Our job is to pick out the important stuff, the “signal,” and reject the “noise.” - by Vic Rosenthal

...The world is changing, getting less rational, more dangerous and more fragmented. Nobody will give artificial respiration to weak nations in a world dominated by Putins, Xi Jinpings and (maybe) Trumps. Israel won’t be protected by international organizations or laws, even if they were not subverted politically and turned against us. And it can’t depend on the US, which has its own problems that will only get worse. What will matter in the future, and already matter today, are facts on the ground and the ability to deter aggression. This is the real “signal.” The posturing of international diplomacy is just part of the noise that is intended to obscure it.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
05 May '17..

The latest UNESCO resolution on “Occupied Palestine” is both nothing and something.

It is nothing because it changes nothing. It cannot render “null and void” Israel’s possession of Jerusalem or its status as our capital city (echoing Hamas’ new document of principles, p.11). It cannot make Ma’arat HaMachpela or Kever Rachel “Palestinian” sites. And it cannot make UNESCO something rather than the nothing it has become, because its passage of a series of similar resolutions shows that it is a creature of anti-Israel politics rather than an organization to promote international cooperation.

On the other hand, the resolution adds to the massive accumulation of documents, maps, slogans, manifestos and resolutions in UN agencies, churches, and universities – none of which in themselves change anything – that declare that we, the Jewish people in their sovereign state, are nothing. A historian of the 30th century might come upon this pile of documents and believe that there is a country called “Palestine” that is “occupied,” although there would be a far smaller collection of sources testifying to the existence of a state called “Israel.” They might wonder how nothing can occupy something.

Although millions of Arabs, other Muslims, Europeans, Ha’aretz writers, and other enemies of Israel have been so far unable to dislodge the tenacious grip of the Jewish people from their land by force or the combination of force and guile called “diplomacy,” they have been able to produce thousands of tons of paper attesting to the proposition that we don’t exist, and to the extent that we do, we oughtn’t to.

(Continue to Full Post)

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Honig - Preempting Piggy’s end

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
01 June '12..




Of late, shocked to their ultra-sensitive core, our chattering classes tug extra-hard on our national fire bells.

With exhilarated alarm, they alert us to how unloved we are overseas. Our news purveyors appear to take uncommon pleasure in driving the point home.

The other day broadcasters announced solemnly that “Germans have become markedly more critical of Israel, with 59% describing it as aggressive, according to a survey published by the Stern weekly.”

This monumentally significant poll was conducted on the eve of German President Joachim Gauck’s visit to our backwoods.

We’re definitely on a treacherous downward spiral because, as several reporters stressed, “a similar Stern survey in 2009 found that only 49% considered Israel aggressive.” Ouch!

Underscoring how we’re perceived by the descendants of active Nazis and of those who inactively couldn’t care less about their Germanic genocide, we were somberly informed that “70% of Germans agree with the statement that Israel pursues its interests without consideration for other nations.” Three years ago, just 59% of holier-than-thou Germans regarded us as an egocentric and thoughtless bunch. Things were so peachy then.

But were they?

Ackerman - What Was Israel Established For?

Matthew Ackerman
Commentary/Contentions
15 November '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/11/15/israel-zionism-refuge-self-determination/#more-774679

The first sentence in a Wall Street Journal article published today on Israel’s efforts to deal with illegal immigration from Africa via its border with Egypt describes Israel as “a country established to absorb Jewish refugees after World War II.” In its small way, this phrase points to the essential problem of a century of Zionist advocacy in the United States.

This problem was evident in the career of Louis Brandeis, the first prominent American Jewish advocate for Zionism. Already a famous lawyer when he assumed leadership of the Zionist movement in the United States in 1914 (a reputation that would bring him to the Supreme Court in 1916), he gave the movement a tremendous boost in American renown and credibility.

But Brandeis brought with him an insistence that Zionism had nothing to say for American Jews. The establishment of a Jewish state would for him be a refuge for Jews lacking the means or ability to get to a place like the United States where their rights would be assured. So it was that principally along these lines – Zionism as a refuge for the persecuted and impoverished Jews of Europe and elsewhere and little else besides – that the Zionist case was made by American Jews before World War II.

The Holocaust only strengthened this line of argument, making the rhetoric of security and refuge irresistible. The same kind of thinking behind Brandeis’ Zionism remained evident in the important exchange of letters between the American Jewish Committee leader Jacob Blaustein and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1950. In them, Blaustein underlined the view that Israel was a “home” for “hundreds of thousands” of Jews from “Europe, Africa, and the Middle East,” but that “home” for American Jewry was the United States, and it was there that they found “freedom” and “security,” not a continuation of “exile.”

On the Wings of Ignorance about Israel

Daphne Anson
20 January '11

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/01/on-wings-of-ignorance-about-israel.html

“Symbolic of the political problems that impact the environment is that when Israel sought to designate the Palestine sunbird (Cinnyris osea) as its national bird, it had to be pointed out that it was already the official bird of Palestine,” opines a travel writer on her blog (which I’m not going to link to on principle!). “Both have issued stamps depicting this lovely little bird. It seems that Israel wants everything that would be Palestine’s: as much of its land as it can pepper with settlements, control of its water, control of the Palestinian people to move about their land – and now, their national bird.”

The bird’s not flightless – its habitat is not confined to “Palestine”. In fact, it gets as far as Africa. Yet big bad Israel has stolen it. Go figure!

For me, that claim in the top paragraph is symbolic of the widespread ignorance about the history of the land the Romans dubbed “Palestine”, an ignorance that informs and propels the present-day trend towards the delegitimisation of Israel.

This was brought home to me yesterday morning, when a neighbour of mine – who is certainly not in the delegitimiser camp, but confesses to “sitting on the fence” owing to lack of knowledge about “who’s right and who’s wrong, Israel or the Palestinians” – told me that although she’d regularly attended Christian Sunday School, and had studied “Religious Instruction” for her A levels and remembered that there had been two kingdoms, Israel and Judah, she’s none too familiar with the history of the area after biblical times. She hadn’t realized, until I mentioned it, that the name Palestine came from Philistia, and was imposed on Judea by the Romans as a way of emphasizing to the Jews that their land was well and truly conquered.

If a person like that confesses to being confused and ignorant, I thought to myself, what hope for those who have hardly if ever opened a Bible in their lives.

PA Continues to Promote the Denial of Israel's Existence: All of Israel is "Palestine"

Itamar Marcus/Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Palestinian Media Watch
Hudson New York
30 June '10

The Palestinian Authority TV's weekly game show between competing Palestinian universities continues to deny Israel's existence through the questions posed to the quiz contestants.

Last week, three different questions and matching answers on The Stars all reflected a world view in which Israel does not exist.

One PA TV quiz answer taught that the length of "Palestine's" coast was 235 km. Gaza's coastline is only 45 km. long and Israel's Mediterranean coastline is approximately 190 km. long. Presenting "Palestine's" coast as 235 km. presents a world in which all of Israel is "Palestine."

Another quiz answer described the Israeli city of Nazareth as a "Palestinian city." A third answer taught that the size of "Palestine" was 27,000 sq. km. - an area that includes all of the State of Israel, as well as the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The West Bank and Gaza Strip comprise less than 7,000 sq. km.

PA TV is under the direct control of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's office.

It should also be noted that PA TV displayed the EU logo as background throughout the quiz.



(See full article)

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The Palestinian Issue – A New Paradigm: Focusing on the Humanitarian rather than the Political

Dr. Martin Sherman
Jerusalem Summit

A. Assessment

1. The conventional-wisdom paradigm for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has failed woefully, bringing nothing but misery and despair to both sides – but particularly to the Palestinians as individual human beings.

2. This conventional paradigm has attempted to solve the conflict by means of a Political Approach involving the establishment of a self governing Palestinian entity on territories in Judea Samaria and Gaza which have been under Israeli control since 1967 i.e. on the basis of a "Land for Peace" approach.

3. Dispassionate assessment of the history of the conflict and its current development will strongly suggest that persisting with attempts to attain a political solution on the basis the conventional paradigm are at best futile - and at worse harmful. Accordingly, alternative modes of resolution must be pursued.

B. Analysis

1. Analysis of Palestinian deeds and declarations over the years make it difficult to avoid the conclusion that they are in effect both unwilling and incapable of achieving and maintaining statehood.

(a) Palestinian Unwillingness: This is reflected in the fact that the Palestinians have rejected every single viable proposal which would have afforded them a state - from the 1947 partition plan to the 2000 Barak proposals.

(b) Palestinian Incapability: The Palestinian national movement has enjoyed conditions far more favorable than almost any other national independence movement since WW-II - widespread international endorsement of their cause, unmitigated support of a superpower in the decades of the Cold War, highly sympathetic coverage by the major media organizations, and over a decade of Israeli administrations who have acknowledged (and at times even identified with) the Palestinians declared national aspiration. In spite of this, the achievements of Palestinian national movement have been more miserable than almost any other national independence movement – bringing nothing but privation and penury to its people.

(Read full synopsis)
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