Surprise? Haaretz in Promoting Hate Speech, Plumbs New Depths

...Haaretz has a right to criticize Israel but it also has a responsibility not to publish hate speech and the open questioning of Israel’s very right to exist. Is it any surprise that some foreign media outlets have few qualms about publishing similar screeds if they can find them in Haaretz?

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
05 June '14..

Haaretz’s publisher Amos Schocken recently made clear in an open call for subscribers that he sees his newspaper as a tool to advance a particular politicized agenda. But just how far is Haaretz willing to go? Judging by an opinion piece, Haaretz has crossed the line from legitimate criticism into outright hatred towards the state of Israel.

In his piece, “Israeli apartheid exposed at the airport,” (behind a pay-wall) Salman Masalha, an Israeli Arab, writes:

Many would agree with the principle that a state, whatever its name is, that practices racial segregation has no right to exist in the world with pretenses of being moral.

Israel is this kind of state.

He goes on to document his treatment at Ben-Gurion Airport by security officials. Granted, being singled out for a security check cannot be a pleasant experience but it can at least be understood within the context of the particular threats to Israeli aircraft and passengers.

Accusing Israel of “racial segregation,” and referring to “the school of Zionism’s racists,” Masalha makes it clear that his issue with Israel goes way beyond any airport security check. Instead it is Israel’s very existence that is illegitimate:

Things must be said clearly: A state that sees any citizen as a permanent suspect due to his very existence in it and his ethnic affiliation has no right to exist. A state that tries to hide its apartheid regime behind technological devices has no right to exist. Technology cannot conceal the Zionist evil forever. Because evil based on ideology will ultimately overflow, burst out and smash the mask covering the racists’ faces.

Masalha continues by making an inappropriate analogy to the treatment of Jews by the Nazis:

To make this clear, the next time I go to Ben-Gurion Airport, I’ll have a yellow patch with me, to show the truth about the Jewish-democratic glitch to all the citizens of the world passing through its gates.

While Masalha accuses Israel of being a racist state, he may wish to reflect on his own choice of words when describing the senior Israeli security officer whom is the object of his rage:

Ophir was a young, darkish security man, perhaps a descendant of converts from the Arabian Peninsula, perhaps from the Atlas Mountains. But one thing was clear, his black color looked very shabby, tattered and stained with evil.

Many Nations Have State Religions… Not Israel. Where's the Coverage?

...And of course there are many states that are clearly undemocratic and make no pretense of not having a state religion such as Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. But even these do not attract the scrutiny and criticism that Israel does on college campuses, in the United Nations and certainly in the media. Unlike Israel, many nations do have official state religions and yet… Where’s the coverage?

Sarit Catz..
CAMERA Snapshots..
05 June '14..





Members of Israel’s coalition government are currently promoting a proposed new “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.” Ynet News reports:

The proposal is expected to be presented to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday but will not be brought to a vote. Instead, the special committee, composed of representatives of the coalition, will work to reach an agreed wording for the controversial bill, and push the proposal through the approval process by the end of the summer session in July.

This proposed law states in part:

The State of Israel is the National Home of the Jewish People; wherein the Jewish People fulfills its yearning for self-determination in accordance with its historical and cultural heritage.

While the proposed new law establishes national symbols and holidays, it does not establish a state religion. It seeks only to establish in Basic Law the status of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Nonetheless, it has attracted a great deal of controversy and even criticism within Israel as well as abroad, among enemies of Israel, and within the Jewish community in the Diaspora. The refusal of Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel as a Jewish state had been characterized as one of the major sticking points in the recently-ended negotiations.

The Jerusalem Post has reported on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reaction to the criticism:

Netanyahu said it is “astonishing” to him why there should be any opposition to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

“One cannot favor the establishment of a Palestinian nation-state in order to maintain the Jewish character of the State of Israel and – at the same time – oppose recognizing that the State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People,” he said. “Supporting the establishment of a Palestinian nation-state and opposing the recognition of the Jewish nation-state undermines – over the long-term – the State of Israel’s very right to exist.”

Strikingly, a majority of Israeli Arabs accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state. Still, many critics believe that Israel simply cannot be a Jewish and democratic state, perhaps believing that democratic states don’t reference any religion. This is simply an uninformed view. Israel has no written constitution, but the Basic Laws have been given that status by the courts. Yet many other countries recognize and even sanction various religions in their very constitutions and attract no criticism whatsoever.

Taking account of where Israel is left as the US winks at the terrorists

"By this time next year, Hamas could have not only an intact military force and terrorist agenda in Gaza, but also a solid foothold in the West Bank and at least a say in — if not veto power over — PA and PLO decisions. In that case, a new system would take shape in the Palestinian territories in which an armed-to-the-teeth political party gradually overshadows the central government and begins to take over numerous institutions."

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
05 June '14..

A Wall Street Journal editorial published yesterday points out from line one the difference between ordinary political decisions of the sort one can agree or disagree with, and acts that will lead to people being killed, with the guns, bullets and salaries of the religiously-inspired killers being provided by unsuspecting citizens of certain great democracies.

U.S. Funding for Hamas? The State Department winks at the Palestinian merger with the terror group.
June 4, 2014 4:17 p.m. ET [Wall Street Journal]

The 1988 Hamas Charter explicitly commits the Palestinian terror group to murdering Jews. Thanks to the formation this week of an interim government uniting Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which the U.S. supports to the tune of more than $400 million a year, the American taxpayer may soon become an indirect party to that enterprise.

"Today we declare the end of the split and regaining the unity of the homeland," PA President Mahmoud Abbas said in televised remarks Monday. The split he was referring to is the bloody conflict between Mr. Abbas's Fatah faction, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which in 2007 forcibly expelled Fatah from the Gaza Strip.

Previous attempts at reconciliation had failed in large part because Hamas had refused to subsume its armed wing to the PA. This time Mr. Abbas acquiesced to a partnership with a heavily armed terrorist group. The resulting relationship will likely resemble the one next door between the Lebanese government, with its negligible regular army, and the Shiite terror group Hezbollah, which like Hamas boasts an arsenal of Iranian-supplied missiles.

The question is whether the U.S. government will continue to fund the PA now that Mr. Abbas has cast his lot with a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization. U.S. law prohibits dispensing taxpayer money to any Palestinian entity over which Hamas exercises "undue influence."

To hew as close as possible to the letter of U.S. law, the architects of the Hamas-backed interim government have assembled a cabinet of old PA holdovers and technocrats from Gaza with no obvious links to Hamas. The maneuver was good enough for the Obama State Department. "At this point, it appears that President Abbas has formed an interim technocratic government that does not include ministers affiliated with Hamas," spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters earlier this week. "Moving forward, we will be judging this government by its actions."

But that still leaves open the question of the PA's treaty obligations. The Oslo Accords and its progeny, including the 1998 Wye Memorandum, set very clear limits on the extent and potency of the PA arsenal. Under the Wye Memorandum, for example, the PA is required to "establish and vigorously and continuously implement a systematic program for the collection and appropriate handling of" illegal weapons.

Nobody should count on the aging and calculating Mr. Abbas to exercise meaningful control over Hamas's arsenal, much less its behavior. And nobody should count on the Obama Administration to apply meaningful penalties to the PA for joining forces with Hamas and flouting its obligations toward Israel. That leaves Congress, which can block funding to the Palestinians until they prove capable of governing themselves as something other than a terrorist enterprise.

Eminent Israeli strategic adviser and commentator, Ehud Yaari, writing in Times of Israel yesterday as well, says there are straightforward reasons why Hamas decided to get into a relationship with the Palestinian Authority, stemming from an internal review

(Continue)

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Describing Hamas in 10 Words or Less

...If the Post, and CNN, and the LA Times (and many, many others) wanted to provide an accurate description of Hamas in 10 words or less, they should have written something like this:

Yarden Frankel..
Zion's Corner/israelnationalnews.com..
03 June '14..

Now that the West has decided to work with a Palestinian "unity" government, Hamas is being mentioned often in the media. In order to briefly tell readers who Hamas is, most articles include a short description.

Typical are:

"...backed by the Islamist militant group Hamas, which the United States and Israel have branded a terrorist organization." (Washington Post)

"...Hamas, a militant Islamic group that hasn't recognized Israel..." (CNN)

"...backed by Hamas, which Israel considers a terrorist organization." (LA Times)

Yet even given the need for brevity that is an accepted requirement of modern day journalism, do these short descriptions convey the most accurate information about the group? Is the refusal of Hamas to recognize Israel the most important fact to tell readers about the group? Or by specifying only that Israel (and in the Washington Post article the U.S.) believes it to be a terrorist organization, are the media implying that the nature of the group is unclear? Is the group more a "militant" group that one responsible for terror?

The fact is that Hamas' track record of suicide bombings, thousands of rocket attacks on civilian areas, kidnapping, and the murder of hundreds of innocent men, women, and children is clear. Hamas openly boasts of these deeds in order to spread terror. Doesn't that make them a classic example of a terrorist group?

Not a footnote, but a re-framing of the story. Mizrahi Nation

...The form that the Jewish presence in this region has taken—national sovereignty—is unprecedented. But if we place the story of the Jews of Islamic countries at the center rather than at the margins of our consciousness, we see that Israel represents a continuation of the past as much as it does a break with it. We Israelis are Jews in the Middle East. That we are free, safe from persecution, and in charge of ourselves—these things are new. But that we are here? There is nothing new about that at all.

Matti Friedman..
Mosaic Magazine..
June '14..

The story of Israel, as most people know it, is well trod—perhaps even tiresome by now. It begins with anti-Semitism in Europe and passes through Theodor Herzl, the Zionist pioneers, the kibbutz, socialism, the Holocaust, and the 1948 War of Independence. In the early decades of the return to Zion and the new state, the image of the Israeli was of a blond pioneer tilling the fields shirtless, or of an audience listening to Haydn in one of the new concert halls. Israel might have been located, for historical reasons, in the Middle East, but the new country was an outpost of Europe. Its story was a story about Europe.

This story was a powerful one, and it has not changed much over the decades, certainly not in its English version. A recent example is Ari Shavit’s best-selling My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, in which the characters, with few exceptions, are the usual pioneers, Holocaust survivors, lovers of Europe spurned by Europe, devotees of classical music forced to become farmers and fighters, and their children and grandchildren: Ashkenazi Israelis like the author, and like me. Other actors are present onstage, but they are extras or props, not the stars. An earlier example of the form was Amos Elon’s richly told The Israelis: Founders and Sons (1971; reissued 1983), which purported to peer into the soul of the country but had scarcely a word to say about anyone not from Europe. Everyone knew who “the Israelis” really were.

A confluence of interests has endeared this same narrative to Israel’s enemies, who have used it to increasing effect. In Israel, goes one variant of the story, Arabs were made to pay the price of a European problem. A less benign variant posits that Israel is not a solution to anyone’s suffering but instead a colonialist European state imposed by empowered Westerners upon a native Middle Eastern population: that blond pioneer is less a victim rebuilding himself as a free man or an agent of progress than he is a white Rhodesian rancher.

It is 2014, and it should be clear to anyone on even passing terms with the actual country of Israel that all of this is absurd. Israel has existed for nearly seven decades and, like most things on earth, has turned into something that would have surprised the people who thought it up. Half of Israel’s Jews do not hail from Europe and are descendants of people who had little to do with Herzl, socialism, the kibbutz, or the Holocaust. These people require not the addition of a footnote, but a reframing of the story. Hard as this is for those of us whose minds were formed in the West, this means putting aside the European morality play that so many still see when they look at Israel, and instead viewing non-Europeans as main characters.

