Surrendering to Anti-Israelism/other news
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http://frontpagemag.com/2011/03/21/surrendering-to-anti-israelism/ Surrendering to Anti-Israelism
Posted by
Richard Baehr on Mar 21st, 2011 and filed under
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Pressure from the political left has shaken the pro-Israel consensus that has historically existed within the American Jewish community. This consensus has been attacked by such "luminaries" as former New Republic editor
Peter Beinart for requiring progressive Jews, especially younger and generally less affiliated Jews, to "check their values at the door" when it comes to Israel. At the same time, the pro-Israel consensus has also had to confront the assault from Jewish or Jewish-affiliated activist groups from the burgeoning
BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) movement against Israel. In essence, the pro-Israel consensus has come under attack from both the soft and hard left.
The soft left is unhappy with Jewish settlements in the West Bank and considers them to be an obstacle to peace with the Palestinian Authority, which they maintain would be easily realizable if only Israel would agree to withdraw from most of the settlements. While 60-plus years of history argues against this, the proponents of the "settlements are the real problem" view maintain they want to end Israel's international isolation, and achieve the peace and security the nation and its citizens have always wanted. An equally, if not more important, side benefit is that a resolution to the conflict would make Israel less of a lightning rod in the salons that the soft left calls home.
The hard left believes Israel is an apartheid state (much like the former South Africa), born in original sin in 1948-1949, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who were supposedly "driven out" during the war that accompanied the creation of the Jewish State. Additionally, Palestinians are now suffering through a "brutal occupation" (the words always go together) of the West Bank, now in its fifth decade, which was instituted following the Six Day War.
Recently, the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, convening in New Orleans last October, established a new initiative to fight the BDS movement. It created the
Israel Action Network. Martin Raffel, the senior vice president of the Jewish Council of Public Affairs, and the new director of the IAN, described the initiative:
The project, which I am directing, will work alongside Israel and key organizational partners in the US and Canada, not only to stand up against anti-Israel initiatives, but also to anticipate and prepare for future challenges and actively promote a fair and balanced picture of the Middle East among key constituencies.
The General Assembly reportedly allocated $6 million to the IAN effort, not an inconsiderable sum, given the funding issues described earlier.
Now comes word that the IAN has made a decision as to the organizations that fit under the umbrella of its anti-BDS movement efforts. In a statement late last week, Raffel offered the
following:
In my judgment, those groups that are unwilling to support the Jewish people's right to build a national homeland in Israel — i.e., recognition of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state — place themselves outside the Jewish mainstream and cannot reasonably be seen as allies in our effort to counter the growing assault on Israel's legitimacy.
But what to think about Zionists on the political left who have demonstrated consistent concern for Israel's security, support Israel's inalienable right to exist as a Jewish democratic state, and consider Israel to be the eternal home of the Jewish people — but have decided to express their opposition to specific policies of the Israeli government by refraining from participating in events taking place in the West Bank or purchasing goods produced there? I vigorously would argue that such actions are counter-productive in advancing the cause of peace based on two states that they espouse, a goal that we share. But this is not sufficient cause to place them outside the tent.
As the Reut Institute report on delegitimization stresses, it is these activists from the Zionist left who are best positioned to advocate to their liberal friends, who by all rights should be supportive of Israel as the region's most democratic and most supportive society of women's, LGBT, labor, and minority rights[.]
In essence, the Raffel statement acknowledged that there are two classes of BDS supporters — "good" boycotters and "bad" boycotters. The good boycotters need to be welcomed within the community's big tent, since they share the broader Jewish community's consensus view of Israel — i.e., good boycotters supposedly have "demonstrated consistent concern for Israel's security, support Israel's inalienable right to exist as a Jewish democratic state, and consider Israel to be the eternal home of the Jewish people." If such boycotters exist as Raffel articulates, I have yet to find them or hear from them. In fact, the category of "good boycotters" is relatively indistinguishable from the "bad boycotters" when it comes to events and campaigns targeting Israel.
Raffel also argues that these acceptable boycotters are needed within the big community tent in order to help persuade the more hardline leftists that Israel deserves their support (for example, because of women's rights, LGBT issues, labor, and minority rights). Presumably, if the bad boycotters (the delegitimizers of Israel) were educated by other progressives about all the progressive features of Israel's society, then the bad boycotters could be persuaded to move along the political continuum, maybe even becoming good boycotters themselves.
