FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

I attended the California State University Fresno [CSUF] “Conference on Middle East Studies” this weekend. I can only hit some high and low spots. Where to begin?

With the good parts: One of the first papers presented was by Neda Maghbouleh, a Ph.D student at UC Santa Barbara, about the effect of Iranian popular music of the  ’70’s and ’80’s on first and second generation Iranian-Americans. It was like discovering a parallel universe, inhabited by Googoosh, among others. Ms. Maghbouleh obviously enjoyed her research a great deal and showed it.

There were a few other bright spots, like when Mary Husain, who was pilloried here (”Scholarship or Rubbish?“) for publishing a striking example of postmodernist academic boondoggling at its worst, actually mentioned this site as an example of “The post-9/11 Assault on Higher Education and Academic Freedom”! “I don’t even know who these people are”, she wailed.

Ms. Husain, please know that 1) I chose to focus “Scholarship or Rubbish?” on you rather than your co-author because you are a member of the CSUF Middle East Studies Program [MESP] and he is not, and not because of your Muslim-sounding name; 2) I chose to write about you rather than a non-Muslim member of your department because of the availability and staggering badness of your published article; and 3) I fail to see how my critique limits academic freedom. I am however, guilty as charged of “stealing” your photo from the CSUF academic website.

From here on, though, things went rapidly downhill. My original fear that the MESP would become a platform for anti-Israel political agitation because the initiators, Dr. Vida Samiian and Dr. Sasan Fayazmanesh have expressed extreme anti-Israel positions in the past, appears to have been justified.

Dr. Lawrence Davidson of West Chester University (Pennsylvania) presented two papers. The first, on “forced migration” of Palestinians was a 20-minute polemical recitation of charges against Israel, including “purposeful impovershment” of the Palestinians, “equivalent to genocide” by such means as the “apartheid wall” because “Israel covets Palestinian land”. The Palestinians live in constant insecurity, Davidson said, from incursions, air attacks, etc. Israel claims that this is in self-defense, but in fact “over the past 60 years Israeli policy has been motivated by racism”, a desire to have all the land “Palestinian-rien”.

Davidson presented ‘facts’ and figures more rapidly than I could write, but I would be interested in knowing how he documents such highly dubious statements as “Israel expropriated 50% of the land in the West Bank” and “40% of Israelis favor ‘transfer’ of Palestinians”. This was anything but a scholarly paper; it was at best a political speech, and at worst — incitement of hatred.

Davidson gave an interesting answer when asked how he could discuss all of the above without even mentioning Palestinian terrorism, or decisions such as the rejection of partition, etc.  Israel is the dominant power, he said, and therefore controls everything that happens. The Palestinians are by definition powerless, so their ‘resistance’ is simply a reaction to Israeli oppression. Hence, surprisingly enough, violent actions on both sides are Israel’s fault. This argument needs no further refutation!

He was also asked how he could leave out of the equation the historical backing of extremists by the Arab nations, and, recently, the Iranian proxy war against Israel being prosecuted by Hamas and Hezbollah.  He responded that Israel was offensively powerful enough to counter any imaginable military threat — ignoring tiny Israel’s unique home-front vulnerability. He further suggested that Israel should simply ‘take a chance’ and agree to the Saudi initiative — which I think I have shown is equivalent to national suicide for the Jewish state.

Davidson presented a second paper, this one on teaching about the Middle East. He believes that students arrive with an anti-Muslim and pro-Israel orientation which is created by overwhelming bias in the American media. I suppose he has had students who only watch Fox News, but I hardly think that NPR, CNN, the NY Times, Reuters, the AP, Pacifica Radio, etc. can be called pro-Zionist!

Nevertheless, he faces the problem of how to break down the students’ ‘emotional’ cleavage to Zionism and get them to understand the Palestinian viewpoint.  One of his most effective techniques is to have the students read various sources, including pro-Palestinian material written by Israelis — he even mentioned renegade Israeli academic Ilan Pappé as a good choice! He also likes the early Benny Morris — with its doctored quotations from Ben-Gurion and other Zionists.

The class then takes the form of a discussion, in which he presents his own position, all the while reassuring the students that disagreement will not affect their grades. Some students have difficulty overwhelming their ‘emotional’ attachment to Zionism, and those, he admits, often drop his class. The possibility that there might be a student who — though employing logical thinking and careful research — might nevertheless fail to agree with him was not mentioned.

Davidson was less a scholar than a polemicist and less a teacher than an indoctrinator. I can’t imagine that such a person could have held an academic position when I was in school, but I suppose that was a long time ago.

One of the sessions that I most looked forward to was one on “What the future has in store?” This was to be, unfortunately, my last, as you will see.

Dr. Eric Hooglund blamed Israel and settlements for everything. Why bother to repeat it yet again? He also did not mention terrorism or Hamas, but he claimed that the failure of Camp David, the Roadmap and the Annapolis negotiations to lead to peace were all because of Israel insistence on expanding settlements and building new ones.

He also said that friends and former students of his in the US State Department felt that US policy would change significantly — I understood him to mean in the direction of the Palestinians — if Barack Obama is elected.

