FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Every once in a while it’s necessary to argue against some of the myths that have become current. Here are three such myths:

Myth no. 1: The Israel-Palestinian conflict is between Israel and the Palestinians.

Actually, the conflict pits Israel against the Arab world, and against the forces of Sunni and Shiite Islamism. All of the above have never accepted the idea of a Jewish state in the Mideast and wish to eliminate it. The US supports Israel where it sees a congruence of national interests; there is by no means unqualified support, and at this moment these interests are perceived by many in the US administration to be growing farther apart.

Among those who wish to destroy Israel are Iran and Saudi Arabia. These nations have invested a lot of oil money in terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah which are doing their best to destabilize the region (e.g., in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority) and to kill Israelis. They also fund massive media and propaganda campaigns around the world, carry on diplomatic offensives against Israel, and support jihadist groups in various places, which — while they may not directly target Israel — use terrorism to try to influence Western nations’ policy toward her.

It’s also appropriate to mention Syria and Egypt, which are presently stockpiling large quantities of weapons, including sophisticated weapons whose only use would be against Israel, and — especially in the case of Syria — have large stocks of chemical and biological weapons.

The role of the Palestinians — and we must also include a large proportion of the so-called “Israeli Arabs” who today see themselves as Palestinians first — is as a growth medium for the terrorist militias. For this reason, their general condition is kept as miserable as possible and their sense of victimization nurtured, both in terms of their historical grievances and their present treatment by Israel. As I’ve said before, the Palestinians’ function is to be the point of the spear to be driven into Israel.

Myth no. 2: Israel is much more powerful than the Palestinians

An understanding of Myth no. 1 above shows that this is more irrelevant than false. The IDF is more than a match for the terrorist militias — although Hamas and Hezbollah are presently developing professional, well-trained and well-equipped armies that are a far cry from Arafat’s guerrillas. But much of the danger comes from the connections of the terrorist militias to their patrons — as demonstrated by the second Lebanon war — and from the potential of these patrons’ direct involvement. Iran’s soon-to-be nuclear capability and Syria’s chemical rockets stand behind this threat.

Continuing terrorism against Israel, while it may not be as dramatic as the invasions of 1973, can have the effect of harming Israel’s economy and morale, weakening her and reducing ability to fight a major war when it comes.

The small physical size of Israel has made her civilian population vulnerable to short-range rocket attacks from outside her borders which are very difficult to prevent, and which — because the terrorists are non-state proxies — can continue without international pressure to stop them even though they are war crimes under international law. Israel, on the other hand, is highly limited in how it can respond, especially by the US. This tips the balance of power against Israel.

Myth no. 3: Israel uses its power to oppress the Palestinians

One of the strategies used by Israel’s enemies is to create and capitalize upon as much ‘oppression’ as possible. So Israel is forced to establish roadblocks in the West Bank to prevent suicide bombers from crossing into Israel proper, and then the Palestinians relate stories of pregnant women giving birth there, etc.

Another example is the regular protests against the security fence by Palestinians and their ‘international’ supporters, designed to both draw attention to Israel’s security measures, to present them as oppression, and to provoke Israel into responding as violently as possible to create more incidents. If there are not enough real incidents, they exaggerate and sometimes entirely fake them.

On a much larger scale, Hamas provoked Israel into the partial blockade of the Gaza strip by firing thousands of rockets into Sderot and environs. Hamas then exaggerated the privations of the Gaza residents and quite successfully presented this to the international media. The recent ‘blackout’, in which Hamas pretended that a cutoff of diesel fuel caused a major power outage, while the strip still was receiving 75% of normal electricity supply from Israel and Egypt, was a major propaganda triumph.

The Left in Israel and progressives around the world call for an ‘end to the occupation’ because they think that a solution to the conflict will be more likely if the Palestinians are freed from ‘oppression’. But they do not understand that the ‘oppression’ is actually desired and indeed often created by the anti-Israel forces as a tool to get the West to force Israel to make concessions. Once the concessions are made — this is what the progressives don’t understand — the ‘oppression’ always appears somewhere else or in another form, requiring more concessions.

So, for example, when Israel withdrew from South Lebanon and went to great lengths to get the UN to certify the border, Hezbollah discovered the Shebaa Farms as a pretext to claim that Israel still occupies Lebanon.

And when Israel withdrew from 100% of Gaza but found it necessary to control the borders to prevent terrorism, the Palestinians complained that they were in a “huge open-air prison”. Hamas also fired mortars at the crossing points in order to force their closure, so they could blame Israel for more ‘oppression’. Finally they fired rockets at Sderot until Israel, prevented by the human-shield tactic from massive retaliation, responded with the blockade (which of course was not complete for humanitarian reasons anyway).

