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From the BBC today:

The Israeli-built West Bank security barrier is a symbol of what is “deeply wrong in the human heart”, the Archbishop of Canterbury [Dr. Rowan Williams] has said.

So far, so good. I can’t imagine too many things more deeply wrong than suicide terrorism. But he adds

We are here to say, in this so troubled, complex land, that justice and security is never something which one person claims at the expense of another or one community at the expense of another…

Is he saying that Israelis are unjust to ‘claim security’ by fencing terrorists out if this is inconvenient for the Arab community? It seems so. His point seems to be that just as terrorism is an expense to the Jews, so is fencing to the Arabs. More:

We are here to say that security for one is security for all. For one to live under threat, whether of occupation, or of terror, is a problem for all, and a pain for all…

This is insane. The fence and terrorism, he implies, are equivalent forms of ‘threat’. Self-defense is aggression, war is peace, love is hate, truth is lies, and you, Dr. Williams, are an idiot.

Technorati Tags: Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Israel

“Syria has drawn three major lessons from the war and has begun to implement them. The first is that rockets - 4,000 struck northern Israel during the 33-days of fighting - can paralyze the home front. The second is that antitank missiles can penetrate the Merkava tank and force infantry units to abandon armored personnel carriers and trek into enemy territory by foot. And the third is that in villages and cities the Israeli Air Force’s abilities are limited and IDF ground forces can be defeated.” [Jerusalem Post, 21 Dec., Emphasis added].

The IDF has begun to implement some lessons, too, including a defense against antitank missles.  The short-range rockets are another story, and an answer must be found here as well. But the lesson must also be learned that Israel cannot afford to pull punches because of the danger to noncombatants.

Rick Richman also recalls Churchill and Chamberlain, drawing highly disturbing parallels to the events of 1938. Read it here.

By Vic Rosenthal (apologies to W. Churchill)

Suddenly it’s 1938…or perhaps 69 CE.

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“Three brutally simple choices face Israelis: either Jewish Israelis give up Zionism; or Muslim Israelis accept Zionism; or Muslim Israelis don’t remain Israeli for long. The sooner Israelis resolve this matter, the better.”

A good analysis with lots of links. Read Daniel Pipes‘ commentary here. For more background on the ‘Palestinization’ of Israeli Arabs, see the article by Eric Rozenman (also linked in Pipes’ piece) here.

Israeli Arabs have made some demands (you can read them here) to “promote equality for the Arab/Palestinian citizens of Israel”. These demands go far beyond what are usually meant by ‘equal rights’ and can be called a program for the realization of Palestinian national aspirations within Israel. It’s been argued that “if Israel does not define itself as the state of all its citizens it will not be a true democracy”; but what is being called for is in essence the end of Zionism. Is Zionism incompatible with democracy?

In other words, can a state be democratic but not ethnically neutral? I think it can and must. In most cases the very raison d’être for a state is that it is a homeland (and in the case of Israel a refuge) for a particular ethnic group. With a few exceptions (e.g., the US), all of the nations of the world define themselves with an ethnic reference. So how can these states be democratic?

I understand democracy as a system in which the will of the majority of the citizens, usually through some representative means (such as a parliament), determines the policy of the state. But this is not enough: in order to guarantee that the citizens have the capability of expressing their political will effectively, they must receive equal and fair treatment in the areas of civil rights, education, employment, housing, social benefits, health care, public works, etc.

Note that democracy does not require that the state view all citizens as identical in all respects, but just that it does not discriminate in ways that will affect their political rights.

The Palestinian demands go far beyond equal rights in this sense and include what I’ve called ‘national aspirations’. They demand, for example, that Israel (I suspect the name would be changed) must be defined as the state of both the Jewish and Palestinian peoples, and in fact that the Palestinians must be granted a special status as the ‘indigenous’ people of the region, including a veto power on all proposed laws. They insist that there be no preferential Jewish immigration (the Law of Return), although they insist on a right of return for the descendents of the Arab refugees of 1948 and 1967. They demand ‘symbolic’ changes, such as the flag and national anthem, as well as complete autonomy in areas such as education. I will leave the comparison of such a binational state (for this is what it is) to the Palestinian Authority, where Jews are not permitted to live, as an exercise!

The fact is that not only is such an interpretation of ‘equal rights’ not required for a nation to be democratic, but like all Arab proposals it is a recipe for the dismemberment of Israel.

There is a fundamental difference between equal rights and nationalist aspirations; the latter by definition can only be realized — as Zionists well understand — in a people’s own homeland. Therefore I suggest that those Israeli Arabs who will not be fulfilled living in a country not their own, albeit one in which their civil and economic rights are guaranteed, should look to the creation of an autonomous Palestinian state (outside of Israel, please).

Technorati Tags: Israeli Arabs, Israel, Palestinians

“Gaza is free of occupation, but there are no investors and no prosperity,” Abbas said. “We dreamed that (Gaza) would prosper and dozens of investors from all over the world came to Gaza. Nothing has come to fruition. We decided it was better to fire rockets. Israel left, said goodbye, and instead of (Gaza) remaining calm and flourishing, there are those that still prefer to fire rockets.” — Mahmoud Abbas.

Read the article by Matt Lebovic here.

…it may not be what you think.

By Vic Rosenthal

The sight of David Duke, Robert Faurisson, Fredrick Toben, and the Neturei Karta lunatics paying homage to the would-be Hitler of the 21st century unsurprisingly makes Jews livid. But what tactical purpose does it serve?

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By Vic Rosenthal

If there’s any remaining doubt that Jimmy Carter’s book is a propaganda bomb and not just a sign of approaching senility, his letter to America’s Jewish citizens, written after a meeting with several Arizona rabbis, has removed it.

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He’s Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, the editor of an English-language Bangladeshi newspaper called, strangely, The Weekly Blitz. The official charge is sedition (punishable by death by hanging, of course) for advocating dialogue with Jews and Israel. In other words, he’s an Interfaith Alliance type of guy!  Not good in a state that’s flirting with Islamism. Melanie Phillips describes his situation here, and several ways to help him can be found here.

By Vic Rosenthal

On July 31, 2002, a bomb inside a bag covered by a newspaper exploded in the cafeteria of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Seven people (four Americans among them) were killed and 85 injured, two of whom later died. Many of the injured were Israeli Arabs; the university had until then been considered a model of coexistence between Jews and Arabs.

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The so-called ‘right to return’ for 4 to 5 million hostile ‘refugees’ to Israel would clearly be the end of the Jewish state. Everyone knows this. But our own Peace Fresno has signed a declaration insisting upon it.

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