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Peace Now will be demonstrating against ‘the occupation’ in Hebron tomorrow, the 40th anniversary of the start of the Six Day war.

The High Court of Justice ruled Monday that the Peace Now organization could go ahead with a protest to set take place Tuesday next to the Jewish settlement in the West Bank city of Hebron…

The commander of Hebron Brigade, Colonel Yehuda Fuchs, told the court that the protest would lead to a breach of the peace by settlers, which could endanger the lives of demonstrators, local Palestinian residents, IDF soldiers and police. — Ha’aretz

Tensions in Hebron are presently very high and one can understand the reluctance of the army to take the responsibility of preventing an explosion.

Peace now has always represented the left wing of the Zionist camp; that is, while advocating withdrawal to the 1967 lines (and some kind of compromise on Jerusalem), they have not gone as far as explicitly endorsing a right of return to Israel for Palestinian refugees or a binational state.

What is the significance of a demonstration on June 5? It would be unfair to suggest that Peace Now wishes that the 1967 war had gone the other way, as does the extreme Left.

Rather, they want to say that Israel should have reached a negotiated agreement (with the Arab nations? the Palestinians?) that would have traded the territories for peace; and that instead of doing this Israel built settlements which prolonged The Occupation, in their opinion the root of the present conflict with the Palestinians. To fix it, they advocate immediate negotiations to evacuate the territories and the settlements.

Now, I don’t want to try to tackle the question of what should have happened during the last 40 years. One could bring up the ‘three no’s’ of the Khartoum conference in September of 1967, or the duplicity of Yasser Arafat during the Oslo period to argue that it wasn’t as simple as Peace Now wants to suggest. But let’s just talk about today.

Today the Palestinians are governed by Hamas, which is presently waging war against Israel in the south, and which has consistently rejected any Jewish presence in the Mideast. The ‘moderate’ Arab states have proposed a non-negotiable ‘peace’ plan that is just a document of surrender, while the not-so-moderate ones like Syria and Iran are preparing for war.

Evacuating the West Bank and/or the Golan Heights today would simply be suicide. This is a fact regardless of whether you like the settlers in Hebron or whether you think that Israel’s policies over the past 40 years have been ill-advised. Today, the only peace that could be achieved this way would be the peace of the grave.

So why is Peace now — undoubtedly in combination with foreign and Palestinian ‘activists’ — trying to provoke a violent confrontation, which at best will divert the resources of the army and police away from protecting the nation, and at worst cause injuries and even deaths while feeding the anti-Israel propaganda machine?

With all due respect, there is no pro-Israel goal that can be served by this demonstration — only Israel’s enemies will benefit. If this is what they want, then it should be clear to everyone that Peace Now is an anti-Zionist organization.

Update [5 Jun 1022 PDT]: The demonstration took place, with only a few hundred Peace Now demonstrators appearing, and a large presence of police and soldiers. There was no right-wing counter-demonstration and no violence.

Palestinians threw stones at the bus carrying the Peace Now members, thus demonstrating that for them, as for Hitler, a Jew is a Jew. 

Technorati Tags: Israel, Peace Now

More threats from the Iranian Hitler:

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s president said on Sunday the Lebanese and the Palestinians had pressed a “countdown button” to bring an end to Israel…

“With God’s help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech.

“By God’s will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future,” he said. He did not elaborate.

It’s interesting to speculate about what he gets from this bellicose language. I presume it’s done to help promote Iran as leader of the Muslim world, which is almost synonymous with ‘biggest enemy of Israel’.

This time the threat is not of an Iranian attack, but of a proxy war involving clients Hezbollah and Hamas.

Comparing the situation to that of the 1960’s and 70’s, we have Iran playing the role of the Soviet Union as the sponsor of Arab confrontation.

On the one hand, Israel’s position does not appear any worse than it was. The US appears to be supporting Israel at least as much, and possibly more, than in the past. Although it is bogged down in Iraq, it was no less bogged down in Vietnam then. Iran is no Soviet Union militarily. And Hamas and Hezbollah cannot theselves constitute an existential threat to Israel.

The greatest danger comes from a war with Hamas and Hezbollah escalating to include missile attacks from Syria and Iran. Such attacks could cause large numbers of casualties, even without nuclear involvement. But Israel’s powerful second-strike capability should deter this kind of escalation.

So what I expect, and what Ahmadinijad seems to be threatening, is a two-front war with Hamas and Hezbollah, waged by means of short-range rockets and infiltration of terrorists. Sort of a 2006 war on steroids, with the Arabs going for limited goals and, despite the threats, not the destruction of Israel.

On the one hand, Hamas is much more prepared than last summer, and Hezbollah is no less so. The presence of international forces in Lebanon may or may not deter Hezbollah, but will certainly constrain Israel’s response.

The IDF has learned some lessons, but it’s not clear if it has any more of an answer to short-range missiles than before. Another unknown is Israeli strategy: how close to Syria and Iran will Israel take the fight?

Nothing will be more important to Israel in this coming struggle than leadership.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah

Do you think the British Union of Colleges and Universities (UCU) boycott resolution is about the welfare of Palestinians? Do you think it represents a true grass-roots movement? Do you think the sponsors would like to see a reduction of tensions between Israel and the Palestinians? Do you wonder why they are not calling for a boycott on Iranian academics, who — by the same logic UCU use — support the persecution of progressive elements in their universities?

Do you wonder “what’s the point?”

Boycotts of Israel, called “anti-normalization,” have been endemic to Arab world trade unions for many years, in particular, Jordanian and Egyptian trade unions have used these boycotts to sabotage their country’s peace agreements with Israel, and to terrorize journalists and academicians into breaking off any contact with Israelis. This activity began long before the current Intifada and has nothing to do with the occupation. Aided by British anti-Zionist activists, these trade unions, supported by the most extreme elements in Palestinian society, in Egypt and Jordan, have now succeeded in exporting their racist campaign to other countries. Through the UCU, they have found a way to spread their poisonous approach.

Read the whole article here.

Technorati Tags: UCU, Israel