FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel’s Chief of Staff since January 22 of this year doesn’t talk to the press. And he doesn’t allow his officers to do so, either. Or talk to politicians. And he prefers that they do not go to cocktail parties.

Ashkenazi himself wouldn’t have time for parties, since he normally arrives at his desk on or before 7 AM and doesn’t get home to his family until 11 PM.

His predecessor, Dan Halutz, tried to execute surprise inspections of various units. But somehow, the word would get out, and Halutz would arrive at a base and find everything in abnormally perfect order. Ashkenazi does this too, but he tells no one where he is going until he gets into his car and gives instructions to his driver.

Ashkenazi was drafted and joined the Golani Brigade in 1972. He fought in the Sinai in 1973, the Litani campaign in 1978, and the 1982 Lebanon war, where he commanded the forces that captured Beaufort Castle, Nabatiyeh, and Jebel Baruch — some of the fiercest fighting of the war. He has held almost every position there is in the IDF ground forces, and has a remarkable memory for detail. So it is impossible to bullshit him. He knows how everything is supposed to be, and who is responsible for everything.

Dan Halutz, an Air Force man, thought that it was possible to explain logically why something should be done and it would happen. Ashkenazi, a ground combat soldier, understands that it is also necessary for every individual to know with 100% certainty that failure to follow orders and procedures will be noticed and there will be consequences for the responsible party.

Combat soldiers tend to like him. His immediate subordinates learn quickly that they need to be very well prepared at all times.

It would be unfair to call his style ‘management by fear’, because this implies a degree of capriciousness, a situation where no one knows where the lightning will strike next. In the case of Ashkenazi, it’s more like management by total knowledge. There’s nothing arbitrary at all: whoever screws up will pay the price. Don’t screw up and you have nothing to worry about.

Unfortunately, the IDF let a lot of ‘little’ things slide in the period between the two Lebanon wars. We saw then that little things add up, but they are not sliding any more.

In my opinion, it’s very probable that Israel will see war on an even greater scale than 2006 within the next year or so. It looks to me as though Israel has put the right man in place for a very tough job.

Technorati Tags: Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel, IDF

The left-wing Jewish group Brit Tzedek v’Shalom is asking the US to establish communication with Hamas:

“In the name of ensuring humanitarian treatment of the Palestinian people, please consider a pragmatic policy of contact with those Palestinians in control of the Gaza side of these border crossings who may be affiliated with Hamas,” Marcia Freedman, the Brit Tzedek v’Shalom president, said in a letter sent last Friday to the U.S. Secretary of State. — JTA

The idea is apparently that the suffering of the residents of Gaza, caused by the international boycott of Hamas, transcends politics. It’s a humanitarian issue.

In reality, Hamas has the resources to help Gaza residents on its own. Large quantities of military supplies, weapons, and ammunition pass into the Gaza Strip every day through the multiple tunnels into Egypt. Hamas receives funds from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Islamic ‘charities’ throughout the world, including the US.

Indeed last week, Hamas received a huge amount of money from the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (in other words, from the US and EU), when 3,500 members of Hamas’ “Special Security Forces” were paid a full year’s salary — supposedly a result of a “computer glitch”.

Meanwhile Hamas continues ‘military’ activities against Israel, provoking responses like the recent incursion into southern Gaza, where the IDF clashed with Hamas troops armed with ‘advanced’ weapons.

It’s clear that Hamas has chosen guns over butter, as the saying goes.

But relief supplies are being sent to Gaza. The problem is that Hamas and other Gaza terrorist factions have made the crossings dangerous:

[On July 26, UN Mideast Envoy Michael] Williams said Palestinian militants fired 192 rockets and mortar shells at Gaza’s crossings and into Israel in the last month. He said Hamas’ military wing was responsible for most of the attacks on the crossings, while Islamic Jihad fired most of the rockets and mortars into Israel. — Justin Bergman, Forbes [my emphasis]

Two weeks ago, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh led reporters on a tour of Gaza to show them the “humanitarian crisis”:

‘Gaza today is better,’ Ismail Haniyeh, still calling himself Palestinian prime minister, told dozens of foreign reporters who joined a bus tour of the coastal enclave that took in a prison, a church, border posts and security installations.

‘But the strangling siege … has affected Gaza very much,’ he added, two days before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice embarks on a new round of peace diplomacy in Israel and the West Bank. ‘I hope on your visit you have seen the suffering and will convey to the world the reality of the suffering.’ — Reuters

So Hamas wants the ’siege’ lifted because Palestinians are suffering, yet they continue their military buildup, their terrorist attacks against Israel, and even attack the very crossing points through which aid must pass!

It’s hard to see how Brit Tzedek v’Shalom can promote tzedek (righteousness) and shalom (peace) by helping to legitimize the evil and warlike Hamas.

Technorati Tags: Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, Hamas, Israel, Gaza

What is it possible to say about Shimon Peres, Israel’s new president?

Israeli President Shimon Peres has proposed that Israel release all 10,000 Palestinian security prisoners it is holding in exchange for the Palestinian Authority finally cracking down on anti-Jewish terrorism, Israel’s Ma’ariv daily newspaper reported on Monday.

According to the report, Peres’ plan would see Israel free 2,000 prisoners every year for the next five years as an incentive for the Palestinians to begin dealing with the terrorism emanating from territories under their control. The Palestinians were supposed to start cracking down on terror back in 1993, when Israel granted them autonomy with a guarantee of statehood at some point in the future. — Israel Today

I hate to use the same quotation twice in the same week, but Benjamin Franklin allegedly said that the definition of insanity was to do the same thing over and over while expecting different results. If anyone was ever insane in this way, it is Mr. Peres.

Last week, Peres proposed a ‘peace’ plan that would have Israel withdraw from most of the West Bank while ‘compensating’ the Palestinians with territory within the Green Line so that they end up with 100% of the territory that he believes belongs to them.

Never mind, as Isi Leibler points out, that this is throwing out the correct interpretation of UN resolution 242 and accepting the Arab version. Never mind that it calls for unprecedented concessions regarding Jerusalem and the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian ‘refugees’.

Never mind that since 1993 we have learned, except for Peres who is apparently incapable of learning anything, that concessions do not bring peace, but rather more war.

Never mind that proposals like this, even if the government officially denies them, send a message of weakness and surrender which will ultimately result in more bloodshed, when Israel responds to the inevitable terrorism which is the Arabs’ way of showing strength.

Only a man with the enormous arrogance of a Shimon Peres can accept the honor of being elected president, a post which incidentally is supposed to be above politics, and then turn around and make proposals for which he does not have any kind of mandate, and which are actually dangerous to the state that he is supposed to serve.

There are no more Nobel Prizes waiting for you out there, Mr. Peres. Incidentally, Arafat’s prize, which he got at the same ceremony, is now in the hands of Hamas, which stole it from Arafat’s Gaza headquarters. I devoutly hope that this doesn’t happen to yours.

Technorati Tags: Peres, Israel

Almost everyone agrees that the US is a strong supporter of Israel.

• Apologists for anti-US terrorism claim that such attacks are caused by our relationship with Israel.

• Antisemites claim that the US strongly supports Israel and that it is because our government and media are controlled by Zionist Jews.

• Every presidential candidate talks about our traditional strong support for Israel and the need to continue it. Congress periodically passes resolutions by huge majorities which express support for Israel.

• And the Jewish establishment in the US preens itself in the most fulsome way on the closeness between the US and Israel, which it believes is a result of its efforts.

But the fact is that US policy is not especially pro-Israel. Let’s look at the facts.

First, what about the huge amount of aid? In 2006, Israel received about $240 million in civilian economic aid (down from $477 M in 2004), and $2.4 billion in military aid. The administration plans to increase military aid to $3 billion next year. Both the civilian and military aid must be spent primarily in the US, and much of the ‘civilian’ aid is for military purposes.

The effect of this aid is to make Israel’s military policy a captive of the US. As you recall, the big questions during last summer’s war were “how long will the US let this go on?”, “did Condoleeza Rice authorize a ground attack?”, and similar.

