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Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper with Israel’s Netanyahu

Daniel Pipes has written an essay (“The Sick Middle East“) that sums up the condition of the region in depressing detail. He writes that “maladies run so deep in the Middle East (minus remarkable Israel) that outside powers cannot remedy them,” and then goes on to present a truly remarkable list of problems caused by endemic backwardness, racism, greed and shortsightedness. Read it if you woke up in an excessively optimistic mood today!

Nevertheless, he concludes that while fixing it may be impossible, action is sometimes necessary in order to protect the civilized world from the barbarians that it has empowered by its thirst for their oil:

Nineteenth-century diplomats dubbed the Ottoman Empire “the Sick Man of Europe.” Now, I nominate the whole Middle East the Sick Man of the World. The region’s hatreds, extremism, violence, and despotism require many decades to remedy.

While this process perhaps takes place, the outside world is best advised not to expend blood and treasure to redeem the Middle East – a hopeless task – but on protecting itself from the region’s manifold threats, from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and harems to mega-terrorism and electromagnetic pulse.

This is why the policy of the Obama Administration to permit the most dangerous element in the Muslim Middle East, the expansionist and war-mongering Iranian regime, to obtain nuclear weapons is so foolish. And why supporting the interests of one of the most viciously racist and aspirationally genocidal entities there, the mother of terrorism called the PLO, is so irrational.

Israel really is different, as Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper noted this week:

I believe the story of Israel is a great example to the world.

It is a story, essentially, of a people whose response to suffering has been to move beyond resentment and build a most extraordinary society, a vibrant democracy, a freedom-loving country with an independent and rights-affirming judiciary, an innovative, world-leading “start-up” nation.

You have taken the collective memory of death and persecution to build an optimistic, forward-looking land one that so values life, you will sometimes release a thousand criminals and terrorists, to save one of your own.

In the democratic family of nations, Israel represents values which our government takes as articles of faith, and principles to drive our national life.

The US under Obama, it seems, has given up on the idea that values count in international affairs. Either that, or the values of the administration are closer to those of the Iranian leaders or the PLO than to those that characterize Israel — or Stephen Harper.

Shabbat shalom!

Technorati Tags: Daniel Pipes, Middle East, Israel, Stephen Harper

In today’s “Israel Hayom,” Nadav Shragai describes the situation in Mt. Scopus, in northeastern Jerusalem:

A few minutes’ drive from the National Police Headquarters in Jerusalem, where along the way sits the Hebrew University campus (founded 88 years ago), soldiers, students, policemen, civilians and local residents try braving the drive to arrive safe and sound to school, reserve duty or their homes. Along the way, they may encounter anything and everything from Molotov cocktails, stone throwing, hit-and-run attempts, burning tires and cinder blocks on the road. In this ongoing local intifada, which has known its ups and downs, everything is fair game as far as the youth of Issawiyeh are concerned. …

Female students leaving the campus on foot frequently suffer sexually related assaults. They have tried everything — whistles, pepper spray, self-defense courses, they have written letters to police commanders, held meetings in the Knesset. Nothing has helped them. Take that path, go around that way, protect yourselves like this — these are the answers they hear.

This is not the only place in the Jewish state where Jews are afraid of becoming victims of anti-Jewish violence. About a mile to the south the ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, where Jews have been buried for 3,000 years, is also dangerous territory for Jews, not to mention a target of continuous vandalism. Numerous famous rabbis, Henrietta Szold (the founder of Hadassah), Eliezer Ben Yehuda, Menachem Begin and many others are buried there, and a Jew taks his life in his hands to visit their graves!

There are neighborhoods in Jerusalem and Arab towns where a Jewish driver stands the risk of being dragged from his car and lynched. And of course the roads of Judea and Samaria have become arcades for Arab terrorists-in-training to practice throwing rocks and firebombs.

Most of the time — although every few weeks there is an exception — this doesn’t rise to the level of murder. Hence I call it ‘misdemeanor terrorism’; but it is no less terrorism.

The Arabs that perpetrate these offenses believe that the Jewish presence in the land of Israel is illegitimate, and that therefore anything they do is perfectly justified. They have an endless list of exaggerated and imagined atrocities to avenge. Much of the time the terrorists and vandals are juveniles, making it hard to arrest them and impossible to deter them with threats of punishment.

Local Arabs either support and encourage the behavior, or in effect become human shields, because security measures are called ‘collective punishment’. And photographers — often local Arabs employed by international media — lap up the excitement. How would you like to be lynched while these vultures (who may have encouraged your attackers) get their closeups?

Misdemeanor terrorism is just another way in which the Arabs act to chip away at Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. What good does it do if the IDF has nuclear weapons at its disposal as long as Jews can’t walk the streets of their capital in safety (or, in another example of the erosion of sovereignty, are not permitted to pray — not even to move their lips — on the Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism, in the center of Israel’s capital)?

Meanwhile, since the time of Arafat, the PLO has been promulgating its made-up version of history in which there is no connection between Jews and Jerusalem! Even the Obama Administration seems to have acquiesced in this outrageous lie.

Obviously there are a lot of practical and technical things that can and must be done. But above all, it is necessary for all the institutions of the state — the government, educational system, police, etc. to be on the same page: that Israel is sovereign in all of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount. It is essential that all degradations of Jewish sovereignty, whether by criminal activity or simply improper situations that are allowed to fester because authorities are afraid of Arab reaction, be opposed.

The Arabs never stop probing for weaknesses, and attacking when they find them. The more they are allowed to get away with, the more they will do. In one of the greatest moments of modern Jewish history, the IDF captured the Old City in 1967, at great cost — and almost immediately, Moshe Dayan began the process of abdicating sovereignty by placing control of the Temple Mount in the hands of the Muslim waqf. Only the Oslo agreement compares with this decision in its disastrous effects for the state of Israel!

