How did Sharon pull it off. If you look back on this website you will see that we were taking an interest in reputable polls which were showing that a majority of Israelis were against the pullout (really ethnic cleansing) and that this was growing as Hamas rockets continued to rain down.
This is why I found the following article very interesting because it points to much hatred for the Jewish pioneers who some people call “settlers” among some Jews. That is the saddest thing about the whole situation. It is that which has led Sharon to do the dirty work for the enemies of the Jewish people. It is a sad thing, yet…Rather than cover up the differences they have to be brought into the open and fought out in an open political manner...isill editor Felix Quigley.
The religious-nationalist majority of Israel was dealt a crushing blow. In 2001 Ariel Sharon led the religious-nationalist voters to a stunning victory over the left minority that vowed to vacate Gaza. The majority was shocked when Prime Minister Sharon reversed his promise to keep Israel intact He proceeded to harness the governmental machinery to cruelly expel 10,000 Jews from Gaza and the West Bank. He surrendered painfully developed farmland and long established Jewish communities to the Arabs. No conditions were required of the Arabs. This is the first time a democratic state expelled its own citizens to hand over land to avowed terrorists and murderers.
The electoral majority of 2001 was subject to repeated lies. Subsequent party elections and polls showing disfavor with Sharon’s coalition with Peres and other leftists were ignored. Massive rallies of Jews were passed over by the government and a compliant media. Suppression and censorship were utilized. Protestors and settlers had to face government agent provocateurs. The largest concentration of forces (63,000 army and police) since the 1973 war was organi! zed to achieve the expulsion. The bulk of the pro-Israeli media in Israel and in North America demonized the settlers.
Before Sharon or a successor strikes again we have to understand the tactics this anti-Zionist minority utilized. Below are examples from two supposedly pro-Jewish nationalist sources that typified the North American Jewish media efforts on behalf of disengagement.
The Canadian Jewish News (CJN) Of January 20, 2005 initiated an assault on the hundreds of thousands of settlers by demonizing them. The column’s purpose was to separate the settlers from the rest of the Jews. It was typical of the demonization that went on throughout the Jewish media in the United States and Canada. Its purpose was to create a Jew that would be hated, reviled and opposed. The author of the piece contends “settlements are a bad, destructive idea, one that Sharon promoted for too long and one that will cost him and the country dearly.” “Settlers “make us look bad-- they make us look terrible, rapacious and imperialistic.” The settler is stereotyped as “a bearded man with a gun at his hip.... Settlements and the unrealistic messianic theories behind them have brewed a noxious cocktail that will poison us in the future.” The Canadian Jewish News, willfully publishes material to delegitimize hundred of thousands of Jews an! d to separate them from all other Jews. The CJN columnist fails to state why these settlers in the post-1967 territories are different than the Zionist settlement movement that began about 100 years ago. If today’s settlers are vile and noxious then under what claim can the author support the existence of Jewish life in Israel today
How a paper supposedly an organ for all the Jews of Canada can publish swill about Jews under the threat of being expelled by their own state is beyond the boundaries of reporting. This question can be hurled at the hundred of other papers in North America that demonizes fellow Jews whose sons and daughters served in the armed forces and added to the well being of Israel. These peaceful and productive Jewish people have been butchered by Arab suicide murderers...
Yet we are told the “settlers curse and attack Palestinian children on the way to school, and Israel must send soldiers to guard the kids.” Other Jews, they claim, “are involved in attacks on Palestinians and their olive groves in an effort to terrorize the Arabs and drive them away.”
When such calumny is challenged the usual reply is recall “Dr. Baruch Goldstein” or other isolated Jews. How would the CJN back up this claim and protect its author? Even under the extreme duress generated by Sharon’s grossly exa! ggerated statements against those that supported the Jews of Gaza, there was no sign of organized killing on the part of the heroic youth that tried to hold the land and synagogues. These youths were maligned as outsiders and fanatic zealots. Not immune to the assault on the settlers is the one American intellectual publication that once appeared to be concerned primarily with the security and survival of the Jewish state--Commentary.
Commentary magazine from New York resorts to demonization to support the expulsion. In the March 2005 issue, Hillel Halkin, a frequent contributor describes the “national-religious” bloc as “wild-eyed Jews brandishing pocket Bibles in one hand and assault rifles in the other.” He argues that removal of these fanatics (resting on claims of “unconcealed messianic proclamations) from Gaza is but “a dress rehearsal for what inevitably must come next: similar withdrawal involving more...settlers from the W! est Bank.” (my emphasis) Untold thousands of Jews must be ethnically cleansed for the 23d Arab state. Halkin cites an oft repeated theme that “the drastic deterioration of Israel’s image in the world is due to the prolongation of its military occupation of the territories....” In short Israel can be loved by all once again if the uprooting of Jews would occur thereby inflicting “a theological disaster “for the religious-national bloc.” Most important to Halkin is to break the links between Judaism and Zionism. For many Israeli intellectuals such as Yoran Ezrahi (Rubber Bullets) better no Israel than the commitment to Jewish faith and the Jewish homeland.
Halkin uses highly charged terms such as Communism and its being “founded by the grandson of a Rabbi,” (Karl Marx) to shed light on Zionism. Another name eruditely tossed in to besmirch the settlers is Sabbatai Zevi’s messianic movement. Marxism and Sabbatianism have nothing to do with the issue. If one accepts Halkin’s linkage you must write off the whole Zionism movement in Israel.
As Sharon cancels the Camp David treaty designed to keep Egyptian soldiers out of the Sinai and Gaza by approving the entry of Mubarak’s forces in Gaza,Halkin asserts “Gaza...has little strategic value, and less of a history of Jewish life.” He refers to the 1948-1967 period when all Jews were expelled from Gaza by Nasser’s troops. Israel ha! s to clear the way for a sovereign 23d Arab.
To enhance the point that Israel is slated to comprise a small piece of land next to Palestine, the leading Commentary writer and its Editor-at-Large Norman Podhoretz supports and rationalizes Sharon’s unconditional and unilateral disengagement scheme and gives his support to a new Arab state.
Podhoretz, once a leading intellectual in the forefront of defending the beleaguered Israel, casts the debate in terms of the one he had with his daughter and grandson, serving in the army. (“Bush, Sharon, My Daughter and Me”, (April 2005) He cleverly stereotypes the extremists in his family. He reports his grandson is so radical and extreme that it makes his daughter Ruthie appear moderate. What! do his children want? They seek a viable state of 10,000 square miles. Podhoretz, and Halkin, will be content with a divided land between two sovereign nations. Halkin explains there will be an intermixture of both people. Jews will have to adjust to an admittedly “perfect horror of a map....” (This includes the some 1.5 million Palestinian Arabs who are citizens of Israel.)
Podhoretz neglects to mention one important member of his family--Eliot Abrams. Now director of the U.S. National Security Council Middle East Section. He is quoted as saying “it’s clear to us (the United States) that in the end the settlements on the other side of the partition will be dismantled.” That means the bulk of the 250,000 settlers will have to move.
Podhoretz understands the fears of Jews who mistrust the PA and other Palestinian agencies. He has an answer. He writes that “(a)s an American...there is one thing I know better than any of the Israelis who have been briefing us....” It is George Bush. “...I would be astounded were he (Bush) to renege on the preconditions he has attached to his support for a Palestinian state.” He concludes that this is “one prince...that deserves to be trusted....” Israel will not be pushed to make concessions to a PA that wants to destroy Israel. Podhoretz cites Bush’ statement of 2004 there would be no Palestinian state “unless and until new leaders emerged who would begin building ‘entirely new political and economic institutions, based on democracy...and actions against terrorism.’” Podhoretz concludes “I now am aware of the price many (tens of!!) thousands of Jews will have to pay for the increased security and peace that I still believe Bush and Sharon, working together, will bring...” to Israel. This is the assurance he gives to his extremist daughter and ! even more immoderate grandson. (If I had not read this call for sacrifice on the part of thousands of Jews by Podhoretz in Commentary I would not believe it. How many times have I heard him and his wife Midge Decter speak out for the integrity of Israel.)
If the religious-nationalists, i.e., those Jews who believe in a Jewish state, are ever to recover the majority they had in 2001 they must understand what caused their disengagement from their homes and communities, Not only must a prevaricator like Sharon be retired from public life there must be an understanding of the anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist Israelis. These are led by the intellectuals who call themselves post-Zionists, new historians. secularists and universalists. For these nominal Jews the hatred of a Jewish state is paramount in their priorities. They dominate institutions throughout Israel and enjoy the support of the Jewish establishments in North America and elsewhere. Israel, The Jewish state, has been dealt a serious and near mortal blow with Sharon’s total reversal of the 2001 election. We have an awesome job to rectify this most undemocratic assault on the one Jewish state on earth. We had best heed Menachem Begin who said “We Fight, therefore we are.”
Friday, September 16, 2005
“Christianity Dying in Its Birthplace
by Daniel Pipes, New York Sun
On the issue of the Sharon surrender of Gaza this website was totally against. I thought it was totally wrong, to put it mildly, that Jews should be used against Jews to create an area of the world which is Judenfrei. It is of course possible to make other arguments but there are certain principles in life which we must adhere to and for me that is one.
