America’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights versus the Gang of Six - by Stephen M. Flatow

Because they live in the safe and comfortable suburbs of New York City and Washington, D.C., Ross, Indyk, Makovsky et al have the luxury of pontificating about the need for Israel to give up territory without ever having to deal personally with the consequences of such withdrawals. But for the Israelis who now live within missile range of Gaza—and who could have been within missile range of the Syrians if they were on the Golan Heights—the consequences are very real.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
25 March '19..

America’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights is supported by a broad cross-section of the American Jewish community—with the glaring exception of six Jewish ex-State Department officials who always manage to find a way to criticize Israel.

Dennis Ross, Daniel Kurtzer, Richard Haas, Aaron Miller, Martin Indyk and Indyk’s assistant, David Makovsky, have all retired from the “peace-processing” business and are now busying themselves posing as Mideast “experts” on talk shows and op-ed pages.

This Gang of Six, who spent so many years trying to convince us that Yasser Arafat was moderate and that parts of Jerusalem should become the capital of “Palestine,” are now trotting out all the reasons why the United States should not recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s control of the Golan.

Dennis Ross said in an interview with Foreign Policy magazine that the U.S. action will “make it harder” for the Arab world to support peace with Israel. That’s dumb, but at least it’s not weird. His colleagues’ comments, by contrast, have been downright bizarre.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Israel, the Golan and the Great British Foreign Office Fantasy - by Douglas Murray

...The Israeli government has given the British government what it wanted. Perhaps now would be a good time for the British government to reciprocate in some way?

Douglas Murray..
Gatestone Institute..
24 July '18..

According to the British Foreign Office, the Golan Heights are 'occupied'. They have been 'occupied' -- according to the logic of the UK Foreign Office -- since 1967, when Israel took the land from the invading forces of Syria. Ever since then, the Israelis have had the benefit of this strategic position and the Syrian regime has not. This fact, half a century on, still strikes the British Foreign Office as regrettable, and a wrong to be righted in due course.

Of course, since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the official position of the UK government has become ever-harder to justify. For example, if the Israeli government were at some point over the last seven years suddenly to have listened to the wisdom of the Foreign Office in London and handed over the strategic prize of the Golan, to whom should it have handed it? Should Israel be persuaded to hand over the territory to the Assad regime in Damascus? It is true that, throughout the course of the Syrian civil war, the one bit of territory to which the Syrian regime has laid claim and which it has not been able to barrel-bomb and otherwise immiserate the people there has been the Golan Heights. Only in the Golan has anybody in this 'Greater Syria' been able to live free from the constant threat of massacre and ethnic, religious or political cleansing.

Other candidates for the territory naturally presented themselves across the same time-frame. The armies of ISIS came right up to the villages on the Syrian side along the borders of the Golan. There, they were able to bring that form of peace-through-barbarism which the world has come to know well. If ISIS had triumphed in the Syrian conflict rather than suffering repeated set-backs, would the UK Foreign Office have handed them the territory by way of reparational justice, or victor's prize? If not them, then perhaps the armies of Iran or Russia could have been the recipients of this feat of restorative diplomacy? Perhaps anyone who wished to lay claim to the Golan could have had it. So long as it was not the Israelis.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The UN General Assembly, the Golan, and Theater of the Absurd - by Elliott Abrams

...It’s hard to think of a better example of why the United Nations has become the theater of the absurd. The representative of a regime that rules perhaps ten percent of Syria and has murdered half a million of its own people, including with poison gas, condemns Israel for its “killing.” The General Assembly spends a day passing six resolutions denouncing Israel. And representatives of democracies all around the world hide and abstain.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
03 December '16..
Link: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2016/12/03/the-united-nations-general-assembly-the-golan-and-theater-of-the-absurd/

This past week the United Nations General Assembly commemorated once again the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” and took the occasion to pass six anti-Israel resolutions.

Ranging from the despicable to the absurd, these resolutions of course have nothing to do with reality in the Middle East, nor do they bring peace one minute closer. Let’s take a look at one–the resolution entitled “The Syrian Golan.”

This resolution (formally known as Agenda item 34 or document A/71/L.8) had many cosponsors. They included, and I quote, such world leaders as “Bolivia (Plurinational State of)” and “Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of),” plus Zimbabwe, Comoros, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and of course a bunch of Arab states.

The heart of the resolution is this: The General Assembly

Determines once more that the continued occupation of the Syrian Golan and its de facto annexation constitute a stumbling block in the way of achieving a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the region…

Demands once more that Israel withdraw from all the occupied Syrian Golan to the line of 4 June 1967 in implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions;

What precisely would happen were Israel tomorrow morning to withdraw from what the UN calls “the Syrian Golan?” Would Islamic State try to overrun it and slaughter Druze living there? Would Iranian-backed militias take part of it? More likely, would the butcher Bashar al-Assad’s Iranian-backed army try to seize it? Or, most likely of all, would Hezbollah forces seize it?