Jerusalem is the spiritual center of the Jewish world. Israel needs to ensure that it remains under Jewish control, even if the actions need to ensure this are unpopular with the Arabs, the UN, and the Obama Administration.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Sovereignty

Material for canceled UNESCO Jewish exhibit

I’ve been complaining about the Obama Administration a lot recently, particularly about its insistence on Israeli concessions to the PLO for an impossible peace deal, and for its enabling Iran’s nuclear program. But even more shocking — because it puts the administration’s ideological opposition to the very foundation of the Jewish state on display — is this:

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, has pulled a Jewish exhibit two years in the making, entitled “People, Book, Land – The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel,” after a zero hour protest from the Arab League, The Algemeiner has learned.

The exhibit, which was created by Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) together with UNESCO, was scheduled to open on January 20th, 2014, at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters. The invitations had already gone out, and the fully prepared exhibition material was already in place. The display was co-sponsored by Israel, Canada and Montenegro.

It is not surprising that the Arab League is opposed to anything that suggests that Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East has any legitimacy. But the stunning part is that prior to the Arab League’s objection, the State Department withdrew the US as a sponsor of the exhibition, using language almost identical to that of the Arab League! Here is the US position:

“At this sensitive juncture in the ongoing Middle East peace process, and after thoughtful consideration with review at the highest levels, we have made the decision that the United States will not be able to co-sponsor the current exhibit during its display at UNESCO headquarters,” wrote Kelly O. Siekman, Director at the Office of UNESCO Affairs of the State Department, in an email seen by The Algemeiner. [my emphasis]

J. E. Dyer writes,

What’s so damaging to the peace process … about a Jewish history exhibit?  According to the Arab League, it’s the evidence it would present of the Jewish people’s long association with the land of Israel.  The campaign to suppress that evidence is a new lie, dating only to about the 1960s as a coherent political endeavor.  It started with Yasser Arafat and other Arab politicians, and continues today with such grotesqueries as the assertion – made on occasion by Mahmoud Abbas – that “Jesus was a Palestinian.”

The appalling thing, however, is that the U.S. government is throwing in with this campaign, by tacitly agreeing that the historical truth about the Jews and Israel is inimical to “peace.” [my emphasis]

‘Appalling’ is too kind. I prefer ‘disgraceful’.

Could there be a clearer demonstration of the anti-Zionist, indeed anti-Jewish attitudes of the State Department — and indeed, since the decision was taken after “review at the highest levels,” the President?

Technorati Tags: Israel, US State Department, UNESCO

Courtesy of Yaakov Kirschen, Dry Bones.

Shabbat shalom!

Technorati Tags: Ya’alon, Kerry, Israel

What kind of expression is this – “punishing Israel”? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we youths of fourteen who, if they don’t behave properly, are slapped across the fingers? — Menachem Begin, 1981, after the US ‘punished’ Israel for bombing Saddam’s nuclear reactor

Yesterday, I wrote about Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s remarks about John Kerry’s “inexplicable,” “obsessive,” and “messianic” drive to get Israel to agree to a dangerous plan that would “ensure that Ben Gurion Airport and Netanya become a missile target.”

The US State Department exploded, saying Ya’alon’s statement was “offensive and inappropriate, especially given all that the United States is doing to support Israel’s security needs.” Netanyahu gave him talking to, and he apologized.

We know, of course, that every word that he uttered, and more, was true. Ya’alon is a soldier and a soldier has to act on the basis of reality on the ground — otherwise, people get killed. So he forgot that politics and diplomacy are different.

The part about “all the US is doing…” was a nice touch. I presume that was intended as a reference to US military aid to Israel.

US military aid is provided in order to advance the interests of the US, as defined by the administration. Often it also serves the interests of the country receiving it — or, in most cases, the ruling regime — but that is only accidental. There may be real costs to the recipient as well as benefits.

I am starting to believe that in Israel’s case, the costs have begun to exceed the benefits.

The most obvious direct cost is the constant pressure to make a deal, any deal, to get Israel out of the territories and allow the creation of a PLO state there. For simple, obvious reasons that I am tired of repeating, such a state is incompatible with Israel’s security. If the IDF gets out of the territories, as Ya’alon noted, Israelis will die from rockets, from terrorism and perhaps from a new regional war.

Kerry’s pretense that there is a technological solution is simply a smokescreen to obtain an Israeli withdrawal. It sounds ugly, but one could correctly say that the objective is a Jew-free Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. Can anyone deny this?

There is also the restraint that the US has forced on Israel regarding Iran. Israel has taken the Iranian regime at its word and views its nuclear program as an existential threat. But US policy now appears to be to achieve a rapprochement with the regime, and it has been following a path that it appears will result in a nuclear-capable Iran. The US has pulled out all the stops in its efforts to prevent Israel from taking action against Iran.

The US now treats Israel as a “key target” for counterintelligence (along with Pakistan, China, Iran, North Korea, etc.). It has presented Israel with the ‘gift’ of a super-high-resolution radar system which can detect Iranian missile launches almost as they occur, but can also observe all Israeli air activity, including takeoff of small drones. It is staffed and guarded by by Americans, and its data is filtered in California before it is given to Israel.

It was reported that an Israeli official called the radar station “golden handcuffs.” But perhaps this applies to the entire enterprise of US aid to Israel. It might be a better long-run deal for Israel to pay for its own weapons and develop its own radar systems — and take off the golden handcuffs.

Technorati Tags: Israel, US aid