With a dogma shattered, finally, embracing the Israelis on the other side - by Sara Al-Nuaimi

Our relationship with Israel is one of timeless harmony. My caring for Palestinians means urging to stop trying to destroy Israel and instead come to terms with it.

Sara Al-Nuaimi..
Guest Columnist/Israel Hayom..
24 August '20..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/finally-embracing-the-israelis-on-the-other-side/

It has always been my dream to visit Israel, the mystical, forbidden, and imaginative place. What would it feel like to enter a synagogue, to see a candle-lit menorah, to hear the psalms, to get inspired by a new language, to allow new words and new creative emotional experiences to take place? To sing, dance the horah, and celebrate with Israelis the remarkable turn of a new millennium?

As an Emirati woman, in the past, some would react with, "Are you okay? What's wrong with you?" Perhaps the oddest response I have received was, "Are you a Shiite?" (I am Sunni.) Thinking of all the positive aspects of Israel in a way disintegrated all the false beliefs pounded into society that limited my immersive being.

When Arabs deny the Holocaust, they in some way deny my own existence that upholds an identity that wants to be everything Arab, but also everything new, expanding, global, universal. There is an elated feeling of inspired hope, of love and freedom when parts of an old traditional construct start to melt away, yet there's also a safe deep current of satisfaction in knowing that Israel's narrative is also built on traditions like our own, and there's no more the fear of having to cut cords with our past in order to look ahead.

Our relationship with Israel is one of timeless harmony. The richness in knowing that we are larger than belief is the greatest richness in life. This is what acknowledging Israel means to me. Carrying a heart free of enmity is the most meaningful thing in life. I marvel at the possibilities and the consequences. If only I can stand right in front of an Israeli bakery right now and enjoy a freshly baked bagel.

This is an earthquake, a call to Israel’s Arab neighbors to look to the future rather than the past - by David Suissa

After UAE deal, will liberal Zionists stand on the right side of history?

David Suissa..
Israel Hayom/Jewish Journal..
19 August '20..

The forces of darkness in the Middle East are panicking. One of the most powerful Arab countries in the world has made peace with the dreaded Zionist enemy.

For these forces of darkness, anything that challenges the demonization of the Jewish state is a disaster. In order for these regimes to survive, Israel must remain the irredeemable sinner, the evil oppressor of Palestinians, the Jewish invader who took over holy Muslim land.

This dark view of Israel has long been the mother’s milk sustaining the dictators of the region, keeping attention away from their own corruption, incompetence and oppression of their people.

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The problem is that in the long run, any model based on lies and manufactured hatred is not sustainable. At some point, people wake up. People have to eat and make a living. People have to envision a better future.

This opens them up to other truths.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), in making a historic deal with Israel, woke up. In fact, they woke up a while ago. The difference is that now, they’re coming out. They’re not hiding it. They’re telling the world and the people of the region: Israel is not our enemy. Israel doesn’t want to invade us. Israel has a lot to offer.

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PM Netanyahu’s bold move - by Ruthie Blum

The Israeli right is wrong to see the prime minister’s deal with the UAE as a capitulation to foreign pressure. He is creating optimal conditions for the Jewish state’s road ahead.

Ruthie Blum..
JNS.org..
18 August '20..

Anyone wondering what had become of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ostensible July 1 target date to begin the process of extending sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria received an answer last Thursday.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement on Aug. 13 that Washington had brokered a peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates—and accompanying reports that the deal precluded “annexation of the West Bank”—put the question to rest.

Once it emerged that Netanyahu had been busy for the past few weeks negotiating the terms of the treaty with Trump and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, his sudden silence on sovereignty became clear. Ironically, the weekly protests outside of the Israeli premier’s official residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem included the chanting of slogans and waving of banners decrying his “annexation” plans.

The cessation of these plans—derived from the “Peace to Prosperity” vision that Trump unveiled at the White House on Jan. 28—have not assuaged the anti-Netanyahu camp, however. The demonstrators in the capital and elsewhere across the country have other bones of contention to keep their Woodstock-like festivals going.