In what follows I will not try to offer anything resembling a comprehensive history but only trace an alternative way of seeing things and point out what this might yield by way of insight into the life of the country that exists today.

I’ll begin by introducing my friend Rafi Sutton.

Twelve ways the US administration has failed its ally Israel by David Horovitz

Washington’s rush to recognize the new Hamas-backed Palestinian government is only the latest in a dismal series of missteps, failures and betrayals

David Horovitz..
Times of Israel..
03 June '14..

Mere hours after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a government backed by the Islamic extremist Hamas group, the US State Department legitimized the arrangement, declaring that it would work with the new government because it “does not include members affiliated with Hamas.”

What was saddest about Washington’s insistence on accepting Abbas’s paper-thin veneer over his government’s new nature — his “technocrat” ministers were all approved by Hamas — is that it represents only the Obama administration’s latest abrogation of leadership, logic and leverage at Israel’s expense. Rather than rushing to embrace a Palestinian government in which an unreformed Hamas is a central component, what was to stop the US conditioning its acceptance on a reform of Hamas? What was to stop Washington saying that it would be happy to work with Abbas’s new government, the moment its Hamas backers recognized Israel, accepted previous agreements and renounced terrorism? Not a particularly high bar. What was to stop the US making such a demand, one of tremendous importance to its ally Israel? Only its incomprehensible reluctance to do.

Unfortunately, however, such lapses and failures are not the exception when it comes to the US-Israel alliance of late. This administration has worked closely with Israel in ensuring the Jewish state maintains its vital military advantage in this treacherous neighborhood, partnering Israel in offensive and defensive initiatives, notably including missile defense. It has stood by Israel at diplomatic moments of truth. It has broadly demonstrated its friendship, as would be expected given America’s interest in promoting the well-being of the region’s sole, stable, dependable democracy. But the dash to recognize the Fatah-Hamas government was one more in a series of aberrations — words and deeds that would have been far better left unsaid or undone, misconceived strategies, minor betrayals.

1. So, yes, where Hamas is concerned, you’d think that an ally would not legitimize, as part of the Palestinian government, an organization bent on the destruction of Israel, an organization declaredly refusing to change that goal, an organization with a proven, mass-murdering track-record.

2. Going back to the start of the latest failed peace effort, you’d think an ally would listen to the advice of well-meaning experts warning that attempting to do the same thing that failed in the past in the belief that it will turn out differently — in this case, strong-arming two hostile, untrusting parties into an acutely sensitive and complex agreement in a very short period — is the definition of insanity. Rather than setting an impossible nine-month timeframe for negotiating a permanent accord, when all reasonable evidence and past experience showed that this would fail, it would have been better for the US and its international allies to start working systematically, investing time, money and leverage in, among other spheres, education and media, in order to create a climate conducive to progress. Peacemaking is going to require a gradual process, grass-roots change; there is no quick fix. Every credible, peace-supporting voice on the ground here told the Americans exactly this before they set out. And was ignored. And now we all have to brace for the dangerous consequences of the all-too-predictable failure.

3. While we’re talking about producing a more conducive climate, you’d think an ally would use its regional clout and leverage to work with partners in the region to rehouse Palestinian refugees, first of all in Gaza, where there is no Israeli military or civilian presence and no reason for the festering wound to be artificially maintained. This is humanitarian work of the highest order, to which no organization or individual genuinely committed to the well-being of the Palestinian people could object. It would be opposed only by those whose ostensible sympathy for the Palestinian plight is outweighed by their hostility to Israel.

But honor matters

...If any party had a chance of building a viable state focused on the welfare of its citizens rather than making war against the Jews, it was the Third Way. It came in sixth with about 2.4% of the vote.

Dr. Salam Fayyad, Western-educated
economist and former Palestinian PM.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
04 June '14..

Honor is a difficult concept, particularly for modern-day progressives. It is archaic, elusive, unquantifiable, profoundly personal, stubborn, indifferent to public opinion, beyond the grasp of economic incentives, social norms and government coercion. — Bret Stephens

But honor matters. I think I’ve mentioned this Middle-Eastern fable before: a rich and powerful man discovers that someone has stolen a blanket from him. Although he knows who did it, he has many more blankets than he needs, so he overlooks the theft. But soon thefts become more frequent and more valuable things are taken; ultimately the man finds himself alone in the desert, his sons dead, his wives raped and stolen, and all his animals and even his tent gone.

The moral is that if you don’t sweat the small stuff, then it can quickly become big stuff. Lose your honor and you lose everything.

When Israel traded a thousand dangerous Arab prisoners for Gilad Shalit, members of WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) cultural groups saw it as an indication of how much Israelis cared for their children. Arabs saw it as a blow struck against Israel’s honor.

Hizballah propaganda likes to talk about the honor gained when it fought Israel to a stalemate in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. But Nasrallah also said that if he had known what it would lead to, he would not have ordered the kidnapping that started it. He gambled that he could hit Israel with impunity and thereby damage its honor; but Israel’s violent answer had the opposite effect. Honor and deterrence are closely related, and a disproportionate response is one way to get both.

Westerners think of justice as an impartial ideal. Their justice demands that a murderer go to prison or be executed. But honor demands that the victim’s people get revenge. That’s entirely different, and is why the Arabs celebrate so joyfully when Israel is forced by the US to release terrorist murderers.

Symbols are important where honor is concerned. In 1967, Moshe Dayan thought it would be a gesture toward reconciliation and a practical way to reduce tension to give control of the Temple Mount to the Muslim waqf. In one stroke it negated the honor gained from the capture of the holy site.

Another way to surrender honor is to put it in play and then back down, as Barack Obama did for Assad’s chemical weapons.

