Israel, to thine own people be true - by Vic Rosenthal

...Are the Arabs our worst enemies? Possibly not. Arguably, the West has done more damage to Israel’s chances for survival by diplomatic pressure for concessions and by financing the PA, Hamas (via UNWRA) and countless anti-Zionist NGOs and UN agencies, than Palestinian terrorists with their suicide belts. Think about that. Israel’s response has been to play along.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
22 April '16..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2016/04/to-thine-own-people-be-true-israel/

I read in today’s [Wednesday] newspaper that Israel will be building a sophisticated barrier along the border with Gaza. Sensors, underground walls and who knows what secret systems to detect tunneling and infiltration. The cost is estimated in billions of shekels (a shekel today is about US$ 0.26). We are continuing to develop and deploy a multi-tiered antimissile defense that also will cost billions.

Meanwhile, the US State Department, Germany, the EU and the Arab League all insist that the Golan heights belong to the non-country of Syria. “No state can claim the right to annex another state’s territory just like that,” say the Germans, while they advocate ‘Palestine’ doing exactly that.

In the US, Joe Biden spoke to the anti-Zionist J Street organization and expressed his “overwhelming frustration” with Israel’s government, and called for the Left to return to power in Israel. Such respect for democracy he has.

And of course the inimitable Bernie Sanders continues to call Israel’s responses to attacks from Gaza “disproportionate.”

In the opinion of the West, Israel can defend itself as long as its defensive measures aren’t too effective, like the security barrier in Judea and Samaria, and as long as they are completely passive, like Iron Dome. It is not permissible for Israel to kill any Arabs in the process; even wounded terrorists must be protected and given medical treatment. It doesn’t matter if no other country has a better record of reducing collateral damage in any recent conflict – any civilian casualties are grounds for condemnation.

The West believes that no strategic considerations such as the fact that the Golan, the Jordan Valley and the high ground of Judea and Samaria are essential for Israel’s defense can override the desires of the ‘Palestinians’ for a state, or the ‘rights’ of the Butcher of Damascus, Hezbollah, IS or whoever will rule the remnants of Syria. On the other hand, it does not accept Israel’s rights under international law.

The West agrees that exploding buses are bad. But it blames them on Israel controlling territory that she shouldn’t, security measures inconvenient for the Arabs and disproportionate responses. If we stop doing these things, it suggests that there will be no more terrorism.

This position is either extremely stupid or hypocritical. In the case of Bernie Sanders, I vote for stupid; but the State Department, Germany and the EU (and others that I haven’t mentioned) are hypocrites: they say they believe we have a right to self-defense, while aware that what they want is for Israel to be unable to defend herself.

Are the Arabs our worst enemies? Possibly not. Arguably, the West has done more damage to Israel’s chances for survival by diplomatic pressure for concessions and by financing the PA, Hamas (via UNWRA) and countless anti-Zionist NGOs and UN agencies, than Palestinian terrorists with their suicide belts. Think about that.

Israel’s response has been to play along.

Our estranged generals - by Caroline Glick

...But whatever the cause of their behavior, the fact is that behavior has alienated them from Israeli society. In treating Palestinian terrorists with more respect than it accords its own soldiers, the IDF General Staff is earning the public’s fury. And in their contemptuous dismissal of the public’s loss of trust, our generals – including Ya’alon – are demonstrating that they have become strangers to their own society. This of course is a calamity. The IDF lost the public’s trust at Purim. Let us hope that at Passover, our generals will leave their bubble and begin repairing the damage they caused. They are not in Europe. They are here. And they need to be with us.

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
21 April '16..

It's been a long time in coming, but it finally happened.

The IDF General Staff has lost the public trust.

This is terrible for the General Staff. But it is more terrible for the country, because the public is right not to trust our military leaders. They have earned our distrust fair and square.

The final straw came in less than optimal circumstances.

But such is life. Things are never cut and dry. On Purim, Sgt. Elor Azaria killed a terrorist in Hebron as he lay on the ground, shot, following his attempted murder of one of Azaria’s comrades.

Still today, we don’t know whether Azaria acted properly or improperly. He claims that he believed the terrorist had a bomb beneath the heavy jacket he was wearing in the middle of a heat wave.

Azaria claims that he shot him because he feared that the terrorist – who was moving – was trying to detonate the bomb. This view was shared by emergency personnel at the scene caring for the wounded soldier.

But even before he had a chance to tell his story, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon had already declared Azaria guilty of murder. Based on an initial field investigation and a snuff film produced by the European-funded anti-Israel group B’Tselem, Eisenkot and Ya’alon excoriated Azaria and pronounced the soldier, who was decorated for his service just last year, a rotten apple.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially joined them in their condemnations. But when he realized that the public wasn’t buying it and that the evidence was far from cut and dry, to his credit, Netanyahu walked back his remarks.

Ya’alon and Eisenkot, in contrast, have refused to let the uncertainty of the situation affect them.

Their continued assaults on the soldier have compounded the damage. Their stubborn refusal to give Azaria the benefit of the doubt and admit that he may well have comported himself properly indicates that they have no idea how their statements are being viewed by the public, or worse, they may not care. They may simply be playing for another audience.

And here lies the beginning of the real problem.

For the public – including the five thousand citizens who came to the support rally for Azaria at Rabin Square on Tuesday – the critical moment was when the film of Azaria being led away from the scene in handcuffs was broadcast on the evening news. That image, of a combat soldier who killed a terrorist being treated like a criminal, was the breaking point for the public. Whether he was guilty or innocent was beside the point. The point was that his commanders – beginning with the defense minister and the chief of General Staff – were treating him like a criminal instead of a combat soldier on the front lines defending our country from an enemy that seeks our destruction.

This image, combined with Ya’alon’s and Eisenkot’s increasingly shrill and caustic condemnations of Azaria, was a breach of the social contract between the IDF and the public. That social contract says that we serve in the IDF. We send our children to serve in the IDF. And the IDF values us and values our sons and daughters as its own.

