Shorts: The end of J Street, and a letter to the editor

Fresnozionism.org
29 September '10

Die, J Street, Die!

J street reminds me of Rasputin, who was supposedly poisoned, shot several time, clubbed, tied up in a carpet and thrown into the icy Neva river to freeze or drown before he finally died.

Revealed to be receiving money from donors associated with Arab and Iranian interests, called out by the Israeli Ambassador for taking positions that “could impair Israeli interests,” caught in a bare-faced lie about its connections to anti-Israel billionaire George Soros, J Street may be losing its influence with the Obama Administration and on Capitol Hill as it daily grows more radioactive.

Now new revelations published by the Washington Times about J Street’s covert lobbying on behalf of the notorious Goldstone report may finally wrap J Street and its smoothly mendacious director, Jeremy Ben Ami, in a carpet and throw them into the Neva:

J Street — the self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace lobbying group — facilitated meetings between members of Congress and South African Judge Richard Goldstone, author of a U.N. report that accused the Jewish state of systematic war crimes in its three-week military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

Colette Avital — a former member of Israel’s parliament, from the center-left Labor Party and until recently J Street’s liaison in Israel — told The Washington Times that her decision to resign her post with J Street earlier this year was a result in part of the group’s “connection to Judge Goldstone.”

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Fear and Survival: The Tragedy And Threat That Is George Soros

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
29 September '10

I’ve long pondered the bizarre doings of billionaire financier George Soros, who's become the single biggest funder of left-wing and often anti-Jewish (certainly, anti-Israel) causes in Europe and North America. Most recently, it was revealed that Soros was a huge contributor to the anti-Israel J Street group even though the organization had lied about that connection.

But how can one explain the behavior and motives of Soros? For me, finally, the missing piece of the puzzle has fallen into place.

The first key bit of evidence was Soros’s interview with the December 20, 1998, “Sixty Minutes” television show in which he recounts his experiences as a 14-year-old boy in Nazi-occupied Hungary, a time when he said his “character was made.” Soros’ father had sent him to live with a bribed Christian government official who was involved in confiscating Jewish property.

A lot of the discussion about this interview has been misdirected over whether Soros was in some way a war criminal. This is clearly untrue since he was barely a teenager and didn’t actually do anything but observe. He was as he describes himself, a “spectator.”

Let’s get a more sophisticated, accurate understanding by examining what Soros actually said about the experience long afterward. What did he learn from being a spectator, watching both sides but truly being on neither side?

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A Mess of His Own Making

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
29 September '10


The non-peace talks are on hiatus while Mahmoud Abbas goes running to the Arab League for instructions. Elliott Abrams explains why we shouldn’t much care:

The sky is not falling. Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations were suspended on Sunday, perhaps briefly and perhaps for months, after Israel’s 10-month moratorium on settlement construction expired. Palestinian officials said they would refuse to talk if construction restarted, and so they did. Yet war hasn’t broken out, nor will it. …

Also last week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reminded his people that “we tried the intifada and it caused us a lot of damage.” Hamas, the terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, can commit acts of terror at any time. But with Israeli and Palestinian officials working together to keep the peace, Hamas can’t create a general uprising.

Peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) have been an on-again, off-again affair since they began with the Oslo Accords in 1993. During the Arafat years talks alternated with terrorism, for Arafat viewed both as useful and legitimate tactics. After the so-called second intifada of 2000-2001 and the 9/11 attacks, Israel’s then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ran out of patience with that game, as did President George W. Bush. From then on they worked to push Arafat aside.

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Mr. Abbas, Tear Down This Wall!

Sol Stern
Jewish Ideas Daily
28 September '10

While the world's headlines focus with exaggerated alarm on Israel's lifting of its ten-month building freeze within Jewish West Bank settlements, an issue of far greater moment for the prospects of peace in the Middle East goes determinedly unaddressed. This is the matter of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees—a subject on which the Obama administration, a fierce promoter of the building freeze, has been strikingly silent.

In Cairo a little over a year ago, President Obama proclaimed "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." After reminding his Arab audience that "six million Jews were killed" by the Nazis, he added immediately that, for their part, the Palestinians too "have endured the pain of dislocation" and many still "wait in refugee camps . . . for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead." At the time, a number of commentators objected to the President's seeming equation of the abundantly funded refugee camps run by the United Nations with Nazi death camps. Few, however, pointed out that his explanation of the plight of the Palestinian refugees was false, confusing historical cause and effect.

