FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

The ‘direct talks without preconditions’ that have begun are not in fact without preconditions. There is no doubt that they will be cut short unless the US can force Netanyahu to agree on continuing a freeze on construction activity in Judea, Samaria and (unofficially) East Jerusalem. The concession might be public or private, but the effect will be the same.

There may be other unstated conditions. For example, if Israel were to send the IDF after the Hamas terrorists who are playing ‘bad cop’ in the drama that has so far cost four Israeli lives, or retaliate against Hamas in Gaza, the PA would undoubtedly break off the talks. Israel is expected to show restraint and let the PA handle ‘security’.

If the past is a guide, the script calls for the PA to pick up a bunch of Hamasniks and make a lot of noise. In short order they will all be released. The PA did say that they had arrested the car that was used in at least one of the assaults, but that’s small comfort.

What this means is that Hamas has been given a license to kill for the duration of the talks. Several commentators have already suggested [and I agree] that this is far too much to pay for a process which is designed primarily to boost Barack Obama’s credentials before the coming election, and which cannot possibly have an outcome that’s beneficial to Israel.

Israel has also made some demands, but unlike Palestinian ones, none of them are considered preconditions. But some of them absolutely should be.

First, Israel has asked that the PA stop ‘incitement’. What is incitement? It’s the continuous propaganda being fed to the Arab population — in Israel as well as the PA-controlled areas — to hate Jews, to venerate Arab terrorists who have killed Jewish civilians and to expect that all of ‘Palestine’ will soon be in the hands of its true ‘owners’, the Palestinian Arabs. One can’t expect the PA leadership to have popular support for a real peace agreement as long as this continues. And one shouldn’t expect Israelis to talk to someone who is at that moment calling them pigs and a monkeys.

Second, Israel wants any agreement to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Some say “why insist on a formulation that is objectionable to the Arabs? After all, it’s just words”. But there is a huge significance in this formulation because of what it tells us about the future behavior of the state of ‘Palestine’.

One might think that the purpose of the negotiations is to partition the land into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, and to determine borders, etc. But the Palestinians are not prepared to admit that the part that they don’t get does not also belong to them. Just look at how Israeli Arab Knesset member Haneen Zouabi talks. Would you buy a car from someone who agrees to take your money, but insists that the car will always belong to him?

Third, Israel wants a commitment that what will be agreed to will end the conflict, that the Palestinian Arabs will have no further claim on Israel. This isn’t an idle demand. In 1974 the PLO adopted a program that views the creation of an “independent national authority” as a step to the complete liberation of ‘Palestine’ (the so-called “phased plan”). Israel has a right to demand that a Palestinian state will not be simply another hostile entity from which to wage war.

These three demands ought to be treated as preconditions. There should be no talks without them, because without them there is nothing to talk about.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, direct talks

By Vic Rosenthal

MK Yoel Hasson (left) is restrained by a guard as he is taunted by MK Haneen Zouabi, June 2, 2010.

It’s the same old strategy:

Throw rocks at Jews, fire rockets at them, beat them with clubs, even shoot them. Push them, provoke them. Then, either they ‘exercise restraint’ or fight back. In the former case you’ve humiliated them, maybe hurt or killed some at no cost. In the latter, you cry ‘disproportionate force’, ‘collective punishment’, ‘state terrorism’, or whatever.

You win, either way. The only difference is the mood of the big demonstration afterwards.

This works in politics as well as in the street or on the high seas. Take Haneen Zouabi, the first female Arab member of Israel’s Knesset. In 2009, she generated excitement by indicating that she welcomed the development of an Iranian bomb, seeing more danger in Israel’s nuclear capability (Daniel Pipes called her “Iran’s Representative in the Knesset“).

Next, she sailed on the recent Turkish blockade-running flotilla, on the Mavi Marmara, the ship on which Turkish thugs tried to beat Israeli commandos to death. In interviews, Zouabi claimed that the ‘activists’ on the ship had no plans for violence, but video footage shows her standing next to Turks holding clubs and iron bars.

This almost produced the desired result. There were calls for her to be stripped of Israeli citizenship, and there was even a mini-brawl between Arab and Jewish Knesset members. But in the end, all that happened was that some relatively minor parliamentary privileges were taken away from her.

