The Deadly and Lethal Israeli House Strikes Again

...Like the monster of a horror movie, the peace process always comes back and no matter how many blows the Israeli house delivers to it, a year later there's a sequel where the Israeli house is being stalked by the peace process monster all over again. The army of lethal Israeli houses, which may not be built for another five years, if ever, seem formidable in the black newsprint of the New York Times and in the fulminations of Guardian columnists, but their actual potency is limited to housing Jewish families and infuriating international diplomats and their media coathangers.

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
01 September '14

There are few weapons as deadly as the Israeli house. When its brick and mortar are combined together, the house, whether it is one of those modest one story hilltop affairs or a five floor apartment building complete with hot and cold running water, becomes far more dangerous than anything green and glowing that comes out of the Iranian centrifuges.

Forget the cluster bomb and the mine, the poison gas shell and even tailored viruses. Iran can keep its nuclear bombs. They don't impress anyone in Europe or in Washington. Genocide is a minor matter when in the presence of the fearsome weapon of terror that is an Israeli family of four moving into a new apartment.

Sudan may have built a small mountain of African corpses, but it can't expect to command the full and undivided attention of the world until it does something truly outrageous like building a house and filling it with Jews. Since the Sudanese Jews are as gone as the Jews of Egypt, Iraq, Syria and good old Afghanistan, the chances of Bashir the Butcher pulling off that trick are rather slim.

Due to the Muslim world's shortsightedness in driving out its Jews from Cairo, Aleppo and Baghdad to Jerusalem, the ultimate weapon in international affairs is entirely controlled by the Jewish State. The Jewish State's stockpile of Jews should worry the international community far more than its hypothetical stockpiles of nuclear weapons. No one besides Israel, and possibly Saudi Arabia, cares much about the Iranian bomb. But when Israel builds a house, then the international community tears its clothes, wails, threatens to recall its ambassadors and boycott Israeli peaches.

(Continue)

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A senior British diplomat said Israel's move was "provocative"

Yisrael Medad..
My Right Word..
09 November '12..






I received this item from a friend who highlighted a section:

Europe condemns Israel's OK for new settler homes

...A senior British diplomat said Israel's move was "provocative" and "deeply disappointing."

"The UK has been consistently clear that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and by altering the situation on the ground are making the two state solution, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, increasingly hard to realize," British Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt said.

Well, there is a short response to Mr. Burt:

Israel refuses to pay attention to a country which was the only country in the world to recognize a supposed legality of sovereignty of a country, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, over the territory of the former Palestine Mandate, Judea and Samaria, which it patently illegally occupied and then annexed to the territory it controlled east of the Jordan River for 19 years and in addition, denied Jews and Israelis their rights according to the 1949 Armistice Agreements it signed with Israel.

________________

The longer response:

Tobin - Obama Has Raised the Stakes on Jerusalem

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
11 August '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/08/11/obama-biden-jerusalem-housing/

In the spring of last year, the Obama administration picked a fight with the Israel over the routine approval of some housing starts in Jerusalem because it coincided with a visit to the country by Vice President Joe Biden. Washington ginned this “insult” to Biden up into a full-scale attempt to undermine Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Though that effort failed, as would subsequent ambushes for Netanyahu set by the White House, the after shocks still linger as Obama’s precedent-setting attack on Jewish Jerusalem has become a major problem for the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Today, the Israeli government gave the final approval for the construction of the same apartment buildings in the Ramat Shlomo district of the city that were deemed such an affront to Biden’s honor. We can expect the routine condemnation of these homes from both the administration as well as other critics of Israel. But while the debate over the status of Jerusalem is, as Seth wrote earlier today, nothing new, it is important to note the significance of this particular controversy and to understand why it signaled an unprecedented policy shift on the city’s future by the United States.

