10 Reasons Why Syrians are a Happy People

reformsyria.org
November 21, 2009
Mohammad al-Gareeb (Pseudo - 23-year old Syrian student - Translated)

Reason No. 10 - We are a happy people because weather forecasters in Syria brighten our mood by announcing a spring-like conditions in all seasons of the year. They collude to use weather forecasts, which, unbeknownst to them, do oscillate sometimes, to lift our spirits and humor us.

Reason No. 9 - We are a happy people because the average salary of an employee is such that he is never at a loss of how to spend it. In fact, the salary spends itself in the first five days of the month allowing its owner to sleep well at night not fearful of thieves who could rob him or to tire himself by thinking of ways to spend the excess.

Reason No. 8 - We are a happy people because the privacy of a toilet is the only place where we can express a democratic opinion freely, not fearful of someone listening (even those closest to us) thus suspecting, G*d forbids, they are informers. Lately, our happiness has been on the rise because the private sector in Syria has built public toilets on various streets of Damascus, which, for the first time, allows us to freely express our opinion publicly.

Reason No. 7 - We are a happy people because the Parliamentary elections, besides contributing to the national economy by employing script designers and coffee busboys, also provide the Syrian citizen with an additional income in the form of a bribe paid by the candidate for his/her vote. All the while, the economic conditions are conducive for the voter to kindly accept, or purposefully seek, the bribe. Also, we are a happy people because the elections represent a chance for the candidates to enter communal restaurants they would avoid like the pest outside election time.

Reason No. 6 - We are a happy people because the Syrian newspapers finds it as its duty to save the Syrian citizen the price of purchase, so it publishes the same stories routinely, over and over. A Syrian citizen can go for a week or a month not buying the newspaper and he would not miss any Syrian news.

Reason No. 5 - We are a happy people because Syrian television news programming produced a song entitled: "I am Syrian, Oh how lucky I am" (Ana Souri, Ahh ya Nyalli!!) and introduced it as part of the daily news.

Reason No. 4 - We are a happy people because our political parties never have any disputes or contradict each other as a result of sharing the same opinion. All of the Syrian Members of Parliament, representing the different political parties partaking the same ideology, consistently vote by raising all their hands simultaneously and lower them simultaneously as well.

Reason No. 3 - We are a happy people because our government officials have become heroes like the destructive Hulago Khan (Destroyed Baghdad in 1258), resistant like Salah Din Al-Ayoubi, and invading like Sakr Qureish (Syrian TV series glorifying Islamization of Spain). The people see these officials humbly walk amongst them and driving their big expensive cars, which render them even more heroic than the traditional heroes, something Syrians are so proud of.

Reason No. 2 - We are a happy people because our officials shelter the Syrian people from outside evil and secure us with indoctrination while their sons stimulate the Syrian economy in our absence.

Reason No. 1 - We are a happy people because we are forced to be happy. If not, we will all die from strokes and heart attacks given what goes around us and the lives we lead.
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Is the President encouraging Palestinian violence?

Ira Sharkansky
The Shark Blog
19 November 09

There has been a worrisome shift in Israeli commentary on President Obama's efforts to force peace between Israel and Palestine.

A prominent emphasis had focused on the President's naivete, what one called a "childish" assumption that his engagement could bring the parties to positions they had not taken on their own.

Now there is a concern that the president may actually be advancing the prospect of violence.

The possibility comes from only part of a sentence, but it was a presidential sentence that received wide media coverage. Obama said that construction in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo makes it harder to achieve peace, and embitters the Palestinians in a way that could be dangerous.

It took less than a day for the media to note that a prominent Palestinian--one who was a leader in the 2000 intifada and muted as a possible successor to Mahmoud Abbas-- was urging the launch of popular campaigns to achieve statehood.

Is it too much of a stretch to see "popular campaigns" as code for mass demonstrations, likely to produce violence and the start of another intifada, and to see the Palestinians finding an endorsement for their actions in Barack Obama's mention of Israel's contribution to their dangerous embitterment?

To those who say we should not rest expectations on phrases expressed by an American president and a prominent Palestinian, it is appropriate to take another look at history. Palestinian statements and actions going back to the 1930s indicate a deep seated feeling that they have a monopoly of justice in this bi-national dispute. Moreover, they have gone the route of violence on several occasions. Recent statements by several prominent figures provide some justification for Obama's conclusion that prolonging their lack of satisfaction could produce another round.

Was the President simply expressing his worry? Was he careless in overlooking what his comment could add to existing tinder already smoldering? Could he possibly have intended to provide justification for violence, either by way of punishing Israel for not accepting his dictates about freezing settlements, or as an effort to achieve something that would save him the embarrassment of failure?
(Read full article)
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Map Check

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
20 November 09

The central problem in foreign press coverage of Israel is the tendency of journalists to rewrite and sensationalize current events or, more commonly, to mischaracterize them into agreement with a preferred narrative. Take the brouhaha over Gilo. Many journalists would like to incorporate the Israeli decision to add housing to this neighborhood into the larger narrative about West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements encroaching on land slated for a future Palestinian state. It would be complicated if it was acknowledged, as Jeffrey Goldberg pointed out, that

The building of apartments in Gilo is irrelevant to [the] eventual disposition of Jerusalem because everyone — the Americans, the Palestinians and the Israelis — knows that Gilo … will undoubtedly end up in Israel as part of a negotiated solution. … It doesn’t matter, then, if the Israelis build 900 housing units in Gilo or 900 skyscrapers: Gilo will be kept by Israel in exchange for a one-to-one land swap with Palestine.

The narrative of dispossession would be even more profoundly challenged if it was acknowledged that Gilo isn’t even in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. It’s actually in Southwest Jerusalem. Type “Gilo Jerusalem” into Google Maps if you want to see for yourself. Yet almost every single story on the Gilo controversy locates the neighborhood in a completely different region — specifically, an Arab region — of Jerusalem. What’s even more remarkable is that most of these stories are written by reporters who are stationed in Jerusalem. These sloppy characters either don’t know the geography of their own backyard or are willfully misleading their readers.

So, here’s to you, Ben Hubbard of the AP, Katya Adler of the BBC, Fox News, the BBC(again), Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian, Ben Lynfield of the UK Independent, Ilene Prusherof the Christian Science Monitor, and many more.

You have all flunked Journalism 101.

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Israel: We believe in Life; You Benefit

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
20 November 09

You may be aware that while its enemies are threatening to wipe it off the map or are attacking it with terrorism and while many of those who should be its friends slander it daily, Israel does things that benefit all humanity. When you see four such medical and technological breakthroughs announced in one day, it should be hard to ignore.

There’s a now-famous Islamist slogan: We believe in death and you believe in life? Remember the implications of that for the rest of the world. But there’s also the opposite: We believe in life, including helping to save and better your life.

Here are the four latest examples:

-- A new Israeli invention allows cancerous tumors on the skin to be detected and examined before they become visible to the naked eye, Ben-Gurion University announced. Dermatologists and plastic surgeons usually diagnose skin tumors by the appearance of the tumor, normally with the naked eye, only rarely using a dermatoscope - a magnifying tool that allows tumors to be examined in detail. The newly developed instrument, known as OSPI, uses safe levels of radiation, projected at the tumor and returned to the gadget, which measures its character, including its contours and spread. OSPI also uses liquid crystals to carry out the examination.

--About 70% of all people with severe burns die from related infections. But a revolutionary new wound dressing developed at Tel Aviv University could cut that number dramatically. Prof. Meital Zilberman of TAU's Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed a new wound dressing based on fibers she engineered that can be loaded with drugs like antibiotics to speed up the healing process, and then dissolve when they've done their job. A study published in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research - Applied Biomaterials demonstrates that, after only two days, this dressing can eradicate infection-causing bacteria. The new dressing protects the wound until it is no longer needed, after which it melts away.

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Banished at Turtle Bay

A U.N. critic has her credentials stripped.

Wall Street Journal
20 November 09

As part of our public-service reports on the workings of your favorite world body, allow us to introduce you to Anne Bayefsky. The Toronto native is an expert on human-rights law and an accredited United Nations observer. She is also a friend of Israel, which makes her persona non grata as far as the folks at Turtle Bay are concerned.

Ms. Bayefsky's sin was a two-minute talk she delivered at the U.N. earlier this month after the General Assembly had issued a resolution endorsing the Goldstone Report, which levels war crimes charges at Israel for defending itself in the face of Hamas's rockets. "The resolution doesn't mention the word Hamas," she said. "This is a resolution that purports to be even-handed; it is anything but."

Ms. Bayefsky's comments were the only note of criticism on a day otherwise marked by much U.N. jubilation. Whereupon she was summarily stripped of her U.N. badge and evicted from the premises. "The Palestinian ambassador is very upset by your statement," Ms. Bayefsky says the U.N. security chief told her. Journalist Matthew Russell Lee tells us that he heard the ambassador asking whether U.N. security had "captured" Ms. Bayefsky.

For the record, the U.N. claims that Ms. Bayefsky violated procedures by bringing a colleague who lacked a proper badge, and that she was not entitled to speak where she did, though representatives of nongovernment organizations have used it in the past. And when we called the Palestinian Mission to get their side of the story, they told us the fracas was the last of their worries. Maybe so.

Yet the U.N. continues to bar Ms. Bayefsky from the premises, despite calls on her behalf by the U.S. mission and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. Best-case scenario, one U.N. insider tells us, is that "they'll put her on probation." We hear the U.N.'s NGO accreditation committee, chaired by Sudan, will likely make the final decision.

Meanwhile, a committee of the General Assembly recently passed a resolution on the so-called defamation of religion. "Everyone has the right to hold opinions without interference, and has the right to freedom of expression, the exercise of which carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to limitations," it says.

"Without interference" yet "subject to limitations." Orwell should be living now.

Related : Sudan?!
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Yad Vashem with an air force

Sarah Honig
"Another Tack"
JPost
19 November 09

One of this country's prominent professional talking heads, who also happens to be a longtime friend, opined in all earnestness when we met the other day that "the most pivotal recent political development" was Tom Friedman's op-ed in The New York Times (November 7) entitled "Call White House, ask for Barack." The broadcaster positively glowed and gloated. From his ultra-leftist standpoint this was a devastating blow to Binyamin Netanyahu and he lustily savored the triumph.

I had to confess my abysmal failure to be wowed. I gave Friedman's supposedly seminal column less than passing attention and couldn't see what the hoopla was about. Friedman is a veteran Jewish Israel-basher, whose career was constructed on his "personal crisis" of disillusionment with the Jewish state. Trashing Israel, after all, is his proven stock-in-trade. So what if Friedman figures there's "no romance, no sex, no excitement, no urgency" to our peace process, "not even a sense of importance anymore"? Big deal. Whoopty-do!

"The Americans are fed up with Bibi. They'll hang him out to dry and ditch the peace process," the media-hotshot retorted with noticeable exasperation.

"What peace process?" I snapped back. "It's a sham. There never was any process to achieve real coexistence, only a pretext to weaken Israel. Some 'useful-fool' Israelis play along for political expedience and others are intimidated to adopt the agenda," I argued. "Please let Washington quit trying to make us more vulnerable. By all means let them leave us alone."

That said, I wasn't optimistic: "It's too good to be true. What have we got to go on? Friedman? Since when does he call the shots?"

My influential colleague was flabbergasted: "Friedman reflects Obama's mood. This is a stern warning for us. At the very least Friedman will sway Obama and then we'll see where that gets us."

I ached to ask which side my famous interlocutor rooted for and whether he gave voice to left-wing wishful thinking, but I controlled myself.

(Read full article)
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Barack Obama is no friend of Israel

FresnoZionism.org
18 November 09

Until now, I’ve refrained from being sharply critical of President Obama. I’ve wanted to give him time to develop his policies, to learn from his experience that the real obstacle to peace in the Mideast is not Israel. I’ve assumed that his native intelligence would allow him — once he became involved in the process — to get past the unexamined left-wing worldview that came from his educational background and his associations, and to put aside the bad advice that he’s received. I’ve hoped that he would turn out to be a Truman or JFK, someone capable of thinking for himself as soon as he realized that the buck does in fact stop at his desk.

I’ve criticized some of his actions, true. I was upset by his early choice of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samantha Power, Rob Malley, and some others as advisers. I objected to his nomination of Chas Freeman as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. I found his Cairo speech offensive. I was unhappy with his embrace of the phony ‘pro-Israel’ group J Street. I strongly objected to his original call for a settlement freeze. I was dismayed by his treatment of PM Netanyahu when he visited the US recently.

But I kept hoping that he would someday ‘get it’. Not any more:

Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) — Israeli plans to build 900 new homes in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood, constructed beyond the city’s 1967 borders, could have “dangerous” consequences, President Barack Obama said today.

Obama said “additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel’s security,” according to a transcript of an interview he gave Fox News. “I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbors, I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous.”

Obama’s remark was echoed by the European Union, Ban Ki-Moon, and others.

Some background: Gilo is within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, on the southwest side of the city, next to the Arab town of Beit Jala and not far from Bethlehem. Some Jews lived there pre-1948. In 1967, the area was captured from the Jordanians along with the rest of East Jerusalem, and in 1980 it was formally annexed to Israel as part of Jerusalem. Today, about 40,000 Jews live in Gilo.