The US has never flinched from using its leverage, as when it forced Israel to absorb Scud strikes on Tel Aviv in 1991 so as not to upset the charade that the US had Arab ‘allies’ with it in the Gulf war; nor when President George W. Bush placed an embargo on helicopter parts at the beginning of the second intifada in response to targeted killings of terrorists (the embargo was lifted after 9/11).

Benefits to the US include a market for military products, real-world testing of these products, and a proxy military force in the Middle East.

While Israel certainly needs to be able to counter weapons provided to Syria and Iran by Russia, the US is responsible for arming two of the major potentially hostile powers in the region, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Note that the proposed large increase in military aid to Israel is in part to ‘balance’ a huge ($20 billion) arms deal with the Saudis.

Historically, US foreign policy has not been nearly as pro-Israel as either AIPAC or Al-Qaeda would have us believe. For example, Eisenhower and Dulles threatened to get Israel sanctioned and expelled from the UN 1956, and forced ben Gurion to withdraw from Sinai while refusing to guarantee her freedom of passage in the straits of Tiran — the same issue that became the casus belli for the 1967 war, when LBJ refused to force Nasser to back down.

The US has never accepted the Israeli annexation of Jerusalem, and has resisted moving its embassy to West Jerusalem — where the Knesset is and which has been in Israeli hands since 1948 — for years.

In general, US policy toward Israel has been designed to gain influence with the Arabs rather than to help Israel — hence the seemingly irrational push today for an impossible ‘peace process’.

On the other hand, US policy toward Saudi Arabia — including going to war to protect her oil reserves in 1991, and selling her military hardware that, from an Israeli point of view, upsets the regional balance of power — has always been positive, despite Saudi actions against US interests.

Mearsheimer and Walt to the contrary, the Jewish lobby has not been nearly as successful as both its enemies and friends believe, and US policy toward Israel has generally followed the various administration’s views — and sometimes those of the pro-Arab State Department — regarding US interests.

Technorati Tags: Israel

I’ve written that the ADL’s position on the Armenian Genocide is objectionable and should be changed. The Armenian Genocide is a historical fact (as an off and on resident of Fresno for a period spanning 35 years, I’ve heard plenty of first-hand accounts). To say that it’s an open question whether genocide occurred is not different from Holocaust denial, and it simply cannot be justified.

However, there are those who wish to use this issue — and the stubbornness of ADL head Abraham Foxman — to destroy the institution. And despite statements like this one,

Ultimately, it is the seductive appeal of the ADL’s dark visions that most threaten us. American Jewry enjoys privileges undreamed of in Jewish history: we are a more accepted, more integral part of our country than any Jewish community ever has been. We have entered unprecedented territory in Jewish history, and the enticements and possibilities of this new era should be setting our souls alight.

Foxman’s ADL justifies its existence by beckoning us backward, encouraging us to hide from the ever-present Cossacks in a psychological shtetl. It’s a dark vision that serves the ADL’s interests, but not ours. — Joey Kurtzman, ‘Fire Foxman’

the reality is that antisemitism in the US is not going away, fueled by Arab and Iranian oil money. Mearsheimer and Walt and Jimmy Carter are more sophisticated than David Duke-style Jew-bashing (although there’s plenty of that still around), but the very improvement in the situation of the Jews in America — and Kurtzman is correct that it is historically unprecedented — has made them a target.

Keep in mind that anti-Israel forces believe that US policy is strongly pro-Israel and that this is a result of the ‘Jewish lobby’ (they are incorrect on both counts, but this is the topic of another article). They believe that anything that weakens US Jewry is to their advantage, and that includes antisemitism in America.

The ADL is the one organization which carefully documents and tracks antisemitic activitities in the US. When a holocaust denier, a neo-Nazi, or Muslim extremist gives a lecture, the ADL is there. Kurtzman and others who find the ADL embarrassing and old-fashioned would throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In the case of the Armenian Genocide the ADL seems to have felt that they were doing the Turkish Jewish community a favor by appeasing the Turkish government — and not, as Kurtzman suggests, ‘exploiting’ the Turkish Jews. Nevertheless, the policy was tactically wrong (as appeasement usually is) and morally unsupportable.

