FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

I believe that although the Wahabis, al-Qaeda, and the Mullah’s regime in Tehran are often lethally competitive with one another, they are capable of unification. Those who say that these movements will never work together because of their ideology are precisely as correct as those who in the 1930s said that the communists and the Nazis would never work together. They didn’t, until they did. — James Woolsey, at Herzliya conference.

Woolsey is a former director of the CIA. He too sees that we are at a critical juncture in world history and must take very difficult decisions in the very near future. Read Chess with Tehran.

So when historians look back, I think they will identify the MSM’s appalling performance as one of the main sources the West’s vulnerability to Global Jihad at the beginning of this century. — Richard Landes, at Herzliya Conference.

This is not just journalism-centric exaggeration, it’s a serious argument which you must read — here. He also shows how the biased coverage of the Israeli-Arab conflict is a paradigm case of the media’s failure at this critical point in history.

Jimmy Carter was interviewed this morning on NPR. The interviewer pressed him on his use of the word ‘apartheid’, an obvious and reasonable question. However, there are a few other questions, also obvious and reasonable that were not asked. For example:

• Do you think that you were influenced in any way by the millions of dollars you personally and the Carter Center received from Arab sources?

• You said in your book that the Arabs must recognize Israel’s right to exist in peace. Don’t you think that it’s reasonable to expect an end to terrorism before Israeli concessions are made that compromise her security? Wouldn’t it be irresponsible for the Israeli government to give up territory while rockets are falling?

• The thrust of your arguments is that Israel is responsible for the conflict as a result of her occupation of ‘Palestinian land’ in 1967. How do you account for the Palestinian terrorism against Israel (and the pre-state Jewish presence) since at least 1920? Don’t you think that the Arabs — both the Palestinians and Israel’s neighbor states — must bear some responsibility for the sustained terrorism and war that they’ve waged against the Jews over the years?

Update [25 Jan 1453 PST]: Read Kenneth Stein’s review of Carter’s book. Stein was Executive Director of the Carter Center from 1983 to 1986, and the Center’s Middle East Fellow until 2006, when he resigned in protest of the book.

Technorati Tags: Carter, Israel, NPR

Hezbollah’s strike on Tuesday totally paralyzed the capital and resulted in five deaths. There’s no doubt that Nasrallah can topple the government whenever he wants. Either some external force dissuaded him, or — now that he’s shown what he can do — he prefers to get control by means of threats. You can read the details in the Lebanon Daily Star.

A Lebanon under Hezbollah control is an even greater threat to Israel than a weak Lebanon which can’t control it. Remember that the Lebanese army is supposed to prevent Hezbollah guerrillas from deploying on the border and even disarm them (according to UN resolution 1701)!

If Lebanon becomes Hezbollastan, it will be a piece of the Shiite crescent being established by Iran in the heart of the Mideast — Iran, Iraq (after the US leaves), Syria, and Lebanon. This is more or less exactly the opposite of what US policy was supposed to achieve.

Will the US and Israel permit this to happen? Can they do anything about it?

Update [25 Jan 1114 PST]: Lebanese students fight it out, two more dead.

Technorati Tags: Lebanon, Hezbollah, Nasrallah, Israel

What we are facing today is nothing new. Jews are being wronged in many ways: in the political, economic, and social arenas; both as an identity as well as individually. The purpose of this is to intimidate us, to silence us so that we will not speak up. In my opinion, the British model is what the United States will experience in the near future, where there will be an increase of anti-Semitism on campuses and in societies, and what is marginally acceptable will become commonly acceptable.

We have seen many intellectual elites bitten with this cancer in Britain and worldwide, such as the revival of the Durban process to delegitimize Israel by 2009…We have seen the impact of the inflow of Saudi money into British campuses. More mosques have been built in the US in recent years, in which most of them Wahabism is taught…It is time for us to think anew as we see the marginally acceptable ideas becoming visibly accepted by the mainstream. [my emphasis] — Malcolm Hoenlein, at the Herzliya Conference

There can be no doubt that there is a deliberate plan to delegitimize Israel in part by weakening her natural suppporters, the Jews. The latent power of the antisemitic virus is so great in the West that it doesn’t take much to stimulate its flowering, and a lot of money is flowing from the twin poles of radical Islamism, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The themes adumbrated in the ‘academic’ work of Mearsheimer and Walt and the popularization of Jimmy Carter now find expression even in discussions of real estate.

“The main issue is the nationality issue. No matter what we do in the area of equality, Israel will not be legitimate.”

I think this is the second most serious (after Iran) issue faced by Israel today. I’m reproducing in full the remarks made Tuesday at the Herzliya conference by Dr. Schueftan, Deputy Director, National Security Studies Center, University of Haifa. Unfortunately, the difficulties he describes will not go away by themselves. — Editor.

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Barry Rubin had a very good column in the Jerusalem Post yesterday: Weakness and bad strategy. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but what struck me appears at the end, almost as an afterthought:

Partly due to its insolubility and partly to the many regional crises elsewhere, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue to decline in regional importance.

As for the Arab-Israeli conflict (as distinct from the Israeli-Islamist or Israeli-Iran conflicts), it exists only in demagogic speeches and the illusions of Westerners who know little about the region.

The real threats to Israel come from the soon-to-be nuclear Iran, as well as the Islamist Hamas and Hezbollah, funded and supported by Iran. So making an agreement with the Palestinians, as Peretz would like to do, can only increase the threat as long as the Palestinians are dominated by Hamas. And the same goes for Syria, where Hezbollah’s influence grows from moment to moment.

For us in the United States, there’s a lesson as well. The line of reasoning so beloved by James Baker and his Saudi patrons that says that the Israel-Palestinian dispute is at the root of the conflict in the Middle East has got it backwards. Trying to fix the region by forcing Israel to make concessions is actually strengthening the enemies of the United States — radical Shiite Iran and Sunni Islamists, solidifying their control of the area rather than cooling the conflict down.

Technorati Tags: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel, Iran

Editor’s note: ‘Gary’ (not his real name) is an acquaintance. I’m posting the following in order to illustrate how some antisemitic notions – especially the ideas that the Jews control the mainstream media and use this control to prevent exposure of the their conspiratorial influences on everything else, are remarkably prevalent today.

I found the statement that the antisemite was just exercising his right of free speech somewhat strained, but it just could have been about not understanding the difference between ‘censured’ and ‘censored’.

I’ve obscured various details, such as the name of the blog from which he quotes, and so forth. Otherwise this is exactly what he sent me. I would especially like to receive comments about this.

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…despite the criticisms that can be leveled at him, the recent effort by some leading intellectuals and media types to target Foxman as the man leading an effort to “silence” critics of Israel is something that even those who aren’t his biggest fans should be worried about. — Jonathan S. Tobin, The Jewish Exponent

First they came for Rosen and Weissman. But I didn’t speak up because AIPAC was too big for its britches. Then they came for Foxman, but I didn’t speak up because the ADL is tacky. You get the idea.

Carter, Mearsheimer/Walt, and all the others have a goal: to break American Jewry’s power to help Israel.

Read Tobin’s article about the attack on Abe Foxman here.

By Vic Rosenthal

“Every Palestinian contact that recognizes Israel, I see as a partner in negotiations - even if we’re speaking of Hamas,” [Amir] Peretz said at the Institute for Policy and Strategy of the IDC Herzliya, while not mentioning the two other conditions set by the Quartet - a cessation of terror activity and the recognition of previous Israel-Palestinian Authority peace agreements. — Jerusalem Post

Peretz has perhaps not noticed that Hamas’ ‘recognition’ of Israel is like my recognizing a tiger I meet in the street: I can’t avoid it, but I don’t agree that it has a right to be there.

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…the Jews have to decide, once again, if we want to survive. If we want to make it, then we need to rekindle one of the basic premises of Zionism, and take matters into our own hands. It’s not enough to simply feel that we’re back where we started, 110 years ago. The question is what we’re going to do about it. The question is, how do we restore hope? — Daniel Gordis, This Place Called Hope

Israelis are struggling with a combination of internal problems and external threats. Gordis asks what the Jewish people — not just Israel — need to do in order to to survive. Read it here.

Israel is not innocent of mistakes, but all Israel’s mistakes are dwarfed by the Palestinian liability. Living under an occupation is no great joy, and criticism of the occupation in general and of the settlements in particular, is legitimate. More than legitimate. We are not dealing with theory, however, but with facts: huge sums of money that were given to the Palestinians went down the drain. And the opportunities to win independence and prosperity were rejected in favor of the supreme objective: wiping Israel off the map. — Ben-Dror Yemini, from Maariv (in Solomonia).

Who provided the billions of dollars that have gone to the Palestinians and have not improved their lives one whit? What did they do with the money? Why are they still refugees and the territories occupied?

Ben-Dror Yemini answers these and other questions in this groundbreaking article, found in the excellent Solomonia blog of Martin Solomon.