat the strategic threat posed by the radicalization of the Israeli Arab sector. And he is probably right. At any rate, it is all but certain that the government could take no action without the Guardsmen.

In light of the growing force of the international campaign to delegitimize Israel's right to exist, no government in Jerusalem will act unless it feels it has strong and stable backing from a mobilized citizenry. For instance, it is hard to imagine how Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could have defended Jerusalem as stalwartly as he did during his trip to Washington this week if he hadn't known that the public is with him.

By the same token, the state will only enforce its laws without prejudice when it is certain that the public will rally behind it. Our leaders need to know that the public will stand behind them when the New Israel Fund grantees collaborate with the international Left and the Islamic Movement to demonize Israel as racist for protecting the property rights of the state and its citizens.

Israel, like all democracies, is only as strong as its citizens. What organizations like the New Israeli Guardsmen show is that Israel's citizens are strong. We are willing to bear the burdens of a free people. As Pessah, the Jewish festival of freedom, approaches, we must support their endeavors and demand that our leaders follow their example.

How to contribute to the New Israeli Guardsmen

Comment by Caroline Glick:

If you were inspired by the story of the New Israeli Guardsmen (Hashomer Hahadash) and would like to support their efforts, here is the information you need to contribute.

US citizens may make tax exempt contributions to the Guardsmen through the Israel Independence Fund. Please stipulate on the check that the contribution is for the Shomer Hahadash (New Guardsmen).

The fund's mailing address:

The Israel Independence Fund
c/o NGN Capital
369 Lexington Avenue, 17th Floor
New York, NY 10017

If you would like to make a non-tax-deductible direct bank transfer contribution, please wire the money to Bank Yahav, branch 142, account number 5002 for the Shomer Hahadash.

You can also send checks in shekels directly to the organization as follows:

Make the checks out to:

Yoel Zilberman for the Shomer Hahadash
Moshav Tzippori, Israel, 17910.

If you are Israeli and would like to make a tax exempt contribution, the group has made arrangements to accept such contributions. To get precise information please contact Yoel Zilberman at sando.shomer@gmail.com.

Thanks for your support for these important endeavors on behalf of Israel.

Caroline Glick: Obama's Jewish Defenders

2010-04-01T14:34:00.001+03:00

Two weeks ago, President Barack Obama opened a diplomatic war on Israel. The proximate cause of his offensive was the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Board's decision to approve the future construction of 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem.

The goal of the assault is twofold. First, it seeks to undermine the legitimacy of Israel's control over Jerusalem in order to weaken Israel's standing among the American public. As Obama advisor Martin Indyk mocked, Obama's onslaught against Israel has made the Netanyahu government "supersensitive," about Jerusalem.

Second, as Obama's advisors explained to The Atlantic, through his unprecedented attacks on Israel's right to sovereignty over its capital city, Obama is working to topple Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government in the hopes of replacing it with a leftist government led by Tzipi Livni and Kadima.

It is a startling turn of events. Obama of course was elected to the presidency with the overwhelming support of the American Jewish community. Part of that support - which netted him 78 percent of the Jewish vote -- was based on his repeated assertion that he is absolutely committed to Israel's security.

Obama's expressed desire to overthrow the democratically elected government of Israel stands in contrast to his refusal to acknowledge the basic illegitimacy of the Iranian regime he seeks to appease. That government is founded on last June's stolen presidential elections which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power amidst massive opposition from the Iranian people. And of course, the Iranian regime which Obama coddles is publicly developing nuclear weapons with the declared purpose of destroying Israel; serves as the leading state sponsor of terrorism; and according to the US and British militaries is training al Qaida and Taliban fighters to kill US and British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In an interview with ABC News in January, Obama made clear that the transformative change he pledged to bring to America during the 2008 presidential campaign remained the goal of his administration. Indeed, he made clear that to enact the sort of unpopular, radical domestic and foreign policies he favors, he is willing to diminish his prospects for reelection. As he put it, "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president."

To enact his deeply unpopular domestic agenda, Obama relies for support on labor unions, the leftist leadership of the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill, the leftist media and pressure organizations like MoveOn.org. These organs work to demonize Republicans while threatening Democrats who are not leftists with defunding and primary challenges in order to coerce them to support Obama's radical domestic policies.

In light of the deep and widespread support Israel enjoys among Israelis, Obama has cobbled together a similar coalition against the Netanyahu government specifically and against a strong Israel generally. His coalition for weakening the US alliance with Israel is comprised of Leftist Israelis - and particularly the Kadima Party and the Israeli media on the one hand -- and leftist pro-Palestinian American Jewish groups on the other hand. Together, these Israeli and American Jewish groups provide political cover for Obama's onslaught against Israel and the US alike.

The Jerusalem planning board's decision was non-political. The board is staffed by professional urban planners, representatives of the nature reserves authority and other statutory bodies who convene to determine whether building schemes comport with law and building regulations or not. Its meetings never attract much attention.

As the Netanyahu government sought to understand how a routine meeting of the board became an international story, many officials alleged that Kadima had colluded with the Obama administration to exploit the board's decision to provoke a crisis in US-Israel relations. Kadima's purpose in this, it was argued, was to lower the public's support for Netanyahu.

These allegations have been supported by the fact that a week before Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to Israel, Livni confidante and Kadima MK Yoel Hasson told Israeli Radio, "In the coming weeks we will see how messed up Netanyahu's relations with the Europeans and Americans are."

Furthermore, Makor Rishon's senior columnist Amnon Lord reported last Friday that Kadima heavyweight Haim Ramon met with one of Obama's senior Middle East advisors ahead of Biden's visit. He also pointed out that Livni's key political advisor Eyal Arad is also an advisor to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

Whether or not Kadima colluded with the Obama administration to cook up the crisis over building in Jerusalem, Livni and her cohorts were quick to loudly condemn Netanyahu for the decision - about which he was uninformed and regarding which he has no legal authority to intervene.

In condemning Netanyahu, Livni and her Kadima colleagues were energetically assisted by the Israeli media.

All the major commentators at all the major newspapers pounced on the story as a means to attack Netanyahu and side with the Obama administration. Prominent among these condemnations was Yediot Ahronot's senior commentator Shimon Shiffer. Ignoring Biden's long record in the Senate of rejecting every sanctions bill against Iran, and his fair-weathered support for Israel, Shiffer declared Biden the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the US Senate while lambasting Netanyahu for "insulting" this great friend of Israel by not preventing a meeting he didn't know about and had no authority to interfere with.

With the Israeli Left actively supporting Obama's onslaught against Netanyahu in Israel, Obama's Jewish American surrogates J Street and Americans for Peace Now denounced his critics at home. In time for AIPAC's annual policy conference this week in Washington, J-Street published a full page ad in The New York Times on Monday applauding Obama's condemnation of Israel and calling for the administration to dictate the terms of a "peace" deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

These Jewish American and Israeli forces provide cover not only for Obama to attack Israel, but even for anti-Semites to gain credibility for their vicious broadsides against the Jewish state. So it is that last week The Washington Post published an op-ed by Prof. Steve Walt, the co-author of the anti-Semitic tome The Israel and US Foreign Policy. In his article, Walt claimed that AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Anti Defamation League are anti-Israel and that Obama, J-Street and Americans for Peace Now are Israel's true friends. By inference, of course, Walt asserted that he too, is a great friend of Israel. And this is from a man who won his fame by claiming that Israel's Jewish American supporters operate in a conspiratorial, underhanded manner to influence US foreign policy in a way that harms US national security.

By proclaiming that Obama is pro-Israel, his Jewish supporters in Israel and the US invert reality. Their obvious intention is to use the jargon of supporting Israel to confuse, demoralize and disenfranchise Israel's actual supporters in the US while demonizing the majority of Israelis who believe that Obama is hostile to Israel and support Netanyahu in his rejection of Obama's pressure.

The great challenge of the overwhelming majority of Israelis, and of Israel's actual supporters in the US is to hold these mendacious voices in Israel and in the American Jewish community alike accountable for their actions. Otherwise, by pretending to be pro-Israel while attacking Israel's sovereign rights and actual supporters these forces will do more than simply destabilizing the democratically elected government of Israel. They will undermine the foundations of the US-Israel alliance and endanger the security of the Jewish state and the wellbeing of the American Jewish community.

Originally published in The Jewish Press.

Posted on March 28, 2010 at 4:15 PM

Sarah Palin: Peace Not Possible if Iran Not Sanctioned

2010-04-01T13:58:00.009+03:00

Peace Not Possible if Iran Escapes Real Sanctions

GI Note: Please take note of Israeli flag behind Mrs. Palin's desk before she was nominated as VP candidate and USA-Israel lapel pin she wore at recent Nashville Tea Party.

This is a meaningful week for so many of us. As millions of Christians and Jews celebrate this Holy Week, it's appropriate to reflect on developments in the Holy Land.

Israel faces a nuclear threat from Iran that grows every day. Today we learned that the CIA has concluded that Iran already has the capability and the know-how to build nuclear weapons.

While President Obama once said a nuclear-armed Iran would be "unacceptable," after more than a year in office it's sobering to have to acknowledge that his administration has made no progress in implementing "crippling" sanctions on Iran, let alone halting Iran's nuclear program. Even the rhetoric moved in the wrong direction – recently the administration downgraded their call for "crippling" sanctions to sanctions that "bite."

Shockingly, as we learned last week, these "biting" sanctions will no longer include actions that could actually change Iran's behavior, including limiting Iran's access to international capital markets and banking services or closing air space and waters to Iran's national air and shipping lines.

So the issue is not when the so-called sanctions will come (President Obama promised them in "weeks" today) but whether they will even "nibble." And while the Obama administration was more than willing to use every parliamentary trick in the book to ram its government health care takeover through Congress, conversely, it has worked hard to stall bipartisan efforts to pass the Iran Sanctions Act.

Many, many Americans and our allies know that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the consequences will be catastrophic for our interests in the Middle East, and we want our government to do everything in its power to prevent Iran from acquiring nukes.

We foresee a regional nuclear arms race beginning as other countries seek their own nuclear weapons to protect themselves from Iran. Nuclear non-proliferation efforts would be over.

The U.S. and our allies in the international community would be shown to be impotent – after long claiming that Iranian nuclear weapons could not and would not be tolerated. And Israel would face the gravest threat since its creation. Iran's leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, the mullahs would be in a position to launch a Second Holocaust.

Iran continues to develop long range missiles. Its missiles can reach Israel and Europe right now and in time they will be able to reach US territory.

This issue is the most serious security challenge facing the U.S. in the region. Yet just as the Obama administration inexplicably gives up on imposing crippling sanctions on Iran, it's taken an uncompromising hard line against one country in the Middle East: Israel. On his recent visit to Washington, the Israeli Prime Minister was treated like an unwelcome guest, as shown by White House actions such as refusing to be photographed with Israel's Prime Minister.

Public demands for concessions have been made of the Israelis while the Palestinians add ever more conditions to their participation in peace talks, and those in the administration that dare to argue for looking at these policies through the lens of Israel's security needs are subject to slanderous attacks from "senior administration officials." The Obama administration has their priorities exactly backwards; we should be working with our friend and democratic ally to stop Iran's nuclear program, not throwing in the towel on sanctions while treating Israel like an enemy.

In a week when events in the Holy Land thousands of years ago are on the minds of millions, we would all do well to include Israel's security in our prayers as we encourage our government to do all it can to ensure there is never a nuclear Iran able to threaten our interests or our allies.

- Sarah Palin

Caroline Glick: Sarah Palin's Friendship

2010-04-01T13:45:00.001+03:00

From the GI Archives: Sarah Palin's Friendship
February 12, 2010, 10:40 AM

US President Barack Obama is an inept, incompetent leader. More than his failure to pass his domestic agenda on health care and global warming despite his Democratic Party's control over both houses of Congress, Iran's announcement on Thursday that it is a nuclear power and has the capacity to produce weapons-grade uranium is a testament to Obama's feckless incompetence. Even his most ardent supporters are admitting this.

Take The New York Times. In a news analysis Thursday of Obama's failure to prevent Iran from advancing with its nuclear program, David Sanger wrote that for the US president, the last year has been "a year in which little in his dealings with Iran has gone the way that the White House expected."

Since Obama first announced his wish to sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a Democratic presidential candidates' debate in the spring of 2008, the 44th US president's only strategy for dealing with Iran has been to appease its leaders. And as of Tuesday, he still believes that ingratiating himself with the regime is his best bet.

At his press conference Tuesday, Obama wouldn't admit that appeasement has failed, even as all of Iran's top leaders said they were expanding their illicit uranium enrichment activities. The most he would do was acknowledge that the regime's leaders "have made their choice so far, although the door is still open."

As for sanctions, well, Obama said it will take "several weeks" to put those together at the UN.

The distressing truth is that Obama's aim has never been to prevent Teheran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. His whole "sanctions-if-engagement-fails" strategy is just a ruse. The Obama administration has never intended to place serious sanctions on Iran. As one senior administration official told The New York Times, the purpose of the sanctions talk is to get the Iranians to agree to negotiate. As he put it, "This is about driving them back to negotiations, because the real goal here is to avoid war."

Got that? As far as Obama is concerned, Iran with nuclear weapons isn't the main concern. Israel using force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is the main concern.

US PRESIDENTS have a far freer hand in foreign policy than they have in domestic affairs. A president's ability to implement his domestic agenda is constrained by Congress. Congress has much less of a say in foreign policy. But the main constraining factor for a US president in both domestic and foreign affairs is public opinion.

Over the past year, Obama failed to pass his domestic agenda even though he enjoyed governing majorities in both houses of Congress, because the public opposed his agenda. So, too, if the public is able to express its opposition to his foreign policy, particularly as it relates to Israel and Iran, he will be unable to sustain it.

To date, in light of his sinking approval ratings, the main thing Obama has had going for him is that since the presidential election, his political opponents have lacked a leader capable of uniting his opponents around an alternative path. Over the past week, that leader may have emerged.

On Saturday, former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin gave the keynote address at the Tea Party Movement convention in Nashville, Tennessee. As she did in the presidential campaign, Palin electrified her audience in Nashville by credibly channeling the populist impulses of American voters. In her signature line she asked, "So how's that hopey changey stuff working out for ya?"

Palin excoriated Obama on his handling of US foreign policy. Among other things, she noted that a year into his quest to appease dictators, America's international standing is in shambles. "Israel, a friend and a critical ally, now questions the strength of our support," she added.

Palin bellowed that on issues of foreign policy, there is no room for self-delusion. As she put it, "National security, that's the one place where you've got to call it like it is." And then, "We need a foreign policy that distinguishes America's friends from her enemies and recognizes the true nature of the threats that we face."

If her address wasn't enough to convince Americans - and specifically American Jews - that Palin thinks supporting Israel and standing up to Iran are the keys to US national security, then there was her interview on Fox News Sunday. Asked how Obama can win reelection in 2012, Palin responded, "Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really to come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do."

And if that still isn't enough, there is her lapel pin. The politician who leads the populist opposition to Obama decided to make her most important speech since the 2008 election wearing a pin featuring the US flag and the Israeli flag.

Palin, who is considering a run in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, is using her public platforms to reassemble the coalition of security hawks, social conservatives and blue collar workers that propelled Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980. Her support for Israel serves her in building support among both security hawks and social conservatives.

Unlike Obama's empty protestations of support for Israel, Palin's support is obviously heartfelt and therefore will not diminish while Obama remains in office. And as Palin becomes stronger, her ability to influence the US debate in a manner that constrains Obama's freedom to intimidate Israel into allowing Iran to become a nuclear power will rise.

DISTURBINGLY, IN spite of Palin's extraordinary support for Israel, the American Jewish community overwhelmingly rejects her. As Jennifer Rubin noted in her article, "Why Jews hate Palin," in Commentary magazine, Jews disapproved of Sen. John McCain's choice of Palin as his running-mate by a 54 to 37 percent majority. The sneering broadsides published against Palin by leading American Jewish writers are legion.

In her article, Rubin gives a number of reasons for American Jews' rejection of Palin.

On the one hand, American Jews, who overwhelmingly self-identify as Democrats and disproportionately identify as liberals, oppose Palin for the same reason they oppose all social-conservative Republicans - because she isn't a liberal Democrat. What makes American Jews' rejection of Palin unique is its emotional potency. Rubin argues that the visceral hatred that many American Jews express towards Palin is effectively an issue of class hatred, or snobbery. They are four generations removed from the sweatshops where their great grandparents labored on New York's Lower East Side. And they don't like this woman with a funny accent who went to University of Idaho, guts fish and shoots moose.

This may be true. But if it is, American Jews might want to rethink their loyalty to their social class. As the demonstrations against Ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine, against former prime minister Ehud Olmert at University of Chicago, against Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon at Oxford, as well as the disinvitation of Prof. Benny Morris at Cambridge and the celebrity of Harvard's anti-Semitic Prof. Steve Walt show clearly, the bastions of intellectual elitism where American Jews feel most at home have become the repositories of the most virulent hatred of Jews in America and the West today. Liberal standard bearers like Hollywood have had no compunction about giving prestigious awards to movies like Paradise Now, which glorified murderers of Jews in a manner unmatched since the days of Leni Riefenstahl. Elite media outlets like The Atlantic Monthly are only too happy to publish the rantings of newly fashionable haters like Andrew Sullivan.

Liberal Democratic Jewish voices, like Leon Wieseltier at The New Republic, are aware that there is a problem with the rampant anti-Semitism in their camp. And they fear that as a consequence, American Jews may take a second look at Palin with her Israeli flag lapel pin. As Wieseltier wrote this week, "A day does not go by when I do not do my humble part to prevent such a transformation [of American Jewry from liberals to conservatives] from coming to pass."

THE FACT of the matter is that for Israel's sake such a transformation can't happen quickly enough. It isn't that American Jews have to change their social agenda, but they must recognize that today, sadly, there is not meaningful bipartisan support for Israel in the US Congress. The 54 lawmakers who wrote Obama a letter last month asking him to force Israel to open up Gaza's borders were all Democrats. Opposition to passing sanctions against Iran, and opposition to an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear installations, are only politically significant among Democrats.

In her speech at the Tea Party Conference, Palin said, "We need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern."

The fact of the matter is that Obama came to many of his anti-Israel sensibilities through his professor friends - Rashid Khalidi, John Mearshimer, Samantha Power, William Ayres, Bernadine Dohrn and, of course, the late Edward Said. Americans interested in national security - and particularly American Jews who support Israel - should be the first ones to second Palin's statement.

Sarah Palin's emergence as the mouthpiece of populist opposition to Obama presents Israel's supporters - and particularly Israel's Jewish supporters - with an extraordinary opportunity and an extraordinary challenge. Palin's coupling of support for Israel with her populist domestic agenda marks the first time that support for Israel has been treated as a core, populist issue. The opportunity this presents for American Jews who care about Israel is without precedent.

But of course, to make the best use of this opportunity, American Jews who support Israel have to disappoint Wieseltier. They have to acknowledge that the Left has rejected their cause and increasingly, rejects them.

Obama's failure to prevent Iran from moving forward with its nuclear program, and his stubborn refusal to support an Israeli move to deny Iran the ability to threaten Israel and global security as a whole, place Israel and core US national security interests in unprecedented jeopardy. His fellow Democrats' willingness to support him as he maintains this perilous course means that the Democratic ship has abandoned Israel, and strategic sanity.

Palin's future in politics is unknowable. But what is clear enough is that today hers is the strongest single American voice opposing Obama's foreign policy and the loudest advocate for supporting Israel and denying Iran nuclear weapons. For this she deserves the thanks and support of American Jewry.

IDF: Commander of the Kenyan Military Visits Israel

2010-03-25T12:23:00.000+02:00

IDF Spokesperson March 24th, 2010
Commander of the Kenyan Military Visits Israel

The Chief of Israel's General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, met earlier this
evening with the Commander of the Kenyan Military , General Jeremiah
Mutinda.

