FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

The following is from an article by Anne Hertzberg of the intrepid NGO Monitor:

…a group of NGOs, primarily funded by European governments, the EU, and the New Israel Fund (NIF) have initiated a campaign to denigrate the Israeli justice system in order to bolster efforts to have Israelis arrested for “war crimes” in Europe, and in order to support the PLO’s application to the International Criminal Court for an investigation of Israel.

They also play an integral role in the PLO strategy to use UN frameworks, not to resolve the conflict, but to “internationalize the conflict as a legal matter” and to “pave the way for (the Palestinians) to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice” as Mahmoud Abbas tellingly revealed in a May 17 New York Times op-ed…

Adalah, an Israeli NGO heavily funded by the NIF and the EU, is a leader of this strategy. At a 2008 conference in Brussels funded by the Swedish government, Adalah’s General Director Hassan Jabareen recommended that Palestinian activists “should try to portray Israel as an inherent undemocratic state” and “use that as part of campaigning internationally.”

Adalah has implemented this strategy in many submissions to UN committees, including the Human Rights Council. Additionally, in 2009, Adalah filed an “expert” opinion on behalf of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in a lawsuit brought by the group in Spain seeking the arrest and imprisonment of seven Israeli officials for alleged “war crimes” arising out of the killing of a senior Hamas terrorist, Salah Shehade.

In 2007, Adalah presented its proposal for a “Democratic Constitution” for Israel. In its introduction, Adalah begins by demanding that

The state of Israel must recognize, therefore, its responsibility for the injustices of the Nakba and the Occupation; recognize the right of return of the Palestinian refugees based on UN Resolution 194 [understood by Arabs as return of any ‘refugees’ who choose to do so — ed]; recognize the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination; and withdraw from all of the territories occupied in 1967.

The constitution proposal also contains several options for providing the Arab minority with a veto over all decisions of the Knesset. There is lots more, and it’s clear that the adoption of this constitution would mean the end of the Jewish state.

As Hertzberg wrote, Adalah is supported in part by the New Israel Fund (NIF). In fact, Adalah received more than one million dollars from the NIF between 2006 and 2010.

This is the same NIF that was a center of controversy last year when it was revealed that the great majority of NGO’s that contributed ‘evidence’ for IDF ‘war crimes’ to the Goldstone report — most of which consisted of the repetition of unsubstantiated charges made by Gaza residents in the presence of Hamas officials and translators — received funding from the NIF.

This is also the same NIF that made news again this year when it became known that the NIF funded an extremist group called “The Coalition of Women for Peace” which had little to do with women or peace but a great deal to do with demonizing and promoting the boycott of Israel.

Its 2008 IRS form 990, the most recent one that I have, shows that the NIF distributed more than $20 million in grants in 2008. Not all of the NIF’s projects are anti-state, and these programs are pointed to by its defenders to justify their support. For example, there is a grant for “support for women suffering battering or sexual abuse.” There are numerous grants for “religious pluralism” which I presume means support for non-Orthodox Judaism. There are grants for environmental purposes (although in many cases ‘protecting the environment’ means opposing the security fence).

But the overwhelming thrust of the NIF’s grantees is antagonism to Israeli society as it is. Over and over one sees grants for promoting or protecting ‘rights’ for various groups (mostly Arabs, but also women and some Jewish immigrants). There are a great many grants for ‘community organizing’, and for ‘promoting equality’ in one or another realm. The overall impression is that Israel is oppressive and undemocratic, and NIF funds are used to pressure the ‘establishment’ into changing its ways, following the example of the civil rights movement in America.

And then of course there are things like a grant of $140,000 to “promote peace” (there are numerous large grants for this purpose) and $700,000 for “protecting human rights of all populations in Israel”, $308,000 for “protecting the human rights of the Arab minority in Israel”, and multiple grants totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars for “protecting human rights in the occupied territories”. There was even a grant of $458,500 for “promoting democracy and human rights in the media”. Could Israel’s media possibly be made more democratic?

The NIF is big business.  Its 2008 income was almost $35 million in contributions and grants (the Ford Foundation gave it $5 million). Its CEO in 2008, Larry Garber (the present CEO is Daniel Sokatch), was paid more than $228,000 in that year, a consultant named Aaron Back was paid $235,000 for ‘program management services’, and there were seven additional employees with annual salaries over $100,000. Just because it’s a non-profit doesn’t mean that nobody profits!

This huge enterprise is focused on one tiny, embattled democratic country, aiming to remake it in accordance with the fantasies of an ideal society as imagined by liberal American Jews.

This is bad enough, but it also funds a darker enterprise, which is to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state. I’m sure its supporters would claim that they are only trying to bring about peace (by opposing the policies of its democratically elected government), but the effect is to weaken the state and strengthen its enemies.

Oh — did I mention that this is the same NIF as the one of which Rabbi Richard Jacobs, the incoming president of the Union for Reform Judaism, is a board member? The URJ has said that Rabbi Jacobs will step down from his outside board positions for the first years of his presidency,  “in order to focus his energies on the task ahead of him.”

What he should do is resign from the NIF altogether, insofar as that organization is hurting, not helping, the state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Adalah, NIF, Rabbi Richard Jacobs, URJ

In January of this year, Hizballah and its allies brought down the coalition of Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri. A new PM, Najib Mikati, was designated, but he had not been able to put together a coalition until yesterday.

The new Lebanese cabinet of 30 ministers includes 18 members of the Hizballah-led “March 8 Alliance,” (the name refers to an anti-Western demonstration held in 2005). That’s a majority, folks, and it includes the justice and defense ministries.

This means that Iranian-Syrian proxy Hizballah has even more power over Lebanon than before.

Is it time for the US to stop sending aid, particularly military aid, to Lebanon?

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in response that Washington should cut off the funding for Lebanon.

Hezbollah led the toppling of the government of Saad Hariri while the former prime minister was on a visit to Washington in January. The group was upset with Hariri’s support for a U.N.-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister’s father.

Hezbollah had two Cabinet positions in the Hariri government [there still are only two ministers who are members of the party, but their ‘alliance’ partners have grown from 11 to 18]. U.S. lawmakers last year mulled withholding the roughly $100 million in military aid to Lebanon because of Hezbollah concerns but reversed course after classified briefings indicated the Lebanese military was able to handle the assistance responsibly. — UPI

Here’s an example of the way the Lebanese Army has acted “responsibly:”

On August 3rd, 2010, Lebanese Army snipers shot and killed an Israeli officer who was directing a routine tree-clearing operation on the Israeli side of the border. Another officer was seriously wounded.

There is no doubt that this was a deliberate provocation by Hizballah to divert attention from the indictments that were shortly expected (they are still ‘expected’) of the UN Special Tribunal looking into the assassination of Rafik Hariri.

In the next war, Hizballah rockets from Lebanon will kill Israelis. There’s no doubt about this either.

Now it is even more important that the US stop supporting the Lebanese Army, which — far from checking Hizballah in accordance with UN resolution 1701 — acts on its behalf.

Technorati Tags: Lebanon, Hizballah

A new king arose … who did not know Joseph.

By Vic Rosenthal

The history of the Jewish people in exile tended to repeat itself, following a pattern first described in the Torah, in the book called shemot [Exodus].

The people of Israel find themselves in a place where they are tolerated, perhaps a place where the ruler is friendly or finds them useful. They do well, multiply, accumulate wealth and prestige. Many of them take on customs of the people among whom they live, and some even forget who they are.

But the local population doesn’t forget. They become jealous of the success of the children of Israel (later called Jews). And something happens — perhaps the friendly ruler dies and is replaced by one who “did not know Joseph.” Laws and customs change, rights and privileges are taken away, and suddenly the Israelites have the stark choice between leaving their homes, perhaps the only ones they’ve known, finding another place where they can start over, or being wiped out.

It happened in Egypt, and it’s been happening everywhere since then, in the Christian and Muslim worlds, in the Europe of  the Middle ages and after the Enlightenment. It happened in 20th Century Germany, where Jews lived as privileged an existence as anywhere in the world.

Hitler’s defeat and the worldwide revulsion against Nazi ideology were expected to end the cycle in Europe, but today Jews are more and more beginning to realize yet again that they do not have a future there.

There are only two places today where significant Jewish populations live without fear of being thrown out: the US and Israel. The US, because of its unprecedented tradition — developed as a result of the interplay between the heterogeneous Christian sects that founded it, and the multiplicity of peoples that comprise it — in which tolerance is the highest value. And Israel because it is a Jewish state.

Unfortunately new Pharaohs — both a man and an ideology — have arisen who “did not know Joseph.” And they threaten the Jewish people in both of these safe havens.

The ideological Pharaoh is an anti-rational postmodernism, in which all truth is political, combined with a naive leftist politics in which the West is always wrong and any group defined as ‘oppressed’ is always right — and is permitted anything. Although it sees itself as tolerant, it is only tolerant of certain kinds of differences.

This ideology is taught in our great American universities, and more and more it is becoming the dominant one among our intellectual and political elites.

The old American ideology would have allowed Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren to speak his piece at UC Irvine, because freedom of speech is one of its highest priorities. The new ideology defines ‘freedom’ as the right to shut down discussion that is politically unacceptable.

On many US campuses, Jewish students are afraid. Although they are attacked for being pro-Israel, they are attacked in antisemitic terms. It is the primacy of politics over tolerance which makes this possible.

This ideology bears the seeds of a new and dangerous antisemitism, the kind that America has almost never known.

***

In order to understand how Jews in Israel are threatened, we need to shift our point of view from the Jewish people within a particular state to the Jewish state in the world. We need to move from the Jew to the Jew among nations.

The parallels are clear. The Jewish state came into being as a third-world nation. She struggled through wars and privation, absorbed millions of penniless immigrants, built the structure of a modern state from almost nothing.

Her neighbors weren’t happy. They were jealous of the success of the Jew among nations, and they blamed their problems on her. They made up myths about how she had taken what was rightfully theirs. They wanted to destroy her and take what she had built.

