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As Israelis are about to begin their High Holiday season — one of introspection, resolutions and repentance for religious and secular Jews alike — TIME magazine gives us a cover story entitled “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.”

TIME slanders Israel for Rosh Hashana

The article itself is so stupid as to be not worth refuting. Those Jews, it points out, haven’t changed much since the Middle Ages:

In the week that three Presidents, a King and their own Prime Minister gather at the White House to begin a fresh round of talks on peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the truth is, Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter. They’re otherwise engaged; they’re making money…

They make their case by quoting a couple of Israeli political analysts — no, actually, they are real estate salespeople — who say with authority,

“The people,” Heli says, “don’t believe.” Eli searches for a word. “People in Israel are indifferent,” he decides. “They don’t care if there’s going to be war. They don’t care if there’s going to be peace. They don’t care. They live in the day.”

So much for TIME.

But what can it mean to say that Israel doesn’t care about peace? In 2006, there was a smallish war in Lebanon. 121 Israeli soldiers were killed. These soldiers have families, it is a small country, and most Jewish Israelis serve in the IDF. My own son is a reservist in a combat unit, and he will certainly take part in the next Hizballah war, which is generally regarded as inevitable.

In 2006 42 Israeli civilians were killed and 4,262 wounded by Hizballah rockets (figures here). Hizballah is known to possess at least twice as many rockets and long-range missiles than in 2006, and it’s expected that the next war will also involve Syria, which has thousands of weapons aimed at Israel as well. The government expects that home front damage and casualties will be much greater than 2006.

So, we are expected to believe that Israelis don’t care about peace?

As is so often the case, there is a semantic problem here. The word ‘peace’ is ambiguous, and people like TIME’s writers tend to conflate different meanings. Jews love to draw distinctions — the Talmud is full of them — so I propose a distinction and a new word to illustrate it.

‘Peace’ will continue to mean what it has always meant: an absence of war, a state of quietude in which people are free to follow economic, creative and spiritual pursuits without fear of someone trying to kill them. A state, in other words, which Israel has not known since its founding, but which 99% of Israelis profoundly wish for.

There is, however, another concept for which I will coin a new word: poose. ‘Poose’ will mean the thing that Israelis don’t much care about, the state in which Israel agrees to give up enough territory, security, sovereignty and autonomy that the Palestinian Arabs will agree to take it — and Barack Obama will be happy.

Not many Israelis are yearning for poose, because they know that the Palestinians have no intention to give them peace. Palestinians prefer poose, because poose will make it easier for them to get what they really want, which is the replacement of Israel by an Arab state.

Poose is what Israel got in South Lebanon with UNSC resolution 1701 in 2006, an agreement which was supposed to end the war and prevent Hizballah from rearming, but which instead prevents Israel from preventing Hizballah from rearming.

Poose is also what Israel got from the Oslo Accord, which brought Original Terrorist Yasser Arafat back from exile, funded and provided arms for the murderers he dispatched, and ultimately gave birth to the second Intifadah in which more than a thousand Israelis (and many Palestinian Arabs) died.

Poose, in other words, brings war. No wonder Israelis are opposed to it!

Recently, the US Agency for International Development paid an Israeli organization called The Geneva Initiative to develop advertisements featuring Palestinian figures calling for Israelis to trust them. “We are partners for peace,” they say. “What about you?” But the nature of Palestinian demands makes it clear that what they are offering is poose, not peace.

Here is one of the ads, featuring Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Erekat speaks English, and there are Hebrew subtitles. But in order to illustrate the difference between peace and poose, Elder of Ziyon has inserted English subtitles that express Erekat’s true, pooseful, intentions:

Technorati Tags: Israel, peace, poose, Palestinians

The ‘direct talks without preconditions’ that have begun are not in fact without preconditions. There is no doubt that they will be cut short unless the US can force Netanyahu to agree on continuing a freeze on construction activity in Judea, Samaria and (unofficially) East Jerusalem. The concession might be public or private, but the effect will be the same.

There may be other unstated conditions. For example, if Israel were to send the IDF after the Hamas terrorists who are playing ‘bad cop’ in the drama that has so far cost four Israeli lives, or retaliate against Hamas in Gaza, the PA would undoubtedly break off the talks. Israel is expected to show restraint and let the PA handle ‘security’.

If the past is a guide, the script calls for the PA to pick up a bunch of Hamasniks and make a lot of noise. In short order they will all be released. The PA did say that they had arrested the car that was used in at least one of the assaults, but that’s small comfort.

What this means is that Hamas has been given a license to kill for the duration of the talks. Several commentators have already suggested [and I agree] that this is far too much to pay for a process which is designed primarily to boost Barack Obama’s credentials before the coming election, and which cannot possibly have an outcome that’s beneficial to Israel.

Israel has also made some demands, but unlike Palestinian ones, none of them are considered preconditions. But some of them absolutely should be.

