FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Here is an example of why I despair of most of our news media. I’m using an example from NPR, whom I beat up on regularly, but it could be the AP, the cable networks, etc.

NPR’s Daniel Schorr explained why (a shocker) the ‘peace process’ is going noplace:

Most recently, while special envoy George Mitchell was striving to resume modest contact through so-called proximity talks, the tension was increased, first by the provocative announcement of new Jewish settlement activity at the moment Vice President Joseph Biden was in Jerusalem. Then the Israeli commando raid on a Turkish-led flotilla of relief ships for blockaded Gaza…

The basic deadlock remains firm. Netanyahu will not accept a Palestinian state with its own defense capability. The Palestinians will not accept a Jewish state that nibbles away with settlements in occupied territory. But never mind, we are a long way from tackling these ancient deadlocks.

This is like vuvuzelas at a soccer game. The drone is always there and after awhile you stop paying attention to it. But it still makes you tired.

Let’s just look at some of what’s packed into this boring little report.

First, the ‘provocative announcement’: a lower-level functionary announced, during Biden’s visit in March, that at some time in the future Israel intended to build 1,600 apartments in an existing Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, a couple of blocks from the green line, a neighborhood that already has 20,000 residents and which would certainly become part of Israel if Jerusalem were to be divided. This should have been a non-event — Biden didn’t even know he was supposed to be insulted until they told him, but the administration decided to make it a test case of the proposition that Israel is not sovereign in Jerusalem.

A huge flap ensued, and Israel was forced — pay attention, you’ll see this again — to agree to an unstated, but real, freeze on construction in East Jerusalem.  The Obama administration sprung a trap on Israel. And from then on the media referred to the “Israeli provocation” as if Israel had done something, er, provocative.

Next, the ‘Israeli raid’: Israeli commandos boarded several ships which ware attempting to break the legal blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza. On one ship they were surprised by a specially trained and organized squad of Islamist terrorists, who tried to beat and stab them to death and/or take hostages. When the Israelis finally defended themselves, several of the terrorists were killed, giving rise to a worldwide fury of condemnation — as if Israel was responsible for the deaths.

The US, as in the previous instance, exacted a price: Israel was forced to lift restrictions on almost all material flowing into Gaza, and forfeit its right to apply economic pressure to the Hamas regime. In essence, the US and the world legitimized Hamas. Just as before, the media — as illustrated by Schorr — has decided that the event will be treated forever after as an Israeli provocation. It would be more correct to refer to it as ‘the IHH [the Turkish Islamist group responsible] ambush’ instead of ‘the Israeli raid’, but you will never hear that.

Finally, the ‘deadlock’: if you repeat something often enough, no matter how nonsensical, ultimately people stop looking for reasons and just assume that it’s true. So NPR, the Times, etc. keep saying that Israeli settlement construction is an obstacle to peace. Nobody seems to notice that Israel hasn’t built a new settlement in years, and that the government is enforcing, sometimes quite forcefully, the settlement freeze it agreed to.  But it is important to the US administration and the media that Israel be seen as the roadblock, and hence the constant emphasis on this.

Let me just add another thing about settlements. Exactly why are they an obstacle? Israeli security measures like the fence and bypass roads, etc., are often used as evidence that Israel is practicing a form of apartheid. But that could not be true, because Israel — within the Green Line — is dotted with Arab settlements, many of which are currently expanding (often by means of illegal construction).

So if Arabs can live in Israel, why can’t Jews live in ‘Palestine’? The answer is that the conception of ‘Palestine’ is precisely of a racist state where Jews are not permitted. If you think this is anything other than racism, ask yourself this: suppose an Arab citizen of Israel wanted to move to ‘Palestine’. Would the Arabs object?

The more complete answer, of course, is that the Arabs see all of the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean as belonging to them. They want the Jews out of all of it. What good is a  two-state partition if it doesn’t get them closer to their objective?

There’s a precedent: in 1948, all the Jews living in Jordanian-occupied territory in Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem were forcibly deported — ethnically cleansed — from those places.

All three of these issues are spun in the way they are for a reason: to divert attention from the fact that the responsibility for the continuation of the conflict is on the Arab side. Israel is presented as the problem, and the implication is that the solution requires Israel to move, not the Arabs.

It is profoundly distressing to me that this is the line taken by the US administration and promulgated in its friendly media. Because — what does the administration want to happen?

Technorati Tags: Israeli-Arab conflict

Avraham Burg speaks at PCUSA General Assembly

The Middle East Study Committee of the Presbyterian Church of the US  (PCUSA) recently issued a report that was so one-sided that even J Street protested.