Dr. Sasan Fayazmanesh spoke about American policy toward Iran, as determined by the power relationships between various groups in the US administration (and the administration to come). At one point I actually began to empathize with him. After all, he thinks that American policy is to wage war against his homeland — if not by armies, then by economics; and I think that American policy may lead to the destruction of Israel by its enemies. We both see little difference between the parties in this respect.

However, all good things come to an end. In this case someone asked a question about Ahmadinejad’s famous remark that is often translated “Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth”.  Fayazmanesh said that the translation was incorrect — a not unreasonable point, although it is quite clear from Ahmadinejad’s support of Hezbollah and Hamas, his financing of the Syrian missile buildup, etc., that he is at least aiming for what might be called ‘regime change’ in Israel, from Jews to Arabs.

“You see, he said, Ahmadinejad is not anti-Semitic.” And he displayed a Powerpoint presentation entitled “Ahmadinijad: is he an anti-Semite?”

The first slide showed the Iranian President sitting down at a table — perhaps at the notorious Holocaust denial conference of 2006 — with representatives of a radical Neturei Karta faction, a tiny sect — possibly less than one hundred members — of the favorite Jews of every anti-Semite, previously paid to perform by Yasser Arafat and now most likely by Ahmadinejad.

“You see,” said Fayazmanesh, “he cannot be an anti-Semite. These are Jews. They are his friends.”

All of us have character weaknesses and one of mine is that the level of crap that sets me off is not all that high. I stood up, and said quite loudly, and maybe without making enough sense: what about the Holocaust denial conference? What about the Holocaust denial conference? Then either I walked out, was asked to leave, or both. Really, it was the cumulative effect of some of the other speakers — particularly, but not exclusively, Davidson — with the surrealism provided by Neturei Karta taken seriously that did me in.

Several times an Israeli participant in the conference asked something like “Look, this is supposed to be an academic meeting, why is only one point of view presented?” The response from one moderator was that constant discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was — his word — “tedious”.  Apparently anti-Israel rants by Lawrence Davidson, Eric Hooglund and others were not “tedious” — only attempts to respond from the audience were.

Update [23 Oct. 1509 PDT]: Upon rereading my notes, I realize that I had wrongly attributed the statement about the State Department sources saying that Obama would lead to ‘big changes’ to Sasan Fayazmanesh. It was actually made by Eric Hooglund.

Technorati Tags: CSUF, Middle East Studies, Mary Husain, Lawrence Davidson, Sasan Fayazmanesh, Eric Hooglund

I’ve recently written about antisemitism, so I thought I would give equal time to Islamophobia — especially since I and other Zionists are often accused of it. Here’s what the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] says it is:

Islamophobia refers to unfounded fear of and hostility towards Islam. Such fear and hostility leads to discriminations against Muslims, exclusion of Muslims from mainstream political or social process, stereotyping, the presumption of guilt by association, and finally hate crimes.  In twenty-first century America, all of these evils are present and in some quarters tolerated. While America has made major progress in racial harmony, there is still a long road ahead of us to reach our destination when all people are judged on the content of their character and neither on the color of their skin or their faith. [my emphasis]

They add that the following (false) propositions are widely believed as a result of Islamophobia:

• Islam is monolithic and cannot adapt to new realities.
• Islam does not share common values with other major faiths.
• Islam as a religion is inferior to the West. It is archaic, barbaric and irrational.
• Islam is a religion of violence and supports terrorism.
• Islam is a violent political ideology.

In order for an attitude to constitute Islamophobia, then, it must be an irrational prejudice, like racism or antisemitism, in which discrimination or hatred occurs based only on a person’s membership in a particular group.

It is not irrational, though, to feel fear and hostility towards a group which does intend, through violence or subversion, to replace democratic governments with theocratic ones. And this describes those Muslims that we call Islamists. Daniel Pipes defines ‘Islamists’ as

…individuals who seek a totalistic, worldwide application of Islamic law, the Shari‘a. In particular, they seek to build an Islamic state in Turkey, replace Israel with an Islamic state and the U.S. constitution with the Koran. — Pipes, “Counting Islamists“

Although CAIR’s examples of Islamophobic belief do not apply to all Muslims, at least the last three propositions arguably are true of Islamists, such as members of Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and their supporters. There is no doubt that these groups explicitly believe in violent action to achieve their goals, and that their supporters applaud violent terrorism. There is no doubt that Shari’a — where it has been applied in Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, for example — is at odds with Western values.

It’s not relevant to this discussion whether these Islamists have ‘hijacked’ normative Islam, as is often said. The point is that they behave in barbaric and violent ways — or support such behavior — and justify this by an appeal to Islamic principles. Only a minority of Islamists are actually prepared to engage in violence themselves, but most would agree with statements like “violence is often justified in defense of religion”.

One question that is relevant is how many Muslims among the world’s 1.4 billion are Islamists. If it turns out to be a significant number, then a degree of concern — not prejudice, but concern — about Muslim influence in American society is justified. Pipes believes that the number of Islamists worldwide is between 10 and 15 per cent of all Muslims. Some communities have a much higher percentage, such as in the UK or among Palestinians, and others are lower. Overall, this is a huge number.

Pipes, by the way, is mentioned by CAIR as a disseminator of Islamophobic beliefs — but his careful distinctions between Muslims, Islamists and  Islamists who are terrorists refute this accusation, by CAIR’s own definition of Islamophobia.

