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YNet reports:

The US is transferring $150 million in aid to the Palestinian government in coming days, the Palestinian Prime Minister announced Wednesday.

The payment is part of a total of $550 million the US pledged to pay to the Palestinians over three years, part of a total of $7.7 billion in pledges from international donors made at a conference in Paris in December.

[Palestinian Authority PM Salam] Fayyad said the US money would go directly to the national treasury, to be used for running the cash-strapped government.

Everybody knows that the Palestinian Authority (PA) under Mahmoud Abbas and Fayyad does not represent a significant number of Palestinians, is not capable of making a peace deal with Israel that both sides could accept, and could not enforce such a deal if it were made.

Everybody knows that the only thing keeping the PA from losing control of the West Bank as happened in Gaza is the presence of the IDF.

Abbas’ frustration at the failure to make progress in talks that are supposed to lead to an independent Palestinian state is disingenuous: he knows that Israel cannot accept a right of return for refugee descendants, and he knows that Palestinians will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Israeli PM Olmert’s pretense at negotiating with Abbas is just that, because he knows the same things.

President Bush knows that “a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians that defines a Palestinian state” will not be signed this year, at least not a meaningful one.

Everybody knows that Hamas is more popular among Palestinians than any other political entity.

Everybody knows, even Javier Solana of the EU must know by now, that Hamas is committed to destroying Israel, not ‘liberating the Palestinians’ from the 1967 occupation. And everybody knows that Hamas is funded by Iran, which is also committed to same goal.

And everybody knows that establishing a peaceful Palestinian state — especially one which is “viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent” in President Bush’s words — while Hamas controls Gaza and threatens to take over the West Bank — is simply impossible.

So why are millions, indeed billions, earmarked for this project, when everyone knows it is entirely a charade?

Why do we continue to hear the same nonsense from politicians and media about the importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, when the greatest problem — the problem that threatens to engulf the world in nuclear war — is the struggle between Iran and its allies and proxies and the West for control of the Middle East and its resources? Why is less attention paid to the nuclear weapons presently in the hands of the highly unstable Pakistan and those soon to be built by Iran than to the importance of a ‘contiguous’ Palestinian state?

Good questions.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians

Maybe I need to change the station on my clock radio.

A few days ago I awoke to an NPR interview with a Palestinian plumber, in which the usual complaints about checkpoints, humiliation, and above all the security barrier were rehearsed in personal, emotional detail. Israel’s point of view was represented in entirety by the following statement by NPR’s Eric Westerveldt:

Israeli officials insist the wall and checkpoints are needed to stop Palestinian attacks inside Israel.

NPR has been criticized for their biased coverage on numerous occasions, and they say that although one piece may present a particular point of view, there will be others expressing the other side. So I said to myself “they owe us one”.

Today I got what they probably consider the Israeli point of view: “Israelis, Government Divided on Dealing with Hamas“. Big surprise, the four minute segment is almost all Israelis who want to talk to Hamas. Perhaps 30 seconds is given to a government spokesman who claims that the government is opposed to such negotiations — except indirect talks about the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas for over a year — and one woman who doesn’t trust Hamas.

NPR mentions a recent poll in which “two thirds of Israelis favored direct talks with Hamas“, but failed to explain that the question asked referred to talks intended to bring about the release of Shalit! So actually the government is in agreement with popular opinion on this issue.

Then they bring on Shlomo Brom, a former general who is far to the Left in Israeli politics, calling for a cease-fire, opening the crossings between Israel and Gaza, and for Israel to ’supply the needs’ of Gaza’s population.

The impression is given that this position — which is held by only a tiny minority of Israelis — is actually popular, as opposed to the hard-line stance of the government. But of course this is not so.

The reasons to not hold direct talks with Hamas and especially not to negotiate a cease-fire are simple.

For one, Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. It’s not possible to reach an accommodation with someone whose goal and bottom line is wiping you out. There isn’t a middle path between being and non-being.

A cease-fire would be advantageous to Hamas and bad for Israel. Barry Rubin writes,

A cease-fire is riddled with problems, paradoxically bringing even more violence. Hamas won’t observe it, letting both its own members and others attack Israel while inciting murder through every institution. The ceasefire won’t last long; Hamas would use it to strengthen its rule and army while demanding a reward for its “moderation”: an end to sanctions and diplomatic isolation; even Western aid.

Hamas is not a ‘normal’ political organization, as NPR wishes us to think. Hamas was dedicated to destroying Israel when it was out of power, and continued to be so dedicated after it took control of Gaza. Hamas did its best to murder Israelis when Gaza was under occupation, and continues to do its best now that Israel has completely withdrawn. When Hamas could have had international recognition (and aid) simply by agreeing to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept prior agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, they refused.

Hamas today is funded massively by Iran, which uses it as one of its proxies (the other main ones are Syria and Hezbollah). Iran is very interested in eliminating Israel, as I recently wrote:

There are multiple reasons for Iranian policy towards Israel, which include religious motives, the desire to earn propaganda points in the wider Arab and Muslim world, and their understanding that Israel is a base for American power in the Mideast which must be neutralized in order to expel Western influence from the region.

Naturally, NPR and Shlomo Brom don’t mention the Iranian context at all.

Update [19 Mar 2008 1729 PDT]:

Soccer Dad points out that there is a new poll in which only 25% of Israelis and just 17% of Israeli Jews want to talk to Hamas. Why the difference from the Ha’aretz poll? Read his explanation here.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, NPR

The US ambassador to Israel, Richard Jones, who once announced that Jonathan Pollard was lucky not to have been executed, has done it again.

On Monday during a tour of Mea Shearim, a haredi neighborhood bordering on Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, US Ambassador to Israel Richard H. Jones told The Jerusalem Post that the US was “concerned about where things are built in Jerusalem.”

Referring to the overcrowded haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Jones said he was aware of the shortage of housing, but added: “Sometimes people do have to move to a different location. They cannot always stay close to their families.” — Jerusalem Post

Jones apparently believes that all areas which were not part of Israel between 1948 and 1967 belong to the Palestinians.

This contradicts UN resolution 242 (as interpreted by those who wrote it), the view of the Israeli government, and President Bush’s letter to PM Sharon of April 2004. All of these agree that borders will be decided by negotiations between the parties concerned, and will not necessarily be identical with the pre-1967 cease-fire lines.

Unfortunately, the idea that all of the territory that changed hands in 1967 is ‘Palestinian land’ is constantly repeated in anti-Israel circles and apparently this includes the US State Department.

Jones also seems to think that Israel is a banana republic whose policies can be micromanaged by the US.

Possibly Jones learned his skills as an assistant to Paul Bremer in the Coalition Provisional Authority, where many of the decisions were taken that resulted in the unhappy situation of the US today in Iraq. Or, when as Ambassador to Kuwait, he was alleged to have intervened on behalf of a Kuwaiti gasoline supplier which overcharged the US military $61 million.

I can agree with Jones on one point: sometimes people do have to move. Take, for example, the US embassy in Tel Aviv.

Technorati Tags: Richard Jones, Israel

German chancellor Angela Merkel is visiting Israel, and plans to discuss Germany’s “historical responsibility”.

Most people would understand this to mean something like “Germany’s debt to the Jewish People as a result of the Holocaust”. And some would argue that the debt has been paid, or the debt can never be paid, or that the guilty Germans are almost all dead now, or that they should or should not be forgiven.

But there is another aspect of this that I would like to talk about which is alive and contemporary. This is the way Nazi ideology became part and parcel of the Arab, and particularly Palestinian Arab world view, and how this has contributed to their position that any solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict short of another Jewish genocide is unacceptable.

In his book “History Upside Down: the Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression“, David Meir-Levi explains how Hamas’ parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, began a “political and military relationship with Nazi Germany” in the 1930’s, and how its leader Hassan al-Banna was inspired by Nazism.

Of course the most famous Palestinian Arab Nazi — who was closely connected to the Brotherhood — was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who helped raise Muslim armies for Hitler in the Balkans, and who intended to implement the Final Solution in Palestine. Matthias Küntzel writes,

The Mufti’s aim was to “unite all the Arab lands in a common hatred of the British and Jews”, as he wrote in a letter to Adolf Hitler. Antisemitism, based on the notion of a Jewish world conspiracy, however, was not rooted in Islamic tradition but, rather, in European ideological models.

The Mufti therefore seized on the only instrument that really moved the Arab masses: Islam. He invented a new form of Jew-hatred by recasting it in an Islamic mould. He was the first to translate Christian antisemitism into Islamic language, thus creating an “Islamic antisemitism”. His first major manifesto bore the title “Islam-Judaism. Appeal of the Grand Mufti to the Islamic World in the Year 1937”. This 31-page pamphlet reached the entire Arab world and there are indications that Nazi agents helped draw it up. Let me quote at least a short passage from it:

“The struggle between the Jews and Islam began when Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina… The Jewish methods were, even in those days, the same as now. As always, their weapon was slander… They said that Muhammad was a swindler… they began to ask Muhammad senseless and insoluble questions… and they endeavoured to destroy the Muslims… If the Jews could betray Muhammad in this way, how will they betray Muslims today? The verses from the Koran and hadith prove to you that the Jews were the fiercest opponents of Islam and are still trying to destroy it.”

Küntzel shows how today’s virulent Arab antisemitism, as exemplified by the Hamas Covenant, was actually a melding of the “DNA” of anti-Jewish attitudes in traditional Islam with the genocidal hatred of Adolf Hitler (he also shows how the Muslim Brotherhood is the direct ancestor of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups).

The British, by the way, who elevated Husseini to his position in order to damage Jewish and French interests in the Mideast, and who helped Muslim facists escape after WWII (see John Loftus, “The Muslim Brotherhood, Nazis, and Al-Qaeda“), also bear quite a bit of “historical responsibility” for what has happened to Jews in the Mideast since the war and what has happened to the US, Britain, Spain, and numerous other nations since 9/11.

The point of all this is that Nazism did not die in Hitler’s bunker in 1945. It lives on in Arab Jew hatred, and this perhaps explains why the Arabs and especially Palestinians have consistently been allergic to a solution of the conflict that leaves Israel in existence.

It also explains why Muslim Jew hatred today, as exemplified by Hamas and Hezbollah, is not limited only to the Jews of the Middle East, but extends to all Jewry everywhere.

Technorati Tags: antisemitism, anti-Semitism, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Nazisim, Germany, al-Husseini

No degree of hateful expression (or action) is forbidden to them:

The editor of a pan-Arab daily published in London says the terrorist attack on Jerusalem’s Mercaz Harav Yeshiva on March 6 attack was “justified” and that the religious seminary is responsible for “hatching Israeli extremists and fundamentalists.”

In his lead article last Sunday, Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, chose not to condemn the shooting attack in which eight students were killed and nine were wounded, and said the celebrations in Gaza that followed symbolized the “courage of the Palestinian nation.” — Jerusalem Post

The Palestinian Arabs have always murdered Jews. When there were only a few Jews in the region, as in Tzfat in 1834, the Arabs raped and murdered them. Before the founding of the State of Israel, as in Hevron in 1929, the Arabs murdered Jews. During the so-called Arab Revolt of 1936-39, the Nazi-inspired and financed Palestinian Arabs murdered Jews.

When the UN partition resolution was approved in 1947, guess what the Arabs did? Yes, and they also did it in the period between 1948 and 1967, when ‘the occupation’ began and Yasser Arafat learned from his Soviet backers that he could get Western liberals on his side by recasting his racist, genocidal campaign as a ‘war of national liberation’, and the outnumbered Jews as a powerful colonialist oppressor.

Now everything is supposed to be about Palestinian human rights, occupation, and oppression, but we can get a clue toward what it is really about by looking at the Hamas Covenant, by noticing that the Arabs have refused every possible compromise that would leave Israel standing, by the fact that they continue to attack Israel from Gaza after the withdrawal, and — quite convincingly — simply by listening to them.

Israeli extremists and fundamentalists murdered by courageous Palestinians

Top left: Avraham David Moses (16), Ro’i Roth (18), Neria Cohen (15), Yonatan Yitzhak Eldar (16); Bottom: Yochai Lifshitz (18), Segev Peniel Avihail (15), Yehonadav Haim Hirschfeld (19), Doron Meherete (26).

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Merkaz haRav, genocide

The Islamic Republic of Iran

The Islamic Republic of Iran is geographically the 18th largest country in the world and has more than 70 million inhabitants. It ranks third worldwide in proven oil reserves (after Saudi Arabia and Canada), and second in natural gas (after Russia).

Iran is governed by a radical Islamic regime which hangs homosexuals and stones adulterers, persecutes religious minorities and political dissidents, executes juvenile offenders, and arrests women for ‘improper’ dress (see: Human Rights Watch, Iran).

Crude oil futures yesterday closed at more than $110/bbl. and a gallon of gasoline in the US will shortly cost $4.00 (this especially benefits Iran, whose cost of production is greater than Saudi Arabia’s). As the American economy weakens — in part due to the increased outflow of dollars for petroleum — Iranian influence throughout the world increases.

One of the things Iran is doing with its huge windfall of oil profits is to develop nuclear bombs and missiles to deliver them. Some analysts say that Iran is likely to have a usable nuclear weapon by 2009. That’s next year, folks.

One of Iran’s goals is to dominate the Middle East, replacing Saudi Arabia as the predominant power. To this end it has allied itself with (or made a satellite of) Syria, through which it supplies Hezbollah, its proxy in the struggle for control of Lebanon.

Another goal is to destroy Israel, which has only 7 million people, an area 1.3% of Iran’s, and no oil reserves. The Iranian leadership is quite outspoken about this.

One strategy is to train and supply anti-Israel terrorists among the Palestinians and others. The rocket arsenals of Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas are bought and paid for by Iran. If you wonder how Hamas, allegedly “under seige” in Gaza, manages to fire tens of rockets a day and continuously attempt to attack Israeli soldiers and civilians near the Gaza/Israel border, wonder no longer.

This explains how the supposedly weak and oppressed Palestinians can present a real threat to Israel: Iran has their back.

There are multiple reasons for Iranian policy towards Israel, which include religious motives, the desire to earn propaganda points in the wider Arab and Muslim world, and their understanding that Israel is a base for American power in the Mideast which must be neutralized in order to expel Western influence from the region.

Unfortunately, many Westerners (like the Yale and Harvard educated cupcake discussed in the previous post and British PM Gordon Brown) ignore the last part, and assume that Iran is just Israel’s problem.

Yossi Klein Halevy writes,

So long as the international community tries to create a Palestinian state without seriously confronting the jihadists, Iran and its proxies will continue to make peace impossible–not by “derailing” negotiations, but by making those negotiations irrelevant.

And if the community does not succeed in stopping Iran’s anti-Israel program, the results will not be pretty.

Understandably, Israel has avoided a confrontation with Iran, which could result in the most devastating war Israel has fought. But as the siege around Israel’s borders tightens and as the Iranian nuclear program quickens, that direct confrontation becomes increasingly likely.

According to a just-released strategic assessment by the Israeli intelligence community, 2008 will be the “Year of Iran.” The Lebanese government, warns the assessment, could collapse in the coming months, allowing Hezbollah to take power. Meanwhile, Hezbollah and Hamas are considering a coordinated rocket assault on Israeli population centers, almost all of which are within rocket range of either group. And, according to the strategic assessment, sometime within the coming year, or by early 2009 at the latest, Iran will achieve nuclear capability. The threat that emerges from the intelligence assessment may well be the most acute that Israel has ever faced.

Western inaction will force Israel to act out of simple self-preservation. Maybe that’s the intention?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iran

Those who don’t get it — and there are many — should not style themselves “foreign policy experts”.

Ms. Power, meet Mr. Ahmadinejad…
By Barry Rubin

A friend asked me about the meaning of the following quote from a now-former Obama advisor:

…Syria’s really tricky. I think if we could get our policy in Israel straight, then you get a sort of credibility to convene Arab governments that have a civil society with — hopefully, you still have a few allies in Europe and elsewhere — and actually start to have the difficult conversation about how one can liberalize. — Samantha Power

I understand what she means and it is very important. It is the most basic concept of many or most Middle East “experts,” politicians, and the media. It says: if we could move away from Israel and force it to surrender — oops, to make peace — working with all those smart European governments, then the United States could help lead the Arab world to be democracies. Israel’s policy is the cause of all the problems, even the lack of democracy in the Arabic-speaking world.

That is what it says very clearly. It is extremely stupid. But anyone who thinks of the Arab world in these terms is not only an idiot, but also a very good candidate to become a highly rewarded, well paid, frequently published, person who will get tenure/op-eds in leading newspapers, etc.

We are supposed to believe, in this conception, that these countries don’t really exist, they don’t have societies, their regimes don’t have interests, they don’t have issues, they don’t have histories or internal struggles or class systems or ethnic and religious tensions. No, everything in these lands are just reflections of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Of course if the “genius” in question knows nothing about those societies, regimes, ideologies, issues, interests, histories, and just plain human beings — this seems logical.

And this is why Western policy toward the Middle East is in such a serious mess and hasn’t worked. This will continue to be true unless they stop the Israel-centric explanation for everything in the region and take into account dictatorship, ideology, Islamism, Arab nationalism, traditional social structures, religious world views, imperialist ambitions and chauvinist attitudes, the treatment of women, economic systems. You know, all the stuff that counts everywhere else in the world.

But of course what this vision does is that it tells people that they should really hate Israel. After all, if Israel didn’t exist–or acted in a way so that it would not exist for much longer–we are to believe that the Middle East would be peaceful, democratic, moderate and pro-Western. If you believe this than you really do think that the world would be a better place without Israel. Ms. Power, meet Mr. Ahmadinejad.

. . .

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). His latest books are The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan) and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

Technorati Tags: Samantha Power, Israel, Syria, Middle East, foreign policy

Mourner’s tent for Merkaz haRav murderer, with flags of Hamas, Fatah, and Hezbollah

From Arutz Sheva:

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter (Kadima) gave the police an order Wednesday to destroy the home of the family of the terrorist who murdered eight yeshiva students last Thursday night. The order came after six days of deliberations and legal consultations.

My prediction: this will not happen. There will be the usual international outrage, and pressure will be applied “in order to not damage the peace process any further”.

Israel does not have the freedom of action of a sovereign nation in internal affairs — compare, for example, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Iran.

Dichter has said that there are no legal grounds to remove the murderer’s mourners’ tent. The family did remove Hamas and Hezbollah flags when requested to do so by police. In my opinion, there are grounds having to do with national self-respect that require the removal of the tent, and legal grounds need to be found.

So far, spokesmen from Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, the Sudan, and others have praised the murderous attack. Some called it ‘courageous’, others said that the victims (7 out of 8 were teenagers) were ‘dangerous extremists’, who learned to ‘hate Arabs’ at the Merkaz haRav Yeshiva. All saw it as a great victory for their side.

Mick Napier of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign — just one example from many similar organizations worldwide — called the yeshiva “a training centre for illegal occupation, murder and ‘Arabs to the Gas Chambers’”. He considers the attack justified retaliation for the ‘murder’ of Palestinians in Gaza.

He went on to ‘explain’ the philosophy of the yeshiva as follows:

The Mercaz HaRav yeshiva is based on contempt for all Gentiles, not only Arabs. … [the founder of the yeshiva, haRav Abraham Yitzchak haCohen] Kook’s classification of Palestinians as non-human allows the graduates of Mercaz HaRav to ignore those commandments that forbid stealing, murder and coveting.

Since non-Jews are similar to another species in the Kooks’ world-view, the very notion of human rights governing the relations between Jews and others is naturally repugnant to his followers…The Kooks’ primitive god is similar to that of their American Christian fundamentalist counterparts. Both groups of fundamentalists believe that the coming of the Messiah is imminent…they agree that the normal forms of human decency are no longer in force…

Napier’s source is a book on Jewish fundamentalism by Shahak and Mezvinsky, which is quoted frequently by right- and left-wing antisemites, including David Duke of the KKK and Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada. This kind of stuff is stock in trade for the massive hate-Israel industry.

Condoleezza Rice and British PM Gordon Brown, in their condemnations of the attack, managed to mention the importance of the [worthless] ‘peace process’. So I expect they will want to do their best to ‘reduce tensions’ by preventing any form of retaliation by Israel, even including the demolition of the terrorist’s house.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Merkaz haRav

From YNet:

Recent developments on the Arab-Israeli front include the following: A massacre at a Jerusalem Jewish seminary perpetrated by an east Jerusalem resident, a near lynch of municipal parking inspectors, a call for martyrdom at a mass rally in Umm al Fahm, and repeated warnings issued by the Shin Bet director indicating that Israeli Arabs are increasingly involved in terror activities….

