A Palestinian state, just a Qassam rocket away, just like Gaza - by Dror Eydar

The Palestinians have never sought an independent state. All they ever wanted was for the Jews not to have one. Meanwhile, we speak up on behalf of our enemies and assign them ideals they have never held.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
08 March '19..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/03/08/the-dinosaurs-and-the-palestinian-state/



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You still hear serious people talking out loud about the two-state solution as a reasonable – even inevitable – possibility to the conflict between us and the Arabs of the region: dividing the good land and establishing an Arab state on the hills of Judea and Samaria, which could wind up connecting to the Hamas state in the Gaza Strip to the west and the state of Jordan to the east.

Exactly 100 years have passed since the division of the land was first suggested in the 1919 Faisal–Weizmann Agreement, after World War I. Eighteen years later, in 1937, the Peel Commission (convened to investigate the bloody events of 1936) proposed dividing the land, and a decade later, on Nov. 29, 1947, the U.N. voted in favor of the partition plan. The Arabs refused, and their response was war.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded before the "occupation" of the 1967 Six-Day War. Its goal was to "liberate all the land from the Zionists." Our country was then quite small in size, and still the organization's terrorists wanted it. The goal hasn't changed; it has sometimes been disguised to delude naïve, liberal, self-righteous Jews in the West.

The Oslo Accords came into being after the PLO was on the mat after backing Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein during the First Persian Gulf War. The Palestinians supported any murderous dictator who served their purposes. In Oslo, the government under then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin put the dying organization on artificial life support and brought tens of thousands of terrorists whom we had armed into western Israel to force the division of the country and fulfill their dream of peace. If the Jews don't acknowledge their right to their own land and revive their sworn enemies from the ashes, we can expect nothing more from Europe or the U.S. That is how the organization of terrorists became the official, respectable representative of the supposed forthcoming Palestinian state.

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It didn't happen. The Palestinian Arabs never asked for an independent state alongside ours; mainly, they wanted the Jews not to have a state. The Jews, for their part, insist on speaking on behalf of their enemies and attaching all sorts of nice ideas to them which they never held. Article 20 of the PLO charter decrees that the Jews are only a religion, not a nation, and therefore have no rights to a country of their own, and must return to the nations from which they arrived and live as Russian, Polish, Iraqi, or Iranian citizens. That article has never been changed. This is a fundamental Arab position; even Arab MKs do not recognize the Jewish people's right to national determination in their own land.

In the past decade, the basic condition laid down for negotiations with the Palestinians – recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people – is not designed to win their recognition of us. We don't need it. It functions as a litmus test for how honest their intentions are. If there is no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, then even after the land is divided, the Arabs will continue to talk about Israel in terms of colonialism and an apartheid state because they would be able to point to the Law of Return, for example, as a "racist law" that gives Jews preference in obtaining citizenship when they make aliyah.

Count To Three - Wadi Ara-Bloc Swap A Farce - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

...Avigdor Lieberman has been pushing this half baked idea for decades. Its part of his portfolio of half baked ideas that include handing over security responsibility for the Gaza Strip as well as most of Judea and Samaria (and the Triangle and Wadi Ara) to third parties.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
28 July '17..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=72673

You don't have to count to ten.

It should be enough to think for three seconds to realize that the idea of "swapping" Wadi Ara for the Etzion Bloc is a farce.

A third rate lawyer can readily come up with five ways to insure that the Israeli Arabs in Wadi Ara retain their Israeli citizenship even if the area is transferred to the Palestinian Authority.

The result?

"Auschwitz Minus" borders and no change in the demographic composition of the country.

Avigdor Lieberman has been pushing this half baked idea for decades. Its part of his portfolio of half baked ideas that include handing over security responsibility for the Gaza Strip as well as most of Judea and Samaria (and the Triangle and Wadi Ara) to third parties. Years ago Lieberman wanted Egyptian security forces deployed at the gates of Ashkelon (responsible for Gaza) while Jordanian forces patrolled the outskirts of Netanya and the suburbs of Jerusalem. Since then he's added the possibility of staking our survival on the efficacy of the deployment of NATO and/or other international groupings in a sovereign Palestinian state.

And he's labeled a "right winger"!!

Count to ten.

Yes. I am furious and disappointed that Israeli Arabs saw fit to give a hero's burial to three terrorists who murdered two Israeli Druze.

But I count to ten.

And I see a bright future.

No Mr. Trump. “Dignity” is anything but a purely positive and innocent requirement.

...What kind of dignity is there if Palestinians are arrested just because they murdered some Israelis? And it doesn't stop there. Any expression of the connection of Jews to holy places offends Palestinian "dignity". Taken to its ultimate conclusion, Palestinian dignity is offended by the very existence of the Jewish State!

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..
13 May '17..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=72509

"Trump plans, in talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to "reaffirm America's unshakeable bond to the Jewish state" and in a meeting with Abbas to “express his desire for dignity and self-determination for the Palestinians.” U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster - 13 May, 2017

About "self determination" - its time for Prime Minister Netanyahu to make it absolutely clear that the only relevant form of "self determination" for the Palestinians is a form of autonomy. A NECESSARY condition for any truly viable arrangement is that it does NOT provide for Palestinian sovereignty. Ask any legal expert and they will tell you that if a sovereign Palestinian state formed via a "fantastic deal" completely and utterly breaks the terms of the deal it REMAINS a sovereign state.

And "dignity"?

Don’t be fooled into thinking that “dignity” is some noble criteria. A purely positive and innocent requirement.

Because basically any security measure can be interpreted as being undignified.

What kind of dignity is there if shipments entering Palestinian territories are subject to inspection?

What kind of dignity is there if the sovereign state of Palestine is subject to measures to insure that weapons restrictions are honored?

What kind of dignity is there if Palestinians are arrested just because they murdered some Israelis?

And it doesn't stop there.

Punctuating History And Narratives In The Middle East: Israel Versus Palestine - by Sheri Oz

...Wherever you want to begin telling the story of the Middle East, or from whatever perspective you want to view the PWI, just know that within most of known human history, you can find recognition of an independent Jewish entity that predated almost all countries in the world and therefore is decidedly not a UN creation but a UN-recognized ancient sovereign nation. And absolutely nowhere you look will you find a Palestinian Arab entity by that name or any other, other than the modern state of Jordan that decidedly is a UN creation.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
27 January '17..

Here is a way of looking at the history of the so-called Israeli occupation of so-called Palestinian land: History is narratives. Narratives are stories. Stories have beginnings, middles and endings. Human history has no end in sight so nobody knows how this story of our sojourn on Earth is going to end, or even if it will end. Many theories abound, all of them faith-based whether or not they incorporate God or Gods, or Holy Spirits, or vapours or black holes or nano-particles.

We have stories about how it all began and these stories are also faith-based. Every religion and every science has its story of human beginnings on Earth.

And, of course, there are stories within stories.

Israel versus Palestine is a story within the larger Middle East story. It used to be Israel versus The Arabs and then by the late 1980s this turned into Israel versus Palestine. So anyone born after 1980 probably sees the problem with Israel — let me call that the PWI — as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I wonder how many of us born in the 1960s and earlier remember how the PWI used to be the Israeli-Arab conflict. It is merely a matter of punctuation.

By punctuation I mean where we put our full stops, how we divide up our paragraphs and where we consider the story to have begun. (I know the latter two items are not considered punctuation for all you grammar geeks, but allow me some poetic license here, okay?)

Below is a list of possible punctuation marks in history. I think it becomes obvious how that changes the entire narrative.

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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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That which adds to our enemies' motivation to continue against us with greater force - Mordechai Kedar

...The Supreme Court may not understand this, or simply may not take it into account. But it is important for us to know that destroying Jewish homes helps motivate our neighbors to continue to fight us - and results in pushing any hopes for peace much farther away.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar..
Israelnationalnews.com..
25 November '16..
Link: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19814..
h/t Sally Zahav - Middle East and Terrorism

Israel is getting closer to the time when, if no solution is found, Amona is going to be destroyed - and possibly homes in Ofra and other places in Judea and Samaria demolished - in order to carry out the decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court. A vociferous public debate is in full swing in Israel, with those in favor of the demolition and those against it arguing about the Regulation Law, the standing of Supreme Court decisions and on the status of the court itself. No one cares about how the "other side" sees the destruction of the homes, what the "other side" takes it to mean and the conclusions the "other side" - our enemies, draw from that destruction.

The Islamo-Arab side observes what is happening in Israel, hears the public debate and is astounded by the court's independence and its ability to force its world view on the entire Israeli government. Some Arab columnists openly wish for that to be the situation in their own countries, with a court that defends the ordinary citizen, and even those who are not citizens, from the arbitrary decisions of rulers and politicians.

The Arab side, however, also has a totally different view and understanding of the home demolitions. This is a religious narrative, one that sees religion as the source of the underlying explanations for everything that happens in the world and Allah as the causal factor in everything that happens each day. Allah's words are in the Koran, a book that is relevant in every place at every time and in every situation. The destruction of the Israeli homes also has an explanation in the Koran, to be found in a paragraph at the start of Chapter 59, the Exile chapter.

"It is He Who got out the Unbelievers among the People of the Book from their homes at the first gathering (of the forces). Little did ye think that they would get out: And they thought that their fortresses would defend them from Allah. But the (Wrath of) Allah came to them from quarters from which they little expected (it), and cast terror into their hearts, so that they destroyed their dwellings by their own hands and the hands of the Believers, take warning, then, O ye with eyes (to see)!" (translation: Wright-house.com)

According to Islamic interpretations, this paragraph concerns a group of Jews known as "Bani Nadir" who lived near the city of Medina. They refused to convert to Islam and Mohammed expelled them from their homes allowing them to take with them only the goods that could be carried by one camel. Instead of complying, the Jews destroyed their own homes and took the beams away so the Muslims could not make use of them. What is significant here is an instance in which Jews prefer to destroy their own homes when Islam is stronger than they.

Since what is in the Koran is relevant in every period, including the present one in which Muslims see Jews destroying their own homes, the above-quoted Koranic verse immediately comes to mind: "They destroyed their homes with their own hands" to explain what is going on, but the rest of the verse is no less important "with the hands of the Believers," meaning that believers, referring to Muslims - Jews are not believers to Islam! - have acted so as to cause the Jews to destroy their own homes.

Israel, the Middle East and coalitions that are built on shifting sand dunes - by Dr. Mordechai Kedar

Middle East coalitions are also built on shifting sand dunes, and once again I warn those who make the decisions in Israel and outside it to steer clear of a love affair with the present-day stars in the constellation, from basing any long term policy on Middle East "coalitions" and especially from paying in hard currency - such as land - for a piece of paper just because the word "peace" is written on it.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar..
Israelnationalnews.org..
28 October '16..
H/T Sally Zahav
Link: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19674

A little over two years ago, in mid-August, I ended my weekly article with the following sentence:

"The Middle Eastern see-saw is leaning heavily towards the Saudi-Egyptian axis, but it is not at all clear whether that coalition will continue to direct the Middle East in another year or two. Israel must not be tempted to align its security and future with a temporary constellation, no matter how good it appears to be. Israel must always base its policy on long term planning that gives priority to Israel and its territorial possessions and not to agreements resting on the shifting sands of the Middle East."

Unfortunately, for the last two years Israelis and many others have been talking about the importance of a treaty between Israel and the so-called "coalition of moderate Sunni nations" - to wit, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, The United Arab Emirates, and the Palestinian Authority - all of them united against the Iranian threat and ISIS which threaten the stability and welfare of their regimes. There are even those who accuse Israel's government of not being wise enough to make use of the present situation in the Middle East to forge a peace agreement with the Arab and Islamic world on the basis of the Saudi Peace Plan adopted by the Arab League.

The foundation of the "moderate Sunni coalition" was the close cooperation between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that began when King Abdullah, all heart and outspread hands, supported General Sisi, who in July 2013 ousted elected president Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, this in sharp contrast to the will of the US government and Europe. The Saudi billions saved Egypt from bankruptcy, and the cooperation between the two countries reached the point where Egyptian soldiers came to the aid of the Saudis in their struggle against the Iranian and Houthi forces in Yemen.

Except that since then, the sand dunes on which the aforementioned "coalition" was built have shifted in the wake of the north winds coming from the battlegrounds of Syria, putting paid to the bets on what seemed like a winning hand just a short while ago.Today the relations between Egypt and the Saudis are a far cry from cooperation and Egypt is now in close cahoots with Saudi Arabia's enemies, headed by Iran.

How did the turnabout happen?

Continued Cluelessness and the History of ‘Evenhanded’ Failure - by Evelyn Gordon

...Forty-three years later, it seems the lessons still haven’t been learned. The Palestinians and Hezbollah have replaced Cairo and Damascus as Israel’s main Arab enemies (Iran is non-Arab), but the world still prates about the “cycle of violence” and insists that “neither side” wants war, no matter how many times the Arabs say otherwise. And Western countries are still suffering from their own cluelessness about the conflict’s real nature.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analyses from Israel..
04 September '16..

Among those diplomats and journalists who don’t simply blame the Arab-Israeli conflict entirely on Israel, the preferred approach is “evenhandedness.” This approach, epitomized by the “cycle of violence” cliché, holds that both sides want peace and are equally to blame for its absence. Remarkably, this view has persisted despite decades of proving wrong in ways that hurt the very countries which espouse it – as demonstrated yet again by newly released documents from the Nixon Administration.

The documents, which Amir Oren reported this week in Haaretz, include redacted versions of the CIA’s daily presidential briefings on the eve of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The agency’s cluelessness is mind-blowing.

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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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Launching wars when one is not prepared for the results of possibly losing them

...To say that we must change our approach towards Israel is an understatement. There are fundamental changes that we ourselves must make, and we must find the courage and moral fortitude to make them. ...The Jews are not keeping the Arabs in camps, we are.

Fred Maroun..
Gatestone Institute..
10 July '16..

This is part one of a two-part series. The second part will examine what we Arabs can do differently today.

In the current state of the relationship between the Arab world and Israel, we see a patchwork of hostility, tense peace, limited cooperation, calm, and violence. We Arabs managed our relationship with Israel atrociously, but the worst of all is the ongoing situation of the Palestinians.

The Original Mistake

Our first mistake lasted centuries, and occurred well before Israel's declaration of independence in May 1948. It consisted of not recognizing Jews as equals.

As documented by a leading American scholar of Jewish history in the Muslim world, Mark R. Cohen, during that era, "Jews shared with other non-Muslims the status of dhimmis [non-Muslims who have to pay protection money and follow separate debasing laws to be tolerated in Muslim-controlled areas] ... New houses of worship were not to be built and old ones could not be repaired. They were to act humbly in the presence of Muslims. In their liturgical practice they had to honor the preeminence of Islam. They were further required to differentiate themselves from Muslims by their clothing and by eschewing symbols of honor. Other restrictions excluded them from positions of authority in Muslim government".

On March 1, 1944, while the Nazis were massacring six million Jews, and well before Israel declared independence, Haj Amin al-Husseini, then Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, declared on Radio Berlin, "Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you."

If we had not made this mistake, we might have benefited in two ways.

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Fred Maroun, a left-leaning Arab based in Canada, has authored op-eds for New Canadian Media, among other outlets. From 1961-1984, he lived in Lebanon.

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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What worked in the schoolyard can also work in the Middle East - by Vic Rosenthal

Indeed, the idea that it’s acceptable to shoot at Jews – indeed, also to try to stab them, burn them with firebombs and blow them up on buses – is encouraged when we hunker down and defend ourselves while not seriously striking back.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
30 May '16..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2016/05/lessons-from-the-schoolyard/

When I was about 12 years old, I got into one of those schoolyard fistfights. Surrounded by a circle of boys cheering us on and hoping for as much blood as possible before a teacher noticed, we threw relatively ineffective punches at each other. I don’t recall many details but I do recall my strategic cowardice: I was afraid to punch the other boy in the face. I fought defensively and punched at his body. Even 60 years later, I’m embarrassed: I was thinking I don’t want to make him really mad.

My opponent was a bully and there would be other fights. The correct strategy would have been to teach him a lesson he would not forget. What was I afraid of? I was already fighting.

Israel’s situation is not exactly parallel, but it’s close. We aren’t afraid of our enemies, but we hold back because we don’t want to make our allies mad.

In the very early morning hours of October 6, 1973 when, after a disastrous string of intelligence failures, it became clear that war with Egypt and Syria was about to break out, Golda Meir finally authorized calling up the reserves. She considered a preemptive strike as well, but decided against it:

In recounting the events of the morning of October 6, Meir told the [Agranat] commission that her “heart was very much drawn to” a preemptive strike, “but I am scared.” In both the cabinet meeting on the morning of Yom Kippur and in previous meetings with Dayan and chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. David Elazar, she testified to having said: “1973 is not 1967, and this time we will not be forgiven, and we will not receive assistance when we have the need for it.”

Had Israel fired the first shot of the war, Meir testified, the US would have claimed “you started” and, based on her knowledge of the Pentagon, she continued, “I can say with 100 percent (certainty)” that the airlift of arms and supplies would not have been delivered.

Meir was deterred by Kissinger’s warnings not to preempt. But in any event, the US did not begin to airlift supplies to Israel until Israel’s Ambassador Simcha Dinitz hinted on October 9 that if things got any worse, Israel would be forced to use nuclear weapons.

Today we have allowed Hezbollah to create a massive missile array, embedded in civilian areas, with more long-range and accurate missiles than it had before the war of 2006. We have allowed Hamas to reconstruct the tunnels that posed such a threat in 2014, and replenish their stock of rockets (and Hezbollah is digging tunnels too). While the IDF has operated on numerous occasions to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining “game-changing” weapons from Iran via Syria, it has nevertheless upgraded its offensive and defensive capabilities greatly since 2006.

Israel has been deterred from preemptively attacking, first by US diplomatic pressure and later by the amount of damage to our home front that Hezbollah and Hamas could do at this point.

Israel is preparing itself to absorb the blow that it expects will characterize the beginning of the next war. This week there will be an exercise of the Home Front Command (what they used to call “Civil Defense” in the US) to simulate the evacuation of 25,000 people from the North and South which will be under rocket attack (and possibly tunnel-borne ground attack) from Hezbollah and Hamas.

The IDF is also procuring more Iron Dome short-range antimissile systems, as well as the longer-range Arrow and David’s Sling systems.

What’s wrong with this picture? Of course we need to do these things in order to protect our citizens. But it would be wrong if we come to depend on defensive weapons instead of offensive strategy.

An audacious proposal, and the gaping hole it pokes in the Palestinian narrative

...At this point, there is no turning back the clock, and in light of subsequent developments, Eshkol's plan is as unworkable now as it might have been sensible back then. But even after so many decades, it is worth recalling his audacious proposal, if only to highlight where the underlying fault truly lies for the ongoing conflict: with the Palestinians and their defenders.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
19 May '16..

Fifty-one years ago this week, the youthful Jewish state proposed a peace plan that could have altered the course of Middle East history and settled the Arab-Israeli conflict once and for all, had it not been soundly ignored by the Arab states and the Palestinians.

And while it might seem pointless to look that far back, it is precisely now, when Israel is coming under increasing international pressure and criticism, that we need to remind the world – and ourselves – about the real underlying cause of the dispute with our neighbors.

It was May 17, 1965, when Levi Eshkol, Israel's third prime minister, ascended the podium in the Knesset to lay out a remarkably detailed plan for regional harmony.

This was before the 1967 Six Day War was even on the horizon, at a time when there was no "occupation," no "settlements" and no "Judaization" of Jerusalem.

There was just Israel, a tiny sovereign Jewish entity struggling to survive in a hostile neighborhood and surrounded by those intent on its destruction.

Eshkol, who was 70 years old at the time and had served in the Jewish legion during World War I and the Hagana's high command in Israel's struggle for independence, was considered neither charismatic nor polished, and spoke Hebrew with a Yiddish accent. But on that fateful summer day, he boldly put forward a comprehensive vision of what peace with the Arab states could look like, if only they were willing to countenance the idea.

He didn't communicate in slogans or catchphrases, as many politicians do today. Eshkol spoke in clear sentences and in no uncertain terms, offering to launch direct talks with Arab leaders with the goal of transforming the 1949 armistice agreements into lasting treaties of peace.

"We propose," he said, "that direct negotiations be conducted between Israel and the [Arab] states that signed the agreements with us, to replace them by pacts of peace. The peace settlement will be made on the basis of Israel as it is."

In other words, despite previous Arab attempts to destroy the Jewish state, Eshkol was willing to accept Israel's 1949 boundary lines if only our neighbors were ready to do the same.

"The four Arab States which have borders with us alone extend over an area of 1.2 million square kilometers," he pointed out, "and Israel has only a sixtieth part of the area in its possession, in other words slightly more than 1.5 percent – 21,000 square kilometers."

The premier then went into great detail about the benefits peace would bring, ranging from economic cooperation to a reduction in the arms race, as well as open borders and freedom of access to holy sites.

He even promised that Israel would provide financial aid toward the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in neighboring Arab countries.

In return, Eshkol made a simple request, asking the Arab states for "full respect for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of all the states in the region."

A very simple conflict - by Martin Sherman

The intractability of the 100-year dispute between Jew and Arab over the Land of Israel is rooted not in its complexity, but its brutal simplicity.

Martin Sherman..
Into the Fray/JPost..
27 April '16..

Until 1967, Israel did not hold an inch of the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank, the Gaza Strip or the Golan Heights. Israel held not an acre of what is now considered disputed territory. And yet we enjoyed no peace. Year after year Israel called for – pleaded for – a negotiated peace with the Arab governments. Their answer was a blank refusal and more war... The reason was not a conflict over territorial claims. The reason was, and remains, the fact that a free Jewish state sits on territory at all. – Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, before a joint session of the US Congress, January 28, 1976

We will never recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel. – Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, Cairo, November, 2014

One of the widely propagated falsehoods regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict in general, and Palestinian-Israeli one in particular, is that it is an immensely complex problem requiring great sophistication and creativity to resolve.

Brutal simplicity

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The 100-year struggle between Jew and Arab over control of the Holy Land, extending west of the Jordan River to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, is in fact a very simple one.

But recognition of the stark simplicity of the conflict does not in any way imply that it is easy to resolve. In fact, it is the brutal simplicity of the conflict that makes a solution so elusive.

Any endeavor to obfuscate this unpalatable fact can only have – indeed, has had – gravely detrimental, even tragic, consequences, just as mistaken diagnosis of a malaise is likely to have detrimental, even tragic, outcomes. Any attempt to portray the conflict as “complicated” is not a mark of sophistication or profundity, but rather of a desire to evade the merciless, unembellished truth.

For the clash between Jew and Arab over the exercise of national sovereignty anywhere west of the Jordan is a classic “them” or “us” scenario, an arch-typical zero-sum game, in which the gains of one side are unequivocally the loss of the other.

No amount of genteel pussyfooting around this harsh reality will change it. No amount of polite politically correct jargon will soften it.

Sorry to tell you, but…. - by Dr. Mordechai Kedar

The peace movements turned Israel's image into that of a weak and soft defeatist country, the exact opposite of the kind of country that achieves peace in the Middle East

Dr. Mordechai Kedar..
Israelnationalnews.com..
22 April '16..

My dear friends, Jews in Israel and the Diaspora.

I am sorry to tell you that the terror attacks we from which we suffer today and yesterday, a week ago, a month, a year and a decade and century ago, are all part of the same war, the same struggle, the same Jihad waged against us by our neighbors for over a century. Sometimes it is a full scale war with tanks, noise, flames, planes and ships and sometimes it is a war on a slow burner known as "terror" with explosions, stabbings and shots. Each of these is Jihad in Arabic, each is aimed at Jews just for being Jewish.

I regret to remind you of the fact that this war began way before the establishment of the Jewish state declared in 1948. The riots and massacres of 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936-39 et al, were not due to a Jewish state or what our enemies call the "occupation" of 1948, and certainly not because of the 1967 "occupation". The bloody and cruel massacre of the Jews of Hevron in 1929 was carried out against Jews who were not part of the Zionist movement, quite the contrary. The Palestine Liberation Movement (Fatah) was founded, may I remind you, in 1959 and The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964, years before the 1967 "occupation" that was a result of Israel winning the Six Day War.

I hate to point out to you that the shouts we heard, mainly in the 1948 War of Independence, were "Itbach al Yahud" – "Butcher the Jews" – and not the "Israelis" or the "Zionists," because their problem is with the Jews who refuse to be dependent on the mercy of Islam, refuse to live as dhimmi, protected ones, the way Islam mandates for Jews and Christians. In the Arab world, children still sing (in Arabic): "Palestine is our country and the Jews are our dogs." The dog, in Islamic tradition, is an unclean animal. Sharia law stipulates that if a Muslim is praying and a dog, pig, woman, Jew or Christian walks in front of him, his prayers are worthless and he must begin the entire ritual once again.

It is not pleasant to tell you this, but Israel's enemies' most popular chant is (in Arabic) – "Kyber, Khyber O Jews, Mohammed's army will yet return." Khyber is an oasis in the Arabian Peninsula that was populated by Jews until Mohammed slaughtered them in 626 C.E. The chant commemorates that event and threatens a repeat performance. The Jews, according to the Koran (Sura 5, verse 82) are the most hostile enemies of the Moslems. Verse 60 states that Allah's curse and fury upon them turned them into monkeys and pigs. Since when do monkeys and pigs have the right to a state? Since when are they entitled to sovereignty?

Despite what you think, peace with Egypt was achieved only after Sadat realized that despite Arab efforts to destroy Israel in the 1948 War of Independence, the 1956 Sinai Campaign, the 1967 Six Day War, 1970 War of Attrition, and even the 1973 Yom Kippur War that took Israel by surprise, the Jewish state managed to push back all the Arab armies and bring the war to their territory. That is why Sadat understood that Israel is not conquerable and that there is no choice other than making peace, even if this peace is temporary and based on the precedent of the 628 C.E. Hudabiya Peace in which Mohammed gave a 10 year hiatus to the infidels of Mecca, but broke it at the end of two years when they fell asleep on the watch.

Root causes and red herrings - by Martin Sherman

...It is time to acknowledge the unpalatable fact that the enmity of Arabs towards the Jews and the Jewish state is: Not about borders but about existence. Not about what the Jewish people do but about what the Jewish people are. Not about the Jewish state's policies but about the Jewish state per se. And not about Jewish military "occupation" of Arab land but about Jewish political existence on any land. Israel must internalize these truths and undertake a policy to convey them with conviction and vigor to the world. Otherwise Israel may well be "liberated."

Martin Sherman..
Israel Hayom..
22 April '16..

More than two years before any Israeli presence in what are now the "occupied territories," Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser issued a public message: "We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand, we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood" (March 8, 1965).

This chilling declaration of genocidal intent by the leader of the largest Arab nation was not an isolated aberration.

Quite the contrary, it was typical of a pervasive Judeo-phobic frenzy that prevailed throughout the Arab world, well before the notions of "occupation" and "settlements" -- the current buzzwords for rallying anti-Israeli sentiment -- had any practical significance, or even conceptual relevance.

On May 18, 1967, following the withdrawal of the U.N. peacekeeping forces in Sinai, in compliance with Egyptian demands, the Cairo-based radio station Voice of the Arabs blared: "As of today, there no longer exists an international emergency force to protect Israel. We shall exercise patience no more. ... The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war, which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence."

Two days later, Gen. Hafez Assad, father of current President Bashar Assad and then-Syria's defense minister and later president, boasted: "Our forces are now entirely ready. ... The time has come to enter a battle of annihilation."

On May 27, Nasser reiterated his murderous goal: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."

Four days before the outbreak of war, on June 1, Iraqi President Abdul Rahman Ali -- later assassinated by Saddam Hussein -- threatened: "The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. ... Our goal is clear -- to wipe Israel off the map."

The mood on the Jordanian front and among the Palestinians, together with their Arab "patrons," was strikingly similar.

On Nov. 18, 1965, Nasser remarked: "Our aim is the full restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people. In other words, we aim at the destruction of the State of Israel. The immediate aim: perfection of Arab military might. The national aim: the eradication of Israel."

Jordan's King Hussein, apparently impressed by this bluster, entered into a military pact with Egypt on May 30, 1967, despite bitter acrimony between Nasser and himself. He declared: "All of the Arab armies now surround Israel. The UAR [Egypt], Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon, Algeria, Sudan and Kuwait. ... There is no difference between one Arab people and another, no difference between one Arab army and another."

At the time, the entire West Bank and Gaza, territories now claimed for the establishment of a Palestinian state, were under Arab control. Nasser ruled Gaza, Hussein the West Bank. Yet neither undertook the slightest initiative to initiate any self-governing Palestinian entity in these territories.

The Palestinian issue and the pitfalls of erroneous assumptions - by Yoram Ettinger

...Erroneous Western assumptions that the Arab-Israeli conflict was triggered by the Palestinian issue have led to erroneous policies. It's time for the "Palestine Firsters" to disengage from oversimplification and re-engage with the complex reality of the Middle East.

Yoram Ettinger..
The Ettinger Report..
19 February '16..

Common sense suggests that simplistic and erroneous assumptions produce simplistic and erroneous policies, as has been the case with all U.S. initiatives on the Palestinian issue. This is because the U.S. foreign policy establishment has been erroneously perceiving the Palestinian issue to be the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Hence there was the initial U.S. opposition to the 1977 Israel-Egypt peace initiative and the attempt to inject the Palestinian issue into it on the eve of the 1979 signing ceremony; the 1987 U.S. recognition of the PLO, which rewarded and strengthened a role model of international terrorism; the passive U.S. role in the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace initiative; the U.S. endorsement of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat for the Nobel Peace Prize and the embrace of the self-destructive 1993 Oslo Accords; the failure to punish the Palestinian Authority for its hate-education and other systematic violations of the Oslo Accords; and the resounding failure of U.S. President Barack Obama's initiatives highlighting the Palestinian issue.

Contrary to the U.S. foreign policy establishment's worldview, the 1948 Arab-Israeli war was not launched by Arab countries on behalf of Palestinian aspirations. The Arabs launched the war in order to advance their own -- not the Palestinians' -- interests through the occupation of the strategic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, the Palestinians blame Arab leaders for what they term "the 1948 debacle."

Moreover, the objective of the 1948 war was to prevent the establishment of an "infidel" Jewish entity on land that Muslims believe was divinely endowed to the "believers" (Waqf). Thus, during the October 1947 Pan-Arab Summit, then Arab League Secretary General Abdul Rahman Azzam stated: "The establishment of a Jewish state would lead to a war of extermination and momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades. ... This war will be distinguished by three serious matters: ... the shortest road to paradise … an opportunity for vast plunder … avenging the martyrdom of Palestinian Arabs."

Jordan joined the 1948 war to expand its territory from the east bank of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean as a step toward dominating the Arab world. Egypt harbored similar ambitions and sought to foil Jordan's ambitious strategy. Egypt deployed some of its soldiers to the Jerusalem region to check the Jordanian military moves. Iraq aspired to control the 585-mile-long Iraq-Haifa oil pipeline, which extended from the oil fields in Kirkuk/Mosul through Jordan to the refineries in Haifa. Syria, for its part, considered the war an opportunity to conquer some southern sections of "Greater Syria."

At the end of the 1948 war, Iraq occupied Samaria (the northern West Bank), but transferred it to Jordan, not to the Palestinians. Jordan occupied Judea (the southern West Bank) and in April 1950 annexed both areas (naming them the West Bank) to the Hashemite kingdom on the east bank of the Jordan River. The kingdom prohibited Palestinian activities and punished or expelled Palestinian activists. Egypt conquered the Gaza Strip and imposed a nightly curfew (which was terminated when Israel gained control of Gaza in 1967). Egypt prohibited Palestinian national activities and expelled Palestinian leaders. Syria occupied and annexed the al-Hama area in the Golan Heights.

Israel: A remarkable accomplishment and it should be celebrated

...The fact of the matter, however, is that the Jews have survived all their historical enemies and the Arab-Muslim world, while a far larger demographic in the Middle East, is a mess. The Muslims of the Middle East suppressed and abused the Jewish minority there, not to mention the beleaguered Christians, from the time of Muhammad until the fall of the Ottoman Empire early in the twentieth-century following World War I. They conquered the Jews and they conquered the entirety of eastern Christendom and now honestly believe that such imperial conquests give them moral rights to the land that they plundered and continue to occupy and harass indigenous populations throughout the area. However, from that moment until this the indigenous Jews have consolidated their position economically, scientifically, diplomatically, and militarily. Furthermore, they did so while under constant violent pressure from their inhospitable neighbors and while enduring the snide contempt of the European states who generally side with the Arabs against the Jews. This is a remarkable accomplishment and it should be celebrated.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
13 February '16..

The long Arab-Muslim war against the Jewish people goes on and on... but the Jews are winning.

We need to acknowledge that the conflict is an ongoing expression of Arab-Muslim religious hatred toward Jews as manifested since the time of Muhammad and embedded within the Koran and the Hadiths. Further, it is promoted and prolonged by western-progressive hostility toward Israel, and thus toward Jews, more generally, veiled within profoundly hypocritical notions of social justice and universal human rights.

Some will speak of a semi-historical / semi-mythological Islamic "Golden Age" wherein ascending Islam led the world in science and was amicable toward non-Muslims, including the Jewish minority.

This is false.

Islam, historically, has most often not been friendly toward non-Muslims and their scientific contributions, aside from the advancement of Algebra, have been negligible for many centuries.

The truth is that long before the rise of the Western Enlightenment - long before Galileo pointed his little refracting telescope at Venus and proved the heliocentric view of the solar system - the Islamic world was a civilizational leader.

It conquered vast territories from Christians and Jews and others throughout the Middle East, suppressed those around them, and made a few scientific advances during a period of human stupidity, backwardness, and blindness.

Islam, however, seems to have nowhere to go but down and one major reason for this is the ongoing and violent hatred toward the Jewish minority and all other infidels or apostates or "wrong" kinds of Muslims. Islam, after all, beats on nobody so much as it beats on its own.

What I would argue is that if Islam, in general, and the Islamic states, in particular, would stop harping on the fact that the Jewish people have independence on the small historic Jewish homeland, perhaps Middle Eastern Arabs could begin the process of moving into the modern world. They could - in my fondest imagination - give up old hatreds in favor of cultivating interest in the sciences and arts, building businesses and advancing local economies, bolstering the well-being of the world rather than seeking to tear it down through the Jihad.

{That would be nice.}

But the fact of the matter is that the Jews have basically won the Long Arab War.

Welcome to the Both Real and New Middle East

...All of which is to say Peres’s idea that all the spears would be beaten into plowshares didn’t take into account the fact that Palestinian nationalism is inextricably tied to the struggle to eradicate Israel, no matter where its borders would be drawn. Its failure had nothing to do with Netanyahu and everything to do with the Palestinians.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
05 November '15..

The 20th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination has set off a bit of nostalgia in some precincts for the euphoria that affected many in Israel and the United States after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. At the time, Shimon Peres’ book, The New Middle East, symbolized the pie-in-the-sky expectations about the peace process. Though all of his predictions proved absurdly and tragically inaccurate, Peres still holds onto his faith in a process that was flawed from the start by placing his trust in a terrorist. He still foolishly blames Prime Minister Netanyahu and not Yasir Arafat for the collapse of his dreams. But while Peres’ idiotic vision of the region turning into a version of the Benelux nations (tell that to Hamas and Hezbollah, not to mention Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah), the truth is that there are some things about the real Middle East today that benefit Israel and are every bit as extraordinary as Peres’s fanciful scenario. More importantly, they were achieved by a so-called right wing government staying strong and making common cause with Arabs who share Israel’s fear of Islamists.

This week in a move that stunned the Arab world, Egypt voted with Israel in the United Nations for the first time in its history. Days before that, reports told of Jordanian combat pilots participating in a joint military exercise with Israel and the United States. Neither event is by itself of great significance. But taken together and put in the context of the conflicts in the Middle East that have nothing to do with the Palestinians, they show that that although Israel’s critics harp on its isolation, Israel is no longer completely surrounded by enemies but can, in fact, look at Egypt and Jordan as nominal if not entirely friendly allies.

The vote at the UN was over something relatively minor — membership on the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space Affairs — but the mere fact that it was the first time it ever voted for Israel for something is historic. After an avalanche of criticism from the Arab world, the Egyptian government claimed the move was really just a tactical move that might ensure the election of some Arab nations to the committee, too. But that excuse doesn’t hold water, and there’s no denying the symbolism here. After 67 years of fervent opposition that continued even after a peace treaty was signed between the two countries in 1979, the vote indicates just how far the government of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has moved towards cooperation with the Jewish state since the military toppled the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. Cairo now correctly views Israel as a fellow combatant in the struggle against the Islamists of the Brotherhood, Hamas, and its Iranian allies.

That’s the same view held by Jordan’s government, though, to be fair. King Abdullah and his father, King Hussein, always understood that Israel was a covert ally in the Hashemite regime’s struggle for survival against Palestinian and other radical Muslim foes dating back to the 1970s. The only difference is that, with ISIS on the march and Iran (with the tacit acceptance of the Obama administration) extending its influence across the region, the need for close cooperation with Israel on security matters is now more important than ever.

What this means is that, although Israel’s enemies are still legion, and Palestinians remained mired in a culture of hate and rejectionism, two of the nations that posed the most potent military threat to Israel’s existence in the first decades of its life are now more or less allied with it. Indeed, their governments see eye-to-eye with Netanyahu on all major security matters, including their justified concerns about the implications of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Even as we celebrate these developments, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that anti-Semitism and hate for Israel are still endemic in both Egypt and Jordan. The rising tide of global anti-Semitism that has its roots in the Muslim world still constitutes a potent threat to Israel’s future and requires it to, as Netanyahu correctly noted, “live by the sword” for the foreseeable future.

Despite its cold war, Israel can survive and thrive

For two decades the Jewish state has sought, fruitlessly, to negotiate an end to the conflict. Needed is a new, viable strategy for coping with reality and winning out

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
03 September '15..

It’s a longstanding truism of international relations that “everyone knows” the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet today, after more than two decades of negotiations under several different Israeli, Palestinian, and American governments have repeatedly failed to produce the two-state agreement whose terms “everyone knows,” it is past time to put this false idea to rest. In fact, what the talks have shown is that even when there’s agreement on general principles, the remaining gaps are insurmountable—and often there isn’t even agreement on principles. What this means is that, for now and for the foreseeable future, a final peace is not achievable.

To most Israelis, this isn’t news. Repeated polls have confirmed that while a stable majority still favors a two-state solution, an even larger majority doesn’t believe an agreement can or will be signed anytime soon—or that the Palestinians are serious about reaching one.

And little wonder. After all, every proposal made by either Israel or international mediators in the past 20 years has met with summary rejection. Yasir Arafat turned down offers by Prime Minister Ehud Barak and U.S. President Bill Clinton in 2000-01; Mahmoud Abbas never even responded to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s offer in 2008; and last year, according to a senior American official, Abbas first “rejected all of [Secretary of State John] Kerry’s ideas” and then “refused” an American proposal personally presented by President Barack Obama.

No less telling, each territorial concession by Israel has produced not a decrease but a dramatic increase in Palestinian terrorism. In the two-and-a-half years following the Oslo Accords in 1993, when Israel withdrew from most of Gaza and parts of the West Bank, more Israelis were killed by Palestinians than in the entire preceding decade. The second intifada, which erupted in 2000, produced more Israeli casualties in four years than all the terror attacks of the previous 53 years combined. Since 2005, the year in which Israel evacuated every last soldier and settler from Gaza, Palestinians there have fired over16,000 rockets and mortars at Israel’s civilian population. People who are serious about making peace generally don’t use every bit of territory ceded to them in order to attack their “peace partner.”

Even the issue of the future borders between Israel and the Palestinian state, supposedly the easiest of all to negotiate, has proved intractable. Several Israeli premiers, including Benjamin Netanyahu, have reportedly accepted the “everyone knows” principle that these must be based on the 1967 lines with territorial swaps. But there’s a reason why both Israeli and international proposals to this effect, from the Clinton parameters onward, have repeatedly failed to win Palestinian concurrence: they envision land swaps for about 6 percent of the West Bank to minimize the number of Israelis who would have to relocate, but the Palestinians insist on much smaller swaps that would require evicting hundreds of thousands of Israelis from their homes. In 20 years, the Palestinians haven’t budged on this; kicking Israelis out of their homes is evidently more important to them than ending the hated “occupation.”

The same irreconcilability is even more evident on the “hard” issues like Jerusalem and refugees. Both Barak and Olmert offered to cede the Temple Mount on condition that the agreement include some kind of recognition of Jewish religious and historical ties to the Mount. Arafat rejected Barak’s proposal; Abbas rejected Olmert’s.

This unwillingness even to acknowledge Jewish ties to Judaism’s holiest site encapsulates the heart of the problem: the Palestinian refusal to accept that Jews have any right to any part of the land of Israel. Until that changes, the conflict will likely remain unresolvable.

Consequently, a kind of stalemate has taken hold, periodically interrupted by brief, fierce skirmishes but so far containable: a cold war, if one likes, that may be destined to endure as long as the obdurate Palestinian refusal itself. Hence, after two decades in which it has sought fruitlessly to negotiate an end to the conflict, what Israel needs in order to emerge victorious from this war is a new, realistic strategy for coping with the situation as it actually exists.

What would such a strategy look like? How have other countries navigated conflicts with seemingly no foreseeable end? Is there any model in political or diplomatic history that would suggest a feasible way forward?

Contrived Palestinian National Identity, Jim Crow and Jews

...Many would suggest that, contrived or not, "Palestinian" as an ethnic or national designation now exists and that as a matter of general human decency, if not liberal ideology, it must be acknowledged. And, of course, the world has acknowledged the "Palestinians" as a distinct people with a history and with rights. What I fail to understand, however, is just why it is that Jewish people are under any moral or ethical obligation to acknowledge a people who only recently came into existence as a people for the purpose of undermining, and eventually destroying, Jewish national autonomy?

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
26 July '15..

The western-left today thinks that the Jews are oppressive to Muslims in the Middle East. They believe that Jewish Israelis are brutalizing and ethnically-cleansing the innocent "indigenous" population.

In previous decades the so-called "Palestinian narrative" has taken hold of the western imagination. Within that narrative, vicious and militaristic Jews marched out of Europe and violently displaced the native population in the early-middle of the twentieth-century. Jews pushed "Palestinians" out of their native land where, as "Palestinians," they had been living for many thousand of years. Mahmoud Abbas even laughably claimed that the "Palestinians" have a 9,000 year history on that land. He said, "Oh, Netanyahu, you are incidental in history; we are the people of history. We are the owners of history."

If the "Palestinians" are the "owners of history" it must be a secret history that they keep entirely to themselves. I have never heard of a people with a secret history before! The "Palestinians" have lived on that land for 9,000 years and, yet, somehow, history seems to have passed them by. It is a profound mystery. There are no records of a "Palestinian" state on that land. There are no records of the great "Palestinian" artists or leaders or scientists that thrived in the Land of Palestine for all those thousands of years. Yet the foundation of Arab and western-left hostility toward the Jewish Israelis is the idea that they violently displaced the native population. Jews, we are to understand, are illegally "Occupying" - with the Big O - Judea, a land that belongs to Palestinian-Arabs, not Jews.

There is always a charge against the Jews among westerners in every generation.

Every generation they tell us just why Jewish kids deserve a good beating. In previous generations, of course, we were either guilty of killing Jesus or of giving the world Jesus and are, therefore, responsible for the failings of Christianity. We were sometimes thought of as the heinous agents of greedy capitalism or the heinous agents of totalitarian socialism. And, needless to say, in the early part of the twentieth-century, we were the wrong "race." We were considered inherently, essentially, bad people.

In this generation, however, the charge is that we are mean to Arabs.

There are around six million Jews in Israel and something between three hundred and four hundred million Arab-Muslims surrounding them in the Middle East. For reasons having to do with theocratic bigotry, Muslims in that part of the world traditionally despise the Jews and often teach their children to throw stones at us. Throwing stones at Jews in Israel is not a manifestation, as is often claimed, of righteous push-back against the "Occupation," but is a time-honored tradition within Arab culture, grounded in the rankest form of bigotry and persecution of the despised "other."

It was Caliph Omar Abd al-Azziz, who reigned between 717 and 720 CE, who codified the rules of dhimmi status, sometimes referred to as the Pact of Omar or Covenant of Omar, but which I like to think of as Jim Crow for Jews. The first and foremost rule was the paying of jizya tax and acceptance of the conditions of ahl al-dhimma. In Martin Gilbert's In Ishmael's House, we read:

Predicition: We’re not on the verge of war — yet

...I don’t see an immediate danger of war, although low-intensity conflict will continue and probably get worse. But then, the same could have been said in early 1914!

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
29 June '15..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2015/06/were-not-on-the-verge-of-war-yet/

Someone recently asked me if I thought we would be at war again soon. Not just Gaza, but the big one — Hizballah and Iran. As the West’s red lines crumble, it’s a forgone conclusion that Iran can have a bomb as soon as they wish; and with President Obama rushing to relieve sanctions and unfreeze Iranian assets, the regime will have all the money it needs to fund its aggression, nuclear and non-nuclear.

So what is Israel going to do about it? After all, I don’t think the traditional position of the Israeli government that it will not allow any of its regional enemies to obtain nuclear weapons has changed.

There are good reasons not to attack Iran today. Most of Iran’s deterrent rests with its expeditionary force, Hizballah in Lebanon. Although Israel would very much like to pull the fangs of this particular snake, Hizballah has entwined its rocket launchers and command centers deeply with the civilian infrastructure, and destroying it will destroy the homes and many of the lives of the population of southern Lebanon.

Israel would be completely justified in doing this. We aren’t obligated to commit suicide to protect civilians who have rocket launchers in their garages and cellars. This would be tragic for those people, but it’s a tragedy for which Iran and Hizballah would be fully responsible.

Israel too would suffer home front casualties, predicted to be worse than in any war since 1948.

Nevertheless, we know from the example of the recent war in Gaza — in which Gazan casualties were comparatively modest — what the reaction from US President Obama would be. We can expect an immediate embargo on weapons and ammunition, support for UN demands for a disadvantageous cease-fire, and who knows what other punitive measures. Paradoxically, the better our defensive systems perform and the fewer Israelis die, the greater will be the pressure on us to stop fighting.

Obama’s strategy is perplexing, because the initiative to tilt toward Iran against Israel and the conservative Sunni Arabs is not particularly in the interest of the US. The enemies of America are the radical Islamists of both streams, the Sunni IS and Iranian revolutionary Shiite regime. These are the forces that are metastasizing terrorism throughout the world in an attempt to put an end to Western hegemony. Allowing Iran to nuclearize in the hope that it will bring stability is a potentially disastrous policy. It also alienates former US allies like Egypt and the Jordanian and Saudi regimes, and of course Israel, whose aspirations do not include bringing down the West.

I think, however, that this policy is not being implemented out of a consideration of true long-term American interest. Rather it is based on the personal predilections of Barack Obama, his reverence for Islam and the post-colonialist ideology that characterized his mentors Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, etc. Michael Oren said that if you want to understand Obama, look at his Cairo address of 2012. Unfortunately, as we saw during the Gaza war last summer, this ideology is the opposite of pro-Israel.

Unfortunately, Even More Water Won’t Solve the Middle East Conflict

...Israel’s friends should be celebrating its water solutions and it is to the credit of the Times, whose generally biased coverage aims usually to back up the false narrative of it as an oppressor, that it would highlight this story. But let no one think this miracle produced by Jewish brains, skill and determination will play much of a role in ending the conflict.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
31 May '15..

Yesterday’s New York Times front-page feature about the amazing advances made in desalinization by the state of Israel provided some hope for those who believe that global warming and the prospect of more droughts leaves humanity with a grim future. Only a few years ago, Israelis were concerned about the question of how they could continue to grow their first world economy with a growing population in a country where there simply wasn’t enough water. What followed was a major investment in technology and enactment of sensible policies about water use that led to this startling fact. As the Times states, “More than 50 percent of the water for Israeli households, agriculture and industry is now artificially produced.” Though water is expensive, the prospect that the country will run out is gone. In a region that is in desperate need of Israel’s expertise, you would think this development would lead to better relations with the Palestinians and the Arab world. But what is missing from the Times’ story is the fact that there is little sign of any interest in cooperation on the part of Israel’s antagonists. As much as they ought to take advantage of the Jewish state’s advances, such concerns are always secondary to their main priority: fighting Israel.

The story of how Israel revolutionized its production and use of water is another proud chapter in the country’s history. In the past couple of decades as attacks on Israel’s legitimacy have multiplied, we haven’t heard much about Jews making the desert bloom. That old line about the rebirth of this old land under the care of a returned people has been treated as an outdated cliché by biased journalists who preferred story lines that reinforced the libels about Israel being an apartheid state. That theme was also part of the narrative about water.

To the extent that water has been mentioned much in the news, it generally served as another point of attack as Palestinian claims that Israel was “stealing” their water in the West Bank was often reported as fact rather than a political talking point. As even the Times notes in its feature, Israel continues to supply the Palestinians with more water than it is required to do under the Oslo Accords. Israel shares the mountain aquifer that runs through the West Bank with the Palestinians. But the Palestinians position is that they are entitled to all of it, not just their share. The underlying problem of that discussion has always been the assumption that all of the territory is “Palestinian land’ to which Israel has no legitimate claim. But even if you think Israel ought to cede much of that territory if the Palestinians are ever willing to make peace, the problem with this argument is that the Arabs still don’t recognize Israeli rights to any water except the sea into which they have been trying to push the Jews ever since they began returning to their ancient homeland.

It might make sense for Israelis and Arabs to cooperate about water. But if water remains an issue that exacerbates the conflict rather than solving it, it’s not because the Israelis aren’t willing to share their expertise or even some of the water they are desalinizing or treating for further use. It’s because water, like economic development, has always been beside the point to Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims.