Show and Tell

FFTvideo
02 December '10

As the most recent bout of peace negotiations carry on, the Palestinian Arabs are trying to place their lack of progress on Israel's desire to be seen as a Jewish state. Or, perhaps, on a limited number of homes that have been approved to be built in Jerusalem.

However, one might want to take a good look at what the Palestinian Arab leadership is teaching their children. This is a glimpse at who will inhabit the "future state of Palestine."



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It's hot, and especially on the Hamas border

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War
02 December '10

On yet another day of unseasonable heat as well as truly tragic news from Israel, there are all-too-familiar reports of an attempt by Gazan terrorists early this morning to penetrate the Israel/Gaza border and carry out another attack on Israelis.

Ynet says IDF aircraft and tanks fired on several Palestinian Gazan Arabs trying to cross the border near Kibbutz Kfar Aza around dawn. Kfar Aza, a sun-drenched, almost idyllic kibbutz community created in 1951 by Jewish immigrants from Egypt and from the Moroccan community of Tangiers, is ten kilometers south of Sderot, and unbearably close to the viper's nest on the far side of the border with Hamas-controlled Gaza. In May 2008, rocket and mortar fire from the Gazan terrorists crashed into Kfar Aza and killed Jimmy Kedoshim while he was tending his garden. A champion paraglider, Jimmy turned his love for parachuting and aerial photography into a business. A photo he took of his community from the air, showing its proximity to the misery of Gaza, is above - source here.)

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U.S. Adopts Israeli Anti-Terror Tactics, but Waffles on Defending Israel’s Use of Them

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
02 December '10

One cable from the WikiLeaks trove raises a disturbing possibility: the Obama administration’s obsession with Israeli settlements could end up undermining America’s own war on terror.

Shortly before Israel announced a 10-month freeze on settlement construction last year, Germany urged Washington to threaten that absent such a moratorium, the U.S. would refuse to block a UN Security Council vote on the Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza. U.S. officials correctly responded that this would be “counterproductive” but agreed to tell Israel “that their policy on settlements was making it difficult for their friends to hold the line in the UNSC” — thus implying that Washington might so threaten in the future. And last month, the U.S. indeed implicitly conditioned future efforts to block Goldstone on another settlement freeze.

Yet America has a vital interest of its own in burying Goldstone: facing many of the same military problems in its war on terror that Israel does, it has increasingly adopted many of the same tactics.

Last month, for example, the New York Times reported that in Afghanistan’s Kandahar region, “American forces are encountering empty homes and farm buildings left so heavily booby-trapped by Taliban insurgents that the Americans have been systematically destroying hundreds of them” in order “to reduce civilian and military casualties.” They even destroyed houses that weren’t booby-trapped because “searching empty houses was often too dangerous.” And as an Afghan official correctly noted, “It’s the insurgents and the enemy of the country that are to blame for this destruction, because they have planted mines in civilian houses and main roads everywhere.”

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Paranoia is funny:"Wikileaks is Israeli plot against Turkey"

Elder of Ziyon
01 December '10

The depths of crazy, courtesy of Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News:

Israel could have engineered the release of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents on WikiLeaks as a plot to corner Turkey on both domestic and foreign policy, according to a senior ruling party official.

“One has to look at which countries are pleased with these. Israel is very pleased. Israel has been making statements for days, even before the release of these documents,” Hüseyin Çelik, deputy leader of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and the party’s spokesperson, told reporters at a press conference Wednesday.

Following initial reaction to the leaked U.S. Embassy cables, which have revealed diplomatic secrets about Turkey, Azerbaijan, its Middle Eastern neighbors, Turkish officials have started to suspect that “the main cause of these leaks was to weaken the Turkish government.”

WikiLeaks has released approximately 250,000 documents of confidential U.S. diplomatic correspondence to newspapers around the world. Around 8,000 of those documents are from the U.S. Embassy to Ankara.

That a whopping 3%.

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Change Of Pace: IRANIAN Official Forced To Turn Back From Visiting Europe

Daled Amos
01 December '10

I remember back in June reading in the LA Times that protesters had blocked the unloading of Israeli cargo ship in Oakland. As it turned out, they had blocked a Chinese ship by mistake, and the ones behind the whole thing was a pro-Palestinian group, not the dockworkers themselves.

Still, based on that story, I did not pay close attention to the story from Holland that Dutch gas companies refused to fuel the Iranian Foreign Minister's plane--I misread the headline as referring to Israel.

But in fact, this story is all about Iran:

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki dropped his planned visit to the Netherlands on Tuesday because US sanctions meant his Iran Air plane might be refused fuel.

“Mr. Mottaki canceled his visit because the government of the Netherlands could not guarantee that his plane would be refueled by private fuel firms at Schiphol airport, which follow US sanctions,” Ward Bezemer, a spokesman for the Dutch Foreign Ministry, wrote The Jerusalem Post.

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Israel vs. the International Criminal Court

Anne Herzberg
jewishideasdaily.com
29 November '10

For more than six decades, Israel has been subjected to violence, warfare, and a relentless campaign of terror attacks deliberately targeting civilians. Today, these attacks are spearheaded by states, including Iran and Syria, and terror organizations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizballah, Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the PFLP, and even al-Qaeda.

But that is not all. This "hard-power" war is bolstered by a corresponding "soft-power" war aimed at delegitimizing and demonizing the Jewish state. The latter campaign is led by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) utilizing the rhetoric of international law and human rights. Their efforts are funded by the European Union, European governments, George Soros, the Ford Foundation, and others.

The strategy of exploiting legal processes to attack Israel's legitimacy was developed at the 2001 UN World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, whose final declaration called for the establishment of a "war-crimes tribunal" against Israel. Since then, NGOs have filed lawsuits throughout Europe and North America to have Israeli officials arrested and imprisoned as "war criminals." They were also heavily involved in the one-sided 2004 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that declared Israel's security barrier to be "illegal." The primary goals of all these cases are to play havoc with normal diplomatic relations and to criminalize all methods used by Israel to protect its citizens from attack.

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Thou Shall Not Steal: Not Even from Rich Oil Tycoons

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut Yehudit
21 Kislev, 5771
(Nov. 28, '10)

Translated from Ma'ariv's NRG website

Editor's note: A number of months ago, the Noble Gas Company discovered vast stores of natural gas in Israel's territorial waters. According to a prior agreement with the Israeli government, the royalties from the discovery were supposed to have been substantial. But after politicians mixed in, the government appointed the Sheshinski Committee, which advised Israel to re-adjust its tax/royalties structure on hydrocarbons. This proposal means that Israel will renege on its initial agreement with the drilling company and significantly lower the sum of the royalties.

First, proper disclosure. I have never met oil tycoon Yitzchak Teshuvah and I do not have any stocks or interests in Noble Energy. I have no reason to support them. On the contrary – as a politician, it is worthwhile for me to ride the populist wave and vociferously align with the witch hunt against the tycoons who "steal" the public's wealth.

But I have a small problem. Theft is theft and robbery is robbery – even when the victims are wealthy. True, many aspects of the Israeli version of capitalism are avaricious. The huge profits pocketed by Israel's banks are mostly based on interest gained on private accounts – not from actual business deals. This totally contradicts Jewish law and the Jewish spirit. This means that the banks are a motor of servitude – not of economic growth, as they are supposed to be.

The banks are only one glaring example. The salary gap in Israel is among the highest in the world. It's a dog eat dog world out there and the cunning chap who amasses power uses it to trample the person beneath him – without blinking an eye.

The solution for our problem with capitalism is not to institute socialism. Socialism is simply a sophisticated form of robbery that makes everybody poor. An ideology that rejects the sanctity of one's possessions will ultimately lead to a complete contempt for the sanctity of life. It is no coincidence that Stalin and Mao were the greatest murderers in the history of mankind. For some reason, we also seem to have forgotten that "Nazism" is a shortened version of "National Socialism." Socialism is the last thing we need.

We suffer from an exploitative form of capitalism because we have adopted it without our Jewish culture that would refine and restrain it. Jewish economics is based on a triangle. Its base is the sanctity of life and possessions, a.k.a. capitalism. But the triangle has two other sides: faith and kindness. The three Forefathers of the Nation of Israel; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were billionaires. The approach that associates property with immorality is Christian. But if you remove capitalism from the ethical envelope of Jewish faith and kindness – you are left with the jungle that we experience today.

Back to the gas royalties. It is sad to see the transformation of politicians who espouse capitalism at every opportunity into populist Robin Hoods, robbing the rich to feed the poor. What usually happens in these cases is that if the Robin Hood doesn't know when to stop when he gets into power, the rich flee and he proceeds to rob the next layer of society.

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The Two-State Delusion VIII – The New Middle East Paradigm

Arnold Soloway
Special to UCI
01 December '10

President Obama’s publicly stated opposition to a united Jerusalem logically concentrates attention on other positions and actions he has taken that ominously diminish the U.S.-Israel relationship: His eloquent Cairo apology to and effusive praise for the Muslim world, while implicitly criticizing Israel; his very deferential attitude in various encounters with Arab leaders, contrasted with the utter disdain and disrespect he publicly showed Israel’s Prime Minister, Netanyahu; his endorsement of a Ground Zero mosque; his repeated acerbic demands on Israel alone, while courting terrorists that Israel must contend with every day. President Obama also seems to ignore the grim prospect that the “Two-State Solution” would effectively advance the P.L.O.’s “Strategy of Stages” for the destruction of Israel.

Most disconcerting: President Obama’s diplomatic outreach to Iran has proven an abject failure; all the U.N. and U.S. sanctions will not bring Iran to give up its pursuit of nuclear weaponry, leaving us dependent on “containment”. But it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to contain a nuclear-powered Iran, the dominant power in the Middle East with growing influence beyond. And from its past experience of simply ignoring successive U.N. resolutions and U.S. opprobrium with no fear-inspiring reprisal, it will have no great fear of a U.S. or international community response to any of its future actions.

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Shattered Lens - Photo Bias Exposed in the Wire Services

A snapshot of how Reuters, AP and AFP/Getty misuse imagery to distort coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Honest Reporting
Media Critiques
02 December '10

(A giant project from Honest Reporting, very thorough, and ongoing. Y.)

Images have unprecedented power to mold public opinion. The three international wire services – the Associated Press, Agence France Press / Getty Images and Reuters – have assumed a central role in presenting images from Israel and the Palestinian territories to the world.

HonestReporting was first became intimately involved in the role of the wire services in photo choice when we exposed Reuters' 2007 calendar gaffe, which followed the Fauxtography affair from the 2006 Lebanon War.

Since then, we have covered numerous instances of photo bias, including a blatantly staged photo of Hamas taken by Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem in 2008. Reuters continues to publish Salem's photographs of the region, including another series of staged images we documented shortly after the Gaza flotilla in June.

Until now, however, nobody has commissioned a study to examine the imagery produced by the wire services to see whether there are any identifiable trends that may indicate bias.

To find out if Israel is being treated fairly by the wire services, we embarked on a three-month in-depth study of how Israel is portrayed by all three wires. This study covers the period that began with the Gaza flotilla on May 31, 2010 and ended with the murder of four Israelis at the hands of Palestinian terrorists on Aug. 31, 2010.

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Obama driven by ideology, not realism

Fresnozionism.org
01 December '10

The main thing I’ve learned from the WikiLeaks documents is that I was wrong about Barack Obama. I’d thought that he was putting the screws to Israel in order to appease the Arab world, particularly the Saudis. Apparently not. David Horowitz puts it very well:

The Obama administration, it is now clear for all to see, was not pressing a reluctant Netanyahu to make settlement-freeze and other concessions to the Palestinians in part because it truly believed this would be helpful in generating wider support for tackling Iran.

Not at all. The United States, we now know courtesy of WikiLeaks, was being repeatedly urged by a succession of Arab leaders to smash an Iranian nuclear program they feared would destabilize the entire region and put their regimes at risk. Their priority was, and is, battering Ahmadinejad, not bolstering Abbas.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, in 2008, had not urged the US to chivvy those recalcitrant Israelis toward concessions to the Palestinians as a pre-condition for grudging Saudi support for a firmer US-led position against Iran. Anything but. Never mind the Palestinians, the king simply implored Washington to “cut off the head of the [Iranian] snake.”

Likewise, with minor variations in the course of the following year, the rulers of Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.

We are now starting to hear, courtesy of WikiLeaks, what Jordan and Egypt had to say on the matter too.

So, one asks, if Obama was not doing the Arabs’ bidding, why did he base his entire Mideast policy on the obviously false ‘linkage’ theory that asserts that ‘solving the Palestinian problem’ is a prerequisite to stabilizing the Middle East, and in particular, to dealing with Iranian expansionism?

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Food Fight

Jon Haber
Divest This!
01 December '10

BDSers never seem to have much luck when they take their fights to the food aisles. Perhaps it is the necessity of food coupled with the pleasure it brings that highlights the fact that boycotters are threatening the former and completely lacking in the latter whenever they wave their fists at a package of Israeli couscous or, now, non-Israeli hummus.

The Battle of Coucous was waged last year when BDSers declared a Day of Rage directed at Trader Joe’s for daring to refuse to strip Israeli foods from their shelves, just because the boycotters demanded they do so. The Internet buzzed with threats that hundreds of protestors would descend on Trader Joe’s stores nationwide to picket and “deshelve” the hated Israeli couscous in protest of the store following its own conscience, rather than the will of the boycotters. But by the time the smoke cleared, the only activity the threatened boycott managed to gin up was thousands of Israeli supporters buying out Trader Joe’s Israeli stock across the country.

Today, the battle has turned to hummus, not hummus produced in Israel but Sabra hummus produced in the US. While not my personal favorite brand (although I did buy a bunch of it on Buy Israeli Goods Day yesterday), Sabra is owned by the Strauss Group, an Israeli food conglomerate that does a fair amount of charitable work within Israel in areas such as education, sports and health. In addition, they make donations of money, sports equipment and recreation facilities to two units of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

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Christian Tomuschat, Head of the Goldstone Implementation Committee, Resigns

For Immediate Release:
Contact: Anne Bayefsky
info@eyeontheun.org
December 1, 2010

Christian Tomuschat, who headed a UN committee charged with implementing the Goldstone Report, has reportedly resigned. He had been appointed by UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay. Tomuschat’s credentials were questioned earlier this year, in a July 14th, 2010 article by Anne Bayefsky.

Tomuschat’s resignation is the second blow to the credibility of the UN’s efforts to implement the Goldstone report. Following Bayefsky’s July article, the UN secretariat official whom Pillay had assigned to coordinate the Tomuschat committee’s activities, Ahmed Motala, was removed from the case.

In July, Bayefsky pointed out that Tomuschat and the other two members of his committee were tainted by their close affiliation with an NGO which had been deeply involved with the Human Rights Council’s campaign to vilify Israel. Bayefsky’s article also revealed that the UN staffer Motala appointed to work with Tomuschat doubled as an anti-Israel blogger. In the midst of the Gaza war he had written that Israel targeted Palestinian civilians in order to impress voters. The Tomuschat committee staffer wrote “What better way to gain the support of the Israeli electorate than to…kill innocent civilians”

On July 15 Jerusalem Post correspondent, Benjamin Wienthal, revealed prior statements by Tomuschat that indicated deep prejudices on the very issues he had been assigned to tackle. Wienthal reported in the Weekly Standard and the Jerusalem Post that in 2007 Tomuschat told a German newspaper that Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin was “as ruthless as the attacks of terrorists.” Later in July, Wienthal reported that Tomuschat had once provided legal advice to Yasser Arafat’s PLO.

Last month, UN Watch reported on further examples of Tomuschat bias.

Tomuschat’s resignation ought to further undermine the credibility of the report he submitted to the Council in September. In his report Tomuschat repeated the odious claim that Israel engaged in “violence against civilians as part of a deliberate policy.” Tomuschat’s report went on to criticize Israel’s legal system for failing to mount a witch hunt for “officials at the highest levels.” Referring to a Hamas internal “investigation,” in which Hamas exonerated itself from all wrongdoing, Tomuschat’s team could only conclude that it “is not in a position to ascertain the veracity of any of these assertions.”

Following that report, the Human Rights Council reappointed Tomuschat and his other two committee members, Param Cumaraswamy and Mary Davis. They have been charged with producing yet another report by next March.

Unfortunately, many other UN authority figures, selected precisely because of their history of anti-Israel and anti-Western bias, remain. For further information see EYEontheUN’s list of current UN authorities.

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Lies about Samaria

Jamie Glazov
frontpagemag.com
01 December '10

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Michael Gottlieb, an oleh (immigrant) from the US who is a man on a mission. After moving from New York’s suburbia to Israel’s bucolic Samarian (Shomron) heartland region, he has joined the battle to save the Land of Israel in general and the Shomron in particular. His weapon of choice: his “Shomron Central” hasbarah blog.”

FP: Michael Gottlieb, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.

I would like to follow up a bit on our recent interview, The Dire Importance of Samaria.

Let’s start with Israelis’ lack of awareness, understanding and appreciation for their Shomron heartland. What are the consequences?

Gottlieb: It is true that most Israelis today are painfully unaware of the unique asset they have in Samaria. They haven’t been exposed to the immense strategic value of the Samarian mountain ridges, the important depth it adds to their tiny country, nor the crucial airspace it provides overhead. No one’s telling them about the Samarian Mountain Aquifer, Israel’s largest and most significant source of fresh water. They don’t realize how much cheap land and affordable living space is available out there, how close it is to the big cities nor do they have a clue that by Biblical, historical and legal right, it’s all theirs.

The consequences of all this are obvious. If the vast majority of Israelis don’t appreciate what they have in the Shomron; if they don’t understand its multi-faceted importance for the Jewish State; its people; its identity; and its future, then they can’t value it and they can be persuaded to give it away. What should be non-negotiable becomes negotiable. And that is what we’re seeing today. The Israeli government, with the support of many Israelis, is on the verge of capitulating to world pressure because they don’t understand why they should be saying “No”.

FP: Samaria is so close to Israel proper, yet most Israelis never venture there. Why is that?

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The Palestinian Refugees on the Day After "Independence"

Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi
Jewish Center for Public Affairs
Published December 2010

The gap between Israel and the Palestinians on the refugee question cannot be reconciled. The Palestinians demand a "just peace," which implies recognition of the right of return according to their interpretation, and rejects any compromise on the issue.

The Palestinian position, which receives support from Palestinian and even some Israeli human rights organizations, looks to UN resolutions that uphold the right of return as a "private right" of every refugee. This means that the representatives of the Palestinian people (as well as the Arab League and the United Nations) have no authority to waive this right in the name of the refugees.

According to the Palestinian consensus, non-implementation of the right of return will leave open the gates of the conflict with Israel. This implies justification for the continued armed struggle against Israel even following the establishment of a Palestinian state.

By rejecting "patriation" or the resettlement of the refugees in any Arab state, the Arab Peace Initiative essentially leaves each refugee with no choice but to go to Israel itself. The Arab states rejected any solution that involves "resettling [of the Palestinians] outside of their homes."The Arab Peace Initiative does not envision the Palestinian refugees being resettled in a West Bank and Gaza Palestinian state.

The transfer of border crossings to Palestinian control and/or the establishment of a Palestinian state is likely to bring about a wave of immigration, combined with a mass expulsion of Palestinians (primarily from Lebanon, Syria and Jordan) toward the Palestinian territory even without a political agreement on the refugee issue. This could lead to the infiltration by Palestinians into Israeli territory, as well as legal claims by refugees at the International Court in The Hague for the right of return, restitution of property, and compensation.

