CAMERA - New Year's Resolutions We'd Like the Media to Make

Sarit Catz..
CAMERA/Middle East Issues..
04 January '13..





Every January, people around the world take stock of themselves and resolve to improve in the new year, vowing to break bad habits and form good ones. In 2013, CAMERA would like news media to do the same and we suggest the following 13 for '13...

New Year's Resolutions We'd Like the Media to Make:

1. Stop misreporting on Gaza.
Gaza is not occupied, not a “prison camp” and the people are allowed to fish. The Palestinians in Gaza rank above average in the Arab world by all indicators: health care, immunizations, education, nutrition, longevity, and low childhood mortality. Israel withdrew every last soldier, civilian and interred body from Gaza in 2005, the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza is legal and Israel does not control all of Gaza's borders – Gaza has a border with Egypt which Egypt controls. Hamas rules the Gaza Strip and responsibility for any suffering on the part of its residents lies primarily with the terrorist organization.

2. Stop calling Mahmoud Abbas a “moderate”.
Since succeeding Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority president and leader of Fatah, Abbas almost invariably has been described as a “moderate.” This, despite the fact that Abbas, Arafat and a few colleagues founded Fatah in 1959 to “liberate” Israel, not the West Bank (then occupied by Jordan) or the Gaza Strip (then held by Egypt); that Abbas continues to incite his people against Israel; that he refuses to even negotiate with Israel; and that Abbas published his doctoral thesis as a book, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement,” which denied the severity of the Holocaust and claimed “a secret relationship between Nazism and the Zionist movement.” His PA TV and other media outlets continue to praise terrorist killers as “heroes” and describe Israeli cities as part of “Palestine.” What is moderate about this?

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.

.

Both the scythe and the sword

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
04 January '13

Is there hope? For the situation, I mean. That’s what we’re hearing from various places. The question pops up as a defiant challenge whenever we reach the logical conclusion that in light of the geopolitical situation, which is changing before our eyes, and after twenty years during which the Palestinians have avoided making peace with us, we see no chance for real peace with our neighbors. Contrary to the usual propaganda, the dispute with them is not territorial, but much deeper. It has to do with the roots of the ancient myths and the religious disagreement between us and the Muslims.

As far as Islam is concerned, the Jews have no right to sovereignty over even part of the Land of Israel, which they consider wakf — sacred Muslim land. Even the moderate Ahmad Tibi was heard saying this week that he did not recognize the concept of the “Land of Israel.” So where is the hope?

Maybe this is where the fixing starts. For 2,000 years we held onto the hope of returning to our ancestral land and resuming life here as a free nation living in security on our own soil. During that time, there were those who gave up and vanished into the current of history. Those who believed kept on living as Jews in the shadow of death among the various peoples and nations, and waited.

A “state of Palestine.” Whatever happened with that?

David Frum..
National Post..
05 January '13..

Perhaps you’ve forgotten already — the holiday season is such a busy time of year — but a little over a month ago, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to recognize a “state of Palestine.” As we enter 2013, I find myself wondering: Whatever happened with that?

On Friday, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree that henceforward the PA would be known as the “State of Palestine.” Henceforward, all signs, stamps and official documents will bear the new letterhead.

Yet here’s what’s puzzling: Only a few days before issuing his proclamation, President Abbas had publicly speculated about dissolving his new state and summoning Israel to reoccupy the whole West Bank. Meanwhile, Palestinian social-service recipients are protesting cuts — and directing their ire not against their own government, but against the United Nations.

From the Ma’an news agency, datelined Dec. 17, 2012, in Ramallah: “The heads of popular committees in refugee camps across the West Bank met Monday in Ramallah and agreed to escalate protests against UNRWA [The United Nations Relief and Works Agency]. Demonstrators will shut down all UNRWA offices on Tuesday to protest the dismissal of over 100 staff at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the committee chairman said.”

Meet Richard Falk, the American UN policeman for Israel.

Steve Apfel..
American Thinker..
03 January '13..

Richard Falk is a one-off type. No other cop in the world polices a whole nation -- even one no bigger than Israel -- or is duty-bound to bring the nation to book, and blow the whistle before he even sets off on his policeman rounds. And what other cop is a foreign appointee, beholden to people looking out to slap a criminal image on one scapegoat nation?

That's Richard Falk, the American UN policeman for Israel. A Princeton law professor, with facial features that Hitler and Goebbels liked to plaster around the Third Reich to orchestrate the oldest of hatreds, and unabashedly hostile to all things Jewish, Falk was lately removed from the board of Human Rights Watch, the global NGO.

That step was a long time coming. Falk is not your policeman's policeman. He has a record. There was the cartoon he posted of a Jew in the guise of a slavering dog; a cozy partisanship for the Hamas terrorist group of Gaza; the oddball book he recommended, titled The Wandering Who? and more wayward than all else, his conspiratorial beliefs. How many Western law professors can there be who espouse the 'Israel was behind 9/11' theory? It's not what you'd expect from a guardian of human rights. That, anyhow, was what the HRW board thought, looking over Falk's shoulder before telling him to go.

But poison for one body can nourish another. Members of the UN Human Rights Council, including the member for the U.S., receive and debate Falk's indictments of Israel and see in their appointed cop nothing to render him unfit for the job. So he gets to keep the grandiloquent title: 'Special Rapporteur to the UN Council on Human Rights on violation of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.'

A mouthful of a sonorous title. But broken up into chunky bites it yields the full story -- the evolutionary beliefs and commitments that lawman Falk must bring to the job.

The origin of the second intifada? Yasir Arafat decided, case closed.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
04 January '13..

Analysts have long debated the role of Yasir Arafat in the second intifada, the violent Palestinian uprising that followed on the failure of Camp David in 2000.

The PLO and Palestinian Authority (PA) have long denied that Arafat was behind the violence, instead calling the second intifada a spontaneous uprising. This claim was endorsed in the so-called Mitchell report, the “Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee” of 2001: “We have no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence at the first opportunity….”

That story began to fall apart for good in 2010, when Hamas leader and co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar stated that “President Arafat instructed Hamas to carry out a number of military operations in the heart of the Jewish state after he felt that his negotiations with the Israeli government then had failed.”

(+Videos) Not Newsworthy News from Israel’s Islamist neighborhood

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

If it was a western president or prime minister – let alone an Israeli one – who had made utterly bigoted and hate-filled remarks about Muslims not long before he took office, it sure would be a top news item all over the world. But when it turns out that some two years ago, the man who is now Egypt’s president called “the Zionists” “blood-suckers,” “warmongers,” and “the descendants of apes and pigs,” most of the mainstream media (MSM) seem to think it should be politely ignored.

In a way one could actually argue that this really isn’t newsworthy, because if the MSM accurately reported on Islamist ideology, everyone would already know that implacable Jew-hatred is an integral part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s views and agenda. After all, Morsi’s statements from 2010, which were recently translated by MEMRI, faithfully echo themes that are all too familiar from the Hamas Charter, and similar views are regularly propagated by well-respected Muslim scholars.



The question why this torrent of loathsome statements by influential and widely respected figures who clearly shape and represent mainstream views is studiously ignored in the MSM was recently addressed by Pat Condell, who focused on the Palestinians and argued that this kind of “political correctness” reflected a patronizing and ultimately racist attitude.

European settlements, Northern Cyprus and double standards

Dore Gold..
Israel Hayom..
04 January '13..

Anyone flipping through cable television channels with his or her remote control has undoubtedly come across programs about British and other retirees from Northern Europe seeking to escape the harsh climate where they live by venturing to one of the well-known vacation spots along the Mediterranean coast. The difficult problem that these buyers face is the soaring prices of properties over the last decade in places like Marbella, Spain, the French Riviera, or Italy's Amalfi Coast, which leads many to look for more economical alternatives. As a result, many European buyers after 2002 have been flocking to Northern Cyprus, where a villa with a swimming pool can be bought at discount prices.

The main legal question that is not addressed with this new European property boom is the legal status of the area where these new homes are being built. It should be recalled that in 1974 the Turkish army invaded Cyprus, which had been an independent state since 1960 and took over 37 percent of the island. Tens of thousands of Greek Cypriots were expelled in this period in what they viewed was a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing by the Turkish army. In the aftermath of the invasion, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 353 which demanded "an immediate end to foreign military intervention" and called for "the withdrawal without delay from the Republic of Cyprus of foreign military personnel."

The Turkish Cypriots declared their independence in 1983 by forming the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus," an act that the U.N. condemned as "null and void." Over the years, an estimated 160,000 "settlers" who came from Turkey moved into Northern Cyprus. In many cases, properties that had been left behind by Greek Cypriot refugees were given by the Northern Cyprus administration to Turkish Cypriots and to the Turkish settlers, who sold them to European buyers. To date, some 5,000 British citizens have purchased homes in Northern Cyprus despite it being a clear-cut case of an "occupied territory." According to a BBC report, as many as 10,000 foreigners have bought up former Greek Cypriot properties in Northern Cyprus.

Is there any basis for comparing Northern Cyprus to the situation with the West Bank?

No Mr. Abbas, there will not be Palestinian flags over Jerusalem

Barry Shaw..
Original Thinking/JPost..
04 January '13..

Mahmoud Abbas said on November 11 that Palestinians “would continue the march until victory when Palestinian flags are hoisted over the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem and its mosques and churches.”

As if this wasn’t bad enough news, notice he did not say anything about synagogues, or Jewish holy places. In case you were wondering, this has nothing to do with his respect for our sacred sites. He hasn’t got any. On the contrary, if we are to believe what official Palestinian TV News is saying.

The Palestine Media Watch NGO of Itamar Marcus exposed an item: The Palestinian Authority has denounced the existence of any Jewish history in Jerusalem. In this report, it claimed that the Jewish Temple “exists only in the minds of radical organizations.”

Not only do they deny Jewish identity to Jerusalem and the land, they actively reject and destroy all evidence and facts placed before them.

Instead, they invent an ancient Palestinian history in its place. The Palestinian Authority, from Abbas down, accuses Israel of stealing Palestinian heritage when confronted with the evidence of our history.

So what hope is there for mutual understanding and recognition? There is none.

What do Palestinian flags flying over Jerusalem mean in real-estate terms? And what are the potentially explosive repercussions of such a move? Would they be hoisted over the Temple Mount, the Western Wall? They have already said they do not recognize such a place.

Discarding history - The Temple Mount is not in our hands

The Temple Mount is not in our hands • The Muslim wakf continues to damage antiquities and archeological artifacts as authorities remain helpless to prevent it • Entire Jewish, Muslim and Christian histories are being brutally dumped in garbage sites.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
04 January '13..

On a high steel scaffold next to the southern area of the Temple Mount compound’s eastern wall, workers of the Muslim wakf have been working to repair the wall for quite some time. One after another, the stones are removed from the “diseased” area of this wall, which threatened to collapse some years ago, and replaced with new surfacing stones.

The result is an eyesore: a bright spot of relatively new stones, in the eastern wall of the Mount, that stand out from the layers of earlier, darker stone surrounding it. But the aesthetic problem, which may be solved one day, is actually the easy part of the story of the Temple Mount in recent years. This story has many chapters, some that have been told and some that will be. But if the story is to be given a title, it should be “One Transgression Leads to Another.”

Let’s start from the end. Last Sunday, three trucks drove up onto the Temple Mount and discharged their cargo: more surfacing stones for the Mount’s shaky eastern wall. Afterward, the trucks turned toward the piles of debris on the Mount’s eastern section. This is no ordinary debris. Replete with archaeological artifacts, these piles of debris comprise about 3,000 tons of the soil that the Muslims dug up from the Temple Mount about 15 years ago, when they turned the area known as Solomon’s Stables, at the southeast corner of the Temple Mount, into the underground Al-Marwani mosque.

But these 3,000 tons are only a quarter of the amount. Another 9,000 tons of debris were dug up in the same place. In Nov. 1999, this enormous quantity of debris, filled with archaeological artifacts, was removed by trucks in the middle of the night and thrown, like ordinary rubbish, into illegal trash dumps.

Last week, in violation of a High Court injunction, the wakf began removing what was left of the debris on the Temple Mount (the remaining 3,000 tons). A special ministerial committee and later the police gave the wakf permission to remove trash and tree prunings only, but the Muslims loaded the trucks with some of the debris as well. An archaeologist by the name of Tzachi Dvira saw what was going on.

"Lacking Any Foundation in Law"? Meet the European Court of Justice

Douglas Murray..
Gatestone Institute..
04 January '13..

Few people would ever label the hydra-like institutions of the European Union as transparent... or responsive to the desires of we mere voters. The EU has long been in the habit of ignoring the will of the peoples of Europe, if their will is not the same as the will of the EU. Its accounting procedures are so lacking in accountability that the EU's own auditors have refused to sign off on the entity's budgets for the last 18 years running. And of course the European Court has a long and ignoble track-record of ignoring the security concerns of EU citizens in favour of the rights of terrorists to go about their lives and careers unhindered.

So nobody should be terribly surprised at the European Court of Justice's latest demonstration of opposition not merely to transparency but to the peoples it presumes to govern.

Shortly before Christmas the European Court threw out a lawsuit filed almost three years ago, which would have led to the EU being required to release the details of its funding of non-governmental organizations [NGOs]. The suit, filed in 2010 by the superb NGO Monitor, accused the European Commission [EC] -- the "executive branch" of the acronym-rich EU - of failing to fulfill the EU's own transparency obligations. These obligations -- included, for what it's worth, in European Freedom of Information law -- require that details of EC funding should be available upon request. For thirteen months, NGO Monitor has requested such information, and for all that time the EC has claimed"'privacy" and "commercial interests" among other reasons for refusing to have any transparency.

Previously, since June 2005, NGO monitor had identified almost $48 million of funding given by the EC to groups which include those actively involved in extremist anti-Israel activity.such as boycott campaigns and "lawfare" -- frivolous and malicious lawsuits to try, through the harassment and expense of lawsuits, to intimidate people from questioning or criticizing Islam.

Palestinians For Dissolution of the Palestinian Authority

Dr. Mordechai Kedar..
Middle East and Terrorism..
04 January '13..

Occasionally a journalist must show his readers a disturbing, difficult and complex picture, so that they will not be surprised when reality hits them in the face. It is not my intention to spread anti-Israeli propaganda, but rather to illustrate the prevailing mood that confronts us, for this is the task that I am entrusted with and this is the responsibility that rests on my shoulders.

Several days ago, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, announced that if negotiations with Israel are not renewed in a way that will lead the Palestinian people toward their goal, he will invite Netanyahu to Ramallah, he "will lay the keys on the table” and dissolve the PA. This announcement, which was given to the newspaper “Haaretz”, was supposed to shock Israel to its foundations, but that is not what happened: the Israeli public – which is preoccupied with upcoming elections – did not go berserk as a result, and the announcement was left hanging in the air.

But the Palestinian public is not indifferent to events, and in recent weeks we have seen an increase in public disturbances in Judea and Samaria. The Arabs who are residents of the disputed territories take Abu Mazen’s announcement in various ways: some fear an outbreak of violent acts that will harm not only Israel but them as well; some fear that dissolution of the PA might cause an economic downturn, but there are some who wish for the dissolution of the PA and not because of Zionist motives. We bring the words of one of these, Ahmed Muhsin, who, after Abbas’s announcement about dissolving the PA, published the following article, entitled “Since the PA is meaningless, dissolve it if you can and leave us be!!”

The article, written by Muhsin (my comments in parenthesis, M.K.):

Redefining failure as victory

One can only hope that the stiffening of national resolve the public seems to be displaying in its choice of candidates for the next Knesset, will result in a new political atmosphere that will permit the IDF to once again become the formidable and feared fighting apparatus it once was.

Martin Sherman..
Into the Fray/JPost..
03 January '13..

Post-modern notions have blurred the strategic clarity of Israel’s political leadership and its defense and foreign affairs establishment. [T]he outcome of the 2006 [Lebanon] war makes the next round inevitable – Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies

Even if Israel can very capably defend itself...it lacks the will to make the protracted efforts to defeat its enemies.... No one at the upper echelons of Israel’s political life articulates the imperative for victory – Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum

The IDF either lost ability to or forgot how to close with and destroy a determined enemy.... When a nation’s infantry cannot close the last 100 meters and kill a determined foe a country is in trouble  - Col. (ret.) Kevin Benson, former director, the US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies.

Last week, Yaakov Lappin, who covers military and security affairs for The Jerusalem Post, published an article which should give cause for grave alarm to anyone concerned with Israel’s security.

The reason the article, titled “Israel redefines victory in the new Middle East,” is so disturbing is that it appears to indicate that Israel’s defense establishment has learned little from the string of military failures – or at least, non-successes – incurred by the IDF over the better part of a decade.

Hamas to Accept Palestinian Refugees from Syria? Not Likely.

Daniel Greenfield..
frontpagemag.com..
03 January '13..

Just remember, the Israelis don’t care about the suffering of Palestinian Arabs. But Muslims care deeply about their suffering. That suffering is the only reason why they have been conducting a genocidal war against Israel for generations.

They care so much that Kuwait and Iraq both expelled huge numbers of Palestinian Arabs. Syria cares so much that it’s shelling Palestinian Arabs. And Hamas, the official Muslim Brotherhood representatives of Palestinian Arabs, and the most popular group among them, cares so much about them that it refuses to accept their refugees from Syria because it might undermine its campaign against Israel.

According to the report, head of Hamas in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh told UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, that the Gaza Strip couldn’t take in Syria’s Palestinian refugees due to an ideological issue: If they take in the refugees from Syria, Israel could use it against them when it comes to the Palestinians’ demand for the “right to return” to villages inside present day Israel, by pointing out that the refugees no longer need to return to Israel because they have been relocated to new homes in the Gaza Strip.

(+Video) Mordechai Kedar, Israel's Defender in Arab Media

Jspace Staff..
jspace.com..
December '12..

Mordechai Kedar doesn’t look like a scary guy. But get him behind a microphone, and he can become an interviewer’s worst nightmare.

The Bar-Ilan University lecturer has made a name for himself as the go to personality for Arab media types. Kedar, 60, is trotted out on a near weekly basis to interview at some of the most notoriously anti-Israel publications, with journalists looking for a scapegoat to present arguments on “the occupation” and “Zionist oppression.”

