FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

The always-perceptive David Gerstman connects some dots for us:

First the sequence:

a) Israeli Airstrike in Syria Targets Arms Convoy, U.S. Says by Isabel Kershner and Michael Gordon – January 30, 2013

Israeli warplanes carried out a strike deep inside Syrian territory on Wednesday, American officials reported, saying they believed the target was a convoy carrying sophisticated antiaircraft weaponry on the outskirts of Damascus that was intended for the Hezbollah Shiite militia in Lebanon.

The American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Israel had notified the United States about the attack, which the Syrian government condemned as an act of “arrogance and aggression.” Israel’s move demonstrated its determination to ensure that Hezbollah — its arch foe in the north — is unable to take advantage of the chaos in Syria to bolster its arsenal significantly.

b) Israel Bombs Syria as the U.S. Considers Its Own Military Options by Michael Gordon, Eric Schmitt and David Sanger – May 3, 2013

Israel aircraft bombed a target in Syria overnight Thursday, an Obama administration official said Friday night, as United States officials said they were considering military options, including carrying out their own airstrikes.

U.S. apologized for leaking details of Israel. US officials told that they review the matter.The leak forced Assad to react harshly.
— Chico Menashe (@chicomenashe) May 19, 2013

c) Israel Airstrike Targeted Advanced Missiles That Russia Sold to Syria, U.S. Says by Michael Gordon – July 13, 2013

Israel carried out an air attack in Syria this month that targeted advanced antiship cruise missiles sold to the Syria government by Russia, American officials said Saturday.

The officials, who declined to be identified because they were discussing intelligence reports, said the attack occurred July 5 near Latakia, Syria’s principal port city. The target was a type of missile called the Yakhont, they said.

d) Some Syria Missiles Eluded Israeli Strike, Officials Say by Michael Gordon – July 31, 2013

American intelligence analysts have concluded that a recent Israeli airstrike on a warehouse in Syria did not succeed in destroying all of the Russian-made antiship cruise missiles that were its target, American officials said on Wednesday, and that further Israeli strikes are likely. …

The officials who described the new assessment declined to be identified because they were discussing classified information.

On four separate occasions this year, administration officials talking to Michael Gordon (and other reporters) of the New York Times revealed information about Israeli striking Syria. In three of the cases it’s acknowledged explicitly that official speaking to Gordon would not identify him or her self. Yet only once did the United States apologize. Still, in three separate instances the administration deprived Israel of deniability about the strike. The most recent case, suggested that Israel would strike Syria again. The suggestion [is] hardly something that helps Israel.

Israel’s objective in these strikes is not to take sides in Syria’s civil war, nor is it to humiliate Bashar al-Assad or provoke war between Israel and Syria. It is simply to prevent advanced weapons from reaching Hizballah. In particular, Israel has not claimed any of these operations because it does not want to put Assad in the position of having to defend his honor by striking back.

When US officials leak intelligence information that identifies Israel as the perpetrator, it becomes harder for Assad to ignore these attacks or claim they are the work of rebels.

Assad isn’t stupid. He knows that Israel does not want to intervene in his civil war, and he has plenty to deal with without adding another enemy. He knows that if he hits back against Israel, it will retaliate in turn. He doesn’t need this when he believes that he is making good progress in pushing back the rebels. Yet he loses face and deterrence every time he absorbs an Israeli strike without responding.

My speculation is that he is thinking that he will settle scores with Israel later, after he defeats the rebels. But who knows how far he will allow himself to be pushed?

What are the motives of the US officials who are leaking this data?

• Is this a rogue operation, or are they doing it at the behest of the administration?

• Are they trying to provoke a war between Israel and Syria?

• Are they trying to deter Israel from interdicting weapons shipments to Hizballah?

• Are they trying to punish Israel for resisting efforts to force it out of the territories?

Whatever it is, it is extremely dangerous for Israel, which is facing tens of thousands of missiles aimed at it from both Syria and Hizballah.

Is this the behavior of an ally?

Technorati Tags: Syria, Israel, intelligence leaks

Expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem, 1948

Recently, Mahmoud Abbas said (again) that ‘not one Israeli’ would remain in “our lands.” For Abbas, there is no hypocrisy in demanding at the same time that the descendents of 1948 Arab refugees should ‘return’ to the Israel where they never lived, because — why should we be surprised? — he believes that everything between the river and the sea is “our lands.”

Let’s make no mistake about the significance of the Obama/Kerry ‘peace’ process: if something like the formula of borders ‘based on’ the 1949 armistice lines with land swaps is implemented, then some undetermined number — perhaps 100,000 — of the 300,000 Jewish residents of Judea (excluding Jerusalem) and Samaria will be expelled from their homes, farms, businesses, etc. If Jerusalem is divided, then perhaps another 200,000 will be forced to leave.

In other words, the US is trying — it is one of the highest-priority foreign policy goals of the Obama Administration — to implement a plan to ethnically cleanse the area of Jews.

When the Jordanian army illegally invaded this area in 1948, this was precisely what happened: Jews were driven at gunpoint from land that was promised to them by the international community in the Palestine Mandate. Since 1967, of course, this injustice has been undone as Jews returned to their historic homeland. Now our government is trying to expel them yet again!

Although Western supporters of the PLO make much of the fact that Abbas has only said ‘Israelis’ and not ‘Jews’, anyone familiar with the content of Palestinian media in Arabic knows that the PLO’s motives are frankly racist. It is shocking that a country like ours which exhibits such exquisite sensitivity to the slightest whiff of prejudice would pretend not to notice and proceed with a plan that is racist in the extreme.

Well, they say, it’s absolutely necessary because the status quo is unsustainable. Millions of Arabs are living ‘under occupation’. It can’t continue!

But actually, some 95% or more of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria live in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (which is dominated by the PLO). ‘Occupation’ impinges upon them only where it must to prevent terrorism against Israelis. What the Palestinians want (among many other things) is

• Complete sovereignty, including the ability to make military alliances, control airspace, etc.

• Removal of all Israeli security measures, such as the security barrier, all checkpoints, etc.

Really, is it the case that ending Palestinian ‘frustration’ at the inability to make war on Israel is so important that it justifies the ethnic cleansing, for the second time, of hundreds of thousands of Jews? Where is the urgency? Couldn’t many of the grievances of the Arabs be ameliorated if they were to stop their daily attempts to murder Jews?

In fact, why is it so urgent to grant a sovereign state to a ‘people’ most of whose ancestors moved to ‘Palestine’ no earlier than 200 years ago from Egypt or Syria, who have defined themselves as a people in opposition to the Jews and whose sovereignty is intended to undo that of the Jews in their homeland, and who have expressed their new-found nationalism in the most violent and ugly ways possible?

Make no mistake, if this plan is implemented the damage to Israel’s security and to its social cohesion will be incalculable. This, of course, is the intent of Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO, who have never wavered from their objective of destroying Israel and replacing it with another Arab dictatorship (which will probably shortly become another Islamist theocracy under Hamas).

Is this how our country, which prides itself on its embrace of freedom, justice and democracy, promotes those values beyond its borders?

Technorati Tags: Obama Administration, Israel, Palestinians

The Palestinians had three major preconditions for talks:

• That they will be based on the pre-1967 ‘borders’
• That construction outside the Green Line will be halted
• That prisoners will be released

All of these preconditions have been met, in some sense. The prisoner release was approved at great political cost for PM Netanyahu, an unpublicized limitation on construction if not a complete freeze seems to be in effect, and Kerry has made a promise to the Palestinians that the basis of the negotiations will be the so-called pre-1967 lines (the State Department denied this in the typical careful language that indicates that it is in fact true).

What does it mean that the negotiations will be ‘based’ on pre-1967 lines, or more precisely, the 1949 armistice lines?

The position of the Obama Administration is that land outside the Green Line in Judea and Samaria (excluding Jerusalem, which is another story) belongs, by default, to the Palestinians. Thus, any territory kept by Israel in a peace agreement would require compensation to the Arabs in the form of land swaps from areas that are within the Green Line.

As I’ve written before, this position flies in the face of international law, contravening the Palestine Mandate, the 1949 armistice agreement, the spirit of UNSC resolution 242 and the Oslo Accords. In summary, the Mandate gave prima facie rights in Judea and Samaria to the Jews, the armistice agreement did not establish any kind of borders,

Art. VI. …

8. The provisions of this article shall not be interpreted as prejudicing, in any sense, an ultimate political settlement between the Parties to this Agreement.

9. The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto.

UNSC 242 called for “secure and recognized boundaries,” and Oslo made no mention of the 1949 lines.

A fair starting position, taking account of international law and precedent, would be to treat Judea and Samaria as disputed territory to which the Jews have at least as much (and possibly more) rights than the Arabs, and develop a plan to achieve “secure and recognized boundaries” — with an emphasis on ‘secure’, given recent experience with Gaza.

Instead, the US chose to tilt sharply toward the Arabs. In effect, the administration is acting as though the illegal Jordanian invasion and occupation of Judea and Samaria in 1948, and the ethnic cleansing of its Jewish population, nullified Jewish rights to the area and converted it into ‘Arab land’!

As I wrote yesterday, Abbas doesn’t see the need to make any concessions at all, because he believes that ultimately the UN will give him a state without requiring him to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, give up his unprecedented demand for ‘right of return’, or even accept a ‘two states for two peoples’ formula.

Kerry has not accomplished anything special, other than proving yet again that the Arabs are prepared to pocket what they can get from Israel without giving anything up. And it is very hard to imagine the negotiations succeeding. Here is an article by Jeffrey Goldberg, not a right-winger by any means, which explains why.

What do Kerry and Obama know that we don’t?

If someone can come up with an answer other than that they expect the talks to fail and then will be free to let the PLO go to the UN, please let me know.

Technorati Tags: Israeli-Palestinian negotiations

Obama mentor Edward Said symbolically throws a stone at Israel across Lebanese border, July 2000

With the start of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Washington, there is one overriding question:

What does the Obama administration think it will get out of this?

We know what the Palestinians want: They hope to see Israel forced to stop construction outside of the Green Line, while they push forward with EU-funded projects to create facts on the ground in Israeli-administered Area C. They hope to make it impossible for Israel to back away from the idea that the 1949 armistice lines are in fact the boundaries of ‘Palestinian land’, and not mere accidents of history. They want to further cement their narrative about history and international law, including fantastic conceptions like ‘right of return’ in the world’s — and America’s — consciousness. They have already gained agreement to the release of many convicted murderers, a humiliating loss of face for Israel and a huge propaganda victory for them.

We also know what Israel wants: To avoid an open break with the Obama Administration at a time of extreme peril for the Jewish state. A confrontation with Iran — or the lack of one, equally dangerous — is certain within the next year. Hizballah’s missiles and Iran’s nuclear program will not go away by themselves.  While it would be dreaming to expect the US to take real action against Iran, it is essential to maintain at least nominal American support for Israel’s actions.

In Israel, only the extreme Left, for whom a complete removal of Jews from the territories is literally more important than the survival of a Jewish state, thinks that it would be a good thing for Israel to sign an agreement with the PLO today.

It is impossible to imagine that these talks will succeed (here are 22 good reasons why not). But nevertheless, the administration pushes on. Why?

I believe that the reason is a fundamental ideological commitment by Barack Obama, one on which he has not wavered since his election, to the Palestinian cause. He expressed this commitment to his friend Rashid Khalidi in 2003, who told Palestinian-Americans “You will not have a better senator under any circumstances.”

Note that I said “Palestinian cause,” not the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace. The difference is that although he pays lip service to Israeli security, it is clear that he gives it a very low priority compared to Palestinian sovereignty. It is impossible to know if he is actually hostile to the Jewish state, but at best he seems to think that its security will take care of itself, and focuses on the Palestinian side.

In his first term, Obama tried to get negotiations going on very similar principles. But he made some tactical mistakes — primarily, not coordinating his plans with the Palestinians in advance — and was made to look foolish by Netanyahu. He backed down.