According to Dr. Dan Shiftan of the University Of Haifa School Of Political Science, “we are witnessing an ongoing process of radicalization in Arab society…. the stone throwing incidents we have witnessed as of late are no coincidence, and are a direct product of this radicalization, which legitimizes violence in retaliation for perceived Jewish atrocities.”

The majority of the Arab public, notes Shiftan, chooses to endorse leaders that explicitly call for the annihilation of the State of Israel. “Arabs have such an extreme, incendiary leadership today because these are the very views that get Arab leaders elected. Arab leaders that are elected these days must espouse radical views not only calling for the destruction of Israel, but also supporting all of Israel’s enemies worldwide…Any Jew-murdering terrorist is immediately embraced by the current Arab leadership.”

From the Arab point of view, the problem is discrimination against Israeli Arabs and incitement against them by right-wing politicians:

Dr. Khaled Abu-Asba, a professor for the sociology of education at the university of Haifa has also, like Shiftan, studied Israel’s Arab population extensively for many years. Like Shiftan, he blames radicalism and incitement for the utter breach of trust between Jews and Israeli Arabs, but believes that the incitement in question stems form Israeli rightist[s].

“There is an onslaught of abuse these days,” says Abu-Asba. “People blame Arab leaders for instigating violence, but when a Jewish MK says ‘we’ll throw you out’ or ‘we’ll take care of you all’ no one says a word. Is this not incitement? Are there Arab MKs making similar statements?”

Abu-Asba further notes that “as Israeli Arabs we are Israeli citizens, but also members of the Palestinian people with political views befitting such….as Israeli Arabs we are hurt most by the current violence as we are caught right in the middle of the fray.”

There is no doubt that discrimination against Israeli Arabs exists. On the other hand, perceived differences in allocation of public funds, etc. are also due to different standards of governance in Jewish and Arab localities (which are run according to traditional patronage systems).

But discrimination and allocation of resources are problems that can be dealt with. The intractable part is ‘political views’ among the Arabs that there should not be a Jewish state, and the support of ‘leaders’ who call for the murder of Jews and the destruction of the state.

Unfortunately, this point of view is prevalent among the opinion leaders and intellectuals among the Israeli Arabs (see my post “Israeli Arab intellectuals are irresponsible“).

Israelis, Jewish and Arab, need to ask themselves seriously “what will be the future”? In particular, those Arabs who are advocating civil war — because that is what they are in fact advocating — should understand that they will probably lose such a war and bring upon themselves a nakba (catastrophe) greater than that of 1948.

Although it seems unthinkable to them, peace and cooperation would be far more beneficial.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Israeli Arabs

If this is true, it’s not good:

The report quoted a “senior Palestinian source” as saying that if the 30-day [trial] period proves successful, Israel will assent to the Egyptian calm initiative, including the cessation of ground and air attacks in the Gaza Strip and refraining from retaliating for the terror attack at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva last week.

There can’t be peace between Israel and Hamas. Hamas exists for the destruction of Israel. If Hamas is allowed to continue existing, it will continue trying to destroy Israel. Israel should keep up the pressure until Hamas is gone.

The timing of the proposal is par for the course; Hamas often offers a cease-fire immediately after a particularly horrible outrage like the Merkaz haRav massacre.

Another London-based pan-Arab daily, Al Hayat, quoted an Egyptian source as saying that the specific Israeli conditions for the 30-days test period included a complete halt of rocket attacks against Israel and on construction of smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border.

According to the source, [Defense Ministry official Amos] Gilad emphasized that Israel agreed to the calm on the condition that it would not be used by Palestinians for rearmament.

They would never do that, would they?

On Monday, both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak emphatically denied there was any kind of negotiating process with Hamas, and insisted that the IDF “retained its freedom of action” in the Strip. — Jerusalem Post

Imagine my relief. Keep in mind that the ‘negotiating process’ is with Egypt, not directly with Hamas.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas

‘Nationalism’ is the phenomenon of a national or ethnic community desiring self-determination — to live in a state where they are the rulers.

Zionism is certainly a form of nationalism, in which the Jews, finding it impossible to live as second or third-class citizens under regimes either antisemitic themselves or tolerant of antisemitism, sought self-determination. The Jews were happy to accept the 1947 UN partition of what was left of the original Palestine Mandate, because they wanted a state.

