Archive for December 2014

Western Indifference to the Palestinian Culture of Hate

December 15, 2014

Western Indifference to the Palestinian Culture of Hate, Front Page Magazine, December 15, 2014

(Here is the video of the Islamic preacher.

The New York Times is by no means alone in making the “news” fit its ideological narrative. For an excellent analysis of how and why it happens, please read Sharyl Attkisson’s recent book Stonewalled.– DM)

The practice of ignoring such malevolence partly stems from the fact that the New York Times wishes to present a certain narrative at the expense of the facts and partly stems from a systematic inability of some Western media outlets to hold Arabs to a Western standard of decency and morality. Thus, Arab anti-Semitism, the same kind of anti-Semitism practiced in Europe some 75 years ago, is either ignored or attributed to mere cultural differences.

Rarely is the sort of vitriol witnessed in the videos expressed in English to Western audiences. Only the crassest among them publicly share their feelings about Jews, and the West for that matter. But behind closed doors it’s an entirely different story. Groups like MEMRI, CAMERA, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and many others do an excellent job in exposing the malevolence hiding just beneath the surface. The problem is no one seems to care. No one cared 75 years ago either.

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palestinian-450x331

A shockingly, disturbing video has recently surfaced exposing the true and pernicious face of Palestinian extremism and xenophobia. The video, made available by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) shows a bearded sheikh giving what appears to be an impromptu sermon on the Jews. (After all, what else is there to talk about?) The venue is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, considered by those who practice the “religion of peace” to be their third holiest site after Mecca and Medina.

The speech itself is filled with gut-wrenching anti-Semitism, the kind that would even make the editors of the New York Times blush. The sheikh describes how the Jews possess the vilest of traits, how they were responsible for killing the “prophets,” how they attempted to assassinate Muhammad, how their time for “slaughter is near,” how they will be slaughtered “without mercy,” and of course there’s the perfunctory, “Jews are apes and pigs” thing.

Interestingly, the speaker doesn’t mention the longing for Palestinian statehood or independence. Instead, he talks of the establishment of the “Islamic Caliphate.” “Oh Allah’” he states, “Hasten the establishment of the State of the Islamic Caliphate,” and further rants, “Oh Allah hasten the pledge of allegiance to the Muslim Caliph.” He spews forth the latter statement three times to chants of “Amen!” from the large, approving crowd congregating around him.

These comments, which would register horror and revulsion in the West (at least in some quarters) are almost banal among Palestinians. In fact, a similar video featuring a different speaker some days earlier at the same venue, conveyed identical sentiment, expressing admiration for the Islamic State and calling for murder of Jews and annihilation of America.

Guttural anti-Semitism is ingrained and interwoven in the fabric of Palestinian society. Despite their minuscule numbers, 78% of Palestinians believe that Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars while a whopping 88% believe that Jews control the global media and still more believe that Jews wield too much power in the business world.

Much of the blame for this can be placed squarely on the doorstep of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which subjects the Palestinian population to a steady diet of hate-filled, Judeophobic rhetoric through state-controlled media and educational institutions. It is so well entrenched that the process of deprogramming, if it were ever attempted, would take generations to reverse.

Some of the blame however, rests with the Obama administration and the European Union, which continues to fund the Palestinian Authority with an endless supply of taxpayer money without demanding any form of accountability. Western money is openly used to fund the Palestinian Authority’s hate apparatus with money flowing into institutions that propagate anti-Semitism and encourage terrorism.

Some Western media outlets are also culpable in perpetuating the Palestinian culture of hate. The New York Times for example has frequently and diligently covered so-called “price tag” vandalism attacks; a practice universally condemned by nearly all Israelis and vigorously prosecuted by Israeli authorities but rarely, if ever, covers the type of venomous hate speech witnessed in the above-noted videos.

Hate crimes inspired by this type of pernicious speech are also routinely ignored. Highlighting this point is the disturbing case of Asher Palmer, an American citizen who, along with his infant son was murdered when a rock thrown by a Palestinian crashed through the windshield of the car he was driving, hitting him flush in the face. The New York Times ignored the gruesome murders and only mentioned the incident in passing a few days later in the context of a reprisal “price tag” attack against a mosque. Under the unbelievably skewed editorial policies of the New York Times, it took an act of vandalism, ostensibly committed by Jews, to highlight the horrific murder of Asher Palmer and his infant son at the hands of Arabs.

The practice of ignoring such malevolence partly stems from the fact that the New York Times wishes to present a certain narrative at the expense of the facts and partly stems from a systematic inability of some Western media outlets to hold Arabs to a Western standard of decency and morality. Thus, Arab anti-Semitism, the same kind of anti-Semitism practiced in Europe some 75 years ago, is either ignored or attributed to mere cultural differences.

Indeed, the New York Times no longer even bothers to hide the fact that it engages in duplicitous double standards when it comes to reporting Palestinian-Arab racism and hate speech as evidenced from a telling exchange between New York Times’ opinion page staff editor, Matt Seaton and Tamar Sternthal, a director at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).

Rarely is the sort of vitriol witnessed in the videos expressed in English to Western audiences. Only the crassest among them publicly share their feelings about Jews, and the West for that matter. But behind closed doors it’s an entirely different story. Groups like MEMRI, CAMERA, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and many others do an excellent job in exposing the malevolence hiding just beneath the surface. The problem is no one seems to care. No one cared 75 years ago either.

Off Topic: Elizabeth Warren Sides With Israel, Not With the Liberals Who Keep Daydreaming About Her

December 15, 2014

Elizabeth Warren Sides With Israel, Not With the Liberals Who Keep Daydreaming About Her.

( Warren is being pilloried by the “progressive” media in the States for being pro-Israel.  Watch her speech to understand why I believe she is the only candidate the Dems could field who would actually deserve your vote. – JW )

Slate.com

Last month’s Netroots Nation conference brought about a virtual epidemic of Warrenmania: The contagious theory that freshman Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is ideally positioned to challenge Hillary Clinton for president, and that she hasn’t really ruled that out.

I was skeptical, because she has ruled this out, many times, and because of a nagging worry some Clinton doubters shared with me. They didn’t know where Warren was on foreign policy. Clinton’s neoliberal hawkishness, which had created the conditions for beating her in 2008, was well known. But Warren had never really staked out a foreign policy vision, not even in her memoir. In Detroit, when reporters for the conservative Capitol City Project ambushed Warren with a Gaza question, she Speedy Gonzales’d her way to a hotel elevator.

