The Apartheid Libel and Palestinian Opinion

...If Jebreal wants Israel to become a place where Arab-Jewish hostility is lessened, then she should address her complaints to her fellow Arabs who support Hamas and whose hostility ensures the seemingly indefinite perpetuation of the conflict. But by invoking the apartheid libel about Israel and not the settlements in the territories she is giving away her real intent. Not even a total withdrawal from the lands won in 1967 would satisfy her any more than it would Hamas. What she wants is an end to the Jewish state, not a civil-rights movement as she disingenuously claims. So long as this is what passes for informed Arab opinion, no one should be surprised that Israelis have given up on peace for the foreseeable future.

Bratislav Milenkovic
NYT

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
28 October '14..

The latest poll of Palestinian opinion provides another sobering dose of reality to those who think that Israeli actions are the sole obstacle to peace. Following on the heels of previous surveys taken in the aftermath of this past summer’s war, the poll from the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center again shows that most Palestinians think Hamas won the conflict. More importantly, support for the Islamist terror group and the idea of continuing a military struggle against Israel continues to go up while backing for the supposedly more moderate Fatah declines. This is important in understanding not just how remote the chances of convincing those Fatah moderates to negotiate even a favorable peace deal with Israel are, but also why Israeli attitudes toward Palestinians have changed.

The polls tell us that the same people who were being used as human shields by Hamas in Gaza as well as other Palestinians in the West Bank are still unwilling to rethink their backing for the group’s efforts to wage war and ultimately destroy Israel. This is puzzling to those in the West who bother to look at the numbers, since it makes no sense. Hamas’s campaign of “resistance” against Israeli “occupation”—the phrase by which they refer to pre-1967 Israel and not just the West Bank—has no prospect of success. All it brings the Palestinians is more devastation, suffering, and bloodshed.

And yet the majority of Palestinians remain so hostile to Israel’s existence and the Jewish presence on even the land it held before June 1967 that the struggle remains popular. From its beginnings in the early 20th century, Palestinian nationalism has always been inextricably linked with the war on Zionism. Reinforced by a constant drumbeat of incitement from both the official media of the Palestinian Authority and its leadership, the political culture of the Palestinians remains implacably hostile to Israel even if one takes Hamas out of the equation. That culture of denial of Israel’s legitimacy feeds the terrorism of Hamas in the form of missiles and terror tunnels, but also the Arab violence in the streets of Jerusalem against Israeli citizens that has created a steady toll of casualties in recent months.

It is also in that context that we should read the latest diatribe against Israel in the New York Times. An op-ed published today by Israeli Arab journalist Rula Jebreal is a compendium of charges all aimed to depict the country as fitting into the “apartheid state” libel. In her telling, every aspect of the country’s laws is geared toward discrimination against the Arab minority population. Israel is, like any democracy, imperfect and it would not be true to claim that Israeli Arabs have no cause for complaint. Some of what she writes about is true and some are distortions. But one doesn’t have to read too far between the lines to see that the purpose of her indictment is not redress of specific wrongs but the end of the Zionist project. The rights of national minorities should be protected in any society but the existence of that minority does not give them the right to thwart the basic purpose of the state.

Kerry, Qatar and the poisonous tree by Caroline Glick

...Rather than recognize that they are being played by double-speaking Palestinians and their jihadist supporters, Washington and Brussels are going along with their deceit. Both the Obama administration and the EU firmly side with the Palestinian demand that Jews be denied civil rights in Jerusalem. Both have condemned and threatened Israel for not preventing Jews from lawfully purchasing homes in Silwan and for allowing contractors to build homes for Jews in Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem. This places the Israeli government in an impossible position. It is being attacked by jihadist forces who seek its destruction. It is told by Washington and Europe that if it doesn’t appease those who cannot be appeased by denying protection and civil rights to Jews, then it will lose whatever is left of its good relations with the US and Europe.

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
38 October '14..

It would be interesting to know which Arab leaders are telling US Secretary of State John Kerry that the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians is “a cause of recruitment” to Islamic State.

Is that something he is hearing from Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani? The Qatari leader, whose kingdom has been cited by the US Treasury Department as a major funder of Islamic State (IS), is certainly one of Kerry’s favorite regional leaders.

If Thani did blame Israel for the rise of IS, then his statement would constitute yet another instance of the double game Qatar has been playing with the Americans. On the one hand, the regime is financing jihad, and other the other hand, it pretends to side with the West against the jihad that it is funding.

