Jimmy Carter Blunders In USA Today

Once again I've received a piece of e-mail from CAMERA that I think is important and that I think a lot of my readers will want to see and act upon. Yes, there is something you can do that's positive with just a few minutes of your time by simply sending an e-mail. Since I can't just link to a web page I'm going to post the whole thing here:

JIMMY CARTER'S BLUNDERS IN USA TODAY

When it comes to Arab-Israeli affairs, is former U.S. President Jimmy Carter a) uninformed, b) misinformed, or c) blinded by an anti-Israel animus? His USA Today Op-Ed, "Israel's new plan: A land grab" (May 16 print edition) makes a strong case for "all of the above."

Key Errors

Carter falsely claims that:

1) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's plan to establish Israel's permanent eastern border in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) "would take about half of the Palestinian West Bank ...."

According to the Israeli Supreme Court decision calling for the realignment of the route of the security barrier to lessen impact on Arabs in Judea and Samaria, the barrier will encompass only 7 percent (not "half") of the West Bank. Olmert's "convergence" proposal --- to be enacted if Palestinian Arabs do not negotiate a final agreement in good faith --- would lead to withdrawal from the more isolated Jewish communities to the east of Israel's security barrier. The residents of those settlements would be consolidated in the major settlement blocs west (on the Israeli side) of the barrier.

2) "The barrier is not located on the internationally recognized boundary between Israel and Palestine, but entirely within and deeply penetrating the occupied territories." There is no "internationally recognized boundary between Israel and Palestine." The 1949 - 1967 "green line" separating Israel from the Jordanian-o ccupied West Bank was and remains a temporary armistice line. The Arabs, refusing to recognize Israel, refused to negotiate a permanent border. Given the impermanent nature of the armistice lines, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) called for, among other things, negotiations to establish "secure and recognized" boundaries. The authors did not expect Israel to return to the vulnerable pre-'67 armistice lines.

While there may be a sovereign nation of "Palestine" in the future, currently there is no "Palestine." The British Mandate for Palestine terminated in 1948. The West Bank is not "Palestinian" but disputed land and subject to negotiations, as Resolutions 242 and 338, and subsequent diplomatic intitiatives like the "road map" made clear. Jordan and Israel are successor states to "Palestine," and the West Bank and Gaza Strip await final allocation.

3) The only internationally recognized "division of territory between Israel and the Palestinian ... awarded 77 percent of the land to the nation of Israel ...." Land alloted to the original British Mandate included what became Jordan (77.5 percent), the Golan Heights (later transferred to the French Mandate for Syria), what became Israel (17.5 percent), and the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the remaining five percent.

4) "Gaza is now...almost completely isolated from the West Bank, Israel and the outside world."

Carter appears to have forgotten that the Gaza Strip shares a border with Egypt and, through it, the rest of the world. That may have something to do with recently reported al Qaeda infiltration of Gaza, on which the former president is silent. And of course, if the terrorism emanating from Gaza stopped, there would be no need for the security measures that restrict movement between Gaza and Israel.

5) "Deep [Israeli] intrusions would effectively divide [the West Bank] into three portions."

The security barrier's route and an Israeli proposal to connect the suburb-settlement of Ma'ale Adumim to Jerusalem still would leave the West Bank as one contigous area. In fact, at its narrowest the West Bank would be about nine miles wide --- the same as Israel at one of its most constricted points inside the pre-'67 "green line."

6) "This confiscation of land is to be carried out without resorting to peace talks with the Palestinians, and in direct contravention of the 'road map for peace' ...."

Despite constant, material Palestinian Arab violations (including terrorism and anti-Jewish incitement) of the Oslo Accords and related agreement, Israel persisted in negotiations from 1993 to 2001. This effort included the 2000 Israeli-U.S. offer of a state on 95 percent-plus of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and on 97 percent-plus in 2001. In violation of the Oslo agreements, the Palestinians launched the "al-Aqsa intifada" terrorist war in 2000. Attempted terrorism continues at a high level, with occasional deadly attacks. Olmert is still offering negotiations -- provided the Palestinian Arabs put forth a serious partner. But he said Israel will not wait much longer.

7) "Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Israeli government rejected the key provisions of the 'road map' by the ... the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia ...."

Sharon and his government accepted the "road map," but included a list of concerns that stressed that Palestinian obligations to halt terrorism and destroy terrorist infrastructure had to be carried out, not just Israeli obligations.

8) The " 'road map' has been endorsed unequivocally by the moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas."

Endorsed, maybe; implemented, rarely. The PA under Abbas and his Fatah movement often promised to curtail anti-Israel terrorism and the PA's pervasive anti-Israeli incitement, but for the most part did not. Now with Hamas leading the PA cabinet and legislature, Abbas wields even less influence.

9) "Although the recently elected Hamas legislators will neither recognize nor negotiate with Israel while Palestinian land is being occupied, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has expressed approval for direct Olmert-Abbas peace talks."

The "Palestinian land" Hamas considers occupied by Israel includes not just the West Bank but all of pre-'67 Israel as well. Hamas' charter and its campaign this January make that clear. A gesture of approval by the Hamas prime minister "for direct Olmert-Abbas peace talks" might help soften international opposition to funding the PA government of terrorists. It costs Haniyeh nothing; meanwhile, Hamas leader Khaled Mesha'al, "urged supporters around the world ... to send it arms, fighters and money to back its fight against arch-foe Israel," Reuters news agency reported recently. Is Palestinian rejectionism, terrorism and realpolitick over Carter's head, or does he not care?

10) Lack of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement is "one of the major causes of international terrorism ...."

Nonsense. Fanatical Islamists reject modernism and religious freedom. Any country or government that is not a theocracy practicing their particular extreme interpretation of Islam would be on the Islamist terrorists' enemies' list. Israel is just one of many hated countries and moderate Muslims are also targets. Numerous commentators have pointed out that al Qaeda's terrorism stemmed primarily from Osama bin Laden's desire to oust the "infidel" U.S. presence from Saudi Arabia and overthrow the "sacriligeous" Saudi dynasty; destroying the Jewish state was low on the priority list until bin Laden expanded his targets to include other pro-Western Arab regimes like Jordan and Egypt. Islamic fundamentalism, personified by Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution in Iran, has always seen the United States as "the Great Satan," Israel as only "the Little Satan." Carter's failure to recognize that threat, or to resp ond forcefully during the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, helped drive him from office. He appears to have learned little in the subsequent quarter-century.

Action Item:

Write to editors@usatoday.com; Op-Ed Page Editor Glen Nishimura, gnishimura@usatoday.com; Editor Ken Paulson, kpaulson@usatoday.com; and Publisher Craig Moon at cmoon@usatoday.com.

Please send CAMERA a blind copy: letters@camera.org

Highlight Carter's numerous errors. Stress that these mistakes are basic and --- made by someone in a position to know better --- reveal a deeply distorted view of the subject. Question whether the same commentary, riddled with falsehood as it is, would have been published if submitted by someone without Carter's name recognition. Insist that the ex-president's column ill-served USA Today readers and urge the newspaper to seek a qualified commentator to set the record straight.

With thanks, Eric Rozenman Washington Director CAMERA

Please also share this with anyone you know who you think would be interested.

Technorati Tags: jimmy carter israel middle east palestine convergence usa today anti-israel animus

Tonecluster on Iran

From the blog Tonecluster on Iran, from a post dated 15 May:At the moment Iran is well on the way to the bomb, and will not be stopped by any means short of war. That is not just a curmudgeonly opinion, it is a historical one. Tyrants have never been stopped by words, words only indicate weakness to them. As was the scene in 1938 so it is now. The europeans think and act as if deals can be made and "peace in our time" declared by appeasing.

To return to Churchill then and borrow a few words: the West must choose between war and appeasement; if it chooses appeasement, it will get war.Wise words, yet it sometimes seems our leaders just don't see it. The left certainly does not.

Technorati Tags: iran nuclear threat middle east europeans churchill appeasement peace in our time

Israeli Bloggers Rally Around Jailed Egyptian

On 7 May 2006 at a peaceful pro-Democracy rally in Cairo 11 Egyptian pro-democracy activists were arrested, part of 49 in total in a two week period. Among them was a well known blogger, Alaa Abd El Fattah, who writes for Manal and Alaa's Bit Bucket. (Manal is Alaa's wife.) Bloggers around the world are rallying in support of Alaa demanding he be freed. A Free Alaa blog has been started for their campaign and an an online interactive petition is also up and running.