What they consider to be the prime minister’s poor handling of the current so-called “second wave” of the coronavirus crisis is one such issue. Another is his heading of the government while under indictment for corruption. Calling him “crime minister,” they scream and shout that he should resign.

Never mind that they have been complaining about his reluctance to open the economy completely while gathering in massive numbers and huddling together, many without masks, as though Health Ministry warnings and regulations don’t apply to them.

Forget about the fact that Netanyahu not only was re-elected to head the Likud Party in a democratic primary, and that his remaining at the helm is the result of democratic Knesset elections and coalition-building.

Leave aside the fact that he, like every other Israeli citizen, is innocent until proven guilty. The loud crowds urging his ouster are angry at their lot and hold him responsible for it.

It is natural for an anxiety-ridden population with an uncertain financial future and bleak present to blame its leader. People all over the world are doing just that, accusing their governments of failing to prevent COVID-19 deaths on the one hand and of killing the economy on the other.

Netanyahu, thus, is in good company. But he possesses abilities that few of his counterpart heads of state can match. The deal that he reached with the UAE is but one example among many. His engaging in political clashes while managing a low-intensity conflict against Hamas in Gaza and launching repeated mini-strikes on Iranian facilities is another.

The two are connected, and not only because the Sunni Gulf states now see in Israel a staunch ally in their mutual battle against the mullah-led Shi’ite regime in Tehran, but due to Netanyahu’s knowledge that holding off on his promised sovereignty moves would arouse the ire of many of his supporters, without gaining him any brownie points from his detractors—at least not those on either side of the Israeli spectrum.

Indeed, none of the current protesters will stay home next weekend,

(Continue to Full Column)

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. 

Incredible Israel-UAE deal upends the ‘rules’ about peace-making in Middle East - by Michael Oren

For more than half of a century, the paradigm of Middle East peace-making has proven highly resistant to change. Yet even the fiercest advocates of that belief-system must recognize the seismic shift that will take place once the UAE-Israel treaty is signed. Some will no doubt insist on adhering to disproven assumptions. Those who care about peace will abandon them.

Michael Oren..
TOI Blog..
14 August '20..

The impending peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is more than just a stunning diplomatic breakthrough. It represents a fundamental shift in the paradigm of peace-making.

For more than 50 years, that paradigm has been based on seemingly unassailable assumptions. The first of these was that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the core dispute in the Middle East. Resolve it, and peace would reign throughout the region. The premise was largely dispelled by the Arab Spring of 2011 and the subsequent civil wars in Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen. Still, a large body of decision-makers, especially from Europe and the United States, continued to regard a solution to Israel-Palestine as the panacea for many, if not most, of the Middle East’s ills. Then-secretary of state John Kerry’s intense shuttle diplomacy, which paralleled the massacre of half a million Syrians in 2012-14, proceeded precisely on this assumption.

The next assumption was that core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was settlement-building in Judea/Samaria, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Freeze it and the dispute would be easily mediated. This, theory, too, collapsed in the face of facts. Israel withdrew from Gaza, uprooting 21 settlements, in 2005, and then froze settlements for much of 2009-10. The conflict nevertheless continued and even worsened, but that did not prevent foreign policymakers from persisting in the belief that peace is incompatible with settlements.

And, in addition to ceasing construction in the territories, Israel was expected to give virtually all of them up. This was the third assumption — that peace with the Arab world could only be purchased with Israeli concessions of land. This belief is as old as Israel itself. The first Anglo-American peace plans — Alpha and Gamma — were predicated on Israeli concessions in the Negev and elsewhere. After 1967, the principle applied to areas captured by Israel in the Six Day War and, after the return of Sinai to Egypt in 1982, to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The same secretary of state Kerry repeatedly warned Israel that failure to forfeit those areas would result in its total international isolation.

Yet another assumption held that “everyone knows what the final agreement looks like.” With minor modifications and territorial swaps, this meant that a Palestinian state would be created along the pre-1967 lines with a capital in East Jerusalem. The Palestinians would give up the so-called right of return for Palestinian refugees, agree to end the conflict with Israel and to cease all further claims, and to accept the formula of “two states for two peoples.” Israel, in turn, would remove dozens of settlements, redivide its capital, and outsource West Bank security either to the Palestinians or some international source. Of all the assumptions, this was the most divorced from reality. Not a single aspect of it was achievable. In fact, no one knew what final agreement looked like.