That the organized Jewish community has come to such a state of incoherence brings to mind the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan's
article from 1993 about "defining deviancy down," which analyzed how communities react to increases in deviant criminal behavior.
Moynihan argued that as the amount of deviant behavior increases, the community becomes incapable of recognizing all of it, and adjusts to the new reality by lowering its standards. So, behavior once thought deviant (but not the most deviant of all criminal behavior), is no longer considered so.
Could a better description be offered for Raffel's recent comment? The evidence abounds: Hillel chapters, in large part funded by Jewish Federations, are wrestling with whether to accept bad boycotters, who oppose the Jewish state of Israel (e.g.
Jewish Voices for Peace). Jewish Federations in New York and Washington, D.C. are being challenged for funding theatres or other groups whose purpose seems to be to
undermine the Jewish State.
J-Street, an organization which repeatedly and
falsely proclaims that it is pro-Israel,
pro-peace, has become part of the Jewish mainstream, with its conferences addressed by Israeli leaders, members of Congress, and Obama administration officials. Its leader is a frequent visitor to the White House and an invited guest to the president's briefings to Jewish leaders. The organized Jewish community sees the enemy, and by and large, seems to be ready to surrender and call the enemy a
friend – all in an ill-advised effort to expand or maintain the semblance of a broad communal tent.
The problem for the organized Jewish community world is, unfortunately, far bigger than figuring out how to deal with boycotts. The sharp rise in intermarriage and the triumph of secular humanism among recent generations of increasingly prosperous and comfortable suburban Jewish Americans, have weakened ties between Jews and Israel, between Jews and synagogues, and between Jews and the organized Jewish community. Unlike prior generations, the new generation of Jews have not experienced the Holocaust, and do not understand the fear for Israel's survival felt among older Jews.
The Jewish community is comfortably at home on the
left. Young Jews remain politically active, but for many, Israel is no longer a core concern. Saving the planet, protecting abortion rights, saving Darfur, all draw a stronger response than supporting Israel. Until 1967, many of those on the left supported Israel as the weaker party, facing a vast Arab world bent on Israel's destruction. The 1967 war changed the moral valence for the left — Israel became the occupier, the colonialist power. The Palestinians replaced the broader Arab world as the second party to the conflict, and were seen as the weaker party, deserving of the left's sympathy and concern. The common causes shared between the far- and soft left on every other issue have made it easier for the former to join with those who oppose Israel. Furthermore, the large Jewish presence in the anti-Israel cause provides cover for the hard left, allowing it to appear, not anti-Semitic, but just anti-Israel or anti-Zionist.
The Jewish communal world seems to have chosen a fake consensus on Israel in lieu of unity among those who actually care about the country's fate. Making nuanced arguments for good boycotters as opposed to bad ones is an absurdly weak posture for a pro-Israel community facing passionate opposition. It will inevitably serve to weaken the battle against the BDS movement, rather than expand the ranks of those fighting it. This is nothing less than defining anti-Israel deviancy down.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/03/jew-hatred-run-amok-unhrc-to-vote-on-six-anti-israel-resolutions.html I look forward to the next President of the United States withdrawing from the UN and tying any and all contributions to results and performance. Because this is beyond the pale. The slaughter of non-Muslims in Muslim countries, the honor killings, slavery, gender apartheid, and the mindless slaughter of their own people in Libya, Iran, Somalia, etc., is proof enough that they ought to be expelled from the the "democratic" world body -- let alone sit on the a "human rights council," no less.
And here we are, once again, punishing and marginalizing the shining beacon of medicine, technology, education, benevolence and humanity in the most hellish region on earth, Israel. What a world.
And Obama defers to these animals. He is part of the problem.
The United Nations Human Rights Council is set to vote on six resolutions on
Israel, but only one that focuses on Iran and none on Libya, as it wraps up its 16th session Thursday and Friday.
One of the resolutions asks that the Security Council consider referring the situation in the "occupied Palestinian territories" to the
International Criminal Court.
RELATED:
Opinion: The UNHRC - Hard at work condemning Israel UN expert repeats 'ethnic cleansing' claim against Israel Overall the council is due to pass 38 resolutions, out of which 14 deal with individual countries.
The
UNHRC is expected to pass resolutions criticizing human rights in Myanmar, North Korea and Cote d'Ivoire. It also has resolutions dealing with change in Burundi, Tunisia, the Republic of Congo and the Republic of Guinea.
