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Thirteen years after Israel’s enemies unleashed one of the most damaging fake atrocity stories in military history, the Israeli government has come up with an official report [1.8 mb pdf] to refute the September 30, 2000 France 2 news broadcast, narrated by respected correspondent Charles Enderlin, that claimed to show 12-year old Mohammad Dura shot dead by IDF soldiers.

Oh, we already know and knew almost immediately beyond a reasonable doubt that al-Dura was not shot by the IDF, and we almost certainly know that he was not shot at all, by anybody. Persuasive evidence (more persuasive than the official report) is here.

In fact, we can say with confidence that the incident was a fake, set up by France 2′s Palestinian cameraman and local Gaza residents.

But what is difficult to understand is the Israeli diffidence in the face of the vicious allegations.

The immediate response of the IDF was to temporize. From the official report:

On that same day, following the France 2 report, the Spokesperson Unit released a statement which made clear that while it was not possible to determine, based on the footage broadcast by the network, the source of the shots apparently fired at Jamal and the boy, ultimate responsibility lay with the Palestinians for cynically launching armed attacks from within the civilian population. …

But then, at a press conference on October 3, it turned disastrous:

[Maj. Gen. Giora] Eiland, in response to a question regarding Al-Durrah, answered that as a result of the gunfire at the junction, Jamal and the boy “took cover next to a wall, several meters from where Palestinians fired at us. The soldiers returned fire and apparently the boy was hit by our fire.”

Eiland later explained,

I had not seen all the evidence made available to the Israeli army only later…Given the long history of Palestinians exposing their children to danger, I assumed that the main issue in this case would be the question: Why would the Palestinians have exposed their own civilians to danger by firing on the Israelis while a boy and his father were in the crossfire? I did not realize that my words would be used to accuse Israel of cold-blooded murder.

The footage was played and replayed around the world. Two weeks later, two IDF reservists were torn to pieces in Ramallah to shouts of “al-Dura! al-Dura!” The alleged cold-blooded murder became the symbol of the Intifada, and an inspiration for suicide bombers. Daniel Pearl’s murderers and even Osama bin Laden, before and after 9/11, invoked it as justification for their acts.

Meanwhile IDF Maj. Gen. Yom Tov Samia, OC Southern Command, reenacted the incident, examined the relative locations of soldiers and Palestinians, and concluded that IDF bullets could not have hit al-Dura. This was announced at a press conference on November 27, which was almost entirely ignored by the media — and by top officers and Israel politicians. Indeed, the IDF Chief of Staff, Shaul Mofaz, told the Knesset that the investigation was a “private initiative of Samia,” not part of an official investigation.

Why didn’t Mofaz and his boss, Ehud Barak, who was serving as both Prime Minister and Minister of Defense at the time, take up the cause of the IDF and demand, with the maximum possible diplomatic force, that all information related to the incident — including all the footage shot by France 2 on that day — be placed at Israel’s disposal to do a proper investigation?

It didn’t happen, not then and not later, despite the revelation of more and more facts casting doubt on the story that the IDF had shot Dura. In 2005, the PM’s spokesperson to the foreign press, Ra’anan Gissin, asked France 2 for the footage and was turned down. In 2007, the IDF spokesperson tried to get the footage, but again Enderlin refused to provide it. More recently, the French Ambassador was asked “to help,” to no avail. Surely the State of Israel could have done more to defend the honor of its armed forces than to deploy low-level officials.

A French media critic, Philippe Karsenty, who has been defending himself against a libel suit filed against him by France 2 correspondent Enderlin for at least 10 years — he called the presentation “a hoax” — spoke bitterly in 2009 about the treatment he received from government officials:

During all those years, I got the cold shoulder from Israeli officials. With the exception of a few mavericks like Danny Seaman (director of the Government Press Office), Raanan Gissin (Spokesman, Prime Minister’s Office), Shlomi Amshalom, former deputy spokesperson for the IDF, or former ambassador Zvi Mazel, the vast majority of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs personnel treated me and others who pursued this case, as embarrassments – conspiracy nuts who they wished would just disappear…

In 2002, when it was still possible to do something immediate, Nissim Zvili was the Israeli ambassador to Paris. He listened courteously but explained to me that he was a friend of Charles Enderlin, the French journalist who narrated the al Dura hoax.

In 2006, Zvili was replaced by Daniel Shek, who refused to shake my hand, and later commented on a Jewish radio that I was defending “conspiracy theories.” When I asked his colleague in charge of communication at the embassy in Paris, Daniel Halevy Goitschel, why he never returned my phone calls, he responded: “the phone doesn’t work at the embassy”. We are not even dealing with a lack of support here. On the contrary, I was being sabotaged.

When I won the case [against another media outlet] in May 2008, Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said: “Karsenty is a private individual and no one in the Israeli government asked him to take on his battle against France 2. Karsenty had no right to demand that Israel come to his aid. All calls on the Israeli government to come and ‘save’ him are out of place. He was summoned to court because of a complaint of the French television channel. I don’t see where there is room for the Israeli government to get involved.”

Last December, I went over the evidence with Aviv Shir-On, who now claims to have helped me, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). After two hours he repeated the old MFA refrain, “I’m not convinced”. Let’s say, for the sake of generosity, that Shir-On is just one more timid defender of Israel, so afraid of what “others” might say, that even the judgment of an independent (and hardly well-disposed) French court in favor of his own country, does not give him the courage to speak. So even though I won the case, and the new evidence from France 2 sharpens our argument, I could not count on Israeli officials to help move into a counter-attack. Enderlin, humiliated by the court decision, was allowed to bluff his way back to prominence, and recently, in the Gaza war, lead the journalists’ attack on the Israeli government…

On January 2009, I met Tsipi Livni, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and asked her about the al Dura story and the lack of reaction of the Israeli officials. Why didn’t the State of Israel demand that France 2 admit their blood libel following the court decision? I was stunned by her answer: “Well, it happens that we kill kids sometimes. So, it’s not good for Israel to raise the subject again”. — Philippe Karsenty: Israel Losing the Media War: Wonder Why?