But Pharaoh protected her, or, more correctly, permitted her to protect herself. American Pharaohs came and went, some more and some less friendly to the Jew among nations. Nevertheless, none were openly hostile to her.

But now a new Pharaoh has arisen, our first postmodern President, Barack Obama. And he did not know Joseph.

A product of the New Left, Obama personifies the new ideology — thus his sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs, the paradigm case of the oppressed third-world peoples (despite the fact that they live better than 90% of the world’s population).

And this new Pharaoh has spoken: he’s taken away the understandings that Israel had depended on — the provision of secure and recognized borders agreed on between the parties of UNSC resolution 242, the promises of prior presidents regarding borders and the unacceptability of a right of return for Arab refugees.

He’s demanded that Israel shrink herself to a degree that no American president has ever done. And he’s demanding it now, when her neighbors are more dangerous than ever. And those neighbors are slavering with anticipation, thinking that they are going to receive their heart’s desire, after 63 years, on a silver platter.

He is demanding that Israel give away every one of its bargaining points, in return for words. These words, whether from the Arabs or a US President, have been shown to be worthless more than once.

The new Pharaoh is a product of the New Left, but he’s also a product of another tradition, that of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He’s not stupid enough to get caught verbalizing his attitude, but his cold hatred came through like a searchlight when he spoke to the representative of the Jew among nations, Binyamin Netanyahu.

***

American Jews have a problem, which can only be solved if it is recognized for what it is — a destructive ideology. Unfortunately, too many of them, smug in what they think is the protective bosom of American tolerance, are flirting with it themselves instead of opposing it.

Israel’s problem is more immediate. Its solution depends on her ability to hold off her neighbors, who are bent on raping her while Obama, the UN, the Europeans, etc. hold her down.

Now we get to the point that the analogy breaks down. Diaspora Jews were powerless. They had to depend on the good will of the ruler. Faced with a vicious one, they had no choice but to flee or die. But the Jew among nations has a world-class military capability, which can defeat the forces lined up against her.

The success of this effort will depend on a lot of things, but from a psychological point of view, the most important is the understanding that there will be no help from Pharaoh. For planning purposes, Barack Obama must be placed in the ‘enemy’ column.

We can only hope that very soon, a new king will arise in America.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Obama, Pharaoh

The Washington Times reports:

The White House is pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to publicly adopt President Obama’s view that Israel’s pre-1967 border should be the basis for future peace talks.

The Obama White House appealed to Jewish leaders on Friday that the request of Israel was part of an effort to head off Palestinian plans to declare an independent state at the United Nations in September.

The Jerusalem Post adds:

Steve Simon, senior National Security Council advisor on the Middle East, held a conference call with Jewish leaders on Friday in which he said that the Palestinians had indicated that they would move forward with talks on the basis of Obama’s plan if Israel agreed to as well and that the US was now waiting for Israel’s answer, according to participants on the off-the-record call.

They said Simon also noted that the US was reasonably confident the Palestinians would abandon their effort to go to the UN in the case of such a scenario.

First, note that the implications of the Obama plan are that Israel must, as a precondition to negotiations, agree to return to 1949 armistice lines, in contravention of UNSC resolution 242 that has been the basis of all Israeli/Arab peace negotiations since 1967.

Yes, Obama mentioned “agreed-on swaps,” but if there is no agreement — if the Arabs don’t agree — then Israel still goes back to 1949 lines. And the withdrawal has to take place before negotiations on refugees and Jerusalem begin. If the Arabs insist on a ‘right of return’ and all of Jerusalem, what will Israel do — take back Judea and Samaria?

Second, note that the US has reneged on the commitment it made in the 2004 “Bush letter” that refugees would return only to ‘Palestine’, and not to Israel. In 2009, Hillary Clinton said that the letter was ‘informal’ and “did not become part of the official position of the United States government.”

Until recently, it was understood in the US that a ‘right of return’ for Arab refugees to Israel was unthinkable. Now, apparently not so much. So much for the written word of the President of the United States.

The administration now has a new argument for why Israel has to hurry up and surrender, “real quick,” as my teenage son used to say. If we don’t ‘head them off’, the Palestinians will “go to the UN” (shudder).

But the Palestinians can go to the UN General Assembly with their automatic majority any time they want and get yet another nonbinding resolution, which will mean exactly nothing.

A security council resolution could have teeth — but the US can stop any such resolution with its veto. So where’s the urgency? Perhaps the administration is suggesting that it would not be so quick to veto the next anti-Israel SC resolution, unless Israel plays along?

The Palestinians are playing their role to the hilt as always. They are ready to “move forward” — it’s just Israel that’s holding up the works!

Here we go again, just like the settlement freeze: the tag team of the Obama administration and the Palestinians jointly escalate Arab demands and make it look like Israel is at fault.

All this is just more proof that the administration’s goal is to get the Arabs what they want: Israel out of the territories with no recognition, no end of conflict, and no negation of their demand for ‘right of return’.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Obama administration, Palestinians