Now that it is done I am concerned to show what is happening in the Middle East as accurately as I can.
The “Palestinian” movement because of lies told about the refugees has got support within Ireland. Some of this support comes from the Church. Yet the following article by Daniel Pipes shows that in Israel itself Christianity continues to grow but in PA controlled areas Christians are beuing driven out. So this article should indeed be read along with all the other material on Gaza where of course Jews have been driven out and their places of worship burned to the ground such is the intolerance of the “Palestinians” for religions other than Islam...editor of isill Felix Quigley
What some observers are calling a pogrom took place near Ramallah, West Bank, on the night of September 3-4. That's when 15 Muslim youths from one village, Dair Jarir, rampaged against Taybeh, a neighboring all-Christian village of 1,500 people.
The reason for the assault? A Muslim woman from Dair Jarir, Hiyam Ajaj, 23, fell in love with her Christian boss, Mehdi Khouriyye, owner of a tailor shop in Taybeh. The couple maintained a clandestine two-year affair and she became pregnant in about March 2005. When her family members learned of her condition, they murdered her. That was on about September 1; unsatisfied even with this "honor killing" – for Islamic law strictly forbids non-Muslim males to have sexual relations with Muslim females – the Ajaj men sought vengeance against Khouriyye and his family.
They took it two days later in an assault on Taybeh. The Ajajs and their friends broke into houses and stole furniture, jewelry, and electrical appliances. They threw Molotov cocktails at some buildings and poured kerosene on others, then torched them. The damage included at least 16 houses, some stores, a farm, and a gas station. The assailants vandalized cars, looted extensively, and destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary.
"It was like a war," one Taybeh resident told the Jerusalem Post. Hours passed before the Palestinian Authority security and fire services arrived. The 15 assailants spent only a few hours in police detention, then were released. As for Khouriyye, the Palestinian Arab police arrested him, kept him in jail, and (his family says) have repeatedly beat him.
As the news service Adnkronos International notes, for Palestinian Christians "the fact that the Muslim aggressors have been released while the Christian tailor-shop owner is still being held, at best symbolizes the PA's indifference to the plight of Palestinian Christians, at worst shows it is taking sides against them."
A cousin, Suleiman Khouriyye, pointed to his burned house. "They did this because we're Christians. They did this because we are the weaker ones," he said The Khouriyyes and others recall the assailants shouting "Allahu Akbar" and anti-Christian slogans: "Burn the infidels, burn the Crusaders." To that, an unrepentant cousin of Hiyam Ajaj replied, "We burned their houses because they dishonored our family, not because they are Christians."
This assault fits a larger pattern. According to the Catholic Custodian of the Holy Land, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Christians in the Bethlehem region alone have suffered 93 cases of injustice in 2000-04. In the worst of these, in 2002, Muslims murdered the two Amre sisters, 17 and 19 years old, whom they called prostitutes. A post-mortem, however, showed the teenagers to have been virgins – and to have been tortured on their genitals.
"Almost every day – I repeat, almost every day – our communities are harassed by the Islamic extremists in these regions," Mr. Pizzaballa says. "And if it's not the members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, there are clashes with … the Palestinian Authority." In addition to the Islamists, a "Muslim land mafia" is said to operate. With PA complicity, it threatens Christian land and house owners, often succeeding to compel them to abandon their properties.
The campaign of persecution has succeeded. Even as the Christian population of Israel grows, that of the Palestinian Authority shrinks precipitously. Bethlehem and Nazareth, historic Christian towns for nearly two millennia, are now primarily Muslim. In 1922, Christians outnumbered Muslims in Jerusalem; today, Christians amount to a mere 2% of that city's population.
"Is Christian life liable to be reduced to empty church buildings and a congregation-less hierarchy with no flock in the birthplace of Christianity?" So asks Daphne Tsimhoni in the Middle East Quarterly. It is hard to see what will prevent that ghost-like future from coming into existence.
One factor that could help prevent this dismal outcome would be for mainline Protestant churches to speak out against Palestinian Muslims for tormenting and expelling Palestinian Christians. To date, unfortunately, the Episcopalian, Evangelical Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, as well as the United Church of Christ, have ignored the problem.
Instead, they pursue the self-indulgent path of venting moral outrage against the Israeli bystander and even withdrawing their investment funds from it. As they obsess with Israel but stay silent about Christianity dying in its birthplace one wonders what it will take to awaken them. “
On the issue of the Sharon surrender of Gaza this website was totally against. I thought it was totally wrong, to put it mildly, that Jews should be used against Jews to create an area of the world which is Judenfrei. It is of course possible to make other arguments but there are certain principles in life which we must adhere to and for me that is one.
Now that it is done I am concerned to show what is happening in the Middle East as accurately as I can.
The “Palestinian” movement because of lies told about the refugees has got support within Ireland. Some of this support comes from the Church. Yet the following article by Daniel Pipes shows that in Israel itself Christianity continues to grow but in PA controlled areas Christians are beuing driven out. So this article should indeed be read along with all the other material on Gaza where of course Jews have been driven out and their places of worship burned to the ground such is the intolerance of the “Palestinians” for religions other than Islam...editor of isill Felix Quigley
What some observers are calling a pogrom took place near Ramallah, West Bank, on the night of September 3-4. That's when 15 Muslim youths from one village, Dair Jarir, rampaged against Taybeh, a neighboring all-Christian village of 1,500 people.
The reason for the assault? A Muslim woman from Dair Jarir, Hiyam Ajaj, 23, fell in love with her Christian boss, Mehdi Khouriyye, owner of a tailor shop in Taybeh. The couple maintained a clandestine two-year affair and she became pregnant in about March 2005. When her family members learned of her condition, they murdered her. That was on about September 1; unsatisfied even with this "honor killing" – for Islamic law strictly forbids non-Muslim males to have sexual relations with Muslim females – the Ajaj men sought vengeance against Khouriyye and his family.
They took it two days later in an assault on Taybeh. The Ajajs and their friends broke into houses and stole furniture, jewelry, and electrical appliances. They threw Molotov cocktails at some buildings and poured kerosene on others, then torched them. The damage included at least 16 houses, some stores, a farm, and a gas station. The assailants vandalized cars, looted extensively, and destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary.
"It was like a war," one Taybeh resident told the Jerusalem Post. Hours passed before the Palestinian Authority security and fire services arrived. The 15 assailants spent only a few hours in police detention, then were released. As for Khouriyye, the Palestinian Arab police arrested him, kept him in jail, and (his family says) have repeatedly beat him.
As the news service Adnkronos International notes, for Palestinian Christians "the fact that the Muslim aggressors have been released while the Christian tailor-shop owner is still being held, at best symbolizes the PA's indifference to the plight of Palestinian Christians, at worst shows it is taking sides against them."
A cousin, Suleiman Khouriyye, pointed to his burned house. "They did this because we're Christians. They did this because we are the weaker ones," he said The Khouriyyes and others recall the assailants shouting "Allahu Akbar" and anti-Christian slogans: "Burn the infidels, burn the Crusaders." To that, an unrepentant cousin of Hiyam Ajaj replied, "We burned their houses because they dishonored our family, not because they are Christians."
This assault fits a larger pattern. According to the Catholic Custodian of the Holy Land, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Christians in the Bethlehem region alone have suffered 93 cases of injustice in 2000-04. In the worst of these, in 2002, Muslims murdered the two Amre sisters, 17 and 19 years old, whom they called prostitutes. A post-mortem, however, showed the teenagers to have been virgins – and to have been tortured on their genitals.
"Almost every day – I repeat, almost every day – our communities are harassed by the Islamic extremists in these regions," Mr. Pizzaballa says. "And if it's not the members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, there are clashes with … the Palestinian Authority." In addition to the Islamists, a "Muslim land mafia" is said to operate. With PA complicity, it threatens Christian land and house owners, often succeeding to compel them to abandon their properties.
The campaign of persecution has succeeded. Even as the Christian population of Israel grows, that of the Palestinian Authority shrinks precipitously. Bethlehem and Nazareth, historic Christian towns for nearly two millennia, are now primarily Muslim. In 1922, Christians outnumbered Muslims in Jerusalem; today, Christians amount to a mere 2% of that city's population.
"Is Christian life liable to be reduced to empty church buildings and a congregation-less hierarchy with no flock in the birthplace of Christianity?" So asks Daphne Tsimhoni in the Middle East Quarterly. It is hard to see what will prevent that ghost-like future from coming into existence.
One factor that could help prevent this dismal outcome would be for mainline Protestant churches to speak out against Palestinian Muslims for tormenting and expelling Palestinian Christians. To date, unfortunately, the Episcopalian, Evangelical Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, as well as the United Church of Christ, have ignored the problem.
Instead, they pursue the self-indulgent path of venting moral outrage against the Israeli bystander and even withdrawing their investment funds from it. As they obsess with Israel but stay silent about Christianity dying in its birthplace one wonders what it will take to awaken them. “
BUSH AND SHARON'S GAZA SLUMBER PARTY
By Don Feder(posted September 7, 2005)
The article by Don Feder which follows sums up for me how serious a betrayal and blow is the surrender of Gaza to the terrorist PLO. Don was writing before the experience of seeing those Palestinian Arab terrorists burning down the Jewish Gaza synagogues, shown without any opposing comment on our television screens. But Don puts his finger on the central issue when he comments “If Israel evacuated every square inch of the Jewish state, except for one block in Tel Aviv, the Palestinians would demand that too. And the EU would insist on negotiations to determine the block's final status.” Precisely! The aim of the Arabs which will not go away is the determination to end the existence of Israel. And just keep in mind that tiny Israel is no more than the size of Wales while the Arabs cover an area more than twice the size of the United States! (editor of isill Felix Quigley)
Imagine the following scenario: In the wake of 9/11 and the murder of 3,000 Americans, President Bush announces a unilateral disengagement from the war on terrorism. The U.S. determines to do nothing further about Saddam Hussein or al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Troops will be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia and America will end all support for Israel.
What do you think the outcome would have been? Unless you're Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore, the answer is obvious - more terrorism, total war on the home-front. That's exactly what Israel and the world will get from the ethnic-cleansing of Gaza.
In yet another example of pervasive bias, the liberal media referred to last week's forcible removal of roughly 9,000 Jews from Gaza and parts of Samaria (and the destruction of homes, businesses, farms and synagogues) as an "evacuation." That's like calling Kristallnacht urban renewal.
When people are driven from their homes because of their religion or race, it's ethnic cleansing. The Israelis are the first people in history to ethnically cleanse themselves (so much for the theory of Jewish intelligence), all to make way for a Palestinian state, which, the international community has decreed, will be Judenrein.
After the establishment of Jihadistan, one million Arab Muslims will continue to reside in what's left of Israel, while not one Jew will be allowed to live in Judea and Samaria (AKA: The West Bank) or Gaza. In other words, the Palestinians will succeed where the anti-Semites of antiquity (Philistines, Babylonians, Assyrians and Romans) failed: There will be no Jews in Biblical Israel.
More than half a century after the destruction of European Jewish communities, the world calls this progress. (And this was also my biggest objection to the handing over of Gaza by Sharon – FQ)
Palestinian terrorists (a redundancy) were exultant. What they've been unable to achieve in military confrontations, Ariel Sharon, George Bush, the US State Department and European Union handed them on a silver platter. As Munich was for Hitler, it only whetted their appetites.
Muhammad Def (on the top of Israel's terrorist most-wanted list) jeered at the Israelis from his Gaza rat hole: "Today you leave Gaza in humiliation. You are leaving hell. But we promise that, with Allah's help, all of Palestine (i.e., Israel) will turn into hell for you. ... We will not rest until we liberate our entire holy land." (These statements from Hamas are totally ignored by the Irish media and by the Irish “Left” – FQ)
This is no idle boast.
In the few days since the destruction of 25 thriving Jewish communities was completed, a yeshiva student was stabbed to death in Jerusalem, an Israeli border cop was stabbed in the throat in Hebron and two Qassam rockets were fired from Gaza into the Israeli town of Sderot. Only quick thinking by a bus driver prevented a bloodbath in Beersheba, where a suicide bomber in a bus station succeeded in killing only himself, and injuring a score of passengers.
But this is merely an aperitif, compared to what will surely follow.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (hailed by the administration as a moderate) joyfully proclaimed, "We will not rest until they ("the Zionist enemy") leave all of our land." Official maps produced by the so-called Palestinian Authority make it clear that "all of our land" means not just Gaza City, Ramallah, Jenin and East Jerusalem - but West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Netanya.
If Israel evacuated every square inch of the Jewish state, except for one block in Tel Aviv, the Palestinians would demand that too. And the EU would insist on negotiations to determine the block's final status.
While IDF soldiers were driving other Jews from their homes, PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei was in Damascus hammering out a deal with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, confirming what realists knew all along: The PA will do nothing to disarm them or hamper their operations in Gaza.
Remember Bush's 2002 Rose Garden declaration that the ball was in the Palestinians' court and that it was now up to them to prove their commitment to ending terrorism?
Recall Sharon's assurances, starting with his 2001 campaign for prime minister, that there would be no concessions, no talks, not even pre-negotiations, until the Palestinians stopped killing pregnant women, toddlers and elderly Holocaust survivors? I won't talk to the Palestinian leadership until the terrorist gangs are disarmed, Sharon bravely pledged.
All, of it was empty rhetoric - posturing designed to placate constituencies and sooth consciences.
Gaza is the first bitter fruit of those hollow words. Washington fights terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan (at the cost of more than 2,000 American lives) and rewards it in Israel. How long will it be before al-Qaeda sets up shop in Gaza city, along with Islamic terrorists from Kashmir, Chechnya, the Philippines, etc.?
The world may smile smugly at the site of Jews evicting Jews from their homes. But the whirlwind awaits all of us, and not just those "hardcore settlers" (as The New York Times called them) clinging to their Torah scrolls.
Who gets the bill for this fiasco?
First and foremost, Ariel Sharon, who has lustily embraced the illusion of land-for-peace - a suicidal fantasy he would have scorned a decade ago.
Sharon has based his political career on being Bush's buddy. I have the best relationship with the Americans of any Israeli leader, Sharon bragged when he ran for reelection.
That "special relationship" has come with a hefty price tag: Sharon has ceded his national security policy to Foggy Bottom. "This is what the U.S. State Department is demanding that I do, and I must do it" Sharon reportedly pleaded to the Chief Rabbi of Haifa to justify the Gaza surrender. Someone forgot to tell the general that he is prime minister of Israel, and not Condoleezza Rice (who, by the by, warns her subordinate in Jerusalem that "It cannot be Gaza only").
Blame Bush too. It's wrong to say that W. is willing to sacrifice Israel to what he perceives to be the new, post-Iraq, alignment of US interests in the Middle East. The reality is much worse. The president really believes all of this will work -- that the Palestinians will have a state aimed like a dagger at the heart of Israel, and the latter will have "secure borders." That will happen when Osama bin Laden converts and has his bar mitzvah at the Wall in Jerusalem.
Bush has an undeserved reputation as a hardheaded foreign-policy realist. In reality, much of the time he inhabits a dream world. He refuses to protect our borders from terrorist infiltration or from people who could become our Palestinians in a generation.
He has fantasies of Jeffersonian democracy sprouting in the arid soil of Iraq. (Exactly how many democracies in nations with a Muslim majority are there?) Having read the Cliffs Notes Koran, he's convinced that Islam is a religion of peace.
Even before 9/11, the president was persuaded that solving the Palestinian problem was the key to peace in the Middle East - that regional tensions could all be laid at Israel's doorstep. (Did the supposed dispossession of the Palestinians cause Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1991? Israel wouldn't be reborn for another 500 years when Muslim cannon smashed the walls of Constantinople.)
Give the Palestinians a state, Bush reasons, and they'll settle down to the task of nation-building. Rockets will be beaten into pruning hooks. The fact that the Palestinians have never given the least indication that they're ready to coexist with Israel (however it's constituted) isn't allowed to intrude on this New World Order vision.
It's not about Gaza or Judea and Samaria; it's about Israel.
Without the territory liberated in 1967, the rest of Israel is indefensible. Abba Eban, a leader of the left Labor Party, called Israel's pre-'67 boundaries "Auschwitz borders." Every retired U.S. general who's visited the region essentially has said the same thing: Without the high ground of Judea-Samaria, without strategic depth, Israel can not be defended. Within a year of the loss of the Sudetenland (part of Hitler's Road Map), the rump Czech state was incorporated in the Third Reich.
Sharon and Bush are sleepwalking through history (participants in a lethal Middle East slumber party). Pray that something shakes both leaders out of their somnambulistic state before Israel drifts into that not-so-good night.
An earlier version of this article was published on GrassTopsUSA
The article by Don Feder which follows sums up for me how serious a betrayal and blow is the surrender of Gaza to the terrorist PLO. Don was writing before the experience of seeing those Palestinian Arab terrorists burning down the Jewish Gaza synagogues, shown without any opposing comment on our television screens. But Don puts his finger on the central issue when he comments “If Israel evacuated every square inch of the Jewish state, except for one block in Tel Aviv, the Palestinians would demand that too. And the EU would insist on negotiations to determine the block's final status.” Precisely! The aim of the Arabs which will not go away is the determination to end the existence of Israel. And just keep in mind that tiny Israel is no more than the size of Wales while the Arabs cover an area more than twice the size of the United States! (editor of isill Felix Quigley)
Imagine the following scenario: In the wake of 9/11 and the murder of 3,000 Americans, President Bush announces a unilateral disengagement from the war on terrorism. The U.S. determines to do nothing further about Saddam Hussein or al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Troops will be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia and America will end all support for Israel.
What do you think the outcome would have been? Unless you're Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore, the answer is obvious - more terrorism, total war on the home-front. That's exactly what Israel and the world will get from the ethnic-cleansing of Gaza.
In yet another example of pervasive bias, the liberal media referred to last week's forcible removal of roughly 9,000 Jews from Gaza and parts of Samaria (and the destruction of homes, businesses, farms and synagogues) as an "evacuation." That's like calling Kristallnacht urban renewal.
