THINK-ISRAEL features essays and commentaries that provide
context for current events in Israel. The war Islam is waging against Israel and the West
is top priority. We report on global anti-Semitism, Islamism and
creeping Sharia. We aim to
make sense of what's going on.
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We are told that there is a difference between extremist Islam and
peaceloving normal Islam.
Judging by their behavior, Muslims are
anti-West, anti-Democracy, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Buddhist,
and anti-Hindu. Muslims are involved in 25 of some 30 conflicts going
on in the world: in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Congo,
Cote d'Ivoire, Cyprus, East Timor, India, Indonesia (2 provinces),
Kashmir, Kazakastan, Kosovo, Kurdistan, Macedonia, the Middle East,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Somalia, Sudan, Russia-Chechnya,
Tajikistan, Thailand, Uganda and Uzbekistan.
Doesn't this mean that
extremist Islam is the norm and normal Islam is extremely rare?
"The Palestinian people does not
exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for
continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab
unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians,
Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical
reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people,
since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a
distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism.
"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which
is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to
Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand
Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim
our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite
Palestine and Jordan." (PLO executive committee member
Zahir Muhsein, March 31, 1977, interview with the Dutch newspaper
Trouw.)
The Palestinian leadership, including Ahmed Shukar and
Yasser Arafat, has openly admitted Palestinian "peoplehood" is a fraud;
See here.
"It should be remembered that in 1918, with
the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France were handed
more than 5,000,000 square miles to divvy up and 99% was given to
the Arabs to create countries that did not exist previously. Less
than 1% was given as a Mandate for the re-establishment of a state for the Jews
on both banks of the Jordan River. In 1921, to appease the
Arabs once again, another three quarters of that less than 1% was given to a
fictitious state called Trans-Jordan."
(Jack Berger, May 31, 2004.)
The total for all the 22 Arab League
countries is 6,145,389 square miles (SM). By comparison, all 50 states of
the United States have a total of 3,787,318 SM. Israel has
8,463 SM, about one-sixth of that of the State of Michigan.
Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan are Muslim but not Arab and are
not included.
World Arab population: 300 million;
World Jewish population: 13.6 million; Israel's Jewish population:
5.4 million. (Dr. Wilbert Simkovitz,
http://dehai.org/archives/dehai_news_archive/apr04/0223.html)
"... during the late 1940s, more than 40 million refuges around
the world were resettled, except for one people. They [Palestinian
arabs] remain defined as refugees, wallowing 60 years later in 59
UNRWA refugee camps, financed by $400 million contributed annually
by nations of the world to nurture the promise of the "right of
return" to Arab neighborhoods and Arab villages from 1948 that no
longer exist." (Noam Bedein, Jerusalem Post, January
6, 2009.)
Some 900,000 Jews left behind $300 billion in assets when they were
forced to flee for their lives from the Arab countries in the 1940s.
They hold deeds for five times Israel's size. (Independent Media
Centre, Winnipeg)
Re Israel's irrevocable ownership of Israel, Samaria, Judea,
the Golan and Gaza:
"Nothing that Israel's legal system says can change the facts
that: (1) the legal binding document is the Mandate of the League
of Nations and (2) the obligations of the Mandate are valid in
perpetuity." (Professor Julius Stone)
"By 1920 the Ottoman Empire had exercised undisputed sovereignty
over Palestine for 400 years. In Article 95 of the treaty of
Sevres, that sovereignty was transferred to England in trust for a
national homeland for the Jews. The local Arabs had never
exercised sovereignty over Palestine and so they lost nothing.
Their rights were fully protected by a provisio in the
grant: '...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done
which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine...' The proviso has
been fully observed by the Israelis. Since 1950 the Arabs have
built some 261 new settlements in Judea and Samaria — more
than twice as many as the Jews, but you never hear of them. They
fill them with Arabs from Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan and by the
grace of God they become Palestinians. Allahu Akbar! The Arabs
call Judea "the West Bank' because they would look silly claiming
that Jews are illegally living in Judea." (Comment by
Wallace Brand on Martin Peretz "Narrative Dissonance" The New
Republic, July 1, 2009)
"More Americans need to become familiar with the concept of baseline
budgeting. In simple terms, if an agency's budget is $100, and they
are expecting an increase of $10.00 next year, but they only get
$8.00, politicians characterize that as a $2.00 cut in spending.
Concerning the entire $1.2 trillion in 'cuts' engendered by the
sequester, it must be understood that they are not really cuts at all.
They are really a lowering of the projected increase in federal
spending going forward. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) cuts
through the fog. 'For the 2014-2023 period, deficits in CBO's baseline
projections total $7.0 trillion. With such deficits, federal debt
would remain above 73 percent of GDP — far higher than the 39 percent
average seen over the past four decades,' it reports. Thus, over the
next decade, we are 'cutting' our way to adding another $7 trillion of
debt to the $16-plus trillion we have already amassed. As far as the
administration, Democrats and their media enablers are concerned, any
attempt to mitigate that 'paying-for problem' will turn America into a
Third World nation of vegetable eaters. Yet the simple truth remains
inarguable: absent the genuine entitlement reform critically necessary
to get our spending under control, we are headed for national
bankruptcy. At that point, even vegetables may be a luxury item. [..]
over the next decade, we are 'cutting' our way to adding another $7
trillion of debt to the $16-plus trillion we have already amassed.'
(Arnold Ahlert, February 19, 2013)
Think-Israel tends to use salafist rather than
extremist or Islamist or militant or
fundamentalist or activist to describe generically a
pious Muslim, one who sticks as closely as possible to the
unfiltered words and actions of Mohammad and the first three
generations of Muslims, including, especially, the Companions of
the Prophet. In modeling himself as closely as he can on the
preachings and practices of Mohammad, a salafist can in modern
terms be precisely described as an uninhibited terrorist, a
theological supersessionist, a political supremacist who believes
Islam and sharia law must dominate and a social barbarian, who
wages jihad with whatever tools are available.
Thanks to the high quality of whitewash supplied by sympathetic
propagandists, he seldom is so described.
INTRODUCTION: THE OCCUPIED LAND OF ISRAEL
by Bernice Lipkin
Resurgent Islam wants to dominate the world. Israel is in the
way. So Israel has to be taken out of the game. Outright invasion
and conventional war haven't worked, so the salafists are doing
other things — everything from demonizing
Israel in the press and in academia to terrorizing Israeli
citizens using Arab women and children, a clever
adaptation of lone-wolf tactics. Neo-Marxists, globalists,
multiculturalists and some main-line churches are big supporters,
either because of their own intrinsic Jew-hate or hate of Israel for
showing how successful an independent nation-state can be.
NGOs and media people, academics and politicians, including those
running the European Union, have been more than worth their hire.
Self-hating Jews, many of whom identify with Utopian visions
— Marxism or globalism or some other anti-Jewish ideology
— use their Jewish credentials to persuade the ignorant they
know what they're talking about. It hasn't helped those resisting
Muslim domination that the USA twice elected a Muslim who is
openly helping Iran take over the Middle East.
In the first World War, the Ottomans, who ruled all of the
Middle East, sided with Germany, which lost the war. Consequently,
backed by the League of Nations, the Ottoman land was divided up
by the victors, mainly England and France. These actions were
authorized by the League of Nations in the form of contractual
mandates. Britain received a Mandate for Mesopotamia (Iraq).
France handled Syria and the Lebanon. The third Mandate, the Palestine
Mandate, put the region of the Bible into an irrevocable trust for
the Jewish people. When the League was dissolved, its legal
authorizations remained unchanged but were handed over to the United
Nations.
The Arabs were gifted with 99.9% of the area. The original
intent was to have a single Arab state, but this proved
impractical. After some iterations, the Arab States of Syria,
Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, TransJordan, Bahrain
and Qatar were created. Turkey was set. Many of these states had artificial
borders, ignoring the dominant relations — family, clan and
tribal — in the area
(Gabriel Scheinmann, 2013).
The third Mandate, the Palestine Mandate, was unique in that it
took heed of the special relationship of the Jews and their
ancient homeland. This amounted to less than one percent of the
Middle East for a future state. And then, before the League could
vote on the land division, the Brits gave 78% of the land destined
to be the Jewish State — the region on the east bank of the
Jordan River — to be administered by Abdullah, son of
Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca. It was initially called Transjordan
and now is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
In 1948, after the end of the Second World War, Egypt, Syria,
Transjordan, Iraq and Lebanon declared war and invaded the
just-born State of Israel. Most of the Arabs living in Israel fled
— the total is estimated at anywhere from 300,000 to 400,000
up to 700,000 Arabs, with the low end being most probable (Samuel
Katz, Eretzyisroel.org).
The 1949 Census counted 160,000 Arabs still living in Israel.
The Arab refugees were given a UN relief agency all to
themselves, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Any one who
had lived in Mandated Palestine for at least two years before
fleeing in 1948 could register. The refugees were called
"Palestine refugees", not Palestinian refugees. They served
as a wonderful propaganda ploy. Posters of sad-faced refugee
children hung in the UN building in NYC; they received more
sympathy than the victims of Nazism and Fascism. In 1967, Arabs
fleeing the Territories when the Arabs again attacked Israel were
added to the refugee register. UNRWA also supports "internally
displaced persons" living in Israel, Samaria or Judea.
Unlike all other refugees who are mostly settled within a
decade, the UNRWA Arabs and their descendants became, and continue
to be, refugees in perpetuum.
All other refugees over the whole world that are helped by the UN share a single agency,
the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). UNHCR supports
every refugee world-wide, including the Palestinian refugees
UNRWA doesn't handle, and on a smaller per capital budget. In
2013, UNHCR cared for over 42.9 million people, including the
refugees from the current war in Syria and elsewhere in the
Middle
East
(Brett D. Schaefer and James Phillips, 2015).
UNRWA only supports those Arab refugees that live in Jordan,
Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank) and
Gaza. As of 2012, UNRWA supported approximately 4,950,000
registered patrilineal descendants, and 30,000-50,000 original
UNRWA refugees from
1948
(WikkiPedia, 2016). There are said to be more than 7 million
Palestinian Arab refugees in toto world-wide. This is an
amazing demographic, considering that there was a total
population (Muslims — Turks, Arabs, Circassians, Bosnians,
Syrians, etc. — Christians, Jews) estimated anywhere from
200,000 to 350,000 in 1860 in the area that is now Israel, the
Territories and Jordan! UNRWA no longer has a compelling reason to
exist
(Emanuel Marx, Middle East Quarterly, 2012). UNRWA's staff no
longer serves the typical immediate needs of refugees. There is no
reason why it is still the major supplier of food, housing,
education and medical care for the "refugees." It also has become
a major source for teaching hostility and hate towards Israel. It instills
in the local Arabs the belief they own Mandated Palestine and have
the right to return to Israel.
In 1950, the UN General Assembly considered that "the
reintegration of the refugees into the economic life of the Near
East, either by repatriation or resettlement" [emphasis
added] was "essential in preparation for the time when
international assistance is no longer available, and for the
realization of conditions of peace and stability in the area;"
(U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) res. 393 (V), Dec. 2, 1950, (1).) So
it should be a good thing that, as of 2013, 40% of the refugees
supported by UNRWA have full citizenship in Jordan, Syria and
Lebanon. However, they have not had to relinquish their refugee
benefits and status, and they continue to swell the refugee count.
Other reasons for the spectacular increase in the number of
Palestinian "refugees" in 60 years are these: many Arabs living
close to refugee camps have registered as refugees for the
extensive refugee
benefits
(Samuel Katz, Eretzyisroel.org), deaths are not reported and
the birthrate of the Palestinian refugees is many times the rate
in Western countries.
IN 1964, YASSIR ARAFAT, HEAD OF THE PALESTINE
LIBERATION ORGANIZATION (PLO) created a people, calling them
the "Palestinian Arab People". Initially, the Palestinian people
were the Arabs living in Israel. The local Arabs living in the
Territories — Samaria, Judea and Gaza, which were then under
Jordanian and Egyptian control — were excluded, as were the
Arabs in Jordan. Israel gained back the Territories in 1967 and
when the Palestinian Charter was revised in 1968, the Arabs in the
Territories became "Palestinians." As Article 5 of the Palestinian
National Charter (PNC) of 1968 states:
"The Palestinians are those Arab nationals
who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of
whether they were evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone
born, after that date, of a Palestinian father - whether inside
Palestine or outside it - is also a Palestinian."
(Avalon. Palestinian National Charter)
This is much the same as the definition of a UNRWA Palestine
refugee, except there's no minimum residency specified,
yet neither the original Palestine National Charter of
1964 nor the Palestinian National Charter of 1968 mentions the
Palestine refugees as such. Jews who lived in Palestine "before
the Zionist invasion" (year unspecified) would be allowed to
stay.
On behalf of the new entity, the PLO claimed all the land of
the Palestine Mandate as a homeland; i.e., it included all of
Israel (including all of Jerusalem), Samaria, Judea, the Golan and
Gaza. Thus, Palestine became the Arab name for Biblical Israel; it
was coextensive with Mandated Palestine, i.e., the land that was
by international law in 1922 intended as the future Jewish
Homeland. Articles 19 and 20 (PNC, 1968) are of interest in how
the Covenant dealt with facts both legal and existential.
Article 19: "The partition of Palestine in 1947
and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal,
regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to
the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in
their homeland, and inconsistent with the principles embodied in
the Charter of the United Nations; particularly the right to
self-determination."
Article 20: explained
why the Jews could not make a similar claim.
"The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for
Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are
deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of
Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and
the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being
a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews
constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are
citizens of the states to which they belong."
This ignores that the Arab States in the 1940's and 1950's had
forced out their Jews because of their supposed national
affiliation with the new state of Israel. Nor does it explain why
Palestinians Arabs, who are member of the religion of Islam and
claim to be an integral part of the Arab nation, can have an
"independent nationality."
The Covenant pledges the Palestinian Arabs to "armed struggle"
— with "commando action" as their modus operandi to
win back their homeland. Article 27 promises the Palestinian Arabs
won't "interfere in the internal affairs of any Arab state" — an
unkept promise, considering that the PLO has thuggishly attempted
to take over the government in Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1975).
Continuing a trend, in 1990 it supported Iraq's invasion of
Kuwait. In fact, while they modestly see themselves as the
vanguard that will liberate their homeland, their ultimate
objective is to become a part of a comprehensive unity among the
Arab states (Article 13).
Not coincidentally, the PLO Covenant was adopted just four years
before a second Arab invasion of Israel, which ended with Israel
taking or taking back — depending on your point of view —
Samaria, Judea and the eastern part of Jerusalem, territory that
Jordan had conquered in 1948. Until then, most of the local Arabs had
accurately seen themselves as the descendants of Arabs who had come to
Israel in the 20th Century, after the British and the Jews created a
lively economy. They were well aware, by family names and family
history, of the Arab States from which they had migrated. Thanks to
propaganda that ignored facts, their children and the world belatedly
discovered — and wholeheartedly believed — that the
Palestinians were an ancient people, whose land was stolen by the
Nazi-like Jewish invaders, who mistreated the indigenous natives, the
Arabs. Western pro-Palestinians, including many a churchman, suggested
that the Palestinians had few resources to fight mighty Israel, hence
they were to be excused for resorting to what in any other group would
be considered barbaric and brutal terrorism.
Despite the propaganda, many Arabs seem to know the actual
condition of an Arab in Israel. Even after Israel became a State,
Arabs have kept coming into Israel by hook and by crook —
coming in to work and staying, coming in to marry a cousin and
never leaving, sneaking in, or using a passport its original owner no
longer needs.
USING THE REFUGEES TO CREATE SYMPATHY FOR THE ARAB CAUSE was
the first success the Arabs had in their military and media
campaigns to kick the Jews out of the Land of Israel.
Nevertheless, and despite the words of the Covenant, the Palestine
refugees have specifically been excluded from becoming citizens of
the envisioned future State of Palestine. The Daily Star
reported that the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations,
Abdullah Abdullah, confirming Mahmoud Abbas's words, has stated
that "This would not only apply to refugees in countries such as
Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan or the other 132 countries where
... Palestinians reside... [but] even Palestinian refugees who are
living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian] state, they are
still refugees. They will not be considered citizens."
(Daily Star, September 15, 2011). The Palestinian Authority
expects UNRWA to continue footing the bill. Nor will the State
allow a Jew to live there, no matter when his ancestors came to
Israel.
Since 1967, the core of anti-Israel propaganda is the assertion
that the Palestinian Arabs own Palestine. For now, they are
willing to take control just of what they call the Palestinian
Territories. The Arabs use a simple mantra: the Jews stole
Palestinian land and are occupying it. There are many colorful
and inventive side
streams (David
Meir-Levi, May 2006) but the major thrust is the contention
that the Arabs are the true owners of the land. In the
face of the blasting hostility from the world presses and
political leaders, Israel has responded with timidity and appears
to have lost confidence in the rightness of its
claim
(Michael Devolin, January 2014). It doesn't speak up about its
ownership of its land. It doesn't voice its history of symbiosis
with its ancient homeland. Afraid to fight the enemy to the point
of winning, the Israeli elite have turned their anger inward and
bully very religious Jews, many of them inhabitants of
"settlements," a term that should remind people that they are the
closest thing Israel has to the early settlers of modern Israel,
the pioneers who came in waves from the 19th century on to
redeem the Jewish homeland and who succeeded in creating a state.
Ironically, these demonized "settlers" are among the most
patriotic segment of the population and many serve in the IDF,
requesting assignment to the infantry, the tank corps and other
dangerous jobs.
Perhaps because they still hope to process a peaceful
settlement with some segment of the Arab world, Israeli leaders
have refused to speak up and tell the world about Israel's right
to the land. The land belongs to the Jews by right of God's
promise to the Jews. The land belongs to the Jews because the
moral foundation of the Western world was developed by the Jews in
their homeland. The land belongs to the Jews because of the
continued presence of Jewish inhabitants in the Land of Israel
throughout the centuries. The land belongs to the Jews because of
the symbiosis of Jews and the Jewish homeland — the land
went to rack and ruin when they weren't there in sufficient
numbers to tend to it. The land belongs to the Jews because of the
devotion of the Jews, who, over the centuries, have remembered
their homeland daily in their prayers where ever they were. The
land belongs to the Jews because international law, recognizing
the special relationship of the Jews and their homeland, put the
Jewish homeland in an irrevocable trust for the Jews, which
continues to this very day. The land belongs to the Jews by right
of conquest — the Jews bested the Arab invaders who came to
destroy them.
The world needs a strong Israel to fight the war resurgent
Islam is waging. Israel's elected officials need to regain
confidence to fight global terrorism appropriately in their part
of the world. The emphasis on a peace process, which is designed
to take nibbles out of the tiny Jewish state, is going
in the wrong direction. The Oslo Accords and the Gaza Retreat have
already placed organized, hostile and unmonitored groups of Arabs
inside Israeli land, where they can easily sustain an effective
terror campaign and where they put Israel's water supply at risk.
It is time to consider realistic alternatives to the "peace
process", which saps Israel's strength and goes nowhere.
"Arab and Jewish Refugees — The Contrast"
(Eli
E. Hertz, MythsandFacts.org, 2007) is a
well-detailed article on how the Arab leaders caused the creation
of both Arab and Jewish refugees when the modern State of
Israel came into being. Most of the more than 800,000 Jews that
were forced to flee from the Arab countries were absorbed in the
new Jewish state even though it had few resources, and got no help
from the UN. The Arabs that fled from Israel when ordered to leave
by the Arab countries that invaded Israel in 1948 are still not
permanently resettled after more than sixty years in the Arab
countries that host them. There are almost no Jews left in Arab
countries. Why not implement the second half of an ordinary
population transfer, and resettle the Arab refugees in some part
of the vast Arab land holdings, where they can live on their own,
rather than as dependents of the UN?
THIS ISSUE OF THINK-ISRAEL EXAMINES ONE TOPIC AND ITS
IMPLICATIONS: the claim that Israel is occupying land that belongs
to the Palestinian People. Obviously, we have a point of view. We
assert that by any valid measure the Land of Israel belongs to the
Jews. We further assert that it is the Arabs who are trying to
dispossess the Jews.
In this undertaking, we used articles from Think-Israel,
starting from 2002 when Think-Israel was established until the
present. Viewed in the aggregate, it is spooky how many stories
from way back could have been written today in 2016, with little
or no change. Are we in an early decade of another hundred year
war? Or is it because our recent and current leaders have insisted
that Islam is a peaceful religion and refuse to
say Jihad and Islam in the same sentence? In either
case, we have not started to fight back seriously.
There is overlap in content among the article, in part because
we tried to pick a variety of presentations, from those suitable
for the casual reader that wants to get the 'gist' of the matter
to those with the information required by someone charged with the
responsibility of presenting an accurate and detailed lecture to a
classroom or a jury. Altogether, they constitute a very small part
of the large number of articles, both relevant and excellent, that
we have presented over the years. Look them up. Read them. It will
be an enriching experience.
The articles below divide into two parts: general articles and
legal arguments:
PART 1: General Articles That Address Several Questions:
1) Who are the Palestinians people and what is the history of
their ancient kingdom of Palestine?
2) What is the history of the Palestinian Arabs and
what is the history of the Jews in the Land of Israel?
What are the claims of the Palestinian Arabs and what
are the claims of the Jews in Israel?
3) Question 3 describes Arab and media propaganda tricks and
suggests how to counter them. Most of the papers provide facts and
insights. Perhaps when Jews learn to present these truths with the
vivid imagery that Arabs and their sympathizers do so well,
people will finally understand the facts of the matter.
4) Israelis want a permanent separation from the Arabs. Arabs
take their mission to destroy Israel seriously. So a peace process
that has Israel giving up land while keeping an expanding Arab
population in Israel is ineffective, if not suicidal. Are there
better alternatives?
PART 2: Applicable Legal Concepts And
Pertinent Legal Documents:
Relationships among the pertinent legal documents confirming
the Jewish ownership of the Land of Israel
Applicable legal concepts and terminology
Israel's legal ownership of the Land of Israel: significance
and implications
Does Israel own Judea and Samaria? Are the settlements legal?
International law and the 4th Geneva Convention
Later UN Resolutions
Israelis Are Occupying Jewish Land, Not Arab Land
SUMMARY:
There Is No Palestinian People. The so-called
Palestinians are part of the Middle East's Arab population, with
no difference in ethnicity, culture, religion or foundational
history. Their life-style in any Muslim country depends strongly
on how closely their leaders (the country's "president" or king,
their clerics, their tribal rulers, the heads of their clans)
subscribe to trying to imitate the mores and practices of early
Islam. They came into Israel, as in many other countries, as
invaders; the sum total of their contribution to civilization has
been to carry out multi-level jihad to reduce non-Muslims to dhimmi status
under the rule of sharia law.
Sovereignty. After the Romans destroyed the
sovereign Jewish State of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish
people, the area was conquered and under the rule of Arabs,
Christians, Persians and an assortment of Muslim groups for the
next two millenia. Currently, the instant-mix assortment of Arabs
and other Muslims who call themselves the Palestinian People claim
the Territories are their country, and, when talking among
themselves, they claim Israel itself as their country. But they
are neither ancient nor indigenous. There has never been an
independent sovereign entity called Palestine. Even more
generally, from Roman times on, at no time did any people
(re)establish a national homeland under Arab rule or any one
else's sovereign rule, until the Jews returned to redeem their land.
The Jews Own The Land Of Israel. They own the
land by irrevocable International Law; by Bible; by History; by
creating the Moral Foundation for the Western World there; by
always Maintaining a Presence there; by their Devotion; by
teaching their children to Never Forget Their Ties To The Land; by
Talking about it and Including it in their Prayers (they prayed
seasonally for rain in Israel when they had been living thousands
of miles away for hundreds of years); by steadfastly Keeping the
Commandments under changing conditions; by Celebrating its
Festivals And Fast Days And Holy Days without pause; by creating a
meaningful substitute for service to the Temple on the Mount; by
finally Redeeming a Land that had fallen on hard times; by
Creating a Vibrant Society; by Retaking on the Burden of figuring
out how humans can balance personal growth and community
responsibility; and if these reasons don't convince, by the way
most all other people have gained land: by the Right of
Conquest.
In Short: the Jews of Israel own the Land of
Israel: Israel, Samaria, Judea, Gaza and the Golan. The Arab
invaders are illegally occupying this land. This issue of
Think-Israel provides substantiation and clarification, using
facts, observations, history and analysis.
PART 1: GENERAL ARTICLES
QUESTION 1: THE PALESTINIANS
Who are the Palestinian People?
What is the history of their ancient kingdom of Palestine?
Why invent the Palestinian People?
Who are the Palestinian People?
The invention of the Palestinian people is the keystone of the
successful propaganda campaign that insists that Israel is
occupying the homeland of the Palestinian people, inheritors of
the ancient land of Palestine. It is so pervasive and commonplace a
notion that it goes unquestioned. It's one of the store of items
that millions of people take for granted. Successive Israeli
governments know better, but desperate to paper together some sort
of peace between Jew and Arab, they don't challenge this factoid.
Their silence has brought them more and
more unbridled terrorism by the local Arabs; and
more and more overt hate displayed by Palestinian sympathizers
around the world.
Yashiko Sagamori asks the right questions about the obscure
birth of the Palestinian people. This was one of the first
articles to puncture the false claim that the local Arabs were a
people, separate from other Arabs. Arab propagandists have spun a
web of lies, bestowing a fictitious history to a mixed bag of
Arabs, 95% of whom had come into Israel in the 20th century
legally and illegally because of the new economic opportunities
made possible by the British and the Jews. Yashiko Sagamori asked
reasonable questions that would apply to any place calling itself
a state. The pro-Arab weavers of fantasy may persuade the ignorant
and those prone to see evil in anything Jews do. But they can't
answer these questions truthfully because the pseudo-people, the
Palestinians, have no country of origin called Palestine. There
may be minor differences in accent or style of life because of where they came from but in the main
they are indistinguishable from other Arabs in religion, history,
food, and culture.
This is a very excellent review of the facts about the
"Palestinian People" and their short but violent history. Eli E.
Hertz notes that "[m]ost so-called Palestinians are relative
newcomers to the Land of Israel." How true. If they were truly
indigenous, their huge jump in population in a relatively short
time under poor environmental conditions would be the biggest
demographic miracle in history. Also,
why was there no mention of a
(indigenous) "Palestinian people" until Israel captured the
Territories after it was invaded by the neighboring Arab
countries? As Hertz writes, "Suddenly a separate Palestinian
peoplehood appeared and claimed it deserved nationhood — and 21
other Arab states went along with it."
Crafty Yasser Arafat is the one credited with deciding that
the Arabs weren't going to destroy Israel by fighting the Jews
head on. So he invented the Palestinian people, who, he claimed,
were native to Palestine (a state that had never existed).
Ignoring that this "people" were mostly natives of the neighboring
Arab countries, he declared Israel was occupying Palestinian land.
Ergo, these newly-branded Palestinians were justified — and here
the media and many a mainline church agreed with him — in doing
anything and everything to regain their land. As Moshe Dann points
out, "the fraud worked!" "The success of 'Palestinianism' is a
tribute to what money, influence and Jew-hatred will buy and
attract." It's time this hoax was exposed.
Victor Sharpe provides us with an excellent and concise history
of "the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians." Far from being
a unique people, they are no different from the Arabs in the
states that neighbor Israel. And, in fact, almost all of their
ancestors came into present-day Israel and the
Territories after 1900 from these countries, after the
Jews began returning to their homeland in large numbers.
"[T]here is no such thing as a Palestinian people; no such thing
as a Palestinian history; and no Palestinian language exists.
There has never been any independent, sovereign Palestinian
state in all of recorded history — let alone an Arab independent
state of Palestine." What is remarkable is that, without a shred
of evidence, they have convinced so many that they are the
original inhabitant of the land and that the Jews, who are the
indigenous natives, are occupying Palestinian land. Lest you
discount this history because the author is Jewish, Sharpe
provides statements by Arabs and other non-Jews that the
Palestinians are not a people and descriptions of how desolate
and underpopulated the land was before the Jews came to redeem
their homeland.
OF COURSE THE "PALESTINIANS" ARE AN INVENTED PEOPLE
by Jerome S. Kaufman, December 11, 2011
In this article, Jerry Kaufman sums up what Newt Gringrich
said a week before. In actuality, the Palestinians are a fake
people. They had not developed into a people over the centuries.
Those we called Palestinians have no identity distinct from the
general Arab population. In fact, as Kaufman records, prior to the
birth of the State of Israel during Britain's control of the area,
it was the Jews that were the 'Palestinians", not the Arabs. They
published the Palestinian Post (later changed to the
Jerusalem Post); and they formed the all-Jewish Palestinian
Brigade that fought as part of the British Army in World War 1.
In fact, even the separation of the population as Arab or Jew
is inaccurate; Arabic is a major language spoken in the area, but
the people were of many ethnic groups. The 1911 edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica lists half a hundred groups living in
Mandated Palestine — Beduins, Circassians, Jews, Christians,
Arabs, Assyrians, Chaldeans, etc. There was no group called
Palestinian or one that called itself Palestinian. Michael Curtis
of the BESA Center puts it this way in an essay entitled
"Palestinians: Invented People" (BESA Center Perspectives Paper #
157, December 20, 2011.
Available
here.)
"...no independent Palestinian state has ever existed, let
alone one that manifested a 'Palestinian identity.' A few
examples can illustrate this. The first Congress of
Muslim-Christian Associations in the area met in February 1919 to
consider the future of the territory formerly ruled by the Ottoman
Empire, which dissolved after World War I. The Congress declared:
"We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria as it has never been
separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by
national, religious, linguistic, moral, economic, and geographical
bonds." The celebrated scholar Philip Hitti, testifying before the
Anglo-American Committee in 1946, stated there was no such thing
as Palestine in history, "absolutely not." The United Nations
Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), in its September 3, 1947
report, remarked that Palestinian nationalism, as distinct from
Arab nationalism, was a relatively new phenomenon. It concluded
that Palestinian identity was part of a rich tapestry of
identities, mostly predicated on Arab and Islamic solidarity.
"The Palestinians themselves reached the same conclusion.
Palestinian spokesperson Ahmad Shuqeiri told the UN Security
Council in 1956 that Palestine was nothing more than southern
Syria. The head of the Military Operations Department of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Zuheir Muhsein, declared
on March 31, 1977, "Only for political reasons do we carefully
underline our Palestinian identity. ...the existence of a separate
Palestinian identity is there for tactical reasons." The PLO, in
its own Charter or amended Basic Law (article 1), states that
Palestine is an integral part of the Arab nation. That "Arab nation" never
included a state known as "Palestine." Indeed, the inhabitants of
the general Palestinian area were not subjects of an Arab nation
but of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the area from 1516-1918.
This was the last recognized sovereign power in the area. The area
of Palestine was a district of the Empire, officially a
vilayet (province), not a political entity. No independent
Palestinian state has ever been established, nor was there a
single administrative or cultural unit of Palestinians. Arabs in
the area were not different in any way from other Arabs in the
Middle East. Nor was Israel established on the ashes of any state
other than the Ottoman Empire.
"On the other hand, a sovereign Jewish state existed prior to
the rise of the Roman Empire. While the Romans destroyed the
Second Temple, changed the name of the land to Syria Palestina,
and banished the Jews from Jerusalem, this did not eradicate all
Jewish presence in the area. Moreover, the Jews in the Diaspora
maintained a strong consciousness of the historical connection of
the Jewish people to Palestine — a connection that was
acknowledged in the League of Nations mandate."
This is a much-amplified version of an essay first posted in
March 2003. Using information from various sources, many of them
Arab, this essay makes clear that the Palestinians are not native
to Palestine. They are not an ancient people. They are not a
people. Advertised as the original natives of a (never-existent)
state of Palestine, they are the most successful scam the Arabs
have ever run in their obsession to destroy Israel.
What is The History Of The Ancient Kingdom Of Palestine
It's impossible to write actual details about the existence of
an ancient kingdom that never existed. At least it is for anyone
who respects facts. The Arabs have a gift for appropriating Jewish
history and filling in the blank spaces with moon dust. We don't
have that talent, so we offer, instead, these articles which
contain in-your-face facts on history and migration patterns that
indirectly confirm this statement: the "Palestinian people" did
not arise from a Palestinian homeland in Israel or anywhere else.
For the most part, they are Arabs that came, legally and
illegally, in large numbers from
the neighboring Arab countries after settler Jews opened up new
economic opportunities and especially between 1917 and 1948 when
the British ignored their entry but suppressed Jewish immigration.
Nowadays many
a propagandist talks about Palestine as if such a sovereign
political entity exists anywhere except in the fancy-filled
illogic of Jew-haters. It doesn't exist. What's more — it never
did. The fallback position of these Jew-haters when forced to
admit the facts is: but the land belongs to the natives that
were driven out or marginalized when Israel became a state.
Again, this is wrong. Most of these "natives" came into the land
after the Jews and the Brits created economic opportunities
— or are the descendants of those that did. Steven Simpson
provides us with an excellent history of the development of the
"Palestine" myth, which has become one of the more important ways
to attack the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Unlike the notion
that the Palestinian Arab homeland is Palestine, the legitimacy of
Israel is warranted by history, morality, international law and
the rules of conquest.
Tsafrir Ronen bluntly provides us with some historic facts
that are usually ignored by diplomats formulating a fantasy of two
people living side by side in peace, when the reality is that one
of these people — the Palestinian Arabs — is not an authentic
people. They were invented as a way to challenge the Jewish
people's return to their land. As Ronen writes, "[t]his is the
essence of the Arab propaganda war, which is intended to steal the
identity of Eretz Yisrael and to transform it into Palestine, and
by such means to turn the Jewish people into occupiers of Eretz
Yisrael. That's the whole story." Who says so? The Palestinian
Arabs. Their very own leadership says so. Openly. And in print.
Read some of their statements in this article.
THE HISTORY AND MEANING OF "PALESTINE" AND "PALESTINIAN"
by Patricia Berlyn, February 15, 2004
This is a tightly woven excellent review of the badly-misused
terms: Palestine and Palestinians. Having no
history to speak of — the families of most of the Arab inhabitants of Israel
and the Territories came there after 1900 — the Arab leadership
claimed the geographic (not political) region of the Ottoman
Empire called Syrian Palestine was actually once their kingdom.
WAS THERE A PALESTINIAN ARAB NATIONAL MOVEMENT AT THE END OF THE OTTOMAN PERIOD?
by Wallace Edward Brand, September-October 2011
During the 400 years in which the Ottomans ruled what later
was known as Mandated Palestine, there was no Palestinian state,
no Palestinian people and no Palestinian Arab nationalist movement
among the local Arabs and other Muslims and non-Muslims. Yet some
40 years later, Yasir Arafat proclaimed there was a Palestinian
people and Palestine had always been their land. Wallace Edward
Brand examines whether there is evidence of a nationalist movement
in the period between the end of Ottoman rule after World War 1
and the artificial creation of Palestinian peoplehood, during the
time that the Jews were building the infrastructure of a State and
redeeming their ancient homeland.
THE SMOKING GUN: ARAB IMMIGRATION INTO PALESTINE, 1922-1931
by Fred M. Gottheil, Winter, 2003
Palestinian Arabs base their claim to Israeli land on "deep
and timeless roots in that geography and that their own
immigration into that geography has at no time been consequential.
To challenge that contention, then, is to challenge their
self-selected criterion for sovereignty." Fred Gottheil not only
challenges that assertion but demonstrates the likelihood that many
of the Palestinian Arabs migrated — or are descendants of those
who migrated — to Mandated Palestine and continue to this day to
migrate to Israel to take advantage of economic conditions made
available by the British Mandatory Government and the Jews. His
facts and figures are in line with what Winston Churchill —
well-informed about the British Mandate — said about the Arab
influx into Israel: "far from being persecuted, the Arabs have
crowded into the country and multiplied."
Once the question is raised, the "because" becomes evident:
these people are called Palestinians, so obviously Palestine must
belong to them. Knives and rocks and hideous murders of Jewish
women and children are the only weapons these poor victims have
to oust the Israeli invaders. So whatever they do to regain their
land, the world forgives them.
Articles in this section add a more basic reason for
the continued antagonism to the Jews, no matter how much Israel
caters to the local Arabs. According to the Qu'ran, the Jews have no right
to the Land. So any way of destroying Jewish credibility and their
physical presence is virtuous.
Robert Reilly asks a critical question: why were the
Palestinian people invented? The short answer is they serve as a
political ploy, as visual aids to keep us focused on the
unfairness of a nascent Israel surviving invasion by her
neighbors. Their suffering becomes justification for the Arab
doing any loathsome deed to drive the Jews out. The assertions
that the Arabs Palestinians own the land, that they were
driven from their homes, that they are Cinderella and Israel is
cruel step-mother are latter-day accretions. The basic issue is
that by the rules of Islamic theology, Jews have lost their right
to the Holy Land. As Reilly puts it, "... Jewish sovereignty in
Israel is incompatible with the Qu'ran..." Therefore they must not
be allowed to be a sovereign power.
Shelby Steele discusses the Arab war against the Jews, in which
the Arab aggressors have successfully persuaded themselves and
others that they are "victims of colonialism, ... victims of
white supremacy." What is so thought-provoking about this essay
is that Steele homes in on the power of a "poetic truth", a
fantasy powerful enough to counter factual reality. As he points
out, "Poetic truths ... are marvelous because no facts and no
reason can ever penetrate. Supporters of Israel are up against a
poetic truth," one that is supported by the West, which "lacks
the moral authority" to speak the truth. We must counter the
Arab narrative and Steele indicates some procedures for
restating the narrative.
SOVIET RUSSIA, THE CREATORS OF THE PLO AND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
by Wallace Edward Brand, January-February 2010
If Yasser Arafat was the father of the Palestinian People,
Russia was its mother. Wallace Edward Brand writes about the role
Soviet Russia played in literally creating the Palestinian People
in 1964 and in establishing Yassir Arafat as its leader. He bases
much of this on the revelations of Major General Ion Mihai Pacepa,
who has been vetted and certified as a credible source. Creating
the "Palestinian" people as a propaganda weapon to counter
Israel's ownership of Mandated Palestine has also been confirmed
by many Arab sources (cf. here.)
WHAT IS "PALESTINIAN LAND" AND WHO ARE THE "PALESTINIANS"?
by Dafna Yee, January-February, 2007
People casually use the terms "Palestinian" and
"Palestinian Lands" without realizing they are adopting a lie
conceived by the P.L.O. and perpetuated by a pro-Arab media. They
are subscribing to the notion that Israel exists on Palestinian
land. It is, as Yee writes, "aiding Israel's sworn enemies in their goal to replace Israel with 'Palestine.'"
In this essay Dafna Yee untangles some of the history of how
some local Arabs became the "Palestinians." And why historically
and geographically there is no such thing as Palestinian land.
ISLAM AND THE OTHER: THE AL-WALA' WAL-BARA' DOCTRINE
by David Bukay, February 23, 2014
Steele's article above on the Palestinian cultivation of
victimhood is a special case of how Muslims view their
relationship to all other religions and groups. What powers the
Muslims' shameless attempts to destroy non-Muslims physically and
culturally rather than live peaceably with them is the al-Wala'
wal-Bara' doctrine. Muslims see themselves as peaceful and
non-Muslims as aggressors. So Muslims must defend themselves.
David Bukay describes it this way: "...Muslims can viciously
attack at almost every possible opportunity while crying out they
are victims of oppression and aggression. They can perpetuate
obscene inhuman acts of violence, terrorize and intimidate, while
they accuse the other of colonialism, apartheid, racism, and
Islamophobia." In this binary world, "... it is the right against
wrong; and it is the pious against the evil-doers; it is Paradise
or Hell. There are no legitimacy, consensual recognition and
acceptance of the other, unless he becomes Muslim or he is subdued
to Islamic rule."
QUESTION 2: THE HISTORY OF AND CLAIMS TO THE LAND OF ISRAEL
What is the history of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel?
What is the history of the Jews in Israel?
What are the Palestinian Arab claims to the Land of Israel?
What are the Jewish claims to the Land of Israel?
What are the Jewish claims specifically to Samaria and Judea
(aka the West Bank)?
What is The History Of The Palestinian Arabs in the Land of Israel?
"Palestinian" history is fabrication on a grand scale. Much of
it is an appropriation of the Jewish connection to the Land of
Israel. When they can't sell the notion that the Palestinian Arabs
are a discrete people, Arab fabricators dust off another fantasy:
after the Arabs conquered the land in Mohammad's time, they
intermarried with the locals, who voluntarily converted to Islam,
and all lived happily in a fruitful and peaceful land until the
Jews came. The closest applicable history is this: the Arab
followers of Mohammad (NOT Palestinians) conquered
Palestine in 636 CE. They held it until 661 CE, when the Umayyad
Caliphate of Damascus took control. The Abbasids took control in
750 CE and then the region was governed by a number of Arab
semi-autonomous rulers until the Fatimids gained control in 1098,
to lose the land almost immediately to the Crusaders. That was the
end of any sort of Arab rule. From then until World War 2, the
area was ruled by different Muslim and Christian groups, with the
Ottoman Turks ruling it from 1516 until World War 1. We could
extend the term Arab to include any Muslim rule, but then we get
further and further from any Palestinian specificity. The Arabs
from Arabia were one of some 50 ethnic groups that lived in the
area, which deteriorated more and more into a moribund land of
rocks and sand by the 20th century, when waves of Jews came to
redeem their homeland.
A FEW UNFASHIONABLE FACTS WORTH KNOWING ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST
by Steven Plaut, January-February, 2005
This essay is strictly facts — no interpretation. Steven
Plaut accurately makes the point that "Palestine was stolen from
the Jews by the Arabs and not the other way around."
Articles in Think-Israel — as well as much of the background page
— have made the same points in different ways. And we will keep
repeating the truth until the Arabs and their buddies stop lying.
by Y.K.Cherson and Rachel Molschky, appendix by Dr. Rivka
Shpak Lissak, January 9, 2014
Y.K Cherson and Rachel Molschky recount the non-history of the
Palestinian Arabs. They seem to have been known to no one in
earlier civilizations. The Assyrians knew the Jews. They didn't
know the Palestinians. The Babylonians didn't write about them. In
Roman writing and sculptures and friezes, there's no mention of
Palestinians. Isn't that odd, considering that the Romans and the
Jews mixed it up in exactly the same spot for years? And then one
day, Yasser Arafat said, "Let there be Palestinians." And the
world immediately believed in this miraculous birth.
There is an addendum by Dr Rivka Shpak Lissak that deals with the
question: when did the Arabs come into "Palestine." Note, we said
Arabs, not Palestinians.
FOUNDING NATIONAL MYTHS: FABRICATING PALESTINIAN HISTORY
by David Bukay, May-June, 2012
As David Bukay points out, "By appropriating to themselves the values,
traditions, and historical facts that belong to the Jews, Palestinians
have managed to fabricate a 'legitimate' history and political
traditions out of nothing while denying those of Israel." Quite an
achievement, particularly when so much of their version is absurd,
using historic and geographic facts in a farcical fashion. For
example, they claim with a straight face that Jesus the Jew — born well before Islam was invented and the
Arabs invaded the area — was
their first shahid (martyr). And make no mistake. They have convinced many purportedly
educated and knowledgeable people that this is so. At least, their Western
comrades, including churchmen, have raised no objections.
When you read this, you might — as I did — hear a pin popping an
over-inflated balloon. The global main stream media, the
leftists of Israel, including some who govern the country, and
the (un)paid Arab-aiders have hidden the facts under reams of
false information. And here comes irrefutable evidence from the
very long period which started whe the Muslims conquered the
Land of Israel in the 7th Century C.E. until the Jews in the
late 19th century returned in droves to redeem the Land, joining
the Jews who had never left Israel. During this period, the
Arabs had taken a thriving and productive land and turned it
into an unproductive rock-strewn wilderness (rather like what
they are doing in Gaza today). Avi Goldreich writes of a 17th
century book which, simply by describing the reality of the time
makes us aware that the Land of Israel was then unfruitful and
had few inhabitants. And of those inhabitants, the Muslims were
a minority, a small minority. As Winston Churchill noted many
years later, some 95% of the Arabs in Israel and the Territories
migrated into Palestine in the 20th century to coattail on the
Jewish enterprise.
In 1878, less than a hundred and fifty years ago, what is now
Israel, Gaza, Samaria, Judea, the Golan and Jordan was a "desolate
arid wilderness, almost empty." It was barely able to sustain the
estimated 100,000 to 250,000 Arabs, Bosnians, Circassians, Jews,
Christians and other scattered groups who lived there. Zeev Galili
writes of a map done at the time, showing all the settlements and
their sizes. It is a guide to a realistic estimate of the
population at that time.
Elliot Green writes of a time — all of a hundred years ago
— when there was no such entity as Palestine, let alone a
Palestinian people. There was not even such a thing as Arab
nationalism. As they had from Biblical times, Jews lived in the
Land — then an undifferentiated part of the Ottoman Empire — and
were not called occupiers. Arabs lived there and were not called
owners.
This is an examination of a history text disseminated on many Arab
websites and some neutral sites that provide historical documents on
the Middle East. It is said to have been produced by a group of Jewish
scholars, an anonymous group that calls itself Jews for Justice in
the Middle East. We think it's a fraud.
What is The History Of The Jews in the Land of Israel?
"Whereas there is irrefutable archeological, ethnographic and
literary proof that Jews have inhabited Israel since time
immemorial, there is no similar evidence of an ancient, indigenous
Palestinian people. To compensate for their lack of historicity,
the Palestinian Arabs deprecate the Jewish connection to Israel
with lies and distortions that are often repeated by their
supporters on the left.
"They contend, for example, that the Jewish People originated
in Europe and that the Temple never stood in Jerusalem. They claim
that the Jews were complicit in the Crusades, although Jews
suffered far worse than anyone else at the hands of the Crusaders.
They argue that the archeological record, which is so rich in
linguistic, cultural and architectural evidence of ancient Jewish
life in Israel, is simply the product of Zionist propaganda. In so
doing, they project their own lack of national bona fides onto the
only people with a continuous link to the land.
"The audacity of such claims is truly Orwellian." (Matthew
Hausman, May 2013,
here.)
This set of articles reviews the history of Jews in the Land of
Israel and their treatment in Arab countries.
HISTORY OF JEWISH SOVEREIGNTY OVER ISRAEL OVER 3000 YEARS
by Roy Chweidan, March-April, 2010
This article was written to counter the pernicious and
widespread myth that the Arabs pre-date the Jews in Israel.
Depending on the gullibility of the audience they claim to be the
early Canaanites; or Philistines; or they claim that in Temple
times it was a Palestinian state filled with Palestinians like
Jesus and his mother Mary; or they claim they intermarried with
the natives when they conquered the land in Mohammed's time, and
this is the next best thing to being native themselves. They
ignore that 90-95% of them came after 1900 into what is now Israel
and the Territories. Roy Chweidan presents a short summary of the
actual history of Israel starting in the period of the Judges.
There are also two appendices: European Coalition for Israel,
"90th Anniversary Of The San Remo Conference," April 25, 2010; and
Eli E. Hertz, "Jerusalem," March 17, 2010.
JERUSALEM, CAPITAL OF THE JEWS: THE JEWISH IDENTITY OF JERUSALEM IN GREEK AND ROMAN SOURCES
by Rivkah Fishman-Duker, November 2008
As Rivkah Fishman-Duker writes, by the early second century
CE, when Tacitus wrote his history, it is clear that the narrative
of the circumstances of Jerusalem's foundation had become
standardized among Greeks and Roman writers. Descriptions of the
Temple are always part of the accounts of Jerusalem and Judaism.
In addition to physical descriptions, Fishman-Duker describes the
religious aspect of the Temple, which differed radically from
Greek and Roman paganism. Their accounts range from the factual to
the libelous and bizarre. As Fishman-Duker writes, "The references
to Jerusalem in these classical texts not only demonstrate the
historical attachment of the Jewish people to Jerusalem, but also
contribute to our knowledge of Jews and Judaism in the ancient
world."
Jenny Grigg highlights the major periods in the history of the
city of Jerusalem, pointing out that not only is it Judaism's
holiest site and capital of Jewish states both in ancient times
and in modern times, but there has been a Jewish presence there
for some 3000 years. As for the Palestinian Arabs, their claim
to the city "seems to be based solely on their desire to possess
it." Paradoxically, to ensure that people of all religions can
worship in Jerusalem freely requires that Jerusalem remain under
Israel's sole rule.
Many feel Gaza has little connection with the Jews. Gary
Fitleberg recounts the history of Gaza, including some material
from that well-known reference book: the Bible. It was part of
the territory allocated to the tribe of Judah. Samson brought
down the Temple of Dagon in Gaza. After Jerusalem fell, it was
an important Jewish center during many invasions and changes of
ruler. It certainly has more affiliation with the Jewish people
than many people realize.
This essay — a chapter from Shmuel Katz'
Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine — makes
the point that the Jews didn't create a homeland in recent
times. Israel has been their homeland for thousands of years.
They needed to regain it and redeem it. And that too took
thousands of years, though during that time, no matter how hard
the local conditions and how oppressive the rulers, there were
always some Jews living in the Jewish homeland. By the mid-1800s
while still under Ottoman rule, the entire region that
was to become Mandated Palestine after World War 1 was
Darfur-poor, economically a derelict and practically empty of
people. Katz writes that the total population —
Jews and non-Jews — at that time is estimated at 50,000-100,000 people.
The millions of Arabs currently in Israel and the territories
are mostly 20th century immigrants and their descendents. Katz
makes it clear that the "historic ownership [of Palestine] by
the Arab people or by a 'Palestinian entity' is a fiction
fabricated in our own day." It is about time the Arab propaganda
that claims the Palestinians/Arabs are the natives and/or a
"Palestinian/Arab nation" who have been dispossessed by the
invasion of the Jews is recognized to be the fantasy that it
is.
ISLAM AND THE JEWS: THE STATUS OF JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN
MUSLIM LANDS, 1772 CE
by Jacob Marcus, January-Febraury, 2008
"In 1772," Jacob Marcus wrote, "a Muslim scholar in Cairo
was asked how Jews and Christians should be treated." This text is
his reply. It is in keeping with earlier Muslim practices (see,
e.g., Andrew G. Bostom (ed.), The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism:
From Sacred Texts to Solemn History) and indicates a continuity in
discrimination against Christians and Jews throughout Islamic
history. It certainly calls into question modern spins on Muslim
intolerance — that it is due to their unhappiness with what Israel
and America are doing; that it is due to a few irrational fanatics
on the fringe of the religion; that it is due to Muslim shame at
being left behind by western technology and science; and that it
is due to modern dictatorships and would disappear if democracy —
usually defined as the right to vote, which many Muslim
dictatorships already have — was adopted in Muslim countries.
THE FORGOTTEN OPPRESSION OF JEWS UNDER ISLAM AND IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL
by Elliott A. Green, December 1, 2008
Elliott Green writes, "Contrary to what many Jews and other people
have believed, conditions in Muslim lands were often worse for Jews
than in Christendom". They were subject to the extortion tax levied on
all infidels, but they were singled out as the enemy and as inferior
beings in the Quran and ever after were ranked at the bottom of the
social structure, living in fear and humiliation over the centuries.
It was particularly poignant to see this in Jerusalem, where, as
Chateaubriand wrote, "these legitimate owners of Judea [are] slaves
and strangers in their own land." Ignoring history, or perhaps banking
on the general ignorance of their readers, writers such as Professors
Walt and Mearsheimer speak of the innocent Arabs hounded by the Jews,
a neat inversion of reality.
Another myth is that until the Jews came back in numbers to their
homeland, Jews had lived harmoniously under Arab rule.
Circumstances varied but, as in this article, he was always a
dhimmi. What The Elder of Ziyon describes is a page out of the diary
kept by James Silk Buckingham on his travels. He was entertained
in Damascus by the local prime minister. The guests included a
Jew, described by Buckingham "as the wealthiest and the most
powerful of all present", a personage who managed the machinery of
government. Yet as a Jew, he was dhimmi. The other guest sat or
stood; the Jew sat on the ground.
by Chedva Margolit; foreword by Steve Kramer, April 28, 2008
As Steve Kramer writes in his foreword: "Nothing is more
appropriate on the 60th anniversary of Israel's Declaration of
Independence than reading the words of a young Jewish wife who
left America and came to Israel for love of Eretz Yisrael." This
essay is to be treasured.
Palestinian Arabs claim the land because they claim they are
the descendants of the Philistines and/or the Canaanites. But the
Arabs didn't conquer the area until the 7th Century CE and by then
the ancient Philistines and Canaanites were dead thousands of
years. They also claim they own the area specifically designated
by the British as Palestine and once the southern part of the
Ottoman province of Greater Syria. But there were few Arabs living
there (see
here). The area was economically depressed and there were
relatively few people living there, counting everyone. The
inhabitants were some fifty ethnic groups, practicing some half
dozen religions. The official language was Turkish. Arabic, the
language of the Koran, was, according to Wikipedia, used mainly
for religious practices. Moreover, much of the land was owned by
absentee landowners, not the locals. The present-day Arabs in
Israel and the Territories can't even claim to have married the
long-time inhabitants, because most of today's Arabs or their
great granddaddies came into the area after 1900. So their
major claim is that it's their land because they say so. That may
enough for the U.N., the E.U. and other such fair-minded groups,
but it's not much of an argument.
If a Palestinian sympathizer tells you Jesus was a Palestinian,
remind him Jesus was born a hundred years or so before the Romans
conquered Israel and renamed it "Syria Palaestina", hoping, as do
the Arabs today, to eradicate the attachment of the Jews to their
homeland. From then through the Ottoman period, it was
geographically the southern part of the Syrian province.
Politically, it was nothing. The Brits revived the name
Palestine for the area, and the Jews called themselves
Palestinians, until the creation of the State of Israel. If the
Palestinian sympathizer tells you that there was a
country/state/kingdom called Palestine that is now occupied
by Jews, understand that he thinks you are ignorant enough to
believe anything.
Lawrence Auster examines the Arab claim to Palestine. He
points out that the Arabs — and that includes the 'Palestinians' — are
not native to Palestine and their control of Palestine has
long been over. Besides, Arab control was sandwiched in
among conquests by other ethnic groups that also were not
indigenous to the region. Auster also demolishes the Arab claim
that the Jews stole their land. As he writes, "The claim is
laughable coming from the Arabs, who conquered and reduced to
slavery and penury ancient peoples and civilizations stretching
from Persia to the Atlantic; who rejected an Arab state in
Palestine alongside the Jewish state under the 1947 partition plan
and then sought - unsuccessfully - to obliterate that nascent
Jewish state; and who never even spoke of a distinct Arab state in
Palestine until the founding of the terrorist Palestinian
Liberation Organization in 1964, sixteen years after the founding
of the state of Israel."
Muslims haven't tried to change their barbaric ways. Instead, as
Tabitha Korol writes, they have concealed them; whitewashed them;
spoken bald-faced lies; intimated critics by yelling Islamophobia at
any negative remark about Islam, no matter how accurate, no matter how
mild; vandalized and destroyed religious emblems and places and
renamed areas (calling Judea and Samaria the West Bank) in order to
delegitimize their victims and deprive them of visual and verbal
confirmation of their history. Like parasites they present other
people's histories as theirs — which, I suppose, is understandable,
given their own history. Korol presents some of their fantastic claims
and refutes them with facts.
William Rabinowitz paints a searing picture of a not-too-bright
current-day Jewish college student, who has absorbed a
pro-Palestinian attitude from his teachers, the local Muslim
students and the TV and newspapers and can faultlessly repeat the
party line. Rabinowitz responds with very different answers to
someone who had been indoctrinated to believe that the
Palestinians are indigenous to Israel and own the land. Rabinowitz
seems to specialize in humor-coated history, wrapping little-known
historic facts in whimsy. In this essay, he points out that after
the Jews were defeated by the Romans and through the thousands of
years of the diaspora, there was always a Jewish presence in
Israel He writes about the Jews of Pek'in, Israel, a community
where Jews have been in continual residence for the last 2 and 1/2
millenia. It is a fact that has been obscured as attention is
usually focused on the immigration of Jews starting in the 19th
century to redeem their ancient homeland.
With the connivance of the United Nations, the Palestinian
Arabs have had free reign to attempt "to rob Israel of its
history, heritage, and homeland." As Jerold S. Auerbach points
out, "Plundering Jewish history and claiming Israeli land is, of
course, the raison d'être of Palestinian existence." They have
claimed Abraham was a Muslim, as was Jesus and presumably all the
Jews living in Israel at the time of the Second Temple. They have
claimed they have been in Palestine for eons, ignoring that most
of the "Palestinians" came to what is now Israel and the
Territories after 1900. The latest outrage is claiming "the Dead
Sea as Palestine's own 'heritage site.'" While attempting to steal
Israel's identity and history, they go well beyond the usual
identity theft. They also claim Israelis have no history; Jews
never had a Temple; they never had sovereignty in Israel
There is always the argument thrown up — so ok,
there's nothing special about the Arabs who are living in Israel and the
Territories. But they deserve their own place, don't they?
Even the U.S. went from a position of not negotiating with the PLO
in 1991 — which was and is and will be a terrorist
organization committed to destroying Israel — to its current
promotion of such a state in just 10 years. In this article,
Patricia Berlyn critically examines the current
reasonable-sounding arguments that are put forth by the
well-meaning and not so well-meaning as reasons to establish a PLO
state for the Palestinian Arabs.
The homeland of the Arabs and the Arabs who call themselves
Palestinians is the Arabian Desert. The Homeland of the Jews is
the Land of Israel. When England and France wrote up the Mandates
that started the process of creating many of the current Arab
states as well as the State of Israel, it was understood that
the Mandate for the Jewish Land was simply confirming a long-time
truth: the Land of Israel was the Jewish homeland. Through the
centuries of the diaspora, there was always some Jewish presence
in the land. The unique and unwavering attachment of the Jew to
his homeland over the two millennia of the diaspora is supported
by the Bible, by history, by international law and by conquest.
William Mehlman begins his review of Howard Grief's recent book,
The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International
Law: A Treatise on Jewish Sovereignty over the Land of Israel this
way:
With The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under
International Law (Mazo Publishers, Jerusalem) Canadian-born
Israeli constitutional scholar and lawyer Howard Grief has given
us a book that shatters every myth, lie, misrepresentation and
distortion employed over the 61 years of Israel's existence to
negate the sovereign rights of the Jewish People to their national
home." This is exactly right. It should be required reading for
every self-styled maven, journalist, politician, ethicist and
humanist — including the Jewish leaders of Israel — who thinks he
knows Middle Eastern political history, when his information is,
more often than not, anectodal and received from dubious sources.
Alex Rose writes of the time of the
Balfour Declaration, when the resolve of the English to create a
Jewish state was strongly asserted by influential members of the
British Cabinet. He also examines the Arab case against the creation of
the Jewish State, showing that their arguments were and are
invalid. Jews have claims to their land biblically, by their
unbroken ties to the land historically, and by their reclamation
of their homeland.
November 2 marks the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration,
the letter that laid out Britain's intent to help establish a
Jewish State. Sean Gannon writes about the Declaration in context
of the Arab argument that the Jewish claims have no legitimacy.
Its language was later incorporated into the League of Nations'
Mandate, which put the land irrevocably in trust for the Jewish
people. The Trust was passed on to the League's successor, the
United Nation. It has not been abrogated.
AN ANSWER TO THE NEW ANTI-ZIONISTS: The Rights Of The Jewish People To A Sovereign State In Their Historic Homeland
by Dore Gold and Jeff Helmreich, November 16, 2003
Dore Gold and Jeff Helmreich's article touches many of the
concerns raised in ignorance or out of hate by those who reject
the notion that the Jews, long a people forced out of their home
and subject to the wills of others, have returned home. And are
doing remarkably well.
I have some quibbles with Gold and Helmreich's otherwise
accurate account. It is true that many Arabs have done less well
than other groups. But the authors could accurately have noted
that Arabs are favored in civil suits by the judiciary. And they
have a larger share of many service budgets, sometimes because of
conditions they themselves have created. For example, due to the
generation after generation marriages of close cousins, many Arab
children have genetic defects. What this means is that spending by
well-baby clinics is for kidney dialysis machines for the Arab
children and lolly pops for the Jews. And the statement that
"Israel was built as a haven for Jewish refugees fleeing
persecution" is an inadequate explanation. It is true that if the
state of Israel had existed in the early 1940s, more Jews would
have escaped the Holocaust. And persecution and pogroms in the
Diaspora were a fact of life (or more often, death) over the
centuries. But the primal instinct that led Jews to come to their
ancient homeland was to fulfill their identity as a people. As
Gold and Helmreich write, "Throughout Jewish history, national
independence was perceived as a condition for Jewish
self-fulfillment. Redemption was tied to the idea of return."
JERUSALEM: OUR REDEEMABLE RIGHT: JEWS HOLD LEGAL SOVEREIGNTY OVER ISRAEL'S ENTIRE CAPITAL CITY
by Michael C. Duke, December 2, 2010
Michael Duke writes about the legal foundation stone of
Israel's right to Israel and the Territories — including
all of Jerusalem — and about a lawyer who spent a quarter
of a century determining precisely that the Jews are the legal
owners of all of Jerusalem. The document is the San Remo
Resolution of 1920; the lawyer is Jacques Gauthier, an expert in
international law. San Remo did not just set the future for
Mandated Palestine — which the Jews have redeemed and
partially reconstituted — but it also mandated the future
Arab states of Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Later, other modern Arab
states were carved out of the vast expanse of the Middle East by
the same authority. That trust passed to the U.N. when the
League of Nations was dissolved. The U.N. has not gained respect
for its embarrassing embrace of the Arab attempt to delegitimize
Israel but even the U.N. must realize it can not break an
irrevocable trust with Israel as beneficiary by trying to give
away Biblical Israel and some of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Arabs without simultaneously destroying the basis for the Arab Middle East.
Specific Jewish Claims To Judea And Samaria, Where The Settlers
Live
Samaria and Judea and the Golan, as well as Gaza, are integral
parts of the Land of Israel. However, because so much venom has
been spent denying the legitimacy of Jewish towns (AKA
settlements) in the Territories, we include some specific
information about the Settlements and the Settlers.
(From the May-June 2009 Introduction to articles on the
Territories, slightly revised)
These articles are about the bravest of the brave: the settlers,
Israel's staunch nationalists. They know it's their land and they
plan to live there, despite the dangers and the hardships, during
the times their government encourages them and during the times
the government, at the bidding of foreigners, harasses them.
Thanks to years of conditioning, the Po' Palestinians have the
sympathy of the West and their terrorism is excused, while almost
everyone is emotionally certain that the villains, the main
obstacles to peace, are the Jewish settlers (a sneer is
obligatory when you say settlers).
Jordan conquered Samaria and Judea and the eastern part of
Jerusalem in 1948, when the Jews fought off the first Arab
invasion of Israel. Many of the settlers are Jews who returned to
the area when the Jews took the area back after the second Arab
invasion of Israel in 1967. The settlements are their towns and
villages and cities and trailer camps and compounds. Why are these
patriotic Jews demonized? Perhaps because they can't be persuaded
by Arab-aiding nonsense. They know that this land is Jewish: by
God's will, by the Bible, by history, by devotion, by never
completely leaving the land over the centuries, by international
law that established an irrevocable trust for the Jewish people,
and by conquest after fighting off the invading Arabs.
With all the facts on Israel's side, how does one promote the
claims of a non-people, the Palestinians? Simple. First: Demonize
the "settlers". Then no one will complain when you steal Jewish
land. Second: Call Judea and Samaria the West
Bank. It's easier to pretend that a place called the West Bank
belongs to the Palestinians than to try to claim that the
Palestinians own Biblical Israel.
Rachel Neuwirth briefly traces the history of Judea and
Samaria over the centuries. She points out that "[t]he Jewish
presence there has been continuous, except for 19 years from 1948
to 1967 when the area became judenrein" under Jordan's rule.
"After the 1967 war, the Jewish people have simply been returning
to the land from which they were forcibly expelled during the
first Arab-Israeli war of 1948-49."
The 4000-year old city of Hebron in Judea, Judaism's second most holy
city, is the site of the Machpelah, the Cave of the Patriachs,
where Abraham and Sarah are buried. The Jews lived there no
matter what the political climate throughout the centuries. In
1929, when rumors started to spread that the Arabs were planning
to attack the Jews, many Jews refused to believe it. Sammy
Benoit (Yid with Lid) writes of the massacre in August, 1929.
Arabs, who for years had been friendly neighbors, turned vicious
and, encouraged by the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini,
slaughtered the Jewish population. The British removed the Jews
from the city, not the Arabs — an early example of rewarding
terrorism. The Jews were denied permission to return to Hebron.
After 1967, when Israel regained the city and against the
opposition of the local Arabs and their own government, Jews
began to resettle in Hebron. Since then, the Jews
continue to be harassed by the Arabs and by the Israeli
government, which make no secret of the fact that it favors the
Arab population of Hebron in any dispute.
Yoram Ettinger devotes this article to a recap of some
important historical facts about Samaria and Judea — Biblical
Israel — and to explaining the region's importance to Israel's
security needs as articulated by American military leaders. As he
pointed out in a previous paper that to talk about: "[d]efensible
borders for the Jewish State on the one hand, and a giveaway of
the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria on the other hand,
constitutes a deadly oxymoron." The current paper adds substance
to that conclusion.
When Shmuel Katz writes history, he writes from his own
knowledge and experience — he's been there, done that. Here he
cuts through the claims by the Arabs and their sympathizers that
the major obstacles to peace are the Jewish settlements in the
Territories. Very simply and very accurately, Katz explains that
these settlements are indeed legitimate: "the Mandate remained the
defining document for governing Palestine." As he puts it, "From
the point of view of international law these settlers are as legal
as any resident of Manhattan or of Shreveport, Louisiana." He
points out that the second clause of the Geneva Convention of 1949
— the one that dealt with occupied territories — makes
it clear that it does not apply to the Jewish presence in Judea
and Samaria: "because Jordan was not a sovereign possessor but an
illegal invader, and similarly was Egypt an illegal invader of
Gaza. Israel liberated both areas, restoring them to the territory
of the Palestine Mandate of 1922."
Thanks to the groundwork laid by Peace Now and other
anti-Jewish groups like them, many descendants of Jewish settlers
of European stetlach and Christian descendants of settlers
of the Wild West are convinced that Israeli settlers are the major
reason there's been no peaceful resolution between Jews and
Arab StatesArabsPalestinians Mahmoud
Abbas. They are certain the settlers in the Territories are
chronically and stubbornly in violation of the Law. The lowly
outpost is perceived as particularly evil, perhaps because it is
easier to demolish than Ariel, a settlement city of some 20,000.
So the outpost — often a single trailer or two — has come to stand
as a symbol of all Israeli building on supposedly Arab land. Moshe
Dann points out that when the State shows bias against Jewish
Israelis, "when government officials don't apply the law
equitably, the authority of the state is undermined." His
examination is particularly appropriate when one realizes that
Arabs are taking over land and building illegally with enormous
help from the European Union and Arab countries and without a
murmur of disapproval from a cowed Israeli government.
THE COGNITIVE WAR AGAINST ISRAEL IN THE SETTLEMENT DEBATE
by Richard L. Cravatts, September-October, 2012
Do the Jewish state and the Territories belong to the Jews?
The question was brought into prominence in 2012 by a report
issued by a committee of Israeli legal experts, chaired by Supreme
Court Justice Edmund Levy. The jurists focused narrowly upon the
legality of Jewish settlements in Samaria and Judea — affirming
that towns and villages in Samaria and Judea are indeed legal,
thus undermining the demonization of "settlements" by those who
fear that Jews living in the "West Bank" (as they ahistorically
call it) will make it harder to give away Jewish land to the
Arabs. In place of the capricious and often malicious treatment of
Jewish citizens living in the towns and villages of Samaria and
Judea, it recommends easing regulations, halting scheduled
demolitions and planning building as the population grows.
Richard Cravetts spells out some collateral implications of
the Levy Report. It makes clear that the world has been fed a
fanciful tale by the Arabs. It calls an intellectual halt to the
fallacious anti-Israel propaganda promulgated by hostile Western
politicians, diplomats and media for whom "the perennial victim
status of the long-suffering Palestinians trumps any sovereign
rights of Israel regarding its borders, security, and even its
survival in a sea of jihadist foes who yearn for its destruction."
Thus, Samaria and Judea (aka the West Bank), Gaza, and the eastern
part of Jerusalem have been untruthfully called "Arab" land and
Israel the "occupier", oppressing the po' Palestinians, who have
no way to fight for their rights except with rocks, knives and
explosives against the enemy, in the person of Jewish babies
asleep in their cribs, Jewish toddlers in their beds and Jewish
children at school.
As of 2016, the Jews of Samaria and Judea are still not treated
as first-class citizens. Nor has the Israeli government
popularized the Levy report, which addresses what Israeli leaders
have known since Israel acquired permanent title to Samaria and
Judea almost a hundred years ago. I hope it doesn't take as long
for Western leaders to accept the truth of the Levy report as it
took for the Vatican to admit officially that the earth revolves
around the sun — it finally conceded this in 1992, 359 years
after Galileo was condemned for speaking the truth.
by Daniel Kaganovich and Michael Butler, March, 2004
When all the arab-promulgated arguments are shot down, the
nuisance-value one remains: "Yeah, so they're not legally or
historically entitled to it, so maybe some of them came in
illegally just yesterday, but if you give the territories to
these 'Palestinians' there will be peace." This presupposes that
removing Jewish settlements will reduce friction. Daniel
Kaganovich and Michael Butler argue that removing the source of
the "friction" (Jews) will not make a dent in the ideology that
causes it. It will only encourage its spread."
Shiloh, north of Jerusalem, is another town destined to be given
as a free gift to the Arab terrorists, should Ehud Olmert have
his way in the next few weeks. Carol Iannone writes of a chance
visit she made to Shiloh some years back. She captures its
atmosphere perfectly. Of her first sight of the town, she
writes, ".. there was something extraordinary about its
placement against the emptiness of the landscape, something
dreamlike about the way it stood shimmering in the open,
sun-filled air." She describes her visit to the young settler
couple thus, "... there was just a pervasive contentment. So far
from being belligerent fanatics hysterically claiming their
entitlements, this couple possessed modesty and humility, and
conveyed a sense of quietness and assuredness and peace." "I
felt strangely at home there as well. The land of the Bible is
my country too, I felt. There is even a Shiloh in America, where
men also staked their lives on their vision of nationhood."
What are the techniques used to demonize Israel
and the Jews?
Answering Those That Denigrate Zionism
Answering The Canard That The Jews Stole And Are Occupying Arab Land
Arguments Derived From The 'Jews Stole Arab Land' Assertion
From Lies Of Omission To Theatrical Hoaxes
This section focuses on media tricks and techniques.
A major technique is suppressing pertinent facts that put a
different coloration on assertions by Arabs and their media
buddies. In the Quotation Section above, there is an item about
Zahir Muhsein of the PLO executive committee, who admitted that
Palestinian "peoplehood" was a fraud. The newly created people
were a collection of Arabs from different clans in the Arab
countries. What was claimed to be the ancient kingdom of Palestine
had been, for hundreds of years, the geographical name for the
southern part of the Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire. The
usual pro-Arab rebuttal to Muhsein's devastating admission is to
point out that he happened to prefer being counted among the
Syrians Muslims — as if he were an outlier. What the
rebuttal ignores, as pointed out by Tsafrir
Ronen
here, is that he was not unique. Many, if not most, of the
Palestinian leadership, at the inception of the Palestinian
people, felt the same way.
As another example, the Israeli Arab leader, Mohamed Kanana,
makes much of the statement, "Twenty percent of the population
[mostly Arabs] own only 3 percent of the land." Perfectly true.
But as Jared Israel writes (see
here), "He [Kanana] leaves out a crucial fact: Jews make up
80% of the population of Israel but own only 3.5% of the
land!"
Bald-faced lies are often used. They range from the libelous
— claiming Gazans are impoverished
(here) and claiming that Israel is responsible for the
physical and psychological problems suffered by Palestinian
children
(here) — to the ludicrous, such as the claim that Mossad
uses animals and birds to spy on their neighbors
(here.) A couple of the articles point out some of the major
ways used to mislead the uninformed. We also document some of the
more serious hoaxes perpetrated by the Arabs and/or their media
aiders — from doctored tourism to manufactured massacres.
When an event or a process defies logic — it couldn't happen but
it has — it is often helpful to ask: were this a planned
manipulation, how could it have come about. Richard Cravetts
sequences a set of propaganda procedures that would explain how
Israel came to be seen as an apartheid occupier of another
people's land — a statement that is contrary to fact. He does all
but ask who might be pushing the buttons. I'd vote for the Muslim Brotherhood and/or Saudi Arabia.
Arab propaganda is simple but effective. It makes
easy-to-digest assertions in a convinced and convincing manner and
then repeats them ad nauseum until they become generally accepted.
David Meir-Levi has prepared a list of these lies — lies that have
been exposed as lies time and again. Yet the Arabs and the
pro-Arab media continue to promulgate these lies, despite the fact
that they should know better. Maybe they do. Certainly, we should
be wary about accepting the word of any Middle-East "expert" who
talks about Israeli "occupation" of "Palestinian" land.
[2016 NOTE: The two articles, this and the next one below, by Paul Lademain complement
each other and provide excellent advise for countering the skillful
way the pro-Arab media create the framework for inculcates
negative attitudes about Israel.]
Here be words of wisdom on how to designate areas, places and
people, when labels are sensitized political statements. Paul
Lademain provides us with simple rules that allow us to fight
Israel's fight when we speak of events in the Middle East.
Lademain's instructions have the added bonus that we will be
speaking accurately and won't have adopted the meretricious
language used by Israel's enemies. You will find ways to add to
the list. I, for one, was alerted when a well-meaning supposed
advocate for Israel said, "He is a Hamas activist." I corrected
him, pointing out that the correct term is Hamas terrorist. As
Lademain says, "Be ye not fools, O Israel." Master his examples.
You'll be surprised how soon they become automatic, and other
people repeat your language choices.
Paul Lademain has some sensible advise for those who do public
relations for Israel. They may seem obvious but Israelis don't
seem to understand how they reinforce Arab propaganda, when for
example, they call Judea and Samaria "disputed territory." Jews
shouldn't be disputing that the "West Bank" is Jewish (which, by
the way, should always be called by its proper name: Samaria and
Judea). They should know it is Jewish and say so. In this essay,
Lademain suggests Jews stop using Arab terms that have the wrong
denotation: occupiers, illegal settlements, extremist when
terrorist will do nicely. Settler has become a pejorative term.
Don't use it. Simple, isn't it? He also suggests learning actual
history. For instance, Yasser Arafat "confessed that he had no
intention of complying with the terms of the Oslo Accords when
he signed them. That being the case, his signature means nothing
because he rejected the agreement while pretending to agree to
its terms and this pretense renders the agreement void." Simple,
isn't it? And oh yes, when someone expects you to collapse in
defeat by yelling international law, make them define whhich one
they are talking about. And make them try to link their argument
to it. That's not so simple.
Short, direct, informative, this essay by Yvette Alt Miller lays
out common ways the media avoid telling the truth. Presenting it
in such a way that is easily dismissed. Or telling it partially.
Her examples are actual instances of bias against Israel. Miller
suggests readers practice finding instances of these tricks, to
better understand what they are being fed by the media. My prime
example would be the New York Times, which managed to downplay
the ongoing Holocaust in World War 2. Most newspapers may not be
as clever hiding such a big story but the omission and
trivialization of Prez Obama's close friendships with a slew of
Marxists before he was nominated come close. This is a very
useful reference.
In May, The New Yorker published an article by Jeffrey Goldberg demonizing the Jews who live in the territories. It slanders the Jews and absolves the Arabs by its choice of value words and selective details — details that give us a distorted picture instead of an understanding of what's going on in Israel's heartland. Richard H. Shulman analyzes Goldberg's article in detail.
Bernice Lipkin writes that "...the Arabs and their
pro-peace marxist Pals are excellent at creating realistic hoaxes.
With the help of the lackey-media, these hold up, at least until
someone looks at them carefully. Or until someone takes a photo of
the directors setting up the hoax.
"What is also becoming clear is that apparently it is as easy for
the hoaxsters to fool themselves as it is to fool anyone else.
They begin to believe their own lies. The world then can not be
trusted. Whoever doesn't agree with them must be lying. Whoever
denies Arab claims is conspiring against the Arab world. It can't
possibly be that they themselves are not credible. This is not a
mentality that is attuned to progress or new knowledge. It won't
reject ideas that don't stand up to experience. Indeed, the
opposite is true. The world and all within it must conform to the
notions the Arab know to be true. There is no room for argument."
Snookering Rachel Corrie into believing she was in
"Palestine" to protect the locals was small potatoes compared to
the current Tourist Flimflam. Combine the respectability of
Harvard; the illusion that the tourist is taking the trek that
Abraham or maybe it was Jesus or somebody like that there took;
eye-rolling pious wishes to promote peace between Abraham's
children (as if Mohammad were an uncircumcised Jew); and an
efficient tourist agency that organizes comfortable trips with
congenial fellow-travelers directly to authentic Arabs on the West
Bank and even, titter, titter, Gaza — how can an ordinary
middle-class tourist on the yokel-level information-wise not
believe that what he sees and what he hears must be the straight
story. And that's the cleverness that beats all. A marvelous
illusion, where some truth and a big helping of lies are put
together to encourage the visitor to become a supporter of the
Arab narrative: the "Palestinians" own the West Bank (and the rest
of Israel), which the Jews are currently occupying — real history
and geography be damned. Janel Levy provides us with the details
of a current scam, worked by the seemingly respectable and having
all the cleverness of an excellent con. The returnees will become
live 'witnesses' to a great injustice, never realizing they've been
had.
This is a compilation of doctored and fraudulent pictures taken recently in Lebanon by different cameramen and utilized as anti-Israel propaganda. They have been classified and analyzed by zombie of the zombietime website. This article is both fascinating and instructive.
On July 30th, Israel returned fire against Hezbollah rockets
launched from Qana in Lebanon. Civilians were killed, including
children. Hezbollah declared it a massacre; the pitiful pictures
of dead children were shown around the world; and Israel was
once again castigated. But within hours, people began suspecting
what happened at Qana was a hoax, not a "massacre." Some
bloggers examined the photos of the massacre carefully; others
noticed other bloopers and inconsistencies. And the careful plot
to discredit Israel began to unravel.
THE BLACKOUT — A HAMAS-ALJAZEERA CO-PRODUCTION / STAGED GAZA BLACKOUT PICTURES
by Martin Solomon, January-February, 2008
These pictures of the Gaza blackout are instructive. There
is no way that the pathos-filled pictures could have made their
way to print without the collusion of Arab photographers, who took
them at angles that hid the light and the truth. The news editors
are equally culpable. They presumably knew that the Gazans were
not in an electricity blackout. They knew that creating hoaxes is
an often-used tool in Arab propaganda. Why did they print the
Israel-demonizing pictures without verification?
Considering how often Zionism is used as a derogatory epithet
by bigots, it is sad how little these people actually know about
"Zionism, its origins and its natural achievement in the birth of
the State of Israel." In this excellent essay, Salomon Benzimra
explains the multi-faceted nature of Zionism and its centrality
for Jewish peoplehood.
Zionism is often thought to be a recent movement and,
according to some, no longer of significance. In this insightful
essay, Michael Anbar argues that "Zionism is a non-separable,
fundamental aspect of Judaism — an aspect without which Judaism
loses its meaning as a national culture. Eliminating Zionism and
the hope for the Messiah leaves Judaism without its soul, leaving
a dead skeleton of bare rituals." Perhaps that is why Jew-haters
try so hard to rid Judaism of its Zionist convictions.
INTRODUCTION TO NATIONS UNITED: HOW THE UNITED NATIONS IS UNDERMINING ISRAEL
by Alex Grobmam, Jul-Aug, 2009.
Dr. Alex Grobman is a historian who writes on contemporary issues
affecting the Jewish community. In his book,
Nations United: How The UN Undermines Israel and the West (2006)
he focuses on
the gross hostility the U.N. has shown toward Israel. This essay
is the Introduction to the book. It lays out the context — the
centuries-long Jewish attachment to Israel and the Jewish return
to reclaim and restore its land, the mission we call Zionism. And
it characterizes Anti-Zionism, which, promulgated by obsessive
Arab bloc voting in the U.N., became international in scope. As in
the rest of the book, the writing is direct and the ideas
comprehensive.
This article could be entitled Zionism in Action. In a
few lines, Hilda Terry sketches out a picture of what life was
like in way back then, when Jews started coming in large numbers
to Palestine in the late 19th century to redeem their homeland.
Drawing on family stories and letters, she writes about the early
Zionists and their battle to bring the Land of Israel back to life
from the place of swamps, sand and rocks it had become. They
purchased "unlivable land nobody else wanted" and that only at
outrageous prices. Their enterprise boosted a near-dead economy
and attracted Arabs from the neighboring country. When Israel
gained Samaria and Judea and Gaza in 1968, Israel improved the
quality of life of the local Arabs, until the Arab leaders
stopped her. As Terry writes, "Gaza was a place where even the
earlier Egyptian soldiers had been shocked by the shabby
barefooted natives wading in freely flowing open sewage. Stuck
with the unexpected custody of this sorry Arab town, Israel
immediately began building new homes with electricity and plumbing
for their new charges." Israel reduced infant mortality in the
Territories and taught the Arabs more efficient and more
productive ways to farm. But the Arab leadership, then as now, was
interested in destroying Israel, not improving the lives of the
ordinary Arabs.
Michael Devolin explains the animus against Zionism as well as
ever I've seen it done. As he writes,
"Western journalists have portrayed religious observance, especially Jewish observance, as something shameful and an embarrassment for their envisioned type of intellectual. ... Zionism has become their Exempli gratia in the war they have made against all things Jewish. Therefore Zionism is never mentioned as a practical and ancient commandment of the Torah, a commandment as conspicuous and practical as the prohibitions against stealing and murder; instead it is transmogrified as a Jewish evil simply because the political and expansionist objectives of Islam and Christianity have always been given more precedent in the press than the right of the Jew to live safely and securely in the land of Israel."
Zionism is nothing more or less than our ancient connection to our land. We are obligated to redeem it, should it — as it did during centuries of foreign and Ottoman rule — fall on hard times. It's a matter of family affiliation and affection. It isn't a symbol. It is symbiosis. To thrive, Jews need their Land. The Land of Israel needs them.
In recent years, the mainline Protestant churches — joined by
the niche Quakers and Mennonites — have wholeheartedly subscribed
to the political BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign
intended to destroy Israel. Simultaneously, ignoring history,
Bible and cultural differences, their theology now asserts that it
is not the Jews but the Palestinian Arabs, a 'people' that, in
1964, sprung full-grown and in an instant from Yasir Arafat's brow,
that are the ancient Israelites. Paul Merkley writes of this
bizarre inversion of factual history. There is one other notable
correlation with the churches adopting this Arabian
counter-history. As Merkley pointed out previously (here), the United Churches of Christ "has lost approximately
300,000 members (about 20% of its membership) since 2005, the year
when its convention passed its first divestment resolution."
Indeed, the rate at which the Methodist, Episcopal and Lutheran
churches have also lost members makes the designation "Mainline
Protestantism" questionable.
Elliott, a reader of the original article, said, "Great article!
This really gets to the heart of the PR issue. We have a great
product, we just need to sell it as well as we do Intel chips and
Israeli tech know-how..." If we were to continue to describe what
Jeremy Gimpel says in marketing terms, it would be that what is
needed is not just being pro-Israel but being a passionate Zionist
and making that clear to everyone. Israeli politicians talk about
security when they should telling the world about their
enthusiastic commitment to redeem their ancient homeland. Some
promoters have even gone totally ahistoric and promote bikinis,
beaches and surfing, as if those were Israel's reason for being.
It is the passion that Israelis have for their Land that people
need to hear. Then they will understand why Israelis are, despite
the religion-based hatred of their neighbors and the mindless
propaganda to demonize Israel, a people happy to be living in the
Jewish state.
Answering The Canard That The Jews Stole And Are
Occupying Arab Land
If there's anything most people are sure about regarding the
Arab-Israeli hostilities, it is that the Arabs own the Land.
Therefore it follows that, somehow or other, the Jews illegally
got hold of it. How exactly this came about is seldom explored.
That the neighboring Arab countries invaded Israel time and again
is not emphasized. That when the Jews fought back successfully,
they took back land that already was legally theirs is
ignored. On the contrary, once the belief that the Jews were in
the wrong was solidly embedded in 'global consciousness', other
derogatory ideas became plausible: the Jews must have taken the
land by illegal aggression; the Arabs are refugees and it must be
because of the Jews; the Jews must be treating the conquered
people badly because that's what conquerors do, etc., etc. As Max
Singer put it in his article "Thieves Get No Sympathy,"
here:
In emotional terms, thieves don't have
rights, even to security. How could we expect support for a
"thief's" assertion that the victim shouldn't use illegal means to
recover his land, that he, the "thief," needs stolen property to
protect his security, or that consideration should be given to the
citizens the usurper has settled on the stolen land?
Our demand for "defensible borders," for example, is heard as
"Israel needs to keep Palestinian land in order to defend itself."
This doesn't grab Europeans who don't even worry much about being
able to defend themselves, much less Israel.
The Palestinians, by contrast, are heard as saying, "we are a
proud and ancient people; our land was stolen by colonialist
foreigners, and we will fight until we get it back." The reply
that they are fighting too dirty, or that Israel needs the land to
protect its security, doesn't carry much emotional weight.
Given the core indictment, it didn't take much to charge the
Jews with additional crimes. They didn't just steal the land and
milk its resources, as the Europeans did in the West and in the
Far East. They stayed and made their home there, or as the Arabs
would have it, they turned the Arabs into refugees and are
occupying the land they stole.
In 2003, during George W. Bush's administration, the peace
process was refurbished by the Quartet (the US, some members of
the UN, the European Union and Russia) and renamed the Roadmap.
For the first time, the US Gov't itself called the Territories
(Samaria and Judea — aka the West Bank — and Gaza)
"occupied." This implied that the Arabs in the Territories were
long-time inhabitants, a conclusion that ran counter to the facts.
Serious Arab immigration has started after the Jews began coming
back in large numbers to redeem their homeland. Some 95% of the
Arab inhabitants had come as immigrants after 1905 — they
had never had roots in the land. In fact, despite pro-Palestinian
claims that Israel was treating the "Palestinians" terribly, Arabs
have been pushing their way into Israel and the Territories to
live. Well over 400,000 Arabs had entered the Territories since
the Oslo Accord of 1993 as tourists, workers and spouses and never
left. Few questioned why people would want to live in a country
that treated them badly. Few asked how the Jews could be occupying
Palestinian land, when not even the Arabs had ever owned the land,
except for some years after the Muslim invasion of 672
CE.
Singer's solution for fighting the keystone Arab's argument is
a good one:
[...] Entrenched anti-Israel sentiment
will not be moved until we state that we are a proud and ancient
people; that the disputed land is our homeland, and was ours
historically; that the land was assigned to us by the League of
Nations, and we will fight to protect our country.
Boycotters and all those who sympathize with the po'
Palestinians because Israel is "occupying" Palestine should read
this essay by Boris Shusteff. In simple terms, he makes clear that
the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews. The San Remo Conference of
1920, confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922, "gave"
the Jews the part of the Ottoman empire that encompassed the
ancient Jewish homeland, just as it "gave" the Arabs
all the rest of the part of once Ottoman Empire that we
call the Middle East. The land allocated to an eventual Jewish
state was much less than 1% of the Middle Eastern land area; it
included what is now Israel, Samaria, Judea, Gaza, the Golan and
Jordan as a solid block. The specifics of the allocations were
written as three separate mandates (Syria, Iraq, Palestine) to be
carried out by the Mandatory powers: Britain and France. Between the San Remo Conference
in 1920 and the authorization by the League of the Palestine Mandate
contract in 1922, Britain split off 78% of what was to be
Jewish land — the land east of the Jordan river that is now Jordan
— to be
administered by the Arab Hashmites. After the United Nations was formed
in 1945, the League of Nations was dissolved in 1946, transferring
all its assets to the UN. The treaties deposited with the League
of Nations and the trusts and the legal status of countries
created by League of Nations' Mandates were transferred to the
United Nations. There has never been a binding resolution passed
by the Security Council changing the ownership of Mandated
Palestine, nor, by the legal doctrine of estoppage, can there
be. The San Remo Conference action that made the Jewish people the
owners of Mandated Palestine remains the applicable international law.
With this essay by Israel Kasnett, we add to our store of
articles on Israel's irrevocable right to Mandated Palestine with
information on the view of the Peel Commission of 1937 on the
Balfour Declaration and the Mandate. The Commission confirmed the
large increase in Arab population in Palestine since 1920. It
states: "Jewish immigration and subsequent economic growth in
Palestine led to increased Arab immigration from other countries
by those seeking economic opportunity."
This essay by Efraim Karsh is
exquisitely detailed yet very understandable. It dissects the
misleading and fallacious threads that are woven together into the
charge that Israel is occupying Palestinian Arab land. As the
title says, "What occupation?" In addition to demolishing the
non-factual Arab "narrative", Karsh defines precisely what is
really keeping the pot boiling: "It is not the 1967 occupation [of
the Territories] that led to the Palestinians' rejection of
peaceful coexistence and their pursuit of violence. Palestinian
terrorism started well before 1967, and continued — and
intensified — after the occupation ended in all but name.
Rather, what is at fault is the perduring Arab view that the
creation of the Jewish state [in 1948] was itself an original act
of 'inhuman occupation' with which compromise of any final kind is
beyond the realm of the possible." As Karsh makes clear, the
Palestinian Arabs regard the lawful establishment of the State of
Israel itself as the original sin, even though Israel was at the
time located in a very small part of its lawful entitlement.
As part of this essay, Michael Zebulon provides facts about
Britain's unlawful severing of the land east of the Jordan River.
Indeed, Zebulon has the gift of making it fun to learn some necessary
information we should all know about "Palestine" and the
"Palestinian people". The Arabs have another kind of gift — they
have been able to invent a people — the Palestinians — and a
country called Palestine, where this people is said to have dwelt
from ancient times. Never mind that there is no P sound in
Arabic, so ironically, having a suspected terrorist say
Palestine is an effective shibboleth. But we have the facts
of geography and history available and they are an excellent way
to counter the Arab fantasy. We simply need to speak up.
The belief that the Arabs own the Land that is Israel and the
Jews do not is a political version of Goldilocks and the three
bears. The Jews owned it too long ago and too short a time ago.
But the Arabs who conquered the area at the rise of Islam — well,
that's just the right time ago. Another popular pro-Arab argument
is that it has "been nearly 1,900 years since Jews exercised
sovereignty there — and it is absurd to argue that any group still
has rights to land they last governed such a long time ago."
Steven Plaut turns that argument on its fez with a few home truths.
For one, If recency wins, then the birth of modern Israel trumps
because the last time the Arabs held the land was much earlier.
And even then, it was Arabs, not Palestinian Arabs,
in charge. It's a pleasure to watch a logical mind spell out the
implications of the fanciful nonsense the Arabs dish out. There
is an appendix from MidEast Web for Coexistence that provides a
"Brief History of Israel And Palestine."
Ever read a book or a gang-up of books, proving something you
know in your bones is wrong? The arguments dazzle and seem too
weighty to push aside. It is only later that you have that
'hey-wait-a-minute' moment, when you notice a gap, an
inconsistency, a puzzling omission. This is roughly what has
happened to the history of newly-reborn Israel and its 1948 war of
survival, when it was attacked by its Arab neighbors, intent on
destroying the non-Arab state. The story was told accurately at
first. Then the New Historians revised the interpretation of these
events and announced that the original version was a myth. The
issue was not, they declared, Israel's remarkable accomplishment:
redeeming Jewish land and constructing a free and democratic
Jewish state in a relatively short amount of time. The issue was
that through no fault of their own, the local Arabs suffered
severely in 1948 and it was all because of what Israel did
intentionally.
Using the New Historian Benny Morris as both focus and foil,
Avi Becker recounts distortions, misinterpretations and down-right
lies told by the New Historians. What made these whoppers so
pernicious is that Israel was cast as a figure of evil, which
needed to atone for its sins. It was put on the defensive in
political negotiations. These accusations were eventually used to
try to delegitimize Israel. Benny Morris was a key figure in
framing the features of the New History; he fashioned a strong
base on which others constructed ever more-outlandish
interpretations. It is ironic that it would be Morris who later put
a stop to this nonsense by supplying essential information the New
Historians had omitted: First, the Arabs saw the 1948 War
as just another battle in their unswerving religious Jihad over
the centuries to become top dog over all other
religions. Second the Arabs, not the Jews, started the 1948
war and, by this action, rejected a partition resolution that
would have given them land. Ironic.
The truth that the Arabs don't own the Land of Israel and the Territories is just beginning to crack the cement of lies cast
around the historic events. It doesn't help that many readers, who
were, for their own reasons, so eager to accept the New
Historians' lies, will be just as motivated to ignore the
truth.
David Ha'ivri writes in particular about distributing
information about the Jewish citizens who live in Biblical Israel.
But his advise is of general value to improve Israel's ability to
communicate. As he says, "The problem is mainly that Israel's
advocates are not addressing the particular issues for which
Israel is under attack. By avoiding and not responding to the
accusatory claims, it appears that Israel doesn't have a good
answer." The comments in the original Ynet article serendipitously
illustrate how to provide right answers. Someone pushes the
incorrect but frequently-used "Israel is violating international
law in occupying the West Bank." Knowledgeable readers respond
appropriately. New points are raised and answered. A reader, "Gee"
from Zikron Yaakov, puts Israel's ownership of Samaria and Judea
succinctly this way:
"First under international law for it to be 'occupied' it needs
to meet two conditions. The 'occupier' has to not have a legal
claim to the land. The second part is the people claim need to
have said legal claim.
Gaza, Judea and Samaria meet neither condition. Our claim to
the land is enshrined in the UN Charter and the Covenant of the
League of Nations - so we do have legal claim to the land.
Then there is the little fact that the Arabs do not have any
legal claim to the land. Nobody on this planet has managed to date
to produce said legal claim. So the Arabs are squatting on the
land illegally. So much for the claim of international law."
Arguments Derived From The 'Jews Stole Arab Land' Assertion
This section examines other matters, including some that are
ignored, once the notion that the Jews are occupying Arab land is
firmly established. For example, if someone is convinced that the
Jews are occupying Palestine — I've made people laugh in
derision by telling them the easily-verified fact that the Jews
are occupying their own, not Arab, land — then it is a
short step to believing the Jews must be responsible for all
those millions of Arab refugees. Few suggest the actual and
obvious: most Arabs left because their leaders told them to leave
and because they feared the Jews might do unto them as they would
have done to the Jews, should they have won the war(s). As
another consequence, people are not outraged that the Arab
refugees now in their fourth to sixth generation —
medicated, fed, housed and educated on our money and growing from
a few hundred thousand in 1948 to 7-8 million — are still
with us, when almost every other refugee in the whole wide world
is (re)settled within a decade. The Arab refugees are a wound
that has not been allowed to heal in the normal manner, which is
say, by settling the refugees in other parts of Arab Land. They
continue to serve as a propaganda ploy that the Jews occupy their
land.
There were, actually, two sets of refugees created around the
time that Israel became a state. Everyone know about the Arabs.
Few know about the more numerous Jewish refugees, who were kicked
out of the Arab countries, fleeing mainly to Israel to avoid being
killed. They were absorbed by Israel and helped to resettle
without any help from the U.N. These Jews left behind an enormous
amount of property and personal goods worth billions and billions
of dollars. In contrast, the claim of so many Arab refugees that
they left behind much land and prosperous farms in Israel when
they fled the war zone is not in sync with the actuality that
under the Ottomans very few Arabs held private property in Syria
Palestine and most of those that did lived elsewhere and were
unlikely to have become refugees.
(See
here.) Until the Jews came and revitalized the Land of the
Jews, the Arabs, along with every other ethnic group in Palestine,
lived in squalor. Most were landless laborers or tenant farmers on
land that produced little. They had nothing much to leave behind.
Those Arabs that came after the Jews created economic opportunity
came for jobs, not because they had wealth to invest. Yet the
circular reasoning persists: if an Arab lives less well than a
Jew, it must be that the Jews must have taken away the Arab's
property. Clearly, until the thinking public truly understands
that the Jews took nothing away from the Arabs — except
perhaps the Arab delusion that Islam should reign above all
religions — all sorts of collateral crimes can be attributed
to the Jews. And the global public will excuse Arabs for
committing barbaric acts against the evil Jews.
Foster the belief that the Palestinian Arabs own the land of
Mandated Palestine and even many a churchman will feel anything
the Palestinians do to regain their land is justified. (see
here). After all, they only have guns, rocks and knifes to fight
against a well-equipped Israeli army.
The media and politicos have bought into "returning" Arabs some
of their land, so there is much discussion about where the proposed
Arab state will be located. There is less said about the
question: is there to be one Arab state, two or three? After all,
78% of the land that was to be Jewish was cut away illegally by
the British and given to the Arabs to administer. They now call
it Jordan. Then there is Gaza, abandoned by the Jews in a moment
of idiocy. It is ruled by Hamas and is a training ground for
terrorism for several bloodthirsty groups. Will that stay
independent or be linked to the Palestinian entity? And if so,
what if the locals again vote to be ruled by Hamas?
As another matter, ignorant tweeters and journalists are sure the
Land was always called 'the West Bank' and that the Jews quite
recently invented fancy names for it. Judea and Samaria may
sound vaguely familiar, but there is no impetus to identify them
as the very accurate names of the region since ancient times.
Until Syria became a war zone, there were always voices raised
urging Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria. Jewish
security concerns are still ignored, because who wants to help a
thief hold onto his stolen land? Maybe when people are open to
listening to the truth, that attitude will change.
The Norwegians seem to have no concept of the world-class
proxy war taking place in the Middle East: the Palestinian Arabs,
both those controlled by the Fatah Terror Group and those in Gaza
under the thumb of the less polished Hamas, are the foot soldiers
of resurgent Islam. The terrorist activities they practice in
Israel are eventually emulated and exported. On the other side,
Israel, not by its own choice, has been thrown into the front
lines and given the role of defending Western values of fair play
and 'live and let live.' Ironically, some of those who should be
most grateful haven't a clue. One such is Norway's Ambassador to
Israel, Svein Sevje, who condemns Norwegian terrorism against
Norwegians but condones Arab terrorism against Jews. This is
based, he claims, on Israel's occupation of Arab land.
He, as do others, also discounts the improved economy, education
and medial care that Israel brought to a blighted area.
Wallace Brand responds in this essay with the actual facts about the
so-called Israeli occupation.
I've read a lot of accusations that Israel treats its Arab
population despicably, even brutally. But when it comes to
specifics, the only problems adduced are the fence to keep out
terrorists and being stopped at checkpoints. Pat Gilsan brings up
an interesting point. Why, she asks, if Israel is so awful, why
are Arabs coming from all over the Arab world to Israel, and
staying, legally and illegally. As she says, "Nobody leaves a good
place to come to a bad place." She also answers the Arab claim
that Israel is occupying land belonging to the 'Palestinian
people' and counters with facts that show that the only genocide
has been by the Arabs and perpetrated against the Jews. The
solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict? "The answer is not to give
up land. The answer is to transfer the Arabs."
QUESTIONS REASONABLE PEOPLE ASK ABOUT ISRAEL AND YESHA
by Yechiel Leiter, May 10, 2007
Yechial Leiter does an excellent job explaining why Israel and
Yesha (Samaria, Judea and Gaza) belong to the Jewish
people by history, by religion, by unbroken affiliation, by
international law and by conquest. By the same token, he
explains why this land does not belong to the Palestinian
people. Part of the explanation is that there is no Palestinian
people, there never was a Palestinian nation and there never was
a state of Palestine. Among the errors he corrects is the notion
that the correct name for the land on the western bank of the
Jordan is the West Bank, suggesting that the Jews who call it
Samaria and Judea recently invented these names. The opposite is
true — the area was called Samaria and Judea from biblical times
until Jordan named it the West Bank when it invaded Israel in 1948.
Drora bat-Melech is an Israeli whose parents and grandparents
were authentic refugees. Together with some 150 to 250 thousand
other Jews, they were forced to flee from Iraq in the
1940s-early 1950s, even though the Jews had lived in Iraq for
some 2500 years, more than a thousand years before the Arab
invaders conquered the area. Not only were they kicked out,
leaving most of their possessions and real estate behind, they
had to pay the Arab government for the privilege of being
allowed to leave alive. The scene was replayed in the other Arab
states. The Jews received no help or compensation from the U.N.,
but the new state of Israel absorbed them and made them
citizens. Bat-Melech was a refugee from Iraq but she was an
'aboriginal' in Israel because in 1922 their ancient land was
restored to the Jews in recognition of their historic attachment
to it; it was held in trust until they could develop the
infrastructure and population to be a state. In 1948, when the
neighboring Arab states invaded the new state of Israel, Arabs
who fled — many of them left on orders of their leaders,
and expected to return as soon as Israel was demolished —
were placed into camps in Arab states, in Gaza and in Samaria
and Judea, when these was under Jordanian control, where they
were treated as aliens and denied citizenship. Unlike any other
group of refugees ever, they were given refugee status in
perpetuum, they and their descendants, even those "refugees"
who had come brand new to Mandated Palestine just a couple of years
before they fled as refugees.
PALESTINIAN MYTHS: THE RIGHT OF RETURN OF THEIR REFUGEES
by David Bukay, January 29, 2014
David Bukay writes of a myth the Arabs have fostered: that the
Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 and who were relabeled as Palestinians
are entitled to return to their homes, they and their children and
their grandchildren and their great grandchildren. Retroactively and
much later than the events of 1948, their supposed loss of what is now
the State of Israel came to be labeled nakbah, a disaster. They
had no problem ignoring that the local Arabs never were in control of
the land. They simply covered the facts with a fantasy that their
identity, hitherto proudly Syrian, was always Palestinian. Their
fantasy and their status as refugees would ordinarily have disappeared
in a few years, except for the fact that they were put on lifetime
support by the UN and given an agency, UNRWA, that tends exclusively
to their needs, sustaining them physically, educating them, medicating
them and keeping their fantasy fresh.
"A LAND WITHOUT A PEOPLE FOR A PEOPLE WITHOUT A LAND"
by Diana Muir, March-April, 2008
"A Land Without A People For A People Without A Land" has it
exactly right. Note that it says A People, not People.
An alternative version makes the meaning even clearer: "a country
without a nation" in need of "a nation without a country."
Using the high estimate, in 1890, there were some 500,000 people (some 50
ethnic groups, including Jews, Christians, Arabs and other
Muslims) in the desolated Ottoman territory that would become the
portion of mandated Palestine west of the Jordan river and that
included today's Gaza, Israel, the Golan, Samaria and Judea. A
staple in the Arab list of grievances is that the early Zionist
immigrants were shocked to find that the land wasn't empty —
implying there was a thriving Palestinian population that
Israel subjugated. Diana Muir concludes that certainly it was
known there were some people on the land. A land without
a people means the territory "was without a national character".
The notion of a
Palestinian national identity "only developed in reaction
to Zionist immigration." She tracks the origin of the phrase and
its use as anti-Zionist propaganda.
If Samaria and Judea and Gaza are Palestinian Land,
not Jewish land, then the political arbiters of morality are
right to help the Palestinians regain their land. The latest
international threat to Israel's sovereignty and security comes
from the road map issued by the Quartet. It is Oslo all over
again, but more virulent — instead of negotiations, it would
impose dangerous restrictions on Israel. The UN, the EU and Russia
didn't fight Iraq. Apparently, Israel is more their size.
QUESTION 4: ISRAELIS WANT A PERMANENT SEPARATION FROM THE ARABS. ARABS WANT
TO DESTROY ISRAEL
Every peace process calls for Israel to give up land,
making it easier for Arabs to attack her, while she keeps an
expanding and hostile Arab population. Does that address Israel's
concerns?
How do we deal with the initial supposed reason for Arab
hostility: the plight of the Arab refugees of 1948 and 1967? Their
rapidly expanding numbers alone are enough to destabilize any
plan.
Are there better alternatives to solve the Arab-Israel
hostilities than unrealistic "peace processes"?
What's delaying an effective solution?
Will Current Peace Processes Bring Peace?
Peace process arguments have little to do with core concerns on
either side. Arabs bring up the ongoing plight of the unsettled
refugees, soft-pedaling that the 1948 and 1967 Arab refugees won't
be allowed to become citizens in the projected Palestinian state.
They argue that they want the return of their land, when what they
want is an expanded base, a place like Gaza, from which to launch
more effective attacks against Israel. The Jews argue their need
for security — thus implicitly admitting they know that
giving up land won't bring peace. They talk security and not the
passionate love of the land most Israelis feel. Their leaders say they are willing
to share the land. This feeds the world's certainty that
the land belongs to the Arabs.
Current peace processes offer Israel one of two options: a
bi-national state or two neighboring states, one Jewish, one
Arab. Either one means the local Arabs can proceed with less
hindrance to try to destroy Israel. Either one means less land
available for growth of Jewish communities, while the Arab
population expands rapidly. Either one means eventually the Arabs
are in control and the Jews are dhimmis, dead or converted to
Islam. This is suicidal.
Actually, there is no real difference between the choices. A
bi-national state of Arabs and Jews would soon be under Arab
control, because Israel already allows Arab family reunification
and ignores the presence of Arabs who enter illegally or who
overstay their visa. As the Arabs gain political control through
larger population numbers, intimidation, bribery and the help of
their Western friends, they will, as they have done in every other
host country, demand social services, regulations and laws
customized to favor Islam. This will be the case whether or not a
bi-national state would accept a sizable number of UNRWA's
"refugees". The conundrum is this: according to the Arabs, Israel
is supposed to take in any and all of the over seven million
refugees that wish to return. On the other hand, Fatah and most
Arab countries insist that these refugees can not be citizens of a
Palestinian state. And such a state would still have a hostile
Hamas-controlled Gaza as a neighbor. In the two-neighboring states
option, the Arab state would be ethnically cleansed of Jews, as
Gaza is now. And if Fatah or any like-minded group is in power, it
will not accept any Arab refugee. On the other hand, the
reduced-in-size Jewish State would have an expanding Arab
population and a continuation of Israel's policy of allowing a
continuous influx of Arabs, including many of the supposed
descendants of the 1948 and 1968 refugees. How long would it
remain Jewish?
A peace treaty that would be worth while for Israel's to sign
would:
Stop the expansion of the 1948 "refugee" population.
Disperse the current refugees to an area or areas of Arab Land.
Increase the separation between Jewish land and Arab land sufficiently
so that terrorists have minimal access to Israel.
Keep Israel in the Land of Israel and the Land of
Israel in Israel.
Show as much consideration and respect for Israel and its concerns as
it does for the Arabs and their demands.
These conditions would need to be in place prior to "peace" and
easily enforceable because treaties with the Palestinian Arabs are
worthless.
THE BLACKMAILER'S PARADOX: ARAB-ISRAEL NEGOTIATIONS ARE A GAME
by Prof Yisrael Aumann, July-August, 2010
Professor Yisrael Aumann applies game theory to how to
negotiate with Arabs. In the Blackmailer's Paradox, it is the side
that doesn't flinch, that makes unreasonable demands and doesn't
compromise, that walks home with the goodies. To date the Arabs
have played the game better, convincing Israel to be the one that
must compromise. Aumann suggests some necessary changes in
Israel's negotiating stance. Of course in real life, the problem
is more complex. Negotiation implies a willingness to compromise.
Unfortunately, the Arabs aren't just unreasonable — the goal of
Islam's leaders is to destroy Israel, no matter what the costs.
But Aumann is certainly right that the Israelis need some street
smarts.
THE ARAB WAR ON ISRAEL: THE MORASS OF MIDDLE EAST
DIPLOMACY
by Rachel Neuwirth, May 11, 2006
This is an important paper that explicates the
many levels on which the peace process is ill-conceived. It makes
understandable why, despite years of trying and the efforts of
diplomats, political leaders, analysts and media people to solve
the "Israeli-Palestinian" conflict, the result has been a failure.
One reason is that their focus was "on the mechanics of
implementation," while fundamental information was ignored. They
never investigated the basis of the claims of the newly-minted
Palestinian people. Nor did they seem to know about Israeli's
irrevocable legal claim to Mandated Palestine. Rachel Neuwirth
suggests that the "fallacy of the ongoing political dogma [the
creation of a Palestinian state] should be recognized" and an
approach based on historical/legal truths should be substituted.
Over the years, we have seen each peace negotiation for ending the
Arab war against Israel put the burden of making headway on
concessions by Israel. This appears a reasonable, even fair,
activity only because it is anchored in the commonly-held
deep-seated conviction that a Jewish State is at fault by just
being in the Middle East, which is otherwise Muslim (if one
ignores all the other minority religious and ethnic groups in the
Arab states). However, for true understanding, it isn't enough to
know the facts. You need to know what pseudo-reality the facts
demolish. Patricia Berlyn provides us with both: the non-facts
that too many believe and the actual facts. As applied to the
prototypic Peace Process, she breaks the major premise into
component and derivative assertions, which are also false, and
provides us with actual facts why this is so. If you are so used
to the fantasy that has been created about the Arab-Israeli
conflict that your first reaction is to deny Berlyn's "Reality"
remarks, may I suggest you check the facts out before rejecting
them. Preferably in an authoritative source.
For generations, Western Middle East "experts" have urged
Israel and the West to start "dialoguing" with Hamas. At stake is
whether Hamas will openly acquire the windfall money the USA is
giving the Palestinian Arabs. Hamas has acted as the spoiler,
openly refusing to recognize Israel as legitimate, while offering
a truce with a 10-year expiration date, providing that Israel
first settles the millions of Arabs who claim descent from the
original ~420,000 Arab refugees. The PLO appears to be more
accommodating to Western views, but basically it is just as
vicious as Hamas. In this essay, Alex Rose reviews two fundamental
Palestinian documents: the charters of Hamas and the PLO. Hamas's
Charter, which says that its mission is to eradicate Israel, is
phrased as a religious compulsion, and hence can not be revoked.
The PLO charter is a political document, which has often been said
to have been revoked — but never has. Both make clear that the
Palestinian Arabs regard the destruction of Israel as their
mission, and they continue to steadfastly affirm this intent both
in word and deed. This will not change, no matter how much the
West denies reality or trivializes Muslim core values.
THE PREREQUISITE FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST:
ARAB RECOGNITION OF THE LEGITIMACY OF ISRAEL
by Kenneth
J. Bialkin, March-April 2010
THE
peace process — it seems always to apply only to the
Arab Israeli conflict — certainly hasn't lacked high-level
presidential involvement, from the Elder Bush to Obama, plus the
presence of the U.N., the E.U. and their cohort of diplomats and
politicians. Nevertheless, as Kenneth J. Bialkin puts it: "A peace
process which rests upon Israel's unilateral concessions is doomed
to fail — unless and until the world also demands that the Arab
states (including the Palestinians) recognize Israel's legitimacy
and sovereignty, explicitly and openly. ... This is the most
important prerequisite for peace." As the previous article by Rose
suggests, this would require a rejection by both Hamas and the PLO
of their foundation eschatology. And a rejection of the Koran's
decrees against Jews. Obviously, politicians and diplomats find
pressuring Israel to make concessions a far easier task than
trying to convince Muslims to betray fundamental convictions.
We are so used to hearing "human rights" associated with the
Arab encroachment of the Land belonging by every legitimate
measuring stick to Israel that it comes almost as a shock to read
Judah Tzoref's valid argument that Arab aspirations can not be
fulfilled by depriving the Jews of their right "to human and
national equality."
Bernice Lipkin summarizes some of Israel's recent history of trying to
make peace when the Palestinian Arabs don't want peace and have made
no effort to cooperate. It is time to stop these attempts to obtain
the currently unobtainable. She suggests that it's time to stop
appeasing terrorists and go back to nation-building as the San Remo
Resolution anticipated. Suggestions for additional reading materials
are provided.
Professor Sharon asserts that
the war between two civilizations — "between the civilization
based on the Bible and between the civilization based on the
Koran" — started a long time ago. It will continue as long as
Islam is bound by its holy books, as long as it has the imperative
to rule the world. In consequence, peace as
understood in Judaism or Christianity, is impossible between Islam
and other religions, cultures and civilizations. It puts the
current diplomatic ways of obtaining peace between the Arabs and
the Jews in the same category as attempting to square the circle.
It is possible to envision a secession of hostile
activities by Muslims, but that won't come about by a peace process in which
Islam is enlarged rather than constrained.
The previous article by Moshe Sharon spoke of large group
dynamics that are based on antithetic religious principles. This
article by Yashiko Sagamori investigates these cultural
differences as acted out on the personal level. Sagamori makes the
simple but profound observation that the more humans believe they
resemble each other, the less do they understand their cultural
differences. Take us and the Muslims.
The Destabilizing Impact Of The Perpetual Arab Refugees
BACKGROUND:
Refugees are usually resettled either back to where they came
from or in other countries within a few years. The only exceptions
are the Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 and their multi-generation
descendants. After 60 plus years, they are still
refugees. UNRWA, the UN agency that supports these refugees and
only these refugees, provides lifetime welfare benefits, rather
than focusing on resettlement.
There are two UN agencies dedicated to handling refugees. The
UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was established on a temporary
basis to deal with the Arabs who fled the new state of Israel when
it was attacked by its Arab neighbors in 1948, as soon as the
State of Israel came into being. Additional refugees were added in
1967, when Arabs fled when the Arab countries again invaded Israel.
Over the years Arabs labeled "internally displaced persons",
Arabs who live in Israel, Samaria or Judea,
have also been registered as "refugees".
The original group of refugees has increased enormously, starting with
an estimated 300-400,000 to 750,000 refugees, and is now over 7
million. UNRWA handles only the Arab refugees living in Jordan,
Lebanon, Syria, Samaria and Judea (the West Bank), and Gaza, which
totals 5.49 million people. The other UN agency, the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), handles every other
refugee in the world, including the Palestinian refugees not
handled by UNRWA.
Brett D. Schaefer and James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation
compared the two agencies this way
(March 5, 2015):
"As of July 1, 2014, UNRWA reported a staff of 30,252 to support 5.49
million persons (5.09 million 'registered refugees' and 398,229
'other registered persons') in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and
Gaza Strip. UNRWA reported expenditures of $1.1 billion in 2013,
including $678.9 million in regular budget expenditures ($206 in
total budget expenditures per individual and $125 in regular
budget expenditures per individual).
"UNHCR reported a staff of 7,735 in 2013, a 2013 budget of $5.34
billion, and budget expenditure of $2.97 billion to support more
than 42.9 million refugees, internally displaced persons, and
'others of concern' to UNHCR in more than 100 countries ($124 of
total budget per individual or $69 in budget expenditure per
individual)."
THIS SECTION EXAMINES TWO FACETS of the problem of the
Palestine refugees: (1) the enormous increase rather than diminution
of the number of refugees over the years, and (2) the
relationship of the refugees and the peace negotiations between
Israel and the Palestinian Arabs (also see previous section on
the peace process):
(1) Put simply, stopping the exponential growth of Arab refugees, a
festering problem, means reexamining the role of UNRWA. UNRWA
hasn't reduced the number of refugees. Quite the opposite. UNRWA
has grown the Arab refugee problem into a large, almost
intractable, problem. In conjunction with Muslim clerics and
political leaders, they have instilled in their charges the
certainty that the Land belongs to them. They have carefully
cultivated an attitude of revenge. They have nurtured a cult of
death, helping to train their clients in techniques of terrorism
from the time they are toddlers. Instead of dissolving their
client's refugee status and making them independent, they have
made the refugees dependent and incapable of running their own
lives. UNRWA needs to be separated from the Arabs it has
psychologically crippled.
Israel solved the problem of the Jewish refugees from Arab
lands — it made them citizens and helped them reconstruct
their lives as Israelis while keeping what they wanted of their
old customs and traditions. Though Israel was a new country and a
poor country, it did this with no help from the U.N. The wealth
and real property the Jews left behind when they were forced to
flee is still in the hands of the Arab states.
The Arab countries have resources to solve the other refugee
problem. The refugees live in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, but there
are 22 Arab states, which could take in groups of these Arabs,
depending on their resources. Or they could finance the
construction of a Palestinian Arab state somewhere within the
99.99% of the Middle East the Arab own. It could be much larger
than Israel and the Territories and still be a tiny portion of the
land the Arabs have. At this point, someone is sure to say: but
don't you understand, the Arab refugees want to return to their
homeland, just as the Jews did over 2000 years of the Diaspora.
The answer is that it is a publicist's dream but a complete lie to
say that Israel belongs to the Palestinian people. There is no
Palestinian People. There never was a Country or State that was
called Palestine. They have no claim to land that most of them
came to after the Jewish Aliyah made the area economically
attractive. The land was owned by the Ottomans for hundreds of
years before the Europeans conquered it in WW1, not by Arabs.
It is ludicrous that so many local Arabs have kept their
benefits-rich refugee status while living under Arab governance in
Gaza, Samaria and Judea. It is pathetic that their pretending that
their environment and culture is alien to what they had before
their (great) grandparents left Israel — a few miles down
the road — is accepted by their logic-deficient and
history-ignorant sympathizers.
(2) As the American Friends Service Committee, a pro-Arab group,
writes: "The Palestinian refugee issue is at the heart of
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
Establishing a Palestinian State in the Territories would give the
Palestinian Arabs a state of their own, thus negating the
argument that the Jews were occupying the Palestinian Homeland. It's
been assumed that a Palestinian State would provide a permanent home for the Arab
refugees now scattered in several Arab states.
But the establishment of a Palestinian State will not bring peace.
The leaders of the Arab countries and the Palestine
Authority continue to insist that all the Palestine refugees have
the right to be repatriated to Israel. They have openly said they
intend to continue hostilities until the refugees return to their
homes in what is now Israel.
Pro-Arab sympathizers such as the Holy Land Principles
Org write (see
here): "If their [Arab refugees's] right to return to Israel
is respected, they will thus be able to choose the option most
appropriate to them, i.e. return to Israel, take the nationality
of a new Palestinian state or resettle in a third country." In
point of fact, the Palestine Authority has already firmly stated
that the refugees will not be allowed to become citizens of this
Palestinian State anymore than they have been allowed to become
citizens of all other Arab states except Jordan, where, despite
their citizenship, they are still counted as refugees. Nor can
they elect to resettle permanently in a third country. They can't
even elect to settle in the particular Arab country from which
they or their (grand)parents migrated to Mandated Palestine, often
just a few years before they fled. They are now UNRWA-registered
refugees and as such, they are an important asset for the Arabs to
use to fight Israel. The Arab countries don't want to settle the
refugees permanently because they want millions of refugees
invading Israel.
Israel would be foolhardy to let in even some of the
refugees because they have been indoctrinated to work towards
making Israel part of the Palestinian State; i.e., destroying the
Jewish character of Israel.
Considering the importance of continued Jihad and global conquest
in the Muslim culture, there may be no political or educational
way to peaceful relations.
THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES ON THE DAY AFTER "INDEPENDENCE"
by Jonathan D. Halevi, December 2010
Hard statistics are hard to come by. But In 1948, what would
become the new State of Israel (and not including the Golan, Gaza, Judea and
Samaria) had somewhat less or much less (depending on the
estimate) than 690,000 to 736,000 permanent Arab residents. (See
MidEastWeb.) After the Arab invasion of the new-born State of
Israel in May 1948, subtracting the couple of hundred thousand
Arabs that remained, and accepting the artificial inflation due to
double ration cards, not reporting the dead, registration of Arabs
in the Territories and poor Arabs in the Arab host countries that
had never been to Israel — there were at the very
most — 595,000 refugees, well below the number of Jews
who were forced to flee the Arab countriess. In August 1948, the U.N.
estimated the number of Arab refugees needing help at 330,000. The
U.N. now supports around 5 million people [as of 2010], the
putative original refugees and their multi-generation descendants. As of 2016, the
number of refugees registered with UNRWA plus those living elsewhere is well over 7 million.
Jonathan Halevi does an excellent job of making us understand
Arab thinking on the right of return of the Palestine Arabs to
Israel. In essence, even if a sovereign Palestinian Arab state
were to be established, this would have no impact on changing the
status of the Palestine refugees. The Arabs have locked
themselves into a refusal to accept anything but an unfettered
return of the more than seven million Arab "refugees" to Israel
before they consider ending their armed struggle with Israel.
This is reinforced by their interpretation of Resolution 194 and
additional resolutions of the General Assembly of the U.N.,
although none of these resolutions are binding. In this context,
note that PA Chairman Abbas has stated that the Arab refugees
will not be allowed to become citizens of any future state of
Palestine.
Ignoring for the moment that Israel is a sovereign country,
perfectly capable of deciding for itself who it will allow in,
the rejectionism of the Arab leaders appears to leave only one
path for the registered refugees: if the refugees can't be
citizens of a Palestinian state and the Arab leaders in the
different Arab states continue to reject any "resettlement of the
refugees in any Arab state, the Arab Peace Initiative essentially
leaves each refugee with no choice but to go to Israel itself."
The Arab states now hosting the 'refugees' are a way station in
which to collect the refugees and strengthen them to work to take
over Israel when they to go back to their old homes in Israel
— Halevi cites a 2010 poll of Palestinians where the
majority agree that "Palestinians must work to get back all the
land [i.e. Israel] for a Palestinian State. Those that think
that inundating Israel with even thousands, let alone millions,
of Arabs is the humanitarian thing to do and downplay that it
will destroy Israel should give consideration to creating a
destabilizing precedent. Give this a thought: after World War Two
there were millions and millions of
refugees
(see here
and
here); many of them were resettled in new places. What if
these refugees and their children and their grandchildren and
their great grandchildren began to demand the right of return?
We have added an appendix using part of an article written by
Eli E. Hertz in 2012 and entitled "UN Resolution 194 and the
'Right of Return.'" Additional legal assessments of Resolution 194 and the
right of return are:
Ruth Lapidoth, "Do Palestinian Refugees Have a Legal 'Right
of Return' to Israel?'", available
here,
Ruth Lapidoth, "Security Council Resolution 242: An Analysis of its Main Provisions,"
here
and
Constantine Kaniklidis, "The Israeli/Palestinian
Conflict: The Evidence", available
here.
Michael Bernstam describes Gaza, with its eight UNRWA refugee
camps as "a totalitarian paramilitary camp at war with its
neighbors and other Palestinians." Typically, refugees are
helped over an immediate crises and encouraged to resettle
somewhere or other in a timely fashion. In contrast, UNRWA, the
agency established in 1949 exclusively for the Arab refugees,
has continued to provide generous handouts, medical care,
education and social services to the children and grandchildren
and great grandchildren of the original refugees. UNRWA, with
its complete welfare program for an ever-expanding clientele
living in 59 refugee camps scattered over several Arab countries
and in the Territories, has thwarted economic development,
destroyed opportunities for peace in the Middle East, and
created, along the way — both metaphorically and literally — a
breeding ground for international terrorism." Keeping these
professional refugees on the dole has prevented them from
developing a nation-state. It follows that the best way to
improve their lot would be to abolish UNRWA.
Claudia Rosett puts the essential facts about the Gaza populace bluntly, "In the current violence of Gaza, we are seeing the fruition of one of the most bizarre creations of modern diplomacy: a UN-supported welfare enclave for terrorists." and "Hamas has been running Gaza as a territory reduced to basically two industries: aid and terrorism." Strip out the fantasy that Hamas is mostly a beneficent social services agency. Strip the cunning propaganda that there's something so unique about the "Palestinian" Arabs that, unlike any other group of refugees in the world, they are never to be resettled anywhere but in the land they claim as their own and until then they are entitled to the services of an entire U.N. agency just for them. Strip out diplomat language that tries to hide that the United Nations has been corrupted. And you are left with the essentials Rosett states so well. Instead of being a force to encourage civility and human rights, the U.N. has become another forum for promulgating Arab propaganda and bankrolling terror.
Unlike all other groups who have become refugees
temporarily, the refugee status of the Palestinian Arab is
artificially maintained by the United Nations Relief and Welfare
Agency (UNRWA). The problem is not just political. As Moshe Dann
writes, "... UNRWA receives funding from terrorist organizations
(including al Qaida connected) and [UNRWA's] 'refugee camps' are
major centers of terrorism." And terrorism is not the way to
promote peaceful co-existence.
UNHCR, an agency of the United Nations, has helped millions
of refugees since WW2 to find new homes in a timely fashion.
Refugeehood isn't transferable to the next generation. UNHRCR
handles all refugees except the Arabs refugees, who have an
agency, UNRWA, dedicated to them and their children and
(great)grandchildren, with no termination point in sight. Unlike
all other refugee groups, they have been preserved as refugees
until they can return to their homes in Israel. UNRWA feeds them
and provides them with education and medical services. It also
allows them to be inculcated with hate toward Israel and trained
as terrorists. Elliott Abrams makes the case that "Palestinian
refugees should be handled by UNHCR with the intention of
resettling them. That process should begin with a redefinition of
who is a refugee entitled to benefits, so that benefits are based
on need rather than on status." It would improve life for them. It
might even improve the chances of peace in the Middle East. (For
additional material on UNRWA and how it keeps the refugee problem
from being resolved, see the exchange of comments at the end of
the article.)
Alternative Ways To Reduce Hostilities Between Arabs And
Jews
An immediate solution to being besieged to give up land would
be to annex Samaria and Judea. Israel has international law on its
side, as well as Biblical promise, and an extraordinary history of
devotion to the homeland: there were always Jews living in Israel
despite having to endure dreadful hardships and Jews kept its
memory alive for 2000 years when living in the Diaspora. In recent
times, Israel created a modern state out of a malaria-infested,
rock-strewn wasteland, a state that in a few short years has
benefitted the entire world with innovative electronics and
medical techniques. It has served as an instructive example of how
to live civilized when barbarians want to reduce you to their
level. Even demographic trends are in its favor. It also has the
reality underlying the creation of most countries — it
conquered the land fair and square, regaining more of its own land
each time the Arab countries invaded Israel to demolish it.
The problem is that Israel is still groggy from years of
believing that it must cater to world opinion. Unfortunately, it
doesn't have the luxury of deferring action. As the first of this
set of articles points out, the world, with Israel in the
foreground, is in the midst of the latest jihad by resurgent
Islam. It must rid itself of Fifth-Column Arabs in Israel and
curtail the growth of the Arab population so that it doesn't
reach the "take-over" stage of Muslim control of a foreign host.
(See Richard Butrick's article in the January 2013 Think-Israel
issue
here.)
Annexation is a short-term solution. A better solution and one
that gives the Arabs that call themselves Palestinians their own
land is to give them their own place(s) within the vast land area the
Arabs own. See e.g., Section 1 of the September-October 2010
Issue. This will require regional support — but, after all,
the Arab states were responsible for the local Arabs becoming
refugees. In fact they created two sets of refugees: Arab and
Jewish.
This set of articles examines alternative solutions that have a
chance of succeeding because they are based on realistic goals and
historically good solutions.
Some suggest that money be given to individual families to
assist them to set up in an Arab country — they would be
given a sufficient dowry to make them attractive to the Arab state
they were negotiating with.
Others suggest the Palestinian Arabs now living in the various
Arab states stay where they are but have their status changed so
they become citizens of the respective states.
As a third-way: give the Palestinian Arabs, including the
refugees, a large tract of Land in Arab Land — Saudi Arabia
and Sinai have been suggested. Fence it in. Help them farm if they
wish. Help them set up infrastructure, if they wish. Spend the
money that now goes on fences in Israel and UNRWA salaries and
terrorist training camps on helping the Palestinians truly learn
how to run a state. And if they prefer terror and murder and
adding nails dipped in rat-poison to their explosives, let them do
it — to themselves. Their choice.
Muslim leaders have persuaded the current American
administration that their jihad against the West is America's
fault because it supports Israel. The Arab jihad against Israel is
Israel's fault because it inhibits Arab nationalism. Blaming
Islamist violence in Afghanistan and Iraq and the nuclear threat
in Iran on Israel's supposed occupation of Arab land conveniently
forgets that the Arabs were massacring Jews in the Holy Land well
before Israel was a state — "Palestine" was never a state —
during the time when Jew and Arab lived equally in squalid
conditions under the Ottoman rule. As Wallace Brand makes clear in
this essay, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is just another
manifestation of the Third Wave of jihad by a resurgent Islam. The
Islamists have again begun a religious war around the world,
aiming at world dominance. "Terror in the West is not caused by US
support for Israel; terror all over the world is the result of
Islamist imperialism."
Lewis lipkin defines population exchange as "the legal and
enforced exchange of populations so as to eliminate conflict by
eliminating contact." He notes that "[p]opulation exchange is not
a new idea. Sometimes a complete separation is the only way that
two groups unable to live together can get on with their lives.
It might be time to complete the separation of the Jews and the
Arabs. The Jews were evacuated from Arab countries when Israel
was born. Maybe it's time to do the second half of the transfer:
move the Palestinian Arabs to Arab countries." If it is moral and
not racist to contemplate the removal of hundreds of thousands of
Jews, who have legitimate ownership from Samaria and Judea, it is
not racist to transfer Palestinian Arabs to one or more Arab
states. There are, moreover, practical reasons. First, were an
Arab state to be established in Samaria and Judea, it would, like
Gaza, become yet another area from which to launch attacks
against Israel. Second, as Lipkin points out, "The neck between
the 1967 border and Netanya on the Mediterranean coast is less
than 10 miles. There is no depth to defend against external
attack — against external attackers that are supported by 5th
columns that can draw on some 2 million internal enemies. Neither
the geographic situation or the demographics are acceptable." As
we have seen, any Israeli concession encourages the
diplomats of a hostile Europe and UN to pressure Israel to give
up yet more land. And if the Palestinian Arab population is not
resettled in Arab Land, the Peace Diplomats will pressure Israel
to allow a sufficient number of alleged 1948 "refugees" to come
live in Israel, where they can more easily work to destroy it.
For political reasons, UNRWA has provided the Arab refugees of
1948 and their descendants with lifetime welfare when the goal —
as it is for all other refugees — should have been (re)settling
them permanently as soon as possible. To rehabilitate the Arab
refugees, Martin Sherman advocates (1) eliminating UNRWA and (2)
removing the anti-refugee discrimination in citizenship,
employment and housing practiced by the Arab states that currently
host the refugee camps. For those Palestinian Arabs living in the
Israeli Territories — Samaria and Judea (the West Bank) and Gaza
— he recommends that Israel and such international donors that
wish to participate give them generous financial help to relocate
to Muslim countries as individuals, not under the control of their
leaders. A 2004 poll indicated over 70% would take such a deal. It
would also financially benefit the countries that accept them. For Israel,
it would be cheaper than the enormous military costs it currently incurs to
defend itself from neighboring Palestinian states. And for the
international community, especially the European Union, the money
they invest in the Palestinians might actually benefit the community.
Decisions about giving up land that actually belongs to
Israel have been based on false assumptions about demographics and
the belief that West Bank Arabs feel strongly about the land.
Robert Barnes suggests that a realistic alternative strategy
should be explored, i.e., encouraging Arabs to emigrate. He
discusses some practical considerations that would make this plan
feasible.
by Bernice Sacks Lipkin and Lewis Edward Lipkin; appendix by
Richard H. Shulman
It would be suicidal for Israel to allow a Palestinian state to be carved out of Biblical Israel, particularly one that would control a major component of her water supply and is capable of shooting missiles everywhere in Israel. But there remains the festering problem of a growing Palestinian refugee population living on cradle-to-coffin debilitating welfare, taught to hate Israel and the West and used as pawns to make claim to Jewish land. The Editors of Think-Israel propose that the Palestinian Arabs — those from the refugee camps and those residing in the Territories — be helped to establish a viable state within the land given to the Arabs by the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire was dissolved. The state would be physically well-separted from Arab population centers and legally independent of the Arab country that previously owned the land. Within their state, the Palestinian Arabs would have complete control of their politics, education, culture and living style. Given recent political developments in the Middle East where Israel's military and technological strength is a major asset, the strengthening of Israel's appreciation of its own religious roots and a growing disbelief in the reliability of supposedly impartial external organizations, this is a propitious time to create such a state.
A NEW PLAN FOR RESOLVING THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT
by Richard H. Shulman, September-October 2010
Richard Shulman's plan for resolving the Arab-Israeli
conflict takes into consideration Israeli Arabs as well as the
Arabs living in the Territories. The plan lays down a sequence of
feasible steps that are primarily Israel's responsibility:
beginning with changing Israel's attitude and policy of doing
anything and everything for a peace that can't come about under
prevailing conditions. Israelis need to start thinking with their
heads and start basing their actions on their own interests and
their actual experience with the Arabs, not on the wishful
thinking or the frank anti-Zionism of ignorant foreign diplomats,
politicians and media. Some changes are obvious: favoring the
Arabs no matter what the merits of their case in police actions
and in the judiciary needs to stop; Arab sedition in Israel and in
the Territories is no longer to be tolerated; the Oslo Accords are
to be nullified and Jewish areas in the Territories are to be
annexed. It is much less clear whether eventually expulsion will
be required. Discussions before hand should consider that it would
violate Israel's concept of civil rights as well as creating much
opposition. On the other hand, "[e]xperience shows that a large
Muslim minority is not compatible with majority survival." It does not help resolve the conflict for the
U.S.A. to pressure Israel to make peace while ignoring Islam's
goal of destroying Israel. In fact, America herself needs to make
changes in how she reacts internally to Muslim demands and
infiltration. She needs to recognize that the fight against global
Islamic jihad must be fought globally.
Scraping away false facts that serve as base for unworkable
peace proposals to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, Rachel
Neuwirth uses significant factual data on land availability to
propose a resolution that would benefit the Palestinian Arabs as
well as the Israelis; namely, transfer the Palestinian Arabs to
their own place in a sparsely inhabited part of an Arab country
such as Saudi Arabia.
Gennadiy Faybyshenko notes that the Saudi Arabian Initiative
— which provides for the creation of a Palestinian state inside
Samaria and Judea and the return of enough Arabs to almost double
Israel's Jewish population — would mean the end of Israel. That
won't do. But given the Saudi concern for their Palestinian
brethren and given that Saudi Arabia is huge but sparsely-settled,
a comfortably-sized state for the Palestinian refugees could be
set up in some small portion of Saudi Arabia. Refugee problem:
solved! A state for the Palestinians: created! And, that, according to the Obama administration, is the key to peace and harmony in the Middle East.