If Israel were to completely withdraw to the 1967 lines, there is no doubt that the internal ‘oppression’ of the “Palestinian citizens of Israel” would then come to the fore (not that this is being ignored today).

This also explains why no matter how much aid is given to the Palestinians, their condition never seems to improve.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians

Reuters has gone completely over the top. They are no more reliable or less biased than Al-Jazeera — indeed, they are worse because everyone understands Al-Jazeera’s point of view, while some still take Reuters seriously.

Yesterday I mentioned several incidents in the ongoing war between Israel and Palestinian terrorists. In one case two border police officers were ambushed and shot, one fatally. In the other, two Hamas terrorists infiltrated a school in Kfar Etzion and started stabbing people; they were overpowered and killed by two of the teachers.

Get ready for this. Here is how Reuters reports these incidents:

Two Palestinians, Israeli killed in W.Bank incidents

JERUSALEM, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Jewish settlers shot dead two Palestinians and gunmen killed an Israeli border policeman in two separate incidents in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, medical and security services said.

Note that the headline and the story mentions the Palestinians first, and does not suggest that they were doing anything other than minding their own business when (in highly emotive language) the “settlers shot [them] dead”.

Police said Palestinian gunmen shot an Israeli paramilitary border policeman near the Shuafat refugee camp near Jerusalem and that he died of his wounds at the scene.

A woman, also from the Israeli security services, received moderate to serious gunshot wounds in the same incident, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Israel Radio reported that a large number of police and soldiers were combing the area, searching for the gunmen.

OK, although I’m not sure what the faintly disreputable word ‘paramilitary’ is supposed to add. Now let’s get to how the Palestinians died, five paragraphs into the story:

In the second incident, settlers overpowered and shot dead two Palestinians who infiltrated a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, an army spokeswoman said.

Israel radio said the Palestinians had stabbed two settlers at the Kfar Etzion settlement, not far from Bethlehem, before being shot, and a hospital spokeswoman in Jerusalem said the settlers’ injuries were light to moderate. [my emphasis]

Just in case you might have mistakenly thought that they were humans living in a kibbutz, the article uses the words ’settlers’ and ’settlement’ no less than six times.

The “Palestinians” — who should be called ‘terrorists’ if anyone should — disabled an alarm system and cut the perimeter fence at the kibbutz, which houses a yeshiva operated by the famed Talmudic scholar, Adin Steinsaltz. Dressed in stolen IDF uniforms, they sneaked into a meeting of teachers and attempted to stab them; they were shot by one of the teachers. Similar infiltrations have resulted in numerous Israeli deaths.

Just a word about the ’settlement’ of Kfar Etzion. It was originally founded on legally purchased land by Yemenite Jews in 1927, abandoned several times due to Arab attacks and rebuilt. Finally, in 1948 Kibbutz Kfar Etzion was overrun by the British-commanded Jordanian Arab legion. Here is an account of what happened:

On the 13th of May the defenders of Kfar Etzion surrendered to the Legion. The Legion honored the surrender, though Arab irregulars continued to fire for some time. The defenders gathered in front of the school and put down their weapons. They were photographed by someone in a kaffiyeh (Arab headdress and European suit). Then an armored car, apparently belonging to the Legion, approached and opened fire, and other Arab attackers opened fire with submachine guns and grenades. Some survivors claimed Legion soldiers were not involved, others insisted that they were. Survivors all recall that that the Arabs were screaming “Deir Yassin.” All accounts agree that Legion officers rescued several survivors.

About 50 defenders escaped to the cellar of the old German monastery that was within the grounds, and tried to defend themselves there. The Arab attackers finished them off with hand grenades and then blew up the building, which collapsed over them. All but about five defenders were eventually killed. In all, about 128 defenders were massacred by the Palestinian Arab irregulars or the Jordan Legion, counting those who had escaped to the basement of the monastery. Some accounts do not count these people as “massacred” and estimate that fifty were massacred. However, those who fled to the basement were given no chance to surrender. One of the survivors, a woman, was taken to a field to be raped by two Legion soldiers, but saved by an officer. About 157 Jewish defenders died in the final battle for Gush Etzion, including those killed in the massacre.

After the illegal 19-year Jordanian occupation ended in 1967, Kfar Etzion was rebuilt yet again.

Technorati Tags: Reuters, Kfar Etzion, Israel, terrorism, media bias

When the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) came out in December 2007, I was struck by the emphasis placed on its first sentence — “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program” — in all major media reports, and the almost universal conclusion drawn that the US was not going to take serious action, military or diplomatic, to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons (see “The NIE: read past the first line“).

