FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

By Vic Rosenthal

Moshe Elad wrote:

When Palestinian intellectuals in the US are seriously asked to explain how after 60 years of conflict, Israel has a space satellite, a series of Nobel Prize laureates for significant scientific achievements and an economy that thrives even during wartime, while the only Palestinian scientific achievement is the Qassam rocket, they respond: “Give us a state and we’ll be able to do the same.”

There are lots of reasons for the contrast, but one of the important ones is this: the Jews were always obsessed with the Jewish people, their survival, their culture, and their development. So were the Palestinians.

The US and Israel tried to give them a state in 2000, but they wouldn’t take it. Creating a state is slow, difficult work. Taking one away from somebody else is easier.

One of the mistakes made by some of the early Zionists was not to pay enough attention to the Arabs. The Arabs always paid attention to the Jews. The Palestinians like to talk about Palestinian culture and enterprise, but really all they care about is Jews: what they possess and how it can be taken from them. How everything originally belonged to them and how the Jews took it away. How to humiliate the Jews, how to hate them, and how to kill them.

That’s it. That’s Palestinian ‘culture’. A culture that can make heroes for children out of people that are willing to die themselves to kill Jews. Some Palestinians have big dreams, like blowing themselves up in a market, killing tens of Jews. Others have to be content with stealing Jewish cars.

In Gaza you have all these Palestinians cooped up together with no Jews to kill. They do their best, firing rockets into Sderot, trying to blow themselves up at crossings, shooting at electrical workers on poles, planting bombs near the border fence, tunneling under the border to plant explosives under Israeli military posts, torturing Israelis by kidnapping their children and dangling hope in front of them for months and sometimes years. But there’s all this untapped Palestinian creativity, of a type that is almost unique in the world, and it’s bottled up. So they have to fight each other, Hamas, Fatah, the clan two streets over.

When Jews were trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto, they published newspapers and journals, created works of art, played music, engaged in every imaginable form of economic activity — all this while they were being shipped out to extermination. The Palestinians fight, bomb internet cafes and coffee shops, assassinate rivals, kidnap friendly journalists, and try to kill Jews. The Palestinians are not imprisoned by the Jews, who would happily coexist with them, but by their mass psychosis about needing to kill Jews.

Is it something genetic that makes them like this? I don’t think so. They have a moral sense — there were great outcries of shame and horror when Fatah and Hamas started having their pitched battles in the streets. It just doesn’t extend to Jews.

I think Haj Amin al-Husseini, the fanatically antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem and Yasser Arafat, my candidate for worst ‘human being’ of the 20th century had something to do with it. Both of these Palestinian leaders, much beloved by their people, always put killing Jews first among their priorities (Hitler did too). Arafat’s first task on his return to ‘Palestine’ in 1993 was to start building an educational system designed to create Jew-killers. Someone who was in the first grade in 1993 would be 20 years old today.

Today (Tuesday), 15 Gazans have been killed in inter-militia fighting, and 18 Israelis in Sderot wounded by Qassam rockets fired from Gaza, some seriously. Happy Nakba (catastrophe) day!

Technorati Tags: Palestinians, Jews

The Jerusalem Post reports:

More than five people, including four children, were wounded and several people suffered from shock after Hamas terrorists fired at least seven Kassam rockets into Sderot on Tuesday afternoon.

Two rockets directly hit separate private residences and another hit a school building in the city. The other rockets landed in the city’s streets.

One woman was seriously wounded and her four children were lightly to moderately wounded after one of the first rockets hit her home…

Hamas officials claimed responsibility shortly after the attack, saying the salvo was retaliation for Israel’s killing an operative during an attack near a border crossing earlier Tuesday and also to commemorate the May 15 founding of Israel in 1948, known to Palestinians as al-Naqba, of “the catastrophe.”

Enough is enough. How long can this be permitted to continue?

What’s needed is another catastrophe for the Palestinians.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Sderot, Hamas

By Vic Rosenthal
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, whom many consider the most likely person to be Prime Minister after Olmert, spoke to a public meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense committee today (quotations from Ha’aretz, interspersed with my comments):

…Livni said Monday that an Arab peace plan is no substitute for direct negotiations with the Palestinians, and urged Arab leaders to prod the Palestinians into making concessions with Israel.

The plan is not intended seriously by the Arab states, who do not see an end to the conflict with Israel (other than one which includes an end to Israel), as in their interest. On the other hand, there must be Palestinians who grasp that their situation can only get worse without a solution. Mustn’t there?

She added that it would not be possible to end the conflict with the Palestinians with a military incursion into the Gaza strip. Instead, she said, a military action would only cause damage and bolster extremists who want to see the diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority fail.

The situation in which Palestinian terrorists can depopulate an area of the country — which will grow as the range of their rockets increases — cannot be allowed to stand, for psychological and political reasons in addition to military ones. A solution has to be found, and if the only one possible is an incursion, then there needs to be an incursion. Will it bolster extremists? Far less than allowing them to operate with impunity is doing.

The foreign minister went on to say that “in order for Israel to exist as a democratic Jewish state, in a way that does not contradict itself, we must achieve a situation in which there are two sovereign states.”

In a two-state situation, Livni explained, the Palestinians would be able to evoke the right of return and enter a Palestinian state, not Israel.

She seems to be invoking the demographic argument; that is, only by giving up the territories will it be possible for Israel to have a Jewish character and still give full rights to all of her citizens. But there are some very big problems that can’t be swept under the rug:

Can a tiny Palestinian state in the poor land of the West Bank and overpopulated Gaza be economically viable? Is it possible for a Palestinian leadership to arise that could govern this state as anything other than a base for attacks against Israel? If there were such a leadership, would the extremists permit it to function? What about the Israeli Arabs? Will they be happy under Jewish control or will they demand yet another partition? Does this ’solution’ just postpone the demographic problem rather than solve it?

Livni said that it is imperative that all the committee members agree on the method with which to go about negotiating with the Palestinians. A permanent solution however, she said, is not realistic at this time. “The fact is,” she said, “that at the head of the Palestinian government stands an extremist religious terror organization.”

Indeed. So she recognizes that there is nobody with whom to negotiate a two-state solution. Then what is the object of negotiating? The danger of doing so is that the US and Europeans will force Israel into making dangerous concrete concessions that can’t easily be taken back while we know a priori that with Hamas as a ‘partner’ there is no hope for a settlement. Only Hamas, not Israel, could benefit.

Livni also said that the foreign ministry is making efforts to prevent the Hezbollah from rearming itself, and to free the captured soldiers. She said that Israel can currently protect itself from the Hezbollah threat using tools provided by United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Hezbollah has rearmed, and there has not been a single sign of life from the soldiers since they were captured. And finally, unless the ‘tools’ she mentions include a short-range missile defense system, this simply cannot be true.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Livni

I’ve written that the US policy of aiding the unpopular (and just as anti-Israel) Fatah movement in its struggle with Hamas is ill-conceived. Now here’s another way in which supplying Fatah with weapons can backfire:

Hamas ambushed a convoy in the Gaza Strip on Sunday and seized a stockpile of US weapons transferred in recent months to militias associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, according to Hamas and Fatah sources.

“We obtained the US weapons and will keep hijacking any assistance the Americans provide to Fatah. Our fighters are aware of the American and Israeli conspiracies to topple our government. We’re trained and well prepared to defeat the American-backed (Palestinian) agents,” said a top member of Hamas’ military wing in the Gaza Strip. – YNet

So not only does the US deliberately provide one terrorist militia with weapons, but we inadvertently supply the other as well.

There should be a total weapons embargo placed on all the militias, and the civilized world should stop sending aid of any kind to the Palestinians until terrorist attacks (from all of the groups, including those associated with Fatah) stop.

Technorati Tags: Hamas, Fatah

Israelis have traditionally been suspicious of Christian attempts to proselytize in Israel. ‘Missionary’ is not a term of approbation in Hebrew. But Israelis are coming to appreciate the friendship offered by Christian Zionists. Author Naomi Leitner is an attorney in Israel.

By Naomi Leitner

It is time for Jews to get over their blanket distrust and wariness of Christianity. Times have changed and Christianity is no longer the preeminent threat that it was to Judaism over the millennia. It is time to move on and face our new enemies, rather than continually fight the last war. Frankly, I am far more fearful of the Islamic Jihadist tugging at his suicide belt than I am of even the most fire-and-brimstone Christian thumping on his Bible.

While there may be a lot to disagree with in any political movement, we need to recall that politics is the art of making alliances and forging bonds to further common causes. One can make common cause even with people with whom one disagrees on extraneous issues. We can agree to disagree on certain issues and work together on others. For instance, my theology about the fate of New Orleans is closer to that of Rabbi Kushner (When Bad Things Happen to Good People) than it is to that of Rev. Hagee - but why does that prevent a meeting of the minds on Israel’s right to exist? Politicians succeed by finding the meetings of the minds on specific issues. And that is the essence of inter-faith alliances.

Speaking of bonds and alliances: we have no other allies. Our numbers are paltry and our enemies numerous. Should we brush away the one hand extended in genuine friendship?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Christian Zionism

The phenomenon of anti-Israel Jews has always surprised me, and I tended to explain it in terms of Stockholm syndrome, rebellion against parental authority, etc. But its prevalence lately, as shown by Zombie’s photo essay on the recent appearance of Jimmy Carter in Berkeley, is making me think more in terms of some form of mass psychosis.

Zombie noted that most of the demonstrators did not appear to be connected with the university, and

It seemed, in fact, that the demonstration was more of a silent staring match between rival Jewish ideological camps: anti-Israel Jews (generally self-identified as “left-wing”) versus pro-Israel Jews (commonly though to my mind often inaccurately identified as “right-wing”).

Whatever is wrong with these people, it’s not just a few Chomskyite crazies anymore. A good friend of mine, who has been involved in pro-Israel advocacy for many years, recently told me “I’ve had it with the Jews. They’re not helpful. The real support for Israel today comes from Christians.”

I have to laugh when I read antisemitic commentary about how the Jewish Zionists work together systematically pulling the strings that cause world governments to tilt toward Israel’s interests. No string pulled by a Jew is likely to cause anything, because for sure there will be another Jew pulling in the opposite direction. Compare this to the almost unanimous position among Arabs and Muslims, even if they can’t agree on anything else, that there should not be a Jewish state in the Middle East.

Although arguments between Jews about Zionism have been going on among Jews since before the time of Herzl. Today with our enemies stooping to unimaginable depths of depravity, it’s even more depressing than usual.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Zionism, Jews

Israel must not accept this quietly:

(IsraelNN.com) United States Ambassador Richard Jones will boycott the Jerusalem Day celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem this week, according to Israel Radio. In doing so, the U.S. is joining with the member nations of the European Union, who informed the Israeli government via a German representative that they would be avoiding the ceremonies.

The rejections reflect the international community’s concern over the possibility of offending the Palestinian Authority and Israel’s Arab neighbors, who insist that Jerusalem must become the capital of a PA state.

It’s infuriating and painful to see Israel consistently behaving as a supplicant, begging for recognition of her sovereignty. The West treats the dictatorships and absolute monarchies of the Arab nations, as well as the morally bankrupt, kleptocratic and murderous Palestinian leadership with care and respect; but Israel remains illegitimate, her capital not her capital.

In 1967 Israel defeated the Arabs in a war which was intended by them to be a war of annihilation and took back control of Jerusalem from Jordan, which had brutally expelled the city’s Jewish residents in 1948, desecrated her synagogues and cemeteries, and barred entrance to her holy places. Israel later annexed Jerusalem, offering full Israeli citizenship to her Arab residents. Where is the justice in the ‘international community’ demanding that Israel turn her capital over to the Palestinians, whose greatest contribution to history has been the perfection of terrorism as an instrument of policy?

Justice, in this case apparently grows out of a barrel of oil.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Arabs

David Forman, Jerusalem Post:

Although American Jews have long told themselves that their influence on US foreign policy far outweighs their numbers, they would be mistaken to believe that their sway is unlimited. That would be falling prey to anti-Semitic propaganda that posits that the Jewish lobby wields excessive control over foreign policy - and not just regarding the Middle East…

It is not possible (and it never was) for Zionists to depend on Jewish political influence to promote the interests of Israel in the US. The truth is that

Despite their numerical inferiority, Jews have been a force in the US because of the historical link between Judaism and Christianity, expressed in the Judeo-Christian tradition that forms the basis of Protestantism and Catholicism, the major religious denominations in the US. They have garnered respect because of their active participation in the political system. Indeed, Israel has benefited greatly from American Jews’ active involvement, and counts on the Jewish lobby to advance its causes both within the administration and among the populace.

This link is under attack — Jimmy Carter’s book is a volley in this war — and the growing Arab-American minority is learning how to participate in the system, and how to maximize their influence upon it. They are learning, to a large extent by studying the approaches taken by the Jews. However, they are more focused than Jews today:

It is no longer true that American Jews vote as a bloc regarding issues related to Israel. No longer does Israel dominate their thought processes when they enter the voting booth - primarily because concepts of nation, peoplehood, ethnicity and culture play only a peripheral role in their lives…

…this stands in sharp contrast to the American-Arab community’s voting patterns. Its loyalty to Arab and Islamic causes is unyielding. Simply put, within the American-Arab world there is no debate about Middle East politics as is the case within a very diverse Jewish world.

It seems to me that pro-Israel forces in the US have been myopic in looking primarily to the Jewish community for support. One doesn’t have to be Jewish to understand that Israel is the front line in the struggle between the Western ideals of individual freedom and an Islamic conception that is wholly different, and which is aggressively trying to promulgate itself throughout the world — and particularly in the Christian world.

Christian Zionism, even if it mobilizes only a tiny portion of its huge base, has far more potential to help Israel than the so-called Jewish lobby.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Christian Zionism

Jordan’s King Abdullah will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday in Ramallah. IsraelInsider writes:

There are unconfirmed reports that Abdullah II, head of the Hashemite Kingdom, is exploring a new confederation linking Jordan and the Palestinian Authority as a run up to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state…

The driving force for the talks from the Jordanian perspective is deep concern about instability in the Hashemite Kingdom as the Palestinian Authority descends into chaos and refugees are expected to flood into Jordan following the start of the anticipated US troop withdrawal from Iraq in the late summer. Jordan evidently believes that a confederate relationship with the PA will lure Israel into a less adversarial position with respect to the Hamas-led Palestinian government, and may even lead to its recognition and lifting of economic sanctions against it.

The reports originated with Debka, a source of uncertain reliability and have been denied by PA and Jordanian officials. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for Abbas to seek a closer relationship with Abdullah. If Israel were to leave tomorrow, either unilaterally or as a result of international pressure (something Abbas believes will happen), an entirely independent territory would likely degenerate into a Gaza-like shambles.

(more…)

David Kimche, writing in the Jerusalem Post:

Anwar Sadat, just like Bashar Assad, offered to enter into peace negotiations with us. More than a year before the Yom Kippur War exploded on us, he told us “peace in exchange for Sinai.” We turned him down, and the result was - eventually - that we did agree to peace in exchange for Sinai, but only after a war in which more than 2,000 Israeli soldiers were killed and many more thousands wounded…

How many will die if fighting flares in the Golan this summer? Every single loss of life will have been in vain, for eventually we will be negotiating with the Syrians, and we will reach an agreement with Damascus on a solution in the Golan, just as Menachem Begin did with Egypt over the Sinai…

Nobody wants a war with Syria (at least, nobody I know). Certainly not me; if war comes, my son will be fighting in it.

But Kimche’s argument can be carried even further. Eventually we’ll be negotiating with Hamas over Tel Aviv, so why not get it over with and avoid war?

The real question is this: if war with Syria comes, would it be best to fight with or without the Golan?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Syria, Golan

There is no more controversial issue for Jews in the US today than their relationship to Christian Zionists — and in particular to Dr. John Hagee.

Before you dismiss this movement as unimportant or peripheral, remember that the Balfour Declaration, without which there probably would not be a state of Israel, was in great measure a product of Christian Zionism. Keep in mind that by far most Christians in the US identify themselves as evangelical or “born-again”: estimates of their number range from 50 million to over 100 million! In any case, there are far more of them than there are Jews in the world, by any estimate. If a significant number of these can be called ‘zionist’ or even mildly pro-Israel, this has enormous significance.

(more…)

As everyone knows, six Muslim Jihadists were arrested this week for planning an attack on the huge army base at Ft. Dix in New Jersey.

The Justice Department said that they had viewed Islamic training and weapons videos on the Internet. It’s also been suggested in some news reports that some of the men became acquainted with one another online. But so far, there’s no indication that they have anything but a virtual connection to international terror groups:

White House spokesman Tony Snow said there is “no direct evidence” that the men arrested in the Fort Dix plot have ties to international terrorism.

“They are not charged with being members of an international terrorism organization,” Snow said. “At least at this point, there is no evidence that they received direction from international terror organizations. — AP

It’s probably safe to say that without the Internet, this group would not exist. This is exactly what I meant when I called the Internet a Jihad Amplifier. The fact that no direct connection to Al-Qaeda or other organizations was found is not something to be happy about. Indeed, Jihadists without such connections have a much better chance of remaining undetected until it’s too late.

They were caught only because they made a really dumb mistake when they tried to get a video of their training activities copied at a local Circuit City store. The next batch might be a little smarter.

Technorati Tags: Terrorism, Internet