The Jerusalem bus bombing is claimed by Hamas jihadists as one of their own - by Arnold Roth

...How young men and women with unlived lives and unattained achievements ahead of them choose unfathomable hatred as their path and endanger their own lives for the prospect of killing or maiming Jews doesn't get the attention it ought to. There is a process at work, as we wrote yesterday

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
21 April '16..

When a Jerusalem bus went up in flames on Monday, causing serious injuries to passengers and damage to several vehicles, there was some question at first about whether to call it an accident, or - this being Jerusalem - to look for a terrorist behind the injuries and harm. The conclusions took time to emerge ["18-Apr-16: A Jerusalem bus has exploded"] as the security people gathered evidence and waited to interview some of the injured from the bus. But we now know.

A Palestinian militant from the occupied West Bank who was wounded when his bomb exploded on an Israeli commuter bus in Jerusalem on Monday has died, an Israeli hospital spokeswoman and a pro-Hamas website said on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the Jerusalem hospital where the wounded man was treated confirmed he had succumbed to his injuries. Israeli authorities have placed a gag order on the investigation and declined to release any details. The pro-Hamas Palestinian Information Centre identified him as Abdel-Hamid Abu Srour from the Ayda refugee camp near Bethlehem and said he was a member of the Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas militant Islamist group... Israeli medical sources said six people wounded by the blast were still being treated in hospital, the rest had been released by late Wednesday... ["Palestinian wounded in Jerusalem bus bombing dies, Hamas claims him", Reuters, April 20, 2016]

The "militant" is reported to be 19 and has permanently ceased to be an "activist". He will however remain a terrorist and, given the theological orientation implied by the Hamas connection, a jihadist. In Palestinian Arab society, he is now upgraded to "martyr".

(Read Full Post. Please Share)

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. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

.

Open Letter to Gen. Eyal Zamir - Your Assessment of Hamas is Disturbing

...Far be it from me to claim that this is an easy challenge. But with all of our special forces, technology and intelligence I am confident that we are up to this challenge. The next round we have to get it right. And its your job to make it happen.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
20 April '16..






Dear Gen. Eyal Zamir - Southern Command

Today you claimed that Hamas is "deterred" by its experience in the last round and then noted that Hamas is preparing for the next conflict.

I sincerely hope that you said that only for public consumption.

Because if you genuinely believe that Hamas is deterred then this indicates that you and the people briefing you are profoundly clueless.

As you yourself noted, Hamas is preparing for the next war.

And thanks to the "quiet for quiet" arrangement with Israel, they are preparing for the next round under ideal conditions.

They can openly train forces for the next round - today they even had a live fire exercise - confident that the IDF won't interfere.

They can openly develop, test and manufacture weapons - confident that the IDF won't interfere.

They can even fly various platforms practicing in earnest for the day that these platforms will cross into Israel - confident that the IDF won't interfere.

No. Hamas is not deterred. They are patient.

I daresay that when I compare the behavior of Israel to that of Hamas that we are the deterred party.

The Link Between Hamas and BDS - by Jonathan Tobin

...The problem with BDS isn’t who funds it so much as the fact that it remains a cause in service to hate. It is wrong not because of its associations but because, like Hamas, it’s purpose is to work for Israel’s destruction and the dispossession of its people. This is a fact that BDS supporters and fellow travelers ignore at the loss of their own integrity.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
20 April '16..

Those who wish to rationalize or apologize for those involved in the BDS — boycott, divest and sanction — movement against Israel have sought to depict it as a principled effort that is rooted in a concern for human rights. Even those liberal critics of BDS like writer Peter Beinart have called for welcoming young Jews who are supporters of BDS and even members of groups like Students for Justice in Palestine into Jewish communal groups and events. He depicted such people as “hearing the voice of Sinai” — a metaphor for a vision of Jewish values and law — albeit in a different, if upsetting manner. Just as he denies that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, Beinart and other liberals who agree with him allege that however upsetting BDS may be, it is primarily motivated by Israeli policies rather than hate.

This claim has been undermined by the anti-Semitic statements and behavior that has been employed by BDS advocates on American college campuses. But yesterday we learned of another link between BDS and hate. In testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Jonathan Schanzer presented evidence of a troubling link between a main source of funding for BDS and the terrorist Hamas movement.

As Schanzer explained, his group traced what happened to employees of three now-defunct non-profit groups that were implicated by the federal government in support for terrorism. The three, the Holy Land Foundation, the Kind Hearts Foundation for Humanitarian Development and the Islamic Association for Palestine were involved in raising money for Hamas in the United States. But while the Treasury Department shut these Hamas fundraisers down, that still leaves open the question of what happened to those involved with these groups. According to Schanzer, seven key figures in raising money for Hamas are now associated with a new organization called American Muslims for Palestine.

As the Times of Israel reports:

Schanzer told members of Congress that the latter is “arguably the leading BDS organization in the U.S., a key sponsor of the anti-Israel campus network known as Students for Justice in Palestine.” The organization, he said, provides money, speakers, training and even “apartheid walls” to SJP activists on campus, for the annual Israel Apartheid Week events.

While the activity of American Muslims for Palestine is advocacy, not terror funding, Schanzer is right when he says, “Americans have a right to know who is leading the BDS campaign and so do the students who may not be aware of AMP’s leaders or their goals.”

Where UNESCO and ISIS converge - by Caroline Glick

...The problem is that UNESCO commits the very crimes for which it condemns ISIS. Indeed, it committed the crime of seeking to wipe out history, whose preservation is “an essential condition for peace and the future of the region,” the day it passed its resolution on Palmyra. Right after UNESCO’s board unanimously passed its resolution on Palmyra, it also passed a resolution whose goal is to erase Jewish history in the land of Israel.

Caroline Glick..
Our World/JPost..
19 April '16..

Last month, UNESCO's director general Irina Bokova issued a statement congratulating Russian- backed Syrian forces for liberating the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State (ISIS).