General Mutinda arrived in Israel on Sunday for a week-long work visit, as
the guest of the Ministry of Defense, in order to strengthen the military
cooperation between the two nations and examine a possible cooperation with
the Israeli Defense Industries. This is the first visit by a Commander of
The Kenyan Military in the IDF in over a decade.

During his visit, the General will attend security and strategy brieifings
from military officials, tour the Israeli Defense Industries and visit a
naval base and the Yad Vashem Museum.

The IDF and the Kenyan Military cooperate on different security matters.

Professor Moshe Arens: Israel doesn't need to grovel for U.S. forgiveness

2010-03-25T12:14:00.002+02:00

Professor Moshe Arens
Haaretz - March 15, 2010

So sorry! Very sorry! Very, very sorry! We apologize! This will never happen again! The prime minister, cabinet members and senior bureaucrats repeated this over and over again last week in an attempt to set right what seemed to them to have been a major blunder, one they thought had spoiled what should have been a dramatic goodwill visit by the vice president of the United States, Joe Biden. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might have been humming "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood," while he sat waiting for the arrival of Biden, who vented his anger over what he considered an insult by being deliberately late for dinner.

The government's critics in the media had a field day. According to them the decision by the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee to approve plans for putting up additional houses in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, just as Biden was arriving in the country, was ruining relations between the United States and Israel and causing irreparable damage to strategic cooperation between the two countries. Listening to them, one might have thought that if some years from now historians try to determine why the U.S. administration did not take any effective action to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, they will find that the responsibility lay on the shoulders of a minor Israeli civil servant who set the agenda of a local planning committee for that fateful day.

Since it was well known in Washington that the Netanyahu government had not frozen building activity in Jerusalem, and that therefore not only construction there was continuing but also the routine planning activities that precede construction, the blame was now being put on the "timing." Presumably, if the planning committee had held its session a few days before Biden's arrival there would not have been a problem. Or, had it met a few days after Biden's departure and he left here under the impression that planning activities had been suspended in Jerusalem, only to find out differently on his arrival in Washington, there would have been nothing to get excited about.

"Timing" is important when investing in the stock market, but it is of little relevance here. There is no substitute for the truth when dealing with friends and allies. And the truth in this case is that while the Israeli government has frozen construction in Judea and Samaria for 10 months, there has been no such freeze in any part of Jerusalem, and certainly no holdup of planning procedures. There was no need for all this groveling by Israeli spokesmen. On the subject of Jerusalem, the government of Israel and the administration in Washington simply disagree.

Throughout the U.S.-Israeli relationship there have been disagreements on certain issues. They are inevitable, even among the best of friends. But generally, the disagreements have not been taken public, but have been discussed in confidential exchanges between representatives of the two governments. U.S. President Barack Obama, however, has taken a new approach, which he signaled at his speech last June in Cairo, where he publicly called on Israel to stop settlement activity.

The rationale of this approach was presumably to accelerate the negotiations between Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But what the Americans must be finding out to their chagrin is that this approach is actually making it more difficult, if not impossible, for Abbas to come to the negotiating table. Whereas in the past he negotiated with Israel while settlement activity continued, without setting prior conditions, Obama's Cairo speech left Abbas no choice but to demand the cessation of settlement activity in Judea and Samaria as a condition for entering negotiations. After all, he cannot be less Palestinian than Obama.

Now, after the statements made by Biden in Israel, followed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's public rebuke of Netanyahu, he will demand the cessation of construction in Jerusalem, and possibly even the freezing of all planning activity regarding future construction as a condition for beginning negotiations with Israel. As the saying goes, "why make it difficult, when with a little effort you can make it impossible?" This is hardly the way to advance the peace process.

Moshe Arens (Hebrew: משה ארנס‎, born 27 December 1925) is an Israeli-American aeronautical engineer, researcher, diplomat and politician. A member of Knesset representing the Likud party between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens also served as Israel's Ambassador to the United States and was professor at the Technion in Haifa. He currently serves as the Chairman of the International Board of Governors at the University Center in Ariel.

Moshe Arens: Palestinian dream of statehood further away than ever

2010-03-25T12:04:00.002+02:00

From The Galilee Institute Archives:

Palestinian dream of statehood further away than ever
By Professor Moshe Arens

Originally Published in Ha'aretz, December 1, 2009

Never in the history of man has so much effort been invested by so many in nation-building as with the Palestinians. The United States, the European Union and many other countries have been investing huge resources as part of this effort. An American general, Keith Dayton, is training the Palestinians' fledgling police force.

And yet there still seems to be a long way to go. There is no unified Palestinian leadership. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, and whereas the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas is the generally recognized leadership of the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, its control of this area is far from complete.

It was only relatively recently that the Palestinians declared themselves a national entity and have been recognized as such by the international community. The United Nations partition resolution in 1947 called for the division of western Palestine into a Jewish and Arab (not Palestinian) state. Jordan's annexation of Judea and Samaria in 1949 and the awarding of Jordanian citizenship to the Arab population residing there met with no objections from any quarter. It was only with the foundation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, under Yasser Arafat's leadership, that a claim for Palestine was put forth on behalf of the Palestinian people.

But for many years the PLO was little more than a terrorist organization. And it was only after Arafat declared in May 1989 that the PLO's charter, which denied the legitimacy of Israel's existence, was "caduc" ("obsolete"), and the 1993 Oslo Accords that granted rehabilitation to Arafat and his terrorist group, that the PLO attained general recognition as the representative of the Palestinian people. So the Palestinians took their place among the recognized community of nations.

It did not take long before Arafat reverted to terrorism and the Oslo Accords were turned into ashes. Only after Arafat's demise and the election of Abbas, who declared that the Palestinians must abandon the weapon of terror, were the Palestinians showered with outside assistance in an attempt to chaperone them on the road to statehood. The "two-state solution" mantra was adopted worldwide, including by many in Israel. Some even began to argue that the only obstacle to achieving Palestinian statehood and peace with Israel was the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria.

But while Abbas is in Venezuela seeking encouragement from Hugo Chavez, and the Israeli government declares a settlement freeze for 10 months in Judea and Samaria, the ultimate goal of Palestinian statehood seems further away than ever. So far there is nothing more than a virtual Palestinian state, a house of cards. Anyone who thinks the settlement freeze will serve as the foundation for this house of cards will soon find that he is mistaken. There is no connection there. The intensive care and artificial respiration provided by U.S. President Barack Obama may not be able to bring this patient to life.

At this time the Palestinian state may be no more than an impossible dream. The reality is that there are currently three Palestinian entities - the Kingdom of Jordan, the Hamas-ruled enclave in the Gaza Strip, and the area of Judea and Samaria that is not in the control of Abbas, although his headquarters is there. No law of nature prohibits the existence of three Palestinian states at some future date, but it seems patently unreasonable and not very likely. Freezing settlement construction in Judea and Samaria for the next 10 months is not going to change that.

So why did Benjamin Netanyahu's government decide on the 10-month settlement freeze, which is no more than a futile gesture? The prevailing explanation is that the Israeli government wanted to please President Obama. Although personal relations between the leaders of nations is not completely unimportant in international relations, it is certainly not the first priority in conducting a country's foreign policy. Relations between Israel and the United States are not based on personal sympathy, but rather on common values and strategic interests.

When there are differences of opinion between two friendly nations they are not resolved by trying to please one or the other leader. They are certainly not resolved through the issuance of orders by one side to the other. Israel is a small country, but it is an independent country. Netanyahu does not have to state, as Menachem Begin did, that we are not a banana republic, but he does need to make that clear. That is of great importance for U.S.-Israel relations in the years to come.

Moshe Arens (Hebrew: משה ארנס‎, born 27 December 1925) is an Israeli-American aeronautical engineer, researcher, diplomat and politician. A member of Knesset representing the Likud party between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens also served as Israel's Ambassador to the United States and was professor at the Technion in Haifa. He currently serves as the Chairman of the International Board of Governors at the University Center in Ariel.

Prof. Moshe Arens: From Balfour to a Palestinian State

2010-03-25T11:35:00.003+02:00

From the Galilee Institute Archives:

Prof. Moshe Arens: From Balfour to a Palestinian State
November 3, 2009

Ninety-two years ago today the British foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, sent the now famous letter, known as the Balfour Declaration, to Baron Rothschild to be transmitted to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

Looking at the State of Israel today one might say it all started with the Balfour Declaration. Some would say, it all started with Theodore Herzl and the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, 20 years earlier. And students of Zionist history would say it all started even earlier with the Lovers of Zion, the Hovevei Zion, and the first wave of modern Jewish immigration to Palestine from Eastern Europe, Ha'aliya Harishona. But as far as international recognition of Zionist aspirations, and the political movement that set in motion the Zionist enterprise that became the Jewish state in Palestine, the State of Israel, it all started with the Balfour Declaration.

In World War I efforts had been made to have Jews, as Jews, participate in the fighting against the Turks. The Zion Mule Corps, commanded by John Patterson and his deputy Yosef Trumpeldor, had participated in the fighting at Gallipoli; the NILI spy network in Palestine, led by Aharon Aaronson, had been providing intelligence information to the British; and the Jewish Legion organized by Vladimir Jabotinsky, that was to participate in the fighting in Palestine, was formed in August 1917.

All that, and the political spadework done by Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow in London had laid the groundwork for the declaration. And there was the sympathy for the return of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland in some circles in Britain. But in the final analysis, as was to be expected in a nation at war, it was the immediate interests of Britain, at the moment, that tipped the scales in favor of this momentous declaration of sympathy with the Zionist cause.

The support of American Jewry, thought to have considerable influence, for the war effort was expected to be strengthened by the declaration. And the misperception that the many Jews in leadership positions among the communists in Russia, at the time in the throes of the communist revolution and Russia's continued role in the war uncertain, might be swayed by the declaration to keep Russia in the war, was a consideration in the issuance of the Balfour Declaration by the British government.

THE DECLARATION, a powerful statement of support for Zionist aspirations, by what was at the time one of the world's great powers intent on gaining control of much of the Middle East after the war, contained sufficient ambiguities to leave succeeding British governments plenty of room for maneuver to satisfy the exigencies on the ground as seen by British policymakers as time went on.

The original draft of the declaration which contained the phrase "Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people" was amended in the final text to read "His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

"In Palestine" could be interpreted as meaning that not all of Palestine should become the national home of the Jewish people. Additionally, the boundaries of Palestine not being defined at the time, left ambiguous the eventual size of the area to be allocated as a national home of the Jewish people. And not least - for Zionism's goal was the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine (Herzl's manifesto was entitled Der Judenstadt) - the Balfour Declaration had substituted for Jewish state the more ill-defined "national home for the Jewish people."

These ambiguities came to haunt the Zionist movement as British governments exploited them over the years. The Arab population in Palestine did not welcome the idea of largescale Jewish immigration and the application of the Balfour Declaration to the area. They quickly learned that rioting was an effective tool in getting the government in London to accede to their demands and backtrack on the Balfour Declaration.

In April 1920 riots were organized against the Jews in Jerusalem.

The following year there were Arab riots against the Jews in Jaffa. The immediate British response was a temporary suspension of Jewish immigration. Proposals by Jabotinsky that Jewish battalions similar to the Jewish Legion be enlisted so as to quell the riots and establish order were rejected, while the British forces stationed in Palestine were completely ineffective in overcoming Arab rioters.

The attitude of the British military in Palestine was generally anti-Zionist and favored the Arabs. In a circular distributed to the British officers serving in Palestine, Gen. Walter Congreve, commanding Egyptian Expeditionary Forces from Cairo, wrote "[The army's] sympathies are obviously with the Arabs... who have been the victims of the unjust policy forced upon them by the British government."

The Zionist delegation to the Paris peace conference in 1919 had submitted a map of the Jewish national home which included territory east of the Jordan River, as well as the Golan Heights in the north. But no sooner had a British military administration established itself in Palestine than a process of whittling away at the territory to which the Balfour Declaration was intended to apply was begun.

Within a month of assuming the post of colonial secretary in February 1921, Winston Churchill was on his way to Cairo to chair a conference to frame British policy in the Middle East. Paying little attention to the map presented by the Zionist delegation at the Paris peace conference, and the decisions of the Allied conference in San Remo in 1920 which decided that the area west and east of the Jordan River were to be a single territory to which the Balfour Declaration would be applied by the mandatory power, the Cairo conference concluded that Abdullah, who had entered the area east of the Jordan from Arabia with some of his troops, remain there as the ruler of Transjordan within the framework of the British mandate for Palestine. In making the offer to Abdullah at a meeting in Jerusalem in May, Churchill agreed that the provisions of the Balfour Declaration would not extend east of the Jordan River. The offer was accepted.

It was the beginning of Arab rule and the exclusion of Jewish settlers from over 78 percent of what was going to be the Palestine Mandate granted to Britain by the League of Nations in June 1922. At about the same time French-British negotiations delineating the northern border of Palestine were concluded leaving the Golan Heights in French mandated Syria.

IN ADDITION, under the pressure of the Arab riots in Palestine the British government began backtracking on the Balfour Declaration. The Churchill White Paper issued in June 1922 ascribed the Arab riots to "exaggerated interpretations of the meaning of the Declaration."

The White Paper, announcing the government's policy, went on: "Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that Palestine is to become 'as Jewish as England is English.' His Majesty's government regard any such expectations as impracticable and have no such aim in view. They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded 'in Palestine.'

"As for Jewish immigration to Palestine, the White Paper stated that "this immigration cannot be so great in volume as to exceed whatever may be the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals."

From there it was going to be one long retreat from the original promise. And so it was none other than Winston Churchill, throughout his life the greatest constant friend of Zionism among the British leadership, who decided on a drastic reduction of the territory assigned to the Jewish national home, while downgrading the meaning that this national home was to have for future British governments.

The Arabs were led to believe that rioting in Palestine would lead to further retreats by the British government from the Balfour Declaration. The riots of 1929 led to the appointment of the Shaw Commission which recommended that the immigration policy should be reviewed so as to prevent "excessive" Jewish immigration. The outbreak of renewed Arab riots seven years later led to the appointment of the Peel Commission.

Based on its recommendation, the British government concluded that the terms of the Mandate were unworkable and that the only feasible solution would be partition of western Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state, the Jews being assigned a small enclave covering about 33% of western Palestine or less than 10% of the area originally assigned to the Palestine Mandate for the establishment of a Jewish national home.

Rejection by the Arabs of these recommendations and three years of further Arab riots led in May 1939 to the Macdonald White Paper which rang the death knell for the Jewish state, limiting Jewish immigration to 75,000 during the next five years, and making further Jewish immigration to Palestine contingent on Arab approval.

It in effect provided for the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine, what in today's parlance would have been called a Palestinian state. Winston Churchill in later years was to refer to the MacDonald White Paper as "this low-grade gasp of a defeatist hour." It slammed the doors of Palestine shut to Jewish immigration just as Hitler's persecution of the Jews of Europe was beginning to move into high gear.

In a conversation with Malcolm MacDonald, the colonial secretary, in May 1939, Chaim Weizmann said: "You are handing over the Jews to their assassins."

The White Paper was ruthlessly and brutally enforced against those refugees who attempted to reach the shores of Palestine. The Royal Navy was used off the coast of Palestine, while the British secret service was used to spy on the organization of groups of "illegal" immigrants in Europe and Britain's diplomatic representatives in the capitals of the Balkan countries and Turkey were used to pressure these governments to deny them transit visas so that they would not be able to proceed to Palestine. The first shots by the Royal Navy during World War II were fired on September 2, 1939 against the immigrant ship Tiger Hill killing two of the refugees on board. It was a policy that was to be pursued throughout the war.

The tragedy of the Struma, which sank in the Black Sea in February 1942, claiming the lives of all but one of its 768 passengers, including many women and children, exemplified the heartlessness, if not to say the inhumanity, with which that policy was pursued.

As cables went back and forth between London, Cairo and Istanbul regarding the fate of the refugees on board, stranded in Turkey in a non-seaworthy vessel, Lord Moyne, the deputy minister of state, Middle East, notified the government that he had learned from secret sources that the Struma was the first of several ships which were being chartered in order to carry "illegal immigrants" from southeast European ports to Palestine, and that there was no alternative to carrying out the White Paper policy and refuse the passengers on the boat entry to Palestine.

THE PALESTINE high commissioner, Harold MacMichael, lent his support to this recommendation by the further objection that the passengers on the Struma were mainly professional people and would therefore, if admitted to Palestine, constitute an addition to the "unproductive element in the population." Tens of thousands could have been saved from the Holocaust had Britain relented on executing the White Paper policy. Hundreds of thousands could have been saved had a rescue effort been mounted to bring Jews from Europe to Palestine during the war years.

The Struma tragedy destroyed the last vestiges of the special relationship between Britain and Zionism inaugurated with the Balfour Declaration. From thereon it was going to be a confrontation, and eventually outright mutual hostility.

Britain barred the entry to Palestine of the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, the Jewish underground carried on a campaign to force Britain to leave, and eventually Britain, relinquishing the Mandate, turned the seemingly insoluble problem over to the United Nations.

In the vote on the United Nations partition resolution, dividing western Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state, Britain abstained. During the War of Independence, the British equipped the Jordanian Arab Legion which participated in attacks on Israel, British tanks tried to block the advance of Irgun fighters during their attack on Jaffa and RAF fighters flying out of Egypt engaged the fledgling Israeli air force over Israeli positions in the Sinai.

Only eight months after Israel had been established, and had been immediately recognized by the United States and the Soviet Union, did Britain reluctantly extend its recognition to the new state.

What is the explanation for the fact that British governments turned their backs on the Balfour Declaration and over the years pursued a policy that was designed to lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state in Palestine rather than a Jewish state? That the Jewish state, Israel, was finally established over strenuous British opposition?

Although Britain's decision-makers were tainted throughout the years by a strain of anti-Semitism at all levels, the military, the civil service and also the government, the decisions reached were basically just plain power politics.

The Arabs were considered to have more power, more influence, more ability to cause trouble than the Jews. And as Britain approached the war years, looking for allies and trying to neutralize enemies, it seemed so obvious that the millions of Arabs in the Middle East, and the Arabs of Palestine were far more important to Britain's interests than the small Jewish community in Palestine, and their Zionist supporters in the world, who in any case had no choice but to back the war against Hitler. But it turned out to be a miscalculation. British governments underestimated the strength and the vitality of the Jewish community in Palestine and its nascent military capability, and the tenacity of the Zionist movement. The Arabs lent no support to the Allied cause in World War II.

Britain's attempts to appease them brought no returns. Whereas the Jewish contribution to the war effort was not insignificant and might have weighed far more in the scales had Britain been prepared to establish a Jewish army, as called for by Jabotinsky and Weizmann at the outbreak of the war, a call that was not heeded out of concern for the Arab reaction to such a move. The military potential of the Yishuv was significant as became clear a few years later.

When in May 1948 the surrounding Arab armies attacked Israel, Ernest Bevin told Churchill that the Arabs would win. It was another miscalculation. British miscalculations over the years turned out to be of no benefit to Britain, delayed the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, caused a great deal of suffering and claimed many victims, but they could not prevent the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine - Israel. The Palestinian state may yet follow, but this time it will need Israel's agreement.

Moshe Arens (Hebrew: משה ארנס‎, born 27 December 1925) is an Israeli-American aeronautical engineer, researcher, diplomat and politician. A member of Knesset representing the Likud party between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens also served as Israel's Ambassador to the United States and was professor at the Technion in Haifa. He currently serves as the Chairman of the International Board of Governors at the University Center in Ariel.

Dore Gold: Diplomatic Dispute Obscures Israel’s Help to USA

2010-03-24T17:11:00.003+02:00

Dore Gold: Diplomatic dispute obscures Israel’s invaluable help to U.S. military

By: Dore Gold
OpEd Contributor
March 23, 2010

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right to speak about U.S.-Israeli strategic ties during his speech at Tuesday’s AIPAC conference.

During the recent bilateral tensions between the Obama administration and the Israeli government, a vicious rumor began to spread that the U.S. feels that Israeli “intransigence” in the peace process puts U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan at risk.

The source of this rumor was not Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Central Command, who recently testified before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. Petraeus is concerned with the possible outbreak of an initifada that is shown on the Al-Jazeera satellite network and foments rage in the Arab street that weakens the legitimacy of his Arab military partners.

Yet the idea that Israel was putting U.S. forces at risk began to spread inside the Washington beltway. For example, Jake Tapper, White House correspondent for ABC News, interviewed President Obama’s political advisor, David Axelrod, March 14 and asked whether the Israeli “housing issue” put the lives of U.S. troops at risk.

When Axelrod refused to answer, Tapper persisted and asked the question a second time. Clearly this idea has penetrated the thinking of political reporters.

Columnist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that linking construction plans at Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood to the security of U.S. forces in the Middle East actually came from Israeli press reports of the meeting between Vice President Joe Biden and Netanyahu in Jerusalem. Biden’s spokesman denied those reports when Goldberg made a formal inquiry.

The net effect of rumors of this sort is to reinforce the image of Israel as a strategic burden rather than as a strategic asset, which only exacerbated the current tensions. For years, there has been a whole cottage industry of anti-Israel forces, who have been trying to promote this view across the United States.

It began with professors Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, who argued in their 2007 book, The Israeli Lobby, that Israel is nothing less than “a strategic liability.” They have made significant inroads in universities and think tanks, so that the rumors about Jerusalem building projects threatening soldiers in Afghanistan fell on fertile ground.

Netanyahu argued at AIPAC that Israel has actually helped save the lives of Americans. Historically, he is absolutely correct to paint Israel’s strategic partnership this way. In August 1966, the Mossad succeeded in recruiting an Iraqi Air Force pilot who flew his MiG-21 to Israel.

The intelligence on the MiG-21 was shared with Washington and would prove to be extremely valuable, considering the fact that the MiG-21 was the work-horse of the North Vietnamese Air Force in the years that followed.

Israel supplied the Americans with many other Soviet weapons systems, from 130mm artillery to T-72 tanks. Gen. George Keegan, the former head of U.S. Air Force Intelligence, was quoted in the New York Times on March 9, 1986, saying that the intelligence the U.S. received from Israel could not have been obtained if the U.S. had “five CIAs.”

Keegan went further: “The ability of the U.S. Air Force in particular, and the Army in general, to defend whatever position it has in NATO owes more to the Israeli intelligence input than it does to any single source of intelligence.”

Even after the Cold War, Israel continues to be a vital American strategic partner. In 2007, the U.S. ambassador to Israel revealed that Israeli technology was being used by the U.S. armed forces in Iraq to protect them from Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) that were responsible for most U.S. casualties in the Iraq War.

In short, Israel was helping save American lives in Iraq.

On March 15, 2007, the commander of EUCOM, Gen. Bantz Craddock, told the House Armed Services Committee that “in the Middle East, Israel is the U.S.’s closest ally that consistently and directly supports our interests.”

During his AIPAC speech, Netanyahu disclosed: “Israel shares with America everything” that it knows about their common enemies, especially intelligence.

When states like the U.S. and Israel have high-profile diplomatic disagreements, it is sometimes the nature of the press to seek the dramatic. A learned debate about the applicability of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention to Jerusalem would be fitting for Yale Law School, but it does not sell newspapers.

For that reason, the Obama administration has a special responsibility to contain its tensions with Israel. It would be a serious development if the disagreement over Israel’s rights in Jerusalem spilled over into the strategic relationship between the two countries.

Netanyahu tried to contain this problem at AIPAC, but both sides need to make sure that unnecessary diplomatic tensions do not sacrifice their long-held strategic interests that have served the security of both countries.

Dore Gold served as Israel's ambassador to the UN. His website is www.dore-gold.com. He heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Reposted with permission of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

IDF Spokesperson: Response to Qassams May Be Surprising

2010-03-24T15:02:00.002+02:00

Maj. Gen. Galant to Hamas: IDF's response to Qassams may be surprising
IDF Spokesperson 23 March 2010 , 18:17

The head of the Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant spoke about restoring
calm in the south. He also referred to the soldiers morality during
Operation Cast Lead and the recent investigation on the death of Soldier
Gavriel Cheptich.

The head of the Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, spoke today (Mar.
23) about restoring calm to the Southern communities and utilizing the
element of surprise against Hamas if need be.

Referring to the recent intensifying rocket attacks originating from Gaza,
Maj. Gen. Galant said that, "We hope this is a temporary event. Our response
is measured and calculated, based on our intention to facilitate the
continuation of the quiet and a normal life in the south. I suggest that the
enemy not repeat its mistake the way it misjudged our response in Operation
Cast Lead. The blood of the State of Israel's citizens will not be shed
without consequence," he added.

Moreover, Galant said, that the IDF will work to restore calm in the south,
"utilizing our capabilities including the element of surprise." He also
added that the achievement gained during Operation Cast Lead will not shape
the long term reality.

Later, Maj. Gen. Galant spoke about the moral behavior of soldiers during
Operation Cast lead saying that, "During Operation Cast lead, for every
three terrorists, one Palestinian civilian was killed in the fighting.
Senior Commanders of armies from countries that criticized Israel's morality
during Cast Lead have come here to learn exactly how we achieved such a
thing."

Additionally, Galant referred to the death of Staff Sergeant Gavriel
Cheptich saying that "We are looking into the details of the incident, we
will draw the necessary conclusions and lessons to see how to improve our
operations in the future."

Dr. Emmanuel Navon: Prelude to Suez?

2010-03-24T14:13:00.001+02:00

March 24, 2010

Abba Eban used to quip that the Six Day War was the first war in history after which the victors asked for peace while the vanquished demanded unconditional surrender. This pattern still characterizes Middle East peace negotiations, but it seems that it is now being applied to other regions.

Hillary Clinton recently advised the UK and Argentina to begin talks about the Falklands Islands. What is there to talk about, for goodness’ sake? Those islands are British since 1833, and Britain won the Falklands War in 1982. Whenever Argentina makes claims over the Falklands, the island’s inhabitants reply that they have a right to self-determination and that they have no wish to be part of Argentina. Britain’s sovereignty over this far-away island off Argentina’s coast is indeed a historical oddity, but so is France’s regime in Guyana or America’s in Puerto Rico. The list is longer. Yet one wonders what America’s reaction would be if it were "advised" to "begin talks" with Spain about Puerto Rico. Incidentally, Mrs. Clinton has not "advised" Russia to "begin talks" with Japan about the South Kuril Islands.

It is not hard to understand why. If Japan were to press its case on the Kuril Islands, it would likely be ignored by America. The Obama Administration is unsuccessfully trying to convince Russia to vote for tougher UN sanctions against Iran, and aggravating the Russians with the almost-forgotten territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands would not be helpful.

Why has Argentina decided to pick a fight about the Falklands? Recent seismic surveys suggest the presence of oil reserves in the Falklands basin. The Kirchners figure that such a boon, if it is confirmed, would come at the right time: the first couple is unpopular because of recent revelations that they’ve grown rich while in office, and Argentina’s economy is performing poorly. Invading the island would undoubtedly end in another military humiliation. But claiming that all Argentina cares about is the "human rights" of the Falklands’ residents has better chances of working. That the current US Administration is legitimizing this canard is troubling.

No less troubling is the fact that the United States is treating Britain (one of its closest international allies) with such disdain while accommodating the Krichners. Argentina’s President and her husband are die-hard peronists who have distanced their country from the United States and improved ties with Hugo Chavez. The message being sent to Britain is that pro-American democracies that win wars when they are compelled to fight should not expect a better treatment from Washington than nationalist bullies who feel entitled to impose their will after being defeated on the battlefield.

Well, Perfidious Albion: Welcome to the club. We in Israel know the feeling. But we also know the morality of the story. After the 1956 Suez war, the Eisenhower Administration abandoned England because it thought that such was the price for convincing the Arabs that America was not their enemy. It didn’t exactly work: Nasser became a hero, he united his country with Syria, and the Bagdad Pact started falling apart. When Nasser announced his military alliance with the Soviet Union in 1955, the US did not respond with a military alliance with Israel. Foster Dulles considered Israel a liability and responded to the Egyptian-Soviet deal with renewed arms sales to conservative Arab regimes. This is what eventually convinced Ben-Gurion to initiate a preemptive strike against Egypt.

Looking at America’s current foreign policy, it is hard not to have in mind the reasons that convinced Israel to act against Egypt in 1956 and that might convince it to eventually act against Iran.

Dr. Alex Grobman: Enabling Arabs

2010-03-24T06:13:00.000+02:00

24 March, 2010

Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to Israel, ostensibly to renew negotiations between the Israel and the Arabs, demonstrates once again America’s failure to address the root causes of the conflict. Pressuring Israel to make concessions and condemning her for constructing homes in Jerusalem and in Yehuda and Shomron where Jews are legally permitted to build only encourages Arab intransigence, and convinces them to continue their war against the Jewish state.

When will the U.S. insist that the Arabs stop incitement against Israel in their media, schools and mosques? When will the U.S. demand that Arabs stop abusing their own children by subjecting them to TV programs and music videos preaching hatred of Jews, encouraging martyrdom, and denying Israel’s existence?

When will the U.S. insist the Arabs cease denying the historic connection of the Jews to the land of Israel? And when will the U.S. acknowledge that the Arabs have never recognized Israel’s right to exist?

Since the days of the British Mandate, the Arabs have resorted to violence in an attempt to shape British and U.S. policy. The Palestinian Authority, which is wrongly viewed as moderate, glorifies terror. To celebrate the 45th anniversary of the establishment of Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Palestinian Authority daily newspaper featured a special section praising terrorism and terrorists.1

The paper extolled the 1976 Savoy Operation during which terrorists captured the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv and killed eight hostages and two soldiers. The bus hijacking by Dalal Mughrabi in 1978 in which 37 Israelis were murdered is described as a “Ribat (religious war).” A square in the Arab town of el-Bireh was recently named after Mughrabi. Fatah was applauded for firing missiles at Israeli cities from Lebanon during the 1980s. Accounts of ten senior terrorists, described as “heroic Shahids (Martyrs), were featured.2

Where is the outrage against Fatah and Hamas for manipulating their children by using alluring animated characters like Farfur, the Mickey Mouse character, Nahul, a bee and Assud, a bunny to that instill hatred against Jews and seek their destruction? “Kids fall in love with them, and then right in front of their eyes these characters …become shahids (martyrs for Allah),” notes Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch. 3

Teaching children that Israel is “occupied Palestine” and that the Jews have usurped their land is another theme found on Hamas and Fatah television. During one month, each televised a program in which a group of children were dancing with large keys hanging around their necks. Hamas had the towns of Beit She’an, Haifa, Jerusalem, Ramle and Acre on their keys. Fatah’s keys had Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, Ramle and Jerusalem on them. To everyone the message was quite clear: the Arabs were the real owners of these cities, not the Jews.4

How will the Arabs rid their land of the Jews? The only way Hamas asserts is to kill them. Three different words were used by a Hamas children’s television program to describe how to purge the Jews from Arab land. All the Arabic expressions, Manhurin Naher, Nidbah- hom, Shaht mean slaughter. Nassur, the bear puppet, explained that the Jews must be “erased from our land.” To ensure the children understood precisely what this meant, the young host of the program added that “They’ll be slaughtered.”5

Hamas is clear that violence should not be directed against the Jews alone, since the U.S. is also their arch enemy. This message against America is contained in a children’s song broadcast on Hamas TV:

"Daddy gave me a present, a machine gun and a rifle.
When I am a big boy, I will join the Liberation Army.
The army of [Izz Al-Din] Al-Qassam (Hamas),
which has taught us how to defend our homeland.
Our homeland is precious, precious.
We [are] victorious, victorious over America and Israel.
[Improvises:] Son of a bitch - what brought you to this land?"

6

Peace with Israel is not the goal of the Palestinian Authority either. In an interview on PA TV, Fatah spokeswoman Kifah Radaydeh stated: “It has been said that we are negotiating for peace, but our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; and the goal is Palestine. I do not negotiate in order to achieve peace. I negotiate for Palestine, in order to achieve a state."7

At a preliminary conference of the Palestinian Youth Parliament in Ramallah.
Palestinian Authority president and Fatah chairman Mahmoud Abbas reiterated this point: “I say this clearly: I do not accept the Jewish State, call it what you will." Abbas was given a large framed map of "Palestine," covering the entire area of Israel.8

When PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, another Arab leader inexplicably presented in the West as a moderate, paid a condolence call to the family of Faiz Faraj, the terrorist who tried to stab an Israeli soldier in Hebron in February, he sent an important message to the Arabs that he supports terrorism. Instead of condemning violence, Fayyad denounced “in extremely harsh terms the action of the occupation forces carried out as part of the ongoing campaign to suppress the non-violent protests of residents in the various regions.”9

There is no subtlety in what the Arabs are saying or doing. When a sermon broadcast over PA TV under the control of Mahmoud Abbas calls for the destruction of the Jews because they are “the enemies Of Allah [and] enemies of humanity,”10 what alternative do the Arabs have but to to liberate their land through jihad? They have shown that they will use whatever means to defeat the Jews, even if it means poisoning the minds of their own children and sacrificing them in homicide bombings.

Settlements have never been an impediment to peace, and never will be. They are used as tactic to dupe the gullible and as an excuse to attack the Jews. Israel’s first president Chaim Weizmann understood the fundamental reason for the Arab/Israeli conflict when he said, “The real opponents of Zionism can never be placated by any diplomatic formula: their objection to the Jews is that the Jews exist, and in this particular case, they exist in Palestine.”

Dr. Alex Grobman’s latest book The Palestinian Right to Israel will be published by Balfour Books in April 2010.

1. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Fatah prides itself on deadly terror attacks.” Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), (January 15, 2010).
2. Ibid; Khaled Abu Toameh, “Fatah holds ceremony naming square after terrorist.” Jerusalem Post. (March 15, 2010); Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Fatah officials celebrated popular inauguration of terrorist square.” PMW (March 14, 2010). Palestinian Authority TV began its broadcast on the 32nd anniversary of the terror attack by praising it as: "A glorious chapter in the history of the Palestinian people... [near Tel Aviv] in the heart of the occupation state. The operation shocked the occupation entity." Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, ““PA TV Interviews terrorist’s sister on anniversary of terror attack.”PMW (March 13, 2010)

3. Aryeh Dean Cohen, “Tube of Hatred” Jerusalem Post (August 10, 2009), Online Edition; Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, “Mickey Mouse Again: Disney Images adorn studio while mass murder is glorified.” Palestinian Media Watch (September 9, 2008); Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Hamas TV teaches kids to kill Jews,” PMW (September 23, 2009).

4. Ibid; Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “PA still teaches kids that all of Israel is ‘occupied.’” PMW (October 19, 2009); Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Palestinian TV children’s quizzes teach that there is no Israel.” Palestinian Media Watch. (September 2, 2009); “Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV Children’s Puppet Show: ‘We Must Rise Against the Zionist Criminal, the Enemies of Allah, and Liberate Jerusalem and All the Holy Places.’” MEMRI. Special Dispatch 2864 (March 17, 2010).

5. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Hamas TV teaches kids to kill Jews.” PMW (September 23, 2009). See “Palestinian Hate Education since Annapolis, taxpayersalliance.com (February 2, 1010).

6. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Palestinian child sings about victory over Israel and the US: Daddy gave me a present, a machine gun and a rifle." PMW (February 8, 2010); see also Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, “PA TV news report: Child vows to ‘liberate Palestine’ with weapons” PMW (February 1, 2010).

7. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Fatah official: “Our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; the goal is Palestine.” PMW (July 12, 2009).

8. Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook,”Mahmoud Abbas: ‘I do not accept the Jewish state, call it what you will.” PMW (April 28, 2009); Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “High school graduates at official Fatah ceremony: Haifa and Jaffa are ‘Palestine.’” PMW (August 4, 2009).

9. Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook,”PA Prime Minister honors dead terrorist with condolence visit.” PMW (February 14, 2010).

10. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Jews are the enemies of Allah and humanity” “The Prophet says: ‘Kill the Jews.’” PMW (February 1, 2010).

11. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1949), 290.

Walter Rostow: Historical Approach to the Issue of Legality of Jewish Settlement Activity

2010-03-23T16:20:00.002+02:00

From the Galilee Institute Archives:

Copyright 1990 The New Republic Inc.
The New Republic, April 23, 1990

HEADLINE: Historical Approach to the Issue of Legality of Jewish Settlement Activity
BYLINE: Rostow, Eugene W., GI Note: The Late Eugene W. Rostow was US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs between 1966 and 1969. He played a leading role in producing the famous Resolution 242 and in the debate around the word "the" that was left out of it.

The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created. The Mandate for Palestine differs in one important respect from the other League of Nations mandates, which were trusts for the benefit of the indigenous population. The Palestine Mandate, recognizing "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country," is dedicated to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing nonjewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

The Mandate qualifies the Jewish right of settlement and political development in Palestine in only one respect. Article 25 gave Great Britain and the League Council discretion to "postpone" or "withhold" the Jewish people's right of settlement in the TransJordanian province of Palestine-now the Kingdom of Jordan-if they decided that local conditions made such action desirable.

With the divided support of the council, the British took that step in 1922. The Mandate does not, however, permit even a temporary suspension of the Jewish right of settlement in the parts of the Mandate west of the Jordan River.

The Armistice Lines of 1949, which are part of the West Bank boundary, represent nothing but the position of the contending armies when the final cease-fire was achieved in the War of Independence. And the Armistice Agreements specifically provide, except in the case of Lebanon, that the demarcation lines can be changed by agreement when the parties move from armistice to peace. Resolution 242 is based on that provision of the Armistice Agreements and states certain criteria that would justify changes in the demarcation lines when the parties make peace. Many believe that the Palestine Mandate was somehow terminated in 1947, when the British government resigned as the mandatory power. This is incorrect. A trust never terminates when a trustee dies, resigns, embezzles the trust property, or is dismissed. The authority responsible for the trust appoints a new trustee, or otherwise arranges for the fulfillment of its purpose.

Thus in the case of the Mandate for German South West Africa, the International Court of justice found the South African government to be derelict in its duties as the mandatory power, and it was deemed to have resigned. Decades of struggle and diplomacy then resulted in the creation of the new state of Namibia, which has just come into being. In Palestine the British Mandate ceased to be operative as to the territories of Israel and Jordan when those states were created and recognized by the international community. But its rules apply still to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which have not yet been allocated either to Israel or to Jordan or become an independent state.

Jordan attempted to annex the West Bank in 1951, but that annexation was never generally recognized, even by the Arab states, and now Jordan has abandoned all its claims to the territory. The State Department has never denied that under the Mandate "the Jewish people" have the right to settle in the area. Instead, it said that Jewish settlements in the West Bank violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which deals with the protection of civilians in wartime. Where the territory of one contracting party is occupied by another contracting party, the Convention prohibits many of the inhumane practices of the Nazis and the Soviets before and during the Second World War-the mass transfer of people into or out of occupied territories for purposes of extermination, slave labor, or colonization, for example. Article 49 provides that the occupying power "shall not deport or transfer part of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

But the Jewish settlers in the West Bank are volunteers. They have not been "deported" or "transferred" by the government of Israel, and their movement involves none of the atrocious purposes or harmful effects on the existing population the Geneva Convention was designed to prevent. Furthermore, the Convention applies only to acts by one signatory "carried out on the territory of another." The West Bank is not the territory of a signatory power, but an unallocated part of the British Mandate. It is hard, therefore, to see how even the most literal-minded reading of the Convention could make it apply to Jewish settlement in territories of the British Mandate west of the Jordan River. Even if the Convention could be construed to prevent settlements during the period of occupation, however, it could do no more than suspend, not terminate, the rights conferred by the Mandate. Those rights can be ended only by the establishment and recognition of a new state or the incorporation of the territories into an old one.