The 179 pages of the report positively reek with self-righteous pomposity, and include quotations from the Tanach and even the Talmud! It’s impossible to deal with this bizarre document systematically, but here are some random notes.

The authors’ historical vision comes entirely through the eyes of Arab and extreme left-wing commentators, like Ilan Pappé and Avraham Burg, as well as anti-Israel NGOs. For example, they portray the creation of the Arab refugees as entirely Israel’s fault:

One of these psycho-traumas is the Holocaust in which 6 million European Jews were annihilated at the hands of the Nazi party, its state apparatus and allies. The other trauma is the forced displacement of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 from their ancestral homeland by the Israel Haganah [the pre-state militant force that was the precursor of the Israel Defense Forces]. [p 30]

The report ignores the actions of the Palestinian and Arab leadership before, during and after the 1948 war, the repeated attempts at reconciliation by Israel, etc. The Nakba story is repeated over and over, and compared with the Holocaust several times.

There’s a creative take on the 1967 war, too:

In June 1967, Israel attacked Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. At the end of six days, Israel had taken the Gaza strip and the Sinai from Egypt, East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan from Syria. The United Nations Security Council passed resolution 242 that requested the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the 1967 war and emphasized the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area could live in security. [p 64]

Interesting. “Israel attacked,” and Nasser’s closing the Strait of Tiran, massing troops on the border and threatening genocide had nothing to do with it! The interpretation of resolution 242 is funny, too, leaving out the “secure and recognized borders.”

They don’t do much better with more recent events. They actually wrote this sentence to describe the bloody 2007 coup in which Hamas overthrew the Palestinian Authority in Gaza:

Violence erupted, thought by many to be aided and abetted by the United States and Israel, within the Palestinian territories with the end result that in 2007 Hamas controlled the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority and Fatah the West Bank. [pp 97-98]

Violence erupted! Shooting Fatah operatives in the knees and throwing them off tall buildings erupted! Setting people on fire erupted! And the US and Israel were responsible! I couldn’t make this stuff up.

And here’s their analysis of the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons:

While this growing fear [of the Iranian bomb] is a deep concern, an equal concern is the number of nuclear warheads that Israel currently stockpiles and thus the growing sense of Iranian vulnerability and insecurity. While Israel will not confirm its possession of nuclear weapons or the number held, it is generally agreed that Israel has stockpiled close to 100 nuclear weapons.

The only just and peaceful solution to this growing concern is to work for a nuclear-free Middle East in both Iran and Israel. [p 36]

Really? It’s “an equal concern?” The Israeli nuclear capability is the reason that it hasn’t already been attacked with chemical weapons, and may well be one of the main reasons that there still is a Jewish state. Israel has never, ever brandished its weapons offensively. Iran would have nothing to feel ‘insecure’ about if it were not developing nuclear weapons and threatening to destroy Israel every other day.

Should the Palestinians be criticized for resorting to terrorism?   The Presbyterians see it as a response to violence by Israel’s army and settlers, and  it’s presented as entirely understandable even if ultimately not “acceptable”:

Inexcusable acts of violence have been committed by both the powerful occupying forces of the Israeli military and the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, as well as, the Palestinians, of whom a relatively small minority has resorted to violence as a means of resisting the occupation. Violence is not an acceptable means to peace, regardless of its rationale. [p 37]

There’s no distinction between terrorism and self-defense, either:

Distressingly, all too often violence is used as a means of reacting to injustice or as a means of inflicting a country’s will on another people. Violence, whether by tanks, attack helicopters, F-16 fighter jets, rubber bullets, tear gas canisters, antipersonnel bombs, white phosphorous, rockets, bombs of any kind including suicide bombs, is reprehensible and is a crime against humanity. [p 70]

The writers choose their facts selectively:

Consider the case of Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian journalist, novelist, and short story writer, who was assassinated along with his young niece, Lamis, on July 12, 1972, by Israeli agents in a car bomb explosion in Beirut. By the time of his early death at the age of 36, he had published eighteen books and written numerous articles on the culture, politics, and the Palestinian people’s struggle. His works have been translated into seventeen languages. A collection of short stories about Palestine’s children was published in English in 1984 and was titled Palestine’s Children. Kanafani’s untimely death deprived the Palestinians of an eloquent voice. [p 71]

Oh, the humanity! But CAMERA points out that Kanafani was the right-hand man of George Habash, head of the ultra-violent PFLP, a group responsible for numerous murders and hijackings. Kanafani met with the Japanese Red Army who perpetrated a vicious attack at Lod airport, killing 26 and injuring 80. Who says that intellectuals can’t also be men of action?

So why is Israel so evil? According to the report, Israelis have been morally damaged by the trauma of the Holocaust:

This sense of historical victimization creates for some Israelis a compensatory reflex to choose power and armament; to reject the claims and critique of others; and the adoption of a philosophy that the “end justifies the means,” even if that means the loss of human rights, life, and the dignity of others.  [p 31]

Of course Israel’s choice to arm itself could not have anything to do with the fact that the country has been under continuous attack from both regular armies and terrorists since its inception, right? Nope, they just don’t care about anyone else.

In addition, despite dozens of references to Israeli policy as ‘immoral’, there doesn’t appear to be a single mention of the policy of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to educate their populations, especially children, to hate Israel and Jews in the crudest antisemitic terms.

Indeed, the report describes Hamas — an organization whose charter preaches the violent destruction of Israel and exhorts Muslims to murder Jews — as follows:

The United States, European Union, and Israel governments consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel, while most Gazans see Hamas as an organization formed to resist the occupation by Israel and to recover their lost lands in Palestine. Hamas is an Arabic acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama alIslamiyya, or Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas is a militant organization; however over 90 percent of Hamas’ resources are spent on social services to the Palestinian refugees.

The implication seems to be that resisting the occupation and recovering lost lands applies to the occupation of 1967. But of course, for Hamas, the occupation started in 1948. So “most Gazans” and the Western governments don’t disagree about Hamas’ intentions! The statement about Hamas’ resources is ridiculous and is unsourced.

Overall, the report could not possibly be more one-sided. It is a sustained indictment of Israel. When it mentions Palestinian terrorism and violence (which it does only rarely), it’s always explained as springing from the trauma of the Nakba or the horrors of occupation.

This historically and morally upside-down, hateful document will be considered by the PCUSA’s General Assembly this week.

Update [6 Jul 2010 1341 PDT]: I changed the caption on the photo, which previously read “anti-Israel extremist Avraham Burg…” Burg is not exactly that. He annoys the hell out of me because, in essence, he blames Israel and the Jews for Arab antisemitism. But he doesn’t advocate a ‘secular democratic state of its citizens’, nor does he call for boycotts, divestments, etc.

Technorati Tags: Presbyterian church, Israel, Palestinians

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones? — Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man

Today marks 234 years since the US declared its independence from Britain. Slightly less well known, but almost as important is the date April 9, 1865, the end of our Civil War. Other memorable dates for Americans include December 7, 1941 and September 2, 1945, which bracket our involvement in WWII. And September 11, 2001. These will be on the test, history students.

Does 9/11 belong on the above list? Does it mark a turning point in our history as a nation, or is it simply a rather large ‘man-caused disaster’, in the words of Janet Napolitano, horrible but with no long-term significance? Or something in between?

Since shortly after 9/11 the US has been at war, and as far as I know we’ve never fought a war against an enemy so poorly defined. From fighting ‘terrorism’ — clearly a tactic and not an entity — we’ve gone to fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban, groups that seem to be the tip of the spear of something much larger, which is unmentionable.

Today’s enemies can’t compare to Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan in military capability, and yet somehow they keep going. In Iraq, we defeated Saddam in a matter of months. But American soldiers are still fighting someone or other there.

My father was asked (OK, told) to spend the first few years of his son’s life at war in the Pacific because the Japanese, rapidly conquering East Asia, had bombed Pearl Harbor, killing 2459 Americans and severely damaging the Pacific fleet. The US entered the war to stop the Japanese aggression and incidentally to help save Europe from Hitler. This made sense to him and many others. Today our ‘leaders’ cannot name the enemy.

Many of us are confused about the significance of events. Here’s something that should wake us up, an issue that separates those who get it from those that don’t:

The proposed Islamic center, two blocks from Ground Zero

The Imam of a mosque in lower Manhattan, Feisal Abdul Rauf, has proposed building a 13-story, $100 million structure that will house a mosque and community center, in place of the former Burlington Coat Factory building which was damaged by debris on 9/11. Incidentally, this picture, which seems to deemphasize the relative size of the building, appears to be the only one available on the web. It will overlook the site of the destroyed World Trade Center.

Abdul Rauf’s group claims that

This proposed project is about promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture.  Cordoba House will provide a place where individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, will find a center of learning, art and culture; and most importantly, a center guided by universal values in their truest form – compassion, generosity, and respect for all.

New York’s mayor Bloomberg doesn’t have a problem with a mosque at this location, and neither did 29 out of 30 members of a local community board, in a non-binding vote. But five to ten thousand New Yorkers had enough of a problem to join a massive demonstration against it.

It’s a fascinating question. Does Abdul Rauf represent a moderate, conciliatory, tolerant Islam — one that is not previously found in history, I might add — or is he following in the tradition of the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, who built the Dome of the Rock over the ruins of the Second Temple in 692 CE? Is it a work of peace or a triumphal celebration of a successful act of war?

Maybe we can get a hint from this news story:

The imam behind a proposed mosque near Ground Zero is a prominent member of a group that helped sponsor the pro-Palestinian activists who clashed violently with Israeli commandos at sea this week.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a key figure in Malaysian-based Perdana Global Peace Organization, according to its Website.

Perdana is the single biggest donor ($366,000) so far to the Free Gaza Movement, a key organizer of the six-ship flotilla that tried to break Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip Monday.

Perdana’s ‘peace’ website contains lies and libels more vicious than usual about the Mavi Marmara incident, including assertions that IDF videos of the ambush were fake.

Does the ‘tolerant’ imam support the highly intolerant Hamas?

But there’s more. Abdul Rauf’s bio on the Cordoba Initative site describes some of his publications thus:

His publications include the books, Islam: A Search for Meaning, Islam: A Sacred Law (What every Muslim Should Know About the Shariah), and What’s Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West, which the Christian Science Monitor rated among its five best books of 2004…

Interestingly, the profile on the Perdana site is a bit more explicit:

He is the author of Islam: A Search for Meaning, in which he defines Islam as the universal religion that goes beyond the cultural settings of the Prophet Muhammad, and Islam: A Sacred Law, What Every Muslim should know about the Shari`ah.

…far enough beyond, to include New York City, right?

Technorati Tags: Ground Zero Mosque, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

The Arab world tells us they care a great deal for the ‘Palestinian people’. But the truth, as I’ve written many times, is that it’s always more important to hurt Jews than to help Arabs — which explains the following:

Palestinian refugees demand basic civil rights

(Beirut, AFP): Thousands of Palestinian refugees gathered yesterday outside UN headquarters in Beirut to demand basic civil rights in Lebanon, such as a choice of jobs and ownership of property…

The Palestinians traveled in buses from Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps for the Beirut gathering organized by Palestinian and Lebanese non-governmental organizations.

“Working is a right,” “We want to live in dignity,” read placards carried by the protesters.

“I have the right to own property,” said another, summing up the frustration of the tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees who live in dire conditions in Lebanon…

The majority of UNRWA-registered refugees live in dire conditions in the camps across and are denied basic civil rights. Under Lebanese law, Palestinian refugees can not own property or hold most white collar jobs (doctors, engineers, lawyers, architects) and are stuck in low-paid employment.

They are also denied social security and medical aid in state hospitals.

There is a long history of similar behavior, even by the Palestinian Arabs’ own leaders. For example, when Israel occupied Gaza and Judea and Samaria after the 1967 war, they almost immediately began programs to move refugees out of the camps and into permanent housing that they would own. But the PLO — and the UN — bitterly opposed it:

What is perhaps surprising is that the United Nations also opposed the program, and passed harsh resolutions demanding that Israel remove the Palestinians from their new homes and return them to the squalid camps. For example, UN General Assembly Resolution 31/15 of Nov. 23, 1976:

Calls once more upon Israel:

(a) To take effective steps immediately for the return of the refugees concerned to the camps from which they were removed in the Gaza Strip and to provide adequate shelters for their accommodation;

(b) To desist from further removal of refuges and destruction of their shelters.

Similarly, UNGA Resolution 34/52 of November 23, 1979 declared that:

measures to resettle Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip away from their homes and property from which they were displaced constitute a violation of their inalienable right to return;

1. Calls once more upon Israel to desist from removal and resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and from destruction of their shelters;

Perhaps thanks to this support from the UN, the PLO began threatening to kill any refugee who would move out of the camps. After a few such attacks, the build-your-own-home program died, and that is why there are still Palestinians [in] refugee camps in Gaza. — CAMERA

The only way a ‘refugee’ could leave the camp, said the PLO, was by returning to his ancestral home in Israel, even if he was a multi-generational descendant of an original refugee, and today there are about 4-1/2 million claiming this status. Unlike all other refugees, Palestinian refugee status — which entails both a deprivation of human rights and a lifetime welfare benefit — is hereditary.

UNRWA, the agency that feeds them, has structured its benefits so that it is profitable for refugees — for whom there is no work or who are not allowed to work — to have large families. The truth of the matter is that the so-called refugees have three functions: a moral club to beat Israel with, a reservoir of violently hostile and unemployed young people to serve as terrorists, and an army with which to overwhelm Israel demographically.

A clearer-cut case of the denial of human rights — a hereditary denial of human rights yet — cannot be found anywhere. Funny that it hasn’t been taken up by the UN Human Rights Council, isn’t it?

Palestinians protest denial of rights in Lebanon

Technorati Tags: Palestinian refugees, Lebanon, human rights