Posted tagged ‘Two state solution’

Israel’s Revenge Is That “We Are Still Here”

June 7, 2015

Israel’s Revenge Is That “We Are Still Here” The Legal Insurrection, June 7, 2015

My wife and I are back, after an intense two weeks in Israel.

From the Lebanese to Gaza borders, from the Mediterranean Sea to Judea and Samaria, from the cool evenings of Jerusalem to the heat of the Negev Desert, from an apartment in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem to Bedouin villages in the north and south, from university campuses to military bases, from faculty to students, from Jews to Muslims … I can’t say we saw it all, but we saw a lot.

I’ve documented most of our big events in daily posts, with the exception of our emotional meetings with the families of Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner, students killed in the 1969 Supersol supermarket bombing by Rasmea Odeh; that post is coming, but I still have new photos, documents and information I have to work through.

Here are my 5 Big Takeaways from the trip:

1. Our Revenge Is That “We Are Still Here”

Near the start of our trip, we visited Moshav Avivim straddling the Lebanese border, where we met Shimon Biton, a survivor of the 1970 bazooka attack on a school bus by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Biton, who was six and one-half years old, lost his father in the attack, and himself was shot point blank range by the terrorists when they realized he survived the bazooka attack.  Ten days before we met Biton, he was reunited for the first time in 45 years with the nurse who helped save him.  (Featured Image)

When we asked whether he ever wanted revenge, Biton told us that the revenge was that “we are still here and building for another 70 families.”

Moshav-Aviviv-Shimon-Biton-e1432683043370[Shimon Biton, Moshav Avivim, Israel]

When we related that story to numerous people we met along the rest of the trip, heads vigorously shook up and down.  It struck a chord, since almost every Israeli has a relative or friend impacted by terror.

Despite several decades of terrorism, particularly intense during the Second Intifada, and a world campaign against it, the People of Israel are still there.

The will to resist is underestimated.  Israel has a longer-term view, and a history.  It will not give in to boycotts, or Obama, or outside pressure that puts its security at risk.

2. “I don’t like Bibi, BUT….”

For whatever the reason, most of the people with whom we interacted self-identified as center-left or left.

There was no shortage of criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: He’s egotistical, he doesn’t keep his tough promises, he is only interested in his own political survival, he’s a liar, his pre-election comment about Arab voting was shameful, and so on.

Yet with only a couple of exceptions, the negative comments always were followed with a big BUT.

Benjamin-Netanyahu-at-Western-Wall-post-election-2015-e1426681806959[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Western Wall after 2015 election victory.]

But he is the only Israeli politician who has the stature to handle the world pressure; but I don’t envy the position he is in with so many forces against us; but [opposition leader Yitzhak “Bougie” Herzog] Bougie is weak and no one will fear him; and so on.

These opinions pretty much were reflected in polling and the election results — Many people may not like Netanyahu, but he is the only Israeli politician capable of standing up for Israel in a hostile world.

3. I don’t like Obama, no BUTs about it

Polling in Israel shows Obama is hugely unpopular.  Our anecdotal interactions with Israelis confirmed that polling.

I  can’t recall anyone, from left to right, who had anything nice to say about Obama.  The most consistent theme was that Obama is naive and weak, and that naivitee and weakness had resulted in disaster in the Arab world as it encouraged the most aggressive Islamist elements.

They see Syria falling apart with al-Qaeda or ISIS groups likely to control large parts of the country; or if not, then Iran in control. There are no good outcomes for Israel’s Golan Heights border. Along the Lebanese border there is Hezbollah, and in Gaza Hamas and increasingly even more radical Salafist-ISIS groups.

Against this background of being surrounded by a sea of increasing threats resulting from Obama administration policy, not a single person thought the Iran nuclear deal made any sense, or trusted the Obama administration on it.

In other words, Israelis live in the real world, not the world of Obama’s delusional hope.  And they don’t appreciate Obama taking risks with their lives.

4. Are we really that popular in the United States?

The anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement was a frequent topic of conversation, almost always brought up by us as part of describing the type of coverage at Legal Insurrection.  This coincided with what I consider an irrational panic the past two weeks in the Israeli press and political discourse about BDS (more on that in a later post.)

I tried to explain that there is a complete disconnect between the BDS movement in the U.S. and the vast majority of Americans.  Gallup and Pew polling shows Israel at or near historical highs in terms of Israel’s favorability both abolutely and relative to favorability of Palestinians.  The gap between those who pick Israel over Palestinians when the question forces a choice, also is historically high.

Virtually every Israeli we met was shocked that Israel is actually so popular in the United States.  Even Israelis who have extensive American contacts and visit the U.S.

That’s not all so surprising.  Both the U.S. and Israeli media focus on the negative, though for different reasons.  The U.S. media long has had in implicit anti-Israel bias, compounded by the rise of left-leaning new media, while the Israeli media competes for readers with a “sky is falling” outlook.

(added) Israel’s enormous popularity among Americans is a strategic asset.  That strategic asset needs to be used more effectively to minimize the damage from the narrow but influential slices of the American population — radical faculty, some students, and mainstream journalists — who have explicit or implicit anti-Israel biases. The American people as a whole are the “Israeli Lobby.”

5. The Next War is Only a Matter of Time

While we were in Jerusalem, Israel underwent a national defense drill, including sirens warningof incoming rockets.

Our tour along the Gaza border, particularly near Sderot, also reflected preparation for the next round of rocket fire through reinforcing key civilian infrastructures, such as schools.

Sderot-Israel-bomb-shelter-street-e1433110130989[Sderot, Israel, street bomb shelter with “Shalom” grafitti]

There was a pervasive feeling that the calm cannot last.  And sure enough, while we were there and just after we left, rockets were fired from Gaza to Israel by Salafists suffering from a Hamas crackdown, and groups competing with Hamas for control.

That’s the logic of the region in which Israel lives: Radical groups retaliate against each other by firing rockets at … Israel.

The next war is coming.  Every Israeli knows it. It’s only a matter of time.

*  *  *  *  *

Those are my big takeaways.  I hope you enjoyed the coverage.

We will be back in Israel, hopefully next year.

Who Is Blocking Palestinian Elections?

June 4, 2015

Who Is Blocking Palestinian Elections? The Gatestone InstituteKhaled Abu Toameh, June 4, 2015

  • Fatah is afraid that Hamas’s chances of winning the elections, especially in the West Bank, are very high. Hamas is not willing to relinquish control over the Gaza Strip, certainly not to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, who were expelled from there in 2007.
  • Each party cares only about its own interests, while at the same time lying to the world that it is all Israel’s fault. Hamas continues to invest enormous resources in digging new tunnels, in preparation for a new war with Israel.
  • All this is being done with the help of anti-Israel governments around the world, and groups such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, whose only goal is to delegitimize Israel and demonize Jews rather than to help the Palestinians.

One year after Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas announced the establishment of the Palestinian Fatah-Hamas “national consensus” government, the two rival parties remain as far apart as ever.

