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The Peel Commission’s “two-state solution,” 1937

Yesterday Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party became the latest member of Israel’s cabinet to call for an end to the pretense that a “two-state solution” could be a ‘solution’ in any sense.

The notion of having a two-state solution established in the Land of Israel is now at a dead end; never in Jewish history have so many people talked so much and expended so much energy in something so futile,

he said. Instead,

Bennett reiterated his stance that Israel should annex — “as quickly as possible” — virtually all the areas [Area C] that were not handed over the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo accords, including the Jewish communities and a handful of Palestinian towns. He further advocated that Israel devise “aggressive” new plans to drastically improve the economic well-being of both the Jewish and Arab inhabitants of Judea and Samaria.

Bennett said that Israel must continue its settlement activity in Judea and Samaria “in full force, because only facts on the ground would make everyone understand that it is an unrealistic proposition to have a Palestinian entity in the Land of Israel.”

Naturally this led to a storm of criticism — in some cases, abuse — from the Palestinians, the Israeli Left, Europe and the Obama Administration, just as last week’s remark by Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon that the government would not support a “two-state solution” did.

So what is the history of the “two-state solution?”

The original Palestine Mandate conceived of the establishment of a Jewish state in part of the area taken from the collapsed Ottoman Empire after WWI. The victorious Allied Powers also established a Mandate in what was to become the present-day state of Iraq, one for Lebanon and Syria, etc. The British took about 70% of the Palestine Mandate and created the Arab state of Transjordan.

But despite the plethora of new Arab states (and Mandates that would become states), violent opposition to Jewish sovereignty in what was left of Palestine arose among the Arabs, and for various reasons — oil among them — Britain abandoned its responsibility to the Jewish people. When the British were ultimately driven out of the region — in great measure by Jewish resistance — they sided with the Arabs in their attempt to abort the creation of a Jewish state.

In the lead-up to the 1948 war, there were various partition proposals to reduce even further the area allocated to a Jewish home, all of which were acceptable to the Jews. There was the Peel Commission report of 1937, which proposed a small Jewish state, a larger Arab state and a chunk including Jerusalem to remain under British administration. And of course there was the UN Partition Resolution of 1947. Both of these were rejected by the Arabs, who did not — as they do not today — accept the idea of any Jewish sovereignty in Palestine.

Note what the various “two-state solutions” were supposed to solve — Arab opposition to Jewish sovereignty. Of course only total elimination of the Jewish state could do that.

After the 1967 war, Israel accepted UNSC resolution 242, under which Israel would give back lands it had occupied to its neighbors in return for peace treaties that would guarantee “secure and recognized boundaries.” The clear intent of the resolution was that Israel would give back some of the land, but not necessarily all of it, particularly because the pre-war boundaries were not ‘secure’.

Israel signed a peace agreement with Egypt and evacuated the Sinai (unfortunately Sadat would not take Gaza as well). But in 1988, Jordan ceded its claims on Judea and Samaria to the PLO. Any peace treaty in the framework of 242, then, would have to be with the PLO.

The Oslo agreements of 1993 were intended to lead to such a peace agreement. As everyone knows, the PLO was not prepared to accept the terms offered at Camp David and Taba in 2000-1, and chose to make war instead — a war in which more than a thousand Israelis (mostly civilians) and possibly 3,000 Arabs (mostly combatants) were killed.

The PLO rejection of the offers was not a matter of technical details, but of fundamental ideological beliefs. This is shown by the refusal of the PLO to change its charter despite a massive effort by US President Clinton to get them to do so, by the persistence of both terrorism and incitement throughout the Oslo period, and by the ultimate recourse to war against Israel’s population.

Nevertheless, another offer was made, this time by PM Olmert in 2008. This offer was even more generous than that made in 2000-1. When its contents were revealed recently, many Israelis were shocked. But that offer was rejected as well.

Israel evacuated every last Jew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. They even dug up bodies from cemeteries and removed them. For reasons that I have never understood, the PLO was furious that the withdrawal wasn’t ‘coordinated’ with them.  Israel got absolutely no credit for giving the Palestinians what they had been saying they wanted for years! Of course, two years later, Hamas came along and viciously took over Gaza, murdering numerous PLO functionaries. But that wasn’t because the withdrawal wasn’t ‘coordinated’. In any event, it showed that evacuating territory near Israeli populations was a bad idea when Hamas ramped up its rocket attacks.

It has always fascinated me that those calling for a “two-state solution” seem to believe that once an agreement is signed and the IDF leaves the territories, then there will be peace. Is there any precedent that the Arabs might not honor an agreement? Could a regime change on the Arab side cause the abrogation of the agreement? Just to ask these questions shows the idiocy of the “two-state solution!”

As Abraham Katsman argues here, the security consequences of a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria are unacceptable:

…history indicates that withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, absent major changes, is arguably the single most counterproductive act imaginable for long-lasting peace. There is no greater obstacle to peace than the perpetual temptation to launch another war against Israel from such lopsided lines.

What is so sacred about the pre-1967 lines, anyway? In 1967, there was neither peace nor an independent Palestinian entity. Similar lines were part of the 1947 Partition Plan, and were overrun by invading Arab armies. The pre-1967 lines were never an internationally recognized border — thanks to Arab insistence that they not be. They were merely the armistice lines of 1949, an armistice honored mostly in the breach. In 1967, Arab armies finally shredded the armistice by attacking across those lines, in spite of Israeli pleas to Jordan’s King Hussein not to do so. With new ceasefire lines in 1967 and 1973, the pre-1967 lines were rendered meaningless, having lasted all of 18 years, 1949-1967. R.I.P.

Even putting aside Israel’s own legitimate legal, cultural, and historical claims to disputed territories, Israeli withdrawal to those lines won’t happen now due to Israeli aversion to existential vulnerability.