Bokova said Palmyra “carries the memory of the Syrian people, and the values of cultural diversity, tolerance and openness that have made this region a cradle of civilization.”

Bokova added, “The deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime, and UNESCO will do everything in its power to document the damage so that these crimes do not go unpunished. I wish to remind all parties present of the absolute necessity to preserve this unique heritage as an essential condition for peace and the future of the region.”

Last week, UNESCO’s executive board passed a resolution unanimously outlining the steps the organization would take to rebuild the devastated site, whose major monuments were destroyed or damaged during the city’s 10 months under ISIS rule.

All of this, is all very well and nice.

The problem is that UNESCO commits the very crimes for which it condemns ISIS. Indeed, it committed the crime of seeking to wipe out history, whose preservation is “an essential condition for peace and the future of the region,” the day it passed its resolution on Palmyra.

Right after UNESCO’s board unanimously passed its resolution on Palmyra, it also passed a resolution whose goal is to erase Jewish history in the land of Israel.

The resolution, titled merely “Occupied Palestine,” (a country that doesn’t even exist), defined the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site, as an exclusively Muslim site. Jews who visit it were referred to derisively as “right wing extremists.”

The Western Wall, Judaism’s second holiest site, was similarly referred to as an exclusively Islamic site.

The resolution reinstated a previous resolution’s false claim that the tombs of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people in Hebron and Bethlehem are mosques. The resolution, like the one from last week, was also a war crime, where UNESCO acted with malice to destroy the historical record.

In another act of cultural aggression, whose goal is to destroy the historical record, in last week’s resolution UNESCO falsely and maliciously referred to Jewish cemeteries as “fake graves,” in “Muslim cemeteries.”

The Peace Process Is an Obstacle to Peace - by Michael Mandelbaum

...Telling the truth about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would affirm American support for international law, democracy, the peaceful resolution of international disputes, and the principle of equal rights for all peoples. It would also affirm American opposition to aggression and terrorism. It would, that is, put the United States—to use a term favored by recent administrations—on the right side of history.

Michael Mandelbaum..
Commentary Magazine..
14 April '16..

The Peace Process Is an Obstacle to Peace. And it always has been, because its premises are false


The American presidency has accumulated a number of traditions that anyone holding the office is expected to perpetuate. Examples include delivering the State of the Union address to Congress, lighting the national Christmas tree, and presiding over the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. The next president will no doubt continue all three. If he or she follows the pattern established by the most recent incumbents, however, the result of the peace process will be failure. Indeed, the continuation of the peace process as it has been practiced will not simply be futile: It will be positively harmful. The conduct of the peace process has made peace less likely. If it is to continue at all, a fundamental change in the American approach is needed.

Successive administrations have failed at the peace process because they have not understood—or not admitted to themselves—the nature of the conflict they have been trying to resolve. In the eyes of the American officials engaged in this long-running endeavor, making peace has been akin to a labor negotiation. Each side, they have believed, has desired a resolution, and the task of the United States has been to find a happy medium, a set of arrangements that both sides could accept. In fact, each side has wanted the conflict to end, but in radically different and indeed incompatible ways that have made a settlement impossible: The Israelis have wanted peace; the Palestinians have wanted the destruction of Israel.

At the core of the conflict, standing out like a skyscraper in a desert to anyone who cared to notice, is the Palestinian refusal to accept Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East. This attitude has existed for at least a century, since the Arab rejection of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. While much has changed in the region over those 10 decades, the conflict’s fundamental cause has not. The Palestinians’ position is expressed in their devotion to what has come to be called incitement: incessant derogatory propaganda about Jews and Israel, the denial of any historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem and its environs, and the insistence that all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to the Arabs, making the Jews living there, in the Palestinian view, contemptible interlopers to be killed or evicted. The Palestinians’ attitude has expressed itself, as well, in their negotiators’ refusal either to accept any proposal for terminating the conflict or to offer any counterproposals of their own. The goal of eliminating Israel also lies behind Palestinian officials’ glorification as “martyrs” of those who murder Israeli civilians, giving their families financial rewards to encourage such killings.

American officials have either ignored or downplayed all of this. They have never emphasized its centrality to the conflict, instead focusing on Israeli control of the West Bank of the Jordan River, which the Israeli army captured from Jordan in the 1967 War and on which Israel has built towns, villages, and settlements. American officials have regarded the “occupation,” as the international community has chosen to call it, of the West Bank as the cause of the ongoing conflict. In fact, the reverse is true. It is the persistence of the conflict that keeps Israel in the West Bank. A majority of Israelis believes that retaining control of all of the territory brings high costs but that turning it over entirely to Palestinian control, given the virulent Palestinian hostility to their very existence, would incur even higher costs. A withdrawal, they have every reason to believe, would create a vacuum that anti-Israel terrorist groups would fill. Ample precedent supports this view: When Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon and Gaza, two terrorist organizations—Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza—took control of the vacated territories and proceeded to launch attacks against the Jewish state.

Biden’s Untimely Assault on Israel - by Elliott Abrams

...In his book, Ross wrote that “Obama believed Israel was capable of doing more on peace. And it could help change the regional realities, and our place in the region, if it would only move on the Palestinians. But what if the Palestinians were not prepared to move? What if they were not capable of moving, regardless of Israeli actions? He never seemed to ask that question.” Neither did Biden.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
19 April '16..

Yesterday, Israel was assaulted twice: once by terrorists, and once by the Vice President of the United States.

The physical attack was in Jerusalem, where a bomb injured 21 people in a bus, several of them seriously.

On the very same day, the VP addressed the group called J Street and shared with it not solidarity with Israelis under attack but–with remarkable timing–a rhetorical attack on the government of Israel.

Here is some of what he said, according to a report in The Times of Israel:

Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged “overwhelming frustration” with Israel’s government on Monday and said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration has led the country in the wrong direction, in an unusually sharp rebuke of America’s closest ally in the Middle East.