If we draw the distinction between Islam (a religion) and Islamism (a political movement based on Islam) we can see that concern about Islamism is not irrational or unfounded. It is not a form of racism or ethnic prejudice. There may indeed be Islamophobia in the world, but this isn’t it.

But that doesn’t stop some people from confusing legitimate concern about Islamism with hatred for Muslims.

For example, one of these concerns is that some history textbooks recently adopted in California present a distorted, “sanitized” view of Islam. A report from the American Textbook Council (”Islam in the Classroom: What the Textbooks Tell Us“) includes the following discussion of the concept of jihad:

New definitions of jihad started to circulate in U.S. history textbooks and classrooms in the 1990s. The engine was a 1994 Council on Islamic Education [CIE] “guide” for publishers that maintained jihad meant “‘to exert oneself’ or ‘to strive.’ Other meanings include ‘endeavor, strain, effort, diligence, struggle. . . .’ It should not be understood to mean ‘holy war,’ a common misrepresentation.” Soon, jihad underwent a definitional overhaul. In this amazing cultural reorchestration, the pioneer was a Houghton Mifflin world history textbook, Across the Centuries, still firmly established in junior high schools. Across the Centuries said jihad is a struggle “to do one’s best to resist temptation and overcome evil.” Jihad was reimagined as an “inner struggle” and element of Muslim self-improvement. These changes reflected the intersection of multiculturalism, suddenly a trendy social studies construct, and Houghton Mifflin’s commercial ambitions in social studies. Then and later, appearing from nowhere, the California-based Council on Islamic Education would become a fixture on the textbook scene.

Other items such as shari’a, the status of women in Islam, etc. have similarly been made more palatable. A student educated from books like this would have no idea that Islamism existed. Yet when the editor of the  local Hadassah newsletter included a discussion of this in connection with Hadassah’s Curriculum Watch program, she was called a “hate-mongering Islamophobe”. Even by CAIR’s definition this is absurd.

CAIR and other similar organizations have done their best to exaggerate the amount of true Islamophobia in America and to promote an exquisite sensitivity to it on the part of Muslims and the ‘multiculturalism police’. The effect is to prevent an accurate understanding of Islam in all of its forms, and to make it more difficult to expose the activities of Islamist extremists.

Technorati Tags: Islamophobia, Islamists, CAIR, Council on Islamic Education, textbooks, California

Recently I wrote about the Mennonite Central Committee [MCC] co-hosting a dinner for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the occasion of his recent vist to the UN. Several readers were kind enough to send links to the MCC’s press releases concerning their motivation, which is explained as being grounded only in a desire to promote peace, in accordance with Christian principles.

From my point of view, of course, having dinner today with Ahmadinejad is little different from doing it with Hitler in 1938, insofar as Ahmadinejad — in addition to developing atomic weapons — is presently working full-tilt to prepare his Syrian satellite and his proxy armies in Lebanon and the occupied territories to make war on Israel (the first round was fought with Hezbollah in 2006). And like Hitler, he is quite pleased to express his anti-Semitic reasons for doing so.

Therefore I see isolation of Iran along with sanctions strong enough to bring about regime change as the only peaceful way to prevent the massive conflict that will certainly be the outcome of his plans. And if there is no peaceful solution, then there must be a non-peaceful one, or there won’t be a Jewish state.

The MCC, for its part, also seems to be opposed to the Jewish state, although unlike Ahmadinejad they seem to think that it can be made to disappear quietly. The following quotations are from “Peacebuilding in Palestine/Israel: A Discussion Paper” attributed to “MCC staff working on Middle East issues”.

First, let’s see how the MCC views the 60 years of Israel’s independence, punctuated as it has been by wars — sometimes genocidal in intent — and murderous terrorism:

Since the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948 uprooted between 700,000 to 900,000 Palestinians from their homes, Palestinian history has been a story of dispossession. Refugees and internally displaced persons have been prevented from returning home. Tens of thousands more Palestinians became homeless again during the 1967 war. Since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip (hereafter the Occupied Palestinian Territories, or OPT) in 1967, Palestinians have faced multiple types of dispossession, from house demolitions to the uprooting of trees, from confiscation of land for the construction of illegal Israeli settlements to the expropriation of water resources, from checkpoints and roadblocks to a permit system that places increasingly tight restrictions on Palestinian movement…

Neither Palestinians nor Israelis, meanwhile, have enjoyed physical security, as both peoples have turned toward violent means in the hopes that security might be obtained through violent force.

While the MCC wishes to appear neutral, desiring only peace, a more pro-Arab point of view could not be imagined. Let me rewrite the above a little more accurately:

Since the war of Independence — in which Israel was attacked by Palestinian Arabs and invaded by armies of five Arab nations — resulted in the displacement of about 650,000 Palestinian Arabs and 800,000 Jews from Arab countries, the Arab nations have created a dispossessed people. After the war they refused to talk to Israel or even acknowledge her existence, and they forced the Arab refugees into camps where they became wards of international charity (Jewish refugees were resettled, mostly in Israel).

In 1967 Israel again repelled a genocidal threat by the Arab nations, and occupied the West Bank and the Gaza strip, which had been illegally held by Jordan and Egypt since 1948. Although Israel wished to exchange the territories for peace agreements with the Arab nations, the Arabs refused and tried to retake them in yet another major war in 1973.