Steven Shamrak envisions giving the Palestinian Arabs a larger land area than what they have now by relocating them in the Sinai Desert. The separation between them and Israel would be beneficial to both groups.
UPDATE: RE Shamrak suggestion: in 2015-6, Sisi of Egypt offered the PALs a
home in Sinai. They rejected it. Right now, they can walk to a
Jewish neighbor and slaughter them. Sinai would be inconvenient.
THE DEATH OF OSLO AND THE REBIRTH OF JORDAN-IS-PALESTINE
by Matthew Hausman, March 11, 2012
Matthew Hausman elegantly demolishes the notion that the Oslo Process was a vehicle for peace, and suggests an alternative procedure — declaring Jordan, which already has a Palestinian Arab majority, as the Palestinian state. He makes clear that the Jews have had a historic and religious attachment to their homeland for thousands of years and in point of fact never completely left it. The Palestinian Arabs, in contrast, "had no ancestral connection", nor were they a nation or a people. They were mostly immigrants from the neighboring countries, attracted by the economic opportunities created by the Jews and the British. That being the case, moving them to nearby Jordan does not sever them from their homeland. Just the opposite — it gives a motley group of Arabs, the local Arabs and for the millions living in the refugee camps in the various Arab countries, land that could become their homeland.
The British were given the administration of the Palestine
Mandate to aid the Jews settle Palestine as a homeland. Instead,
the Brits gave the administration of the portion of
Palestine east of Jordan River — some 78% of the Land of
Israel — to the Hashemite clan. Over time, the Arab rulers
called the area Transjordan and now it's the Hashemite Kingdom of
Jordan, and the majority of its inhabitants are already
Palestinian Arabs. Sarah Honig writes about Jordan, pointing out
some home truths.
It is Paul Lademain's contention that Israel's leaders — he doesn't think highly of them — are not dealing correctly with the Arabs encroaching on Jewish land. He
bluntly diagnoses what's wrong with Israeli
governments wanting to demonstrate kindness to their enemy more
than showning concern for their own people. As he wrote in ("Israel's Leadership is ignorant of Law", (Nov 21, 2009):
Arabs, especially those educated in the US, apparently
understand British law better than today's Israelis and one of the
most important laws pertaining to the ownership and title to land
is: Possession is 9 points of the law (aka: Possession is 90 per
cent of the law.) This "common law" is in effect throughout the US
and incorporated into statute, and known as "the law of adverse
possession". The law of adverse posssession" allows a trespasser
who gains control over lands belonging to another for a statutory
period to destroy the true title-holder's claim to its property.
The law of adverse possession is well understood by the invading
arab scofflaws, and when Israelis — many in Israel's current top
leadership — automatically refer to every arab as a 'palestinian'
they are, wittingly or not, aiding and abetting the seizure and
destruction of their own nation — bit by bit, piece by piece, and
acre by acre.
By so easily hoodwinking Israelis — getting Jews to call Islamics
'palestinians' and rewarding them with superior rights — the
arabs, who pose as poor and oppressed, are thereby enabled to
buffalo Jews at every turn. Worse still, some powerful women
lodged in Israel's highest court use every imaginary excuse to
reward the Islamics at the expense of Jews — as if these Jewish
women were ashamed of being Jews in a Jewish state.
As we've repeatedly said in the past, we must say it again:
Nations who agree to relinquish their land or their power in
exchange for air-kisses are correctly perceived as "losers,"
because even if they win the war, they invariably lose the peace.
For instance, when Israel bowed to US pressure, and strove to
appear magnanimous by bargaining away its right to assert control
over lands in its possession, Israel was punished by the world
community for its naivete and failure to understand how to
exercise its rights and powers. In short, Israel's status as a
nation was immediately diminished by this unnecessary sacrificial
gesture. A gesture that generated only short-term, illusory
benefits. [...]
To perfect control over YOUR land you must first resolve that
the land is YOURS — and shall always be yours — and to do so
without any qualms and with absolutely no guilt. This new attitude
will allow Jews to assert domination and control over their
promised land without trembling and worrisome second-guessing,
which bad habits have led Jews into the delicious trap of
analysis-paralysis — that is, delicious to the arabs, who joyously
moved in and began to conquer Israel through their sheer numbers
(and untrammeled fecundity) until finally they reached a tipping
point which permitted them to launch attacks on Israeli
civilians.
An effective prescription for peace can be stated in two
words: get real. Israelis need to stop pretending they can
sweet talk into normal, peaceful behavior a bunch of people taught
by their holy books and their holy men and scholars and political
leaders that they are destined to reign over the planet; and that
they must never stop working towards that goal. To change the
odds, Israelis need first to change themselves somewhat. They need
non-Marxist, non-globalist education, a fistful of facts not
wishful thinking, new attitudes and firmness of purpose. They need
to figure out how to give up the intruders, not Jewish land.
Perhaps most of all, they need to admit that much of the Jew's
confidence that what he is doing is the right thing to do comes
primarily from his spiritual connection to God and the land of
Israel. That doesn't seem too much to do when the alternative is
oblivion at the hands of a determined group of death cultists
aided by Western "friends" with reasons of their own for
eliminating the Jews.
Annexing Samaria and Judea, a
large part of the territories, may be a small timorous step but
it's a step in the right direction. John Hinderaker points out
that annexing Judea and Samaria would "entirely moot the idea of
an independent Palestinian state, not just deter the U.N. from
supporting one for the moment" — an excellent reason for openly
claiming land that actually belongs to Israel by international
law. What would become of the Arabs living in Samaria and Judea?
Hinderaker suggests a new interpretation of the 'right of
return': "all Arabs now living in Judea and Samaria would be
allowed, or if necessary required, to return to their compatriots
in Jordan, Gaza, Egypt and Lebanon."
Yoram Shifftan has written significant articles exploring both
Israel's ineffective hasbara and her legal right to Biblical
Israel. In this essay, he asks why Israel's image continues to
deteriorate. He delves and uncovers a major reason: Israel does
not rebut Arab lies with the historical and geographical facts
that are both accurate and that support her claims.
Unfortunately, this lack of resolution is part and parcel of a
larger problem — Israel is still dominated by a small but
influential group that puts liberal secularism above patriotism.
ISRAEL NEEDS TO STOP ARGUING THE PALESTINIANS' CASE AND START ARGUING ITS OWN
by Evelyn Gordon, June 11, 2015
Evelyn Gordon writes an article that shouldn't have to be
written.
As the title says, it's time Israel stopped acting as unofficial
spokesmen pleading the Palestinian cause. With all its savvy in
medicine and technology, one would think she could come up with some
intelligent way to talk to the world and tell it about the irrevocable
right of the Children of Israel to the Land of Israel.
Victor Sharpe points out that the fatal flaw in the succession
of peace plans is that "[f]or Muslims, no non-Muslim state or
nation that is on land once conquered by Muslim armies in the
name of Allah will ever be tolerated." This cuts down the number
of intelligent options for Israel to 1. "Unpalatable as it must
be, the only solution for Israel is to make not one additional
concession but resolve to face the entire world if need be
rather than deny Jewish history, Jewish faith, and the Zionist
cause." It must ignore "the siren calls of a fraudulent,
beguiling and deceptive peace."
Tom Carew uses the recent Lebanon War as a starting point on
how we need to restructure our thinking about what our objectives
are in fighting our Jihadist enemies. Instead of praising the IDF
goal of saving enemy civilians at the cost of sacrificing Israeli
citizens, he suggests rational war aims are directed at winning, not
posturing. He then, succintly, provides the context in which these
objectives will be applied — the Fanatical Jihadi Fringe (FJF) war
against everyone else. As he points out, there's "no possible
scope for any negotiation or compromise with the FJF, because...
for the FJF, there is simply nothing to negotiate."
JANUARY 2016 UPDATE: Unfortunately, the
theme of maintaining political correctness as defined by those not
friends of Israel has continued into 2016. It was prominent in
2014 when Israel went into Gaza. Jewish children died because
Israel would not eliminate Arab mortar guarded by human shields.
In this year of 2016, the Arabs are using men, women and children
to snipe, knife and stone Israeli civilians, seemingly at random.
Instead of trying to kill as many terrorists as possible, the
Israeli government has put an IDF soldier on trial because he
killed a terrorist who had been secured but before it was
absolutely determined whether the terrorist was wearing an
explosive. Will Israel never learn?
Martin Sherman wrote this remarkable essay in January 2003. He
pointed out that "[t]he Jewish people have taken their
peace-making efforts to irrational extremes." What he said then is
true now: "The time has come for Israel to assert its fundamental
right to self-defense and for the Jews to remind the world that
they can be fearsome warriors when pushed to the wall. It is time
to convey to the public at home and abroad that Jewish patience is
at an end, that Jewish lives are not cheap and the letting of
Jewish blood will no longer be acceptable. It is time for this
embattled nation to arise, to cry "havoc" and let slip the dogs of
war. Only then will it be clear that the present policy of
restraint was indeed a noble gesture of benign strength and not of
ignoble faintheartedness."
WHAT ISRAEL SHOULD DO NOW: A TIME FOR MORAL CLARITY
by Rabbi Yosef Y. Jacobson, January 16, 2004
Rabbi Yosef Jacobson responds "to some of the painful questions people
of goodwill are asking today." His answers are succinct and
clear and explain why basic concepts many accept as true — that
there is a Palestinian people and that Israel is occupying
Palestinian land — are not true. Given the facts, he suggests
that "[t]he best way to bring about genuine peace in the
Arab-Israeli war is by Israel putting an end to any future
negotiations on the land. Israel must assume full security and
military control over all of the territories under the united
banner of a single country, Eretz Israel."
Barbara Lerner writes about the Muslim ambition to become top
dog globally, with Islam the supreme religion and all other
religions treated as inferior. Destroying Israel seems to be a
necessary step. When invading Israel didn't work, Israel's Arab
neighbors began waging a stealth war. Their weapons were oil
money, taqqiya (creative lying, approved by the Koran,
whereby a Muslim could do and say anything and not feel
honor-bound to keep his word) and the newly-invented Palestinians
would invert reality and become the quintessential victim. They
are succeeding in discrediting Israel — which was out of its
league at playing their propaganda game — and winning the
overwhelming support of the Europeans. Lerner points out that our
acceptance of Muslim's assertions and our denigration of our own
Jewish and Christian Biblical values earn the West contempt and
make the Muslims more confident they will win. "To change their
minds, and our future, we need to reject the Palestinian
Taqqiya and embrace Biblical Israel."
ISRAEL MUST REACQUIRE SUFFICIENT IDEOLOGICAL DETERMINATION TO PERSEVERE, PROGRESS, REPULSE, AND OVERWHELM ITS ADVERSARIES
by Major General (res.) Gershon Hacohen, October, 2015
Gershon Hacohen advocates a major change in Israel's attitude
towards terrorists and in its ways of keeping its enemies at bay. He
urges a change from reaction to proaction. He promotes a policy
change from minimal and mostly responsive actions that at best
contain terrorist activity to actions that will overwhelm Israel's
adversaries and stop the low-level but constant terrorism. He
advocates viewing "Israel as a stepping stone for redemption and
as the Jewish national spiritual homeland" rather than "as a safe
haven." As it is now, Israel is locked "into a defensive posture"
dictated by the actions of the Arabs. She should be seizing the
initiative. She is the one to "re-shape and shake-up the strategic
environment"; she is the one that should be determining the facts on the
ground. Jerusalem as a whole needs to be connected seamlessly to
its satellite communities. As Hacohen writes, "We are seeking the
return to Zion in all regions of our homeland! And if Israel does
not insist on this, it will steadily withdraw inward, toward the
coastal plain, and edge towards decline." Jewish settlements in
Samaria and Judea should be treated as the "forward outposts of
Zionism" that they are.
Hacohen's assessment of Israel's squeamish and inadequate
response to Arab hostility is readily confirmed. It is absurd that
Jewish citizens only obtain permission to build in Samaria and
Judea with great difficulty, while the continuous illegal building
by Arabs is ignored by the authorities. It is shameful that the
Arab Waqf sets the rules so that Jews can not pray on
the Temple Mount but Arab children play ball games on Judaism's
Holiest Site. It is almost fifty years since the Jews reclaimed
eastern Jerusalem from the Jordanian invaders, and it is still a
slow, painful and expensive process for Jews to reclaim their
property. Too many politicians, judges and the media acquiesce in
Arabs continuing to squat rent-free in buildings that legally
belong to Jews. They don't stop the Arabs from building new constructions on land owned by
Jews. They have allowed whole neighborhoods to be taken over by the Arabs in
this manner. The upshot has been that the Arabs have become
arrogant. Snotty Arab children have no fear of punishment as they
terrorize Jewish children or harass IDF soldiers. Jews on the
Temple Mount are attacked by Arab women screeching at them. Jews
are arrested for moving their lips — they might be praying! All
this makes the Arabs more and more confident that they will eliminate the
Jews and take over all of Israel.
PART 2: LEGAL CONCEPTS AND PERTINENT LEGAL
DOCUMENTS
RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE PERTINENT LEGAL
DOCUMENTS CONFIRMING THE JEWISH OWNERSHIP OF THE LAND OF ISRAEL
The articles in this set connect the relevant legal documents,
emphasizing the importance of the San Remo Conference and the
ensuing Mandate for Palestine.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916): Also known
as the Asia Minor Agreement, this was a
secret agreement between Britain and France on how they would
divide the Middle East region of the Ottoman Empire among the
Allied Powers, with specific areas marked out on an official map.
France would control today's Syria, Lebanon, northern Iraq and
southeast Turkey; Britain would control the area that is today's
and the Negev would be a single Arab state or a confederation of
Arab states; and the area southward from Gaza to the Dead Sea and
covering the Ottoman Sanjak of Jerusalem would be under
international administration. Jerusalem and Jewish interests were
not mentioned. They did worry about controlling arms importation
into the Arab territory. The treaty was officially nullified by
the Allies at the San Remo conference in April, 1920. The full
text is available at
avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/sykes.asp.
The Balfour Declaration (November 2, 1917): This was the famous
letter Lord Arthur James Balfour sent to Baron Walter Rothschild
acknowledging that: "The British government favored the creation
of a Jewish national home in Palestine." The full text is
available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/balfour.asp.
The Covenant of the League of Nations (1919 plus
amendments to 1924): This detailed
the structure and membership of the newly-formed League of
Nations. Some of the text indicated concern with how to implement
the League's Mission, which was: to promote international
co-operation and to achieve international peace and security.
Article 8, for example, called for reducing national armaments.
According to Article 12, arbitration was the method of choice for
settling disputes. Article 22 of the Covenant established "the
principle that the well-being and development of ... peoples [not
yet able to stand by themselves] form a sacred trust of
civilization." The full text is available at
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp.
The San Remo Conference (April 19-26, 1920): The
Allied Supreme Council passed resolutions at San Remo, Italy, that
created mandates for administering the new partitions of the once
Ottoman Empire. The boundaries would be finalized by the Principal
Allied Powers. On April 24th, they passed the resolution for
Palestine, confirming, as Joshua Teitelbaum put it (September
15, 2010, here) "the historic roots of the
internationally-recognized right of Jewish self-determination. It
recognized the existence of the Jews as more than individuals who
subscribed to a certain religion – Judaism – but rather as
a corporate group deserving of national expression, in this
case in the form of a national home." This document, backed by the
entire membership of the League of Nations, authorized the
decision to put the land on both sides of the Jordan River, the
land that was once Biblical Palestine, in a permanent trust for
the Jewish people with the understanding "that this would not
involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the
non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political
status enjoyed by Jews in any other country...." It incorporated
the provisions of the Balfour Declaration combined with Article 22
of the League of Nations Covenant. The full text is available at
http://www.cfr.org/israel/san-remo-resolution/p15248
The Treaty of Sèvres (August 10, 1920): This
was one of group of documents that spelled the end of the Ottoman
Empire. In signing the Treaty of Sèvres, the Ottomans
relinquished all of their non-Turkish territory. The treaty spoke
of an independent Armenia and an autonomous Kurdistan; these
provisions were later voided by the Treaty of Lausanne. Articles
94 and 95 of Section 6 of Part 3 recapitulated the San Remo
provisions; Britain was given the mandate for the southern half of
the Ottoman province of Syria, the region known as Palestine. The
full text is available at http://www.hri.org/docs/sevres/
The Franco-British Boundary Convention (December 23,
1920): This demarcated the boundaries between Palestine,
Mesopotamia and Syria-Lebanon — between the British and French
mandates — rectifying the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. Much of
the Golan was illegally put in the French-controlled area, and
hence removed from the Palestine Mandate. Otherwise, with some
modifications, Palestine was most of the land that had been Jewish
in Biblical times. It was land on both sides of the Jordan River.
The full text is available at
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2213236
The British White Paper (June 3, 1922): In response to the
violence starting in 1920, where the Arabs rioted, looted Jewish
shops and massacred Jews, the British issued this White Paper
reassuring the Arabs (!) that the Balfour Declaration did not
"support "the disappearance or the subordination of the Arabic
population, language, or culture in Palestine." And, as the Jewish
Virtual Library put it (here),
it "also established the principle of 'economic absorptive
capacity' as a factor for determining the immigration quota of
Jews to Palestine." On the other hand, it stated unequivocally
that "the Declaration, reaffirmed by the Conference of the
Principle Allied Powers at San Remo and again in the Treaty of
Sevres, is not susceptible of change." The White Paper noted that
letter from Sir Henry McMahon to the Sharif of Mecca did indeed
promise Arab independence from the Ottomans within particular
territories. However, the same letter excluded "the portions of
Syria lying to the west of the District of Damascus. This
reservation has always been regarded by His Majesty's Government
as covering the vilayet of Beirut and the independent Sanjak of
Jerusalem. thus excluded from Sir Henry McMahon's pledge." The
full text is available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1922.asp
The Mandate for Palestine (July 24, 1922): Between the time
the provisions of San Remo were formulated and the time they were
confirmed and detailed in the Mandate for Palestine, Winston
Churchill illegally handed over "the administration" of
Transjordan (the land west of the Jordan and ove three quarters of
Mandated Palestine) to Abdullah, Sharif Hussein's second son; the
region eventually became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The
Mandate gave "civil and religious rights" to all the residents of
the Land (no mention was made specifically of "Arabs"). Article 2
said, "The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country
under such political, administrative and economic conditions as
will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid
down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing
institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious
rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race
and religion." The full text is available at
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp
The Anglo-American Convention (December 3, 1924): In 1922
President Warren G Harding signed the unanimous joint resolution
of Congress recognizing a future Jewish state in "the whole of
Palestine." The Anglo-American Convention is a follow-up document.
President Calvin Coolidge by proclamation confirmed the United
States of America's acceptance of the provisions of the Mandate
for Palestine. It included the full text of the Mandate for
Palestine. The US needed a separate document, other than the
Mandate for Palestine, because it was not a member of the League
of Nations. There was the ambiguity that the USA's acceptance was
in part because "the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that
the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the
declaration originally made on the 2nd November, 1917, by the
Government of his Britannic Majesty," when Palestine meant the
land on both sides of the Jordan River, not just the land that
remained after Britain essentially gave TransJordan 78% of the
land in 1921. The full text is available
http://www.alliedpowersholocaust.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/1924-Anglo-American-Convention.pdf
The United Nations Charter (1945): The assets of the
League of Nations, including the Palestine Mandate, were
transferred to the new United Nations organization — it came into
being June 26, 1945 --- after its Charter came into effect on
October 24, 1945. The League of Nations held its last assembly in
April 8, 1946, and dissolved itself on April 20, 1946. The UN
charter has 19 Chapters and covers membership, agencies, the
General Assembly, the Security Council and the Secretariat, among
other subjects. Chapters, in turn, contain Articles, that specify
rules, regulations, policy, and procedures. Article 80, Chapter
12, is most relevant to the Mandate for Palestine. Speaking of the
International Trusteeship System, it states that "nothing in this
Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner
the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of
existing international instruments to which Members of the United
Nations may respectively be parties." Often informally labeled the
Jewish People's clause, Article 80 of the UN Charter means that
the Jewish right to Palestine and the Land of Israel continues
in perpetuum, even though the Mandate expired May 15, 1948,
when Israel became a sovereign State. It confirms that the right
to the Land of Israel and Palestine is vested in the Jewish People
and can not be altered or abrogated. This means, for example, that
it would be illegal for the UN to transfer ownership of any part
of Palestine to the Palestine Authority. The full text of the
Charter is available at http://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/
This is a superb presentation by
Eli E. Hertz on the Legal Aspects of
Jewish Rights to the Land of Israel. It begins by asking What is
Palestine? It explains the importance of the term Mandate
and presents the chronology of the events leading to signing of the
document that placed Mandated Palestine in an irrevocable trust for
the Jewish people, to develop into a Jewish state. Three facts are of
particular importance. (1) The representatives of the League of
Nations viewed the Mandate as reinforcing an already existing historic
connection between the Jews and their ancient homeland. The Land was
theirs by right. The Jews would be redeeming, reconstituting and
recreating their national Home in situ. (2) The rest of the
Middle East part of the Ottoman Empire (some 99.99% of the land) was
cut up into states that were given to the Arabs. In some cases there
was a long-established connection to the land. In others, boundaries
were arbitrary and were a poor fit to the clans and sects of the
various local Arabs living in that particular region. (3) The Assets,
Rights and Obligations of the League of Nations were transferred to
the United Nations where it came into being. The Palestine Mandate is
valid.
The version on Think-Israel of Hertz's article is in slides
format. A presentation that emphasizes the text material is
available on the Myths and Facts website here.
SUMMARY OF ISRAEL'S LEGAL RIGHTS TO JUDEA AND SAMARIA
by Ted Belman, November-December, 2009
Ted Belman summarizes the unbroken series of treaties and
resolutions, laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of
Nations and the United Nations, that give the Jewish People title
to Mandatory Palestine and the city of Jerusalem. Ownership of
the Land went from the defunct Ottoman Empire to the present
State of Israel. The Arabs were never involved. The
"Palestinians" had never owned the land; they had never had a
state on the land. Considering that during the same period and by
the same mechanisms, the Arabs acquired title to over 99% of the
Middle East, the Arabs can hardly be considered to be deprived of
land.
by Canadians for Israel's Legal Rights, August 10, 2011
This article focuses on the sequence of events that led to the
San Remo Conference.
It describes the context and environment within which the San
Remo Conference took place.
It also serves as a sister paper to the next article below, Howard Grief's article on the San Remo
conference. It was produced by the Canadians for Israel's Legal Rights
(CILF).
THE RIGHTS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
OVER THE LAND OF ISRAEL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
by Howard Grief, December 5, 2010
Howard Grief discusses the documents that established the firm
legal foundation of Israel being the exclusive owner of the land
designated as Jewish by the League of Nations. The Land of Israel
— current Israel, Samaria and Judea (aka West Bank), the
Golan and Gaza — was given to the Jewish people as a
perpetual trust and handed in that condition to the successor to
the League of the Nations, the United Nations. This is a clear
presentation of the documents that preceded the document of
ownership and some of the history of the time. Any whittling away
of this trust is illegal, whether it is attempted by a foreign
country, the Israeli government or the U.N. itself. The question
that remains is why have successive Israeli governments not
asserted their claim. For that matter, why would a Jewish
government allow control of the Temple Mount, its most holy site,
by the Arabs?
TWO NOTABLE EVENTS RECALLED THROUGH THE PRISM OF HISTORY
by Alex Rose, June 6, 2010
Alex Rose writes about two notable events of historical
importance. The first was the San Remo Conference of 1920. "It
recognized the exclusive national Jewish rights to the Land of
Israel under international law, on the strength of the historical
connection of the Jewish people to the territory previously known
as Palestine." The San Remo Resolution "remains irrevocable,
legally binding and valid to this day." The second was Abba Eban's
speech to the UN General Assembly's Special Political Committee in
1958 suggesting transfer of the Arab refugees to the states
responsible for the problem — the Arab states that had invaded
Israel in 1948 and 1967. Actually, these states were responsible
for two sets of refugees: the Arabs from Israel and the Jews from
the different Arab countries. Israel, with few resources, took in
the Jews. The Arabs had huge resources but have reneged. It's time
they faced up to their responsibility.
Jerold Auerbach does what shouldn't be necessary — he reminds
the politicos of the U.N. that its creating a Palestinian State
in what was Mandated Palestine would be illegal. It would
violate the U.N.'s own role as guarantor that what was Mandated
Palestine is held in an irrevocable trust for the Jewish people.
It is, in fact, incorporated in the UN Charter as Article 80.
Auerbach also explores why Israel has not made this information
generally known. He writes, contrasting a secular government and
more or less religious settlers: "At best ambivalent - and
usually hostile - toward Jews in Judea and Samaria, government
officials have resolutely maintained silence about the
international guarantees for the 'close settlement' of Jews west
of the Jordan River." But that doesn't do away with reality:
Israeli settlements are legitimate because Samaria and Judea
belong to Israel. They are legally Israel's by the same
authority that gave the rest of the Ottoman Middle East to the
Arabs. "The Palestinian claim, by contrast, is a contrived
recent invention. ... Devised by Arabs who only recently
identified themselves as 'Palestinians,' it is built on the
foundation of perpetual victimization claims, the international
determination to delegitimize Israel, and - perhaps most
revealing - the pillaging of Jewish and Zionist history."
Annexation by Israel of at least pieces of Samaria and Judea is
a low-keyed but necessary solution.
The articles in this Section are concerned
with some fundamental legal concepts and how they do and do not
apply in determining whether Israel is occupying Jewish land or
Arab land. Specifically, the first article discusses what the
rights of a sovereign state entail in context of the Jewish
ownership of the Land of Israel. In the second article, the
oft-times clashing concepts of self-determination versus the
rights of a sovereign state frame a discussion of the legality of
the settlements in Judea and Samaria. The third article explains the essential difference
between legal and legitimacy. The final
article in the set discusses the impact of media sloppiness in
using legal terminology and citing legal documents.
Because some of the information in Part 2 on Israel's claim to
Jewish land depends on the legal concept of a Trust, we
repost here "The Palestine Mandate in a Nutshell", written
by Wallace Edward Brand. It first appeared in
Introduction to the September-October 2014 Issue (see here and
below). The "unshelled" version is at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2385304. See
also Brand's discussion of Israel's ownership as applied to
Judea and Samaria
here.
The text of San Remo Agreement provided: "The High Contracting Parties agree to ENTRUST... the administration of Palestine . . .
Trust law for non-lawyers
After finding an intention to set up a trust, look for:
The "settlor", the person or entity setting it up. He
contributes the trust res.
The cestui que trust or "beneficiary" of the trust.
The trustee.
The trust res or the thing place in trust.
The purpose of the trust.
The term of the trust.
These are the vital elements of a trust. Some are expressed; others
may be inferred. For example if you place a delicate Ming dynasty
bowl in trust for your daughter aged 5, others may infer that the
purpose of the trust that is to vest when she is 30 is to preserve
and protect it until she is capable of doing that herself.
The 1920 San Remo agreement of the Allied Principal War Powers
contained the British Balfour Declaration of Policy word-for-word.
The 1922 Palestine Mandate approved by 51 countries that were
members of the League of Nations, and also by the United States,
filled in the details needed to apply the Balfour Policy.
One. At San Remo, the settlor of the trust was the Supreme
Council of the Allied Principal War Powers in WWI. They defeated
Germany who commenced the war and the Ottoman Empire who joined
Germany in making war on the Allies. Under customary International
Law, the victors in a defensive war may negotiate with the
vanquished to establish new boundaries for it and keep all the
territory outside the new boundary. In this way the Ottoman Empire
was reduced to Turkey. The remaining Turkish territory in Europe
was allocated by the Supreme Council at the 1919 Paris Peace
Talks. Claims for territory in the Middle East — Syria,
Mesopotamia and Palestine — were resolved at the reconvening of
the group at San Remo, the following year. At the Paris Peace
talks the Allies set up the League of Nations including Article 22
of its Covenant that provided for "mandates". These were
combination trusts and guardianships for countries that had been
colonies of Turkey for 400 years. The Mandatory was to provide
stability and tutelage for their political development to become
independent representative governments over time.
Two. The cestui que trust is the beneficiary. The beneficiary
has no right to go to a "law court" to protect his rights. That is
only the right of the trustee. He has legal dominion over the
trust res. For a tangible piece of property, such as a Ming
dynasty bowl, only the trustee has the right of possession. If it
is stolen, only the trustee can go into a court of law to reclaim
it. The beneficiary is limited to protecting his rights against
abuse by the trustee. He is entitled to go into a court of equity.
The beneficiary here was the Jewish People or World Jewry. It was
the Jewish people and the Arab people who had submitted competing
claims for collective political rights to Palestine at the Paris
Peace talks. Woodrow Wilson's Commission of Inquiry in searching
for those throughout the world having the right of
self-determination had said of the Jews that Palestine was "the
cradle and home of their vital race" and noted that the Jews were
the only people that had no other land.
An express term of the trust made the World Zionist Association
the formal advisor to the mandate government. Another term
required the trustee to facilitate only Jewish immigration so the
Jews could become a majority.
Three. The mandate was based on English law concepts of trusts
and guardianships. Britain volunteered to be trustee or
"mandatory" and was selected.
Four. The thing placed in trust, the trust res, was an
intangible, the collective right of a group to establish a
government and provide for its administration. This is referred to
as "group political rights". An individual political right,
sometimes referred to as included in "civil rights", is the right
to one vote for each citizen.
Five. The purpose of the trust was, in the case of most of
the mandates, providing a stable government until such time as the
majority of the people in the territory of the state developed
politically and could represent themselves - there having been no
opportunity in the last 400 years for the inhabitants of the
former Turkish colonies to do that. It was also, in the case of
the Palestine Mandate, to avoid an antidemocratic Jewish
government. At the time the Jews were in the minority in the
entire territory of Palestine and if they had legal dominion over
the political rights, an antidemocratic government would be in
power. One purpose of the Palestine Mandate was to delay
representative self-government until the Jews were in the majority
within the area to be ruled.
Six. The term of the trust — it was to end when the Jewish
population in the area to be ruled was in the majority and the
Jews had the capability, just as any European Government to
exercise sovereignty. That would avoid an antidemocratic
government such as later was founded in Syria by the French, of a
minority of Alawites that under Hafez Assad and Bashir Assad has
caused so much misery and destruction.
Historical note
In 1948 the Jewish population within the Armistice Line in
Palestine became the majority. The trust res partially vested. In
1967 it became completely vested. Coincidentally the UN Partition
Resolution 181 was enacted on November 29,1947, not long before
1948 when Israel proclaimed its independence. That is why many
people believe that Resolution 181 is the root of Israel's
sovereignty. But the Arabs rejected this Resolution. By law it was
only a recommendation that must be approved by all involved before
becoming international law. It died at birth when rejected by the
Arabs.
In 1964 the PLO charter was drafted in Moscow. It posited that
there was a "Palestinian Arab People". In the '60s also the Soviet
Diplomats at the UN promoted two International Conventions
dignifying the right of any "people" to have the right of
political self-determination not just under natural law, but also
under international law. These became effective in 1976. But the
drafters at the UN made sure that these rights under international
law were subordinate to the right of a preexisting state to
territorial integrity because since the new world order was
established after the Peace of Westphalia, national boundaries of
sovereign states have been inviolable.
LEGAL RIGHTS AND TITLE OF SOVEREIGNTY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE TO THE LAND OF ISRAEL AND PALESTINE UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
by Howard Grief, February 2004
Howard Grief's book, "Legal Foundations and Boundaries of
Israel under International Law" was one of the first and one of
the most complete explanations of Israel's indisputable sovereign
rights under international law to Israel, Samaria, Judea, Golan and
Gaza. In this essay, Howard Grief brilliantly fulfills his objective
"to set down in a brief, yet clear and precise manner the legal
rights and title of sovereignty of the Jewish people to the Land
of Israel and Palestine under international law." He makes clear
that Jewish National Home meant the Jewish State and its
boundaries are co-extensive with those of Palestine, including
both Cisjordan and Transjordan. He makes clear that the existence
of a Palestinian nation "is the greatest hoax of the 20th century
and continues unabated into the 21st century. This hoax is easily
exposed by the fact that the 'Palestinians' possess no distinctive
history, language or culture, and are not essentially different in
the ethnological sense from the Arabs living in the neighboring
countries of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq." He makes clear that
"The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of
1907 are acts of genuine international law, but they have no
direct application or relevance to the legal status of Judea,
Samaria, the Golan and Gaza which are integral territories of the Jewish
National Home and the Land of Israel under the sovereignty of the
State of Israel. These acts would apply only to the Arab
occupation of Jewish territories, as occurred between 1948 and
1967, and not to the case of Israeli rule over the Jewish
homeland." He makes clear that Israel's title to all of Palestine
was not abrogated by later UN resolutions asserting that the
"Palestinian people" have legal right to Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
This paper should be part of your cache of information for the
next time you are told that Resolution XXX of the U.N. guarantees
the rights of the Palestinian Arabs to YYY.
INTERNATIONAL LAW, SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE SOVEREIGN
STATE: AS APPLIED TO THE STATUS OF SAMARIA AND JUDEA
by Wallace Brand, January, 2016
Part I examines the legal basis of the Levy report, which
concluded that Jewish settlements are legal. In fact, the
legality of Israel's presence in Judea, Samaria and East
Jerusalem was res judicata as of April 25, 1920, when [at
the San Remo Conference] World Jewry received a beneficial
interest in the political rights to Palestine that was intended
to mature into a legal interest. The policy for the Arab States
that were established at around the same time by other Mandates
was to deal with the current Arab inhabitants but the beneficiary
for Mandated Palestine was World Jewry. The Mandate thus
confirmed a living connection between the Jews and their
homeland, extending over some 3700 years. As Wallace Brand
writes, "... under International Law, the Jewish
People have sovereignty over Palestine west of the Jordan River
and the Arab people residing in Palestine calling themselves "The
Palestinian Arab People" do not."
Part II "shows that International Law does not support
unilateral claims of secession from a sovereign state such as that
of the alleged Palestinian Arab People because when there is a
tension between the right of a 'people' to self-determination and
the territorial integrity of a sovereign state, the latter is
paramount."
Michael Zebulon provides us with a lively exposition of a
serious topic: the legality of the Jewish settlements in Samaria
and Judea. It is written in the form of a rebuttal to Pres. Obama
who has questioned their legitimacy. Zebulon delves deeply into
the concept of legitimacy and why the term is not twin to legality
This essay provides a well-rounded description of the commitment
in international law to the all-member ruling by the League of
Nation that what was called Mandated Palestine s in an
irrevocable trust for the Jewish people for all time. The trust
was given over with no changes or exceptions to the U.N. Read
this. It will sharpen your understanding of why settlements are
legal. And legitimate.
DOES THE INTERNATIONAL NEWS MEDIA OVERLOOK ISRAEL'S LEGAL RIGHTS IN THE PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI CONFLICT?
by Dan Diker, June 10, 2003
This is a meticulous examination of how the media, by using
sloppy language, intentionally or unintentionally further Arab
land claims. The media promote the wrong idea that the Arabs have
international law on their side, even though, as an example, the
drafters of Resolution 242 did not plan on an Arab state, except
Jordan, west of the Jordan River. As Dan Diker writes, "The
emotionally charged Palestinian liberation story is, for many
reporters, more compelling than the dry, factual context of
history, especially existing international laws and resolutions
that support Israel's narrative."
ISRAEL'S LEGAL OWNERSHIP OF THE LAND OF ISRAEL:
SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPLICATIONS
There are far-reaching consequences of Israel's legal ownership.
This section deals with some of the implications of Israel's ownership of
the Land of Israel.
As Matthew Hausman writes (see here.)
The acceptance of the San Remo program by the League of Nations —
and the restatement of its ambitions in the 1922 Mandate for
Palestine — evidenced an acknowledgment of the Jews' status as an
indigenous people and their right to settle anywhere in their
homeland, including Judea and Samaria, and thus underscored the
legal basis for the reestablishment of the Jewish state.
Consequently, traditional recognition of the Jews' indigenous
rights should inform any proposals for resolving the Arab-Israeli
conflict. This would be consistent with the ideals set forth in
the "Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples," voted on by the
U.N. in 2007. Of particular relevance is the language contained in
Article 10, which states:
Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands
or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free,
prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned
and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where
possible, with the option of return.
Though the true intent of this nonbinding declaration may have
been to promote the Palestinian cause at Israel's expense, it
cannot be divorced from the long-standing recognition under
international legal conventions that the Jews are indigenous to
the Land of Israel. Accordingly, it implicitly reinforces the
Jewish connection to lands the Palestinians now attempt to claim
as their own, and provides justification for potential
resolutions that are premised on legally-cognizable Jewish
claims, rather than on politically-motivated or apocryphal
Palestinian pretensions.
Hausman points out, "A Palestinian state created by
dispossessing Jews from their ancestral lands would be in
violation of international law and would represent a repudiation
of history." Arguably, this would also be the case were an Israel
government itself to act against Jewish ownership of the land.
Two articles in this section examine this issue.
INTERNATIONAL LAW REGARDING THE LAND OF ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM
by Elliott A. Green
Elliot Green brings the significance of San Remo up to the present time.
"International Law" is often used as a buzz word
implying that Israel is violating international Law and is "occupying"
the Land of Israel illegally. On the contrary, as Green
writes:
International law has recognized Jewish rights to sovereignty over
the Land of Israel and to settlement throughout the land. In April
1920, at the San Remo Conference (part of the post-World War I
peace negotiations), the Principal Allied Powers, acting on behalf
of the international community, recognized all the land between
the Jordan River and the sea, including Jerusalem, as part of the
Jewish National Home, based on the Jewish people's historic
rights.
[...] The San Remo decision for the Jewish National Home was ratified by
the League of Nations in 1922 and endorsed by a joint
resolution of the United States Congress that same year, with a
more official US endorsement coming in the Anglo-American
Convention on Palestine (proclaimed 1925).
[...] When the UN was founded in 1945, it reaffirmed through its Charter
the existing territorial rights of peoples as they had been before
the war (Article 80). This applied of course to the Jewish
National Home.
[...] Hence, the areas that Jordan called "West Bank," as well as east
Jerusalem (which had thousands of Jewish residents before 1948),
remained part of the National Home even during Jordanian occupation.
THE EXCLUSIVE POLITICAL RIGHTS GRANTED TO THE JEWS IN 1920 AT SAN REMO
by Wallace Edward Brand, September-October, 2012
Wallace Brand writes that the solution to the Arab-Israeli Conflict
is usually presented as either a single bi-national state with an Arab
majority OR two states, with the Arab state cutting Israel or residing
in its heartland. He reminds us there is a third way that is based on
rights to the territory granted at San Remo almost a hundred years
ago: a single Jewish state. In this article, he discusses the
background, details and implications of the momentous San Remo
decision.
Salomon Benzimra points out the significance of the Sam Remo
Conference. For one, "for the first time in history, Palestine
became a legal and political entity." The so-called
Palestinian people — the local Arabs in Israel and the
Territories — had never had a state or sovereignty. Also, the
"de jure sovereignty of Palestine was vested in the Jewish
people." The San Remo conference was, as Benzimra notes,"a major
historical milestone," yet in recent time, the irrevocable grant
of sovereignty over the Land of Israel by the Jewish people made
by the international community has hardly been mentioned, thus
allowing nonsensical claims that the Jews were illegally occupying
the land to be taken seriously [emphasis added].
This was written before PM Sharon evacuated the Jews from
Gaza. But it is applicable to any giving away of Jewish land.
Yoram Shifftan provides a meticulous analyses of the legal
status of the "territories". He bases the legitimacy of the
Jewish claim to Biblical Israel — Gaza, Samaria and Judea
(aka the West Bank) — on rock-solid international law.
Israel holds Biblical Israel as a sacred trust for all future
generations and can not gift it away. What is surprising —
and appalling — is that Israel's diplomatic corps and its
educational system did not proclaim these truths; they were mute
while the Arabs invented fanciful claims that the world accepted
as valid. A decade later, we are still suffering the consequences
of the Gaza give-away.
ISRAEL'S STRANGEST SELF-DEFEATING PARADOX: Forgetting To Teach Itself And The World Jewish National Rights In Palestine
by Yoram Shifftan, July-August, 2004
Yoram Shifftan expands on earlier articles that discussed
the centrality of international law to support Israel's right to
mandated Palestine — land the Arabs claim as theirs. He suggests
that Israeli leaders have been delinquent in not teaching the
facts to their own citizens as well as proclaiming them to the
world. He emphasizes the continuing obligations of the Mandate.
This was written at the time of the Annapolis Summit, which
based "peace" activities on false premises in yet another
attempt to nibble away more of the land that is Jewish. One
indication that Jerusalem was on the cutting board was P.M.
Olmert's clearly expressed annoyance that diaspora Jews believe
they have a stake in and a say about Jerusalem. Olmert claimed
Jerusalem was solely an Israeli issue. Ted Belman summarizes the
arguments that acknowledge the legality of world Jewry's claim
to Jerusalem.
Eli E. Hertz demolishes the propaganda piously sprouted by
those who want to break the indivisible connection of Jews and
Jerusalem. How does he do this? By stating the facts of history,
contrasting the age-old and ageless connection of Jews to
Jerusalem to the meager and politically-motivated connection of
Muslims to Jerusalem. Legal information on the
internationalization of Jerusalem and U.N. resolutions on Jerusalem
are to be found in the second half of the article.
This essay is both readable and worth reading.
DOES ISRAEL OWN JUDEA AND SAMARIA? ARE THE
SETTLEMENTS LEGAL?
The Land of Israel is in a perpetual trust for the Jewish
people. Because Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank) and
every bit of Jerusalem are part of the Land of Israel, they
belong to the Jewish people. There should be no need for
additional discussion. However, Jordan occupied the area for some
nineteen years after she invaded Israel in 1948, so there was time
for all sorts of fanciful concoctions to take root.
In 1967, when Israel was able to reclaim the Territories — Judea,
Samaria, the Golan and the Gaza Strip — and the eastern section
of Jerusalem, like Jack's beanstalk, these fantasies grew
tall and expansive. Unfortunately, Israel didn't appreciate how
important it was to set the record straight right away. In fact,
since the Oslo Accords of 1993, Israeli governments have not even
responded to Arab accusations that Israel is violating
international law by building settlements in Samaria and Judea.
Perhaps they fear introducing reality into that long-playing
fantasy: the Peace Process. Perhaps they fear being the ones to
put a spoke in the mum-mum policy Western politicians cherish:
making global peace by putting another Arab state inside
Israel.
The attacks on the settlements have been vicious and
successful. Most of the world is sure the Jewish settlements
should not be allowed. Even the White House, when it isn't
fighting for transgender bathrooms, bemoans settlement activity.
The American Administration ignores the crumbling of the fragile
political structures in the Middle East, while using its power to
eat away at land that legitimately belongs to Israel. This
misguided mission is more than irrational when you consider it
speaks quaintly of two people, Israelis and Palestinians, who need
to share the same land, ignoring that new forces, more vicious and
more recalcitrant than Fatah or even Hamas, are acting as directed
by the Koran to use any and all means to put the entire world
under Sharia law.
In 2012, PM Netanyahu appointed a committee of legal experts
to focus on a specific issue: are the Jewish settlements in
Samaria and Judea legal or are they violating international law?
The Committee's report was a well-phrased reiteration of some of
what became international law at the San Remo Conference almost a
hundred years ago, namely, the Jewish people own Judea and
Samaria. Nothing has changed that fact. The Levy Report has
affirmed that the decades-long presence of Israel in Judea and
Samaria is not "belligerent occupation." Israel has the
legal right to settle in Judea and Samaria. To date, PM Netanyahu
hasn't acted on the Report, while those that wish to do to the
Jews in the Territories what Ariel Sharon did to the Jews of
Gaza continue to tell tall tales.
[Part of this introduction
was taken from the introduction to the November-December 2013
Issue of Think-Israel.]
Israel and Palestine by the renowned Professor of
International Law, Julius Stone, "presented a detailed analysis
of the central principles of international law governing the
issues raised by the Arab-Israel conflict." His student, Ian
Lacey, has provided us a summary of the main points, using the
text of the original. Lacey's extracts can be downloaded from
Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. October 13,
2003. We present here Part I, entitled "The Legal Status of
the Territories."
ISRAELI SOVEREIGNTY OVER JERUSALEM, JUDEA AND
SAMARIA
by Wallace Edward Brand, March-April, 2010
Wallace Brand writes on the legal
underpinnings of Jewish ownership of the Territories — Samaria
and Judea — and of the eastern part of Jerusalem. These areas
were assigned to Israel in the San Remo conference in 1920 and in
the Mandate for Palestine. They were part of the area held in
trust for the Jewish people. They were destined to become part of
the modern state of Israel as soon as the Jewish people built the
infrastructure and population to exercise sovereignty. But Britain
was a bad trustee. Between the San Remo Conference and the League
of Nations voting on the Mandate, Britain lopped off the area east
of the Jordan, Trans-Jordan, to be administered by a Hashemite
sheikh, leaving 26% percent of the land — Samaria, Judea,
Gaza, the Golan and what became Israel proper — in trust for
the Jews. Jordan captured Samaria, Judea and Gaza when the
neighboring Arab countries invaded Israel at her birth in 1948.
Israel did not get them back until 1967-8, when her Arab neighbors
again invaded Israel. Foolishly, she did not immediately formally
annex Samaria and Judea, thus giving the local Arabs the
opportunity to invent out of whole cloth a history and geography
that claimed that the Arabs owned the area. They also tried to
redefine 'national home' as being a part of, not all of, the
Palestine Mandate. Brand makes clear why that didn't work. He also
makes clear that Jewish settlements are legal because they are
built on Jewish land.
Eugene V. Rostow wrote two articles on the Jewish settlements
for the New Republic during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.
The first, published April 23, 1990, was written a few months before Saddam Hussain of Iraq
invaded Kuwait and precipitated the first Gulf War. Bush excluded
Israel from fighting during the War and then, after the USA had
forced Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, he pressured the then Prime
Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, to attend the Madrid Conference, a
Middle East peace initiative that led to Oslo 1. The second
article was published October 21, 1991, just days before the Madrid Conference. Mr.
Rostow helped draft the UN Security Council Resolution #242, which
called on Israel and the Arab States (not the Palestinians) to
make peace, and allows Israel to administer the territories until
there is a just and lasting peace.
In these essays, Rostow imparts important information on several
matters. First, he emphasizes Israel's right of settlement, which
was bestowed by the League of Nations and written into the
Palestine mandate. He observes that "[t]he State Department has
never denied that under the mandate 'the Jewish people' have the
right to settle in the area." However, the State Dep't inter
alia objected to the Jews building in the territories by
insisting "that Jewish settlements in the West Bank violate
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which deals
with the protection of civilians in wartime. Where the territory
of one contracting party is occupied by another contracting party,
the convention prohibits many of the inhumane practices of the
Nazis and the Soviets before and during the second World War - the
mass transfer of people into or out of occupied territories for
purposes of extermination, slave labor, or colonization. For
example, Article 49 provides that the occupying power "shall not
deport or transfer part of its own civilian population into the
territory it occupies." Rostow makes clear Article 49 doesn't
apply because the "Jewish settlers in the West Bank are
volunteers."
Rostow makes clear that it is not Israel's legal
standing that is at issue. He points out that "[t]he controversy
about Jewish settlements in the West Bank is not, therefore, about
legal rights but about the political will to override legal
rights." He asks whether "the United States prepared to use all its influence in
Israel to award the whole of the West Bank to Jordan or to a new
Arab state, and force Israel back to its 1967 borders?"
JEWS BUILDING SETTLEMENTS IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA IS LEGAL
by Salomon Benzimra, January 2, 2012
Salomon Benzimra summarizes the major points of the Levy
Report on the legality of the settlements. The Report addressed the
problems that stem from incorrectly characterizing Israel taking back
its own land as an "occupation." The Report notes that "No 'special
rights' were conferred to the Jewish people. The Supreme Council
recognized a pre-existing right by calling for the 'reconstitution' of
the Jewish National Home in Palestine — and not the 'creation'
— it being clearly understood that it would turn, in time, into a
sovereign Jewish State, pending an expected Jewish population
majority." This article is essential reading. It goes a long way to
correcting the falsehoods the Palestinian Arabs and their ignorant
friends in the media have been peddling.
PROFESSOR BERMAN'S MISTAKEN VIEWS ON THE LEVY REPORT
by Wallace Edward Brand, August 5, 2012
In this essay Wallace Brand focuses on the principle that law is by
judicial process, not by concensus. He discusses the circular argument
accepted by many that goes like this: most lawyers disagree with the
Levy Report. Therefore those wishing to explain why the Levy report is
accurate and the opposition have got it wrong should be kept from
confusing the public. The critical argument is that the
Levy Report is not a new idea thought up by Israel right-wingers but a
circumspect restatement of what was decided a century ago on how to
prepare for a Jewish State. In point of fact, by the time the League
of Nations issued the Mandates for Jewish and Arab states, the British
had lopped off some 78% of the land intended for an eventual Jewish
state and given it over to the Hashemites to administer — when no one
objected formally, this eventually became transJordan and then Jordan.
Ted Belman presents the opinions of some eminent jurists that
confirm one consequence that Judea and Samaria were given as an
irrevocable trust to the Jewish people; namely, that they can
build housing and businesses, and public and private institutions
upon their land. Those that would help the Arabs try to steal the
land are fond of citing the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) to
claim that Jewish settlements are illegal, but in point of fact,
the FGC doesn't apply.
FIGHTING BACK — THE LEGAL CASE FOR JUDEA AND SAMARIA
by Nadav Shragai, November-December, 2013
Dror Eydar has suggested that the "[t]he fight against our
possession of those parts of Israel that are the most important to
our identity as an ancient nation is a fight against the return to
Zion (see here). Reducing the number of legal Jewish settlements
while ignoring rogue Arab settlements will make an eventual Arab
take-over of the land easier. In this essay, Nadav Shragai writes
that, finally, some jurors are now counterattacking with the
easily substantiated truth: Israel has historical and legal rights
to the land. He quotes some of their arguments.
APPLYING CONSTITUTIONAL LAW TO THE 1967 LIBERATION OF JUDEA, SAMARIA AND GAZA (BIBLICAL ISRAEL)
by Howard Grief, September-October, 2007
This is Attorney Howard Grief's elegant summary explaining why
Justice Meir Shamgar was incorrect when he ruled that Israel's
reestablishing itself in Biblical Israel was illegal.
In this issue we get at the nuts and bolts. One can trace almost
all — if not all — the difficulties that Israel has
had in the last 40 years defending its irrevocable right
to Samaria, Judea and Gaza to Justice Shamgar's incorrect
legal advice. Had the appropriate law been applied, we wouldn't
be needing to rebut the "pernicious Occupation Myth." Shamgar's
original ruling "provided our enemies with an enormous
propaganda victory in the eyes of the world, for the term
'occupation' implied that Israel had taken over by war the land
of another people to which it had no right under international
law, an absolutely false implication."
The Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) Relative to the Protection of
Civilian Persons in Time of War was signed August 12, 1949.
Part 3 deals with the Status and Treatment of Protected Persons.
Section 3 in Part 3 deals with "Occupied Territories".
These are the 6 paragraphs of Article 49, the Article most often cited
as applicable to Israel's citizens living in Samaria and Judea:
Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.
The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.
The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.
The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.
"The Occupying Power
shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population
into the territory it occupies."
In response to assertions that the Geneva Convention made
Jewish settlements in Samaria and Judea illegal — the Arab
settlements in the area are always ignored — Eugene
Kontorovich wrote
(September
7, 2012, here):
"Whatever "deport or transfer" means, and I think it is clearly
ambiguous, it relates only to action by the occupying power. It is
Israel, not private individuals, who can violate the anti-transfer
norm. There is no auto-transfer.
[...] Thus the spontaneous or voluntary movement of Israeli
nationals (the only controversy seems to concern Jews)
simply does not trigger 49(6). True, there are many who wish to
read 49(6) this way, but it transforms a prohibition on
governmental deportation or transfer into a requirement that the
government STOP its nationals from moving to occupied territory,
which is quite far from what the text says. (And indeed many but
not all settlements were built against the will of the
government.) Art. 49(6) was designed to prevent governmental
efforts at demographic transformation (as have been seen with
considerably less fuss in Tibet, Western Sahara, etc) rather than
create ethnically or nationally exclusive zones.
[...] "The desire to have an international legal ban on 100% of the
settlements, despite the diverse circumstances of their creation
and continuation, stretches the language far beyond what it can
bear. And it doesn't help matters that the Article gets little or
no traction in other comparable cases, that one could learn from
the international community's treatment of those precedents.
"Finally, the Convention assumes that nationals of the occupying
power are not also nationals of the occupied territory. Given that
the occupying territory had no nationality in 1967 (it was not
Jordan, and it did not have its own citizenship), this makes it
quite hard to apply to the given situation. Indeed, some of the
"transferees" were indigenous to the occupied area, and had as
much claim to its "nationality" as anyone. Certainly international
law had recognized the area as a Jewish "homeland," making it
quite unlike other transfer situations.
[...] Israel is not obliged to abide by glosses of professors and
committees rather than a plain language approach to a not-often
applied provision.
In a comment entitled, "The International Court of Justice (ICJ) Inappropriate Use of the Fourth
Geneva Convention: the ICJ lacks the authority to affect ownership
of any part of the Territories," Eli Hertz pointed out (September
8, 2012, here):
"The language of Article 49 was crafted in the wake of World
War II and the Nazi occupation — an occupation that led to a war
of aggression in which Nazi Germany attacked its neighbors with
impunity, committing a host of atrocities against civilian
populations, including deportation and displacement of local
populations in occupied Europe. Millions were sent to forced labor
camps and those of particular ethnic origin, most notably the
Jews, were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers. The drafters
of Article 49 were concerned with preventing future genocide
against humanity.
"But that has not stopped critics and enemies of Israel, including
members of the UN and organs such as the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) from using the Geneva Convention as a weapon against
Israel, even when statements by authoritative analysts, scholars
and drafters of the document contradict everything said by those
who distort history for politically motivated reasons.
[...] "How that (Geneva) Convention could apply to Jews who
already had a legal right, protected by Article 80 of the United
Nations Charter, to live in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the
Gaza Strip, was never explained." It seems that the International
Court of Justice never explained it either."
This set of articles deal with the misuse of the FGC by those
opposed to Jewish occupation (in the sense of Jews occupying their
own homes in their own homeland) of Samaria and Judea. As was
pointed out above in discussing Israel's legal ownership of the
Land of Israel, "'A Palestinian state created by dispossessing
Jews from their ancestral lands would be in violation of
international law and would represent a repudiation of history.'
(Hausman, 27mar11). Arguably, this would also be the case were an
Israel government itself to act against Jewish ownership of the
land." Two articles in this section examine the attitudes of
successive Israeli governments to Jews living in the
Territories..
THE QUESTION OF THE APPLICABILITY OF THE FOURTH GENEVA CONVENTION ON OCCUPATION TO JUDEA, SAMARIA AND GAZA
by Howard Grief, March-April, 2009
Howard Grief makes clear why applying rules from the Fourth
Geneva Convention (FGC) to Israel's ownership of Judea and Samaria
(the "West Bank") and Gaza rests on dubious and incomplete
interpretions of FGC. Briefly, the IDF can not be considered a
"hostile army" occupying Judea, Samaria and Gaza because these
areas did not belong to Jordan or Egypt. By irrevocable trust, the
land belongs to Israel. He also overturns the myth that Israel is
an occupier of Arab land, because Mandated Palestine was never
Arab land. This is an important paper. We have included appendices
on some basic documents that indicate that the Peace Process and
the Two-State solution violate Israel's irrevocable right to
Mandated Palestine.
Professor Eugene Kontorovich describes the legal status of the
Jewish towns and villages — "settlements" — in simple
language, making the legal context very plain. He points out
that a settlement in Samaria and Judea may not meet the
requirements of "Israel's building or zoning rules, and thus are
sometimes called 'illegal,'" but "in general, the 'unauthorized'
settlements raise no issues under international law." Yet, from
the hue and cry that arises when an Israeli living in Samaria or
Judea adds a bedroom to his house, one would think profound evil
was being perpetrated. He concludes, "The Geneva Convention was
designed to protect against governmental efforts to forcibly
change the ethnic make-up of an area, efforts of the kind that
occurred in World War II. It would be a bitter irony if it were
misread as requiring that any territory be kept free of Jews, or
any ethnic group."
Remembering that the International Red Cross had no problem
accepting the Arab's Red Crescent (which has often taxied
terrorists into Israel) but refused to allow the entry of the
Jewish Magen David until it agreed to not display the Magen David
sqymbol, it comes as no surprise to learn that the International
Red Cross is a politicized anti-Israel participant in demonizing
Israel. In this essay, Moshe Dann focusses on how they misuse the
provisions of the Geneva Convention, specifically Article 49.
THE SETTLEMENTS AND THE MONSTROUS CHARGE OF
ILLEGALITY
by David Isaac, November-December, 2010
Jewish settlements in Samaria and Judea
(aka the West Bank) are legal by international law: the
San Remo Conference and the Mandate for Palestine.
How could they not be, when that entire area is Jewish by an
irrevocable trust created by the same International Authority that
created many of the Arab states? Yet, as David Isaac writes, a
great deal of the anti-Israel propaganda by the European Union and
the American administration inter alia has been focused on
claiming that Jewish settlers are fanatics, their settlements
illegal. On the other hand, Arab settlements, built on private
land not their own — or even on public land — are never
considered illegal. What's going on is that propagandists want to
turn over the land to the Palestinian Arabs, without the problem
of having to expel a lot of Jews living on the land. Their major
arguments are based on dismissive readings of the Geneva
Convention of 1949 Article 49, initiated in 1978 by Herbert
Hansell on behalf of the Carter State Department. Isaac points out
why their interpretation is fallacious.
Dr. Yoram Shifftan continues his brilliant explication of
the legal bases for Israel's possession of Samaria, Judea and
Gaza. Citing Julius Stone, Professor of International Law,
Shifftan carefully extracts the applicable and appropriate legal
interpretations from the inaccuracies that have wantonly been
heaped over the truth.
WHO IS ENTITLED TO GIFT AWAY JEWISH NATIONAL RIGHTS?
by Yoram Shifftan, September-October, 2004
This is a companion piece to the previous article, which
focusses on the lack of awareness of the legal foundation of the
right of the Jews to what was Mandated Palestine. This essay
makes the point that the Land of Israel can not be gifted to
another group until its citizenry is fully aware of the
legalities and the consequences of such an action.
Eli Hertz talks about the international law that pertains to the Middle East. The territory the Ottoman Empire had owned for hundreds of years was taken over by England and France after World War I. The area labeled Mandated Palestine was to be Jewish. The rest — 99.9% of the Middle East — was carved into present-day Arab states; this was never challenged. Only the peaceable Jewish state must show cause for existing, despite its title to the land.
The UN's Security Council Resolution 242 is the major argument
for the negation of the Palestine Mandate. A complete analysis,
including the text of the Resolution, can be found in Ruth
Lapidoth's article, "Security Council Resolution 242: An Analysis
of its Main Provisions,"
here.
Resolution #181 of 1947 is also frequently cited as proving that
Jewish settlements in the Territories are illegal.
In point of fact, no later resolution can nullify
the Palestine Mandate, which made the Jewish people the
beneficiary of the region that was Biblical Israel with no time
limit.
When Israel was near birth in 1948, her Arab
neighbors invaded. Israel repelled the attack but Egypt held onto
Gaza and Jordan captured Samaria and Judea (aka the West Bank)
and a piece of the eastern part of Jerusalem. Some lawyers have
argued that when Israel became a state, the Palestine Mandate
terminated. They concluded from this that Israel no longer held
title to the Arab-captured territories. Yisrael Medad wrote this
counter argument (September 12, 2012,
here.):
"Article 80 of the UN Charter,
once known unofficially as the Jewish People's clause, which
preserves intact all the rights granted to Jews under the Mandate
for Palestine, even after the Mandate's expiry on May 14-15, 1948.
Under this provision of international law (the Charter is an
international treaty), Jewish rights to Palestine and the Land of
Israel were not to be altered in any way unless there had been an
intervening trusteeship agreement between the states or parties
concerned, which would have converted the Mandate into a
trusteeship or trust territory. The only period of time such an
agreement could have been concluded under Chapter 12 of the UN
Charter was during the three-year period from October 24, 1945,
the date the Charter entered into force after appropriate
ratifications, until May 14-15, 1948, the date the Mandate expired
and the State of Israel was proclaimed. Since no agreement of this
type was made during this relevant three-year period, in which
Jewish rights to all of Palestine may conceivably have been
altered had Palestine been converted into a trust territory, those
Jewish rights that had existed under the Mandate remained in full
force and effect, to which the UN is still committed by Article 80
to uphold, or is prohibited from altering.
"As a direct result of Article 80, the UN cannot transfer these
rights over any part of Palestine, vested as they are in the
Jewish People, to any non-Jewish entity, such as the "Palestinian
Authority." Among the most important of these Jewish rights are
those contained in Article 6 of the Mandate which recognized the
right of Jews to immigrate freely to the Land of Israel and to
establish settlements thereon, rights which are fully protected by
Article 80 of the UN Charter."
A comprehensive discussion on Article 80 can be found in Howard
Grief's article "Article 80 and the UN Recognition of a
'Palestinian State'" and its comments here. Return to What We Are Talking About
OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES?
by Salomon Benzimra, July-August, 2004
Salomon Benzimra points out a logical inconsistency. When
the Arabs waged war against Israel in 1948, the UN was bound to
defend Israel because of Resolution 181. As Salomon Benzimra
notes, they did no such thing. Winning that war, Israel's conquest
of some of the land allocated by the UN to the Arabs was
(properly) deemed valid. So why was Israel's conquest — when the
Arabs again attacked Israel in 1967 — declared an occupation? He
traces the problem back to the preamble of UN Resolution 242.
Wallace Brands explains one reason people think the Jewish
settlement in Samaria and Judea are illegal. In point of fact,
they are not. He describes the situation at the UN, when Russia
got passed "a resolution promoting the 'inalienable rights of the
Palestinian People' without any examination of whether there was a
Palestinian People or what their rights were and then was able to
form a UN 'Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of
the Palestinian People'". Relying on meretricious legal opinions,
the Committee "concluded that the Jews were, under international
law, engaged in illegal occupation of Judea, Samaria, East
Jerusalem and Gaza." Julius Stone, an authority on international
law, "showed that the Resolutions the opinion was based on were
not International Law but mere recommendations that died at birth
when the Partition Resolution, No. 181 of 1947, died at birth
because it was rejected by the Arabs." He also pointed out what
the UN Committee legal support should have known: the rights of a
people to self-determination can not abrogate "the territorial
integrity of a preexisting state, [in this case, Israel], and that
right is paramount." But the damage was done, and the incorrect
conclusion — that the settlements were illegal — is
believed by too many.
Eli Hertz presents the pertinent information about two U.N.
Resolutions — 181 and 242 — that are often used inaccurately to
'prove' that Israel needs to give up yet more of its tiny country
to the Arabs. Resolution 187 was adopted by the General Assembly
in 1947 and would have partitioned mandated Palestine into a
Jewish state and an Arab state. It was never adopted by the
Security Council, so it was never a binding resolution. In any
event, the Arabs rejected it. It became null and void when the
Arab states invaded the new-born state of Israel in 1948. U.N.
Resolution 242 was adopted after the 6-day war by the Security
Council. It said that Israel was to return some of the land it
conquered when the Arab states formally agreed to allow Israel to
live in peace with secure and recognized borders. It did not
mention Palestinian Arabs.
SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 242: A VIOLATION OF LAW AND A PATHWAY TO DISASTER
by Howard Grief, September-October, 2008
In 1948, Jordan, one of the Arab armies that invaded Israel,
conquered the eastern part of Jerusalem, Samaria and Judea. Israel
regained these areas after the Arabs invaded Israel again in 1967.
The U.N. passed a non-binding resolution, 242, when fighting
stopped. The Arabs have often falsely claimed that according to
Res. 242, Israel was to return to the pre-1967 borders. Howard
Grief's comprehensive article explains exactly what Res 242 did
and did not assert. And what it was wrong in asserting —
i.e., "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war"
does not apply in that Israel was not the aggressor. It had been
threatened by imminent aggression. "In this case it is certainly
admissible under international law for the state under imminent
attack to keep the territory that was captured from which the
planned aggression emanated." More importantly, Grief makes the
point that "the Security Council does not have and never had the
authority or right to order Israel to withdraw from territories
that constituted historical and legal areas of the Jewish National
Home and Land of Israel that had been recognized implicitly or
explicitly as belonging to the Jewish People in various acts of
international law: the San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920; the
Franco-British Boundary Convention of December 23, 1920; and the
Mandate for Palestine, confirmed by the League of Nations on July
24, 1922 and accepted by the United States in the Anglo-American
Treaty on Palestine of December 3, 1924." This land is held in a
perpetual trust for the Jewish people.
THE PALESTINIAN UN UPGRADE: SETTING THINGS STRAIGHT
by Alan Baker, December 5, 2012
This is a straight-forward summary of what Mahmoud Abbas'
request to the UN General Assembly to upgrade the area
controlled by the Palestinian Authority to a state did and did
not do. Alan Baker points out that it "neither created a
Palestinian state, nor did it grant any kind of statehood to the
Palestinians." It has no effect on the situation on the ground
between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, no matter how much
significance the media give the political charade.
Unfortunately — and this wasn't within the scope of the article
— media distortions are likely to be believed by a public
trained to sympathize with Palestinian victimhood.
The San Remo Conference in 1920 established that Mandated
Palestine — some one tenth of one percent of the Ottoman
Middle East — was to be in trust for a Jewish State. The
rest of the Middle East would be divided into Arab states. When
Israel's Arab neighbors invaded Israel in 1948, Egypt took Gaza
and Jordan seized Samaria and Judea and a chunk in the eastern
part of Jerusalem. So the new State of Israel, while it maintained
legal ownership, lost physical access to these areas. During, this
time, the local Arabs never contended that they, not Egypt and not
Jordan, owned the land. But when the Jews reclaimed their land in
1967, the newly-congealed Palestinian people began asserting that
Israel was occupying their land and, retroactively, "50
years late want a separate distribution just for them."
Julius Stone, a law professor predominant in both jurisprudence
and international law, approached the problem of culpability from
a fresh point of view. Boiled down it is: the groups that
benefitted from the situation that occasioned the Palestinian
Arabs misfortune are responsible, in proportion to the benefits
received, with the Arabs having obtained 99.99% of the Ottoman
Middle East land holdings. He points out that the refugees were "a
by-product of the Arab State resort to military force in 1948, in
order to destroy the State of Israel." He reminds us that the Arab
states not only encouraged Arabs to flee Israel when they invaded
Israel in 1948, but they are responsible for actively forcing
almost a million Jews to flee the Arab countries, leaving their
homes, businesses and personal property behind. Israel did far
more than its share by absorbing the Jewish refugees as full
citizens, while the Arab states are yet to take responsibility for
either the Arab refugees or the Jewish refugees. It remains the
responsibility of the Arab states, Jordan in particular, to
resettle the Palestinians. Stone concludes that "[t]he growth of
more specific Palestinian Arab consciousness in the last decade,
even if this now represents a peoplehood entitled to
self-determination, cannot be projected back into time so as to
invalidate a distribution of decades before. And this is the more
so since, in all but name, there is an already existing Arab State
in Palestine ... Jordan." Stone also demolishes Arab claims to the
land based on conquest — Jews conquered the area both and after
the Arab — or population numbers or displacement.
Stone is a major figure in the legal understanding of major
issue in the Arab-Israel conflict. In this issue of
Think-Israel, several authors cite him extensively. See for
example, articles by Yoram Shifftan
here, here, here,
and
here. Howard Grief cites Stone's opinions
here
and
here.
Wallace Brand cites
Stone
here and Ian Lacey devotes his article to
summarizing Stone's analysis of the "central principles of international law governing the
issues raised by the Arab-Israel conflict."
A complete list of relevant articles can be found by googling in
the search box on the top of this page.
Thanks are due Wallace Brand for sending
Think-Israel a digitized copy of the original of this pamphlet.
The notion that Israel is occupying Arab land has been used
to condone the barbaric behavior of the Arab terrorists and
condemn whatever Israel does to defend itself. Yet, as Howard
Grief demonstrates, it is a fundamental egregious error. He
examines the origins of this myth in meticulous detail.
Surprisingly, it was the fault of Jews — the jurist Meir Shamgar,
in particular — who applied the wrong laws when the Jews overcame
the Arab invasion of 1967 and came into control of Gaza, Samaria,
Judea, Golan and the Sinai. Only later were these inappropriate
concepts picked up and used so effectively by the Arabs.
The myth that Israel is occupying land owned by the
Palestinians is so ingrained, it seems to be received truth. A
large part of this belief is due to Arab propaganda, reinforced
and amplified by cooperative news and TV media. Some of the blame
goes to Shimon Peres and the Israeli leadership who decided that
the Oslo Accords would be strengthened if the Jews allowed Arab
lies to go unchallenged. But now Howard Grief writes of another
source of the belief that Israel is illegally sitting on Arab
land. He writes of the shocking fact that it was an Israeli judge,
Meir Shamgar, who ignored international law and applied the wrong
concepts when Israel successfully fought back the invasion by the
neighboring Arab States. She did more than fight back. She
regained land that was rightfully hers by international law. But
over the years, rather than reinforcing Israel's claim, sloppy
thinking by some of the Israeli judiciary has given the
cotton-candy narrative spun by the Arabs a seemingly solid
foundation. In this and in his other writings on Israel's
ownership of the land, Grief provides us with the facts and a
broad understanding of what these facts mean.
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE OCCUPATION AND THE SETTLEMENTS
by Ted Belman, July-August, 2010
As Ted Belman writes, "The pro-Palestinian propaganda machine
has succeeded in stigmatizing the Israeli occupation and the
settlements. Time and again we hear about the 'brutal
occupation' and the 'illegal settlements'. We rarely hear the
truth in opposition to these lies." He provides us with a clear
statement of the facts. To the fact that the land is Jewish by
international law — meaning that the U.N. is supposed to be
helping the Jewish settlements to expand — add the fact that
some 95% of the supposed indigenous "Palestinians" came in after
1900, and it becomes Ph.D. thesis-level puzzlement how the Arabs
and Arab-aiders have managed to make everyone believe lies that
invert the truth.
THE JEWISH RIGHT TO LIVE IN WESTERN PALESTINE: The Irrelevancy Of 'Belligerent Occupation' and the 4th Geneva Convention
by Yoram Shifftan, May-June, 2005
The jurists of Israel in the Ministry of Justice appear to
excel in creative albeit inappropriate reinterpretation of the law
— and not only Israeli law, but international law. Misapplying the
concept of "belligerent occupation" and the 4th Geneva convention,
they recently rejected the appeal of the Gazan Jews that the
government be stopped from carrying out Sharon's unilateral
disengagement plan. Yoram Shifftan explains why the bases of their
rejection are inapplicable to the current situation. He has called
the Israeli justice system "a legal system a là demand,"
tailored for the legalization of the uprooting.
The Ottoman Empire ruled the Middle East from the 1500's for
some 400 years. It had the bad judgment to side with Germany in
World War 1, and so lost its enormous land holdings to the Allies,
particularly the British and the French. With legal authorization
from the League of Nations (LON), at the San Remo Conference in
1920, the Allies created three mandates for dividing these Ottoman
holdings: the Syrian, the Iraqi and the Palestinian. The first two
— which distributed more than 99% of the land to the Arabs
— eventually gave rise to many of the current Arab states,
including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Kuwait.
The third mandate reserved the small amount of land remaining,
the land that had been Biblical Israel,
the land on both sides of the Jordan river — today's
Israel, Samaria, Judea, Gaza, the Golan, and Jordan. — for a
Jewish state that would be formed when the Jews had sufficient
infra-structure and population.
The Palestine Mandate (for the Land of Israel) was legally
launched at San Remo. Between then and the LON's ratifying the
Mandate in 1922, Britain allowed the land east of the Jordan river
to be "administered" by the Hashemite Arabs, leaving what is today
Israel, Samaria, Judea, Gaza and part of the Golan in perpetual
trust for the Jews. It then — also illegally — ceded
the Golan Heights to France in 1923. For the next few years until
World War 2, these were the highlights: the Arabs often rioted and
occasionally slaughtered their Jewish neighbors wholesale; the
British illegally blocked immigration from Europe to Palestine
when Nazi Germany began systematically annihilating Jews; and the
UN tried unsuccessfully to divide Mandated Palestine between the
Arabs and the Jews. During World War 2, the Jews of Palestine
fought on the side of the British and at home in Palestine they
fought against the British.
The neighboring Arab states started attacking the State of
Israel even before its birth day on May 14, 1948, and to almost
everyone's surprise, the Jewish state survived. But it lost land.
Egypt took control of Gaza. And (Trans)Jordan captured Samaria and
Judea and a small piece in the eastern part of Jerusalem. Jordan
kicked out and/or killed each and every Jew living there and
filled the area with Arabs from everywhere. In addition to the new
Arab inhabitants, many of the Arabs who fled Israel during the
Arab invasion also came to live there as refugees.
This went on for 19 years. The local Arabs never asked for
self-determination. They never demanded a new state or talked
about regaining their ancient land — not until the
neighboring Arab states again attacked Israel in June 1967, and
Israel was able to win back its land. It was then that the Arabs
mostly abandoned conventional warfare. although they would try
again in 1973. They continued guerrilla "lone wolf" and
small-group terrorism. Indeed, it was in designing small but
effective attacks that the local Arabs have been at their most
creative. But they began to emphasize propaganda via the media and
academia as well as political initiatives by friendly groups such
as the European Union and "humanitarian" institutions such as the
United Nations. They built on top of the sympathy they had
successfully created for the Arab refugees who had fled Israel in
1948. The local population, declared a people in 1964, was to
become a major tool to battle Israel.
When Jews started making aliyah in large numbers in the late
1800s, Ottoman Syrian Palestine (Israel, the Territories and
Jordan) was severely underpopulated but rich in ethnic variety
— less than 350,000 people, split into some fifty ethnic
groups including Arabs, lived there in 1860. Most of them were
Muslim. There was a large jump in immigration from the neighboring
countries starting in the early 1900s, because of the economic
opportunities made possible by the Jews and later also by the
British, after the Ottomans lost their land holdings.
The population in the Territories including Gaza was greatly
enlarged after 1948 by 'Arab' refugees that were clients of UNRWA.
Moreover, at the end of the Arab-Israel War of 1948, after Jordan
kicked out all the Jews from Samaria, Judea and some of eastern
Jerusalem, she encouraged the entry of Muslims from neighboring
states. In December 1948, UNctad estimated a population of
415,000 to 426,000 on the West Bank (Samaria and Judea), and some
81,000 in Gaza. They estimate that by May 30, 1967 there were
900,000 people on the West Bank and 450,000 in Gaza. The majority
were registered as refugees. In 1968 there were 290,000 Muslims
and 103,000 Christians and other non-Jews living in Israel. Jordan
had been cut out of Mandated Palestine in 1922, but some 70% of
her population was said to be Palestinian. In 1967, there were no
Jews in the Territories, Jordan having killed them or expelled
them after she gained control of the area in 1948.
In 1964, the Muslims living in Israel and the Territories
— Sudanese, Bosnians, Circassians, Turks, Egyptians, Syrians
and Bedouins, etc., plus their kin in Jordan and elsewhere —
were suddenly a single people: the Palestinians. In fact, the
Palestinian Arab leadership asserted they were the descendants of
the Philistines, the Canaanites; they were the original owners of
Palestine, the aboriginals — whatever fancy took them,
history and geography be damned. Until the Jews made aliyah,
Syrian Palestine had, for hundreds of years, been an unsanitary,
poverty-stricken, under-populated place, with high infant
mortality and a stagnant barely viable economy. Most inhabitants
lived hand-to-mouth. But now, the refugees claimed huge fortunes
in land and personal property left behind in Israel.
Their new status as a people made new narratives plausible.
Retroactively, the Jews became occupiers of Palestinian land.
Because the Jews had been denied habitation in the Territories for
almost two decades, the Palestinian Arabs could pretend the Jews
had never lived there.
Life began for the Palestinians as a people in 1964. Their
history's zero time was 1967. They complained after 1967 that the
Jews were occupying Palestinian land. When details were needed,
like reusing ancient columns as building blocks, they reused
Jewish history as their own, exchanging only heroes and villains.
In their history, there never was a Jewish Temple on the Temple
Mount. Jesus was a Palestinian. The Palestinian Arabs had happily
lived for eons in Palestine until the Jews invaded.
So successful have they been in selling such absurdity that the
Arab refugees have become somewhat superfluous. The few hundred
thousand original refugees, augmented by their progeny and by
non-refugee locals, have grown into the millions. They continue to
be fed, educated, medicated and housed by UNRWA, a special UN
refugee agency. The head of the Palestinian Authority isn't about
to take on UNRWA's burden. He has announced that these refugees
will not be part of a future Palestinian State, not even those
currently living in Samaria and Judea. He is, however, looking out
for their future. He has demanded that the refugees have the right
to return to their (mostly illusory) pre-war dwellings in
Israel, all seven million of them.
It is worthwhile reflecting on a simple fact: had the Hashemite
State of Jordan and Egypt not captured some of the Land of
Israel and held it for nineteen years, none of this would have
happened. The Arabs would still conspire to destroy Israel, all of
Israel, but Samaria, Judea, Gaza and the eastern part of Jerusalem
would be seamless parts of Israel. They would not be available as
detachable containers to be filled with all sorts of agit-prop,
fantasies, claims and assertions by pro-Arab propagandists. As it
is, the 19 years of Jordanian occupation were the occasion for
starting all sorts of creative theatrics. Arabs have hijacked
Israel's history and have attempted to steal Israel's land. They
have inverted history and claimed Israel is occupying Palestinian
land. Given successive Israeli governments that don't even answer
back, they have convinced most of the world they are in the right.
Just think. Had Israel not lost control of some of her land for a
few years, the Arabs would not be asserting rights they never had
in the Land of Israel.
JANUARY-JUNE, 2016 BLOG-EDS
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
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Please note that The Blog-Ed pages for
January-June 2016 are not currently available.
Different Blog Ed pages will be down
intermittently until the Archive structure is
in place. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Think-Israel tends to use salafist rather than
extremist or Islamist or militant or
fundamentalist or activist to describe generically a
pious Muslim, one who sticks as closely as possible to the
unfiltered words and actions of Mohammad and the first three
generations of Muslims, including, especially, the Companions of
the Prophet. In modeling himself as closely as he can on the
preachings and practices of Mohammad, a salafist can in modern
terms be precisely described as an uninhibited terrorist, a
theological supersessionist, a political supremacist who believes
Islam and sharia law must dominate and a social barbarian, who
wages jihad with whatever tools are available.
Thanks to the high quality of whitewash supplied by sympathetic
propagandists, he seldom is so described.
ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF WAR
Islam is waging a religious war and its religion is to wage war.
Muslims do not wage jihad out of desperation or
poverty or a sense of inferiority. They wage war because Islam is
a Religion of War. It's built on a mission: to conquer all other
religions, to reduce all other people to dhimmitude, if they don't
convert or choose death instead. Playing the victim and declaring
that any criticism of Islam is islamophobia are weapons of
intimidation to paralyze the enemy into inaction. Israelis and
Westerners do fear Islam's irrational and overblown responses to
the ordinary give and take among people and groups. This is not
phobic; it's rational.
A reader, Dilbert WhoKnows, said on Nov 27, 2015 (a comment
on an excellent article by Hussein Aboubakr here) "Students of Islamic history
know that the religion has not been corrupted by fundamentalist
forces. The religion has simply re-taken its original format
of violent conquest, and murderous domination of non-believers
after a hiatus of several centuries of Islamic power stagnation.
The stagnation of Islam power was due to the rise of the west
and other stronger peoples who were able to stop the Islamic
conquest and push it back towards its Arabian center. The
Islamic world essentially imploded on itself and remained stuck
while the rest of the developed world continued to move forward
faster and faster. The anger and frustration felt throughout the
Islamic world is due to the cognitive dissonance where the
religion teaches that they should righfully dominate everyone
else, but in reality they are the most backwards and undeveloped
of all the nations on earth. Thus the change can not come from
within as the needed changes are direct contradictions to the
basic tenets of the faith."
See also the video "Fear of Muslims is Rational"
here.
Daniel Greenfield makes the case that "Islamic violence is a
religious problem." When salafist terrorists murder and rape,
"[t]hey are not perverting a great religion, as our politicians
claim, they are living it." Greenfield makes the point crystal
clear by this comparison: "What the Ten Commandments are for the
Jew, or the resurrection of Jesus is for the Christian — the
physical dominance of Islam is to the Muslim. It is the basis and
fulfillment of his faith." Muslims may talk the spirituality lingo
— it's persuasive propaganda in the West — but, as Greenfield
says, "Islam is not primarily an inward spiritual experience, but
an outward expression of tribal honor." Islam is a religion of
war, not peace.
THE ANATOMY OF DENIAL: MULTICULTURALIST DELUSIONS IN AN AGE OF
TERRORISM
by Bruce Thornton
While salafists proudly boast how well they mirror Mohammad's
activities — slaughter, violence, invasion, enslavement, rape,
vandalism — Western multicultural ideologues insist that Islam is
a religion of peace. Bruce Thornton suggests several reasons for
this, including differences in religious intensity. He notes that
"Western secularism has rendered us incapable of understanding
passionate religious beliefs." For the most part, religion in the
West is or is becoming compartmentalized and tepid whereas "the
commands of Allah and the words and deeds of Mohammed are a living
presence in every aspect of a devout Muslim's life." If Mohammed
condoned violence fourteen hundred years ago, violence is
acceptable today, no apologies necessary. This is a thoughtful
essay directed at the problem why all sorts of palliative
treatments are suggested to stop Muslim expanionism and violence,
but the obvious source of the problem, Islamic doctrine, is
willfully ignored.
Barry Shaw describes Islam as a kinetic religion because it
must, by its own rules, continue to press on and never stop until
it obtains its religious objective: the expansion of Islam to every part of
the world. Muslims may come into a new host country weak and
ill-equipped but they have the obligation to establish a presence
there and "turn it into solid Launchpad from which to expand to other
locations, which must be controlled and fortified before spreading
out to the next stage of the expansion. This can be done
militarily or peacefully, depending on the political environment
into which Islam intends to expand." But done it must be, no
matter how much Western appeasers would like to pretend it ain't happening.
Stephen Coughlin is a leading expert and lecturer on how
Islamic jihad is directly derived from Islamic religious doctrine
and how the Holy Books serve as primers for current terror
activities. Many of us have read how he was fired by the Defense
Dep't because associates of the Muslim Brotherhood objected to his
factual lectures on the clear and present danger of Islam to
America
(see
here). If firing Coughlin was intended to suppress his
message, it boomeranged — Coughlin has published his analysis as
a book that is reaching a larger audience. Moreover, being fired
for revealing the source of Islamic terrorism serves as
authentication of the truth of Coughlin's charges today in the
same way that being 'banned in Boston' by self-appointed book
censors certified the importance of the ideas expressed in a book
a half century ago.
In this article, Edward Cline reviews Coughlin's book,
"Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of
Jihad." Part 1 of this review describes how criticism of
Islam, even if true, is against Sharia Law, and thus is
considered to be religious blasphemy. In the USA, executive
edicts from the White House have forbidden government training
manuals and data bases for military and defense analysts to
associate terrorism and Islam. Hence our defense and security
agencies are blocked from openly identifying acts of terror
committed by Muslims, unless these acts are called aberrations of
the Religion of Peace. In actuality, the commands for jihad
against all non-Muslims, for violence, for plunder, for slaughter
and for viewing women as chattel are directly from the
to-be-followed more recent instructions of the Koran and Hadiths.
The earlier peaceful sections have been abrogated.
In part 2 of this review, Cline
focuses on Coughlin's "explication of the roles of Sayyid Qutb,
the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation in the emasculation of America's power to defend
itself from 'civilization jihad'." As Cline notes, "If there is a
'failure to communicate' the peril in which America finds itself,
it is not Stephen Coughlin's failure."
THE RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS OF SUICIDE BOMBINGS: ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY
by David Bukay
This classic essay by David Bukay points out the disparity of
the Western belief — promoted by Islamic apologists such as
Professor John Esposito of Georgetown U. and John Brennan,
Director of the CIA — that jihad is some sort of internal
spiritual struggle and the actual meaning of jihad as spirited
warfare against all who are not yet in submission to sharia law.
Bukay points out that jihad was defined as an internal struggle
only when "Muhammad and his band of followers were small and
relatively weak and so prone to compromise." This interpretation
was abrogated (i.e., canceled, voided, superceded) by Mohammad
himself. Since then, Jihad has meant the necessary violent
and non-violent never-ending struggle to ensure Islam's victory
over every non-believer everywhere. It is a compulsory duty for
Muslims, not subject to debate. It justifies every way of
conquering the enemy, including committing suicide, which is
otherwise prohibited by Islamic law. Those killed participating in
jihad are considered to be living with Allah in Paradise, where
they enjoy special rewards. Jihad is as central to Islam today as
it was in Mohammad's time. As powerful and as deadly.
This section deals with some general conditions affecting the
entire Middle East. The basic conflict is between the Sunnis and
the Shi'ites.
Attempts to readjustment the balance of power between the two
groups have led to large-scale violence and governmental
destabilization over the entire region. Open hostilities between
the groups are likely to intensify now that Iran will have
nuclear resources with which to lord it over her neighbors.
Maj.Gen. (res.) Yaakov
Amidror wrote on January 24,
2016
in a BESA Center perspective Paper:
"During this upcoming period, Iran will behave like a regional
power, and anyone who does not accept its status will have to
deal with its increasing power and the strength of its
emissaries in the region. The American move in making the deal,
and its ramifications for Iran's stature, serve as a kind of
proof for the Sunnis of an American decision to align with the
Shiite side of the struggle."
At the very least, Iran will do what it does well: create disorder
and disruption by fighting through its many proxies. And the
response by the other states will contribute to the breakdown of
civility and the rejection of limits on barbaric behavior.
As Jonathan Spyer noted in a recent paper, the main problem in the
Middle East is the domination of political Islam by
"States, indifferent to any norms and rules, using terror and
subversion to advance their interests, Jihadi armed groups, and
the refugee crises and disorder that result from all this are the
practical manifestations of it." (See
here).
Meantime, the world struggles to "understand" what has caused
all this. Many reasons have been proposed for the sharp increase
in violence. Both groups are said to suffer overt frustration
because the status of the Muslims in the world doesn't match the
superiority their religion tells them they are entitled to have.
The reasons adduced to explain the current perturbations are for the
most part fanciful and independent of Islam itself. Israel, of
course, has been blamed for the region's woes, as has the West.
But it is becoming recognized that the motive power behind the
surge of what is called radical Islam terrorism is that both the Sunnis
and Shi'ites are committed to unlimited jihad for the sake of
Islam. They aren't deviating from the tenets of Islam. They are
very much rooted in the beginnings of Islam in thought and in
action.
Return to What We Are Talking About
LEADERSHIP OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD AND ISLAMIC JIHAD IS WHAT IS AT STAKE FOR MUSLIMS
by Col. Tom Snodgrass (Ret.)
Tom Snodgrass provides a primer explaining the similarities and
differences between the Sunnis and Shi'ites. Both are dedicated to
replacing the US Constitution — and the administration of every
non-Muslim country — with sharia law. Neither will give up until
they obtain this objective. The US has been dealing with the
different factions piecemeal, supporting the Sunnis here, the
Shi'ites there. Snodgrass suggests the US needs to "adopt a
comprehensive strategy which is based on the reality that the U.S.
loses regardless who triumphs in the Islamic religious sectarian
war: Islamic State Sunni Salafist Wahhabis, al-Qaeda Sunni
Salafist Wahhabis, Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, or Shia Khomeinist
Twelvers."
In the current war between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites in the
Middle East, Iran is the major source of funding for the
political-military organizations acting as Iranian proxies
and fighting for the Shi'ite side in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.
Jonathan Spyer explores how successful these different alliances
have been. Spyer believes Iran will be more successful creating
chaos in the region than developing a sustainable hegemony over
the Middle East.
Clive Kessler has an interesting perspective: Islam since it
fell behind the West, has tried various governmental and
administrative fixes, from secular to military to Marxist. It has
now gone back to its violent religious beginnings, to
sharia-dominant "pure" Islam and idealization of that perfect man,
Mohammad. Kessler talks about only a minority taking the terrorist
route. But given there were 2.08 billion Muslims in the world as
of 2014, even if only 15% are terrorists and their support
structure, that is 312 million people,
which is close to the entire population of the USA (318.9 million
in 2014). Not proven is whether Islam
ever actually discarded Sharia as society's glue. Not proven is
whether Islam ever had the creativity it takes for success. Soon
after its formation it absorbed the Persian and Hebrew cultures,
inter alia. Its rampages were effective but are hardly
proof that Islam intrinsically can build and create as well as it
can pillage, destroy and make subservient. Islam's blaming
everyone and everything but itself and its lack of introspection
stands in sharp contrast to the way, for example, the Chinese, another ancient
people, found its way to modernity through many blunders and false
starts. It reshaped its people, not the world.
For years, we were told that the Po' Palestinian Arabs were
sadistically violent only because they had no other way to fight
the Jewish invaders of their homeland, an explanation that assumed incorrectly
that these Arabs owned the land. As justification for
barbaric behavior, the notion they were fighting to regain a
homeland began to fall apart when the salafists started
doing unto the West what it had done in Israel. One could patch
together a commonality that the West was under attack because it
aided Israel or because it had done Islam wrong, but
the uniqueness of the underpinning of Arab terror
— that it was fighting for its land — was
lost. As Brig.-Gen (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser wrote (December 3,
2015,
here.)
"What disturbs the Palestinians is that as radical Islam's direct
warfare against the West expands, they lose a key asset for
promoting their goals. If, as is becoming increasingly clear, the
Palestinian issue is not the heart of the problem, then the West's
expression of regret for its "crimes" on this issue will not solve
the greater problem. The request for penance must be much more
far-reaching; Iranian President Hassan Rouhani recently made
dialogue with the United States conditional on an American request
for Iran's forgiveness. In addition, the more the connection
between the two kinds of terror grows, the more the radical
Islamic component of the Palestinian rejection of Israel's
existence as the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people and
preference for a violent struggle to eliminate it, is exposed. The
West would better understand how difficult it is to promote a
settlement and may (as Israel would hope) come to understand that
the terror against Israel is essentially part and parcel of the
terror against the West."
The Pro-Palestinian propagandists are now using a second line of
justification: the actions of the terrorists are due to
'frustration, desperation, fury at being dealt a poor hand,
shame, etc.' — environmental and external reasons, not part of
the Religion of Peace. Nevertheless, it is becoming clear that
they don't want a homeland — they rejected Genl Sisi's offer of a
homeland in the Sinai. What they want is to take over all of
Israel and evict the Jews because they controlled the area for a
time centuries back. The reasons for terrorizing the West have
also become suspect. It isn't because the West wronged them. It
isn't because they suffer from frustration or poverty or
desperation. It's
because they have a mission to impose Sharia globally on all.
In this essay, Mark Humphrys rejects the absurd notion that the
fight for a Palestinian homeland is the well-spring for
Arab terrorism throughout the Middle East. He points out that the
sociological certainty that poverty and frustration cause acts of
terrorism is also wrong. Most terrorists capable of the self-direction
needed to carry out a successful terror attack come from the
upper classes. He identifies the motive power of Islamist
terrorism: Islam.
This section begin with the history of the treatment of the Jews
in Iran, from the time it was the Persian Empire until today.
The other essays explore the new threats to global survival
which became reality when the so-called nuclear deal with Iran
was accepted by Prez Obama. After a flurry of reports detailing
the defects of the JCPOA in the summer of 2015, news articles
on progress were markedly reduced. This set of articles brings us
up to date.
Many of the Deal's dangers were obvious from the start; many
warned of the consequences. For example, see
here. These possibilities have become reality, with Iran
running the show: deciding what it will and will not do, dictating
to the West, deciding what the IAEA — the agency responsible for
monitoring the nuclear deal — may and may not examine. In the
last issue of Think-Israel, in the Section entitled "We Can Still
Defeat the Iran Nuclear Deal", where
we concluded that there were ways to stop Iran's unimpeded
drive to become a nuclear power (see here).
These ways are still available. And using them is more necessary
than ever.
In step with Iran's punching its way out of the paper bag full
of JCPOA's restraints on its nuclear ambitions, there has been a
reconsideration of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT),
an early attempt at restricting nuclear proliferation. The NPT has
no bite, no ability to stop Iran's ambition, but coming from the
mouths of the European Union and the American President and the
Muslim-riddled United Nations, it has enough strength to tie up
Israel to make it incapable of responding to Iranian threats and
activities.
The maneuver to paralyze Israel is multi-pronged.
Besides trying to ensure politically that Israel doesn't use
nuclear power, there is a "special relations between the
PLO/Fatah and Iran." This is the documentation at hirhome.com/iraniraq/plo-iran2.htm:
"PLO/Fatah, now better known as the 'Palestinian Authority,' will
govern a Palestinian State in the militarily strategic
territories of Judea and Samaria (or 'West Bank') if the Middle
East 'peace process' concludes with a 'Two-State Solution.' Given
that Iranian leaders daily promise the destruction of Israel,
most people assume that PLO/Fatah has nothing to do with Iran. It
would be absurd, they implicitly reason, for Israeli leaders to
give strategic territory to an Iranian proxy. And yet, it is a
historical fact that PLO/Fatah helped install Ayatollah Khomeini
in power and create the current Iranian Islamist regime. It has
maintained a close relationship with this regime ever since. This
short film PLO/Fatah and
Iran: The Special Relationship from HIR at http://www.hirhome.com documents that
relationship:"
Alex Rose traces the treatment of the Jews through the
dynasties from ancient Persia to its transformation to modern-day
Iran. With few exceptions, Jews, like other religious minorities,
were treated harshly by successive rulers, well before the Arabs
conquered Persia. The Arab rulers were Shi'ite, so the traditional
brutality of the Muslims was reinforced by the Shi'ite doctrine of
purity, najis, which emphasized the fear of uncleanliness
caused by non-believers — Jews and Christians. An episode of
Jewish "pollution" was often the trigger for a pogrom or forced
conversion to Islam. The current rulers of Iran, the mullahs, may
be conversant with modern technology but they are as obsessed with
Jew-hate as most of their predecessors.
The Iran Nuclear Deal was not signed, not affirmed by raised
hand, not treated as a treaty by the US executive, not voted on
directly by the US Congress. It is a non-binding set of plans,
which unfortunately the USA Administration seems to feel
honor-bound to implement, while Iran has announced it will do what
it wants, when it wants. Roger Aronoff points out that the State
Dep't's spin on these facts is to emphasize verification
rather than contractual agreement, even though Iran has already
stated it is now and will continue to be non-compliant when the Deal
interferes with its own plans. As for the rigorous monitoring that
verification demands, IAEA, the monitoring
agency, has already shown itself to be incapable of standing up to
Iran's bullying. The upshot is that "President Obama is
perpetrating a dangerous hoax through his triumphal advocacy for
this so-called deal, and the media, for the most part, are
participating."
Yigal Carmon, co-founder of MEMRI, an institute that does
scrupulous translations from the Arab media, has examined the
end-game activities of the Iran nuclear deal. The final bits and
pieces were to be in place by December 15, 2015 so the
participants could begin carrying out their agreed-upon Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Instead, "[t]he JCPOA is
best characterized by bangs and whimpers — by bold prohibitions on
Iran that peter out in qualifying terms such as 'unless,' 'except
if,' and the like." Moreover, by her actions and temper tantrums, Iran has
totally "rewritten" the JCPOA so Iran will be doing just what she
wants to do. In fact, Iran is the one
stipulating conditions the West must agree to — or else Iran will
stop her version of cooperation. The IAEA monotoring agency has long been intimidated into not
going against Iran's inperious demands. As Carmon says, "With every passing
day, Iran is more and more in violation of the JCPOA. But neither
the Republicans nor the Democrats, nor the media, nor anyone else
will acknowledge this, for the implications are too devastating."
The Obama Administration continues to tout the Iran Nuclear
Deal as having thwarted Iran's ability to acquire nuclear weapons
for at least a decade. Even if Iran doesn't already have the
bomb, Obama's claim is unlikely. It ignores "other crucial
requirements for effective nonproliferation." Emily Landau
examines the impact of the JCPOA on the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty (NPT), which was enacted in 1970 as the way to stop "the
spread of nuclear weapons and the destabilization that could
result." She points out that "[i]nstead of shoring up the
nonproliferation regime, the Iran deal is likely to dangerously
undermine it" in that it will likely lead non-nuclear NPT members
to reexamine their commitment to current NPT regulations and
restrictions. As it is, taking advantage of a loophole, Iran, a
member of the NPT, like North Korea and Iraq before it, has
already been substantially advancing "a military nuclear
capability under the cover of a supposedly civilian one." The
supposedly mature nuclear countries irresponsibly have made no
attempt to punish the rogue countries, which quickly learned that
in pushing nuclear proliferation beyond legal limits, they would
suffer no loss in "long-term status, wealth, and power."
Contrariwise, as Landau writes in an article entitled "The
NPT's Challenge To Israel" (see here), over the years, there has been intermittent but substantial pressure on
Israel, not a member of NPT, to become a member — maybe the only
member — of a "nuclear-weapon-free zone" in the Middle East. As
Landau writes, "the only way for Israel (or any of the other
states outside the treaty) to join the NPT is as a non-nuclear
weapon state; therefore the call for Israel to join the NPT is
necessarily a call for Israel to disarm itself of whatever
nuclear capability it is assumed to have."
Ignoring Iran's genocidal rants and NPT's own, albeit weak,
acceptance of the right of self defense, many have argued that Israel
and Iran should have equal NPT obligations. Now that Iran has
shown itself to be erratic — using its growing expertise in
nuclear matters to intimidate — logically, we'd expect the
pressure on Israel to disarm itself would discontinue. But logic
isn't a prominent feature of Arab demands. Landau concludes that
much depends on whether the Arabs think that "increasing
attention to Israel had a realistic chance of producing results."
The salafists are determined to win Europe from the control of
the "Crusaders" — they want another shot at the Christians they
weren't able to defeat at the time of the Crusades. Instead of
mounting a realistic defense against the Muslim invasion of
Europe and infiltration of the US, Western leaders blame
everything and everybody but Islam. This set of
articles identifies some of the ruses Western leaders employ to
avoid having to deal with reality. They allow uncontrolled
immigration of an unassimilable culture. They refuse to give up
their precious ideology — diversity and multiculturalism — even
though, should the salafists win, there will be no diversity,
only the uniformity of sharia law. There will be no respect for
all cultures; all cultures will be treated as inferior to Islam.
They continue to see Israel as the root cause of global problems
and try to cripple it, even though as Dr Shine observes, "Israel
stands at the forefront of the war against terrorism." A video
called "Paris Attacks: Western Politicians are Accessories to
Murder" featuring Paul Weston here reinforces the observation
that the weak and ineffective behavior of Western politicians
contributes to the harm the salafists have been able to do the West.
Edward Cline write about the demented mental
state of the political elite of Europe who, ignoring the
devastation, crime, social diseases and economic disruption the
Muslims has brought to their countries, continue
to preach a distorted form of Christianity: when faced with Muslim
anti-social behavior, turn the other cheek and pretend
even harder that Muslims will allow themselves to be reshaped into
civilized Europeans with Western values. As Cline notes, using German
Chancellor Angela Merkel as a supreme example of
ideology-motivated behavior, "Her 'mind-set' of plurality and
diversity is directly at odds with those of the disdained hoi
polloi." Ordinary folk who rely on the evidence of their eyes
are sneered at and given misinformation or no information to keep
them from objecting to the social upheaval the Muslims have
engendered. To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The political
elite are different from you and me."
Haim Shine writes bluntly and accurately,
"For many years, European policymakers have endlessly regurgitated
the fallacy that the 'suffering' of Palestinians motivates
terrorists across the globe. This baseless and hypocritical claim
stems from a desire to appease Arab countries and promote European
business interests." There is no connection between the
Israel-Palestinian conflict and Islamic terror. Instead, there are
two facts that are for the most part disregarded: (1) Salafists
regard France and Germany as 'Crusader states' and are ready to
continue their battle with the Christian Crusaders; and (2)
through no desire on its part, nevertheless, "Israel stands at the forefront of
the war against terrorism." Until this is acknowledged and the war
against Islamic terrorism becomes serious, people will die from
terrorist acts. It would behoove European and American politicians
to stop pushing Israel to make suidical concessions and to
understand that, as Shine writes, "Any ceded land would turn into
a forward base of radical Islam."
The Main Stream Media (MSM) continue to emphasize the
humanitarian aspects of the refugee influx into Europe, primarily
Germany, with its generous welfare benefits and enthusiastic
welcome of the refugees by its Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The
media ignore that their own photos show that currently 69% of the
Syrian refugees coming by sea are not women holding toddlers but
grown men, well dressed and equipped with cell phones (see here).
The MSM don't explain why wealthy Middle East countries such as
UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain won't take in refugees, especially
when these countries have the same culture, attitude toward women
and family, religion and language as the refugees. In Europe,
refugee absorption is not doing well.
The European public was brimming with friendliness
towards the refugees only a short while ago. Its
enthusiasm was much reduced
after major increases in crime were reported and took a sharp
plunge after a mass attack against women took place on New
Year's Eve 2016 in various German cities, particularly in Cologne where
Arab migrant gangs harassed and attacked women sexually. The way
the gangs assaulted lone women and "diverted outsiders' attention"
(see
here) suggests the attacks were pre-planned and coordinated.
More and more, harassment of native women is being reported from
Western European countries. In Sweden, 77% of the rapes are
committed by Muslim males, who are 2% of the population (see
here.) Other facts are just as indigestible. ISIS is openly
bragging that thousands of their members have entered Europe as
unvetted refugees or on fake passports, while surveys show that 25%
of the Syrian refugees in Europe (with an estimated range
from 13% to 80%) sympathize with the Islamic State (see
here). And most European Muslims want Sharia. not European, law
(see here).
In this article, Soeren Kern focuses on the social and
political perturbations triggered by the large increase of
refugees into Germany in 2015, adding to those already there. Far
from keeping a low profile or showing gratitude for their
resettlement, the Muslim community is already beginning to be
angry and aggressive towards the natives. They are demanding
modifications in the lifestyle of the Europeans in line with their
own religious and social practices. This doesn't sit well with the
native populations, but the responses of the politicians, police and judicial
authorities have been mixed. Many such as Henriette Reker, mayor of
Cologne, are blaming the women victims for the New Year's Eve
attacks. For the most part, the police are overwhelmed and can no
longer offer much protection to the native population except for
major crimes such as murders and rape (see
here.) Various reports on the impact of the refugees on
Europe's welfare systems and economy, and its political and social
institutions, are available here. Another
report by Baroness Cox in England
(see here) highlights the impact on the English and Muslim
communities of polygamous muslim males having as many as 20
children each. It is safe to say that Europeans are just beginning
to think through the consequences of the fact that the Muslims have a
much higher birthrate than the natives.
Pamela Geller writes of the strange inertia that has taken
over the West. Westerners seem to have lost the will to defend
themselves against the Islamic invaders. In France, they have reacted to the
recent horrible terror attacks in Paris with meaningless
ineffective gestures. As one example, they composed a clever
hashtag, which was "just the latest in an endless stream of
manifestations of the sophomoric, embarrassing, preening
self-indulgence that is endemic in our sick culture." The Eiffel
Tower peace symbol is another example of creating a hollow symbol
instead of mounting an adequate defense of Western culture
against the savages that would destroy it. Much of the media have
responded to the Muslim challenge by blaming "right-wing
extremists," as if that declaration will harm a single one of our
real enemies. In a show of lunacy, heads of state meeting in Paris
ignored the attacks on Paris except to mouth solemn nothings; they declared
global warming as the greatest threat to mankind. The West has
yet to recognize we are at war. In war, "you either win or you are defeated."
To show weakness only makes it easier for the salafists to defeat us.
THE REACTIONS OF THE ISRAELI AUTHORITIES TO THE ARSON ATTACK AND MURDER IN THE ARAB
VILLAGE OF DUMA
This section discusses the arson attack on a house in the Arab
village of Duma that left a mother and father and their baby dead.
The police usually quickly identify a murderous terrorist. When
the current intifada struck Tel-Aviv at the start of 2016, within
a day, the police correctly determined that the terrorist was an
Israeli Arab from Wadi Ara, yet despite their six-month long,
wide-sweeping, monomaniacal investigation of Jewish suspects, they
have never found any evidence that Jewish settlers were
responsible for the Duma tragedy. So eager have some secular
security/police/judiciary been to blame religious Jews, they have
treated these suspects — some of whom are in their teens
— brutally, not letting them sleep, putting them in
isolation, incarcerating them beyond the legal limits, refusing
them their religious rights, preventing them from seeing their
families and lawyers, beating them and torturing them to try to
force them to confess. When some the suspects were released, they
were placed under house arrest, almost as a gesture of spite and
frustration.
One reader, Dov Blair Epstein (INN, Jan 2, 2016), summed up what
many thought: "amazing, just like that, name of [Tel-Aviv] killer
found. Maybe they're also looking for the real killers of the
Dawabshe baby....oh, no, that HAS to be a Jew." What is more
shameful, the disgraceful treatment of the suspects was not the
work of a few arrogant policemen going well beyond their legal
authority; the directive to torture Jewish suspects came from the
Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein (see here.)
These are some of the pertinent elements of the story that are,
to put it politely, underreported. The arson attack in which three
members of the Dawabsha family died occurred in July 2015. There
were no eye witnesses and no evidence, but only Jews were blamed,
even when the authorities knew there was no reason to suspect
them. It was not until December 2015 that Internal Security
Minister Gilad Erdan admitted that there was no evidence to try
the suspects. The police have ignored the ongoing murderous clan
war in Duma itself — the Dawabsha family is part of one of
the feuding clans. The Arabs immediately blamed Yehuda Landsberg
of Gilad Farm in Samaria, but had to retract the accusation when
it was discovered he was serving time for another crime. The
murdered family lived in the center of Duma, where access was
difficult, and an out-of-towner would be easily spotted, yet they
hung around long enough to hit two houses and watch until the fire
was working, without being caught. There was
graffiti sprayed on a nearby wall, the Magen David and two phrases
— "revenge" and "long live the Messiah." "Revenge" had
components of Arab calligraphy but was immediately attributed to
the Jews.
What was the motivation of the responsible authorities? Was it the
desire to make Arab terrorism less out-of-proportion by adding some Jewish
'terrorists' to the other side of the scale? Was it the fear of
Arab rioting if they focused on the logical suspects, the Arabs of
Duma? Was it the taking advantage of the opportunity to demonize
'Settler' Jews in the Territories to make it easier to give up
Jewish land? Was it the fear that Jews might start to behave as
reprehensibly as the Arabs? Was it the fear that Jewish
vigilantism might force the Government to deal with Arab
terrorism seriously rather than symptomatically? Or was it simply
an opportunity for the extreme secular to lash out at religious
Jews, whom they loathe more than they do the Arabs who are trying
to destroy the State of Israel? So rabid have some members of the
Israel Security Agency (Shabak) become,
that when the case against the Jews faltered, a video
appeared of a Jewish wedding in which Jews were said to be
stabbing a picture of an Arab baby and otherwise, well, behaving
like Arabs. Some anecdotal material has appeared that makes the
video questionable. As an example (see here),
a woman from Kfar Etzion, a close friend of the groom's family, asks
The family tried to find out from all the guests who brought
these images ... just a mystery. Did not find.
Who gave the weapons? The group has no weapons! Also, the weapons disappeared two minutes right after the song.
Who took the video? The photographer was somewhere else. According to the owner of the hall, GSS agents came several hours earlier, and installed cameras all over the room! After the wedding they came and took them.
In short, it turns out that unfortunately, someone organized and initiated all of this in advance.They distributed weapons and pictures and in a shocking way stabbed the picture of the boy in front of the camera. It is important to know the truth, how much it hurts. (translation unclear...)
In a conversation with those in charge of Security of this event, hundreds of plainclothes police arrived ... in civilian clothes. Presented him with a police ID.
Neither the Groom nor his family nor his Bride or her family recognize who danced with the picture.
And now, Shabak has announced they will be taking two of the
suspects, Amiram Ben-Uliel and a minor, to trial. Under a
government gag order, news from the courts has just about ceased;
information is by way of rumors.
There is much to ponder in the behavior of the Israeli authorities
involved in the harassment of the Jewish settlers, in what is a
striking contrast to the care taken not to injure the human
shields of missile emplacement in Gaza — as just one example. What
is indisputable is that, as many have observed, we have witnessed
the acting out of a morality play illustrating, once again, the
Talmudic observation that those that are kind to the cruel will
in the end become cruel to the kind.
'SETTLER' PAYS TROUBLING CONDOLENCE VISIT TO ARAB VILLAGE
by Hillel Fendel
Yonadav Tapuchi joined a group of Jews who went to Duma on a
condolence visit and to "give a clear message that there are some
acts that have no justification." It didn't take long for him to
realize he'd been suckered into being a anti-Israel propaganda
prop. As Hillel Fendel records, Tapuchi's observed that the second
house that was burnt, the one where the Dawabsha family lived,
was not only hard to reach but would have been hard to enter. Yet
the arsonists had time to navigate to the middle of the village,
enter two houses, set the second on fire, "wait with the parents,
spray graffit in two places ... and then run away through the
middle of the village with all the townspeople surely already up
and on their feet seeing the flames and hearing the family's
cries. Something here is very fishy..." Yes, indeed.
The global media have distributed
a video purporting to show religious Jews poking holes in a photo
said to be of the dead Dawashba baby at a wedding where the
wedding guests were said to be celebrating the arson attack in
Duma. This article was written by Lenny Goldberg, father of the
bride at the wedding where this happened. Yes, he agrees, some
waved rifles and toy guns.
Some do take rifles to celebrations, never knowing when some
murderous Arabs will decide to crash the party. But the ominous
and lurid attributions in this story appear to have been added
after the fact. To me, the blurry photo looks more like the image
of a Yeshiva boy. Or maybe it's a new-Age Rorschach. The waving of
guns while dancing is said to show hatred of the Arabs. If true,
it is certainly different than the way the Arabs celebrate a
Jewish death. They don't wave toy guns. They shoot real bullets in
the air, which occasionally kill a celebrant or two. The Arabs
aren't timid about showing their joy openly and instructing their
children in how to celebrate the death of an enemy. They want
photographers to take close-up pictures of their joy in killing.
Here, the Jewish father of the bride notes that while everyone
dancing is wearing white shirts, "the guys holding the signs are
wearing jackets and their faces are blurred." He doesn't know
them. He has good reason to suspect that this was a Shin Bet
setup.
Tuvia Brodie makes the point that when the police ignore a
clan-war motive and focus solely on Jews as the perpetrators,
"professional police investigation may not be your agenda." He
goes on to discuss the political benefits to Israel's Left of
having Israel's Right "accused of unravelling Israel's democracy."
Leftists, particularly Marxists, pit democracy against Judaism and they believe that anything that weakens
Jewish identity contributes to increasing democracy. And the
importance of Duma? As Brodie puts it,
"Duma: it's the newest weapon in the Left's war against Jewish Israel."
Jacob Freedman writes that rhetoric and talk hasn't and won't
stop episodic terror attacks. Palliatives such as putting
protective barriers at bus stations are not enough. Effective
treatment would include affecting the families of the Arab
terrorist, who, to date, continue to receive their welfare
benefits in food, medicine, housing, tuition. More importantly,
Jewish identity needs to be strengthened.
Israel is treated
as the enemy by the present American Administration. The UN spends
an inordinate amount of time castigating Israel for breathing. The
European Union and the United Nations lavishly fund and support
her belligerent enemies. Almost all of the global media have a
pro-Palestinian Arab slant and the salafists crow with joy that
Hamas and Hezbollah and Isis are encircling the Jewish State. In
response, Israel is doing some things well. She is reaching out
and creating trade agreements with Asiatic countries. Closer to
home she is sharing renewable energy and water conservation
technology with Greece and Cyprus. She now has a office in Abu
Dhabi as part of her membership in the International Renewable
Energy Agency. Egypt and Israel have drawn closer, because both
realistically fear the harm a nuclear Iran will do to the Middle
East. And she has invented and innovated so many of the medical,
computer, water and agricultural appliances and electronics
— as well as techniques
and conveniences the world relies on — that a sincere believer in
the anti-Israel Boycott-Divest-Sanction (BDS) movement should withdraw
from civilization and go live in a cave to make sure he isn't
inadvertently using something that comes from Israel (see a new video
here or here.
Or listen to Pat
Condell on BDS here).
In this set of articles, we emphasize Israel's need to make
major attitudinal changes if Israel is to overcome successfully
the damages done to Israel's citizenry by Israel's Arab citizens
and neighboring Muslims. One way to start is to emulate the
realistic appraisals of Moshe Saperstein, a delightful essayist
with a style that combines sarcasm, dry humor and straight-out
bitching. That's so much better a way to do a refutation than by
reciting long boring and lofty speeches about how Israel wants
peace while ignoring that her enemies are trying their best to destroy her. On the Temple
Mount and on the streets of cities and towns randomly across the
country, the Arabs have sent in their crack troops —
aggressive screeching women and cute-looking youngsters, the
younger the better ‐ using knives, guns, stones, and vehicles
as weapons. It's awful that often the only way to stop the
darlings is with a bullet, but that definitely does help protect
Jewish women and children. The articles by Gershon Hacohen and
Barbara Ginsberg should be read with care because much of the
Jew's confidence that what he is doing is the right thing to do
comes primarily from his spiritual connection to God and the land
of Israel.
ISRAEL NEEDS NEW WAYS TO RESPOND EFFECTIVELY TO THE THIRD INTIFADA
by
Stephen Kruger
In the Israel-Arab
relationship, Stephen Kruger sees Israel as the battered partner.
To change her role in this unwanted relationship, Israel needs to change her
responses to the current Third Intifada. Blowing up empty houses
is ineffective. Israel needs to cast aside her overly
protective concern for the "innocent Arab civilian."
She need to take direct control of Judea and Samaria, part of the
ancestral Jewish homeland. She needs to respond to the concocted
fantasy that there was a Palestinian people who controlled
Mandated Palestine in the misty past, a fantasy that the Arabs
sold to the world, because Israel, in the interests of peace,
never spoke up. She needs to assert her rights to land that is
hers (a) by the Bible, (b) legally by the San Remo Conference and
as a
United Nations trust; and (c) by right of conquest, when she deflected
the aim of her hostile neighbors to destroy her and took
possession of additional land as a result.
Will the "world" scream? Of course. Doesn't it always, no matter
what Israel does?
An indication of how ill-prepared Israelis are attitudinally to
fight effectively is that we are in the midst of the Third
Intifada and Israelis are still debating how to handle a terrorist
neutralized after he's committed his act of terror. They aren't
even sure if the context should be normative civil law or wartime
necessity. Mordechai Kedar writes of the basic political
differences that underlie the opposing views. Morally superior
liberals don't want to stoop to the level of the enemy. They
"relate to the terrorist stabber and murderer as though he is a
member of civilized society who has, unfortunately, strayed from
the proper path, but is entitled to all the protection afforded by
law to any criminal..." Unfortunately, because the terrorist is
treated as a hero by the Arabs and enjoys generous benefits in
prison, including the ability to obtain advanced degrees at
Israeli taxpayer expense, this ends up encouraging terror and murder.
Whatever the morality of killing the terrorist on the spot, it
does have the effect of deterring terrorism. As Kedar
points out, in the Middle East, he "who succeeds in convincing his
enemies that he is invincible and that they had better leave him
alone for their own good, has a chance of achieving peace."
SUNNI POLITICAL ISLAM: ENGINE OF THE 'ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN' CONFLICT
by Jonathan Spyer
With all due respect to those that insist that the current
problem with the Muslims is not their religion but their political
aspirations — and not denying that the Muslim movers and shakers
do indeed plan to rule the world under sharia by utilizing
politics, social acceptance and terrorism, among other means
— Islam's domination of all other religions is an unshakable
part of their religious tenets. It is also, as Jonathan Spyer,
points out, significant in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where
the "centrality of religion continued to fire the various
movements fighting Israel. The very name "Fatah," for example,
which is often — absurdly — described as a "secular"
movement, is a religious term. "Fatah" is in Arabic a term
literally meaning to "open," but is used in context to mean "to
conquer a land for Islam. [...] [T]he core energy on the Arab side
is one of religious rage — a feeling that the
re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in parts of the land
formerly ruled by Muslims constitutes a crime against god."
It would seem to me that an outsider, unfamiliar with the history
and geography of the conflict, is likely to side with the Arabs,
because instinctively he knows true owners of land do not
willingly give up their land. Thus Israel has weakened its
irrefutable biblical, historic, legal and conquest claims
to the land by promoting the secular and rational and offering to
share the land, while downplaying the deep-rootedness of the love that
Israelis, even secular Jews, have for their homeland.
I'M GETTING TO KNOW MY MOTHER; IGNORANCE IS BLITZ; FLAMES;
ONE MORE LAST THING; AND OTHER ESSAYS
by Moshe Saperstein
Rachel and Moshe Saperstein lived in Gush Katif in Gaza until
the Israeli Government of Ariel Sharon unilaterally kicked them and
another 10,000 productive and patriotic Jews out of their homes
and greenhouses. One theory claimed that tightening the borders by
cutting away Gaza would make defense more efficient. In point of
fact it brought Hamas closer to Jewish population centers and gave
them more room to train terrorists and assemble explosives. From
reading the Saperstein essays over the years, we understand how this moronic
displacement affected the involuntary participants. We know the
struggle it has been not to sink into depression but continue to
fight a recalcitrant and inefficient bureaucracy to regain
permanent housing for members of the original Gush Katif
community. Every so often we hear rumors that the politicians are
prepared to kick the Jews out of Samaria and Judea and the eastern
part of Jerusalem so the local Arabs can have their own state. One
wonders how the politicians, who in ten years, have not yet completed the
resettlement of the 10,000 members of Gush Katif community
plan to handle some 800,000 new Jewish refugees.
On the road they have traveled these last seventy years,
American Jews have come to a fork they had not anticipated.
There was optimism after World War II. It was symbolized by the
formation of the United Nations, which was founded on the belief
that hostilities between countries could be talked out and
negotiated. Wars weren't necessary to solve differences. Jews, too,
since the end of second World War, have been optimistic. They have
been more than comfortable as secular-appearing members of the
liberal intellectual culture: sophisticated, open to all ideas,
tolerant almost to excess, concluding from the Holocaust that they
should take a low profile as Jews while passionately defending the
human and civil rights of others.
Jews adored the idea that they could vote for an attractive,
articulate black man as President. Unfortunately, Prez Obama
didn't return their love. He was raised as a Muslim and had
internalized the major goal of the Koran: make Islam supreme;
all other religions are inferior, members of all other religions
are dhimmis His antipathy was reinforced
by his long-standing preference for socialism over democracy, a
socialism that includes despising religion.
Right now Jews are at a place where the familiar road has
stopped. The Liberals — now called Progressives — continue to
deviate further and further towards the extreme Left. The
old-fashioned benign liberal is considered quaint. To stay liberal
means adopting Marxism, socialism, white-hate and Jew-hate, as
well as becoming a partner to Muslim activists, who don't
negotiate or tolerate. Otherwise, one must go to the Right, to the
group still imagined by many as old-white-men, fossilized Republicans
lacking a sense of humor and disliking Jews. But the Right, at
least by a large majority, has abandoned Jew-hate, and does uphold
the Jewish ethic that hard work and family values are the way to a
happy and productive life. As more Jews realistically assess what their new
political choices are, the writings of the prophetic Rabbi Meir
Kahane become more appreciated. In this article, Barbara Ginsberg
writes of the Rabbi's take on Israeli security.
In this issue we examine the inadequacy of
news sources and publishers as well as the ethics of a
think-tanker who is anything but objective. The article by
Rosenthal is of interest because it catches a columnist at the
point where he sees some of the truth but won't follow where
logic leads. And a Canadian Muslim explores one source of
inciting Muslims to become lone-wolf terrorists.
THOUGHTS OF AN IDF SOLDIER AFTER A MONTH IN THE WEST BANK
by Noga Gur-Arieh
Noga Gur-Arieh transmits some thoughts a reservist IDF soldier
named Yoav shared with her. He spend a month in Samaria and Judea.
What he found most troubling was the behavior of the journalists
and "human rights" activists who "watch as Palestinians aggravate
and interrupt the soldiers there, and when the soldiers finally
respond, they turn their cameras on, making it seem as if the
Israeli Defense Forces is all about war and conquest, and the
Palestinians are weak and helpless." Often the media precipitate
episodes of violence. A video such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2QoGtJwZH0&feature=youtu.be
captures the sort of abuse the IDF soldiers are subjected to by Arab
children who have learned from experience that they won't suffer harm
by taunting the solders.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG FINALLY GETS IT, THEN QUICKLY LOSES IT AGAIN
by Vic Rosenthal
Years of brilliant propaganda have demonized the Settler Movement.
Yet most people would be hard put to explain rationally why they
feel the Jews should not establish towns and communities in Samaria
and Judea. There is indeed a logic behind it. A very simple one.
IF the Arabs are to succeed in taking over the Territories
THEN the Jews must be discouraged from living in Samaria-Judea.
HOW? Get the Jews out of the Territories by hook, by
crook, by terror, by murder, by blandishment. Demonize the Jews.
Lie. Lie. Lie. Demonize the settlers. Any and every Jewish
settlement (a tainted word for a town or city located in Samaria
and Judea) is evil. Never mention the illegal Arab
settlements.
THE RESULT: Thanks to the major media and the UN/EU
politicos conditioning the public, lots of Arab money and a
quiescent Israeli government, the evil nature of the settlers has
become an unshakable belief, resistant to facts and logic.
Vic Rosenthal shows how hollow this pernicious blather is. As
context, he presents the limited reasoning of someone, Jeffrey
Goldberg, who is much better informed about the facts than most.
Goldberg agrees that eliminating the Jewish towns in the
Territories would have little impact on creating peace between
Arab and Jew. But he is still in favor of destroying the settler
movement, because he hopes that eliminating the settlements may
somehow eventually pacify the Arabs, or at least, not rouse them
to more extreme violence.
Goldberg doesn't pursue his own logic. If freezing the
Jewish settlements isn't the way to peace Then why bother
recklessly and pointlessly destroying a culture that is productive
and patriotic? Realistically, in giving up Samaria and Judea, we
would only make it easier for the Arabs to carry out their avowed
mission to destroy all of Israel.
If we put aside the belief that there is a magic way to make peace
with Arabs that want to destroy the Jewish state, there is another
matter to deal with. The Arabs declare that any state of theirs
will not allow a single Jew to live there. And the Jews could
happily live without the presence of uncivilized practitioners of
the cult of death. Both sides want a separation. As Rosenthal says
"In any divorce, one of the ex-spouses has to move out. Goldberg,
like Obama and like other American and European diplomats, can't
shake the idea that it should be the Jews — possibly because he
thinks they can be more easily pushed around." But there is no
reason for Israel to consent to this idiocy.
The usual reason for
semantic cleansing — rebranding — is to downgrade a
well-recognized name that has, for one reason or another, become
tarnished. In this case, the New York Times has started
calling Jewish holy places such as the Temple Mount and the Cave
of the Patriarchs by their Arab names. Richard Shulman notes that
the Times deliberately targets Jewish holy places. This had
the dual effect of downplaying that the Temple Mount is the
holiest site in Judaism and pretending that the site has been
exclusively Muslim from time immemorial. Previously, they stopped
using the name Judea. Perhaps they feared some Times
readers might notice the obvious connection between Jew
and Judea. The Times calls ancient Judea
and ancient Samaria the West Bank, a name that came into
being in 1948.
Raza Raheel is a Canadian Muslim who speaks out against
radical Islam. On the common Muslim gambit of playing the victim,
she has said, "Let's get over this victim ideology that we,
Muslims, are being persecuted." She has observed that "[t]he OIC
have a powerful grip at the UN because their numbers are high and
they have an unspoken agreement to stand up for each other,
regardless of cause. So if the word "Sharia" is ever used in any
resolution or speech and is connected to, for example, stoning of
women, since Sharia is associated with the Muslim religion and is
practiced in many Muslim countries, they will object and not allow
that point to be documented." In this article, she examines one
example of how
salafist radicalization is inculcated.
BUSTED: NEW YORK TIMES INVENTS BACKLASH AGAINST NEW YORK MUSLIMS
by Jack Engelhard
Jack Engelhard captures the ambience at
the NY Times and its respect for truth and accuracy in this
story of supposed backlash against Muslims that appeared in the
Times on November 25, 2015. The headline informs us that
day by day New York Muslims are growing ever more fearful for
their lives - they fear retribution after the Paris massacre.
Muslim self-defense organizations have all weighed in with
predictions of doom and gloom and the mullahs have loudly worried
about backlash — not about the monstrous crimes their
fellow-Muslims have been committing. But how many of these hate
crimes have been confirmed, or at least attached to a actual
person? Two or possibly three separate women say they were spat
upon by men who cursed and threatened. One woman wearing a hijab
claims to have been deliberately tripped as she was rushing to an
exam. In NYC, that's too ambiguous to count. That's a lot of
brouhaha over a couple of minor incidents. Well, you can't blame
the Times for dramatizing a whole lot of nothing'. It was a
slow newsday. On the other hand, considering the Times
won't tell the real stories of Muslim overt hostility to others
and their attempts to take over NY campuses, it must be hard to
fill a news sheet most of the time.
Martin Indyk claims to be a Jew but has been the tool
of American presidents, from Clinton through Obama, who act
as if they believe the claims of
the so-called Palestinians.
The pressure is always on Israel to make high-risk concessions.
The simplest way to tag him is to know that he served on the
board of the Israel-hating New Israel Fund. Moreover, as
Executive Vice-President of the Brooking Institute, an influential think-tank,
he accepted a $14.8 million dollar "donation" from Qatar, a top
funder of Hamas. That was around the time he led the 2014
American-initiated peace negotiations between Israel and the
Palestinian Arabs. Of course, he blamed Israel for his failure
(see
here and here.) In this article, David
Bedein explains how "Indyk is one of the people who paved the
way for Yassir Arafat and the PLO armed control to gain control
over most of the Palestinian Arab population." Committed to the
idea that Israel withdraw from territories, legitimately hers,
that she got back in the 1967 Six Day War, "Indyk oversaw every
step of the Oslo process with that precise policy in mind —
Israel giving up land that is vital to her defense." Quel creep!
THOMAS JEFFERSON AND RADICAL ISLAM'S WAR ON THE WEST
by David L. Hunter
Prez Obama has described Islam as having always been part of
America, implying that Islam has helped strengthen America. David
Hunter writes that it is true that as far back as Colonial times,
we interacted with Muslims — mainly Muslim pirates who were
capturing American cargo ships and selling American citizens into
slavery. The US had no warships so it unhappily paid ransom
until the increase in ugly incidents was deemed
intolerable. Thanks to the grainy irritant of Islamic piracy,
America began developing a pearl of a navy. So yes, if we tweak
historical fact sufficiently, Obama's assertion is sort of true.
It is often said that we should be grateful Islam kept Greek
and Hindu intellectual accomplishments
safe for the West during the "dark ages." Mark Durie sets the
record straight. He points out that the
Islamic conquest and "resulting Arab control of the
Mediterranean, stunted scientific progress in Europe." Indeed, it was
"Islam's disruption of Mediterranean civilization [that] ushered
in the so-called European 'Dark Ages'." Islam didn't maintain
contact between Eastern learning and the West; it destroyed it.
THE OTTOMAN-GERMAN ATTACK ON THE SUEZ CANAL — 1915
from the Israel Daily Picture website
The Ottomans attacked British positions along the Suez Canal
in January 2015 at the start of World War 1. These pictures are,
for the most part, from the Ottoman Imperial Archives.
HOW THE MUFTI OF JERUSALEM CREATED THE PERMANENT PROBLEM OF PALESTINIAN VIOLENCE
by Edy Cohen
Edy Cohen writes on Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of
Jerusalem, who was "a fervent anti-Semite, the most important
Nazi collaborator in the Arab world, and a political activist who
worked tirelessly for the ethnic cleansing and physical
destruction of the Jews in Palestine and in the Middle East as a
whole." His brazen lies — he claimed, for example, that the Jews
wanted to conquer Muslim sites — incited the local Arabs and
helped initiate riots and terror attacks, models of current-day
terrorist tactics. The British response was to disregard their
legal and moral duty to help the Jews settle their homeland.
Instead they curtailed Jewish immigration. During WW2, the Mufti
gathered troops to massacre the Jews in Palestine, a plan that,
thanks to the British victory in North Africa in 1942, didn't
come to fruition. He was more successful in recruiting Muslims to
fight for Germany. "In the western Balkans, he raised three SS
divisions composed of Bosnian and Albanian Muslims who
participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary," He
blocked thousands of Jews from escaping from Europe to Palestine.
Above all, he rejected peace with the Jews. His ideology lives
on in the Arab world.
When the modern state of Israel came into being in 1948, its
Arab neighbors immediately invaded it. The Jews had little
weaponry, few trained fighters and no air force. Britain turned
over its stock of weapons to Egypt and TransJordan before it
vacated the region. Except for Czechoslovakia, the members
of the United Nations — who had just voted for the formation of
the Jewish State — embargoed the sale of military weapons to
Israel. The Arabs had every reason to expect to have an easy time
carrying out their declared mission: to push the Jews into the
sea. Martha Hall Kelly writes about "Above and Beyond," a
Paramount film shown at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. It tells
the story of World War II aviators who cobbled together an
air force from inadequate last-leg planes to prevent a second
Holocaust. For additional information, look at the an hour-long
documentary entitled A Wing And A Prayer. It was produced by
Boaz Dvir and narrated by William Baldwin (Hawaii-Five-O,
Backdraft). It is available here and here. It
features firsthand accounts by the operation leader, Al Schwimmer,
and some of the group of daring aviators he recruited.
40TH ANNIVERSARY OF "ZIONISM IS RACISM": MOYNIHAN'S HISTORIC SPEECH
by UN Watch
The passing of
Resolution 3379 at the United Nations on November 10, 1975
declaring that 'Zionism is Racism' was a significant event in the
progressive demonization of Israel at the UN. The US Ambassador to
the UN, Patrick Moynihan, denounced the resolution the same day.
He observed that it was an outrageous act on the part of a number
of countries "and thereafter, the outrageous thing having been
done, to profess themselves outraged by those who have the
temerity to point it out, and subsequently to declare themselves
innocent of any wrong-doing in consequence of its having been
brought about wholly in reaction to the 'insufferable' acts of
those who pointed the wrong-doing out in the first place." What a
great description of what has since become commonplace: the
tendency of Arab leaders to declare themselves victims of the
outrageous terror acts that they themselves have perpetrated. The
worrisome thing to them is not the act of terror but the
possibility of backlash against the perpetrators and abettors of
the acts of terror.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
Think-Israel tends to use salafist rather than
extremist or Islamist or militant or
fundamentalist or activist to describe generically a
pious Muslim, one who sticks as closely as possible to the
unfiltered words and actions of Mohammad and the first three
generations of Muslims, including, especially, the Companions of
the Prophet. In modeling himself as closely as he can on the
preachings and practices of Mohammad, a salafist can in modern
terms be precisely described as an uninhibited terrorist, a
theological supersessionist, a political supremacist who believes
Islam and sharia law must dominate and a social barbarian, who
wages jihad with whatever tools are available.
Thanks to the high quality of whitewash supplied by sympathetic
propagandists, he seldom is so described.
THE IRAN DEAL
The five permanent members of the Security Council (US, Russia,
China, Britain France) and Germany, collectively known as P5+1,
have negotiated an agreement to regulate Iran's nuclear program:
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
This issue is devoted to examining the deal that Prez Obama is
determined to make with Iran.
If you read no further, understand this: "It had already
become clear that we have implemented our stated objective of
preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon by agreeing to make
certain that no one interferes with her developing nuclear
weapons." The rest of this issue provides details on how and
what.
AIPAC early on did an excellent job of summarizing how the
nuclear deal with Iran was being described and what is actually
the case. See also their "Analysis: An Unacceptable Deal" (July 28, 2015.
here.) As we have learned more, the facts have become even more
distasteful. As an example, any deal requires proper verification
which, in this case, means free access by the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA). As first advertised, inspection was to be allowed
anywhere, anytime. But Iran has already announced it won't
allow direct inspection at military sites. What's worse, the
inspection protocol is governed by a side agreement outside of the
Iran Agreement, one between Iran and the IAEA, which
the US and the other P5+1 countries are not allowed to see.
"Why is Iran So Happy About The Deal", a video created by The
Israel Project, is a quick view of what Iran will gain (click
here) if this deal/treaty/agreement/contract/understanding is
allowed to come to fruition, Iran will have it all, and the West will have
gained nothing.
We are beginning to understand what the
consequences are likely to be. There is more to know. But it is
unlikely that further information will change the general picture
for the better. It is equally unlikely that the
politically-correct description of the deal will change to fit
reality. As recently as September 10, 2015, the day U.S. Senate
Democrats stopped the debate on disapproval of the Iran Nuclear
Deal, President Obama said, "‎Today, the Senate took an historic
step forward and voted to enable the United States to work with
our international partners to enable the implementation of the
comprehensive, long-term deal that will prevent Iran from
obtaining a nuclear weapon."[emphasis added] Yet the agreement
spends a great deal of space on how many centrifuges and
radioactive material and resources Iran is allowed to have over
time and how we will help her with our experience and nuclear
skills. What else does she need to develop nuclear weapons?
To make more precise what Obama is saying in his
logic-defying way: in order to prevent Iran from
making nuclear weapons, we will help her make nuclear bombs. And
we are pledging to Iran that we will thwart any attempts by
hostile countries (such as Israel) to stop or hinder Iran's nuclear
program.
These are other consequences that the deal ignores.
How the other countries in the Middle East,
particularly the Sunni Muslim states, will react to the ominous
news that Iran requests/demands will be backed by nuclear
weaponry.
Iran will receive 150 Billion dollars. Much of this will
go to support her mercenaries — Hezbollah and Hamas and other
terrorist groups — to repel counterattacks.
Some of the money will be available to facilitate Iran's
foreign policy: bribery, blackmail and intimidation
of the global media, politicians and academics.
