by Jonathan Dahohah Halevi for Yediot Ahronot
Israel has recently delivered to the United Nations Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon its official response to the UN’s fact finding mission to Operation Cast Lead, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone. Hamas’ government is also preparing to submit its official response before the grace period of six months set to the parties by the Goldstone committee is overIn sharp contrast to the genuine fears expressed by Israel, Hamas does not seem to feel any threat in the legal arena. On the contrary, Hamas demonstrates self-confidence based on the understanding that the Goldstone committee strived only to incriminate Israel and all other limited references to the other side were just for lip service without any legal significance.
Musa Abu Marzouq, Hamas’ second in command, said in this regard in an interview to al-Mashahid al-Siyasi newspaper (December 8, 2009) that “All paragraphs in the Goldstone report convict Israel and totally exonerate Hamas from any misconduct... Likewise, the (Goldstone) report exonerated Hamas from all other accusations mentioned by Israel and even when the (Goldstone) report is dealing with the rockets which were launched from the Gaza Strip it speaks about military groups without naming Hamas.”
Hamas’ line of defense vis-à-vis the Goldstone report has been shaped by a group of Palestinian jurists headed by Diya Al-Din Muhsin Al-Madhoun, former legal adviser to Ismail Haniyeh (Hamas prime minister) and today chairman of the Tawtheeq (documentation) organization that was the key factor assigned by Hamas’ government, on which the Goldstone committee relied for sources of information in its fact finding mission. In series of interviews to the media, Madhoun elaborated as follows Hamas’ main legal arguments of its would-be response to the Goldstone report assumed to be delivered in the near future to the UN secretary general.
The armed struggle is legitimate
Madhoun asserts that all historic Palestine is an occupied land and that the international law legitimizes the right of self defense and resistance of the Palestinian people, who are living under 61 years of occupation. Therefore, Madhoun argues that “resistance operations conducted by the Palestinian resistance organizations, including launching rockets and mortar shells at the occupying Zionist forces, and all other military operations, are legitimate according the international law under the principle of defending our people and liberating our occupied land.”
Israel has no right to self defense
Madhoun entirely rebuts Israel’s claim for self defence, arguing that it constitutes a grave violation of the Palestinian people’s right for self defence as reflected in its armed struggle to liberate the land of Palestine. And in his words (translated from Arabic): “the war against Gaza was illegitimate... as the international law rules that there isn’t legitimate defence (of the occupier) against the legitimate defence (of the occupied) embodied in the defence through struggle.”
Hamas didn’t want to kill Israeli civilians
According to Madhoun, Hamas and the other “Palestinian resistance organizations” were systematically prudent in implementing the international law and avoided intentionally targeting Israeli civilians. Referring to the many hundreds of rockets which struck Israeli communities during the war, Madhoun explained that the Palestinian organizations launched the rockets only at “military targets,” such as tanks positions, military airports and concentrations of Israeli military forces on their way to invade the Gaza Strip. He finds evidence in the low number of Israeli fatalities totaling only three people who were killed by the “inaccurate rockets when they missed their original targets.” Furthermore, Madhoun stressed that Hamas spared the lives of Israeli civilians, claiming that if they were targeted dozens of them may have been killed.
Rockets were launched only at occupied territories
Madhoun argues that Israel’s claim that Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations launched rockets at its sovereign territory is groundless. Relying on UN resolution 181 (known as the Partition Plan for Palestine), but without accepting it, Madhoun said that all rockets targeted only areas which were designated to the “Arab state” by the UN resolution, and as Israel has no internationally recognized borders with the Palestinian territories, their areas are still under conflict. Consequently, he concludes that Israel violated the rights of the Israeli civilians for security in settling them illegally in this military disputed area and thus risking their life.
No legitimate targets in Gaza
Madhoun unconditionally negates justification for any Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip. In addition to the aforementioned arguments denying Israel’s right for self defence, Madhoun noted that t international law prohibits attacks on any target when there is a doubt whether it is combatant or civilian. “My stand is that all targets bombed in the Gaza Strip are under the category of doubt”, he said.
Goldstone’s accusations against Hamas are meaningless
Madhoun regards the Goldstone report as a one sided document against Israel, saying that more than 500 pages were dedicated to describing a myriad of widely documented accusations against Israel, while for the Palestinian side only 10 pages were allocated and even they didn’t include any evidence or documentation. Confidently, he asserts: “I can say as a jurist that all allegations mentioned in the (Goldstone) report do not mount to significant accusations of violating the humanitarian international law and the (Hamas) independent investigative committees will prove it.”
War criminals only in Israel
Madhoun boasted of Hamas’ cooperation with international jurists, human rights organizations, the Goldstone committee and UN delegates, which helped in establishing the argument that Israel committed war crimes. The next stage in Hamas’ strategy, according to Madhoun, is prosecuting Israeli “war criminals” worldwide and submitting lawsuits to the International Criminal Court against Israel.
Tawtheeq organization, headed by Madhoun, is backed by the Law Committee of the Palestinian parliament and its Hamas members include Dr. Yunis al-Astal who advocates the extinction of all the Jewish people, Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabia, who urged suicide attacks in Jerusalem, and Jamila al-Shanti, who identifies with terrorist attacks against Israel.
The reality is illusive and strikes time and time again in our faces. A declared terrorist organization, which adheres to the Islamic law (sharia) as the only source of legitimacy and promotes ideology of genocide, receives legal support from human rights organizations and internationally respected jurists in its lawfare waged against a democratic state.
Even more peculiar is Judge Richard Goldstone’s decision to rely without reservations on Tawtheeq and its experts in preparing its report, while they publicly make a travesty of the international law and argue that Israel violated the Palestinians’ rights to kill Israelis in the armed struggle for the liberation of the land of Palestine and to destroy Israel.
Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi is a senior researcher of the Middle East and radical Islam at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He is a co-founder of the Orient Research Group Ltd. and is a former advisor to the Policy Planning Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Hamas Faces Fiscal Crisis due to Tight Restrictions and Blockade: Sources
by Emad Drimly, Saud Abu Ramadan
The deposed government of the Palestinian Islamic Hamas movement, which rules the impoverished enclave of the Gaza Strip, faces a severe fiscal crisis due to the lack of financial liquidity and the tight restrictions of the Israeli blockade, sources close to Hamas said on Sunday.
The sources, which spoke on condition of anonymity, told Xinhua that Hamas government is facing difficulties in bringing money into the blockaded enclave, which resulted in the lack of financial liquidity, adding that "this might lead to a severe financial crisis that Hamas would soon suffer from."
Israel had imposed a tight blockade on Gaza after Hamas and two minor armed groups' militants kidnapped the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a cross-border attack in southeast Gaza Strip in June 2006. Israel tightened the blockade after the movement seized control of the enclave in June 2007.
"Hamas government is about to face so many difficulties, mainly about paying the monthly salaries for its civil and security employees and other running costs," said the sources. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas deposed Hamas government after the movement took control of the Gaza Strip.
In addition to the tight blockade that Israel imposes on the enclave, the international community led by the U.S. had imposed an embargo on the movement after it won the legislative elections four years ago. Hamas rejected the world's requirements, mainly recognizing Israel and denouncing violence.
"The financial crisis is not linked to the sources of finance or its fundamental financial abilities, but it is linked to the difficulties of bringing this money to the Gaza Strip and the shortage of liquidity due to more than three years of Israeli blockades and the restrictions imposed on the banks," said the sources.
The deposed Hamas government hasn't yet paid the salaries of January to its 34,200 employees in the Gaza Strip, said the sources, adding that "there are concerns that the government of Hamas wouldn't be able to pay its employees the salaries of the coming months if the crisis goes on."
There has been no official announcement made by Hamas government officials in Gaza that the government suffers from a financial crisis and a shortage of financial liquidity to cover its monthly running costs.
Gaza economy experts believed that the reason behind the crisis "is the tight security measures Egypt is imposing on its borders with the Gaza Strip," adding that Egypt imposes tight restrictions on money entrance into the Gaza Strip either held by individuals or groups.
Hamas had repeatedly expressed concerns over an underground steel barrier that Egypt builds under the borderline between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. The purpose of building the barriers, according to Egyptian officials, is to secure Egypt's borders and prevent smuggling through underground tunnels.
According to the experts, there is another reason behind the fiscal crisis that Hamas in Gaza is suffering from, where local banks in the Gaza Strip have financially boycotted Hamas and refused to deal with the movement or its deposed government.
According to Hamas government's official figures, there are 34, 200 employees who receive about 16 million dollars as monthly salaries, adding that 16,700 are police and security officers, and 17,500 are civil employees working at the various ministries of the government.
The sources said that the deposed government of Hamas had recently met with several experts to study the possibilities of carrying out cuts off and closing down some of the less influential ministries, merge other ministries together and reduce the monthly invoice of the salaries.
An official source in Hamas ministry of finance, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, admitted to Xinhua that there are " serious difficulties the government suffers from, especially bringing financial liquidity from abroad to the Gaza Strip."
However, the source said that "so far, the government is still able to run its affairs, adding that the delay in paying January salaries to the employees is basically related to "technical problems," adding that "the salaries will be paid within the coming few days."
In December last year, the government of Hamas approved its annual budget which is 540 million U.S. dollars. However, and due to the current difficulties it is not clear if Hamas government in Gaza will be able to continue paying the salaries to its employees in the coming few months.
Hamas officials said there are four basic sources of income into the budget of Hamas government: first is the taxes and customs the government collects from the Gaza Strip population, second is the agricultural investment in Gaza, third is the local donations and fourth is the Arab and Islamic donations.
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) which is a rival to Hamas accuses Iran, Syria and Qatar for supporting Hamas government in the Gaza Strip by sending huge amounts of money to the movement to keep it surviving and controlling the Gaza Strip.
View the original article in People.
The deposed government of the Palestinian Islamic Hamas movement, which rules the impoverished enclave of the Gaza Strip, faces a severe fiscal crisis due to the lack of financial liquidity and the tight restrictions of the Israeli blockade, sources close to Hamas said on Sunday.
The sources, which spoke on condition of anonymity, told Xinhua that Hamas government is facing difficulties in bringing money into the blockaded enclave, which resulted in the lack of financial liquidity, adding that "this might lead to a severe financial crisis that Hamas would soon suffer from."
Israel had imposed a tight blockade on Gaza after Hamas and two minor armed groups' militants kidnapped the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a cross-border attack in southeast Gaza Strip in June 2006. Israel tightened the blockade after the movement seized control of the enclave in June 2007.
"Hamas government is about to face so many difficulties, mainly about paying the monthly salaries for its civil and security employees and other running costs," said the sources. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas deposed Hamas government after the movement took control of the Gaza Strip.
In addition to the tight blockade that Israel imposes on the enclave, the international community led by the U.S. had imposed an embargo on the movement after it won the legislative elections four years ago. Hamas rejected the world's requirements, mainly recognizing Israel and denouncing violence.
"The financial crisis is not linked to the sources of finance or its fundamental financial abilities, but it is linked to the difficulties of bringing this money to the Gaza Strip and the shortage of liquidity due to more than three years of Israeli blockades and the restrictions imposed on the banks," said the sources.
The deposed Hamas government hasn't yet paid the salaries of January to its 34,200 employees in the Gaza Strip, said the sources, adding that "there are concerns that the government of Hamas wouldn't be able to pay its employees the salaries of the coming months if the crisis goes on."
There has been no official announcement made by Hamas government officials in Gaza that the government suffers from a financial crisis and a shortage of financial liquidity to cover its monthly running costs.
Gaza economy experts believed that the reason behind the crisis "is the tight security measures Egypt is imposing on its borders with the Gaza Strip," adding that Egypt imposes tight restrictions on money entrance into the Gaza Strip either held by individuals or groups.
Hamas had repeatedly expressed concerns over an underground steel barrier that Egypt builds under the borderline between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. The purpose of building the barriers, according to Egyptian officials, is to secure Egypt's borders and prevent smuggling through underground tunnels.
According to the experts, there is another reason behind the fiscal crisis that Hamas in Gaza is suffering from, where local banks in the Gaza Strip have financially boycotted Hamas and refused to deal with the movement or its deposed government.
According to Hamas government's official figures, there are 34, 200 employees who receive about 16 million dollars as monthly salaries, adding that 16,700 are police and security officers, and 17,500 are civil employees working at the various ministries of the government.
The sources said that the deposed government of Hamas had recently met with several experts to study the possibilities of carrying out cuts off and closing down some of the less influential ministries, merge other ministries together and reduce the monthly invoice of the salaries.
An official source in Hamas ministry of finance, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, admitted to Xinhua that there are " serious difficulties the government suffers from, especially bringing financial liquidity from abroad to the Gaza Strip."
However, the source said that "so far, the government is still able to run its affairs, adding that the delay in paying January salaries to the employees is basically related to "technical problems," adding that "the salaries will be paid within the coming few days."
In December last year, the government of Hamas approved its annual budget which is 540 million U.S. dollars. However, and due to the current difficulties it is not clear if Hamas government in Gaza will be able to continue paying the salaries to its employees in the coming few months.
Hamas officials said there are four basic sources of income into the budget of Hamas government: first is the taxes and customs the government collects from the Gaza Strip population, second is the agricultural investment in Gaza, third is the local donations and fourth is the Arab and Islamic donations.
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) which is a rival to Hamas accuses Iran, Syria and Qatar for supporting Hamas government in the Gaza Strip by sending huge amounts of money to the movement to keep it surviving and controlling the Gaza Strip.
View the original article in People.
Israel on Canadian college campuses; an up-hill battle
by Noam Bedein, Director of the Sderot Media Center, www.SderotMedia.org.il
Presenting the human side of Sderot, Israel and the western Negev would seem innocuous enough, as it is the only region in the western world where rockets and missiles target a civilian population. The people of southern Israel have their own story to share.
Yet after a 10-day visit to Canadian college campuses, organized by Hillel Canada and the CIJA umbrella organization of Canadian Jewry, I discovered that even Sderot residents must fight for their legitimate right to live in the land of Israel.
The purpose of this trip was to balance the after-effects of the “Gaza narrative”, exactly one year after Israel's 21-day Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.
On Canadian college campuses, the challenge became to justify the very existence of the city of Sderot.
This was best exemplified by an article published in a Winnipeg student newspaper, penned by a Palestinian-Canadian sociology student. This student amazingly attacked the credibility of another student for sharing her experiences visiting Sderot. This student had described her shock at the ’15 second’ alarm, known as the “Color Red,” which warns Sderot residents of only a few seconds to escape to safety from the time the missile is fired from Gaza to the time it explodes in Sderot.
The Palestinian student showed little sympathy for Sderot under fire:
“Sderot’ is actually a settlement on the Palestinian land of Najd, an illegally occupied territory stolen from Palestinians. It is a town created on the ashes of an ethnically cleansed and defaced Palestinian village....You want to talk about ‘terror’? Najd’s Palestinian villagers were expelled on May 13th, 1948 by Israeli forces before Israel was even declared a state.”
Here is a well-educated student born in Canada, with Palestinian descent, that calls the Israeli town of Sderot an illegitimate “settlement” constructed on the ruins of an Arab village abandoned during the 1948 war. Indeed this same student makes no acknowledgement of the historical fact that between 1951-1953, the Jews that settled in Sderot were from among the 850,000 Jews expelled in masses from Arab countries in the Middle East. During and after the 1948 war, 670,000 Palestinian Arab refugees were fled or forced from their homes.
Indeed, this Canadian-Palestinian college student is not the first to rationalize the thousands of aerial attacks and terrorizing of Sderot and southern Israel civilians.
“You know why Sderot is under rocket fire? Because there was an Arab village called Najd,” began a BBC reporter in an interview. I recall the reporter sitting in our Sderot Media Center office trying to find a ‘reasonable excuse’ to justify rocket fire against a civilian population.
Ironically, most Israelis/Jews do not even know that Palestinians and their leadership define Sderot as an illegal ‘settlement,’ while under international law it is undisputedly a city in the State of Israel.
Indeed, the first question I often ask student audiences during presentations is the following:
“If Sderot is a settlement and two miles northeast of Sderot lies the ruins of the Arab village called Najd, which the Palestinians say had a population of 30 families, who now live in the United Nations refugee camps in Gaza, what’s the justification for Jews to live in Sderot or anywhere else in Israel?”
The challenge today is to first actually ask these basic questions, before throwing around answers or solutions for the modern Arab-Israeli conflict.
“What is our right, as Jews and as Israelis, to this country in our homeland? Do we have any rights to this land at all?”
