FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

News item:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed that plans to present two female Palestinian terrorists with a medal of honor have been withdrawn…

The Al Kuds Mark of Honor, the PLO’s highest medal, was meant be awarded in a ceremony in Ramallah Thursday to two female terrorists who helped kill Israelis. The terrorists’ families were slated to receive the honors in their stead.

The two female terrorists were Ahlam Tamimi, a Hamas affiliate serving a life sentence for driving the suicide bomber who exploded himself in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, killing at least half a dozen people, and Amra Muna, who seduced Ophir Rahum over the Internet and then lured him to Ramallah where he was murdered.

Conferring the Al Kuds Mark of Honor is decided at the discretion of the PA president, and he alone has the final say when choosing the Palestinians to be honored with the medal. — Jerusalem Post

This is almost…unintelligible.

Did Abbas not know who he was recommending for “the PLO’s highest medal”? Did he think the Israelis wouldn’t notice? Did he think they would notice but not care?

Does he think that murdering Israeli civilians is the highest act that a Palestinian can perform?

Why does Israel continue with the charade that there is a possibility of peace with the PLO? How long will it take to grasp that a fundamental mistake that was made at Oslo when the terrorist murderers of the PLO/Fatah were chosen to represent the Palestinians?

After all the historical experience with those who want to destroy the Jewish people and the Jewish state, how can we have forgotten what an enemy is and how we must deal with one? Has this concept been invalidated in the postmodern world?

Mahmoud Abbas (courtesy CoxandForkum.com)

Technorati Tags: Israel, Abbas, PLO

YNet reports:

A group of young Meretz Party activists sent a letter on Wednesday to Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal calling on him to release kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, recognize the State of Israel and launch negotiations on a ceasefire to promote the establishment of a Palestinian state…

“The Israeli occupation and the Palestinian terror have failed. The only solution is mutual recognition of the fact that both nations are here to stay and must therefore develop a normal relationship,” they told Mashaal in the letter.

If only it were that simple!

I don’t know what the Meretz activists think — that Mashaal will see their point, that his statement that he would agree to an independent Palestinian state with pre-1967 borders was a real offer of peace which must be pursued, or what.

It’s certain that Mashaal has not repudiated the Hamas Covenant, which calls for Israel to be destroyed.

This is a textbook case of why the ‘Western liberal approach’ to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict doesn’t work.

A normal relationship between the two nations is the last thing that Mashaal wants. Ending the occupation of the territories, establishing a Palestinian state and living in peace and prosperity is not his goal. In Mashaal’s world, the Palestinian terror has not failed. It has gained Hamas control of Gaza, and will shortly do the same for much of the West Bank. No, it has not yet succeeded in driving the Jews from Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, but in time he believes that it will.

Why on earth should he agree to end a policy that is achieving its aims in order to obtain a goal that he does not desire?

The Meretz activists think that Mashaal wants what they want: peace and prosperity. In fact, not even ‘moderate’ Palestinians like Mahmoud Abbas want this. What they want is to reverse the outcome of 1948 and recover their honor by expelling the Jews from the land that they believe was stolen from them.

From a Western point of view, the Palestinians are irrational, but they are what they are.

I think we are not going to succeed in teaching the Palestinians history. We are not going to explain to them that the Jewish state is really legitimate, and that they should give up the irredentist dream which has come to dominate the consciousness of the entire people — indeed, which has in essence created the ‘Palestinian people’.

What we need to do is to teach them in a practical way that terrorism will not bring their goal closer, and that the consequences of its employment will be horrific for them.

What this implies will not make the Meretz activists happy. One thing is that Israel must never respond to terrorism by giving up control of land, as she did in Gaza. ‘Ending the occupation’ is not likely in the near-term. And another is that the response to terrorism must be severe.

Does this mean that there is never a possibility of peace? Assuming that Israel is capable of continuing the struggle with as much or more perseverance as the Arabs, then some day an Arab leadership will arise that is prepared to say, as Rabin did, “Enough”.

But this won’t be today, and it certainly won’t be Mashaal!

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Mashaal, Meretz

Below: the Devil takes full possession of Jimmy Carter’s soul. I wonder what he had to pay for it?

Carter lays wreath at grave of Yasser Arafat

Jimmy Carter is not (entirely) senile, and he has read a history book. He knows full well that Yasser Arafat is personally responsible for the murder of countless Jews, mostly innocent civilians, children, Olympic athletes, and an old man in a wheelchair.

He knows full well that at least three wars were started as a direct result of Yasser Arafat’s machinations, in which hundreds of young Jordanians, Lebanese, Israelis, Palestinians and others were killed.

He knows full well that Yasser Arafat had hundreds of Palestinian Arabs who were his political opponents murdered, allegedly for ‘collaboration’ with Israel.

He knows full well that Yasser Arafat stole literally billions of dollars which were intended to build a Palestinian economy and improve the condition of the Palestinian Arabs, and deposited it in his Swiss bank account. His fat, spoiled wife still gets $10,000 a month from the Palestinian Authority (undoubtedly covered by the US).

He knows full well that Yasser Arafat entered the Oslo ‘peace’ process with no intention to make peace and immediately constructed an ‘educational’ and media system designed to destroy the possibility of peace and to help young children grow up to be martyrs for the cause.

He knows full well that Yasser Arafat destroyed the two-state option by ordering and financing terrorism during the Oslo period and then rejecting the Clinton-Barak proposals in 2000, choosing war instead.

He knows full well that Yasser Arafat made peace between Israel and the Palestinians impossible by intervening at one of the rare historical moments when the conflict could have been solved and preventing its solution. How many more Arabs and Jews have yet to die as a result?

Carter knows all this, but he still honors the foul piece of garbage, the filthy snake who was likely one of the worst political actors of the 20th century (and believe me, he had competition)!

What did the Devil pay him for his soul?

Technorati Tags: Jimmy Carter, Arafat, Satan

Human nature is perverse in many ways. Why are some otherwise reasonable people sexually attracted only to partners who are obviously total losers, over and over? But irrationality is not confined to the personal sphere. There is a dark side of the psyche that pulls some in the direction of destruction and death, that admires really massive evil.

For example, how do you explain the popularity of Adolf Hitler, who started the Second World War and was responsible for the death of as many as 72 million human beings. Why do people collect Nazi memorabilia and dress up in SS uniforms? One would think that evil is repellent, but apparently the opposite is the case for many.

Or take the fascination with mass murderers, or particularly violent ones:

[Charles] Manson’s influence has ranged wide, in pop culture and beyond, covering fashion, graphics, music,] movies, television, and the stage. In an afterword composed for the 1994 edition of the non-fiction Helter Skelter, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi quoted a BBC employee’s assertion that a “neo-Manson cult” existing then in Europe was represented by, among other things, approximately 70 rock bands playing songs by Manson and “songs in support of him.” - Wikipedia

Perhaps there is an evolutionary explanation for this. Someone with no compunctions about murder and a certain degree of cleverness (note that neither Hitler nor Manson were simply brutes) is likely to succeed in a world close to Hobbes’ state of nature, and this renders him an advantageous ally.

This is part of the reason that terrorism works. Terrorism creates fear, which in turn generates both hostility and identification (the Stockholm syndrome). But there is also an element of admiration for the degree of brutality and indifference to suffering that characterizes terrorist acts.

Israel, unfortunately, has been a laboratory for the study of the effects of terrorism since before the founding of the state, and in Israel we see both extremes: extreme hostility and hatred of Arabs by some, and a pathological desire to appease on the part of others — probably more Stockholm syndrome than Manson appreciation, since the latter is mostly displayed by those who view it from a safe distance.