While no American government has ever recognized Israeli sovereignty over any part of the ancient capital, it is equally true never before had an American president made an issue of the building of homes in the existing Jewish neighborhoods begun in the immediate aftermath of the reunification of the city in 1967. Though settlement building in the West Bank has been a constant source of tension, and projects such as the one at Har Homa outside these Jewish sections of the city (although it was on vacant, Jewish-owned land) were disputed by Washington, housing in places like Ramat Sharon had never been a bone of contention.

That’s because even administrations deemed less than friendly to Israel always took it as a given these neighborhoods must be treated differently from West Bank settlements. There was no chance they would ever be surrendered in a peace settlement. That stance was reinforced in 2004 when President George W. Bush sent then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a letter specifying any deal with the Palestinians must take into account control of Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem were no longer on the table.

But all that changed under Barack Obama. It was Obama’s personal condemnation of the creation of new apartments in these existing Jewish parts of the city that has made their future a matter of dispute and encouraged Palestinians to hold onto false hopes that one day the Jewish residents of these homes will be forcibly evicted. This foolish decision to raise the stakes on Jerusalem has forced the Palestinian leadership to ramp up their already unrealistic demands on the issue and therefore made peace an even more remote possibility.

While news accounts of decisions about housing starts in Jerusalem routinely refer to them as obstacles to peace, it bears repeating this assertion is absolutely false. Because everyone knows (as they have always known), neither Ramot Sharon nor any other of the existing Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem will ever be given up, it doesn’t matter how many homes are built there. The number of new apartments created there doesn’t matter any more than the vast number of new homes built in Arab neighborhoods in the city.

These homes are a red herring that have no bearing on the future of the peace process. It was Barack Obama who made Ramat Sharon and the right of Jews to build and live in the rest of Jerusalem into the bitter and pointless controversy it has now become.

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Tobin - Obama Renews Assault on Jewish Jerusalem

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
09 August '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/08/09/obama-assault-jewish-jerusalem/

The Obama administration renewed its attack on Jewish Jerusalem today by formally condemning the construction of apartments in part of the city. The approval last week of a housing project in the Har Homa neighborhood of the city was blasted by the State Department as being contrary to the peace process and an impediment to the renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians.

But like previous statements from the administration, the complaint about apartments in Har Homa has little to do with the moribund peace process and everything to do with an Obama policy decision to treat the hundreds of thousands of existing Jews living in parts of Israel’s capital as being no different from the most remote hilltop settlements in the West Bank. Despite the rhetoric from Washington, Har Homa isn’t up for grabs in a theoretical peace deal, and housing there won’t stop a two-state solution if the Palestinians ever decide they want one. What it is an obstacle to is an effort to rip Jerusalem apart and to evict Jews from their homes.


While no American government has ever recognized Israeli sovereignty over all of the city since it was reunified during the 1967 Six-Day War, only Obama has sought to exploit divisions about this issue in such a way as to weaken the Jewish state’s hold on its capital. During the past two years, Obama has personally injected himself into this issue to try and undermine Israel’s position in Jerusalem. The 2010 spat in which the administration disingenuously tried to claim Vice President Biden was insulted by another Jerusalem building project was a lever by which Obama sought to pressure the Netanyahu government into agreeing to suspend all building in the city. The prime minister rightly refused, and to Obama’s consternation, was supported by the overwhelming majority of Israelis. It is true that Har Homa, a project that began in the 1990s, has always been a point of contention between the U.S. and Israel. But the notion control of this land will ever be conceded to the Palestinians is absurd.

Though apologists for Palestinian intransigence claim Israel’s building in Jerusalem is a blow to a potential two-state solution, this is utterly false. The Palestinians know if there is to be an accord, the Israelis won’t be leaving Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Treating those parts of the city illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967 as “Arab territory” in which Jews may not build or live is a non-starter. Though a negotiation might theoretically give a Palestinian state control of some Arab sections of the city, it will not give them places like Har Homa or any of the other place where Jews are building.

Moreover, for the United States to seek to curb home building in Jerusalem at the very moment when Israelis are calling for a greater supply of housing in order to lower the high existing prices is ridiculous. Doing so would not only be against Israel’s security needs but a blow to its economy.