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1,000 pray at renovated Joseph's Tomb

Yair Altman
Israel News/Ynet
29 September '10
Posted before Chag

Ten years have passed since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada. One notorious incident at the beginning of the uprising – the exchange of fire at Joseph's Tomb, during which Border Guard Madhat Yusuf was killed and the site evacuated and torched by angry Palestinians – marked the end of a permanent Israeli presence there.

However, on Monday night about 1,000 people came to the tomb to pray for the first time since the site and the tomb it contains were renovated.

The Civil Administration coordinated security with Palestinian security forces for the visitors who came to mark the Ushpizin prayer at the tomb in the center of the Palestinian city of Nablus.

Kever Yosef: Rising from the ashes. For more details on how to have the 
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"The process was led by the army and the Samaria Regional Council after a personal request from the head of the Civil Administration to the Palestinian Authority," a source at the site said. "It was closely coordinated, according to an agreement between the sides to safeguard religious sites."

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Looks Like Abbas Gets The Dead Cat This Time Around

Daled Amos
28 September '10
Posted before Chag


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “managed to leave the dead cat at the doorstep of both the Obama Administration and [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas,” said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator who is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for   Scholars.

Ben Smith, In blame game, arrow tilts to Abbas

Writing about Abbas giving in to pressure and coming to the peace table, Evelyn Gordon notes A Lesson for the Future in Abbas’s Retreat on Refusing to Talk:

[A]fter months of proclaiming that he would not resume talks with Israel without a complete freeze on Israeli construction in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has backed down. And this offers a crucial lesson for the future.

“The reason Abbas was willing to move his red line was because he came under intense pressure from the US, certain elements inside the EU, and from Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan to start talks, even though all his conditions were not met,” [Jerusalem Post's Herb] Keinon noted [here]. “The valuable lesson here: The Palestinians, too, and not only Israel, are susceptible to pressure.”

The fact that Keinon is right can be adduced from the fact that both Keinon and Gordon wrote this six months ago in March.

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Ben-Gurion’s legacy on Jerusalem under assault

Dore Gold
Op-Ed/JPost
28 September '10

Right after the War of Independence, prime minister David Ben-Gurion faced inexorably difficult pressures over the future of Jerusalem.

The UN planned to press its case for internationalization. Its grounds were General Assembly Resolution 181, adopted in 1947 and known as the partition plan, which not only advocated the establishment of Jewish and Arab states in former British Mandatory Palestine, but also recommended putting Jerusalem under UN control as a corpus separatum, or separate entity.

True, the resolution was not legally binding; it had been forcibly rejected by the Arab states. Moreover, the UN never established the special regime for Jerusalem that it proposed. In fact, it failed to dispatch any forces to save the Old City when reports streamed in that its ancient synagogues were being systematically destroyed. Nevertheless, even after the war ended, leading diplomatic players in the UN, including the US government, came back and insisted on resurrecting the idea of international control.

Ben-Gurion stood in the Knesset on December 5, 1949 and, in no uncertain terms, rejected the demand for internationalization. He looked back at what had happened during the War of Independence, explaining that the UN “did not lift a finger” when invading Arab armies tried to destroy the holy city. It was only because of the efforts of the newly created IDF that the siege of Jerusalem had been lifted and the rest of its Jewish population saved. Ben-Gurion declared that Israel no longer viewed Resolution 181 as having any further “moral force” with regard to Jerusalem.

Four days later the General Assembly responded, again insisting that Jerusalem “should be placed under a permanent international regime.”

Ben-Gurion nonetheless stood his ground and declared on December 13, 1949 that the Knesset and the rest of the government would be transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

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Let Jews build homes

Op-ed: Razing of ‘unauthorized outposts’ unjust, raises questions about rule of law

Moshe Dann
Israel Opinion/Ynet
29 September '10

Conventional wisdom says that “Israel promised (the US) to destroy all ‘unauthorized outposts,’ and, therefore, must fulfill its obligations.” If the government is looking for an excuse, this is a poor one.

The "promise" made in a letter in April, 2004 from Dov Weissglass, then chief of the Prime Minister's Bureau to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, was submitted "on behalf of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon;" the letter was not signed by Sharon, nor was it affirmed by the cabinet. It was, simply, "diplomatic correspondence."

Moreover, the letter contains conditions. "The Israeli government believes that further steps by it, even if consistent with the Roadmap, cannot be taken absent the emergence of a Palestinian partner committed to peace, democratic reform, and the fight against terror."

Using this letter to justify destruction of Jewish "unauthorized outposts" raises serious questions:

Does Weissglass' letter obligate Israel to carry out its provisions while ignoring its conditions? Does this letter obligate future Israeli governments? Was the letter approved by the cabinet (since it mentions only the PM)? Why didn't Prime Minister Sharon sign it? Other than Weissglass' letter, there is no binding agreement to destroy Jewish "unauthorized outposts," destroy settlements, or prevent Jews from building anywhere in the Land of Israel.

Asked to respond, senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office avoided direct specific answers. "This government is committed to the rule of law, and abiding by the law is paramount to maintaining a civil society." They refused to elaborate.

This begs the questions and shifts the argument to Israeli law and, vaguely, "rule of law."

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Is the U.S. Government and West Generally Starting to Comprehend the Real Issues and Problems in the Middle East?

Barry Rubin
GLORIA Center
29 September '10

After acceding to U.S. requests for nine months by freezing construction on existing Jewish settlements in the West Bank and also not building over the pre-1967 frontier in Jerusalem, Israel got nothing.

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed willing to continue it in some form, pressures from within his coalition made that impossible.Therefore, the freeze is coming to an end, though Israel is still ready to discuss limits on new construction. Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas is threatening to walk out of the once-every-two-weeks direct talks.

So what has been the reaction?

First, 87 U.S. senators, that's 87 percent of the membership, have urged Obama to keep Abbas from walking out of talks. They have not blamed Israel for the crisis.

The Obama Administration is approaching the issue calmly and there has been no bashing or even criticism of Israel. Why? Lots of reasons, one being the impending November elections and the government's eagerness to show it has achieved something in international affairs. Another is that officials now realize that the PA has been their real headache, refusing to talk for 20 months, constantly setting new preconditions, and eagerly looking for some way to walk out of negotiations. Europe is being pretty quiet also about blaming Israel.

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A small slip (again and again) by the BBC but it has consequences

A

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War
28 September '10

Our headline says "slip" but we don't believe that's what has happened.

Israel's self-imposed ten-month long moratorium on construction in Judea and Samaria expired on Sunday. If its purpose was to encourage the Palestinian Authority leadership to join discussions with Israel on a peace process, it was no great success. For most of those ten months, Mr Abbas the head of Fatah and of the PA flatly refused; then agreed to indirect talks where the Israelis would not be permitted to be in the same room at the same time as the Israelis; and then - just a few weeks ago - consented to actual face-to-face talks which started earlier in September.

Large parts of the Israeli public never understood why we would be expected to stop constructing houses, schools and communities in towns that we regard as our home. And having nevertheless agreed to do exactly that, many of us never understood why the other side's refusal to then sit down and talk was accepted at large (by the media, by international agencies, by most countries' diplomats) with almost complete equanimity. But that's how it was.

Now the parties are talking, and every rational person hopes they will find a way to reach common ground and a basis for peace.

Which brings us to the BBC.

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Warfare by Drone

Yaacov Lozowick
Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
28 September '10

I recognize that 2004 was a very long time ago, and no reasonable person ought to be expected to remember things that far back. Me too. Alas, upon reading this news item in the New York Times, about how the Americans are stepping up their drone attacks against nasties in Pakistan - an article in which the words "Illegal by international law" never appear, I had this strange urge to find out how far back was it since the general international consensus was united in its condemnation of Israel's illegal assassinations. 2000? 2001? Perhaps even as late as September 12th 2001?

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The Same Mistake

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
28 September '10

Even Richard Cohen has figured out that it is not Bibi’s intransigence but Obama’s incompetence that is at the root of the non-peace-talks impasse.
He writes:

Obama ought to confer with someone who knows the region — and listen to him or her. Trouble is, many experts have told him that his emphasis on settlements was the wrong way to go. As late as last week and the succession of meetings held at the United Nations, it was clear that Netanyahu would not ask his Cabinet to extend the settlement freeze. Yet not only did the White House reject this warning, the president repeated his call for a freeze. “Our position on this issue is well-known,” Obama told the U.N. General Assembly. “We believe that the moratorium should be extended.” Well, it wasn’t. …

The Obama approach to the Israeli-Palestinian problem has been counterproductive. Either the Palestinians have to back down from their — even more importantly, Obama’s — insistence that all settlements be frozen in place or Netanyahu has to back down from his pledge that any moratorium would be temporary. Either Abbas or Netanyahu has to lose credibility and neither man can afford to. They are not mere negotiators; they are heads of government.

Obama, too, has to husband his credibility. He foolishly demanded something Israel could not yet give.

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The sins of the media

Op-ed: New Year a good time for changing bad habits, such as flawed anti-Israel reporting

Gilead Ini
Israel Opinion/Ynet
28 September '10

The start of the Jewish New Year is an especially fitting time to evaluate the news media’s coverage of the Middle East conflict. In many traditions, the New Year is a time for resolving to changes bad habits.

In the Jewish tradition, it’s also a time to repent for transgressions of the past year. Yom Kippur’s Al Chet prayer, for example, begs forgiveness for a long list of sins, ranging from hard-heartedness to improper speech to lying.

Because a number of influential media organizations committed the journalistic equivalent of such egregious sins, perhaps an alternate version of Al Chet would be appropriate. This prayer might involve asking the public, whom journalists are meant to serve, to grant forgiveness for the following:

For the sin of whitewashing terrorist groups

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria last month suggested that Americans should look to Hezbollah as a model of religious tolerance. That’s because the terrorist group “respects” the Jews, and is merely opposed to “Israel’s occupation of Arab lands.” So said Hezbollah’s PR chief, and so Zakaria unquestioningly relayed to his trusting viewers.

But Zakaria, who is considered an expert on international affairs, should surely know that Hezbollah’s leader insists the Holocaust is a “myth,” and was quoted in a Lebanese newspaper saying that if Jews all gather in Israel “it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” How by any definition is this “respect” for the Jews?

Zakaria should also realize that, despite any euphemistic references to opposing Israeli “occupation,” Hezbollah isn’t shy about announcing, as its leader did, that “‘Israel’ is an illegal presence (and) a cancerous gland, and must be wiped out of existence.”

The Economist likewise twisted reality to whitewash a terror group. In July, the magazine reported that Hamas “implies that recognition (of Israel) would come at the end of negotiations....” Never mind that just days earlier, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar explained his group continues to plan for Israel’s destruction: “Our plan for this stage is to liberate any inch of Palestinian land, and to establish a state on it. Our ultimate plan is (to have) Palestine in its entirety. I say this loud and clear so that nobody will accuse me of employing political tactics. We will not recognize the Israeli enemy.”

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Ha'aretz, Margaret Atwood, Fabricate Allegation of Child Deaths

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA Media Analysis
28 September '10

Celebrated poet and fiction writer Margaret Atwood, the recipient of the Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University last May, should stick to the world of fiction. In a Sept. 17 piece in Ha'aretz entitled "Suffering of Palestinian children is something both sides can agree on," Atwood cites a 2009 report by Save the Children U.K. called "Life on the Edge," claiming that document finds that "the rate of malnutrition of the children in Area C [of the West Bank, under full Israeli control] is higher than even that in Gaza, and many kids are not only developmentally stunted, but are dying from related illnesses." But the 70-page document says nothing about child malnutrition or mortality, either caused by illnesses related to malnutrition, developmental stunting, or otherwise. This is pure invention on the part of Ms. Atwood, whose piece appeared in the Yom Kippur issue of the Israeli publication.

This gross falsehood serves as the test case in Ms. Atwood's challenge to what she calls the "entrenched" view of Israelis, and falsely epitomizes what she sees as Israel's responsibility for the conflict. In her words: "If you break it, you own it. Israel owns this problem, and Israel should fix it. Or does Israel really want an international campaign in which every doughnut shop in North America features a collection box, a sad-eyed child holding a dead sibling, and a stack of outrage-generating leaflets? Write your congressman: Tie aid to Israel to action on Area C child malnutrition and deaths? Give at church, save an Area C baby? Or how about: On the Day of Atonement, when considering wrongs to other human beings for which you bear some responsibility, start with the children of Area C?"

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Jordan reveals the purpose of UNRWA

Elder of Ziyon
28 September '10

Jordan has written a "carefully worded" letter to the head of UNRWA and to the Arab donor nations warning about the shortfall in UNRWA's budget.

Originally reported in Saudi Arabia's Okaz on September 19th, the letter emphasized the dangers to Lebanon and Jordan of reducing the UNRWA budget.

Even though the vast majority of so-called "Palestinian refugees" in Jordan are in fact Jordanian citizens, the Hashemite kingdom shows no interest in integrating those residents into Jordanian society and has consistently worked to keep the Palestinian Arabs crammed into these miserable camps under UNRWA control rather than integrate these citizens into Jordanian society.

UNRWA - Lords of Misery Film made by Pierre Rehov 
Used with permission (Y.)

Redemption1948

The newspaper said that Jordan regularly warns of the dangers of reducing UNRWA's budget, as "these UNRWA camps are meant to keep the issue of Palestinian refugees alive."

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US pressure only works one way

Fresnozionism.org
28 September '10

More than a year ago, Barack Obama stalled the ‘peace process’ by suggesting that construction inside existing Israeli settlements was ‘an obstacle to peace’.

The Palestinians immediately agreed with him, and refused to talk until ‘settlement activity’ stopped.

Obama applied pressure to Israel and succeeded in forcing it to agree to a 9-month freeze on construction in Judea and Samaria late last year. But it wasn’t good enough for the Palestinians, who still would not agree to negotiate.

In March of this year, the US administration took advantage of an announcement by a low-level clerk in Israel’s Housing Ministry that there were plans to construct 1,800 apartments in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem to orchestrate a rupture in relations with Israel. After Obama’s widely publicized humiliation of Benjamin Netanyahu (which he later denied), Israel agreed to freeze construction in East Jerusalem too, although no official announcement was made. There were further concessions, but the Palestinians still weren’t satisfied.

Finally, last month, the Palestinian Authority (PA) was persuaded to agree to direct talks with Israel. The talks so far have consisted of the PA making demands while refusing to agree that the outcome of talks will be “two states for two peoples.”

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Has Liberal Washington Figured Out the Palestinians?

Jonathan S. Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
28 September '10

During the course of his first year and a half in office, President Barack Obama demonstrated time and again that he was not shy about placing pressure on Israel. Having picked fights with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Jewish settlements in the West Bank soon after both men assumed their posts in 2009, and then again in 2010, over a housing start in Jerusalem during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph Biden, Obama’s antipathy for the Israeli government is well established. But in spite of this, something interesting is happening in Washington as the peace talks promoted by Obama have foundered on the question of whether Israel will agree to renew a freeze on settlements as a precondition for the Palestinians’ continued presence at the table: Israel isn’t being blamed for the mess.

Some in the administration and even the established media have stumbled upon the fact that, as Ben Smith wrote yesterday in Politico, the problem is “the Palestinian insistence that one issue — settlements — be resolved before talks can begin.” This means that “Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is now feeling some of the heat reserved last year for Netanyahu, and facing the prospect that if he fulfills his promise to withdraw from talks, he will bear the full blame for their collapse.” Smith even quotes Palestinian propagandist Hussein Ibish as admitting that the “onus is on the Palestinians not to walk away.”

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Ask the Arabs of East Jerusalem: Should Jerusalem Be Redivided?

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
28 September'10

The future status of Jerusalem is back on the negotiating table between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and Israel. It is being described as one of the "core issues" in the US-sponsored direct talks that were launched in early September.

Both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators need to take into account that it's completely unrealistic to talk about restoring the pre-1967 situation where Jerusalem was divided into two cities.

The division was bad for Jews and Arabs back then and it will be worse if it happens once again.

Jerusalem is a very small city where Jews and Arabs live across the street from each other and on top of each other. Since 1967, Israel has built many new neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city, rendering it impossible to imagine a reality where Jerusalem would exist as a divided city.

Redividing Jerusalem will turn the lives of both Jews and Arabs into a nightmare, especially with regards to traffic arrangements. Every day, tens of thousands of Jews and Arabs commute between the two parts of the city freely.

Redividing Jerusalem will result in the establishment of checkpoints and border crossings inside many parts of the city. Jews and Arabs will find themselves confined to their homes and neighborhoods, which will be surrounded by security barriers and checkpoints.

In addition, the negotiators must concede the possibility of asking the Arab residents of the city about their preferences. There is no reason why more than 200,000 Arabs in Jerusalem should be denied the right to voice their opinion on a matter that has a direct affect on their lives and future.

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