A Concoction Of Canards For Cairo Crowd

Posted Thursday, June 04, 2009

Obama the Humble declares there will be no more "dictating" to other countries. We should "forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions," he told the G-20 summit. In Middle East negotiations, he told al-Arabiya, America will henceforth "start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating."

An admirable sentiment. It applies to everyone — Iran, Russia, Cuba, Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all settlement activity. As Secretary of State Clinton imperiously explained the diktat: "a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions."

What's the issue? No "natural growth" means strangling to death the thriving towns close to the 1949 armistice line, many of them suburbs of Jerusalem, that every negotiation over the past decade has envisioned Israel retaining.

It means no increase in population. Which means no babies. Or if you have babies, no housing for them — not even within the existing town boundaries. Which means for every child born, someone has to move out. No community can survive like that.

The obvious objective is to undermine and destroy these towns — even before negotiations.

To what end? Over the last decade, the U.S. government has understood that any final peace treaty would involve Israel retaining some of the close-in settlements — and compensating the Palestinians accordingly with land from within Israel itself.

That was envisioned in the Clinton plan in the Camp David negotiations in 2000, and again at Taba in 2001. After all, why turn towns to rubble when, instead, Arabs and Jews can stay in their homes if the 1949 armistice line is shifted slightly into the Palestinian side to capture the major close-in Jewish settlements, and then shifted into Israeli territory to capture Israeli land to give to the Palestinians?

This idea is not only logical, not only accepted by both Democratic and Republican administrations for the last decade, but was agreed to in writing in the letters of understanding exchanged between Israel and the United States in 2004 — and subsequently overwhelmingly endorsed by a concurrent resolution of Congress.

Yet the Obama State Department has repeatedly refused to endorse these agreements or even say it will honor them. This from a president who piously insists that all parties to the conflict honor previous obligations.

The entire "natural growth" issue is a concoction. It's farcical to suggest that the peace process is moribund because a teacher in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is making an addition to her house to accommodate new grandchildren — when Gaza is run by Hamas terrorists dedicated to permanent war with Israel and when Mahmoud Abbas, having turned down every one of Ehud Olmert's peace offers, brazenly declares that he is in a waiting mode — waiting for Hamas to become moderate and for Israel to cave — before he'll do anything to advance peace.

In his much-heralded "Muslim world" address in Cairo on Thursday, Obama declared that the Palestinian people's "situation" is "intolerable."

Indeed it is, the result of 60 years of Palestinian leadership that gave its people corruption, tyranny, religious intolerance and forced militarization; leadership that for three generations — Haj Amin al-Husseini in 1947, Yasser Arafat in 2000, Abbas in December 2008 — rejected every offer of independence and dignity, choosing destitution and despair rather than accept any settlement not accompanied by the extinction of Israel.

In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over to the Palestinians, their leaders — Fatah and Hamas alike — built no schools, no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, no institutions that would relieve their people's suffering. Instead they poured everything into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts.

Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the fault of Israel and the settlements.

Blaming Israel and picking a fight over "natural growth" may curry favor with the Muslim "street." But it will only induce the Arab states to do like Abbas:

Sit and wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter.

Which makes the Obama strategy not just dishonorable but self-defeating.

© 2008 Washington Post Writers Group

Who Does the US Really Believe 'Palestine' Belongs To?

TY to the
The Wilder Way
by David Wilder


National Home for
THE JEWISH PEOPLE JUNE 30, 1922
HOUSE RESOLUTION 360 - UNANIMOUSLY ADOPTED

"Palestine of today, the land we now know as Palestine, was peopled by the Jews from the dawn of history until the Roman era. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. They were driven from it by force by the relentless Roman military machine and for centuries prevented from returning. At different periods various alien people succeeded them but the Jewish race had left an indelible impress upon the land.

"Today it is a Jewish country. Every name, every landmark, every monument and every trace of whatever civilization remaining there is still Jewish. And it has ever since remained a hope, a longing, as expressed in their prayers for these nearly 2,000 years. No other people has ever claimed Palestine as their national home. No other people has ever shown an aptitude or indicated a genuine desire to make it their homeland. The land has been ruled by foreigners. Only since the beginning of the modern Zionist effort may it be said that a creative, cultural, and economic force has entered Palestine. The Jewish Nation was forced from its natural home. It did not go because it wanted to.

"A perusal of Jewish history, a reading of Josephus, will convince the most skeptical that the grandest fight that was ever put up against an enemy was put up by the Jew. He never thought of leaving Palestine. But he was driven out. But did he, when driven out, give up his hope of getting back? Jewish history and Jewish literature give the answer to the question. The Jew even has a fast day devoted to the day of destruction of the Jewish homeland.

"Never throughout history did they give up hope of returning there. I am told that 90 per cent of the Jews today are praying for the return of the Jewish people to its own home. The best minds among them believe in the necessity of reestablishing their Jewish land. To my mind there is something prophetic in the fact that during the ages no other nation has taken over Palestine and held it in the sense of a homeland; and there is something providential in the fact that for 1,800 years it has remained in desolation as if waiting for the return of the people."

Written by Representative Frank Appleby, New Jersey Theodore Frank Appleby (October 10, 1864 – December 15, 1924) was an American Republican Party politician who represented New Jersey's 3rd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1921 to 1923. He was the father of Stewart Hoffman Appleby, who also became a congressman from New Jersey.

Endowment for Middle East Truth

Jonathan Schanzer on Middle East Panel with Senator Sam Brownback, General Giora Eiland and Dr. Daniel Pipes

June 3, 2009

Column One: Obama's Arabian Dreams

US President Barack Obama claims to be a big fan of telling the truth. In media interviews ahead of his trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and during his big speech in Cairo on Thursday, he claimed that the centerpiece of his Middle East policy is his willingness to tell people hard truths.

Indeed, Obama made three references to the need to tell the truth in his so-called address to the Muslim world.

Unfortunately, for a speech billed as an exercise in truth telling, Obama's address fell short. Far from reflecting hard truths, Obama's speech reflected political convenience.

Obama's so-called hard truths for the Islamic world included statements about the need to fight so-called extremists; give equal rights to women; provide freedom of religion; and foster democracy. Unfortunately, all of his statements on these issues were nothing more than abstract, theoretical declarations devoid of policy prescriptions.

He spoke of the need to fight Islamic terrorists without mentioning that their intellectual, political and monetary foundations and support come from the very mosques, politicians and regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt that Obama extols as moderate and responsible.

He spoke of the need to grant equality to women without making mention of common Islamic practices like so-called honor killings, and female genital mutilation. He ignored the fact that throughout the lands of Islam women are denied basic legal and human rights. And then he qualified his statement by mendaciously claiming that women in the US similarly suffer from an equality deficit. In so discussing this issue, Obama sent the message that he couldn't care less about the plight of women in the Islamic world.
For Full Story

Caroline Glick:The Eternal Front Line

The Center's Middle East Fellow, Caroline Glick, received the 2009 Guardian of Zion Award in Jerusalem. The award is presented by the Ingeborg Rennert Foundation. Thanks to Yishai Fleisher of Israel National Radio, who recorded the audio.
For the text, go here: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p18078.xml

The End of America’s Strategic Alliance with Israel?

Caroline Glick

Thursday, June 04, 2009

From an Israeli perspective, Pres. Barack Obama’s speech today in Cairo was deeply disturbing. Both rhetorically and programmatically, Obama’s speech was a renunciation of America’s strategic alliance with Israel.

Rhetorically, Obama’s sugar coated the pathologies of the Islamic world — from the tyranny that characterizes its regimes, to the misogyny, xenophobia, Jew hatred, and general intolerance that characterizes its societies. In so doing he made clear that his idea of pressing the restart button with the Islamic world involves erasing the moral distinctions between the Islamic world and the free world.

In contrast, Obama’s perverse characterization of Israel — of the sources of its legitimacy and of its behavior — made clear that he shares the Arab world’s view that there is something basically illegitimate about the Jewish state.

In 1922 the League of Nations mandated Great Britain to facilitate the reconstitution of the Jewish commonwealth in the Land of Israel on both sides of the Jordan River. The international community’s decision to work towards the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in Israel owed to its recognition of the Jewish people’s legal, historic, and moral rights to our homeland.

Arab propaganda finds this basic and fundamental truth inconvenient. So for the past 60 years, the Arabs have been advancing the fiction that Israel’s existence owes solely to European guilt over the Holocaust. As far as the Arabs are concerned, the Jews have no legal, historic, or moral right to what the Arabs see as Islamic land.

In his address, while Obama admonished the Arabs for their pervasive Jew hatred and Holocaust denial, he effectively accepted and legitimized their view that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust when he said, “the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied,” and then went on to talk about the Holocaust.

Just as abominably, Obama compared Israel to Southern slave owners and Palestinians to black slaves in the antebellum south. He used the Arab euphemism “resistance” to discuss Palestinian terrorism, and generally ignored the fact that every Palestinian political faction is also a terrorist organization.

In addition to his morally outrageous characterization of Israel and factually inaccurate account of its foundations, Obama struck out at the Jewish state through the two policies he outlined in his address. His first policy involves coercing Israel into barring all Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria (otherwise known as the West Bank), and Jerusalem.

Obama claims that this policy will increase prospects for peace. But this is untrue. As Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas made clear in his Washington Post interview last week, Obama’s trenchant campaign against Jewish construction in these areas has convinced the Palestinians they have no reason to be flexible in their positions towards Israel. Indeed, Obama’s assault on Israeli construction and his unsubstantiated, bigoted claim that the presence of Jews in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem impedes progress towards peace ensures that there will be no agreement whatsoever between Israel and the Palestinians.

After all, why would the Palestinians make a deal with Israel when they know that Obama will blame Israel for the absence of a peace agreement?

Even more strategically devastating than his castigation of Israel as the villain in the Arab-Israel conflict is Obama’s stated policy towards Iran. In Cairo, Obama offered Iran nuclear energy in exchange for its nuclear-weapons program. This offer has been on the table since 2003 and has been repeatedly rejected by the Iranians. Indeed, they rejected it yet again last week.

Obama must know that his policy will not lead to the hoped for change in Iran’s behavior. And since he must know this, the only rational explanation for his decision to adopt a policy he knows will fail is that he is comfortable with the idea of Iran becoming a nuclear power. And this is something that Israel cannot abide by.

The only silver lining for Israelis from the president’s speech in Cairo and his general positions on the Middle East is that Obama has overplayed his hand. Far from bending to his will, a large majority of Israelis perceives Obama as a hostile force and has rallied in support of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu against the administration. This public support gives Netanyahu the maneuver room he needs to take the actions that Israel needs to take to defend against the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran and to assert its national rights and to defend itself against Palestinian terrorists and other Arab and non-Arab anti-Semites who wish it ill.

— Caroline B. Glick is the senior fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Center for Security Policy and the senior contributing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

What Was Obama Thinking?

Sivan 13, 5769, 6/5/2009
Fundamentally Freund
by Michael Freund


US President Barack Obama's speech yesterday in Cairo may very well go down in history as a turning point, though not of the sort that the mainstream media and pundits are hoping for.

Rather than heralding a new era in relations between the West and Islam, the president's performance projected weakness and lack of resolve. And while his charm and poise may work well with voters in Middle America, among the radicals and jihadists of the Middle East they will be viewed with litte more than contempt and derision.

Indeed, the very opening of his remarks reveal just how out of touch Obama is with the reality on the ground in the region.

The president started off by saying the following, "Good afternoon. I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has had stood as a beacon of Islamic learning. And for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. Together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress."

Did he say "harmony between tradition and progress"?

What Obama undoubtedly did not realize is that Grand Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the man who stands at the head of Al-Azhar, is anything but a beacon of progress.

Back in November 2004, Tantawi led the prayer services at Yasser Arafat's funeral in Ramallah, where he praised the Palestinian terrorist by saying, "Arafat has done his duty as a defender of the Palestinian cause, with courage and honesty".

Furthermore, as historian Benny Morris noted in The New Republic last year, Tantawi authored a book in the late 1960s called The Jews in the Qur'an and the Traditions which was reissued in 1986 and which said as follows: "The Qur'an describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e., killing the prophets of Allah, corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people's wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness ... only a minority of Jews keep their word.... [But] not all Jews are the same. The good ones become Muslims."

And, as Morris further pointed out, Tantawi has called Jews "the descendants of apes and pigs."

What was Obama thinking in heaping praise on an institution run by such a man? Is this the type of person to be held up as an example of "the harmony between tradition and progress"?

If you listen carefully, you can hear the sounds of snickering in Damascus, Teheran and Riyadh, as the region's extremists enjoy a good laugh at the naivete of America's commander-in-chief.

Defining Normal

by Paula R. Stern
Sivan 13, 5769 / 05 June 09
INN


We are in the three-minute zone; aren't we lucky?


A few years after we arrived in Israel, we were blessed with a baby boy. On the day I left the hospital, I was handed papers to sign. In America, on the day I left the hospital, I was handed a piece of paper with my infant's footprint. This would serve to identify him if he was kidnapped. When my son was born in Israel, there was no paper with a footprint - babies are very rarely stolen in Israel; children are not kidnapped nearly as often. And more likely, if a child disappears it is because a parent accidentally left the child in the car and someone stole that.

So, there was no paper with a footprint, but two strange things did happen as I was being discharged with my new son. The first was that I was handed a check for several hundred dollars (in shekels).

"What's this?" I asked the nurse at the station.

"Bituah Leumi," she answered, National Insurance. The day of discharge, and each month that follows, the government issues a stipend per child to help the parents in raising, clothing and schooling their children. That was nice. In America, I was asked to sign insurance forms indicating the cost, in thousands of dollars, for my hospital stay.
I wasn't sure what to do next, so the nurse told me to go to the room down the hall, "The door is open."

For Full Story

Paula Stern is also the author of a very fine blog, http://israelisoldiersmother.blogspot.com/

Obama's Plan

Friday, June 05, 2009

Question: If a two-state solution means a Palestine with no Jewish towns or cities in it, does that mean that all Palestinian towns and cities inside Israel will also have to be uprooted and expelled?

Just asking.

Obama's Speech in Cairo

THURSDAY, JUNE 4TH, 2009 AT 9:52 AM
The President’s Speech in Cairo: A New Beginning
Posted by Jesse Lee

Approximately 55 minutes long, the issue of Israel and the "Palestinians" is spoken about beginning in the 6th minute. The full transcript is found earlier in today's postings from IMRA

Note from White House Advisor Shows Cultural-value Hegemony?

Thursday, June 4, 2009
Text: Note from White House advisor shows cultural-value hegemony?
Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

When an American asserts that everyone in the world "simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives" that is pretty insulting.
No national aspirations? No willingness within society to make sacrifices in order to serve the interests and goals of that society?
Is the entire world motivated solely by an interest in improving per capita GNP?
This is nothing less than American cultural-value hegemony.
And it goes far beyond being insulting.
It is dangerous for policy makers to refuse to appreciate and understand the very real cultural differences that exist in our world.
Serious businessmen learn all they can about cultural differences before traveling overseas.
But it sounds like the White House policymakers make the dangerously lazy simplifying assumption that everyone is the same.

From: David Axelrod,
The White House
To: imra@netvision.net.il
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 7:02 PM
Subject: A New Beginning -- Watch the President's Speech

Hello -
As a Senior Advisor to the President, I'm here in Cairo, Egypt where I watched President Obama deliver an unprecedented speech calling for a new beginning for the United States and Muslim communities around the world.
We all know that there has been tension between the United States and some Muslim communities. But, as the President said this morning, if all sides face the sources of tension squarely and focus on mutual interests, we can find a new way forward.
The President outlined some big goals for this new beginning in his speech -- including disrupting, dismantling, and defeating violent extremism. It was a historic speech, and since many Americans were asleep at the time it was given we wanted to make sure you had a chance to see it:
Majority-Muslim countries around the world are filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives, just as in America. Indeed, part of what makes America great is having nearly seven million Muslim Americans living here today and enriching our culture and communities.
We can extend that kind of relationship abroad. It won't always be easy, but if we make an effort to bridge our differences rather than resigning ourselves to animosity, we can move toward a more peaceful world over time.

Thank you,
David Axelrod
Senior Advisor to the President
The White House .
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW .
Washington, DC 20500 . 202-456-1111

Israel Today, the West Tomorrow

Mark Steyn

Commentary May 2009

On Holocaust Memorial Day 2008, a group of just under 100 people—Londoners and a few visitors —took a guided tour of the old Jewish East End. They visited, among other sites of interest, the birthplace of my old chum Lionel Bart, the author of Oliver! Three generations of schoolchildren have grown up singing Bart’s lyric:
Consider yourself
At ’ome!
Consider yourself
One of the family!
Those few dozen London Jews considered themselves at ’ome. But they weren’t. Not any more. The tour was abruptly terminated when the group was pelted with stones, thrown by “youths”—or to be slightly less evasive, in the current euphemism of Fleet Street, “Asian” youths. “If you go any further, you’ll die,” they shouted, in between the flying rubble.
A New Yorker who had just moved to Britain to start a job at the Metropolitan University had her head cut open and had to be taken to the Royal London Hospital at Whitechapel, causing her to miss the Holocaust Day “interfaith memorial service” at the East London Central Synagogue. Her friend, Eric Litwack from Canada, was also struck but did not require stitches. But if you hadn’t recently landed at Heathrow, it wasn’t that big a deal, not these days: Nobody was killed or permanently disfigured. And given the number of Jewish community events that now require security, perhaps Her Majesty’s Constabulary was right and these Londoners walking the streets of their own city would have been better advised to do so behind a police escort.
_____________
A European Holocaust Memorial Day on which Jews are stoned sounds like a parody of the old joke that the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. According to a 2005 poll by the University of Bielefeld, 62 percent of Germans “are sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews”—which is a cheerfully straightforward way of putting it. Nevertheless, when it comes to “harping on,” these days it’s the Jews who are mostly on the receiving end. While we’re reprising old gags, here’s one a reader reminded me of a couple of years ago, during Israel’s famously “disproportionate” incursion into Lebanon: One day the U.N. Secretary General proposes that, in the interest of global peace and harmony, the world’s soccer players should come together and form one United Nations global soccer team.
“Great idea,” says his deputy. “Er, but who would we play?”
“Israel, of course.”
Ha-ha. It always had a grain of truth, now it’s the whole loaf.
“Israel is unfashionable,” a Continental foreign minister said to me a decade back. “But maybe Israel will change, and then fashions will change.” Fashions do change. But however Israel changes, this fashion won’t. The shift of most (non-American) Western opinion against the Jewish state that began in the 1970s was, as my Continental politician had it, simply a reflection of casting: Israel was no longer the underdog but the overdog, and why would that appeal to a post-war polytechnic Euro Left unburdened by Holocaust guilt?

Full Article click here

Some Quick Observations Regarding President Obama's Cairo Address

Weekly Commentary
Dr. Aaron Lerner Date:
4 June 2009

Some quick observations regarding Obama Addresses Muslim World in Cairo
today:

#1 Obama's insult to Saudi Arabia?

After visiting Saudi Arabia, where it is against the law for Christians to
worship freely, Obama says the following in Cairo:

"The fifth issue that we must address together is religious freedom. Islam
has a proud tradition of tolerance.I saw it firsthand as a child in
Indonesia, where devout Christians worshiped freely in an overwhelmingly
Muslim country."

#2. Absence of pluralism in thought on Arab-Israeli affairs

When President Obama ponders every and any other issue in the world there is
the traditional pluralistic approach that entertains the possibility that
one doesn't have a monopoly on wisdom. But when it come to the "two state
solution" religion, there is no place and no space to consider alternative
views that do not embrace this dogma.

the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through
two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.
It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true. "

"Everyone"?

Is Mr. Obama asserting that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is a figment
of our imagination?

#3. Equivalence of rights to exit

"At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to
exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. "

And what if they are mutually exclusive? Oops.

And where is it etched in stone that a Palestinian "autonomous state", where
Palestinians enjoy self rule but are denied the means to destroy the Jewish
state is not acceptable?

#4 The big lie - settlements violate agreements and undermine peace process

". Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and
undermines efforts to achieve peace."

Palestinian complaints about settlement activity cite Article XXXI Paragraph
7 of the Interim Agreement: "Neither side shall initiate or take any step
that will change the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip pending the
outcome of the permanent status negotiations."

The meaning of "status" means "legal status". A violation of the agreement
would take place if Israel annexed part of the West Bank or Gaza Strip or
the PA declared an independent state in the area before the negotiations
were concluded. Israeli settlement activity is no more a violation of the
Agreement than Palestinian construction. Many Palestinian officials
recognize this and instead argue that the settlements are not "in the spirit
of Oslo". But the agreements are legal documents, and as legal documents
what counts is what is written - not some amorphous "spirit".

Israeli settlement activity is the only action from the Israeli side which
threatens the Palestinians with the prospect that the deal they may refuse
today may be considerably better than the deal that Israel will be able or
willing to offer tomorrow. Even if the negotiations are bogged down due to
Palestinian intransigence and Israeli redeployments are postponed, all of
this is temporary in nature. A short blip in the century old Arab-Israeli
conflict. But settlement activity is quite another story. Growing
settlements define areas which the Israeli national consensus will never
support returning. Settlements stretching on key roads turn the tables on
future possible solutions, ending the isolation of Israeli settlements and,
in turn, isolating Arab villages.

Besides encouraging the Palestinians to lower their demands and
expectations, settlement activity, if properly packaged, can be used as a
prime tool in the battle against terror. Historically, settlements were
considered the "Zionist response to terror." A look at the map of modern
Israel finds it sprinkled with the names of settlements named in memory of
the victims of various Arab attacks. Today's terrorists are popular folk
heroes in Palestinian society. The cost to the Palestinians of terror, in
the form of restrictions on movement and commerce, may be painful, but the
pain is temporary in nature. Large terrorist attacks may postpone Israeli
redeployments and talks, but, again, these are temporary setbacks.

Terrorist attacks may, in fact, be viewed in the long run by the
Palestinians as serving their interests by softening Israel's resolve. When
one well known Israeli Leftist declared in an interview on Israel Radio
after the bus bombings in Jerusalem that "we celebrated the day that the
wall dividing Jerusalem was torn down in 1967 and we will celebrate the day
it is erected again" this was not lost on the Palestinians.

But what if the Netanyahu Administration returns to the "Zionist response to
terror"? Sure, the Palestinians won't be pleased to learn that the "Shchunat
Munk" neighborhood is being built in the memory of the Munk family recently
murdered in a drive-by shooting. But will the murderers still be the same
heroes they were before their action lead to the building of yet more Jewish
homes?

The "Zionist response to terror" has another benefit. Besides deterring Arab
terror, it would serve to bolster the morale of the Israeli public by
offering it a positive emotional outlet through which to respond to Arab
terror. By establishing living memorials, Israel would be effectively
saying: "We are on the map. Terror will not vanquish."

It is said that the Arabs decided to make peace with Israel when they came
to the conclusion that they could not destroy the Jewish State on the
battlefield. By the same token, settlement activity today may very well
convince the Palestinians that they must compromise now or face the
prospects of a considerably worse deal in the future.

5. The Pope was sorry Israel needed security measures - Obama just wants
them dropped

Consider this contrast:

The Pope recognizes that Israel needs to carry out security measures:

"One of the saddest sights for me during my visit to these lands was the
wall. As I passed alongside it, I prayed for a future in which the peoples
of the Holy Land can live together in peace and harmony without the need for
such instruments of security and separation"
The Pope's deporting remarks - 15 May 2009

President Obama doesn't mention Israel's security needs:

"Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can
live, and work, and develop their society. "

So Israel should let the trucks carrying cement and rebar into Gaza so that
Hamas can build more reinforced positions for its war against the Jewish
State? Roadblocks should be dropped even if it means dead Israelis from
terror attacks?

6. Obama's vision of open Jerusalem is here today - not under other
arrangements

"when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and
Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully
together."

Mr. Obama describes the situation today in Jerusalem. The only restrictions
on access are security related. The more solid the "calm" the broader the
access to all.

Only those who are profoundly blinded by an ideological-religious commitment
to removing Israeli sovereignty from Jerusalem can argue that some
house-of-cards arrangement can replace Israeli sovereignty and still have
Jerusalem as "a place for all of the children of Abraham" - including
Jews - " to mingle peacefully together."

It takes absolutely no imagination to come up with a score of scenarios in
which the various "solutions" proposed lead to restrictions and ultimately a
ban on Jewish prayer at places also held holy by other faiths.

It should be noted that the true model of "a place for all of the children
of Abraham to mingle peacefully together" is the Tomb of the Patriarchs (aka
Ibrahim Mosque) in Hebron where not only do Jews and Moslems pray within
close proximity, there are even arrangements to enable each faith to use the
entire facility on their special holidays.

Israeli Settlements?

"At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to
exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not
accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."
Pres. Obama Speech in Cairo
4 June 09

Obama Speech in Cairo

(This was the section of the speech most germane to the U.S. position on Israel. The full text from IMRA can be read by clicking here. The video will be posted when available)


The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world.


America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.


Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed - more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction - or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews - is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.


On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.


For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It is easy to point fingers - for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel's founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.


That is in Israel's interest, Palestine's interest, America's interest, and the world's interest. That is why I intend to personally pursue this outcome with all the patience that the task requires. The obligations that the parties have agreed to under the Road Map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them - and all of us - to live up to our responsibilities.


Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.


Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist.


At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.


Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society. And just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security; neither does the continuing lack of opportunity in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be part of a road to peace, and Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.


Finally, the Arab States must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities. The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state; to recognize Israel's legitimacy; and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.


America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs. We cannot impose peace. But privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away. Likewise, many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state. It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true.


Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.

Obama Sows a Mideast Whirlwind

Center for Security Policy | Jun 01, 2009
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Jerusalem): From this vantage point, two events this week appear to be ominous straws in the wind, warnings of a "man-caused" maelstrom that may inexorably plunge the Middle East into another, potentially cataclysmic war.

The first is the fact that Israel feels obliged to undertake an unprecedented, country-wide civil defense exercise this week. At one point in its course, every man, woman and child in the Jewish State is supposed to seek shelter from a simulated attack of the kind Iran may shortly be able to execute against it.

The second is President Obama's latest effort to reach out to the Muslim world, this time on June 4 from one of its most important capitals, Cairo. There, he is expected to make an address that will reiterate his previous statements on the subject - pronouncements that, unfortunately, can only have been interpreted by his intended audience as acts of submission.

If past is prelude, the President of the United States will: apologize yet again for purported offenses against Muslims by his country; promise to be respectful of Islam, including those who adhere to its authoritative, if virulent, theo-political-legal program known as Shariah; and enunciate diplomatic priorities and initiatives designed to reach out to America's enemies in the region, while putting excruciating pressure on its most reliable ally there, Israel.

This pressure has become more palpable by the day. For Full Article

How to REALLY Pressure Israel (1991)

Click on the cartoon to open a larger, more readable version of this full page Dry Bones Special:


Okay so the new and inexperienced President Obama thinks he can pressure Israel into taking his orders? Hey, we've had meaner guys in the White House who thought that they could twist our arms. Bush the father for example.

Back in 1991, George HW Bush tried to pressure our then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in order to appease the fig-leaf coalition of Arab states he had lined up against Saddam Hussein. This Dry Bones cartoon page offered the American President some suggestions on how to REALLY pressure Israel. As it was then, so it is now!

Your thoughts?

Mommy, Am I an Outpost?

To the Honorable Barack Obama

Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Text: Esther Pollard's Letter to President Obama

To the Honorable Barack Obama,
President of the United States of America

Via Hand-delivery c/o US Consulate, Jerusalem

B"H

June 3, 2009
Jerusalem, Israel

Dear Mr. President,

Greetings of Peace from the Holy City of Jerusalem, the eternal capital of
the Jewish Nation! This is the city where the Holy Prophets of the Bible
spoke in the name of the Almighty G-d of Israel, presenting to mankind what
it is that G-d expects of us.

I am the wife of the captive, Jonathan Pollard, who has been languishing in
an American prison for more than two decades. As a president who claims to
be devoted to the pursuit of justice and righteousness, you will no doubt
appreciate that there are a number of Biblical passages that seem to have
been written for your illustrious visit to the region at this time.
......... Full Text

...Set my husband, Jonathan Pollard, free and send him home now to the holy
city of Jerusalem, the indisputable heart and soul of the Jewish Nation
which dwells in Zion; the eternally united and indivisible capital of the
Jewish State of Israel - and may G-d bless!

Yours truly,

Esther Pollard
Mrs. Jonathan Pollard

--
JUSTICE FOR JONATHAN POLLARD
Website: http://www.JonathanPollard.org
RSS: http://www.JonathanPollard.org/rss.htm

Obama, No You Can't

According to local media close to 200 activists were demonstrating outside the American Consulate in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening. This was in protest of recent statements and threats made by the Obama administration regarding the continued development of settlements in Yehudah, the Shomron, as well as Jerusalem.

The demonstration was being conducted under the slogan, "Obama! No! No You Can't!," as well as "The Land of the Bible Belongs to the People of the Bible."

"Mr. Obama, we started demonstrating 16 years ago," said Rabbi Shalom Gold, the founder of Kehillat Zichron Ya'acov in Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood, alluding to the early days of the Oslo Accords. "You were in your '30s and you probably didn't know the first thing about Eretz Yisrael... but we're part of God's divine plan, we're here and we're staying here!"

"Be a friend of Israel, but even if you won't be, we have the greatest ally in the world," he said, pointing to the heavens.
A point well taken. Thank you Rabbi Gold.

Unknown gunmen burn a coffee shop in the Gaza Strip and attack the owner

Unknown gunmen burn a coffee shop in the Gaza Strip and attack the owner
Tuesday June 02, 2009 17:08 by Ghassan Bannoura - IMEMC News

A group of unknown gunmen attacked and burned, on Tuesday at dawn, a coffee shop located in down town Dier Al Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

(I have no idea whatsoever why this picture is associated with this article. Perhaps it is an internal editorial comment about themselves, but if so, they better keep their doors locked.)




Gaza poster - Photo by Toban Black


Local sources reported that masked gunmen arrived at the coffee shop and then forced the owner, his brother and a worker who were at the place out of the shop and started to beat them up. The sources added that the gunmen threatened to kill the owner.

The gunmen left shortly after burning the shop. Witnesses told media that Palestinian police arrived at the location and started an investigation.

A number of such attacks were reported last year all over the Gaza strip, groups like the Islamic army have announced responsibility for some of last years attacks.

3:0 for the Islamic Front

By Moshe Feiglin

4 Sivan, 5769 (May 27, '09)


"We may have to take down illegal outposts, as the US demands, in order to focus attention on the Iranian threat."



These words, spoken by Binyamin Netanyahu at a stormy Likud Knesset meeting last week, testify to the fact that an anti-Semitic outpost has been planted in the heart of Israeli mentality. Its name? "Illegal outposts."

No serious person claims that the persecution of the Jewish settlement movement is in any way connected to the necessity to abide by the law. The Jewish buildings slated for demolition are surrounded by countless Arab structures even less " "legal" than the outposts – but nobody pays them any attention. In other words, the term "illegal outposts" is an Orwellian euphemism that is meant to conceal simple anti-Semitism. Netanyahu, Lieberman and all the coalition members who use this terminology in an attempt to hide their capitulation to pressure from the Left, the Arabs, Obama and the rest of the world must know that they have been ensnared in anti-Semitic semantics. There is no difference between negating the right of Jews to live in the mountains of Samaria and negating the right of Jews to walk on the sidewalk. The term "illegal outposts" is a salute to Goebbels. Period.

Those people who do not have the tools to understand Israel's uniqueness in the eyes of G-d will necessarily adopt anti-Semitic premises. A Jew can not be normal. If he does not accept that he is chosen by G-d, he will ultimately stoop lower than anyone else. That is why in the battle currently being fought between the Islamic front and Netanyahu, the score is 3 to nothing.

In order to defeat the enemy, it is imperative to understand who he is. But a person who cannot identify himself cannot identify his enemies, either. He loses even before the game begins. If he cannot defeat his enemy – he ends up joining him – and channeling his energies inward - against the "illegal outposts" instead of fighting his real enemy.

Let us analyze the battlefront that Israel faces. It is comprised of four major players: Mahmoud Abbas, Mahmoud Achmadinijad, Barack Hussein Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu. The first two want to destroy Israel and replace it with a Moslem entity. The third is patently pro-Moslem and consistently supports the first two. And the fourth doesn't really understand who he is. He attempts to be "pragmatic" in a struggle that is completely religious and willingly folds up the barriers blocking the first three.

Here is how the pre-game warm-ups have gone in the short time that Netanyahu has been prime minister:

Mahmoud Abbas refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state prior to the start of negotiations. Obama supported Abbas' positions and Netanyahu, of course, gave in. The result is that Israel recognizes the "Palestinian nation" and its right to a nation state in the Land of Israel, while the "Palestinians" – with the rest of the world following suit – do not recognize the right of the Jews to have a state in their land. That's a goal for the "Palestinians." The score is now one to nothing.

Mahmoud Achmadinijad doesn't have a bomb yet, but the Jews have already begun to destroy themselves. Netanyahu has surrendered and is channeling Israel's energies against the outposts in a futile attempt to buy international approval to attack Iran. The pictures of the destroyed outposts broadcast throughout the world will help Netanyahu attack Iran like the pictures of the destroyed Gush Katif made Europe repent. It is a clear case of the dialectic of destruction – channeling destructive energy inward against an "enemy" that can be easily defeated. That's another goal for the Islamic front. The score is now two to nothing.

When Barack Hussein Obama released the trial balloon called Bushehr in exchange for Yitzhar, it seemed that Netanyahu could easily deflect this anti-Semitic proposal - that really means that a Jew has to pay for the right to live. The nuclear danger presented by Iran is widely understood in the world and the foolish correlation between the settlements and the need to stop the Iranian threat is easy to invalidate. But last week, Netanyahu adopted the Bushehr for Yitzhar principle and distributed eviction notices to the Jewish settlers.

That's three to nothing for the Islamic front.

We have lost world recognition of our right to a state, we have destroyed settlements and we have adopted the Bushehr for Yitzhar principle – in other words, it is not the Iranians who are the problem – it is the Israelis.

That is the list of Netanyahu's achievements until now.

And the game has not even begun.

*Translated from the Hebrew article in Makor Rishon

Defusing the Demographic Time Bomb

by Bennett Zimmerman and Michael Wise
in Focus
Spring 2008

http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/111/defusing-the-demographic-time-bomb


(While not relevant to the discussion of Eretz Yisrael as the eternal home of the Jewish people, the fear engendered by the demographics discussion should be addressed)



In an historic and pivotal speech before the Knesset in May 2003, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shocked his nation by announcing that Israel would withdraw from the Gaza Strip and large parts of the West Bank to demographically defensible lines in light of forecasts that Israeli Jews would soon lose their majority west of the Jordan River.

This was a striking turnabout for Sharon, who had established his reputation as a security hawk, and was widely considered to be the father of Israel's settlement movement. After decades of backing the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the former general was convinced that Israeli control in the disputed territories would soon force Israel to choose between its Jewish character and its vibrant democracy.

Subsequent Israeli policy has been built upon the same premise. Israel's current prime minister, Ehud Olmert, continues to believe that Jews will soon be outnumbered in their own land. This has been an important rationale for the renewed land-for-peace negotiations with the Fatah-backed Palestinian Authority in which Israel is considering painful concessions that may impact its long-term security. However, the forecasts, based largely upon numbers provided by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), are wrong.

The New Palestinian Census of 2007

The newest Palestinian census, released in February 2008, reported that there are now 3.71 million persons living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, this figure includes persons living overseas, persons twice counted, and projections that have spooked successive Israeli governments in recent years.

Related article: Demographic Trends in the Land of Israel, by Yakov Faitelson

According to corroborative reports gathered from the PCBS, other Palestinian Agencies, Israeli authorities, and third parties, the recent Palestinian census numbers themselves are still inflated by as many as 1 million persons. After removing twice-counted persons and individuals not currently living in the territories, the population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip totals no more than 2.7 million people.

Original Sin: The Palestinian Census of 1997

The current PCBS data is wrong because it does it not reflect corrections the PCBS itself noted in its original census of 1997. That census included Palestinians who had left over the years, but who were issued identification cards during Israel's Civil Administration. According to the Oslo Accords, these persons had preferential rights to return to the territories. However, the PCBS included these individuals in their figures even if they were absent for decades. Using this data, the PCBS arrived at a faulty estimate for the West Bank and Gaza population totaling 2.8 million persons.

International supervision, however, required the PCBS to define the methodology that helped it arrive at its final numbers. Once it was understood that the PCBS augmented its numbers by including 325,258 residents living abroad, and 210,000 Jerusalem Arabs already counted by Israel, it was clear that the PCBS 1997 Census should have totaled 2.2 million persons. This number essentially confirmed Israel's estimated figure of 2.1 million persons living in the territories, based upon school records, the re-issuance of identification cards, and Israel Border Police records.

Curiously, the Israeli government did not adopt the adjusted figures. Rather, successive Israeli governments worked with the faulty data first provided by the PCBS.

Prisoner Release

The obvious anger in this cartoon was ignited by the local PR campaign that our Prime Minister has launched about his appointment of his "representative" for the return of Gilad Schalit.
What got me angry was that the Netanyahu government continues its silence on Jonathan Pollard, even as it publicly and proudly struts its concern about Schalit and secretly prepares its list of Palestinian convicts to release as part of an "exchange", which is simply paying ransom to kidnappers!

The Press Release distributed by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser begins:

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today (Sunday), 31 May 2009, appointed former senior Mossad official Hagai Hadas as his special representative on the return of abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Hadas will be assisted by security establishment officials, Minister Dan Meridor and MK Yisrael Hasson; his work will be overseen by a special team composed of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, Minister Yossi Peled, Minister Moshe Yaalon (and Minister Meridor and MK Hasson).".
Bibi's Press Release ends with:


"Shortly after Prime Minister Netanyahu informed Hadas of his appointment, Hadas contacted Noam Shalit, who is currently in the US, and told him of his appointment. Hadas said that Gilad Shalit and his family are at the center of affairs and that this was a moral mission of the highest order. He pledged to do his utmost to unite all relevant bodies and noted that, "We have a great obligation to our fighters and it is in the spirit of this commitment that I intend to act."
The whole Press Release is here.

* * *
Question: When was the last time that a representative of the Israeli government contacted a member of Pollard's family to explain that obtaining Jonathan's release "was a moral mission of the highest order"?

Sovereignty Reminder

בראשית
13:14 And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him: 'Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward;
13:15 for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.
13:16 And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.
13:17 Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for unto thee will I give it.'



Sovereignty is the exclusive right to exercise, within a specific territory, the functions of a Nation-state and be answerable to no higher authority.(Boczek, Boleslaw Adam (2005). International Law: A Dictionary)

Moshe Feiglin - Outposts, Anti-Semitism, and America

Moshe Feiglin of Manhigut Yehudit
talks with Yishai Fleisher INR

Where we are and where we need to be going.

9 Sivan/June 1 Click Here

Give The Man a Raise

Israeli Government Press Director Daniel Seamen





State Dept.: Obama’s Demands To Stop West Bank Expansion Includes Jerusalem
By David Bedein, Middle East Correspondent
Friday, May 29, 2009

Jerusalem — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has issued an unprecedented statement clarifying President Barack Obama’s demands for Israel to stop expanding Jewish communities in areas it acquired following the 1967 Six-Day War,
including Jerusalem. ........

Ms. Clinton’s press spokesman was asked if President Obama’s demand to halt expansion of “West Bank Jewish communities” included a demand to stop expansion of Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem.

The answer was affirmative. The U.S. State Department demands that Israel limit Jewish growth in these areas of Jerusalem, “whose status remains to be determined” in negotiations.

Israeli Government Press Director Daniel Seamen reacted to this Obama administration statement by saying: “I have to admire the residents of Iroquois territory for assuming that they have a right to determine where Jews should live in Jerusalem.”

Hatikva message to Obama - Don't tread on me

Graphic: Thanks to Women in Green
Hatikvah: Courtesy of Knesset website



On the eve of President Barak Obama's trip to Egypt and Saudi Arabia,
we will hold a
VIGIL in front of the US Consulate.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3rd at 6:00pm
AGRON STREET, JERUSALEM

With the participation of
Rabbi Yossef Mendelevitch, former Prisoner of Zion; Rabbi Sholom Gold,
Dean Jerusalem College for Adults; MK Ayoub Kara; Mrs. Esther Pollard;
Dr. Motti Keidar, Bar Ilan University; Former MK Elyakim Ha’etzni; and others.

Help us say it loud and clear:
the “two state solution” is a crafty formula to ensure the "final solution" to the State of Israel.

For Zion's Sake we will not be silent!

"That's It, Tel Aviv is Gone"

Hamas TV: Gaza evacuation by Israel leads to destruction of Israel - March, 2007
(For video click on picture)

Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV broadcasts numerous political messages during its daily programming. The message that has been repeating most frequently in March is a statement made by Ahmad Yassin, founder and former head of Hamas, who was killed by Israel. The statement was made in response to Israel's plan to evacuate Israeli towns in Gaza Strip in 2005.

Yassin's message was that the Palestinians had found the key to destroying Israel. Since terror was forcing Israel to leave its towns in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians would now only have to keep up the terror in Israel's other cities and Israel would run from those as well.

I Admit: It's All Unnatural

Sivan 10, 5769, 6/2/2009
From the Hills of Efraim
Yisrael Medad (also blog My Right Word)

For anyone reading the reports in the media, in blogs and elsewhere on the issue of natural growth, the amount of material and its complexity is overwhelming. Well, it certainly is for me. It is also, sometimes, frustrating. Take this New York Times graphic presentation, for example.



It appears quite impressive but what it is actually doing is imparting a sense of Jewish dominance, of something slithering along. First of all, besides four Arab cities, where are the hundreds of Arab villages. Second, if Arab population growth were placed on the same map, it would overrun the outlines and become a blob.

I am sure that if I had a real head for mathematics I could explain issues such as demographics, density, birth rates, etc.

I don't so just let me say: I admit it. There really is no "natural growth". It's all unnatural.

Jews have returned home. They are revenants, coming back to their ancestral homes after centuries.

Despite difficulties, terror, opposition from within, pressure from without and many other obstacles, our growth is almost miraculous.

Maybe we do have God on our side.

Guardian of Zion Award Lecture

Guardian of Zion Award Lecture
June 1, 2009, 4:26 PM
Caroline Glick

Last night I was honored to received Guardian of Zion Award from the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar Ilan University. The ceremony was held at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
The following is the text prepared for delivery of the lecture I presented at the dinner. I titled it "Jerusalem, the Eternal Frontline."

It was a beautiful evening, one that I daresay I will always remember.

Good evening. Minister Landau, Members of Knesset, President Moshe Kaveh of Bar Ilan University, Professor Benzion Netanyahu, past Guardian of Zion award winners Prof. Elie Wiesel and Arthur Cohn, and honored guests, thank you all for coming here today.
I would also like to thank some very important people who made a special trip to join me here this evening. Thank you to my parents, Sharon and Gerald Glick who came here from Chicago. Thank you to Frank Gaffney, the President of the Center for Security Policy in Washington and my dear colleague, and his wife Marisol for flying in from Washington to be here.
Thank you to Professor Avi Bell from Bar Ilan University Law School, my friend and intellectual sounding board for delaying your flight to New York where you'll be presenting a paper at a law conference tomorrow, to be here with me tonight.
Thank you to Prof. Joshua Schwartz from the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar Ilan and your staff for organizing this event.
And finally and most importantly, thank you Mr. and Mrs. Ira and Inga Rennert. Thank you for bringing my parents and the Gaffneys to Jerusalem for this event. Thank you for your extraordinary support for my work. And thank you for being such amazing Jews who give of yourselves everyday for Israel, for Jerusalem and for the Jewish people throughout the world. I am privileged to know you and we are blessed as a people to have you among our leading lights.

I TAKE ENORMOUS satisfaction from receiving this award. For nearly as long as I can remember, the image of the watchman on the gates of Jerusalem has been the singular image of Jewish strength for me. It is has always been to the Jewish watchmen, ever vigilant, to whom we have owed our lives, and our survival as a people.
Today these watchmen preserve our freedom in our land. For fifty generations in exile, it was the memory of those Jewish Centurions, manning the barricades that inspired us to keep faith with our traditions, our God, our law, and our land.
For full address click here (powerful and moving)

Ethnic Cleansing (1994)

The Year was 1994.
The World was upset about "Ethnic Cleansing".
A UN Commission of Experts was set up to enquire into "grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and other violations of international humanitarian law".
To avoid any misunderstandings the UN Commission defined ethnic cleansing as:
"a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas." - more

State Department 1 June Briefing: Refuse to take stand if Obama honors commitments of previous presidents

Robert Wood
Deputy Department Spokesman
Daily Press Briefing

Washington, DC

June 1, 2009

(This is the middle of the press briefing. For full transcript click here)

QUESTION: Is the letter binding or not on this Administration?

MR. WOOD: Look, what I'm saying to you, James, is we have - there are a
series of obligations that Israel and the Palestinians have undertaken.

QUESTION: I haven't asked about their obligations and what they've
undertaken. I've asked about a letter that this country sent to Israel. I'd
like you to address that letter.

MR. WOOD: Well --

QUESTION: Is it binding on this Administration?

MR. WOOD: Well, this Administration is - as I said, has laid out its
proposals, its strategy for moving forward. And that's about the best I can
help you with on that, James.

QUESTION: Does it entail that letter?

MR. WOOD: I've said what I can say on this right now.

QUESTION: Robert, do you realize that by not saying yes, indeed the U.S.
Government continues to be bound by the letter that former President George
W. Bush sent, you are leaving open in the air the possibility that it does
not see itself as bound?

MR. WOOD: I don't believe I'm doing that at all. What I'm saying to you is
we have had a series of discussions with our Israeli and Palestinian
partners. We've had discussions about their obligations and what both sides
need to do. Both sides are well aware of what they need to do, and they know
that we are trying to help them meet their obligations. And we'll continue
to do that.

And I'm just not going to get into the substance of what a previous
administration may have agreed to. I'm focused on what this Administration
is trying to do right now. And that's where we are.

Okay, thank you all.

"Peace in Our Times"

"Peace in Our Times", a phrase that continues to call out and evoke more than 70 years later, the illusions and their consequences, fostered by closed eyes.

Obama!

Letter to Haaretz: NGO Silence on Gilad Shalit

May 6th, 2009
by NGO Monitor Staff Dear Editor,

Kobi Ben-Simhon’s insightful assessment of the campaign to free Gilad Shalit, (‘Lost Cause’ , 24 April) overlooked an important contributing factor in the failure to yet bring Shalit home.
As Shalit’s basic rights continue to be denied, the virtual silence of human rights NGOs on the issue is striking. As reported by NGO Monitor, international groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have made only fleeting references to Shalit’s fate and usually then only in the context of condemning Israel for ‘war crimes’ or ‘collective punishment.’ Similarly, Israeli NGOs such as B’tselem, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Gisha and Association for Civil Rights in Israel have utterly failed to engage in a concerted campaign for Shalit’s release.
Had these organizations, who claim human rights as their guiding principle, added their voice to the campaign, the effect could only have been positive, particularly during the final days of the Olmert government. Their failure to do so reveals a highly selective definition of human rights based upon political agenda rather than humanitarian values.

Yours Sincerely,
Dan Kosky
Communications Director
NGO Monitor

Abbas's Waiting Game

By Jackson Diehl

Washington Post

Friday, May 29, 2009

(It seems they have a game plan)

Mahmoud Abbas says there is nothing for him to do.
True, the Palestinian president walked into his meeting with Barack Obama yesterday as the pivotal player in any Middle East peace process. If there is to be a deal, Abbas must (1) agree on all the details of a two-state settlement with the new Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu, which hasn't yet accepted Palestinian statehood, and (2) somehow overcome the huge split in Palestinian governance between his Fatah movement, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which rules Gaza and hasn't yet accepted Israel's right to exist.
Yet on Wednesday afternoon, as he prepared for the White House meeting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Abbas insisted that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and swear off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and publicly accept the two-state formula.
Until Israel meets his demands, the Palestinian president says, he will refuse to begin negotiations. He won't even agree to help Obama's envoy, George J. Mitchell, persuade Arab states to take small confidence-building measures. "We can't talk to the Arabs until Israel agrees to freeze settlements and recognize the two-state solution," he insisted in an interview. "Until then we can't talk to anyone."
For veterans of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Abbas's bargaining position will be bone-wearyingly familiar: Both sides invariably begin by arguing that they cannot act until the other side offers far-reaching concessions. Netanyahu suggested during his own visit to Washington last week that the Palestinians should start by recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, though he didn't make it a precondition for meeting with Abbas.
What's interesting about Abbas's hardline position, however, is what it says about the message that Obama's first Middle East steps have sent to Palestinians and Arab governments. From its first days the Bush administration made it clear that the onus for change in the Middle East was on the Palestinians: Until they put an end to terrorism, established a democratic government and accepted the basic parameters for a settlement, the United States was not going to expect major concessions from Israel.
Obama, in contrast, has repeatedly and publicly stressed the need for a West Bank settlement freeze, with no exceptions. In so doing he has shifted the focus to Israel. He has revived a long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud. "The Americans are the leaders of the world," Abbas told me and Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt. "They can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, 'You have to comply with the conditions.' "
It's true, of course, that if Obama is to broker a Middle East settlement he will have to overcome the recalcitrance of Netanyahu and his Likud party, which has not yet reconciled itself to the idea that Israel will have to give up most of the West Bank and evacuate tens of thousands of settlers. But Palestinians remain a long way from swallowing reality as well. Setting aside Hamas and its insistence that Israel must be liquidated, Abbas -- usually described as the most moderate of Palestinian leaders -- last year helped doom Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, by rejecting a generous outline for Palestinian statehood.
In our meeting Wednesday, Abbas acknowledged that Olmert had shown him a map proposing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank -- though he complained that the Israeli leader refused to give him a copy of the plan. He confirmed that Olmert "accepted the principle" of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees -- something no previous Israeli prime minister had done -- and offered to resettle thousands in Israel. In all, Olmert's peace offer was more generous to the Palestinians than either that of Bush or Bill Clinton; it's almost impossible to imagine Obama, or any Israeli government, going further.
Abbas turned it down. "The gaps were wide," he said.
Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze -- if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. "It will take a couple of years," one official breezily predicted. Abbas rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession -- such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees.
Instead, he says, he will remain passive. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life." In the Obama administration, so far, it's easy being Palestinian.

Here in Israel, right now, we are having a massive civil defense exercise. The script assumes that we've been simultaneous hit by Hamas, Hezbollah, attacked by local Arabs, and bombarded by missiles. All of our hospitals, civil defense people, police, army, and the general public will take part in the exercise. Testing sirens, setting up road blocks, running to municipal bomb shelters, evacuating "the wounded".
We're looking reality in the eye.