FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

FresnoZionism.org is one year old this month. The first post, on December 6, 2006, was inspired by the publication of the Iraq Study Group report with its appalling suggestion that the US buy its way out of Iraq by betraying Israel — an idea that, unfortunately, seems to have become policy.

This is the 725th post. Since the beginnning, FresnoZionism has gotten about 60,000 page hits from about 10,000 unique IP addresses. Only some fraction of these are real people reading it, of course. There are 247 comments on these posts, many of them by the indefatigable Shalom Freedman in Jerusalem. There are 33 other sites with links to FresnoZionism right now. All of this makes us small potatoes in the blog world.

Writers and editors are nourished the thought that somewhere someone is actually reading what they produce. Thank you all for this.

Hours after the security cabinet ruled against a large military operation in the Gaza Strip, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said Wednesday that it was impossible to defeat a terrorist group without having control on the ground.

During the day, more than 20 Kassam rockets were fired into the western Negev, pounding Sderot and outlying communities. A young girl was lightly wounded by shrapnel in her leg and two others were treated for ringing in their ears after one Kassam struck the middle of a residential neighborhood in Sderot.

“I don’t think that this reality can continue for much longer,” Ashkenazi said at a conference on Israel’s future security challenges at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. — Jerusalem Post

The rocket attacks have barely missed a day since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza strip (the withdrawal was complete in September 2005). In 2006, over a thousand rockets were fired. They have killed 12 Israelis and caused numerous injuries and much property damage.

The rockets and Israel’s disinclination or inability to respond effectively to them are emblematic of the whole situation. The Qassam rockets are not significant in a military sense. Although they are aimed at the civilian population they are not even a real terror weapon, like the German V-1’s and V-2’s.

They are a psychological weapon, designed to crush the self-image and spirit of Israelis. Every rocket that falls and drives shrieking children into a shelter carries the message “we can do whatever we want to you, you cannot defend yourselves, you are nothing”.

But like the chemical warheads that mix two by-themselves harmless substances to form a deadly agent on impact, the Qassams are binary weapons. Unlike the chemical warheads, though, the rocket only carries one half of the destructive payload. Without the second component, the rockets are almost harmless. And that component is Israel’s weak response.

The Chief of Staff is not the only one that understands that there is no alternative to an incursion and continued military occupation of strategic parts of Gaza, including the Beit Hanoun area from which many of the rockets are fired, and above all the ‘Philadelphi Corridor’ which runs along the Egyptian border, and under which weapons, explosives and terrorists are smuggled.

So what’s stopping it? Surely the government understands the damage the rocket barrage is doing.

Here are some of the deterrent factors:

1. Hamas has built fortifications, tunnels, bunkers, etc. along the Gaza-Israel border which would be difficult to overcome, and the fight would bring Israeli casualities.
2. An incursion into heavily populated Gaza would result in Palestinian civilian casualties.
3. A fight in Gaza might cause Hezbollah to open a second front in the North, firing its (more potent) missiles as in 2006.
4. The US, in order to placate the Arab nations that are so important to her effort in Iraq, has forbidden Israel from anything more than limited operations.

The IDF can overcome obstacles 1-3 by careful and creative planning. Ashkenazi believes this, which is why he has made the remarks quoted above.

But he can’t overcome no. 4. Only an Israeli government with the strength of character and self-respect to face the US as a sovereign nation can do this. And it’s not impossible:

• Sooner or later the US will realize that its real enemies are the same as Israel’s enemies. Our relationship with Saudi Arabia has cost us dearly, and our re-engagement with Iran and Syria promises more of the same.
• The US has few real allies in the Mideast, and especially not ones with an effective military and nuclear capability — except Israel.

Strength of character. Self-respect. And a belief in the rightness of the Zionist enterprise, the creation (and now preservation) of a Jewish state in her ancestral home.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Gaza, Gabi Ashkenazi

I just opened my mail to find a solicitation for funds from Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Rabbi Saperstein finds that this dark, cold winter is “dark politically as well”, and I agree with him. Israel is in as much or more danger today as she has been since 1948, and things don’t look so good for the Jewish people in the USA either, with a surge in antisemitic expression in popular and ‘intellectual’ culture.

Imagine my surprise, then, to find that the issues Rabbi Saperstein is most concerned about do not include antisemitism at all, the issue of Israel is mentioned last — and the policy he advocates in this regard is the worst imaginable!

Here are Rabbi Saperstein’s top ‘challenges”:

• Supreme court nominations,
• Civil rights protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people,
• Global climate change,
• The international health care crisis,

and finally this:

• “During too many years of a hands-off approach to the Middle East conflict, the Reform Movement was the most outspoken national Jewish organization calling for U.S. efforts to help craft a two-state solution. Finally it appears that the U.S. is reengaging, and there is now an opening toward peace. The RAC is working vigorously with members of Congress and the Administration to advance a viable and lasting resolution to the conflict.”

Now I am quite concerned about climate change, and certainly have opinions about all of the above issues, although they may or may not be the same as Rabbi Saperstein’s. But keep in mind that this is a solicitation from a Religious Action Center to a specifically Jewish audience, supposedly concerned about Jewish issues. Yet most of these issues are simply white bread liberal politics.

I’ve heard it said that Jewish ethics, as understood by Reform Jews, is identical with mildly left-wing liberalism. If this is false, I certainly can’t tell that from Rabbi Saperstein’s letter.

Now let’s get to the last “challenge”.

Rabbi Saperstein would undoubtedly call himself pro-Israel. But as I’ve written countless times, the so-called policy of “engagement” is really a policy of appeasement of violently anti-Israel and antisemitic regimes. The policy embraces arming Israel’s enemies and forcing Israel to make concrete concessions that damage her ability to survive in the face of terrorist and conventional assaults, in return for absolutely nothing — unless it is the increased contempt in which she is held around the world.

Does Rabbi Saperstein really believe that “there is now an opening toward peace”? With whom, the despised, powerless Mahmoud Abbas, who nevertheless refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and insists on the right of return to Israel for 5 million Arabs? The Saudis, with their ‘peace’ plan that requires complete Israeli surrender on every issue before there will be “normal relations” (but not recognition)?

Does he agree with the statement issued under US auspices at at the Annapolis conference — at which Israelis were not permitted through the same door as Arabs — which condemned “terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis”?

Rabbi Saperstein’s position supporting the US present Middle East policy is therefore pernicious. It is a position that no Jewish religious organization should take in view of the importance of Israel and Jerusalem to Judaism (see the Reform Movement’s own ‘Miami platform’ of 1997). It is no more or less than the standard liberal dogma about this issue, like all the rest of his “challenges”.

As a member of a Reform congregation myself, I have a “challenge” for Rabbi Saperstein: explain to me how your letter is supposed to appeal to me as a Jew and a Zionist. Or are these categories irrelevant to Reform Judaism?

Technorati Tags: Reform Judaism, URJ, Religious Action Center, Saperstein, Israel

The American plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace which relies on Palestinian ‘moderates’ is less than worthless, and should be terminated immediately.

Arms and money given to the Palestinian Authority (PA) today will be used against Israel in the future, when the present unstable situation collapses. Forcing the IDF to withdraw from the West Bank will make the inevitable war even more difficult.

The division between Fatah and Hamas is artificial and cannot be maintained. Even one Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would have difficulty being economically viable; two could never be. Today Saudi Arabia and Egypt are working to bring the sides together, and there is no doubt that a coalition will shortly be formed. Maybe it will be called Fatmas.

Although Fatah is presented as being moderate and Hamas extremist, their views about Israel are actually very similar.

Fatah’s demands include a right of return for refugee descendants, no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, withdrawal to 1949 armistice lines, and Arab sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem, including the holy sites.

Mahmoud Abbas claims that if Israel meets these demands, a Palestinian state will live in peace with Israel.

Hamas makes exactly the same demands, except that they offer a 10-year hudna (truce) rather than peace.

Both organizations have ‘military’ (read: terrorist) wings. Indeed, Fatah’s al-Aqsa brigades murdered an Israeli the day before the opening of the Annapolis conference.

Fatah’s functionaries are corrupt, many of them involved in drug dealing, extortion, and other kinds of crime. They are highly unpopular among Palestinians because of this, and because many think that Abbas deliberately lost the power struggle in Gaza in order to break up the Hamas-dominated PA government (you will recall, Hamas won the Palestinian election) in order to restart the flood of US aid. The only reason Fatah is in control of anything now is that the US is propping it up while the IDF fights off Hamas’ attempts to take over the West Bank.

Hamas was founded on Islamic principles, while Fatah is more-or-less secular. Hamas and Fatah are both quite brutal to their enemies. For Palestinians on one side or the other this is important, but for Israel it is irrelevant. The only difference is a promise of what might happen if Israel meets impossible conditions.

The situation today is that the US-financed Fatah and the Iranian-backed Hamas are struggling for leadership, as proxies of their patrons, while at the same time Egypt and Saudi Arabia are trying to give birth to Fatmas — an entity which they will control. Fatmas will be much more dangerous than its predecessors, combining the legitimacy of Fatah with the militancy of Hamas.

It is very hard to imagine any other outcome than a Fatmas coalition. One thing that I am sure of is that the winner is not going to be the US-backed Abbas faction by itself. So weapons we give Fatah today will either be inherited by Fatmas or taken by Hamas.

So how can the US maintain its influence?

How about by supporting Israel, our true ally in the region, as opposed to dishonestly playing both ends against the middle by arming and encouraging her enemies?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Hamas, Fatmas

Everyone knows that the UN is heavily biased against Israel. But maybe everyone does not know that the organization whose charter calls for “friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”, and which is “based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members”, holds an annual event devoted to denying the legitimacy of one of its members and the right to self-determination of one of the oldest identifiable “peoples” in history.

I am, of course, talking about the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” held every November 29, the anniversary of the Partition Resolution of 1947!

In other words, the UN — since 1977 — has commemorated a prior UN resolution by repudiating it.

Here are some of the things that the UN has done recently on this special day.

In 2005, a map of the region showing ‘Palestine’ and not Israel was displayed. There was also a moment of silence in honor of suicide bombers.

In 2006,

…the U.N. Trusteeship Council room was adorned with a series of panels rewriting the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the Arab point of view, describing 7 or 8 million Palestinians claiming a right of return — enough to destroy the Jewishness of the state of Israel, and lauding the success of the violent Palestinian uprising or intifada.

This year, following protests by Israel, the event had only two flags: that of the UN, and that of ‘Palestine’. You can read the article linked above for details on what was said by the various pro-Palestinian speakers.

The 2005 map of ‘Palestine’ on which the word ‘Israel’ does not appear, along with the UN and Palestinian flags.

Every year the Israeli ambassador denounces this travesty of fairness, and every year the Palestinians and their friends find new ways of expressing their contempt. Israel should apply some form of sanctions to UN personnel and agencies on her territory to make it clear that there will be a cost attached to this really intolerable treatment.

Technorati Tags: UN, Israel, Palestinians