FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

News item:

Israel has raised the idea of transferring parts of the territory in “the triangle” southeast of Haifa — along with the hundreds of thousands of Israeli-Arab citizens who live there — to a future Palestinian state in return for annexing West Bank territory including settlement blocs, Maariv reported on Wednesday. …

The idea is aimed at addressing two central issues in a possible peace agreement: first, land swaps between Israel and a Palestinian state that would enable Israel to expand its sovereignty to encompass major West Bank settlements, while compensating the Palestinians with territory that is currently part of sovereign Israel; and second, preserving Israel’s Jewish majority. …

There are currently around 1.6 million Israeli Arabs in the country and Maariv estimated that transferring 300,000 of those residents to a Palestinian state would leave Israel’s Arab population at around 12%.

By drawing on land from the triangle, where two of Israel’s largest Arab towns, Tayibe and Umm al-Fahm are located, Israel would be able to offer the Palestinians more territorial compensation in order to annex more West Bank settlement areas, the report said.

This idea has been around for a long time. Avigdor Lieberman was pushing it in 2010. It makes sense to someone who wants to find a compromise solution that will reduce conflict between Israel and a future Arab state.

There are, however, several reasons that it is a waste of time to talk about it.

The first is that the Arab citizens of Israel aren’t insane. There is no way they want to trade the freedom, healthcare, education and economy of the Jewish state to join up with another corrupt, kleptocratic, backward, totalitarian Arab state. This is the case even if they talk like Palestinian nationalists.

The second is that it directly contradicts Palestinian goals. They do not want to reduce the number of Arabs in Israel, even if they are the relatively moderate ‘Israeli Arabs’, they want to increase it.  There is no shortage of Arabs who claim to be ‘Palestinian’ — by their figures, there are about 11 million ‘Palestinians’ in the world, all of whom supposedly have a right to live in what we call ‘Israel’!

There is another reason. The Arabs believe that they are the true ‘owners’ of the land, all of it between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Listen to MK Haneen Zouabi:

… 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]

Arabs like Zouabi are infuriated by the idea of land swaps, because it would exclude them from part of their ‘patrimony’ and keep it for Jews. They are opposed to partition, except as a temporary solution on the road to a unified Arab ‘Palestine’. The only acceptable Jewish state for them is no Jewish state.

There is a fundamental asymmetry of objectives in the negotiations between Israel and the Arabs. Israel wants to end the conflict and is willing to give up much (way too much, in my opinion) in order to move toward a solution. The Arabs want to kick the Jews out of the territories, pump hostile ‘refugees’ into Israel, and replace the Jewish state with an Arab one.

It illustrates the asymmetry to note that the Arabs — and the US — expect that an agreement would result in the expulsion of tens or hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes (indeed, the Arabs want to maximize the number). But the idea of changing the status of Arabs, who would remain in their homes and on their land, will not be on the table.

Where is the US in this? The administration cares about one and only one thing: reversing the outcome of the 1967 war. Anything that will bring this about is fine with a regime, which — this is the only possible interpretation of its proposals and Middle East policy in general short of idiocy — could not care less about the continued existence of a Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: land swaps, Israel, Arabs

Some explanations of why I try to avoid certain popular expressions:

Anti-Semitism is a stupid word. ‘Semites’ are people whose languages belong to a certain linguistic grouping, and includes numerous ethnicities. The word ‘Anti-Semite’ was invented by a 19th-century Jew-hater, Wilhelm Marr, who wanted a scientific-sounding name for his Jew-hating club. It is responsible for the single stupidest argument in the history of politics (“Arabs can’t be anti-Semitic – they are Semites!”) For what it’s worth, Arabs can be Jew-haters. And so can Jews.

West Bank: Judea and Samaria (יהודה ושומרון) have been called that from biblical times. Even the UN used those names until after 1950, when the Kingdom of Jordan, having invaded these lands and ethnically cleansed them of Jews, illegally annexed them and started calling them the ‘West Bank’ to distinguish them from the East Bank, where the rest of Jordan was located. Only the UK and Pakistan recognized the annexation, and it was reversed on the ground in 1967. Why do we keep using this expression?

Pre-1967 borders: the cease-fire agreements signed between Israel and the Arab states in 1949 established these lines on the basis of the locations of the armies at the time of the cease-fire. The agreements indicated that they were in no way to be considered permanent ‘borders’ because neither side wanted them. UNSC Resolution 242, which the Arab states and Israel both accepted, calls for ‘secure and recognized boundaries’ to be established. The 1949 armistice lines are neither.

Palestine correctly applies only to the area of the British Mandate for Palestine, in effect from 1922 to 1948. The Romans, of course, invented the name after the Bar Kochba revolt of 135 CE, to recall the Philistines, biblical enemies of the Jews (who were long gone). It applied variously to parts of Syria and Judea.  There was no such entity during the Ottoman period — the area that corresponds to today’s Israel was divided into several vilayets [provinces] of the Empire. Residents of the Mandate, both Jews and Arabs, were called Palestinians. There was a newspaper published by Jews called the ‘Palestine Post’, and my wife has a burlap sack labeled “Palestine Button Company, Tel Aviv.” There is no such place as ‘Palestine’ today.

Palestinian people is a controversial expression. Some say that there is no such people, because most of the Arabs that populate the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean are descendents of relatively recent migrants from various places, mainly Syria and Egypt, and there was never a unique ‘Palestinian’ language, polity or culture. PLO media claims that ‘Palestinians’ descended from ancient Canaanites or Philistines, but this is complete nonsense.

But I do think that today there is a Palestinian people, although I date its coalescence to the 20th century. It was created in opposition to Zionism by leaders like al Husseini, who used traditional Muslim Jew-hatred and racism to create a politics of hatred.

The real father of the Palestinian nation, though, was Yasser Arafat, who promoted a false history (both ancient and recent), and after he was given power over the Arabs of the territories in 1993, introduced systematic indoctrination into all aspects of Palestinian life, especially the education of children. Today there is definitely a unique Palestinian culture, one of the ugliest on earth. Its most prominent manifestation is the glorification of the greatest terrorist butchers as the greatest Palestinian heroes.

Palestinian refugees are entirely different from all other refugees recognized by the UN in that their refugee status can be inherited, and no attempt may be made to resettle them anywhere (except Israel). True refugees from the 1948 war may have numbered as few as 320,000, and certainly no more than 650,000. Far fewer remain today, but the almost 5 million Arabs with ‘refugee status’ who are not treated like legitimate residents of most of the countries where they live, and are fed, clothed and schooled by the UN, should be called something else. How about ‘used’?

The problem with two-state solution is that it means entirely different things to Israelis and Arabs. To Israelis it is an agreement that results in an Arab state that will live peacefully alongside Israel and an end to the conflict with the Palestinians. To the Arabs it means the evacuation of Jews from Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem and the admission of ‘Palestinian refugees’ to Israel. It denotes a temporary situation before the unification of ‘Palestine’ under Arab rule. I’d prefer to just call it a train wreck.

Finally, can we give international law a rest? Few politicians know what it is, and there is no apolitical World Supreme Court that can decide, for example, whether the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to Israeli settlements (there are many highly competent legal scholars that say no, but the European Union and the BBC just keep saying that it does).

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestine

Palestinian Arabs celebrate the return of 26 prisoners from Israel, December 30, 2013. All but 3 were convicted of murder.

Israel has done it again, releasing 26 Arab prisoners (all but 3 were convicted of murder), the third of 4 groups totaling 104 that Israel has been pressured into freeing by the US, in order to ‘bring the Palestinians to the table.’ This release, like the others, happened despite anguished protests from the families and friends of the victims of these terrorists. Caroline Glick gives us an example, Juma Ibrahim Juma Adam and Mahmoud Salam Saliman Abu Karbish:

In 1992, the two men firebombed a civilian bus, murdering Rachel Weiss, who was nine months pregnant, and three of her pre-school aged children, as well as IDF soldier David Delarosa, who tried to save them.

And the Palestinian Authority/PLO, its President Mahmoud Abbas, and the Palestinian Arab population in general welcomed these murderers as heroes.

There are two aspects of this that I find interesting. One is the attitude of the Arabs, and the other is that of US officials — John Kerry, Barack Obama, and others responsible for the present débacle.

The Arabs are simple. In their world, a Jew doesn’t hold a Muslim captive. Actual Jewish sovereignty turns things upside down, and their violence is therefore totally understandable, completely justified. Have you ever heard a Palestinian Arab criticize terrorism for moral reasons? The closest they get (which is not at all close) is to say that it’s bad policy which does not help the Palestinian Cause. Let me quote something from the PLO-oriented Ma’an News Service:

Nevertheless, the Fatah official [Nabil Sha’ath] expects 2014 to be dedicated to reactivating Palestinian resistance. The PA, he said, is expected to join more UN organizations and to dedicate efforts to achieve reconciliation with Hamas.

“We have to use smart and fruitful means of struggle rather than violent struggle in order to maintain international support, as negotiations have failed to make a single step forward.”

He added: “The minimum of what we were offered in the year 2000 hasn’t been reached, not to mention that the US has failed to exert pressure on Israel to guarantee Palestinian rights.”

It seems “impossible” to reach an agreement, says Shaath, due to Israeli demands of maintaining security control, annexing Palestinian lands, refusing Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem and requesting that the PA recognizes Israel as a Jewish state.

“We will not recognize Israel as Jewish state, and would like to ask John Kerry if he agrees that we recognize the US as a Christian state,” Shaath said. [Huh? — ed.]

Thus, he added, the Palestinians have the right to practice resistance by all means.

“However, we should choose a smart resistance which will not cause us calamities like what happens when a missile is launched from Gaza. We have to make sure the world will show solidarity with us just as in Europe where settlement products will be boycotted by the beginning of 2014.”

It should be understood that there is more to ‘smart resistance’ than joining more UN organizations. ‘Violence’ to Palestinian Arabs means the use of guns and explosives. Throwing rocks and even firebombs counts as ‘nonviolence’. Here are a few words from Linah Alsaafin, a young ‘Palestinian’ woman (born in the UK and raised in England, the US, and ‘Palestine’) about the true meaning of nonviolence:

…to even consider throwing rocks as a violent act is absurd. The message is very clear: rocks are thrown at the enemy as a way of underscoring the Palestinians’ disapproval of a foreign occupier from intruding and expropriating their lands and homes. At the risk of insulting their intelligence and losing their respect at such a dim question, I asked a few Nabi Saleh children why they throw rocks. Their responses were simple: We don’t want the army here. This is our village. They are occupying us. …

The David versus Goliath analogy is lost on those well-meaning “nonviolent” folks. Truth be told, the literal Arabic translation of “nonviolent” isn’t used widely. We use the term muthahara silmiya which means “peaceful protest.” It is especially cringe-worthy to remember how I used to look down on those who threw rocks in Bilin and Nilin, something I now attribute to my ignorance and inexperience. I used to think — as a victim the propaganda pumped out by western media — that throwing rocks was a thing of the past, and that we needed new ways to resist, not quite the Gandhi way but something along those lines. Thank God for Nabi Saleh.

The whole article is worth reading. ‘Non-violent’ seems to mean ‘justified’, and ‘the occupation’ is so evil that anything a Palestinian does is justified. When you are driving home from work and a 5-pound rock crashes through your windshield at, say, 30 mph, take comfort in the knowledge that it is not ‘violent’, but ‘peaceful’.

So much for the Arabs. What about the sanctimonious John Kerry, who lectures Israel about making ‘hard decisions’ (ones that will result in the removal of hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes and subject the remaining state of Israel to daily terrorist incursions and rocket bombardments), in return for the PLO president who doesn’t represent anyone but himself and will likely not last a year in his position, uttering some kind of formula in English that can be construed as acceptance of a Jewish state?

I am not the only one who is wondering “what the hell does the US get out of this?” Could there be a worse time to weaken Israel than when Syria is engaged in a vicious civil war — actually a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran? When Lebanon is on the verge of being drawn into the conflict, Jordan is destabilized by millions of refugees from it, and Egypt’s economy has imploded? When Hizballah has 60,000 rockets, many hidden in civilian homes, aimed at Israel?

And importantly, when it is obvious to all, Israelis and Palestinian Arabs alike, that no agreement is possible?

I don’t know the answer, although I have my theories. Meanwhile, let me ask Mr. Kerry when it will be OK to release Charles Manson and 103 similar others to Nantucket?

John Kerry’s retreat on Nantucket Is., Massachusetts

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Arabs, prisoner release, John Kerry

I wasn’t going to write about “la quenelle.” Some things are just too stupid. But even particularly stupid things sometimes have a lesson to teach.

So what is the ‘quenelle’?

It is a the combination of an inverted Nazi salute and a traditional French gesture meaning “fuck you,” popularized by a French ‘comedian’ named Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala.

The gesture has spread rapidly in France. Jean-Yves Camus, a French academic who studies the extreme right, says the quenelle has become a “badge of identity, especially among the young, but it is doubtful that all of them understand its true meaning”. Dieudonné, Mr Camus adds, has become the hero of a movement which sprawls across the traditional boundaries of right and left – anti-system, hungry for conspiracy theories, convinced that the world is run by Washington and Tel Aviv [sic]. Mr Camus says that the “spinal column” of the movement is the conviction that “the Jews pull all the strings”.

Despite several convictions for anti-Semitic remarks, Dieudonné has strayed once again over the boundary between self-proclaimed anti-Zionism and outright provocation. During his one-man show, he attacked Patrick Cohen, a Jewish radio journalist who has publicly criticised him. Dieudonné said: “When the wind turns, I don’t think he’ll have time to pack a suitcase. When I hear Patrick Cohen talking, you see, I think of gas ovens.” France Inter, the radio station for which Mr Cohen works, has brought a case against Dieudonné for provoking racial hatred.

It has become a sport to take photographs of oneself making the quenelle in front of places of Jewish significance, like synagogues, Auschwitz, the Kotel, etc., or with unsuspecting Jews (photos courtesy Algemeiner.com).

The quenelle at Auschwitz

The quenelle at the Kotel, with an Israeli soldier

The quenelle with Haredi Jews

Here is Dieudonné [“God’s gift”] himself performing the quenelle:

Dieudonné himself.

Dieudonné has made a career of skirting French anti-racism laws, denying the Holocaust and being as offensive as possible to Jews. According to one observer, he has started a genuine movement:

Yaakov Haguel, head of the World Zionist Organization’s Department for Countering Anti-Semitism which organized the New York conference, “The Countering Anti-Semitism and Delegitimization of Israel Conference,” said the salute has already caught on around the world.

“It’s gaining more and more momentum, spreading on the Internet and social networks and turning into a clear Nazi symbol, and it doesn’t appear to be a passing phenomenon,” Haguel told Yedioth Ahronot. “It’s spreading to Israel too these days, and we must acknowledge that and stop it.”

Addressing the conference, Haguel said, “The recent anti-Semitic incidents point to an alarming trend of hatred of Jews around the world and particularly in the U.S., which is considered by many the safest place for Jews. Unfortunately, we are witnessing dozens of anti-Semitic incidents on average within one week across the U.S.”

I said there was a lesson in all this, and there is. It is that nothing plays better when things are going to hell than blaming the Jews, especially in Europe, where the indigenous European cultures are rapidly committing demographic suicide while being swamped by rapidly growing Muslim populations. I can’t say if popular Jew-hatred is increasing in the US, but if it is, it’s related to the job-free economy. Here too it is a right/left phenomenon: traditional working class neo-Nazis and the leftists who made up the ‘occupy’ movement are both out of work and both blaming the Jews.

One thing that makes the US different from Europe is the strong pro-Jewish and pro-Israel position of many, but not all, Christian Evangelicals. American Jews who take this for granted or even see the community as an enemy because it is politically and socially conservative are making a very foolish mistake.

The ‘clever’ photos of quenelles at Jewish sites and with Jews, which the perpetrators view as courageously speaking truth to Jewish power, are essentially childish and craven responses to the powerlessness that the marginalized people taking them experience. It is nevertheless worrisome that this movement is developing alongside the increasing anti-Zionism of the European governments and the Obama Administration — very definitely not the powerless fringe.

There are reports that Israel is planning a program to induce French Jews who are fleeing the country to come to Israel. It is more and more becoming clear that the notion of Israel as a refuge for persecuted Jews, a notion derided by the Beinarts and Ben Amis as outdated, is as true today as it was in 1948, and that the survival of the Jewish people absolutely depends on the survival of the Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: Jew-hatred, Dieudonné, quenelle

Yesterday Ha’aretz reporter Ari Shavit was interviewed on NPR about his new book. Let me start by saying that Shavit is not a foaming anti-Zionist like his colleagues Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and (formerly) Akiva Eldar. And I have to admit that I haven’t read his book. But the interview reveals a certain mindset that is disturbingly common among the supposedly sane Left in Israel.

For example, Shavit said,

It was part of the Ottoman [Empire]  – and the entire region was, like, chaotic and tribal. So one has to remember, they did not conquer a well-established state, but those other people were there. And my great grandfather did not see them. Now, that’s the source of the tragedy, because on the one hand, you have this amazing triumph that is a result of the brilliant insight [of Zionism]. On the other hand, you have this ongoing tragedy of a 100-year war – more than that – that is the result of that basic flaw, that we did not see the Palestinians and the Palestinians would not see us, and…

This isn’t true, at least for those Zionists with decent eyesight. It was clear to Vladimir Jabotinsky as early as 1923, that as much as some of the more tender-minded Zionists believed that it would be possible to share sovereignty over the land with the Arabs, the Arabs would never willingly agree to it. Zionism does not require expulsion or expropriation of the Arabs, he believed, but it does require Jewish sovereignty, a Jewish state, and he was certain that this couldn’t come about through a voluntary agreement.

The collision of Jews and Arabs in the land of Israel was bound to have a winner and a loser, and Jabotinsky was convinced that a Jewish victory was not immoral, any more than an Arab victory — which history has shown us would have been far bloodier — would have been. Zionism was moral because there was no alternative for the Jews, while there were many for Arabs. But that doesn’t mean the Arabs have to be happy about it.

This is where Shavit’s own vision is distorted. For him, the only moral solution is one in which both Jews and Arabs are satisfied. Unfortunately there is no such solution. The choice is between a Jewish state and the survival of the Jewish people, or the opposite of that.

Shavit is full of guilt, as if there were another option which we could have chosen! As a paradigm for Zionist crimes, he discusses the expulsion of the Arabs from Lydda, a very controversial incident. Shavit concludes that Israel “owes” the Palestinians something — a state. He sees this obligation as absolute, just as he believes that they have an obligation to tolerate our state.

He is wrong. What we, as Zionists, are obligated to do is to create and maintain our Jewish state while doing as little harm to the Arabs as possible. Especially compared to other nationalisms — particularly Arab nationalism — we have done so. The Zionist leadership did what was necessary to create the state, and despite what anti-Zionist revisionist historians say, did not engage in mass murder (as Arabs did whenever possible). Certainly some Arabs were expelled from their homes, mostly — as in the case of Lydda — because of the conflict they were engaged in. Shavit’s feelings of guilt are inappropriate.

And we do not “owe them” a state. In fact, because a Palestinian Arab state in Judea and Samaria is simply incompatible with the continued existence of the Jewish state — a result of military realities and Arab and Muslim intentions — we are obligated to oppose such a state.

Technorati Tags: Jabotinsky, Ari Shavit, Palestinian Arabs