FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

News item:

BEIRUT — Islamist militants are perpetrating “a shocking catalogue of abuses” in secret jails across northern Syria, including torture, flogging and killings after summary trials, Amnesty International [AI] said on Thursday.

It said in a report that the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), one of the most powerful jihadi groups to emerge from Syria’s almost three-year-old conflict, is operating seven clandestine prisons in rebel-held areas.

Detainees are held for reasons ranging from suspected theft to offences against Islam such as smoking or sex outside marriage. Others are seized simply for challenging ISIL authority or belonging to rival armed groups, it said.

“Those abducted and detained by ISIL include children as young as eight who are held together with adults in the same cruel and inhuman conditions,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty’s Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

I don’t doubt it. One thing we can be sure of is that when subhuman barbarians fight, there will be atrocities on both sides. But why should we believe AI about anything? I am not an expert on what is going on in Syria, but I have a pretty good idea about matters related to Israel, and on that subject AI is neither unbiased nor impartial. Let me quote the respected NGO Monitor (more links and documentation of the claims below are at the site):

AI disproportionately singles out Israel for condemnation, focusing solely on the conflict with the Palestinians, misrepresenting the complexity of the conflict, and ignoring more severe human rights violations in the region.

In violation of its policy of “impartiality,” Amnesty employs two anti-Israel activists with well-documented histories of radical activism in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Deborah Hyams and Saleh Hijazi, as researchers in its “Israel, Occupied Palestinian Territories and Palestinian Authority” section.

Allegations of “war crimes”: Distorts [I would say ‘invents’ – ed.] international law, misusing terms like “collective punishment,” “occupying power,” and “disproportionate” in its condemnations of Israel’s Gaza policy.

AI’s report, “Operation ‘Cast Lead: 22 Days of Death and Destruction” (July 2009), charges Israel with “war crimes” during the conflict. The 127-page publication ignores considerable evidence that Hamas used human shields, minimizes Palestinian violations of international law, and promotes boycotts and “lawfare” against Israel. [AI accepted Hamas accounts uncritically and presented them to the media and UN as results of ‘investigation’ – ed.]

During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, AI unjustifiably accused Israel of “war crimes” and “deliberate attacks on civilians,” and relied on Lebanese “eyewitnesses” to allege that Hezbollah did not operate in population centers.

AI hosted a “Russell Tribunal on Palestine” on November 8, 2010, dealing with “Corporate complicity in Israel’s violations of International Law.”

Lawfare: On February 2, 2009, several media outlets reported that AI transferred files to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor regarding alleged “war crimes” committed by Israel. These reports made no mention of any AI initiative regarding Hamas war crimes aided by Iran and Syria.

AI defended the exploitation of British courts by pro-Palestinian “lawfare” activists. Amnesty-UK Director Kate Allen, along with other NGO officials, signed a letter published in the Guardian (“We must not renege on war crime laws,” January 16, 2010), protesting proposed changes to British law that would limit the unregulated access to UK judges that allows for politically motivated cases.

Arms embargo against Israel: Campaigns for an arms embargo against Israel, while ignoring the massive flow of offensive weapons and explosives from Iran and Syria into Gaza. An April 1, 2009 press release (“Shipment reaches Israel, President Obama urged to halt further exports”) revealed that AI tracked a vessel carrying arms across the Atlantic Ocean and through the Mediterranean Sea. Amnesty-USA accompanied this report with a call for action, including letters to Secretary of State Clinton labeling Israel a “grave violator of human rights” and demanding to know the “reason behind sending these arms now.”

Defending those linked to terror: Following the January 2011 conviction and sentencing of Ittijah head Ameer Makhoul on charges of spying for Hezbollah, AI claimed, “Ameer Makhoul’s jailing is a very disturbing development…[He] is well known for his human rights activism on behalf of Palestinians in Israel and those living under Israeli occupation. We fear that this may be the underlying reason for his imprisonment.”

In 2010, senior staff member Gita Saghal was suspended after she condemned AI’s alliance with an alleged Taliban supporter.

“Apartheid” rhetoric: The release of the report “Troubled Waters – Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water” (October 2009) coincided with a campaign alleging that “Israel’s Control of Water [is] a Tool of Apartheid and a Means of Ethnic Cleansing.” [Jew-hater – ed.] Ben White, author of Israeli Apartheid: A Beginners Guide, spoke at the Amnesty-UK release of the report, as well as at other Amnesty-UK events.