The Palestinians also argue Har Homa must be taken from the Israelis because it would give them a strategic edge along the city’s southern border and give them easier access to other parts of Jerusalem. But their call for territorial contiguity is merely an excuse to avoid talks. The West Bank and Gaza are already separated by pre-1967 Israel. Contiguity for the Palestinians would mean an end to Israeli security as well as an unconscionable abrogation of Jewish rights in their ancient capital.

Today’s announcement may be seen as the administration throwing a bone to the Palestinians to bribe them to give up their effort to evade peace talks by asking the United Nations to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. But statements such as these only encourage more intransigence. So long as the Palestinians are allowed to nurture their ambition to take Jerusalem from Israel, peace will be unattainable. By condemning the building of Jewish homes in Har Homa, the Obama administration has poured more fuel on the fire of the conflict and once again staked out a position that undermines America’s alliance with Israel.

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Obama, Let My People Go

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
21 April '11

3,000 years after the Jewish people left Egyptian slavery bound for the land of Israel, their freedom remains as elusive as ever. A new Pharaoh adjacent not to the Nile, but the Potomac, looks out from the White House and issues his decrees regarding the Jews.

No sooner does a Jew build a house in Jerusalem, than one of the Pharaoh's flunkies rushes to condemn him for it. A week before Passover, one of those flunkies announced that the administration was both "deeply concerned" and "very worried" about new Jewish homes in Jerusalem. A day later Jewish families hoping to be able to live in their own holy city were greeted with the announcement that approval for more housing had been suspended to avoid offending the little man with the big ears in the White House.

The Obama Administration has spent more time condemning housing in Jerusalem, than genocide in the Sudan. If some parts of Israel are constantly being shelled by terrorists, the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem is constantly being shelled by administration spokesmen. Year after year, the people of an overcrowded city are frustrated in their efforts to find a place to live, when some White House or State Department flunky finishes sipping his coffee, gets up in front of a microphone and expresses the grave concern of his master that a new condominium might go up in a place where Jews had been living long before the religion of Obama's grandmother was even a twinkle in her mad prophet's eye.

Building permits in Jerusalem now undergo a perverse kind of astrology. Approvals for every stage of the process must happen at a time when no administration official is visiting Jerusalem, and no Israeli official is visiting the US. When Biden visited Jerusalem at the same time that a municipal housing approval came through-- the administration staged a convulsive spectacle.

(Read full "Obama, Let My People Go")

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Seething on the Left over new housing units in Gilo

Carl
Israel Matzav
16 January '11

Israel's hysterical Left is seething over a 1,400-unit housing project in the southeastern Jerusalem suburb of Gilo, which is slated to advance in the approval process next week.

A plan to build 1,400 new housing units in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood located beyond the Green Line, will be discussed next week and is expected to be approved by the city's local planning and building committee, reported Army Radio on Sunday. If approved, the plan will then be submitted to the District Committee. 

According to Peace Now Secretary-General Yariv Oppenheimer, the plan is one of the largest to be established across the Green Line, one that is even bigger than the Ramat Shlomo and Har Homa plans that triggered a great uproar last year and raised tensions in relations between Israel and the United States, reported Army Radio.

With respect to Ramat Shlomo, that's a lie. The Ramat Shlomo plan is for 1,600 housing units. The Har Homa plan is 980 units. It would be nice if these people at least got their facts straight.

In any event, 1,400 units is far from the largest project in Jerusalem - 'east' or 'west.' The original Ramat Shlomo in the early '90's was over 2,000 units, and I believe that Har Homa was even more.

(Read full "Seething on the Left over new housing units in Gilo")

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Quite Unsettling

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
10 January '11


It seems that

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations said that “inserting settlers into Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem” undermined prospects for addressing the city’s status.

He has it backwards.

It is that Arabs had inserted themselves into Jerusalem, the 3000-year old capital of the Jewish nation and it was they who expelleds the last of the Jewish residents from the Old City in May 1948, refusing to allow them to return for over 19 years under an illegal Jordanian occupation.