This is the way I was able to get across and present Israel’s perspective to Muslims, to pro-Palestinians, Israel critics and to the international press. By asking this basic question, we ask everyone to realize that Israel is the only independent country in the world whose legitimacy as a state is being questioned.
The leadership and governing bodies of the Palestinian side do not recognize Sderot's establishment in the first years of the creation of the Jewish state, while most Israelis/Jews have accepted a two- state solution.
As another Canadian-Palestinian student expressed himself during my presentation at Carleton University in Ottawa, quite matter of fact:
”You Jews dreamt to go back to your home land after 2,000 years... Why do you think we will stop teaching our children to dream to return to our homes in Al-Majdal (Ashkelon) only after 60 years?”
In other words, educated Canadian born Palestinian students living comfortably abroad, view Sderot quite simply as an illegal settlement and do not recognize the Jewish State of Israel. They do not accept my existence as an Israeli. So does the opposite apply to a Palestinian raised in a United Nations refugee camp, who has not been given any solution or hope for the past 60 years- (even though the UN has resettled more than 50 million refugees worldwide since World War II), will that Palestinian recognize my existence as an Israeli?
Instead, Palestinian education focuses on the preparation of the Palestinian people for the ‘right of return’ to homes and villages from 1948 in Israel which no longer exist. Homes and villages for example in and around cities like Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba, and more which have all been under terrorist missile fire.
“So, what’s your solution to this reality?” asked students on each of the Canadian campuses that I visited. In the hundreds of presentations I have given in the past three years I always answer, “I’m not here to present you a solution, I’m here to present the problem.”
The answer to that logical question is that there may not be any instant “solution.” Yet that should not exempt students from knowing the reality of what people in Israel have to cope with - and, in the case of Sderot, that their unique miraculous rocket reality is like no other in the world right now. Rockets have become a daily routine of life in Israel, where one civilian population is being targeted by rockets, rocket-launchers take cover under another civilian population on the other side of the border.
Can this definition of terrorism be understood from a typical 5-second daily news broadcast in Israel in the past four years?
“Two rockets fell outside of Sderot today. No injuries, and no damages,” is how the typical broadcast or news update would read, followed by a weather report in Israel.
These five-second news reports have now tallied up to 311 attacks and including 20 different types of rockets, Iranian missiles and mortars fired from Gaza towards southern Israel, since the END of the military operation in Gaza on January 18, 2009.
If things were truly clear about our rights as Jews to live in Israel, I would not have found myself providing a testimony to a Jew, Judge Richard Goldstone in Geneva. I was allowed a 30-minute presentation where I described to the Goldstone Commission the eight-years of life under rocket fire and concluded by raising my hands in front of them:
“I do not have enough fingers on my hands to count the amount of times rockets exploded only 10 meters from a kindergarten packed with children...”
“Why do we have to wait until a kindergarten or classroom full of children suffers a direct hit by a rocket, in order for us Israel, to have the international support and sympathy to do what is right to protect our own citizens?”
This was the question I put forth to Judge Goldstone and the rest of the panel of UN judges, which was met only with stone silence.
The time has come to raise these questions to college students around the world, and to provide them with proper and accurate answers for them to stand up for Israel and for themselves as proud supporters of Israel.
By generating such awareness, we promote peace without instant solutions and we force the world of public opinion to acknowledge the real barriers for peace, beginning with the continuing refusal of the Arab world to recognize the legitimacy of Sderot and of Israel in their neighborhood.
Noam Bedein is the director of the Sderot Media Center.
Presenting the human side of Sderot, Israel and the western Negev would seem innocuous enough, as it is the only region in the western world where rockets and missiles target a civilian population. The people of southern Israel have their own story to share.
Yet after a 10-day visit to Canadian college campuses, organized by Hillel Canada and the CIJA umbrella organization of Canadian Jewry, I discovered that even Sderot residents must fight for their legitimate right to live in the land of Israel.
The purpose of this trip was to balance the after-effects of the “Gaza narrative”, exactly one year after Israel's 21-day Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.
On Canadian college campuses, the challenge became to justify the very existence of the city of Sderot.
This was best exemplified by an article published in a Winnipeg student newspaper, penned by a Palestinian-Canadian sociology student. This student amazingly attacked the credibility of another student for sharing her experiences visiting Sderot. This student had described her shock at the ’15 second’ alarm, known as the “Color Red,” which warns Sderot residents of only a few seconds to escape to safety from the time the missile is fired from Gaza to the time it explodes in Sderot.
The Palestinian student showed little sympathy for Sderot under fire:
“Sderot’ is actually a settlement on the Palestinian land of Najd, an illegally occupied territory stolen from Palestinians. It is a town created on the ashes of an ethnically cleansed and defaced Palestinian village....You want to talk about ‘terror’? Najd’s Palestinian villagers were expelled on May 13th, 1948 by Israeli forces before Israel was even declared a state.”
Here is a well-educated student born in Canada, with Palestinian descent, that calls the Israeli town of Sderot an illegitimate “settlement” constructed on the ruins of an Arab village abandoned during the 1948 war. Indeed this same student makes no acknowledgement of the historical fact that between 1951-1953, the Jews that settled in Sderot were from among the 850,000 Jews expelled in masses from Arab countries in the Middle East. During and after the 1948 war, 670,000 Palestinian Arab refugees were fled or forced from their homes.
Indeed, this Canadian-Palestinian college student is not the first to rationalize the thousands of aerial attacks and terrorizing of Sderot and southern Israel civilians.
“You know why Sderot is under rocket fire? Because there was an Arab village called Najd,” began a BBC reporter in an interview. I recall the reporter sitting in our Sderot Media Center office trying to find a ‘reasonable excuse’ to justify rocket fire against a civilian population.
Ironically, most Israelis/Jews do not even know that Palestinians and their leadership define Sderot as an illegal ‘settlement,’ while under international law it is undisputedly a city in the State of Israel.
Indeed, the first question I often ask student audiences during presentations is the following:
“If Sderot is a settlement and two miles northeast of Sderot lies the ruins of the Arab village called Najd, which the Palestinians say had a population of 30 families, who now live in the United Nations refugee camps in Gaza, what’s the justification for Jews to live in Sderot or anywhere else in Israel?”
The challenge today is to first actually ask these basic questions, before throwing around answers or solutions for the modern Arab-Israeli conflict.
“What is our right, as Jews and as Israelis, to this country in our homeland? Do we have any rights to this land at all?”
This is the way I was able to get across and present Israel’s perspective to Muslims, to pro-Palestinians, Israel critics and to the international press. By asking this basic question, we ask everyone to realize that Israel is the only independent country in the world whose legitimacy as a state is being questioned.
The leadership and governing bodies of the Palestinian side do not recognize Sderot's establishment in the first years of the creation of the Jewish state, while most Israelis/Jews have accepted a two- state solution.
As another Canadian-Palestinian student expressed himself during my presentation at Carleton University in Ottawa, quite matter of fact:
”You Jews dreamt to go back to your home land after 2,000 years... Why do you think we will stop teaching our children to dream to return to our homes in Al-Majdal (Ashkelon) only after 60 years?”
In other words, educated Canadian born Palestinian students living comfortably abroad, view Sderot quite simply as an illegal settlement and do not recognize the Jewish State of Israel. They do not accept my existence as an Israeli. So does the opposite apply to a Palestinian raised in a United Nations refugee camp, who has not been given any solution or hope for the past 60 years- (even though the UN has resettled more than 50 million refugees worldwide since World War II), will that Palestinian recognize my existence as an Israeli?
Instead, Palestinian education focuses on the preparation of the Palestinian people for the ‘right of return’ to homes and villages from 1948 in Israel which no longer exist. Homes and villages for example in and around cities like Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba, and more which have all been under terrorist missile fire.
“So, what’s your solution to this reality?” asked students on each of the Canadian campuses that I visited. In the hundreds of presentations I have given in the past three years I always answer, “I’m not here to present you a solution, I’m here to present the problem.”
The answer to that logical question is that there may not be any instant “solution.” Yet that should not exempt students from knowing the reality of what people in Israel have to cope with - and, in the case of Sderot, that their unique miraculous rocket reality is like no other in the world right now. Rockets have become a daily routine of life in Israel, where one civilian population is being targeted by rockets, rocket-launchers take cover under another civilian population on the other side of the border.
Can this definition of terrorism be understood from a typical 5-second daily news broadcast in Israel in the past four years?
“Two rockets fell outside of Sderot today. No injuries, and no damages,” is how the typical broadcast or news update would read, followed by a weather report in Israel.
These five-second news reports have now tallied up to 311 attacks and including 20 different types of rockets, Iranian missiles and mortars fired from Gaza towards southern Israel, since the END of the military operation in Gaza on January 18, 2009.
If things were truly clear about our rights as Jews to live in Israel, I would not have found myself providing a testimony to a Jew, Judge Richard Goldstone in Geneva. I was allowed a 30-minute presentation where I described to the Goldstone Commission the eight-years of life under rocket fire and concluded by raising my hands in front of them:
“I do not have enough fingers on my hands to count the amount of times rockets exploded only 10 meters from a kindergarten packed with children...”
“Why do we have to wait until a kindergarten or classroom full of children suffers a direct hit by a rocket, in order for us Israel, to have the international support and sympathy to do what is right to protect our own citizens?”
This was the question I put forth to Judge Goldstone and the rest of the panel of UN judges, which was met only with stone silence.
The time has come to raise these questions to college students around the world, and to provide them with proper and accurate answers for them to stand up for Israel and for themselves as proud supporters of Israel.
By generating such awareness, we promote peace without instant solutions and we force the world of public opinion to acknowledge the real barriers for peace, beginning with the continuing refusal of the Arab world to recognize the legitimacy of Sderot and of Israel in their neighborhood.
Noam Bedein is the director of the Sderot Media Center.
Palestine's 'economic miracle' : Immense amount of international donations inflate Palestinians' disposable income
by Avi Trengo, Economics Correspondent
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has been crowned as "the Palestinian Ben-Gurion at the recent Herzliya Conference. However, there is a great gap between the achievements attributed to him and his abilities in practice.
Fayyad is credited with changing the corrupt PA apparatus, but even in the financial realm where his expertise lies, his abilities are mostly manifested through the drafting of impressive documents as well as fundraising.
Meanwhile, the absurdity inherent in his statements regarding "Palestinian independence within two years" is clear to anyone familiar with the Palestinian economy. Fayyad is a former World Bank official, but even on the financial front his deeds are far from the image he has nurtured.
The Palestinian economy is the only place in the world where the per capita GDP is less than half the disposable income per capita. This is the result of three factors:
1. The Palestinians barely produce anything. Most of their GDP comes from government expenditures by the PA itself.
2. The Palestinians receive immense sums donated by the world.
3. Tax collection is almost unheard of, aside from the taxes collected (for Fayyad) by the Israeli government, which provides the PA with NIS 450 million (roughly $120 million) monthly; this comprises about 40% of the PA's budget.
The result is clear: Low GDP, but high disposable income. Indeed, it's an economic miracle.
Meanwhile, the situation is even more extreme in the Gaza Strip, where the PA spends 57% of its budget. Fayyad hands over salaries and allowances to 150,000 people, yet tens of thousands of them don't work, while others receive two salaries: One from Fayyad and another from Hamas. This is why the only industries active in Gaza are imports through smuggling tunnels and real estate - the surplus of cash in Gaza's banks prompts them to offer mortgages, and this results in a rise in real estate prices.
The former finance minister in Fayyad's government expressed it vividly in an interview with Le Monde: He said the Europeans are unaware that their money funds Hamas. Hamas doesn't know what to do with all the money in its pockets so it buys real estate. As result, the price of upscale beachfront real estate in Gaza increased by 300%. The money from the EU and from the taxes collected by Israel ultimately reaches Hamas, he said.
When Hamas took power, Fayyad was supposed to ensure (in line with the international community's demand) that the salaries he hands over do not reach Hamas hands. He indeed proceeded to remove 20,000 people form the list of salary earners, but two months later added more than 10,000 of them to the list of recipients of government allowances.
By doing so, Fayyad showed that he too is familiar with the Palestinian concept of the "revolving door." However, this is not his only economic failure.
Palestinian PM’s dubious schemes show he’s nothing like Israel’s founding father
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3845482,00.html
On the security front, Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad counts on the IDF and Shin Bet. Despite his claims that the IDF should not be operating "in the Palestinian state's territory," he knows that he has no control on the ground, neither in the Gaza Strip which he dreams of reuniting with the West Bank, nor in his own backyard in Judea and Samaria.
If Fayyad is indeed interested and capable of reuniting Gaza and the West Bank, when and how does he intend to do so? Will he be leading a Palestinian army that will deploy in Rafah and move north until it retakes Gaza City from the hands of Hamas? Obviously not. He is in fact creating the conditions for boosting Hamas, so that the IDF will ultimately have to enter Gaza, retake it while paying a heavy diplomatic price, and then end the "occupation" and hand it over to Fayyad, without him having to do a thing.
And back to the economic front: About two years ago, the World Bank demanded that Fayyad not only cut down PA salaries (no results thus far) but also that he minimize the second-highest PA budget clause: Payments aimed at covering electricity and water bills which PA residents refuse to pay (the accumulated electricity debt of Gaza residents stands at $2.7 billion.) This clause, which constitutes about 8% of the PA's budget, is hidden by Fayyad under the heading “Net Lending.”
Fayyad seemingly charges local authorities for the electricity provided to their residents by Israel, yet immediately “loans” them the money. As such, they appear as a local authority debt to the Palestinian Treasury. Two years ago, he attempted to force PA residents to present proof of payment on their electricity bills before receiving government allowances. The PA’s “public service sector” immediately embarked on a warning strike, and Fayyad got the hint and has refrained from demanding that the bills be paid.
A few months ago, Fayyad came up with an original solution: As he hands over immense sums for the salaries of tens of thousands of security officials in Gaza, who no longer work since Hamas took power there, he raised their salaries by 4% and even got EU funding for this. However, at the same time he deducted a similar sum from these salaries for “electricity bills.”
Everyone was pleased until Hamas authorities found out about it. They viewed it as financially detrimental to their government, and in response stopped handing over to the Palestinian fuel authority the sums of money collected from Gaza residents who do pay for electricity. This was the reason for the latest fuel crisis in the PA.
In conclusion: Ben-Gurion, who was a man of real work and pioneering spirit would be turning in his grave had he heard that Fayyad - a man who excels in dubious schemes and in drafting impressive donation requests that include words like “transparency,” “responsibility,” and “economic stability” - has been crowned as his successor in the 21st Century.
View the original article at Yediot Ahronot
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has been crowned as "the Palestinian Ben-Gurion at the recent Herzliya Conference. However, there is a great gap between the achievements attributed to him and his abilities in practice.
Fayyad is credited with changing the corrupt PA apparatus, but even in the financial realm where his expertise lies, his abilities are mostly manifested through the drafting of impressive documents as well as fundraising.
Meanwhile, the absurdity inherent in his statements regarding "Palestinian independence within two years" is clear to anyone familiar with the Palestinian economy. Fayyad is a former World Bank official, but even on the financial front his deeds are far from the image he has nurtured.
The Palestinian economy is the only place in the world where the per capita GDP is less than half the disposable income per capita. This is the result of three factors:
1. The Palestinians barely produce anything. Most of their GDP comes from government expenditures by the PA itself.
2. The Palestinians receive immense sums donated by the world.
3. Tax collection is almost unheard of, aside from the taxes collected (for Fayyad) by the Israeli government, which provides the PA with NIS 450 million (roughly $120 million) monthly; this comprises about 40% of the PA's budget.
The result is clear: Low GDP, but high disposable income. Indeed, it's an economic miracle.
Meanwhile, the situation is even more extreme in the Gaza Strip, where the PA spends 57% of its budget. Fayyad hands over salaries and allowances to 150,000 people, yet tens of thousands of them don't work, while others receive two salaries: One from Fayyad and another from Hamas. This is why the only industries active in Gaza are imports through smuggling tunnels and real estate - the surplus of cash in Gaza's banks prompts them to offer mortgages, and this results in a rise in real estate prices.
The former finance minister in Fayyad's government expressed it vividly in an interview with Le Monde: He said the Europeans are unaware that their money funds Hamas. Hamas doesn't know what to do with all the money in its pockets so it buys real estate. As result, the price of upscale beachfront real estate in Gaza increased by 300%. The money from the EU and from the taxes collected by Israel ultimately reaches Hamas, he said.