Karsenty was convicted, and the conviction was overturned on appeal — but recently the decision that exonerated him was reversed by France’s highest court.

It’s too late for the Israeli government to help him with his case, but let’s hope it can find the strength at last to support the IDF.

***

Update [2210 PDT]: The report also discusses at length Jamal al-Dura, the father, who claimed to have been wounded in the incident. It concludes that the scars he displayed were caused by an older injury done to him by Hamas operatives, and the treatment of those wounds in an Israeli hospital! Here is a summary from another article about the incident by Rabbi Shraga Simmons:

Meanwhile, the boy’s father, Jamal al-Dura, was engaging in his own bit of media manipulation. He held a press conference where he lifted his shirt to show journalists the scars on his chest as “proof” that Israeli soldiers had fired on him. In truth, these scars were the result of tendon transplant surgery that Jamal had undergone years earlier at an Israeli hospital, after being severely wounded by a Palestinian thug. Dr. David Yehuda, the surgeon who operated on Jamal, recognized the scars: “His wounds are not bullet wounds, but were produced by two things – first, the knife of the Palestinian who cut him, and second, my knife that fixed him. He faked the case.” Jamal had displayed the height of ingratitude: After being saved by an Israeli doctor, he turned that around to foist a libel on the Jews.

Technorati Tags: al-Dura, IDF, Israel

I haven’t written about the Benghazi affair before. I’m not in a position to judge whether the State Department or military could have intervened in time to save Ambassador Stevens, or why the consulate wasn’t reinforced, etc.  I’m sure the disaster could have been prevented, and someone is responsible for it. But I’m not the one to explain how and who.

What I am competent to discuss is the politics of the decision to present the attack as something that it was not, and that the relevant people knew at the time it was not.

Some of President Obama’s opponents have been saying that it was all about the election. Obama’s claim was that he had more or less ended the terrorist threat — after all, he killed bin Laden! So the truth that an American ambassador was murdered on the anniversary of 9/11 by al-Qaeda linked terrorists would not be helpful. Therefore, the story that the attack grew out of a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Islam video was pushed instead.

This is true as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough. The fact is that the video story was part of a theme that has run through Obama’s presidency from the beginning. This is the idea that the policy of the United States toward the anti-Western jihad should have two dimensions: we will kill overt anti-American terrorists, while at the same time try to placate the Muslim world through diplomacy and propaganda.

Every effort is made to relate positively to Muslims here and abroad. Aid programs are established to Muslim countries. NASA administrators are asked to reach out to the Muslim world. Less benignly, ‘Islamophobia’ is presented as a more dangerous phenomenon than domestic jihad, the administration embraces the Palestinian cause, supports Islamists in Egypt, falls in love with the Islamist PM of Turkey, etc.

This policy, which started immediately before Obama’s inauguration when he pressured Israel to withdraw from Gaza, found full expression in his Cairo speech of June 4, 2009. Although I was initially shocked by his obscene equation of the Holocaust with the way the “Palestinian people … have suffered in pursuit of a homeland,” the most alarming thing about the speech taken as a whole is its obeisance to the Arab and Muslim historical narrative, the story that is told to justify aggression against the US and the West (and Israel is only a small part of this).

For example, he said,

The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

In other words, it’s all our fault. Never mind the cultural and political backwardness that made Muslim nations hellholes for all but a tiny privileged minority, never mind the cynical behavior of kleptocratic Muslim leaders who sold themselves to whomever would supply the most weapons for them to use in their wars and intrigues against each other and Israel — their problems are all because of those Western colonialists!

Compare them to Israel, which freed itself from British domination to become the most successful nation in the Middle East, or Vietnam, or many other formerly colonized peoples. And keep in mind that many Arab countries, like Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, went rapidly from Ottoman domination to independence, suffering little, if at all, from Western exploitation.

Obama’s approach extended to the way we respond to ideologically-motivated terrorism in the US. The administration seems to have taken the true statement “not all Muslims support terrorism” and quite invalidly inferred from it that “Islam can never be the motive for terrorism.” So Major Nidal Hassan’s mass murder at Ft. Hood is explained as workplace violence, other terrorists are defined as mentally disturbed, the Department of Homeland Security issues a directive that such words as ‘jihad’ and ‘Muslim’ cannot be used in connection with terrorism, and the NYPD is criticized for carrying out surveillance of mosques.

In the view of the Obama administration, the enemy is not an ideology. It is only specific organizations (whose motives are not discussed) that attack us.

Any disagreement with this position — anyone who suggests that there is a dangerous ideology of political Islam out there which often finds violent expression in terrorist acts — is stigmatized as an Islamophobe, a kind of racist, a designation which places the person so vilified outside the pale of discourse, and justifies denying him or her the right to speak publicly.

And so we come back to Benghazi. What better explanation could be given for the disaster than an Islamophobic video? Not only does the randomness of the outburst excuse everyone involved for the failure — who could have known this would happen? — and not only does it hide the fact that even the acknowledged war against al-Qaeda hasn’t been going as well as they would like us to think, it casts blame precisely on those ‘intolerant’ opponents of the administration’s policy of trying to placate the Muslim world!

Thus the schmuck who made the video is imprisoned for a year for a parole violation, after Hillary Clinton tells the parent of one of the US personnel murdered in the attack that she would see to it that the filmmaker was arrested and prosecuted.