Among those rallying around Alaa are a large number of Israeli and Jewish bloggers (updated 16 May) including:

• On The Face
  
• Shalom Israel
  
• Dry Bones
  
• Yaeli In Israel
  
• Moving On Up
  
• WestBank Blog
  
• Dutchblog Israel
  
• Step By Step - Making Aliyah
  
• Abba Gav
  
• The Mad Bad Crazee Life of Me
  
• The Muqata
  
• Cousin Lucy's Spoon
  
• Something Something
  
• Adloyada
  
• Soccer Dad
  
• and now my own Israel, Zionism, and Aliya
  
• and Blogs of Zion, where I am a contributing writer

Lisa Goldman. who writes On The Face, has been particularly active in getting word out.

While I am personally not sure about the idea of Google bombing I do happen to think this is a worthwhile cause and we all need to spread the word and make our voices heard.

Yesterday on Blogs of Zion Aharon raised the issue of racism in Israel. The current conflict with the Palestinians has hardened many Israeli attitudes towards Arabs. Watching Israelis and Jews rally to help an Egyptian, a man who, as a blogger, we think of as one of our own somehow, shows that tolerance is alive and well in Israel and that we Jews can find common cause with Muslim Arabs. My one hope from all this is that some Arabs are aware of this and start finding common cause with us. The one thing that can certainly end a conflict is if there would no longer be public support for violence and terrorism.

Technorati Tags: egypt alaa alaa abd el fattah israel democracy free alaa bloggers israeli+bloggers

Fear of Action vs. the Consequences of Inaction

Yesterday AP reported that traces of highly enriched uranium were found in Iran at a facility linked to the Iranian military. The uranium was enriched to near or above the level needed for nuclear weapons. This further validates the claim made by the Bush administration, some in Europe, and Israel that Iran is indeed actively developing nuclear weapons. This came just two days after Iranian President Ahmadinejad's latest promise of genocide for Israel, in which he said Israel "cannot continue and one day will vanish."

On the same day, on NPR's On Point program, President Bush's record low approval rating was the topic of discussion. One of the guests (I honestly don't know which) expressed the "fear" the President Bush would "precipitate a war with Iran" to boost his sagging polls before the midterm election.

Precipitate a war? It seems to me the Iranians are the ones precipitating a war. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is providing arms to al-Qaeda in Iraq and Iran has offered to share nuclear technology with Sudan, a nation which has been committing genocide in Darfur and previously in southern Sudan. Iran has also been providing Katyusha rockets to Hamas, some of which were seized by the Jordanians. Is there any doubt that Iran would also gladly provide weapons, including radiological or even nuclear weapons, for al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups to use against the United States?

Rather than fearing war with Iran all of us in the free world should fear the consequences of inaction. One day we could wake up and find that Cleveland or Miami, Tel Aviv or Birmingham could be a radioactive crater with millions dead or dying courtesy of the Iranian regime. Two thirds of Americans see Iran as a threat according to a recent Zogby poll, with 58% believing Iran will inevitably use nuclear weapons if it obtains them. I have no clue what the other 42% are thinking with all the evidence in front of them.

Yes, war is horrible to contemplate and innocent people will die. Yes, many nations will side with Iran, from Hugo Chavez' government in Venezuela to most of the Muslim world. Oil supplies will undoubtedly be disrupted and their will certainly be economic hardships. Considering the likely alternative: nuclear annihilation for Israel and an eventual nuclear attack on the United States, those hardships seem like a small price to pay and the casualties of a conventional war, as tragic as they would be, are mild by comparison.

Technorati Tags: iran nuclear threat middle east terrorism israel

That Didn't Take Long...

That didn't take long... not long at all. The Bush Administration, following the lead of the European Union and the United Nations, is funding the Hamas government in the territories. Of course this is for "humanitarian aid", aid the Palestinians have a long history of diverting to corrupt officials and to terrorism. It is also for Palestinian Authority salaries. The P.A., of course, is run by Hamas. The aid will flow through the office of President Mahmoud Abbas, as if that would make any difference.

While all this wonderful humanitarianism was going on Hamas reminded the world that it will never recognize Israel and claims all of Israel, not just territories captured in 1967. In the words of Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas's political bureau:

One of Hamas's founding principals is that it does not recognize Israel. We [participated in] the elections and the people voted for us based on this platform. Therefore, the question of recognizing Israel is definitely not on the table unless it withdraws from ALL the Palestinian lands, not only to the 1967 borders.

[...]

The resistance is Hamas's agenda, and we will coordinate in the upcoming period with all the factions in order to rally the Palestinian people around the resistance as a strategic option.

Hamas also appealed to the world to provide the things it really wants: arms, fighters, and money for it's war against Israel. Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, speaking in Qatar, said:

We ask all the people in surrounding Arab countries, the Muslim world and everyone who wants to support us to send weapons, money and men

George Santayana's famous quotation, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.", has never been more true. The Bush administration and the Europeans need to look at what the Palestinians did with their funds up until now. You can never win a war on terrorism by funding the self same terrorists you are fighting.

Technorati Tags: hamas israel united nations palestine EU terrorists terrorism war on terror

British University Union Considers Boycott of Israel

Jon Pike of Engage is reporting:

The union that covers staff in the newer universities is to consider a further resolution on boycotting Israeli universities at its conference in Blackpool later this month.

The text of resolution before NATFHE reads, in part:

Conference notes continuing Israeli apartheid policies, including construction of the exclusion wall, and discriminatory educational practices. It recalls its motion of solidarity last year for the AUT resolution to exercise moral and professional responsibility.

Mr. Pike goes on to say:

198C is inaccurate, dishonest, and in conflict with NATFHE's constitution. Let's take the central point first. 198C seeks NATFHE endorsement for a private or individual boycott of Israeli academia. It doesn't say which universities, so we must presume that it refers to all the universities in Israel. It does so, disingenuously, because it couches the boycott call in terms of individual responsibility, but the foul discriminatory language is there: it asks that people consider their responsibility (in relation to) "contacts with Israeli individuals".

[...]

Let's be stone cold clear about this: what the proposers of this resolution want is union endorsement for actions that are, in effect, anti-Semitic. They aim to endorse the actions of Mona Baker, who sacked members of the editorial board of her journal because they were affiliated to Israeli Universities. We know that Mona Baker's policy is, in effect, anti-Semitic: she doesn't want to have contact with any individuals who are affiliated with Israeli institutions, and those people will largely be Jews. And we know, of course, that Mona Baker thinks these actions are 'appropriate' (and, when criticised, complains bitterly about the Jewish press). We know, too that concerned supporters of Palestinian rights like Prof. Judith Butler clearly distance themselves from Baker. Yet the South East region of Natfhe want their union to endorse Baker-type actions.

Please read Mr. Pike's complete piece here. A vote on the resolution will be held later this month.

Mona Baker is one of the academics in the U.K. cited by Dr. Alan Dershowitz in his book The Case For Peace as part of a campaign to villify Israel in academia and create a generation of leaders utterly opposed to the Jewish state. I described this in my post Poisoning The Well last month. Here Israeli academia is possibly faced with yet more tangible results of the bias against her in British and American academia.

Oh, and if anyone actually believes Israel somehow practices anything even vaguely resembling apartheid, I refer you to this piece I wrote last year and the excellent New York Times article on the security fence it refers to.

Huges thanks to Yael K. for the link to Mr. Pike's post. I've also posted this on Blogs of Zion as it seems that the mainstream British and American press aren't about to report on this. Perhaps if we get the word out far and wide they will have to take notice.

Technorati Tags: academia israel uk palestine natfhe anti-semitism bias boycott

More Media Bias: At Least PBS Corrects Their Website

Did you know that "the state of Palestine" already exists? Did you know its "history in the region stretches back 6,000 years"? No? Neither did I. In all of history there has never been a state of Palestine, not even for six minutes. The name Palestine was first given to the region by the Romans less than 2,000 years ago. Arabs didn't come to what is now Israel and the territories until the Mohammedan conquests in the 7th century. Arab leaders during the British mandatory period from King Feisal or Jordan and Iraq to Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini (the Palestinian Arab leader) referred to the people we now call Palestinians as Syrians. Indeed even today's Hamas leaders want a pan-Arab Islamic state, not an independent Palestine. So when did these 6,000 years come from? Somehow that didn't stop PBS from including that statement in the background web page for the recent Frontline special on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, entitled The Unexpected Candidate.

Don't look for the statement on the PBS website. Thankfully it's gone, replaced with a much more accurate history. On 10 May 2006 CAMERA, The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America , sent an e-mail to it's membership taking credit for this and eight other corrections on the PBS website. Since they haven't been posted to the CAMERA web page yet I thought I'd share:

ORIGINAL: Civil war erupted, with Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq supporting the Palestinians . Nevertheless the Israelis prevailed and in ensuing years captured more territory west of the Jordan River.

REVISED: Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq joined the Palestinians in attacking and trying to eliminate the nascent state.

ORIGINAL: Waves of Jewish refugees flooded the country, more than doubling the Israeli population.

REVISED: Waves of Jewish refugees flooded the country, many from Europe, but most fleeing Arab countries, and more than doubling the Israeli population.

ORIGINAL: In 1955, a new Egyptian government closed the Straits of Tiran and the Suez Canal to Israeli ships in response to a perceived spy threat. The following year, Shimon Peres led Israel to invade the Sinai Peninsula, aided secretly by Britain and France...< BR>

REVISED: In 1955, a new Egyptian government closed the Straits of Tiran and the Suez Canal to Israeli ships in response to a perceived spy threat. The following year, Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula, backed by Britain and France....

ORIGINAL: Tension continued, however, and fighting broke out again in 1967. A young Yasser Arafat had stirred up liberation hopes in occupied Palestine, and border skirmishes began to escalate. In May that year...

REVISED: Tension continued, however, and fighting broke out again in 1967. In May that year...

ORIGINAL: In the days that followed, Israeli troops conquered the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian troops defending Sinai.

REVISED: In the days that followed, Israeli troops conquered the Egyptians troops defending Sinai. Israel also defeated assaults by Jordan from the east and Syria from the north.

ORIGINAL: In the late 1980s, fed up with occupation and Jewish settlements in former Palestinian territories, the Arafat-led Fatah party began the first intifada in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

REVISED: In the late 1980s, fed up with occupation and Jewish settlements in former Palestinian territories, local Palestinians began the first intifada in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, later joined by Yasser Arafat's Fatah militants.

ORIGINAL: The emergence of suicide bombers and the increasing instability within the Palestinian leadership further derailed the talks....

REVISED: Palestinian suicide bombers began attacking Israeli civilians, and the increasing instability within Palestinian leadership further derailed the talks...

ORIGINAL: It remains to be seen if Israel and the international community will accept the militant group Hamas in any future peace negotiations, following the group's landslide victory in the January elections.

REVISED: It remains to be seen if Israel and the international community will accept the militant group Hamas in any future peace negotiations, following the group's landslide victory in the January elections. Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist, and is regarded as a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union.

While I applaud CAMERA's work I have to wonder how much damage the PBS site already did. In light of this and the ongoing and persistent media bias I've previously reported, mainly from mainstream and left-leaning media, is it any wonder that people who trust these news sources often have wildly distorted views of the conflict?

Huge thanks to my mom for sending this along to me. I first published it on Blogs of Zion and cross-posted it here.

Technorati Tags: media bias israel revisionist history palestine camera pbs frontline middle east

Linked and Quoted By Iranians

One thing I certainly never expected was to see my Zionist blog quoted and linked from an Iranian news site or Iranian news blog. Today that happened...

The title of the article is "Jews Must Go Back To Europe". The link is in the third paragraph, as is the quotation. What's next, my very own fatwa?

It really is great that my political writing is being recognized and quoted all over the place. Some recognition, though, I might be better off without.

Technorati Tags: iran iranian blog iranian news links

It Seems I'm Not The Only One...

It seems I am not the only one blogging about the new coalition agreement. In a tongue-in-cheek piece in his blog The Sunken Synagogue titled You Could Be A Minister Too Sabzi Aash writes:Many people seem bothered by this, but I say, the more the merrier. There's plenty of important work to be done in this country, and why should any elected official be left feeling inconsequential? I would suggest increasing the number of ministers as much as possible. There's no reason why every member of the Knesset can't have his very own post and volvo to go with it.Some of his suggested new portfolios include:

• Minister of Deception and Policy Reversal
  
• Minister of Miseducation
  
• Minister of Unaesthetics, Unfunctionality, and Homogenization
  
• Minister of Societal Breakdown
  
• Minister of Party Proliferation
  
• Minister of Media Bias
  
• Minister of the Euthanization of the Dead Sea
  
• Minister of Corruption

He explains how each of these new ministries will benefit Israeli society. It's very funny and a very good read.

Technorati Tags: politics satire israel coalition building israeli politics political satire

Like A Bunch of Spoiled Children

According to the Jerusalem Post there have been further meetings between Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Designate Peretz to revise the coalition agreement the two men signed. It seems there was public outcry over the record size of the proposed new Israeli government. This is as it should be. 27 ministers and two new ministries plus a bunch of new deputy ministers was incredibly wasteful. Anyone who has spent any time in Israel and has dealt with government red tape knows the last thing Israel needs is a bigger bureaucracy.

Now, with both Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Designate Peretz seeing a little light they realized that they had to cut down the bloated government. Good! They woke up and smelled the coffee. A bunch of Labour MKs (plus Uriel Reichmann, formerly of Shinui and recently of Kadima) get upset because they can't get some extra little bit of power for themselves or their chosen ministry they wanted to run. Boo hoo! It's sad to see politicians who want to lead the country acting like a bunch of spoiled children. By The Jerusalem Post's count Prime Minister Olmert would still have a 64 seat center-religious-right coalition without Labour. Perhaps Peretz, as his party's leader, needs to remind his rebellious MKs of that. No one party is essential; not even Labour.

Israel's leaders need to put political squabbles behind them and deal with the real challenges posed by Iran and ongoing Palestinian terrorism.

{NOTE: This is another piece I wrote for Blogs of Zion.]

Technorati Tags: politics israel coalition building israeli politics politicians

On Holocaust Remembrance Day: Calls For A New Holocaust

The enemies of Israel and the Jewish people picked Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) to call for a new Holocaust, one that would destroy Israel.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahemdinejad, renewing his calls for Israel to be destroyed, said:We say that this fake regime cannot not logically continue to liveand addedOpen the doors [of Europe] and let the Jews go back to their own countriesconveniently ignoring the fact that a majority of Israel's Jewish population didn't come from Europe and has no ties to that continent. He also threatened to pull out of the IAEA and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty:What has more than 30 years of membership in the agency given us? Working in the framework of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the agency is our concrete policy, (but) if we see that they are violating our rights, or they don't want to accept (our rights), well, we will reconsider.Meanwhile, in New York City, protesting Islamists promised a new nuclear Holocaust for Israel, chanting in Arabic:Zionists, Zionists You will pay!
The Wrath of Allah is on its way!
Israeli Zionists You shall pay!
The Wrath of Allah is on its way!
The mushroom cloud is on its way!
The real Holocaust is on its way!
Israel won't last long
Indeed, Allah will repeat the Holocaust right on the soil of Israel
Another mushroom cloud, right in the midst of Israel!Any guess who they think might deliver this Holocaust?

Outgoing Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz warned:
Of all the threats we face, Iran is the biggest. The world must not wait. It must do everything necessary on a diplomatic level in order to stop its nuclear activity. Since Hitler we have not faced such a threat.He is, of course, quite correct, but I fear too many in the world still don't care about Jews or Israel and are, in any case, ready to repeat the mistakes of Neville Chamberlain. Prime Minister Olmert summed up my feelings very well in his Yom HaShoah speech:
appeasement, concessions and weakness amount to a recipe for holocaust. Anti-Semitism, tyranny, lust for murder and terrorism have not passed forever. Even today, they hang over the head of the free world like a sword of Damocles... Only a determined and firm moral stand, only willingness to fight for and protect liberty will guarantee the future of humanity.Brave words, Mr. Prime Minister. Do you have the courage to act on them? I fear the rest of the world, including the United States, is poised to disappoint you and I and all others who care about Israel's future.