The Palestinian Arabs — and the rest of the Arab world — have opposed every partition, from the minimal Peel Commission proposal of 1937, the UN partion of 1947, and the Clinton-Barak offer of 2000. Their ‘nationalism’ is not a desire for self-determination, but exists almost entirely as opposition to the Jewish state on ‘their’ land. Here is Mahmoud al-Zahar of Hamas:

“Palestine means Palestine in its entirety - from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River, from Ras Al-Naqura to Rafah. We cannot give up a single inch of it. Therefore, we will not recognize the Israeli enemy’s [right] to a single inch. — MEMRI

This is not about making a Palestinian state, it’s about negating the Jewish state.

Palestinian actions on the Israel withdrawal from Gaza make this attitude clear. For the first time, Palestinian Arabs had complete control of the Gaza strip. An American (Jewish) donor donated money to buy the greenhouses of the expelled Jewish settlers so that they could be given to the residents intact. Large amounts of money were made available by the EU and others to jump-start the economy in the region.

The response was to destroy everything left standing, to fire mortars at the crossing points between Gaza and Israel, to fire rockets at Sderot and surrounding communities, to use scarce resources to smuggle weapons and explosives from Egypt, to dig tunnels under the border with Israel to kill and kidnap Israeli soldiers, to make it impossible for Gazans to work in Israel or to develop the local economy, to do their best to provoke Israel — in short, to create chaos and make war.

This is not the behavior of a people that desires a state of their own. It is simply an expression of hatred and the wish to destroy, so that they can take what is not theirs.

Well, this is Hamas, after all. What about the ‘moderate’ Palestinians as exemplified by Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas?

Abbas claims that he wants a state alongside Israel, not instead of it as Hamas does. But he insists on the ‘right of return’ to Israel for almost five million descendants of 1948 refugees, something that would end it. He resolutely refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He does absolutely nothing to suppress Hamas terrorism in the areas he controls, or even the gunmen of Fatah’s own al-Aqsa brigades. And last but not least, he continues to permit the hateful antisemitic incitement against Israel and Jews from every educational, media, and religious organ of the Palestinian Authority that he leads.

Raed Salah is an Arab citizen of Israel who leads the northern branch of the ‘Islamic Movement’. He is the former mayor of the large town of Umm el-Fahm. You could call him a religious nationalist. Here is what he says about Jerusalem:

[Salah] went on to deny any Israeli or Jewish historical claim to the city, denying that there ever existed a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount.

“The claims of the Jews are big lies and they have no right to any speck of dust here,” he said.

And in case there is any doubt of where he is coming from,

During his sermon in Jerusalem’s Wadi Joz neighborhood on February 16 of last year, Salah urged supporters to start a third intifada in order to “save al-Aksa Mosque, free Jerusalem and end the occupation.”

Salah’s speech also attacked Jews, saying, “They want to build their temple at a time when our blood is on their clothes, on their doorsteps, in their food and in their drinks. Our blood has passed from one ‘general terrorist’ to another ‘general terrorist.’”

He also said, “We are not those who ate bread dipped in children’s blood.” – Jerusalem Post

This is the true face of Palestinian ideology, which is not really a form of nationalism but rather an irredentist cult, characterized by a propensity to murder, whose imagery and metaphors are those of blood and death.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian nationalism

This seems pretty obvious to me, but somehow the government of the US — as well as our leading Presidential candidates — seem to miss it. Wake up, and pay attention to how they are fooling us!

If They Don’t Fool You They Can’t Defeat You
By Barry Rubin

Radical forces in the Middle East have rewritten the international rulebook in a way designed so “they can’t lose.” That is, there’s no easy response to their behavior and strategies.

What’s even more worrisome is the widespread failure in the West even to realize this is happening. Hamas and Hezbollah fire from among civilians and use civilian homes for military purposes; Syria or Iran deploy disinformation, radical regimes pretend moderation, and there are plenty of suckers to take the bait.

Extremism makes many believe that kind words and concessions can transform them; intransigence produces a response that if they won’t give up we must do so.

Here are some new rules in which “we” represents such disparate forces as Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraqi insurgents, al-Qaeda, Syria, the Taliban, and others including radical Arab nationalists. These forces are not all alike or allied but do often follow a parallel set of rules quite different from how international affairs have generally been conducted.

(more…)