The Insanity of the United Nations

The United Nations has finally responded to the Iranian nuclear threat. Believe it or not elected Iran has been elected to be Vice Chair of the U.N. Disarmament Commission. Iranian Ambassador Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi used his ascension to claim that Israel's nuclear stockpile is among "the major sources of concern with regard to global peace and security." Arutz Sheva quotes Danesh-Yazdi's statement: "The continued existence of thousands of nuclear warheads in the stockpiles of the nuclear-weapon States, which could destroy the entire globe many times over, and the increasing resort to the threat of their possible use, are the major sources of concern with regard to global peace and security," Danesh-Yazdi said, adding that Israel was required to place all of its "clandestine nuclear facilities" under UN nuclear watchdog supervision.Arutz Sheva's piece points out that the election of Iran to the Vice Chair of the U.N. Disarmament Commission was immediately followed by yet more threats to destroy Israel by Iran's President Ahmadenijad.

Needless to say U.S. and Israeli reaction was less than warm. The Jerusalem Post goes on to report:Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), who heads the House subcommittee on the Middle East issued a statement in which she compared the decision to "appointing a serial killer to serve as a juror in a murder trial."This follows a United Nations Security Council debate on Monday, the very day a suicide bomber killed nine innocent people in Tel Aviv and wounded close to 70 others at a falafel stand, to consider condemning Israel for its anti-terrorism activities in Gaza and the West Bank. Voice of America reports:The U.N. Security Council opened a debate on Israeli military operations in the occupied territories, hours after Monday's suicide attack in Tel Aviv.

Arab countries asked for the open Council debate after the United States blocked adoption of a statement last week that would have called on Israel to refrain from excessive use of force that endangers Palestinian civilians.

More than a dozen countries had lined up to criticize Israeli military actions, including Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Algeria, Indonesia, Egypt, Cuba and Venezuela.Those nations lining up to criticize Israel are among the worst offenders of human rights in the world. (Thanks to Ariel for the links.)

The United Nations continues to be the mouthpiece for despots and dictators to relentlessly spew against the United States and Israel yet both nations continue to participate in and promote the failed world body. I fail to understand why both nations remain members or why the United States continues to act as host for the U.N. The U.N. needs to join the League of Nations in being relegated to the dustbin of history. It needs to be replaced with a League of Free Nations, open only to those who support human rights and democracy.

Technorati Tags: UN iran united nations palestine israel disarmament terrorism nuclear threat

Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Yael K wrote a wonderful historical piece on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising:63 years ago today was the eve of Passover and the 50,000 - 60,000 (out of more than half a million who had been forced into the narrow streets of this confined space) suriving Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto were slated to be finally and completely annihilated. When the SS troops entered the ghetto to renew the deportations to the death camps, however, they met with unexpected resistance.

Fewer than 500 young fighters, girls and boys --the youngest aged 12 but most in their late teens and early twenties, who were poorly armed and even more poorly trained refused to go to their deaths quietly. Instead they embarked on a desperate and hopeless struggle, none expecting to survive it or even to survive beyond the first day. And yet, on that first day this small group achieved an astonishing victory --the attacked elite SS troops withdrew from the Ghetto in chaos. Not a single Jew was deported from the ghetto on that day....Make time to read the full piece if you can. As the daughter of two Holocaust survivors all I can say is we need more pieces like this to make certain the world never forgets.

Technorati Tags: holocaust shoah warsaw ghetto WWII World War II jewish history warsaw poland

Further Poisoning The Well

Media Bias In the Wake of the Tel Aviv Bombing

Late Monday night, in the wake of the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, I tuned to first CNN then CNN International. While both CNN networks had covered the terror attack earlier in the day their news crawl at the bottom of the screen no longer mentioned it. Instead the Israeli missile attack on Gaza City was mentioned. The fact that nobody was killed or injured in Gaza was conveniently ignored. The bombing in Tel Aviv, which killed nine innocent people at a falafel stand and injured 70, wasn't there to provide context. Qassam rockets fired from Gaza that day were also deemed not newsworthy. If someone was catching the news for the first time that day and chose CNN as their primary news source they might believe that Israel, without provocation, attacked Palestinians in Gaza. By comparison Fox News, which tends to be pro-Israel, still had the suicide bombing on their news crawl 24 hours later.

CNN is hardly alone in providing subtle bias to their news coverage. Reuters, the European news agency, began their story on the Tel Aviv bombing this way:TEL AVIV (Reuters) - A Palestinian suicide bomber killed nine people and wounded 60 outside a Tel Aviv restaurant during the Jewish holiday of Passover on Monday, an attack the governing Islamic group Hamas called an act of self-defense.Why put the Hamas justification in the very first sentence? It gives the Hamas statement equal weight with the bombing itself.

Beyond the subtle anti-Israel media bias I have illustrated there are, of course, media outlets that do nothing to mask their blatant bias and go as far as presenting propaganda as news stories and revising history to portray Israel as the root of all evil in the Middle East and beyond. As I previously reported the BBC has been caught fabricating stories and has twice been censured by it's own Board of Governors for anti-Israel bias. UK newspapers The Guardian and The Scotsman are equally bad. On business trips to Houston last year I found Pacifica Radio station KPFT broadcasting hours of anti-Israel diatribe so virulent that I might have thought I was listening to a station from Ramallah rather than Texas.

While it is true that there are some mainly conservative media outlets that tend to be biased in favor of Israel (the aforementioned Fox News and the UK newspaper The Telegraph are good examples) they are by far outnumbered and would, in any case, be dismissed or ignored by those on the political left where most of today's anti-Israel animus resides. This media bias reinforces the relentless effort to indoctrinate young people to be anti-Israel in major prestigious academic institutions I described and documented in my piece Poisoning The Well.

Is it any wonder that pro-Israel voices get shouted down in left-wing political fora? Is it any wonder that anti-Zionism and even in-your-face anti-Semitism are blossoming in the political left? How can those of us who have traditionally been on the political left and yet strongly support Israel fit in? How can it be that those who claim to stand up most strongly for tolerance and diversity are completely unwilling to accept or even listen to a Jewish or Israeli viewpoint, or worse, are willing to support or even parrot views which sound like those emanating from Germany 65 years ago? How do those of us who are now deeply concerned change opinions which have become so hardened? How do we fight back?

[NOTE: This piece also appears in Blogs of Zion in a somewhat abbreviated form, published under my Hebrew name.]

Technorati Tags: media bias israel suicide bombing palestine terrorism cnn bbc reuters pacifica radio

Happy Pesach!

Happy Pesach! Hag Sameach!

Pesach (Passover) is about liberation from slavery, about freedom, about miracles G-d performed for the Jewish people... Pesach is also about the food! Really good homemade matzo ball soup is to die for. This year I also discovered one amazing store bought treat: Manischewitz Triple Chocolate Ultimate Macaroons. We're talking chocolate macaroons with chocolate chunks in them dipped in chocolate.

No, I don't know how many pounds I've gained and I don't want to know.

Next year Pesach b'eretz if all goes well.

Technorati Tags: pesach passover matzo ball soup macaroons jewish holidays food

Poisoning The Well

By now much has been made of the paper "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," recently produced for Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government by Stephen Walt, its academic dean, and Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, which charges that such a lobby influences American foreign policy against American interests. If you read the paper, all 35,000 words of it, it isn't much different that what one might read on a neo-Nazi or anti-Semitic hate site. A few Jews in government have undue influence, Jews bias the media, and so on. Think of it as an updated Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion with all the trappings of academia and prestigious institutions of higher learning.

This paper didn't happen in a vacuum. It is part of an extremely disturbing trend of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic attitudes being taught on university campuses by supposedly scholarly professors. Earlier this month the US Commission on Civil Rights found that anti-Semitism on American college campuses is a serious problem, adding that there is "substantial evidence" that some universities "may repress legitimate debate concerning Israel." What actually is happening is that anyone who defends Israel is intimidated into silence or worse. I had reported on problems at Columbia University in New York and in the University of California system in my 25 October 2005 post on intimidation of Jewish students on campus. Similar problems exist at prestigious universities across the United States, in Canada, and in Europe.

Harvard University Professor of Law Alan Dershowitz, in his 2005 book The Case For Peace, charges:I will demonstrate that there is an explicit campaign of vilification against Israel ...the goal of this well-coordinated campaign is entirely negative: namely, to produce a generation of future leaders--political, economic, religious, academic--who are virtually programmed to be stridently anti-Israel.He names professors such as Noam Chomsky of MIT, Norman Finkelstein of DePaul, and four Columbia professors. In Britain he cites Oxford professor Andrew Wilkie and Mona Baker at UMIST, among others.

If a young, impressionable student is paying tens of thousands of dollars to attend what he or she believes to be one of the finest institutions of higher learning in the world they are, by and large, going to believe their professors are telling the truth. They will not recognize historical revisionism, propaganda, and outright lies when they are taught as history unless they have already studied the subject in question. In future posts I will show how the campaign Dr. Dershowitz alleges is already bearing dubious fruit.

[NOTE: This post, albeit in slightly different form, also appears on Blogs of Zion, where I am a regular contributor writing under my Hebrew name.]

Technorati Tags: academia israel palestinians palestine intimidation anti-Semitism bias

BBC Online Censured For Anti-Israel Bias

For the second time in two years the BBC Board of Governors has censured it's own people for biased, anti-Israel reporting. The first time was for Barbara Plett's reporting on Yasser Arafat's illness just prior to his death. Now they have censured BBC Online for a biased description of UN Resolution 242. To quote the article:The article, published late last year, suggested the UN called for Israel's unilateral withdrawal from territories seized during the six-day war when in fact it called for a negotiated "land for peace" settlement between Israel and "every state in the area".

The governors report, which specifically singled out the reporting of the UN resolution after the 1967 Israeli-Arab Six-day war stated that the piece on the BBC news website did not give a balanced view of events.

[...]

At the time the British Ambassador who drafted the approved resolution, Lord Caradon said: "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial."

The BBC governors' report concluded: "The committee considered that by selecting only references to Israel, the online article did not accurately reflect this balance and gave a biased impression. It therefore breached editorial standards on both accuracy and impartiality".These two cases are only the tip of the iceberg. The BBC issues a steady stream of biased anti-Israel reporting. This is common of many European media outlets but the BBC, which I have previously referred to as the British Bias Corporation seems to be the worst of the bunch. Is it any wonder there is so much anti-Israel sentiment in Britain and Europe in general?

[NOTE: This post also appears on Blogs of Zion, where I write under my Hebrew name.]

Technorati Tags: bbc israel palestinians palestine united kingdom uk media bias

Rockets Land: Israel Needs to Act

If you read any of the Israeli press you know that every single day the Palestinians fire Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel. These rockets are homemade and wildly inaccurate, but they do cause property damage and occasionally kill people. Last week for the first time the Palestinians fired a Katyusha rocket into Israel towards the city of Ashkelon. This shows the Palestinians are successfully smuggling weapons into Gaza, weapons that could seriously threaten Israeli towns and villages. The Israeli government reaction has been timid at best.

Aharon, writing in Blogs of Zion, makes a strong case that the likely new Kadima-Labour coalition government must act to successfully stop rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza before it unilaterally withdraws from land in Judea and Samaria. Failing that Israel's major cities would be subject to rocket fire.

The question of how to deal with this was put to Labour leader Amir Peretz in the run up to last week's Israeli elections. Here is Aharon's first person account of what happened. Aharon's reaction to Mr. Peretz' answer is also insightful:
During the run up to the vote I managed to squeeze into a restaraunt where Peretz was pressing flesh. A woman, a British Olah, called out to him in Hebrew (he doesn't speak American, kal vachomer British) "What are you going to do about the Kassams?" He responded that he is from Sderot and that he knows the people of Sderot are proud to be on the front lines.

First, I admire the Zionist bravado. I'm proud of our border yishuvim that stand firm. But, for their sake and the country's, that's not a good enough answer, especially because we aren't talking Sderot but also Ashkelon. The Zionist ethos seems to run less strong in cities than in small towns and the Olmert Peretz team need to do more than just rely on the willingness of Israeli citizens to stand firm and keep the bomb shelters clean.

This is only to say that a government of Israel that is planning to enact more pullouts needs to show that it can keep the rockets off our heads, especially when those pullouts will open up launching sites near our major cities. And the proving ground for this ability has to be Gaza.I agree with Aharon. Something needs to be done and the Israeli government needs to act. If it takes overwhelming force to stop rocket attacks then force is what is needed. The first responsibility of any government is to protect it's citizens. Prime Minister Olmert needs to worry less about what the international community thinks and more about insuring the safety of Israelis.

Technorati Tags: gaza israel palestinians palestine sderot rockets terrorism

Passover Shopping (Aliya Diary, Page Two)

Even though it's still more than three weeks until Pesach (Passover) I've started picking up kosher l'pesach supplies when I find them in the market. I already have bought matzo meal. Actually, I use that all year instead of breadcrumbs since it makes a very nice, light breading. It just happened that the container I found was already for Passover. I also have a box of Yehuda Matzo Farfel imported from Israel which gives me some hope that I will find more of the imported products I usually buy.

Why did I start so early this year? Green Bay doesn't exactly have a huge Jewish population. OK, the conservative shul has 125 families that are members and that is a good sized congregation, but I get the idea that overall it's a small and very assimilated community, No one supermarket has a really good kosher foods section though most have at least a small selection. Israeli products are few and far between. This is very different from Cincinnati or even Raleigh.

What I end up doing is visiting different markets, especially those with the best selection (Woodmans, Copps, and Cub Foods, in that order) to find what I want. I go to a fourth market, the one nearest my home, because it has the best selection of organic produce and because it's convenient. With a name like Piggly Wiggly it isn't surprising that they don't have a kosher or Jewish foods section at all. This isn't exactly the convenient one-stop shopping I've had elsewhere.

If anyone knows of a market I've missed with a good selection of Jewish and/or Israeli foods anywhere near Green Bay by all means please e-mail me. I'm still pretty new to the area and I certainly could have missed the best one. As far as I can tell there just isn't a Yiddishe gaas (Jewish neighborhood) here and the community seems to be really spread out.

One of my motivations, albeit a minor one, for moving to Israel is that it is the one place in the world where being Jewish just isn't an issue. 80% of the population is Jewish and 30% of the Jewish population is some sort of Orthodox. While I'm not Orthodox I've decided to keep a kosher kitchen as a matter of tradition, of preserving Jewish culture, and because a little religious observance really doesn't hurt. Sure, when I lived in New York I had a Super Sol (an Israeli supermarket) that was shomer Shabbas (closed on the Jewish Sabbath). It still isn't the same as living in a predominantly Jewish country where the national culture is my culture, the one I was raised in and identify with.

So... with any luck this will be the last or at least the next to last year where I feel I have to hunt for foods for Pesach.

Technorati Tags: passover pesach kosher food green bay jewish holidays israel aliya aliyah diary

Jericho and Justice / Kidnapping and Chaos

Let's put this widely reported story in context:

On 17 October 2001 members of the Popular Front For The Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) gunned down Israeli Tourism Minister Rehevam Ze'evi in a Jerusalem hotel. Five Palestinian terrorists were eventually charged in the murder. In April, 2002 Israel was besieging the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his Muqata compound in Ramallah after still more terrorist attacks the previous month. The United States brokered an agreement between Arafat and the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to end the siege. The IDF would withdraw but Arafat agreed to jail those responsible for the murder of Minister Ze'evi and one more wanted Palestinian, Fuad Shubaki, involved in the Karine A affair under the watchful eye of British and American jailers in Jericho. Hamas denounced the agreement stating:The PA accepted the proposal (of US President George W.) Bush to place Palestinian militants accused for the murder of a Zionist official in a prison under US and British guard. We, Hamas, refuse and denounce this measure that constitutes a new submission to American and Zionist demands and conditions.Now, nearly four years later Hamas is in the process of taking over the Palestinian Authority. Hamas earlier this month voiced their intentions to free Ze'evi's killers including PFLP leader Ahmed Sa'adat. According to a BBC report: UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he had repeatedly raised concerns about the security of the Western monitors in the jail and given a final warning about their withdrawal on 8 March. Yesterday, on 14 March the British and American monitors, fearing for their lives, pulled out. Palestinian lame duck President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Britain and the U.S. for the pullout even though he had done nothing to insure these people would not be killed. Israel moved forces into position surrounding the prison, eventually destroying the facility and capturing the prisoners. One Palestinian was killed and one more was injured in the raid.