First, Israel has asked that the PA stop ‘incitement’. What is incitement? It’s the continuous propaganda being fed to the Arab population — in Israel as well as the PA-controlled areas — to hate Jews, to venerate Arab terrorists who have killed Jewish civilians and to expect that all of ‘Palestine’ will soon be in the hands of its true ‘owners’, the Palestinian Arabs. One can’t expect the PA leadership to have popular support for a real peace agreement as long as this continues. And one shouldn’t expect Israelis to talk to someone who is at that moment calling them pigs and a monkeys.

Second, Israel wants any agreement to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Some say “why insist on a formulation that is objectionable to the Arabs? After all, it’s just words”. But there is a huge significance in this formulation because of what it tells us about the future behavior of the state of ‘Palestine’.

One might think that the purpose of the negotiations is to partition the land into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, and to determine borders, etc. But the Palestinians are not prepared to admit that the part that they don’t get does not also belong to them. Just look at how Israeli Arab Knesset member Haneen Zouabi talks. Would you buy a car from someone who agrees to take your money, but insists that the car will always belong to him?

Third, Israel wants a commitment that what will be agreed to will end the conflict, that the Palestinian Arabs will have no further claim on Israel. This isn’t an idle demand. In 1974 the PLO adopted a program that views the creation of an “independent national authority” as a step to the complete liberation of ‘Palestine’ (the so-called “phased plan”). Israel has a right to demand that a Palestinian state will not be simply another hostile entity from which to wage war.

These three demands ought to be treated as preconditions. There should be no talks without them, because without them there is nothing to talk about.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, direct talks

By Vic Rosenthal

MK Yoel Hasson (left) is restrained by a guard as he is taunted by MK Haneen Zouabi, June 2, 2010.

It’s the same old strategy:

Throw rocks at Jews, fire rockets at them, beat them with clubs, even shoot them. Push them, provoke them. Then, either they ‘exercise restraint’ or fight back. In the former case you’ve humiliated them, maybe hurt or killed some at no cost. In the latter, you cry ‘disproportionate force’, ‘collective punishment’, ‘state terrorism’, or whatever.

You win, either way. The only difference is the mood of the big demonstration afterwards.

This works in politics as well as in the street or on the high seas. Take Haneen Zouabi, the first female Arab member of Israel’s Knesset. In 2009, she generated excitement by indicating that she welcomed the development of an Iranian bomb, seeing more danger in Israel’s nuclear capability (Daniel Pipes called her “Iran’s Representative in the Knesset“).

Next, she sailed on the recent Turkish blockade-running flotilla, on the Mavi Marmara, the ship on which Turkish thugs tried to beat Israeli commandos to death. In interviews, Zouabi claimed that the ‘activists’ on the ship had no plans for violence, but video footage shows her standing next to Turks holding clubs and iron bars.

This almost produced the desired result. There were calls for her to be stripped of Israeli citizenship, and there was even a mini-brawl between Arab and Jewish Knesset members. But in the end, all that happened was that some relatively minor parliamentary privileges were taken away from her.

She’s been quite outspoken about her views. Here are some excerpts from recent interviews:

… 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]

These quotations are not contradicted by their context. They represent Zouabi’s thinking, which is clearly outside the paradigm of the Jewish state. It is not simply ‘dissent’, it is a call to negate the state. A good argument can be made that she is aiding Israel’s enemies and working for the overthrow of its government.

In other words, she is committing treason and inciting same.

But can you imagine if she were to lose  her citizenship or even be removed from the Knesset?  It would be trumpeted by anti-Israel elements that Israel is not a democracy, that it oppresses its Arab citizens and stifles free speech.

Either way — just like the goons of the Mavi Marmara — Zouabi wins.

Now let’s contrast Zouabi with another Knesset member, Meir Kahane. Kahane’s views were extreme compared to most other Jewish Knesset members. For example, he advocated the transfer of Arabs out of the Jewish state. In 1985 the Knesset banned ‘racist’ candidates, the Supreme Court upheld it, and Kahane’s Kach party was excluded from the election in 1988.

Neither Zouabi not Kahane are (were, in Kahane’s case) democrats. Kahane recognized that Jews and irredentist Palestinian Arabs can’t live together peacefully and proposed an undemocratic solution, but one that would leave the Jewish state in existence. Zouabi claims to believe  in ‘a state of its citizens’ — all its inhabitants — but she proposes to incorporate all 4-5 million Arabs claiming ‘Palestinian nationality’ among these inhabitants so as to create an artificial majority. As ‘owners of the land’ she privileges this majority, replacing one ethnically-based nation-state with another.

Whether you find Kahane’s or Zouabi’s ideas more objectionable is not the point. The question is, “which of them is more dangerous to the continued existence of the state?” Because only if you think that the expression of a point of view presents a clear and present danger to the state — if, for example, it constitutes incitement to insurrection — should it be removed from the political arena.

It’s worth reading the whole MEMRI translation of Zouabi’s remarks. She starts from the position that the Jewish state is illegitimate, and calls for the unity of all the ‘Palestinian people’ — whether in Gaza, Israel, Judea/Samaria, Lebanon, etc. — in order to accomplish the conquest of the land of which they are the ‘owners’.

Zouabi’s speech is clearly incitement to overthrow the state. The fact that she and others like her are given a platform by the Israeli political system out of fear that their suppression would be called ‘undemocratic’ is a serious mistake.

She is far more dangerous than Kahane was and should be expelled from the Knesset.

Technorati Tags: Haneen Zouabi, Isarel, Mavi Marmara, Meir Kahane

Yesterday’s murders were typical. A car carrying four Jews was raked by automatic fire. Then the terrorists approached their victims and shot each of them numerous times, in order to ensure that they were dead. Four Jews — two men and two women, one of them pregnant — died for the crime of being in “the land the Palestinians want for their future state” as the NY Times or AP would put it.

This happened near Hebron, in Judea. Some will say that these Jews deserved what they got, or if they didn’t deserve it, they should have expected it. After all they were on ‘Palestinian land’.

As I’ve written numerous times, the 1949 armistice line is not a border. There is no ‘Palestinian land’, not until some legitimate authority representing the Arabs will agree to end the conflict and recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Even if it were, what do you call a nation that does not permit Jews to live among them, on pain of death?

There was a thriving Jewish community in Hebron until 1929, when it was wiped out by an Arab pogrom made by the grandfathers of today’s ‘freedom fighters’. When Arabs, Europeans and our own officials talk about yesterday’s little pogrom, you will hear them say that they condemn terrorism, but… The ‘buts’ will differ. The Arabs will talk about their frustration in getting the state that they want (they will pretend to mean only the territories — as if they could not have had such a state in 1937, 1947, 2000 or 2008), and our people will say that ‘extremists must not be allowed to sabotage the peace process’.

Here is some news: insofar as they do not accept the right of Jews to have a state with any borders in the Middle East, they are all ‘extremists’, including Mahmoud Abbas and even the ultra-‘moderate’ Western-educated economist Salam Fayyad.

Here is what US Secretary of State Clinton said to PM Netanyahu yesterday:

Well, let me express our deepest sympathy to the families who have lost their loved ones. This kind of savage brutality has no place in any country, under any circumstances. The forces of terror and destruction cannot be allowed to continue. It is one of the reasons why the prime minister is here today: to engage in direct negotiations with those Palestinians who themselves have rejected a path of violence in favor of a path of peace. We have to not only stand against the kind of horrific murders we saw today on behalf of the four who were lost and, as the prime minister said, the seven orphans who have been brutally deprived of their parents, but on behalf of all people — Israelis, Palestinians, everyone who knows that there is no answer when violence begets violence. And I thank the prime minister for his leadership in seeking a different future for the children of Israel. And we pledge to do all we can, always, to protect and defend the State of Israel and to provide security to the Israeli people. That is one of the paramount objectives that Israel has that the United States supports in these negotiations. [my emphasis]

I am afraid that Mrs. Clinton does not understand, or pretends to not understand, the conflict that she is trying to ‘solve’.

First, she does not understand that there is no Palestinian leadership that will take the “path of peace.” This path requires an agreement that Israel — within whatever boundaries are agreed upon — is the legitimate nation-state of the Jewish people. Further, it requires a commitment to a final end of conflict, a termination of claims against Israel. Even the most moderate Palestinian ideology is not prepared to grant any legitimacy to Israel, which at best they regard as a usurper that is too powerful to challenge today. Their idea of  ‘peace’ is a hudna, a temporary truce until they have the strength to redress their grievances.

Second, she does not understand that “violence begets violence” is an entirely inappropriate — indeed, slanderous — explanation. Violence has been the choice of the Palestinian Arabs since the beginning of the 20th century. The Jewish response to it has taken many forms, from attempts at diplomacy and conciliation to self-defense and even reprisal. But the motivation for Arab violence has always been the same: to kill or expel the Jews from ‘their’ land.

Third, she does not understand that the Jewish people learned from centuries of insecurity and persecution culminating in the Holocaust that they cannot depend on anyone else to defend them or provide security. They do not want this from the US. What they want is to be allowed to defend themselves without interference, and in this particular case, without an imposed ‘peace’ agreement that will prevent them from defending themselves.

Fourth, she does not understand that the “terror and destruction” cannot be stopped by forcing Israel to give up territory to an ‘authority’ that has no popular support and which does not control the behavior of the majority of Palestinian Arabs.

Fifth, she does not understand that the instability in the wider region does not depend on the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, but rather is fed by the sponsorship of Islamist and terrorist groups in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and elsewhere by the Iranian regime. You cannot cure an infection without neutralizing it at its source.

I have lost patience with this inability to understand that characterizes US officials like Mrs. Clinton. It’s long past time that they should have understood the facts and stopped basing policy on the myths of Palestinian moderation and the centrality of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Unless of course they understand the facts well enough but believe that it is in their interest to shrink Israel regardless of the consequences.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Arabs, Hillary Clinton, terrorism