Finally, Israel agreed to negotiate a two-state solution with archenemy Yasser Arafat. But Arafat preferred  continued ‘armed struggle’ to a final agreement which would give up  the Palestinian claim on all of the land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. Since 1948 and especially since 2000 Israel has been subject to multiple forms of terrorism, which has made roadblocks, checkpoints and  the security barrier necessary.

Now let’s look at the MCC’s solution to the conflict:

1. A complete end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, based on a full withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 lines, and the evacuation of all Israeli settlements, save for equitable arrangements mutually agreed upon by the negotiating parties.
2. A just solution for the Palestinian refugee problem, in accordance with international legality, the relevant UN resolutions, and the basic principle of refuge choice.
3. A shared Jerusalem open to all faiths.

I’ll discuss these points one at a time.

1. Remember, these territories were not ‘Palestinian’ before 1967 — they were occupied by Jordan and Egypt, and before that the British, and before that the Ottoman Turks. The pre-1967 boundaries are no more than cease-fire lines established at the end of the 1948 war. A rational two-state solution — if such a thing were even possible — would allow Israel to keep areas of Jewish population, while Palestine would include areas with Arab majorities, even some which are inside present-day Israel. The Palestinians reject any ’swaps’, however, because Israeli Arabs are happy with the economic benefits of living in Israel and because it suits them to have a politically active minority in Israel.

Even if Israel did withdraw fully to the 1967 lines, displacing more than 200,000 Jews — most of whom live in settlements close to the 1967 border or in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem — does anyone think that Arab demands on Israel would end?

2. The relevant UN resolutions — at least 194 and 242 –  have always been interpreted by the Arabs as calling for the ‘return’ of any of the nearly five million descendants of the original refugees who wish to do so to Israel. In my view and that of many experts in international law, this interpretation is not correct. But reference to “UN resolutions” in this context has become ‘code’ for ‘right of return’, and the MCC must be understood to be advocating this.

No Israeli government has ever considered this acceptable as part of a peace agreement, and for good reason. For one thing, it would immediately make Israel an Arab majority state. There are no Arab states which treat Jews decently, and some — including ‘Palestine’ — do not permit Jews to live in them at all. For another, a large number of the ‘refugees’ are members of one of the terrorist militias that adhere to genocidal anti-Semitic principles, such as Hamas. There is no doubt that if such a ‘return’ were implemented, it would be the beginning of a violent civil war. It’s hard to see how the MCC can say that this ’solution’ will “ensure that both Palestinians and Israelis might live securely under vine and fig tree”.

3. Jerusalem today is open to all faiths, as opposed to the period between 1948 and 1967 when Jews did not have access to their holy places.

The MCC displays its bias in other ways. Just using the phrase “Occupied Palestinian Territories” for all areas outside the 1967 boundary implies that these areas were originally ‘Palestinian’. But in fact they were part of the British Mandate no more or less than the part inside the lines, and were illegally occupied in 1948 by Arab states. In fact, some places — like parts of East Jerusalem and Gush Etzion — had Jewish populations before 1948, populations which were eliminated by force and murder by the Jordanians.

The MCC website contains numerous articles and papers about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The overall position is that the founding of Israel represented a ‘taking’ of the land from the ‘indigenous’ Palestinians — something which is historically false — and that since then Israeli policy has been designed to obtain and keep the maximum amount of land possible without granting political rights to the Arabs. Even an article about MCC-supported irrigation projects contains accusations of Israeli ‘expropriation’ and other oppressive policies.

The continuous violent Arab struggle against any Jewish presence in the land, which has been going on for at least 100 years is ignored or minimized, as are the various failed attempts at partition, coexistence, and peace  — failed because the Arabs have never agreed to accept less than all of the land.

The MCC presents Israel as massively powerful, oppressing the weak Palestinians, while ignoring the coordinated assault by the Arab nations and Iran, with their petrodollar resources, to put an end to the Jewish state.

The MCC even tries to whitewash the genocidal Ahmadinejad:

…we believe that the president’s public comments have moderated somewhat over the past two years. When challenged regarding his comments about “wiping Israel off the map,” Ahmadinejad has said to us in previous meetings and, at last, in interviews with both CNN and the Los Angeles Times in late September, that he is not talking about a military solution. Rather, he supports the “one-state” solution, a political resolution in which Israelis and Palestinians elect a single government to represent both peoples.

As I said above, it’s simply impossible to believe that there could be such a ’single [Arab] government’ that would permit the Jews to live in peace. But we must also ask, if this is what Ahmadinejad wants, why has he introduced literally thousands of missiles into Lebanon and Syria, some with chemical and biological warheads, all aimed at Israel? Why has he financed and trained Hezbollah’s massive militia? Why is he creating an army for the murderous Hamas?

Technorati Tags: Mennonite Central Committee, MCC, Ahmadinejad, Israel, Palestinians

News item:

The president of the United Nations General Assembly is expected to attend a dinner in New York organized by five American Christian organizations at which Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will be a featured guest…

The private dinner is being billed as “an international dialogue between religious leaders and political figures” in a conversation “about the role of religions in tackling global challenges and building peaceful societies.” It is being sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee [MCC], the Quaker United Nations Office, the World Council of Churches, Religions for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee. — Jewish Daily Forward

This is not the first time that the Mennonite Central Committee — a relief and social action organization representing the Mennonites and several other denominations — has sponsored a meeting with Ahmadinejad.