As claimants to the territory, the Israelis have denied that they are required to comply with the Geneva Convention but announced that they will do so as a matter of grace. The Israeli courts apply the Convention routinely, sometimes deciding against the Israeli government. Assuming for the moment the general applicability of the Convention, it could well be considered a violation if the Israelis deported convicts to the area or encouraged the settlement of people who had no right to live there (Americans, for example).

But how can the Convention be deemed to apply to Jews who have a right to settle in the territories under international law: a legal right assured by treaty and specifically protected by Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, which provides that nothing in the Charter shall be construed "to alter in any manner" rights conferred by existing international instruments" like the Mandate? The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there. Another principle of international law may affect the problem of the Jewish settlements. Under international law, an occupying power is supposed to apply the prevailing law of the occupied territory at the municipal level unless it interferes with the necessities of security or administration or is "repugnant to elementary conceptions of justice."

From 1949 to 1967, when Jordan was the military occupant of the West Bank, it applied its own laws to prevent any Jews from living in the territory. To suggest that Israel as occupant is required to enforce such Jordanian laws-a necessary implication of applying the Convention-is simply absurd. When the Allies occupied Germany after the Second World War, the abrogation of the Nuremberg Laws was among their first acts. The general expectation of international law is that military occupations last a short time, and are succeeded by a state of peace established by treaty or otherwise. In the case of the West Bank, the territory was occupied by Jordan between 1949 and 1967, and has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 rule that the Arab states and Israel must make peace, and that when "a just and lasting peace" is reached in the Middle East, Israel should withdraw from some but not all of the territory it occupied in the course of the 1967 war. The Resolutions leave it to the parties to agree on the terms of peace.

The controversy about Jewish settlements in the West Bank is not, therefore, about legal rights but about the political will to override legal rights. Is the United States prepared to use all its influence in Israel to award the whole of the West Bank to Jordan or to a new Arab state, and force Israel back to its 1967 borders? Throughout Israel's occupation, the Arab countries, helped by the United States, have pushed to keep Jews out of the territories, so that at a convenient moment, or in a peace negotiation, the claim that the West Bank is "Arab" territory could be made more plausible. Some in Israel favor the settlements for the obverse reason: to reinforce Israel's claim for the fulfillment of the Mandate and of Resolution 242 in a peace treaty that would at least divide the territory. For the international community, the issue is much deeper and more difficult: whether the purposes of the Mandate can be considered satisfied if the Jews finally receive only the parts of Palestine behind the Armistice Lines-less than 17.5 percent of the land promised them after the First World War. The extraordinary recent changes in the international environment have brought with them new diplomatic opportunities for the United States and its allies, not least in the Middle East.

Soviet military aid apparently is no longer available to the Arabs for the purpose of making another war against Israel. The intifada has failed, and the Arabs' bargaining position is weakening. It now may be possible to take long steps toward peace. But to do so, the participants in the Middle East negotiations - the United States, Israel, Egypt, and the PLO - will have to look beyond the territories.

The Late Eugene W. Rostow served as US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs between 1966 and 1969 and played a leading role in producing the famous Resolution 242 and in the debate around the word "the" that was left out of it. When he wrote this piece in 1991 he was "Distinguished Fellow" at the United States Institute of Peace.

Are the settlements legal? by Eugene Rostow

2010-03-23T16:04:00.003+02:00

From the Galilee Institute Archives:

Copyright 1991 The New Republic Inc.
The New Republic, October 21, 1991

HEADLINE: Resolved: are the settlements legal? Israeli West Bank policies
BYLINE: Rostow, Eugene W., GI Note: The Late Eugene W. Rostow was US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs between 1966 and 1969. He played a leading role in producing the famous Resolution 242 and in the debate around the word "the" that was left out of it.

Assuming the Middle East conference actually does take place, its official task will be to achieve peace between Israel and its Levantine neighbors in accordance with Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

Resolution 242, adopted after the Six-Day War in 1967, sets out criteria for peace-making by the parties; Resolution 338, passed after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, makes resolution 242 legally binding and orders the parties to carry out its terms forthwith. Unfortunately, confusion reigns, even in high places, about what those resolutions require.

For twenty-four years Arab states have pretended that the two resolutions are "ambiguous" and can be interpreted to suit their desires. And some European, Soviet and even American officials have cynically allowed Arab spokesman to delude themselves and their people--to say nothing of Western public opinion--about what the resolutions mean. It is common even for American journalists to write that Resolution 242 is "deliberately ambiguous," as though the parties are equally free to rely on their own reading of its key provisions.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Resolution 242, which as undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until "a just and lasting peace in the Middle East" is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces "from territories" it occupied during the Six-Day War-- not from "the" territories nor from "all" the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means. Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from "all" the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the "fragile" and "vulnerable" Armistice Demarcation Lines, but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called "secure and recognized" boundaries, agreed to by the parties. In negotiating such agreements, the parties should take into account, among other factors, security considerations, access to the international waterways of the region, and, of course, their respective legal claims.

Resolution 242 built on the text of the Armistice Agreements of 1949, which provided (except in the case of Lebanon) that the Armistice Demarcation Lines separating the military forces were "not to be construed in any sense" as political or territorial boundaries, and that "no provision" of the Armistice Agreements "Shall in any way prejudice the right, claims, and positions" of the parties "in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine problem." In making peace with Egypt in 1979, Israel withdrew from the entire Sinai, which had never been part of the British Mandate.

For security it depended on patrolled demilitarization and the huge area of the desert rather than on territorial change. As a result, more than 90 percent of the territories Israel occupied in 1967 are now under Arab sovereignty. It is hardly surprising that some Israelis take the view that such a transfer fulfills the territorial requirements of Resolution 242, no matter how narrowly they are construed.

Resolution 242 leaves the issue of dividing the occupied areas between Israel and its neighbors entirely to the agreement of the parties in accordance with the principles it sets out. It was, however, negotiated with full realization that the problem of establishing "a secure and recognized" boundary between Israel and Jordan would be the thorniest issue of the peace-making process. The United States has remained firmly opposed to the creation of a third Palestinian state on the territory of the Palestine Mandate. An independent Jordan or a Jordan linked in an economic union with Israel is desirable from the point of view of everybody's security and prosperity. And a predominantly Jewish Israel is one of the fundamental goals of Israeli policy. It should be possible to reconcile these goals by negotiation, especially if the idea of an economic union is accepted.

The Arabs of the West Bank could constitute the population of an autonomous province of Jordan or of Israel, depending on the course of the negotiations. Provisions for a shift of populations or, better still, for individual self-determination are a possible solution for those West Bank Arabs who would prefer to live elsewhere. All these approaches were explored in 1967 and 1968. One should note, however, that Syria cannot be allowed to take over Jordan and the West Bank, as it tried to do in 1970.

The heated question of Israel's settlements in the West Bank during the occupation period should be viewed in this perspective. The British Mandate recognized the right of the Jewish people to "close settlement" in the whole of the Mandated territory. It was provided that local conditions might require Great Britain to "postpone" or "withhold" Jewish settlement in what is now Jordan. This was done in 1922. But the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan river, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors. And perhaps not even then, in view of Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, "the Palestine article," which provides that "nothing in the Charter shall be construed ... to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments...." Some governments have taken the view that under the Geneva Convention of 1949, which deals with the rights of civilians under military occupation, Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal, on the ground that the Convention prohibits an occupying power from flooding the occupied territory with its own citizens. President Carter supported this view, but President Reagan reversed him, specifically saying that the settlements are legal but that further settlements should be deferred since they pose a psychological obstacle to the peace process.

In any case, the issue of the legality of the settlements should not come up in the proposed conference, the purpose of which is to end the military occupation by making peace. When the occupation ends, the Geneva Convention becomes irrelevant. If there is to be any division of the West Bank between Israel and Jordan, the Jewish right of settlement recognized by the Mandate will have to be taken into account in the process of making peace.

This reading of Resolution 242 has always been the keystone of American policy. In launching a major peace initiative on September 1, 1982, President Reagan said, "I have personally followed and supported Israel's heroic struggle for survival since the founding of the state of Israel thirty-four years ago: in the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again."

Yet some Bush administration statements and actions on the Arab-Israeli question, and especially Secretary of State James Baker's disastrous speech of May 22, 1989, betray a strong impulse to escape from the resolutions as they were negotiated, debated, and adopted, and award to the Arabs all the territories between the 1967 lines and the Jordan river, including East Jerusalem. The Bush administration seems to consider the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be "foreign" territory to which Israel has no claim. Yet the Jews have the same right to settle there as they have to settle in Haifa.

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were never parts of Jordan, and Jordan's attempt to annex the West Bank was not generally recognized and has now been abandoned. The two parcels of land are parts of the Mandate that have not yet been allocated to Jordan, to Israel, or to any other state, and are a legitimate subject for discussion.

The American position in the coming negotiations should return to the fundamentals of policy and principle that have shaped American policy towards the Middle East for three-quarters of a century. Above all, rising above irritation and pique, it should stand as firmly for fidelity to law in dealing with the Arab-Israeli dispute as President Bush did during the Gulf war. Fidelity to law is the essence of peace, and the only practical rule for making a just and lasting peace.

The Late Eugene W. Rostow served as US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs between 1966 and 1969 and played a leading role in producing the famous Resolution 242 and in the debate around the word "the" that was left out of it. When he wrote this piece in 1991 he was "Distinguished Fellow" at the United States Institute of Peace.

Other Than Apartments in Jerusalem, What Else is Going on in the Middle East?

2010-03-21T12:35:00.003+02:00

Nations Must Know When to Cringe and Crawl--But for the West It's Becoming Routine
By Barry Rubin
March 18, 2010

Sometimes selective appeasement is necessary in foreign policy. But when and just how far should a democratic country go in such behavior? Here's a brilliant defense of giving in at times-which doesn't mean I necessarily agree with it, but I do respect it-and a recent example of how it's overdone and mistakenly carried out nowadays.

The Times of London article is by George Walden, a former British diplomat and Conservative member of parliament with a lot of international experience. Let's consider what he says and how we should interpret it.
The title tells a great deal: "We can't afford the moral high ground: "In tough economic times, Britain cannot be too picky about whom it does business with." In other words, the West is much weaker than it used to be and is often the beggar in these relationships with Third World dictatorships.

At times this is true, but at other times craven behavior is unnecessary and dangerous. Indeed, as I've often pointed out, the sense of Western weakness (the West cannot do anything) and cowardice (it won't do anything) is Viagra for aggressive regimes-from Venezuela through Russia and the Middle East to North Korea--and revolutionary groups.

Here are Walden's vivid examples:

1. The British government had to persuade an enraged Saudi king that the showing on television of a program about his government's nasty beheading of a princess did not reflect official British views. He writes: "Being careful not to apologize for something over which the Government had no control, in the hope of reversing a devastating trade ban and other sanctions." This is the right way to handle it, explaining without apologizing and also, one might add, without censoring. Note, however, how often this line has been crossed more recently by the United States and European governments.

2. A cordial meeting with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, "Despite what we knew of Saddam's crimes, not just against his own people but in London, where his goons were busy poisoning dissidents." In this case the action was strategic as well as trade-oriented. The British government did it, "Because he was at war with Iran, because the Russians were in Afghanistan and - who knew? - en route for the Gulf; and because, for historical reasons, our exports to Iraq were rather large."

Supporting Iraq against Iran during the 1980-1988 war was a correct decision. The great mistake though, as I have argued in great detail elsewhere (Cauldron of Turmoil; The Tragedy of the Middle East) was to continue that behavior after 1988, errors that helped produce Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. In other words, strategic appeasement has to be carefully limited and, of course, used only with countries which are actually doing something useful to you, not your enemies (Iran) or those who promise benefits and never deliver (Syria).

3. The British government also "countenanced with little more than a noisy protest the barbarously sophisticated assassination of a British citizen in London, Alexander Litvinenko. Why? Partly because to have taken it farther would have jeopardized our exports to a fast-growing market, where the largest company in Britain, BP, had extensive investments." The same thing happened in the case of a Libyan embassy employee murdering a British policewoman in cold blood.

I'd say this is going too far. Looking the other way while one of your citizens-and especially one of your own civil servants--is murdered on your territory out of purely commercial considerations seems too craven and a violation of the government's promise to protect its own people.

4. Prime Minister Tony Blair overrode, "The law of the land in unprecedented fashion to protect the Saudi Royal Family from a corruption investigation in connection with a BAE deal. Legally it was a scandal, but to do otherwise would have put a huge defense contract at risk (you could hear the French salivating), not to speak of the incidental disadvantage of severing anti-terrorist cooperation with Riyadh, which the Saudis had blatantly threatened."

I think this was a mistake, though perhaps the investigation might have been slowed or reduced in scope. When dictatorships get you to break your own laws like that it is subverting your own society. As for anti-terrorist cooperation, I suspect reasonably that this was more a Saudi than a British benefit. Beware of letting a dictatorship charge you for a service which is more useful to them than to you.

5. The deal allowing a Libyan terrorist in the Lockerbie plane incident go free in exchange for an oil deal with Libya. This is a serious error because not only does it make clear you can be bought and sold but also encourages future terrorist attacks. This-not the attack on Iraq-is the real blood for oil scandal.

Ironically, of course, when once Western states conducted gunboat diplomacy to protect investments and citizens while also to open markets, today the exact opposite occurs. (Is a terrorist attack the equivalent of a modern gunboat?) Walden rightly notes, "We would do well to understand this, because the international moral climate seems destined to become more brutal at roughly the same rate as our economic vulnerability increases."

One should ask if Western imperialism has been replaced by Third World imperialism. Wow, that's a good subject to study, isn't it? Let's get the academics , journalists, and intellectuals on it right away: Once upon a time North America and Europe were at times aggressive bullies but now that torch has been passed to a variety of radical dictatorships in the Third World. They are guilty of Westophobia, anti-Western racism, opposition to diversity, and a variety of other sins. I hope you can see the potential in this line of inquiry for turning the contemporary Western debate upside down.

But I digress. Walden makes clear regarding his examples: "I am not talking about wars, so much as how sovereign nations deal with one another in conditions of formal peace. " But I'd go further than this: one can justify concessions or even what seems like appeasement in exchange for something tangible provided by an ally, even if somewhat odious and temporary. (The prime example is the alliance with Stalin's USSR during World War Two.)

Yet such gifts should never be given to enemies-even in conditions of formal peace-who are trying to destroy the friends and influence of one's own countries. The reason is that given the most practical considerations, such steps will strengthen the enemies and make them redouble their efforts to attack and undermine.

While acknowledging that Great Britain and America have done wrong things themselves, Walden explains-this should be obvious but unfortunately isn't:

"Those who look forward eagerly (pop stars and theatre folk very much included) to the demise of the Anglo-American model and the emergence of a multipolar world should pause and consider where exactly these new poles of power are to be located, and how they are likely to behave when they feel the post-colonial boot transferring to the other foot."

He also notes that some Western countries will merely step in even if others engage in sanctions. Of course, this is a problem in the Iran case with Russia and China.

One error I think Walden makes is to attribute the demand for more moralism as coming from pop stars and cosmopolitan elitists. Yet while such groups may find a cause like saving the whales or freeing Tibet congenial, it seems that nowadays they are more often on the other side, demanding kindness to dictatorships and tolerance of terrorists.

Indeed, given the five cases he cites above, I cannot identity a single one of the "beautiful people" who were outraged and demanded tougher action against Saddam, the Saudis, Libya, or for that matter Venezuela, Russia (over its attack on Georgia, for instance), Iran, or Syria (given its terrorist intimidation of Lebanon.

Tellingly he concludes:

"I am not suggesting we ease our moral joints in preparation to incline the knee in multiple directions. I simply draw attention to the widening gap between our predilection for national outrage and our power for action, and inquire how we propose to bridge it....Above all ask yourself how you would explain your ethical one-upmanship to an-out-of-work aviation technician/oil man/fork lift truck driver in the North of England."

This made me think of the impoverished British mill workers who demanded sanctions against the Confederacy during the American Civil War because they opposed slavery, even though refusing to buy Southern cotton made them unemployed. Are today's workers made of the same stuff as their ancestors, even if the elite doesn't live up to its forbears?

So often we see that what is going on, though, is not dictated by clever strategy but a belief system in which "my country right or wrong" (yes I know the rest of the quote about putting it right if it isn't) becomes "my country always wrong." This is what the late J.B. Kelly called the "preemptive cringe" as policy.

And so State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley who never apologized to undermining a democratic friend of the United States did so to Libya. After that country's daffy dictator Muammar Qadhafi threatened jihad against Switzerland because that country merely wanted to sustain its rule of law against his son's criminal behavior while on a visit, Crowley made some mildly derogatory remarks.

But once Libya threatened actions against U.S. businesses he backed down. So let's get this straight. Switzerland briefly arrested one of Qadhafi's sons on the charge of beating up hotel workers, Libya then kidnapped two Swiss businessmen, imposed a trade embargo on Switzerland, and barred EU citizens from visiting but the United States is apologizing to Libya.

Shouldn't the United States be backing up brave little Switzerland? Apologizing, crawling, and appeasing should be reserved for those times when it is really required by a compelling national interest. Doing it too often can be habit-forming; teaching others that they can walk all over you to their profit.

Optional footnotes:

I resisted the temptation to make some reference about Walden's pond being turned into a swamp by excessive appeasement.

I also resisted the temptation to quip that P.J. O'Rourke would certainly make a better--certainly a more entertaining--State Department spokesman than P.J. Crowley. For those who don't know, O'Rourke is a bitterly acerbic and funny satirical writer.

Reposted by permission of the author.

* Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle East (Routledge), The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

Israeli Effort in Haiti Continue With IFA

2010-02-01T23:34:00.012+02:00

Monday, February 1, 2010

Israel Flying Aid Continues the Israeli Efforts in Haiti

Source: Ami Isseroff

The IDF rescue teams have dismantled their life saving M*A*S*H unit (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) and field hospital and most IDF personnel have left Haiti after giving "first responder" emergency aid that won praise from global media and gratitude from the Haitian people and governments. The teams that rescued people from wreckage are also gone, as well as the Zaka volunteers. They all did an impressive job. But the tragedy of the Haiti earthquake is not ended, and neither has the aid extended by Israelis. Gal Lousky's Israeli Flying Aid is there and they have set up a a Web log to tell the story of Israeli Flying Aid to Haiti. They are rebuilding orphanages, rescuing young girls from sexual exploitation, getting food to the hungry and trying to fill the urgent and seemingly endless needs of a displaced population With the aid of Orange Israel Telecommunications, they are building an orphanage to house 70 children as an initial project.

Israeli Flying Aid (IFA) is a volunteer non-profit organization founded by Gal Lousky. IFA specializes in transferring emergency, lifesaving aid to populations in disaster areas, and in particular nations in which the IFA presence is especially significant:

• Nations that have no diplomatic relations with Israel, and are hostile to Israel.

• Nations in which the government is hostile to its own citizens and refuses to allow entrance of foreign lifesaving aid after natural disasters but in effect uses the disaster as a weapon of mass annihilation in order to overturn opposition.

• “Complex regions” where UN Red Cross teams and NGOs are not allowed entry (e.g., Indian Kashmir following the earthquake, Russian-occupied Georgia, etc.)
IFA has aided disaster victims in India, Sri Lanka, the Georgian Republic and elsewhere, including extending aid in the United States during Hurricane Katrina.

Israeli Flying Aid is on the spot in Haiti bringing vitally needed help. They need your donations to continue.

Donation information:

For donations via wire transfer, please use the following details:

Israel Flying Aid
Israel Discount Bank
Branch number: 199
Account number: 57797
Swift code: IDBLILIT

For donations via check please write check out to PEF and add following cover letter:

P.E.F ISRAEL ENDOWMENT FUNDS, INC.
317 Madison Avenue, Suite 607, New York, NY 10017

Date:______________________

Enclosed is my contribution of $ ____________________________ with recommendation to your trustees that it be used for:

Organization: Israel Flying Aid, 48 Ben Zion Galis, Sgula Petach Tikva, ISRAEL 49277

Name (contributor):_____________________________________ (please print)

Address:______________________________________________________

Minimum contribution accepted is $ 25.00.