When Hamas took power, Fayyad was supposed to ensure (in line with the international community's demand) that the salaries he hands over do not reach Hamas hands. He indeed proceeded to remove 20,000 people form the list of salary earners, but two months later added more than 10,000 of them to the list of recipients of government allowances.
By doing so, Fayyad showed that he too is familiar with the Palestinian concept of the "revolving door." However, this is not his only economic failure.
Palestinian PM’s dubious schemes show he’s nothing like Israel’s founding father
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3845482,00.html
On the security front, Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad counts on the IDF and Shin Bet. Despite his claims that the IDF should not be operating "in the Palestinian state's territory," he knows that he has no control on the ground, neither in the Gaza Strip which he dreams of reuniting with the West Bank, nor in his own backyard in Judea and Samaria.
If Fayyad is indeed interested and capable of reuniting Gaza and the West Bank, when and how does he intend to do so? Will he be leading a Palestinian army that will deploy in Rafah and move north until it retakes Gaza City from the hands of Hamas? Obviously not. He is in fact creating the conditions for boosting Hamas, so that the IDF will ultimately have to enter Gaza, retake it while paying a heavy diplomatic price, and then end the "occupation" and hand it over to Fayyad, without him having to do a thing.
And back to the economic front: About two years ago, the World Bank demanded that Fayyad not only cut down PA salaries (no results thus far) but also that he minimize the second-highest PA budget clause: Payments aimed at covering electricity and water bills which PA residents refuse to pay (the accumulated electricity debt of Gaza residents stands at $2.7 billion.) This clause, which constitutes about 8% of the PA's budget, is hidden by Fayyad under the heading “Net Lending.”
Fayyad seemingly charges local authorities for the electricity provided to their residents by Israel, yet immediately “loans” them the money. As such, they appear as a local authority debt to the Palestinian Treasury. Two years ago, he attempted to force PA residents to present proof of payment on their electricity bills before receiving government allowances. The PA’s “public service sector” immediately embarked on a warning strike, and Fayyad got the hint and has refrained from demanding that the bills be paid.
A few months ago, Fayyad came up with an original solution: As he hands over immense sums for the salaries of tens of thousands of security officials in Gaza, who no longer work since Hamas took power there, he raised their salaries by 4% and even got EU funding for this. However, at the same time he deducted a similar sum from these salaries for “electricity bills.”
Everyone was pleased until Hamas authorities found out about it. They viewed it as financially detrimental to their government, and in response stopped handing over to the Palestinian fuel authority the sums of money collected from Gaza residents who do pay for electricity. This was the reason for the latest fuel crisis in the PA.
In conclusion: Ben-Gurion, who was a man of real work and pioneering spirit would be turning in his grave had he heard that Fayyad - a man who excels in dubious schemes and in drafting impressive donation requests that include words like “transparency,” “responsibility,” and “economic stability” - has been crowned as his successor in the 21st Century.
View the original article at Yediot Ahronot
Stop the Bonner-Bashing!
by David Wilder, Spokesman, Jewish Community of Hebron
For the past couple of weeks, ever since the 'story' broke, I've been debating with myself whether or not to write anything about it. I've learned, usually the hard way, that sometimes it's better to shut up. But usually, my second nature gets the better of me and I mouth off anyhow. That's what I seem to be doing now. Actually, I find myself in a somewhat strange situation. I've helped out journalists before, even those I really didn't particularly care for. A number of years ago a CNN correspondent was hit in the head with a rock (thrown by an Arab) outside Beit Hadassah. The guy really wasn't a friend of ours, but, what can you do �" he was bleeding. So I sent him up to my apartment to get some first aid from my wife. Another time, when a journalist's car battery died in Hebron, I helped him start up with cables. A photographer friend of mine was almost killed by a group of very angry people the night that Beit Shapiro was emptied of its Jewish residents. I didn't save him; someone else from the community arrived first. Etc. Etc. I guess it's what we call in Hebrew 'Derech Eretz' or in plainer language, just being well-mannered and polite. But I don't recall that I ever had to publicly defend a journalist. Especially one of the most well-known journalists in the field who happens to work for a paper that surely isn't a friend of ours. Well, there's a first time for everything. I've known Ethan Bronner probably for about as long as I've worked in the business of media as spokesman for Hebron's Jewish community, primarily with the foreign and English-speaking press. Way back then, I'd guess about 13 years ago, Bronner was working for the Boston Globe. I'm not sure why I remember him; I meet so many reporters from around the world and have a lousy memory for names and faces. And truthfully, I usually prefer to forget them as fast as I can after meeting them. But, for whatever reason, when he arrived back in Israel, probably a decade after leaving, I remembered him. Why? I'm not sure. But his name stuck in my head perhaps because he wasn't as one-sidedly biased and subjective as others. That’s not to say that I agreed with everything he wrote. Far from it. In 1996 he wrote, “Since the settlers in Hebron are among the most fervent of Jewish nationalists, believing they are part of a celestial scheme for Jewish reconquest of the Promised Land, the conflict here seems insoluble.” On the other hand, that same year, he also penned,“For years, leaders of the tiny, fortress-like Jewish settlement in the middle of this Palestinian city have said that the very idea of Palestinian police is absurd since armed Palestinians, uniformed or not, would ultimately turn their guns on Israelis. Never, these leaders argued, should such a force be permitted in Hebron, a city rich in Jewish history where the biblical patriarchs are buried, and today the last West Bank city under full Israeli control. If that came to pass, they said, the lives of every Jew -- settler or visitor -- would be at risk.” In any case, there aren’t a whole lot of journalists that can be described as being ‘somewhat objective’ concerning Hebron. I’ve followed Bronner’s writing in the NY Times since he arrived back here, I guess about a year or so ago. I publicly attacked him in an op-ed piece written for the Jerusalem Post this past summer, marking the 80th anniversary of the 1929 riots and massacre, [http://goo.gl/tKiG], when he compared the Israeli right to Hamas. On the other hand, after reading a feature he authored called Resolve of West Bank Settlers May Have Limits last September, I had to seriously consider the merits of the piece. But I really didn’t get a kick out of the positive publicity he gave to the radical left-winger Ezra Nawi in the pages of the New York Times [http://goo.gl/TojJ]. So much for another NY Times bureau chief in Israel. They come, they go, but we stay. Almost. Until a couple of weeks ago. I started catching blogs attacking Bronner because… his son joined the Israeli army. This, it seems, in the opinion of some of my best left-wing friends, is a primary reason why Bronner cannot continue to serve as the Time’s Bureau Chief. Why? Because he can no longer be…. Objective? Ah. The truth finally revealed. Remember such bureau chiefs such as Serge Shememan, who titled Hebron Jews as ‘militants’ and ‘extremists’ [http://goo.gl/Peoh]. Or Deborah Sontag’s magnum opus, written as she retired from her position in Israel, Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed [http://goo.gl/1Av9], where she absolves Arafat from the ‘failed’ Barak-Arafat Camp David powwow, which led to the beginning of the Oslo War aka 2nd Intifada in October, 2000, and places the blame on Barak. (According to Tom Gross http://goo.gl/imfk - “this piece has been dubbed “the mother of all Arafat-rehab articles.””) Well, that’s OK. That’s good, objective NY Times journalism because it extols the Arabs, lambasts Israel, and most importantly, demonizes “the settlers.” But, if a correspondent happens to have a son who has patriotic emotions towards the Jewish state, and desires to take part in defending his people (Bronner is Jewish, and married to an Israeli), well, that’s just too much. That kind of a correspondent will never ever be able to fit the bill and abide by the Times age-old agenda (see previously quoted Tom Gross article). What’s the problem? It’s a given that Israeli soldiers are, by definition, ‘bad guys,’ evil Arab-hating killers, who will let nothing stop their vindictive violent acts of war against poor, innocent, defenseless terrorists, who have nothing but Goldstone to protect them. That being the case, Ethan Bronner’s son is now ‘one of them.’ Bronner the elder, being the ‘evil ones’ father must have some sympathetic symbiosis with these iniquitous emotions, thereby branding him as ‘unfit’ to cover Israel for the paper that publishes all the news that’s not fit to print. Guilt by association. I wonder how far back they would go. Say, for example, that it wasn’t Bronner’s son in the army, rather his grandson. Would that still taint his objectivity? Probably. I seem to remember that about 60 years ago the “Jew stain” included anyone twenty-five percent Jewish. OK. The left wing blogs can be excused. After all, this is how they make their money. But �" on Saturday, the NY Times Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, wrote in a column in the NY Times [http://goo.gl/hIcb] officially recommending that Bronner be relieved of his Israeli duties, “at least for the duration of his son’s service in the I.D.F.” This is about as inexcusable as you get. Like I said, I’m not a flag-waving fan of Ethan Bronner, but I do believe that he retains some qualitative journalistic integrity. And I am a flag-waving fan of Jewish patriotism, especially when it takes the form of a young man wanting to serve his country and his people. Especially a kid who didn’t spend his entire life growing up in Israel. To penalize his father for such devotion, to accuse him before-the-fact of lacking the ability to continue to write objectively, is a professional slap in the face, publicly insulting. These people’s problem is that a correspondent who cannot Israel-bash on a daily basis is not worthy of his business card. Despite my professional disagreements with Ethan Bronner, which I will continue to express whenever necessary, in this case I stand behind him, his son and his family one hundred percent. With blessings from Hebron.
www.hebron.com (English)
www.hebron.org.il (Hebrew)
www.machpela.com
www.hebronfund.com
www.thewilderway.info
Tel:Israel # 972-52-429-5554
US # - 1-347-725-0325
Canada 1-647-723-3789 x109
Fax: (801) 720-9291
Google/Aim Chats: Beit Hadassah
Skype: Beithadassah
Twitter: DavidWilder
Facebook: http://profile.to/hebron.jewish.community
For the past couple of weeks, ever since the 'story' broke, I've been debating with myself whether or not to write anything about it. I've learned, usually the hard way, that sometimes it's better to shut up. But usually, my second nature gets the better of me and I mouth off anyhow. That's what I seem to be doing now. Actually, I find myself in a somewhat strange situation. I've helped out journalists before, even those I really didn't particularly care for. A number of years ago a CNN correspondent was hit in the head with a rock (thrown by an Arab) outside Beit Hadassah. The guy really wasn't a friend of ours, but, what can you do �" he was bleeding. So I sent him up to my apartment to get some first aid from my wife. Another time, when a journalist's car battery died in Hebron, I helped him start up with cables. A photographer friend of mine was almost killed by a group of very angry people the night that Beit Shapiro was emptied of its Jewish residents. I didn't save him; someone else from the community arrived first. Etc. Etc. I guess it's what we call in Hebrew 'Derech Eretz' or in plainer language, just being well-mannered and polite. But I don't recall that I ever had to publicly defend a journalist. Especially one of the most well-known journalists in the field who happens to work for a paper that surely isn't a friend of ours. Well, there's a first time for everything. I've known Ethan Bronner probably for about as long as I've worked in the business of media as spokesman for Hebron's Jewish community, primarily with the foreign and English-speaking press. Way back then, I'd guess about 13 years ago, Bronner was working for the Boston Globe. I'm not sure why I remember him; I meet so many reporters from around the world and have a lousy memory for names and faces. And truthfully, I usually prefer to forget them as fast as I can after meeting them. But, for whatever reason, when he arrived back in Israel, probably a decade after leaving, I remembered him. Why? I'm not sure. But his name stuck in my head perhaps because he wasn't as one-sidedly biased and subjective as others. That’s not to say that I agreed with everything he wrote. Far from it. In 1996 he wrote, “Since the settlers in Hebron are among the most fervent of Jewish nationalists, believing they are part of a celestial scheme for Jewish reconquest of the Promised Land, the conflict here seems insoluble.” On the other hand, that same year, he also penned,“For years, leaders of the tiny, fortress-like Jewish settlement in the middle of this Palestinian city have said that the very idea of Palestinian police is absurd since armed Palestinians, uniformed or not, would ultimately turn their guns on Israelis. Never, these leaders argued, should such a force be permitted in Hebron, a city rich in Jewish history where the biblical patriarchs are buried, and today the last West Bank city under full Israeli control. If that came to pass, they said, the lives of every Jew -- settler or visitor -- would be at risk.” In any case, there aren’t a whole lot of journalists that can be described as being ‘somewhat objective’ concerning Hebron. I’ve followed Bronner’s writing in the NY Times since he arrived back here, I guess about a year or so ago. I publicly attacked him in an op-ed piece written for the Jerusalem Post this past summer, marking the 80th anniversary of the 1929 riots and massacre, [http://goo.gl/tKiG], when he compared the Israeli right to Hamas. On the other hand, after reading a feature he authored called Resolve of West Bank Settlers May Have Limits last September, I had to seriously consider the merits of the piece. But I really didn’t get a kick out of the positive publicity he gave to the radical left-winger Ezra Nawi in the pages of the New York Times [http://goo.gl/TojJ]. So much for another NY Times bureau chief in Israel. They come, they go, but we stay. Almost. Until a couple of weeks ago. I started catching blogs attacking Bronner because… his son joined the Israeli army. This, it seems, in the opinion of some of my best left-wing friends, is a primary reason why Bronner cannot continue to serve as the Time’s Bureau Chief. Why? Because he can no longer be…. Objective? Ah. The truth finally revealed. Remember such bureau chiefs such as Serge Shememan, who titled Hebron Jews as ‘militants’ and ‘extremists’ [http://goo.gl/Peoh]. Or Deborah Sontag’s magnum opus, written as she retired from her position in Israel, Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed [http://goo.gl/1Av9], where she absolves Arafat from the ‘failed’ Barak-Arafat Camp David powwow, which led to the beginning of the Oslo War aka 2nd Intifada in October, 2000, and places the blame on Barak. (According to Tom Gross http://goo.gl/imfk - “this piece has been dubbed “the mother of all Arafat-rehab articles.””) Well, that’s OK. That’s good, objective NY Times journalism because it extols the Arabs, lambasts Israel, and most importantly, demonizes “the settlers.” But, if a correspondent happens to have a son who has patriotic emotions towards the Jewish state, and desires to take part in defending his people (Bronner is Jewish, and married to an Israeli), well, that’s just too much. That kind of a correspondent will never ever be able to fit the bill and abide by the Times age-old agenda (see previously quoted Tom Gross article). What’s the problem? It’s a given that Israeli soldiers are, by definition, ‘bad guys,’ evil Arab-hating killers, who will let nothing stop their vindictive violent acts of war against poor, innocent, defenseless terrorists, who have nothing but Goldstone to protect them. That being the case, Ethan Bronner’s son is now ‘one of them.’ Bronner the elder, being the ‘evil ones’ father must have some sympathetic symbiosis with these iniquitous emotions, thereby branding him as ‘unfit’ to cover Israel for the paper that publishes all the news that’s not fit to print. Guilt by association. I wonder how far back they would go. Say, for example, that it wasn’t Bronner’s son in the army, rather his grandson. Would that still taint his objectivity? Probably. I seem to remember that about 60 years ago the “Jew stain” included anyone twenty-five percent Jewish. OK. The left wing blogs can be excused. After all, this is how they make their money. But �" on Saturday, the NY Times Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, wrote in a column in the NY Times [http://goo.gl/hIcb] officially recommending that Bronner be relieved of his Israeli duties, “at least for the duration of his son’s service in the I.D.F.” This is about as inexcusable as you get. Like I said, I’m not a flag-waving fan of Ethan Bronner, but I do believe that he retains some qualitative journalistic integrity. And I am a flag-waving fan of Jewish patriotism, especially when it takes the form of a young man wanting to serve his country and his people. Especially a kid who didn’t spend his entire life growing up in Israel. To penalize his father for such devotion, to accuse him before-the-fact of lacking the ability to continue to write objectively, is a professional slap in the face, publicly insulting. These people’s problem is that a correspondent who cannot Israel-bash on a daily basis is not worthy of his business card. Despite my professional disagreements with Ethan Bronner, which I will continue to express whenever necessary, in this case I stand behind him, his son and his family one hundred percent. With blessings from Hebron.
www.hebron.com (English)
www.hebron.org.il (Hebrew)
www.machpela.com
www.hebronfund.com
www.thewilderway.info
Tel:Israel # 972-52-429-5554
US # - 1-347-725-0325
Canada 1-647-723-3789 x109
Fax: (801) 720-9291
Google/Aim Chats: Beit Hadassah
Skype: Beithadassah
Twitter: DavidWilder
Facebook: http://profile.to/hebron.jewish.community
The Fatah Charter: Intentions Vs. Words
by Arlene Kushner
On January 27, 2010, the Jewish Telegraph Agency put out a news story which indicated that a new Fatah charter, which had emerged from the Fatah Conference held in Bethlehem in August 2009, omitted a previous call for Israel’s destruction.