Keep in mind that Ahmadinejad has

• Called for the state of Israel to be ‘wiped off the map’

• Said (several times) that the ‘Zionist regime’ is on the verge of destruction

• Hosted a holocaust denial conference; he himself has called the Holocaust a “fairy tale”

• Financed and armed the terrorists of Hezbollah and Hamas who have killed hundreds of Jews and Israelis

• Financed and supplied a huge military buildup in Syria, including chemical and biological weapons — all aimed at Israel

The fact that he does this while aggressively developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them makes him more than a garden-variety bigot. A principled reaction — especially for a group ostensibly dedicated to non-violence and peace like the MCC — to a head of state like Ahmadinejad would be to denounce him, to urge his quarantine from the society of peace-loving nations, and to call for real sanctions against Iran, strong enough to topple Ahmadinejad’s regime.

Instead, they are buying him dinner.

Unfortunately, the MCC has a long history of one-sided anti-Israel expression, uncritical adoption of the most virulent slanders against the state, and even explicit denial of Israel’s right to exist. It ‘partners’ with groups such as the Sabeel ‘Ecumenical Liberation Theology’ Center and the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, and other extreme anti-Zionist organizations. Legitimizing the anti-Semitic Ahmadinejad is only a continuation of a policy that does not believe that there should be a Jewish state of Israel.

Here in our valley we have many Mennonite Christians, who have a reputation as honest, kind and hardworking people. I have two questions for them:

• How can you support (if indeed you do support) the MCC’s action which legitimizes an anti-Semitic fanatic who threatens a second Holocaust while denying the first one?

• How can you countenance the participation of the MCC and its ‘partners’ in the promulgation of vicious lies and distortions against the state of Israel, a propaganda campaign designed to lay the groundwork for its physical destruction?

The original Haman gets his just desserts

Technorati Tags: Mennonites, Israel, Ahmadinejad

Sometimes you have to repeat the same facts over and over, because the other side never stops lying about them.

A case in point is the Clinton-Barak offer to Yasser Arafat in December 2000. Supporters of Israel have held that the offer was more than fair, an indication that Israel was prepared to make real sacrifices for peace, and that Arafat’s rejection of it and the ensuing intifada were proof of Palestinian unwillingness to accept any reasonable compromise.

Arafat — and since then Jimmy Carter and other supporters of the Palestinian cause — have claimed that the offer was not reasonable at all. For example, Lawrence Davidson — who, incidentally will be presenting several papers at a forthcoming conference sponsored by the California State University Fresno Middle East Studies Program — wrote the following:

The “generous offer” has been disproved by both American and Israeli experts. For instance, among others, Robert Malley, President Clinton’s advisor on Israeli-Arab affairs who was at Camp David II; Ron Pundak, Director of the Peres Center for Peace; Professor Jeff Halper (Ben Gurion University); Uri Avnery, head of Gush Shalom, Israel’s foremost peace organization; and finally Ehud Barak himself has twice (in the New York Times of May 24, 2001 and in the Israeli hebrew newspaper Yedi’ot Ahronoth of August 29, 2003) denied that his offer was anywhere near “generous.”

What did Barak really offer? According to the above reports his offer gave the Palestinians a little over 80% of the West Bank carved into nearly discontinuous cantons. The Israeli government would have controlled all the Palestinian borders (none of which would touch on another Arab state), it would have controlled the air space above the Palestinian territory, most of the major aquifers, retained sovereignty over East Jerusalem, maintained almost all Israeli settlements and access roads, controlled immigration into the Palestinian “state,” and retained the Jordan Valley through an indefinite “long term lease.” This is an offer that no Israeli would ever accept. However, most Israelis and Americans do not know these details and believe instead in the myth of generosity. — Davidson, “Orwell and Kafka in Israel/Palestine“

Before discussing the substance of Davidson’s allegation, let’s look at his sources.

Ron Pundak was one of the Oslo agreement negotiators, but he was not present at Camp David. His 2001 article “From Oslo to Taba: What Went Wrong?” appears to be Davidson’s source for the above. Pundak unsurprisingly argues that Oslo was a great idea, but it failed due to “miscalculations and mismanagement” on both sides, especially by former PM Binyamin Netanyahu and Barak. He does not specifically cite a source for the 80% figure, but a map included is an “approximation based on Israeli and Palestinian sources”.

Robert Malley was at Camp David as a special assistant to President Clinton. He is highly controversial today because he favors recognizing Hamas and calls for Israel to negotiate directly with Hamas. His 2001 article “Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors” (with Hussein Agha) appears to be Davidson’s source. In it, Malley explains that Barak’s positions were always presented verbally in terms of what he would agree to if there were a final agreement, because of his [justified] fear that the Palestinians would ‘pocket’ any concrete written proposal and then use it as a starting point for further demands. What Barak was in fact prepared to accept then appeared as American ‘ideas’ from the mouth of President Clinton. Malley argues that therefore there was actually no ‘real’ offer other than some ‘bases for negotiation’ which were in the 90% range. He sees this as justification for the Palestinian claim that this was Barak’s best offer. But this is not the case by Malley’s own account of Barak’s negotiation technique!

Jeff Halper and Uri Avnery, with all due respect (not much) were not in a position to know what was offered at Camp David and are partisans of the Palestinian cause. Halper is presently in Gaza as part of the “Free Gaza” mission.

Now, what about the most interesting source, Ehud Barak himself? Try as I might, I could not find a mention of Barak in the New York Times archive on May 24, 2001 (nor could I find the Yediot reference). However, the following appears in an August 6, 2001 interview with Clyde Haberman of the Times:

When those negotiations collapsed, Israelis and American officials, including President Bill Clinton, put the blame squarely on Mr. Arafat. But newly published accounts [Malley, Agha and Pundak?] offer a different perspective. They say that all the parties at Camp David share responsibility, among them Mr. Barak for supposedly overbearing negotiating tactics.

Stung by the criticism, the former prime minister asked for time to make his case against what he called the ”gossipizing of history.” He has never been one to admit mistakes freely, and he was no different today when he said, ”I can answer almost every gossip item.”

He had offered the Palestinians more than any Israeli leader ever, he said, but his ”peace partner” chose to turn his back.

But there is a highly specific and authoritative source for the details of the offers. Dennis Ross was the chief Middle East negotiator for both Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He was intimately involved in the negotiations from start to finish. Here is what he said about the final Clinton-Barak offer:

In actuality, Clinton offered two different proposals at two different times. In July, he offered a partial proposal on territory and control of Jerusalem. Five months later, at the request of Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister, and Arafat, Clinton presented a comprehensive proposal on borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and security. The December proposals became known as the Clinton ideas or parameters.

The Clinton parameters would have produced an independent Palestinian state with 100 percent of Gaza, roughly 97 percent of the West Bank and an elevated train or highway to connect them. Jerusalem’s status would have been guided by the principle that what is currently Jewish will be Israeli and what is currently Arab will be Palestinian, meaning that Jewish Jerusalem — East and West — would be united, while Arab East Jerusalem would become the capital of the Palestinian state…

Since the talks fell apart, there has emerged a mythology that seeks to defend Arafat’s rejection of the Clinton ideas by suggesting they weren’t real or that Palestinians would have received far less than what had been advertised.

Arafat himself later claimed he was not offered even 90 percent of the West Bank or any of East Jerusalem. But that was myth, not reality.

Indeed.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Lawrence Davidson, Camp David, Clinton-Barak offer

My wife left our car with its pro-Israel bumper stickers outside a big local  bookstore today, and she found the following note on the windshield when she returned:

“ZIONISM”

IS

Seperatism

&

Rasic Racism

The good news is that the person who left this note was apparently capable of recognizing that he/she had spelled “racism” incorrectly the first time, although “seperatism” seems to have slipped by.

Our correspondent doesn’t seem to know what ’separatism’ is (here’s an example). Even Jimmy Carter didn’t accuse us of that. Probably he or she meant ‘apartheid’, but got tired just thinking about spelling it.

One of the things which characterizes grass-roots anti-Israel people is their complete ignorance of the actual issues and of history (our friend is even ignorant of the actual slogans).

The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis has nothing to do with race  — how can it when it is impossible to tell an Israeli from a Palestinian by their appearance? But antisemites of the Right and Left (for example, Shlomo Zand) will go on and on about the Khazars, about how Ashkenazis are not actually Jews, etc. Their obsession with race is indeed racist, but is not shared by average Israeli, who is concerned about Palestinian terrorism, not Arab or Jewish genetics.

It’s true that anti-Israel Arabs have adopted a lot of the trappings of European racist antisemitism in order to stir up hatred. But Israeli Jews have always had more concrete reasons to dislike Arabs, such as the history of murderous attacks, from pogroms in the 1800’s, through the ‘riots’ of the 1920’s and -30’s and the terror attacks of the Arafat period, to the Qassam rockets of today. Who needs racial antagonism when friends and relatives are murdered?

Despite all this, Israel has not exterminated the Palestinians or ethnically cleansed territories captured in wars started by the Arab nations — Israel has not behaved like Jordan, for example, which one way or another eliminated every last Jew in the areas it occupied in 1948.

One might well ask who in the Middle East is actually racist. Egypt, where Mein Kampf is a runaway best seller and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was a hit TV series; Hamas, whose charter calls for the killing of Jews and repeats silly antisemitic cliches — it would be funny if they didn’t actually murder people — or Saudi Arabia, whose official website until very recently carried a statement that “Jewish persons” would not be allowed into the Kingdom? What about Sudan, where an Arab government is committing genocide against three non-Arab ethnic groups, because of their color or religion or both?

If you search for ‘Zionism’ on YouTube, you will find numerous videos in which neo-Nazis, ordinary antisemites, and Iranian TV personalities explain how Zionism is a racist doctrine that holds that Jews are superior to non-Jews and that Jews must strive for world domination (or even the extermination of non-Jews). All of this is false.

Zionism simply states that the Jewish people has a right to self-determination, like any other people. Zionists believe that the State of Israel was legitimately established and has a right to exist as a Jewish State (see: “Zionism — What it is and isn’t“).