The bottom line for Israel is a sovereign Jewish state with defensible borders. The PLO’s reason for being is to end the Jewish state. What’s surprising is that John Kerry and others continue to think that there’s room for an agreement that could be consistent with both.

Technorati Tags: two-state solution

In a previous post, I imagined the situation in 2018, with Israel’s traditional Arab and Iranian enemies mostly toothless as a result of Sunni-Shiite conflict and economic incompetence, while a new threat emanates from a viciously anti-Jewish Western Europe. There, traditional European Jew-hatred has combined with the influence of a rapidly growing Muslim population to produce a true witches’ brew of hatred for Jews and their state.

But as one commenter noted, there was a country that, despite its importance, was not mentioned even once: the US. And the reason was that although the trends for Europe seemed clear, my ability to imagine the future here in the US was far weaker, producing only cloudy visions.

Or maybe I just wasn’t comfortable with what I envisioned. But let me flip the switch on the time machine anyway.

It’s 2018. President Clinton is halfway through her first term, having been helped to a landslide victory by a lackluster Republican candidate nominated by a fractured party split between representatives of extractive industries, social conservatives and Tea Party libertarians. Although the media that had so single-mindedly shilled for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 had begun to tire of him when the heavy hand of the Justice Department fell on them in 2013, Ms Clinton convinced the press that she was on their side. After all, wasn’t her own daughter a TV journalist?

Demographic changes also helped. Hispanics and Asians represented a greater share of the population than in 2012, and these groups voted heavily Democratic, especially as Clinton and her husband had campaigned hard for the American Immigration and Diversity Act of 2014, which provided a relatively unobstructed path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants (and future Democratic voters). Many people voted for Ms Clinton simply because they thought it was time to give a woman a chance (it was hard to argue that male politicians hadn’t screwed up big time).

Although the Republican Party had traditionally been considered the party of ‘big business’, 2018′s biggest businesses — Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. — gave large contributions to Democratic candidates, and only smaller ‘insurance’ donations to Republicans.

Finally, there were some less savory aspects to the election. Small businesspeople thought twice about publicly supporting Republican candidates out of fear of regulatory agencies and the IRS, which were even more politically active than in 2013, despite the furor that had arisen then. Lists were compiled of voters that had moved or died, and since there was no requirement for ID to vote in most states, others voted in their places. Information from the massive NSA databases about ordinary Americans found its way to political operatives.

It was no contest for the presidency, and only slightly less unbalanced in the House and Senate.

Not that the Congress mattered that much anymore. Despite its constitutionally mandated role, its continued paralysis through the Obama years made it inevitable that the Executive Branch would find ways around it. By 2018, many of its debates were only political posturing, while the real decisions were taken by the administration by executive orders. Some politicians made quaint speeches about the Constitution, to little effect. “What can we do?” said administration spokespeople. “The Congress is dysfunctional.”

Although the Democrats had campaigned against income inequality, it turned out that the rich — especially the super-rich — were continuing to get richer, and the poor and middle-class poorer. Despite the commitments of the ‘progressive’ administration, health-care and other services for the poor, disabled, mentally ill, homeless, etc., suffered more and more for lack of funds. Many roamed the streets, begging and stealing to survive.

Shortly after Clinton’s election at the tail end of the Israeli-Hizballah war of 2016, Hizballah activated several terrorist cells who had infiltrated the US from South America via the Mexican border. They succeeded in detonating bombs at LA International Airport and several Jewish institutions in Los Angeles. They also invaded the Israeli consulate there, killing several security personnel and taking numerous hostages. Although Israel sent a security team, the terrorists began executing hostages before they arrived, and the LAPD stormed the building, resulting in a bloodbath of terrorists, hostages and police.

After the LAX bomb was determined to contain radioactive materials — a ‘dirty bomb’ — the centrally-located airport was abandoned at huge cost. Property values tumbled within a 30-mile radius (although the contamination was in fact limited to the airport area). The city of Los Angeles was forced to declare bankruptcy when it could not come close to balancing its budget.

Many Americans asked how this could have been allowed to happen, given the degree of surveillance that they had become used to, including tracking of cellphone usage, emails, monitoring of the content of voice communications, and a massive expansion of facial recognition software which received inputs from hundreds of thousands of cameras in public areas and matched it to databases of passport and driver’s license photos. Since these programs were revealed in 2013, they had become even more pervasive — and the security agencies developed incredibly powerful search tools than can spit out complete dossiers on the lives of individual people or groups, by analyzing literally trillions of database entries in moments.

President Clinton promised to “bring the terrorists to justice,” but Israel had already destroyed the Hizballah infrastructure in Lebanon, so all she could do was send the few surviving terrorists to Guantanamo (which she promised to close). US Muslim organizations such as CAIR, ISNA, etc., swung into action to forestall an expected ‘wave of Islamophobia’. Liberal churches and Reform Temples throughout the country held special meetings in which representatives of those organizations ‘explained’ the difference between ‘bad’ (Shiite) Muslims like Hizballah, and ‘good’ Muslim-Brotherhood types like themselves. They also hinted that the patience of even ‘good’ Muslims could run out if the US continued to support the existence of a Jewish state.

It was argued that ‘hate speech’ against Islam was partly responsible for the anger against the West, and that — while everybody had a right to free expression — certain videos and blogs should be removed from the Internet, because they exacerbated a bad situation. Many people agreed. The Clinton Administration hinted that “it knew how to deal with hate-mongers” and would take steps to do so.

The Administration issued a classified executive order called the “Homeland Protection Act” [HPA] which was explained as a response to the “West Coast 9/11.” Since it was classified, the contents were not revealed, but it was understood that it was necessary to deal with the emergency, just like the broad surveillance measures. It was thought that it temporarily suspended certain parts of the Bill of Rights. Again, many Americans agreed, and those who didn’t understood that they needed to be very careful about how they expressed their disagreement.

Some Americans were taken into custody under the HPA. Interestingly, they were mostly right-wingers, not Islamic terrorists. But the HPA apparently didn’t require that they be publicly charged, so in essence they disappeared.