The dual policy — killing overt terrorists while expressing love and respect for Islam — is both unfortunate for our real allies, like Israel, which sees itself pressured into concessions to the PLO or Hamas as a way to show that Obama cares about Palestinian Muslims, as well as a failure.

The reason for the failure is a misunderstanding of the messages we send as they are received in Arab and Muslim cultures. The message of caring and respect that we are trying to send is perceived as weakness. Muslims understand that non-Muslims can either fight or submit to Islam — it’s not possible to admire Islam while at the same time refusing to submit. So Obama’s gestures are either ignored or indicate that he is not strong enough to fight.

At the same time, the drone strikes and the war in Afghanistan kill Muslims, and it is the duty of Muslims to avenge these killings. The fact that the perpetrators are non-Muslims makes them obscene in these cultures, the reversal of the natural order.

In the meantime, the morale of our police forces on the home front is weakened, the tools necessary to discover and prevent jihadist terrorism are taken out of their hands, and aggressive Islamic ideologues in our mosques and college campuses are encouraged.

A better policy would be to stop pretending to admire the people who hate us. We should say to the Muslim world, “look, we have a system that’s different from yours, we think it’s better, and we intend to defend it. Anyone who hurts us or our allies will get it back ten times over.” We don’t need to ‘declare war on Islam’ to do that, as apologists for the present policy claim.

Our leaders have become so used to lying, that they haven’t considered simply being honest and standing up for what we believe.

Technorati Tags: Islam, Benghazi, Obama administration

Still dangerous

Recently, PM Netanyahu traveled to the Kremlin to try to talk Russian President Vladimir Putin out of sending advanced weapons, including the S-300 air defense system, to Syria.

Although I wasn’t there, my guess was that Netanyahu said something like, “don’t do this, because if you do we will have to bomb them.” In particular, the S-300 would make it much harder for Israel to interdict arms transfers to Hizballah, or prevent possible chemical attacks against Israel by Syrian rebels or Hizballah, if they should get control of some of Assad’s arsenal.

According to American officials, Netanyahu’s arguments were not successful:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s last-minute trip to Russia on Tuesday apparently did not change the Russians’ intentions to also deliver the advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Syria. According to the [Wall St.] Journal, U.S. officials believe that Russia is moving more quickly than previously thought to deliver S-300 surface-to-air defense systems to Syria. U.S. officials told the paper that the S-300 system, which is capable of shooting down guided missiles and could make it more risky for any warplanes to enter Syrian airspace, could leave Russia for Syrian port of Tartus by the end of May.

Together, the S-300 anti-aircraft and anti-missile system, and the Yakhont anti-ship system, would pose a formidable threat to any outside intervention in Syria, based on the international Libya model. The anti-ship missiles would be a serious threat to the Israeli navy, as well as the facilities above Israel’s newfound underwater gas reserves. The S-300 could threaten Israeli military and civilian aircraft flying Israeli airspace, and not just over Lebanese and Syrian airspace.

Providing weapons like this to the unstable Syrian regime (or even a stable one) is remarkably irresponsible; but then, this is Putin. My guess is that Putin countered with threats of his own if Israel interferes with Russian actions.

Dore Gold explains which weapons Israel considers ‘game changers’ that it cannot permit to fall into the hands of Hizballah:

a. Chemical weapons.

b. Iranian surface-to-surface missiles equipped with heavy warheads, like the Fateh 110, which has a highly destructive 600 kg. warhead as compared to the 30 kg. warhead on Hizbullah’s Katyusha rockets that it launched against Israel in the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

c. Long-range anti-aircraft missiles, like the Russian-manufactured SA-17, which can limit the freedom of action of the Israeli Air Force if deployed by Hizbullah in southern Lebanon. The SA-17 uses a mobile launcher. Israeli diplomacy has been especially concerned with the Russian sale of even more robust S-300 anti-aircraft missiles by Russia to Syria, though there are no indications that Hizbullah is a potential recipient of this system.

d. Long-range anti-ship missiles, like the Russian supersonic Yakhont cruise missile, that has a range of 300 km. and can strike at Israeli offshore gas rigs in the Eastern Mediterranean. Russia recently sent a shipment of the missiles which will be added to an initial inventory of 72 missiles received first in 2011.

If Iran manages to prop up Assad at the price of turning Syria into a wholly-owned satrapy, then I’m not sure that it would be much better than if Hizballah itself had the weapons, from an Israeli point of view. Israel’s deterrence will be markedly weakened if the decision to use such weapons is taken out of the hands of a semi-autonomous Syrian regime and placed in Iran.

What motivates the Russians?

I think they have decided correctly that control of the Muslim Middle East hangs in the balance, with the main players in the struggle being Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunni elements, and Turkey. I think they have decided that the ‘strong horse’ is Iran and the Shiites. In addition, Russia faces challenges from Sunni Islamists within Russia itself and in Muslim states bordering it.

Russia has also always been unhappy with a Western-aligned nuclear power like Israel so close by. In fact some historians have suggested that the Soviets provoked Syria and Egypt to make war on Israel in 1967 in order to justify a strike on Israel’s nuclear facility in Dimona. Israel is also shaping up to be a future rival to Russian domination of the natural gas supply to Europe. An Iranian victory — and incidentally the end of the Jewish state — would be just fine for them.

Ugly? You bet. The forces opposing the Iran-Russia axis include the hostile and economically devastated Egypt, the super-extreme Sunni Salafists (some allied with al-Qaeda), the neo-Ottoman Islamist Turkish regime, Saudi Arabia — and the United States, which may or may not still be a formidable military power, but certainly does not appear to have the resolve to confront Iran, not to mention Russia.