The “national consensus” government, headed by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, was formed after a series of “understandings” between Fatah and Hamas on the basis of previous “reconciliation” agreements between the two sides.

A year later, it has become obvious that the “national consensus” government has failed to achieve its main objectives: the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip; ending the conflict between Hamas and Fatah, and preparing for new presidential and parliamentary elections.

Fatah and Hamas can only blame each other for the failure of the latest attempt to end their dispute and do something good for their people. There is no way this time that they could lay the blame on Israel.

The two parties had a chance to cooperate on the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of last year’s military confrontation between Israel and Hamas. The international community even offered to assist in the mission, but Fatah and Hamas chose to continue fighting each other at the expense of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Until today, the two rival Palestinian parties have not been able to reach agreement on a mechanism for the transfer of funds from international donors to the Gaza Strip.

Fatah claims that Hamas wants to steal the money, while Hamas is already accusing Fatah and the Palestinian Authority government of working to lay their hands on the funds.

Fatah and Hamas agreed back then that the Hamdallah government would remain in office for only six months — the period needed to prepare for long overdue presidential and legislative elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But the “interim” government has just completed its first year in power, while the chances of holding new elections under the current circumstances are non-existent.

1096One man, one vote, one time? Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (left) and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas (also president of the Palestinian Authority) are pictured voting in the last election for the Palestinian Legislative Council, which took place in 2006.

Again, the two sides do not seem to be interested at all in sending Palestinians to the ballot boxes. Each side has many good reasons to avoid holding new elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

First, Fatah and Hamas do not trust each other, and each side is convinced that the other would try to steal the vote. How can there be free and democratic elections while Hamas and Fatah continue to arrest and torture each other’s supporters in the Gaza Strip and West Bank?

Second, Fatah is afraid that Hamas’s chances of winning the elections, especially in the West Bank, are very high. That is because many Palestinians still do not trust Abbas and Fatah, whom they accuse of maintaining close security ties with Israel. Moreover, many Palestinians remain disillusioned with Fatah because of its failure to combat financial and administrative corruption and pave the way for the emergence of new leaders.

There is no way that Hamas and Fatah can cast the blame on Israel regarding the issue of elections. If they were really interested in holding new elections, they could do so with the help of the international community, as was the case with previous votes in 2005 and 2006. Israel even helped the Palestinian hold those elections.

When several Hamas candidates from east Jerusalem ran in the January 2006 parliamentary election, Israel did nothing to stop them. Israel even opened its post offices in the city to allow Arab voters from the city (who hold Israeli-issued ID cards) to vote in the election.

Charges made by some Palestinians and anti-Israel groups around the world, to the effect that Israel is responsible for “foiling” efforts to achieve Palestinian unity, are baseless. Although the Israeli government initially opposed the Fatah-Hamas “reconciliation” deal that was reached in 2014, it has not stopped the Palestinian prime minister and some of his cabinet members from visiting the Gaza Strip to pursue the implementation of the accord. In fact, Prime Minister Hamdallah has since visited the Gaza Strip twice, after receiving permission from Israel to go through the Erez border crossing.

Recently, ten Palestinian ministers were forced to leave the Gaza Strip, after Hamas placed them under house arrest in their hotel and banned them from meeting with locals. The ministers entered the Gaza Strip through the Erez border crossing. They came to the Gaza Strip to help solve the problem of thousands of Hamas government employees who have not received salaries for more than a year, and to discuss issues related to the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.

So while Israel facilitated the visits by Hamdallah and his ministers to the Gaza Strip, it was Hamas that expelled them and prevented them from carrying out their duties. Had Israel expelled the ministers from the Gaza Strip or stopped them from entering the area, the country would have been condemned by the international community for “blocking” efforts to achieve Palestinian unity and rebuild the Gaza Strip.

Today, it has become unavoidably clear that Fatah and Hamas, and not Israel, are responsible for the ongoing plight of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The two parties are unlikely to resolve their differences in the near future, further exacerbating the misery of their people. Each party cares only about its own interests, while at the same time lying to the world that it is all Israel’s fault. Hamas is not willing to relinquish control over the Gaza Strip, certainly not to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, who were expelled from there in 2007. As for Abbas, he does not seem to be interested in regaining control over a problematic area such as the Gaza Strip, where most of the population lives under the poverty line and in refugee camps.

Yet instead of being honest with their people and admitting their failure to improve their people’s living conditions, Hamas and Fatah continue to wage smear campaigns against each other and, at the same time, also against Israel.

The campaigns that Hamas and Fatah are waging against Israel, particularly in the international community, are designed to divert attention from their failure to provide their people with basic services or any kind of hope.

While ignoring the plight of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority leaders were prepared to invest huge efforts and resources in trying to have Israel suspended from the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA). It is as if the Palestinians had solved all their major problems and all that they needed to do now was to stop Israeli soccer players from playing in international matches.

Hamas, for its part, continues to invest enormous resources in digging new tunnels, in preparation for another war with Israel. The money that is being invested in the tunnels and the purchase and smuggling of weapons could benefit many families who lost their homes during the last war. But Hamas, like the Palestinian Authority, does not care about the misery of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. They want to fight Israel to the last Palestinian. And this is all being done with the help of anti-Israel governments around the world, and groups such the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, whose only goal is to delegitimize Israel and demonize Jews rather than to help the Palestinians.

Exiled Fatah Terrorist Amna Muna on PA TV: We Will Continue Until Our Entire Land is Liberated

May 26, 2015

Exiled Fatah Terrorist Amna Muna on PA TV: We Will Continue Until Our Entire Land is Liberated, MEMRI TV via You Tube, May 26, 2015

(The Palestinian Authority is Israel’s “partner for peace” and its titular leader, Abbas, can be an angel of peace according to the Pope. Some angel; some peace.– DM)

In a May 15 interview on the official Palestinian Authority TV channel, Amna Muna, a Palestinian terrorist who was freed in the Shalit prisoner swap and exiled to Turkey, said: “Nothing will break our resolve – not imprisonment, not exile, and not martyrdom… We shall continue on our path until our entire land is liberated.” Muna, who was speaking to PA TV over the Internet, was imprisoned for her involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenager Ofir Rahum in 2001.

 

Op-Ed: Every Day is “Opposite Day” with President Barack Obama

May 26, 2015

Op-Ed: Every Day is “Opposite Day” with President Barack Obama, Israel National News, Mark Langfan, May 26, 2015

In sum, either Obama is, at best, a Middle-east policy ignoramus or, at worst, an Iranian stooge. If Obama rolled dice to make his Middle-East decisions, he’d have a better average than his current total Middle-East failure on every issue.  So, chances are he is not intending his Middle-East policies to bring peace, but instead planning them to bring war and sow the violence, death and destruction that they have predictably brought.

**********************

Obama has done exactly the opposite of what should be done in the Middle East for his entire term. Israel had better ignore his advice.

Following Obama’s speeches is like watchingSesame Street’s “Opposite Day”, the Sesame Street episode where everything is “opposite.”  ‘Up’ is ‘down,’ ‘left’ is ‘right,’ and so on and so forth.  It’s like Berra saying “It’s deja vu all over again.”

With Obama, for the past seven years, every day is “Opposite Day.”  Everything he says sounds upside-down and backwards, and is proven, in the short-term, to be just that.  Instead of being chastened by reality, Obama blithely still talks-the-talk like he’s reading off the Holy Grail.

Take Obama’s latest upside-down and backwards ‘Opposite-Day’ statement: “I continue to believe a two-state solution is absolutely vital for not only peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but for the long-term security of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state.”  Given Obama’s 0%batting average on Middle-East strategy, it safe to conclude that keeping the “West Bank” is vital for Israel’s security.

For starters, what Middle East policy has Obama gotten right in the last seven years?  Obama’s total retreat from Iraq that empowered Iranian-puppet al Maliki to castrate the Western Iraqi Sunnis that mutated into ISIS?  Obama’s bombing of Qaddafi, and setting North Africa into a ball of flames?  Obama’s toppling of Mubarak and coronation of the Muslim Brotherhood Sunni Islamic State of Egypt?  Obama’s green-lighting Iran to set Shiite Arab against Sunni Arab as he anoints Iran as a nuclear-threshold state, and gives $50 billion to further fund its Islamic “resistance” revolution?  Obama’s total protection of the genocidal Assad as he gasses Sunni Muslims to death?

Obama has made the wrong policy decision on every Middle Eastern issue, yet still speaks as if he’s the Middle-east guru.

The truth is Israel’s retention of the “West Bank” is vital not only for the peace and security of Israel, but also, most importantly, for the moderate Arabs who bathe in the warmth of Israel’s security envelope.  If Israel left the “West Bank”, forget about the resulting Hamastan that once concerned us, because the result would be an  ISIStan. Hamas will soon start asking Israel for protection from ISIS as that organization is beginning to attack it in Gaza.  And after Assad falls, and the Sunnis start really paying Hezbollah back for its genocide against the Syrian Sunnis, the Shiites of South Lebanon will have only one protector: Israel.

Was Israel’s retreat from Gaza good for Egypt?  No, it created a cancer that sent its Iranian-funded Islamic-bedlam to the Sinai, and then to Egypt-proper.  Israel’s “peace-process” regarding Gaza has enabled Hamas to turn the Palestinians of Gaza into cannon-fodder for the world press, and the World Court.  With Gaza’s failed-test-case, Obama’s claim that Israel repeat the same withdrawal from Judea and Samaria almost seems to present evidence of a malevolent intent to eradicate peace and security for Israel, and the moderate Arabs who are now protected by Israel.

And let us not forget Jordan.  Wouldn’t Jordan “love” an ISIStan state to its west?  The analogy is simple, a Hamastan Gaza is to Egypt what an ISIStan “West Bank” would be to Jordan—a formula for Jordan’s total disintegration.  As it is, Jordan’s King Abdullah is facing ISIS to the north and to the south. Jordan can be easily overrun, it hardly needs additional pressure along its western border, now protected by Israel.

In sum, either Obama is, at best, a Middle-east policy ignoramus or, at worst, an Iranian stooge. If Obama rolled dice to make his Middle-East decisions, he’d have a better average than his current total Middle-East failure on every issue.  So, chances are he is not intending his Middle-East policies to bring peace, but instead planning them to bring war and sow the violence, death and destruction that they have predictably brought.

If Obama says “up,” think “down;” and if he advises retreat from Judea and Samaria, Israel had better stay exactly where it is.

The Pope and the Palestinians

May 20, 2015

The Pope and the Palestinians, Front Page Magazine, May 20, 2015

(The article also deal with Islam in general, as to which the Pope’s fantasies reflect those of the Obama Administration and others. — DM)

francis-and-abbas-450x253

Perhaps the ultimate expression of this faith in Islam was Pope Francis’ assertion in Evangelii Gaudium that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

**************************

Contrary to reports in the mainstream press, Pope Francis did not call Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas “an angel of peace.” The correct translation of the pope’s words is “I have thought of you: that you could be an angel of peace.”

Why, then, was it so easy to believe the initial reports? Perhaps because the initial reports seemed to align with previous papal overtures to Palestinian leaders. Pope Francis had previously called Abbas a “man of peace,” he has shown sympathy for Palestinian grievances, and other popes have given the appearance of lending legitimacy to the Palestinian cause. For example, Pope John Paul II is reported to have received PLO leader Yasser Arafat on twelve different occasions.

Arafat was a terrorist. One would think that the Vatican would have wanted to limit its contacts with him. The same goes for Abbas. He has repeatedly honored and praised Palestinian “martyrs” who have slaughtered innocent Jews. There is evidence that he helped fund the 1972 operation that killed eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. Why is he accorded such a cordial reception at the Vatican?

Although the Church has often declared its spiritual bond with Jews, it has had a less harmonious relationship with the nation where approximately half the world’s Jews now reside. The Vatican was the last Western government to accord diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel (in 1993). In addition, on several occasions, prominent prelates have likened Israel to King Herod, the murderer of innocents; and others have accused Israel of being an apartheid state. Meanwhile, Catholic NGOs such as Pax Christi and Trocaire have been major players in the boycott, divest, and sanctions campaign against Israel.

Of course, the BDS campaign directly impinges on Israeli security. So do the calls by numerous Christian leaders to tear down the security barrier that divides Israel from the West Bank. On his trip to the Holy Land a year ago, Pope Francis allowed himself to be photographed in prayer at a section of the wall where a large graffiti message compared Bethlehem to the Warsaw Ghetto. In a naïve gesture of solidarity with Palestinians, the pope was unwittingly lending credence to the idea that the Israelis could be compared to the Nazi occupiers of Poland.

The wall was constructed to prevent suicide attacks against Israeli citizens. It’s estimated that its construction has saved thousands of lives. To suggest that the wall is offensive, as many Christians have done, is to suggest that Jewish lives don’t matter. Moreover, such judgments betray an entirely lopsided view of the situation. Take the Gaza conflict. The Catholic hierarchy typically had little to say about the daily rocket barrages launched against Israeli citizens from Gaza, but it was quick to condemn Israel on those occasions when it finally retaliated. In a similar vein, Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, blamed last year’s Gaza war on the Israeli embargo which, he said, had turned Gaza into “a factory of desperate people, designed to easily turn into extremists.”

In short, many Catholic leaders have shown a tendency to blame Israel for defending itself. The implication, of course, is that there would be no need for defense if Israel would only go to the peace table and make the concessions demanded of it by the Palestinians. The Vatican’s recent recognition of the “State of Palestine” reflects this naïve view of the situation. The supposition is that the Palestinians only want to be left in peace, whereas there is abundant evidence that the deepest desire of Palestinian leaders is for the extermination of Israel. Have Vatican officials never seen the photos of Abbas holding up a map of Palestine that encompasses all of the territory currently known as Israel? Are they unaware that he has personally called for a Palestine that is Judenrein? Didn’t they notice that when Israel gambled on disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Gaza soon turned into a terrorist state governed by an obsession to destroy Israel?