Via Glenn Greenwald, here’s a report from C. Ryan Barber on how Warren handled the Israel question. (The report is one week old; maybe we were all busy with real news last week.) In Cape Cod, a Warren supporter told the senator he disagreed with her recent vote to fully fund Israel’s Iron Dome, and that people were “disagreeing with Israel using their guns against innocents.” He was not alone; according to Gallup, Democrats viewed Israel’s operation in Gaza as “unjustified” by a 47-31 margin, and independents opposed the operation by a 46-36 margin.

Yet Warren didn’t agree with them, or with the voter.

“America has a very special relationship with Israel. Israel lives in a very dangerous part of the world, and a part of the world where there aren’t many liberal democracies and democracies that are controlled by the rule of law. And we very much need an ally in that part of the world.”

Warren said Hamas has attacked Israel “indiscriminately,” but with the Iron Dome defense system, the missiles have “not had the terrorist effect Hamas hoped for.” When pressed by another member of the crowd about civilian casualties from Israel’s attacks, Warren said she believes those casualties are the “last thing Israel wants.”

“But when Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they’re using their civilian population to protect their military assets. And I believe Israel has a right, at that point, to defend itself,” Warren said, drawing applause.

A few weeks ago, when Warren announced a post-midterms trip to Israel, it was covered as a box-checking exercise for a possible 2016 run. What if it’s not that? What if Warren has the foreign policy views you might expect from a baby boomer who was a registered Republican during much of the Clinton presidency? In that case, she’s not well positioned at all to build a left-wing political coalition against the Clintons, as she keeps saying she won’t do. Brian Schweitzer—now, there’s a guy ready to go to Hillary Clinton’s left on foreign policy. But well, you know.

Is Obama ready for an about-face to recognize Assad? Will Syria provide the strike force against ISIS?

December 14, 2014

Is Obama ready for an about-face to recognize Assad? Will Syria provide the strike force against ISIS?, DEBKAfile, December 14, 2014

bashar_al_assad_12.14Bashar Assad gets a new lease of life

Netanyahu will ask Washington to exercise its veto against the Palestinian motion. But the Obama administration would rather not, since it supports the Palestinians in principle.

Israel may therefore find itself this time ranged against a united US-Russian front on the Palestinian issue, Moscow’s reward for Washington lining up behind its plan for Syria.

Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Sunday, Dec. 14, that Israel would “rebuff any UN moves to set a timetable for withdrawal from territory.” He said Israel now faced a possible diplomatic offensive “to force upon us” such a withdrawal within two years.

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High expectations based on unconfirmed reports swirled around Arab capitals Sunday, Dec. 14, that US President Barack Obama, in league with Moscow and Tehran, had turned his longstanding anti-Assad policy on its head. He was said to be willing to accept Bashar Assad’s rule and deem the Syrian army the backbone of the coalition force battling the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

If these expectations are borne out by the Obama administration, the Middle East would face another strategic upheaval: The US and Russia would be on the same side, a step toward mending the fences between them after the profound rupture over Ukraine, and the Washington-Tehran rapprochement would be expanded.

The Lebanese Hizballah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah would be vindicated in the key role they played in buttressing President Assad in power.

But for Saudi Arabia and Israel, an Obama turnaround on Assad would be a smack in the face.

The Saudis along with most of the Gulf emirates staked massive monetary and intelligence resources in the revolution to topple the Syrian ruler.

Israel never went all-out in its support for the Syrian uprising, but focused on creating a military buffer zone under rebel rule in southern Syria, in order to keep the hostile Syrian army, Hizballah and elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps fighting for Assad at a distance from its northern borders with Syria and Lebanon.

If Obama goes through with accepting the Assad regime, Israel will have to write off most of its military investment in Syria. In any case, Israel’s intelligence agencies misjudged the Syrian situation from the first; until a year ago, they kept on insisting that Assad’s days were numbered.

DEBKAfile’s Arab sources single out major pointers to the approach of a reversal of Syrian policy in Washington:

1.  The resignation of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary last month. Hagel was adamant in advocating Assad’s ouster.

2.  No more than one sentence was devoted to the Syrian conflict in the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) summit’s resolutions in Doha last week, despite its centrality to inter-Arab affairs: the summit called for “a political solution” of the Syrian issue that would “ensure Syria’s security, stability and territorial integrity.”

Not a word on Assad’s removal from power.

3.  DEBKAfile’s Washington and Moscow sources report that the Syrian issue was destined to figure large in the Rome talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Sunday, Dec. 14.

The Kremlin is making US acceptance of its plan for ending the Syrian conflict the condition for joining the US-European line on the Palestinian demand that next week’s UN Security Council session set a two-year deadline for Palestinian statehood within 1967 border. The text calls for Israeli “occupation of Palestinian territory captured in the 1967 war” to end by November 2016.

France, Britain and Germany are in efforts to draft a resolution of their own.

So any deal Kerry and Lavrov are able to finalize for a tradeoff between the Palestinian and Syria issues will be put before Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu when he meets the US secretary in Rome Monday, Dec. 15.

Netanyahu will ask Washington to exercise its veto against the Palestinian motion. But the Obama administration would rather not, since it supports the Palestinians in principle.

Israel may therefore find itself this time ranged against a united US-Russian front on the Palestinian issue, Moscow’s reward for Washington lining up behind its plan for Syria.

Moscow proposes that the Syrian opposition throw in the towel and both sides accept a truce – especially in the long battle for Aleppo – for the re-convening of the Geneva 2 peace conference in Moscow, with America’s support and participation. Provincial elections would then take place in Syria to bring the Assad government and opposition elements into collaborating in the various ruling institutions.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov spent two days in Damascus last week to work on the details of this blueprint with Bashar Assad, after which he commented tellingly that he was “in contact with our American partners.”

Russian officials then elaborated on their plan before Hizballah and opposition representatives in Turkey.

Even the US Senate bill calling for fresh sanctions against Moscow and the supply of $350 million worth of military aid to Ukraine under the Ukraine Freedom Support Act is unlikely to rock the Kerry-Lavrov Middle East boat.

President Obama is unlikely to affix his signature to the bill and President Vladimir Putin will take it in his stride if he sees progress in reaching an agreement with the United States on Syria.

Even the American threat to station medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe following Moscow’s refusal to endorse the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty failed to cast a cloud over the Kerry-Lavrov encounter.

The two top diplomats have a solid history of progress in forging diplomatic accords on thorny international issues (e.g. Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s chemical weapons).

If they fail this time, Netanyahu’s talks with Kerry will be lighter and smoother. But if a Syria-Palestinian tradeoff is forged between the two powers, Israel may for the first time find itself on a collision course with a joint US-Russian front on the Palestinian issue.

Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Sunday, Dec. 14, that Israel would “rebuff any UN moves to set a timetable for withdrawal from territory.” He said Israel now faced a possible diplomatic offensive “to force upon us” such a withdrawal within two years.

Therefore, the Israeli air strikes against a shipment of Russian missiles for Syria for Hizballah last Monday, Dec. 8, may be seen as an act of defiance against this nascent big-power partnership. Our sources reveal that Moscow was not alone in demanding “explanations” for Israel’s “aggressive” – so too did Washington.

War Drums Beat Louder & Faster Between U.S. &amp

December 14, 2014

War Drums Beat Louder & Faster Between U.S. & Russia

Posted on December 14, 2014

by Eric Zuesse. Eric Zuesse

via War Drums Beat Louder & Faster Between U.S. & Russia Washington’s Blog.

 

Eric Zuesse

On Saturday, December 13th, Russian media reported that U.S. President Obama evidently can’t wait to sign the congressional authorization for war against Russia (which has already been passed in draft form by 98% of U.S. House members and 100% of U.S. Senate members), and that he is already shipping military supplies into Ukraine for use against Ukraine’s ethnic Russians that the Ukrainian Government is trying to eliminate.

Mikhail Emelyanov, a leading Russian parliamentarian, was quoted as saying on Saturday, Russia “cannot calmly watch as the US arms Ukraine with the most modern lethal weapons. In this regard, we should not appear weak. The situation is very alarming. Judging by US intentions, they want to turn Ukraine into a fighting platform against Russia.”

The popular Russian website “Colonel Cassad” reports that the reason why Ukraine’s airports in Zaporozyhe, Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk mysteriously shut down for other traffic on Saturday was to unload weapons-shipments from the U.S. Specifically, it said that, at Zaporozyhe, “one of the airport workers replied that the airport has to be prepared to accept military aircraft with equipment, including Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk. The equipment is expected from the United States.” For the time being, civilian traffic at all three of those airports is being reduced during the next few days, in order to unload that U.S. freight.

Also reported Saturday at fortruss.blogspot was that, “Right now at Zaporozhye airport they are unloading two transport planes from USA. Cargo is in boxes. According to additional information two more planes are expected to arrive.”

Just one day prior, Foreign Policy had bannered on Friday, “Who Will Foot the Bill in Ukraine?” and their reporter naively claimed that, “little aid is forthcoming for Ukraine as its government faces a shortfall.”

The “aid” is actually already coming, in the form of U.S. military cargo shipments, gratis from U.S. taxpayers (though hardly gratis from the U.S. armaments-makers, whose business is booming from this). And the Ukraine “government faces a shortfall” thing is actually far worse than that: as Forbes’s Mark Adomanis headlined on April 15th, “Ukraine’s Economy Is Nearing Collapse.” He reported, “The central bank was forced to take such desperate measures because the currency has been in free fall, losing more than 35% of its value against the dollar this year. The Hryvnia has been the world’s worst performing currency in 2014.” And: “The only reason that things haven’t totally imploded is because of the $18 billion package of assistance from the IMF and the $9 billion in additional assistance pledged by the United States and the European Union. This financial assistance is desperately needed and will obviously help the Ukrainian government keep the lights on. The problem is that Ukraine’s funding needs aren’t a static target but are directly influenced by changes in its economic outlook. Since that economic outlook is darkening, Ukraine’s already large funding needs have grown commensurately.”

Forbes’s Kenneth Rapoza then noted on November 12th, “The nation’s currency, the hryvnia, has lost 91.5% of its value so far this year.”

On December 11th, Ukraine’s new Minister of Economic Development admitted, “By and large, the state is bankrupt.”

So: U.S. and European taxpayers will be funding all of those ‘loans,’ which will never be paid back, they’re actually donations instead of loans, because Ukraine was already tens of billions of dollars in debt even before the West took over; and none of these additional ‘debts’ will be able to be paid back one cent unless and until those earlier debts are, which will never be possible in that spiraling-downward country, which is now designing a military graveyard with a capacity for 250,000 fresh corpses of Ukrainian soldiers, and that’s not a very productive “investment” for any country to be making. America’s ‘investment’ in Ukraine is an ‘investment’ in corpses; and far more of those will be of the millions of residents in the targeted region than of the soldiers on either side of the conflict.

One of Russia’s loans to Ukraine has a provision saying that if Ukraine’s ratio of debt to GDP exceeds 60%, then Russia can demand and Ukraine must pay in cash the full due amount. The ratio has already exceeded that, but the official figure won’t be announced until March 2015, and, as Britain’s Economist noted, “That could trigger a default on all Ukraine’s other international bonds (which are worth about $16 billion up to 2023).” So: all of the money that is being ‘loaned’ to Ukraine now is purely a donation, since Russia will certainly pull the plug and flush Ukraine down the toilet this coming Spring. Then, all of a sudden, that $16 billion in cash will need to be put up by the Ukrainian Government, and whatever there is to put up, practically all of it will have to be paid to Ukraine’s old chief lender: Russia. The West will get little or nothing of it.

Washington isn’t out to help the Ukrainian people; it’s solely using Ukraine as a launching-pad for WW III against Russia. That’s all it’s “good for” now. And that’s what Obama is using it for: to slaughter, first, the residents in the parts of Ukraine that refuse to be ruled by the regime that Obama put in place; and, then, everybody else.

If this sounds crazy (and of course it does), then please ask your two Senators and your one Representative in the House: “Why did you vote to approve sending weapons to the Ukrainian Government?” (Mine refuses to answer.)

Please then report back here, in the reader-comments below, what the answer to that question is. Everyone who reads this article here will be interested to know what the answer to that question is.

Here is the list of the only 10 members of Congress who voted no on that bill, and all of them are in the House:

California’s George Miller (D)

California’s Dana Rohrabacher (R)

Florida’s Alan Grayson (D)

Florida’s Alcee Hastings (D)

Kentucky’s Thomas Massie (R)

Michigan’s Justin Amash (R)

North Carolina’s Walter Jones (R)

Tennessee’s John Duncan (R)

Texas’s Beto O’Rourke (D)

Washington’s Jim McDermott (D)

If any of those Representatives happens to be yours, then don’t ask him why he voted for the bill; he voted against it.

‘The Third Narrative,’ and Michael Walzer and Todd Gitlin, Join the Fight Against Israel

December 14, 2014

The Third Narrative,’ and Michael Walzer and Todd Gitlin, Join the Fight Against Israel

December 13th, 2014 – 2:38 pm

By Ron Radosh

via Ron Radosh » ‘The Third Narrative,’ and Michael Walzer and Todd Gitlin, Join the Fight Against Israel.

 

By RONALD RADOSH AND SOL STERN

Michael Walzer, the distinguished political philosopher who writes on topics as varied as the theory of just war and Judaism, is now one of the leading lights of a group of academics called The Third Narrative, which recently issued a statement calling for “personal sanctions” against right-wing Israeli political figures whose views are allegedly so beyond the pale of acceptable discourse about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that they should be turned into non persons.

For starters, Walzer and his fellow “liberal Zionists” are demanding that the United States and the EU impose visa restrictions and freeze bank accounts for such dangerous Israeli politicians as Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, Housing Minister Uri Ariel, Likud MK Moshe Feiglin and Ze’ev Hever, head of a group called Amana, which oversees Israeli settlements. These four right-wing activists were chosen, a scholar told The Forward, “because they stand out by working to make the occupation permanent and irreversible.”

The group’s members include sociology and journalism professor Todd Gitlin, historian Michael Kazin, sociologist Alan Wolfe and other self-proclaimed center-left academics, some of whom are social-democrats affiliated with the journal Dissent. Most of them are proud members of the “democratic Left.” They also proclaim themselves liberal Zionists who oppose academic boycotts such as those advocated by the BDS movement.

Some years ago, Michael Walzer wrote a penetrating essay titled “Can There Be a Decent Left?” But by signing on to these destructive and hypocritical demands, Walzer himself has provided strong evidence that the left (including even the social-democratic left) has become indecent about Israel. Having taken on those he called the “Blame America First” leftists, Walzer has himself joined the “Blame Israel First” crowd.  His group says it distinguishes itself from the BDS extremists who hate Israel. Rather than ostracize all Israeli academics, they stress that they are only targeting individuals whom they see as most responsible for the “occupation.” As they say in their Dec.8th statement, these individuals pursue “unjust, unlawful, and destructive policies in their most extreme and dangerous form.”

Walzer and his colleagues believe that these perfidious individuals do not have the same rights of free speech as the “good Israelis” who favor a two-state solution and the creation of a Palestinian state. Bennett should be virtually criminalized because he favors “creeping annexation, Ariel for advocating a one-state solution, and Feiglin for his “undisguised extremism” and for his advocacy of annexationist policies, such as building homes in outposts considered illegal by the Israeli government.

The new liberal Jewish censors have an entirely different standard for Palestinian leaders. They know that Mahmoud Abbas’ government on the West Bank has demonstrated again and again that it will not acknowledge Israel’s permanent right to exist as a Jewish state, has done nothing to stop the rampant anti-Semitism throughout the school system and the PA itself, and that Abbas has never agreed to give up the “right to return,” which if implemented means the end of the Jewish state.

Since Abbas and his comrades support extreme positions that prevent a peaceful solution of the conflict, Walzer and company should logically be in favor of personal sanctions against these anti-peace extremists in the Palestinian Authority. Unfortunately the liberal, pro-peace Zionists  have never protested the destructive, anti-Jewish statements emanating regularly from PA headquarters in Ramallah. Like the BDS movement whom they claim to oppose, their proposals are aimed only at Israeli political leaders they disagree with.

Consider, for example, the logic Todd Gitlin uses in urging academics to follow their lead rather than the BDS movement.  Writing in Tablet Magazine and published on The Third Narrative’s website, Gitlin inadvertently reveals that his disagreements with BDS are essentially only tactical. He calls BDS advocates guilty of issuing “apolitical tantrums in cases of right versus right.” But a close reading shows Gitlin guilty himself of very similar tantrums.

He favors “reform boycotts,” such as the “divestment” movement against South Africa in the era of apartheid. He argues that this was a practical objective, in which one side was clearly wrong, while the issue in Israel is a “clash of right against right.” Nevertheless, Gitlin calls the BDS movement’s members “people of good will” who only want to “push Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians.” Really? In 2008, then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Mahmoud Abbas a Palestinian state with the equivalent of 98% of the territory on the West Bank and Gaza and offered to divide Jerusalem so that the Palestinians could establish their capital in the Holy City.  Did Gitlin or Walzer ever call Abbas an extremist for rejecting peace and a two-state solution at the time?

Instead Gitlin offers this virtual endorsement of BDS’ position on the recent Gaza war:

Their passion to press the state of Israel to abandon the occupation of the West Bank, to encourage de facto the emergence of a Palestinian state that would live side-by-side with a majority-Jewish state, I devoutly share. The death toll and destruction caused by Israeli attacks on Gaza this summer only strengthen the case that Israel’s defense needs do not justify wholesale destruction and everyday victimization, even in the face of terror and aggression.

Gitlin believes that Israel’s response to neverending rocket attacks by Hamas was not justified, and accepts without question the BDS narrative that Israel did not try to avoid civilian casualties. He utters not a word about the Hamas fascist movement and totalitarian government that has the support of over 60% of Palestinians and that placed rocket launchers purposefully in civilian areas, including hospitals and schools, knowing that Israel would try to avoid hitting these.

Instead Gitlin and Walzer turn all their political passions exclusively against an Israeli political faction that is a small minority and that at least competes fairly in Israel’s democratic process. Another member of The Third Network, Cary Nelson, editor of a book opposing academic boycotts of Israel, favors condemning the views of Israeli leaders he thinks are extreme, but he makes the basic point that somehow eludes Walzer and Gitlin: “I cannot support sanctioning them for exercising their free speech rights.”

The claim of Gitlin and Walzer that since they are not for a blanket boycott their version is more legitimate and ethical is fallacious. What if a far-right government in this country proposed a ban on those leftist political leaders in Israel whom Walzer and Gitlin like? What if a right-wing European government issued sanctions against Walzer and Gitlin and stopped them from speaking in Europe? Gitlin thinks the views of Bennet and the others are “a proper target” because “their activity is toxic.”  He doesn’t seem to comprehend that these “toxic” leaders  have gained support because ordinary voters in Israel are fed up with the Palestinian leadership’s long and continuing refusal to accept any kind of a just peace and two-state solution.  Israeli politics have become “toxic” primarily because of the failure of Israel’s peace camp to succeed in ending Palestinian rejectionism, despite scores of compromises they have offered to the Palestinians.

Instead of issuing faux travel bans against Israelis, The Third Narrative group would do much better for Middle East peace if they put some pressure on Mahmoud Abbas to give up the Palestinian right of return. They have not one word about the necessity for such an action, not to speak of urging sanctions against any Arab opponents of Israel, including Hamas. Their position is asymmetric, felt only in Israel but not in Gaza or the West Bank. It is similar to the positions of the “peace movements” of the 1980s in Western Europe that opposed the Euromissiles placed in Germany against the Soviets by Jimmy Carter, but said not one word about Soviet armaments and missile deployment aimed at the West.

Walzer and Gitlin’s arguments for a limited, personal boycott achieves nothing for peace, but it does cross the slippery slope in which any side can seek to limit the legitimate political activity of certain hated individuals. The position they take harks back to the popular position espoused by Herbert Marcuse in the 1960s- “repressive tolerance.” Marcuse believed that to attain freedom, one had to suppress the opinions of those on the Right. Rather than debate with an opponent, as Martin Indyk recently did with Naftali Bennet at the Brookings Institution, they prefer to repress it, via attempting to silence those they oppose by sanctions. It does not occur to them that trying to suppress free speech in another democracy — one that is a key ally of the U.S. in the Middle East — makes them akin to the caricature always used by the Left, that Americans are imperialists seeking to tell other nations how to run their affairs.

It is beyond hypocrisy to see their call for sanctions adopted by academics and intellectuals who bathe themselves in the halo of humanism, liberal Zionism, and social democracy.

As George Orwell famously noted, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

 

 

Israeli Ambassador: Obama “Worldview Not in Accord w/Any Israeli Government.”

December 14, 2014

Israeli Ambassador: Obama “Worldview Not in Accord w/Any Israeli Government.” Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, December 13, 2014

But it certainly is in accord with Iran.

Former ambassador Michael Oren provided a little reminder that the issue isn’t Netanyahu and that Obama’s radical politics would put him at odds with any Israeli government.

This is an administration which makes the racist claim that Jews living in Jerusalem are “settlers”, which funds terrorists and takes their side against Israel.

Michael Oren was the consummate diplomat. He was dignified, thoughtful, articulate, knowledgeable and tactful.

In a dialogue at The Plaza here last week at the annual Scholar-Statesman dinner of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Oren said that “this administration [in Washington] has a worldview that is not in accord with any Israeli government,” not just the current one.

Describing the Obama administration as “ideological” on the Mideast, with the president’s 2009 outreach-to-the-Arab-world Cairo speech as its source, Oren said the White House views east Jerusalem communities like Gilo, for example, as not necessarily part of the Jewish state, a position he said no Israeli government would accept.

(Gilo is over the Green Line but part of the Jerusalem municipality, with a largely Jewish population.)

After the March 17 elections, Israel’s next government “likely will move to the right,” Oren predicted, “and America may be going a different way.”

Though he said the U.S.-Israel relationship is crucial — “we [Washington and Jerusalem] have no choice but to be allies” — he asserted on several occasions that “Israel has to take responsibility for itself.”

Asked by moderator Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute, about the West’s negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, Oren first noted that Israel’s “margin for error is exactly zero” on this issue, given Iran’s longstanding threat to destroy the Jewish state.

Then, his voice rising, he said that if you believe that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is indeed the moderate he claims to be, if you believe that Iran has reversed its policy of being the world’s leading exporter of terror, if you believe that its leaders have changed their long pattern of lying about the nuclear program, and if you believe the West is capable of and willing to respond militarily to prevent the production of a nuclear bomb, then yes, you should support the U.S. effort to reach an agreement with Iran.

“But if your children and grandchildren’s’ lives depended on it, you may reach a different conclusion,” he asserted, adding: “We [the Jewish people] have not come back after 2,000 years to disappear.”

And it goes without saying, that if you believe that you’ve chosen to completely ignore everything happening in the world.

I am not Oren’s biggest fan and what he is saying is simply common sense. Obama isn’t just at odds with Netanyahu or with Israel. He’s at odds with the remaining US allies in the Middle East. If Obama is at odds with Muslim allies of the US because he supports Muslim terrorists like the Muslim Brotherhood, it goes without saying that his relationship with Israel will be toxic.

IAF Syria Raid Last Week was ‘the Biggest to Date’

December 14, 2014

IAF Syria Raid Last Week was ‘the Biggest to Date’ – Defense/Security – News – Arutz Sheva.

Targets included Dimas airport, SAM repository, and the 105th Brigade, says Al Monitor.
By Arutz Sheva
First Publish: 12/13/2014, 10:30 PM
IAF F-15

IAF F-15

The Israeli air raid on Hezbollah weapons in Syria last Sunday was the most extensive yet, in terms of the number of targets hit, according to a report on Al Monitor. IAF warplanes targeted military sites in Dimas, 25 kilometers northwest of Damascus, as well as Damascus International Airport, 25 kilometers east of the capital, according to a statement issued by the Syrian armed forces.

The IAF has carried out at least four strikes on targets in Syria since the civil war there began, in order to prevent weapons from being moved from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The warplanes targeted a Syrian military airport in the Dimas area, according to a Syrian pro-government journalist who covers Syrian army operations in the capital and who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.

A Syrian soldier who serves in Dimas confirmed that the targets were arms destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“The Israeli shelling that targeted the Dimas airport hit the building where these shipments are assembled, and it hit the first truck that left the area toward the border,” the soldier said, noting that two of the Hezbollah fighters who were escorting the truck were killed in the airstrike and a third was wounded.

In addition to the Dimas airport, the Israeli warplanes reportedly struck a repository of surface-to-surface missiles in the region, as well as the 105th Brigade, according to the journalist who visited the attacked site in Dimas.

The journalist said, “The damages incurred by these military centers are great, and the targets are mostly depots of weapons and missiles. Moreover, a Sukhoi military aircraft that had landed a few minutes before the raid at the Dimas airport was also affected by the bombing.”

‘Hamas will liberate West Bank, just like Gaza’

December 14, 2014

‘Hamas will liberate West Bank, just like Gaza,’ Israel Hayom, December 14, 2014

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar reveals group’s true intentions in Judea and Samaria, says, “We will repeat the same steps in the West Bank as preparation for our arrival in all of Palestine” • PM speaks with Greek counterpart after Athens attack.

141854662560693664a_bMahmoud al-Zahar called security cooperation between Israel and the PA a “national disgrace” | Photo credit: Reuters

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar over the weekend revealed the Palestinian terrorist organization’s true intentions in Judea and Samaria.

In a speech marking the 27th anniversary of the group’s creation, al-Zahar said, “Just as we liberated Gaza, just as we established a real national government there, just as we built a victorious army, just as we built a protective police force, and just as we have created security apparatuses with which to fight the enemy, we will repeat the same steps in the West Bank as preparation for our arrival in all of Palestine.”

Prior to the IDF’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza this past summer, and following the collapse of diplomatic talks with the Palestinian Authority, the PA and Hamas held successful talks to establish a unity government, which was formed in early June. Hamas, however, simultaneously worked to topple the Fatah-led PA, and the infrastructure it had built in Judea and Samaria was uncovered in mid-August by Israel’s Shin Bet security agency and dismantled. The Shin Bet arrested 93 Hamas operatives working to establish the group’s military infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, an infrastructure that included money and weapons caches, safe houses and more.

Orchestrating these efforts was senior Hamas operative Salah al-Arouri, from the terrorist group’s headquarters in Turkey.

Until now, Hamas had denied reports it was seeking control of Judea and Samaria. Last week al-Zahar accused Fatah of “treating Hamas like an enemy instead of as a political rival.”

In a statement issued on his behalf, al-Zahar blamed Fatah for the siege imposed on Gaza, and he accused the PA of preventing construction materials from entering Gaza while Israel was allowing such goods to cross the border. Al-Zahar also condemned security cooperation between Israel and the PA, calling it a “national disgrace.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with his Greek counterpart, Antonis Samaras, on Friday following Thursday night’s shooting attack on the Israeli Embassy in Athens. Over 50 bullets were fired at the building, but no one was harmed in the attack. Greek security forces believe the attack was perpetrated by a radical left-wing organization, and were investigating any connection to a similar shooting attack on the German ambassador’s residence in Athens last year.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement following the shooting, calling on the international community “to condemn anti-Israel incitement spread around the world by Palestinian leaders and pro-Palestinian groups.”

The Middle East realists: Old and new

December 14, 2014

The Middle East realists: Old and new, Israel Hayom, Richard Baehr, December 14, 2014

America, according to Friedman and the Israel Lobby professors ‎should also ignore Israeli concerns and push forward with a nuclear ‎deal with Iran. A successful negotiation, even one which leaves Iran ‎with nuclear breakout capability in a few months, is certain to ‎change Iran’s pattern of international behavior, as it becomes a ‎regular member of the “community of nations” and gets back to ‎enjoying more robust economic relations with many other nations. ‎Iranian aid to Hezbollah, Hamas, Assad in Syria, Yemeni Shiite ‎rebel groups, Iraqi Shiites, all of these aggressive efforts will soften ‎or go away once Iran becomes America’s latest and greatest strategic ‎partner.‎

Friedman has been one of the great lap dogs for the Obama ‎administration, and his loyalty cost the president very little.

A touch of realism would be welcome in the White House at this ‎point. But it won’t happen because the self-styled realists are ‎wearing the blinkers, and think they know all there is to know.

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Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of ‎Government and Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago like to ‎call themselves foreign policy realists. Realists are, in their minds, people who can ‎assess international situations without any ideological blinders or bias. Walt and ‎Mearsheimer co-authored “The Israel Lobby,” originally as a lengthy article in the ‎London Review of Books in 2006, and then as a much longer book version in 2007. In both ‎the article and book, the professors argued that America’s very tight relationship ‎with Israel was strategically unsound for the United States. The authors claimed ‎that the closeness between the two countries was a product of the behavior of the ‎Congress of the United States, which they believe had been unduly influenced by ‎the political power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and ‎other supporters of the Jewish state, such as evangelical Christians. ‎

In less academic, and blunter terms, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman ‎welcomed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his address to a joint session ‎of Congress in 2011, writing that the applause for Netanyahu reflected the fact that the ‎Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”‎

Of course, Friedman had been out ahead of Walt and Mearsheimer, with a similar ‎themed comment in a column in The New York Times in February 5, 2004:‎

‎”Israel’s prime minister has had George Bush under ‎house arrest in the Oval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. ‎Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded ‎by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice ‎president, Dick Cheney, who’s ready to do whatever Mr. ‎Sharon dictates, and by political handlers telling the ‎president not to put any pressure on Israel in an election ‎year all conspiring to make sure the president does ‎nothing.”

Friedman styles himself as an “eminence grise,” sitting high up in ‎New York Times land, a platform from where he can speak as an ‎equal with the likes of academic intellectuals such as Mearsheimer ‎and Walt, but also foreign leaders too numerous to name, and ‎American presidents, all of whom understand the significance of ‎receiving a favorable column from Tom Friedman. As a presumably ‎great strategic thinker and realist like Walt and Mearsheimer, ‎Friedman has come to the same conclusions as the professors on ‎where America’s strategic interests lie in the Middle East. America ‎must challenge Israel and force a two-state solution with the ‎Palestinians. This is in Israel’s interests as well, of course, since the ‎absence of peace creates so much ill will for both Israel and its ally ‎America among other nations in the region and around the world. ‎Friedman always claims he has Israel’s real interests at heart, while ‎their elected government digs deeper holes. Clearly, if Israel were ‎only to be more forthcoming, the deal with the Palestinians could ‎finally get done this time (next time, some time, whenever…). ‎

America, according to Friedman and the Israel Lobby professors ‎should also ignore Israeli concerns and push forward with a nuclear ‎deal with Iran. A successful negotiation, even one which leaves Iran ‎with nuclear breakout capability in a few months, is certain to ‎change Iran’s pattern of international behavior, as it becomes a ‎regular member of the “community of nations” and gets back to ‎enjoying more robust economic relations with many other nations. ‎Iranian aid to Hezbollah, Hamas, Assad in Syria, Yemeni Shiite ‎rebel groups, Iraqi Shiites, all of these aggressive efforts will soften ‎or go away once Iran becomes America’s latest and greatest strategic ‎partner.‎

Friedman has been one of the great lap dogs for the Obama ‎administration, and his loyalty cost the president very little. In his ‎case, the president revealed that he reads Friedman’s columns, and ‎then followed it up by inviting Friedman into the Oval Office to ‎offer up his invaluable insights. With all that respect and notoriety, ‎nothing could possibly stop the love coming from the Times ‎columnist for everything Obama. Friedman’s latest service to President Barack ‎Obama was to trash the critics of the president’s Iran policy:‎

‎ ‎‎”Never have I seen Israel and America’s core Arab allies ‎working more in concert to stymie a major foreign policy ‎initiative of a sitting U.S. president, and never have I seen ‎more lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans — more ‎willing to take Israel’s side against their own president’s. ‎I’m certain this comes less from any careful consideration ‎of the facts and more from a growing tendency by many ‎American lawmakers to do whatever the Israel lobby asks ‎them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign ‎donations. “‎

Friedman and Walt and Mearsheimer are locked into an old and ‎predictable thesis that America’s real strategic interest in the region ‎is securing its oil supplies, and cozying up with the oil-rich nations ‎of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. Improving relations with Iran fosters ‎a new climate where American is not so isolated as a result of its ‎support for Israel. And if Israel and the Palestinians make peace, ‎there will be a warm glow everywhere, improving the atmospherics ‎to address other regional issues.‎

There is however a new realism which has overtaken some of those ‎countries who have been patronized by the American realists for ‎decades. For years, many oil rich nations subsidized the efforts of ‎Islamists in schools, universities, mosques, and in politics. They ‎believed they had bought them off to a large extent in their own ‎countries, but could tip the scales against Israel by aiding Hamas ‎and could satisfy the aggressive demands for Islamist expansion in ‎other places. ‎

The new realism, demonstrated most prominently by Egypt, but ‎also by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all Sunni Arab states, is that ‎Iran, in particular a nuclear Iran, will become more assertive, not ‎less, and represents the biggest threat to their own regimes. Sunni ‎Islamists are also a threat to stability — witness Iraq, Libya, Syria, the ‎Sinai in Egypt. Increasingly, Turkey and Qatar are now grouped ‎with Iran as advancing an agenda that is unhelpful to the Saudis, ‎Egypt, and the UAE. Saudi Arabia and Egypt will not vote with ‎Israel at the United Nations, and they will continue to sign onto the ‎usual collection of resolutions condemning Israeli human rights ‎violations against the Palestinians. But it is Egypt that has gone to ‎war with jihadists in Sinai, and effectively shut its border with ‎Gaza. Egyptian soldiers and civilians are being murdered by Hamas ‎and other allies of the Muslim Brotherhood. Defeating this threat is ‎as important to Egypt, as defeating Hamas is for Israel.‎

Caroline Glick makes the argument this way:‎

‎”But the alliance that emerged this summer between Israel and ‎Egypt, with the participation of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, is ‎also a highly significant strategic development. For the first time, ‎a major regional power is basing its strategic posture on its ‎understanding that the threats against itself and against Israel ‎stem from the same sources and as a consequence, that the ‎war against Israel is a war against it.‎

“Israelis have argued this case for years to their Arab neighbors ‎as well as to the Americans and other Western states. But for ‎multiple reasons, no one has ever been willing to accept this ‎basic, obvious reality.‎

“As a consequence, everyone from the Americans to the ‎Europeans to the Saudis long supported policies that empower ‎jihadist forces against Israel.‎

‎‎ ‎“[Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah] Sissi is the first major leader to break with this consensus, as a ‎result of actions Hamas took before and since his rise to power. ‎He has brought Saudi Arabia and the UAE along on his ‎intellectual journey.‎

‎ ‎“Sissi’s reassessment of the relationship between the war against ‎Israel and the war against Egypt has had a profound impact on ‎regional realities generally and on Israel’s strategic posture ‎specifically.‎

‎”From Israel’s perspective, this is a watershed event.‎

‎ ‎“The government must take every possible action, in economic ‎and military spheres, to ensure that Sissi benefits from his ‎actions.”‎

Of course, the Obama administration seemed enthralled with the ‎Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, and both threatened ‎and for a time carried out an aid suspension when Sissi and his supporters engineered the ‎overthrow. There have been rumors, denied of course, that the White House has entertained similar notions for Israel due to its ‎‎”unconstructive” policy on settlement construction. More likely, ‎the administration may be trying to intervene in a none too ‎subtle fashion with the upcoming Israeli elections, to signal how ‎much better relations would be between Israel and America if ‎only Netanyahu were gone. If that is the White House strategy, it is not, ‎to use a word, realistic. Most Israelis expect nothing but the ‎back of the hand from Obama at this point, and Obama’s ‎blessing will not enhance the candidates of the Left in the ‎election.

A touch of realism would be welcome in the White House at this ‎point. But it won’t happen because the self-styled realists are ‎wearing the blinkers, and think they know all there is to know.‎

Op-Ed: Going from Bad to Worse

December 14, 2014

Op-Ed: Going from Bad to Worse, Israel National News, Ted Belman, December 14, 2014

(Please see also Caroline Glick tells off Danish ambassador and Preacher at Al-Aqsa Mosque to the Jews: “We Shall Slaughter You Without Mercy” — DM)

From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.

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The world is totally committed to the two-statesolution. European country after country is passing non-binding resolutions to recognize Palestine in principle. The parameters of the deal which have been set in stone, notwithstanding that all issues are to be decided by negotiations, are the ’67 lines plus swaps and the division of Jerusalem.

Never mind that such a deal is not good enough for the Arabs.  Hamas rejects it outright. Mahmoud Abbas, as President of the PA, is still clamoring for the so called right of return and is unwilling to recognize Israel as the home of the Jews while at the same time insisting that “Palestine” be yudenrein.

The EU has already put a boycott on goods from Judea and Samaria and is drafting legislation imposing sanctions on Israel. It is even rumored that the US is contemplating doing the same. That’s ironic considering that both want to ease sanctions on Iran.

Israel, for its part is going along to get along, at least that is, to a degree. Netanyahu has agreed to negotiate the two-state solution subject to three pillars, “One, genuine mutual recognition; two, an end to all claims, including the right of return; and three, a long-term Israeli security presence.” This is according to his remarks to the Saban Conference.  He did not mention borders. Would he accept ’67 lines plus swaps?  He didn’t say but I think it is implied. Even so, there are no takers.

The Palestine Authority (PA) has turned its back on negotiations which would require it to accept these pillars and instead is getting ready to ask the UN Security Council to recognize the state of Palestine and to call for Israel to evacuate the territories calling for a full Israeli withdraw to the pre-1967 lines by November 2016.

The Obama administrations is working to prevent this but at the same time is considering the implications of not vetoing it. From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.

Congress, on the other hand, in their spending bill, provides as follows, according to the Washington  Post, “The bill stops assistance to the Palestinian Authority if it becomes a member of the United Nations or UN agencies without an agreement  with Israel. It also prohibits funds for Hamas.” and provides “$3.1 billion in total aid for the country (Israel) plus $619.8 million in defense aid”. It has yet to pass.

Meanwhile the PA continues its incitement and lies. A recent poll of Palestinians showed that 80 percent supported individual attacks by Palestinians who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations and 59.6 percent supporting rocket fire at Israel. Is this a partner for peace? This poll may have been intended to promote the resistance.

At long last Israel is mounting certain responses. 1) Greater police presence in Jerusalem with fewer restrictions on them, 2) Greater penalties, like longer sentences, for any violent rioters and 3) Enacting zero tolerance laws prohibiting incitement.  The Bill, not yet passed into law, states, “A call to an act of violence or terror deserves condemnation in the criminal realm as well, even if it is insufficient to lead to violence or terror. It does not deserve to be protected by the principle of freedom of expression.”

Wednesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon attributed  the building freeze in Judea and Samaria to pressure from the Obama administration and suggested Israel has to wait him out.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that objection to “settlements” was longstanding and would not change after President Barack Obama leaves office in 2017 and said “Our policy has been consistent for quite some time,”

I am not so sure. Besides, she misses the point. While all administrations, from President Reagan on have considered settlements, while not illegal, to be an “obstacle to peace”, none of them forced Israel to freeze construction and even planning for construction and certainly not in Jerusalem.

The US and the EU continually allege that ‘settlements’ are an obstacle to peace. Have you ever heard them claim the same about PA incitement, or its support of terror or its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or its unwillingness to forego the “right of return”? Maybe, a little bit in passing, but they have done nothing to change their position and hardly condemned them.

Furthermore, Obama’s decision to back negotiations based on borders along the ’67 lines plus swaps was a big mistake. Doing so was contrary to his often stated position that any settlement must come through direct negotiations. He has forever repeated the mantra that neither side should take any unilateral moves which pre-determine the outcome.  He himself, by predetermining the borders, is pre-determining the outcome.

Had he not pre-determined the borders of the final settlement, then Israel would have been entitled to build everywhere at its peril, meaning that when borders are agreed upon, if ever, the housing on Israel’s side would remain and the housing on the Palestinian side would have to be vacated if the PA insists on the Nazi doctrine of making the land yuden frie (Jew free) and the West supports such a doctrine.

The only unilateral moves proscribed by the Oslo Accords and all subsequent agreements, are those which change the status of the land. By this is meant, claiming sovereignty. So Israel can’t annex the land andthe PA can’t go to the UN and ask them for sovereignty, not so long as the Oslo Accords have not been formally abrogated. The construction of housing by Israel in no way changes the status of the land. And neither does land use planning.

And if you think that Israel will agree to divide Jerusalem, their eternal capital, think again. Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem, when addressing the JPOST Diplomatic Conference attended by over three hundred of diplomats, gave a very upbeat assessment of the transformation of Jerusalem that is taking place and will continue to take place.  He stressed the commitment by him and the government to maintain the status quo between all religions. He ended by disabusing the audience of any thoughts they might have about dividing Jerusalem. It will never happen, he said, and I believe him.

Israel is consumed with the issue of whether to pass the nation-state bill which essentially declares that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. To do so, claims the left in Israel, is to diminish it as a democratic state. But there is no evidence to support this.

Eugene Kontorovich wrote a two part article in the Washington Post onThe legitimacy of Israel’s nation-state bill in which he said the bill was unremarkable when compared to many European constitutions with similar, and stronger, national homeland provisions.

He also argued that:

“The proposed measure must also be understood in the context of Israel’s diplomatic situation. Israel’s biggest diplomatic issue is the status of Jerusalem and the West Bank, and international pressure to create a new Arab state there and in Gaza. The major argument by proponents of territorial withdrawal (including President Obama and Sec. Kerry) is that despite the serious security risks, Israel must retreat in order to maintain a “Jewish state.” Indeed, even foreign leaders, like President Obama and Secretary Kerry have both justified their pressure on Israel by invoking the preservation of the Israel’s Jewish identity.”

And went further:

“Thus supporters of Israel leaving the West Bank believe having a Jewish state is worth security risks, surrendering historical homeland and religious sites, and expelling over 100,000 Jews. That suggests a Jewish state is not merely a legitimate thing, but one that is worth a great deal. Yet the same voices calling for Israel to undertake dangerous diplomatic concessions in the name of preserving the state’s Jewish identity balk at legislation declaring that the state in fact is what they claim they want it to remain.”

According to a Israel Democracy Institute recent Poll, 75% of Israeli Jews see no contradiction between Israel being Jewish and being dermcratic.

MEMRI, the NGO that for years has translated the Arab media to document what the Arabs including the PA say among themselves as opposed to what they say in English to the West, prefaced their latest report with this:

“Preacher At Al-Aqsa Mosque In Jerusalem Tells Jews: ‘We Shall Slaughter You Without Mercy’ and ‘I Say To [You] Loud And Clear: The Time For Your Slaughter Has Come’; Says Koran Depicted Jews ‘In The Most Abominable Images,’ Allah Turned The Jews ‘Into Apes And Pigs’; Calls To ‘Hasten The Establishment Of The State Of The Islamic Caliphate’”

Is there any making peace with these people?