When people are driven from their homes because of their religion or race, it's ethnic cleansing. The Israelis are the first people in history to ethnically cleanse themselves (so much for the theory of Jewish intelligence), all to make way for a Palestinian state, which, the international community has decreed, will be Judenrein.
After the establishment of Jihadistan, one million Arab Muslims will continue to reside in what's left of Israel, while not one Jew will be allowed to live in Judea and Samaria (AKA: The West Bank) or Gaza. In other words, the Palestinians will succeed where the anti-Semites of antiquity (Philistines, Babylonians, Assyrians and Romans) failed: There will be no Jews in Biblical Israel.
More than half a century after the destruction of European Jewish communities, the world calls this progress. (And this was also my biggest objection to the handing over of Gaza by Sharon – FQ)
Palestinian terrorists (a redundancy) were exultant. What they've been unable to achieve in military confrontations, Ariel Sharon, George Bush, the US State Department and European Union handed them on a silver platter. As Munich was for Hitler, it only whetted their appetites.
Muhammad Def (on the top of Israel's terrorist most-wanted list) jeered at the Israelis from his Gaza rat hole: "Today you leave Gaza in humiliation. You are leaving hell. But we promise that, with Allah's help, all of Palestine (i.e., Israel) will turn into hell for you. ... We will not rest until we liberate our entire holy land." (These statements from Hamas are totally ignored by the Irish media and by the Irish “Left” – FQ)
This is no idle boast.
In the few days since the destruction of 25 thriving Jewish communities was completed, a yeshiva student was stabbed to death in Jerusalem, an Israeli border cop was stabbed in the throat in Hebron and two Qassam rockets were fired from Gaza into the Israeli town of Sderot. Only quick thinking by a bus driver prevented a bloodbath in Beersheba, where a suicide bomber in a bus station succeeded in killing only himself, and injuring a score of passengers.
But this is merely an aperitif, compared to what will surely follow.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (hailed by the administration as a moderate) joyfully proclaimed, "We will not rest until they ("the Zionist enemy") leave all of our land." Official maps produced by the so-called Palestinian Authority make it clear that "all of our land" means not just Gaza City, Ramallah, Jenin and East Jerusalem - but West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Netanya.
If Israel evacuated every square inch of the Jewish state, except for one block in Tel Aviv, the Palestinians would demand that too. And the EU would insist on negotiations to determine the block's final status.
While IDF soldiers were driving other Jews from their homes, PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei was in Damascus hammering out a deal with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, confirming what realists knew all along: The PA will do nothing to disarm them or hamper their operations in Gaza.
Remember Bush's 2002 Rose Garden declaration that the ball was in the Palestinians' court and that it was now up to them to prove their commitment to ending terrorism?
Recall Sharon's assurances, starting with his 2001 campaign for prime minister, that there would be no concessions, no talks, not even pre-negotiations, until the Palestinians stopped killing pregnant women, toddlers and elderly Holocaust survivors? I won't talk to the Palestinian leadership until the terrorist gangs are disarmed, Sharon bravely pledged.
All, of it was empty rhetoric - posturing designed to placate constituencies and sooth consciences.
Gaza is the first bitter fruit of those hollow words. Washington fights terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan (at the cost of more than 2,000 American lives) and rewards it in Israel. How long will it be before al-Qaeda sets up shop in Gaza city, along with Islamic terrorists from Kashmir, Chechnya, the Philippines, etc.?
The world may smile smugly at the site of Jews evicting Jews from their homes. But the whirlwind awaits all of us, and not just those "hardcore settlers" (as The New York Times called them) clinging to their Torah scrolls.
Who gets the bill for this fiasco?
First and foremost, Ariel Sharon, who has lustily embraced the illusion of land-for-peace - a suicidal fantasy he would have scorned a decade ago.
Sharon has based his political career on being Bush's buddy. I have the best relationship with the Americans of any Israeli leader, Sharon bragged when he ran for reelection.
That "special relationship" has come with a hefty price tag: Sharon has ceded his national security policy to Foggy Bottom. "This is what the U.S. State Department is demanding that I do, and I must do it" Sharon reportedly pleaded to the Chief Rabbi of Haifa to justify the Gaza surrender. Someone forgot to tell the general that he is prime minister of Israel, and not Condoleezza Rice (who, by the by, warns her subordinate in Jerusalem that "It cannot be Gaza only").
Blame Bush too. It's wrong to say that W. is willing to sacrifice Israel to what he perceives to be the new, post-Iraq, alignment of US interests in the Middle East. The reality is much worse. The president really believes all of this will work -- that the Palestinians will have a state aimed like a dagger at the heart of Israel, and the latter will have "secure borders." That will happen when Osama bin Laden converts and has his bar mitzvah at the Wall in Jerusalem.
Bush has an undeserved reputation as a hardheaded foreign-policy realist. In reality, much of the time he inhabits a dream world. He refuses to protect our borders from terrorist infiltration or from people who could become our Palestinians in a generation.
He has fantasies of Jeffersonian democracy sprouting in the arid soil of Iraq. (Exactly how many democracies in nations with a Muslim majority are there?) Having read the Cliffs Notes Koran, he's convinced that Islam is a religion of peace.
Even before 9/11, the president was persuaded that solving the Palestinian problem was the key to peace in the Middle East - that regional tensions could all be laid at Israel's doorstep. (Did the supposed dispossession of the Palestinians cause Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1991? Israel wouldn't be reborn for another 500 years when Muslim cannon smashed the walls of Constantinople.)
Give the Palestinians a state, Bush reasons, and they'll settle down to the task of nation-building. Rockets will be beaten into pruning hooks. The fact that the Palestinians have never given the least indication that they're ready to coexist with Israel (however it's constituted) isn't allowed to intrude on this New World Order vision.
It's not about Gaza or Judea and Samaria; it's about Israel.
Without the territory liberated in 1967, the rest of Israel is indefensible. Abba Eban, a leader of the left Labor Party, called Israel's pre-'67 boundaries "Auschwitz borders." Every retired U.S. general who's visited the region essentially has said the same thing: Without the high ground of Judea-Samaria, without strategic depth, Israel can not be defended. Within a year of the loss of the Sudetenland (part of Hitler's Road Map), the rump Czech state was incorporated in the Third Reich.
Sharon and Bush are sleepwalking through history (participants in a lethal Middle East slumber party). Pray that something shakes both leaders out of their somnambulistic state before Israel drifts into that not-so-good night.
An earlier version of this article was published on GrassTopsUSA
Why Corporations Fund Radical Islam
by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
September 2, 2005
This article by the illustrious writer Daniel Pipes explains in detail using a specific case how an Islamo-fascist organisation like CAIR can use the court system successfully...editor Felix Quigley
How does the Council on American-Islamic Relations (and others in the Islamist victimization industry) fare so well when it complains to a corporation? That's the question Margaret Wente, the Globe and Mail's star columnist, takes up in an insightful analysis fraught with implications.
Wente's article looks at the high-profile case of Jeffrey Rubin, chief economist for the World Markets division of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. In an April 5, 2005, report to clients, he accurately predicted that oil prices would keep rising:
The first two oil shocks [in the 1970s] were transitory, as political events encouraged oil producers to seize full sovereignty over their resources and temporarily restrict supply. This time around there won't be any tap that some appeased mullah or sheik can suddenly turn back on.
In response to the phrase "some appeased mullah or sheik," the executive director of CAIR's Canadian branch, Riad Saloojee, protested to the CIBC.
We are gravely concerned that Mr. Rubin is promoting stereotyping of Muslims and Arabs in a CIBC publication. We request that Mr. Rubin and CIBC World Markets issue a letter of apology and undergo sensitization training regarding Muslims and Arabs.
In a later formulation, Saloojee put his grievance more simply: "Many Muslims felt the comments were inappropriate."
Saloojee's point is plain silly, as mullahs (in Iran) and sheiks (on the Arabian Peninsula) make the key decisions turning the oil spigot on or off. But that hardly mattered to CIBC, which quickly fulfilled Saloojee's demands, issuing a public apology and requiring Rubin (called by the CIBC "one of Canada's long standing premier economists") to undergo cross-cultural diversity training.
Wente provides some interesting details on the latter, which was conducted by Laraine Kaminsky, executive vice president of Graybridge Malkam, diversity specialists based in Ottawa. Kaminsky devised a curriculum especially for Rubin, and CIBC paid a cool C$5,000 for her two-hour session with Rubin. (In the spirit of journalistic grit, Wente voluntarily submitted herself to the same curriculum as Rubin suffered through; she reports the information she picked up was a "combination of the anodyne, the obvious and the interesting.")
Why this sudden retreat by CIBC, when Rubin had written an accurate and patently inoffensive passage? Why did the bank not stand by its star economist?
For that matter, why have so many other corporations capitulated to the demands of CAIR and its ilk? In 2000, I tallied up some major corporations (Anheuser-Busch, Burger King, DoubleTree Hotels, Los Angeles Times, MasterCard International, Miller Brewing, and Seagrams) that had pulled advertisements found offensive by the Islamists. Disney has reined in two of its radio broadcasters, Michael Graham and Paul Harvey. Two clothing businesses, Liz Claiborne and Warehouse One, withdrew or discontinued women's apparel that bore Arabic script. The worst of these appeasements took place in 1997-98, when, on the basis of a bogus complaint by CAIR, Nike accepted humiliation at its hands.