The Palestinian response was to torch British consular and cultural facilities, to accuse the U.S. and Britain of conspiring with Israel to raid the prison, and to kidnap foreigners across the West Bank and Gaza. Abu Qusai, a spokesman for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, stated:We call upon all American and British citizens to leave Palestinian territories immediately, otherwise they will be subject to kidnapping and other consequences. Palestinian gunmen didn't just kidnap Americans and Brits, mind you, but also thought South Koreans, French doctors, Australians, and Swiss Red Cross workers were appropriate targets. PA President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the U.S. and Britain. Generally the 17 people who were kidnapped were people who supported the Palestinians and were trying to help them. Foreigners fled the Palestinian controlled territories in fear of their lives as Palestinian gunmen threatened to kill their hostages. European observers at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt left, never to return. By late that night the P.A. reported that no foreigners remained in Gaza. Israeli, American, and British flags were burned, partly because of the raid and partly because the supply of Danish flags had probably already been burned.

What happened in Jericho was justice, plain and simple. The Hamas-led Palestinian Authority promised to break it's agreement with the U.S. and Israel and threatened the lives of U.S. and British observers. The men in question had been convicted in Palestinian courts. Israel simply couldn't allow assassins, murderers, and arms smugglers to go free to kill again.

What happened afterwards in Gaza and Palestinian-controlled Judea and Samaria was barbaric, chaotic, indiscriminate violence directed at anyone and everyone who wasn't Muslim.

The two sets of events cannot be equivocated, nor is this some sort of logical cause and effect. What did French doctors or Swiss Red Cross employees ever do to harm the Palestinians? Nothing, of course. All they tried to do was help and they were repaid with violence and threats upon their lives.

Would someone explain to me why the Palestinians deserve a state of their own again? Please, I really want to know. They've never had one before. Please also explain to me how these people are ready for self-rule. Frankly, I just don't see it.

Technorati Tags: jericho israel palestinians palestine gaza kidnapping terrorism hamas

The Straw Man

Yesterday I turned on CNN International and promptly saw British Foreign Minister Jack Straw once again equivocating the Iranian nuclear threat with the "threat" posed by Israel's nuclear weapons and saying that once Iran is dealt with Israel will have to be dealt with. I don't know if this was merely a rebroadcast of his statement last Thursday or something new since I didn't catch the story from the beginning. Last week he added: "If you want to see a nuclear-free Middle East, you've got to remove that threat from Iran, including the rhetorical threat to wipe Israel off the face of the map. Once you've done that, then we can get on to work in respect of Israel.The Israeli government, for it's part, decided not to react to Mr. Straw's comments. It was felt that it would be a bad idea to change to focus of attention from Iran to Israel. It was also noted that Prime Minister Sharon had supported the idea of a nuclear-free Middle East, but only in a future where Israel had peace agreements in place with all the countries in the region.

Is anyone else outraged by this equivocation? Modern Israel has only fought defensive wars and has never threatened its neighbors. Israel, if left alone, is a threat to nobody. Iran, on the other hand, has threatened to wipe Israel off the map. Doesn't anyone see the two as just a wee bit different? I can only find one possible reasons for such a statement: to placate (appease?) Muslims at home and abroad.

Do comments like this help Britain's standing in the Arab and Muslim world? Of course not. Iranian, Palestinian, and other Muslim clerics constantly have sermons claiming Islam will eventually rule Britain and America. On Friday evening, just over a day after Mr. Straw's comments, Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called the United States, Britain, and Israel the "triad of evil". Today in Gaza the the British consulate was burned and the British cultural center was vandalized. This came after British jailers left a prison in Jericho fearing for their lives. The IDF then came in to capture the killers of the late Minister of Tourism, Rehevam Ze'evi. Palestinians claimed that Britain was part of an Israeli conspiracy, as if this was justification for the destruction and the kidnapping of British subjects in the West Bank.

Nothing Foreign Minister Straw will say or can say will ever change the fact that in many corners of the Muslim world the British, like their American counterparts, can do no right. Britain simply cannot be forgiven by the radicals and fundamentalists in the Muslim world for it's role in Iraq, for failing to be sufficiently anti-Zionist, and for simply being other than Islamic. No amount of equivocation or appeasement will ever change that.

Someday the governments in both the U.K. and the U.S. will have to figure out who their friends are and who their enemies are. They clearly haven't done it yet.

Technorati Tags: jack straw united kingdom uk britain iran nuclear threat israel palestinians

Happy Purim

A Happy Purim to one and all!

Another good reason to make aliya: I haven't found a place in the Green Bay area to buy good hamentashen. You have to make them yourself and I really didn't have the time. There is something wrong with Purim without hamentashen. I will make a very nice meal for myself to celebrate.

Technorati Tags: purim aliya aliyah hamentashen jewish holidays green bay

Green Leaf In the Israeli Knesset?

Ale Yarok (עלה ירוק), the Green Leaf party, started out as a one issue political party dedicated to the legalization of marijuana in Israel. During the run up to the 2003 elections polls showed them passing the 1.5% threshold and capturing two seats in the Israeli Knesset. Then one of their party leaders came out in favor of legalizing prostitution as well and their support went up in smoke.

Ale Yarok is back for the current election campaign and clearly some Israelis feel it's high time there was Green Leaf in the Knesset. With the threshold to gain entry into parliament now raised to 2% and polls showing Ale Yarok falling just short the party engaged in a new ad campaign to attract voters with the theme "We have other aspirations". In Hebrew "to aspire" and "to inhale" are the same word. Clever. New items in their platform include gay rights, legalization of same-sex marriage, support for struggling artists, and reducing traffic accidents. Perhaps if people are stoned enough they will realize they shouldn't drive and won't have accidents.

Anyway, one controversial ad in particular garnered significant press both in Israel and overseas by showing what seems at first like an ordinary Jewish wedding but ends with a passionate kiss by two lesbian brides. (video here) Were ads like this successful? The first poll after it aired, conducted by Dialogue for the newspaper Ha'aretz showed Ale Yarok winning two seats in the 17th Knesset. If they do receive at least 2% of the vote there will be a lot of partying at Ale Yarok headquarters later this month.

Technorati Tags: israel elections israeli+elections green leaf politics marijuana knesset

Aliya Diary, Page One

This blog, from the start, was meant to have two very different purposes that I hoped would compliment each other.

The first purpose, the one that has pretty much been what the blog has been about up until now, was a reaction to what I read in the mainstream media that just plain doesn't match reality. I read story after story about Israel that, without proper background information, end up, either deliberately or unintentionally, giving a false impression. Many stories are colored by bias, by lies that have been repeated so many times that even intelligent, honest reporters believe them to be true, by "history" that never happened, and in general stories that paint a picture of Israel that is very different than what I know first hand about the country where so much of my family lives and where I feel so much at home.

The blog, up until now, has been deeply political. It has set out to debunk inaccuracies in the media, use historical background (hopefully with solid references) to put stories into proper context, and to voice my opinions on news regarding Israel and the world's relations with Israel. The blog has been rather impersonal.

The second purpose for this blog, the one that has been neglected up until now, is deeply personal. It is a diary: the diary of my aliya, my long planned move from the United States to Israel. Aliya almost happened many times in my life and probably should have happened on more than one occasion. My parents were serious about it but ultimately my mother decided she didn't want her children to go to war. I first visited a shaliach seriously in Miami in 1985. I did so again after a fall, 1996 trip to Israel. I spoke with yet another shaliach again in 2004 and again last year. Since 1996 it really has been a question of when, not if.