The New York Times wrote in an editorial,

Tehran, we are now told, halted its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003, which means that President Bush has absolutely no excuse for going to war against Iran.

…and, therefore, far less leverage to get effective sanctions applied. The overwhelming reaction in the press and foreign and domestic political circles was similar: the US is backing off on stopping Iran’s nuclear program.

I argued at the time that anyone actually reading the NIE (the non-classified part that was released) would get the impression that the likelihood of Iran developing deliverable nuclear weapons in the next few years is still as great as ever.

Today former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said the same thing in a Jerusalem Post interview:

…the NIE “doesn’t say what you probably think it says. Once you get past the first sentence or two, it doesn’t come out that different from the 2005 NIE. All of the attention was focused on the one finding that [Iran halted the weapons-building] aspect of the weapons program, even though later they say that they only have ‘moderate confidence’ that this suspension has continued. That’s a polite way of saying they don’t have a clue what the situation is.”

The document also defines the weapons program as “actual weaponization, that is, fabrication - only a tiny sliver of the total activity required for a country to have a nuclear weapons program. It still remains entirely within Iran’s discretion when and under what circumstances it proceeds to a nuclear weapons capability.”

Iran, it is well known, is continuing with the other parts of the job — the preparation of nuclear explosive material, and the development of delivery systems.

Bolton also expressed his opinion about who was responsible for the release of the report and its wording:

“I know the people who wrote this intelligence estimate,” Bolton continued. “They are not from our intelligence community. They’re from our State Department. It was a highly politicized document written by people who had a very clear policy objective.”

Said objective, in my opinion, being to placate Iran in return for a reduction of the level of violence by Iranian-influenced Shiite forces in Iraq. Has it worked? Maybe:

Gen. David Petraeus has been deservedly praised for tamping down violence in Iraq, but an unlikely character deserves some credit— [Shiite militia leader Moqtada al-] Sadr. Five months ago the firebrand cleric ordered his followers to lay down their arms, and they’ve largely obeyed…

In early December Sadr issued another decree, urging his followers to focus on prayer and religious studies. He’s leading by example. Senior clerics close to Sadr, who did not want to be named speaking about their boss, confirm that he himself is studying to ascend to the rank of ayatollah, using books, CDs and even texts on the Internet. — Newsweek

If this is the correct analysis, then the maneuver provides a short-term gain for a lame duck administration. But it may yet create a much bigger problem for the next President, for the Mideast, and indeed for all of us.

Technorati Tags: NIE, Iran, Bolton, al-Sadr, Iraq

This guy gets it from all sides. He’s Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, specialist in internal medicine and nuclear cardiology from Phoenix Az., former naval officer, critic of CAIR and the Flying Imams, and a real-life moderate Muslim. He’s Chairman of the Board and founding member of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), which supports

…the expression of Islam which is in synergy with American democracy, the U.S. Constitution, and the clear separation of religion and state. AIFD was formed on the basis that the development of this ideology at the core of the American and global Muslim consciousness is the central mission necessary in order to ultimately defeat the threat of Islamism and jihadism.

Dr. Jasser interprets the “Flying Imams” lawsuit — you will recall that several Imams behaved in ways calculated to draw attention to themselves on a US Airways flight, got themselves kicked off, and then sued the airline, the Minneapolis Airports Commission and even the anonymous passengers who complained about them — as part of a campaign by the Islamist, Saudi-funded Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to establish itself as the voice of American Muslims in opposition to moderate groups like his own. He writes,

While the press may focus on the flying imams case, for American Muslims, the battle is broader. On one side are the imams represented by CAIR, the Islamic Society for North America, and the North American Imams Federation, all of which lean toward an Islamist view supporting greater interplay between religion and politics and the primacy of sectarian identity. On the other side are Muslims embracing Western secular democracy. The two are mutually exclusive in their interpretation of religious hierarchy, the interplay between theology and contemporary politics, individuality, and tolerance.

Responsibility for the victory of traditional, tolerant, and pluralistic interpretations of Islam lies with Muslims and Muslims alone. The intellectual marginalization of Islamists is the duty of Muslims who value the principles upon which the United States was built and now stands. This requires recognizing the primacy of the Constitution in political life, even if Muslims turn to the Qur’an in their spiritual life. Islamists, though, insist that regardless of temporal government, the Qur’an should be the central guiding document for legislation and interpretation. Islamists believe the Qur’an is the only source of law while non-Islamists believe it is just one source.