Since the Israeli consensus holds that the mass return of Palestinian refugees to Israel means national suicide, Israel will require robust international support in negotiations on a final status agreement to reach an accord on the basis of defensible borders, and to find a permanent solution to the refugee problem based primarily on the Palestinian refugees receiving citizenship in their host countries or their absorption in a Palestinian state.

On September 2, 2010, Israel and the PLO relaunched negotiations for a political settlement to resolve their conflict, with America providing sponsorship, pressure, and go-between services, and with Egypt and Jordan providing political backing. Among the core issues to be resolved, one of the toughest is the Palestinian refugee problem. Yet the Palestinian consensus does not leave Palestinian leaders with any room for maneuver whatsoever regarding the right of return.

(Read full paper)

The death of a frog

As the parable of the amphibian goes, will Israel reach the lethal boiling point where it has made one concession too many?

Martin Sherman
Op-Ed/JPost
29 November '10

“…if you place [a frog]… in a pot of tepid water…, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor …and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.”
– Daniel Quinn, The Story of B

For anyone concerned with the fate of the nation-state of the Jews, there is a grave caveat in this citation from a well-known American author. It is a caveat that will be ignored only at great peril, and one that is becoming increasingly pertinent – especially in the light the ever-more perceptible signs of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s readiness to embrace measures that he promised to eschew (such as a renewed building freeze); and the growing friction between him and ministers in his government (such as Moshe Ya’alon and Silvan Shalom) who are insisting that he in fact honor the promises he made.

In recent years, Israel has back-pedaled repeatedly on positions it has taken, continuously “adapting” to situations that expose it to ever-greater security risks and consenting to circumstances that would have seemed inconceivable in the not-too-distant past.

An appropriate point of departure to illustrate the severity of this disturbing phenomenon, and to gauge just how drastically Israel has allowed its positions to be eroded with the passage of time, is Yitzhak Rabin’s last address to the Knesset. On October 5, 1995, exactly one month before his assassination, Rabin sought Knesset ratification of the Oslo II agreements (or to give their full title “The Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip”) that were signed two weeks previously.

Restoring public awareness of this erosion – and the comprehension of its significance – is crucial, particularly since the median age of the Israeli population is just over 28. This means that roughly half of all Israelis were not yet in their teens in the “Oslo period” and thus have no real personal recollection of the events that took place during those fateful days – other than what was provided by the misleading and distorted coverage in a biased press, both at home and abroad.

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Israel's English-Language Media, AFP, Selectively Report on Israeli Poll

Gilead Ini
CAMERA Media Analysis
30 November '10

A poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute noted that Israelis don't trust the media. In fact, at only 34 percent, the number of Israelis who trust the media is as low as it has been in the past eight years.

That same poll — or more specifically, the way Israel's main English-language news Web sites reported on one aspect of the survey — might also help explain why this is the case.

Along with questions about a number of weighty issues relating to Jewish-Arab relations, the poll asked Israelis whether it would bother them to have members of certain communities as neighbors.

Both Jewish and Arab Israelis were asked, for example, what they would think about living near homosexuals, foreign workers, ultra-orthodox Jews, immigrants from Russia or Ethiopia, mentally handicapped and others.

Perhaps most interesting to observers of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Jews were asked if it would bother them to have Arabs as neighbors, and Arabs were asked if it would bother them to have Jews as neighbors. Indeed, the English-language Web sites of Ha'aretz, Yediot Aharonot and the Jerusalem Post each mentioned this aspect of the poll in their coverage of the overall findings. So did Agence France Presse. But in a striking double standard, each of these news sources presented readers with only half of the picture, relaying that many Jews expressed discomfort about the idea of living next to an Arab but altogether ignoring the fact that even more Arabs expressed discomfort about the idea of living next to a Jew.

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To Get Arab Support on Iran, Take a Leaf from Bush Sr.

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
01 December '10

As Jennifer noted yesterday, the latest WikiLeaks revelations definitively refute Barack Obama’s “linkage” theory: that Israeli concessions to the Palestinians were necessary to persuade Arab states to oppose Iran’s nuclear program. But what the documents reveal about the profound strategic misconception behind this theory is frightening.

The list of Arab states urging America to bomb Iran, and the forcefulness with which they urged it, is astonishing. It includes Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates; virtually the only exception was Qatar. Clearly, no Israeli concessions were needed to persuade these countries that strong action against Iran was desirable.

But both Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush insisted that this behind-the-scenes urging wasn’t enough; they needed Arab states to go public with it. As CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid told UAE officials in 2007, “we need our friends to say that they stand with the Americans.”

If Bush had any strategy for achieving this goal, it doesn’t emerge from the reports I’ve seen. But Obama did: linkage. If America showed that it’s on the Arabs’ side by extracting Israeli concessions, the theory went, then Arab states would no longer be reluctant to stand publicly beside the U.S.

But the idea that “soft power” could solve a quintessentially hard-power problem is a profound misconception, because the issue wasn’t the Arabs’ view of Washington as too pro-Israel; that never stopped them from supporting America if it served their interests before.

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See What the Settlers do to the Olive Trees

wejew.com
Arutz Sheva
01 December '10


See What the Settlers do to the Olive Trees


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Muslims & Jews: what they don't want you to know

Bataween
Point of No Return
01 December '10

The oppression throughout history of Jews in Arab countries has long been an embarrassment to leftists and western opinion-formers, writes E Green in his review of a must-read compilation of essays edited by Malka Hillel Shulevitz: The Forgotten Millions: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands {Cassell, 2001 (2nd ed.)} Although Green's review was published a few years ago, his analysis, and Shulewitz's book, remain as pertinent as ever:

Some of the most important events and historical processes get the least attention. In the oceans of ink spilled over the Arab-Israeli conflict relatively little attention has been given (in Israel too) to the historical background of the Jewish immigration --or flight-- to Israel from Arab countries. Partisans of the Arab cause tended to either falsify reality or ignore it. This has included Communists and leftists as well as spokesmen for Western interests in the Middle East. This whole subject has been an area where Communist ideology and practice converged with Western moral and political prejudices and interests.

The existence of oppressed Jewish (and other) minorities in Arab lands has long been an embarassment to certain Western journalists and policy-makers, as well as to Communist ideologues. The mainstream of American journalism in the 1940s and 1950s typically portrayed the Arab world as a region where people were kind, where toleration of Jews and other minorities was the rule, and where only Israel's presence spoiled the longing of the naturally anti-Communist Arab Muslims to join the Baghdad Pact. Soviet propaganda likewise advocated Arab unity, although in behalf of "anti-imperialist" and "progressive" goals and under Soviet rather than Western sponsorship.

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Why Do European Socialists Like Hanukah?

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
30 November '10

Hanukah, as we know, commemorates a miracle. This year, I witnessed one firsthand.

I just gave a lecture in Toulouse, France, on “The Political Ideology of Israel’s De-Legitimization.” On the conference’s panels were French intellectuals and public figures who refuse to write and talk in Newspeak, such as Richard Prasquier (President of CRIF), Yvan Rioufiol (Le Figaro’s least politically correct columnist), Philippe Karsenty (a media analyst who’s been fighting, with guts and resilience, the French state TV channel France 2 on the Al-Dura blood libel), Robert Redecker (a French philosophy professor who lives under permanent police protection because of a fatwa issued against him for a critical article he once wrote on Islam), and Jacques Tarnero (a French author and filmmaker who argues that European opinion makers are trying to absolve Europe from the Holocaust by accusing Israel of behaving like its former torturers).

There was also a French Senator, Jean-Pierre Plancade. Originally a member of the French Socialist Party, he is now an independent.

Plancade ended his talk by begging the Jews to bring light to the world, and he referred to the upcoming Hanukah holiday to make his point. Coming from a politician who rose within a party that is both staunchly secular and sympathetic to the Palestinian narrative, those were striking words indeed.

Why do these people side with Israel and the Jews? Because they realize that their own freedom is threatened by Israel’s enemies.

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