FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

One of the most penetrating comments about the Goldstone report was made by Israeli President Shimon Peres, who said that the report “makes a mockery of history”.

Mocking history is a specialty of Zionophobes, from the murderous fanatics of Hamas, through the thugs of Fatah, by way of the morally corrupt scum of the Saudi Arabian elite and the Europeans who are becoming less and less able to hide their Jew-hatred, via Goldstone’s farcial ‘United Nations’, including Terrorism Appeasement Headquarters and Saudi Appreciation Society — the US Department of State — and finally arriving at the man in the street who believes what he hears and reads in the media.

The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has presented a good, readable defense here, and undoubtedly they will soon produce a formal response to the 500+ page sliming from the UN.

There are a lot of evil slanders in the report, but there is one overarching falsehood that characterizes it as well as all of the NGO reports. In the words of IDF Judge-Advocate General Brig.-Gen. Avichai Mandelblit,

The baseless claim in the report that Cast Lead was planned and launched to intentionally harm the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and to punish it, effectively illustrates the radical distortion and one-sided character of the report and proves, in my opinion, that the decision not to cooperate with the mission was the right one. [my emphasis]

The fact is that such a motivation would be entirely irrational. Punishing Palestinian civilians would not reduce Hamas’ fighting capability and would only damage Israel’s diplomatic position. High civilian casualties would increase pressure on Israel to end the operation prematurely.

But the consequences for Israel described did occur, not because it was actually guilty, but because the world believed Arab lies.

Part of the Zionophobic world-view is to always interpret actions of Israelis as manifestations of evil motives. The more depraved the motive, the more convincing it is. This is combined with the propensity to believe every horrible accusation, because for the Zionophobe Israel is capable of anything. Palestinians gleefully make claims, Hamas provides ‘evidence’, and the audience laps it all up.

Israel’s MFA is not a Ministry of Propaganda. Its job is to manage Israel’s foreign policy and incidentally to explain why Israel takes the actions that it does.

In fact, Israel does not have a Ministry of Propaganda, so it’s left to amateurs like me to tell you that the Palestinians are liars. Their audience is so ready to believe and their lies have such concrete benefits that they have turned the creation of falsehood into a major industry, probably their biggest after rocket manufacture and construction of bunkers and tunnels .

Actually, they are more than just liars. They are objectively one of the worst cultures in recent history, really a pathological bunch:

• Who violently attacked and murdered Jews for at least the last 100 years out of sheer racism;
• Who time and time again refused to accept that Jews had any legitimate rights in the Land of Israel;
• Who insisted that they were the ‘owners’ of all of the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean;
• Who expressed their belief by murder, particularly of women and children;
• Whose leaders consistently sacrificed their people on the altar of unending war;
• Whose leaders and supporters made and kept them refugees;
• Whose leaders indoctrinate their children to aspire to martyrdom;
• Whose poets and artists celebrate the bloody death of Jews and yearn for a world where the land is occupied only by Arabs;
• Whose national heroes are terrorists like Samir Kuntar or Dalal Mughrabi;
• Who see Yasser Arafat, the man who more than any other popularized terrorism against civilians as a political tool, as the father of their nation;
• Whose every communications medium and institution is a source of antisemitic hatred;
• Who, because of their prioritization of  ‘resistance’ above all else, have not developed a normal economy and live parasitically, receiving more international aid per capita than any other national group;
• Who believe that historical truth is determined by what is good for the Palestinians, and made up a history to match;
• Who believe themselves not responsible for anything bad that happens to them, always finding someone else (usually ‘the Zionists’) to blame;
• Whose political consciousness hasn’t advanced beyond loyalties to clans, gangs and militias;
• Whose social consciousness is racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and generally cruel;
• And who have developed ‘projection’ — turning truth upside down and accusing their victims of the vile behavior that they themselves display — into an art.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Goldstone, Palestinian culture

Bret Stephens (“Obama Is Pushing Israel Toward War“) asks this question:

Events are fast pushing Israel toward a pre-emptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, probably by next spring. That strike could well fail. Or it could succeed at the price of oil at $300 a barrel, a Middle East war, and American servicemen caught in between. So why is the Obama administration doing everything it can to speed the war process along?