In August 2010, the executive director of Amnesty-Finland, Frank Johansson, referred to Israel as “a scum state” on his blog.

…

Although AI claims that it does not accept donations from governments or political parties, in 2008 the organization received a 4-year grant from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), totalling to £3,149,000. In 2010, AI received £842,000 from DFID. Amnesty International and its branches have also received funding from the European Commission, the Netherlands, the United States, and Norway.

The whole idea of NGOs like AI is to be an independent voice, free from political influence, driven only by humanitarian concerns. Such an organization lives and dies by its credibility (or ought to). But it appears that in respect to Israel, it has none. And therefore there is no reason to take it seriously in any other case.

One can speculate about whether this is a result of corruption by the massive funding available for groups who are willing and able to promote Israel-hatred, the pervasive leftist ideology in the academic milieu from which AI’s ‘researchers’ are drawn, or a combination of both.

But regardless of the reason, the result is that the group has made itself worthless, and should disband.

Technorati Tags: Amnesty International

The following axioms of Palestinian Arab behavior guarantee that Israel will have little to worry about from them for the foreseeable future:

1. Honor is more important than life, and lost honor can’t be recovered except by violence. Arab propaganda constantly reiterates the propositions that the Jews stole Arab land, committed massacres of Arabs, etc. The perceived loss of honor creates a massive amount of anger and therefore irrationality — especially in young men that have few other outlets for their energy. Hence the attraction of martyrdom, the propensity to target Jewish children, the glorification of terrorists, etc. Violence is seen as entirely justified until honor is recovered.

The focus on violence is self-defeating, because it impedes diplomatic gambits that might actually work. The most effective strategy of the Palestinian Arabs has been to pretend to want peace, an approach that got them the Oslo agreements, a huge defeat for Israel. Arafat squandered much of the gain by ramping up violence in the second Intifada.

If the Palestinians really want to destroy Israel, they should make compromises in negotiations — for example, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state — which they can always go back on later once they have gained concrete benefits. The boundless naivete in the West and the leftish parts of Israeli society will do their work for them. Fortunately, they are psychologically unable to do this.

2. It is always more important to hurt Jews than to help Arabs. One example of this is Hamas’ use of resources to build rockets and terror tunnels instead of sewage treatment facilities and power plants. Another is the specialization of Palestinian universities in politics rather than actual education. And of course the paradigm case is their insistence that the descendants of 1948 refugees must be kept stateless and miserable rather than being resettled.

As a result, Palestinians are kept poor, ignorant and frustrated. They do not like or trust their ‘leadership’, and are not worth much in a national struggle except as cannon fodder. They are constantly told that their problems are a result of ‘occupation’, but they are smart enough to know that this isn’t true.

Palestinian Arabs and Jews have been shown to be closer genetically than, for example, Jews and Europeans. Look what the Jews have done with this material! Palestinians could, too. But they won’t.

3. It is always a high priority for Arabs to hate other Arabs. This is really a general Middle-Eastern problem, not a specifically Palestinian one. Jews suffer from it as well, but it really is hurting the Palestinians. Today Hamas is in big trouble because it put all its eggs in the Muslim Brotherhood basket of Mohammed Morsi; now he’s out, and they are running out of funds. The feud between Hamas vs. Fatah appears insoluble, and now there are more radical groups operating in Gaza and Judea/Samaria that hate both Hamas and Fatah.

I thought hard about posting this. What if they take my advice? I can’t imagine that they will, though. They have been screwing themselves since the 1920’s; why should they stop now?

Technorati Tags: Palestinians, Israel

Aftermath of bombing of Aleppo, Syria, yesterday. Yes, some of that debris used to be people.

At least 76 people, including 28 children, were killed yesterday when regime forces bombed a rebel-held section of Aleppo with so-called “barrel bombs,” drums packed with explosives. It also seems to be the case that chemical weapons have been used at least four times this year, including on several occasions following the attack near Damascus that attracted so much attention.

Although both the Iranian-backed regime and the rebels (supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar) are remarkably vicious, the regime has done more damage because of its greater firepower. As always in this kind of warfare, civilians make up most of the over 100,000 dead, and all of the millions of refugees in neighboring countries — who are now suffering in the winter weather.