(Continue article...)

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Don't run to Assad

Gabriel Siboni
Haaretz
15 November 09

The latest appeal by Syrian President Bashar Assad to renew negotiations with Israel, and statements on his people's readiness for peace, have once again brought peace talks with Damascus to the forefront.

The eager response by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who expressed their willingness to enter negotiations without preconditions as soon as possible, amply demonstrates how Assad is getting to eat the cake and have it too.

Syria has been brought back from the political cold only after indirect talks with Israel via Turkey were revealed. These talks gave the Syrian regime legitimacy, even though Syria continued on as a loyal member of the radical bloc. The talks boosted the ostracized regime, and the full extent of the strategic damage they have caused to Israel has yet to be fully understood. Syria was and is a disturber of regional balance, as American forces coping with its attempts to destabilize Iraq can testify.

Assad has several personal achievements of this kind to his credit: Syrian involvement in the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri is well-known; Syria is developing chemical weapons of mass-destruction, and has tried to set up a nuclear reactor to achieve military nuclear capability.

Terrorist organizations over the years have found Syria to be a convenient and helpful host. Syria's deep involvement in Lebanon and its part in delivering advanced weapon systems to Hezbollah increase Lebanese instability, while providing backing for increased Iranian involvement. All these demonstrate how deeply Assad is implicated in the radical axis.

Some say that pulling Syria out of the Axis of Evil will improve Israel's overall strategic balance. But closer heed must be paid to the Syrian president's words. To him, peace with Israel means Israeli retreat from the Golan, while he maintains his strategic connection to Iran and other rogue states. Past experience shows that rapprochement attempts by Israel and parts of the international community don't make him moderate his positions, but rather convince him to believe he can have everything both ways.

Israeli decision-makers need to fundamentally review Israel's real interest in regard to Syria, while neutralizing the kind of strategic discourse that was relevant 30 years ago but is now hopelessly outdated.

The enemy, having realized it cannot conquer Israel, has chosen the path of resistance and attrition, with the aim of exhausting Israelis in the long run. This change proves the irrelevance of giving away assets in exchange for security arrangements and guarantees, demilitarization and the like.

A true peace agreement with Syria can only be discussed after Syria undergoes a profound and fundamental change. The desire to please the Damascus regime and go into talks will not help bring about such change.

Assad, whose supreme interest is preserving the Alawi reign, has a lot to lose. Israel must reach a strategic agreement with the American administration on the fundamental conditions for talks with Syria.

The first among them should be separation from the radical axis and from radical ideology. Syria, deep in the throes of an economic crisis and located in a problematic geo-strategic position, must choose a new path before peace talks can begin. Right now, Assad's haughty attitude is like he is living in a glass house and throwing stones in every direction.

The author chairs the military research program at the Institute for National Security Studies.
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Note to Media: Gilo Is in Jerusalem

CAMERA
18 November 09

Yesterday, Israel approved the building of 900 homes in Jerusalem, a move opposed by the United States, and incorrectly reported by some media outlets which misreported Gilo's location. For instance, the International Herald Tribune ran the following brief today on Page 4:

Whether you call it a settlement or a neighborhood of Jerusalem, Gilo is not in the West Bank. As Isabel Kershner correctly reports today in the New York Times (which publishes the Tribune):

Israel said Tuesday that it had advanced plans to expand a Jewish district of Jerusalem in territory that was captured in the 1967 war and that the Palestinians claim as part of their future state. . . .

The Israeli move to push forward the building plans in Jerusalem comes as the Palestinians have begun seeking support for a plan to win the United Nations Security Council's recognition of a Palestinian state, without Israel's agreement, in the lands Israel won in 1967. . .

[The 900 housing units] are in Gilo, an area in southern Jerusalem considered by Israel to be a neighborhood of the city and by the Palestinians and much of the world to be a settlement that violates international law

In addition, it is clear from reading the transcript of yesterday's State Department press briefing that the Obama administration also understands that Gilo is situated in Jerusalem and not the West Bank. For instance, spokesman Ian Kelly states:

Well, I think, Michel, you've heard us say many times that we believe that neither party should engage in any kind of actions that could unilaterally preempt or appear to preempt negotiations. And I think that we find the Jerusalem Planning Committee's decision to move forward on the approval of the - approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem as dismaying.

Gilo lies within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, though it is outside the Green Line delineating the pre-1967 boundaries, as shown in this U.N. map. Another part of the city that falls within this category -- within municipal boundaries but outside the Green Line -- is Jabel Mukater, the home of the Arab attacker who shot dead eight yeshiva students in April 2008. As Steven Erlanger and Kershner reported March 8, 2008 in the NYT:

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Analysis: Obama's press on Gilo shows a continued misread of Israel

Herb Keinon
JPost
19 November 09

US President Barack Obama is an extremely intelligent man surrounded by equally intelligent advisers, many of whom have years of experience dealing with the Middle East. His continued misreading and misunderstanding of the Israeli public is, therefore, somewhat baffling.

This misread was evident again in the past few days by the US objection to the Jerusalem Municipal Planning Committee's approval of a plan to build some 900 new units in Gilo - not in a far-flung settlement overlooking Nablus, nor even in one of the settlement blocs like Gush Etzion, nor even a Jewish complex in one of the Arab neighborhoods of the capital, but in Gilo, one of the large new neighborhoods built in the city following the Six Day War. If Israel cannot build in Gilo without US approval, than it cannot build in Ramot Eshkol, French Hill, Ramot, Neveh Yaakov, Pisgat Ze'ev, East Talpiot or Har Homa.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Tuesday expressed "dismay" at the decision. The dismay, however, cuts both ways, with many Israelis clearly dismayed that the US - like Europe - now seems to be considering as settlements the post-1967 neighborhoods in Jerusalem. The EU, clearly following Gibbs's lead and then taking it one step further, released a statement on Wednesday saying, "The European Union is dismayed by the recent decision on the expansion of the settlement of Gilo."

Truth be told, this is not the first indication of US policy on this matter. Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice seemed to be giving the new neighborhoods settlement status in 2007 when she opposed a new project in Har Homa. She didn't clarify, however, whether other Jerusalem neighborhoods over the Green Line, such as Gilo and Ramot, were settlements in the eyes of the United States.

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25 Long Years

Jonathan Pollard is the only person in the history of the United States to receive a life sentence for spying for an American ally. On November 21, 2009, Pollard will enter the 25th year of his life sentence, with no end in sight, and with not a peep out of our "leadership".

The maximum sentence today for such an offence is 10 years. The median sentence for this offence is 2 to 4 years. Click to see a list ofcomparative sentences.

Frolicking in the Quicksand: How the Obama Administration Keeps Making Huge Mistakes in the MIddle East

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
19 November 09

Of course, the Obama Administration has its defenders. They either ignore criticism of the Administration’s foreign policy or claim it is all partisan and ideological. And yet the truth is that if you watch the government's policy on a daily basis it is truly remarkable how many dumb, avoidable mistakes are made.

I won’t supply a long list here but instead will talk about the latest one. Let’s take it step by step to see what a mess is being created.

Background: Israel announced in 1993, at the time of the Oslo agreement with the PLO, that it did not view construction on existing settlements as a violation. The Palestinians, during the ensuing 16 years, never made this a big issue. The U.S. government, while it can say it technically opposed this, was pretty quiet about it, never did anything.

Then President Barack Obama came to office and made the construction issue the centerpiece of his Middle East policy, sometimes it has appeared to be the keystone of his whole foreign policy. It may seem like an exaggeration but often it seems as if the administration believes that if Israel stopped building 3000 apartments all the region’s problems would go away.

So far, the Administration has wasted almost ten months in this pursuit. First, it shouted at Israel as if it were some servant to do it fast or else. Then when Israel didn’t, the Administration realized that perhaps Israel should get something in exchange for the concession. So it went to Arab states and asked—presuming, wrongly, that they are desperate for a peace agreement—for some compromise but got nothing.

Now it had destroyed its own policy since the Palestinian Authority (PA) refused to come to negotiations until there was a complete freeze. How could it be less hardline than the president?

But there was a solution, sort of. Israel agreed to stop all construction once the apartments currently being built are finished. And naturally, Israel said, this didn’t apply to east Jerusalem.

The United States accepted the deal, with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton exulting about what a huge concession Israel was making. Aside from everything else, the U.S. government knew how big a risk Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was taking with his coalition.

Ok. Sorry to give you all this background but it is necessary to understand how the Administration loves to jump in the quicksand.
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Sudan?!

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
19 November 09

When last we left the UN clown show, Richard Goldstone’s report had been roundly applauded and approved, and Anne Bayefsky (who has spent a quarter century bird-dogging the UN, a task which few of us could endure for an afternoon, let alone an entire career) had been carted off and her credentials taken for speaking up with righteous indignation about the UN’s latest round of Israel-bashing. The kicker, as reported by Fox News:

Bayefsky is now waiting for the U.N. to return her credentials or to refer her case to the Committee on NGOs, which will meet during January and February and could decide whether to renew her NGO pass — a prospect that has her deeply worried.

“The chances of my getting through that committee are basically nil,” she said.

The nation that chairs the committee, Sudan, is currently engaged in a murderous war on its own citizens and expelled 13 major aid NGOs from the country in March — meaning that a human rights violator that rejects NGOs within its own borders will be overseeing the approval of NGOs at the U.N.

Asked about this apparent inconsistency, a spokeswoman for the U.N. body overseeing the NGO committee said in an e-mail that “the Departments concerned are investigating this matter on the basis of established practice, jurisprudence and thorough review of the facts.”

Well isn’t that par for the course. It’s all there: the high-minded double-talk (what “jurisprudence” justifies roughing up a critic and snatching her badge?) and the inmates running the asylum, and all of it in service of the UN’s one great and constant mission — vilifying Israel. The timing here is far from coincidental:

“The next three weeks are the heart of the entire year at the U.N. General Assembly. The frenzy of anti-Israel activity is going on right now,” she said. “There’s a reason they’re keeping me away — this is no accident.”

This hypocrisy circus is the “international community” whose approbation Obama seeks. The Obami treat the UN with decorum and respect, as if it were a serious organization rather than a gang of thugs that devotes its time to silencing critics, providing cover to terrorists, and averting its gaze from its member states’ own appalling human-rights records. Obama tells us that the world community is one that enjoys shared values. Really. Which goals and values in particular do we share with this crowd?

Bayefsky may miss the “heart of the entire year,” but she’s gotten to the nub of the problem. Unfortunately, the Obami show no sign of taking this or any other incident to heart, nor of reconsidering their role in enabling the UN miscreants.

Related: Banished at Turtle Bay
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Kiss the Independence Intifada goodbye

Michael Young
The Daily Star
19 November 09

The death of the Independence Intifada of 2005 has been prematurely announced many times. However, today we have in front of us a genuine corpse, the end of the fleeting aspiration four years ago, at least in its more restricted form, of establishing a system emancipated from Syria.

The Syrians, who left Lebanon through the window after Rafik Hariri’s assassination only to re-enter by the front door in recent months, have done so thanks to an understanding with Saudi Arabia. There are differences between what we have today and the Syrian-Saudi condominium after Taif, above all that the Syrian Army is no longer deployed in Lebanon. The latest contract is more equitable and is complicated by the fact that Iran has a powerful stake in the system through Hizbullah. However, it is familiar in leaving Lebanon with little discernible sovereignty, in large part courtesy of Lebanese divisions.

It’s no secret that the Saudis put considerable pressure on the prime minister-elect, Saad Hariri, to come to an arrangement over the new government with the opposition, one reason why he was forced to spend much time negotiating with Michel Aoun, to the irritation of his Christian partners. The Syrians, too, kept their end of the bargain, apparently with Turkish prodding, by bringing Aoun into line. After five months, the Hariri government was made in Lebanon only in the narrowest of ways.

This represents a fundamental shift from what Lebanon had between 2005 and 2009. From 2004 on, the country was placed under an effective, if highly imperfect, form of international trusteeship, thanks to a series of Security Council resolutions governing Lebanese affairs. This began with Resolution 1559, calling for a Syrian withdrawal, an end to foreign interference in Lebanon’s presidential election that year (and presumably all years), and the disarmament of armed groups. The UN decisions also included Resolution 1595, which set up an international commission to investigate Hariri’s murder, and it was followed by Resolution 1701, establishing a reinforced mechanism for the stabilization of southern Lebanon after the summer war of 2006.

That international scaffolding has been substantially eroded in recent years, by action or omission. Resolution 1559 has been implemented only in the sense that Syrian soldiers have left Lebanon. However, Syrian meddling in Lebanese affairs has been unrelenting, and in late 2007 France significantly undermined the letter of the resolution, which it had co-sponsored, by actively bringing Damascus into the Lebanese presidential election. As for the disarmament of Hizbullah or pro-Syrian Palestinian groups, nothing has happened, and the Cabinet is preparing to find a consensual rhetorical formula in its statement to evade the question.
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Helping the Palestinians Falsify History

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
18 November 09

For sheer gall, Barack Obama’s labeling half of Israel’s capital a “settlement,” as Jonathan has pointed out, may be hard to beat. But a New York Times report of a new book about the Temple Mount is definitely in the running. Seeking to give readers some background, the report offered the following gem: “The lack of archaeological evidence of the ancient temples has led many Palestinians to deny any real Jewish attachment or claim to the plateau.”