At the time, many pro-Israel people argued that a second-term president would have less to lose — and will have learned from his first-term mistakes. And indeed, this seems to be the case. Now, less than a year into his second term, the other shoe is finally dropping.

Obama now has his team in place — a team that (despite disingenuous statements made during confirmation proceedings) is far more anti-Israel than his first-term people. Kerry, Hagel, Power, Indyk — all are much closer to the Palestinian point of view, less concerned with Israel’s security, than their predecessors.

I think that the administration understands that the talks will not succeed (let’s face it, anyone with half a brain understands this). As Barry Rubin argues, the Palestinians believe that they will get everything they want by international pressure, legitimized and enforced by UN — this time the Security Council — action. So they will make no concessions. The talks will go nowhere, except insofar as Israel will be made to show good faith — this is the same strategy used in so many con games, by the way — with giveaways like the prisoner release.

Following Rubin’s argument, then the US will be able to say that it has tried its best, but [insert how it is Israel’s fault here]. Therefore, it can and will abandon the position it has taken for decades, that the question of Palestinian sovereignty, borders, Jerusalem, etc. must be settled between the parties. It will agree that the UN, the International Court of Justice, etc. may decide the issues.

And then the US will acquiesce in Palestine’s unilateral independence. Perhaps UN Ambassador Samantha Power will be one of the first to announce her nation’s recognition of the new state.

This is the sound of Barack Obama dropping the other shoe.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Israel-PLO negotiations, Obama Administration

Memorial to Ofra and Tal Moses, burned to death in 1987 when Mohammed Dawd threw a firebomb into their car. Dawd is scheduled to go free in the upcoming prisoner release.

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

I will be returning to Israel next year, after more than 25 years in the US. So now that I will be an Israeli again, I think I am allowed to take the gloves off:

What you did by agreeing to release more than 100 Arab prisoners who have been convicted of crimes including multiple murders is beyond wrong. It is shameful. It is disgusting. It is immoral. And it is stupid.

I admit that I am shocked. I admired you. I thought that you learned Zionism from your father, and I know that you put your body on the line more than once for the state of Israel. So how could you do it?

I understand that the murderous insects to be released are older, they will be carefully watched, etc. So maybe they will be unlikely to hurt anyone again (although maybe not).

But look what you have done:

You have betrayed the families of the victims of these terrorists, who were shot, burned, stabbed, blown up and beaten to death. They believed that they had received justice, even if they would never get their loved ones back. Now they will watch their killers grin and make victory signs on television as our ‘peace partners’ celebrate their heroic return. For what?

You have destroyed the honor of the Jewish people. You have put up a sign saying “an Arab is superior to a Jew, you can kill them and go free.” Nothing is more important in the Middle East than honor. Did you forget that you live in the Middle East? You handed Israel’s enemies a huge victory. For what?

You have made a mockery of Israel’s justice system. Murder isn’t murder, if the perpetrator is a Palestinian. Multiple life sentences evaporate. For what?

I strongly opposed the decision to release prisoners in return for Gilad Shalit, but at least you got Shalit back. What did you get for this?

You certainly didn’t get the approval of Israel’s Jewish population, 84% of whom opposed the decision.

No, what you got was the agreement of the illegitimate ‘President’ of the Palestinian Authority, who couldn’t deliver on a ‘peace’ agreement if he wanted to — which he doesn’t — to sit at the same table with you and make even more outrageous demands, demands for Israel’s capital, demands to flood the state with so-called ‘refugees’, demands to expel Jews from their homes, so he can establish a state dedicated to the destruction of yours and mine, and fill it with rocket launchers.

You know in your heart that there will not be a real peace with the Palestinian Arabs in our time. So why did you throw away our honor to decorate Obama’s resumé?

Oh, you got something from Obama too?

Maybe he promised to bomb Iran’s centrifuges next week. I hope so, because if it was anything less, you sold yourself and your people far too cheaply.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Netanyahu, Arab prisoners