“I firmly believe that the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past the past several years — the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures — they’re moving us and more importantly they’re moving Israel in the wrong direction,” Biden said.

He said those policies were moving Israel toward a “one-state reality” — meaning a single state for Palestinians and Israelis in which eventually, Israeli Jews will no longer be the majority.

“That reality is dangerous,” Biden added.

Put aside the exquisite timing of Biden’s remarks on a day when Israel suffered a terrorist attack, and they are still quite something. For one thing, President Obama is about to join a GCC summit in Saudi Arabia. Does Biden really think the Arabs pay no attention to how we treat our closest friends and allies? Does he not know that they will read all of this and not gloat– but instead wonder when they will be getting the same treatment?

Celebrating Terrorism, Palestinian Style - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...The public statements of the Palestinian leaders and groups after the Jerusalem terror attack are yet another sign of how they continue to incite their people against Israel. These are the type of statements that prompt Palestinian men and women to grab a knife (or in this case an explosive device) and set out to kill the first Jew they run into. The major obstacle to peace with Israel remains the absence of education for peace with Israel. In fact, it is safe to say that there never was a real attempt on the part of Palestinian leaders and factions to prepare their people for peace with Israel.

Palestinian cartoonist Omayya Juha celebrated the April 18 terrorist
bombing of a Jerusalem bus by quickly drawing a cartoon featuring
 a Palestinian woman celebrating the terror attack by ululating
 and handing out candies in front of the burned-out bus.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
19 April '16..

Shortly after the Jerusalem bus terror explosion attack on April 18, a number of Palestinian factions rushed to issue statements applauding the "heroic operation" and urging Palestinians to pursue the path of armed struggle against Israel.

The Palestinian jubilation over the terror attack, the first of its kind since the suicide bombings during the Second Intifada more than a decade ago, is yet another reminder of the growing radicalization among Palestinians. This radicalization is mostly attributed to the ongoing anti-Israel incitement and indoctrination by various Palestinian factions and leaders.

Not surprisingly, the first Palestinian group to applaud the Jerusalem bus attack was Hamas.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that his movement "welcomes the Jerusalem operation and considers it a natural response to Israeli crimes, especially extra-judicial executions and the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

The Hamas spokesman was in fact echoing similar charges made by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who declared that Palestinians will not allow Jews to be "defiling the Aqsa Mosque with their filthy feet."

How can anyone blame Hamas for making such accusations against Jews when Abbas, Israel's peace partner, was the first to come out against tours by Jews to the Temple Mount? It is worth mentioning that Abbas's allegations came only a few weeks before the eruption of the "Knife Intifada" in early October.

Another Hamas leader, Hussar Badran, also praised the terror attack. He said his movement was determined to pursue the resistance to "expel the occupation from our Palestinian lands."

When Hamas leaders talk about "expelling the occupation from the Palestinian lands," they mean that Israel should be eliminated and replaced with an Islamist empire.

On Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV, broadcaster Mohamed Hamed was so happy and excited to hear about the Jerusalem terror attack that he decided to salute the perpetrators.

A Reality v. Democrats’ Israel Debate - by Jonathan Tobin

...To the contrary, rather than encouraging peace, stands such as those of Sanders, and the European countries that he cites as backing up his slurs about the Gaza war, are instead giving the Palestinians the impression that they should redouble their terror efforts rather than make peace. As unrealistic as Sanders’ economic positions may be, his opinions about the Middle East that are being applauded on the left as a refreshing dissent from the bipartisan support for Israel that exists in this country, are based on even greater fantasies.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
18 April '16..

Last week, the split within the Democratic Party was put on display during the debate in Brooklyn between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Given his well-known critical views, Sanders’ full-throated attack against Prime Minister Netanyahu, as well as his re-floating of the smear that Israeli Defense Forces’ efforts to suppress missile fire and terror tunnels from Hamas terrorists in Gaza were “disproportionate,” to say nothing of his statement blaming the continuation of the conflict on Israel rather than, as Clinton pointed, squarely on the Palestinians where it belongs, was hardly surprising. But his willingness to go on the offensive against the pro-Israel community in this way just days before the New York primary illustrated his belief that the liberal base of the party — and a vocal left-wing minority of Jews — agree with him. The problem with his stands though — and that of many in his party as well as the Obama administration — is that they are not so much at variance with Clinton’s beliefs as they are with the reality of the Middle East, as a series of recent events, including today’s Jerusalem bus bombing, illustrate.

Sanders’s stand may not win him as many votes as he thinks since even most liberal New York Jewish voters aren’t that comfortable with his willingness to embrace the “disproportionate” canard even if they also don’t like Netanyahu. But it was widely applauded by veteran Israel-bashers like the New York Times’ Roger Cohen (who also has doubled at times as an apologist for Iran) as well as the left-wing J Street lobby. Though at times it has maintained the pretense that its goal is to replace AIPAC as the voice of the pro-Israel community, the group has a fraction of that mainstream group’s support and influence. Yet it is being propped up by the administration, which is sending both Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry to a J Street event tonight as a signal of its desire to encourage those Jews who are critical of Netanyahu.

But as weak as the arguments in favor of Sanders’ stands were, the bombing in Jerusalem and the discovery of a new terror tunnel were more reminders of how out of touch with reality, the Vermont senator, the administration and their left-wing cheering sections are.

The bombing, which injured 21 people, represented a marked escalation in the conflict just at a time when many in Israel thought a decline in attacks showed that the “stabbing intifada” might be coming to an end. The bombing was applauded by Hamas, which spoke of it as appropriate retaliation for supposed “desecration” of the mosques on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, a lie that has been consistently sounded by the Palestinian Authority, too, as it has both applauded and encouraged terror attacks during the past several months. While there is no telling whether this is an isolated incident or the start of a new terror offensive that will return to more bloody tactics used during the second intifada that took thousands of lives in the last decade, it is nevertheless a troubling development.