Gifts are tax deductible only if made payable to P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds, Inc. (IRS No. 13-6104086)

Upon request a copy of the last Annual Report filed by P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds, Inc. with the New York Secretary of State may be obtained from either P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds, Inc. 317 Madison Avenue, Suite 607, New York, NY 10017, or the office of the New York Secretary of State, 162 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12226.

Judean Eve! Live Today and Archived All The Time...

2010-01-01T14:57:00.007+02:00

Today on the Judean Eve radio program: Targum Onkelos is revived (and now in English!!) by ou.org and gefenpublishing.com, swords are beat into plowshares in Sderot, Anita Tucker is rebuilding Netzer Hazani, modest women are dressing as classy as Audrey Hepburn, fighting to save the Dead Sea from dying and Israel is being defended by its greatest detractors - all this week on Judean Eve with Dr. Mike Cohen of Bar-Ilan University and the Galilee Institute sitting in for the amazing Mrs. Eve. Links to all the guests can be found as always at http://www.gogalil.com/radiolinks.html

Yoram Ettinger: The Jerusalem Boardroom #139

2010-01-01T14:57:00.006+02:00

Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom #139, Jan. 1, 2010

Yoram Ettinger, Jerusalem

1. Acquisition of Israeli companies accelerated. IBM acquires Israel's Guardium for $200MN in cash, its 9th Israeli acquisition. The 1st acquisition was in 1998 (Ubique) and then iPhrase (2005), Unicorn (2006), WatchFire (2007), TeleLogic, XIV, Diligent and FilesX in 2008 (Globes, Nov. 30, 2009). Broadcom acquired Israel's Dune networks for $178MN in cash (Globes, Dec. 2), its 5th Israeli acquisition, following VisionTech (2000), M-Stream (2004), Siliquent Technologies (2005) and Octalica (2007). Alcon acquired Israel's Optonol for $150MN and additional sum preconditioned on milestones (Globes, Dec. 15). Abbott Laboratories acquired Israel's Starlims Technologies for $123MN (Globes, Dec. 16). Autodesk acquired Israel's PlanPlatform for $25MN (Globes, Dec. 18). Oclaro acquired Israel's Xtellus for $33MN and additional sum preconditioned upon milestones (Globes, Dec. 21). CA acquired Israel's Oblicore for $25MN, its 10th Israeli acquisition (Globes, Dec. 31).

2. SGE invested $12MN in Israel's NetforMx (Globes, Dec. 15). Sequoia and Charles River participated in a $10MN round by Israel's CloudShare (Globes, Dec. 14). Emergence Capital led a $10MN 3rd round by Israel's SupportSpace (Globes, Nov. 27). JK&B Capital and Longworth participated in the $8.6MN 2nd round by Israel's ViewFinity (Globes, Dec. 24). DAG Ventures led am $8MN 3rd round by Israel's Clarizon (Globes, Dec. 15). Bessmer, Vulcan Capital and Ascent Ventures participated in a $6MN round by Israel's Bizo (Globes, Nov. 27). Intel Capital participated in a $4MN round by Israel's Zend and in a similar round by Israel's Saifan (Globes, Nov. 27).

3. Israel's Palsan, located in the Galilee on the Lebanese border (1,100 workers in Israel and 350 abroad in Israeli, US and French plants), is a global leader in the area of armor protection technology for vehicles. Palsan's chief client has been the US military. For example, Palsan has teamed up with Oshkosh to provide 6,244 armored vehicles for the US Army. In 2007, Palsan was awarded a $1.1BN contract, for 5,500 military vehicles, as Navistar Defense's subcontractor. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), a senior member of the Armed Service Committee, credited on Nov. 3, 2009 Palsan's protection of M-ATV combat vehicles with making a difference in the personal safety of US GIs in Afghanistan. Palsan's 2008 sales reached 2.5BN Shekels (3.8 Shekels per US dollar), a 100% leap compared to 2007 and 50MN in 2002 (Ha'aretz, Dec. 28).

Yoram Ettinger is a consultant on US-Israel relations as well as the Chairman of Special Projects at the Ariel Center for Policy Research. Formerly the Minister for Congressional Affairs to Israel's Embassy in Washington, DC, Ettinger also served as Consul General of Israel to the Southwestern US. He is a former editor of Contemporary Mideast Backgrounder, and is the author of the Jerusalem Cloakroom series of reports which is featured on The Galilean Word and many other blogs.

Source: Yoram Ettinger, traight from the Jerusalem Boardroom #139, Jan. 1, 2010. Reposted with permission of the author.

Caroline Glick: A low and dishonest decade

2010-01-01T13:04:00.000+02:00

Upon returning from Cairo on Tuesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu proclaimed, "It's time to move the peace process forward."

The most sympathetic interpretation of Netanyahu's proclamation is that he was engaging in political theater. It was a low and dishonest statement uttered at the end of what has been, in the immortal words of W.H. Auden, "a low and dishonest decade."

Everyone with eyes in their heads knows that there is no chance of making peace with the Palestinians. First of all, the most Israel is willing to give is less than what the Palestinians are willing to accept.

But beyond that, Gaza is controlled by Hamas, and Hamas is controlled by Iran.

For its part, Fatah is not in a position to make peace even if its leaders wished to. Mahmoud Abbas and his deputies know that just as Hamas won the 2006 elections in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Hamas would win elections today. To maintain even a smudge of domestic legitimacy, Fatah's leaders have no choice but to adopt Hamas's rejection of peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state.

Clearly, now is not the time "to move the peace process forward."

No less than what it tells us about Netanyahu, his statement is notable for what it tells us about Israel. Our continued willingness to ensnare ourselves in the rhetoric of peace processes demonstrates how little we have progressed in the past decade.

In 1999, Netanyahu was ejected from office by an electorate convinced that he was squandering an historic opportunity for peace between Israel and its neighbors. A majority of Israelis believed that Netanyahu's signature policies of demanding that the Palestinians abide by their commitments to Israel, and maintaining the IDF's security zone in south Lebanon were dooming all hope for peace.

His successor, Ehud Barak, promised to remove IDF troops from Lebanon and forge a final peace with the Palestinians and with Syria within a year. After winning the election, Barak famously promised a swooning crowd at Rabin Square that the "dawn of a new day has arrived."

Barak lost no time fulfilling his campaign promises. He withdrew the IDF from south Lebanon in May 2000.

He launched talks with Syria in December 1999. For four months he begged Syrian dictator Hafez Assad to accept the Golan Heights, stopping only after Assad harshly rebuffed him in March 2000.

And in July 2000 at Camp David, Barak offered Yasser Arafat Gaza, 90 percent of Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem in exchange for peace. After Arafat rejected his offer, Barak sweetened it at Taba in September 2000, adding another 5% of Judea and Samaria, the Temple Mount, and extra lands in the Negev, only to be rejected, again.

Barak made these offers as the wisdom of appeasement exploded before his eyes. Hizbullah seized the withdrawal from Lebanon as a strategic victory. Far from disappearing as Barak and his deputy Yossi Beilin had promised it would, Hizbullah took over south Lebanon and used the area as a springboard for its eventual takeover of the Lebanese government. So, too, with its forces perched on the border, Hizbullah built up its Iranian-commanded forces, preparing for the next round of war.

Similarly, Barak's desperate entreaties to Assad enhanced the dictator's standing in the Arab world, to the detriment of Egypt and Jordan.

To the extent he required encouragement, the ascendance of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran made it politically advantageous for Arafat to reject peace. Buoyed by their rise, Arafat diverted billions of dollars in Western aid from development projects to the swelling ranks of his terror armies. Instead of preparing his people for peace, he trained them for war.

Arafat responded to Barak's beggary at Camp David and Taba by launching the largest terror offensive Israel experienced since the 1950s. The Palestinians' orgiastic celebration of the mass murder of Israelis was the final nail in Barak's premiership, and it seemed at the time, the death-knell of his policies of appeasement.

A year and a half after he took office, the public threw Barak from power. Likud leader Ariel Sharon - who just a decade earlier had been taken for dead - was swept into power with an electoral landslide. To the extent the public vote was for Sharon, rather than against Barak, the expectation was that Sharon would end Barak's appeasement policies and defeat Arafat and the terror state he had built in Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

But this was not to be.

Rather than abandon Barak's policies, Sharon embraced them. He formed a unity government with Labor and refused to fight. He didn't fight after 22 teenagers were massacred outside the Dolphinarium nightclub in June 2001. He did not fight after the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Palestinian celebrations of the slaughter in New York and Washington.

Sharon did not order the IDF to fight until the carnage of March 2002 that culminated in the Seder massacre at Netanya's Park Hotel forced his hand. Had he not ordered the IDF to dismantle the Palestinian terror infrastructures in Judea and Samaria at that time, he faced the sure prospect of being routed in the Likud leadership race scheduled for November of that year.

Operation Defensive Shield was a textbook example of what you get when you mix weak politicians with a strong society. On the one hand, during Defensive Shield, the IDF took control of all the major towns and cities in Judea and Samaria and so enabled Israel to dismantle Palestinian terror networks by remaining in place in the years that followed.

On the other hand, Sharon refused to allow the IDF to launch a parallel operation in Gaza, despite repeated entreaties by the army and residents of the South. Most important, Sharon barred the IDF from toppling the PA or even acknowledging that it was an enemy government. And he maintained that the Palestinian jihad began and ended with Arafat, thus absolving all of Arafat's deputies - who were then and today remain deeply involved in the terror machine - of all responsibility.

In acting as he did, Sharon's signaled that he was not abandoning appeasement. Indeed, he made clear that his aim was to re-embrace appeasement as his national strategy as soon as it was politically feasible.

Most Israelis explained away Sharon's behavior in his first term as the price he was forced to pay for his coalition government with Labor. So when in 2003 Sharon, Likud and the political Right won an overwhelming mandate from the public to lead the country without the Left, the expectation was that he would finally let loose. He would finally fight for victory.

Instead, Sharon spat on his party, his coalition partners and his voters and adopted as his own the policies of the Left that he had condemned in his campaign.

To implement those policies, Sharon dismantled his government and his party and formed a coalition with the same Left the nation had just overwhelmingly rejected.

The past decade's major policies: the withdrawal from Gaza, the construction of the security fence, the acceptance of the road map peace plan, the Annapolis Conference, Operation Defensive Shield, the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead all shared one central feature. They were all predicated on ignoring the lessons of the failure of appeasement in 2000.

Whereas Defensive Shield's strategic success was owed to Israel's decision to maintain control over the territory the IDF seized in the fighting, in launching the wars with Hizbullah and Hamas, Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert, ignored that success and chose instead to emulate the operation's failures.

To further his government's appeasement policies, Olmert refused to order the IDF to seize south Lebanon or Gaza. By the same token, like Sharon in Defensive Shield, Olmert announced at the outset that he had no interest in defeating Israel's enemies. He limited the goals of the campaigns to "teaching them a lesson." And of course by not seeking victory for Israel, Olmert enabled both Hizbullah and Hamas to claim victory for themselves.

By opting not to defeat Hizbullah or Hamas, Olmert communicated the message that like Sharon before him, his ultimate strategic aim was to maintain the political viability of appeasement as a national strategy. He was fighting to protect appeasement, not Israel.

As we move into the second decade of this century, we need to understand how the last decade was so squandered. How is it possible that in 2010 Israel continues to embrace policies that have failed it - violently and continuously for so many years? Why, in 2010 are we still ignoring the lessons of 2000 and all that we have learned since then?

There are two main causes for this failure: The local media and Sharon. Throughout the 1990s, the Israeli media - print, radio and television - were the chief propagandists for appeasement. When appeasement failed in 2000, Israel's media elites circled the wagons. They refused to admit they had been wrong.

Misleading phrases like "cycle of violence" were introduced into our newspeak. The absence of a security fence - rather than the presence of an enemy society on the outskirts of Israel's population centers - was blamed for the terror that claimed the lives of over a thousand Israelis. Palestinian propagandists and terrorists such as Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti were treated like legitimate politicians. Palestinian ties to Iran, Syria, Iraq and the nexus of global jihad went unmentioned or uncommented upon.

At the same time, opponents of appeasement - those who had warned of the dangers of the Oslo process and had spoken out against the withdrawal from Lebanon and a potential withdrawal from the Golan Heights and Gaza - were not congratulated for their wisdom. They remained marginalized and demonized.

This situation prevails still today. The same media that brought us these catastrophes now derides Likud ministers and Knesset members who speak out against delusion-based policies, while suddenly embracing Netanyahu who - with Barak at his side - has belatedly embraced their pipe dreams of appeasement-based peace.

Then there is Sharon. The man who built the settlements, who removed the PLO from Lebanon, who opposed Oslo, Camp David and the withdrawal from Lebanon; the man who opposed the security fence and pledged to remain forever in Gush Katif. As Israel's leader for most of the past decade, more than anyone else Sharon is responsible for Israel's continued adherence to the dishonest, discredited and dishonorable dictates of appeasement.

Whether due to his alleged corruption, his physical enfeeblement, his fear of the State Department, or his long-held and ardent desire to be accepted by the Left, Sharon betrayed his voters and his party and he undermined Israel's ability to move beyond failure.

Auden's "low and dishonest decade" was the 1930s. It was the West's obsession then with appeasement that set the world on course for the cataclysm of World War II.

As Israel enters the new decade, we must redouble our efforts to forestall a repeat of the cataclysm of the 1940s. Disturbingly, Netanyahu's call for a fraudulent peace process shows that we are off to an ignoble, untruthful start.

Source: Reposted with permission from http://www.carolineglick.com

Emmanuel Navon: A Sense of Purpose

2009-12-31T14:52:00.003+02:00

To end the Year 2009 on an upbeat note, I would recommend the reading of two recently published books: One State, Two States by Benny Morris, and Start-Up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer –provided you read them in that order.

Morris has gone a long way since his self-appointment as a "new historian" poised to question Israel's historical narrative and "myths." In January 2004, he surprised –and shocked- many by declaring to Ari Shavit that "when the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy;" that "there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing;" that it was necessary to uproot the Palestinians in 1948; that Ben-Gurion "had carried out a full expulsion –rather than a partial one- he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations;" that "the non-completion of the transfer was a mistake;" that in circumstances which "are liable to be realized in five or ten years … acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential;" that "there is not going to be peace in the present generation;" that "we are doomed to live by the sword;" that "something like a cage has to be built" for the Palestinians; that all Israelis can do at this point is "to be vigilant, to defend the country;" and that "the Arab world as it is today is barbarian" ("Survival of the Fittest," Haaretz, 9 January 2004).

In One State, Two States, Morris shows that the Zionist movement accepted the principle of partition out of political realism from the time it was first proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have systematically rejected the idea, and Arafat only deceived Israel with the Oslo Agreements to implement the "phased strategy." With the steady radicalization and islamization of Palestinian society today, Morris argues, chances of implementing the two-state solution are null.

Morris also shows, no less convincingly, that the alternatives to the two-state solution (including an Arab-dominated bi-national state) are unrealistic and undesirable (as far as Israel is concerned, at least). So there is no alternative to a solution that doesn't work. Great.

Morris is a realist. He realizes that Israel is in a catch-22 type of situation. Probably because he didn't want to end his book on a bleak note, he does suggest a way out by proposing the revival of the "Jordanian option." Nice try, but it doesn't wash. Jordan doesn't want it and, as Morris himself explains at length, the Palestinians will never sign a deal that leaves a sovereign Jewish state in the equation.

Despite his unconvincing attempt to sound optimistic in the last two pages of his book, Morris makes a compelling case: There is no solution.

If you were about sink into despair, then read Start-Up Nation. It will make you realize that Israel is doing just fine without a solution to its protracted conflict with the Palestinians.

As Senor and Singer show, Israel is an unmatched success story despite the absence of peace.

Israel doubled the size of its economy while multiplying its population fivefold and fighting six wars. This phenomenon is unmatched in the economic history of the world.

Israel has the highest density of start-ups in the world, and there are more Israeli companies listed on the NASDAQ than European companies. After the United States, Israel has more companies listed on the NASDAQ than any other country in the world, including China and India. In 2008, per capita venture capital investments in Israel were 2.5 times greater than in the United States, more than 30 times greater than in Europe, and 80 times greater than in China.

Between 2000 and 2006, Israel fought the five-year Palestinian terrorist war and the second Lebanon War. And yet, during that same period, foreign direct investments (FDI) to Israel tripled, and Israel's share in the global venture capital market doubled from 15% to 31%. In the summer of 2006, just as the second Lebanon war broke out, Warren Buffet bought an Israeli company for $4.5 billion. This was the first time that Warren Buffet bought a company outside the United States. And right after the war, Bill Gates came to Israel saying that the "innovation going on in Israel is critical to the future of the technology business."

Why is that? The bottom line, Senor and Singer argue, is that technological innovation is the ultimate source of productivity and growth, and that Israel is the world leader in technological innovation. The fact that Israel is a country at war does not derail the link between innovation and growth. In fact, Israel has even turned its permanent involvement in warfare to its advantage.

Think about it: among first-world economies, only three (Israel, South Korea, and Singapore) face existential threats, have fought wars for survival, and have a lengthy compulsory military service. And all three countries are economic success stories. In the case of Israel, the army has produced a wealth of military research applied to civilian applications, as well as technology-savvy youngsters who know one or two things about taking risks and making tough decisions. It is no coincidence if many of Israel's most successful start-ups were founded by young Israelis who acquired their technological knowledge, courage, and social networks in the army.

Senor and Singer, of course, are not saying that war is actually good for economic growth. But they convincingly show that the peace=economic growth equation is wrong. In the case of Israel, adversity has generated creativity. Israel has proven its ability to turn problems into assets. It is the lack of water that has turned Israel into a world leader in the fields of desert agriculture, drip irrigation, and desalinization. And it is because France, our main military supplier at the time, decided to abandon us in 1967 that Israel developed its own military industry and became a world leader in that field as well.

Determination is central to Israel's success. During the first Gulf War in 1991, Israelis were instructed by their government to stay home in sealed rooms with their gas masks. The American chip-maker Intel feared that its Israel factory would be paralyzed. But this didn't happen. Intel's Israel engineers braved Saddam's missiles and ignored their government's instruction, and they came to work. It is Intel Israel that designed the chip in the first IBM personal computers, the first Pentium chips, as well as a new product that saved Intel from decline. War did not prevent Intel's Israel plant to become the company's critical manufacturing center.

So the Arab world's constant aggressions, embargos and boycotts have been unable to hurt Israel because Israel is resilient and creative. If anything, the Arab world is only hurting itself because it spends more energy trying to undermine Israel than trying to be productive. The results are devastating. The non-oil exports of the entire Arab world (with a population of nearly 300 million people) are less than the exports of Finland (with a population of 5 million). The Arab world produces almost one third of the world's oil and has benefited from a surge in demand from China and India in the past decade, but this is a mixed blessing. Indeed, it is even a curse –what economists call the "natural resources curse." Because they have oil, Arab economies don't feel the need to innovate, create, and produce. And so they don’t.

The number of world patents registered between 1980 and 2000 was 77 for Egypt, 20 for Syria, and 15 for Jordan. It was 7,652 for Israel. China, which is a main consumer of Arab oil, published in 2003 a list of the five hundred best universities in the world. The list did not include any of the two-hundred universities in the Arab world.

If Israeli technology could help wean the world from oil, the Arab world would lose its only and unreliable asset. Arab countries might then consider making peace with Israel and making their economies more productive –including through economic ties with Israel. And the world's leading economies would be freed from their geopolitical dependency upon unstable and unreliable countries. This only sounds far-fetched if you don't think about Israel's technological exploits. Just think of the electrical car project of Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi. His company, Better Place, is the fifth largest start-up in history. It is developing a revolutionary model to spread the use of electric cars. If Agassi succeeds, as I believe he will, the world's dependency on oil will be dealt a fatal blow.

Ultimately, Israel's success relies on its sense of purpose. Senor and Singer quote historian Barbara Tuchman, who wrote before Israel's high tech boom: "With all its problems, Israel has one commanding advantage: a sense of purpose. Israelis may not have affluence … or the quiet life. But they have what affluence tends to smother: a motive."

The fact that there is currently no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unfortunate, but it is not life-threatening –provided that Israel's keeps its sense of purpose alive and well.

Source: http://www.navon.com

IDF Blesses Whole World for Holidays

2009-12-27T13:34:00.000+02:00

Lt. Col. Avital Leibovitch, head of the foreign press branch of the IDF Spokesperson Unit, takes a moment to wish the world a happy holiday. Whether you are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or Druze - the Israel Defense Force is happy to wish you a joyous new year and a peaceful holiday season!

IDF Blesses Whole World for Holidays

IDF: Ballistics Confirm: Gun Found on Terrorist Killed Rabbi on Thursday

2009-12-27T12:32:00.005+02:00

IDF Spokesperson December 27th, 2009

Ballistic Analysis Confirms: Arms Found in Terrorist's House in Nablus were the Ones Used to Murder Israeli Father of Seven on Thursday Night

A ballistic analysis conducted on the weapons found in the house of the terrorist Annan Tzubach in Nablus the morning of December 26th has confirmed that they were the sames guns used to murder Rabbi Meir Avshalom Hai. Rabbi Hai, a father of seven and a resident of Shavey Shomeron, was murdered by Palestinian gunfire while driving his vehicle in the area of the village on December 24th, 2009.

IDF: Terrorists Responsible for Murdering Father of Seven Killed in joint IDF-ISA Operation

2009-12-26T18:39:00.003+02:00

IDF Spokesperson Announcement
December 26th, 2009
Terrorists Responsible for Murder Killed Overnight in joint IDF-ISA
Operation

"The Israel Defense Forces will act firmly against those who aspire to harm citizens of the State of Israel and Israeli security forces, and will not rest until those involved in the murderous act are brought to justice," said OC Central Command, Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrachi, at the end of a joint IDF-ISA operation.

Overnight, security forces entered Nablus in an attempt to locate and arrest the men suspected of involvement in the murder of Meir Avshalom Hai this past Thursday.

Meir Avshalom Hai, [a father of seven and a popular teacher of young children] a resident of Shavey Shomeron, was murdered by Palestinian gunfire while driving his vehicle.

During the operation, IDF special forces killed three terrorists responsible for carrying out the shooting: Raed Surkajy, Assan Abu Sharach and Annan Tzubach.

When he was killed, Annan Tzubach was armed with a handgun and hiding two M16 assault rifles, an additional handgun, and ammunition.

Names of Terrorists Killed During Tonight's IDF Operation:

Nader/Raed A-Gabar Machmad Surkajy, a 40 year old resident of Nablus, is a Nablus Fatah Tanzim activist and has been imprisoned in Israel in the past. Prior to his arrest in 2002, Surkajy was a senior member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and was involved in multiple terror attacks. Surkajy was also involved with the manufacturing of explosives and the establishment of an explosives-manufacturing laboratory in Nablus. Surkajy was arrested in April 2002 and was released earlier his year in January 2009.

Assan Fatachi Naif Abu Sharach, a 40 year old Nablus resident, has also been previously imprisoned in Israel. He is the brother of Naif Abu Sharach, the former head of the Fatah Tanzim in Nablus, who was responsible for planning multiple terror attacks until he was killed by IDF soldiers in 2004.

Annan Saliman Mustafa Tzubach, a 36 year old Nablus resident, a Shahad Al-Aqsa activist and was involved in widespread militant activity within the framework of the Nablus Fatah Tanzim. The group was led by Naif Abu Sharach until his death. Annan served as an arms dealer and supplier. During an attempt to arrest him tonight, Annan was killed after an exchange of fire with the IDF while he was found in a hiding place along with weapons and ammunition. Annan was included in an agreement in which wanted terror suspects were granted amnesty in exchange for a cease and desist in all
terror involvement.

Dr. Aaron Lerner: Israel moving to wartime footing?

2009-12-24T22:11:00.004+02:00

Israel moving to wartime footing? Netanyahu invites Livni to join unity government

Dr. Aaron Lerner

Date: 24 December 2009

Israel Radio reports
www.iba.org.il/bet/index.aspx?classto=142&entity_code=601517&site_code=14

That Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu invited opposition leader MK Livni to join in a national unity government in the same way that Menachem Begin joined the government before the 1967 Six Day War. Under the proposal, Kadima would join the government with a number of ministers without portfolio. Livni said she would get back with a response.

The news came just as Israel was rocked by news that a group of Kadima MKs may split from Kadima and join the coalition.

It would appear that the formation of such a national unity government indicates that Israel is facing a catastrophic situation.

It would be a stretch to think that something having to do with Palestinian – Israeli relations could possibly qualify for such a move.

The obvious explanation: Iran!

Dr. Aaron Lerner is a highly respected political analyst and the director of IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis). He can be reached at imra@netvision.net.il.

Yehudit Tayar: It is up to us to save Israel for the Jewish people

2009-12-24T21:43:00.001+02:00

Netanyahu, Barak, Peres and the Knesset destroying their own country. Sound familiar?
It is up to us to save Israel for the Jewish people

By Yehudit Tayar

The Apartheid, anti-Zionistic meticulous plans of the Netanyahu/Barak government against Israeli citizens in the heartland of Israel are an ominous omen for the future of the Jewish State. Think of the amount of money that would be poured into the "operation" that this deceitful company of politicians plans to use in order to destroy Jewish homes, freeze any building, cut off communications to prevent any possible enlistment of people coming out to help to protect their fellow citizens. Think of the number of police, the military forces, the amount of money for aerial photography, etc.

Then let us compare this to the current lack of efforts and lack of governmental financial backing for our military operations to protect the citizens in Israel from the continuing violence directed against us. Every day citizens and military all over Israel, not only in Yesha (Judea and Samaria), are being attacked by terrorists with missiles and advanced weaponry.

The media has learned nothing from their collaboration in the previous "operation treason” during which the Sharon government promised both quiet to the citizens of Israel and a "solution for every resident" of Gush Katif and the Northern Shomron. The media collaborated with the government and orchestrated the promotion of this deceitful, traitorous plan. When implemented this plan proved disastrous with the uprooting of our families, living and our dead, and the destruction of our towns, villages and synagogues.

The entire country has paid the price for the Hamas terror-based Gaza that was the immediate result of the operation. The rocket attacks and subsequently the military operation inside of Gaza were the direct result of the destruction of Gush Katif, the small but vibrant area cultivated by Israelis, that so benefited the Arab economy.

Now what will happen to the country following the plans this government has for the center of Israel, the very heartland of Israel - Judea, and Samaria? How will this deter our enemies from within and from outside our borders from planning even more terror against us? One would surmise that the bitter lessons of the mistakes made by previous governments would have been learned. Sadly, the opposite is the case.

That leaves the ordinary people, the residents of Israel who understand the implications of this undemocratic, unlawful plan against us, to protest the land in any way we can. To stop this from happening we must continue to build, we must prevent the forces sent to implement these unlawful anti-Jewish decrees from entering our communities.

Sometimes it is in the hands of the simple people to change history. We must learn from the bravery of the freedom fighters from the time of the Maccabees and from the heroes of the Mossad L'Aliyah Beth. These brave citizens, who against the wishes of the so-called leadership in Eretz Yisrael, continued to bring in Jews from Nazi Europe during the War of Independence to save their own lives and the existence of the entire country.

The compliance by so-called leaders of Israel with the wishes of foreign nations, not in the best interest of the security of Israel, is a tragedy repeated time and time again. It happened first with the British occupying forces in our Land, and now with the pressures from Barak Hussein Obama, Europe and the rest of the world. Those misguided pathetically weak "dreamers of peace at any price" acted like a fifth column. They did not live in reality but rather with some pipe dream that if we only do what the world wants maybe we will be loved or at least left alone.

We have finally come home to our Land as a people and we cannot afford to allow weak, misguided politicians to endanger the future of the Jewish State by dangerous, anti-Jewish plans. It is up to us to fight to prevent this not only for ourselves, the Jewish pioneers in Yesha, but for all Israeli citizens who will pay the price if, G-d forbid, a Muslim Palestinian state is allowed inside our borders.

Yehudit Tayar is a veteran spokesperson for the Jewish pioneers living in Yesha and lives for the past 30 years with her family in Bet Horon, in the Benjamin Region of the Shomron.

Arab Reports: Hamas flexible on prisoner expulsion

2009-12-24T21:31:00.001+02:00

Published Thursday (updated) 24/12/2009 17:16
www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=249260

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Hamas is leaning toward accepting Israel’s demand to
deport more than 100 prisoners in an exchange deal that would secure the
release of a captured soldier, news reports said on Thursday.

The Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal reported on Wednesday that Hamas would allow
123 prisoners to be deported in an exchange that would also see the release
of some 1,000 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.

Israel wants to deport prisoners who were convicted of carrying out or
organizing attacks that resulted in the deaths of Israelis. Many of the
attacks in question took place in the context of the second Palestinian
intifada against the Israeli occupation.

The swap deal now hinges on the demand to expel these prisoners either to
Gaza or abroad, rather than release them to the West Bank.

Senior Hamas officials from the Gaza Strip were expected to travel on
Thursday to Damascus to meet with the group’s top political leaders,
including Khalid Mash’al, to discuss Israel’s latest response. Hamas
received the response from a German intermediary who visited Gaza on
Wednesday.

The deputy head of Hamas' Political Bureau, Moussa Abu Marzouk said on
Wednesday that Hamas would respond to the mediator within a few days.

Abu Marzouk, one of the leaders living in exile in Damascus, told the
London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat that there had been "unprecedented
progress, but still not enough so that the deal would get underway, because
of disagreements with the Israeli security establishment."

Al-Hayat also reported that, according to Western diplomatic sources, Israel
had agreed to release 443 out of 450 prisoners listed by Hamas, on condition
that 100 would be expelled. Another 500 prisoners would be released in the
deal, but were not specified on Hamas’ list.

Hamas sources also told Al-Hayat that Israel is refusing to release certain
high-profile prisoners, including Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, PFLP
Secretary-General Ahmad Sa'adat, and Hamas military leader Abdallah
Barghouti.

The issue of expulsion is sensitive for the families of the prisoners. Some
families interviewed by Ma’an said that while they prefer their relatives
unconditional release, they would except exile to Gaza.

Abla Sa’adat, the wife of Ahmad Sa’adat, told Ma’an, "My husband’s position
is that he wants to stay in the country, but under the worst circumstance he
would accept deportation to Gaza."

Deporting prisoners would also put Israel in direct violation of the
US-backed Road Map peace plan. Authored soon after the deportation of
Palestinian fighters after the siege of the Church of the Nativity, the
document obligates Israel to "[take] no actions undermining trust, including
deportations."

Gaza Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar said Wednesday that after delivering
Israel's response, the German mediator left Gaza and returned to Germany for
Christmas. He said the mediator would be returning to the Strip in a few
days, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Israel is negotiating with Hamas through German and Egyptian mediators in
hopes of freeing Gilad Shalit, a soldier captured in 2006 from a military
base by militants who tunneled into Israel from Gaza.

Also on Wednesday, Israel’s military chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Gabi
Ashkenazi said that returning Shalit home was a national duty.

"Bringing back Gilad Shalit is a national mission, and both covert and overt
actions are being carried out to do so," Ashkenazi told a gathering of youth
groups in the Israeli port city of Ashdod on Wednesday.

"As the chief of staff, I am responsible for every soldier. I feel obliged
to bring him back home; naturally it's better to keep a discussion of the
details to closed forums, but I hope that the mission will be completed," he
said, according to Haaretz.

Israeli Man Killed by Terrorist Gunfire in Samaria

2009-12-24T19:10:00.002+02:00

IDF Spokesperson Announcement December 24th, 2009

Israeli Civilian Killed in Shooting Attack in Samaria Region

Shots were fired at a car driven by an Israeli civilian northwest of Nablus

An Israeli civilian was killed on Thursday afternoon (Dec. 24) in a shooting attack near Shavei Shomron, northwest of Nablus. Fire was opened from an ambush or from a car traveling towards the car that the Israeli civilian was in. Vast IDF forces are searching the area to find those responsible for the gunshots. Both Magen David Adom and the IDF Medical Corps forces were called to the site and performed CPR on the victim, however the military doctor was compelled to pronounce him dead on the site.

Israel Army Radio reported that the attack took place on the road between the towns of Einav and Shavei Shomron. The Israeli sustained injuries to the head as a result of the attack and died at the site.

Earlier on Thursday (Dec. 24), it was publicized that a demolition explosive had been detected near Road 443 on December 17 and an terrorist attempt to attack Israeli cars on this same road was thwarted. According to the report, following sounds of an explosion in the area, IDF and Border Patrol forces searched the area of Kfar Beit Niballa, south of Ramallah. In this search a homemade explosive and a diagram outlining the planned terrorist attack against cars with Jewish drivers to be carried out by a local terrorist organization were found. The explosive was found inside the body of a metal fire extinguisher, which, had it been successfully exploded, would have turned into shrapnel.

Phyllis Chesler: Could Jesus Live Safely In Bethlehem Today?

2009-12-24T10:00:00.000+02:00

Could Jesus Live Safely In Bethlehem Today?

Posted By Phyllis Chesler On December 24, 2009 @ 9:18 am

It is Christmas 2009, and instead of peace on earth and good will towards all, Muslims are busily blowing up churches and Christians all over the Islamic world.

This is an awful reality but it is neither recent nor unexpected. Perhaps what is even more awful is the world's silence and seeming passivity. We in the West who believe in religious tolerance have not stopped the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries. In the name of political correctness, we have also "tolerated" the often aggressive demands for mosques, public prayer, minarets, and loudspeakers on our own soil even though there is absolutely no reciprocity towards Christianity (or any other non-Muslim religion) in most Arab and Muslim countries.

For example, this year, in a church in Bellinzona (Ticino), in Switzerland, a Nativity scene [1] displays Jesus surrounded by minarets! "The unusual scene is supposed to make people reflect about brotherhood and human rights, after 57% of the Swiss (and 68% in Ticino) recently voted against minarets on mosques. On the crib are verses from the Bible and the Koran on the topic of water."

First they came for the Jews … and indeed, most Jews, all 800,000 of us, fled the Arab and Muslim world in the 1940s and 1950s. No one stopped this "silent exodus [2]" or really cared that it had happened. Individual Muslims and the Muslim governments happily, greedily, confiscated Jewish homes, factories, and farms; those Jews who were not slaughtered were allowed to leave with ten dollars in their pocket. Unlike the Palestinian refugees, the Jews and Israel took care of their own. Unfortunately, the Muslim world turned parasitically to the United Nations and to the world to fund the very Palestinians whom they would not allow to remain in their countries as refugees or citizens.

As to our Christian brothers and sisters:

Two days ago, in Mosul, Iraq, the Syrian Orthodox Church of St. Thomas [3], founded in 770 AD, was bombed — killing two civilians and wounding five others. This was the "sixth attack on Christians there in less than a month." Ironically, according to their identity cards, the two murder victims were actually Muslims. However, according to Father Abdul Massih Dalmay of this church, "Christians are being targeted during Christmas time." Father Dalmay feels that the government has not provided enough security for churches at this time and views this as "negligence on their part."

The Syrian Orthodox Parish of the Immaculate Virgin was attacked a week ago. An infant girl was killed and forty people were wounded. Father Faez Wadiha, of this church, says, with irony: "This is certainly a Christmas present for Mosul, a message of congratulations why we are celebrating a feast of love and peace. But we will pray in the streets, in homes, in shops. God is everywhere, not just in churches." The Syrian Catholic Church of the Annunciation , the (Chaldean) Church of St Ephrem, and the St. Theresa Church were all bombed in Mosul in the last month. According to another Christian Father: "These attacks are aimed at forcing Christians to leave the country."

Some might say: There is an unwanted (and perceived as) Christian-American military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. These bombings are in retaliation …well, not so fast. There are other Muslim countries where there is no (unwanted) American military presence and where both Jews and Christians have lived long before Islam even came into being — countries in which Christians are now under siege. Let's look at what's happening to Christians who live in some Muslim countries today.

Egypt

For years now, Islamist "gangs" have been forcibly converting Christian children [4] to Islam by drugging, kidnapping, gang-raping, photographing the rapes, blackmailing, and "marrying" the female child, as young as twelve, to Muslim men. The Egyptian police have been unwilling to stop this criminal activity. Recently, a Christian television channel broadcast a program about this in Arabic. Many Egyptians were shocked. Here is one of the kidnappers' tactics:

"The latest fraud mentioned on the TV program is that Muslim gangs who dress as Coptic priests, offer a car lift to Christian girls and then abduct them. `The Coptic Church has warned its congregation against letting any unknown person dressed as a priest into their homes or accepting a lift.'" (My thanks to John Peter Maher for this information).

A substantial Christian population has always lived in Egypt. They have increasingly been bombed, tortured and murdered. For example, the Monastery of Abu Fana [5] in Upper Egypt has existed since the 5th century — which clearly predates Islam by two centuries. Last year, Bedouin Muslims attacked the monastery, "destroying a small church and burning the monastery's farm. Nine monks and monastery employees were wounded and four others were abducted." Jeff Jacoby writes:

"One of the [abducted] monks had his arm and legs broken," the Egyptian lawyer and human-rights activist Nagib Gabriel later testified. "The other two were tied together with ropes, suspended from a tree, and severely beaten with hoses and sticks. Afterwards, they were placed — upside down and still tied together — on the back of a donkey and shoved off. The monks were further commanded to spit on the cross and proclaim the shahada [the Muslim credo that "there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet"], beaten every time they refused, and even threatened with death."

Pakistan

For a long time now, Christians have been persecuted in Pakistan. Their female children have been kidnapped, forced to convert and forcibly married to Muslims; both priests and believers have been attacked, and often murdered. Earlier this month, in Sargodha, Pakistan (in or near the Punjab), a mob of Muslim villagers, armed with clubs, spades, and axes attacked a showing of a film on Jesus [6], injuring three part-time evangelists very seriously as well as four Christians in attendance. The mob destroyed their appliances and absconded with funds. The mob also turned on Christian villagers who tried to intervene. Apparently, the mob climbed "trees to get a clearer view of the screen. The eyewitnesses said that as soon as the Muslim attackers watched the resurrection and ascension of Christ, they became enraged because their version of Islam forbids portraying an image of a living thing and especially that of a prophet. " As usual, the police refused to register a complaint.

Turkey

Last month, Turkish authorities uncovered a detailed plot [7] by Turkish naval officers to commit violence against their country's non-Muslims in an effort to unseat Turkey's Islamist government. "Entitled the `Operation Cage Action Plan,' the plot outlines a plethora of planned threat campaigns, bomb attacks, kidnappings and assassinations targeting the nation's tiny religious minority communities. …The scheme ultimately called for bombings of homes and buildings owned by non-Muslims, setting fire to homes, vehicles and businesses of Christian and Jewish citizens, and murdering prominent leaders among the religious minorities." Nine hundred and thirty nine Turkish non-Muslims were specifically marked as targets.

And, on December 15, 2009, in Istanbul, in response to a Swiss vote banning the construction of new mosque minarets, a group of Muslims went into a church building in eastern Turkey and threatened to kill a priest [8] unless he tore down its bell tower. Specifically, on December 4, 2009, three Muslims entered the Meryem Ana Church, a Syriac Orthodox church in Diyarbakir, and confronted the Rev. Yusuf Akbulut. They told him that unless the bell tower was destroyed in one week, they would kill him. … Akbulut has been the target of threats, harassment before."

