FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

News item:

President George W. Bush and [Saudi] King Abdullah formalized new cooperation on Friday between the kingdom and the United States on a range of topics, including the development of civilian nuclear energy in Saudi Arabia and US protection of Saudi oil fields.

The agreements came as Saudi Arabian leaders made clear that they saw no reason to increase oil production until their customers demanded it, apparently rebuffing a request made by the president directly to the king in an effort to stay the soaring US gasoline prices. — Jerusalem Post

I wish I had been a fly on the wall to hear the discussion, but Mr. Bush must have said something like this:

“We’ll help you develop nuclear technology (theoretically only for non-military use), and we’ll use our military forces — already fighting the Iranians for your interests in Iraq — to protect your oil fields. In return, you’ll keep the price of oil high in order to crush our economy. At the same time, you’ll use your windfall profits to finance the most radical forms of Islamic fundamentalism around the world, including in the USA.”

“In the Israeli-Palestinian arena, we’ll continue to support the Fatah terrorists so that they can form a unity government with the Hamas terrorists, splitting the latter from Iran. We’ll force the Israelis to give up land for a new Sunni state on their doorstep. We’re equipping and training its army right now.”

“Maybe we’ll get Israel to fight Hezbollah in Lebanon for you. That will weaken both Israel and Iran.”

What a great deal!

Update — Saudi Arabia has agreed to increase oil production by about 3.3% — a token increase which did not prevent oil from reaching a new high of $128/bbl. today.

Who’s in charge here?

Technorati Tags: Saudi Arabia, oil price

The parallels between the present period and the late 1930’s are striking. Although we should keep in mind that Hitler and his allies were ultimately defeated, it was at the cost of something like 70 million people killed in war, starved to death, dead of war-borne disease, and of course murdered in several genocides.

It’s Them or U.S.
By Barry Rubin

After seeing how Western leaders are handling Lebanon, said an Israeli official privately, “Hizballah could only laugh. We have to take it into consideration that nobody will ever help us.”

Of course, Israel is not alone because there are so many others becoming victims of a combination of Western dithering and radical aggressiveness.

Whether or not the West figures it out, the other side knows well what’s going on. “There are only two sides — Iran and the United States,” said the Iranian newspaper Kayhan. Another leading Tehran daily, Jomhouri-e Islamia, explained that as a result of Hizballah’s victory in Lebanon, “The U.S.’s Influence in the Region will stop, and the regimes identified with it will be replaced.”^[1] From Tehran’s viewpoint, that’s about 20 countries, all but Syria, maybe Sudan, and the Gaza Strip.”

It’s a zero-sum game: Them or U.S., so to speak. Today, Lebanon (or at least west Beirut); tomorrow the world!

Somewhere to the south of Iran target Lebanon, a bit west of Iran target Iraq, north of Iran target Egypt, and adjoining Iran targets Jordan and the West Bank, sits little Iran target Israel.

A Gulf Arab journalist, in an article tellingly entitled, “Iran is Enemy Number One,” wrote a few days ago: “The true feeling of the Saudis, Bahrainis, Kuwaitis, and Qataris is that Iran is the enemy and it must be brought down and weakened.”

These people know they are at war, with the two fronts right now being Lebanon and Iraq. The Arab-Israeli conflict still exists but has become more of an Israel-Palestinian, Syria, and Iran conflict in practice. For most Arab regimes, it’s useful for making propaganda and proving their militant nationalist-Islamic credentials but things have changed a great deal from past decades.

Of course, this doesn’t mean they will cooperate or make peace with Israel. Moderation not only threatens to expose them to radical subversion but also to weaken their own dictatorships’ structure, which rests heavily on demagogically blaming Israel for all their shortcomings.

As one Gulf ruler put it privately, “We can use Israel and bash Israel simultaneously.” In other words, Israelis — as well as Americans and some Europeans — must oppose Iranian ambitions for their own reasons. So why should Arab regimes give anything to them for doing so, even if it means protecting their own sovereignty and systems as well?