There is nothing to stop Iran from importing nuclear
components, technical help and even whole units from North Korea
and other friendly countries. There is nothing to stop Iran from
outsourcing the creation of needed components or whole bomb
assembly.
Once the politicians of Europe, Russia, China and
particularly the USA have invested their reputations and egos,
they will be committed to protecting Iranian nuclear activities.
As we saw with the Oslo Accords, the USA State Dept rejected all
evidence that the Palestinian Authority was not carrying out its
promises of recognizing Israel, abandoning terrorism and
instituting democratic reforms. Instead, the Clinton
administration insisted it was up to Israel to try harder to make
the treaty a success by making more concessions. Similarly, the
Iran treaty countries are more likely to blame Israel, sun spots,
global warming, the Jooz, new Iranian rulers, Sunni counter
attacks, the Jooz, a poor translation of the treaty, the Jooz,
sabotage by hostile groups in Congress, etc., etc., than take
effective action against Iranian violations of the Iran Nuclear
Deal.
We hear tell congressmen are thinking long and hard about this
deal. If true, what they are weighing is what they need to fear
the most: Obama's wrath or the anger of the voters. Bye and large,
the Democrats have decided they fear Obama more in the short term,
and who knows, a miracle might happen before they come up for
reelection. And too many Republicans don't have the passion and
determination to stop Obama from having his way.
Nevertheless, it is important that we fight every item that
contributes to Iran's progress, every regulation the American
administration issues that helps Iran, every decree that promotes
Iranian nuclear activity, every media article that lulls us and
calms us and quiets our anxiety. We just might delay her
activities significantly. Some unforeseen event might change the
picture significantly. Maybe an Iranian province or two will
rebel. Maybe a nuclear site might blow itself up. Maybe Iran will
run out of water or irradiate her own water supply. Maybe..,
Maybe...
The bulk of this issue presents the facts and what they mean.
But we do have some ideas on how to fight the Deal. They may be
found at the end of the informational articles
here.
If we do not stop the Iran Nuclear Deal now, then
realistically, as Norman Podhoritz put it (here):
"The brutal truth is that the actual alternatives before us are
not Mr. Obama's deal or war. They are conventional war now or
nuclear war later.
FACTS VERSUS WISHFUL THINKING
This set of articles lays out disadvantages to the world of
Iran's achieving its passionate desire for nuclear appliances.
The picture will only become more ugly as we learn more about the
"secret" side deals made with Iran. The beginning articles
— the more factual ones — are followed by more
in-depth analyses of why Iran, a major if not the biggest,
paymaster of global terrorism, should not be allowed to success.
So many of the arguments urging acceptance of the Iran Nuclear
Deal are wishes, hopes, fantasies, misdirections and just plain
lies. Some of these are also discussed in this section.
NUTS AND BOLTS OF THE IRAN DEAL: IS IT REALLY BAD?
by Daniel Grynglas
Daniel Grynglas points out that we sent two American amateurs
against first class bluffers and tricksters. What else could we
expect but an Iranian win? The Americans were charged with coming
home with a deal, any deal; the other negotiating countries were
eager to partake of the billions Iran would acquire when it agreed
to a deal.The eagerness of the P5+1 negotiators was a weakness
that Iran knew how to exploit. And. in the face of the P5+1 very
many bargaining chips, it did so successfully. Grynglas provides a
list of the main provisions, referencing the pertinent clauses in
the JCPOA document. He points out treaty defects, including some
large legal loopholes; the built-in ability for Iran to drag out
the time between when inspection is requested and when (and if) it
happens; and how easy it will be for Iran to hide evidence of
illegal nuclear activity. As he says, "This agreement is full of
loopholes and gives Iran more-than-ample opportunity to cheat."
There is also the serious problem of what's omitted: "...the
agreement includes a very long list of various individuals,
companies, transportation units, and entities related to the
sanction regimen," but only a few of the ~70 known nuclear sites
are named; so the agreement may easily become a focal point of
contention and/or the basis of an Iranian argument that only these
sites can be inspected. The ingenuity and skill shown by the
Iranian negotiators is now being matched by the misleading and
mendacious arguments the Obama administration is using to convince
the US to accept a deal that will allow Iran to become an nuclear
power unrestrained by moral inhibitions.
FACTS AND FANTASIES ABOUT THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL, FROM SEVERAL SOURCES
by Richard H. Shulman
Richard H. Shulman explores the actuality of the terms of the
Iran nuclear deal and the likely consequences of the treaty
stipulations that are praised by the pro-deal news media. The
writings of The New York Times writer, Richard Cohen,
illustrates what's wrong with much of the pro-treaty arguments:
pro-treaty writers are prone to wishful thinking instead of
assessing the treaty realistically. Lacking sensible arguments,
they resort to denigrating those who question the theory, and they
invent fantasies that endorse the empowerment of a rogue country.
Afraid to examine the consequences of accepting this ill-designed
document, they assert that non-acceptance will lead to war. As
Shulman points out, Iran has already declared war on us. The issue
for us is how best to fight it, rather than to deny what's going
on. Shulman also references several anti-deal writers, who have
made important observations that can be summed up this way: the
treaty appears to have ways to handle cheating and flouting the
terms of agreement, but, realistically, other transactions such as
Russia's agreeing to sell Iran an anti-missile system already
nullify some of the ways the treaty plans to handle
non-compliance. Shulman concludes,
"Every alleged restriction, if not already removed from
negotiations, has a major loophole." The treaty is a fraud. A
dangerous fraud.
by House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Chairman: Ed Royce
This summary of the elements of the Iran Nuclear Agreement was
produced by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The Committee
has held two dozen hearings since 1913 and continues to do so.
This paper highlights major shortcomings of the treaty, whether
one invokes the standards Obama's own former advisors would use or
the standards implicit in the terms of the treaty itself.
SURRENDER IN VIENNA: THE FALSE ASSUMPTIONS OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
by Allan Myer
The Israel Project's The Tower has published an
excellent briefing entitled "Surrender in Vienna: Why We Need A
Better Nuclear Deal With Iran. (ISBN: 978-1-943842-05-6; see here.).
It discusses Iran's destabilizing drive for regional hegemony and
the danger Iran poses worldwide, given the agreement's weaknesses
that allow the continuation of nuclear development, the removal
of sanctions and a weak inspection protocol. It may be downloaded
as a PDF document. This article by Allan Myer serves as the
introduction to the set of articles. As Ben Cohen wrote in the
Preface:
Allan Myer asks the pertinent question: "Does the President's
conclusion match up to the world as it is, or is the conclusion
based on series of profoundly false assumptions?" Regrettably,
and despite President Obama's insistence that the agreement with
Iran is grounded on empirical verification rather than plain
trust, the assumptions of the current administration concerning
Iran and its future behavior have, as Myer asserts, created an
outcome whereby research on advanced centrifuges is permitted and,
at the same time, the bans on Iranian weapons imports and
ballistic missile programs are removed. All in all, this provides
"a significant boost to the legitimacy of a regime with a truly
despicable human rights record."
Obama assumes that Iran, a major sponsor of terrorist
activities in the Middle East, Europe and America, will be a
stabilizing influence in the Middle East. He apparently believes
the terms of this agreement will circumvent cheating.
Unfortunately, these assumptions are contradicted by Iran's past
interactions with other countries in the Middle East, by its sorry
history of cheating, by its high-handed reinterpretations of
contractual obligations, by its lack of cooperation and by its
linking its pursuit of nuclear power to its profound hatred of
America and Israel. These unrealistic assumptions constitute a
shaky foundation to base an agreement that will have major
influence on the restructuring of the Middle East. Any agreement
based on them will soon show itself to have no way of restraining
Iran in its bid for global domination.
Robert D. Onley writes that "Obama's Iran deal is a direct
manifestation of the President's fundamentally misguided
worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the
wishes." No amount of tweaking will fix its structural
unsoundness. Onley suggests that "President Obama's willingness to
concede Iran's new-found normalized membership in the community of
nations on the basis of this nuclear deal is an affront to the
liberal, free, democratic principles that have stood against the
forces of tyranny throughout American history." It may also be
unconstitutional. "By seeking approval of the deal under the UN
Security Council, President Obama has bound the United States
under international law without Senate consent [and] ... the Iran
deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of
the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As a number of critics have
pointed out, the Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate
international law and feature commitments that President Obama
could not otherwise lawfully make." These are reasonable grounds
for halting the precipitous acceptance of the Iran Nuclear Deal in its
present state.
The previous section discussed many specific weaknesses in the Iran
Nuclear Deal. In a call to action, the Zionist
Organization of America
(July 29, 2015, here) described them this way: "It does not dismantle any part of its
nuclear infrastructure."
It does not:
Terminate its nuclear weapons research and development
Close its nuclear facilities
Dismantle its centrifuges
Remove its stocks of enriched uranium
Enable substantive, on-the-spot inspections of Iranian nuclear sites,
declared or undeclared
Terminate Iran's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program
It will, the ZOA notes, "produce a nuclear arms race in Middle
East" and "the U.S. will be obliged to live under the permanent
shadow of nuclear blackmail."
With so much at stake, we'd expect the negotiating committee
would be very careful about pinning down Compliance, Verification,
and Enforcement. The initial articles in this section are about
Iran's compliance, verification procedures and enforcement
protocols, in that order. The last ones are about an incident at
the Parchin military site in Iran that prefigures how compliance,
verification and enforcement are likely to play out once the deal
is signed.
We are already seeing grid lock between Prez Obama's
reassurances that the Deal is based on verification not trust and
the newer information that, in practice, the Deal depends on
trust, not verification. We are supposed to trust the IAEA,
although it was revealed (here) that "Iran
apparently threatened [Director-General of IAEA] Yukiya Amano in a
letter meant to ensure he did not reveal specific information
about the nature of nuclear inspections going forward, according
to Iranian AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi." We should trust the
Obama Administration, whose leader sold the country on Obamacare
with the promise that if we liked our doctor we could keep him, if
we liked our insurance plan, we could keep it. And, what is almost
impossible to do, we need to trust Iran to behave responsibly.
Actually, in one sense, we can trust Iran — it has bluntly
and without apologies declared it will do what it wants when it
wants. But that doesn't reassure that Iran will abide by the face
meaning of the rules, and ignore legal loopholes, ambiguities and
nullifications and its own wishes.
IRAN PUBLISHES BOOK ON HOW TO OUTWIT US AND DESTROY ISRAEL
by Amir Taheri
To put the best face on the American President's encouragement
of a nuclear Iran, it has been said that what Prez Obama wants
from Iran is not a non-nuclear Iran. He is willing to settle for a
much less ambitious result, detente, a lessening of hostile
relations between Iran and much of the rest of the world. It is
most unlikely that even this can be achieved. This article by Amir
Taheri gives us insight into Iran's attitude toward peaceful
coexistence with any non-Muslim country once ruled by Muslims.
Iran's Ayatollah Khameni has just published a book in which he
directs specific hatred towards Israel because "it is a loyal
'ally of the American Great Satan' and a key element in its 'evil
scheme' to dominate 'the heartland of the Ummah.'" Here and
elsewhere, Iran's leaders have often publicly stated they have
no intention of foregoing terrorism and belligerency and complying
with the terms of the Iranian nuclear deal.
IF THE IAEA INSPECTED RESTAURANTS WE'D ALL GET FOOD POISONING!
by Dr. Robin McFee
Robin McFee juxtaposes the scrupulous care with which
restaurants are monitored with the sloppy and inadequate way the
IAEA will verify activity at suspected nuclear sites. The article
makes a humorous comparison about a deadly situation, namely, that
Iran is in control, one way or another, of how its nuclear sites
are inspected and its conformity to treaty regulations verified.
To reduce the problem to its simplest terms, Iran will decide what
facilities the IAEA can visit. If allowed, IAEA inspectors have to
request permission to visit and the time to the actual inspection
can be creatively stretched out long enough to allow even union
labor to dismantle a nuclear facility. In many cases, IAEA
inspectors are not allowed direct access. Iranian technicians will
take the soil samples that determine what type of nuclear activity
has been going on. This has been likened to accepting a urine
sample brought in from the outside by a person suspected of
illegal drug use. To add insult to injury, the US — even though
Obama is the biggest promoter of the Iran Deal — has no control
on verifying whether Iran is working on nuclear weaponry. The
procedure is laid down in a 'secret' side agreement between Iran
and the IAEA.
THE "IRAN NUKE DEAL:" ANOTHER UNREAD BESTSELLER — AND WITH ALL THE "USUAL" SCARY PARTS
by Daniel Gallington
Whatever agencies will be in charge of dealing with Iran
if, or more likely when, it breaks its promises,
will find it almost impossible to enforce the agreement.
Definitions are poorly spelled out. Actual procedures are as
vague as reassurances are optimistic. Already, the elastic has
gone out of 'Snapback', whereby sanctions were to be
automatically restored, should Iran violate the Deal. Secretary
Kerry stated, "The arms embargo is not tied to snapback." His
mind may have been on the slippery means by which the diplomats
were able to take such a crucial enforcement tool off the table
without collapsing the deal, for he continued, "It is tied to a
separate set of obligations. So they are not in material breach
of the nuclear agreement for violating the arms piece of it,"
(August 11, 2015, see here).
As usual, every bitter grain of
reality is coated with honeyed reassurances. In this case, Kerry
reassured us that the P5+1 has "ample tools at our disposal"
should Iran try to send weapons to Hezbollah or to the Shia
militia in Iraq. But these alternatives to sanctions are
unspecified and the protocols for invoking them are unwritten.
Realistically, once sanctions, the major enforcement tool, are
removed, they will never be reinstated, making it more difficult
to prevent or punish Iran for abrogating any part of the deal at
will. The greater amount of enforcement activity will be
dissipated in determining whether any particular incident is
worth the effort of proving it is anti-agreement and then
determining how to enforce the rules, such as they are. And
meantime, Iran works on.
Gallington writes of his concern that nothing we do will have
any effect on Iran's covert program to build nukes. For several
reasons, enforcement is almost impossible. As he points out,
"It's virtually impossible to separate a 'peaceful' nuclear
energy program from one intended to produce material to make
nuclear weapons. This is because perhaps 95 percent of the
'nuclear fuel cycle' pertains to both programs, and so most of
the 'dirty work', i.e., the secret weapon building part, happens
at the very end of a so-called 'peaceful nuclear program'."
Then too, because an agreement is written in several languages,
inevitably there are subtle changes in the meaning, context and
usage of words between versions, so an agreement, especially one
drawn up by politicians, is often sufficiently ambiguous that it
becomes grounds for bickering and indecision rather than for
action. Add to this the "side agreements' and 'secret protocols' that
might contradict or nullify the guidelines for verification in
the Deal, making it uncertain when enforcement is required.
Initiating enforcement implies that the authorities have
verified that there is illegal nuclear activity. In what is a
grotesque division of labor, the terms under which the IAEA (the
agency to verify Iran's compliance or lack of compliance)
operates are in a secret agreement separate and independent of
the Iran Nuclear Deal and inaccessible to the P5+1 countries.
What we do know is that the IAEA has already abdicated its role,
letting Iran control access to nuclear sites and procedures for
obtaining evidence.
Gallington emphasizes that committing a rogue country to a set
of laws is counterproductive. The agreement acts to shield
countries such as Iran while they do whatever they want. At most,
this deal slows down Iran's nuclear program for a while, assuming
that she does not yet have the bomb. But the amount of slowdown
time is uncertain. Even if Iran still does not have nuclear
weaponry, the promise by the negotiating countries to use their
experience and technology to help Iran acquire the skills to make
a bomb nullifies the assertion that Iran won't break out a bomb
for some eight years. As Alan Dershowitz has pointed out, "The
devil is not so much in the details as in the broad outlines of
this deal and its understanding by the parties," (here)
It's not a question of more or less. The whole approach of
defining the borders of Iran's nuclear estate is wrong. Iran is a
terrorist state and shouldn't have any such property.
IAEA TELLS CONGRESSMEN OF TWO SECRET SIDE DEALS TO IRAN
AGREEMENT THAT WON'T BE SHARED WITH CONGRESS
by Fred Fleitz
There are two side deals that are
independent of the Iran Nuclear Agreement. They are separate
agreements between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), who do inspection and verification. Fred Fleitz writes
that "[o]ne of these side deals concerns inspection of the Parchin
military base, where Iran reportedly has conducted explosive
testing related to nuclear-warhead development... The other secret
side deal concerns how the IAEA and Iran will resolve outstanding
issues on possible military dimensions (PMDs) of Iran's nuclear
program."
Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Congressmen Mike Pompeo (R.,
Kan.) had discovered these side agreements when they
met with IAEA officials in Vienna. Their press release points out
that "Both arrangements will not be vetted by any organization
other than Iran and the IAEA, and will not be released even to the
nations that negotiated the JCPOA [Iran nuclear agreement]."
In a word, these side deals were designated as secret, and are
not accessible to the US. This means that knowing
there is adequate compliance, rigorous verification, and timely
enforcement depend primarily on accepting the conclusions issued by
the IAEA, but we have no information on how they will carry out
inspections and/or whether they succumbed to political pressures. Talk about buying a naked pig in a shielded poke! It
doesn't require knowledge of nuclear science to deduce that the
negotiators knew that the inspection protocols, which are crucial
to serious monitoring of Iran's nuclear program, were likely
inadequate. Iran has often controlled the negotiations by stubborn
refusals or arrogant demands, putting progress on hold. Were
verification adequate, the verification protocols would be proudly
displayed in the Deal document. Instead, they were cleverly taken
off the table so that methodology would not be subject to
questioning by Congress or the American public.
As Fleitz points out, "This means that two crucial measures of
Iranian compliance with the nuclear agreement will not be
disclosed to Congress despite the requirements of the
Corker-Cardin bill (the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act), which
requires the Obama administration to provide the U.S. Congress
with all documents associated with the agreement, including all
"annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements [emphasis added],
implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical, or
other understandings and any related agreements, whether entered
into or implemented prior to the agreement or to be entered into
or implemented in the future."
We might also ask: what else is being kept secret?
IRAN: NO IAEA INSPECTORS WERE PRESENT AT SUSPECT MILITARY BASE WHEN WE COLLECTED SAMPLES
by Patrick Goodenough
Without rigorous verification, there is no way to know whether
Iran is complying with the terms of the Iran Nuclear Deal (IND). A
major weakness of the IND is that the verification procedures are
not part of IND. They are part of secret contractual arrangements
between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Essentially then, we have to trust IAEA's verification procedures;
we have to trust that IAEA is trustworthy.
We had already discovered that IAEA inspectors can not simply
walk into any Iranian site at any time. They have to request
permission and the entire process can take months. We had already
learned that Iran has refused to let IAEA into military sites. Now
there is more news.
Patrick Goodenough writes about the mid-September 2015 IAEA
inspection of Iran's base at Parchin. Parchin has been a
particular site of interest to the IAEA, which has tried to inspect there since
2005. It is more urgent now because there is evidence that Iran
has recently been sanitizing the place. Iran appeared to
capitulate and the site was finally inspected. Now we learn that
"Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behruz Kamalvandi
told the IRNA state news agency Monday [September 21, 2015] that
Iranian experts had collected the samples 'in the absence of the
inspectors affiliated to the International Atomic Energy Agency,'
before the samples were handed over to IAEA officials."
Well, that certainly tells us how much we can trust the
procedures that verify Iranian compliance with the terms of the
Iran Nuclear Deal. Immediately afterwards, we learned from IAEA
chief Yukiya Amano how much we can trust IAEA in general. Amano
insisted the "the process was carried out under our responsibility
and monitoring." Certainly it was the IAEA's responsibility. But
even allowing Iranian technicians to participate let alone collect
the samples seems an odd way for the IAEA to monitor sample
collection.
The IAEA is in the process of collecting information on
allegations that Iran had been trying to developing atomic
weapon capability. Its report is due mid-October, with a final
report due December 2015. Care to take a guess what their findings
will be?
Except for future revisions and reinterpretations in the Iran
Nuclear Deal — all likely to relieve Iran of even more
responsibilities — we now have a pretty good
idea of what Iran's rulers were after and what they got. Their
expectation have been met, even though these are much more
outrageous than Prez Obama's modest desire for a legacy, where
almost anything, even this awful nuclear deal, would do.
Although Iran's contractual obligations are minimal, Iran
still reserves the right to do whatever it wants. Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani has underlined that Iran will not allow
foreign countries to interfere in its defense and military
affairs and will continue arms sales and purchases irrespective
of the views of other states. "We will purchase weapons from
wherever we deem necessary and we are not waiting for anyone's
permission; if we deem necessary we will sell our weapons and we
will do this without paying attention to any resolution" [...]
"On Friday, the Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps
Aerospace Force, Brig.-Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said that Iran
'will continue developing its defense capabilities and military
might, especially the surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.'"
(Fars-Iran. August 22, 2015.
See here.)
The P5+1 held all the good cards, but, given the poor quality
of their negotiators, it is not surprising that Iran, with the
help of the American president, won the pot. With a lack of
diplomatic politeness, it immediately started to brag of its
victory over its enemies. As Adam Kredo wrote: "Iranian President
Rouhani celebrated the deal in a speech that detailed how the
country received everything it was looking for from the United
States... [He] went on to say that Iran 'will scrutinize
implementation of the agreement" to ensure that the United
States and other world powers uphold their end of the
bargain.'" (here).
[emphasis added]
When Truth Revolt reprinted Noah Pollak's article
(see here), they
wrote: "In a news conference (Wash Post, July 15, 2015), President
Obama touted the Iran nuclear deal as a 'powerful display of
American leadership and diplomacy' that shows 'what we can
accomplish when we lead from a position of strength and a position
of principle.' So what exactly did we 'accomplish'?
To answer that question, Noah Pollak has provided a devastating
'balance sheet' that 'cut[s] through the rhetoric surrounding the
Iran deal' by listing in 'simple and non-technical' terms what we
get out of the Iran deal versus what the world's leading state
sponsor of terrorism gets.
The reader is free to make up his own mind about the merits of
the deal and the extent to which it advances U.S. interests and
U.S. security, and that of our allies,' writes Pollak, but as he
implies, it's hard to imagine how anyone can look at the actual
terms of the deal and not agree with Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu that this is a 'stunning historic
mistake.'" (see here.)
Herbert London writes that the Iranian leadership had four
objectives when negotiating with P5+1. They wanted to continue
their nuclear projects, including work on a nuclear bomb; they
wanted sanctions removed; they wanted their criminal record —
anti-Iran resolutions by the Security Council — deleted and the
nuclear record expunged. They were completely successful. As
London writes: "What this agreement has done from Rohani's point
of view is legitimate Iran as a nuclear power, ignoring its role
as the leading state sponsor of terror and a nation responsible
for the death of at least 1000 Americans. No wonder Iran
celebrates. This agreement is a victory the Shia have sought for
1400 years since the split with the Sunni majority."
REPERCUSSIONS FROM THE 'DEAL' IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND FURTHER
Iran will acquire billions of dollars
that she can use as she pleases. Hence she has the means to bribe,
intimidate and terrorize the Sunni countries of the Middle East.
Supporting Hezbollah and Hamas will make only a very small dent in
her budget.
Judging from the appeasement behavior of P5+1 and IAEA
throughout the negotiations, Iran has no reason to expect
curtailment of its nuclear program. Moreover, it has already
announced it will continue its efforts to develop conventional
weapons such as the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM),
capable of reaching the US, carrying a nuclear warhead.
Even though the nuclear deal is not yet a working entity, it
has already promoted significant changes in the Middle East.
First, the combination of Iran's projected full pocketbook and its
determination to acquire both conventional and nuclear weaponry
has caused other Middle East countries to focus on acquiring
nuclear weapons. Second, Iran can buy all the foot
soldiers it needs and can readily acquire proxies to fight in
different countries. Syria can be maintained as a nodal point in
the war between Shi'ite and Sunni. Iran can create diversions and
start new aggression where ever it wishes.
FIRST: As facts of the 'deal' became known, it became clear that
Iran's nuclear ambitions will be unrestrained in the future. This
understanding is already leading Sunni countries, fearful of
Shi'ite Iran's new power, to set more rapidly into motion nuclear
weapon programs of their own. Saudi Arabia has long feared a
nuclear Iran and has been considering how to develop a mighty
nuclear and conventional armament program of its own. Saudi Arabia
has an inadequate population, one not distinguished in scientific
enterprise; she imports much of her technology and the people to
run the various institutions. She could short circuit trying to
create an infrastructure that is beyond her abilities by inducing
Pakistan to share either its knowledge or some of its nuclear
arsenal directly. She did, after all, bankroll a substantial part
of Pakistan's current store of weapons. And Russia is said to have
agreed to help build reactors for the Saudis.
Egypt and Jordan have less financial resources but they are also
about to start less ambitious nuclear programs with Russia's help.
With what appears to be political neutrality, Russia is also
supplying Iran with a missile-defense system to protect her
nuclear facilities from attack.
The most likely candidate to initiate a substantial program to
develop nuclear weapons is Turkey. She has a large population,
many of whom are educated in advanced science; she already has two
research nuclear power facilities built with help; and she, too,
has signed an agreement with Russia to built a large nuclear power
facility.
Altogether, according to the Jewish Virtual Library (here):
"Like Iran, at least twelve other Middle Eastern countries have
either announced plans to explore atomic energy or have signed
nuclear cooperation agreements: Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, UAE,
Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Syria, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman
(Two other counties - Yemen and Libya - cancelled their nuclear
programs). Each of these countries, like Iran as well, have
explicitly stated that they are only interested in peaceful uses
of nuclear technology. The fear is now that these countries may
follow the Iranian example and work toward building a nuclear bomb
to protect themselves in any future nuclear arms race." These
mostly Sunni countries fear a nuclear Iran, particularly now that
the US will be obligated by its treaty with Iran to protect Iran's
nuclear program from harm.
Obama's 'deal' doesn't deal with Iran's warfare in Syria or
Yemen or with its support of Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran's one
hundred and fifty billion dollar windfall and its freedom from
sanctions are immediately of concern because Iran will have the
freedom and the wherewithal to strive to establish her hegemony
over the Middle East. Iran will be able to destabilize and
restructure the Middle East at a faster pace because she will be
able to pay for an increased number of terrorist attacks in more
parts of the Middle East and give bigger bribes to more politicos,
thus challenging Saudi Sunni control of the region. So Iran's
enriched attempts to move to a dominant position are an immediate
and existential problem for the Saudis.
With some misgivings about verification, Saudi Arabia has come
out for Obama's Deal, but this doesn't imply what we'd ordinarily
assume, namely, that the Saudis are in tune with the Obama
Administration. It's unlikely King Salman believes Obama has
stopped Iran's nuclear weaponization plans, but as Saudi's Foreign
Minister Adel al-Jubeir said, "Now we have one less problem for
the time being to deal with, with regards to Iran. We can now
focus more intensely on the nefarious activities that Iran is
engaged in the region." (Salman Rafi, "US concerned as Saudi
Arabia, Israel team up against common foe Iran,"
see here.)
SECOND: Even without the deadly potential of a nuclear
war, a future possibility, the Iran Deal has already had
repercussions in the Middle East, strengthening some alliances and
destabilizing more fragile areas.
The region has never been known for stability. Quite the
opposite. And in the last few years, since the "Arab spring", it
is like a 7-legged chair, where each leg is of a different size.
Libya has split into multiple terrorist-controlled domains;
Lebanon is in large part Hezbollah-controlled; Yemen is split into
three regions, each fighting the other; aside from a
Kurd-controlled area, Syria is the locus of multiple Sunni
terrorist groups all fighting the Iran-backed Bashar Assad's
government and often each other; some of Iraq is controlled by
Iran, some by ISIS, some by the Kurds and the rest is pending;
Jordan, without the protection of the Saudis and Israel, would
last about as long it would take its king to fly off to
Europe.
The Palestinian Arabs, useful to the Arab countries because
they could be presented to the world as pitiful victims of
Israel's aggression, are, in the present crisis, of low priority.
Fatha's head, Mahmoud Abbas is in motion, looking in
scatter-brained fashion for money sources and political support.
Sunni Hamas is now on Shi'ite Iran's payroll, as is Hezbollah.
And while Sunni allies are unreliable and Sunni terrorists are
split between multiple groups, some of which, such as ISIS and
al-Qaeda, hate each other more than they hate the Shi'ites, Iran
appears whole and untroubled by internecine fights between her
clients and mercenaries. So Saudi Arabia is focusing its efforts
on strengthening Egypt, obtaining weaponry needed in the future,
persuading irresolute countries such as Pakistan to join the fight
and coordinating with Israel.
The fragile rights of the minority Christian and "heretical"
Muslim groups are deteriorating still further. The massacring,
rape and forced conversions to Islam of Christians have become so
common, they are no longer news, but the slaughter continues. The
Western Protestant churches ignore their fellow-Christians,
preferring to put their efforts into helping to destroy Israel
economically by BSD efforts. The Roman Catholic Pope has committed
his Church to the Palestinian Arab cause, while ignoring the
plight of the Middle East's Christians.
Russia to date has mostly helped build facilities and supply
weaponry but although it may have less resources than the US, it
has a much stronger leader. To date, it hasn't played a large
role, at least not publicly.
The turmoil is spreading in and beyond the Middle East. Syrians
fleeing from the combat have taken refuge in Jordan, Lebanon and
especially Turkey, contributing to the pressure on these
countries. Businessmen from European countries, itching to get
some of Iran's billions, ignore some of the ramifications of
Iran's increased power. Buyers of Middle East oil have always been
uneasy. Arabs have always associated supplying oil with buyers
accepting — or at least not attacking — Muslim political views.
Iran will not be timid about using its role as a major oil
supplier to the Far East to make India and China and Japan
understand they must
actively support her activities.
Some social engineers are following the Marxist edict always to
take advantage of a crisis: they are promoting the idea that
Europe, already swamped by unassimilatable Muslims, should take in
more of them And Prez Obama, always happy to downgrade America,
wants to add thousands of Syrian refugees to the terror-prone
Somalis he has already brought to the States, using tax-payers'
money to bring them in and welfare money to support them.
In this bubbling and turbulent mix, there is one country that
stands out as unpredictable.
Turkey has long been the joker in the Middle East deck. As
David P Goldman said (The Persian Pandora's Box" July 16,2015
here):
"Turkey's reaction to the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran will be
something of a bellwether. The reactions of other regional players
were known in advance, except for Turkey's, which has tried to
play all sides, and no longer can. When Iran was isolated
diplomatically in 2010, Turkey sought to mediate between Iran in
the West, and failed miserably. In 2012 and 2013, Turkey helped
Iran skirt sanctions through a billion-dollar gold trade that
allowed Iranian traders to buy the precious metal in Turkey, cart
it to Dubai, and sell it for foreign exchange. But Turkey and Iran
are the bitterest of opponents in the Syrian civil war, with
Turkey backing ISIS as a blunt instrument against the Assad
regime, and against the Syrian Kurds, whose hopes for autonomy
further the Kurdish national cause."
Some things seem certain. Although a member of NATO, Turkey is
an active player in the confusing alliances and clientships of the
Middle East. Turkey doesn't want a Kurdish state next to it.
Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood are bosom buddies. Turkey and
Egypt are definitely not. Egypt openly captured Turkish
intelligence officers actively involved in guerrilla war waged by
IS in Sinai and Egypt.
Statements about Turkey and other Middle East countries should be tagged by
date. Turkey's attitude toward ISIS is not immutable. As a
generality, it fights ISIS when it must, but would rather
devote its fire power to attacking the Kurds. There is documentary
evidence that Turkish officials have directly interacted with
high-level ISIS members (Robert Spencer, July 29, 2015,
here). Turkey has long been a conduit through which IS has
smuggled weaponry into Syria and young volunteers from around the
world have come to ISIS. But on July 20, 2015 ISIL bombed Suruc, a
town in Turkey. This made them a (temporary?) enemy.
The Turks are unambiguously against Syria, well they were in
June 2015. It's not quite clear in July 2015. With IS's threat to
Turkey's security the new top priority, Syria has been
downgraded. And Turkey and the Saudis have been diplomatically
smiling at each other, although the Saudis are backing Egypt.
Saudi would like Turkey as part of a Sunni consensus against Iran,
but Turkey views Egypt with distaste, and, as always, is somewhat
mercurial.
This section discusses the complexity woven into the simple
statement that Iran will use some of its new billions of dollars
to strengthen Syria's Bashar al-Assad in his fight against ISIS
and the Syrian rebels. It explores some aspects of the
relationships and schemes of Turkey vis a vis Syria. Can we
predict whether Turkey will again side with Iran? It seems likely
it will. But that won't harm Turkey's relationship with Prez
Obama, another good friend of Iran.
SYRIA AND TURKEY — A HISTORY OF A COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP
by Euronews Staff
This article by Euronews Staff focuses on the changing
relations over time between Turkey and both Syria and Isis. Turkey
and its neighbor, Syria, have had good and bad relations over many
years. The situation has been more complicated since the rise of
Isis. When Isis has behaved itself in its dealing with Turkey,
Turkey has focused on its chronic disagreements with Syria. When
ISIS has forced a confrontation, Turkey has focused on fighting
ISIS. In general, they are allies, even though ISIS is fighting
Iran, with whom Turkey does deals.
Jonathan Spyer explains how what was
initially a civil war in Syria has splintered into multiple independent
conflicts, involving Sunni Arab rebels, the Kurds, IS, and Turkey.
Spyer makes an important point about these separate wars being
fought inside Syria. "So even if Assad's declining fortunes were
to lead to his departing the scene, the war for Syria's
succession, and the suffering of its inhabitants, would almost
certainly not be at an end."
Currently, Turkey has joined the West's fight against ISIS in
Syria. Aside from this giving Turkey an opportunity to hit at the
Kurds, as Burak Bekdil writes, Turkey has emphasized that it wants
to install a moderate group when it clears the area of
ISIS. It has suggested the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a group that
doesn't have the ability to fight IS or Syria. Moreover, the FSA,
once touted as a democratic group seeking civil rights in Syria,
has been shown to be just as prone to practices such as recruiting
children as soldiers as any Salafist terror gang. Bekdil suggests
Turkey's actual objective is to find a new safe home for the Sunni
Salafist Muslim Brotherhood, a group that both Turkey and the
Obama administration like, encourage and shelter.
Caroline Glick provides the major highlights of what Turkey is
doing in Syria. She emphasizes the important point that under the
guise of cooperating with Western forces in fighting ISIS, Turkey
devotes most of its effort to killing Kurds. "As for that 'safe area'
in northern Syria, as the Kurds see it, Erdogan will use it to
destroy Kurdish autonomy. He will flood the zone with Syrian Arab
refugees who fled to Turkey, to dilute the Kurdish majority. And
he will secure coalition support for the Sunni Arab militias -
including those still affiliated with al-Qaida - which will be
permitted by NATO to operate openly in the safe area." This is
being done with Obama's concurrence and in a most sanctimonious manner.
Obama could do no better.
On May 7, 2015, "the Senate held a vote on the Iran Nuclear
Agreement Review Act of 2015, commonly referred to as the
"Corker-Cardin bill", in which every Senator voted on that bill
with the understanding that the Iran nuclear agreement was an
executive agreement, and not a treaty, and that United States
sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program remain in place." By
the Constitution, it takes a yes vote by 2/3s of the members for
Congress to confirm a treaty, which means that 67 senators need to
YES to ratify a treaty. The Corker-Cardin bill will pass
legislation with only 1/3 of the members voting
yes. It gave Congress 60 days to review the final agreement when
there was a final agreement.
Negotiations between P5+1 and Iran were completed in Vienna,
Austria July 14, 2015. The full text of the agreement known as the
Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) is available
here,
here and
here, among many other sites. Buzzfeed here
has linked to a version posted by the Russian government here.
In a press conference July 14, 2015, Prez Obama said he'd veto
any Congressional legislation that would prevent implementation of
the Deal — and that was true. He also said the Deal was
built on verification, not trust. He said that the Deal prevented
Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and American national
security depended on preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear
weapon. He said inspectors will have 24/7 access to Iran's key
nuclear facilities. Secretary of State John Kerry in a press
conference in Vienna said the agreement would allow sanctions to
snap right back into place if Iran reneges on its commitments.
Three bald lies from Obama, one from Kerry.
Following a "diplomatic blitzkrieg" by the Obama
Administration, the U.N. Security Council (UNSC), which includes the P5
members (U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China), voted
unanimously July 20, 2015 for the Deal and agreed to lift its
sanctions. This was done "under silence". As Mark Langfan explains
(here:)
In an "under silence" adoption procedure, instead of the UNSC
holding a normal positive vote, the motion that is set for
party specifically objects to the motion. This "under silence"
procedure would put the onus on Israel to be the first, and
possibly the only, objector to the UNSC's adoption of the Iran
deal.
In the established handbook on diplomacy, G. R. Berridge's
"Diplomacy: Theory and Practice," the "under silence" procedure is
described as being used by the majority where "a proposal with
strong support is deemed to have been agreed unless any member
raises an objection to it before a precise deadline: silence
signifies assent — or, at least, acquiescence. This procedure
relies on a member in a minority fearing that raising an objection
will expose it to the charge of obstructiveness and, thereby, the
perils of isolation."
[...]
And for history's sake, it would be important to have the 15
members of the UN Security Council go on record as having voted
for what many have called a modern-day 1938 Munich Appeasement of
the Nazis, in a comparison to the Islamic regime's calls to
destroy Israel while reportedly building a nuclear arsenal.
The JCPOA was adopted with no show of hands or discussion or
signing a document.
The House and Senate had until September 17, 2015 to, in the
words of Richard Hertling and Kaitlyn McClure (see
here), "to review the agreement, reached by international
negotiators in July, and ultimately vote for a resolution of
approval or disapproval."
Hertling and Kaitlyn wrote that "[e]nactment of a resolution of
disapproval from Congress would remove President Obama's ability
to lift sanctions on Iran. This outcome is now improbable because
Senate Democrats have secured enough votes in support of the
nuclear agreement to sustain a presidential veto of any resolution
of disapproval, notwithstanding the likely opposition of all
Republican senators (only one is undecided) and the opposition of
several leading Democratic senators."
On September 10, 2015, the Senate voted to end debate on the
resolution of disapproval. By the rules of the Corker-Cardin bill,
only 34 YES votes (1/3 of the number of Senators) were needed and
the Democrats had 42 votes to end the debate. With four Democrats
voting with them, the Republicans had 56 votes to vote AGAINST
ending the debate to disapprove JCPOA, which wasn't enough.
60-votes is needed to negate a resolution. The House did not vote
on JCPOA at all. Technically, Congress did not vote for or against
the JCPOA per se.
Now President Obama can concentrate on selling the deal to the
general public, most of whom don't like it, and making its
operations bullet-proof before the public is aware that Iran will
do whatever it wants, while the P5+1 is obligated to help them
build a bomb. To help him, he has the enthusiastic cooperation of
a large group of well-funded news media, academics and (mostly)
Muslim front organizations for Iran.
THE RISE OF THE 'IRAN LOBBY': TEHRAN'S FRONT GROUPS MOVE ON
— AND INTO — THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
by Clare M. Lopez
This article by Clare Lopez on the Iran Lobby was written in 2009.
As Lopez noted in a more recent article
(see here), the 2009 article
"was offered as a warning about the constellation of forces that
was just then moving into power positions from which to influence
U.S. foreign policy in ways supportive of the Tehran regime's
objectives."
There have been some changes in personnel and group names and
people have changed jobs if not ideology. The Campaign for a
New American Policy for Iran (CNAPI) website no longer exists.
Sahar Nowrouzzadeh had left her job at NIAC but didn't leave
her ideology behind when she become Director for Iran for
America's National Security Council. Joseph Cirincione
directs Ploughshares.com, a site that, with a tone of sweet
reasonableness, urges the West to forgo military action and try
diplomacy, chiding the U.S. as if we were unreasonable to worry
that it isn't safe to give the bomb to a country whose salafist
leaders can't stop blurting out their hatred of the US and
Israel. WND's Aaron Klein (November 15, 2014. see
here) notes that Ploughshares "has also partnered with a
who's who of the radical left, including Code Pink, the
pro-Palestinian J Street, United for Peace & Justice, the U.S.
Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and the Demos
progressive group, where Obama's former green jobs czar, Van
Jones, serves on the board." In December, 2012, former CNAPI
experts, James Dobbins and Amb. Thomas Pickering, were
among those that signed an open letter suggesting that easing
sanctions would have a greater influence on Iran's "willingness
to modify its nuclear program and to cooperate in verifying
those modifications" than if we demand more ambitious
objectives such as "capitulation to all U.S. demands or regime
change." They needed not have worried. The Deal gives Iran sanction
easement and a lot more. At no cost. In fact, As David Rutz
July, 7, 2015, see here.) pointed out, "On issue after
issue over a potential nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama
administration has caved... U.S. has fallen short, misled or
simply kowtowed on sanctions, uranium enrichment, Iran's
breakout capacity, whether Iran could be a good actor and
more."
New avenues of projecting how cooperative Iran has been have
opened up. The social media have expanded. Tweeting and its
clones have proven ideal media for communicating with the
attention-handicapped: one can assert a "factoid" without the
need to back it up with facts. The Huffington Post just
launched an Arabic Edition. It will be managed by Anas Fouda
and Wadah Khanfar, both from al-Jazeera, which supports the
Muslim Brotherhood. And academics that hate Israel and
democracy have become bolder in disseminating their ideology.
But basically, Lopez's excellent reference
article on the people and groups who toil to carry out Iran's
Mullahs bidding, without balking at anything the Mullahs do,
remains fresh and useful.
TRAITOR SENATORS TOOK MONEY FROM IRAN LOBBY, BACK IRAN NUKES
by Daniel Greenfield
IAPAC is a pro-Iran lobby group which clearly had AIPAC on the
brain when it came time to name itself. Daniel Greenfield names
US senators that have accepted donations from the Iranian
American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) and are for the Iran
Nuclear Deal. It is ironic that one of them, Senator Markey,
wants to tighten control of gun ownership to "address the plague
of gun violence" but is voting for a deal with Iran — a
major money-source for international terrorism and a known cheat
— that will allow her much more pernicious weaponry in a
few years. In addition to other senators that had a conflict of
interest, Secretary-of-State Kerry and Vice-President Biden, both
of whom are involved in the Iran nuclear deal, have taken money
from IAPAC. As Greenfield points out, "While the so-called
'Israel Lobby' is constantly scrutinized, the fact that key
foreign policy positions under Obama are controlled by political
figures with troubling ties to an enemy of this country has gone
mostly unreported by the mainstream media."
Despite the unpopularity of the Iran Nuclear Deal, there is one
group that continues to promote its virtues: academics,
particularly those who are themselves the products of Middle East
departments. By no coincidence at all, they also loathe US and
Israel. Cinnamon Stillwell provides us with word images of some of
the most virulent of these professors. In the style of Baghdad
Bob, they deny that Iran plans to build a bomb and on the basis of
nothing, some are sure the mullahs will benevolently use the freed
funds to better the economy for the Iranian people. They are
quick to divert criticism of Iran's plans on how she says she will
use nuclear weaponry to finding fault with Israel's nuclear
program, although Israel has never threatened to use their bombs
on other countries. With these professors able to influence
students, the damage that Edward Said did to the academic field of
Middle East studies lingers on.
Despite the huge amount of funds and propaganda invested in
selling the Iran Nuclear Deal, Americans instinctively reject
allowing an insane totalitarian state planning genocide have
nuclear weapons. Only some 21% of the public wants the Obama Deal
(September 2015. Pew poll). With good reason. As Alex
Joffee wrote: (August 3, 2015, here):
"It is revealed daily just how horrendous the deal
really is. On every point enrichment, centrifuges, stocks of
fissile material, inspections, sanctions on the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps members and businesses, 'snapback,'
etc. the Obama administration caved completely. Concessions on
ballistic missiles and arms sales were thrown in at the last
minute; the administration lied about it all, while Iran touted
its victories and American capitulation. All this went on amidst a
background of Iranian chants of 'death to Israel' and 'death to
America,' which entered not at all into American
calculations."
The Obama Administration has cut a deal with Iran that is
designed to benefit no one but the fanatical Mullahs of Iran.
Turmoil in the Middle East will increase. Europe will increasingly
become dhimmified, Americans will live in fear of seemingly random
organized terror attacks.
People don't like the deal, but there are so many distractions,
so many other personal and national problems to worry about. And
the media aren't doing their job of keeping an important situation
constantly in front of the public.
We can still stop the monstrous transaction that will help Iran
become a nuclear power and hence the most important regime in the
Middle East, giving it more money and more freedom to pursue its
desire to reestablish a Persian empire that espouses Shia Islam,
while subjecting non-Muslims to an inferior status. We can still
stop the Deal from coming to fruition.
WAYS AND MEANS
BECOME PROACTIVE: Americans need to change their attitude
that there's nothing more they can do. Americans who love
America must start acting up. Forcefully. In the absence of a
media and press working properly, we need to do it ourselves. We
need to act for ourselves by ourselves.
WRITE LETTERS, HOLD RALLIES, DO STREET THEATER: We can
form groups that write letters and inform others about the
specifics of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). We
can join grass root groups — such as the Tea Party, Judicial
Review, etc ‐ that have sprung up to resist all the ways that
the present Administration has devised to weaken our country. We
need to talk about it at our dinner tables. We need to make it a
joint concern with our friends. We need to worry about it. We can
network and alert others across the country through Facebook and
twitter and other social media. The web is neutral. The key is
sustained effort.
PRESSURE CONGRESS: We can continue to bug our
congressmen. We have the phone, the letter, the visit by
constituents. We can make those congressmen that helped pass the
Iran Nuclear Deal become aware that in kowtowing to Obama, they
haven't been representing the people. Tell them they have a chance
to redeem themselves between now and the next election by
proactively terminating US's participation. Maybe Congress can use
countering JCPOA as an exercise in learning how to recapture its
Constitutional role as an entity independent of the Executive
Branch. And that means it must be made to fear the power of its
constituents more than that of the Obama Administration.
PRESSURE THE STATES: Congress makes laws but so do the
States. And the states need not accept Federal agreements
passively. As Joel Pollak writes (see below), "they cannot be
forced to implement an international treaty or agreement that is
not self-executing—i.e. one whose implementation requires new
congressional laws." Surprisingly, "Many of the states that have
applied harsh restrictions on Iran, moreover, are liberal "blue"
states. New York, for example, maintains a blacklist of persons
"determined to be engaged in investment activities in Iran."
People on the blacklist can not bid on contracts put out by New
York State.
PRESSURE THE COURTS: We can exert pressure by way of the
courts. First, the Deal is not a legal treaty as defined by the
Constitution, but is sufficiently weighty to require treatment as
one, even if it is defined as an agreement. This might require the
Supreme Court to determine its status. Second, terrorists can be
sued for damages in the U.S.A. In February 23, 2015, the families
of the American victims of Palestinian acts of terror won their
case claiming million of dollars of damages. Already a lawsuit has
been filed (August 11, 2015) against Sec-of-State John Kerry and
Treasury Sec Jacob Lew by two dozen plaintiffs who were victims of
Iranian-sponsored terrorism between 1995 and 2006. More can be
done. Even though we think that Saudis were responsible for 9/11,
it has been established that Iran was responsible in large part
for the destruction of the Twin Towers and part of the Pentagon
and the (thwarted) attempt to destroy the White House (see
below and here.) Three thousand people died. Their families
has the right to sue Iran. We can try to force the decision-making
courts to freeze Iran's assets until the courts have time to hear
the claimants and make a decision.
EXAMINE JCPOA IN CONTEXT OF RELEVANT LAWS ALREADY IN FORCE:
Louis Beres writes about the JCPOA's "crude subversion of both
international and national law ..." (see paper below). First, it
violate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which became
law in 1970 and was extended in 1995 to continue with no time
limit. The nuclear countries that signed the NPT are obliged
NOT "in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any
non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire
nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control
over such weapons or explosive devices." Moreover, Beres points
out, Prez Obama "refused to base his country's negotiations with
Iran upon a duly contingent expectation that Tehran's leadership
first abrogate unambiguously genocidal statements" Hence, JCPOA
also violates the Genocide Convention, which "criminalizes not
only genocide per se, but also 'conspiracy to commit genocide,'
and 'direct and public incitement to commit genocide.'" Beres also
discusses an interesting topic: what strategies will Iran utilize,
when it has gotten all that it wants from the JCPOA and is ready
to terminate its participation unilaterally.
James Rosen (October 9, 2015,
here) raises another legal issue. "[T]he Iran Threat
Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (ITRA), signed into law by
President Obama in August 2012, was explicit in closing the
so-called 'foreign sub' loophole." Aside from the language in
ITRA that directs that foreign subsidiaries of American companies
are to be treated as are the parent companies, "Additional
executive orders and statutes signed by President Obama, such as
the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, have reaffirmed that all
prior federal statutes relating to sanctions on Iran shall remain
in full effect." Iran is on our Terrorist List, so American
companies can not deal with her. If foreign subsidiaries are to
be treated like their owners, then the subsidiaries can not do
business with Iran. But, "Section 5.1.2 of Annex II [of JCPOA]
provides that in exchange for Iranian compliance with the terms
of the deal, the U.S. 'shall...license non-U.S. entities that are
owned or controlled by a U.S. person to engage in activities with
Iran that are consistent with this JCPOA.'" In reopening this
loophole, Prez Obama is violating his own 2012 law. Companies and
their subsidiaries are also at risk of violating the law. As
Senator Ted Cruz said, "Any U.S. company that follows through on
this, that allows their foreign-owned subsidiaries to do business
with Iran, will very likely face substantial civil liability,
litigation and potentially even criminal prosecution. The
obligation to follow federal law doesn't go away simply because
we have a lawless president who refuses to acknowledge or follow
federal law."
PUBLICIZE FAILURES OF THE UN: It is almost certain that
Iran will soon provide us with activity proving it is in violation
of JCPOA stipulations. According to Dr. Saberi Ansari, Iran's
legal advisor during the talks, "JCPOA is neither an agreement nor
a treaty... An agreement or a treaty is distinguished by the fact
that its contents are binding on contracting parties. This is not
the case with JCPOA."
Salomon Benzimra points out (see below) that Iran is
flagrantly ignoring UN resolutions by conducting acts of terror
and by spewing hate against Israel. In this way, Iran is putting
in-your-face pressure on the UN, which has strong resolutions
against terrorism. On July 20, 2015, the UN passed United Nations
Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2231, which is essentially
JCPOA plus some attention to Iran acquiring conventional weapons
and ballistic missiles. The resolution was passed in silence and
not signed by the negotiators.
By September, three top Iranian leaders — President Hassan
Rouhani, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, and Deputy Foreign
Minister Abbas Araghchi — stated that they will abide by the
provisions of only the JCPOA and they will violate Resolution
2231. They are indeed violating Resolution 2231. But they are
also already violating JCPOA. In mid-October, 2015, October 18,
2015 to be exact, the Iran Nuclear Deal took effect and
conditional waivers were given. By then, Iran had arrogantly
given us evidence of disregarding components of the deal that
they didn't like. Or they did things that would make their
nuclear program more dangerous. According to AP, "Iran
successfully test-fired a guided long-range ballistic
surface-to-surface
missile." (here.)
Supreme Leader Khamenei said "the U.S. and European
Union must announce that they were dropping sanctions before Iran
completely fulfilled its
obligations." (here.)
Yukiya Amano, Director-General of IAEA is still trying
to set up interviews with Iranian scientists and hold an
inspection at Parchin, supposedly an issue that was resolved. Now
it comes out that the previous visit to Parchin was to an area
unconnected to the suspicious area.
CONNECT JCPOA AND IRAN'S BANKING/BROKERAGE PRACTICES:
Patrick Clawson (August 21, 2015. see below) writes about
Iran's murky banking structure. He notes that "... under the
nuclear deal Washington has reserved rights to preserve serious
limits on Iranian trade with European and Asian firms. Banks are
involved in trade in several ways and Washington retains the power
of "sanctioning foreign banks involved in Iran trade, supporting
seizure of Iranian assets, highlighting the risks from Iranian
deceptive financial practices, and maintaining regulatory
pressure."
As Clawson points out, "it is by no means clear if the Obama
administration will make vigorous use of those rights." However,
there is nothing to stop private citizens refusing to have their
money invested in businesses that trade with Iran or pressuring
their credit unions not to invest in companies doing business with
Iran. A small group of knowledgeable activists can leverage their
effectiveness by building up a network of people less acquainted
with banking and brokerage practices but who are indignant at the
thought of contributing to Iran's support of terror activities
globally. The USA Patriot Act states:
"If you are a
financial institution and you engage in any transaction involving
Iran's Central Bank or any other Iranian bank operating inside or
outside Iran, you are at risk of supporting Iran's illicit
activities: its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its support for
terrorism, and its efforts to deceive responsible financial
institutions and evade sanctions. Any and every financial
transaction with Iran poses grave risk of supporting those
activities."
We have the tools. We need to use them.
IS THE JCPOA A TREATY OR A MORE CASUAL DEAL?
One way to attack the JCPOA is to start by pinning down its
legal and functional status. And then we can use congressional and
legal means to block it from being implemented.
What exactly is the Iran Nuclear Deal? It is constructed as
— and has the power of — a major treaty. It is between
members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany with a
single country, Iran. It is also a special contract between the
U.S. and Iran that will make Iran's progress towards developing
nuclear weaponry a partnership.
Yet, as if it were a minor undertaking, it is called a
deal, an arrangement, an executive agreement,
anything but a treaty.
Why was it done this way? One answer is that Obama and his henchmen
knew that if it were sent to Congress for ratification as a
treaty, they could never get it through Congress. A treaty must be
ratified by two-thirds of the membership of the Senate and there
are not 67 Senators willing to vote for its ratification.
For whatever reason, members of the Senate were apparently
convinced that it would be better to draw up a bill that didn't
define the JCPOA as a treaty. In fact, it was specifically
declared not to be a treaty. On May 7, 2015, the
Cocker-Cardin Bill came into being.
The full text of the amended Corker-Cardin bill can be found
here. A summary for congress is available here.
It was NOT a direct vote on JCPOA. It was presented as a way "[t]o
provide for congressional review and oversight of agreements
relating to Iran's nuclear program, and for other purposes." Every
senator except Tom Cotton voted for it, Democrats and Republicans
alike. It provided deadlines for the President to provide
information on various components of the JCPOA.
These are its major points: (Note: glosses are in [])
The President makes an agreement with Iran. He sends to
Congress "all related materials and annexes" to this agreement.
It describes which sanctions are to be waived.
It expressly demands reassurances from the President that
Iran's nuclear activity does not jeopardize U.S.'s security.
It expressly forbids Iran's nuclear activities to be used "to
further any nuclear-related military or nuclear explosive purpose,
including for any research on or development of any nuclear
explosive device or any other nuclear-related military purpose."
It requests a report from the Secretary of State assessing
whether the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has the
access, funding, manpower and authority" to "effectively implement
the verification regime." [Preamble ii of the JCPOA asserts that
"the full implementation of this JCPOA will ensure the exclusively
peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme." It is not clear how
the Secretary of State can be sure the IAEA can examine suspicious
military sites when inspection protocols are secreted in a
document US officials can not view. In a practical sense, this
issue may be considered to be "resolved", in that Iran has said
military bases are not to be inspected and this is not being
challenged. But this leads to the core concern: how much is the
JCPOA reassurance that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful worth
when there's no way to ensure adequate verification?]
The Corker-Cardin Bill assumes that Iran will (i) "use all
measures not expressly prohibited by the agreement to conceal
activities that violate its obligations and commitments under the
agreement; and (ii) alter or deviate from standard practices in
order to impede efforts to verify that Iran is complying with
those obligations and commitment."
Congress will hold hearing for 60 days after it receives
the Agreement and all its collateral material. During this period,
the President can not remove sanctions. During this period, "if a
joint resolution of disapproval ... vetoes such joint resolution,
the President may not eliminate sanctions except deferrals,
consistent with Corker-Cardin. [But Congress does not have to act.
As Jack Goldsmith points out
(here), if Congress does nothing during the review period,
"the President can exercise his pre-existing authority to waive
sanctions."]
(c) Effect of Congressional Action with Respect to Nuclear Agreements
with Iran
It is sense of Congress that
(C) this section does not require a vote by Congress for
the agreement to commence.
(d) Congressional Oversight of Iranian Compliance with Nuclear Agreements
IN GENERAL.—The President shall keep the appropriate
congressional committees and leadership fully and currently
informed of all aspects of Iranian compliance with respect
to an agreement subject to subsection (a).
POTENTIALLY SIGNIFICANT BREACHES AND COMPLIANCE
INCIDENTS.—The President shall, within 10 calendar days of
receiving credible and accurate information relating to a
potentially significant breach or compliance incident by
Iran with respect to an agreement subject to subsection
(a), submit such information to the appropriate
congressional committees and leadership."
I am not a lawyer but by the wording of Corker-Cardin, it does
seem that Congress takes it for granted that the agreement when
completed is immediately viable. It is not a treaty that Congress
must ratify for it to become operational. The Bill appears to
assume the agreement will be in force without any Congressional
input; Congress does not have to approve it or disapprove it. So I
don't understand the supposed concern and upset in Congress, when
it was discovered in July that Obama was sending the JCPOA to the
UN Security Council for approval and thus it would be operational
before it could be reviewed by Congress. See, for example,
here.
It does give Congress the right of review after the agreement
was signed by President Obama: Congress can as part of its review
process try to pass a resolution of disapproval. [Update: it did
and of course that failed.]
It's probably not exhaustive, but Corker-Cardin does a fine job
of enumerating many of the devious ways Iran can violate the terms
of JCPOA. It does deal with Congressional instructions on
sanctions. It does require the President to keep Congress informed
on Iran's compliance and what he was doing about non-compliance.
Time lines are instituted for reporting and repair from the
Executive Branch to Congress, else Congress will consider
appropriate legislation. If violations are not corrected,
"Congress may initiate within 60 calendar days expedited
consideration of qualifying legislation pursuant to this
subsection."
All in all, not a strong bill.
The executive agreement, the JCPOA, was finalized in Vienna,
Austria July 14, 2015. As prescribed in Coker-Cardin, "Congress
will hold hearing for 60 days after it receives the Agreement and
all its collateral material. During this period, the President can
not remove sanctions." Congress began hearings. It began its
review. As Andrew McCarthy wrote:
(here)
"The Corker review process is a provision of the Corker law that
permits Congress to attempt to enact a "resolution of disapproval"
against Obama's Iran deal — an illusory process because there was
never any chance that Democrats would allow such a resolution to
be enacted over Obama's certain veto."
On September 10, 2015 the Senate approved a resolution to end
the debate on a resolution of disapproval of the JCPOA. Don't let
the twists and turns of that sentence throw you. The vote was 56
against closure to 42 to stop the debate. The Republicans didn't
have the 60 votes necessary to continue the debate. No treaty was
ratified. No agreement/arrangement/deal was rejected. On the other
hand, no agreement was accepted by Congress. Voting to stop a
debate to reject JCPOA is not the same as voting to reject —
or accept — JCPOA itself.
There is one clear road block built into Corker-Cardin bill.
It insisted that all the documents relevant to the executive
agreement be on hand when it reviewed the contract. This didn't
happen. Verification is carried out by IAEA and its arrangements
for carrying out inspection are in a side document that the US,
specifically, is not allowed to see. In fact, Secretary-of-State
John Kerry, the American chief negotiator, testified in Congress
that he hasn't seen the side agreement. This isn't a trivial
point. The mainstay of Obama's arguments for accepting the JCPOA
is that it isn't based on trust, it's based on verification. But
the U.S. has no way of directly warranting the verification
process. We have to trust the IAEA, and we have recently seen how
well that works in practice (see the Compliance, Verification and
Enforcement section above). Because the Executive Branch has not
yet sent Congress all the side issues and other secret documents,
a Congress with a spine can argue that until it has all the
documents, it can't do a review of the deal. It might halt
implementation of JCPOA until this condition is met.
Congress can also argue that documents that it received may
have been made obsolete in the last few days before the treaty
negotiators accepted JCPOA. Inspectors were supposed to go into
suspected nuclear installations anywhere at any time. By the time
of agreement, terms had changed. Inspectors had to request
permission to come. Iran had 24 days to respond. But some pro-deal
proponents were still arguing that inspections were not being
limited by Iran.
There is the larger point of the nature of the JCPOA. The JCPOA
walks like a treaty and talks like a treaty and has momentous
influence on the future of all parts of the world, including ours.
The Obama Administration calls it an executive agreement, not a
treaty. Does renaming a treaty make what is functionally a treaty
a non-treaty? If it is, indeed, only a temporary executive
agreement, then it has little substance. It is vulnerable. Yet
Congress did little to stop it. Perhaps the next administration
will ignore it as arbitrarily as this Administration is using it
to empower Iran.
THE RELATION BETWEEN IRAN'S MILITARY NUCLEAR PROGRAM,
INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILES AND SOME REQUIREMENTS OF THE
JCPOA
FACT: The Verification Agency Is Forbidden Access To The Most Likely
Places For Developing Nuclear Weaponry.
The Administration says this deal is focused on Iran's making
nuclear weapons, not on other bad behavior such as spending its
money on terrorists to terrorize. But Iran has a "civilian"
nuclear program and a military nuclear program. The JCPOA says
very little about Possible Military Dimensions (PMD), but Iran has
said emphatically that its military sites will not be open to
inspection. And it is the "military sites" where the action
probably is.
The White House claims it is blocking Iran from producing a bomb.
The White House website provides us with the major reasons
it believes Iran is blocked from building a nuclear bomb.
Of the four roadblocks to the bomb, two concern how the JCPOA
prevents uranium from being enriched at the Natanz and Fordow
facilities and one is about how the plutonium reactor at Arak
'can't produce any weapons-grade plutonium'. But these sites have
already been blown. As Clare Lopez wrote (April 15, 2015, see here.)
The critical issues before us then are not so
much about the number of centrifuges, or which generation of
centrifuges, or what level of enrichment will be allowed to Iran
going forward at the show case sites: rather, we must ask why and
how our negotiators have themselves been spun up to dither
endlessly, but only about sites already in the public domain.
Iran's secret parallel nuclear weapons program remains unmentioned
and untouched."
The fourth argument on the WH Site touches on the problem of
how the JPCOA inspectors will handle yet unidentified sites. How
does it block "a covert pathway to building a secret nuclear
program." Iran has already said that military facilities can not
be inspected. If an exception is made, Iranian technicians will
do sample collection. At best, IAEA might view the procedure from
cameras, which is not good enough for a proper assessment. (See
Olli Heinonen's paper, Section on Compliance, Verification,
Enforcement).
Yet, according to the White House, "Basically, from the minute
materials that could be used for a weapon comes out of the ground
to the minute it is shipped out of the country, the IAEA will
have eyes on it and anywhere Iran could try and take it."
Considering the effort it took for these zealous IAEA inspectors
to get to inspect Parchin — and then it was the Iranians that
did the collection — this seems a blithe, almost childish,
dismissal of a very serious problem. Iran doesn't fear the
verification inspectors. The political fix is in.
FACT: U.S. Will Help Iran To Obtain Nuclear Weapons.
A particularly creepy set of commitments on the part of the
PS5+1 is described in the JCPOA Annex III, which envisions nuclear
cooperation between Iran and subsets of PS5+1, mutually determined
and focused on shared experience and technical implementation and
improvement of Iran's "reactors, fuels and associated
technologies, facilities and processes,"
(see here.) For example:
10.D.1 pledges us to: "Co-operation in the form of
training courses and workshops to strengthen Iran's ability to
prevent, protect and respond to nuclear security threats to
nuclear facilities and systems as well as to enable effective and
sustainable nuclear security and physical protection systems;"
10.D.2 pledges us to "Co-operation through training and
workshops to strengthen Iran's ability to protect against, and
respond to nuclear security threats, including sabotage, as well
as to enable effective and sustainable nuclear security and
physical protection systems."
Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon put it this way:
"The United States and its partners have just
become the international protectors of the Iranian nuclear
program. Instead of rolling back the Iranian nuclear program,
we're now legally obligated to help the Iranians build it up and
protect it," said one Western source present in Vienna and who is
apprised of the details of the deal. here.
The JCPOA also specifically says that America and its cohorts
will "facilitate exchanges and visits to nuclear power plants
outside of Iran." This also means that we will not be able to
determine the extent of what Iran learns from this. Claudia Rosett wrote this
(August
7, 2015. here):
The Iran deal does not say exactly which nuclear plants among the
world powers will host these nuclear tours for Iran. Like many
aspects of this deal, the nitty gritty will likely be handled by
U.S. officials in secret councils, under captions such as "Nuclear
safety." Whose safety, exactly? Let's spell this out: If you
happen to live downwind of a nuclear power plant, do you really
want officials from Iran — world's leading state sponsor of
terrorism — casing the joint?
[...]
Obama administration officials have been justifying these
arrangements on grounds that their first priority — the blinkered
aim of this deal — is to ensure that Iran's nuclear program is
"exclusively peaceful." On that premise, in this Iran deal, they
propose to endow Iran with training in running a modern
"exclusively peaceful" nuclear infrastructure.
Combine these facts with Fusion Technology.
The American administration says that Iran is working only on
peaceful nuclear enterprises, ignoring that the deal commits the
P5+1 to help them with fusion technology. Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum
writes (see
here) that the JCPOA:
leaves them "with 1500 kg of 20% enriched U235. That's enough
for quick conversion to 8 to 10 Hiroshima-size A-bombs (atom
bombs) containing 25-30 kg each of 90% U235." More likely, the
Iranians will focus on using nuclear fusion to develop "a hydrogen
fusion bomb of the sort that vaporized the island of Bimini: an
H-bomb."
Controlled fusion potentially may have many peaceful uses
in the future, but not now. It is extremely difficult to work with,
while the uncontrolled fusion used to make H-bombs is
relatively manageable.
Add A Delivery System: Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.
Ballistic missiles are not needed for Iran to reach Israel.
They are sufficient to travel to the United States loaded with
nuclear bombs. And the U.S., according to Iran, is their main
enemy; it's the 'Great Satan.'
What experts fear most is an attack
on our electric grid. A few bombs properly set off could disable
the country. Ambassador Henry Cooper
here) describes the potentially catastrophic Electro-Magnetic
Pulse (EMP) effects, pointing out that "a burst over the
continental U.S. could bring our entire "just in time" economy to
an indefinite standstill—we could lose for many months the
electric power grid and our communications, transportation,
banking and other critical infrastructure systems upon which we
depend for survival... most Americans would perish for lack of
food and other necessities. For example, diabetics without Insulin
would die, as would others without critically needed prescriptions
filled. How long would it be before civil order would break down
if those in our cities were without the benefits of our globally
dependent, just-in-time economy? And then what?"
Recognize That Obama Is Shielding Iran's Real Nuclear Program from Harm.
Obama's Jew-baiting increased outrageously when he feared the
JCPOA might be shot down. Since then, he has focused on making
sure Israel does not interfere with Iran's plans. Lori Lowenthal
Marcus writes (October 23,
2015,
here): "ever since 2012, the United States has been spying on
Israel in order to prevent the Jewish State from attacking
suspected Iranian nuclear sites, according to Friday's Wall
Street Journal... The White House had sent an additional
aircraft carrier to the region after learning that Israeli
aircraft had flown into Iranian airspace in what U.S. officials
feared was a test run for an attack on Iran's Fordow plant. The
carriers had attack aircraft on board prepared to respond to any
Israeli attack on Iran."
No deductive power is necessary to realize that Iran
does not have peaceful intent. They have spoken up for themselves.
The New York Post Editorial Board (August 13, 2015, here)
reports that
Mohammad Javad Zarif was in Lebanon in August, meeting with the head Hezbollah terrorist, Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah's TV station al-Manar reported, "Zarif said from Beirut that the nuclear agreement between Tehran and the world powers created a historic opportunity for regional cooperation to fight extremism and face threats posed by the Zionist entity."
Translation: With a "signing bonus" to Iran of $100 billion or more, the nuke deal will empower the Islamic Republic to send more cash, rockets and other arms to Hezbollah and other anti-Israel terrorist groups.
It will also boost Tehran's regional prestige — allowing it to
bully other nations into greater hostility toward Israel."
A video called "Believe Them - NO Nukes
for Iran",
see here,
makes the same point.
It is the combination of sharing our knowledge with Iran
including how to use fusion power to make hydrogen bombs, their
work on developing a ballistic missile capable of carrying bombs
to the U.S., Obama's protecting Iran from Israel, and the Iranian
hatred of US and Israel that makes JCPOA such a menace to regional
and world stability.
CONCLUSIONS
In summary, ObamaDeal is cut from the same cloth as other Obama
projects. Prez Obama has an almost unblemished record for picking
the wrong side and doing the wrong thing. Like ObamaCare it is
poorly defined and designed to do the opposite of its supposed
goal, in this case, preventing Iran from making a nuclear bomb.
Its promoters are chock full of reassurances that ignore baleful
outcomes that are already becoming visible and it rests on
trusting the unreliable.
The main objection to getting America out of a lemon of a deal
is that the U.N. will remove sanctions anyway. But there's more to
the JCPOA than sanctions. Containing Iran's nuclear program
depends on timely verification and swift enforcement. As it
stands, this Deal paralyzes us more than it binds Iran. If we were
not party to this Deal, we wouldn't need to waste inordinate
amounts of time and effort trying to prevail upon Iran
pretty-please to allow inspection of suspected sites.
Detaching U.S. from this contract will give America more
flexibility to use appropriate means to prevent a nuclear-armed
Iran.
Adoption of JCPOA in the U.S. can be undone with an active
educational campaign that exposes the dangers of the agreement; by
legal means and by hampering the free exchange of Iran's
money.
Freed of our obligations under JCPOA, we will be able to treat
friends as friends and enemies as enemies, instead of pretending
we can tame Iran's mad mullahs into civilized behavior. An America
that acts effectively will give confidence to the Sunni countries
that now, with good reason, fear Iran's power play. It may reduce
their need to own bombs themselves. At the very least, we won't
need to open our facilities to Iranian scientists or train Iranian
technicians in how to make hydrogen bombs. We won't be in the
ridiculous position of preventing countries such as Israel, Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf States from hindering Iran while Iran develops
nuclear weaponry to use against us.
The Administration main way of avoiding further inquiry into
JCPOA is to insist it's all over. It's a done deal. There's no
more to be said.
It is not over, not until the bombs fall or until we
make sure Iran has no bombs to throw at us, whichever comes
first.
Joel Pollak writes about states rights. He notes that "
States and local governments do not play much of a role in foreign
policy. However, they cannot be forced to implement an
international treaty or agreement that is not self-executing—i.e.
one whose implementation requires new congressional laws." And
they are in control of who bids on state contracts. Moreover, " 30
states have passed divestment laws, roughly a dozen have passed
contracting restrictions, and some have passed supplemental
legislation, such as a 2012 law passed in California that applies
to the state's insurance industry." These forbid "pension funds
and contractors from providing economic benefits to Iranian
companies and the Iranian regime." As Pollak points out, "That
leaves great power in the states' hands to trigger the deal's
collapse—or force Obama to re-negotiate."
LOOKING BEYOND STRATEGY AT THE STILL-HIDDEN FLAWS IN IRAN DEAL.
by Louis René Beres
The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which the U.S. is a
party, is legal under the Constitution. It explicitly "obligates
its nuclear-weapon State Parties '...not in any way to assist,
encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture
or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive
devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices'." As
Louis Beres points out, this means that JCPOA is in violation of
Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution, commonly known as the
Supremacy Clause. JCPOA is also in violation of the 1948 Genocide
Convention, which "criminalizes not only genocide per se, but also
'conspiracy to commit genocide,' and
'direct and public incitement to commit genocide.'"
THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL'S FALLOUT ON THE UNITED NATIONS
Salomon Benzimra
The deal was between members of the Security Council of the United
Nations( UNSC) plus Germany and Iran. Salomon Benzimra writes of
problems the JCPOA makes for the United Nations because the JCPOA
would negate several UNSC resolutions currently in effect that
call on UN members to punish acts of terrorism. The UN Charter
states, "All Members shall refrain...from the threat or use of
force against the territorial integrity or political independence
of any state..." (Art. 2[4])" but the Iranian mullahs rant against
Israel and declare they will destroy her. As Benzimra points out,
"it is worrisome that the major world powers, led by the U.S. administration, have concocted the lame JCPOA agreement which, beyond all its flaws, casts a serious doubt — by commission and omission — on whatever credibility the United Nations still has as an international institution designed to preserve world peace and fair relations between its member states.
WILL THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IMPLEMENT THE STRINGENT SANCTIONS AUTHORIZED UNDER THE IRAN AGREEMENT?
by Patrick CLawson
Patric Clawson writes about Iran's banking structure and how the
JCPOA might impact them, impeding normal trade. He discusses how
sanctions would impact Iran's banking practices in several areas:
"sanctioning foreign banks involved in Iran trade, supporting
seizure of Iranian assets, highlighting the risks from Iranian
deceptive financial practices, and maintaining regulatory
pressure." As an example, private U.S. lawyers and plaintiffs have to date seized
some $46 billion of Iranian assets because of Iranian support of
terrorist attacks against specific Americans. Because regulator pressure has been
maintained, many major international banks have suffered "billions
of dollars in fines for sanctions violations or actions including
improper handling of mortgages and manipulating interest rates and
foreign exchange rates." Clawson concludes, "Even if the Obama
team does little to retain the pressure on foreign financial
institutions, the next U.S. administration could decide to be more
proactive. Much could be done within the framework of the JCPOA
because Washington has only pledged to take extremely modest
steps. The failure of the Obama administration to clarify the
meaning of various provisions — which on their face appear to
provide much sanctions relief but on close reading suggest that
need not be the case — has fed the critics' skepticism about what
the Obama team plans to do."
As Lev Haolam put it:
"This Palestinian mother was shown such kindness by Jews when her
young son was treated, free of charge, for his heart problem in
an Israeli hospital. She freely acknowledges this, but she still
hopes that her child will grow up to be a martyr. This video is a
rare look into the mind of someone who worships death and
destruction. She describes the difference between her culture and
all of Western society perfectly when she explains that for her
people life is meaningless. Please share, it is so important that
people see this." (Dr. History, August 2015).
Return to What We Are Talking About
THE POLITICAL NATURE OF TODAY'S MIDDLE EAST STUDIES
by Andrew C. McCarthy
Andrew McCarthy writes about Edward Said, a major corrupter of
an entire area of academic study: Middle East studies. He
eventually tainted sister department such as linguistics and
political science in many universities. His method of attack was
simple. He decreed that Westerners could not understand the Middle
East and, even more damaging, they were only interested in
justifying colonialism. "The point of pursuing knowledge about
'the languages, culture, history, and sociology of societies of
the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent,'" Said elaborated,
"was to gain more control over the 'subject races' by making
'their management easy and profitable.'" He buffaloed otherwise
intelligent academics into accepting this nonsense. He helped make
"modern Middle East studies .. a political movement aligning
leftism and Islamism under the guise of an academic discipline."
This included demonizing Jews and accepting the myth that there
existed a Palestinian people whose land was occupied by Israel.
The Arabs and their geographically-challenged media cohort
claim that the Arab village of Susiya has been there for centuries
and the authorities had no right to expel the villagers from their
homes. There indeed was an ancient town of Susiya, but it was
Jewish and is now an archeological site. Some Arabs, who actually
live in Yatta in the Palestinian Authority sector, in recent years
and illegally put up some structures in Susiya as part of a land
grab funded by the European Union. The Supreme Court heard the
case and ordered demolition. The pro-Arab press and Western
diplomats howled in outrage.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL'S ISLAMIST PROBLEM CONTINUES, SENIOR FIGURE ACCUSED OF MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD LINK
by Donna Rachel Edmunds
Donna Rachel Edmunds writes about the hitherto-denied
connection between a senior Amnesty International (AI) official
and the Muslim Brotherhood. AI said: "Amnesty
International does, however, take very seriously any allegations
that would call into question our impartiality and is therefore
investigating the issues raised." Peter Kolding, a reader of the original
article,
pointed out an ironic inconsistency; he
wrote: "Let's just understand this: An organization accused of
partiality, and with a grotesque record of malice, lies and
contempt for democracy and the sovereignty of nations, will be
investigating its own impartiality."
BOSTON UNIVERSITY PROF BLAMES U.S. FOR ISLAMIC STATE SEX SLAVERY
by Robert Spencer
In this article, Robert Spencer dismembers Kecia Ali's defense
of Muslim sex-slavery. In a recent article, she wrote,
"In focusing on current abuses in the Middle East, perpetrated
by those claiming the mantle of Islam, Americans — whose
Constitution continues to permit enslavement as punishment for
crime — deflect attention from partial U.S. for the
current crisis in Iraq."
Spencer retorts, "See, the Islamic State doesn't practice sex slavery because it is sanctioned in the Qur'an and Sunnah, but because the U.S. did bad things in Iraq. This is what passes for analysis on most university campuses these days."
IRAN, HEZBOLLAH ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR 9/11, RULES FEDERAL JUDGE
by Janice Kephart
Clever pro-Iranian media suggest Iran is all talk, no do. It
rants. It says outrageous things. But what has Iran actually done?
Hmn? Of course, this works best when written for the ignorant, the
readers of the New York Times, for example, an audience
that happily ignores that Iran has done both Hezbollah — and
at the moment — Hamas proud. Their weapons storehouses are
stocked to the brim. Their training camps are full. True, Iran's
beleaguered client, Assad of Syria, has his hands full staying
alive despite Iran's prodigious help. So, under the radar of that
civil war, Iran has been directly attacking the Jews who live on
the Golan Heights (See Benjamin Korn,
here).
More generally, Iran has been attacking
Western countries directly and outside of the Middle East for
sometime now. It was a major contributor to the 9/11 attack.
Janice Kephart writes about "the case of Fiona Havlish, et
al v. Usama Bin Laden, et al, 03-CV-9848 (GBD) and is
part of the consolidated proceeding In Re Terrorist Attacks on
September 11, 2001, Civil Action No. 03 MDL 1570 (GBD)." Based on
the "preponderance of the evidence", the Islamic Republic of Iran and
its offshoot, Hezbollah, were indicted by a US judge of "providing
material support" for the 9/11 attack on the USA. Iran began
planning 9/11 in the mid 1980s, when it set up a terrorist task
force to plan "unconventional attacks." But this has
received little publicity.
There are relatively few hate crimes committed against
Muslims. As a group, they are more likely to commit hate crimes
than be victimized by them. Yet, being labeled an Islamophob is
beginning to have serious consequences. Muslims allow no criticism
of Islam and are seeking to criminalize 'Islamophobic' speech and
writing. Should that happen, the fact that the text is completely
factual will be no excuse; it will still be treated as a criminal
offense. Denis MacEoin explores some of the background of a ploy
that threatens to restrict Western freedom of speech.
In recent years, the mainline Protestant churches — joined by
the niche Quakers and Mennonites — have wholeheartedly subscribed
to the political BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign
intended to destroy Israel. Simultaneously, ignoring history,
Bible and cultural differences, their theology now asserts that it
is not the Jews but the Palestinian Arabs, a 'people' that, in
1964, sprung full-grown and in an instant from Yasir Arafat's brow,
that are the ancient Israelites. Paul Merkley writes of this
bizarre inversion of factual history. There is one other notable
correlation with the churches adopting this Arabian
counter-history. As Merkley pointed out previously (here), the United Churches of Christ "has lost approximately
300,000 members (about 20% of its membership) since 2005, the year
when its convention passed its first divestment resolution."
Indeed, the rate at which the Methodist, Episcopal and Lutheran
churches have also lost members makes the designation "Mainline
Protestantism" questionable.
WHY WAS A NAZI FLAG FLYING FROM A JERUSALEM HOTEL IN THE 1930S?
by Lenny Ben David
Lenny Ben David presents historic pictures of the Fast Hotel
near the Jaffa Gate. It served kosher food but its owners were
Protestants, members of a community of German Templars in
Jerusalem. And in 1933, it housed the German Consulate, complete
with Nazi flag. The hotel lasted longer than the Nazis, but it too
is now gone.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
Think-Israel tends to use salafist rather than
extremist or Islamist or militant or
fundamentalist or activist to describe generically a
pious Muslim, one who sticks as closely as possible to the
unfiltered words and actions of Mohammad and the first three
generations of Muslims, including, especially, the Companions of
the Prophet. In modeling himself as closely as he can on the
preachings and practices of Mohammad, a salafist can in modern
terms be precisely described as an uninhibited terrorist, a
theological supersessionist, a political supremacist who believes
Islam and sharia law must dominate and a social barbarian, who
wages jihad with whatever tools are available.
Thanks to the high quality of whitewash supplied by sympathetic
propagandists, he seldom is so described.
We present some articles on the San Remo Conference. Think-Israel
will be adding to this Section and adding additional material by
August. Thanks to the machinations of Murphy, we have not been
able to upload many articles.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SAN REMO RESOLUTION
THE SAN REMO RESOLUTION
April 25, 1920
This agreement between post-World War I allied powers (Britain, France, Italy, Japan) was adopted on April 25, 1920 during the San Remo Conference. The Mandate for Palestine was based on this resolution; it incorporated the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the Covenant of the League of Nation's Article 22. Britain was charged with establishing a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. Terroritorial boundaries were not decided until four years after.
It was agreed —
(a) To accept the terms of the Mandates Article as given below with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the proces-verbal an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous afternoon by the undertaking given by the French Government that they recognized this protectorate as being at an end.
(b) that the terms of the Mandates Article should be as follows:
The High Contracting Parties agree that Syria and Mesopotamia shall, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22, Part I (Covenant of the League of Nations), be provisionally recognized as independent States, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The boundaries of the said States will be determined, and the selection of the Mandatories made, by the Principal Allied Powers.
The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
La Puissance mandataire s'engage a nommer dans le plus bref delai une Commission speciale pour etudier toute question et toute reclamation concernant les differentes communautes religieuses et en etablir le reglement. Il sera tenu compte dans la composition de cette Commission des interets religieux en jeu. Le President de la Commission sera nomme par le Conseil de la Societe des Nations.
The terms of the mandates in respect of the above territories will be formulated by the Principal Allied Powers and submitted to the Council of the League of Nations for approval.
Turkey hereby undertakes, in accordance with the provisions of Article [132 of the Treaty of Sevres] to accept any decisions which may be taken in this connection.
(c) Les mandataires choisis par les principales Puissances allies sont: la France pour la Syrie, et la Grand Bretagne pour la Mesopotamie, et la Palestine.
In reference to the above decision the Supreme Council took note of the following reservation of the Italian Delegation:
La Delegation Italienne en consideration des grands interets economiques que l'Italie en tant que puissance exclusivement mediterraneenne possede en Asie Mineure, reserve son approbation a la presente resolution, jusqu'au reglement des interets italiens en Turquie d'Asia.
THE FEAR OF VIOLATING AN OATH WAS OVERTURNED: THE SAN REMO
CONFERENCE 95 YEARS AGO
Menahem Rahat
The establishment of many of the Middle East countries was
determined at a League of Nations congress at San Remo some
ninety-five years ago. There, the international community gave the
Jewish people an irrevocable trust to its ancient land, with the
assurance that it would eventually create a Jewish State. Yet few
Israelis know of the Conference, and successive administrations,
in their quest for peace with recalcitrant neighbors, seldom
allude to it. Menahem Rahat explores its power to wipe out Jewish
uneasiness at renewing ownership of its land and encouraging its rebirth.
SHOULD JEWS RECLAIM THE WORDS "PALESTINE" AND "PALESTINIAN"?
by Richard Mather
As Richard Mather points out, "the postmodern notion of a
deep-rooted Arab Palestinian culture is a sham." The myth-makers
assert that the local Arabs in Israel and its territories are a
people who have been there since time immemorial. Mather presents
some pertinent facts that contradict the Arab fantasy and make
clear the "Palestinian people" has no coherency and is mainly a
cludge of Arabs coming from Syria, Egypt and other parts of the
Arab world. The land had a meager population for centuries. In the
entire area, there was a little over a quarter of a million
non-Jews in 1800 and a little less than half million in 1890.
Then, the population rose began to rise more rapidly, not
coincidentally just when the Jews, coming from Europe to redeem
their land, creating economic opportunities for Arabs coming in
from neighboring land.
Salomon Benzimra points out the significance of the Sam Remo
Conference. For one, "for the first time in history, Palestine
became a legal and political entity." The so-called
Palestinian people — the local Arabs in Israel and the
Territories — had never had a state or sovereignty. Also, the
"de jure sovereignty of Palestine was vested in the Jewish
people." The San Remo conference was, as Benzimra notes,"a major
historical milestone," yet in recent time, the irrevocable grant
of sovereignty over the Land of Israel by the Jewish people made
by the international community has hardly been mentioned, thus
allowing nonsensical claims that the Jews were illegally occupying
the land to be taken seriously [emphasis added].
ISRAEL NEEDS TO STOP ARGUING THE PALESTINIANS' CASE AND START ARGUING ITS OWN
by Evelyn Gordon
Evelyn Gordon writes an article that shouldn't have to be
written.
As the title says, it's time Israel stopped acting as unofficial
spokesmen pleading the Palestinian cause. With all its savvy in
medicine and technology, one would think she could come up with some
intelligent way to talk to the world and tell it about the irrevocable
right of the Children of Israel to the Land of Israel.
Tabitha Koral writes of a subspecies of Jew bred by the
centuries in which Jews lacked a sovereign country and often lived as
dhimmis. Taking on the attitudes of those that despised them,
these Jewish turncoats promote any action that will weaken
Israel. Korol writes specifically of Jay Michaelson,
contributing editor to the Forward, who advocates giving up
Jewish land to the Arabs for a spurious peace.
Think-Israel tends to use salafist rather than
extremist or Islamist or militant or
fundamentalist or activist to describe generically a
pious Muslim, one who sticks as closely as possible to the
unfiltered words and actions of Mohammad and the first three
generations of Muslims, including, especially, the Companions of
the Prophet. In modeling himself as closely as he can on the
preachings and practices of Mohammad, a salafist can in modern
terms be precisely described as an uninhibited terrorist, a
theological supersessionist, a political supremacist who believes
Islam and sharia law must dominate and a social barbarian, who
wages jihad with whatever tools are available.
Thanks to the high quality of whitewash supplied by sympathetic
propagandists, he seldom is so described.
THIS ISSUE'S THEMES
This issue is about the terrorist groups that are reshaping
the map of the Middle East.
THE FIRST THREE SECTIONS in this issue describe some
major terrorist groups and their impact on the Middle East in
general and on Israel in particular.
When Israel became a state, its neighbors attacked it, using
conventional warfare. But new methods of warfare were needed once
the Arab countries realized they weren't going to beat Israel
militarily. They turned to waging effective propaganda campaigns,
convincing those that wanted to be convinced that, despite all
evidence to the contrary, Israel was occupying Arab land and was
abusing the Arab Palestinians. This new attitude towards Israel
justified the well-organized terror attacks that began targeting
Israel and Jews systematically. In 1964, Yassar Arafat declared
the local Arabs were a separate people, retroactively to be known
as Palestinians. He then created the Fatah, a terrorist group
devoted to killing Jews, both soldiers and civilians. Hamas was
established in Gaza in 1987-88 by the Muslim Brotherhood, also with
the specific purpose of destroying Israel.
But what has been most successful has been asymmetrical
warfare, waged by 'lone wolves,' the younger the better. A Jewish
family is stabbed in their sleep one night when an Arab neighbor
sneaks into their house; a family driving on the road is shot by a
sniper another day; Jews are struck by Arabs steering cars and
trucks and bulldozers at them on still other days. Teenagers, two
or three at a time, are kidnapped and slaughtered. This asymmetric
warfare has been highly successful. Uniforms aren't necessary.
Expensive weaponry isn't necessary. A few dollars worth of
gasoline and explosive or missiles that are so poorly constructed
they hit almost randomly inside and outside of Gaza force Israel
to response with the Iron Dome system, high-tech and expensive,
with each interception costing some $60,000
(see here).
The size of a terrorist group becomes less important. Israel won't
send out a IDF unit to fight a couple of 12-year olds throwing heavy rocks. On
the other hand, a terrorist group can grow in size and
organization. If it has enough recruits and money and
organizational ability, it can become big enough to act almost as
a sovereign state. Limitations on weaponry and on the use of
biological and chemical warfare that have evolved over the years
are ignored.
Once confined almost exclusively to harassing Israel, the new
terrorism threatens the entire area. These terrorists often act
like sovereign states themselves, without giving up any of their
intrinsic thuggish viciousness. It is, in fact, often difficult
to tell the difference between a terrorist state and a terrorist
gang. ISIS — The Islamic State — is a terrorist gang that has acquired land, oil fields
and terrorist affiliates that it supports with funding, weapons
and training; it rules harshly over a large civilian population.
Iran — The Islamic Republic — is a sovereign state that has land and oil fields and
terrorizes a huge civilian population; it has acquired terrorist
gangs and sovereign states — what's left of Syria and
possibly Yemen via the Houthis — as affiliates that it
supports with funding, weapons and training.
In recent times, except for low-keyed inter-clan and
inter-tribe skirmishes, attacks have involved defined states:
attacks have been encouraged by a government against a specific
group, for example, the Armenian massacre; a structured proxy
group fights against the Government, such as Hezbollah in the
civil war in Lebanon; or the war is between two sovereign powers
as between Iran and Iraq. The kings in power when many of the Arab
countries were mandated into existence in the 1920s were mostly
deposed, replaced by secular or salafist governments, equally or
more repressive. But the states always had two features: borders
and rulers. In the new Middle East, that is no longer a reliable
statement.
Henri J. Barkey, a professor of international relations at Lehigh
University, made the point this way April 21, 2015 in the
Washington Post
(see here):
The state as we know it is vanishing in the Middle East.
Strife in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, foreign intrusion from
states within the region and outside it, and dreadful rule by
self-serving elites have all contributed to the destruction of
societies, infrastructure and systems of governance. Nonstate
actors of all kinds, most of them armed, are emerging to run their
own shows. Generations of mistrust underlie it all. [emphasis added]
In the transitional Middle East, sovereign states, major terror
groups and splinter gangs, ideologically, have much in common.
These Muslim terrorists — thugs, gangs and
sovereign states — are almost all salafists. They
believe that Islam must dominate all other religions and they are
all committed to pursue jihad until this comes true. They
disagree mainly on which entity should run the show. The supposed
'authentic' Syrian rebels that have received much weaponry from
the US are no exception. A large number of the group's fighters
are seasoned al-Qaeda members.
These groups cooperate with each other and knife each other,
often at the same time. Their common worship of Mohammad's ways
and writings doesn't stop them from internecine fighting. From
Mohammad's time, it never has.
As EndTimes, a reader of the
Daily Caller
(see here) put it:
"Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam. One
calls itself the Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the
Islamic State. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first
on the region and then on the entire world. They just disagree
among themselves who will be the ruler of that empire."
They do have different personalities, depending on which ones
of their commonality of features are emphasized. Is the target
domestic or global? Is the goal to infiltrate the host country's
infrastructure and, like a cancer, itself become the
infrastructure or openly to behead resisters and "traitors" to
change the country's life style rapidly and force adherence to
sharia law? Do they act quietly or with much publicity? Do they
use "inoffensive" weapons — stones, knives, cars and
home-made explosives — on a few victims at a time but again
and again without end or do they plan nuclear extermination of
whole populations at a single time?
At the moment, ISIS tops the hit parade. It is a study in
contrasts. It can plan and organize with the best and behave with
the worst. ISIS is well-organized and plans meticulously but
imaginatively. The leadership understands the values of those
whose land they have taken over and how fast they can impose
sharia law. They know how to attract the malleable and persuade
the reluctant. They are good businessmen and know how to keep
money coming in. They are thugs and aren't scrupulous on how they
keep the money flowing. They use modern methods of social
networking to attract recruits, yet they advocate that women are
for breeding and are chattel under their father's or husband's
complete control. They use sexual barbarism and large-scale
slaughter as weapons of terror. They are unashamedly bestial,
beheading wholesale, raping women and children, showing no
civilized response to human suffering. A reader,
RufusFirefly,
(see here) summed it up this way:
For a religion
who says it's devoted to God they sure have a strange way of
expressing that devotion. The sights of headless bodies, bodies
strung up like the carcasses of animals, people burned to death in
cages, people getting their hands cut off, women and pre-pubescent
little girls sold as sex slaves. You know, if we didn't know
better we would say this looks a lot like something Lucifer would
highly approve of.
These groups may have an ideology that is medieval, but their
ambitions are transnational. It is curious that they are often
described or market themselves in terms more commonly associated
with modern business and trade than religion: al-Qaeda
franchises, Muslim Brotherhood offshoots, ISIS market shares,
al-Qaeda associates. This is from a Pri September 2014 article,
"With terrorism, as with business, it's all about market share," (see here):
Who ever heard of a terrorist group announcing the opening of its
latest "branch?" Yet that's what happened a couple of weeks ago,
when al-Qaeda announced in a video from its leader, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, that it was opening al-Qaeda in the Indian
Subcontinent. Al-Zawahiri said that it had taken more than two
years "to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian subcontinent into a
single entity." Sounds like an M&A strategy, no?
It did to Sandip Roy, a senior editor at the Indian news site Firstpost. "I looked at it and I thought, 'All he lacks is a PowerPoint presentation.'"
In fact, the website Medium has created just the sort of PowerPoint presentation an ISIS exec might use if he were pitching to investors. It's complete with cash flow, market share and competitive advantages.
Roy says that, shortly before the al-Qaeda video was released, Burger King had announced its own expansion into India. He was struck by the parallels between the two.
He believes al-Qaeda is acting like the big traditional player,
while ISIS, which actually spun off from al-Qaeda, is the newer
and "much more hip" start-up. "It's kind of like the classic IBM
versus Apple starting out in a garage," he says.
[...] The bigger message, for Roy, is that al-Qaeda realizes it no
longer possesses a monopoly on "Terror Inc."
The reader may notice that we say little about one of the most
insidious of the salafist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood. While
they remain active in the West, they seem to be lying low in the
Middle East. They may have temporarily changed their venue or they
may be waiting for things to settle down.
We do discuss how the changes in the organization and scope
of terror groups has forced modifications in how countries
respond. The previous model of one country's identifiable soldiers
clashing with another country's troops in specific locations isn't
often useful. Several articles are devoted to detailing some of
the new thinking, which has stopped regarding terrorism as an
occasional nuisance and has started recognizing that terror
organizations are the new ethnic group/state/corporate
organization; that asymmetric warfare is the new way of waging
war; and that the new warfare is without legal or moral constraint except
that it adheres to the precepts in the Koran.
One thing we can say with certainty: if we don't stop Islam's
takeover of the West and Far East now, we will be forced to try
later, under much less favorable conditions.
THE TWO MIDDLE SECTIONS ADDRESS THE REACTIONS OF ISRAEL AND THE
WEST. It was an easy decision for Israel to stay out of the
battles of her neighbors, they are none of them her friends. It is
difficult but so far possible to maintain vigil at her
borders, to stop shipments of weaponry to Hezbollah and quietly
to provide medical care and surgery to injured wounded rebels and
civilians. Like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, she is alarmed that
America and Europe don't seem to understand the consequences of
Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
The second section in this set is entitled "To Aid and Abet the
Enemy: Censor Thyself. Blame the Victim" and focuses on the
reactions in the West. It is so convenient to pretend that we
can maintain a civil society with just a few appeasements to the
Muslim life-style. Sometimes that works, at least for a while.
But in general, appeasement is perceived as weakness and Muslim
activists push to open these weak spots wide. We go from having
halal meat for the Muslims to not having pork for the
Christians. We go from having puff-pieces written in textbooks
describing Islam as the religion of peace to calling any
criticism of Islam criminal. When western law that contradicts
sharia is ignored in practice, little by little the individual
loses his right to run his own life. The protection afforded him
by the Constitution and the bill of Rights is corroded. Sharia
law takes hold in non-Muslim countries when the media and the
politicians trivialize Western ways of living or when they talk
about the importance of allowing individual rights but invent
loopholes that allow Sharia law to function. The actual victims
— the native populations of Western countries —
often contribute to their own victimization by self-censorship
and by not resisting the voices that are willing to give up
everyone's freedom to pacify the Muslim community.
THE LAST TWO SECTIONS ARE, AS USUAL, PUBLIC RELATIONS/PROPAGANDA
AND HISTORY. The first one
presents some of the bad-mouthers of Israel, whose propaganda
rants overpower any facts they might have about the events they
are supposed to report. Some exaggerate some minor details
and ignore the significant ones. Some invent factoids wholesale.
Some chastize anyone that has a bad word to say about Arabs.
Some blame the victim. Others invert the truth, painting Israel as
doing the bloody deeds of the Arabs and/or award the Palestinians
with the crown of innocence, rightly the property of Israel.
PA Mahmoud Abbas (left) described by Pope Francis (right) as an
"angel of peace"
The final section is the History Section. This time of the year
being dominated by preparation for Passover, actually celebrating
it and then repacking everything for next year, we present a story
of how hard it was for some Jewish soldiers serving in the
Palestine Brigade in World War 1 to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. The
massacre of the Armenians, the first genocide of the 20th Century,
is described and there's an article on the authentic Palestinian
refugees around at the end of World War 2: the Jews from the Arab
countries, who were forced out of places the Jews had lived in for
thousands of years, far longer than had the Arab invaders.
As Dan Illouz wrote in the January-February 2015 issue, "The
rise of the Islamic State has finally shocked some people into a
belated awareness of what's been going on in Middle East." ISIS
may be the newest and the nastiest, but ISIS has the same ideology
as do all salafist groups: they will wage jihad until they conquer
the world for Islam. When we assume ISIS is an anomaly in Islam,
we make the mistake of limiting the reach and spread of Resurgent
Islam to a relatively small number of terrorists. Even when we
know there are hundred, if not thousands, of variously-sized
terror groups, we ignore how many of them interact, concurrently
friends and enemies. We are wrong when we think 'lone-wolf'
terrorists function without a strong support structure. We are
just as wrong to attribute independence of thought and technique
to 'lone-wolf' terrorist groups.
To comprehend the enemy of current civilization, we have to
understand that our enemy's motive power is its adherence to the
terrorist preachings and teachings of Mohammad. "What would
Mohammad do? What would Mohammad say" is the way millions of
Muslims figure out how to interact with the world. Which terror
organization ends up as the rulers of the Middle East depends on
other factors: organizational ability, funding, the ability to
maintain a large stock of high-tech weaponry, the ability to
manipulate politicians, media and academics, the ability to
attract troops and just sheer luck.
Right now the thugs of Iran and ISIS are the heavy favorites,
but the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda are still in the running.
The possibility that Iran will make a bunch of bombs before it is
stopped OR that ISIS will overcome Iran and become the owner of
the nuclear bombs Prez Obama is graciously helping Iran to
develop OR that they cooperate is enough to give anyone
nightmares.
The Dail Mail UK, the original publishers of this
article by V.S. Naipaul wrote, "A long-term critic of Islam as a
global threat, he [Naipaul] also challenges those who say the
extremists have nothing to do with the real religion of Islam..."
Change ISIS to SALAFISTS and Naipaul's article might
appear even 50 years from now as an excellent summary of our
present day conflict.
THE TERROR STRATEGIST: SECRET FILES REVEAL THE STRUCTURE OF ISLAMIC STATE
by Christoph Reuter
According to documents accessed by Der Spiegel, Haji
Bakr was the Islamic State's strategist who planned the
organizational structure and the operations ISIS would perform to
take over parts of Syria and Iraq. Christoph Reuter writes about
the notes and organizational charts drawn up by Baki and
discovered after his death. They details ISIS mode of operation
and they clarify how ISIS's phenomenally rapid rise was possible.
It is also possible to reconstruct the events surrounding the
birth of ISIS from the initial membership of ex-officers from
Saddan Hussein's army and start-up funds from al-Qaeda. When they
targeted a town, they first set about getting information about
the religious and sexual activities of the members of the local
power structure. This gave ISIS the material to blackmail some of
the people, entice others to join them and list which people they
would need to eliminate. Controlling the populace, training the
troops and having the funds to carry out operations were prime
objectives. And when the infrastructure was in place, they
declared the caliphate was resurrected.
Life is simpler in the West. Adversaries are
well-defined and separate. They wear different uniforms. You root for one team or for another. Things are different in the Middle East. As
the Meir Amit Center demonstrates, arch enemies will trade and
create economic alliances while carrying on brutal actions against
each other. ISIS has conquered most of the Syrian oil fields in
northern and eastern Syria but they don't have the skilled workers
to maintain them. Syria supplies the workers. Syria needs oil and
gas. ISIS needs the revenues from the sale of oil and gas. They
worked out a deal. A side benefit is that ISIS is supplied with a
reliable source of electricity. When I read this article I thought
about how different things are in Israel. For some reason that I
don't understand, Israel supplies the Palestinian Arabs with
electricity for free. The Arabs show their gratitude by taking pot
shots at the men who come to fix the grid.
Olivier Guitta writes that terror groups
around the world have joined the Islamic State as affiliates. The
reward for affiliates is that they can share in ISIS's celebrity
status. In return, they contribute their ability to wreak terror
and destruction in their particular locales. Boko Haram had been a
particularly important asset for al-Qaeda, obtained training and
funding from al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), while helping AQIM
expand into Nigeria. It has shifted its allegiance to the Islamic
State, leaving al-Qaeda much weakened.
The nuclear framework agreement signed between Iran and world
powers, namely the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France
and Germany, on April 2, was defined by U.S. President Barack
Obama as an "historic understanding," while Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu defined the deal as "bad."
— Israel Commentary
(see here.)
"To my mind, a 'good deal' needs to bolt the door on the Iranians getting a nuclear weapon."
— David Petraeus, March 19, 2015,
(see here.)
With good reason, anyone who
can see two checker moves ahead worries about the Iranian
unswerving intention to build nuclear bombs. As this article by
David Daoud makes clear, non-Arab Iran is also building up its
holdings in neighboring Arab countries. As the introduction to
Daoud's article puts it, "With the fall of Yemen to Iranian-backed
rebels, the subordination of the Iraqi army to Iran-backed
militias, and the continuing dominance of Iranian proxies in Syria
and Lebanon, it seems that a new empire has emerged—right under
the nose of the United States."
A BAD AGREEMENT WITH IRAN WILL UNDERMINE MIDDLE EAST STABILITY
by Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall
Michael Segall sees the struggle in the Middle East as one
between "between the proponents of change — such as Islamic State,
Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran; and the proponents of
stability — the moderate Arab states including Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, the Gulf states, and Tunisia, along with Israel." This is
a particularly bad time for Iran to be given advantages. Segall
puts into succinct and precise language how Iran is outmaneuvering
the world. He confirms the trepidations most of us have felt as we
learn that Iran is not only continuing its nuclear weaponry
program but literally gaining ground — Arab country by Arab
country — as well as regional political power. Iran's
"growing entrenchment in the Syrian-Lebanese domain" and the
increased coordination of Hizbullah, Hamas and other Palestinian
terror organizations, will enable it to encircle Israel.
Institutions such as the European Union, the P5+1 and the American
administration, which should be stopping Iran's progress, aid and
abet her ascent, while reassuring us that all is well. Two of
Segall's conclusions — "the West repeatedly capitulates in
the negotiations" and "The Iranian regime will not change in
nature." — add up to a frightening future for the world.
Bernice Lipkin writes about a fatwa said to have been issued
by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, against Iran's
developing nuclear weapons. The fatwa simply doesn't fit with
Iran's monomania to build nuclear facilities or with
the bellicose statements of its leaders. Yet Western leaders,
including President Obama, have eagerly used the fatwa as linch pin
to reassure the world that Iran was building nuclear facilities
for peaceful purposes. It is not known where and when the fatwa
was issued, if it were actually issued. It doesn't have even a
fake birth certificate.
Prez Obama asserts the agreement with Iran will prevent war and
has called anyone who disagrees a warmonger. On much firmer
ground, Caroline Glick shows why Obama's policy of nuclear
appeasement will actually lead to a devastating war. A concerted
diplomatic effort might still work but only if it is linked to
collateral activities that would include supporting the Middle
East countries that are already in a de facto war with
Iran; wrecking Iran's nuclear installations ballistic missile
storage facilities; and striking Revolutionary Guards command and
control bases. With Obama in command, that won't happen. By
threats, promises, stubbornness, deceit, broken promises and
unexpected moves, Iran has routed the diplomats and, with Obama's
support, has paralyzed any effective way to stop her brazen
progress toward nuclear capability other than by warfare. This
forces other Middle Eastern countries to try to acquire nuclear
capability, making the possibility of a nuclear devastation in the
region all the more likely.
STRATEGIC FOLLY IN THE FRAMEWORK AGREEMENT WITH IRAN
By Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaacov Amidror
Yaacov Amidror makes a gloomy but realistic assessment of what
life in the Middle East will be like if the US and European powers
permit Iran to acquire nuclear weaponry and become a nuclear
power. In addition to creating a "new, violent Middle East," in
what is already an unstable region where thousands of civilians
have already been slaughtered, Iran would also become a global
power, with a heightened ability to inflict its Salafist ideas on
the rest of the world. It is mystifying that Prez Obama would
facilitate Iran's dominance and its horrifying consequences, when
even now it would only take a few days for the US to completely
destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. And he continues to thwart
Israel's ability to do so.
Like the Greek legend of the serpent Hydra, as we weaken or
destroy one band of terrorists, old ones have more freedom of
action and new ones pop up and become popular. Some terrorist
groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda and Hizbullah are
so well-established, they have cells, banking contacts, political
networks, (not necessarily legal) businesses and front groups
around the world. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood frequent the
American White House. To illustrate the point, Hizbullah, which
is dedicated to destroying Israel, is part of Lebanon's
government and has, as this map indicates, an extensive global
reach. It is more active in Europe than the map would suggest.
The European Union (EU) resisted labeling it a terrorist
organization for as long as it could. The EU finally banned
Hezbollah's political wing but its 'humanitarian' wing has
continued to procure weapons and raise funds for its terrorist
operations, which Hezbollah usually performs elsewhere other than
in Europe.
This section asked some general questions. What is the
commonality among the Muslim terrorist groups? How do they
interact among themselves? Deep down, below the cover story that
the Arab states are passionately concerned about their Palestinian
cousins, who after 65 years are still living segregated in camps
in these same Arab states, who do the leaders of these states
really see as the enemy? Are terror entities becoming
institutionalized in the Middle East? Given that the present-day
terrorists may destabilize the world more than the isms did
in the last century, how is the rest of the world to protect
itself? One of the essays suggests that our fundamental policy
should be to destroy the core belief system that nourishes
salafist terrorism: Islam itself.
PM
Netanyahu used this map in a recent address to AIPAC. It
illustrates the extent of the Iran-funded Hezbollah terrorist
network. (from Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, The
Jewish Press, 3mar2015. Ben-Gedalyah: "[Netanyahu] left out
Argentine, the site of the Hezbollah bombing in 1994 of the AIMA
center, but the map included Peru, the United States, India,
Thailand, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria,
Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, France, Germany and, of
course, Israel.")
Soeren Kern writes of a terrorist from
Morocco and his Spanish wife, who have recently had a child in the
Islamic State, on land which was once part of Syria. By birth, the
child is Spanish. His mother is one of more than 100 Spanish
citizens who have joined ISIS. Think of it. This ISIS couple
already has photos for their family album — look! look! there is Daddy
waving the heads of men he decapitated. He did it for Allah and
Islam. As a conscientious father concerned that his children
be brought up properly, it is likely he will teach them how to
bomb, decapitate, shoot, knife and otherwise rid the world of
those who go against Islam. He is a pious man and does what the
Koran tells him to. And as the jihadists of IS take wives and
start families, they will have a renewable home-grown source for
future terrorists in addition to the usual recruits, who come for
the romance, the excitement and the reassurance that Islam gives
them permission to act out their anger. As Kern points out, we
will soon have "a generation of Western passport-holding jihadi
parents who are — presumably — inculcating their "Western"
children with fundamentally anti-Western values."
Islam is an all-encompassing paean of hate. Many with advanced
insight insist Resurgent Islam is making a political ideological
statement. And it is. At the same time, its acts of terrorism are
making a statement about its core beliefs as a religion. Mark
Durie writes of Muslim slaughter of Christians because they are
Christian and of the Sura in the Koran that supports such
activity. Incidentally, the accompanying photo of Muslims beheading
Christians is sufficiently stylized that the Metropolitan Opera
could use it next time it presents a sympathetic songfest lauding
Muslim terrorists.
In some ways the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and ISIS are similar.
Both are excellent in organizing and planning an operation in
coordinated detail and in consolidating and expanding their gains.
They differ in that the MB prefers stealth jihad,
infiltrating a host country's infrastructure, creating a strong
network connection with politicians and academics and influencing
policy from within. ISIS prefers big, bold, fast and utterly
demoralizing operations. A matter of style, not ideology.
Albert Ahlert writes of the history of a group that has had many a
name change and currently is called ISI (Islamic State of Iraq),
ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), or ISIS (Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria), depending on what territory is
referenced. It's getting so big and stable, it often goes by its
short all-encompassing name: IS (Islamic State). MB, founded in
the 1920s, was the first in recent history to focus on bringing
back the Caliphate and Sharia. MB has directly spawned groups such
as Hamas and, if Egyptian sources are accurate, ISIS. And it has
influenced the formation of many other salafist groups, which
share the obsession of revitalizing Islam, recreating the
Caliphate and living under sharia law. ISIS is also linked to the
Muslim Brotherhood via al-Qaeda, which promoted its growth and
with which it has had a fluctuating relationship. Currently,
depending on the particular event, one can make a case that ISIS
and MB work hand in
glove (see
here) or are on the outs. Or, in typical Arab fashion,
denounce each other, while cooperating on other matters.
Much of Western
foreign policy in the Middle East is based on the assumption that
what drives the Arab states and unifies the people of the region
is the need to destroy that element perceived as alien, the Jewish
state. Without the irritant of Israel, the Arabs would be content,
peace and harmony would prevail. Paul Merkley suggests that recent
events such as the banding together of Sunni countries to destroy
the Shiite Houthi rule of Yemen show this is manufactured
nonsense. In actuality, the core animosity is the mutual hatred of
Sunni and Shi'ite, each out to prove it is authentic Islam, the
other a heretic imitation.
Dry Bones. The True Moslems, May 29, 2015.
As Merkley puts it, "what is tearing
the Middle East apart today is the fact that the Muslim powers
hate each other more than they hate us. This is not necessarily a
comfort. But it does make clear that we have a range of responses
that otherwise would be beyond consideration." He points out that
"the largest obstacle standing in the way of a recalculation of
diplomatic possibilities in the Middle East may well prove to be
the determination of the President of the United States and his
Secretary of State to keep on the world's agenda the hopeless
issue of resumption of the Peace talks between Israel and Mahmoud
Abbas."
COMPARING AL QAEDA AND ISIS: DIFFERENT GOALS, DIFFERENT TARGETS
by Daniel L. Byman
Daniel Byman compares the differences in
modus operandi and method of recruitment of two major Sunni
terror groups, Al Qaeda and ISIS. Both are salafist and both are
ambitious to be top dog in Islam, which they believe should be the
top dog religion in the world. Al-Qaeda regards the US as its
major enemy, and "the root cause of the Middle East's problems,"
and commits acts of terror often, as on 9/11, in dramatic and
spectacular ways. ISIS, which emerged in Iraq, saw as its first
task the securing of its local environment and since then has
extended its control over more and more of the region, doing so in
shockingly brutal ways. Terror groups that sign on as affiliates
tend to focus on the parent concerns, ISIS troops slaughtering the
local Shi'ites, al-Qaeda recruits attacking Western outposts.
Based on his analysis, Byman suggests counter tactics for the US.
I'm not sure I agree that the local Arab population will reject
ISIS's tactics, as they become more grotesque. The local Arabs in
Israel's Territories chose Hamas as against Fatah, gravitating to
the terror organization with the more open violence.
The overthrow of dictatorial regimes that began with the Arab
Spring has created much motion, much strife, displaced civilians
and a busy shuffling of government officials in and out of office,
but little increase in democracy or individual freedom. A most
significant consequence has been that more states have been unable
to maintain a normal or even a minimum administrative structure to
provide the services — access to education, food and water,
transportation, communication, public safety, etc. —
expected to some degree of even an incompetent government. On top
of these deprivations, civilians who are not actively engaged in
battle and jihad, suffer from life-threatening attacks by rival
jihadists and are caught in the crossfire as their own group
retaliates.
Many African states and gangs
have left primitive and inadequate and are now stumbling
around in passive non-functional, except for salafists such
as the Boko Haram. The UN is planning to do something about them,
just as soon as it finishes denouncing Israel for an almost
infinite list of wrong-doings. Lebanon is considered stable, if we
ignore the large number of Hezbollah in Parliament and the
government. Internal peace has been gained at the price of
civilized living, but it might not last because both ISIS and
Jabhat al-Nusra have announced their battle plans include fighting
Hezbollah. Meantime, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Libya have shrunk in
size as different salafist groups as well as the Kurds have
gouged out
large patches of land within the borders of the official states.
The new or at least transitional Middle East can roughly be
compared to feudal Europe in the Middle Ages. In the Middle East,
a recently restructured state is composed of fiefdoms controlled
by jihadi bands, which have pledged allegiance to one of the
bigger warlords, al-Qaeda or ISIS or Iran. Terrorist gangs and
clans run Libya, where a brigade might be providing protection for
the locals while fighting and raiding outsiders. ISIS now has
enough land so it can train new troops in actual battle against
the other major salafi groups; and the central government is
reduced to some fancy words on a piece of paper. In Yemen as in
ancient Gaul, the country is divided into three parts, each part
controlled by a different salafist faction, which is at war with
the other two. The new terrorist powers are mirror images in their
allegiance to the word and deed of Mohammad and their hatred of
the US and Israel. The old central government has abdicated,
leaving a vacancy the Iran-supported Houthis will likely
fill.
People search for survivors under the
rubble of houses destroyed by an air strike near Sanaa Airport in
Yemen, March 26, 2015. (Reuters/Khaled Abdullah)
This section discusses the state of disarray of the Arab states
in the Middle East and how Israel is coping with the situation. As
luck would have it, Israel has already had years of practice
balancing the safety of its populace with the fear of media and
political outcry if it harms one strand of an Arab's beard. For
well over a half century, a standard Arab ploy has been to hide
weaponry among civilians. It's win-win. If the Israelis avoid
targeting the area, their missiles are safe. If the IDF kills some
human shields in destroying a civilian-guarded missile site, the
Arabs gain inches of newspaper space and minutes of TV time, as
Israel is chastised for causing the death of innocent civilians.
At present, in dealing with multiple civil wars, Israel doesn't
support either side or, when more than two sides are at war, any
side. It nips attempts to place a terrorist presence on its
borders. And, quietly, it provides humanitarian and medical aid to
injured civilians living near its borders. Its attempts to prevent
future havoc by preventing Iran from making an atomic bomb have
been thwarted by the American President, who has been running
interference for Iran for some time now. As Louis Beres on April
22, 2015
put it:
"... it is effectively
certain that Israel will have to face a fully nuclear Iran
sometime in the next several years. It is also plausible that
Israel's overall strategic position has been compromised by
pertinent decisions of the Obama presidency, most recently, by the
Pentagon's surprise publication of a 1987 document detailing
once-secret elements of Israel's nuclear program [...] Israel will
soon have to: (1) reassess the regional "correlation of forces;"
and, correspondingly, (2) refashion its substantially complex
"order of battle." [...] Israel's nuclear arsenal offers a
potentially indispensable impediment to the actual regional use of
nuclear weapons. Joined with a fully-coherent strategic doctrine,
one that would include, inter alia, more explicit codifications of
counter-city ("counter-value") targeting, and also certain
enhanced efforts at ballistic missile defense, these weapons could
come to represent the entire Middle East's principal line of
defense against Iranian nuclear aggression, and regional nuclear
war.[emphasis added]
THE UPHEAVALS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND ISRAEL'S STRATEGIC
BALANCE
by Amos Yadlin and Carmit Valensi
For years, Arab propaganda claimed the
so-called Arab-Israeli conflict (or its lite version: the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict) was the root cause of whatever
bedeviled the Middle East. In 2010, the Arab Spring triggered a
set of events that unhappily have resulted in bloody salafist
attacks that have killed or injured hundreds of thousands of
people and taken large chunks of land out of several of the Arab
states. All of these new powers are sincere in their dedication to
promoting the dominance of Islam and the authority of sharia. Amos
Yadlin and Carmit Valensi suggest that what we are seeing is the
acting out of religious differences, where each group is certain
it is one that is correctly interpreting Mohammad's wishes. They
point out that the Arabs are no longer preoccupied with Israel,
now that they must deal with the viability and survival of their
own countries. Unfortunately, these new circumstances continue to
demand Israel's attention and will continue to do so. Asymmetric
conflict, border flare-ups, the local Arabs acting on the belief
that they are an ancient people and all of Israel was once a
Palestinian state can flare up. ISIS can decide to test out its
strength by provoking a fight. And there is Iran building a bomb,
undeterred by the EU, the UN or the USA. And yet the new
configuration creates opportunities. As Yadlin and Valensi note,
a "wide congruence of interests has come into being for
Israel and moderate Sunni Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, the
Gulf States, and Jordan. This represents an opportunity for
regional cooperation..." Egypt is blocking smuggling tunnels,
which makes it hard for Hamas to accumulate weapons of war. The
Kurds are pioneering the concept of an ethnic group with autonomy
that transcends state borders. Israel has much to contribute to
regional cooperation should partnerships with moderate Arab states
become possible. Israel needs to review its policy options.
A LEGAL AND OPERATIONAL ASSESSMENT OF ISRAEL'S TARGETING PRACTICES
by Michael Schmitt and John Merriam
Primarily using data from Israel's July 2014 excursion into
Gaza, Michael Schmitt and John Merriam examined Israel's
"targeting methods and even some of its specific positions on the
law of armed conflict (LOAC)," within the "unique operational and
strategic context in which the IDF operates." IDF is a conscript
force, not a professional army, so the IDF must take into account
that the public justifiably has a strong fear of capture or death
of its soldier-children in combat. So it puts a high priority on
operations such as discovering and destroying tunnels the Arabs
build to sneak up on troops. The IDF must also contend with the
Arabs putting "fighters and military objectives among civilian
persons and objects." To avoid hitting civilians, it resorts to
warning when and where it will strike, which eliminates the
important element of surprise; and it treats only voluntary human
shields as hostile participants. IDF operations are also monitored
by an independent judiciary on an on-going basis. Schmitt and
Merriam conclude that "we found that their approach to targeting
is consistent with the law and, in many cases, worthy of
emulation." The only problem is that Israel's being a boy scout when
it needs to put a stop to its enemy's missile attacks may be
praiseworthy but it is not effective in that it doesn't wipe out
missile attacks.
Jonathan Spyer points out "that Israel has no natural allies on
either side of Syria's civil war—neither among the Iran-allied
'regime' forces, nor with the overwhelmingly Sunni Islamist
'rebels.'" Israel has avoided involvement as much as possible. It
does not participate in the current war between Hezbollah and the
Al Nusra Front. Its activities are limited to stopping specific
shipments of weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon via Syria and
preventing the presence of a strong terrorist group on the Golan
border. It also provides humanitarian and medical aid to wounded
rebels and Syrian civilians living near the border. Israel's goal
is to maintain a secure border and stem spillover of the Syrian
civil war into Israel. Spyer details some of Israel's interaction with
Al-Nusra, a very capable group of Sunni jihadists fighting the
Assad regime, to prevent their encroachment on the border.
As in the previous article by Jonathan
Spyer, this article by Yossi Kuperwasser discusses Israel's policy to avoid "open
intervention or taking sides in the bloody Syrian conflict."
Clearly, Israel does not support either of the two main sides in
the civil war — the Iranian-led radical axis and the radical Sunni
axis led separately by Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra." Of
particular interest in
Kuperwasser's article is how "Israel and the Iranian-led radical
axis" set the rules of the game in Syrian territory without coming
to sustained and open battle.
Stripped of its phony history and the fake story of how badly
it's been treated by Israel, the Palestinian pseudo-state can be
seen for what it is: another failed Middle East attempt at
government. This is true whether it's the Palestine Authority
— whose illegal head of state pockets much of the millions
of dollars the West bestows on the local Arabs in Israel and the
Territories — or Hamas in Gaza, which has imposed its
notions on its Arab subjects of how to live 7th Century in the
21st Century. Long before ISIS emerged, before al-Qaeda
choreographed 9/11, the Palestinian Arabs were innovating new and
devastating ways of disrupting civilization and ignoring civilized
conventions. Eli Hertz discusses how well the Palestinian
self-government already fits the characteristics of a Crazy State.
LEGAL RULES AND ANTI-TERRORISM WARFARE: THE CASE OF MUSTAFA
DIRANI, REVISITED
by Keren Aviram and Yoram Schweitzer
Large-scale terrorism, neither random nor sporadic, is leading to
a reexamination of the use of stylized rule-driven conventional
warfare, now that asymmetric warfare has become the rule. Applying
civil court procedures on terrorist activities has also come in for a
reexamination. In this important paper, Keren Aviram and Yoram
Schweitzer discuss a new ruling, using the case of Mustafa Dirani
as prototype, where the Israeli Supreme Court expanded the "common
law rule precluding the examination of an enemy's claim during
wartime and applied it to members of terrorist organizations
operating out of foreign countries, even if not in a formal state
of war with Israel."
TO AID AND ABET THE ENEMY: CENSOR THYSELF. BLAME THE VICTIM. KEEP THE VICTIMIZER HAPPY.
We know a lot about the ways
anti-Semitism in Europe and the USA is systematically promoted by
Muslims, how the job of marketing Jew-hate is made easy because of
the European susceptibility to thinking the worst of Jews, and how
the plague of irrational hate spreads among the academic elite as
quickly or even more rapidly than in more ignorant communities. We
know many Jews have responded to explicit or to murmured Jew-hate
by becoming themselves willing participants in BSD and other hate
campaigns against Israel. They blame the victim and shelter the
victimizer.
This section examines some examples of Protect the
Victimizer, lest he turn on you. People who should know better
— and this includes Jews — accept the Arab invention
of a Palestinian people. Newsmen, politicians and academicians who
are supposed to dig for the facts suppress the truth and often
invent lies to favor the Arab cause. The information that Judea
and Samaria (the West Bank) are Jewish by international law, by
history and by conquest is readily available, but people insist
Israel is occupying Palestinian land. The humanitarians who are
ready in the US to jail parents who spank their children or let
their youngsters walk home from school by themselves
excuse the Po' Palestinians, who strap explosive belts on Arab
toddlers and teach them to shoot pretend guns at Jewish targets.
Many a media person has argued that it is the Arab
murderer — or, more often, the Arab community from whence he came —
that is the true victim, because the host society hasn't made Muslims
feel welcome. Too many of our opinion
makers invert reality, downplay the importance of free speech, blame the victim and
insist that the victimizer is the real victim.
Given Judaism amazing record for family stability, high
creativity, low social pathology, financial success and strong
moral teaching, one would suppose American Jews would encourage
their children, even their intermarried children, to raise Jewish
families. But "Jewish parents don't act as if it is in their
children's best interest for a happy, good, meaningful life, to be
Jewish." American Jews act as if, deep down, they don't really
believe they are as accepted in American culture as they proclaim.
In this essay Karin McQuillan examines why it is that, despite
their success, so many "American Jews display the faulty reactions
typical of trauma victims." Many of them exhibit "existential
insecurity", acting out the judgment of their abusers in their
2000 years in the diaspora, exhibiting the defensive and
convoluted reactions typical of the abused victim: "the
self-blame, the guilt, the false accusations of being worse than
the abuser, the pretense you were the one who caused the problem."
Many a liberal Jew confuses "self-betrayal with proof of moral
goodness," Using Israel as his proxy and inverting reality, he
condemns Israel for mistreating the Palestinian Arabs. The world
media also deny the obvious fact that the Arabs are neo-Nazi and
insist that murder-obsessed Arab society is the "real" victim. As
McQuillan writes, "Any group that tries to publicize Arab hate is
criticized and marginalized as right wing. News of Arab
anti-Semitism is routinely and thoroughly censored by NPR,
the Washington Post, and the New York Times, because
the reality of these facts is unwelcome."
CARTOONISTS ARE CONTROVERSIAL AND MURDERERS ARE
MODERATE
by Daniel Greenfield
Considering how protective TV media such as CNN and newspapers
such as the Washington Post are of Muslim 'sensitivity', it
should come as no surprise that when the American Freedom Defense
Initiative (AFDI) held a Draw Muhammad cartoon contest which
incensed a couple of Islamic terrorists so they came to shoot up
the contest participants, the media blamed the AFDI for provoking
the shooters. As Daniel Greenfield puts it:
"A
contest in which Bosch Fawstin, an ex-Muslim, drew a cartoon of a
genocidal warlord is 'controversial' and 'provocative', while the
Muslim Students Association (MSA), which has invited Sheikh Khalid
Yasin, who has inspired a number of terrorists, including
apparently one of the Mohammed contest attackers, is a legitimate
organization that is only criticized by controversial, intolerant
and provocative Islamophobes."
Was the Cartoon
Contest designed to provoke? Of course. Just as Martin Luther King
marched in towns that overtly hated blacks, not down safe streets
in quiet towns. That's just the point. Provocative, in-your-face,
unwelcome speech must be allowed. Polite talk that raises no ire
raises no issues. The cockamamie Mainstream Media reaction of
blaming the victim while "understanding" the sensitive hurt
feelings of the terrorist has become so commonplace that people no
longer see how sick and dhimmi-ish this is. In the inverted moral
sphere in which the media spin, what is important is to protect
the Islamic Victimizer from punishment for his immoral and illegal
behavior. READ
MORE
ISLAMIZATION OF THE WEST
by Geert Wilders
Geert Wilders was present at Garland Texas at the Cartoon Contest
that was attacked by Muslim gunmen because the contestants
insulted Muhammad by drawing his image. Wilders is no stranger to
having Western politicians and opinion makers blame him for
rocking the boat, for giving Muslim terrorists an excuse for
rioting. Even though he was (and is) a leader of one of the major
political parties in Holland, he was put on trial by the Dutch for
the crime of inciting racial hate. What had he done? He made a
film "Fitna" in which he quoted from the Koran. No distortions. No
commentary. He simply cited currently-enforced rules from the
Koran. Even worse, he spoke out against losing his country and his
values to foreign invaders. In this essay, he sounds the alarm
that the West is under attack by those that would turn the West
into another fiefdom under Islamic rule, with Sharia displacing
Western law and the primitive thug-based values of the Salafists
— treating women as chattel and wiping out the individual's
freedom to run his own life — displacing Western values. In
this speech that he made April 29, 2015 to American congressmen at
a meeting of the Conservative Opportunity Society, he pointed out
a major error in how Europe handles incoming Muslims: people from
Muslim countries that illegally make it into Europe are not turned
back. Nor do the Dutch authorities insist that these immigrants
assimilate the Western values of the host countries. We have an
analogous situation in the States in that those who make it over
the border from Mexico win big: jobs, welfare, free education,
free medicine, and defense lawyers when they are caught engaging
in criminal activities. In both countries, the rewards of illegal
entry has encouraged substantial smuggling in of Muslim jihadists,
which makes the host countries less safe as more salafists become
available to promote Islam and sharia law. The authorities do
nothing for fear of riling the Muslims. It's easier to blame those
that speak up.
The disparity between the law and its enforcement doesn't just
affect free speech. Politicians and judges may make
strongly-worded statements against violence against women yet
refuse to back up their strong words with strong action. Leslie
Lebl writes of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)
describing sharia as "incompatible with ... democracy" yet its
reports on human rights don't identify sharia law as a major
reason for Muslim mistreatment of and violence against women.
Polygamy is so obviously against Western values that we'd expect
laws against polygamy to be strictly enforced in the Muslim
immigrant community. Instead, as Lebl notes, "Although polygamy is
illegal in all EU member states, it probably exists in all of
them, and in some has been de facto legitimized." European
countries ignore polygamous unions, debate polygamy rather than
enforce the law, allow it if it was legal where it occurred, or
classify Muslim wives as single mothers so they receive
welfare. Thanks to the many loopholes, "perhaps some 300,000
people in Britain are living in polygamous families, many if not
most at state expense." Similarly, the Council is strongly against
violence against women. It "does not, however, recognize the
critical difference between domestic violence and the
sharia-justified violence against women, especially honor
killings." Little by little, sharia becomes the de facto
law of the land — and not just for the Muslims.
MAKING DAVID INTO GOLIATH: HOW THE WORLD TURNED AGAINST ISRAEL
by Joshua Muravchik. Reviewed by Shoshana Bryen
Joshua Muravchik wrote in "Making David
into Goliath", "Israel's image is not undermined by what
Israel actually does as much as by deliberate, popular, and
well-funded sources pursuing warfare against Israel off the
battlefield." As Shoshana Bryen observes in her review, "with the
triumph of the Six-Day War. ... Israel ceased to be perceived as
endangered and therefore ceased to command the world's sympathy...
The Arab states, in one of the most impressive political turns of
the modern age, switched the conversation from Arab rejection of
Israel to Israel's occupation of the Palestinians." Muravchik
writes of the large number of Leftists, Jews and non-Jews,
Israelis, Europeans and Americans, academicians, media people and
think-tankers who, for money or ideology or job security, have
maligned Israel. They were and are willing to tell outright lies,
distort or ignore what they actually see and know, and omit
critical facts to further the Arab cause. Bryen writes that
"Muravchik comes to the ugly—and current—truth of European
politics: European countries were willing to barter with
Palestinian organizations in order that they mostly leave
Europeans alone." From appeasement to slavishly doing the Muslim
bidding was not much of a step.
This set of articles presents professional bad-mouthers of
Israel. Some are paid directly from Muslim sources and some are
media people, working for organizations that are supposed to be
our tellers of truth, exposers of evil. Content is likely to be
distorted, but usually the style is fine. These professionals usually
avoid sounding petty — they manage this by wrapping the
nasty message in some high-minded expressions. A recent example
of an exception to this rule was Prez Obama's petty uncovered swipes at the
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Obama's petulance was
a major embarrassment, even though the media tried hard to ignore
his childish tantrums.
Cinnamon Stillwell writes about Reza Aslan, a lecturer at UC
Riverside. He has a monochromatic description of what's wrong
with Islam: there's nothing wrong with Islam. What's wrong is
the bunch of Islamaphobic bigots, who have a big pot of money
donated by big business bigots and spend it all to stir up
Islamaphobia by criticizing Islam. He has no use for information
that comes from independent sources. He sticks to material that
comes mainly from the Center for American Progress (CAP), a
far-left organization. Armed with a few statistics that are
debatable and chiefly ad hominem arguments, he dismisses
the possibility that Islam is dangerous. He praises diversity
and the American tolerance for differences, ignoring that, when
Islam gains control of a country, its tolerance disappears and
only a rigid Koran-based life style is permitted. CAP and
academic followers such as Aslan have invested much effort in
making people fear being called a bigot. They make it simple to
avoid being called islamophobic: just don't criticize anything
in Islam, ignore Islam's attitude to women and polygamy, ignore
its anti-Semitism and hatred towards Christianity, Hinduism and
all other religions. Ignore its battling with everyone, even
other Muslims, ignore Muslims teaching their children how to
behead someone. And you won't have to fear that someone will
call you an islamophob.
Kane Rooks and David Bedein summarize some of Gershon Baskin's
"questionable statements of supposed fact that Baskin weaves into
his writings." Many of Baskin's statements are confident
reassurances that the Palestinian Arabs do not want to destroy
Israel. A pity that Abbas and Hamas don't talk the same talk.
This article provides a summary of Baskin's most flagrantly wrong
statements, questionable declarations and pompous profundities.
In this essay, Michael Devolin takes on Thomas Friedman, the
Shimon Peres of journalism. Both Peres and Friedman can sustain a
lofty tone and the pretense of having carefully examined all that
needs considering, combined with an impressive ignorance of
consequences and incompatibilities. In a recent column, Friedman
reassured us that in his pondering on the forthcoming nuclear deal
with Iran, he was considering small details like verification and
larger matters like the "wider American strategic goals in the
region." In Friedman's dream sequence, transforming Iran into a
civilized country would take place after Iran and the Saudis
played out their ancient feud, pummeling each other "until they
get exhausted." Devolin points out a few defects in Friedman's
analysis. First, if the Sunnis and the Shi'ites have been fighting
from soon after Mohammad's time, why would Friedman expect them to
patch up things before Iran acquires the bomb and misuses its new
power? Iran's incurring a tragic number of deaths during the
Iran-Iraq war didn't shorten the war. Why would it now? Second, it
may be true that given a resurrection of the U.S. relationship to
the Shah — the one Jimmy Carter ruined — the US might
be able to use Iran to counterbalance the Sunni forces, but there
is no such relationship now. And Iran's open hatred of America and
Israel is hardly an indication that Iran wants to be our buddy. As
Devolin observes, "untruths and fantasy are today common fare for the
Western journalist."
We seem to be in the beginning of a trend where journalists,
previously forced by their editors or the Arabs to engage in the
practice of exaggerating Israel's mistakes or inventing nasty
stories about Israel out of whole cloth, while ignore the actual
and bestial behavior of the Arabs, tell all. First, there was
Mattie Friedman. Now, as Andrew Harrod writes, Mark Lavie has
revealed how distorted journalism has become, with reporters
accepting Arab fraudulent claims without investigation. Lavie
also talks about frank intimidation. For many years, reporters
have justifiably feared their families would be harmed if they told the
truth about the Arabs or showed footage of Arabs whooping it up
in delight that Israelis or Americans were dead.
Rachel Ehrenfeld and Ken Jensen ask how the Muslim Brotherhood
and others who practice disinforming the West about the nature of
Islam have been so successful for so long. They conclude that
these jihadist groups spin lies and stretch truth within the
context of simple and high-minded but false 'explanations' such as
'lack of economic development and social injustice.' Ehrenfeld and
Jensen use as example the now-deposed Morsi government, which was
voted in to protect human rights, but, instead, decreed shari'a
law for Egypt. They might also have used the West's sympathy to
the Palestinian Arabs as example. Palestinians are excused their
knifing, sniping, stoning and lobbing missiles at Israeli
civilians because they are too frail militarily to rid Palestine
of Jewish occupation. Thanks to years of conditioning, the West,
even supposed historians, ignores that there is no Palestinian
people, there never was a Palestinian state, and it is the Arabs
who invaded land set aside by international law for a Jewish
state.