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Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States and a member of Knesset, is the author of Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide(Random House, 2015).

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. 

Viewpoint:'White' Israel and its migrant workers

Carmel Gould
Just Journalism
20 July '10

The picture painted by Mya Guarnieri in her Guardian Comment is free article, ‘Children are just Israel's latest victims’ is stark. Readers unfortunate enough not to know better would doubtless reach two false conclusions: first, that Israel treats its migrant worker population exceptionally badly; and second, – and perhaps the most demonstrably untrue – that Israel is a ‘white’ country, which does not like non-white people.

The trigger for these accusations is a decision by Israel in 2009 to deport back to their countries of origin a group of illegal migrant workers, including up to 1,200 children who were born in Israel. The story’s headline, standfirst and opening paragraph together implied that the children were to be sent away alone but the second paragraph actually admitted that the minors were in fact due to be sent back ‘along with their families’.

Guarnieri’s central complaint is that the children were born in Israel and that sending them to their parents’ countries of origin would be an act of ‘inhumanity’ completely out of step with civilised behaviour. This provides the context for her accusation that the policy is born of a racist country.

But deporting migrant children controversially is by no means unique to Israel. The European Union has gone out of its way to make legal its planned deportation of thousands of lone Afghan asylum-seeking minors, including by committing to build ‘reception centres’ in war-torn Afghanistan ‘that can provide care for minors when the family cannot be found’. The Guardian itself reported these measures last month when the UK announced that it would be participating in the scheme, although the issue of race was not mentioned.

(Read full story)

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UAE Ambassador: Benefits of Attacking Iran Outweigh Risks

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
07 July '10

President Obama, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullins, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have all pooh-poohed the use of force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Obami have relied on ”linkage” to justify their fixation on the “peace process” — i.e., the idea that progress there is needed to make progress in stopping the Iranian nuclear program.



But Israel’s neighbors have a different idea. The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is “unacceptable” to them — and they really mean it — just as it is to the Jewish state. The latest indication comes in this report from Eli Lake:

The United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that the benefits of bombing Iran’s nuclear program outweigh the short-term costs such an attack would impose.

In unusually blunt remarks, Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba publicly endorsed the use of the military option for countering Iran’s nuclear program, if sanctions fail to stop the country’s quest for nuclear weapons.

“I think it’s a cost-benefit analysis,” Mr. al-Otaiba said. “I think despite the large amount of trade we do with Iran, which is close to $12 billion — there will be consequences, there will be a backlash and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country, that is going to happen no matter what.”

“If you are asking me, ‘Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran?,’ my answer is still the same: ‘We cannot live with a nuclear Iran.’ I am willing to absorb what takes place at the expense of the security of the UAE.”

John Bolton, as well as many other Middle East hands who regularly visit the region, confirms that in private, a number of other Arab leaders have said the same thing. So perhaps we can dispense with the fruitless “peace process,” round up a coalition of the willing (it is a catchy term), and make clear to Iran that if it does not voluntarily give up its nuclear program, it will face an alliance that will “disarm” it.

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US blinkered by a simplistic view of Middle East peace

Michael Young
The National (Dubai)
07 April '10

Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut. He has a number of interesting points to make on perceptions of the current situation amongst our neighbors.

An interesting logic is taking hold in Washington, but where it will lead no one knows. The idea is that in order for the United States to contain Iran in the Middle East, it must impose a Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement, in that way denying Tehran the ability to mobilise regional animosities against Washington’s interests.

In a Washington Post column on Wednesday, David Ignatius quoted an American official in support of this rationale. “The American peace plan [to propose the outlines of a final settlement] would be linked with the issue of confronting Iran, which is Israel’s top priority,” the official said. “We want to get the debate away from settlements and East Jerusalem and take it to a 30,000-feet level that can involve Jordan, Syria and other countries in the region.”

There is some merit to the argument. To limit Iranian influence throughout the region, the Obama administration will need to multitask, gradually taking away from Tehran the many cards it has accumulated and played effectively in recent years.