In this context, the idea that solving the Palestinian issue will bring peace and stability in the region, ensure good Arab-Western relations, and quiet radical Islamism becomes especially laughable.

Consider the following. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, it might use them on Israel. This is such a serious threat of genocide that Israel must be prepared to attack Iran’s installations to block the possibility.

But this is just a possibility. There is also an absolute certainty. If Iran gets nuclear weapons: no Western country will stand against it, Arab regimes will rush to appease it, and hundreds of thousands of Muslims will join radical Islamist groups to replace all those regimes Iran says must go.

For the moment, however, Lebanon is the Spanish Civil War before the main conflict. A democratic majority, a united front of Christians, Druze, and Sunni Muslims, defies terrorist attacks sponsored by Syria, Iran’s ally. They simply don’t want to live under an Iran-style Islamist regime. Government supporters are angry that Hizballah can launch war on Israel whenever it pleases at great cost to their nation. They angrily remember decades of Syrian domination, repression, and looting.

Spain, of course, became progressive humanity’s great icon of in the 1930s. Such people were horrified that the Western democracies would not help Republican Spain while the German and Italian fascists poured troops, weapons, and money into the Fascist side.

But why didn’t Britain and the others act? Their motives were precisely the same as inhibits determination today. They feared war and the resulting cost and casualties. They profited by trading with the other side. They disliked the great power that was doing more (in those days the USSR, today America of course). Since the Catholic Church backed General Francisco Franco’s cause they didn’t want to be labeled what today would be called “Catholophobic.” They lacked confidence in their own society, which Ezra Pound called a “botched civilization,” “an old bitch gone in the teeth.” Pound eventually preferred the fascists, as too many intellectuals and artists now find the Islamists the lesser of the two evils.

William Butler Yeats said it best: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst, Are full of passionate intensity.”

In 2006, for example, the UN — all the world’s nations nobly assembled — decided that troops would be sent to southern Lebanon, Hizballah would be kept out from there and disarmed, weapons smuggling would be blocked. Hizballah disagreed and did what it wanted. The world gave in: Hizballah (Syria and Iran), 1; World, 0.

So if the world won’t even help Arab, Muslim-led, democratic, Lebanon, why should Israel give credence to any such promises or guarantees. Ah, but Israel can defend itself. It’s the toughest of all Iran’s intended targets.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill recalled in December 1941, speaking to Canada’s parliament, that collaborationist French generals warned him that if Britain, too, didn’t surrender to Hitler, “In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” Churchill wryly told his cheering audience: “Some chicken; some neck!”

A few years later, Hitler lay dead and defeated.

Mr. Ahmadinejad take note.

[1] MEMRI translation

A somewhat different version of this article was published in the London Jewish Chronicle, May 15, 2008.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, visit http://www.gloriacenter.org.

The US plan to pay, train and arm the Palestinian Authority’s ’security’ forces to ‘fight terrorism’ has always been surreal. Someone recently likened this to paying Kellogg to fight cornflakes.

For example,

Israel recently rejected a request by the US security coordinator to the region to allow Palestinian security forces to receive personal armor kits, night-vision goggles and electronic communication systems that the PA planned to use to set up a military communications network, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The request was made to the Defense Ministry by Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, the American security coordinator to the Palestinians and Israel.

Senior defense officials said Wednesday that Dayton made the request on behalf of the Palestinian Authority several weeks ago and that it was immediately rejected, since some of the items had the potential to “break the balance” between the IDF and the PA security forces. — Jerusalem Post

What kind of insane logic is at work here? If they are enemies then they should not be given one rifle bullet, not to mention night-vision equipment and body armor. Balance? Is the idea that they are allowed to be dangerous, but not too dangerous? Tell it to the families of any number of Israeli victims of terrorists who also happen to be members of the PA ’security’ forces.

The US, with Israel’s cooperation, is arming Fatah — the single terrorist organization that has killed more Israelis than any other — because somebody thinks, despite clear statements and concrete proof to the contrary, that they will use their weapons to fight Hamas?