What's not clear is why Israel wants to wait for Hamas to get stronger

Dr. Aaron Lerner - it is clear why Hamas wants to wait until they are stronger to attack. What's not clear is why Israel wants to wait for Hamas to get stronger.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..
19 April '16..

The Story behind the Tunnel: The IDF and Hamas are Trying to Prevent a War

Since the conclusion of Operation Protective Edge, the issue of attack tunnels has remained a top priority among decision-makers in Israel. A special column by Amir Rapaport following the discovery of the tunnel near Kerem Shalom

Amir Rapaport | 18/04/2016 Contact author
http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/content/story-behind-tunnel-idf-and-hamas-are-trying-prevent-war

The untold story behind the recently uncovered Hamas tunnel near the Israeli community of Kerem Shalom is no less interesting than the minute details on the tunnel itself, which by now are known to all. During the past few weeks, a great effort was made in order to prevent an all-out war with Hamas.

Let us begin with what is known: The tunnel found near Kerem Shalom was restored last year, and is probably part of the network of tunnels that was dug prior to Operation Protective Edge. The construction method of the tunnel has improved, and now includes thicker concrete revetments that will prevent a collapse from explosions or infiltration of rainwater. The very fact that Hamas has invested considerable effort in building tunnels is well known and understandable – tunnels are a strategic achievement in the conflict with Israel, and Hamas is preparing for the next round of fighting since the last round ended.

Since Operation Protective Edge, Hamas lost the logistical infrastructure it had during the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Most of the tunnels used by Hamas during Operation Protective Edge were dug in this period. Despite the difficulty, the digging rate remains very high. Thousands of Gaza residents are engaged in the digging work. No less than 15 of them were killed in recent months as a result of collapsed tunnels while working (primarily due to the heavy rains this year in the South of Israel).

For its part, Israel views the challenge posed by tunnels as the highest priority since the conclusion of Operation Protective Edge. Every single idea is considered by the defense establishment. Hundreds of millions have been invested in various technology projects to locate and "handle" tunnels. Billions more will be spent. The engineers who deal with the various developments deserve the highest of compliments, and yet it seems that intelligence still has an important role to play. Also, a little luck always helps.

Keep this tunnel in mind when the "hopelessness of life" in Gaza gets cycled back into the news again

...Naturally, the people from OCHA maintain a long-standing UN tradition of seeing no evil, hearing no evil and reporting no evil even as massive attack-tunnel construction - and cement pilfering by Hamas officials - goes on month after month right under their noses.

Truckloads of cement shipped to Gaza via
Israel, 25 Nov. 2014 [Image Source: Getty]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
18 April '16..

Why are so many Gazan Palestinian Arabs still homeless? Because that's what Hamas wants, and what Hamas wants, Hamas - with its total, iron-fisted control of resources inside the Gaza Strip - gets.

This morning (Monday), Israeli officials revealed that, about ten days ago, the IDF

had found a concrete-lined tunnel stretching hundreds of meters from Gaza into Israel, reminiscent of dozens of tunnels destroyed by the army during a 50-day war with Hamas-led fighters in 2014 launched in part to thwart the underground passages. Speaking to reporters in his Jerusalem office, Netanyahu warned Hamas against trying to harm Israeli citizens and vowed that Jerusalem will continue to invest heavily in mechanisms to detect tunnels dug from Gaza into Israel. “The government is investing a fortune in thwarting the threat of tunnels. This is an ongoing effort; it does not end overnight; we are investing in it and will continue to invest steadily and firmly,” he said. [Times of Israel, April 18, 2016]

(And a second tunnel discovery may be on the way.)

For Israelis, this is a major story: concrete proof of where the Islamists of Hamas are focusing efforts; validation for the restrictions imposed lately on cement shipments into Gaza; a taste of what might be around the corner this summer; and a sign that the exceptionally thorny matter of how you detect an enemy's attack-tunnels might have a technological solution.

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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. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

.

Context-free reporting at the BBC concerning 2009 Gaza incident - Hadar Sela

...Among the obligations set out by the BBC’s public purposes remit is the commitment to “[b]uild a global understanding of international issues”. Clearly context-free reporting such as that displayed in this item not only does nothing to contribute to fulfilling that remit, but actively hinders the BBC’s supposed aim.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
17 April '16..

On April 15th a filmed report made by Jane O’Brien and Bill McKenna for BBC World News and BBC News US was promoted on the BBC News website’s Middle East page under the headline “Palestinian doctor turns personal tragedy into dramatic play“. The synopsis tells BBC audiences that:Jane Obrien report

“The real life story of the Palestinian doctor who lost his children in Israeli air-strikes has been turned into a play.” [emphasis added]

In fact, the tragic incident in which Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish’s three daughters and niece were killed in 2009 was not the result of air-strikes at all – as the subsequent investigation showed and as the BBC itself has previously reported.

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Great Idea! Let's Create a Real Palestinian State - by Daniel Greenfield

...A real two-state solution is just that simple. And it can happen tomorrow. Let’s stop fantasizing about peace. Peace and Palestine go together like oil and water. This is what a real Palestinian state would look like. And the moment it comes into being, any possibility of peace dies.

Daniel Greenfield..
Frontpagemag.com..
14 April '16..





It’s not a nightmare if you can make it come true.

A Palestinian state has never existed during any period in human history. Let’s change that.

The United States has spent billions of dollars trying to create a Palestinian state. It’s time that we finally got our money’s worth. We’ve been putting money in the broken Palestinian slot machine in the metaphorical Palestinian casino (the real one was shot up when terrorists turned it into a base) for decades. It’s time to finally get our Palestinian jackpot. But to make it happen, we need to be realistic.

Forget the peace process. Forget negotiations. They’ve never worked before. They’re not going to now.

And there’s nothing to negotiate anyway.

There are almost a million Jews living on territory claimed by the PLO. Removing them would be the single greatest act of ethnic cleansing against an indigenous population today. It would also be impossible. But the same people who insist that the United States, a country of 318 million, can’t deport 11 million illegal aliens, think that Israel will somehow deport 1/8th of its own population if they just chant loudly enough about “occupation” outside Jewish businesses in London or San Francisco.