One of these has been the “resistance” card – the notion that because Israel does not want peace, the best option for Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular is to pursue armed struggle. This has undergirded Iran’s military support for Hamas and Hizbollah, who have enjoyed some popularity in the Arab world, despite the fact that in Gaza and southern Lebanon their actions in recent years have been disastrous. But that matters little to Iran’s regime, since both organisations have given Iran the means to thwart Arab-Israeli talks.

(Read full article)
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The Real Security Lapse in Dubai

Letting terrorists conduct business.


Daniel Halper
The Weekly Standard
01 March '10

The Times of London reports that police in Dubai are in a tizzy, six weeks after the killing of Hamas's Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a hotel in downtown Dubai. A major security breach, an extrajudicial murder--it's being called all sorts of unsavory things. And police say they're certain that Mabhouh was killed by the Israeli Mossad, but don't provide hard evidence. Who exactly killed Mabhouh (aside from how they killed him, which the videos do a pretty good job showing) might not ever be known.

Dubai police are quick to blame everyone but themselves for security lapses.

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Spinning the death of a terrorist

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
28 February '10

The media continue to give prominent coverage to the investigation of the death of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, whose body was found some six weeks ago in a Dubai luxury hotel. Dubai's police authorities have boasted that it took them just 24 hours to come close to solving the case, and their ostensible professionalism and efficiency have been widely praised after the release of extensive CCTV footage that supposedly shows various teams involved in al-Mabhouh's assassination.

However, it seems that few in the media have been willing to notice what was rightly highlighted in a report by Global Post correspondent Tom Hundley, who pointed out that Dubai "has become a kind of Arabian Big Easy where a senior operative in a powerful political organization can be assassinated in a five-star hotel - and the crime will be hushed up for more than a week while the powers-that-be decide how the story will be spun."

Indeed, it is definitely noteworthy that almost ten days elapsed before Mabhouh's assassination was announced by the UAE government's official press agency, which reported on the day of his funeral that he had been killed by an "experienced criminal gang."

(Read full post)

Related: Video Killer Thriller In Dubai
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Hamas is Threatening Who?

Tariq Alhomayed
Asharq Al-Awsat
01 February '10

Following the assassination of Qassam Brigades leading figure Mahmoud al Mabhouh in his [hotel] room in Dubai, the leaders of Hamas came out threatening and promising to avenge his death. This is understandable and only expected due to the nature of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; however what was not clear was whether Hamas was threatening revenge on Israel or was threatening to violate the land of Arab countries.

Some Hamas leaders began to remind us of the history of the intelligence war between the Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] and Israel in the past and it seems that for the first time Hamas is acknowledging the PLO’s struggle and what it did for the Palestinian cause, as Hamas mentioned conflicts that took place in Cyprus for example. Mahmoud Zahar, a leading Hamas figure, went further than that when he openly threatened that “we send a clear message to the Arab countries with ties to the Zionist side to learn from the lesson of this crime that was committed.”

He added, (and this is the crux of the matter), “Today, the incident has been repeated in the UAE, and I believe that the UAE and other [states] must realize that the Zionist side does not respect the sovereignty of any Arab country nor of any state in the world, and that its own interest takes precedence over all interests of nations. [In this regard] there must be reconsideration of ties between the Zionist enemy and the states and [there must be] evaluation [of ties] in light of the crimes committed by the occupying state against the Palestinian people.”

The first mistake is that the UAE does not have ties with the “Zionist side” to use Zahar’s terms. Is Hamas trying to say that Mossad agents are moving around freely in UAE territory for example and that this is known to the authorities there? If Mahmoud al Mabhouh himself – the Hamas commander who was assassinated in Dubai and who was assigned the task of liaising between Hamas and Iran – entered the UAE from Damascus on what was said to be an Iraqi passport (but that is another story altogether) and using a different name, and the UAE authorities did not know at the time that he was a leading figure of the Qassam Brigades or that he was wanted by Mossad for 20 years, then how would the UAE security authorities or others know whether or not those coming to the UAE are agents of Mossad or other apparatus?

(Read full article)
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