FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Recently, I wrote about Ahmadinejad’s bragging that Iran was already the predominant power in the region. There is no doubt that US influence has declined radically in the last few years, but Ahmadinejad is counting gestational chickens.

The biggest obstacle in his way is tiny Israel, remarkably. The conservative Arab regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt are paper tigers militarily and politically. Israel, with all of its problems, still projects Western power in the region (would that the West, and particularly the US administration understood this).

The Iranian strategy is to weaken Israel in every way possible, particularly by conventional warfare between it and Hizballah and perhaps Syria. Hamas is also a threat to a lesser extent. Many recent events point to a resumption of hostilities in the North in the near future, which would serve Iranian interests in multiple ways, including giving the regime more time to proceed with its atomic weapons program.

Iran and its clients believe that they are in a much better position than in 2006, and are confident of success. They believe that they will be able to fire rockets into all parts of Israel at will, and kill thousands.  They believe that the IDF will be powerless to overcome Hizballah’s fortifications and will suffer massive casualties. They believe that their secure communications system is impenetrable. They believe that Israel will be surprised by advanced weapons that Hizballah has secretly received from Iran. They believe that the Israeli leadership will dither ineffectively as happened in 2006.

They are so wrong.

Israel suffered a huge trauma in 2006, when the ground branches IDF were entirely unprepared for the conflict, and the leadership was incompetent to manage a war. But the lesson was learned. The IDF embarked on a massive shakeup, returning to the values that made it so effective in the past. Careful planning, preparation and attention to detail have become paramount again.

The IDF knows how the rocket launchers are hidden and fortified and where they are. It knows what weapons the Hizballah forces will deploy and how to counter them. It has built models of villages, bunkers and missile launchers and its soldiers have been training intensively on them. There is good intelligence, human and otherwise, on Hizballah and Syria’s plans and capabilities. And regarding the ‘impenetrable’ command and control system, Hizballah’s Nasrallah can’t order a pizza in Beirut without the IDF being aware of it.

There are contingency plans for almost any eventuality, and decisions will be made quickly. The leadership team of PM Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Gaby Ashkenazi are all highly qualified military men who come from the IDF’s ground forces. The contrast with the 2006 team of Olmert, Peretz and Halutz is sharp.

Syria’s Assad, Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad have been strutting, threatening and bragging in a way that is reminiscent of Nasser’s pre-1967 hubris. Israel does not desire yet another conflict; Ehud Barak recently emphasized Israel’s commitment to peace by offering yet again (to my distress) to return the Golan Heights to Syria in return for a peace agreement. But Assad responded that Syria would agree only to take the land back; discussions about peace would have to wait.

There are many question marks. What will Iran do? What will the US do? Russia? Will someone take action against Iranian nuclear facilities? I’m happy that I’m not the PM of Israel.

Israel’s enemies, as always, are overconfident. And as always, they are going to pay the price. What a pity for everyone involved that they won’t take the other road.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Mideast war, IDF

In my last post, I wrote about how a Zionist student group in Israel called Im Tirtzu exposed the way a ‘progressive’ American foundation, the New Israel Fund (NIF), supported the Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provided 92% of the negative citations from Israeli sources in the Goldstone report.

Im Tirtzu held a demonstration in front of the home of the NIF President, former Meretz MK Naomi Chazan, and bought full-page ads in Israeli newspapers showing Chazan wearing a rhinoceros-like horn (the Hebrew word for ‘fund’ and ‘horn’ are the same, keren).

Here is the English version that ran in the Jerusalem Post:

Im Tirtzu's full page ad showing Naomi Chazan wearing a horn, er, fund.

NIF and friends are furious. NIF called it a “particularly despicable attack.”  Rabbi Brant Rosen, a proud supporter of the anti-Zionist J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace, calls Im Tirtzu a “right-wing ultra-nationalist group”  and describes the ad as having “anti-Semitic overtones”. J Street itself said the ad was “reminiscent of propaganda from the darkest days of recent Jewish experience.” Americans for Peace Now uses almost identical language, saying that the campaign is “reminiscent of dark times in our people’s history.” Even the center-left Ron Kampeas said

Call it keren, call it horn, this is an anti-Semitic ad. No getting around it. This makes Naomi Chazan looks like she eats babies for breakfast. For lunch. And dinner. And snacks.

Sorry, but all of these accusations of antisemitism strike me as remarkably stupid.

In deciding whether something is antisemitic, intention is relevant. After all, I have displayed antisemitic cartoons from Arab and Iranian newspapers in order to make a point about their regimes. Does this make me antisemitic?

Im Tirtzu doesn’t hate Jews. Their ad does not try to make the viewer hate Jews. The caricature doesn’t make Chazan look evil, like the well-known ones of Ariel Sharon eating babies; it makes her look like a fool, which is the point. Displaying an image that is “reminiscent” of “dark times” possibly serves to suggest that dark times are coming again. It certainly doesn’t suggest that Jews are beasts with horns.