Why has it taken so long? Life keeps getting in the way. There have been health issues, financial obligations that had to be met, a romance that ultimately crashed and burned, and so on. Last fall when I realized that I wasn't going to stay with Red Hat and that a job change was coming I came very close to deciding to move to Israel and look for a job there rather than in the States. While I wasn't as financially prepared as I might have liked I certainly had sufficient resources to make aliya a reasonable, practical choice.

My decision to delay yet one more time had to do with a beloved pet of all things. My ferret Nyssa had been diagnosed with lymphoma, a terminal illness, in November of 2004. Against all odds she was still alive a year later and is still alive today. Her life has been detailed in yet another blog I write. For a year now I've been hearing from her vets that she is in the final stages of the disease yet she keeps fighting and living. To someone who isn't a pet owner this must sound insane. To those who have beloved pets, particularly ferret people who know how intelligent these animals are and how closely bonded they become to each other and to their owners, it actually does make sense. Anyway, with this illness there is no way Nyssa could get the health certificate to travel to Israel and she likely wouldn't survive the trip in any case. I decided to wait until she is gone and, to my great joy, that is taking far longer than expected.

In the meanwhile I moved to Wisconsin for a job that didn't work out. That led to a change in my career direction which, if successful, would mean I could work anywhere in the world with a high speed Internet connection. While it is too early to know how this is working out for certain so far things look very, very good. It is becoming increasingly likely I will be able to move to Israel and retain my work and my income, a great luxury indeed. Making this solid will take a bit more time. I now expect to finally make aliya one way or another no later than next year sometime.

While there have been far too many detours I believe the direction of my life is now clear and I can see how I can make my dream of aliya a reality with far less risk and doubt than the typical olah. Actually that was always true. I have wonderful family support both in the States and in Israel. Still, I like being financially independent and that makes me much more comfortable with what is, after all, a major life change. I really now believe that I simply won't permit more detours, at least not long ones.

So my aliya diary begins. So I begin writing down the steps I take towards making this move a reality. Better late than never.

Technorati Tags: israel aliya aliyah diary moving

Annexation? Colonies? Inflammatory U.K. Media Bias

On March 6th The Scotsman ran a story with the incredible headline Israel 'plans to annex West Bank colonies' in response to Hamas. The story, of course, was about former GSS Chief and Kadima Knesset candidate Avi Dichter's detailing of Prime Minister Olmert's plans for unilateral withdrawal from most of Judea and Samaria. The headline was the most inflammatory part of the piece, of course, and it colors how a reader not intimately familiar with the history of the area and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians will view further disengagement. Allow me, if you will, to dissect and debunk this headline.

First, calling the West Bank settlements "colonies" is inaccurate. Some, such as Gush Etzion and pretty much the entire Etzion bloc, were Jewish property and Jewish towns prior to 1948. Israeli forces had to evacuate the population when the Jordanian army conquered the area during Israel's 1948-49 War of Independence. Why does 19 years of illegal Jordanian occupation turn Israeli Jewish towns into colonies? Why was Jordan's occupation deemed somehow legitimate and Israel's subsequent control of the area for the next nearly 39 years somehow illegitimate?

Similarly the Jewish community of Hebron lived for many centuries in peace with their Arab neighbors. It was only the violence incited by then Palestinian Arab leader Haj Amin al-Husseini, the British appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and the subsequent Hebron massacre of 1929, that drove the Jewish community out. The "settlers" in Hebron have simply reclaimed homes and property that was Jewish for centuries and restored a community in a city that is holy to the Jewish people. Hebron is, after all, the site of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the burial place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. President Bill Clinton recognized this, proposing at Camp David in 2000 that Palestinians lease the Jewish enclaves in the city to the Jewish inhabitants and/or Israel indefinitely. His idealistic vision was one of Jews and Palestinian Arabs once again living together in peace. Does either the terrorism and slaughter of 1929 or the Jordanian occupation of Hebron from 1948 until 1967 negate the Jewish claims in the city and centuries of continued Jewish presence there?

Other settlements, such as Alfe Menashe and Gilboa, were placed at strategic high spots along the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line which divided Israel from Jordan. Alfe Menashe, for example, was a barren hill and the home of a Jordanian gun emplacement. From Alfe Menashe on a clear day one can see almost the entirety of the coastal plain, from Haifa in the north, to Hadera, Netanya, Herzliya, Tel Aviv, and even Ashdod in the south. That represents 70% of Israel's population. The Jordanians routinely used the site to shell Israeli cities. Does it make any sense at all to turn such a hillside over to a hostile enemy like Hamas? Building a town there and establishing a permanent presence was common sense and a prudent measure to insure there would be no future attacks.

The armistice line, despite attempts by the media to portray it as a recognized border, was nothing of the sort. U.N. Resolution 242 called for withdrawal from territories, but not necessarily a withdrawal to the Green Line. Rather Israel was to have secure and recognized borders reached through negotiation. Again, common sense dictates that if the pre-1967 arrangements left Israel terribly vulnerable certain adjustments would have to be made. Settlements like Alfe Menashe and Gilboa are within both the letter and the spirit of U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338.

Lord Caradon, the British ambassador to the U.N. in 1967 and the author of Resolution 242, put it this way speaking on the PBS new program The MacNeil/Lehrer Report on March 30, 1978:We didn't say there should be a withdrawal to the '67 line; we did not put the 'the' in, we did not say all the territories, deliberately.. We all knew - that the boundaries of '67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers, they were a cease-fire line of a couple of decades earlier... We did not say that the '67 boundaries must be forever.Russian delegate Vasily Kuznetsov was even more forceful in defending Israel's right to secure borders:... phrases such as 'secure and recognized boundaries'. ... there is certainly much leeway for different interpretations which retain for Israel the right to establish new boundaries and to withdraw its troops only as far as the lines which it judges convenient.Nobody in their right mind would judge leaving a nation's citizens open to regular shelling and mortar attacks 'convenient'.

Mr. Dichter's announcement made no mention of annexation. Rather it said that in the absence of a partner for peace Israel would have to take unilateral steps to establish secure borders. The door is open for Hamas or any future Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel as Arafat claimed to do and start a new peace process, one in which the Palestinians would again have a say in the final borders.

Finally, and perhaps most damning, is that pro-Palestinian media outlets like the BBC, The Guardian, and The Scotsman, rarely if ever mention just what Israel is giving up, what legitimate claims Israel and the Jewish people have in Judea and Samaria. The term "Jew" refers to someone from Judea. Jews, in Hebrew, are Yehudim while Judea is Yehuda. This is NOT mere coincidence. Judea and Samaria are the heart of ancient Israel, dotted with Jewish historical and religious sites. Yet Prime Minister Olmert is proposing surrendering 90% of this area to a hostile enemy that will tolerate no Jewish visitors and no Jewish worship. This would be a huge sacrifice for the sake of stopping the bloodshed on both sides and it is quite controversial within Israel. Yet the media outlets in question portray the area as Palestinian lands and the Palestinian claims to these lands as uniquely legitimate. The truth is that there are two conflicting claims. However, if one is taking sides, as The Scotsman clearly is, only acknowledging one claim helps shape public opinion, particularly considering this is presented as objective news rather than editorial.

With media outlets such as this is it any wonder that we have seen an incredible rise in anti-Zionism and even anti-Semitism in the U.K.?

Technorati Tags: israel palestinians palestine hamas terrorism united kingdom uk disengagement

...and Now Positive Actions By the Bush Administration and Russia

The world community continues to dance around Hamas, weaving to and fro, changing directions at such an amazing rate as to cause a sort of political whiplash for those of us observing and trying to figure out what a given country's policy really is. I've described Bush administration policy as schizophrenic. Here is a lovely example of why.

Two days ago I chastised the Bush administration for cheering a European Union decision to release €120 million ($143 million) in aid to the Palestinian Authority, pointing out that the funds would ultimately end up going to Hamas. On Thursday the Palestinians partially complied with a Bush administration demand to return $50 million in aid already send to the PA. State Department chief Middle East envoy David Welch, testifying before Congress, confirmed that $30 million had been returned and that the Bush administration was working to collect the other $20 million. Here is an example of the Bush administration and the State Department saying absolutely the wrong thing and then doing absolutely the right thing within the space of a week. As I do believe that actions speak more loudly than words I'll give the Bush administration kudos for working to isolate and pressure Hamas. I just wish I could be more certain that they will continue to work in this direction. For the moment, at least, I'm willing to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt.