This is certainly the case in Jerusalem.

According to an investigative report published Friday in Yisrael Hayom , Qatar is financing the violence in the capital. Veteran Jerusalem affairs reporter Nadav Shragai wrote that the Islamic rioters who daily attack Jewish visitors and police forces on the Temple Mount are paid by Qatar through the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement.

The Qatari government and other Islamic funds are transferring vast sums of money to the Islamic Movement’s radical northern branch headed by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah. The Islamic Movement in turn is paying thousands of shekels every month to hundreds of women and men, mainly Muslim Israeli citizens, who call themselves the Murbitat.

The Murbitat presents itself as an Islamic prayer group, but according to Shragai, the group’s job is to harass Jews and police on the Temple Mount. They scream and curse at Jewish visitors and in recent months have escalated their violence against them, and their police escorts. These violent attacks include assaults with rocks, firebombs and firecrackers.

To prevent the police from blocking their entry to the Mount, members of the Murbitat enter the mosques in times of relative calm and then remain there for weeks at a time. The women are used as well to smuggle firecrackers and other weaponry onto the Temple Mount by hiding them in their burkas.

In a report published Sunday by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Palestinian affairs researcher Pinchas Inbari explained the goals of the violence.

The riots and assaults on the Temple Mount have two goals. First, they aim to incite the Islamic world against Israel and return attention to the Palestinians. And second, they seek to destabilize the regimes in Egypt and Jordan.

Regarding the goal of galvanizing support for jihad by attacking Israel, Inbari recalled how immediately after longtime Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood’s most influential cleric, Qatar-based Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, gave a speech at a mass rally in Cairo and called for the Muslims to march on Jerusalem.

Kasnett - A View from Israel: The naïveté of the Left

Israel Kasnett
JPost Magazine
19 August '11

http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=234311

If every demand by the Palestinians is met, does anybody really believe there will be peace?

I often receive e-mails from various organizations explaining how it is “not too late” to take action on this or that issue. Recently the question one organization asked was, “Will the United States do the right thing at the United Nations Security Council, this one time?”

No problem there – innocent question. But the next question posed was, “Will the US government stand up for basic fairness instead of vetoing yet another UN vote on behalf of Palestinian human rights?”

Wait a minute. Palestinian human rights? That’s not at all what the UN vote is about.

But this organization, in its e-mail, claimed, “Palestinians are bringing their case for recognition to the United Nations as soon as September – not because it will suddenly create a viable Palestinian state or end the occupation – but because it could provide leverage to help them press their case for freedom and equality.”

Freedom and equality? But gay Palestinians often flee to Israel from both Palestinian Authority- and Hamas-controlled areas to escape near-certain death. In 2007, Hamas banned music in Gaza, and in 2008 it banned women from smoking water pipes in cafes. Next, women were banned from riding motorcycles, and in 2010, Hamas banned men from working in women’s hair salons. In the same year, the PA banned the recitation of the Koran over mosque loudspeakers (in Israel, it is perfectly legal).

Israel also doesn’t shove Palestinians off rooftops, as both Hamas and Fatah members did in 2007.

This year, The Jerusalem Post reported that the PA had banned Palestinian journalists from reporting about the findings of the Independent Commission for Human Rights concerning abuse of human rights by the PA and Hamas.

Gordon - New Poll Shows Real Cause of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Evelyn Gordon
Commentary/Contentions
15 July '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/07/15/new-poll-shows-real-cause-of-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/

Here’s a poll you will not see covered in your daily paper, because it throws the real cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into uncomfortably stark relief: Asked whether they agreed with President Barack Obama’s statement that “there should be two states: Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people and Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people,” only 34 percent said yes; 61 percent disagreed. Moreover, a whopping 66 percent said the Palestinians’ goal should not be a permanent two-state solution, but a two-state solution as an interim stage en route to the ultimate goal of a single Palestinian state in all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – a goal that amply explains their opposition to recognizing Israel as the Jewish homeland.

This was a serious poll, conducted by American pollster Stanley Greenberg and the Beit Sahour-based Palestinian Center for Public Opinion by means of face-to-face interviews in Arabic with 1,010 adults in the West Bank and Gaza. And the findings only get worse. As the Jerusalem Post reported:

Asked about the fate of Jerusalem, 92 percent said it should be the capital of Palestine, 1 percent said the capital of Israel, 3 percent the capital of both, and 4 percent a neutral international city.

Seventy-two percent backed denying the thousands of years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, 62 percent supported kidnapping IDF soldiers and holding them hostage, and 53 percent were in favor or teaching songs about hating Jews in Palestinian schools.

When given a quote from the Hamas Charter about the need for battalions from the Arab and Islamic world to defeat the Jews, 80 percent agreed. Seventy-three percent agreed with a quote from the charter (and a hadith, or tradition ascribed to the prophet Muhammad) about the need to kill Jews hiding behind stones and trees.

All these findings contradict the accepted wisdom that the root of the problem is Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza, so if Israel would just raze the settlements, peace would break out tomorrow.
Withdrawing from the West Bank and Gaza won’t help if Palestinians don’t accept the existence of a Jewish state in any borders and see the two-state solution as a mere stepping-stone toward the ultimate goal of Israel’s eradication – exactly as prescribed by the PLO’s famous Phased Plan of 1974, which called for establishing a “Palestinian national authority” in any territory available and then using it as a base for “completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory.” It seems for most Palestinians, almost 20 years of peace talks haven’t changed this ultimate goal one whit.

This is the root of the conflict and has been ever since Britain first backed a “national home for the Jewish people” in the 1917 Balfour Declaration. It’s why no Palestinian leader has ever been able to say “yes” to any Israeli offer – and never will be able to, no matter how much the offer is improved, unless this changes. Until the international community recognizes this and starts working to change Palestinian public opinion, the “peace process” will continue to be mere wasted effort.

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.
.

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.”

(Read full post)

  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. 

.

You’ve missed the boat, Mr. Krauthammer

Arlene Kushner
Arlene from Israel
September '10

A response to a column by Charles Krauthammer -- “Your move, Mr. Abbas” -- that appeared in the Washington Post on September 10, 2010 and can be found at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/09/AR2010090904999.html


Charles Krauthammer commends President Obama for establishing a final agreement as the goal of Middle East talks. Krauthammer identifies two major stumbling blocks to such a deal: that PA President Mahmoud Abbas lacks a popular consensus, and that he refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. If Abbas had popular backing and the courage to move ahead, Krauthammer says, a settlement would be within reach. After all: “a final peace… remains on the table.”

Krauthammer is correct in his initial, limited assessment of Abbas. However, he then strays far afield, offering unwarranted assumptions and errors of fact:

When he observes that “a final peace… remains on the table,” he explains that he is referring to the offer made in 2000 at Camp David by Ehud Barak, then Prime Minister of Israel, to nay-saying PA President Yasser Arafat, during a summit orchestrated by President Bill Clinton. Krauthammer echoes other pundits who maintain that we already “know” what the “peace” looks like, and that the parties need only flesh out details. As it happens, however, he has not done his homework.

(Read full article)

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. 
.

Northern Ireland: Refutation Number 4539

Eamonn McDonagh
Z-Word Blog
30 August '10

Regular readers of this blog will know that we have repeatedly argued against the usefulness of the Northern Ireland analogy applied to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nevertheless, like the corpse of a drowned dog, it keeps bobbing to the surface again and again. The latest example is by Ali Abunimah in the New York Times. With a deep sigh and a heavy step I’ll now proceed to take it apart.

The conflict in Northern Ireland had been intractable for decades. Unionists backed by the British government saw any political compromise with Irish nationalists as a danger, one that would lead to a united Ireland in which a Catholic majority would dominate minority Protestant unionists.

This is false. Only the most extreme factions of unionism, those associated with illegal terrorist groups, rejected any compromise with Catholic nationalists. The rest only baulked at whatever they perceived as a first step towards the end of the Union. And far from supporting Unionist intransigence successive British governments sought to encourage their Northern Irish citizens to reach an acceptable internal compromise.

The British government also refused to deal with the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, despite its significant electoral mandate, because of its close ties to the Irish Republican Army, which had carried out violent acts in the United Kingdom.

Saying that the IRA had close ties to Sinn Féin is like saying that the United States Army has close ties to the United Sates government, with the important difference that in the Sinn Féin - IRA relationship it was always the latter that made the key decisions. Furthermore, the British government negotiated with Sinn Féin - IRA on a cyclical basis (fight a bit, talk a bit fight a bit) at least as far back as the Cheyne Walk talks of 1972. And finally, the great bulk of the violence carried out by the IRA occurred in Northern Ireland and was inflicted on ordinary people.

(Read full post)

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.
.