Our note writer needs to study history as well as spelling.

Technorati Tags: Zionism, Israel 

A couple of things that don’t fit anywhere else:

1) Yesterday, I attended an “Israel@60″ celebration here in Fresno. Lots of good feelings, vendors selling kippot, food, music, food, dancing, food, etc. Two Chabad rabbis did a land-office business getting people to put on tefillin.

I was in charge of an “Israel Advocacy” table. It was not exactly the the most popular thing at the event, but that’s not surprising.

A few people came over, took my literature, and talked a bit. One man looked at a pamphlet and shook his head. “Why are you shaking your head?”, I asked. He pointed to a photograph. “Arafat,” he muttered. “We love Israel, said his wife. We’ve been there several times.”

Like everyone who expressed similar sentiments, these people were Christians. Yet so many Jews reject their friendship. We shouldn’t.

2) Bloggers love to see their posts linked on other sites. It’s proof that someone other than the author reads them. Jewish bloggers actually go to the extreme of posting a collection of links to each other’s posts from time to time! Such vanity. It’s called Haveil Havalim (vanity of vanities), and you can find this week’s edition here.

Technorati Tags: Christian Zionism, Haveil Havalim

Fresno State’s Middle East Studies program is planning an “International Conference” on “Teaching about the Middle East in the 21st Century” this October.

Why do I care? Because, given the politicization of academia in general and Middle East Studies in particular — and the individuals running the conference — I expect that it will not be a quiet exercise in arcane scholarship.

Instead, I expect another attempt to bring the politics of hatred to our local university, just as the same people turned a benign “International Days” event into a vicious anti-Israel “Palestine Day” in 2003.

Papers apparently can be about absolutely anything Mideast-related. Some of the ‘disciplines’ listed are

• Culture, Gender & Ethnography
• Diaspora & Migration Culture
• Middle East Politics & Representations
• U.S. Foreign Policy

It’s easy to guess the kind of material that is likely to be presented in those ‘disciplines’, especially since the postmodernist revolution in academia has made it possible to claim that anything politically congenial to the writer is true (see Nadia Abu El-Haj and CSUF’s own Mary Husain).

The conference chair is Dr. Sasan Fayazmanesh, by trade an economist, but known for popularizing the term “USrael”, in support of his view that US and Israeli policy is closely coordinated (if only it were so), and dominated by a “neo-con” (Jewish) cabal.

The Middle East Studies program has been in existence for a year, funded by a grant from the US Department of Education. Judging by the course offerings and programs, my feeling is that it should have been called “Arab and Persian” studies, since there is no indication that there are or ever have been Christians or Jews in the region! The program is chaired by Dr. Vida Samiian, Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, “Palestine Day” organizer, and an activist who has been responsible for bringing numerous anti-Israel speakers and films to the area.

Let’s hope this will not turn into Fresno’s Durban Conference.

Technorati Tags: CSU Fresno, Sasan Fayazmanesh, Vida Samiian, Middle East Studies

Palestinians talk about ‘humiliation’ a lot. Humiliation at checkpoints (carefully ignoring the reason for the checkpoints), humiliation by airport security, and above all, humiliation caused by the very presence of the hated Zionists on soil which they believe to be theirs. Today an op-ed in our local newspaper, written by two people prominent in our Muslim and Jewish communities, mentioned the “daily humiliation” of the Palestinians. The very carefully written op-ed — the subject of creative ambiguity is something I’ll discuss another time — reminded me that I wanted to talk about humiliation, and who is humiliating whom.

News item:

Gaza’s only power plant will be shut down in two to three days unless Israel resumes fuel shipments, power plant director Rafik Maliha said Saturday.

Maliha warned that half a million Gazans would be left without electricity.

Israel halted supplies last week after Gaza terrorists attacked the Nahal Oz fuel depot on the Gaza-Israel border and killed two workers.

The power plant’s fuel reserves have been low in recent months, after Israel restricted fuel supplies in hopes of forcing terrorists to halt rocket attacks from Gaza.

First of all, the ‘crisis’ that would occur if the power plant shut down is exaggerated. Gaza gets fully 70% of its power from the Israeli electrical grid and another 5% from Egypt. The Gaza strip has about 500,000 residents in toto, so the statement is sheer nonsense.

Now here is what happened at Nahal Oz: a carefully planned, sophisticated attack was executed as a cooperative effort between Hamas and several other terrorist groups.

It was not a random action. One of the participants, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), named the operation “Breaking Zionist Arrogance.” The Zionist arrogance in question, of course, constitutes supplying fuel to Hamas-ruled Gaza, and the strategic purpose of the attack was to interrupt it so that there will be another pretext for more actions, such as breaking down border fences — either into Egypt, Israel or both. It will be another cause for the massive ‘frustration’ building up in Gaza.

On the same day of the attack on the terminal, about 50 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza fell in Israel.

So what Hamas and friends are saying is the following:

“We will kill you as much as we like and you will supply fuel and electricity with which we will build rockets to kill you more. We will only stop when you agree to open up your borders to us, so that we can go among you and kill even more.”

This is what is truly humiliating.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Nahal Oz, Gaza, Hamas

Sami al-Arian is a former faculty member at the University of South Florida. He pled guilty in 2006 of raising funds for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization, after being charged in 2003 with numerous terrorism-related offenses.

