FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

NGO Monitor’s Gerald Steinberg talks about the “narrative war”:

The narrative war is as old as the attacks by Arab armies and terror attacks. Following the failure of the 1948 invasion to destroy the nascent Jewish state, Arab leaders began a massive effort to rewrite these events. The process was repeated in 1967, when Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s moves to wipe Israel off the map were turned into a “war of occupation.” By repeating the myths and slogans enough times, and aided by the use of oil wealth, intimidation and terror, this strategy has gradually succeeded.

The narrative war, which has conquered Europe and is moving to North America, begins with the false history covering the Mandate period, from the Balfour Declaration through the 1947 UN partition plan. This version portrays Israel as a Jewish “colonization project” forced on the Arabs by European anti-Semitism and guilt after the Holocaust, as well as Jewish power and manipulation (as reflected in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). The violent Arab rejection of the original “two states for two peoples” proposal, and the continued refusal to accept a Jewish state, regardless of borders, has been removed from these histories.

In the narrative, the Palestinians are always innocent victims – by definition – and Israel is painted as the powerful and manipulative aggressor. Refugees from wars initiated by the Arabs became the object of international sympathy, provided by an international support system with massive budgets that reinforce the narrative. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is “commemorating 60 years” of existence, insures that the hatred is perpetuated.

In contrast, the almost equal number of Jewish refugees [actually, a greater number — ed.] who fled Arab attacks has disappeared from the history books – Jewish refugees are inconsistent with the narrative.

This simpleminded dichotomy – Palestinian victims and Jewish aggressors – works well with Western (particularly but not only European) academics, intellectuals, journalists, diplomats, NGO human rights campaigners and political leaders – particularly from the liberal end of the spectrum. And European governments, including the carefully hidden mechanisms of the European Commission, fund the narrative wars through anti-Israel NGOs that receive money under the misleading headlines of “human rights” and “peace partnerships.” On the basis of these images, whenever Israel responds to attacks, the flood of condemnations follow – including false claims of “war crimes,” “collective punishment” and “humanitarian crisis.”

In Jerusalem, the narrative war has adopted the Arab version, which eliminates 3,000 years of Jewish history as well as the [Jordanian] occupation and systematic desecration of the 1948-1967 period. The EU gives large sums to organizations like Ir Amim and B’Tselem that produce their tendentious reports which are copied and published by the European Commission in order to further demonize Israel. This is the political equivalent of a Ponzi scheme – money is provided to generate anti-Israel reports that justify providing more money, without any external checks or accountability. [my emphasis]

There are also North American sources of money for the campaign, such as the New Israel Fund (NIF), etc.

We know that the first step toward the elimination of Israel is its delegitimization.  Although Europeans and other sophisticated actors will not (at least publicly) call for the annihilation of the Jews in Palestine by Hezbollah rockets or Iranian nukes, the atmosphere created by the falsification of history and current events may very well prevent international action to forestall these possibilities.

There is also a degradation of the quality of life in Israel caused by reduced physical security as a result of concessions forced by international pressure, economic and social effects of the boycott/divestiture movements, etc. Israel’s enemies are thinking long term: it’s common to hear Arabs say “it took 200 years to get the crusaders out of Palestine”.

The so-called ‘nakba law’ to forbid Israeli citizens from observing the birth of Israel as a catastrophe is a response to the popularity of the Arab narrative. Such a law would be very difficult to enforce and probably on balance have negative PR consequences without affecting attitudes; but one can understand the motivation of its supporters.

The NGO campaign is just another front in the broader information war. Israel should not abandon the field in this area either.

• Israel should publicly call out the EU, document the campaign and trace out the money flows. It should demand a UN resolution condemning it and insisting that it be stopped. Of course, no such resolution would pass, but silence is not an option.

• Israel should take serious steps to set up a world-class news and information facility, comparable to Al-Jazeera. As I’ve said countless times, a country with the world’s best air force and a superb high-tech sector can do this. All that’s needed is the will.

Technorati Tags: Israel, NGOs, information war

What’s the big deal about freezing “settlement activity”? Israel is only talking about building within the boundaries of existing settlements, and most of these ‘settlements’ are in East Jerusalem or right on the Green Line. It’s hard to imagine how this can be a practical impediment to a peace agreement.

Yet the Palestinians are insisting that there can be no discussion until such activity stops, and multiple American spokespersons have made it clear that the US also takes this issue very seriously. Why?

From the Palestinian point of view it’s simple. First, it’s a great talking point. They can say “Israel refuses to stop building settlements, so they are not serious about peace”. The distinction between building homes in Gilo (between West Jerusalem and Bethlehem) and colonizing a hilltop in Samaria is lost on the media, but they are more than ready to conclude that Israel is the real obstacle to peace if given an excuse.

Second, if the Americans can be persuaded to go along it could be a weapon against the Netanyahu government:

Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze — if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. “It will take a couple of years,” one official breezily predicted. — Jackson Diehl, Washington Post

Netanyahu was pushed from power in a similar way during his first term as Prime Minister (1996-1999), when American demands  led him to concede control of Hebron and to sign the Wye River Agreement promising further concessions to the Palestinians. The consequent erosion in support from his base was part of the reason he was defeated by Ehud Barak.

But the interesting question is “why are the Americans pushing so hard?” Some possible answers:

• They also want Netanyahu out. But Obama can’t wait the interminable months for a new Israeli government to be up and running, so I doubt this.

• They want to put pressure on Netanyahu short of bringing him down. They know he can’t accept a freeze so they can use it as a bargaining point to get something else.

• They have promised other Arab nations — Saudi Arabia comes to mind — that they will make ‘progress’ on the settlement issue.

What is frustrating to me is the energy being expended by the US over the non-issue of a settlement between Israel and the increasingly irrelevant Palestinian Authority.

The real issues in the Israeli-Arab conflict are the huge military threats from the Hezbollah and Syrian rocket stockpiles, the popularity of Hamas among Palestinians, and of course the ever-spinning Iranian centrifuges.

All of these come down to one: Iran’s project to eliminate the Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, settlements, Palestinians, Iran

Jackson Diehl, Washington Post:

In our meeting Wednesday, Abbas acknowledged that Olmert had shown him a map proposing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank — though he complained that the Israeli leader refused to give him a copy of the plan. He confirmed that Olmert “accepted the principle” of the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees — something no previous Israeli prime minister had done — and offered to resettle thousands in Israel. In all, Olmert’s peace offer was more generous to the Palestinians than either that of Bush or Bill Clinton; it’s almost impossible to imagine Obama, or any Israeli government, going further.

Abbas turned it down. “The gaps were wide,” he said.

The idea that Israel could “accept the principle” of  “right of return” but somehow not allow it in practice is a popular one. Proponents say that this would allow Palestinian leaders to save face among their constituency while still agreeing to a deal that Israel will accept.

This is one of those issues — like whether Israel should demand recognition as a Jewish state — that looks to some like a verbal quibble with no practical consequences. Why not agree (assuming that Palestinians would as well) and move forward?

Actually, like the question of the Jewishness of the state it is of supreme importance and Israel must never agree to anything like it.

To “accept the principle” means to accept the following:

• Israel is responsible for the creation of the refugees — despite the fact that the Palestinian Arabs started (and the Arab nations continued) the war that resulted in the flight of 700,000 refugees.

• Israel is responsible for the condition of today’s ‘refugees’ — despite the fact that the Arab nations (and to some extent the UN) have turned the original refugees into almost 5 million claimants of refugee status who have not been resettled.

• Israel was born in injustice, which must be reversed — Other refugees who fled their homes as a result of war (or even persecution or expulsion, like the 850,000 Jews from Arab countries who became refugees beginning in 1948) can be resettled, but Palestinian Arab refugees must ‘return’, because Israel must reverse the Nakba (catastrophe) it visited upon them.

In other words, ‘accepting the principle’ means accepting the entire Arab narrative of the conflict, in which Israel bears all of the guilt. Only after an abject confession will the aggrieved Arabs be prepared to permit her to continue to exist (for a while, anyway).

As a commenter on my previous post mentioned, this is closely related to the Arab refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state. The principle of ‘right of return’ implies that the refugees, not the Jews, are the actual “owners” of the land.  So just as the Palestinians will not compromise on one, they will not compromise on the other. And as I pointed out, if Israel does not belong to the Jewish people, why is there a state of Israel at all?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, refugees, right of return

Uriel Heilman said,

There is something of the absurd in the recent flurry of activity in Israel to ensure that it is recognized as a Jewish state…

Is Israel so insecure about its identity that it needs others, particularly its adversaries, the Palestinians, to tell it what kind of a country it is? If Israel wants to be a Jewish state, let it be so. It shouldn’t need anyone else to affirm it. Israel should worry more about its own citizens, Arab and haredi, who have a problem with its self-declared identity.

On the contrary, it is not only not absurd, it is absolutely essential.

The Arabs and others who refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state — or, in another formulation, as the state of the Jewish People — do so because they refuse to admit that there is a Jewish people.

Here are some Palestinian comments made last month in response to PM Netanyahu’s  statement that there would be no progress in talks with Palestinians until they recognized Israel as a Jewish state:

Omar al-Ghul, an adviser to PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, said that Netanyahu’s demand was aimed at transferring the Palestinians to another country.

“No Palestinian leader can ever accept this demand even if the whole world recognizes Israel as a Jewish state,” he stressed. “The state of Israel belongs to all its citizens, the Palestinians [sic] owners of the land and the Jews living there.”

Hafez Barghouti, editor of the PA’s daily mouthpiece, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, said that Netanyahu’s demand was aimed at expelling the Arab citizens of Israel and turning Jerusalem into a Jewish city.

“Netanyahu wants to replace the Palestinian kaffiyeh with a Jewish kippa,” Barghouti said. “This is an irrational and absurd request. No country in the world has ever demanded that it be recognized on the basis of its religion and not political entity.” (my emphasis)

Palestinians have been consistent in their insistence that ‘Jews’ means ‘practitioners of the Jewish religion’ and nothing else. If there were no Jewish People, this would be very convenient for the Palestinians, because it would indeed make no sense for a ‘religion’ to ask for a state. Zionism, which demands self-determination for the Jewish People, would be meaningless. By denying that there is a Jewish people, the Arabs are denying Jewish self-determination.

Unfortunately for the Palestinian Arabs — whose own claim to peoplehood is far more tenuous — there is a history and tradition of the Jewish People over thousands of years.  19th-century Zionists, many of whom (including Herzl) were entirely secular, called for a Jewish state to solve the historical problems facing Jews — religious and secular — living among other peoples. The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate, the UN Partition Resolution and Israel’s Declaration of Independence — not to mention the practical self-defense of Israel since then — all declare that there must be a homeland for the Jewish People.

We need to understand the Palestinian position in the context of all of their demands, including ‘right of return’. Practically speaking, what it means when Palestinians deny a Jewish People is that they see Israel as just another Middle Eastern state, which happens to be under the control of Jewish colonialists. But of course the real ‘owners’ will ultimately repossess it.

As long as they do not accept Israel as a Jewish state — a state of the Jewish People — they continue to claim it, and to assert the right to ‘resist’ its ‘unjust’ occupation.

This is actually the first thing needed for peace: an unambiguous admission that we have a right to be here. The rest would be a matter of details.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jewish People, Jewish State, Palestinians