FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

The Obama Administration continues to make the same mistake, over and over: it refuses to understand the importance of ideology as a cause of behavior. This is in part because of its own ideology: a naive leftism in which the only motivator of human behavior is economics or power relationships. This is combined with the fact that most of our elite is ignorant of history and not very interested in it.

For example, they do not seem to understand that it’s more important to the Palestinians to eliminate the Jewish state than to have a prosperous state of their own. More seriously in the long run, they don’t understand that Islamists will take their money, but cannot be bought.

The majority of Israeli Jews and their leadership have an ideology, too. It’s called Zionism, and it’s combined with a historical memory of the tenuous existence of the Jewish people. The administration doesn’t get these things either.

For example, Hillary Clinton said this yesterday:

It’s our very strong belief, as President Obama conveyed to the Israelis, that it is not in anyone’s interest for them to take unilateral action … The U.S. has worked very hard with Israel on all levels from the military, intelligence, strategic, and diplomatic to make sure we were sharing information … It is in everyone’s interest for us to seriously pursue at this time the diplomatic path.

Israel, of course, is worried that if it waits until its window of opportunity to preempt closes, and if US actions — either diplomatic or military — are not effective, then it is exposed to a nuclear attack at worst, or conventional war under a nuclear umbrella at best.

I think this fear is quite reasonable, but there is much more. What Ms Clinton is asking is that the Jewish people give up one of the primary tenets of Zionism: that we are responsible for our own defense.

The history of the Jewish people in the Diaspora has been that their fate was not in their own hands. In Christian Europe and in the Muslim nations of the Middle East and Africa, when the antisemites prepared a pogrom the far-outnumbered Jews would approach the local rulers and beg, or pay, to be spared. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes entire populations were expelled, brutalized or murdered.

More recently, before and during the Holocaust, the allied nations did almost nothing to save the Jews of Europe. One of them, Britain, took actions that directly abetted the Nazis in their efforts to murder the Jews. Even after the war, Jewish refugees were kept in concentration camps.

Zionism is in part a response to this history, and teaches that the Jewish people cannot depend on the rest of the world to protect them. Israel has lived by this principle, rescuing  the Jewish refugees of WWII and saving countless Jews from the Arab world and Africa since then.

Israel has devoted enormous resources to developing a strong military capability. Unlike other nations, it hasn’t used its capability for conquest. The return of the economically and strategically valuable Sinai to Egypt in return for a peace agreement — arguably a mistake — is evidence of this.

Do Clinton or her boss really expect Israel to leave everything to them? Do they expect the Jewish people to go back to begging for its life? Do they expect Israel to give up the control of its own destiny, achieved with great difficulty and by enormous sacrifice, and become a protectorate of the US? Do they think Israel will give up Zionism?

I’m afraid the answers to the above are all ‘yes’, but it is clear that if Israel gives in to the pressure it will be the end of the Jewish state, whether Iran ultimately gets nuclear weapons or if Israel, with its Zionist heart ripped out, more slowly succumbs to the Muslim, leftist and antisemitic alliance that has never given up its struggle to end Jewish self-determination.

How, for example, will Israel resist pressure to make dangerous concessions to the Palestinians if its survival is entirely in American hands?

Israel still has leaders that know this, both in the government and in the opposition. They will not be swayed by the administration’s campaign against a preemptive strike.

The administration should understand that Israel is not going to knuckle under, and that therefore the best way for the US to be constructive is to ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself successfully instead of trying to sabotage it.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iran, Obama Administration

Moses liberating Palestine by armed struggle

You may have noticed that the Palestinian Arabs are doing their best to replace the Jewish people, not only on their land, but in history and tradition. So they claim that there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, that Rachel’s tomb is and has always been a mosque, and that their ancestors are not mostly Arabs from Egypt and Syria who have been in the land of Israel for less than 200 years, but rather ancient Canaanites.

They great Palestinian ‘culture’ is too focused on hatred and death to be original, so their creativity is limited to turning facts upside down, as in the massive blood libel that the IDF deliberately kills Arab children, when in fact killing Jewish children is the specialty of Arab terrorists.