Ethnically cleansing 8,000 Jews from Gaza/Gush Katif led to nationwide civil disobedience, riots and, eventually, the fall of a political party and three straight terms for Prime Minister Netanyahu. Now imagine trying to deport 800,000 people from their homes simply because they’re Jewish.

And it wouldn’t just be the Jews alone being rounded up into trucks, buses and maybe boxcars.

52 percent of Arabs in East Jerusalem would rather be Israeli citizens than live under the PLO. Are we supposed to deport 100,000 Arabs from Jerusalem to make way for this imaginary “Palestinian” state?

How much ethnic cleansing do we have to do to make the Islamic colonial fantasy of Palestine real?

It’s not going to happen.

Let’s create a real Palestinian state instead. And I don’t mean the PLO’s President for Life Mahmoud Abbas going down to the UN to give another speech. Abbas is on his 11th year of a 4-year term. The US spent $4.5 billion promoting “Palestinian democracy” and the last PLO election was ten years ago.

Hamas won. It would win today all over again.

Current polling shows that 2/3 of “Palestinians” want Abbas to resign. Abbas has no political authority to form a Palestinian state, a Palestinian shawarma stand or a Palestinian anything.

If there’s going to be a Palestinian state, it has to be based on the will of the people. That means it will be a Hamas state. A Palestinian state that is not based on the will of its people has no legitimacy. The only legitimate Palestinian state is therefore a Hamas terror state.

Not every Arab is an enemy - by Elyakim Haetzni

Even today during arguments with Arabs, when I accuse them of incitement and terror, they step back and ask me: And who exactly brought in Arafat and his terrorists? Us or you? And who put them in charge over us? We have Arab enemies, but not all Arabs are enemies. The "small difference" is a moral imperative and national one.

Elyakim Haetzni..
Israel Opinion/Ynet..
16 April '16..

The decrease in the intensity of the intifada which the prime minister recently spoke about, is not quantitatively significant. The terrorists failed both in the street and in its overarching purpose to tear at the fabric of the day-to-day lives of both Jews and Arabs—in factories, markets, restaurants, universities, businesses, malls, elevators, and hospitals.

During even the bloodiest days of violence, we saw Jews and Arabs continuing to live their lives, working amongst and with each other. The inciters didn't dare publicly call for a halt to this relationship. They know that there's no chance of that happening.

If Israel can pass this test of coexistence despite the poisonous atmosphere, will the Jewish State become stronger or weaker? Take into consideration the call for separation in hospitals; does this not play into the hands of Israel's enemies, whose goal is to tear Jerusalem and other Arab areas away from Israel? Just as separation between Jews and Arabs isn't a religious obligation, it also isn't a national ambition. Therefore, the polemic on the separation of maternity wards has nothing to do with the controversy between the Right and the Left.

I've never been in a maternity ward, but I do know the insides of hospital rooms, and there were almost always Arabs in the rooms with their families as well. The amount of noise they make is the same as a Jewish family. And as for the medical staff—Jewish and Arab doctors, nurses and management: This is what the peace that everyone talks about looks like.

This is how it was for 44 years in Kiryat Arba, and I saw many years of good neighborliness. The breakup came in two waves, and started at the end of 1987 with the First Intifada. Right when we started to recover, the Oslo disaster happened. It was at this point that the Arabs started to send their warning.

Take my son, for example. One day, while on his way to Hebron, he was driving close to Beit Omer. A car coming from the opposite direction (with Palestinian license plates) started flashing its headlights to get my son to stop. Why? People were throwing rocks at cars on the road. Who? Other Arabs.

Paying the Jizya in Bethlehem - by Dexter Van Zile

...Is staying in the land worth the damage Palestinian Christians do to their reputations — and their souls — by misinforming their co-religionists in the West about the nature of the Palestinian cause and by shilling for the thuggish, inept and corrupt Palestinian Authority? Is the Palestinian Christian presence in the land really worth the bad example they are setting for their fellow Christians in the West and the disgraceful legacy of dishonesty and submission they are passing on to their children? Is it worth it, really?

Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, who also serves on 
the faculty at Bethlehem Bible College, 
translates a defamatory speech made by 
Hanna Amira, chairman of the PA’s Higher 
Presidential Committee for Christian Affairs, 
at the 2016 Christ at the Checkpoint Conference. 
(Photo: Dexter Van Zile)

Dexter Van Zile..
Times o Israel..
16 April '16..

Last month I spent four days attending the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference held in Beit Jala in the West Bank. It was the third time I attended the event, which has been held every even-numbered year since 2010. At the 2012 and 2014 conferences, I came home appalled by the lies and misinformation broadcast at the conference, which is organized by Bethlehem Bible College, a non-denominational school supported by Evangelicals from North America and Europe that is a hotbed of anti-Israel agitation in the West Bank.

At the 2012 and 2014 conferences, speakers blamed radical Islam’s violence against Christians in the Middle East on Christian support for Israel, as if Muslims had no moral agency of their own. Speakers condemned Jews for having rejected Jesus as the messiah, suggesting that this rejection rendered Jews unfit to run a sovereign state of their own. On a more practical level, speakers falsely reported that the security barrier completely surrounds Bethlehem, the city of Christ’s birth, in an attempt to portray the Jewish state as an obstacle to God’s purposes for peace in the Middle East.

I was stunned that the speakers defamed the Jewish people so brazenly and that the audience of 600 Evangelicals from North America and Europe listened so happily to it all.

Similar messaging was broadcast at the 2016 conference. I should be in a high dudgeon about what I heard, but instead I feel pity.

Spreading lies about the Jewish state, as unsavory and self-destructive as it is, is the price Palestinian Christians pay for staying in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It’s what they have to do.