Wente gives several reasons for these cases of advanced corporate timidity. First, to resist the Islamists means absorbing a public relations hit:
because image and reputation are so crucially important, big organizations are vulnerable to small interest groups with loud voices. No CEO wants his shareholders, his employees, his customers and his board of directors to pick up a newspaper and see a headline proclaiming that somebody is boycotting his company for being anti-Muslim.
Second (and conversely) touting one's diversity virtues makes for positive publicity:
On the same day this week that the CIBC posted a record third-quarter loss on account of the Enron debacle -- $1.9-billion—it made room in its news release to remind people that in June, it celebrated Diversity Month for the 13th year.
Third, beyond the PR angle, looms the legal one.
In the United States, where laws are strict and juries tough, companies that lose discrimination suits in court can be forced to pay out millions. "Better to call me first than call the lawyer later," Ms. Kaminsky said with a smile.
Kaminsky is here alluding to the corrective dimension of her work. Wente notes that the session with Rubin is now formally documented in his personnel file, which gets the bank off the hook if anyone feels like suing later on, or invoking some hate law, or complaining to a human-rights commission. Did the CIBC take corrective action with its offending employee? Is the CIBC truly sensitive to diversity issues? Yessirree!
Wente concludes that the bank, in other words, "took the path of least resistance. It found a quick and dirty way to make the problem go away."
Comments: (1) Kenneth Timmerman shows in his book Shakedown how Jesse Jackson developed this racket from practices on the mean streets of Chicago. What began as street gangs intimidating local businesses ended up working with corporate boards and Wall Street. This practice has become a potent weapon in the United States and in other Western countries; Islamists are just getting started at it. Timmerman writes me that "Jackson turned the grievance industry into a lucrative money-maker for himself and his political machine; CAIR has clearly studied his tactics and is applying them with success."
(2) In political terms, the top personnel in most corporations are conservative but their appeasing behavior makes them structurally liberal. However much they may bemoan in private the need to apologize and pay out, they do it.
(3) The marketplace places a premium on winning a positive reputation among every segment of consumers, and that points to grievance-mongers wielding power over corporations into the indefinite future. No matter how disreputable the mongers might be, as they often are, corporations would rather pull products, apologize, and pay than fight. This bonanza promises to keep the Islamist and other shakedown artists in both the money and the public eye. The worst of it is, I see no legislative or other means to change this dynamic.
FrontPageMagazine.com
September 2, 2005
This article by the illustrious writer Daniel Pipes explains in detail using a specific case how an Islamo-fascist organisation like CAIR can use the court system successfully...editor Felix Quigley
How does the Council on American-Islamic Relations (and others in the Islamist victimization industry) fare so well when it complains to a corporation? That's the question Margaret Wente, the Globe and Mail's star columnist, takes up in an insightful analysis fraught with implications.
Wente's article looks at the high-profile case of Jeffrey Rubin, chief economist for the World Markets division of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. In an April 5, 2005, report to clients, he accurately predicted that oil prices would keep rising:
The first two oil shocks [in the 1970s] were transitory, as political events encouraged oil producers to seize full sovereignty over their resources and temporarily restrict supply. This time around there won't be any tap that some appeased mullah or sheik can suddenly turn back on.
In response to the phrase "some appeased mullah or sheik," the executive director of CAIR's Canadian branch, Riad Saloojee, protested to the CIBC.
We are gravely concerned that Mr. Rubin is promoting stereotyping of Muslims and Arabs in a CIBC publication. We request that Mr. Rubin and CIBC World Markets issue a letter of apology and undergo sensitization training regarding Muslims and Arabs.
In a later formulation, Saloojee put his grievance more simply: "Many Muslims felt the comments were inappropriate."
Saloojee's point is plain silly, as mullahs (in Iran) and sheiks (on the Arabian Peninsula) make the key decisions turning the oil spigot on or off. But that hardly mattered to CIBC, which quickly fulfilled Saloojee's demands, issuing a public apology and requiring Rubin (called by the CIBC "one of Canada's long standing premier economists") to undergo cross-cultural diversity training.
Wente provides some interesting details on the latter, which was conducted by Laraine Kaminsky, executive vice president of Graybridge Malkam, diversity specialists based in Ottawa. Kaminsky devised a curriculum especially for Rubin, and CIBC paid a cool C$5,000 for her two-hour session with Rubin. (In the spirit of journalistic grit, Wente voluntarily submitted herself to the same curriculum as Rubin suffered through; she reports the information she picked up was a "combination of the anodyne, the obvious and the interesting.")
Why this sudden retreat by CIBC, when Rubin had written an accurate and patently inoffensive passage? Why did the bank not stand by its star economist?
For that matter, why have so many other corporations capitulated to the demands of CAIR and its ilk? In 2000, I tallied up some major corporations (Anheuser-Busch, Burger King, DoubleTree Hotels, Los Angeles Times, MasterCard International, Miller Brewing, and Seagrams) that had pulled advertisements found offensive by the Islamists. Disney has reined in two of its radio broadcasters, Michael Graham and Paul Harvey. Two clothing businesses, Liz Claiborne and Warehouse One, withdrew or discontinued women's apparel that bore Arabic script. The worst of these appeasements took place in 1997-98, when, on the basis of a bogus complaint by CAIR, Nike accepted humiliation at its hands.
Wente gives several reasons for these cases of advanced corporate timidity. First, to resist the Islamists means absorbing a public relations hit:
because image and reputation are so crucially important, big organizations are vulnerable to small interest groups with loud voices. No CEO wants his shareholders, his employees, his customers and his board of directors to pick up a newspaper and see a headline proclaiming that somebody is boycotting his company for being anti-Muslim.
Second (and conversely) touting one's diversity virtues makes for positive publicity:
On the same day this week that the CIBC posted a record third-quarter loss on account of the Enron debacle -- $1.9-billion—it made room in its news release to remind people that in June, it celebrated Diversity Month for the 13th year.
Third, beyond the PR angle, looms the legal one.
In the United States, where laws are strict and juries tough, companies that lose discrimination suits in court can be forced to pay out millions. "Better to call me first than call the lawyer later," Ms. Kaminsky said with a smile.
Kaminsky is here alluding to the corrective dimension of her work. Wente notes that the session with Rubin is now formally documented in his personnel file, which gets the bank off the hook if anyone feels like suing later on, or invoking some hate law, or complaining to a human-rights commission. Did the CIBC take corrective action with its offending employee? Is the CIBC truly sensitive to diversity issues? Yessirree!
Wente concludes that the bank, in other words, "took the path of least resistance. It found a quick and dirty way to make the problem go away."
Comments: (1) Kenneth Timmerman shows in his book Shakedown how Jesse Jackson developed this racket from practices on the mean streets of Chicago. What began as street gangs intimidating local businesses ended up working with corporate boards and Wall Street. This practice has become a potent weapon in the United States and in other Western countries; Islamists are just getting started at it. Timmerman writes me that "Jackson turned the grievance industry into a lucrative money-maker for himself and his political machine; CAIR has clearly studied his tactics and is applying them with success."
(2) In political terms, the top personnel in most corporations are conservative but their appeasing behavior makes them structurally liberal. However much they may bemoan in private the need to apologize and pay out, they do it.
(3) The marketplace places a premium on winning a positive reputation among every segment of consumers, and that points to grievance-mongers wielding power over corporations into the indefinite future. No matter how disreputable the mongers might be, as they often are, corporations would rather pull products, apologize, and pay than fight. This bonanza promises to keep the Islamist and other shakedown artists in both the money and the public eye. The worst of it is, I see no legislative or other means to change this dynamic.
What a state it will be...by Gary Bauer
Gary Bauer is pro-American but he is truthful and in this article he shows the nature of the Palestinian state and the contradiction in American politics (and I could put it much firmer than that) which has led Bush and Rice to campaign for this projected Palestinian state. What will be its nature? What sort of country will it be? Bauer gives some clues here. This was carried on Israpundit and I include a couple of comments at the end which contain some other information for readers to follow up (John Loftus writings) ...editor Felix Quigley
“What A State It Will Be, by Gary Bauer
The European Union, the United Nations and, sadly, even the Bush Administration continue to push for the creation of a Palestinian state that, we are told, will live "side by side with Israel in peace." Meanwhile, did anyone take the time to check out what the "citizens" of this future state did in the last 24 hours, as Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza? Mobs carrying Hamas and Islamic Jihad flags rampaged through Gaza looting, shooting guns in the air, and then burning Jewish synagogues to the ground. The frenzy wasn't completely unexpected given the culture of death that has prevailed in the Palestinian territory for years. Bodies even had to be exhumed from Jewish graves during the evacuation, because everyone knew that once the Palestinians were in control the graves would be desecrated. There has not been one word of condemnation for this behavior from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Secretary Rice, while congratulating both the Israelis and the Palestinians for "their effective coordination," sadly failed to even mention the torching of the synagogues. Moreover, our State Department unbelievably issued a statement criticizing Israel for not demolishing the synagogues. According to the diplomats at State, leaving them standing put the poor Palestinian Liberation Organization in the untenable position of either guarding the synagogues or allowing their destruction by the mobs!
