Monday, May 31, 2010

NAY-SAYERS AND CHARLATANS

Instead of boycotting Israel why are all these organizations that are supposedly trying so hard to bring about peace not boycotting the Palestine Authority or HAMAS instead?

The Gaza strip is run by HAMAS, a group that is considered a terrorist organization by western democracies such as the US and the EU. This could be overlooked: many movements start out militantly (such as Haganah and Lehi during the days of British rule over the Palestine Mandate) and slowly become more acceptably political; in HAMAS’ case this has not happened, whatsoever.

HAMAS refuses to recognize or accept the OSLO agreements and still calls for the destruction of Israel. How is it possible for these groups or organizations that wish to boycott Israel to overlook a government policy by HAMAS that advocates wiping out its neighbor? Is that not a bit fishy?

These agreements are internationally recognized and stipulate the recognition of Israel’s right to independence along with the Palestinians’ right to statehood. HAMAS refuses to accept Israel’s right to exist. That alone is a crime by the laws of the United Nations. However, some choose conveniently to “forget” that until this very day not just HAMAS, but most of the Arab world, has been committing crimes against international law by not accepting the UN recognition and acceptance of Israel.

Thus, if these organizations boycotting or threatening to boycott, Israel were serious about peace, or truly in support of the principles of democracy, they would be boycotting HAMAS, not Israel. Instead as always they carry out one-sided, biased attacks against Israel.

Think about the facts clearly: Israel has more than once offered up statehood and an end to the occupation. In every case these offers have been rejected. They have not been rejected by the Israeli Right, nor by her supposed hardliners. No, in every case a majority of Israelis have stood behind their leaders, no matter how many concessions they have offered in the name of peace. These offers of peace by Israel and the readiness of Israel to recognize statehood for the Palestinian people have always been rejected by the supposed moderates of the Palestinian camp. Why no boycott there?

So, again I ask, why boycott Israel? Their cries say because we are embargoing the Gaza strip, and/or because of the occupation and/or because of war. Well, I’ll ask them this: why haven’t they boycotted HAMAS or the Palestinian people for shooting, indiscriminately, 8000 rockets into southern Israel? This is a crime against humanity over which there should be no debate.

In each case Israel has done everything to stop this situation while the Palestinians and the Arab world has done everything to keep it alive. But no boycotting of Arab oil! Funny how all the boycotters of Israel are apparently willing to look the other way at the atrocious crimes committed by HAMAS, the Palestinians in general and the Arab world, as long as they can put that Arab black gold in their cars.

So, why are organizations in the international community boycotting a democratic, open country and not boycotting a super conservative, chauvinistic, homophobic, repressive and militaristic society? Oil, Ignorance, arrogance, and anti-Semitism I guess.

Israel is not a perfect country and I will be the first to admit it. On the other hand the people who are attempting to boycott Israel are wrong. They have ignored in all possible ways the crimes that are being committed against Israel. The artists, politicians and organizations that want to boycott Israel are shameful, because they have traded in their supposed liberal ideals for biased, one-sided and racist policies.

The biggest joke of this whole mess? Why is it that Israel is the only nation to win a war ... no, to win several wars ... and yet have to make constant concessions and compromises to the losers of those wars? Why is it that Israel is the only nation, perhaps in the history of nations, which must always yield, which must tolerate judgment and condemnation for defending her right to exist, and which must always, always, always parlay with charlatans who deny her basic right to exist?

Saturday, May 29, 2010

CRACKER JACK JOURNALISM

If we are to believe Ari Shavit article of 27/5/2010, Israel has caused herself such immense damage in the last ten to fifteen years that she is on the verge of a great catastrophe. According to Shavit her situation is so dire there is no hope for a future.

All of his information, by the way, is based on either post-Zionist thought or outside sources that are far from friendly towards Israel.

Ari Shavit basis his OPINION on four different events: the full U.N.-accepted withdrawal from South Lebanon; the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza strip, made in coordination with the United States and the EU; the Nashralla/Tehran Lebanon war of 2006; the Meshal/Tehran Gaza war of 2009.

Shavit also opines that the founding leaders of Israel knew exactly when the right time was, politically, to proclaim the creation of the state of Israel, while today’s leaders of Israel lack all concept of political timing. He blames this all on the Right, as if the Left has done nothing but great things for the state!

Shavit would do well to dig deep into Benny Morris’ book, 1948. Although partition was passed by the UN, it was not widely accepted by the world or by the rulers (England) of the then mandate of Palestine. The Yishuv was constantly fighting an uphill battle for political acceptance of the Jewish State; after all they were up against the whole of the Arab world and their enormous oil resources.

Shavit blames Israel and her leaders for what he calls “the four lamentable events,” but he cannot be more wrong. It is the UN and the international community who have behaved shamelessly since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, not Israel’s leaders.

It was the UN that recognized, okayed and accepted Israel’s withdrawal from South Lebanon. It is the UN and the International community that let Hezbollah and Lebanon spit in the face of UN laws.

Not only did Hezbollah totally disregard international law, it then flaunted this when it attacked Israel twice, the second time leading to the war of 2006. Although I would have loved to have seen a complete and total IDF victory, the army still fought and beat Hezbollah on its own soil. Again Israel cannot be blamed for the UN’s and international communities’ sick acceptance of Syria and Iran rearming Hezbollah once again after the war of 2006. Shavit sounds almost as if he wants Israel to occupy South Lebanon again -- as though the international community would just be fine with that!

Shavit complains on one hand about Israel’s withdrawal, but offers absolutely no remedy for what should have, or what should be, done. He completely overlooks the inept, arrogant, one-sided and racist policies carried out against Israel by the UN, Red Cross, Amnesty International and other International Communities when dealing with Hezbollah’s criminal behavior.

Shavit then castigates Israel for her unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Again he should be turning his attention not towards Israel, but towards the heinous behavior of the Palestinian population of Gaza and the shameful behavior of the international community.

Israel’s withdrawal from the whole of the Gaza strip was a gift to the American government, the EU and Palestinian Authority. The leadership of Israel removed communities that had been in place since 1967 and handed over this land to the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian people. Granted, Israel was doing this also for her own benefit diplomatically, but it was also given to Mahmoud Abbas as a peace offering indicating Israel’s seriousness for reaching a peace agreement.

What was given to Israel as a gift in return?

Voted in through a corrupt sham of “democracy,” Hamas took over governing Gaza almost the minute after Israel withdrew. Hamas is a terrorist organization that did not and does not accept Israel’s right to exist. Picture the reaction of the American Government and Americans if they woke up one morning to Canada denying her right to be?

Or, picture world opinion if an Israeli government not only denied Palestinians the right to statehood and advocated the transfer of all Arabs in Israel, Judea and Samaria into Jordan. The world would go berserk.

But the international community accepts a Hamas-run government that advocates the same policy directed at Israel’s Jews. On top of this, the “new and friendly” Hamas government in effect ripped up all the agreements penned by Israel, America, the EU, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. As an extra, added bonus, Israel was given 8,000 rockets rained down on her southern communities.

Shavit omits mentioning that the players of the international community the EU, UN, Amnesty International, etc., etc.,sat back and watched as the new Hamas government carried out war crimes by shelling civilian centers indiscriminately.

When Israel decided to defend herself, a world that is hateful towards Israel solely because she happens to be the Jewish State started to scream bloody murder. Plain and simple, there is no other explanation for the international Community’s behavior towards Israel.

While Shavit dwells on the world’s reaction -- which would be anti-Israel no matter what she does -- he fails to recognize the victory that the IDF achieved in Gaza; especially after the promises Hamas made when they opted to reject a renewal of the Gaza ceasefire.

Before the Gaza war, Hamas promised to send the IDF back in one big body bag. Instead, the IDF, performing as it has in the past, fought and won a lighting quick victory against Hamas. This victory, when one looks at the harshness of what war is, was won with very little civilian damage. The Gaza strip is populated by 1.3 million people, Hamas intentionally used these people, the whole of Gaza’s population as human shields. The fact that 1,300 Palestinians were killed, the majority of them Hamas militants, is a tiny amount in the numbers of war. Shavit blaming Israel for the world’s ridiculous and insane condemnation of her actions in Gaza is like blaming the victims of the Holocaust for being sent off to concentrations camps.

Then there is the occupation of Judea and Samaria (which most of the world knows as “The West Bank”). Shavit again lays the blame at the feet of Israel, as if he were clueless to all Israel has done to empower the Palestinians. As if numerous Israeli Prime Ministers have not lost their jobs and one his life because of the Palestinians’ sick need to continue the Occupation.

That’s right, Palestinian leadership wants to continue the infamous Occupation. How else to explain the Palestinian refusal to accept partition, or for their refusal to accept peace, statehood and an end of conflict in 2000 at the Camp David and Taba talks.

Instead of lambasting Israel, Shavit should be pointing his finger in the direction of the world community for continually accepting the Palestinians’ refusal to accept responsibility for all the Wars and pain they have caused their own people and the citizens of Israel.

But no, in Shavit’s Cracker Jack world of journalism, the occupation continues not because of the Palestinians refusal to accept Israel as the Jewish State, but because Israel just wants to continue the occupation. Of course this happens to run contrary to every Israeli government since Rabin and Peres signed the Oslo accords.

People like Shavit and Gideon Levy are prime examples of why the left is not in power. Labor and Kadima would do well to take a look at Haaretz as a daily reminder of how to regain their power. Something people like myself hope for.

Haaretz and its writers are no longer part of a newspaper, a newspaper actually has news in it. Haaretz is an opinion rag that leans heavily toward negative, self-hating leftists, with a post-Zionist take on the situation between Israel and the Palestinians.

This is not a democratic point of view, nor does it come close to representing even a tenth of Israel’s population. For Labor and Kadima to regain the faith of people like myself and the majority of Israelis, they must distance themselves from these elitist, self-destructive, post-Zionist concepts that blame Israel for all the wrongs the Arab world is causing. Furthermore and worst of all, none of them has a constructive alternative to offer as a substitute for Zionism or a firm belief in the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish nation.

The Shavits and Levys of Haaretz have become pawns and mouthpieces for an outside world that has and always will be hostile towards the Jewish state. IT WILL BE THIS WAY UNTIL A REPLACEMENT FOR OIL IS FOUND.

The majority of Israelis want Peace and are ready for compromise, but we are not going to accept responsibility for a world that will find us guilty no matter what we do. After all, Ari Shavit, it was David Ben Gurion who said “Let me first tell you one thing: It doesn't matter what the world says about Israel; it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive.”

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

NIGHTMARE “REALITY”

Let us imagine a country living up to the standards of Haaretz’ Gideon Levy and those like him.

First off, everyone who did not agree with him would be reminded continuously that they were ignorant, stupid and morally depraved. Ah, wait a moment: Levy does this to those of us who choose to be patriots almost daily anyway!

Next, in Gideon’s dream “reality,” deligitimization would substitute for honest criticism. If you didn’t accept this twisted concept, then you would be deemed a fascist. But, hey, once again, this is what Levy does all the time already!

In Gideon Levy’s perfect world every citizen would hack away at Israel’s legitimacy no matter what she does. They would raise their children to hate the soldiers who defend them and would glorify the poor, helpless Palestinians. Every miscreant that calls his- or herelf an academic and spends his/her life trying to wipe Israel off the map would be met at the border with open arms, by all Israelis.

In Levy’s utopia any soldier in a position of trust who violates the oath to defend and protect the state by stealing top secret documents and selling them to journalists would not be punished; they would be celebrated as heroes and probably given a medal for valor.

Sometimes I wonder why Gideon Levy still lives in Israel. Not only does he hate the government of Israel, but he hates us, the citizens of the country, too. He continually refers to us in his articles as the “MAJORITY” as if we were a slavering gang of rabble-rousers.

Why does he hate us so? For one thing, he claims we Israelis are becoming fascists. He appears to sincerely believe that we want to silence all those who criticize Israel and that we are actively destroying the democracy we once worked so hard to create.

All of this is true in Gideon Levy’s arrogant, elitist dream state. In the real world, here is what is truly going on.

Israeli democracy is thriving. Gideon Levy knows this better than anyone. After all his writing -- and the fact that it gets printed in a paper that daily tries to undermine the whole nation -- is proof of the pudding. In almost every one of his articles he deliberately substitutes criticism for insidious delegitimization. One of his more outlandish, preposterous and demeaning examples was when he recently compared Israel to North Korea!

Gideon Levy does not criticize his country; he slanders her. Levy’s take on Israel not letting Noam Chomsky into her borders to speak at the West Bank Bir Ziet university is another example of his arrogance and anti-Israel sentiment. Why should Israel let another professor, who has sided with Holocaust deniers, delegitimizes her on a regular basis and acts against her, into her borders?

Levy chooses to ignore that fact that that demagogues can be far more dangerous than weapons (unless, of course, it’s in the cause of trying to muzzle an eloquent pro-Israel academic like Alan Dershowitz, often critical of nay-sayers like Chomsky). Chomsky, a clever man, prevaricates about Israel (and admittedly nearly all Western nation-governments) almost continuously and apparently has no boundaries when it comes to his invention of falsehoods connected to Israel.

What do Levy or Chomsky have to say about the near-daily demonstrations against the Israeli government in East Jerusalem by Arabs and foreign activists? Nothing, because these could only occur in a democratic country, and the Levy/Chomskys of this world are trying their best to paint Israel in un-democratic colors.

Israeli Arab Knesset members berate their country on a daily basis, and they do it in ways that no other minority could in the Western World. They delegitimize their country and hide behind their Knesset seats. The left-leaning free press in Israel continually attack the government, something that could only happen in a democracy. A soldier, Anat Kamm, steals Army documents pertaining to IDF positioning in the case of a war with Syria, Lebanon and Iran; she then sells them to a journalist who prints much of what was in those documents. Kamm trial is underway now; the worst she’ll get is a life sentence. This treasonous behavior would have gotten her worse in many other places in the world and would have gotten her the same in any democracy in the Western World.

Students on campuses across Israel are silenced when they object to their professors’ injection of opinion over fact when discussing Israel’s political situation. Many of these professors also go out of their way, not simply to criticize their country, but to delegitimize her. This, of course, could only be done in a country that upholds democratic institutions.

Gideon Levy and his ilk suffer from a serious disease called elitism. This disease makes Levy and his friends incapable of understanding what is really happening on the ground in Israel.

The citizens of Israel, who have backed peace on so many occasions, are sick and tired of continually giving and giving to the Palestinians and the Arab world, but always getting feces in return. We are so very, very tired of watching our governments get burned by Yassar Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and their friends and then having the world condemn us for their treacherous behavior. We are tired of people like Gideon Levy, who gets to write his garbage with no restraints, condemning us for doing more to create a Palestinian State then the Palestinians and their Arab brethren have done.

Gideon Levy was obviously on a long vacation in his dream world during the debacle of the Camp David and Taba talks, when Israel gave the Palestinians all they wanted and more and got war in the place of peace.

Gideon Levy is the true ignoramus. He demands that we sit silently by as the world tries to steal our country from us. A democracy has the right to defend -- and just as important, to maintain -- itself against those who wish to harm her. But Levy wishes for an Israel that will surrender his or her freedoms to a malicious, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic world.

Sorry, Gideon, we’re just not ready for that. If that makes me stupid, then I'll take that over your “genius.”

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

A COWARDLY BUNCH-

This last month and a half has been a tough one for Israel -- more so than usual -- largely because the bad guys, supported by a horde of misinformed, self-proclaimed “human rights” seditionists have been gaining dangerous ground.

Granted we are used to dealing with a world that is unfriendly, a one-sided world that ignores all that is done TO the Jewish state, or BY the Jewish state (unless it can be interpreted negatively, that is).

Many of us try to remain optimistic, brushing aside the pathetic calls for Israel’s destruction emanating from the Arab and Muslim world. Rocket attacks from Gaza are just part of who we are. Denial of our right to have our own state by a virulently anti-Zionist (the currently PC term is post-Zionist) international radical left and extreme right are just part of our daily fare. This is the price we Israelis pay to maintain self-determination.

No other nation in the world deals with so much unwarranted hatred than Israel and her citizens. Why shouldn’t we feel “special?”

Sadly, things are getting even worse for us here, though.

It is now patently clear that Palestinian leadership is not the least interested in making peace. They are using the proximity talks to corner Israel with unacceptable demands and then point the finger at her government after the Palestinians thwart the negotiations. This has been the Palestinians game forever.

This is sad for both Israel and the Palestinians. Sad for us because the peace we want so much and are willing to give so much to get will not happen. Sad for the Palestinians because they are still incapable of realizing that they will not break us, even with economic and political warfare.

Our situation here in Israel is getting worse not because of the threats mentioned above, that we have dealt with since the creation of our democratic nation. No, our situation is getting worse because those who should know better, those who have the opportunity to take a difficult, but brave, stance have chosen the easy, but cowardly, path.

Today -- although the fascist anti-Israel camp will try to dazzle and fool you with lies of Jews running the media and silencing those who oppose Israel,-- it is almost impossible to be pro-Israel on university campuses, media outlets and in the art world. The attacks on pro-Israel professors, artists and writers have reached a level that has not been seen since Nazi Germany. In reality it is the Pro-Israel professors, academics and Historians that are being silenced. The Ben Whites of the world do not hesitate to try and muzzle anyone who does not openly support a call to rip the nation of Israel apart.

The excuse these modern day fascists in sheep’s clothes use is Israel’s policies in the territories. These policies, proposed in the year 2000, were giving 97% of Judea and Samaria (West Bank is the modern, western name for these lands), East Jerusalem, three quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem, all the Gaza Strip and the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees to the newly founded state of Palestine. All of this meant ending the occupation. This was rejected by the Palestinians. As they have always done, the Palestinians and Arabs rejected Palestinian statehood for yet another attempt to destroy Israel.

This fact alone should clarify where the boycotters of Israel really sit. They do not want peace, nor are they boycotting Israel because of the Occupation. If they truly wanted to boycott someone for the occupation, then they should boycott the Palestinians for rejecting peace in 2000, and again in 2008 when offered by Ehud Olmert.

No, if they really wanted to boycott someone they would boycott the Arab world for its backing of a colonialist policy that has kept Israel as an Island Ghetto sitting amongst the Arab World. They would boycott the Arab world for keeping the Palestinians as refugees in their states, a political game piece, instead of giving them citizenship. They boycott Israel because they are either completely ignorant to the history of this conflict (which does not excuse them), or because they are ant-Zionists who will do everything to delegitimize the Jewish state.


Just to put an artistic flourish upon the endless crap Israel has to endure from the non-Middle Eastern outside world, performers Gil Scott-Heron and Elvis Costello pulled out of commitments they had made to perform in Israel,

Gil Scott Heron was right: “The revolution will not be televised.” But there also won’t be any revolution thanks to his cowardice. Instead of doing his research and taking the time to examine our conflict here, Gil Scott-Heron caved in to some pseudo-intellectual neo-brownshirts shouting slogans at his concert in London.

As many artists of pre-World War Two Europe did, Gil Scott-Heron caved in to fascism to avoid walking a difficult but morally correct path. Heron would rather sell out to the people who sold his ancestors into slavery (Arabs controlled the African end of the Slave trade and sold Black Africans to White Europeans), than to rally to the side of the Jews who stood side by side with America’s African American brothers during the Civil Rights Movement. Gil should read some more Martin Luther King Jr. history, so he can realize that King -- as much as today’s revisionists would like to deny -- supported Israel and Zionism wholeheartedly. Heron knows that “hatin’ Satan” has never been easy, but apparently even the greatest of self-proclaimed fighters can be intimidated. On the streets of New York City we say that “Punks like this are never around when the beef cooks in our part of town.”

Elvis Costello’s weak excuse is no better. If he had a conscience, he would tell those trying to scare him into canceling his concert in Israel to go stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Instead he, too, behaves like a craven -- omitting all Israel has done to erase the settlements, create peace and establish a Palestinian State -- and spits in our face.

These artists and their ilk do nothing for peace; they have surrendered their dignity to extremists, racists and fascists. They have surrendered to this despicable boycott -- to protect their wallets and for no other reason. Heron and Costello have seen first hand what the modern day left-wing Brownshirts will do to discourage any artist who supports Israel, the atrocious attacks on Sir Elton John being one example. Unlike Gil Scott-Heron and Elvis Costello, Sir Elton John has remained steadfast in the face of a barrage of attacks. He has remained strong because he knows better than anyone: Israeli acceptance of homosexuality runs contrary to the homophobic policies of the Palestinian Authority, the entire spectrum of the Arab world and all countries embracing Islam.

The boycott of Israel -- unlike the one against Apartheid South Africa -- is wrong. Israel is more than 80% Jewish. The whites of South Africa made up less than 10% of that country. Israeli is a democracy in which thirteen members of her parliament are Israeli Arabs.

No, this boycott is against resolving the conflict; this boycott is a profoundly anti-Zionist one (remember, the Arab members of the UN once succeeded in having Zionism classified as racism). The boycott, its backers and those who have been too cowardly to stand against it are not just enemies of Israel and the Jewish nation; they are also enemies of democracy and human rights.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

POLITICAL TERRORISTS

If anyone was wondering what the new American-sponsored peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians meant to the Palestinian side all they need do is look at the statements made by Nabil Shaath last Wednesday.

Shaath unveiled the new Palestinian initiative to isolate and boycott Israel in the international community. Here is what he had to say, “There is a need to create and endorse new struggling tools, such as the popular resistance, and to increase our efforts in the international arena to isolate and punish Israel, prevent it from deepening its relations with the European Union and attempt to expel it from the United Nations”.

Where is the condemnation from the Obama administration? Interesting how President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joseph Biden lashed into Israel for announcing new building plans in her capital city, but they have remained completely silent with these outlandish, provocative statements made against Israel from one of the Palestinian Authorities highest officials.

It is shameless that the Obama Administration has done nothing immediate about this extreme incitement against Israel. The announcement of the building project in Jerusalem was made by a low level member of the Jerusalem City Building Authority, which the Netenyahu government has no power over. This statement was still immediately condemned by the Obama Administration. Whereas the statements from Palestinians were made by Nabil Shaath who sits in the highest echelons of the Palestinian leadership.

Shaath’s remarks are a shocking example of the Palestinians’ strategy of foiling the peace talks. Most importantly, his astounding and threatening statement is in complete contradiction to the conditions set by the Americans for starting the talks.

For Shaath to actually say that the Palestinians are attempting to destroy Israel’s relationship with the European Union and attempt to have her expelled from the United Nations is a Cassus Belli.

Shaath’s incendiary words have also exposed the atrocious job of the Obama administration’s foreign policy vis-a-vis the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The appeasement of the Arab, Muslim world has done nothing to inch them closer to making the needed compromises to reach a peace agreement. In fact Obama’s policy of appeasement has actually nudged the Arabs into a more hostile and greedy stance.

It has long been apparent that the Palestinians have no intention of making peace with Israel, and of late they have been emboldened by what they see as the Obama Administration’s harsh treatment of Israel. They now intend to force Israel into a corner by unilaterally declaring statehood and pushing the United Nations into excepting it. This in turn will force Israel to unilaterally annex all the land in the West Bank that is still in her immediate power.

Shaath and his ilk are obviously incapable of learning from the mistake made by all the former Palestinian leaders. His statements are reminiscent of those made by the Palestinian Leadership before they carried out the greatest disaster their nation has ever experienced in rejecting the Partition of the Palestinian Mandate into two states.

As the old saying goes, “plus ca change, plus c’est the meme chose” ... or, the more things change, the more they are the same. The Palestinians still want to see the destruction of Israel; they simply have realized that they can’t do it militarily. Now they’re going to try their best to do it economically and politically. Unfortunately, they have acquired a growing number of misguided and misinformed do-gooders and so-called human rights activists who should better spend their time supporting the refugees of Darfur (which incidentally is an instance of Arab Muslims murdering and oppressing black Muslims).

When will they learn that Israel is here to stay? She is made up of 6.5 million Jews and 1.5 million Arabs. No matter how hard they try they cannot erase this fact, no matter how much delegitimization and political terrorism they carry out they cannot erase the Jewish State.

Sadly the Palestinians are running down the same road they have taken time and time again; this time in a slightly different vehicle. The trip will end with the same result, however: denying themselves a nation.

IDEAS YOU WON'T FIND IN HAARETZ

By Shmoel Yitzhak

ONCE OVER LIGHTLY BUT NOT POLITELY

* Will someone be kind enough to give Barak Obama a non-Arabic map of the Middle East. Ensure that it has a large arrow pointing at Israel, which is not that far from Cairo.

* Then, perhaps, one of his cerebral advisors -- perhaps the Jewish one whose father is a doctor -- can remind the empty suit passing for a president that he has yet to visit the Jewish nation to which he keeps giving instructions.

* Three journalists have Middle East politics better analyzed than any of their colleagues in the world. They are the Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick, Sarah Honig and Barry Rubin.

* I would be very, very disturbed if I learned that Bibi Netanyahu did not read their stuff -- digest it fully -- and learn from what they're telling him.

* This isn't Murphy's Law so we call it Moishe's Law. "Give an Arab politician something for nothing in return and you always will be a slap in the face as a bonus.

* Or, has everyone forgotten the "bonus" Israel received from exiting Lebanon and Gaza.

* Unless you happen to like rockets for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

* And let us not forget for one minute that the Gaza "truce" is holding so well that Hamas continues to allow -- encourage? -- continuous Gaza-based attacks as far as Ashkelon.

* Of course, Judge Goldstone would examine one of those burning rockets and suggest that it would go good with matzoh.

* It would be heartening to know that there is more than one professor in the Good, Old USA who can defend Israel -- and rip its enemies -- with the insight and passion of an Allan Dershowitz.

* Definition of "naive:" Believing that the proposed sanctions against Iran will cause Ahmadinejad to do anything but: 1. Yawn; 2. Smirk; 3. Order his nuclear scientists to hurry-up with the bomb.

* The "Iron Dome" missile defense system makes a lot of sense -- on paper. But to put too much faith on its unerring ability to be a deterrent is a case of putting too much faith in science and too little in reality.

* An Israeli soldier remains alive -- we hope -- and in Hamas' captivity. How come the likes of Goldstone, the United Nations or even President Obama haven't demanded that he be returned without any pre-conditions?

* Can you imagine how long Haaretz would be in business if it were delivering the same daily anti-government messages in, say, Egypt, Syria or Iran? Answer: Maybe two days. One day for the dictators to do a double-take, thinking the stories were the result of typographical errors; and the second day to wreck the presses, computers and the folks behind the stories.

* Biggest transportation mistakes in Israel: 1. Failure to extend the railway system to Eilat and Metulla; 2. Not starting construction on a Tel Aviv subway two decades ago; 3. Inadequate campaigns against unsafe driving throughout the country.

* Mr. Hariri in Lebanon wants the "international community" to impose a Middle East peace on the rivals. Among card-players, that's called stacking the deck.

* Hilary Clinton could use a map of Israel as well.

Friday, May 21, 2010

HYPOCRISY RULES THE WAVES

The hypocrisy of the anti-Israel world know’s no bounds. It seems that week after week the academics, journalists and politicians are trying to outdo each other with their virulently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic behavior.

On one day we have the Prime Minister of Turkey using virulently anti-Semitic demagoguery against Israel because she defends herself against Palestinian Arab aggression. Then the representatives of the people with whom we are supposedly making peace (the Palestinian Authority) do all they can to delegitimize Israel and incite against our right to statehood on a nearly daily basis.

Ben White, a free-lance journalist who has become the darling of the anti-Israel cabal by authoring “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide” in England, went to great lengths to ensure that Benny Morris, a left-leaning Israeli historian, was not given the right to speak at a Cambridge college. The fact that this nobody was able to accomplish this is simply a measure of how popular it is in academic circles to hate Israel. Yet pro-Palestinian types are allowed to speak at the university whenever they want.

Gideon Levi of Haaretz continues to increase his dark fantasy world by comparing Israel to North Korea. The calls for boycotts against Israel grow louder, while nothing is said or done about the constant Arab refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as the Jewish State.

Lets start with Recep Tayyip Erdogan: The Prime Minister of Turkey can’t resist the most hypocritical, outrageous and anti-Semitic criticism of Israel. Here are some of his quotes. Last November Erdogan said that Israeli actions in Gaza were far worse than what the government in Sudan had done in Darfur. In Paris this spring he called Israel “the principal threat to peace in the Middle East.” He also called Israel's stance on Jerusalem “madness.” At the Davos conference last year Erdogan fell into a virulent, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic diatribe, calling Israelis “murderers” and “genocidists” because of Operation Cast Lead. He has continuously said Jews run the world media.

The problem here is that Prime Minister Erdogan is the leader of a country that has deprived the Kurdish nation its self-determination and statehood. For some reason the Palestinians are more deserving of a state than the Kurds are. The Palestinians obviously are also more “human” than the Kurds. The Turks have no problem mass killing Kurds, bombing their homelands with modern fighter Jets, all unprovoked, while Israel cannot defend herself after Hamas shoots 8,000 rockets into southern Israel.

On top of all of this,Turkey happens to be the country that committed the world’s first act of recorded genocide and crimes against humanity when she mass-murdered more than one million Armenians and displaced thousands more. More recently, when not calling Israel names, Erdogan has been busy muzzling his judges and jailing his own generals (those who are most secular). This man has a right to judge Israel?

Erdogan is just one of many politicians who have taken on a vehemently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic attitude. Others like Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and half of the third world grow increasingly disgusting with their rhetoric. Meanwhile all of them are committing atrocities against their people that far exceed anything Israel could or has ever cooked up against the Palestinians, or their own citizen-Arabs.

How does the world expect Israel to be receptive to peace, when so much of the world is not receptive to the Jewish nation’s right to self-determination and self-defense of the state they have built?

Ben White is yet another glaring example of all that is evil with the Anti-Israel camp: White will obviously go well out of his way to suppress the freedom of speech to anyone who dares to support Israel’s right to exist, even if they happen to be left-leaning liberals.

He managed to deny Benny Morris, a left-leaning historian who regularly takes Israel to task for what she has done to the Palestinians in the past, the right to speak at Cambridge University -- under the guise of Morris being a racist!

White’s total fabrication is yet another example of how far those of his ilk will go in their attempts to smear Israel; much like the Nazis did in pre-WW2 Germany to delegitimize Jews and their supporters. White’s deceit enabled university authorities to cancel Morris’ speech for fear that he “might get attacked if he were to appear at Cambridge." These tactics are totally similar to those used by the Brownshirts of the Nazi party.

In all of this Morris’s only crime was that he believes that Israel has the right to exist as the Jewish State alongside a Palestinian State.

Ben White calls Israel an Apartheid State, ignoring the fact that Israel is a representative democracy whose Parliament is made up of thirteen Arab members and five more who are Druze. White also omits to mention that the Palestinians are still in their political position solely because of the mistakes their own leaders made by putting the destruction of Israel before the creation of Palestine. Ben White chooses to forget that the Palestinians were offered full peace, 97% of the West Bank, East Jerusalem as their capital city, three quarters of Jerusalem’s old city, all the Gaza Strip and the Right of Palestinian refugees to return to the new Palestinian State.

More than anything it is Ben White’s attitude toward Israel herself and the Jewish nation that truly reveals him not just as anti-Israeli but also as an anti-Semite. Ben White blames Israel for anything and everything that happens in the Arab-Israel conflict. He singles Israel out as an Apartheid State, while totally overlooking the fact that the Palestinians have totally de-Judaized Samaria and Judea where and when they can. He overlooks the fact that the Arab and Muslim world have done everything to deny the Jews their rights over their own religious sights.

It does not bother Ben White that Jews can’t buy land in Jordan and non-Muslims or non-Arabs can’t become citizens of Arab countries. It does not bother Ben White that Israelis and Jews are not allowed to travel to Saudi Arabia. More than anything Ben White has this incredibly skewed opinion that the Arabs deserve yet another country, their twenty-fourth in the world. But the Jews for some reason do not deserve their own country in the land that has been theirs since history began.

It is Ben White who is, in fact, the racist. Of course, his justification for his racism is that it is directed at Israel and the Jews, that of course makes it acceptable.

Gideon Levi is a lot like Ben White. The big difference between the two is that Gideon Levi is Jewish and lives, breathes and enjoys all the “perks” of Israel’s democracy. Levi betrays the responsibility that comes with being a journalist in a country that has freedom of speech, when he presents fallacious statements about his country’s character. Like Ben White, Levi will do anything to delegitimize Israel’s behavior towards the Palestinians. To Levi it makes no difference that the Palestinian Arabs have done nothing but spit in the face of Israeli peace overtures time and time again. Levi does not care that the Arabs started this war before Israel’s independence and he couldn't care less that the Arabs have done everything to keep this war going.

No, to Gideon Levi the major problem is that Israel happens to be the one and only Jewish State in the world. It does not make a difference that this Jewish State affords more freedoms to its Arab, Druze, Circassion and Bedouin minorities than are afforded to American and Western European minorities.

There are also the boycotts and attempted boycotts of Israel the world over. It seems it‘s unfair for Israel to boycott/blockade the Gaza strip in response to a constant barrage of rocket fire and a government (Hamas) that calls for Israel’s destruction. But it’s all right for English Labor unions and the U.S. Presbyterian Church to boycott and blockade Israel.

This type of insane hypocrisy is what makes peace impossible. If these groups wish to boycott Israel, they had better boycott Palestinian goods for Hamas’s crimes against humanity. It is Hamas that started the terrorist suicide bombing campaign during the early to late Nineties that ended in the assassination of Itzhak Rabin and the death of the Peace Process. What these boycotts are saying is that is okay for the Palestinians to say no to peace and to incite against Israel. But Israel is not entitled to fight back, to maintain her freedom and statehood.

The anti-Israel camp appear not to care that the Palestinian poor are getting poorer, that the stateless are still stateless. Or, if they do, they blame it all on Israel. Their apparent goal is the delegitimization and destruction of Israel. For them it is not about creating the state of Palestine next to the Jewish State of Israel; it is about wiping the Jewish off of the map of the earth.

For the Palestinian I say this: if your situation is bad, refer to your dad and his before that. What’s your reason for being angry at Israel? Karma is real, and it is your dad and his dad who started this deal.

The Palestinians would be wise to recognize that Anti-Israel haters aren’t going to get them a state. Nor will they better their chances at attaining peace in the Middle-East by denying their true brothers their right to self-determination. The Palestinians absolutely and finally must realize they made a tremendous mistake by rejecting partition. They made an even bigger mistake by rejecting peace in 1993 and choosing war again in 2000. If they do not wake up soon and realize their time for statehood is running out, the Palestinians will lose everything: culture, society and nation.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Who We Are-

Jew, here is a definition of the word from the Merriam Webster dictionary.

Jew-Pronunciation: \ˈjü\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French ju, jeu, from Latin Judaeus, from Greek Ioudaios, from Hebrew Yĕhūdhī, from Yĕhūdhāh Judah, Jewish kingdom

Date: 13th century

1 a : a member of the tribe of Judah b : Israelite

2 : a member of a nation existing in Palestine from the sixth century b.c. to the first century a.d.

3 : a person belonging to a continuation through descent or conversion of the ancient Jewish people

4 : one whose religion is Judaism
 
The first three definitions talk of a tribe, a people, a nation. Why? Because being a Jew meant being part of a tribe or nation long before it meant being part of a religion. The religion called Judaism today is nothing more than the laws given to the Hebrew/Israelite/Jewish nation thousands of years ago to enforce discipline and create stability in a rustic herding culture as it transitioned and developed, much like laws are made today in parliaments the world over. 

The definition of the word or name Jew has become so important in today’s world, but why? 

Because for thousands of years other nations (mostly conquerors in search of expanding their empires) have bullied, persecuted, exiled and/or mass murdered Jews. Because Jews have always existed within and among other cultures, as well as in their own lands, with a code of conduct which takes precedence over any other, the Greeks enslaved and killed us because we turned our back on Greek culture. The Romans, because we rebelled against them, went so far as to destroy our country and capital city, rename both of them and transplant a majority of the Jews from Israel to Rome, attempting to erase us from geographical history. The Arabs invaded us, colonized our land and built their Dome of The Rock and Al Aksa Mosque on our Temple Mount. The Eastern Europeans carried out pogroms in which thousands, if not millions of Jews were killed. The German Empire finally tried to extinguish us completely from the world during the Shoah / Holocaust.

In all of these cases above we were persecuted and killed because we were the Jewish nation – a people apart, with its own code of conduct, no matter where we lived -- not the Jewish religion. We were the nation to reject or rebel against the new, in-culture, then we became the nation that killed Christ (A Jew).  Today’s revisionists try to deny, whitewash or ameliorate most of these irrefutable historical truths.

The word Jew comes from the Greek word for Judea, the Jewish Kingdom that was an integral part of the Israelite Kingdom. Judah was head of one of the twelve tribes of Israel, offspring of Israel, father of the Israelites or Jewish people. However, today’s Jew-haters and anti-semites are doing all they can to say we are no longer a nation, that we do not deserve to be a nation, that if we were to be a nation we’re in the wrong place, or that if we are indeed a nation, we’re a human rights abusing, colonialistic, apartheid one. After thousands of years of killing us because we are a nation, today’s revisionist anti-semites wish to take this integral part of our identity away from us.

Why do they want to take this away from us?  Because the fact that Jews have a unified code of conduct that is thousands of years old, and goes wherever they go, has always been the biggest thorn in the side of Jew-haters.
Why is that? 

Because after thousands of years of Jews hoping, praying and trying, they have finally achieved their long sought after goal, the State of Israel, with its capital city of Jerusalem. But, to Jew-haters and anti-semites, the Hebrew/Israelite,/Jewish and now Israeli people/nation are standing up to today’s new “cool” cultures: Fanatical Islam, Fanatical Leftism and Fanatical Rightism – all with threatening nuances of Fascism and all bad copies of our friends the Nazis, with the same old goals.  Worst of all for the anti-semites is that this new found self-determination of the Jews has given their nation an army to fight back with.

This army, the IDF, has dealt all anti-semites a major blow. They can no longer get away so easily with bullying, persecuting and killing Jews. They, (Arab/Muslims especially) have tried on many occasions to militarily wipe this new incarnation of the Jewish nation off of the map of the world. In all cases they have failed. Only a few still believe they can militarily destroy Israel. Instead, these haters have turned their focus to a new realm, that of delegitimizing Jews as a nation and their deserved right to Self-Determination and statehood.

Now these fanatics wish to once again turn the Jew and his new nation into a pariah by using many of the same techniques of the past but just flip-flopping them. The biggest fallacy of them all is the accusation that the Jew has stolen the land that makes up Israel; that the new nation is simply an instrument of the colonizing Europeans.

This is what the Arabs, Far Leftists and Far Rightists all claim. The truth is simple, though. Jews have always been living in the land that is Israel today, plus in the contiguous area known as the West Bank. We may not have always been the majority, thanks in great part to colonizing forces (Greeks, Romans, Arabs), but the same can be said for Tibet. 

Jerusalem has always been a majority Jewish city and is mentioned 669 times in the Tanach; not once in the Koran. Jerusalem has always been the most sacred and holy city for the Jewish Nation. When the Romans sacked Jerusalem in the year 70, history tells us there were close to, or more than, a million Jews killed. How is that possible when the population of Jerusalem was so much smaller? When Titus laid siege to Jerusalem on the 14th of April in the year 70 C.E., it was the holiday of Passover. During this time, much like today, Jews flocked to Jerusalem from all over the Roman world because of its integral importance to the nation.

The word Jew comes from Judea, Judah, the nation and Kingdom of Israel. Arabs come from Arabia, which is nowhere near Israel or Jerusalem. Arabs themselves were the true colonizers, making it all the way to Spain in their attempt to conquer the world. In a speech given by Marcus Julius Agrippa, or Agrippa the Second, who was attempting to persuade the Jews from revolting against Rome. Given from the roof of his palace with his sister Berenice by his side in the year 66ce , Agrippa’s speech mentioned the Arabians in Arabia. They had not yet begun their conquests and the “prophet” Mohammed was centuries away from being a light in his mother’s eyes!

Israel, First World as it may appear to be on the surface, is one of the last remaining pieces of the ancient world. Jews are a lot like crocodiles and sharks: organisms of the ancient world living in modern times.

Many secular Jews outside of Israel are not taught the history of their nation. If we do not know who we are and what our history is, how can we defend ourselves against today’s enemies, particularly in this current war of words and name-calling? These secular Jews hear the words, sometimes eloquent, sometimes persuasive, of the Jew-haters and anti-semites and think Israel may be wrong, maybe shouldn’t exist, or perhaps is just as bad as things are described. 

We are not even seven decades removed from the Holocaust and today anti-semitism rears its head all over the world. Leaders from around the world -- Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran -- constantly spew anti-semitic rhetoric. Ahmadinejad has even called for Israel’s destruction and threatened her with nuclear war.

Voices of the self-hating Jews, such as American academics like Noam Chomsky and the world leaders named above, are doing untold damage to Israel, in an existential sense. In short, the naysayers currently are winning “The War of the Words .” 
It is time for us to return to our roots, to remember who we are as a nation and to fight back against the de-legitimizers -- the anti-semitic, anti-Israel haters.

All those who would defend the nation Israel, raise up your dictionaries, wield your history books … and fight!

Saturday, May 15, 2010

DEFENDING PROFESSOR D-

Isn’t it funny when people shoot off their mouths for their right to freedom of speech, then do all they can to deny their opposition that same right?

This is what happened at Tel Aviv University last week when Alan Dershowitz accepted an honorary doctorate from the university.

Dershowitz used his freedom of speech to take to task left-leaning professors who make it their life to criticize -- no, worse -- defame Israel and her government. He specifically mentioned Shlomo Sands and Anat Matar.

These professors, who routinely take advantage of the freedoms awarded them by the democratic state in which they live, immediately tried to silence Dershowitz by calling him an inciter. If this is not the pot calling the kettle black, then I don’t know what is.

Shlomo Sands is the author of a book (The Invention of The Jewish People) that denounces the Jewish people, denounces their right to a state and is as close to a twenty-first century Protocols of The Elders of Zion as you can get. When Anat Matar isn’t teaching, she is gallivanting around Europe at pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests calling her country an apartheid state and demanding an economic boycott of Israel.

This is incitement against the people of Israel and the State.

Why should these professors have the right to slander Israel, make up their own mythos of the Jewish people and incite against the Jewish Nation? Shlomo Sands, Anat Matar and others can do all of this, but Prof. Dershowitz can’t demand that these radical inciters be held accountable for attempting to influence students who have paid tens of thousands of hard-earned Shekels to learn facts, not opinions?

What these professors unintentionally did in their attack on Alan Dershowitz is highlight and expose all that is wrong with the fanatical, anti-Israel left. They demand democracy and its freedoms for themselves and the side they align themselves with, while denying it to those who stand against their hatefulness. The last time I checked, that type of behavior is best suited for a dictatorship or theocracy rather than a democracy. This behavior also runs contrary to their own definition of freedom of speech.

The professors at Tel Aviv University who tried to muzzle Dershowitz’s call for honest and factual higher education reveal themselves as nothing more than the playground bully who finally has been hit back. Now they’re crying “foul” because they know Alan Dershowitz is right. They know he is right when he calls for a halt to their attempts to turn the minds of students with the near-seditious insertion of personal politics into their curricula.

These academics also happen to be hitting below the proverbial belt.

The militant left and its supporters in the media have done all they can to delegitimize Dershowitz, depicting him fallaciously as a radical conservative. This is, of course, far from the truth. Alan Dershowitz is a left-leaning liberal who was active in the civil rights movement and is an avid campaigner in the American pro-choice movement. Not exactly right-leaning or conservative.

When it comes to Israel, Dershowitz supports the two-state solution and is firmly in favor of removing Israeli settlements. Fortunately, he also firmly believes it’s possible to be intelligent, educated, reasoned, constructively critical AND a patriot.

However, as usual, these purported academics would rather go with their opinions than the facts.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

ACADEMIC FREEDOM....OR LICENSE

by Shirley Walton

The other day I was reading a piece in the English language Haaretz newspaper about a protest waged against Harvard University professor Alan Dershowitz a week ago at Tel Aviv University (TAU).

Dershowitz, a well-known lawyer and vocal supporter of Israel, gave a speech as he was given an honorary doctorate by the University. In that speech he deplored the actions of certain Israeli academics whom he felt were misusing their positions to both criticize the government of Israel and to influence students to do the same. For instance, one academic named by Dershowitz had recently been in London (while TAU classes were in recess) to participate in a conference supporting an economic boycott of Israel.

A letter to university president Joseph Klafter, signed by 80 TAU academics, said that Dershowitz’ comments amounted “to incitement.” The letter further demanded that the university “unequivocally defend the freedom of expression of all the members of the academic community.”

The most striking part of the letter, at least to me, was the statement that Dershowitz “has no evidence that anyone on the faculty has forced his views on students.”

This led me to one crucial question: what are a teacher’s “views” doing in the classroom in the first place? Whatever the teacher’s private opinions, politics or basic “slant” on life may be, should they be a part of the curriculum? If academia has decided it’s merely “freedom of expression” to insert one’s own opinions or views into a classroom, then we are in serious trouble.

Just think of the enormous power the words of a college professor can have on eager, open, inquiring minds. When that vulnerable 18-year old brain is introduced to huge amounts of new information and ideas for the first time, and by a genuine PhD-type authority figure, is that brain capable of discerning the difference between an historical fact and that powerful professor’s opinion?

I will never forget my first anthropology class at the University of Michigan, taught by one of the world’s most famous anthropologists, Robert Service. I wanted to become an anthropologist, and I was thrilled to be in this humongous Anthro 101 class -- along with about 499 other 18-year olds. We hung on his every word, breathlessly.

In two hours Service tried to cram the basics of anthropology into our minds, to set up the parameters of the semester course, and about midway through he apparently thought he was losing us (I admit my eyes had started to glaze and the pen in my hand was drifting) and decided to wake us all up.

While describing to us the significance of incest laws in human history, he suddenly said, “Every one of you look at the person sitting next to you.”

We did, grinning at each other slightly and going along with whatever the game was.

“If there were no laws against incest,” said Service portentiously, “None of you would be able to sit next to each other and listen to me speak!”
Five hundred mouths dropped open; five hundred pairs of eyes now nervously glanced at the person in the next seat. And, since there is little on the mind of a 17 or 18-year old but thoughts of sex, the image of a huge pile of depraved savages performing a monstrous orgy flashed through many of those 500 brains, too!

Service, with a few choice words, had turned a concept -- incest -- into a reality that we all instantly understood. By the end of that first two-hour session of Anthro 101, I thought he was some sort of deity.

Had Service then told me that he believed in demonism and I should go draw pentagrams on my mother’s champagne beige carpet and sacrifice my gray cat, Smoky, on a pagan altar, I would have seriously considered it!

I think you all see my point: the enormous power and influence an academic has over young minds is an equally huge responsibility; one that should NEVER be tainted by personal opinions or views.

And if those academics can’t keep their own views out of the kids’ classrooms, then they should resign and become politicians -- which is what they’re doing anyway!

Sunday, May 9, 2010

PEACE=COMPROMISE

With the opening of proximity negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians let’s take a step back, a deep breath and look with a magnifying glass at how the Palestinians will ruin any chance of Peace.

History is a key component to making a better future. This is a bit of knowledge the Palestinians lack. These negotiations will probably fail because the Palestinians have never wanted to look back on their history with an ounce of truth. They have never wanted to look at their past mistakes in an attempt to correct them.

From the beginning of this conflict the Arabs of Eretz Israel ( I call them this because the name Palestinian is nothing more than a twentieth century invention) have done all they can to deny the Jews their rightful home.

Jews were a majority population in the major cities of Eretz Israel until the Arab riots of the early twentieth century. The Jews were the majority in Hebron, Safed and Jerusalem.

When the opportunity of returning European Jews to their native homeland in Israel was approved by the British with the Balfour declaration, the Arabs of the mandate revolted and murdered hundreds of Jews. In 1929 the Arabs committed the Hebron massacre, killing 67 Jews and pushing the rest out of Hebron. Hebron, a majority Jewish City since antiquity was, in one fell swoop, de-Judaized.

On November 29th, 1947, the United Nations voted 33 to 13 in favor of the partition of the Palestine Mandate into two states, one Jewish one Arab. The Jewish population of Palestine accepted this, the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee rejected it with the backing of the Arab League. What this means is from the beginning of this conflict the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab world in general have never accepted the concept or the right of a Jewish State.

Because of the Arab refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist, the war of Israeli Independence was fought and won by the Jews. Israel fought and won this war against
the combined armies of Egypt, Trans-Jordan (under British military leadership), Lebanon, Syria, plus contingents from Morocco, Libya, Algeria and Iraq.

From this point on the Jews created and maintained the state of Israel.

In addition to creating a homeland for the battered remnants of Europe’s Jewry, Israel brought in all the Jewish refugees, some 900,000, who were subsequently expelled from the Arab and Muslim states where they had been living since exile from ancient Israel thousands of years ago.

The Arabs, on the other hand, forced their supposed brethren into refugee camps WHERE THEY STILL EXIST TODAY! Refugees camps still exist both in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, both areas ostensibly run by the Palestinians since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

While Israel has built itself up into a pluralistic, democratic country while simultaneously constantly fighting for its survival, the Palestinian Leadership and the Arab world have let the Palestinians squander in refugee camps ... as a bargaining chip.

On numerous occasions the state of Israel has gone the extra mile to give land back for peace. On almost every occasion the Arabs have rejected these offers, opting for war -- in the hopes of finally destroying Israel.

After the Six Day War (1967), the Eshkol government offered to return all of the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights and the West Bank for peace. The Arabs counter-offered with the once famous Three No’s of the Khartoum Conference: No Peace with Israel, No Recognition of Israel and No negotiations with Israel.

The facts of history point out again and again the refusal of the Arab world to recognize the Jewish nation’s right to exist, with their own self-determination, on land that had been theirs for thousands of years and long before Arabs had come out of Arabia.

The greatest folly committed by the Palestinians, which the world has seemingly forgotten was the rejection of peace by Yassar Arafat. After seven years of painstaking negotiations Ehud Barak decided to put the Palestinian leadership to the ultimate test. American President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinian leadership 97% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Muslim and Christian quarters of the old city, sovereignty of the Temple Mount and the return of Palestinian refugees, to the new state of Palestine.

Arafat rejected what was -- and always will be -- the best offer any losing nation will receive in any peace negotiations. In fact one could even claim that what was offered to the Palestinians that day was what a winning nation should receive out of peace negotiations! Once again, compromise -- the heart of making peace -- was a foreign concept to the Palestinian. Arafat rejected this offer because it would mean that Israel would have to be recognized and accepted as the Jewish State.

To this day, I believe that Prime Minister Barak knew that Arafat would reject even the finest offer. He knew this because he knew Yassar Arafat would never give up the hope of destroying Israel and replacing it with yet another Arab State. However, Barak also naively believed the world would finally recognize all that Israel had done to create a Palestinian State, exposing Arafat and the Palestinian leadership as still intent on wiping Israel off the world map. While Barak did an amazing job of exposing the Palestinians true intent, he forgot that the world was still as anti-Semitic as it has always been.

It made no difference that everyone from Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright, the heads of Europe to the King of Saudi Arabia condemned Arafat. Months later, thanks to the war he started in response to PM Barak’s more than generous offer, the world was condemning Israel for responding to suicide attacks that were mass-murdering her citizens.

Today there is ridiculous talk about the settlements being the main obstacle to peace. This deluded concept is built totally by complete ignorance of the historical facts (or by simply choosing to ignore those facts). There shouldn’t be settlements today, but not for the reasons given by the Palestinian leadership, the EU, the Obama administration, the people suffering from amnesia at Haaretz or the Israeli left.

There shouldn’t be settlements today because Yassar Arafat should have put his people before his ego and his hatred of a Jewish state’s existence at Camp David and Taba. There should be a Palestinian State today and there would have been, if not for the Palestinian leadership who rejected peace in 2000. The only reason why there are still Jewish settlements and why there is no Palestinian State rests in the hands of those who rejected the greatest compromise a state could give while seeking peace.

Today Mahmoud Abbas is not interested in peace or compromise with Israel. What he is interested in is making Israel out to be the bad guy for mistakes the previous Palestinian leadership made. He hopes to blame Israel when talks breakdown because of his Palestinians’ inability to compromise.

An instant clue to the ultimate failure of the current so-called peace effort is the type of negotiations Abbas agreed to. Israel and the Palestinians have been negotiating face to face since before the actual signing of the Oslo Accords. It was face to face (but behind-the-scenes)negotiations that made the Oslo Accords possible. Abbas rejecting face to face negotiations shows how frivolous and infantile the Palestinians still are.

Most mature of all is Hamas’ (the leaders of Gaza) “welcome” to even this inane pretense of negotiations: firing a Qassam rocket into Israel, near Ashkelon!

More insidious, the world has chosen to ignore the Palestinians’ cunning maneuvering of the sympathies of the extreme left into helping delegitimize Israel. The current array of monstrous acts allegedly perpetrated by Israel -- apartheid, occupation, oppression, repression, genocide, a plethora of other so-called human rights abuses -- could make Rudolf Hess blanch. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” will look like children’s literature before the Palestinophiles get through with their slander about Israel.

I hope for peace. I hope Israel will finally get the chance to be at peace with her neighbors. I hope for the Palestinians there will be peace. I hope they get their state.

I doubt it will happen, though, since they are still so determined to destroy Israel before building their own nation on her ashes.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Feeling the Love

Dear Friends and Supporters:

Like many supporters of Israel who stand up for our beleaguered country I receive many hate-mails on my blog and at the Facebook page I started in defense of Israel.

Today is different. Today Mohammed Kolaghassi, a member of Facebook made this very personal by sending me a threatening message to my profile page.

Here is what Mohammed had to say. “Hey man fuck you and fuck the group help Israel......we are going to get you Zionist pig.....P.”

At first I just decided to report him to the Facebook administrators, but after thinking about this disgusting incident I felt you, as partners in this battle with me, deserved to know about this, too. This was just as much an attack on you.

Mohammed Kolaghassi represents all that is despicable about the Anti-Semitic, Anti-Israeli camp. The proponents of Anti-Israelism are made up of the fanatical Left, Anarchists, Islamo-Fascists and Arab Colonialists. All one form or another of Fascism. Mohammed is their foot soldier.

Mohammed wants to scare me into being quiet either by physical violence or by threatening me as he did via message on Facebook.

Mohammed wants to shut me up because he knows that when I write, I bring a novel experience into play: truth backed up by facts. He knows that as long as there are people in this world ready to defend Israel, she will exist.

It’s not just me he wants to scare. He wants to scare my supporters and the people who are behind me in this battle to maintain our freedom.

What Mohammed Kolaghassi does not understand is that I am not easy to scare. For far too long our side has been silenced by modern day brownshirts who wish to take away our nation’s liberty and my freedom of speech. I refuse to let that happen.

Mohammed Kolaghassi and those like him will not shut us up anymore, no matter how many times they threaten us.

Israel and her supporters are here to stay no matter what, and it would be wise for people like Mohammed to get used to it.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The Treachery of Levy-

In this past weekend edition of Haaretz the people of Israel were treated to a fantastic lesson on Democracy by Gideon Levy.

The problem with Levy’s opinion article was the unmitigated arrogance and disdain he manifested toward the Israeli public, calling them ignorant, stupid and worse, fascistic.
Why? Because we do not want top secret documents that could endanger our soldiers and country stolen and sold off to the highest bidders.

In Gideon Levy’s world President Obama should take the blueprints of the American Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carriers and post them on Facebook. The American army should also start doing public tours of the nuclear missile silos secretly stashed throughout the United States of America.

I have gotten used to Gideon Levy’s hatred for Israel and his obnoxious attempts to always blame his nation for the mistakes made by the Arabs. His articles are often nothing more than delusional nonsense; his rhetoric predictable.

So, what caught my eye this time around? The absurd notion in Mr. Levi’s head that he can lecture Israel and Israelis about democracy.

His defense of Anat Kamm is loathsome. This is a woman who was put into a position of trust by the Israel Defense Forces. She broke that trust by stealing top secret army documents and selling them to Uri Blau, an investigative reporter for, you guessed it, Haaretz. Many of these documents were connected to IDF defense doctrine in the case of a full-fledged war with Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.

Understandably Israeli citizens are furious with Kamm because what she has done is to endanger the security of their country for her own benefit. Blau and Kamm went well beyond freedom of speech and cogent investigative reporting. They engaged in treason.

What they did would be illegal in any democracy in the world.

In most countries, democratic or otherwise, Kamm would pay for her actions with her life. Just ask Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, put to death by the American court system on charges that were never one hundred percent proven (to this day mention of the Rosenbergs causes controversy and debate). Or, if it is not the death penalty Kamm would get for treason, then she could well pay for it by sitting in jail for the rest of her life, as Jonathan Pollard will in the US.

Gideon Levi does not want democracy and if he defends someone like Anat Kamm in the name of democracy, then he knows precious little about it.

His accusation that Israelis are fascists and ignorant of what democracy really is, because they demand that a treasonous soldier actually pay for her treachery, exposes his pure, unadulterated hatred for Israel -- no matter what the nation does.

Gideon Levi is not a fascist. But he is an Israel hater, possibly a self-hating Jew and by default, an Arabist. Ironically, next to Levy’s piece was one written by an Israeli Arab lamenting the recent visit to Libya by a group of Israeli Arab leaders, saying, “All of a sudden, all these MKs forgot that they have sworn an oath of loyalty to the State of Israel in the Knesset ...” The author of the piece, Salman Masalha, also said that the visit “...signifies a loss of both political and moral orientation.”

Levy’s almost constant rant against Israel’s government, and his obvious disdain of her citizens ( the majority of her citizens, rather) indicates he, too, has lost political and moral orientation.We know that no matter how much Israel gives when it comes to peace Levy will always blame her government for the Arabs’ refusals. Now that he has labeled Israel’s citizens fascists and ignorant of democracy for demanding the punishment of a soldier citizen who committed treason, he has made himself nothing more than a gross misrepresentation of all that is good about democracy.

Gideon Levy is Israel’s Tokyo Rose.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Don’t Believe the Hype-

The last two weeks have been an awesome display of how badly the Obama administration has failed in its Middle-Eastern foreign policy. These numerous failures have caused harm to America’s constant ally and supporter, Israel. It has been an almost amazing demonstration of Obama’s apparent willingness to sell out Israel.

Syria and Iran transported Scud missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon last week. For those who do not grasp the seriousness of this situation for Israel due to a lack of military knowledge, I’ll explain. A Scud missile is a tactical ballistic missile that can transport chemical and biological warheads, an offensive weapon system that most countries don’t possess. For the first time, Syria (i.e., Iran via Damascus) has put these missiles into the hands of a terrorist organization that seeks to destroy Israel.

In fact, the only instance where Scuds were directed toward Israel was during Desert Storm, by Saddam Hussein. Significantly, the ONLY reason why Israel suffered this barrage of Scuds was at the direct request of the United States (the first George Bush).

One main reason why America is seeking to destroy Al Qaida the world over is so technology like this never makes it into the hands of any terrorist organization. But America since Obama became President has been restraining Israel from moving against targets like this, in the hope of pulling Syria away from Iran.

This naive approach has failed on so many occasions: during Desert Storm Syria demanded that the US keep Israel from attacking Iraq; then there was the Madrid Conference which the US half-nelsoned Israel to attend, only to have the Jewish state lambasted by the tyrannical Arab attendees; during the Oslo Accords period (1993-2000), it was Syria backing Hamas and their suicide bombings that ultimately destroyed the peace process.

The biggest joke of all was when the US strong-armed Israel and Syria into meeting in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, on January 3, 2000. There Israel offered Syria a return of the entire Golan Heights, minus the eastern Kinneret beaches (that never had been in Syria’s possession anyway). Ironically, Hafez al Assad, leader of the most water-rich country in the entire Middle East, demanded not only the entire Golan, but the eastern Kinneret beaches as well, which would have given Assad access to Israel’s main water source. Obviously, no deal.

The Syrians are totally afraid of moving into the Western Camp. It would force the Assad family hegemony into making reforms in their own country. This is a horrific thought for the tiny Alawite minority that runs Syria.

Thus, the US’ foolish attempts to appease Syria at Israel’s expense not only has been useless, unproductive, but often disastrous -- for both Israel and America.

While all this has been happening in the Middle-East, a high ranking Israeli diplomat, the deputy ambassador to Britain, gets attacked by Pro-palestinian thugs, paid and provided for by the Palestinian Authority and its President Mahmoud Abbas. Deputy Ambassador Talya Lador-Fresher would have been beaten severely if not for her Israeli escorts after her speech at Manchester University. This all happened without a response from either the British or American government. They have no problem condemning Israel for building homes in Jerusalem, but can’t say a word about Mahmoud Abbas and his constant incitement against Israel.

Last week Iran carried out its greatest war games ever. While conducting these military drills, Iran and the Iranian government -- as always -- threatened Israel and her existence. They also threatened America by expressing readiness to close the straits of Hormuz. They also test-fired five missiles capable of reaching Israel. And only two days ago the Vice-President of Iran went so far as to threaten that Iran would “cut off Israel’s feet.”

Meanwhile Sheik Hassan Nashrallah, leader of Hezbollah reacted furiously and threatened one of Israel’s only Arab allies, Egypt, for the verdict given down to twenty six Hezbollah agents who were about to carry out suicide attacks against Israeli tourists visiting the Sinai. This is how ballsy the Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah triangle has become in the short time that Barack Hussein Obama has been President of the United States of America.

They actually believe they can get away not just with threatening Israel today, but also Arab states allied to Israel and/or the US. What will happen when the ever-weaker (physically and politically) Hossni Mubarak passes away? It will be a disaster on a major scale if America does not do more to get things in gear for its allies in the Middle-East.

King Abdullah of Jordan, the other so-called Muslim ally of both Israel and the US, is going through a minor period of memory loss. He has apparently forgotten that his Kingdom is still around because of one country alone and that one country is not America; it is Israel.

Israel has kept the Kingdom of Jordan alive militarily ever since the Syrians threatened to bringdown Abdullah’s father King Hussein during the Black September Syrian invasion of northern Jordan. It was Israeli F-4 Phantoms circling and strafing the Syrian tanks that pushed them back into Syria.

Now King Abdullah can’t stop running his mouth off, condemning Israel for not giving into all of Mahmoud Abbas’s ridiculous pre-conditions for starting negotiations. He also seems intent on condemning Israel for trying to secure and protect Jewish historical sites which are part of the ancient Land of Israel. King Abdullah, grandson of the man who razed the entire Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem wants to lecture Israel about protecting holy sites!

And yet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is promising American Jews that all is okay. She keeps letting them know that they have nothing to fear; that President Barak Obama just loves Israel so much.

Clinton “promises” that the unshakable relationship between Israel and America is still just that: unshakable. Clinton natters on about how a nuclear Iran is unacceptable and that the U.S. will never let it happen. Ms. Secretary of State also warned the Syrians and the Iranians against threatening Israel.

What is the Obama administration going to do to stop Iran? What are they going to do to stop the Syrian threats? Nothing.

This administration has done absolutely nothing but condemn Israel and appease the Arabs. This administration has continued to overlook some of the worst Palestinian incitement against Israel and against Jewish holly sites in Israel.

Obama and Clinton have been wasting time with ridiculous sanctions, sanctions that have never ever prevented a country from achieving its goals of attaining nuclear weapons as North Korea clearly shows. Although these sanctions have never worked in the past America continues to fight to get them passed, while Iran continues the development of atomic weapons.

Israel must begin to prepare its population for all out war with Iran. Israel can no longer wait for American appeasement. She must look to the past -- World War II -- to know what to do for the future. Israel cannot afford to let Iran attain nuclear weapons capability, while America can.

The US has a history of selling out its allies; Taiwan is a great example. America sold her out to appease the Peoples Republic of China.

However, Israel cannot afford to have a rug pulled out from under her feet. That would mean Shoah, Part Two.

We must do what is right for Israel and the Jewish nation, which is to defend ourselves against these enemies who obviously will never stop seeking to destroy us.