John Kerry and the violent non-violence on the road to peace - by Arnold Roth

...This must have been a welcome message for the entirely-Arab audience, as we assume was his summing up of the Palestinian Arab role

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
08 November '17..

The man who was America's most senior diplomat between 2013 and 2017 and before that a failed candidate for the highest elected office in the land, has some surprisingly naive views, it turns out, about the Palestinian Arabs.

In a recording broadcast last night by Israel's Channel 10 News, John Kerry is heard telling an unspecified conference in Dubai "in the past year attended by Middle East leaders" including the head of Israel’s Joint (Arab) List (a Knesset/parliamentary party), that he

blamed the Israeli government’s resistance to the establishment of a Palestinian state for harming the prospects of a peace deal

and foresaw a "violent Palestinian uprising if there was no progress in peace talks" ["In recording, John Kerry says Israeli government doesn’t want peace", Times of Israel, November 7, 2017]. We can only guess which peace talks he means. Kerry warned

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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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The Obama/Kerry Parting Tailwind to Terror -by Evelyn Gordon

...Two and a half years ago, I detailed how another Obama/Kerry effort to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace ended up sparking a war instead. But either they learned nothing from that fiasco, or they simply don’t care how many Israelis and Palestinians die for the sake of enabling them to posture self-righteously on the world stage. After all, they’ll be out of office at the end of the week. Israelis and Palestinians will still be here bleeding.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
17 January '17..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/israel-obamakerry-tailwind-to-terror/

A few weeks ago, the security threat Israel faced from Palestinian terror looked relatively low. But then Barack Obama and John Kerry decided to meddle. The consequences were eminently predictable: They got to enjoy feeling self-righteous, while Israelis and Palestinians pay the price in blood.

Here’s what things looked like a few weeks ago: The lone-wolf Palestinian terror attacks that were proliferating a year ago had largely died down since most Palestinians had concluded (correctly) that they weren’t accomplishing anything. Rocket attacks from Gaza were at their lowest point in 11 years, with only 15 rockets fired in all of 2016, down from 24 in 2015. Moreover, the fact that just 39 rockets were fired in the two years following the Gaza war of 2014 showed that this war had created far greater deterrence than its predecessors. By comparison, 261 rockets were fired in the two years after the 2009 war and 412 in the two years after the 2012 war. And if further proof were needed of the war’s deterrent effect, there was Hamas’s bizarre offer last month to share its homemade rockets with anyone willing to use them against Israel–a clear indication that it had no intention of waging its own war anytime soon. If it did, it would be stockpiling its rockets rather than trying to hawk them.

But by last week, things looked very different. Israeli defense officials reported a sharp upsurge in attempted Palestinian attacks–primarily rock-throwing, but there was also a deadly car ramming in Jerusalem that killed four soldiers and wounded 16. In a highly unusual statement, the officials noted that this rise had occurred in the two weeks since the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning Israeli settlements on December 23. And while the increase was partly attributable to the Palestinian exam season (when more teens are out throwing rocks because regular classes are canceled), it was much steeper than the usual exam-period spike.

That this upsurge occurred immediately after the UN resolution is no coincidence. Defense officials obviously can’t spell out the causal connection. It would be highly unseemly for them to accuse the Obama Administration of fomenting anti-Israel terror. But a commentator is subject to no such restraints, so let me explain.

Paris. A farce and a fraud—but could have been still worse - by P. David Hornik

...A new era in which conservative Western administrations, with the U.S. and Britain taking the lead, could treat Israel with diplomatic decency and take a clearer view of the Middle Eastern reality it deals with? Time will tell.

P. David Hornik..
Frontpagemag.com..
15 January '17..
Link: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265473/farcical-peace-conference-paris-p-david-hornik

The 70-nation conference on the Israeli-Palestinian issue in Paris on Sunday included neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives and was a farce and a fraud—but could have been still worse.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the conference represented the “last twitches of yesterday’s world. Tomorrow’s world will be different—and it is very near.”

It was, of course, one of the reasons the conference was farcical: although Secretary of State John Kerry was in attendance, he was representing an administration that is in its last five days in office, and whose policy of harassing Israel was—among much else—repudiated in the U.S. elections two months ago.

France, the host and convener of the conference, was hardly in a stronger position: the Socialist government of François Hollande is on its last leg and its path, too, is expected to be jettisoned in the upcoming French elections.

Israeli columnist Prof. Eyal Zisser notes that “in the actual Middle East…no one gives France a second thought and no one is taking its peace initiative seriously.” It was, after all, France that led the misguided Western assault on the defanged Qaddafi regime in Libya and reduced that country to jihadist chaos; and it is France that has sat impotently while its former colonies, Lebanon and Syria, have fallen under Hizballah rule in one case and into Hobbesian mayhem in the other.

And as David Harris has pointed out, France’s credentials as an honest broker on the Israeli-Palestinian issue are also less than sterling:

The mockery of a "Paris Peace Conference" - by Elliot Abrams

...So the conference will soon be nearly forgotten, and go down as yet another feeble effort to undermine Israel’s legitimacy. Of course if you ask the French, they will angrily deny that this was their purpose. I agree that it was not the purpose, but it is the effect, predictably. Like Resolution 2334, it is another diplomatic blow against the Jewish State, trying to isolate it and criticize it and undermine its ideological and diplomatic defenses. And meanwhile, this very month, we will see the PLO pay more money to prisoners convicted of terrorist acts and name more schools or parks or squares after murderers and would-be murderers. But there will be no Paris conference about all of that.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
15 January '17..
Link: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2017/01/15/the-paris-peace-conference/

Once upon a time, the term “Paris Peace Conference” was a serious one, and referred to the historic Versailles Conference that ended World War I. That conference began on January 18, 1919, and it is striking that the French would wish to make a mockery of their own history by convening a useless conference on almost exactly the same date—today, January 15.

Today nearly 70 countries, and nearly 40 foreign ministers including the one from the United States, are gathering in Paris. Why? Well, why not—from the point of view of the foreign ministers. You do have to sit through an entire day of boring speeches, of course, but then you get the whole weekend in Paris. I’ll bet most arrived Friday for a good dinner, then you have Saturday free for shopping, then another dinner….who would say no merely because the event will be useless or harmful to the cause of peace?

For John Kerry this is his swan song, and he is fresh from Vietnam where he walked down memory lane yet again, at God knows what cost to American taxpayers. But thinking of Kerry should lead us to recall who will be engaged in this event. There is Kerry, who will be unemployed in five days. There is French President Francois Hollande, who has announced he won’t even run for re-election in May. There is Palestinian President Abbas, elected in 2005 for a four year term and now entering his 12th year. And Abbas won’t actually be at the conference, just nearby in some gorgeous hotel suite. Israel is boycotting the conference. No one will represent the new American administration.

What is the point of this endeavor? According to the French, it is to show support for the two-state solution and urge both parties, meaning Israel and the PLO, to negotiate. That is a demonstration of bias, because it is the PLO not Israel that has been refusing negotiations and rejecting peace plans again and again for years—indeed decades. To treat the government of Israel and the PLO as if their desire for peace were identical is wrong and unfair. If the participants at the conference truly wished to advance peace, they would be pressuring the Palestinians to stop rewarding and inciting terrorism by glorifying terrorists, and pressuring them to start negotiating seriously. This will not happen. There is every reason to believe Mr. Abbas will leave Paris satisfied with the circus and feeling zero real pressure to do anything at all.

Why is John Kerry 'worried'? - by Dr. Reuven Berko

...Lacking a sense of history and any vision for the future, Kerry doesn't see the weakness and the need in the crumbling Arab world; doesn't recognize how marginal the Palestinian problem is and how pathetic its claims are; and doesn't understand that, in any case, if the Arabs could get rid of us, they'd have done so long ago. As it is said: May God protect me from my friends; I can defend myself against my enemies.

Dr. Reuven Berko..
Israel Hayom..
08 January '17..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=18109

When Sheikh Ekrima Sabri was still the grand mufti of Jerusalem, he declared to the media that he would prefer that the city remain occupied by Jews rather than become internationalized as part of a peace plan. Sabri said that the Muslims would eventually wrest control over the city away from the Jews, but it would be much harder to liberate it from the hands of the Christians and the Crusaders.

The return of the "Crusader occupation" via its "imperialist spearhead" -- the Jews -- is a shadowy fear that lies in the hearts of radical Islamists. They see the return of Christianity to the city, and certainly the resurrection of the Jews in their historic, promised capital with Christianity's help, as casting doubt on the relevance of the Islamist mission and the "seal of the prophets" doctrine, which, as we know, cancels out its predecessors.

Thus far, they have accepted an arrangement in which Jews are kept away from the city and worshippers at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are subject to two Islamic families who for generations have held the keys to the church and allowed Christians -- before they fled the Middle East -- to open its doors and pray there. The reappearance of the Jewish people and the founding of their state and its capital in Jerusalem changed their world order into an insufferable situation in which the Jews were no longer a religious tribe that wandered, persecuted, throughout the world, the subject of God's eternal wrath, destined to convert to Islam.

The threat of "Jewish crusader-ism" served the fundamental hatred of Jews in Muslim countries, as well as the Arab countries and the Palestinians' political manipulations, especially when they made cynical use of Zionism as a uniting pillar of the Arab Spring. For types like Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and members of the ranks that represent his ideas -- including Sabri, radical Islamist Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, and adviser to the "rais" [president] on religion affairs, Sheikh Mahmoud Al-Habash -- locating Israel's capital in Jerusalem means nothing less than a collapse of peace and a declaration of war on Muslims.

After the Blood Libel of ‘Illegal Settlements’, What Comes Next? - by Eric Rozenman

...Winston Churchill acknowledged that “the Jews are in Palestine as of a right; not on sufferance.” One year after Israel’s stunning triumph in 1967, Eric Hoffer wrote: “Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. … The Jews are alone in this world. If Israel survives it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources.” The same is true of the new blood libel. As usual, we’re on our own.

Eric Rozenman..
Algemeiner.com..
03 January '17..

Many critics of President Obama’s abstention from the recent UN Security Council vote, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s justification for this betrayal, underplayed or missed the historical and religious context.

The US’ irrational insistence that a Jewish presence in east Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank are “flagrant violations of international law” is effectively a new blood libel.

For the historically challenged, the blood libel was the allegation that Jews murder non-Jews in order to use their blood for religious rituals. It began in pre-Christian Greek culture, grew as Christianity spread in medieval Europe, was invoked in Czarist Russia and Nazi Germany, and has been exhumed by Palestinian terrorists and Islamic clerics. For more than 2,000 years, this blood libel has led to the massacres of countless Jews.

Is it hyperbole to compare a UN resolution and a harangue by a departing secretary of state to the blood libel?

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Actually, Palestinians Hate Blue Israel Too - by Jonathan Tobin

...Whether or not they like Netanyahu, a clear majority know that Palestinians have repeatedly rejected peace and still have a conception of national identity that makes peace impossible for the present. Israeli society is split along religious, economic, security, and political fault lines. But when placed in the context of Palestinian hate, international anti-Semitism and Obama’s betrayal, the cultural divide between right and left is not quite as great as Israel’s critics would have us believe.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
03 January '17..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/palestinians-hate-blue-israel-too/

For the mainstream media, explaining Israeli politics is difficult work. A country where the poor and disenfranchised immigrants from the Middle East have traditionally supported the party of the right (Likud) while the wealthy and the upper middle-class of largely European origin are the last strongholds of the political left does not translate easily into American political context. In the United States, political culture is rooted in very different concerns than those of the average Israeli, where security issues and attitudes toward the Arab world still dominate. The temptation to make flawed analogies, it seems, is still irresistible. That led to the New York Times’s attempt to ascribe reactions in Israel to Secretary of State John Kerry’s astonishing attack on the Jewish state last week to a divide between “red state” and “blue state” Israeli voters. The piece not only failed to effectively analyze the Israeli response to the Obama administration but also the reason why the Middle East conflict hasn’t been solved.

New Times Jerusalem bureau chief Peter Baker isn’t entirely wrong when he says that there is a stark divide between left and right in Israel. For some who live in secular and liberal Tel Aviv, what goes in Jerusalem and even along the border with Gaza–let alone West Bank settlements–has sometimes been of little interest. I can recall conversing with Tel Aviv residents about a visit to Sderot in the south eight years ago, which at the time was besieged by Palestinian missile fire, in which they reacted as if I was speaking of what was happening in Afghanistan. The disconnect between the minority who blame their own country for the lack of peace and the majority who correctly see the problem as the function of Palestinian intransigence is great, even if Hamas’s 2014 missile attacks on the secular metropolis erased some of the left’s complacency.

Yet the left-wing establishment that once dominated Israeli politics and society was effectively marginalized by the collapse of the peace process in the carnage of the second intifada. In the wake of the Palestinians’ refusal of an offer of statehood from the last Labor-led government in 2000, the even split between left and right that had characterized Israeli politics since the 1970s was transformed into a new reality in which power rested with a dominant right and an ever-changing roster of centrist parties. The fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now serving his third consecutive term in power and that the only viable alternative comes from Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid Party speaks volumes about how little influence leftist organs like Haaretz have, even as it continues to support attacks on the Jewish state from foreign critics like Kerry.

John Kerry’s Attack on Israel: The Failed Attempt to Divert Attention from Obama's Disastrous Foreign Policy

...No amount of doting on the Palestinians can hide the fact that the Obama administration’s foreign policy pursuits have been a failure, and no amount of scapegoating Israel will hide the growing force of this assessment in the years to come.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 390..
02 January '17..
Link: http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/390-frisch-kerrys-attack-on-israel-a-failed-attempt-to-divert-attention-from-obamas-disastrous-foreign-policy/

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Secretary of State John Kerry’s attack on Israel last week represents a vain attempt to deflect attention from the Obama administration’s failed foreign policy. Kerry’s fixation on the Palestinian issue explains why Russia, with one-tenth the GDP of the US, has emerged as the winner in Syria against both US and Israeli interests and why Iran, its ally, has come to control two more Arab capitals by proxy. Instead of promoting core US interests, Kerry has squandered efforts on promoting a two-state solution that has failed to materialize since it was first proposed by the Peel Commission eighty years ago. Hopefully, the next administration will give core US interests their due and find creative ways to deal with the fallout of a Palestinian national movement that has failed for 100 years.

In US Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent speech, in which he attempted to defend Washington’s abstention on the UNSCR resolution against Israeli settlements, he sounded more similar than ever before to the European leaders who reflexively condemn Israel. The similarity is rooted in a predicament shared by both the US under Obama and the EU – a weak and ineffectual foreign policy. Obama’s and Kerry’s “European” orientation has reduced American influence in world affairs to its lowest point since WWII and most certainly since the Vietnam War.

Just as the Europeans cover up their geostrategic weakness by ganging up on Israel, so too have Obama and Kerry zeroed in on Israel and the Palestinian issue as a means of covering up the abysmal failures of their foreign policy. Unfortunately, Israel is saddled with the costs of those foreign policy failures.

Kerry noted that the US concluded “an historic $38 billion memorandum of understanding that exceeds any military assistance package the United States has provided to any country, at any time, and that will invest in cutting-edge missile defense and sustain Israel’s qualitative military edge for years to come.” True, but he neglected to mention that most of those funds will go to meet the dangers of an aggressive Iranian policy.

Tehran has been emboldened by a $50-100 billion windfall resulting from the unfreezing of its assets in Western capitals, a bonanza orchestrated by Obama and Kerry. Israel knows full well that much of that windfall will be used to buy Russian state-of-the-art anti-air defense systems. This will make it much more difficult for Israel to attack Iran when it goes nuclear (which it inevitably will). Those systems will also be used to augment Hezbollah’s massive missile inventory in southern Lebanon, which is aimed at Israel’s major population centers.

Israel is also paying dearly for Obama’s debacle in Syria. For the first time since the 1980s, Israel is severely constrained in its mastery over the skies by a strong Russian air force presence in Syria, a state of affairs the Obama administration did nothing to prevent. Incredibly, President Vladimir Putin, the leader of a country with less than half the population of the US and one tenth its GDP, has led a winning Russian-Iranian-Syrian coalition against an ineffectual US. Tensions have only increased among Arabs, Kurds, Turkey, and the US. The Arab-Kurd standoff in Syria runs the risk of driving many Arabs into an alliance with IS.

John Kerry's consistent suspension of disbelief - by Yoram Ettinger

...The U.S.'s and Israel's national security, and the pursuit of peace, require a long-term, tenacious commitment to realism, not oversimplification, short-term convenience and suspension of disbelief. The critical errors of the past have doomed a litany of well-meaning peace initiatives.

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger..
Israel Hayom..
30 December '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=18047

The term "suspension of disbelief" refers to the well-intentioned subordination of documented facts and common sense to zeal and wishful thinking, sacrificing long-term realism on the altar of oversimplification and short-term gratification and convenience.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's Dec. 28 speech was replete with suspension of disbelief and totally inconsistent with the reality in the Middle East. But it was consistent with his 31-year foreign policy track record.

Kerry was the top frequent-flying senator to Damascus, allowing his own idyllic vision of the globe and his hosts' duplicitous rhetoric to cloud reality. He contended that first Hafez Assad and then Bashar Assad -- two of the most ferocious, cold-blooded dictators in the world -- were constructive leaders, referring to Bashar Assad as a generous reformer and a man of his word, even while the Syrian president was terrorizing his people and facilitating the infiltration into Iraq of Islamic terrorists whose aim was to murder Americans.

In his 1997 book "The New War," Kerry demonstrated an inclination to dismiss the writing on the wall when in conflict with wishful thinking: "Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman."

In March 2011, Kerry stated: "My judgment is that Syria will move, Syria will change as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the U.S. and the West." Indeed, Syria has changed. But, contrary to Kerry's assessment, not in a good way, with hundreds of thousands of people killed and millions displaced and made refugees.

The “international community's” Israel problem - What’s in it for them? - by Vic Rosenthal

...Even though national interest is cited – Kerry even argued in his speech that American interests were served by destabilizing Israel! – the real motivation for these policies is deep, irrational, and unfortunately, very familiar.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
29 December '16..

I am writing on Wednesday, after the passage of UNSC resolution 2334 and John Kerry’s speech laying out his parameters for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And after that, there will or will not be another Security Council resolution, in which the so-called “international community” will continue on its path to making Israel indefensible and ultimately seeing her disappear.

Today I’m going to take a longer view and ask a more fundamental question than “how are they going to try to stick it to us tomorrow?” Today I want to know “what’s in it for them in sticking it to us?”

This is interesting, because the obvious answer seems to be “nothing.” Look at this objectively: Israel is a tiny country which actually contributes a lot to civilization in science, technology, medicine and more. The Palestinians (PLO and Hamas varieties) basically have one interest, and that is destroying Israel and taking over their tiny piece of land. Their major contribution to civilization seems to be the popularization of airline hijacking and suicide bombing. Israel tried several times to give away large chunks of its country – which it is fully entitled to keep – in order to end the conflict, but the Palestinians have refused every time. Lucky for us.

Most of the nations, if asked, would say that it has to do with the human rights of the Palestinians. This is interesting too, because the Palestinians seem to think they have a right to kill anyone Jewish they come across. Israel argues persuasively that it really has to take security measures that affect the Palestinians, because otherwise they would exercise their “right” to murder us. How do we know? Experience: the withdrawal from Gaza and the various prisoner releases. Give them a chance, and they try to kill us. It happens every time.

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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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Dear John (Kerry): No “E’s” For Effort Being Handed Out Here - by Sheri Oz

...So tell me, John, has the PLO or the PA formally recognized Israel? I know Abbas has stated that he would take back said recognition of Israel if he does not get his way, but that is a very shrewd manipulation of people’s minds to make them think that he ever recognized Israel. And you fell for it, John, did you not? I guess this shows you do not have what it takes to make a mediator or arbitrator (how that made you Secretary of State material still bewilders me, but politics is a foreign country all to itself, I guess).

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
29 December '16..

I understand you will be looking for a new job soon, John. Do you know if Tricky Dicky ever did get that position as a used car salesman? In any case, that is not what I was thinking of for you.

I know you studied law and even worked for a few years as a prosecutor before going into politics. Seeing your performance in this last speech, I can only imagine that you went into politics because you were not a very good courtroom lawyer. Long-winded, repetitious, not really sure of your facts, I have the feeling judges told you more than once to move along in your opening and closing statements and asked if there was a point to all that verbiage.

I can imagine that defence attorneys probably got bored after a while of calling out “objection”. The judge would then wearily ask you, “Is this going anywhere?” “Do you have a question for the witness?” “Can you please stop testifying on behalf of the witness.” (None of this seems to have made you unfit for a career in politics.)

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Spending 45 minutes on settlements, and 45 seconds on terrorism - by Stephen Flatow

...To portray Israeli kindergarten construction as the equivalent of Palestinians blowing up buses, stabbing women and children, or lynching Israelis who accidentally drive into their neighborhood is nothing less than outrageous.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
28 December '16..

Like many others, I sat at my computer with baited breath Wednesday waiting for Secretary of State John Kerry to explain the background to the U.S. abstention on last week’s United Nations Security Council vote. And explain he did. But there were so many things wrong with what I will call Kerry’s farewell anti-Israel speech:

Spending 45 minutes on settlements, and 45 seconds on terrorism.

Claiming the Palestinians “live under Israeli military occupation” when 98 percent of them live under the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Condemning Israeli construction even within Jerusalem.

But if I had to choose the one aspect that bothered me the most, the part that made me want to shout at the computer screen, it would be the false moral equivalence.

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Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

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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Unless you count the Palestinian Authority stopping terror attacks to be a "concession"

...The Palestinians have responded with suicide bombings, stabbings, shootings, rocket fire, more incitement and more overt support of terrorists. Israel has made all the concessions. (Unless you count the Palestinian Authority stopping terror attacks to be a "concession," which mean you consider Palestinians to be murderers by nature and want to reward them for acting like normal humans.) 

Elder of Ziyon..
28 December '16..

John Kerry's speech on Wednesday gave Palestinians two more gifts from the US today - rewards for their adamant refusal to compromise.

Kerry said that Israel must do more concrete moves for peace - stopping building, giving more power to the PA - in order to build confidence towards a two state solution. There were no such concrete demands on the Palestinian side, only wishy washy requests to stop incitement and terror - with no consequences if they refuse.

As has been pointed out before, Mahmoud Abbas has bragged on multiple occasions that he has not changed the Palestinian position one bit since 1988.

Since then, the Israeli side has given the Palestinians autonomy, land, and allowed them to arm themselves. It has released scores of murderers and terrorists from prison.

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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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Question. How Many Jewish Children Are Too Many for the NYT, Obama?

...If the issue that so disturbs President Obama is that the Jewish mothers and fathers of East Jerusalem are having too many children, maybe he wants to propose a solution rather than simply allow the United Nations Security Council to condemn the newborns? What’s his answer? An old-fashioned Chinese Communist-style one-child policy, with state-enforced abortions?

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
28 December '16..

In a lead, front-page news article headlined “Defying U.N., Israel Prepares to Build More Settlements,” the New York Times conveys an explanation for the United States failure to veto an anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations Security Council.

“The addition of more than 100,000 settlers during Mr. Obama’s tenure convinced him that it was time to change the approach at the United Nations, aides said,” the Times reports. The Times doesn’t identify who these “aides” were or otherwise explain why limiting Jewish population growth in the West Bank is a project worthy of presidential attention

A deeper look at some of the math in the Times article makes Obama’s action seem even more peculiar. The Times reports:

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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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Kerry's demographic doomsday for Israel bogeyman - by Gregg Roman

...Unfortunately for Secretary Kerry, most Israelis are well aware that time is not running out on Israel's future as a democratic Jewish state. A democratic Jewish state is very much in existence and running strong. For all of the loud condemnations of Israel on Western college campuses, Israel's diplomatic relations are stronger than ever before, even in the Arab world, and its international trade is massively expanding. It's kind of hard to rain on that parade. Most Israelis couldn't care less if Gazans or West Bankers choose to have slightly bigger families than the inhabitants of Tel Aviv.

Gregg Roman..
MEF/The Hill..
09 December '16..

Critics of Israel love to exploit Jewish fears and anxieties. The most extreme resort to Holocaust inversion, boycotts, blacklists, and other singling-out methods reminiscent of Europe's anti-Semitic past. Secretary of State John Kerry likes to wave around the threat of Israel's demographic extinction.

Acute Israeli sensitivity on this matter came to the fore in the late 1960s, when Israeli rule over the newly won Gaza Strip and West Bank was thought by many to be untenable owing to much-higher Palestinian birth rates. If Israel chose to annex the territories, it would be obliged either to disenfranchise their Palestinian inhabitants, making Israel undemocratic, or extend the vote and watch Israel's Jewish majority turn into a minority. For Israel to remain both a democratic and a Jewish state, according to the conventional wisdom, it would have to give the territories up. "The womb of the Arab woman," the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat famously said, was his "best weapon."

Fast-forward five decades. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the number of (non-Jewish) Arabs living in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (4.62 million) and in Israel (1.68 million) for the first time matches the number of Jews (6.3 million). Taking into account still-higher Palestinian birthrates, as neatly graphed out in a September 2016 full-page New York Times advertisement by a pro-Palestinian group, the Jewish population in the expanse of territory "from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River" is projected to decline to 44 percent in 2030.

In his drive to wrest Israeli concessions he believes will break the Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic logjam, Secretary Kerry has repeatedly warned of a demographic doomsday for Israel. "How does Israel possibly maintain its character as a Jewish and democratic state when from the river to the sea, there would not even be a Jewish majority?" he warned last December. Time is "running out" for Israel, Kerry maintains, insinuating that Arabs will be even less likely to accept a Jewish state as part of the former Palestine mandate once they become an overall majority, instead returning to their demand for a "one-state" solution. Israel then winds up "either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens — or ... a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state."

But time is not running out, at least not for Israel. There are three big problems with the demographic doomsday argument.

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Gregg Roman is director of the Middle East Forum.

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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Palestinian statehood? An idea whose time has passed - by Stephen M. Flatow

...There may be no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in our generation; not all international conflicts have solutions. One thing has now become clear: a Palestinian state next to Israel is not the solution.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
07 December '16..

John Kerry and J Street are worried. They see their cherished dream of a Palestinian state slipping away.

Kerry's criticism of Israel at the Saban Forum Dec. 4 attracted a lot of attention. But the transcript of the U.S. secretary of state’s remarks reveals an important moment that the media overlooked. Just as he was about to denounce Israel's policies, Kerry suddenly turned to the audience and said:

"By the way, just let me ask a question. Raise your hands. I mean, I know some of you may not want to acknowledge, but how many of you believe in a two-state solution, believe two states is critical? Okay, it's the vast majority of people here. How many of you don't, are willing to say so? There's one hand up, one, two—maybe a few of you don't want to say."

Kerry is so worried that public support for Palestinian statehood is slipping away that he desperately sought affirmation from the obviously sympathetic audience.

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Stephen M. Flatow, a New Jersey attorney, is vice president of the Religious Zionists of America and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 1995.

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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John Kerry’s Bitter and Foolish Alternative Reality - by Jonathan Tobin

...Stabbing Israel in the back at the UN won’t bring peace any closer either, but Kerry prefers to leave the State Department with a gesture that would damage Israel and hamstring his successor rather than simply go home.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
05 December '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/john-kerry-bitter-alternative-reality-israel/

For those who thought that the Obama administration would fade away quietly in its last weeks in office without a parting shot at Israel, Secretary of State John Kerry has a message: They’re not done yet. Yesterday, while speaking at the Saban Forum at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Kerry let loose with a harangue that put all the blame for the lack of Middle East peace on Israel. He gave the Palestinian Authority and its undemocratic leader, Mahmoud Abbas, a pass for their refusal to negotiate seriously. He concentrated his fire on Prime Minister Netanyahu and other members of his government for “ignoring all our warnings about settlements” and dooming the prospects for a two-state solution. More than that, Kerry specifically hinted that the door was still open for a U.S. initiative at the United Nations Security Council before Donald Trump is sworn into office, which would undermine Israel’s negotiating position and possibly brand it as an international outlaw.

Kerry’s rant indicated that, despite last week’s AP report that the president already determined it would be a mistake to attack Israel in this fashion during this lame-duck period, many administration officials are, as Haaretz reported, still desperately trying to persuade him to the contrary. Clearly, Kerry is one of those doing so. His Saban remarks, which came almost immediately after speech by Netanyahu at the same conference, is a sign that his campaign against Israel is far from over.

The secretary of state is right that a great many members of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and some of his Cabinet ministers are strong supporters of the settlement movement. It’s equally true that, while Netanyahu has repeatedly expressed his support for a two-state solution and demonstrated his willingness to talk with Abbas, most of his government and a clear majority of Israeli voters have given it up as a viable policy for the foreseeable future. That is not because most Israelis don’t want peace. They do, but, unlike Kerry and the rest of the Obama administration, they are not in denial about the Palestinians.

Kerry bizarrely referred to Abbas as “committed to non-violence” even though the Palestinian leader has continued to send mixed signals about how committed he is to peace. Abbas has made some diplomatic gestures, but he continues to laud terrorists as heroes and martyrs, pays these killers and their families pensions, and allows his official media to spread hate against Jews and Israelis. Sometimes he evens joins in himself, as when he helped foment the “stabbing intifada” by spreading canards about Israel plotting to harm the Temple Mount mosques. Most important, Abbas refused to negotiate seriously with Netanyahu even when the prime minister offered to give up most of the West Bank. Nor has he recognized the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, a sign that he doesn’t really intend to end the century-old war against Zionism that has become an inextricable part of Palestinian national identity.

Kerry? Trusting someone who cannot even tell the truth about the basics - Elder of Ziyon

...Why should Israel have ever trusted someone who cannot tell the truth about the basics of the peace process - and who lies about it to make Israel look bad?

Elder of Ziyon..
05 December '16..






John Kerry, speaking at the Saban Forum this past weekend, said:

When Oslo was signed in 1993, the vision was that with the signing of Oslo, Area C – everybody knows there’s Area A, B, C – Area A is Palestinian security and administrative control, Area B is a split between administrative and security control, and Area C, which is 60 percent of the West Bank, is just Israel security and administrative still. But the deal of Oslo in 1993 was over the next year and a half Area C would be transferred to the Palestinian control administratively. Well, it didn’t happen for a number of different reasons. We won’t go into that now.

Kerry had good reason not to go into it - because it is a complete fiction.

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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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Cameras, Temple Mount and Palestinians. When in Doubt, Try Intimidation - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...We are seeing an old movie. Once again, the Palestinians have strong-armed their way to disaster. Their incessant intimidation fails to achieve a truly worthy goal: a better life under a non-dictatorial regime. Once again, the Palestinians have prevailed -- and in their win, they lose yet again.

Palestinian Arab young men with masks, inside
Al-Aqsa Mosque (some wearing shoes), stockpile
rocks to use for throwing at Jews who visit
the Temple Mount, September 27, 2015.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
22 April '16..

Succumbing to Palestinian intimidation, Jordan has dropped its plan to install surveillance cameras at the Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), or Temple Mount.

The cancellation of the plan is seen as a severe blow not only to Jordan, but also to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who, in October 2015, brokered the agreement to install the cameras at the site.

Kerry announced then that Jordan and Israel had agreed to round-the-clock video surveillance, with the goal of reducing tensions at the Temple Mount.

Since then, however, the Palestinians, who have unleashed a wave of violent attacks on Israel in a purported response to Israeli "provocations" at the Temple Mount, have been campaigning against the plan to install the security cameras there. This week, it turned out that this campaign of intimidation was not in vain.

The Palestinians argue that the cameras would be used by Israel to identify and arrest Muslim worshippers who protest against visits by Jews to the Temple Mount. What they seem to have forgotten is that these "protesters" regularly harass Jewish groups and individuals touring the Temple Mount. The "protesters" are known as murabitoun (the Steadfast) and their main mission is to stop Jews from touring the Temple Mount. Some are affiliated with the Palestinian Authority (PA), while others are on the payroll of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

How Kerry will respond to this spit in the face remains to be seen. Not a sound was heard from him throughout the months of the Palestinian campaign to scuttle the plan.

With the U.S. deafeningly quiet on the subject, the Jordanians were left alone to deal with the Palestinian intimidation.

Always a Willing Audience for the Same Palestinian Charade - by Jonathan Tobin

...So why can’t Obama and Sanders get the message and stop hounding the Israelis to make more concessions in order to create a peace that the Palestinians don’t want? The answer lies in a blame-Israel-first mentality that is impervious to facts as well as recent history. The overwhelming majority of Israelis — including the leading opposition to Netanyahu — that a two-state solution is impossible without a Palestinian peace partner. But Abbas always seems to have a willing audience for his charades among those who prefer myths about Israeli intransigence to the truth about the Palestinians. Until the Europeans and the increasingly hostile to Israel left wing of the Democratic Party wise up to this game, it will continue and Jewish blood will continue to flow in this and future intifadas.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
07 April '16..

To anyone who read Bernie Sanders’ comments about Israel in his Daily News interview last week, heard the candidate’s Middle East policy speech (that he chose not to deliver at the AIPAC conference), or President Obama’s numerous evaluations of the current situation, there’s no mystery about the blame for the lack of peace in the region. They both put the onus on Israel for failing to better relations with the Palestinians and specifically think that the existence of settlements in the West Bank, as well as Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem that they also call settlements, is the primary obstacle to peace. That point of view received a kind of validation last week when Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas called for new peace talks with Israel.

Speaking on Israel’s Channel 2, Abbas claimed, “I want to see peace in my life” and called upon Prime Minister Netanyahu to meet with him “at any time.” The implication of the statement was that the Palestinians have been and continue to be willing to talk peace but that it has been the Israelis who have refused to engage with them or make any offers that would allow them the statehood and independence they desire. The interview fit in nicely with the image that Israel’s critics have nurtured about its “hardline” government.

Nor did those who take Abbas at face value understand the Israeli government reaction to Abbas’s attempt at outreach. Speaking with more amusement than eagerness, Prime Minister Netanyahu tweeted that he had cleared his schedule on Monday and was waiting for Abbas. The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacted similarly, declaring that it was time for the Palestinians to make good on Abbas’ offer and to come and talk. The PA’s response was telling. “Negotiate what?” replied PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat. He went on to say that if the Israelis really wanted to talk they needed to concede in advance about settlements, agree to withdraw to the June 1967 lines, and release all imprisoned Palestinian terrorists.

In other words, Abbas wasn’t really serious about talking with Netanyahu. Moreover, just to make clear exactly what was going on, Palestine Media Watch issued a translation of a March 11 speech by Abbas broadcast on PA television broadcast to Palestinians. In contrast to the moderate champion of peace heard on Israeli TV, this Abbas had something very different to say. Instead of talking about mutual coexistence, Abbas said that the Palestinian people have “been under occupation for 67 or 68 years.”

For those who need help with their math, that means he’s talking about 1948 or 1949 when the modern state of Israel was born. In other words, according to Abbas, all of Israel inside the 1967 lines as well as the West Bank and Jerusalem is under “occupation.” This is significant not just because it contradicts his most recent attempt to pose as a moderate. It’s important because it explains everything the Palestinians have done since the Oslo Accords supposedly set the region on a path to peace in 1993.