WarSclerotic

Hamas-Abbas: A reality check, Israel Hayom, Prof. Ron Breiman, April 27, 2014

(What was that about a leopard and its spots? Have President Obama and Secretary Kerry heard the story? — DM)

The blood bond between the leader of the “good” terrorists from Ramallah and the leader of the “bad” terrorists from Gaza once again proves that they both share the same goal: destroying the State of Israel, not just expelling the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria. They differ only in style. Whereas Hamas has made its objectives painfully clear, Abbas has assumed a deceptive posture that has won him many supporters in the enlightened world, including the Obama-Kerry duo and radical Israeli lefties. These pro-Abbasites won’t let the facts get in the way; it won’t be long before they ask us to bury our heads in the sand and continue the “peace process.”

The events that took place over the past week — and especially the renewed alliance between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas — should make us rethink the underlying assumptions that have guided Israel’s conduct; it is time to wake up to the sobering reality. The “peace process” was premised on the notion that there are “good” terrorists that could be engaged, and “bad” terrorists that had no place around the negotiating table. That myth was debunked once and for all last week.

The blood bond between the leader of the “good” terrorists from Ramallah and the leader of the “bad” terrorists from Gaza once again proves that they both share the same goal: destroying the State of Israel, not just expelling the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria. They differ only in style. Whereas Hamas has made its objectives painfully clear, Abbas has assumed a deceptive posture that has won him many supporters in the enlightened world, including the Obama-Kerry duo and radical Israeli lefties. These pro-Abbasites won’t let the facts get in the way; it won’t be long before they ask us to bury our heads in the sand and continue the “peace process.”

The new reality requires each player to rethink their strategy. The Americans should stop banging their heads (and our heads) against the wall in search of the right formula for peace. They should also shed the false premise that has guided their Middle East policy and address other foreign policy challenges (Ukraine, for example). The Arab world has already begun to focus on the Abbas/Hamas twins, analyzing their points of agreement and disagreement. Israel should not pick a favorite; both are our enemy.

Israel is now presented with a golden opportunity to unshackle itself from the false notion that a two-state solution can be implemented west of the Jordan River. This concept was doomed from the start. Israel, like the Arabs, should take care of its own interests by making aliyah (immigration to Israel) its top concern. With anti-Semitism on the rise, Israel should focus on its Zionist raison d’etre: the ingathering of the exiles in the land of the Jewish people. Whatever it does, Israel must make it clear that it will not uproot Jews from their homes.

Israel has already agreed to a far-reaching territorial compromise when it signed the peace treaty with Jordan. Israel must now sit back and wait until the Palestinian majority in Jordan decides to exercise its rights.

The difference between Israeli Arabs and the Arabs of Judea and Samaria is artificial: the former group has lived under the auspices of the Jewish state longer. A period of nineteen years — the interlude between the War of Independence and the Six-Day War — is all that separates them. That period represents just one half of one percent of the time encapsulated by the history of the Jewish people. By asking for the release of Israeli-Arab prisoners, Abbas cast himself as the leader of all the Arabs in the Land of Israel, both within the Green Line and beyond. The Israeli-Arab journalist who was recently dispatched to Beirut with documents from Ramallah underscored this.

On the same token, the Jewish people have been arbitrarily divided into two sets of people. The first, which lies east of the Green Line, has temporary residence in Judea and Samaria. Their human and property rights are compromised and regularly infringed upon. It has become commonly accepted that they could — and should — be forcefully evicted from their homes and be approached with racist baits so that they willingly relocate in exchange for monetary compensation.

The second, which lives west of the Green Line, enjoys permanent status, knowing that its property and homes will not be taken away. Anyone who is concocting “peace” plans based on this arbitrary distinction is not a peace-loving individual, nor is he or she a true champion of human rights.

Israel would be well-served by leaving “the valley of Achor for a door of hope” (Hosea 2:17); Israel must make lemonade out of the lemons of the peace talks. The “peace” trend has run its course. There is no point in dancing around this modern-day golden calf chanting “This is thy god, O Israel” (Exodus 32:8).

Netanyahu compares Iran nuclear threat to Nazi menace | The Times of Israel.

At Remembrance Day ceremony, PM implores world not to repeat mistakes; Peres warns of resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe

By Joshua Davidovich and Stuart Winer April 27, 2014, 8:06 pm Updated: April 27, 2014, 8:49 pm

Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at Yad Vashem Sunday, April 27, 2014. (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The world turned a blind eye to the rising Nazi threat over 75 years ago, and today Iran is being allowed to develop its nuclear program and menace Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday as the country marked Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Declaring that Iran was determined to acquire nuclear weapons, and urging international negotiators to insist that Iran’s enrichment and other nuclear capabilities be completely dismantled, Netanyahu warned: “A deal that leaves Iran as a threshold nuclear state will bring the world to the threshold of the abyss.”

Israeli leaders gathered at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial Sunday night to remember the 6 million victims of the Nazi genocide.

On Monday morning, an air raid siren will ring out for two minutes as the nation comes to a standstill to mark Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, as the memorial day is official known.

Six survivors of the Shoah lit torches at Yad Vashem Sunday night, and Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres spoke at the ceremony.

Netanyahu said the world had failed to act against the rising Nazi threat, despite being warned about it, drawing a line to current tensions with the Iranian regime.

“It’s not that they did not see. It’s that they did not want to see,” he said of world leaders before the Holocaust.

“Today we are facing real threats and immediate dangers,” he said. “I call on the world power to insist that Iran completely give up its abilities to make nuclear weapons.”

He added that Israel would not stand by silently.

“In contrast to our situation in the Holocaust today we have a tremendous power to protect ourselves,” he said. “Israel is stronger than ever.”

“On behalf of the Jewish people, I say to those who have sought and still seek to destroy us: You have failed and you will fail.”

The speech was a familiar echo of years past, when Netanyahu has also warned of the Iranian threat and vowed to defend the country from suffering another holocaust.

“Iran is warning openly about its intentions to destroy us and is working with all its might to carry it out,” the prime minister said at the same ceremony in 2013. “The hate against Jews hasn’t disappeared, but has morphed into a murderous hate against the Jewish state. We won’t leave our fate in the hands of others, even the best of our friends.”

Peres devoted part of his speech to the resurgence of European anti-Semitism, particularly in Hungary, where he said the Jewish community was destroyed with “brutal efficiency” 70 years ago.

“We must not ignore any occurrence of anti-Semitism, any desecration of a synagogue, any tomb stone smashed in a cemetery in which our families are buried,” he said. ”We must not ignore the rise of extreme right wing parties with neo-Nazi tendencies who are a danger to each of us and a threat to every nation.”

He added that Israel had to be strong because of anti-Semitism around the world, but “must not give up on peace.”

“A strong Israel is our response to the horrors of anti-Semitism but it does not excuse the rest of the world from its responsibility to prevent this disease from returning to their own homes,” he said. “We are strong enough to repel dangers, we should not be scared of threats and we must not give up on peace.”

Netanyahu wrote on Twitter Sunday that Iran was seeking to wipe out the Jewish people as the Nazis did some 70 years ago. He also drew a line to Gazan terror group Hamas, which he said was denying the Holocaust while trying to create a new one.

Earlier, Netanyahu dismissed a statement by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemning the Holocaust as the “most heinous crime” of the modern era. Netanyahu told CNN Abbas was attempting to “damage control” after signing a unity deal with Hamas last week.

Among the torchlighters at the Yad Vashem ceremony was Asher Aud (Sieradski), 86.

Over six years, he was separated from his parents and siblings in his native Polish town of Zdunska Wola and then scavenged for scraps of bread and staved off a debilitating illness alone in the Lodz ghetto before he was deported to the Auschwitz death camp.

There, he avoided the gas chambers and crematoria, and after a long incarceration, he weathered the notorious death march through the snow to Mauthausen, where those who fell behind were shot dead on the spot. After the war, he passed through a series of displaced person camps before he boarded a ship to the Holy Land where he did his best to forget the past for the next half century.

Of all the atrocities he endured, Aud said the strongest memory is the one that was most traumatic — parting from his mother at the age of 14.

It was September 1942. The Nazis had rounded up the Jewish community inside the local cemetery and were preparing to deport them. His father and older brother had already been taken and he was left with his mother and younger brother, Gavriel.

“I remember looking down and I happened to be standing on my grandmother’s tombstone,” he recalled. “The Germans walked among us and anytime they saw a mother with a child, they tore the child from her arms and threw them into the back of trucks.”

That’s when he realized life as he knew it was over.

“I looked around and I just said ‘mother, this is where we are going to be separated,’” he said.

Soon after they were marched through two lines of German soldiers. “I didn’t even feel it when the Germans hit me but every time they struck my mother and brother it was like they were cutting my flesh,” he said.

Israel is home to some 200,000 survivors, over a quarter of whom live in poverty, according to a report released last week.

On Sunday, government ministers approved a plan to fund an additional NIS 1 billion to expand benefits to survivors.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Abbas says Holocaust ‘most heinous crime’ of modern era | The Times of Israel.

Netanyahu rejects statement, claims Abbas’s new unity partner, Hamas, is ‘trying to achieve another Holocaust’

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (photo credit: Alain Jocard/AFP)

Waiting for the Palestinian Godot, Haaretz, Ari Shavit, April 24, 2014

(An illuminating bit of history that stutters while repeating itself. — DM)

Why are we repeatedly surprised every time Mahmoud Abbas fails to sign a peace agreement with Israel?

Take heed: Twenty years of fruitless talks have led to nothing. There is no document that contains any real Palestinian concession with Abbas’ signature. None. There never was, and there never will be.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at a leadership meeting in Ramallah, in April. Photo by AP

There are some moments a journalist will never forget. In early 1997, Yossi Beilin decided to trust me, and show me the document that proved that peace was within reach. The then-prominent and creative politician from the Labor movement opened up a safe, took out a stack of printed pages, and laid them down on the table like a player with a winning poker hand.

Rumors were rife about the Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement, but only a few had the opportunity to see the document with their own eyes or hold it in their hands. I was one of those few. With mouth agape I read the comprehensive outline for peace that had been formulated 18 months earlier by two brilliant champions of peace — one, Israeli, and one, Palestinian. The document left nothing to chance: Mahmoud Abbas is ready to sign a permanent agreement. The refugee from Safed had overcome the ghosts of the past and the ideas of the past, and was willing to build a joint Israeli-Palestinian future, based on coexistence. If we could only get out from under the Likud’s thumb, and get Benjamin Netanyahu out of office, he will join us, hand in hand, walking toward the two-state solution. Abbas is a serious partner for true peace, the one with whom we can make a historic breakthrough toward reconciliation.

We understood. We did what was necessary. In 1999, we ousted Likud and Netanyahu. In 2000, we went to the peace summit at Camp David. Whoops, surprise: Abbas didn’t bring the Beilin-Abu Mazen plan to Camp David, or any other draft of a peace proposal. The opposite was true: He was one of the staunchest objectors, and his demand for the right of return prevented any progress.

But don’t believe we’d give up so quickly. During the fall of 2003, as the Geneva Accord was being formulated, it was clear to us that there were no more excuses, and that now, Abbas would sign the new peace agreement and adopt its principles. Whoops, surprise: Abu Mazen sent Yasser Abed Rabbo (a former Palestinian Authority minister) instead, while he stayed in his comfy Ramallah office. No signature, no accord.

But people as steadfast as us don’t give up on our dreams. So in 2008 we got behind Ehud Olmert, and the marathon talks he held with Abbas, and the offer that couldn’t be refused. Whoops, surprise: Abu Mazen didn’t actually refuse, he just disappeared. He didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no, he just vanished without a trace.

Did we start to understand that we were facing the Palestinian Yitzhak Shamir? No, no, no. In the summer of 2009, we even supported Netanyahu, when he made overtures to Abbas with his Bar-Ilan speech, and the settlement freeze. Whoops, surprise: the sophisticated objector didn’t blink, or trip up. He simple refused to dance the tango of peace with the right-wing Israeli leader.

Have we opened our eyes? Of course not. Again, we blamed Netanyahu and Likud, and believed that in 2014, Abu Mazen wouldn’t dare to say no, not to John Kerry. Whoops, surprise: In his own sophisticated, polite way, Abbas has said no in recent months to both Kerry and Barack Obama. Again, the Palestinian president’s position is clear and consistent: The Palestinians must not be required to make concessions. It’s a complicated game – squeezing more and more compromises out of the Israelis, without the Palestinians granting a single real, compromise of their own.

Take heed: Twenty years of fruitless talks have led to nothing. There is no document that contains any real Palestinian concession with Abbas’ signature. None. There never was, and there never will be.

During the 17 years that have gone by since Beilin took that document out of his safe, he’s gotten divorced, remarried, and had grandchildren. I also divorced, remarried, and brought (more) children into the world. Time passes and the experiences we’ve accumulated have taught both Beilin and me more than a few things. But many others haven’t learned a thing. They’re still allowing Abbas to make fools of them, as they wait for the Palestinian Godot, who will never show up.