American negotiators were mystified by the Arabs’ refusal to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. They shouldn’t have been: Jewish sovereignty over ‘Arab land’ is a direct slap at Arab honor.

Most Americans don’t get this, and the more educated they are, the less they get it. Israelis with Mizrahi backgrounds get it better than Ashkenazim, especially if they are old enough to remember life in an Arab country.

Terrorists, Art Shows and Rewarding Palestinian Misbehavior

...Both exhibitions thus sent the same message: Palestinians can engage in anti-Israel incitement, glorification of terror, and online bullying, but not only will they suffer no penalty, they will even be rewarded. Respected institutions will provide taxpayer funding for these activities, expel Israeli and American artists to accommodate them, and even issue fawning apologies for offending Palestinian sensibilities.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
03 June '14..

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aptly noted yesterday, it’s “strange” that even as European governments loudly condemn anti-Semitic attacks like the one on the Brussels Jewish Museum, they “speak about friendship with a Hamas unity government that commits these very same acts and glorifies them.” The same goes for the Obama administration, which condemns terror with one side of its mouth while rushing to recognize the new Fatah-Hamas unity government with the other, even though Hamas leaders openly refuse to recognize Israel, give up anti-Israel terror, or disarm.

Yet this willingness to whitewash and even reward Palestinian misbehavior isn’t confined to government circles. As examples, consider two recent art shows–one sponsored by the Ottawa municipality and the Ontario Arts Council, the other by a Pittsburgh museum.

The Ottawa municipality is currently hosting an exhibition by Palestinian-Canadian artist Rehab Nazzal. It features a video called “Target,” which, according to official publicity material, shows “artists, writers and leaders” who were “assassinated” by Israel. But when Israeli Ambassador to Canada Rafael Barak watched the video, he discovered that many of these “assassinated artists and writers” were actually leading terrorists. They include Khalil al-Wazir, planner of the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, in which PLO terrorists hijacked an Israeli bus and killed 37 civilians; Dalal Mughrabi, one of the perpetrators of that attack; Salah Khalaf, founder of the PLO faction that massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics; and Khaled Nazzal, a senior official of another PLO faction that massacred 22 Israeli schoolchildren at Ma’alot in 1974.

Moreover, several people featured in the video were actually killed by fellow Palestinians–including both Khalaf and one genuine artist, a caricaturist murdered for drawing derogatory cartoons of PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Still others were indeed killed by Israel, but hardly “assassinated”: Mughrabi, for instance, died in a shootout with Israeli soldiers who stormed the bus in an effort to stop the massacre. In short, Nazzal’s work is a piece of vile anti-Israel incitement and a glorification of terrorism, funded wholly by Canadian taxpayers.

No Western government would finance works glorifying, say, the 9/11 terrorists or the London subway bombers. But when Barak and local Jewish groups protested this exhibit, city hall trotted out the standard excuse: It was chosen by a committee of artists, and politicians shouldn’t interfere with artistic decisions.

Washington accepts terror state - only requires English press releases

...#3. In the event of a rocket attack from Gaza, the only thing the United States expects PA President Mahmoud Abbas to do is issue a press release.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
03 June '14..




Let's read this incredibly shocking passage together:

"Well, we condemn all rocket attacks from Gaza. We would also expect President Abbas to do so as he has in the past, and we expect the Palestinian Authority to do everything in its power to prevent attacks from Gaza into Israel. But we recognize that Hamas currently controls Gaza..."
Jen Psaki - U.S. Department of State Spokesperson
Daily Press Briefing
Washington, DC
June 2, 2014

Now let me walk through what this means:

#1. The United States has absolutely no expectation that the formation of the unity PA government will have any significance with regard to the anything relating to security matters in the Gaza Strip.

#2. The United States accepts the continued control of Gaza by Hamas with Hamas in no way being expected to honor any of the written commitments that the PA is committed to – first and foremost that the Gaza Strip is a demilitarized zone.

#3. In the event of a rocket attack from Gaza, the only thing the United States expects PA President Mahmoud Abbas to do is issue a press release.

Now what?

I am optimistic.

If the American double-cross was more diplomatic, more muted, the temptation would have been to kick the can down the road and wait to see what develops.

Israel's Islamic movement, the far more dangerous enemy within

...Is it reasonable and sensible to permit the northern branch of the Islamic Movement to function when their activities are obviously aimed at the destruction of Israel?

Moshe Arens..
Haaretz..
03 June '14..

Israel is not short of enemies – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, terrorist gangs in Sinai, assorted terrorist groups near the border on the Golan Heights since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, and farther afield the atomic ayatollahs in Iran. But far more dangerous, there is an enemy within – the northern branch of the Islamic Movement headed by Raed Salah from the Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm in Wadi Ara.

The northern branch of the Islamic Movement is for years actively engaged in subversive activity aimed at destroying the State of Israel and establishing in its place an Islamic State. This is their openly declared aim and, believe it or not, they are making progress toward achieving that aim. Progress, toward achieving what to many might seem an impossible mission, is being made by gradually mobilizing the Muslim population in Israel in an anti-Israeli crusade. By preaching to them that Israel is their enemy, inciting them to violence against Israel, and fighting tooth and nail against any move toward integration by Israel’s Arab citizens into Israeli society.

If you don’t believe it just take a look at the Bedouin population in the Negev. Over 30 years ago the Bedouin Negev did not identify with the Palestinian national movement, they were friendly to Israel, many of their young men volunteered for service in the IDF and, although Muslim, were not particularly observant and did not see themselves as part of an Islamic army waging war against Israel.