But Kedar isn’t one to back down. The Israeli scholar uses perfect Arabic to present the Jewish state’s case, and he does so in stunning detail. Jspace recently caught up with Kedar to talk about Syria, Iran, and what it’s like to tango with Al Jazeera.

Jspace: How did you get involved with the Arab media?

Mordechai Kedar: I have spoken Arabic for many years. My parents actually came from Poland but I studied Arabic in high school. Back then we based our studies of Arabic on the Arab media. We read newspapers, we were listening to radio in those days. And this is how the teacher taught us Arabic, but in a very interesting way because we were dealing with daily issues through newspapers and radio. We became exposed to Arab media.

Then I went to the army and I spent 25 years in the IDF intelligence corps and there also, not everything, but quite a bit of what we knew about the Arab world was taken from the Arab media. When I started my academic life after I finished the army in 1995 I concentrated on the Syrian media as a test case and my PhD.

Because I read Arabic and speak Arabic, the Arabic mass media actually found me. And today we come to a situation where at least once or twice a week I’m asked to participate in all kinds of interviews.

How do you prepare for an interview that might turn confrontational?

First of all, my knowledge is my preparation. Maybe even then I need a little information about what happened today or yesterday but really my education, what I spent let’s say more than 40 years of my life collecting and internalizing, this is what is behind me.

I’ll tell you to a degree what it comes to. As you might remember right after September 11, 2001, many in the United States of America were talking about the school curricula in the Arab world, which do no promote tolerance and acceptance but on the contrary promote zealousness and parochialism and anti-Westernism, anti-Americanism. In the Arab world or the Islamic world everybody now had to refuse the school curricula in order to make them more acceptable to the American or the Western world.

So there was a big debate. One day the channel Al Arabiya calls me and they invite me to a discussion about the school curricula. I went to the studio and I was listening to the beginning of the program and the anchor was talking about the Israeli school curricula, saying it promotes hatred against Arabs, and against Palestinians, against Muslims, all these things. I was prepared to speak on a totally different program, on the school curricula in the Arab world, and here I am sitting in front of the camera and the anchor is talking about the school curricula in Israel, which actually I had no idea about.

I had to keep a poker face, and discuss for a whole hour about it. So I find myself diverting the subject from Israel to the Arab world. It took me a few minutes, but I raised the issue of, “Why are you talking about the Israeli school curricula when the biggest point in the world is the school curricula in the Islamic world in the Arab world?” They were of course angry about this but this worked. I had to change the subject to somewhere where I feel more comfortable. So for me, it’s about the ability to impose your agenda on the discussion. You need full mastery of the language and confidence within yourself. And you know, chutzpah also doesn’t hurt in these issues.

Conference Overview and Highlights - Application of Israeli Sovereignty over Judea and Samaria

Arlene Kushner..
03 January '12..





This past Tuesday, here in Jerusalem, the Women in Green -- joined now by some other groups -- sponsored their third annual conference: Application of Israeli Sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.

The turnout was incredible. Not only did it exceed numbers for the previous two conferences by a good deal, planners had to move the venue because registration was so robust. And even in that larger venue the hall was packed. This provides strong evidence for what I have been saying -- that the Israeli populace is moving right, and is, indeed, weary with notions of a "two-state solution."