The Canadian Prime Minister expressed his concern about the erosion of civil rights in the US, especially since many Americans were crossing the border into Canada daily. The US government responded by beefing up its control of the Canadian border, subjecting suspected emigrants to impromptu examinations to ensure that they were not trying to avoid their US tax obligations. The Administration issued an executive order than anyone leaving the US had to prove that they had paid all due taxes or post a bond. In some places, they built a wall.

Impossible? I wonder.

Technorati Tags: USA, Bill of Rights, Constitution

Patrick Mercer, MP

News item:

A British MP who was caught on camera branding an Israeli soldier a “bloody Jew” has apologized for his remark, the British-based Jewish News reports. …

Describing an encounter with a soldier while trying to enter an “intelligence establishment” during a recent visit to the Jewish state, he was reported during last Thursday’s program as saying, “An 18-year-old girl wearing a uniform, but with her sort of hair in plaits, and crazy jeweler [sic] and open-toed sandals, with a rifle up my nose. Who the f*** are you, you know? ‘Well I’m a soldier.’ Are you? You don’t look like a soldier to me. You look like a bloody Jew. And I’ve no doubt that if I’d come up with the wrong answer, I’d have had my head blown off.”

[MP Patrick] Mercer, who served as shadow homeland security minister under Michael Howard and Iain Duncan Smith, has told the Jewish News, “I’d like to apologies [sic] unreservedly for any offence I’ve caused to all my friends in the Jewish community.”

A pity he didn’t get his arrogant Jew-hating head blown off, in my opinion. And he doesn’t need to apologize to “all [his] friends in the Jewish community,” assuming that he still has any. He has to apologize to that young woman who, while doing her duty, taught this worthless prick an important lesson: that there is one place in the world where Jews don’t have to take crap from such as him.

MP Mercer expressed the thought held more quietly by so many, especially in Europe and the UK: they believe that it’s just not proper for there to be Jewish soldiers, a Jewish army, a Jewish air force, Jewish nuclear weapons, or a Jewish state. In their minds, Jews exist to be insulted, to be victimized in various ways, maybe to be pitied but never to be respected.

But those days ended in May, 1948, when MP Mercer’s own regiment, the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, along with the rest of the British forces in Palestine, slunk back to England with its tail between its legs, after getting its ass kicked by Jewish soldiers like the young woman he insulted!

There. Now I feel better.

Technorati Tags: Patrick Mercer, IDF

Women of the Wall — the end of the Jewish state?

Sometimes our friends can be worse than our enemies.

Here is an argument made by Yori Yanover of the Jewish Press, to a correspondent named Dan Silagi, who found the “Women of the Wall” [WOW] relatively harmless:

Our entire justification for having conquered the land from the former inhabitants, which we have done, is that it was God given to us. Otherwise, we’re just European colonialists who pushed out the indigenous people for no good reason other than the power of the gun.

If we believe that God gave us the land, we must ask, what is our relationship with God? Do we bring anything into the relationship, or is the Gift from God argument, essentially, an empty slogan we don’t really believe in?

If we believe in it, then we must accept that our relationship with God is through the commandments, more accurately through our adherence to His commandments — because that’s what He, in his eternal wisdom, told us.

So that our adherence to halacha and our right to the land are inseparable, and if we don’t adhere to halacha, we have no rights here.

Now, the most essential, most central, most crucial part of halacha is submitting to the yoke of our sages. In this case, there is one sage who is the state appointed administrator at the Kotel, and he laid down the law — only to be defied both by the WOW and by two lower courts. Incidentally — the high court still sides with the Rabbi of the Kotel.

So, Dan Silagi, while I agree that your predictions are true, I also say that they make you and your ilk nothing better than the British and French oppressors of the black tribes of Africa, and that you, as a secular European invader devoid of justification for your occupation, must at once relinquish authority over the land to its rightful Arab owners.

Now I would be the last to argue that God did not give the land of Israel to the Jewish people, but like many other gifts, it didn’t fall on us like manna. We had to earn it. And we, the Jewish people, did earn this one. In fact, even for those who don’t believe in God, the right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is clear.

Yanover is apparently a Zionist, but he’s been listening to anti-Zionist talk for so long that he seems to believe it. We “pushed out indigenous people,” did we? Time for a short history lesson:

There were Jews in the land of Israel since biblical times, although many were dispersed by the Romans, murdered by Crusaders, converted by Muslims, etc. Mark Twain visited the land in the mid-Nineteenth Century — before the arrival of the first Zionists — and found a desperately poor land, where Arabs and Jews lived under unspeakable conditions, ridden by disease and exploited by absentee Ottoman landlords. Yes, there were somewhat more Arabs than Jews — so what?

The Zionists, as the cliché says, drained the swamps, reclaimed land that had been lost to agricultural use for centuries. They ultimately created industries and commerce. They turned wasteland into productive land and introduced modern medicine. These things benefited both Jews and Arabs.

When the Ottoman rulers were replaced by the British there were further improvements. The British built rail lines and other projects, for which they imported Arab workers. The Palestine Mandate area became a magnet for Arabs from neighboring countries, especially Syria, where there was continuing political unrest and famine, and Egypt. Many — probably most — of today’s ‘Palestinians’ are descended from Arabs that came to Palestine after the 1880′s.

Meanwhile, the Jews built the precursor of a state. They built roads, created health-care and pension systems, an army (well, more than one), established trade unions, and a ‘government’ which could negotiate with the British. The Arabs, most of whom were not ‘Palestinian’ nationalists but believed that Palestine was actually the southern part of Syria, followed a familiar pattern — anti-Jewish riots and terrorism. Their leader, al-Husseini, cooperated with Hitler and planned to establish extermination camps in Palestine after the German victory.

As the mandate period wore on, the British more and more sided with the Arabs, culminating with the White Paper of 1939 which more or less entirely reneged on the promise by the international community to the Jewish people of a national home in Palestine. But despite this, and with the expenditure of much blood — about 1% of the Jewish population died in the War of Independence — the Jews kicked out the British colonialists and established the State of Israel.

Of course I’ve left out a lot, including the flight of Arabs from the new state, the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab nations and their ingathering to Israel, and Israel’s struggle to survive through several wars afterwards.

But the fact is that God’s promise, if you look at it that way, was also embodied in international law and then made real by the labor, initiative and blood — a huge amount of blood — of the Jewish people, including secular ones.

So with all due respect, Mr. Yanover, don’t sweat the WOW.

The Jewish people can handle them, just like they can handle anti-Zionist Haredim and extreme leftist academics.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Zionism, Women of the Wall, Yori Yanover

Two sisters of Aya Baradiya cry at the well where Aya was murdered

The following news item appeared on the English-language site of the Palestinian Ma’an News Service in January. There was a flurry of media comment, which has since died out. Nothing has changed since then:

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — President Mahmoud Abbas has no plans to amend laws that reduce sentences for suspects who claim an “honor” defense for murdering women, his legal adviser says.

“Why change it? This would cause serious problems,” Hassan al-Ouri told Ma’an, adding that such a reform would “not benefit women.”

In May 2011, the president pledged to amend the law to guarantee maximum penalties for “honor killing” in response to protests over the killing of university student Aya Baradiya in Hebron.

Aya Baradiya was murdered in 2010 by her uncle Okab [variously spelled Iqab or Akab], allegedly because “he disapproved of her relationship with her fiance.” Okab and his accomplices dragged her behind their car, beat her and tied her up. Then they threw her, still alive, into a well. In 2011, The Guardian reported,

But the killing went far beyond a family affair. After the discovery of Aya’s body more than a year after the 20-year-old university student went missing, her uncle confessed to Palestinian police, claiming it was an “honour” killing. Widespread protests against such crimes, led by students and women’s organisations, erupted. In response, the Palestinian president last month scrapped historic laws that permitted leniency for the perpetrators of so-called “honour” killings.

It is not so clear that this was a traditional ‘honor’ killing — some think the uncle had other motives — but after all, who cares? Tying women up and throwing them into wells is unacceptable for any reason, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, the Guardian article is incorrect. Abbas did change a law in 2011 — but it was a never-used law that pardons a murderer if he finds his wife in bed with another man. Of course this wouldn’t apply to 99% of honor killings anyway.

It turns out that the relevant law — which allows for a maximum sentence of 6 months in jail (often only 1 or 2 months in practice) if a murder is judged to be committed for the sake of preserving a family’s honor — will not be changed after all.

Al-Ouri says the president will not change the go-to clauses for lawyers seeking leniency for clients who claim they committed murder to defend family “honor.”

Articles 97 to 100 of the Jordanian Penal Code, in force in the West Bank, still offer reduced sentences for any act of battery or murder committed in a “state of rage.”

“The (law) only addresses 1 percent of the problem. What we need is a new culture,” al-Ouri said.

He got that one right.

Technorati Tags: Palestinians, honor killings, murder, Aya Baradiya, Mahmoud Abbas

Arab child is inspired by his ‘heroes’, imprisoned terrorists (2009)

One of today’s PLO preconditions for negotiation with Israel — they change frequently — is for a release of “all Palestinian prisoners.” For example, the Times of Israel reported today that

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year offered to free 50 Palestinian security prisoners who have been held since before the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, in a bid to get Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to come back to the peace table, The Times of Israel has learned.

However, Abbas rejected the offer.

Today, a senior Palestinian official told The Times of Israel, the Palestinians might agree to renew talks with Israel if Netanyahu releases all 107 of the pre-Oslo veterans still in jail, most of whom have blood on their hands.

The Prime Minister’s Office had no comment on the matter.

It’s important to understand that these demands are more than just an attempt by the PLO to get a concession from Israel without giving anything in return (although it is assuredly that).

Although the Arabs and their supporters will refer to these individuals as ‘political prisoners’, they have by and large been convicted of serious violent crimes, especially including murder. They are not imprisoned simply for their politics.

The demand for the release of prisoners is of great ideological and religious significance. In the PLO’s secular/postcolonialist Palestinian narrative, the Jews have no legitimacy in ‘Palestine’, and therefore do not have the right to imprison Arabs, the true ‘owners’ of the land. In addition, violent terrorism is the natural right of an ‘oppressed people’ trying to free themselves from colonialists.

From the standpoint of the Islamist Hamas, the actions of the prisoners constitute defensive jihad against Jews usurping land which is an Islamic waqf. Far from being criminals, they are heroes for doing their Allah-commanded duty.

For both groups the release of the prisoners would also humiliate the Jews, who would not be able to revenge themselves on the killers of their relatives (incidentally, this is another reason Israel should implement a death penalty for terrorist murder).

And both see themselves as fighting to reestablish Arab (as well as tribal and family) honor by recovering the possessions ‘stolen’ from them in the nakba of the founding of the Jewish state.

The release of these prisoners, therefore, would be a great victory and encouragement for the Palestinian cause, even if the prisoners themselves are no longer useful in the struggle. Expect a massive celebration when the ‘heroes’ return home.

As often happens, pragmatic Israelis miss the significance of ideology. The report continues:

It is understood that the Israeli security establishment has no objections on security grounds to the release of the 107 pre-Oslo veterans, particularly in light of the release of 1,027 Palestinian security prisoners to Hamas as part of the deal that saw the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in Gaza in October 2011.

We can quibble about this, especially since some of those released in the Shalit deal did return to terrorist activity. But even if this is entirely true, the security aspect is only a small part of the significance of releasing Arabs that have murdered Jews.

The correct approach would be to apply the death penalty to murderers, and to imprison the others — and keep them imprisoned — under humiliating conditions.

If Israel would like to end Arab terrorism, the way to do it is by removing the incentives, not by making it pay.

Technorati Tags: PLO, Israel, terrorism

The ‘New Ottoman’, Turkish PM Erdoğan, is forcing what could have been an insignificant incident to become an anti-regime revolution. His immense ego may be his downfall.

Illustration by Judah Rosenthal, who also did the Moty and Udi cartoons. He is currently working on a graphic novel about the conquest of Jerusalem in 1967.

It’s 2018. Israel is still beleaguered, but not by its traditional foes.

In a short, bloody war in 2015, Israel crushed Hizballah. Shortly thereafter, it launched a series of strikes against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, using new non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) technology against above-ground installations, plus ultra-precise multiple-strike penetrating bombs to open the underground bunkers. Without Hizballah and without an answer to NNEMP weapons, Iran was forced to defer its nuclear ambitions indefinitely.

Syria’s civil war still sputters and flares, with Assad’s Russian-supported forces in control of the coastal areas and Damascus, while various rebel groups hold the rest. An independent Kurdistan has been declared (although it hasn’t been recognized by the UN), including parts of Iraq and Syria.

Insurrections also continue with various levels of violence in Iraq, Bahrein, Saudi Arabia, and other states. Jordan, which received a massive amount of military aid from Israel, is still under control of the Hashemite king, although there are insurgents operating there too.

With the destruction of Hizballah and the partial neutralization of Iran, organized terrorism worldwide has declined. But there are still multiple radical Islamist organizations that are challenging their perceived enemies wherever they can.

After the Egyptian economy disintegrated in 2014-15, the Islamist regime was overthrown by the military. Some food aid was received from the US, but nowhere near enough to prevent food riots, widespread malnutrition and some actual starvation. Israel is providing the military government with large amounts of water (from gas-powered desalinization plants) to irrigate parts of the Sinai. Partly in return (and partly to protect its own existence) Egypt has been cooperating with Israel in keeping weapons away from Hamas and fighting radical Islamists in the Sinai.

Although greatly weakened during the years of AKP dominance, the Turkish military has reasserted itself and with much popular support has reined in the excesses of Erdoğan’s regime. Many officers that were imprisoned (with or without trials) have been rehabilitated, and the army has made it clear that it will not stand for further erosion of secular institutions. Relations with Israel have also improved, as the pragmatic officers overrode the AKP’s ideological rigidity.

Meanwhile, Israel’s economy is continuing to do well. Its huge natural gas reserves have enabled it to produce large amounts of electricity at very low cost, which it uses in part to desalinate sea water. For the first time in history, Israel has enough water! Natural gas is also exported to Turkey and Eastern Europe, in accordance with an agreement with Russia to maintain prices.

The PLO still exists and still rules most of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. It still receives subsidies from Europe and the US, and still tries to engage in ‘popular resistance‘ (murder by means of weapons other than guns and explosives) when possible.

Hamas, cut off from aid from Hizballah and the Muslim Brotherhood, now exists primarily on UN aid, a massive expansion of UNRWA.

So where does the threat that I mentioned above come from?

In two words, Western Europe.

The UK has its first Muslim Prime Minister, elected after the escalating riots of 2014-5. Considered by all a ‘moderate’, he managed to quiet the uprisings by promising to establish shari’a courts with authority over Muslim towns and enclaves throughout the country (very few non-Muslims remain in those areas). British Jews have taken a very low profile since the riots, during which many were targeted by the rampaging mobs. Many of those whose Zionist sympathies were known fled to Australia or Canada, and some went to Israel. Although the PM publicly says that he supports the continued existence of Israel, he favors a right of return for all Arab ‘refugees’ — there are now 10 million claiming refugee status — release of all Arab prisoners, and “an end to apartheid.”

The rest of the EU states are more or less the same, although they do not yet have Muslim heads of state. The French Jewish community has almost entirely left, most going to Israel. Antisemitic acts by Muslims — but also by non-Muslims who blame Israel and Jews for the violence of Muslims and for economic problems — have multiplied. Jews in Holland, the Scandinavian countries, etc. are also fleeing because they feel they cannot depend on their governments to protect them from pervasive Jew-hatred.

Muslim demands have a history of being quickly accommodated, since if they are not the result is often violent. Most such demands relate to local autonomy, shari’a courts in Muslim areas, compliance with Muslim sensibilities about food, animals, alcohol, ‘blasphemy’ and ‘immorality’ in media, school curricula, etc.

But as happened in 2013 with the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby, we see more and more violent acts ‘explained’ in terms of foreign policy. The EU has long since removed any military presence from Afghanistan (as did the US; Afghanistan is today ruled by the Taliban); but now demands center on policy toward Israel.

Antisemitism in Europe is taken for granted, even in countries where there are few Jews (most of them, now). In Germany, for example, politicians can safely say that while the Holocaust was a great evil, it is possible to understand how Jewish behavior, if it did not cause it, at least created the conditions that made it possible. Likewise, there is little sympathy for Israel, which is seen as an instigator of violence, not its victim.

As the threats from Israel’s neighbors recede, we find the danger from nuclear-armed, unstable Europe increasing.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Middle East, 2018, Europe, Islam

After the vicious murder of British soldier Lee Rigby by Muslim terrorists several weeks ago, there were several instances of vandalism against mosques, as well as a few small demonstrations organized by the English Defense League, which were met with opposition from “anti-fascist” protesters. But the predicted “wave of anti-Muslim sentiment” did not materialize.

Gordon Ross relates British reactions to another perceived ‘outrage’, one that happened in 1947.

By Gordon Ross

There can be no comparison between the 1947 anti-Jewish riots in the UK and the very recent 2013 anti-Muslim demonstrations.

In August 1947, consequent upon retaliatory actions taken by Jewish militants of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (so-called “terrorists”) against the occupying British mandatory authorities in the land of Israel, there was a serious backlash from sections of the indigenous UK population against Jews in the UK in anti-Jewish riots which were at their worst in Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. Synagogues, Jewish shops, centres and individuals were attacked, and demonstrators called for violence against Jews. There wasn’t any significant protest against the riots from outside the UK Jewish community.

Daniel Trilling described them thus:

In Birkenhead, near Liverpool, slaughterhouse workers had refused to process any more meat for Jewish consumption until the attacks on British soldiers in Palestine stopped. Around Merseyside, the anger was starting to spill on to the streets as crowds of angry young men gathered in Jewish areas.

On Sunday afternoon the trouble reached Manchester. Small groups of men began breaking the windows of shops in Cheetham Hill, an area just north of the city centre which had been home to a Jewish community since the early 19th century. The pubs closed early that day because there was a shortage of beer, and by the evening the mob’s numbers had swelled to several hundred. Most were on foot but others drove through the area, throwing bricks from moving cars.

Soon the streets were covered in broken glass and stones and the crowd moved on to bigger targets, tearing down the canopy of the Great Synagogue on Cheetham Hill Road and surrounding a Jewish wedding party at the Assembly Hall. They shouted abuse at the terrified guests until one in the morning.

The next day, Lever said, “Cheetham Hill Road looked much as it had looked seven years before, when the German bombers had pounded the city for  12 hours. All premises belonging to Jews for the length of a mile down the street had gaping windows and the pavements were littered with glass.”

By the end of the bank holiday weekend, anti-Jewish riots had also taken place in Glasgow and Liverpool. There were minor disturbances, too, in Bristol, Hull, London and Warrington, as well as scores of attacks on Jewish property across the country. A solicitor in Liverpool and a Glasgow shopkeeper were beaten up. Nobody was killed, but this was the most widespread anti-Jewish violence the UK had ever seen. In Salford, the day after a crowd of several thousand had thrown stones at shop windows, signs appeared that read: “Hold your fire. These premises are British.”

There were no Jewish clerics in the UK preaching hatred, incitement to violence, murder and treason from the pulpit, no young UK born ‘disaffected’ Jews demonstrating against the UK and burning its national flag in the streets, setting explosives here or travelling to the Middle East to join or train with the militants there, as has been the case in recent years with a number of Imams and other UK born Muslims.

In 2005 there were the 7/7 London Islamist bomb outrages, resulting in many dead and injured.  Since then there has been an ongoing Islamist terror campaign, with Islamist demonstrators calling for violence against and murder of non-Muslims, and a continuing barrage of complaints and demands issuing from the Muslim community, including the demand for the introduction of shariah law!  In 2010, a Muslim woman was put on trial for the attempted murder of an MP.  She stabbed him in the stomach because he had supported the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.  She would not plead against the charge because she refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the court, and a plea of ‘Not Guilty’ was accordingly entered by the court on her behalf.  Fortunately the jury found her ‘Guilty’. In May this year, Islamist extremists murdered a British soldier on the streets of Woolwich, London, in full view of passers-by.

This latest Islamist outrage has provoked some anti-Muslim demonstrations and attacks, which the authorities here and other appeasers have been quick to condemn, but nothing that can in any way be compared with the anti-Jewish riots of 1947, and there were no significant demonstrations or protests from any section of the ‘indigenous’ UK population against the earlier Islamist extremist attacks and demands.

The only demonstrations staged here before were in support of Islamist terrorist groups like Hezbollah (in August 2006: “We are all Hezbollah now”) and Hamas, and those against the Jewish nation-state of Israel when it dared to defend itself against enemies dedicated to its destruction and the destruction of all Jews everywhere. Such demonstrations have often been led by prominent public and political figures such as former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone (whose inclination is to welcome and embrace known extremist Islamic cleric hate-mongers), gorgeous George Galloway (of ‘Big Brother’ fame) and senile radical left-winger, Tony Benn (complete with Arab keffiyah around his scrawny neck), and have persuaded some people in the UK to the view that ‘Britistan’ is truly on the way!

© Gordon Ross 2013

Gordon Ross is a non-practising (retired) solicitor, currently living in north London.  After practising law in London for almost 30 years, both in employment and on his own account, he immigrated to Israel in 1983 and re-qualified as an attorney at the Israel Bar.  In 1987 he returned to London, solely in order to take up employment as an in-house lawyer in commerce, which position he held until retirement towards the end of 2008.

He is keenly interested in history, both ancient and modern, and in international politics, particularly where Israel and the Middle East are concerned.

Technorati Tags: UK, 1947 anti-Jewish riots, Jews, Muslims, terrorism

Benjamin Weinthal writes (subscription):

The left-liberal German Green party finally forced the hand of the conservative Merkel administration to explicitly declare—what before had been an open secret—its support for product labels covering export goods from the occupied territories in the West Bank and Golan Heights.

Germany’s Green Party unleashed a firestorm of criticism in May over its parliamentary initiative to label Israeli exports to Europe and the Federal Republic. Critics in Germany and the United Kingdom argued that the Green Party push was an eerie reminder of the Hitler movement’s “Kauf nicht bei Juden!” [Do not buy from Jews!] boycott action and a modernized form of the yellow star.

Dr. Emily Haber, a state secretary in the German Foreign Ministry, conveyed the new position of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in a letter to the Green Party: “The label ‘Made in Israel’ is, according to the opinion of the federal government, only allowed for products from within the borders of Israeli state territory before 1967.”

The measure is an unashamedly provocative anti-Israel move by the largely pro-Israel Merkel administration. It will blur the lines between an all-encompassing boycott of Israeli merchandise and demarcation of settlement products. In short, the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement will push the punitive label action down the slippery slope of blocking access to all Israeli goods.

Apparently, a decision about how to label products made beyond the Green Line hasn’t been made yet. Probably the yellow star is not in the running, but it should be. It is impossible any longer to hide the ugly hate-based double standard applied to the world’s only Jewish state by the international Left, of which Greens are representative:

In 1983, the Green Party put out a “Green Calendar” with the headline “Israel, the gang of murderers” and called for a “boycott of goods from Israel.” In an article last month in the German daily Die Welt entitled ‘The long tradition of Green Anti-Zionism,” the Green Party’s history of blaming Israel for the Middle East’s problems was highlighted. A year after the notorious “Green Calendar” was published, Green party politicians launched a fact-finding mission in the Middle East with visits to Jordan, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and the occupied West Bank. The delegation prepared a final document ahead of the trip declaring Israel “totally responsible for the emerging blood bath in the Middle East, when Israel does not decisively change its policies.”

A mere seven years later, a leading Green deputy, Hans-Christian Ströbele, who still serves in the Bundestag, justified the later Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s rocket attacks on the Jewish state during the First Gulf War in 1991 as a “logical, almost compelling consequence of Israel’s politics.”

Another telling example of the Greens’ disparate treatment toward Israel is that they have shown no comprehensive and systematic effort to push Germany’s government to similarly label products from Turkish occupied North Cyprus. In fact, the E.U. has showed no appetite for product labeling from territorial conflicts spanning the globe: Gibraltar, the Falklands, Western Sahara, Tibet, Kashmir, the Russian-held regions of Georgia, Armenian-held regions of Azerbaijan, North Cyprus, and Kosovo. Israeli products remain the notable exception subject to EU consumer protection.

The EU continues to hide its official Jew-hatred behind logically indefensible statements that the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria is illegal, but its double standard betrays its true motivation.

Technorati Tags: Germany, EU, BDS, Israel, Green Party

This is just beyond belief.

Patrick S. Poole, a freelance writer, has published a long, detailed, and exhaustively documented article exposing the American government’s schizophrenia regarding radical Islamists, “Blind to Terror: The U.S. Government’s Disastrous Muslim Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S. Middle East Policy.”

Expect to read and hear denunciations of Poole as an extremist and Islamophobe, and the article dismissed as right-wing craziness. Neither is true. Read the article and check the references (most are official documents or mainstream journalism).

During the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations the US government has actively courted Muslims who have overt connections to terrorism, who have publicly espoused violent jihad or who have raised funds for terrorist groups. These Muslims, sometimes at the same time that they were under investigation by law enforcement agencies for illegal activities, have been invited to the White House, employed by the FBI and Defense Department as trainers, and consulted by government officials on issues relating to Islam and terrorism. An early example was the case of Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi:

Al-Amoudi’s case is perhaps the best example, because he was the conduit through much of the U.S. government outreach that was conducted following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Not only was he asked by the Clinton administration to help train and certify all Muslim military chaplains (his organization being the first to certify such),[13] he was later appointed by the State Department in 1997 as a civilian goodwill ambassador to the Middle East, making six taxpayer-funded trips.[14]

Further, with the assistance and encouragement of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, al-Amoudi arranged the first White House Iftar dinner in 1996, personally hand-picking the attendees.[15] Thus, he was regularly invited to the White House during both the Clinton and Bush (II) Administrations. In 1992 and 1996, al-Amoudi’s American Muslim Council hosted hospitality suites at both the Democratic and Republican conventions.[16] It is fair to say that during this period, Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi was the most prominent and politically connected Muslim leader in America.

As is now known, and the U.S. government has admitted, at the time that he was being courted by Democrats and Republicans alike, he was a major fundraiser for al-Qa’ida according to the Department of the Treasury.[17] However, it isn’t as if the U.S. government was not aware of al-Amoudi’s attachments. As far back as 1993, a government informant told the FBI that al-Amoudi was funneling regular payments from Usama bin Ladin to the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted for authorizing terror attacks targeting New York landmarks.[18]

In March 1996, al-Amoudi’s association with Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook was exposed in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.[19] Two years later, the State Department came under fire by the New York Post for inviting al-Amoudi to official events despite his known statements in support of terrorism and terrorist leaders.[20] Even then the Post noted the problem with the government’s policy of reaching out to the wrong Muslim leaders:

The problem is that such groups have been legitimized–both by government and the media–as civil-rights groups fighting anti-Muslim discrimination and stereotyping. Unfortunately, their definition of such discrimination consists of anyone who writes about the existence of–or tries to investigate–radical Islamic terrorist groups and their allies on these shores.[21]

A more embarrassing episode occurred in October 2000, when al-Amoudi appeared at an anti-Israeli rally where he was cheered by the crowd for his support for terrorists. “I have been labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas. Anybody support Hamas here?” he asked the crowd three times to the roar of attendees. “Hear that, Bill Clinton?” he continued. “We are all supporters of Hamas. I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hezbollah. Does anybody support Hezbollah here?” Again, he was met with the cheers of the crowd.

Well, one might think, that was then. But it continued after 9/11:

The U.S. government’s success with Muslim outreach since September 11 hasn’t fared any better. One of the first Muslim leaders that the government turned to was Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qa’ida cleric who was in direct contact with at least three of the September 11 hijackers.[41] Awlaki, who had been placed on the CIA’s “kill or capture” list, was killed on September 30, 2011 in a CIA-led drone strike on the al-Qa’ida cleric’s convoy in Yemen, which President Obama hailed as a “milestone” in the fight against al-Qa’ida.[42]

As the cleanup from the terrorist attack on the Pentagon continued, Awlaki was invited by the Pentagon’s Office of Government Counsel to speak at a lunch in the building’s executive offices as part of the government’s new Muslim outreach policy.[43] Ironically, one of the September 11 terrorists who had helped hijack American Airlines Flight 77 that was flown into the Pentagon had described Awlaki as “a great man” and his “spiritual leader.”[44] Yet concerns had been raised about Awlaki long before the September 11 attacks.

A joint congressional inquiry in the September 11 attacks found that law enforcement had been investigating Awlaki’s contacts with terrorism suspects as far back as 1999.[45] Further, just two days after September 11, Awlaki had described the terror attacks as an “accident” in an interview with a local television station.[46] Also prior to his appearance at the Pentagon the New York Times had noted Awlaki’s fiery anti-American rhetoric prior to the attacks, and in November 2001, he had defended the Taliban in an online chat about Ramadan on the Washington Post website.[47] Thus, despite claims that Awlaki had been “vetted” before the Pentagon event, abundant evidence of Awlaki’s extremist views was more than readily available before he appeared at the Pentagon event.[48]

Needless to say, nobody does political correctness better than the present administration:

To emphasize the Obama administration’s new Muslim outreach policy, the White House issued a directive in August 2011 ordering law enforcement to engage “community partners” to help combat “violent extremism.”[155] This White House policy, signed by President Obama, effectively granted highly questionable official status to extremist groups, like ISNA and MPAC, who even now claim previously unknown oversight to law enforcement training and investigations. One example of the effect of this new policy are the Shari’a-compliant guidelines that federal law enforcement officials must now comply with when conducting raids related to Islamic leaders or institutions.

This was exhibited in May 2011, when the FBI raided a South Florida mosque and arrested its imam and his son for financially supporting the Taliban. The rules required law enforcement officials to remove their shoes before entering the mosque and prohibiting police canines from the property.[156] The common sense of these new rules undoubtedly would have been put to the test had the subjects tried to flee to be pursued by shoeless federal agents. There is also no indication that such sensitivity rules have been established by the FBI for any other religion but Islam, raising serious constitutional questions.

There is more, much more. You might ask, “how can we detect radical Muslims who might engage in or support terrorism against the US when the ‘experts’ we turn to share their ideology?” Good question.

From the outset, the Obama administration has followed a course to blind government agencies to the international and domestic jihadi threat and tie the hands of law enforcement investigators to identify such activity. One of the first steps in 2009 was for the Obama administration to remove any reference to “radical Islam” from the National Security Strategy, a move that was hailed by CAIR and other Muslim groups.[139] In fact, many of the U.S. government’s outreach partners had a direct hand in demanding the language purge from national security protocol and agency lexicons in recent years, going as far back as MPAC’s vehement criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report for the use of the words “Islamist,”,” “jihad,” and other such terms to describe the motivations, influence, and ideology of al-Qa’ida and the September 11 terrorists.[140] Undoubtedly, the Obama administration’s move was part of the recent justification by the Associated Press to purge the same language from their stylebook.[141]

More recently, Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) challenged the removal of these terms from the FBI’s “Counterterrorism Analytical Lexicon,” including “jihad,” “Islam,” and even “Hamas,” “Hizballah,” and “al-Qa’ida,” in a floor speech in the House of Representatives.[142] The very next day, FBI representatives contacted Gohmert’s staff, claiming that the lexicon he cited didn’t even exist. Those same representatives quickly retreated when it was confirmed that hard copies had been distributed to all counterterrorism agents in the field, electronic copies resided on the FBI’s intranet, and after the current author reported the matter and posted an electronic copy of the FBI’s lexicon online.[143]

Finally, there are the foreign policy implications:

Did the fact that their top outreach partners on Islamic and Middle East issues are known fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood–identified as such by federal prosecutors in federal court–contribute to the Obama administration’s naïve and ultimately false [view] of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East? Was there any reflection by anyone in the administration when these same outreach partners, very close to the White House, began openly meeting with their Middle East counterparts following the toppling of longtime U.S. allies and even hosting them in Washington, D.C. (such as the dinner MPAC hosted for Tunisian Muslim Brotherhood leader Rachid Ghannouchi, who had been banned from the United States for nearly 20 years)?[204]

More good questions.

Technorati Tags: Muslims, terrorism, law enforcement, political correctness

In an op-ed in Saturday’s Wall St. Journal, Peggy Noonan wrote this about the Obama Administration’s political misuse of the IRS:

What does it mean when half the country—literally half the country—understands that the revenue-gathering arm of its federal government is politically corrupt, sees them as targets, and will shoot at them if they try to raise their heads? That is the kind of thing that can kill a country, letting half its citizens believe that they no longer have full political rights.

Noonan, of course, is writing about the discrimination in granting special tax status and audits of conservative groups like Tea Party organizations during the campaign for the 2012 presidential election.

But it is also true that the administration used the IRS to suppress American Zionist organizations who might be suspected of opposing its policy to force Israel out of Judea and Samaria.

No, I am not foolish enough to imagine that this issue, which only a tiny minority of Americans cares about, is as important to the nation as a whole as large-scale abuse of administrative power in order to influence a presidential election. But personally, it is very disturbing.

I am almost retired now, but my wife and I operated a small business. I can tell you that I feared no competitor or government entity as much as the IRS. I shivered every time we received an official communication from it. The IRS has its own rules, its own courts, its own enforcement system. The IRS can crush the small businessperson like a gnat if it wishes.

Many of my blog posts are highly critical of administration policy toward Israel, and in particular, of its obsessive drive to force Jews out of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, its acceptance of the myth of an oppressed Palestinian people, etc. In fact, I have made an avocation of criticizing the government on an issue that it has shown itself to be very, very sensitive about.

It’s depressing to consider that perhaps only my obscurity has protected me from harassment by the IRS!

But with automated technology making it possible to scan and analyze internet communications without human intervention, even obscurity may not be a safe haven. The same tools that allow Facebook and Google to pry into our attitudes about pizza and cosmetics can be employed by government agencies to search for everything from terrorists to political dissidents.

Today’s news indicates that, in principle, the administration has no scruples about using the enormous power of the IRS to deny political opponents their First Amendment rights. Apparently it is prepared to do so even for issues that are only marginally important to Americans.

What, other than limitations of cost and practicality — which technology is rapidly overcoming — prevents it from expanding its surveillance, and possible repression, even further?

Technorati Tags: Obama Administration, IRS, First Amendment