I don’t think that even the US State Department is far enough removed from reality to believe that. So the question arises: why is the US arming Fatah?

I am not going to speculate. But Israel should send Lt.-Gen. Dayton home posthaste.

Incidentally, following the remarkably obsequious welcome given President Bush — even by Olmertian standards — one wonders what other shoe will be dropped during this visit.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Authority

I really hate the word ‘wonk’, but in recent years I’ve become a history wonk. So my current bedtime reading has been the newly updated Seventh Edition of The Israel-Arab Reader, edited by Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin (Penguin: 2008, ISBN 978-0-14-311379-9).

The book is simply a collection of relevant documents from the Bilu Manifesto of 1882 to President Bush’s statement at the Annapolis conference on November 27, 2007, arranged in strict chronological order. In these days when rewriting history for political purposes is not only common, but apparently is seen by many as a legitimate academic enterprise, I find a dip into the cold water of actual facts refreshing before going to sleep.

For example, take the British White Paper of 1939 (p. 44) which first reaffirms Britain’s commitment under the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate to provide for a Jewish National Home in Palestine, and then continues as follows:

Although it is not difficult to contend that the large number of Jewish immigrants who have been admitted so far have been absorbed economically, the fear of the Arabs that this influx will continue indefinitely until the Jewish population is in a position to dominate them has produced consequences which are extremely grave for Jews and Arabs alike and for the peace and prosperity of Palestine. The lamentable disturbances of the past three years are only the latest and most sustained manifestation of this intense Arab apprehension. The methods employed by Arab terrorists against fellow Arabs and Jews alike must receive unqualified condemnation. But it cannot be denied that fear of indefinite Jewish immigration is widespread amongst the Arab population and that this fear has made possible disturbances which have given a serious setback to economic progress, depleted the Palestine exchequer, rendered life and property insecure, and produced a bitterness between the Arab and Jewish populations which is deplorable between citizens of the same country [my emphasis].

In other words, unhappy Arabs respond with riots, terrorism and violence. Sound familiar? So the British, while ‘deploring’ the violence, decided to solve the problem — by stopping immigration:

For each of the next five years a quota of 10,000 Jewish immigrants will be allowed on the understanding that a shortage one year may be added to the quotas for subsequent years, within the five year period, if economic absorptive capacity permits.

In addition, as a contribution towards the solution of the Jewish refugee problem, 25,000 refugees will be admitted as soon as the High Commissioner is satisfied that adequate provision for their maintenance is ensured, special consideration being given to refugee children and dependents…

After the period of five years, no further Jewish immigration will be permitted unless the Arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce in it [!].

Like Chamberlain’s famous capitulation to Hitler in the previous year, Britain chose to make a ‘practical’ decision instead of a morally correct one. And people wonder why the phrase “perfidious Albion” is still current!

I highly recommend this book, which may be read at any time of the day.

Technorati Tags: White Paper, Perfidious Albion, Israel, Palestine Mandate

The 1948 war, even Benny Morris now admits, was a jihad against the Jews in the land of Israel.

I’m looking forward to Morris’ new history of the War of Independence, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, which has just been published. A fundamental fact about the conflict which has been missed by those who believe that peace can be achieved by compromise, is that from the beginning — long before 1948, even — it has been driven by the Arab struggle to eliminate the Jewish presence in the region. It isn’t a question of borders, minority rights, refugees, or anything else.

Morris, famous for his assertion of an active Jewish role in the flight of the Palestinian refugees (and his unfair and disingenuous treatment of Ben-Gurion in this connection), has finally come to see the fundamental nature of the conflict.

The jihad is difficult to understand for westerners who think that everything can be solved by fairness, economic development, and communication. Recently Rabbis for Human Rights held an ‘alternative’ 60th anniversary celebration for Israel, in which they emphasized the need for Israel to ‘live up’ to ethical principles contained in the Declaration of Independence.

This is not only irrelevant — the jihadists’ desire to expunge Jews from ‘Palestine’ has nothing to do with how the Jews behave — but directly helpful to the enemy. The Arabs’ explicit strategy is to present Israel as denying human rights to Palestinians, by provoking, exaggerating, and even inventing incidents in order to make it seem as though the conflict is about these sort of issues rather than the continuation of a genocidal war. Rabbis for Human Rights and similar Jewish groups assist them in this project of delegitmization by validating their claims.

Western observers then become indignant about Palestinian rights and ignore the Arab and Persian jihad which is trying to take away the most essential of human rights from the Jewish people, the rights to self-determination and to life.

Meanwhile, the murderous jihad continues. A rocket from Gaza took another life today, a woman in Moshav Yesha (her name hasn’t been released yet), a tourist visiting relatives. The rocket struck quite close to her, riddling her body with the ball bearings packed in its warhead.

The body of yet another murder victim is removed, this time from Moshav Yesha

Technorati Tags: Benny Morris, Rabbis for Human Rights, Israel, terrorism, jihad

News item:

Hamas rocket nearly hits busload of students in Sderot

(IsraelNN.com) Following a weekend of over 20 mortar shells and rockets, Hamas fired a rocket Sunday afternoon that narrowly missed a busload of students in the parking lot of Sapir College in Sderot. A car was damaged.

Earlier this year, student Roni Yichye was killed by a Hamas-fired rocket in the same parking lot.

Two questions for Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak:

1. What would you have done if the rocket had made a direct hit on the bus?
2. Why wait for it to happen?

On Friday, Jimmy Kedoshim, 48, father of three, was killed by a Hamas mortar shell in his garden in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz close to the border. Kedoshim was a powered paragliding champion, a former paratrooper who used his skill to operate an aerial photography and advertising business. He’s shown here immediately after landing his paraglider.

He was killed for the crime of being a Jew living in Israel. How long can this be allowed to continue?

The body of Jimmy Kedoshim is removed from his home in Kfar Aza

Technorati Tags: Israel, Sderot, Hamas

What appears to be a civil war is beginning in Lebanon, with Hezbollah — a radical Shiite group — trying either to mount a traditional coup in which the present somewhat pro-Western government will be replaced with a Hezbollah-dominated one, or simply to give their state-within-a-state de facto control of the country.

Probably it’s the latter, which can be accomplished without providing an excuse for embarrassing Security Council resolutions. One of the triggers for the current crisis was Hezbollah’s private telecommunications network, which the government rightly sees as a way for Hezbollah to coordinate and direct their forces without interruption or interception of communications. Another was the government’s attempt to remove a pro-Hezbollah airport security administrator.

Lebanon has parties (and militias) representing various factions of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Christians, and Druze. It also has an ‘official’ army that supposedly takes orders from a government in which Hezbollah’s strength has increased significantly as opposition politicians are murdered (8 since 2005), probably by Hezbollah ally Syria. Hezbollah’s militia is well-trained and well-armed, and it also has many sympathizers in the Lebanese army. The army has already agreed to backtrack on some of the government’s demands regarding the communications network and airport manager.

Hezbollah is funded by Iran and supplied through Iran’s satellite, Syria. Syria also has her own interests in Lebanon, having colonized that nation for almost 30 years until being forced to remove her forces in 2005 after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (almost certainly by Syrian agents).

In 2006 the US and Iran fought a proxy war by way of Israel and Hezbollah. Results were inconclusive enough to encourage Iran to rearm Hezbollah and attempt to develop a similar army from Hamas in Gaza, although there is reason to believe that the IDF woke up and smelled the coffee, and will do better next time.

The next time may be coming soon if the present civil strife spills over into an attack on Israel, or if Israel gets nervous enough to intervene.

Noah Pollak sees similarities between the behavior of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, and sees Western observers making the same fundamental mistake in both cases:

What does the crisis in Lebanon teach us about Hezbollah? It teaches us the same lesson we learned from Hamas when it took Gaza: Islamic supremacist groups, despite their claims to the contrary, cannot be integrated into states or democratic political systems…

We have heard for many years from an array of journalists, scholars, and pundits that Hamas and Hezbollah are complicated social movements that employ violence in the service of their political goals, and that they are therefore susceptible to diplomatic engagement…

In the streets of Beirut, with Kalashnikovs and RPGs, Hezbollah is making it abundantly clear that its participation in Lebanese politics ends when Hezbollah is asked to submit to the state’s authority. How many more Middle East “experts” are going to proclaim that the answer to Islamic supremacism is dialogue and political integration?

No one knows exactly what Hezbollah intends. What is certain is that the Lebanese government does not have the strength or the will to resist, and that therefore another domino will shortly fall to the Iranian axis.

Update [11 May 2008 0713]: For an excellent analysis of Hezbollah’s recent actions, see Jonathan Speyer, “The Question of Power“.

Technorati Tags: Lebanon, Hezbollah

Another Israeli civilian has been killed in a Hamas bombardment, in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, close to the Gaza strip. Several others were wounded. Nine rockets or mortar shells fired from Gaza struck Israel today, including this one.

Meanwhile, indirect negotiations for a cease-fire continue in Egypt. Although we don’t know the details, suggestions are that it would include a hugely unbalanced prisoner exchange with Hamas and possibly other concessions.

Israel’s government is at the same time super-rational and entirely irrational. Super-rational because it is capable of making the decision to accept the continuing attrition of the rocket attacks, the humiliation of allowing Hamas to depopulate part of the state and prove to the world that Israel is incapable of defending herself, so as not to deal with the short-term consequences of putting an end to Hamas.

And irrational because it is prepared to trade one kidnapped soldier — who will quickly be replaced by another — for the release of hundreds or even more than a thousand prisoners, many of them with blood on their hands (the requirement to only release non-murderers was dropped some time ago).

A few simple facts need to be recognized:

1. Hamas will not go away by itself and it is not ever going to become a Zionist organization. Its reason for being is to destroy Israel and kill Jews. The question is not if to fight it, it’s when. And Hamas isn’t getting weaker.
2. The rocket barrage is an attack on more than the unfortunate victims. It is an attack on the sovereignty of the State of Israel. It cannot be allowed to continue.
3. Israel is in a war for survival. Soldiers are lost in war. I have three children, all of whom served in the IDF, one for an extended period. I know the feeling when the telephone rings at night. But a lopsided prisoner exchange will encourage further kidnappings and remove the deterrent against terrorist murder.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Gaza

American policy has always been ambivalent on Israel. I’ve written about the tension between the promises of President Bush and the demands of Condoleezza Rice. I’ve mentioned the State Department commitment to a smaller Israel.

Now Richard Holbrooke has pointed out that back in 1948 State Department big shots, particularly Secretary George Marshall, weren’t so happy about the creation of Israel either:

…opposition really came from an even more formidable group: the “wise men” who were simultaneously creating the great Truman foreign policy of the late 1940s — among them Marshall, James V. Forrestal, George F. Kennan, Robert Lovett, John J. McCloy, Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson. To overrule State would mean Truman taking on [Gen. George C.] Marshall, whom he regarded as “the greatest living American,” a daunting task for a very unpopular president.

Beneath the surface lay unspoken but real anti-Semitism on the part of some (but not all) policymakers. The position of those opposing recognition was simple — oil, numbers and history. “There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other,” Defense Secretary Forrestal told [Clark] Clifford. “Why don’t you face up to the realities?”

As we know, Truman indeed took on Marshall and others, and the US cast its vote to recognize the Jewish state, although the State Department sandbagged Truman on the earlier vote to partition the former Mandate. Holbrooke writes,

In March, Truman privately promised Chaim Weizmann, the future president of Israel, that he would support partition — only to learn the next day that the American ambassador to the United Nations had voted for U.N. trusteeship. Enraged, Truman wrote a private note on his calendar: “The State Dept. pulled the rug from under me today. The first I know about it is what I read in the newspapers! Isn’t that hell? I’m now in the position of a liar and double-crosser. I’ve never felt so low in my life…”

This may have been the first time that the State Department tried to screw Israel, but it wasn’t to be the last.

In 1967, Egypt had closed the Strait of Tiran, cutting Israel off from its outlet to the Red Sea and much of its oil supply (which at that time came from Iran). Nasser had requested the removal of UN troops from the Sinai and massed troops and tanks there. Although the US had made a commitment to protect Israel’s freedom of navigation in the Strait when she withdrew from the Sinai in 1956, when push came to shove we did not stand behind it, and the State Department tried to convince Israel to make concessions to Egypt instead. Secretary of State Dean Rusk advised President Johnson not to pressure Egypt and to discourage Israel from a preemptive attack.

And now of course, we have Ms. Rice trying to get Israel to sign a peace agreement, any peace agreement, with the Palestinian Authority — regardless of the damage to Israel’s security.

It’s fair to say that while a majority of Americans have always supported Israel, the foreign-policy establishment has been downright hostile. And this is often reflected in tensions between elected officials like the President and Congress who are accountable to the people, and the State Department which is not. And in some — but not by any means all — important cases, the pro-Israel side has won.

Israel’s enemies are presently doing their best to change this, in a multifaceted campaign. Jimmy Carter, Mearsheimer and Walt, the prosecutions of AIPAC’s Rosen and Weissman and now Ben-Ami Kadish, are all doing their parts to promote the position that the interests of Israel and the US are divergent.

Their effort is complicated by the fact those who perpetrated the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor happen to be Israel’s greatest enemies as well. One would think that the question of who is America’s best friend in the Middle East should have been settled conclusively after 9/11.

Unfortunately, the supposedly pro-Israel US government’s sheer incompetence in its response to 9/11 and everything else has given ammunition to those who say that we need a ‘new’ policy, which (surprise) should not be pro-Israel.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Technorati Tags: Israel, State Department, Truman

News item:

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, Palestinian militants say, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.

The Israeli air strike that killed the 33-year-old last week also laid bare his apparent double life and embarrassed a U.N. agency which has long had to rebuff Israeli accusations that it has aided and abetted guerrillas fighting the Jewish state.

In interviews with Reuters, students and colleagues, as well as U.N. officials, denied any knowledge of Qiq’s work with explosives. And his family denied he had any militant links at all, despite a profusion of Islamic Jihad posters at his home.

But militant leaders allied to the enclave’s ruling Hamas group hailed him as a martyr who led Islamic Jihad’s “engineering unit” — its bomb makers. They fired a salvo of improvised rockets into Israel in response to his death. [my emphasis]

The UN agency which operates the school is UNRWA, of course. UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) was set up by UN resolution 302 in 1949 specifically to deal with Palestinian refugees; no other refugee group has had its own UN agency. The UNRWA 2007 budget was $487 million. The largest contributors are the US, the European Commission, Sweden, the Norway and the United Kingdom. UNRWA has more than 27,000 employees, 99% of whom are Palestinians, almost all ‘refugees’.

UNRWA is a major employer in Gaza and other locations, and one of the biggest contributors to the Palestinian ‘economy’ (the other is Palestinian Authority salaries, mostly for ’security’ forces).

More details about the ‘refugees’, from the UNRWA site:

One-third of the registered Palestine refugees, about 1.3 million, live in 58 recognized refugee camps in the area of operations in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the West Bank and Gaza Strip…

The other two-thirds of the registered refugees live in and around the cities and towns of the host countries, and in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, often in the environs of official camps. While most of UNRWA’s installations such as schools and health centres are located in refugee camps, a number are outside camps and all of the Agency’s services are available to both camp and non-camp residents.

UNRWA’s mandate is to provide services to the 4-5 million descendants of the 750,000 1948 refugees, not to resettle them. Resolution 302 clearly intends it to be a temporary agency, and the implication is that the host governments will ultimately take responsibility for the refugees and also, reading between the lines, that they would eventually be resettled.

As everyone knows, the Arab nations (except Jordan) refused to allow any change in the status of the refugees, and chose to keep them and their descendants miserable in order to create an army that they hoped would ultimately overwhelm Israel either as an inexhaustible source of terrorist recruits or by way of a ‘right of return’. There is no precedent for a refugee situation lasting 60 years, and none for refugee status to be passed to descendants. Yet somehow the Palestinians are different.

UNRWA is the mechanism by which this unnatural growth is fed and nurtured. Were it not for UNRWA, the original refugees would have found homes and employment in host countries (and indeed, had the Arabs been prepared to make peace, many would have been able to return to Israel).

The Arab nations haven’t had to pay for the development of this army. We have, and continue to do so, just as we pay for the Palestinian Authority security forces, many of whom are terrorists or gangsters.

The Palestinian employees of UNRWA share the politics of Palestinians everywhere, and that means that a majority of them approve of ‘armed struggle’ as the best way to ‘liberate Palestine’ and solve the refugee problem. So it entirely unsurprising that rocketry buffs like Awad al-Qiq are UNRWA employees.

But the irony of a teacher moonlighting as a terrorist that the Reuters dispatch plays on is actually not ironic at all.

Because there isn’t any contradiction between the mission of UNRWA and that of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Technorati Tags: Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, Qiq, Gaza, terrorism

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is in big trouble, being investigated by police for bribery allegedly committed when he was mayor of Jerusalem.

This is not the first time that Olmert has been accused of financial wrongdoing, but from what is said in the papers, it’s apparently the most potentially damaging accusation.

This is happening exactly when he is negotiating with the Palestinian Authority and under pressure from the US to commit to a ‘peace’ agreement that will result in a Palestinian state before President Bush leaves office. Unconfirmed reports suggest everything from ‘there is no progress’ to ‘he is agreeing to evacuate most of East Jerusalem and offering some form of right of return’.

It seems to me that a PM with the threat of jail hanging over his head, one who is massively unpopular and kept in office only by the self-interest of Knesset members who themselves do not want to face elections, is not in the best position to negotiate a ‘deal’ that will change the borders of the State of Israel.

Many in Israel believe that the judiciary is highly politicized — left-wing — and that decisions to prosecute Olmert or not, when to prosecute him and what to charge him with may well be made in order to push him to make certain decisions in the ongoing negotiations.

We can also note that the elements in the US government who would like to see an agreement favorable to the Palestinians now also have a way to apply pressure to Olmert, especially since a key figure in the investigation is a US citizen.

The continuance of Olmert’s government is dependent on his coalition partners. The best thing that could happen now would be for enough of them to resign and thereby force new elections, before Olmert is indicted — or worse, in the event that he is not indicted.

The Nightmare Continues — courtesy of Dry Bones

A couple of things that don’t fit anywhere else:

1) Yesterday, I attended an “Israel@60″ celebration here in Fresno. Lots of good feelings, vendors selling kippot, food, music, food, dancing, food, etc. Two Chabad rabbis did a land-office business getting people to put on tefillin.

I was in charge of an “Israel Advocacy” table. It was not exactly the the most popular thing at the event, but that’s not surprising.

A few people came over, took my literature, and talked a bit. One man looked at a pamphlet and shook his head. “Why are you shaking your head?”, I asked. He pointed to a photograph. “Arafat,” he muttered. “We love Israel, said his wife. We’ve been there several times.”

Like everyone who expressed similar sentiments, these people were Christians. Yet so many Jews reject their friendship. We shouldn’t.

2) Bloggers love to see their posts linked on other sites. It’s proof that someone other than the author reads them. Jewish bloggers actually go to the extreme of posting a collection of links to each other’s posts from time to time! Such vanity. It’s called Haveil Havalim (vanity of vanities), and you can find this week’s edition here.

Technorati Tags: Christian Zionism, Haveil Havalim