How would that affect the people living there? Or the people living in northern Israel? Or the people living across the border from the Golan in Jordan?

The UN, Reversing the Laws of Thermodynamics, and Israel on the Golan Heights

...One could not do better to make Israel’s case than to cite Moshe Arens -- retired Israeli diplomat, Defense Minister, and aeronautical engineer. “According to the second law of thermodynamics there are no reversible processes in nature. Nothing can return exactly to its original state. This law may not hold in international relations, but the exceptions are few and far between.” Syria is unlikely to return to its “original state” which, in fact, was only its state determined by colonials and held for a few decades in the middle of the 20th Century. The UN, however, may believe it has a better chance of reversing the laws of thermodynamics than of bringing the war of Syrians and others parties to an end.

Shoshana Bryen..
American Thinker..
03 May '16..

Chinese Ambassador Liu Jieyi, who held the April UN Security Council presidency, announced last week that the status of the Golan Heights “remains unchanged.” That is, of course, true -- like the old "Saturday Night Live" running gag, “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.”

He meant it belongs to Syria, and he was responding to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet on the Golan, “The Golan Heights have been an integral part of the land of Israel since ancient times; the dozens of ancient synagogues in the area around us attest to that. And the Golan is an integral part of the state of Israel in the new era. I told [Secretary of State John Kerry] that I doubt that Syria will ever return to what it was.”

That is, of course, also true and entirely unremarkable. But thus begins another round of UN condemnation of Israel resting on silly propositions. In this case:

- That Syria -- ruled by a war criminal in the midst of a civil war with other groups that include war criminals -- has a valid claim to anything; and- That Israel is wrong because the UN is miffed.

A bit of relatively recent history is useful here.

An Israeli was raised in the Galilee sleeping every night in a bunker to avoid Syrian shelling from the Golan Heights -- Hamas and Hizb’allah are latecomers to the war crime of indiscriminately firing at civilians. As a child, he helped on the family farm. While riding the tractor, his father couldn’t hear the mortars fired by the Syrians down into the fields. The child’s job was to be within eyesight of the tractor along the edge of the field near some trees. When the mortars began, he would wave a large red flag to catch his father’s attention, at which his father would slip off the tractor and hasten for shelter. Not exactly milking the cow.

Things changed in June 1967 when, after intensified shelling by the Syrians, the IDF captured the Golan. Israeli soldiers stood on the Heights and looked down into Israel’s Hula Valley. Their new understanding of the dire circumstances at the bottom shocked them, and they left a marker that remains today. “From here,” it reads, “You look ten feet tall.”

At great cost in the lives of military personnel, Israel retained the Heights in 1973 after Syria launched an offensive on Yom Kippur.

Israel would have been within its rights to annex the Golan Heights -- in 1967 or in ’73. The UN line about “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force” (ever applied only to Israel) to rational observers means the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by offensive force; otherwise defense would have no meaning. Israel acquired the Golan in defense, and retained it in defense.

It was understanding that insecure boundaries could result in additional wars -- in the case of Israel, not least because the Arab countries were/are still working to overturn the 1948 independence of Israel by force -- that the 1967 UN Resolution 242 contained the security promise to Israel of “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

Israel's Quneitra Attack in Context: Game Not Over

...The Iran/Hizballah/Assad side has long threatened to develop the Golan as a front for possible 'jihad duties' against Israel. Both Syrian President Bashar Assad and Nasrallah made unambiguous public statements in 2014 threatening the opening of military activity against Israel in this area. Israel, in turn, has made clear that such a move would constitute a violation of the status quo . The strike on Sunday constituted a very kinetic further Israeli message intended to drive home this point.

Thousands of Iranians gather in Tehran
for the funeral of Revolutionary Guard
Commander Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi

Jonathan Spyer..
MEF/JPost..
22 January '15..

In analyzing the significance of, and likely fallout from ,the Israeli killing of a number of senior Hizballah and IRGC personnel close to the Golan border this week, a number of things should be borne in mind:

Firstly, the killings were a response to a clear attempt by the Iranians/Hizballah to violate the very fragile status quo that pertains between these elements and Israel in Lebanon and Syria. in his interview to the al-Mayadeen network three days before the attack, Hizballah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah explicitly claimed that his organization was not engaged in 'resistance work' on the Golan. The Israeli strike showed that this statement was a lie.

Some analysis of the strike has suggested that the men killed in the attack were engaged in preparation for the placing of sophisticated Iranian missile systems on the Syrian part of the Golan. Other accounts suggested that their mission was part of preparing this area for the launch of ground attacks across the border against Israeli targets, perhaps using proxies. In either case, the mission was a clear attempt to change the arrangement of forces in the north, in such a way that could be expected to ensure an Israeli response.

Secondly, in the past, Hizballah has reacted differently to Israeli strikes on it or its Syrian allies within Syria, compared to strikes on Lebanese soil. The difference again relates to the unstated but clear 'rules of the game' between the organization and the Jewish state. Israeli strikes on materiel making its way to the organization from Syrian soil have elicited no response from the movement.