Perhaps this was the reason why the Prophet Muhammad and his companions sought to avoid creation of the same religious intermediary class that today CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, and the North American Imams Federation presume to fill. — M. Z. Jasser, Exposing the ‘Flying Imams’

Dr. Jasser has been attacked from the American Right for saying that the correct interpretation of the Quran is one of tolerance and peace, and by Islamists for…lots of things. Here’s one Islamist’s response to Dr. Jasser:

Arizona Muslim Voice cartoon showing Dr. Jasser as a dog

I’m certain that Dr. Jasser’s views on the Arab-Israeli conflict aren’t anything like mine. But I think that our basic approach to concepts like truth, fairness, and above all the proper roles for religion and state are probably pretty close. This is a guy I could talk to.

Which made me wonder why, when Rabbi Eric Yoffie of the Union for Reform Judaism decided to reach out to American Muslims, he chose the Saudi-connected, highly controversial Islamic Society for North America (ISNA) as a partner, rather than Dr. Jasser’s AIFD.

Technorati Tags: Jasser, American Muslims, moderate Islam, CAIR, ISNA, Yoffie

Recent events make it clear that a Barack Obama presidency is not a long shot. It is a real possibility. A combination of Republican weakness, Obama’s personal attractiveness, and the fact that many Americans see him as the candidate of change — and nobody doubts that we need that — puts him in a very strong position today.

So it’s very important for those of us who are concerned about US policy in the Mideast, particularly toward Israel and the Palestinians, to understand where he is coming from on this issue, and perhaps to educate him about the history and current facts about it — because he may be the “decider” next year.

Like any good politician, he hasn’t said too much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, except that he favors a two-state solution. He did make a slightly more specific comment which I discussed last week, in which he seems to hold a position much like the Ayalon-Nusseibeh plan: there will be a division ‘based on’ the 1967 borders with land swaps to allow Israel to keep highly populated settlement areas and the Palestinians to get Arab areas within the Green Line in return, and the right of return for Arab refugees will be limited to the Palestinian state.

We can quibble about the details of such an agreement, but the overriding problem today is that a) there isn’t a unitary Palestinian entity that can negotiate such a settlement for all Palestinians, and b) no imaginable Palestinian leadership would (or could) accept it. A solution that is — given the players — unobtainable is not a solution.

So while this might be imaginable as an acceptable outcome (I will not get into that now), simply presenting it as a policy is absurd unless a way of achieving it is specified. Saying “we’ll negotiate with everybody” is a cop-out and possibly dangerous.

And then there’s the Zbig problem.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, was chosen by Obama as a top advisor on foreign policy. I am not going to try to guess what is in Brzezinski’s head or Obama’s, but here are some of Brzezinski’s public statements:

Given that the Middle East is currently the central challenge facing America, Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have rendered a public service by initiating a much needed public debate on the role of the “Israel lobby” in the shaping of U.S. foreign policy. — Zbigniew Brzezinski, A Dangerous Exemption

I hate to say this but I will say it. I think what the Israelis are doing today for example in Lebanon is in effect, in effect–maybe not in intent–the killing of hostages. The killing of hostages. Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you’re killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. — Speech, July 20, 2006

Israel desired or favored the destruction of Iraq by the United States. Now it doesn’t hide its preference for the United States doing something to Iran, even though Israel itself has a powerful nuclear retaliatory capability. — Speech, June 12, 2007

We pressed the Palestinians to have elections in which the Hamas would participate. Hamas did win those elections. We were the ones who made that possible. So I think at some point we have to be prepared to conduct some sort of a dialogue with Hamas, perhaps informal, then increasingly formal.

Prime Minister Begin, whom I knew well, he told me personally that he didn’t think there was such a thing as a Palestinian, that there was no Palestinian nation, and that he was adamantly against two states coexisting in the space of the former mandate of Palestine, namely Israel and Palestine.

Yet we continued dealing with that government. We negotiated with it. We gave it a lot of economic assistance. And in the course of years, the Likud government itself came to accept the idea of two states within the territory of the former mandate of Palestine, coexisting with each other. — Interview, Online Newshour, July 18, 2006

The current crisis poses a grave threat to United States interests. One can argue forever as to whether Yasir Arafat or Ariel Sharon is more responsible for its eruption. — NY Times Op-ed, April 7, 2002

There’s a great deal of similar material available. Brzezinski supports the pernicious, even anti-Semitic Mearsheimer and Walt, he accuses Israel of ignoring collateral damage and in effect committing war crimes in Lebanon, he perpetuates the false and dangerous accusation that Israel is in some sense responsible for the US being in Iraq, and — time and again — he declares a moral equivalence between Israel and her terrorist opponents — Hamas and Arafat.