Wrote JTA: “US Jewish groups...have long called for Fatah...to renounce the negationist language of earlier charters. The calls have been repeated in a number of congressional resolutions...”
Omission of certain phraseology does not, however, necessarily signify the renuncia tion that Jewish groups have sought. The question is whether the omission in this instance has import: Does the fact that Fatah’s new charter no longer explicitly calls for the elimination of Israel represent a genuine moderating of its previous stance? The answer, succinctly, is no.
Not one of the Arabic-speaking experts on Fatah contacted for this article - including a journalist, head of a research institute and an academic - were aware of any evidence of Fatah moderation. Their positions provide not unim por tant back ground.
JTA did no direct research for its report. Instead, it drew directly upon material put out by Secrecy News, a well-respected, little-known agency of the Federation of American Scientists, dedicated to providing public access to documentary resources that are not classified. Secrecy News, in turn, drew upon information from the Open Source Center (OSC) of the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
OCS acquired the original Arabic charter via a link posted on the Fatah Forum web site. OCS then arranged for it to be translated into English and placed the transla tion on its website. It was not, however, accessible to the general public: OSC general policy is to restrict access to its material to government employ ees and contrac tors.
Steve Aftergood, who runs Secrecy News, obtained the document from a contact with access to the OSC. Thus, Aftergood was able to vouch for the source of the document. But he knew “nothing about the authenticity or validity of the Arabic original... or the quality of the OSC translation.”
The JTA release states forthrightly that “the new Fatah charter maintains a militant tone,” and indeed, when the charter is examined, that is found to be the case. “You must know that our enemy is strong and the battle is ferocious and long,” it declares in its introduction. It speaks, as well, of “revolution” and “liberation.”
But what is meant to be liberated by revolution?
The document’s true intention is found in the final statement of its introduction: “Long live Palestine, free and Arab.” This theme was echoed in a closing statement for the Fatah Conference made on August 13, 2009 by Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas. “Egypt is for Egyptians,” he declared, “Syria is for Syrians, Lebanon is for Lebanese, and Jordan is for Jordanians. Yet, Palestine is for the Palestinian people...”
Indeed? “Palestine,” in this context, refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It most clearly does not mean that Gaza and the West Bank is for Arabs, while what is inside the Green Line is for Jews. If all of Palestine is for Arabs, then the obvious intent is that, when the “revolution” was completed and “liberation” had been achieved, Israel would exist no more.
This take is confirmed by a closer look at the document itself. This charter, it says, drafted to attend to such organizational matters as defining the tasks of leaders and regulating the relationship between members, has “been adopted within the frame work of adherence to the provisions of the Basic Charter,” ratified in Tunis in 1989.
This is not a full revision, then, but an adjunct providing for certain bureaucratic and organizational matters. No need to be explicit about the elimination of Israel; all that is necessary is to acknowledge the primacy of the Basic Charter, which did call for Israel’s elimination.
This essential point seems to have been passed over by the JTA report. Bewilder ingly, it notes the terminology regarding adherence to the Basic Charter, and then goes on to say, “Nonetheless, missing entirely from the charter is the...language...in the 1989 version that implied Israel’s replacement...”
Nonetheless? But within the broader context, what is missing is not really of consequence. It certainly does not seem to merit the JTA headline: “New Fatah charter omits language on Israel’s demise.”
The Palestinians are particularly adept at presenting their positions so that they seem to be what we would wish them to be. Sometimes we allow ourselves to be taken in by this, so eager are we to find evidence of increasing Palestinian Arab moderation.
Yet the task that falls to us it to be certain that we are not deceived. In examining the new Fatah charter, we cannot legitimately find cause for optimism. This document provides no evidence of increasing Fatah moderation.
Arlene Kushner is the senior research analyst for the Center for Near East Policy Research in Jerusalem, and author of a daily blog, Arlene from Israel.
View the original article in the Arlene
On January 27, 2010, the Jewish Telegraph Agency put out a news story which indicated that a new Fatah charter, which had emerged from the Fatah Conference held in Bethlehem in August 2009, omitted a previous call for Israel’s destruction.
Wrote JTA: “US Jewish groups...have long called for Fatah...to renounce the negationist language of earlier charters. The calls have been repeated in a number of congressional resolutions...”
Omission of certain phraseology does not, however, necessarily signify the renuncia tion that Jewish groups have sought. The question is whether the omission in this instance has import: Does the fact that Fatah’s new charter no longer explicitly calls for the elimination of Israel represent a genuine moderating of its previous stance? The answer, succinctly, is no.
Not one of the Arabic-speaking experts on Fatah contacted for this article - including a journalist, head of a research institute and an academic - were aware of any evidence of Fatah moderation. Their positions provide not unim por tant back ground.
JTA did no direct research for its report. Instead, it drew directly upon material put out by Secrecy News, a well-respected, little-known agency of the Federation of American Scientists, dedicated to providing public access to documentary resources that are not classified. Secrecy News, in turn, drew upon information from the Open Source Center (OSC) of the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
OCS acquired the original Arabic charter via a link posted on the Fatah Forum web site. OCS then arranged for it to be translated into English and placed the transla tion on its website. It was not, however, accessible to the general public: OSC general policy is to restrict access to its material to government employ ees and contrac tors.
Steve Aftergood, who runs Secrecy News, obtained the document from a contact with access to the OSC. Thus, Aftergood was able to vouch for the source of the document. But he knew “nothing about the authenticity or validity of the Arabic original... or the quality of the OSC translation.”
The JTA release states forthrightly that “the new Fatah charter maintains a militant tone,” and indeed, when the charter is examined, that is found to be the case. “You must know that our enemy is strong and the battle is ferocious and long,” it declares in its introduction. It speaks, as well, of “revolution” and “liberation.”
But what is meant to be liberated by revolution?
The document’s true intention is found in the final statement of its introduction: “Long live Palestine, free and Arab.” This theme was echoed in a closing statement for the Fatah Conference made on August 13, 2009 by Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas. “Egypt is for Egyptians,” he declared, “Syria is for Syrians, Lebanon is for Lebanese, and Jordan is for Jordanians. Yet, Palestine is for the Palestinian people...”
Indeed? “Palestine,” in this context, refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It most clearly does not mean that Gaza and the West Bank is for Arabs, while what is inside the Green Line is for Jews. If all of Palestine is for Arabs, then the obvious intent is that, when the “revolution” was completed and “liberation” had been achieved, Israel would exist no more.
This take is confirmed by a closer look at the document itself. This charter, it says, drafted to attend to such organizational matters as defining the tasks of leaders and regulating the relationship between members, has “been adopted within the frame work of adherence to the provisions of the Basic Charter,” ratified in Tunis in 1989.
This is not a full revision, then, but an adjunct providing for certain bureaucratic and organizational matters. No need to be explicit about the elimination of Israel; all that is necessary is to acknowledge the primacy of the Basic Charter, which did call for Israel’s elimination.
This essential point seems to have been passed over by the JTA report. Bewilder ingly, it notes the terminology regarding adherence to the Basic Charter, and then goes on to say, “Nonetheless, missing entirely from the charter is the...language...in the 1989 version that implied Israel’s replacement...”
Nonetheless? But within the broader context, what is missing is not really of consequence. It certainly does not seem to merit the JTA headline: “New Fatah charter omits language on Israel’s demise.”
The Palestinians are particularly adept at presenting their positions so that they seem to be what we would wish them to be. Sometimes we allow ourselves to be taken in by this, so eager are we to find evidence of increasing Palestinian Arab moderation.
Yet the task that falls to us it to be certain that we are not deceived. In examining the new Fatah charter, we cannot legitimately find cause for optimism. This document provides no evidence of increasing Fatah moderation.
Arlene Kushner is the senior research analyst for the Center for Near East Policy Research in Jerusalem, and author of a daily blog, Arlene from Israel.
View the original article in the Arlene
Sunday, February 7, 2010
FAYYAD TO ISRAELI AUDIENCE; YOU MAKE CONCESSIONS - WE WON'T
by Barry Rubin
Imagine this. You're prime minister of a regime that isn't yet a state. You are praised in the Western media as a great moderate man of peace. You represent a people who the U.S. president says is in an intolerable situation. You supposedly want a country of your own. Indeed you've announced you will get a state in two years, something conceivable only if your negotiating partner agrees. You're dependent on contributions from Western democratic countries that want you to make a deal. Your rivals have seized almost half the land you want to rule and work tirelessly to overthrow your regime and very possibly to kill you personally.
But here comes a big opportunity.
You are invited by your negotiating partner to its most important meeting of the year. All the other side's top leaders and opinionmakers are listening to you.
And that country's second most powerful leader has just made a very conciliatory speech praising you personally, urging peace, offering concessions, and telling his own people they must be ready to give you a lot.
What do you do?
Make a warm conciliatory, confidence-building speech, showing by substantial offers that you, too, are willing to compromise; stretching out your hand in order to build friendship and ensure you get a country?
Hey, we're talking about the Palestinians here! And as I say over and over again: anyone who thinks the Palestinian Authority (PA) is going to make peace hasn't been paying attention to what they say and do.
So here is what PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told the audience at the Herzliya Conference, held at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), following Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak's conciliatory speech:
--Israel must immediately start pulling out of the rest of the West Bank, without getting anything in return.
--It must immediately stop all construction on settlements, including apartments now being completed.
--Israel's army should never enter PA-ruled areas. Even if the PA refuses to arrest those who have murdered Israelis or won't stop planned attacks, Israel's army must do nothing, despite the 1993 agreement between the two sides permitting this. Fayyad said this isn't necessary because the PA is taking care of these matters. But this makes no sense: when Israel sees that to be true it never orders incursions in the first place.
--Israel should end its blockade of the Gaza Strip, even though the Hamas movement ruling there refuses to make a deal with the PA, openly announces its goal of destroying Israel, and smuggles in as many weapons as possible. Moreover, as soon as it feels secure again, Hamas will launch new attacks on Israel. Fayyad claimed, however, that if Israel did so, the PA could then build government institutions in the Gaza Strip, though it has no control whatsoever there.
--He openly stated that his goal was to mobilize international support and create such a strong state apparatus that the world would pressure Israel to end any presence in the West Bank or east Jerusalem, apparently without the Palestinian side giving anything.
--While Barak said that the "roughness" of the region made it harder to give the Palestinians everything they wanted (for example, the PA could be overthrown by Hamas; subverted by Iran and Syria; unwilling or unable to stop cross-border attacks), Fayyad responded that once Israel left all of the West Bank the region would become more stable and peaceful. That's a rather questionable assertion.
It is true that he ended by saying:
"The Israeli people have a long history, they have pain, they have ambition, and like you, we Palestinians have our own history. Right now we are going through lots of pain and suffering. And we have one key aspiration, and that is once again to be able to live alongside you in peace, harmony and security."
Yet he addressed none of the points in Israel's own peace plan: an official end to the conflict if there is an agreement; resettlement of Palestinian refugees in Palestine; an end to incitement (which would be easy to do) to kill Israelis; limits on the militarization of a Palestinian state; or recognition of Israel as a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian Arab Muslim state (the PA constitution says that Islam is the country's official religion).
This was not an extremist speech or one seeking conflict. Fayyad is probably the most moderate guy in the PA leadership. He was doing about the best he could. But that's the point. He has no base of support, isn't a member of Fatah, and doesn't really represent Palestinian thinking. He is in office for one reason only: the Western donors demand it. Fayyad, and arguably the PA leadership as a whole, don't want a new war with Israel. But Fatah will sponsor one if it thinks such a step is advantageous or needed to out-militant Hamas.
Equally, Fayyad couldn't go any further than he did because he knows that his Fatah bosses, Palestinian constituents, and Hamas enemies would throw him out if he offered the slightest concession to Israel and demanded any less than everything they want.
We will see how much progress Fayyad makes over the next two years in building strong and stable institutions. Yet it should be understood that what he is doing is not a way to convince Israel that both sides can reach a compromise peace but to persuade the world to force Israel to make compromises without the PA having to do so.
The irony is that it doesn't matter what Barak says, except to show the world that Israel wants real peace and to encourage Israeli voters to back Labor as a party that balances a strong desire for peace with a smart sense of security for the country.
Barak warned the right-wing in Israel that it would be a mistake to oppose a genuine two-state solution, an outcome that Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu-like Barak--has accepted. But the defense minister also urged the left-wing not to be naïve.
Here's a fascinating example of how the world generally interprets the situation. Read this paragraph from the Washington Post coverage carefully:
"But there was a common thread, too, with each acknowledging an international consensus on the idea of two nations. Barak said that Israel risks becoming 'an apartheid state par excellence' if it does not negotiate the terms of Palestinian statehood soon, and Fayyad said the work being done in the West Bank on governance needs to be matched by political progress."
The two statements are supposed to be parallel. Barak says: Israel must get rid of the West Bank for its own good. Fayyad says: progress must be made in negotiations, in the context of a speech in which he asked for a long list of Israeli concessions and offered nothing in exchange. These statemens are not parallel. A parallel statement would be if Fayyad had said something like:
The Palestinians risk becoming permanently mired in violence and backwardness unless they negotiate terms for Israel feeling secure in giving up the territory.
Since 1993 not a single Palestinian leader has ever made a speech to his own people like Barak's, never said that they should have to give up something to get a state, never urged the media and public debate to become more moderate.
Four days before Fayyad's speech, here is the Friday prayer sermon given in Nablus by the imam appointed there by Fayyad and broadcast on the television Fayyad controls:
"The Jews are the enemies of Allah and [Muhammad], the enemies of humanity in general, and of the Palestinians in particular.... Jews will always be Jews. Even if donkeys cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl, and snakes cease to bite, the Jews will not cease to be hostile to the Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad said: 'Whenever two Jews find themselves alone with a Muslim, they think of killing him.' Oh Muslims, this land, these holy places, and these mosques will only be liberated when we return to the Book of Allah, and when all Muslims are prepared to become mujahideen for the sake of Allah, in support of Palestine, its people, its land, and its holy places."
How can this be reconciled with Fayyad's claim that the sole aspiration is "to live alongside you in peace, harmony and security"?
Note that this is a Palestinian Authority, not a Hamas, cleric speaking. Note, too, that while Fayyad's speech is covered around the world, sermons like these are never quoted in the Western media. This is not to say that the sermon is real and Fayyad's views are fake, it is to say that the sermon is meant to shape Palestinian politics and public opinion and what Fayyad says is meant to shape Israeli and Western politics and public opinion. Fayyad, a figurehead, is not going to make anything change and he isn't even going to try. Nor does Fayyad have any control over the ruling party, Fatah, whose leadership is still hardline on goals and negotiations, though not on more immediate issues.
The Israeli audience applauded Fayyad because it does want peace and prefers him to all the worse alternatives, especially Hamas but also those in Fatah. Yet few have any illusions that peace is at hand or that Fayyad is going to deliver it.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books, go to GLORIA Center.
See the original article at the GLORIA Center.
Imagine this. You're prime minister of a regime that isn't yet a state. You are praised in the Western media as a great moderate man of peace. You represent a people who the U.S. president says is in an intolerable situation. You supposedly want a country of your own. Indeed you've announced you will get a state in two years, something conceivable only if your negotiating partner agrees. You're dependent on contributions from Western democratic countries that want you to make a deal. Your rivals have seized almost half the land you want to rule and work tirelessly to overthrow your regime and very possibly to kill you personally.
But here comes a big opportunity.
You are invited by your negotiating partner to its most important meeting of the year. All the other side's top leaders and opinionmakers are listening to you.
And that country's second most powerful leader has just made a very conciliatory speech praising you personally, urging peace, offering concessions, and telling his own people they must be ready to give you a lot.
What do you do?
Make a warm conciliatory, confidence-building speech, showing by substantial offers that you, too, are willing to compromise; stretching out your hand in order to build friendship and ensure you get a country?
Hey, we're talking about the Palestinians here! And as I say over and over again: anyone who thinks the Palestinian Authority (PA) is going to make peace hasn't been paying attention to what they say and do.
So here is what PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told the audience at the Herzliya Conference, held at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), following Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak's conciliatory speech:
--Israel must immediately start pulling out of the rest of the West Bank, without getting anything in return.
--It must immediately stop all construction on settlements, including apartments now being completed.
--Israel's army should never enter PA-ruled areas. Even if the PA refuses to arrest those who have murdered Israelis or won't stop planned attacks, Israel's army must do nothing, despite the 1993 agreement between the two sides permitting this. Fayyad said this isn't necessary because the PA is taking care of these matters. But this makes no sense: when Israel sees that to be true it never orders incursions in the first place.
--Israel should end its blockade of the Gaza Strip, even though the Hamas movement ruling there refuses to make a deal with the PA, openly announces its goal of destroying Israel, and smuggles in as many weapons as possible. Moreover, as soon as it feels secure again, Hamas will launch new attacks on Israel. Fayyad claimed, however, that if Israel did so, the PA could then build government institutions in the Gaza Strip, though it has no control whatsoever there.
--He openly stated that his goal was to mobilize international support and create such a strong state apparatus that the world would pressure Israel to end any presence in the West Bank or east Jerusalem, apparently without the Palestinian side giving anything.
--While Barak said that the "roughness" of the region made it harder to give the Palestinians everything they wanted (for example, the PA could be overthrown by Hamas; subverted by Iran and Syria; unwilling or unable to stop cross-border attacks), Fayyad responded that once Israel left all of the West Bank the region would become more stable and peaceful. That's a rather questionable assertion.
It is true that he ended by saying:
"The Israeli people have a long history, they have pain, they have ambition, and like you, we Palestinians have our own history. Right now we are going through lots of pain and suffering. And we have one key aspiration, and that is once again to be able to live alongside you in peace, harmony and security."
Yet he addressed none of the points in Israel's own peace plan: an official end to the conflict if there is an agreement; resettlement of Palestinian refugees in Palestine; an end to incitement (which would be easy to do) to kill Israelis; limits on the militarization of a Palestinian state; or recognition of Israel as a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian Arab Muslim state (the PA constitution says that Islam is the country's official religion).
This was not an extremist speech or one seeking conflict. Fayyad is probably the most moderate guy in the PA leadership. He was doing about the best he could. But that's the point. He has no base of support, isn't a member of Fatah, and doesn't really represent Palestinian thinking. He is in office for one reason only: the Western donors demand it. Fayyad, and arguably the PA leadership as a whole, don't want a new war with Israel. But Fatah will sponsor one if it thinks such a step is advantageous or needed to out-militant Hamas.
Equally, Fayyad couldn't go any further than he did because he knows that his Fatah bosses, Palestinian constituents, and Hamas enemies would throw him out if he offered the slightest concession to Israel and demanded any less than everything they want.
We will see how much progress Fayyad makes over the next two years in building strong and stable institutions. Yet it should be understood that what he is doing is not a way to convince Israel that both sides can reach a compromise peace but to persuade the world to force Israel to make compromises without the PA having to do so.
The irony is that it doesn't matter what Barak says, except to show the world that Israel wants real peace and to encourage Israeli voters to back Labor as a party that balances a strong desire for peace with a smart sense of security for the country.
Barak warned the right-wing in Israel that it would be a mistake to oppose a genuine two-state solution, an outcome that Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu-like Barak--has accepted. But the defense minister also urged the left-wing not to be naïve.
Here's a fascinating example of how the world generally interprets the situation. Read this paragraph from the Washington Post coverage carefully:
"But there was a common thread, too, with each acknowledging an international consensus on the idea of two nations. Barak said that Israel risks becoming 'an apartheid state par excellence' if it does not negotiate the terms of Palestinian statehood soon, and Fayyad said the work being done in the West Bank on governance needs to be matched by political progress."
The two statements are supposed to be parallel. Barak says: Israel must get rid of the West Bank for its own good. Fayyad says: progress must be made in negotiations, in the context of a speech in which he asked for a long list of Israeli concessions and offered nothing in exchange. These statemens are not parallel. A parallel statement would be if Fayyad had said something like:
The Palestinians risk becoming permanently mired in violence and backwardness unless they negotiate terms for Israel feeling secure in giving up the territory.
Since 1993 not a single Palestinian leader has ever made a speech to his own people like Barak's, never said that they should have to give up something to get a state, never urged the media and public debate to become more moderate.
Four days before Fayyad's speech, here is the Friday prayer sermon given in Nablus by the imam appointed there by Fayyad and broadcast on the television Fayyad controls:
"The Jews are the enemies of Allah and [Muhammad], the enemies of humanity in general, and of the Palestinians in particular.... Jews will always be Jews. Even if donkeys cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl, and snakes cease to bite, the Jews will not cease to be hostile to the Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad said: 'Whenever two Jews find themselves alone with a Muslim, they think of killing him.' Oh Muslims, this land, these holy places, and these mosques will only be liberated when we return to the Book of Allah, and when all Muslims are prepared to become mujahideen for the sake of Allah, in support of Palestine, its people, its land, and its holy places."
How can this be reconciled with Fayyad's claim that the sole aspiration is "to live alongside you in peace, harmony and security"?
Note that this is a Palestinian Authority, not a Hamas, cleric speaking. Note, too, that while Fayyad's speech is covered around the world, sermons like these are never quoted in the Western media. This is not to say that the sermon is real and Fayyad's views are fake, it is to say that the sermon is meant to shape Palestinian politics and public opinion and what Fayyad says is meant to shape Israeli and Western politics and public opinion. Fayyad, a figurehead, is not going to make anything change and he isn't even going to try. Nor does Fayyad have any control over the ruling party, Fatah, whose leadership is still hardline on goals and negotiations, though not on more immediate issues.
The Israeli audience applauded Fayyad because it does want peace and prefers him to all the worse alternatives, especially Hamas but also those in Fatah. Yet few have any illusions that peace is at hand or that Fayyad is going to deliver it.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books, go to GLORIA Center.
See the original article at the GLORIA Center.
Israel's Tri-Dimensional Strategy
by Dr. Emmanuel Navon
www.navon.com
Benjamin Netanyahu did a good job confusing his audience last night by talking almost exclusively about archeology and tourism during his "Herzliya Speech." Not that anyone was expecting to be told the exact date and time of Israel's speculated military operation against Iran. But the trick was well done, and I can picture Uzi Arad enjoying the frustration of his successor.
My conclusion from this year's Herzliya Conference is that Israel must adopt a tri-dimensional strategy with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still a matter of ideological debate. The debate is no longer about territorial integrity versus peace (both sides to that debate have long been defeated by reality), but about 1967 versus 1948. In other words, can the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular be trusted that they will leave Israel alone if and when the results of the 1967 war are settled, or will they always insist on settling the results of the 1948 war?
Dan Meridor hasn't made up his mind on that. At the Herzliya Conference, he told the story (which I've heard from him before) of a meeting he had with Mahmoud Abbas before the 2000 Camp David Summit. Abbas told Meridor he took his son to Nazareth, showed him the house where he was born and said: "We are not coming back to this house." This gave Meridor the impression that the Palestinians had given up on the "right of return."
But then at Camp David Abbas was the one, of all people, who insisted on not budging on the "right of return." Meridor says he's still not sure whether the Palestinians are after us for 1967 or 1948. "If it's 1967, the conflict can be settled" he says. "If it's 1948, it can't." He also says the status-quo is untenable, implying that the conflict must be settled. He did not say what he would recommend doing if and when it becomes clear to him that the conflict is not about 1967 but about 1948.
Dan Schueftan (from Haifa University), for his part, has no doubt that the conflict is about 1948 and therefore that there is no solution to it. Because the conflict with the Palestinians has no solution, Israel must free itself from the Palestinians by getting out of most of the West Bank, "not because the Palestinians deserve it, but because Israel does not deserve to be stuck with them" he says.
Eliot Abrams (from the Council on Foreign Relations) did not clearly state his opinion on the 1948 vs. 1967 debate, though he did say that there would have been no Israeli offer that could have satisfied Arafat, and that Abbas is playing for time because he knows he's a lame duck and doesn't want to be remembered as the first Palestinian leader who gave up on the "right of return." If this doesn't mean that the conflict is about 1948, what does it mean?
The debate at the conference was basically between Dan Schueftan and Eliot Abrams on the one hand, and Danny Rothschild (the Conference's new Chairman) and Daniel Kurtzer (a former US ambassador to Israel) on the other. Rothschild and Kurtzer are of the opinion that the conflict is about 1967 and therefore can it be settled (why, in that case, was the Arab world at war with Israel before 1967 and established the PLO in 1964 is a question for them to answer).
This is why they recommend responding positively to the "Arab Peace Initiative." Kurtzer basically told his audience not to believe any of his co-panelists on that (except for Rothschild) but to only trust him (this reminded my of an op-ed Evelyn Gordon wrote in The Jerusalem Post when Kurtzer was still ambassador to Israel. The title was: "Dan Kurtzer Behaves like an Israeli." Indeed).
Olmert's offer to Abbas in September 2008 basically endorsed the "Arab Peace Initiative." Yet Abbas rejected it. Kurtzer tried to exonerate Abbas by saying that Olmert was a lame duck at the time. But, as Eliot Abrams revealed, the Bush Administration encouraged Abbas to take the offer. As Abrams argued, if Abbas was serious and sincere about ending the conflict with a pre-1967 Israel, he would have pocketed the offer and then could have blamed the new Israeli government for not honoring it (especially since, in September 2008, the prospect was that Tzipi Livni would replace Ehud Olmert, not that new elections in Israel would be held).
There is a major weakness and contradiction in Danny Rothschild's argument. Because the status quo is demographically suicidal, he says, Israel must extricate itself from it. He rejects the idea of doing so unilaterally because he claims the security challenges of a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank would be as suicidal as the demographic ticking bomb.
So we simply must have a deal with the Palestinians. What he is saying is that Israel should expect the Palestinians to save Israel from the Palestinians.
That doesn't make sense, however, because Israel's nightmare (i.e. letting time and demography make the two-state solution irrelevant) is the Palestinians' dream. In fact, Saeb Erekat just published a paper recommending the replacement of the two-state solution by the one-state solution. It is precisely because the Palestinians know that Israel is petrified by the idea of becoming a bi-national state that they are playing for time.
If Israel wishes to separate itself from the Palestinians, it should not expect the Palestinians' cooperation in doing so. This is why I've been convinced since 2000 that only Dan Schueftan's idea makes sense.
Shueftan's strategy can only be implemented, however, if Israel completes the (expensive) technology to protect itself from short-range missiles, effectively deters Iran and its proxies, and takes the "soft war" to the enemy's court.
Operation Cast Lead proved that Israel has the military capability of deterring rocket attacks from unilaterally evacuated areas, but also that the Palestinians completely outmaneuver Israel in the diplomatic and media arenas.
It took the Goldstone Report for Israel to finally realize (with a 40 year delay) that the Arab world has been waging a "soft war" against Israel through the media, the UN and NGOs since the 1973 war.
When she was Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni endorsed her Ministry's idiotic stance that the "soft war" is about "branding" and convincing the world that Israel is cool.
The British judge that issued an arrest warrant against her two months ago was obviously not impressed by the fact that Israel has nice beaches and impressive high-tech companies. It is about time that Israel's leadership realizes that the Goldstone Report (which Prime Minister Netanyahu described as a strategic threat to Israel) is the result of the "soft war" and that this war must be fought with a clear and consistent strategy. It is an embarrassment to Israel that the "soft war" has been mostly fought so far by private organizations (such as Palestinian Media Watch, UN Watch, NGO Monitor, and BICOM, to name a few), while our Foreign Ministry only knows how to whine about its puny PR budget.
As for Iran, deterrence is and will continue to be a tricky issue. At the conference yesterday, Switzerland's former ambassador to Iran, Tim Guldiman, basically said that we should continue to negotiate with Ahmanadinejad while not even thinking of toppling his regime. This statement, of course, tells a lot about Switzerland's interests in Iran. In April 2009, Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz warmly hosted Ahmadinejad.
Meanwhile, the Swiss energy company EGL signed in 2008 a deal with Iran to import 5.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually between 2011 and 2035 (a move that undermines US efforts to put economic pressure on Iran). No wonder Guldiman was very vocal about leaving Ahmadinejad alone.
François Heisbourg, Chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and of the Geneva Centre for Security Studies, argued that talks with Iran have become pointless, that even a complete embargo on refined oil would not threaten the mullahs' regime (because it would only affect about 50% of the country's oil consumption), and that if a military strike was able to delay the Iranian nuclear program for as long as the 1981 Israeli strike in Osiraq managed to delay the Iraqi nuclear program, it would definitely be worthwhile considering.
Israel's week points are not only Palestinian demographics, Arab propaganda, and Iran's nuclear program, however. Another weak point is the world's dependence on oil.
Two panels at the Conference were devoted to this topic. James Woosley (a former CIA Director who is a strong advocate of US energy independence) was very vocal about his claim that the West is funding its enemies and digging its own grave by not weaning itself from oil.
Yossi Hollander (an Israeli entrepreneur who now invests most of his time and money in the anti-oil lobby) convincingly showed that oil is a curse to the world economy and a major reason for US "tolerance" vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia.
Gal Luft (an Israeli energy expert based in Washington) argued that it takes political leadership to turn scientific knowledge into energy revolutions.
He took the example of Napoléon Bonaparte who decided he had enough with France's dependency on salt and offered a prize for the discovery of an alternative to food preservation.
This is how vacuum cans were born and made France "salt free." Hence the title of Luft's book Turning Oil into Salt.
The knowledge to dethrone oil is there; we just need leadership, and Israel should lead the way not least because it is the main geopolitical victim of oil supremacy. It is encouraging that Netanyahu has adopted the idea and set-up a team (headed by Prof. Eugene Kandel from the Hebrew University) to make Israel a world leader in alternative energies. It is, after all, thanks to Shimon Peres' personal involvement that Shai Agassi started Better Place.
So Israel's strategy must be threefold: 1. Prepare the ground for a de facto separation from the Palestinians; 2. Proactively and professionally wage the "soft war" it has been loosing for nearly four decades; 3. Lead the way in the energy revolution. If Israel manages to extricate itself from the Palestinians, to neutralize Arab propaganda, and to help the world wean itself from oil, its geopolitical situation would improve dramatically.
As for Iran, don't count on Switzerland. But if a nuclear winter eventually embraces our region, at least we Israelis will be able to enjoy, in the meantime, the new archeological and tourist sites promised last night by Netanyahu.
Dr. Emmanuel Navon (formerly: Mréjen) is a consultant, an academic and a public speaker specialized in International Relations. He was born in 1971 in Paris, where he went to an English-speaking school and graduated from Sciences-Po (MA in Public Administration), one of Europe's most distinguished universities. While at Sciences-Po he interned at the French Foreign Ministry, specializing in International Organizations, and at the French Finance Ministry, specializing in International Political Economy.
In 1993, he moved to Israel, pursuing graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he earned a Ph.D. in International Relations. During his graduate studies he consulted to the Israeli Foreign Ministry on UN Reform and was selected to join the Shalem Center as a research fellow.
He was awarded the Yehoshafat Harkabi Prize for his MA Thesis and the Yaacov Herzog Prize for his Doctoral Dissertation.
Upon the completion of his academic studies, he worked as a consultant for Arttic, the leading group in Europe and Israel specialized in the preparation and management of technology-related partnerships.
There, he built European-Israeli consortia and consulted to large Israeli companies such as the Israel Aircraft Industries, Israel Electric, and Teva. After Arttic, he served as Vice-President of GoldNames, an investment company focusing on serving the Internet domain name asset class. He was instrumental in building the company's presence in the French-speaking market, and became well acquainted with Israel's high-tech industry.
With the sudden deterioration of Israel's international image and economic activity at the turn of the new millennium, Dr. Navon engaged in writing and public speaking, making the case for Israel in the foreign media and on university campuses. He was appointed CEO of the Business Network for International Cooperation (BNIC), an organization founded by Israeli high-tech legends Yehuda Zisapel and Eli Ayalon, to train Israeli business leaders for pro-Israel advocacy overseas.
In 2005, Emmanuel Navon left BNIC and founded his own company, The Navon Group Ltd. (which became The Navon-Levy Group in 2007), an international business consultancy dedicated to the strengthening of Israel's economic and strategic ties with emerging markets, especially in Africa.
In addition, he teaches at Tel-Aviv University 's Abba Eban Graduate Program for Diplomacy Studies, where he organized and chaired, between 2004 and 2008, the "Ambassadors' Forum," a regular encounter where foreign diplomats and leading Israel public figures jointly discussed current international affairs.
Dr. Navon is the author of A Plight among the Nations -Israel's Foreign Policy Between Nationalism and Realism (VDM Verlag, 2009) and of numerous articles. His blog is read by thousands of people around the world.
He is a proud reservist in the IDF, and a no less proud member of Likud (Israel's largest conservative party), and of the Movement for Quality of Government in Israel (an Israeli NGO committed to clean politics).
He sits on the boards of TrackBull Mutual Funds, an Israeli investment firm specialized in EFTs, and of EMET (Endowment for Middle East Truth), a brave and politically incorrect Washington think tank.
Dr. Navon is a regular political commentator for television channels, radio stations and newspapers in Israel, in the United States, in Europe, and in Canada. He is fluent in English, Hebrew and French, and is conversant in German.
He lives in Efrat, Israel, with his wife and their four children.
www.navon.com
Benjamin Netanyahu did a good job confusing his audience last night by talking almost exclusively about archeology and tourism during his "Herzliya Speech." Not that anyone was expecting to be told the exact date and time of Israel's speculated military operation against Iran. But the trick was well done, and I can picture Uzi Arad enjoying the frustration of his successor.
My conclusion from this year's Herzliya Conference is that Israel must adopt a tri-dimensional strategy with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still a matter of ideological debate. The debate is no longer about territorial integrity versus peace (both sides to that debate have long been defeated by reality), but about 1967 versus 1948. In other words, can the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular be trusted that they will leave Israel alone if and when the results of the 1967 war are settled, or will they always insist on settling the results of the 1948 war?
Dan Meridor hasn't made up his mind on that. At the Herzliya Conference, he told the story (which I've heard from him before) of a meeting he had with Mahmoud Abbas before the 2000 Camp David Summit. Abbas told Meridor he took his son to Nazareth, showed him the house where he was born and said: "We are not coming back to this house." This gave Meridor the impression that the Palestinians had given up on the "right of return."
But then at Camp David Abbas was the one, of all people, who insisted on not budging on the "right of return." Meridor says he's still not sure whether the Palestinians are after us for 1967 or 1948. "If it's 1967, the conflict can be settled" he says. "If it's 1948, it can't." He also says the status-quo is untenable, implying that the conflict must be settled. He did not say what he would recommend doing if and when it becomes clear to him that the conflict is not about 1967 but about 1948.
Dan Schueftan (from Haifa University), for his part, has no doubt that the conflict is about 1948 and therefore that there is no solution to it. Because the conflict with the Palestinians has no solution, Israel must free itself from the Palestinians by getting out of most of the West Bank, "not because the Palestinians deserve it, but because Israel does not deserve to be stuck with them" he says.
Eliot Abrams (from the Council on Foreign Relations) did not clearly state his opinion on the 1948 vs. 1967 debate, though he did say that there would have been no Israeli offer that could have satisfied Arafat, and that Abbas is playing for time because he knows he's a lame duck and doesn't want to be remembered as the first Palestinian leader who gave up on the "right of return." If this doesn't mean that the conflict is about 1948, what does it mean?
The debate at the conference was basically between Dan Schueftan and Eliot Abrams on the one hand, and Danny Rothschild (the Conference's new Chairman) and Daniel Kurtzer (a former US ambassador to Israel) on the other. Rothschild and Kurtzer are of the opinion that the conflict is about 1967 and therefore can it be settled (why, in that case, was the Arab world at war with Israel before 1967 and established the PLO in 1964 is a question for them to answer).
This is why they recommend responding positively to the "Arab Peace Initiative." Kurtzer basically told his audience not to believe any of his co-panelists on that (except for Rothschild) but to only trust him (this reminded my of an op-ed Evelyn Gordon wrote in The Jerusalem Post when Kurtzer was still ambassador to Israel. The title was: "Dan Kurtzer Behaves like an Israeli." Indeed).
Olmert's offer to Abbas in September 2008 basically endorsed the "Arab Peace Initiative." Yet Abbas rejected it. Kurtzer tried to exonerate Abbas by saying that Olmert was a lame duck at the time. But, as Eliot Abrams revealed, the Bush Administration encouraged Abbas to take the offer. As Abrams argued, if Abbas was serious and sincere about ending the conflict with a pre-1967 Israel, he would have pocketed the offer and then could have blamed the new Israeli government for not honoring it (especially since, in September 2008, the prospect was that Tzipi Livni would replace Ehud Olmert, not that new elections in Israel would be held).
There is a major weakness and contradiction in Danny Rothschild's argument. Because the status quo is demographically suicidal, he says, Israel must extricate itself from it. He rejects the idea of doing so unilaterally because he claims the security challenges of a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank would be as suicidal as the demographic ticking bomb.
So we simply must have a deal with the Palestinians. What he is saying is that Israel should expect the Palestinians to save Israel from the Palestinians.
That doesn't make sense, however, because Israel's nightmare (i.e. letting time and demography make the two-state solution irrelevant) is the Palestinians' dream. In fact, Saeb Erekat just published a paper recommending the replacement of the two-state solution by the one-state solution. It is precisely because the Palestinians know that Israel is petrified by the idea of becoming a bi-national state that they are playing for time.
If Israel wishes to separate itself from the Palestinians, it should not expect the Palestinians' cooperation in doing so. This is why I've been convinced since 2000 that only Dan Schueftan's idea makes sense.
Shueftan's strategy can only be implemented, however, if Israel completes the (expensive) technology to protect itself from short-range missiles, effectively deters Iran and its proxies, and takes the "soft war" to the enemy's court.
Operation Cast Lead proved that Israel has the military capability of deterring rocket attacks from unilaterally evacuated areas, but also that the Palestinians completely outmaneuver Israel in the diplomatic and media arenas.
It took the Goldstone Report for Israel to finally realize (with a 40 year delay) that the Arab world has been waging a "soft war" against Israel through the media, the UN and NGOs since the 1973 war.
When she was Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni endorsed her Ministry's idiotic stance that the "soft war" is about "branding" and convincing the world that Israel is cool.
The British judge that issued an arrest warrant against her two months ago was obviously not impressed by the fact that Israel has nice beaches and impressive high-tech companies. It is about time that Israel's leadership realizes that the Goldstone Report (which Prime Minister Netanyahu described as a strategic threat to Israel) is the result of the "soft war" and that this war must be fought with a clear and consistent strategy. It is an embarrassment to Israel that the "soft war" has been mostly fought so far by private organizations (such as Palestinian Media Watch, UN Watch, NGO Monitor, and BICOM, to name a few), while our Foreign Ministry only knows how to whine about its puny PR budget.
As for Iran, deterrence is and will continue to be a tricky issue. At the conference yesterday, Switzerland's former ambassador to Iran, Tim Guldiman, basically said that we should continue to negotiate with Ahmanadinejad while not even thinking of toppling his regime. This statement, of course, tells a lot about Switzerland's interests in Iran. In April 2009, Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz warmly hosted Ahmadinejad.
Meanwhile, the Swiss energy company EGL signed in 2008 a deal with Iran to import 5.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually between 2011 and 2035 (a move that undermines US efforts to put economic pressure on Iran). No wonder Guldiman was very vocal about leaving Ahmadinejad alone.
François Heisbourg, Chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and of the Geneva Centre for Security Studies, argued that talks with Iran have become pointless, that even a complete embargo on refined oil would not threaten the mullahs' regime (because it would only affect about 50% of the country's oil consumption), and that if a military strike was able to delay the Iranian nuclear program for as long as the 1981 Israeli strike in Osiraq managed to delay the Iraqi nuclear program, it would definitely be worthwhile considering.
Israel's week points are not only Palestinian demographics, Arab propaganda, and Iran's nuclear program, however. Another weak point is the world's dependence on oil.
Two panels at the Conference were devoted to this topic. James Woosley (a former CIA Director who is a strong advocate of US energy independence) was very vocal about his claim that the West is funding its enemies and digging its own grave by not weaning itself from oil.
Yossi Hollander (an Israeli entrepreneur who now invests most of his time and money in the anti-oil lobby) convincingly showed that oil is a curse to the world economy and a major reason for US "tolerance" vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia.
Gal Luft (an Israeli energy expert based in Washington) argued that it takes political leadership to turn scientific knowledge into energy revolutions.
He took the example of Napoléon Bonaparte who decided he had enough with France's dependency on salt and offered a prize for the discovery of an alternative to food preservation.
This is how vacuum cans were born and made France "salt free." Hence the title of Luft's book Turning Oil into Salt.
The knowledge to dethrone oil is there; we just need leadership, and Israel should lead the way not least because it is the main geopolitical victim of oil supremacy. It is encouraging that Netanyahu has adopted the idea and set-up a team (headed by Prof. Eugene Kandel from the Hebrew University) to make Israel a world leader in alternative energies. It is, after all, thanks to Shimon Peres' personal involvement that Shai Agassi started Better Place.
So Israel's strategy must be threefold: 1. Prepare the ground for a de facto separation from the Palestinians; 2. Proactively and professionally wage the "soft war" it has been loosing for nearly four decades; 3. Lead the way in the energy revolution. If Israel manages to extricate itself from the Palestinians, to neutralize Arab propaganda, and to help the world wean itself from oil, its geopolitical situation would improve dramatically.
As for Iran, don't count on Switzerland. But if a nuclear winter eventually embraces our region, at least we Israelis will be able to enjoy, in the meantime, the new archeological and tourist sites promised last night by Netanyahu.
Dr. Emmanuel Navon (formerly: Mréjen) is a consultant, an academic and a public speaker specialized in International Relations. He was born in 1971 in Paris, where he went to an English-speaking school and graduated from Sciences-Po (MA in Public Administration), one of Europe's most distinguished universities. While at Sciences-Po he interned at the French Foreign Ministry, specializing in International Organizations, and at the French Finance Ministry, specializing in International Political Economy.
In 1993, he moved to Israel, pursuing graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he earned a Ph.D. in International Relations. During his graduate studies he consulted to the Israeli Foreign Ministry on UN Reform and was selected to join the Shalem Center as a research fellow.
He was awarded the Yehoshafat Harkabi Prize for his MA Thesis and the Yaacov Herzog Prize for his Doctoral Dissertation.
Upon the completion of his academic studies, he worked as a consultant for Arttic, the leading group in Europe and Israel specialized in the preparation and management of technology-related partnerships.
There, he built European-Israeli consortia and consulted to large Israeli companies such as the Israel Aircraft Industries, Israel Electric, and Teva. After Arttic, he served as Vice-President of GoldNames, an investment company focusing on serving the Internet domain name asset class. He was instrumental in building the company's presence in the French-speaking market, and became well acquainted with Israel's high-tech industry.
With the sudden deterioration of Israel's international image and economic activity at the turn of the new millennium, Dr. Navon engaged in writing and public speaking, making the case for Israel in the foreign media and on university campuses. He was appointed CEO of the Business Network for International Cooperation (BNIC), an organization founded by Israeli high-tech legends Yehuda Zisapel and Eli Ayalon, to train Israeli business leaders for pro-Israel advocacy overseas.
In 2005, Emmanuel Navon left BNIC and founded his own company, The Navon Group Ltd. (which became The Navon-Levy Group in 2007), an international business consultancy dedicated to the strengthening of Israel's economic and strategic ties with emerging markets, especially in Africa.
In addition, he teaches at Tel-Aviv University 's Abba Eban Graduate Program for Diplomacy Studies, where he organized and chaired, between 2004 and 2008, the "Ambassadors' Forum," a regular encounter where foreign diplomats and leading Israel public figures jointly discussed current international affairs.
Dr. Navon is the author of A Plight among the Nations -Israel's Foreign Policy Between Nationalism and Realism (VDM Verlag, 2009) and of numerous articles. His blog is read by thousands of people around the world.
He is a proud reservist in the IDF, and a no less proud member of Likud (Israel's largest conservative party), and of the Movement for Quality of Government in Israel (an Israeli NGO committed to clean politics).
He sits on the boards of TrackBull Mutual Funds, an Israeli investment firm specialized in EFTs, and of EMET (Endowment for Middle East Truth), a brave and politically incorrect Washington think tank.
Dr. Navon is a regular political commentator for television channels, radio stations and newspapers in Israel, in the United States, in Europe, and in Canada. He is fluent in English, Hebrew and French, and is conversant in German.
He lives in Efrat, Israel, with his wife and their four children.
Israeli Intelligence Think Tank Hosts Palestinian leader: Issues Ultimatum to Israel
by David Bedein
On Tuesday, February 2, Palestinian Authority leader Salman Fayyad made an unprecedented appearance at the annual “Herzlia conference” of the leading lights of Israeli intelligence, and used the occasion to issue an ultimatum to Israel, in which Fayyad, appointed as the Prime Minister of the PA by Machmud Abbas, declared that he would a Palestinian state within two years.
Fayyad said: “We have shown that we are serious in our intention to establish a state. We will do everything possible to be ready for this within two years”.
Fayyad’s theme was that “a failure to establish a state within two years could create severe disappointment on the Palestinian street”. Fayyad clarified that the international community also expects to see a solution within this time span, and that the Palestinian demand is to create a situation in which the world applies pressure on Israel.
Fayyad laced his presentation with statements of recent PLO history that had nothing to do with reality. Fayyad declared that the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the patron of the Palestinian Authority, had recognized Israel at the PLO’s conference in 1988 and in the wake of the Oslo Accord in 1993.
What Fayyad failed to mention was that at the PLO conference in 1988, which convened in Algiers, he refused to recognize Israel, while the media and many wishful thinking diplomats quoted a memo from Palestinian sources BEFORE the Algiers conference which assessed that the PLO was “expected to cancel the PLO covenant and recognize Israel”, a decision which never occurred.
The 1993 myth of PLO recognition is even more interesting.
The Oslo “Declaration of Principles” mutual recognition peace accords were indeed signed by the PLO’s Machmud Abbas and Yassir Arafat together with Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993.
Yet the Israeli Knesset Parliament ratified the Oslo Accords on September 25, 1993 - while the PLO would not ratify the accords when the PLO executive convened in Tunis on October 6, 1993 and the PLO’s Palestinian National Council convened in Gaza on April 24, 1996 to cancel the PLO Covenant which calls for Israel’s destruction and simply refused to do so and has never cancelled the PLO Covenant.
Fayyad also addressed security issues, demanding that Israel stop military incursions in areas governed by the Palestinian Authority, which have continued since Israel reestablished its presence in Palestinian cities and villages and refugee camps since April, 2002, greatly reducing terror attacks from Palestinian areas, after Palestinian terrorists had infiltrated Israel and murdered more than 1,000 people in Israel between 1993 and 2002.
During 2009, with Israeli military presence firmly entrenched in Palestinian areas, five Israelis were murdered by Palestinian terrorist infiltrators, as opposed the tens of Israelis per month who were murdered by terrorist infiltrators at the beginning of the decade.
However, Fayyad was firm in his demand that Israel must withdraw its military presence from all Palestinian areas: “The meaning of an end to the occupation is Palestinian presence, and not Israeli presence, in this area. We have proven ourselves from a security standpoint. Dealing with the security situation is not in Israel’s interests, it is also in the Palestinians’ interests”, including Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Fayyad went on to say that “ In all the agreements and understandings, nothing has ever been said to contradict the fact that East Jerusalem is an inseparable part of the Palestinian state...You are building exactly in the places where the Palestinian state is supposed to be established”
Along with this, Fayyad issued a further demand, to remove the “siege from the Gaza Strip”, without any call for the Palestinian Hamas regime that rules Gaza to cease and desist from hostile activity against Israel, saying that “ Removing it will contribute to a positive dynamic in advance of achieving internal Palestinian unity”. Fayyad added that if the Palestinian Authority were given a chance, it could rehabilitate Gaza very quickly. Fayyad forgot to mention that there is no chance that the PA will ever rule Gaza, where Hamas’s Gaza government remains unchallenged.
In terms of Fayyad’s call to remove Israeli military presence from Palestinian areas, Fayyad conveniently forgot to mention to the rank and file of Israeli intelligence that armed Israeli military intelligence forces protect his home and family in the Jerusalem Arab neighborhood of Beit Hanina, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and that Israeli security guards often accompany Fayyad during his travels.
How would Fayyad react to the removal of Israeli military protection from his home and family?
On Tuesday, February 2, Palestinian Authority leader Salman Fayyad made an unprecedented appearance at the annual “Herzlia conference” of the leading lights of Israeli intelligence, and used the occasion to issue an ultimatum to Israel, in which Fayyad, appointed as the Prime Minister of the PA by Machmud Abbas, declared that he would a Palestinian state within two years.
Fayyad said: “We have shown that we are serious in our intention to establish a state. We will do everything possible to be ready for this within two years”.
Fayyad’s theme was that “a failure to establish a state within two years could create severe disappointment on the Palestinian street”. Fayyad clarified that the international community also expects to see a solution within this time span, and that the Palestinian demand is to create a situation in which the world applies pressure on Israel.
Fayyad laced his presentation with statements of recent PLO history that had nothing to do with reality. Fayyad declared that the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the patron of the Palestinian Authority, had recognized Israel at the PLO’s conference in 1988 and in the wake of the Oslo Accord in 1993.
What Fayyad failed to mention was that at the PLO conference in 1988, which convened in Algiers, he refused to recognize Israel, while the media and many wishful thinking diplomats quoted a memo from Palestinian sources BEFORE the Algiers conference which assessed that the PLO was “expected to cancel the PLO covenant and recognize Israel”, a decision which never occurred.
The 1993 myth of PLO recognition is even more interesting.
The Oslo “Declaration of Principles” mutual recognition peace accords were indeed signed by the PLO’s Machmud Abbas and Yassir Arafat together with Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993.
Yet the Israeli Knesset Parliament ratified the Oslo Accords on September 25, 1993 - while the PLO would not ratify the accords when the PLO executive convened in Tunis on October 6, 1993 and the PLO’s Palestinian National Council convened in Gaza on April 24, 1996 to cancel the PLO Covenant which calls for Israel’s destruction and simply refused to do so and has never cancelled the PLO Covenant.
Fayyad also addressed security issues, demanding that Israel stop military incursions in areas governed by the Palestinian Authority, which have continued since Israel reestablished its presence in Palestinian cities and villages and refugee camps since April, 2002, greatly reducing terror attacks from Palestinian areas, after Palestinian terrorists had infiltrated Israel and murdered more than 1,000 people in Israel between 1993 and 2002.
During 2009, with Israeli military presence firmly entrenched in Palestinian areas, five Israelis were murdered by Palestinian terrorist infiltrators, as opposed the tens of Israelis per month who were murdered by terrorist infiltrators at the beginning of the decade.
However, Fayyad was firm in his demand that Israel must withdraw its military presence from all Palestinian areas: “The meaning of an end to the occupation is Palestinian presence, and not Israeli presence, in this area. We have proven ourselves from a security standpoint. Dealing with the security situation is not in Israel’s interests, it is also in the Palestinians’ interests”, including Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Fayyad went on to say that “ In all the agreements and understandings, nothing has ever been said to contradict the fact that East Jerusalem is an inseparable part of the Palestinian state...You are building exactly in the places where the Palestinian state is supposed to be established”
Along with this, Fayyad issued a further demand, to remove the “siege from the Gaza Strip”, without any call for the Palestinian Hamas regime that rules Gaza to cease and desist from hostile activity against Israel, saying that “ Removing it will contribute to a positive dynamic in advance of achieving internal Palestinian unity”. Fayyad added that if the Palestinian Authority were given a chance, it could rehabilitate Gaza very quickly. Fayyad forgot to mention that there is no chance that the PA will ever rule Gaza, where Hamas’s Gaza government remains unchallenged.
In terms of Fayyad’s call to remove Israeli military presence from Palestinian areas, Fayyad conveniently forgot to mention to the rank and file of Israeli intelligence that armed Israeli military intelligence forces protect his home and family in the Jerusalem Arab neighborhood of Beit Hanina, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and that Israeli security guards often accompany Fayyad during his travels.
How would Fayyad react to the removal of Israeli military protection from his home and family?
On Free Speech and Informed Public Debate: An Open Letter to NIF and Affiliated NGOs
By Professor Gerald Steinberg and the NGO Monitor staff
To ACRI, Bimkom, B’Tselem, Gisha, PCATI, Yesh Din, HaMoked, PHR-I, Rabbis for Human Rights, and New Israel Fund (NIF):
The recent attacks directed against NGO Monitor’s detailed research represent a dangerous attempt to prevent free speech and informed public debate on the political role of some NGOs. In particular, in your February 1, 2010 letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu , you tendentiously referred to NGO Monitor as an “extreme group” that “unleashed an unrestrained and inflammatory [attack],” and implied that we are the “rotten fruits” of Israeli democracy; B’Tselem’s US representative, Mitchell Plitnick, labeled us “extremists” and “right wing”; and, a few months ago, an NIF employee posted an indecent graphic on his blog (which was later removed) to illustrate his opinion of NGO Monitor’s publications.
These characterizations are inconsistent with claims to uphold the mantle of human rights and democracy in Israel. Contrary to the implications of your letter, NGO Monitor has never contested the right of civil society organizations to exist or to criticize. And if your rhetoric about upholding free speech in Israel were matched by your policies, you would uphold our right as an independent research organization, and the rights of NGOs that do not share your political views, to do the same.
The critical debate surrounding foreign government funding for NGOs that undertake political advocacy in Israel is legitimate, and all sides have the right to be heard.
The concerns about your political activities and their relationship to campaigns delegitimizing and demonizing Israel are valid. Criticism is not repression.
These latest attacks are consistent with your continuing refusal to engage NGO Monitor and other significant critics in meaningful dialogue. Instead, you have repeatedly avoided debate. Most recently, you were provided the opportunity for an open platform at a Knesset conference on European government funding for political NGOs, but chose instead to boycott and question the legitimacy of this forum.
NGO Monitor remains committed to engaging with you in public debate on the role of political NGOs in Israeli society and in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is time to move beyond counter-productive name-calling and attempts to silence critics.
Prof. Gerald Steinberg and the NGO Monitor staff
View the original article at NGO Monitor
To ACRI, Bimkom, B’Tselem, Gisha, PCATI, Yesh Din, HaMoked, PHR-I, Rabbis for Human Rights, and New Israel Fund (NIF):
The recent attacks directed against NGO Monitor’s detailed research represent a dangerous attempt to prevent free speech and informed public debate on the political role of some NGOs. In particular, in your February 1, 2010 letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu , you tendentiously referred to NGO Monitor as an “extreme group” that “unleashed an unrestrained and inflammatory [attack],” and implied that we are the “rotten fruits” of Israeli democracy; B’Tselem’s US representative, Mitchell Plitnick, labeled us “extremists” and “right wing”; and, a few months ago, an NIF employee posted an indecent graphic on his blog (which was later removed) to illustrate his opinion of NGO Monitor’s publications.
These characterizations are inconsistent with claims to uphold the mantle of human rights and democracy in Israel. Contrary to the implications of your letter, NGO Monitor has never contested the right of civil society organizations to exist or to criticize. And if your rhetoric about upholding free speech in Israel were matched by your policies, you would uphold our right as an independent research organization, and the rights of NGOs that do not share your political views, to do the same.
The critical debate surrounding foreign government funding for NGOs that undertake political advocacy in Israel is legitimate, and all sides have the right to be heard.
The concerns about your political activities and their relationship to campaigns delegitimizing and demonizing Israel are valid. Criticism is not repression.
These latest attacks are consistent with your continuing refusal to engage NGO Monitor and other significant critics in meaningful dialogue. Instead, you have repeatedly avoided debate. Most recently, you were provided the opportunity for an open platform at a Knesset conference on European government funding for political NGOs, but chose instead to boycott and question the legitimacy of this forum.
NGO Monitor remains committed to engaging with you in public debate on the role of political NGOs in Israeli society and in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is time to move beyond counter-productive name-calling and attempts to silence critics.
Prof. Gerald Steinberg and the NGO Monitor staff
View the original article at NGO Monitor
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Special Report: THE INCITEMENT REPORT, Volume 1, Issue 1: Incitement by the Palestinian Authority
THE INCITEMENT REPORT
VOL. I, ISSUE I
Incitement by the Palestinian Authority
November 2009 - January 2010
PUBLISHED BY:
THE CENTER FOR NEAR EAST POLICY RESEARCH
BEIT AGRON INTERNATIONAL PRESS CENTER
37 HILLEL STREET
JERUSALEM 94581 ISRAEL
TEL. 02 6236368
CtrForNearEastPolicyResearch@gmail.com
www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com
_____________________________________________
q Al-Ayyam (PA), November 12, 2009, reported:#
“Mahmoud Abbas…spoke in favor of armed resistance at a rally marking the fifth anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death: ‘We will continue [Arafat's] long and exhausting struggle [that was] fraught with blood, sweat, and tears. The road [we are traveling] today is anchored in a noble heritage of struggle that we built with brave hands, an enlightened mind, and a national thinking [rooted in] long experience. We combined armed struggle with political activity. Our guns were not the guns of highway robbers. They were political guns [promoting] a noble goal.’
q According to El-Shourouq (Tunisia), November 15, 2009:#
Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Sha'ath said in an interview: "Today we have the right to return to the armed struggle in order to restore our rights. For 18 years we tried to negotiate, but Israel has continued its aggression, destruction, massacres and [construction of] settlements. Today we have the right to turn back to the alternative [routes]... If negotiations fail, we will turn to armed struggle. This is our right, as I have said... International law stipulates that, when an occupying [force] takes one's land and harms one's honor, one has the right to resort to armed struggle."
q Hafez Al-Barghouthi, editor of the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, wrote on November 15, 2009:#
"[We] must bring things to the point of no return: either [we obtain] a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the June 4, 1967 borders, or the flood will descend...
"The Palestinian people will not allow its tragedy to repeat itself without a reaction. If it must choose between a quick death and a slow one, it will choose the short road and set the land on fire everywhere...
"We owe nothing to anyone. On the contrary, it is others who owe us a huge debt. If the roads to peace are blocked by settlements and international conspiracies, we will turn ourselves into paragons of sacrifice... When we no longer have anything to lose, it will be [the Israelis] who will lose..."
q On December 24, 2009, three members of Al-Aksa Brigades killed Rabbi Meir Avshalom Chai in a drive-by shooting in Samaria and fled. Two days later, the IDF had tracked them to their homes, in the Nablus area . Two refused to come out of their homes and surrender; a third came out using his wife as a shield and was thought to be armed. They were all shot dead.
By December 27, the Palestinian Authority leadership and PA-controlled media had begun to refer to the three as shahids – holy martyrs:#
PA President Mahmoud Abbas sent a personal emissary – Secretary General of the President’s Bureau, Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim – to the homes of their families. He carried letters from Abbas that conveyed condolences and informed the families of his decision to name them “Shahids of the Palestinian Revolution” (PA TV)
Said Al-Rahim: "Without doubt, what the occupation authorities have carried out is a wild and barbaric act and a deliberate, malicious assassination in cold blood."
PA TV featured a poster of the three terrorists, expressing condolences from Abbas. The text on the poster read:
"With honor and admiration to those who are more honored than all of us.
"The Palestine Liberation Organization, Fatah, accompanies to their wedding [of martyrs with virgins in Paradise]:
“The Martyr, Commander, Hero: Rassan Abu Serah
”The Martyr, Commander, Hero: Ra'ed Al Aschregi
”The Martyr, Commander, Hero: Anan Sobh
The Director General of the Presidency expresses condolences to the Nablus Martyrs - in the name of the President [Abbas].”
Additionally, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad personally visited the homes of the families of these men and conveyed condolences.
It should be noted that there was denial of what the three men had done. There was no claim that “innocent” men had been mistakenly killed by the IDF.
Maan News Agency on December 26 referred to the activity of these men, “which led to the death of the settler in a shooting operation."
q Dalal Mughrabi was a young female terrorist who led a party of 11other terrorists down from Lebanon into northern Israel, via the Mediterranean, in 1978. They first killed wildlife photographer Gail Rubin on the beach and then hijacked a bus. When the bus was stopped at a roadblock, and a gun battle ensued, she blew it up. In all 37 civilians, including 10 children, were killed and 71 wounded. This attack, which became known as the Coastal Road Massacre, is one of the worst in Israel’s history. Mughrabi herself was killed in the gun battle.
On December 29, 2009, PA President Mahmoud Abbas honored Mughabri’s memory on the occasion of her 50th birthday. PA dignitaries and a children’s marching band were present for the ceremony.#
A very large banner was displayed at the ceremony. It had Mughrabi’s picture on it. The text read:
"Under the auspices of President Mahmoud Abbas
The Political and National Education Authority Ceremony on the anniversary of the birth of the bride of the cosmos The Shahida (Holy Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi."
Two PA TV broadcasts noted the ceremony.
Additionally, the governor of Ramallah announced the naming of Dalal Mughrabi Square.
While on December 30, 2009, PA spokesman Jamal Nazal, writing in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, referred to her as “the heroine of Palestine’s heroines.”
q Wafa Idris, the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, detonated a bomb in the center of Jerusalem in January 2002 that killed one and injured over 100.
During the first week of January 2010, she was honored as a Shahida (Holy Martyr) in a Fatah promotional video broadcast on PA TV.#
q On January 11, 2010, the following appeared in the PA paper Al-Ayyam:#
Headline: "The occupation accuses the Palestinian leadership of incitement because of Dalal Mughrabi Square -Minister of Culture: Honoring the Shahids is the least we can do, and resistance to the occupation is a legitimate right"
"The occupation government [the Israeli government] has reiterated its familiar tune of accusing the [Palestinian] National Authority of incitement within Palestinian culture. The Israeli Prime Minister... claims that the Palestinian leadership is encouraging terror in its culture.
”Netanyahu claims that the proof, which he presented to the members of his government, is the naming of a square in the region of Ramallah and El-Bireh after the Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi. ...
”Netanyahu is reported as saying: 'Anyone who supports naming [the square] after Dalal Mughrabi, who was responsible for the murder of dozens of Israelis, is encouraging terror and pushing peace further off...'
”Netanyahu was referring to the operation of self-sacrifice led by Mughrabi in 1978, the ‘Coast Operation’ within Israel, which led to the deaths of 36 Israelis. Netanyahu accused the [Palestinian] National Authority of incitement in schools and in cultural activities in general.
”Minister of Culture Siham Barghouti said, in response to the Israeli claims, that 'It is our right to preserve and maintain [the memory] of our fighters who sacrificed their lives for our sake and for the sake of the Palestinian cause.'
”She added: 'Honoring them in this way [by naming public places after them] is the least we can give them, and this is our right, especially since we believe that resistance, in the shadow of the ongoing occupation, is a legitimate right, and we are proud and we pride ourselves on our heritage of struggle, which has been realized by our Shahids and fighters throughout history.'
q Al-Quds, Jerusalem, January 21, 2010, reported:#
“The concluding statement of Fatah's Revolutionary Council meeting said that there was a need to step up the popular resistance and to expand it to all Palestinian areas harmed by the settlements and by the separation fence.”
q On Friday, January 29, 2010, a sermon was broadcast on PA-controlled TV that said in part:
“The Jews, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger! Enemies of humanity in general, and of Palestinians in particular - they wage war against us using all kinds of crimes, and as you see - even the mosques are not spared their racism...
"Oh Muslims! The Jews are the Jews. The Jews are the Jews. Even if donkeys would cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl and snakes to bite, the Jews would not cease to harbor hatred towards Muslims. The Prophet said that if two Jews would be alone with a Muslim, they would think only of killing him. Oh Muslims! This land will be liberated, these holy places and these mosques will be liberated, only by means of a return to the Koran and when all Muslims will be willing to be Jihad Fighters for the sake of Allah and for the sake of supporting Palestine, the Palestinian people, the Palestinian land, and the holy places in Palestine. The Prophet says: 'You shall fight the Jews and kill them…’”#
Incitement by UNRWA
January 2010
Karen AbuZayd has retired as Commissioner-General of UNRWA and has been succeeded by Filippo Grandi, who had been AbuZayd’s lieutenant.
Providing insight into the issue of UNRWA incitement we have Mr. Grandi’s inaugural letter to the UNRWA staff, dated January 26, 2010. It appeared on the UNRWA website.#
Mr. Grandi’s letter includes the following:
“I need not tell you how difficult this period is for the Palestinian people. We are all painfully aware of the counterproductive policies collectively punishing the people of the Gaza Strip; conscious decisions that have caused untold suffering and a dramatic deterioration in the lives of the population, in contravention of international law. One of my key priorities will be to continue to advocate strongly on behalf of the 1.5 million Gazans, and to do so not only until the end of the blockade and the occupation, but also until a just and lasting solution to the plight of the refugees is achieved.
“Despite some recent economic improvements for some, the lives of most Palestinians in the West Bank continue to be made almost impossible by obstacles, walls, movement limitations and other restrictions, and by the expanding threat of settler violence. For those residing in East Jerusalem, as I do, it is cause for daily anguish to watch the situation deteriorate rapidly under our very eyes, especially the ruthless evictions of Palestinians from their homes. UNRWA will continue to stand with the affected families and all of those in need of our protection and will tirelessly lend our voice to their calls for justice.”