That was before the Islamic Movement began its activity among the Negev Bedouin. Since then they have been sending religious emissaries from the north to the Bedouin in the Negev, teachers from the north have infiltrated the Bedouin school system in the Negev, and the Islamic Movement has been regularly organizing demonstrations and riots in the Negev. They are busy spreading anti-Israel propaganda. Their message to the Bedouin Negev is that they are Palestinians, that Israel is their enemy, and that they are not allowed to enlist in the IDF, the army of their enemy. In recent years this effort is being spearheaded by the northern branch of the Islamic Movement.

Once a year the northern branch holds a mass anti-Israel propaganda festival in Umm al-Fahm, under the slogan “The Al Aqsa mosque is in danger.” There tens of thousands of Israeli Muslims are being incited to believe that Israel is planning the destruction of the Al Aqsa mosque, and are urged to be prepared to give their lives to prevent this “abomination.”

Betraying Peace, Embracing of Hamas, All In A Day's Work

...By allowing American taxpayer dollars to flow to a government controlled in part by Hamas, Obama is violating U.S. law. But he’s also signaling that the U.S. has no intention of ever pressuring the Palestinians to take the two-state solution they’ve been repeatedly offered by Israel and always rejected. For a president that is obsessed with his legacy, that’s a mistake for which history ought never to forgive him.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
02 June '14.

When Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas chose to scuttle peace talks with Israel this spring by deciding to conclude a pact with Hamas rather than the Jewish state, he was taking a calculated risk. In embracing his Islamist rivals, Abbas sought to unify the two leading Palestinian factions not to make peace more possible but to make it impossible. Since Palestinian public opinion–indeed the entire political culture of his people–regards any pact that would recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state as a betrayal of their national identity, bringing Hamas back into the PA fold illustrated that he would not take the sort of risks that peacemaking required.

But given the PA’s almost complete dependency on the United States and Europe for the aid that keeps its corrupt apparatus operating, there was a genuine risk that the unity pact would generate a cutoff of assistance that could topple his kleptocracy. U.S. law mandated such a rupture of relations, as did the officially stated policy of the Obama administration that rightly regards Hamas as a terrorist group, not a legitimate political player. But there was a chance that Washington would accept a Palestinian deception in which technocrats would be appointed to rule in the name of the Fatah-Hamas coalition in order to pretend that the terrorists were not in charge.

In the weeks since the unity pact was concluded it wasn’t clear which way the U.S. would jump on the question of keeping the money flowing to Abbas, though at times Secretary of State John Kerry made appropriate noises at the PA leader about the danger of going into business with Hamas. But today’s press briefing at the State Department removed any doubt about President Obama’s intentions. When asked to react to today’s announcement of a new Fatah-Hamas government in Ramallah, spokesperson Jen Psaki said that the U.S. would accept the Palestinian trick. As the Times of Israel reports:

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Monday that Washington believes Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has “formed an interim technocratic government…that does not include members affiliated with Hamas.”

“With what we know now, we will work with this government,” Psaki said. She did, however, warn that the US “will continue to evaluate the composition and policies of the new government and if needed we’ll modify our approach.” She later added that the administration would be “watching carefully to make sure” that the unity government upholds the principles that serve as preconditions for continuing US aid to the Palestinian Authority.

In recognizing the fig leaf of a “technocratic” government that is meant to distract the world from the reality that Hamas is now in full partnership with Abbas, the Obama administration may think it has put Israel’s government—which publicly called for the world not to recognize the Palestinian coalition—into a corner. But by discarding its own principles about recognizing unrepentant terror groups, Obama has done more than betrayed Israel. He has betrayed the cause of peace.

It would be a mistake to waste much time debating whether the cabinet Abbas has presented to the world is not really affiliated with Hamas. The people he has appointed are nothing but stand-ins for the real power brokers in Palestinian politics—the leaders of Fatah who lord it over those portions of the West Bank under the sway of the PA and the Hamas chieftains who have ruled Gaza with an iron fist since the 2007 coup in which they seized power there. Just like Abbas’s previous attempt to swindle the West into thinking that the PA intended to embrace reform during Salam Fayyad’s ill-fated term as prime minister, the “technocratic” cabinet isn’t fooling anyone. Americans and Israelis may have lauded Fayyadism as a path to a responsible Palestinian government that would eschew corruption and try to actually improve the lives of its people. But Fayyad was a man without a political constituency and, despite the support he had in Washington, was thrown overboard by Abbas and the PA went back to business as usual without a backward glance.

Nor is there any use arguing about whether it is Hamas that has been co-opted by Abbas and Fatah rather than the other way around. The two rival parties have very different visions of Palestinian society with Hamas hoping to eventually install the same kind of theocratic rule in the West Bank that it established in the independent Palestinian state in all but name in Gaza. But at the moment there is no fundamental difference between the two on dealing with Israel. Despite its unwillingness to recognize Israel even in principle and its refusal to back away from its charter that calls for the Jewish state’s destruction and the slaughter of its people, Hamas doesn’t want an open war with Israel anymore than Fatah. But by the same token, Fatah has demonstrated repeatedly over the last 15 years that it is as incapable of making peace with Israel, even on terms that would have gained it sovereignty over almost all of the West Bank and a share of Jerusalem, as Hamas. The two parties are genuinely unified in their desire to keep chipping away at Israel’s international legitimacy and to avoid peace at any cost.

Admitting this would be a bitter pill for an Obama administration that has invested heavily in Abbas, a man they have wrongly portrayed as a peacemaker even as they have vilified Netanyahu as an obstacle to a deal. So rather than honestly assessing their policy and owning up to the fact that five and a half years of attempts to appease Abbas and tilt the diplomatic playing field in his direction have done nothing to make him say yes to peace, the administration will go along with the PA’s deception.