Brzezinski is very smart, and usually includes statements that suggest an understanding of Israel’s need for security. However, there’s no question that the policies that he will advocate will be to Israel’s severe disadvantage.

We don’t need another James A. Baker in a critical position in a future Obama administration. Obama has received criticism from pro-Israel voices like Alan Dershowitz about Brzezinski. The Obama campaign has responded that the criticism is politically motivated and coming from supporters of Hillary Clinton.

Regardless, Brzezinski’s slant is clear from his own words.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Brzezinski, Israel

The Fatah organization is celebrating the 43rd anniversary of its first terrorist attack, an attempt to sabotage Israel’s National Water Carrier on January 3, 1965.

Please note that this was two years before the start of ‘The Occupation’ of the West Bank and Gaza.

As part of the celebration, they are fighting with Hamas members in Gaza with at least 8 dead between them overnight. But never mind, I can’t get too upset about this.

The acronym “FATAH” [فتح] is created from the complete Arabic name: HArakat al-TAhrir al-Watani al-Filastini [Palestinian National Liberation Movement], becoming “HATAF”, which, since it means “sudden death” in Arabic, was reversed to become “FATAH”. The word Fatah is prominently used for the Islamic expansion in the first centuries of Islamic history, and so has strongly positive connotations for Muslims. — Wikipedia

Fatah was founded in 1954 by Palestinian students, including Yasser Arafat (who actually was born in Cairo and was not a Palestinian at all). Arafat became Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee in 1969, a year in which the PLO claimed 2,432 terrorist attacks against Israel.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] is composed of several factions, Fatah being the dominant one. Here are two short quotations from the PLO Charter (official English version — the Arabic is even more explicit):

Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. Thus it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase…

Article 15: The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national (qawmi) duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine [Arabic version says “liquidation of the Zionist entity”].

Although President Clinton demanded of Yasser Arafat that this charter be modified as part of the Oslo agreement, this was never done (see also letter of Ambassador Dore Gold here). Over the years, Fatah has been responsible for more Israeli deaths than any other terrorist faction, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.

In fact, according to the Israeli internal security service (Shabak) the murderers of Ahikam Amichai and David Rubin, who were killed last Friday were both Fatah members and Palestinian Authority employees. One of them was a PA policeman.

Nevertheless, the US and other international donors have pledged $7.4 billion to the Fatah-dominated PA. The US — your tax dollars — is supplying rifles, ammunition, training, and even paying for armored personnel carriers for them, supposedly to ‘fight terrorism’.

This is like paying Kellogg’s to fight cornflakes.

Technorati Tags: Fatah, PLO, Israel

In the Winter and Spring of 1947-48, Palestinian Arabs and Jordanian troops maintained a siege on several Jewish kibbutzim southeast of Jerusalem in the area known as Gush Etzion. Ultimately, after five months, Kibbutz Kfar Etzion was overrun, and 250 inhabitants — soldiers and civilians — were massacred. The other kibbutzim surrendered.

Early in January 1948, a detachment of Jewish soldiers numbering 35 tried to walk the twenty kilometers from Jerusalem to Gush Etzion to bring them needed supplies. Supposedly they were seen by an Arab shepherd, whom they captured.

The story is that they considered killing him but decided to release him because he was a noncombatant. This story is told to recruits in the Israeli army, where it is presented as correct behavior, an illustration of the concept of tohar haneshek (purity of arms).

Of course the shepherd reported what he had seen, and a large force of Arabs was sent against them. All 35 were killed. They are remembered as the “lamed-hey” (the 35).

This Friday, almost exactly 60 years after the deaths of the lamed-hey, three young Israelis, Na’ama Ohion, Ahikam Amihai and David Rubin, were hiking in a place called Nahal Telem, near Hebron. Here is how Na’ama Ohion described what happened:

Ohion told her friends that, at the beginning of the hike, an elderly Arab passed them, and they began to recall the story…

Ohion told her friends they were making black-humor jokes about the historical incident. “We could never imagine that our hike would end up like theirs,” her friends said she told them.

About an hour later, she said, a gray Land Rover appeared and drove toward the three hikers, with a rifle barrel sticking out of the window. A Palestinian sitting in the back seat sprayed the three with bullets. Amihai and Rubin were hit, and Ohion ran to hide behind bushes above the trail. When she heard the shooting die down and the terrorists’ vehicle drive away, she came out of her hiding place.