There are several seriously tendentious statements – and, in fact, outright misrep resenta tions – included here. But this material is problematic for reasons beyond this: UNRWA’S mandate is purely humanitarian. Grandi is assuming a political stance that is absolutely beyond his purview. How does UNRWA come to “stand with affected families” who have been evicted in eastern Jerusalem?
View the full document at Israel Behind the News
VOL. I, ISSUE I
Incitement by the Palestinian Authority
November 2009 - January 2010
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q Al-Ayyam (PA), November 12, 2009, reported:#
“Mahmoud Abbas…spoke in favor of armed resistance at a rally marking the fifth anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death: ‘We will continue [Arafat's] long and exhausting struggle [that was] fraught with blood, sweat, and tears. The road [we are traveling] today is anchored in a noble heritage of struggle that we built with brave hands, an enlightened mind, and a national thinking [rooted in] long experience. We combined armed struggle with political activity. Our guns were not the guns of highway robbers. They were political guns [promoting] a noble goal.’
q According to El-Shourouq (Tunisia), November 15, 2009:#
Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Sha'ath said in an interview: "Today we have the right to return to the armed struggle in order to restore our rights. For 18 years we tried to negotiate, but Israel has continued its aggression, destruction, massacres and [construction of] settlements. Today we have the right to turn back to the alternative [routes]... If negotiations fail, we will turn to armed struggle. This is our right, as I have said... International law stipulates that, when an occupying [force] takes one's land and harms one's honor, one has the right to resort to armed struggle."
q Hafez Al-Barghouthi, editor of the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, wrote on November 15, 2009:#
"[We] must bring things to the point of no return: either [we obtain] a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the June 4, 1967 borders, or the flood will descend...
"The Palestinian people will not allow its tragedy to repeat itself without a reaction. If it must choose between a quick death and a slow one, it will choose the short road and set the land on fire everywhere...
"We owe nothing to anyone. On the contrary, it is others who owe us a huge debt. If the roads to peace are blocked by settlements and international conspiracies, we will turn ourselves into paragons of sacrifice... When we no longer have anything to lose, it will be [the Israelis] who will lose..."
q On December 24, 2009, three members of Al-Aksa Brigades killed Rabbi Meir Avshalom Chai in a drive-by shooting in Samaria and fled. Two days later, the IDF had tracked them to their homes, in the Nablus area . Two refused to come out of their homes and surrender; a third came out using his wife as a shield and was thought to be armed. They were all shot dead.
By December 27, the Palestinian Authority leadership and PA-controlled media had begun to refer to the three as shahids – holy martyrs:#
PA President Mahmoud Abbas sent a personal emissary – Secretary General of the President’s Bureau, Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim – to the homes of their families. He carried letters from Abbas that conveyed condolences and informed the families of his decision to name them “Shahids of the Palestinian Revolution” (PA TV)
Said Al-Rahim: "Without doubt, what the occupation authorities have carried out is a wild and barbaric act and a deliberate, malicious assassination in cold blood."
PA TV featured a poster of the three terrorists, expressing condolences from Abbas. The text on the poster read:
"With honor and admiration to those who are more honored than all of us.
"The Palestine Liberation Organization, Fatah, accompanies to their wedding [of martyrs with virgins in Paradise]:
“The Martyr, Commander, Hero: Rassan Abu Serah
”The Martyr, Commander, Hero: Ra'ed Al Aschregi
”The Martyr, Commander, Hero: Anan Sobh
The Director General of the Presidency expresses condolences to the Nablus Martyrs - in the name of the President [Abbas].”
Additionally, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad personally visited the homes of the families of these men and conveyed condolences.
It should be noted that there was denial of what the three men had done. There was no claim that “innocent” men had been mistakenly killed by the IDF.
Maan News Agency on December 26 referred to the activity of these men, “which led to the death of the settler in a shooting operation."
q Dalal Mughrabi was a young female terrorist who led a party of 11other terrorists down from Lebanon into northern Israel, via the Mediterranean, in 1978. They first killed wildlife photographer Gail Rubin on the beach and then hijacked a bus. When the bus was stopped at a roadblock, and a gun battle ensued, she blew it up. In all 37 civilians, including 10 children, were killed and 71 wounded. This attack, which became known as the Coastal Road Massacre, is one of the worst in Israel’s history. Mughrabi herself was killed in the gun battle.
On December 29, 2009, PA President Mahmoud Abbas honored Mughabri’s memory on the occasion of her 50th birthday. PA dignitaries and a children’s marching band were present for the ceremony.#
A very large banner was displayed at the ceremony. It had Mughrabi’s picture on it. The text read:
"Under the auspices of President Mahmoud Abbas
The Political and National Education Authority Ceremony on the anniversary of the birth of the bride of the cosmos The Shahida (Holy Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi."
Two PA TV broadcasts noted the ceremony.
Additionally, the governor of Ramallah announced the naming of Dalal Mughrabi Square.
While on December 30, 2009, PA spokesman Jamal Nazal, writing in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, referred to her as “the heroine of Palestine’s heroines.”
q Wafa Idris, the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, detonated a bomb in the center of Jerusalem in January 2002 that killed one and injured over 100.
During the first week of January 2010, she was honored as a Shahida (Holy Martyr) in a Fatah promotional video broadcast on PA TV.#
q On January 11, 2010, the following appeared in the PA paper Al-Ayyam:#
Headline: "The occupation accuses the Palestinian leadership of incitement because of Dalal Mughrabi Square -Minister of Culture: Honoring the Shahids is the least we can do, and resistance to the occupation is a legitimate right"
"The occupation government [the Israeli government] has reiterated its familiar tune of accusing the [Palestinian] National Authority of incitement within Palestinian culture. The Israeli Prime Minister... claims that the Palestinian leadership is encouraging terror in its culture.
”Netanyahu claims that the proof, which he presented to the members of his government, is the naming of a square in the region of Ramallah and El-Bireh after the Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi. ...
”Netanyahu is reported as saying: 'Anyone who supports naming [the square] after Dalal Mughrabi, who was responsible for the murder of dozens of Israelis, is encouraging terror and pushing peace further off...'
”Netanyahu was referring to the operation of self-sacrifice led by Mughrabi in 1978, the ‘Coast Operation’ within Israel, which led to the deaths of 36 Israelis. Netanyahu accused the [Palestinian] National Authority of incitement in schools and in cultural activities in general.
”Minister of Culture Siham Barghouti said, in response to the Israeli claims, that 'It is our right to preserve and maintain [the memory] of our fighters who sacrificed their lives for our sake and for the sake of the Palestinian cause.'
”She added: 'Honoring them in this way [by naming public places after them] is the least we can give them, and this is our right, especially since we believe that resistance, in the shadow of the ongoing occupation, is a legitimate right, and we are proud and we pride ourselves on our heritage of struggle, which has been realized by our Shahids and fighters throughout history.'
q Al-Quds, Jerusalem, January 21, 2010, reported:#
“The concluding statement of Fatah's Revolutionary Council meeting said that there was a need to step up the popular resistance and to expand it to all Palestinian areas harmed by the settlements and by the separation fence.”
q On Friday, January 29, 2010, a sermon was broadcast on PA-controlled TV that said in part:
“The Jews, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger! Enemies of humanity in general, and of Palestinians in particular - they wage war against us using all kinds of crimes, and as you see - even the mosques are not spared their racism...
"Oh Muslims! The Jews are the Jews. The Jews are the Jews. Even if donkeys would cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl and snakes to bite, the Jews would not cease to harbor hatred towards Muslims. The Prophet said that if two Jews would be alone with a Muslim, they would think only of killing him. Oh Muslims! This land will be liberated, these holy places and these mosques will be liberated, only by means of a return to the Koran and when all Muslims will be willing to be Jihad Fighters for the sake of Allah and for the sake of supporting Palestine, the Palestinian people, the Palestinian land, and the holy places in Palestine. The Prophet says: 'You shall fight the Jews and kill them…’”#
Incitement by UNRWA
January 2010
Karen AbuZayd has retired as Commissioner-General of UNRWA and has been succeeded by Filippo Grandi, who had been AbuZayd’s lieutenant.
Providing insight into the issue of UNRWA incitement we have Mr. Grandi’s inaugural letter to the UNRWA staff, dated January 26, 2010. It appeared on the UNRWA website.#
Mr. Grandi’s letter includes the following:
“I need not tell you how difficult this period is for the Palestinian people. We are all painfully aware of the counterproductive policies collectively punishing the people of the Gaza Strip; conscious decisions that have caused untold suffering and a dramatic deterioration in the lives of the population, in contravention of international law. One of my key priorities will be to continue to advocate strongly on behalf of the 1.5 million Gazans, and to do so not only until the end of the blockade and the occupation, but also until a just and lasting solution to the plight of the refugees is achieved.
“Despite some recent economic improvements for some, the lives of most Palestinians in the West Bank continue to be made almost impossible by obstacles, walls, movement limitations and other restrictions, and by the expanding threat of settler violence. For those residing in East Jerusalem, as I do, it is cause for daily anguish to watch the situation deteriorate rapidly under our very eyes, especially the ruthless evictions of Palestinians from their homes. UNRWA will continue to stand with the affected families and all of those in need of our protection and will tirelessly lend our voice to their calls for justice.”
There are several seriously tendentious statements – and, in fact, outright misrep resenta tions – included here. But this material is problematic for reasons beyond this: UNRWA’S mandate is purely humanitarian. Grandi is assuming a political stance that is absolutely beyond his purview. How does UNRWA come to “stand with affected families” who have been evicted in eastern Jerusalem?
View the full document at Israel Behind the News
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
FOUL PLAY AT THE NEW ISRAEL FUND
by Ben Dror Yemini
Ma'ariv
The New Israel Fund is angry. It thinks that it is correct to disseminate false testimony about the State of Israel. It thinks that it is okay to take part in the demonization campaign that is being staged by organizations whose goal is the elimination of Israel. It thinks that it is okay to cooperate with the Goldstone commission, even though it was formed by an automatic majority of the benighted countries that control the UN Human Rights Council. It thinks that it is okay that Israel cooperate with the commission, even though there is no country in the free world that supported the committee’s formation. And it is absolutely legitimate, in a democratic country, to do all these things.
But there is another thing that is also legitimate to do: to reveal the truth about the fund and the organizations that falsely claim the title of being “human rights” organizations. If most of the political organizations supported by the fund do not recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state-don’t cry human rights. Say the truth: the denial of rights to Jews only. The Palestinians have a right to a nation state in a state of their own, as do the Croats and the Hungarians and the Czechs and the Slovaks and other nations-but not the Jews.
The New Israel Fund supports, for example, the Zochrot organization. This is a non-profit organization that strives, avowedly and openly, to destroy the State of Israel by means of exercising the “right of return.” Not that there is any such right, and not that there ever was another precedent for a mass “return” after a population swap in the wake of wars-but this does not bother the New Israel Fund. It will always jump in under the slogan of “human rights.”
All this doesn’t mean that Israel is exempt from criticism. After all, out of the hundreds of allegations, there are a few of substance. But if many sane people loathe the human rights organizations, it’s not because they loathe human rights. Just the opposite. It’s because the sane majority is fed up with human rights becoming the weapon of benighted forces. It’s because the New Israel Fund has turned itself into another organization, one of many in the world, which are party to this global deception. There are a million and one offenses to human lives and human rights in the world. Israel, as a state in conflict, offends less than all others. This has been checked. This is backed up in numbers. But it is the one taking the brunt of the criticism. This is called demonization, delegitimization and obsession. This is not defense of human rights but, rather, an orchestrated campaign in the service of Iran and Hamas. This is not the intent of the fund. But it is the result.
We should call things by their real names. The majority of the organizations supported by the New Israel Fund work to delegitimize Israel. But the fund rolls its eyes heavenward and whines: what’s wrong with human rights? There is nothing wrong. What’s wrong are those who strive clearly to deny the Jews’ right to exist in the only place where they have sovereignty, to turn Israel into a “country of all its citizens” in which the majority will be Hamas supporters. It is wrong when someone wants to commit politicide against only one other people in the world. It is wrong when someone cooperates with the forces of evil and tries to sell the lie that this is “human rights.”
How is it that many, mainly Jews, support this fund? How is it that they enable this systematic campaign that pretends to be humane, and in practice is demonic? They are not anti-Semites. They are people with good intentions. After all, the rhetoric is about human rights and minorities. Jews are sensitive to that. And it’s good that they are. Most of them simply don’t know. Most of the sincerely and truly want for Israel to be more enlightened and more advanced, while being stricter about human lives and human rights. But they do not know that the money goes to other goals. Even Prof. Naomi Chazan, who heads the fun, is not a hater of Israel. But what happened to them is exactly what has happened to innumerable organizations that deal with the “discourse of rights.” Ultimately, they serve the agenda of Iran and Hamas.
Human rights organizations can earn back the trust in them. They must support human rights, not organizations that work to deny Israel’s right to exist. In the meantime, these organizations, and this includes the New Israel Fund, are not only Israel’s great enemy, but also that of the free world and of human rights.
Ma'ariv
The New Israel Fund is angry. It thinks that it is correct to disseminate false testimony about the State of Israel. It thinks that it is okay to take part in the demonization campaign that is being staged by organizations whose goal is the elimination of Israel. It thinks that it is okay to cooperate with the Goldstone commission, even though it was formed by an automatic majority of the benighted countries that control the UN Human Rights Council. It thinks that it is okay that Israel cooperate with the commission, even though there is no country in the free world that supported the committee’s formation. And it is absolutely legitimate, in a democratic country, to do all these things.
But there is another thing that is also legitimate to do: to reveal the truth about the fund and the organizations that falsely claim the title of being “human rights” organizations. If most of the political organizations supported by the fund do not recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state-don’t cry human rights. Say the truth: the denial of rights to Jews only. The Palestinians have a right to a nation state in a state of their own, as do the Croats and the Hungarians and the Czechs and the Slovaks and other nations-but not the Jews.
The New Israel Fund supports, for example, the Zochrot organization. This is a non-profit organization that strives, avowedly and openly, to destroy the State of Israel by means of exercising the “right of return.” Not that there is any such right, and not that there ever was another precedent for a mass “return” after a population swap in the wake of wars-but this does not bother the New Israel Fund. It will always jump in under the slogan of “human rights.”
All this doesn’t mean that Israel is exempt from criticism. After all, out of the hundreds of allegations, there are a few of substance. But if many sane people loathe the human rights organizations, it’s not because they loathe human rights. Just the opposite. It’s because the sane majority is fed up with human rights becoming the weapon of benighted forces. It’s because the New Israel Fund has turned itself into another organization, one of many in the world, which are party to this global deception. There are a million and one offenses to human lives and human rights in the world. Israel, as a state in conflict, offends less than all others. This has been checked. This is backed up in numbers. But it is the one taking the brunt of the criticism. This is called demonization, delegitimization and obsession. This is not defense of human rights but, rather, an orchestrated campaign in the service of Iran and Hamas. This is not the intent of the fund. But it is the result.
We should call things by their real names. The majority of the organizations supported by the New Israel Fund work to delegitimize Israel. But the fund rolls its eyes heavenward and whines: what’s wrong with human rights? There is nothing wrong. What’s wrong are those who strive clearly to deny the Jews’ right to exist in the only place where they have sovereignty, to turn Israel into a “country of all its citizens” in which the majority will be Hamas supporters. It is wrong when someone wants to commit politicide against only one other people in the world. It is wrong when someone cooperates with the forces of evil and tries to sell the lie that this is “human rights.”
How is it that many, mainly Jews, support this fund? How is it that they enable this systematic campaign that pretends to be humane, and in practice is demonic? They are not anti-Semites. They are people with good intentions. After all, the rhetoric is about human rights and minorities. Jews are sensitive to that. And it’s good that they are. Most of them simply don’t know. Most of the sincerely and truly want for Israel to be more enlightened and more advanced, while being stricter about human lives and human rights. But they do not know that the money goes to other goals. Even Prof. Naomi Chazan, who heads the fun, is not a hater of Israel. But what happened to them is exactly what has happened to innumerable organizations that deal with the “discourse of rights.” Ultimately, they serve the agenda of Iran and Hamas.
Human rights organizations can earn back the trust in them. They must support human rights, not organizations that work to deny Israel’s right to exist. In the meantime, these organizations, and this includes the New Israel Fund, are not only Israel’s great enemy, but also that of the free world and of human rights.
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