In short, these thugs are doing what everyone knew they would do. The new baby nation of Palestine straining to be born shows all the early signs of being a deformed monster - a new terrorist state, built on radical Islam, and controlled by murderers and thieves.
Posted by Joseph Alexander Norland at September 13, 2005 08:12 PM
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1. Yehoshua Kehati said:
If you want to really understand the corrupt international relations we (Israel/Jews) are dealing with, read "The Secret War Against the Jews". Begin in the middle of the book, approximately, with the story of the USS Liberty, "accidentally" fired on and virtually destroyed by Israel while it was fighting for its life.
As it is said,'People have friends, nations have interests'. The duplicity of the USA and England continues through to the present, and a key word is: O-I-L. Also, remember that most humans think either that they are smarter than G-d, or that He doesn't run tthe world.And don't forget "From Time Immemorial", by Joan Peters, which deals wth duplicity in its many forms as it played its role in Arab-Israel relations.
Anyone want to buy some greenhouses, cheap? Contact Mort Zuckerman or James Wolfensohn. So much for sophistication!
Posted by: Yehoshua Kehati on September 13, 2005 09:34 PM
2. elvis said:
Yehoshua- A well documented book by John Loftus. His web site has lots of other juicy info on the subject plus a review of the book which you site.
Posted by: elvis on September 14, 2005 01:52 AM
“What A State It Will Be, by Gary Bauer
The European Union, the United Nations and, sadly, even the Bush Administration continue to push for the creation of a Palestinian state that, we are told, will live "side by side with Israel in peace." Meanwhile, did anyone take the time to check out what the "citizens" of this future state did in the last 24 hours, as Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza? Mobs carrying Hamas and Islamic Jihad flags rampaged through Gaza looting, shooting guns in the air, and then burning Jewish synagogues to the ground. The frenzy wasn't completely unexpected given the culture of death that has prevailed in the Palestinian territory for years. Bodies even had to be exhumed from Jewish graves during the evacuation, because everyone knew that once the Palestinians were in control the graves would be desecrated. There has not been one word of condemnation for this behavior from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Secretary Rice, while congratulating both the Israelis and the Palestinians for "their effective coordination," sadly failed to even mention the torching of the synagogues. Moreover, our State Department unbelievably issued a statement criticizing Israel for not demolishing the synagogues. According to the diplomats at State, leaving them standing put the poor Palestinian Liberation Organization in the untenable position of either guarding the synagogues or allowing their destruction by the mobs!
In short, these thugs are doing what everyone knew they would do. The new baby nation of Palestine straining to be born shows all the early signs of being a deformed monster - a new terrorist state, built on radical Islam, and controlled by murderers and thieves.
Posted by Joseph Alexander Norland at September 13, 2005 08:12 PM
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TrackBack URL for this entry:http://www.israpundit.com/mt-tb.cgi/10530
Comments
1. Yehoshua Kehati said:
If you want to really understand the corrupt international relations we (Israel/Jews) are dealing with, read "The Secret War Against the Jews". Begin in the middle of the book, approximately, with the story of the USS Liberty, "accidentally" fired on and virtually destroyed by Israel while it was fighting for its life.
As it is said,'People have friends, nations have interests'. The duplicity of the USA and England continues through to the present, and a key word is: O-I-L. Also, remember that most humans think either that they are smarter than G-d, or that He doesn't run tthe world.And don't forget "From Time Immemorial", by Joan Peters, which deals wth duplicity in its many forms as it played its role in Arab-Israel relations.
Anyone want to buy some greenhouses, cheap? Contact Mort Zuckerman or James Wolfensohn. So much for sophistication!
Posted by: Yehoshua Kehati on September 13, 2005 09:34 PM
2. elvis said:
Yehoshua- A well documented book by John Loftus. His web site has lots of other juicy info on the subject plus a review of the book which you site.
Posted by: elvis on September 14, 2005 01:52 AM
DERSHOWITZ'S FANTASY
The issue here is the question of the Palestinian state, what type of state it will be. It is also the failure of people like Alan Dershowitz to refuse to draw some very obvious lessons from the evidence which is right in front of them (Such as the immediate burning of Jewish synagogues in Gaza just as soon as they entered the area). Look out for the comments by Israpundit editor in brackets. I include the additional Israpundit reader comments which carry many valid points...editor Felix Quigley
This time, peace may be real thing
By Alan M. Dershowitz, Chicago Tribune
There have been many false starts in establishing a two-state solution to the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but this time all the basic elements appear to be in place. Israel's successful evacuation of the Gaza Strip demonstrates the desire and ability of the Israeli government to make and implement tough decisions necessary for a pragmatic peace based on a two-state solution. (On the contrary, a basic element is missing namely the acceptance of the State of Israel)
There still are many barriers to a real peace. Some come from the Israeli side, others from the Palestinian side. The greatest barriers, however, come from outsiders: right-wing American Jews and Christians who are more Israeli than the Israelis, Islamic fundamentalists and left-wing European and American academics, politicians and church leaders who are more Palestinian than the Palestinians.
Those who are more Israeli than most Israelis oppose any territorial compromise. They resisted leaving Gaza and they will resist giving up any of the West Bank, even if such compromise is essential to peace. The notion of compromise has no basis in justice or law and recommends concessions just because the other side demands them). They simply do not trust the Palestinians to make a real peace. They believe that ending the occupation will increase terrorism and weaken Israel. (This sounds quite reasonable to me.)
Those who are more Palestinian than the Palestinians oppose the two-state solution, urging instead one binational state. They know, of course, that because of demographic realities, any such binational state quickly would become another Arab-Muslim state and that Israel would disappear from the map. (Except that this is what the Palestinians themselves want.)
Some opponents of peace, such as Hamas and the current Iranian government, believe the only solution is the military destruction of Israel. The tragedy is that these naysayers and nay-doers are standing in the way of a pragmatic peace whose basic elements have been accepted already, at least in broad principle, (Nonsense. There is no agreement on the "right" of return, Jerusalem or borders. So what elements are there broad agreement on?) by most reasonable Israelis and Palestinians. These elements include the following:
1) Two states based on Israeli withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip and nearly all of the West Bank, with territorial adjustments consistent with UN Security Council resolutions and existing realities on the ground.
2) Some symbolic recognition of the rights of Palestinian refugees, including compensation and some family reunification, but no absolute right of return to Israel for the millions of descendants of those who claim refugee status--a questionable right whose exercise would produce the great wrong of quickly turning the Jewish state into yet another Muslim-Arab state. All Palestinians should have the right to return to what will become the Palestinian state.
3) A division of greater Jerusalem, with the Arab part becoming the capital of the Palestinian state and the Jewish part the recognized capital of Israel.
4) A renunciation of all forms of violence, including terrorism, and an undertaking by the Palestinian state to dismantle terrorist groups and take all reasonable efforts to prevent acts of terrorism, just asIsrael has undertaken to prevent and punish Jewish terrorism against Palestinians.
5) An end to the singling out of Israel for demonization, delegitimation, divestiture, boycotts and the like by international organizations, many academics, religious leaders and media pundits; and the normalization and acceptance of Israel as a full and equal member of the international community.
(This sounds to me like the Saudi Peace Plan. Israel has rejected this out of hand.)
Sometimes it's better to start at the end, when the final resolution seems obvious and widely accepted. The big problem is how to get there, and that journey will take bold compromises on each side.
The writer and philosopher Amos Oz does not expect old enemies "to fall in love" with each other. "Let's not be sentimental." He sees the conflict as a "tragedy in the exact sense of the word"--collision between one very powerful claim and another no less powerful." ( If I wanted to appear reasonable I would never quote an extreme Leftist like Oz. Furthermore I reject the notion of equivalency which Oz puts forward.) Employing a literary analogy, he believes that tragedies "can be resolved in one of two ways: There is the Shakespearean resolution, and there is the Chekhovian one.
At the end of a Shakespearean tragedy, the stage is strewn with dead bodies and maybe there's some justice hovering high above. A Chekhov tragedy, on the other hand, ends with everybody disillusioned, embittered, heartbroken, disappointed, absolutely shattered, but still alive. And I want a Chekhovian resolution and not a Shakespearean one for the Israeli-Palestine tragedy."
A Chekhovian compromise is the only true road to peace. (Let me know when the Palestinians or Arabs are ready for such a solution. I won't hold my breath.)
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seem to understand this. The opponents of peace must not be allowed to stand in the way of compromise in this promising season of potential peace.
Posted by Ted Belman at September 11, 2005 08:05 AM
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1. Ed D said:
Mr. Dershovitz is with no doubt a brilliant lawyer. In every other vocation he is more like the Wizard of Oz. How can anyone so brilliant be so stupid? Is it because he is an academic, a leftist, a Jew hater, a dreamer or all of the above? If all of the elitist think like him and had control of Israel's future, then they, the Israelis might as well march in step to the gas chambers or in this case the chopping block. Mr. dershovitz, stick to being a lawyer. You justg might get a lot of Muslim clients.