Ohion saw her friends’ bodies riddled with bullets. After her attempts to resuscitate them failed, she climbed out of the wadi to a high point where she could use her cell phone, and waited there until help came. — Nadav Shragai, Ha’aretz

Amihai and Rubin, both sons of rabbis, were off-duty soldiers, and they were armed. Before they died they managed to kill one of the terrorists and wound another. The Islamic Jihad, the Fatah al-Aksa Brigades, and Hamas have all claimed ‘credit’ for the murders.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Ahikam Amihai, David Rubin, terrorism, lamed-hey

Everything you need to know about Hamas:

Hamas on Thursday called on the UN to rescind the 1947 decision to partition Palestine into two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs.

The group said in a statement, released on the 60th anniversary of the UN vote, that “Palestine is Arab Islamic land, from the river to the sea, including Jerusalem… there is no room in it for the Jews.” — Jerusalem Post

Everything you need to know about Fatah:

• Salam Fayad, Palestinian Authority “prime minister”: “Israel can define itself as it likes, but the Palestinians will not recognize it as a Jewish state.”
• Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s executive committee: “This issue [recognition as a Jewish state] is not on the table; it is raised for internal [Israeli] consumption.”
• Ahmad Qurei, chief Palestinian negotiator: “This [demand] is absolutely refused.”
• Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO Negotiations Department: “The Palestinians will never acknowledge Israel’s Jewish identity. … There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined.” — Daniel Pipes

Everything you need to know about Arab citizens of Israel:

In a unanimous vote on Saturday, the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee decided to reject an Israeli request that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” — Arutz Sheva

A large majority of Israel’s Arabs object to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over territory swaps (73 percent), a survey conducted by Mada al-Carmel - the Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa - finds. Most Arabs also object to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state (65 percent) and renouncing the Right of Return (79 percent). Israeli Arabs also believe that the Palestinians cannot back down on Jerusalem-related issues, according to the poll. — Ha’aretz [my emphasis]

Israel has agreed that there is a Palestinian people and that it is entitled to self-determination in its own state. One can argue long and hard about what makes a ‘people’, but there is no doubt that the Jewish people have it in at least as great a measure — and more — than the Palestinians.

And yet nothing seems to evoke rejection quite so violent as the Israeli demand to be recognized as a Jewish state — the state of the Jewish people. This applies not only to the Palestinians, but to most Arab nations, for example, the Saudis:

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States rejected recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

“There are 1.5 million civilians in Israel who do not define themselves as Jewish,” [referring to Arabs, Christians and others] Adel al-Jubeir told reporters at the U.S.-convened Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Annapolis, Md. “We do not believe states should define themselves according to religion or ethnicity.” [!] — JTA

Leaving aside the hypocrisy — coming from the country that Jews are not allowed to enter, where Christian Bibles are prohibited, and where only Muslims can be citizens — the majority of states in the world are defined as the homeland of an ethnic group with a religious identity more or less intertwined, and the fact that they have citizens belonging to minority groups does not delegitimize them. But only Israel is denied this self-definition.

There is one simple explanation, and it is that the Arabs do not agree that there should be a Jewish Israel. They are prepared to accept a state called ‘Israel’ as long as it can be an Arab state, in which case they will quickly change the name anyway. The insistence on “right of return“, which would instantly change Israel from a Jewish to an Arab state, is proof of it.

Hamas, as always, does the best job of straightforwardly articulating the basic principle that they espouse — and share even with the ‘moderates’ of Fatah — which is that they will accept nothing less than the reversal of the creation of Israel and the outcome of the 1948 war. The pragmatic West and the optimistic Israeli Left never fathomed this, imagining the bellicose talk of the Arabs to be mere rhetoric. I would like to think that at least a few are finally beginning to understand.

Some commentators have recently started talking about how the US needs to apply “tough love” to Israel about such issues as settlements, roadblocks, prisoners, etc. But it’s the Arabs who need it, who need — for once and for all — to be forced to understand that there will be no going back to 1947. There is only one kind of peace to be had, and that is peace with Israel as a Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jewish state, right of return

So simple:

Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the Vatican’s office for migrants, said an agreement to restart peace talks, reached Tuesday in Annapolis, Maryland, was encouraging and that he hoped by this time next year concrete measures would be under way.

“It is my hope that all the parts of the problem are taken into consideration such as that of the Palestinian refugees, who like all other refugees, have the right to return to their homeland,” Martino said. — Jerusalem Post

Here are seven reasons why it is not so simple, and indeed why the Palestinian demand is outrageous and unjust:

1. The war which created the refugees was started by the Palestinian Arabs and their allies and was the culmination of a campaign of terrorism and pogroms against Jews in Palestine since at least the 1920’s.
2. There were at most 700,000 Arab refugees (probably less). The Palestinians are demanding that almost 5 million descendants of these ‘return’ to Israel 60 years after the war (the Jewish population of Israel is about 5 million).
3. During and after the War of Independence, about 850,000 Jews were expelled from or fled their homes in Arab countries, in most cases leaving all of their property behind. These Jews were absorbed by other countries, most of them going to Israel. Do not their descendants have a claim on the Arab world?
4. The Arab nations hosting the Palestinian refugees refused to absorb them, and a special UN agency (UNRWA) was created just for them. The normal UN refugee agencies were not used, because they are concerned with finding homes for refugees. UNRWA’s job has been to keep them in camps and on welfare in order to nurture a hostile population to be used as a source of anti-Israel soldiers and ultimately as a demographic weapon. Some UNRWA personnel belong to terrorist organizations, such as Hamas.
5. When Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1948, the areas were ethnically cleansed of Jews, who fled or were murdered. The Palestinians are demanding that all Jewish settlements be removed from what is to be their state. Yet they expect Israel to absorb an additional 5 million Arabs!
6. If Israel were to agree to this, it would immediately have an Arab majority and would cease to be a state of the Jewish people. But the Palestinians insist that they must have a state because they have a right to self-determination. Apparently, they do not think that the Jewish people has this right as well.
7. Practically speaking, the influx would result in immediate civil war, which would make similar wars in Lebanon and Yugoslavia look like ping-pong tournaments.

Cardinal Martino, ironically, is President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace!

He is also President of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples. One would think that he might have some understanding of the prototypical “Itinerant People”, who have finally returned home after thousands of years.

Technorati Tags: Martino, Vatican, Palestinian refugees, Israel

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published a document called “Israel, the Conflict and Peace: Answers to frequently asked questions“. It’s a remarkably straightforward and well-written exposition of the present government’s strategy of seeking peace with the Palestinians in the framework of a two-state solution.

Whatever you think of the prospects for success of this approach, it is based on the views expressed by President Bush in his speech of June 2002, and on the so-called ‘Roadmap‘ derived from that — although the Bush Administration may have moved further toward the Arab point of view since then (a recent Bush speech mentioned the Saudi/Arab League Peace Initiative approvingly).

The paper is very readable and interesting, building on the idea of the two-state solution while making clear what Israel expects from its partners in the upcoming negotiations. However, one section in particular — about incitement — struck me as being emblematic of the reason why the whole enterprise has such a small chance of success.

When you read this section, which is specifically directed to incitement against Israel by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, keep in mind that similar remarks could be made about almost any Arab country, including (especially) Egypt, with whom Israel is allegedly at ‘peace’.

How does incitement harm peace?

There is a direct connection between anti-Israeli or antisemitic incitement and terrorism. The extreme anti-Israeli indoctrination that is so pervasive in Palestinian society nurtures a culture of hatred that, in turn, leads to terrorism.

(more…)

Here’s how Paul Reynolds of the BBC sees the chances that Annapolis will have a positive result:

There are perhaps only two reasons for any hope.

The first is the fear of something worse.

Annapolis can be seen as a way of trying to support the moderates.

The strategy is to show Palestinians that talks can produce results and that the confrontation promoted by Hamas in Gaza is not the way forward.

The danger is that this strategy might fail and leave the Palestinians with nothing and the Israelis still in the state of “siege” described by the Irish and UN diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien in 1986.

I would suggest that the real danger is that this strategy might succeed, Israel will get out of the West Bank, and then the ‘moderates’ will stop pretending to be moderate or be replaced by Hamas. But Reynolds’ real point is to come:

The second is a better understanding that the philosophy behind Oslo and the road map might be wrong. Both those agreements sought to establish an atmosphere of peace and security first, leading to a final agreement second.

There is nothing wrong with trying to create better conditions, something for example that the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been trying to do on the economic front.

But without a final agreement, there can probably be no peace and security. Security will not lead to an agreement. It is an agreement that will lead to security.

In other words, unless Israel gives the Palestinians the agreement they want, there will not be peace and security. An ‘agreement’ sounds so civilized, but the word for concessions made to stop someone from trying to kill you is ‘appeasement’.

Is it too much to ask, as the roadmap and Oslo did, that the Palestinians stop terrorism before they get their state, especially since one would like to have some reason to think that they are capable of it before putting them in rocket range of Ben Gurion Airport? Apparently Reynolds thinks so.

It’s mind-boggling that the response to the failure of the Palestinians to meet their commitment to end terrorism, which was the primary reason for the collapse of Oslo and the Roadmap, should be to simply give up on the requirement and push Israel to hand over territory even while terrorism continues.

But there are other indications that Reynolds and the BBC see Israel, and not the Palestinians, as the main obstacle to peace:

There has been little sign that they are anywhere near agreement [on borders, Jerusalem, settlements, and ‘right of return’ for refugees].

Instead there has been a new argument - about an Israeli demand that Israel should be recognised as a “Jewish state”.

This is something fundamental for the Israelis but Palestinians see it as taking one of their cards - the refugees - off the table in advance.

First of all, this is not a ‘new’ argument. It is no more and no less than an insistence that the Palestinians (and the world) recognize that the Jews won the war of 1948, when a Jewish state was established in Mandatory Palestine. It is being articulated now because it is evident that the Arabs do not accept this.

The absolutely absurd, historically unprecedented, requirement that a hostile population of 4 to 5 million descendants of refugees from a war that their side lost 59 years ago ‘return’ — does not belong “on the table” at all, and it should be seen, along with the denial of Israel’s right to be a Jewish state, as a demand for the reversal of the outcome of the 1948 war. Far from a demand for self-determination for Palestinians, it is a refusal to grant this same right to Jews.

Reynolds and the BBC suggest that the issue is about such things as the size of the Palestinian state, how much of Jerusalem they will end up with, and the welfare of the refugee descendants.

What they don’t see, or (less charitably) pretend not to see is that this argument is not actually about the Palestinians and their state. More fundamentally, it’s about the Jews and theirs.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, BBC, Annapolis meeting

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas unveiled a $1.75 million mausoleum for Yasser Arafat on Saturday, in a pomp-filled ceremony that helped him draw on the continued popularity of his iconic predecessor as he headed into peace talks with Israel. — YNet

What does it tell us about the Palestinian point of view that they venerate Arafat?

Let’s leave aside the early Arafat — the swaggering terrorist who tried to destabilize Jordan in 1970, was the immediate cause of the First Lebanon War in 1982, who gave the order to push the aged American Leon Klinghoffer’s wheelchair overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro in 1985, and who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis in countless terrorist attacks.

Let’s just consider the Arafat who returned triumphantly to Ramallah from exile in Tunis after the signing of the Oslo Accord, which recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. The early ’90’s were a historic opportunity for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. After the Gulf war, Iraq — one of the primary fomenters of conflict — was temporarily out of the picture, Iran was still weak from the long war with Iraq during most of the 1980’s, and Syria was at least pretending to appease the US.

Arafat, as head of the newly-established Palestinian Authority (PA), immediately went to work. Although paying lip service to the idea of little by little building connections and reducing tensions between Israel and the Palestinians that was the Oslo process, he did exactly the opposite. He turned all PA institutions into agencies of incitement against Israel: the religious establishment, the media, the schools. He established summer camps and youth organizations dedicated to training future soldiers in the war against Israel.

While taking money and weapons from the US and Israel intended to build Palestinian ’security services’ which would ‘fight terrorism’, he actually paid terrorists (many of whom were members of the ’security services’) to kill Israelis. He transmitted a message of peace in his speeches in English, and one of jihad when he spoke Arabic.

Arafat got an enormous amount of aid from the US and the EU which was intended to build infrastructure for a Palestinian state, deposited much of it in his personal bank account (estimates of his net worth ranged from $300 million to billions), enriched his hangers-on, purchased huge amounts of arms and financed terrorism.

Nevertheless, Israeli and American negotiators convinced themselves that it was just a matter of getting the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed on a peace agreement. So Ehud Barak made an offer including unprecedented concessions on issues such as borders and Jerusalem at Camp David. As everyone knows, Arafat rejected it in July of 2000, without even making a counteroffer. Still not understanding, Israel sweetened the offer at the Taba negotiations in January 2001, after Arafat had already launched the violent second Intifada against Israel.

It was also rejected, and afterwards Arafat claimed that Israel had only offered the Palestinians “Bantustans” in the West Bank. But this was a lie.

So, what does Yasser Arafat represent? Apart from his tactics of duplicity and terrorism, Arafat consistently rejected the idea of a peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel and did his best to prevent this from coming about, believing that continued ‘resistance’ would ultimately reverse the war of 1948.

What does this tell us about Mahmoud Abbas and the so-called ‘moderates’ who claim to want exactly this peaceful state? Why do they so greatly admire a man who was personally cruel and corrupt, who caused the Palestinian cause to become synonymous with terrorism throughout the world, who caused several mini-wars and whose legacy may yet cause a major one, and who absolutely rejected the idea of a state alongside Israel?

What part of Arafat don’t they understand?

Technorati Tags: Arafat, Israel, Abbas