Indonesia

In the rapidly Islamifying Indonesia, in Jakarta, "hundreds of Muslims celebrated the eve of the Islamic New Year last Thursday (Dec. 17) by attacking a Catholic church building [9] under construction in Bekasi, West Java. A crowd of approximately 1,000 men, women and children from the Bebalan and Taruma Jaha areas of Bekasi walking in a New Year's Eve procession stopped at the 60 percent-completed Santo Albertus Catholic Church building, where many ransacked and set fires to it, church leaders said. Damage was said to be extensive, but no one was injured."

Somalia

"Islamic extremists controlling part of the Somali capital of Mogadishu this month executed a young Christian [10] whom they accused of trying to convert a 15-year-old Muslim to Christianity. Members of the Islamic extremist group al Shabaab had taken 23-year-old Mumin Abdikarim Yusuf into custody on Oct. 28 after the 15-year-old boy reported him to the militants. Yusuf's body was found on Nov. 14 on an empty residential street in Mogadishu, with sources saying the convert from Islam was shot to death, probably some hours before dawn."

Thus, Christians and other non-Muslims have been continuously attacked and persecuted in Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Somalia.

Christmas approaches. What about the Holy Land? What kind of Christmas may we expect there?

The Jewish King David was born in Bethlehem [11], as was Jesus. Nevertheless, fewer and fewer Christians (and no Jews) live there year-round; pilgrims come to visit at this time of year but that's about it. According to Benny Avni, writing in the New York Post [12], "fifty years ago, Christians made up 70 percent of Bethlehem's population; today, about 15 percent…Practically the only place where the Christian population is growing [12] is in Israel."

As to the Church of the Nativity, it was treated abominably by Palestinian terrorists [13] who, in 2002, held priests hostage there and treated it as a combination garbage dump and toilet. Israeli forces had to rescue the priests and arrange a cease-fire and surrender.

In the West Bank, churches, Christian cemeteries, and Christian-owned businesses have been attacked and defaced. Christians have been leaving in droves. According to Benny Avni, the current "West Bank Christian population (not counting Jerusalem)…is now less than 8 percent of the population."

In today's Wall Street Journal [14], Daniel Schwammenthal focuses on the persecution of Arab Christians in Bethlehem and especially on how the Western media has refused to cover this fact. When we read about the persecution of Palestinians it is only ascribed to Israel, never to Hamas, Hezbollah, or to the Palestinian Authority. The firebombing of Christian homes and of the only Christian bookstore in Bethlehem, the mass Islamic prayers in Manger Square, the intimidation of students at a Christian Bible college by Muslims who stand outside and loudly chant from the Qu'ran — are all daily realities for Christians in Bethlehem. A Christian spokesman in Bethlehem says: "We have never suffered as we are now suffering."

Only the Jewish government of Israel guards and cherishes the holy places of all religions over which it has sovereignty. Only the Jewish Israeli government has offered permanent asylum to the Baha'i who fled Iran and temporary asylum to the black African Muslims and Christians who fled persecution and genocide at the hands of ethnic Arab Muslims in Sudan.

What in God's name, are we to conclude from all this? Nina Shea, in National Review [15], draws some of the necessary conclusions:

"The disappearance of living Christian communities would signal the disappearance of religious pluralism and a moderating influence from the heart of the Muslim world. Within our lifetime, the Middle East could be wholly Islamicized for the first time in history. Without the experience of living alongside Christians and other non-Muslims at home, what would prepare it to peacefully coexist with the West? This religious polarization would undoubtedly have geopolitical significance. So far, official Washington has not taken this under consideration."

As I've said: What happens to the Jews, at least under Islam, is bound to happen to Christians next. And so it has.

Of course, Muslims persecuted, colonized, and genocidally exterminated other non-Muslim groups too. Let's not forget the Hindus in India who were under genocidal attack for 700 years; the Zoroastrians and Baha'i who were under attack in Iran; and the Armenians who were genocidally exterminated by Turkish Muslims. Armenians are a Christian ethnic group whose members belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church. To this day, the Turks still refuse to admit their responsibility.

So, on the one hand we have a relatively passive Christian West which has chosen not to actively stop the persecution of Christians in Muslim lands. On the other hand, we have allegedly "peaceful" Muslims who look the other way as Christians are persecuted and who are, understandably, also unwilling to … die to save Christians. For that matter, they are simply trying to live their lives and they are also unwilling to risk their lives to save other Muslims as well. "Peaceful" Muslims do not necessarily feel responsible for what is happening. Culturally and psychologically, they have been well trained to blame others, never themselves and to never act alone, as individuals, and/or against the family, clan, tribe, or ummah.

For example, the other day, I engaged my taxi driver in conversation. He was a young man from Turkey. He told me that he was a religious Muslim, that his wife wore hijab — and that he was committed to peace.

"Do you understand the Islamic jihadists who massacre innocent civilians in the name of Islam"?

Calmly, he answered. "Madame, they are not real Muslims. No real Muslim would do anything like that. I don't know any Muslims like that." He was very definite about this.

Said I: "But don't you want to stop such criminals from committing atrocities in the name of your religion?"

He remained silent. Perhaps my question embarrassed him or made him sad; perhaps he was angry and could not afford to show it. Perhaps my question even threatened him because it assumed, even demanded, that he should be "doing" something. However, this soft-spoken man expressed no sorrow, no sense of responsibility, no guilt. His practice of Islam rendered him superior to it all; thus, evil had nothing to do with him, he had disassociated himself from it entirely.

As the world celebrates the birth of the Prince of Peace — originally a Jewish rabbi from Bethlehem–let's be clear: In these times, Jesus would not be safe in the city where he was born, neither as a Jew nor as a Christian.

I hope that all Christians who live in a Muslim country are allowed to celebrate this day safely, in tranquility and joy. Merry Christmas.

(Thanks again to Esther [16] for bringing some of this information to my attention.)

Article printed from Chesler Chronicles: http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler/2009/12/24/could-jesus-live-safely-in-bethelehem-today/

URLs in this post:

[1] Nativity scene: http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1000/Nieuws/article/detail/452646/2009/12/23/Zwitserse-kerk-zet-minaretten-rond-kindje-Jezus.dhtml

[2] silent exodus: http://www.pierrerehov.com/exodus.htm

[3] Church of St. Thomas: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j3EKaI2F-IrEVz8KuMSH3ZiDAG6w

[4] forcibly converting Christian children: http://aina.org/

[5] Monastery of Abu Fana: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/23/not_all_tidings_are_of_great_joy/

[6] attacked a showing of a film on Jesus: http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/pakistan/12536/

[7] uncovered a detailed plot: http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/turkey/12618/

[8] threatened to kill a priest: http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/turkey/12559/

[9] attacking a Catholic church building: http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/indonesia/13008/

[10] a young Christian: http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/somalia/11836/

[11] born in Bethlehem: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04642b.htm

[12] New York Post: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/bethlehem_exodus_jH6iVNuarsPLBceXPzHO6I

[13] treated abominably by Palestinian terrorists: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,52445,00.html

[14] Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704304504574610022765965390.html

[15] National Review: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWFiNDRhOWZiNjJhYzY0OTE2NzdjNDFiYjJjMTY4ZWM=

[16] Esther: http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/

The "Mandate for Palestine" is the Best Reply to "Occupation"

2009-12-23T22:33:00.000+02:00

Dear friend,

Have you ever asked yourself why during the period between 1917 and 1947 hundreds of thousands of Jews throughout the world woke up one morning and decided to leave their homes and go to Palestine? The majority did this because they heard that a future National Home for the Jewish people was being established in Palestine, on the basis of the League of Nations' obligation under the "Mandate for Palestine." This historical document laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international law.

The "Mandate for Palestine" was not a naïve vision briefly embraced by the international community. Fifty-one member countries - the entire League of Nations - unanimously declared on July 24, 1922: "Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

American Support for a Jewish National Home:

On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution (the Lodge Fish Resolution) of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine – anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea:

"Favoring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected." [italics in the original]

On September 21, 1922, President Warren G. Harding signed the Lodge-Fish Resolution, endorsing the Balfour Declaration and the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The U.S. Government (not a member of the League of Nations) maintained that her participation in WWI and her contribution to the defeat of Germany and the defeat of her Allies, entitled the United States to be consulted as to the terms of the "Mandate for Palestine."

The outcome of this request was a "Convention [Treaty] between the United States of America and the United Kingdom with respect to the rights of the two governments and their nationals in Palestine," a relationship governed by international law. The Convention contains the entire text of the "Mandate for Palestine" including the preamble and was concluded and signed by their respective plenipotentiaries in London on December 3, 1924; Ratification advised by the Senate, February 20, 1925; Ratified by President Calvin Coolidge, March 2, 1925; Ratified by Great Britain, March 18, 1925; Ratifications exchanged at London, December 3, 1925; Proclaimed, December 5, 1925.

In ratifying the Convention, the United States of America formally recognized the terms of the "Mandate for Palestine" and the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.

Any attempt to negate the Jewish people's right to Palestine - Eretz-Israel - and to deny them access and control in the area designated for the Jewish people by the League of Nations is an actionable infringement of both international law and the Supremacy Clause (Article VI, paragraph 2 of the United States Constitution), which dictates that Treaties "shall be the supreme Law of the Land".

We collectively and individually must do all we can to support the Jewish people and the state of Israel. There is no more crucial time than today, and I believe that this body has the capacity to help defeat the "Occupation" mantra by insisting that the land of Israel has been given to the Jewish people as of right, and in accordance with existing international law.

Sincerely,
Eli E. Hertz
eMail: eli@hertztec.com

The Muqata: The Rambam's Visit to Har HaBayit

2009-10-25T16:31:00.003+02:00

Courtesy: The Muqata

Yesterday, the 6th of the Jewish month of Heshvan, marked 843 years since the Rambam -- Maimonides, went up to the Temple Mount -- Har HaBayit, in the old walled city of Jerusalem, and prayed. In 1166 C.C, the Rambam made a pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, as well as visiting other areas around Jerusalem and Hevron.
The event was so special to the Rambam, that he vowed to make a special holiday and commemorate it annually.

The Rambam (Moshe, son of Maimon, otherwise known as Maimonides) was the physician to the Sultan of Egypt in the 12th century. His most well known work is the 14 volume Mishna Torah, (literally, The Repetition of the Torah), which was the first attempt to systematically codify the entire body of Jewish law, (halachah). This work became the basis for later codifications, most notably, the Shulkhan Arukh, written by Rav Yoseph Karo in the 16th century.

In 1166 C.E. the Rambam made a pilgrimage to Israel:

"We left Acco for Jerusalem under perilous conditions. I entered into 'the great and holy house' [the term used to refer to the Holy Temple] and prayed there on the sixth day of the month of Cheshvan. And on the first day of the week, the ninth day of the month of Cheshvan, I left Jerusalem for Hebron to kiss the graves of my forefathers in the Cave of Machpela. And on that very day, I stood in the Cave and I prayed, praised be G-d for everything. And these two days, the sixth [when he prayed on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem] and the ninth of Mar-Heshvan I vowed to make as a special holiday and in which I will rejoice with prayer, food and drink. May the Lord help me to keep my vows...." (translation, courtesy of the Temple Institute)

More at The Muqata: The Rambam's Visit to Har HaBayit

Emmanuel Navon: Jew Boy Street

2009-10-25T15:40:00.003+02:00

Courtesy: Emmanuel Navon http://www.navon.com

In one of the many phone calls that Golda Meir made to Henry Kissinger during the Yom Kippur War, she thought it would be a good idea to pull the Jewish emotional trick in order to speed up the urgently needed arms delivery. Kissinger got quite annoyed. "Let me explain something to you, Golda" he said. "I am, first and foremost, an American. Then I am a Secretary of State. And only after that am I a Jew." Unimpressed, Golda replied with the aplomb and wit of a Jewish mother: "It's OK, Henry. In Hebrew, we read from right to left."

Eventually, Henry did deliver the goods, but he also held Israel back toward the end of the war. He didn't want the Soviets to step in and, mostly, he didn't want Israel to humiliate Sadat. The Egyptian leader, Kissinger correctly figured, would give up on the Russians if he was convinced that only America could deliver Sinai to a Soviet-weaned Egypt.

When Kissinger landed in Israel during his "shuttle diplomacy," some Israeli demonstrators shouted at him "Jew Boy!" Then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was embarrassed about this name-calling, but he eventually gave in to Kissinger's arm-twisting by pulling out of the Suez Canal's eastern shore. Sadat got his down payment and didn't need more explanations. Then came Jimmy Carter. He started talking about the need to associate the Soviets to the "Middle East peace process." Sadat couldn't believe it. "I kicked the Russians out of the door and Carter wants to snick them in from the window!" he exclaimed. Hence Sadat's decision to preempt Carter's mischief by dramatically announcing that he was willing to negotiate directly with Israel and to come to Jerusalem.

Carter coerced Begin into withdrawing from all of Sinai and into dismantling all Israeli settlements there. To some, this proves that only America can force Israel into making peace and, in effect, save Israel from itself. This theory, however, misunderstands the difference between what Kissinger and Carter had in mind.

For Kissinger, the Soviet Union was an enemy to be defeated. In the Middle East, that meant pulling the largest Arab country out the Soviet rim, and preserving "our son of a bitch" in Iran. For Carter, by contrast, the Soviets and their Middle-East clients needed to be appeased by addressing their demands –first and foremost when it came to Israel. But forcing Israel to meet its enemies' demands and dropping the Shah did not temper Soviet expansionism and Muslim radicalism. Indeed, the last year of Carter's presidency witnessed, almost simultaneously, the signing of a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, the Islamic coup in Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (not to mention the Sandinista coup in Nicaragua).

According to the "linkage" theory, America will be able to pull itself out of Iraq and sweet-talk the Iranians into dropping their nuclear ambitions only after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved. Georges Soros, for example, wrote in his 2007 manifesto On Israel, America and AIPAC that "Iraq is largely beyond our control; but if we succeeded in settling the Palestinian problem we would be in a much better position to engage in negotiations with Iran and extricate ourselves from Iraq." Recent history proves otherwise. Khomeini seized power in Teheran and Saddam Hussein built a nuclear plant (thanks to France, in both cases) after Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David accords under American pressure. The Camp David accords did not only set the framework for a bilateral Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement but also for a solution to the Palestinian problem.

The fact that America is not winning in Afghanistan and is being outsmarted by Iran has nothing to do with Israel. When America is resolute and gives itself the means to win, it does. At the end of 2006, the war in Iraq seemed lost. President Bush gambled one last time by ordering a surge of troops. It worked. It is thanks to the surge's success that President Obama was able to order a gradual troop withdrawal from Iraq. Today, it is in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, that the United States is loosing control. According to General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, a surge is badly needed in Afghanistan to avoid a humiliating defeat for NATO. President Obama is wavering.

Sending more troops to Afghanistan is harder than delivering articulate speeches on why peace is better than war. Easier still is to adopt George Soros' mistaken "linkage theory" that being tough on Israel shall alleviate America's Middle East headaches.

J Street's website claims that "Georges Soros did not found J Street" and that Soros "publicly stated his decision not to be engaged in J Street when it was launched." It does not say that Soros was not engaged in J Street before it was launched. Wikipedia's entry on J Street states that "the initial support of J Street came from multi-billionaire George Soros, who for a brief time was associated with the organization. Soros pulled out before the initial launch, so as not to negatively affect the group."

Today's opening of J Street's conference in Washington was preceded by many accusations and very little debate on substance. There are clearly different ways of approaching the Middle East's challenges. J Street's approach has the merit of being clear, even though it has failed in the past. Instead of trying to find out the exact number of J Street's Arab donors, or of pointing out to the correct fact that the Israeli speakers at J Street's conference are mostly political has-beens whose ideas have been defeated by facts and rejected by voters, Israeli policy makers and commentators should engage in an easily winnable debate. Exposing the fallacy of most of J Street's assumptions is no rocket science. Let's do that instead of debasing ourselves with the "Jew Boy" name-calling.

After all, those who called Kissinger a "Jew Boy" three decades ago probably miss him today.

2009-08-26T21:37:00.002+03:00

PAN AM 103 VICTIMS' FAMILIES AND SUPPORTERS PROTEST RELEASE OF BOMBER MASTERMIND AT UNITED KINGDOM UN MISSION

Wednesday, August 26, 2009
AMCHA-CJC
3700 Henry Hudson Parkway
Bronx, NY 10463
P. 718.796.4730
F. 718.884.3206
E. info@amchacjc.org
www.amchacjc.org

The parents' faces are etched with nearly 21 more years of grief. But their
children remain young, frozen in time, their bodies blasted apart in the
terror bomb which downed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December
1988.

Kathleen and Jack Flynn stood outside the United Kingdom UN Mission in
mid-Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, for their murdered son John Patrick,
then 21. Hope Asrelsky stood for her daughter Rachel, also 21. Babette
Hollister stood for her daughter Katharine, then 20. Gathered about them
were demonstrators organized by Amcha-Coalition for Jewish Concerns. They
protested the release by Scotland of Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset
Ali al-Megrahi, sentenced to life for orchestrating the murder of the 270
victims of Pan Am 103, 189 of them Americans. It is widely believed that
al-Megrahi's release to a hero's welcome in Tripoli was in exchange for
British commercial oil and gas contracts with Libya.

"When there is such a miscarriage of justice we cry out", declared Amcha-CJC
national president Rabbi Avi Weiss. "In God's words, 'your brother's blood
cries out to me from the ground', here, the blood of 270 Pan Am 103 victims.
To the parents of the victims, there are no words which can give you proper
solace. But across the denominations and faiths, each soul of good
conscience is trying to emphasize with you. You have not forgotten;
millions of people have not forgotten. Every passenger on any airline in
the world has been affected.

"Al-Megrahi was released on 'compassionate' grounds. Misplaced compassion
doesn't help, but hurts. Letting al-Megrahi go sends a message to
terrorists, you can do it and get away with it. And certainly no one
believes that only one person took down the plane. To Libya and, I believe,
Syria, we say, we have not forgotten. When Muammar Qaddafi comes to the
United Nations, as expected in a few weeks, he should be absolutely shunned.
Col. Qadaffi: The voice of moral conscience will follow you from the UN to
the Libyan compound in Englewood, NJ, where you may stay. You will not be
safe from the souls of Pan Am 103."

"To lose your oldest son in such a horrific act of terrorism is such an
incredible happening," Kathleen Flynn explained. It has certainly impacted
our entire life. God has blessed us with three other children and seven
grandchildren, but the pain is there every day. Terrorism is here to stay,
and we have to be ever vigilant and make sure that the nations which
participate in terrorist acts are punished. We should not be doing business
with terrorist nations."

"It's an appropriate day for me to be here," Babette Hollister told the
crowd and assembled media. "I spent the morning up in the cemetery because
tomorrow would have been my daughter's 41st birthday. I didn't even attempt
to explain to her what I would be doing this afternoon. It seems such a wild
thing that a person would be released after murdering 270 people."

"I don't speak the language in Scotland", Hope Asrelsky declared. "But I
think they've changed the word 'compassion' to mean the release in exchange
for oil exports and contracts."

Rabbi Jason Herman of the West Side Jewish Center, posed the question, "What
would happen if 21 years from now America, in an act of 'compassion', would
release 9/11 organizer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? In these upcoming days of
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, we speak of forgiveness and compassion. But not
holding someone accountable is not an act of compassion. The most ultimate
act of compassion is to hold someone accountable because it means that what
they did matters. Scotland hasn't learned that lesson; I hope the rest of
the world does."

Although the voices of the speakers were amplified to the many passersby on
the busy street a block from the United Nations, the protest also became
moments of healing. Rabbi Weiss gathered the protesters in a large circle.
"Let's close our eyes and try to feel the hurt", he told them. "Let's do
all we can to empathize with the families, to unite our souls, to stand as
one."

Other speakers included Maharat Sara Hurwitz of the Hebrew Institute of
Riverdale and Rabbi Israel Stein, rabbi emeritus of Rodeph Sholom,
Bridgeport, Ct.

