WarSclerotic

Israel’s Netanyahu, before going to US, says no restrictions on building in east Jerusalem | AM 1150 Kelowna – News Talk Sports for the Okanagan.

By: Mark Lavie, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JERUSALEM – Israel will not restrict construction in east Jerusalem, Israel’s prime minister said Sunday hours before leaving for Washington, despite a clear U.S. demand that building there must stop and a crisis in relations between the two longtime allies.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline statement came just hours before he was scheduled to leave for Washington.

His meeting with President Barack Obama Tuesday will be the first high-level meeting since the crisis erupted 10 days ago, when Israel embarrassed visiting Vice-President Joe Biden by announcing a plan for construction in a Jewish neighbourhood in east Jerusalem, which is claimed by the Palestinians.

“As far as we are concerned, building in Jerusalem is like building in Tel Aviv” and there would be no restrictions, Netanyahu told his Cabinet.

This tough stance on Jerusalem has run into stiff opposition in Washington, but there were signs that Israel was working to ease the crisis. Cabinet ministers said that while there would be no formal freeze, construction in Jewish neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem would be restricted, like Netanyahu’s partial 10-month West Bank construction freeze.

At stake are the first peace contacts between Israel and the Palestinian government in more than a year.

The Palestinians agreed to mediated talks, but the Jerusalem construction flap has given them second thoughts. Israel said it prefers direct negotiations but would go along with the indirect format.

On Sunday, Netanyahu met with Obama’s special Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, who is set to mediate. He delivered the White House invitation to the prime minister.

At the meeting with Netanyahu, Mitchell said, “Our shared goal … is the resumption of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians in an environment that can result in an agreement that ends the conflict and resolves all permanent status issues.”

U.S. officials have been dialing back the crisis rhetoric in recent days. The fact that a such a meeting was scheduled – even though the original purpose of Netanyahu’s trip was not to meet Obama but to address a convention of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby – is a likely indication that the U.S. and Israel are succeeding in ironing out their differences.

The diplomatic package Netanyahu is offering the U.S. to ease the bilateral crisis has not been made public, but officials say one element is agreement to discuss all the outstanding issues with the Palestinians in indirect peace talks Mitchell is set to mediate. Those would include the future of Jerusalem, as well as borders, Jewish settlements and Palestinian refugees.

Netanyahu has always opposed compromise over Jerusalem. Israel captured the city’s eastern sector from Jordan during the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it, a move not recognized by any other country. Over four decades, Israel has built a string of Jewish neighbourhoods around the Arab section of the city.

Most Israelis consider them part of the Jewish state, but Palestinians equate them to West Bank settlements, considered illegal under international law.

Previous rounds of unsuccessful peace talks have included a formula for Israel retaining the Jewish neighbourhoods while Palestinians got sovereignty over the Arab sections, but Netanyahu pointedly took that off the table when he took office a year ago.

In Gaza Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Israel to end its blockade on Gaza, imposed after Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier in 2006 and tightened when the Islamic militant Hamas overran the territory the following year. Israel allows only basic humanitarian supplies into Gaza.

The blockade causes “unacceptable suffering” and “undercuts moderates and encourages extremists,” Ban said after visiting a housing project in the Khan Younis refugee camp. “My message to the people of Gaza is this: The United Nations will stand with you, through this ordeal.”

Most of the 15,000 homes destroyed or damaged during Israel’s war in Gaza last winter have not been repaired because of the ban on importation of most building supplies. Israel launched the war after years of militant rocket fire from Gaza.

In West Bank violence Sunday, the Israeli military said troops in the West Bank shot dead two Palestinians carrying pitchforks and an axe who tried to attack a soldier.

Another Palestinian died of a head wound from a clash with Israeli soldier the day before. His brother was killed in the same protest.

Also Sunday, the Israeli military said it would build a checkpoint on lands of the Palestinian West Bank village of Betunia to search vehicles before they cross onto a major highway that links Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the military to allow Palestinians to travel on parts of the road that were closed to them in 2002, after Palestinian militants shot at Israeli vehicles and killed several motorists.

Other Than Apartments in Jerusalem, What Else is Going on in the Middle East? | Global Terrorism.

Obama Punished Israel by Diverting Anti-Iran Bunker Bombs – Defense/Middle East – Israel News – Israel National News.

Vilifying Jews is nothing new: Goldstein | Lorrie Goldstein | Columnists | Comment | Toronto Sun.

In every era, the haters find new ways to spout the same old evil

Last Updated: March 21, 2010 2:15am

Following last week’s column on Israeli Apartheid Week, a number of readers have asked if I’m arguing anyone who participates in this annual event is a Jew hater.

No. There may well be those who participate in IAW, which started at the University of Toronto in 2005, out of a genuine humanitarian concern about Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

They may also be genuinely unaware the IAW campaign — as British Conservative MP Michael Gove noted during a Canadian tour last fall — uses an age-old tactic employed by Jew haters throughout human history.

That is, to take the founding paradigm of any era, that which we say we most value or believe in, and twist it to portray Jews not just as capable of wrongdoing — since that can be said of anyone — but rather to portray Jews as the most evil people on Earth.

Our paradigm today — what we say we value most — is human rights.

That’s why, to the Jew hater, it’s vital, through IAW, to portray Jews not just as human rights violators, but as the world’s worst violators.

Hence the unrelenting, unfair comparisons of Israel — the Jewish state — in its treatment of the Palestinians, to the most publicly reviled human rights violator of the modern age — apartheid South Africa.

This without any qualifiers — the security threats to Israel posed by Arab and Islamic terrorism — or context — how human rights in Israel compare to the Arab and Islamic dictatorships surrounding it.

Why? Because for Jew haters, none of that matters.

To the contrary, it’s perfectly acceptable to them when Muslims violate the human rights of other Muslims, Christians, or Jews, or when the state-run media in much of the Arab and Muslim world constantly spout Jew hatred.

That’s because Jew haters don’t care about human rights, only about maliciously depicting Jews not just as human rights violators, but as the world’s worst violators.

Similarly, they attack the legitimacy of Israel as “the Jewish state” in a way they would never attack, say, the Islamic character of “The Islamic Republic of Iran”.

None of this is new.

Go back to the Second World War when our emerging paradigm was the supremacy of science over religion.

That’s why the Nazis, even as they were exterminating six million Jews (and millions of others), sought to “prove” through “scientific” means, including medical experimentation (torture), that Jews were not simply an inferior race, but the most degenerate race on Earth. Not just that they were flawed, but irredeemably corrupt.

Go back hundreds of years to when religion was our founding paradigm and we see Jew haters portraying Judaism not just as a flawed religion, but as the most evil religion on Earth, with Jews even accused of using the blood of non-Jewish children (the “blood libel”) to make Passover matzah.

The message of Jew haters has always been consistent.

It’s that Jews aren’t merely fallible, as is everyone. Rather, Jews are unimaginably evil and thus hating them is justified.

So, yes, it’s possible some IAW enthusiasts aren’t Jew haters, just as it’s possible some people who deny the Holocaust are merely ignorant about history.

That said, it’s a given many, if not most, Holocaust deniers are Jew haters.

Why? Because anyone who wants to portray Jews as the puppet masters behind every major global conflict of the past century, of, absurdly, being the simultaneous instigators of tyrannical communism and corrupt capitalism, and of controlling both the international banking system and what movies Hollywood produces, has to discredit the Holocaust.

Why? Because if the Jews are so all-powerful, why did they allow it to happen?

Hence the Jew haters’ argument that not only is the Holocaust a hoax, but that the evil Jews have now fooled the world into feeling guilty about something that never happened and stolen billions of dollars in reparations in the process.

So yes, it’s possible some folks who attend IAW events aren’t motivated by Jew hatred, just as it’s possible some who deny the Holocaust aren’t, either.

It’s just that in so many cases, it’s not probable

Report: PM to ask US for bombs against Iran – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Sunday Times reports Netanyahu will press Obama administration during upcoming Washington visit to release sophisticated bunker-busting bombs needed for possible strike on nuclear sites

Ynet

Jpost | Print Article.

Ahead of AIPAC meeting, US Congress leaders express “deep concern” over flap.

Photo by: Courtesy of US Congress Web site. Resolve Israel spat quietly, Obama urged By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPOND 21/03/2010 Ahead of AIPAC meeting, US Congress leaders express “deep concern” over flap.

International News | Obama to Iran US offer of dialogue still stands.

President Barack Obama speaks on health care reform at George Mason University

WASHINGTON (Agencies)

U.S. President Barack Obama renewed his administration’s offer of dialogue and diplomacy with Tehran on Saturday, a year after his offer of a new beginning with Iran failed to achieve concrete results.

Obama, who addressed Iranians in a new videotaped appeal to mark the observance of Nowruz, an ancient festival celebrating the arrival of spring, has pledged previously to pursue aggressive sanctions to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.