When it comes to Iran the council's short resolution calls for the creation of a special rapporteur to look at the situation of human rights. But it does not condemn any human rights violations in that country.
With respect to Israel however, it has issued six resolutions. One resolution is on the Golan Heights, another on last May's Gaza flotilla incident and a third on the Palestinian right to self-determination.
Two resolutions deal with the Israeli presence in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and the sixth is a resolution based on the work of the panel which monitors Israeli compliance with the 2009 fact-finding mission into Operation Cast Lead, otherwise known as the Goldstone Commission.
Four of the resolutions speak of illegal Israeli activity and human rights violations.
Votes on the resolutions come in the same week that Palestinians in Gaza launched a barrage of rockets against southern Israel and a woman was killed and 39 other people were wounded by a bomb at the Jerusalem Central Bus Station.
Within the resolution on the Goldstone Report on Gaza is a call by the UNHRC for the General Assembly to reconsider that report, which strongly attacks Israeli for grave human rights violations and possible war crimes, during its 2011 session.
It asks that the General Assembly refer the Goldstone Report to the Security Council for further action.
It further asks that the Security Council consider referring the situation in the "occupied Palestinian territories" to the International Criminal Court.
According to nongovernmental group UN Watch, which monitors the Human Rights Council's activity, prior to its 16th session the council had approved 51 resolutions dealing with individual countries, out of which 35 were about Israel.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=213121 The UNHRC: Hard at work condemning Israel
By ANNE BAYEFSKY 03/21/2011 12:35 The Council is poised to adopt six resolutions this week condemning just Israel – the highest number of resolutions dedicated to bashing the Jewish state at a single session.
Talkbacks (23) The meeting on Monday at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva helps explain how it is possible for the horrifying murder of the Fogel family by Palestinian terrorists on March 11 to have been so easily minimized by the "civilized" world. Slashing the throat of a three-month old baby and stabbing a three-year old twice in the heart has sickened and anguished Jews everywhere, but the steady pounding of anti-Semitism at the United Nations has not skipped a beat.
At this session of the Human Rights Council a UN-accredited NGO distributed a publication containing the following picture:
The demonic Jew, with the swastika substituted for the star of David on the Israeli flag, is depicted as an octopus strangling freedom-loving innocents.
The Jews as a vile life-threatening octopus was also a feature of Nazi propaganda. Today, it is how the Turkish NGO, the International Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), is permitted to portray its attempt last May to defy a legal Israeli naval blockade.
An appeal made to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, to take action against the IHH and to object to the distribution of this material on the UN "designated NGO tables outside the plenary room" was ignored.
The UN-accredited IHH "humanitarians" also delivered a statement at this Council's session in which they said: "we consider the unlawful activities of Israel to be the most serious threat, one that is even more dangerous than that of a nuclear attack."
Being fanatical hatemongers is evidently no barrier to being UN-accredited.
The IHH is not alone. On March 11 of the current session, the Council "Bulletin of informal meetings" advertised the time and place of a meeting entitled "Human rights in Palestine." It was organized by the UN-accredited NGO "Nord-Sud XXI" and held in a UN-provided room near the Council chamber. Invited speakers manufactured such accusations as "people are buried alive in Israeli prison cells," and "one woman had gangrene and they cut her foot off instead of treating her," followed by "we want a future free of Zionist crimes," and "we need revolution and intifada against this oppression." Imad Zuhairi, deputy permanent observer of the Palestinian Authority to the UN in Geneva, was an enthusiastic participant in this event, made possible only with the assistance of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights despite its focus on advocating violence against Israelis. Zuhairi declared a few hours before the Fogel murders: "we cannot equate resistance against occupation with terrorism."
Such NGOs operate hand-in-glove with the Council. Currently being discussed during the Council session is another resolution on the IHH flotilla, calling for still another report to condemn Israel on the same subject in June. Because the Organization of the Islamic Conference holds the balance of power at the Council, by controlling the regional groups that form the Council's majority, the resolution is guaranteed to be adopted later this week.
Furthermore, the flotilla resolution is just one of many. There is another resolution on settlements. It condemns only Israel, references the Road Map only to allege Israeli violations, and demands Israel end "all settlement activity, including "natural growth."