That’s a blow to Israel, which now finds itself more isolated than ever. But the real betrayal doesn’t involve Obama’s broken promises to the Jewish state or to pro-Israel voters. By buying into the myth that Hamas isn’t involved with the new PA government, the president is putting a spike into the last remote chances for a peace deal in the foreseeable future. So long as the Palestinians are allowed to believe that there is no price to be paid for rejecting peace, there will be no change in their attitudes. By allowing American taxpayer dollars to flow to a government controlled in part by Hamas, Obama is violating U.S. law. But he’s also signaling that the U.S. has no intention of ever pressuring the Palestinians to take the two-state solution they’ve been repeatedly offered by Israel and always rejected. For a president that is obsessed with his legacy, that’s a mistake for which history ought never to forgive him.

Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/06/02/obamas-embrace-of-hamas-betrays-peace-palestinians-us-aid-fatah/

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!
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Surprised? Hamas moves in, US shrugs

...With a wink and a nod the restrictions passed by the US Congress disappear, as we knew they would, because the keystone of US policy in the Mideast is still, as it has been since the Arab oil boycott of the 1970s, to reverse the results of the Six Days War. Considering that if Israel had lost that war it most likely wouldn’t exist today, the decision to fund Hamas is perversely logical.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
02 June '14..

State Department briefing, today:

QUESTION: What is the U.S. Government’s view of the so-called Palestinian unity government that was sworn in today by Palestinian President Abbas?

MS. PSAKI: Well, at this point, it appears that President Abbas has formed an interim technocratic government that does not include ministers affiliated with Hamas. Moving forward, we will be judging this government by its actions. Based on what we know now, we intend to work with this government, but we’ll be watching closely to ensure that it upholds the principles that President Abbas reiterated today.

QUESTION: One follow-up on this.

MS. PSAKI: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: When you say, “Based on what we know now, we intend to work with this government,” does that mean that based on what you know now, you intend to continue disbursing U.S. foreign assistance to the Palestinian Authority and this government?

MS. PSAKI: It does, but we will continue to evaluate the composition and policies of the new government and calibrate our approach accordingly.

Now, this is a “unity government,” and one of the partners is Hamas. All of the ministers were approved by Hamas, even if none of them comes to work wearing a Hamas headband, and it is unthinkable that Hamas will not have significant input into its decisions. The “technocratic government” is only a fig-leaf to allow the US and the rest of the ‘civilized’ world to ignore restrictions it placed on dealing with — and paying — murderous terrorists.

With a wink and a nod the restrictions passed by the US Congress disappear, as we knew they would, because the keystone of US policy in the Mideast is still, as it has been since the Arab oil boycott of the 1970s, to reverse the results of the Six Days War.

Considering that if Israel had lost that war it most likely wouldn’t exist today, the decision to fund Hamas is perversely logical.

Speaking out of both sides of the mouth depending on who's listening

...For those lacking the patience to click and watch the entire one minute and 11 seconds, Al-Habbash is hectoring his assembled audience of Palestinian Arab VIPs, including the "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas who heads the PA, on how the young men who are pointlessly and violently laying down their murderous lives in the name of jihad in Syria ought to think again and go do it in Jerusalem.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
02 June '14..

Over at CIFwatch, they have an excellent post from this past Friday illustrating something that people who watch the Palestinian Arab political leadership know only too well. When an Arabic-speaking audience is focused on them, their message - tuned to the expectations of those hearing them - is frequently blood-and-guts violent, often vicious, using extremist language, imagery and exhortations. Put them in front of non-Arabic-speakers and they conjure up an entirely different, moderate, reasonable and cultured facade. The CIFwatch headline: "A perfect illustration of how the PA fools the UK media into believing they’re ‘pro-peace’":

The PA Minister of Religious Affairs was quoted recently in English criticizing violence and incitement and supporting peace. However, several months ago, in two separate speeches in Arabic, he called for terrorist attacks in Jerusalem and explained - as did Yasser Arafat before him – that the PA’s putative entreaties for peace are merely tactical decisions with the ultimate aim of vanquishing their Israeli ‘peace partners’.

The minister's name is Mahmoud Al-Habbash. As holder of the Waqf (Religious Affairs) portfolio, he has come out strongly and unequivocally - as he did a few days ago (see the evidence here in English) - against Hamas-style violence and incitement... just as most reasonable people would expect of a man with spiritual inclinations and responsibilities.

Most reasonable people would be wrong.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!
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The 'Jesus Was a Palestinian' Narrative and the Return of Christian Anti-Semitism

...As Christians are murdered by Islamists across the world, some of their churches are directing their passions elsewhere. They are busily rewriting history, constructing a theology out of gross political distortion and lining up once again with historic forces of unfathomable darkness. It is not just the State of Israel that is being threatened as a result. Stamping upon its parent, the Church is embracing its own assassin—and the West’s potential nemesis.

Melanie Phillips..
Commentary Magazine..
01 June '14..

Manger Square was bedecked with huge photomontages of classic artworks featuring Christian imagery superimposed with images from the Palestinians’ modern reality. Caravaggio’s “Ecce Homo” merged with a photograph of Palestinians crossing an Israeli checkpoint on their way to Jerusalem, equating Palestinians with Jesus and his suffering.

—The New York Times, May 25, 2014, reporting on Pope Francis’s visit to the West Bank

Within the Protestant world, many churches are deeply hostile to the State of Israel. They present the Palestinians as victims of Israeli oppression while ignoring the murderous victimization of Israeli citizens at their hands. This much is generally known. What is less known is the even more disturbing fact that this perverse animus is increasingly fed not by the politics of the present moment but by theology.

This is all the more striking because millions of evangelical Christians are among the most passionate supporters of Israel in America and elsewhere. These Christian Zionists believe the Hebrew Bible’s account of how God chose the Jewish people to form a kingdom of priests and promised them the land of Israel. That religious belief has turned Christian Zionists themselves into a key target for evangelization on the part of those churches that have Israel in their crosshairs—and those evangels are bearing fruit.