We saw a similar turnaround this week in Russia. President Vladimir Putin had angered the United States, the European Union, and Israel by inviting Hamas officials to Moscow for meetings. The statements by President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after the meeting for the first time echoed the position previously taken by the U.S., the E.U., Canada, and Israel, demanding that Hamas recognize Israel and abandon terrorism. FM Lavrov's statements included the following:I don't think Hamas will have ... any future if Hamas doesn't change. [Hamas needs] to transform itself into a political party and to be sure that the military wing of Hamas become a legitimate part of the Palestinian security structures.These words are indeed helpful. Time will tell if this a true shift in Russian foreign policy. I'd like to see some actions from Russia to isolate Hamas as well.

Hamas leader Khaled Mashall, for his part, consistently refuses to consider taking destroying Israel off Hamas' agenda. Prior to meeting with Russian officials he said:The issue of recognition is a decided issue. We don't intend to recognize Israel. On Wednesday Agence France Presse reported that Mashall had harsh words for his European benefactors who had just sent the Palestinians the aforementioned €120 million, stating their aid could not buy Hamas. He added:The Palestinian people cannot sell their legitimate claims. There can be no trading on that, with money on one side and on the other side our homeland and our rights... Humanitarian aid should not be given with conditions. It's inadmissible.To Hamas destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamist state is a "legitimate claim".

It is time the world faces up to the reality that Hamas is an unrepentant terrorist group bent on destroying Israel. If you support Hamas you support war against Israel.

Technorati Tags: israel palestinians palestine hamas terrorism european union russia foreign policy

European Union, Bush Administration Backtrack on Funding Hamas and Terrorism

On Monday the European Union released €120 million ($143 million) in aid to the Palestinian Authority before a Hamas-led government officially takes over. Tell me, oh great European humanitarians: how will you keep this money going into Hamas hands as soon as they are in charge? How can you assure that the funds won't be used to kill innocent Israelis in terrorist attacks? You cannot give any such assurances, of course. The European Union has simply found a way to keep supporting the Palestinians, including Palestinian terrorism, while maintaining some form of plausible deniability that they are, in fact, supporting Hamas and really don't care which terrorist faction is running the Palestinian Authority.

I reported last June that the E.U. was renewing contacts with Hamas at that time. If it was OK to deal with Hamas then it clearly is OK, as far as the Europeans are concerned, to deal with them now despite recent statements to the contrary. Ilka Schröder, a former Green Party member of the European Parliament from Germany, wrote an open letter to the "Working Group" of the E.U. Parliament asking for an end to the funding of and complicity in Palestinian terrorism by the European Union. In 2003 she accused Europe of siding with the Palestinians in their terror war on Israel as a proxy war against the United States. Some excerpts from her lecture follow:It is an open secret within the European Parliament and the Commission that European Union aid to the PA has not been spent correctly. Everyone knows that the PA created a black budget. After entering and searching the Headquarters of Arafat, the IDF presented a vast amount of material found there. It shows how the PA as an Institution and Arafat as a person are involved in ideological preparation, financial and political support and planning of terrorist acts against Israeli citizens. The government of Israel officially informed the European Commission that the PA misused EU money. The reaction of the Commission to the material that the Israelis presented was - to put it diplomatically - not very convincing.
[...]
The European Parliament does not intend to verify whether European taxpayers' money could have been used to finance anti-Semitic murderous attacks. Unfortunately, this fits well with European policy in this area.
[...]
The need for a solution only exists as long as the war continues. This is why the EU does not want the conflict to end before it gains a major role. And this is why the EU does not wish the PA to give up too early and why the EU is strengthening the PA. The EU is getting up to the cynicism of stirring up a conflict that it supposedly wants to see resolved by financing one side. This is the inherently inhuman purpose of EU humanitarian aid in the region. The Palestinians are playing the ugly role of being the cannon fodder for Europe's hidden war against the US.What has changed in Europe and in European support for the Palestinians since 2003? In my view absolutely nothing has changed.

The Bush Administration, whose policy towards Israel and the Palestinians has been schizophrenic at best, praised the European decision. In the words of State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli:It is a sign that we are all working together. We are all working together to prevent a collapse of the interim PA government and to support the Palestinian people. Obviously, when there is a new government, we'll need to reasses our positions, based on the formation of that government and the composition of that government.This after President Bush has said that the United States would have no dealings with Hamas and not support the Hamas-led government in any way. As I have noted before the only real difference between Hamas and Fatah in any case is that Fatah pays lip service to a peace process while Hamas does not. How can the Bush administration claim to fight terror on the one hand when they cheer the funding of terrorism on the other? If Ms. Schröder is correct the Bush administration is cheering a policy that is designed specifically to undermine American interests in the region. Does this make sense to anyone?

Technorati Tags: israel palestinians palestine hamas terrorism european union eu foreign policy

Iran, Hamas, and the Threat of Nuclear Holocaust

The front page of the Arabic website of the military wing of Hamas, the Ezzedeen alQassam Brigades, features an animated graphic at the top on the right hand column. It's a black rectangle with a red Star of David. The Jewish star shatters with a nuclear explosion. This graphic is notably missing from the English language website. Only the Jerusalem Post and a few pro-Israel blogs found this particularly newsworthy. Interestingly enough this graphic appeared on the exact same day Iran offered to fund the Hamas-lead Palestinian government.

For those who would dismiss this timing as sheer coincidence it was a little more than a week earlier than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad claimed that Israel would be "removed" by the Palestinians and the Islamic nations of the region if the west didn't remove Israel first. For his part Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal met with Ahmadenijad on February 20 and pledged that Iran will have a major role in Palestine.

Back on 1 January I reported that Israeli intelligence estimates that Iran could have nuclear weapons as soon as next month. At that time I called on the U.S. and NATO to act militarily against Iran. It doesn't take a genius to connect the dots and see that the threat from Iran now comes in two forms: a direct missile strike by Iran or the use of Hamas, which effectively borders Israel, to deliver a nuclear weapon into an Israeli city. How else could Hamas threaten to destroy Israel by nuclear means?

Call me an alarmist if you will but I take all these news stories, together, as rather ominous. The world has waited too long while Iran and its friends in Russia and China stall and drag out the diplomatic process. They will undoubtedly continue to stall as long as possible until an attack on Israel has been successfully completed. The time for either President Bush and/or Prime Minister Olmert to act is now, while they still can.

Technorati Tags: iran foreign policy israel nuclear proliferation middle east palestinians hamas palestine

The Correct Response To Hamas

One of CNN's world news headlines today reads: Israel PM rules out Hamas contacts. The implication is that this sort of Israeli action is a bad thing, a deterrent to some sort of illusive peace. Quite the contrary. Prime Minister Olmert correctly states: ...the Palestinian Authority is, in effect, becoming a terrorist authority. Israel will not agree to that. Israel will not compromise with terror and will continue to fight it with all its might. However, we have no intention of harming the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian population. Israel will not hold contacts with a government that Hamas is part of -- a small part, big part or a majority.The point he makes is that Hamas is fundamentally different than Fatah and the previous Palestinian government. I don't believe that's true. Fatah is also run by terrorists whose aim is the destruction of Israel. The difference is that Fatah pays lip service to a peace process while attacking Israel while Hamas does not.

Israel's action isn't new and the Prime Minister's statements are actually merely repeating what he has said continually since the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections. It's hardly news, except that it gives certain media outlets an opportunity to paint Israel in a bad light while never once mentioning the thousands of Israeli civilians, both Jewish and Arab, that Hamas terrorists have murdered or maimed. Prime Minister Olmert's statements are also not Israeli unilateral action taken in a vacuum. The United States, the European Union, and Canada have all ruled out contacts with Hamas for precisely the same reason.