Rabbi Weiss urged participation in the noontime September 24th rally at Dag
Hammerskjold Plaza against the expected presence of Iranian president
Ahmadinejad at the UN General Assembly.

Grobman: Israelis Denouncing Israel: Legitimate or Arrogant?

2009-08-24T20:20:00.003+03:00

When Israelis Denounce Israel: Legitimate Criticism of Israel or Arrogant Self-Delusion

Dr. Alex Grobman

Critics of Israel abound. Some are antisemites who seek the demise of the Jewish state. Others have legitimate concerns about particular Israeli policies. Among the most vocal are a number of Israeli intellectuals who challenge the country’s raison d’être.

In an August 20, 2009 editorial in the Los Angeles Times, Neve Gordon, a professor of political science at Ben-Gurion University, accused Israel of being an apartheid state. He said a two-state solution was the “more realistic” way to end this inequity. Since only “massive international pressure,” will bring about this state and thus save Israel, Gordon recently joined the Arab sponsored Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement founded in July 2005.1

Vilification of Israel by Jews is not a new phenomenon. As early as May 1, 1936 Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson asked: “Is there another people on earth whose sons are so emotionally twisted that they consider everything their nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape and robbery committed by their enemies fills their hearts with admiration and awe? As long as a Jewish child…can come to the land of Israel, and here catch the virus of self-hate…let not our conscience be still.”2 For Katznelson this was aberrant behavior, not the norm. Today, criticism of Israel has become ubiquitous among a significant portion of Israeli intellectuals.3

In the 1950s, psychologist Gordon Allport explained that Jewish self-hate is the process in which the victim identifies with his aggressor and “sees his own group through their eyes.” The Jew “may hate his historic religion…or he may blame some one class of Jews…or he may hate the Yiddish language. Since he cannot escape his own group, he does in a real sense hate himself—or at least the part of himself that is Jewish.”4 Self-hating Jews play a significant role in anti-Israel campaigns of the Western media. Historian Robert Wistrich noted that Jews highly critical of Israel are featured in the British media.5

Manfred Gerstenfeld, chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, found that the French elite and media adore Jews and Israelis who are highly critical of Israel.

A number of marginal Jews, who are not known in Israel, are presented as part of the Israeli mainstream. 6 Israeli’s condemnation of their country is a result of living under “a state of chronic siege,” posits Kenneth Levin, a historian and psychiatrist. Israelis have been abused for so long, that they escape their pain by espousing anti-Israel sentiments. Appeasing the terrorists, they believe, will end hostilities. Israel only has to acquiesce to Arab demands, cease obsessing about defensible borders and other strategic issues, and peace would ensue and such concerns would become irrelevant.7

Sol Stern, a former editor of the New Left Ramparts magazine, adds that this assumes both sides act rationally. According to this scenario, when Israel’s concessions are considered equitable, amity will compensate for any remaining differences. Didn’t the enmity between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union end in détente? Hadn’t President Richard Nixon gone to China? Aren’t “the Arabs rational” people? 8 Any “peace process” is intrinsically superior to war. Regardless of all previously failed attempts, isn’t another peace overture worth trying? To suggest there might be “something inherently violent and unreasonable in Arab Muslim political culture” could be interpreted as racist.9 Instead, Israeli intellectuals began disparaging their own culture and re-writing their country’s history. When they concluded that the Arabs had legitimate grievances, they decided “it was time to try again to split the difference.”10 In the 1980s and 1990s two different Israeli administrations offered “land for peace’ to Syria, but were rebuffed. Under terms of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Israeli government permitted terrorist organizations to return to the West Bank and Gaza and gave tens of thousands of weapons to Yasser Arafat’s security services, before he signed a peace treaty or an irrefutable security agreement. Arab failure to rescind the Palestine National Covenant’s demand for Israel’s demise and replacement by a Palestinian state was either ignored or minimized.11 “No nation in the world has taken so many mortal risks for a putative peace with its most implacable enemies,” Stern observes. Even after the Oslo Accords were shattered when the Arabs began blowing up civilians in pizza shops and on buses, Ehud Barak offered another proposal at Camp David. Instead of accepting this offer, Arafat unleashed “yet another savage wave of extermination against Israel’s civilian population” with weapons Israel had provided him.

Stern credits neoconservatives with understanding that Israel’s right to exist as a democratic Jewish state has always been the main problem for the Arabs, not the “disputed territories.” Arab attempts to bring their case to the attention of the world are not arbitrary.

Suicide bombings are a cleverly planned strategy that has produced considerable advantages. After the first series of attacks against Israeli supermarkets, cafés, malls and buses, the Arab cause was championed by European governments and on American campuses.12 Israeli victims receive little sympathy, historian Tony Judt and a severe critic of Israel claims, because they are not seen as victims of terror, but as “collateral damage of their own government’s mistaken policies.”13 Israeli offers to exchange land for peace have not succeeded. Appeasement has only increased hatred of Israel. Yet Israel is continually pressured to make concessions.

The reason, Stern believes, is that progressive critics cannot acknowledge a fundamental truth: “that there can be political movements, like Islamic terrorism—in which the jihad and the intifada merge—that are so pathological in their hatreds that we can solve the problems they purport to care about only after they are defeated.” 14

Levin sees an element of arrogance in “this self-delusion” by Israelis who believe they can affect change. Jews assume a responsibility for something over which they have no control, to ward off despair. This is similar to an abused child who feels responsible for his plight and views himself as “bad.” The child maintains, “the fantasy that if he becomes good enough,” his father will stop hitting him, his mother will give him attention and whatever other form of abuse he suffered will end.

In the same way, some Israelis are delusional when they assume they can control Arab behavior.

Dr. Alex Grobman is a Hebrew University trained historian. He is the author of a number of books, including Nations United: How The U.N. Undermines Israel and The West, Denying History: Who Says The Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? and a forthcoming book on Israel's moral and legal right to exist as a Jewish State.

1. Never Gordon, “Boycott Israel: An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it’s the only way to save his country,” latimes.com (August 20, 2009).2. Edward Alexander, “Israelis Against Themselves.” In The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders. Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor, Eds. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 35.
3. Ibid., 35-36.
4. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Jews Against Israel,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs No.30 (March 1, 2005).
5. Ibid.
6. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “European-Israeli Relations: Between Confusion and Change? An American Watching Anti-Israeli Bias in France, Interview with Nidra Poller.” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (September 2006).
7. Kenneth Levin, The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege (Hanover, New Hampshire: Smith and Kraus Global, 2005), vii-viii, xv, xix-xx.
8. Sol Stern, “Israel Without Apology.” City Journal. (Summer 2003), Online.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Tony Judt, “The country that wouldn’t grow up.” Haaretz. (May 5, 2006), Online.
14. Stern, op.cit.
15. Levin, op.cit. xvi-xx.

Support Trader Joe's and Israel this Sunday!

2009-08-23T18:50:00.002+03:00

Support Trader Joe's and Israel this Sunday!

Dear Friends,

Recently, anti-Israel protestors have rallied at local Trader Joe’s stores throughout the bay area of San Francisco and bombarded customers and store managers with anti-Israel propaganda.

These "activists" have been vandalizing the Israeli products by disfiguring them with labels depicting an Israeli Orange that is half a hand grenade and stickers that read “Don’t Buy into Apartheid; Boycott Israeli Goods.”

This issue has come to light with a highly disturbing video on YouTube “Dishelving Israeli Goods at Trader Joe’s.” Click on the title or the picture below. Please view this video and see why it is so imperative for all of us o act now. This is a deliberate campaign to employ boycott, divestment and sanction initiatives against Israel.

The Galilee Institute echoes the calls of the local Jewish and non-Jewish communities of San Fran to show support for Trader Joe’s and Israel by buying these quality and delicious products along with our regular groceries for the week.

Many email messages have been sent out by the synagogues and organizations on the North Peninsula inviting you and your family to visit your local Trader Joe’s store this Sunday, August 23rd at 11 a.m. and then again on Wednesday, August 26 at 7 p.m. to buy these great products.

We hope to have as many people there as possible to thank the Managers and Assistant Managers for their support and for stocking Israeli products.

The goal is to support Trader Joe’s and to show our deep appreciation as they continue to stock Israeli products and for not bowing to the pressure of anti-Israel organizations and sentiments.

Please join in on one of these very important days at your local Trader Joe’s www.traderjoes.com

1820 S. Grant St., San Mateo,
765 Broadway, Millbrae,
1482 El Camino Real, San Carlos

The Israeli products include:

Harvest Grains Israeli Couscous
Pastures of Eden Feta Cheese
Dorot garlic, cilantro and basic cubes (frozen food section)

Let us stand together as one, with our hearts, our feet and our dollars to help Israel.

With the abundant blessings of Jerusalem!

The Galilee Institute Staff

Caroline Glick : Netanyahu's Perilous Statecraft

2009-08-23T18:37:00.001+03:00

Caroline Glick :: Netanyahu"s perilous statecraft

This week we discovered that we have been deceived. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's principled rejection of US President Barack Obama's bigoted demand that Israel bar Jews from building new homes and expanding existing ones in Judea and Samaria does not reflect his actual policy.

Construction and Housing Minister Ariel Attias let the cat out of the bag.

Attias said that the government has been barring Jews from building in the areas since it took office four months ago, in the hopes that by preemptively capitulating to US demands, the US will treat Israel better.

And that's not all. Today Netanyahu is reportedly working in earnest to reach a deal with the Obama administration that would formalize the government's effective construction ban through 2010. Netanyahu is set to finalize such a deal at his meeting with Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, far from treating Israel better as a result of Netanyahu's willingness to capitulate on the fundamental right of Jews to live and build homes in the land of Israel, the Obama administration is planning to pocket Israel's concession and then up the ante. Administration officials have stated that their next move will be to set a date for a new international Middle East peace conference that Obama will chair. There, Israel will be isolated and relentlessly attacked as the US, the Arabs, the Europeans, the UN and the Russians all gang up on our representatives and demand that Israel accept the so-called "Arab peace plan."

That deceptively named plan, which Obama has all but adopted as his own, involves Israel committing national suicide in exchange for nothing. The Arab plan - formerly the "Saudi Plan," and before that, the Tom Friedman "stick it to Israel 'peace' plan" - calls for Israel to retreat to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines and expel hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. It also involves Israel agreeing to cease being a Jewish state by accepting millions of foreign, hostile Arabs as citizens within its truncated borders.

The day an Israeli government accepts the plan - which again will form the basis of the Obama "peace conference" - is the day that the State of Israel signs its own death warrant.

Then there is the other Obama plan in the works. Obama also intends to host an international summit on nuclear security in March 2010. Arab states are already pushing for Israel's nuclear program to be placed on the agenda.

Together with Obama administration officials' calls for Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - which would compel Israel to relinquish its purported nuclear arsenal - and their stated interest in having Israel sign the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty - which would arguably force Israel to allow international inspections of its nuclear facility in Dimona - Obama's planned nuclear conclave will place Israel in an untenable position.

Recognizing the Obama administration's inherent and unprecedented hostility to Israel, Netanyahu sought to deflect its pressure by giving his speech at Bar-Ilan University in June. There he gave his conditional acceptance of Obama's most cherished foreign policy goal - the establishment of a Palestinian state in Israel's heartland.

Netanyahu's conditions - that the Arabs generally and the Palestinians specifically recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state; that they relinquish their demand that Israel accept millions of hostile Arabs as citizens under the so-called "right of return"; that the Palestinian state be a "demilitarized" state; and that Arab states normalize their relations with Israel were supposed to put a monkey wrench in Obama's policy of pressuring Israel.

Since it is obvious that the Arabs do not accept these eminently reasonable conditions, Netanyahu presumed that Obama would be forced to stand down.

What the prime minister failed to take into consideration was the notion that Obama and the Arabs would not act in good faith - that they would pretend to accept at least some of his demands in order to force him to accept all of their's, and so keep US pressure relentlessly focused on Israel.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what has happened.

Ahead of Obama's meeting on Tuesday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Al-Quds al-Arabi reported that Obama has accepted Netanyahu's call for a demilitarized Palestinian state. Although Netanyahu is touting Obama's new position as evidence of his own diplomatic prowess, the fact is that Obama's new position is both disingenuous and meaningless.

Obama's supposed support for a demilitarized Palestinian state is mendacious on two counts. First, Palestinian society is already one of the most militarized societies in the world. According to the World Bank, 43 percent of wages paid by the Palestinian Authority go to Palestinian militias. Since Obama has never called for any fundamental reordering of Palestinian society or for a reform of the PA's budgetary priorities, it is obvious that he doesn't have a problem with a militarized Palestinian state.

The second reason his statements in support of a demilitarized Palestinian state are not credible is because one of the central pillars of the Obama administration's Palestinian policy is its involvement in training of the Fatah-led Palestinian army. US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton is overseeing the training of this army in Jordan and pressuring Israel to expand its deployment in Judea and Samaria.

The US claims that the forces it is training will be responsible for counterterror operations and regular police work, and therefore, it is wrong to say that Dayton is raising a Palestinian army. But even if this is true today, there is no reason not to assume that these forces will form the backbone of a future Palestinian army. After all, the Palestinian militias trained by the CIA in the 1990s were trained in counterterror tactics. This then enabled them to serve as the commanders of the Palestinian terror apparatus from 2000 until 2004, when Israel finally defeated them. It is the uncertainty about these forces that renders Obama's statement meaningless.

And that gets to the heart of the problem with Netanyahu's conditional support for Palestinian statehood. Far from deflecting pressure on Israel to make further concessions, it trapped Israel into a position that serves none of its vital interests.

For Israel to secure its long-term vital national interests vis-a-vis the Palestinians, it doesn't need for the US and the Palestinians to declare they agree to a demilitarized state or for a Palestinian leader to announce that he recognizes Israel's right to exist or even agrees that Israel doesn't have to commit national suicide by accepting millions of Arab immigrants. For Israel to secure its national interests, Palestinian society needs to be fundamentally reorganized.

As we saw at the Fatah conclave in Bethlehem last week, even if Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas were to accept Netanyahu's conditions, he wouldn't be speaking for anyone but himself. Fatah's conclave - like Hamas's terror state in Gaza - gave Israel every reason to believe that the Palestinians will continue their war against Israel after pocketing their state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. There is no Palestinian leader with any following that accepts Israel. Consequently, negotiating the establishment of a Palestinian state before Palestinian society is fundamentally changed is a recipe for disaster.

Furthermore, even if Netanyahu is right to seek an agreement with Mitchell next week, he showed poor negotiating skill by preemptively freezing Jewish construction. Domestically, Netanyahu has lost credibility now that the public knows that he misled it. And by preemptively capitulating, the prime minister showed Obama that he is not a serious opponent. Why should Obama take Netanyahu's positions seriously if Netanyahu abandons before them before Obama even begins to seriously challenge him?

Beyond the damage Netanyahu's actions have inflicted on his domestic and international credibility is the damage they have caused to Netanyahu's ability to refocus US attention and resolve where it belongs.

As the prime minister has repeatedly stated, the Palestinian issue is a side issue.

The greatest impediment to Middle East peace and the greatest threat to international security today is Iran's nuclear weapons program. A nuclear-armed Iran will all but guarantee that the region will at best be plagued by continuous war, and at worst be destroyed in a nuclear conflagration.

Netanyahu had hoped that his conditional support for Palestinian statehood, and his current willingness to bar Jews from building homes in Judea and Samaria would neutralize US pressure on Israel and facilitate his efforts to convince Obama to recognize and deal rationally with the issue of Iran's nuclear weapons program. But as Ambassador Michael Oren made clear on Sunday, the opposite has occurred.

In an interview with CNN, Oren said that Israel is "far from even contemplating" a military strike against the Islamic republic's nuclear installations. He also said, "The government of Israel has supported President Obama in his approach to Iran, initially the engagement, the outreach to Iran."

From this it appears that Israel has not only made no headway in convincing the administration to take Iran seriously. It appears that Jerusalem has joined the administration in accepting a nuclear-armed Iran.

It is possible that Oren purposely misrepresented Israel's position. But this too would be a disturbing turn of events. Israel gains nothing from lying. Oren's statement neutralizes domestic pressure on the administration to get serious about Iran. And if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear installations in the coming months, Oren's statement will undoubtedly be used by Israel's detractors to attack the government.

Some critics of Netanyahu from the Right like Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman claim that it may well be time to begin bringing down Netanyahu's government. They are wrong. We have been down this road before. In 1992, the Right brought down Yitzhak Shamir's government and brought the Rabin-Peres government to power and Yassir Arafat to the gates of Jerusalem. In 1999, the Right brought down the first Netanyahu government and gave Israel Camp David and the Palestinian terror war.

There is another way. It is being forged by the likes of Vice Premier Moshe Ya'alon on the one hand and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on the other.

Ya'alon argues that not capitulating to American pressure is a viable policy option for Israel. There is no reason to reach an agreement with Mitchell on the administration's bigoted demand that Jews not build in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. If the US wants to have a fight with Israel, a fight against American anti-Jewish discrimination is not a bad one for Israel to have.

Ya'alon's argument was borne out by Huckabee's visit this week to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Huckabee's trip showed that the administration is not operating in a policy vacuum. There is plenty of strong American support for an Israeli government that would stand up to the administration on the Palestinian issue and Iran alike.

Netanyahu's policies have taken a wrong turn. But Netanyahu is not Tzipi Livni or Ehud Olmert. He is neither an ideologue nor an opportunist. He understands why what he is doing is wrong. He just needs to be convinced that he has another option.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

Posted on August 21, 2009 at 5:37 PM

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Emmanuel Navon: Give a Speech Mahmoud!

2009-06-15T12:09:00.004+03:00

Why don't you also give a Speech, Mahmoud?

By Emmanuel Navon

http://www.navon.com

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is apparently not joining the Middle East speech contest launched by President Obama earlier this month in Cairo. No wonder: he has been outmaneuvered and would have precious little to say.

In a way, the Palestinians have cornered themselves. For the past two decades, they have presented their struggle to the world as a liberation movement while emphatically making it clear to their children that the ultimate goal in the "liberation of Palestine." There are indeed many people around the world who sympathize with the "one state solution" implied by the so-called and ill-named "right of return," but Western leaders do not accept the idea that the one of the two peoples that fight over the Holy Land should be deprived of its national rights. Hence the broad Western support for the "two-state solution."

Now that even Israel's Likud Prime Minister has endorsed that principle, the Palestinians can hardly whine to the international community. They will say that Netanyahu's two conditions (i.e. demilitarization and acceptance of Israel's Jewishness) are "unacceptable," but fair-minded people will surely wonder what's unacceptable about not invading Israel with millions of Arab immigrants and about not installing Iranian missiles in the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, Mahmoud Abbas is unlikely to make his own speech, telling his people that the "right of return" to Israel is a hoax, that the Temple Mount is also holy to the Jews, and that the radioactive effects of an Iranian nuclear bomb dropped on Tel-Aviv will not be stopped by the Green Line. And, while he is at it, he might as well publicly rescind his Holocaust-denying Ph.D. dissertation. Alas, Abbas will continue to say that Israel is "killing the peace process." Same old delusion, same old prattle.

One wonders if President Obama and other world leaders will eventually realize that the Palestinians are tricking the international community, and hold them responsible for that. The Palestinians will make sure that this does not happen by using propaganda. After all, they got away with rejecting Ehud Barack's offer in 2000 and with turning down Ehud Olmert's proposals in 2008.

Israel must be prepared for the upcoming propaganda contest. The Palestinians are now going to present the demographic demise of Israel and the militarization of the West Bank as "rights." Last night, Netanyahu both said and faced the truth. The Palestinians' hyperventilating reaction is an indication of what they are up to. Israel must take the initiative and be on the offensive; otherwise, it will soon find the ball back in its court. As Mark Twain said, "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." Let's tie our shoes fast before someone else ties our hands.