Using a recent event that is destined for the history books,
Mark Steyn writes on how to present a case and how not to present
a case. He emphasizes the importance of the style and substance of
Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress by comparing it to
Prez Obama's "small and petty" belittlement of the Israeli Prime
Minister. Netanyahu warned of the dangers of Iranian expansionism
in territory and its ability to produce nuclear weaponry.
Netanyahu also pointed out an important fact when dealing with
Muslim countries: ISIS may be on the outs with Iran, but that
doesn't mean ISIS is friendly to the West. Steyn also admonishes
us that 'your enemy's enemy is not automatically friendly' also
applies to us in the US.
COULD JEWISH SOLDIERS IN THE BRITISH ARMY CELEBRATE PASSOVER IN JERUSALEM IN 1918?
by Lenny Ben-David
Using photographs and old letters, Lenny Ben-David asks whether
Jewish soldiers in the Jewish Legion in the British army and the
individual Jews serving in the armies of Great Britain,
Australia and New Zealand were allowed to celebrate Passover in
Jerusalem in World War 1. The Jewish Legion was commanded by
Col. John Henry Patterson, and letters written by the Colonel
indicate that he was furious about the anti-Semitic policy which
denied his soldiers permission to celebrate Passover in
Jerusalem in 1918 and again in 1919, yet there are old photos
showing Jewish soldiers doing just that. Although Jews were in
the majority in Jerusalem, the British-run municipality allowed
Arab violence against them, Hebrew was "officially disregarded
and humiliated," and "Arab notables who betray pro-Jewish
feeling" were penalized. Another photo suggests Jewish soldiers
did have their seder in Jerusalem, but not those in the Jewish
Legion "perhaps because of the army's desire to restrict a
distinctly Jewish, nationalistic corps in its midst." The Jewish
Legion made Pesach, but not in Jerusalem.
The current spate
of ugly ways to torture and murder people by both the Shiite and
Sunni branches of Islam is not new. Clifford May makes the point
that in recent history the "slaughter of Armenian Christians 100
years ago [was] preface and precedent to what's happening in the
Middle East today." The fact that the world quickly forgot the
Armenian victims reassured the Nazis that they too could slaughter
people for the crime of a member of a particular ethnic or
religious group without the world making much of a fuss. Nor do
today's Muslim terrorist groups need to contend with a hostile
aroused media as they exterminate Middle Eastern Christians.
They cage prisoners, use 12-year old children to behead captives,
rape women and sell children into slavery. They proudly act as
practitioners of the Religion of Peace have always done.
READ
MORE
TWO STATES IS A FRAUD
by Drora bat Melech
Drora bat-Melech is an Israeli whose parents and grandparents
were authentic refugees. Together with some 150 to 250 thousand
other Jews, they were forced to flee from Iraq in the
1940s-early 1950s, even though the Jews had lived in Iraq for
some 2500 years, more than a thousand years before the Arab
invaders conquered the area. Not only were they kicked out,
leaving most of their possessions and real estate behind, they
had to pay the Arab government for the privilege of being
allowed to leave alive. The scene was replayed in the other Arab
states. The Jews received no help or compensation from the U.N.,
but the new state of Israel absorbed them and made them
citizens. Bat-Melech was a refugee from Iraq but she was an
'aboriginal' in Israel because in 1922 their ancient land
was restored to the Jews in recognition of their historic
attachment to it; it was held in trust until they could develop
the infrastructure and population to be a state. In 1948, when
the neighboring Arab states invaded the new state of Israel,
Arabs who fled — many of them left on orders of their
leaders, and expected to return as soon as Israel was demolished
— were placed into camps in their 'aboriginal' land, but
they were treated as aliens and denied citizenship. Unlike any
other group of refugees ever, they were given refugee
status in perpetuum, they and their descendants, even
those "refugees" who had come new to the area by June 1946.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
Think-Israel tends to use salafist rather than
extremist or Islamist or militant or
fundamentalist or activist to describe generically a
pious Muslim, one who sticks as closely as possible to the
unfiltered words and actions of Mohammad and the first three
generations of Muslims, including, especially, the Companions of
the Prophet. In modeling himself as closely as he can on the
preachings and practices of Mohammad, a salafist can in modern
terms be precisely described as an uninhibited terrorist, a
theological supersessionist, a political supremacist who believes
Islam and sharia law must dominate and a social barbarian, who
wages jihad with whatever tools are available.
Thanks to the high quality of whitewash supplied by sympathetic
propagandists, he seldom is so described.
FEATURED STORIES
January-February 2015
What we are talking about in the January–February 2015 Issue
The ARAB INVASION OF JERUSALEM AND THE TEMPLE MOUNT
As described by Peter Hammond in his book Slavery,
Terrorism and Islam (see also Richard Butrick's article in the January
2013 Think-Israel issue
here), when the Muslim population of a host country becomes
more than 5-10%, they begin to start their bid to take over the
country. In Israel, Muslims officially are some 17% of the
population, not including the many that live there unreported and
illegally. So it should come as no surprise that the Arabs are
flexing their muscles. As in Malmo, Sweden and Paris, France
inter alia they are securing territory for themselves,
the supposedly non-existent no-go zones. Jerusalem suffers from
other lacerations. The unimpeded Arab intimidation and violence
has impacted attitudes across the country, both Jewish and Muslim.
One young Jewish woman, army-trained and religious, living close
to Gaza and thus willing to risk erratic attacks from Hamas,
confided in me that she no longer traveled to Jerusalem, which
would seem to be a much safer place to live than her own town. But
in Jerusalem she was afraid of getting into a cab driven by an
Arab. Her fear of being kidnapped is very real and not uncommon.
How has the growing Arab boldness affected Arabs citizens of Israel? When I was looking
for a hotel close to the Kotel last Sukkot, I called a hotel in
the area and asked whether they would have a Sukkah. The thick voice
responded arrogantly that I was calling a hotel in Palestine and
they certainly would not.
More openly, the Arabs are targeting Jews
at the Temple Mount. As Moshe Feiglin has highlighted publicly by
speaking out and coming to the Temple Mount, the harassment of
Jews by Arabs on the Temple Mount is shameful, a shanda,
made more appalling in that official Israel aids the Arabs in
preventing Jews from praying at their most Holy Site.
Menachem Begin insisted that "the right of free Jewish worship in
Jerusalem stood at the very core of the independence that Zionists
sought...A people that does not defend its holy places—that
does not even try to defend them—is not free."
Unfortunately, just as the British in the Mandate Period caved in
to Arab demands to keep the peace, Israeli politicians today are
more concerned with preventing Arabs from rioting than respecting
the right of Jews to pray freely in their own land.
One
observation starkly highlights the absurdity of the prevailing
policy: Jews can't pray on the Temple Mount— a Jew was arrested
for the suspicious activity of closing his eyes— but Arabs can play soccer there. It puts
the lie to any argument that excuses Arab violence by pleading
Arab sensitivity to infringement of their religious practices or
mosque environment. In point of fact, what Israel's timidity has
gained her is increased Arab unruliness, intimidation and vulgar
behavior.
Professor Paul Eidelberg has suggested some ways Jews can begin
reclaiming their most Holy Place:
1. We need to publicize the idea that Jewish control of Israel's holiest site, the Temple Mount (the Har HaBayit) on which stood the Beit HaMikdash, is a precondition of uncontested Jewish control of an undivided Jerusalem and the vivid restoration of Jewish national honor as well as the sanctification of God's Name. Once Jews maintain unequivocal control of the Temple Mount, a serious movement can be initiated among Christian in the United States to move the American embassy to Jerusalem — which would produce a salutary shock wave across the world.
2. Conversely, so long as the Muslim Authority (the Wakf) controls and desecrates the Temple Mount, the nations will despise Israel and kowtow to the Arab-Islamic world. Muslim desecration of the Temple Mount not only exposes Jewish weakness, but increases Muslim arrogance and incites Islamic violence everywhere.
3. Jewish spiritual revival of the Temple Mount would not only be the pinnacle of a Jewish restoration of Jerusalem; it would also inflict a lethal blow on the ambitions of Muslims, who regard Jerusalem is the key to their global ambitions.
4. The Wakf has long been violating the Law of Antiquities and the Law of Planning. The Muslims are erasing all historical evidence of Jewish presence on the Temple Mount. The Netanyahu Government knows this and has cravenly said they have no intention of interfering.
5. Of course, exclusive Jewish control of the Temple Mount is inseparable to Israel's control of Judea and Samaria. (See below, point 14.)
6. To show that the Temple Mount is the key to the world-historical function of the Jewish people prescribed in the Tenach, I shall now quote various passages from Joshua Berman's book, The Temple.
7. The Temple, he writes, represents "the spiritual center of the country. Here, at the site where God's presence is most manifest, the representatives of the Jewish people execute commandments and rites that symbolize the service of the nation as a whole."
8. It should also be noted that any non-Jew, so long as he adheres to the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality, can bring certain "sacrifices" to the Temple, which acknowledges God's sovereignty over mankind.
9. The Temple — "a house for God's Name" — symbolizes "a public declaration of God's sovereignty. The ambition of declaring God's sovereignty in the world, which was initiated by Abraham, is the calling of the Jewish people."
10. Berman goes on to say: "God's acclaim in the world is a direct function of how Israel is perceived [by the nations]." Israel must become a great country. "A great country should possess political stability at home and should be at peace with its neighbors. It should possess a strong economy and should be home to a culture that boasts strong [moral and intellectual] virtues." Israel did not become such a nation until the reign of King David, and it was left to his son Solomon to build the (first) Temple. All nations then flocked to Jerusalem, which was recognized not only as the City of Peace but the City of Truth.
11. "The function of the Temple as a symbol for God's acclaim in the world reaches its apex with the visit of the queen of Sheba to Solomon's court" — Solomon, the wisest of kings. Ponder, therefore, these verses of Isaiah 2:1-3: "And many nations will go and cry, 'Let us go up the to mountain of God's house, to the house of the Lord of Jacob, and we will learn from His ways and walk in His paths, for out of Zion goes forth the Torah and the word of God from Jerusalem.'"
12. Now let us consider Rabbi Chaim Richman's essay, "A Third Jewish Temple" (May 18, 2000), where he says: "People assume those who are interested in the Temple are radical elements opposed to peace." Alluding to the era of King Solomon, Rabbi Richman points out that the Temple Mount represents "the hallmark of the greatest era known to man.... This place has been sanctified by God from the beginning of time.... Here Jacob laid his head. Here Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac.... Of the 613 commandments in the Torah, 113 of them depend on the existence of a Jewish Temple. We have not received a cancellation order for any of the commandments issued at Mount Sinai."
13. Public opinion must therefore be educated about the Temple, about its significance in Judaism. Obviously, the Netanyahu Government, steeped in timidity and intellectual stagnation, will not do this. This Government doesn't really represent the Jewish people. At least 25% of Israel's Jewish population is religious, and at least 50% is traditional. The Jewish people were not consulted when, Netanyahu, without Knesset or public discussion, endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, Israel's heartland. There is no reason to believe, therefore, that this orator with a golden tongue and clay feet will stand firm on the issue of Jerusalem and the Har HaBayit.
14. Hence, a Jerusalem Movement involving a network of cells across the nation should be initiated by Jewish youth and venerable rabbis. Their proclaimed purpose is to preserve the integrity of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount now being sullied by Muslims. Weekly demonstrations will be necessary. Eminent speakers should be called upon to denounce Netanyahu's policy of moral equivalence regarding Jewish and Muslim claims to the Holy Land — an insult to Jewish intelligence, as well as to countless Christians who are grateful for Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem, knowing that by this alone will they be welcomed in the Holy City.
Gil Ronen reports on a new gambit used by the local Arabs,
"citizens of Israel," to show disrespect to Judaism and to Jews
on the Temple Mount. Arab men and women of all ages, including
youngsters, especially young girls, are paid to harass Jews
verbally and physically to ensure they can't worship there. They
can't even enjoy a moment of contentment or contemplation on this
most Holy of the Jewish Holy sites. And the police, paralyzed by
politicians who fear bad publicity, either do nothing or arrest the
Jewish "troublemakers". An Addendum lists some relevant videos.
An Arab Member of
the Knesset flies the PLO flag on the Jewish Temple Mount and the
police do nothing. Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu asks, "If a Kahane flag is
illegal, is the PLO flag on Temple Mount kosher?" Perhaps the
question should be, "In WW2, would the USA allow a Nazi flag fly
from the National Cathedral?" Have we forgotten that Resurgent
Islam has declared war on the West and Israel; and the
faux-people, the Palestinians, are foot soldiers in that war? As
an aside, the Arabs don't just fly their terrorist flag, they burn
flags of other countries on the Temple Mount. See them burning the
French flag here.
STATUS QUO? 'JEWS PRAYED ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT FOR CENTURIES'
by Hillel Fendel
Hillel Fendel "explores the origins of the hotly-contested
'status quo' at Judaism's holiest site." As he says, everyone
"religiously" is determined to continue the "status quo"— even
those who blather about freedom of worship. But, as Fendel asks,
what is the status quo? At the moment, Jews are forbidden
by their Government to pray on the Har HaBayit (The Temple Mount).
The reason for preventing Jews from praying is said to be that
Jews might inadvertently step on a forbidden area. If the intent
is to prevent desecrating a sacred place, why are Arabs allowed to
run wild and destroy ancient relics? Besides, historically, Jews
prayed there for hundreds of years without hindrance. The real
reason appears to be to not stir up Arab anger. But if so, it
isn't working. It is only emboldening the Arabs employed by
Hamas et al to behave despicably.
Who would have believed in the 1930's, as Hitler was
starting his genocidal war against the Jews, that some eighty
years later the Jewish State would be a major safety zone for
Christians in the Middle East, the victims of another genocidal
war, this time one conducted by the Islamic States? And Christians are among
the strong voices declaring how important the Temple Mount is for
Jews. Jan Willem van der Hoeven writes what even secular Jews
should know and understand.
Tuvia Brodie reports on the presence of no-go zones in
Jerusalem. In Europe, 'For Muslims Only' areas are land patches
— usually in a large city that has a sufficient
concentration of Muslims — that are completely controlled by
Muslims and only obey sharia law. Non-Muslim are not allowed in,
not even police or firemen [See, for example, documentation of
no-go zones in France
here.]
Israeli no-go zones differ from those
in European countries only in that the surrounding Arab villages
are also, for the most part, no-go zones, so that Jerusalem is
more and more ringed by hostile bands of Arabs, who are citizens
of Israel but identify with the Muslim Jihad against Israel.
WHY INTERFAITH DIALOGUE CAN'T RESULT IN MUSLIMS BECOMING
TOLERANT
In his essay below, Clive Kessler points out that for
interfaith "dialogue ... to proceed, no one party can 'set the
rules'". This isn't a policy that can honestly be followed by
Muslims who are compelled by the tenets of their religion to
regard non-Muslims as infidels who must convert to Islam or pay
Islam for the privilege of being allowed to live. This hasn't
stopped Muslims from participating in interfaith dialogues but it
may account for why these dialogues seem to end with only the
Muslims gaining any material benefits from the transactions. The
last essay provides an instance where Jews and Christian Arabs
have genuinely made common cause, in that both groups live in
Israel and are loyal to their country. But in general, as one
reader, Gary Fouse, commented on another one-way interfaith
dialogue, this one held at Georgetown University (January 13,
2015), "Sounds like Springtime in Germany. Was Mel Brooks there?
Having sat through many of these side shows, it never ceases to
amaze me how the gullible pastors and rabbis soak up this garbage
that flies in the face of the daily slaughters around the world.
Many of these US Muslim leaders will decry terrorism and violence
insisting it has nothing to do with Islam, yet consider Yusuf al
Qaradawi to be one of the greatest Muslim scholars. Qaradawi
affirms every fear we have about Islamic ideology when it comes to
apostates, Jews and Christians. He wants them all dead."
Several videos that complement the articles on interfaith
discourse:
(1). David Wood discusses the 3-step Strategy of Jihadists: Stage
1: Stealth Jihad (Live in Peace); Stage 2: Defensive Jihad (Claim
Victim Status); Stage 3: Offensive Jihad (Kill off disbelievers).
Religious Interfaith Dialogue is a type of Stealth Jihad, Stage 1.
See it either
here or
here.
(2) Baron Bodissey of the Gates of Vienna website writes on the
Islamic service at the Washington National Cathedral that took
place November 14, 2014, in an essay called, "What happened at
National Cathedral last friday?" See clips and commentary
of the service here
and some excellent articles from the Counter Jihad Report
here. The fourth article down is the transcript and additional
commentary on the National Cathedral service.
(3) Bare Naked Islam has a video beautifully illustrating
taqiyya (lying to prettify/protect Islam). The assertions by the
speaker, Iman Musri, are followed by contradictory facts
here.
A viewer, cat, said of Iman Musri: "The man is a liar. Look at his body language of
swinging legs as he lies. This is why the pen and pictures of the
real and evil truth of the lies of islam, is mightier than the
sword. We must keep on putting the truth up front for people to
judge. Putting the truth, juxtaposition to the lies of the
speakers works so very well. We must engage muslims with the truth
and show their lies at every opportunity. Thanks to BNI, Geller,
Spencer and so on, we have good knowledge to use to prove the lies
of islam."
(4) Also from BareNakedIslam. (February 18, 2015) is this video
featuring Hajj Saeed, Imam of the Al-Faruq Mosque in Copenhagen,
who bluntly says, "We don't believe in
interfaith dialogue."
He points out that 'Prophet Mohamed engaged in war, not dialogue.
When the Jews refused to come to Allah, he killed them. We will
not dialogue with people who believe in a false religion, who live
in a bogus culture.'" See
here.
Religious supersessionism is the belief that one's religion has
replaced or fulfilled its predecessor religion(s). In this
article, Clive Kessler concentrates on making explicit the
supersessionist substrate of Islam. He examines the weakening of
such an attitude toward Jews in current Christianity, thus
suggesting that a religion can reverse a negative attitude
without doing violence to itself. The essay also suggests that
attempts at interfaith understanding are doomed to fail when some
the participants are innately supersessionist. Christianity has
come a long way towards reorienting itself to respect Judaism.
Muslims, however, still suffer from the conviction that Islam is
— or should be— the religion that dominates any and all
others. In practice and because of their unbending attitude, they
take advantage of members of other religions who are trying so
hard to show acceptance that they end up doing the bidding of the
Muslims.
Edward Cline examines sharia law— the thorn in the side of
ecumenism— from the point of view of the burdens it places on
Muslims. It is a distasteful but incontestable fact that sharia is
a package deal, sanctioning primitive, violent sexual practices,
enforcing a supercessionary attitude and encouraging jihad against
everything and everyone that is not Islamic. As Cline says,
"Muslims of whatever stripe are stuck between a rock and a hard
place — between the totalitarian nature of Islam, and its
absolute, non-negotiable imperatives of Islamic dogma." Western
media and academia and political leaders have placed no
restrictions on "the stealthy and incremental Islamic incursions
into Western culture," accompanied with its offensive behavioral
patterns. So, non-violent Muslims have the additional burden of
solving the problem of how to behave in a civilized fashion, a
problem that they, not us, need to solve.
When pushed to the wall, Muslims engaged in interfaith
dialogue can always claim that violent jihad is only carried out
for the just cause of autonomy for Muslims, as in Kashmir,
Palestine and Chechnya— the Islamic version of 'you can't make
omelets without breaking eggs'. This appears to be the virtuous
excuse provided no matter what the size of the Muslim population relative
to the size of non-Muslim groups in the country— which begs the
question why are the Muslims the only ones entitled to be in charge of
their own destiny. Probe further and it becomes clear that the
request for autonomous space is actually the desire for a
beachhead, from which Islam can eventually force and enforce sharia
law on all of us.
In this essay, Diana West describes what was wrong with the
Muslim service conducted by a prestigious group of salafists and
associates of Islamic terrorists at the prestigious Washington
National Cathedral. Like the majority of Muslims globally, these
Muslims strongly uphold sharia law, which means, in practice, that
they have no doubt that Islam has replaced the imperfect religions
of the Christians and the Jews— an attitude not conducive to
genuine tolerance. The Episcopals thought they were being
ecumenical, but judging from the surus read, all that these
benighted Christians got for their efforts was a lecture larded
with some very nasty appraisals of Christianity and Judaism. In
Arabic, of course.
Baron Bodissey of the Gates of Vienna website
wrote of a surprising and little-known fact about the event in an
article entitled
"The Washington National Masjid." "The administrative leaders
of the Episcopal Church obviously have no idea what it means to
allow their building to be used a place where formal Islamic
prayers take place [emphasis added]. Or maybe they do, and
they don't mind. In any case, once Muslims have said their prayers
as an assembled group, the structure becomes a masjid, a mosque,
and the property of the waqf board, the Islamic trust for the
Ummah. The local Islamic community may decide to defer taking
formal title to the building until their numbers in the Washington
area are sufficient to make it prudent to do so, but after
tomorrow, the National Cathedral will have become a mosque. And
not just any old mosque, but one with full connectivity to the
Muslim Brotherhood." As the Baron notes, the Muslim service was "a
highly symbolic demonstration of Islamic supremacism" by a
religious group that assumes other religions should accommodate
them but would not themselves be foolish enough to reciprocate the
Cathedral's hospitality.
Aryeh Tepper writes the story of what is happening because an
ethnic group of Israelis put Israel's claim to take diversity
seriously to the test. Perhaps inspired by the revitalization of
Jewish identity in the Jewish homeland and certainly unhappy at
being lumped in the non-homogeneous cludge of ethnicities
labeled Arab, the Israeli Aramean Christian community asked
that they be legally identified as Aramean, a specific and unique
Israeli minority, just as are the Druze and the Circassians. This
hasn't pleased the Palestinian Authority, but while Israel has
been reluctant to stir up the easily-inflamed Muslim Arabs, it has
shown little tolerance to anti-Aramean incitement by these Muslims.
Tepper makes the case that there is a regional movement in Arab
countries and well as in Israel of minorities who are beginning to
think of themselves in terms of their own history, rejecting both
pan-Arabic philosophy and Muslim Arab political domination. There
have been a sufficient number of groups emphasizing their
identities before the Arab invasion that "the belief that the
Middle East is somehow essentially Arab" has come into question.
The fact that Arabs are Johnny-come-lately in contrast to the
newly-assertive native populations is being recognized. Why is
Tepper's article in this section? The interfaith interaction of the
Jews and the Arameans is based on a genuine commonality:
both groups are loyal citizens of the Jewish state and both have a
strong interest in preserving it.
In 1938, Europe was happy to believe
that Neville Chamberlain had talked Adolf Hitler into giving up
his warlike posture. The major effect of the "Peace in our Times"
agreement was to prolong the war when it came and make it more
deadly. We appear to be in an analogous situation now with Iran.
These essays ask why the West doesn't recognize how much danger we
are in.
Return to What We Are Talking About
OBAMA'S FAILED NUCLEAR POLICY AND KHAMENEI'S DUPLICITY
by Majid Rafizadeh
Majid Rafizadeh points out the serious defects in Prez Obama's
handling of the most consequential crisis of the current century.
"The primary objective of the nuclear negotiations was to
completely dismantle Iran's nuclear program in order to remove the
threat of Islamists obtaining nuclear weapons... when Iranian
leaders realized that President Obama is more desperate than Iran
to get a nuclear deal at any cost, Tehran began dictating and
setting the terms in the talks, shrewdly threatening Obama to walk
away from the talks if they are not satisfied...In the next few
months, Obama is likely to give more concessions." Given his
amateurish, waffling-and-wavering inept management, it is not surprising
that many people suspect, as did a reader, JayWye, who wrote in
FrontPage Magazine that: "Comrade Obama WANTS Iran to achieve
nuclear weapons. Comrade BHO is not working for America,he's
working AGAINST the US."
TRASH TALK DIPLOMACY, US-ISRAEL RELATIONS, AND IRAN
by Jeffrey Herf
It is perhaps an indication that Israel and the US once had
strong relations that Prez Obama is as hostile to Israel as he has
become to Britain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, once stout allies of
the US. The issue, as Jeffrey Herf writes, is that Obama hates
Israel because he perceives Israel as an obstacle to what has
become obvious: Obama's policy towards Iran is one of appeasement.
Even worse, it appears Obama will do nothing to stop Iran
obtaining nuclear weapons, but will instead thwart and punish
anyone who dares object. Acting more as a street thug than a
diplomat or leader of a powerful nation, Obama has resorted to
nasty language, direct insults as when he left Netanyahu in a room
and trotted off to his dinner, and other shows of petulant and
insulting behavior. He has also leaked information that prevented
Israel from directly attacking Iran's nuclear facilities. As Herf
reminds us. "Only if the President is willing to turn down a bad
deal with Iran will there be a chance of success via diplomacy and
sanctions short of war." But the president continues to be angry
with anyone who points out he's heading recklessly in the wrong
direction.
Sarah Honig uses Sholem
Alechem's story of the bird-Jew to anchor an egregious example of "the fear of
giving offense to one's mortal enemies..." In this newer version,
she takes to task those who argue that it is PM Netanyahu's "duty
to obediently assume the role of the bird-Jew and self-destruct"
to appease Prez Obama's anger at Netanyahu contradicting Obama's
empty reassurances that Iran will not possess nuclear weapons. And
doing it publicly. This view ignores that Congress is independent
of the Executive Branch and that Obama's overt hostility didn't
start or even blossom because of Netanyahu's addressing Congress
and warning them against a deal that would allow Iran to build
nuclear weapons, thus gaining the means to lord it over the other
countries in the Middle East, threaten oil supply globally and be
in a position to devastate Israel or any place in the Western world. Honig points out that if there
be interference in a sovereign country's domestic policy, it is
Obama who is the culprit, blatantly meddling in the
Israeli election and encouraging the craven worship of Obama by
Israel's bird-Jews, the Leftists.
It seems as if we've been negotiating with Iran for eons,
initially to prevent her from acquiring nuclear weaponry, and now,
it appears, to hope she uses her power wisely. Bernice Lipkin
suggests reasons that might account for the West's lack of
urgency and concern.
The list below shows that ISIS follows the teachings and
practices of Islam. All Salafist groups share these features,
because they all derive their sacred mission of jihad warfare from
Islam, whether they are as violent as ISIS or more politic as is
the Muslim Brotherhood. They all believe in the supremacy of
Islam, whether they are members of a large organized group such as
Al Qaeda or freelancers appearing to be unaffiliated with any
terrorist group. They all model themselves on the words and deeds
of Mohammad, the embodiment of perfection. They all follow the
teachings and practices sanctioned by the Koran.
17 November, Abu Nidal, al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades,
al-Nusrah, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula, Anbat an-Ansar, Ansar al-Islam, Army of Islam,
Boko Haram, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Hamas, Haqqani, Harakat
ul-Mujahidin, Hezbollah, Houthis, Iaish-e-Mohammed, Iranian
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or Iraq and the
Levant; name changes reflect growing territorial acquisitions),
Jamaat ul-Mujahideen, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestine Islamic Jihad,
Palestine Liberation Front, Talaban — to name only a few
of the better known groups — are not aberrations. They are
pious Muslims.
by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC)
This article is the Overview Section of a
monograph issued by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism
Information Center (ITIC). The monograph is a comprehensive examination of
"the nature of the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS),
an Islamic Salafist-jihadi terrorist organization founded a decade
ago as a branch of Al-Qaeda in Iraq." It is an excellent and
reliable reference on the roots of ISIS; its ideology; its
military and financial capabilities and areas of control; its
military campaign in Syria and Iraq (to mid-November 2014); how it
has and will continue to increase regional instability; the
American campaign against ISIS; and the danger it poses to Israel.
The researchers took into account that they were dealing with a
dynamic organization in situations subject to rapid change. To
understand and prepare a comprehensive yet readable report on ISIS
meant the researchers needed to assess, evaluate and integrate
information from a multiplicity of primary sources dealing with
the "history Islam, the Sunni-Shi'ite schism, the Salafist-jihadi
movement from which ISIS sprang; the changes in Al-Qaeda and the
global jihad; the developments in the civil wars in Syria and Iraq
and the various aspects of the Middle Eastern upheaval." One can
only admire how well they have succeeded.
Mordechai Kedar focuses on what makes ISIS outstanding if not
unique. And why it is so popular with young Muslim volunteers, who
come from all over the world to be part of ISIS. Kedar observes
that it projects strength. ISIS members are encouraged to kill
citizens of powerful countries and these countries do little or
nothing in response. Isis has reestablished the caliphate, which
was dissolved some ninety years ago, They announced the caliphate
wasn't some dream in the future; it had come into existence and it
came complete with a caliph, who just happened to be the head of
ISIS. Moreover, ISIS has apparently established a reputation for
being authentic Islam. Its unabashed use of decapitation, burning
and torture certainly is modeled on how the founder of Islam
treated apostates, captives and the disobedient. As Kedar says,
"Islamic State — at this point — seems a young and vibrant one,
whose actions are in true accordance with Islamic precepts and
which does not give any consideration to the heretical,
materialistic and permissive cultural mores with which Western
culture tries to inculcate Muslims all over the world."
Rachel Ehrenberg cites Abu ZBakr
Al-Baghdadi of ISIS, who argues that it is reasonable "to unite
all the jihadi groups under one umbrella. After all, they all
seek the same result: fight the jihad to establish a global
Islamic rule." It is more common, however, for Muslim groups
such as the Muslim Brotherhood that practice stealth jihad to
ascribe terrorism to "Political Islam, so that they can call
Islamic religion a religion of peace.
Martin Sherman makes the point that
terrorism is very closely linked to Islam. Muslim apologists point
out that the majority of Muslims are not violent. True, but if we
go by population figures, some 17% of the world's population is
Muslim, so we'd expect they'd commit roughly 17% to 20% of the
acts of terrorism. Instead, Muslims are the majority of the
terrorists. They kill infidels. They kill other Muslims. They
kill. And polls indicate that in Muslim countries, either the
majority of people or a significant minority are "in favor of
harsh corporal punishments (whipping/amputation) for
theft/robbery; death by stoning for adultery; and death for
apostasy." Muslim terrorism is said to be done as a response to
colonialism, globalism, and Western hostility. But India was
colonized, and Hindus don't behave like Muslims. We are told
Muslims turn to terrorism because of poverty or because they are
on the fringe of society. But many terrorists come from homes that
are seemingly integrated into the community and are well-educated.
When the facts are promulgated, these arguments are also
discredited. What does hold up, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali put it, "Islam
is not a religion of peace. It's a political theory of conquest
that seeks domination by any means it can. Every accommodation of
Muslim demands leads to a sense of euphoria and a conviction that
Allah is on their side. They see every act of appeasement as an
invitation to make fresh demands."
In this essay, Michael Devolin explains how aptly the term
perpetuity describes the history of Islamic jihad from the
time of Mohammad until now. Perpetual Jihad is an Islamic
imperative. As Devolin says, "Islamic jihad is never satisfied
with its own, but only with complete possession of the other. They
want only the field next to theirs, and once in their possession,
Islam and the Muslim world concede nothing. It is meaningless to
the Arab Muslim that the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has been a holy
site for Jews long before the Prophet Mohammed and even longer
before his Muslim hordes invaded ancient Israel. The sensibilities
of Christians are of no concern to the Muslim extremist whose
religious intolerance has made Nazareth today almost uninhabitable
for them." Their program is facilitated by their anti-democratic
pro-Palestinian supporters in the West. Also posted are some
comments by readers of the original publication. The last one, by
Ronald B, is an excellent description of stealth jihad.
Nicolai Sennels suggests that the "aspects of [Muslim]
behavior that make us sick" aren't symptoms of islamophobia. It
just means we have justifiable islamonausea. Despite all the
efforts invested into convincing us we are Islamophobic when we
critize Muslim behavior, as Sennels points out, "There is nothing
phobic or racist about feeling nauseous when hearing about the
countless, bloody massacres committed by Muhammad and his many
devout copycats throughout history and all over the world today."
The rise of the Islamic State has finally shocked some people
into a belated awareness of what's been going on in Middle East.
The belief that peace negotiations are possible even though
Muslims will never abandon their goal of conquest has been
undercut. Dan Illouz writes of some of the lessons learned: the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the central conflict in the
Middle East; territorial withdrawals strengthen terrorism; Iran
needs to be stopped; and, finally, Israel must stand up to
pressure.
The media are everywhere in Israel and the Territories, but
the reporters and camera men see only what they want to see and
hear only what they want to hear. They are susceptible to Arab
hoaxes and indifferent to truth spoken by Jews. They are advocates
for the Arabs, whose cause justifies all. And oddly enough,
instead of feeling guilty about corrupting the advertised
standards of their guilds, they are satisfied that they are doing
the politically correct thing to do — vilifying the
Jews.
THE IDEOLOGICAL ROOTS OF MEDIA BIAS AGAINST ISRAEL
by Matti Friedman
Matti Friedman writes "about how the media dissect and magnify
Israel's flaws while purposely erasing those of its enemies."
While working for the Associated Press (AP), he became "aware of
certain malfunctions in the coverage of the Israel story —
recurring omissions, recurring inflations, decisions made
according to considerations that were not journalistic but
political, all in the context of a story staffed and reported more
than any other international story on earth." He points out that
this is not limited to AP; it is true of the international press
with few exceptions. Friedman has since become a whistler blower
who provides anecdotal and summation evidence, confirming what
many of us have long assumed. As Friedman writes, by the rules of
much of the international media, "Jewish hatred of Arabs is a
story. Arab hatred of Jews is not... 100 houses in a West Bank
settlement are a story. 100 rockets smuggled into Gaza are not.
The Hamas military build-up amid and under the civilian population
of Gaza is not a story. But Israeli military action responding to
that threat — that is a story, ..." Friedman understands there is
a larger and more sinister context. He points out, "The only group
of people subject to a systematic boycott at present in the
Western world are Jews, appearing now under the convenient
euphemism 'Israelis.' The only country that has its own 'apartheid
week' on campuses is the Jewish country." He clearly sees how the
media have demonized the Jews — Jews/Israelis are occupiers,
they are human rights violators, they are the vilest of the vile
— and he understands how journalists and reporters and
cameramen function as pro-Palestinian propagandists. He
makes the important point that the alleged occupation of Jews of Arab land has
become the central symbol of evil, which anchors and gives
meaning to any story about victimization anywhere in the world.
But he is apparently still certain that Israel really is occupying
Arab land, when the reverse is the actual case. I hope as he
progresses in understanding, he reads some factual history.
The San Remo Conference of 1920 and the various Middle East
Mandates that created both the single Jewish state and many of the
current Arab states would be a good starting point. He might begin
here,
here,
here,
here,
here
and
here.
PBS: AMERICA'S "MOST TRUSTED INSTITUTION" AND ITS COVERAGE OF ISLAM
by Denis MacEoin
The Public Broadcasting Station (PBS) has convinced the public
it is a superior, unbiased and trustworthy educational instrument.
In point of fact, as Denis MacEoin demonstrates, they have acted
as apologists for Islam. In a recent series on Islam, they
"broadcast, through a film and on the internet, religious
propaganda in place of balanced educational, instructional, and
public information material, despite elaborate claims to the
contrary." This is not a casual assertion, because, certified by
the authority of PBS, this material has influenced the views of
millions of Americans about Islam, yet it is littered with
propagandistic bits, some of which are false, and many of them
misleading and incomplete. Some sponsors "are linked to dubious
organizations"; and some advisors have links to terror
organizations, are salafist ideologues and have no scruples about
lying and denying ugly facts about Islam. One, Azizah al-Hibri,
asserted that Islam is compatible with women's rights and that the
"concept of the separation of church and state came from Islam." A
speaker, M. Cherif Bassiouni, is both a prominent lawyer and a
defender of Hamas. He has argued "that Islamic law does not punish
apostasy — a statement that might have come as a surprise to the
many thousands of Muslim apostates and heretics who have been
executed from the time of Muhammad to the present day." Perhaps
the biggest howler was the unduly flattering portrait of Mohammad
and the biggest error of judgment was presenting Karen Armstrong
disingenuous distortions as historical facts. The material is
suitable for a missionary video but in no way can it serve as a
serious source of information about Islam.
Although the UN had an agency to handle the millions of
refugees around the world, it set up a special agency, UNRWA
exclusively for the Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 when Israel
became a state. Most of them fled because Israel's neighbors who
invaded the fledgling state told the residents to clear out until
they could kill off the Jews and/or for fear the Jews would do
unto them as they would have done unto the Jews. The Jews survived
that invasion and another two after that, but the collection of
refugees were pure gold as propaganda in that Arab propagandists
claimed they were the aboriginal people of the land, which the
Jews stole from them. Joan Peters determined that the facts and
the Arab story didn't match and published the results in 1984 in a
book entitled From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the
Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine. For her efforts, she was
denounced by a host of Palestinian Arab supporters. Joan Peters
died this year in January. Nadav Shragai tells us about her
accomplishment.
WHY THE LEFT REFUSES TO TALK ABOUT MUSLIM ANTI-SEMITISM
by Daniel Greenfield
The mainstream press, which is mostly Leftist, spends much time
on the sins of the European far right. A major sin of these
Rightists is that they don't like what Muslims are doing to
European countries and they say so. But the press becomes timid
when the subject is Muslim anti-Semitism. Daniel Greenfield points
out that Muslim anti-Semitism has been "the dominant form of
violence against Jews in Europe. And it has been that way for some
time now." "When Western leftists make common cause with Arab and
Islamic nationalists, they aren't being post-colonial, they're
advocating an earlier form of colonialism [under Arab rule] that
led and is once again leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass
slavery and the destruction of indigenous cultures; including that
of the Jews." In such an environment, Jews would again live as
dhimmis under Arab control as they did for hundreds of years.
Their investment in "[t]he
post-colonial narrative obligates academics and journalists to
favorably contrast the Muslim treatment of Jews, then or now, with
the European treatment of Jews." Meantime, "Muslim Supremacist
anti-Semitism remains interested in persecuting and killing Jews.
WILL AMERICAN JEWRY AGAIN FAIL TO CONFRONT HISTORIC THREAT?
by Atera Beck
With the declared threat by Iran to wipe out Israel when they
get the bomb the lack of indignation by the general population,
and the lack of strong response by the Jewish organizations, it is
beginning to look much like it did in the 1930s, when Hitler was
just getting started. Atara Beck asks whether American Jewish
leaders are repeating the same tragic mistakes of the Nazi era?
She writes that in the 30s, grassroots American Jews wanted to
help their co-religionists in Europe, but the major Jewish
organizations did little, and some actually fought the idea of
helping the Jews in Europe. In the year 2015, while Iran
broadcasts it can't wait to get nuclear weaponry to use on Israel,
the American administration, particularly Secr.-State Kerry and
National Security Advisor Rice attacked PM Netanyahu for voicing
his concern that Iran's nuclear program hasn't yet been stopped.
Rabbi Boteach placed an ad in the New York Times "castigating
rice." At the that point, many American Jewish organizations
"rushed to denounce Boteach for daring to insult Rice." Will they
never learn!
If I tell you that Moe Berg spoke fifteen languages and went to
Princeton, the Sorbonne and Columbia Law School, you might think
this will be about yet another Jewish intellectual/academic. What
if I add that he played baseball so-so but he won the Medal of
Freedom and it is displayed in the Baseball Hall of Fame? Bernard
Shapiro tells of Moe's wartime exploits during World War 2, one of
which won him the medal.
NAZI DIARY REVEALS BRUTAL TACTICS EMPLOYED AGAINST LODZ JEWS
by Kobi Nachshoni
Nazi officers kept a record of day-to-day
life in the Lodz Ghetto. A diary containing their notes has been
uncovered. It records punishments they inflicted and the brutal
ways they had to obtain information. They hunted Jews that had
managed to stay out of the ghetto. They were cruel and created a
reign of terror. They recorded the details of what they did but in
sanitized language. This is contrast to Muslim salafists who take
pleasure in broadcasting videos showing them decapitating and
shooting their victims.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
This issue breaks naturally into two sections. Part I
focuses on our usual concerns: the salafi jihad against Israel and
the West. Part II is an high resolution look at Counter Terrorism
and the state of the Middle East States.
PART 1
The Islamic Jihad continues tirelessly, comprehensively and
successfully to pacify the West. Occasionally their efforts are
overt and dramatic acts of terror. For the most part, they work
quietly and effectively. They convince our churches to become
instruments spewing hate. They infiltrate our entertainment,
educational, political, judicial and defense institutions. They
corrupt our media and destabilize our society. Our media people
tell us how nice most Muslims are, so why fuss about the few
percent that aren't. A TV show had a Christian killing his
daughter because she is serious about a Muslim man — talk about
reversing reality! The ACLU sniffs out any attempt to introduce
Christianity in public schools, but I've not heard any complaint
from them about school children being taken to mosques, dressed
in burkas, and taught how to pray like Muslims do. If a
terrorist act is so blatant it can't be ignored — beheading
pedestrians on the street, say — we are immediately reassured
that this is an aberration in Islam. We are not told the truth:
in the Muslim religion, decapitation is an acceptable way to deal
with those who won't submit to Islam and are therefore, by
definition, enemies of Islam. We don't want to be labeled
islamophobic, do we?
Except when expediency stayed their hand, much of Europe and
the American State Department have been hostile to the modern
state of Israel from its beginning. We include in this issue
essays on Britain, a prime example. In the
first World War, the Palestinian Jews fought for England
while the English Administration in Palestine helped the Arabs,
who for the most part cooperated with the Nazis. Its handling of
the Palestine Mandate, which it had taken on with the
understanding that it was to midwife a viable state of Israel
is a sorry history of constricting Israel's growth.
Currently, English culture is itself under siege from England's
Muslim population. Britain's response is to cooperate with the
Muslims, especially against Israel, which, because
of its location, is on the forefront of the fight against a Muslim
takeover of the West.
In American academia, in mainline churches, in much of the
media, in the UN and in the US Administration, Israel is
the enemy. No one thinks the campaign to delegitimize Israel,
isolate it and destroy its economy is contextually bizarre. Israel
is not praised for its pinpoint retaliation of Hamas's bombing.
Other countries can kill hundreds and thousands of civilians
without media or 'humanitarian' complaint, but Israel is accused
of war crimes if it kills a single child used as a human shield.
In contrast, despite all evidence to the contrary, the Muslim
Brotherhood, which has spawned multiple terrorist organizations,
is lauded as a reasonable and friendly organization that means the
West no harm. In fact Huma Abedin, a member of a family prominent
in the Brotherhood, was deputy chief of staff in Hillary Clinton's
State Department. Clearly, if we are on a wartime footing, it is
not with the perpetrators of 9/11.
A NEW PHASE IN THE JIHAD INVASION OF THE USA?
The ongoing and systematic jihad by Resurgent Islam appears to be
climbing to new heights, and has the open support of
traditional native anti-Semites while it has succeeded in cowing
many defense groups into silence. Whether it is direct from Arabia
or initiated by some of their local supporters, the Arab story of
their victimization is now echoed by the
Metropolitan Opera, which, with huge money problems, is
nevertheless staging a
lavish production of an anti-Jewish opera. On campus, academic
unions ban Israeli colleagues while attacks on Jewish students that
inhibit their ability to live normal lives have increased.
Think-tank reports can no longer be taken for granted as accurate
and complete. This section provides examples and, in
addition, suggestions on ways to stop the
onslaught of Islam on the West.
Return to What We Are Talking About
HAMAS-BACKING QATAR ALSO FUNDING BROOKINGS INSTITUTE, HOME OF
FORMER U.S. MIDEAST ENVOY INDYK
by Dave Bender
A comment that came to Think-Israel acutely summed up that the
salafists had purchased another way to influence public opinion:
"Qatar is buying Washington clout by funneling large amounts of
cash into the Brookings Institution, a leading progressive DC
think tank, through Martin Indyk, who evidently has been co-opted
by their money... Brookings serves as a major source of policy for
Democrats in Congress...It is also a classic example of the
mainstream press ignoring a major conflict of interest story
willfully." In this essay, Dave Bender emphasizes that Qatar also
funds Hamas and, as do other Middle East Arab countries, it
expects value for its money from grantees, terrorists and
"non-combatants" alike. The discovery that Qatar was a major
contributor to Brookings took on additional significance because
it highlighted a major conflict of interest. Martin Indyk, a high
echelon member of the Brookings Institute, while posing as neutral
in his role as US negotiator, blasted Israel, claiming it, and it
alone, was responsible for the latest collapse of the so-called
"Peace Talks". Was he speaking from his experience as a negotiator
or as a hireling of a foreign power?
It is important to recognize that the Brookings Institute isn't an
isolated example. Unfortunately, many supposedly objective
Washington research groups and think-tanks have been corrupted
— in the sense that their awareness of their funding
sources' interests leads them to self-censorship. They ignore or
downplay or distort important information. It is also true that
toeing the line is often openly a required condition of future
funding.
THE HIJACKING OF HISTORY BY OPERA: THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER
by Phyllis Chesler. With examples of script falsification
by Richard H. Shulman
Phyllis Chesler examines the artistic and not so artistic aspects
of The Metropolitan Opera staging of "The Death of Klinghoffer," a
reenactment of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro by a group
of Arab terrorists, who shot a wheelchair-bound passenger, Leon
Klinghoffer, in the head and then threw him overboard. Their
reason? He was a Jew and they were homeless because of the Jews.
Putting aside the fact that the Jews hadn't stolen the land from
the Arabs because the Arabs didn't own the land, call me stupid,
but I don't get how killing a defenseless Jew can be presented as
an inevitable or effective or even expected way to assuage anger
and loss. If, as is claimed, this is an attempt to understand
humans acting out their agony, shouldn't the script have probed
deeper? Are killing and torture routine responses to being
deprived of a home? If so, why aren't Jews terrorists? After all,
at the very least, some 800,000 Jews were forced to flee Arab
countries roughly around the time the families of the stage Arabs
agreed to leave their homes at the behest of the Arab countries
invading the new state of Israel. So maybe there's something in
the nature or nurture of the Arab 'victims' that drives them to
bestiality. But the opera doesn't go there. It follows the trite
formula of pitting the good guys against the bad guys, with the
terrorists and the Jewish passengers acting as stand-ins for Arabs
and Israelis. The terrorists sing
good-guy lyrics, so we know they must be good guys.
Richard Shulman points out the gross tampering with
historic facts that was required to make the terrorists seem to be
good guys and the libel needed to make villains of the Jews.
What an inversion of history!
Actually, there is one aspect of the opera's conception that is
worthy of exploration: the appealing vision of terrorists who
have a human concern for lost homes and wrecked families was
concocted by the composer/librettist. The real terrorists
hijacked the boat to force Israel to release another terrorist,
Samir Kuntar, in prison for invading an Israeli home, seizing a
father and his four-year old daughter, and smashing the head of
the child against a rock in front of her father. As Chesler
writes, the librettist, bought up as a Jew and now an Anglican
priest, appears enamored of the theme of murder-crucifixion of a
Jew. The composer is an admirer of Edward Said, who falsified his
own history and used his academic standing to strengthened the
illusion that the Palestinian Arabs were an actual people. So
there is the interesting question: was the substitute plot
designed to enhance the opera's artistry or was it because even a
librettist much more talented than the Klinghoffer librettist
could not have squeezed out sympathy for the real terrorists, who like
beasts of the field did what they did with pride and the
admiration of their families, but without human conscience.
We are left to ask: why did the Met, which prefers to keep
dramatic controversy tidily on the stage and not moving into the
audience, put this on? Not surprisingly, many people automatically
assume that the Arab Jihad, having secured a forum for its world
view in academia, is now ready to tackle the arts. Even if the
lavish presentation was not pre-soaked in oil money, it says
something about the anti-Semitic climate the Arabs have been
paying to create that the Met had no qualms putting on such a
show.
The actions of some Jewish Met donors have also been called into
question. As Mark Langfan of AFSI (see here)
noted: not one rich black donor would support an opera that
explained the 'perspective of a white lynch mob' lynching a black
man... But, today, with this evil opera glorifying the terroristic
Palestinian murder of an American Jew, there are still many, many
rich American Jewish Metropolitan Opera donors who are still going
to donate millions upon millions to the Metropolitan Opera. And,
that ... is sickness." Even worse, the large Jewish organizations
that have ignored the harassment of Jews at colleges and the
hostility of the Obama administration towards Israel remain
stuporous, even though this malodorous production at the Met looks
like the start of yet another phase of Arabs spewing money
to encourage holocaust-level Jew-hate while Jews pretend it isn't
happening.
Too many Jews respond to the growing overt antagonism to Jews
by Jew-haters who lie deliberately or distort the truth by using
the "everyone is entitled to speak" argument. Caroline Glick
spells out how far we've come from small acts of violence against
Jews to systematic bans, divestments and sanctions. Dock unions
won't unload Israeli goods; academic unions won't affiliate with
Israeli universities; Jewish students are subjected to harassment
and violence, which the university administrations ignore.
Increasingly, as Glick puts it, "another dam has been breached.
Another safe zone has become a no-go zone." and there is no end in
sight. Yet the Jews have been slow to respond and when they do,
their quiet remonstrances have been ignored. There are better ways
to deal with the wave of non-random attacks designed to demonize,
terrorize and isolate Jews. For example, ZOA demanded that those
major Jewish donors that continued to donate after the Met staged
a propagandist anti-Jewish opera be called to "account for their
decision not to revoke their multi-million dollar support for the
opera house." Responding to anti-Jewish thug tactics should be by
exposing the front group's backing and ties to terrorism.
Intimidation can be met by restraining orders and filing criminal
complaints. Lawsuits against academic administrators who allow
Jewish students to be subjected to attacks ranging from verbal
abuse to physical assaults are more effective than writing polite
letters suggesting the administrators do when they already know
they should be doing and have no intention of doing. As Glick
suggests, "an aggressive campaign of legal, political, social and
financial opposition to those who seek to demonize Jews and deny
Jews civil rights as Jews as well as those who enable them can go
a long way toward making members of these hate groups and their
supporters rue the day they decided to go after the Jews."
Experts have written off Europe. It has been conquered by
the Muslims. Europe's welfare systems pay to produce Arab babies.
Europe's ideology of multiculturalism is an invitation to inflict
the Muslim singular way of life on the native populations.
Europe's nervousness at meddling in religion is used by the Muslims
to try to make Islam top dog, while demonizing Judaism and
denigrating Christianity. And it doesn't help that Europe is
highly susceptible to anti-Semitism. Perhaps I'm clutching at
straws, but I think the arguments for Europe's slide into
cultural oblivion may be premature. Though not organized, many
people are more savvy than the dhimmi media and politicians that
speak for them.
Over many years, Geert Wilders has fought the Islamic Jihad by
political action and educational means. Although a member of the
Dutch parliament, he was put on trial for the hate crimes of
telling the truth about Islam in articles and making a
documentary called Fitna, which had the audacity to quote
passages directly from the Koran. In this article, he asserts we
must do more than "bomb its strongholds in the Middle East." It
is also necessary to confront Western-born Muslim jihadists at
home in the West. As Wilders says, "war has also come to our
streets" and every Westerner is a potential target. This, in many
ways, is more difficult to do, because it runs counter to
political correctness and insists that homeland security is more
important than subscribing to the ideology of multiculturalism.
GERMAN POLICE RAID MOSQUE, ISLAMIC CENTER, AND MUSLIM FLATS OVER SUSPECTED TIES TO THE ISLAMIC STATE
by Bare Naked Islam
This article records an unusual
happening: the German police rounding up those with connections to
ISIS. As in other European countries, the
police don't want to be perceived as persecuting a minority
religion, especially Islam. In an unusual move, German police
arrested members of ISIS in several raids. This article appeared
in Bare Naked Islam. Several comments suggested the Germans would
act stronger if they weren't inhibited by their reputation for
brutality, which they earned by slaughtering Jews in World War 2.
HOW BRITISH NEWSPAPERS HANDLE MUSLIM CRIMES AND ACTS
OF TERRORISM
by Bernice Lipkin
Bernice Lipkin describes the discrepancy between the shallow
way Islamic terrorism and Islamic crimes are handled in the
British Press — the major objective is to keep the peace
— and the savvy understanding of what's actually going on by
many of their readers, who recognize that too many of their Muslim
neighbors have no intention of fitting into Britain's culture but
wish to remold England's style of life to suit their own needs as
Muslims. In this instance, the public was made aware that some
Muslims, though born in Britain, have chosen to fight for ISIS in
the Middle East and perhaps to destroy some of their fellow
citizens when they return home. At the same time, the newspapers
headlined that Muslim gangs have been grooming white lower-class
British children as prostitutes. Yet the main concern of the press
was not why the Muslims were so destructive to the English life
style. Instead they worried that people might resent what was
happening and make life hard for their Muslim neighbors.
Scenes of Islamic terrorists who wish to make European
institutions Islam-compatible fighting police are dramatic, but it
is some of the subtler types of Islamic influence that are the
greater danger. Bruce Thornton writes of the illogical, sometimes
absurd, arguments used to bolster hate of Israel, As Thornton
writes, "there is no question that hatred of Israel reflects the
continuing existence of anti-Semitism in Europe, intensified by
millions of Muslim immigrants for whom hating Israel is
theologically justified."
This is how Diana West answered Americans who are "still
genuinely puzzled as to how it could be that our presidents and
secretaries of state and generals and pundits keep hammering home
the big lie that Islam has nothing to do with jihad, that the
religion of conquest is a 'religion of peace'". It's done, she
explained, because, as in the convincing case that communism,
unlike Nazism, is not linked to the horrors it caused,
disassociation works.
[see here.] The converse is also true. Israelis are falsely
accused of being child killers, even though they meticulously
attempt to avoid hitting Arab children serving as human shields
for terrorists. It is perhaps a task for future historians to
determine how many incidents are necessary to create a linkage.
Certainly the first article in the set would seem to be grotesque
enough to sear an association. But few in the media have
broadcast the story and so it can not spread enlightenment very
far.
In skill in persuasion, public relations by Salafists such as
IS is even more amateurish than Israel's. The only difference is
that the global media doesn't disseminate every Muslim mumble and
fumble. Robert Spencer describes a gory event somewhere between an
honor killing and group entertainment, where a woman accused of
adultery was stoned. Her father had the honer of hurling the first
stone. The participants were recorded by a devotee of sharia law
using modern technology. Will it have any impact on the certainty
by so many that Islam is a religion of peace? Unlikely.
As demonstrated by Tabitha Korol, NPR is likely to do for an
autodidatic education what Peace Now and Oxfam have done for human
rights, namely, destroy its good name. NPR has proven itself
untrustworthy as a vehicle of education in that it is notoriously
agenda-driven, describing the terrorist cohorts of Islam as
following a religion of peace, innocent victims of the very same
Israelis that they slaughter. Conversely, NPR describes Israel's
precision in targeting enemy missiles while avoiding civilians in
terms that suggest that Israel deliberately targets civilians. A
mite of logic would suggest that the Arabs wouldn't hide their
weaponry in the midst of women and children if they didn't know
the Jews care more about Arab civilians that the Arab governments
do. They'd lose too many of their weapons.
There was a time when Israelis were trying to convince
themselves that the thuggish, Jew-hating Arafat and his buddies
could, for the right price, give them peace. Their official and
unofficial spokesmen would go on such shows as Charlie Rose on TV
and blather that their desire was to see a Palestinian state
neighboring or inside Israel. That aberration seems, for the most
part, to have worn itself out, but Israelis, when given the
opportunity to tell it as it is to Jews in a position to spread
the word, still yack on about the desirability of peace, not the
impossibility of compromising with those who have a monomaniacal
desire to kill Jews. They don't say straight out that war and
jihad and terror and killing infidels and raping and beheading and
looting are not aberrations in Islam; they are what Mohammad
wanted his followers to do. Shari Goodman recounts an evening when
Michael Oren, once Israeli ambassador to the U.S., spoke at a
parlor event. He pooh-poohed Muslim infiltration in the White
House and US defense agencies, knowledge of which is so widespread
that some has even reached the mainstream media. Most egregiously,
Oren saw Arabs hostility as a land claim and not as what it is: an
all-out war where the only endpoint the Arabs will accept is an
Islamic victory over all other groups with a different religion or
ideology, with the Jews being an immediate target. From all
indications, Israel will have to work hard just to get up to the
starting point of educating the world, let alone doing an effective
job.
DOES ISRAEL HAVE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS? NEW YORK TIMES: "NONSENSE"
by First One Through
To get one's news mainly from the New York Times (NYT) is to
believe that Israel restricts the press. It's true that Israel has
been appraised as having a free press by Freedom House. It's the
only country in the Middle East that does. Another authoritative
group, the Foreign Press, has protested Hamas's censorship of
reporters in Gaza. But why bother with statistics, when an
NYT Bureau chief claims to have contradictory evidence from
unnamed sources. The White Queen of the Times declared of Israel's
record of freedom of the press, "Nonsense." And she, herself, has
said it. Though it isn't to her credit. Nor does it help counter the
decline of the NYT as a reputable source of information.
by Shlomo Sand. With Foreword by IAM Editor and Review by
Gordon Haber
Half a dozen years or so ago, Shlomo Sand, who was something
of a mediocrity, academic-wise, realized there was a easy route to
fame and fortune. He could capitalize (I hope that Sand, a Marxist
in good standing, won't find the term offensive) on two facts: he
was born Jewish and he had an academic union card. All he needed
to do was change his audience. Since then he has written an
anti-Judaism trilogy that has succeeded in bringing comfort and
confirmation of their every belief to Jew haters everywhere,
particularly those in Europe. His first two books attempted to rip
Judaism from its historical and theological roots. His latest book
details how he stripped away his own Jewish identity. It provides
no world shaking insights or original philosophy, but his saying
"I stopped being a Jew" seems on the mark. I wonder though —
now that he has denied himself the right to use Jewish credentials
to certify how evil Judaism is — will his assertions be
worth as much to the Jew-haters he has inspired?
The Future State Of Israel, 1920, was to be on both
sides of the Jordan (courtesy of Eli Hertz,
www.MythsandFacts.org)
The map was used in
justicenow4israel.com
to point out that both sides of the Jordan were in trust
for a Jewish Homeland. Article 25 of
the Mandate for Palestine states that,
The wording, "postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions is by the nature of the wording a temporary action. That action was only valid until there was a change in the conditions leading to that decision. It did not authorize the British to permanently cut off portions of the land and turn it over to a foreign people.
This section recounts the history of Britain's treacherous
behavior towards the Jews in the context of the Arab-Jewish
conflict. One of the most egregious example was Britain's stealing
78% the land assigned by international law at San Remo in 1920 for
a Jewish homeland. It became today's Kingdom of Jordan. The
question remains: why, when the Arabs acquired through no effort
of their own more than 99% of the enormous Middle Eastern
territory of the Ottoman Empire, why did Britain have to steal
from the tiny amount of land assigned to be the Jewish
homeland?
Because much of the information in this Section on Israel's claim
to Jewish land depends on legal
concepts, we post here "The Palestine Mandate in a Nutshell",
written by Wallace Brand. The "unshelled" version is at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2385304.
See also Brand's recent discusssion of the roots of Israel's sovereignty
here and
here.
The text of San Remo Agreement provided: "The High Contracting Parties agree to ENTRUST... the administration of Palestine . . .
Trust law for non-lawyers
After finding an intention to set up a trust, look for:
The "settlor", the person or entity setting it up. He
contributes the trust res.
The cestui que trust or "beneficiary" of the trust.
The trustee.
The trust res or the thing place in trust.
The purpose of the trust.
The term of the trust.
These are the vital elements of a trust. Some are expressed; others
may be inferred. For example if you place a delicate Ming dynasty
bowl in trust for your daughter aged 5, others may infer that the
purpose of the trust that is to vest when she is 30 is to preserve
and protect it until she is capable of doing that herself.
The 1920 San Remo agreement of the Allied Principal War Powers
contained the British Balfour Declaration of Policy word-for-word.
The 1922 Palestine Mandate approved by 51 countries that were
members of the League of Nations, and also by the United States,
filled in the details needed to apply the Balfour Policy.
One. At San Remo, the settlor of the trust was the Supreme
Council of the Allied Principal War Powers in WWI. They defeated
Germany who commenced the war and the Ottoman Empire who joined
Germany in making war on the Allies. Under customary International
Law, the victors in a defensive war may negotiate with the
vanquished to establish new boundaries for it and keep all the
territory outside the new boundary. In this way the Ottoman Empire
was reduced to Turkey. The remaining Turkish territory in Europe
was allocated by the Supreme Council at the 1919 Paris Peace
Talks. Claims for territory in the Middle East — Syria,
Mesopotamia and Palestine — were resolved at the reconvening of
the group at San Remo, the following year. At the Paris Peace
talks the Allies set up the League of Nations including Article 22
of its Covenant that provided for "mandates". These were
combination trusts and guardianships for countries that had been
colonies of Turkey for 400 years. The Mandatory was to provide
stability and tutelage for their political development to become
independent representative governments over time.
Two. The cestui que trust is the beneficiary. The beneficiary
has no right to go to a "law court" to protect his rights. That is
only the right of the trustee. He has legal dominion over the
trust res. For a tangible piece of property, such as a Ming
dynasty bowl, only the trustee has the right of possession. If it
is stolen, only the trustee can go into a court of law to reclaim
it. The beneficiary is limited to protecting his rights against
abuse by the trustee. He is entitled to go into a court of equity.
The beneficiary here was the Jewish People or World Jewry. It was
the Jewish people and the Arab people who had submitted competing
claims for collective political rights to Palestine at the Paris
Peace talks. Woodrow Wilson's Commission of Inquiry in searching
for those throughout the world having the right of
self-determination had said of the Jews that Palestine was "the
cradle and home of their vital race" and noted that the Jews were
the only people that had no other land.
An express term of the trust made the World Zionist Association
the formal advisor to the mandate government. Another term
required the trustee to facilitate only Jewish immigration so the
Jews could become a majority.
Three. The mandate was based on English law concepts of trusts
and guardianships. Britain volunteered to be trustee or
"mandatory" and was selected.
Four. The thing placed in trust, the trust res, was an
intangible, the collective right of a group to establish a
government and provide for its administration. This is referred to
as "group political rights". An individual political right,
sometimes referred to as included in "civil rights", is the right
to one vote for each citizen.
Five. The purpose of the trust was, in the case of most of
the mandates, providing a stable government until such time as the
majority of the people in the territory of the state developed
politically and could represent themselves - there having been no
opportunity in the last 400 years for the inhabitants of the
former Turkish colonies to do that. It was also, in the case of
the Palestine Mandate, to avoid an antidemocratic Jewish
government. At the time the Jews were in the minority in the
entire territory of Palestine and if they had legal dominion over
the political rights, an antidemocratic government would be in
power. One purpose of the Palestine Mandate was to delay
representative self-government until the Jews were in the majority
within the area to be ruled.
Six. The term of the trust — it was to end when the Jewish
population in the area to be ruled was in the majority and the
Jews had the capability, just as any European Government to
exercise sovereignty. That would avoid an antidemocratic
government such as later was founded in Syria by the French, of a
minority of Alawites that under Hafez Assad and Bashir Assad has
caused so much misery and destruction.
Historical note
In 1948 the Jewish population within the Armistice Line in
Palestine became the majority. The trust res partially vested. In
1967 it became completely vested. Coincidentally the UN Partition
Resolution 181 was enacted on November 29,1947, not long before
1948 when Israel proclaimed its independence. That is why many
people believe that Resolution 181 is the root of Israel's
sovereignty. But the Arabs rejected this Resolution. By law it was
only a recommendation that must be approved by all involved before
becoming international law. It died at birth when rejected by the
Arabs.
In 1964 the PLO charter was drafted in Moscow. It posited that
there was a "Palestinian Arab People". In the '60s also the Soviet
Diplomats at the UN promoted two International Conventions
dignifying the right of any "people" to have the right of
political self-determination not just under natural law, but also
under international law. These became effective in 1976. But the
drafters at the UN made sure that these rights under international
law were subordinate to the right of a preexisting state to
territorial integrity because since the new world order was
established after the Peace of Westphalia, national boundaries of
sovereign states have been inviolable.
Joan Swirsky, who sent this article by Kenneth Levin to
Think-Israel, wrote: "This essay traces British animus (strongly
virulent) against the Jews. Thwarting Jewish safety, toadying to
Arab prejudice, preventing Jewish defense, encouraging Arab
violence by offering false charges as 'cover' for Arab attacks."
British sympathy to the Arab cause remains as true as it was a
hundred years ago. As Levin notes, "But even beyond the context of
violence, anti-Israel distortions of realities in the territories
are pervasive in Britain." As example, when Israel gained control
of Gaza, she improved the lives of the Arabs still living in
refugee camps by building them permanent homes with electricity
and running water and finding them employment in Israel. This
radically changed when Hamas gained control. But to read the
British media, the exact opposite is true: Hamas is painted as
a fair-minded governor, while, inconsistently, the Gazans suffer
under (phantom) Israeli occupation.
WAS BRITAIN'S SEVERING TRANSJORDAN FROM THE JEWISH
HOMELAND AN ACT OF PREJUDICE, MISJUDGMENT OR BETRAYAL OF THE JEWS?
by Alex Rose
Thomas Jefferson once said it was not honorable to take legal
advantage when it was contrary to justice. Alex Rose provides us
with a comprehensive analysis of what seems a bizarre act by
Britain when it held the Mandate for developing the ancient land
of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people. The entire area set
aside was a minuscule piece of the Ottoman Empire while
the Arabs were given over 99% of the area. Yet when England wanted to
reward the Hashemite Abdullah a consolation prize because the
Saudis, a rival clan, got Mecca and Medina and a huge land
surround, Britain chopped three-quarters of the one percent
destined to become Israel, using as pretext that these Arabs would
merely administrate the land, not own it.
Sarah Honig summarizes succinctly what the other articles in
this section flesh out in detail and brings the story up to the
present day. She also puts the lie to the notion that the foreign
policy of a supposedly rational country is primarily determined by
calculated national interest. As she makes clear by describing
Britain's behavior, ideology and historic prejudice may counteract
self-interest.
This is the season that we celebrate the start of the new year
of 5775. It is a time that we are encouraged to reflect and think
about bringing a sense of service to HaShem into our everyday
lives. If we choose to do so, circumstances are seldom much of a
hindrance. Michael Freund writes of a Rosh Hashanah in Auschwitz,
when Naftali Stern, a cantor, took upon himself the task of
conducting a full Rosh Hashanah service in the camp, where just
surviving was almost impossible. To do so, he swapped his bread
rations for pencil and sacks on which he wrote out the prayers for
Rosh Hashanah from memory. And on Rosh Hashanah, he held a service
for the assembled Jews.
THE U.S. NAVY SAVED JEWS OF ERETZ YISRAEL 100 YEARS
AGO
by Lenny Ben-David
It was 1914. World War 1 was starting, and the Ottomans, then
the rulers of the Middle East including the land that would
become the modern State of Israel, were massing troops, preparing
to move against the British. Their preparations including looting
food and supplies and conscripting the locals, including the
local Jews, who were already living close to the edge of
disaster, suffering from poor crop yield, plundering by
government officials and the enforced enlistment of their
breadwinners. They needed money to tide them over. The money was
forthcoming from some American millionaires. The problem was how
to get the money to the needy by avoiding the sticky fingers of
Turkish officials. The U.S. navy came to the rescue. American
ships monitoring the eastern Mediterranean between Beirut and
Cairo carried money and supplies to sustain the beleaguered
Jewish community.
In 732, the hitherto unstopped conquest of the Middle East and
Europe by the Muslims was brought to a halt at Tours, some 175
miles from Paris. The victorious army was led by a Frankish duke
who earned his sobriquet Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer) at
the battle. It wasn't a one-shot victory, but it marked the
beginning of Europe's ability to fight off the Muslim invaders.
Mark Tapson tells the story, with emphasis on the contrast between
Charles the Hammer and the present-day dhimmi, Prince Charles, who
inter alia has encouraged the demographic invasion of
England by Muslim immigrants. The Islamic means are different; the goal
the same.
We have no systematic or coherent plan to fight the war
Resurgent Islam has declared against us. If anything, we spend
more effort fighting and denigrating those in our society that
see the danger in Islam. Homeland Security has no problems with
Muslims from known terrorist organizations such as CAIR strolling
through their offices but warned that American soldiers returning
from Afganistan might be a danger. After 9/11, our leaders
insisted Islam was a 'religion of peace' and spoke of fighting
terrorism, as if terrorism were an independent entity and
not a tool, like a knife or a gun. Nowadays, thirteen years
later, we talk about fighting terrorists, but in terms of
fighting a specific terrorist group — the 'bad terrorists'
awardee of the month — that is more or less independent of
other terror groups. We may even highlight some of the atrocities
committed. But we ignore that these groups all have the same
mission.
It is a major defect in our response to Islamic Jihad that we
ignore that it is the supremicist ideology of the Koran that
fuels and sustains Muslims engaged in terrorism. Instead, we act
as if terrorism were caused by environmental conditions such as
poverty. We accept the masks of friendliness that Middle East
rulers wear for some occasions as genuine, and fantasize that
they have permanently changed attitude and are finally willing to
accepting Western values. We give priority to not offending
Muslim sensitivities over and above preserving our democratic
institutions and our way of life. We believe we can make model
citizens from "moderate" terrorists such as PA's Mahmoud Abbas.
We don't see the Islamic Jihad as a global war. Instead, we pick
a group to fight, "dictators" one day, Al-Qaeda another.
Currently, we are focusing on ISIS. Were we to examine the
situation intelligently, we might notice that the only urgent
problem — in the sense of the world-changing political, economic
and environmental damage that it can do in the near future — is
Iran's acquisition of nuclear weaponry. Our cognitive distortions
help prevent us from operating at full power against the
salafists, with a view to extirpating their belief in Islamic
ideology, the force behind their actions. At some point we will
have to return to the methodology of World War II, where first we
devoted our energies to conquering the Axis countries and then we
reeducated the Germans and Japanese sufficiently so that their
ideological underpinnings were no longer strong enough to
threaten us.
POORLY UNDERSTOOD AND POORLY IMPLEMENTED COUNTERTERRORISM
This section discusses the differences between fighting terrorism
versus fighting terrorists versus fighting terrorists and
their ideology. To fight terrorism per se is as
contributory to effective action as accusing the producer of the
Life of George/Mohammad of inciting Libyans to attack the
American compound in Benghazi.
Our views on what makes someone
become a terrorist and whether we believe barbaric acts of
terrorism are condoned or condemned by Islam determine how we go
about countering terrorists and whether we believe in the
existence of the unaffiliated lone wolf and the moderate Muslim.
This set of essays deals with four mistaken ideas:
We are fighting violence and extremism. NO. We must recognize
we are fighting terrorists who are more or less violent. But even
this is insufficient. We must also focus on the Koranic sources that
make violent behavior a religious duty.
Lone wolves are independent and are unaffiliated with
terror groups. They commit random acts of terror, and we can't
know ahead of time. NO. They are inculcated with a sense of
mission, and usually they act under supervision and tutelage of
the local mosque and/or an experienced terrorist group. Discovering
who they are is not done by infiltrating a "cell" but by watching
those in whom jihad recruiters show particular interest and those
in the Muslim community who have recently rejected their previous
'Western' life style, basing their new behavior on the Koran,
growing a beard, giving up ordinary entertainment, urging others
to follow their example, etc.
The Muslim community can be divided into two
groups: a small group of terrorists and their supporters and
everyone else: 'moderate Muslims', who are peaceful. NO. There are
pious Muslims at one end of the scale and secularized Muslims at
the other, with degrees of piety in between. As a rule of thumb,
the more pious the Muslim, the more likely it is that he will
condone terror and be willing to participate in acts of terror.
Islam is not a peace-generating moderate religion. Its religious
practices are modeled not only on what Mohammad said but on what
Mohammad did, making it almost impossible to restructure or
reinterpret barbaric Islamic practices. Acts of terror are
intrinsic to Islam.
We can work with salafists that don't (often) display
violence and thus avoid dealing with violent terrorists. NO.
Interfaith groups and politicians may think members of non-violent
Muslim Brother spinoffs such as CAIR are interested in being good
citizens and adopting a 'live and let live' attitude towards their
neighbors. But there are no moderate terrorists. They have the
same mission as any other salafist in the West: making sharia the
law of the land in the West as it is in the Middle East.
THE FLAWED SCIENCE BEHIND AMERICA'S COUNTER-TERRORISM STRATEGY
by Katharine C. Gorka
The Obama administration and its academic expert advisers hold
that Islamic terrorism is the response to legitimate grievances.
Consequently, countering Violent Extremism (CVE) must be done by
addressing environmental causes — we must attack poverty,
alienation, low political and social status, and other such
traumatizing experiences. Others in the Counter-Terrorism
community, with greater real-world experience and knowledge of the
Muslim psyche, struggle to make the public understand that Islamic
jihad is not another expression of societal unrest and
discontent. As Katharine Gorka makes clear in this plainly written
study, terrorism is a weapon traditionally used by pious Muslims,
salafists, who, no matter what their socio-economic status,
believe that Muslims have a religious obligation to make Islam
prevail over the adherents of all other religions and belief
systems. No matter how much the government restructures the
terrain and softens the experiences of Muslim immigrants and
chants mantras about the virtues of multiculturalism, it won't
change the fact that Islam is intrinsically incompatible with the
Western belief that the individual matters and is capable of
running his own life to actualize his own goals. She makes clear
that until we correct the diagnosis, we will not rid ourselves of
the disease.
In an essay on the Boston Massacre
(see here.)
I pointed out that the so-called lone wolf was a cost-effective
way for a terrorist group to create a terror incident. "Supplies
are cheap and terror enthusiasts are plentiful." I suggested that
"specific training in particular weaponry could be reduced if
preparation ... created a fervently strong emotional commitment to
Islam. [...] Complete top-down hierarchical control wasn't
necessary. This didn't imply the terrorist was a free agent,
unaffiliated with an organized group of terrorists." Just the
opposite. In this article, Andrew McCarthy informs us that the
term 'lone wolf' "is actually a surveillance-law concept",
designed to allow investigators to track individuals doing things
like buying explosives or casing a bridge. Even if they did not
yet know what terrorist group was running him, "the involvement of
a foreign terrorist organization" was presumed. Thanks to denial
politics and political correctness, 'lone wolf' has come to mean
just the opposite, i.e., it now signifies an unaffiliated
individual who has somehow radicalized himself without access to
jihadist literature and/or to those who preach dedication to
Islam. It is now an article of political faith that his actions
have nothing to do with Islam, "no matter how many 'Allahu
Akbars!' are shouted as bullets fly, bombs blast, or heads
roll." Deciding ahead of time that the lone wolf is unaffiliated
makes it unnecessary to pursue possible associations. So
investigators don't have to go against the Obama administration's
decree that jihad and Islam must not to be linked. And only the
public suffers.
'LONE WOLF,' OR 'KNOWN WOLF'? THE ONGOING COUNTER-TERRORISM FAILURE
by Patrick Poole
Patrick Poole writes about other consequences of the
fallacious belief that we need to Counter Violent Extremism (CVE)
rather than fight devout Muslims willing to be extremely violent
in the service of Islam, sustained by the certainty that Mohammad
would approve of what they do. Poole makes the case that far from
being untraceable nonentities, "terrorist actors are almost always
part of a network who were involved in recruiting and tasking
terrorist activity." As evidence, he writes of cases we've all
heard of. As one example, Russian Intelligence had alerted the FBI
that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers who blasted people
watching the Boston Marathon, was a radical Islamist. He was also
readily tied to the near decapitation of three Jews, one of whom
was said to be Tsarnaev's best friend, in what may have been a
terrorist 'rite of passage'. But there was no follow-up. Major
Hasan at Fort Hood is another example. I don't know what else
Hasan could have done to alert people that he was fanatical about
protecting his people, other Muslims. Yet the army authorities
ignored all indications
because he was a Muslim. Which raises another question: why
would the Obama administration lay the blame for terrorist acts on
everything but what the Koran decrees is acceptable behavior in
the service of Islam?
Carol Brown points out that one can't
claim the Koran preaches peace because the 'peaceful' verses in
the Koran are abrogated by the later verses that advocate mass
murder and mayhem in the service of Islam. And these teachings are
followed today as 'religiously' as they were a thousand years ago
when Mohammad's followers sliced through a crowd as if they were
scything grass. As Brown says, "there are those Muslims who are
not outwardly violent (yet), but who support those who are and/or
who participate in creeping Sharia. Throw taqiyya into the mix and
it becomes extremely difficult to know or trust who is the
ever-elusive moderate Muslim."
In an article entitled
"When Will Uncle Sam Pursue American, Not Islamic,
Interests?"
(here), Diana West wisely pointed out that in the Middle East
it is a waste of time and money to support whichever
group is judged at the time to be 'moderate' "as a means of
defusing the 'extremism' of Islam." Currently, "President Obama
plans to fight against ISIS in Iraq and to support ISIS-allied
forces in Syria." She suggested it's time we "acknowledge publicly
that 'moderates' in the Islamic world are as common and/or as
reliable as unicorns, and 'extremism' is the basis of Islam, and
formulate new policy." Muslim leaders and clerics never tire of
telling us, there is only Islam; there is no moderate
Islam. But we and our policy makers don't listen. As Daniel
Greenfield puts it, "You won't find the fabled land of moderate
Muslims in the east. You won't even find it in the west. Like all
myths it exists in the imagination of those who tell the stories.
You won't find a moderate Islam in the Koran, but you will find it
in countless Western books about Islam. [...] 'Moderate Islam'
isn't what most Muslims believe. It's what most liberals believe
that Muslims believe." When we assert there is a form of Islam
that is moderate and that people who follow this version are
Moderate Muslims, we are actually talking about secular Muslims
who follow Islam only minimally, if at all. It is the more or less
secular Muslim, mislabeled as Moderate, that liberals in the west
believe in, religiously. Their faith remains unshaken, no matter
what the facts. They will hear no evil spoken against moderate
Islam because it makes possible their belief in multiculturalism
and the brotherhood of man. Why they hold such beliefs is another
question.
There is a mistaken belief among many academics and "experts"
that we can work with non-violent salafists. They forget that
methods and deadlines may differ, but all salafists work towards
the same goal: "the resurrection of a Sharia-enforcing caliphate."
Raymond Ibrahim discusses a tactic where the efforts of a
'moderate' terrorist group are combined with an openly terrorist
group. He phrases it in terms of the good cop-bad cop routine that
severely rattles a detainee and then gives him a way out of his
difficulty by suggesting he cooperate with the good cop. When the
players are salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is cast as
the good cop, the persuasive argument is that the West should deal
with the supposedly non-violent MB, thus avoiding violence from
any one of a number of overt terrorist groups (that the MB has
spawned).
Israelis are familiar with the version practiced by the
Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Territories and Hamas in Gaza.
Both hate Jews and want to destroy Israel. To the extent that the
PA acts in an almost civilized fashion when compared to Hamas, it
has been foisted on Israel as a partner for peace by a world that
refuses to look too closely at the real situation. The PA plays
the role of rehabilitated thug and only occasional terrorist. One
might describe the PA collectively as moderate terrorists,
if this description weren't nonsensical, given the history of
Fatah. The members of Hamas are openly terrorist, reminding
Israelis that if they say out loud that the PA is no different
than Hamas, they will have to admit that both these groups of
Palestinian Arabs are the enemy that they actually are.
SHIFTING ALLIANCES IN THE MIDDLE EAST:
THE PLAYING FIELD, THE RULES OF THE GAME AND THE TEAMS, THEY ARE
A'CHANGIN'
These graphs below are from the summer of 2013 and appeared on
the
Democratic Underground website. Since then, ISIS has
topped the A-List of terrorists, and, except for some
allied terrorist groups, everyone professes to hate ISIS,
especially Syria, which, nevertheless, has bought oil from it ever
since ISIS captured a major Syrian oil field. Qatar has also
emerged as an important player. Once in accord with the Saudis and
the US, it now hedges its bets by supporting the US in bombing
ISIS but supports the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and al-Qaeda
through private channels and via Kuwait. Qatar also supports
Hamas, which is on the US terrorist list (and believe me, it's
hard to get on the list these days if you're really a terrorist,
Major Hasan at Fort Hood, for example). Operationally, Prez Obama
more visibly does what the Muslim Brotherhood does, unless forced
by circumstances to do otherwise. He certainly says he doesn't
like al-Qaeda, which, according to him, is withering away. But as
part of the Syrian rebel groups, they get their share of American
largess and what came out of Libyan storehouses when Gadaffi was
murdered. He and the European Union and the U.N. openly support
Hamas with money and political clout, while Hamas has stated its
hatred of the West, and the US in particular. Contrariwise, Prez
Obama professes to care about Israel, while doing all he can to
prevent Israel from stopping Iran from making nuclear bombs. When
Iran has the bomb, structured alliances will collapse — the
regional states will be too busy blaming each other for letting it
happen, while sucking up to Iran, who won the game.
Ofir Haivry subdivides the current major "teams" in the Middle
East into five geographically-fuzzy coalitions, which he describes
as "loosely ideological confederations." These are (1) the
Autocratic Sunni Coalition led by Saudi Arabia; (2) the
Sunni-Populist Coalition led by Turkey and propelled by the Muslim
Brotherhood; (3) the Shia-Radical Coalition led by Iran, which
keeps the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria from collapse; (4) the
Sunni-Jihadist Coalition led by ISIS, whose boldness and
unequivocal savagery have captured the loyalty of Sunni Arabs,
especially young recruits from around the world; and (5) the
Coalition of the Nation States, which until recently consisted of
one member — Israel — which alone carried the banner
of democracy and national self-determination, goals now starting
to be sought by some of the region's oppressed groups such as the
Kurds and the Druze of Lebanon and Syria. Haivry makes the
important point that the goals of the first four groups "are
shaped by some shade of Islamism ... where political opposition is
crushed, women are subjugated, and Salafist Islam rules..." The
good news is that the Middle East countries haven't, except for
Qatar, wasted much time supporting Hamas. The bad news, not
discussed by Haivry, is that the US, the UN and the EU have taken
on the role of major supporters of Hamas and its anemic sister,
the PA. Haivry's sensible advice is that the US should not by
worrying about which of the first four groups to support. It
should be "strengthening the critical alliance with Israel,
supporting the Kurds, and exploiting the weaknesses of the four
other coalitions."
QATAR'S SUPPORT OF HAMAS AND JIHADIST FORCES IN THE MIDDLE EAST
by JCPA
As the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) notes, in
the fluid restructuring of alliances in the Middle East, Sunni
Qatar stands out because — while appearing friendly to the
West and its Sunni neighbors — it is using its enormous oil
wealth lavishly to support jihadist groups such as "Hamas, Muslim
Brotherhood, Jabhat al Nusrah, al-Qaeda affiliates, Libyan
Islamists, and even ISIS" and to undermine other Sunni countries:
"Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain." It is also one of the
few states in the Middle East devoting much effort currently on
trying to destroy Israel by supporting Hamas. The constant in all
this support to salafist movements in the Middle East and in
various African states appears to be Qatar's need for muscle in
its hassles with Saudi Arabia over land and power.
The major way the public is instructed an event is significant
is by way of the newspaper and TV media broadcasting it,
explaining it, cogitating on it and doing so again and again. But
the mechanism of media is largely broken. And so the public is
often ignorant of major changes in policy, though these are
independently recognized by think-tankers and experts in counter
terrorism. Although Iran is moving steadily towards acquiring
nuclear weaponry, it has become clear that the Obama
Administration has shifted its allegiance from Sunni Saudi Arabia
to Shiite Iran. We can expect therefore he will help by convening
conferences and blathering about sanctions, but will do nothing to
stop Iran. Indeed, we can expect the US to continue to run
interference and not let any other country stop Iran or its proxy,
Syria. And any harm we do to ISIS will enhance Iran's
position.
Yoram Ettinger notes that the enemy of my enemy is my
friend (EEMF) credo that has guided Western and Israeli policy
over decades is decidedly wrong in the Middle East. "The misguided
characterization of Iran" as a potential ally because it is
fighting ISIS "could produce a nuclear conflict, a mega-trillion
dollar cost to the U.S. taxpayer, an unprecedented level of
fatalities, a tidal wave of global anti-U.S Islamic terrorism, and
tectonic eruptions of insanity throughout the globe." Similarly,
"[t]he victory of wishful thinking over reality was also the basis
for Israel's 1993 policy toward the PLO — the enemy of Hamas —
which was gullibly expected to align itself with Israel's war on
Palestinian terrorism, in return for the unprecedented Israeli
territorial concessions of the Oslo process. Instead, since 1993,
Israel has been a victim of an unprecedented wave of PLO/Hamas
anti-Israel terrorism..." A policy based on EEMF can't work
because it flies in the face of the mission of salafist Muslims,
whether Sunni or Shi'ite, to make Islam the supreme religion in
the world, with all other religious and ethnic groups subservient
to it.
TERROR GROUP KHOROSAN SAID TO POSE MORE OF A
THREAT TO U.S. THAN ISIS. GROUP TURNS OUT TO BE OBAMA HOAX
by Andrew C. McCarthy
As if we didn't have enough problems trying to determine who's
on what team and how to keep tabs on the more than one thousand
terrorist groups in Syria, the Obama administration has
introduced unnecessary noise in the system. In June of this
year, the news media began writing about an extremist group
called the Khorasan Group. It was said to be more dangerous than
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). By September, the
media informed us the US had initiated some airstrikes against
both ISIS and the Khorosan in Syria. This information carried
with it the not so subtle message that Obama wasn't ineffective,
at least not in war. He had put together a working coalition of
Arab countries — Jordan, the United Arab Emirates,
Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The air strikes against ISIS,
some sloppily hitting largely civilian areas, did indeed occur.
There is only one problem The Khorosan Group was a hoax, a
fictitious name the Obama administration invented with malice a
forethought. Andrew McCarthy tells us about it.
This section deals with the foundation and history of the
development of what we might call the generic pious Arab.
And why, as Professor Eidelberg explains, you can't make peace
with the "Religion of Peace." You can only submit or fight.
This essay by Edward Cline is based on a recent book by F.W.
Burleigh entitled It's All About Muhammad: A Biography of the
World's Most Notorious Prophet. Islam is as it is because
Muhammad was as he was. Islam is not based just on what Muhammad
said. It is equally true that whatever Muhammad did is approved
behavior for everyone for all time. What makes today's Islam and
jihadists tick? As Cline says, "Basically, it's Muhammadan
insanity armed with a razor-sharp sword looking for a convenient
neck to strike, or an empty, weak, malleable mind to fill. And
whether they're called al-Qaeda, or the Taliban, or ISIS, or
Hamas, or Hezbollah, or the Muslim Brotherhood or any of its
sundry and cousinly franchises, they are all nihilistic
psychotics."
An Addendum from The Muslim Issue website entitled
"Islam — The Crimes of Prophet Mohammed" is a list of
specific acts we in the West regard as criminal or at least
immoral. They are acceptable and even admired in Islam; they serve
as a model for how to behave properly. Thus, child marriage is
acceptable because Mohammad married a 6-year old.
Guy Millière writes a brief but excellent contextual
history of the modern development of Resurgent Islam, which began
when it became obvious to Muslim clerics and leaders that Islam
was far behind the West. Some leaders looked to the West for
solutions. Others, despising what they saw in the West, proposed,
as reformation, a return to the "original principles" of Islam. A
corollary ambition was the re-creation of a single sovereign
government for the Arabic-speaking people of the Middle East.
This dream suffered when the League of Nations in the early 1920s
split the conquered Middle East empire of the Ottomans into many
Arab states and one Jewish state by separate mandates for Syria,
Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordan and Mesopotamia, creating states
that ranged from fundamentalist (Saudi Arabia) to secular
(Turkey). While the concomitant growth of modern Zionism, a
national liberation movement, was compatible with regimes that
held different world views, the theology of both Islamic
fundamentalism and Arab nationalism was not, because it was based
on the intolerant supremicist principles of early Islam. Radical
Islam crystallized with the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood
in 1928. It promoted a meticulous return to living by Muhammad's
words and deeds; but it was also "influenced by Western
totalitarian dogmas: Marxism, Leninism, fascism,
National-Socialism." It is capable of blatant lying about its
history, tenets and goals to gain adherents and disarm opponents;
clever in creating a faux people, the
Palestinians, to make spurious claims to Jewish land; and
brilliant in building networks and bribing, blackmailing and
bullying its way into Western infrastructure. Yet basically it
simply divides the world into the House of Islam and the
yet to be conquered House of War. As Millière points out,
while Israel has brought fruitful inventions to the world's store
of technology, science, art and medicine, Radical Islam has become
"the most destructive force of the twenty first century. It brings
only chaos and sterility; it is dangerous and has no future."
Mordechai Kedar writes about the false images Middle East
leaders project and the false claims they make. An egregious
example is the supposed "Pan-Arab Nation" — the commonality of
history and mission that is said to bind all Arabs together. In
actuality, as Kedar points out, "The idea of the Pan-Arab Nation
never succeeded in replacing the loyalties of many Arabs to
traditional, secondary frameworks such as the tribe, religion
(Muslim, Christian, Yazidi, etc.) or sect (Sunni, Shiite, etc.)."
As do other Arab leaders that Kedar describes, Qatar's rulers flip
between incompatible persona: they consistently fund
terrorist organizations that target Westerners, while proclaiming
themselves friends of the West. They even, when necessary, join
the coalition of countries that plan to wage war against IS, the
Islamic State. Kedar emphasizes that it is important for Israel to
understand it can not "build its future relying on the temporary
masks hiding the faces of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Emirates and
Egypt."
This is an essay in two parts, both written by Professor Paul
Eidelberg but published separately. Part 1 argues that peace
and land can not be compared so their degrees of value
can not be compared. They can, however, be examined in relation to
the motivational and cognitive environment of the particular
culture. The Israelis have gone to extreme, almost suicidal,
lengths to obtain peace, starting with returning the entire Sinai
Peninsula, when President Sadat of Europe hoped for a return of a
small amount, and they have honored the terms of the 1993 Oslo
Accords, which gave administrative control of land legally owned
by Israel to the PLO. The Arabs have not provided the peace they
promised. In fact, they met none of the terms they'd agreed to.
Part 2 discusses the differing cognitive environments of the two
cultures and how Israeli efforts for peace are futile, given how
Arab culture influences Arab behavior.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
This issue of Think-Israel examines the continuing attacks by
Hamas of Gaza on the Israeli civilian population, Israel's
response and some of the fallout. It also looks at some Jihadist
operations in the West, internecine fighting among the Muslim
States of the Middle East and the consequent restructuring of
alliances. These are all different aspects of the unrelenting
determination of the Salafists to make Islam the dominant power in
the world.
Operation Protective Edge became the latest round of a chronic
war. It is a war that Resurgent Islam, flush with money and
salafist dedication, resurrected against the capitalist West and
against Communist Russia and China. It is a war aided and abetted,
consciously or not, by anti-Israel Western liberals, particularly
some in the media and academia. It is as if whoever engineered
Islam's fiendishly clever ways of winning said: These are our
objectives. First, we will control the framing and distribution
of information by the media, by textbooks and by the professorial
class. We will be the ones who say who the good guys are and who
should be shunned — facts are irrelevant. Two, using the
noble concept of multiculturalism, we will marginalize the natives
in countries where we settle, while sopping up available welfare
funds. Third, Israel is foremost in thwarting our designs. Let us
demolish her before Westerners wake up and take action against
us.
If Israel continues to be indecisive and if the West only
gathers strength to resist Muslim domination episodically, this
war might go on as long as the Christian-Muslim encounters of the
Middle Ages. Or Iran could trigger a round of fighting using nuclear
weapons. Neither is a pleasant prospect.
WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ISRAEL'S CAMPAIGN IN GAZA? ANSWER THESE AND YOU'LL KNOW:
Does wearing civilian clothes transform a terrorist and
his family into civilians that must not be strafed?
Does using a building as a school nullify its use as a weapons
depository?
Do prayers at a mosque five times a day trump the 24 hours
per day when the mosque is serving as a military command and control
center?
Should a hospital that shelters Hamas leaders be treated as a
medical center?
Does providing food and education for
refugees-in-perpetuum in a U.N. building override its use as a
warehouse for wartime explosives that could be set off in
situ?
Jewish children, often terrified, spend much of their
time rushing to safety as missiles rain down from Gaza. Arab
children in Gaza have only to be somewhere, anywhere, to increase
the probability that the location is safe from Israeli
counterattack. Because Arabs believe they are superior, do the
Israelis have to agree with them by giving Arab children such
respect?
Should Israel abort a mission to destroy mortars guarded
by Arab children, allowing these mortars eventually to terrorize
and even destroy Jewish children?
Israeli politicos seem to think the answer is "YES" to all of
these.
Richard Shulman presents facts about Gaza that many in the
news media avoid or de-emphasize, in their attempt to whitewash
Hamas. As example, the UN acts as if it were neutral and
impartial. In point of fact, most of staff of the UN agency,
UNRWA, which provides Arab "refugees" with cradle-to-grave
welfare, are themselves Palestinian Arabs. And the UN peacekeepers
have a record of conspiring with terrorists. He also dissects the
war the media, in particular the New York Times, wages
against Israel, while purporting to present a balanced view. It's
time people asked why the media are horrified by the 2000 deaths
in Gaza and ignore the 200,000 deaths in Syria, let alone the
deaths in the civil wars in many other Arab countries. Shulman
explains why a diplomatic solution won't work with a jihadist
enemy, and why Israel's way of waging war is also defective:
Israel loses the element of a surprise attack by messaging
civilians that they are going to bomb an installation containing
weaponry in a few minutes. (BTW: Israel's reward for such civility
is that organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) think
that's insufficient notification; HRW ignores that many Israelis
have only 15 seconds warning that a rocket is about to strike near
them.) He also points out that Fatah, though presenting a slicker
veneer, is no better than Hamas.
When the war began, Jack Englehard brushed aside the mean, the
vicious, the trite and the silly reasons for ignoring Hamas's
constant barrage of missiles extending further and further into
Israel. He focused on the main issue: Hamas needed to be taken
down. It was a long-due just war. The troops were dedicated and
trained, Israelis were almost unanimous in wanting Hamas
destroyed, the military had the technology to end the operation in
hours, take Gaza over in two day, conquer it completely in seven
days and would be in a favorable position to destroy terrorist
infrastructure, which will take another two years. (Freund, JPost,
18Aug2014) — and this against a very nasty group of people. But
Israel has a major weakness — pusillanimous politicians, so
afraid of "the world's opinion" they don't protect their own
citizens. And so it was that the IDF fought, as Englehard writes,
as if the battle plans were designed by the sages of Chelm.
Victor Sharpe writes critically of the 2005 "'disengagement
plan,' a euphemism for unilateral retreat from Gaza,' where Israel
evacuated every Jew living in Gaza. That made it possible for
Hamas to take over Gaza and have an easy time manufacturing
explosives and lobbing missiles into Israel and the Territories.
In this latest foray by Israel into Gaza, Israel meticulously
pinpointed targets and warned civilians to evacuate targeted
areas, a strategy that can be billed as highly moral but which has
little impact on turning the Gazan Arabs against bombing Israel.
There is concern that instead of being effective by wiping out
Hamas, the politicians will return to the familiar game of
offering real land — this time parts of Samaria and Judea (aka
the West Bank) — for an ephemeral "peace." There's one problem
with this approach — Hamas was designed for one purpose only:
to destroy the Jewish state, not live peaceably next to it. It's in
their charter and they abide by it.
GAZA IS WHAT IT IS TODAY BECAUSE ISRAEL ABANDONED IT IN
AUGUST 2005
It was August 2005 right after Tisha B'Av that Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, who had been elected on the strength of his promise
to deal more firmly with the Arab terrorists living in Gaza,
arbitrarily and capriciously expelled all the Jews, some 10,000
people, from their homes and orchards and synagogues in Gaza,
leaving it to become a terrorist haven, uncontrolled, unmonitored,
with complete freedom for the new owners to lob missiles into
Israel, which they did, by the thousands-ful. We wouldn't keep
reminding you what a disaster the expulsion of the Jews from Gaza
was — except that there is a strong possibility that many a
politico in Europe, the USA and even in Israel can't wait to stop
the current Gaza War (which would never have happened if the Jews
hadn't left Gaza), so they can get back to their variant of trying to
square the circle: planning out a two-state solution that would
make much of Samaria and Judea and the eastern part of Jerusalem
into the next internationally-certified terrorist state.
Jeff Dunetz reminds us of the great expectations Ariel Sharon
voiced when he expelled a patriotic and productive group of Jews
from Gaza in August 2005. To others, unfortunately a minority, it
was a daft idea grounded in a nebulous hope, not experience. And
so it has proven to be. Besides contributing to the economy and
to new technology, the Jews were also a sort of early warning
system, able to monitor incipient terror plots and military
training and weapons manufacture, activities that continues to
absorb the energy of many of the Arabs of Gaza. The expulsion
didn't make for peace. Quite the contrary.
Bernice Lipkin recalls the story of the idealistic and
technically skilled Jews who lived in Gaza and grew wonderful
vegetables, while keeping an eye on their Arab neighbors, who were
prone to initiating new and clever ways to kill Israelis. All the
Jew was expelled from Gaza in 2005, leaving it to the terrorists
groups to squabble over. Synagogues were replaced by terrorist
training camps. Public buildings became bomb factories. Thriving
businesses were replaced by mosques preaching Jew-hate. Gaza was
soon taken over and governed by Hamas. Thanks in large part to the
funds sent it by the UN, EU and the West including the US, Gaza's
larders were filled with missiles and its murderous inclinations
became more ambitious. In 2014, we are still paying the price for
acting on the idiotic idea that giving land to terrorists who want
to decapitate you will make them peaceful and neighborly.
PROPORTIONATE RESPONSE; DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM; TWICE
BETRAYED; and other essays
by Moshe Saperstein
These essays by Moshe Saperstein help us understand what it is
like to live in a trailer exposed to the missiles constantly being
launched from Gaza, while trying to live a normal life. He and his
wife Rachel were among the 10,000 Gazan Jews that became refugees
in their own state when, in 2005, the Sharon government expelled
all the Jews living in Gaza in the bizarre belief that this would
cause their terrorist neighbors to make peace. Left to their own
devices and no longer monitored by the local Jews, the Arabs of
Gaza used the extra elbow room to train terrorists and manufacture
and/or assemble ever more sophisticated weaponry. It is bitter
irony that all Israel is suffering from missile attacks from Gaza
and this would never have happened if Israel hadn't kicked settler
Jews like the Sapersteins out of Gaza in the first place.
It has become blatantly obvious that the Arabs of Gaza will
continue to kill Israeli civilians and soldiers until their stock
of weaponry is used up — they're saving the new stuff for
later. It's become obvious that nothing Israel does will change
the determination of the Salafists, including Hamas, to destroy
Israel. It's so obvious that it has forced a departure from the
previously unquestioned belief that Israel is the culprit who
treats the noble savages of Gaza real bad and for no particular
reason. Whether this will hold is yet to be seen.
Amanda Berman discovered people she had once respected actually
harbored ugly notions about Israel, while showering sympathy on
the Arabs of Gaza. They suppressed or trivialized the fact that Hamas
murders, stones, booby-traps and kidnaps Israelis and hangs those
of its own people who won't conform. They were even capable of
ignoring the fact that Hamas uses its women and children to shield
the terrorists and their weaponry. The essay contains an excellent
precis of facts that should be common knowledge. They serve as
anchor references when confronted by Jew-hate disguised as
humanistic concern for Arab "civilians".
If I have any quarrel with the article, it is
that I disagree with Berman's opinion that "occupation" is a
legitimate topic of debate. From context I assume she doesn't mean
Arab illegal encroachment on Jewish land, which is a fact, but is
referencing the fable that Jews are occupying
MuslimArab Palestinian Land.
Oh, if only the Israeli Government were bold enough to throw away
its investment in promoting a non-viable two-state solution and
would broadcast that Samaria and Judea as well as Gaza
and Israel itself are Jewish property, made so at San
Remo in 1920 by the same international consensus that created most
of the current Arab states.
How much more neurons must flash, how many more dendrites must
integrate data before the airheads of the world figure out what's
going on? How long before those that claim wide-ranging spiritual
lives with a deep appreciation (pronounced ah pree see A
shun) of the finer things of life, how long before these aesthetes
in jeans acquire sufficient imagination to even describe the
current reality accurately, let alone understand it in a
multi-layered fashion.
Steve Kramer describes the prevailing attitude of Israelis
toward the attacks on them by the Arabs in Gaza, who have broken
every one of the recent ceasefires the diplomats have forced on
Israel. He uses as example the partial change in attitude by the
well-known, well-to-the-left Israeli author, Amos Oz, who send an
autographed copy of of his books together with a love letter to
Marwan Barghouti, terrorist and mass murderer of Jews (See Meotti,
INN, 13May2014). As recently as two months ago Oz had no
difficulty ignoring life-threatening rock throwing by young Arabs
while denouncing young Jewish activists as neo-Nazis supported by
"numerous nationalist or even racist legislators, as well as
rabbis". At the end of July, in an interview in Deutsche Welle
predictably he said that Israel's ground offensive in Gaza
was excessive. What was different was that he made clear Israel's
dilemna in how to handle Hamas's use of civilians and their houses
to store weaponry and launch rockets. In a pretzel-like
conclusion, he declared, that "at least in some points the
military action is excessive - justified, but excessive." Huh? Ah
well, it's a start toward reality.
articles by Chandan Nandy and by Mrutyuanjai Mishra
Despite harassment and terror attacks by Muslims, for many
years, India was solidly against Israel and voted with those
condemning Israel for anything and everything in the U.N. The
articles and comments below indicate there has been a shift. How
much is yet to be seen. Some writers were far ahead of the
politicians, but starting in around 2011, political attitudes
began to show change publically. The article by Chandan Nandy
focuses on a recent pro-Israel rally in Kolkata that attracted
some 20,000 participants. Mrutyuanjai Mishra discusses the
expansion of the jihadist war against the world. The comments to
his article would suggest many of the readers of the Times of
India are more knowledgeable about what's going on in Gaza than
the readers of the New York Times.
JIHADISTS ARE HARD AT WORK IN THE USA AND EUROPE —
ACTUALLY, EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD.
A major reason for the change in attitude towards Israel is due to
the actions of the Muslims themselves. In Gaza, no matter how
often the New York Times intimated that Hamas was blameless
or at least not very effective at killing Jews so what did it
matter, it became common knowledge that Hamas leaders were using
the locals as human shields. It's true most of the Arab population
was delighted when an Israeli was murdered or kidnapped. But they
weren't happy when their own houses were at risk, because they
were shielding launch pads or tunnels or were wired with
explosives. To make it worse, Hamas wouldn't let them leave, even
when the Israelis made it clear they would be bombing some of
these houses. It also became harder to blame Israel for
occasionally unintentionally injuring an Arab child, when Hamas
warriors surrounded themselves with these children while they
launched missiles.
Then too, the world was shocked to learn Muslims weren't just
angry at Israel and the Jews. Islamists have beheaded Westerners
in London as well as on their own territory. They've taken over
areas in Paris and won't permit non-Muslims to enter. They've
raped so many Swedish women that some natives dye their hair black
to protect themselves. So, little by little, despite the best
efforts of much of the media to downplay the damage done by
resurgent Islam, people are becoming aware that the most pious of
the Muslims have declared war on all of us. It is becoming
understood that the Salafist Muslims who activated and continue to
maintain a well-organized and well-funded jihad globally are
determined that Sharia law will rule the world. This set of essays
identifies some of the ways jihad warfare has infiltrated the USA
and other countries, often indirectly in ways that appear
non-threatening. In the West, Islamists take advantage of our
belief in individual freedom to infiltrate our educational,
judicial and political structures. In other parts of the world,
their ways are more brutal and overt. They spare no country. No
part of the world is safe.
With his jaunty air and extraordinary ability to fabricate,
Prez Obama asserted that Muslim Americans have contributed much to
"the very fabric of our nation." Some people responded that until
9/11 the major Muslim contribution to USA history was the Barbary
Pirates preying on American ships. Oleg Atbashian at The People's
Cube Blog takes a different tack: he show us what governmental
fabric woven by Muslims would look like. Unlike Obama's version,
Atbashian's depiction of a Muslim-influenced America isn't made
out of whole cloth.
ISIS MUSLIM RADICALS INFILTRATING US VIA MEXICAN BORDER
by Dave Jolly
As if we didn't have enough problems because of illegal
immigrants, now we need to think seriously about Islamic
terrorists coming into the States through our porous border with
Mexico. It's been known for years that Korans and prayer mats have
been found at the border, but the major media have ignored the
implication that members of sleeper cells are likely being put in
place. Now Dave Jolly tells us that reliable analysts believe
"Muslim radical members of ISIS may be infiltrating the United
States." At this point, we can demand confirmatory evidence —
positive evidence such as another 9/11 — or we can agree with
the Mexican newspaper editor who wrote this headline, "The Arab
terrorists were here!" Putting it another way, we can wait for
Prez Obama to think about deciding it might be an idea to deal
with it in the future indefinite, or we might lend the border
states political reinforcement so they will deal with it.
BACKGROUNDER: STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE (SJP)
by Lee Kaplan
The organization called Students for Justice in
Palestine (SJP) is misnamed. It is not led by students. And it
isn't interested in Justice in Palestine. As Lee Kaplan makes
clear, SJP is yet another organization supported by Arab oil money
and devoted to destroying Israel. Led by devotees of sharia law,
it is well-organized and runs effective training sessions,
disruptive demonstrations and dramatic street theatre. It works
hand in hand with other pro-Palestinian groups such as the
International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which sends young
Westerners such as Rachel Corrie to act as human shields for Arab
terrorist groups. Kaplan recounts the history of the SJP, "a
conglomeration of ISM activist types, former or secular Jews,
mostly Muslim Arabs, but some Christians and radically socialist
communists." The glue holding these disparate groups together is
unabashed anti-Semitism.
Before the Arab countries found themselves fighting for their own
lives, the major ambition of these pious Muslims, Sunni and
Shi'ite, was to see Islam taking its rightful place as the most
important religion in the world. For hundreds of years, Muslims
have fought for supremacy. They conquered the Middle East and
encroached on Europe and the East, the American continents not
being "discovered" as yet. Nowadays, two major blocks hinder this
ambition, the big Satan, the USA, and the little Satan, Israel.
Were Israel to be extinguished, they could devote their monetary
and political clout to bringing sharia to the West without hindrance.
LABOUR MP: BRITISH MUSLIMS ARE DOING 'HUMANITARIAN WORK' IN IRAQ/SYRIA, JOINING ISIS NO DIFFERENT TO JOINING ISRAELI ARMY
by Raheem Kassam
Yasmin Qureshi is the epitome of the moderate Muslim. She was
born in Jhelum, Pakistan and moved to the UK when she was nine.
She is married, lives in Bolton South East, and practices law as a
Barrister in Manchester. She has been actively involved in
community work for over twenty years with the Citizen Advice
Bureau and local law centres. She has been the governor for a
college and three schools. She was the Head of the Criminal Legal
Section of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and later the Director
of the Department of Judicial Administration in Kosovo. She is a
past President of the Pakistan Club (UK). She is the former Chair
of the Human Rights and Civil Liberties Working Group of the
Association of Muslim Lawyers. And, as Raheem Kassam writes, she
defends Muslim terrorists, asserting that the British Muslims
fighting for ISIS are humanitarians.
Benjamin Kerstein writes about the global pogrom that has been
underway for well over a decade. "[It] has taken lives. It has
destroyed property. It has injured, brutalized, and terrified
Jews and Jewish communities in many nations." He writes mainly
about the atrocities that have occurred in France; in fact, in
2013 40% of all hate crimes in France targeted Jews. Because of
its large Jewish and large Muslim populations, the systematic
harassment of the Jewish community by Muslims is very clear in
France, but the same trend is to be seen all over Europe. A
chilling fact is that the Muslims may be the instigators, but
the participants in the sieges, street violence, looting, store
burnings, fire bombs, vandalism and hate-filled rallies are both
Muslims and Europeans, and usually the police look the other
way. The Pogrom mentality has spread to the USA, Canada and even
Australia. In the Muslim countries, which expelled Jews when
Israel was created, there is the phenomenon of anti-Semitism
without Jews, where medieval anti-Jewish confabulations are
taken as facts. The one country which has had Jews in any
numbers since the 1950s is Turkey. Egged on by the current
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, the pogrom is in progress there,
too. Everywhere, "for all practical purposes, [there is] no
distinction between hatred of Israel, hatred of Zionism, and
hatred of the Jews." Kerstein expects this anti-Jew fury to
spread where ever there are Jews. He might also have noted that
this hate will not be satiated with Jewish blood. It is likely
that, as is the usual sequence, the Jew may be the first to be
attacked, but he is never the last.
STOP BLAMING ISRAEL AND WAKE UP: THE BLACK FLAG OF JIHAD IS THE REAL THREAT TO THE WORLD
by Douglas Murray
Those who blame Israel for the ills of the Middle East, if not
those of the entire world, are right about one thing: there is a
single cause riling up the world's lemmings and making trouble
for other cultures. But it's not Judaism. It is, as Douglas
Murray writes, resurgent Islam, split into separate groups but
united in this single cause and waving the same black flag of
terror. He makes the important point that the current spate of
anti-Semitism is causing problems for Jews today, but tomorrow
people in other countries and other ethnic group will suffer
from the same Muslim hatred and violence. As Murray puts it,
"Israel is not the cause of the world's problems. It is simply
on the front line of them."
It is clear that pious Muslims, Salafists — Muslim
Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, Lashkar e Taiba, IS
(previously ISIS), Al-Shabaab, Al-Nusraa, Boko Haram and the many
less well-known small gangs,
(There's around one thousand bands operating in Syria. That's groups,
not people.
See here.) — all want the end or the weakening of all
cultures except Islam, so that Muslims and Sharia law will rule
the world. In the Middle East, they have begun fighting among
themselves about which groups will run the world before finishing
the war against the West and the Far East.
Warfare in the Middle East is so different from what we expect.
The war between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites is definitely on but
the players and colleagues and subsidiaries on both sides don't
have stable affiliations. They shift allegiance and split, then
reunite partially but often with major changes in their allies.
They don't have an identifiable team shirt or mascot or team song.
It's chaotic at best and, to outsiders, totally illogical.
Why should Sunni ISIS kill Sunni al-Qaeda leaders and sell oil to
Shi'ite-allied Syria?
Why should Shi'ite Iran support Sunni Hamas which is on the outs with
Syria, which is strongly supported by Iran? Why should Sunni Qatar
support the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS, while Sunni Saudi
Arabia want to destroy them? At the same time, ISIS and the Muslim
Brotherhood, which should be natural allies, are saber-rattling —
or should that be sword-slicing — at each other.
The only players more illogical are the Westerners looking for
an opening. Why should the American administration want to work
with Iran to eliminate ISIS, when Iran has vowed to destroy the
USA and Israel. If we succeed in destroying ISIS, it will only
strengthen al-Qaeda, which has vowed to destroy us. Middle East
alliances are so unstable that the West is hard put to know
which terrorist group to support, but, shucks, you gotta support
some team, dontcha?
Despite Obama's shallow view of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict as central to the instability of the ME, the facts are
otherwise. While the Arab states are vocally for the right of the
1948 Arab refugees to return to Israel — they fled in 1948
when the neighboring Arab countries invaded the newly-declared
modern State of Israel — and for statehood for the local
Arabs calling themselves Palestinians, operationally speaking the
locals are only useful for creating sympathy for the Arab mission
of destroying the Jewish State. Their major objective is the
creation of a single Arab state, which, ironically, is what was
initially envisioned after the Western Allies defeated the
Ottomans in World War 1. The major subsidiary issue is: which
Arab group is going to control the single Arab state or caliphate
that is envisioned by pious Sunnis. Giving the Palestinian Arabs
a state carved out of Israel is not a cure for the Arab craving
for a pan-Arab state that will control the world. This essay
provides an excellent historical analysis for understanding the
non-connection of the lip-service for a Palestinian state and the
Salafist obsession for a renewed Caliphate.
There is an unofficial alliance to repel Iran's ambition to
dominate the Middle East and influence global politics. As
Caroline Glick points out, this is a direct consequence of the
American president's policy of punishing friends such as Israel
and Egypt and cozying up to declared enemies such as Iran and the
Muslim Brotherhood. She might have also pointed out that when
confronted by a situation as in Syria where the Assad regime is
protected by Iran but is fighting Al-Qaeda, one of Obama's
not-so-secret friends, he dithers. When I asked a friend raised in
the Middle East how a Muslim can hug you with one arm and knife
you with the other, he said, "That's the nature of the Middle East."
It's not behavior Westerners can understand intuitively, if at
all.
Resurgent Islam continues to try to dominate the world. In the
West, except for some isolated incidents, quickly forgotten,
Muslim Salafist groups have not drawn much attention to their
activities. And like lobsters in water that is slowly heated,
Westerners have adapted. We haven't noticed how much our
educational and political systems and media have been
infiltrated. In the Middle East different groups of pious
jihadists are in control of some or all of many Arab countries
and openly wage war against secularists, non-Muslims and even
other Salafists. They have bombed, lobbed rockets, sniped,
stoned, gouged, waterboarded and fought but, over time, even
these acts have become familiar, dreaded but expected.
Occasionally, an murderous act have gained attention by being
particularly shocking — a woman who wouldn't repudiate
Christianity had a large cross shoved down her throat, an
al-Qaeda terrorist ate the liver of someone he just shot, three
Israeli teens and 300 Nigerian girls were kidnapped, a honor
killing was coupled with a beheading, Christian women and
children were beheaded. In this essay, Illana Freedman and Jerry
Gordon write about ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), one of
the known groups, which recently morphed into something rather
new. Outlandishly brutal but with military discipline and
competence, it has great confidence and — thanks to a talent
for robbing banks and looting weaponry — a couple of billion
dollars, part of which it spends not only on equipment but on
artful propaganda, which has attracted many foreign-born Muslims
to come to be trained as terrorists. What really set them apart
is that they didn't just yearn for the reestablishment of the
Caliphate, they announced they had brought it about and their
leader was Caliph for all Muslims. The immediate impact was to
delight some and enrage others, with few undecided. They might be
scary enough to wake up the world to the dangers of Resurgent
Islam.
ACROSS TIME AND DEATH: IRAN AND THE ISIS CHALLENGE
by Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall
Michael Segall assesses the ISIS phenomenon mainly from the
point of view of its confrontations with Iran, and the likely
regional and global consequences. ISIS has been able to ride
roughshod over the Iraqi army and is fighting Hizbullah on its
homeground in Lebanon, so it has become "a real threat to Iran's
strategic assets in Syria and Lebanon and especially to its
aspiration to restore Shiite supremacy." Segall is almost unique
in emphasizing that Iran will "leverage its influence and deep
involvement in Iraq, along with its common interests with the West
(and even with some of its regional adversaries) when it comes to
containing ISIS's expansion southward in Iraq and westward to
Jordan. The aim of this leverage will be to extract concessions on
the nuclear issue."
I believe, the worst thing that can happen in the region is
for Iran to acquire nuclear weaponry. If that happens, it won't be
a quantitative difference. It would take the current chaos and the
battling and the shocking deaths and the rearrangement of borders
and the shifts in the power structure to a totally different
place, good for no one except perhaps the Iranian government. So
why does the USA want to help Iran destroy ISIS when it is in our
best interest to let ISIS damage and distract Iran? It is awful
what ISIS is doing to civilian Yazidis, but the Obama
Administration is able to ignore that Syrian children are being
slaughtered in the thousands. Actually, we could rescue the
relatively few Yazidis quietly by airlift, just as the Israelis
patch up wounded Syrian civilians in field hospitals near the
Syrian border. We can let ISIS and Iran duke it out in the Middle
East, while we focus on curtailing ISIS's (and al-Qaeda's) ability to attract
and train Westerners and Muslims born in the West, because
these trained terrorists would be a direct threat
to America, Europe and Israel when they return home.
Noah Beck packs a lot of information about Hamas's and ISIS's
tactics in what purports to be advice on how to be a evil
perpetrator yet be accepted by most of the media as innocent
victim. A reader, Daniel, adds this tip: use the language of
"freedom" — West loves it. For example: "Free Iraq from colonial
powers", "Free Syria from oppression", etc. West has hard time
opposing such slogans, for example "Free Gaza" or "Free
Palestine" are very popular, and nobody is bothering to check the
facts...
Hamas and Isis have the same religious and political ideology
and the same sense of mission, and they both enjoy behaving
barbarically. As Benjamin Netanyahu said, "Hamas is ISIS, ISIS is
Hamas." There is, however, a difference in how they are perceived
and treated. Prez Obama rushed to save the Yazidis who have been
under siege by ISIS but when Israel finally responded to daily
bombardment from Hamas, he stopped shipping missiles to Israel
until it agreed to stop bombing Hamas, even though it had not
completed the job of dismembering Hamas.
A reporter, Matti Friedman, in an article called "An Insider's
Guide To The Most Important Story On Earth", observed that
"there was a malfunction in the practice of journalism" in that
when it comes to reporting on events involving Israel, reporters
come into the Middle East being anti-Israel. As example, he
pointed out that "[m]ost reporters in Gaza believe their job is to
document violence directed by Israel at Palestinian civilians." In
this essay, Nidra Poller describes how unshakable their built-in
prejudice is. Many in the mainstream press are scrambling to keep
themselves from examining their cheerleader attitude on behalf of
the Salafists. At the moment, reality has them under strong
assault but they are resisting with all their might the meaning of
ISIS's latest contribution to global entertainment: the beheading
of James Foley, a journalist who like them was fanatically
anti-Semitic and a strong supporter of Sharia and the Arab
jihad.
Assassinations were easier to ignore when Jews or half-Jews
that lived in Arab villages like the actor Julian Mer-Khamis, who
lived in Jenin and marched to a Salafist drummer, were exterminated
by their hosts. Obviously, Mer-Khamis should not have invaded the
village; he wasn't welcome. It was easy for them to understand the
Muslim Brotherhood stoning, flaying, beheading, burning and
pushing large crosses down the throats of Egyptian Coptic
Christians. After all, did Christians behave all that differently
when they ruled the region? When Daniel Pearl was beheaded, they
could argue that Daniel Pearl was a Jew, so in some collective
sense he deserved beheading. But James Foley was one of
them. As Daniel Green writes
(see here) "James Foley was one of a new breed of activists
calling themselves journalists. He didn't travel to report on a
story, but to promote an agenda... Foley came to Syria to support
the Sunni Islamist rebels against the Syrian government. He was a
vehement advocate and while he didn't necessarily side with any
single group, he echoed the one sided narrative rather than
telling the truth about the Islamists." It was their ox that was
gored. James Foley was unblemished ideologically and his death was
deliberate.
Poller writes that the truth hangs in the
thread joining ISIS and Hamas, both believers in Sharia law, both
beheaders of their own people, but it's unlikely the media will
make the connection. They will continue to believe that if they
blame the Jews, they are ensuring their own safety.
Foley's execution might be an intimation of what's in store for
other Western reporters, no matter how committed to the jihad.
Nevertheless, all things considered, it is predictable the
journalists will overcome this shock to their ideological system.
Unfortunately for them, troublesome facts are emerging. Back home,
their own
Muslim immigrants refuse to behave in a civilized fashion. And
thousands of their citizens who went off fight for jihad will
return with terror skills and a hatred of their native land. What
then?
Justin Amler rakes up for our edification
notions about Jews much of the world believes are true: Jews are
stubborn, Jews don't listen to their friends like the UN and the
Arab League, Jews are aggressive and attacked the Gazan Arabs for
no reason at all, etc., etc. With tongue-in-cheek, he suggests
these depictions of the Jews must be true because reliable sources
from the Main Stream Media and international political groups like
the UN right down to Yasser Arafat and Bishop Tutu have said so, again
and again. It's not the world's fault the Jews are to blame for
all the problems of the world, is it?
William Levinson argues that in fighting the battle of words,
the best defense is an offense. Tools used by the enemy can be
taken and used against them. He uses as example the story of
Rachel Corrie, who was manipulated by ISM to act as shield for the
Arabs against the IDF. When she died, struck by debris while
playing "chicken" with an Israeli bulldozer, she was billed by ISM
as a idealistic activist, martyred in the cause of peace. In fact,
the first eye witness reports claimed the driver backed up and ran
her over again. That accusation ceased when it was realized that
would have left her as flat as a pancake; (it did lead to her
being called St. Rachel of IHOP.) ISM acknowledged Corrie was more
useful to them dead than alive, so Levinson suggests Israel should
have agreed she was an idealist but should have emphasized that
she was duped by ISM, which knowingly and recklessly endangered
her life. Essentially, he is suggesting jiu-jitsuing the arguments
of the anti-Israel organizations against them. As he says, "PsyWar
is an offensive weapon" and speed in structuring the way an event
is described is essential. Unfortunately, Israel continues to lose
this important war.
ISIL'S OTTOMAN "CALIPHATE" FORBEARS BRUTALLY SLAUGHTERED 250,000 ASSYRIAN-CHALDEAN, AND ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS A CENTURY AGO
by Andrew G. Bostom
Andrew G. Bostom describes a massacre by the Ottomans that
took place during World War 1, between 1914 and 1919 in what is
now northern Iraq and eastern Anatolia. Of the 250,000 people
killed, most was slaughtered between June and September 1915. All
the victims were Christians; the murderers were mostly local
Muslims armed with knives and rocks, who were incited by State
officials and politicians. Thousands of ordinary villagers
participated in the orgy of slaughter. The victims were unarmed
and were tied up. They were shot, stabbed, stoned, drowned and
decapitated; their throats were crushed and they were thrown off
roofs — just as infidels are treated in the Middle East
nowadays when Arabs riot or when terrorists murder Israelis. As is
the case currently when Muslims go on the rampage in the Middle
East and Africa against their Christian neighbors, the "massacre
was accompanied by serial mass rape of the women. Young girls were
abducted as sex slaves and children as household servants." Other
Christians were forced to flee. Many of them were massacred
primarily by the Muslim Ottoman army or were attacked by local
Arab gangs. How modern it all sounds. I wonder what excuses were
used to justify routine Muslim barbarism.
INTERVIEW WITH AN AUSCHWITZ GUARD: 'I DO NOT FEEL LIKE A CRIMINAL'
interview by Felix Bohr, Cordula Meyer and Klaus Wiegrefe
Felix Bohr, Cordula Meyer and Klaus Wiegrefe interviewed a
91-year old man named Jakob who had been a guard in Auschwitz. He
denies he ever hit a prisoner but he no longer denies, as he did
in earlier years, that he knew about the wholesale killing of Jews
at Auschwitz. Now he says strongly, "When the crematorium is
constantly burning, then everyone knows tha something is going
on." After the war, most everyone involved and those living in the
neighborhood of the camp denied knowing. Jakob has come forth to
bear witness that they knew.
Helen Schwimmer
writes of a wedding that took place more than a half century ago.
What makes this wedding different is that Lilly and Ludvig, the
bride and groom, had survived the Holocaust and were now
incarcerated in a Displaced Person's (DP) camp in Bergen Belsen. Lilly
dream of being married in a white gown was fulfilled because a
German ex-pilot swapped his useless parachute for coffee beans. A
seamstress cut the parachute into the wedding gown that the bride
wore when she was married in the synagogue the DPs had renovated.
Lilly's sister wore it soon after, and then a cousin, and then one
bride after another in the camp. Some 50 years later the gown,
stitched, restitched, redesigned, and redecorated very many times
was donated to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
where it is on display. As Schwimmer writes of Lilly and her
sisters, "As young brides, they had stood underneath the chuppah
and recited the blessings that their ancestors had been saying for
thousands of years. In doing so, they chose to honor the legacy of
those who had perished by choosing life."
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
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the top of the Blog-Ed page.
As Israelis absorb the horror of the murders of the Hebron Yeshiva
boys, they have drawn close together. Recognition of their kinship
as a single family has blossomed. The response to learning the
boys are not alive has not been rioting or violence. The mood of
the country is outwardly quiet. It has become a time of reflection
on what unites Jews as a people. Young and old, proudly secular
and unswervingly religious, simple people and those who consider
themselves sophisticated, villagers and members of the world
community — they have come together in Tel-Aviv, at the Kotel, in
large groups and small around the country, to pray for the safety
of the boys, to mourn their deaths.
For individuals, it's been an acknowledgment and an affirmation
of a common identity. A bonding. Its effect on governmental
policy, in contrast, is ambiguous at best. Cynics can be forgiven
for suggesting that the government's hustle and bustle, its
huffing and puffing, is cosmetic. Israeli Arabs are increasingly
more assertive, more demanding, more arrogant. But the inertia of
the Government is profound. It continues to mouth obsolete notions
that peace is attainable - we just have to try a little harder
to find the right approach. And when they are honest, the
politicians admit to being more afraid of Arabs rioting than Jews
crying.
Yet this could be an interval to reassess the effectiveness of
the Jewish state's response to Arab violence these past years.
That resurgent Islam has grown in confidence and has attempted
more and more acts of unbelievable evil is too in-the-face to
ignore. Now is a good time to ask whether Israel's policies need
reformulating to handle the spreading chaos.
What is an appropriate response to the ever more harrowing
attacks on Jews?
Steven Plaut said of this essay, posted a day after the bodies of
the three teenagers were discovered on June 30, 2014 and three days after the
IDF entered Gaza: "Three days of intensive military action in Gaza
with virtually no terrorists killed? More 'signaling that
Israel is deadly serious'? Yes, we are back to the RRH
doctrine." This essay on the Really Really Hard Doctrine (RRH) was published
in 2005. It is still right on the mark. That in itself
speaks volumes about what is wrong with the IDF's genteel
designed-to-fail approach to stopping local terrorism.
In response to the kidnapping-murder of Eyal, Gilad and
Naftali, the people of Israel have come together in uncommon
nationalistic unity. But, as David Solway writes, the extreme
Left-wingers and Jewish Jew-hating NGOs such as the New Israel
Fund and J Street continue to advocate measures the serve the
Arabs. The local Arabs demonstrate their attitude towards peace
with the Jews by three-finger hand waving, jubilation and handing
out candy. The government, too, has acted as if it were business
as usual. It has issued meaningless threats; it temporizes; it
continues to threaten IDF soldiers with punishment should they
even start to think their lives are worth more than the life of an
Arab child proudly serving as shield to his terrorist Daddy or
Mommy. It is time to change strategies. Solway suggests, among
other necessary measures, that "[t]here is, really, no other effective
way of dealing with a musteline pack of jihadist predators and
barbarians than to credibly threaten it with extinction." And if
nothing changes, something will change: the local Arabs will
become bolder and bloodier.
Think-Israel tends to use salafist rather than
extremist or Islamist or militant or
fundamentalist to describe generically a pious Muslim, one
who sticks as closely as possible to the unfiltered words and
actions of Mohammad and the first three generations of Muslims,
including, especially, the Companions of the Prophet. In modeling
himself as closely as he can on the preachings and practices of
Mohammad, a Salafist can in modern terms be precisely described as
an uninhibited terrorist, a political supersessionist who believes
his religion must dominate and a social barbarian. Thanks to the
high quality of white wash supplied by Islamic propagandists, he
seldom is so described.
In this section, we examine some areas where Islam has impacted
Western host countries negatively, yet the West continues to
ignore the danger. A major cause for concern is the increase in
radicalization of Westernized Muslims. Yet little has been done
to counter Salafist proselytizing at local mosques and mullahs
preaching fundamentalism on the internet. European administrators
are reluctant to make any effort, let alone a strong one, to
confront Muslim hostility and bullying behavior. They do, in
fact, invent excuses for Muslim behavior that Muslims find
annoying. A case in point is the Western invention of the
'Moderate Muslim' to describe a pious Muslim who believes in
tolerance of all religions — though this is a contradiction in
terms. Expanding on this, they claim the majority of Muslims are
moderate. Western administrations are also often energetic in
reinforcing the Muslim's hatred of Jews — to the point that more
and more Jews are leaving Western Europe. But given the general
hatred of Salafists for Western culture, siding with Islam
against Judaism won't protect Europe's Christians from their
Muslim neighbors.
AS EUROPE SLIDES INTO A DARK AGE, JEWS MUST REVIEW THEIR FUTURE
Isi Leibler
In plain language, Isi Leibler explains why Jewish life in Europe
has become problematic. As he writes, "... although 70 percent of
the French population fear Islamic domination, that has not
stemmed the tide of traditional anti-Semitism... What is more
depressing is that, as a rule, the public is even more
anti-Semitic than the government and perceives Israel as the
principal source of global evil — no different to the Middle Ages
when the Jews were regarded as the source of all natural disasters
such as plagues and famine."
Soeren Kern provides us with a snapshot of some of the
incidents that happened in the month of April of this year in the
European countries. They have in common that all involved Muslims.
In addition to the usual rapes and vandalism, Muslims distributed
anti-Jewish books and attacked Jews, collected charity money for
Hezbollah, and attacked churches. The police were able (or were
not able) to stop Muslims leaving the country to participate in
jihad in the Middle East and Africa. Muslim groups lobbied for
expanding the teaching of Islam in schools, while in Lutheran
Finland, administrators worried that singing a Christian song
during school ceremonies might offend the Muslims. A new law
allows Swedes to be put on trial for the heinous crime of
criticizing Islam. Muslim immigration in general is high, while in
Sweden emigration by natives has increased considerably.
When empty gestures and polished phrases via the social
media outlets substitute for effective action, we call it
Hashtag diplomacy. Mark Steyn comments on a recent example:
the First Lady showed she cares about the kidnapping of young
girls by Boko Haram by posing with a hashtag on a poster. This is
useless as a rescue effort. Steyn calls it "moral preening." The
hashtag as non-action action serves as graphic imagery for the
general lethargy that characterizes the way administrators in the
West are handling Muslim demands and anti-social behavior.
European school administrators respond to the harassing and even
the stabbing of Jewish school children by Muslims by suggesting
the Jewish children keep a low profile. Schools have stopped
teaching the Holocaust and the Crusades, because these subjects
offend the Muslim community. It's just too much trouble to fight
Muslim anger and dissatisfaction. And this, while the percent of
Muslims in the population is still relatively low.
Raymond Ibrahim and many others write about the fallacy
of assuming there exists a group of Muslims who are deeply
religious but practice a moderate form of Islam. As he put
it in a recent article,
"'moderate Islam' is an oxymoron." Nevertheless, with pious
certainty but no factual underpinnings, Western media and
academia continue to claim, "'True' Islam ... is intrinsically
free of anything 'bad.' It's the nut-jobs who hijack it for
their own agenda that are to blame." While the public is
diverted to focus on the hunt for the moderate Muslim, it has
ignored a real danger to Western society: the radicalization of
Muslims born in the West. The native-born children of immigrant
Muslims are much more apt to harass non-Muslims, commit
robberies and become jihadists than their parents. This goes
against the politically correct piety that given economic
opportunities and freedom, jihad will wither away. It won't. In
fact, given greater resources and less fear of consequences, it
will expand.
It is fairly well-known That Muslim groups that front for Muslim terrorists are
involved in smuggling and selling illegal drugs.
What is novel is that terrorist groups are now
manufacturing and/or repackaging legal drugs. James Robbins
describes how Hezbollah is using the skills and resources it developed
to smuggle cigarettes, diamonds, cars and drugs to
distributing legal medications. And it has started manufacturing
some of them — without supervision or regulation.
Westerners invented the sub-genre, the Moderate Muslim —
defined as a Muslim who believes and conforms strictly to
Mohammad's words and deeds yet is tolerant of neighbors with
different ideas. They ignore that pious Muslims deny
that a pious Muslim can accept that Jews and Christians and
Buddhists and Hindus are equal to a Muslim. Westerners not only
believe in the Moderate Muslim but they claim that very few Muslims
are radicalized, i.e., believe strictly in what the Holy Books of
Islam preach. Fred Dardick demonstrates that Westerners haven't
got this right, either.
The centuries-old goal of Islamic theology "for Islam to be
triumphant across the entire world, including Europe and the
Western world" is often dismissed as anti-Islam conspiracy theory.
The mainstream media often omits mentioning that the WHO
doing the robbery, murder or arson is a Muslim. In the USA, when
members of terrorist fronts hob-nob with administration officials,
even in the White House itself, it is treated as another social
event. In this essay, Fjordman takes the pulse of various European
countries and concludes that Europe has become very sick from
massive Muslim legal and illegal immigration. Western
administrators, opinion makers, gate-keepers, the media —
the white corpuscles of defense — don't do their job. They
leave the public feeling that the major changes in demographics
and culture caused by Islamic infiltration aren't a serious
concern. By not presenting the facts sharply, by pooh-poohing
incidents and by omitting crucial information, they give the
impression that things will eventually stabilize and the Muslim
immigrants will be absorbed. Actually, the rate of Islamic
thuggery, rioting, murdering, vandalizing, looting, raping,
blocking non-Muslims from entering Muslim-dominated parts of a
city, remodeling institutions to make them Islam-friendly and
modifying and/or discarding native cultural icons — i.e.,
colonizing Europe and marginalizing the natives — is increasing
very rapidly and many Europeans are persuaded that this is a good
thing. In line with this, the number of radicalized Muslims is
increasing. So what does it take to make a Salafist out of a Muslim?
As Fjordman writes, study the Koran [or an authentic translation]
and take it seriously.
CONNECTIONS BETWEEN MUSLIM PRACTICES, IDENTITY AND ISLAMIC IDEOLOGY
This section focuses on how Muslim identity and Salafist
ideology continue to influence life styles and religious
practices. It includes essays on what affiliations define
identity. And how the honor-and-shame-based Arab culture views
peace negotiations with Israel. That the Jews avoided
extermination is seen as an affront. Generous terms by Israel do
not wipe out the insult. In fact, the more the appeasement, the
greater the insult. Only destruction of Israel by Arab efforts
will soothe Arab shame.
The West may see honor killings, beheadings and shameless lies
as barbaric aberrations, but Muslims proudly see them as religious
practices sanctioned by Mohammad, the founder of their religion.
Thus, flying in the face of known facts and ignoring Western
insistence on logic and coherence, Arabs are willing to
manufacture preposterous historic and geographic claims. A
recent one asserts that the Palestinian Arabs predate the entry of the
Biblical Jews into their land.
Nonie Darwish has said (see
here), "It is a tragedy and a shame that it had to take the
mass kidnapping and sexual enslavement of 300 Nigerian girls by
Muslim jihadists for the world to finally express its outrage over
Sharia's evil deeds. Similar stories of Christian girls being
kidnapped, forcibly married and converted to Islam by their Muslim
captors, have been a reality for decades. But unfortunately, and
tragically, they have been ignored by our mainstream media." In
this article, Phyllis Chesler provides us with a concise but clear
history and context of this horrifying practice. [As an update,
some 60 girls have escaped but the others were sold into sexual
slavery or forced into marriage with Muslims. The going rate is
said to be $12 USD per girl.]
CHANGING THE HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: SAEB EREKAT'S NEW
SPIN
Amb. Alan Baker
Alan Baker provides us with excellent information on the Arab
invasion and immigration into the Land of Israel over the
centuries. This is in context of an examination into the recent
assertions of Palestinian Arab leaders that their ancestors were
the ancient Canaanites, hence, they predate the Jews in the Land
of Israel. While this makes a tidy case for historic ownership of
the land (although inconsistently they arbitrarily dismiss Jewish
ancestral claims), if true, it would also prove the so-called
Palestinians are not Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula, not
descendants of the original followers of Islam and not kin to the
Arabs who conquered the land, thus, from a Muslim point of view,
making it Arab Islamic territory forever. I should think one
could argue further that if it weren't for Israel's strong
protection of their human and civil rights, these "Canaanites"
would be in the position of the original Egyptians, the Egyptian
Copts, who live as third-class citizens in a state ruled by
non-Egyptian Arabs. In other words, their historicity by itself
would give them little political advantage, whereas the claim by the Jews
to their homeland is not only backed by the Bible and history,
but by international law and conquest.
Currently, a strong claim of ancient historical rights might be
useful, considering that it is beginning to be recognized that
the majority of Palestinian Arabs didn't come into Mandated
Palestine until after the Jews came in large numbers to redeem
their homeland. It does have the problem that the Jews killed off
the ancient Canaanites. But who ever claimed that logic and
consistency were necessary when making a pro-Palestinian point?
Jihadists see such acts as beheading and eating the enemy's liver
as trophies of war, where trophies may be physical parts of the
body or captured women, who are used as sex slaves. Dawn
Perlmutter writes that photography has become a more recent way to
prove victory. Videotaping atrocities has become popular, with
many hostages slaughtered and beheaded to provide a cast for
future films. Perlmutter points out that Western analysts are
wrong to treat the taking of trophies as deviant behavior. It is,
as Perlmutter points out, authentic Islam. As another example of
Western misapprehension, putting atrocities onto tape isn't
"intended as a justification for his actions it is a recruitment
video, a brilliant piece of propaganda that will appeal to
sexually frustrated men who will join the fight just so they can
engage in morally sanctioned sex.[...] Al Qaeda understands that
sex, violence, heroism and other rewards of battle sells. The
history of Islam is a history of trophies of
war."
In a sense, Islam has already had a reformation — salafism is
a point-by-point attempt to mimic the ways of the originator of
the religion. Its practitioners wish to improve religious
practice by being more like the early practitioners. But
reformation has produced different behavior patterns in Muslims
than in Christians, because, as Raymond Ibrahim points out, the
fundamentals of the religions are different. Christianity
preaches love — even if it doesn't always practice it. Islam
began by preaching submission to the commands of Allah as
demonstrated by Mohammad. Any softening of behavior is a
weakness when measured by the original Islamic standards.
Civility and tolerance are considered "compromises and half
measures." They will always be "vulnerable to challenge by
purists," the real reformers. So it is that the true reformers,
the Salafists, instead of shedding barbaric behavior and
becoming more tolerant, have come ever closer to the brutal
behavior and intolerant attitudes of the founder of Islam.
For Muslims in the Middle East, as Harold Rhode writes,
"religion and political identity almost always trump everything
else—including citizenship." Allegiance to a particular state has
never replaced identity by religious sect: Sunni versus Shiite "is
probably the most important over-arching identity throughout the
Muslim world". Other associations also define identity. When
parents are from different ethnic groups, family identity is via
the father. As Rhode writes, "Identity is not a matter of choice.
A man is what his father is and a woman is what her husband is."
Conversion to Islam is easy; conversion from Islam "is punishable
by death." Another major factor contributing to the Muslim's sense
of identity is his extended family: his tribe, his clan, his
family. Altogether, identity in the Middle East is complicated and
very different from Western ways of placing oneself in time and
place.
WHY THE ARAB WORLD IS LOST IN AN EMOTIONAL NAKBA, AND HOW WE KEEP IT THERE
by Richard Landes
Western culture is guilt-based, where morality — doing what is
right and what is wrong — is determined by a set of coherent and
interlocking behavioral precepts and commandments set by God. They are
to be followed, whether the action becomes known to others or not.
Arab culture, in contrast, is shame- and honor-driven, meaning
that the individual responds with shame when he knows his actions
are, or would be, judged negatively by his group. Situations are
more context-dependent. Consistency between activities isn't
important. Essentially, good behavior is modeled on what Mohammad,
God's prophet, did and said. Richard Landes notes that the defeat
of seven Arab armies in 1948 by Jews, who had been dhimmis to
Islam for centuries, was an affront to Arab honor, that Arabs
still feel the need to avenge. In guilt societies, the individual
tends to blame himself; in the shame societies, he blames others.
As we have seen, the Arabs blame the Jews for their defeat. That
the Arabs were the ones to start the war by invading Israel is
irrelevant. The same urgency to punish Israel for not allowing
itself to be destroyed is at work in the large — to assuage
Muslim anger and shame, Islam must dominate the entire world.
Offerings of appeasement and compromise by other countries and
cultures are not insufficient, they are dangerous steps going in
the wrong direction.
THE EXPLOSIVE GROWTH OF TERRORISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST
In modern times, ever since the oil-rich countries in the
Middle East acquired a never-ending supply of money and the
human engineering resources their money can buy, they have
promoted different styles of salafist Islam around the world by
infiltrating foreign governmental infra-structure, donating to
foreign educational institutions, investing in the arts,
networking with politicians, religious leaders and financiers and
creating huge media propaganda mills, which include clerics to
convert less religious Muslims. These 'peaceful' methods are
supplemented by sending out colonizing immigrants especially to
Europe in overwhelming numbers. The massive propaganda campaign
involving churches and academia to demonize Israel is intended to
crush a major block to Islamic ambitions. Small and large acts of
overt terrorism are increasing globally. Muslim terrorists are being
'trained' in the Middle East wars and return to practice their
trade in their native countries, including Israel.
Activities to re-establish a
global Caliphate have resurfaced among the Sunnis, this time
anchored in plentiful resources. Salafist terror groups are
bringing the fight back into their home countries. They view the
breakdown of governments in the Middle East, hostilities between
Shiites and Sunnis and the waffling weakness of the West as their
opportunity to take over territory for the Caliphate.
And they have the necessary support of the majority of Muslims.
As Andrew Bostom put it, "2/3s of Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia want a Caliphate. Post
U.S. liberation of their countries, 91% of Iraqis and 99% of
Afghans want sharia." Among Muslims, there
is "the overwhelming desire for application of the
Sharia—Islam's liberty-crushing, religio-political totalitarian
system that encompasses the smallest details of religious
practice, to the largest issues of politics." (See
www.andrewbostom.org, June 21, 2014.)
It may seem surprising that Muslims support the idea of a
Caliphate, which would bring back the good old days of
unquestioned male dominance, illiteracy for women, strict
theocratic regulation of every facet of life, and harsh
punishments. How will that differ from what many Muslim-majority
countries now have? In the Caliphate, Muslims will dominate not
only the minority ethnic groups in their own countries but
everyone in all countries.
Paul Merkley has an
excellent section of the origins of the Shia-Sunni quarrel,
essentially a difference of opinions on who was most worthy to
carry on after Mohammad, a quarrel that hasn't been resolved in
some 1400 years. The recent meeting in Geneva of Iran and the
Western countries on curtailing Iran's nuclear program made it
obvious that, barring the unexpected, the US has given Iran the
green light to develop nuclear weaponry. For the Jews, Geneva
confirmed that "the moment has come to compensate for the
reduction of America's commitment to its security by 'seeking new
allies.'" The Saudis voiced their understanding that the change in
the American Administration's attitude meant that Persia was the
enemy to focus on, not Israel. It isn't that they like Israel any
better. But as the hatred between the Sunnis and the Shiites
continues to intensify, they fixate on each other. To utter a
soul-satisfying insult, one side has to accuse the other of
conniving with Israel, of being a tool of the Zionists.
EGYPT'S THREE-PART TERRORISM THREAT AND WHAT CAN BE DONE TO STOP IT
by Daniel Nisman
Daniel Nisman points out that although Egypt's al-Sisi has
contained, or perhaps even crippled, the Muslim Brotherhood, the
Jihadi threat has expanded and is coming from the Sinai Peninsula,
Cairo and neighboring Syria. "For now, Sisi and the transitional
government have only to thank the staunchly anti-Brotherhood Saudi
Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait for keeping Egypt's economy on life
support, allowing it to continue its one-foot-after-the-other
counter-terrorism campaign." But to counter terrorism long term will
require new tactics, such as amnesty and jihadist rehabilitation,
as well as engaging the cooperation of the local community.
The Sunni Saudis and the Shiite Iranians have been the lead
players in Sunni-Shiite confrontations in the Middle East. But
the Saudis are dependent on the USA to protect them from invasions
and take-overs. With Prez Obama cuddling up to Iran, it would appear
according to those who read political entrails that King Abdullah
of Saudi Arabia may be reversing his adamant rejection of Iran's
nuclear ambitions and most any other grand regional plans Iran has
in the works. Jonathan Spyer's take is that Abdullah will be
accommodating — minimally. This suggests Abdullah is treading
water, waiting for a more astute US leadership to take over
— hopefully, before Iran acquires nuclear weaponry and
dominates the Middle East.
THE MAD DREAM OF A DEAD EMPIRE THAT UNITES ISLAMIC REBELS
by Amir Taheri
The salafist JundAllah is a world-wide Sunni organization that
is fighting to reestablish the Islamic Caliphate. One of its
branches [Da'esh or Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)] has
been increasing its holdings rapidly in both countries to the
point that the media have started taking notice. Amir Taheri
believes they share with al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and the Iranian
mullahs inter alia political ambitions, where "God plays a
cameo role at best." What is certain is they split the world up
into three segments: the 57 Muslim-majority countries; countries
that Muslims have ever ruled, even briefly; and the outliers such
as America and Japan, that were never part of the caliphate. The
main point of contention is who will be Caliph?
WHO ARE THE SYRIAN REBELS? ARE THEY A THREAT TO ISRAEL?
by Ari Soffer
As part of the assertion that Islam is a religion of peace,
George W Bush reduced the size of our terrorist enemies to a
small cadre — a resolute headman Osama bin Laden by name
and his throat-slitting band of al-Qaeda men. Later, Obama
reduced the number of enemy terrorists to one - Osama himself.
Obama was finally forced to concur with the military that it was
the right time and place to take out Osama. Once the raid
succeeded, he took full credit. The root was dead. The few
remaining terrorists would soon abandon the fight. To those that
believed him, it may come as a surprise that, instead of
withering away, the number of Salafists and the number of
Salafist groups has grown tremendously — there is said to
be around 100,000 fighters, members of 1000 terrorist groups of
varying size and different affiliations, in Syria
alone (Jane's,
September 2013).. Ari Soffer describes the major squabbling
gangs that, lumped together, are the Syrian rebels.
Ideological clones, they often disagree on who to kill first and
the degree of barbarity to unleash. For Israel, the major issue
is: which ones among them are most likely to have Israel on
their priority kill list. Most appear too busy fighting
the Syrian government and the Shiites to waste time on Israel.
But ISIS and al-Qaeda have links with jihadi groups in Gaza and
the Sinai and several of the groups have made forays into Lebanon
to attack Hezbollah, which sides with Iran.
WHY THE SAUDIS AND MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD HATE EACH OTHER
by Mordechai Kedar
This article is indicative of what may be viewed as a counter
trend to cooperation among the terrorists, and among their State
supporters. As terrorist groups multiply, they maintain their
goals, but squabbles among them can grow to deadly confrontations.
Similarly, terrorist supporters often have a falling out. The
Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) were and are strong
supporters of universal sharia law by whatever means are at hand,
including terrorism. As Mordechai Kedar notes, "Saudi Arabia was
once a safe haven for Muslim Brotherhood leaders who fled
persecution in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. Now the Saudis are
pouring money into Sisi's regime in order to destroy them." It is
true the Saudis and the MB vie for supremacy; they have different
attitudes about the role of religion; and they view the West
differently. Until recently, these differences haven't seemed
strong enough to disrupt their similar goals and religious
ideology: both are Sunni and both actively propagandize for a
strict adherence to the Koran. Nevertheless, they no longer
cooperate in projects and their hostility is more open and
unrestrained. Kedar discusses why that is.
How should the West solve the Shiite Sunni feud? Mike Konrad
has a simple solution: Do nothing. Let them kill each other.
It may not work. It probably won't. But what has?
The pro-Palestinian gang-up on Israel comes from many sources.
In this issue, we look at a few of them: pseudo-tourist groups,
academics, magazines. Jews are often in the leadership of those
attacking Israel. And even the Red Cross has lent a hand.
Sarit
Catz reports on a New Yorker article by Bernard Avishai
about Israel's Independence Day. In Israel, Yom Haatzmaut is a
joyous occasion with bitter-sweet memories, particularly as it is
positioned just after the Day of Remembrance when Israelis mourn
the victims of terror and their soldiers who died defending them.
Since The New Yorker, once blithe and amusing, became
self-consciously didactic, it is probably not surprising that it
did not deviate by a nuance from the ugly view of Israel
promulgated by the Left, where The New Yorker places itself
politically. But the tone of the article is monotonically nasty,
the condemnation shrill and context-free and the error rate
extremely high. Considering that part of The New Yorker's
sales pitch is its supposed sophistication, why do
they publish Avishai, who has been making the same not only false
but boring and discredited arguments for some four decades? As
Catz suggests, "it is time for The New Yorker to find
someone else to write about Israel."
JEWS AGAINST THEMSELVES: THE BDS MOVEMENT AND MODERN APOSTASY
by Edward Alexander
Using Vassar as example, Edward Alexander describes the
anti-Israel atmosphere that predominates there as on many a
campus. It is almost not to be believed that Vassar, which once
preened itself on its intellectual standards, now not only
tolerates but admires crude anti-Israel promoters, who win by
intimidation and thuggery, not by clear thinking or factual
foundations. Unfortunately, this type of discourse isn't confined
to a small group of ignorant students but appears to represent
the one-sided way many of the staff present academic material on
Israel. Jewish professors — including the head of the Jewish
Studies Program — are to be found among those that have decided
Israel is singularly evil and act on this belief. If there are
those that disagree, they are most mousy quiet.
Alexander makes the point that hatred of Judaism by Jews has
taken various forms over the centuries. Today, vilifying Israel
appears to be the most satisfying way to handle incompatibility
between their natural identity and the attitudes they need to
adopt to be considered liberal. It is not surprising that "the
leaders of [the BSD] movement are 'disproportionately,' if not
preponderantly, Jewish apostates ..." One wonders what they are
trying to destroy by trying to destroy Israel.
Moshe Dann writes that the
International Red Cross (ICRC), in the person of Anton Camen,
decided "unilaterally and arbitrarily" and incorrectly that Israel
was violating international law and, in taking possession of
Samaria and Judea, was occupying land belonging to the Palestinian
Arabs. The poorly constructed arguments are easily demolished. Nevertheless,
even though legal savvy isn't ICRC's strong point,
"because the ICRC has official 'observer' status at the UN and is affiliated with most other international organizations, its decisions are considered authoritative — and are therefore unquestioned."
Note that material on Israel's strong legal claims can be found in the Levy Report (see for
example, here). A more
general understanding of the international law that granted
Samaria and Judea to the Jewish People can be found in
Think-Israel articles by Howard Grief and by Wallace Brand on the
San Remo conference.
For additional historical insights into pre-World War 2 Jewry,
we recommend you take a look at the collection of photographs
taken by Nazi soldiers of small Jewish towns in Poland. (The
photos are from the Knesset Photo Exhibit and are online at
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/180008.) Also look at:
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~dhershkowitz/pic43b.jpg, a collection
of photos of the Holy Land during the 1800s and early 1900s, with
photos listed by geographic area by David Hershkowitz.
What is striking in the older pictures is the poverty
of the people, the emptiness of the land and the paucity of
buildings and people. It was an archeological treasure and a
living hellhole.
Read "The True Identity of the so-called Palestinians" at
http://palestineisraelconflict.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/the-true-identity-of-the-so-called-palestinians/
and Louis René Beres, "Israel's Survival
Imperatives: The Oslo Agreements in International Law and National
Strategy," ACPR Policy Paper No. 25 (1998),
http://www.acpr.org.il/pp/pp025-beresE.pdf
The non-bombing of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp during World
War 2 is another of the bleak "if only...." events of that
time. The strike could have been made from Italy and the Allies
had already started a scheduled bombing of a cluster of synthetic
oil factories that the Germans set up in that area, close to where
the death camp prisoners were housed. We now know more about the
lack of support in the West for saving Jews. The Camp should have
been bombed. But it wasn't. Rafael Medoff tells us why.
HOLOCAUST WHISTLEBLOWER JAN KARSKI HONORED BY GEORGETOWN
by Renee Ghert-Zand
Renee Ghert-Zand writes that the commemoration of Jan Karski's
100th birthday at Georgetown University. Karski witnessed the
wholesale murder of Jews and on July 28, 1943, he told the USA
President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, what he'd seen. To no avail.
After the war Karski taught at Georgetown U,
committed to perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust victims.
THE JEWISH CONTRIBUTION TO D-DAY: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT
by Walter Bingham
During World War 2, on June 6, 1944, the Allies landed massive
forces on the Normandy coast, opening a second front in their
fight against Nazi Germany. It was the beginning of the end of the
war. Walter Bingham was one of the troops. In this essay, he
writes of how much the Jews who were lucky enough to escape the
Nazis and reach England contributed to the war effort. Those with
German or Austrian passports were treated as enemy aliens early in
the war; they weren't trusted with weaponry and were given
low-skills jobs. But eventually, they, and Jewish refugees from
other European countries, were able to put their skills and
training to use. They were interpreters and teachers. And many
became soldiers, where they were in double jeopardy. Aside from
the usual hazards of war, "if they were captured, they would be
executed as spies and traitors. Not to mention what would have
happened to them had they been discovered to be Jews."
Jack Schwartzwald writes of the Israeli Navy, using anecdotes
to highlight its history. He writes of men who shaped the force,
including Paul Shulman, an American who intended a career in the
US Navy but who in the 1940s helped smuggle Jews from Europe who
were interned by the British in post-war camps in Cyprus. From
fumbles and mis-starts, by the end of the Six Day War, Israel's
navy had both conventional boats and a daring commando group of
frogmen. Innovative refinements and novel usage of their equipment
were the hallmarks of the Navy's successful performance during the
Yom Kippur War, when the emphasis was on protecting the large
percent of the population concentrated along the coastal plain. In
the 1970s and '80s, they were successful in shoring up coastal
defense to contend with PLO terrorists raids, usually striking
from Lebanon. From the 1990's on, the Navy's improved and
modernized arsenal has seen much action. Intercepting terrorist
arms shipments is routine and blockading entrance to Gaza
necessary. As part of their vigilance, in 2010, they fought
Turkish terrorists by boarding one of a flotilla of boats engaged
in high-visibility propaganda, bringing out-of-date medical
supplies and banned equipment to Gaza. And, as Schwatzwald points
out, "The recent discovery of offshore gas fields has placed novel
defense responsibilities on the Israeli Navy..."
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
Please note that The Blog-Ed pages for
May and June 2014 are not currently available.
Different Blog Ed pages will be down
intermittently until the Archive structure is
in place. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Every so often, at the beginning of a new year, we reprint a
report connecting the increase in size of the Muslim population in
a host country and the increase in Muslim aggressiveness. Last
year, "Overview Of Islamic Takeover" by Professor Butrick made the
point by estimating when the size of the Muslim population
encourages Muslims to become more and more assertive in the USA. (Read
Overview
Of Islamic Takeover here.) Starting with the
September-October, 2013 issue, we serialized R.K. Ohri's book
The Long March of Islam, which, chapter by chapter,
meticulously examined the impact of a growing Muslim population on
Hindu India. This year we repeat what was part of a blog-ed by
Steven Shamrak in January 2010:
Progression of Islamic Expansionism Extracted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book,
Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and
Contemporary Threat.
Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a
country to agitate for their religious privileges. When
politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies
agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of
the other components tend to creep in as well. Here's how it
works:
As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in
any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a
peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This
is the case in:
United States- Muslim 0.6%
Australia ------- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -------- Muslim 1.9%
China ----------- Muslim 1.8%
Italy ------------- Muslim 1.5%
Norway ---------Muslim 1.8%
At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize other ethnic
minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting
from the jails and among street gangs. This is happening in:
Denmark --------- Muslim 2%
Germany --------- Muslim 3.7%
Spain -------------- Muslim 4%
Thailand ---------- Muslim 4.6%
United Kingdom--- Muslim 2.7%
From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion
to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push
for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food,
thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will
increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their
shelves — along with threats for failure to comply. This is
occurring in:
France -------------- Muslim 8%
Sweden ------------ Muslim 5%
The Netherlands --- Muslim 5.5%
At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to
allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia,
the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish
Sharia law over the entire world.
When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to
increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their
conditions. In Paris, we are already seeing car-burnings. Any
non-Muslim action offends Islam, and results in uprisings and
threats, such as in Amsterdam, with opposition to Mohammad
cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily,
particularly in Muslim sections, in:
Guyana — Muslim 10%
India ------ Muslim 13.4%
Israel ----- Muslim 16%
Kenya ---- Muslim 10%
Russia --- Muslim 15%
After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting,
jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of
Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in:
Ethiopia --- Muslim 32.8%
At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror
attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in:
Bosnia ---- Muslim 40%
Chad ------ Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon — Muslim 59.7%
From 60%, nations experience unfettered persecution of
nonbelievers of all other religions (including nonconforming
Muslims), sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law
as a weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels, such as in:
Albania --- Muslim 70%
Malaysia — Muslim 60.4%
Qatar ----- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan ---- Muslim 70%
After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some
State-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide, as these
nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such
as has been experienced and in some ways is ongoing in:
Egypt -------- Muslim 90%
Indonesia --- Muslim 86.1%
Iran ---------- Muslim 98%
Iraq ---------- Muslim 97%
Jordan ------ Muslim 92%
Pakistan ---- Muslim 97%
Syria -------- Muslim 90%
100% will usher in the peace of 'Dar-es-Salaam' — the
Islamic House of Peace. Here there's supposed to be peace, because
everybody is a Muslim, the Madrasses are the only schools, and the
Koran is the only word, such as in:
Afghanistan — Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia — Muslim 100%
Somalia ------- Muslim 100%
Yemen -------- Muslim 100%
This year we add two other topics of consequence.The first is the story with the most misshapen mislabeling
in years: the Fort Hood massacre. To describe it as workplace
violence is wrong on so many levels. Take it as a glaring sign
that our leaders haven't a clue to what is going on or they think
that we don't. Or both. The label acts as a benchmark showing the
high degree of contempt our politicos have for us ordinary
citizens. They longer seem to need to hide their cynicism; they
believe we are willing to believe anything. It highlights that our
military has been cowed into ignoring obvious signs of
radicalization and isn't yet allowed to switch to sensible action
and rational thought. It certainly shows a lack of respect by the
administration for our military, and a lack of self-respect in
some of the army's higher echelon — both are bad relationships,
especially now. Most of all, it is simply insane-asylum moronic.
The second story is our candidate for the topic most
guaranteed to give you nightmares as our Secretary-of-State and
our Prez pirouette around the globe, ignoring what's important,
ignoring that Iran will soon have nuclear weaponry and can't wait
to use them.
HOW OBAMA AND THE ARMY BETRAYED THE VICTIMS OF FORT HOOD
by Sara Carter
Many events ignored by the
media have refused to fade into oblivion. As an outstanding
example, Benghazi is still with us, bits and pieces dribbling out
through the Administrations stonewall. But the story that wins the
award of The Most Misnamed, The Most Orwellian, the most blatantly
bizarre is the Fort Hood Massacre. That Major Nidal Hasan
murdered a baker's dozen of people and wounded thirty-two others
— awful as that was — doesn't make it outstanding. What
makes it notoriously emblematic of how the Administration and the
Army handle what they regard as politically sensitive is the
pusillanimous way they handled Hasan. First they ignored all
the signs of his instability and growing dedication to Islam.
Then, after the deed was done, they dug their way further into
Orwellian ThinkMode by labeling the whole thing Workplace
Violence. In this article, Sara Carter tells the story
properly — from the point of view of Hasan's victims and their
families.
For those Americans who graciously are willing to sacrifice
Israel to Iran's nuclear weapons, in the unrealistic belief that
we will thus gain peace in the Middle East, consider this sobering
article by Ambassador Henry F. Cooper. He writes, "If you live
near the Gulf of Mexico, you are the front line to an emerging
existential threat to all Americans. The electromagnetic pulse
(EMP) from a nuclear weapon exploded a hundred miles above the
U.S. could kill 60-90 percent of all Americans. Though efforts in
2013 made progress in gaining awareness of this key problem, much
remains to be done to get the powers that be to address this
well-known threat that could be launched by Iran or Terrorists
from a ship in the Gulf." It does put a different perspective on
the Iranian threat, doesn't it?
THE PALESTINIAN ARABS ARE TRYING TO STEAL JEWISH
LAND AND JEWISH HISTORY
Eli E. Hertz (www.MythsandFacts.org) put it well and pithily: PALESTINE IS JEWISH. It
is a fact that "51 member countries — the entire League of Nations [Today's UN] — unanimously declared on July 24, 1922:
"Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."
"The 51 member countries of the League of Nations as of July 24, 1922:
Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, British India, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Persia, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Republic of China, Romania, Siam, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Union of South Africa, United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
"Palestine is Not a State, it is the Name of a Geographical Area.
"Palestine is a name coined by the Romans around 135 CE from the name of a seagoing Aegean people who settled on the coast of Canaan in antiquity — the Philistines. The name was chosen to replace Judea, as a sign that Jewish sovereignty had been eradicated following the Jewish Revolts against Rome.
"In the course of time, the Latin name Philistia was further bastardized into Palistina or Palestine. Palestine was never a sovereign independent Arab state belonging to any people, nor did a Palestinian people distinct from other Arabs appear during 1,300 years of Muslim hegemony in Palestine under Arab and Ottoman rule. Historically, before the Arabs fabricated the concept of Palestinian peoplehood as an exclusively Arab phenomenon, no such group existed. This is substantiated in countless official British Mandate-vintage documents that speak of the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine — not Jews and Palestinians."
This section deals with setting the record straight. And it
asks: what is there about the Arab character that drives their
attempt to steal Jewish identity?
In 1878, less than a hundred and fifty years ago, what is now
Israel, Gaza, Samaria, Judea and Jordan
was a "desolate arid wilderness,
almost empty." It was barely able to sustain the estimated 100,000
to 250,000 Arabs, Circassians, Jews, Christians and other scattered groups
who lived there. Zeev Galili writes of a map done at the time,
showing all the settlements and their sizes. It is a guide to a
realistic estimate of the population at that time.
Y.K Cherson and Rachel Molschky recount the non-history of the
Palestinian Arabs. They seem to have been known to no one in
earlier civilizations. The Assyrians knew the Jews. They didn't
know the Palestinians. The Babylonians didn't write about them. In
Roman writing and sculptures and friezes, there's no mention of
Palestinians. Isn't that odd, considering that the Romans and the
Jews mixed it up in exactly the same spot for years? And then one
day, Yasser Arafat said, "Let there be Palestinians." And the
world immediately believed in this miraculous birth.
There is an addendum by Dr Rivka Shpak Lissak that deals with the
question: when did the Arabs come into "Palestine." Note, we said
Arabs, not Palestinians.
PALESTINIAN MYTHS: THE RIGHT OF RETURN OF THEIR REFUGEES
by David Bukay
David Bukay writes of a myth the Arabs have fostered: that the
Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 and who were relabeled as
Palestinians are entitled to return to their homes, they and their
children and their grandchildren and their great grandchildren.
Retroactively and much later than the events of 1948, their
supposed loss of what is now the State of Israel came to be
labeled nakbah, a disaster. They had no problem ignoring
that the local Arabs never were in control of the land. They
simply covered the facts with a fantasy that their identity,
hitherto proudly Syrian, was always Palestinian. Their fantasy and
their status as refugees would ordinarily have disappeared in a
few years, except for the fact that they were put on life support
by the UN and given an agency, UNRWA, that tends exclusively to
their needs, sustaining them physically, educating them,
medicating them and keeping their fantasy fresh.
David Cohen writes of the disparity between the real history of
the Jews in Palestine, which the media ignore, and the invented
history of the "Palestinians", which the media accept without
asking for documentation. The Arabs have mastered the Big Lie and
the elite accept it. This is immoral. If the newer generations of
Arabs apparently believe their own lies and act with hostility,
then, as a reader, Mark, points out, "You cannot negotiate with
any entity that disrespects, hates , deceives, lies, denies,
murders, falsifies and dishonours you to the extent that those
within the PA leadership, terrorist groups and I warrant the
majority of 'Palestinian Arabs' do. Good try, but not good enough.
READ MORE
MUSLIM ROULETTE
Bosch Fawstin
Another popular myth — this one held by Westerners as well as being
promulgated by Arabs "to make Islam appear harmless" — is
that there is such a thing as a moderate Muslim. As one reader
summed up this article by Bosch Fawstin, "Just as there are no
such aberrations as vegetarian T-Rex, lions and leopards, so is it
with moderate muslims." Fawstin own comment on the article is good
advise: "We have to start with reality and go from there, not from
wishful thinking."
A significant part of the Palestinian Arab campaign to separate
Israelis from their homeland is to destroy Jewish holy places and
historic artifacts, thus obliterating the connection between Jews and
their history. Together with destroying the physical evidence of a
long relationship between Jews and the land of Israel, the Arabs
insist that Jews have no long-term connection with the land.
Victor Sharpe tells the story of one of their lies: that there was
no Temple on the Temple Mount. What is more incredible than the
disrespect the Arabs show to other religions, is that the Israeli
Government allows it to happen.
ISLAM AND THE OTHER: THE AL-WALA' WAL-BARA' DOCTRINE
by David Bukay
What powers the Muslim's shameless attempts to destroy non-Muslims
physically and culturally rather than live peaceably with them is
the al-Wala' wal-Bara' doctrine. Muslims see themselves as
peaceful and non-Muslims as aggressors. So Muslims must defend
themselves. David Bukay describes it this way: "...Muslims can
viciously attack at almost every possible opportunity while crying
out they are victims of oppression and aggression. They can
perpetuate obscene inhuman acts of violence, terrorize and
intimidate, while they accuse the other of colonialism, apartheid,
racism, and Islamophobia." In this binary world, "... it is the
right against wrong; and it is the pious against the evil-doers;
it is Paradise or Hell. There are no legitimacy, consensual
recognition and acceptance of the other, unless he becomes Muslim
or he is subdued to Islamic rule."
While some churches have become more obnoxious in the way they
treat Israel, others have become more devoted and sincerely see
Judaism as the root of their belief system. This section contrasts
the two views.
Perhaps borrowing from Arab street drama shtick, St. James
Church in London erected "a mendacious wall on its premises in
order to make an ignominious political point." Denis MacEoin wrote
a letter to the administrators at St. James, which elegantly exposes
their inane view that Israel is evil in protecting itself from
Arab violence, while Arabs have the right to be violent. He points
out that the reality is that in the Middle East, Israel is the
only country where Christians are thriving and their numbers are
growing. He understands that the Church administrators "have
bought the narrative that portrays Palestinians as suffering
victims and Israelis as people without conscience, aggressors,
bloated by pride and prejudice." But his analysis doesn't stop
there. The letter is remarkable because it sees as context for the
St. James wall not some shallow view of Middle East politics but a
reenactment of supercessionary thinking, a much firmer basis to
consider the St. James action anti-Semitic.
The Presbyterians' Israel Palestinian Mission Network (IPMN)
has made an unscrupulous attack on Judaism, their weapon a "study guide"
about the Arab-Israeli conflict: a pamphlet and a DVD called
"Zionism Unsettled." In accepting it, the Presbyterian Church USA
(PCUSA) leadership has sunk into the sinkhole of unthinking
pro-Palestinian advocacy. As Jonathan Tobin of Commentary
Magazine says so clearly, "Any PCUSA that chooses to
distribute [this screed] ... is endorsing hate speech and seeking
to spread a doctrine that seeks Israel's destruction ... the PCUSA
has crossed a line that divides people of good will from those who
promote racism or anti-Semitism." The essay by Diana Appelbaum
focuses on the Sabeel Center. Its supercessionary theology has
been a major factor in producing a state of mind in which "Zionism
Unsettled" could be judged as acceptable by an organization that
considers itself an arbiter of morality.
THE VATICAN AGAINST ISRAEL: A REVIEW OF MEOTTI'S
NEW BOOK
by Janet Levy
Janet Levy reviews Giolio Meotti's latest book entitled, "The
Vatican Against Israel: J'Accuse." Meotti is not sanguine that
the new pope will "finally extinguish centuries-old, Catholic
anti-Semitism and its concerted efforts to sabotage the Jewish
State. In the book, he "explores the theological foundation for
1,700 years of Catholic enmity toward Jews that led to manifold
persecutory actions and atrocities through the centuries and how
it continues to play out in Church policy toward the Jewish State
today." While the Church's attitude toward the Jews is well-known,
it is eye-opening to learn that the Church's position on Jews has
"led to today's shocking alliance with Islam .... [and] has
prevented the Church from aiding persecuted Christians throughout
the Muslim world." The Church seems unable to repudiate its
supercessionary belief that it has replaced Judaism, while it
ignores the fate its false friends, the Muslims, have in store for
all Christians.
Robert Nicholson has written an important essay on Christian
Evangelicals. He understands that Jews have cause to be wary of
Christians, given the many centuries of pogroms and persecutions.
But, he argues, they should understand how Evangelicals view Jews.
By and large, "they see Israel as a nation chosen by God to
play a unique role in history." It is true that "a minority emphasiz[e]
apocalyptic themes." And some evangelicals trivialize or reject
HaShem's covenant with the Jews. But basically, "evangelicals love
Israel because God loves Israel." In today's world, Jews should be
concerned that there is a strong and growing group of anti-Israel
and pro-Palestinian evangelicals — which is all the more reason
Jews should make common cause with the evangelicals. Nicholson
recommends Jewish outreach where Jews get to know and interact
with evangelicals. It is a sensible suggestion that Jews get to
feel as comfortable with evangelicals as liberal Jews feel with
social activists from the mainline churches. After all, we share a
common interest: the welfare of the Jewish state.
DAVID ALONE: LESSONS FOR CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS FROM THE PSALMS OF DAVID
by Paul Merkley
Paul Merkley has written a unique essay, whose theme is that
the crises King David experienced and his emotional reactions
serve as a relevant guide for today. The author focuses on the
message of the psalms to Christian Zionists, but they clearly have
a much larger relevance.
This is a companion article to the one above by David Goldman.
It isn't just Israelis who more and more see Judaism as an
integral part of their identity. Small Jewish communities wilting
in largely hostile environments are coming back home to Israel.
And there have be many anecdotes of people taking up genealogy,
discovering their Jewish roots and acting upon that knowledge. As
a particular example, Hispanics and Latinos in the US southwest
have been discovering their Jewish roots, many dating back to the
Spanish Inquisition, when their choice was to convert to
Catholicism, leave the country or fry. Yosef Juarez writes about
members of a Church group that, slowly and with many dropouts,
realized they wanted to join the Jewish people.
CHAOTIC ENEMIES AND FAIR-WEATHER FRIENDS. TIME FOR ISRAEL
TO GROW UP?
Israel's enemies make real threats
against Israel's existence and Israel's friends not only ignore
them but cravenly cater to Israel's enemies. Israel may be forced
at long last to follow its own destiny as well as take
responsibility for the Territories, land put in trust for the
Jewish people by the international community. The Israeli
government and judiciary may even learn to treat its own citizens
as well as it treats its enemies. Israel certainly has some tough
decisions to make.
Michael Devolin starts that with the premise that whatever
Israel tries and whatever it does to placate world opinion,
anti-Semitism is ingrained and will never die. That being the
case, Israel needs to stop asking forgiveness for defending itself
and its interests. In particular, Jews need to "cease placating
the world, especially the Arab Muslim world". It's time to cast
off learned responses from Judaism's stay in the diaspora and for
Jews to stop asking pardon for living. As Devolin puts it, it's
"[t]ime for Jews to stop apologizing for their Zionism." Israel
has regained much of its internationally-approved territory. It is
a sovereign nation, creative and innovative. It should start
acting like one.
ISRAEL AT A POINT OF NO RETURN — IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
by David P. Goldman
David Goldman, who blogs as Spengler notes that "American
Jews, who have been running away from Judaism for the past three
generations, are upset that Israel has embraced the normative
Judaism they worked so hard to suppress." And so they have,
leaving a still shrinking group of Leftists, who cling with
religious fervor to their vision of a universalist Marxist
utopia. Goldman suggests that the Israeli Left "perceives that
the clock is running out, and has worked itself up into a froth
of hysteria against Israel." Whatever the reason, the majority of
Israeli Jews acknowledge their Jewish identity and with it has
come what was once considered to be a contradiction in terms:
high tech innovative developments by a religious people.
CLAIMS OF THE JEWISH AND ARAB PEOPLES UNDER
INTERNATIONAL LAW TO THE RIGHT OF POLITICAL SELF-DETERMINATION IN
PALESTINE
by Wallace Brand
In the May-June
2013 issue of Think-Israel, we presented Wallace Brand's essay
called "Roots Of Israel's Sovereignty And Boundaries In
International Law: In Defense Of The Levy Report." It is actually
Part I of a paper that, as Wallace Brand writes, "... shows why,
under International Law, the Jewish People have sovereignty over
Palestine west of the Jordan River and the Arab people residing in
Palestine calling themselves "The Palestinian Arab People" do
not." The present article is Part II of the complete document and "shows that International Law does not support
unilateral claims of secession from a sovereign state such as that
of the alleged Palestinian Arab People because when there is a
tension between the right of a "people" to self-determination and
the territorial integrity of a sovereign state, the latter is
paramount." This issue features Part II plus an new Introduction
to the complete paper.
One of the large number of elephants squatting in the "peace
process" room is the water issue.
This problem is mainly ignored. Instead, the Arab complaint that
they aren't getting a fair share of the water dominates the news.
The water libel is big again, now that it's becoming difficult to
sustain the lie that Israel is an apartheid state. Too many
tourists have been to a public park or amusement center in Israel
and seen Arabs strutting around like they own the place. The
imagery usually contrasts a sad Arab women svitzing in her
burqa with a happy Israeli child swimming in a pool. We are never
shown pictures such as these that comes from Gaza.
(See others at
http://www.israellycool.com/2012/06/29/more-photos-from-concentration-camp-gaza/.)
It's never mentioned that the Arabs mucked up the Gaza aquifer
when it came under their control or that individual Arabs drill
illegally. Responsible people they are not. In this article,
Professor Haim Gvirtzman presents the real facts about water
distribution. We hope it also makes you think what will happen
should Israel be dumb enough to hand over control of its aquifer
to the Arabs by creating an Arab state in Samaria and/or
Judea. Does Israel really want Arabs sitting on top of their water
supply?
Elliott Green writes of the upsurge of anti-Semitism in Europe
due, in part, to the enduring Muslim hatred of Jews, but also
because state-funded institutions, such as France2, the French
state TV, incited the Muslims by repeatedly showing a hoax
purporting to show a young boy shot by Israeli troops. The pattern
has been repeated in other European countries and by EU-funded
"NGOs that incite hatred of Jews while speaking in the name of
human rights, civil rights and peace." Under these conditions,
paper peace agreements and promises of cooperation aren't worth
much — no one will enforce them. In fact, "a diminished Israeli
strategic deterrence ensuing from a treaty or accord, is likely to
encourage Arabs sooner or later to conventional war or rocket
attacks." Under these conditions, no matter what the pressures
and/or promises, it behooves Israel to worry about its security
needs first and foremost. It needs also to acknowledge that the
Western countries have fostered a strong propaganda campaign
against Israel, and Israel must meet the propaganda challenge by
educating the world by exposing the lies and explaining the facts.
You can tell how important the Jordan Valley is to Israel's
security by the number of pundits claiming "Israel no longer needs
the Jordan Valley as a shield against aggression from the east.
They argue that the demise of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq,
the weakening of civil war-torn Syria, and the impressive
stability of Jordan in light of the turmoil of the Arab world
renders the threat from the east and its proximity to Israel's
center a thing of the past." Professor Efraim Inbar points out
that they ignore that the instability in the Arab countries may
eventually spread to Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Giving it to
Palestinian Arabs is another poor idea. He points out that Israel
must occupy Area E-1, if it to have an undivided Jerusalem. The
Jordan Valley is militarily indispensable.
Despite the huge effort to make people believe that peace
between Israel and some subset of the Arabs is the linchpin of
peace in the Middle East, it is not the case. As Matthew Hausman
put it, "... the Arab-Israeli conflict is unrelated to any other
conflicts plaguing the region; and it persists solely because of
the refusal to recognize Jewish national integrity." So the
question arises, what is the cause of the chronic turbulence and
frequent outbreaks of unrestrained violence in the Middle East?
Certainly, the Sunni-Shiite divide has never stopped being an
irritant and these days has blossomed into ugly regional violence.
Or perhaps it's the hate storms stirred up by the many variants of
Islamic fundamentalism, all of which promised a return to Islam's
former glory. Given the current splinterings and shatterings in
the regions, a revival of Islam's dominance looks less and less
likely to happen.
Several papers in this section discuss possible
outcomes of the current turbulence depending on, as Mark Durie
writes, how Muslims "make theological sense of the trashing of
their religion's utopian vision." Is a political restructuring
complete with individual human rights even possible, let alone
probable? Or will Muslims enmeshed in primitive Islam continue to
vent their anger and frustrations on everyone else?
Other essays point out that other problems have reached
critical mass: the network expansion of al-Qaeda and other
terrorist groups for one and Iran's nuclear resources for
dominating the Middle East and terrorizing the West as another.
The regional perturbations have created de facto border
changes in the area of fighting and have attracted a pool of
volunteers from abroad, including Bosnia. Yet the Western nations
seem to be indicating by their inactivity and their willingness to
do business with Iran that they don't believe that eventually the
whirlwind from the Middle East will suck them into another global
war.
In order of appearance, the papers deal with the Sunni-Shiite
divide, views of the future, al-Qaeda, Iran, Saudis and other hot
spots.
As J. Millard Burr describes it, small but intense battles are
breaking out all over the Middle East between Sunnis and Shiites;
mini civil wars, street riots, sniping, car bombing — all
the skills terrorists have been practicing on non-Muslims are
being used against each other. As Burr puts it, "there now exists
a widespread war between Sunni and Shiite, the likes of which in
its expanse has never been seen before in the Middle East and
South Asia." Shiite Iran has been hit with "pesky attacks by the
Sunni Baluch that populate a large part of southeastern Iran and
western Pakistan." In Egypt and Pakistan, small Shiite communities
are under vicious attack. Alliances and conflicts change as in a
kaleidoscope. At the moment, "it seems that an Egypt-Saudi
Arabia-Israel alliance against Iran is emerging." But events shift
rapidly and patterns are hard to discern.
Islam theology is built on it being the dominant religion, its
followers dominating infidel dhimmis. Islam was remarkably
successful at conquest and domination for well over a half a
millennium and then declined as the West successfully fought back,
from the Portuguese conquest of Goa in 1510 to the establishment
of the State of Israel, "which was considered by many Muslims to
be the crowning humiliation in ... [a] long line of defeats."
According to Mark Durie, their loss of power sent Islam into a
profound crisis, which led to "revivalist" movements — such as
the Wahhabi, the Jamaat e-Islami, the Muslim Brotherhood and
offshoots such as Al Qaida — that asserted that a complete
behavioral and belief adherence to the words and actions of
Mohammad would restore Islam's former glory. Yet, "wherever
revivalist movements have gained the ascendancy, human misery has
only increased" and many Muslims are losing confidence in "Islam's
ability to solve the problems of living well in this world." What
next? Will Muslims decide that Islam itself is the problem and
modify the religion or leave it? Will a retrogressive Islam use
nuclear weapons to shore up a failed theology? Whatever the
reaction(s), as Durie puts it, "the world will be in for quite a
ride in the years to come."
In contrast to Mark Durie's assessment of the situation (see
above), Daniel Greenfield sees no possibility of change in Islam.
"Islam has been stuck in ... repeating the same few decades over
and over again, moving from religious ecstasy to holy war, seeking
redemption through religious tyranny and Jihad, and finding that
there was no escaping the internal decay and instability in the
veins of the religion." Aside from the occasional "exercise of
power," it has no alternative "spiritual form." Thus the political
flipping from a theocracy to the overthrow of those in power to
the establishment of yet another theocratic rule. For Muslim
leaders, the game, according to Greenfield, has little to do with
spirituality or theology and much to do with money and power.
Unlike Durie's suggesting Muslims might want a better life,
Greenfield writes that "[n]ot only is the Islamic imagination
incapable of envisioning a better way, it is also obsessed with
the destruction of anyone or anything that can. ...The reflexive
Islamic hostility toward the modern and the humane is fear
transformed into hate." "Islamic fanaticism is most pronounced
among those who have the most to lose," the upper classes.
Greenfield sees no avenues for change. As he puts it, "Islam has
no capacity for debate. Its blasphemy laws wall off dissent and
prevent anyone from questioning the moral absolute of its power.
It has, as the Ayatollah Khomeini said, no sense of humor.
...There is no room for doubt in Islam ... Accordingly there is no
thaw, only the eternal winter." He concludes that "spring will
never come for Islam," only repeats of "the same bloody rituals of
Jihad, the killing of infidels and the civil wars, the slaves
building civilizations, the masters molesting young girls and then
beating them to death out of fear that the children might not be
theirs."
This is taken from the January 19, 2014 Financial Times (FT)
(http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/09b2c416-8144-11e3-95aa-00144feab7de.html#slide1).
The map and the associated material on FT are an excellent study
guide to learning about Al-Qaeda, its affiliates, franchises
and tag-alongs. Despite the rosy hope by the American
Administration that Al-Qaeda is moribund, I fear this map will have a
long and useful shelf-life.
EXPOSED: THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD/AL-QAEDA CONNECTION
by Raymond Ibrahim
Raymond Ibrahim writes of the growing evidence of an alliance
between the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and Al-Qaeda, both Salafist,
both dedicated to promoting the supremacy of Islam, but with very
different styles and time frames, al-Qaeda more dramatic and
appearing to be opportunistic and impulsive while the MB is
committed to a gradual and under-the-radar takeover. In July 2013,
former President Muhammad Morsi, a member of the Muslim
Brotherhood, was overthrown by the Egyptian military and is now on
trial, accused of working with al-Qaeda and other foreign terror
groups. Evidence includes purported "recorded conversations
between Morsi and Muhammad Zawahiri, al-Qaeda leader Ayman
Zawahiri's brother." In this essay, Ibrahim comments on events
"that now, in light of these phone conversations, make perfect
sense and independently help confirm the authenticity of the
recordings." An alliance, temporary or for a longer time period,
would not be surprising, given that Egypt, thanks to Saudia
Arabia's financial support, has shown surprising strength in
holding its own against the MB, al-Qaeda and the American
administration.
The long arm of al-Qaeda has reached into Jerusalem. Matthew
Vadum writes that "Israeli security forces have shut down a
massive al-Qaeda plot coordinated by terrorist mastermind Ayman
al-Zawahiri that involved attacking the Jerusalem Convention
Center and the American embassy in the diplomatic center of Tel
Aviv." The plot was elaborate and included "bring[ing] a group of
foreign terrorists to Israel using fake Russian passports, who
would have entered the country by posing as tourists." The plot is
significant not only because of its well-planned range of terror
operations but because it targeted both Israelis and Americans. It
would appear that al-Qaeda has responded to Obama's perceived
weakness in reacting against Muslim terror and not to his
friendliness in sending armaments to the Syrian "rebels", among
whom the al-Qaeda contingent is prominent.
Iran has continued her nuclear
program, aided and abetted by Prez Obama. Even with it unfinished,
she has become a power in the region and she is a serious threat
to Israel. Caroline B. Glick provides us with a gloomy but,
unfortunately, accurate assessment. "Our leaders continue to hope
that a proper mix of concessions to the PLO will convince Obama to
stand by his empty pledge to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear
power. Obama will do no such thing. Concessions to the
Palestinians will weaken us militarily and politically. And they
will give us no advantage over Iran. While it is important to deal
with the administration's hostile insistence on unreciprocated
Israeli concessions to the PLO, we cannot ignore Iran." Future
historian can debate how and why the situation reached crisis
level. Glick makes it clear action is needed. NOW.
READ MORE
AMERICA CODDLES NUCLEAR IRAN — IRAN PLOTS DEATH FOR GREAT SATAN
by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
Terresa Monroe-Hamilton writes as plainly as I have yet read
of the asymmetric relationship between Iran and the Obama
Administration: Obama protects Iran while she develops the
weaponry to destroy America. He also prevent Israel from attacking
Iran and fires generals who would be willing to take on Iran,
while Iran has already — while her weapons are still incomplete
— started to exert control over the Middle East states. What's
going on seems obvious. Why no one is stopping it is a mystery.
Ken Jensen, editor at ACD, wrote as preface to this article
written by Rachel Ehrenfeld,
"Despite continued public statements of support for U.S. and
Western counterterrorism efforts, sporadic enforcement of new
laws in the Kingdom regarding such things as money laundering,
money transfers to dubious foreign recipients, and the
occasional rousting of terrorist cells (al Qaeda- and
Iran-affiliated), Saudi Arabia remains one of the most important
sources of terrorist funding worldwide — if not THE most
important source.
"The U.S., while knowing this full well, has for many years
doled out nothing but praise for the Saudis when it comes to
fighting Islamist terrorism. This is as true now as it was after
September 11. In this, the U.S. government has seemingly accepted
the principal underpinning of the Saudi regime: buying off its
would-be Islamist adversaries at home. The leading principle has
been all along - not in our backyard. Thus the Kingdom's support
of Osama bin-Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
"But Saudi funding to globally spread their Sunni radical
version of Islam-Wahhabism--began in earnest in 1962 with the
establishment of the Muslim World League (MWL), which expanded
into at least to one hundred branches in more than thirty
countries, and served as the main body for other international
Saudi charities. Since then, the Kingdom's charities have been
estimated to spend between $1.5 and $2 trillion to build many
thousand of mosques, madrassas and Islamic centers equipped with
Saudi books and Imams, preaching the Wahhabi doctrine."
As Ehrenfeld points out, "Saudi and other radical-Islam promoting
regimes' direct and indirect involvement in and support of
terrorism must be fully exposed and addressed if we are to
maintain our security protect our liberty."
The title is a bit of a misnomer, but the analysis is
first-rate. James Lewis makes an important observation about the
hate media messages emanating from Europe, the Middle East and
students and academics in the USA, so reminiscent of the 1930s:
"[g]enocidal hate propaganda is back in the world, though it's
never reported in the American and European media. To report the
constant stream of hate agitation against the West and Israel
would undermine the socialist-Islamist alliance that apparently
has run the world since Arab oil embargo of 1973. The major
financiers have been the Sunni Saudis and Muslim Brotherhood and the
Shiite Iranians. Now, with Iran, aided by the Obama administration,
racing to a nuclear weapon triumph, as Lewis puts it, "This is the
highest-stakes nuclear poker game since the death of Josef
Stalin," jeopardizing the welfare of the entire Middle East as
well as giving Iran the power to terrorize the West. "The biggest
risk of Obama's community organizing shenanigans is ... a
regional war between Sunni imperialism (Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Jordan, Pakistan, Libya) and Shi'ite imperialism (Iran, Syria, and
Lebanon). As soon as Iran goes nuclear, the Saudis and Egyptians
have arranged to import nuclear weapons from Pakistan. A regional
Sunni-Shi'ite war might therefore escalate very quickly."
As Jonathan Spyer points out, the Middle East currently is not
defined by "by rivalry between nation-states, but by sectarian
divisions," particularly the Sunni-Shiite divide. In this essay,
Spyer asks why the conflict is particularly intense in Syria, Iraq
and Lebanon. He suggests first that they "are all home to a host
of different sectarian and ethnic communities." In Syria and Iraq,
there's never was a live-and-let-live separatist plan between the
sharply-differentiated ideologies. Instead, whoever was strongest
suppressed the others. Lebanon did have a power-sharing
arrangement between Christians and Muslims, but it "collapsed into
civil war in 1975." In these states, the tensions existing because
of ethnic, religious and political differences have been
exacerbated by "unresolved questions of national identity." In the
past decade, as suppression was weakened, the various factions
have reasserted themselves in Syria and Iraq, and the fighting
spilled into Lebanon. The separate conflicts have consolidated
into what appears to be a regional war between the Sunnis and the
Shiites, in which the once separate states of Iraq, Syria and
Lebanon appear to have been amalgamated. The Iranian-led Shiite
side, which includes Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah, "has emerged as a
tightly organized alliance," while the Saudi-supported Sunnis and
al-Qaeda and the other terror groups that fight as Sunnis are far
less unified. In addition, the Kurds have taken advantage of the
current state of disarray to carve out an independent area for
themselves. The West seems not to have caught up with the facts on
the ground, despite the importance of the Middle East to Western
economy.
"OUR GOAL IS JERUSALEM" — MILITANT ISLAMISTS IN SOUTHEAST EUROPE
by Gordon N. Bardos
Gordon Bardos writes of the Balkans, particularly Bosnia, which
has produced Islamists who have committed acts of terror in
Germany, Bulgaria and Cyprus. "Indeed, almost every major
terrorist action against the US and other western countries and
interests over the past two decades has had Balkan ties or
connections—including the 9/11 attacks, the August 1998 US
African embassy bombings, the December 1999 Millennium Bomb Plot
targeting Los Angeles' LAX Airport, the October 2000 attack on the
USS Cole in Aden Harbor, the November 2003 Istanbul bombings, the
March 2004 Madrid Train bombings, the 7/7 London Underground
bombing, the May 2007 Fort Dix bomb plot, the July 2009 Raleigh
Group conspiracy, and the January 2010 conspiracy to attack the
New York subway system." "According to one estimate, Bosnia has
provided more Syrian jihad volunteers than any other country in
Europe per capita." This isn't accidental. Balkans terror
organizations have had a "sophisticated infrastructure for some
two decades." These terrorists have developed useful local
alliances, secured safe havens, found ways to transfer funding
safely and have media people to 'whitewash' them, Their numbers
may not be large, but their organizational skills make them a
menace to the West.
TEN TRUTHS MAINSTREAM COMIC BOOKS EVADE TO PROMOTE 'MUSLIM SUPERHEROES'
by Bosch Fawstin
Bosch Fawstin is an ex-Muslim independent cartoonist. In this
article he combines text and graphics to delineate the politically
correct cowardice of Marvel and DC Comics, who ignore elemental
truths about Islam and concoct Muslim superheroes as they'd wish
Muslim superheroes to be, not as they are. "[A] good Muslim by our
standards is a bad Muslim by Islamic standards. Therefore, a true
Muslim superhero would be a Muslim supervillain." The publishers
ignore that Resurgent Islam has declared war on us; that Islam
means submission, not peace; that our problem is
Islamophilia, Not "Islamophobia"; that appeasement doesn't work;
that Islam doesn't sell; that Islam is contrary to liberal values;
that the American superheroes — Superman, Batman, and Captain
America — were created by Jews; that good Jihadists are Islam's
heroes; that you can't insert 9/11 into a Superhero World without
avenging it.
ABBAS VERSUS FACTS: JEWS 'WEREN'T ATTACKED' IN KUSRA
by Dalit Halevi, Ari Yashar
In what was an ignominious order, Israeli police, for no
sensible reason and illegally but under orders of Defense
Secretary Moshe Ya'alon, destroyed Jewish vineyards in the
Binyamin region of Samaria. As Dalit Halevi and Ari Yashar write,
this "sparked a confrontation Tuesday, in which an Arab mob [from
Kusra] abducted and violently beat 30 Jewish residents, leaving
several of them injured." Having always found stonewalling a
useful tool, Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority (PA) used
it once again, denying that the residents of Kusra had try to
lynch the Jews. "They (the Arabs) didn't hit them," claimed the PA
head, "for we have rights and culture, and aren't like them
attacking trees and mosques." This is so obvious a lie, why was it
necessary for the Jewish victims to show pictures and otherwise
document that the Jews were indeed threatened with loss of life?
Well, Israelis have learned from experience that foreign
journalists are swift to believe any balderdash by an Arab and
hard to convince of the actual events.
Paul Lademain has some sensible advise for those who do public
relations for Israel. They may seem obvious but Israelis don't
seem to understand how they reinforce Arab propaganda, when for
example, they call Judea and Samaria "disputed territory." Jews
shouldn't be disputing that the "West Bank" is Jewish
(which, by the way, should always be called by its proper name:
Samaria and Judea). They should know it is Jewish and say so. In
this essay, Lademain suggests Jews stop using Arab terms that have
the wrong denotation: occupiers, illegal
settlements, extremist when terrorist will do
nicely. Settler has become a pejorative term>? Don't use
it. Simple, isn't it? He also suggests learning actual history.
For instance, Yasser Arafat "confessed that he had no intention of
complying with the terms of the Oslo Accords when he signed them.
That being the case, his signature means nothing because he
rejected the agreement while pretending to agree to its terms and
this pretense renders the agreement void." Simple, isn't it? And
oh yes, when someone expects you to collapse in defeat by yelling
international law, make them define whhich one they are
talking about. And make them try to link their argument to it.
That's not so simple.
ACT LIKE A GHETTO JEW AND BE TREATED AS A GHETTO
JEW
by Gil Solomon
Gil
Solomon writes of an attitude of helplessness that was real when
Jews were barely tolerated in a host country. That has
unnecessarily stayed with some Jews, even though they live in the
sovereign state of Israel and have dominion over their own lives.
It's time these Jews rid themselves of that attitude. It is no
longer appropriate. On a larger scale, Solomon writes of the
so-called peace process, where the IDF "has lost the
confidence or will to even deal with a rag tag bunch of rock
throwers on the West Bank. The IDF is taunted daily but refuses to
respond in the only way that these people will understand." Most
importantly, Solomon writes that "Unfortunately for Israel, to
this day it has no concept of Hasbara, let alone realizing that
Hasbara is a war that Abbas and Co. have mastered to an extent
beyond their wildest imagination." When the Arabs started calling
themselves a people that had a history in a country called
Palestine, "no other country or people on the face of the earth
would have even indulged their ludicrous and incessant claims nor
given them the time of day. Jordan certainly did not." But the
Jews did. It's time Israel spoke the truth and laid that lie to
rest.
David Hazony writes of a woman who has found an unusual and
effective way to fight terrorism. We usually think of fighting
terrorism by bombing bunkers and training grounds, by outshooting
terrorists so they run out of bullets. But terrorists need a much
larger range of support. They need "money, legitimacy, and
freedom to operate." They need quite ordinary help from ordinary
commercial systems. And that is what governments and private
lawyers have started targeting. Lawyers such as Nitsana
Darshan-Leitner, an Israeli lawyer and Director of Shurat HaDin,
are suing in civil courts to seize terrorists' assets on behalf
of the victims of terrorism. Banks can be sued. "Major
corporations have discovered that they cannot operate with
impunity." States such as Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, states
that support terrorism, can be sued. The Palestinian Authority
can be sued. Even the social media are vulnerable to law suits for
abetting international terror.
Darshan-Leitner has pointed out that a major defect in the deal
reached between the members of the UN Security Council and Iran is
that the emphasis was on Iran's nuclear program — which is indeed
a major concern — but Iran's role as a major financier of
terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah
was ignored. And that isn't good. If it continues and banks and
companies "fail to understand that they are aiding and abetting
terrorism, legally speaking, then as soon as the terrorism starts
again, there will be a whole new wave of lawsuits." A woman's work
is never done.
THE SCOTSMAN WHO HUNTED HITLER'S AGENTS IN THE USA
by Adam Lebor
Adam Lebor writes an amazing story that started the summer of
1940. England was already at war, but Nazi sympathizers such as
the aviator-hero Charles Lindbergh were still speaking up boldly
in the USA, in tune with many in finance and reputable
establishments, declaring "that the Nazis were the best bulwark
against the advance of Communism." The British sent a Scotsman,
Donald MacLaren, to New York to hunt "Hitler's agents and his
big-money backers." His mission wasn't to kill; it was to destroy
Nazi business connections and weaken support for Germany. He
established a network of "150 agents across the Americas in the
early years of the War on behalf of British Security Coordination
(BSC)... his mission was to report on Nazi-American business
links." A primary target was I.G. Farben, named GAF in the USA,
which "extended its tentacles into the heart of the business,
legal and political establishment, sending diplomatic and
industrial secrets — plus huge profits — back to Berlin." MacLaren
started a quarrel between two factions of GAF so each reported the
other as Nazis. He pushed a publicity blitz against IG Farben,
exposing them and forcing the US to shut them down.
Using material from a recent book by Wendy Lower, Tony Rennett
writes of the wholehearted participation of German women in
Hitler's plans to exterminate Jews. They weren't just the
concentration camp guards and nurses. They were ordinary
housewives, secretaries, midwives, party girls and distributors
of the clothing and belongings of murdered Jews. They killed
Jews from conviction and for sport, babies as well as adults.
they smashed in the heads of children and otherwise murdered
them in ways later to be repeated by Arab terrorists. After
Germany was defeated, they "played the helpless woman card" and
only a few out of the millions of women complicit in the
crimes of the Nazis were actually punished for their sadistic
acts of cruelty.
General Evelyn Hugh Barker,
General Officer Commanding of the British forces in 1946, two
years before the State of Israel came into being. A loathsome
critter, he hated Jews and his goal was make the Jews "suffer
punishment and be made aware of the contempt and loathing with
which we regard their conduct." He was certain in his bones that a
Jew would do anything for money. Sarah Honig deftly compares
Sec-State Kerry to Barker, and makes psychological sense of
Kerry's out-of-the-blue proposal to compensate those Israelis who
fled Arab countries. Sephardic Jews are stereotyped as hard-nosed
hawks (maybe because their families lived among Arabs and know how
Arabs behave towards dhimmis when they have the upper hand). And
so like Barker, Kerry targets their pocketbooks, assuming that
they will be swayed to agree to whatever disasters the American
Administration is prepared to inflict on Israel to force a very
strange kind of "peace." Actually, these Jews who were forced to
flee the Arab countries in the 1940s and '50s, leaving behind
valuable personal property and much real estate, are entitled to
compensation. But without strings. And it should be a promise that
is meaningful, not one that Kerry knows will never be kept. Kerry
needs it to be tendered just long enough to "magically transform
Sephardi hawks into Ashkenazi doves," which he assumes will happen
just as soon as he pushes the money button. Methinks Kerry is as
poor a psychologist as he is a statesman.
WHEN AN ISRAELI AMBASSADOR DEBATED A BRITISH HISTORIAN ON ISRAEL'S LEGITIMACY—AND WON
by Yair Rosenberg
Yair Rosenberg recounts the 1961 debate between the historian
Arnold Toynbee and the Israeli Ambassador to Canada, Yaacov
Herzog. Toynbee was an early bird, one of the first to give voice
to assertions now in common use: the Jews have no right to a
state; the Jews treat Arabs badly; the Jews are today's Nazis.
Rather than argue that Toynbee didn't have his facts straight —
which he didn't — Herzog argued, successfully, that Toynbee
himself had written that all people commit atrocities. If all
nations act more or less as did the Nazis, no nation should be
singled out. Rosenberg makes the point that Herzog's argument had
the virtue of asserting that "Israel is a normal state with normal
problems." It isn't all black. It isn't all white. Toynbee also
asserted Judaism was a "fossil" — an anthropological analog of
supersessionism. It was contrary-to-fact, and Toynbee
conceded that "Israel can defossilize, just as you can defrost a
car." (A bizarre argument, no more possible than unboiling an
egg.) The debate would probably not be formulated in the same way
today but it would be nice if more Jews spoke up instead of
letting the pro-Palestinian propagandist have stage center.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
Those readers who receive our bimonthly
email to access feature articles directly
already know that the co-founder of
Think-Israel, Lewis Edward Lipkin, M.D., died
September 24, 2013. He would have been 88
November 2, 2013.
We — me,
his children and his grandchildren — have the
consolation that he had the pleasure of
playing with his first great grandchild and
knew another was on the way. He had a good
sense of humor (I know this because he always
laughed at my puns), an encyclopedic memory,
and was very insightful. He was both a
technician and a theoretician. He brought
together linguists, engineers, computer
scientists and biologists to tackle problems
in the brand-new field of computer-aided
diagnosis. He was a first-rate diagnostician
and biologist, a teacher that made his
students want to understand, not memorize, and
the guy you went to when you were stuck on a
technical problem. He was brought up secular,
but once he started studying, he evolved into
a frummie. He passed on his love of
history and photography to some of his
descendants and his love of reading to all of
them. He was very special.
Bernice Lipkin
Editor, Think-Israel
There was no
September-October 2013 issue of
Think-Israel.
What we are talking about in the
November–December 2013 Issue
In contrast to dramatic and overt terrorist attacks, stealth
jihadists in the USA works under the radar, quietly invading our
educational system, our law courts and our media in their effort
to supplant the U.S. Constitution with Sharia law. Salafists such
as the Muslim Brotherhood make use of obvious non-terrorist means
to destroy America. They persuade malleable politicians to declare
Islam a peaceful religion and that any contrary assertion is
criminal. They attack the legitimacy of Israel, a front-line state
thwarting Islamic ambitions. They accustom Americans to eating
halal food and accepting the notion that making life convenient
for Muslims is more important than practicing our way of life.
Despite their low numbers, Muslims exercise inordinate influence
because of their money and unswerving, non-negotiable dedication
to their cause. They influence gate-keepers and individual
politicians, including those in the White House. They terrorize
Western institutions into self-censorship. They weaken the US
army. This section focuses on some of their recent
activities.
HALAL: SECRETLY SHOVING SHARIA ISLAMIC LAW DOWN YOUR THROAT
by Audrey Russo
Halal meat is meat butchered and prepared according to Muslim law.
It is somewhat akin to rudimentary kosher, but with less attention
paid to the animal's state of health. In Britain, schools and
hospitals surreptitiously use halal meat to feed school children
and hospital patients. Supermarkets sell unlabeled halal meat. In
this article, Audry Russo makes us aware that unlabeled
Halal meat is now in US supermarkets and restaurants. This should
not be a matter of indifference, because buying Halal meat
includes paying a sum of money for charity that often goes
directly to terrorist groups.
Peter Farmer describes the pre-World War 2 purges by Joseph
Stalin, when "...members of the intelligentsia, senior government
bureaucrats (nomenklatura), professionals, land-owning farmers
(kulaks), members of the military and anyone else suspected of
being an enemy of the state were swept up in the wave of suspicion
and mutual distrust." As one consequence, "Stalin's purges left
the Soviet Union utterly ill-equipped to fight the Second World
War... More often than not, ... able commanders and leaders were
replaced by ideologically-reliable but militarily-incompetent
Communist Party hacks." Today in the USA, we are witnessing "the
coerced retirements, resignations, and firings of senior
flag/general officers presently occurring throughout the upper
reaches of the U.S. military." Moreover, "U.S. military personnel
[are] being indoctrinated to hold favorable but
historically-inaccurate views of Islam, they are being taught that
traditional American and Judeo-Christian values have no place in
the military... Military chaplains report that they are being
pressured - in some cases, against their religious vows - to
perform homosexual marriages; ...certain administration officials
want proselytizing by Christians outlawed within the ranks, but no
such prohibition has been put forth for Islamic initiatives of the
same kind." The US armed forces is not the place to encourage
"political expediency" and anti-American ideology.
American and British universities have become factories
churning out Jew haters, all done under the guise of social
justice, fair play and helping the underdog. Joseph Puder examines
a particularly virulent locale — Ireland, a country that
seemingly would have much in common with Israel, both having been
treated shabbily by England, both struggling to lift themselves up
with little capitalization or oil, gas or mineral wealth. But no,
the support the Irish once gave the new state of Israel in 1948
has been replaced by a virulent and surprising anger at Israel
(code for Jews).
ACADEMIC FREEDOM AGAINST ITSELF: BOYCOTTING ISRAELI UNIVERSITIES
by Stanley Fish
This essay by Stanley Fish makes the point that boycotting
academics and universities in countries viewed as oppressive is
not within the definition of academic freedom, which is "freedom
to engage in teaching and research free from the influences or
pressures of politics." The university is not a political forum.
Academic freedom doesn't give educators the right to promulgate
their political ideology in the classroom. This doesn't mean a
professor must ignore his strong political and humanitarian
beliefs and opinions. It does mean the academy is not the
appropriate place for displaying his concerns. In this essay,
Fish has the disciple to ignore the blatantly inaccurate
justifications for urging a boycott of Israeli academics.
He doesn't make the obvious point that it is only Israel that is
under the gun. He doesn't argue that the boycotters are
anti-Semitic (though I believe the instigators and all the
"activists" except the low-information malleable
student-disciples are Jew haters). He sticks to the point under
discussion: academic freedom is "the freedom to pursue scholarly
inquiry, not the freedom to advance justice and equality on
university time." It is a simple and narrow argument in the same
way that the First Amendment is a simple statement for expansive
freedom of speech.
Abdul Quader Mollah, assistant secretary-general of
Bangladesh's Jamaat-e-Islami party and known as the "Butcher of
Mirpu", was finally brought to trial in February 2013 and
sentenced to life imprisonment for shooting hundreds in the 1971
Bangladesh war of independence, including beheading a poet and
raping a girl. He and the Jamaat party cooperated with the
Bangladeshi army, which slaughtered civilians in the millions. In
Bangladesh they wanted him dead and after a large and sustained
protest, the Bangladesh Supreme Court convicted Mollah of war
crimes and sentenced him to death. In the USA, as Ryan Mauro
writes, The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is lobbying the
US Government to pressure Bangladesh to stop prosecuting the 1971
war crimes. They might succeed. Prez Obama trusts ICNA's advice
and often consults with them; and they are outreach partners of
the FBI and Homeland Security.
Discover The Network provides evidence that the Islamic Circle
of North American (ICNA) insists that everyone should live under
Sharia. ICNA's goal is to destroy America and turn it into a
Muslim state. It has ties with Hamas. It is one of the groups that
helps the Muslim Brotherhood teach Muslims "that their work in
America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the
Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable
house by their hands ... so that ... God's religion [Islam] is
made victorious over all other religions." Thanks to urging by
ICNA, inter alia, this administration ordered the FBI to
purge everything in their databases that Islamic supremacists
deemed offensive. As Dwight C. Holton, former U.S. Attorney for
the District of Oregon, wrote, "I want to be perfectly clear about
this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of
violence or or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they
are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this
president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands
for. They will not be tolerated." Against such touching concern
for Muslim sensitivity, we can only ask: if information about the
Tsarnaev family hadn't been purged from the FBI databases, would
the Boston Marathon massacre have happened?
WHAT IF ISLAMISTS TOOK CONTROL OF THE WHITE HOUSE?
by Howard Rotberg
Howard Rotberg doesn't speculate whether the President and his
closest advisers are dedicated Muslims or Muslim sympathizers.
Instead, he asks: if Radical Islamists were running the
government, what would a Salafist president do? He describes
likely operations such an Administration would initiate... Gulp!
SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PEACE PROCESS OF 2013-14
With the turbulence in the Middle East and all the slaughter
among Muslim groups, and Iran close to having the nuclear muscle
to bully the entire region, isn't it odd that the European Union
and the Obama Administration focus on the peace process between
Israel and the Arab states,the
Palestinian Arabs,
the Palestinian Authority,
Abbas, elected head of the PLO, Abbas, the
out-of-office president of the PLO? Does it seem the
Administration is thinking about currently important issues?
It reminds me of a cartoon — by Vargas, I think — eons ago:
two women are seated in a subway car. The car is empty except for
a naked woman seated opposite them. One of the women whispers to
the other, "Look at her chapped hands." Is the peace process
anything but a side show in the tumult of the region?
Isn't it curious that when uncivil war broke out across the
Middle East, mighty America was so fearful of Arab violence, it
shut down 22 of its embassies. Yet it forced Israel to release
Arabs who brutally massacred Jews, knowing they will again prey on
Jews. Do the clowns who were elected to run our country really
have their minds on the essentials? Does the Obama Administration
have Israel's back? It acts as if it had a knife aimed at Israel's
back. Or a nuclear bomb.
Another image comes to mind. It a photo taken in the late
1930s. England and France thought they had avoided war with
Germany by appeasing Hitler's demands. England and France forced
the Czechs to cede Sudetenland, the area of Czechoslovakia where
the majority of the inhabitants were German speakers, to Germany.
In doing so, they disregarded that Hitler had in earlier
negotiations demanded autonomy for Germans in Poland and Hungary
as well as in Sudetenland. The Munich Agreement was signed on September
30, 1938, with Hitler agreeing to make no further demands.
However, by March, 1939, Germany had incorporated Sudetenland and
Hitler's soldiers moved into what was left of Czechoslovakia.
England and France had to fight Germany anyway, a stronger and
more confident Germany.
Chamberlain holds up Munich Agreement, signed by both
Hitler and himself, in 1938. (Wikimedia Commons)
and
Another association comes to mind. While Rome burned, the
Emperor Nero sang as he played the lyre. Nowhere have I read that
Nero thought that were he to produce the right music, he could
solve the problems of the Roman Empire. In contrast, Prez Obama
is fixated on the notion that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the
linchpin of Middle East instability. And he thinks his tinkering
will solve everything.
Avi Bell's essay on "The Facts Of Life In The Middle East"
(http://www.israpundit.com/archives/56671) has the ring of truth
to it. He writes:
If Israel refuses to negotiate, that proves Israel is not interested in
peace, because it refuses to negotiate.
If the Palestinians refuse to negotiate, that proves Israel is not
interested in peace, because the Palestinians can see negotiations with
Israel are pointless.
If Israel makes preconditions to negotiations, that proves Israel is not
interested in peace, because it is trying to avoid negotiations.
If the Palestinians make preconditions to negotiations, that proves
Israel is not interested in peace, because the Palestinians have to
force Israel to be serious in the negotiations.
If Israel makes no offer of peace, that proves Israel is not interested in
peace.
If the Palestinians make no offer of peace, that proves Israel is not
interested in peace, because the Palestinians can see that making offers of
peace with Israel are pointless.
If Israel makes an offer of peace and the Palestinians reject it, that
proves Israel is not interested in peace, because Israel is not willing to
make the kind of offer the Palestinians would accept.
There are variations on this, e.g.,:
If Arabs make war, but offer to end it, that proves that Israel is
interested in war and Arabs are interested in peace, because the Arabs
offered peace. (Thomas Friedman/Arab "peace" initiative)
If Israel makes war, but offers to end it, that proves that Israel is
interested in war and Arabs are interested in peace, because Israel made
war. (Defensive Pillar, Lebanon II, etc.)
If Arabs attack, that proves Israel is interested in war and Arabs are
interested in peace, because Israel provoked the Arabs to attack.
If Israel attacks, that proves Israel is interested in war and Arabs
are interested in peace, because Israel attacked.
If Palestinians carry out acts of terrorism, that proves that Israel is
mistreating the Palestinians, because the Palestinians feel they have no
choice but to carry out acts of terrorism.
If Palestinians try to carry out acts of terrorism, but Israel foils
them, that proves that Israel is mistreating the Palestinians, because
Israel is carrying out anti-terror actions against the Palestinians
even while there is no terrorism.
If Palestinians don't try to carry out acts of terrorism, that proves
that Israel is mistreating the Palestinians, because the Palestinians
are good and innocent and Israel uses terrorism as an excuse to
mistreat Palestinians.
The peace process is to be carried out by two groups, one of
which has sworn to kill off the other. The Arabs have never
swerved from their desire to rid the Middle East of Israel. So
what's to negotiate? Whether the Arabs will be allowed to kill
50,000 Jews or only 5,000 Jews? Will the sides haggle on whether
the land the Arabs take over will be turned into training camps
for terrorists and factories for making explosive belts or just
manufactories?
Does anyone see it as peculiar that Sec-State Kerry, the American
"honest broker", praised the recalcitrant Arabs and was well —
how shall I put this? — extremely undiplomatic with the Israelis?
Even though the Israelis had been so cooperative they released
Arab terrorists just to persuade Abbas to come to the table. I
wonder what getting them to sit in the chairs will cost Israel?
This brings up another point: are the Arabs so sure of their
standing with the American Administration that they don't need
even to pretend to wish for peace? Instead, Abbas demanded the
return of his heroes, killers of Jews, and Kerry, the toothy
fairy, made his wish come true. To me. the ugliest consequence of
each plunge by Israel into peace-seeking is that she slowly has
become accustomed to sacrificing her children, her pride and her
sense of integrity, as Daniel Greenfield says in an essay below,
on the "alter of peace." Why can't Israel just say no to Obama?
Other countries on the planet, large and small, powerful or with
no real resources, have no trouble doing so. Being cooperative on
the Peace Process isn't going to make Obama stop Iran from
manufacturing nuclear weapons. If the Israelis have been caving on
concessions to the Palestinian Arabs in the hope that Obama will
finally handle Iran effectively, they should by now recognize that
it ain't going to happen. Obama will just keep stringing them
along.
All in all, the focus on the Peace Process of 2013-14 makes little sense. I
suspect it will make even less sense to future historians.
Unless Israel makes the mistake of leaving Samaria and Judea to
her enemies. Then it will be known as the beginning of the
demise of Israel.
Emanuel Winston wrote about an important point that Peace
Process proponents ignore: signing a permanent treaty with
infidels is against the Koran. Muslims are forbidden to keep to
a treaty's terms for more than ten years. In the Islamic
prototype of how to make and break an agreement, Mohammed "made
that treaty while he was militarily weak so he could worship at
Mecca. But, in two years he returned with a strong army, broke
the 10 year treaty, brutally murdered and decapitated all the
men, captured and enslaved the women and children of the Banu
Quraizah Tribe." The treaty of Hudaibiya is still in force.
Yassir Arafat told his Arab audience in Arabic he would break
the Oslo Accord when he was stronger. He said this the same
day he signed the Accord. Whenever a new regime takes over
an Arab country, it is expected that all prior treaties will be
broken. Egypt signed a cold peace with Israel after the 1973 Yom
Kippur War when its invasion of Israel failed. When the Muslim
Brotherhood finally took over after the Arab Spring, they voiced
their determination to abrogate the treaty with Israel, which
had netted them the whole of the Sinai. Even when treaties are
not dramatically broken, the Arabs don't stick to the terms.
They have gained many Israeli concessions over the years, but
they remain committed to their holy war for Islam. Abbas still
brags of his intent to destroy Israel, not making a real peace
with it.
Asaf Romirowsky and Nicole Brackman make the point that the
Middle East has changed considerably since 1973, after the
Egyptians lost the Yom Kippur War. The countries of the region
are embroiled in their own problems and life-and-death
conflicts. The splinter wars and the fallout from the Syrian
civil war affect many countries in the region. Egypt is busy
suppressing the takeover threat from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Egyptians and other groups engaged in fending off hostile groups
or trying to overthrow some current government don't have the
time even to pretend concern for their Palestinian cousins. As
one Hezbollah fighter said, "Let the Palestinians liberate their
country themselves." Actually, the IDF has been the major prop
for maintaining both the Palestinian Authority and the throne of
the Jordanian King, but it would be unreasonable to expect the
IDF to fight for the "Palestinian" cause. The reality is that
in the global media, the Palestinian liberation narrative is
still important but in the Middle East, it is a known scam,
having nothing to do with real life. The White House and its
enthusiastic Secretary-of-State Kerry seem to be the last to
know this. Maybe someone should tell them.
John Kerry has achieved something no other American
secretary-of-state has. As Jerold Auerbach writes, Kerry's
one-sided abominable behavior towards the Israelis and his
multiple fiascos have made the Jew-hating Jim Baker,
Secretary-of-State in the 1990s, look like a nice guy in
comparison. Kerry ranted against the Jewish settlements and told
the U.S. Senate to ignore what the Israelis were telling them. If he
knows anything about the San Remo conference that gave Palestine
Mandated land to the Jews, just as other Mandates created many of
the Arab states, it wasn't reflected in his treatment of the
Israeli delegation. His bellicose behavior set the right tone for
a peace process that is not a peace process. "Most ominously", as
Auerbach writes, "he now seems willing to sell Israel for a mess
of Iranian diplomatic pottage."
HARD CHOICES FOR ISRAEL; SOFT TREATMENT FOR THE PA
by David Gerstman
David Gerstman discusses how the media and Western politicians
distorted the motivation and behavior of the principle parties
involved in the Peace Process. They retroactively redefined what
Israel's borders should be. They blithely accepted that the
Palestinian state would be Jew-free. They painted an inaccurate
— in fact, contrary-to-fact — picture of Netanyahu as
hardliner and discounted Israeli concessions. But they accepted
Abbas' actual recalcitrance as indication that he was protecting
the Palestinian right of return. Why have another Arab state if
the Arab refugees will not be citizens of the new state! They
have ignored Israel's authentic claims and demonized the Jewish
settlers in the Territories, whose presence there made it harder
to give away the land to the Arabs. It was left to Israeli
journalists to point out that idolizing murderers of Jews is
not a sign of intent to forgo terrorism. In fact, the core
problem — that the Arabs do not accept the Jewish state and
are intent on destroying it — is softpedaled. In short, the
press and politicians, including Sec-of-State Kerry, act as
devoted fans of a particular ball team, cheering the Arabs on to
victory.
As we learn from the story of Abraham's willingness to
sacrifice his son,"G-d did not want human sacrifices. The peace
process does." In this essay, Daniel Greenfield discusses the
similarity between Israeli politicians who see the butchery of
Jews as Israel's sacrifice for peace and the pagan worshipers of
Moloch. Except, in the modern State, anyone might become a
sacrifice at random" "Everyone," meaning Jews specifically,
should accept "our measure of sacrifice and struggle," Prez
Obama told Israeli students. To help the process along, he
backed the Palestinian insistence that the jailed murderers of
Jews be freed. It's all in the cause of peace. The Jewish
leaders who collaborated with the Nazis also viewed sending Jews
to die because the sacrifice of some was necessary to save
others. As the Jews did then, Jewish politicians now do the work
for their enemies. As in the concentration camps, each round of
deaths weakens the community. Each peace process round makes the
next round of sacrifices "save" a more diminished State, a more
fractured country. Yet the politicians continue to delude
themselves, acting as if they were the ones making the
sacrifice. Their excuse: if we don't do something, they will.
The notion of holding firm, of refusing to be the sacrificial
lamb, seems never to occur to them.
HOW THE U.S. SOLVED THE PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI CONFLICT
by John R. Miller
To quote from this article: "With the help of prognosticator John
R. Miller — former U.S. ambassador-at-large on modern slavery,
visiting scholar at the Institute for Government Studies at
UC-Berkeley, and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute — we
present this memo from the year 2016, which explains what
misfortunes might have befallen the Middle East by then." I hope
this is irony, not precog history.
From Oslo on, Israeli governments have not responded to Arab
accusations that Israel is violating international law by building
settlements in Samaria and Judea. They fear introducing reality
into that long-playing fantasy: the Peace Process. More precisely,
they fear being the ones to put a spoke in the mum-mum policy
Western politicians cherish: making global peace by putting
another Arab state inside Israel.
Recently, the Israeli government was handed a well-phrased
current reiteration of some of what became international law at
the San Remo Conference almost a hundred years ago: The Jewish
people own Judea and Samaria (aka "the West Bank"). The Levy
Report has affirmed that the decades-long presence of Israel in
Judea and Samaria is not "belligerent occupation."
Israel's situation is unique (sui generis) and Israel has
the legal right to settle in Judea and Samaria. (See, for
example,
Restoring Israel's rights: the Levy Report.)
To emphasize that having and protecting Israeli communities in
Samaria and Judea was far preferable to cleansing the area of
Jews, Minister of Economics Naftali Bennett (A-7. 20nov13)
reminded his audience at the Conference of Presidents of Major
Jewish Organizations of the Israeli's government's expulsion of
Jews from Gaza in 2005 and the dreadful consequences. He said,
"Leaving Gaza cost 1,000 times more than staying." He might have
added that many of the 10,000 Jews forced out of Gaza are not yet
permanently resettled and most aren't contributing to the economy
as they once did. And this doesn't begin to describe the human
misery and the psychological and physical assaults on the families
that were made refugees in their own country. Yet the politicians
are again playing their shuffle-and-swap games that include moving
Jews out of Samaria and Judea or — an even more grotesque idea —
leaving them undefended in a newly created Arab state. This policy
could eventually make some 700,000 to 800,000 Jews homeless and an
impossible drain on the economy.
A campaign has started to teach the truth to the Knesset and to
the public (see
Regavim.) It comes at a
time, when the American administration is ignoring the crumbling
of the fragile political structures in the Middle East and is,
instead, using its power to eat away at land that legitimately
belongs to Israel. This misguided mission is more than
irrational when you consider it speaks quaintly of two people,
Israelis and Palestinians, who need to share the same land,
ignoring that new forces, more vicious and more recalcitrant
than Fatah or Hamas, are acting as directed by the Koran to use
any and all means to put the entire Middle East under Sharia
law.
FIGHTING BACK — THE LEGAL CASE FOR JUDEA AND SAMARIA
by Nadav Shragai
Dror Eydar has suggested that the "[t]he fight against our
possession of those parts of Israel that are the most important to
our identity as an ancient nation is a fight against the return to
Zion
(see
here). Reducing the number of legal Jewish settlements while
ignoring rogue Arab settlements will make an eventual Arab
take-over of the land easier. In this essay, Nadav Shragai writes
that, finally, some jurors are now counterattacking with the
easily substantiated truth: Israel has historical and legal rights
to the land. He quotes some of their arguments. Note that
Think-Israel, among other blogs, has presented many articles on
the Palestine Mandate and the San Remo Conference, which created
an irrevocable internationally-guaranteed trust for the Jewish
people's ownership of the Land of Israel.
Guy Bechor writes about America's ideas of what constitute
security requirements for Israel — so that Israel can keep its peace
partner from destroying it. These solutions were inadequate decades
ago. By now, with more powerful weaponry, a more radicalized Arab
population and the splintering of control of the Arab population
among competing terrorist groups — some of whom make Hamas
look moderate — America's security planning is ludicrous.
Some of the new players are war-hardened and experienced al-Qaeda
fighters, some are rising stars. All are imbued with strict
Koranic Salafist ideology and immune to compromise. These are the
groups that will take over Judea and Samaria a minute after the
IDF relinquishes control and restructure the behavior and
attitudes of the local population to conform to its Salafist
mentality. Christian Arabs will not survive and the new Arab peace
state, no matter what it promised, will become a secure place —
to launch killer missiles into Israel.
The politicians might be forgiven for ignoring Israel's historic
and legal claims to Samaria and Judea if these areas were a 'white
elephant' that was expensive and contributed little to Israel's
security or economy. But as Moshe Dann points out, the residents
are productive; they serve as early-warning alerts and first
responders when the Arab Salafists start another attack; and they
protect Israel's water supply. The settlers say what the
politicians are too timid to say: this is our land and we will
live on it.
THE DAY AFTER; BUILDING OUR HOUSE; NINTH GENERATION; OUT!;
GLOBAL WARMING AND THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION ... and more
by Rachel and Moshe Saperstein
In these essays, Rachel and Moshe Saperstein write more of their
transitional life that began when the Jewish community was forced out of Gaza in
2005 by its own government. They are finally seeing the start of a real house they are
building. Sad to say, the introduction to their last set of
essays is still applicable: "Rachel and Moshe Saperstein were among the 10,000 Gazan Jews that
became refugees in their own state when, in 2005, the Sharon
government expelled all the Jews living in Gaza in the bizarre belief
that this would cause their terrorist neighbors to make peace. Left to
their own devices and no longer monitored by the local Jews, the Arabs
of Gaza used the extra elbow room to train terrorists and manufacture
and/or assemble ever more sophisticated weaponry. It is bitter irony
that all Israel is suffering from missile attacks from Gaza and this
would never have happened if Israel hadn't kicked settler Jews like
the Sapersteins out of Gaza in the first place." What is more
incredible is that some politicians are eager to repeat the
expulsion on a grander scale, this time using the hundreds of
thousands of Jewish pioneers living in Judea and Samaria and in
the east part of Jerusalem.
LEIBLER ON SETTLEMENTS - RIGHT DIAGNOSIS, WRONG PRESCRIPTION
by Martin Sherman
Isi Leibler recently wrote (Jerusalem Post, December 21,
2013) that PM Netanyahu needed to create a policy about the
settlements that said clearly Israel would build in those areas
of Samaria and Judea that it will keep and it will not build in
those areas that it is expected to give away. But, as Martin
Sherman points out, agreeing that Israel will be giving
away any of its land gives legitimacy to the Palestinian
false claims. Moreover, consenting to giving up land only leads
to fruitless and pointless concessions to "coax the Palestinians
into a negotiated resolution of the conflict." These measures
stiffen "Palestinian intransigence and hence, prolong the
conflict, and promote pressures for even more Israeli
concessions." Most importantly, tacit consent to a give-away
policy is poor tactics that could lead to disastrous
consequences: the loss of security for over 80% of the Israeli
population, the creation of longer and less defensible borders,
and the putting of Israel's main airport at an unacceptable risk of
attack. As Sherman puts it, Israel has a simple choice: "between
the river and the sea there can only — and eventually will —
prevail either total Jewish sovereignty or total Muslim
sovereignty."
If we were to grade Israel: it does brilliantly in science and
technology and in innovative ways to help humanity confronted by a
natural disaster. It does less well in standing up for its
national identification and its Jewish roots. It flunks in
handling external political pressures and showing national
integrity and pride. It has been hypnotized by the word "peace" to
give up land and act as if it cared for the safety and comfort of
terrorist Arabs more than it does for its own citizens. It appears
traumatized by the fear of being "isolated" and unloved.
It is encouraging that Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken up clearly
of the dangers of a nuclear-empowered Iran. Speaking of the
interim agreement reached November 24, 2013,
(http://imra.org.il/story.php3?id=62454, November 25, 2013) he
said this:
"What was achieved last night in Geneva is
not an historic agreement; it is an historic mistake. Today the
world has become a much more dangerous place because the most
dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward
attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world.

For the first
time, the world's leading powers have agreed to uranium enrichment
in Iran while ignoring the UN Security Council decisions that they
themselves led. Sanctions that required many years to put in place
contain the best chance for a peaceful solution. These sanctions
have been given up in exchange for cosmetic Iranian concessions
that can be canceled in weeks.

This agreement and what it means
endanger many countries including, of course, Israel. Israel is
not bound by this agreement. The Iranian regime is committed to
the destruction of Israel and Israel has the right and the
obligation to defend itself, by itself, against any threat. As
Prime Minister of Israel, I would like to make it clear: Israel
will not allow Iran to develop a military nuclear capability."
It is unfortunate that Netanyahu continues peace talks with the PLO.
They make Israel look weak and foolish. They waste time
that would be better spent deciding how to deal with Iran
decisively. Often, he still acts as if what he fears most is "European
economic strangulation of Israel" [see Section 4, July-August 2013
issue of Think-Israel.org.] Unfortunately, Israel doesn't have the
luxury of wasting time on stupidity and yet surviving
Muslim-initiated political, military and social assaults, which
have become bolder and nastier as time goes on. This section is
about changing some of its institutionalized behavior and
rethinking some of its policies.
Western Europeans and American Jewry are dying out, the
Europeans because they don't breed near as much as their Muslim
immigrant population and the Jews because they marry out and too
many don't experience anything but a superficial and often boring
version of Judaism. Daniel Greenfield writes on the traumatic fact
that so many Jews are at best Jews in name only or who equate the
current trends in practicing social justice as authentic Judaism.
They have never experienced an unselfconscious living Judaism that
permeates and gives meaning to their lives. As one reader
commented, "Thank you for this excellent article. I grew up
believing and still believe that without faith in Divine
revelation and the convenant between G-d and Abraham, one could
not be a Jew. Far too many supposed Jews are nothing more than
Esaus who have cheated their progeny out of this priceless
birthright."
Ari Sofer writes that it is time the State of Israel shed the
habits of the galut, where surviving in a hostile
environment was the primary necessity. Certainly, Israel needs to
"decisively stamp out terror." But Israelis should start focusing
on the liberating goal of redeeming their homeland. The Israeli
population needs a change of mindset. As things are now, "those
living in front-line communities are made fully aware that if they
are ever stupid enough to defend themselves against Arab violence
they will face the wrath of the legal system." To be
given the means to fight back, they have to be heard by the
government, and that means speaking up strongly in the hundreds of
thousands. Israelis need to object strongly to the Israeli
government speaking of security when they should "clearly and
unashamedly insist on [Israel's] claims to this land." It is no
wonder that the Arabs who unequivocally state it is their land are
believed. A reader of the original posting, Austin, writes:
"...This is the very best, the clearest, the most direct, both in
the physical sense and the metaphorical sense, of any letter i
have previously read in my whole life. What he writes is the very
essence of what Israel should be,-but isn't..."
ORGANIZED TREACHERY VERSUS ORGANIZED HYPOCRISY: A 35-YEAR STUDY OF ISRAEL'S DYSFUNCTIONAL GOVERNMENT
An Interview With Paul Eidelberg By Wolff Bachner
Israel has no constitution but muddles along using a patchwork of
laws from various eras and countries, a sense of peoplehood
and ad hoc responses from crisis to crisis. In this
interview conducted by Wollf Bachner, Professor Paul Eidelberg
points out that "after witnessing the chaos and confusion that
emanates from Israel's current political establishment, [he]
authored detailed proposals for political reform and drafted the
first Constitution for the State of Israel." It was generally
well-received but was ignored by Israel's political elite, which
prefers Israel's current system of fragmented proportional
representation from among multiple parties. This allows the
winning party to choose its coalition parties at will (in the last
two elections there were 33 parties that gained some votes) rather
than having to stick to policy enunciated ahead of the election.
Ariel Sharon's "Likud Party won more than 70 percent of the votes
in February 2003, when it campaigned against the Labor Party's
policy of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza," yet in August 2005, it
itself expelled all the Jews from Gaza. Arab terrorists
took over the territory and launched more efficient terror
attacks against Israel. Eidelberg points out that it would
increase accountability were local
representatives elected by local voters in district elections
rather than by their place on their party's list. But making Israel
truly democratic and politicians accountable is not a local issue.
A constitution that ensures democracy is also one that ensures
Israel's security and survival. As such, it is important to the
West because, "Should Israel fall, there would be nothing to stop
the establishment of a new Islamic Caliphate from the
Mediterranean to Asia and the forces of tyranny would be poised to
overrun Europe."
Israel has been ambiguous about its nuclear capability, neither
bragging nor denying. Louis Beres asks whether "nuclear secrecy
[is] necessarily in the best survival interests of the Jewish
State?" This doesn't mean tell-all or say-nothing.
He points out that the value of the bomb is mainly in deterrence,
not revenge, and as such, "too much secrecy can sometimes be
counter-productive." What is needed is a thorough assessment in
Israel not only of how best to utilize its nuclear power but also
how it will make its enemies aware of its policy. In today's
environment, this means Iran must be clear that Israel doesn't
just have first-strike capability but can deliver an adequate
response that is invulnerable to an Iranian first-strike by its
enemies. Or, Iran may be deterred by plausible threats of "regime
targeting." Israel must also convince its enemies that it has the
resolve to carry out its military decisions. What is needed is a
reassessment of "the substantial security benefits to Israel of
'breaking' nuclear ambiguity."
Europe has been Israel's major trading partner. As time goes on,
however, the European Union has become sufficiently brazen to use
its economic power to try to force Israel to denounce some of its
own people and to declare that Jewish communities in Samaria and
Judea are illegal. (See for example, Section 4, July-August, 2013,
Think-Israel.) Such interference in a sovereign country's
activities is not only outrageous, it can be easily countered, as
the many suggestions in our previous issue indicate. However, PM
Netanyahu seems to consider European trade highly essential.
But, as John Reed writes, it is now looking for new trading
partners in emerging economies, those who are interested in
developing their economics rather than using blackmail to back up
their political views. Thanks to Pres Obama using the EU to
squeeze Israel — aside from his procrastinating on how to
stop Iran's nuclear ambitions — Israel is beginning to
question how much it can rely on the American administration.
The shallow Western intelligentia and their gung-ho students and
Sabeel-ized main churches focus on the unfairness of the Jews
being granted a tiny piece of the Middle East, part of the area that has
been the keystone of their history and their identity for four
thousand years. The same authority, the League of Nations,
converted the rest of the 99.99% of the Middle East that had
belonged to the Ottoman Empire into Arab states. In doing so they
did not take into account clan and tribal affinities or history,
as they had when allocating land to the Jews in the Palestine
Mandate. We've read many articles suggesting how to split up
Israel to make space for that non-people, the Palestinian Arabs.
Few articles, to date, have considered redrawing the boundaries of
the Arab states, created by other mandates at the same time the
Jews were given Mandated Palestine as an irrevocable trust. In
this essay, Gabriel Scheinmann suggests that the borders of the
Arab states be allowed to be redrawn by current events — even if
it means Balkanization of the area for a while. He does not examine what would
happen at the U.N., already thoroughly corrupted by the block of
22 Arab countries voting as one.
While the West laments for the professional refugees, the
Palestinians, "the funding and media support for the Palestinian
cause has dried up in the Middle East." Ali Salim notes that
"Arab and Muslim incitement to massacre — and the provision of
arms and ideological support for most of the Islamist and
Palestinian terrorist organizations — have almost completely
disappeared while the Arabs are now busy destroying themselves."
Millions of authentic refugees are homeless. Hundreds of
thousands are dead. We may be making our biggest mistake ever by
not stopping Iran's nuclear program while we still can. We could
at lest get out of Israel's way so that she could do the
necessary. Instead, the Obama Administration's only significant
contribution has not been to world peace but to global warming.
Sec-State Kerry flies back and forth to the Middle East to
rekindle the burnt out Peace Process, a pointless enterprise
that can have no significant effect on our current crises,
except, probably, to make things worse.
THE UNITED STATES IS LOSING THE MIDDLE EAST COALITION
by Mordechai Kedar
Mordechai Kedar writes that since the 1970s, the split between
the countries that support the West — Saudi Arabia, the Gulf
Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Israel and Turkey —
and those that support the Soviets — Syria, Libya, Iraq and
South Yemen — was stable. Now, "the pro-Western coalition has
begun to crumble, and two key countries — Saudi Arabia and Egypt
— are searching for a new political crutch." This is in part due
to their perception that the Obama White House, by wooing Iran
and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, is not concerned with
their security. Israelis are also beginning to question the
wisdom of pressuring Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria,
leaving the area open to a terrorist takeover. Moreover,
although Kedar doesn't allude to this, the USA, by leaking
information about Israel's plans, has continuously thwarted
Israel setting up an assault against Iran's nuclear weaponry
development. All in all, it is not clear that the United States
and the West any longer have a coalition in the Middle East.
QUIETLY, ISRAEL AND THE GULF STATES DRAW CLOSER TOGETHER
by Jonathan Spyer
This is a sister article to the previous article by Mordechai
Kedar that spoke of both Saudi Arabia's and Israel's
disenchantment with Prez Obama's ineptness — if not actual
refusal — in stopping the Iranian nuclear bomb program. In this
article Jonathan Spyer makes the point that Obama's diplomatic
activities, which effectively give the Iranians additional time
in which to complete their program, have brought the two
countries together in an unspoken alliance. To a Westerner, it
is strange to see arch-enemies cooperate. But it is not unusual
in the Middle East to be fighting with and against another group
at the same time. The Saudis have worked with the Muslim
Brotherhood on common educational and proselytizing projects;
the Saudis have tried to destroy the Muslim Brotherhood because
of political differences. Hamas, the child of the Sunni Muslim
Brotherhood, has been off and on friendly with Syria, which is
allied with Shi'ite Iran. As Spyer puts it, "On the face of it,
any alliance between Jewish Israel and Salafi Saudi Arabia might
appear an absurdity. Israel is a liberal democracy and a Jewish
state. Saudi Arabia is a repressive absolute monarchy, based on
a particular Salafi Muslim outlook which is deeply anti-Jewish
and anti-Christian in nature...Saudi Arabia supports Salafi
Islamist forces in both Syria and Egypt. Saudi money finds its
way to Salafi elements among the Palestinians. But the areas of
commonality are on issues of cardinal importance to both
countries."
Jim Kouri writes about some happpenings that took place in
Syria. The plot was simple enough: the heads of a gang were
killed by a rival gang. Some of the first gang took over a
Syrian oil field. What made this story so interesting is the set
of players and their fractured loyalties. The killers were
members of an al-Qaeda group that has taken over parts of Iraq
— you know, the country we made safe for democracy. They used
to call their territory the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) but now
they are expanding into Syria so they call their turf the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The two men who were
killed were commanders in the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a
multi-group organization that Prez Obama sees as good-guy
rebels, so he sends them supplies to help them fight the Syrian
regime. Some of the best soldiers fighting in the FSA are The
Al-Nusra in Syria. They are part of a very large gang that calls
itself Jabhat Al-Nusra. Al-Nusra is also al-Qaeda and very
pious, very Salafist. This December, the FSA and its Al-Nusra
contingent took over the Al-Omar oil field which is very large
and very productive. This was a big win. They didn't blow it up.
They started operating it "after entering into tacit agreements
with the Syrian regime [supplying oil and gas to the regime that
they are fighting against in return for a fee]." After all, they
need the money to fight the regime.
In this article Ben Dror Yemini examines the joining of Jihadists
and Marxists to accuse Israel of racism towards the Bedouins.
Steven Plaut described the context of this article this way: "The
axis of evil, the alliance of jihadi Islamofascism with
anti-Semitic Leftism, has a new cause and it is bashing Israel
over its supposed mistreatment of the Bedouins in the Negev.
Israel, you see, holds the racist opinion that Bedouins have to
obey the law and cannot simply seize any parcel of land they want
to own and keep it without paying for it. As you know, Israeli
leftists believe Arabs should be exempt from obeying the law
because they are gosh oh so oppressed. Enforcing any laws for
Arabs is racist and discriminatory. Israeli Arabs held violent
'protests' yesterday, demanding that the entire Negev be turned
over to the Bedouins, and they were joined by Jewish communists
and Israeli Leftists for a Second Holocaust." Lyn Julius has
commented that this is an "excellent article, pointing out the
exploitation of 'human rights' in order to demonise Israel. The
losers are the Bedouin themselves, who are denied an opportunity
to move into planned developments. They are being sacrificed to
propaganda." How true. In a broader perspective, it is another
locale where resurgent Islam is trying to destroy Israel, which is
a major block to its plans to dominate all other religions and
ideologies.
EDWIN BLACK'S NEW BOOK CONNECTS NIF TO FORD FOUNDATION ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIVISM
by Joshua Levitt
NGOs are a powerful force in manufacturing and choreographing
grass-roots riots and in releasing supposedly accurate assessments
of how poorly Israel handles human rights issues and how badly
it treats the Palestinians. As para-UN organizations, they receive
automatic respect and are assumed to be reliable. Joshua Levitt
writes about Edward Black's new book, Fanning The Flames,
which makes clear that many NGOs may talk human rights but their
mission is to weaken if not to destroy Israel. In this article, he
writes about Black's investigation of the New Israel Fund (NIF),
and its damaging attacks on Israel and the IDF. The NIF is largely
supported by foreign donations, particularly from the USA.
A CRITIQUE OF IRSHAD MANJI'S 'THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM TODAY'
by Paul Austin Murphy
Irshad Manji is Director of the Moral Courage Project at NYU
Wagner College. She describes herself as a "reformist Muslim",
but some of what she writes is a defense of Islam and a
prescription to reform the non-Muslim world. Paul Murphy
examines several statements from her book, The Trouble with
Islam today. He notes that because a Muslim invented the
guitar or cough syrup or algebra doesn't mean Islam per
se was a factor. Moreover, algebra was developed long before
Islam existed. As another example, her definition
of itjihad has nothing to do with its actual meaning and
even less to do with the Koran. In a related example, Murphy
point out that Manji makes much of the fact that the Quran
doesn't say whether Allah created Adam first, or Eve first.
Murphy points out that this isn't a 'proto-feminist' narrative.
Mohammad was illiterate and got most of his information about
the Jewish and Christian bibles second hand. What is
particularlly telling is a statement where Manji writes that
"Suppressing Islam for the sake of 'progress' resembles
tyranny." As Murphy writes, "That's precisely and the only the
kind of 'democracy' that very many Muslims want - from hard-core
Militants to Islamists and reactionaries."
David Bukay writes of the recent propaganda by the
Arabs that the Jews have no historic links to Jerusalem. He
emphasizes two facts: (1) [except for the two ancient Jewish
kingdoms and the State of Israel] "the Land of Israel has never
become a politically independent entity with a distinct identity
as a nation; and, ... [(2)] Jerusalem was never the capital city
of any empire or any independent regime or nation, and was not
even ever an important city to any of the empires that
controlled it besides the Jews." As context for this article,
Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote, "In his preposterous Christmas greeting,
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, claimed: 'Jesus
was a Palestinian messenger.' He also used the opportunity to
deny the right of the Jews and their State of Israel, to their
3,000 year-old capital city Jerusalem. Carried away by his
efforts to delegitimize the Jews and Israel, Abbas went on to
say, 'Our prayers are with the...mosques and churches
(added emphasis) ... of Jerusalem which remind the world of the
Arab identity of our occupied capital." Ehrenfeld added a
note to readers: "we wish you a very happy celebration of the
anniversary of the birth of the only Jewish settler whose right
to call Bethlehem, home, has been never protested throughout the
world (until now)."
US POLICY: PRETEND TO SUPPORT ISRAEL, WORK AGAINST HER
by FresnoZionism
The blogger known as FresnoZionism suggests that the American
administration "seems to see a nuclear-armed Iran as a fait
accompli, and has decided to make the best of it by aligning
itself with the Iranian regime rather than opposing it. ...the
decision has been made to appease." Hence all the diplo and media
activities — chiseling away at more of Israel's
land and planning to create chaos in Israel proper by flooding it with
Jewish refugees from Samaria and Judea — to weaken Israel
and give Iran time to manipulate its nuclear weapons. Keep this
context in mind next time the media try to embroil you in a
pity-session for the deprived Palestinians. I disagree with
FresnoZionism on one point. He believes Iran will not use its
nuclear capability to attack Israel directly but will blackmail
and terrorize it (and the other countries in the neighborhood). I
don't think that the Iranian mullahs who send at least 100,000
Iranian children out to die as they exploded hidden field mines
will worry about retaliation against Iran. They would reason that
millions of Iranians should be happy to die to see Israel
destroyed. The mullahs themselves of course will be protected in the
bunkers.
THE TSAR'S SCAPEGOATS: BEILIS, THE CHASSIDIM AND THE JEWS
by Eli Rubin
In 1913, Menachem Beilis was accused in Tsarist Russia of the
ritual murder of a Christian child. Eli Rubin recounts the
fascinating story of corruption where doctors, lawyers, academics,
government officials, priests and police were easily persuaded to
lie in court and to attest to the guilt of someone they knew was
innocent in order to demonize the Jewish people. Despite a "false
show of science and scholarship" and a stacked jury, Beilis was
eventually found not guilty, but the accusation that Jews committed
ritual murder was not condemned. As Rubin points out, "One hundred
years later, the blood libel continues to fuel anti-semitic
agitation in the former Russian empire, the Middle East and
beyond. Now as then, our only weapons against prejudice, lies and
hate are unity, truth and justice."
When Hitler came to power in 1938, he instituted non-violent
repressive measures against the German Jews. KristallNacht, the
night of the broken glass, refers to what is considered the
start of violent assaults by the Nazis. Synagogues were burned,
homes and businesses were destroyed and some 30,000 Jewish men
were sent to concentration camps. FDR issued a statement
condemning the violence, but "the U.S. refused to ease the
immigration restrictions it then had in place, constraints that
prevented masses of German Jews from seeking safety in America."
From Kristallnacht on, conditions worsened.
"During World War II, Hitler and the Nazis implemented their 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish problem,' and carried out the systematic murder of some 6 million European Jews (along with, by some estimates, 4 million to 6 million non-Jews) in what came to be known as the Holocaust."
Rafael Medoff recounts how FDR used the FBI and the IRS against
Jewish activists. In the wake of the recent revelations that the
IRS has targeted Jewish organizations such as Z Street (not to be
confused with J street, a team member in Obama's war against
Israel), we present a historic reminder that it takes more moral
strength than most politicians have to resist using the powers of
the Government for their own political goals. During World War 2,
the Bergson Group developed an active campaign "to press the
Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration for the rescue of Jews
from the Nazis." The FBI "eavesdropped on the Bergsonites'
telephone conversations, opened their mail, went through their
trash, and planted informants in the group to steal documents from
Bergson's office." They found nothing criminal. "At the same time,
the IRS launched a full-scale inquiry into the Bergson Group's
finances, seeking to revoke its tax-exempt status." Medoff writes
that "[i]n the end, the IRS investigators were unable to find
evidence of any wrongdoing. In fact, as the IRS team became
familiar with the group's work, they came to sympathize with it,
and 'when they finished, [they] made a contribution between
them—every one of them gave a few dollars.'" That wasn't
repeated during the Obama administration.
JONATHAN POLLARD: THE 'SPY' WHO IS STILL OUT IN THE COLD
by Cal Thomas
Some people become angry when others insist that Jonathan Pollard
has already spent an inordinate amount of time in jail for spying.
Their degree of anger is greater than their knowledge of salient
facts. Jonathan Pollard was not actually tried for his crime and
the government broke its plea agreement with him. He has been
kept in jail far longer than anyone who has committed a similar or
worse offense, mainly because of secret evidence that has not
been properly assessed. The information he stole was about the
military and nuclear capabilities of Israel's unfriendly Arab
neighbors and not about American facilities. Nor did his spying
lead to any American's death, as did spying by others. Pollard has
served ten years in prison for spying and eighteen more because of
political pressure. Cal Thomas reminds us once again it is time to
release Pollard from prison.
Victor Sharpe provides us with an excellent and concise history
of "the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians." Far from being
a unique people, they are no different from the Arabs in the
states that neighbor Israel. And, in fact, almost all of their
ancestors came into present-day Israel and the
Territories after 1900 from these countries, after the
Jews began returning to their homeland in large numbers.
"[T]here is no such thing as a Palestinian people; no such thing
as a Palestinian history; and no Palestinian language exists.
There has never been any independent, sovereign Palestinian
state in all of recorded history — let alone an Arab independent
state of Palestine." What is remarkable is that, without a shred
of evidence, they have convinced so many that they are the
original inhabitant of the land and that the Jews, who are the
indigenous natives, are occupying Palestinian land. Lest you
discount this history because the author is Jewish, Sharpe
provides statements by Arabs and other non-Jews that the
Palestinians are not a people and descriptions of how desolate
and underpopulated the land was before the Jews came to redeem
their homeland.
Matthew Hausman describes the dismal history of the Oslo
Accords. The Palestinian Authority hasn't renounced terrorism or
stopped antisemitic incitement. In fact, it voices its
determination to wipe Israel off the map. "The PA has consistently
failed to honor its obligations under Oslo, minimal though they
have been compared to the demands placed on Israel. In contrast,
Israel has honored her commitments, even when doing so has
threatened her security and national integrity." Hausman suggests
it is time for "Israel to reject outside pressure in favor of
alternatives that make better historical and strategic sense." One
alternative that can be rejected is the notion of a two-state
solution, which incorrectly "presumes that the conflict is about
geography and can be resolved by the creation of yet another
independent Arab-Muslim state." Hausman recommends following a
course consistent with authentic Jewish values and notes that "any
solution that sacrifices Israel's Jewish character is by
definition inconsistent with Jewish values." Jewish values have
often been twisted and mis-stated to pressure Israel to accept a
2-state solution where Israel loses land and the Arabs do not
reform either their behavior or their perception of Israel as the
enemy. He cautions that such "attempt[s] to force an unjust solution on Israel
based on a false narrative will provide neither truth nor genuine,
lasting peace." Israel must reject these fraudulent solutions.
"She must not lose sight of the historical justification for her
existence or the values that make her both a Jewish state and a
vital democracy."
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
We seriously fought
Salafist Islam from September 11, 2001 until a few days later when
Pres. George Bush asserted Islam is a Peaceful Religion. Under
Pres Obama, we've retrogressed even more. We are no longer not
fighting Islam, we are aiding and abetting its mission to take over
our country. Muslims with terrorist affinities are welcomed into the
White House and our security agencies. Even though Muslims are
responsible for most domestic terrorism, our security agencies are
forbidden to spy on mosques, where most terrorist plots are initiated
and developed. Muslims are allowed to pay elite universities to
whitewash Islam and spread anti-semitism. K12 text-books portray
Islam as peaceful. American courtrooms use Sharia law to try civil
cases among Muslims; this guarantees that the mother in a divorce
case will lose out. To write only incontrovertible facts about
Islam's brutality doesn't shelter the author from criticism and
harassment. Any criticism of Islam, factual or not, is
considered islamophobic. Islamophilics have spent millions to make
sure it as traumatizing as is being called a racist. And wot,
I ask you, can be worse than that? Answer: being too squeamish to
stop the Salafists from working to substitute Sharia law for the
Constitution.
Jim Fletcher reviews a new book by Michael Coffman and Kate
Mathieson called Radical Islam At the Door In the
House. It describes "how deeply radical Islam has penetrated not
only the White House, but educational institutions, interfaith
religious bodies, and with the introduction of Al-Jazeera, even
media." It points out how the Islamic goal of turning America into an
country ruled by Sharia has succeeded on many levels, from co-opting
interfaith partners to do their bidding to making it alright for a
cabdriver to refuse to take a seeing-eye dog in his cab because he
considers dogs unclean. In many ways it underscores what factual blogs
and books have warned for years: resurgent Islam is a well-funded,
well-integrated, well-organized, dedicated movement to make Islam
globally supreme. Perhaps this book will dissipate the benign haze
through which the mainstream media and our own government have taught
us to view Islamic infiltration.
Respect for Muslim sensitivities triumphs over American security
once again. Despite the long and unquestioned association of post
offices and posters of criminals wanted by the FBI, Muslim
terrorists require special handling. As Arnold Ahlert writes, "the
FBI announced it will be pulling ads featuring wanted terrorists off
Seattle-area buses. Muslims have complained the posters imply
'Muslims are the face of global terrorism.'" Taking down pictures of
Muslim terrorists will not banish the fact that they are the
face of global terrorism. "Sunni Muslims were responsible for 'about
70 percent' of the 12,533 terrorist murders committed in 2011." But
the media much prefers focusing on White Supremacist terror — which
accounted for 77 terrorist murders. As Ahlert points out, "Telling
the truth about global jihad is becoming a riskier and riskier
business." Speaking the truth about Muslim terrorists is no longer a
God-given right. It is unacceptable when done by ordinary citizens.
Radical Islamic ideology can not be criticized in polite society.
And this non-speak is increasingly being reinforced by Government
officials. What it doesn't stop is Islamic terrorism.
OBAMA'S SNOOPING EXCLUDES MOSQUES, MISSED BOSTON BOMBERS
by Investors Business Daily
The Council on American Islamic Relations is an unindicted
co-conspirator of the Holyland Foundation that supported Hamas. CAIR
itself is a creation of the Muslim Brother (MB), for whom it acts as
a front. It and other MB fronts are so well thought of by the Obama
Administration that they were able to pressure the Government to purge
its terrorist data bases so that Muslim and jihad are
no longer linkable (see
here and
here). They also persuaded the Obama Administration to
stop spying and carrying out sting operations at mosques. As this
article reports, since
October 2011, the Government has cut the FBI off from spying where
most terrorist transactions take place: Islamic mosques. The NSA now
controls an expensively guzzied up modern equivalent of J. Edgar
Hoover's blackmail files on everyone. Rightwingers such as Bill
O'Reilly and Dennis Prager don't like it but believe government
invasion can save us from a terror attacks. Yet consider this: the
majority of terror attacks are by Muslims. The radicalization of
most Muslims takes place in or is initiated by people at mosques.
And as this article tells us, mosques are where FBI agents are
forbidden to snoop. So what good is the huge collection of NSA
files, which can only tell you the complete history of everyone a
particular person interacted with at particular times in particular
places, what he bought, where he ate, what porno sites he visited,
his thoughts, how he spends his leisure time, who his children hang
out with, and so on and so on? Blackmail? Surely not.
Our government officials would never stoop so low, would
they?
HATE FILLED, RACIST MANUAL FOUND IN AMERICAN MOSQUES
by Dave Gaubatz
Dave Gaubatz writes of a manual that is available in many Western
mosques. It gives the lie to the notion that terror attacks in the
West are perpetrated by individuals unaffiliated to major terrorist
groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Rather, we should think of
these individuals as they think of themselves — as Soldiers of Allah,
acting "in full compliance with the Islamist movement in America." The
manual provides budding terrorists with information on what to do and
how to do it, should the FBI contact them or come after them.
Richard Shulman writes of the inconsistency in American universities,
where the school's administration allows hate-speech by anti-Zionist
students — primarily Muslims and Marxists — by calling it free
speech but allows anti-Zionists to harass Jewish students and
prevent them from speaking freely or holding meetings.
Anti-Zionism is a flimsy, easily-removed mask for demonizing Jews.
Unfortunately there is no effective organized opposition. The BDS and
other anti-Israel groups often set campus attitudes. "...most faculty
members are not activists, except for those in the social studies
departments, who are anti-Zionist. Anti-Zionist Jews speak out against
Israel, while most of the rest are cowed or uninterested." Jewish
Studies Programs are "scholarly and specialized;" they are not
equipped to debate against groups that have been trained for years in
disruptive tactics. Northeastern University (NU) is an egregious
example of how pervasive Jew hate can be on campus. Shulman writes of
some resistance that has developed to counter NU's campus
anti-Semitism. NU's administration has been notified by ZOA that
"schools receiving federal funding are required by the Civil Rights
Act to ensure that hostility toward students of a particular religion
must be remedied." But while Muslim activism has been full-blown at
least since 2002, effective rebuttal is still in its early stages,
politely pleading its case rather than making the colleges fear the
consequences of not acting properly.
READ MORE
THE TRAGEDY OF DETROIT: HOW IMMIGRATION AND MULTICULTURALISM DESTROYED IT
by Frosty Wooldridge
The great city of Detroit, the locus of America's auto industry,
has gone bankrupt. John Hayward
(see
here) blames it on Detroit's "ruling class of politicians and
union bosses [which] spent it into oblivion. Absurdly unsustainable
pension plans created a towering mountain of unsustainable
liability. The city treasury was looted for the benefit of officials
and their very special friends, leaving municipal services at a
Third World level. Taxes were raised, driving employers away. The
auto industry collapsed under the weight of Big Labor's demands." In
the current article Frosty Wooldridge adds an important reasons for
Detroit's demise: the legal and illegal immigrants who swarmed into
the city. They came for the generous freebies Detroit handed out but
they had no intention of assimilating. Among them were a large
number of illiterate immigrants from the Middle East, who took over
neighborhoods where they imposed sharia law, while milking the
welfare system. As Wooldridge writes, "Multiculturalism: what a
perfect method to kill our language, culture, country and way of
life." Some say that bankrupt Detroit is a early version of what
will happen to the debt-incurring Federal Government. There is of
course a major difference — Detroit couldn't print funny money,
which the Federal Government is happily doing.
Daniel Greenfield has pointed out
(see here) that Muslims are no longer an insignificant minority
in Europe. Unlike the natives that don't have sufficient new births to
sustain their numbers, Muslims have large number of babies and
practice their religion to the hilt. Greenfield notes that "[i]n the
UK more people attend mosques than the Church of England" and a
Egypt-style church burning have been reported from Sweden. Mohammed
was the most popular baby name last year, ahead of Jack and Harry. In
France, in this generation, more mosques have been built than Catholic
churches and in southern France there are already more mosques than
churches. Mohammed-Amine is the most popular double name, ahead of
Jean-Baptiste, Pierre-Louis, Leo-Paul and Mohammed-Ali...In Belgium,
50 percent of newborns are Muslim and empty Belgian churches are being
turned into mosques. The most popular baby name is Mohammed and of the
top 7 baby names, 6 were Muslim. A quarter of Amsterdam, Marseilles
and Rotterdam and a fifth of Stockholm is already Muslim. The most
popular baby name in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and The Hague is...
Mohammed."
Their domination in other fields has been equally spectacular. They
commit crimes out of proportion to their numbers, including rapes and
brutal murders. In 2013, Muslims committed all the rapes in
Norway. A thousand rapes were reported in Stockholm, Sweden, in the 7
first months of 2013 alone. Some 30% of the victims were girls under
15. 85% of the rapists were not native. In England, Muslims have
finally been convicted of running child prostitution rings. They soak
up welfare benefits. In Denmark, they are 5% of the population, and
receive 40% of the welfare benefits. In German, 80% of the Turkish
immigrants are on the dole. In Britain, half the working age Muslim
population isn't working; they also had the highest disability rates
of any group. They aren't grateful; they feel it is their due that
dhimmis support them. Muslims demand halal meat and they demand that
schools serve no pork. Many schools and hospitals
now serve only halal meat. They have reset school
curricula; the holocaust is no longer taught.
As their numbers grow, Muslims have increasingly demanded Europeans
conform to their life style and to Sharia law. Most European political
and intellectual leaders have responded by caving in to Muslim demands
and joining them in vocal anti-Semitism.
Simple common sense suggests they should be uniting with Jews and
Sikhs every one else who has been subjected to Muslim arrogance
to fight the Islamic takeover of Europe. Instead, invoking the
nobility of multiculturalism, they are passive as Islam takes control.
When Muslims becomes sufficiently strong, multiculturalism will go out
of style and uni-cultural Islam culture will dominate.
David Solway has observed that many conservative writers and thinkers
have started describing the world we live in as "a world turned upside
down" As a variant of Garrison Keillor's 'If you da-de-da, you might
be a de-da-de', our world might be described as upside down where
"anti-jihadist freedom fighters Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are
forbidden entry to the U.K. as disturbers of public order and social
peace while avowed terrorists are welcomed into the country and
allowed to live handsomely on the public dole." Englishmen, once proud
of their individualism and freedom, enforce "the borders of these
shariah-controlled zones, applying the rules laid down by the Islamic
inhabitants." It's a world where the al-Dura hoax is protected by
French courts and Philippe Karsenty is found guilty of presenting
evidence of the hoax. Descending to truly black humor, "Iran chairs
the UN Conference on Disarmament and Syria was recently a member of
the United Nations Human Rights Committee." But then the U.N. has been
an indecent joke for many years. Meantime, the Religion of Peace is
slowly killing off individual freedoms, civility and multicultural
tolerance for other religions. It's even having a go at
homousian-heteroousian warfare among its own Salafist sects.
DUTCH ISLAMIC SCHOOL'S LIES AND THREATS OFFER BROADER LESSONS
by Abigail R. Esman
Abigail Esman writes of the Ibn Ghaldoun Islamic school in
Holland, where lying, cheating and stealing appear to be the norm
for the administration, the students and their parents. Its
directors used "subsidies earmarked for books and local educational
school outings to take 200 students and their families ... to
Mecca." After-school study groups were used to indoctrinate the
children in radicalism and to reject assimilation. A group of its
students stole "copies of the national final exam ... and were
selling it over the Internet." Parents pressured teachers to pass
failing students instead of flunking them. Esman suggests that
self-inflicted illiteracy and refusal to assimilate have contributed
to the high unemployment rate among Muslims in Holland. The
take-home lesson from Ibn Ghaldoun is that "[t]he West must at last
demand that its Muslim children be part of our cultural and moral
fabric — starting in the classroom."
Soeren Kern points out that "[t]he rate of increase of Muslim
inmates in British prisons is eight times faster than that of the
overall prison population, and the numbers show a clear
overrepresentation of Muslim convicts." Aside from underscoring that
the Muslim population is not living up to the claim that they are
productive citizens, there is the very serious problem "that British
prisons are becoming hotbeds for Islamic radicalization." There is an
Islamic gang culture that controls the prison drug trade; there is
forced conversion of prisoners who fear for their lives; there are
al-Qaeda members who serve as role models for the younger inmates;
there is the terrorizing of non-Muslim prisoners who don't conform
because they eat pork or listen to Western music. As in the USA where
radical imams are prison chaplains, little is being done in Britain to
stop these practices.
Like Geert Wilders who was tried in Holland for the crime of producing a
documentary that used quotations from the Koran, Elisabeth
Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted in Austria for calling
Mohammad a pedophile. In this essay she discusses European laws
that "criminalize public incitement to 'hatred' against 'a group
defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national
or ethnic origin'". Slander used to mean speaking or writing a
malicious lie with intent to do someone harm. Now, European courts
are free to redefine slander as Islam has always defined it in
sharia law: slander is whatever is resented by a Muslim, whatever
he feels harms him. Whether it is true or false is irrelevant.
It can be a criminal offense in countries such as Austria, Sweden,
Germany and Britain that don't have Constitutional protection for
free speech. She makes the important observation that the Muslim
Brotherhood "has been working assiduously since the 1970s to place
members of its affiliated organizations in state, federal, and local
government here in the United States, and within important
transnational bodies and NGOs in the European Union." Under the guise
of tolerance,anti-racism and diversity, they are redefining what can
be written and spoken about Islamic practices and beliefs. In
America, jihad and Islam were removed from the lexicon
of FBI training manuals. In Europe, one can go to jail for
criticizing Islam. She suggests some ways of fighting this insidious
and dangerous trend.
CELEBRATING FRENCH DHIMMITUDE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES
by Bruce Bawer
Bruce Bawer writes of a municipality in France, Roubaix, where the
French administration actively contributes to the ascendancy of
"Ilamo-leftism." It helps a "Palestinian charity that collected for
Arab orphans; the money goes to children of suicide bombers. The
town mosque is run by Salafists; there is a Muslim enclave, which is
'no-go' to non-Muslims. In sum, Roubaix is "a model of rank,
shameless official dhimmitude. Roubaix has attained social harmony —
if you want to call it that — by selling out completely to the
proponents of sharia." What makes Roubaix a shining example of a
world turned upside down is that the New York Times recently
wrote about Roubaix and its disregard of French law and culture as
if it were "some kind of triumph of multicultural concord."
The Times reporter, Alissa Rubin, misinterpreted the many
signs of Muslim control as indications that Roubaix "has made a
point of embracing its Muslim population." Rubin praised Roubaix as
"a role model for other French towns and cities" on how to live in
harmony. Judging from how Roubaix succeeded, all it takes is to
succumb completely to Islam's demands.
Peaceful Islam. Let me count the ways:
Burning Christians in their churches in Egypt.
Shooting rockets at children walking to school in the morning in Israel.
Rebels eating the organs of someone they have
just slaughtered in Syria.
Gang raping women in England and Sweden.
Setting explosives that amputate the feet of a young dancer in Boston.
Killing hostages in Russia and in China.
Detonating a bus full of tourists in Bulgaria.
There's no end to their peace-loving activities.
They fill the globe.
Apologists for Muslim savagery suggest "its victims as somehow
deserving of the jihadist attacks... any Jews killed are payback for
the purported Israeli persecution of the so-called Palestinians." This
doesn't work when the victims are Buddhists, who are mostly pacifists.
Apologists can't claim Buddhists have mistreated Muslims. Moreover,
"Buddhism is the pet religion of the media, Leftists, Progressives and
Liberals, and even those who are right of center find it hard to
dislike Buddhism." Bill Warner speculates that the attacks on
Buddhists might have negative consequences, making it more difficult
to justify Islam's attacks on other religions. Some people might even
rethink their defense of Islam's aggression.
Simon Deng, a former Sudanese slave, spoke at the U.N.'s Durban III
Conference, which was held in NY in Sept. 2011. Although the
Conference was called The Perils Of Global Intolerance, it was
a continuation of the virulent anti-Israel lies and ugly
distortions heard at the previous Durban conferences. In a remarkable
action, Simon Deng spoke out against the real agenda of the
Conference. He said:
"The people who suffer most from the
UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis, but all those people who
the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel; we, the
victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious
minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the
biggest victims of UN Israel hatred."
EGYPT'S COPTIC CHRISTIANS FACE UNPRECEDENTED REPRISALS FROM
THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
by Daria Solovieva
Daria
Solovieva describes some of the more recent attacks in Egypt on the
Coptic Christians: looting, burning churches, harassing nuns, killing
people. The "reason" this time was Morsi's ouster from the Presidency
of Egypt. No one is suggesting the Copts were responsible for booting
Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood out of the government, but the
Morsi supporters needed some way to show their anger, didn't they?
The news about the internecine fights between different
colorations of
Jihad has concentrated on Egypt and Syria. But
the action is much more wide spread. Olivier
Guitta writes about what's happening
elsenwhere, including Europe, where Hezbollah
has encountered little resistance in
raising funds from sympathizers and by selling
drugs
The European Union (EU) has decided that henceforth its member
states are to boycott the three-quarters of a million Israeli Jews
living in Samaria, Judea and the eastern part of Jerusalem.
Yori Yanover wrote in The Jewish Press (July 16th,
2013,
here.) that Ha'aretz reported that "the European Union has
published a binding directive to all 28 member states forbidding any
funding, cooperation, awarding of scholarships, research funds or
prizes to anyone residing in the Jewish settlements in Judea and
Samaria and in East Jerusalem. In addition, the directive requires
that any future deal to be signed with Israel must include an item
that determines that the settlements are not part of sovereign Israel
and therefore are not part of the deal."
This is not a sudden change in policy. It is a blatant statement of EU
practices that have developed over time. These demands are consistent
with EU prejudices. As Guy Milliere (see here)
points out, "For more than four decades, several European countries,
and the European Union itself, have established close and compromising
relationships with various regimes in the Arab world. They have become
prisoners of what is called Europe's 'Arab Policy' — with full support
for the 'Palestinian cause' and 'anti-Israeli' activities and
movements, regardless of how thoroughly detrimental these might be to
their own survival — as so presented by Bat Ye'or in her prophetic
book, Eurabia, published in 2005."
The sanctions themselves may end up as more limited than feared. Or
the EU might cherrypick what "illegalities" to ignore and which to be
virtuous about. But it is important to realize the intent is to humiliate Israel. Every time
Israel signs an agreement with a EU country, it will be agreeing that
Jewish settlements are illegal, a statement that is contrary-to-fact,
as several papers in this Section discuss. The more general problem is
that EU has flat out rejected that Biblical Israel belongs to Israel.
The EU has capriciously decided that Israel has no title to land that
is Jewish legally, historical, Biblically and by right of conquest.
Many have noted the irony of how the EU ignores Arab terrorism while
slamming Israel for imaginary or minor faults. Peter Martino (see
here) writes: "The Muslim Brotherhood is embraced as a
friend and partner of Europe, but Jewish sportsmen, artists and
scientists are considered a dangerous threat to peace in the Middle
East. The EU's policies towards Israel and the Jews has become so
vicious, dishonest and unfair, that it is hard to avoid the conclusion
that the EU is an anti-Semitic organization. The sooner the 'political
wing' of this organization is dismantled, and the EU returns to its
origin as a free trade organization, the better."
Emmanuel Navon (see here) put
it this way: "For the European Union (EU), labeling Hezbollah as a
terrorist organization amounts to a tough philosophical question. But
labeling Israeli products from Judea and Samaria as non-Israeli
entails no such travails. While there is no question that Hezbollah is
a terrorist organization, defining Judea and Samaria as 'occupied
territory' is debatable at best."
Moran Azulay (see
here)
wrote that PM Netanyahu announced that
"Israel will not sign additional agreements with EU such as a
scientific cooperation agreement, due to the expected EU limitations
on the settlements." But this hasn't been followed up by specifics.
Nevertheless there is no reason to put up with this treatment, even if the
politicians aren't to be trusted.
Pleas and polite letters are useless. But there are effective ways to respond.
Caroline Glick (see
here) writes that the EU "hopes to coerce Israel into abandoning
its legitimate historic claims as the indigenous people of the Land of
Israel to the lands allocated to the Jewish people under international
law by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. It hopes to
coerce Israel into surrendering its right to defensible borders and
voluntarily transform itself into an indefensible strategic basket
case wholly dependent on the goodwill of outside powers for its
survival." She makes three major suggestions:
the Knesset pass a "law requiring all Israeli entities
that agree to operate under the EU's funding guidelines to register as
foreign agents and report all EU contributions." "Those
contributions," she added, "should be taxed at the highest corporate
tax rate."
As 'Area C' is the area of Judea and Samaria where Israel
exercises most civil and military authorities. Israel should suspend
all EU projects in Area C. Future EU projects should be subject to
intense scrutiny by the civil administration. Israel's default
position should be to reject, rather than approve such requests, given
their hostile intent."
"EU peacekeeping forces from Gaza to Lebanon to Syria have
repeatedly proven not only their cowardice, but their willingness to
act in ways that endanger Israel in order to protect themselves.
Israel should bar European forces from further participation in armed
forces in Israel. To this end, Israel should allow the mandate of the
European-dominated Temporary International Presence in Hebron to
expire when it next comes up for review."
David Lev
(See
here) expands on (2) and suggests boycotting some major European
Union projects that features Israel as a central partner and funder
— slated to provide some 600 million euros. "Among them is an 80
billion euro project to clean up the Mediterranean by 2020. Horizon
2020
'aims to de-pollute the Mediterranean by the year 2020 by tackling
the sources of pollution that account for around 80% of the overall
pollution of the Mediterranean Sea: municipal waste, urban waste
water and industrial pollution,' the EU said when the project was
announced in 2011. Israeli green technology is a centerpiece of the
project, with Israeli researchers providing numerous systems to
remove pollution from the shores of Greece, Turkey, Italy, France,
and northern African countries. At least some of the technologies
Israel is contributing to the project were developed by companies and
academic institutions located in Judea and Samaria and in areas of
Jerusalem liberated in the Six Day War. Considering the financial
crisis in many Mediterranean countries, Israel's funding for the
project may be a major issue for the continuity of the project.
According to the new EU rules, Israel will have to pledge not to
supply any of that technology to the project — removing a good chunk
of the technology contributions Israel was slated to make."
There has been a rash of suggestions on the internet on the proper
response to the EU dictum.
Political Acts:
The Legal Forum for the Land of
Israel urged the government immediately to utilize the Edmund Levy
report, which explains why Israel has a right under international law
to settle in the West Bank.
The Levy report should be backed up with a new program to build many
new settlements and expand existing ones. There is no need to wait for
annexation to start such a program. Fortifying the hilltops with
Israeli outposts and stopping illegal Arab building is also a good
security measure, particularly in these chaotic times.
The Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza
Strip said, "All European projects [for Palestinians] in Judea and
Samaria should be stopped until this unilateral decision is
rescinded."
Let it be known which NGOs are funded by EU. They are foreign
agents and their treason should be exposed.
Subsidize the Arabs in the Territories who will lose jobs because Europe
won't buy from Jewish settlements so they can move to Europe.
Gush Etzion Regional Council head David Perl called on Israel to annex
Area C. "Now is the time for the prime minister to stand up and apply
Israeli law on territory that is part of our homeland, and in so doing
fix an ongoing historical distortion," Perl said.
Annex the Territories, all of the land that is in irrevocable trust
for the Jewish people as stipulated by the League of Nations (LN). The
Trust was assigned to the United Nations when the LN became defunct.
Media Material:
A reader, Canadian Otter
(http://www.israpundit.com/archives/56509),
suggests, "carpet bomb the media with history lessons, such as the
violation of the Palestinian Mandate by the British, European support
for PLO terrorists, Western training of Muslim Brotherhood with the
specific aim of destroying Israel, widespread protection of Nazi
criminals (some of them in government jobs), and much, much more that
goes on right now. Place in front of their noses Israel's legal right
to the land (Howard Grief left a vast legacy of research in this
area). EU new generations don't know about any of this, they've been
so brainwashed in school and by the media. (Maybe this lack of
information goes for Israeli youth as well.)"
Start a long-term media campaign that EU is being arbitrary and
irrational, ignoring grotesque behavior by Muslims and interpreting
everything Israel does as an evil act. Israel will not demean itself
by going along with such immorality.
A reader of Guy Milliere's Real Clear Politics website wrote:
"Publicizing and explaining the exclusive sovereign claim of the
Jewish people to all of the Land of Israel and emphasizing that when
the League of Nations recognized this claim, which is still binding in
international law, the nations of the world did not bestow a right on
the Jewish people but merely recognized and gave secular legal force
to our pre-existing right."
Distribute videos such as
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kc6LE6FXcQ,
which in satiric fashion informs us of computer and medical
innovations that were created in Israel.
Others such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lYojSiBe2k on Israeli
water technology tell the story straight.
What individuals and companies can do on their own:
AFSI advocates a Buy Israel program concentrating on products like
AHAVA and SODA-STREAM that come from the Territories.
Increase the Buycott campaign in the USA and Canada to buy
Israeli products. Buy Israeli wine, cheese and other produce. Buy
Israeli cosmetics and clothes designed by Israelis. Buy
pharmaceuticals from Israeli companies such as Teva that
make generic drugs.
Companies can start shifting their emphasis and increase their
interactions with Asian countries such as India and China, reducing
the importance of trade with EU states.
Boycott Europe. Take holidays in Israel.
Don't take European vacations and write the Consulates and tell them
why you won't be coming to Europe this year.
Put Europe at the end of the line when selling innovative medical
techniques, medications, technology and
— when it's available —
natural gas. Let Europeans know it's because the EU refuses to admit Jewish
settlements are legal, as they are.
NOTE: See also the video "The Spring of Judea and Samaria,
produced by Ezra Ridgley"
here.
THE EUROPEAN UNION — HYPOCRISY, HOSTILITY AND BLATANT PREJUDICE
by Amb. Alan Baker
In this article, Alan Baker lays out in succinct fashion why the EU's
recent directive boycotting Jews living in Samaria and Judea is
legally and politically flawed. The EU has ignored the legal
documents encouraging these Jewish settlements by the international
community and has based its condemnation of the settlements on
inappropriate documents such as the Geneva Convention, which
are not applicable. Baker points out that "[t]he repeated use
by the EU of the term 'occupied Arab,' or 'Palestinian territories'
to refer to the area of Judea and Samaria has no basis in law or
fact." These conclusions were also part of a petition he drafted for
the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, which was sent to the EU. The
petition was signed by 1100 jurists, rabbis and diplomats around the
world urging the EU to shelve its "legally flawed and incorrect
assumptions regarding both the legality of Israel's settlements and
the status of the pre-1967 armistice lines as Israel's border."
(see
here). As Nachi Eyal, director of the Legal Forum for the Land of
Israel, has said: "The world needs to understand that there is a
deliberate deception is being perpetrated [by the EU] and that Judea
and Samaria belong to the Jewish people by their historic right as
well as by law."
This article is, in part, a companion article to Ambassador
Baker's more general refutation of the European Union's "case"
against the Jewish settlements. Melanie Phillips focuses on the San
Remo Treaty, which reaffirmed that the land was historically the
homeland of the Jewish people, and the Geneva Convention, which the
EU misapplied. Phillips calls this "an act of malevolence" "But,"
she adds, "the fault in large measure surely lies with Israel. For
although some may find this incomprehensible, Israel does not make
to the world the one case that matters — why Israelis are fully
entitled under international law to build their homes in these
territories; and exactly how Britain, the EU and the UN have grossly
misstated and misapplied that international law." After all, as a
reader, Mladen Andrijasevic, asks, "Is it really so difficult to
read the San Remo Treaty of 1920, Article 6 of the Palestine
Mandate, the UN Charter, Chapter XII, Article 80 and Article 49 of
the Geneva Convention and see that Israeli settlements beyond the
Green Line are legal under international law?" Phillips suggests
reasons why Israel has been remiss. Her assessment needs to be taken
seriously. And the situation corrected.
"OCCUPIED TERRITORIES": WHAT ABOUT CYPRUS, KASHMIR, TIBET?
by Douglas Murray
As Douglas Murray writes, "The European Union (EU) has again
decided that it should dictate Israeli border and security policy." In
this essay, he focuses on a particular aspect of this decree: the EU's
double standard in that the EU has not taken such a stand on other
disputed borders in the world. He writes in particular of Cyprus, a
member of the EU, where Turkey illegally annexed the northern area
over forty years ago. Even if one doesn't accept Israel's ownership of
the Territories, unlike Turkey, it clearly has security and political
justification for maintaining control. Yet, while the EU plans
economic and academic shunning of Israel, "the EU does not consider it
imperative that Turkey should disengage from the illegal occupation of
an EU member state." Curious.
NY FEDERATION HAS ITS OWN BOYCOTT OF JUDEA AND SAMARIA
by Ron Jager
There's a split in the American Jewish
community, in that while some 55% oppose a
Palestinian Arab state, other Jews, including
organizations such as the American Jewish
Congress, which should understand the
Palestinian Arabs have no intention of being a
peaceful neighbor, continue to promote the
Arab cause. Left-leaning Jews have been
inventive and creative in doing PR — against
Israel. They are major suppliers and
vindicators of the BSD (Ban, Sanction, Divest)
campaign against Israel. The European Union is
reprehensible in ignoring all evil in the
Middle East and picking on the one democratic
state in all of that vast area: Israel. But,
as Ron Jager asks: why do American Jewish
groups refuse to help Jewish citizens of
Israel who live in Samaria and Judea? As he
writes, "If New York Federation-funded
agencies can so blatantly boycott children who
have lost their parents and siblings to
terror, why should we be so surprised when the
Europeans adopt a similar policy of boycotting
Jews?" There is an addendum on an article by
Bill Narvey called "Is The Boston JCRCB Jewish
Leadership Really From Boston Or From Chelm?"
that wonders how interfaith Jews can join
forces with Muslim groups that hate Jews and
want to kill them.
It seems particularly stupid for the EU to antagonize Israel just
as Israel is about to develop its newly-discovered offshore deposits
of natural gas. Nevertheless, in split-brain fashion, while the EU is
crowing about its plans to humiliate Israel by forcing it to pretend
settlements are illegal, another group of EU officials, ignoring EU's
righteous convictions, is talking to Israel about linking "Israel's
natural gas fields to the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline." It is not
surprising, as Malcolm Lowe writes, that "the EU took vehement
exception to Special Rapporteur Richard Falk's most recent report, aka
baseless diatribe against Israel." European politicos are suddenly
denouncing boycotts. European officials are reassuring Israel the EU
guide lines don't mean what they say, and even if they sound nasty,
they are very limited in what they can achieve, and even if they are
legal, some European countries (more aware or less ideological) have
denounced them. Thanks to the Trade Unions, the Protestant Churches,
an anti-Israel press and Arab money, 40% of the Europeans believe
Israel "is conducting a war of extermination against the
Palestinians," but the working stiffs in the European governments see
it in their national interest to work with Israel. Who will win out:
the EU or the EU? Perhaps Israel needs to ask the real EU to stand up
and take responsibility for its actions. As an aside, I don't think
Malcolm Lowe need worry that with its new riches Israel will behave
like a primitive Gulf State. The behavior of Jews, even not very
religious Jews, is anchored in the Torah, and not on the mouthing of a
7th century primitive.
Compiled from articles by Smadar
Bat Adam and by AFSI
The treatment by Israel of the Negev Bedouins is a prime example
that no good deed shall go unpunished. Israeli has given them the
medical support to keep their newborns alive. Bedouin infant medical
problems are still high due to long-term cousins marriages but this
program has been so successful, it is estimated the Bedouin population
will double in 15 years. For at least a half century, Israel has been
coaxing the impoverished Bedouins — native to Saudi Arabia, Syria,
Iraq and Jordan — to live in permanent housing so that the young can
receive an education and join the modern world. This has been
partially successful. Mandatory education has reduced illiteracy from
95% to 25% in a generation, but higher education is still not a
priority goal in the community. The Bedouin have responded to freebies
without responsibility by illegally building on state and private land
in a sprawling destructive fashion, including taking over public land
set aside for parks. Some 40% continued to live in illegal villages,
not entitled to electricity, water or trash pick-up. The government
will now try the Begin-Prawer 5-year economic development plan for the
Negev Bedouins to clear up the issue of land ownership, improve the
condition of Bedouin women and ease the Bedouins into Israeli society.
It allocates most of its Negev budget to the Bedouins, rather than
helping Jews settle the Negev.
Currently, a major problem is that
many Bedouins have been radicalized and where once they saw themselves
as separate from the Palestinian Arabs, now they identify with them, so
their taking over the Negev means they will want to assign it to areas
controlled by the PLO. In July many of them rioted because they would
have to move off the land they held illegally in the Negev and
Galilee. Are they being treated unfairly? Yes. Jewish settlers have
their legal homes demolished with no compensation and there are no
plans to build new Jewish towns in the Negev, but billions of shekels
are earmarked for the Bedouins. They are given thousands of dunam of
free land but also resist giving up their illegal buildings. As one
reader said, "Israel is a topsy-turvy world, where incredibly Arabs
who seek to destroy the state have more rights than the
Jews...Amazing!"
Another reader, Stop the Insanity!!!!!!!!!, writes, "Only in Israel
are the enemy housed and legalized.The PA has a policy of no Jews in
their hoped for state.Why O Why does Israel not respond in kind - No
Arabs in the Jewish State.Jewish morality can be our worst enemy at
times like this.To rid Israel of this 5th column the Arab population
must be 'Encouraged' to join their brethren in the Arab countries. Any
foolish agreement Israel concludes with the 'non nation' the
palestinians must include their transfer to their own lands."
Bedouin Riot with PLO flags
(Beersheva, July 15, 2013. Flash 90)
MK Moshe Feiglin recently spelled out what the Israeli Government
is doing: "You gave up on the Temple Mount, you gave up on
construction in Jerusalem, you have abandoned the Jews in the eastern
section of the city, you have frozen construction in Judea and
Samaria, and now you've given away the Negev."
The current article discusses both what an Americans for a Safe
Israel (AFSI) group saw as they traveled through the Negev and the
implications of the Israeli Government caving to the Bedouin land-grab
of the Negev.
Israel has been invaded by a slew of Africans, posing as refugees
but actually looking for an easier life than in their native
countries. Most are not qualified to work. They have taken over a
part of Tel-Aviv, where, as Sarah Honig writes, "[n]umerous murders,
robberies and violent rapes are routinely reported in the city's
dark seamy underside. Doubtless, way more go unreported." The influx
into Israel has mostly been stopped, but, mainly due to the flak
from a Marxist press, little has done little to expel a clear and
obvious danger to Israeli citizens. As Honig writes, the irony is
that the same Left that that wants to kick Israeli citizens out of
Biblical Israel, "eagerly espouses whatever weakens Israel — be
it yielding territory to ever-implacable enemies, importing hostile
Arabs, opposing legislation to reduce the danger of being overrun by
would-be annihilators or even undermining efforts to deport illegal
(often Muslim) Africans."
Amir Rapaport (see
here) has written of the IDF's new priorities: "the attainment of
intelligence superiority, development of knockout fire delivery
capability, active defense systems, cyber warfare, and border
protection systems, while the ground forces are to be downgraded in
importance and priority." Typically, historians complain that Generals
seem always to be fighting the last war. But in this case,
paradoxically, some experts are concerned that Israel's embrace of
innovative new techniques, many of which are robotic, are not suitable
if the enemy continues to fight the last war. In this essay, Mark
Helprin reports that Israel is preparing for asymmetrical wars such as
those Hezbollah and Hamas fight, because its military leaders believe
that ground wars with regular armies encountering each other in
specific places are a thing of the past. Helprin points out that
"[t]he fallacy of this course is ...[that] the Arab confrontation
states have coalesced at unlikely times and in unlikely
circumstances." Reinforcing this viewpoint, Professor Avi Kober (see
here) has written of "the troop-density paradox," in which
"low-intensity challenges actually require more troops than
high-intensity ones." This would mean that whether the enemy is a
seasoned guerrilla force or a regular army fighting openly, men and
material are necessary. It seems the wrong time to give up tanks and
trained ground troops.
PLEASE NOT AGAIN: RELEASING TERRORISTS FOR 'PEACE'
by Prof. Louis René Beres
Much of the response to Israel's releasing barbaric murderers from
jail just to get some illegal and recalcitrant Arabs to come sit and
talk yet again, has rightfully been emotional: indignation and anger
and demoralization. Demoralized is a very textured word. People
become fearful, despondent, uncaring, distraught, terrified, logy,
inert, paralyzed, jumpy. A demoralized populace is the very opposite
of a citizenry invigorated and full of determination to act: ready for
battle, squashing problems as they arise, working around current
blocks. And, in this sense, the Netanyahu Gov't, which I respect for
helping Israel out of its solipsist socialist inertia into a
phenomenally creativity under capitalism, is demoralizing Israelis. In
this essay Louis Beres writes of another aspect of the prisoner
release. He points out that not only is releasing terrorists
"indecent, it is also unlawful." Moreover, in promoting this, the
U.S., in the person of Barack Obama, "will be in violation not only of
international law, but also the law of the United States. This is
because international law is already part of US law (the 'supreme law
of the land') by virtue of Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution, and
also by virtue of a number of landmark Supreme Court decisions." And
the worst of it is that Israel, aside from losing its self-respect,
will gain nothing but more wide-spread terrorism from this "good-will"
gesture.
Many have commented on the bitter fact that the Obama
Administration successfully pressured Israel to release terrorists who
murdered defenseless civilians but has itself refused to release
Jonathan Pollard, whose espionage jeopardized no lives yet has been
treated worse than spies such as Aldrich Ames, who was directly responsible
for the death of Americans. In this article, Jonathan Pollard doesn't
speak of the cruel and unusual punishment he has suffered. He argues,
instead, that Israel "has the dubious distinction of being the only
country in the world so befuddled by moral ambiguity that it is
willing to dishonor its dead, betray its bereaved, and disgrace its
citizens for the sake of political expediency." And the facts are with him.
In this essay, Rabbi Pruzansky compares Israel's
irrational entering "into negotiations with an enemy sworn to its
destruction, when any outcome of those negotiations will redound to
its detriment" to the battered wife who can no longer make rational
assessments. "Just like the battered-wife blames herself for the
violence, thinks she can improve the situation by making unilateral
changes, lacks self-esteem, and therefore endures the violence,
injury, emotional and verbal abuse and degradation that is her fate —
so too Israel. ... Only a country that lacks self-esteem willingly
surrenders its land to its enemies..." A reader, Phil, commented, "No
argument with any of your statements, but if Israel had leaders who
would answer the diplomats pressuring Israel by declaring firmly that
the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish Nation, and not one inch of
it is negotiable, I think the pressure would eventually fade, as its
futility became apparent. Peace negotiations? Sure. Land negotiations?
Never. Not one inch. In this regard, Israel's leaders are indeed to
blame, for suggesting that Israel will give up anything for even the
chance to talk about peace."
THE ENEMY AGENDA AND ISRAEL'S RULING INTELLIGENSIA
by Zvi November
Zvi November writes that Israel's leaders do not appear to have
the smarts "to explain her legitimate rights, the justice of her cause
and rebut the outright lies Arabs have succeeded in spreading
worldwide." When they should assert sovereignty over the Territories,
they waffle and use loser terms such as "disputed territories." They
ignore simple truths that would allow them to set the terms of the
discussion; e.g., assert that it is time for transfer the local Arabs
to Jordon, which sits on land originally set aside for the Jews and
has a Palestinian Arab majority.
FAUX PEACE TREATIES, THE TEMPLE MOUNT AND THE TERRITORIES
Some of the articles in this section
capture the irrational loathing the world has
been conditioned to feel towards the Jews who
live in Samaria and Judea, which is Biblical
Israel. (It's called the West Bank by those
that pretend that there is no connection
between the Jews and their ancient homeland.)
The Jews living in towns in Samaria and Judea
aren't demonized just by outsiders. They have
become the Jews of the Jews and the designated
victims of the police and judiciary, who don't
put a foot wrong when it comes to actual
criminals who are Arab.
They do this, despite
the fact there are now many articles available
that present factual evidence on how the
League of Nations divided the Middle Eastern
territory of the Ottoman Empire after it was
defeated in World War 1. The Balfour
Declaration, the San Remo treaties, and the
League of Nations Mandate for Palestine
reaffirmed that the ownership of Mandated
Palestine belongs ONLY to the Jews,
just as other Mandates written at the same
time created many of the present-day Arab
states. (Read an excellent summary
here. and google the many articles in
Think-Israel on Israel's legal ownership of
Samaria, Judea and Gaza. See also
the Section on the Levy Report in the
September 2012 issue
here and
the video "The Identify Of The Land"
here.) Despite the clear evidence,
sequential Israeli Governments have not
claimed the land to which they have clear and
unique title. It is unconscionable that Israel
does not assert its legal, historic, Biblical
and conquest rights, but passively allows the
false assertions that the "Palestinians" own
the land to persist. By their actions, Israeli leaders
are following in the footsteps of the
Europeans, particularly the Brits,
who took up themselves the trust to help the
Jews develop the means to reinstate their
homeland, and instead, did all in their power
to prevent the creation of a Jewish state.
Dror Eydar ( August 4, 2013,
here) calls for a positive and
persistent action. As he put it:
"Every diplomatic statement, press
conference and political speech needs to emphasize, first and
foremost, the historical, religious and moral rights of the Jews to
their land. Mr. President of the United States of America, do you
believe in the Bible? Do you believe in the promise of this land to
the Jewish people? Almost 2,000 years before Islam came to this world,
when the forefathers of MKs Zahalka and Tibi were worshipping idols in
the Hijaz desert, our own forefathers were walking here and beginning
to practice monotheism.
"One thousand six hundred years before
Islam, we had a kingdom and Temple in Jerusalem. Twice we were
destroyed and exiled, and twice we came back home. Four hundred years
before the advent of Islam, the Romans changed the name of Judea to
Palestine, after the coastal nation known as the Philistines, who had
disappeared hundreds of years previously. The Romans sought to erase
the connection between the Jews and their land. Now Arabs of the
region call themselves Palestinians and say, 'We were here before
you.' This lie must be exposed at every opportunity. Telling this
truth is also our chance at achieving true peace."
What is as appalling is that Jews are not allowed to pray
freely on their most sacred place, the Temple Mount. It is a morbid
example of black irony. Anywhere else in the world (except in
Judenfrei Arab countries, there would be an outcry, but here in the
country of the Jews, Jews aren't allowed to pray on the Temple Mount,
but Arabs may pray, play soccer and come and go freely. The Government
is paralyzed for fear the Arabs will riot, and the global media will
as usual condemn Israel.
Clearly it is necessary to take the guardianship of Jewish holy
places away from the Waqf and return it to the Jews. Israel might
as well do it right. The world will scream just as loud at half
measures or cosmetic changes. More generally, a proper solution, well
stated by Alexis Worlock, ("My Answer To Jews Who Oppose Deportation
Of The Enemies Of Israel" Facebook, July 12, 2013) is this:
"I'm offended by the sick double standard under which some Jews allow
atrocities and outrages to be perpetrated against fellow Jews; and are
willing to go so far as to say it's fine for Israel to uproot entire
Jewish communities, some after 3 generations, including destroying not
only homes and livelihoods but close, lifelong community
relationships; destroy farms and greenhouses and synagogues; disinter
remains from cemeteries...forcefully enter homes and carry out
screaming children...[In August, 2005 — bsl] And all this, in
response to these people having done NOTHING WRONG. On the
contrary--the Jews of Gaza, who had built with their own hands
beautiful, productive, close-knit communities, were evicted ONLY due
to the genocidal hatred, acted out in violence, of THEIR
NEIGHBORS--the ones who were allowed to remain in Gaza and are given
immense financial assistance from Israel and the rest of the world!
And once the Jews were forcibly removed from Gaza, it immediately
became a launching pad for kidnapping, constant rocket attacks on
civilians in Israel proper, and unspeakable acts of terror against any
Jews that came within reach, and when they could no longer find Jews,
against other Arab Gazans.
"So, when it comes to allowing outrages against fellow Jews...even
when it comes to forcibly uprooting innocent and productive Jewish
families...the voices of 'Jewish conscience' are oddly silent. But
when one suggest that, rather than the innocent Jewish victims of
genocidal hate, but the PERPETRATORS be uprooted — suddenly there are
all kinds of cries of conscience. Jewish laws of 'kindness and
compassion' are suddenly invoked. I'll quote you a Jewish law of
kindness and compassion, from the Talmud: 'He who is compassionate to
the cruel, winds up being cruel to the compassionate.' [...] The Nazis
of today are suddenly presented as the "victims"! Because--while they
are trying to massacre every last Jew from the face of the earth, for
no crime except the fact of being Jewish... My relatives who were
victims of the Holocaust would have loved, would have fallen on their
knees in gratitude, to have had the possibility of being merely
deported, instead of the unspeakable horrors that were actually done
to them."]
To claim Israel's own property as Israeli is apparently a fearful
act for the politicians, who don't seem to understand how it would
free them from the periodic wastes of time spent negotiating peace
with Arabs, who want to see the Jewish state destroyed; they don't
want to create a state of their own.
Without Israel's strong assertion that she will not consider a
give-away of Biblical Israel, John Kerry, the USA Secretary of State
has been free to perform his own version of the Kerry Dance, where he
plays the pipes while Abbas calls the tune. A serious question is
whether the Peace Process is just stupid or malicious? Are we being
danced around because the entire Obama administration has a limited
repertoire of ideas and methods or is this just the latest
resurrection of a decayed idea that haters of Israel have relied on to
destroy the Jewish State? It is possible that the Obama
administration is blackmailing Netanyahu — their Chicago-based
method of operation is to blackmail or bribe or demonize. Integrity
means nothing. Their objective is to further their aims.
It may be that Netanyahu believes Israel needs a political settlement
to survive. As Evelyn Gordon wisely said, "Once a prime minister
convinces himself that the country's very survival depends on an
Israeli-Palestinian agreement, the inexorable consequence is that
almost no concession is too high to pay for a deal, or even for the
faintest chance of one" (see
here).
It may be
that Netanyahu is acting absurdly stupid because his overriding
concern is defeating Iran before she drops — or threatens to
drop — a bomb, and the USA administration has threatened to
block him UNLESS he agrees to whatever nastiness the USA encouraged by
Abbas can dream up, he's likely wasting precious time. Given Obama's
previous history, he'll string the Israelis along and eventually
default on his promises. If he's out to help kill off Israel, he's not
going to do anything to help Israel bomb Iran, not matter what he
promises and no matter how many terrorists Israel releases.
See also this prescription for an Isaiah State rather than a Pariah
State. It is called "An Isaiah State Light To Nations" and features an
interview with HaRav David Bar-Hayim entitled "Terrorists for Peace (Talks)."
A HISTORY OF BETRAYAL OF THE JEWISH STATE BY THE BRITISH, FRENCH AND THE US
by Alex Rose
When the Allies won the first World War, the vast Middle East
portion of the Ottoman Empire was divided by a set of Mandates
into what would be a single Jewish state and many of the current
Arab states. The Mandate for the establishment of the Jewish State
was an irrevocable trust for the Jewish people. It was unique in
that it was considered a reattachment of the Jews to their
homeland. In this way, it differed from the Arab states, where
boundaries were drawn for geographic convenience rather than
historic connection. As Alex Rose writes, the British betrayed
their trust, and indeed, overtly helped the Arabs by allowing them
open immigration, supplying them with arms and adding 80% of the
Mandate land to the already enormous area gifted to the Arabs,
while they closed Palestine to the Jews who in the 1930's and
1940's were fleeing from the Nazis. Just as in Israel currently,
when the Arabs were displeased, they threatened mayhem and the
authorities would exclude Jews from their property. The attitude
and activities of the French and the US administrations over the
years have been more sympathetic to the Arab demands than to the
Jewish State, which, despite all, has succeeded in providing a
good life and freedom for its citizens, an amazing accomplishment
in a region suffering from the twin afflictions of rigidity and
chaos.
The new "peace" negotiations might be
useful, were they to raise the return of
Pollard as the price of releasing arab
monster. Raising the issue of the return of
Jewish property in the Arab countries or
suitable compensation would be useful. After
all the Arab invaders of the newly-created
State of Israel created two sets of refugees.
One, Jewish, was absorbed as fully empowered
citizens of Israel, the other, Arab, was
useful as the face of Arab "suffering" and
seemed to have hit the jackpot in that our tax
dollars have helped pay for their free food,
education, medical care and housing. They
didn't use their leisure time to create the
infrastructure of a state but moldered in
welfare status, with little incentive to work
for a living and act independently. Ronald
Lipsman reviews the sorry history of the Oslo
Accords and the damage the agreement has done
to Israel. He concludes that it is "time for
Israeli leaders— indeed, for the whole
nation — to recognize the futility of
Oslo, declare it a dead letter, and pursue a
completely different path. It is time for
Israelis to recognize reality, stop acting
like they lost all the wars that they have
won, and initiate a new strategy." The fault
for the Oslo failure and the initiative for
success lies not with Israel but with the
Arabs, who continue to dream of destroying
Israel.
To hear even many of the people who are friendly towards Israel,
the Jewish settlements in Samaria and Judea are a singular shiny
large-caret jewel radiating Israeli malevolence and needing no context
and no factual explanation to arouse international anger. 'Jewish
settlements are evil' is a mantra Jew-haters have
succeeded in having added to the world's unquestioned set of incorrect
beliefs. Ask people why these settlements are evil. It is so obvious
to them, they are surprised you ask. Nevertheless, factually,
by international law Jewish settlements in the Territories are to be
encouraged and helped to develop. (Google San Remo Treaties and UN
charter and view 'Gauthier On Jerusalem'
here. Google "Think-Israel.org" for additional articles.)
Yet they are automatically rejected as a sign of Jewish unwarranted
expansionism, but "Palestinian" Arab settlements that are indeed
illegal invasion, constructed by a phony people claiming a country
that never was, are acceptable. If the no-longer legal President of
the PA. Mahmoud Abbas, can bluff his way into acquiring most of
Samaria and Judea and Eastern Jerusalem, this would mean kicking out
three-quarters of a million Jews from their homes because Abbas is not
willing to have a single Jew on Arab turf. That is considered
reasonable but let the Jews talk of exporting the Arabs to a place of
their own in the vast lands bestowed on the Arab States, and the world
screams in horror. In this essay, Sarah Honig suggests a non-trivial
reason why this is so: it is the ancient refusal to accept a viable
Jewish state where Jews can live as Jews.
Sherri Mandell is the mother of Kobi Mandell, who skipped school
to take a hike with his friend. They were beaten to death by
Palestinian Arabs who then smeared their blood over the walls of the
cave where they were found. In this essay, she makes clear the
discrepancy between the fantasy that the Jews living in the
Territories are the reason that there is no peace in the Middle East
and the actuality, i.e., that their religious beliefs do not allow the
Arabs to come to terms with a Jewish State, no matter what its size.
Elad Benari tells the story of Boaz Albert, a wine
maker living in Samaria, who understands that Israel must reclaim its
land, not give it away. This is not the operational agenda of
successive Israeli administrations, who continue to act as if peace
will blossom if only they give away another piece of tiny Israel. He
has been harassed and even subjected to a taser attack by the
authorities, who would never subject an Arab terrorist to such arbitrary
treatment. In an Addendum, Boaz Albert explains why he
must defy the authorities.
Steven Plaut writes about the significance of the Temple Mount for
Jews and for Christians. When the Jews reclaimed the Temple Mount in
1967, they stupidly allowed the Arabs to retain control of it. The
Arab have taken advantage of the government's fear that Arabs will
riot. More and more, with the Government compliance, they block Jewish
access to the Temple Mount. Jews are frequently and capriciously
banned from the Mount and they are never allowed to pray there. Jews
who violate the odious restrictions on their rights to their Holiest
Site in their Holiest City of Jerusalem are subject to arrest.
Meantime, the Arabs destroy artifacts from previous Temple times to
eradicate the ancient and continuous connection of Jews and the Temple
Mount. As Plaut says, "the entire legal status quo for the
Temple Mount, under which Israel relinquishes control to the Muslim
religious authorities, serves as yet another reminder that Jewish
self-abasement and cowardice do not win Israel any tolerance or
goodwill. The time has come for Israel to make it clear that it will
no longer seek peace via gestures of debasement of Jewish dignity nor
by auto-suppression of the legitimate religious rights of Jews."
SPECIAL REPORT: VIOLATION OF JEWISH RIGHTS ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT
by Michael Fuah
This is a concise and precise report prepared by Michael Fuah on
the shoddy treatment of Jews who are not allowed by the Israeli
Government to access their most holy site. As unbelievable as it
sounds, it is a fact that "Jews are barred from entry for weeks on end
when demanded by Muslim clerics; that Jews are not permitted to pray,
in any manner or form, even in a murmur; that Jews are not permitted
to carry prayer books or any books of a religious nature; Jews are not
permitted to bow or prostrate themselves; Jews are not permitted
access throughout the day; Jews are not permitted to study text; Jews
are not permitted to linger," while Arabs have full access to the
Jewish Temple Mount. Arabs can pray there, have picnics and play
soccer without restriction.
Every American administration in recent years that ran into political
problems confirmed by low approval rates had an out. They promoted a
major distraction that looked like a legacy-sized mission: let's make
peace between the Arabs and the Jews. As Haim Shine (see
here) points out, "In practice, that meant Israel conceded
material benefits to the Arabs while losing self-respect and
self-confidence. And making itself more an easy target for the growing
Arab violence." Even if the brokers were honorable, even if Israel
were to make itself into a basket case for peace — which she has
seemed on occasion to be willing to do — and even if the Arabs,
including its current spokesman Mahmoud Abbas, the quasi head of the
Palestinian Authority, had not declared that the Arabs intend, sooner
or later, to eradicate Israel, Warren Manison in this article tells us
why the fantasy of two states, one Arab, one Jewish, living side by
side in peace (or one inside the other, or one on both sides of the
other) is an impossibility.
Chloe Valdary writes that America upholds its good name and foundation
principles. "[It] realizes that when it comes to its own
self-interests, negotiating for peace with those who seek, indeed,
live, to see their destruction, is a futile mission." Yet she
pressures her most reliable ally in the Middle East, Israel —
who also lives by high moral standards — to denigrate her
sovereignty by making suicidal concessions to those who work to
destroy her. As Valdary says, "It is not Israel's responsibility to
convince the leaders of Western civilization to uphold its own
standards of justice and truth, nor is it Israel's responsibility to
be made to endure a trial and error process of being the 'better,
naive' person, which as precedent has shown has only brought death and
destruction." "[T]he idea which Israel must aspire to, indeed the idea
upon which it was founded, is the national sovereignty of its own
people and their right to live in their ancient homeland." Amen to that.
This set of essays asks whether Islam, whose ideology advocates
aggressive means to dominate over all other religions, rejects any
criticism of Islam and treats women and minority groups as chattel or,
at best, as dhimmis, is potentially compatible with democratic
practices, which encourage inter-group tolerance and freedom for
individuals to make their own decisions.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, "[t]here is an unshakable belief
in many a Western heart that all humanity hungers after democracy."
These optimists see the budding of democracy in the Middle East in the
flimsiest of evidence. And yet, as Bernice Lipkin suggests, it may be
that "the question whether Islam and democracy are compatible has
already been answered. "Consider that the State of Israel has for over
sixty years been conducting an unplanned field experiment in social
relations. There is a large group of Arabs now living in Israel.
Unlike so many of the Arabs in the rest of the Middle East who are
illiterate, diseased and live in abject poverty, they receive higher
education and health care as do all other Israeli citizens. They are
given welfare for their large families ...They live in a country where
living among others with different life styles without rioting is the
norm. They walk without fear in public parks and gardens yet —
except for shop keepers — they object when Jews tread on their
turf, or what they claim as theirs, often resorting to violent attacks
and murder to make their attitude clear." How much more evidence is necessary?
HAS THE "PALESTINIAN CAUSE" BEEN DEMOTED IN THE HIGHER COUNSELS OF
THE ARAB WORLD?
by Paul Merkley
The leaders of the Arab world have never encouraged the practice of
democracy in their own land or in ours. They have emphasized
submission to Allah and striven to eliminate Israel, which they
perceive as a major block to their ambitions. In this essay, Paul
Merkley points out that the global animosity to Zionism has been in
large part the product of an expensive and long-term campaign the
wealthier Arab leaders have waged militarily and through various
educational and media conduits. It has no basis in history, but there
is wide-spread and unquestioned belief that the Palestinian Arabs are
an independent people, indigenous to Israel and the Territories; and
the Jews stole their land. Now the Arab leaders are themselves in
jeopardy and have a more important concern — their own survival
amidst the chaos of civil wars and the overt theological war between
the Sunnis and the Shi'ites. I find it of interest that, although
there is some talk about expanding participatory government, the major
response to the chaos has been to bind the populace even more strictly
to Islamic fundamentalism or to secular dictatorship, not to
democracy. The good news is that "the issue of Palestine has, at least
for the time being, lost its priority among the Arab governing
classes. Paradoxically, 'the 'Palestine cause' is growing in potency
... among opinion elites and progressive activists in our part of the
world." Why, with all the many critical and interactive problems in the
Middle East that are time-sensitive and have a direct impact on
America economically and politically, has the American administration
chosen to devote its energies to the "peace process", which has been
sitting on the sidelines for some time now?
THE MOSQUE: CENTER OF RELIGION, POLITICS AND DOMINANCE
Clare M. Lopez
The Sunni and the Shia branches of Islam have been arguing
theologically and often by open warfare since Mohammad's death about
which one should head Islam. Inevitably, one or the other attacks a
mosque important to the other side. As Clare Lopez points out, both
groups are committed to a rigid authoritarianism, and because there is
no possibility of coup and retaliation. This is not about winning an
abstract point of theology.
Each side is aware that whichever side
wins will, as Lopez puts it, "unleash holy genocide on every other
group not aligned with it...There is no such thing as a 'win-win'
concept in Islam." Even in Egypt, "[t]he foundational building blocks
of civil society—individual liberty, freedom of belief and speech,
genuine universal equality before the law, citizens' participation in
their own governance that goes beyond a mere ballot box exercise—are
simply not there and cannot develop there as long as so many in Egypt
remain in thrall to Islamic law (shariah), to which such concepts are
anathema." The mosque in the future will continue as it has since the
first mosque in Medina as a political center. Mosques serve as "the
central structure in an Islamic society: it is a gathering place,
place of worship, and a place for teaching Islamic doctrine
— but also a
base of operations, military operations, the command and control hub
for the commanders of the Islamic armies to plan their next offensives
in the incessant wars of conquest." So like obituaries, journalists could
compose articles now on mosques destroyed in the future, leaving space
to inject the name and history of the specific mosque. The article
will not go to waste.
CAN ISLAM BE REFORMED? A RESPONSE ESSAY TO DANIEL PIPES
by Nikolaas de Jong
Nikolaas de Jong points out "democracy and rule of law have hardly
taken root in the rest of the non-western countries," so it is
surprising that scholars such as Daniel Pipes assume incorrectly that
the current Middle East revolutions are similar to or will have the
same outcomes as those that took place in the West. There are
essential differences in Islamic and Western cultures that shouldn't
be papered over. de Jong quotes Professor David Bukay, who has
described Islam as a "tribal collective." As such, it "concentrates on
the distinction between Muslims and 'the others', which is
characteristic of all tribal peoples." "There are no human rights, no
human dignity outside the tribe, and the only goal its members know is
the expansion and prolongation of the tribe...In Islam, there are no
concept of universal ethics." Only fellow Muslims are treated with
respect. "Islam is a unique phenomenon in world history: it is a tribe
of civilizational proportions, and its viciousness is to be explained
by the tribal mentality that still utterly dominates its adherents."
Islamism is not an aberration in Islam; secularism was and is; "a
really secular and democratic strain of thought of course never
actually developed within Islamic intellectual circles." The prognosis
for Islam ever acquiring modern civilized mores is poor.
Ali Salim writes that things have soured since the heady days of
the Arab Spring and the Middle East is again lagging behind the rest
of the world "in social, economic and technological progress."
Naturally, it can't be their fault, so they are asking who is
responsible. The Saturday people, the Jews, are an obvious choice to
blame just as they have been from Mohammed's time on. The Sunday people,
Christians, are hated because they were the Crusaders, and "became the
hated European imperialists and the hated colonialists," who made the
Muslims feel inferior. The imams in the mosques complete the circle,
"claiming that Islam's real enemies are the Christians, manipulated by
the Jews who control them." They have also been successful in
convincing many Western Christians that if they solve the Palestinian
problem, "the entire Middle East will metamorphose into paradise and
blossom, and everyone will live in harmony forever." "The radical
leaders of political Islam ... do not trumpet their plan to take over
the world and rule it as Allah's chosen people; instead, they recruit
eager agents among the Christians to make life miserable for the
Jews." They also recruit Muslims at home and in the West, who,
"[d]ispatched by their imams, go on rampages of slaughter and
bloodshed in the name of Allah."
Salim warns that "the West's ... refusal to listen to and believe what
the political Islamist leadership openly says — and its refusal
to defend itself — will lead to catastrophe." "The Jews do not
fear to show their determination and willingness to fight a
life-and-death battle for their continued existence; it is that
determination which has made the Islamists avoid confronting them for
the present and target the Christians instead." He calls on America to
"give up its dreams of a democratic happy ending for the Middle East
and start looking reality in the face."
Daniel Greenfield points out that since
Mohammed's time, the Muslims haven't just
conquered other civilizations, they have
destroyed the histories and religions and ways
of life of these non-Muslims. But this hasn't
led to cohesion. Instead Muslim armies
"quickly turned on each other. Edward
Cline said of this essay, "It goes far in
defining the reason why the Middle East, or at
least the Muslim part of it, will always be in
bloody turmoil." Greenfield responded that
Lawrence Auster at View from the Right has an
interesting take on this essay: "Islam cannot
develop stable, reasonably humane societies
because Islam consists of crushing everything
but itself. From the beginning, the victory of
Islam has meant the suppression of the
culture, ethnicity, religion, and all other
traditions of the Islamized country. The whole
Islamic world thus consists of suppressed
cultures/peoples struggling to live within the
stranglehold of Islam. The only way this
will-to-life can express itself is through
eternal civil war against other
cultures/peoples. Whichever group emerges
victorious becomes the oppressor, using the
fist of Islam to keep down all other groups."
In an earlier article (see
here), Abdulateef Al-Muhlim wrote, "The
Arab world wasted hundreds of billions of
dollars and lost tens of thousands of innocent
lives fighting Israel, which they considered
is their sworn enemy, an enemy whose existence
they never recognized. The Arab world has many
enemies and Israel should have been at the
bottom of the list. The real enemies of the
Arab world are corruption, lack of good
education, lack of good health care, lack of
freedom, lack of respect for the human lives
and finally, the Arab world had many dictators
who used the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress
their own people." In this essay, Al-Mulhim
examines why the Arab Spring didn't lead to
the betterment of people's lives but to
increased hatred between groups in the Arab
world and to Arab governments killing their
own people.
THE SIMMERING RIVALRY BETWEEN QATAR
AND SAUDI ARABIA
by Daniel Wagner and
Giorgio Cafiero
Daniel Wagner and
Giorgio Cafiero write about Qatar and Saudi
Arabia, two countries in the Middle East that
have much in common: they are both vastly
wealthy; they both believe that Islam should
rule the world and everyone should follow
Sharia practices; they both give huge amounts
of money to promote their ideology. They
should be the best of friends, but they
aren't. The Saudis had a bitter separation
from the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), who had
previously often supplied the people skills to
implement many a Saudi propaganda project.
Qatar then began sponsoring MB, which angered
the Saudis. They both support the Syrian
'rebels', but associate with different
terrorist groups within the confederacy. In
several countries in the Middle East, they
spar for power and dominance, while working
for common goals.
Harold Rhode writes of the issues that divide
the Sunnis fighting against the Assad
government and why Russia and China have
chosen to help him. Rhode notes that the
various groups of "Arabic-speaking Sunnis may
loathe Syria's Assad, but they also hate and
kill each other. Qatar and Saudi Arabia [both
Wahhabi fundamentalists and both supporting
the "rebels"] passionately hate each other and
support different groups within the Islamic
opposition groups in Syria. The Qataris, along
with the now only nominally secular Turkish
Republic, support the Muslim Brotherhood. The
Saudis support Salafi fundamentalists." Though
they may disagree on the nature of the future
Caliphate, the vast majority of
non-fundamentalists still believe that Sunni
Islam must rule and all others must know their
place inferior to the Sunnis. Rhode suggests
that because there is more of them, "Sunni
fundamentalism, in the end, is much more
dangerous than Shi'ite fundamentalism, because
about 85% of the world's approximately 1.4
billion Muslims are Sunni."
Maybe we in the West should just get tickets for a different ballgame.
President Obama, with consistently poor
intuition and bad taste, has backed the Muslim
Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt's civil war, despite
the fact that when the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
candidate, Morsi, became president, his goal
was to enforce Sharia law by any means rather
than worrying that much of Egypt's population
lives on the edge of starvation. Morsi's
notion of statesmanship was to rid himself of all
who had opposed the MB. Fundamentally, the
Brotherhood is a terrorist organization,
pursuing its objectives through any and all
means. "In or out of power, the Brotherhood is
murderous, intolerant and ruthlessly bent on
absolute power." In this article, Daniel
Greenfield uses the activities and attitudes
of the MB to expand our understanding of what
Muslim terrorist outfits are all about.
THIS SECTION FOCUSES ON SYRIA AND EGYPT, THE CURRENT ATTENTION
GRABBERS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
ARE WE GOING INTO SYRIA?
We seem confronted with the strong possibility
that we're about to enter the deep and
turbulent waters of another war. We might be
going into Syria, after having been fed
reasons so clumsy as to make conspiracy
theorists of us all.
The object of our opprobrium is the Syrian government, which is in
the stocks, accused of using nerve gas on its own citizens. I'm not
sure if the gravamen is that it used nerve gas or that it used it on
its own people. From all reports, we don't actually plan to get rid of
the tons of poison gas, which can only be accessed by troops on the
ground. And we have no plans to send in ground forces.
The Government and its media have us boxed in an information
vacuum, where we get more reassurances than information, where we are
told that the Syrian Government's gassing a couple of hundred
civilians with neurotoxic gas is evil — and it is — but we are to
ignore that the other side, the Syrian Al-Qaeda rebels, held up a bus
and decapitated every one of the passengers, including a four week
old infant. Admittedly, endangering American soldiers to help
Al-Qaeda take over Syria makes me want to barf.
So why are we going into Syria? Because everyone else has tickets
for the show? Not good enough. To send them a message? I firmly
believe that if you want to send a message, use Western Union. Or a
social network. If we are going into Syria to save Prez Obama's
credibility, it's way too late for that. If we are going in to show
the Alewites the proper way to murder children, we've already done
that demo in Waco. All we have to do is send them some of the Waco
Texas videos.
Maybe we just want to even out the playing field. In the last few
weeks, the mostly Al-Qaeda splinter groups and other Salafists that
make up the rebel forces have splintered and are squabbling among
themselves, while still doing their thing — decapitation, mutilation
and gorging on human organs. So it behooves us to weaken Bashar
al-Assad's gang to level things out a bit. If Prez Obama could keep
from pulling yet another Snowden and keep his big mouth shut about
Israel's tactical plans, maybe Israel could use its pinpoint weapons
to take out some of the weaponry the international community
condemns.
If we actually want to stop Syria, should we not be in Iran,
destroying the much more dangerous nuclear devices Iran is working on?
Syria, without Iranian support, wouldn't last long. Otherwise, it does
appear we are going into Syria for reasons of honor and celebrity
spotlighting, with no effective plan except to kill some Syrians. No
exit plan. Not even a Plan A and a half. If other countries, Russia
for example, with their own game plans see this as an opportunity to
make us waste our young soldiers and expensive high-tech weaponry, it
might end up making the Vietnam debacle look like a wise, well-thought
out military excursion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
IS EGYPT ON A SEESAW, FLIPPING BETWEEN THE
MILITARY AND THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD?
The nasty Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is
fighting the nasty Egyptian military. Who are
the bad guys? Thanks to the NY Times we
know: it's — are you ready for this? — the
Jooz. The headline in the NYT reads Ny Times
Blames Israel And AIPAC For Prolonging Egypt's
Agony
(see
here).
So what did the Jooz do to create the
turbulence in Egypt? They lobbied the American
Congress. And it's also what they didn't do.
It seems that the Israeli "military had close
ties to General Sisi from his former post as
head of military intelligence, were supporting
the (military) takeover as well. Western
diplomats say that General Sisi and his circle
appeared to be in heavy communication with
Israeli colleagues, and the diplomats believed
the Israelis were also undercutting the
Western message by reassuring the Egyptians
not to worry about American threats to cut off
aid."
The Jooz, who haven't shown enough gumption to
just say NO to Obama wanting them to give
Biblical Israel to Abbas, an Arab who has no
official position and is "acting" as PM four
years after his term of office ended, control
the American Congress. Wow. Who knew! And when
it's Morsi vs the Military, according to the
NYT, Morsi and MB are the good guys.
I'll bet you thought the news media was corrupt
only when writing about Israel.
In this set we present different opinions
on the army takeover. It was probably the
right thing to do to get rid of Morsi who was
turning Egypt into a state completely
dominated by sharia law. BUT it is unlikely to
be a turning point to democracy.
Fundamentally, the military wants what the MB
wants, in perhaps an attenuated manner. But the
reality is a totally overwhelmed populace,
with an inadequate supply of grain and an
unemployment rate that's even worse than ours.
So the likelihood is that, sooner or later,
unless Egypt regains some stability, the
people will turn against this government. My
guess is that we may see seesaw cycles, the
surge toward believing in MB toggling with
believing in military-style efficiency, until
some complete crash.
This article is taken from Sarah Palin's Facebook comments on Syria
and was posted by Dr. Eowyn, who wrote, "Palin's essay is the best, most
intelligent, and most sensible I've seen on the alleged Syrian
chemical attack, which Obama — who has done nothing but lie, and
lie, and lie to the American people — claims to have been launched
by the Syrian government."
To put it bluntly, as Edward Luttwak does,
"At this point, a prolonged stalemate is the
only outcome that would not be damaging to
American interests." "Iranian money, weapons
and operatives and Hezbollah troops have
become key factors in the fighting," So an
al-Assad regime victory would increase Iranian
and Hezbollah prestige, "posing a direct
threat both to the Sunni Arab states and to
Israel." "But a rebel victory would also be
extremely dangerous for the United States and
for many of its allies in Europe and the
Middle East." Now would seem the time to
waffle and be indecisive. For a change, the
American administration seems up to the task.
Gary Gambill argues
against the notion that arming the 'good guy'
Syrian rebels to win will "bring about a
peaceful resolution of the conflict." More
likely, it will be, as in most civil wars, a
war to the death, until one side or the other
suffers defeat. Gambill lays out a utility
model of war and peace for how the various
players in the Syria war might react. But, he
notes Syria will need a neutral arbiter when
"all of the major players are willing to forgo
many of their wartime objectives in favor of a
compromise that salvages what is left of
Syria's state institutions and economic
infrastructure." Being neutral is certainly
not the way American Administration acts in
Israel, where it pushes on Israel to be the
one to make concessions.
Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood won
the election by a small margin and immediately
began changing the country to conform to a
harsh Salafist ideology, as it has been doing
in other countries it now controls. The
Egyptian army seemed to have stopped the
spread of Muslim Brotherhood takeovers of
military-style regimes just when it looked
unstoppable. But instead of accepting its loss
of control of Egypt, the Brotherhood fought
back, by inciting the people to rebel, which
would turn a power transfer into a chaotic
civil war. The Army acted immediately,
brutally and effectively. Jonathan Spyer
points out the fight is about which particular
Sunni group is in control. It is not over
basic ideology — they are both strong on
Sharia. Spyer doesn't believe it's even about
the style in which the country is run, secular
or overtly theocratic [I disagree with him -BSL]. As for the future,
practically speaking, to hold onto power, the
army needs Saudi Arabia to pay the bill for
imported grain. Otherwise, the country will
collapse and the people are likely to flip
back to vote in the MB.
This article examines the activities of
Ahmed Bedier, a spokesman for front
organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood and
his brother, Amir Bedier. It examines a video
interview Ahmed gave recently that is
representative of how news can be presented in
a subtly slanted fashion — in this case to
evoke sympathy for the victims of the Egyptian
army crackdown on "demonstrators". Prez Obama
likes the Muslim Brotherhood, so his media
friends like them, too. The CBS video was
hostile to the Egyptian Army and sympathetic
to the Bedier brothers, who were not
identified as members of the Muslim
Brotherhood. We caught Ahmed Bedier out in a
big lie, but it isn't known whether the
interview was ordered by CBS or whether Ahmed
just saw an opportunity and took it.
REVOLUTIONARY SALAFI ISLAMISTS IN EGYPT: AN ANALYSIS AND GUIDE
by Barry Rubin
In this essay that was written before the
Army takeover, Barry Rubin suggested that the
future of Islamist rule in Egypt depended on
"whether the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and
the more heterogeneous various Salafist
groups can cooperate.The Salafists pull the
Brotherhood to take stronger action more
immediately and may have faith in the larger
organization or consider it to have betrayed
the revolution. The Salafists operate with a
wide deal of autonomy, being able to take
extra-parliamentary action ranging from
terrorist armed struggle to violent attacks
on Christians and other opponents of the
regime. The fact that there are now four
competing Salafi parties shows the different
streams of ideology and strategy." Although
the Army currently holds sway, this article
shows the complexity of the interactions
among the many Salafist groups in the
country. And there is no guarantee that they
will not again seize power as they have done
before.
Nonie Darwish has pointed out that "[t]his
is the central problem in most Muslim
countries: the difficult choice between a
man-made, civilian, military, 'infidel'
government, and a totalitarian Islamic
theocracy." In this essay, Fuad Ajami argues
that Gen. El-Sissi "can't solve the age-old
troubles of Egypt that nourish political
Islam. He can't heal the crushing poverty or
herd into some modern utopia a country driven
by a Darwinism that leaves the vulnerable
without support." Alternatively, the Muslim
Brotherhood's brand of all-encompassing
Islamic practices is not trusted, although it
has made deep inroads, partially by
persuasion, partially by terrorist acts. Ajami
doesn't believe the downfall of Morsi was due
to "young, disaffected elements" but to the
support of an "economic titan." Whatever the
case, the country is now split in support
between the two modes of governing. Egypt has
a way to go before it can be pronounced as
stable, let alone as economically viable.
Admittedly, Arab Hasbara is
excellent. The world is convinced that Israel
acts like the Nazis to the local Arabs.
When all the evidence is raked up and sifted, all they
can complain about is that Arabs are stopped
at checkpoints. Jews are also stopped at
checkpoints, and their pocketbooks are
searched in movie theaters. But that is
ignored. The Jews have been ineffective
in making the case that the Land of Israel
belongs to them. We can agree that the need
for security is essential but it isn't
debate-winning. Instead of letting the false
claims of the Arabs go unchallenged, Dror
Eydar (See above and see
here.) writes that Israel should be
emphasizing its political and legal claims, as
well as its historic associations. A writer on
Dr Steven Carol's website has suggested using the
contrast between Israeli and Muslim
practices." These items are based largely on his
suggestions.
Send out videos which show Honor
killings, female genital mutilations, bombings
of civilians by Arabs, using children to
shield terrorists. These are not man-bites-dog
events. They are common and ordinary. These
videos must be directed and sent out. Make
them go viral. Hit them with video after
video of Muslim outrageous behavior. Over
and over and over again. Don't stop when
someone complains that it unfair to the Arabs
to make them look bad.
Instead of arguing about the legality
of San Remo, argue about life under the Ummah.
The world does not care about San Remo —
fancy legal arguments will not sway a
quasi-illiterate generation. Instead, using a
spread sheet, a co-ordinated group of emailers
can assemble email addresses and code them by
gender, age, religious affiliation, etc. They
can then tailor the emails to the groups in
question. Email videos of gays executed under
Islam to gay rights groups; email videos of
female genital mutilation to feminist groups
and college age women; email videos of
Christians being attacked to church groups.
Monitor the websites of the
pro-Palestinian or "center" blogs. Never get
personal or indulge in name-calling. Stick to
the point. Send the addresses of videos to
counter their material. For websites that
don't accept attachments, have page on the
group website for snapshots and videos. I've
seen videos of children forced into
fighting in the Syrian civil war and an
al-Qaeda warrior eating the heart of someone he
just killed. Sunnis are killed by Shi'ites,
Shi'ites are killed by Sunnis and Christians
are tortured to death by both. Let the world
know the truth. The mass media isn't getting
the message out.
A group that includes a couple of
retired IT people can handle it at the cost of
a dedicated server (which one of them probably
already has). Keep it legal; make sure people
can easily delete their names from the list.
Have sample emails available on the group
website as does CAMERA and let people modify
them and send them to their own email lists.
Sometimes Israel is rough. The other
side pounces on every perceived abuse. Carol's
writer believes Israel should curtail
Price-Tag attacks and some settler actions
because the Internet is having a field day
with them. House demolitions are becoming a
cause celebre. "Don't say 'good enough
to the Arabs'," he advises, "it is hurting
Israel more than the Arabs." I disagree with
this attitude. Israel should lay out the
entire sequence of events when there is
a so-called Price-Tag attack, including the
initiating injurious behavior of the Arabs.
The media don't complain when the Israeli
government demolishes a Jewish settler's home;
they only care when its the home of an illegal
Arab settler (Yes, Virginia, there are a huge
number of illegal Arab buildings! And studies
have shown that very few of them are
demolished by the government.) On home
demolition, I look forward to reading how the
government explains demolishing the homes of
Jewish settlers, building on land that was
given in trust to the Jews.
I would add that to be informative, they
should also write about the personal bonding
of ordinary people and their land. Several of
the essays below do just that.
Elliott, a reader of the original article,
said, "Great article! This really gets to the
heart of the PR issue. We have a great
product, we just need to sell it as well as we
do Intel chips and Israeli tech know-how..."
If we were to continue to describe what Jeremy
Gimpel says in marketing terms, it would be
that what is needed is not just being
pro-Israel but being a passionate Zionist and
making that clear to everyone. Israeli
politicians talk about security when they
should telling the world about their enthusiastic
commitment to redeem their ancient homeland.
Some promoters have even gone totally
ahistoric and promote bikinis, beaches and
surfing, as if those were Israel's reason for
being. It is the passion that Israelis have for their
Land that people need to hear. Then they will
understand why Israelis are, despite the
religion-based hatred of their neighbors and
the mindless propaganda to demonize Israel, a
people happy to be living in the Jewish state.
This is a very personal essay by an
Israeli. Using her own history, Corinne Berzon
provides us with a sketch of the complex world
of the Israelis and how they have survived
world-wide animosity and local bombings by
their unfriendly neighbors. As Berzon writes,
"The dichotomy between living in fear and
living to the fullest is a very Israeli
invention.This fatalism is our version of
joie de vivre." Applied to the peace
process, she writes, "These new peace
talks will fail, just like all the others
have. But we will keep smiling and living
because the alternative is despair, and as
Golda Meir once said: 'Pessimism is a luxury
that no Jew can afford.'"
David Hornik tackles the question why
Israelis — attacked by hostile neighbors in
periodic wars, attacked randomly by terrorists
and live missiles, and attacked constantly by
much of the world's media — are a happy folk.
They say so in polls. They live with gusto.
But it's not a hedonistic — live every day as
your last — sort of happiness. Hornik
suggests "the answer is likely to lie in the
general Israeli Jewish culture...It is a
truism that the Jewish religion and ethos are
highly affirmative of earthly life and invest
it with great significance." It is also the
case that even many of the secular Jews have a
Friday night family meal and they enjoy the
holidays which aren't just fun but "embody
meanings on a national level." As Hornik puts
it, "It's not that Israelis feel themselves to
be under the shadow of death; it's that
they're carried along by the richness of
life."
INTERNATIONAL NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS: "GLOBAL CONSCIENCE" OR POWERFUL POLITICAL ACTORS?
by Dr. Rephael Ben-Ari
Becoming an international non-government
organization (INGO) gives a group instant and
often unwarranted standing and respectability.
Their reports are taken seriously by the media
and tribunals, simply because they are a INGO.
Rephael Ben-Ari points out there is no
accreditation system and no regulations; nor
are they accountable to the public. Too many
INGO's "prioritize campaigning and advocacy
instead of relief and charity" and don't even
try to hide their extreme political biases.
Some use their position to whitewash and act
as a shield for terrorists, particularly
Muslim salafists, while lambasting, even
demonizing, democracies such as the USA and
Israel. Because they can act without scrutiny
they can make unsavory deals with local power
brokers and terrorists that further their own
mission but also prolong and/or expand local
problems. All in all, too many of them are
giving once noble terms such as
peace and humanitarianism and
civil rights and human rights
and ethics a bad name.
This is an account of what happened when, in
July, 1943, FDR was told of the Holocaust by
an eye witness, Jan Karski. Roosevelt already
knew of what was happening to the Jews in the
Warsaw ghettos and in the concentration camps,
but he was no more swayed to rescue them than
were the British Anthony Eden and Winston
Churchill. It is ironic that Karski was
recently posthumously honored at the White
House by President Obama, who refuses to react
effectively to Iran's openly-stated plans to
destroy the Jewish state.
A PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY TURNS HIMSELF INTO AN OBJECT OF STUDY
by Bernice Lipkin
Bernice Lipkin writes of a case where a
psychologist, Micah Leshem,
has made himself into an object worthy of
psychological study. He produced and published
a cartoon where Jewish are hacking the body of
a presumed Arab. Why the inversion?
Arabs hack and mutilate. Arabs decapitate
hostages. Arabs remove hands for trivial crimes.
Why create a cartoon attributing such brutal
practices to Jews? To make the situation still
more bizarre, Leshem is himself a Jew. And he
lives in Israel, which suffers from Arab
barbarism. Whatever motivated him?
As Israel's image in the world keeps
deteriorating, Dan Illouz suggests her
supporters need to start using innovative
methods to promote the nation's positive
image. "Israel's current strategies in public
diplomacy can be summarized into two different
schools of thought: the defensive school and
the positive school, ... which links it to the
state's many great achievements." Illouz
argues that "the rebranding that Israel needs
is not as the creator of instant text
messaging, but as a symbol of freedom in this
world, as the consequence of historical
justice being done." The Jews are in a
position to redeem their ancient homeland.
This bond is based on solid facts, not
fantasy. He advices that "we start talking
about the miracle of the restoration and the
great universal values which Israel
represents." A novel and sensible idea, indeed.
I believe we should also point out that while
the Mandate for Israel was seen as
restoration, other mandates by the same
international authorities created many of the
current Arab states by drawing borders on a
map, often without regard to tribal and clan
loyalties. The Arab states created included Saudi Arabia, Syria,
Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.
Simcha
Jacobovici discusses how Judea acquired
the improbable name Palestine. "The
area of Judea erupted in a massive Jewish
revolt against Rome in 66CE," and in the year
70 CE, the Romans succeeded in destroying
Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The revolt
was followed by other uprisings, until
finally, "in 135 CE, the Romans exiled the
majority of the Jewish people and renamed
Judea 'Palestina' after the Plishtim, the "Sea
People", who had come from the Aegean in the
13th Century BCE and
settled along the Mediterranean coast. By the
time Judea was called Palestine, the connection to the Plishtim was
non-existent. There were no Plishtim. They had
died out or been assimilated into the local
culture some six hundred years before. Both
the history and the misnaming of the region
has current relevancy because of the
publication of a recent book that has Jesus
living in Palestine, a misrepresentation
of the geographic and historic facts. As
Jacobovici writes, "the people living in Judea
at the time of Jesus — including Jesus and all
his disciples — would never have referred to
their country as 'Palestine'." Syria
Palestine officially became a Roman
province about a century after Jesus' death.
YEMEN, THE CRUCIBLE OF AL-QAIDA, WAS ONCE
A POWERFUL ARABIAN KINGDOM RUN BY JEWS
by Jacob Mikanowski
The Middle
East before Islam was full of "complicated
conflicts among Jews, Christians, and pagans."
There was even a Jewish kingdom called Himyar
in present day Yemen. Little was known about
it for centuries; and scholars argued whether
Himyar's monotheism was authentic Judaism.
Thanks to new text and archeological findings,
we now know that it begun at the end of the
3rd century CE with the conversion of some of
Himyar's rulers and lasted some 150 years,
ruled by a dynasty of Jewish kings. G.W.
Bowersock, a historian and a classicist, has
recently published The Throne of
Adulis, in which he "shows the ways in
which its[Himyar's] rulers attempted to
navigate a course through the great-power
conflicts of late antiquity and how their
efforts ultimately ended in catastrophe. Along
the way, he tells a story rife with intrigue,
treachery, and ambition, underpinned by
scholarly detective work of the most patient
and demanding kind." "As in the Cold War in
the 20th century, the rivalry between these
superpowers was ideological as well as
political, and it created allegiances and
enmities with far-flung states." As they say,
"the more things change ...."
Since the start of Islam, Muslims have
attacked shrines and religious sites of other
religions, for religious, political and
propaganda reasons. In a relatively short
time, they overcame the Persian Empire and
conquered Arabia and North Africa. By 717 CE,
their only political rival was Christian
Byzantium. Suleliman, the new Caliph of Islam,
ordered a major offensive, a holy war, against
Constantinople, the capitol city of Byzantium.
What was then an enormous force, 120,000
infantry and cavalry and a naval force of
80,000, was assembled. The ground troops
arrive at Constantinople, having terrorized
the natives on route, killing the men and
enslaving the woman and children. The walls of
the city were impenetrable so the major effort
was left to the navy. Ibrahim writes that "two
important factors saved the empire: Arab
inexperience at sea warfare and Greek
ingenuity [using Greek fire]." The troops were
also subjected to famine, freezing weather and
harassment from local tribes. New
reinforcements were sent out, including,
Christian Copts, who promptly deserted,
fleeing to Constantinople. Constantinople was
saved and did not fall to the Muslims until
1453, "giving an inchoate Europe the needed
time to mature, strengthen, and unify."
Efraim Karsh provides us with an unflattering
but accurate portrait of Thomas
Edward Lawrence, the man best known as
Lawrence of Arabia. Much of what is accepted
about the Great Arab Revolt against the
Ottoman Empire was, as Karsh puts it, an
"extraordinary feat of historical deception"
that Lawrence "single-handedly produced." (In
point of fact, it was a complete fiasco.)
Even a biographer such as Scott Anderson who
was willing to take Lawrence at his word,
acknowledged that "earlier than most,
Lawrence seemed to embrace the modern concept
that history was malleable, that truth was
what people were willing to believe." Karsh
assesses Lawrence as "an exceptionally gifted
charlatan with a keen eye to networking and
self-promotion, who successfully cast his
spell on far more senior and accomplished
contemporaries, such as Allenby and Winston
Churchill..."
HOW THE EU'S SETTLEMENT POLICY LEGITIMISES MASS DISPOSSESSION
by Lyn Julius
Lyn Julius writes of little known facts. For
example, "at least 13 villas and public
buildings around [Cairo's Tahrir] Square
(including the present Swiss, German,
Canadian, Russian, US, Korean, Bahraini and
Algerian embassies) were once the residences
of wealthy Jews - properties seized by the
Egyptian state." "The World Organization of
Jews from Arab Countries estimates that Jews
living in Arab countries owned some 100,000 sq
km of deeded property, equivalent to four
or five times the size of Israel itself." The
Jews were expelled in the 1940s and 1950s and
never received compensation. In the so-called
Arab East Jerusalem, "hundreds of thousands of
Arab squatters live [rent-free] on land still
owned by the Jewish National Fund" and private
Jewish owners. The larger issue is that the
European Union
and pro-Arab propagandists have made the
ethnic cleansing of Jews — and the stealing of
Jewish land and real estate — acceptable in
what they regard as Arab land, while ignoring
the genuine claims of Jews to land illegally
in the possession of Arabs in Israel and the
Territories and in the hands of the Arab
governments in Arab countries. Julius asks:
who disposed whom? And why is Israel expected
to make all the concessions?
HOW IAN FLEMING MASTERMINDED THE
INVASION OF SICILY
by Daniel
Mandel
In WW2, the Allies
fooled the Germans into believing their
invasion of Southern Europe,
scheduled to take place in 1943 in Sicily, was to take
place elsewhere. The story reads like one of
Ian Fleming's James Bond thrillers. It is in
fact a true story and Ian Fleming, the author
and an intelligence agent, was part of a group
that created the illusion of a courier on a
crashed plane who drowned, carrying
papers that spelled out details of a landing
in Greece and Sardinia. They created documentation
authenticating the invented life and used an
available corpse for the courier. Daniel
Mandel tells the tale.
60 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH: THE ISRAELI NAVY LAY THE FOUNDATIONS FOR A LONG TRADITION OF HUMANITARIAN AID
by David Saranga
Israel is among the first to offer
effective medical and humanitarian aid when a
country suffers a disaster such as an
earthquake or when a nuclear facility leaks.
It is an interesting fact that Israel began
the practice soon after it became a state.
David Saranga talks of the first such rescue
mission; it was done off-the-cuff and without
pre-planning or official policy. Greece had
been hit hard by a series of earthquakes. By
chance, the Israeli Navy, such as it was, was
returning home from a training session in the
Aegean Sea. The commander of the flotilla
requested and received permission to turn back
to Greece and do what they could to help.
Starting another tradition, they were the
first rescue group to arrive. They were able
to provide on-the-scene medical assistance
— performing surgery on fractures and delivering premature
babies — as well as transportation to the
mainland for the seriously
wounded. Saranga has a special interest in the
rescue operation: his late father, Eliyahu
Saranga, was a junior commander on the INS Misgav.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
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We dedicate this issue to the memory of Howard Grief (1930-2013)
The Legal Foundation of Jewish Sovereignty of the Land of Israel
Howard Grief's book, "Legal Foundations and Boundaries of Israel
under International Law" was one of the first and one of the most
complete explanations of Israel's indisputable sovereign rights under
international law to
Israel, Samaria, Judea and Gaza. In his memory, we present two
of Howard Grief's papers that appeared in Think-Israel.
The first is entitled "Legal Rights And Title Of Sovereignty Of The
Jewish People To The Land Of Israel And Palestine Under
International Law" from the July-August 2005 issue.
The original introduction read:
In this essay, Howard Grief brilliantly fulfills his objective "to set down in a brief, yet clear and precise manner the legal rights and title of sovereignty of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and Palestine under international law." This paper should be part of your armamentarium for the next time you are told that Resolution XXX of the U.N. guarantees the rights of the Palestinian Arabs to YYY.
The second article is entitled "The Rights Of The Jewish People Over
The Land Of Israel Under International Law" from the January-February
2012 issue. The introduction to the article read:
Howard Grief sets forth the firm legal foundation of Israel being the exclusive owner of the land designated as Jewish by the League of Nations. The Land of Israel — current Israel, Samaria and Judea (aka West Bank) and Gaza — was given to the Jewish people as a perpetual trust and handed in that condition to the successor to the League of the Nations, the United Nations. This is a clear presentation of the documents that preceded the document of ownership and some of the history of the time. Any whittling away of this trust is illegal, whether it is attempted by a foreign country, the Israeli government or the U.N. itself. The question that remains is why have successive Israeli governments not asserted their claim. For that matter, why woud a Jewish government allow control of the Temple Mount, its most holy site, by the Arabs?
This article was originally posted in Think-Israel in the
September-October 2009 issue. This was the original introduction:
William Mehlman begins his review of Howard Grief's recent
book, The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under
International Law: A Treatise on Jewish Sovereignty over the Land of
Israel this way:
"With The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under
International Law (Mazo Publishers, Jerusalem) Canadian-born Israeli
constitutional scholar and lawyer Howard Grief has given us a book
that shatters every myth, lie, misrepresentation and distortion
employed over the 61 years of Israel's existence to negate the
sovereign rights of the Jewish People to their national home." This
is exactly right. It should be required reading for every
self-styled maven, journalist, politician, ethicist and humanist
— including the Jewish leaders of Israel — who thinks he
knows Middle Eastern political history, when his information is,
more often than not, anectodal and received from dubious
sources.
ROOTS OF ISRAEL'S SOVEREIGNTY AND BOUNDARIES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: IN DEFENSE OF THE LEVY REPORT
Wallace Brand
Some years ago, Wallace Brand became interested in the
Arab-Israeli conflict and particularly in the facts used to
justify the contention that Israel has illegally occupied Judea,
Samaria and East Jerusalem. To his surprise, he found "that
instead of justifying the adjective occupied, close examination of
the facts and relevant law resulted in a more accurate designation
as liberated.
In the current essay, he examines the legal basis of
the Levy report, which concluded that Jewish settlements are legal.
In fact, the legality of Israel's presence in Judea, Samaria and East
Jerusalem was res judicata as of April 25, 1920, when [at the
San Remo Conference] World Jewry received a beneficial interest in
the political rights to Palestine that was intended to mature into a
legal interest." The policy for the Arab States that were also
established at around the same time by other Mandates was to deal
with the current Arab inhabitants but the beneficiary for Mandated
Palestine was World Jewry. The Mandate thus confirmed a living
connection between the Jews and their homeland, extending over some
3700 years. Modern Israel was legally projected to be molded in two
stages, where [1] "Palestine was legally recognized as the Jewish
National Home as a prelude to [2] a reconstituted Jewish State,"
which would come into being when the Jews were in the majority. Great
Britain was designated as the trustee. "This required Britain to give
priority to the beneficiary's interest over its own economic and
political interests," by developing the conditions for creating a
Jewish state. Brand also provides us with the sorry history of
Britain's actual performance: it did all in its power to prevent the
Jewish state from ever coming into being. Its most contemptible act
was to block Jews fleeing from Nazi-conquered Europe from coming into
Palestine. None the less, Mandated Palestine is Jewish by
international law. I find the current anti-Israel attitude of the
U.N. curiously similar to Britain's, in that it ignores that it is
trustee of an irrevocable trust with the Jewish people as
beneficiary. (See Shifftan's article
here.) For the legal ownership of Jerusalem, start with this
interview with Jacques Gauthier
here. (Google Think-Israel for additional articles.)
In recent months, Martin Sherman has taken up various aspects of a
recurrent theme: what possesses a presumable intelligent people who
have devised many common-sense solutions to economic, health, energy
and technology problems to suicidal action for a chimera called
"peace", where they give up land that bolsters their security for a
peace that is impossible in the current Middle East. Why
ever would they allow a terrorist group to control territory that
legally belongs to Israel, especially land neighboring
Israel's population centers?
Martin Sherman asked in a May 23, 2013 article, "Can the people trust
the government?"
He concluded that "almost four decades of successive Israeli
governments [have frittered] away the fruits — both physical assets
and international stature — of Israel's stunning military victory of
June 1967." It started with PM Begin evacuating all of Sinai, which is
now becoming "a jihadi emirate ... and is slowly evolving into a
security nightmare." In 1993, PM Rabin accepted the Oslo Accords,
whereby Israel allowed Yasir Arafat and his thugs to control much of
the Territories and Arafat returned the favor by raising the slaughter
of Israeli civilians to new heights. The next governments didn't
bother with the pretext of gaining peace. PM Barak unilaterally left
south Lebanon a vacuum that Hezbollah immediately filled, becoming so
powerful that the European Union is afraid to declare it a terrorist
organization; and in 2005, PM Sharon, in a totally goofy move, pulled
all the Jews out of Gaza, leaving it under Hamas control and the
terrorists even closer to Israeli population centers. Now, the current
Israeli Government is showing symptoms of planning further give-aways
of the Land of Israel, knowing full-well it will become yet another
terrorist stronghold. As Sherman wrote,
"Given the mounting dangers to national security that the
injudicious adoption of a policy based on political
appeasement-cum-territorial concessions has precipitated in the South
and North, it seems almost inconceivable that it is again being
contemplated in the East — where its inevitable failure would have far
graver ramifications than elsewhere. Could it be that a government
headed by a premier, and composed of a bevy of ministers, senior
officials and advisers, who built their political careers on warning
of the perils of relinquishing the highlands of Judea and Samaria and
control of the Jordan Valley, be the government that does precisely
that? The people of Israel are confronting a crisis of credibility.
Can they trust the people elected to lead them...?
In "The two-state psychosis: The Oslo Syndrome revisited,"
Sherman pointed out that "[f]orced to concede that virtually all the
assumptions upon which the land-for-peace approach, and its derivative
two-state paradigm, were founded, have been demonstrated to be totally
without foundation, two-staters refuse to acknowledge error." Instead
they developed new unproven, and contrary-to-fact slogans, such as
"constructive unilateralism," as if the Gaza fiasco wasn't sufficient
to making an IQ 80 understand that withdrawal from land was a bad
idea. Nature abhors a vacuous mind.
Sherman wrote that "constructive unilateralism" is better described as "'preemptive
surrender', where Israel acquiesces a priori to virtually all
Palestinian demands for statehood, in return for absolutely nothing,
but [would] shoulder the burden of financing much of their
implementation." It will dismantle Israeli settlements, saddling the
government with the necessity to relocate 50 times the number of Jews
it kicked out of Gaza in 2005. It has not yet provided many of the
only 10,000 Gaza Jews with permanent housing, nor are most of these
Jews productive and contributing to the economy as they were when they
were growing fabulous marketable vegetables and flowers. If in eight
years the Government hasn't yet been able to reinstate 10,000 Jews
into the economy, how are they going to handle 500,000?
Then came Alan Dershowitz's "Feckless Formula" of a tri-partite
dissolution of Biblical Israel. (See also: "Rebut or retract: A public
challenge to Dershowitz", May 9,2013,
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Rebut-or-retract-A-public-challenge-to-Dershowitz-312710)
In the scheme of things, Alan Dershowitz is seen as pro-Israeli.
Relative to such questionable Jews as Peter Beinert and Jews that
don't even pretend concern for Israel but are 110% pro-Palestinian, he
may well be. Sherman shows us why Dershowitz's arguments for a
two-state solution are "puerile, prejudicial and paradoxical."
A common theme of self-proclaimed "friends of the Jewish state" is
to show concern for the Jewish character of the State of Israel. They
worry Jewishness would be lost if Israel holds on to land
inhabited by Arabs. They don't worry that in giving up the land
incrementally, sooner or later, there will be no Jews left to embody
this Jewishness. None of them suggest that Israel should and
could keep the Land that belongs to her and give up the Arabs,
transferring them to someplace in the vast Arab land holdings, where
they would feel right at home because it is home. Like
time which runs only in one direction, they see only one course
of action: keeping the rapidly growing number of Arabs in Israel and
giving up the Territories. Yet, now and in the future, as Sherman
writes, "Israel ... does not have the capacity to end the Arab siege,
to force peace upon the Arabs. ... The Arab/Muslim hostility ... can
only be placated by the Jewish state ceasing to be Jewish."
I find it ironic that in the Palestinian Arab community, which
obviously doesn't have independence of life style or freedom, it is
the man-in-the-street that is applying the pressure to demolish Israel
and not make peace with it, whereas in Israel, the only democracy in
the Middle East, it is a small number of people — the
Administration, and some academics — who espouse an unpopular
give-away program that are running the show, even though they ran for
office against such a program and know it is against the wishes
of the majority.
In Deciphering delegitimization,
Sherman asks why Israel "is far more reviled today than during the
rigid 'rejectionism' of Yitzhak Shamir? This is not a question that
should be flippantly dismissed as irrelevant. For experience has shown
that continual concessions have proved disastrously counterproductive,
while escalating Palestinian intransigence has paid handsome
dividends." He points out that "if the legitimacy of a Palestinian
state is accepted, then any measures incompatible with its viability
are illegitimate... [while] any policy that is designed to secure
Israel's minimal security requirements, will preclude the
establishment of a viable Palestinian state." He concludes that
legitimizing an Arab state on Israeli land can have only one
consequence: delegitimizing Israel.
The current essay continues Sherman's exploration. He asks, if the
Government planned to empty Samaria and Judea of Jews, how would they
go about it? He creates a frightening, feasible way of
shrinking Israel, demoralizing the people and making Israel's enemies
even more confident of victory. Does the Netanyahu government plan
anything like this? Their current actions in destroying Jewish
villages and outposts in the Territories without due process are not
reassuring.
According to the Oslo Accords, some of Judea and Samaria (aka the
West Bank) was to be governed by the Palestinian Authority and some,
Area C, by Israel. There is, however, an ongoing surreptitious
effort by the Arabs to take possession of area C, where the Jews
live. They have been establishing illegal "Bedouin settlements,
while providing financial and legal support to the residents, who
are increasingly identifying with the idea of a Palestinian state."
The Israeli government, which ignored the Levy report that Jewish
settlements were legal by international law, had done nothing to
protect the Jewish residents and has turned a blind eye to the Arab
encroachment. This is a fascinating article by Gil Bringer detailing
his investigations into who is behind the Bedouin activity.
Unsurprisingly, it is the Palestinian Authority, which, from the
beginning has never given Israel the peace it promised, while taking
advantage of Israel's generously fulfilling its contractual
obligations. It is troubling that the Israeli government is not
troubled that it is de facto losing control of some of its
sovereign land, land that is both Biblical and historically Jewish,
land it will need for defense when the Arabs feel ready to attack
openly.
NO EXCUSES, PROGRESSIVE ANTI-ZIONISM IS ANTI-SEMITISM
by Matthew Hausman
Matthew Hausman makes an unusual connection, which, once it is
articulated makes good sense. He connects Judaism and Jewish
nationalism, or rather, he examines the link between Anti-Judaism and
the undermining of Jewish nationalist claims. Jew-haters (and this
includes many who are Jews by birth) have to deny "that Jews are
entitled to sovereignty in their homeland." They need to hack at the
awesome stature Jews have as an ancient people that never totally
lost contact with their homeland; over thousands of years, they
retained their religion and national identity. Jew haters are in a
sense forced to claim that Jews are illegal aliens in Israel, with no
affinity to the land. This in turn "requires the suppression of
Jewish history and acceptance of an incompatible national myth that
has no factual foundation." To counter the wealth of archeological,
textual and ethnographic evidence that Jews have lived in Israel
since ancient times, Jew-haters have resorted to smashing Jewish
artifacts, historical revisionism, blood libel and the ignorant
assertion that it's all just Zionist propaganda. "The audacity of
such claims is truly Orwellian." Hausman suggest that "[a]pologists
who stubbornly cling to the fiction that anti-Zionism is not a form
of bigotry need to examine the motivations of social and political
activists who reject Israel's legitimacy. Those who deny Jewish
history, promote a revisionist Palestinian narrative, or falsely
accuse Israel of crimes that actually occur in Arab-Muslim society
are not acting with purity of impulse."
Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never harm
you. Really? How about a picture, a faked picture, which becomes a
spiked club used to beat you? The picture of the frightened 12-year
old supposedly shot at by Israeli soldiers for three-quarters of an
hour before he was killed became the Palestinian Atlas holding
together every anti-Jew calumny and vilification every imaginative
Jew-hater could dream up. The boy's fright and his supposed death was
used to justify slitting the throat of a Jewish baby in her crib and
decapitating a Jewish journalist working on an assignment. It made it
believable that Jews habitually seek out Arab children to kill.
Ironically, swap Jews and Arab in the last sentence and
you do have an actual fact. After the initial shock, many people soon
found more holes in the story than bullet holes in the wall behind the
young Al-Dura, but for the most part, seasoned journalists acted as
naively as the proverbial country hick and swallowed the hoax whole.
After 13 years, it has finally dawned on Israel that the dead child
and his wounded father were a big part of the Palestinian
victimization story and maybe it would be a good idea to get the truth
out. It has done so in a Report that will certainly confirm the
suspicions of those who early on wondered how come the bullet holes
were circular as they would be if they came from a spot straight in
front of the wall, not from the IDF position, or why there was no blood
on the ground when the child was supposedly shot in the stomach, at
least not until the next day, or why the camera man couldn't take
better pictures when he was standing a few feet from the al-Duras? My
suspicions didn't need the physical data on bullet track angle. I just
knew that if it were my child, I'd be shielding him with my body and
he'd be too busy complaining that I was suffocating him to be
frightened.
The AlDurah Project is a storehouse of information. It has the raw
footage on which the fairytale is based. See it for yourself. Watch
the supposedly dead boy's arm come up as he peeks at the camera.
Click here.
This next is an excellent video laying out some of the evidence
that determined that the al-dura story was a fake.
THE AL-DURA AFFAIR AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR MORALITY AND ETHICS IN FRANCE
by Ambassador Freddy Eytan
Freddy Eytan writes about the recent Israeli
governmental inquiry into the al-Dura affair, an investigation made
some 13 years after the incident happened. Eytan writes, "The report
also glaringly reveals one among many examples of the sort of media
coverage that is typical in an arena that is undoubtedly one of the
most complicated, volatile, and sensitive in the world. The authors of
the report have successfully demonstrated how a Palestinian
photographer violated the basic tenets of journalistic work, and how a
foreign reporter accepted his version of events and his photos
wholesale without questioning their reliability for a moment. Clearly,
this does not reflect on those reporters who do their work honestly in
Israel. Such phenomena, however, exist and must be denounced and
uprooted." Considering the current stonewalling and misleading
accounts by many mainstream papers, it's going to take another
thirteen years for them to come to terms with the truth.
When the Muhammad al-Dura story aired on TV some 13 years ago,
Shmuel Rosner was working for Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper produced
by Jews who don't much like Israel and are sympathetic to the Arab
cause. Rosner believed the story unconditionally. He suspected the
motives of those who didn't accept the story. It took time before the
discrepancies started to sway him. He paid attention to the doctor
who testified that the scars on the father weren't from IDF bullets
but from an operation the doctor performed some eight years before.
It says much about the power of the original image, that despite
the footage that shows the boy moving his arm after he was "dead",
Rosner is only at the point where he suspects he will probably end
"with accepting the possibility that Israel might be in the right,
after all."
SHOULD TERRORISTS BE TRIED BY MILITARY OR CRIMINAL COURTS
The capture of the second Boston Marathon bomber again brings up
the question whether to try terrorists in civil court or military
court. Which way will maintain due process but get us results
effectively and efficiently? If the choice is a civil court, another
consideration is making sure interrogators are given sufficient time
to use sophisticated, legal but possibly slow ways of gaining
information about future plans from the terrorist before he is allowed
to lawyer up. Closure for the suffering families of the victims also
needs to be considered. The articles below discuss all these aspects.
When a terrorist is captured, usually much of the discussion
centers on whether he should be tried in a civil court or a military
court. In discussing the legal status of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the
Boston Marathon bomber, Michael Mukasey raises another important
issue: why was Tsarnaev's interrogation handled as a criminal
matter? There was a FBI-led High Value Interrogation Group (HIG) at
his bedside to gather intelligence. Ideally, they would be given
sufficient time to substantiate his information and ask follow-up
questions. Instead, Eric Holder's "Justice Department order[ed] U.S.
Marshals to bring a magistrate judge to [the] hospital to advise him
of a right he did not have if he was being questioned for
intelligence purposes, and to introduce him to a lawyer with no
authority to advise him in connection with such questioning." As
Mukasey points out, if "no admission of his or lead from information
he disclosed was to be used in his criminal case, then he was no
more entitled to a lawyer in connection with such questioning
unrelated to his criminal case than he was entitled to a lawyer to
close a real-estate transaction." Why was Mr. Holder in such a hurry?
SHOULD TERRORISTS BE TRIED IN MILITARY OR CIVIL COURTS: A DILEMMA FOR DEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES
by Brig. General (Ret.) Dov Shefi
Continuing previous practices, the state of Israel tried terrorists
in a military court up to 1999; after then it tried people held for
acts of terror in civil court. So it has familiarity with both
practices. Dov Shefi, who served as an IDF JAG, notes that in a
democracy, "one may expect Justice even in a military court," but
there are procedural advantages in trying a terrorist in a civil
court. But he believes the USA botched the interrogation of
Zacharias Moussaoui, arrested in August 2011 and knowledgeable about
the forthcoming 9/11 attack. "Once the investigators knew that
Moussaoui attended a course of 'limited' flying (waiving lessons for
take-off and landing), there could have been and should have been a
much more sophisticated investigation without using force." He also
believes the trials of the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorists have gone on far
too long. The families of the victims deserve closure. This isn't
hypothetical for Shefti. He lost his son in the 9/11 destruction of
the World Trade Center.
AMERICANS, YOUR GOVERNMENT IS LISTENING TO YOU — JUST LIKE THEY PROMISED
There doesn't seem to be much likelihood that increasing the machinery
to read a vastly increased number of emails will deal adequately with
the problem of Islamic terrorism. First, the Government has purged its
terror databases of links between Islam and terms such
as terror or jihad. So it isn't easy — or maybe not
even possible — to obtaining names of people whose emails might
provide leads to future terror attacks. Second, the Government has
ordered that there is to be no snooping on mosques, which eliminates
many excellent leads to aiders, abettors, instigators and trainers of
potential terrorists. So what is omnibase giganticus useful
for? If you have a particular name or a couple of names, you will
learn much about how often he/they communicate, where he/they send attached
documents, who do he/they write to most frequently, where he/they write
from, etc. — very useful information in learning about your
neighbors, your enemies, and particular groups you don't like. And of
course, it can be used positively. Suppose a member of CAIR — or of
any other Muslim Brotherhood front group that, thanks to the White
House, has access to the FBI, Homeland Security or the White House —
learns from "casual" conversation that a particular group in the CIA
is assigned to look at a particular MB affiliate. All it would then
take is a single casually-vetted consultant who could search on the
members of the CIA group and pass pertinent information on to the MB.
Frankly, if we were to learn al-Qaeda networks have been apprised of
moves that were to be directed against them, would we really be
surprised?
THE BLACK BOX: INSIDE AMERICA'S MASSIVE NEW SURVEILLANCE CENTRE
by James Bamford
This essay was published more than a year ago by James Bamford, who
was one of a small group of writers who tried to alert us that
"...for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the
Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance
apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening
posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of
email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the
country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost
unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes.
Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the
trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its
electronic net. And, of course, it's all being done in secret." The
information about NSA collecting private messages came from a former
NSA employee, who went public because of the program's warrantless
spying on private individuals. No one seemed to care. Maybe no one
thought it applied to his private messages. Now, after an NSA
contractor released some secret NSA documents to illustrate that
anyone with access to the government servers can wiretap anyone, the
public has finally reacted.
WHY EXPANDED GOVERNMENT SPYING DOESN'T MEAN BETTER SECURITY AGAINST TERRORISM
by Barry Rubin
Barry Rubin asks whether bigger is better, security-wise.
Specifically, does collecting everybody's emails, phone calls and
social network tweets help uncover terrorists? Rubin reminds us it's
not the quantity of data bits than counts. We need to understand the
enemy and be willing to act on information about potential threats.
What does need changing is our mind set. We need to adopt an attitude
that is not politically correct toward those that would destroy us.
As Rubin puts it, "Isn't it absurd that the United States can't
finish a simple border fence to keep out potential terrorists, can't
stop a would-be terrorist in the U.S. army who gives a power point
presentation on why he is about to shoot people (Major Nadal Hassan),
can't follow up on Russian intelligence warnings about Chechen
terrorist contacts (the Boston bombing), or a dozen similar incidents
must now collect every telephone call in the country?" It's not just
absurd. It's useless.
BLIND TO TERROR: THE U.S. GOVERNMENT'S DISASTROUS MUSLIM OUTREACH
EFFORTS AND THE IMPACT ON U.S. MIDDLE EAST POLICY
by Patrick S. Poole
In the context of stealth jihad, the March-April 2013 issue
of Think-Israel
includes material on Salafists who have been allowed into our
security agencies and have even been invited to the White House. These
Muslims have been successful in having counter terrorist experts
dismissed from their jobs. Because of their complaints, American
databases on terrorists are now purged so that Islam can
not be associated with such terms as
terror, jihad and other useful descriptors.
Increasingly, their demands "include purges, blacklists, book bans,
star chambers, speech codes, mandatory reeducation and official
retaliation against federal employees, with the White House setting
up a task force authorized to enforce these measures across the
federal government." By analogy, it is as if the criminals get to
decide which laws apply to them and who will be allowed to prosecute
them, knowing that the judges will always back them up. In this
essay, Patrick Poole expands on the theme of jihadist infiltration
into our security agencies during the Clinton and Bush
administration, and more extensively, in the Obama Administration.
Perhaps infiltration is the wrong word, because they have been
welcomed with open arms by the incumbent President, and our defense
agencies have been forced to do the same. Poole's study "poses
serious questions as to the efficacy and even security concerns
about U.S. government outreach to Islamic groups, which often turn
out to be Islamist militants, enemies of Islamic moderation, and
even supporters of terrorism."
Since this study appeared, we have learned that NSA databases that
collect communications from private citizens are not tightly
controlled. Contractors, who may or may not have had extensive
vetting, had access to databases which collect information on American
citizens, which I assume includes emails from individuals who work in
security agencies in the government to their friends and families. Add
this to the information available to CAIR, ISNA and MPAC, etc. at our
security agencies, we can speculate that the Muslim Brotherhood and
perhaps even al-Qaeda have been kept up-to-date on information that might
affect them.
Re America and China, maybe we can have a new Olympics — who
can hack the most emails in the least amount of time. In Syria,
— trimming away the meaningless drool of humanitarian
concerns, helping innocent civilians, felling dictators, making
democracy work — the choice can be stated simply: we can
choose to support President Assad, who has used nerve gas to kill his
own people (but not us) or we can support the rebels, where many, if
not most, of their top fighters are al-Qaeda, with a mission to kill
off those that won't submit to Salafist Islam. They also will use
whatever is available to kill off Syrian civilians. They'll even eat
their organs. Prez Obama seems enamored of the Muslim Brotherhood,
Salafists in Suits, but they have the same Islamist goal as al-Qaeda:
to restore the Caliphate where Islam rules over all. Before we jump
in, maybe Obama might reflect on how we senselessly destroyed the
Gaddafi regime only to see it replaced by various al-Qaeda fiefdoms
and country-wide lawlessness, while Gaddafi's store of weaponry was
stolen by the terrorists and is being used to support Salafist
takeovers. If we want to do something that's useful, why don't we
actually stop Iran before she perfects some nuclear weapon and tests
it by bombing our oil supply and/or using a suitcase bomb on an
American city.
This is a video about Ahmed,an eight-year-old boy fighting along
side the rebels on the front line of Syria's civil war.
There have been so many problems between China and USA that the recent
summit of the heads of the two administrations might have been of
some significance. But it wasn't expected to be. And it lived up
— or down — to its low expectations. As Rachel Ehrenfeld
notes, "The U.S. had given up the fight against China's cyber
espionage even before Obama had the opportunity, as many hoped, to
confront the Chinese president." Sol Sanders concludes that whether
this was because of their capabilities or because of the
circumstances under which they govern, "Neither party was in a
position to tackle the growing list plaguing the relationship between
the superpower and the superpower-wannabe." Perhaps if the Summit had come
after the NSA scandal became known, the two leaders could have
had a bonding experience, life not being happiness-making for either
of them at home at the moment.
Reuven Berko brings us up to date on the Syrian civil war from an
Israeli and a global viewpoint. To put it simply, "Assad is bad and
the Islamist revolutionaries are no better, and it doesn't truly make
a difference who survives." It is strange that the USA sides with the
Syrian rebels, whose goal is a Caliphate, whose center would be
Greater Syria and whose announced mission is to destroy Israel before
taking on the rest of the world. It is even stranger when it is known
that the rebel ranks are filled with volunteers whose allegiance is to
al-Qaeda, which is dedicated to putting the USA under Sharia law
— something Assad has never threatened.
AL-QAEDA CALLS ON SYRIAN REBELS TO BUILD ANTI-WESTERN STATE
by Colin Freeman
Remember Zayman al-Zawahiri, co-founder of al-Qaeda, the guy who
helped bring about 9/11, the guy who advocates attacking "the far
enemy" — America. Well, the al-Nusra terrorists, fighting in
Syria on the rebel side, are totally devoted to Al-Qaeda and its
ideology; they are dedicated to spreading Sharia everywhere. Colin
Freeman writes that al-Zawahiri has formally called on them (that's
a polite way of saying he ordered them) to start instituting the
Caliphate in Syria. Why do we care? President Obama is planning to
send weaponry to the Syrian rebels. Of course they will have to sign
a pledge that says: 'These weapons will not be given to al-Qaeda.
Promise.'
If the Syrian situation wasn't confused enough, Lebanon has now
openly introduced itself into the conflict, ready to fight with the
Sunni rebels against Assad and Hezbollah, which controls southern
Lebanon. This is in response to the Hezbollah's spokesman,
Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, admitting that Hezbollah has
been fighting for the Assad regime to defend both Syria and Lebanon
from the Sunni threat. What is clear is that the confrontation is
becoming more binary — Sunni against Shiite (Shiite now
includes Alewites, with differences in doctrine ignored). The
additional factor of the Lebanese Hezbollah fighting against the
Lebanese government on Syrian territory looks very much like a
second civil war, this one displaced to Syria, which is already
fighting its own civil war. E.B. Picali and H. Varulkar discuss the
newest restructuring. It is of interest that when Hezbollah asserted
that "if Syria falls to the rebels, this will be the end of the
Palestinian cause," former Lebanese prime minister Sa'd Al-Hariri
told him harshly that "the age of [using] the Palestinian cause, the
resistance and [our] national unity as something to be bartered with
is over." Moreover, there's a shift in some Palestinian Arabs
groups, in that they are joining the rebel side, despite the fact
that Hezbollah was a big financial and political supporter. READ MORE
HOLLYWOOD'S CREEPY LOVE AFFAIR WITH ADOLF HITLER, IN EXPLOSIVE NEW DETAIL
by David Mikics
David Mikics writes of a little-known de facto partnership
between Adolf Hitler and Hollywood producers, almost all of whom were
Jews, in the years after Hitler came to power and before World War 2.
Ben Urwand, wrote about it in forthcoming book, The Collaboration:
Hollywood's Pact With Hitler. Hollywood wanted audiences. "Hitler
wanted ... the ability to shape the content of Hollywood movies—and he
got it. ... What is shocking and new about Urwand's account is its
blow-by-blow description of Hollywood executives tailoring their
product to meet the demands of the Nazi regime." Movies depicting the
need for a strong leader did well in Nazi Germany. "A film that showed
the advantages of democracy over fascism could never be made in
Hollywood in the 1930s because of political pressure stemming from
Hitler's Germany..." As for Hitler, "[t]he movies he found most
inspiring, most magical in the spell they cast on an audience, were
made in America." Hitler saw to it that "there would be no reference
to the ever-more desperate plight of the Jews under the Nazi rule in
any Hollywood film of the '30s." Movies became anti-Nazi of course
when the war started but Hollywood's repression of the facts about
Jewish persecution continued even during the war years. ... Despite
the courageous efforts of screenwriter Ben Hecht to raise public
awareness of the Holocaust while it was happening, there was only one
reference to what was being done to the Jews in any Hollywood movie
made during the war: a 5-minute sequence of a minor courtroom drama
called None Shall Escape (1944), in which Nazis shoot a group
of Jewish prisoners who fight back while they are being loaded onto a
train. ..."
Yvette Alt Miller tells the unsavory story of how so many Nazis
escaped from Germany and from punishment for their ghastly crimes after
the war. The Odessa File might be fictional but Nazi war
criminals were helped to start new lives with new identities by such
respected institutions as the Vatican and the Red Cross. Professor
Gerald Steinacher, an Austrian now living in the USA and author of
Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice, writes
how they supplied the Nazis with safe houses and forged documents.
Some Catholic churchmen saw this as a return to religion (without
probing into how genuine the Nazi new-found religiosity was); some saw
the Nazis as victims; some cared for nothing except additional bodies
to fight atheistic Communism. Whatever their excuse, they aided Nazis
to flee Europe. The Red Cross moronically did no checking, they just
issued travel documents; Steinacher suggests these were in the tens of
thousands. As Steinacher wrote, "this isn't an oversight — this wasn't
a bureaucratic error." We can judge from current practices of the
International Committee of the Red Cross that welcomes the Muslim Red
Crescent but won't allow the Jewish Magen David to exhibit a Jewish
Star on ambulances in the Territories that the Red Cross attitude
isn't new. The International Red Cross has been a bitter enemy of
Israel and the Jews for a very long time.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
THE MARATHON TERRORISTS IN CONTEXT OF MUSLIM JIHAD
AND A COMPLICIT AMERICAN ADMINISTRATION
On March 15, 2013, we were again subjected to a sizable terrorist
attack. We were again shocked into the realization that we have a
serious problem with Islamic Jihad working to destroy Western culture
by acts large and small, from overt terror to quiet infiltration into
our infra-structure. It is not that we haven't been kind enough to the
Muslim community or that we haven't made enough of an effort to
support 'moderate' Muslims. It isn't even, as President Obama seems to
believe, that America is too uppity and needs to settle for a more modest
position in the world community. The core issue is that Salafist
Muslims have declared war on the West and Israel and we are largely
ignoring it. They are determined
to reshape our culture so that it fits inside their system of
theocratic governance and sharia-based life style. Their efforts are
aided by academics, politicians and media people who genuinely believe
in globalism. They would like to see rule by the small group at the
U.N. that represents coalitions of the countries of the world, though
not the people of those countries. The machinations of our own
Government have been a significant part of the problem.
We present a group of papers concerned with different facets of the
problem of Muslim Jihad, Muslim terrorism and Muslim practices as
manifested in the Muslim world and in ours. Areas examined in this set
are: Islam: our perception versus their practices; the
USA government's endorsing and protecting Jihadists; and changing
styles of Islamic recruitment and terrorism.
We need information when we ask the hard questions: How do we
minimize Islamic terrorism? What solutions are available? Do we need
new laws or is it sufficient to start using the ones we have? If the
media can no longer be relied on to alert us to the danger of Islamic
Jihad, what resources can we substitute? If the schools are
anti-American, how do we educate our children? If the Government is,
operationally speaking, in cahoots with Salafists such as the Muslim
Brotherhood, what do we do? The Jihadists are determined to wipe out
our way of life and substitute their sharia-based religion. It's about
time we reacted.
TO MAKE A WESTERNIZED TERRORIST: COMBINE RESURGENT ISLAM AND
AMERICAN SOFTHEADEDNESS
by Bernice Lipkin
Bernice Lipkin examines the determined efforts of jihadists, aided
and abetted by an Administration that is an adherent of the ideology
of "progressivism." An unforeseen consequence has been the emergence
of the Westernized Muslim terrorist, who is native to the West or who
has lived here much of his life. The Lone Wolf and small group
terrorists, provided they are imbued with passionate commitment, have
advantages over the imported jihadist. They have local knowledge and
already "fit" into the environment. The most compelling reason for
large terror organizations to utilize them is that it is
cost-effective. As Lipkin points out, "Supplies are cheap and terror
enthusiasts are plentiful. With reduced need for a large cast,
synchronous operations and complicated equipment, the 'script writer'
can more easily mock up a plot to use at an oncoming event that will
guarantee attention." "There is likely to be more opportunity for
roughly scripted rather than rigidly choreographed direction. The
field workers may be given the plot and left to work out the details.
Or some tasks may be carefully timed and others left for
improvisation depending on the circumstances." Until America changes
its ways, Islam's activities on behalf of Islamic supersessionism
will continue.
IF THE MAJORITY OF MUSLIMS ARE PEACELOVING PEOPLE, DO WE
REALLY HAVE ANYTHING TO WORRY ABOUT?
by Citizen Warrior
Citizen Warrior carefully dissects the
Muslims we lump together as peaceloving into its components,
including those who are peaceloving except when they are rioting;
those who look forward to being at peace when the world has readjusted
itself to the requirements of Sharia law; those who are peaceloving
but are always pushing the envelop, demanding concession at work and
at school that suit their lifestyle; those who aren't violent but
never speak against rioting and mayhem, and so forth. And there's the
more passive Muslims who work by not working and overloading the
welfare system, who populate the Muslim enclaves, pay zakat and accept
stoning, beheading and mutilation because such punishments are part of
their religion. And their religion is immutable. Citizen Warrior notes
that even if the peaceloving are in the majority, "it doesn't take a
majority to cause serious trouble..." Put another way, if only 10% of
the world's Muslim population is violent, that amounts to more than
half the entire population of the United States of America.
If it weren't so deadly, it would be comical. The perpetrator of
the Marathon bombing says very seriously, this is why I did
it, and Obama administration officials and CAIR snap
back, no. that can't be the reason. no.no.no. The
Investigative Project (IPT) tells us that "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is
telling investigators he and his brother were motivated by religion
to plot their carnage," and high level Government official aren't
about to agree that Islam's teachings had anything to do with it.
They wouldn't question his explanation if he said he was made to
feel different or he was too poor to buy shoes everyone else was
wearing. So it is disturbing that the Government and Islamic
advocacy groups reject even the possibility that immersing oneself
in the teachings of authentic Islam might lead someone to commit an
act of terror. Such misplaced certainty makes it unlikely they will
look into the "role radical Islam played in past terror plots," no
matter how many terrorists proudly try to tell them the truth.
Alexander Maistrovoy wrote this article to examine the large
increase in the practice of Salafist Islam in Russia. It has spread
everywhere from its confines in the Caucasus Mountains to major cities
such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. Where ever it goes, it deliberately
incites rage against the Russians. Serendipitously, the article puts
into context the growth of Wahhabism in Chechnyia and Dagestan, the
homeland of the Tsarnaev brothers, who exploded two bombs during this
year's Boston Marathon.
This a companion piece to Alexander Maistrovoy's article above on
the growing commitment to Islamic jihad by Muslims all over Russia.
This article focuses on the violence in and around Chechnya, itself.
As Ben English writes, "the Northern Caucasus Mountains serve as a
fertile breeding ground for violent Islamic extremist groups." He
recounts some of the atrocities committed by the Muslims of Chechnya.
Like the Palestinian Arabs, their culture fosters the development of
the mass murderer and the assassin. It isn't true that everybody
wants to enjoy their life and take care of their families, just like
you and I do. Some cultures are dedicated to a higher calling: the
imposition of Sharia law on everybody, using as much violence and
barbarity as possible.
Raymond Ibrahim writes
of a recent fatwa issued by Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a member of Saudi
Arabia's highest religious council: "There is no minimum
age for marriage, and that girls can be married 'even if they are in
the cradle.'" As Dr. Fawzan says, nowhere is there an minimum age for
girls to marry in Sharia. ... Muhammad, Islam's role model,
married Aisha when she was 6-years-old, 'consummating' the marriage —
or, in modern parlance, raping her — when she was 9." Fawzan
does allow for the practical consideration that the child should be
capable of handling the weight of the man. But her age and/or an
extreme difference in age between husband and wife have no bearing on
the matter (no pun intended). As Ibrahim points out, "Sharia law is
nothing less than a legal system built atop the words and deeds of a
7th century Arab, whose behavior — from pedophilia and sex-slavery to
war mongering and plundering — was very much that of a 7th century
Arab." As non-Muslims, we might perhaps regard these savage practices
as a monstrously sick joke if so many Muslims weren't intent on
inflicting Islam's enlightened views on the rest of us.
Stella Paul speaks for many when she writes, "The authorities
expect us to report suspicious backpacks, but stay silent as the tomb
about the nature of the men who put them there." It is another
indicator of what has happened to this country because the Chief
Executive has been concerned with protecting the Muslim community from
unproven hatred but ignores that the Salafists are actively
undermining our way of life as they push their mission of bringing
Sharia to America. If they can persuade us to criminalize anti-Islam
statements, eventually, we would have no freedom of speech. As it is,
the Administration's whitewashing terrorists and sneering at our
military and border police is a prescription for demoralizing our
troops and making the jihadists confident. Pretending that Islam is a
peaceful religion doesn't make it so. It only makes us as stupid as
the Jihadists think we are.
Bruce Thornton makes clear that the Marxist interpretation of
American history and attitudes is no longer an esoteric 'narrative'
held by a few obscure intellectuals. It is by now being mouthed by
ordinary lower-grade (in the sense of teaching K12) teachers of
ordinary American youngsters. Education at this level initiates the
implanting of attitudes and opinions that are stored at a level often
resistant to later examination. Because Thornton has experienced the
impact on his own family, this is not a unanchored theoretic article,
though it targets concepts and techniques that need examination. As he
points out, "the ideas may be garbled, half-baked, incoherent, and a
collection of clichés and slogans. But they are still toxic and
effective at transmitting a world-view to impressionable minds."
Basically, Thornton alerts us that this is yet another area where the
termites munching at our basic freedoms are busily at work. This is an
important article that makes clear what's wrong with our current
educational system.
Matthew Vadum's article is going to be a surprise for many if not
most people, no matter how knowledgeable they are about the dirty laws
and regulations the government has put in place the last few years.
According to the recently-issued Touchstone document on training FBI
agents, if a terror suspect is associated with the "humanitarian" wing
of a terror group, that doesn't mean the FBI should think he's acting
"in furtherance of the organization's illicit objective(s)." Heaven
forfend! Of course, this allows a member of a Salafist organization to
appear in public wearing its peace and humanitarian burqa, while
promoting Islamic terrorism under the hood. But we wouldn't want to
hurt his feelings — why he might have to abandon his noble efforts to
make us all live under Sharia.
From: Steven Merley, "The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States," Series
No 2, Paper No 3, April, 2009, Hudson Institute.
HISTORY OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD PENETRATION OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
by Clare Lopez
Clare Lopez has written a comprehensive examination of how the
United States has bolstered and protected the forces of al-Qa'eda and
the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). In the Middle East, they are establishing
Salafist governments, not democratic ones. In the USA, the Brotherhood
has been allowed to tamper with America's security. Their ambitious
but detailed and well-organized plan is to bring back the Caliphate,
where Islam is dominant and believers in all other religions —
or no religion — are subservient. Over the years it has spread
its ideology by establishing seemingly benign schools, mosques, social
and student clubs as well as by exploiting interfaith groups and
developing political networks at high levels. Sometimes openly, most
often undercover and via a third-party, it has used tactics ranging
from quiet infiltration into the host country's infra-structure to
using the growing Muslim community to intimidate, riot and terrorize
the natives. Its greatest accomplishment may be in fostering a
politically correct environment that blames Islamic terrorism on a
small group of hijackers and discourages "inquiry about the very
Islamic doctrine that al-Qa'eda and hijackers themselves declared to
be their motivation." Lopez makes clear why "it is urgent that we
recognize this clear and present danger that threatens not only our
Republic but the values of Western civilization."
'ACTIVISTS' HOPING TO HELP BREACH GAZA BLOCKADE, RAPED IN BENGHAZI
by Lori Lowenthal Marcus
The Gaza flotilla of 2010 gained publicity; the flotilla of 2011
didn't get far out of the gate. This year they tried a truck convoy.
As Lori Lowenthal Marcus writes, this too was a bust, and a terrible
experience for several of the women who were raped. This story has
wider implication. First, with respect to the terrorism of the future
(see here), it reinforces the likelihood that terror will be small
affairs carried out by local Lone Wolves. Second, it reveals what is
an open secret, that the naive Western human shields shipped in by
organizations such as ISM to Gaza and elsewhere have been raped by the
Arabs they have come to help. Khaled Abu Toameh wrote in a related
article on a fatwa issued by Jordanian Salafi Sheikh Yasser Ajlouni
allowing jihadists to rape women captured during war. "As of now,
families of 'pro-Palestinian' activists around the world will have to
think ten times before sending their daughters on humanitarian aid
convoys." ("Raping Women in the Name of Islam," April 7, 2013)
NEW TREND IN AL-QAEDA'S RECRUITMENT EFFORTS: AMERICAN
MUSLIMS SHOULD CARRY THE BURDEN OF JIHAD IN U.S.
by Y. Carmon
and H. Migron
As Y. Carmon and H. Migron
write, "Al-Qaeda's effort to recruit Americans for action in the U.S.
takes place on two levels." On the ideological level, they try to
counteract the "the efforts of moderate Islamic scholars to challenge
jihadist and extremist notions." On the practical level, "Al-Qaeda is
striving to place the responsibility for jihad in America upon the
Muslim community in the U.S. This is instead of having mujahideen come
from other parts of the world to attack the U.S., and instead of
recruiting American Muslims to fight on other jihadi fronts
worldwide." Seems an obvious refinement. We may have seen the fruit of
this approach in Boston at the Marathon.
Instead of a garden of flowering democracy and respect for human
rights, the Middle East is fast becoming a yard full of every
variety of Salafist, all of whom preach authentic Islam and Sharia
uber alles. The Saudis, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda and their
cohorts are exerting increasing control. The West, apparently unaware of
the danger this is to them, is helping them win. How soon will the
people of the Middle East and the West look back with regret for the
dictators who were vanquished by the Arab Spring?
The major schism in Islamic theology that produced the Shia versus
Sunni differences in religious ideology and practices is also
reflected in differences in politics and ideas about government.
These differences in turn quite often translate into bloody strife
between the two factions, as we see in the current Syrian civil war.
But the overwhelming concern for both groups is spreading Sharia
globally. The Quran itself is from Allah and thus immutable. The rule
of thumb seems to be that Shia and Sunni will fight each other
within a Middle Eastern country or even across the region but will
cooperate against a perceived enemy such as Western culture or
against any non-Muslim religion. (Contrariwise, the West has sided
with the Sunni in Syria against the Shiite.) And when engaged in
trying to demolish Israel, they become one big happy umma.
MEDIA LABELS ARAB SPRING PRO-DEMOCRACY AS MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD (MB) FULFILLS JIHADIST VISION
by Ashraf Ramelah
An act of desperation in Tunisia triggered uprisings in the Arab World
that were labeled the Arab Spring, suggesting the advent of
democratic freedom for the Muslims of the Arab world. In retrospect, a
more accurate label would be the Muslim Brotherhood's takeover of
the Arab world. Better still, recalling the movie The
Producers that refurbished Hitler, a close ideological
relative, Springtime For MB, might be the most suitable. As
Ashraf Ramelah writes, "...in Egypt the controlling Muslim Brotherhood
is fully exposed as an enemy of the people ...and their pursuit of
democracy." Moreover, "they are at the helm of countries militarily
surrounding Israel and strategically critical to 'liberate the land of
Palestine.' Assuming Assad falls, Lebanon, now dealing with Iran's
Hezbollah, and Jordan could be next."
Until way too late in the day, USA ignored Assad's growing arsenal
of chemical weapons. The other side of the Syrian civil war has also
expanded. As Rachel Ehrenfeld and Ken Jensen write, "the salafist
terror group, Jabhat al-Nusra, an extension of al Qaeda in Iraq,"
have been part of the rebel group for well over a year and has
attracted Sunni jihadists from around the world. In point of fact,
"it has grown in strength to become the leading rebel force in
Syria." In other words, while the Obama Administration reassured us
not too long ago that al-Qaeda was just about dead, not only is it
alive but the USA is helping supply its team mates with armament and
train its brothers-in-arms, the Jordanians and Syrian rebels. Anyone
want to bet that al-Qaeda is excluded from our supplies? And when
al-Nusra gets hold of Assad's store of goodies, does anyone believe
they will destroy them unused? Meantime, back on the golf course ...
SYRIA'S AL-NUSRA FRONT PLEDGES ALLEGIANCE TO AL-QAEDA
by Matthew RJ Brodsky and Michael Johnson
Matthew Brodsky and Michael Johnson provide additional material on
the Jabhat al-Nusra Salafist jihadist group, which is fighting the
Syrian regime on the side of the rebels, while pledging their
allegiance to the al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The U.S. and
E.U. are "right to worry about arming any rebel groups in Syria, in
part because they fear that weapons could fall into the hands of
more Islamist elements and turned against Western allies in the
region." Brodsky and Johnson are concerned that the West find a
rebel group to support lest "Syria's future will be determined
either by al-Qaeda franchises or Bashar al-Asad, his sponsors in
Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah." The question is: are there any
— let alone a sufficient number of — democratic rebels
in the entire region that can hold their own against the Salafist
rebels: al-Qaeda, the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood?
As noted above, in Syria the U.S. is supporting the side of the
anti-regime rebels that is loaded with al-Qaeda and other Salafists,
none of whom espouse democracy or like the West. In this essay, David
Devoss writes about Iraqi Kurdistan, an American success story. For
over twenty years, the U.S. has helped build up three Kurdish
provinces in Iraq, and the Kurds are sincerely pro-American. "Iraqi
Kurdistan now serves as both a homeland for the Kurdish diaspora and
a refuge for persecuted Christians." But now "it appears the Obama
administration may be willing to sacrifice Kurdish autonomy in
return for illusory strategic leverage [with the Iraqi government.]"
As Israel Commentary put it, "Kurds — Another key ally Obama is
about to throw under the bus?"
King Abdullah of Jordan was recently interviewed by Jeffrey
Goldberg, who painted a pleasing picture of him "as a dynamic, young
and intelligent leader working to bring Jordan into the 21st
century." Goldberg observed him at kingly work, lunching with
Bedouin leaders then flying his plane home. David Haivri adds some
needed information. The regime is totalitarian and the king is even
losing the support of the Bedouins, his core community. The
Palestinian Arabs, who have been stripped of their rights, are 70%
of the population and would vote him out. Although he has tried to
stay on the right side of the Brotherhood, he is rightly
concerned the Muslim Brotherhood will depose him, once they have
finished off Assad.
IRANIAN SHIITE TERROR CELL IN NIGERIA FOLLOWED A FAMILIAR PATTERN
by Dr. Jacques Neriah
Jacques Neriah describes the operations of an Iranian terrorist
group that was established in Nigeria by Iranian handlers using local
Shiite talent, who carry dual passports. "In the first phases they
concentrate on the collection of intelligence, and train in the use of
weapons and explosives in Iran. In a later phase they will seek to
carry out their terrorist attacks through proxies." They focus on
pro-Israeli and pro-American targets. Neriah writes that "Shiite
communities around the world represent the infrastructure upon which
Iran builds its subversive policies worldwide. This has been the case
in most terrorist actions carried out by Iranian agents or proxies
such as Hizbullah operatives, and Nigeria is no exception." "All these
events provide a rare view of the covert war conducted by Israel, the
U.S., and its allies against Iran and Hizbullah." It seems a certainty
that in Nigeria a single terrorist isn't dismissed as an unaffiliated
Lone Wolf.
EFFECTS OF THE ARAB SPRING SO FAR ON CHRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
by Paul Merkley
Paul Merkley writes of the treatment of Christians and Jews by
Muslims in Middle East countries. When Israel became a state in
1948, the neighboring Arabs vented their rage at such impudence, by
forcing the Jews — who had lived in these Arab countries far
longer than the Arabs — to flee. Currently, as the Middle East
comes under the rule of Salafists, Christians are in jeopardy. In
Afghanistan, "Christians are put to death under blasphemy and
apostasy laws enforced by a government installed, maintained and
subsidized by the West." Elsewhere, as in the Egyptian Coptic
community, churches and businesses are burned, Christians are forced
to convert to Islam and whole communities flee brutal persecution.
Yet the secular Western press and politicos all the way up to the
Obama White House ignore the plight of the Copts and pretend the
Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood are moderate and tolerant.
DEATH TO CHURCHES UNDER ISLAM: A STUDY OF THE COPTIC CHURCH
by Raymond Ibrahim
In article after article, Raymond Ibrahim has been tracking the
devastating and unrelenting assault of Islam on Christians by its
leaders and its ordinary people. In this essay, he describes the
history of the interactions of Islam and the Egyptian Coptic Church
— the early history is discussed in Part 1 and the current
history is addressed in Part 2. As Wolff Bachner says in his
Introduction, "The documentation for Mr. Ibrahim's article does not
come from Western historians. It comes directly from the writings of
Islamic scholars and historians dating back to the actual events. The
faithful recorders of Islamic history never tried to deny or hide the
truth. They kept accurate records of the events of the times,
unvarnished by any fear of outside criticism or political correctness.
To the great Muslim writers, Islam was the only correct religion and
they felt no need to apologize for wishing to make it the one faith
for all of mankind."
Muslims start by making small and reasonable-sounding demands.
When these are fulfilled, their demands blossom like weeds and grow
large, larger and finally grotesque and unyielding. It takes
colossal egotism to believe that it is proper for a Muslim to spew
hatred at and denigrate all other religions but is within his rights
to lash out at anyone criticizing Islam in any way. The same
arrogance that is incapable of tolerance to other world views is
reflected in the Arab's insistence that Allah speaks exclusively in
Arabic, therefore the Koran must be read only in Arabic and not
translated. Paul Murphy connects the Arabocentric view with Islam's
"long-lasting and ubiquitous" racist behavior. Similarly, spoken
through the voice of Interfaith Muslims, what they consider a
just and proper jihad is a bizarre kind of sharing. Their ultimate
goals are: to replace all laws with sharia; to
replace all religions with Islam; and to replace all
governments with the Muslim Caliphate.
HOW CAN ANY RATIONAL, NORMAL PERSON BELIEVE IN ISLAM?
by Jake Neuman
Jake Neuman presents some of Islam's teachings, those currently
reaffirmed by their theologians and leaders: to slay for Allah, to
do jihad against the infidel, to subjugate women, to hate Jews, to
practice pedophilia, to punish minor infractions with mutilation and
stoning, to steal from non-Muslims, to murder apostates, inter
alia. These are not unavoidable consequences but direct
commands. He asks: How can any normal, rational person believe in
Islam, how can anyone believe that Islam is a religion? A
follow-up question might be: why do our democratic media, academics
and political leaders pay Islam respect and work hard to satisfy its
intolerant demands on us kaffirs? It is puzzling, isn't it?
Zeev Shemer writes of what the civilized world would describe as
another senseless killing: "a Jew,[Eviatar Borowski] a father of
five was stabbed to death on a street corner by an Arab who he had
never met before, wielding a knife, looking for a Jew to kill." My
sympathies to the pro-Palestinian media that will have a minor
problem in making this appear justified, but there is a larger
issue: for the last 40 years, Israel has tried to appease the Arabs.
"This pathological approach to Islamists has driven this country to
a very dark place." Shemer questions the lunacy of not treating a
terror attack as a terror attack. They capture the terrorist,
skillfully repair his leg wounds and house him comfortably until the
Arabs can swap him for another captured Israeli soldier or free him
on humanitarian grounds. Why provide the cult of death Arabs with
yet another hero? Oh. Did we mention this murderer, Salam Zaghal, was
released from prison a few months ago? He'd been convicted of trying
to kill Jews by throwing rocks.
Fjordman writes of a proposal legally to ban anti-Feminism
"hatred" as akin to racism. Norway's "Ministry of Children, Equality
and Social Inclusion," run by an anti-racist from Iran, likes the
idea. It would join the critical examination of Islam as hate talk.
Actually, exploring Muslim attitudes towards women is
already verboten socially and in the media. Practically
speaking, that means only white men can be directly identified as
criminal. Predictably, even though rape has increased hugely —
Muslim immigrants consider Nordic women immodest, hence fair game
— it would be racist to attribute this to the Muslim attitude
towards women. So little or nothing is done. I have one quibble with
Fjordman. Astute media readers and listeners in the USA have already
figured out that if an alleged terrorist or rapist or family killer
is not specifically described as a white man or as having blue eyes
and blond hair, it is more than likely it's yet again a Muslim. If we
aren't shown his picture, it's almost certain it's a Muslim.
Michael Devolin explains the animus against Zionism as well as ever
I've seen it done. As he writes,
"Western journalists have
portrayed religious observance, especially Jewish observance, as
something shameful and an embarrassment for their envisioned type of
intellectual. ... Zionism has become their Exempli gratia in
the war they have made against all things Jewish. Therefore Zionism is
never mentioned as a practical and ancient commandment of the Torah, a
commandment as conspicuous and practical as the prohibitions against
stealing and murder; instead it is transmogrified as a Jewish evil
simply because the political and expansionist objectives of Islam and
Christianity have always been given more precedent in the press than
the right of the Jew to live safely and securely in the land of
Israel."
In other words, Zionism is nothing more or less than our ancient
connection to our land. We are obligated to redeem it, should it — as
it did during centuries of foreign and Ottoman rule — fall on hard
times. It's a matter of family affiliation and affection. It isn't a
symbol. It is symbiosis. To thrive, Jews need their Land. The Land of
Israel needs them.
READ MORE
DECONSTRUCTING OBAMA'S JERUSALEM SPEECH
by Richard H. Shulman
President Obama came to Israel and made a nice speech that was
well-received. He gets A for delivery, reassurance and stirring the
(selected) audience.
Richard H. Shulman writes about other factors,
many of which were played down by what is often called Obama's
poodle media. Shulman weighs and measures Obama's words against what
we know from Obama's previous behavior in similar situations. Obama
flunks. As Shulman summarizes the essence of the speech, "Close and
sober examination of it, however, confirms his anti-Zionism and his
demagoguery."
Arab pocket money buys a lot of academics. Last year, the Kennedy
School at Harvard had a conference on the One-State Solution, an
effective way for the Palestinian Arabs to overwhelm the Jews in
Israel by sheer numbers. This year Boston University will be doing a
variant of the same scheme: a Right of Return Conference, where
supposed grown-ups will discuss allowing into Israel some 5-7
million Arabs who claim previous connection to Israel. Richard
Cravatts points out that "every one of the participants of the BU
conference are part of a retinue of the hate-Israel crowd, a
traveling road-show of politicized scholars, propagandists, and
pseudo- and non-academic activists with only a thinly-veiled animus
towards Israel, Zionism, and Jews in general." Cravatts provides us
with excellent portraits of some of the participants, political
ideologues, who have long used the Arab refugee as a shield behind
which they can safely attack Israel. Oh, that our universities
should have come to this!
On Nov. 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations
adopted a resolution for the establishment of Israel as an independent
Jewish state. On the 5th day of Iyar (May 14, 1948, Gregorian) David
Ben-Gurion flanked by the members of the Provisional Council of State
read the Declaration of Independence to the assembled guests. Israel
commemorates this singular event yearly on Yom Ha'atzmaut
("Independence Day") by ceremonies and festivities that include
honoring the Israeli Defense Force and holding the International Bible
Contest. This year Yom Ha'atzmaut fell on April 16, 2013. Ted Belman
has posted an English translation of the Declaration.
Eric Lichtblau cites the statistics for the number of ghettos and
concentration camps during the Nazi era. They are much higher than
most people, even scholars, assumed. He also points out that the
claims of ignorance by many Germans is specious. A personal
anecdote: my husband attended a meeting of pathologists in Germany
many years ago. He asked about a concentration camp that had been
nearby during World War 2. The local pathologists earnestly claimed
they didn't know about murder at the camp. Imagine. Pathologists.
And they didn't recognize the smell of burning flesh.
Aliza Vitis-Shomron was 14 and one of the few survivors of the
Warsaw Ghetto, where Jews rose up and fought their Nazis captors
bitterly and heroically until there were no more Jews left. The
rebellion "became a symbol of struggle against impossible conditions,
illustrated a refusal to succumb to Nazi atrocities and inspired
other acts of uprising and underground resistance by Jews and
non-Jews alike." The rebels told her she was too young to fight but
she should tell the world "'how we died fighting the Nazis. That is
your job now.' She's been doing that ever since, publishing a memoir
about life in the ghetto and lecturing about the revolt and its
legendary leader, Mordechai Anielewicz."
We end this issue with an essay by Victor Sharpe on the Passover.
Again in 2013, as for the past 3,300 years, we will eat a ceremonial
meal and tell our children the story of how HaShem delivered the
Jewish people from their enslavement in Egypt. And He gave them as
theirs the Land of Israel in an everlasting Covenant from
(using modern names) the Red Sea to the Mediterranean to the Euphrates.
This year, as in so many years in the past, there are
those who would deny us our patrimony. Again and again they try to
persuade us or threaten us to give up our land. "Nevertheless, to give
away one inch of the land is a profound rejection of the Covenant made
between His people and Almighty God. It is also a strategy of national
suicide... And it would not go amiss to remind the increasingly Godless
European Union [among others] of Passover's gift to the Jewish people:
The promised and undivided land."
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
Over the years several studies have correlated the growth of the
number of Muslims resident in a foreign country and "the transition
from conciliatory Islam to fascist Islam." It is a major theme of
R.K. Ohri's book "The Long March of Islam" that we serialized from
September-October 2009 to March-April 2011. To set the stage, this
is called The Stages of Global Muslim Takeover. The last time
we reprinted it was in the January-February 2010 issue of Think-Israel.
Stages of Global Muslim Takeover
Infiltrate quietly, settling in small numbers near or among the
locals' towns and villages.
Establish friendly relations, and convince others of the virtues
of Islam.
Participate in community activities and provide charity for the
poor and generosity to all, while encouraging the immigration of other
Muslims.
Get converts and supporters from the rank and file of the local
population, particularly from the poor and disenfranchised of the host
society, via the multiple mosques and madrasas and charitable and
human rights groups. (Today, in the case of the US and EU, converts
come in great numbers from the ranks of criminals, especially
imprisoned African-Americans.)
Agitate for greater and broader rights and considerations for
Muslims, and for protection against real or imagined "Islamophobia".
Organize a political party to push for changes in law to permit
Muslim-only enclaves and for laws that formalize the host society's
accommodation of Muslim religious needs.
Institute the divide-and-conquer strategy of making pacts with
some anti-establishment or minority government groups, legal (as has
been done in the USA with Green Party, National Lawyers Guild) or
illegal (KKK, Aryan Nation) so they will help in the following stages.
Once you have the power base (some 10-15 percent of the
population), then use violence, strikes, street riots, assassination,
intimidation and bribery of government officials to destabilize the
government.
If the host country's government response to the violence is not
effective, then there is a de facto green light to start
full-blown terrorism which will topple the government and allow Muslim
leaders to move up the power ladder with the help of the
anti-establishment groups. Once in power, Muslim leaders can use their
influence over the agitating Muslim population to quell the violence,
thus pretending that they are helping restore order even as they
themselves orchestrate the violence.
Abandon the erstwhile anti-establishment allies and reign
supreme; establish Shari'a, and declare the state to be a new Muslim
nation where Shari'a is law and non-Moslems are dhimmi.
In the January-February 2010 issue, we looked at Islamist infiltration
in Israel and in the West. What were we doing, if anything, to counter
an Islamic takeover? And what outcome could we expect from our
actions? A fundamental concern was voiced in an article in that issue
by D.L. Adams, "What is our purpose in supporting the creation and
growth of societies and governments that are fundamentally opposed to
our existence."
In the current issue, we look at Israel, the West and the Arab
Middle East and ask: How far has Resurgent Islam infiltrated into our
infra structure and perturbed our way of life. And what can we do
about it?
THE FIVE STAGES OF ISLAM
by Richard Butrick
We are reprinting this essay by Richard Butrick from the
July-August 2011 issue of Think-Israel. It describes the changes
in the behavior of Muslims as their numbers increase relative to the
rest of the population in a non-Muslim country. While varying in some
details, the general picture is the same: the Muslims don't want to
'fit in' or assimilate or just live quietly in their own way. They
want to run the show and won't stop until they do.
Europe is becoming more and more antisemitic as the Muslim
population grows and is overtly anti-Jewish, killing Jews and
demonizing them. But their animosity isn't confined to Jews; more and
more the Muslims are now bullying the natives. The takeover of Europe
proceeds with no sign of an adequate counter response. People flee to
the outskirts as Muslim enclaves in the cities grow. Or they move to
another country. But there is no fight in them. In the USA there is
overt infiltration into agencies such as Homeland Security, the FBI,
the CIA and the State Department by Muslims with questionable loyalty
to America. Add to this that creating new military weaponry is on
hold; appeasement and "containment" are considered good policy.
Infiltration is still primarily under the radar —educational
textbooks and other sources of information whitewash Islam. It has
become clear that Academia's traditional liberalism is too often
funneled into hateful acts against "enemy" groups as defined by
Marxist professors and into curtailing the rights of free speech by
those it calls illiberal. The Muslims are the new blacks, the underdog
group that needs protection —and Resurgent Islam have spent a boodle
making this happen.
A major problem in the West is not direct or even undercover
infiltration. It is a shift in moral ideology —moral relativism is
in. Our values are all relative. Our ideologies are all equal,
although some ideologies such as Marxism and Sharia may be a tad more
equal than others. It's not alright for a Christian child to pray in
school; it is alright for teachers to take Christian children to visit
mosques, where they put on burqas and pray as do Moslems. Clearly, the
acceptance of the equality of all ideologies is undermining our
traditional values. But that's only the beginning of its effect on the
West. It is also contributing to the non-reaction by the West to the
clear and present dangers of Resurgent Islam. The West is unarmed, as
Barry Rubin notes, "in ideas, analysis, and understanding." What were
once firm convictions anchored in a Judeo-Christian morality have
become spongy and soupy. Eventually this results in a society that
actually believes that "if you're nice to the terrorists, they'll be
nice to you." But a Islamic takeover would not bring reciprocal
tolerance. Quite the opposite. It would insist that everyone be
governed by the tenets of sharia law.
This is a very personal reaction by Caroline Glick to an encounter
with British Intelligentsia, and noteworthy for that reason. The
occasion was a debate entitled: "Israel is destroying itself with its
settlement policy. If settlement expansion continues Israel will have
no future." Caroline's side lost. She expected the debate would argue
facts and logic. Instead, the winning side appealed to people's
passions. And the English are not noted for innate kind feeling to
Jews. What appalled her was that the audience behaved as a mob, when
presented by any fact in Israel's favor —not what one would expect
"of upper crust, wealthy British people." Methinks, though she knows
about British anti-Semitism intellectually, she was shocked by the
experience —Brits, known for civil debates, acting like a bunch of
rabble rousers from Ramallah.
Bruce Bawer has an eye for the details that anchor his sorrowful
conclusion that Europeans are fleeing some of their major cities
because these are now places the Muslim immigrants have taken over.
In recounting a story of a boy who was kicked off a bus because some
Muslims objected to his dog, Bawer writes, "The story of that boy and
his dog, simply put, is the story of today's Europe in miniature —
the story of a continent whose natives are increasingly being
tormented by Koran-wielding tyrants, and increasingly in flight."
INDOCTRINATING CHILDREN: 'PALESTINE SOLIDARITY' IN THE CLASSROOM
by Cinnamon Stillwell and Rima Greene
Cinnamon Stillwell and Rima Greene write about another of
that well-known sub-species of Jew-Hater: the Western and/or Israeli
Jews who identify so closely with the Palestinian Arabs, they hate
and loath Israel. They have so completely incorporated the ideology
of the Arab that they cheer when an Arab terrorist kills a Jew. One
of this group, Marcy Jane Knopf-Newman, who has taught English at
Arab universities in the Middle East, shows considerable talent in
generating novel and fun ways to delegitimize "Israel in the
malleable minds of her students." She has now produced a book on how
to teach Palestine [sic] to American children that shows her
creativity both in presenting ideas and in distorting facts and
inventing inappropriate analogies. Her eye is always on the purpose
of the book, facts be damned. There is an addendum by Todd Starnes of
a recently-described incident where a public school teacher had her
students don burqas.
Europeans tend to feel guilty over their history of global
colonization. (There have been attempts to point out colonization
wasn't a one-way street. See e.g., Fjordman's "Europeans As Victims Of
Islamic Colonialism"
here.). Muslims do not feel guilt over ruling and/or enslaving
other people. Their attitude is: if it was once ruled by Islam, it is
ours to eternity. Soren Kern writes about a recent example.
Once upon a time a long time ago, most of Spain was under Islamic
rule and the mosque in Cordoba was its majestic symbol. When the
Christians reconquered Spain some five hundred years later, the mosque
was converted to a church and a ban was placed on Muslim prayer there.
Soeren Kern writes that in the last few years, many Muslims have
become radicalized and believe that because they once ruled Spain, it
belongs to them forever. As a first step, they demand the right to
pray in the church. Church officials point out the obvious —that in
a similar but reversed situation —the Damascus mosque was previously
a church —the Muslims wouldn't think of giving up the mosque, nor
would anyone expect them to do so. But as Kern points
out, "as the Muslim population in Spain continues to grow in size (it
is expected to nearly double by 2030) and in political influence,
history may be reversed earlier than most Spaniards might imagine."
ISLAMISTS TO WEST: PUT UP YOUR HANDS AND HAND OVER YOUR PROPERTY!
by Barry Rubin
The West has the equipment, the weaponry, scientific acumen, modern
ideas. Why isn't it making mincemeat of Islamic terrorists? Why is
creeping sharia continuing to take over? Using an actual happening
as paradigm, Barry Rubin analyzes why the West is so easily
intimidated, paying blood money rather than ridding us of bullies that
want to reconstruct our entire society to suit themselves.
It's our "ideas, analysis, and understanding" that need updating.
Paul Eidelberg writes that modern-day 'Islamic fundamentalism' is
indeed authentic Islam." It is "Islamism revived" and modeled on the
religious-political-lifestyle system developed by Mohammed himself.
Jihad —waging offensive war against infidels —is a basic principle
of all four schools of Islamic law. Eidelberg notes that "Islam has
already invaded Europe. Its goal is nothing less than conquest. And
Europe, rotting in nihilism, hedonism, and anti-Semitism, is allied
with its gravediggers." He is concerned that in America, "Moral
relativism infects the democratic mind and saps the will to overcome
the absolutism of the Islamic mind." He believes "the Jewish
conception of man's creation in the image of God ... can provide
democracy with [the] ethical and rational foundation" it needs to
fight an Islamic takeover.
The Arab countries have ethnic, religious and governmental
diversity, so one size democracy won't fit all. Even so, it is "only
if certain Islamic regimes are conquered and occupied, only if an
entire generation of Muslim children is re-educated, only if political
power is decentralized and political accountability replaces
Muhammadan top-down leadership, can one speak sensibly of
democratizing Islam. Merely to eliminate Muslim despots and institute
democratic elections will accomplish nothing enduring." His words are
as applicable today as when he wrote this essay in 2004.
CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM, AND ATHEISM: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE WEST
Interview with William Kilpatrick by Jamie Glazov
William Kilpatrick has previously written about moral relativism and
how it impairs the ability to tell right from wrong. More recently he
has focused on another consequence: that it impairs the ability to
understand that Islamic ideology is dangerous for the West. As he
says, "One of the main reasons Western citizens can't see the obvious
about Islam is that they have been subjected to an educational system
that insists on the moral equivalency of all cultures and religions,
just as it had previously insisted on the equivalency of all value
systems... Or, to paraphrase Mark Steyn, the people who brought you
Heather Has Two Mommies are about to bring you "Heather has
four mommies and a great big bearded daddy." He hopes Christians
will start standing up for their cultural heritage instead of allowing
the moral relativism that makes our civilization passive while Islam
pushes aggressively to replace Western civilization with Islamic
Sharia.
In this article Edward Cline expands on an article by Daniel
Greenfield on the strange affinity of the political Left and Islam.
Greenfield observed that "The left views the Islamists as just another
front group to be used. The Islamists see the left the same way and in
Iran, Egypt and Tunisia, the Islamists have a better track record of
getting the better of the left." Cline believes that the Left isn't
really clueless about the nature of Islam but there's a dark side that
motivates the Left to act "as the janissaries of Islam, as ideologues
and Sturmabteilung of another totalitarian system, for the
moment tolerated and drafted into Islam's cause to swell the numbers
of Islam's brigades and to handle the rough stuff in protests and
demonstrations and clashes with the targets of the day." There's
certainly good reason to suspect many on the Left cater to the Muslims
precisely because they believe the Muslims are capable of
exterminating freedom of individual action. But there is still the
puzzle that when watching Resurgent Islam in action, how can the Left
avoid noticing the glaring inconsistencies between its professed
belief system and Muslim ideology. As the editor of the Fahrenheit211
website put it (20Feb13): "Whichever way you look at it here you have
a Left political current that says it is for the rights of minorities
to be treated equally but supports those Islamic groups that would
quite happily kill said minorities. For the democratic Left to work
with Islam is about as far away from the promotion of diversity and
tolerance than you can possibly get, because Islam doesn't 'do'
diversity, Islam only does oppression. In Islam there is no diversity
of religion, of politics or of thought."
I was watching an oldie called "The Girl from Petrovka" starring Goldy
Hahn as a Russian ballerina, who has learned how to survive in
Communist Russia. It started me thinking about the Russian Revolution
— of which, admittedly, my actual knowledge is limited. Anyone with
real knowledge will probably shudder at the following simplistic
summary, but as a rough outline I think it works. First they killed
off the Imperials. Then they made sure the 'middle class' didn't
interfere with their grand plans: some they killed; some
manufacturers, industrialists and land owners joined the Party; some
left. When they had leeched out of their system most of those who were
creative, efficient and had the ability to organize, they had to
contend with everybody else. I wrote down what might be an analogous
process here in the States. Of course, it can't happen here.
Israel has been doing things wrong for a long time. After the Oslo
Accords were signed, it was soon obvious that the Palestinian Arabs
had no intention of fulfilling their promises, yet Israeli politicians
continue to voice their desire for a Palestinian State in Israel's
heartland, knowing full well that such an entity would only be an
expanded version of terrorist-controlled Gaza. The Arabs have worked
full time at murdering Jews with whatever is at hand —explosives,
missiles, rocks, guns and knives —and Israel has responded only
occasionally and weakly: they would drop leaflets announcing they were
coming, so they were met by empty houses; and they avoided hitting
Arab youngsters used by their own parents as human shields. Most
Israelis have become more realistic, understanding that conciliatory
gestures won't work, but Israeli politicians and much of its media and
academics continue to appease the Arabs and the European Union and the
"world" media at the expense of their own citizens. They continue to
allow the Arabs to define the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They join
in demonizing the "settlers", who are, of all Israel's citizens, most
like the earlier settlers of the late 1800's in dedication to country
but with a love of Torah, not Marxism. Even though Judea and Samaria
are Jewish by the same international law that gave the rest of the
Ottoman Middle East to the Arabs, some Jews (less all the time) talk
of giving up pieces of their tiny country, even Biblical Israel. Dr.
Gabi Avital described it this way: "For nearly 45 years, Israel has
dug itself into a booby-trapped pit. We have been trained to think
that if we exit the occupied territories, the remedy will appear and
cure the ills of the country. If you just sit and talk, the terror
will disappear for good and a vision of a dove with an olive branch
will shine over the Jews from the Green Line" (Israel Hayom,
11Feb2013). Many Jews see that the solution is to reclaim the
Territories yet the politicians dither on, continuing tactics long
shown to be useless. This irresolution may seem comical but it has
become dangerous as the Arabs —now around 20% of the Israeli
population —become bolder in their demands.
This set of essays
progress from the situation as it is now to ways of changing it to
Israel's benefit.
This is a compilation by Bernice Lipkin of recent news items and
articles that serve to illustrate how far the Arabs has come in
terrorizing their Jewish neighbors, intimidating the government and
judiciary, stealing Jewish land and taking over Jewish Holy Sites.
They have become bold, knowing they won't be challenged.
It's eerie how Hamas population control strategy is so like Alinsky
Socialist strategy. In this essay Paul Alster outlines how Hamas can
have its cake —the Gazans are "under siege, deprived of everyday
goods, whose only means of receiving sufficient supplies is through
the network of tunnels ... from Egypt" —while eating the supplies it
receives directly from Israel. Hamas deliberately limits the cross
points to bolster its painting of a people under siege while
collecting its share from tunnel delivery. Incidentally, Hamas has
some of the weaponry left unsecured when we knocked off Gaddafi of
Libya. Isn't it nice to know they aren't all in the hands of
al-Qaeda?
MURDERED DIPLOMACY: HOW THE ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT HAS BEEN TOTALLY TRANSFORMED
by Barry Rubin
Mahmoud Abbas the sort-of head of the Palestinian Authority (elections
have been delayed three years) requested and received the status of a
non-member state. Meaningless, yet useful, in that Abbas will now try
to peddle the "notion that the 'international community'
was recognizing its claim to every inch of the West Bank, the Gaza
Strip, and east Jerusalem." We can look forward to Palestinian
Authority comic SLAPP suits against Israel at the UN. But its
unintended consequence is important: it has destroyed the diplomatic
"peace process." Since Abbas now has his virtual State, it is
pointless for Israel to negotiate borders of a real State. As Barry
Rubin writes, "If the Israel-Palestinian situation were to be
considered to be like a hand grenade, the 'international community'
has just pulled the pin and thrown it away.'" Given the chaos in the
Middle East and the internecine and inter-state conflicts, Abbas is
likely to get short shrift from other Arab countries that he invites
to share his fantasy.
THE ISRAEL CONSTITUENT — REALISM OVER WISHFUL THINKING
by Yoram Ettinger
Yoram Ettinger writes that "the Israeli constituent demonstrates more
realism than Israeli politicians." Most Israelis have learned from
experience and "have concluded that security-driven peace supersedes
peace-driven security." "A ratio of 65%:33% opposes the repartitioning
of Jerusalem in the context of a peace accord; 65%: 31% reject a
withdrawal from the Jordan Valley; 68%:28% refuse evacuation of Ariel
and western Samaria; 72%:22% insist on retaining control over the
blocs of Jewish settlements; 73%:18% disapprove relinquishing control
over the Judea and Samaria mountains which dominate Ben Gurion
Airport; 67%:22% insist that Israel retains control of the Judea and
Samaria Highway 443 connecting Jerusalem to the coastal plain." It's
time for the politicians to change their ways.
There has never been diplomatic or political question that the city of
Ma'ale Adumim, near Jerusalem, would always be Jewish and "attached"
to Jerusalem by Area E1. Yet, "for over 10 years, Israel deferred to
international requests to delay construction in the area in order to
appease the Palestinians." When finally they began the long-delayed
construction, the Palestinians falsely accused Israel of denying
contiguity between two major areas in a future Arab state. Why would
people believe these claims, when Arab leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas
have no credibility, having even denied any historical connection
between Jews and Jerusalem? Isi Leibler attributes this to the double
standards whereby actual wrongdoing by the Palestinian Arabs is
ignored but any assertion that Israel is a fault is taken at face
value. He also points out that many believe the Arabs out of ignorance
and here Israel has been negligent in not making a forceful case for
itself.
IS THE PROBLEM PALESTINIAN ARAB REJECTION OR "OCCUPATION?"
by Richard H. Shulman
This essay by Richard Shulman is built around two papers
representative of those written by academics, diplomats and
government administrators who claim to have Israel's interest at
heart and want to instruct it for its own good. A Professor Krebs
sheds crocodile tears over the Israeli "occupation on the grounds (no
pun intended) that it creates a bunker mentality in Israelis. Yosef
Kuperwasser and Shalom Lipner, both in the Israeli government, point
out insightfully that a fundamental problem is the Arab rejection of
a Jewish state in territory the Arabs once held. However, having
spelled out that nothing can be resolved until the Arabs accept the
notion of a non-Muslim state, they revert to the usual discussion of
how Israel can appease the enemy, while hoping that someday they'll
change. Richard Shulman rebuts these arguments with commonsense, by
carrying the opposition arguments to their logical conclusions and by
facts, features somewhat lacking in the referent papers.
Giulio Meotti recognizes their merit of the hilltop Youth, the
youngster who guard the hilltops of Samaria and Judea, keeping
terrorist Arabs from taking over more of Jewish land. As Meotti
writes, "They are Israel's most outstanding individuals, instilled
with ideals that their government ministers can only envy. They are
Israel's last heroes." Why guard the hilltops? When the Arabs attack
in force, the ones who control the hilltops will control the area. And
how are these young heroes rewarded, these strong-minded patriots who
have the temerity to put their own people's welfare first? They are
the most reviled of that most reviled group of Israeli Jews —the
patriotic Jewish settlers of Samaria and Judea. Yet it is they who
understand that it is both craven and pointless to try to appease an
enemy whose goal is to kill Jews, no matter how conciliatory the
Jews try to be.
Dr. Martin Sherman bluntly describes the major failing of Israel's
security measures: "Israel's greatest strategic challenge, its
gravest strategic failure and its grimmest strategic danger is the
conduct — or rather misconduct — of its public diplomacy." To call
Israel's public diplomacy (PD) inadequate is to overrate it. Israel's
PD infrastructure needs a complete overhaul, not a quick fix. It will
take money, encouragement of pro-Israeli groups, change of staff —
and most importantly —a change in attitude. PD should not be
treated as an add-on but as "an operational arm of national
strategy." Professional diplomats aren't up to the job. Israel needs
voices who are dedicated to Israel and who "can identify and
articulate the raw truth as to the true origins of the
delegitimization of Israel" —"intellectual warriors."
Israeli politicians seem to have forgotten the consequences of the
disastrous removal of the Jews from Gaza and are making noises again
about splitting off more Jewish land in the "interests of peace." In
this essay Daniel Greenfield analyzes why giving up Jewish land to
terrorists doesn't lead to peace with the Arabs. It's not even an
inadequate solution — not even in the short term. It has no
relevance to the root cause: Arab religion-based hostility to Jews and
Arab ambition to rule the world. There's also another reason for not
uprooting the Jews of Samaria and Judea that Greenfield's masterful
analysis does not cover. The thriving Gazan Jewish communities were
destroyed in 2005 and many if not most are still not settled and
certainly are not as productive. If the Government couldn't
competently handle less than 10,000 people at huge financial cost let
alone the cost in human suffering, how are they going to manage half a
million Jewish refugees from Samaria, Judea and Jerusalem?
We started this issue with the proposition that the behavior of
immigrant Muslims in a non-Muslim host country is governed by the size
of the Muslim population. As their population increases, the Muslims
become less accommodating. They begin to make increasingly outrageous
demands and sculpture the environment to suit themselves,
marginalizing the natives. So how does that work when we are dealing
with Muslims in a Muslim country?
Some years ago, the Sunni-Shiite philosophic split became low-level
warfare, as in the proxy war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia, the Sunni
moneyman, has been battling it out with Iran, the lead country of the
Shi'ites. Thanks to the Arab Spring in 2010 which created (more)
instability in a number of countries, the pace picked up and became
open and obvious warfare between components of the Sunnis and the
Shi'ites.
After months-long demonstrations and strikes, the actual body
blows to the Tunisian and Egyptian governments were fairly rapid,
especially with the USA butting in in Egypt against the Mubarak
Government. Tunisia is still without a government. Unemployment grows,
turbulence increases. There is tension between the secular and the
fundamentalists, who continue to grow stronger. And, oh yes, a secular
opposition leader has been assassinated. The Muslim Brotherhood now
runs Egypt.
In Libya, for some reason, Washington saw fit to interfere and help
hunt down Moammar Gaddafi, who of all the Arab dictators was the least
threat to the West. The rebels included al-Qaeda affiliates, one group
of which was later responsible for the Benghazi massacre. Libya no
longer has a dictator. Nor does it have much of a functioning
government. It is now the locus of small independent fiefdoms,
terrorist bands who protect some and terrorize others. No one seems to
have thought ahead to secure Gaddafi's vast weaponry stores. Some were
destroyed by Hamas in Gaza very simply: they shot them at Tel-Aviv.
Gahdafi's weaponry has been showing up in newer Arab Springlets. The
USA has been implicated in delivering some of them via Turkey to
Syria, to the rebels.
The internecine clashes within many countries, certainly in Libya
and Syria, are inaccurately described as a rebel (how romantic!)
revolt against government dictatorship. Actually, they are strict
fundamentalists fighting against secularists, against nominal Muslims
or against not-quite-so fundamentalists. Or they are Sunni against
Shiite. Increasingly, both sides are reinforced by weaponry and man
power from other countries.
Daniel Greenfield summarizes the recent activity in Arab countries,
which has been helped along by the USA, the EU and the UN, this way:
(16Jan13, "One Hundred Wars," Jewish Press
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/columns/
daniel-greenfield/one-hundred-wars/2013/01/16/0/?print) "The French
are in Mali now, being shot at by Islamists armed with the very same
weapons that France airdropped into Libya. Either those or the weapons
that France sold to Gaddafi in the preceding period when European
countries were competing to be his arms dealers." [..]."Saif Gaddafi
went from the toast of European academics to a mass murderer,
Gaddafi's opposition went from Al Qaeda terrorists to brave rebels,
then the brave rebels, many of whom were actually Iraqis, Tunisians
and Jordanians, shot up an American diplomatic mission, hooked up with
some of Gaddafi's Tuaregs to take over Northern Mali, shot them up and
began carving out their own Islamist Emirate. [..] In two years, the
evil ruthless dictators who kill and torture their own people have
been replaced by ruthless democratically elected dictators who kill
and torture their own people."
When 9/11 happened, we were given the kindergarden level
reassurance that what we were fighting was terrorism and that
we could visualize this terrorism as being embodied in al-Qaeda
and in particular in one man, Osama bin Ladin, leader of al-Qaeda. We
were told that when we cut off its leadership, al-Qaeda would soon
shrivel away. That notion is no longer tenable. But it is not yet
widely understood that in the current major hot spot, the civil war in
Syria —as was the case in Libya —many if not most of the
experienced fighters in the revolutionary rebel forces are dedicated
Salafists. Al-Qaeda is Salafist. The Muslim Brotherhood is Salafist.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are Salafist. They may squabble over nuances,
but they all are followers of authentic Islam as practiced by
Mohammad. They all work towards a global Islamic Caliphate. And if
they win, Syria will become yet another Salafist state.
So yes, we can talk about a Muslim takeover by a subset of Muslims
within a Muslim country. It seems to depend less on number of people
than on who has the most advanced weaponry, the most experienced man
power, renewable resources and dedication. So far the Muslim
Brotherhood and like-minded Salafists have been doing well.
It's been over twelve years since Radical Islam violently let us know
that it was at war with the West, yet we still am not sure what to
call this enemy. Things seem to have settled down to calling them
Islamists. It is claimed that Islamists interpret the Koran in an
extremist political fashion as against the moderate Muslims who are
simply pious people practicing their religion. That makes things tidy.
Unfortunately, it is a distinction without a difference. To practice
the religion according to the Koran is indeed to be political and try
to make all others subservient. Just ask the vocal Muslim clerics in
the Middle East and in the mosques around the world.
Unconsciously, most of us view others as more imperfect or
perhaps as superior replicas of ourselves —with a similar
live-and-let-live attitude. This essay by Raymond Ibrahim takes a
specific case where such an assumption leads to erroneous conclusions.
As he says of the current concern that the Islamists are taking over
Egypt: "Islamists are currently evoking the one argument that has
always, from the very beginnings of Islam, empowered Islamists over
moderates in the Muslim world." The Islamists-Salafists back up their
claim to be keepers of the true faith of Islam because they
stringently follow Sharia. So any secular Muslim who doesn't want
Sharia but calls himself a Muslim automatically loses the debate. What
Ibrahim details in the small is mainly true in any Muslim country
where the Islamists are in —or close to —control.
TRIBES WITH FLAGS: HOW THE ARAB SPRING HAS EXPOSED THE MYTH OF ARAB STATEHOOD
by Aaron David Miller
An Arab leader or cleric may speak about his vision of the future as
if his particular notion were the only possible outcome, but in fact,
different leaders envision differing governing structures: many long
to reinstall a theologically-based Caliphate while, on the other
extreme, some envision shackling states together to create a
political pan-Arab superstate similar to what Egypt did in the last
century. It is easy to map these disparate futures onto the Islamic
belief that Islam must be top dog globally, ruling over subservient
non-Muslims. It may also be that what these contradictory visions
express is an Arab desire for unity among themselves. Unfortunately,
as Aaron David Miller writes, Arabs may talk about nation and state
but they appear to identify parochially —"it's loyalty to the
tribe, family, sect, and religious group that provides the primary
source of identity and organization." By stripping away the top level
of rigid government control, the Arab Spring brought the tensions
among these conflicting identities out into the open, together with
the age-old Arab way of dealing with conflicting ideas: murder,
rioting and vandalism. Even Miller, who is more optimistic than I am,
doesn't expect positive results for a long while. As he points out,
unity requires the opposite approach: it needs leaders who think
nationally, viable and legitimate institutions and a way of
accommodating dissension peaceably.
Shoshana Bryen makes the point that Iran has made a sizable investment
in supporting Syria's Bashar Assad, but her aspirations are at least
regional and her reach is expanding. Bryen points out that "the United
States, which has focused rhetorical attention on the Iranian nuclear
program, ... has utterly failed to see Iranian activities spread
openly across the globe." As she writes, "Whatever the fate of Bashar
Assad, Iran is unlikely to abandon its investment in Hezbollah or in
other Syrian groups, but Iran's interests go well beyond the
Syria/Hezbollah axis. Iranian influence in predominantly Shiite Iraq
continues to grow and there are reports of Iran building Iraqi
Hezbollah militias as the security situation continues to deteriorate
since the American departure in 2011."
U.S. AID TO SYRIA'S REVOLUTION NOT TO THE JIHADISTS
by Walid Phares
In the Benghazi festering scandal, while we know the major players, we
don't know the actual relationship between them. We know that the
result of a CIA hush-hush operation was this: the USA Government was
gun running Libyan weaponry to the Syrian rebels as it had to the
Libyan rebels against Gaddafi. Quantities of the weaponry ended up
with the al-Qaeda fighters who are a strong asset on the rebel side.
We know Ambassador Stevens was involved. We know the Syrian rebels
were —and are —made to look good compared to the Syrian regime's
atrocities. We know the rebellion's strong connections to al-Qaeda
were kept quiet. Now, cleverly, the Obama Administration has come out
openly for the rebels and, of course, is still officially against
al-Qaeda. In a binary world, if al-Qaeda is bad then the other rebels,
particularly the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and al-Nusrah, an al-Qaeda
affiliate, must be good. As Dr Walid Phares points out, they are not.
They are as much Salafist as al-Qaeda. Should they control the revolt,
the result will be another Islamist regime, which will not hesitate
turning these weapons on Americans and other Westerners. He argues for
supporting the secularist democratic rebels, of which I'm sure there
are some.
The previous article by Walid Phares was concerned with the problem of
aiding the Syrian opposition without having the money go to the
various Jihadist groups who are prominent among those fighting the
Syrian regime. This article by Leslie Gelb is specifically interested
in avoiding payment to al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Because the two
authors raise somewhat different issues, propose somewhat different
solutions and because the problem is acute, both articles are
presented.
Frida Ghitis writes about a terrorist attack that casts light on
several moral issues, including the European Union's (EU) selective
discrimination in the Middle East. On July 18, 2012, a bus carrying
Israeli tourists in the Black Sea resort of Burgas in Bulgaria was
attacked by terrorists. It was likely the work of Hezbollah and hard
evidence eventually identified Hezbollah as the culprit. But within
days of the attack, it was brought home to those who had assumed
Hezbollah was on the EU terror list that it was not. Moreover, the EU
ruled out putting Hezbullah on the Terror List. The EU insisted there
was no tangible evidence to link Hezabollah to terrorism —which was
as accurate as asserting there's no evidence to link goldfish to
water. For months, there was speculation whether Bulgaria would
release its evidence and would it state openly that Hezbollah was to
blame. That would put pressure on the EU. On February 5, 2013,
Bulgaria did state that Hezbollah was responsible for the terrorist
attack on the bus. The EU did not follow suit.
Considering how rapidly the UN and the EU condemn any action by
Israel —even when they aren't sure what the circumstances were or
even if it actually happened and wasn't another Arab hoax —this does
say something about the fear the EU has about riling up the friendly
Muslims living in Europe and how unafraid they are of accusing Israel
of anything and everything. The EU is making it easier for Hezbollah
to terrorize the Lebanese, fight for Iran, harass Israel and raise
funds in Europe.
Recently, the new Secretary of Defense described the take-home message
from President Eisenhower in 1956 forcing Israel to withdraw from the
Sinai Peninsula as taking a hard line with Israel. In this essay, Alex
Joffe points out that "[t]he brief and ill-conceived campaign of
Israel, Britain and France to capture Sinai and the Suez Canal grew in
part out of American policy failures. [...] At every turn, the United
States waddled into Arab and Muslim politics it did not understand and
failed to take Israeli concerns seriously."
as Joffe writes, "... forcing allies into concessions is less
impressive than successfully exerting pressure on adversaries" should
be the lesson learned from the 1956 fiasco.
This is a very depressing article. It would be nice if it weren't
true, but we know from the first paragraph it is a clear indictment
of the pitiful state America has been reduced to in just a few years.
In almost Dickensonian fashion, Victor Davis Hanson shows us why this is
The Worst of Times for America., "a country on its way to a
$20 trillion national debt and a "'lead from behind' foreign policy of
managed decline." To compound the problem, Prez Obama has chosen for
his cabinet three men on his own level of mediocrity, making it almost
a certainty there is little chance of correcting the downward plunge.
The silver lining? As Hanson writes: "the worse the U.S. performs, and
the lower the American profile abroad, the more the world likes Barack
Obama — almost as if to say, 'At last, they're just like us.'"
Considering that disorder is enveloping so much of the world, maybe it
should be wishing that America was what it was a few years ago,
capable of lending it strength, energy and optimism to move the world
to exciting new heights, rather than being content to be one among
equals, all equally unstable, chaotic and miserable.
Mohamed al Durah death just at the start of the 2000 intifada still
serves as the iconic image of how Israel was recklessly injuring
innocent Palestinian Arabs. Those who read beyond the headlines later
learned it was a hoax, a brilliantly-staged piece of street drama,
produced by Arab terrorists and certified by a French commentator who
wasn't there and France 2. By geometry and geography, al Durah
could not have been killed by the Israel soldiers who were blamed. He
was however cowering a few feet away and in directly line to some Arab
snipers. What Nidra Poller makes us understand is that al Durah wasn't
just justification for the intifada, it has become more global and has
served as "reason" for Arabs to kill Jews elsewhere. Moreover, using a
staged provocation as justification for ensuring riots and murders
became popular and is still in use —witness the recent rioting at
American embassies.
SANDY TOLAN'S THE LEMON TREE—BIAS AND MISINFORMATION CLOAKED AS FACT
by Roberta P. Seid
Roberta P. Seid reviews a book by Sandy Tolan that is used in "some
secondary schools... to educate students about the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict. Factually, it is full of errors. Worse, it presumes that
"Palestinians lost their homeland or nation in the 1948," disregarding
that the local Arabs never owned the land. In fact, they were not
morphed into a Palestinian people until the 1960s, when Yasir
Arafat declared them so. The appropriate comparison would be between a
Arab refugee from the 1948 war who fled to give the invading Arab
armies room to kill the Jews and a Jewish refugee from the Arab
countries that was forced to flee for his life, leaving his goods and
property behind.
Paul Eidelberg addresses the
"marketing" aspect of Israeli Public relations. It can't be fixed by
polishing or small fixes. It is basically flawed. As Eidelberg
suggests, when Israel talks up how much they are like other countries,
"The more Israel's government seeks to win the approval of the
nations, the more it will be despised by the nations."
"Such self-abasement betrays their lack of pride in the Jewish heritage, and
this is exactly why Israel is so often humiliated."
He suggests the more Israel comport itself as a Jewish nation, the
more respect it will receive.
Sarah Honig explores why virtually all Israeli-made films are
self-hating and malign Israel. Israelis are pictured as if the films
were produced by the Nazi Propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels,
himself. The Arabs, in contrast, are shown as dedicated, noble and
proud. Honig notes that "[i]n their own twisted way it's as if today's
Israeli filmmakers had paid heed to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr." threatening
Jewish movie executive in 1940 for making anti-Nazi films. This
generation of Jewish film makers go beyond the "faint-heartedness of
yesteryear's moguls. They .... cynically espouse and hype that enemy's
cause."
THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE OUTBREAK OF THE SECOND INTIFADA: ITS OWN DAMNING TESTIMONY
by Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi
The second intifada broke out in September 2000 —soon after the July
Camp David talks failed when Arafat rejected the more than generous
Israeli offer —and declined after Arafat died in 2005. Much ink has
been spilled reassuring the world that it wasn't the fault of the
Arabs that spontaneous suicide-bombing, rioting and vandalism erupted
mdash; it was all the fault of the Jews. The proximal pretext was that the
then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to the Jewish holy site, the
Temple Mount. (Horrors! A Jew on the Jewish Temple Mount in a Jewish
country!) Jonathan Halevi has done a meticulous investigation of who
is responsible for triggering the intifada. Using Palestinian Arab
sources, simple logic, and knowledge of Arafat's modus
operandi, he concludes that the intifada was directly instigated
and managed by Arafat. This article can be read as a fascinating
whodunit, where all the clues lead to a single conclusion. But is it
likely to end the myth that it was a sand-roots spontaneous uprising?
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
Different Blog Ed pages will be down intermittently until the Archive
structure is in place. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Allowing the Arabs and their European friends to set the agenda,
Israel has pursued a useless peace policy, bending over backwards to
persuade the Arabs to become genuine peace partners. It has brought
them nothing but grief, ever more dead Israelis and more acts of
terror against more of their citizens. The world hasn't appreciated
that Israel has jeopardized the safety of its own citizens to reduce
harm to the Arabs. Instead, the world demands Israel do more "for
peace" while asking nothing of the Arabs. How does Israel get back on
the right track of making the safety of its own citizens its
priority?
The first step is to understand that ALL of Mandated Palestine belongs
to Israel and was authorized by the same international authority that
gave the other 99.99% of the Middle East to the Arabs.
The second step is to recognize that the peace process is a
scam to deprive Israel of its land. As Efraim Karsh points out, "Few
subjects have been falsified so thoroughly as the recent history of
the West Bank and Gaza."
The third is to stop going down the wrong road and, as
Caroline Glick recommends, change current Israeli policy. Israel
needs to stop being an enabler that gives the Arabs immunity while
they work to destroy Israel.
More and more Israelis are considering annexing Samaria and
Judea officially and putting all of the Territories under Israeli law.
See "On Reclaiming Jewish Land"
here, including Hausman's article, "Reclaim Jewish Land; Reject
The Two-State Solution"
here.
Others, Think-Israel included, believe annexation is
insufficient. Israel will sooner or later be confronted by a choice
that can be simply stated this way: Keep The Land And Expel The
Arabs — OR — Keep The Arabs And Lose The Land.
Phrased thus, the solution becomes obvious. Just as the Jews were
forced from the Arab countries, it is time for the second phase of
this population exchange, moving the local Arabs to some part of the
vast land area controlled by the Arabs. This would be an upgrade. They
would have more space while living in the same environment, life style
and culture they are accustomed to having. It would allow them — and
this includes all the Arab refugees now scattered in the different
Arab countries — the ability to govern themselves. Or carry on their
way of death, but only against each other. Their choice.
This set of papers lay out the first steps of a policy based on
reality. At the very least, it protects the character of the Jewish
state.
This is Additional Material on San Remo and Israel's ownership of Mandated
Palestine:
Yoram Shifftan has written a series of articles on Israel's ownership
of Mandated Palestine by an irrevocable trust to the Jewish people. See e.g.,
here,
here, and
here.
Michael C. Duke, "Jerusalem: Our Redeemable Right" here;
In the box above, google san remo, league of
nations, irrevocable trust, mandated
palestine, Israel's legal right for a more complete
selection of relevant articles on Think-Israel.
This is a superb presentation by Eli E. Hertz of the Legal Aspects of
Jewish Rights to the Land of Israel. It begins by asking What is
Palestine? It explains the importance of the term Mandate
and presents the chronology of the events leading to signing of the
document that placed Mandated Palestine in an irrevocable trust for
the Jewish people, to develop into a Jewish state. Three facts are of
particular importance. (1) The representatives of the League of
Nations viewed the Mandate as reinforcing an already existing historic
connection between the Jews and their ancient homeland. The Land was
theirs by right. The Jews would be redeeming, reconstituting and
recreating their national Home in situ. (2) The rest of the
Middle East part of the Ottoman Empire (some 99.99% of the land) was
cut up into states that were given to the Arabs. In some cases there
was a long-established connection to the land. In others, boundaries
were arbitrary and were a poor fit to the clans and sects of the
various local Arabs living in that particular region. (3) The Assets,
Rights and Obligations of the League of Nations were transferred to
the United Nations where it came into being. The Palestine Mandate is
valid.
The version on Think-Israel was compiled to be viewed as a html
file.
(If you download it, you also need to download the png files to
transfer the photos. Do this with a get hertz.palestinemandate* command.)
The original powerpoint presentation can be downloaded
here.
A presentation that emphasizes the text material is available on the Myths and
Facts website:
here.
Bernice Lipkin summarizes some of Israel's recent history of trying to
make peace when the Palestinian Arabs don't want peace and have made
no effort to cooperate. It is time to stop these attempts to obtain
the currently unobtainable. She suggests that it's time to stop
appeasing terrorists and go back to nation-building as the San Remo
Resolution anticipated. Suggestions for additional reading materials
are provided.
THE PALESTINIAN UN UPGRADE: SETTING THINGS STRAIGHT
by Alan Baker
This is a straight-forward summary of what Mahmoud Abbas' request to
the UN General Assembly to upgrade the area controlled by the
Palestinian Authority to a state did and did not do. Alan Baker points
out that it "neither created a Palestinian state, nor did it grant any
kind of statehood to the Palestinians." It has no effect on the
situation on the ground between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, no
matter how much significance the media gives the political charade.
Unfortunately — and this wasn't within the scope of the article —
media distortions are likely to be believed by a public trained to
sympathize with Palestinian victimhood.
This essay by Efraim Karsh is exquisitely detailed yet very
understandable. It dissects the misleading and fallacious threads that
are woven together into the charge that Israel is occupying
Palestinian Arab land. As the title says, "What occupation?" In
addition to demolishing the non-factual Arab "narrative", Karsh
provides a thoughtful insight into what is really keeping the pot
boiling: "It is not the 1967 occupation that led to the Palestinians'
rejection of peaceful coexistence and their pursuit of violence.
Palestinian terrorism started well before 1967, and continued —
and intensified — after the occupation ended in all but name.
Rather, what is at fault is the perduring Arab view that the creation
of the Jewish state was itself an original act of "inhuman occupation"
with which compromise of any final kind is beyond the realm of the
possible. Until that disposition changes, which is to say until a
different leadership arises, the idea of peace in the context of the
Arab Middle East will continue to mean little more than the
continuation of war by other means."
WHY LIFTING THE ISRAELI 'OCCUPATION' WON'T STOP VIOLENCE
by Steven Plaut
Steven Plaut reduces the entire Arab-Israeli embroilment to two simple
statements. First, the international community is certain that were
Israel to Remove its Occupation of the "Occupied
Palestinian Territories", it would Lower Violence: the
ROLV axiom. Even most Israeli politicians pay lip service to this
proposition. Second, "the international consensus about removal of
Israeli occupation is empirically false and nearly all Israelis, both
Jews and Arabs, understand that it is false." Experience has taught
them that when Israel gives up territory, as it did in Gaza, the Arabs
in the Territories use it to increase their manufacture and assembly
of weaponry to use against the Jewish state — not exactly an
occupation of high priority, were the Arabs interested in developing
the infrastructure of a viable state.
THE ISRAELI CONSTITUENT — REALISM OVER WISHFUL THINKING
by Yoram Ettinger
Yoram Ettinger chronicles the new thinking in Israel. Playing Russian
roulette with the safety of Israeli citizens is no longer considered
the way to ensure Israel's security or its survival. Checkpoints along
borders are safer than open entry. Monitoring highways decreases the
opportunity for snipers to kill people driving by. As reliable polls
show: the Israeli public is "top heavy on realism and low on
wishful-thinking." Now if only the politicians, the academicians and
the media would catch up.
Once upon a time, Judaism was a proselytizing religion, winning many
converts in the Roman empire. This went on until the newly empowered
Christian Church in Rome made it very clear that the Church would
destroy Judaism if Jewish proselytizing didn't stop. The Rabbis
internalized this stricture so completely that they didn't just stop
actively trying to teaching Jewish ideas and practices to non-Jews,
they made it downright hard to become a Jew. Israel has been
undergoing a similar incorporation of a practice that could prove to
be fatal: the notion that she must show her enemies and critics she is
highly moral, more moral than her attackers, when she should be
focused on winning the war they are waging against her. Daniel
Greenfield makes us see how utterly immoral this behavior is.
Out-losing the Arabs is suicidal.
Caroline Glick points out that "both Israel and the United States are
basing their policies towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on
false assumptions about the nature of that conflict." The root problem
is that the Arabs deny the legitimacy of the Jewish State and Israel
contributes to Arab recalcitrance by her gestures of appeasement,
which only reinforce the Arab belief that eventually they will destroy
Israel. She suggests initiating a policy to:
eradicate Hamas rule in Gaza; make clear that the Palestinian Authority
was continuing terrorist acts; end Israel's recognition of Fatah;
stop Palestinian delegitimization of Israel and Jews; end the
construction freeze; and gradually end military rule in the Territories.
by Bernice Sacks Lipkin and Lewis Edward Lipkin; appendix by
Richard H. Shulman
This is an unrevised reprint of an article that
was originally published in the September-October 2010 issue of
Think-Israel. This was its introduction:
It would be suicidal for Israel to allow a Palestinian state to be carved
out of Biblical Israel, particularly one that would control a major
component of her water supply and is capable of shooting missiles
everywhere in Israel. But there remains the festering problem of a
growing Palestinian refugee population living on cradle-to-coffin
debilitating welfare, taught to hate Israel and the West and used as
pawns to make claim to Jewish land. The Editors of Think-Israel
propose that the Palestinian Arabs — those from the refugee camps and
those residing in the Territories — be helped to establish a viable
state within the land given to the Arabs by the League of Nations when
the Ottoman Empire was dissolved. The state would be physically
well-separted from Arab population centers and legally independent of
the Arab country that previously owned the land. Within their state,
the Palestinian Arabs would have complete control of their politics,
education, culture and living style. Given recent political
developments in the Middle East where Israel's military and
technological strength is a major asset, the strengthening of Israel's
appreciation of its own religious roots and a growing disbelief in the
reliability of supposedly impartial external organizations, this is a
propitious time to create such a state.
Pro-Palestinian partisans have demonized the Israeli Jews who live
in the towns and villages of Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank).
The logic was simple. They believed the Arab claim that the land was
Arab. They expected that eventually the Arabs would be given it. They
worried that the Jews were hindering the process by building homes
there. Hence propaganda was designed to stop Jews from inhabiting the
land. Consider how different the perspective becomes when one pays
attention to a simple fact: the Jews own the land by international
law in an irrevocable trust. The initial article by Salomon Benzimra
summarizes the legal foundations and explains why the Jewish Settlements
are legal.
(Note also: (1) the
September-October 2012 issue of Think-Israel featured a section on the
Levy report
here; and (2) the Introduction to the previous section in this
issue has
additional material on the Territories as an irrevocable trust for
the Jewish people.)
The other articles in this section address the demonization of the
Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria and the current threat that the
Israeli Government will again suicidally move Jews from their homes
and businesses as they did in Gaza in 2005.
Though the information has been out there for a long time, the
first break in the elaborate and official pretense since Oslo that the
Palestinians were a legitimate people and had a legitimate claim was
the Levy Report (see the articles in this Section and in the previous
issue of Think-Israel), which asked one question: were the Jewish
settlements legitimate? Yes, they were and are. (How could they not be
when the entire region is legally and irrevocably Jewish?) The Israeli
administration, so fearless in rooting out anything the Jewish
settlers of Samaria and Judea do that the government can interpret as
illegal, has yet to look at the implications of the Levy report. But
the genie is out of the bottle. And it is in accordance with the
Israeli mind: there is no possibility of peace with an enemy who
wants to kill you. They are not interested in negotiating over a
few dunams of land.
It should also be pointed out that aside from the Jewish
settlements, as Steven Plaut emphasized, "there are no alternative
effective ways to prevent the conversion of the West Bank into
Hamastan" —which will happen should Israel be insane enough
to give the 'Palestinians' sovereignty over any part of the land
(see
here).
Think how different life would be in Israel today if the Jews were
still in Gaza, preventing the Arabs from terrorizing Israelis with
their missiles.
JEWS BUILDING SETTLEMENTS IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA IS LEGAL
by Salomon Benzimra
Salomon Benzimra summarizes the major points of the Levy
Report on the legality of the settlements. The Report addressed the
problems that stem from incorrectly characterizing Israel taking back
its own land as an "occupation." The Report notes that "No 'special
rights' were conferred to the Jewish people. The Supreme Council
recognized a pre-existing right by calling for the 'reconstitution' of
the Jewish National Home in Palestine — and not the 'creation'
— it being clearly understood that it would turn, in time, into a
sovereign Jewish State, pending an expected Jewish population
majority." This article is essential reading. It goes a long way to
correcting the falsehoods the Palestinian Arabs and their ignorant
friends in the media have been peddling.
So much of the world is able to ignore such minor contributions to the
dissension between Israel and her neighbors as Arab youth throwing
heavy rocks at people driving by or taking pot shots at them,
decapitating Jewish babies and stabbing nearby pedestrians. They don't
bother blaming the unrest on such minor inconveniences as missiles
lobbed from Gaza or explosives left unattended in pizza parlors. They
overlook the home factory production of poison gas and explosive belts in
toddler sizes. But
they do, as Daniel Greenfield reminds us, rightfully have concerns
about WMH — the Weapons of Mass Housing that Jewish settlers have
planted on some of the land they occupy. As Greenfield points out,
these dwellings are terrifying. They are the real danger to a peaceful
solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. President Obama recognizes
this. He might ignore trivia like "the gangs of paid rapists
assaulting women in Tahrir Square" or the "small mountain of African
corpses" in Sudan or Iran building nuclear bombs, but he has drawn the
line at the criminal activity exhibited by Jewish settlers, who
blatantly erect yet another housing unit in Jerusalem. He has
directed his cabinet ministers and countless agencies to give the
matter their full attention. We now understand retroactively why he
was given the Nobel Peace Price.
THE SCARY HEBRON SETTLERS OR OUR AFTERNOON AT THE FEDERMAN FARM
by Miroslav Marinov
Israel is renowned for its genuine generosity, even to its
enemies. It supplies the welfare kings and queens in the Territories
with power, even though workmen are repaid with potshots when they
need to repair the electric wires. But there is one group of Israeli
citizens the Israeli media and the Israeli left (as well as the
European media, the European left, the American media, and the
American left) can't tolerate: the Jewish residents of Samaria and
Judea and eastern Jerusalem, the so-called settlers. In a way, the
name is appropriate. They are the closest thing we have to the Jewish
settlers who came in the late 1800s on to redeem their homeland.
Miroslav Marinov wipes the tar off a "settler family" in Hebron and
let's us see the real people.
Rachel and Moshe Saperstein were among the 10,000 Gazan Jews that
became refugees in their own state when, in 2005, the Sharon
government expelled all the Jews living in Gaza in the bizarre belief
that this would cause their terrorist neighbors to make peace. Left to
their own devices and no longer monitored by the local Jews, the Arabs
of Gaza used the extra elbow room to train terrorists and manufacture
and/or assemble ever more sophisticated weaponry. It is bitter irony
that all Israel is suffering from missile attacks from Gaza and this
would never have happened if Israel hadn't kicked settler Jews like
the Sapersteins out of Gaza in the first place. Recently the IDF tried
again to contain the missiles attacks. Saperstein writes of needing to
seek shelter yet again during Hamas's intensified missile attacks.
Before Ariel Sharon threw all the Jews out of Gaza, it was possible to
voice all sorts of reasons to do so. But the consequences are beyond
dispute: expelling the Gaza Jews was one of the worst — if not the
worst — mistakes Israel ever made. It doesn't take arcane reasoning
to figure out why it was a mistake. The missiles Hamas lobs from Gaza
into Israel are a constant reminder of what happens when you turn over
land to a terrorist organization. They reward your generosity by
trying to kill you with greater enthusiasm and more deadly weaponry.
And they can do it closer to you than ever before. Give up Samaria and
Judea and they won't need long-range missiles to hit their targets.
They'll literally be right next door to them. Aside from giving
terrorists prime shooting positions, we might mention Israel has done
a lousy job of resettling the 10,000 internal refugees from the 2005
Gaza fiasco. How do they plan to pay for resettling another
100,000-250,000 more displaced Jews? The wonderment is that an article
such as this one by Giulio Meotti should be necessary.
THE MIDDLE EAST IS NOT A PEACEFUL NEIGHBORHOOD. MAJOR CHANGES ARE LOOMING
The bad news is that a region that was at the same time rigid
and unstable has becomes more unstable. And probably more
theologically rigid. The good news is it's hard to sustain the
insistence that everything that happens in the Middle East is Israel's
fault. But the American Administration, the EU and the UN sure are
trying. This set of articles describes the current instability and
looks at factors that foretell changes that will impact Israel.
THE MIDDLE EAST IS NOT A PEACEFUL NEIGHBORHOOD. MAJOR CHANGES ARE LOOMING
by Bernice Lipkin
Bernice Lipkin summarizes the current state of the Muslim states in
the Middle East and suggests some changes that seem likely. The
good news is that if Israel can cast off her conditioning that it is
up to her to make peace, she should fare well in the changed
conditions.
Israel forced its own citizens out of their homes in Gaza in 2005. The
theory was that giving Hamas control of all of Gaza would turn a bunch
of terrorists into sober statesmen. Instead, it made it easier for
Hamas to launch missiles at Israelis at closer range. Israel finally
invaded Gaza in 2009 to stop the missiles. After ignoring Hamas'
attacks for years, the "world" took notice, and immediately pressured
Israel into leaving Gaza. Israel left. Hamas began firing missiles into
Israel again. It's November 2012 and Israel is again attempting to
stop the rocket attacks from Gaza by hitting specific targets, but
they didn't launch a ground attack. George Jochnowitz writes about
the recent request by Hamas for a cease fire. He argues that Hamas
actually was trying to tease Israel into attacking. He points out that
operationally the Arabs have since done everything since 1947 to avoid
having a state. What they have done with great enthusiasm is act out
their hatred of the Jews. It's not at all clear why the Jews continue
to pursue the fantasy that giving the Arabs a state in Israel's
heartland will induce peace.
Barry Rubin declines (in the grammatical and in the political sense)
Thomas Friedman's proposition that everybody wants/needs/should
have democracy and the proper way to determine whether Egypt under
the Muslim Brotherhood (which the Egyptians enthusiastically voted
into office) has become a democracy is to wait a couple of decades and
then see how many members of minority groups are in political and
governmental power. This is enclosed within an inappropriate
either-or ish context: either Egypt will go democratic a
la India or non-democratic as did Pakistan. It must be nice to
have such a simple mind. Considering how often Friedman has been way
off the mark over the years, I don't blame him for giving his
prediction a hefty two decades to ripen before it is tested for
accuracy. Or, as is more likely, until people have forgotten all about it as
well as his next batches of half-baked absurdities.
It's either an ironic curiosity or an indicator of the power of the
politicized media that the faux people, the "Palestinians," with their
invented history, has everyone demanding they be handed a state cut
out of Israel's tiny domain, while the Kurds, a legitimate people with
their own language, history and traditions, wanting only to live in
their own state instead of being split among three large Arab
states, have received little sympathy from the "world." Jonathan Spyer
writes of the complicated geo-political situation, now that the
current civil war in Syria has given the Kurds the opportunity to gain
control of a swath of land in Syria bordering the autonomous Kurdish
region in Iraq.
Every week, Michael Ordman writes a column about new medical
innovations or technological developments or how Israel is sharing its
discoveries and inventions. This is one such column, chosen at random.
We are conditioned to believe we are hostage to the Saudis and other
Arab countries to provide the fuel we need to run our factories,
businesses, cars and homes because, supposedly, it has become harder
and harder to find and develop oil reserves. But as Andrew McKillop
explains, the opposite is true. Massive new sources of hydrocarbons
have been discovered. For example, "Israel has world class reserves of
natural gas with likely or probable oil condensate supply becoming
available..." New methods of extraction are also increasing the
supply. And there's been a significant "decline of global energy
demand". So we should be looking at more energy at lower prices. What
hasn't adjusted is the outlook of the oil and gas companies and
producers. Or the media. I would add that the thinking of the
politicians also needs a realignment with reality. Governments
salivating at how much money they'd rake in by taxing the breathe we
exhale need to stop focusing on a man-made climate holocaust, which
even politicized scientists are starting to admit isn't going to
happen. Prez Obama apparently is still planning to reduce the gas our
cars use by expensive duds: increasing prices at the pump, making the
extracting of coal financially punitive, working with renewables before
all the production problems are ironed out or even known,
manufacturing klutzy and expensive battery-run cars and keeping the
huge reserves we have here in America locked. Mckillup points out that
"for Israel, the mega change in global energy that is continually
advancing has changed the 'strategic resource thesis' for
Israel-Middle East relations."
In the context of a review of books on the future of Israel and
Western civilization, Ron Lipsman contrasts the notion of a universal
world order (controlled by a small aristocracy) that is the model
favored in Europe versus the ethnic Nation-State that Israel so
impressively embodies. "[T]he tiny outpost of Western Civilization
known as Israel" is under ideological attack because of its
insistence on being an independent state and is, indeed, a very
particularistic and unique entity, whose abilities and enterprise the
West needs if it is going to survive. As Lipsman puts it: "Western
Civilization is in a battle for survival — a contest in which it
doesn't seem even to recognize that it is a combatant. Only Israel is
aware of the contest — because its very survival is constantly
and manifestly at stake." He also makes clear that Israel's current
strategy of lurching from crisis to crisis, reacting minimally rather
than from a coherent plan, is untenable. He summarizes some dismal
projections of the future of the sort that Israel will need to
counter by developing innovative and appropriate strategies.
SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSES OF THE ARAB/MUSLIM CHARACTER
The section presents possible explanations for Arab/Muslim hatred
and feelings of superiority, despite few real-world accomplishments
other than waging unceasing war and developing innovative ways to
slaughter people. The last of the set examines implications of an
attitude that sees itself as immutable and not subject to change.
We've seen in places as different as Great Britain and India that when
there is a critical mass of Muslims in the host country, Muslims are
unlikely to try to be good citizens. They are more likely to insist
the host culture modify its way of life to conform to Islamic culture
and law.
HAMAS HOSTILITY TOWARDS ISRAEL — A PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF WHY IT ENDURES
by Babs Barron
The psychologist, George Kelly, developed a personality theory that
spoke of how an individual construed his "world" and his own place in it.
One aspect of the theory was a response that refused to admit the
construction was faulty. Instead, like Procrustes in the Greek myth who
chopped or stretched people to fit his bed, an individual may cut or
stretch facts to fit his ideational system rather than admit he was wrong.
Babs Barron applies the theory to how Hamas can't seem to change its
ways, even when they bring poor results.
Dafna Yee discusses some interesting parallels between
terrorism — Israel accepts battering by the local Arabs —
and domestic violence, specifically the behavior of the battered woman
and her abusive partner. Both have in common the cycles of escalated
violence punctuated by inadequate reactions by the victim. Neither
type of abusive behavior can be stopped by negotiations or appeasement
or working harder for peace. Domestic violence is stopped by a strong
authoritative external source. Terrorism is stopped by sufficient
counter attack to make the terrorists understand their acts have
consequences that will damage them.
Wafa Sultan was brought up as a Muslim and trained as a psychiatrist.
As an adult, she rejected Islam and is one of the few who had dared to
speak and write openly of what's wrong with Islam. Elisabeth Eaves
writes about Sultan's newest book which is a psychological analysis of
Islam. Out of a deep knowledge of the preachings and practices of
Islam, Sultan concludes, "Islam is rotten in its very foundations and
a danger wherever it spreads." The article provides an unexpected
insight into the thinking of a Westerner with much less experience of
Islam. Eaves, describing herself as an optimist, opines that Muslims
are capable of reconstructing their present image of their God, whose
attributions include being a hater, a humiliator and a harmer.
Actually, pious Muslims are committed to modeling themselves on the
words and deeds of that most perfect of men, Muhammad.
This precludes making structural modifications in the religion.
CAN A MUSLIM BE A GOOD CITIZEN IN A NON-MUSLIM COUNTRY?
by Babu Suseelan
Babu Seseelan writes about the ideological disparity between Islam and
Western civilization. Ordinarily, when moving to another culture, the
immigrant expects to modify his behavioral practices sufficiently to
live in peace with the dominant culture. However, Islam claims to be
immutable. It doesn't conform to other ideologies. So the question is:
can a Muslim be a good citizen outside of a Muslim country?
The Council On American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was founded in
1994-5 by Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad, who previously had worked for the
Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP). IAP was itself co-founded by
Mousa Abu Marzook, a top leader of Hamas, and Sami al-Arian. Ztruth
(see here)
characterizes al-Arian as "a convicted terror supporter whom CAIR
supports to this day." IAP was described in U.S. vs. Sabri as an overt
arm of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which launched Hamas. So the
genealogy is: MB->Hamas->IAP->CAIR. CAIR came into prominence after
9/11. Ibrahim Hopper, its spokesman, claimed to be speaking for 6-7
million Muslims. A well-researched
study by Tom Smith puts the best estimate of the Muslim population
at around 1,886,000.
(Read
this.)
CAIR purports to speak for the Muslim Community. I hope that's not
the case. Its two-faced pronouncements are just what you'd expect
from a group that lives by Sharia and will do whatever it takes to
impose it on everyone. They are good at soft-soaping Jewish and
Christian religious leaders but they are equally good at incitement.
They villified a non-conformist Muslim author to the point that Muslim
clerics called for the man's death. (See the excellent article by
Khalid Duran
here.) Some of its leaders have been convicted of terrorism and/or
aiding terrorists. Yet it indignantly attacks accurate reports of its
activities as islamophobic. When Rifqa Bary, born Muslim, became a
Christian, she fled from her family in fear for her life, afraid of
becoming yet another statistic in the growing number of honor
killings in the West. Predictably, CAIR sided with her family
(See
here).
CAIR makes time for small matters as well as the big ones. They
may ignore the hate systematically taught in mosque schools but they
certainly keep an eye on how Muhammad is portrayed in other school
systems. CAIR-CAN, The Canadian CAIR, has demanded a Jewish school
remove a junior high school textbook titled "2000 Years of Jewish
History: From the Destruction of the Second Bais Hamikdash Until the
Twentieth Century," that accurately portrays Muhammad as a Jew
hater. As the BlazingCatFur website put it, CAIR-CAN demanded "the
Jewish school submit to Sharia law for insulting Islam's false
pedophile prophet Muhammad."
(See
here.) In a Broward County public school library, they spied a
copy of "Islam and Terrorism," by Mark A. Gabriel. CAIR Florida forced
an investigation by the School Board and sent Muslim children to spy
on the local libraries, looking for Gabriel's book or similar books.
Yet with all the work these overworked thought police have, they make
time to socialize with government politicos. Robert Spencer reported
on a fundraiser attended by Islamist groups and terrorist-affiliates
such as Nihad Awad that featured Nancy Pelosi.
(See
here.)
In this section, we talk about two major stealth jihad operations
by CAIR, whose anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism have long been out
in the open but are mostly ignored, thanks to CAIR's manipulation of
politically-powerful patrons.
Known to be a Muslim Brotherhood (MB) front and open about their
support of Hamas and Hezbollah, they have taken to giving advice to
the Republican Party on outreach to Muslims.
(see here). Even worse, the Obama administration has invited
members of the MB to the White House, indirectly endowing CAIR with
respectability. The Administration's contacts with CAIR are not just
third-party. There is a paper trail of visits by members of CAIR to
the White House. CAIR has also aggressively sought to negate the
Constitution. But perhaps CAIR's promotion of Sharia law will soon
become better-known. They have been sued for fraud and for covering
up the fraud; the case is due to come to trial soon.
As this introduction was being written, CAIR has endorsed Obama's
choice for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel. As Marc J. Fink noted
wryly, "It's not in America's national security interest to have a
Defense Secretary who regularly receives praise from an organization
named an unindicted co-conspirator to fund the terrorist group Hamas
in America's largest terrorism financing case; an organization
officially banned from cooperation with the FBI and cited as an agent
of the Muslim Brotherhood in America." (16Dec12, Islamist Watch) For
more material about Islamists, see Frank Gaffney's Course in 10
parts on the Muslim Brotherhood at
http://muslimbrotherhoodinamerica.com/.
Steve Emerson and John Rossomando write a detailed and documented
account of the hundreds of visits by known radical Islamists including
CAIR personnel "to the Obama White House, meeting with top
administration officials." "[M]any of these visitors belong to groups
[such as CAIR] serving as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and
other Islamic militant organizations." Imagine! Resurgent Islam
proclaims it is dedicated to warring against the West and prominent
members of their organizations are welcome visitors to the White
House. To understand how bizarre this is, substitute German
Nazis for Islamist organizations and
Roosevelt's White House for Obama's White House. Yet the
media say nothing and the public slumbers. Write a book with this
weird a plot? Naw. Too improbable. It would never sell.
In this essay, Clare Lopez tells us how CAIR has gone after the
Constitution of the United States of America for interfering with
their practice of Sharia law. The Michigan state legislature proposed
a bill stating that "no foreign law may take precedence over American
law or Michigan state law in a Michigan court room." It mentions no
foreign law specifically but CAIR objected and has lobbied against it.
Lopez points out that "[t]he reason the Muslim Brotherhood and all
other sharia-adherent Muslims cannot accept that sharia provisions
that conflict with U.S. law be superseded by Constitutional law in
American courts is precisely the notion that Islamic law must dominate
all other laws on earth in every respect." She notes "there are also
multiple elements of sharia that are utterly antithetical to the U.S.
Constitution and Declaration of Independence," including sharia's
barbaric mutilations, stonings, lashings and its treatment of
homosexuals and women.
MASSIVE FRAUD, COVER-UP BY CAIR EXPOSED IN FEDERAL LAWSUIT
by Christopher Collins
CAIR is being sued for "fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and
intentional infliction of emotional distress" inflicted on several
individuals. The brief describes CAIR as "a criminal organization that
deceptively holds itself out to the public as the nation's largest
Muslim-American civil rights organization." The suit is in behalf of
"numerous client-victims who had looked to CAIR for legal assistance,
yet the CAIR 'attorney' allegedly handling their cases was in fact not
an attorney." Christopher Collins describes the background for the
suit and details the charges of fraud and CAIR's cover-up of the
fraud. For additional information, there is a Memo of brief
here. and a Facts brief
here.
Islamic preachers use interfaith Jewish and Christian clerics as
Trojan horses to create an environment they expect will eventually be
controlled by the Muslims. They have different strokes for different
folks. Many Jewish interfaithers are so charmed by the notion they are
engaging in dialogue, they ignore evidence they are being played for
fools. On many campuses Jewish students in Hillel willingly help the
Muslims promote sharia, which, if adopted, would reduce these students
to dhimmi status (See
e.g.,
here.) It is perhaps appropriately iconic that when the Muslim
'students' at SFSU in 2002 rose up as a major group of campus bullies,
fully equipped with Jews-are-monsters posters and a set of
procedures on how to harass and repress the Jewish students and
intimidate the administration, one of their first acts was to attack
Jewish students at Hillel who were demonstrating for peace.
Muslim interactions with Christians is much more elaborate. Except
for the minor detail that Muslims slaughter Christian Copts in Egypt
and Christian blacks in Africa, Muslims, at least superficially,
appear to accept Christianity in ways they don't accept Judaism. They
certainly don't constantly inform the world they are going to blow up
some Christian nation just as soon as they have the nuclear means to
do so. In return, guided by Christian Arabs who blame the Jews
for the suffering of Middle Eastern Christians, mainstream Protestant
church leaders in America and Europe encourage their members to make
friends with the Muslims and to avoid commerce and contact with the
Jewish state. While Muslim clerics deny Jews have a history in what
they call Palestine, they claim they share Jesus with Christianity.
Actually they see him as subsidiary to Mohammad in a revamped
narrative where his role is to promote Islam. More recently their
tactics to stem Christian appreciation that Christianity's roots are
in Judaism have taken a turn to the dark side. Using the argument that
the Jews are oppressing the Palestinians, the Arabs and their
Christian supporters encourage the Christian laity to makes Jew-hate a
virtue. Once that is established, they can operate on an emotional
level, where rational argument has no place: The Jews killed Christ
and they continue to kill Christ, now reincarnated in the bodies of
the suffering Palestinians. Considering that both Jews and Christians
are under threat of annihilation by Muslim Arabs, it is a bizarre fact
that the Christian Churches in the Middle East are as rabidly
anti-Jewish as are the Muslims. Dhimmi Christian leaders adhere to the
same hatred of the Jews as do their Muslim masters, Arab Christian
clerics being an egregious example.
In this well-documented article, Hillel Zaremba describes how
Islamists including CAIR have exploited naive interfaith groups, who
don't seem to care whether these Muslim organizations actually
practice, or even preach, tolerance for other religions. Many
Christian and Jewish groups have openly ignored the evidence that
groups like CAIR are not practitioners of interfaith tolerance; quite
the opposite, they have only contempt for other religions. These
Islamic groups are dedicated to supporting terrorists who prey on
Christians and Jews and fundamentalists seeking to make Islam the
religion uber alles. It's not clear that the legitimate
interfaith groups understand that by their partnering with these
Islamists, they are implicitly certifying that the Islamists are reputable.
"In an increasingly one-sided sense of tolerance, [the interfaith
groups are] embracing the very haters they would otherwise oppose."
THE PALESTINIAN HOLY TRINITY: JESUS, ARAFAT AND ABBAS
by Tazpit News Agency
Since Arafat — and probably before that — Arab spokesmen
have taken to denying Jews have any historic connection with
Jerusalem, especially the Temple Mount. Based on this reasoning, they
have no problem calling selected members of previous generations of
Israeli Jews Palestinians. Jesus, for example. Or his Mum. As
asserted by noted Arab historians such as Hanon Ashrawi and Mahmoud
Abbas (who, for his Ph.D., also proved the Holocaust never happened),
statements that Jews never worshipped in Jerusalem show up on Western
TV, newspapers and blogs. While they might flunk as historians, it is
possible the Arabs have finally made some contribution to humanity:
they have given us an idiot-proof test for identifying idiots: i.e.,
it's anyone who believes them.
Paul Murphy writes on InterFaith Muslims. They claim that Mohammad
himself practiced non-proselytising interFaith dialogue, but Murphy
points out why this is unlikely. Similarly, Muslims claim to "share
Jesus", but actually they see him as subsidiary to Mohammad in a
revamped narrative where his role is to promote Islam. Far from
practicing tolerance, the InterFaith Muslims believe Islam has
superseded Judaism and Christianity and, therefore, is the only valid
religion.
Bruce Bawer describes the plethora of organizations, mostly Christian,
that are dedicated "to providing various types of aid, comfort,
counsel, and support to the Palestinian people" as constituents of the
anti-Israel peace industry. They claim to be working for peace among
the different religions in the Middle East but only the Arabs directly
receive benefits. Terms such as "Respect and
reconciliation, peace and empowerment, hope and
healing, freedom and dignity" figure large in their
descriptions of themselves. Many claim to hold non-violence in high
regard, though many others are openly, even viciously, anti-Jewish,
portraying Israel as persecuting the Christ-like Palestinians, whose
behavior is never at fault. They state correctly that many Palestinian
Christians are leaving the Territories, implying that this is Israel's
fault and that Christian flight is unique to that region. They ignore
that Christians living in Muslim countries around the global suffer
persecution and are fleeing before they are murdered.
THE CHRIST-KILLER MOTIF HAS RETURNED TO THE MAINLINE CHURCHES
by Paul Merkley
In this essay, Paul Merkley writes how Arab Christians preaching
Ecumenical Liberation Theology have persuaded mainline Protestant
church leaders to ignore history, geography and current events and
wholeheartedly support the Muslim Arab assertion that Israel is
occupying Palestinian land and persecuting the Palestinian people.
Starting with various projects to isolate Israel by boycotting her
goods, the churches have advanced to where they actively demonize
Israel and Zionism. They openly promote Jew-hate on a deep emotional
level by resurrecting the imagery of the Jew as Christ-Killer. In the
modern version, Israel is the Christ-killer, slaughtering those
blameless innocents, the Palestinian people.
THE CARNAGE OF CHRISTIANS IN 'SCHEDULE 2' COUNTRIES
by Shoshana Bryen
The Arab Spring may not have blossomed into freedom and democracy but
it has changed the rules of engagement between Muslims and
Christians in Arab countries that exchanged rule by dictator for
rule by ideologues with a rigid adherence to sharia. Christians, who
had adapted to dhimmi life in a Muslim country over the centuries, are
under new threats to their way of life. Shoshana Bryen
presents a novel analysis why some countries can kill wholesale
without much international condemnation and others are condemned for
killing a single human shield.
This section points to some major players encouraging an
anti-Israel attitude in the public. The Obama Administration has overtly
been attempting to discredit and humiliate Israel, while it is
supportive of conditions that promote Muslim infiltration in this
country and Islamist takeover in the Middle East. Obama's scorn of
Netanyahu set the tone for an attitude that is occasionally quiescent
but has never changed. Much of the media have been anti-Israel for
decades and change is unlikely, particularly among the larger
newspapers. Some think-tanks such as George Soros's CAP promote the
Muslim Brotherhood or work to criminalize criticism of Islam, so it
not surprising they are anti-Semitic. But there are think-tanks and
academics here and in Israel that are just as virulent. It is hard for
organizations whose business it is to produce papers or lectures for
the public to hide their anti-Israel sentiments. It is less obvious
but just as present in respected organizations such as the
International Red Cross.
WHERE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR GUTMAN HAS GONE WRONG: MUSLIM ANTI-SEMITISM IS NOT ISRAEL'S FAULT
by Omri Ceren
It's been a year since Scott Johnson, in the December 4, 2011 issue of
Act for America Houston wrote that "Barack Obama's animus
against Israel has been manifest in many ways from the first days of
the administration. The administration views Israel as a thorn in its
side and an obstacle to better relations with the Arab and Muslim
regimes of the Middle East." In this essay, Omri Ceren writes of
a specific illuminating example: the speech by Obama's Ambassador
to Belgium blaming the Jews for Muslim Anti-Semitism. Gutman's
interpretation of Muslim anti-Semitism is in line with the
Administration blaming Israel for Arab animosity. Given the
Administration's evident inability to correctly gauge what's going on
in the Middle East, it is not surprising the Obama policy in the
Middle East has been, and continues to be, a bust.
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS (ICRC) AND 'THE OCCUPIED
TERRITORIES'
by Moshe Dann
Moshe Dann provides us with an excellent analysis of the ICRC's war
against Israel. Because of the respect it has earned by its work in
other parts of the world, its conclusions on what is happening in
Israel and the Territories has been accepted as authoritative. It has
dishonestly and in full knowledge of its actual meaning "turned Geneva
Convention IV — which was intended to ensure the protection of
civilians threatened by war and other conflicts — into a
political sledgehammer against Israel." Perhaps someday we will know
why they do this and who in the ICRC took up the cause of demonizing
Israel.
MEDIA BIAS AND THE EROSION OF FIRST AMENDMENT IDEALS
by Matthew M. Hausman
Matthew M. Hausman writes about the obvious but mostly unspoken
problem that the media have largely been co-opted by the Obama
administration and have abdicated responsibility for alarming the
public when the government starts trying to infringe on our freedom
and constitutional rights. As Hausman says, this occurs when
"...opinion is stated as fact or when information at odds with the
publisher's views is distorted or suppressed." The media act upon
"ideological loyalties that undercut their independence and
neutrality." During
the 2012 presidential election, it "downplayed Mr. Obama's dismal
economic policies, ignored his crippling divisiveness, glossed over
his apologetic treatment of Islamists, and excused, misreported or
altogether avoided commenting on his myriad foreign policy blunders.
The failure to critically probe the terrorist attack on the American
consulate in Benghazi, Libya offered but one of the most glaring
examples of the media's bias — although by no means the only one." I
wonder how much the self-corruption of the mainstream media correlates
with the increased degree to which the public relies on TV headlines
for a quickie take on what's happening and on particular blogs and
network groups for analyses of what the events mean.
MOLAD: THE EMBARRASSING DEBUT OF A NEW ISRAELI THINK TANK
by Petra Marquardt–Bigman
Israel and America have their share of organizations that pose as
pro-Israel but aren't. J Street and the American and Israeli branches
of Peace Now are but two of the more notorious of these. Petra
Marquardt-Bigman writes of a new one, Molad, an Israeli think tank
determined to provide "quality content" to Israel's intellectual
discourse. Unlike most every one else that has examined Israel's
belated and inadequate responses to damaging media stories, Molad
asserts Israel's hasbara is fine. Nor is the problem the world
press, so fair-minded, so neutral. It's Israel's political policy that
is at fault. Israel simply isn't trying hard enough to make a peace
treaty attractive enough to the po' Palestinians. Clearly, should the
Jews offer to vacate Israel, they'd have a fighting chance at an
agreement. No matter how idiotically generous previous Israel's Prime
Ministers have been, anything else – and this seems to be the only
conclusion we can draw from Molad's arguments – just won't do.
SYLVAIN CYPEL ON BENNY MORRIS'S ABOUT-TURN ORIENTALIST ABOUT-TURN ON ISRAEL
by Paul Austin Murphy
It is a fact that for many years Benny Morris was a revisionist
historian, twisting Israeli history to fit a Marxist interpretation
that rejects the State of Israel and Zionism. But then Morris
apparently rethought what was happening, and took a crack at being a
real scholar, a historian who let events speak for themselves. As Paul
Murphy tells us, it was at that point that the Leftist-Marxist
revisionist historians denounced Morris, declaring that politics had
corrupted his work. In this essay, Murphy examines the writings of
Sylvain Cypel, who sees racism as the root evil that "explains"
why imperialistic colonists dehumanize the colonised. The early
Zionists, returning to their homeland to redeem their land,
must have been racists. This is completely non-descriptive of
the idealistic Jews of the early aliyahs who practiced self-reliance,
not colonialism. But why let facts interfere? As Murphy observes, the
Orientalists see the Arab, black or Muslim as the noble savage and the
Westerner as his enslaver. By their definition, an Arab or Black can't
be a racist; only a westerner can. Sound familiar? Meantime, we can
judge how clear-eyed Morris has become by this: "There is a deep
problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. A world in
which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West,
in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien...
Revenge plays a central role in the Arab tribal culture...."
Several Arab countries have over the years identified unusual Mossad
agents, spies which we stupid Westerners would have taken for ordinary
birds equipped with leg bands so Israeli scientists could study
migratory patterns. But the keen Arabs captured the raptors and knew
what they were immediately. The last of this set of essays is a recent
deliberate hoax, where a photo of a family killed in Syria was
recycled, this time the caption claimed it was the Israelis who'd
killed them and this time the venue was Gaza. Faking photos have
become something of an Arab specialty. Israel was immediately blamed
for killing the 12-year old Mohammed al-Dura, and it took a long time
before it was determined the IDF bullets would have to have traveled a
circular path to strike anywhere near him. On the other hand, the
faked Qana massacre was exposed almost instantly by alert bloggers
(See
here.)
Some photographers have unique styles, making it easy to spot their
fakes. William Jacobson observed that Abid Katib's shoe fetish gave
him away (See
here.) The New York Times photographer, Tyler Hicks, liked to
strew red rose petals on his posed shots of death and destruction in
Lebanon (See
here.) A video moderated by Shraga Simmons of some previous Arab
faked photos or mislabeled photos is available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HBlAf9g6dcb.
Jeff Dunetz recounts the sad fate of some unusual Mossad agents caught
spying in Arab states. Sudan recently captured a Mossad agent that was
a vulture. We're not talking about his eating habits; it was
literally, a vulture. In 2011, the Saudis captured a Mossadi vulture,
pictured
here. This latest capture recalls the shark Egypt claimed was
planted in Egyptian waters by Mossad back in 2010 to scare away
tourists. And the Saudis captured one in 2011. Its identification was
certain; he was wearing a leg band that read "Tel Aviv University."
Enough said.
PHOTOS OF SYRIAN MASSACRES RECYCLED AS GAZA ATROCITIES
by Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency
Anav Silverman presents another case of an Arab photo hoax, where a
photo of a family killed in the Syrian civil war is described as a
family killed in Gaza. By Jews, of course. Why is it, when faked
photography and situational hoaxes are so often done by Arabs, that
supposedly reliable news agencies fall for them time and again? (See
also the video of some previous Arab faked photos or mislabeled photos at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HBlAf9g6dcby, moderated by Shraga
Simmons.)
PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S SECRETARY OF STATE DESCRIBES JERUSALEM IN 1871
by Lenny Ben-David
After the Civil War, Lincoln's Secretary-of-State, William H. Seward,
took a world tour. In 1871, he "visited Jerusalem where he described
the population, visited the 'Wailing Wall,' even participated in
Friday night services, apparently at the Hurva synagogue." In this
article, Lenny Ben-Davis presents some excerpts describing the visit
from the book Seward wrote about his travels.
This essay was submitted by Jack Bloom. It is a letter written by
his brother Solomon, an American who was in the Haganah in Israel in
1948 and fought in the War of Independence. Some of Solomon's fellow
group of soldiers were among the 35 soldiers of the Haganah that were
ambushed in the Judean Hills, while on their way to save Ramat Rachel,
which was under Arab siege. None returned.
25 YEARS AGO ON THE MALL: SPEAKOUT FOR SOVIET JEWRY
by Judith Lash Balint
Judy Balint remembers her coming to Washington 25 years ago as one
of many who came to speak for the Jews in the Soviet Union, who were
not allowed to speak out for freedom. The demonstrators demanded that
Soviet Jews who wished to leave the Soviet Union be allowed to do so
and those Jews who wanted to stay be allowed to practice Judaism
unhindered. It was towards the end of an era when so many Jewish
leaders worked for civil rights for others — they were among the
most dedicated and effective workers for civil rights for blacks
— but ignored the repression of their own people in the Soviet
Union. But it was also a time that so many ordinary American Jews
dedicated themselves to work for freedom for the Jews in the Soviet
Union.
The Blog-Ed pages for November and December are not available at this time.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
Techniques used to spin an event; i.e., to apply a slant or
particular emphasis to information, with intent to deceive or minimize
the import of the event. Techniques used in damage control.
Techniques include:
Appearing to report the news while actually ignoring major facts
Emphasizing some fact that is not that important but
leads away from embarrassing data
Demolishing a red herring and declaring there's no more
to say on the subject
Reframing the issue. Also known as skipping to the next card
on the teleprompter
Trivializing the real and the actual
Using a technicality as a smoke screen
Asserting some irrelevant generality that sounds profound
Becoming indignant rather than responsive. "Sir, you are
impugning my honor."
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: FACTS WE KNOW ABOUT THE 9/11 2012 BENGHAZI MASSACRE
A. Was it a riot due to Muslim anger at a movie
called the Innocence of Muslims?
This is actually two questions.
Was it a riot? No, it was a terrorist raid.
Why is the Obama Administration directly implicated? The
riot story was certainly not concocted by the terrorists. The
Administration started calling it a riot almost immediately. The
Administrations knew two hours into the attack that it was
unmistakeably a terrorist raid, yet for almost two weeks, they
continued to mislead the public by calling it a spontaneous riot.
Was it due to anger about a movie about Muhammad? No. We aren't sure why the
terrorists attacked. Possible motives that have factual basis are:
to kidnap the Ambassador and swap him for the Blind Sheikh, who is sitting in a U.S. prison
the local band of terrorists, Ansar al-Sharia, were celebrating the first 9/11
Ambassador Christopher Stevens was engaged in gathering up weaponry left loose after Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi was killed. The local terrorists have a competing interest in obtaining and keeping the weaponry. This sounds incredible but actually has the most credibility.
Why is the Obama Administration directly implicated? Other
such weapons from Gaddafi's warehouses have shown up in Sinai, Mali
and Syria. It suggests that after the massacre the Administration has
tried to prevent it from becoming more widely known that the U.S. is
supplying weaponry to the rebel groups fighting Syrian President
Assad. Seasoned Al-Qaeda members are a major rebel asset. The
Administration can not be seen to be associated with al-Qaeda.
B. Did officials in the Obama administration
prevent people going to aid fellow Americans in danger?
This also breaks into two separate issues.
Did the Administration refuse to allow trained fighters located
within a mile to go help the Americans rebuff a terrorist attack.
The former Naval SEALS who volunteered to go to the rescue of the
Americans under siege were told to stand down. They went anyways — against orders.
Did the Administration deny pleas from the Americans for help?
Yes.
Why is the Obama Administration directly implicated. We know
Ambassador Stevens and others had warned that security arrangements in
Libya were inadequate. They were allowed to deteriorate further. We
know the White House knew within an hour that the worst case scenario
had come about and American officials were in danger and desperately
needed help. No one other than a very high echelon official could have
sent help or withheld help. We know none was sent, despite pleas from
the besieged Americans. We know trained fighters were on the ready,
waiting for the President to push the GO button. He went to bed,
instead. By doing nothing, he denied help to a group of Americans, a
group that included an American Ambassador.
Unlike Watergate, this isn't a question of what did the President
know and when did he know it. Ordinary protocols and procedures would
ensure that the President knew within the hour that the Americans were
under siege and within two hours that terrorists had attacked with
sophisticated weaponry. The questions are: Who let the massacre run
its course? And why?
Because of the nature of the events, the cast of possible culprits
is small: the only ones with the authority to order the appropriate
personnel either to stand-down or to set in motion the actions
required to send help are Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA David
Petraeus, and the White House, primarily President Barack Obama and
possibly his Grey Eminence, Valerie Jarrett. For some actions, only
the President could initiate them.
The miracle of the century is that the Obama Administration has
managed by smudging the details, distracting the public and blurring
the issue to keep the story of the century out of public
consciousness. A personal anecdote: after voting, I went over to the
table where the Democratic and Republican representatives were handing
out literature. I asked, "People comment about Benghazi?" The
Republican rep mumbled she's heard something about it. The
Democratic party rep said in a puzzled manner, "Ben who?" This article
reviews some of the information we have available a month after
the Benghazi massacre.
ARMS FLOW TO SYRIA MAY BE BEHIND BENGHAZI COVER-UP
by Clare Lopez
Clare Lopez writes of what is well-known to the counter terrorist
community:
the Obama Administration has been furtively supplying the Syrian
rebels with armaments coming from Gaddafi's Libyan store houses.
Unfortunately for us, the
romanticized rebels include a sizable group of al-Qaeda fighters and
are backed by the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia, who are intent
on creating sharia-based governments throughout the Middle East.
In what appears to be a repeat of our alliances in taking down Colonel
Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the Obama Administration, openly siding
with the Syrian rebels, is also supplying them with weaponry. It is an
open secret that seasoned Al-Qaeda fighters are among the star troops
of the "rebellion" against Bashar Assad.
In this article, Aaron Klein writes about American recruitment of
Jihadists to fight Assad. Meantime, while we act to topple nasty
dictators, we ignore that Iran continues to develop nuclear weaponry,
which will trump all our good works in making Syria safe for
a regressive fundamentalist government.
The reader who sent us this article wrote this about
it: "This is the first explanation I've seen that really fits all the details.
It makes no sense that the administration would not jump to the rescue in
case of a mob action OR EVEN a terrorist attack. What's to lose? It would
have been killing Bin Laden all over again. "Yeah there were some remnants
of al Qaeda but we dealt with them!"
However if the administration recognized that this attack was:
(1.) Of unknown size and composition, probably (or known to be) larger than it
appeared and including anti-aircraft weapons; and,
(2.) A very long thread pulled out of the sweater of their illegal (because
not approved by Congressional oversight committees) covert operation.
And then doing nothing regardless of consequences on the ground AND
displaying total disarray afterward, make perfect sense.
Hillary's having taken the blame for the poor 'consulate' (it was actually a
CIA facility) security is just falling on her own sword to protect the boss.
"Talk about a foreign policy reset! Wandering around the world
destabilizing governments we don't like for one reason or another AND
messing with Russia's national interests is an indescribably bad idea, close
to guaranteed to come back at us in U.S. misery within a few years. I
don't think Doug Hagmann's closing statement is too strong.
At a deeper (yes, deeper than WW III!) level what we see is our president's
red line for his policy actions: 'Whatever I think I can get away with.'
If he should be reelected — you can still find thoughtful opinions going
both ways — then he will be impeached. Possibly immediately as a result
of this catastrophic scandal, although much will depend on whether the media
continue to bury it. But if not immediately, then later on, probably
following some domestic calamity when he goes far enough to scare courage
into even Congress."
Andrew Bostom writes about Ansar al-Sharia, the terrorist gang
that stormed the American compound in Benghazi and killed four
Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Bostom points out
that the group is one of many groups — the Saudis, the Muslim
Brotherhood, the many fundamentalists engaged in terror — that are
working for a Salafist takeover of all the countries in the Middle
East. What is puzzling is why — as in Egypt and Libya — are we
helping to create yet another regime fully devoted to brutal and
totalitarian pre-medieval Sharia law? It may be different than a
sort-of secular dictator, but it aims at re-establishing a Caliphate,
not a democracy.
As Raymond Ibrahim pointed out months ago, "Egypt's longtime
banned Muslim Brotherhood — the parent organization of nearly every
subsequent Islamist movement, including al-Qaeda — has just won the
nation's presidency, in the name of its candidate, Muhammad Morsi.
That apathy reigns in the international community, when once such news
would have been deemed devastating, is due to the successful efforts
of Muslim apologists and subversive agents in the West who portray the
Brotherhood as "moderate Islamists" — irrespective that such a
formulation is oxymoronic, since to be 'Islamist,' to be a supporter
of draconian Sharia, is by definition to be immoderate. Obama
administration officials naturally took it a step further, portraying
the Brotherhood as 'largely secular' and 'pluralistic.'"
The Brotherhood in the person of Muhammad Morsi has won the
presidency of Egypt and much of its parliamentary seats while
neutering the military leadership — it still has a cut of the spoils
but is without the power to set policy for the country. The Brotherhood snatched
some of the classiest weaponry from Libya and if the terror fiefdoms ever
coalesce in that under-structured place, they'll probably be in
charge. With the active cooperation of Prez Obama, they will take over
Syria when Bashar Assad calls it quits, and they have their eye on
Jordan. True, there are some lumps in the custard — the Saudis are
for the same objectives as the MB and work with them, but aren't fond
of the MB; also, some of the terror fiefdoms in Libya aren't keen
about relinquishing power to the MB. But, tut, tut. The MB and their
buddy Obama are moving right along.
The Brotherhood is beginning to show that its relationship to Obama is like that of its kinship to the
Saudis: they work together, but the MB has more push, more
organization, more planning ability. They seriously want sharia law, a
Caliphate, and the Blind Sheikh responsible for the first attack on the
Trade Center released. And it's a 24/7 mission. No golf games for
them.
The media may echo Obama's claim that the MB are friendly
secular sheep; but perhaps even Obama should be wary of the MB's
wolfish teeth and claws. Morsi the so-called moderate has made it an early task
to subjugate the Christian Copts even more than they are now. He
dreams of forcibly converting them all to the religion of peace:
Islam. It's not an empty threat, considering that many of the mainstream
Western churches are too busy castigating Israel for not being
subservient to the local Palestinian Arabs to worry about the fate of
Christians in the Middle East. Nor does the MB ambitions stop at
Egypt's borders. As Mudar Zahran noted in a Gatestone Institute article in October 2012,
"The Muslim Brotherhood has proven itself a strategically patient
radical organization that thinks long-term. It has been trying to take
control of Egypt since 1928. Now that it does control Egypt, other
countries, such as the UAE and Jordan, may already be on its list."
Incidently, an excellent video on the history of the MB is available
on the FSM website.
We begin this section with what the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) sees as
its mission in its own words. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
cite some pertinent comments made by Mustafa Mashhur, who led the
Egyptian MB from 1996 to 2002. They are consistent with what the MB
has been saying since its creation in 1928.
Can anything be further from the misleading nonsense spouted by the Obama administration and
the uncritical media, which insist the MB is secular, moderate and a
swell bunch of guys?
Matthew Hausman goes beyond the superficiality of the claim
that Egypt is now a democracy because people used the ballot box and
examines the true nature of the new government in Egypt. In doing so,
he makes clear the contrast between the underlying theocracy in
Egypt and the republican form of democracy we enjoy in the USA. He
spells out the difference between the Muslim desire for totalitarian sharia
law to encase people and their institutions and the American desire for
freedom of action and self-determination for the individual.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATE (UAE) CALLS FOR ANTI-MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD COALITION
by Ryan Mauro
Ryan Mauro writes that the United Arab Emirate (UAE) recognizes
the threat the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) can be to the Gulf states and
is proposing a coalition against both the MB, which is a Sunni
product, and the Shi'ite Mullahs of Iran. Even Saudi Arabia — which
works with the MB to destroy the Syrian regime — sees the MB as the
root cause of unrest and turbulence in the region. Mauro writes that
the USA is wrongheaded to support the MB when it should be working
with Arab governments to counter MB ideology
AL QAEDA IN SYRIA: JIHADISTS USE CHAOS IN ARAB AWAKENING
by Bruce Riedel
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda, was in his
younger days a member of the Muslim Brotherhood,(MB) leaving it for a
possibly more extremist group, but always determined to carry
out the mission of the founder of MB to recreate the Caliphate and
revive the practice of every minutia of sharia law.
On the Arabian Pennisula,
Ansar al Sharia (AAS), is the organizational name shared by multiple, more-or-less autonomous
groups in Tunisia, Libya and Yemen. It is variously described as a
renamed al-Qaeda or as an affiliate of al-Qaeda.
One such group committed the
Benghazi massacre. As Bruce Riedel points out, Zawahiri has called
for al-Qaeda members to go fight the Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime,
while urging Sunnis to rely only on al-Qaeda. For an organization the
Obama administration reassured us was withering away, it seems
remarkably energetic.
"UNITED STATES OF ARABS":
MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD PLAN BELLIGERENT PAN-ISLAMIC SUPER-STATE
by Yaakov Lappin
Now that the Muslim Brotherhood(MB) has taken over the Egyptian
government, Yaakov Lappin observes that the next stage is to complete the
"Islamization of the Egyptian state and society, before they can turn
their sights on their final goal, the creation of a pan-Islamic
super-state that will encompass the region, and then wage war on
Israel." This has been made clear by several prominent clerics.
Sheikh Mohammed Badie, head of the MB, who has called for a "jihad
for the recovery of Jerusalem."
Lee Smith points out that were Jordon's King Abdullah II's regime to fall, Israel "would lose
its remaining strategic partner in the region—having already lost
Turkey and Egypt—and face a possible nightmare on its longest
border." Abdullah's position is affected by what happens in Syria.
"A Muslim Brotherhood victory in Syria could put wind in the sails of Jordan's own Brotherhood party, the Islamic Action Front, and perhaps inspire them to add another Arab state, along with Tunisia and Egypt, to their collection."
The Project is a Muslim Brotherhood (MB) plan to infiltrate and
defeat the U.S., using a multitude of flexible methods, all coming
under the rubric of stealth jihad. It's been known by the
Western intelligence communities since the plan was discovered in 2001
accidentally during a raid on Youssef Nada, director of the Al-Taqwa
Bank of Lugano, a member and a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood for more than 50 years.
but it has never been publicized by the main stream media. (See
for example, two articles detailing their methodology and goals by
Patrick Poole: from 2006 here
and from 2007 here. In
this essay Kerry Patton discusses how Glenn Beck is alerting the
public with two shows devoted to The Project. (More details are
available in the Appendices to his article.) Patton's main point is
that it is true that Shi'ite Iran is evil, but that doesn't make the
Sunni MB or the Saudis less of an enemy to us.
Daniel Greenfield in the persona of Tim Paulin writes as if he were channeling the British
poet Tom Neilson Paulin, a doting Palophile, who identifies so completely with the
Arab blood lust culture that he has no problem interpreting barbaric
behavior as moral and just. Even fun. As a reader, Shiva, notes, "the
point is skillfully made: that this is where the current Leftist
mindset inexorably and logically leads, to a 21st century
re-incarnation of Jew hatred and Nazism." Or, as Tom Paulin said
to Al-Ahram Weekly, "I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all."
Bosch Fawstin has described himself as a recovering Muslim.
Buy or download his "Faces of Palestine" (see below) and share his
insights about the Palestinian Arabs. (For an excellent summary of the
history, culture and personalities of the Arabs that says in words
what Fawstin's drawings say in images, read "Arabism=racism!"
here.)
After 9/11, as Daniel Greenfield points out, "[j]ust when
Americans had good reason to fear Islam, they were cautioned that such
fears were symptomatic of an irrational and bigoted Islamophobia..."
The number of Muslim-linked phobias has grown. We now have
Khwanophobia (the fear and or hatred of the Muslim Brotherhood),
Shi'itophobia and Salafi-phobia, to name but a few. Curiously, no one
appears to
have been diagnosed with a phobia of non-violent Muslim sects,
only "of violent Muslim groups—almost as if there is nothing
irrational about those phobias at all."
Amil Imani points out that "Islam is a brutal, tribal
warrior cult that glorifies jihad and martyrdom." It can't be mellowed
into civilized behavior because its culture was molded by its holy
books and these are regarded as immutable. Unfortunately, "Islam is a
powerful magnet for the masses who are unable to deal with the
uncertainties of life and death on their own. It is from this
population, many already thoroughly indoctrinated from birth that the
majority of die-hard jihadists emerge."
ANTI-SEMITISM AND ISLAM — EXPOSING A LONG SEATED MYTHOLOGY
by Alex Rose
It is often argued that Arab hostility to Jews is a modern phenomenon,
brought about by the creation of a Jewish state on land the Arabs
regard as theirs. Until recently, it is claimed, Jews and Arabs lived harmoniously.
Alex Rose informs us this is mythology not history. In point of fact,
Jew-hatred has been an integral part of Islam since its inception and it has
continued unabated for fourteen hundred years.
As Rose writes,
"From the days of Mohammed, non-Muslims under Muslim rule were subject
to taxation, humiliation, oppression, exile, and murder."
Diana West speaks bluntly of what our soldiers are
subjected to in Afghanistan, when interacting with their Afghan
counterparts. There are actual assaults by our supposed allies. There
is the pressure by the American leadership that they behave as dhimmis
in this Muslim culture, keeping a low profile and being very
respectful. The worst is their exposure to a culture that is
stomach-turning, a culture that abuses women, rapes children and
tortures animals.
"Do the Jewish state and the Territories belong to the Jews? The
question was recently brought into prominence by a report issued by a
committee of Israeli legal experts, chaired by Supreme Court Justice
Edmund Levy. The jurists focused narrowly upon the legality of Jewish
settlements in Samaria and Judea — affirming that towns and villages
in Samaria and Judea are indeed legal, thus undermining the
demonization of "settlements" by those who fear that Jews living in
the "West Bank" (as they ahistorically call it) will make it harder to
give away Jewish land to the Arabs (See the article by Richard
Cravatts below). In place of the capricious and often malicious
treatment of Jewish citizens living in the towns and villages of Samaria
and Judea, it recommends easing regulations, halting scheduled
demolitions and planning building as the population grows.
Just as when Newt Gingrich bluntly said that there was no
Palestinian people and there had never been a Palestinian state, many
are opposed to speaking openly about Israel's entitlement to her land,
fearing it will jeopardize the defunct "peace process." Some opponents
of the Levy Report, such as David Kretzmer in the Jerusalem
Report of July 24, 2012,
have claimed Israel was ignoring "international consensus and the
considered view of almost all experts in international law." Berman
would appear to be advocating that the law be decided by majority vote
rather than from legal principles (See Wallace Brand's article on
Berman's mistaken view). He may be right that, thanks to the vast
amount of propaganda asserting the land belongs to the Arabs, many
lawyers, if not the law, are on the side of the Arabs. Nevertheless,
over the years, major knowledgeable experts in international law have
asserted what the Levy Report states: Jewish settlements are legal
(see Ted Belman's article below).
To me, Kretzmer's most ludicrous notion is that Modern Israel is
somehow a different entity than the one established on the basis of
San Remo and the Balfour Declaration. This ignores the irrevocable
trust whereby the League of Nations (LON) gave the land to the Jews
for establishing a Jewish State — the trust was transferred to the
United Nations when it came into being (See Shifftan's and Brand's
articles below). I find the notion that the action of the LON is no
longer applicable strange. If it were true, what happens to the
legality of the large number of Arab countries — including Iraq,
Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria — carved out of the
defunct Ottoman Empire, which came into being by the same LON's
authority? Scraping the barrel's mouldy bottom, Kretzmer further
insists that the intent was for the Jews to establish a
homeland [Heimstätter was the term used by Max
Nordau as a less of a in-your-face substitute for state]
in Palestine, rather than the establishment of Palestine as the
home of the Jewish people." Would he argue that the rights the Balfour
Declaration granted to existing non-Jewish communities (civil and
religious but not political) were to be applied IN some parts of
Palestine, but not others?
Some like Jonathan Tobin of Commentary Magazine
have taken the centrist position, not disapproving the judicial decision but
not abandoning the current way of pursuing peace: "How can Israel hope
to bargain for such an outcome [a peace deal] if it is unwilling to
state that Jews have every right to live in these towns and villages
as well as in Jerusalem?"
It is too soon to know whether the media belief that nothing
will suit but that tiny Israel must chop off more of its small space
will continue to dominate international thinking and control the
actions of the Israeli Government. Here, the general population has
been ahead of the officials. It has long since decided the peace
process is dead and they might as well hold onto their land.
As more Israelis understand the government has been negligent in not
asserting their legitimate rights, perhaps the government will begin
to deal with the more important issue: whether peace is more likely to
be gained: by giving up Biblical Israel, relocating its Jewish
inhabitants — Abbas and other Palestinian Arab leaders insist that
any state they control will not have a single Jew living in it —
and encouraging the growth of the Arab population in
Israel and the Territories OR by formally annexing the
Territories and relocating the local Arabs to the neighboring Arab
countries. Attention should be directed at the obvious: Israelis are
not occupying Israel and the Territories, except in the sense that
they live there. They live there legally and morally, by an
irrevocable trust guaranteed by international law; by historic
association; by Biblical promise; by unbroken devotion to the homeland
for thousands of years; by redemption and revival of a land that lay
fallow for hundreds of years; by the creation of a thriving State,
whose citizens are in ferment, creating innovations in agriculture,
industry, science and medicine that benefit everyone in the world and
by modern-day conquest, having defeated Arab invaders several times
over. The Israeli government suppressing the truth and sacrificing its
own people to benefit the Palestinian Arabs will never
win accolades from the media; it will just encourage the Jew-haters.
The first articles below are mainly about the legal principles,
justifications and ramifications. The later ones discuss other
aspects: the sustained anti-Israel propaganda that this report finally
negates, and the importance of Israel finally speaking out
about what it has known since it acquired permanent title to the land
almost a hundred years ago.
Over the years, Think-Israel has examined various aspects of
Israel's legitimate ownership of Israel and the Territories. Use
the Google box at the top of the home page for articles by Howard
Grief, Yoram Shifftan, Wallace Brand, Ted Belman, Martin Sherman, Eli
Hertz and terms such as
ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE LEGAL ARGUMENTS IN THE LEVY REPORT
by Hadar of CIFWatch, editing a translation by Joel
The Elder of Ziyon website posted an English translation of the legal
arguments in the Levy Report. Actually, they posted one by Joel, a
second by Hadar of CIFWatch that
"tidied up" the first and added footnotes and paragraph numbers and a
third done by UNISPAL (http://unispal.un.org). This below is the second one
posted.
All are available at
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/07/english-translation-of-legal-arguments.html.
Previously only the conclusions and recommendations were available in
translation.
THE EXCLUSIVE POLITICAL RIGHTS GRANTED TO THE JEWS IN 1920 AT SAN REMO
by Wallace Edward Brand
Wallace Brand writes that the solution to the Arab-Israeli Conflict
is usually presented as either a single bi-national state with an Arab
majority OR two states, with the Arab state cutting Israel or residing
in its heartland. He reminds us there is a third way that is based on
rights to the territory granted at San Remo almost a hundred years
ago: a single Jewish state. In this article, he discusses the
background, details and implications of the momentous San Remo
decision.
WHO IS ENTITLED TO GIFT AWAY JEWISH NATIONAL RIGHTS?
by Yoram Shifftan
This article by Yoram Shifftan was initially published in the
September-October 2004 issue of Think-Israel as a companion piece to
his article "Is Israel's Legal System Acting Illegally?"
(http://www.think-israel.org/shifftan.legalsystem.html). It emphasizes
the lack of awareness of the legal foundation of the irrevocable right
of the Jews to what was Mandated Palestine.
PROFESSOR BERMAN'S MISTAKEN VIEWS ON THE LEVY REPORT
by Wallace Edward Brand
In this essay Wallace Brand focuses on the principle that law is by
judicial process, not by concensus. He discusses the circular argument
accepted by many that goes like this: most lawyers disagree with the
Levy Report. Therefore those wishing to explain why the Levy report is
accurate and the opposition have got it wrong. They should be kept from
confusing the public. The critical argument is that the
Levy Report is not a new idea thought up by Israel right wingers but a
circumspect restatement of what was decided a century ago on how to
prepare for a Jewish State. In point of fact, by the time the League
of Nations issued the Mandates for Jewish and Arab states, the British
had lopped off some 78% of the land intended for an eventual Jewish
state and given it over to the Hashemites to administer — when no one
objected formally, this eventually became transJordan and then Jordan.
Avi Bell writes that the Levy Commission "is on solid ground in
observing that neither Jordan nor any other foreign state had
territorial sovereignty over the 'West Bank' in 1967 and that the
territory cannot therefore be 'foreign' for purposes of the law of
belligerent occupation. Indeed, had the Levy Commission chosen to so
argue, it could have argued cogently that Israel itself was already
the lawful sovereign over the 'West Bank' in 1967." He expects that
the Report will open up discussion of "the legitimacy of Israel's
position under international law after many years in which Israel has
been silent about its legal rights."
Ted Belman presents the opinions of some eminent jurists that
confirm one consequence that Judea and Samaria were given as an
irrevocable trust to the Jewish people; namely, that they can build
housing and businesses, and public and private institutions upon their
land. Those that would help the Arabs try to steal the land are fond
of citing the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) to claim that Jewish
settlements are illegal, but in point of fact, the FGC doesn't apply.
THE COGNITIVE WAR AGAINST ISRAEL IN THE SETTLEMENT DEBATE
by Richard L. Cravatts
Richard Cravatts spells out some of the collateral damage the Levy
Report does. It makes clear that the world has been fed a fanciful
tale by the Arabs. It calls an intellectual halt to the fallacious
anti-Israel propaganda promulgated by hostile Western politicians,
diplomats and media for whom "the perennial victim status of the
long-suffering Palestinians trumps any sovereign rights of Israel
regarding its borders, security, and even its survival in a sea of
jihadist foes who yearn for its destruction." Thus, Samaria and Judea
(aka the West Bank), Gaza and the eastern part of Jerusalem
have been untruthfully called "Arab" land and Israel the "occupier"
oppressing the po' Palestinians, who no way to fight for their rights
except with rocks, knives and explosives against the enemy, in the
person of Jewish babies asleep in their cribs, Jewish toddlers in
their beds and Jewish children at school. I hope it doesn't take as
long for Western leaders to accept the truth of the Levy report as it
has taken for the Vatican to admit officially that the earth revolves
the sun — it finally conceded this in 1992, 359 years after Galileo
was condemned for speaking the truth.
Moshe Dann notes that the Levy Report is Israel's "first authoritative
and official opinion on Israel's legal right to Judea and Samaria."
This is a fact. What is amazing about it is that Israel's legal right
to the Territories was established irrevocably well before there was a
Jewish State, yet successive governments, anxious for peace with
flaky Arab neighbors, never rebutted the myth that Israel was
occupying Arab land. As Dann points out,
"Whether or not its recommendations are accepted and implemented, the
report is a turning point in how Israel and hopefully the
international community understand the critical question: whose land?"
IS THIS PROMOTING ISLAMIC SUBMISSION THROUGH FEAR, OR IS IT ORDINARY PROPAGANDA?
This set of articles examines some examples of extreme pro-Jihad
media propaganda. While pretending to be impartial, 60-Minutes did an
amateurish, one-sided hatchet job on Israel. Their theme was:
Christians are leaving the West Bank. It must be Israel's
fault. More generally, Cultural Jihadists aren't just verbally
protesting messages they consider anti-Islam, they are vandalizing
ads, making ad writers very uneasy, especially when, as the last
article in the set shows, Islamists don't just talk, they vilify,
demonize, destroy and murder what they don't like. And they get away
with it. Isn't it about time we countered jihad propaganda more
strenuously by attacking political Islam rather than responding?
60 Minutes staff members have made a career of taking nasty jabs at
Israel. Not only are these assertions nasty, they range from
misrepresentation to outright lies. Their recent report on Christian
life in Israel "was sufficiently twisted to promote the Palestinian
narrative." They selected Christian dhimmis who talked about
Christianity being a Palestinian export! This blithely ignores that
Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea. There never was a Palestinian
State. Bob Simon spoke mournfully of the problems of Christians living
in the Holy Land, but didn't mention he was talking about
Arab-Christians living miserable lives under Muslim Arab rule. In
actuality, Christians are wisely fleeing fundamentalist Arab/Muslim
countries, while the Christian population in Israel is increasing.
Tabitha Korol feels "60 Minutes should apologize and correct its
defamation of Israel while exposing the true plight of Christians in
the Islamic world." Rots of ruck.
As Edward Cline writes, "the de facto imposition of Sharia law
on Western non-Muslims is insidiously accumulative." In their
unswerving determination to destroy any public message they regard as
anti-Islam, cultural Jihadists have singled out the lewd ad –– and
that can be anything that shows more female skin than what is visible
wearing an ankle-length sack over the head. Edward Cline relates their
campaign to "the near psychotic or pathological mindset about women
that Islam inculcates in Muslim men." Their religion doesn't encourage
respect for women. They grow up believing that women are chattel that
lose their value if they lose their chastity. And an immodest woman is
fair game for rape and torture –– by them. The connection between the
cage-like restrictions on a woman's freedom, honor killings and the
permitted raping of any "immoral" woman isn't a coincidence. We might
ignore this and mumble multiculturalism were this restricted to
their own countries, but unfortunately, they insist their host
cultures behave according to their ideas. Or suffer brutal and
barbaric punishment.
Vincent Gioia writes about how Islamists excel in "the art of
intimidation - using freedom in western civilization as a weapon in
the battle to rule the world." They are helped by the inability of
Westerners to believe people can behave so badly, that in our modern
world, some people will do
anything to "replace all other religions and governments with Islam
and Sharia law." Despite all contrary information, "the news media ...
is filled with misinformation about Islam. Despite untold acts of
atrocities by Muslims, Islam is still regarded in many circles as "a
religion of Peace..." Despite the fact that "[i]In Islamic countries
the non-Muslims are treated like second or fifth class people and
their populations are decreasing enormously." Despite the fact that
high-profile refugees from jihad must have police protection from
Muslims who openly and without penalty state they are going to kill the apostates. Vincent Gioa says "we need
to engage in the effort [to inform the public] not only through films and videos; we must
address the financial culture and reveal the truth about Sharia
banking and finance. We must also prepare propaganda [if you can call
truth propaganda] that is directed towards the blue collar workers."
He suggests such topics that might break through the thick layer of
media support that shields the public from hearing about what Islam's stealth
Jihad campaign is doing to our country. Above all, as Gioia wisely
says, "We must become bigot-proof because any challenge will invite
accusations of racism." Why should we inflict the pain of action on ourselves?
As Gioia says, "It is simple; we either fight or lose our
civilization." And dominance by Islam isn't happiness-making.
Paul Harris posted these photographs taken by Hugo Jaeger, the German
photographer who was Hitler's personal photographer. They provide us
with images hinting at what life was like in Poland for the Jews in
1939-1940 after the German invasion and before the mass extermination
of the Jews got underway. They were taken in Kutno, Poland. The
Addendum posts the Foreword to the Life magazine presentation
of Jaeger's photographs. It was written by Justyna MajewskaJustyna
Majewska,
who works as a curator at the Holocaust Gallery in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.
FOR THE SIN I HAVE SINNED: Yom Kippur Story From the Holocaust
by Annette Keen
Annette Keen was born in a Displaced Persons Camp just after World War 2. Her family moved to the USA, where her father, a trained cantor, together with other Holocaust survivors, became farmers. She writes about Yom Kippur 1952, walking with her father silently along the muddy road to the Synagogue the Survivors had built. When they arrived and he had donned his ceremonial robe, her father shared with her some of the agony he felt on Yom Kippur 1939 when, at his father's insistence, he reluctantly fled the advancing Germans, abandoning his own father, who stayed and chanted Kol Nidre. In a few sentences, she makes the incident a parable of the Jew's relationship to HaShem.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
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FEATURED STORIES
JULY-AUGUST 2012
What we are talking about in the July-August 2012 Issue
This issue is mostly about revelations, the common ordinary kind, the kind that result from being forced to look at things in new ways because of new happenings. Judging from recent news items, more of the general public seem to have become aware that we have a new enemy we should take seriously.
It isn't really a new enemy. Resurgent Islam has long been using
its enormous wealth and its expanding population to try to dominate the world. The Muslim Brotherhood started organizing and planning for a dominant Islam with the entire world adhering to Sharia law over eighty years ago. Muslim theologians, scholars, academics, political leaders, sheikhs and heads of prominent families are passionately dedicated to reestablishing the Caliphate, imposing Sharia law, and in the process, giving every Muslim the feeling of superiority over non-Muslims. But the implications have been ignored by us, the targeted victims.
ISLAMISTS HAVE BEEN BUSILY TAKING OVER EUROPE by rapidly increasing their already large population. They back up their increasing demands by riots, mayhem, terrorism, brutal physical attacks on those they claim have insulted their prophet Mohammad and by inhuman slaughter of civilians, particularly Jewish babies and young children. In Europe, they support their troops — the huge number of humble Muslims with their multiple wives and many children — by sopping up the host State's disposable income in welfare payments. In their own countries the long stable relationship of a Muslim majority and dhimmi minorities is in flux, with Islam stepping up the pace of terrorizing minorities and making it more and more difficult for them to maintain their religious practices. The killing, torturing and burning of their resident Christians and other minorities is on the increase. In America, their quiet infiltration of our infrastructure has been occasionally punctuated by isolated acts of war. Though they began attacking us earlier, 9/11 was a seemingly unavoidable declaration that they meant us harm. Yet we continued to act as if we can make the unpleasantness go away if we ignore it.
We defeated Nazism and Communism. Yet we've been botching the war Islam declared. Aside from sending our soldiers to fight interminable and deliberately limited wars, we've not made a total commitment to fight back. But current events are forcing a change in attitudes. The violent overthrow of dictatorial governments in the Middle East hasn't — as we had been led to believe it would — brought about democracy and freedom. Any more than deposing Saddam Hussein and his entire regime led to a fundamental change in Iraq. All that's happened is that political dictatorships have been exchanged for Islamic dictatorships. The cast of characters participating in the civil war in Syria suggests Syria will be no exception.
In America, despite the reassurances coming from much of the media that the only problem is that the poor Muslims are suffering from Western Islamophobia, our attitudes are changing. The sensational disclosure that American security and administrative agencies have been infiltrated by Islamists is beginning to force us to rethink what we think we know about the Religion of Peace.
Admittedly there's still the bogeyman fear of being called a racist — may it soon join the fear of being called a communist on history's dusty pile of conditioning and control words that have lost their power. But one indicator of the change in attitude is that talking about Islam is no longer totally taboo, even in the face of the well-funded campaign to make any criticism of Islam a crime and to label anyone who objects to Islamicist tactics as islamophobic. We are beginning finally to explore implications. We are starting to connect the dots.
One example has been our shock and amazement when security vetting
issues are discussed, voiced as: how the devil did Huma Abedin ever
get security clearance?
The government does an exhaustive security examination on people
working in sensitive security positions in the government. The inquiry
is particularly stringent in wartime, and whether we acknowledge it or
not, Islamists, seeking to impose Sharia law globally, have declared
war on us. The recent revelations about Huma Abedin's affiliations to
the Muslim Brotherhood would seem to disqualify her from her State
Department job. A query from Congressmen asking for proof that she —
as well as some other political appointees to jobs in sensitive
positions — does not adhere to an ideology at odds with our
Constitution has been treated as a laughing matter and the legalities
are ignored. But it is a gateway inquiry. The situation inspired an
examination into the vetting process. Trivializing its importance
jeopardizes our way of life, as would giving Sharia law legal standing
in American law courts, the topic of the second essay in this section.
Bernice Lipkin examines two cases that explore the American security
vetting system as it applies to high level jobs in the government: (1)
confirming that the legal requirements for being the President are met
and (2) doing background checks and examining affiliations of people
applying for positions that provide them access to and/or control of
classified information and/or security sites. The first case highlights
problems that arise because there apparently is no official system in
place to confirm that the Constitutional requirements for the
Presidency are met. In the second case, the vetting system is in place
and is routinely used to check out security issues. In this instance
it failed to prevent questionable Islamic infiltration.
THE THREAT OF SHARIA AND THE LEADERSHIP OF AMERICA'S TWO PARTIES
by Eric Allen Bell
Laura L. wrote this about Eric Allen Bell's article on how the political
parties are handling the growing problem of court decisions being
based on Sharia law in American courts rather than on American
Constitutional law: "It is the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood front
groups to implement sharia law in America and in fact it has been
applied in American courts. I'm sick of politicians in both parties
treating islam as though it's just another benign religious faith when
it is in fact a lethal, totalitarian, imperialistic political
ideology. I'm sick of being told we must tolerate and respect an
ideology masquerading as a religion, which seeks to forcibly convert,
subjugate or kill unbelievers. I'm also sick of alleged conservatives
proclaiming their patriotism, adherence to the constitution and their
deep commitment to the nation's national security and the preservation
of American ideals of liberty and so forth [when their] silence on the
civilizational or stealth jihad taking place in America reveals that
they are more concerned with advancing their careers than in defending
America and preserving our future." Because our law makers are
allowing Sharia infiltration into our court system, as Bell points
out, Muslim women and children are deprived of equal protection under
the law. What is of more general concern is that by allowing sharia
law to get its nose into the American courts system, we are opening
the way for sharia to override American Constitutional law and
determine court decisions in an ever widening sphere — to where it
could become de facto law for all of us.
These essays are on prominent examples of three sorts of girls of
the Brotherhood: a mother and daughter from a family that holds high
positions in the Muslim Brotherhood; an American patsy who died
believing in a cause she didn't understand, while her savvy Arab and
Marxist comrades have found she is more useful dead than alive; and a
member of a terror group that springs from the Muslim Brotherhood. In
her Arab community, she is glorified as a heroine because she killed
and maimed Jews. She couldn't be more honored if she'd received the
Nobel prize. But, then again, killing and maiming seem the only things
Palestinian Arabs do well.
Perforce, much of the attention is on Huma Abedin of the Abedin
family of Muslim stalwarts, who are large-sized cogs in the wheel
trying to flatten the West. Huma earned this attention when people
became aware that she wasn't just the wife of Anthony Weiner, the
sextextist, but was the Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton. It was soon discovered that she was part of a family
that have all — including Huma — been actively involved in an
organization promulgating Brotherhood supremacist ideology. The
Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA) was established by Dr.
Abdullah Omar Naseef, a major donor to Al-Qaeda. IMMA proclaims itself
"the only scholarly institution dedicated to the systematic study of
Muslim communities in non-Muslim societies around the world." How
scholarly IMMA is is arguable. What is not assailable is that the
Abedins and IMMA have been actively connected to men in Al-Qaeda
leadership positions.
Jamie Glazov interviews Walid Shoebat on Huma Abedin's ties with the
Muslim Brotherhood (MB), an organization whose mission is to give Islam
global control. Her mother is in the leadership of the Muslim
Sisterhood. Her brother and her father, now dead, have been
prominent in MB operations. Shoebat points out that it is also peculiar that
her family would allow her to marry a non-Muslim, particularly a Jew,
"unless Huma has a 'higher calling' and a unique exception was made
for her, since she is an ear into top U.S. sensitive information, or
Anthony Weiner has converted to Islam or even both." He suggests the
U.S. current policy of gaining "what they deem a 'moderate Muslim
Brotherhood' ... is like saying that in order to win the Cold War with
Russia, that we needed to promote 'Capitalistic-Communism' or during
WWII we should have promoted 'pro-Jew Nazism' in Germany." He makes
the case that the Islamists understand us better than we understand
them.
Walid Shoebat interprets for us projects whose names suggest innocuous
pursuits carried out by the Abedin family: mother Saleha, head of the
Muslim Brotherhood's (MB) Sisterhood branch and editor-in-chief of the
Journal of the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA); father
Sayed Zaynul, an author and a launcher of a plan called "Muslim
Minorities in the West"; son Hassan, who is also on the board of the Oxford
Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS); and daughter Huma, once assistant editor
of JMMA and currently Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton. There's nothing picayune about the Abedin
family's organizational talents. Mama's Sisterhood spans some 16
countries. Papa's publication speaks of recruiting Muslims living in
the West to make Islam dominant. We don't have to wait years in the
future to determine whether this is true - - we have already seen
Islamic Students of North America (ISNA) and Muslim Students of America (MSA) in destructive action on American campuses. Son Hassan's OCIS can boast of having Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, the leader of the Muslim
Brotherhood, the man who can create a full-blown riot with the flick
of his finger, as a OCIS Trustee. And Daughter Huma has both an
unparalleled view of American policy and the clout to influence it.
In this essay, Shoebat emphasizes that while the Abedins
are leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood, they also has
a strong connection to the Saudis. In fact, "The House of Saud had
used Huma's father Sayed Zaynul Abedin's Muslim Minorities in the
West published in 1998 as part of 29 works to construct a plan to
conquer the world with Islam."
SALEHA MAHMOOD ABEDIN, A FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE MUSLIM SISTERHOOD
by Discover The Networks
Discover The Networks provides us with a biography and an informative
resumé of the achievements of Saleha Mahmood Abedin, a woman
who's led a fulfilling life expanding the reach of sharia law around
the world. She is a founder of several large organizations and a
joiner of others. One, the Muslim Sisterhood, encourages prominent
Arab women to promote Muslim Brotherhood ideology in the West by
stealth. She's a member in good standing in interfaith and peace
groups. A firm believer in Sharia, she promotes the complete
subservience of women, child marriage and female genital mutilation.
She has translated into English Fatima Umar Naseef's book on how to be
a devout Muslim woman. [See Andrew Bostom's article below.] The book,
whose views presumably are acceptable to her, views Sharia as saving
women from the slavery of man-made laws, from having to decide on her
own what type of clothes to wear, what tasks to undertake and what to
do with her life. Sharia is her guide. Abedin is also editor-in-chief
of JMMA, the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, published by the
Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA). Before becoming Deputy
Chief of Staff and aide to the Secretary of State, her daughter Huma
worked with her as an editor of JMMA. Another daughter Heba is
currently an assistant editor. IMMA was launched and has been
supported by Abdullah Omar Naseef, a known financial mainstay of al
Qaeda.
Andrew Bostom provides us with a well-researched description of the
extent of Saleha Abedin's promulgation of the views and practices of
the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), a "modern traditionalist Islamic jihad
movement." Dr. Abedin is Professor of Sociology in Jeddah, Saudi
Arabia. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Muslim Minority
Affairs (JMMA). She chairs the International Islamic Committee for
Women and Child (IICWC) in Amman, Jordan. She is a prominent member
of the Muslim Sisterhood, the woman's division of the Muslim
Brotherhood. She is a strong proponent of child marriage and
clitoridectomy. She midwifed the translation into English of Fatima
Umar Naseef's book Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and
Obligations. The book advocates feminine modesty, where immodesty
apparently is whatever might tempt a man. It asserts that a woman's
role is primarily that of wife and mother, the one who gives birth to
the men who fight in Jihad. The book is anchored in the writings of
Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian writer and a leading member of MB, whose
ideology was an extension of the writings of the founder of MB. Both
advocated world-wide violent revolution to bring true Islam to all.
Bostom makes clear that the views held today "by the entire global
Muslim umma's pre-eminent Muslim theologians and scholars" on Jihad
and Islamic Jew-hatred are the same as those held by Qutb, and Qutb's
views, in turn, "are in full accord with classical Muslim jurists."
Considering Dr. Abedin's promulgation of "liberty-crushing Sharia
supremacism," "[t]he extent of Dr. Abedin's influence on her daughter
Huma Abedin's views and efforts — the latter still a close aide to
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — should long ago have been
investigated, clarified, and discussed in the public domain."
WHAT MIGHT CIVILIZED PEOPLE BE THINKING WHEN SOCIOPATHS LIKE TAMIMI BASK IN ADULATION?
by Frimet and Arnold Roth
As Frimet and Arnold Roth write, "Our daughter Malki, murdered at the
age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of
jihadist hatred and barbarism." Their way of coping was to establish
Keren Malki, to take care of Israeli children with special needs, no
matter whether they are Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Druze or
unaffiliated. In sharp contrast, the entire Arab culture that produced
the woman terrorist responsible for Malki's death considers her a
heroine, not a monster. She brought death to some and misery to many.
She had no positive impact on her own people or changed anything for
the better. But actual accomplishments aren't the goal, are they? It's
all about feeling superior. The goals of a blood-lust people are
seldom ennobling. They destroy what they are incapable of creating. We
can ask why do these people play these games that are so grotesque?
Perhaps it is because they model themselves on a primitive pedophile
who enjoyed destruction. His followers were better at looting than
planting, better at demolishing than building. Even today his
spiritual descendants don't show the ability to behave in a civilized
manner, the way the Roths did. That would take compassion and
generosity and disciplined bravery. Not their strong points.
[Note: See the January-February 2012 issue of Think-Israel here
for a story on Wafa Al-Biss, another murderous terrorist.]
In this essay, Bernice Lipkin brings the information on the
sensational death of Rachel Corrie up to date. The emphasis here is on
the organizations that, in the name of humanitarianism and peace,
recruit patsies such as Corrie, idealistic young exploitables, and use
them to further a very different agenda — the delegitimization of
Israel, the infiltration of sharia into the West.
THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND THE MIDDLE EAST REGIONAL STRIFE
This set of essays look at the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that has
recently taken power in Egypt as well as other extreme Sunni Islamist
groups. In the course of discussing the long list of players now
battling in Syria, one of the essays examines Brotherhood
participation in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
When Syrians rebelled against the rule of President Bashar Assad,
it was assumed the well-supplied rebels would soon unseat him. The
rebellion has turned into a civil war that threatens to destabilize
the region, not just the country. This is in part due to the
ideologies of the major players and their plans for the future of
the region. Bernice Lipkin provides a summary of the players on the
opposing teams and their complex interactions.
WHY REVOLUTIONARY SUNNI ISLAMISM IS THE WORLD'S GREATEST STRATEGIC THREAT AND NONE OF IT IS MODERATE
by Barry Rubin
Barry Rubin begins this essay this way:
"No, it sure isn't the age of Aquarius or of Multicultural, Politically
Correct love-ins. It's the age of revolutionary Islamism, especially
Sunni Islamism. And you better learn to understand what this is all
about real fast. Focusing on the Sunni revolutionary Islamist tidal
wave, the foundation of knowledge is that there are three types and
they are all bad, very bad. A lot of people are going to be
misinforming you about this and getting others — never themselves, of
course — killed. Rubin is talking about the al-Qaeda style groups,
the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is information you
need to have.
ASHARQ AL-AWSAT TALKS WITH EX-MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD LEADER IBRAHIM EL ZAFARANI
by May Ibrahim
May Ibrahim records an interview with Ibrahim Al-Zafarani, a former
Muslim Brotherhood (MB) leader in Alexandria. The interview is
noteworthy in
that Al-Zafarani acknowledges that MB's rival, the Salafist movement, is
growing. But he attributes it to the MB involvement
in politics rather than religious advocacy — as if that hasn't always been
true. In the face of slaughter and church-burnings, he claims that
"Christian fears are not justified." Al-Zafarani does, however, reveal tantalizing tidbits about the structure of
the Egyptian MB and the interrelationships of the various cliques and
cadres in the MB. I especially liked that major control is in the
hands of a group called the Guidance Bureau. As good as George Orwell was, he
didn't come up with anything that Orwellian.
WILL EGYPT'S MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD ORIENT TO SAUDI ARABIA OR IRAN?
by David P. Goldman
The major struggle for dominance in the Middle East is between Saudi
Arabia and Iran. After that allegiances and interests become murky;
traditional linkages can no longer be relied on. In Egypt, the new
President, Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has
eliminated potential challengers at least in the short term and has
placed the MB in a position to make binding decisions for Egypt. Will
the MB ally itself with the Sauds or with Iran? After presenting the
arguments on both sides, David Goldman predicts that Egypt will do
neither but will, essentially, tread water, while attempting to keep
good relations with everyone. Goldman believes that in the long run,
"[t]he most probable outcome is that Egypt's military will assert
control with Saudi financial backing and suppress the Muslim
Brotherhood."
Encouraged by anti-Israel NGOs and Israeli marxists, the Arabs in
Israel have laid claim to both public and private lands. The illegal
spreading out of the Bedouins throughout the Negev has become a
serious problem. The Bedouins had moved their herds back and forth
across what is now Israel and its neighboring countries for hundreds
of years, never establishing permanent habitation. Thanks to their
goats, their contribution to agriculture was to render the land barren
and unproductive. Now, after the many years it took the Israeli
government to persuade them to settle in permanent quarters, they've
begun to take over land, ignoring legality and good environmental
practices. Similarly, the Palestinian Arabs continue to claim
everything in sight as well as denying that Jews had any connection to
the land. Their partisans have made similar wild claims, false or
exaggerated or misleading, about Arab discoveries in science. And by
ignoring facts and suggesting connections that didn't exist, President
Obama has given the interaction between President Jefferson and the
Muslims a misleading interpretation.
Given the timidity of the Government at protesting illegal building by
Arabs, it isn't surprising that the illegal grabbing of land by the
Bedouins in the Negev has received little official or media attention.
The image of the Bedouins as wandering nomads — at least in Israel —
has been changing for half a century and has been replaced by the
reality of the Bedouins settling down, willy nilly, over the entire
Negev. Concomitantly, the Bedouins have been radicalized and as Atara
Beck writes, "Those aiming to conquer Jewish land have resorted to
destructive behaviour, including 'agricultural crime and theft,
extortion through violence and threats, hooliganism in the streets,
malls and entertainment centres and environmental pollution.'" They are
backed by Peace Now and other radical pro-Palestinian groups, which
can be counted on to raise a ruckus whenever the Israeli government tries to stop
Arab illegal building or allow Jewish legal building.
IT'S NOT JUST THE TEMPLE MOUNT; THEY EVEN CLAIM SUSYA
by David Bedein
David Bedein gathers some facts countering the "facts" Arab use to
bolster their claim to the town of Susya. What is puzzling is, given
that it so easy to determine that the Arab claims are false, why do so
many "reputable" academics and journalists go along with the lie? Is
it, as one reader commented, that "[w]hat the Arabs and their supporters love to do
is use 'creative license' as they come up with their fairy tales,
creative license that the anti-Semites of the world love to embrace."
What is worse is that so many supporters of the Arab claims are Jews,
who would never dream of defending the homes of Jews that live in the
Territories and have legitimate claims.
The White House's report on President Obama's iftar
dinner at the White House breaking bread after Ramadan would indicate
that Obama's speech was a model of
misdirection, misinformation and missing information. The Press Release said that
Obama suggested Jefferson entertaining the Tunisian ambassador
might be seen as the first Iftar dinner at the White House.
Jefferson did invite the ambassador to dinner but the slant given by the
White House is all wrong. Perhaps the speech writers fired the fact
checkers in the interests of
saving a few kopeks — it would the first austerity measure at the White
House in these dismal economic times.
In this essay, Lee Cary corrects the misleading
implication that relations with the Barbary Pirates were friendly or
that the Muslims have contributed much to American history. As one
reader, Twoiron, commented, "The two major 'gifts' of Islam to
America: 1) the Barbary Pirates, and 2) 9/11/2001." Of further
interest: it is amazing to read the difference between 2008 when
people tiptoed around the possibility that Obama was Muslim, and a
committed Muslim to boot, and today's openly-expressed hostility to
this now acknowledged fact — for he [Obama] himself has said it.
BARACK OBAMA, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THAT IFTAR DINNER, AND THE REWRITING OF HISTORY
by Hugh Fitzgerald
This is a companion piece to Lee Cary's piece above.
Why are we devoting so much space to a single event? Because it is
emblematic. Because it is uncomplicated and the features that are lies show up
clearly. No judgment is needed. Its lesson needs to be absorbed — and
applied to more difficult subjects: the national debt, which is of
tsunami height; the economy,
which is tanking; the myriad falsifications, such as crediting GM with recovery when the Gov't, which now
owns the company, boosted their sales by buying a
fleet of cars from them using our money; the printing of money we can't back, so inflation
increases. Think of this essay as Understanding. 101.
ISLAMIC INVENTIONS? HOW ISLAMIC INVENTORS DID NOT CHANGE THE WORLD
by Wiki Islam
There are many Muslim groupies, employees and devout believers in
underdoggery posting a prodigious amount of misinformation on how the
Muslims have helped the progress of the human race, inventing
everything from the concept of zero in mathematics to windmills.
There's only one problem. While these claims would make good material
for Scheherazade's tall tales, fact-wise — as this article from
WikiIslam makes clear — they just aren't true.
This is a morality play of sorts. It chronicles what it takes to make
a media person stop ignoring evil. It is the story of Ola Abbas, who
saw the brutality of the Syrian government as it sought to stop the
hemorrhaging of its authority as the Syrian rebels gained ground.
She saw the secret police in action. She saw censorship of anything
not promoting the Syrian president. She finally defected — the first. In
her defense, she was right to be afraid.
Maybe next someone will write why our esteemed Western
media had for these many years cooed over Assad and his well-dressed wife. Who pulled their chain?
Yarden Frankl describes how a photographer turned the scene of a
poorly-attended demonstration against Israel into a compelling shot of
Gaza children behind bars. He scrupulously captioned it as coming from
an industrial area during a rally. The Independent (UK)
newspaper used it with no caption to illustrate an inflammatory
article on the treatment of Palestinian Arab minors detained for
criminal activities in the Territories. There is an Editor's Addendum
on the subject of the newspaper article: "a Report on Palestinian
youngsters in the Territories detained in custody". In its own way,
the Report is almost as misleading as the faked photo.
Jack Engelhard suggests that "[t]he colossus that was called
mainstream news media, as in America-hating/Israel-bashing journalism,
is being cut down to size. People are catching on to the deceptions
that characterize most of our traditional news organizations..." He
notes that CNN is way down and many other networks in America, England
and Israel are being ridiculed for poor journalism. Things are better
but there's still a long way to go:
"...truthful journalism can succeed only if we demand nothing less."
BDS IN THE PEWS: EUROPEAN, US, AND CANADIAN GOVERNMENT FUNDING BEHIND ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIVISM IN MAINLINE CHURCHES
by NGO Monitor
Many anti-Israel boycotts, sanctions and divestiture (BSD) campaigns
are carried out with the financial and advocacy support of mainline
churches in the U.S. and Canada, which have for a decade openly
involved themselves in a sustained effort to demonize Israel. What is
most shocking is that "a number of European governments, plus the
United States and Canada, provide funds for these church-based efforts
to delegitimize Israel. These tax-payer funds are disbursed as grants
to church-based humanitarian NGOs, which then transfer these funds to
highly politicized pro-Palestinian NGOs." This article is an excellent
summation of the support funneled to the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation
Theology Center and the Holy Land Trust (HLT). The World Council of
Churches is a major supporter of the Sabeel Center, organizing
activist groups and donating money. The Sabeel Center carries out a
rage attack against Israel, using imagery in which the death of Jesus
is emotionally manipulated to inflame the target audience against the
Jews.
Ben Cohen writes of the material prosperity and impoverished souls of a
bunch of Jewish bloggers and think-tankers who insist they have the
proper view of the Middle East. In their two-dimensional imagery, Israel
is ballooned out as mightier than the combined power of all the poor,
put-upon Arabs, who are thus justified in whatever they do in their
monomaniacal desire to destroy Israel. Many of these Jews have a novel
way of inserting themselves into the picture. They see themselves as
this generation's samizdat, dissidents willing to sacrifice
themselves, intellectual suiciders, so to speak, verbal shields for
non-Jews who otherwise might fear being labeled as antisemites. They
see themselves as courageously battling a shadowy but persistent
menace, the Israel lobby, that, of course, continues to invent
dastardly plots to muzzle them. In reality, they have open and
generous support from Zionist-hating organizations directly or from
pass-through groups aligned with such organizations. They publish what
they want with no fear and with wide distribution. They are
derivatives of earlier generations but not from the one they claim.
They are, instead, the full blooming of the negativity of early
anti-Zionists, the Reform rabbis of the 1800s, and the
nineteenth-century American Council for Judaism. Some of the present
generation of Jewish Jew-Haters can hide their hate better than
others, but in general, this generation of anti-Zionists use their
Jewish intelligence to say polysyllablically what klutzy neo-nazi skin
heads say more bluntly but with just as much fervor and hate.
Martin Sherman makes the cogent point that the
pursuit of the 2-state solution was an abysmal mistake that has given
rise to almost intractable problems, has put Israeli citizens in easy
range of Arab missiles, has jeopardized Israel's existence, and has
put the possibility of peace at a distance further than ever
before. It has also bewildered the two-staters because of the "refusal
of reality to conform to their political prescription." He writes
about two prominent two-staters: Simon Peres and Gershon Baskin.
President Shimon Peres of course will be remembered as the Israeli
version of Joe Biden. His inane utterances are the envy of many a
comedian. Baskin's crowning achievement was participating in the
negotiations that swapped a thousand terrorists, many of whom are
recidivists, for the return of Gilad Schalit.
He remains Optimist-in-Chief that peace is possible
if only Israel ... He is currently begging Prez Obama to stop
Israel from striking Iran lest it cause Iran to start a nuclear
weapons program. Sherman suggests the two-staters do the honorable
thing and retire from political life. I myself would prefer they took
the Japanese way of atoning for their dreadful error.
The enormous Ottoman Empire collapsed when the Ottomans picked the
wrong side in World War 1. Initially, there were to be two states, one
region for the Jews which included the Gaza, Judea, Samaria,
today's State of Israel and present-day Jordan. The other 99% of the
enormous Ottoman holdings were to become a single Arab state. That
soon went by the boards and the Arab area was carved into a group of
states, some like Egypt with a long history and coherence, others
created by drawing lines on the map of the Middle East. Daniel Mandel
recounts some of the history of the British Mandate for Palestine,
when Britain was granted the supervisory right by the League of
Nations to help the Jews develop their homeland. The goal was a
Jewish State, where everyone had civil and religious rights but only
the Jews had political rights. The British failed miserably. They had
much to contend with, including a recalcitrant group of Arabs that
were accustomed to lording over docility-conditioned Christians and
Jews. The British handled the situation badly, rewarding the Arabs for
bad behavior and punishing the Jews for being cooperative. As Mandel
writes, "The land once earmarked for the Jewish National Home, in
which Jews were to reside by right, not on sufferance, and to which
Britain, in the words of the Balfour Declaration, had pledged 'its
best endeavors to facilitate,' had become a country in which Jews
could neither freely settle, nor (after February 1940) freely purchase
land," ensuring that the Jews remained a minority. When the Jews
asserted themselves sufficiently, the British gave up control. The
Jews then had only to win approval for Statehood from the U.N.
countries and fight off an invasion by its Arab neighbors, and there
it was: a sovereign state.
The Library of Congress has a collection of pictures taken by
photographers who lived in the "American Colony" in Jerusalem between
1881 and the 1940s. Lenny Ben-David presents some of the photographs
on the massacre of Jewish families living in Hebron by their Arab
neighbors in August 1929. Over the years, we have presented accounts
of the Massacre (google hebron massacre under the banner on the
home page). Aside from the similarity to
current Arab attacks, this was an early example of how authorities
react to Arab uprising. When the Arabs slaughtered Jews, the response
of the then authorities, the British, was to remove the Jews from
Hebron, not punish the Arabs. Why are Westerners so quick to cave to
bald barbarism?
We started with an examination of some legal requirements. An
important issue but a mundane one. The intent was to throw cold water
in the face of our complacency. Confronted with the fact that
Resurgent Islam is actively engaged in establishing Sharia Law in the
West, we have done everything except acknowledge that we must deal
with Islamic aggression in a resolute, forthright and aggressive
fashion. When told that someone on a high level in the Administration
has family in leadership position in the Muslim Brotherhood, our
congressmen and media respond that she's a nice person and pooh-pooh
security considerations. How inane can one get! We end with a
wonderful essay on godliness by Spengler, better known for hardheaded
essays on economics and politics. Ponder this as you start
preparations for reliving the agony of the destruction
of the Temple and approaching the rejuvenation of the New Year.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
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FEATURED STORIES
MAY-JUNE 2012
What we are talking about in the May-June 2012 Issue
FATAH AND HAMAS. ISLAM AND ISLAMIST. THEY'RE ALL UNDER SHARIA
The Palestinian Arab Hamas is
more openly brutal than the Palestinian Arab Fatah, but both are
dedicated to murdering Jews and crushing any political or religious ideology other
than Islam. In the same way,
being a Muslim and being an Islamist is a matter of style, not
ideology. Given a critical mass of people, Muslims will
push the envelop, never stopping, never having enough, always
aggressive and intimidating — while complaining they are victims of the
host culture. Islamists are more obviously aggressive than
moderates Muslims, but no different.
FOUNDING NATIONAL MYTHS: FABRICATING PALESTINIAN HISTORY
by David Bukay
As David Bukay points out, "By appropriating to themselves the values,
traditions, and historical facts that belong to the Jews, Palestinians
have managed to fabricate a 'legitimate' history and political
traditions out of nothing while denying those of Israel." Quite an
achievement, particularly when so much of their version is absurd,
using historic and geographic facts in a farcical fashion. For
example, they claim with a straight face that Jesus the Jew — born well before Islam was invented and the
Arabs invaded the area — was
their first shahid (martyr). And make no mistake. They have convinced many purportedly
educated and knowledgeable people that this is so. At least, their Western
comrades, including churchmen, have raised no objections.
THE RHETORIC OF NONSENSE: FABRICATING PALESTINIAN HISTORY
By Alexander H. Joffe
The Arab world insists that the history of ancient Israel and
pre-Israel Canaan was the history of the Palestinian Arabs and not
of the Jews. Alex Joffe makes the important observation that this
tells us much about how the Arab thinks as well as giving us "an
insightful glimpse into the psyche of their willfully duped Western
champions." He proceeds to explain that, in the context of Arab
mentation and philosophy, what is important is the impact, however ridiculous the Arab assertions might be. It is something worse than a
silly lie. It and the hoaxes such as the Jenin massacre and the lies
protective of Islam are more ominous. They allow the Arab to
acquire a virtual history more to his liking and in portraying the Jew
as a modern upstart, brutal to boot, he assuages the guilt of
Europeans who still feel complicit in the massacre of the Jews in
World War II. Ignoring the absurdity, Europeans pay for
conscience-assuagement by presenting the Arab as the innocent victim
in a black and white morality play, wherein the Jew as white colonist
treats the Arab as native brutally.
Muslims haven't tried to change their barbaric ways. Instead, as
Tabitha Korol writes, they have concealed them; whitewashed them;
spoken bald-faced lies; intimated critics by yelling Islamophobia at
any negative remark about Islam, no matter how accurate, no matter how
mild; vandalized and destroyed religious emblems and places and
renamed areas (calling Judea and Samaria the West Bank) in order to
delegitimize their victims and deprive them of visual and verbal
confirmation of their history. Like parasites they present other
people's histories as theirs — which, I suppose, is understandable,
given their own history. Korol presents some of their fantastic claims
and refutes them with facts.
James Zumwalt writes that with women now holding less than 2 percent
of seats in the Egyptian parliament and Islamists in power, it is
likely that the status of women will take another long step backwards
in conformity with Sharia law. Ignoring the possibility a women might
seek divorce because of spousal abuse, "Islamists argue [that] increased
family law rights for women have been responsible for rising divorce
rates and the demise of family unity. Under Mubarak, women were
allowed to divorce without the consent of their husbands and were
granted limited child custody rights." The age of consent to marriage
will likely drop from 18 to 14. And what is truly bizarre, a draft law
would allow a husband to have intercourse with his dead wife. But it
should not be too unsanitary. He is only allowed intercourse within
the first 6 hours after her death. There! Doesn't that make it
alright?
Robert Reilly refutes a recent op-ed by Reuel Marc Gerecht that made the
optimistic black is white argument that Muslim fundamentalists are
critical to "the moral and political rejuvenation of their countries"
because they will clean the countries of communist ideologies so that
eventually the Arab countries will evolve into democracies, just as
the Europeans went from theocracy to democracy. As Reilly points out,
upheavals don't necessarily lead to improvement. Previous
barbaric wars in Islam against non-Muslims and other Muslims tightened
Sharia's grip. Not one produced democracy.
Moreover, Gerecht ignores that freedom of conscience, a prerequisite
for secularism, is absent in Islam. Reilly concludes that the trajectory of
Arab governance is unlikely to be heading toward democracy.
IS THERE ANY VALID SPACE FOR JIHAD IN THE MODERN WORLD?
by Babu Suseelan
Babu Suseelan asks rhetorically whether there is room for Jihad in our
high-tech modern world. He argues that
"[t]hroughout its history, everything Mohammedans have touched has been
marred with lies, wars, tyranny, massacre, and terror. Islamic blind
faiths and its cruel principles cooked up by Mohammad have violently
destroyed our original ethical concepts, moral principles and social
structures. In fact, Islam is not a religion, but a closed, rigid
political dogma fit only for invasion, war, terrorism, plunder, sex
perversion, looting, massacre, oppression, abduction, kidnapping,
beheading, and cultural destruction The blind followers of Mohammad
have successfully twisted empathy, love, harmony, coexistence,
pluralism and religious tolerance into submission, hatred, Jihad War
and murder." Quite an indictment. Unfortunately, it isn't hyperbole.
Suseelan urges we take drastic action now to secure our
future.
In the Middle East they are replacing the Arab Spring by the
introduction of stricter sharia law. In America they are softening us
up to accept Islamic values and Islamic definitions of justice and
freedom. And, trust me, Islamic notions of justice and freedom don't
come from the Bible. In academia, sensitive areas (read: criticism of
Islam) are avoided. Solid scholarship is being replaced with cartoon
bubbles of joyful triteness. The media and our children's textbooks
assure us Sharia will fit right into America, especially if we ignore
the Constitution. The pushers of sharia don't need to burn books that
are based on thoughtful integration of established facts. Instead, all
that is needed is distraction. It's even working in politics. At the
watering holes and in the bars, are people pooling their knowledge of
how much America is in hock? Are they worrying about the
Administration's shiftless spending of money we don't have? Do they
worry that those labeled as millionaires — and that has gone from
2,500,000 to 250,000 and will be 25,000 any month now — have become
Orwellian Goldsteins and are being discouraged from fashioning goods
and creating jobs? No. The manipulated public is absorbed in decrying
the jello-solid linkages that tie the Republican presidential
candidate to a woman who lost her job at a company he'd once run — or
maybe it was her husband who lost his — and didn't have insurance
soooo ... she died of cancer and it's all his fault. Our
infrastructure is being chewed away by the termites in our regulation
agencies and government is more by decree than by law. Yet we spend
our time discussing one distraction after another. Someone was smart
enough to answer the accusation that Romney was cruel to his dog by
saying, "At least he didn't eat it like Obama did." That stopped that.
So another smoke bomb was tossed. And then another. The economy and
our debt are not addressed. And the infiltration of sharia is ignored.
This set of articles provides some examples of sharia.
Nidra Poller examines the arbitrariness of the media's reactions in
situations that are fairly similar. They insisted on interviewing
Gilad Shalit while he was still in Hamas control but they didn't delay
the release of the Arab terrorists by a minute. Consider their very
different reactions to the killing of the Libyan Mouamar Gaddafi and
the waging of the Iraq war. "The media hated the Iraq 'war.' They
loved the Libyan 'liberation.'" So they showed no humanitarian horror
at the huge number of collateral deaths and the destruction of
property when Gaddafi was slaughtered. There was no talk of
"disproportionate force." NATO could do no wrong — at least for a
day. In Morocco, Islamists, now called Moderates, are suddenly
acceptable, even though they can't be told apart from the bad
Islamists of a year ago. So taken are the media with the illusion of a
changing-for-the-better Middle East, they are incapable in seeing that
the winner is inevitably sharia. They've even used their ability to make an
event seem significant on Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and ignored the
signs this street theatre is in part courtesy of those promoting
Islamization of the Western world. As Poller writes, "[t]he
unalterable goal of Islam is to impose sharia" and it never stops. But
the media are too entranced by the Siren Song of the world they imagine
is being birthed to care.
Glossy Islamophilic programs are sprouting up all over the place.
Because they are given on campus, they are often taken seriously,
though few qualify as scholarly. Georgetown University, for example,
has a cottage industry in publishing texts that airbrush the history
and ideology of Islam; these fairy tales are sold to the public as
authentic information. Jewish Studies programs, in contrast, are
usually bolder and explore many aspects of Jewish history and ideology
without fear of restriction. So what happens when unfettered
scholarship steps on a Muslim toe? Phyllis Chesler writes about what
happened at Yale, when its Institute for the Study of Global
Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) examined "Islamic Judeophobia and
specifically ... Iranian genocidal Judeophobia." It took only a few
complaints that ISGAP's research was racist for Yale to decided the
subject threatened its "scholarly commitments" (read: who needs a
bunch of Muslim kids rioting and oil sheiks withdrawing big-bucks
funding?) and closed it down. As Chesler concludes, "Antisemtism is as
virulent, threatening and genocidal as it has ever been and the need
for a Charles Small and an organization like ISGAP, that is not afraid
to seek the truth, is more pressing than it has ever been."
There are many ex-Muslims who will critically assess Islam but a
practicing Muslim willing to adapt his religion to conditions very
different than the ones in which it was born is rare. Dr. Zuhdi
Jasser, a physician and a pious Muslim, has declared himself to be
such a person. In fact, he started an organization with the promising
name of American Islamic Forum for Democracy. It has two important
goals: (1) the separation of mosque and state; and (2) maintaining
Islam as a religion, not a political ideology. He has recently written
a book that Dr. Andrew Bostom examines in this essay. It is
disappointing that Jasser asserts, contrary to fact, that the Koran
doesn't encourage conversion to Islam, enforced or voluntary; that the
Koran does not "sanction the jihad conquest of non-Muslims, including
their subjugation and justified humiliation"; that the Koran does not
"affirms Islam's triumphant supersessionism, vis a vis both Judaism
and Christianity"; that the Koran doesn't encourage the elimination of
other religions and their artifacts. If the assertions made by Dr.
Jasser on the theory and practice of Islam were true, there would be
no need for an organization whose preachings, if followed, would
eliminate hostile and bloody Muslim attempts at takeovers of host
countries. "No drastic reforms [would be] required of mainstream,
institutional Islam."
Over the last eighty years,
the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has devoted its time, resources, energy
and money — all of which it has in prodigious amounts — to a single
cause. It has outlined general plans, structured and restructured the steps in the plans and refined them. It has
developed clever social engineering methods, often using the target country's
ideology against itself. In Europe, it takes advantage of the belief
in multiculturalism to make Europe support the indigent and highly
fertile immigrant Muslims that are bankrupting it. Where ever Muslims have a
local majority — at a school, in a neighborhood — they demand their life
style be followed; and they will create no-go zones, where
non-Muslims are not let in, not even firemen and policemen. In Israel
most of children clinics' money goes to treat the ailments of Arab children
that are the products of generations of cousin marriages. And the Arabs
in the territories expect Israel to provide them with water and
power, while they takes pot
shots at the men that come to maintain the services. In America it is
using our concern for victims and our
belief in democracy and freedom for all to force undemocratic
practices: installing sharia banking, demanding sharia courts, demanding special perks
at work and school, harassing Jewish students at universities
and intimidating university administrators so they take no action, building a huge
mosque in a largely Christian area, holding up traffic
while they pray on busy city streets, forcing jobs to conform to their
ideology rather than performing the requirements of the job (clerks
refusing to sell alcohol, cab drivers refusing to transport seeing-eye dogs come to
mind) and intimidating the media so that media people
censor themselves. In the Middle East and in Asian countries where
Muslims are the majority, the non-Muslim minorities are treated
brutally. All in all, the MB — using a host of implementers,
well-wishers and useful idiots — has
carefully implemented a complex set of small and large interacting
activities across the globe, all in the service of making Islam
dominant and inflicting sharia law on all the countries on the planet.
A formidable task. But by now, they often know what is likely to work. They know
when to efface themselves and when to be bold. They know how to win at
the game of power politics.
Caroline Glick provides us with a blow by blow description of the
events in Egypt from the first hope-filled days when the populace led
by idealistic secularists overthrew Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship. Her
essay could almost be entitled: How the West was won. Except this is
the Arab Middle East and — to get to the bottom line — the good guys
lost. Instead, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), has emerged as Egypt's
dominant power, positioned so it will likely move the Army aside just
as it ran circles around the heterogeneous groups who expected the
fall of the dictatorship would automatically usher in a secular
democracy. The idealists hoped and assumed; the MB had a goal:
the formation of a rigidly islamic Egypt that is completely
sharia-compliant. It planned realistically and implemented a series of
actions designed to reach this goal. Glick isn't telling us a
happy-ending Cinderella story but it is important we understand what
happened and how it was that the MB, seemingly against the
odds, raked in the chips. When things settle down, they will take on
their next task: attacking and terrorizing Israel. They will have the
use of sophisticated equipment, courtesy of the United States. They
will have the services of a well-trained military, courtesy of the
United States. They have the good wishes and financial support of
President Obama, who sees them as a force for moderation. They will
have no problem disregarding the much-praised peace treaty with
Israel. It will become just another casualty of the Arab Spring.
THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IN THE ARAB WORLD AND ISLAMIC COMMUNITIES IN WESTERN EUROPE
by Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
This is a general summary of what's happening — and what the Muslim
Brotherhood (MB) is making happen — in a large chunk of the world.
"It deals with the nature of the movement in each country,
its relations with the various regimes and evaluates its chances of
exploiting regional unrest to its own ends. It also examines the
Muslim Brotherhood's branches in Western European countries and the
implications of its activity for both internal European affairs and
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict." ITIC's tone is moderate but you can
figure out whether the MB is as moderate as the media proclaim it from
small touches such as "In the Palestinian Authority Hamas, the
Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, ... in a series of
violent military maneuvers it overthrew Fatah and the Palestinian
Authority and took political and security control of the Gaza Strip."
ITIC updates this summary from time to time and it makes an excellent
reference to hold onto.
For those of us accustomed to easily-defined separations in ideology
and tactics between contending groups, the relationship of Al-Qaeda
and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) can be confusing. They are often at odds
and hurling mutual insults, but they are fighting on the same side
against the Syrian regime. This essay by Thomas Joscelyn clarifies
some of the confusion. The main point to remember is, as Joscelyn
writes, "[t]he disagreements between the Brotherhood and al Qaeda are
largely tactical, not ideological or strategic." Practically speaking,
it suggests they are willing to defer acting on their own differences
until their mutual goals are reached. Nor matter how much Islam's
apologists attempt to persuade us that the MB are moderate Islamists,
Raymond Ibrahim's dictum remains valid: "Moderate Islamist is
oxymoronic, since to be "Islamist," — to be a supporter of draconian
Sharia — is by definition to be immoderate."
Mark Tapson discusses an important new resource to help us fight off
Civilization Jihad — a term that describes the non-violent
attacks on our civilization and our way of life. The Center for
Security Policy (CSP) has developed a series of videos called "The
Muslim Brotherhood in America" that details the activities of the MB
infiltration and how this furthers their jihad against the West. It
examines the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and its spinoffs
into our security and regulatory agencies, our military and
counter-terrorism groups — and even into the White House, itself. As
Tapson concludes, the course is "both an essential guide to
comprehending the depth and breadth of the threat posed to America by
the MB and a useful plan of action to counter that threat."
Will it be by bomb or by starvation? By implosion? By explosion?
Or will it end up as splinter groups bickering while the region limps along? One
thing seems certain: it is unlikely that the brain-dead recipe
Israel has been using — breaking off pieces of itself to maintain
peace at an acceptable level of violence — will be even minimally effective
anymore. Israel might actually have to use its power rather than keep playing
Gulliver tied up by the strings of the Politically-Correct Lilliputians
Much of Egypt's population has little margin between minimal
survival and actual starvation. So a rise in grain prices could push
the country into chaos. In this essay, Spengler examines the role of the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which, in these uncertain times, has
increased instability by encouraging demonstrations against Saudia
Arabia. This was biting the hand that previously had promised
money to feed Egypt.
The Brotherhood apparently believes it is better
to have a economic crisis now while they can still place blame on the Egyptian
military than later, when they themselves are fully in control. Spengler
writes that "...Egypt is in a classic pre-revolutionary
situation...with a vanguard party ready to dislodge a disintegrating
civil society, and replace it with totalitarian party rule at street
level. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest political party, is
poised to ride to power on the back of this crisis."
Already it controls bread and fuel prices. Already people hoard;
commodities are unavailable; and Egypt is running out of cash.
An Israeli reader, Aryeh Zelasko, reminds us there is something like a silver
lining, a tarnished silver lining, to these ominous clouds: "We [Israelis] are
actually very fortunate to have enemies like this. Their hatred for us
(and nearly everything else in the world) is so profound that they
will even cut their own throat if the blood will annoy us. They are
only months away from massive starvation and all they can concentrate
on is whom to insult." Or it might be that the Brotherhood just didn't want to waste a
good crisis, even a manufactured one.
Yaakov Lappin writes about the future of
Egypt's cold peace with Israel, which may be finished for several reasons.
Since the Arab Spring with the regime change in Egypt and turbulence in Syria,
terrorists — Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda-affiliated groups —
have installed themselves in the Sinai Peninsula
with large caches of munitions, weaponry and rockets and have started
firing rockets into Israel.
Egypt's army is more concerned about losing control of Cairo than the Sinai; it
will confine its
struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) to Cairo and Egypt's
political institutions.
The MB, which is beginning to show its power overtly and whose
philosophy is to start wars and to attack in order to further Muslim
dominance, will welcome a Hamas-Egypt alliance that boldly attacks Israel.
After all, the MB fathered Hamas; they share the same ideology.
And Hamas, now chased out of Syria, will have more
elbow room in which to operate. This means that Israel will no
longer confront terrorist attacks just from Gaza, but from Gaza and the Sinai,
which are already linked via in-place tunnels. It is ironic that
Israel gave up both Gaza and the Sinai unilaterally in the interests
of peace and now will likely have a
fierce fight to neutralize them.
In the arithmetic of the Middle East, an Israeli soldier who kills a
single Arab child acting as a human shield for terrorists is
committing a crime against humanity and the U.N. convenes its
delegates who declare Israel must cease and desist entire operations.
By the same math, an Arab country such as Syria may kill its
rebellious citizens by the thousands and the same U.N. will spend
months negotiating with Syria's President and never get much beyond a stern
warning and a decision to reconvene. And Prez Obama, who had no
problem killing off the Libyan king, Moammar Gaddafi, who didn't
threaten our security, "seems paralyzed:... he is committed to a U.N.
process almost certainly doomed to failure; and [more to the point]...
he fears taking on the real nemesis in Syria, namely Iran's
ayatollahs," who prop up the Assad regime. He doesn't seem to
understand that diplomacy will never stop Iran.
Iran is actively our enemy, determined to do us serious damage.
Allowing her to acquire nuclear capability would have serious consequences
locally in the Middle East and globally.
Bolton concludes that "we may have to wait for a more resolute
president," but events might not wait.
In Syria there are some players that care about Syria as Syria. They
want to keep the regime. Or change the regime. But for most of the
other combatants, the civil war in Syria is a proxy battleground where
Sunnis and Shiites duke it out, where Russia shows muscle, where the
Muslim Brotherhood tests out a takeover opportunity, where the
American administration tries to stack the deck for the MB embedded
among the rebels. David Goldman makes the rational suggestion that
prolonging the conflict is useful in many way for the proxy players
and interested onlookers, including us. And if, per chance, one wanted
to deal with Syria, the way to do it is "to beat up the dog's owner,
namely Tehran." As he points out, "Iran is the threat, not Syria. The
scandal is that the administration has done nothing to neutralize the
Iranian threat." How right he is.
David Meir-Levi has written a remarkable article exploring the
possibility that Israel might soon need to fight a nine-front war, a war
where all the barbaric nightmare monsters in the neighborhood gang up on
Israel. As he suggests,
"Israel now seems to be close to that situation."
He looks at Iran, Hezbollah, the Sinai
inhabited by various terror groups, Egypt, Hamas, Fatah and Syria. He
is even willing to tackle a group many ignore: the
Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel who are, for the most part, disloyal. And of
course, there are the brain-washed Arabs in the Territories.
The Middle East may be engulfed in chaos and strife. It may see
populations massacred by their own leaders. It may be creating new
refugees running for their lives. The governments taking over from the
corrupt dictatorships are not what the West and many democrats in the
Middle East were hoping to see. They are totalitarian and fundamentalist. But not
everyone is upset by the new
regimes. Hamas members such as al Skudsi Bin Hookah see this as
an invigorating experience, a time of new beginnings and renewed
energy to fulfil their mission: to smash anyone and any group of
people that stand in the way of their recreating the Caliphate.
Much of the initial protection of Muslims came from oil-based
friendships of Western leadership with Saudi "royalty." But as time
goes on, solidarity with Muslims, compassion for terrorists and
contempt for Jews is the way politicians and mainstream churches
express Jew-hate. The more timid a government is in confronting
the demands of its Islamic population, the more the nasty attacks
against Jews increase. As we will read below, what we are beginning to
see on California campuses has become pervasive in much of Europe.
Moreover, Muslim highhandedness and disregard for anyone else's
desires but their own has spread to how they treat the European
natives.
Norway may be earning itself the title of most overtly anti-semitic
country in Western Europe. Its leadership mouths platitudes about
having "a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bullying in schools"
but ignores documented attacks on Jewish students. Instead, the
politicians lash out at those, such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
who complain. Bawer notes that "... while Norwegian officials ... are
terrified of offending Muslims, they are not terribly worried about
offending Jews." The situation is not improved by the unmitigated stupidity of the Wiesenthal Center in
protesting against Islamophobia while ignoring that "a disproportionate number
of anti-Semitic acts in Norway are committed by Muslims" who have been
taught Jew-hate from childhood.
The Center also has had nothing to say about how the
reflexive solidarity of Norway's multicultural elite with the Muslims
contributes to creating an antisemitic climate. This does not help
encourage Norway to change its ways.
When the New York Trade Center and a chunk of the
Pentagon were destroyed by a bunch of Muslim Arabs, the Muslim
community in America was immediately given absolution. Their dancing
in the streets and their joy at the destruction were ignored. We
were immediately reassured that Islam was a religion of peace.
People sheltered them, ran errands for them, invited them
to kaffeeklatsches. They were not blamed for the evil done by
their coreligionists. In Toulouse, France, recently a Muslim on a
motorcycle slaughtered three people and injured many others at a
Jewish school. The Muslims are sufficiently numerous there; they
don't need protecting. They are increasingly in control of their
environment. They can riot and disrupt at will. As Giulio
Meotti points out, the Toulouse killing set off antisemitic
incidents across France. You can't blame them on publicity in the
media. The press has barely mentioned the spate of antisemitic
incidents. Seventy years after the Holocaust, now fueled by
the unabashed Jew hate of the immigrant Muslims, European
antisemitism is again overt and virulent. And Jews are leaving.
Soeren Kern writes about another, more recent, incident where Muslims
violently protested the public presentation of a cartoon of
Muhammad. To sum it up: An anti-Salafist group in Bonn has rally,
holding banners depicting Mohammad. Muslims riot and attack German
police trying to separate the two sides. Police arrest many Muslims
and then release most of them. German politicians talk a good line
about the Salafists being anti-democratic, but in general, as Kern
puts it, "German authorities have sought to silence the peaceful critics of
multicultural policies that allow the Salafists — who say they are
committed to imposing Islamic Sharia law throughout Europe — openly
to preach violence and hate." One would almost think one was in
Israel, where Jewish police almost always defend Arab thieves, vandals and
attackers and blame their Jewish victims.
DON'T LET AMERICA IMITATE A BURNING EUROPEAN UNION
by Bruce Thornton
There is the old fable about the boy sent to market. He brings back a
dog in a brown paper bag and is lectured that he should have put the
dog on a leash. The next errand is to bring back
bread. He puts it on a leash and drags it along the dusty road. Told
the bread should have been tucked in his hat, he comes home with melted
butter the next errand. The point is that what is appropriate under
previous circumstances may not be currently useful. Bruce Thornton
writes of the inappropriate application of the evils of nationalism
under Hitler to today's Europe. The politicians pump up the virtues
of the European Union (EU), asserting "that supranational
institutions and laws would replace the nation-state with its
divisive particularities of custom, culture, religion, and language."
No such parliament has yet done so, not the League of Nations,
certainly not the U.N., and not the E.U. Nor will it, given the
individuality of the member nationalities. The differences in
attitude and work-ethic have become blatantly obvious in the current
currency crisis. The Germans wouldn't bail out Greece unless Greece
adopted an austere budget. The result has been greater disparity and
little relief for Greece. While some cling to the "utopean dreams of
absolute equality, prosperity for all, and a cost-free dolce vita",
many have forsaken rosy platitudes and assert it is every country for
itself. Thornton points out there is an important lesson here for us in
America: "we should take warning and fight against those like Obama
who see the EU as a model to follow."
[Note that this article was written in 2006. It holds true, except
that, on the one hand, Muslims control more enclaves that exclude non-Muslims
and, on the other hand, some right-wing politicians who have
campaigned against Muslim immigration have actually been elected. These
objectors to immigration are thoroughly reviled by the multiculturalists, who
continue to dominate the government, the media and the cultural
institutions. ]
Until around 1995, the Swedish population was ethnically
homogeneous. They looked the same; they thought the same. They had a
state envied for its generous benefits for the unemployed and
underemployed. But as time went on and more Swedes were seduced away
from their Protestant work ethic to a welfare mentality, the State
began finding it difficult to sustain a social structure with
more-outgo-than-income, and with a growing number of make-work rather
than make-money jobs. Some politicos saw — and see — increased
Muslim immigration as
the solution, even though statistics would indicate this immigration has not
contributed income. Instead, it "has greatly contributed to bringing
the Swedish welfare state to the brink of bankruptcy." But instead of
confronting the damage the massive Muslim immigration had done to the
country — "rapidly declining social harmony and increasing
insecurity" as well as a high number of robberies, rapes, attacks on Jews, vandalism, arson and increased welfare costs — debate has been
almost entirely silenced.
As a reader, Zerosumgame, put it, "The government and media are
paralyzed by political correctness. So there is little to prevent the increasing influx of
unassimilatable Muslim immigrants into Sweden-- as into all of Western
Europe — from, as Fjordman writes, 'transforming the continent into a
post-Western entity some call Eurabia.'"
There is a simple indicator of the power of the Muslims in Europe. The
growing power of the Muslim population in western European countries was clearly seen in the
recent French election. As
Soeren Kern writes, "Muslims cast the
deciding vote that thrust Hollande into the Elysée Palace... it is a
preview of things to come." 93% of the votes of the resident 5-6
million Muslims who voted (1.7 million votes) went to Hollande.
Muslims responded to Hollande's promise of amnesty to some 400,000
illegal Muslims. Muslim residents without French citizenship will
be allowed to vote in the 2014 municipal elections. Moreover, the
Socialists have promised them generous welfare benefits. Add to these
tangible benefits, "[i]n the ideological sphere, Socialists and
Muslims generally share a mutual antipathy for traditional
Judeo-Christian values. Although many Muslims oppose the secular
agenda of the Socialists, most Muslims wholeheartedly support
Socialist multicultural dogma, which they are leveraging to promote
the Islamization of Europe." Voting as a solid bloc — and they will
— they will keep the Socialists in power indefinitely. Or at least,
until they feel ready to take power directly.
IT IS TIME FOR THE EUROPEAN MULTICULTURALISM WORM TO TURN AT LAST
by Babs Barron
Barbara Barron writes that since Geert Wilders won his case in court,
the Dutch government has begun instituting measures that will resist
Muslim immigrants taking advantage of the prevailing multicultural
ideology to impose its particular lifestyle over Holland. But even if
the measures to protect "the rights of all Dutch people against
Islamic encroachment" succeed, "Europe and the rest of the non-Muslim
world, ... [are] far too ready to cave in to Islam's exaggerated sense
of entitlement, far too often underpinned by a subliminal (and
sometimes explicit) sense of threat and menace if it does not get its
own way." In England, France and cities in Sweden, Muslims infiltrate
an area until they dominate it, then declare that it is exclusively
for Muslims, no non-Muslims allowed. They continue to expand the
enclave by harassing periphery non-Muslims to move out, enlarging the
areas where the host Government has no control. "The rest of
Europe, if not the world, needs to follow [Holland's] example and
soon."
This set of articles examines some of Israel's other problems: attacks
from the Jewish Left on Zionism; a media that is hopelessly biased
against Israel to the point of falsifying news reports; illegal immigration; the festering
peace disease, and the need for a Constitution whose
internally-consistent
integrated rules are based on Jewish principles.
This is a call by Martin Sherman for the Zionist endeavor — the reclamation of the
ancient Jewish homeland — to be allowed to prosper. This is a call
for the voice of the majority of the Israelis to be heard and not be
drowned out by, as Sherman puts it, "an insignificant minority view"
of post-Zionists who dominate "the legal establishment, the media and
much of academia." "Having eviscerated the Zionist political parties
of any resolve and self-confidence, and emboldened by the reticent
response of their adversaries, the post-Zionists have now set their
sights on the symbols of Jewish sovereignty... the spiritual roots of
the Zionist movement." Sherman takes the discourse away from the
politically correct worry that a Jewish state complete with Jewish
symbols and Jewish values might make its Arab citizens uncomfortable,
possibly even humiliate them. Sherman points out that "Arabs in Israel
who feel their national identity is incompatible with political
realities and the conduct of public life have many options. Demanding
that the victors relinquish their ethos to accommodate the defeated is
not one." Fundimentally, this is a call for Jewish self-respect.
Israel has been stabbed by the media so many times for so long
and so unjustly, it reacts lethargically if at all. For
the most part, it seems to have adopted a 'liars will always be with us'
attitude — even when the stories the media distribute aren't just
distorted but clearly indicate that the writers and photographers and
editors and producers willingly participated in yet another Arab
hoax and/or baseless attack on Israel. In this essay,
Daniel Greenfield lays out the ideational props the Western reporters
move around in different contortions when writing about Israel (the bad
guys) and the Palestinian Arabs (white as the driven snow).
He does so in a precise and bitterly calm way that is as convincing as it is
disturbing. One would like to come up with counter examples. But it
hard to do so. Reporters in Israel, whether Jew or Gentile, write as
enemies of the State and its people. As for Muslim reporters, they
don't even have to be in Israel to supply their readers with
nonsensical falsehoods and downright hoaxes about the only place in
the Middle East standing strong against the Islamacist's desire to
establish a universal caliphate. The Muslims have a mission. What is
puzzling is why the Jewish and Christian minions of the Western
press act as dishonestly as they do.
Guy Bechor writes of a new type of warfare. Africans have been swarming illegally
into Israel, increasingly so as time goes bye, not as refugees —
although they are so misrepresented — but as economic migrants,
wishing to improve their lives. They are unlike the large number
of well-behaved Filipinos, Thai, Sri Lankans and other guest workers
who fit easily into Israeli society. Instead, like the Muslim immigrants in
Europe, the African immigrants, mostly Muslim, are aggressive and
confrontational. They invade public parks, harass women, expect free
health care and automatic visas, disrupt neighborhoods, commit crimes
and create public health problems. It is a sad fact that many NGOs and agencies
who don't wish the Jewish state well encourage immigration while charging the
government with racism in a well-funded effort to change the
demographic balance and make Jews a minority in their own state. There
is also the unpalatable fact that these migrants are themselves racist
and hold women in low esteem. Bechor points out this influx is a
problem that requires urgent attention before it, like America's
problem with illegals from Mexico, becomes intractable.
There is an addendum: excerpts from an essay by Nurit Greenger, which fills in
some details.
Daniel Greenfield writes of Israel's obsession with what is unlikely
to materialize: peace with those committed to slaughtering them.
Forsaking logic, forsaking reality, forsaking experience with the
worth of an Arab promise, forsaking the knowledge that one can't make
a binding contract with those who don't believe a contract is binding,
feverishly, Israelis continue to pursue peace. "Israel doles out
fortunes in money, land and power in exchange for the promise of peace
and an end to the violence... tomorrow, always tomorrow." Peace
recedes as they approach; irrationally, they — at least their leaders
and the leftists — continue to pursue it. There is no way they can
create peace — except the peace of death — and there is no way the
Arabs will cooperate in a genuine peace. Israelis are so besotted, so
hungry to invent rational excuses, they don't listen to themselves
coldly cataloguing the facts. They listen to the siren song of the
friends of the Arabs, goading them on to try harder, to fashion the
mirage of a peace partner, to ignore reality, to blame themselves, to
beg for peace. This doggish attitude — the more suicidal the plan, the more it
is considered moral — is so ingrained that even when they are given
solid evidence that the land is theirs and there is no reason to give
it away, they prefer to stay in the comfort zone where they live
happily ever after next to their wonderful neighbors, the terrorists
of Hamas and Fatah and al-Quada and Islamic Jihad and so forth and so
on.
Martin Sherman asks why the land-for-peace formula is still proposed,
given its "accumulation of past failures" and "the accumulating
evidence of its future implausibility?" Devout two-staters attribute
the lack of peace to every sort of reason and its opposite. For
example, they now claim the unilateral Gaza withdrawal in 2005 was an
abysmal failure because it wasn't "the product of a negotiation
process — the acknowledged impossibility of which was presented as the
need for unilateral measures in the first place." But as the 'let's
try' wheel has rolled, leaving one peace formula and then another in
the mud, Israel is again being encouraged to agree to all
Palestinian demands pre-negotiation. This latest is frightening not
just because its solemnly-phrased absurdity would lead to intractable
problems for Israel and new Arab demands but because it was suggested
by some Israelis in prominent positions. Sherman has a suggestion that
might actually bring peace to the region: don't push out the Jews from
Samaria and Judea; pay the Arabs to leave. By asserting its legal
sovereignty over Samaria and Judea, Israel would prevent the area
becoming a "giant South Lebanon" — a big step forward.
In a real sense a run-away and unelected judiciary has usurped the power
Israeli voters believe is invested in the Knesset. It has followed its
own ideological interpretations of the Rule of Law. As Paul Eidelberg
explains, this is fundamentally due to a lack of a Constitution.
Israel doesn't have one. It relies on a set of Basic Laws, ad
hoc implementations and the competence and basic decency of its
elected officials. Eidelberg argues that what is needed is radical
reform of Israel's entire system of governance. "Israel needs leaders
committed to the reconstruction of the very foundations of the state,
leaders armed with profound knowledge of institutions—the kind needed
to make Israel a Jewish commonwealth capable of conquering her
enemies." In part 2, Eidelberg provides a detailed example how
reviving the Rule of Law would affect the prosecution of public
officials on trial for criminal activity.
Brandon Marlon points out that modern Israel at 64 had done amazing things in
developing ways to help mankind. But, naturally, there are areas that
could stand improvement, ranging from customer service to electoral
reform. He also suggests major changes in how Israel responds to her
hostile neighbors. It is time that she asserted her sovereignty
over Biblical Israel.
Is there any way to break an New York City upper-west side
"hintellectuwell" Jew of his reliance on the New York Times? Is
there any way a Jew in Berkeley would go against the tribal customs of
the Marxists who decree what is acceptable? Like the hypnotized, they
continue to spout what they read, though their own eyes and ears
contradict what they are saying.
From other sources, they may absorb some facts, but they
will never allow themself to follow through on the implications.
This is unfortunate because the hate projected by the radical left media
against Israel is actually directed at all
Jews, even those in NYC and Berkeley.
Fjordman disputes the oft-proclaimed assertion that left-wing
journalists don't let their personal views influence how they
report the news. Simultaneously, they believe that a right wing
commentator can not be neutral. As a consequence, the reading public
can not be blamed for thinking that mass murderers on the right
acted upon the information they received from the right wing, but
left wing mass murderers had personal motivations having nothing to
do with their informational sources. Together with this self-deception,
they imagine themselves saving the masses from the evils of right
wing propaganda. It is not a recipe for providing the public with
the information it needs to handle real-world crises.
'POLITICAL CORRECTNESS' IS TOTALITARIAN MIND CONTROL
by David Kupelian
David Kupelian argues that far from being an instrument encouraging
politeness, civility and sensitivity, political correctness is "an
insidious frontal attack on common sense and conscience through
language manipulation." As a case in point, the Islamic Jihad that
declared war against the West using multiple means including mass
terror attacks is called by the American government "man-made
disasters, losing in the process all association with Islam,
primitive barbarism and religious fanaticism." As Kupelian points
out, "our civilization is literally being turned upside-down through
the strategic redefinition (and therefore transformation) of our
society's operating principles." He provides us with a selection of
phrases whose new meaninglessness go far to proving his theme.
Aided by enthusiastic reviews in the New York Times and other
mainstream newspapers, yet another pretty fantasy about Sharia law has
become a best seller. This one by Sadakat Kadri is awash in reverence
about the Koran and that most perfect of men, Muhammad, and his
purported conversations with Allah. The analytic level of the writing
is captured in Kadri's summary: [Muhammad] "had more access to eternal
wisdom than any other human being who had lived." What makes this
article by Bruce Bawer so enlightening is that in this astringent
critique of the Kadri book, he not only lets the gas out of Kadri's
book, he also spells out some of the techniques employed by the
fabulist writers on the Koran and Muhammed. May it inoculate you
against the latest epidemic of sugar-coated propaganda about Islam.
Robin Shepherd views BBC personnel as "overwhelmingly in thrall to an
obsessive anti-Zionist bigotry which appears to know no bounds."
Considering their treatment of Israel, that's actually rather mild.
When it comes to Israel, one associates the BBC with the bludgeon,
the machete, the hatchet. Allowing for differences in time and place, the BBC treats
Israel — and increasingly, Jews — much as Mohammad's marauders
treated their chosen victims. They have such blood-letting lust, they
even will base a story (aka attack) on the pronouncements of
Richard Falk, who, when it comes to Israel, incorporates in himself
the viciousness distributed among multiple BBC minions. To really pin
down Falk's credentials, allow me to point out he is Special
Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights at the U.N. He is outrageously
bigoted even for that organization. He condemns Israel's killing of a
single Arab acting as a shield for a terrorist as a heinous crime,
but is silent when Fatah kills its own citizens for selling property
to Jews or when Hamas severely punishes its own people for deviating
from the increasingly harsh superimposition of Sharia law. UN Watch
described him well, saying "While [he] appears highly qualified and
well versed in the language of human rights, the reality is that his
twisted moral vision negates the basic principles of human rights,
recasting tyrants, terrorists and teachers of hatred as heroic
victims resisting colonialist oppression."
Rafael Medoff writes of the interview he had with Benzion Netanyahu in
June 2009, who was in the U.S.A. during the 1940, actively working on
gaining support to rescue the European Jews, who were being massacred
by the Nazis and their cohorts. Netanyahu was asked about the
attitudes and support — or non-support — of the then president,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, congressmen and leaders of major
Jewish organizations. The interview reinforces what history in
retrospect confirms: despite the adoration of the American Jews,
"Roosevelt was only superficially sympathetic to the suffering of
European Jewry." He had no interest in saving them from certain death.
And too many Jews who had reached positions of power in the
government and as leaders in the Jewish community did little to push
the Administration to rescue the European Jews.
PASSENGERS ON A SHIP TURNED BACK FROM ITS JOURNEY: 64 YEARS LATER, EXODUS SURVIVORS MEET FOR LUNCH
Sherry Gavanditti
In violation of their mandate to help the Jews develop their homeland,
the British curtailed Jewish immigration to Palestine as much as they
could during the 1930s and 1940s. Sherry Gavanditti writes of two
Holocaust survivors who suffered through the evils perpetrated by Nazi
Germany and then, together with the other 4500 Jews aboard the
Exodus 1947, were subjected to gratuitous cruelty when the
British refused to allow the passengers off the boat bringing them to
Palestine. The passengers were returned to Europe, to Germany of all places.
The two later fought in the Israeli War of Independence, when the
newly-created State of Israel was invaded by its Arab neighbors.
Gavanditti writes of the meeting of these two men some six decades later.
Jerrold Sobel has compiled a graphic image of what he accurately
describes "as one of the all time most heinous pogroms ever to have
befallen the Jewish people during their remarkable but often
calamitous history." It occurred June 1941 in Romania, when the Jews
"were isolated and differentiated by the Romanian authorities. To
avoid the mobs, houses of Christians were marked with crosses, all
Jews were forced to wear the Star of David on their clothing, Jewish
men were forced to dig ditches in the Jewish cemetery, Jewish homes
and shops were broken into and looted, Synagogues burned, random acts
of violence against Jews in the streets were commonplace throughout
the city." When the savagery subsided, between 280,00 to 380,000 Jews had been killed.
Robert Werdine writes about the attacks by the Arabs in the spring of
1948, even before the State of Israel was declared. The Jewish
defenders of one of the settlements in the Etzion Bloc were
overwhelmed, surrendered and were slaughtered while they satas prisoners. All the
Jews living in Jerusalem's Old City who weren't killed were expelled,
the houses and synagogues were deliberately destroyed, and the
gravestones in the cemetery on the Mount of Olives broken and used as
building material and stepping stones to the latrines. The object was
to kill or expel the Jews, so that not one Jew remained. The object
lesson was not lost on the Jews, who had little military material or
training but understood their choice was to defend
themselves or suffer annihilation. For those who know the realities of the
Arab assault, the romanticized fantasy of the nakba, where innocent
Arabs were thrust out into the world as refugees, loses much in the telling.
When Israel became a State, its Arab neighbors invaded it; and in so
doing created two sets of refugees. One set consisted of the Arabs who
fled Israel as well as each and everyone of their children and their
children's children and their children's children's children, plus
anyone living in Arab countries with any sort of claim, however
flimsy. After more than 60 years, few of the original group are left.
But, unlike any other refugee group in the history of the world, their
numbers continue to grow because the U.N. declared they are entitled
their food, their education and their health care. It's the least it
can do to console them for the unhappy fact that they weren't able to
destroy Israel. The second group of refugees was created when
state-sanctioned mobs in almost
all the Arab countries, angry that a bunch of uppity Jews had dared to
reclaim land the Arabs knew for sure belonged to them, attacked the
Jewish residents. It didn't occur to the U.N. to help these
refugees, even though many came of families that had been rooted in
the region long before Muslim marauders invaded the Middle East. But
then, it wasn't necessary. Israel took them in, and very soon, they
were not longer refugees. They were Israeli citizens. Matti Friedman
tells the story of some of the Jews living in Aleppo Syria, when Israel became
a state.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
We start this issue with a two-pronged question: What does Islam want to
accomplish and how are we in Western culture helping them by
self-censorship, complacency
and appeasement?
In the 1930s, during the economic crisis before World War 2, the then American President, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt said we had nothing to fear but fear itself — but in those days,
the whole country was involved. Nowadays, many don't seem to know
Islam has declared an unending, multi-faceted uncompromising war against us — we act as if this is a debating society
and we can talk them to death. In truth,
we may have lots to fear and nothing to gain by not fighting back.
Keep in mind that the adherents to Islam aren't allowed to pick and
choose. They can't revise an outdated command by giving it a figurative or
milder meaning. A good Muslim — a pious Muslim — follows the Koran
without deviation. It is the word of Allah, as given voice by
Muhammad, who is himself
the best example Muslims have of how to think and behave as a Muslim.
Resurgent Islam's mission to rule the planet is neither haphazard nor short-lived. It
has been well-planned. An early objective has been to kill off the growing power of a Jewish
presence in the Middle East. When the modern State
of Israel survived the onslaughts and invasions by her Arab
neighbors, it became a subsidiary objective to cut the ties between Israel and the Jews in the West who contribute to
its viability. After years where antisemitism was disapproved by the
well-bred and thus pushed under the
radar, Jews in the west are now themselves a target. The new antisemitism is
mouthed not just by skin-head crazies but by respected academicians at
major universities, by mainline churchmen and by minority groups that
have been the beneficiaries of the unequaled participation by Jews in
the fight for political and social equality.
We have reached the point where many in the West sing the Siren
Song of accommodation with the terrorists. As Sarah Honig writes
below:
"The international community can't wait to whitewash, exonerate, find
extenuating excuses for and otherwise legitimize Arab terrorists,
lessen their culpability, conceal their ideology, make light of their
record, explain away their sins and gloss over their proven malice."
What is perhaps most disconcerting is
that so many Jews — particularly those in organizations designed to
defend Judaism from its antisemitic enemies — seem oblivious to what's happening.
The well-funded and sustained campaign to demonize Israel and marginalize Jews in
America is seldom rebutted by one of the major Jewish organizations. It is a benchmark of sorts that the Holocaust has become too
controversial for the Jewish Federation. This is discussed by Ahlert's
article in this set.
While we play our silly lets pretend that all-is-jolly
games, Iran is building nuclear weapons to terrorize the Middle East
and silence the West. Locally in Israel, Hamas
and Fatah continue to act as they
proclaimed in their charters.
"Goals: Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of
Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence. Method:
Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic... in uprooting the
Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist
state is demolished.... Opposing any political solution offered as an
alternative to demolishing the Zionist occupation in Palestine"
— Fatah Constitution
This is not much different from Hamas's charter, which reads:
"Israel will exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it
obliterated others before it.... Initiatives, and so-called peaceful
solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to
the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.... The Day of
Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews, when the
Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will
say O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him."
Should the impossible occur and the Arab terrorists — the pious Muslims of today who most
clearly emulate Mohammad — mellow their genocidal message, isn't it clear
that the pious Arab populace would soon replace them with leaders from
the smaller, less media-highlighted groups of devout terrorists,
rabidly ready to carry on the Prophet's vision?
The brutal and the
bloodiest prepare on the small stage of Israel to take their perfected
mission to a larger audience. Yet the
West sleeps.
Amil Imani has written an excellent summary of the Islamic threat
throughout the world: "Islamists are hell-bent on imposing their
Stone-Age system on everyone." They consider it — including their
master-slave model for a well-run society and their brutal
tactics in achieving their goal — a religious duty, which rids them
of guilt and hesitancy.
"Islam, by the nature of its very doctrine, appeals to man's baser
nature." This is so alien to other religions and to secular humanism,
that there is a tendency to disbelieve the reality.
Sarah Honig states bluntly what many in the West would like to
ignore: "Hamas anchors its Jew-revulsion in the Koran." As the Hamas
Charter asserts, "there is no solution to the Palestinian problem
except by Jihad." Nevertheless, no matter how openly Hamas states its intent,
Westerners, with all the evidence against them, continue to act
as if Hamas can be gentled, that we can all
reason together, if we but make the effort — again. Honig
suggests, using the Swiss as example, that either
they "know what Hamas is but just [don't] really
give a hoot" or ...
"don't wish to burden their selective conscience with excess information — as per precedents from Third Reich days about other genocidal harangues"
HOLOCAUST SPEAKER TOO CONTROVERSIAL FOR PURDUE CALUMET?
by Arnold Ahlert
Self-censorship is an excellent way
to deny the threat of resurgent Islam.
If we never get into a confrontational situation, we don't have to think
about the consequences of standing up — or not standing up — for our way of life against a group
that places no limitations on what it will do to win.
One excellent indicator that self-censorship is at work is when Muslims object to the Holocaust being taught,
and the school or local school board accede to their demand. Or
often, they cut the course or lecture series when no one has yet complained, but they
are aware that Muslims objected to it somewhere else.
This has become commonplace in Europe, especially England. But it is still
fairly new in this country.
In this essay, Arnold Ahlert chronicles a recent example
that occurred at Purdue University. What makes it particularly
appalling
is that Jewish Federation, a major Jewish organization, went along
with the action.
THIS PASSOVER, FREE US FROM A FAILED JEWISH LEADERSHIP
by Stella Paul
This being the season in which we celebrate the Passover and our deliverance from
slavery into becoming a free people, we present Stella Paul's special
prayer for deliverance from an American Jewish leadership which for
many years has shown itself to be
"A clueless bunch of mini-Pharaohs, strutting around proclaiming their moral superiority"... This
being the season of the Passover, she frames her prayer in the format
of dayena, "It would have been enough, O Lord." Actually,
considering the tone of the essay, a better translation might be the
Yiddish-English "genug, already." (Enough already!)
David Meir-Levi provides us with is a detailed summary of how far the
Islamists have come in softening us up so that we won't resist their
next phase of attack on western civilization. They have effectively
used a variety of procedures from lawfare to terrorism. Almost
unnoticed is "the quiet, gradual and peaceful infiltration of Muslim
operatives and their supporters into our social, legal, educational
and political systems under the guise of legitimate democratic
activism..." What makes all of this so depressing is that like
lobsters slowly subjected to increasing heat, we seem to adapt and
remain quiescent. We show no alarm.
Mark Steyn tells us how important Geert Wilders is in the fight for
all of us in the West to retain
our freedom of speech and thought. Wilders was put on trial for committing the sin of
describing Islam accurately in its own words. Unfortunately, in
Europe, "[t]hose who seek to analyze Islam outside the very narrow bounds of Eutopian political discourse wind up either banned (Belgium's Vlaams Blok), forced into exile (Ayaan Hirsi Ali), or killed (Fortuyn, van Gogh)."
"In 21st-century Amsterdam, you're free to smoke marijuana and pick
out a half-naked sex partner from the front window of her shop. But
you can be put on trial for holding the wrong opinion about a bloke who died in the
seventh century." Fear of Islamic intolerant reactions to what they
call Islamophobia — i.e., any criticism of Islam — has made European
officialdom intolerant of those of their citizens who question Islam's assessment of itself.
EUROPE IS SUFFERING FROM THE PLAGUE — AND THE USA IS INFECTED
Europe is suffering from a plague that has reached epidemic
proportions. The plague is not accidental; it's been carefully planned
to maximize its impact.
The plague carriers are an unruly, contentious group, the
Muslim immigrants, who do not wish to associate in a peaceable way with
the natives. They wish to dominate and impose their values. The
symptoms the natives exhibit are these: they suffer from a loss of
nerves, a fear of confrontation, a tendency to appeasement and
self-censorship and an inability to exert themselves to reverse the
situation. The USA has been infected, and in America as in Europe, many an academician and
politician has signed up to help transmit the disease to different target
groups. We are beginning to watch our language so as not
to offend Muslims; our courts are toying with the idea of accepting
sharia law in a limited way; we bleach truthful
statements about the ruthlessness of the Muslim conquests out of our textbooks. But the plague has not yet
reached an epidemic — and possibly irreversible — level.
Bruce Bawer writes of the Obin study of the impact of Islam on
the educational system published in France in 2005. It
contains a litany of refusals by Muslim children to participate in
anything or eat anything or accept anything or study anything at
odds with their religion — this in a country that prides itself on
its multicultural integration.
Hand in hand with this, the Muslim children were thoroughly-indoctrinated
Jew-haters. "Muslim students objected to anything having to do with
Judaism. Holocaust denial was common."
It noted that "...there is no school in France — not even a
Jewish school! — where Jewish children are safe from the
pernicious evil of Muslim Jew-hatred." If anything, the situation has
worsened for Jews. France itself is unlikely to remain a democracy
much longer, given that this Muslim population is rapidly increasing,
they will not assimilate, and the French leadership shows no signs of
takings measures to
reverse the situation.
MAINSTREAM AMERICAN MUSLIM JURISTS' BLUEPRINT FOR UNDERMINING
AMERICA'S LEGAL SYSTEM
by Andrew Bostom
Whoever is blueprinting the takeover of the West by resurgent Islam
must think it is a powerful tool to say exactly what Islam plans to
accomplish. Andy Bostom recounts the dream of that patriotic
American, Salah al-Sawy, who is willing to live briefly under
American law until he has sufficient resources to change things to their proper state, where
everyone lives under Allah, and Muslims are in control.
Eventually, the Islamic Umma expects to
"supercede Western conceptions of human rights as enunciated, for
example, in the US Bill of Rights, and the UN's 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights." If they don't succeed, it won't be for
want of trying. For
"Muslims serving as judges in non-Muslim (including US) legal systems:
It is permissible to work as a judge in an infidel nation or a nation
which rules by infidel law, even if that leads to ruling by their law,
if by so doing one is able to increase the good and decrease the bad
as much as possible." As it is said, "he judges by the rulings of the Shari'a as much as possible, even if by a ruse."
So now we know.
"Because it is now almost axiomatic for American school textbooks to
whitewash all things Islamic", Raymond Ibrahim undertakes to gives us
a more accurate picture of the Muslim Conquest of the vast land
area from the Middle East and Spain to central Asia and
India. The inhabitants were offered the usual Muslim choices:
conversion, dhimmitude or a fight to the death. This is taught proudly
in the Muslim world. But Western textbooks would have you
believe the conquered people couldn't wait to accept Islam.
A major objective of resurgent Islam is to criminalize any criticism of
Islam that any Muslim might object to. Their campaign
has been sufficiently successful that we have become infected
with the fear of saying anything
that can be considered Hate-Islam-speech. It easily overrides our
supposedly-irrevocable and guaranteed-by-the Constitution free
speech. It has indeed become dangerous to verbalize a whimsical or logical train of
thought that might be politically distasteful. Muslims that aren't
too squeamish to decapitate a human apparently are too sensitive, too
delicate, to be
subjected to hurtful words. In this essay Edward Cline describes the
stigmata of the
disease with which we are afflicted.
If virtue still has power, this essay will become a classic.
The bedrock of Muslim propaganda is that the po' defenseless Muslims
have been victimized by just about everybody. In India, the Hindu is
the victimizer, ignoring it's Muslims who commit all the acts of
terrorism. In Europe, just by showing displeasure, the Muslims are
succeeding in having Holocaust studies removed from the curriculum. In
America, the loudly-voiced Muslim claim that they are the chief victim
of hate crimes would seem to substantiate their claim that America is
irrationally islamophobic. In actual fact, religion-based hate crimes
against Jews are more than seven times as frequent as religion-based
hate crimes against Muslims (70% versus 9%) — and many of these
crimes are committed by the po' defenseless muslims. In Israel and the
Territories, the po' Palestinian Arab claim they are victimized by the
Jewish government, though, case by case in the courts, Arabs are
consistently favored over Jews in any property dispute. In this
section we present cases where the Arab is actually the victim — of
other Arabs.
It is ironic that Arab brutality to
other Arabs is ignored, but the world's press calls Israel's
killing a human shield a criminal act.
It is ironic that Arabs do better in Israeli courts than
Arab women in Sharia courts.
Mr. bin Hookah is foreign correspondent and roving reporter for
The Gaza Gajeera. In this column, he recounts his experience
as an unwilling resident in an Israeli jail these past few years.
Israel has been accused of killing a handful of human shields in 2009
in Gaza. Syria has in fact murdered some 12000 of its own citizens
within the past year, including some 400 children that were jailed
and tortured. Yet the Anti-apartheidniks rage against Israel and
ignore Syria's barbaric behavior. Efraim Karsh points out in this
essay that Syria's human rights record is not atypical. Apartheidism
is endemic in the Arab states — as is religious intolerance, ethnic
inequality, racism, gender discrimination, slavery and other
practices that Western liberals condemn in theory but ignore when
they are done by their proteges, the Muslims of the Middle East.
When a culture is built on aggression and conquest, it's
not surprising that the same lack of respect for others spills over
into family relations and clan interactions, where
brutality is also the norm.
David Hornik tackles an important subset: Arab on Arab
violence. Ignoring the phenomenon allows Arab propagandists to
balloon out grievances against Israel that are likely the expression of
the resentment Arabs feel against Jews being in control, when in
their perfect world, Jews — and everybody else
— should be dhimmis. Given their religion-based culture
of violence, as Hornik notes,
"...the idea that upgrading the West Bank and Gaza to statehood would be a step toward peace, let alone democracy, is surely in need of a reality check."
PALESTINIAN SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR SELLING A HOME TO JEWS
by Daniel Halper
In keeping with the discussions in the previous articles, a grave
problem is that
Palestinian Arabs are in danger from their own leaders, who consider
it is a capital crime to sell property to a Jew. This has had consequences.
Sales have been handled between Arab and Jew surreptitiously. They avoid
filing papers and out of fear of their own leaders
the Arab seller can't own up to the sale. Now the Israeli Supreme
Court is jeopardizing the use of this outlet.
Moshe Dann writes of the highly discriminatory rulings against Jews
in Israeli court cases when a Jew and an Arab have a property dispute,
As he notes, "This ruling should send shivers down the spine of everyone who respects the rule of law. It means that Israel's Supreme Court has been compromised by a political agenda that discriminates against Jews. By abandoning the Ottoman rules, the High Court may well have undermined the rule of law, by changing the age-old principles of land occupancy in Judea and Samaria by sudden judicial fiat."
SEX AND SHARIA: MUSLIM WOMEN PUNISHED FOR FAILED MARRIAGES
by Charlotte Rachael Proudman
A reader of the original article, Michelle Brooks, wrote:
"I am always absolutely incredulous to find instances where British
laws are broken over and over again without penalty ...
Well done Charlotte Proudman for shedding more light on
such a dark corner of our judicial system - and for those who will
say that Sharia councils are not courts — we know! However, because
thousands of vulnerable Muslim women don't know, these operations
continue to bring in a steady flow of cash to a sinister bunch who
have callous disregard for the welfare of women who are often sent
back to their abusive husbands as they haven't been beaten enough to
warrant a divorce."
ACID ATTACKS: JUST A CULTURE THING OR JUST ISLAMIC?
by Gadi Adelman
As Gadi Adelman points out, acid attacks are not unique to Islam, but
they are commonly used in the Islamic culture as punishment or
retaliation. In Jewish law, 'an eye for an eye' became the foundation
for tort law, where an equivalent monetary recompense was substituted for retaliation.
In Islamic countries, one can find recent court decisions where someone found guilty
of blinding another has his own eye removed. Acid attacks are
commonly used against women and children by husbands and fathers
angry that they are not obeyed; and
these are seldom punished. I was going to say it was a dog's life for
women in Islam, but that's not true. Women don't get eaten. They are
just brutalized and regarded as inferior creatures.
Arnold Ahlert writes about a ruling under Sharia law that seems insane
to Westerners. A young Muslim woman aged 16 was ordered by the court to marry
the man who had raped her a year before.
The important issue in that culture is not that a
young girl suffered psychological and physical damage. What matters is that in losing
her virginity before marriage, the victim causes her family to lose honor.
So says Sharia.
Since Sharia law blames the woman when
there's a rape, the family often feels marriage to the rapist is the only
way to restore the family's honor — it's that or killing the woman
that was raped.
In this case, after suffering several months of
beatings after marriage, she committed suicide.
There is a
stark difference between Western and Islamic law and attitudes;
and stories such as this one cut through the nonsense that "all
cultures are equally viable," all ideologies equally acceptable.
Not that long ago, Bangladesh, a Muslim country, was noted for being
democratic, secular, tolerant and modern in outlook; the attitude was
reinforced by its Constitution. But as in Turkey and in Egypt and
Iran, the fundamentalists took over and the country has become
conventionally Islamic. Mohshin Habib gives us a look at how the
Muslim religion influences some every-day matters.
Advocates of the "Push Israel to allow a bunch of hostile Arabs
live near, around, in and next to Israel" (AKA "2-state solution")
present this as the only possibility outside of the suicidal 1-state
solution, where the Arabs would control the state and the Jews — if
allowed to live — would be dhimmis. But there are many other possibilities.
Over the years, Think-Israel has presented many ideas that would allow
the Israelis to build their remarkable country in peace and bring
stability to at least a small part of the Middle East. Our own
solution is among several suggestions presented in the
September-October 2010 issue.
Below we present two other ideas. We start with factual article
that provide context:
(1) Who are the Palestinian-Arabs? and (2) How many of them are there
in the Territories?
Yoram Ettinger provides definitive information on the origin of the
name and region called Palestine and the quite-separate origin of
those we now call "Palestinians. The article is noteworthy for using
population statistics from various sources. They make it clear, in the words of Dr. Carl Hermann
Voss, that "[t]he Arab population of Palestine was small and limited until
Jewish resettlement restored the barren lands and drew to it Arabs
from neighboring countries." When England was given the League of
Nations Mandate to help the Jews develop the area into a Jewish state,
she called it Palestine.
She betrayed her trust, splitting off the
78% of the territory that was on the east side of the Jordan river to
and giving it to the Hashemites to administer,
then encouraging Arab
immigration into the remainder of the land while making difficulties for Jewish immigrants, "until Arab
demography was sufficiently enhanced".
Palestinian is a recent name
intended to lend support for the false claim that these Arabs are a separate people. But
thanks to the multiplicity of cultures, nationalities and races that never
assimilated — the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica counted 51 —
and the chronic internecine warfare of a volatile and ever
changing population in the region, no
nation or people had crystallized in all the years since the Arab
conquest. Nor had the population increased significantly.
"In 1554, there were 205,000 Moslems Christian and Jews in Palestine.
In 1800, the total population was 275,000." Then the Jews came. And
the Arab population figures increased steeply.
The West invests so much media promotion, economic resources,
and political capital on the
Palestinian Arabs, one would suppose determining reliably how many
Arabs actually live in the Territories would be a simple lookup. It
isn't. David Ha'ivri lays out the problem and suggestions possible
reasons why the data are sequestered. He refers to
"reputable, independent studies" that use accurate statistics to estimate
Arab population. We suggest googling articles by Yoram Ettinger on
demographics to obtain these. To understand the implication of these data, we also include an article by
Ettinger contrasting current fertility rates for Arabs and Jews in
Israel and the Territories. Most surprising.
THE DEATH OF OSLO AND THE REBIRTH OF JORDAN-IS-PALESTINE
by Matthew Hausman
Matthew Hausman
elegantly demolishes the notion that the Oslo Process was a vehicle
for peace, and suggests an alternative procedure — declaring Jordan,
which already has a Palestinian Arab majority, as the Palestinian
state.. He makes clear that the Jews have had a
historic and religious attachment
to their homeland for thousands of years and in point of fact never
completely left it. The Palestinian Arabs, in contrast, "had no
ancestral connection", nor were they a nation or a people. They were
mostly immigrants from the neighboring countries, attracted by the
economic opportunities created by the Jews and the British. That being
the case, moving them to nearby Jordan does not sever them from their
homeland. Just the opposite — it gives a motley group of Arabs,
the local Arabs and for the millions living in the refugee camps in
the various Arab countries, land that could become their homeland.
Dr. Kedar has written, "Tribalism,
which may be understood as 'loyalty of individuals and groups to a
traditional framework, such as a clan, sect, ethnic or religious
subgroup', ...
forms the basis of much of the social structure of the Arab and
Islamic world.
... tribal or family alliances endure intact even after tribal
territory has been incorporated into a state system." Building on this
observation, Dr. Kedar suggests a novel suggestion for solving the
Palestinian Arab problem and thus bringing peace
and stability for at least a small part of the Middle East.
This set of articles focus on Iran. Complicating a situation
that is already in crisis, Prez Obama is playing Russian Roulette with the
Middle East, where the
blanks are endless sessions of talk and sanctions but no one is stopping
Iran's development of nuclear weapons. This set of essays discusses
some misleading data that encourages procrastinators to dither and why
we should act before we have to confront a nuclear Iran. One of the
essays reminds us that lack of resolution also characterizes how we
are fighting resurgent Islam in other parts of the globe. Another
points out that we won't stop a domestic attack by ignoring that our
enemies are ceaselessly working at destroying our way of life.
A modest proposal: If Prez Obama is convinced we can wait and still act
effectively when necessary, he has a simple way to convince us: let
him allow his children to
live incognito in Israel. Is he willing to put something in the pot
besides high-falutin' words — and the lives of thousands of Israeli
Jews and Middle Eastern Arabs?
Thomas Joscelyn writes that the 2007 NIE report was "flat wrong about
Iran's covert work," in that it ignored Iran's ongoing work on
"civilian" uranium conversion and enrichment. It did grave damage in
that it supported the notion that Iran wasn't all that warlike in its
nuclear ambitions, a conclusion many politicians and 'let's give
negotiations and sanctions a chance' ideologues, including the present
American administration, welcomed. When dealing with a group of
fanatics who wasted some 100,000 to 500,000 of their own children, who
were sent to blow-up land mines (and themselves), it would seem more
intelligent to err on the side of suspicion of Iran's claims of
innocence, particularly when it announces its intent to blow up Israel
as soon as it has a bomb. Or maybe it will attack the USA directly. Or just
cow its neighbors into political surrender. When the
bomb goes off or is used as political blackmail, will Obama blame it on Bush?
THE IRANIAN DECISION ON THE PRODUCTION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
by Ephraim Asculai
Ephraim Asculai provides the basic facts about Iran's ability to produce
nuclear weaponry. We are certain of these facts or, at the very least, can make
educated guesses about them.
He concludes "Iran has the technical know-how and the facilities to enrich its LEU
(3.5 and 20 percent uranium) to high enriched uranium (HEU) of about
90 percent enrichment." "the Iranians can, If the technicians receive
the order to do so, quite quickly produce HEU for the first core of a
nuclear explosive device."
Brett Stephens in a March 19, 2012 Wall Street Journal article entitled "The
Bogus Iran Intelligence Debate" uses a less technical way to make the
same point: given that
the Iranians have the components, focusing on when they
will be ready to produce bombs is bogus. He explains the actual core
issue (no pun intended) this way:
"You may not be able to divine whether a drinker, holding a bottle of Johnnie
Walker in one hand and a glass tinkling with ice in the other,
actually intends to pour himself a drink. And perhaps he doesn't. But
the important thing, at least when it comes to intervention, is not to
present him with the opportunity in the first place. [...]
To have sufficient quantities of enriched uranium is, so to speak, the
whiskey of a nuclear-weapons program. By contrast,
'weaponization'—the vessel into which you pour and through which you can deliver the enriched uranium cocktail—is merely the glass."
Alana Goodman makes a chilling but compelling observation that pierces
the unstated belief of many an antisemite that Iran might
take over the Middle East, even blast Israel, but they won't
attack America. Based on the
fact that Hezbollah agents — tools of Iran — are in the USA and have a sufficient
network of donors to be effective, she asks, "the argument from the appease-Iran crowd is so counter-intuitive. If there's broad concern about the threat of Hezbollah operatives in the U.S. now, why would we expect them to be less of a threat if they were backed by mullahs with nukes? Or are we just supposed to that pray Israel and our other allies don't do anything that might offend the regime once it obtains nuclear weapons, lest its Hezbollah allies retaliate against us domestically?"
Karen McKay reminds us that we are repeating the cut and run tactics
we used in Vietnam, instead of staying the course and fighting
effectively the war that radical Islam is waging against us. We need
also to understand that the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War are not
separate wars; they are components of the global war Islam is waging
around the world. As McKay writes,
"We are at war with an implacable enemy who intends to cleanse the world of Jews and destroy Western civilization. Mealy-mouthed speeches, attempts to excuse or "understand" those who are dedicated to destroying us, and limp-wristed responses to threats—such as negotiations and feel-good sanctions--will doom us. Our enemies respect only strength, decisiveness and fearlessness."
Propaganda, public relations statements, harangues and debate arguments are not in
themselves either good or bad. It depends on how they are used, when
the text is supposed to be factual.
It depends on how much — or how little — the writers feel the need
to tell the truth. It would be nice if they were constrained to tell
"the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," but that doesn't
necessarily happen, not even in respected papers such as the New York
Times. Often they will tell some of the truth,
fudge some of it, distort some, confabulate, lie, generalize a
minor incident, ignore significant data, and stretch out a small point to make
it seem as the core issue. Some of this, of course, is due to sheer
dullness — how many media people were physics or math majors, or even took courses
that required logical thinking? But much is deliberate obfuscation and
inventive lying with malicious intent. There is one
interesting subset:
when the object of the media's attention is both guilty and a Muslim.
The press utilizes its standard practices of distortion, but now the
intent is to minimize the heinous crime. The media can actually
sounds kind and understanding. They can make you feel vindictive and
ungenerous if you disagree with them.
LICENSE TO MURDER: THE ENDURING THREAT OF THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION
by Alex Grobman
Responding to a number of people have asked if they can use the
introduction of his book License to Murder: The Enduring Threat of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Dr. Alex Grobman had made it
available. Here below is a copy. As Kenneth Bialkin, Chairman of the America-Israel Friendship League, puts it, "Dr. Alex Grobman seeks to explore how and why a vicious lie, a warrant for genocide, first written in the early 1900s, aided endemic antisemitism and then morphed into anti-Zionism.
WASH. POST'S PALESTINIAN PROPAGANDA FALSIFIES HISTORY AND THE BIBLE
by Leo Rennert
One would think that the naming a square in memory of Dr. Dajani. "an Arab
physician who treated both Arabs and Jews" before Israel became a
state would be a heartwarming story. The Washington Post used it
to vilify Israel, distort recent history and revise the Bible to suit
Arab propaganda. As Leo
Rennert writes, the Post's reporter, Joel Greenberg,
"inject[ed] his piece with anti-Israel poison pills in an attempt to
undermine the very legitimacy of Israel's nationhood." The Arab
invasion of the new-born state is ignored and Israel is made to seem
responsible for the Doctor's family leaving. "With
Greenberg, the sad tale of the Dajani family is turned into
Palestinian victimhood rather than the outcome of massive
self-inflicted wounds by Arab leaders. The 1948 debacle was caused
entirely by Arab rejectionism, not by Israel's creation." Rennert
rightly concludes that its "journalistic selectivity ... tells worlds about the paper's anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bias in its news columns."
EXPOSED: UN MEDIA OFFICIAL RESPONSIBLE FOR FALSE PHOTO TWEET
by Simon Plosker
We are familiar with lone wolf terrorists, imbued with the peaceful
messages of Islam, massacring non-Muslims with no visible instruction
from a central planning group. Now we hear of lone-wolf propagandists,
who, apparently independently, set up a well-structured hoax, when,
usually, a successful
hoax requires coordination, planning, money and authority. The al-Dura construction, for
example, required one group of Arabs to distract the IDF while another
crew faked the death of a 12-year old boy, Muhamad al-Dura. The
cameraman, standing near the Arab snipers, reassured the network that the posed
shot was of a 12-year old boy hiding behind his father, caught in the
crossfire between the IDF and
Palestinians. The boy's father told lies that were later discovered.
The French network and its anchorman broadcast that the Jews had shot an innocent
Arab child. This brilliant hoax fueled a global hatred of Israel,
which was immediately condemned as the killer of innocent Arab
children. Only later did it become known the Palestinians had shot at
al-Dura, and, even now, few know the real story. Simon Plosker
writes of this new twist on how to libel Jews.
There is one type of
occasion that brings out a show of kindness and understanding in the media. When
a Muslim slaughters an innocent,
the press has a well-practiced, ritualistic procedure to wheedle
us into believing the Muslim isn't a monster, just a good guy gone
wrong because of social factors. He is another victim of society. If
they had their druthers, they would
keep it secret that the murderer was a Muslim. A man's religion is considered
unimportant if he's a Muslim.
Mark Steyn describes the steps in the procedure.
On Mount Ebal, where the Jews entered the Land of Canaan some three
thousand years, Adam Zertal, an archaeologist, has been excavating
what likely is Joshua's Altar, the first altar built in the Promised
Land for service to HaShem, in accordance with the instructions recorded in the Bible.
Dror Eydar tells an exciting story on two levels. There is
the awesome story the excavation is disclosing. The specific objects
found, the evidence provided by the debris, the topology of the area
— all these say that the rules for
sacrifice and kashruth were in place at the beginning of Nationhood.
The architecture of the altar, itself, amazingly enough, mirrors the
structure of the altar of the Second Temple but precedes it
by a thousand years. And there is the less salutory story — this is
yet another example where new data are denigrated because they don't
support the belief system of the establishment,
the established religion in this case being the belief by
establishment archaeologists that the Bible isn't history.
THE IRAQI JEWS — THE OLDEST DIASPORA, NOW SAFE IN ISRAEL
by Norman Berdichevsky
Norman Berdichevsky writes of the history of the Iraqi Jews — the Babylonian Jews of
ancient times —
"Like the overwhelming majority of the large Jewish population of
approximately 800,000 Jews living in the Middle East in 1948 outside
of Palestine," they were "the casualties of modern Arab nationalism
and religious extremism."
"They are unequivocally the oldest diaspora community going back to
the Babylonian captivity after the destruction of the Temple in 586
BCE. They can also claim to be the original Zionists, following the
call of Ezra the Scribe to return to the land of their fathers in
Judea." Berdichevsky describes their modern flight to Israel from
persecution in Iraq and the period of
adjustment in an Ashkenazi-dominated society. "It was particularly
galling to the older generation that they
"had been for many centuries the center of the Jewish world" and
"in the course of just a few years [their dominance] was completely liquidated." But
integration was helped by shared army experience and today Jews from
the Arab countries are prominent in Israeli culture, in politics and
in the military, while retaining their ancient traditions.
As Berdichevsky observes, "Israelis have learned to live together and
to rely less and less on simply being tagged with a label whether
ethnic, racial or cultural." A fascinating story.
HEROES AND UNSUNG HEROES - THOSE WHO MOVED THE WORLD
by Victor Sharpe
Victor Sharpe writes of two British men, both of whom loomed large in the days
preceding the birth of Israel. T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence
of Arabia, helped defeat the Turkish army fighting the twilight battles
of the Ottoman Empire. He was a proponent of Arab Revolt
against the Ottoman, although,
given the Arab performance — as in the taking of Beersheva — it would seem the Arabs
were after loot not nationalism. Richard Meinertzhagen was not
flamboyant, but he was an excellent tactician and "an avowed Christian
supporter of Jewish and Zionist aspirations working for the
reconstitution of a Jewish state within the ancient, ancestral and
biblical homeland." Intertwined with the activities of these men to
destroy Ottoman rule was the NILI, a group of young Jews who
operated in Turkish territory and acted as
dedicated spies for the English. Sharpe writes,
"The conquest of El Arish, Gaza, Beersheba and
finally Jerusalem would have been almost impossible without the
massive amount of information provided by the NILI Jewish
underground."
Sarah Honig writes of the events of the first full day after the
modern state of Israel was declared at 4p.m., May the 14th, 1948,
before the Sabbath began. The police, who just the day before were the
Mandatory Police, charged their first thief — he had stolen a book. A
ship from Europe docked, filled with Jews who just the day before were
considered illegal, and the passengers, were now declared legal
immigrants. But the new state did not even have that single day to be
at peace as it began meeting the demands of sovereignty. Contrary to
the myth that Israel was born because of Holocaust guilt, as Honig
writes, "The 'Great Arab Revolt' of 1936-39 — fomented by the
still-revered Haj Amin al-Husseini and financed by Nazi Germany —
merely delayed Jewish independence." Now, the Arab League, "avidly
pro-Nazi", declared war, and the armies of seven Arab states invaded
Israel, determined to destroy the newborn, which had, thanks to
England's collusion with the Arabs, only a meager amount of military
armament and a population that was combat-unready. The Jews survived
the onslaught and went on to build up an impressive country. The Arabs
remain mired in misery, fixated on destroying the Jewish State.
When the U.S.A. abandoned Vietnam, for many of her Vietnamese allies
"...hoping to escape Communist persecution and torture — there was no
choice but to perilously attempt escape by sea."
Many perished. Some came within sight of ships from different
countries, which ignored their distress signals. One boat was lucky.
The passengers were rescued by an Israeli vessel and eventually
brought to Israel. 25 years
have past. Menucha Chana Levin tells the story of the rescue and the aftermath.
This is where our readers get a chance to write opinions
and editorials and share articles they find informative. The Blog-Eds
page for the month is updated every few days.
There is a separate file that is the index for the articles on the
Blog-Ed page. You can access an article immediately from this index by
clicking on the item in the index.
To access the Index, click the "Blog-Eds List" box in the Blue Strip on
the top of the Blog-Ed page.
We talk about some new misanthropic and misleading media attacks on Israel and
we discuss ways of changing people's attitudes. We spend some time considering the fallout after Newt
Gingrich startled everyone by saying what so many knew but wouldn't acknowledge: the Palestinian
Arabs are not a people. Israel did not steal their land. We ask: what
does it mean that so many in the media knew this, but didn't share their
knowledge with their readers. On the contrary, many argued for
concessions to the Arabs. Why the long-standing inhibition on
bringing the truth to the foreground? Why was the Palestinian People invented?
Given that the Press will stay hostile but more people understand the
pro-Palestinian pretense of being a People is just a pretext to
justify killing Jews, we ask why doesn't Israel stop her "White-Knight" quest for peace
with the Arabs? It's just as bizarre as anything out of Alice in
Wonderland. But it's not just ineffective, it's dangerous. Israel owns
Samaria and Judea and Gaza legally, as well as morally, by history, by
Bible and by conquest. Why not annex them and be in a position to
protect her population centers? She can then deal with the resident
Arabs as a separate problem, which may require
different strategies.
We examine some new insights into the Arab character and how Arabs/Muslims act
out Islamic dictates among themselves. Iran is of particular concern
in a region where there's little stability outside of Israel.
We try again to solve that mystery: is there such a thing as a
Moderate Muslim, that we define as one who is pious but doesn't — and
doesn't want to —
practice jihad against others.
We also has some essays on how Islam is doing stealth jihad-wise.
We explore the relationship between what Harvard academics write and what
school children are taught as facts about Islam.
What changes people's minds? The impact of authority figures —
favored professors, parents, religious leaders — is a major factor in
how opinions are formed. Clever and/or dramatic media presentation may
work to set an attitude. Or to help change it. Occasionally, the
change seems, paradoxically, both fated to be yet easily attributable to random
factors. This segment examines some possibilities.
[1] Having a well-known figure assert an obvious but ignored
truth is especially effective when a once-popular, policy is defunct
but no one wants to be the first to say so. Newt Gingrich spoke out
forcefully and said what apparently everyone — except those who only read Arab
press releases — knew; to wit, there is no authentic
Palestinian people. It is a collection of Arabs who came into
what is now Israel mostly in the 20th Century from all over the Middle
East and was declared a people by Yassar Arafat in 1964. The curious
fact is that the bubble didn't immediately burst. The varied reactions
are themselves are interest. We discuss the responses in the essay
called "Israel's Existential Problems" (see above).
[2] Another way depends on what, initially, seems to be an
unfocused need to do something different. An
individual is dissatisfied. He is looking for something he feels he's missing.
Often his journey is spiritual or takes the form of making contact
with his roots. This is another theme explored below.
[3] A bold reframing of the structure of the debate will often
work.
[4] An open mind that pays attention to disparities can force
a review of long-held attitudes and assumptions. The information that
Middle Eastern wealth is aggressively used in ugly
and annoying ways to promote Islam in America is not secret. As
Ralph Peters has pointed out:
"...right now, in 21st-century America, estimates project that at
least 70% of mosques and madrassahs in the United States receive Saudi
funds, directly or indirectly." "...the Saudis also spend
extravagantly on building mosques at the extreme fringes of Muslim
penetration — to mark the territory for Islam." (Emphasis
added.) Nevertheless, the author of the last essay below ignored the
evidence — as do many on the Left. He assumed that the local
opposition to the erection of a mega mosque in the heart of the Bible
Belt was simple bigotry. How he came to a deeper understanding makes a
fascinating story. When all is said and done, it is pretty chutzpadic
of Saudi Arabia to bleat about tolerance when they won't allow someone
of a different religion — not even the American soldiers who protect
them in their homeland — to worship openly.
OF COURSE, THE PALESTINIANS ARE AN "INVENTED PEOPLE"
by Jerome S. Kaufman
In this article, Jerry Kaufman sums up what Newt Gringrich said. In actuality, the
Palestinians are a fake people. They had not developed into a people
over the centuries. Those we called Palestinians have no identity
distinct from the general Arab population. The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica lists half a hundred groups living in Mandated
Palestine — Beduins, Circassians, Jews, Christians, Arabs, etc. There
was no group called Palestinian or one that called itself Palestinian.
Michael Curtis of the BESA Center puts it this way:
"...no independent
Palestinian state has ever existed, let alone one that manifested a "Palestinian
identity."
"A few examples can illustrate this. The first Congress of Muslim-Christian
Associations in the area met in February 1919 to consider the future of the
territory formerly ruled by the Ottoman Empire, which dissolved after World
War I. The Congress declared: "We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria as it
has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by
national, religious, linguistic, moral, economic, and geographical bonds." The
celebrated scholar Philip Hitti, testifying before the Anglo-American Committee
in 1946, stated there was no such thing as Palestine in history, "absolutely not."
The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), in its September
3, 1947 report, remarked that Palestinian nationalism, as distinct from Arab
nationalism, was a relatively new phenomenon. It concluded that Palestinian
identity was part of a rich tapestry of identities, mostly predicated on Arab and
Islamic solidarity.
"The Palestinians themselves reached the same conclusion. Palestinian
spokesperson Ahmad Shuqeiri told the UN Security Council in 1956 that
Palestine was nothing more than southern Syria. The head of the Military
Operations Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Zuheir
Muhsein, declared on March 31, 1977, "Only for political reasons do we carefully
underline our Palestinian identity. ...the existence of a separate Palestinian
identity is there for tactical reasons." The PLO, in its own Charter or amended
Basic Law (article 1), states that Palestine is part of the Arab nation.
That "Arab nation" never included a state known as "Palestine." Indeed, the
inhabitants of the general Palestinian area were not subjects of an Arab nation
but of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the area from 1516-1918. This was the
last recognized sovereign power in the area. The area of Palestine was a district
of the Empire, officially a vilayet (province), not a political entity. No
independent Palestinian state has ever been established, nor was there a single
administrative or cultural unit of Palestinians. Arabs in the area were not
different in any way from other Arabs in the Middle East. Nor was Israel
established on the ashes of any state other than the Ottoman Empire.
"On the other hand, a sovereign Jewish state existed prior to the rise of the Roman
Empire. While the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, changed the name of
the land to Syria Palestina, and banished the Jews from Jerusalem, this did not
eradicate all Jewish presence in the area. Moreover, the Jews in the Diaspora
maintained a strong consciousness of the historical connection of the Jewish
people to Palestine — a connection that was acknowledged in the League of
Nations mandate."
NEWT GINGRICH, THE MEDIA TAILORS AND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
by Bernice Lipkin
Newt Gingrich
said forthrightly that there was no such thing
as a Palestinian people and they had never owned the land. Bernice
Lipkin examines one aspect of the
aftermath: the response of the media. In that most of the media have
been more or less pro-Palestinian, one would expect they would be shocked and ask
for proof. Instead the general response could be summed up as: we know
but so what. Let's get on with the peace process.
Now why is that?
Robert Reilly asks a critical question: why were the Palestinian people
invented? The short answer is they serve as a political ploy, as
visual aids to keep us focused on the unfairness of a nascent Israel
surviving invasion by her neighbors. Their suffering becomes
justification for the Arab doing any loathsome deed to drive the Jews
out.
The assertions that
the Arabs Palestinians own the land, that they
were driven from their homes, that they
are Cinderella and Israel is cruel step-mother are
latter-day accretions. The basic issue is that by the rules of Islamic theology,
Jews have lost their right to the Holy Land, therefore they should not be a
sovereign power. They should not.
How do you return to what you hardly knew? David Solway recounts his
all-of-a-sudden start of a journey to the religion of his birth, Judaism, when 9/11 shocked him out of the accretion
of anti-Zionist hate propaganda that had coated him and cocooned him. He realized he had
"acted out of mere rote behavior and fortuitous conjecture, out of an
unexamined desire to think in accordance with the inferences and
presuppositions of my friends and colleagues,..." He realized he'd
made the Jew the repository of all he disliked; reacting
against himself, he had expelled
"himself from his own community." As he travels forward in time, he
has shaken off opinions and attitudes he now sees as puerile and/or
malignant. A fascinating odyssey.
Lyn Julius writes that Israel's pointing out its significant
contributions to the advancement of humanity "in technology, science,
agriculture, ecology, immigrant absorption" doesn't rebut the negative
opinion of Israel held by "grassroots" Europeans. To achieve that,
Israel needs to "explode the misconception, commonly held on the Left,
that Israel is an outpost of western colonialism and imperialism. Jews
were indigenous to the region 1,000 years before the Islamic
conquest" in the 7th Century. They lived everywhere in the Middle East
without interruption for over two millenia world until the Arabs
"ethnically cleansed" the Jews from their ancestral homes in 1948.
More Jews than Arabs were made refugees when the Arabs invaded Israel
in their attempt to nullify Israel's rebirth. "Jews 'stealing Arab
land' is an offensive inversion of reality." Ironically, the Liberal's
disregard of Jewish rights while supporting Muslim rights will have
the effect of reinstating the Muslims as dominant and the Jews and
Christians as inferior dhimmi — which was the relationship of
the religious groups
imposed by the Muslims when they conquered the Middle East.
When this article appeared on Frontpage Magazine, the editor, Jamie
Glazov, wrote that he'd invited the author, Eric Allen Bell, to tell
his story. "Bell [is] a filmmaker who was recently banned from
blogging at the Daily Kos because he wrote three articles that
ran afoul of the mindset there, specifically naming 'Loonwatch.com' as
a 'terrorist spin control network.'" It started innocently enough when
Bell heard that the local folk in Murfreesboro Tennessee — where he
was living — were attempting to deny Muslims the right to build a
mosque. Anyone even vaguely aware of stealth jihad would know
immediately that giving the few local Muslims a place to pray wasn't
why the Muslims wanted to put up a huge mosque plonk in the heart of
the Bible Belt. It was, in fact, a typical Muslim in-your-face
challenge. It is putting up a command center. It is announcing that
from now on the Muslims will be pushing for
special privileges, intimidating the natives, restructuring the
environment for their own convenience and expanding their control of
the region. Bell had to find it out the hard way, from first seeing
the drama simply as bigotry on the part of the Christians and then
slowly discovering there was more to the story. Islam really
does pose real life threats to our way of life. Their
Koran-based attitude towards women, homosexuals, Jews and infidels
— actually, to the entire non-Muslim world — simply can not be aligned with ours, no
matter how glib the Muslim presentation, no matter how untrue the
accusation that all critics are Islamophobic. Bell's simplistic view
has crumpled. As he says, "I support human rights and oppose anything
which I perceive to be in violation of human rights." It's been a
painful journey, refusing the pablum and opting for strong meat.
Discombobulating. And I doubt it
is over.
RECLAIM JEWISH LAND; REJECT THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION
The notion of a 2-state solution stays alive, first, because it is coercively
presented as the only possible solution: "Give away Biblical Israel to those nice Palestinians
OR the bogie man will make you accept a 1-state
solution where those nasty Palestinians will outnumber you.."
Secondly, the diplomats have put some effort into twisting Israel's
arm to accept belligerent neighbors and they believe they are making headway. They haven't really considered alternatives.
Bloggers and think-tankers have.
Solutions proposed and available on Think-Israel have considered some sort of
union with — or transformation of — Jordan; a return to the original Mandate formulation where
everyone has human rights protection but only the Jews have voting
rights; and a population transfer, where the first stage occurred in
the 1940s and '50s when the Jews were driven out of the Arab countries
where they had been living even before the Arab invasions in the 7th
Century C.E.
Think-Israel has formulated a 2-state solution where
Israel takes possession of all of its land and the Palestinian state
is placed where it belongs
— somewhere inside the enormously large Arab land holdings (See
here.)
In the present set of essays,
Barbara Lerner is convincing in her insight that the best way we have to
fight specious Muslim proposals for stealing Jewish land is to begin by
appreciating our own Jewish and Christian Biblical roots in Biblical Israel.
Several article conclude
that the best way to end the refugee problem is to get rid
of UNRWA. Martin Sherman suggests
helping the individual Arab families relocate.
Any viable solution must recognize that the so-called Palestinians have no
valid claim on any part of the Land of Israel — Howard
Grief's essay provides the legal substructure that protects Jewish
rights in the land — and that Israel
would be negligent if it didn't
defend its borders and protect its citizens from Arab predators. The
best way to do this, as Martin Hausman's article suggests, is to annex
the Territories formally.
Thanks to the U.N., there exists a large — and growing — group of stateless Arabs, rejected by the Arab
states, regarded as throwaways in the Arab War against
the West and a constant source of budding terrorists and terrorist activity.
The Palestinians are (not politically) correctly described in several essays below.
It would benefit the West to rid the region of this
constant irritant by (1) by urging that Arab states where the refugee
camps are located to give the refugees
citizenship status; or (2)
by breaking up the collection of Arabs referred to as Palestinians/Arab refugees into family
units,
each individually supplied with the means to negotiate for immigrant status in
countries that will accept them; or (3)
declaring Jordan with its Palestinian arab majority the state of
Palestine. Professor Mordechai Nisan of Hebrew University argued
the case for this solution in
Front Page Magazine.
or (4) by giving
the Arabs now living in the Territories and in refugee camps a
fixed space
in some part of the enormous Arab land holdings that is isolated from
population centers and where
they can determine their own future. They can decide to learn to develop the
infrastructure for
becoming a state or they can continue to kill each other. It's their choice,
providing it doesn't involve harming other people. "An Alternative
2-State Solution" is such
a proposal
and is available
HERE. These and variants should be considered singly and in
possible combination.
THE RIGHTS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
OVER THE LAND OF ISRAEL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
by Howard Grief
Howard Grief sets forth the firm legal foundation of Israel being
the exclusive owner of the land designated as Jewish by the League of
Nations. The Land of Israel — current Israel, Samaria and Judea (aka
West Bank), the Golan and Gaza — was given to the Jewish people as a
perpetual trust and handed in that condition to the successor to the
League of the Nations, the United Nations. This is a clear
presentation of the documents that preceded the document of ownership
and some of the history of the time. Any whittling away of this trust
is illegal, whether it is attempted by a foreign country, the Israeli
government or the U.N. itself. The question that remains is why have successive
Israeli governments not asserted their claim. For that matter, why
would a Jewish government allow control of the Temple Mount, its most
holy site, by the Arabs?
This a sister paper to Howard Grief's article on the San Remo
conference. It was produced by the Canadians for Israel's Legal Rights
(CILF) and summarizes the relationship of the San Remo decisions
to other pertinent legal documents.
ANNEXATION WINS HANDS DOWN OVER A TWO-STATE SOLUTION
by Matthew H. Hausman
The case for annexing Samaria and Judea — the parts of the Land of Israel that
Jordan grabbed as soon as Modern Israel was born — is brilliantly
presented by Matthew Hausman. We have reached the point that Israel
has this choice: "Either she can continue participating in a farcical 'peace process' that is heavily weighted against her national interests, or she can proactively seize the day and craft a solution that makes sense historically, geographically and legally."
I can only add that in reading Hausman's essay I had this
thought: when Israel regained
control in 1967, she didn't annex Samaria and Judea, fearing the large number
of resident Arabs that would be incorporated into Israel. Solving the problem
by annexing the land and
relocating the Arabs was rejected — it wouldn't be a nice thing
to do. Consequently, Israel is now confronted
with pressure to give the land to the Arabs, the Arabs they call
Palestinian. And should that happen, Jews will not be allowed to live there.
Jews will not be allowed in Biblical Israel or in parts of Jerusalem! The
Jews living there now will be forced out and will become refugees in what is left of Israel.
As they say, be kind to the cruel and you'll end up being cruel to
the kind. Your own kind.
Are the Palestinian Arabs ready for statehood?
David Weinberg points out they are on the dole and have almost no
self-generated income. "Over the past 10 years, the Palestinians have
received more than $25 billion in international assistance, and the PA
itself pulled in more than $4 billion per year in 2009 and 2010." Yet
"the PA has a billion dollar budget deficit."
They squander water given them by Israel as if they were living in a rain forest and are
polluting the common water supply by dumping their untreated waste.
They have few organizational, administrative or governmental skills, nor are they
eager to acquire them. They think
in terms of death and destruction, not building and living in peace.
Quel resumé!
Barry Shaw paints a picture of the Palestinians that is right on the
mark: their illogic, their viciousness, their skill
at becoming the world's pet victims.
As Shaw writes:
"They are trapped in their negative stew of victimhood and brutality.
It finds expression in the nonsensical statements of people like
Zahar, or those who accuse Israel of being an Apartheid state. Their
nonsense, to them, makes sense. Sad tales have their impact. The
emotional tale of victimhood is their power."
Barbara Lerner writes about the Muslim
ambition to become top dog globally, with Islam the supreme religion
and all other religions treated as inferior. Destroying Israel seems to be a
necessary step. When invading Israel didn't work, Israel's Arab
neighbors began waging a stealth war. Their weapons were oil money,
taqqiya (creative lying, approved by the Koran, whereby a
Muslim could do and say anything and not feel honor-bound to keep his
word) and the newly-invented Palestinians would invert reality and
become the quintessential victim. They are succeeding in discrediting
Israel — which was out of its league at playing their propaganda
game — and winning the overwhelming support of the Europeans. Lerner
points out that our acceptance of
Muslim's assertions and our denigration of
our own Jewish and Christian Biblical values earn the West contempt and
make the Muslims more confident they will win. "To change their minds, and
our future, we need to reject the Palestinian Taqqiya and embrace
Biblical Israel."
UNHCR, an agency of the United Nations, has helped millions of
refugees since WW2 to find new homes in a timely fashion. Refugeehood
isn't transferrable to the next generation.
UNHRCR handles all refugees except the Arabs refugees, who have an
agency, UNRWA, dedicated to them and their children and (great)grandchildren,
with no termination point in sight.
Unlike all other refugee
groups, they have been
preserved as refugees until they can return to their homes in Israel.
UNRWA feeds them and provides them with education and
medical services.
It also allows them to be inculcated with hate
toward Israel and trained as terrorists.
Elliott Abrams makes the case that
"Palestinian refugees should be handled by UNHCR with the intention of
resettling them. That process should begin with a redefinition of who
is a refugee entitled to benefits, so that benefits are based on need
rather than on status." It would improve life for them. It might even
improve the chances of peace in the Middle East.
(For additional material on UNRA and how it keeps the refugee problem
from being resolved, see
this.)
Martin Sherman has long suggested
(See his article
here.)
that the best way to eliminate the Arab refugee
problem is to eliminate UNRWA as an intermediary between the refugees
and the outside world. He would provide "doweries" directly to
individual Arab families to give them the means to find new homes in
Arab countries or elsewhere. His latest articles on this are:
"Note to Newt I: Univenting Palestinians" and
"Note to Newt II: Rethinking" The present essay answers concerns that have been raised and put
the features of the plan in sharper relief.
THE JEWISH RIGHT TO LIVE IN WESTERN PALESTINE: The Irrelevancy Of 'Belligerent Occupation' and the 4th Geneva Convention
may-jun 2005
by Yoram Shifftan
Insights Into Arab Behavior:Arab Internecine Wars
Daniel Greenfield in "Islam Uber Alles"
wrote:
"The first law of human affairs is force. Before all other laws, the
ballot box and appeals to reason is that primal law that enforces
submission through violence. Islam is a religion built on that first
law, forcing everyone to choose whether they will be the oppressors or
the oppressed, whether they will be a Muslim or a Dhimmi." As in the
Little Red Riding Hood story, the wolf is showing its teeth, but we in
the West still persist in believing it is peaceable while — in a stunning
example of a disconnect between awareness and
behavior — modifying our styles of life so as not to arouse the volatile
fury of the beast. Like parents who are afraid to slap down a screaming
destructive child, we reassure ourselves that Islam 'will grow out of
it' while the Muslim leaders are slowly but steadily
stunting our growth, forcing us into conversion or servility.
For us to survive, our lamb leaders will have to forgo their
fantasy of us eventually lying
down with hungry wolves. The real choice, as Greenfield puts it, is
"... between being hated as a despised underclass, as pigs and dogs, by people who have the ability to harm us on a regular basis, or being hated as the cruel persecutors who kept the faithful from extending the Dar Al Islam by people who have to try very hard to be able to hurt us."
Not a sunny picture. And streams of nonsense about giving the
Palestinian Arabs an incentive to settle down won't change it. Think
of the conversion of Gaza to a terror manufactory since August 2005, when the Israeli government
uprooted the Israeli Jews living in Gush Katif, Gaza from their homes and greenhouses and
businesses and synagogues, making them refugees who — seven years
later — are yet to be fully resettled
in Israel.
For me, the story of how an Arab girl repaid free treatment in Israel
for her ruined face is emblematic of what to expect from the Palestinian Arabs. Dr Arieh
Eldad, a plastic surgeon and a member of the Knesset, told the story in an interview
conducted by Jerry Gordon in New English Review in November, 2008:
"I was instrumental in establishing the Israeli National Skin Bank,
which is the largest in the world. The National Skin Bank stores skin
for every day needs as well as for war time or mass casualty
situations. This skin bank is hosted at the Hadassah Ein Kerem
University hospital in Jerusalem where I was the chairman of plastic
surgery. This is how I was asked to supply skin for an Arab woman
from Gaza, who was hospitalized in Soroka Hospital in Beersheba after
her family burned her. Usually, such atrocities happen among Arab
families when the women are suspected of having an affair.
"We supplied all the needed Homografts for her treatment. She was
successfully treated by my friend and colleague Prof. Lior Rosenberg,
and discharged to return to Gaza. She was invited for regular follow
up visits to the outpatient clinic in Beersheba.
"One day she was caught at a border crossing wearing a suicide belt. She meant to explode herself in the outpatient clinic of the hospital where they saved her life. It seems that her family promised her that if she did that, they would forgive her."
"This is only one example of the war between Jews and Muslims in the
Land of Israel. It is not a territorial conflict. This is a
civilizational conflict, or rather a war between civilization and barbarism."
Wafa al-Biss was a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. She was
imprisoned and then released in October 2011 in the first group of the thousand Arab
prisoners who were swapped for the kidnapped IDF soldier, Galad Shalit.
She has since become a speaker, telling Arab children,
"I hope you will walk the same path we took and God willing, we will see some of you as martyrs,"
At one such rally, her audience
carried Palestinian flags and chanted,
"We will give souls and blood to redeem the prisoners. We will give souls and blood for you, Palestine."
As you can see from this photo,
Israel did a good job repairing Wafa's face. Such a nice looking girl.
TAWRIYA: NEW ISLAMIC DOCTRINE PERMITS 'CREATIVE LYING'
by Raymond Ibrahim
Raymond Ibrahim has previously written classic papers on
taqiyya, the lying to the infidel that is permitted by Koranic law
(e.g., see
here). In this essay, he writes about tawriya, a Muslim
"doctrine that allows lying in virtually all circumstances — including to fellow Muslims and by swearing to Allah — provided the liar is creative enough to articulate his deceit in a way that is true to him."
It needs also to be differentiated from concept words that mean one
thing in Arabic and another in English. For example, as Andrew McCarthy writes in
his essay on the Moderate Muslim,
"hurriya, Arabic for 'freedom,' connotes "perfect slavery" or
absolute submission to Allah, very nearly the opposite of the Western
concept."
The Salafists are less well known than the Muslim Brotherhood,(MB) but
share with them a mission to put Islam in control of the world.
Roughly, the Salafists are more fundamentalist than the MB and
less willing to cloak their ideology
in a modern style in the political arena. They are more likely to
speak openly of suppporting violent jihad.
In this essay, Raymond Ibrahim writes about
Sheikh al-Burhami,
a Salafist leader who says clearly
"that all notions of peace with non-Muslims are based on circumstance.
When Muslims are weak, they should be peaceful; when strong, they
should go on the offensive."
The model for dealing with infidels is how Mohammad dealt with the
Jews of Medina. Initially, when he was weak he spoke peace. When he
was strong, he attacked them. Similarly,
"Muslims may be tolerant of Egypt's Copts now, and not collect jizya
and place them in dhimmitude, until they are more capable — just like
Palestinians may make peace with Israel now, till they are more
capable of waging an offensive."
The Supremist goal in Islam doesn't change.
The Salafists are less well known than the Muslim Brotherhood,(MB) but
share with them a mission to put Islam in control of the world.
Roughly, the Salafists are more fundamentalist than the MB and
less willing to cloak their ideology
in a modern style in the political arena. They are more likely to
speak openly of suppporting violent jihad.
In this essay, Raymond Ibrahim writes about
Sheikh al-Burhami,
a Salafist leader who says clearly
"that all notions of peace with non-Muslims are based on circumstance.
When Muslims are weak, they should be peaceful; when strong, they
should go on the offensive."
The model for dealing with infidels is how Mohammad dealt with the
Jews of Medina. Initially, when he was weak he spoke peace. When he
was strong, he attacked them. Similarly,
"Muslims may be tolerant of Egypt's Copts now, and not collect jizya
and place them in dhimmitude, until they are more capable — just like
Palestinians may make peace with Israel now, till they are more
capable of waging an offensive."
The Supremist goal in Islam doesn't change.
Now that the Arab spring is here, internal conflicts and external
hostilities are breaking out all over the Middle East.
The move to theocratic governments goes hand in hand with the de facto decision of the Western governments to capitulate rather than fight Islamic jihad.
The rule of thumb to predict what the USA will do in any particular
situation in the civil wars in the region is this: the
present administration will side with the
group that is the more theocratic, the more
Islamic, the one that has the harsher practice of Islam, the one
that most dislikes the USA. In Iran, it supported the mullahs,
ignoring the Iranians who gave up their lives to protest a phony election. In Egypt, it
helped eliminate a controllable dictator and supported the protesters,
where the only well-organized group of rebels was the Muslim
Brotherhood. In Libya, American soldiers helped kill off a
pro-American dictator. Al-Qaeda is said to be waiting to take over the
country. Even if this doesn't happen, the Libyan rebels are in the process
of moving from a secular state to one that is strictly Islamic.
In Syria, which
is important as an expediter of Iranian policy, he does nothing to
help the rebels.
Turkey's prime minister is pressuring a once secular country to
conform to strict Islam, and Prez Obama applauds.
The U.N. is equally partial to condemning Israel for
killing any Arab but ignores Syria when it mowed down thousands in the
city of Hom.
The Arab Spring has done little to ameliorate the lives of the multitude
living in dictatorships, many of which still practiced primeval Islam.
It did however make obvious the absurdity of the carefully crafted assertion
that the Arab-Israeli conflict was the lynch pin of problems in the
Middle East. As Guy Bechor pointed out in NYET on February 10, 2012,
"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is marginal compared to the region's
real conflicts and its actual influence is limited." It was useful to
the Arab leaders who could deflect blame for their countries'
problems by blaming Israel.
The articles in this set give us an excellent description of what's
going on, including information on the Salafists, who are not
well-known in the West.
One group of Salafists, the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), once known as
Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat, is
based in north Africa and is
an affiliate of Al-Qaeda. Active
since 2002, it routinely kidnaps tourists and aid workers. AQIM is
dedicated to overthrowing the Algerian government.
One of the authors was willing to predict
outcomes along broader lines: the war between the Sunnis and the Shia.
This is not easy to do, considering that alliances are made
and broken, as if the participants were in a round-robin dating meet,
with 5-minutes to convince another participant of its good intentions. This
time it means what it says. Honest.
Gail Winston wrote about this article,
"If the Western world could mentally and emotionally absorb the historical facts well catalogued by Yoram Ettinger, we might be able to understand why the Muslim world hates us in the West. Then, therefore, we might be able to live and thrive in our own countries by being strong enough to thwart the Muslim world's main goal and desire in their lives to create a Global Caliphate for and of Islam.
"They would require that we all follow their Shariah Law (strict Islam) or they would simply kill us. It says so very precisely in their Koran. Without this understanding of this basic bestial mode of death cult which they have literally "cultivated", we have little chance of surviving the storms caused by their conflicts which they intend to spread in order to conquer the Western way of life."
Speaking about the "Peace Process", Caroline Glick notes that in recent
speeches by Gingrich and Perry, "the Republicans have generated ...
useful contributions to America's collective understanding of current
events in the Middle East." The Democratic Admistration, however, continues
policies that are not responsive to the turbulent restructurings in
that region. Iran continues to be run by an extremely repressive set
of strict interpreters of Islam. And under P.M. Erdogan, Turkey is
rapidly regressing to fundamentalist Islam, and the anti-Americanism
typical of strongly-Muslim countries. Yet Obama's administration
continues to support Turkey, which has an indirect alliance with Iran
in mutual sponsorship of Hamas. In effect, Washington is acting as
Hamas's protector. So Hamas is reinforced in its determination to
destroy the Jewish state. The Administration also continues to
maintain its support of Fatah, which more and more openly refuses to
accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. "Fatah has no reason
to compromise since the US will blame Israel no matter what. And
Israel has no reason to make concessions since the US will deem them
insufficient." Glick concludes that "[f]or the US to secure its
interests in the Middle East, it requires leaders who are willing to
reassess what passes for common wisdom on both sides of the aisle."
In January 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood won two fifth of the seat in
the Egypt Parliamentary election. This surprised the believers in the
advent of an Arab springtime of democracy. This also surprised the
pessimists who knew the MB would eventually take over, but expected it
to take longer. The biggest surprise was the strong showing by the
Salafists, who are as — if not more — devoted to implementing Sharia
in all aspects of civil and political life as the MB. Together, the MB
and the Salafists now control the Lower House of Parliament, making the
notion of a democratic Egypt an impossibility, while they will see to
it that Egypt joins
the number of Muslim countries hostile to the West and Israel. We've been fairly
well-educated about the Muslim Brotherhood and how it intends to
overturn the West and establish a Caliphate. The Salafists groups are
less known. J. Millard Burr brings us up to snuff on the Salafist groups:
who they are and what we can expect.
Avi Jorisch writes about one of the smaller groups of
loosely-affiliated terrorists
that infest the Middle East and north Africa.
The Salafist al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is an affiliate of al Qaeda, and is primarily to be found in
Algeria and Mauritania. Its particular goal is to overthrow the
Algerian government, but it is expanding its aims as well as the
territory it covers.
SUNNI VERSUS SHIA: THE MIDDLE EAST'S NEW STRATEGIC CONFLICT
By Barry Rubin
Barry Rubin lays the broad outlines of the Sunni and Shia conflict as
it plays out in the various Arab states. As Rubin points out, the
tension had been between religious states and more or less secular
states. "Once there are Islamist regimes, theology becomes central
again, as it was centuries ago." He points out the negative impact on the
Palestinian Authority and predicts a possible alliance of Sunni states,
independent of both Iran and Turkey.
What is to become of the Arab Spring
towards democracy and a 'tolerate
your neighbor' attitude? Rubin suspects
"the hope for moderation is minimal. In a region when regimes and movements are competing to prove their militancy and loyalty to a radical interpretation of Islam, nobody is going to want to make peace with Israel."
So what else is new?
These essays suggest that our options for responding to Iran's
almost completed development of nuclear weapons have become more
limited, particularly because
Iran is led by religious fanatics.
Their determination to recreate the
Caliphate globally trumps any rational deterrence scheme. The essays assume
that our leadership is rational and, given the salient facts, will recognize that military action
is now necessary . But what if they don't? Or don't have the will to
do what's necessary?
With regard to Iran, "the only question is when can Iran produce a
nuclear weapon, and the reality is, it is in a position to do so
whenever it chooses." As Mark Silverberg notes, "... the policy of the
Obama Administration continues to be based on the carrot and stick
approach — diplomatic engagement with the mullahs coupled with
international sanctions and the build-up of a large military and naval
presence in and around the Persian Gulf all aimed at compelling the
Iranians to abstain from building a nuclear weapon. ... "Israeli
military strategists are concerned that the U.S. may be unwilling to
undertake ... a [military] strike regardless of how many 'red lines'
are crossed by Iran." Iran says it wants to destroy Israel. If Iran is
bluffing, the bluff is not about using its bombs but what it targets
first: the little Satan, Israel, or the Big Satan, the U.S.A. Even if
Iran holds off on its genocidal intentions, it will have the means to
control the Middle East. We may dismiss them as a bunch of religious
fanatics, but Iran's leaders have a mission that they intend to fulfill,
regardless of the cost in human lives, including the lives of a sizable
part of Iran's citizenry. As Silverberg says, "We are confronted with a
fanatical theological Islamist movement that will accept nothing less
than the submission of Western civilization to Sharia law."
What is to become of the Arab Spring
towards democracy and a 'tolerate
your neighbor' attitude? Rubin suspects
"the hope for moderation is minimal. In a region when regimes and movements are competing to prove their militancy and loyalty to a radical interpretation of Islam, nobody is going to want to make peace with Israel."
So what else is new?
Bruce Thornton notes that "Iran has been killing Americans for 30
years with impunity, from the 241 military personnel killed in Beirut
by a suicide bomber, to the hundreds more soldiers murdered in Iraq
and Afghanistan by Iranian proxy terrorist outfits trained and armed
by Tehran." The American President's weak responses to her growing
nuclear capability doesn't signal a change in American's policy of
appeasement and weak or empty threats.
Moreover, Iran is led by fanatical believers so that ordinary deterrence techniques are not effective. Like it or not,
we need to accept that military
"force is the 'strong magic' that compels fanatical believers to abandon their murderous ideologies or keep them within their own borders."
OBAMA MAKES THE CASE FOR AN ISRAELI STRIKE ON IRAN
by Caroline Glick
American spokespeople seem to believe it's a comfort for Israel
to know that if Iran strikes, America will then strike Iran. Thatcartoon where the children are gathering sticks for a
bonfire and reassure the girl that she can play Joan of Arc. American
pyrotechnics after the fact of first strike would only add to the
horror. In this essay, Caroline Glick makes clear that President Obama
is unwilling to jeopardize his reelection whatever the future costs to
Israel and to America. He has intimidated Israel, threatened her and
spoken false reassurances to the assembled Jews and Christians at
AIPAC. Israel with less resources must strike before Iran makes
much more progress. Or sit and wait for whatever happens. America can
afford to wait longer before acting. "When one recognizes Israel's
short timeline for attacking, one realizes that when Obama demands
that Israel give several more months for sanctions to work, what he is
actually demanding is for Israel to place its survival in his hands."
"Israel will be completely at h
Brotherhood, Iran's proxy takeover of Lebanon and Iran's most
effective gofer, the Syrian
government, Obama
"...has adopted policies and taken actions that have endangered Israel
militarily on all fronts and in fundamental ways."
Naturally, he'd expect Israel to take him on faith.
THE AMERICAN ADMINISTRATION'S RESPONSE TO IRAN'S NUCLEAR THREAT
by Bernice Lipkin
Let's suppose that America really does have a workable plan to stop
Iran from becoming a nuclear power before it's too late. Suppose we
muff the timing. Or suppose — as is more likely — we have no such
plan but are hoping for the best. Bernice Lipkin pursues some of the
possible scenarios that could be the consequences of ignoring the
problem. And other implications.
In the early days of the Arab Spring, when all the romantics were sure
the small group of idealistic youth who helped started the rebellion
would win out, it was considered bad taste to suggest the Muslim
Brotherhood would be the ultimate winner. Actually, they've taken
control faster than most expected. In the recent critical parliamentary
election, the Muslim Brotherhood won about 47% of the seats and the
al-Nour party, part of the even more religiously
conservative Salafi movement, won 20%. Between the two parties,
Islamists are in control of the Lower house of Parliament.
When it seemed the MB would be sharing control with the military,
we read honied tripe about how they'd balance each other (or trip
each other up) and democracy
would triumph. Now that the MB has a goodly hold on the Parliament, it
is demanding the government be dissolved so that the MB can pick the Prime Minister.
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood wants government sacked, feb 9 2012.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/09/
egypts-muslim-brotherhood-wants-government-sacked
Egypt was one of the first countries in the Middle East to appreciate
Western mores. Even under the Ottomans, it was becoming westernized,
with an increasing secular life-style that encouraged secular higher education and
alliances with Western countries. With the new
theocratic administration that is actively hostile to the West, 100 years of moderation have gone down the tube. But
we in the west don't seem to recognize the danger. We've ignored the problem of what
will happen to the advanced weaponry the USA gave and is still giving Egypt.
The Obama Administration's solution to a potentially dangerous
situation has been to downgrade the virulence of the Muslim
Brotherhood and declare it moderate.
Though Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt never succeeded in creating a pan-Arab
union of the Arab states, in a twisted sense the Muslim Brotherhood
can do so. Segments of the MB reside in different countries and may
have differences of opinion but they
have a common ambition: to resurrect the Caliphate. So there is no
assurance that the 1.3 billion dollars worth of advanced weaponry we
give Egypt yearly won't end up in other Muslim countries or on a ship carrying
dirty bombs. There is even less assurance that Egypt will not abrogate
its treaty with Israel. Already Hamas is using the Sinai Desert to
develop more ways to attack Israel.
An Arab Spring may not have come to Egypt, but
Yusaf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual head of MB, has.
Egyptian Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, returned to Cairo today to
deliver a sermon to the crowd during Friday prayers in Tahrir Square,
Friday, Feb. 18, 2011.
(Khalil Hamra/AP)
In his first speech
he said: "I have hope that Almighty Allah, as I have been pleased
with the victory in Egypt, that He will also please me with the
conquest of the al-Aqsa Mosque [i.e., Jerusalem], to prepare the way
for me to preach in the al-Aqsa Mosque."
As another example of their
moderation, note that the second flotilla to Gaza in jun 2011 was
coordinated by Muhammad Sawalha, a senior UK-based Muslim Brotherhood
figure connected to Hamas.
The King of Jordan is a reasonably accurate sensing device in that he's
among the early kowtowers to whatever group of Arabs are likely to take
control. He started honoring MB members back in 2010. In America, instead of acknowledging that the MB has straightforwardly declares it wants to destroy Western culture, the American administration is devoted to whitewashing it.
We no longer have Islamic terrorists at least semantically, even as
Sharia law infiltrates more of our institutions.
Our security agencies worry about the possibility that returning American
soldiers might be a danger, but give access to our security secrets
to known Hamas sympathizers.
Under the guise that
we need to come to terms with a "moderate" Islamic group,
Deputy Secretary of State William Burns met in January 2012 with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the highest-level contact between the United States and the Egypt's largest Islamic group.
Upon receiving the blessings of the State Department,
as Samara Greenberg writes,
"Mohammed Mursi called on Washington to adopt a 'positive position
concerning Arab and Muslim causes,' saying its policies in the past
were 'biased' — an apparent reference to the strong U.S.-Israel
relationship."
ISRAEL'S OPTIONS AS MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD GAINS POWER
By Barry Rubin
The strife that was to usher in a flowering of democracy brought the
Muslim Brotherhood (MB) into power "in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Tunisia,
and very probably Libya, where its branches will control the
governments. In Jordan, the brotherhood leads the opposition; in
Syria, it plays an important role in the revolutionary upheaval." The
region is "now overwhelmingly controlled by radical Islamists."
Despite the American President certifying to its moderation, the
support of its members for violence, its open anti-Semitism and the
speeches of this members say otherwise.
Barry Rubin offers sensible suggestions on how Israel can best "respond to the brotherhood's new power and threat."
Ryan Mauro makes clear how misleading it is to assume that the
Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is moderate because it is cautious, does
long-term planning and constant re-assessment. Its single-minded
mission is to reestablish Muslim dominance. If we don't understand
this, it is not because the MB has kept it secret. It is us who are
deaf, dumb and blind. They keep telling us. They call it gradualism. Of
course, they also describe it as
their form of "democracy" and "freedom," which, even their spokesmen
admit, is a tad different than our concepts.
In the West, to those who listen, it's better known as 'stealth
jihad.' The basic MB strategy, called The Project, was
discovered back in 1982 (See Poole, "The Muslim Brotherhood
Project"
here for a complete description of The Project.)
The MB now has the White House reassuring us that the MB is
moderate, but all objective signs suggest it would be injurious to our
health to believe in the MB's good will.
How much plainer can it be said than how Isi Leibler phrases it:
"What those attempting to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood fail to
comprehend is that this organization represents one of the most
fanatical and dangerous of the radical Islamist groups in the region,
with a dark record of violence and terrorism embedded in its DNA. It
is rabidly anti-Western, anti-Christian and anti-Semitic, is committed
to imposing sharia law and a global caliphate — and willing to employ
any means to further its objectives."
If this exaggerates, explain the pressures exerted against the West to
accept Sharia law
since 9/11. Explain the MB fronts that the MB has started.
Consider its alliances with terrorists around the world.
Explain the Muslim fingerprints that are everywhere:
in insulting us by wanting to build a mosque where they destroyed our
financial center; in infiltrating the FBI and Homeland Security and
the White House, itself; in instructing our Military; in co-opting
banks to make Sharia banking acceptable. Do you really think that
the MB has abandoned its mission to conquer the West? Do you really
think appeasement will stop them?
Andrew McCarthy has written a must-keep essay that really does
explain how Islam wraps the Muslim and envelops him, dampening out all
other influences. The other essays are contrasts. One is an example of supposedly moderate Arabs who, like
Lewis Carroll's snark that turned out to be a boojum, are decidedly
immoderate. The other seems actually to be an ordinary American of
Arab origin.
Some months ago, Andrew McCarthy wrote that he wasn't sure that was
such a thing as a moderate Muslim, but he gave them the benefit of the
doubt and wrote as if there were such an animal. Many of us essayists
were doing the same. In this essay, he is no longer ambiguous. Nor can
we be. A pious Muslim can not be moderate. He can not follow the dictates
of the Koran — especially when they are backed and reiterated by
respected Mullahs and Muslim theologicians — and at the same time
agree that everyone
can peaceably practice whatever religion to which he adheres.
In the Hunting Of The Snark, Lewis Carroll wrote of the travails of a
sea captain and his crew who hunted that hard-to-imagine and
harder-to-capture beast, the Snark.
In similar fashion, so many who purport to know the
crags and crannies of the Middle Easterner's temperment believe there
exists a subgenre of devout believers in the Koran who are pious yet
who are 'just like us' — involved in normal hopes and ambitions for
themselves and their family. Unfortunately as the contours become
clearer,
we are beginning accurately to define the Moderate Muslim. He is
simply an impious Muslim
See Here OR he is
hibernating, easily incited to rioting and
ravaging when his
sheikh and/or mullah so commands. The captain discovered his
"snark was a boojum",
capable of making anyone who meets up with it
"softly and suddenly vanish away."
In this article, William Sullivan writes of two cases of Palestinian moderates who
turned out to be boojums.
Me thinks we best start reshaping our beamish response to sharia
infiltration, lest we, like the unwary crew member, disappear into
the maws of Middle East Islam.
(ADDENDUM: When I finished this introduction, somewhat uneasy that I
had drifted too far from a peshat exegesis of Carroll's boojum,
I googled snark boojun and to my delight chanced upon
"The Snark was a Boojum" at
http://jostamon.blogspot.com/2008/05/snark-was-boojum.html. Read it
and enjoy.)
Maybe, just maybe, Arabs can break out of their self-destructive hatred and envy.
By Lee Habeeb
What can one say about this essay except maybe "Wow!" We've learned
much about different genres of Arab in the U.S.A.: Arabs who are
called moderate because they are indifferent to Islam; quiet-appearing
Arabs who are easily made rabid by their leaders; lone-wolf Arab
terrorists; organized Arab terrorists; Arabs with grievances; Arabs
who push the envelop for special privileges; fanatic Arabs dedicated
to destroying American culture and taking over our country; and moles
who pretend to believe in democracy but who are actually Muhammad
groupies. This essay is by a most unusual Arab. Lee Habeeb is unusual
because he is a very ordinary American. He comes with his own baggage
and a family history partially rooted in Arab mores but his identity
is American. He's another amalgam in the American melting pot of
diverse cultures. He suggests an simple test for
determining where an Arab's basic loyalty lies: how does he feel
about Jews — the regular run-of-the-mill Jew? It doesn't count
that he accepts the New York Times Jews who can justify any bad
deed done by a minority, unless it was committed by a Jew. It is no
test that he is friendly with the traitor Jews who loathe Israel
because its very existence makes them aware of their identity
problems. How does he feel about the ordinary Jew? And Israeli?
In the last issue of Think-Israel, we talked about John Mearshiemer of
the University of Chicago, who has used his academic credentials to
make Jew-hate mainstream and acceptable. In early March, the Kennedy
School of Government — where Mearshiemer's buddy, Steve Walt, holds
court — is hosting a conference entitled,
"One State Conference: Israel/Palestine and the One-State Solution".
A institution once so sensitive that it fired its
president for suggesting that girls and boys may have different
aptitudes and maybe math wasn't really a girl-thing is holding the
academic equivalent of a "Kill the Jews" rally, featuring shoddy
academics, notorious for fabricating data and advancing dishonest arguments to delegitimatize Israel.
Harvard's propagandizing was encouraged by a hefty gift
from the Saudis, who, as we know, respect the freedom to think
independently and to come to heretical conclusions from data.
As the World Jewish Daily says of the conference:
"Ladies and gentlemen, you should be scared. When the nation's top university hosts a conference dedicated to discussing ways to wipe Israel off the map, well, Boston's Jews may be next."
Considering how weighty the brain power is reputed to be in
Cambridge, it is surprising that the
basic propaganda technique is so primitive. Essentially as Bruce Thornton's essay
points out, the pretext that legitimizes all Palestinian terror
is the
supposed need to protect the defenseless Palestinians from the big brute Israel.
Buy that and Arab terror
— its
brutality, its blood lust, its preference for preying on women and
children, slitting their throats, drinking their blood, shooting them
at point blank range, throwing rocks —
become understandable, even justifiable.
Why am I spending so much time on these upper echelon schools? It's
because they have a respected and influential
place in the American educational system.
Held in high regard, they can do much damage.
As the Yiddish saying goes: A fish starts stinking from its head.
It would be bad enough if the attacks on Israel were limited to a
single prestigious
university, but as the "Poison Ivy League" article points out about Ivy
League schools in general:
"You cannot slander gays, women or Muslims, but Israelis have become fair game."
To focus on Harvard once more, Harvard gives good value for their Saudi money. Their academic staff has spread fatuous
pleasantries labeled as facts about Islam far and wide throughout the
school system.
The other articles in the set examine how extensively
Islamic propaganda has infiltrated our educational system.
Editor's Addendum, March 20, 2012:
Brigette Gabriel, President,
Act for America Education
(www.ACTforAmericaEducation.org), announced that
the organization has
released its textbook analysis report,
"Education or Indoctrination? The Treatment of Islam in 6th through
12th Grade American Textbooks."
She writes:
"This report shines a bright light on a pattern of errors, omissions and bias in the textbooks reviewed. Our children deserve better. Our children deserve facts and accuracy, not historical revisionism.
To give you just one example of the errors our research uncovered, in
discussing the 9/11 attacks, the textbooks typically fail to mention
the perpetrators were Muslims or that they acted in the cause of
Islamic jihad. In one book the terrorists are portrayed as people
fighting for a cause. In just a few years after September 11th, the
history of what happened on that tragic day was rewritten in our
school textbooks. Omitting this vital information, that jihad was the
motivation for the attacks, makes it difficult, if not impossible, for
today's young teens, who don't remember 9/11, to really understand
what happened that day —and why.
To access the report log on to www.ACTforAmericaEducation.org.
There's a video on anti-Israel academics speaking at California State
universities. See
here.
This is a video on students taken on a field trip to
a mosque and urged to pray to Allah.
Click here. Read also Stella Paul's article, "When Jewish Boys Bow
to Allah" on the same page.
As Steven Plaut writes, "... in a few days it [Harvard] will be
restoring a great Harvard tradition dating back to the 1930s: the
tradition of hosting Nazis and violent anti-Semites on campus seeking
the mass murder of Jews." The show will feature academics whose
poorly-substantiated assertions (lies and Quasimodo-like distortions to us common folk) have been deservedly discredited.
Unhappily for Harvard's reputation, Jew-hate rain dances are less
acceptable than in the 1930's — and this despite the huge sums of
money the Muslims has spent to create a climate where Jew-Hate can thrive.
HARVARD PROMOTES THE PALESTINIANS' SLOW-MOTION 'FINAL SOLUTION'
by Bruce Thornton
Bruce Thornton examines a basic tactic used to delegitimize Israel:
the world is called on to help the poor Palestinian deprived of his
land by the evil Jews. This inverts reality but it gets a good
response, usually from the ignorant. Surprisingly, this theme will
serve to structure
a conference held at the Kennedy School at Harvard.
The School is a feeder at the well-filled Saudi
trough and apparently it takes its commitment to its patron
seriously, seriously enough to ignore academic standards and a
truthful exploration of the facts. The conference
is billed as a look at Israel, Palestine and the One State. The
thrust is to promote the One-State solution, which — when the spin
slows down — will be seen to be an Arab state, with the Jews in
dhimmi status — if they are allowed to remain, at all. As
Thornton concludes, "The Kennedy School conference, then, is a
propaganda exercise the effect of which is to further the Palestinian
Arab "phases" strategy for destroying Israel."
Richard Baehr makes the point that the insidious anti-Israel poison
coming from Harvard isn't unique.
Unfortunately, Jew-hate in the form of anti-Israelism is showing up
at many of the elite schools, to a greater or lesser degree. When
asked why they allow these exercises in hate, the
administrators at these schools fall back on the "free speech"
defense, That would be fair, if it were applied in the same manner to all hate confabs.
But it is hardly likely that "free speech" would
be the important issue if the Klu
Klux Klan wanted to hold a Day At The Racists.Or if a group of
minorities held in fear and servitude in Muslim countries asked to
have a Down with the Slave Masters powwow to examine conditions in Saudi Arabia.
A cursory examination of the academics invited to speak at Harvard
makes clear the organizers aren't aiming at a high level of academic
quality. They just need to have the conference, so that later they can
cite its findings as authority for anything they want believed by the
hoi polloi. Do we really need to let this obscene show of hate run its course?
If you thought suggesting that academics have become fancy foot soldiers
for introducing Sharia law into this country was over-the-hill alarmist, consider this
consequence of various divisions of Harvard University working to
convince the country that it isn't the Muslims who are the enemy, it's
the Jooz. Janet Tassel presents anecdotes that
reveal the pernicious connection between groups at Harvard who are
exploiting Harvard's prestigious reputation to promote their
political ideology and the Islamic propaganda being mouthed
by duped school marms. That they are even able to get away with this:
"Muslims from Europe were the first to sail across the Atlantic and
land in the New World, starting in 889... [and that]West African
Muslims had not only spread throughout South and Central America, but
had also reached Canada, intermarrying with the Iroquois and Algonquin
nations so that, much later, early English explorers were to meet
Iroquois and Algonquin chiefs with names like Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah
Ibn Malik." says much of the level of education and gullibility of our teachers.
It is also important to note that the Harvard
Administration has done zilch to stop this tripe being distributed in
their name. What will it take to make them
start saying, "I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you."
ADOPTING PRO-SHARIA TEXTBOOKS: WHEN STATES SHOULD STEP IN.
by Alyssa Lappen
Alyssa Lappen provides us with a general survey of how Islam and
sharia law are being taught in American schoolrooms.
"In the last two decades, sanitized Islamic
history and dogma [has] crept into broad use in U.S. public school
books..." Fortunately, there has been some efforts at countering this misinformation.
For example, a Texas
Board of Education forced textbook publishers to rectify their half-truths
and inaccurate portrayals of Islam.
Lappen notes that
"Islamic forces spent decades stealthily cultivating influence over our nation's public schools and curricula through 'minority' channels afforded by 'textbook adoption.' Other 'adoption state' authorities should perhaps now add teeth to their own Texas-like counter-efforts.'"
In this set of essays, we have a candidate for the most
gratuitously nasty story
about Israel and a couple on the ooze from the New York Times, the
newspaper that holds the record for protecting the religion of peace.
Other essays examine wording — words are weapons in
the fight to support Israel.
Speaking about supporting Israel, when does Israel's hasbara
establishment plan to open shop?
THE CHOSEN PEOPLE HAVE TO BE PERFECT:
ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE PRESS IN HOLLAND
Yochanan Visser
This article was written by Yochanan Visser and discusses an
article written by a Dutch reporter, Lisa van Heusden, who was living
in Israel during her pregnancy. Laura, who sent in
this article, is obviously indignant about a mother who complained
because she received excellent pre-natal care in Israel. Laura
writes:
"This is unbelievable. So
Israel's committment to providing the best medical care possible is
spun to be some nazi-like desire to produce a master race. What's
wrong with these people? Instead of this woman being grateful for the
high quality prenatal care she received in Israel and writing a
positive article about it, this is the sick way she twists her
experience. Whatever Israel does is spun by the media to be something
sinister. If it helps earthquake victims in Haiti, Israel is accused
of stealing organs. If it provides high quality prenatal care for its
citizens, it is attacked for wanting perfection for the chosen people
rather than being seen as an example of a modern, progressive society.
And "critics" of Israel feign surprise when they are accused of
antisemitism, yet we are constantly bombarded by hostile, ugly trash
about Israel such as this."
It does seem incredible that a mother —
especially one with a viral infection that can interfere with the
development of a healthy baby —
wouldn't be grateful her child was born healthy. Instead, she
complained her baby was born perfect, when he could have had problems from the
virus she carried. She was delighted that her son was born with a
toe that was too small. As she put it "His personal revenge on the
Israeli health system." The mother is a media person. So it must be hard for her to break old
habits. She's learned how to make Israel look
bad no matter what the circumstances.
Until Lisa came along,
there was an iconic joke that best described
Israel's always receiving
bad press.
The joke goes like this:
An Israeli is on vacation and is visiting a zoo in England when he
sees
a little girl leaning on the lion's cage.
Suddenly, the lion grabs her by the cuff of her jacket and tries to
pull her
inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents.
The Israeli runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a
powerful punch.
Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back letting go of the girl,
and the
Israeli brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly.
A reporter has watched the whole event. The reporter says to the
Israeli:
'Sir, this was the most gallant and brave thing I've seen a man do in my
whole life.'
The Israeli replies, 'Why, it was nothing, really. The lion was behind
bars.
I just saw this little kid in danger and acted as I felt right.'
The reporter says, 'Well, I'll make sure this won't go unnoticed. I'm a
journalist, and tomorrow's paper will have this story on the front page.
So, what do you do for a living and what political affiliation do you have?'
The Israeli replies, "I serve in the Israeli army and I vote for the Likud."
The journalist leaves.
The following morning the Israeli buys the paper to see news of his actions,and reads, on the front page:
RIGHT-WING ISRAELI ASSAULTS AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AND STEALS HIS LUNCH
I have to admit, Lisa's take on Israel wins by a mile.
IS THE NEW YORK TIMES'S AGENDA TO NORMALIZE ISLAM IN THE WEST?
by Phyllis Chesler
As Phyllis Chesler writes,
"On a single day, the New York Times has been known to publish
anywhere from two to six anti-Israel articles, editorials, op-ed
pieces, and letters. Today, I see a new danger arising in their pages...
After spending a year proclaiming the triumph of democracy and the
miracle of the Arab Spring and, as PM Netanyahu has just noted,
refusing to document the existential danger in which Israel finds
herself, the Newspaper of Record has now begun the process of
normalizing Islam in North America and Europe. Its pro-Muslim
"multicultural" agenda is, paradoxically, another form of racism."
What can account for their obsessive concern with the protecting
rights for
Muslim religion. Perhaps the answer is: cherchez la moneé.
This essay by John Hinderaker makes an astute observation about a New
York Times practice. It also provides us with yet another
indicator to alert us that the Gray Lady speaketh false and/or ignores
truth.
This is an impressive exploration by Sol Stern of the character and
ideology of Hannah Arendt, perhaps best known for her exclaiming how
banal evil was, when she saw the very ordinary looking Adolf Eichmann,
who was responsible for the killing of thousands of Jews. She was
raised as an assimilated German Jew and socialist. After the Nazis
rose to power, she became a Zionist.
Fleeing to the USA, she still considered
herself a Zionist but was soon attacking outstanding heros such as
Vladimir Jabotinsky, Peter Bergson and Ben Hecht, calling them
fascists and charlatans. They saw clearly the coming Holocaust and
were desperately trying to save the European Jews. She didn't help in
the rescue effort. Stalin was her hero. She abhorred the idea of an independent
Jewish state in Palestine and urged the Jews to establish a binational
state controlled by the Arabs, ignoring that the Arabs wanted none of it. In sum, she behaved
as a Marxist and a dhimmi, blaming the Jew for the Arab's
recalcitrance. She became a confirmed anti-Zionist, supplying many of
the criticisms that would become standard accusations for the next
generations of Jewish haters of the Jewish state.
THE JEW FLU: THE STRANGE ILLNESS OF JEWISH ANTI-SEMITISM
By Uzi Silber
Uzi Silber describes Jewish self-hatred as Jewish flu, implying it is
so varied and involves so many germ types, it is impossible to wipe out
entirely.
But it can be kept as a low level.
Currently, "its modern symptoms are a rejection of Israel's identity as a Jewish state and a dismissal of its right to defend itself militarily, while embracing the goals of its nihilistic Arab enemies."
Its adherents, both on the Left and on the Right, broadcast their
anti-Jewish messages openly. Read a 'blame the Jews' article which
ignores appalling behavior by Arabs, and you can be sure you'd nailed
another victim of the Jew Flu.
Isi Leibler presents another horror story about Israel's incompetence in
presenting its case. What is there about the management of ideas that
attracts those least able to produce information in a timely and
understandable fashion?
If only Israel's information officers could handle truthful information as adeptly as the
Arabs and their buddies manipulate lies! When they eventually do get around
to responding, it's We did not or We did, too. How about going on the
offense? It's still the best defense.
We understand that the brainy guys are busy
elsewhere, but can't they filter the bottom layer a bit better?
And oh yes, for the sake of accuracy, stones in this article
should be changed to rocks or sharpened stones,
depending on which was used — Arab children are well-versed in a
variety of weapons.
Frank Loewenberg writes of a little known story — the conquest of
Jerusalem by the Persian King Khosrau II in 614 C.E., with thousands
of Jewish soldiers as part of his army. At the time, Jerusalem was the
capital of the province of Palaestina Prima of the Byzantine Roman
Empire, and its Jewish and Christian subjects were "the victims of
heavy taxes, confiscation of property and even forced conversions."
When Persia began its rule in Jerusalem, sacrificial service on the
Temple Mount was reestablished and Nehemiah ben Hushiel became Jewish
governor of Jerusalem. But some three years later, Nehemiah was
removed from office and Jews were banned from the city. By 628 C.E.,
the Byzantine Emperor had regained his lost provinces of Syria, Egypt and
Palestine and the Jews of Jerusalem were massacred. A decade later,
the Muslims invaded. And began another chapter in Jerusalem's history.
In the second World War, the German General Rommel was winning the War
in the Middle East. He was stopped at Tobruk
in Libya by a delaying action that gave the British Army time to
revamp and re-equip, so that it was able later to win at El Alamein,
which was "the beginning of the end for the Germans and their Italian
allies in North Africa." As Jerry Klinger writes, a chief factor in holding the Germans from
moving forward at Tobruk was the incredible fighting by the
outnumbered soldiers of the
Palestine Brigade, a group of some 400 Jews, "a battalion of mine
layers, poorly armed and provisioned, without heavy weapons, or
anti-aircraft equipment but with a grim, teeth clenched
determination." They withstood the continous attacks by the Germans
and in the end, battered and reduced to a quarter of their original
number, they were victorious.
THE REHABILITATION OF AN UNDERGROUND REVOLUTIONARY
By Mitch Ginsburg
Avraham 'Ya'ir' Stern was a most unusual terrorist. He was a poet,
knowledgeable in Torah and a student of classic Greek and Latin. In
the 1930s, he had persuaded the Polish government to help train Jews
to wrench Palestine from the control of the British colonial
government, but this ended when Poland was invaded by the Germans. He
was a man desperate to save European Jewry in spite of the English
Government's refusal to let more than a few Jews immigrate to
Palestine. (It is bitter ironic that the British were in Palestine
because they had been entrusted by the League of Nations to help the
Jews create a homeland.) On February 12, 1942, he was caught by the
English and shot dead when found. During his life as commander of the
Lehi, he was revered by a few and "widely detested by the majority of
Jews in Palestine." As the years have passed, more and more people
have come to his memorial service. Mitch Ginsburg describes Stern's
'rehabilitation.'
See also the video "Teaching the Legacy of Yair
Stern" at http://newsblaze.com/story/
20120214084732nurg.nb/topstory.html
SYRIAN RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE SABRA AND CHATILA MASSACRES
by Dr. Franck Salameh
In September 1982, Arabs living in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian
Arab refugee camps in Lebanon were massacred. The Lebanese Forces
(LF), a Christian militia, was said to have avenged the assassination
by the Muslim Lebanese of the Christian Lebanese leader, Bashir
Gemayel. The LF and Israel were allies. In the aftermath of the
massacre, much of the blame was levied on Israel, which was accused of
not having the foresight to realize that allowing the LF to enter the
camp hunting for terrorists hiding there would lead to a massacre. The
massacre put an end to the possibility of reconciliation between the
Lebanese Muslims and Christians. Franck Salameh suggests that Syria
had most to gain from the massacre. "[I]t scuttled the prospects of
peace with Israel, it extended the Lebanese war for another decade, it
maintained Syria's occupation of the country for another twenty-three
years, it tightened its grip over the functioning of the Lebanese
state, it continued using Lebanon as a launching pad for Syria's
regional settling of scores, and it provided the Alawites with a
bottomless private piggy-bank bankrolling their wars-by-proxy."
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From: Steven Merley, "The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States," Series
No 2, Paper No 3, April, 2009, Hudson Institute.