The New York Times, for it's part, runs today with the headline
Israel, in Slap at Hamas, Freezes Money for Palestinians. The United States, Europe, Canada. and Israel have also been united on denying funding to the Hamas led Palestinian government. They have all clearly stated they would do so since Hamas won the election. Yet Israel stands accused of the sin of taking a "slap at Hamas". Neither the New York Times nor CNN found the fact that Israel thwarted an attempted suicide bombing in Jerusalem today newsworthy. Nowhere in their coverage of Hamas is the pledge, found on a Hamas website, to drink Jews' blood. Some of the high points (in translation) as reported by the left-wing Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz:We will hunt you everywhere, when you wake and when you sleep. We are a blood-drinking people and we know that there is no better blood than Jewish blood.
[...]
By the life of Allah, we will destroy you. We will blow you up. We will take our revenge on you. We will purify our land of you, pigs, who have defiled our land. By the life of Allah, we will take our vengeance. We are carrying out this operation as harsh revenge against the sons of monkeys and pigs.CNN, the New York Times, the BBC, and others also consistently neglect to mention is that Israel, the United States, Canada, and the European Union all leave the door to future discussions and even a new peace process open. The conditions placed on Hamas are simple: recognize Israel, renounce violence, and recognize existing agreements between the Palestinians and Israel. This isn't some new anti-Palestinian initiative. These were the same conditions placed on the PLO and Yasser Arafat prior to the Madrid conference and the subsequent Oslo peace agreement. When Arafat sort-of, kind-of indirectly recognized Israel and proclaimed a desire for peace the world stopped treating him like a terrorist and started treating him like a statesman. The same offer is effectively open to Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and Palestinian Prime Minister designate Ismail Haniyeh. Mashaal, for his part, repeated his pledge, "we will not recognize Israel".

If the peace process has been alive at all it has been on life support since 2000 when Yasser Arafat abandoned peace talks and started a war of terror against Israel. The Palestinian people shot what was left of the peace process in the head when they elected Hamas terrorists as their leaders. Israelis, for their part, seem poised to elect the far more dovish Ehud Olmert to a full term as Prime Minister by a landslide if polls are to believed. Prime Minister Olmert has promised a unilateral withdrawal from most of the West Bank no matter what the Palestinians do, effectively ending Israeli occupation. Why are the Palestinians still the darlings of some left leaning media outlets and Israel still the pariah? Why is their so little outcry against this blatantly biased reporting?

The response by the west to Hamas is the correct one. It's a pity that some in the media pick and choose their facts to try to get people to reach a different conclusion.

Technorati Tags: israel palestinians palestine hamas terrorism media bias

Jewish Geek Humor: Shabot 6000

In this blog I've written about Iran, the Palestinians, anti-Semitism, and anti-Zionism. It's all quite depressing. It really was time for something lighter and a friend sent me just the thing: some Jewish geek humor.

I think most people have been exposed to some Jewish humor. By now most people are aware of geek humor, most famously Dilbert and User Friendly. Now I've found that some bright Jewish guy named Ben Baruch has a sense of humor and has combined the two and the result is Shabot 6000. Yes, that's bot as in robot. It's is just too funny.

Fair warning to my goyishe friends: This comic really requires some knowledge of Judaism. If you grew up in New York and/or have lots of Jewish friends it will still hit the spot. If you're from Billings or Brisbane, well... not so much.

P.S.: Bloggers' spellchecker was probably written by someone from Billings. It doesn't know from Yiddish at all and wanted to change goyishe to geisha.

P.P.S.: For those of you who might be distrubed at a post such as this on a serious political blog I promise to be back writing articles about depressing news from the Middle East by tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: jewish humor geek humor web comic comic strip humor judaism

On Iran: President Bush Gets It Right

Yesterday, after a meeting with new German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Bush made some comments on Iran that clearly demonstrates that on this one issue he clearly understands what the stakes are:
Iran armed with a nuclear weapon poses a grave threat to the security of the world
[...]
The current president of Iran has announced that the destruction of Israel is an important part of their agenda, and that's unacceptable, and the development of a nuclear weapon, it seems to me, would make him a step closer to achieving that objective.The United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany now all agree that Iran should be referred to the United Nations Security Council. What is not clear is if a resolution with any teeth at all, especially one calling for sanctions in the event of Iranian noncompliance, can be drafted and passed without drawing a veto from Russia or China.

As I reported in my post on January 1 Israeli intelligence believes it will be impossible to stop Iran's nuclear program if concrete action is not taken by March. I think it is unlikely that the Security Council will agree on any sort of military action if Iran ignores a resolution, something Iranian President Ahmadinejad has made clear his country would do:
I tell those superpowers that, with strength and prudence, Iran will pave the way to achieving peaceful nuclear energy. The Iranian nation is not frightened by the powers and their noise.Clearly President Bush doesn't believe Iran's intentions are peaceful. Neither do I.

The main question is whether or not the Europeans will go along with an American-led action this time despite what has happened on Iraq. I can only hope that Prime Minister Blair, President Chirac, and Chancellor Merkel all understand that Iran is not Iraq and there is no doubt about the threat posed in this case. The more unified the action, the broader the coalition, the less the likelihood of serious retaliation or an escalation into a larger regional war.

Technorati Tags: iran foreign policy israel nuclear proliferation security council middle east un united nations

Prayers for Ariel Sharon

At this hour Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is in surgery for the second time. A six hour long surgery at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem failed to stop the cerebral hemorrhaging after a serious stroke and he was brought back into surgery. He is still alive but in very serious condition.

At this hour I ask everyone to offer prayers for Prime Minister Sharon that he may recover.

I also ask for prayers for wisdom for acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. May he guide Israel well in his time leading the country.

Technorati Tags: israel ariel sharon palestine politics middle east prayers

Missed Opportunities... Again

The Palestinians "...have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity--Abba Eban, 1978That quote, about the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, has been used by Israeli politicians and their supporters for decades now. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak extended it to the Palestinians as a whole. I have used the Barak version in a previous post myself. Sadly, Abba Eban's words seem more true now than ever and seem to be true of every aspiring Palestinian leader on the scene today.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, now leading his new centrist Kadima (literally "forward") party, has made the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel a part of his election platform. Polls show Kadima with a wide lead over all other parties with elections scheduled for March.

The Palestinians, for their part, seem ready to vote Hamas into power. Part of this is certainly due to current President Mahmoud Abbas' ineptitude and corruption. According to Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, a Hamas takeover of the PA would put would the entire Roadmap peace plan in question. He added:
A Hamas takeover would endanger any aid offered to the Palestinians, since no country would provide financial or any other kind of aid to an authority headed by an armed organization of terroristsGaza is the scene of chaos and anarchy. Leaders of various Palestinian factions are announcing they share they view of Iranian President Mahmoud Adhmadinejad that Israel must be "wiped from the map" and replaced with a Palestinian state. Various armed Palestinian groups, some of which did, at times, abide by the cease fire called for by Palestinian President Abbas, now say they have called off any truce and will resume their attacks on Israel. Even during the so-called truce Qassam rockets rained down on Israel, landing next to a kindergarten classroom and damaging a power plant in the city of Ashkelon, prompting increasing calls in Israel to hold the Palestinian Authority accountable.

During all of this there seems to be no even vaguely moderate Palestinian voice, no calls for a renewed peace process. The Bush administration, which had seemed to be moving towards a more pro-Palestinian position since the President's reelection last year, clearly has grown frustrated and has supported Israel's military response in Gaza. Even European leaders over the past year have said there will be no Palestinian state without an end to terrorism and a return to the peace process.

There is overwhelming support in the world community: in Europe, in the United States, even in Israel, for the Palestinians to have a state of their own. It is the Palestinians' own continued insistence on the destruction of Israel that will cause them, once again, to miss an opportunity for freedom and a hopeful future. The Palestinians face only further hardship and suffering until they abandon their terror war and truly accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: israel palestinians palestine politics terrorism

An Attack on Iran?

Yesterday the online edition of The Jerusalem Post, Israel's English language daily newspaper, lead with the headline US planning strike against Iran. The story, which actually quotes the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, claims that NATO, rather than the United States alone, are examining prospects for such a strike. It goes on to say:
According to the report, CIA Director Porter Goss, in his last visit to Turkey on December 12, requested Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide military bases to the United States in 2006 from where they would be able to launch an assault.I do believe the story to be accurate. I also believe it to be nearly meaningless.

The fact is that both the United States military and NATO plan for all sorts of contingencies and examine all sorts of possibilities. Most of that planning never leads to any concrete action. For those who know my politics here is where I will likely shock some people: in this case I do hope that concrete action in the form of a NATO strike against Iran's nuclear program is imminent.

Yes, I realize that I am advocating military action which will result in people, including many innocent people, being killed. Yes, I fully understand there is at least some small chance that this would lead to a wider war. However, I see only three possible outcomes to Iran's nuclear program:

1. The United States and/or NATO strike Iran to stop the nuclear program
   
2. Israel strikes Iran to stop the nuclear program
   
3. Nothing is done and Iran becomes a nuclear power

Of those three the one that leads to the smallest loss of life is an American-lead series of surgical strikes to eliminate the nuclear threat. Please do read on and let me explain.

Iran is not Iraq. There is no question that the nuclear program exists. Iranian leaders, while repeatedly asserting that they are only seeking peaceful use of nuclear power also add that they have a "sovereign right" to develop nuclear weapons if they so choose.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has openly called for Israel to be "wiped off the map", a call which resulted in widespread international condemnation but no real action. President Ahmadinejad, in explaining his statement, correctly pointed out that he was merely quoting Ayatollah Khomeini. Every Iranian leader has called for the destruction of Israel since the 1979 Islamic revolution. What is different now is that Iran is about to acquire the means to carry out that threat.

Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani openly called for a nuclear attack on Israel on December 14, 2001. His comments included:
... application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world,Just a few days earlier Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, speaking in nationally televised Friday prayers, stated:
You should make the world understand that Israel is the oppressor and that Israel must be destroyed.Mr. Rafsanjani is, according to numerous press accounts, a "moderate". If an Iranian moderate is someone who calls for an unprovoked nuclear attack on Israel what can we expect from a "hard liner" like President Ahmadinejad?

Clearly Israel takes the Iranian leadership at its word and takes the threat seriously. A story published in the Sunday Times of London on December 11 claims that Israel is preparing for a strike on Iran by the end of March if diplomacy fails. In a December 20 Knesset briefing IDF Chief of Intelligence, Major-General Aharon Ze'evi Farkash warned that by the end of March it would be impossible to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons.

Going back to my three possible outcomes, here is how I see each scenario playing out:

1. If nothing is done Iran, either directly with Shahab-3 missiles or through it's proxies, Hizbullah in Lebanon or Islamic Jihad in Gaza, will launch a nuclear first strike on Israel. If the Israeli nuclear capability survives that strike there is undoubtedly a response in kind. The end result is a nuclear exchange with millions of casualties and untold destruction.
   
   
2. Israel strikes at Iran and destroys the nuclear program. Iran, both directly and through it's proxies, strikes back at Israel, possibly including using chemical weapons. In addition other Muslim (likely Arab) countries may well join Iran. The result is a regional war with massive casualties and destruction throughout the Middle East.
   
   
3. The U.S. and NATO strike at Iran and destroy the nuclear program. While it is distinctly possible Iran could strike back at U.S. and allied forces in Iraq or at Israel it is unlikely other Muslim nations would enter a war against the United States and Europe. The result is a smaller military conflict with less loss of life and destruction.

Why should Americans or Europeans support such action? After all, it's just Israel we're talking about, isn't it? Actually, no. We're talking about the oil supply that both the United States and Europe are dependent on. We are also talking about an Iranian regime that already has missiles that can strike most of Europe with the Shahab-4. Major-General Ze'evi Farakash also reported that Iran had purchased missiles from Ukraine capable of reaching Europe. Iran's Shahab-6 missile, being developed jointly with North Korea, would have the range to reach the United States. What would Iran use such missiles for? Nuclear blackmail, perhaps, or... Do we really want to find out?

Technorati Tags: iran foreign policy israel nuclear proliferation middle east

Hanukkah Sameach!

Today is the first day of Hanukkah. Hag sameach! I hope everyone reading this has a very happy holiday. Just don't eat too many latkes or sufganiyot, OK?

Visiting Israel: A Muslim Perspective

Earlier this month a most refreshing article appeared on the Internet. Dr. Tashbih Sayyed, the editor-in-chief of Pakistan Today and Muslim World Today, a Pakistani-born Muslim now living in the United States, wrote about a visit he and his wife made to Israel. What was so wonderful about this article is that it successfully debunks the very negative view of the Jewish State painted by the hard left in this country and indeed the mainstream left in Europe. It stands in stark contrast to so much of what we read on the Internet and hear from sources like the BBC that I'm certain some reading it will simply disbelieve it. Yet, in my experience it is very much accurate and describes the Israel I know and love. The original article can be read on the Muslim World Today website. He explains the purpose of his trip:
I wanted to see if there was any truth in the media allegations that Israel was an apartheid state, undemocratic and discriminatory.
His interest in the article is clearly on how Muslim Israelis are treated and also on the desire of most Israelis to live in peace with their neighbors. Here are some high points:
My understanding of the Jewish State was confirmed when the entry form that I needed to fill before landing in Tel Aviv did not ask for my religion as is the law in Pakistan. Also, unlike Saudi Arabia, no one in Israeli immigration demanded from me any certificate of religion.

As the El Al approached the Promised Land, I continued to shuffle the list of charges made routinely against Israel by its enemies.

• Israelis live in a perpetual state of fear.
  
• Israel is undemocratic.
  
• Muslim Arab citizens of Israel do not have equal rights

Dr. Sayyed goes on to describe how his experiences proved these charges to be false and recounts his conversations with Israeli Arabs.
But here, protected by Israel's democratic principles, the Muslim Arab citizens of Israel are afforded all the rights and privileges of Israeli citizenship. When the first elections to the Knesset were held in February 1949, Israeli Arabs were given the right to vote and to be elected along with Israeli Jews. Today, Israel's Arab citizens are accorded full civil and political rights entitled to complete participation in Israeli society. They are active in Israeli social, political and civic life and enjoy representation in Israel's Parliament, Foreign Service and judicial system.
[...]
I could not find Israelis acting in vengeance against their Arab compatriots.
[...]
On my way from the city of David to the Royal Prima hotel in Jerusalem, I asked my Palestinian taxi driver how he feels about moving to the territories under Palestinian Authority. He said that he could never think of living outside Israel. His answer blasted the myth spread by anti-Semites that Israel's Arab citizens are not happy there.
[...]
Arabic, like Hebrew, is an official language in Israel and underlines the tolerant nature of the Jewish State. All the street signs call out their names in Arabic alongside Hebrew. It is official policy of the Israeli government to foster the language, culture, and traditions of the Arab minority, in the educational system and in daily life. Israel's Arabic press is the most vibrant and independent of any country in the region. There are more than 20 Arabic periodicals. They publish what they please, subject only to the same military censorship as Jewish publications. There are daily TV and radio programs in Arabic.

Arabic is taught in Jewish secondary schools. More than 350,000 Arab children attend Israeli schools. At the time of Israel's founding, there was one Arab high school in the country. Today, there are hundreds of Arab schools. Israeli universities are renowned centers of learning in the history and literature of the Arab Middle East.
My sincere thanks to Dr. Sayyed. I can only wonder if he will now be the subject of a fatwa for daring to write something nice about Israel.

I encourage everyone to read Dr. Sayyed's article in full and to share it with their friends, particularly friends who tend to be anti-Zionist in their views. It's awfully hard to dismiss an article written by a Muslim intellectual that debunks the myths about Israel that so many in the Muslim world and even in the West wish to perpetuate.