Peace was undermined by the Mufti whose house was demolished to make way for the construction of a new residential project, one that will permit 20 families to live where just one lived previously.


That one was first the infamous Nazi-collaborator Mufti, Haj Amin El-Husseini. Then the Antonius couple. The widow, Katy, eventually taking into her bed there the British Military Commander of the Palestine Mandate, Evelyn Barker.

Isabel Kershner keeps up the propaganda by writing there:

Although it is mostly populated by Palestinians, nationalist Jewish Israelis have moved into a number of houses there in recent years, evicting the Palestinian residents after Israeli courts ruled that the properties had belonged to Jews before the establishment of the state of Israel and the Jordanian takeover of East Jerusalem in 1948.

That the Jewish residents of the area, who built their homes there beginning in the 1870s when it wasn't even a neighborhood, purchasing the land from Arabs, were evicted is missing. Somehow, these nasty verbs such as "demolished" and "evicted" never get applied to Jews. Nor "belonged".

(Read full "Quite Unsettling")

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The Crime of Building a House

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
10 January '11

In Niger, two Frenchmen were murdered by their Islamic kidnappers. Saudi Arabia sentenced a 23 year old girl who was gang raped to a year in prison and 100 lashes. Iran arrested two dozen Christians for the crime of being well... Christians. Which of these awful things did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU's Red Baroness Ashton forcefully condemn?

The answer is none of them.

Instead they forcefully and vigorously condemned the demolition of a hotel built by a Muslim Nazi collaborator and now owned by an American-Jewish businessman who bought it in order to build an apartment complex on the spot. An apartment complex for a mere 20 families that is somehow worse than all the aforementioned murders and atrocities. So much worse that they demanded the personal intervention of the highest diplomatic officials of the United States and the European Union.

The Shepherd Hotel in Jerusalem is not the Plaza Hotel. It is a dilapidated neighborhood eyesore that has been abandoned since the 1980's. No one lives in the Shepherd Hotel, a grim ugly fortress surrounded by barbed wire, that remains behind as a legacy of the Mufti of Jerusalem, who championed Hitler and helped recruit Muslims to serve in the SS. But with its demolition, people might actually begin to live on that spot. Children might actually play on ground that had been previously fenced off by barbed wire. And the worst thing of it all is that those people and their children will be Jews.

Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, might have been displeased to look up from the netherworld and behold the demolition of his hotel, but to see the representatives of the United States and the EU taking up his work and treating the demolition of his hotel as the gravest issue of the day would surely have cheered him up. If he had ever been worried that his work would die with a bullet in Berlin or when his Holy War Army, even with the support of seven Arab countries and half the British officer corps failed to drive the Jews into the sea during the War of Independence, the statements of Hillary Clinton and the EUSSR's Red Baroness Ashton testify once again that the evil that men and muftis do lives on after them.

In her statement, Hillary Clinton said the United States is "very concerned" about the demolition of a Nazi collaborator's abandoned hotel. In a world where North Korea and Iran are racing ahead to build nuclear weapons, Russia and China are racing to outstrip the United States in weapons development and the economy is on the brink-- that is what the Obama Administration is "very concerned" about. That 20 Jewish families will be able to have homes in the capital of their own city.

Hillary Clinton chose to attack Israel from Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, a totalitarian regime whose own construction boom was built on slave labor imported from India. Where there are no political freedoms and where non-Muslim foreigners have few rights, if any. Where a video showed the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi torturing a man in ways too horrifying to describe, with the approval of the police and the judicial system over a debt. Where 42 percent of the prisoners are there for being indebted. The UAE is essentially a slave state, built on the backs of mostly non-Muslim migrant workers with no human or legal rights.

(Read full "The Crime of Building a House")

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Toppled Palestinian ‘Landmark’ Symbolized Hate

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
10 January '11

It says something about the way much of the world views the rights of Jews to live in Jerusalem that the erection of new homes in parts of that city is considered such a terrible provocation. Thus, the new housing project in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of the city is generally reported as an outrageous provocation, even though the only reason this area is usually described as “predominantly Arab” or, more outrageously, “traditionally Arab” is because from 1949 to 1967, when this location was illegally occupied by Jordan, Jews were prohibited from living there.

As to whether it is wise for Israel to allow Jews to live in all parts of their capital, that is something that Israelis can debate, though redividing Jerusalem and returning those parts handed over to the Palestinian Arabs to a Jew-free condition seems like a curious way to advance the cause of peace and mutual coexistence. But let’s leave aside the question of Jewish rights or even the strategic wisdom of putting more Jews in these neighborhoods. Let us instead examine the Palestinian claim and what it represents.

When the New York Times reported the fact that ground was being broken for the new housing in Sheikh Jarrah in a story published on Sunday, what it did was to focus on the destruction of what it claimed was a Palestinian “landmark.” What landmark, you ask? Was it a medieval structure that in some way represents the longstanding Arab presence in the city or its culture?

(Read full "Toppled Palestinian ‘Landmark’ Symbolized Hate")

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NY Times glaringly sides with Palestinians -- in its news coverage

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
11 November '10

In a purported news article in the Nov. 11 edition of the New York Times, reporter Mark Landler starts off in his lead paragraph of his article by taking the Palestinian side against Israel on the thorny issue of Jerusalem -- by describing Jewish neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city as "settlements." ("U.S. Struggles to Restore Middle East Talks" page A16).

"Settlements," as descriptive of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, is exactly the line propounded by the Palestinians. At the same time, however, it's a label rejected by Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu just reminded President Obama that "Jerusalem is not a settlement; it is the capital of Israeli."

It is not Landler's job to take either the Israeli or the Palestinian side when reporting on Jerusalem. Israel deems Jerusalem -- east and west -- as its eternal capital. The Palestinians deem well-established Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, whether Har Homa, as in this instance, or the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. as "settlements" where Jews don't belong.

(Read full article)

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Jerusalem is Not a Settlement

Building plans for existing Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem kick up a new media frenzy.

Honest Reporting
Media Critique
11 November '10

Once again, the issue of Israeli building in Jerusalem is making headlines threatening a full-blown crisis. But just how accurate are those headlines?

Settlements are not a consensus issue both within and outside of Israel. However, it is incumbent upon the media to present the facts and the necessary context in order for readers to understand the reality of the situation and to allow for an informed judgment. Unfortunately the media has to a large extent failed.

What is "East Jerusalem"?

According to The Guardian:

The East Jerusalem plans cover almost 980 new homes in Har Homa, 320 in Ramot and 32 in Pisgat Ze'ev, all situated on the Palestinian side of the Green Line.

(Read full critique)

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Obama, State Dept., EU, media concoct phony tempest in a Jerusalem teacup

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
09 November '10

Haaretz and other Israeli left-wing media concocted an anti-Israel gotacha piece a few days ago when they discovered that authorities were soliciting public comments on previously announced plans for construction of some 1,300 housing units in Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Planning for this additional housing has been public knowledge for a long time and it may take several more years before any construction actually gets under way.

But this didn't matter to correspondents of the New York Times and the Washington Post, which saw an opening to portray Israel as hampering efforts to resume direct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. And, predictably, President Obama, the State Department and the European Union also let fly with condemnations of Israel -- without even first checking with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for some clarification.

What is utterly ludicrous about this concocted tempest in a Jerusalem teacup is that the bulk of the new apartment units are to go up in Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood of some 12,000 residents in southeast Jerusalem. Two thirds of Har Homa is on land purchased by Jews after the First World War. The other third is owned by Arabs. The entire existing Harm Homa neighborhood was built on Jewish-owned land and plans for additional housing units also are confined to this part of Har Homa. None of this appeared in media reports or in the criticism leveled by Obama, the State Department and the European Union.

(Read full article)

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Charm Offensive Ends as Obama Panders to Muslim World

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
09 November '10

One week after a midterm election in which his party suffered a historic defeat, it is still unclear whether President Obama will adjust his policies to deal with the voters’ unease over his administration’s record. But one change is already apparent. After several months of pursuing a charm offensive with American Jews and supporters of Israel, Obama has reverted to a stance that caused many Jewish Democrats such unease earlier this year: bashing Israel for asserting the right of Jews to live in Jerusalem.

Obama chose to use his visit to his former home in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, as the venue for comments directly criticizing Israel for approving the building of 1,000 new housing units in the Har Homa section of Jerusalem. The State Department spokesman had previously criticized the plan, but this is clearly an attempt to escalate the dispute with Israel from a pro forma disagreement — the United States has never recognized the city’s unification in 1967 — into a major battle with the Jewish state.

Back in the spring, Obama had seized upon an innocuous announcement of housing starts in an established Jewish neighborhood in a part of Jerusalem that had been occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967 that was issued during a visit to Israel by Vice President Biden, claiming it was an “insult” to the United States. The ensuing argument and attempts at the public humiliation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did nothing to advance the peace process. Even if the Palestinians were to reverse their repeated refusals to make peace and accept a state in the West Bank, Gaza, and a portion of Jerusalem (an offer that Israel has made more than once in the past decade), there is no possibility that those areas where Jewish neighborhoods now exist (and where over 250,000 Jews live) would be turned over to the Palestinians. His dispute with Netanyahu had the effect of forcing the Palestinian Authority to harden its stance on Jerusalem, thus making an accord even more unlikely.

(Read full post)

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Not Charming, Are They?

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
17 October '10

For those who imagine that the Obama team is finally “getting it” with regard to the Middle East or that it has taken to heart the complaints of Jewish supporters, it will be a surprise when the president and his crack diplomatic crew repeat precisely the same error and employ the identical tactics that have been their modus operandi for nearly two years.

Israel resumes building in its capital, in a “Jewish neighborhood.” (The term is objectionable, of course, because it implies Jews can’t live where they please.) This is not some remote “settlement.” This is the sort of building in Jerusalem that has gone on under multiple prime ministers. But the Obami are frustrated and embarrassed, so they double down, reiterating their insistence that Israel cough up more concessions (a building freeze) while the Palestinians freely announce they won’t be recognizing a “Jewish state.” This report explains:

“We were disappointed by the announcement of new tenders in east Jerusalem yesterday. It is contrary to our efforts to resume direct negotiations between the parties,” said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley to assembled reporters at a weekly briefing.

However, Israel has already announced it won’t be reimposing a settlement freeze, certainly not in Jerusalem. The Obami are mute on whether the walk-out by Abbas is “contrary to [their] efforts” as well.

(Read full post)

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Will Obama Go Back to Fighting Over Jerusalem?

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
15 October '10

The announcement today that 238 housing units will be built in Jerusalem will have no impact on whether there will ever be peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The houses will go up in Ramot and Pisgat Ze’ev, Jewish neighborhoods that were created in the 1970s after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War struck down the barriers that rendered those parts of the city that had been occupied by Jordan between 1948 and 1967 Jew-free. Approximately a quarter of a million Jews already live in East Jerusalem, and the notion that they will all be chucked out of their homes in order to allow the city to become the presumably Jew-free capital of a Palestinian Arab state is a fantasy. If the PA doesn’t want to negotiate with Israel, and it is more than obvious that by calling for building freezes they are looking for an excuse to bug out of the talks to which they have been dragged by President Obama, then whether or not Jews build homes in existing Jewish neighborhoods in their own capital won’t make a difference.

But this issue is precisely the one that caused a blowup between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government last spring, when Washington seized on another such innocuous announcement and declared it a mortal insult to the United States because Vice President Biden happened to be passing through the town at the time. The United States has never recognized Israel’s rights in all of Jerusalem, but the decision to specifically oppose building in existing neighborhoods and to, in effect, treat them as being as illegitimate as the most remote West Bank settlements was unprecedented. But contrary to Obama’s expectations, and those left-wing supporters who had been egging him on to fight with Israel (J Street), Netanyahu didn’t fold and was warmly supported by not only the majority of Israelis but by most American Jews, too. The result was that the administration soon backed off and began a charm offensive designed to ingratiate the president with American Jews who were offended by his decision to pick a fight over Jerusalem.

(Read full post)

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Obama Is No Civil Rights Champion

Caroline Glick
bigpeace.com
17 August '10

President Barack Obama would have us believe that his endorsement of the plan to build a mosque at Ground Zero is a testament to his firm belief in civil rights. In one of the White House’s attempts to temper the furor elicited by his statement Friday night, White House spokesman Bill Burton said that it wasn’t that the President was endorsing the mosque. It was simply a civil rights issue.

In Burton’s words, “It is not his role as President to pass judgment on every local project. But it is his responsibility to stand up for the Constitutional principle of religious freedom and equal treatment for all Americans. What he said last night, and reaffirmed today, is that if a church, a synagogue or a Hindu temple can be built on a site, you simply cannot deny that right to those who want to build a Mosque.”

This position would be defensible if it were genuine. But for the President’s claim that he was moved to endorse the plan to build a mosque at a place where Muslims murdered nearly 3,000 people to be credible, then his devotion to the cause of civil rights would have to be absolute and non-discriminating. That is, for it to be credible, we would want to see evidence of him staking out similarly unpopular positions for other groups.

Take Jews for example.

Many people in Obama’s own political camp take umbrage at the thought of Jews having the civil rights to exercise their property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. They claim that Jews must be prohibited from building and even living in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria just because they are Jewish.

(Read full article)

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Obama’s Pie in the Sky

Ted Belman
Israpundit
13 April '10
(first published by American Thinker)

There is no solution to the final status issues of Jerusalem, borders and refugees that both sides will agree to. Nevertheless President Obama is committed to forcing an agreement.

Recently two top administration officials advised David Ignatius, Washington Post, to the effect that Pres Obama is “seriously considering” proposing an American peace plan which would be based on “agreements nearly reached” in the past. This is outrageous, as I will explain and it has no chance of succeeding.

Of course they repeated the mantra that “[e]veryone knows the basic outlines of a peace deal” but they omitted to say, that neither of the parties agrees to it.

This is the first time an administration official acknowledged the linkage between solving this problem with solving the problem of Iran. “It’s not either Iran or the Middle East peace process. You have to do both.” He went so far as to say,”[w]e 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,”

Apparently, after spending a year on making settlement construction and Jerusalem the key issues, the Obama administration is finally admitting defeat and are moving on. Undaunted with their failure so far even with Syria and Iran, they are going to focus on a regional solution. “Incrementalism hasn’t worked” Effectively, the administration is opting for a grand design.

The administration believes that the formula for success requires them to “take on the absolute requirements of Israeli security and the requirements of Palestinian sovereignty in a way that makes sense.” Sorry, but Israel isn’t buying. Obama has been trying to frame the solution that way for a year but he ignores that Israel wants, and is entitled to, more than having its security needs met. She has very strong legal and historical claims to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Obama has done his best to ignore them.

Israel will not accept a deal which forces her to give up on the settlement blocks including Ariel and Maaleh Adumin. Even if these blocks were offered to her, Israel would still have to uproot about 70,000 Jews at a cost of over $100 billion. Most, if not all of Jerusalem as annexed by Israel 40 years ago, would have to remain under Israel sovereignty. Israel would not agree to anything less. While Israel might accept a return of a token amount of refugees, Israel will be looking for redress for the Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

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Obama’s Hopes for Israeli ‘Regime Change’ Will Backfire

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
12 April '10

Veteran peace processor Aaron David Miller gets it half right in today’s Los Angeles Times when he dissects the apparent desire of the Obama administration to drive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office.