The rest of Stephens’ well-written and persuasive piece makes the very important points that stopping Iran really is in the interest of the US, and that it better take Israel’s expressed concern seriously. But he doesn’t provide an answer to the question he poses at the start.

Maybe it’s intended to be a rhetorical question, but I would like an answer.

Here are some possible ones, with the most likely ones first:

1. The administration doesn’t have a clue what to do, and is waiting for something to happen to give it an idea.
2. The administration has decided that nothing can be done, it will live with a nuclear Iran and is confident of its ability to prevent Israel from attacking.
3. The administration really believes that it can talk Iran out of building an actual weapon (and that this would solve the problem).
4. The administration wants Israel to do it (Stephens points out that this is a bad idea from the US point of view).
5. The administration has a secret plan to suddenly get Russia and China to agree to crippling sanctions.
6. The administration plans to launch an attack itself.

I really, really hope I’m wrong but I suspect the answer is nos. 1, 2 or 3.

Of course what happens in real life, as Shalom Freedman would suggest, might be something wholly different and entirely unexpected.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iranian nuclear weapon

Doesn’t it strike you as wholly evil when great powers chop up a smaller sovereign state and hand parts of it over to genocidal maniacs, in order to advance their own interests?

The paradigm case was the Munich agreement in 1938, where the British and French agreed to give a piece of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, hoping to satisfy him and forestall war. They didn’t ask the Czechs, of course.

Now apparently the US and Europe plan to do the same to Israel.

The following appeared in Ha’aretz:

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will resume next month on the basis of an understanding that the establishment of a Palestinian state will be officially announced in two years.

Palestinian and European Union sources told Haaretz that talks will initially focus on determining the permanent border between Israel and the West Bank…

It is understood that this will be accompanied by a public American and European declaration that the permanent border will be based on the border of June 4, 1967. Both sides may agree to alter the border based on territorial exchanges.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to discuss Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees in the initial negotiation stages will not be allowed to delay the announcement of an independent Palestinian state.

Likewise, Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and that the Arab world embark on normalizing ties with Israel, will not constitute preconditions to an “early recognition” of Palestine.

In other words, the intention is that Israel will withdraw to the pre-1967 border in two years and the wishes of her government in the matter will be ignored. It is not clear what will happen to the 300,000 or so Israelis living east of the border (500,000 if you count East Jerusalem) if Israel and the Palestinian Authority can’t agree on border modifications. And agreement isn’t likely, judging by the fact that the PA has never budged on its demand for “not one centimeter less” than that border.

Further, the amputation will take place regardless of whether the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world will give up their desire to resettle millions of hostile ‘refugees’ in Israel or will agree to end the conflict — for this is what recognizing Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish People means.

Keep in mind that the Palestinian Authority will almost certainly include Hamas by the time this happens, so my use of the phrase ‘genocidal maniacs’ is quite appropriate.

The analogy to Munich is close, in that this agreement will bring war, not peace.

In truth, the imposed settlement will be morally worse than Munich. Chamberlain and Daladier were probably naive about Hitler’s intentions, believing that their actions would prevent war. The Europeans and the US State Department, on the other hand, understand quite well what the Arabs want.

This is not being done for peace and not for the Palestinians. It is being done for business reasons, and because craven Western leaders are scared to death of the potential for anti-Western terrorism that could be unleashed by the barbaric Arab nations and Iran.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Authority, Israeli-Arab conflict

I recently had a daytime nightmare. A horrific vision of what could happen if events proceeded along a not-unlikely course. But there are no nuclear explosions in my nightmare. It doesn’t end with a bang…

It’s August 2011. Iran, having stockpiled enough highly enriched uranium for several bombs, begins to actually construct one. Israel, its red line crossed, starts the countdown to execute the long-planned operation which is expected to set the Iranian project back 10 years, when it receives an ultimatum from the US:

The operation must not be carried out. If you go ahead, we will prevent it by any means necessary, including engaging and even shooting down Israeli planes.