Posted by: Ed D on September 11, 2005 02:16 AM
2. BobW said:
Alan Dershowitz is a Kapo/Sunderkommando. He avoid discussing the destruction of the eastern Mediterranian Jews no less than he avoids discussing the destruction of the area's Christians. He gives parity to the Arabs - who are also destroying the area's Arab Muslims.
Alan Dershowitz is an instrumentality of Jewish death. He is a Totenjuden.
Kol tuv,BobW
Posted by: BobW on September 11, 2005 02:53 AM
3. Jack F said:
Not until Hamas can change itself from a terrorist organization to a political one can there be peace between Israel and Palestine. All else is wishful thinking.
Posted by: Jack F on September 11, 2005 02:59 AM
4. Mitch said:
Are you all kidding me? Dershowitz is a "Jew hater" and a "Kapo/Sunderkommando"? He avoids discussing the destruction of the Mediterranian Jews? He gives partity to Arabs?
You clearly haven't read The Case for Israel, let alone The Case for Peace. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised if you did.
Posted by: Mitch on September 11, 2005 03:11 AM
5. Bobzilla said:
BOBZILLA SEZ:
Ah, well. Same 'ol Allan. But let's not demonize him; He is a sincere Zionist, just misguided, and one who insists on judging the Arabs by western standards.
Unfortunately, Allan and those that agree with him just had a NASTY shock from the good Mr. Abbas hisself..from the camel's mouth, so to speak.
See, Abbas gave an interview in Al-Quds and it seems he wants MORE land out of the Negev to the East and South of Gaza..in other words,he NOW wants Israel to go back to the original 1948 borders `for peace'!
Funny thing is, Israel officially swapped that land with Egypt in exchange for more land to Gaza as part of the Camp David Accords, and those borders were recognized officially by the UN. And Arafat and the `Palestinians' agreed to honor those borders as part of Oslo.
What Abbas is doing now is setting up the basis for a never-ending conflict. See, the whole basis for the `Palestinian'-Israeli talks is that (A)when Israel and the Arabs have an agreement there is a basis for the and of hostilities and (B) once an agreement is finalized, the negotiations are over and honored by both sides.
Abbas, by throwing these two notions in the dumpster pretty much let anyone with half a brainknow that the Pals have no intention of ending the war. There's a real good reason for that, aside from the fact that the Pals would kill him if he tried. Abbas, like his buddy Yasir before him has belatedly realized that if Israel were magically to disapear tommorow,the Pals, who are an artificial nationality ,would splinter into their many divisions because they have no basis to be a nation other than Jew hatred and a shared feeling of victimization.
If anybody ever wondered why Yasir never ended the war with Israel, there's the reason.
Add this to the fact that `moderate' Abbas has never found a terrorist worthy of being disarmed or jailed and that the drumbeat of Jew hatred continues unabated in the Pal schools, media and mosques and you get the picture.
Yasir himself said it best,on Jordanian TV the week after he signed the Oslo accords with Mr. Bill and Rabin. After referring to the Peace of Hubidiyeh (one of Mohammed's `treaties' with his enemies the Quaraysh that lasted until he had enough military power to massacre them) "This is a war, and either we will push the Jews into the sea or they will push us into the sea."
I like that quote, BTW. It's honest and direct, and it's not Yasir's fault if certain people on the Left wouldn't take him at his word. Liike the Prophet Mohammed said: "War is deception."
The fact is, there IS no case for `peace' between Israel and the Pals, in the way most of us would understand the word. The Pals cannot make peace and survive as a cohesive group.Even Peres is starting to understand this, saying in today's JP that if Abbas refuses to disarm Hamas and Jihad Islami, there's no basis for any more negotiations.
For those who still cling to the idea that `peace' is possible with these folks based on Israeli concessions..well and good. I hope you're right and I'm wrong. But I don't think I am, and the Israelis are much more likely to settle their problem with the Pals the way King Hussein did in 1970 than by `negotiating ' their way out of it.
For those who've forgotten, King Hussein's Arab legion klled at least 10,000 Pals when Arafat tried to depose him and take over the country in `Black September', and drove the PLO over the border into Lebanon. He never had a problem with them after that.
Posted by: Bobzilla on September 11, 2005 04:13 AM
6. Steve said:
Peace will break out when Israel declares the Palestinian Authority a criminal organization. There are Palestinians genuinely interested in a peace with Israel based on the principle of compromise, but they no more exist in the PA than in Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Their voices are not heard because they risk their lives to raise them. Abbas is a good example of what the PA puts forth as a "moderate". His goal is the extinction of Israel, but he prefers the constant drip of international pressure for Israeli concessions to the inevitable failure of a terror war. Sharon, by leaving the Palestinians in internecine disarray in Gaza, and by building the security barrier and more settlements near Jerusalem, has taken the strategic advantage from the Palestinians. The status quo (at least for now) allows Israel to put the burden on the PA (awaiting the PA's fulfillment of its Road Map obligations) rather than the reverse, while providing a measure of security for Israelis. Of course, Iran and its terrorist clients have other ideas, and the PA will always be there to front for them.
Posted by: Steve on September 11, 2005 07:56 AM
7. burt said:
Mr. Dershowitz is a lawyer who makes a handsome living in the United States. Hence, his solution will be one that reflects his interests- mainly non-zionist, pro- (legal) system where he makes his living. He is Jewish and sees himself as a spokesman for "American Jewry" so his conscience tells him to throw a few crumbs to average Jews whose lives depend upon the existence of the State of Israel. To give him his due, in his TV appearances he does occasionally angrily denounce Israel haters, breaking out of his "good-guy/our-interests-are-your-interests" type Jew.However, this piece is as fawning as it gets.
Since he is seen as a "Jewish spokesman," his views get published and propogate, which is a bad thing. His comment about "right-wing American Jews...who are more Israeli than the Israelis" is part of his "I'm an American" sychophancy. On this point, public comment about Americans who are more Spanish than the Spaniards, more Greek than the Greeks, more Irish than the Irish more Chinese than the Chinese, etc., are rarely heard.
It is only Jews who are called on this and on the peanuts that the US gives to Israel in exchange for priceless Jewish blood taken by terrorists whose fascist states are kept afloat by the US, and whose states deflect the rage of their subjects against Jews who never once did them any harm and do nothing to exploit them in any way.
We hear more in a month about the $2+ billion a year for Israel than we did in 50 years of $3 trillion in aid to Europe and scores of billions to "Arab" "states."
Posted by: burt on September 11, 2005 11:38 AM
8. lignaeus said:
It seems to me that many are viewing the withdrawal from Gaza as an attempted incentive for the Palis to make peace which they rightly say if that is the case that it is doomed to failure on that count and anyway a retrograde step.Seen as a preparation for war it make sense.
Posted by: lignaeus on September 11, 2005 12:53 PM
This time, peace may be real thing
By Alan M. Dershowitz, Chicago Tribune
There have been many false starts in establishing a two-state solution to the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but this time all the basic elements appear to be in place. Israel's successful evacuation of the Gaza Strip demonstrates the desire and ability of the Israeli government to make and implement tough decisions necessary for a pragmatic peace based on a two-state solution. (On the contrary, a basic element is missing namely the acceptance of the State of Israel)
There still are many barriers to a real peace. Some come from the Israeli side, others from the Palestinian side. The greatest barriers, however, come from outsiders: right-wing American Jews and Christians who are more Israeli than the Israelis, Islamic fundamentalists and left-wing European and American academics, politicians and church leaders who are more Palestinian than the Palestinians.
Those who are more Israeli than most Israelis oppose any territorial compromise. They resisted leaving Gaza and they will resist giving up any of the West Bank, even if such compromise is essential to peace. The notion of compromise has no basis in justice or law and recommends concessions just because the other side demands them). They simply do not trust the Palestinians to make a real peace. They believe that ending the occupation will increase terrorism and weaken Israel. (This sounds quite reasonable to me.)
Those who are more Palestinian than the Palestinians oppose the two-state solution, urging instead one binational state. They know, of course, that because of demographic realities, any such binational state quickly would become another Arab-Muslim state and that Israel would disappear from the map. (Except that this is what the Palestinians themselves want.)
Some opponents of peace, such as Hamas and the current Iranian government, believe the only solution is the military destruction of Israel. The tragedy is that these naysayers and nay-doers are standing in the way of a pragmatic peace whose basic elements have been accepted already, at least in broad principle, (Nonsense. There is no agreement on the "right" of return, Jerusalem or borders. So what elements are there broad agreement on?) by most reasonable Israelis and Palestinians. These elements include the following:
1) Two states based on Israeli withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip and nearly all of the West Bank, with territorial adjustments consistent with UN Security Council resolutions and existing realities on the ground.
2) Some symbolic recognition of the rights of Palestinian refugees, including compensation and some family reunification, but no absolute right of return to Israel for the millions of descendants of those who claim refugee status--a questionable right whose exercise would produce the great wrong of quickly turning the Jewish state into yet another Muslim-Arab state. All Palestinians should have the right to return to what will become the Palestinian state.
3) A division of greater Jerusalem, with the Arab part becoming the capital of the Palestinian state and the Jewish part the recognized capital of Israel.
4) A renunciation of all forms of violence, including terrorism, and an undertaking by the Palestinian state to dismantle terrorist groups and take all reasonable efforts to prevent acts of terrorism, just asIsrael has undertaken to prevent and punish Jewish terrorism against Palestinians.
5) An end to the singling out of Israel for demonization, delegitimation, divestiture, boycotts and the like by international organizations, many academics, religious leaders and media pundits; and the normalization and acceptance of Israel as a full and equal member of the international community.
(This sounds to me like the Saudi Peace Plan. Israel has rejected this out of hand.)
Sometimes it's better to start at the end, when the final resolution seems obvious and widely accepted. The big problem is how to get there, and that journey will take bold compromises on each side.
The writer and philosopher Amos Oz does not expect old enemies "to fall in love" with each other. "Let's not be sentimental." He sees the conflict as a "tragedy in the exact sense of the word"--collision between one very powerful claim and another no less powerful." ( If I wanted to appear reasonable I would never quote an extreme Leftist like Oz. Furthermore I reject the notion of equivalency which Oz puts forward.) Employing a literary analogy, he believes that tragedies "can be resolved in one of two ways: There is the Shakespearean resolution, and there is the Chekhovian one.
At the end of a Shakespearean tragedy, the stage is strewn with dead bodies and maybe there's some justice hovering high above. A Chekhov tragedy, on the other hand, ends with everybody disillusioned, embittered, heartbroken, disappointed, absolutely shattered, but still alive. And I want a Chekhovian resolution and not a Shakespearean one for the Israeli-Palestine tragedy."
A Chekhovian compromise is the only true road to peace. (Let me know when the Palestinians or Arabs are ready for such a solution. I won't hold my breath.)
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seem to understand this. The opponents of peace must not be allowed to stand in the way of compromise in this promising season of potential peace.
Posted by Ted Belman at September 11, 2005 08:05 AM
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Comments
1. Ed D said:
Mr. Dershovitz is with no doubt a brilliant lawyer. In every other vocation he is more like the Wizard of Oz. How can anyone so brilliant be so stupid? Is it because he is an academic, a leftist, a Jew hater, a dreamer or all of the above? If all of the elitist think like him and had control of Israel's future, then they, the Israelis might as well march in step to the gas chambers or in this case the chopping block. Mr. dershovitz, stick to being a lawyer. You justg might get a lot of Muslim clients.
Posted by: Ed D on September 11, 2005 02:16 AM
2. BobW said:
Alan Dershowitz is a Kapo/Sunderkommando. He avoid discussing the destruction of the eastern Mediterranian Jews no less than he avoids discussing the destruction of the area's Christians. He gives parity to the Arabs - who are also destroying the area's Arab Muslims.
Alan Dershowitz is an instrumentality of Jewish death. He is a Totenjuden.
Kol tuv,BobW
Posted by: BobW on September 11, 2005 02:53 AM
3. Jack F said:
Not until Hamas can change itself from a terrorist organization to a political one can there be peace between Israel and Palestine. All else is wishful thinking.
Posted by: Jack F on September 11, 2005 02:59 AM
4. Mitch said:
Are you all kidding me? Dershowitz is a "Jew hater" and a "Kapo/Sunderkommando"? He avoids discussing the destruction of the Mediterranian Jews? He gives partity to Arabs?
You clearly haven't read The Case for Israel, let alone The Case for Peace. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised if you did.
Posted by: Mitch on September 11, 2005 03:11 AM
5. Bobzilla said:
BOBZILLA SEZ:
Ah, well. Same 'ol Allan. But let's not demonize him; He is a sincere Zionist, just misguided, and one who insists on judging the Arabs by western standards.
Unfortunately, Allan and those that agree with him just had a NASTY shock from the good Mr. Abbas hisself..from the camel's mouth, so to speak.
See, Abbas gave an interview in Al-Quds and it seems he wants MORE land out of the Negev to the East and South of Gaza..in other words,he NOW wants Israel to go back to the original 1948 borders `for peace'!
Funny thing is, Israel officially swapped that land with Egypt in exchange for more land to Gaza as part of the Camp David Accords, and those borders were recognized officially by the UN. And Arafat and the `Palestinians' agreed to honor those borders as part of Oslo.
What Abbas is doing now is setting up the basis for a never-ending conflict. See, the whole basis for the `Palestinian'-Israeli talks is that (A)when Israel and the Arabs have an agreement there is a basis for the and of hostilities and (B) once an agreement is finalized, the negotiations are over and honored by both sides.
Abbas, by throwing these two notions in the dumpster pretty much let anyone with half a brainknow that the Pals have no intention of ending the war. There's a real good reason for that, aside from the fact that the Pals would kill him if he tried. Abbas, like his buddy Yasir before him has belatedly realized that if Israel were magically to disapear tommorow,the Pals, who are an artificial nationality ,would splinter into their many divisions because they have no basis to be a nation other than Jew hatred and a shared feeling of victimization.
If anybody ever wondered why Yasir never ended the war with Israel, there's the reason.
Add this to the fact that `moderate' Abbas has never found a terrorist worthy of being disarmed or jailed and that the drumbeat of Jew hatred continues unabated in the Pal schools, media and mosques and you get the picture.
Yasir himself said it best,on Jordanian TV the week after he signed the Oslo accords with Mr. Bill and Rabin. After referring to the Peace of Hubidiyeh (one of Mohammed's `treaties' with his enemies the Quaraysh that lasted until he had enough military power to massacre them) "This is a war, and either we will push the Jews into the sea or they will push us into the sea."
I like that quote, BTW. It's honest and direct, and it's not Yasir's fault if certain people on the Left wouldn't take him at his word. Liike the Prophet Mohammed said: "War is deception."
The fact is, there IS no case for `peace' between Israel and the Pals, in the way most of us would understand the word. The Pals cannot make peace and survive as a cohesive group.Even Peres is starting to understand this, saying in today's JP that if Abbas refuses to disarm Hamas and Jihad Islami, there's no basis for any more negotiations.
For those who still cling to the idea that `peace' is possible with these folks based on Israeli concessions..well and good. I hope you're right and I'm wrong. But I don't think I am, and the Israelis are much more likely to settle their problem with the Pals the way King Hussein did in 1970 than by `negotiating ' their way out of it.
For those who've forgotten, King Hussein's Arab legion klled at least 10,000 Pals when Arafat tried to depose him and take over the country in `Black September', and drove the PLO over the border into Lebanon. He never had a problem with them after that.
Posted by: Bobzilla on September 11, 2005 04:13 AM
6. Steve said:
Peace will break out when Israel declares the Palestinian Authority a criminal organization. There are Palestinians genuinely interested in a peace with Israel based on the principle of compromise, but they no more exist in the PA than in Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Their voices are not heard because they risk their lives to raise them. Abbas is a good example of what the PA puts forth as a "moderate". His goal is the extinction of Israel, but he prefers the constant drip of international pressure for Israeli concessions to the inevitable failure of a terror war. Sharon, by leaving the Palestinians in internecine disarray in Gaza, and by building the security barrier and more settlements near Jerusalem, has taken the strategic advantage from the Palestinians. The status quo (at least for now) allows Israel to put the burden on the PA (awaiting the PA's fulfillment of its Road Map obligations) rather than the reverse, while providing a measure of security for Israelis. Of course, Iran and its terrorist clients have other ideas, and the PA will always be there to front for them.
Posted by: Steve on September 11, 2005 07:56 AM
7. burt said:
Mr. Dershowitz is a lawyer who makes a handsome living in the United States. Hence, his solution will be one that reflects his interests- mainly non-zionist, pro- (legal) system where he makes his living. He is Jewish and sees himself as a spokesman for "American Jewry" so his conscience tells him to throw a few crumbs to average Jews whose lives depend upon the existence of the State of Israel. To give him his due, in his TV appearances he does occasionally angrily denounce Israel haters, breaking out of his "good-guy/our-interests-are-your-interests" type Jew.However, this piece is as fawning as it gets.
Since he is seen as a "Jewish spokesman," his views get published and propogate, which is a bad thing. His comment about "right-wing American Jews...who are more Israeli than the Israelis" is part of his "I'm an American" sychophancy. On this point, public comment about Americans who are more Spanish than the Spaniards, more Greek than the Greeks, more Irish than the Irish more Chinese than the Chinese, etc., are rarely heard.
It is only Jews who are called on this and on the peanuts that the US gives to Israel in exchange for priceless Jewish blood taken by terrorists whose fascist states are kept afloat by the US, and whose states deflect the rage of their subjects against Jews who never once did them any harm and do nothing to exploit them in any way.
We hear more in a month about the $2+ billion a year for Israel than we did in 50 years of $3 trillion in aid to Europe and scores of billions to "Arab" "states."
Posted by: burt on September 11, 2005 11:38 AM
8. lignaeus said:
It seems to me that many are viewing the withdrawal from Gaza as an attempted incentive for the Palis to make peace which they rightly say if that is the case that it is doomed to failure on that count and anyway a retrograde step.Seen as a preparation for war it make sense.
Posted by: lignaeus on September 11, 2005 12:53 PM
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