We’ll ignore the fact that the Second Temple is actually well-documented in extant writings from the period, and that several sections of the Temple compound’s outer walls, as described in these writings, have been uncovered (the Western Wall being one of them).

Instead, let’s discuss why there is a dearth of findings from the Temples themselves. (1) There happens to be a mosque on the exact site where, according to tradition, the Temples once stood. (2) Israel, contrary to Palestinian propaganda, is not out to “destroy al-Aqsa”; indeed, it scrupulously avoids any action that might endanger the mosque. (3) Israel is so deferential to Muslim sensibilities that, after capturing the Mount in 1967, it handed control of the site back to the Muslim waqf. Which brings us to (4): for all these reasons, Israel has never excavated the only place in the world where remnants of the Temple could possibly be found. Nor were any digs conducted there before 1967: al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock have stood undisturbed for hundreds of years. And yes, it is hard to produce archaeological evidence if you never even conduct a dig.

What is outrageous about this report is not just the way it abets Palestinian falsifications of history, though it certainly does that: since the reader isn’t told that this “lack of evidence” stems from the fact that nobody ever looked, he naturally assumes that archaeologists did, in fact, look and found nothing.

Even more outrageous, however, is the way Israel’s generosity is being used against it: its very restraint in eschewing excavations on the Mount — its concern, again, for Muslim sensibilities, its desire to avoid even the appearance of harm to the mosques — has been twisted into “evidence” that no Jewish connection to the Mount ever existed.

This is a standard Palestinian tactic: Israel’s refusal to let Jews pray on the Mount, also in deference to Muslim sensibilities, is similarly used as “proof” that Jews have no connection to the site. After all, Muslims pray there; Jews don’t; QED. And this tactic has been wildly successful: most of the world is completely convinced that Israel lacks any rights on the Mount.

But if Israel’s generosity is being exploited in this fashion, perhaps Jerusalem needs to rethink its tactics — and start demonstrating the Jewish connection to the Mount in actions rather than words. Excavating under al-Aqsa would be too drastic a first step. But letting Jews pray on a designated section of the Mount devoid of mosques would be an excellent place to begin.

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'Myself As Exhibit A'

Backspin/Honest Reporting
18 November 09

Jonathan Boyd says MSM coverage of Israel has a direct bearing on the levels of anti-Semitism. That's in spite of what The Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, told Channel 4's Dispatches program.

Boyd writes:

Perhaps most important, it failed to mention in any detail why some Jewish leaders may feel compelled to support Israel. Leaving aside the politics of the region, the notion that Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, or that Israel is the only nation state in the world in which Judaism is mainstream, Jewish culture is the norm and the Hebrew language is widely spoken and celebrated, were all ignored.

But it is, apparently, much easier to trot out the old antisemitic myth. After all, the public deserves to know what these nasty, rich Jews are up to. And what could possibly be wrong in uncovering the truth? There cannot conceivably be a connection between the way Israel and Jews are presented in the media and antisemitism on the streets of Britain.

Or so Alan Rusbridger would have us believe. In the documentary, he maintained that he found it "difficult to believe" that any journalistic coverage of events in Israel could result in acts of violence against Jews on the streets of Britain.

Boyd goes on to describe being attacked by a Briton in 2002, thanks to irresponsible media coverage of Jenin:

Well, allow me to present myself as exhibit A. In April 2002, at the height of the Palestinian intifada, media reports began circulating that a massacre had been committed by the Israel Defence Force in Jenin, in the West Bank. Rumours circulated that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed. The BBC suggested 150. Saeb Erekat, interviewed on CNN, claimed 500. Yasser Abed Rabbo intimated 900. The overarching impression was that the IDF had committed a horrific atrocity.

On the following Saturday, I was walking to synagogue, wearing my kippah (skull cap) in the north London suburb of Finchley. On the way, I was punched in the face by a young man. It was an entirely unprovoked assault. We were simply crossing paths when he delivered a sudden, forceful, right hook. Taken aback, my first response was to ask why he had done it. "That's what happens to Jews," he responded, "when they behave like that."

Mitch Bard reached a similar conclusion to about rising levels of anti-Semitism in 2002:

(Read full article)

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Gilo and Diplomatic Dismay

Rick Richman
Contentions/Commentary
19 November 09

Noah, as you note, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’s statement that the administration is “dismayed” at the construction of more housing in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem — because “neither party should unilaterally preempt negotiations” – is a non-sequitur. Last May, Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House for his first meeting as prime minister with President Obama and announced he wanted to commence negotiations “immediately,” without preconditions, which has been his position ever since.

What unilaterally preempted negotiations was the Obama/Abbas precondition of a settlement “freeze” that (1) was not previously demanded in any prior negotiations, (2) contradicted a six-year understanding about the meaning of a “freeze” (no new settlements, no expansion of existing settlement borders, and no financial incentives for new settlers), (3) could not be defined in practical terms even by George Mitchell, and (4) was not a condition that any Israeli government, Left or Right, could accept.

There was a little comedy silver at the State Department press conference yesterday, as spokesman Ian Kelly repeated the notion that the expansion of housing in Gilo was “dismaying” because it could “unilaterally” preempt negotiations. One of the reporters asked Kelly if he could “give us just a brief synopsis of the progress that Senator Mitchell has made in his months on the job” — to which Kelly responded that the administration had gotten both sides to agree on a goal:

(Continue article)

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Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy

British media and society are gripped by lies about a "secret" Israel lobby controlling foreign policy.

Robin Shepherd
Wall Street Journal
19 November 09

Here is a small selection of events that have taken place in Britain since the end of Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year.

The government has imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel and failed to vote against the Goldstone report in the U.N . The charities War on Want and Amnesty International U.K. have both promoted a book by the anti-Israeli firebrand Ben White, tellingly called "Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide." The Trades Union Congress at its annual conference has called for boycotts of Israeli products as well as a total arms embargo.

In the media, the Guardian newspaper has stepped up its already obsessive campaign against the Jewish state to the extent that the paper's flagship Comment is Free Web site frequently features two anti-Israeli polemics on one and the same day. The BBC continues to use its enormous influence over British public opinion to whitewash anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Middle East. Its Web site, for example, features a profile of Hamas that makes no mention of the group's virulent hatred of Jews or its adherence to a "Protocols of Zion"-style belief in world-wide Jewish conspiracies.

Readers may be surprised to learn, therefore, that the British media and political establishment is apparently cowering under the sway of a secretive cabal of Zionist lobbyists who have all but extinguished critical opinions of Israel from the public domain.

Such charges have been aired to mass critical acclaim this week in a landmark documentary, "Inside Britain's Israel Lobby," on Channel 4—the same outlet that offered Iran's Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an uninterrupted, seven-minute propaganda slot on Christmas Day last year.

The makers of the documentary—top Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne and TV journalist James Jones—have also written about their program in the Guardian. Both furiously deny that they are peddling conspiracy theories. But the mindset we are dealing with was neatly exposed by the authors' own explanation on how their suspicions were aroused that something sinister is at work in the corridors of British power.

It all transpired, they told readers ominously, during an address earlier this year by Conservative Party leader David Cameron at a dinner hosted by the Conservative Friends of Israel.

(Read full article)
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The Campaign to Delegitimize Israel With the False Charge of Apartheid

Robbie Sabel
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
19 November 09

If Israel's detractors can associate the Jewish movement for self-determination with the Apartheid South African regime, they will have done lasting and maybe irreparable damage. Yet the comparison of Israel to South Africa under white supremist rule has been utterly rejected by those with intimate understanding of the old Apartheid system.

Israel is a multi-racial and multi-colored society, and the Arab minority actively participates in the political process. There are Arab parliamentarians, Arab judges including on the Supreme Court, Arab cabinet ministers, Arab heads of hospital departments, Arab university professors, Arab diplomats in the Foreign Service, and very senior Arab police and army officers. Incitement to racism in Israel is a criminal offence, as is discrimination on the basis of race or religion.

The accusation is made that the very fact that Israel is considered a Jewish state proves an "Apartheid-like" situation. Yet the accusers have not a word of criticism against the tens of liberal democratic states that have Christian crosses incorporated in their flags, nor against the Muslim states with the half crescent symbol of Islam. For a Western state, with Jewish and Muslim minorities, to have Christmas as a national holiday is permissible, but for Israel to celebrate Passover as a national holiday is somehow racist. For various Arab states to denote themselves as Arab Republics is not objectionable.

Zionism is perhaps the only national movement that has received explicit support and endorsement both from the League of Nations and from the United Nations. It was the League of Nations that approved the mandate for Palestine with its ringing endorsement of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

The real goal behind the Apartheid campaign is the denial of the legitimacy of the State of Israel and the determination that the only status the Jewish population in Israel can hope for is that of a "protected" ethnic minority in an Arab Palestinian state.

Click here to read the full paper.
*Dr. Robbie Sabel served as Legal Adviser to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1985 to 1993, and is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Philistines and Palestinians

Rabbi Mendel Weinbach
Ohr Somayach
02 Kislev 5770

The envy felt by the nations throughout history towards the success of Jews in every field seems to find expression in an incident described in this week's Torah portion.

"Yitzchak sowed in the land and in that year reaped a hundredfold... the man became great and kept becoming greater… and the Philistines envied him." (Bereishet 26:12-14)

The envious Philistines stopped up and filled with earth the wells that Yitzchak's father had dug, and when Yitzchak's servants dug two new wells of fresh water the Philistines claimed the water was theirs. Only when a third well was dug there was finally no resistance.

The success of Jews in our own day in turning a barren land into a thriving state has once again stirred the envy of "Philistines". We must be confident that we will someday reach that third uncontested well and enjoy a peaceful Israel forever.
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Outrage over 'rape' poster that demonises Israel

Robyn Rosen
Jewish Chronicle
12 November 09

(Maybe I'm missing something, but why the choice of allegedly in the first sentence?)

The offending image and caption

The New Israel Fund (NIF) has defended a conference sponsored by three Palestinian groups it funds, which allegedly “demonised” Israel.

The poster publicising the conference, held in Haifa on Monday, shows the hand of an IDF soldier grasping the breast of a woman wearing a traditional Palestinian dress.

The poster reads: “Her husband needs a permit to touch her. The occupation penetrates her life everyday.”

The groups behind the event received NIF funding last year. Mada Al-Carmel was given $100,000 (£59,000), the Arab Forum for Sexuality was given $23,000 (£14,000) and Women Against Violence was given $217,000 (£129,000).

The conference, My Land, Space, Body and Sexuality: Palestinians in the Shadow of the Wall, was part of a campaign in 11 countries highlighting the attack on sexual rights in Muslim societies.

Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, said: “NIF presents itself as a Zionist organisation and claims to have red lines regarding funding. Yet NIF officials sometimes ignore these boundaries, and grant funds to groups that blatantly are involved in the demonisation of Israel as a democratic Jewish state.”

NIF chairman Nicholas Saphir defended the conference, saying there is a “real humanitarian problem” in Israel, where it is illegal to grant citizenship to Palestinians married to Israeli citizens.

“NIF supports free expression of the various views of our broad spectrum of grantees — whether we agree with all their positions or not,” he said. “As long as the work is within the framework of Israel’s charity law and other Israeli laws, NIF will continue to support them in the interests of sustaining its vibrant democracy.”

Conference organisers insisted that they were not claiming that IDF soldiers rape or sexually violate Palestinians.

Dr Himmat Zuabi, a researcher at the Mada Al-Carmel centre, which carries out studies on the Israeli Arab society, said: “We didn’t talk about actual rape and sexual harassment, we tried to show how the political issue, which is what everybody talks about, has a daily effect on the lives of Palestinian women. The poster was just an artistic device to convey a message.”

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May Your Curse be on Me, My Son

"Perhaps my father will feel me, and I will be in his eyes as a mocker and I will bring upon myself a curse and not a blessing. And his mother said to him, 'May your curse be upon me, my son'." (From this week's Torah portion, Toldot, Genesis 27:12-13)

A youth who had "illegally" entered Gush Katif in its last days asked me:

"I don't know what to do. I must leave Gush Katif for a few days and then I will not be able to return."

"Why not?" I asked him.

"Because if I come back I will have to use a false identity at the checkpoint, and that would force me to lie," he answered. "I do not want to sin."

"I have a great solution," I said to him. "I will write you a note in which I accept upon myself the Divine punishment that you will receive for lying to get back into Gush Katif. After you have lived out your 120 years on this earth, request to be buried with the note and I will merit your Divine retribution. Do we have a deal?"

It didn't take the boy long to see the absurdity of his question, and I lost out on the deal of a lifetime.

It is easy to confuse young people. They are inexperienced and naive. Jacob lacks the life experience of his mother, Rivkah. He is not yet worldly, spending all his time learning Torah. He has not yet acquired the perspective needed to place contradicting values in their proper order. Suddenly, his mother makes an outrageous request of him – to lie to his father, Isaac, and to re-arrange events so that he will give him the blessing reserved for his brother, Esau.

Isaac loved his sons. He was blind to the fact that Esau was deceiving him. He was liable to entrust the faith in G-d revolution that his father had pioneered in the hands of his wicked son, Esau.

Rivkah understood that this would be a tragic mistake. Jacob also understood. So now what? It is forbidden to lie!

The answer to this dilemma is not simple. Generally, the preferred course of action is not to break the law – even for a worthy purpose. "Justice, justice must you pursue," says the Torah. Justice must also be pursued with justice.

That is generally the case, but not always. When should one break the rules?

"Who should one listen to? The teacher or the student?" the Rambam rhetorically asks in the Laws of Kings. In other words, if a person is instructed to carry out an action that is against the commandments of the King of the world and His Torah – he is forbidden to do so.

In reality, this simple directive becomes more complex. In any given set of circumstances, there will always be the rabbis who will explain that it is a terrible sin to deceive Isaac, that Jacob is a terrible soldier, the whole country will fall apart because of him and that we will be left with no army.

We have already witnessed the result of this approach; the destruction of Gush Katif, Israel's defeat in the two wars that came on its heels and the world's negation of Israel's right to exist. Those military, political and spiritual leaders who confused the naive Jacob, leading him to believe that it is a terrible sin to oppose the law - brought the State of Israel to the edge of the precipice. Today, when they once again condemn the conscientious soldiers who refuse to evict Jews from their homes, they prove that they have learned nothing from their mistakes.

"Who is it who hunted food and brought it to me, and I ate from it all before you came, and I blessed him, and he shall surely be blessed," says Isaac to Esau. The famous Biblical commentator Rashi explains that it is not true that if Jacob had not deceived his father, he would not have received his blessings. In this verse, Isaac endorsed the blessing that he gave to Jacob. Ex post facto, he agrees with Rivkah and Jacob.

Rivkah and Jacob identified and prevented the mistake before it happened, warding off catastrophe in the process. Likewise, now is the time to deal with the crimes into which the government is dragging the IDF – not after the next catastrophe, G-d forbid!

The role cast upon the youthful Jacob is not an easy one. His commanders and some of his rabbis are pressuring him, trying to confuse him into gagging his own conscience. They would prefer that he would stop listening to the voice of G-d that clearly instructs him to stop.

May your curse be on me, my son. May your curse be on me.

Shabbat Shalom,

Moshe Feiglin

Another Tack: Save the scarecrow

Sarah Honig
JPost
12 November 09

Some scarecrows are charmers. They cannot maintain their upright position without outside support, but there's a wide engaging smile scrawled on their faces and their incontrovertible cute-factor makes everyone adore them.

Just hear all that pretentious poppycock spouted at us by world opinion (as ever, resonated shrilly by our own left wing). According to trendy conventional wisdom, the Palestinian Authority's scarecrow - Mahmoud Abbas - can do no wrong. At the same time, the Israelis who keep him from keeling over can do no right. Simple isn't it?

Abbas was universally lauded for purity of heart and purpose when he first ascended Yasser Arafat's vacated throne in 2004. After his recently announced retirement, Abbas is piteously beseeched to please reconsider. As per pompous Western pundits, the scarecrow shakily ensconced in Ramallah is our last viable hope for peace. The scarecrow must be saved. Without him the sky is sure to come crashing down.

And who instilled all that dejection and gloom in our upstanding scarecrow? Who is responsible for his desperation, for the I-can-go-on-no-longer melancholy? Only one answer exists: intransigent settlement-building, concord-stifling, conquistador Israel.

BUT BEFORE we subscribe to the international community's premise of Israeli culpability for all that goes awry (and plenty does), there are four critical questions to ponder: Does Abbas deserve his good-guy credentials? Why has he proven such an abysmal failure? Who truly undermined him? And is he worth saving?

1. Is Abbas really righteous? Holocaust-denier Abbas is indisputably a more urbane version of Arafat, with better PR-sense and a closer shave (not that Arafat in his day wasn't adulated as the harbinger of optimism and harmony). True, Abbas sings Arafat's song, but, oh, how much more genteel the rendition!

Abbas has no use for Arafat's in-your-face hysterical chants. He'd never send us to drink from Gaza's sea nor openly exhort millions to march on Jerusalem. His style is slyer than that. To paraphrase Roberta Flack's 1973 hit, mild-mannered Abbas is "killing us softly with his words."

His repertoire consists of the same reliable old Arafat standbys - back to the 1949 armistice lines, Jerusalem is Arab Palestine's capital, no antiterrorist campaign, no end to incitement and no relinquishment of the right to inundate the Jewish state with hostile Arabs.

But Abbas does offer compromise. While he insists the Western Wall be placed under exclusive Muslim control, he magnanimously agrees to permit small numbers of Jews to pray at a limited section thereof under conditions stipulated in 1930 by the Mandate's post-Hebron-massacre Shaw Commission (which forbade the blowing of the shofar). Abbas pledges to generously allow us to reassume our once-lowly status. Big of him.
(Read full article)

American Politics (1980)

Today's Golden Oldie is from October 1980.

The cartoon was about Jimmy Carter who was on the campaign trail for a bid at a second term as U.S. President. He lost.

With Obama we now face an American President who treats the repression of Iranian demonstrators as an internal Iranian affair while taking a stern and personal interest in the question of where Jews may or may not be allowed to live in the city of Jerusalem!?!! This Presidency does not feel the need to hide its double-standard support of the "Palestinian" cause behind empty pro-Israel promises.

It will be interesting to see if Obama will, like Jimmy Carter, turn out to be a one-term wonder.

Apartments in Jerusalem, Now More Scandalizing than Ever

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
18 November 09

The latest expression of displeasure from the Obama administration over Israeli construction in Jerusalem should not be taken as a comment on the construction itself. It is actually a clumsy attempt at damage control. From China, Robert Gibbs said:

“We are dismayed at the Jerusalem Planning Committee’s decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem,” Gibbs said in the statement. “At a time when we are working to re-launch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed. Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations.” … “Our position is clear,” Gibbs continued. “The status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the parties.”

If “neither party should unilaterally preempt negotiations,” what does Gibbs have to say about the actual reason there are no negotiations currently taking place? That would be the Palestinian refusal to hold talks, on the unprecedented and invented grounds that any Israeli construction on land that was occupied by Jordan from 1948 to 1967 unilaterally preempts negotiations. In other words, the White House has endorsed the Palestinian preconditions on negotiations — at the same time as it rejects any attempt to set preconditions on negotiations. Quite a feat.

But this level of nonsense is necessary, and not because of anything the Palestinians or Israelis did. It is because of the immense damage the administration has done to the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas. Having staked the peace process on an undeliverable promise to the Palestinians of a settlement freeze, the administration is now forced to spin furiously for Abbas in order to shield him from even more humiliation than he’s already suffered.

Robert Gibbs pretends to be scandalized, but nobody should buy it. Are we really supposed to believe that George Mitchell thought the Netanyahu government, having rejected numerous such demands previously, would suddenly agree to allow the State Department to dictate to Israel about housing construction in its own capital?

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Why Won’t the Arabs Protect Themselves from Iran by Actively Battling Against Tehran Having Nuclear Weapons?

Barry Rubin

The Rubin Report

18 November 09

It isn’t hard to conclude that Iran having nuclear weapons is a direct threat to Arab states, except Syria—Tehran’s ally—which would benefit. Why, then, don’t Arab states and intellectuals public express more concern?

Western observers were shaken up when at a debate in Qatar, the relatively moderate Arab audience split almost down the middle between those cheering and those jeering the idea of Iranian nuclear weapons.

One member of the audience said:

“Why in the first place should Iran seek the trust of anyone? Iran is an independent, sovereign country, and it has every single right to defend itself. If it wants a bomb, definitely it should have one."

The audience cheered.

Another man said:

"There is something called balance of power. As long as there is Israel, we need a nuclear bomb."

A serious analysis would have to include three main points in explaining this seeming suicidal desire of many Arabs that the real worst enemy of the current Arab order become really, really powerful:

First, fear. Iran is strong, aggressive, close, and represents an ideology that appeals to some of their people. To stand up to Iran’s growing strength could incur costly hostility, pressure and subversion now. And once Tehran gets nuclear weapons, it will remember and take revenge on those who have tried to thwart it.

Second, there is the Middle Eastern version of Political Correctness which, unlike its Western version, has very sharp teeth. All good Muslims are supposed to love each other, hate Israel, and hate America. Much the same can be said of all good Arabs, though Iran of course does not benefit directly from that paradigm.

Consequently, if Iran can become a nuclear-armed Muslim state which views America, the West, and Israel as its enemies, then that must be good for Muslims and even Arabs too, right? How proud they all can be that one of them has made good! That will sure show the West that Muslims can have the ultimate weapon. Certainly, many of their people will be enthusiastic and so the rulers—even in dictatorships—rush to get to the head of the crowd lest it turn on them.

Third, their behavior is based on hopeful thinking, a sort of more likely version of wishful thinking. Surely, they wish, the United States or Israel will solve the problem without their having to do anything. Incidentally, this is similar to their position on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

And, of course, this is a test of U.S. power and will power. After all, if America can’t deal with Iran for them that proves the United States cannot protect them against Tehran. So they are better off keeping their mouths shut now and the option open of appeasing Iran.

(Read full article)

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Under Attack: HR Accused by UK TV Documentary

Honest Reporting
18 November 09

HonestReporting responds to a Channel 4 investigation of the UK's 'pro-Israel lobby'.

On November 16, the UK Channel 4's flagship documentary program, Dispatches, broadcast an investigation of "one of the most powerful and influential political lobbies in Britain, which is working in support of the interests of the State of Israel", directly attacking and smearing HonestReporting in the process.

"Despite wielding great influence among the highest realms of British politics and media, little is known about the individuals and groups which collectively are known as the pro-Israel lobby," the program noted.

Aside from inventing a non-existent "lobby" that conjures up images of some of the worst forms of anti-Jewish prejudice, the documentary attempts to discredit and delegitimize HonestReporting and the thousands of its subscribers who care about accurate reporting of Israel in the media.

The documentary is available to view in full on YouTube or by clicking on the video below to see the specific segment concerning HonestReporting.)

While the program had been in the making for several months, it was only in the few weeks prior to the transmission when those UK Jewish communal and pro-Israel organizations targeted by C4 were contacted by Hardcash Productions and political commentator Peter Oborne.

We at HonestReporting found the premise of the entire program to be highly offensive and prejudiced. For, as commentator Tom Gross notes:

Whereas there is a pro-Israel lobby with some influence in the U.S. (though not the kind of influence ascribed to it by anti-Semites), contrary to what Channel 4 and others think, there is no effective pro-Israel lobby in Britain.

The complete lack of any effective pro-Israel lobby in Britain (as opposed to well organized anti-Israel groups) goes a long way to explaining why some of the coverage of Israel in the British media is among the worst in the world, and sometimes rivals the Iranian and Egyptian media for its sheer nastiness.

Others, including individuals and organisations targeted by C4 have already commented on the nature of the program, which we do not intend to dissect in its whole.

We do, however, wish to respond to the content aimed directly at HonestReporting that appears in the program from 35-42 mins.

(Continue)
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How the IAEA Encourages Proliferation

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
18 November 09

The International Atomic Energy Agency is, as Jonathan noted, deeply disturbed by its latest findings on Iran. It is also deeply disturbed by its latest findings on Syria, which it detailed in another report released this week. Syria’s explanation of the uranium traces found at a Damascus research reactor did not fit the facts, the report said, nor did these traces match Syria’s declared uranium inventory. Moreover, Syria is still refusing IAEA requests for both a return visit to Dair Alzour, the site Israel bombed in September 2007, and initial visits to three military sites whose appearance was altered after inspectors asked to see them.

“Essentially, no progress has been made since the last report to clarify any of the outstanding issues,” the agency concluded.

The real mystery, however, is why the IAEA seems to find this behavior eternally surprising — because its own behavior positively demands such stonewalling.

The IAEA has been investigating Syria for more than two years now. During this time, it has issued numerous reports expressing its concern over suspicious findings that Damascus failed to adequately explain and over Syria’s refusal to let it make the inspections necessary to answer its questions. Yet it has refused to refer the case to the Security Council for sanctions, because, says agency director Mohamed ElBaradei, there is no proof of Syrian wrongdoing.

Well, of course there isn’t. That’s the whole point of Syria’s stonewalling — to prevent the agency from getting such proof!

Damascus, needless to say, is merely copying the lessons learned from the agency’s handling of Iran. After discovering in 2003 that Tehran had been lying about its nuclear program for 18 years, the agency spent the next three years refusing to turn the file over to the Security Council, saying there was no proof Iran’s secret nuclear program was aimed at producing weapons. And when the case finally did reach the Security Council, El-Baradei lobbied vehemently against sanctions, citing the lack of a “smoking gun” that would justify punishment.

Thus all Iran had to do was ensure that there never would be a smoking gun — by steadfastly refusing to comply with inspectors’ requests.

ElBaradei thereby made noncooperation the optimum strategy. Had either Syria or Iran cooperated, the agency might have obtained sufficient evidence to justify severe sanctions. But as long as they refuse to cooperate, the agency has little chance of obtaining such proof, ensuring that any repercussions will be mild. Therefore, they are free to develop nuclear weapons with impunity.

To be effective, IAEA policy would have to be the exact opposite — one of imposing stringent penalties for noncooperation, to encourage suspect countries to “come clean” and prove their innocence. And that, of course, would require suspect regimes to actuallybe innocent, creating a strong disincentive to secret weapons programs.

In short, under ElBaradei, the IAEA has brilliantly hit on the strategy most likely to facilitate nuclear proliferation. Is it any wonder he and the agency won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005?

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Battle Over The Identity Of Eretz Yisrael

It is still difficult to imagine that even though his passion remains within these words, he is no longer with us.

By Tsafrir Ronen z"l
Written Thursday, May 22, 2008

The historic significance of the rise of settlements since the beginning of Zionism has been not just to restore the Jewish people to Eretz Yisrael, but chiefly to reinstate the Hebrew identify of Eretz Yisrael.

The pioneers who transformed Um Juni to Degania, the first kibbutz in the Holy Land (1910), restored its Hebrew identity. With that act, a parcel of our homeland was conquered. The work brigade that transformed “Ein Jalud” to Ein Harod (1921) restored the Biblical identity from Gidon’s days to the valley. The same goes for the transformation of the hills of “Abu Shusha” to Mishmar HaEmek, and the transformation of “Ja’uni” to “Gai-Oni” (Valley of My Strength), and then to Rosh Pina. Every settlement restored to every abandoned spot in the Land its Biblical, Hebrew identity.

The establishment of Elon Moreh renewed the Israeli identity of Elon Moreh.

The recent fight in Hebron over Jewish settlement in part of Hebron’s Jewish Quarter where Arab squatters had set up a marketplace was not just over the rights of two families. The pioneers of Jewish Hebron understand that this battle is over Hebron’s identity. If Hebron is populated by Jews, Hebron’s identity will be Jewish, and if there are only Arabs in Hebron, then even Hebron’s name will be abandoned in favor of “Al Halil,” the Arabic name. The Left wants an Arabic identity for Hebron. Their hatred for settlement is hatred for the idea of linking Eretz Yisrael and the Jewish people. That is the whole story.

Yet not just Hebron is involved. The Left also does not want any of Judea and Samaria to have a Jewish identity. Their friends in the media continue to label the heart of Eretz Yisrael by foreign names given to it by our people’s enemies, such as “Palestine,” the “West Bank,” the “territories,” and the “occupation.” They’ll call the land of the Bible by every possible name, just not the only name that restores a Jewish identity to our land – Judea and Samaria. The meaning of the name “Judea” is that this is the land of the Jews, and Eretz Yisrael means that this is the land of Yisrael – just as Eire-land is the land of the Eires, Eng-land is the land of the English, and Fin-land is the land of the Finns. They cannot be occupiers of a land named after them. A land’s identity is like the identity of the people inhabiting it. The people of Israel cannot be considered occupiers of the Land of Israel.

Had there been no renewed settlement in Shiloh, Beit El and Elon Moreh, these would have remained abstract Biblical names, in the realm of legend. Settlement created the Land’s identity anew. Settlement restored to these areas their true names, and removed from the Arabic conqueror the false Arabic names. Shiloh recreated Biblical Shiloh. If Judea and Samaria are ever abandoned, they won’t just be abandoned physically but in terms of their identity.

Once more, on all the world’s maps, Eretz Yisrael will no longer be called Eretz Yisrael or Israel, but something else. Surely, until 1967, Judea and Samaria were called “the West Bank of the Kingdom of Jordan.” Israel’s military victory over Jordan restored to them their true Biblical name. If Israel abandons them, the enemy will not call them by their Hebrew name, but by their counterfeit name, Palestine, a name artificially created by the Emperor Hadrian when he subdued the Bar Kochba revolt in his longing to destroy the Jewish identify of Judea.

Hadrian’s curse failed. The name Palestine was abandoned entirely over the years. Already the Crusaders called the land “the Kingdom of Jerusalem.” The Arabic conquest didn’t call the Land by any name whatsoever. It was just Southern Syria. For 1300 years the land lacked any identity, and lacked any people that identified with the Land – except for our people. The anti-Semitic British, halting aliyah and settlement by way of their White Paper, understood what the anti-Semites in our midst understand: settlement restores Jewish identity to the Land.

Every outpost carrying a Hebrew name transforms another section of the Land to Hebrew. The battle is not one of tanks or jets. The battle today is the most decisive battle ever. It is a battle over the identity of the Land. Will the Land carry a counterfeit Arabic or pagan identity, a forged name from the Emperor Hadrian? Or will it have an Israelite, Biblical identity – the true identity of the Land.

Only settlement will restore to the Land its Israeli identity. The Arabs demand that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hand over to them the Land, empty of Jews. As long as there are Jews in Judea, it will be impossible to call it by its counterfeit propaganda name – Palestine. The only thing stopping this government from handing over Eretz Yisrael to the enemy is their inability to destroy Jewish settlement, which meanwhile is stopping the wheels of destruction in Judea. The construction of hundreds of new outposts is the only guarantee that the identity of Eretz Yisrael will be preserved.

The desire to destroy settlements is the desire to destroy the identity of Eretz Yisrael – the land of the people of Israel.


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What Nasrallah Did Not Say Directly

Tariq Alhomayed
Asharq Al-Awsat
17 November 09

I always recommend reading Hassan Nasrallah's speeches rather than listening to them, because reading one of his speeches unemotionally allows one to read between the lines. The latest speech given by the Hezbollah leader was as if he were trying to compete with Mr. Amr Musa for the position of Secretary-General of the Arab League. In this speech, Nasrallah spoke about Lebanon, the Arabs, and the world [at large], and offered his opinions and his congratulations on initiatives that have been taken. The most important thing highlighted in this speech was his statements about the elections, the peace process, and Turkey, and in the process revealing [several] important issues.

Nasrallah said that following the election of [US President] Obama "Many people waited and gambled and kept watch, saying wait, for there will be big changes" but that "the reality of this mirage was soon revealed." Nasrallah then quoted a Palestinian negotiator who had told him that we have negotiated for 18 years and not achieved anything. Nasrallah said "the number 18 is an interesting number; [there have been] 18 years of negotiations whose only results are failure, frustration, loss, humiliation, and occupation. In contrast 18 years of resistance in Lebanon has resulted in the liberation of Beirut and its suburbs, the [Lebanese] mountains, Bekaa Valley, and southern Lebanon from Zionist occupation…and without any favors from anybody in this world." The crux of the speech can be seen when Nasrallah said "we are with 'Sunni' Turkey if it wants to defend Palestine, the Gaza Strip, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque."
(Read full article)
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Iran, Its Hostages and the West

The folly of expecting good faith from Iran's hostage-taking rulers.

Wall Street Journal
18 November 09

Iran's big news yesterday is that the government will formally kill five people who participated in June's pro-democracy rallies. Consider, though, the implications for the West's peace-brokers of the case of Frenchwoman Clotilde Reiss.

It is now 20 weeks since Ms. Reiss was arrested while trying to leave Iran and 12 weeks since she was released to the French Embassy "to await her return to France," in the words of President Sarkozy. She's still waiting.

This week, the Islamic Republic resumed legal proceedings against her. Iran has refused to let her leave the country, and the French have complied. But by delivering her to an Iranian court for proceedings this week, Mr. Sarkozy is gambling with the 24-year-old's life. Coming from a politician who has offered stern denunciations of Tehran's nuclear programs, one has to wonder how that decision was made.

In its 30 years, the Islamic Republic has used assassination squads, fatwas, terrorism and hostage-taking as tools of its war with the West. A nearly unbroken string of outrages connects the taking of the U.S. embassy in 1979 to the death sentence demanded for writer Salman Rushdie in 1989 to, more recently, the grabbing of British sailors in 2007. Add to that the detention and trial of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi earlier this year, the 12-year prison sentence meted last month to Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakshsh and, most recently, the charges of espionage leveled against the three American backpackers who stumbled across the Iranian border in July.

Ms. Reiss's ordeal is merely of a piece of this. But it ought to be an instructive piece, particularly as Iran's nuclear ambitions come closer to realization. That's the real significance of this week's report by the International Atomic Energy Agency about Iran's formerly secret uranium enrichment facility near Qom, which the agency concluded had no possible relevance to any purported civilian power program. Once Iran goes nuclear, the whole world becomes its hostage.

For too long the West has responded to these various outrages by offering Iran little more than meek compliance, plus a clean slate the moment any one crisis is resolved. Now President Barack Obama is again beseeching Iran to take the nuclear deal offered to it last month. Nobody should expect Iran's leaders to show good faith. Not when their days are spent executing protestors and abusing the likes of Clotilde Reiss.
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In a Tizzy Again

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
17 November 09

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is willing to show “restraint” in constructionin the West Bank, but will not accept any restriction on building in Jerusalem, senior government sources said Tuesday night. Their comments followed the Jerusalem Municipal Planning Committee’s approval of a plan to build some 900 new units in the southeastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo and the ensuing international objections.

The administration is unhinged again (isn’t it always?) over Jerusalem settlements:

“We are dismayed at the Jerusalem Planning Committee’s decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem,” [Robert] Gibbs said in a statement. ” At a time when we are working to re-launch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed. Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations. The U.S. also objects to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes.”

“Our position is clear,” Gibbs continued. “The status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the parties.”

It’s probably poor form to cite “permanent status” issues since the administration has been on a mission to force Israel to cough up concessions on settlements up front, not as a final-status issue, as has been envisioned on the “road map.”

But this is evidence, certainly, if any more were needed, that the Obama administration has been spectacularly unsuccessful at getting either side in the inert “peace process” to do anything. The Bush administration, you will recall — criticized for being “too close” to Israel — was able to get the Israeli government to withdraw from Gaza, dismantle settlements, slow the growth of new ones and address the issue of checkpoints — not by threatening Israel but by building rapport and demonstrating that we consider Israel an ally, not an impediment to peace. Back in August, former Bush deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, who was instrumental in that approach, wrote :

The Obama administration has managed to win the mistrust of most Israelis, not just conservative politicians. Despite his great popularity in many parts of the world, in Israel Obama is now seen as no ally. A June poll found that just 6% of Israelis called him “pro-Israel,” when 88% had seen President George W. Bush that way. So the troubles between the U.S. and Israel are not fundamentally found in the personal relations among policy makers.

The deeper problem—and the more complex explanation of bilateral tensions—is that the Obama administration, while claiming to separate itself from the “ideologues” of the Bush administration in favor of a more balanced and realistic Middle East policy, is in fact following a highly ideological policy path. Its ability to cope with, indeed even to see clearly, the realities of life in Israel and the West Bank and the challenge of Iran to the region is compromised by the prism through which it analyzes events.

And then came months of more of the same ineffective haranguing from the Obami, topped off by the egregious rudeness shown the Israeli Prime Minister on his recent visit. The Obama team now sees the results of its own failed policy.

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Trevor Norwitz, Open Letter to Judge Goldstone, 19/10/09

A devastating letter from a NY lawyer, Trevor Norwitz, laying out the multiple flaws with the Goldstone Report. Required reading.

New York, New York

October 19, 2009

Judge Richard Goldstone

Head of the UN HRC Fact Finding Mission on Gaza

Via email

Dear Richard:

I have finally completed my review of your Report( 1) which, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read quickly or widely, to paraphrase that infamous war criminal (by your definition) Winston Churchill. I am profoundly disappointed by the contents of your Report, but I am also troubled by the ad hominem attacks that have been directed towards you. I offer this analysis and critique in the spirit of your article in the Jerusalem Post today2, looking only at the substance of your Report and relying neither on its authors’ motives nor their reputation. I do so in an effort to advance the cause of truth and in the hope that you may yet be willing to take actions to mitigate the terrible injustice and damage that your Report is causing. To that end, I am respectfully including some suggestions for you at the end of this letter (which is longer than the one I sent you on July 14 – attached again for your reference – but which I hope you will take time to read).

In a nutshell, your Report is a deeply flawed document that is not only unbalanced and inflammatory, but reflects a procedurally deficient rush to judgment incapable producing any meaningful findings, least of all charges as grave, politically loaded and emotionally laden as those of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”.

I acknowledge at the outset that your Report was difficult to read not only because of its obvious lack of balance, but also because it does raise some hard questions about the precise manner in which Israel reacted to the years of rocket attacks against its towns and people and the threats it faces.(3) I hope that, to the extent it has not already done so, Israel will investigate and explain the incidents you have highlighted which have undoubtedly been part of a chain of events that has resulted in much human suffering. Sadly though, because your Report is so one-sided and unfair, these important questions may receive less attention than they deserve.

As someone who had expected4 a relatively fair and balanced investigation because of your involvement, I am struggling to understand why you would go out of your way and beyond even the “very lopsided unfair resolution” (to use your own words(5)) of the group(6) that authorized your Mission to demonize Israel while legitimizing and even whitewashing Hamas. (For while you may object to that characterization, that is indeed what your Report does, as I describe below.)

I do not intend to focus on factual inaccuracies in your Report (which others better placed that I are already starting to address(7)), but wish to emphasize rather the manner in which your investigation was conducted and its “findings” reported. The imbalance and partiality that [p.2] permeate your Report are evident at many levels. They are manifested in the methodology you adopted to conduct your investigation and reach your conclusions, in the way in which you chose to characterize your Mission and select which incidents you would investigate and which you would ignore, in the fundamental premises which underlie your investigation and conclusions, in the manner in which you have misrepresented the history of the Middle East conflict, and in your use of language both throughout your Report and in your subsequent public statements. Of course this letter can not be comprehensive but can only illustrate a few of the many examples where this one-sidedness shows through your purported factual and legal findings.

(Read full letter)

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Palestinians may declare state. So?

FresnoZionism.org
15 November 09

The latest Palestinian threat is that they will unilaterally declare a state:

Bethlehem – Ma’an/Agencies – The Palestinian Authority is mobilizing international support for declaring statehood, chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Saturday.

“The idea is clear and understandable,” Erekat told the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Ayyam. “Now we mobilize.”

Palestinians will bring the issue to a vote before the United Nations Security Council, which would declare a Palestinian state on the 4 June 1967 border with Israel, he explained.

This is supposed to strike fear into the heart of PM Netanyahu and his (not really so) right-wing government. But imagine the conversation:

Saeb Erekat: We are unilaterally declaring a state.

Binyamin Netanyahu: A state? But you could have had one in 2000. Why didn’t you accept it? Or what about the offer that Olmert made last year, supposedly even worse — I mean, more generous — then the Camp David and Taba ideas? He offered you 98.1% of Judea of Samaria plus a connecting passage through Israel from Gaza, most of East Jerusalem, and to allow 5,000 ‘refugees’ to enter Israel. Why didn’t you say ‘yes’ to that?

SE: Because we want all of East Jerusalem and all of Judea and Samaria. And we want all 5 million Arab refugees to have the right to return to their homes in Israel even if they never lived in them. And we aren’t going to say that Israel belongs to the Jewish people because it belongs to the Arabs that live there now and the ones who will return.

BN: That’s absurd. We’d never agree to that — it would mean the end of the Jewish state.

SE: Bingo.

BN: Well, declare whatever you want. But then you won’t get any land swaps, we won’t evacuate any settlements, and you won’t get ‘contiguity’ to Gaza. You will be in violation of all the agreements that you signed, and you’ll freeze the map as it is today, with no more territory in your hands. You’ll be Foreign Minister of Ramallah.

SE: But the Security Council will protect our new state. The UN will come and kick all 500,000 Jewish settlers [he's including the Jewish population of E. Jerusalem -- ed.] out of our land!

BN: So you are telling me that even the Obama administration wouldn’t veto a resolution to send UN troops to fight the IDF? Because that’s what it would take.

SE: We’ll have our capital in Holy Jerusalem!

BN: But if you won’t negotiate, you’ll get none of East Jerusalem. Even my administration, which is not as right-wing as some say, would agree to negotiate Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Declare a state unilaterally and you’ll just make the present status quo permanent. Is that really what you want?

SE: (losing it) What we really want is to end the occupation, from the river to the sea!

BN: Bingo. But you aren’t going to get that. So you can either keep things as they are today — either by unilaterally declaring a state or by just continuing to refuse to talk — or you can finally accept that “two-state solution” means that one of those two states will belong to the Jewish people, and make a deal.

(Continue reading)

Peace is not a must

Informal understandings only viable approach in our zero-sum conflict

Elyakim Haetzni
Ynet/Israel Opinion
17 November 09

In his recent New York Times op-ed, Thomas Friedman came up with the insight that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are interested in a peace process, and that American pressure on both sides merely hinders them from getting along on their own for lack of any other choice.

Well, welcome to the club. After all, this is what the rightist camp has been warning of all along: Impossible peace plans that exact thousands of “peace victims. However, let us hope that Friedman will not stop there and will proceed to go deeper, into the root of the problem – the reasons why the leftist peace perception was hopeless to begin with.

The deal offered to the Arabs by the “peace camp” is simple: 1948 in exchange for 1967. We will hand over to you everything we conquered in the Six Day War, and in exchange you will recognize the Jewish State’s existence and the Green Line as its lawful border. That is, you will give up much of the land of Palestine, your previous homes, and your dream of returning to them. You will give up everything you fought over through wars and terrorism.

The Arabs have rejected this deal from the outset, and the argument over it persists merely among the Jews. The Arabs, based on their religious, cultural, and national perceptions, cannot sign a deal that in their view would turn a Muslim state into a Jewish one; an Arab state into an Israeli one. Whoever does so, will pay with their life.

An authentic Arab leader will also not be giving up the right of return of Muslim Arabs to the heart of the “house of Islam.” Arafat in 2000 and Abbas in 2009 reached this obstacle and drew back. The blind Americans and Israelis failed to understand why.

A realistic position vis-à-vis the Arabs requires a different approach:

1. Don’t recognize our existence and certainly not our existence as a Jewish entity; as we already exist, we have no need for such recognition. It won’t give us anything. “Recognition” is not a type of merchandize and we offer nothing for it.

2. Don’t give up Haifa and Jaffa. Signing such deal would pain you while granting us no benefit. We know that should we become weaker one day, you will take back the 1948 Palestine even if you declare a thousand times that you renounced it. Hence, “renunciation” is not a type of merchandize either.

3. Don’t engage in negotiations with us and don’t sign an agreement whereby you cannot get more than 1967 in exchange for 1948. This will merely create frustration and disappointment and bring catastrophe to both sides. We will maintain ties, understandings, and even friendship “under the table” – de facto and not de jure. We will have a modus vivendi rather than a formal “peace.”

Our official ties with Jordan have been characterized by King Abdullah as a “cold peace.” It appears that the secret ties that prevailed previously were better. When it comes to give and take, Jews and Arabs get along very well – ranging from commerce to health and from matters of garbage collection to knowledge-sharing and joint projects.

Whatever it is that is deemed worthy for both sides because of neighborly needs goes well, as long as it is managed far away from the watchful eye of the media and public opinion; that is, far away from politics and the agreed-upon lies.

Salam Fayyad’s plan to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state stems from the inability to sign agreements. It is preferable for him to have a de-facto state in so-called Area A, rather than being perceived as a person who renounced sacred demands and rights.

It is difficult for us to internalize the fact that the conflict with the Palestinians is a zero-sum game: Each side feels deep in its soul that this is its land, and this is the only conflict in history where both nations demand the same city as their capital. Only a fool or a swindler would be seeking a “solution,” a term taken from the math realm, just like “peace process” is reminiscent of chemistry, as if we are dealing with exact science here. In life, not everything is resolvable.
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Land For Peace (1994)

Disarming Unilateralism

David Hazony
Contentions/Commentary
17 November 09

Palestinian hopes for a unilaterally declared state suffered another setback today as the EU announced it would not recognize such a move. This comes on the heels of a similar declaration by the U.S. Both cited their commitment to a “negotiated” solution between Israel and the Palestinians. This followed an unequivocal statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that ”there is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and any unilateral path will only unravel the framework of agreements between us and will only bring unilateral steps from Israel’s side.”

The whole bit about waiting for a negotiated settlement rings a little hollow, of course. Many of the world’s most successful countries achieved internationally recognized independence without the benefit of a negotiated agreement between conflicted parties, the United States and Israel being two obvious cases. If Palestinian national aspirations were so legitimate and a two-state solution the only answer, why wouldn’t the great powers recognize this much? And in such a scenario, what unilateral retaliation could Israel reasonably get away with?

Rather, the real problem with Palestinian independence — the elephant in the room, if you will — is that there is no viable Palestinian regime that can claim to run a sovereign country. Right now, the Palestinian territories are divided, ruled by two different Palestinian regimes. The one in Gaza is led by an internationally recognized terror organization supported by Iran and dedicated to war against Israel and violent conflict with the West. The other, in the West Bank, is led by a revolutionary-style regime that is deeply corrupt and still fosters and harbors terrorist groups like the Fatah-Tanzim, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Efforts to negotiate a unification between the two sides have consistently failed, and one gets the sense that the only thing preventing an all-out civil war between Hamas and Fatah is the sliver of land that divides them (Israel, that is).

So the problem, it seems, is not between Israel and the Palestinians so much as among the Palestinians themselves. That this is the real trouble seems to be hinted at by none other than the Palestinian prime minister, Saleem Fayad. According to Fayad, a declaration of independence is really just a “formality” — or at least, it will be, once the institutions of statehood are established. It is not too hard to glean from Fayad’s statement, however, the hidden assumption that such institutions are not yet in place and may not be for the foreseeable future.

One wonders what would happen if the Palestinians really were to replicate the Zionist movement’s means of establishing a homeland: to build systems of government aimed at improving the Palestinians’ lives rather than channeling them toward endless conflict; to build an economy that emphasizes good business rather than corruption; to craft an educational system and public culture that fosters a positive, life-affirming vision of Palestinian identity and coexistence with Israelis rather than one built entirely on “resistance” to the “occupation.” If that were to happen, wouldn’t Israeli and world leaders have a much harder time denying Palestinian statehood? On the other hand, would they even want to? Should they?

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What Does "Pro-Palestinian" Really Mean?

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
17 November 09

In recent years there has been a significant rise in the number of non-Palestinians who describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian” activists. These people can be found mostly on university campuses in North America and Europe.

What is striking is that many of these “pro-Palestinian” activists have never been to the Middle East, let alone the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. In most cases, they are not even Arabs or Muslims.

What makes them “pro-Palestinian”?

In their view, inciting against Israel on a university campus or publishing “anti-Zionist” material on the Internet is sufficient to earn them the title of “pro-Palestinian.” But what these folks have not realized is that their actions and words often do little to advance the interests of the Palestinians. In some instances, these actions and words are even counterproductive.

It is hard to see how organizing events such as “Israel Apartheid Week” on a university campus could help the cause of the Palestinians. Isn’t there already enough anti-Israel incitement that is being spewed out of Arab and Islamic media outlets?

If anyone is entitled to be called “pro-Palestinian,” it is those who are publicly campaigning against financial corruption and abuse of human rights by Fatah and Hamas. Those who are trying to change the system from within belong to the real “pro-Palestinian” camp.

These are the brave people who are standing up to both Fatah and Hamas and calling on them to stop killing each other and start doing something that would improve the living conditions of their constituents.

Instead of investing money and efforts in organizing Israel Apartheid Week, for example, the self-described “pro-Palestinians” could dispatch a delegation of teachers to Palestinian villages and refugee camps to teach young Palestinians English. Or they could send another delegation to the Gaza Strip to monitor human rights violations by the Hamas authorities and help Palestinian women confront Muslim fundamentalists who are trying to limit their role to cooking, raising children and looking after the needs of their husbands.
(Read full article)
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Judge Goldstone: I Participated in a Farce

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
16 November 09

Richard Goldstone seems to use interviews to chip away at the legitimacy of his own work. He told the Forward that nothing he uncovered in Gaza is credible enough to be admissible in court. And now he has admitted this to Haaretz:

Many Israelis are right to feel that the United Nations and its member bodies such as the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have devoted inordinate and disproportionate attention to scrutinizing and criticizing Israel. This has come at the price of ignoring violations of human rights in other countries, some of them members of those very same bodies. The time has come for the investigation of all violations of international human rights law and international law whenever they are committed, in any state.

A few thoughts: First, this is almost exactly what Bob Bernstein argued in his New York Times op-ed about Human Rights Watch — for which he was accused by HRW, on whose board Goldstone sat, of claiming that no scrutiny whatsoever should be applied to Israel. Will HRW now distort Goldstone and level the same charge? Not a chance.

Second, this statement would seem to validate Shimon Peres’s critique that Goldstone is a “small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence” who was “on a one-sided mission to hurt Israel.” Goldstone has admitted that the lawfare campaign against Israel, of which he has become the de facto leader, is a perversion of justice: disproportionately and selectively applied. It is the equivalent of a police force that pursues the arrest of Jews, and scarcely anyone else, for violations. Such a police force is inherently illegitimate. Yet Goldstone chose to become the chief of that police force, and now denounces the fact of its — his — own iniquity. What psychodrama. What a small man.

Third, there is one person perfectly situated to rise to the challenge of even-handedness and proportionality that the good judge has placed before the world: his name is Richard Goldstone. He has earned his bona fides as a harsh and tendentious critic of Israel. Because of this, he has immense credibility at the UN and among “human-rights” activists worldwide. When will his campaign of inquisition against other democracies begin? Someone should ask him.

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UK TV documentary alleging Zionist conspiracy brings torrent of anti-Semitic abuse into public view

Robin Shepherd
RobinShepherdOnline.com
17 November 09

The airing last night of a rambling and analytically threadbare documentary alleging a secretive Zionist conspiracy against the British political establishment has immediately had the predictable effect of bringing anti-Semites and assorted Israel-haters right out of the woodwork.

The documentary shown on Channel 4 — the same channel which on Christmas Day last year gave Iran’s Holocaust-denying president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a seven minute, uninterrupted propaganda slot — was preceded by a primer in the Guardian which I wrote about yesterday. It effectively argued that since there is no sane or rational case to be made for Israel, the rare occasions when British politicians offer words of praise for the Jewish state can only be explained by the presence of a vast and wealthy Zionist lobby which is paying them or pressuring them to toe their line.

The Channel 4 website is now awash with adulation for the documentary and its makers — Peter Oborne and James Jones. Since Channel 4 is leaving all of this up on its site for public consumption, it is clear that they see nothing wrong with what is being said. Here is a small selection of the comments, some of which were published before the programme went out:

Read the rest of this entry »
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Damascus Reverts to Form

Michael J. Totten
MichaelTotten.com
16 November 09

Well, that didn’t last long. Last week, Syrian President Bashar Assadannounced he would resume peace negotiations with Israel without preconditions, but now he suddenly says it’s impossible. “What we lack is an Israeli partner,” he said, “who is ready to go forward and ready to come to a result.”

As an absolute dictator and a state sponsor of terrorism, Assad is in no position to boohoo about how the region’s only mature liberal democracy supposedly isn’t a peace partner — but he wouldn’t do this if he didn’t think he could get away with it. If even the United States, of all countries, is behaving as though Israel were the problem, why shouldn’t he play along?

In a different historical context, it might be amusing, as Baghdad Bob’s alternate-universe pronouncements were, to listen to the tyrannical Assad talk as though he’s the Syrian equivalent of Israel’s dovish Shimon Peres, while the elected Israeli prime minister is a Jewish Yasir Arafat. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, though, is acting as though the first part were true.

Sarkozy is working hard to boost France’s influence in the Middle East by carving out a role for himself as a mediator between Israelis and Arabs. When Assad and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced last week that they would hold talks, they did it through him. And this weekend Sarkozy offered to host Assad, Netanyahu, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at a summit in Paris. He can’t host any such thing, however, if the belligerents on the Arab side are shut out. So Assad has to be brought in from the cold, whether he’s earned it or not.

He hasn’t. And now that his reputation is getting an undeserved scrubbing, brace yourself for the worst sort of passive-aggressive Orwellian grandstanding.

“What Obama said about peace was a good thing,” he said. “We agree with him on the principles, but as I said, what’s the action plan? The sponsor has to draw up an action plan.”

Notice what he’s done here? He’s portraying himself as though not only Netanyahu but also Barack Obama were less interested in peace than he is. It should be obvious, though, that Assad isn’t serious. He supports terrorist organizations that kill Americans, Israelis, Iraqis, and Lebanese — not exactly the sort of behavior one associates with leaders who agree with Barack Obama “on the principles.” Yet he’s blaming the United States for his own roguish behavior, because the U.S. does not have an “action plan.”

Read the rest in Commentary Magazine.

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IAEA Inspectors: We’re Shocked, Shocked at Iranian Duplicity

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
16 November 09

The findings of a report released today from the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors about their survey of a previously secret underground nuclear-enrichment plant have apparently led the group to suspect that Iran may be concealing other nuclear factories. Surprise. Surprise. The unfinished facility near the holy city of Qom was built to accommodate enough centrifuges to produce a couple of nuclear weapons a year, but is, in fact, too small to be useful for civilian uses of nuclear power. That gives the lie to Iran’s protests that its nuclear program is for only peaceful intents, but it’s not as if anyone, either in Iran or elsewhere, actually believed that to begin with. But the point of the report is that this newly discovered plant only makes sense if it were part of a network of covert nuclear facilities that could feed it with “raw nuclear fuel.”

But anyone who is shocked about any of this hasn’t been paying attention to this issue for years. Only two years after the United States issued a ridiculous National Intelligence Estimate denying the reality of the Iranian program, even international bodies like the IAEA are no longer prepared to hedge their bets about Iranian intentions. The reality of the imminence of a nuclear Iran cannot be denied any longer, even by those who would prefer to ignore the peril this development poses to U.S. strategic interests as well as world peace. Experts differ as to the exact time line, but there’s little doubt that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be in a position to announce that an Iranian nuclear device will be ready sometime within the next few years at the latest.

This also brings into perspective President Obama’s diplomacy on Iran. Having both campaigned on negotiations with Tehran without preconditions and downplayed the human-rights disaster in that country in the wake of a stolen presidential election, Obama seemed to believe he could make a deal with the ayatollahs. But the Iranians rightly sensed weakness and have exploited Obama’s desire for talks at any price. They negotiated a pact to transport their enriched uranium to Russia for safekeeping and then renounced it within weeks without an explanation and have refused Obama’s desperate pleas for them to consider an even sweeter deal. With egg left on his face, Obama has been forced to go cap in hand to Russia and now China to beg them for support for sanctions on the recalcitrant Iranians. The Russians played along, to a certain extent, by expressing their unhappiness with Iran. But you have to forget everything we’ve learned about Vladimir Putin and his foreign-policy priorities in order to believe that the Russians will repudiate their Iranian trading partners to accommodate a prime U.S. strategic interest. Optimism about Chinese help is equally fantastic.

Obama’s amateur diplomacy of apologies and bows can take the U.S. just so far when it comes to manufacturing an international coalition behind the sorts of sanctions that could bring Iran to its knees. Having gambled on a losing diplomatic hand with Iran, the president is now scrambling to resurrect a policy that is clearly sinking under the weight of his naïveté. The latest UN report illustrates just how fast the clock is ticking toward a confrontation that the president seems ill equipped to handle.

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J’Accuse! The Frame-Up of Captain Israel by Major Dictatorships

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
17 November 09

The affair began in a most unusual way. A low level spy—in fact, the cleaning woman at the foreign embassy—uncovered an important document in a waste-basket. It showed that someone was violating human rights, acting aggressively, and murdering civilians indiscriminately.

The document ended up on the desk of the officer in charge of counter-intelligence. Who could be the culprit, the traitorous spy to all that was right in the world? The officer, Major Oppressive Dictatorships, of course, already had a bias. He hated Jews and wanted to destroy them. He barely had to look down the roll of countries to know that there was only one Jew on that list: Captain Israel. Yes, he must be the one.

But Major Dictatorships had a problem. True, Israel had access to having an army, force, and the instruments of war. Yet the document did not resemble Israel’s handwriting or general behavior. Of course, that was no problem for him. He knew Israel was at fault. It had no right being on the roll of nations any way. And so it did not bother his conscience at all to forge documents proving what he already believed: Israel was the spy.

The documents were taken to the armed forces commander, General Assembly. He, too, suspected that all was not in order but it didn’t matter to him either. Deciding that Israel was guilty suited his purposes as well. And so he endorsed the prosecution. Captain Israel was court-martialed and quickly convicted. No one listened to his protestations of innocence.

It was a dramatic ceremony. Before all the countries drawn up in the large hall, Israel was stripped of his sword. His buttons were cut off, the insignia identifying him as an officer and gentleman were torn away. The mob howled for blood. But instead Captain Israel was sent to Devil’s Island for life.

Naturally, Israel’s community protested, but few others joined it. Gradually, though, the idea grew among a minority that Captain Israel had been framed. A few wrote in protest: the army was covering up, the government was complicit.

But most responded: What? Can General Assembly and all the others have lied? Ridiculous! Of course you are only saying he's innocent because you are on his side. The documents were persuasive; the newspapers proclaimed his guilt in great detail. The hierarchy of an entire religion insisted on his guilt. A whole wing of the political spectrum condemned him as a monster. Everyone agreed. Only Captain Israel could have betrayed the secrets of human rights and proportional response to the enemy.
(Read full article)
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A Bill Clinton Promise (1999)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon from December 1999. Ten years ago next month.

I've posted this Golden Oldie because the ex-President is here in Israel to share his "wisdom" with us. According to the Associated Press (as quoted by Haaretz)

Bill Clinton in Israel: There would be peace if Rabin were still alive
"Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said on Saturday that if former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin were still alive, a peace accord would have been reached between Israel and all of its neighbors." -more

The impeached President, who broke his promise to free Pollard ten years ago, is now telling us that the ongoing, continuous, and relentless genocidal quest to destroy the Jewish State is because of Israel's political leadership!!?!

The man pushes the limits of hutzpah!

* * *Ten years after Clinton's broken promise, Jonathan Pollard remains in Prison ... On November 21, 2009, Jonathan Pollard will enter his 25th year of a life sentence for his activities on behalf of Israel. The median sentence for the offense Pollard committed - one count of passing classified information to an ally - is 2 to 4 years. Pollard received his life sentence without a trial, as a result of a plea bargain which he honored and the U.S. government violated.

Beyond Appeasement: The Concession Man

Herbert I. London
President, Hudson Institute
16 November 09

When Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1936 he noted that based on his stance of appeasement with Hitler “peace was at hand.” Alas, Chamberlain was duped and, as might have been expected, history has not treated him kindly. But, however false the concessions made by Hitler, Chamberlain believed he had obtained a concession: Restraint on Nazi imperial ambitions.

In 2009 America’s own Chamberlain, President Obama, has adopted a stance beyond appeasement; he engages in preemptive conciliation without any expectation of a quid pro quo. President Obama does not wait to be double-crossed; he is concession man who gives before he is asked and remarkably puts American interests at risk in order to enhance his international standing.

Without securing any benefit from the withdrawal of missile sites and radars in Poland and the Czech Republic, President Obama blithely gave up what had been negotiated and settled with our allies. This move was heralded by the Russians, as might be expected. But Russian leaders immediately noted that they will not use this gesture to put pressure on Iran’s ambition to obtain nuclear weapons. After all, a Russian spokesman noted, “Why should we make a concession when you’ve decided to correct a mistake?”

On September 23, President Obama addressed the United Nations, and in the midst of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, he embraced the Palestinian position for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, a divided Jerusalem, a cessation of new settlements in the West Bank and a “contiguous” Palestinian state. This was said without the slightest concession from the Palestinian side. There wasn’t any demand that the state of Israel must be recognized. There was not the slightest recognition of defensible borders. There was not a hint that Palestinian violence would be arrested. And most significantly, there did not seem to be the slightest recognition of geographic realities: A contiguous Palestinian state of Gaza and the West Bank means Israel would have to be divided in half.
(Continue article)
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Diplomatic Warfare: Palestinians Threaten Unilateral Statehood

Will they try it? And how will Israel respond?

P. David Hornik
PajamasMedia.com
16 November 09

The rhetoric is flying these days in Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that “there is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and any unilateral path will only unravel the framework of agreements between us and will only bring unilateral steps from Israel’s side.”

He was responding to threats by chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat that the Palestinian Authority would ask the UN Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state in all of the post-1967 territories with its capital in East Jerusalem — part of Israel’s united capital of Jerusalem and formally under Israeli sovereignty for over four decades.

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and universally acclaimed moderate, has joined the fray with some immoderate words,saying: “God willing, we will soon have an independent state with its capital in Jerusalem. … Today we are renewing our commitment to the entire Palestinian people — the martyrs, the wounded and the prisoners … to continue the path to victory, the path to a free and independent Palestine.” Given that “martyrs” refers to suicide bombers and “prisoners” to convicted terrorists in Israeli jails, these words would be regarded as endorsement and encouragement of terrorism if someone less diplomatically protected and anointed than Abbas had uttered them.

Israeli leaders have fired back some warning shots.

Even some visitors from abroad have gotten into the act. Bill Clinton, speaking at the Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv,said: “In the last 14 years, not a single week has gone by that I did not think of Yitzhak Rabin and miss him terribly. Nor has a single week gone by in which I have not reaffirmed my conviction that had he not lost his life on that terrible November night, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement for peace in the Middle East.” For many Israelis who lived through the drastically increased terrorism of the early “Oslo process” and then through the three years of greatly reduced terrorism during Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister, the second sentence of that quote from Clinton is more than a little problematic.

To top it off, Arnold Schwarzenegger is here too, though he appears to be keeping his remarks mercifully neutral and anodyne.

What’s behind the rhetoric? The idea of a unilateral Palestinian push for statehood was broached recently by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and has been gaining steam. The Palestinians say that with the Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic talks frozen, they have no choice but to try and get their state by their own means. A quirk in that position is that, ever since Barack Obama became U.S. president, it’s Abbas who has steadfastly refused to meet with Netanyahu whereas Netanyahu has been constantly affirming his readiness to meet with Abbas and start negotiations on the two-state solution.

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Spain, Israel and the Row Over UNIFIL

Soeren Kern
Hudson New York
16 November 09

Senior Fellow, Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Strategic Studies Group

Both friends and foes believe that Zapatero’s increasingly erratic anti-Israel antics are undermining Spain’s international credibility. And indeed, the Zapatero government’s is becoming more radical in its anti-Israel bias.

Earlier this year, for example, a Spanish magistrate aligned with the Socialist party attempted to prosecute Israeli officials for war crimes. In August, the Zapatero government paid for 40 Spanish activists to travel to Israel to rebuild Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem that the Israeli government deemed illegal and tore down in 2008. More recently, Zapatero’s Housing Ministry disqualified a group of Israeli academics from a solar power design competition (which is being sponsored by the US Energy Department) because their university is in the West Bank.

But what about UNIFIL, where Spain has deployed around 1,000 troops?

Most analysts agree that UNIFIL’s mission has been compromised from the start. Although UN Resolution 1701, which brought an end to the Lebanon war in August 2006, is unequivocal in its call for an arms embargo, UNIFIL’s rules of engagement were deliberately muddled by countries like Spain to prevent the force from actively looking for Hezbollah’s weapons.

The lack of a clear commitment by UNIFIL to disarm Hezbollah is a shortcoming that Iran and Syria have been quick to exploit: They have rebuilt Hezbollah’s arsenal while Europeans have stood by and watched.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has cancelled a November 4 and 5 visit to Spain amid a dispute over the command of the European-led United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The visit was called off after reports surfaced that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had secretly asked Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to keep Italy in command of the 13,000-strong UNIFIL force for six months longer than planned, instead of allowing Spain to take over.

(Read full article)

Britain's least effective lobby?

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
16 November 09

In respect of tonight’s TV programme on the allegedly malign influence of the Israel lobby in Britain -- previewed here in today’s Guardian by presenter Peter Oborne -- readers may find enlightening these comments by Robin Shepherd, who takes issue with Oborne’s claim that he is not peddling ‘Jewish conspiracy theory’, and Tom Gross, who observes that there is no effective British pro-Israel lobby.

A propos, in view of Oborne’s suggestion that pressure from pro-Israel donors upon the Tory party silenced criticism of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza by the Tories’ foreign affairs spokesman William Hague, it is instructive to see what Hague actually said about that operation.

He first called for restraint from Israel:

‘We deeply regret the loss of civilian life in Gaza today. We call on the Israeli government to show restraint. At the same time we call on Hamas to stop the rocket attacks which are an unacceptable threat to Israel’s security, so that the ceasefire, which Hamas failed to renew, can be urgently restored’.

A few days later, he amplified this when he called upon Israel to stop its action against Hamas:

‘I am gravely concerned about the continuing violence in Gaza and the numbers of civilians killed and injured. The crisis is exacting a terrible human toll on both sides and it is imperative that further loss of life is avoided. I join the Security Council’s call for an immediate ceasefire and call on Arab countries to use their influence to urge Hamas to end rocket attacks on Israel. I also call on Israel to work with the international community so that the humanitarian relief so desperately needed in Gaza can be provided. The British Government must work with the United States and other members of the Middle East Quartet to secure an early return to negotiations in 2009. The only long-term solution is a negotiated two-state agreement that achieves a viable and secure Palestinian state living alongside a secure Israel with her right to live in peace and security recognised by all her neighbours. The world looks to the new President of the United States to place these negotiations at the top of his foreign policy agenda and to pursue them with vigour and determination from the very outset.’

He also condemned the Israeli shelling of the UN headquarters and joined the outcry over the ‘humanitarian crisis’ in Gaza:

William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: ‘The shelling of the UN Headquarters in Gaza is unacceptable. This undercuts efforts to bring relief to the people of Gaza and is against Israel's own interests. The UNWRA provides food and aid to over a million Palestinian refugees in Gaza. The suspension of its operations will bring more misery to civilians. We desperately need a ceasefire by both sides, not further escalation. Both sides must meet their obligations to protect aid workers at all times.’

He also, as reported here, called for alleged Israeli ‘war crimes’ against the Palestinians to be investigated.

Given that Hague allied himself to some degree with the disproportionate canards of anti-Israel hysteria over Cast Lead and went along with at least some of the blood libels used to defame Israel– not mention the more extreme denunciations emanating from the Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband -- can there ever have been in fact a weaker and more ineffective pressure group than Britain’s Israel lobby?

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Bill Clinton pushes false State Department line

FresnoZionism.org
14 November 09

One sometimes forgets what a fool Bill Clinton was capable of being. And then he reminds us:

“In the last 14 years, not a single week has gone by that I did not think of Yitzhak Rabin and miss him terribly,” Clinton told a VIP gathering at the Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv.

“Nor has a single week gone by in which I have not reaffirmed my conviction that had he not lost his life on that terrible November night, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement for peace in the Middle East.” — Ha’aretz

Oh really? What does Clinton think Rabin would have added to the already over-the-top offers made to the Palestinians at Camp David and Taba that would have caused Arafat to accept them?

Does he think Arafat would have refrained from sponsoring terrorism and educating a generation to be suicide bombers if Rabin had been alive? Does he think that any of the clear messages sent by the Palestinians to this day, that the only ‘peace’ deal that they would accept is unconditional surrender, would have not been sent if Rabin were around?

Either he really is a fool and actually believes this, or he is helping push the current State Department line (after all, his wife is the Secretary) that the reason that there isn’t ‘peace’ is that Israel isn’t giving up enough. Just like the helpful media, Clinton is reinforcing the message that the problem is Israel’s intransigence rather than Palestinian anti-Zionism.

“If you want it, it is no legend,” Herzl said. Unfortunately, this inspiring proposition is only sometimes true. Some people want a peaceful two-state solution next week, but this is one of those times that reality intervenes, and it doesn’t matter how much one wants it, it remains a dream.

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Top British documentary makers peddle conspiracy theory about secretive Zionist lobby ahead of landmark TV show

Journalist Peter Oborne

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
16 November 09

(This article has been updated with links to the full pamphlet explaining the show which airs Monday night. The distortions therein are quite breathtaking. The update also gives a link to Melanie Phillips’ take on the matter. For both, see the links at the end of the article)

You know the old line about the racist who prefaces a torrent of racially charged abuse with the words: “I’m not a racist, but…”? Something similar about conspiracy theories could be said about the makers of a landmark documentary due to be aired this evening on Britain’s Channel 4 Television alleging that a secretive group of Zionists (just “Zionists”, not Jews you understand) has got hold of Britain’s main political parties and is manipulating them to spew pro-Israeli propaganda.

Writing about their documentary in the Guardian (where else?), Peter Oborne, a columnist for the Daily Mail, and television journalist James Jones are, of course, anxious that they should not actually be labelled as conspiracy theorists and seek to pre-empt such charges thus: “It is important to say what we did not find,” they tell us nervously. “There is no conspiracy, and nothing resembling a conspiracy.”

Except that their entire piece makes it quite clear that a conspiracy is precisely what is being alleged.

Read the rest of this entry ».

NYT derisive over Jewish claims to Temple Mount

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
15 November 09

In its Nov. 15 edition, the New York Times features a lengthy article by Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner about publication of a book by Israeli and Palestinian scholars of Jewish and Muslim claims to Temple Mount. Kershner notes that this is the site that "Jews revere as the location of their two ancient temples, and that now houses the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam."

What interests me about the article is not so much the contents of the book, which I have yet to read, as Kershner's own derisive and dismissive view of Jewish claims to Temple Mount, coupled with a more deferential attitude to the Muslim side.

Putting aside the various views expressed in the book, here's Kershner's -- and the New York Times' -- own verdict on which side appears to have the stronger claims:

"The lack of archaeological evidence of the ancient temples has led many Palestinians to deny any real Jewish attachment or claim to the plateau," Kershner writes.

Nothing in Kershner's article about archaeological finds that point the other way, especially about the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 of the current era.

Nothing in Kershner's article about evidence of the Second Temple in the writing of the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus.

Nothing in Kershner's article about the frieze on the Arch of Titus in Rome showing the triumphant return of Roman soldiers carrying the Menorah from the Second Temple.

Nothing in Kershner's article about Jesus's presence in and around the Temple.

Nothing in Kershner's article about specific refrerences in the Koran to both Jewish temples. Yes, in the Koran!

As far as Kershner is concerned, Jews may revere Temple Mount because they believe the temples existed, but her own spin is that there's no empirical evidence to substantiate such a belief.

As for the current status of the Temple Mount amid sporadic tensions and clashes, Kershner is much harder on Jewish behavior on Temple Mount than on Muslim outrages which she glosses over or totally ignores.
(Read full article)
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Ha'aretz's Mualem Waters Down Mofaz Plan

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA/Snapshots
16 November 09

A page three large font headline in Ha'aretz yesterday informs readers:

Mofaz supporters: Haaretz poll shows Israelis are willing to talk with Hamas

The article, by Mazal Mualem, begins:

A Haaretz poll showing 57 percent support for Kadima MK Shaul Mofaz's peace plan "proves the Israeli public is almost always a step ahead of its leadership," sources close to Mofaz said yesterday.

Mofaz's plan includes negotiations with Hamas and an interim Palestinian state on 60 percent of the West Bank in a year.

"The survey results speak for themselves, and here's proof for all to see the Israeli public isn't shocked or appalled by the idea of negotiating with Hamas," one Mofaz associate said.

Not once does the 11 paragraph article by Mualem note that Mofaz's proposal endorses dialogue with Hamas only if the group relinquishes terrorism and recognizes Israel, a fact pointed out in the second paragraph of Friday's front-page article by Yossi Verter, also in Ha'aretz.

Moreover, this would not be the first time a Dialog poll was cited to claim that a majority of Israelis support negotiations with Hamas. And it would not be the first time that poll results from Tami Steinmetz Center of Tel Aviv University contradict the Dialog results. The September 2009 Tami Steinmetz War and Peace Index states:

As to the question of whether Hamas can or cannot be a side to negotiations on a peace agreement with the Palestinians, a clear majority of the Jewish public (71%) says no, while a 53% majority of the Arab public says yes.

Israeli wins gold in fencing; Austrian hosts don't play 'Hatikva'

JPost Staff
15 November 09

(Congratulations to Daria and her teammates, both for the win, and for knowing at 14, what's expected of you.)

Israeli fencer Daria Strelnikov won the gold medal at the cadet's fencing world championship in Austria Saturday night. However, as the 14-year-old athlete stood at the podium waiting to hear the Israeli national anthem, she was greeted by a disturbing quiet.

Strelnikov and a fellow teammate on the podium decided to fill in the silence by singing Hatikva themselves. They were joined by their coach, and other supporting voices in the crowd.
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AP's Caption Challenged Photographer

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA/Snapshots
15 November 09

Remember Bernat Armangue, the AP photographer whose erroneous photo caption wrongly stated that a Palestinian protestor passed out, even though he was holding his hand up in the air? (CAMERA staff prompted a correction.)

Once again, Bernat Armangue is caption challenged. Consider the following photo and caption:

An ultra Orthodox Jewish man pauses in front [sic] the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest site and known by Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009

Here are the problems with this caption, starting with the fundamental falsehood followed by two secondary points:

1) This caption gives the misimpression that the man is actually standing in front of the mosque, on the Temple Mount. Given the tensions surrounding the Temple Mount in recent weeks, the presence of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man standing in front of the mosque could be enough to set off additional Arab rioting, both on the mount and in nearby eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods.

In reality, he is apparently standing at the top of the steps that lead down to the Western Wall. He is resting his left arm on something, most likely the wall at the overlook at the top of those steps. From where he stands, he is separated from the Temple Mount by the Western Wall plaza. Especially in light of the sensitivity of the site, there is a huge difference between an ultra-Orthodox man standing on the entrance steps to the Western Wall, an area next to the Temple Mount and completely under Israeli control, versus an ultra-Orthodox man standing in front of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, on the Temple Mount itself, which is under the day-to-day control of the Islamic Waqf.

This would not be the first time that an AP photo caption has incorrectly placed a scene on the Temple Mount.

2) Why refer to the Temple Mount as the third holiest site in Islam and not point out that it is the holiest in Judaism?

3) The Al-Aqsa Mosque is not known by Jews to be the Temple Mount, it is known to Jews to be on the Temple Mount.

(Also the building in the photo is not the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is located on the southern end of Temple Mount. HT to Naftali on this point)

AP corrected photo captions in September 2000 and May 2009. We await a November 2009 correction as well.

(Hat tip to Yisrael Medad, who noticed this photo on BBC's Web site).

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Terra Incognita: The (ir)responsibility of the academy

Seth Frantzman
JPost
15 November 09

(Thoughtful with interesting points)

Recent debates surrounding politics at university have usually juxtaposed two different political viewpoints against one another. The Right argues that the academy is overflowing with extreme-leftist professors who work to undermine the existence of the state at home and abroad. The Left argues that its freedom of expression is being threatened by the Right and that its campaigns for "justice" or "human rights" are part of making the state more humane.

The Left believes that if a few of its extremist voices call for boycotts of their own universities then that might be "misplaced," but it is part and parcel of a democratic society. Perhaps both sides are right. The academy is at the forefront of anti-Israel intellectual extremism. It is also a bastion of freedom of expression in a free society.

But what both sides are missing is a third view of the academy, namely one that sees it as enshrining certain values, three of which should be responsibility, decency and maturity. The extreme-leftist antics of some faculty members should not be curtailed by laws or by dismissal from the academy. Instead there should be an inculcation of self-control.

Instead of crying "Nazi" every time the IDF does something an academic disagrees with, one could hold his tongue. Instead of requesting the boycott of one's own university, one could have some restraint. Instead of signing petitions encouraging soldiers to desert their units or calling on European powers to immediately intervene to "save" the Palestinians from a "genocide," one could show some self-control.

It is apparent that the central problem with too many of Israel's academics is that they are unsure of their place in society, they misunderstand their relevance and they are embittered and hysterical in their pronouncements to the point of having a childlike "crying wolf" mentality when discussing the conflict in the Middle East.

Consider a few examples. Prof. Ada Yonath, fresh after receiving a Nobel Prize, instead of saying a few words of praise for a society that gave her the opportunities to succeed and excel, immediately launched into a barrage of opinions about Gilad Schalit. She declared that Israel should release all its Palestinian prisoners and that holding them was the real source of all Palestinian attacks on Israel.
(Continue to full article)
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Non Believers

The focus of today's cartoon is the Western "Non Believer".

These folks are committed to not believing what is happening before their eyes. Their ability to maintain their non-belief in the Islamist war that is being waged against them is astounding!