So what are they so angry about?

In my opinion just that Im Tirtzu has effectively exposed the activities of the NIF, and has revealed the progressive community that supports it and its grantees to be ‘useful idiots‘ at best.

Don’t get me wrong. Everyone who was irritated by Im Tirtzu’s ads does not desire the destruction of the Jewish state. Some of them, like Chazan herself, probably think that ending ‘the occupation’ is necessary for the survival of the state, and they view the actions of the NIF and the NGOs that it supports as helping to bring this about.

But even the moderate Left understands that the Goldstone report is poison — an attempt to delegitimize Israel and attenuate its power  to defend itself. They understand that the Goldstone project is part of the war against Israel, no less so than Hamas’ rockets. And they are furious that they have been made fools of, that as a matter of fact their money or other support has gone to aid Israel’s enemies.

They won’t admit this, of course. They’ll stick by the NIF because — just like the Communists who continued to believe into the 1950’s that Stalin was a saint rather than a psychotic mass murderer — they’ll believe almost anything rather than admit to having been duped.

So they respond the usual way. They call Im Trtzu names like ‘neo-cons’, ‘ultra-conservatives’, ‘right-wing-ultra-nationalists’, ‘right-wing hooligans’, etc. They say that it is trying to “quell dissenting voices in Israeli society,” and suggest a potential for murderous violence. Here’s a particularly egregious example, from the absolutely inimitable Richard Silverstein:

A few months ago, a distinguished Hebrew University professor opened his apartment door to a bomb blast that could have killed him.  The bomb was planted by Jack Teitel, according to Israeli authorities.  If Teitel could, from his prison cell, he’d give a thumbs up to those who are maligning Naomi Hazan and NIF.  Who knows, the next Jack Teitel may be lurking in the crowd outside her home.

Who knows? Maybe Yasser Arafat would give J Street a thumbs up from Hell, if he could. The possibilities of this kind of reasoning are limitless! Meanwhile, let’s see where the real antisemitism comes from:

Courtesy of Mr. Dry Bones

Technorati Tags: Im Tirtzu, Naomi Chazan, Goldstone Report, New Israel Fund, Israel

Alan Dershowitz begins his massive, detailed rebuttal of the Goldstone Report thus:

The Goldstone Report, when read in full and in context, is much worse than most of its detractors (and supporters) believe.  It is far more accusatory of Israel, far less balanced in its criticism of Hamas, far less honest in its evaluation of the evidence, far less responsible in drawing its conclusion, far more biased against Israeli than Palestinian witnesses, and far more willing to draw adverse inferences of intentionality from Israeli conduct and statements than from comparable Palestinian conduct and statements.  It is worse than any report previously prepared by any other United Nations agency or human rights group.

As I have mentioned before, the particularly evil aspect of the report is what Dershowitz calls the “inferences of intentionality”, that is, the conclusion drawn that Israel intentionally targeted civilian lives and property in order to inflict collective punishment on the residents of Gaza. Dershowitz writes,

At bottom the report accuses the Jewish state of having implemented a policy in Gaza that borders on genocide.  It blames the civilian deaths that occurred during Operation Cast Lead not on the fog of war, not on the use of human shields by Hamas, not on the inevitability of civilian casualties when rockets are fired from densely populated urban areas, not even on the use of “disproportionate force” by Israel.  Instead it blames the Palestinian civilian deaths on an explicit policy devised at the highest levels of the Israeli government and military, of killing as many Palestinian civilians as possible. It concludes that Operation Cast Lead was not designed to stop the rocket attacks on Israel’s civilians—more than eight thousand over a nine year period.   Instead, the rocket attacks merely served as an excuse for the Israeli military to achieve its real purpose: namely the killing of Palestinian civilians.

What can be called the ‘Goldstone project’ is a contrivance to delegitimize Israel and preempt international support from Israel’s future attempts to defend herself against certain-to-come attacks from the Iranian-supported Hamas and Hizballah. It is part of a strategy whose goal is to eliminate the Jewish state.

The 503-page work of slander rests on two pillars. One is the elaborate edifice of illegitimate inference in which conclusions are drawn by unsound arguments; and the other is the collection of false evidence upon which those arguments are based. This material was primarily gathered by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the usual suspects like Human Rights Watch, but also many Israeli NGO’s like the Physician’s Committee for Human Rights — Israel.

These groups laid the groundwork for the report; they are the sources that are referenced in most of the report’s footnotes and they are the ultimate source of its authority.

Now Elder of Zion has drawn our attention to a remarkable study that points out an interesting ‘coincidence’: no fewer than 92% of Goldstone’s footnotes from Israeli sources that are judged to be negative toward the IDF are sourced from NGO’s supported by the American New Israel Fund (NIF).

Here is the original Hebrew text of a Ma’ariv article describing the study, done by a Zionist student group called “Im Tirtzu” [from Hertzl’s im tirtzu ain zo agada, “if you will, it is no legend”], and here is a machine translation of it. The translation is often somewhat unclear, so here is my own translation of a key paragraph:

The Goldstone report contains 1208 footnotes including 1377 references to various sources. “Im Tirtzu” checked all of these references and came to this astonishing conclusion: Close to half — 42% — of the citations in the Goldstone report from Israeli sources come from organizations supported by the New Israel Fund. When one considers only the negative ones, on which the various accusations and charges against the IDF and its officers are based, the conclusion is even more astonishing: 92% of them come from the same organizations.

The 16 Israeli NGOs listed by Im Tirtzu received a total of $7.8 million from the NIF in 2008-9. Since its founding in 1979, NIF has distributed $140 million in grants. Although some of its money comes from other foundations (it has received at least $40 million from the Ford Foundation, for ‘peace and justice’ projects), it actively solicits individual donors — even I have received literature from it.

Like J Street, the NIF (about which I’ve previously written here, here, and here) targets liberal Jews in the US, giving them the warm feeling that they can ‘help Israel’ while maintaining their commitment to ‘peace and social justice’.

It’s interesting to see how the trail starts from liberal feel-good philanthropy and ends up helping the bloody murderers of Hamas and Hizballah.

Incidentally, we’ll be hearing more about Im Tirtzu. This weekend it held a demonstration in front of the home of NIF President Naomi Chazan, which earned it a rebuke from… J Street!

Im Tirtzu demonstrators, dressed as Hamas terrorists, in front of the home of NIF President Naomi Chazan. The sign reads "thank you, New (Israel) Fund".

Update [1951 PST]: Someone asked me “what’s with the horn?” I don’t know for sure, but the  “New Israel Fund” in Hebrew is “keren hachadasha” (literally “new fund”). The word for ‘fund’ is keren [קרן], which also means ‘horn’.

Incidentally, it also means ‘ray [of light]’, and it’s said that St. Jerome’s mistranslation of this word in Ex. 34:29 where it says “keren or panav” (usually rendered “his skin was radiant”) led to the medieval belief that Moses had horns growing from his face.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Goldstone report, New Israel Fund, Alan Dershowitz, Im Tirtzu

News item:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a Tehran conference Saturday that whoever controls the Middle East controls the world, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported.

In a speech during a conference marking 30 years to the Islamic Revolution, Ahamdinejad reportedly implied that Iran is the top power in the Middle East. “Now the question is who has the last say in the Middle East? Well, of course, the answer is clear to every one,” Ahamdinejad said.

Before WWII, the answer was ‘Britain’. And from 1945 until Barack Obama, the answer has been ‘the US’. But in his Cairo speech, Obama more or less announced that the US, like Britain before it, was withdrawing from the region. And his inability or lack of will to resist Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons guarantees that Ahmadinejad will soon have the answer he desires.

OK, you can blame the bungled US reaction to 9/11, which included an unnecessary and hugely expensive war and a remarkably stupid followup to a military victory if you want to pin it on the Bush Administration, but shouldn’t Obama have at least made an effort to turn things around before slinking away?

It’s not such a long story. The US cultivated — indeed, armed and supported — Saddam Hussein as a counter to Iran. To a certain extent this served the interest of the Saudi regime, which, with its effective lobby and  the help of supportive oil interests, has had an inordinate influence on US policy since the 1930’s. When Saddam got too big for his britches, invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia, Bush I slapped him down — but not hard enough to remove him.

With the Bush II Administration, everything changed. Bush II crushed Saddam’s military and replaced his regime with… nothing. Iran stepped in, and when US troops leave, there is no doubt that ‘independent’ Iraq will become an Iranian satellite.

Lebanon is also losing its last vestige of independence, as Iran’s proxy Hizballah consolidates its hold on that unfortunate nation. Here the fault is shared with Israel, which was given a green light in 2006 by the US and Saudi Arabia to crush Hizballah but failed to do so.

Syria has thrown in its lot with Iran, in a mutually advantageous deal to supply Hizballah, threaten Israel and exploit Lebanon.Turkey under ErdoÄŸan has been moving closer to Iran and Syria and distancing itself from Israel.

This leaves the conservative Arab regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt in a precarious position, facing Islamist subversion from within (encouraged by Iran) as well as the direct threat from Iranian nukes. The Mubarak regime is particularly unstable, with no clear successor waiting in the wings.

