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Here are a few quotations from a recent interview with presidential candidate Newt Gingrich:

I believe that if somebody is firing rockets at you, they are probably not engaged in the peace process. I believe if somebody goes around and says you don’t have a right to exist, they’re probably not prepared to negotiate for peace. I think if someone says they wanna wipe you out, you should believe them.

…

I think we’re much more likely to see an Arab winter, than we are to see an Arab Spring. The fact is that when people point out that of the 1,200,000 Christians who were in Iraq when we arrived, 700,000 have fled the country. That doesn’t strike me as a success. When you know that Coptic Christians who have been in Egypt for 2,100 years are now being persecuted and having their churches burned, that doesn’t strike me as a success. I think the Israeli Defense Minister said the other day that he’s very concerned about the Muslim Brotherhood’s success in this recent election.

Remember, I think 15% of the seats went to people who are more extreme than the Muslim Brotherhood…

So, I think there’s a lot to be concerned about, and whether or not the Arab world is going to evolve now in a very negative, probably very destructive, way.

…

…you have Abbas who says in the United Nations, “We do not necessarily concede Israel’s right to exist.” You’ve had four PLA ambassadors around the world say flatly, “Israel does not have a right to exist.” In late November in India, the PLA ambassador said “Anybody who thinks there is a big gap between Hamas and Fatah is kidding themselves.” You know, and so you have to start with this question “Who are you making peace with?”

…

I believe that the Jewish people have the right to have a state, and I believe that the commitments that were made at a time…remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places. And for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940’s, and I think it’s tragic.

…

Well, I think it’s delusional to call [the Oslo process] a peace process. I mean, we have an armed truce with a Palestinian Authority that’s relatively weak. And on its flank is a Hamas authority which may become relatively weak, because it can’t deliver anything. But both of which represent an enormous desire to destroy Israel. And I think unless you start with…and frankly, given their school system and the hatred they teach in their schools, often with money that comes from us through the United Nations, I mean I think there’s a lot to think about in terms of how fundamentally you want to change the terms of debate in the region.

Say what you will about Gingrich as a viable candidate, but you cannot say that he doesn’t understand the Middle East and particularly the Israeli-Arab conflict.

The quote about the “invented Palestinian people” has stirred up the expected hornet’s nest. For example, Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad called his remark “cheap and disgraceful”:

Responding to the statements of Gingrich, Dr. Fayyad stated that “the Palestinian people inhibited [sic] the land since the dawn of history, and intend to remain in it until the end times”, and added that “people like Gingrich must consult history as it seems that all what he knows about the region is the history of the Ottoman era”.  — IMEMC

Perhaps Gingrich’s tone was insulting, but historically he was not incorrect. Ridiculous Palestinian claims that they are descended from ancient Canaanites notwithstanding, most of the ancestors of the present-day ‘Palestinians’ arrived in the region along with or after the expedition of the Ottoman governor of Egypt Muhammad Ali into Syria in the early 1830’s. Rebellions and famines in Syria brought waves of Arabs into Palestine in the 19th and 20th centuries. And of course British and Zionist development brought even more Arab immigrants.

While Palestinian Arabs were mostly united in their opposition to Jewish immigration (although there were exceptions), specifically Palestinian nationalism probably did not exist before the first decades of the 20th century; interestingly, at first most nationalists were Christians rather than Muslims. Arab inhabitants of Palestine often insisted that the area was actually ‘southern Syria’, and identified as ‘Arabs’ and not Palestinians.

This changed with the founding of the PLO in 1964. Arab residents of the former Palestine Mandate became the ‘Palestinian people’. And in truth, the regional wars and terrorism, their indoctrination by every means possible into a culture based on one main principle, hatred of Jews and Israel,  their incarceration by the Arab nations and the UN in ‘refugee camps’ where they are bred like farm animals in order to incarnate a weapon of mass destruction for use against the Jewish people — all this has finally made them a people. What kind of people is another question.

Nevertheless, it is Fayyad who is ignorant of history, not Gingrich.

Technorati Tags: Newt Gingrich, Palestinians, Israel, Salam Fayyad

Akiva Eldar. Apparently he prefers murderers to car theives

Ha’aretz writer Akiva Eldar described himself thus in a 2008 article:

The prominent Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in November 2000 (in a publication of the Israel Democracy Institute) that “there are Israeli reporters who do not pass the ‘lynch test.'” These, he wrote, are journalists who could not bring themselves to criticize the Arabs even when two Israelis were savagely murdered by a mob in Ramallah. Barnea, who last year was awarded the Israel Prize for journalism, went on to argue that our support for the Palestinian position is absolute. He concluded, “They have a mission.” I was honored to be mentioned as one of those journalists, alongside my fine colleagues Gideon Levy and Amira Hass.

What he wrote yesterday was even more revealing. In an article entitled “Abbas should change his locks before next wave of Palestinian prisoners freed,” Eldar tells us that many of the Arab prisoners to be released in the second phase of the exchange for Gilad Shalit will be “car thieves and petty criminals.”

Now get ready … here is Eldar’s unique take on this:

After being compelled to give Hamas a healthy offering of security prisoners, including “heavy” terrorists, Netanyahu is determined this time to release a low-fat fare.

This isn’t the first time that Netanyahu is converting an agreement to release Palestinian prisoners into either a bonanza or boondoggle for the Palestinian leadership. Twelve years ago, during his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu sent Yasser Arafat mainly prisoners who were incarcerated for criminal – not security – offenses…

Abbas now claims that then prime minister Ehud Olmert promised him he would release two Fatah prisoners for every one prisoner returned to Hamas. Netanyahu suggests that Abbas go to Olmert and ask him for these prisoners.

Eldar is actually criticizing Netanyahu for cheating the PLO by not releasing more murderers! He seems to suggest that Netanyahu is behaving dishonorably toward Abbas by violating some kind of understanding.

Let’s remember that Israel is not releasing these prisoners, who by all rights should serve out their sentences, because it lost a bet on a football game to Hamas and the PLO. They are being released in payment of ransom, to free a kidnap victim who was held incommunicado for more than five years.

In a previous post, I suggested that we refer to the Shalit deal as a ‘jailbreak’ and not a prisoner exchange. There is no difference between this and a situation in which gang members free their confederates by holding a gun to the head of a hostage. The idea that one could behave dishonorably toward the gang in that situation is absurd.

 ***

This is so illogical, so crazy, that I looked more carefully at Eldar’s confessional 2008 article. What could make a Jewish Israeli, one who isn’t stupid, think like this?

There are many Jews who believe that there is no difference between Hebron and Tel Aviv, or between West and East Jerusalem. As far as they are concerned, the Land of Israel was promised solely to the People of Israel. Yet anyone who perceives the West Bank (and not “Judea and Samaria”) and East Jerusalem as occupied territories cannot accept the policies of Israel’s governments for the past forty years. Occupation does not have two sides. There is no symmetry between the occupier and the occupied. This is true even if the occupied fight the occupier with despicable and contemptuous methods.

There are two important threads here.

One is a deliberate blindness to historical facts. Why does he say “not Judea and Samaria?” These were the accepted names until 1950, when the Jordanians, having invaded and occupied the territory that formerly was part of the Palestine Mandate renamed them for political reasons.

Certainly there is a difference between Hebron and Tel Aviv, but the implication of Eldar’s statement is that the difference is that Jews may live in Tel Aviv and not Hebron. But — as Melanie Phillips has written — Jews lived in Hebron for centuries until they were expelled by a murderous pogrom in 1929, and then again by the Jordanians in 1948.

Prior to 1967, the last time these places were under Jewish control was that of King David. Afterwards, a succession of foreign conquerors — occupiers? — controlled them until, with the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the ‘international community’ recognized that a tiny piece of it, their historical home, could be set aside for the Jewish people.

Incidentally, at the same time, several Arab states were created out of former Ottoman colonies. None of them are free or democratic.

Since then, the Arab world — indeed, the Muslim world — has had no higher common purpose than to snuff out this tiny Jewish island in a sea of Arab and Muslim states. When President Roosevelt met with King Saud in February 1945, he was treated to a diatribe on the subject of Jewish immigration to Palestine. Why did Saud care so much about a territory that didn’t border Saudi Arabia at a time of geopolitical upheaval everywhere?

The reason is simple, and it is the same as what animates the conflict today: the possibility of Jewish control of ‘Arab (or Muslim) land’.

In other words, religious hatred and racism.

The second thread is what is called postcolonialism. This is the radical position that morality is politically determined. A ‘colonist’ or ‘occupier’, always European or North American in origin, oppresses a ‘colonized’ people. Because of the inherent power imbalance, the colonized people has a ‘right’ to ‘resist’ by any means available, even terrorism.

In addition to the logical incoherence of this idea — if morality is political, then it is not morality as we know it — the paradigm of European colonialism does not apply to Israel (nor to Israeli Jews, many of whom are of Middle Eastern origin). Indeed, if anyone was an oppressed people that overthrew a European colonial power and established self-determination in their homeland, it was the Jews of Palestine.

Eldar says that he is not opposed to the State of Israel, he just thinks “it [is] better to live in a small but beautiful country than in a large and ugly one.” But his postcolonialist argument leads to a slippery slope. What, indeed, is the difference between Hebron and Tel Aviv? How would he respond to the Arab argument that ‘the occupation’ began in 1948, not 1967?

Not only is he blind to history and ideologically impaired, he is entirely naive about the intentions of the PLO, with whom he wishes to make ‘peace’. He writes,

I have condemned those Israeli policies that reinforce Hamas and weaken the chances for a peaceful settlement: the faltering negotiations for a permanent agreement, the invasive layout of the separation fence, the hundreds of roadblocks and the dozens of illegal settlement outposts.

That was three years ago, but I would have hoped that by now he would understand that any agreement that Israel makes with the PLO will not be peaceful or permanent. And even that will be moot if Hamas replaces the PLO as ruler of the territories, quite likely if Israel withdraws.

***

Eldar’s ideology and lack of historical sense has led him to oppose his own, Jewish people in their struggle with those that hate and want to destroy them, so much so that he doesn’t see the irony in his call for Netanyahu to release murderers — one of those that Abbas would like to see out of jail is Marwan Barghouti, serving 5 life sentences for murder — instead of car thieves!

Technorati Tags: Akiva Eldar, Israel

Leon Panetta: his fury is misdirected

One of the themes of the Obama Administration’s policy is that Israel is responsible for the non-progress of the ‘peace process’ between Israel and the PLO.

For example, last week the US Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, said this directly:

“I understand the view that this is not the time to pursue peace, and that the Arab awakening further imperils the dream of a safe and secure, Jewish and democratic Israel. But I disagree with that view,” Panetta said.

He said Israel needed to take risks, including by breathing new life into moribund peace talks with Palestinians. When asked by a moderator what steps Israel needed to take to pursue peace, Panetta said: “Just get to the damn table.”

But yesterday, as if more evidence were needed, a Palestinian Authority/PLO spokesman proudly announced that it was they who did not want to sit at the table with Israel:

The Palestinian Authority reiterated Sunday its opposition to holding direct peace talks with Israel and pointed out that the Quartet members – the US, EU, UN and Russia – had called for separate negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

The PA’s announcement came in response to remarks by US State Department spokesman Mark Toner, who said last Friday that Israel and the Palestinians must start direct talks before there can be any negotiation on borders and security.

Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat expressed surprise at Washington’s call for direct talks.

He said that the Quartet called last September for separate talks with the two parties, during which Israel and the Palestinians would present their positions on security and borders…

The PLO official said that the Palestinians would agree to face-to-face talks only when Israel halts all settlement construction and accepts the pre-1967 lines as the borders of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. [my emphasis]

Given that this has been the US position since time immemorial, and given that the PLO signed the Oslo agreement which calls for such direct negotiations, Erekat’s expression of surprise is disingenuous. Of course, the PLO has already breached the Oslo agreement by applying to the UN for unilateral statehood, and by allying itself with the unrepentantly terrorist Hamas.

On the other hand, Israel’s PM Netanyahu has called for direct negotiations without preconditions on numerous occasions.

Erekat’s interpretation of the Quartet’s September 23 statement is also disingenuous to the point of outright lying. The statement says that

The Quartet reiterated its urgent appeal to the parties to overcome the current obstacles and resume direct bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without delay or preconditions.

It is correct that the Quartet also said that it will convene an international conference “at the appropriate time.” But what doesn’t Erekat understand about “direct bilateral … negotiations without delay or preconditions?”

Israel quite reasonably will not agree to the Palestinian preconditions, insisting that borders, Jerusalem, and the fate of ‘settlements’ are among the issues that must be negotiated. And apparently there are even more preconditions:

The Palestinian Authority is set to demand that the Quartet pressure Israel to release prisoners in fulfillment of a pledge made by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, senior Palestinian sources told Haaretz on Monday…

Now the PA wants to present the demand ahead of a possible renewal of negotiations with Israel.  — Ha’aretz, Oct. 26

The Palestinians know that they would have to concede something — security arrangements, recognition of the Jewish state, right of return, end of conflict, etc. — in serious negotiations. They cannot or will not do that, so they prefer to have the US force Israel to give them what they want as preconditions. Then all that will remain to negotiate will be how fast Israel leaves the territories.

And for some reason, the Obama Administration seems to be going along with their plan.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Obama Administration, Middle East Quartet

Hillary Clinton complaining that Israel is becoming undemocratic

One of the themes beloved by Jewish-American critics of Israel like Peter Beinart and Rabbi Richard Jacobs has been that Israel is insufficiently democratic. This is also a staple for the Israeli Left whenever Israel’s democratically elected government does something they don’t like.

In particular, the Knesset has been debating several possible approaches to ending or at least reducing foreign funding of Israeli NGOs that delegitimize or demonize the state, interfere with its security, engage in ‘lawfare’ against it, and so forth.

Naturally the individuals for whom these organizations — which have very little indigenous Israeli  support — constitute a meal ticket, are screaming bloody murder.

Now the US Secretary of State has joined the crowd:

WASHINGTON – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced deep concern on Saturday over a wave of anti-democratic legislation in Israel and in particular a bill proposing to limit donations to human rights organizations. Clinton also criticized the growing exclusion of women from Israel’s public life…

Clinton, a longtime advocate for women’s rights, noted she was shocked at the fact that some Jerusalem buses have assigned separate seating areas for women. “It’s reminiscent of Rosa Parks,” she said, referring to the black American woman who refused to give up her seat to white passengers in the 1950s.

Referring to the decision of some IDF soldiers to leave an event where female soldiers were singing, she said it reminded her of the situation in Iran. [my emphasis]

It should be made clear that neither of the phenomena related to women mentioned are government-sanctioned or widespread like bus segregation was in the US. They are confined to ultra-observant communities (in one case, observant  IDF soldiers and the other, hareidi neighborhoods in Jerusalem). Israel’s government and legal system operate on secular principles, and feminism is a powerful force in Israel. I think we can depend on Israelis to solve this one by themselves.

As a feminist and secularist, Clinton should be concerned about the appearance of an association for “the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” that is being organized in newly-‘democratic’ Tunisia. Or perhaps she could comment on the report of a ‘high-level advisory group’ in Saudi Arabia that allowing women to drive would “threaten the country’s traditions of virgin brides.”

The issue of foreign funding for NGOs, however, is quite a serious matter, and it is very disappointing to hear the US echoing the frustrated, disenfranchised Israeli Left. After all, the US has a Foreign Agents Registration Act to ensure transparency of funding for organizations in the US.

Israel is a small country and a few tens or hundreds of millions of dollars here and there can have a strong effect on its conduct of foreign affairs and internal politics, and could even tip the balance in a close election (here are some examples of funding from European governments — note that it doesn’t include church organizations or the US-based New Israel Fund, major contributors to anti-state NGOs).

Another example of “anti-democratic” legislation is a bill which would increase the limit on penalties for libel without damage to $80,000 from its present limit of about $13,000. Proponents say that the present low limits are not a deterrent to media assassinations of public figures.

Finally, there is a bill which will change the way the justices of the Supreme Court are chosen. Today the 9-member selection committee includes three members of the Court itself, two cabinet ministers, two representatives of the Bar Association, and two Knesset members (one from the coalition and one from the opposition).

The Court members plus the Bar Association have managed to dominate the committee in recent history, leading to a self-perpetuating ideologically left-wing court.  The bill wants to require that the Bar Association members also be split between the coalition and the opposition.

Whatever you think of these bills — and I think they represent a much-needed correction in the degree to which the unelected left-wing media and judiciary, along with foreign-funded NGOs, influence Israeli governance  — they are not anti-democratic.

And they are most certainly not the business of the US State Department or the Obama Administration.

What is behind this sudden surge of concern for Israel’s democracy? In the past few days we’ve heard the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, blame Israel for the lack of progress in the worse-than-useless ‘peace process’, and now Ms. Clinton gives aid and comfort to the left-wing opposition to PM Netanyahu.

My interpretation is that this is an effort to a) pressure Netanyahu to make more concessions to the PLO — anything to get an appearance of ‘progress’ to boost Obama’s pretension of being a successful leader in foreign affairs, and b) to keep Democratic Jewish voters and contributors in line despite his increasingly anti-Israel policies.

In other words, it’s all about November 2012.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hillary Clinton, democracy

Russian 'Yakhont' supersonic anti-ship cruise missile

News item:

Russia has delivered supersonic cruise missiles to Syria despite the violence shaking the Arab country and Israel’s furious condemnation of the deal, a news report said on Thursday.

“The Yakhont supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles have been delivered to Syria,” a military source told the Interfax news agency without disclosing when the shipment was made.

Russia signed a contract reportedly worth at least $300 million (222 million euros) in 2007 to supply its traditional Arab world ally with a large shipment of the cruise missiles. Reports said Russia intended to deliver 72 of the missiles to Syria in all.

The deal immediately angered Israel, which fears the weapons may fall into the hands of Hezbollah militants in neighbouring Lebanon…

Another Russian official told Interfax that the missiles, which operate as part of the Bastion mobile coastal defence system, “will be able to protect Syria’s entire coast against a possible attack from the sea.”

Let’s see: Either they will “fall into the hands” of Hizballah, or if Assad survives he can use them against Israel himself. Or perhaps an Islamist successor to Assad will do so.

Although these weapons were ordered before the start of what has become a civil war in Syria, one would think that the present situation would be a good reason to delay the delivery — unless Assad and his Iranian patron (who certainly paid for the missiles) are thinking to deter Western or Turkish intervention.

Another possibility is that they are intended as a deterrent against an Israeli attack on Syrian missile bases which might precede one on Iran.

Russia has stationed naval units at Latakia and Tartus, Syria, providing very important direct access to the eastern Mediterranean (nearby Russian ports are in the Black Sea, requiring passage through the Turkish-controlled Dardanelles and Bosphorous straits). This area has taken on great strategic significance with the discovery of large reservoirs of natural gas. So doubtless the missile system is wanted to defend the Russian base as well.

The gas discovery is almost a mixed blessing. Now in addition to the ideological hatred of the Muslim world, Israel finds that it also has to protect its natural resources against the piracy of great powers like Russia and Turkey (which is motivated by both greed and Islamist ideology).

Shabbat shalom.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Syria, Russia, Yakhont, eastern Mediterranean