This is not just verbiage. Such UN settlement resolutions intimate that the three young Fogel children, while living and breathing, were criminals.
And still it does not end. Incredibly, at this Council session there will be a total of six resolutions adopted condemning Israel alone – on the flotilla, settlements, the Goldstone Report and its successors, the "Syrian Golan," other "grave human rights violations by Israel," and Palestinian self-determination.
Consider the absurdity of the resolution entitled "human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan." The Council claims to be "deeply concerned at the suffering of Syrian citizens" and then demands that Israel "desist from…practices that obstruct the enjoyment of their fundamental rights." There is no mention whatsoever of the Syrian government, its murderous rampages at this very moment in time, and its "obstruction" of the fundamental right of Syrians to live.
On the contrary, Syria is currently running for a seat on the Council and is widely expected to be elected in May.
Saudi Arabia is already a Council member and the ongoing crackdown on democracy advocates in Saudi Arabia is nowhere to be found in the Council's repertoire. The only states other than Israel subject to a resolution of the Council at this session will be North Korea, Iran, Myanmar/Burma, and Cote d'Ivoire.
In sum, the Council is poised to adopt this week six resolutions condemning just Israel, one resolution for each of four other countries, and nothing for the other 187 UN member states. This is the highest number of resolutions dedicated to the demonization of Israel at a single session of the Council since it began in 2006 as the crown jewel of Kofi Annan's UN reform.
A great many in the Western world believe either that discrimination against the Jewish people is an acceptable price to pay for progress on other fronts, or that the United Nations serves at worst as an incompetent but necessary escape valve for hot air and play-acting by weak countries with inferiority complexes. The atrocity committed against the Fogel family puts the lie to this reprehensible and deadly exploitation. The world should have learned long ago that demonizing Jews is not a human right.
The writer is the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/so_it_wasn_israel_Xbn8gVGN8XX39dYDABbczO In the great Middle East who dunit, the verdict is in: The Jews are innocent. They aren't responsible for the violence, extremism, backwardness, discontent or predatory government of their Arab neighbors.
The last few months should have finally shattered the persistent illusion that the Israeli-Palestinian question determines all in the Middle East.
In an essay in Foreign Policy magazine titled "The False Religion of Mideast Peace," ex-diplomat
Aaron David Miller
recounts the conventional wisdom running back through the Cold War: "An unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict would trigger ruinous war, increase Soviet influence, weaken Arab moderates, strengthen Arab radicals, jeopardize access to Middle East oil, and generally undermine US influence from Rabat to Karachi."
Obama: All his charm (and demands on Israel) couldn't get Palestinians to negotiate.
Behind these assumptions has long stood a deeply simplistic understanding of the Arabs. Professional naif Jimmy Carter insists, "There is no doubt: The heart and mind of every Muslim is affected by whether or not the Israeli-Palestinian issue is dealt with fairly."
This is reductive to the point of insult. Carter thinks that Muslims have no interior lives of their own, but are all defined by a foreign-policy dispute that is unlikely to affect most of them directly in the least. He mistakes real people for participants in an endless
Council on Foreign Relations seminar.
The Israeli-Palestinian issue certainly has great emotional charge, and most Arabs would prefer a world blissfully free of the Zionist entity. But the Israelis can't be blamed -- though cynical Arab governments certainly try -- for
unemployment and repression in Arab countries.
Monumental events in recent decades -- the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq War and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait -- were driven by internal Muslim confessional, ideological and geo-political differences. Israel has nothing to do with the Sunnis hating the Shia, or the Saudis hating the Iranians, or everyone hating Moammar Khadafy.
Adam Garfinkle muses in his book "Jewcentricity": "Imagine, if you can, that one day Israelis decided to pack their bags and move away, giving the country to the Palestinians with a check for sixty years' rent. Would the Arabs suddenly stop competing among themselves, and would America and the Arab world suddenly fall in love with each other?"
Yet the pull of the illusion is so powerful that even those who don't profess to believe in it, like George W. Bush, eventually get sucked in.
Barack Obama came into office ready to deploy his charm and fulfill the millennial promise of the peace process once and for all. He couldn't even get the Palestinians to sit down to negotiate with the Israelis, in an unintended "reset" to the situation decades ago.
According to the illusion, the region should have exploded in rage at Jewish perfidy and American ineffectualness. It exploded for altogether different reasons.