From the Israeli point of view, the call to cooperate with the Palestinian “peace” agenda is a call to cooperate in its own demise. Whenever I hear a UN representative or a Vatican spokesman call for peace talks between Israel and Palestine, I think of that scene from Goldfinger in which James Bond is about to be sliced in two by a laser beam. “Do you expect me to talk?” he asks. “No, Mr. Bond,” replies Goldfinger, “I expect you to die.” The Vatican hasn’t yet grasped the point that the Palestinian leadership doesn’t want the Israelis to talk, it wants them to die.

By words and by actions, the Vatican continues to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This policy not only does a disservice to Jews, it also does a disservice to Catholics and other Christians. The main effect of the moral equivalence stance is to sow confusion among Catholics at a time when they need to be clear and unconfused—clear about Islam, that is. The Vatican policy toward Palestine reflects it overall stance toward the Islamic world. In other words, let’s overlook the dark side—the terrorism, the anti-Semitism, the oppression of Christians and other minorities—and let’s put the best face on the Mohammedan faith. For the sake of peace. And also for the sake of maintaining the threadbare narrative that Islam is a close cousin of Catholicism and, therefore, a religion of peace. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this faith in Islam was Pope Francis’ assertion in Evangelii Gaudium that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

How well has this policy worked? Not very. Catholics and other Christians who lived in Muslim lands and who took seriously the Catholic version of “this has nothing to do with Islam” soon found that the tiny minority of misunderstanders were legion and had murder on their minds. Many found out too late. Years of indoctrination in the myth of Islam’s pacific nature had left them unprepared for the violence. Not that the Church was the only culprit. The secular opinion-makers had been preaching the same gospel. The irony is that the Church wants Israel to adopt the same policy of make-believe about Islam that has contributed to the death and displacement of millions of Christians.

The policy requires an almost total denial of facts. In the case of the Arab-Israeli crisis it means ignoring the terrorist ties of the Palestinian government, its unity coalition with Hamas, the massive state-sponsored indoctrination of Palestinian children, and the oft-stated goal of eliminating Israel. Ironically, it also necessitates that one ignore the ongoing persecution of Christians in the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian leaders do a good job of hijacking Christian themes and imagery in order to gull Christians into thinking that they are, indeed, brothers in Christ. Thus, Palestinians have milked the massacre-of-the-innocents meme for all its worth. They also like to claim that Jesus was the first Palestinian. Another favorite theme is that the Palestinian people are the “new Jesus” who is being crucified by the Israelis.

Many in the Catholic hierarchy seem to fall for the ruse, but the steady exodus of Christians from the Palestinian territories tells a different story. The overall population of Christians in the Palestinian areas has declined from 15 percent in 1950 to 2 percent today. After the Palestinian Authority took control over Bethlehem in 1995, the Christian population there declined by half. In the Gaza Strip, only a few hundred Christians remain. That’s because Christians in Palestine, like Christians in most Muslim-majority societies, are treated as second-class citizens—subject to rape, intimidation, and legalized theft.

Meanwhile, the Christian population of Israel continues to grow. Palestinian Christians want to live there and so do persecuted Christians in other parts of the Middle East. Despite years of propaganda to the contrary, they have come to realize that Israel is a safe haven in a world of Islamic chaos.

Do Christians who migrate to Israel know something that the Vatican doesn’t know? The facts are there for everyone to see, but not everyone sees them. Why do Catholic leaders persist in assigning moral equivalence when there is no moral equivalence? Normally, a belief in moral equivalence grows out of a relativistic outlook. But presumably we can rule that out in the case of Catholic prelates. A more likely cause of their moral neutrality is a misapplication of the principle of “judge not.” Christians today are highly conscious of the sins of Western civilization and are therefore reluctant to judge those who lie outside it—in this case, Muslims. However, the principle is meant to apply to judgments about the state of an individual’s soul, not his behavior. And it was never meant to apply to withholding judgments about ideologies and belief systems.

The reluctance to see the mote in the other’s eye can eventually slide over into willful blindness. There are numerous warnings in the New Testament about spiritual blindness and they apply to those within the Church as well as to those without. The big danger for Church leaders is not that they will be seen as judgmental in the eyes of the world, but that they will be seen as foolishly naïve in the eyes of history.

“First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday” is a well-known slogan in the Middle East. It means that after the Islamists finish with the Jews, they will come after the Christians. The fate of the Saturday people and the Sunday people is intertwined. And the fate of both is put in jeopardy when Christian leaders insist on holding on to a fantasy-based picture of Islam.

Liberating Our Jerusalem

May 18, 2015

Liberating Our Jerusalem, Sultan Knish Blog, Daniel Greenfield, May 17, 2015

[T]here are still Jews in the West Bank and they have to be gotten rid of. Once enough Jews have been expelled, there will be peace. That’s not a paragraph from Mein Kampf, it’s not some lunatic sermon from Palestinian Authority television– it is the consensus of the international community. This consensus states that the only reason there still isn’t peace is because enough Jews haven’t been expelled from their homes. The ethnic cleansing for peace hasn’t gone far enough.

There will be peace when all the Jews are gone.

Jerusalem Day is a reminder of what the real problem is and what the real solution is. Muslim occupation of Israel is the problem. The Islamization of Jerusalem is the problem. Muslim violence in support of the Muslim occupation of Israel and of everywhere else is the problem. Israel is the solution. Only when we liberate ourselves from the lies, when we stop believing that we are the problem and recognize that we are the solution. Only then will we be free of the Joe Bidens and the Peter Beinarts, the Jimmy Carters and Barack Obamas, the Gilad Atzmons and Jeremy Ben Amis. Only then will the liberation that began in 1967 be complete.

**********************

When Jordan’s Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city– the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem possible.

MigdalDavid0002

Since then, the annexation and ethnic cleansing has become an international mandate. It would be absolutely inconceivable for the international community to denounce an ethnically cleansed group which survived attempted genocide for moving back into a city where they had lived. It is, however, standard policy at the State Department and the Foreign Office to denounce Jews living in those parts of Jerusalem that had been ethnically cleansed by Muslims, as “settlers” living in “settlements,” and describe them as an “obstruction to peace.” Peace being the state of affairs that sets in when an ethnic cleansing goes unchallenged.

Describing Jewish homes in Jerusalem, one of the world’s oldest cities, a city that all three religions in the region associate with Jews and Jewish history, as “settlements” is a triumph of distorted language that Orwell would have to tip his hat to. How does one have “settlements” in a city older than London or Washington D.C.? To understand that, you would have to ask London and Washington D.C., where the diplomats insist that one more round of Israeli compromises will bring peace to the region.

They say that there are three religions in Jerusalem, but there are actually four. The fourth religion is the true Religion of Peace, the one that demands constant blood sacrifices to make peace possible, that insists that there will be peace when the Jews have been expelled from Judea and Samaria, driven out of their homes in Jerusalem, and made into wanderers and beggars once again. Oddly enough, this religion’s name isn’t even Islam– it’s diplomacy.

Diplomacy says that the 1948 borders set by Arab countries invading Israel should be the final borders and that, when Israel reunified a sundered city in 1967, it was an act of aggression, while, when seven Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948, it was a legitimate way to set boundaries. When Jordan ethnically cleansed East Jerusalem, it set a standard that Israelis are obligated to follow to this day by staying out of East Jerusalem.

Vice President Biden was so upset that the Jerusalem municipality had partially approved some buildings in the city during his visit that he threw a legendary hissy fit. Hillary Clinton stopped by MSNBC to tell Andrea Mitchell that, “It was insulting. And it was insulting not just to the Vice President who didn’t deserve that.” David Axelrod browsed through his thesaurus and emerged on the morning shows calling it an “affront” and an “insult.” Two for the price of one.

Editorials in newspapers denounced the Israeli government for this grave insult to the Obama Administration.”Israel’s Provocation”, the Chicago Tribune shrieked in bold type, describing it as a “diplomatic bomb” that went off in Biden’s face. The Atlantic, eager to get in on the action metaphors, described Israel slapping Biden in the face. A horde of other columnists jumped in to depict the Israelis kicking and bashing the poor Vice-President, while holding his head in the toilet.

Whether Joe Biden was the victim of the Jews or the Jews were the victims of Joe Biden is all a matter of perspective. The Hitler Administration was quite upset to find that Jewish athletes would be competing in the 1936 Munich Olympics. When you ethnically cleanse people, they are supposed to stay ethnically cleansed. It’s in poor taste for them to show up and win gold medals at the Olympics or rebuild their demolished synagogues. It’s insulting to the ethnic cleansers and their accomplices.

That sounds like a harsh accusation, but it’s completely and undeniably true.

bauernfeind-mur-lamentation-jerusalem

When Muslims move into a Jewish town, poor Joe doesn’t come crying that he’s been bombed with a diplomatic affront and slapped with a Menorah. When Muslim countries fund Muslim housing in Israel, there are no angry statements from Clinton and no thesaurus bashing from David Axelrod. Muslim housing in Jerusalem or anywhere in Israel is not a problem. Only Jewish housing is. The issue is not Israel. If it were, then Arabs with Israeli citizenship would get Biden to howl as loudly. It’s only the Jews who are the problem.

The entire Peace Process is really a prolonged solution to the latest phase of the Jewish Problem. The problem, as stated by so many diplomats, is that there are Jews living in places that Muslims want. There were Jews living in Gaza before 1948, but they were driven out, they came back, and then they were driven out again by their own government in compliance with international demands. Now only Hamas lives in Gaza and it’s as peaceful and pleasant without the Jews as Nazi Germany.

But there are still Jews in the West Bank and they have to be gotten rid of. Once enough Jews have been expelled, there will be peace. That’s not a paragraph from Mein Kampf, it’s not some lunatic sermon from Palestinian Authority television– it is the consensus of the international community. This consensus states that the only reason there still isn’t peace is because enough Jews haven’t been expelled from their homes. The ethnic cleansing for peace hasn’t gone far enough.

There will be peace when all the Jews are gone. That much is certainly undeniable. Just look at Gaza or Egypt or Iraq or Afghanistan, which has a grand total of two Jews, both of them in their seventies. Or Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria where peace reigns now that the Jews are gone. Some might say that violence seems to increase proportionally with the number of Muslims, but we all know that would be a racist thing to say. On the other hand suggesting that violence increases with the number of Jews living on land that Muslims want, that’s just diplomacy. A common sense fact that everyone who is anyone in foreign policy knows to be true.

How will we know when the Muslims have gotten all the land that they want? When the violence stops. Everyone knows that agreements mean nothing. No matter how many pieces of paper are signed, the bombs and rockets still keep bursting; real ones that kill people, not fake ones that upset Vice Presidents. The only way to reach an agreement is by groping blindly in the dark, handing over parcel after parcel of land, until the explosions stop or the Muslims fulfill their original goal of pushing the Jews into the sea.

That’s the wonderful thing about diplomacy if you’re a diplomat and the terrible thing about it if you are anyone else without a secure way out of the country when diplomacy fails. And diplomacy in the region always fails. Camp David and every single agreement Israel has signed with Muslim countries aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. The only peace treaty that counts is the one made by tanks and rifles. It’s the one made by Israeli planes in Egyptian skies and Israeli soldiers walking the border. It’s the one made by Jewish farmers and ranchers, tending their sheep and their fields, with rifles strung over their backs. The only peace that’s worth anything is the peace of the soldiers and settlers.

In 1966, Jerusalem was a city sundered in two, divided by barbed wire and the bullets of Muslim snipers. Diplomacy did not reunite it. Israel pursued diplomacy nearly to its bitter end until it understood that it had no choice at all but to fight. Israel did not swoop into the fight, its leaders did their best to avoid the conflict, asking the international community to intervene and stop Egypt from going to war. Read back the headlines for the last five years on Israel and Iran, and you will get a sense of the courage and determination of the Israeli leaders of the day.

When Israel went to war, its leaders did not want to liberate Jerusalem, they wanted Jordan to stay out of the war. Even when Jordan entered the war, they did not want to liberate the city. Divine Providence and Muslim hostility forced them to liberate Jerusalem and forced them to keep it. Now some of them would like to give it back, another sacrifice to the bloody deity of diplomacy whose altar flows with blood and burnt sacrifices.

As we remember Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, it is important to remember that the city is united and free because diplomacy failed. The greatest triumph of the modern state happened only because diplomacy proved hopeless and useless in deterring Muslim genocidal ambitions. Had Israel succumbed to international pressure and had Nasser been as subtle as Sadat, then the Six-Day War would have looked like the Yom Kippur War fought with 1948 borders– and Israel very likely would not exist today.

Jerusalem-Scopus

Even as Jews remember the great triumph of Jerusalem Day, the ethnic cleansers and their accomplices are busy searching for ways to drive Jews out of Jerusalem, out of towns, villages and cities. This isn’t about the Arab residents of Jerusalem, who have repeatedly asserted that they want to remain part of Israel. It’s not about peace, which did not come from any previous round of concessions, and will not come from this one either. It’s about solving the Jewish problem.

As long as Jews allow themselves to be defined as the problem, there will be plenty of those offering solutions. And the solutions invariably involve doing something about the Jews. It only stands to reason that if Jews are the problem, then moving them or getting rid of them is the solution. The bloody god of diplomacy always assumes that they are the problem. There is less friction in defining Jews as the problem, than in defining Muslims as the problem. The numbers alone mean that is so.

Jerusalem Day is a reminder of what the real problem is and what the real solution is. Muslim occupation of Israel is the problem. The Islamization of Jerusalem is the problem. Muslim violence in support of the Muslim occupation of Israel and of everywhere else is the problem. Israel is the solution. Only when we liberate ourselves from the lies, when we stop believing that we are the problem and recognize that we are the solution. Only then will we be free of the Joe Bidens and the Peter Beinarts, the Jimmy Carters and Barack Obamas, the Gilad Atzmons and Jeremy Ben Amis. Only then will the liberation that began in 1967 be complete.

Only then will we have liberated our Jerusalem. The Jerusalem of the soul. It is incumbent on all of us to liberate that little Jerusalem within. The holy city that lives in all of us. To clean the dross off its golden gates, wash the filth from its stones and expel the invaders gnawing away at our hearts until we look proudly upon a shining city. Then to help others liberate their own Jerusalems. Only then will we truly be free.

Pope calls Abbas ‘angel of peace’ during Vatican visit

May 16, 2015

Pope calls Abbas ‘angel of peace’ during Vatican visit, Times of Israel, May 16, 2015

(Update: According to an article at PJ Media, the words weren’t precisely as reported. Instead, the Pope said “May the angel of peace destroy the evil spirit of war. I thought of you: may you be an angel of peace.”  For the Pope, in the course of recognizing “Palestine,” even to express a hope that Abbas may be an “angel of peace” seems as odd as expressing a hope that a rattlesnake may be a good and friendly companion for one’s children.  — DM)

********************

(The Pope seems to have an odd sense of humor. — DM)

000_DV2030018-e1431765591751-635x357Pope Francis welcomes Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a private audience on May 16, 2015 in Vatican (AFP Pphoto pool/Alberto Pizzoli)

Pope Francis praised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as an “angel of peace” during a meeting at the Vatican.

Francis made the compliment Saturday during the traditional exchange of gifts at the end of an official audience in the Apostolic Palace. He presented Abbas with a medallion and explained that it represented the angel of peace “destroying the bad spirit of war.”

Francis said he thought the gift was appropriate since “you are an angel of peace.”

Abbas is in town for the canonization Sunday of two new saints from what was then Ottoman-ruled Palestine. It also comes days after the Vatican finalized a bilateral treaty with the “state of Palestine,” making explicit its recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Abbas, for his part, offered Francis relics of the two new saints.

Vatican-Palestinians_Horo-e1431781749661Pope Francis exchanges gifts with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas during an audience at the Vatican Saturday, May 16, 2015. (Alberto Pizzoli/Pool Photo via AP)

The treaty, which was finalized Wednesday but still has to be signed, makes clear that the Holy See has switched its diplomatic relations from the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the state of Palestine.

A bilateral commission is putting the final touches to the agreement, on the Catholic Church’s life and activities in Palestine, which then “will be submitted to the respective authorities for approval ahead of setting a debate in the near future for the signing,” the Vatican said on Wednesday.

Some observers speculated that the agreement could be signed during Abbas’s visit.

The news of the treaty immediately drew ire from Israel.

“Israel heard with disappointment the decision of the Holy See to agree a final formulation of an agreement with the Palestinians including the use of the term ‘Palestinian State’,” said an Israeli foreign ministry official.

“Such a development does not further the peace process and distances the Palestinian leadership from returning to direct bilateral negotiations. Israel will study the agreement and consider its next step.”

The agreement, 15 years in the making, expresses the Vatican’s “hope for a solution to the Palestinian question and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians according to the two-state solution,” Antoine Camilleri, the Holy See’s deputy foreign minister, said in an interview earlier this week.

In an interview with the Vatican’s Osservatore Romano newspaper, Camilleri said he hoped “the accord could, even in an indirect way, help the Palestinians in the establishment and recognition of an independent, sovereign and democratic State of Palestine.”

The Palestinian Authority considers the Vatican one of 136 countries to have recognized Palestine as a state, although the number is disputed and several recognitions by what are now European Union member states date back to the Soviet era.

Abbas’s visit came a day before two nuns who lived in Ottoman Palestine during the 19th century will be made saints at a Vatican ceremony.

Marie Alphonsine Ghattas of Jerusalem and Mariam Bawardy of Galilee will become the first Palestinian Arabs to gain sainthood.

Ghattas was born in Jerusalem in 1847, and died there in 1927. She was beatified — the final step before canonization — in 2009.

Bawardy was born in Galilee, now in northern Israel, in 1843. She became a nun in France and died in Bethlehem in 1878.

She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1983.

Although there are several saints who lived in the region during Christianity’s early days, Bawardy and Ghattas are the first to be canonized from Ottoman-era Palestine.

The canonization of a third Palestinian — a Salesian monk — is still under review by the Church.

A Preview of ‘Palestine’

May 12, 2015

A Preview of ‘Palestine’, Front Page Magazine, May 12, 2015

Hamas-450x308

[W]hy is the Obama administration placing mammoth pressure on Israel to cede vital strategic territory and why is it besotted with the idea of dismembering Israel by tearing away parts of its ancestral heartland? The answer lies in a flawed foreign policy that rewards tyrannical regimes while back-stabbing allies; a foreign policy that favors Iranian Fatwas over concrete empirical evidence of malfeasance.

******************

Anyone wishing to get a glimpse of what a future “Palestinian” state might look like, need look no further than recent actions taken and official statements made by both the Palestinian Authority and its rival Hamas this past month. While these two governing entities detest each other (perhaps even more so than the infidel Yahuds), it is difficult to discern why, since both of these governing bodies spew forth nearly identical xenophobic rhetoric and act with typical autocratic ruthlessness to stifle any whiff of internal dissent. In essence, they both act in a manner that is not dissimilar to the 20 or so chauvinistic, anti-democratic Muslim pseudo-states of the Middle East.

Most Israelis harbor deep reservations about the creation of an “independent Palestinian state” for a multitude of reasons. Chief among them is the fear that a Palestinian state would devolve into an entity similar to that found in Gaza and that’s a best case scenario. There are far worse, more frightening scenarios. But while Gaza is contained in the southwest corner of Israel and can, relatively speaking, be monitored and controlled, the same cannot be said about the West Bank with its long, torturous border along the imaginary Green Line (the 1949 armistice lines). Moreover, in contrast to the Gaza periphery, much of Israel’s population and industry faces the West Bank, which juts out like a bone into Israel’s throat.

But even if the Palestinian Authority, headed by its aging, autocratic leader Mahmoud Abbas, succeeds in rebuffing a Hamas takeover – an unlikely prospect – the Palestinian Authority’s leadership has proven to be just as extreme, xenophobic and malevolent as its rivals in Gaza. Palestinian Authority TV and media outlets as well as PA-backed NGOs, routinely spew forth ancient anti-Semitic canards involving ritualistic Passover blood libels and conspiracy theories involving Jewish attempts at world domination.

On April 5, in an official PA television interview, Fatah spokesperson, Osama Al-Qawasmi, invoked the notorious early 20th century Czarist forgery known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to back up his spurious claims against Israel. For the sake of perspective, both Hitler’sMein Kampf and the Hamas Charter incorporate the Protocols to buttress repugnant supremacist views and reinforce ancient calumnies.

Al-Qawasmi comments, largely ignored by the West, represent views that are commonplace within the Palestinian Authority. In fact, most high-level officials within the PA subscribe to Hitleresque positions and this comes as no surprise given that the father of the modern “Palestinian” movement and the man who gave birth to Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin al Husseini, was a Nazi collaborator and a dear friend of the Fuhrer.  In January 2013, “President” Abbas, whose own ventures into Holocaust denial are well known, showered the Hitler-supporting Husseini with acclaim.

The Palestinian Authority has also been known to perpetuate ancient ritualistic Passover blood libels. In July 2014 Mahmoud Abbas’ official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, featured an op-ed which claimed that Jews use the “blood of [Palestinian] children” as a key ingredient in Matzah or unleavened bread used by Jews during the Passover holiday. Shortly thereafter, in a variation of that insidious theme, Palestinian Authority TV claimed that Israel was injecting poison into the Palestinian water supply.

In 2013, a Western funded Palestinian propaganda outfit called MIFTAH (which publishes in both English and Arabic) published an article in Arabic criticizing President Obama for speaking of Passover in a favorable light. The author then went on to invoke the ancient blood libel stating,

Does Obama in fact know the relationship, for example, between “Passover” and “Christian blood”..?! Or “Passover” and “Jewish blood rituals?!’ Much of the chatter and gossip about historical Jewish blood rituals in Europe are real and not fake as they claim; the Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.

Palestinians routinely spew forth revolting babble and nonsensical conspiracy theories in Arabic but are substantially more reserved when addressing Western audiences who would find such utterances disquieting to say the least.

MIFTAH was founded by the Palestinian Authority’s spokeswoman and PLO Central Committee Member Hanan Ashrawi. Incredibly, when confronted with the outrage, Ashrawi, a seasoned politician who makes frequent guest appearances on Western news programs, refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing and actually attacked the blogger who exposed the incident claiming that she was the victim of a “smear campaign.” She also risibly noted that she was committed to “open dialogue” and in any event, a “disclaimer” in the publication absolved her and her organization of any culpability.

To a vile terror apologist like Ashrawi, blood libels are part of her concept of “open dialogue.” Only after drawing the ire of her Western donors did Ashrawi express contrition and posted an apologylaced with the requisite dose of crocodile tears. That served to placate MIFTAH’s gullible Western enablers.

But while Palestinians are free to spew forth the vilest canards against Israel and Jews, any whiff of criticism or dissention directed against any Palestinian body, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, is ruthlessly dealt with. In April, a Palestinian civil servant was arrested for expressing views on Facebook critical of Yassir Arafat. More precisely, he failed to subscribe to the view that Arafat was a “martyr.” He was charged with “attacking and harming the martyr, eternal leader and symbol of the Palestinian people Abu Ammar,” Arafat’s nom de guerre. His niece was expelled from Birzeit University near Ramallah for expressing similar views and all other Palestinian universities have been instructed to deny her admission.

In Hamas-controlled Gaza, in a rare show of defiance, a group of between 150 to 200 Palestinians demonstrated against the governing authorities. The demonstrators were beaten with sticks and some were herded off in jeeps by thug-like Hamas enforcers.

These two incidents are demonstrative of the complete absence of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in areas governed by Palestinians. Conversely, Palestinians are completely free to let loose with the vilest canards as long as the objects of derision, defamation and ridicule are Jews.

A Palestinians state, whether governed by Hamas or the “moderate” Palestinian Authority, will almost certainly resemble the 20 or so Arab pseudo-states currently in existence.  It will be dysfunctional, autocratic, xenophobic and unable to survive without massive financial assistance. That will be the nature of the state that lives alongside Israel’s long and tortuous border with the West Bank. That will be the state that will have full view of all commercial airlines that come and go from Ben Gurion International Airport. And that will be the state that juts into Israel’s narrow 9-mile wide waistline overlooking Israel’s heavily populated coastline.

Considering these facts, why is the Obama administration placing mammoth pressure on Israel to cede vital strategic territory and why is it besotted with the idea of dismembering Israel by tearing away parts of its ancestral heartland? The answer lies in a flawed foreign policy that rewards tyrannical regimes while back-stabbing allies; a foreign policy that favors Iranian Fatwas over concrete empirical evidence of malfeasance.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has just formed a governing coalition with a razor thin majority. Yet his coalition partners, cognizant of the dangers they face, both on the battlefield and in the political arena, appear to be solidly behind their Prime Minister. One can only hope that the Prime Minister will stand fast in the face of massive pressure he is sure to encounter from an extremely hostile Obama administration. Good luck Mr. Prime Minister, you’re going to need every bit of it for the next 18 months.

Exclusive: Obama to back Palestinian state at Security Council – payback for Israel’s right-wing cabinet

May 7, 2015

Exclusive: Obama to back Palestinian state at Security Council – payback for Israel’s right-wing cabinet, DEBKAfile, May 6, 2015

Net-0b_clash_5.15Barack Obama plans to punish Israel again

DEBKAfile reports exclusively from Washington: US President Barack Obama did not wait for Binyamin Netanyahu to finish building his new government coalition by its deadline at midnight Wednesday, May 6, before going into action to pay him back for forming a right-wing cabinet minus any moderate figure for resuming negotiations with the Palestinians.

Banking on Netanyahu’s assertion while campaigning for re-election that there would be no Palestinian state during his term in office, Obama is reported exclusively by our sources to have given the hitherto withheld green light to European governments to file a UN Security Council motion proclaiming an independent Palestinian state. Although Netanyahu left the foreign affairs portfolio in his charge and available to be filled by a suitably moderate figure as per the White House’s expectations did not satisfy the US President.

The White House is confident that, with the US voting in favor, the motion will be passed by an overwhelming majority and therefore be binding on the Israeli government.

To show the administration was in earnest, senior US officials sat down with their French counterparts in Paris last week to sketch out the general outline of this motion. According to our sources, they began addressing such questions as the area of the Palestinian state, its borders, security arrangements between Israel and the Palestinians and whether or not to set a hard-and-fast timeline for implementation, or phrase the resolution as  a general declaration of intent.

Incorporating a target date in the language would expose Israel to Security Council sanctions for non-compliance.

It was indicated by the American side in Paris that the Obama administration would prefer to give Netanyahu a lengthy though predetermined time scale to reconsider his Palestinian policy or even possibly to broaden and diversify his coalition by introducing non-aligned factions or figures into such key posts as foreign affairs.

At the same time, both American and French diplomats are already using the club they propose to hang over the Netanyahu government’s head for gains in other spheres.

French President Francois Hollande, for instance, the first foreign leader ever to attend a Gulf Council of Cooperation summit, which opened in Riyadh Tuesday to discuss Iran and the Yemen war, used the opportunity to brief Gulf Arab rulers on Washington’s turnaround on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

And US Secretary of State John Kerry plans to present the Obama administration’s new plans for Palestinian statehood to Saudi leaders during his visit to Riyadh Wednesday and Thursday, May 6-7. Kerry will use Washington’s willingness to meet Palestinian aspirations as currency for procuring Saudi and Gulf support for a Yemen ceasefire and their acceptance of the nuclear deal shaping up with Iran.

Obama turns a smiling face to Israel. Biden: Iran has enough material for 8 nuclear bombs

May 3, 2015

Obama turns a smiling face to Israel. Biden: Iran has enough material for 8 nuclear bombs, DEBKAfile, May 2, 2015

(Obama and Biden speak with forked tongues. Please see also, PM Netanyahu’s Remarks to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.– DM)

Biden-netanyahu_30.4.15We drive each other nuts…

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have gone out of their way in the last fortnight to shower friendly gestures on Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and even Ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer. Refuting the dire predictions by Netanyahu’s critics of a disastrous breach, Obama and Biden, by word and gesture, are putting behind them the rancor long marring relations between Washington in Jerusalem.

The White House launched its new charm campaign for Israel on April 13 by meetings with three groups of American Jewish leaders. Obama addressed the first with an emotional affirmation of his support for Israel and its security. Vice President Biden, National Security adviser Susan Rice and Biden’s national security adviser Colin Kahl then talked to another group of Jewish leaders, while Obama spoke to Jewish “community leaders”, a group of individuals who though unaffiliated are influential and generous donors to the Democratic Party.

Ten days later, on April 23, Biden was the keynote speaker at the Israeli embassy’s Independence Day reception. He stood alongside the former object of administration ire – Ambassador Dermer – and declared: “We have Israel’s back, you can count on that.” He announced that Israel would be the first country in the world to receive the new US F-35 stealth aircraft already next year.

Thursday, the Vice President delivered a lecture at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the key DC research think tank on the subject of US-Israel relations.

In this important lecture, Biden defended in great detail US strategy and objectives in the negotiations for a nuclear accord with Iran, as they enter their final lap.

All in all, the US president and vice president are devoting more time to gestures for repairing relations with Israel than on the burning crises afflicting the world in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.

DEBKAfile found four reasons for this striking White House pivot:

1. After the fireworks sparked by Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to the US Congress against the nuclear accord, which placed him at the forefront of the international front opposing the deal, the White House decided that instead of sparring with him, it would be more productive to convert the Israeli prime minister into a supporter by meeting him halfway on certain points.

2. The rift with Israel proved disadvantageous to the Obama administration, while boosting Netanyahu and his Likud in Israel’s recent general election. The US president has paid a high political and personal price for colliding with Congress on the Iranian nuclear issue. His strategic advisers have recommended a bid to convince Netanyahu that Israel’s most pressing concerns about the nuclear deal are being addressed in the final stage of the talks. Assuming that the prime minister too is not looking for a major rift with Washington, he may be amenable to partly changing course and withdrawing some of his objections to the deal. Congress might then respond more positively to the administration’s nuclear policy.

3. As American gears up for its 2016 elections, the Democratic Party needs to woo the Jewish vote and most importantly its financial support for campaigners.

The Biden lecture to the Washington Institute is therefore worthy of close scrutiny. This masterly and eloquent work is an attempt to lay the political and security groundwork for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s consent to a change of heart from opposition to the nuclear deal to its support.

DEBKAfile has therefore singled out is 17 high points:

  • Israel is absolutely right to be worried about the world’s most dangerous weapons falling in the hands of a nation, whose leaders dream openly of a world without Israel.
  • So the criticism that Israel is too concerned I find preposterous.  They have reason to be concerned. (DF. Netanyahu’s concerns about Iran are fully justified.)
  • …that’s why the President, President Obama, decided for the first time — people forget this — to make it an explicit, declared policy of the United States of America – no such policy existed before President Obama uttered it — that all instruments of American power to prevent — not contain, not contain -— to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran would be used to prevent that from happening.
  • …our military had the capacity and the capability to execute the mission, if it was required. (DF. This was an explicit US presidential pledge to use military force to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.)

Vice President Biden then laid down 12 conditions as the sine qua non for a deal. “If what’s on the table doesn’t meet the President’s requirements, there will be no deal,” he said.

  • A final deal must effectively cut off Iran’s uranium, plutonium and covert pathways to the bomb.
  • The final deal must ensure a breakout timeline of at least one year for at least a decade or more.
  • A final deal must include phased sanction relief, calibrated against Iran taking meaningful steps to constrain their program. (DF. Iran insists on immediate sanctions relief.)
  • A final deal must provide verifiable assurances to ensure Iran’s program is exclusively peaceful.
  • If they did try to cheat… they would be far more likely to be caught because… we’ll also put in place the toughest transparency and verification requirements.
  • Iran will be required to implement the Additional Protocols, allowing IAEA inspectors to visit not only declared nuclear facilities, but undeclared sites where suspicious, clandestine work is suspected and address IAEA concerns about the military dimensions of past nuclear research.
    Not only would Iran be required to allow 24/7 eyes on the nuclear sites you’ve heard of — Fordow and Natantz and Arak — and the ability to challenge suspect locations, every link in their nuclear supply chain will be under surveillance.
  • And if Iran resumes its pursuit of nuclear weapons, no option available today will be off the table. In fact, the options will be greatly increased because we will know so much more.

Biden went on to warn: “Let’s not kid each other. They already have paved a path to a bomb’s worth of material. Iran could get there now if they walked away in two to three months without a deal.” He went on to say:  “Without this deal, they already have enough material if further enriched for as many as eight nuclear bombs. Already, right now, as I speak to you.

  • Under the proposed final deal, the Arak reactor will be redesigned to produce zero weapons-grade plutonium. The spent fuel will be required to be shipped out of Iran for the life of the reactor. And Iran will be barred from building the reprocessing plant for extracting bomb-grade material from plutonium.

“Finally there is the myth that a nuclear deal between the United States and Iran enables Iran to gain dominance inside the Middle East.” The US vice president protested: “But it is a nuclear bargain between Britain, France, Russia, China, Germany, the EU, America and Iran – one that reduces the risk of nuclear war and makes the region and the world a safer place,” he stressed.

“We are working continually to develop the means and capacity to counter Iran’s destabilizing activities…“ he said citing the Strait of Hormuz. We are prepared to use (inaudible) the force.”

Biden wound up his peroration by directing these words to Israel. “It’s true we disagree sometimes. But as I said last week at Israel’s Independence Day celebration, we’re family. I think it was Ambassador Dermer who essentially said the same thing. We drive each other nuts. But we love each other. And most of all we protect each other.”

DEBKAfile’s Washington sources note: The Obama administration appears willing to keep on smiling towards Israel. US Secretary of State John Kerry will soon schedule a visit to Israel, after staying away for a long time, The visit will be billed as promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, but his real errand will be to test the ground with Prime Minister Netanyahu and assess how successful the White House’s gestures of affection have been in toning down his opposition to the nuclear deal.

For now, the host of critics who accused Netanyahu of causing an irreparable breach with Washington over the nuclear issue have retired to a corner.