But Israel has survived, even thrived, against similar odds before.

Shabbat shalom!

Technorati Tags: Russia, Syria, Israel, S-300

News item:

Internet giant Google has changed the tagline on the homepage of its Palestinian edition from “Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine”.

The change, introduced on 1 May, means google.ps now displays “Palestine” in Arabic and English under Google’s logo.

This was noted in most media outlets, but generally treated as unimportant:

“Google can do anything they want. They’re not a diplomatic entity so they can do Google La-la Land if they want to and that’s fine,” says Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. “Still, the question remains, this is a highly sensitive international politics issue, so what made Google decide they wanted to take a position on this?”

Google wouldn’t talk about this, but the company put out a statement saying it was following the lead of the United Nations and other international organizations. It also provided several examples of other name changes.

Israel’s deputy foreign minister sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page, saying Google’s move could hurt peace negotiations.

“I can tell you that it has no diplomatic meaning, and it hasn’t,” says Palmor. “But if people on the Palestinian side believe that they can get anything they want through unilateral steps by international bodies, well in that case they will be more reluctant to talk to Israel.”

As my readers know, I place “peace negotiations” with PLO terrorists somewhere on a line between pointless and dangerous. Rather than an alternative to giving them everything they want unilaterally, they are simply a way of obtaining the same result while maintaining the pretense of bilateral legitimacy.

So that isn’t what I would have told Page. Rather, I would have explained that sovereignty over the territories is disputed and that Israel has a prima facie claim on them in international law going back to the Palestine Mandate. I would have added that today’s “United Nations” is a sham and a scam, dominated by a group of the 56 (‘Palestine’ is no. 57) members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and their “nonaligned” lackeys who have a permanent majority for the elimination of the state of Israel, and probably the Jewish people as well.

I would point out that regardless of the votes of the UN representatives of these various dictatorships, kingdoms and theocracies, ‘Palestine’ can’t be a state because it doesn’t control the territory it claims, nor does it have defined borders (the application presented to the UN refers to the lines of the unimplemented 1947 partition resolution), nor is there a single government. Not only that, it has no economy other than the aid it extorts from the West, and its rulers are a bunch of racists and gangsters (not that this matters in international law, but still…)

Google should understand that by agreeing with said gangsters that ‘Palestine’ is a state, they are in effect agreeing that the Jewish people do not have a legitimate state, and that it is perfectly fine to murder Jews wherever and whenever you can in order to create ‘Palestine’, because these are the basic principles expressed in the charters of the PLO and Hamas, the two ‘Palestinian’ governments.

It’s really pretty simple. You’d think the geniuses at Google could figure it out.

Technorati Tags: Palestine, Google, Israel

Sunday I discussed the way the IRS targeted Jewish and Zionist organizations that applied for tax-exempt status, in the same way that they have done to conservative groups like the Tea Party.

We know why the administration had a problem with the Tea Party, which strongly opposes its candidates and policies. But why jump on Zionists?

The mainstream media are just beginning, after three years, to notice this story, so let me help them understand it better by quoting something that I wrote back in August 2010:

In the past few months, we’ve seen the development of what could be called “the NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) war.” Opening shots were fired by an Israeli Zionist student group named im tirtzu, which caused a stir when it reported that a large majority of the ‘documentation’ of  Israeli ‘war crimes’ in the tendentious Goldstone report on the recent war in Gaza came from 16 left-wing Israeli NGOs, all of which were supported by the US-based New Israel Fund (NIF).

Many of these groups can only be called ‘extremist’, and they are part of the movement to delegitimize Israel. In fact, the NIF’s guidelines did not disallow funding groups that advocate ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ (BDS) against Israel. Other NIF-supported groups include Arab organizations which call for the ‘de-Zionization’ of the state.

These NGOs also received millions from the European Union. The Knesset is now considering legislation to require greater transparency in funding of Israeli groups by foreign sources. NGOs are opposing it and have even asked the EU Parliament to consider this issue (talk about interfering with Israel’s sovereignty)!

There’s a cliché about poking a hornet’s nest. Did you ever hear the angry whine of, say, ten thousand disturbed insects? This pretty much describes the response to Im Tirtzu. Groups that benefited from the NIF’s largess, even the  Union for Reform Judaism (NIF supports its initiatives in Israel) screamed bloody murder.

But they did more: they counterattacked. In a coordinated campaign in early July including the New York Times and J Street, anti-Zionist forces blasted what they called “pro-settler charities” and suggested that they ought not to have tax-deductible status. The Times article included this:

The use of charities to promote a foreign policy goal is neither new nor unique — Americans also take tax breaks in giving to pro-Palestinian groups. But the donations to the settler movement stand out because of the centrality of the settlement issue in the current talks and the fact that Washington has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid in the settlements. Tax breaks for the donations remain largely unchallenged, and unexamined by the American government. The Internal Revenue Service declined to discuss donations for West Bank settlements. State Department officials would comment only generally, and on condition of anonymity.

“It’s a problem,” a senior State Department official said, adding, “It’s unhelpful to the efforts that we’re trying to make.”

It is remarkable how well anti-Zionist ‘Jewish’ organizations and celebrities line up together with the anti-Israel media against anyone, like Z Street, that opposes Israeli concessions to the PLO and supports the right of Jews to live outside the Green Line. The NY Times article quoted above is particularly offensive in its bias, distinguishing between (bad) contributions to ‘settlers’ and (good) donations for ‘Palestinians’. On the day it appeared, J Street

…call[ed] on the United States Treasury Department and relevant Congressional bodies to launch thorough investigations into whether or not the organizations funding settlement activities on the West Bank named in [the] New York Times report have broken the law.

And last year, in a NY Times op-ed, the star of the Jewish Left, Peter Beinart wrote that in addition to boycotting “settler-produced goods,”

We should push to end Internal Revenue Service policies that allow Americans to make tax-deductible gifts to settler charities.

So now we have the answer to why the Obama administration misused the IRS to punish pro-Israel groups:

The Jewish Lobby — the left-wing one — and its media lackeys, made them do it!

Technorati Tags: Z Street, IRS, Obama Administration

Tax-exempt organization CODEPINK suborns treason against the US

What’s he trying to do, say that we can’t play politics with IRS?… Just tell George [Schultz] he should do it. – Richard M. Nixon, August 1972

With a great deal of sound and fury, Americans are discovering that the IRS is being used for political purposes by the Obama administration.

Readers of FresnoZionism knew this back in 2010, when we discussed (here, here and here) the way the IRS targeted the pro-Israel group Z Street when it applied for tax-exempt status. At the time, I wrote that

So, for example, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Students Association, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Council on American-Islamic Relations all can accept tax-deductible contributions. So can the left-wing Americans for Peace Now, Meretz USA, and even the relatively extreme extremist Jewish Voice for Peace.

Incredibly, If Americans Knew, a group dedicated to demonizing the state of Israel is also a proud holder of 501(c)(3) status. And — to my further astonishment — so is CODEPINK, whose members get arrested at anti-military demonstrations, support boycott-divestment-sanctions against Israel, invade the homes of people they don’t like, etc.

While the IRS seems to have drawn the line at Free Gaza — the people that organize the ‘flotillas’ to Gaza — they continue to allow a group called “American Educational Trust” which is a 501 (c)(3) to accept contributions and pass them on!

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, the founder of Z Street who filed a lawsuit against the IRS that year, notes that “the very first hearing in Z STREET v IRS was recently scheduled for the afternoon of Tuesday, July 2, [2013] in the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia.” If Marcus were not a lawyer herself and very persistent, there would be no appeal for Z Street. And need I point out that justice delayed is justice denied?

I don’t know what official reasons were given by the IRS to Tea-Party related organizations — as well, ironically, as those with the word ‘patriot’ in their names — for holding up their applications, but Z Street’s lawsuit claims that

21.   [IRS] Agent [Diane] Gentry also informed Z STREET’s counsel that the IRS is carefully scrutinizing organizations that are in any way connected with Israel.

22.   Agent Gentry further stated to counsel for Z STREET: “these cases are being sent to a special unit in the D.C. office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.”

Could the violation of the First Amendment be more clear? An affadavit from the IRS official in charge of the “special unit” referred to was even more Orwellian:

a. The application indicated that Z Street could be providing resources to organizations within Israel or facilitating the provision of resources to organizations within the state of Israel;
b. Israel is one of many Middle Eastern countries that have a “higher risk of  terrorism.” (LR.M. 7.20.6.7.5.2(1). See also http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2008/122433.htm); and
c. A referral to TAG is appropriate whenever an application mentions providing resources to organizations in a country with a higher risk of terrorism.

This is like saying that we shouldn’t support the Boston Marathon, because terrorism happens there! And it is reminiscent of the US refusal to give refuge to Jewish victims of the Nazis because, as Germans, they were enemy nationals.

Marcus notes that the Z Street charter specifically condemns terrorism, and that Z Street has never provided funds or ‘resources’ to anyone in Israel or anywhere else.  And she adds that Z Street is not the only Jewish organization to receive ‘special treatment’ from the IRS:

And at least one purely religious Jewish organization, one not focused on Israel, was the recipient of bizarre and highly inappropriate questions about Israel.  Those questions also came from the same non-profit division of the IRS at issue for inappropriately targeting politically conservative groups. The IRS required that Jewish organization to state “whether [it] supports the existence of the land of Israel,” and also demanded the organization “[d]escribe [its] religious belief system toward the land of Israel.”

Some say the IRS is out of control. I wouldn’t put it that way — it is under way too much control, by an administration that simply doesn’t understand the Bill of Rights.

Zionists are on his list, too

Technorati Tags: Z Street, IRS, Obama Administration

PLO’s Abbas meets XI Jinping this week in Beijing

I’ve heard suggestions that Israel should be looking east for allies, rather than toward the US and Europe. Judging by the four point “peace plan” proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping while both PM Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas were in China, maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea. Do we really need another plan that doesn’t mention recognition of Israel as a Jewish state?

Here are the four points, with a few comments interspersed. You can decide for yourself if this represents a positive breakthrough.

First, the right direction to follow should be an independent Palestinian State and peaceful co-existence of Palestine and Israel. To establish an independent state enjoying full sovereignty on the basis of the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital is an inalienable right of the Palestinian people and the key to the settlement of the Palestinian question. At the same time, Israel’s right to exist and its legitimate security concerns should also be fully respected.

Just in case we have any question about whether the Chinese are taking sides, the ‘Palestinian people’ have “inalienable rights” to specific territory while Israel has only a “right to exist.” The word ‘legitimate’ is ambiguous, too — does it mean that Israel’s concerns are legitimate, or does it mean that only ‘legitimate’ concerns should be ‘respected’?

As we know, there are no “1967 borders,” only 1949 armistice lines which neither side accepted as having any permanent significance, and which were understood by the drafters of UNSC resolution 242 as needing to be replaced by “secure and recognized” boundaries. And if ‘full sovereignty’ includes militarization and control of airspace, then that is simply inconsistent with Israel’s security.

Second, negotiation should be taken as the only way to peace between Palestine and Israel. The two sides should follow the trend of the times, pursue peace talks, show mutual understanding and accommodation, and meet each other half way. The immediate priority is to take credible steps to stop settlement activities, end violence against innocent civilians, lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip and properly handle the issue of Palestinian prisoners in order to create the necessary conditions for the resumption of peace talks. Comprehensive internal reconciliation on the part of Palestine will help restart and advance the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

Ending violence against innocent civilians, if this means stopping Arab terrorism, would be great. But keep in mind that the PLO promised — when it signed the Oslo accords, and received weapons, money and training for its ‘police force’ — to do just that. PLO-supported terrorism continued, before, during and after the murderous second intifada, under Arafat and Abbas, on both sides of the Green Line, and is even increasing today, giving rise to fears of a third intifada. So any agreement must include a way to ensure that the PLO would honor it, as well as a way to restrain Hamas and the other extremist factions.

I recall the ill-fated ‘Road Map‘, whose full name was “A Performance-Based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” It called for “ending terror and violence” and stopping incitement as part of Phase I. Supposedly there would not be a Phase II if this didn’t happen. Of course it didn’t. Along the way, the idea of conditioning Israeli concessions on Palestinian performance seems to have been given up.

Regarding ‘settlement activities’: the argument has been that even if a ‘settler’ adds a bedroom onto his house within an existing settlement, then he is somehow creating facts on the ground which prejudice a future agreement with the Palestinians. This is illogical, considering that a) the settlement blocs where most Jews live are expected to remain part of Israel under any reasonable agreement, and b) there is established precedent for Israel withdrawing from inhabited settlements. But more important: Arabs, too, are building ‘settlements’, especially in Area C, the part of Judea/Samaria that is supposed to be under full Israeli control. Will they agree to stop their ‘activities’ as well? Because they are the ones creating facts on the ground today.

“Comprehensive internal reconciliation” is a lovely phrase, which means at least the integration of the belligerent, racist and genocidal Hamas into the Palestinian government. Since Hamas is the strongest and probably most popular force among the Arabs of the territories, it would probably lead to a complete takeover. The proper response to Hamas by all civilized peoples should be to reject and isolate it, not invite it to participate. I should add that removing the blockade to permit the import of missiles and other weapons is hardly conducive to peace.

The Chinese also seem to see a release of prisoners as a reasonable precondition. Perhaps they are used to the idea of political prisoners from their own case, but most security prisoners in Israeli jails are there for terrorist acts, of which they have been convicted according to due process (the Chinese could learn something from this).

Third, principles such as “land for peace” should be firmly upheld. The parties concerned ought to build on the existing achievements that include the principle of “land for peace,” the relevant UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative to advance the Middle East peace process across the board.

The idea of Land for Peace is pernicious. It could be rewritten, “your land or your life.” The contrapositive equivalent is “no land, no peace.” It ignores Israel’s historic rights under international law, assumes that Israelis or Jews do not have the right to live in the territories, and asserts that the penalty for doing so is war and terrorism. The Arab peace initiative makes precisely this kind of statement, placing blame for the conflict entirely on Israel and expecting Israel to bear all of the burden of resolving it.

Fourth, the international community should provide important guarantee [sic] for progress in the peace process. Relevant parties of the international community should have a greater sense of responsibility and urgency, take an objective and fair position, make vigorous efforts to encourage talks for peace, and increase assistance to Palestine in such fields as human resources training and economic development.

May I paraphrase: “Israel should be coerced by the ‘international community’ into agreeing to a disadvantageous settlement. Said community will also provide aid to ‘Palestine’, which as always will be used for weapons or to fatten the Swiss bank accounts of its leaders.”

The Chinese proposal gives nothing to Israel except a vague ‘right to exist’ — which of course is in not question regarding any other nation — and echoes PLO demands about borders, Jerusalem, and prisoners. Indeed, it could have been dictated by Mahmoud Abbas.

It almost certainly was. So what was Bibi doing in China?

Technorati Tags: Chinese peace proposal, Israel, Palestinians

These Syrian missiles did not make it to Lebanon (courtesy pietervanostaeyen)

I just watched some video of stuff blowing sky high in Syria.

I won’t add to the speculation about whether they are bombing weapons intended for Hizballah, chemical weapons, or “military research installations.” I do think we can say without fear of being wrong that it is Israel that is doing it, for the second time this week.

Yesterday, I listened in on a discussion about whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about Israel’s survival. My thought was: “I am guardedly optimistic.” Recent events make me feel even more so.

The way I see it, long term trends are mostly in Israel’s favor, although there are serious short-term threats that have to be overcome.

One of the most important of the long-term changes is the erosion of the Muslim oil monopoly. New sources of oil and gas in Canada, the US, China, even some in Israel, will make it harder for Israel’s enemies to pressure the West or Far East, and will reduce the amount of excess cash available to buy politicians and universities.

Although the Islamist takeover of Egypt is often placed in the negative column, the fact is that Egypt — once Israel’s most formidable enemy — is falling apart, as it proves that as far as running a country goes, Islam is not the answer. Egypt’s economic problems are immense, and it will be a long time before it will be capable of using its US-supplied weapons for anything other than putting down demonstrations.

While there has never been anything that united the Muslim Middle East more than hatred of Israel, today the ideological and religious issues dividing it are more important than ever.

Syria, another formerly formidable enemy, is cratering itself as we speak. Although there are justifiable fears that a radical Sunni regime even more hostile than Assad’s may take over, it appears that a decision has been taken in Jerusalem that it is the lesser evil compared to an Iranian/Hizballah takeover. Anyway, whoever follows Assad won’t inherit his massive arsenal, because it won’t be there at the end.

Assad’s exit — as long as Iran is kept out — will cut Hizballah off from its source of weapons, money and expertise. This is important because Hizballah is one of the main short-term threats I mentioned above.

War with Hizballah still seems probable, although less likely than before. In the event of war, its 60,000 missiles will have to go somewhere — I expect some will be destroyed on the ground, others will be launched and intercepted, and some will hit their targets. Hizballah also has built formidable defenses against ground attacks in South Lebanon, and even has plans for incursions into Israel. One has to take the threat seriously, but on the other hand there’s no doubt that Israel would prevail.

Without support via Syria, Hizballah will be weakened, and opposing forces in Lebanon — who do not want to see their national infrastructure damaged yet again by a pointless war of Hizballah’s making — may restrain them.

Iraq is also out of the picture, riven by internal conflict.

What about Iran? There are both short and long-term considerations. In the short term, we can’t minimize the danger from its nuclear program. The probability of American action seems small, so if they are to be prevented from developing actual weapons — and they don’t have far to go — Israel will need to do it. It is certainly correct that the program can only be set back, not taken out entirely.

But for the long term, the regime is highly unpopular. Like Lebanon, there is a large, relatively advanced segment of the population who would prefer peace and development to belligerence and Islamic fundamentalism. The Persian people also have not displayed the degree of Jew-hatred that one finds among the Arabs, unless the present regime has succeeded in ‘reeducating’ them. There is a good chance that a more moderate regime can arise, especially if it is encouraged to do so by the West.

So much for the good. What about the bad and the ugly?

The PLO and Hamas have little military capability, but their hatred is implacable and they can be expected to continue doing whatever they can by means of diplomacy, terrorism and subversion to destroy the Jewish state. Thanks to the ‘educational’ program established by Yasser Arafat and continued by the present Palestinian leadership — despite promises to end incitement — today’s residents of the territories are more pathologically consumed by hatred than ever before.

Israel’s options are limited — it must continue security precautions, work to assure loyalty among its Arab citizens, and make sure that the rest of the world is aware of the true intentions of the ‘Palestinian’ leadership (insofar as it doesn’t share them — see below).

The only thing that can make this problem go away is time, and this only if incitement can be ended. Unfortunately, Israel has little or no power to control this.

What historically empowered the ‘Palestinian cause’ was the Soviet Union and Arab petrodollars. Russia is now more neutral in this particular conflict for various reasons, and the Arabs have fewer and fewer petrodollars to throw around. But there is another factor, one which was kick-started by those same forces, that has taken on a life of its own almost everywhere in the world — Muslim nations, Europe and the academic sector of the US — old-fashioned Jew-hatred, now transmuted into anti-Zionism.

I’m not going to discuss all the ways that Israel should respond, but one is based on a simple psychological principle: humans hate weakness and victims; they like strength and winners.  The way to end Jew hatred is not to apologize or compromise with it, and not to appeal to the haters’ better natures, but rather to maintain our honor: to fight the enemies of the Jewish state with determination, to develop respect — love is not available — and deterrence, the political aspect of fear.

Bombing Syrian weapons depots is a good start.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Syria

A church burns in Cairo surrounded by angry Muslims, May 2011

Yesterday I wrote about the centuries-long project of Islam to dominate the world, and how it has expressed itself in violent struggle. One of the first enemies of Islam, going back to Mohammed’s day, was the Jewish people, and Mohammed slaughtered them mercilessly and forced many to convert to Islam, or to submit to Muslim rule as dhimmis.

But the Jews are small potatoes today, perhaps 14 million souls out of a world population of about 7 billion. True, Israel is a particular problem because of its strategic location, but the general opinion among Muslims seems to be that it is just a matter of time before the battle of Khaybar will be re-fought on a larger scale, and the Jews dispossessed from their toehold in Dar al Islam.

The real obstacle is the Christians, who possess the richest and most powerful nations of the world. Islam is rapidly overrunning post-Christian Europe by demographic warfare and low-level violence, and has struck painfully at the United States, a nation with a Christian majority. But it is fascinating and instructive about the nature of Islam to observe its fanatic intolerance of even the small Christian minority that has managed to persist in Muslim-controlled lands.

Physical facts on the ground are hugely important in a cultural struggle, which is why the rubber hits the road in Israel — on both sides of the Green Line — as a question of who has the right to build, to plant, even to travel, where. So too Islam has always waged a war against the physical manifestation of Christianity, churches, as Raymond Ibrahim explains:

Sharia law is draconian if not hostile to Christian worship. Consider the words of some of Islam’s most authoritative and classic jurists, the same ones revered today by Egypt’s Salafis. According to Ibn Qayyim author of the multivolume Rules for the Dhimmis, it is “obligatory” to destroy or convert into a mosque “every church” both old and new that exists on lands that were taken by Muslims through force, for they “breed corruption.” Even if Muslims are not sure whether one of “these things [churches] is old [pre-conquest] or new, it is better to err on the side of caution, treat it as new, and demolition it.”

Likewise, Ibn Taymiyya confirms that “the ulema of the Muslims from all four schools of law—Hanafi, Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanbali, and others, including al-Thawri, al-Layth, all the way back to the companions and the followers—are all agreed that if the imam destroys every church in lands taken by force, such as Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Syria … this would not be deemed unjust of him,” adding that, if Christians resist, “they forfeit their covenant, their lives, and their possessions.” Elsewhere he writes, “Wherever Muslims live and have mosques, it is impermissible for any sign of infidelity to be present, churches or otherwise.”

To no one’s surprise, in addition to the “tens of thousands” of churches throughout Muslim lands that have been destroyed since the advent of Islam, the regime in Egypt  — which envisions it as a 7th century Islamic state with F16′s and Abrams tanks — is continuing the tradition:

The story of St. George Coptic Church in Edfu is especially instructive of the plight of churches in Egypt. Built nearly a century ago, during the Christian “Golden Age,” St. George was so dilapidated that the local council and governor approved its renovation and signed off on the design. Soon local Muslims began complaining, making various demands, including that the church be devoid of crosses and bells—as stipulated by the Conditions of Omar—because they were “irritating Muslims and their children.” Leaders later insisted that the very dome of the church be removed. Arguing that removal of the dome would likely collapse the church, the bishop refused. The foreboding cries of “Allahu Akbar!” began; Muslims threatened to raze the church and build a mosque in its place; Copts were “forbidden to leave their homes or buy food until they remove the dome of St. George’s Church”; many starved for weeks.

Then, after Friday prayers on September 30, 2011, some 3,000 Muslims rampaged the church, torched it, and demolished the dome; flames from the wreckage burned nearby Christian homes, which were further ransacked by rioting Muslims. Security, which was present, just “stood there watching,” according to Christian eyewitnesses. Edfu’s Intelligence Unit chief was seen directing the mob destroying the church. Even the governor of Aswan appeared on State TV and “denied any church being torched,” calling it a “guest home.” He even justified the incident by arguing that the church contractor made the building three meters higher than he had permitted: “Copts made a mistake and had to be punished, and Muslims did nothing but set things right, end of story,” he proclaimed on TV.

Now you are probably thinking, “American Christians should be up in arms about this.” Some are, of course, but there is a shocking lack of understanding in other circles. Let’s look at a document published in 2010 by the Presbyterian Church of the USA called “Toward an Understanding of Christian-Muslim Relations“. It begins by decrying “stereotypes” about Islam and Muslims, and then suggests that Islamic beliefs are not responsible for the violence that is endemic in the vicinity of Muslims, “social and economic” factors and outside interventions are:

Sadly, economic, political, and social factors have led toviolent conflicts in many parts of the world in which Muslims live. In a few  countries, radical groups that use violence in the name of Islam are active politically. At the same time, large-scale military interventions (from within or from outside) and other governmental actions often inflame and exacerbate local conflicts. Though the root issues of many conflicts are economic or social rather than religious in nature, religion is often used to express and manipulate emotions and to legitimate a wide variety of political and social agendas.

It is quite a stretch to blame the church-burnings, terrorism against Israel, or for that matter 9/11 on these things!

After a long discussion of theological differences (Christians believe in a Trinity; Muslims do not), the document asserts that both groups share a commitment to ‘justice’:

As part of their lives of faith, both Muslims and Christians are also deeply concerned that the societies in which they live should be just. For Christians, concerns regarding justice are rooted in the teaching and example of Jesus, as well as in the prophetic tradition which clearly shaped his understanding and announcement of the kingdom of God. In the Qur’an, God’s concern for justice as well as compassion is stated repeatedly (cf. Qur’an 7:85, 5:8). Although inspired by different religious traditions, Christians and Muslims share many concerns for social justice. Poverty, homelessness, environmental degradation, and violence in media and society are all problems that Muslims and Christians can address together.

What it fails to note, unfortunately, is that ‘justice’ to a Muslim means ‘conformance to Shari’a', Islamic law, in which women, Christians and Jews, and ‘polytheists’ like Hindus or Buddhists have an inferior legal (and social) status to Muslim males. This massive equivocation makes nonsense of the suggestion that Christians and Muslims have similar concerns about justice.

In a particularly dishonest paragraph, the document implies that Islam values religious freedom as we understand it:

Human rights and the rights of communities are among the concerns that Christians and Muslims share. In the light of global discussions of such rights, and the difficult situations in many countries, these issues are often sensitive, and entangled with particular historical and political struggles, or culturally specific claims. Christians and Muslims can make an important contribution by “affirming that the principles of human rights and religious freedom are indivisible…. Religious freedom does not only imply freedom of conscience but also the right to live in accord with religious values and the recognition of cultural and religious diversity as basic to human reality.”

Well, sure. Muslims certainly could “make an important contribution” in this area — but they won’t, because the Qur’an calls for apostates from Islam to be killed, and the rights of non-Muslims to be limited.

Another apologetic passage relates to the treatment of women:

Historically and still in our own time, many women face difficult struggles in both traditions. It is important to note, however, that Christians often fault Islam about the treatment of women in ways that demonize Islam[.] A Muslim woman’s covering of her head is assumed to be a sign of oppression, even when the situation of that woman is not known. Western Christian reactions may prevent our recognition of the power women may have in particular Muslim contexts.

There is a lot more to the treatment of women in Muslim societies than head coverings. As mentioned, Shari’a grants women fewer legal rights than men. Some truly barbaric practices common in many (but not all) Muslim cultures, like genital mutilation and honor killings, while not dictated by Islam, are nevertheless condoned by religious authorities. There are Islamic fatwas permitting wife-beating and rape.

Finally, the document admits that there might be some historical bad blood between Christians and Muslims:

In such conversations [between Christians and Muslims], issues of history require attention. Many Muslims link Christianity and Christians with recent experiences of colonial power and control in various parts of the world, and these associations carry echoes of the Crusades for some. On the other hand, Christians often recall specific instances of violence against, or oppression of Christians in parts of the world in which Muslims are in the majority. Such wounds are a living factor in Christian-Muslim relations today.

The Crusades, which were after all a reaction to Islamic imperialism, may not have been nice, but they did happen in the Middle Ages. And Muslims are quick to see colonialism in any behavior that they don’t like, for example, even in the legitimate self-defense of the Jewish state.

But there is no way to deny that Islamic terrorism and aggression right now, today, have increased in proportion to the increase in the power at the disposal of Muslims; and that — as the example of Egypt shows — Christians are in the cross-hairs.

Wake up, people!

Technorati Tags: Islam, Christians, Egypt, Presbyterian Church USA