Opening Rafah: A Recipe For Disaster

Today the border crossing at Rafah was opened with much fanfare and very positive news coverage worldwide. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas took part in a ribbon cutting ceremony marking the occasion which will give the Palestinians a border with Egypt free of Israeli supervision. Perhaps ominous were some of President Abbas' comments, in particular:
The achievement we are celebrating today belongs first and foremost to the martyrs, wounded, prisoners, and all Palestinians who have sacrificed plenty in this struggle.
Why is this ominous? He credits the intidafa and the ongoing Palestinian terrorism. This is a tremendously important point. This opening is happening in the absence of any peace process. There is absolutely no reason that the weapons smuggling from Egypt into Gaza that used to occur in tunnels and was, at times, stopped by Israeli forces, can now happen much more freely. This will allow heavier and more dangerous weapons into Gaza and ultimately Palestinian areas of Judea and Samaria. In the absence of a peace process, and in a period of escalating terrorism promised by Islamic Jihad and Hamas, will result in the deaths of many more innocent Israeli civilians. When the Israeli government responds as it must to protect it's citizens the net result will also be many more dead innocent Palestinian civilians.

The agreement to open Rafah was only agreed to by Israel after Secretary of State Rice played hardball in the negotiations. We have no way of knowing what threat she held over the head of Prime Minister Sharon to get the agreement. I do believe, however, that there is no threat she could have made, up to and including breaking diplomatic relations, that justifies the Prime Minister not standing up to the United States in this case, much as Prime Minister Shamir did when the first President Bush demanded an end to building in settlements. The net result then was a freezing of loan guarantees. While that undoubtedly hurt the Israeli economy at the time then Prime Minister Shamir put the interests of Israel ahead of warm relations with Washington.

Please do not misunderstand me. I fully understand that if Gaza was sealed off the chances for any sort of meaningful Palestinian economy would be nil. I understand that Palestinians, including many innocent people, would suffer. In the context of an interim peace agreement and a cessation of hostilities I would be all for Rafah being open. The sad truth is that the Palestinain Authority hasn't taken even the first step required by the Roadmap peace plan, specifically the end to incitement and the fighting of terrorism. Israel should not have been required to do anything which endangers it's citizens until the Palestinians took that very simple first step, the first obligation they agreed to, as a reciprocal measure for the pullout from Gaza. The whole point of the Roadmap was reciprocal measures by both sides. It was never meant to be a series of endless concessions by Israel with no movement whatsoever by the Palestinians, and yet that is precisely what Secretary Rice and the Bush administration have demanded.

Ted Belman, writing on the far right Arutz Sheva website did an unusually honest and frank assessment of why Israel agreed to open Rafah. While I generally find Arutz Sheva's commentary to range from anywhere from insane to beyond the fringe, this piece was an unusually good analysis. Nathan Guttman, writing in the Jerusalem Post, referred to the agreement as Condi's coup, stressing the importance not only for Israel and the Palestinians, but for the Bush administration's involvement in Middle East peacemaking. He sees some good possibly coming from this. I wish I could be so optimistic.

So long as the Palestinian leadership is praising "martyrs" and nodding and winking at terrorists more freedom of movement for Palestinians equals more dead Israelis. I wonder how long it will be before my family has to bury a victim of Palestinian terrorism. We've been lucky so far. I fear Condoleeza Rice, who I'm sure has the best of intentions, has insured that our luck will run out.

Rare (for me) Praise For the Bush Administration

Anyone who has read my blogs knows I am no fan of President Bush or his administration. I have often been critical of the President's policies towards Israel, particularly in the wake of the disengagement from Gaza. I felt (and still feel) the Palestinians must make some reciprocal move and start living up to their responsibilities under the Roadmap. The first phase calls for the Palestinians to halt terror and incitement. They haven't even vaguely begun to do anything of the sort and there was Secretary of State Rice demanding more Israeli concessions.

Today, however, the Bush Administration, especially U.N. Ambassador John Bolton got it 100% right. Under intense pressure from the U.S. the U.N. Security Council today condemned Hizbullah for it's attacks on northern Israel this week. Algeria was the only nation that balked. The French wanted to "balance" the resolution by condemning Israeli violation of Lebanese airspace. In the end, however, the Security Council condemned the attacks much as it should.

The Israeli press has called this trail blazing as it is the first time Hizbullah has been condemned for cross border attacks or, as the resolution puts it, "acts of hatred". This follows by just a few weeks the first ever condemnation by the U.N. of the leader of an Islamic nation, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for statements against Israel. Today's condemnation would not have happened without John Bolton or the Bush administration standing firm, and as a result I must give them due credit. Of course, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

On the other hand, I was one of the few Democrats I know who supported the Bolton nomination in the first place, largely because of his work to get Resolution 3379, equating Zionism with racism, revoked. I also felt then and still feel now that the United Nations needs major reforms and that Mr. Bolton may be exactly the right sort of Ambassador, one critical of the U.N., to push for change.

In light of today's resolution I have to wonder if there is hope for the United Nations yet.

Intimidation of Jewish Students on American College Campuses

Sympathy for the Palestinians is pretty easy to understand. It is normal and natural for any liberal, open minded, compassionate person to feel empathy towards people who are poor, downtrodden, and oppressed. Yes, many of us know, intellectually, that much of the Palestinian's suffering is self-inflicted, as in the case of the destruction of greenhouses in Gaza (see my post of September 29th) which could be providing food, employment, income and hope to the people of Gaza, or by their own leadership (see my post of September 8) in walking away from the peace process and starting a war of terrorism instead. That knowledge doesn't stop us from feeling sympathy for people who are, unquestionably, suffering under miserable and often chaotic conditions. There are others who either aren't as well informed or else have an agenda and use this natural sympathy for the Palestinian people as justification for anti-Zionism (inevitably arguing, at least indirectly, for the destruction of the state of Israel) or, worse, outright anti-Semitism. Just plain old-fashioned hatred and discrimination can never be justified.

There is a piece by Leila Beckwith this week on the Opinion page of the Los Angeles Jewish Observer about the intimidation Jewish students face on University of California and California State University campuses. To quote Ms. Beckwith:
...the biased and inaccurate presentation of the Israel/Arab conflict by instructors and guest speakers creates an intimidating environment for Jewish students, and is inconsistent with a university's mission of pursuing truth through critical inquiry and honest discourse.
She writes about protest by "Jewish faculty at the University of California and Scholars for Peace in the Middle East" and an open letter to Governor Schwarzenegger and an online petition. The letter, in part, states:
The problem of Jewish students being intimidated in the classroom and on the campuses of the University of California and California State University was recognized by Governor Grey Davis in a letter in June 2002 to President Atkinson of the University of California and to Chancellor Reed of the California State University system. In this letter, Governor Davis stated his concern about anti-Semitism on California campuses and asked for a system-wide, comprehensive plan.
The petition is simply to ask Governor Schwarzenegger to, in Ms. Beckwith's words:
...implement former Governor Gray Davis's directive to college administrators: to review existing courses and to ensure that campuses are "forums for intellectual inquiry and not vehicles for discrimination, intimidation and hate."
I encourage everyone who is reading this to follow the links in this blog entry and read the letter for yourself and join the over 2,800 people from all over the world who have signed this petition. Whatever your feelings about the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel I would hope that you are willing to stand up against intimidation, anti-Semitism, and bigotry in all its forms.

The sad fact is that what we are seeing in California isn't an isolated case. Conditions at Columbia University in New York were so bad it led to the making of the film Columbia Unbecoming. To quote the Columbia Unbecoming website:
The anti-Israel campaign on college campuses differs greatly from legitimate criticism of Israel's policies; it hides behind the language of human rights and national liberation to demonize Israel, Israelis, and their supporters. It includes the national divestment movement and promotes a one-sided and misleading view of the Middle East conflict that favors Israel-bashing over fair and honest discussion.

Too often, individual professors drive animus toward Israel and pro-Israel viewpoints on campus by using their positions to promote a narrow political agenda that clashes with free and open inquiry. Sometimes such animus is directed at students who dissent from the professors' political point of view.
Those of us who value higher education need to stand up for intellectual honesty and an approach to all conflict, not just the Arab-Israeli conflict, that looks at all sides of an issue, not just the side that is politically fashionable.

Shana Tovah

Shana Tovah! May you have a happy, healthy, and sweet new year.

I'll be back with more political commentary after the holiday.