Miller, a functionary who helped carry out the State Department’s failed Middle East policy during the administrations of both the first president Bush and Clinton, is correct when he points out that American attempts to treat Israel as a banana republic don’t always work out as Washington intends. While the elder George Bush may have successfully undermined Yitzhak Shamir’s re-election in 1992, Bill Clinton’s all-out effort to help Shimon Peres beat Netanyahu in 1996 was a failure that helped sour relations between the two countries. For all of the fact that the United States is Israel’s only ally, not surprisingly Israelis don’t enjoy being dictated to, especially when the issues at stake are their own rights and security. Obama’s transparent attempt to overturn the outcome of an election that was held only a few weeks after his own inauguration doesn’t sit well with the Israeli public and has increased Netanyahu’s popularity. That Jerusalem is the issue over which Obama has sought to ditch Netanyahu is as wrongheaded as it is foolish. No Israeli prime minister is likely to accept Obama’s demand that Jews not be allowed to build in existing Jewish neighborhoods in their own capital.

Miller is also correct when he points out that if Obama were really interested in making progress toward Middle East peace, he’d be far better off cozying up to Netanyahu than attempting to somehow impose a left-wing government on Israel. Only right-wingers or former military leaders have the standing to persuade Israelis to take risks for peace. Obama’s notion that Israel’s opposition leader Tzipi Livni would be more susceptible to American pressure might be true.

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Just for Show

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
07 April '10

Many savvy observers of the Obami assault on Israel have concluded that the fuss over the Jerusalem housing permit was concocted by the Obami to ingratiate themselves with the Palestinians, who were threatening to walk from the proximity talks. There is ample support for this theory, not the least of which is the prior positions of the three players in the Obama freak-out drama — Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and the president. The colorfully named Sultan Knish has compiled a useful bit of history that includes Biden’s co-sponsorship of Senate Resolutions 1322, 113, and 106 (between the years 1990 and 1995):

Biden co-sponsored three Senate resolution, all three of which insisted that Jerusalem should remain Israel’s undivided capital. One of which insisted that it was vital for the peace process that Jerusalem should be affirmed by US policy as Israel’s undivided capital. So naturally, like any good politician, he was insulted by Israel taking him at his word. To argue that Biden was gravely insulted by Israel, is to argue that he was insulted by the policies he himself supported.

Not just passively supported, but co-sponsored in three Senate resolutions which repeatedly stated that these were meant to be the policy of the United States.

But of course the hypocrisy train doesn’t just stop at Joe Biden Station.

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The world wants to kill Jerusalem

Elder of Ziyon
24 March '10

All the people who hyperventilate over new buildings, projects and plans for Jerusalem seem to forget the most basic fact there is: Jerusalem is a modern, living, growing city.

It is not a fossilized museum piece.

Jerusalem has not always been as dynamic as it is today. The portions of the city under Jordanian rule from 1948-67 did not grow to an real extent. In fact, the Jordanian municipality of Jerusalem was a mere 2 square miles in size. Its population decreased, and many citizens moved to Amman.

Under Israeli rule, however, Jerusalem has flourished. Its population has nearly tripled since 1967. It boundaries have grown in all directions.

Any vibrant city needs to make plans. Jerusalem, by its nature, requires very sensitive urban planning, as many of the religious populations want to remain in homogeneous areas but at the same time discrimination is to be discouraged. Children want to live near their parents. Growth is inevitable in a living city and it needs to be managed. Much of that management must be in terms of the mundane facets of everyday life - building approval, zoning laws, creating residential and business districts.

In Jerusalem it is even trickier, as you need to add enforcing the unique character of certain neighborhoods, protecting holy sites, and ensuring equal access to all.

The international community, however, wants to stop the municipality from acting as all cities must. It wants to treat every new initiative and approval as an international incident. It wants to give veto power over Jerusalem to people who do not live there, who never lived there and who showed no interest in the city when they had the means to do so.

In short, the world wants to kill Jerusalem.

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