Abbas is an abstract construction

April 6th, 2007

Abu Mazen speaks:

Abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit will be released soon, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said in a television interview on Friday.

“We are undertaking efforts to free Shalit and these efforts will soon come to fruition,” Abbas told France 24 television of Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was seized last June in a cross-border raid from Gaza into southern Israel. “We are optimistic.” — Ha’aretz

Well, we are not so optimistic, because we know that the decision to release Shalit is in the hands of Hamas, and possibly even Syrian or Iranian elements, and not those of Abbas. Mahmoud Abbas is an abstract construction which exists only to give the world someone acceptable to talk to who is part of the Palestinian government. It doesn’t even matter who the real Mahmoud Abbas is or what he thinks.

Shalit will go home when Israel capitulates and agrees to release a ridiculous number of murderers as ransom, or when Israeli security forces find him…may this day come soon.

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A soldier’s nightmare

April 6th, 2007

Put yourself in their place:

In a chilling account of their capture, the men said they were conducting a routine search of a merchant vessel on March 23 just south of the Shatt al Arab waterway, one nearly identical to 66 similar boardings that had been carried out over the previous four weeks.

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Is it just my imagination?

April 5th, 2007

Arutz Sheva collects a few facts about antisemitism in North America:

(IsraelNN.com) A Jewish center in the Canadian city of Montreal was targeted in a bomb attack, and a synagogue in San Francisco, California was defaced with swastikas during the first days of the Passover festival.

San Francisco’s Emanu-El synagogue, the largest in the city, was defaced with swastikas over the Passover festival. Congregants discovered the vandalism Monday morning.

In the heavily-Jewish populated Bergen County region of New Jersey, swastikas and anti-Jewish graffiti were found engraved into the playground of a Wallington park on Passover eve.

Chicago police are investigating the Passover eve spraying of graffiti on the walls of a Chicago synagogue. Anti-Israel messages, including “Death to Israel,” were painted in English and in Arabic.

A rough drawing of a building labeled “Jewish library” with missiles headed toward it was found in a Princeton University common room. Also in the path of the missiles were stick figures labeled “little Jews.” A swastika graced the top of the sketch. — Israel National News (Arutz Sheva)

Kos imageAnd here’s an image from the Daily Kos (let’s see how long the link remains valid):

Is it just my imagination that antisemitism grows bolder when Israel is perceived to be weak?

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Dershowitz is wrong

April 5th, 2007

Recently PM Olmert refused to consider any peace agreement that granted a “right of return” to Israel — either actual or symbolic — for Palestinian refugees or their descendants (see “Olmert has it exactly right“). Alan Dershowitz suggests a less drastic position:

Having concluded that Olmert was absolutely right as a matter of principle, he may have been wrong as a matter of tactics. The Palestinian narrative, whether factually correct or incorrect, is a reality in the minds of most Palestinians. Earlier Israeli Prime Ministers recognized that, and were prepared to compromise principle for a pragmatic peace. They indicated a willingness to accept some symbolic right of return coupled with compensation.

Dershowitz is wrong. Granting a ‘symbolic’ right of return (what is a “symbolic right”, anyway?) means taking responsibility for the refugee situation. It means, therefore, admitting to having caused it by deliberate ethnic cleansing or at least by being responsible for the war in which the refugees were created. It means giving up the position that Israel was founded in justice.

Why should the ‘right’ be only symbolic if the Arab story is accepted by everyone, including Israel? How long would it stay symbolic then? What argument could Israel give for it to remain only symbolic? What argument could Israel give for (Jewish) aliyah?

The fact is that Israel’s right to exist is grounded in the rightness of its historical narrative. Take that away — as the pro-Arab propagandists are trying to do — and there is no reason for there to be such a state, which, after all, nobody else in the region wants.

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“A curse on Gaza”

April 5th, 2007

Gaza is dissolving into chaos. Soon there will need to be international peacekeepers there to protect the Palestinians from themselves:

“The Gaza Strip has become worse than Somalia,” a prominent human rights activist in Gaza City told the [Jerusalem] Post. “Thousands of gunmen continue to roam the streets and the new government hasn’t done anything to restore law and order. Every day you hear horror stories about people who are killed and wounded. The situation is really intolerable.”

Muhammad Dahlan, who was recently appointed PA National Security Adviser, said it was time to admit that a “curse has hit” the Gaza Strip. “Anyone who does not admit that there’s a curse in the Gaza Strip does not know what he’s talking about,” he said.

Hassan Khraisheh, deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said that the commanders of the PA security forces knew where [kidnapped BBC journalist Alan] Johnston was being held, but were doing nothing to release him. “What’s the point in having 85,000 security officers if they can’t free a foreign journalist who has been held in the Gaza Strip for three weeks?” he asked. — Jerusalem Post

What’s the point, indeed?

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