Here in the US, most people responded to 9/11 with fear, horror, and anger as one would expect. But especially in academic environments, there was also a strong current of, almost, approval. Ward Churchill famously blamed the victims:

As for those in the World Trade Center… Well, really, let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire - the “mighty engine of profit” to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved - and they did so both willingly and knowingly… If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it. — Wikipedia, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens

Churchill’s point of view was by no means extraordinary, although possibly he went out of his way to provoke a reaction (and it didn’t help that he impersonated an Indian, falsified his military record, and committed multiple forms of academic misconduct).

Jihadists claim that there has been a wave of conversion to Islam in the world since 9/11 and the other major terrorist actions. I’ve been unable to substantiate or refute this, but if it is true we can suggest several possible reasons, starting with the most benign:

• The increased consciousness and discussion of Islam, which leads ‘searchers’ to consider it.

• The perception that “if they are serious enough to die — and to kill so many — there must be something to it.”

• Finally, a perverse attraction to the massive amount of evil done in the name of Islam.

Technorati Tags: terrorism

News item:

The Gaza Strip’s four main universities have shut down, saying students can’t get to class because of fuel shortages created by Israeli cutbacks…

The shortages were aggravated last week by two developments. Gaza fuel distributors stopped selling the reduced amounts that did arrive in Gaza, to protest the Israeli cutbacks. Then Israel cut off all supplies after gunmen attacked the Israeli terminal that pumps the fuel to Gaza, killing two workers. — Jerusalem Post

Here is a photo of the Islamic University (IU) of Gaza. It certainly looks like an oasis of learning and peace in a place where there’s no shortage of ignorance and violence.

It may be a bit messier since Fatah and Hamas gangs fought here during the Hamas coup. IU was in the news last year, when it was suggested that USAID funds were used to pay for terrorism-related activities at the university:

In a report entitled “Audit of the Adequacy of USAID’s Antiterrorism Vetting Procedures,” dated November 6 and obtained by Fox News, U.S. Agency for International Development Inspector General Donald A. Gambatesa concluded USAID’s “policies, procedures, and controls are not adequate to reasonably ensure against providing assistance to terrorists”…

“In the basement of Gaza Islamic University, a U.S.-funded institution,” said Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who sits on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and requested the audit, “Palestinian police found several Iranian agents and an Iranian general teaching the students in the U.S.-funded chemistry lab how to make suicide bombs.” — Fox News

I am happy to be able to report that these suspicions are completely unfounded. FresnoZionism.org has received a copy of the IU course catalog, and you can see that it is a serious institution of higher learning. Here are a few of the offerings:

Physics 203: Dynamics — Students will learn the classical theory of the motion of bodies when forces are applied, with special emphasis on Newton’s Third Law. Students will construct their own experimental demonstration of the Third Law, showing how expanding gases in a tube closed at one end can propel the tube forward.

Chemistry 107: Physical Chemistry — This is a laboratory course in which students will learn in a practical manner about high-velocity chemical reactions which liberate large amounts of energy in short periods. Students will demonstrate how such reactions can be created using readily available compounds, like fertilizer.

Communications 250: Cellular Technology — Students will learn the use of cellular telephones for innovative purposes, such as remote control of, er, things. Students from Chemistry 107 will participate.

Civil Engineering 110: Underground Construction – Students will learn techniques used in underground construction projects. Laboratory experience will include tunneling very quietly and concealing tunnel openings.

Psychology 300: Seminar in Deviant Behavior — There has recently been an explosion of suicide in certain cultures. Students will study the reasons for it, and develop techniques to encourage discourage it.

Biology 120: Evolution — Students will learn how certain ethnic groups have evolved, especially from apes and pigs.

Poli Sci 150: Religion and Politics — No longer offered. What’s the difference?

Technorati Tags: Islamic University, Gaza

Jimmy Carter, the Saudi-paid CEO of the Saudi-financed Carter Center has decided to meet with Hamas head Khaled Meshaal in Damascus, despite pleas from the Israeli government and several members of the US Congress, and against the recommendation of the US State Department.

But Carter does not take orders from the State Department or Congress, and he certainly doesn’t have great respect for the government of what he calls an ‘apartheid state’, so off he goes.

“I feel quite at ease in doing this,” Carter said. “I think there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process.”

Although he said the meeting would not be a negotiation, he outlined distinct goals.

“I think that it’s very important that at least someone meet with the Hamas leaders to express their views, to ascertain what flexibility they have, to try to induce them to stop all attacks against innocent civilians in Israel and to cooperate with the Fatah as a group that unites the Palestinians, maybe to get them to agree to a cease-fire - things of this kind,” he said…

“I’ve been meeting with Hamas leaders for years,” Carter said. — Jerusalem Post

Has he talked to them about the Hamas Covenant, which says that it is a Muslim’s duty to kill Jews, that not one inch of ‘Palestinian land’ may be possessed by non-Muslims, and that “the only solution to the Palestinian question is jihad”?

Israel refuses to negotiate with Hamas because it is impossible to compromise with someone whose bottom line is your destruction. Unless Carter is capable of getting Meshaal to repudiate these principles, nothing good can come of their meetings.

But plenty of evil can. Hamas can gain respectability and sanction; instead of a gang of terrorist murderers who have killed literally hundreds of Israelis in shootings, suicide bombings, stabbings and missile strikes, Hamas takes on the cloak of a responsible governing power, which represents the half-million Palestinians of Gaza (and which has many supporters in the West Bank as well).

Hamas wants respectability above all, so that it can eventually receive aid from the West and be allowed to rejoin a ‘unity government’ with Fatah, permitting it to take over the West Bank as it did Gaza — and incidentally take possession of the huge amount of weapons pumped into Fatah by the US.

But there are other interests at work here as well. The Sunni Hamas’ present isolation has forced it to turn to Shiite Iran for financing and weapons. A return to at least partial respectability would reduce this dependence, exactly as Carter’s Saudi bosses wish.

So Carter is actually acting to further Saudi aims, helping the Kingdom gain control of the Palestinian movement, or at least keep it away from Iran.

Hamas supporters sometimes say that there is no reason that it should be marginalized. After all, didn’t it win a majority in the Palestinian Authority government by ‘free and fair’ elections (which Carter monitored)?

If you think that the legitimization of Hamas is a good thing, keep this in mind: if the genocidal Hamas is the legitimate voice of the Palestinian people, then Israel is at war — not just with Hamas, but with the Palestinians.

Because there can’t be peace with someone whose bottom line is your destruction.

Technorati Tags: Jimmy Carter, Hamas, Israel, Saudi Arabia

Sometimes it’s hard to talk to someone when you each have different understandings of the words you must use. For example, here are some questions about definitions of terms, put to an Israeli and an Arab:

Q: What is “the occupation”?
Israeli: The legal military occupation of the West Bank, which began in 1967 as the result of a defensive war, and which would end if the Arabs would agree to make peace.
Arab: The illegal Zionist entity in land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, which began in 1948.

Q: What is a “two-state solution”?
I: The Jewish state of Israel living peacefully alongside an Arab Palestinian state.
A: An Arab Palestinian state next to a “bi-national” state with an Arab majority.

Q: What are “equal rights” for Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel?
I: No discrimination in matters of resource allocation, housing, education, health care, employment, etc.
A: The replacement of the Jewish state with a “state of its citizens”, replacement of the flag and national anthem, a veto power on all governmental decisions by the Arab minority, repeal of the Law of Return for Jews, passage of a Law of Return for Palestinian refugees.

Q: What is “firing rockets from Gaza into Israel”?
I: Terrorism, murder.
A: Legitimate resistance to occupation.

Q: Who was “Yasser Arafat”?
I: A terrorist, a murderer, a man who started at least three wars, who caused the deaths of thousands in Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, etc., a liar and thief who stole billions in funds intended to improve the lot of Palestinians, the man who prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state.
A: The father of the Palestinian nation.

Update [13 Apr 2056 PDT]:

Here’s one more, suggested by a reader:

Q: What is “peace”?
I: The condition in which the Arabs have finally given up trying to destroy Israel and turned their attention to the welfare of their people.
A: A pause in the struggle for which we will be paid by the Americans, and during which we can build up our forces for the next round.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians

Palestinians talk about ‘humiliation’ a lot. Humiliation at checkpoints (carefully ignoring the reason for the checkpoints), humiliation by airport security, and above all, humiliation caused by the very presence of the hated Zionists on soil which they believe to be theirs. Today an op-ed in our local newspaper, written by two people prominent in our Muslim and Jewish communities, mentioned the “daily humiliation” of the Palestinians. The very carefully written op-ed — the subject of creative ambiguity is something I’ll discuss another time — reminded me that I wanted to talk about humiliation, and who is humiliating whom.

News item:

Gaza’s only power plant will be shut down in two to three days unless Israel resumes fuel shipments, power plant director Rafik Maliha said Saturday.

Maliha warned that half a million Gazans would be left without electricity.

Israel halted supplies last week after Gaza terrorists attacked the Nahal Oz fuel depot on the Gaza-Israel border and killed two workers.

The power plant’s fuel reserves have been low in recent months, after Israel restricted fuel supplies in hopes of forcing terrorists to halt rocket attacks from Gaza.

First of all, the ‘crisis’ that would occur if the power plant shut down is exaggerated. Gaza gets fully 70% of its power from the Israeli electrical grid and another 5% from Egypt. The Gaza strip has about 500,000 residents in toto, so the statement is sheer nonsense.

Now here is what happened at Nahal Oz: a carefully planned, sophisticated attack was executed as a cooperative effort between Hamas and several other terrorist groups.

It was not a random action. One of the participants, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), named the operation “Breaking Zionist Arrogance.” The Zionist arrogance in question, of course, constitutes supplying fuel to Hamas-ruled Gaza, and the strategic purpose of the attack was to interrupt it so that there will be another pretext for more actions, such as breaking down border fences — either into Egypt, Israel or both. It will be another cause for the massive ‘frustration’ building up in Gaza.

On the same day of the attack on the terminal, about 50 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza fell in Israel.

So what Hamas and friends are saying is the following:

“We will kill you as much as we like and you will supply fuel and electricity with which we will build rockets to kill you more. We will only stop when you agree to open up your borders to us, so that we can go among you and kill even more.”

This is what is truly humiliating.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Nahal Oz, Gaza, Hamas

Did he do this with a straight face?

The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee [inverted reality when he] filed an official letter of complaint against [Israeli] National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer Friday, citing his threats to obliterate Iran should it attack Israel.

Ben-Eliezer, speaking during the national emergency drill held in Israel during the week, warned Iran any such strike would carry “severe repercussions”; and added that the drill “does not simulate a fictitious situation. I think the future will be much harder that the reality we are familiar with.”

Khazaee filed the letter with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, noting that Ben-Eliezer’s remarks were “another example of the aggressive, terrorist nature of the Zionist regime”; and called on the UN Security Council to take action. — YNet

Coming from the nation whose president has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” (or make it “vanish from the page of time”, depending on the translation you prefer), and who continues to threaten Israel and predict its imminent demise at the hands of his proxies, the complaint is somewhat ironic.

Meanwhile, poor threatened Iran announced that they are running hundreds of new centrifuges to enrich uranium for their ‘peaceful’ atomic program. At the same time, satellite imagery has become available of the site from which Iran recently launched its ’space program research’ rocket, and there are indications that Iran is working on a much longer-range weapon there:

Geoffrey Forden, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there was a recently constructed building on the site, about 40 metres in length, which was similar in form and size to the Taepodong long-range missile assembly facility in North Korea.

Avital Johanan, the editor of Jane’s Proliferation, said that the analysis of the Iranian site indicated that Tehran may be about five years away from developing a 6,000km ballistic missile. — TimesOnline

Such a missile could hit targets throughout Europe, not just the Middle East. Surely one would expect the instinct of self-preservation to kick in among the European democracies, and they would put a stop to the Iranian weapons program before it’s too late.

Do the Europeans really want a country ruled by a theocracy, some of whose members may have messianic pretensions and an apocalyptic vision of the near future, to both have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them?

Iranian missile launch site

Technorati Tags: Iran, Israel

National self-respect demands that Israel not give in on the matter of Richard A. Falk (see: Picking the right guys for the job), UN Human Rights Council nominee for “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967″. Despite the fact that the position itself is absurd and simply an excuse for producing more anti-Israel propaganda, Falk is really exceptional in the degree of bias he brings to his position.

In the essay, “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust”, he called on foreign governments to intervene in Gaza.

“The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty,” Mr Falk wrote, adding it was not “an irresponsible overstatement” to associate the Gaza situation with the Holocaust. — UK Daily Telegraph

In a recent BBC interview, Falk reiterated his position, and as a result Israel is refusing to grant him a visa.

His point of view is quite common in the academic world (Falk is Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton), despite the fact that it entirely ignores reality.

In the real world, Hamas fires rockets at Israel every day, sends terrorists across the border to murder Israelis, and is presently engaged in a huge military buildup with the help of Iran and Syria in preparation for the next war, which will probably involve coordinated attacks on Israel by Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south. Meanwhile Israel supplies fuel and electricity to Gaza.

But Falk apparently is quite accustomed to living in fantasy worlds. Here is an example:

On March 24 in an interview with a radio host and former University of Wisconsin instructor, Kevin Barrett, Mr. Falk said, “It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don’t think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently possess.” NY Sun (my emphasis) (h/t: LGF)

Falk claims that he is “not irresponsible” in equating Israel’s actions in Gaza with the Holocaust, and I presume his ideas about 9/11 are also acceptable in his mind. I’m sure his reference to “neoconservatives” had nothing to do with the common linkage of neocons to Jews (Falk himself is of Jewish extraction). It is strange, though, that he doesn’t simply blame the Bush Administration as most 9/11 conspiracy theorists do.

But it is about time that intellectuals like Falk start to understand that their ‘provocative’ talk may have consequences in the real world, including people getting killed. Certainly anything that prevents Israel from responding to Hamas terrorism falls into that category.

Technorati Tags: Richard A. Falk, Falk, Israel, UN, 9/11

It’s well known that some Arab countries do not permit Jews to live in, or even visit them. Until recently the official Saudi Arabian website carried a notice that visas would not be granted to “Jewish people”.

This is of course in contrast to Israel, which permits people of any religious persuasion to visit and live there and guarantees access to holy places of at least three faiths. Indeed, Israel apparently gives special consideration to Muslims, having ceded de facto sovereignty over the sites most central to Judaism to them.

Saudi Arabia was created by Britain, the local colonial power, in 1927-1932. Nobody asked the Jews or the Jewish community in the pre-state settlement what they thought about its Judenrein [Jew-free] policy.

Now perhaps a new state is about to come into being, ruled by the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas — which, incidentally, refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This new state of Palestine will be born out of an agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. And it is already clear that Israel will be required to put her imprimatur on a state that, like Saudi Arabia, will be officially Judenrein.

Not only will Palestine not accept Jews, any living there now will be forced to leave, one assumes, by the Israeli government and the Israeli army. And this will be considered entirely normal by the world, and even by many Israelis!

Moshe Arens, in Ha’aretz (of all places) writes:

The concept of removing all Jews from a certain region is surely repugnant to any person not prepared to deny somebody’s rights on the grounds of his ethnic or religious origin. It brings back the worst memories of the tragedy that befell the Jewish people in World War II. When it is applied to a part of the Land of Israel it is also contrary to the very foundations of Zionism, a movement based on the right of Jews to settle and live in their land, a right that has received international recognition…

It is generally agreed that Israel should not incorporate all of Judea and Samaria, with its large Arab population, within its borders. But does it necessarily follow that all areas not incorporated within Israel’s borders need to be cleared of all Jews? The Palestinian negotiators currently engaged in the phantom negotiations with Israel’s foreign minister are in any case not capable of making and carrying out any commitments.

But when and if serious Palestinian negotiators appear, it will have to be made clear to them that the continued presence of Jews on territory over which they will have sovereignty in the future, and the assurance of their safety, must be part of a durable peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. An agreement that does not include such a provision will not be an agreement worthy of being called a peace agreement.

Another essential part of such an agreement, and I’m sure Arens would agree with me, is an unambiguous recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

The creation of Palestine — if it happens — will be a recognition that a Palestinian People exists and that they have a right of self-determination. It must not also be a negation of the rights of the Jewish People, either individually as human beings with human rights, or collectively as a people with a sovereign state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestine, Jews, Moshe Arens

Here’s another take on the terrorist attack on the Erez fuel terminal, which I wrote about earlier. I would like to think that this incident will mark the end of Israel supplying its deadly enemy, but I doubt it.

Frog Bites Scorpion*
By Barry Rubin

On April 9, Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip attacked the Nahal Oz fuel terminal in Israel near the border. Two Israeli workers were killed. Shortly before, a shipment of diesel fuel for the Gaza power plant, paid for by the European Union, had left there.

What makes this attack especially significant—and horrible—is that the only reason the terminal was open and the workers were present was to supply the needs of the Gaza Strip’s population. In previous months, the international media and many governments criticized Israel for not doing enough to help Gaza, despite the fact that the area is ruled by an openly anti-Semitic regime which makes clear its goal of destroying Israel, and also daily fires mortars and rockets into Israel. Indeed, as part of this attack, several mortar shells were fired at the terminal.

Hamas, and the world, cannot have it both ways. Either Hamas is the aggressor while Israel is the victim, in which case there should be full international support and favorable media coverage for Israel. Or if unwilling to take such an appropriate stance, the world cannot expect Israel to risk its people’s lives to fuel Gaza machine shops that make rockets to assault it and should stop complaining about Israeli actions in self-defense.

In either case, the latest attacks make even clear what should already be obvious: Hamas is responsible for any suffering in the Gaza Strip. And if Israel should cut off all fuel deliveries to the Gaza power plant, which would only affect about one-quarter of the area’s supplies, it is fully justified in doing so.

The situation, however, goes even beyond this: Hamas is deliberately intensifying the suffering in order to use it as a pretext for its own failure as government, its attacks on Israel, and its ability to beg for international support for victim.

Could the situation possibly be any more obvious?

Apparently it is still not obvious enough for too much of the media and too much of the Western political establishments. Of course, there are many exceptions and more so as time goes on.

One of the classic Middle East stories is the tale of the frog and the scorpion. The scorpion demands that the frog provide a ride across the river on his back. “But you will sting me and I will die,” protests the frog.

The scorpion points out, in response, that since he cannot swim he would not do such a rash thing since he, too, would drown.

The frog agrees.

The scorpion climbs onto the frog and they set off. But in the middle of the river the scorpion stings the frog, and as they sink beneath the water the frog complains, “Why did you do that? Now we’ll both die!”

And the scorpion complains: “Well, what do you expect, this is the Middle East.”

So goes the story in its traditional form. But now we can add some additional modern touches.

First, in the new version the scorpion declares that he will sting the frog without any doubt. But the frog agrees to take the scorpion because he is encouraged or intimidated by onlookers’ remarks: “What! You won’t take that poor scorpion on a ride? What kind of imperialist, racist aggressor are you?”

Second, after the duo drowns, the next day newspapers run the following headlines:

“Frog in Unprovoked Attack on Scorpion!”

“Cycle of Violence Continues”

“Frog Uses Excessive Force on Scorpion Civilian”

* Based on the classic journalistic saying, “Man Bites Dog, news; Dog Bites Man, no news.

. . .

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: Israel, Hamas, terrorism, Erez, Gaza