Now they are trying to steal Pesach. Thanks to Palestinian Media Watch, we have this snippet from Palestinian Authority TV, in which a lecturer at Palestinian ‘university’ (an-Najah, also called “Terrorism U” because of its suicide bomber alumni) explains that the Jewish heroes of the Bible were all Muslims, including Moses, who ‘liberated Palestine by armed struggle’:

So either there were Muslims several thousand years before the birth of Mohammed, or this remarkable ‘scholar’ is talking about the ‘exodus’ that took place in the 19th and early 20th centuries when Arabs migrated to Palestine from Egypt and Syria to take advantage of the economic activity generated by the Zionists!

Technorati Tags: Passover, Israel, Palestinians

The US is pulling out all the stops to prevent Israel from attacking Iran. Much of the campaign has been diplomatic, asking US allies to pressure Israel.

But it’s gone much farther than that, into a realm which could be called preemptive sabotage. Last week former UN Ambassador John Bolton suggested that a Foreign Policy article by Mark Perry reporting a ‘secret’ agreement with Azerbaijan to allow Israel to use its airfields was a deliberate leak:

Clearly, this is an administration-orchestrated leak … This is not a rogue CIA guy saying I think I’ll leak this out.

It’s just unprecedented to reveal this kind of information about one of your own allies.

Indeed. Perry wrote,

Why does it matter? Because Azerbaijan is strategically located on Iran’s northern border and, according to several high-level sources I’ve spoken with inside the U.S. government, Obama administration officials now believe that the “submerged” aspect of the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance — the security cooperation between the two countries — is heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran.

In particular, four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran’s northern border. To do what, exactly, is not clear. “The Israelis have bought an airfield,” a senior administration official told me in early February, “and the airfield is called Azerbaijan.”

If this is true (the Azeris deny it, of course) then it would shorten the distance to Iran for Israeli planes significantly, allowing them to carry more weapons, which would make for a more effective strike. It would make it possible for them to reach Iran without midair refueling or flying over US-controlled Iraqi airspace.

It could be that the Iranian regime is already aware of this. But it’s also possible that there are details in the report that they were not aware of, and without a doubt it embarrasses the Azeri government. While relations between Azerbaijan and Iran are relatively poor, no country whose population is mostly Muslim likes to be associated with the Little Satan.

The article even speculates on precisely what location might be used and how. Quoting a retired US Air Force officer who did a study for the Swedish Ministry of Defense called “The Israeli Threat” (which predicts that the US would be drawn into war with Iran in the event of an Israeli strike), Perry writes:

“…it would have to be low profile, because of political sensitivities, so that means it would have to be outside of Baku and it would have to be highly developed.” Azerbaijan has such a place: the Sitalcay airstrip, which is located just over 40 miles northwest of Baku and 340 miles from the Iranian border. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sitalcay’s two tarmacs and the adjacent facilities were used by a squadron of Soviet Sukhoi SU-25 jets — perfect for Israeli fighters and bombers…

Even if Israeli jets did not land in Azerbaijan, access to Azeri airfields holds a number of advantages for the Israel Defense Forces. The airfields not only have facilities to service fighter-bombers, but a senior U.S. military intelligence officer said that Israel would likely base helicopter rescue units there in the days just prior to a strike for possible search and rescue missions.

Perry’s unnamed US official’s comment about ‘buying an airfield’ is particularly unfriendly, and the official doesn’t hide his or her distaste for the idea that Israel might preemptively defend herself against a nuclear attack:

“We’re watching what Iran does closely,” one of the U.S. sources, an intelligence officer engaged in assessing the ramifications of a prospective Israeli attack confirmed. “But we’re now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we’re not happy about it.”

With all due respect, Israelis aren’t happy about it either. They are not happy about the certain Iranian retaliation, which may include the tens of thousands of rockets in the hands of Hizballah, and even the possibility that Iran might get control of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

They are not happy about the deaths and damage to infrastructure that will result, nor the possible losses of planes, pilots and perhaps special forces personnel. But they are even less happy about a future in which Iran has nuclear weapons, which they view as likely to bring about the end of the Jewish state and even another genocide against the Jewish people.

As I have argued before, the argument that the US would be unwillingly drawn into war with Iran by an Israeli attack is a weak one, simply because Iran would rather fight Israel by itself than Israel and the US. It has no interest at all in having the US Air Force dropping Massive Ordinance Penetrators (video here) on its nuclear facilities, something Israel does not have the capability to do.

There is one consequence of an Israeli attack of which the Obama Administration does have a credible fear: that is the almost certain increase in the price of crude oil that always accompanies any rise in tension in the region, regardless of actual supply considerations. No doubt this would translate into at least a temporary increase in the price of gasoline in the US, which would be very bad for the President on the eve of the election.

The administration’s campaign against an Israeli attack has a public face, which I and others have discussed. But it doubtless also has a hidden one. It’s reasonable to assume that these pressures or threats are kept secret because they are even more ugly than, for example, the public disclosure of the Israeli-Azeri relationship.

Israel’s leadership understands that there is no alternative to stopping Iran. It has no confidence that if it waits until its window of opportunity closes that the US will do the job for it. And now it knows that the US will ramp up its activity designed to prevent such an attack the longer it waits!

The administration has consistently misread Iranian intentions. But a more completely incorrect reading of Israeli intentions couldn’t be imagined.

By acting against Israel rather than Iran, it is making it likely that Israel will act sooner rather than later.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iran

Last week I asked “why is the administration helping Iran deter Israel from bombing its nuclear facilities?”

I suggested that the leak of a war game scenario that began with an Israeli attack on Iran and ended with several hundred dead Americans — of course this is only one possible outcome among an infinite number — was a deliberate attempt to influence sentiment in the US against Israel exercising its right of self-defense.

This particular leak is just one of many. But in addition to the proliferation of reports that an Israeli attack would be ineffective, Iranian retaliation would be devastating, etc., there is a much more dangerous tactic that is apparently being used. Ron Ben-Yishai tells us,

Indeed, in recent weeks the Administration shifted from persuasion efforts vis-à-vis decision-makers and Israel’s public opinion to a practical, targeted assassination of potential Israeli operations in Iran. This “surgical strike” is undertaken via reports in the American and British media, but the campaign’s aims are fully operational: To make it more difficult for Israeli decision-makers to order the IDF to carry out a strike, and what’s even graver, to erode the IDF’s capacity to launch such strike with minimal casualties…

The damage has to do with the revelation of secret information and assessments that would require an expensive, risky intelligence effort for the Iranians to acquire. To sum up, the American publications caused the following damage:

• Iran now has a decent picture of what Israel’s and America’s intelligence communities know about Tehran’s nuclear program and defense establishment, including its aerial defenses.

• The Iranians now know about the indications that would be perceived by Washington and Jerusalem as a “nuclear breakthrough.” Hence, Iran can do a better job of concealment.

• The reports make it more difficult to utilize certain operational options. These options, even if not considered thus far, could have been used by the US in the future, should Iran not thwart them via diplomatic and military means.

In other words, while President Obama told AIPAC that “Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat,” and affirmed “Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs,” he apparently has reserved the right to sabotage Israel’s self-defense if he believes it to be in his interest.

And make no mistake, we are talking about a narrow political interest, not the long-term interest of the US. Here’s why:

Sanctions alone cannot deter the Iranian regime from their nuclear program, because a totalitarian regime that can shoot down dissidents in the street can allocate resources however it wants to. Sanctions are always leaky, and the Revolutionary Guard can be well-fed and its vehicles full of fuel no matter how deprived ordinary Iranians may be.

The only way there is hope for diplomatic efforts to be successful is for sanctions to be coupled with a credible threat of military action. Israel’s threat to attack Iran’s nuclear program, based on its perception of an existential threat, would be credible.

Iranian leaders doubt — almost certainly correctly — that the US itself will contemplate using force, at the very least until after the election. So today only two things are likely to stop Iran from developing a weapon: fear of an Israeli attack, or, if that doesn’t work, an actual attack.

And now the US is sending a clear message to Iran:

Not only will we give you a year or so to work on your weapons, to disperse and bury your laboratories and improve your defenses, but we will make sure that Israel doesn’t strike within that time period either.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has indicated that a point will be reached later this year by which the Iranian program cannot be stopped by the means at Israel’s disposal. Therefore the administration’s actions, if successful, will ensure that Israel will not be able to attack, or even credibly threaten to attack, Iran. They will keep either diplomacy or force from being effective.

They will also nullify Israel’s ability to defend itself as a sovereign power, complete its transition to satellite status, and enable the US to dictate concessions that Israel must make to the Palestinians.  But that’s another issue.

The additional time, plus whatever it can gain by pretending to negotiate, by delaying the very last steps in weapon assembly, etc., will make it very much more likely that Iran will become a nuclear power. Iran will tough out the sanctions, because it will know that in the short term it will have nothing to fear. And in the long term, the political and economic advantages of becoming a nuclear power — and the preeminent power in the Middle East — will outweigh the immediate discomfort.

I am expecting that by next year we will start hearing that this isn’t really all that bad, after all, Pakistan has nukes and they are an irresponsible Islamic nation, the Iranians are rational and can be contained, etc.

I don’t think I have to emphasize what it will mean for the US, and indeed for the West in general, to empower the champion of revolutionary Islamism with the ultimate weapon. And yet, this is the likely outcome if the administration’s strategy succeeds!

Technorati Tags: Iran, nuclear weapons, deterrence, Israel

By Vic Rosenthal

In the 1947 UN partition resolution, the General Assembly recommended that Jerusalem be made a corpus separatum, a political entity under international control, apart from the proposed Jewish and Arab states. This was reaffirmed at the time of the 1949 armistice agreements, but nobody paid attention to it — Jordan annexed the eastern part of Jerusalem, and Israel of course included the western part, which became its capital.

The US did not vote for the corpus separatum resolution in 1949, but nevertheless was not happy with the situation. In 1962, the State Department issued a statement which said, in part,

The United States undertook, however, to give due recognition to the formal acts of the General Assembly and the Trusteeship Council relating to Jerusalem and has since maintained its position that the Holy Places in the Jerusalem area are of international interest to a degree which transcends ordinary considerations of sovereignty.

…the status of Jerusalem is a matter of United Nations concern and no member of the United Nations should take any action to prejudice the United Nations interest in this question. Our objective has been to keep the Jerusalem question an open one and to prevent its being settled solely through the processes of attrition and fait accompli to the exclusion of international interest and an eventual final expression thereof presumably through the United Nations.

I have always suspected that the State Department — many of whose employees were the children of missionaries — simply couldn’t handle the idea of the holy places in the hands of Jews and Muslims. Be that as it may, at some point the position changed — probably with the passage of UNSC resolution 242 in 1967 — so that the status of Jerusalem would be decided by negotiations between the parties concerned, and not by the UN.

The parties, in 1967, were Israel and Jordan. With the Oslo agreements, the status of Jerusalem became a “final status issue” to be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This is today’s official State Department line.

Note that in respect to sovereignty, the State Department has never distinguished between the eastern and western parts. Neither are part of Israel. The 1962 statement explains that

As a consequence of this policy, when the Department learns that a government for the first time is contemplating the establishment of a diplomatic mission in Israel, we inform that government of the historical background of United Nations attitudes toward Jerusalem and express the hope that, in deference to United Nations attitudes, its mission will be established in Tel Aviv, where most other missions are located.

Since the seat of Israel’s government is in western Jerusalem, the only reason to do this is because State believed that Israel is not sovereign in any part of Jerusalem, east or west.

This was reinforced more recently by the case of Menachem Zivotofsky. Zivotofsky was born in Shaare Tzedek hospital in western Jerusalem. His parents requested that his passport read that he was born in “Jerusalem, Israel,” but the State Department refused to issue a passport with this description, despite a law passed by Congress in 2002 directing it to change its policy.

Now, one can argue that the status of eastern Jerusalem is in dispute, but all of Jerusalem? Apparently the US State Department thinks so. Watch spokesperson Victoria Nuland try to wiggle and dance her way out of some expert questioning by AP reporter Matt Lee:

The part in which she will not say whether Jerusalem is the capital of Israel is priceless. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R. FL), chairperson of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, responded “Where does the Administration think Jerusalem is? On Mars?”

But interestingly, in other contexts — like Israel thinking about building apartments in Jerusalem neighborhoods outside of the Green Line — they do seem to be able to make the east/west distinction quite clearly!

Some commentators have pointed out that if “all of Jerusalem is a final status issue” — as reporter Lee cannot get Nuland to deny — then the Palestinian Authority in effect is given a veto power over Israel’s possession of its own capital.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, US State Department