Jews stay in the land through the force of arms and diplomacy. Palestinian Christians stay in the West Bank by shilling on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt and incompetent set of elites in the world.

Treaties, Textbooks, and Ties - by Evelyn Gordon

...Obviously, all of the above are just the first baby steps on a very long road; it will take decades, if not generations, for these views to spread to the broader Arab public. But for most of the seven decades since Israel’s establishment, there has been no movement at all toward reshaping public attitudes; even major events like the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan were strictly government-to-government, and entailed no effort to change popular perceptions of Israel as a loathed enemy....Thus the fact that these attitudes are finally being challenged by Arabs themselves is of real significance. It won’t lead to any practical change in Arab-Israeli relations for a long time to come. But it’s a necessary first step toward such a change, and as such, constitutes genuine grounds for optimism.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
15 April '16..

Whenever I express optimism about the incremental improvements in Israel’s relations with the Arab world, I always get the same question: How can I be optimistic about relations with countries whose populations overwhelmingly loathe Israel and are often anti-Semitic to boot; whose governments actively propagate such sentiments through school curricula and state-run media, while working against Israel in every possible international forum? My answer is that none of that is new. What’s new is the growing number of people in the Arab world willing to publicly challenge these attitudes. Indeed, in recent weeks, scarcely a day has passed without another example.

Perhaps the most remarkable was an offshoot of last weekend’s Egyptian-Saudi deal under which Egypt will transfer two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. Those islands can effectively blockade access to Israel’s port of Eilat, and one such blockade was the proximate cause of the 1967 Six-Day War, during which Israel captured them. The 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty returned them to Egypt in exchange for a promise of Israeli freedom of navigation in the Red Sea – a promise threatened by the islands’ move to Saudi control, and consequently, a change in the peace treaty that required Israel’s consent.

Israel gave this consent because Riyadh provided a written pledge to honor the terms of the Israeli-Egyptian treaty. Moreover, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir reiterated this pledge publicly in an interview with Arab media: “The commitments that Egypt approved [in the peace treaty] we are also committed to, including the stationing of an international force on the islands… We are committed to what Egypt committed to before the international community.”

That’s a stunning shift for a country once so opposed to the treaty that it severed relations with Egypt for daring to sign it, and which still has no diplomatic relations with Israel itself: Saudi Arabia just formally committed itself to a peace treaty with a state it officially doesn’t recognize.

A few days later, a former Iraqi diplomat arrived in Israel as an official and very public guest of Israel’s Foreign Ministry. Hamad al-Sharifi served in the Iraqi embassies in Kuwait and Jordan and as an advisor to Iraq’s Defense Ministry. Before coming, he declared, “I consider myself a friend of Israel. At this time, Arabs need to understand that there is no conflict between Israel and Arab states, rather there is an Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” And after arriving, he told Israeli officials they should stop permitting secret visits by Arab officials, because “In order for the barriers to be broken, the visits should be done in full public view.”

Then there’s last week’s report from a Lebanese daily about an unprecedented initiative by a group of Lebanese schoolteachers: They want the country’s school curriculum revised to drop “animosity toward the oppressing Zionist entity” from the list of goals. They “do not want to educate our children to hate,” they explained. And besides, it’s silly to focus solely on Israel when there are other pressing priorities, like “the struggle against the religious extremism that threatens Arab states.”

The scourge of anti-Semitic Jews - by Barbara Kay

...If only Jews against Jews did in fact go their own way — attacking Israel as unhyphenated Canadians — I would respect their choice. Where the canker gnaws is their appropriation of Jewish tropes of human rights to ingratiate themselves with our enemies, bellowing “not in my name” and lending a bogus Jewish “kashrut” stamp to Palestinian activists. From my perspective, Jews who align themselves as Jews with Islamists in general, and Palestinian Islamists in particular, have succumbed to a cultural disorder. I call this disorder “pathological altruism,” the extreme end of liberalism where Robert Frost’s definition of a liberal as “someone too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel” turns into a sickness. And this sickness is not just prevalent at the margins.

A poster from the Daily Stormer, a
neo-Nazi website, which made the
rounds on U.S. campuses recently.

Barbara Kay..
Full Comment/National Post..
13 April '16..

A poster from the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, made the rounds on U.S. campuses recently. It reads: “White man: are you sick and tired of the Jews destroying your country through mass immigration and degeneracy? Join us in the struggle for global white supremacy at the Daily Stormer.”

If I had seen that poster in my youth, it would have felt like a punch to the gut. Objectively, I should still be sickened. But the world has changed a lot since I was young and naively swaddled in the belief that anti-Semitism had finally been vanquished.

It’s back and it’s back with a vengeance. Hitler only wanted to rid Europe of its Jews. When he died, his dream died, too. The new genocidal dreams are global and today’s would-be Hitlers are plentiful. When one dies, 100 more are recruited. This time around, a sizable number of our Jewish intelligentsia think the way that hate is framed in modern times — as Israel cleansing, rather than racial cleansing — is kind of cool. And it is my youthful naiveté that has been vanquished.

So my reaction to the poster had a surprising 2016 vibe to it: nostalgia. I liked the poster’s quaint transparency. Wow, a guy who hates Jews blows right past all the Israel “apartheid” and “colonization” nonsense and just cuts to the chase like in the old days. It’s refreshing in a way.

Mostly I appreciate that he’s not a Jewish intellectual pitching his hatred of other Jews as moral superiority. I appreciate that he doesn’t consider himself the reincarnation of the prophet Amos calling for justice to roll down like a mighty stream — for Palestinians, that is, not for his own people. That white supremacist holds terrible views, but at least he’s not disguising his anti-Semitism as righteous indignation on behalf of “the wretched of the Earth.” Like, for example, Michael Neumann.

Professor Michael Neumann

Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., who claims that Jews bear a special responsibility to speak out against Israel. In a 2003 blog post, he wrote: “(My aim is to) help the Palestinians (and) I am not interested in the truth, or justice, or understanding, or anything else, except so far as it serves that purpose.… If an effective strategy means that some truths about the Jews don’t come to light, I don’t care. If an effective strategy means encouraging reasonable anti-Semitism, or reasonable hostility to Jews, I also don’t care. If it means encouraging vicious racist anti-Semitism, or the destruction of the state of Israel, I still don’t care.”

Nitzan Tal

Or like Nitzan Tal. Tal’s Hebrew University sociology department MA thesis was entitled Controlled Occupation: The Lack of Military Rape in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict. The abstract of the paper states that “the absence of directed military rape constitutes an alternative way of realizing the same political goals (usually achieved by directed military rape).” In other words, Israel’s military not raping Palestinian women is an act of racism. As the young people say on Twitter: I.Can’t.Even…

Malevolent Jews like Neuman and Tal form a disproportionate wedge of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) pie. They certainly do not represent the traditional strain of vigorous debate that used to characterize Jewish life. No, the vitriol, the irrationality, the delirium of anti-Zionist loathing spewing from this bloc of Jewish progressive academics seems to me to be something — well, not exactly new, but more ferocious, more structured and better funded than at any other time in Jewish history. Most importantly, these single-minded activists have unprecedented access as authority figures to masses of vulnerable minds in an environment virtually cleansed of pro-Israel voices at the tenured level.

Surprise? UN Agency Openly Manipulates Statistics To Demonize Israel - by Rachel Hirschfeld

...OCHA, like other branches of the UN, has altogether lost sight of its founding vision. One group of besieged anti-Assad Syrian aid workers wrote an open letter to OCHA head Stephen O’Brien, stating, “For many of us in Syria, the U.N. has turned from a symbol of hope into a symbol of complicity.” So too in Israel, OCHA and other UN bodies have become instruments that exploit the UN’s original mandate of “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all.” Instead, they appease dictatorships, contribute to regional hostilities, and advance the demonization campaign against Israel in the international arena.

Rachel Hirschfeld..
Algemeiner.com..
15 April '16..

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian Territories (“OCHA-oPt”) is deeply entrenched in fighting the Arab-Israeli conflict. Despite claiming to be a humanitarian agency, OCHA is one of the leaders of political warfare against Israel, attempting to rewrite history, advance distorted statistics, and delegitimize Israel in the international arena.

OCHA is one of the primary coordinators of anti-Israel NGO funding and activity. Through annual lists and ongoing support, it facilitates government subsidies to some of the most biased and politicized regional NGOs, including a number that are highly active in promoting anti-peace BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) and “lawfare” campaigns.

In 2016, OCHA requested $571 million from international donors for partner NGOs such as Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). IRW is banned from operating in Israel and the West Bank because of its alleged role in funneling money to Hamas. And the NRC has funded hundreds of lawsuits in Israeli courts, in an attempt to “try every possible legal measure to disrupt the Israeli judicial system,” according to one of the lawyers involved. Other NGOs that are promoted by OCHA advance false allegations of Israeli “war crimes,” “violations of international law,” “genocide,” and ethnic cleansing.”

In addition to coordinating funding for hostile NGOs, OCHA manipulates statistics to advance its agenda. One of its projects, the “Vulnerability Profile,” claims to provide “the most comprehensive information on physical protection” of the Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank. According to OCHA, in 2014, an estimated 297,900 Palestinians lived under full Israeli security and administrative control. This figure, however, is significantly higher than those cited by top Israeli diplomats and military officials. Shaul Arieli, a retired Israeli colonel, told The Times of Israel, “It’s deception. Practically speaking, this [data] is meaningless. What [OCHA] did is completely political…”

This is not the only example of OCHA promoting questionable statistics. During the 2014 Gaza War, three NGOs — including B’Tselem, Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and Al Mezan — were tasked by OCHA to report on Palestinian casualties. The aforementioned NGOs all lack the credibility to conduct this task, often basing their information on the Hamas Ministry of Health. Similarly, their ad hoc methodology appears aimed at inflating the number of civilians killed. When casualties were examined by the Terror Information Center in Israel, many individuals listed as “civilians” by these NGOs were found to be members of terrorist groups.

In fact, during the course of the hostilities B’Tselem acknowledged, “… in these circumstances, reports may be incomplete or contain errors. Given the urgency of informing the public about events in Gaza, B’Tselem has decided to publish the information now available.” Despite this significant disclaimer by the NGO, the data is distributed by OCHA to the media, world leaders, and decision makers as indisputable fact.

Israel and Saudi Arabia: Good Neighbor Policy - by Elliott Abrams

...Discussions of this potential construction have apparently taken place, and Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia seem to be acting like…..neighbors. That is, common sense is prevailing, rights are being respected, and while Israel and Saudi Arabia have no direct public contacts at all they are able to communicate and get business done. This is a huge change, and of course a welcome one– though the background story of their common fears about American policy and the growing power of common enemies is not at all comforting.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
15 April '16..

The recent announcement that Egypt was returning control over Tiran and Sanafir islands in the Gulf of Aqaba to Saudi Arabia has gotten some attention, but deserves more. It is a moment that reveals much about current Middle Eastern politics.

In 1950 the Saudis transferred control, but in their view never sovereignty, over the islands to Egypt to protect them from what it claimed was the threat of an Israeli takeover. During a visit to Egypt by King Salman this past week, control was transferred back. (There is a reasonably fierce debate in Egypt over whether in fact President Sisi has unconstitutionally abandoned sovereign territory– or anyway as fierce as debates can be given repression and censorship in Egypt.)

During the past few years we have heard repeatedly that relations between Israel and the Gulf Arab states were greatly improved because today they have common enemies in Iran and ISIS, and a common concern about the disappearance of American hegemony in the region. What happened with the two islands this week is proof that the improved relations really do exist.

For one thing, Saudi Arabia has apparently agreed to respect the terms of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979. When that treaty was signed in 1979, the Saudis denounced it and broke relations with Egypt. Times have changed. The treaty contains this clause: