FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

No degree of hateful expression (or action) is forbidden to them:

The editor of a pan-Arab daily published in London says the terrorist attack on Jerusalem’s Mercaz Harav Yeshiva on March 6 attack was “justified” and that the religious seminary is responsible for “hatching Israeli extremists and fundamentalists.”

In his lead article last Sunday, Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, chose not to condemn the shooting attack in which eight students were killed and nine were wounded, and said the celebrations in Gaza that followed symbolized the “courage of the Palestinian nation.” — Jerusalem Post

The Palestinian Arabs have always murdered Jews. When there were only a few Jews in the region, as in Tzfat in 1834, the Arabs raped and murdered them. Before the founding of the State of Israel, as in Hevron in 1929, the Arabs murdered Jews. During the so-called Arab Revolt of 1936-39, the Nazi-inspired and financed Palestinian Arabs murdered Jews.

When the UN partition resolution was approved in 1947, guess what the Arabs did? Yes, and they also did it in the period between 1948 and 1967, when ‘the occupation’ began and Yasser Arafat learned from his Soviet backers that he could get Western liberals on his side by recasting his racist, genocidal campaign as a ‘war of national liberation’, and the outnumbered Jews as a powerful colonialist oppressor.

Now everything is supposed to be about Palestinian human rights, occupation, and oppression, but we can get a clue toward what it is really about by looking at the Hamas Covenant, by noticing that the Arabs have refused every possible compromise that would leave Israel standing, by the fact that they continue to attack Israel from Gaza after the withdrawal, and — quite convincingly — simply by listening to them.

Israeli extremists and fundamentalists murdered by courageous Palestinians

Top left: Avraham David Moses (16), Ro’i Roth (18), Neria Cohen (15), Yonatan Yitzhak Eldar (16); Bottom: Yochai Lifshitz (18), Segev Peniel Avihail (15), Yehonadav Haim Hirschfeld (19), Doron Meherete (26).

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Merkaz haRav, genocide

The Islamic Republic of Iran

The Islamic Republic of Iran is geographically the 18th largest country in the world and has more than 70 million inhabitants. It ranks third worldwide in proven oil reserves (after Saudi Arabia and Canada), and second in natural gas (after Russia).

Iran is governed by a radical Islamic regime which hangs homosexuals and stones adulterers, persecutes religious minorities and political dissidents, executes juvenile offenders, and arrests women for ‘improper’ dress (see: Human Rights Watch, Iran).

Crude oil futures yesterday closed at more than $110/bbl. and a gallon of gasoline in the US will shortly cost $4.00 (this especially benefits Iran, whose cost of production is greater than Saudi Arabia’s). As the American economy weakens — in part due to the increased outflow of dollars for petroleum — Iranian influence throughout the world increases.

One of the things Iran is doing with its huge windfall of oil profits is to develop nuclear bombs and missiles to deliver them. Some analysts say that Iran is likely to have a usable nuclear weapon by 2009. That’s next year, folks.

One of Iran’s goals is to dominate the Middle East, replacing Saudi Arabia as the predominant power. To this end it has allied itself with (or made a satellite of) Syria, through which it supplies Hezbollah, its proxy in the struggle for control of Lebanon.

Another goal is to destroy Israel, which has only 7 million people, an area 1.3% of Iran’s, and no oil reserves. The Iranian leadership is quite outspoken about this.

One strategy is to train and supply anti-Israel terrorists among the Palestinians and others. The rocket arsenals of Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas are bought and paid for by Iran. If you wonder how Hamas, allegedly “under seige” in Gaza, manages to fire tens of rockets a day and continuously attempt to attack Israeli soldiers and civilians near the Gaza/Israel border, wonder no longer.

This explains how the supposedly weak and oppressed Palestinians can present a real threat to Israel: Iran has their back.

There are multiple reasons for Iranian policy towards Israel, which include religious motives, the desire to earn propaganda points in the wider Arab and Muslim world, and their understanding that Israel is a base for American power in the Mideast which must be neutralized in order to expel Western influence from the region.

Unfortunately, many Westerners (like the Yale and Harvard educated cupcake discussed in the previous post and British PM Gordon Brown) ignore the last part, and assume that Iran is just Israel’s problem.

Yossi Klein Halevy writes,

So long as the international community tries to create a Palestinian state without seriously confronting the jihadists, Iran and its proxies will continue to make peace impossible–not by “derailing” negotiations, but by making those negotiations irrelevant.

And if the community does not succeed in stopping Iran’s anti-Israel program, the results will not be pretty.

Understandably, Israel has avoided a confrontation with Iran, which could result in the most devastating war Israel has fought. But as the siege around Israel’s borders tightens and as the Iranian nuclear program quickens, that direct confrontation becomes increasingly likely.

According to a just-released strategic assessment by the Israeli intelligence community, 2008 will be the “Year of Iran.” The Lebanese government, warns the assessment, could collapse in the coming months, allowing Hezbollah to take power. Meanwhile, Hezbollah and Hamas are considering a coordinated rocket assault on Israeli population centers, almost all of which are within rocket range of either group. And, according to the strategic assessment, sometime within the coming year, or by early 2009 at the latest, Iran will achieve nuclear capability. The threat that emerges from the intelligence assessment may well be the most acute that Israel has ever faced.

Western inaction will force Israel to act out of simple self-preservation. Maybe that’s the intention?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iran

Those who don’t get it — and there are many — should not style themselves “foreign policy experts”.

Ms. Power, meet Mr. Ahmadinejad…
By Barry Rubin

'Expert' Samantha Power (courtesy "Vogue")

A friend asked me about the meaning of the following quote from a now-former Obama advisor:

…Syria’s really tricky. I think if we could get our policy in Israel straight, then you get a sort of credibility to convene Arab governments that have a civil society with — hopefully, you still have a few allies in Europe and elsewhere — and actually start to have the difficult conversation about how one can liberalize. — Samantha Power

I understand what she means and it is very important. It is the most basic concept of many or most Middle East “experts,” politicians, and the media. It says: if we could move away from Israel and force it to surrender — oops, to make peace — working with all those smart European governments, then the United States could help lead the Arab world to be democracies. Israel’s policy is the cause of all the problems, even the lack of democracy in the Arabic-speaking world.

That is what it says very clearly. It is extremely stupid. But anyone who thinks of the Arab world in these terms is not only an idiot, but also a very good candidate to become a highly rewarded, well paid, frequently published, person who will get tenure/op-eds in leading newspapers, etc.

We are supposed to believe, in this conception, that these countries don’t really exist, they don’t have societies, their regimes don’t have interests, they don’t have issues, they don’t have histories or internal struggles or class systems or ethnic and religious tensions. No, everything in these lands are just reflections of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Of course if the “genius” in question knows nothing about those societies, regimes, ideologies, issues, interests, histories, and just plain human beings — this seems logical.

And this is why Western policy toward the Middle East is in such a serious mess and hasn’t worked. This will continue to be true unless they stop the Israel-centric explanation for everything in the region and take into account dictatorship, ideology, Islamism, Arab nationalism, traditional social structures, religious world views, imperialist ambitions and chauvinist attitudes, the treatment of women, economic systems. You know, all the stuff that counts everywhere else in the world.

But of course what this vision does is that it tells people that they should really hate Israel. After all, if Israel didn’t exist–or acted in a way so that it would not exist for much longer–we are to believe that the Middle East would be peaceful, democratic, moderate and pro-Western. If you believe this than you really do think that the world would be a better place without Israel. Ms. Power, meet Mr. Ahmadinejad.

. . .

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). His latest books are The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan) and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

Technorati Tags: Samantha Power, Israel, Syria, Middle East, foreign policy

Mourner’s tent for Merkaz haRav murderer, with flags of Hamas, Fatah, and Hezbollah

From Arutz Sheva:

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter (Kadima) gave the police an order Wednesday to destroy the home of the family of the terrorist who murdered eight yeshiva students last Thursday night. The order came after six days of deliberations and legal consultations.

My prediction: this will not happen. There will be the usual international outrage, and pressure will be applied “in order to not damage the peace process any further”.

Israel does not have the freedom of action of a sovereign nation in internal affairs — compare, for example, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Iran.

Dichter has said that there are no legal grounds to remove the murderer’s mourners’ tent. The family did remove Hamas and Hezbollah flags when requested to do so by police. In my opinion, there are grounds having to do with national self-respect that require the removal of the tent, and legal grounds need to be found.

So far, spokesmen from Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, the Sudan, and others have praised the murderous attack. Some called it ‘courageous’, others said that the victims (7 out of 8 were teenagers) were ‘dangerous extremists’, who learned to ‘hate Arabs’ at the Merkaz haRav Yeshiva. All saw it as a great victory for their side.

Mick Napier of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign — just one example from many similar organizations worldwide — called the yeshiva “a training centre for illegal occupation, murder and ‘Arabs to the Gas Chambers'”. He considers the attack justified retaliation for the ‘murder’ of Palestinians in Gaza.

He went on to ‘explain’ the philosophy of the yeshiva as follows:

The Mercaz HaRav yeshiva is based on contempt for all Gentiles, not only Arabs. … [the founder of the yeshiva, haRav Abraham Yitzchak haCohen] Kook’s classification of Palestinians as non-human allows the graduates of Mercaz HaRav to ignore those commandments that forbid stealing, murder and coveting.

Since non-Jews are similar to another species in the Kooks’ world-view, the very notion of human rights governing the relations between Jews and others is naturally repugnant to his followers…The Kooks’ primitive god is similar to that of their American Christian fundamentalist counterparts. Both groups of fundamentalists believe that the coming of the Messiah is imminent…they agree that the normal forms of human decency are no longer in force…

Napier’s source is a book on Jewish fundamentalism by Shahak and Mezvinsky, which is quoted frequently by right- and left-wing antisemites, including David Duke of the KKK and Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada. This kind of stuff is stock in trade for the massive hate-Israel industry.

Condoleezza Rice and British PM Gordon Brown, in their condemnations of the attack, managed to mention the importance of the [worthless] ‘peace process’. So I expect they will want to do their best to ‘reduce tensions’ by preventing any form of retaliation by Israel, even including the demolition of the terrorist’s house.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Merkaz haRav

From YNet:

Recent developments on the Arab-Israeli front include the following: A massacre at a Jerusalem Jewish seminary perpetrated by an east Jerusalem resident, a near lynch of municipal parking inspectors, a call for martyrdom at a mass rally in Umm al Fahm, and repeated warnings issued by the Shin Bet director indicating that Israeli Arabs are increasingly involved in terror activities….

According to Dr. Dan Shiftan of the University Of Haifa School Of Political Science, “we are witnessing an ongoing process of radicalization in Arab society…. the stone throwing incidents we have witnessed as of late are no coincidence, and are a direct product of this radicalization, which legitimizes violence in retaliation for perceived Jewish atrocities.”

The majority of the Arab public, notes Shiftan, chooses to endorse leaders that explicitly call for the annihilation of the State of Israel. “Arabs have such an extreme, incendiary leadership today because these are the very views that get Arab leaders elected. Arab leaders that are elected these days must espouse radical views not only calling for the destruction of Israel, but also supporting all of Israel’s enemies worldwide…Any Jew-murdering terrorist is immediately embraced by the current Arab leadership.”

From the Arab point of view, the problem is discrimination against Israeli Arabs and incitement against them by right-wing politicians:

Dr. Khaled Abu-Asba, a professor for the sociology of education at the university of Haifa has also, like Shiftan, studied Israel’s Arab population extensively for many years. Like Shiftan, he blames radicalism and incitement for the utter breach of trust between Jews and Israeli Arabs, but believes that the incitement in question stems form Israeli rightist[s].

“There is an onslaught of abuse these days,” says Abu-Asba. “People blame Arab leaders for instigating violence, but when a Jewish MK says ‘we’ll throw you out’ or ‘we’ll take care of you all’ no one says a word. Is this not incitement? Are there Arab MKs making similar statements?”

Abu-Asba further notes that “as Israeli Arabs we are Israeli citizens, but also members of the Palestinian people with political views befitting such….as Israeli Arabs we are hurt most by the current violence as we are caught right in the middle of the fray.”

There is no doubt that discrimination against Israeli Arabs exists. On the other hand, perceived differences in allocation of public funds, etc. are also due to different standards of governance in Jewish and Arab localities (which are run according to traditional patronage systems).

But discrimination and allocation of resources are problems that can be dealt with. The intractable part is ‘political views’ among the Arabs that there should not be a Jewish state, and the support of ‘leaders’ who call for the murder of Jews and the destruction of the state.

Unfortunately, this point of view is prevalent among the opinion leaders and intellectuals among the Israeli Arabs (see my post “Israeli Arab intellectuals are irresponsible“).

Israelis, Jewish and Arab, need to ask themselves seriously “what will be the future”? In particular, those Arabs who are advocating civil war — because that is what they are in fact advocating — should understand that they will probably lose such a war and bring upon themselves a nakba (catastrophe) greater than that of 1948.

Although it seems unthinkable to them, peace and cooperation would be far more beneficial.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Israeli Arabs