Somewhat less well-publicized is the Sunni-Shiite conflict in Iraq. The NY Times reports that nearly four dozen people were killed in Iraq today (Monday), with another 19 over the weekend. Most died as a result of suicide attacks or car bombs, but in a particularly ugly incident 12 Shiite pilgrims on their way to a shrine in Karbala were taken off their bus and executed by shooting. More than 8,000 Iraqis have been killed in “sectarian violence” this year, the UN says.

Violent incidents have been reported in the last few days in Nigeria, Somalia, Pakistan, Thailand, Yemen, etc. The Muslim world really is aflame, and it is not because of ‘the occupation’, or indeed anything remotely connected to Israel.

Oh, there would be plenty of violence in Israel if its enemies were not deterred by the threat of force. But that is all that stops them.

These are cultures where violence isn’t the last resort — it’s the first.

One can argue that Western cultures have done worse. The Catholic Church persecuted Jews for hundreds of years. The Germans gave us the Holocaust, and the US and Great Britain killed hundreds of thousands in WWII by massive strategic bombing of enemy cities, including the use of nuclear bombs against Japan. Western colonialism often involved great violence against indigenous peoples. The US practiced a particularly cruel form of human slavery for at least 200 years.

This is undeniable. But Western cultural ideals oppose violence, and Western societies seem to be capable of some degree — perhaps not enough, but some degree — of moral evolution. The Church has renounced Jew hatred and embraced tolerance of other religions. Slavery will not rise again in the US, and its vestiges in the form of racial discrimination are being extirpated. Western military doctrine is evolving in the direction of reducing civilian casualties rather than trying to create them. War itself is treated as something to be engaged in only when necessary, not a noble adventure to be welcomed.

On the other hand, Muslim culture is based on the Quran and the life of Muhammad, in which war to expand the territory of Islam and the subjugation of non-Muslims, are positive values. These cultures did not experience the questioning of traditional beliefs that the West did in the Reformation and the Enlightenment, so they are in general closed to the kind of moral evolution that the West has undergone. Of course there are exceptions. But they prove the rule, which is exemplified by the well-educated Mahmoud Abbas whose regime venerates terrorists who murder civilians, or the Iranian Ayatollahs who preach genocide.

Let’s face it: all cultures are not equal (but different). Some are more evolved — or capable of evolving — than others.

Some people are civilized, while others are barbarians.

Technorati Tags: violence, barbarism

When Rabbi Richard ‘Rick’ Jacobs was nominated to be the head of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) in 2011, I and other members of Reform congregations were strongly opposed. Rabbi Jacobs was a member of J Street’s Rabbinic Cabinet and a board member of the New Israel Fund (NIF), both of which are de facto anti-Zionist organizations, in spite of their self-definition as ‘pro-Israel’. Jacobs also proudly took part in a demonstration in support of Arab squatters in an East Jerusalem neighborhood, even after the left-leaning Israeli supreme court upheld the decision to evict them.

The reaction of the URJ to our criticism was immediate (actually coming before an advertisement we placed in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal hit print) and vicious. Despite its pretenses to democratic principles, nobody knows how to threaten, slander, and stifle free speech like the Left!

Now Jacobs has been in charge of the URJ for several years (and his official bio does not include J Street and the NIF among the multitude of organizations that he has served). Where does he stand on Israel today? Let’s look at the speech he delivered at the URJ Biennial yesterday.

He writes,

There has been interdependence between the Diaspora and Israel from the start. In this current moment, the paradigm of Jewish life is moving toward a more globally interdependent world Jewish community that shares responsibility with the State of Israel for the preservation and regeneration of the Jewish people wherever they may live.

Actually, Jewish life is drying up in the diaspora. In Europe, Jewish communities are fleeing or living in fear of resurgent Jew-hatred, both from Muslim immigrants and home-grown neo-fascists. In the US, the liberal Jewish community is rapidly shrinking. While the number of Orthodox Jews is growing to some extent, the Conservative movement is on its last legs, with synagogues closing and merging rapidly.

The Reform Movement, led by Jacobs, is trying to hold its own (although membership in URJ congregations has dropped significantly in recent years) by embracing what Jacobs calls “interfaith families.” I call them families that are unlikely to have Jewish children and almost certain not to have Jewish grandchildren. This is a policy that leads to short-term growth and long-term disaster.

It’s probably correct to say that today the center of gravity of Jewish life has shifted to Israel from the diaspora. But what Jacobs means by ‘sharing responsibility’ is a paternalistic attitude exemplified by the URJ, J Street and the NIF, which purport to know what’s best for Israel much better than Israelis or their democratically elected government. As if to prove my point, Jacobs goes on to lecture Israel about its relations with the Palestinians, settlements, the treatment of women, and the delicate balance between the religious and secular aspects of the state.

Here is what he says about the farcical ‘peace process’:

The security concerns that Israel faces are of the utmost concern to all of us. Let us never forget. Israel still remains surrounded by forces that, if they believed they could militarily destroy her, they would not hesitate to do so. Only Israel’s strength, enhanced by American support, prevents this outcome. At the same time, we remain deeply committed to the proposition that a real peace process that brings about a viable Palestinian state and secure borders for Israel is indispensible [sic] for Israel’s security and well-being, even as it is for Palestinian political aspirations and for U.S. and Canadian foreign policy interests throughout this volatile, but vital region. [my emphasis]

Now it is bad enough that Jacobs seems to think that “Palestinian political aspirations” do not include the replacement of the Jewish state by an Arab one, or that he thinks that the Jewish people need to be responsible for anyone else’s political aspirations.

But the part about “U.S. and Canadian foreign policy interests” is chilling, especially when the present US administration is so hostile to Israel.

It is the voice of his predecessor in the Reform Movement, Rabbi Stephen Wise, who worked against efforts to save European Jewry during the Holocaust, going so far as to call Ze’ev Jabotinsky a “traitor” and activist Peter Bergson “worse than Hitler” for their attempts to raise the awareness of Americans to the horror taking place in Europe.

Wise did what he did out of devotion to President Roosevelt, and from the conviction that making too much of a fuss about a genocide in far-off Europe would exacerbate Jew hatred in America. Some suggest that he was simply too dazzled by his closeness to power to understand his true moral obligations. And there is the age-old impulse of the diaspora Jew to cling to the hope that non-Jewish power will protect him.

Jacobs clearly sees himself as politically ‘progressive’, but there is more to his remark than ritual obeisance to the administration. I interpret it as an attempt to reassure the non-Jewish world that there is no question of dual loyalty here. When it comes to a conflict between Israel and the Obama Administration, Jacobs wants there to be no uncertainty about where he stands.

With the administration.

Technorati Tags: Rabbi Rick Jacobs, URJ, Israel

News item:

Israeli and U.S. officials said on Wednesday that Kerry began discussing a “framework agreement” for a peace treaty with Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and the head of the Palestinian negotiation team, Saeb Erekat, in Washington on Monday. …

[Kerry] said the solutions to each core issue are known from pervious negotiation rounds. He cited the outline presented by former U.S. President Bill Clinton in December 2000 and the Annapolis talks in 2007-2008 as a basis for these solutions.

“It is essential, in my judgment, to reach for a full agreement and to have a framework within which we can try to work for that. … A basic framework will have to address all the core issues – borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem, mutual recognition, and an end of claims. And it will have to establish agreed guidelines for subsequent negotiations that will fill out the details in a full-on peace treaty,” Kerry said.

This represents a departure from the philosophy of the Oslo agreement that informed previous American attempts to broker a solution, in which the  the “core issues” were left for the end. The original idea was to build trust with small steps, so that ultimately it would be easier for both sides to make the ‘hard choices’ that would be required.

This failed for several reasons. One was that the PLO was incapable or unwilling to repress the extremist elements in Hamas, Fatah and other factions, so that continuing terrorism made it impossible to build trust on the Israeli side.

In turn, Israel’s actions to protect its population — the security barrier, etc. — were considered to be aggression by the Arabs. The PLO leadership also claims that construction in eastern Jerusalem and within existing settlements in Judea and Samaria is evidence that Israel isn’t serious about reaching an agreement, but I believe that this is only a pretext and their real opposition rests on the issues listed below.

Kerry claims that the basic principles of a solution have been known since the Clinton parameters of 2000. This is nonsense — in fact the issues that prevent a solution have been known for years, by both sides. They are:

1. A truly (or even partly) sovereign Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria is inconsistent with Israel’s security. Israel will never offer a degree of  sovereignty that will be acceptable to the PLO.

2. Any Jewish sovereignty between the Jordan and Mediterranean is inconsistent with the PLO’s reason for being. The PLO will never recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, and will never stop trying to end the Jewish state.

3. The PLO is unstable, corrupt, and incapable of protecting itself against radical elements (Hamas, Salafists, etc.) and therefore could not deliver peace in return for concessions, even if it wanted to.

No degree of prodding by the US can overcome these facts.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Arabs