The case dragged on for almost three years, and the jury was unable to decide on a verdict on most of the charges. As a result of his plea he was sentenced to a little more than time served, and was ordered to be deported.

He has been called the “North American head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad“, a group responsible for literally hundreds of terrorist attacks against Israel. The FBI claimed that he “had connections to the blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993; to Hamas official Mohammed Sakr; to the high-ranking Sudanese terrorist Hassan Turbai [sic]; and to Islamic Jihad co-founder Abdel Aziz-Odeh.”

Just to give you an idea of the kind of guy he is, here is a 12-second video in which al-Arian calls for “Victory to Islam, Death to Israel“; and here is another in which he calls upon his listeners to “Damn America and Israel to Death“.

His supporters insisted that the prosecution was ‘political’ and an attack on his right of free speech. But the government insisted that al-Arian gave material support to an organization that he knew was committing terrorist acts (and among whose hundreds of victims were two Americans, killed in Islamic Jihad suicide bombings in Israel).

Al-Arian was also sentenced to 14 months for civil contempt, because he refused to testify against former associates. This sentence was canceled by another judge — but he has been subpoenaed again to testify in front of a grand jury, presumably to be asked again about individuals thought to be involved in terrorism, here and overseas. He has refused to comply and is presently on a hunger strike.

Now, why am I bringing this up?

Because the College Community Congregational Church here in Fresno will shortly be presenting a film and discussion about al-Arian. The film, “USA vs. Al-Arian” is entirely one-sided, focusing on the “heart-wrenching traumas” suffered by al-Arian’s family, and claims that it is his “fight for Palestinian recognition that garners the attention of the authorities” and not the fact that he raised hundreds of thousands millions of dollars to pay for the murder of Jewish Israelis and Americans whom he likens to the sons of monkeys and pigs.

The discussion will be led by Melva Underbakke, a former co-worker of al-Arian, who organized a group called “Friends of Human Rights” in response to his prosecution.

Palestinian apologists, as always, are doing their best to recast their genocidal attempt to reverse history as a struggle for human rights. But leaving aside the complex questions about the constitutionality of the Patriot Act, whether the government is subjecting al-Arian to double jeopardy by subpoenaing him, etc., one simple question remains:

Did Sami al-Arian know that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad for which he was raising funds was actually a terrorist organization which has killed hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians by suicide bombings, shootings, and rockets?

Technorati Tags: Sami al-Arian

I’ve been suspecting this for a long time, but now someone has come along and proven it:

The New York Times, LA Times (may its name be erased), and Washington Post’s op-ed sections are heavily biased against Israel:

A 19-month CAMERA study, from January 2006 through July 2007, of guest Op-Eds about the Arab-Israeli conflict found that in these three papers pro-Arab Op-Eds and/or those critical of Israel overwhelmingly outnumbered pro-Israel Op-Eds and/or those critical of Arabs. Even more telling is the striking fact that during the 19-month period, none of the newspapers ran even a single Op-Ed by an Israeli official. In contrast, each of the three papers ran four Op-Eds by Arab officials, including multiple pieces by Hamas leaders…

It should be noted that many of the Op-Eds generally supportive of Israel also contained criticism of the Jewish state. In contrast, virtually none of the Op-Eds expressing a pro-Arab point of view contained criticism of the Arab side.

While CAMERA inexplicably left our local paper, the McClatchy-owned Fresno Bee, out of the study, I have no doubt that it falls into the same category. Notable are periodic unsigned editorials which supposedly represent the opinion of the editorial board, although they are not written locally. And from time to time there is a particularly objectionable reader submission. Two weeks ago the Bee gave a prominent place to a poorly-written 700-word piece by a local pastor, a rehash of every libel and slander made against Israel, including accusations of murder, atrocities, ethnic cleansing, racism, apartheid, persecution (of Christians yet), etc.

I’m not the first one to note that journalists at media outlets great and not-so-great all do their best to get people to read their papers. And the op-ed page is, after all, the place where opinions are expressed, and strong opinions are interesting.

Nevertheless we know that the Timeses, the Post, or the Fresno Bee would not print an article which defames a racial or ethnic group. The editors would rightly judge this to be irresponsible.

So why is it acceptable to print hateful material that defames a nation?

Technorati Tags: Newspapers, Israel, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Fresno Bee

Recently I wrote about CSU Fresno’s developing Middle East Studies program. I suggested that it might — like many programs and academic departments of Middle East studies — have an uncomfortable slant, tending towards radical Islam and including tendentious anti-American and anti-Israel content.

One of the faculty members teaching several courses and proposed courses is Mary Husain. She has taught courses in the departments of Women’s Studies and Communications in the areas of “cultural studies, gender studies, and media persuasion”. She is listed to teach proposed courses in Middle Eastern Film Criticism, Middle Eastern News Analysis, and Intercultural Communication.

Ms. Husain has recently published an article with Kevin Ayotte, called “Securing Afghan Women: Neocolonialism, Epistemic Violence, and the Rhetoric of the Veil” (NWSA Journal, Vol. 17 No. 3). Although the article is not available on the web, I have obtained a copy from the library.

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