We witnessed revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt without a hint of upset at the Israeli settlements or America's continued failure as a broker of peace. We've seen the
Arab League petition the United States -- whose sole function is supposed to be monitoring Israeli housing developments and paving the way for a Palestinian state -- to undertake a military operation against another (recently suspended) member of the Arab League, Libya.
It'd be easier if the key to the Middle East really were sitting around a negotiating table with a couple of bottles of Evian, poring over a map adjudicating a dispute so familiar that people have built diplomatic, academic and journalistic careers on it.
The current terrain of the Middle East as it exists -- not as we assume it should be -- is hellishly disorienting by comparison: What to do when an ally invades another ally to knock around protesters in violation of our values? When a tin-pot dictator thumbs his nose at us and the rest of West and crushes his opponents with alacrity despite our earnest protestations? When popular uprisings threaten our allies more than our enemies?
It makes the old peace process seem alluringly comfortable and manageable. No, the illusion will never die.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0311/arab_double_standard.php3
Double standard seen in Arab response to Libya By Jeffrey Fleishman
Concerns over Western involvement and possible reigniting of Islamic radicalism complicate the situation, which is also coated with hypocrisy
AIRO â€" (MCT) Arab leaders don't relish attacking one of their own. But bloodshed across Libya and Western pressure have forced them into supporting international airstrikes against Col. Moammar Gadhafi, who in many ways is merely a caricature of monarchies and autocrats throughout the Middle East.
The Arab League urged the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. Now, with French warplanes and U.S. Tomahawk missiles streaking across the North African sky, the league is criticizing the air assault as Arab kings and presidents confront decades-old ironies, religious animosities and fears they will be blamed for siding with Western imperialism.
There are concerns that foreign intervention may reignite Islamic radicalism that so far has not resonated with largely secular protest movements not rooted in religion or ideology. Gadhafi has few sympathizers in the region but rallying against him is likely to pose credibility problems for regimes attempting to calm growing dissent at home.
It is a potent combination that highlights the hypocrisy and dangers of Arab politics. The Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes the Sunni-led nations of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, condemned Gadhafi's regime for killing dissidents even as Saudi troops assisted Bahrain security forces last week in a deadly crackdown against Shiite protesters.
"It's a double standard," said Mohammed Tajer, a lawyer defending detained protesters in Bahrain. "The Arab League consists of dictatorships that want to protect their own interests."
Islamists, who have found scant traction in the region in recent years, have accused Arab leaders of confronting Gadhafi to appease the West. They have conjured the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to suggest that Arab capitals are complicit in a Washington-inspired scheme to dominate the Muslim world.
It is not only religious conservatives and extremists who worry about the troubling pattern of Western intervention in Middle East affairs.
The countries of the Arab League "have overlooked their own backyards, where discontent is brewing and similar kind of rebellion is already knocking at their doors," Ajaz Ahmed wrote in the Arab News in Saudi Arabia. "They need to work out a solution ... instead of involving the foreign forces, which have a history of occupying Arab lands."
On Sunday, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, who a week ago led the call for military action, criticized the withering airstrikes on Gadhafi's forces. "What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians."
Libya has become the dark side of the burgeoning Arab spring. The idiosyncratic and provocative Gadhafi has exasperated and threatened Arab leaders for decades. He is an easy man to demonize, providing regional capitals with a bit of diplomatic cover for supporting international action. His forces have targeted hospitals and indiscriminately bombed civilians in rebel-held eastern Libya.
There have been no "demonstrations against the no-fly zone in any Arab city," said Mustafa Alani, director of the Gulf Research Center in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai. "People might not like it but the only other option is to allow a civil war to develop in Libya; you're going to create another Somalia. They don't like military intervention but in this case it is seen as the lesser evil."
That attitude is different from the mood in 2003 when tens of thousands of protesters in Egypt and other countries marched against their governments' tacit support of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Those demonstrations were not targeted at toppling regimes; the protests today are more volatile and the leaders more desperate.
"Countries like Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Syria are in a delicate situation," said Mustafa Labbad, director of Al Sharq Center for Regional and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "They're afraid of setting a new trend in the region that could backlash on them. They wouldn't want to see foreign powers aiding rebels against their regimes. They also don't want the prospect of another Iraq."