The Christian world likes to forget it, but the history of its relationship with the Jews is terrible. In medieval Europe, the Catholic Church used blood libels to incite the population against the Jews, converted them at knifepoint, and murdered them in great number.

These pogroms were driven by a particular demonology called replacement theology, also known as supersessionism. Going back to the early Christian father Origen (182–254 C.E.), this idea holds that, because the Jews denied the divinity of Jesus, all the promises God had made to them now belong to Christians. Exiled from God’s love, the Jews had become the party of the Devil.

After Auschwitz, this vicious theology unsurprisingly disappeared from view. But it turns out that it only went underground. For now it has returned with a fresh geopolitical impetus furnished by “Palestinian liberation theology,” itself a fusion of Palestinian political aspirations and Christian thinking.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!
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(Video) Things That the Hamas-Side of the Unity Government Say

"Those who liberated Gaza, with the help of Allah, can liberate Jerusalem, the West Bank and the rest of Palestine (i.e., Israel)" [Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), May 29, 2014]

Palestinian Media Watch..
Published on Jun 1, 2014..

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh: "We think that the path of negotiations and peace talks has reached a dead end. The resistance (i.e., terror campaign, 2000-2005), which liberated Gaza [in 2005] and protected Gaza, can liberate the West Bank and the rest of the Palestinian lands, Allah willing. The liberator of Gaza, with the help of Allah, can liberate Jerusalem, the West Bank and the rest of Palestine (i.e., Israel)."



[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), May 29, 2014]

Bulletin: http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=11600
Video: http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=450&fld_id=450&doc_id=11599

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!
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Terrorism raises serious issues that ought to be on the agenda but evidently are not

...If the president of any other nation state, seeking to take its place among the members of the international community, were to triumphantly raise the arms of confessed, unrepentant killers of innocent civilians as Mahmoud Abbas is doing in this August 14, 2013 UPI photo below, and declared them to be role models for his people's children, would that raise any ethical and religious issues worth considering?

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
30 May '14..

A week ago, we posted an item that we want to draw now to the attention of people who might not have seen it, or have read it.

Not for the first time, we are trying to achieve something we feel is constructive, something firmly against terror and those who practice it and encourage it. And we need help from you. The background is at this link: 23-May-14: On the dignity of murderers and their victims: An appeal to Christian friends.

What we seek is to draw the leadership of the World Council of Churches into an overdue, serious and issues-based discussion. They have ignored our communications with them until now, apart from two relatively perfunctory emails we received from their head of communications (!) It may be that this is something they strongly prefer not to do. But the call by their chief executive a month ago (we described it here: "17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?") raises ethical, moral and (yes) religious questions of a serious nature that ought to affect thoughtful Christians no less than other thoughtful people. It's disappointing to see how that discussion is being evaded.

All support and help is welcome. We are especially hoping to attract the participation and backing of people who worship in the churches affiliated with the WCC. Those worshipers are said to number about half a billion. The names of all the member churches are listed at the bottom of that same blog post, here.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!
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Ms. Patterson, not exactly, although the "I don't know" was accurate

...PMW has already reported that the PA Minister of Prisoners vocally rejected the claim that the payments are social welfare aid to the prisoners' families, stressing instead that the prisoners receive salaries "out of esteem." This was likewise corroborated by Chairman of the PA-funded Prisoners' Club Qadura Fares when he announced that the PA had decided on a final version of the law, "which considers payments made to prisoners 'salaries,' to which no other term applies."

Itamar Marcus/Nan Jacques Zilberdik..
Palestinian Media Watch..
29 May '14..

In testimony to Congress, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson, defended the Palestinian Authority practice of paying salaries to terrorists in prison saying "they have to provide for the families." [April 29, 2014]



Palestinian Media Watch has documented repeatedly that this is not correct. According to PA law and in practice the PA does not give stipends to terrorist prisoners' families but salaries to the terrorist prisoners themselves. PMW has already reported that the PA Minister of Prisoners vocally rejected the claim that the payments are social welfare aid to the prisoners' families, stressing instead that the prisoners receive salaries "out of esteem." [WAFA, the official PA news agency, Dec. 27, 2012, see full quote below] This was likewise corroborated by Chairman of the PA-funded Prisoners' Club Qadura Fares when he announced that the PA had decided on a final version of the law, "which considers payments made to prisoners 'salaries,' (Arabic: ratib) to which no other term applies." [Al-Quds Internet edition, Dec. 27, 2012]

In addition, when challenged by Congressman Weber at the hearing on the Administration's Middle East and North Africa Budget Request for 2015 about possibly cutting off US funding because of the PA salary program to terrorists, Assistant Secretary Patterson twice told the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa that she "knows" that the PA "are going to try to phase that out, and we should give them an opportunity to do so."

There is nothing in all the activities and statements of the PA to back up that claim.

(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 which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!
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Can you imagine Ha’aretz playing into anti-Semites’ hands? Why not?

...In their eagerness to justify antisemitism, the Ha’aretz writers inevitably provided a general justification for bigotry: Have you or anyone you know ever been harmed in any way by a Muslim/Arab/immigrant? If so, it’s fine to hate Muslims/Arabs/immigrants – and if anyone calls you a racist, tell them that the political correctness of your bigotry has been certified by Israel’s famously progressive paper Ha’aretz.

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror/JPost..
31 May '14..

Under the title “Netanyahu playing into anti-Semites’ hands,” Ha’aretz opinion writer Carolina Landsmann makes a convincing case that the paper she works for is determined to compete with the often antisemitic websites that cater to anti-Israel activists and outright Jew-haters. Landsmann begins her not particularly coherent column by mocking the Israeli prime minister’s efforts to have good relations with countries in Asia and Africa. Miss Landsmann’s comment on this diplomatically and economically sound approach: “The West repudiates us? Let’s recreate ourselves in the East (at least until they realize who we are).”

Right, Miss Landsmann: maybe Jews can pretend for a while to be different than they really are, but truly, who would want anything to do with them once it becomes clear who the Jews really are?

For Carolina Landsmann, Israel’s prime minister is really “Emperor Netanyahu, head of the Jewish empire with its capital the State of Israel,” and one of the most frightening developments under his reign is what she calls “the ‘Jewish identity’ bill.” Presumably, she refers to the much debated initiatives to define Israel as a Jewish state, though according to her there is something even more sinister afoot:

“We are witnessing a move to nationalize the Diaspora Jews. The bill aims to identify Jewish with Israeli and convert all Diaspora Jews into Israelis de facto. It’s only a matter of time until Jews, wherever they are, get the right to vote. […] Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman are on a dangerous course. They want to harness the struggle against anti-Semitism to the struggle against moves against Israel’s policy. But they don’t realize, or do realize and turn a blind eye, that the move will backfire. It will merely inflame the rage and anger further, because it portrays Israel and the Jews as a body without borders that wants to expand beyond its state. In this sense, Netanyahu is playing into the anti-Semites’ hands by implementing their wildest fantasy about the Jews.”

For good measure, Landsmann also suggests that perhaps “such a situation is not against Israel’s interests. Zionism in its current incarnation has created a distorted dependency on anti-Semitism.”

So let’s summarize all the antisemitic tropes Miss Landsmann manages to pack into her column:

1) Jews want to deceive others who will rightly recoil once they realize who the Jews really are
2) Jews can be seen as “a body without borders” bent on expansion and control everywhere
3) Jews cause antisemitism by behaving in ways that can only confirm antisemitic fantasies about the Jews
4) Jews ultimately benefit from antisemitism

Little wonder that the Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah was excitedly tweeting Landsmann’s column as a confirmation of his views:

More rocket fire by the terrorists of Gaza where (ahem) they "denounce violence"

...It's extraordinary how little media attention such acts of self-inflicted damage get. And how little awareness there is of the price paid by Gazan Arabs because of the jihadists' reckless disregard of the welfare of their own clansmen and family.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
01 June '14..

If they can overcome the squabbling about who gets to be named ministers [see "Disputes over portfolios delay announcement of Palestinian unification until Monday" in the Jerusalem Post], a Palestinian Arab "unity" government is about to be announced.

So says the PA's president Mahmoud Abbas according to several reports today. "Unity" means a regime which unites the Abbas Fatah and PLO groups with the outlawed terrorist organization, Hamas.

"The formation of the government would be the most significant step yet toward ending a crippling seven-year-old Palestinian political split. However, it is also bound to increase friction between Abbas and Israel’s hard-line government. Abbas said Saturday that he would respond to any Israeli punitive measures, such as withholding the monthly transfer of some $100 million in taxes and customs Israel collects on behalf of his Palestinian Authority. The funds are vital to keeping the self-rule government afloat... “We say (the government) is going to recognize Israel, denounce violence and recognize the international agreements,” he said, echoing the international community’s conditions for dealing with Hamas. “This is a technocrat government. It has nothing to do with Fatah, Hamas or any factions.” [National Post, today]

That's for Monday.

Meanwhile it's early Sunday morning here in Israel, and the news from the south of our country at this hour is focused on more immediate matters. A rocket, originating in the terrorism-addicted Gaza Strip which is controlled by Hamas, has just been fired into Israel [IDF Tweet], seeking - as always - Israeli victims.

(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 which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!

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Great question! Will American taxpayers keep building Hamas’ army?

...Now, however, Hamas will not need to employ the tactics of its 2007 coup in Gaza, when it shot Fatah supporters in the knees and pushed them off tall buildings (yes, if you are wondering, there are still some hard feelings in Fatah over this). It can proceed more or less peacefully and even democratically to take over the PA by winning elections. So does the PA still need an army? Will the US keep training its soldiers and equipping it? Who, after all, would they fight with it?

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
31 May '14..

On Monday, if we can believe Mahmoud Abbas, a Palestinian unity government will be formed by the two major factions, Fatah and Hamas. A ‘technocratic’ government will be formed immediately until elections can be held next year.

‘Technocratic’ is a great word. It suggest a government of people interested in economics, sanitation, education, etc., and not in launching rockets, kidnapping soldiers, or stuffing explosives into tunnels underneath the border. The classic technocrat is former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who proved too technocratic (read: opposed to corruption) even for Abbas. Somehow I’m not optimistic about finding many technocrats in either Fatah or Hamas.

Abbas claims that the policies of the new government will be the existing policies of the PA, which ostensibly include nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and adherence to prior agreements (please don’t laugh too loudly). Hamas explicitly rejects these conditions, and plans to retain its weapons and continue its “resistance.” Apparently the EU is satisfied with Abbas’ assurances and will continue supporting the PA.

What about the US? The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 says that

None of the funds appropriated in titles III through VI of this Act may be obligated for salaries of personnel of the Palestinian Authority located in Gaza or may be obligated or expended for assistance to Hamas or any entity effectively controlled by Hamas, any power-sharing government of which Hamas is a member, or that results from an agreement with Hamas and over which Hamas exercises undue influence.

That would seem to mean that the US will have to stop sending US taxpayer money to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as soon as the unity government is established. This is strong, aggressive language, which probably gave some members of Congress and their constituents a warm feeling when it was passed.

But the law also contains a presidential waiver clause. The President can suspend the requirement for 6 months at a time if he thinks US national security requires it. Unlike the waiver clause in the Jerusalem Embassy act of 1995, which can be renewed indefinitely (and so far, has been), this one can’t be renewed after 12 months. So theoretically, unless Hamas turns into a bunny rabbit, the US will have to stop funding the PA, training its ‘security’ forces, etc. in at most a year.

The PA manages to absorb every dollar and euro it gets, while still barely managing to stave off insurrection. It would not survive without US aid.