She’s been quite outspoken about her views. Here are some excerpts from recent interviews:

… I do not represent the State of Israel or speak in its name, but rather in the name of the [Palestinian] struggle, which does not in any way recognize Israel as a Jewish state. [I speak] in the name of a struggle that is performing a role precisely opposed to that of the Israeli Knesset, from the [Knesset’s] standpoint…

… Our platform [of the Balad party] is based on the demands for national and civil equality, for recognition as owners of this homeland, and for the Jewish state to become a state for all of its citizens. This is the compass that directs our political action… Since we define ourselves first and foremost as Palestinians who are owners of the homeland, we view it as part of our platform to defend the right of our people to put an end to the occupation. [This] is not limited to the ’48 territories, but applies to the historical borders of our people. Therefore, our platform includes [supporting] the return of the Palestinian refugees, defeating the occupation, dismantling the settlements, and [securing] East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. [my emphasis]

These quotations are not contradicted by their context. They represent Zouabi’s thinking, which is clearly outside the paradigm of the Jewish state. It is not simply ‘dissent’, it is a call to negate the state. A good argument can be made that she is aiding Israel’s enemies and working for the overthrow of its government.

In other words, she is committing treason and inciting same.

But can you imagine if she were to lose  her citizenship or even be removed from the Knesset?  It would be trumpeted by anti-Israel elements that Israel is not a democracy, that it oppresses its Arab citizens and stifles free speech.

Either way — just like the goons of the Mavi Marmara — Zouabi wins.

Now let’s contrast Zouabi with another Knesset member, Meir Kahane. Kahane’s views were extreme compared to most other Jewish Knesset members. For example, he advocated the transfer of Arabs out of the Jewish state. In 1985 the Knesset banned ‘racist’ candidates, the Supreme Court upheld it, and Kahane’s Kach party was excluded from the election in 1988.

Neither Zouabi not Kahane are (were, in Kahane’s case) democrats. Kahane recognized that Jews and irredentist Palestinian Arabs can’t live together peacefully and proposed an undemocratic solution, but one that would leave the Jewish state in existence. Zouabi claims to believe  in ‘a state of its citizens’ — all its inhabitants — but she proposes to incorporate all 4-5 million Arabs claiming ‘Palestinian nationality’ among these inhabitants so as to create an artificial majority. As ‘owners of the land’ she privileges this majority, replacing one ethnically-based nation-state with another.

Whether you find Kahane’s or Zouabi’s ideas more objectionable is not the point. The question is, “which of them is more dangerous to the continued existence of the state?” Because only if you think that the expression of a point of view presents a clear and present danger to the state — if, for example, it constitutes incitement to insurrection — should it be removed from the political arena.

It’s worth reading the whole MEMRI translation of Zouabi’s remarks. She starts from the position that the Jewish state is illegitimate, and calls for the unity of all the ‘Palestinian people’ — whether in Gaza, Israel, Judea/Samaria, Lebanon, etc. — in order to accomplish the conquest of the land of which they are the ‘owners’.

Zouabi’s speech is clearly incitement to overthrow the state. The fact that she and others like her are given a platform by the Israeli political system out of fear that their suppression would be called ‘undemocratic’ is a serious mistake.

She is far more dangerous than Kahane was and should be expelled from the Knesset.

Technorati Tags: Haneen Zouabi, Isarel, Mavi Marmara, Meir Kahane

Yesterday’s murders were typical. A car carrying four Jews was raked by automatic fire. Then the terrorists approached their victims and shot each of them numerous times, in order to ensure that they were dead. Four Jews — two men and two women, one of them pregnant — died for the crime of being in “the land the Palestinians want for their future state” as the NY Times or AP would put it.

This happened near Hebron, in Judea. Some will say that these Jews deserved what they got, or if they didn’t deserve it, they should have expected it. After all they were on ‘Palestinian land’.

As I’ve written numerous times, the 1949 armistice line is not a border. There is no ‘Palestinian land’, not until some legitimate authority representing the Arabs will agree to end the conflict and recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Even if it were, what do you call a nation that does not permit Jews to live among them, on pain of death?

There was a thriving Jewish community in Hebron until 1929, when it was wiped out by an Arab pogrom made by the grandfathers of today’s ‘freedom fighters’. When Arabs, Europeans and our own officials talk about yesterday’s little pogrom, you will hear them say that they condemn terrorism, but… The ‘buts’ will differ. The Arabs will talk about their frustration in getting the state that they want (they will pretend to mean only the territories — as if they could not have had such a state in 1937, 1947, 2000 or 2008), and our people will say that ‘extremists must not be allowed to sabotage the peace process’.

Here is some news: insofar as they do not accept the right of Jews to have a state with any borders in the Middle East, they are all ‘extremists’, including Mahmoud Abbas and even the ultra-‘moderate’ Western-educated economist Salam Fayyad.

Here is what US Secretary of State Clinton said to PM Netanyahu yesterday:

Well, let me express our deepest sympathy to the families who have lost their loved ones. This kind of savage brutality has no place in any country, under any circumstances. The forces of terror and destruction cannot be allowed to continue. It is one of the reasons why the prime minister is here today: to engage in direct negotiations with those Palestinians who themselves have rejected a path of violence in favor of a path of peace. We have to not only stand against the kind of horrific murders we saw today on behalf of the four who were lost and, as the prime minister said, the seven orphans who have been brutally deprived of their parents, but on behalf of all people — Israelis, Palestinians, everyone who knows that there is no answer when violence begets violence. And I thank the prime minister for his leadership in seeking a different future for the children of Israel. And we pledge to do all we can, always, to protect and defend the State of Israel and to provide security to the Israeli people. That is one of the paramount objectives that Israel has that the United States supports in these negotiations. [my emphasis]

I am afraid that Mrs. Clinton does not understand, or pretends to not understand, the conflict that she is trying to ‘solve’.

First, she does not understand that there is no Palestinian leadership that will take the “path of peace.” This path requires an agreement that Israel — within whatever boundaries are agreed upon — is the legitimate nation-state of the Jewish people. Further, it requires a commitment to a final end of conflict, a termination of claims against Israel. Even the most moderate Palestinian ideology is not prepared to grant any legitimacy to Israel, which at best they regard as a usurper that is too powerful to challenge today. Their idea of  ‘peace’ is a hudna, a temporary truce until they have the strength to redress their grievances.

Second, she does not understand that “violence begets violence” is an entirely inappropriate — indeed, slanderous — explanation. Violence has been the choice of the Palestinian Arabs since the beginning of the 20th century. The Jewish response to it has taken many forms, from attempts at diplomacy and conciliation to self-defense and even reprisal. But the motivation for Arab violence has always been the same: to kill or expel the Jews from ‘their’ land.

Third, she does not understand that the Jewish people learned from centuries of insecurity and persecution culminating in the Holocaust that they cannot depend on anyone else to defend them or provide security. They do not want this from the US. What they want is to be allowed to defend themselves without interference, and in this particular case, without an imposed ‘peace’ agreement that will prevent them from defending themselves.

Fourth, she does not understand that the “terror and destruction” cannot be stopped by forcing Israel to give up territory to an ‘authority’ that has no popular support and which does not control the behavior of the majority of Palestinian Arabs.

Fifth, she does not understand that the instability in the wider region does not depend on the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, but rather is fed by the sponsorship of Islamist and terrorist groups in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and elsewhere by the Iranian regime. You cannot cure an infection without neutralizing it at its source.

I have lost patience with this inability to understand that characterizes US officials like Mrs. Clinton. It’s long past time that they should have understood the facts and stopped basing policy on the myths of Palestinian moderation and the centrality of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Unless of course they understand the facts well enough but believe that it is in their interest to shrink Israel regardless of the consequences.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Arabs, Hillary Clinton, terrorism

What’s he trying to do, say that we can’t play politics with IRS?… Just tell George [Schultz] he should do it. — Richard M. Nixon, August 1972

Recently I wrote (“First Amendment, anyone?“) about the difficulties a Zionist organization called Z-Street was having in getting tax-deductible  — 501(c)(3) — status from the IRS. Here are some excerpts from a suit filed against the IRS by Z Street (the whole complaint is here):

14.   In a letter dated May 15, 2010, IRS Agent Diane Gentry, to whom the Z STREET file had been assigned, sent an IRS Letter 2382 requesting additional information to aid her in her review of Z STREET’s IRS Form 1023 (the “Application”).  Z STREET, by its corporate counsel, submitted a response on June 17, 2010, providing all of the requested information, most of which had already been provided in Z STREET’s initial application, including information about each of Z STREET’s board members.  In fact, detailed personal information about each Z STREET board member had to be supplied to the IRS three times, a number in excess of the experiences of  Z STREET board members for any other board on which they sit…

21.   Agent Gentry also informed Z STREET’s counsel that the IRS is carefully scrutinizing organizations that are in any way connected with Israel.

22.   Agent Gentry further stated to counsel for Z STREET: “these cases are being sent to a special unit in the D.C. office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.”

23.   Z STREET, and its President, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, have publicly taken positions on issues relating to Israel that are inconsistent with positions taken by the Obama administration.

24.   The IRS’s admissions by Agent Gentry make clear that the IRS maintains an Israel Special Policy governing the processing of applications for tax exemption by organizations which are believed to be operated by persons holding political views inconsistent with those espoused by the Obama administration, and that the Israel Special Policy mandates that such applications be scrutinized differently and at greater length, and therefore that they take longer to process than those made by organizations without that characteristic, or even that the tax-exempt application might be denied altogether on that basis.

In my previous post, I mentioned some other organizations which had received 501(c)(3) status from the IRS, including unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing case CAIR and ISNA, as well as Codepink, a group which regularly accuses the US of war crimes and has called for support of the ‘Iraqi resistance’ and US military deserters.

This new policy is apparently not only being applied to organizations that are explicitly Zionist, like Z Street. It seems that just being a Jewish group is enough. Consider this anecdote, from a reliable source:

I told the CPA who handled the 501 exemption for my organization a couple of years ago about Lori’s lawsuit.  Today he sent me an email telling me that his office is working on a tax exemption for a major Jewish religious organization that holds prayer services and Torah classes where each center files for its own exemption. There is no mention of Israel in its application.  They rec’d a letter from the IRS with the following questions:

Does your organization support the existence of the land of Israel?  Describe your organization’s belief system toward the land of Israel.

Need I say that the determination of tax status on the basis of the degree of agreement to administration positions is as clear a violation of the First Amendment as can be imagined? Let’s look at some of the background to this.

In the past few months, we’ve seen the development of what could be called “the NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) war.” Opening shots were fired by an Israeli Zionist student group named im tirtzu, which caused a stir when it reported that a large majority of the ‘documentation’ of  Israeli ‘war crimes’ in the tendentious Goldstone report on the recent war in Gaza came from 16 left-wing Israeli NGOs, all of which were supported by the US-based New Israel Fund (NIF).

Many of these groups can only be called ‘extremist’, and they are part of the movement to delegitimize Israel. In fact, the NIF’s guidelines did not disallow funding groups that advocate ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ (BDS) against Israel. Other NIF-supported groups include Arab organizations which call for the ‘de-Zionization’ of the state.

These NGOs also received millions from the European Union. The Knesset is now considering legislation to require greater transparency in funding of Israeli groups by foreign sources. NGOs are opposing it and have even asked the EU Parliament to consider this issue (talk about interfering with Israel’s sovereignty)!

There’s a cliché about poking a hornet’s nest. Did you ever hear the angry whine of, say, ten thousand disturbed insects? This pretty much describes the response to Im Tirtzu. Groups that benefited from the NIF’s largess, even the  Union for Reform Judaism (NIF supports its initiatives in Israel) screamed bloody murder.

But they did more: they counterattacked. In a coordinated campaign in early July including the New York Times and J Street, anti-Zionist forces blasted what they called “pro-settler charities” and suggested that they ought not to have tax-deductible status. The Times article included this:

The use of charities to promote a foreign policy goal is neither new nor unique — Americans also take tax breaks in giving to pro-Palestinian groups. But the donations to the settler movement stand out because of the centrality of the settlement issue in the current talks and the fact that Washington has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid in the settlements. Tax breaks for the donations remain largely unchallenged, and unexamined by the American government. The Internal Revenue Service declined to discuss donations for West Bank settlements. State Department officials would comment only generally, and on condition of anonymity.

“It’s a problem,” a senior State Department official said, adding, “It’s unhelpful to the efforts that we’re trying to make.”

We’ve learned that on matters relating to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the Times, J Street and the Obama Administration speak with one voice. And they are telling us in no uncertain terms how they feel about ‘settlers’. But Z Street does not give money to settlements (even if it did, the argument to deny 501(c)(3) status would be tortuous). It’s an advocacy and educational group.

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration — like the Nixon Administration — seems prepared to use the IRS as an instrument to punish dissenters like Z Street.

The same Administration that passionately defends the absolute right of a Muslim group of questionable ideology and funding to build a mosque in a highly sensitive location in the US — some might call it ‘unhelpful’ — has done its best to prevent Jews from building even an extra bedroom in East Jerusalem or Judea/Samaria.

Now it is using its massive power to silence American Zionists who disagree with it.

Zionists are on his list, too.

Technorati Tags: Z Street, Obama Administration, IRS, Zionism, First Amendment