By Simon Fischler
I am not one for boycotts: they are counter-productive and often harm those the boycotts are trying to assist.
The Israeli boycott is the worst type of boycott, because no matter how it’s worded, ultimately the boycott is anti-Semitic.
In fact, those leading the boycott openly admit their intention is to deny the Jewish Nation its self-determination.
Israel, the Jewish Nation State and only true democracy in the Middle East has a large Arab minority that enjoys fully the freedom of Israel’s liberal democratic values
But, like all minorities in all democracies, Arab Israelis do face some discrimination – just as Mizrachi and Ethiopian Jews have.
However, unlike other minorities (such as African Americans in the United States) Israeli Arabs face discrimination not because of color, religion or ethnicity, but because of the political choices they have made.
On too many occasions Israeli Arab leaders and their constituents have trampled on the freedoms given to them, openly siding with enemies of Israel.
Never before has a minority in a democracy been given such immense freedoms when they happen to be the same ethnicity of the enemies of the State. Even America in World War II placed her Japanese citizens in interment camps (a nice way of saying concentration camps).
This all gets back to Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi who once again showed Israel’s eighty percent Jewish majority the true face of Israel’s Arab leadership.
Tibi penned an Op/Ed article for The New York Times days ago calling for a boycott of Israel and the eventual destruction of Israel by flooding her with Arabs who have no connection to the nation.
The inexcusable lies included in his shameful opinion piece should have rendered it unprintable, which gives us a revealing insight to where The Times’ sympathies lie.
Tibi says the “Palestinians” were forced from their homes. Mr. Tibi must have forgotten that the majority of Arabs (they did not call themselves Palestinians at that time) fled because their leaders told them to.
Here is a quick quote that should burn at the feet of Ahmed Tibi’s scandalous lies, in the March 1976 issue of Falastin a-Thaura, then the official journal of the Beirut-based PLO. Mahmud Abbas ("Abu Mazen", now President of the West Bank PA), then a PLO spokesman, wrote: "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live."
Inside the article Tibi also whined about freedoms being stripped from Israeli (Jewish and Arab, not discriminatory) citizens who were actively attempting to destroy the nation by calling for a boycott against her.
If this boycott truly were about the peace process and the Internationally binding laws calling for a Two-State Solution for Two Nations, the Jewish and the Arab Nation, the boycott would be directed at the Palestinians!
It is the Palestinian Arabs who rejected the United Nations Partition in 1947, thereby creating this whole conflict that alternately has raged and sputtered around Israel ever since.
It is undeniable that is also the Palestinians who have perpetuated this conflict by continually refusing to accept the two state solution, actively rejecting a Palestinian State and peace in 2000 and the Camp David peace conference.
If Ahmed Tibi actually wanted to create a Palestinian State, he would call on the world to recognize the freedoms given to Israeli Arabs, something we see their brethren in Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and especially Syria (where a massacre is occurring in the city as I write) are struggling to achieve.
Tibi should go work for Peoples Republic of China in the Department of Demographically Destroying Tibet and Propaganda! His lies would actually be funny if they were not so distressing. However, Ahmed Tibi obviously is smart enough to know that the majority of the liberal-minded readers of the New York Times will not do their homework and check up on the fallacies he has penned
But Ahmed Tibi is just the tip of the Israeli Arab spear. He represents a population, he was CHOSEN by a population that takes for granted the democratic rights they are granted.
Apparently Israeli Arabs are unaware that a democracy does not have to offer sedition as one of the benefits of democratic freedoms. Nor does a democracy have to be suicidal to its majority ethnic population.
Sedition is Sedition, even in a democracy and is often handled with the most serious of punishments.
It must be made clear to Israel’s Arab population that they can no longer cry foul when they support anti-Semitic political initiatives. Israeli Arabs can no longer expect the Jewish majority of Israel to turn a blind eye to the virulently hateful rhetoric their leaders espouse.
Israeli Arabs have the same rights as their Jewish co-patriots and their cultural and political freedoms must be maintained under the Laws of the Jewish Democratic State, as it is for Native Americans in the United States. Except, notably, Israel does not assign their Arab citizens to reservations.
The Arabs of Israel need to make a decision: are they Israeli Arabs or Palestinians Arabs? If they are Israeli Arabs, then they must start serving in the Israeli Defense Forces like their co-patriots and contribute to the nation’s preservation. If this is the case, then they are welcome to stay.
If they view themselves first and foremost as Palestinian Arabs, then they should go live in Palestine; end of story.
Ahmed Tibi views himself as a Palestinian, so he should renounce his Israeli Citizenship and go live in Palestine … wherever that is.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
WHAT IF
By Simon Fischler
What if Bibi Netanyahu had countered the Palestinians’ pre-conditions for a full settlement freeze with the pre-condition that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state?
In fact, what if Israel, for the first time ever, proposed her own peace plan, rather than the U.S., Saudi Arabia or the PA
Instead of the partial freeze he has offered, which simply allowed the PA to pooh-pooh, Netanyahu could have -- and probably should have -- said, “Fine ... you want a total freeze on settlements? All you need do is recognize Israel as a Jewish state and you have your wish.”
However, the PA could counter that by recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, one of their “negotiating tools” would immediately be removed from their array of demands.
Israel could immediately return with, “Yes, but, by proposing a full settlement freeze -- something which has never, NEVER been put on the offering table before, we have willingly ceded one of OUR major negotiating tools.”
Would this mean yet another stalemate? Not necessarily.
If nothing else, this exchange would point out to the rest of the world, which appears to be blind to this reality, that the PA is not, nor has it ever been, truly directed toward earnest negotiations, with the possibility of a peaceful co-existence anywhere on the Middle Eastern horizon.
They have been -- always have been -- making absolute demands that are only geared toward the destruction, negation or cancellation of Israel as we know it.
The result of this one constant: the refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, where it is and how it is, means that it is the PA and the other Arab countries which have no treaty, of any sort, with Israel which are practicing “apartheid” -- that nasty word former US President Jimmy Carter is so fond of casting Israel’s way.
What does “apartheid” mean but Afrikaans for, "apartness" or "separateness," or in South African political terms “separate house.” It is the Palestinians, the Syrians, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran who would go further than conventional apartheid: they would deny Israel even a separate house.
This situation has been compounded by PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ threat to declare, unilaterally, a Palestinian state, followed by the possibility of the EU and the UN announcing their potential support of such a unilateral declaration.
WHAT IF? ...
The Palestinian threat to unilaterally declare statehood might appear on the surface to be a potential favor to Israel. With the West Bank and Gaza an actual state, Israel would have the right -- by international law -- to attack with full force after the very next rocket that hits Sderot.
Hypothetically Israel would also have the right in international law, by virtue of “spoils of war” tradition, to officially annex any or all of the parts of the West bank that they won in the 1967 six-day war.
Now enter the EU, where many countries have stated they would recognize a unilaterally declared state of Palestine and furthermore, would “support” such a state.
What does the EU mean by “support?” Does it entail military as well as economic support?
Look at the EU today and examine what it resembles. Does the Roman Empire come to mind?
When the Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Bar Kokba revolt (70 C.E.) and established the puppet state of “Palestinia” (the ONLY time the area has actually been called Palestine), it was not merely comprised of Rome and Italy.
The Roman Empire at that time included what today is Spain, France, the British Isles, Germany, Eastern Europe and North Africa.
Since the EU would be supporting the Arab League’s (North Africa) anti-Israel stance, doesn’t she then become the Rome of modern times?
WHAT IF? ...
The European Union HAS begun to fancy itself the reincarnation of the Roman Empire?
The ramifications of this possibility are enormous, terrifying and endlessly complicated, involving the decline of U.S. power in both the Middle East as well as the “de-Americanization” of the UN.
The Israel of the 21st century is not the Israel of 70 C.E., however, and the EU would do well -- for the sake of the Middle East, itself and the greater world -- to remember this.
Even the most peace-loving, left-wing, liberal Israeli always has supported the belief that “there will never be another destruction of the Second Temple; there will never be another Masada.”
This is no longer simply a nation of shepherders, grape and olive growers, but a first-world, hi tech, multi-ethnic democracy with nuclear capabilities.
However, if the EU persists in its proposal to “support” a unilaterally-declared Palestinian state, it is high time that it ascertain every single Euro goes into the creation and development of a functioning economy, infrastructure and a democratic state, rather than into the pockets of its leaders (ask the widow of Yasser Arafat how her bank account is doing).
It is also high time, particularly as nations of the EU struggle with variations of insurgent Islamic immigrants (i.e., Switzerland banning the construction of Muslim minarets; France outlawing the burqa; bombings in England and Spain) to admit that the “side” of the Middle Eastern conflict which is more like them, with more similar values, systems, needs and hopes (despite their being Jews) is Israel ... not the Palestinians.
Otherwise it is high time for the EU to admit what lies in its heart of hearts, to own up to what is behind its leaders’ constant undermining and negative judging of Israel: their basic anti-semitism.
It is high time for the EU -- and the entire western world -- to admit that they are as sorry as any radical Muslim cleric that the state of Israel ever came to exist.
It is beyond high time for the EU to admit to itself that it would secretly love nothing more than to see the destruction of the State of Israel ... again.
What if Bibi Netanyahu had countered the Palestinians’ pre-conditions for a full settlement freeze with the pre-condition that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state?
In fact, what if Israel, for the first time ever, proposed her own peace plan, rather than the U.S., Saudi Arabia or the PA
Instead of the partial freeze he has offered, which simply allowed the PA to pooh-pooh, Netanyahu could have -- and probably should have -- said, “Fine ... you want a total freeze on settlements? All you need do is recognize Israel as a Jewish state and you have your wish.”
However, the PA could counter that by recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, one of their “negotiating tools” would immediately be removed from their array of demands.
Israel could immediately return with, “Yes, but, by proposing a full settlement freeze -- something which has never, NEVER been put on the offering table before, we have willingly ceded one of OUR major negotiating tools.”
Would this mean yet another stalemate? Not necessarily.
If nothing else, this exchange would point out to the rest of the world, which appears to be blind to this reality, that the PA is not, nor has it ever been, truly directed toward earnest negotiations, with the possibility of a peaceful co-existence anywhere on the Middle Eastern horizon.
They have been -- always have been -- making absolute demands that are only geared toward the destruction, negation or cancellation of Israel as we know it.
The result of this one constant: the refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, where it is and how it is, means that it is the PA and the other Arab countries which have no treaty, of any sort, with Israel which are practicing “apartheid” -- that nasty word former US President Jimmy Carter is so fond of casting Israel’s way.
What does “apartheid” mean but Afrikaans for, "apartness" or "separateness," or in South African political terms “separate house.” It is the Palestinians, the Syrians, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran who would go further than conventional apartheid: they would deny Israel even a separate house.
This situation has been compounded by PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ threat to declare, unilaterally, a Palestinian state, followed by the possibility of the EU and the UN announcing their potential support of such a unilateral declaration.
WHAT IF? ...
The Palestinian threat to unilaterally declare statehood might appear on the surface to be a potential favor to Israel. With the West Bank and Gaza an actual state, Israel would have the right -- by international law -- to attack with full force after the very next rocket that hits Sderot.
Hypothetically Israel would also have the right in international law, by virtue of “spoils of war” tradition, to officially annex any or all of the parts of the West bank that they won in the 1967 six-day war.
Now enter the EU, where many countries have stated they would recognize a unilaterally declared state of Palestine and furthermore, would “support” such a state.
What does the EU mean by “support?” Does it entail military as well as economic support?
Look at the EU today and examine what it resembles. Does the Roman Empire come to mind?
When the Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Bar Kokba revolt (70 C.E.) and established the puppet state of “Palestinia” (the ONLY time the area has actually been called Palestine), it was not merely comprised of Rome and Italy.
The Roman Empire at that time included what today is Spain, France, the British Isles, Germany, Eastern Europe and North Africa.
Since the EU would be supporting the Arab League’s (North Africa) anti-Israel stance, doesn’t she then become the Rome of modern times?
WHAT IF? ...
The European Union HAS begun to fancy itself the reincarnation of the Roman Empire?
The ramifications of this possibility are enormous, terrifying and endlessly complicated, involving the decline of U.S. power in both the Middle East as well as the “de-Americanization” of the UN.
The Israel of the 21st century is not the Israel of 70 C.E., however, and the EU would do well -- for the sake of the Middle East, itself and the greater world -- to remember this.
Even the most peace-loving, left-wing, liberal Israeli always has supported the belief that “there will never be another destruction of the Second Temple; there will never be another Masada.”
This is no longer simply a nation of shepherders, grape and olive growers, but a first-world, hi tech, multi-ethnic democracy with nuclear capabilities.
However, if the EU persists in its proposal to “support” a unilaterally-declared Palestinian state, it is high time that it ascertain every single Euro goes into the creation and development of a functioning economy, infrastructure and a democratic state, rather than into the pockets of its leaders (ask the widow of Yasser Arafat how her bank account is doing).
It is also high time, particularly as nations of the EU struggle with variations of insurgent Islamic immigrants (i.e., Switzerland banning the construction of Muslim minarets; France outlawing the burqa; bombings in England and Spain) to admit that the “side” of the Middle Eastern conflict which is more like them, with more similar values, systems, needs and hopes (despite their being Jews) is Israel ... not the Palestinians.
Otherwise it is high time for the EU to admit what lies in its heart of hearts, to own up to what is behind its leaders’ constant undermining and negative judging of Israel: their basic anti-semitism.
It is high time for the EU -- and the entire western world -- to admit that they are as sorry as any radical Muslim cleric that the state of Israel ever came to exist.
It is beyond high time for the EU to admit to itself that it would secretly love nothing more than to see the destruction of the State of Israel ... again.
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