By contrast, an Israeli attack on a weapons convoy just across the border on Lebanese soil near the village of Janta on February 24, 2014 provoked a Hizballah response . On March 18th, an IED was exploded just south of the border fence in the Majdal Shams area on the Golan Heights, wounding four IDF soldiers.

The rules of the game in question do not indicate a lessening of warlike intentions or a growing affection on the part of Hizballah toward Israel. Rather, they reflect the acute need that this organization and its Iranian masters currently have to not be drawn into conflict with Israel unless this becomes unavoidable.

Hizballah is overstretched at the moment. It has between 5000-10,000 men engaged in Syria. It is engaged in a determined and fraying attempt to prevent Sunni jihadi incursions across the border into Lebanon from Syria, and bomb attacks by the Sunni groups further into Lebanon.

Hizballah is also an integral part of the Iranian outreach effort in Iraq, where members of the organization are engaged in training Shia fighters.

Even as far afield as Yemen, where the Iran-backed Houthi militia is engaged in a push for power, the movement's fingerprints have been found.

All this reflects Hizballah's nature as Iran's primary agent in the Arab world. Given all this activity, the last thing that the IRGC and Hizballah need is to be drawn into a premature conflagration with Israel.

UN Peacekeepers Stop Pretending to Keep Peace - The End of an Era

...The international community also likes the idea of considering the Golan Heights occupied Syrian territory. They should ask the UN peacekeeping forces if they’d like the land to which they’ve currently retreated to still be on the Syrian side of the border. They should ask that question, by the way, while there still is technically a country called Syria.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
15 September '14..

The United Nations has come up with a strange follow-up to Israel’s credible accusations that UN facilities allowed themselves to be used essentially as human shields for Hamas in Gaza: the UN is now, apparently, using Israeli soldiers as human shields up north. Somehow I don’t think that’s what Israeli authorities had in mind when they protested the UN’s one-sided wartime behavior.

What appears to have happened, and which has been confirmed by UN spokesmen, is that UN peacekeeping forces on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights are in retreat. They have, in fact, left Syria. The phrase “peacekeeping forces” should have made them aware of the fact that they would not be supervising a game of hacky sack. A peacekeeping force, theoretically, would arrive during a period of temporary peace to ensure it becomes a permanent peace. The UN forces see it differently.

An AP story today very gently and generously breaks the news, and in doing so buries the lede a bit:

The United Nations said Monday it has withdrawn its peacekeepers from many positions on the Golan Heights because of escalating fighting in the war between Syrian government forces and opposition fighters.

Which positions on the Golan Heights? Asked and answered:

The situation has deteriorated severely over the last few days and advances by armed groups posed “a direct threat to the safety and security of the U.N. peacekeepers” along the Syrian side of the border and in Camp Faouar where many troops are based, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. He said all troops in those areas have been relocated to the Israeli side of the border.

The Syrian side of the border! That’s seems pretty significant. Indeed, it’s the end of an era, as AP notes:

The 1,200-strong U.N. force has patrolled a buffer zone between Syria and Israel since 1974, a year after the Arab-Israeli war. For nearly four decades, U.N. monitors helped enforce a stable truce between Israel and Syria, but the spillover from the Syrian war has led to the abduction of peacekeepers four times since March 2013, made troop contributors wary, and led several countries to withdraw their soldiers.

But all is not lost. It’s possible, says the UN–though they don’t know for sure–that someone affiliated with the UN is still in Syria, somewhere, keeping some kind of peace:

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told The Associated Press earlier that he doesn’t think every single post has been vacated.

Seems like an important detail. But never mind. The important thing is that the UN peacekeepers are safe, hiding behind Israelis.

Something vital to consider as we see Syria descend into a fourth year of lingering hell

...All the talk about territory no longer mattering in our technological and globalized reality has been revealed as so much cerebral claptrap. It’s harrowing enough to envisage what our lot would now be had we succumbed to the advice of the weak-willed among us and surrendered the Golan to Assad. It is incomparably more terrifying to imagine the same mad mutual-obliteration attempted between Salafists and Shiites – and their numerous kindred exotic strains – on the edges of Kfar Saba, Petach Tikva and Jerusalem.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
19 March 14..

Hezbollah is the culprit that most readily comes to mind when trying to figure out who masterminded the roadside attack on IDF soldiers in the Golan last Tuesday. Hezbollah’s motivation is obvious following the destruction of its missile transports into Lebanon.

Not only has it vowed revenge but its ally, embattled Damascus despot Bashar Assad, has served ample warning that from now on he won’t bar Hezbollah forces from striking against Israel from the Golan.

With that in mind, the detonated booby-trap device (and possible kidnap attempt) was no surprise.

Nevertheless, nothing in Syria necessarily resembles what meets the eye. Syria has deteriorated into an anarchic free-for-all zone the likes of which even this erratic region had never known. It has become a magnetic arena for every terror-mongering setup from the Sunni-supported al Qaida to its Iranian-propped Shiite arch-rival Hezbollah. Lots of bizarre, impenetrable and obscure varieties litter the spectrum in-between and all of them are incendiary, violent and sadistic to extremes inconceivable in today’s liberal and pluralistic West.

What started out as the Syrian civil war, and has lured all these warring elements, has now marked its third unhappy anniversary. It went by largely unnoticed in the international community where sporadic hand-wringing about the ongoing Syrian horror-spectacle is all that can be expected.

The underdog anti-Assad native rebels are fading fast and losing hard to assorted jihadist interlopers. Assad and the diverse fanatics from the outside rule isolated strongholds that have been turned into autonomous mini-states. There are no saints in this internecine bloodshed and all protagonists are in fact out-and-out villains.

They, moreover, all lie prodigiously. No proclamation or contention from Syria can or should be trusted.

The Syrian mayhem exposes both pan-Arabism and its antithesis – separate Arab nationalities – as synthetic hoaxes. The artificial and fragile outer national coating has disintegrated wretchedly (elsewhere in the Arab world as well, but most brutally in Syria).

This isn’t a conflict that can be decisively won. Crimes against humanity are perpetrated blatantly by all sides and, occasional lip-service notwithstanding, the world hardly cares. The lust to massacre rages, underscoring the folly and naiveté of American initiatives like the Geneva peace conference.

Is there anyone who still thinks we could have left the Golan?

Why didn't we let the Golan Heights come under the control of the Assad family and forsake our security? Had a deal been signed with Assad, the bloody encounters would have take place right above the Sea of Galilee; no Israeli/Jewish community would have been safe.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
26 August '13..

The barbarians didn't appear out of thin air; they have always been around.

They have been operating in sleeper cells within the mock civilization that was left behind by the European colonialists as the First World War drew to a close in Middle East. With Syria's lid blown off, President Bashar Assad's tribe and its various affiliates have been fighting the Sunni tribes that were in power before November 1970, when Assad's father staged a coup and had his loyalists appointed to senior positions in the military and the government. Do the various tribes in Syria have anything in common?

My heart goes out to the average Syrian who has found himself in the crossfire, a victim of a war among the barbarians. That said, Israel should not get involved. Its help should be limited to humanitarian aid. We must not accept the simplistic narrative that there are good guys vs. bad guys in Syria. Each side in this conflict is just as barbaric as the other. Perhaps even more so.

Those who eat their opponent's heart (I am not making this up) and then rationalize this cannibalistic act, could ultimately use weapons of mass destruction. They are no different from Assad and his allies, Hezbollah and Iran.

There is one area where there is no daylight between the two warring factions: they both have an unlimited supply of hatred toward Israel. If those sides see an opening, they might try to increase the number of incidents that encroach on Israeli territory.

We have no dog in this race. Should Israel decide to back one side or another, it will have provided the Arabs in the Middle East and leftists all over the world with what they had been searching for all along (where it was most convenient): a way to blame Israel for the Syrian civil war.

The Bible tells us that "He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears" (Proverbs 26:17). According to the biblical commentator Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki), this is akin to making a dog bite you for nothing. In other words, the Syrians will tell us, "This is none of your business; we are now going to combine forces against you."

Israel and the disintegration of Sykes-Picot

The breakdown of the old Sykes-Picot political order is testing Israel’s border with Syria along the Golan Heights.

JPost Editorial..
09 June '13..

The political order artificially constructed in the Middle East by the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement is disintegrating. As the Syrian civil war rages, the borders drawn nearly a century ago are becoming blurred.

Syria is gradually splintering into three different entities: one region along the coast is loyal to the Alawite regime of President Bashar Assad; another yet-to- be-determined swath of territory might fall under the control of Sunni opposition forces; and a Kurdish enclave with ties to northern Iran and Kurdish groups in Turkey is also emerging. Perhaps this is the inevitable demise of a state populated by a Sunni majority that is ruled by an Alawite minority.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s territorial integrity is also in danger of being compromised. Iraqi Kurdistan will soon have its own oil pipeline up and running. This is seen as an important step toward an independent Kurdistan.

Shi’ite areas in southern Iraq close to the border with Kuwait are increasingly pressing for autonomy, with support from Iran. And Sunni tribes in Iraq have joined forces against the Assad regime, creating a third distinct sectarian group in Iraq.

The changing balance of power might have ramifications for Jordan, where Beduin tribes rule over a Palestinian majority.

The breakdown of the old Sykes-Picot political order is also testing Israel’s border with Syria along the Golan Heights. Israel must remain vigilant to prevent the sort of anarchy that reigns along the 600-kilometer border which separates Iraq and Syria.

And that is precisely what Israel has been doing.

(+Video) "Violating Human Rights in the Golan" - UN Prepares Syrian-Sponsored Resolution Condemning Israel

UN Watch Briefing..
Vol. 421..
13 March '13..

GENEVA, March 13 - At the UN Human Rights Council on Friday, Syria accused Israel of violating human rights of children in the Golan, while diplomats met in another chamber on the same day to discuss a Syrian-drafted resolution, to be adopted next week, entitled "Human Rights in the Occupied Syrian Golan." There will be five other resolutions targeting Israel, and about the same number on the rest of the world combined.

While this year Syria did not officially present the text, its delegate sat on the dais next to his Pakistani colleague who chaired the session on behalf of the Islamic group. Not a single diplomat called out the sheer lunacy of the exercise. Rather, the EU commented that it was "committed to the protection of all, including those in the occupied Golan." It was willing to "constructively engage on the text," even as it noted that its proposals last year were not implemented. Egypt said it aligned itself with the Islamic group.

Later in the day, UN Watch had occasion to take the floor in the plenary:


HumanRightsUN

Testimony by executive director Hillel Neuer delivered before the UN Human Rights Council plenary, March 8, 2013.

Syrian Rebels Being Trained to Conquer Golan Heights and Shoot Down Israeli Aircraft

Shoshana Bryen..
American Thinker..
13 March '13..

No, they don't say it quite like that. But after years of hypocrisy, the Obama administration has admitted that while it declined to arm Syrian rebels directly for fear that weapons would end up in the hands of al-Qaeda forces, it has been quietly vetting and training anti-Assad forces while others provided weapons all around. Now the training is out in the open, and Secretary of State Kerry has pledged $60 million in "non-lethal aid" to the rebels. (Plus $250 million to Egypt, while Israel may take a hit of $150 million from sequestration -- makes you wonder.)

American assistance is supposed to go only to "moderate" rebels, but arms have been flowing freely, paid for by American "allies" Qatar and Saudi Arabia and moving through Turkey. Recently, a source with ties to Israeli intelligence claimed that a supply line has been running from Bosnian extremist groups, outside the control, influence, or even vision of the U.S. and its allies. Libya and al-Qaeda in Iraq have also been conduits for weapons to rebel militias, and last week, 48 Syrian government soldiers and officials were killed in Anbar Province, an al-Qaeda stronghold.

Israel expects to see any and all weapons, including some of the estimated 15,000 surface-to-air missiles the U.S. admits "disappeared" from Libya, aimed in its direction.

More than a year ago, Maj. Gen. Avi Kochavi, chief of IDF Intelligence, warned that al-Qaeda had moved into the buffer zone that separates Israel and Syria, which had been at least nominally in the hands of U.N. peacekeepers since 1974. Last week, Syrian rebel groups captured 21 Filipino peacekeepers from their Golan Heights enclave and caused others to flee into Israel. Croatia announced that it is removing its 100 soldiers, and Israel fears that others may follow. Kochavi said that should Assad fall, the rebels would aim straight at Israel; Syrian rebel groups agree.

It was Israeli intelligence reports that Assad was moving his chemical weapons that first brought American Special Forces to Turkey and Jordan in 2012, hoping to train Syrian rebels to secure the arsenal before Assad or Hezb'allah moved it to Lebanon or used it. The irony of planning to entrust chemical weapons capability to rebels to whom they wouldn't give guns appears to have escaped the Americans.

Shelly’s macho-man mentor who would've given Assad the Golan

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
09 November '12..

Hanna Rovina, the late-great first lady of the Israeli theater, once quipped: “people with connections don’t need protectzia” (“favoritism,” in Israeli parlance).

This is perhaps why in days bygone retiring IDF generals invariably gravitated to the Labor Party, where they had ample connections which guaranteed them a helpful leg-up to the top of the political hierarchy.

It was all mutually advantageous – symbiotic, in fact. Star officers were fast-tracked to prominence, while Labor basked in their military glory. The effect lent authority to the party’s claim to be the ultimate arbiter of what’s good for our national security. We had whom to count on and the-generals-turned-politicians couldn’t agree more. They profusely sang their own praises.

But nothing is what it used to be, particularly not in Labor. And so the heiress to David Ben-Gurion’s mantle, ex-radio presenter Shelly Yacimovich, found herself without a pivotal vote-getting ex-general figurehead. She had to have one, even if thereby she admits her own lack of experience and need to rely on the mentoring of a macho-man.

So she looked and looked and finally came up with… Uri Sagi. Two weeks on, Sagi withdrew from the Labor race citing “personal reasons.” Shelly is now looking again.

But Sagi’s short-lived political dabble isn’t a negligible footnote. If anything, this brief, embarrassing episode is emblematic because Sagi is hardly in a class of his own. He is garden- variety common.

For those who don’t recall, Sagi, nearly 70, is the ex-OC Military Intelligence who for years has been bewailing the failure to cede the Golan to the Assad clan. His oft-repeated refrain is that this was “a huge historical miss, a mistake of massive strategic proportions.” Even the bloody upheavals in Syria didn’t suffice to change his tune – the one he has been humming incessantly.

Incoming fire from Syria on the northern border

Syrian woman takes a picture of an Israeli community located on the Golan Heights [Image Source] 

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
25 September '12..

It's the eve of Yom Kippur and though the mood here in Jerusalem is calm (thankfully) and the weather glorious (of course), the reverberations of the war that broke out on that day in 1973 are in the air (inevitably).

In the past hour, mortar fire erupted on Israel's northern border, causing explosions in what appear, for now, to be open fields. No injuries, but some property damage that's not yet detailed in the news here. It's reported that the fire is a kind of spillover from the barbarism unfolding over the past year inside Syria: the source is believed to be forces of the Syrian army "engaged" - as the journalists like to put it - with rebel forces near Syria's border with Israel. AFP says the mortars crashed into Israel "by accident". They were intended to hit civilian villages inside Syria.

That ongoing engagement has caused thousands of deaths since it broke out in March 2011. Wikipedia says various sources, including the UN, place the rising death toll at between 26,000 [source] and 39,120 [source] people killed, about half of them civilians. Where is the outrage?

Ari Shavit, the Golan, and Land for Peace

P. David Hornik..
frontpagemag.com..
10 August '12..

I recently went up north for Shabbat. I spent hours just looking at the mountains of the Golan Heights as they reddened toward evening. But slowly the pure pleasure I was getting out of their amazing beauty was replaced by a deep discomfort.

So wrote left-of-center Israeli columnist Ari Shavit on Thursday in Haaretz (full text available here). He knew well, of course, that beyond the tranquil scene he was witnessing lay Syria, a zone of turmoil and brutality.

Indeed, Shavit couldn’t help but think

what would be happening today if the ideological position I had long held—peace in return for the Golan—had been accepted…. I have to admit that if the worldview I had championed had been applied, battalions of global jihadis would be camping near Ein Gev [beside the Sea of Galilee] and there would be Al-Qaida bases on the shores of [the lake]. Northern Israel and the country’s water sources would be bordering this summer on an armed, extremist Islamic entity that could not be controlled.

Shavit and most of the Israeli left had, of course—until the chaos erupted in Syria last year, when they fell silent—long advocated restoring the Golan Heights to the tender mercies of the Assad regime. In 2000 then-prime minister Ehud Barak tried in earnest to hand the Golan over to Hafez al-Assad, father of the current embattled president. Assad responded by posing conditions that even the “peace”-hungry Barak could not meet—inducing relief among realistic Israelis and frustration among the left.

Akunis - Lessons from the Golan

MK Ofir Akunis
Israel Hayom
11 December '11

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=993

Thirty years ago this week something happened in Israel: The Golan Heights legally became an inextricable part of our country. For years, the Golan Heights had been part of the Land of Israel, but on Dec. 14, 1981, it fell under "Israeli law, jurisdiction, and administration." In other words, the Golan became an inseparable part of sovereign Israel.

Anyone who reads the fascinating minutes of the discussion and vote held that day in the Knesset would certainly not be able to discern between claims made back then and those voiced in today's Knesset. The rivalry between the Left and the Right was fierce. During the hearing, then Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who introduced the law, could not restrain himself, calling opposition MK Meir Vilner a "Stalinist."

Exactly 30 years later, what can we learn from that debate about contemporary public discourse?

"Israel Is Not A Banana Republic"

Begin’s Rebuttle Of Reagan, State Dept., on “Punishing” Israel

Love of the Land
09 December '11
H/T to David P.






VOLUME 7: 1981-1982 Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
91. Statement by Prime Minister Begin on U.S. Measures Against Israel, 20 December 1981.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign%20Relations/Israels%20Foreign%20Relations%20since%201947/1981-1982/91%20Statement%20by%20Prime%20Minister%20Begin%20on%20US%20Measure

In an unprecedented move, Mr. Begin summoned the United States ambassador to Israel, and read to him the following statement. It was later read to the cabinet and issued to the public. Mr. Begin complained that the U.S. had punished Israel three times in the past six months. Israel was no. “vassal state” or a “banana republic.” He also hinted of anti-Semitic overtones in some of the punitive measures taken by the United States.

Text of Menachem Begin Statement:

Three times during the past six months, the U.S. Government has “punished” Israel.

On June 7 we destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor “Osirak” near Baghdad. I don’t want to mention to you today from whom we received the final information that this reactor was going to produce atomic bombs. We had no doubt about that: therefore our action was an act of salvation, an act of national self-defense in the most lofty sense of the concept. We saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including tens of thousands of children.

Nonetheless, you announced that you were punishing us – and you left unfilled a signed and sealed contract that included specific dates for the supply of (war) planes.

Not long after, in a defensive act – after a slaughter was committed against our people leaving three dead (including an Auschwitz survivor) and 29 were injured we bombed the PLO headquarters in Beirut.

You have no moral right to preach to us about civilian casualties. We have read the history of World War Two and we know what happened to civilians when you took action against an enemy. We have also read the history of the Vietnam war and your phrase “body-count”. We always make efforts to avoid hitting civilian populations, but sometimes it is unavoidable – as was the case in our bombing of the PLO headquarters.
We sometimes risk the lives of our soldiers to avoid civilian casualties.

Nonetheless, you punished us: you suspended delivery of F-15 planes.

A week ago, at the instance of the Government, the Knesset passed on all three readings by an overwhelming majority of two-thirds, the “Golan Heights Law.”

Now you once again declare that you are punishing Israel.

What kind of expression is this – “punishing Israel”? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we youths of fourteen who, if they don’t behave properly, are slapped across the fingers?

Inbar - Israeli Control of the Golan Heights: High Strategic and Moral Ground for Israel

www.imra.org.il

Prof. Efraim Inbar
BESA Center monograph
http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/MSPS90.pdf


To read full paper click here

CONCLUSIONS

Expectations of the international community for peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors are almost universally based on the “Land for Peace” formula, which, in the case of a possible Israeli-Syrian deal, links withdrawal from the strategic Golan Heights with a peace agreement. Such a formula, however, does not serve Israel’s interests. Giving up the Golan plateau deprives Israel of its best defense against potential Syrian aggression. It also signals Israeli weakness and undermines Israel's deterrence. Designing borders in accordance with current but changing military technology and transient political circumstances is strategically foolish.

Moreover, the expected political returns for Israel from a peace treaty with Syria are meager. Syria is unlikely to align itself with pro- Western Arab states and abandon its regional alliance with Iran in return for Israeli territorial concessions on the Golan Heights. Damascus has made abundantly clear that such realignment is not on the table. Its ability to “deliver” Hizballah in Lebanon is also questionable. Moreover, a peace treaty with Syria is not going to affect the diplomatic fortunes of Israel in the region or in the world. And, Syria, as well as the rest of the Arab world, has little to offer to Israel in economic or cultural terms. Israel hardly desires to integrate into a despotic, corrupt and poor region. This calculus is not affected by the prospects of a change in Syria's leadership.

Another compelling reason for not accepting the “Peace for Land” formula is that the status quo serves Israel’s best interest and preserving it requires Israel to maintain its military superiority. Thus, while the possibility of disrupting the status quo by force exists, a Syrian challenge would be difficult diplomatically and militarily. As long as Syria fears escalation and Israel's power, Israel has the upper hand. Israeli policies toward Syria should be guided by such power politics, just as most territorial disputes are conducted, and Syria must at some point swallow its pride.

Since retaining the Golan is more important for Israel than reaching a peace treaty with Syria in the foreseeable future, Israel should insist on a new paradigm, “Peace for Peace,” based on the principle of defensible borders. The demand for secure borders seems reasonable and is rooted in international resolutions such as UNSC Resolution 242. The political unrest and volatility in the region, including questions about the foreign policies of Israel’s neighbors, similarly prescribe against taking any significant security risks by ceding the Golan to Syria.

Israel should augment its claims for defensible borders on the Golan Heights with normative, legal and historic arguments. A return to the 1967 border is morally repugnant because it implies that the aggressor of 1967, Syria, should not pay any price for its flagrant violation of international norms. Israel should also emphasize its historic rights to this piece of territory and point out that these claims were accepted in the 20th century in internationally recognized documents. It should use these historical and legal arguments to bolster its claim of sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

Israel must regain the moral high ground in order to show that it is demanding land that is part of its historic patrimony – not land that was conquered by force. A discourse rooted in normative, historic and legal considerations is important in this quest. Such a discourse will buttress realpolitik imperatives that dictate Israeli control of the Golan Heights.

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Naksa - Palestinians Killed by the Syrian Government

Shoshana Bryen
Senior Director for Security Policy
JINSA Report #: 1,096
June 6, 2011

http://www.jinsa.org/node/2330

Over the weekend, the Syrian government killed 122 people. What's that? You say some of them were killed by the IDF? No. The Palestinians killed on the Syria-Israel border were sent to their death by Bashar Assad, desperate to deflect attention from the more than 1,200 Syrians he has killed in the past few months, including another 100-plus over the weekend.

The West is slowly and reluctantly concluding that Assad more closely resembles his father - the Butcher of Hama - than the "reformer" Mrs. Clinton and Sen. Kerry want him to be. His victims include unarmed demonstrators, teenagers, women and people who were tortured until they died. More than 10,000 Syrians have been arrested by their government, many of whom disappeared without a trace and a few of whom were returned to their families in bags. Whole villages have been looted, and they're the lucky ones; tanks have rolled through others, firing.

The oddity Sunday was that the Palestinians were willing to do his bidding, willing to be the bauble that distracted the West, willing to march across what they knew to be a well-defended border, willing to let Junior Butcher decide the time, place and manner of their demise. Or it isn't odd - the Palestinians have been pawns of their "Arab brothers" since the days of the British Mandate; cats' paws in Arab efforts to kill Jews and erase Israel.

A few weeks ago, Palestinians were lamenting Israel's independence while pretending to forget that their state was strangled at birth by their "brothers" and then occupied by Jordan and Egypt. On 25 May, the Syrian government bused hundreds of Palestinians to the Syria-Israel border and told them to cross.[1] The Israelis were taken by surprise - the border having been quiet for 40 years - and the border was breached. No one was killed there, although there were deaths on the Lebanon-Israel border and there were riots in Gaza. Afterward, the IDF drew up very public plans to ensure that everyone understood that the IDF would not permit the borders to be breached on "Naksa" day - Sunday 5 June.

The Lebanon-Israel border was quiet by order of the Lebanese Armed Forces. The Gaza-Israel border was quiet by order of Hamas. The West Bank had mild demonstrations.

But the Syrian government took more than 1,000 Palestinians to the border - past Syrian military and UN outposts - and gave them a shove forward. Activists breached the outer fence and tried to storm the Israeli border. The Israelis fired warning shots and tear gas, and finally, fired low at people who crossed the outer fence.

If "Nakba" day laments the creation of Israel, "Naksa Day" laments the failure of the Arab hordes to destroy Israel in 1967. One wag compared it to Germans lamenting May 8, 1945 as the day Hitler failed to destroy the Allies. That's wrong. It's more like the Norwegians - Quislings - willing and evil partners of the Reich mourning the failure of Hitler to rid the world of Jews. The Norwegians were bit players, doing what they could to support the "big guy." The Palestinians are bit players as well.

If they are smart, the Palestinians will look back on "Naksa Day 2011" and call it "wake up" day, on which they finally understood that their Arab "brothers" have been using and abusing them for more than 60 years. They would if they had any self-respect. They would if they want to be something other than a cover for Syrian war crimes.

[1] One salutary effect of this incident was that the media has been forced to report that Syria monitors half a million Palestinian "refugees" who have lived in UNRWA camps/prisons for more than 60 years.


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(video) Mark Regev Answers al-Jazeera Regarding Yesterday's Syrian Border Incident

Daphne Anson
06 June '11

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/06/mark-regev-regarding-yesterdays-syrian.html

He was absolutely top-class yesterday on the BBC, pointing out what was not reported - that Molotov cocktails were being hurled at Israeli troops, and that Israel and Syria are still officially in a state of war - and here he is on Al-Jazeera:



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Golan Brigade commander: Infiltration of Syrians did not surprise us [Problematic narrative]

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
17 May '11





[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: One hopes that this and other remarks by various officials are more a reflection of an approach to treat the Israeli public like children while they themselves realize that they screwed up and are acting to rectify the situation. 


The size of the Golan did not change yesterday ( "you have to remember that this [the Golan Heights] is a very large area") - so that's hardly an explanation that can justify failure. 


Also the line that "At a certain point, the Syrian crowd started throwing stones" is deceptive as it leaves the impression that the forces were deployed and then this transpired when in truth the invasion was apparently underway before Israeli forces were even in a position to respond. 


And, of course, this remarkable narrative: "after this (shooting at legs) they withdrew".


 They didn't "withdraw". Those inside the Druze village interviewing with an Israel Radio reporter remained there for hours. 


This, in fact, was perhaps the most distressing element of the story: those listening to the live broadcast of Israel Radio Reshet Bet heard the correspondent talking live with invaders from Syria at the very same moment that Israeli defense spokespeople were giving the impression that the invaders had been repulsed. All this while for over an hour IDF Radio ignored the event altogether.]

Golan Brigade commander: Infiltration of Syrians did not surprise us
16 May 2011 , 17:36 IDF Website
http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/2011/05/1605.htm

"We prepared for such situations, in which people climbed the border fences, but you have to remember that this [the Golan Heights] is a very large area," commander of the Golan Brigade, Colonel Eshkol Shukrun, said on Sunday evening (May 15) following violent clashes on the Israel-Syria border when Syrian demonstrators breached the border fence. "Their infiltration was not a complete surprise."

Col. Shukrun himself was slightly injured in the clashes but continued to command the forces on the ground.

"At a certain point, the Syrian crowd started throwing stones, some of them large stones that endangered the soldiers," Col. Shukrun said. "When I understood that the event had gotten out of control, I realized that it was time to begin to shoot at the legs of protesters, mainly those who appeared to be the main inciters of the event. After this, they withdrew."

Col. Shukrun explained: "Because it was a crowd that included women and children, the orders to soldiers were to cause as little harm as possible. We tried to exercise restraint and cause little damage. "

Col. Shukrun said that the IDF cooperated with United Nations forces during the event.

"International forces assisted in handling the event, and were in touch with us particularly in the final stages. They took charge of the incident at the 'Shouting Hill' in terms of moving the demonstrators back to the east. The cooperation was good," Col. Shukrun said.

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