What needs to happen is that the ADL needs to retract its statements about the Armenian Genocide, not its “dark vision” of antisemitism, which is unfortunately pretty well justified.

Technorati Tags: ADL, Armenian Genocide, Foxman, Kurtzman

I’ve found it very to difficult to understand the utility of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks being pushed by the US today. Whatever their goal, it cannot be Israeli-Palestinian peace. In this article, commentator Barry Rubin discusses the relationship between appearance and reality.

Window Dressing

By Barry Rubin

Is there a window of opportunity for Israel-Palestinian peace right now? Let me put it this way: in diplomatic terms, looking through the window is worthwhile but, in analytical terms, I don’t think anyone is going to be able to climb through it.

The problem of the current situation poses two typical issues which often bedevil — but could be used to clarify — Middle East issues. The first is the logical versus the real; the second is the diplomatic versus the analytical.

Let us begin by what to outsiders seems a logical evaluation of the current situation. It goes something like this: Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA) it controls in the West Bank are in serious shape. Hamas has seized the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian infrastructure has been devastated. There seems to be no progress toward peace or an independent state.

Given this crisis it is logical that the Fatah leadership, headed by “President” Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who seem to be moderate men, pursue a new course. They can enforce stability on the West Bank and discipline on their own forces. They can use the aid money they are getting from international donors to improve their people’s situation, build schools and hospitals, and create a viable economy. And they can make peace with Israel to obtain a Palestinian state. They can say to the Palestinians: Hah! See how we deliver and Hamas does not! We have brought you all these benefits and so naturally you must support us.

Happy ending. Curtain falls. Standing ovation from the audience. Good reviews in the media. Nobel prizes to follow.

(more…)

From the Jerusalem Post:

Nayef Hawatmeh, leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine [DFLP] and the man responsible for killing 22 [sic] Israeli children in a terror attack on Ma’alot, wants to live in the Palestinian Authority, despite never having had a home there…

Hawatmeh said that his presence in the PA would bolster PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who, he said, needed the support of figures such as himself to advance his diplomatic plans. “Without us, who will you talk to?” he asked.

Who, indeed? Perhaps this tells us something about trying to talk to people who want to kill you.

Although survivors of the Ma’alot massacre (in which a total of 31 died) have “vowed to use any means to stop the government from allowing Hawatmeh to return”, one wonders if “bolstering Abbas” will be considered more important than decency and national self-respect. We’ll see.

Hawatmeh, presently living in Damascus, was supposed to be part of the bolstering that included the pardoning of wanted Fatah operatives and the prisoner release , but this did not happen. Here’s what I said about Hawatmeh then.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hawatmeh, Ma’alot, DFLP, Abbas

The BBC continues to live in its massive time warp, believing it to be 1949. Here is a map which they present to illustrate a story about a shooting in the Old City of Jerusalem:

Note the “1949 armistice line”. Even better is the area marked “no man’s land”!

And of course they find it necessary to introduce the following into any story relating to Jerusalem:

East Jerusalem has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Palestinians hope to establish their capital there, but Israel claims the entire city.

Israel’s annexation of the city is not recognised by the international community.

Palestinians ‘hope’ to do a lot of things, as we know, and the BBC is behind them all the way.

Technorati Tags: BBC, Jerusalem

Sometimes something is glaringly obvious, but people have invested so much in the opposite view that they are rendered totally blind to it.

Israel Harel explains why the Peres Plan will not succeed:

The plan is based on the assumption that the root of the conflict is territorial. And even now that the territorial concessions from Oslo have proved the opposite - that concessions only bring more violence and that Israeli withdrawals strengthen the extremists - the belief in continued concessions has not changed and is a major component of our diplomatic thinking.

[Peres and Olmert] should know very well that the main reason for the Arabs’ war against the Jews is ideological and not territorial, and that even a concession of 100 percent will not satisfy the Arabs.

This is why the 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon strengthened Hezbollah and not the moderates, and why Hamas, not Fatah, won control in free elections after 25 Israeli settlements were uprooted from the Gaza Strip.

If the conflict were territorial, a Palestinian state would have arisen in 1947 when the Jews greeted the partition plan with singing and dancing; certainly the Palestinians would have been prepared to accept the 1948 armistice lines as permanent borders. Ultimately they would have accepted…the far-reaching concessions that prime minister Ehud Barak made to Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat in 2000.

But at the crucial moment, Arafat proved that even 96 percent of the territory, including the Temple Mount, was not his real goal. And now, with Hamas having won in free elections, will it accept less than Fatah would have?

If the definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results’, then Shimon Peres — and many others — need to make urgent appointments with their psychiatrists.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Peres, Olmert

Why does the current excitement about a revived ‘peace process’ appear contrived (I’m reminded of my departed friend Max Fishman, who always referred to it as the “piss process”, and not only to make fun of Peres’ accent)?

Why does it all seem like empty words?

Jonathan Spyer finds two basic reasons:

Firstly, because the two leaders, Olmert and Abbas, lack credibility with their respective publics. Indeed, a sizeable part of Abbas’s public currently lives under the rival Palestinian Authority maintained by Hamas in Gaza. The very existence of that authority raises the question of in whose name exactly will Abbas and Fayad be negotiating, and who will feel bound by any agreement they might reach.

Olmert, meanwhile, has been deeply unpopular among the Israeli public since the Lebanon War last year, and surely lacks the authority that would be required to order the large scale removal of West Bank Jewish communities as part of any deal…

Secondly, there is the more fundamental issue of intention. The peace process of the 1990s collapsed not because of a misunderstanding, but because of the fundamentally irreconcilable positions of the sides - most crucially, on the issue of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and their descendants.

The Israeli left thought that the Palestinian ‘right of return’ was a sort of metaphor, which required only a bit of empathy and a few ritual expressions of guilt to be satisfied. They found out they were wrong. The issue of the refugees remains the single most defining element of Palestinian nationalism. It is also an issue on which Israel cannot concede without ceasing to exist as the expression of the national rights of the Jews - its very raison d’etre.

But if there’s no chance of success, why bother?

The revived ‘peace process’ is part of a rearguard action intended to solidify the ranks of the regional opponents of Iran and of revolutionary Islamism. The so-called axis of moderation - Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan - do not wish, by aligning with the US and Israel, to leave Iran and its allies to champion the cause of the Palestinians - still the greatest ‘legitimating card’ in regional politics. There is therefore a need for something to seem to be happening on the Israeli-Palestinian track.

Read all of Spyer’s analysis here.

The leaders of the democratic nations involved in this charade, Israel and the US, are not doing their constituents a service by maintaining the fiction that there is a diplomatic process that can lead to a true peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Continuing in this direction is especially dangerous for Israel, since it involves the arming of her enemies as well as pressure to make concrete concessions that will reduce her security, particularly when the “process” collapses — as it is certain to do.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, peace process, Olmert, Abbas

An editorial on Wednesday’s Ha’aretz English site discusses the so-called ‘Peres plan’, which I mentioned yesterday (and which the Prime Minister’s and President’s office have denied). Ha’aretz believes that we are now on the verge of “genuine diplomatic processes and practical plans for solving the conflict”, as opposed to previous “empty words” and “barren meetings”.

What is the great breakthrough that PM Olmert and Palestinian President Abbas have achieved at their recent meeting? Nothing less than this:

Olmert, basing himself on a proposal by President Shimon Peres, welcomed the key principle of the Arab peace initiative, which guarantees that negotiations over the borders of the Palestinian state will be based on the June 4, 1967, lines.

It seems to me that all two-state proposals, including Oslo, the Geneva Initiative, etc. have ‘based themselves’ on the 1967 borders, more or less. So this isn’t exactly a breakthrough.