So sensitive is attacking another Arab country that most leaders are saying little about their roles in enforcing the no-fly zone. Qatar has publicly offered its military to help in airstrikes. Saudi Arabia and other nations have been more reticent. It is not clear if weapons or aircraft from any Arab country will be tapped by a coalition coordinated by the U.S. and Europe.
The Gadhafi dilemma is the latest and most dangerous challenge to the region's established order. The leaders of Tunisia and Egypt have been overthrown. The police in Bahrain and Yemen are shooting protesters. The Arab world, which has been loath to change for generations, is confronting an unsettling burst democratic fervor that is tearing down icons and demanding free elections.
Gadhafi has drawn rebuke from Cairo to Dubai. Arab leaders have not been as harsh in criticizing Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh's attacks on protesters. More than 40 Yemeni demonstrators were shot and killed by security forces on Friday after weeks of spiraling unrest.
Bahrain's violent response to protests underlines another issue roiling the Middle East: the sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shiites. The Arab world is dominated by Sunni regimes, including Bahrain's, which was startled in February when the majority Shiite population rose up over discrimination and issued calls for reform. Protesters have complained that Arab governments have not condemned Bahrain's tactics.
Yemen and Bahrain are strategically more important to Washington and Arab interests than Libya, despite the latter's vast oil supplies.
Saleh is cooperating with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to defeat a Qaida organization that threatens to export terrorism throughout the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf and is regarded by Arab nations as a counter to Shiite Iran's growing regional influence.
Some analysts suggest the Arab world should be more active in policing its neighborhood rather than relying on Western help, which often leads to failed policies and recriminations.
"The Arabs should participate militarily in the no-fly zone (over Libya) and so far they have not because they are reluctant to do so, they want someone else to do it for them," said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. "That is not the right position."
Arnold Roth The writer is a lawyer who made aliyah from Australia and lives in Jerusalem with his family. His daughter, Malki, was murdered in the horrific Sbarro terror attack.
When PA Condemns, It's Lying by Arnold Roth
Why Palestinian Authority condemnations of babies being murdered in their beds are a fraud.
Since experiencing the loss by murder of our fifteen year old daughter, we have come to understand that, for many people, terrorism remains truly incomprehensible. People often speak of looking for root causes, but it’s clear that few will trouble themselves to examine the context in which such acts happen.
This has consequences for how we fight the terrorists. We have a very strong sense that unless society at large faces up to this issue of context, ineffective decisions will continue to be taken. And the terrorists are going to keep winning.
When five members of a Jewish family living in the small community of Itamar were stabbed to death in their beds last Sabbath, the condemnations from officials in the local Palestinian Arab government bodies were predictably formulaic. They said they condemned the brutal murders.
Did they mean it? We can know by looking at what those officials said and say when they speak to their own citizens.
One day before the massacre in Itamar ten days ago, Palestinian Authority television, which is the mouthpiece of the Mahmoud Abbas regime, broadcast a program in honour of one of
its former employees.
As Palestinian Media Watch documents, a PA TV film crew is shown interviewing the relatives of a woman called Ahlam Tamimi. She lives in an Israeli prison serving multiple life sentences for one of the most heinous crimes known in these troubled parts.
The program praises her, praises the actions that put her in prison, and unequivocally identifies with the longing of Tamimi’s family members for her and for her release. The camera focuses on a certificate awarded by Fatah, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, calling Tamimi "the heroic prisoner."
Watching this, which countless Palestinian Arab families did, no one would be left in doubt as to what official Palestinian Arab society thinks of Tamimi and of the chain of events that brought this evidently heroic figure to an Israeli cell.
This Tamimi is
the murderer of our daughter and of fourteen (more correctly fifteen as you can see
here) innocent Israelis. She is articulate, capable and very proud of what she did, and everyone watching the program is encouraged to share that pride. The head of the Palestinian Arab political pyramid, Abbas, is closely identified with that pride. Killing Israeli children is something to be proud of, the program teaches and Abbas confirms. Palestinian Arab society holds this Tamimi up as an example to be emulated.
Why? Because â€" as
PMW points out, this is one of the most effective means of promoting terror and ensuring it goes on.
“In honoring the worst killers, the PA is simultaneously giving approval to murder and enticing future terrorists with assurances of glory and honor if they succeed in killing. Terror and murder become the Palestinian’s ticket to fame, honor and glory.â€
'Palin Asked: Why Apologize to the Muslims?' by Gil Ronen
Sarah Palin
Israel news photo: (file)
Popular conservative politician Sarah Palin understands the importance of the Temple Mount to the Jewish people, according to MK Danny Danon (Likud), who accompanied her on a visit to the Kotel Sunday.
Danon told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew-language service: "When we toured near the Kotel and in the tunnels near the Holy of Holies, she told me clear things without hesitating. She understands the importance of the place for the Jewish People and even asked me 'Why do you keep apologizing to the Muslims all the time?'"
"I explained to her the mistakes made by [then-Defense Minister] Moshe Dayan in 1967 and our mistakes in not fulfilling our rights in the Temple Mount and the Old City," Danon said. He was referring to Dayan's decision to hand back the keys to the Temple Mount to the Muslim Waqf immediately after the liberation of the Mount in the Six-Day War.
Danon noted that Israel has large-scale support in the Christian world but "we are afraid to take advantage of it. It's as if we are ashamed about ourselves. But there is great support and I felt it in the tour yesterday."
Palin was also welcomed by Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich, the Kotel Rabbi, who told her that not just the prayers of Jews are more readily fulfilled when uttered at the Temple Mount, but those of Gentiles as well. The rabbi told Palin that he believes she will be an even better "ambassador" for Israel after her visit than she was before it.
The prominent freshman MK said that Israel needs to explain to Christians that it is in their interest, too, to let Israel have control of the holy sites. He noted that in places like Bethlehem, where Muslims are in control, Christians are humiliated.
Israel and the Occupation Myth By DANNY AYALON The hatred and violence that killed five members of the Fogel family existed before the Jewish state did.
The recent murder of a family of five in Itamar shocked Israelis to their core. A terrorist broke into the Fogels' home before stabbing and garroting to death the two parents, Udi and Ruth, and their children Yoav, 11 years old, Elad, 4, and almost decapitating Hadas, who was only three months old.
There has since been very little outcry from the international community. Many nations who are so used to condemning the building of apartment units beyond the Green Line remained silent on this sadistic murder. Meanwhile, the few international correspondents to have covered the massacre have placed it in the context of ongoing settlement-building and Israel's so-called "occupation."
However, regardless of one's views on which people have greater title to Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank, it is a historically inaccurate distortion to claim that the occupation that breeds this type of violence. If this mantra were true, then it must be the case that before the occupation there was no violence. This defies the historical record.
In 1929, the Jewish community of Hebron—which stretches back millennia, long before the creation of Islam and the Arab conquest and subsequent occupation of the area—was brutally attacked. The Jews who had been living peacefully with their Muslim neighbors were set upon in a bloody rampage, inspired by Palestinian Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who later became notorious as Hitler's genocidal acolyte during the Holocaust. In two days, 67 Jews were hacked or bludgeoned to death. Jewish infants were beheaded and Jewish women were disemboweled. Limbs were hacked off the dead as well as those who managed to survive.
On visiting the scene shortly after the massacre, Britain's High Commissioner for Palestine John Chancellor wrote to his son "I do not think that history records many worse horrors in the last few hundred years."
This and other similar pogroms happened, not only before the "occupation" of Judea and Samaria, but even two decades before the state of Israel was reestablished. From 1948 to 1967, Judea and Samaria were illegally occupied by Jordan, which renamed the area the West Bank, in reference to the East Bank of the Kingdom of Jordan that fell beyond the Jordan River. Not one Israeli was allowed into this area, yet nor did Israel know one day of peace in that time, during which it saw brutal attacks launched from the West Bank against Israeli civilians.
Further evidence against the mantra that the occupation breeds violence can be culled from Palestinian sources. Take Hamas's founding charter, for instance, which does not mention occupation or settlements. What is does contain are calls for the complete destruction of Israel, down to its last inch, such as: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." The charter goes even further, aspiring to a point in time when there will be no Jews left anywhere in the world.
Meanwhile, the Palestine Liberation Organization, currently headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, notes in its founding charter that "this organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank," while still calling for a "liberation of its homeland." This was written in 1964, fully three years before Israel conquered the West Bank during the Six Day War.
It's safe to say that the violence and terror visited upon Israelis has little connection to "occupation" or settlements. This myth has no historical foundation, but is easy to proclaim for those who have little understanding of the conflict.
Yet these fatuous canards only make our conflict harder to solve. The recent massacre in Itamar highlighted the Palestinian Authority's ongoing incitement to violence through its media, mosques and educational system. At this point, the basic parameters of the peace process need an overhaul. If our aim is to reach a peaceful resolution, then merely ending the "occupation" would far from guarantee that, as history has shown.
Israel was assured in the past by the international community that if it just retreated from Gaza and Lebanon, peace would flourish and violence would come to an end. In both cases, this hope proved deadly wrong, and millions of Israelis have been subjected to incessant attacks from these territories since the retreat.
This is not about "occupation" or territory; it is about meaningful coexistence. Only when the root ideological causes of our conflict are solved can Israelis and Palestinians make the painful concessions necessary for peace.
Mr. Ayalon is the deputy foreign minister of Israel.
The following fascinating article was translated by The Muqata from YNET.
Update: After receiving a personal thank you letter from the South Korean Embassy in Israel for this blog post, I have made a few minor updates to the article below at the Embassy's request, to better reflect Talmud (탈무드) Study in Korea YNET has reposted an updated version as well.
Close to 50 million people live in South Korea, and almost everyone is taught the Talmud at home by their parents. "We tried to understand why the Jews are geniuses, and we came to the conclusion that we think it is because they study Talmud," said the Korean ambassador to Israel, Mr. Young Sam Ma. And this is how "Rav Papa" became a more well known scholar in Korea than in Israel.
It is doubtful if the Amoraic scholars, Abbaye and Rava imagined their discussions of Jewish law in the Beit Midrash in Babylon would be taught hundreds of years later in East Asia. Yet it turns out that the laws of an "egg born on a holiday" ("ביצה שנולדה ביום טוב") is actually very interesting to the South Koreans who have required that Talmud study be part of their compulsory school curriculum. [Note from Jameel: The Korean Embassy in Israel probably received alot of complaints about Talmud being part of the compulsory school curriculum, and requested that the statement read: "Yet, it turns out that… is actually very interesting to the South Koreans who encourage Talmud learning at home".]
Almost every home in South Korea now contains a Korean-translated Talmud. But unlike in Israel, the Korean mothers teach the Talmud to their children. In a country of close to 49 million people who believe in Buddhism and Christianity, there are more people who read the Talmud - or at least own their own copy at home - more than in the Jewish state. Much more.
"So we too will become geniuses"
"We were very curious about the high academic achievements of the Jewish people", explains Korean Ambassador to Israel, Mr. Young Sam Ma, who was hosted on the channel 1 TV programme "Culture Today"."
"Jews have a high percentage of Nobel laureates in all fields: literature, science and economics. This is a remarkable achievement. We tried to understand what is the secret of the Jewish people? How they - more than other people - are able to reach those impressive accomplishments? Why are Jews so intelligent? In our opinion, one of your secrets is that you study the Talmud".
"Jews study the Talmud at a young age, and it helps them, in our opinion, to develop mental capabilities. This understanding led us to teach our children as well. We believe that if we teach our children Talmud, they will also become geniuses. This is what stands behind the rationale of introducing Talmud Study to our school curriculum." Jameel adds: Again, The Muqata was requested to remove the school curriculum comment, and replace it with, "This is the rational to make Talmud a part of home education in Korea"
Ambassador Ma says the he himself studied the Talmud at a very young age: "It is considered very significant study," he emphasized. The result is that more Koreans have Talmud sets in their homes than Jews in Israel.
"I, for example, have two editions of Talmud: one my wife bought and the other I got from my mother in law". [Jameel adds: Almost like the Jewish tradition of the parents of the bride buying a set of Talmud for their future son-in-law...]
Groupies of Jews
Koreans don't only like the Talmud because they see it as promoting genius, but because they found values that are close to their hearts.
"In the Jewish tradition, family values are important," explains the South Korean Ambassador.
"You see it even today, your practice of the Friday evening family meal. In my country we also focus on family values. The respect for adults, respect and appreciation for the elderly parallels the high esteem in my country for the elderly."
Another very significant issue is the respect for education. In the Jewish tradition parents have a duty to teach their children, and they devote to it lots of attention. For Korean parents, their children's education is a top priority. (YNET)
The photo above of a Talmud translated into Korean,
is courtesy of the South Korean Embassy to Israel.
http://muqata.blogspot.com/2011/03/talmud-study-now-mandatory-in-south.html
The following fascinating article was translated by The Muqata from YNET.
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