Israel is a remaining island of pro-Western power in the region, but it will soon be fighting Hizballah and Syria in the north and Hamas in the south — all Iranian proxies of course  (yes, I am convinced that war is not far away).

Is it likely that Obama will reverse direction, support Israel in its struggle with Iran’s proxies, and do whatever is needed to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons? So far there’s no reason to think so. The administration’s policy until now has been to pressure Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians and to keep missing deadlines for applying sanctions to Iran.

The Iranian opposition might be a ray of hope, but even if it succeeds in overthrowing the regime — a long shot, given the repressive tactics that are being employed against it — there’s no reason to assume that it will not pursue at least some of the geopolitical goals of the present regime.

Today it can be said that we are right at one of those times that future historians will write about as important turning points: the American withdrawal from the Middle East.

No wonder Ahmadinejad is confident about the answer to his question.

Technorati Tags: Middle East, Iran, Barack Obama, Obama Administration

The McDermott/Ellison letter

News Item:

Fifty-four members of the U.S. Congress have signed a letter [the text is here — ed.] asking President Barack Obama to put pressure on Israel to ease the siege of the Gaza Strip.

The letter was the initiative of Representatives Jim McDermott from Washington and Keith Ellison from Minnesota, both of whom are Democrats. Ellison is the first American Muslim to ever win election to Congress.

McDermott and Ellison wrote that they understand the threats facing Israel and the ongoing Hamas terror activities against Israeli citizens but that “this concern must be addressed without resulting in the de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.”

“We ask you to press for immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza as an urgent component of your broader Middle East peace efforts,” they wrote, adding that the siege has hampered the ability of aid agencies to do their work in Gaza…

Ellison has harshly criticized the House of Representatives decision to reject the Goldstone report, arguing that the report “only presents facts and raises recommendations for the future.” He cast doubt that members of Congress who voted to reject the report even took the time to read it and that the rejection hurt the Obama government’s role as an honest broker in the Middle East conflict.

The letter was also signed by those paragons of pro-Israel-ness, J Street and Americans for Peace Now.

Although the letter pays lip service to Israel’s ‘fear of terrorism’, it calls for the removal of restrictions on people moving into and out of the strip, the shipment of construction materials, etc. which would directly lead to such terrorism.  There is only one solution, and that is the removal of the Hamas terrorists from power there.

The Left has been gleeful, of course, while the Right has pointed out that the signatories are Democrats.

I have just one tripartite thought:

• Where is the all-powerful ‘Israel Lobby’ which supposedly controls the Congress?
• Where is the iron hand of AIPAC, which can allegedly destroy any elected official that steps out of line?
• Why don’t the supposedly Jewish-controlled media step in?

Meanwhile, some Israelis have written a far more extreme letter…

More suicidal intellectuals

Yes, I should stop giving them exposure. But here is a letter from a bunch of Israelis, most of them academics, including Dr. Rachel Giora about whom I wrote yesterday, in advance of Israeli President Shimon Peres’ visit to Germany.

The letter accuses peace advocate and ‘architect of Oslo’ Shimon Peres of “numerous violations of human rights”, repeats Hamas and Hizballah atrocity stories, suggests that Israel mistreated nuclear traitor Mordechai Vanunu (in fact, he should have been hanged), and asserts that Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons — without which those who signed the letter would be dead or living in Los Angeles — is unacceptable.

But not all Israeli academics are idiots…

More evidence for early Jewish presence in Israel

A University of Haifa scholar has deciphered an inscription in Hebrew from the 10th century BCE:

A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew scriptures has shed new light on the period in which the Bible was written. Prof. Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David’s reign), and has shown that this is a Hebrew inscription. The discovery makes this the earliest known Hebrew writing. The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least some of the biblical scriptures were composed hundreds of years before the dates presented today in research and that the Kingdom of Israel already existed at that time…

Prof. Galil’s deciphering of the ancient writing testifies to its being Hebrew, based on the use of verbs particular to the Hebrew language, and content specific to Hebrew culture and not adopted by any other cultures in the region. “This text is a social statement, relating to slaves, widows and orphans. It uses verbs that were characteristic of Hebrew, such as asah (“did”) and avad (“worked”), which were rarely used in other regional languages. Particular words that appear in the text, such as almanah (“widow”) are specific to Hebrew and are written differently in other local languages.

The content of the inscription is interesting because is shows a traditional Jewish concern for human rights:

The content itself was also unfamiliar to all the cultures in the region besides the Hebrew society: The present inscription provides social elements similar to those found in the biblical prophecies and very different from prophecies written by other cultures postulating glorification of the gods and taking care of their physical needs,” Prof. Galil explains.

Hebrew inscription from 1000 BCE

Here it is, with his translation:

1′ you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2′ Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]
3′ [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4′ the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5′ Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Ellison, McDermott, Shimon Peres, Gershon Galil, Bible