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

Technorati Tags: holocaust shoah iran islamists New York City israel nuclear threat anti-semitism arabs

My Response To An Anti-Israel, Anti-American Rant

On a closed mailing list I participate in a young American woman posted a long diatribe claiming the United States and its allies are about to invade and or nuke Iran. It went on to describe the United States and Israel as the two most dangerous nations on Earth and as terrorists and to defend the right of other nations (i.e.: Iran) to develop nuclear weapons to stand against American and Israeli imperialism. This young woman went on to assert that the United States, in invading or nuking Iran would start World War IV and that financing terrorism is no justification for nuking anyone. She also claimed the U.S. and Israel and their nuclear weapons are a threat to life on earth itself!

My first instinct was to ignore such a posting but I realize that she actually believes what she wrote. Thanks to bias on university campuses across the United States and Europe added to media bias she is hardly alone in her wildly distorted views. While I certainly did not respond to all her rhetoric I did respond to her main points as follows:
------------------

Is that a sure thing? I don't think so. Sadly I do believe military action against Iran is not only justified, but necessary. First, if any preemptive military action happens at all (and it is hardly clear that it will) it won't be an invasion. No U.S. boots, or those of any other foreign nation, are likely to set foot on Iranian soil. What is likely is a series of surgical strikes carried out from the air to remove Iran's nuclear and ICBM programs.

Why do I feel it is justified to attack Iran? The Iranian situation is unique. Not only are the Iranian nuclear and ICBM programs internationally verified (in stark contrast to Iraq before the invasion of that country) but the President of Iran and a number of its other leaders have called openly for a nuclear attack on a neighboring state, Israel, which has never been in conflict with or at war with Iran or Persia in three millennia of history. Indeed, prior to the Islamic revolution of 1979 the Jewish and Persian people had 25 centuries of friendship and frequent alliances behind them.

President Ahmadenijad has admitted that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at Israel. Iran's Arab neighbors are also concerned about the nuclear program. Iran stands in defiance of a new U.N. Security Council resolution which passed unanimously. Nations that have called for Iran to end it's envrichment program include Canada, Australia, Germany, Japan, Russia, Great Britain, indeed most of the western democracies. To claim concern about Iran is purely an American or American/Israeli issue is simply not true.

Albert Einstein was a pacifist prior to World War II. However, after learning what the Nazis were doing he came to the conclusion that some evils need to be fought. He was right.

Nobody in power in any government I am aware of is suggesting that nuclear weapons be used on Iran or anyone else. Indeed, financing terrorists is not the justification in Iran although Iran certainly does finance terrorists. The justification for an attack on Iran is are active nuclear and ICBM programs and oft repeated threats against Israel, Britain, the United States, and the West in general. Iran already has Shahab-3 missiles capable of striking Israel and Shahab-4 missiles capable of striking European targets. It is actively developing, in cooperation with North Korea, longer range missiles that could eventually be used to attack the United Kingdom or United States. There is also no question about Iran's nuclear program. Even IAEA chief Mohammed el-Baradei, an Egyptian and a Muslim, has described the Security Council action so far as "ineffective".

Israel has had nuclear capabilities since the early 1960s. Twice since then Israel's very existence has been threatened in war: during the first two days of the 1967 Six Day War, and more seriously during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Indeed, without U.S. aid Israel would have been destroyed by an unprovoked Arab attack in 1973. Despite this it did NOT resort to nuclear weapons it clearly had.

Shimon Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his role at Oslo, former Prime Minister of Israel, and number two in the current ruling Kadima (Forward) party, is also the father of Dimona, the prime mover in Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s. He has repeatedly stated that Israel's nuclear deterrent is his greatest accomplishment, an accomplishment that "was not so that there could be another Hiroshima, but so that there could be Oslo". His point, which is well taken, is that without Israel's nuclear capability the Arabs would have had little incentive to consider peace. Indeed, without that deterrent Israel's hostile neighbors could destroy Israel today and likely would.

When has Israel threatened even one of their neighbors? Israel has fought strictly defensive wars. Israel is surrounded by mostly hostile neighbors, some of which openly call for genocide of the Jewish people in terms not heard since World War II. I, for one, am not willing to have my family slaughtered. Israel has a right to self-defense.
-----------------

She went on to call Israeli and American leadership "psychopaths".

-----------------
Israel's leaders are psychopaths? The current leader [Prime Minister Ehud Olmert] was elected on a platform of unilateral withdrawal from territory with nothing in return and the handing over of that territory to Hamas, an organization with a charter that reads like Mein Kampf. Perhaps that is psychopathic, but not in the sense you describe.

Prime Minister Sharon also handed over Gaza without condition and now missiles rain down on nearby Israeli towns -- missiles launched from Gaza. These aren't just home made Qassam rockets anymore. Last week the first Katyusha fired from Gaza landed in Israel proper. Every Israeli Prime Minister since Rabin has been committed to peace and the creation of a Palestinian state.

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My response to her claim that both the United States and Israel were founded as a result of genocide commited against the indigenous peoples of those lands:

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I assume you mean the United States here. Holding present day Americans responsible for acts committed in the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries is a bit insane, don't you think? Nobody living today committed genocide against Native Americans.

In the case of Israel I assume you are unaware that 80% of the Palestinian Arabs were first generation in 1948, the same percentage as the Palestinian Jewish population. Most had come to work in British Palestine due to the opportunities created by Jewish immigrants.

Prior to 1948 the term Palestinian most often meant a Jewish resident. The Arabs considered themselves Syrian and their leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini (Yasser Arafat's uncle, BTW) opposed the creation of a new Arab state and instead wanted Palestine returned to Syria.

The term "Jew" is a shortened form of Judean. Jews are from Judea, which is Israel. We predate any Arab immigration into what is now Israel. The Jewish presence in what is now Israel does date back to biblical times. The Arab presence dates back only to the seventh century and most Palestinians, like their modern Israeli counterparts, are 20th century arrivals.

So.. if you mean Israel which "indigenous" peoples are you talking about? Jews come closest. The Palestinians are not descended from the original Canaanite inhabitants. The closest thing to surviving Canaanites would be the Chaldean and Assyrian minorities in Syria and Iraq.

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She went on to assert that Israel and the United States violate all norms of international law and all international treaties. She further stated that no nation has the right to demand international cooperation.

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No nation is bound by a treaty they do not sign. Not Iran, not Israel, and not the United States. A treaty, by definition, is an agreement.

International law, if such a thing really exists, again can only be defined by international treaty and adjudicated by a universally accepted international court. No such court exists. The ICJ, for example, is not recognized by the United States.

I could go into a long dissertation about the incredible bias and anti-Semitism at the United Nations, but what would be the point?

No, of course not. In the case of the United States, that cooperation is freely given by many nations. In the case of Iran, it is presenting a clear existential threat to one of its neighbors. That neighbor (Israel) has a right to protect it's citizens. The United States, as an ally of Israel *by choice*, with the support of an overwhelming majority of Americans, has a right to assist.

If the U.S. or Israel were destroyed by Islamists I doubt you would like the world that would follow. Are you prepared, as a woman, to give up all your rights and be treated as property under Sharia law? That is the likely result of what you advocate.

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She goes on to define terrorism as support for the United States, Israel, and their "imperial agenda".

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Israel has never been imperialistic in any sense of the word. It defines terrorism as an unprovoked attack on its citizens. Perhaps you approve of blowing up a teen disco, a pizza parlor filled with families, an Israeli Arab owned family restaurant in Haifa, a bus full of commuters, a holiday celebration dinner, a gas station called the "Peace Stop" owned by supporters of the peace process when schoolchildren were waiting for their bus there, a nightclub, etc.... These have all been the targets of terrorism as most sane people would define it. Is this what you are supporting?

------------------
Did she respond to my response? Yes, and her subsequent posts devolved into anti-Semitism: denying Israel's right to exist and minimizing the Holocaust. That, and the reaction of the organization who sponsored the list, will be the subject of some additional articles in the coming week.

[NOTE: This piece appeared in five parts in somewhat different form on Blogs of Zion starting on 4 April.]

Technorati Tags: israel iran anti-american palestine un dangerous nations terrorism nuclear threat

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.

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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.?

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