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Location of the mosque or 'community center'

I see that Rabbi Yoffie of the Union for Reform Judaism has commented yet again about why Jews should support the Ground Zero mosque (if you’re sick of hearing about the mosque, stick around — I’m going to make a more general point). What’s interesting is that while his arguments, good or bad, are at least relevant from a Western perspective, they have little or no connection to the motivation behind the project. In his 2300-word essay on the subject, he leaves out just about everything that is important to Muslims.

I recently heard the propensity of Westerners to assume that their interlocutors in the Muslim world think like they do called ‘mirror-imaging’. And this is what I think Rabbi Yoffie does.

It doesn’t matter whether it is a community center or a mosque or whether it will have a swimming pool. It doesn’t matter if it’s two blocks from Ground Zero or ten blocks, as long as it is presented as being at Ground Zero. Every Muslim in the world knows that Muslims struck at America in the name of Islam on 9/11, inflicted a grievous wound, and now America can’t stop them from building a monument to celebrate that. That is probably 90% of the whole story.

To Americans, a building is a building.  But Muslims know enough of their history to understand the significance of a mosque built at a conquered people’s holy site (in case you don’t, they made it easy to make the connection by calling it ‘Cordoba house‘ at first).

In Tehran, Riyadh or Gaza City what gets built is determined by who wants to build it, not constitutional guarantees. If there’s a conflict, ethnic, family or power relationships resolve it. Of course Christians or Jews need not apply — a new church going up in Gaza would mean that Hamas wasn’t in control.

Note that in these places, the person or group on the losing side may be very unhappy to lose. But that doesn’t mean that they admire the way we do things in America — it just means that they would prefer to be on top.

So if that mosque or whatever it is gets built the conclusion will not be that Muslims should be grateful for American freedom and largeness of spirit. It will be that either Barack Obama is on their side or he’s a weakling. And either of these will imply that they should push harder to get what they want (like, for example, the US to abandon Israel, to allow Iran to get nuclear weapons, etc).

Here are some more concepts that are seen very differently here and in the Middle East:

Compromise: if a union official ends a strike by accepting a smaller wage increase than originally demanded, Americans might praise him for being willing to compromise, to sacrifice for the general good. Arabs or Iranians would assume that he didn’t have the power to get what he wanted.

Universal rights: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opposed segregation because he believed in equal rights for all racial and ethnic groups. In Baghdad, it would be assumed that he was interested in more power and advantages for African-Americans. In the Muslim world, all politics is based on clan, ethnicity or religion.

Negotiation (Harold Rhode explains this here in relation to Iran): in the West negotiation can be a process aimed at arriving at a win-win situation. In Iran, you don’t negotiate unless you have the power to guarantee that you will win. Rhode says,

In politics, Iranians negotiate only after defeating their enemies. During these negotiations, the victor magnanimously dictates to the vanquished how things will be conducted thereafter. Signaling a desire to talk before being victorious is, in Iranian eyes, a sign of weakness or lack of will to win.

Sound familiar? Substitute ‘Palestinians’ for ‘Iranians’ and you won’t be wrong.

Leadership goals: a Westerner would think that the leader of a country like Syria, for example, would want to improve overall economic conditions in his country. Nope — he is interested in staying in power and improving the economic circumstances of his family or clan. He has absolutely no feeling of obligation to the people as a whole. Too harsh? Look at the behavior of the Assads, the Sauds, etc.

Values: do you think the PLO/Fatah wants a peaceful, prosperous sovereign state, the way Israel does? Maybe someday, but not until every square centimeter of land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is in their hands, and every one of the hated nakba-guilty Zionists is dead or subjugated.

Democracy: yeah, right.

Until we stop mirror-imaging we will have a hard time understanding why we need to oppose the mosque, why the Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process’ never seems to get off the ground, and why the Obama Administration policy of engagement with the Muslim world has so resoundingly failed to produce positive results.

Why we need to oppose the Ground Zero mosque

Technorati Tags: mirror-imaging, Ground Zero mosque, Eric Yoffie, Israel, Palestinians

Every once in a while, I’m reminded that it’s necessary to restate some things that I think are obvious, because they are clearly not obvious to everyone. I had a conversation the other day with someone who said something like this:

Why don’t you just give the Palestinians what they want? Israel is a military and economic superpower and the powerless Palestinians have been kicked around for years. Remove the settlements and let them have their state in the ‘West Bank’. That will take the wind out of the sails of the terrorists.

My goodness…where can I start?

Let’s take some of my friends’ explicit statements and implicit assumptions one at a time.

Israel is a superpower. It’s true that Israel has the most powerful military force in the Middle East. But there are several reasons that this is less important than it looks. First of all, there are severe constraints on Israel’s use of this power. Almost every war or operation undertaken by Israel since its beginning has been terminated by an imposed cease-fire, sometimes to Israel’s great disadvantage. Success in war usually means not being destroyed, rather than changing the overall situation in a permanent way. The withdrawal from the Sinai in 1956, the escape of Yasser Arafat and his men in 1982, and the toothless UN resolution that ended the second Lebanon war in 2006 are a few examples among many.

Another problem is Israel’s vulnerability. Tiny, with little or no strategic depth, with all of its population centers in easy rocket range of its enemies, Israel can’t afford to lose battles and can’t hold out in a long conflict without outside help. Israel is presently almost surrounded by hostile entities, with tens of thousands of short and long-range missiles aimed at it from Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.

The conflict is with the Palestinians. The conflict is only partly with the Palestinians. The entire Arab world — and now Iran — sees Israel as an alien body in a Muslim Middle East. Even those countries supposedly at ‘peace’ continue to educate their youth to yearn for the day that Israel can be eliminated. Saudi Arabia has historically employed its economic and political muscle first to try to prevent the creation of Israel and then to weaken it and crush it. Iran threatens it with nuclear weapons and supports nasty proxy armies on its northern border and in Gaza. The Arabs and Iran support and encourage Palestinian terrorists to attack Jewish targets. It’s not incorrect to say that the Palestinian Arabs are really just the point of the spear.

The Palestinians want something Israel can give them. The PLO/Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority does not want a state in Judea/Samaria that will live at peace alongside Israel. They want a combination of things that include a complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice line including all of East Jerusalem, they want the right to militarize their state, and a ‘right of return’ for millions of Arabs who claim ‘refugee status’ into Israel. Even if they get these things — which would involve uprooting hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes and the conversion of Israel into an Arab majority state — they are not prepared to give up their claim against all of Israel or admit that it belongs to the Jewish people.

It seems absurd when stated that way, but that’s the deal they are offering. Give us almost everything, and we will  … demand the rest. This doesn’t even mention the fact that Hamas, with a written program similar to Hitler’s, controls almost half of the Palestinian population and accepts no ‘solution’ except a genocidal one.

Terrorism would end if they had a state. Arab terrorism started when Jews came to the land of Israel, and has continued ever since. Offers of a Palestinian Arab state in (at least) 1937, 1947, 2000 and 2008 were rejected, usually with accompanying terrorism as punctuation. Terrorism clearly has nothing to do with the desire for a state or even the desire to end the ‘occupation’ of 1967 — the return of the Sinai to Egypt and Gaza to the Palestinian Arabs resulted in more, not less, terrorism.

The problem is not that the Palestinians need a state, it’s that the entire Muslim world can’t abide a Jewish one.

There is a solution, but the Obama Administration and the Europeans have it backwards. The solution cannot be imposed  on Israel because Israel isn’t the problem. It must be imposed on the Arabs and Iran:

Support for terrorist proxies and armed aggression against Israel must stop.

Support for Palestinian terrorist factions must stop.

Incitement of hatred against Jews and Israel — in the Muslim world and among the Palestinians — must stop.

The principle that Israel is the state of the Jewish people must be accepted by all parties as a prerequisite for any negotiation leading to a Palestinian state.

In today’s world, this probably won’t happen until Iran gets a new regime. If my friend is as concerned for the Palestinians as much as he says, perhaps he should be working on this.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Iran, Arabs

Ray Hanania is a Palestinian-American standup comedian.

Lately he claims to be getting serious about peace. But his ‘serious’ comments are absurd enough that one wonders if he thinks that he can make up facts like he does jokes.

For example, he said,

To Israel, the issue is security and being recognized as a “Jewish state.”

The fact is Palestinians have recognized Israel’s right to exist. That is not only inherent in their repeated declarations but also in the fact that Palestinians are sitting down and negotiating two states.

Palestinian Arabs have been rejecting the right of Jews to have a state in the Middle East since 1948. He doesn’t seem to know that they violently rejected the presence of Jews at all in 1920, 1929, 1936-39, or that they started the war that became Israel’s War of Independence in 1947.

I explain the the Arab ‘recognition’ of Israel like this: you are walking in the woods and you come upon a bear sitting in the middle of the trail. Of course you recognize that there is bear there. But even though you have to admit that he’s sitting there, you don’t have to recognize his right to do so. Or agree that he can stay there, once you go back and get your gun.

The fact that they won’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state seems, on the face of it, silly. Why do they care what Israel is when the negotiations are supposedly to create Palestine, which is to be a state for them?

The answer that has been given over and over again, recently by Israeli citizen Haneen Zouabi, is that the Palestinian Arabs are the owners of all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, so there can’t be a Jewish state there. Palestinian Authority negotiator Nabil Shaath recently said the same thing, adding that a Jewish state would preclude the ‘return’ of millions of Arab ‘refugees’. Indeed it would!

Hanania says they are “negotiating two states” — but the two states are the Jew-free Arab state of ‘Palestine’, and the other one, called ‘Israel’ until the ‘return’ is accomplished. Then it too can become an Arab state.

I think he believes what he writes. But despite his Arab ethnicity, he’s still intellectually a Westerner, who can’t understand why peace — which by his principles is in the interest of both sides — really isn’t the goal of the Arab leadership.

He makes a lot of jokes about being married to a Jew. He doesn’t have a problem understanding Jews. It’s Arabs that he doesn’t get.

If Ray Hanania wants to be more than a comedian, here’s one place for him to start.

Technorati Tags: Ray Hanania, Israel, Arabs, Jewish State

Tevye complaining about settlements.

Theodore Bikel, the 86-year old Jewish acting and musical legend, who starred as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, is quoted in the Forward thus:

Anyone who has strong feelings for Israel like I do, and that believes it is an absolute necessity to strive for peace, understands that the single most obvious obstacle are the settlements. [my emphasis]

The article goes on to explain that this is why Bikel signed a petition urging Israeli artists to not perform in settlements, and then quotes far-left actor Ed Asner,

“I would like to see this kind of courage among American actors,” Asner said in a telephone interview with the Forward. The eight-time Emmy Award winner praised the Israeli actors for “taking a stand on an issue that no one else wants to touch.”

No one else wants to touch it? Give us a break. These ‘courageous’ actors are on the same side as the Israeli academic and media establishment, the European Union, Barack Obama and the entire Arab and Muslim world!

Anyway, I don’t doubt Bikel’s love of Israel or his Zionist credentials, but he’s wrong. Here are five simple reasons why settlements are not “the single most obvious obstacle to peace.” Then I will reveal what it really is  (it won’t be a surprise to regular readers).

1. The presence of settlements east of the 1949 armistice line is a matter for negotiation, as is the location of the future border. The 2000 Clinton-Barak proposals that were rejected by Yasser Arafat implied that settlements in areas that would become ‘Palestine’ would be removed. But saying that “[all] settlements are an obstacle” prejudges the outcome of negotiations. Are East Jerusalem neighborhoods ‘settlements’? Which ones? What about Gush Etzion, El Kana, Modi’in Illit?
2. If settlements are “the single most obvious obstacle” then one would think that removing them might reduce conflict. But the total removal of settlements from Gaza was associated with an increase in terrorism and ultimately war. What reason do those calling for the end of the settlements east of the line have to think it would be different there?
3. Palestinian Arab terrorism just since 2000 has killed more than 1000 Israeli Jewish civilians and injured thousands more. Doesn’t it make more sense to think that murder is a greater obstacle to peace than a few towns whose presence Israel is prepared to negotiate?
4. Hamas makes no secret of its desire to commit genocide and controls the area where 40% of the Palestinian Arab population lives. It is more popular than the PLO/Fatah regime in Judea/Samaria. Doesn’t it make more sense to think that Hamas is a greater obstacle to peace than the settlements?
5. The Palestinian Authority, with whom Israel is negotiating, continues to feed its population — especially young people — the vilest antisemitic incitement, which clearly advocates the murder of Jews. Doesn’t it make sense to think that incitement is a greater obstacle to peace than the settlements?

No, settlements are not the single most obvious obstacle to peace. The biggest obstacle is the Palestinian narrative, which insists that the Palestinians cannot accept anything less than complete surrender to all of their demands:

• No acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state,
• No Jewish presence east of the 1949 lines,
• No demilitarization, even temporary, of ‘Palestine’
• A ‘right of return’ for Palestinian ‘refugees’ into Israel.

All this is combined with the principle that Israel bears all the responsibility for the conflict!

Technorati Tags: Israel, Theodore Bikel, peace, settlements