Palestinian Arabs celebrate the return of 26 prisoners from Israel, December 30, 2013. All but 3 were convicted of murder.
Israel has done it again, releasing 26 Arab prisoners (all but 3 were convicted of murder), the third of 4 groups totaling 104 that Israel has been pressured into freeing by the US, in order to ‘bring the Palestinians to the table.’ This release, like the others, happened despite anguished protests from the families and friends of the victims of these terrorists. Caroline Glick gives us an example, Juma Ibrahim Juma Adam and Mahmoud Salam Saliman Abu Karbish:
In 1992, the two men firebombed a civilian bus, murdering Rachel Weiss, who was nine months pregnant, and three of her pre-school aged children, as well as IDF soldier David Delarosa, who tried to save them.
And the Palestinian Authority/PLO, its President Mahmoud Abbas, and the Palestinian Arab population in general welcomed these murderers as heroes.
There are two aspects of this that I find interesting. One is the attitude of the Arabs, and the other is that of US officials — John Kerry, Barack Obama, and others responsible for the present débacle.
The Arabs are simple. In their world, a Jew doesn’t hold a Muslim captive. Actual Jewish sovereignty turns things upside down, and their violence is therefore totally understandable, completely justified. Have you ever heard a Palestinian Arab criticize terrorism for moral reasons? The closest they get (which is not at all close) is to say that it’s bad policy which does not help the Palestinian Cause. Let me quote something from the PLO-oriented Ma’an News Service:
Nevertheless, the Fatah official [Nabil Sha’ath] expects 2014 to be dedicated to reactivating Palestinian resistance. The PA, he said, is expected to join more UN organizations and to dedicate efforts to achieve reconciliation with Hamas.
“We have to use smart and fruitful means of struggle rather than violent struggle in order to maintain international support, as negotiations have failed to make a single step forward.â€
He added: “The minimum of what we were offered in the year 2000 hasn’t been reached, not to mention that the US has failed to exert pressure on Israel to guarantee Palestinian rights.â€
It seems “impossible†to reach an agreement, says Shaath, due to Israeli demands of maintaining security control, annexing Palestinian lands, refusing Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem and requesting that the PA recognizes Israel as a Jewish state.
“We will not recognize Israel as Jewish state, and would like to ask John Kerry if he agrees that we recognize the US as a Christian state,†Shaath said. [Huh? — ed.]
Thus, he added, the Palestinians have the right to practice resistance by all means.
“However, we should choose a smart resistance which will not cause us calamities like what happens when a missile is launched from Gaza. We have to make sure the world will show solidarity with us just as in Europe where settlement products will be boycotted by the beginning of 2014.â€
It should be understood that there is more to ‘smart resistance’ than joining more UN organizations. ‘Violence’ to Palestinian Arabs means the use of guns and explosives. Throwing rocks and even firebombs counts as ‘nonviolence’. Here are a few words from Linah Alsaafin, a young ‘Palestinian’ woman (born in the UK and raised in England, the US, and ‘Palestine’) about the true meaning of nonviolence:
…to even consider throwing rocks as a violent act is absurd. The message is very clear: rocks are thrown at the enemy as a way of underscoring the Palestinians’ disapproval of a foreign occupier from intruding and expropriating their lands and homes. At the risk of insulting their intelligence and losing their respect at such a dim question, I asked a few Nabi Saleh children why they throw rocks. Their responses were simple: We don’t want the army here. This is our village. They are occupying us. …
The David versus Goliath analogy is lost on those well-meaning “nonviolent†folks. Truth be told, the literal Arabic translation of “nonviolent†isn’t used widely. We use the term muthahara silmiya which means “peaceful protest.†It is especially cringe-worthy to remember how I used to look down on those who threw rocks in Bilin and Nilin, something I now attribute to my ignorance and inexperience. I used to think — as a victim the propaganda pumped out by western media — that throwing rocks was a thing of the past, and that we needed new ways to resist, not quite the Gandhi way but something along those lines. Thank God for Nabi Saleh.
The whole article is worth reading. ‘Non-violent’ seems to mean ‘justified’, and ‘the occupation’ is so evil that anything a Palestinian does is justified. When you are driving home from work and a 5-pound rock crashes through your windshield at, say, 30 mph, take comfort in the knowledge that it is not ‘violent’, but ‘peaceful’.
So much for the Arabs. What about the sanctimonious John Kerry, who lectures Israel about making ‘hard decisions’ (ones that will result in the removal of hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes and subject the remaining state of Israel to daily terrorist incursions and rocket bombardments), in return for the PLO president who doesn’t represent anyone but himself and will likely not last a year in his position, uttering some kind of formula in English that can be construed as acceptance of a Jewish state?
I am not the only one who is wondering “what the hell does the US get out of this?” Could there be a worse time to weaken Israel than when Syria is engaged in a vicious civil war — actually a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran? When Lebanon is on the verge of being drawn into the conflict, Jordan is destabilized by millions of refugees from it, and Egypt’s economy has imploded? When Hizballah has 60,000 rockets, many hidden in civilian homes, aimed at Israel?
And importantly, when it is obvious to all, Israelis and Palestinian Arabs alike, that no agreement is possible?
I don’t know the answer, although I have my theories. Meanwhile, let me ask Mr. Kerry when it will be OK to release Charles Manson and 103 similar others to Nantucket?
John Kerry’s retreat on Nantucket Is., Massachusetts
Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Arabs, prisoner release, John Kerry
The Israeli government is receiving no credit from either the US or Europe for releasing murderers from its prisons.
Not that any one would sympathize with the Jews – or for that matter with any human being that acts out of sheer stupidity!
Israel is on the receiving end of the world’s wrath and finds its own population embittered and demoralized at home.
Not exactly a formula conducive to peace.
The demand by the US that Israel release murderers reminds me of the demands made on Jewish communities historically in the Diaspora to collectively pay exorbitant taxes or submit to collective punishment. It is an immoral demand made on Israel and it should be objected to in the United States as an immoral foreign policy for the US to be pursuing. The morality of releasing killers is never a subject that is brought up in the US. The media certainly never raises the issue.
TV viewers see heartwarming scenes of reunion without really understanding the abhorrent crimes these freed prisoners have committed.
Shalom-Hillel:
Interestingly after the second release, I saw a segment on CCTV-9 – Mainland China’s English language cable news channel that I get with my cable TV service – which was in-depth and gave time for Israelis who were opposed to this to have their say. It was far better coverage than anything I saw in any U.S. media.
Vic:
You ask: “…what the hell does the U.S. get out of this?”
To understand this, consider the alternative.
If the U.S. concedes, as a matter of official policy, that the Palestinians are thugs who are not genuinely interested in peace with Israel, then the only conceivable U.S. policy going forward is one that backs Israel unequivocally in the face of the PLO/PA. In other words, once the U.S. declares what we see to be obvious – Israel is right, the Palis are wrong – then we are bound to back Israel without reservation, as an ally, in the face of the Palestinian Arabs and their backers.
It is the “and their backers” part that is so hard for U.S. policymakers to swallow. This will fly in the face of one of the most important policy objectives of our so-called Arab “allies”, and much of the rest of the Moslem world in general. Israel then becomes analogous vis-a-vis the Arab/Moslem world to West Berlin vis-a-vis the Soviet Bloc of the Cold War.
We were able to confront and ultimately defeat the Soviets for two reasons. First, because our leaders of that time more or less knew what the U.S. stood for as opposed to them, believed in what we stood for, and had the resolve, based on such beliefs and convictions, to do so. Second, because the Soviets were rational. They may have had thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at us and large armies poised to invade Europe, but they really didn’t want a big war any more than we did. If they couldn’t make gains on the cheap through bluff, intimidation, or subversion, it wasn’t worth it to them. They sure weren’t going to hijack airliners and fly them into our buildings…even the Nazis would not have stooped to that.
The Arab/Moslem “civilization” – if that’s what you want to call it – is not so rational. A “Cold War” with them would involve terrorism against us, and military operatoins by us aimed at preventing the same, that could go on forever….wait a minute, this has happened already! BUT…
…The Arab/Moslem world has successfully convinced large segments of the U.S. leadership class that the reason so many of them hate us so much is because of our support of Israel. If only we didn’t “favor Israel so much” – as in, do ANYTHING for them – then they’d like us and stop coming over here to bomb our marathons and shoot up our military bases an so on. Now, just ask the Russians, who never supported Israel, how much that has prevented Moslem terrorists from targeting them…but no matter, taking advantage of and encouraging what indigenous anti-Semitism exists among U.S. elites, this argument has gained traction among many responsible people here….
…Who happen to be at the helm of our executive branch, and our foreign and defense policy establishments today. They really believe that if they can get Israel to “cry uncle” on the Palestinian issue and agree to commit slow assisted suicide per some bogus agreement, then Islamic sensibilities will be satisfied to the point where the U.S. can withdraw from the War on Islamist Terror at minimal cost to the U.S., but maximal cost to Israel…too bad for them (they can come here; after all, even the U.S. president conducts Passover Seders in the White House).
Failing “crying uncle”, the current U.S. leadership will then do their best to manufacture an excuse for sabotaging the “unbreakable alliance” between the U.S. and Israel, in order to achieve the same ends with respect to the War on Islamist Terror. In order to maintain pressure on Israel, the U.S. under Obama intends to let Iran go nuclear in order to “punish” Israel for her “intransigence”, and beyond that, abandoning Israel at the UN in the wake of an affirmative UNSCR approving the PA’s request for statehood will finalize Israel’s isolation as a Rhodesia-style pariah state; again, all to curry favor with the purveyors of terrorism.
That is what Obama/Kerry/Power/Hagel and so on think they are going to get from this. They are wrong, of course, and as likely as not, this is all going to blow up in their faces.
Israel under Netanyahu really does need to stand up to Obama over these stupid prisoner releases, these pointless talks with the thugs of the PA, and Iran. The near-term costs for Israeli defiance of Obama will be high, much higher than elected national leaders would like to face. Israel may face boycotts, sanctions, etc., from the EU that will throw thousands of Israelis out of work. Many of those who will continue to do business with Israel, such as India and China, will probably ask for more favorable terms at Israel’s expense, as the premium for willing to do business with a “pariah state”. There will probably be a double-digit contraction in the Israeli economy as a result of such punishments.
But, Obama won’t be around forever. And, given Obama’s sinking credibility both at home and abroad, it is not so certain that Israel will suffer so badly as all that.
The bottom line is that for the sake of the future, for the sake of perhaps a prospective U.S.-Israeli relationship that is based on mutual respect, Israeli leaders are going to have to ask for short-term sacrifices in the service of standing up to the U.S. under Obama. Enabling Obama with such humiliating actions as these prisoner releases will only lead to more pressure and more humiliations down the road. It is time to stop this insanity.
Once again, sorry Israel, for Obama. I never voted for him. I understood, though did not agree with, my fellow American Jews who did so in ’08. In ’12, I cannot fathom why so many allegedly did; this has set a whole new standard of stupidity.
But don’t you let that snotty punk defeat you. You are far, far better than him, and than that. Chazak!
The prisoner release is despicable. It is a betrayal of moral principles. It marks a failure in judgment of our Prime Minister and Government. The Americans are detestable for urging this upon us, but we are even more detestable for agreeing to it.
PS Causing more suffering to the families of the victims who have already suffered so much shows an inhumane side of our own government.