Maybe it’s the part about the Arab [League] Peace Initiative? But that calls for “Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines”, which of course does not leave room for Israel to keep some settlement blocs while compensating the Palestinians with land from within the 1967 lines, as in the Peres plan. Nor does it leave room for the “practical and balanced solutions for the issues of Jerusalem and the refugees’ return to places other than Israel’s sovereign territory” that are called for in the Peres plan.

So either Olmert has agreed to nothing, or he has given away the store.

Ha’aretz’ exposition of the alleged Peres plan is interesting not so much for the content, as for the point of view it exposes:

The Peres document proposes that Israel and the Palestinians draft a document of principles, with an upfront guarantee that Israel will provide the Palestinian state with territory equal to 100 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A prior agreement on this central issue, along with a binding timetable, would enable negotiations to be held on the details of the agreement. Such a discussion would focus, among other issues, on what compensation the Palestinians would receive for the designated settlement blocs, which must not interfere with the West Bank’s territorial contiguity.

It seems strange to me that somewhere along the way from the Balfour Declaration, through the major wars and minor conflicts, it has become enshrined as an inviolable principle that the territories belong to the Palestinians, and Israel must transfer them or compensate their owners.

It might be possible to convince me that for practical reasons Israel should not hold on to all of the territories, but I certainly do not start from the position that they are Palestinian territories which Israel must give back to their rightful owners! But this is the position expressed above, and what bothers me about it is the slippery slope to the next step, which is the general Palestinian position that all of the area of the mandate belongs to them, from the river to the sea. If we agree that the territories are Palestinian, what is the distinction between them and the rest of Israel?

Ha’aretz continues to display its remarkable perspective as follows:

Moreover, time is not on the side of pragmatic forces in the Middle East. Israel’s failed war in Lebanon, and the failure of American policy in Iraq, have raised the status of Shi’ite fanatics like Hassan Nasrallah, who receive support from Iran. [my emphasis]

Israel’s war? Somehow I’d thought that Hezbollah’s invasion of Israel, the kidnappings, and the rocket attacks would make it Nasrallah’s war.

And here’s the main point Ha’aretz wants to make:

Without a substantive change in the situation in the territories [i.e., Israel abandoning them], Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip is liable to turn out to be the first step in a takeover of the entire territories by Islamic fanatics.

And I ask: How will an abandonment of the West Bank be different from the abandonment of Gaza?

Olmert, Peres, Abbas, and Fayad may sign a document with great fanfare, and maybe more Nobel Prizes will be distributed. Then, when the IDF has evacuated the Jewish residents from the Judenrein province of Palestine and has withdrawn across the green line, what will prevent Hamas from doing exactly what they did in Gaza?

Maybe this time they won’t even have to fight; perhaps the Saudis can negotiate a unity government for them.

Technorati Tags: Ha’aretz, Peres, Olmert, Abbas, Israel, Palestinians, West Bank, Hamas

Perhaps we shouldn’t have bolstered Abbas so much:

US House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has warned Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas not to talk to an unreformed Hamas about reentering a unity government ahead of a visit to Israel and the West Bank next week.

“Dealing with Hamas and being in any coalition with Hamas [without Hamas accepting international demands to stop terrorism and recognize Israel] would be something which we would look on with opposition and suspicion,” Hoyer (D-Maryland) told The Jerusalem Post in a telephone interview Wednesday. He said such a government would be a “setback” and a “cause for concern.”

Hoyer’s comments followed a Post report that officials from Abbas’s Fatah party have been conducting secret negotiations with Hamas about a possible reconciliation, with the help of mediators from Arab countries. — Jerusalem Post

I just love watching slow-motion train wrecks. This whole scenario was predicted in detail (by Ami Isseroff and others) some time ago.

The US will look very progressive, won’t it, lobbying against Palestinan reconciliation. On the other hand, a rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas will be the death of the Bush Administration’s latest Israeli-Palestinian policy — and probably of some Israelis too, as Hamas adds even more armaments to its collection.

The obvious flaws in the US policy make it hard to understand why it was selected in the first place. The fact that the “mediators from Arab countries” are probably the Saudis may give us a clue.

Technorati Tags: Hoyer, Palestinians, Hamas, Fatah