Since 2008, the US has had an x-band radar installation in the Negev which can detect ‘even a bird’ taking off. The facility is operated and guarded by US  personnel; it is off limits to Israelis. It was installed in order to provide early warning of Iranian missiles, but there is no way that Israel can launch a major (or minor) air operation without the US knowing.

Israel, not prepared to fight the US Navy and Air Force, backs down. The US gives assurances that it will not permit Iran to attack Israel. Iran proceeds to install its new Russian air defense system.

Meanwhile, the US finishes up its withdrawal from Iraq. Syria, in return for the Golan Heights, which it received in January as part of the comprehensive Mideast Peace settlement imposed by the Obama Administration and the Quartet, has stopped allowing Sunni insurgents and supplies to transit the border, and the majority Shiite government has managed to suppress the remaining Sunni insurgency. Obama’s foreign policy appears to be a major success, having brought peace to Iraq, ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Golan Heights, and creating the long-sought after state of Palestine.

Peace in our time has been achieved, says Obama, although he knows enough not to use exactly those words.

What could more natural than for the two mightiest Shiite powers to make an alliance, says the Iraqi Prime Minister, as he announces a five-year economic and military cooperation pact with Iran? And while there is some trepidation that efforts of the new Hezbollah government in Lebanon to disarm Christian militias could lead to strife in that country, most Western diplomats think that the idea of a multi-ethnic state was never really practical.

In Israel, life goes on. Especially in Tel Aviv, you can barely tell the difference between pre-peace days and now. One problem that everyone notices is that air fares are much higher, what with oil at $120/bbl. and rising, and especially since that USAIR  Airbus was hit by an antiaircraft missile fired from the West Bank just as it lifted off from Ben Gurion Airport, killing 247 passengers and crew. President Barghouti of Palestine expressed his sincere condolences to the families of the victims, but indicated that his police have insufficient resources, not enough helicopters, night-vision gear and communications equipment to effectively carry out their mission of fighting terrorism. As a result, the only carrier flying to and from Israel is El Al, whose planes are equipped with special devices to divert the type of missile known to be in the possession of terrorists.

The EL Al aircraft are heavily loaded on trips to America and Europe as those Israelis who can afford it take long vacations outside of the country ‘for the duration’.

The Israeli government has begun a project to reinforce buildings and build protective walls around towns in the area of the Syrian border. Although the peace treaty calls for an end of conflict between Israel and Syria, guerrillas thought to be associated with Hezbollah have been operating in the area, and Syrian troops are not motivated to stop them.  Meanwhile, Golan Druze who are considered pro-Israel were evacuated ahead of the Syrians and are now living in temporary camps in the Negev along with several hundred thousand settlers who were removed from the West Bank.

The evacuation of West Bank settlers was carried out with only a few hundred casualties on the part of the settlers, most of whom left their homes without armed resistance. There were a few isolated settlements where armed Jewish militants resisted evacuation, and special units of the new Volunteer Army, made up of known reliable personnel, were sent in to neutralize them. There are still some holdouts, and Israel has received sharply-worded protests from the government of Palestine in regard to them.

Right now the biggest construction project in Israel is the Palestine Contiguity Highway, to connect the Nahal Oz crossing with Hebron and thence north along the route of the existing Rt. 60 to the capital of Palestine, al-Quds. It’s to be a 150-meter wide corridor with electronic fences on either side, a highway in the middle, and service facilities along the way. Palestinian military vehicles can be seen on service roads, protecting the autos and trucks on the highway from Jewish guerrillas who lately have been harassing them, shooting and then quickly escaping. In some places, the fence is being replaced by a concrete wall to prevent this. Indeed some sections of the dismantled security barrier have been pressed into service.

This project, as well as the yet-to-be started housing for relocated settlers and Golan Druze, has been slowed by the worldwide economic depression caused by the high oil price. When asked about the possibility of increasing production, new OPEC Secretary-General Gholamhossein Nozari of Iran indicated that prices had reached a ‘natural level’ and indeed were at last compensating Middle Eastern and South American nations for years of Western exploitation.

The IDF has recently reduced standards yet again, as the difficulty of recruitment increases. Many secular youth are going abroad when they reach army age, and national-religious types – especially from the relocation centers in the Negev – are as likely to join an underground group like Tzvat Hashem as the IDF. The US-funded and trained (by General Keith Dayton) Volunteer Army has top-notch equipment, but lacks motivation. It also spends a great deal of time chasing Tzvat Hashem fighters, who make commando raids into Palestinian territory, provoking retaliatory Katyusha missile fire from the Palestinian National Army. The Israeli population shifts away from border areas which become more and more insecure.

In the North, Hezbollah has an estimated 100,000 short-range rockets targeted at Israel. Iran, which already dictates policy to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, supports the Ikhwan in Egypt, despite ideological differences, because it prefers Islamic to Western-oriented rule. The weak government of Gamal Mubarak is overthrown, Egypt announces its abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel, and sends the Israeli ambassador home. The US cuts off aid, but Iran and Russia step into the vacuum. Iranian satellite Iraq begins to apply pressure to Jordan to also end its cooperation with Israel.

One of the great accomplishments of the peace treaty was the agreement that, while their inalienable right of return was acknowledged, Arab refugees would defer the exercise of this right to an unspecified time when the government of Israel should agree. US Secretary of State Malley even remarked “who said Arabs don’t know compromise?”

But now the Palestinian citizens of Israel (formerly called ‘Israeli Arabs’) demand an equal right of representation with the Jewish population, as well as a new flag and national anthem, etc. And the UN security council, on a motion introduced by the Iranian representative decides that if the rogue state of Israel does not grant these oppressed Arabs their ‘civil rights’, punishing economic sanctions will be applied to the already weakened Israel.

The Iranian ambassador to the US explains just what could happen to the price of oil, the US abstains, and the resolution passes. Israel, already reeling economically and socially, has no choice but to agree. More Israeli Jews begin to think that their future lies elsewhere.

Now at every opportunity, Arab Members of the Knesset introduce bills calling for the return of their refugee brothers. How can they be prevented from exercising a right that has been recognized in international treaty? How can they be allowed to continue their miserable existence (Palestine has only allowed a few to integrate, preferring to keep the great masses in camps)?

It becomes an international cause célèbre.
…
Enough.
What can we learn from this nightmare?

• Iran must not be allowed to go nuclear, no matter what.
• The Golan must not be transferred to Syria, no matter what.
• An imposed ‘peace’ settlement with the Palestinians must be resisted, no matter what.

No matter what.

Technorati Tags: Israel

I’ve been having a running discussion in the comments section of another blog with David Sokal, someone who is passionately devoted to peace between Israelis and Palestinians (but he and I differ significantly about how best to achieve this). He posted a longish comment on an old post in this blog, and rather than responding where nobody will see it, I decided to present his comment here (indented) together with my responses:

Two things:

1) Yes, obviously dialog is preferred to endless violence or the crushing of one side by the other without mercy. I think that should be clear to anyone who has seen the results of war and bloodshed first hand or even second hand.

I can’t disagree. But the implication is that dialog which would lead to peace is possible. What if dialog — combined with attrition by terrorism and pressure from external powers — is employed by one side as a tool to weaken the other, in order to make a violent ‘solution’ possible? In that case dialog leads to war, not peace.

2) It is up to the Palestinians to create a state of their own, but they might need a little help from Israel. At a minimum Israel must remove its soldiers from the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza. Furthermore, Israel will need to cooperate with Palestine on establishing a transportation route between the two segments of Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank). And finally, it would also be helpful if Israel removed all settlements from occupied territories, all of which are illegal under international law and many of which were stolen from the rightful Palestinian owners.

We already have a clear demonstration of what happens when Israel removes its soldiers from Palestinian-occupied territory: Gaza. So it would be helpful, too, if the various terrorist militias operated by Hamas and the PA were disarmed first. Maybe you are putting the cart before the horse?

The statement that “settlements are illegal under international law” is commonly made, often by those who have no understanding of what ‘international law’ actually is. Here is an argument that the settlements are legal. If you want to dispute it, go ahead.

Here are some questions for you and your readers:

1) Should the Palestinian State be built while it is under occupation?

The Israeli state was. All of the institutions necessary for a state — an educational system, health care, commerce and labor institutions, banks, etc. were in place long before the British occupiers were finally kicked out. Sure, Israel had the help of international Jewry, but no people in history has received more aid per capita than the Palestinians, and so far they’ve built very little (Hamas has built a lot of bunkers and tunnels).

2) Under what conditions should the IDF leave the West Bank?

When Israelis could be secure if the IDF were not in the West Bank.

3) Since there hasn’t been an attack for quite some time from the West Bank, why shouldn’t Israel reciprocate by, at a minimum, freezing the settlements?

Can’t you see the injustice involved in freezing the settlements? You are telling Jews that they can’t build a house on land within the boundaries of a settlement, land that they most likely have clear title to. Arab settlements inside Israel aren’t frozen, so why should Jewish ones in the West Bank be?

Also I must point out the main reason that the West Bank has been relatively quiet: the presence of the IDF.

4) What steps do you imagine still need to be taken before Israel and the PA can sit down and talk about creating a secure, viable and economically vital Palestinian state next to a secure, viable and economically vital Jewish state?

The PA has to stop the continuous flow of antisemitic incitement in their schools, mosques, television, radio, newspapers, summer camps, etc. Terrorist organizations must be disarmed. Palestinians must agree that Israel is a legitimate state of the Jewish people, and that the nakba will not be reversed. The Palestinians need to get a leadership that won’t spend the huge amounts of aid they get on weapons, explosives and distributions to members of their clans and rather invest in economic infrastructure.

5) What will the Palestinian state look like in your view? Will it be totally independent, semi-autonomous or merely a province of Israel with it’s own local authorities under the authority of the Israeli government?

It is entirely up to the Palestinians. If they continue to insist on “not one centimeter less” than pre-67 borders including all of East Jerusalem and ‘return’ of ‘refugees’ then there will never be a sovereign state. If they would honestly say “OK, the conflict is over, no more terrorism, we accept the idea of a Jewish state somewhere between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, we’ll compromise on East Jerusalem, etc.” then there could be a state.

6) If Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and continues to blockade Gaza, what does this mean for democracy in Israel? Can it rule over 4 million people, building walls and fences around and on their property, controlling their movement with armed soldiers at checkpoints dispersed throughout their land, dictating who they can and cannot elect as their leaders, building settlements the inhabitants of which claim citizenship and loyalty to another nation, arresting and imprisoning Palestinians without cause, destroying Palestinian homes as punishment or simply to replace them with settlers … can it do all this and still call itself a democracy?

There is more than some question as to whether your description of what Israel is doing is accurate! But leaving that aside, do you think that Israelis enjoy being yanked away from their lives for reserve duty at said checkpoints?  Why do you think they built the security barrier, just to piss off the Palestinians? And speaking of “claim[ing] citizenship and loyalty to another nation”, many Israeli Arabs are now calling themselves “Palestinians” and demanding that Israel grant them equal political power with the Jewish majority, change its flag and national anthem, etc. If the Jewish settlers don’t belong in the West Bank, should these Arabs live in Israel?

7) Finally, since you do not feel that all conflicts can be resolved through non-violent means, and apparently you include the conflict between Israel and Palestine in that category, what is the end game for Israel?

Israel needs to stay strong enough to repel terrorist attacks from Hamas and the various gangs associated with Fatah, and external threats, such as Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. Israel must make the cost of these Arab and Iranian military adventures so high that they will stop trying to destroy Israel by force.

Ultimately either the Palestinians will get a leadership that understands that it’s more important to help Arabs than to kill Jews, and peace can be pursued, or… not.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians