Racist Demographics and ‘Peace Now’ - by Sheri Oz

So what do you call an organization that gives those “bad Jews” over there the label “settlers,” thereby taking away both their identity and their humanity?

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
18 June '18..

When ‘Peace Now’ began decades ago, I was among those who thought they had the right idea. Working for peace. Who could be against that? Maybe they were not racist back then, but I think they are now.

I will show you some material from their website and what came to my mind when I saw it. Let us start with this graphic representation of the population of the so-called West Bank (Judea & Samaria) as it appears on the Peace Now website:

Now, this is what I saw in my mind’s eye:

When Peace Now refers to “settlers” versus “Palestinians” they are actually referring to Jews versus Arabs. But if they put it in those terms, it would look a bit racist, no?

(Continue to Full Post)

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

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When Israel's Left aligns itself with the Hamas movement and acts as a mouthpiece for its propaganda - by Ben-Dror Yemini

The Left in Israel has opportunities to show that it is pro-Zionist, but when it comes to Gaza's so-called March of Return, it squandered that opportunity. Rather than unting behind Israel and calling this racist and anti-Semitic march out for what it really is, it aligned itself with the Hamas movement and is acting as a mouthpiece for its propaganda.

Ben-Dror Yemini..
Ynet/Opinion..
01 April '18..
Link: https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5216085,00.html

There are moments in which the Zionist left-wing—and this includes Meretz, the New Israel Fund, Peace Now and other groups and people—can prove that it's not just Left, but also Zionist. Hamas's "March of Return" is just such a moment. After all, this wasn't a fight against the occupation. This wasn't a march for peace. This wasn't resistance to the settlement enterprise. This was a provocation which is situated somewhere between the desire to annihilate Israel—as the march's organizers publicly declared—and the crazy shouting of the march's participants. "Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud," which is the Muslim battle cry, from days of old, to slaughter Jews. Not Zionists. Not Israelis. Jews.

In such moments, the Zionist left-wing should make it clear: We're not there. We know this is a provocation. We know this is a march of hate. We know the goal of Hamas and/or the organizers of the march is one and one alone: As many fatalities as possible to embarrass Israel. Any humane and liberal person, any supporter of human rights, anyone who wants peace and reconciliation should come out against this march, its organizers, and the racist and anti-Semitic sentiments leading it.

But no. The representatives of the Zionist left-wing failed this test. They have complaints, but only, or mostly, against Israel. Tamar Zandberg, the chosen leader of the Left, released a statement on "extensive harm done to the Palestinians," while calling for an inquiry. Not a word about the negative sentiments, the racism, the demand of return, the calls to kill Jews. Nothing. Zandberg is not stupid. She knows that the declared goal was "return" and the practical goal was fatalities. But damn the facts. She has another opportunity to slam Israel, and this is what she's doing.

Statements in the same vein were released by Mickey Gitzin, the executive director of the New Israel Fund ("non-violent activity"), and Yariv Oppenheimer ("What are we, Syria?"), the former leader of Peace Now.

Cheering for illegal settlers is okay as long as they’re not Jews - by Stephen M. Flatow

...Ultimately this question boils down to one thing: advocates of the Palestinian cause want to give large parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. If advancing that goal requires them to be disingenuous or intellectually inconsistent, then so be it.

Judea and Samaria's former
 Amona community

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
12 September '17..

The Jewish left, the United Nations, and the international news media have been telling us for years that illegal settlers in the “occupied territories” are the main obstacles to Middle East peace. So they all should have been rejoicing at this week’s news that a group of settlers were evicted from their home.

What happened was that Israel’s Supreme Court forced a group of settlers who had taken over an apartment in eastern Jerusalem that Israel took control of in 1967 — a place that is deemed “occupied Arab territory” by advocates for the Palestinians — to vacate the premises.

The court actually issued the eviction order back in 2013. But those diehard settlers, no doubt backed by pro-settler money from abroad, managed to exploit the Israeli legal system and drag the proceedings out for more than four years. Finally, this past week, the settlers were compelled to leave the property they had been illegally occupying.

So you would think Peace Now and its allies would be celebrating.

Instead, Peace Now issued a press release calling the eviction of the settlers “a dangerous trend that could threaten a future compromise in Jerusalem.”

Huh? Aren’t settlers the obstacle to peace? Wouldn’t their expulsion increase the chances for compromise and reconciliation?

(Continue to Full Post)

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey and 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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When the Israeli Left Crosses the Line - by Jonathan S. Tobin

...Peace Now and B’Tselem have the right to say what they like wherever they choose to say it. But those who join with Israel’s outright foes at the UN, of all places, in an effort to overthrow the verdict of Israeli democracy or to deny Jewish rights and security should not expect anything but contempt from Israelis and those who care about the Jewish state’s survival.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
16 October '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/the-israeli-left-crosses-a-line-peace-now/

It was business as usual at the United Nations on Friday as the Security Council devoted a session to criticizing Israel. Just to make sure that the argument was skewed the event was titled “Illegal Israeli Settlements: Obstacles to Peace and the Two-State Solution.” So rather than a debate about the legality of settlements or whether they (as opposed to Palestinian intransigence) are really the main obstacle to peace, what occurred was a Star Chamber proceeding with the one Jewish state in the dock. The usual suspects decried the presence of Jews in the West Bank, lamented the lack of a Palestinian state, and counseled that unless Israel changes its ways, it will face unspecified consequences.

But there was one thing that differentiated this day from all the Israel-bashing sessions that preceded it: the presence of two left-wing Jewish organizations to add their voices to the chorus of condemnation. Representatives from Americans for Peace Now and B’Tselem, an organization that bills itself as a human-rights group while working to undermine the efforts of the Israeli Defense Forces, showed up at the UN to join the gang tackle of the Jewish state.
The testimony provided by the two groups was correctly contradicted by Israel’s UN representative, who pointed out the conflict is driven by Palestinian hate rather than Israeli home-building. But their decision to appear raises a serious question about the ethics involved in taking an active part in an effort designed to delegitimize Israel on the international stage. It’s fair to ask whether it is appropriate for any organization that identifies as either Jewish or Israeli to assist a world body that is riddled with anti-Semitism in conducting a kangaroo-court procedure in which the Jewish state is judged guilty beforehand.

The most egregious aspect of the presence of these two groups is the assertion made by Peace Now’s Lara Friedman that her participation at the meeting was due to what she said was the “harsh climate” in Israel for human-rights groups. Their work was, she said, too important to be “silenced.” But no one is silencing Peace Now or B’Tselem in Israel.

It’s true that left-wing non-governmental organizations that seek to support the Palestinians against Israel are not particularly popular there these days. The 23 years of Palestinian terrorism and rejection of peace since the signing of the Oslo Accords have caused popular support for these groups to collapse. In particular, activities of outfits like B’Tselem and “Breaking the Silence,” which have taken steps to frustrate the IDF’s efforts in responding to the current “stabbing intifada,” have brought them into general disrepute.

Surprise! Peace Now Head Yariv Oppenheimer Condemns Terror Victim’s Self-Defense

...CAMERA has previously noted Peace Now’s bias and credibility problems....Future reports would do well to note that the organization’s head has now put himself on record as accusing an Israeli who acted in self-defense, protecting himself and others as being guilty of murdering the terrorist who had tried to murder him.

Sean Durns..
CAMERA Snapshots..
11 March '16..

The head of Peace Now, an Israel-based organization that repeatedly has opposed the policies of the Israeli government, has condemned a victim of a Palestinian terror attack for defending himself.

Yariv Oppenheimer, the head of the organization, accused terror victim Yonatan Azarihab of “executing” his attacker without trial.

Azarihab was one of 11 wounded in a March 8, 2016 Palestinian terror attacks in Jaffa and Petach Tikva. The Jaffa attacks took the life of tourist and U.S. Army veteran Taylor Force, 29, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University.

Yet, after being stabbed in the neck, Azarihab fought back. The Israeli removed the knife from his own body and then used it to kill the terrorist who reportedly had set about to find other victims.

According to Israel National News, Oppenheimer blamed Azarihab for this act of self-defense that possibly saved lives. The Peace Now head took to the social media platform, Twitter, claiming:

“This is how it goes [,] from neutralizing terrorist to execution without trial.”

Ignoring numerous instances of poor and biased anti-Israel media coverage (for a list of some examples, see “Wave of Palestinian Violence Accompanied by Spate of Bad Writing, ”CAMERA, Oct. 14, 2015), Oppenheimer claimed “in the present atmosphere, no one in the media dares to report and deal with the issue.” Perhaps this is because the “issue” of Israeli extrajudicial killings is virtually non-existent. However, Palestinian Arabs wantonly trying to murder Israelis is very much an issue.

Hope is the enemy by Vic Rosenthal

...We’re at war with a particularly cruel and implacable enemy. This should be the lesson we learn from the past 24 days, though we should have learned it long ago. Wars are won by both defeating the enemy in battle and making (what’s left of) him understand that he has absolutely no reason to go on fighting. War is hell, as Sherman said. True. But it wasn’t our choice. Let’s get on with it and get it over with.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
25 October '15..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2015/10/hope-is-the-enemy/

It is 24 days since the murder of Eitam and Na’ama Henkin, the event which is considered the beginning of the ongoing “stabbing (shooting, burning, running over) intifada.”

Last night there was a demonstration in Tel Aviv organized by the “Peace Now” movement. Several thousand people demanded that Netanyahu resign and carried banners calling for a “diplomatic solution” with the Palestinian Arabs.

Several thousand? Once the Left could get tens of thousands to join its protests. But only the terminally blockheaded (and John Kerry) still think that the murder wave has anything to do with “the occupation” or the presence or absence of a ‘peace process’ or settlements in Judea and Samaria or economic deprivation.

It isn’t possible to tell Israelis to deny what they see with their own eyes, and sometimes feel with their own violated or burned flesh.

There are too many counterarguments to the Left’s position. The terror that Jews have experienced in the land of Israel began before the state was founded, continued during the years that that there was no occupation and no settlements, got worse when the ‘peace process’ brought the evil seeds of PLO terror back from Tunis, exploded into suicide-bombing violence when Israel tried to give up 95% of the territories in the framework of a peace agreement, and brought thousands of rockets down on our heads when we unilaterally withdrew from Gaza.

Today’s stabbers and burners and murder drivers come from the highest levels of Palestinian Arab society. No deprivation here.

The knives and guns speak to us, as does the incitement on social media, where Arabs are shown how to cut grooves into their knives and put poison on them in order to make them more deadly. Nothing is as eloquent as the way they ram their cars into Jews at bus stops and then get out to hack at them with meat cleavers, the way Arab bystanders spit at and kick a Jewish woman bleeding from the knife still stuck in her back, the way they throw firebombs into the laps of Jewish children strapped into their car seats.

They aren’t shy about telling us what they want, both by word and deed. What could be clearer? They are telling us, get out, Jew. Their religion, their politics, their ethnic-racial hatred all want us gone or dead. To them we are a different species, like the cats and dogs and farm animals that they casually mistreat.

The Left and our pretend-allies-but-really-enemies abroad keep trying to ‘make sense’ of it, usually by picking on something that we are doing that is causing them to be so ‘frustrated’. They are losing hope, we are told. If we would give them their hope back they would stop killing us – as if concessions ever had any effect except encouraging more terrorism!

How Israel was Givat Hamatoasted by ‘peace’ groups

...The truth behind the Givat Hamatos scandal is that it was produced by the left-wing group Peace Now. Not a single one of the “breaking news” stories about this plan were real breaking news reports about a new neighborhood; rather the reports were manipulated from the beginning with the aim of generating maximum press coverage while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington.

Seth Frantzman..
Terra Incognita/JPost..
05 October '14..

The breeze was hot as we made our way through a parched field. Over the hill was what looked like a mechanic’s shop with a small field in the back that had some sheep in it. A young man working at the shop gestured toward us and shouted in Arabic. We continued on, past several caravans. A woman peered at us through a window. That was in 2010, the last time I visited Givat Hamatos. The severely impoverished Jewish community, and the Arab community of Beit Safafa that adjoined it, gave no impression of being of great political importance at the time. Yet today the place is at the heart of an international controversy.

On Friday the European Union claimed that new plans to build 2,610 housing units there threatened the bloc’s relations with the Jewish state. “This represents a further highly detrimental step that undermines prospects for a two-state solution and calls into question Israel’s commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians,” the EU claimed.

The US State Department said Wednesday that the plans called into question Israel’s commitment to peace and would “poison the atmosphere” between Israel, the Palestinians and US. In what commentators called a “striking rebuke,” a State Department spokesman claimed that it would distance Israel from “even its closest allies.” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius joined the outraged chorus, demanding Israel to “urgently reverse this decision.” He also claimed the plans “threaten the two-state solution...One cannot claim to support a solution and at the same time do things against without consequences being drawn, including at the European Union level.”

The issue is supposedly to do with geography. One report at Middle East Monitor claimed these housing units were “near Bethlehem.” Al-Jazeera’s Gregg Carlstrom claimed that the plans “could make it impossible to ever divide Jerusalem.” According to Carlstrom’s article the building would “cut the direct route between Bethlehem and Ramallah.” The new housing would also supposedly “close off the eastern approach” to Beit Safafa, an Arab neighborhood, meaning it “could not realistically become part of a future Palestinian state.”

The truth behind the Givat Hamatos scandal is that it was produced by the left-wing group Peace Now.

Not a single one of the “breaking news” stories about this plan were real breaking news reports about a new neighborhood; rather the reports were manipulated from the beginning with the aim of generating maximum press coverage while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington.

That this is not a new story becomes clear when one discovers the report at Terrestrial Jerusalem, a pro-Palestinian website, called “Looming Crises in East Jerusalem,” published on September 18, 2014.

The article described “town plan 13250, which provides for the construction of 2,610 units.” The report quotes a Walla article that noted “Netanyahu pulled all of these tenders at the very last moment, for fear of the international response at this point in time.”

Terrestrial Jerusalem noted, “If plans to build a settlement at the site are implemented, it will be the first new Israeli settlement neighborhood since construction commenced at Har Homa in the late 1990s.

Moreover, if Givat Hamatos is built, it will result – for the first time since 1967 – in a Palestinian neighborhood of east Jerusalem being completely surrounded by Israeli construction. This has dire implications for the possibility of any peace agreement. Namely: It will make the Clinton Parameters – or principles like them – impossible to implement in east Jerusalem.”

The wording of this earlier report is nearly identical to that of the initial press reports that caused the recent condemnations from Washington and Europe. It also reads like the Peace Now statements that were picked up by a compliant press. Peace Now’s Hagit Ofran claimed, “It’s a huge problem for any future agreement that divides the city...

It blocks the way for any capital the Palestinians might hope to have in east Jerusalem.” Parroting the Terrestrial Jerusalem claim, France’s foreign minister noted Givat Hamatos was the “first new neighborhood over the Green Line in 15 years.”

Let's take a step back and review what we now know. Givat Hamatos is the name of a small hill adjacent to the Green Line and close to Kibbutz Ramat Rahel, just across Hebron Road, which goes to Bethlehem, from the Mar Elias monastery. After Israel annexed this area and it became part of the municipality of Jerusalem after the 1967 war, the neighborhood of Gilo was constructed next to it in the 1980s.

Recycled Outrage in the Peace Camp

...Part of the problem is the permanent industry of European-funded settlement snoops. They count every new shack and every new permit (whereas ironically the EU has a limited grasp on how many Turkish settlers are on its own territory). They will not be silent simply for lack of what to report. One wonders if they will be even silent if all their political demands were realized, or whether they would, as has happened in Gaza, define occupation down.

Eugene Kontorovich..
Commentary Magazine..
02 October '14..

Defining “settlements” has always been difficult. The relevant international law instruments speak only of people being “transferred or deported” by an occupying power. However, most Jews in the West Bank have not been moved there by the Israeli government (that is why they are called settlers, not transferees and deportees).

But recent months have seen an unprecedented broadening of the concept of settlement activity to include things that do not involve Jews moving and, in this week’s dust-up, things that have already happened. The peace camp has been defining settlements down.

The Israeli government has not issued new authorizations for the building of new homes in the “settlements” since before the collapse of negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas. Even Peace Now grudgingly concedes a “semi-freeze.” Yet the absence of new tenders creates a problem for peace processors: they traditionally blame any foot-dragging by Abbas on these tenders, and insist that if Israel desisted, the primary obstacles to fruitful negotiations would be removed.

Yet as the moratorium grows longer, Abbas has, contrary to peace-process predictions, only moved farther away from negotiations. Indeed, he has fully adopted a new strategy of using international pressure to give him his demands without the trouble of having to make compromises.

Unable to blame “new settlement activity,” the peace camp, uncritically parroted by the media, has defined settlements down. Anything is now called “new” settlement activity. Last month, Peace Now treated a surveying decision that certain lands were not owned by private parties–Jewish or Arab–as a massive outrage, though the technical and administrative action would not result in a single hut being built for a single Jew.

C'mon folks, get a grip, There’s no grab!

...We call on the government to instruct the Civil Administration to renew the survey process with full force, not as retribution for terrorist attacks, that are ongoing, but in order to continue developing communities and give a Zionist answer to the systematic and organized attempts of the Palestinian Authority and its collaborator NGOs to take over vast areas of Judea and Samaria and deprive the Jewish people of their legal right to live there.

Gevaot, located in the Etzion settlement bloc..
(photo credit:Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)

Ari Briggs..
Opinion/JPost..
09 September '14..

Last week, the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria declared that some 1,000 acres in the area of Gush Etzion was public (state) land. This step was taken in accordance with decisions of the Security Cabinet following the kidnapping and horrific murder of three boys three months ago in Gush Etzion.

As expected, the extreme left-wing NGOs in Israel, led by Peace Now, exploded with an intensive campaign against this step, and shortly thereafter, the US, the UN and certain European countries began to condemn the move and demanded that Israel repeal its decision.

In a malicious manner intended to throw sand in the eyes of the international community, and to blacken the name of Israel, Peace Now purposely misrepresented this step – which was simply the formal completion of a well-known process – as expropriation of land, and another example of “occupation, expulsion and theft.”

However, an accurate analysis of this declaration and its basis in law completely disproves the claim that Israel has taken over privately owned land. The opposite is actually true – this entire process, implemented by the government, of surveying and officially declaring land to be state land, is intended to ensure that no private property rights will be harmed and that new or expanded communities will be established only on land that belongs unequivocally to the sovereign power according to international law, and not to a private individual.

What is the process of survey and declaration? In 1978, Prof. Aharon Barak, who was then the legal adviser to the government, declared, “The basic assumption in determining ownership of land is that all land is public land, except if it has been acquired by an individual.

Thus, any land which is desolate and against which no private ownership claim has been registered is assumed to be public land.” This mirrors land law in all western countries where there is only public land or private land.

Unable or unwilling, what’s wrong with the Israeli left.

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
10 January '13..

In a post entitled “Confessions of a lapsed leftist,” I tried to explain more than a year ago why my lifelong allegiance to the left had begun to crumble. Of course, many Israelis who had supported “Peace Now” in the 1990s and who had hoped that the negotiations at Camp David and Taba would result in a peace agreement went through a similar experience in view of the fact that the Palestinians chose to respond to Israel’s offers with the long and bloody “Al Aqsa”-Intifada.

The historian Benny Morris has repeatedly described the unfortunate learning process that many of us went through, most recently last fall in a long interview with Ha’aretz. The problem is that Israel’s left – which represented the peace camp – has not been able or willing to go through the same learning process. As a result, there are lots of politically homeless people like me in Israel, and I think the dizzying proliferation of new parties over the past few years is at least in part a reflection of this widespread homelessness.

Personally, I can’t say that I find any of the new options attractive or politically convincing and sound, and it is perhaps for this reason that I felt particular frustration when I recently discovered that a new left-wing Israeli think tank that had been established a year ago is apparently resolved to continue the left’s head-in-the-sand-approach. The two posts I wrote about the new organization were first published in The Algemeiner and on my Jerusalem Post blog; they are cross-posted below with some minor changes.

It's surrender that corrupts the soul of Israel

Fresnozionism.org..
06 September '12..








This morning, a friend sent me an article by Leonard Fein called “Occupation Corrupts Soul of Israel.”

Fein writes,

Hakibush mashchit — The occupation corrupts.

And so, plainly, it does. But so what? However inadvertent the origins, the poison fruit is today fully ripe. To understand that, it is not sufficient to call attention to the horrific attack in Zion Square the other night, the attack by a mob that threatened the life of Jamal Julani, or even to add to it the firebombing hours earlier of a taxi near Gush Etzion in which six Palestinians, two of them children, were wounded.

He goes on to talk about “settler violence,” the complicity of the authorities (if you ask the ‘settlers’, they will tell you that the authorities in fact protect the Arabs), price tag vandalism, etc.

Is this the “poison fruit” of ‘occupation’?

Or is it simply that some Jews have — after decades of murder, vandalism, no-go zones in Israel’s capital and other places, stonings, lynchings, etc. — learned to act like Arabs?

Did the poison come from Jews living in their historic homeland, or from the Arabs who hate them?

Freund - The Green Line? Say "Bye!"

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
21 June '12..

The announcement on Tuesday that a deal had been reached between the government and the residents of Beit El's Ulpana neighborhood will hopefully bring a peaceful end to an otherwise painful episode.

After months of wrangling, the two sides reached an accommodation that will bring about the relocation of the homes at the heart of the dispute along with additional building in other parts of Beit El.

This entire affair, which threatened to resurrect old wounds in Israeli society, was the opening salvo in a campaign by Israel's Left to force the government to demolish Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria that it deems to be illegal. In the coming months, similar conflicts are likely to arise over other Jewish outposts such as those at Givat Assaf and Migron, as the Left seeks to turn back the clock and undermine Israel's presence in the territories.

But the ideologues on the Left are missing the point. The battle over the future of a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria is over. To put it simply: the Left has lost, and the Jewish people have won.

Consider the following. According to an Interior Ministry census published at the start of the year, there are an estimated 722,000 Jews currently living in the areas that were liberated by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. This includes over 300,000 who dwell in parts of eastern and northern Jerusalem that were taken back from Jordan, another 340,000 who reside in Judea and Samaria, as well as 60,000 people who live and study at various educational institutions in the area.

The significance of this statistic is enormous. It means that nearly one out of every 10 Israelis now lives beyond the so-called Green Line.

That is more than the population of Tel Aviv and Haifa combined.

Hence, in just 45 years, since the miraculous victory of the Six Day War, the number of Jews living in Israel's ancient heartland has gone from zero to 700,000 and it is still growing at a hefty clip.

Silverman - Migron residents want to remain home

Anav Silverman..
Israel News/Ynet
14 June '12..

A group of young children parade in a circle, waving Israeli flags against the clear blue sky. They are directed by several youth leaders who are trying to keep the kids in line. It is a few days before Israel’s Independence Day and Migron is preparing for the upcoming festive ceremony, held for the entire community.

Some of the mothers come out to watch their children perform. Among them, stands Aviela Deitch, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who has been living for the past year in Migron, a tiny West Bank community of 49 families, located 14 miles north of Jerusalem. She lives in a small mobile home, with her husband and six children in a community considered "illegal" and "unauthorized," and even marked as a "wildcat outpost" by those who oppose its existence and subsequently described as such in much of the international press.

For Aviela, the terminology does not matter.

"We chose to live here because we wanted our children to know the responsibility of building a community in a place that has wonderful people," she explains to Tazpit News Agency.

"There is a certain quality of life in Migron and a very strong sense of community. The youth are bright and polite and their parents are involved. Our children attend great schools in nearby communities, while the younger ones go to Migron’s community daycare and kindergarten. There is almost a zero- percent crime rate."

Established in 1999, Migron is made up of mostly young professional people who served in the IDF and national service, graduated from universities, with many now working primarily in the fields of social work, special education, rehabilitation, elderly care, computer programming and mechanical engineering.

Frantzman - Occupation: The ‘oxygen’ of the peace lobby

Seth J. Frantzman..
Terra Incognita/JPost..
30 May '12..





(While having some very specific reservations with this piece, on balance there are a number of important points that are brought out and require attention. Yosef)

In its recently released annual report, Amnesty International accused Israel of a laundry list of human rights violations, almost all of which had to do with the occupied Palestinian territories. Most interesting was the list of complaints related to Gaza.

“The humanitarian crisis affecting the Gaza Strip’s 1.6 million residents continued due to Israel’s ongoing military blockade...36 Palestinians were killed in accidents or in Israeli air strikes on tunnels used to smuggle goods between Egypt and Gaza...the Israeli authorities hindered or prevented hundreds of patients from leaving Gaza to obtain medical treatment.”

The continuing saga of Gaza is an important symbol of a larger phenomenon. The occupation of the Palestinian territories can never end because of the vested interest many organizations have in maintaining the fiction of Israeli control, even when control is withdrawn. It is well known that Israel does not control the border between Egypt and Gaza and yet the condemnation for not providing access to hospitals for Gazans assumes that Israel is responsible for providing medical treatment for people in Gaza; once again perpetuating the idea that Israel’s occupation can never be allowed to end.

Human rights organizations and the peace industry are beholden to the occupation, addicted to it – no less than Israel’s most extremist right-wing voices. This may seem a contradiction: how can organizations devoted to ending the occupation in fact support the occupation? The answer: Because the occupation is their raison d’etre and without it they cannot exist. This is typical of the NGO world. For example, those organizations that devote their existence to ending poverty require that poverty be perpetuated because NGOs have become an industry and choice place of employment. That is why we see in the world of NGOs a multiplication of overlapping groups with “mission creep.” This multiplication becomes an intense lobby to support a professional class, to the extent that entire university degrees are now devoted to the phenomenon of the NGO profession.

Medad - Ofran's Reverse Irrationality

Yisrael Medad..
My Right Word..
26 April '12..


Peace Now's Hagit Ofran of its Settlement Watch Project is now arguing backwards:

The right wing, in order to justify continuation of Israeli control over the West Bank and of the expansion of settlements, is trying to claim that 1967 and 1948 are essentially equivalent: if 1948 was justified, then 1967 must also be accepted. Or, most simply: Once Zionism is what we call support for Israel as a homeland of the Jewish people, then Israeli occupation of the West Bank is merely a logical extension of the Zionist doctrine.

Paradoxically, by invoking Zionism in support of the settlements and the occupation, the right wing is joining the biggest opponents of Israel, who argue that if, as they believe, Israel's occupation of the Palestinian people in the territories is illegitimate, then, by logical extension, so is the entire Zionist enterprise.

That is a neat trick.

I have argued for over three decades with all of Hagit predecessors that

(a) indeed, 1967 was an extension and continuation of the 1948 war;

(b) it was so, since the Arabs, who began their terror campaign in 1920, rejected Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish state, had launched a war in 1948, actually on the morrow of the UN Partition recommendation adoption, and had never stopped all throughout the 1950s and 1960s;

(c) by doing so, the Arabs had displayed implaccable hatred that had simply intensified and led to the 1967 conflict triggered by Fatah/PLO terror;

(d) the only conclusion was that anything post-1967 could not be blamed for the hostilities and violence that ocurred pre-1967 and that includes "settlements", "outposts", "occupation", "illegal construction", "East Jerusalem neighborhoods", et al.;

(e) and now, Ofran seeks to reverse all that in an irrationality that astounds. If, as she writes

Tobin - Not a Parody: Peace Now Shocked to Discover Arabs Don’t Want Peace

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
28 February '12..

What will it take to convince supporters of Peace Now the imperative of their organization’s name depends on the Arabs rather than the Jews? After 18+ years of Arab terrorism and rejection of peace offers since the Oslo Accords, it’s hard to say whether anything the Palestinians could do or say would cause them to rethink their myopic view of the world. But give Americans for Peace Now’s Lara Friedman a little credit. After schlepping to an Arab League conference on Jerusalem, she at least had the wit to notice that just about everybody else there was focused on delegitimizing Israel, denouncing its existence within any borders and denying thousands of years of Jewish history.

However, it’s hard not to chuckle a little bit at the indignant tone affected by Friedman in her op-ed published in the Forward as she conveys her shock and dismay to discover the Arab world believes Jews have no rights in Jerusalem or any other part of Israel. She and her group had so convinced themselves all it will take to create peace “now” was for Israelis to support a two-state solution and negotiate, it appears they never took the time or effort to realize the other side has little interest in peace, now or at any other time. This gives her piece the tone of a parody worthy of The Onion even though it was written in deadly earnest. Indeed, it must be considered in writing such an article she has demonstrated the utter cluelessness of her group better than anything the group’s critics could have come up with.

What is so touching (as well as more than a bit comical) about Friedman’s piece is that much of what she says in it is true. For example:

Eydar - Praise Peace Now

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
23 February '12..

Here is a familiar scene from recent years: Peace Now, or one of its clones, petitions the High Court of Justice against construction in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. It is a game of sorts: the settlers build and Peace Now demolishes, or tries to demolish. Eros vs. Thanatos.

Until recently, the state’s response to such petitions was that the construction was in fact wrong, that the homes were slated for demolition and so on. We will see. Everything will be fine. In short: you’re right, but … The legacy of the Olmert administration.

This situation, which has long mired the construction, has been a thorn in the side of many officials in the current government, for whom Jewish settlement is a priority.

About a year ago, the prime minister convened a meeting in which it was decided to distinguish between communities built on state lands and communities built on disputed land, which may be privately owned. It was decided further that communities built on state land would be gradually made legal and legitimized. These decisions are justified not only by the Jews’ moral right to their land, but also by international law.

Hornik - ‘Peace Now’ Faults Israel For Palestinians’ Genocidal Urges

P. David Hornik..
frontpagemag.com..
27 January '12..

Last week Palestinian Media Watch revealed that the Mufti Muhammad Hussein, top cleric of the Palestinian Authority, had approvingly quoted a hadith calling for the genocide of Jews. Hussein, who was appointed to his post by PA president Mahmoud Abbas, did so at a ceremony marking the 47th anniversary of the Fatah movement. The moderator at the ceremony chimed in that “Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs [i.e., Jews] is a war of religion and faith.” As for Mufti Hussein, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered Israel’s attorney-general to investigate him for incitement.

Palestinian Media Watch now reports that the mufti’s words have drawn international condemnation. This, actually, doesn’t amount to much—far less than, for instance, the typical round of condemnations when Israel announces plans to build homes in parts of Jerusalem that the enlightened world thinks should be Judenrein.

Alistair Burt, the UK minister for the Middle East, said: “I condemn the inflammatory words used by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and others…. To refer to the Jewish people in such a way and to talk of killing Jews is anti-semitism, pure and simple.” More surprisingly—seemingly—Palestinian Media Watch also offers a quote from Americans for Peace Now. This organization, founded in 1981 to drum up support for its Israeli parent-organization, Peace Now, states that it

strongly condemns the belligerent anti-Jewish comments made by the Palestinian Authority’s Mufti of Jerusalem at a public event in the West Bank earlier this month…. “We are appalled by these comments, coming from the most senior Muslim cleric on the Palestinian Authority’s payroll,” said Debra DeLee, APN’s President and CEO. DeLee added, “What we find particularly disturbing is that these vile comments were broadcast on the Palestinian Authority’s official television channel, amplifying their inciting [e]ffect.”

I was surprised by those seemingly unequivocal words, and checked the original statement on APN’s website.

Indeed, the context reveals that they weren’t unequivocal at all. Immediately after her above-quoted words, DeLee said further:

IMRA - [Peace Now comes to rescue?] Government Offers Compromise Agreement on the Evacuation of the Structures at Migron

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..
22 January '12..

[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: Yes, the residents of Migron are furious that they find themselves in what they see as an absurd situation in which as a result of "lawfare" on the part of Peace Now they are being expelled from land that they say was virgin untilled land - not privately owned by anyone - until they built their homes. The question - the extremely practical question - is if they can "win" now if they reject Prime Minister Netanyahu's proposal. Where "win" is defined as succeeding in remaining in their homes.

And then Peace Now's Yariv Oppenheimer comes to the rescue in an interview on Israel Radio, recasting Prime Minister Netanyahu's offer as a tremendous victory for the settlement movement - since the proposal provides for the official establishment of the first new community in Judea and Samaria since Oslo. Oppenheimer went even further, predicting that if the residents of Migron accept Mr. Netanyahu's offer that they will ultimately have their cake and eat it to: with both a new community established and the existing Migron location continuing in perpetuity.

Hopefully Oppenheimer won't stop with one interview on Reshet Bet and will make a huge splash in all the Israeli news media channels. The more vocal his criticism the more palatable the offer to the residents of Migron.]

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Government Offers Compromise Agreement on the Evacuation of the Structures at Migron
(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier today (Sunday), 22.1.12, at the weekly Cabinet meeting, said that according to a High Court of Justice decision, the structures at Migron must be evacuated by 31.3.12.

Due to its desire to honor the Court's decision by agreement and peacefully, the Government proposes the following compromise:

Migron residents' permanent homes will be built near the current site, on state lands the planning for which will be arranged.

Upon the conclusion of the construction, the residents will move to the permanent site.

The site will be evacuated and handed over to the Judea and Samaria Civil Administration.

The Government calls on the residents of Migron to agree to the proffered compromise and thus allow the Government to soon request that the Court approve the arrangement.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said that, "This is a good proposal. It does not solve all of the problems, but it does resolve the problem of Migron."

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IMRA - Haaretz reporting bias

Quotes critic of report against BGU without mentioning she founder of Peace Now

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
29 November '11




[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

Question: If a founder of Gush Emunim criticized a report for being prejudiced against the national camp, would the Haaretz article covering the story mention the connection to Gush Emunim?

Of course. And that would be proper.

So here we have Prof. Galia Golan, a founder of of the radical left Peace Now, criticizing a report that slammed the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Politics and Government Department for pushing a radical left agenda.

And not a word about Prof. Golan's past.

Oops.]

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Education body to vote on report on 'slanted' BGU faculty
Panel member admits criticism in report may also have been political.

By Talila Nesher
Haaretz 01:12 29.11.11
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/education-body-to-vote-on-report-on-slanted-bgu-faculty-1.398372

The Council for Higher Education is set to vote Tuesday to ratify the external report it commissioned on the political science faculties at Israel's universities, including Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Politics and Government Department, which came under heavy criticism. The document lists a series of shortcomings at Ben-Gurion University and even advises, as a last resort, closing down the department entirely if the problems are not resolved.

The report also refers to the fact that students at the Ben-Gurion University department are exposed to the personal political opinions of their professors, noting: "Lecturers must ensure that their personal opinions are presented as such, so that the students can judge things from a critical perspective and be exposed to a wide range of perspectives and alternatives."


Further to claims by members of the teaching staff at Ben-Gurion's Politics and Government Department that the committee's work was motivated by political considerations, committee member Prof. Galia Golan, from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, has told Haaretz that the shortcomings exposed at the Negev institution may indeed have been politically biased.

"I felt that some of the committee members, with specific political opinions, were trying to find fault with the place," Golan said. "I don't know if these were instructions from above, but I felt that things were not being conducted fairly."

According to Golan, the same supposed shortcomings that were revealed at Ben-Gurion University weren't even mentioned in the reports on the other institutions, "because they weren't perceived as problematic."

Golan said that "with regard to Ben-Gurion University, [committee] members tended to ignore the positive things and underplay their significance.

"My efforts to convince the committee otherwise came to naught," she added. "The attitude toward the university was unlike the attitude elsewhere."

Golan, who refused to sign the section of the report dealing with the Ben-Gurion University department, also recently sent a letter to the Council for Higher Education warning of the document's lack of fairness and urging that the matter be considered before the conclusions are adopted.

"Distinct political opinions influenced the judgment of some of the [committee] members," Golan told Haaretz. "The chairman of the committee actually tried to be as neutral as possible; but in the end, people were guided by a political approach."

According to Prof. David Newman, the dean of Ben-Gurion's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and one of the founders of its Politics and Government Department, "The department has become a target for attack by all those who wish to suppress any pluralist dialogue and trample every piece of academic freedom. One brief glance at this activity is enough to grasp the inherent danger it poses for the existence of Israeli democracy."

A statement from the Council for Higher Education said: "We totally reject the claim of political considerations ... The evaluation committee is made up of experienced individuals of academic renown in Israel and abroad. The assessment of the Political Science Department at Ben-Gurion University was conducted in the same manner in which the other institutions were assessed.

"The committee, which carried out an independent assessment, was of the opinion that the Ben-Gurion University department is acutely lacking senior staff at the core of the field, and that this requires immediate rectification."