What I would like to do here is provide an overview and then touch on highlights.

~~~~~~~~~~

If there was an over-arching message delivered by speakers (many, not all) it is that sovereignty is something that has to be approached in stages. It is simply not realistic to imagine that the Israeli government is going to get up one fine morning and declare all of Judea and Samaria annexed and fully part of Israel.

What is important, first of all, is the stimulation of public discourse on the issues. People just do not understand, do not have solid information.

It falls to those of use who do understand, and do wish to promote sovereignty, to create the atmosphere for dialogue. And that dialogue must be advanced rationally, via the sharing of facts, and not emotions.

To ensure that a system failure like the Gush Katif expulsion should never reoccur

Daniel Tauber..
Opinion/JPost..
03 January '13..

Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) chairman Naftali Bennett’s statement that he would not obey an order to expel Jews from their homes, the criticism it engendered and his subsequent retraction comprised only the latest example of how, seven years later, the disengagement from Gaza continues to cast a shadow over our national life.

That it still haunts us is appropriate considering what it was: the forcible transfer of thousands of people, in which only Jews – by nature of the plan’s goals – were targeted.

Though the Supreme Court did not strike down the plan, it found that it “infringe[d] the human dignity of evacuated Israelis” in a number of ways, violating their property rights and their right to build their lives where they choose, and destroying their communities, businesses and professional livelihoods, in short, their entire way of life.

Putting aside the mortal dangers it posed (all of which and even more have since been realized) the disengagement also sought to answer the most divisive issue our nation faces – setting the final boundaries of the state – a constitutional matter which even the Constituent Assembly, Israel’s first and only constitutional convention, deemed too controversial to decide on.

DESPITE THE enormity of the violations, the controversy surrounding it and the lasting impact it would have, the disengagement was a relatively easy thing for then-prime minister Ariel Sharon to accomplish.

The government presented its plan, the Knesset approved and the judiciary allowed it be executed. And even that outline makes the process seem more rigorous than it was. In the end, it was a simple matter of majority rule.

Technically, the Knesset could have disapproved a prime minister’s initiative, but in a parliamentary system, this is unlikely.

The government represents a majority of parliament and the cabinet is comprised of that coalition’s most powerful members.

Israel’s proportional system makes Knesset opposition further unfeasible: Even if some coalition members disapprove, in the fractured political landscape produced by the electoral system, allies can always be found outside the coalition. And, as the public does not choose members of Knesset, but only a prepared slate of candidates, MKs are first and foremost accountable to party bodies that set the slate, over which the party chairman typically has substantial control.

The Truth Sometimes Hurts - The Palestinian Authority's Inconvenient Truths

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
03 January '12..

The truth sometimes hurts; that is why the Palestinian Authority has been working hard to prevent the outside world from hearing about many occurrences that reflect negatively on its leaders or people.

In recent years, the Palestinian Authority leadership, often with the help of the mainstream media in the US and EU, has been successful in its effort to divert all attention only toward Israel.

Following are examples of some of the inconvenient truths that the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank do not want others to know about:

- Over 100 senior PLO and Fatah officials hold Israeli-issued VIP cards that grant them various privileges denied to most Palestinians. Among these privileges is the freedom to enter Israel and travel abroad at any time they wish. This privileging has existed since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993.

- Out of the 600 Christians from the Gaza Strip who arrived in the West Bank in the past two weeks to celebrate Christmas, dozens have asked to move to Israel because they no longer feel comfortable living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

- Dozens of Christian families from east Jerusalem have moved to Jewish neighborhoods in the the city because they too no longer feel comfortable living among Muslims.

- Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank continue to summon and arrest political opponents, journalists and bloggers who dare to criticize the Palestinian leadership.

What is a threat to world peace? Not the slaughter in Syria.

The count of 60,000 people killed in Syria over the past 22 months is double the estimated casualty count of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past 45 years.

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
03 January '13..

Lakhdar Brahimi, the so-called UN and Arab League peace envoy for Syria, said this past weekend that 50,000 Syrians have been killed in the 22-month-old civil war in that country. UN Human Right Commissioner Navi Pillay said on Wednesday that an “exhaustive” UN study shows at least 60,000 people have died. Tens of thousands of others have been wounded in that gory, war-crime-rich civil war, and millions have been forced to flee their homes.

Brahimi adds that “if the war stays another year, we will not have 25,000 more, we will have 100,000 more killed.” That’s because since last February Bashar Assad has steadily unleashed ever-greater military firepower against his opponents, including tanks, heavy artillery, attack helicopters, fighter jets, and Scud missiles. Next could be chemical weapons.

Opposition groups that monitor the death toll say that this past Saturday, for example, as many as 400 people were killed — more than double what they call the “typical daily death toll.” About half of them were civilians slain in an alleged mass killing carried out by government troops at a petrochemical university in central Syria.

This is obviously so sad, scary, strategically dangerous, and upsetting.

The figure of 60,000 dead is also a historic marker. Because 60,000 dead is double the estimated casualty count of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past 45 years.

48th Anniversary - Celebrating Fatah's first terrorist attack

"But what so far has gone unnoticed by the media here -- and of course the media worldwide - is that today is not the anniversary of anything. It is not Fatah's 48th birthday. Arafat established Fatah in either 1957 or 1959 in Kuwait." However...

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
02 January '13..

Today Fatah members in Dehaisheh, outside Bethlehem celebrated the terror group's special day by parading around in paramilitary uniforms, khafiiyehs and ski caps while brandishing rifles, axes, mock-up rockets and other terror paraphernalia.

Still according to the wise men in high places, like Israel's President Shimon Peres, Fatah and its leader Mahmoud Abbas are peaceful moderates. Israel is supposed to surrender its capital city and expel more than a half a million Jews from their homes and land in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria in order to appease these Palestinian peaceniks. Today's footage of the Fatah marches in places like Dehaisheh sparked some attention from the Israeli media. So too, the Israeli media gave some coverage to the fact that the commemorative posters Fatah released a couple weeks ago to celebrate today's 48th "birthday", included maps with all of Israel labeled as Palestine, (except for the Golan Heights which they always give to Syria).

...and then watching him board a bus - A soldier's father's prayer

Michael Freund..
Fundamentally Freund/JPost..
02 January '13..

This past Tuesday was a day that somewhere, deep inside of me, I had fancifully dreamed would never come.

After three or four fitful hours of sleep, I awoke at dawn, downed a mugful of coffee, and proceeded to drive my oldest son to the Tel Hashomer military base, where he underwent his induction into the Israel Defense Forces.

My little red-headed child, I realized, was neither little nor a child any more. He was a man, and he was about to join an elite unit, don a uniform and take up arms to defend the Land of Israel and the Jewish people.

My pride, together with the lump in my throat, quickly began to swell.

Sure, when I made aliya in 1995, I knew that life in the Jewish state was a package deal. Along with all the beautiful idealism, the lofty goals and noble values, there would also be a hefty amount of obligations and responsibilities.

But knowing and experiencing are two vastly different things. Knowledge may engage the intellect, but living through something involves all of one's sensory receptors, including the soul.

And believe me, hearing your firstborn child's name called out over a muddled military intercom, and then watching him board a bus that will take him off to basic training is about as vivid and intense a stimulus as one can possibly imagine.

Looking around, I saw dozens of other parents and budding soldiers milling about, some laughing with nervous energy and even abandon, while others sat on benches, seemingly dazed by the solemnity of this momentous rite of passage.

What About the Rights of the Other Women at the Wall?

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary/Contentions..
02 January '13..

Writing in the Jerusalem Post this week, public relations expert Laura Kam argued that the ongoing controversy over Women of the Wall is particularly harmful to Israel because it’s seen as an issue of women’s rights. I agree that Israel’s current policy unacceptably violates Women of the Wall’s rights in some respects. But there’s another group of women whose rights the organization’s overseas advocates too often overlook: the thousands of women who visit the Western Wall every day not to “see and be seen,” as Women of the Wall chairwoman Anat Hoffman shockingly described her goal, but to pour out their hearts to God.

Because much of what the organization seeks to do at the Wall in no way disrupts other people’s worship, the existing ban on these activities is unjustified. A woman wearing a tallit or carrying a Torah, for instance, doesn’t impede anyone’s prayers: If you’re there to pray, your eyes should be on your prayer book, not on what other people are wearing or carrying. Even a full women’s prayer service complete with Torah reading wouldn’t necessarily be disruptive if it were quiet, as Orthodox worship often is: At many Orthodox services, you can’t even hear the Torah reading from more than a few feet away.

But that isn’t what Women of the Wall want. What they want is to make a political statement by worshiping as loudly and publicly as possible–to “see and be seen,” in Hoffman’s words. And that most definitely is disruptive to other worshipers: It’s hard to concentrate on one set of words when someone else is chanting a different set at full volume nearby.

The sanitizing of Palestinian terrorists by the NY Times knows no end

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
02 January '13..

Violent clashes broke out in a West Bank village on Jan. 1 when Palestinians started to pelt Israeli soldiers with barrages of stones. The soldiers, who aimed to arrest a terrorist member of Islamic Jihad, responded with rubber-coated bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowd.

But that's not the way the New York Times reported this incident. The Times headline, in the Jan. 2 edition, squarely puts the blame on IDF troops -- not stone-throwing villagers -- for initiating the violence ("West Bank Clashes Follow Israeli Raid to Arrest Militant" by Isabel Kershner, page A7).

In Kershner's article, the target of the Israeli raid also is not a member of a terrorist group financed and armed by Iran to kill Israelis but merely a "wanted militant." Quoting an IDF spokeswoman, Kershner writes that the purpose of the raid was to arrest a "resident, Murad Bani Odeh, who she (the spokeswoman) said was suspected of being a terrorist." In Kershner's view, Odeh is only a terrorist in the eyes of the IDF, definitely not in the world of the New York Times.

The truth is, no one wants used up peace fantasies.

Dr. Haim Shine..
Israel Hayom..
02 January '13..

This election has sparked feelings of deep, ongoing frustration among the Left. They were hoping that the election would revolve around social and economic issues. Strategic advisers, both local and imported, believed that they would be able to leverage the public's outrage over the cost of cottage cheese (as a symbol for the rising cost of living) and the protest movement over housing prices (which started, ironically, on Rothschild Boulevard, named after the famous philanthropist). It hasn't helped that the leaders of that protest movement have now officially entered the political arena. The media, which fanned the flames of the protest movement at the time, has now abandoned them. The slogan "Bibi is good for the rich" (a reference to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's nickname) hasn't caught on, mainly because most of the rich vote for left-wing parties.

The public understands very well that Israel is not detached from the global economy. Despite objective hurdles, Israel currently represents an island of stability in a turbulent sea of economic uncertainty. Since many of Israel's citizens were once subjected to the suffering inflicted by social and economic Bolshevism, there is no chance that Israelis will support such an approach. The idea of taking from the rich and distributing among the poor works only in fairy tales, not in a modern economy. The big, strong United States has become a lame duck within a matter of years, now that President Barack Obama turned it into a welfare nation where laziness is rampant at the expense of entrepreneurialism and hard work. Israel needs to encourage creativity and initiative and bring more and more people into the workforce. There cannot be any free lunches.

Has the world turned upside down? Who are the extremists?

Andreas Fagerbakke
at Western Wall Photo: Odd Fagerbakke

Andreas Fagerbakke..
Israel Opinion/Ynet..
02 January '13..

People who are pro-Israel always have to defend their opinions and are usually on the defensive. Now it's time for us to stand up and turn the tables.

Why do we always have to defend our opinions? Why must we always be on the defensive? Those people who call us extremists and want to push us into a corner, these people are the real extremists, but they are always let easily off the hook. It's time to stop defending ourselves and start being on the offensive. Let's confront those people who call us extremists with the following questions:

Who are the extremists? Those who want the security barrier and all the checkpoints removed, which will lead to a wave of terror attacks against Israeli civilians, or those who want the barrier and checkpoints to remain in place?

Israel - Resounding Successes, Looming Threat.

P. David Hornik..
frontpagemag.com..
02 January '13..

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics has released its population data for 2012, the year that just ended. As usual, the trends are favorable. The total Israeli population rose to just under eight million, while the Jewish population—for the first time—rose to just over six million.

Naturally, the number has a certain resonance. Aside from the grim association, it has a special positive ring to it as well. At the time Israel gained independence in May 1948, its Jewish population stood at about 600,000, meaning that as of the end of 2012 it had grown tenfold.

By most accounts the Israeli Jewish population also surpassed the American Jewish population in recent years. The comparison, though, is misleading, since American Jewry is undergoing high intermarriage and assimilation rates while in Israel intermarriage is negligible and, with the Israeli Jewish culture dominant, there is nothing to which to assimilate.

The year’s end has brought other good news as well. The recent one-week skirmish with Hamas not only unveiled awesome Israeli defensive (Iron Dome) but also offensive capabilities, including revolutionary intelligence and drone innovations. Hamas celebrated a “victory” in which its 1500 rockets managed to kill six Israelis while Hamas’s side suffered about 180 fatalities, the considerable majority of them combatants.

The war, of course, was hardly enough to tame the wild Middle East, but rational actors observing it would realize that taking on Israel is a risky proposition.

Is Abbas really a 'partner for peace'? Well....

Shlomo Cesana/Daniel Siryoti..
Israel Hayom..
01 January '13..

This week President Shimon Peres urged the Israeli government to embrace Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, calling him a "partner for peace." But a renewed look at the so-called Palestine Papers that were leaked about a year ago paints a completely different picture of the Palestinian leader.

The documents, which detail the behind-the-scenes deliberations on the Palestinian side between 1999 and 2010 over the peace process, were obtained by the pan-Arab news channel Al Jazeera last January, although their content was partially exposed by WikiLeaks before that. Through these documents, one can also learn how far the Israeli leaders were willing to go in the negotiations and how their peace proposals were received by the other party. In light of Peres' comments, Israel Hayom has revisited the controversial aspects of the Palestine Papers .

The documents show that when then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put on the table what was then the most far-reaching peace offer [somewhere between 2006 and 2008], Abbas told his negotiating team "not to commit to any counteroffer lest the Palestinians be bound to it."

The papers suggest that the two parties ironed out numerous details of a would-be permanent status agreement until Olmert handed Abbas a comprehensive peace proposal. While the accepted narrative is that Abbas had no time to respond because Olmert was forced to resign in the wake of corruption allegations in 2008, the papers tell a different story: Abbas had no intention of responding to the offer in the first place.

In September 2008, the Palestinians' chief negotiator Saeb Erekat met with his team and reviewed three possible responses. The first was a counter offer that included a map. It would be presented to the Israeli counterparts but they would not be allowed to hold on to it. The second option was to provide an evasive answer or to equivocate. The final option was a flat-out rejection. Shortly after the documents were leaked, Erekat announced his departure, although his resignation has yet to take effect.

The need to move from an existential Zionism to a Jewish Zionism

Fresnozionism.org..
01 January '13..

A state, especially one that is trying to be a nation-state, a national homeland for a people, needs an organizing principle, a set of ideals, an ideology, a purpose — whatever you think it is, some kind of philosophical reason for being. Otherwise there is no reason to live there if you can go somewhere else. And in the developed world, going somewhere else is more of an option than ever before.

Israel’s worst enemies have powerful ideologies — Islamism and Palestinian nationalism/irredentism.

Even the US, a secular state with a very diverse population has such principles, embodied in its Constitution and Declaration of Independence. They are one reason that the nation survived, in united form, its terrible Civil War, and why — one hopes — it will survive the forces trying to pull it apart today.

Despite being the nation-state of the Jewish people, the state of Israel does not have a set of basic unifying principles. There isn’t a single Zionism, and for some Israelis, any form of Zionism at all is looked at as a combination of ignorance and gullibility.

The early struggle to define the state was won by the secular left-wing Zionists of whom Ben-Gurion was an example. Unfortunately that segment was seduced by and ultimately subsumed in the peace movement, a movement based on a pathologically false view of reality, and encouraged by the worst enemies of the Jewish people. Its collision with the bitter truths of the real Middle East has left in their camp only those who have rejected Zionism, the academics and Ha’aretz columnists who are simply anti-state.

Arlene Kushner From Israel - Did He Have to Do That?

Arlene Kushner..
01 January '13

Well, it's New Year's Day. Knowing both how busy I am (it's a "regular" day here), and how likely it is that many will be away from the computer for New Year's Day, I was not going to write. But my prime minister's recent statement motivated (compelled?) me to do so.

First, let me wish everyone a happy secular new year. It is never the wrong time for wishes for blessing and good things.

~~~~~~~~~~

And to the subject at hand:

There has been a good deal of political discussion here of late regarding a Palestinian state -- whether there is a commitment to one, whether it would good, whether we should support one, etc.

Minister of Education Gideon Sa'ar (Likud) said recently that a Palestinian state has never been part of the Likud platform. Sa'ar is a big vote-getter and a good guy in Likud.

~~~~~~~~~~

Then the political newcomer who is fourth on the Likud list and sure to be in the next government, Yair Shamir -- son of former prime minster Yitzhak Shamir, wrote an op-ed about "Why I oppose a Palestinian state":

"...we must remove the idea of a Palestinian state in our area from the Israeli agenda immediately, if not sooner."

I regret that he spoke only in security terms, about what damage such a state would bring in its wake, and not about our rights to Judea and Samaria, but OK. He is opposed.

And it was important that Shamir referred back to Yitzhak Rabin, who signed on to the Oslo Accords. Many people imagine -- this myth has been refined over time -- that Rabin was solidly for a Palestinian state. But he was not. Shortly before his death, Rabin spoke of what he envisioned with Oslo, which was an autonomy short of a full state. In his article, Shamir presented evidence of Rabin's opinion on the matter.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-i-oppose-a-palestinian-state/

What salad vegetables may tell us about the Arab/Israel conflict

In case you thought this was about some dusty vegetable stand 
in the Casbah: a Spinneys Lebanon hypermarket [Image Source]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
01 January '13..

A minor report in today's edition of the Lebanese newspaper, The Daily Star, deals with grocery store items and the Middle East conflict. Though it centers on nothing more substantial than packaged peppers, it might actually say something significant about how things are in this part of the world.

Israeli produce discovered in south Lebanon shop | January 01, 2013 11:36 AM

By Mohammed Zaaatari | The Daily Star | SIDON, Lebanon | A Lebanese shopper discovered several food items made in Israel in one of Lebanon’s largest retailers Tuesday. While shopping at Spinneys in the coastal city of Sidon, a man, who preferred to remain anonymous, discovered a bag of three kinds of peppers made in Israel. He immediately contacted local authorities who in turn contacted the Lebanese Army. Members of military intelligence and police arrived to Spinneys to discover 13 similar bags that have the word “Israel” printed on the sale tag. Police also noticed that the international bar code for the items was scratched with a blue pen and a new code was handwritten on the bag. The case was then referred to the military judiciary for investigation into how the products made it through the customs department at the port or the airport. Spinneys had a similar incident almost ten years ago when shoppers discovered mugs made in Israel being sold at the retailer.

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.

.

Closing Out 2012 With Erroneous Headline - International Herald Tribune

TS..
CAMERA Snapshots..
01 January '12..






The International Herald Tribune closed out 2012 with the following erroneous page-four headline yesterday:

Actually, in the last three years, tens of thousands of trucks carrying construction material earmarked for projects implemented by international aid organizations have crossed from Israel to the Gaza Strip. For instance, in 2011, more than 10,000 trucks containing construction materials crossed from Israel to Gaza through Kerem Shalom: 102 trucks with infrastructure systems (piping, etc); 382 trucks with iron, 1,629 trucks with cement, and 8,782 trucks with aggregates.

Bomb shelter construction boom in Gaza - But for who and for what?

Dr. Reuven Berko..
Israel Hayom..
01 January '12..

Recently, there has been a construction boom in the Gaza Strip, including in the construction of bomb shelters. This has been accompanied by intense Hamas propaganda. Osama Kahil, the head of the Palestinian Contractors' Union, will attest to that.

Reports from the field state that the construction is being subsidized by the "government," and Gaza City spokesman Hatem Al Shaikh Khalil promises that buildings that add bomb shelters will receive financial benefits.

According to Palestinian propaganda, the shelters are being built in response to previous Israel Defense Forces attacks, during which Palestinians were forced to seek shelter at UNRWA schools, the diabolical U.N. mechanism that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem like a for-profit business.

Israel's efforts to protect its citizens stands in stark contrast to Hamas' cynical use of theirs as human shields. Gazans interviewed on Al-Jazeera have bravely called for military activity to be kept away from civilian neighborhoods. Gaza is showing strong signs of attrition, breaking through the bonds of the "heroes' silence" straightjacket that Hamas has imposed on Gaza's residents. Their suffering is now being used as part of the propaganda machine.

The decision to build shelters is a new development for the Palestinians. The personal safety of the average Palestinian civilian had never been a consideration for their leadership. They have always been cynically seen as "biodegradable ammunition," human shields, bodies required for propaganda photography and oil to grease the wheels of the Muqawama (resistance).

(Video) Only Israel has an anthem of hope and freedom

firstonethrough..
31 December '12..




The national anthems of the countries in the Middle East are full of calls for violence, revenge and martyrdom. Only Israel has an anthem of hope and freedom. Hope and Freedom are foundations for a strong and peaceful country.




The concluding words as well as the music in the video are from "Hope Has A Place" by Enya

For More Researched, Fact-based Humor and Politics Visit firstonethrough.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.

.

Two-State Bar-Ilan Address - Also When Pigs Fly

LOTL..
01 January '12..





An interesting variant on a number of recent polls and posts which we've entitled "When pigs can fly" is the restating once again of PM Netanyahu's stand on Two-State Bar-Ilan Address.

With the recent polls there has been a consistent ignoring in the headlines of results of what were the conditions behind the question asked. The possibility of those conditions being met as a basis for the question, naturally led to these questions being titled "When pigs can fly".

Which brings to mind the Bar-Ilan Address. This from Dr. Aaron Lerner of IMRA:

PM Netanyahu stands by Two-State Bar Ilan Address
Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA 31 December 2012


IMRANEWSVIDEO

The most insidious aspect of the UN circus

LOTL..
January '13..





From Jonathan Tobin's The End of the Peace Process, Commentary Magazine January '13:

The Palestinian victory at the United Nations on November 29 was timed to bring the world body full circle from its vote on that same date in 1947 that had called for the creation of Jewish and Arab states in what was then the Mandate for Palestine. But in voting to upgrade the Palestinian Authority to a nonvoting observer, the UN put its seal of approval on an effort to evade peace negotiations and allowed the Palestinians to act as if they had won an independent state in all of the territory Israel captured during the Six-Day War in 1967. The Oslo Accords of 1993 specifically forbid the parties to go outside the framework of talks to change the status of the dispute—but that is exactly what the Palestinians have done by going to the UN. The measure (which only eight nations joined Israel in opposing) put a semi-official end to the “peace process.”

Yair Shamir - Why I oppose a Palestinian state

Yair Shamir..
Times of Israel..
31 December '12..

The idea that a Palestinian state can lead to enduring peace in Israel has become a diplomatic obsession for Israeli and American policy makers. Ironically, it was former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who was in favor of territorial compromise but opposed a Palestinian state (see his letter below). Despite this, establishing such a state has become the equivalent of a “Messiah” that will bring the long awaited peace to the region. President Shimon Peres declared that there is a majority that supports a two state solution. Such a declaration shows that the president is not updated because a recent poll by Mina Tzemach proves just the opposite namely there is a solid majority in Israel against a Palestinian state.

The fact of the matter is that a Palestinian state would not only fail to bring peace and stability to the region, but would increase the tension and usher in permanent instability to the region. Such a state would immediately ally itself with and become a client of rivals and enemies of America such as Iran, would harm American, Israeli, and even Arab interests. A Palestinian state would be a tailwind to insurgent terrorists in Iraq. It would provide Russia and possibly China and North Korea with a foothold in the eastern flank of the Mediterranean at the expense of vital US interests.

The history of the PA’s Abu Mazen tells us something important about the likely character of a Palestinian state. Abu Mazen, who will be heading this state is afraid to call for elections in the Palestinian Authority out of fear that Hamas would gain control. In other words, he lacks public support even now. Besides that,he is a graduate of Moscow University (Ph.D. thesis: Holocaust Denial) and it was he who managed the logistics of the Munich Massacre of eleven Israeli athletes in 1972. Abu Mazen is one of the engineers of contemporary Palestinian hate education, which has become a production line for terrorists.

From Israel - Two more “if pigs could fly" polls.

Fresnozionism.org..
31 December '12..

Two new polls are being widely quoted in the media as showing that Israelis — even voters for right-wing parties — want to make a two-state deal with the Palestinians. For example, Barak Ravid writes in Ha’aretz [subscription],

Two opinion surveys conducted by different Israeli pollsters in December show that most Likud-Beiteinu and the further-right Habayit Hayehudi voters would support a peace agreement establishing a demilitarized Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, Israel’s retention of major settlement blocs and a division of Jerusalem. The two polls also revealed that two thirds of all Israelis support such an agreement…

The Abraham Center commissioned parallel polls from Mina Tzemach’s Dahaf and from pollster Rafi Smith on the Israeli public’s views about peace with the Palestinians. The firms were aware of each other’s polls. Each poll asked one question: If the government of Israel presented a public referendum on a peace agreement that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to be implemented only after the Palestinians held up all the obligations at their end, especially the war on terror, and the United States approved of the agreement, would you support it or not?

The principles of the agreement as presented to respondents were for two states – Israel for the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinians, with Palestinian refugees having the right to return only to their new country. The Palestinian state would be demilitarized and its boundaries would be based on the 1967 lines with exchanges of equal-sized territory. Those exchanges would take into consideration Israel’s security needs and would retain the large settlement blocs in Israeli hands…

When it came to the general public, Mina Tzemach’s poll revealed that 67 percent supported such an agreement and 21 percent opposed it, while Rafi Smith’s poll showed 68 percent in favor and 25 percent against. The surveys found that the general public’s support for the agreement rose to 75 percent (Dahaf ) and 80 percent (Rafi Smith ) when augmented by various other “improvements” such as a defense alliance with the United Sates, disarmament of Hamas and an end to its rule in Gaza, and Arab states’ willingness to enact full diplomatic relations with Israel.

Does this mean, as the Left suggests, that it is the intransigence of the Netanyahu government that is holding Israel back from making peace? Does it mean that with a little more pressure from the US, such an agreement is possible?

Of course not. What it means is that Israelis really, really want peace and most would give up territory in return, if peace were attainable by doing so.

The poll question presumes that the PLO state would be demilitarized and the Palestinians would “hold up all their obligations [first].” How demilitarization could be enforced and how the Palestinians could be prevented from violating the agreement — as they have violated almost every agreement they made with Israel since 1993 — are not specified. As for the idea that Hamas would disarm and give up control of Gaza, it’s far more likely that Hamas will end up in control of Judea and Samaria too.