Is the world just plain stupid?

 By Yashiko Sagamori

An interesting questionnaire for Palestinian Advocates. 

If you are so sure that "Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history," I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine :  
 
1.  When was it founded and by whom?
 
2.  What were its borders?
 
3.  What was its capital?
 
4.  What were its major cities?
 
5.  What constituted the basis of its economy?
 
6.  What was its form of government?
 
7.  Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
 
8.  Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?
 
9.  What was the language of the country of Palestine ?
 
10. What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine ?
 
11. What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.
 
12. And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?
 
You are lamenting the "low sinking" of a "once proud" nation. Please tell me, when exactly was that "nation" proud and what was it so proud of?
 
And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call "Palestinians" are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over – or thrown out of – the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?
 
I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day "Palestinians" to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here.
 
The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it "the Palestinian people," and installed it in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the "West Bank" and Gaza, respectively?

The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so-called "Palestinians" have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a nation" -- or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.

In fact, there is only one way to achieve peace in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel's ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?

 

Yashiko Sagamori

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Obama prepares to throw Israel under the bus.

 

by Melanie Phillips

A sobering view by one of Britain's most respected columnists

Barak Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamist bus, and he’s getting American Jews to do his dirty work for him. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly told the Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Sunday that efforts to stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians. General James Jones, National Security Adviser to Obama, reportedly told a European foreign minister a week ago that unlike the Bush administration, Obama will be ‘forceful’ with Israel. Ha’aretz reports:

Jones is quoted in the telegram as saying that the United States, European Union and moderate Arab states must redefine ‘a satisfactory endgame solution.’ The U.S. national security adviser did not mention Israel as party to these consultations.

Of course not. If you are going to throw a country under the bus, you don’t invite it to discuss the manner of its destruction with the assassins who are co-coordinating the crime. As I said here months ago, the appointment of Jones and the elevation of his post of National Security Adviser at the expense of the Secretary of State was all part of the strategy to centralize power in the hands of those who want to do Israel harm.

On Tuesday, Vice-President Joe Biden and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry turned the thumbscrews tighter, telling Israel to stop building more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement.

This is all not only evil but exceptionally stupid. The idea that a Palestine state will help build a coalition against Iran is demonstrably absurd. The Arab states are beside themselves with anxiety about Iran. They want it to be attacked and its nuclear program stopped. They are desperately fearful that the Obama administration might have decided that it can live with a nuclear Iran.

The idea that if a Palestine state comes into being it will be easier to handle Iran is the opposite of the case: a Palestine state will be Iran, in the sense that it will be run by Hamas as a proxy for the Islamic Republic. The idea that a Palestine state will not compromise Israel’s security is ludicrous.

It is of course, by any sane standard, quite fantastic that America is behaving as if it is Israel which is holding up a peace settlement when Israel has made concession after concession – giving up Sinai, giving up Gaza, offering all the territories to the Arabs in return for peace in 1967, offering more than 90 per cent of them ditto in 2000, ditto again to Mahmoud Abbas in the past year -- only to be attacked in return by a Palestinian terrorist entity, backed in its continued aggression, let us not forget, by the countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which has made no concessions at all and is not being pressured to do so.

It is not the aggressor here but the victim of aggression that America is now choosing to beat up. In any sane world, one might think the Americans would be piling the pressure on the Palestinians to renounce their genocidal ambitions against Israel, to stop teaching and training their children to hate and kill Jews, to adhere to the primary requirement in the Road Map that they must dismantle their infrastructure of violence as the first step in the peace process; one might think, indeed, that they would view Mahmoud Abbas’s repeated statements that the Palestinians will never accept Israel as a Jewish state to be the main impediment to peace.

But no. The repeated professions that America will never jeopardize Israel’s security are stomach churning when Obama is actually blaming Israel for measures it has taken to safeguard its security – the settlements were always first and foremost a security measure, and the travel restrictions are there solely to prevent more Israelis being murdered – and trying to force it to abandon them. Now comes further news that Obama will also try to force Israel to give up its nuclear weapons – which it only has as a last ditch insurance against the attempt to annihilate it to which several billion Arabs remain pledged.

Of course Obama doesn’t care that Hamas would run any Palestinian state. Of course he doesn’t care that Israel would be unable to defend itself against such a terrorist state. Because he regards Israel as at best totally expendable, and at worst as a running sore on the world's body politic that has to be purged altogether. His administration is proceeding on the entirely false analysis that a state of Palestine is the solution to the Middle East impasse and the route to peace in the region. What that state will look like or do is something to which at best the administration's collective mind is shut and at worst makes it a potential cynical accomplice to the unconscionable. So Israel is to be forced out of the West Bank. Far from building a coalition against Iran, Obama is thus doing Iran’s work for it.

None of this, however, should come as the slightest surprise to anyone who paid any attention to Obama’s background, associations and friendships before he became President and to the cabal of Israel-bashers, appeasers and Jew-haters he appointed to his administration, with a few useful idiots thrown in for plausible deniability.

American Jews, meanwhile, are reacting as predicted – with a total absence of spine.  As IsraelMatzav reports, AIPAC was sending delegates to visit Congress to 'convince' Representatives and Senators to sign a petition calling for a two-state solution. Inspired! Almost eighty per cent of American Jews voted for Obama despite the clear and present danger he posed to Israel. They did so because their liberal self-image was and is more important to them than the Jewish state whose existence and security cannot be allowed to jeopardize their standing with America’s elite.

But the ordinary American people are a different matter. They do value and support Israel. They do understand that if Israel is thrown under that bus, the west is next. And it is they to whom Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu must now appeal, over the heads of the politicians and the media and certainly America’s Jews and everyone else. He must tell the American people the terrible truth, that America is now run by a man who is intent on sacrificing Israel for a reckless and amoral political strategy which will put America and the rest of the free world at risk.

This is shaping up to be the biggest crisis in relations between Israel and America since the foundation of Israel six decades ago. Those who hate Israel and the Jews will be gloating. This after all is precisely what they hoped Obama would do. To any decent person looking on aghast, this is where the moral sickness of the west reaches the critical care ward.

 

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author of, most recently, Londonistan. She is best known for her controversial column about political and social issues which currently appears in the Daily Mail. She was awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

US Mideast policy is based on a mistake.

by  Vic Rosenthal

 

JERUSALEM — The new government of Israel is seeking to reorient the country's foreign policy, arguing that to rely purely on the formulas of trading land for peace and promising a Palestinian state fails to grasp what it views as the deeper issues: Muslim rejection of a Jewish state and the rising hegemonic appetite of Iran…

Such an ambitious effort to reformulate the conflict will be, by all accounts, tough to sell for two reasons.

First, even though the standard approaches have not yielded success, no alternative has emerged.

Second, the Obama administration has repeatedly backed the two-state solution, as have the Europeans. In other ways, too, this White House has seemed to be closer in outlook to Europe than the past administration was.

There's an ambiguity in the concept "two-state solution". One meaning is an outcome, a peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel. The other seems to be a strategy for getting there, which is that the US forces Israel to make concessions.

Most Israelis think that a two-state outcome would be acceptable, if the Palestinians actually wanted it and if there were a way to safely obtain it. The Israeli government has been committed to this since Oslo. But practically no ordinary Israelis believe that it's possible today, for two reasons: Hamas and Iran.

Muslim rejectionism of Israel has been around since 1947. It's been the cause of several major and minor wars and much terrorism between wars. Some people thought that there was a window of opportunity around the early 1990's, when external influences on the Palestinians were at their ebb: Iran and Iraq were weakened by their long war, the Soviet Union was gone. Possibly enough Palestinians could be found who were pragmatic enough to choose peace. But then somebody decided to pick Yasser Arafat, rejectionist par excellence to lead the Palestinians. And the window, such as it was, closed.

Israel's effort to switch the discussion to Iran is likely to be met in Washington and in European capitals with the assertion that it is precisely because of the need to build an alliance to confront Iran that Israel must move ahead vigorously with the Palestinians as well as with the Syrians.

"President Obama views the region as a whole, and trying to isolate each problem does not reflect reality," said a senior American official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the American policy was still in formation. "It will be a lot easier to build a coalition to deal with Iran if the peace process is moving forward."

This 'linkage theory' — that the presence of Israel in the territories prevents progress on other issues, like Iranian weapons — is a blinding non-sequitur.

We know that Israel giving land to the Palestinians today will not lead to a peaceful two-state outcome. Gaza proves that. And the reason that this is so is because the Iranian-backed Hamas will prevent it. A similar argument can be made for the Golan Heights and Syria.

In the presence of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, territorial concessions lead to war, not peace.

The Americans and Europeans are proposing that Israel should make territorial concessions anyway. This, they believe will cause Arab states like Saudi Arabia or even Syria to help apply pressure to Iran to stop fomenting war and building nuclear bombs.

There are two big problems with this. The first is that it will leave Israel with a hostile terrorist state like today's Gaza on a shrunken eastern border, leaving its heavily populated coastal plain defenseless. The Palestinians will be emboldened in their belief that they can reverse the nakba, and the conflict will get worse, not better.

The Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead are both direct results of Israeli concessions to Iranian proxies.

The second is that a weakened Israel will be a far less effective deterrent to Iranian expansion and weapons development than a strong one. Despite their public statements, it wouldn't surprise me if the Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians are counting on Israel to stop the Iranian weapons program before it's too late.

The Palestinian question is actually much less pressing than the Iranian one, and today the former is clearly dependent on the latter, not the other way around.

Here's is Bronner's summation. Somehow the typical arrogant attitude of the unnamed American official shines through:

Israel says the occupation can be ended most easily once Iran is put in its place because then there will be much less risk of Iranian weapons being used against Israel from neighboring territory. Meanwhile, Israel says it cannot be expected to freeze settlement growth entirely.

The American, European and Arab response is that for Iran to be checked, every nation needs to do its part, and Israel's part is to work toward ending the occupation, stopping settlement construction and fostering the creation of a Palestinian state.

When a senior American official was told that the Israelis did not view the Iranian and Palestinian problems as linked, he replied simply, "Well, we do."

Vic Rosenthal

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

 

US Mideast policy, part II.

by  Vic Rosenthal

Yesterday I explained how the Obama Administration’s policy toward Israel and the Palestinians is based on a mistake — the belief that the problems of Iranian expansionism and weapons development would be easier to solve once a Palestinian state had been established.

I argued that this is backwards, since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is exacerbated by Iranian support of Hamas, and that it is impossible to end the conflict without a change in Iran’s behavior.

I want to continue this thread with another argument, and then comment about the source of the mistake.

It seems to me that not only is the administration apparently blind to what Iran is doing now with regard to Israel and the Palestinians, its policy ignores Iranian plans for the future.

Iran has economic and political-religious objectives in the region. They would like to force the price of oil higher, so their less-efficient infrastructure can make a profit. As a result, they aspire to the power to bully Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to reduce production.

Further, Iran has expanded its influence in the arc comprising Syria and Lebanon: Syria has become an explicit satellite of Iran, a recipient of a huge amount of military hardware, much of which is under Iranian control.  Iranian influence over Lebanon, already great — Hezbollah presently is the single most powerful element in the government — will increase even more as Hezbollah makes expected gains in next month’s elections.

Egypt recently arrested a number of Hezbollah agents who were scouting targets for terrorist attacks, some of which were tourist sites where Israelis or Americans might be found, but others — such as locations along the Suez canal — indicated a plan to destabilize the regime. President Mubarak explicitly denounced Iran and Hezbollah.

In Iraq, with its Shiite majority, it’s hard to imagine that anything can prevent Iran from gaining control of that nation when US troops leave.

The Sunni nations are also worried that Iran may successfully export its brand of revolutionary Shiite Islamism, a previously unlikely outcome which its political successes make more and more imaginable.

All of these goals, of course, will be greatly aided by Iran’s achievement of a nuclear capability.

It’s obvious that the biggest obstacle to these plans is both the strongest military power in the region, and the closest ally of the US, Israel. And for this reason Iran is besieging Israel from the north and south by means of its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Note that this has nothing to do with the Palestinians, except insofar as they are being used as soldiers in the Iranian campaign to destroy Israel.

It is suggested that the Saudis and others will be more disposed to cooperate with the US in containing Iran if the Palestinian problem is ’solved’ first. But since it would have no effect on Iranian behavior, there is no reason to believe this.  If this idea came from the Arabs, then it’s more likely that they are simply using this as a handy stick to beat Israel with.

Let’s assume that the Obama administration and the US State Department understand that the policy as stated is absurd. Then what do they gain from forcing the creation of a Palestinian state at this time?

• It’s not good for Israel and moderate Palestinians: as I said yesterday, it’s a prescription for war.

• It will not retard Iranian plans, and if it weakens Israel — which it must — it will advance them. If Israel gives up the Golan Heights, it will represent a direct strategic advantage for Iranian proxies Syria and Hezbollah.

• It will, however, please the Saudis, who would like to see a smaller (or no) Israel  and whose ‘peace plan‘ has now been mentioned as part of the formula for creating the Palestinian state.

• It will also please the pro-Saudi Arabists in the State Department, who have been trying to keep Henry Kissinger’s promise to reverse the outcome of the 1967 war ever since the oil boycott of the 1970’s.

Despite the talk about Barack Obama representing new beginnings, we see that US Mideast policy is still flowing from the same old sources. If the administration wants to give more than lip service to opposing Iranian plans, this has to change.

Vic Rosenthal

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Obama and Israel

 

by  Ami Isseroff

 

  Those supporters of Israel who reacted to the Obama presidency as if it was the combination of the May laws of Tsarist Russia and the election of Adolph Hitler have not been proven correct. Likewise, the Hamas groupies who looked forward to a final victory over the "Israel lobby" have yet to see any results, though many are still hopeful, like Francis Matthew. The first hundred days of the Barack Obama presidency have produced no revolutions in U.S.-Israel relations.

 

The Obama administration has not done much different from the Bush administration. The Bush administration insisted Israel must not strike Iran. The Obama administration insists Israel must not strike Iran. The Bush administration insisted on a two state solution. The Obama administration insists on a two state solution. The Bush administration bawled out Israel for settlement activities. The Obama administration bawls out Israel for settlement activities. The Bush administration did not nothing effective to stop Iranian nuclear development. The Obama administration is doing nothing effective to stop Iranian nuclear development. No settlers have been unsettled because of Obama administration pressure.

 

Thus far, the "Obama pressure on Israel" is mostly a non-story, like the dog that didn't bark in the night. It may be fueled by the wishful thinking of anti-Israel (or anti-Israel pro-Israel) groups like J-Street, by the fears of certain supporters of Israel, and by occasional remarks of people like Zbigniew Brzezinski, who are always good for advice about how to bash Israel.

 

There are good signs: Obama had a Passover Seder for family and friends, the first ever in the White House, though that didn't prevent some wingnuts from insisting he is a Muslim. More important, the United States pulled out of the Durban II conference and stayed out, and the appointment of the "Israel lobby" crusader, Charles Freeman, himself president of an Arab lobby group, as the head of the National Intelligence Council, was blocked.

 

There are bad signs: The US government announced it will call for changes in the wording of Palestinian aid legislation, so that it could give foreign aid to a Palestinian unity government that included an unrepentant Hamas. The US is anxious to rebuild Gaza, at an price. The US also announced that it is not in a hurry regarding talks with Iran. It seems to think that it has all the time in the world. There are also signs of naivete and what amounts to criminal negligence in foreign policy not directly related to Israel. Secretary of State Clinton tried to wish away the rising tide of violence in Iraq:

 

"I think that these suicide bombings ... are unfortunately, in a tragic way, a signal that the rejectionists fear that Iraq is going in the right direction," Clinton told reporters traveling aboard her plane ahead of her unannounced visit to Baghdad.

 

That's one view. A more realistic view is that the US backed Maliki government may be about to be trounced by Iraqi insurgents, and the government that will replace it will make Saddam Hussein look like George Washington. It might not happen, but it is certainly foolish to ignore the possibility, and it is a much more likely outcome than the fairy tale spun by Mrs. Clinton.

 

Even worse, perhaps, is the fact that the administration seems to be so clueless that significant processes fall under the radar, as happened in the Bush administration. In Lebanon, there will soon be an election. There is every indication that this election will be a triumph for the Iranian supported Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. Springtime for Nasrallah and Iran, winter for Lebanon and Israel. This is not the fault of the Obama administration. It happened in part because the Bush administration and the French government pulled the rug out from under their supporters in Lebanon. In part, it happened because of the consistent failure of the United States and other countries to understand that inclusion of the Hezbollah as a political party without disarming it was not a triumph for democracy, but the end of democracy. If one party has guns, there is no more democracy. "Vote for me or I'ill blow your brains out" is a very convincing campaign slogan. But the Obama administration doesn't even seem to be aware that there is about to be a disaster in Lebanon and has taken no real steps to avert it other than a meaningless statement of reassurance while the US was busy selling Lebanon down the river, and an even more pointless and unrealistic request for "fairness" in the Lebanese elections:

 

"The people of Lebanon must be able to choose their own representatives in open and fair elections - without the spectre of violence or intimidation and free of outside interference."

 

What sort of geopolitical genius thinks that sort of appeal would have any affect on Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar Assad or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Disarming the Hezbollah in accordance with relevant UN resolutions would be more to the point.

 

Beyond these auguries, there is no real news yet, because the Obama administration has not yet gotten its act together. The campaign slogans about change didn't have much detailed thought behind them. If one says "Let's engage Iran," for example, one had better have a good idea of what to do when that doesn't work. When Obama insisted he would pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, he should have had a Plan B, to be implemented in the event the insurgency surges. Evidently, he did not, and does not.

 

Many, many government positions are as yet unfilled, and many "policy statements" as yet are nothing more than empty slogans that may have to be abandoned on second thought. Barry Rubin is right to point out that Obama's Middle East policy has not been formulated yet. It might gel a bit more by June has he implies, but he seems to place too much faith in Hillary Clinton as a "realist." Her statement on Iraq was not the sign of a realist. Even as diplomatic euphemization, it didn't pass the grade as "credible fantasy."

 

To an extent, it is fair to say that foreign policy of any U.S. administration is never set in stone. It develops in reaction to events, and it is almost always the result of the interplay of different officials and bureaucratic empires. Those who are used to relatively orderly foreign policy establishments like that of Great Britain, France, the former USSR or Germany under Bismarck have a great deal of difficulty understanding that United States "policy" at any given moment in history may be nothing more than the sum total of statements and actions of several different officials. Each may take off in their own direction, heedless of executive policy and announced principles. The behavior of the United States toward Palestine partition and the bizarre performances of UN delegate Warren Austin in 1948 are a case in point, but not the only one. Under President Nixon, Secretary of State William Rogers and NSC Adviser Kissinger famously worked at cross purposes, each undermining initiatives of the other. Stability and uniformity however, are relative. The first months are often the time when it is most labile. Those who thought that the Obama administration was more prepared, or had a more informed or definite or uniform view than its predecessors, should be disabused of that idea by now.

 

The other half of the picture, of course, is the Netanyahu administration and the USA. Given that US policy is not yet formulated, and given the woeful inadequacy of US concepts of reality in the Middle East, what the Israeli government says and does in the next months is going to have a very significant influence in determining US policy.

 

Ami Isseroff

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Netanyahu and the United States.

 

 

by  Ami Isseroff

The other half of the story of Obama and Israel is Netanyahu and the United States. Like Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu gave the impression during the election that he had a plan, he knew precisely what to do.

Unlike Obama, the Netanyahu administration gave everyone in the world the impression, immediately upon taking office, that for better or for worse, there was going to be a bold and different approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is safe to say that the little speech of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had the impact of a foreign policy tsunami. Pundits insisted Israel was abandoning the two state solution and the peace process. Most of this criticism (or praise, depending on the pundit) was unfair. Lieberman had emphasized that Israel would abide by the road map, and offered peace to Israel's neighbors.

But beyond Lieberman's speech, it turns out that the Netanyahu administration is evidently as clueless about foreign policy as the Obama administration. It seems that Netanyahu will not have his policy ideas together until June, and has asked the EU to postpone a meeting with Israel for that reason. So what was all the fuss about?

Both candidates essentially campaigned on a policy of "Vote for me and I'll figure out what to do." Netanyahu has to understand that the major characteristic of US foreign policy is that it tends to be reactive rather than proactive. It is governed by large bureaucracies that compete with each other, and are very good at shooting down initiatives that come from a rival bureaucracy. When the US has been proactive, as in Iraq, the policy often turns out to be a disaster, because it was formulated without sufficient local knowledge. In Europe, the United States has, or had, a bit more local knowledge because it was working with people and systems much like itself. A Marshall plan for Europe could succeed. A Marshall plan for Gaza would be a disaster. The bad news is that any ideas that any United States administration has for Middle East initiatives are likely to be disastrous. The good news is that the United States will likely change policy in response to initiatives of other players. But that means that the Israeli government must come up with an initiative that is acceptable to the United States as well as serving its own policy interests. There is a big opportunity here for Netanyahu and Israel, waiting to be exploited in Netanyahu's visit to the United States in June.

The Arab Peace Initiative, so called, was designed in precisely that way - to serve Arab interests while being acceptable to the United States. It is acceptable to the United States because in bold headlines, it furthers peace in the Middle East, which is a US interest. It serves Arab interests because it puts Israel on the defensive about peace, while promoting a "plan" that is more or less empty of substance and unacceptable to Israel.

Similarly, the Palestinian Authority wisely adopted the slogan of "Two State Solution" because it suits United States policy and can be, and has been, modified to suit Palestinian Arab interests by making it a threat to Israel tied up with "right of return" of Palestinian Arab refugees - which would eliminate Israel as a Jewish state.

U.S. officials love the Arab Peace Initiative and the "Two State Solution" not only because they seem to further long standing goals of American foreign policy, but because the Arabs like them, and accepting these "policies" is seen as a way to win the hearts and minds of Arab peoples and governments. It is not for Israeli officials to explain that Iranian machinations in Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Egypt and Lebanon are not really dependent on popular support of the "Arab Street" or that Al-Qaeda and its followers don't care much either about the Palestine issue, which is an excuse rather than a cause. They will need to figure that out for themselves.

These broad proclamations are not policies. They are slogans. A slogan can be turned into a policy only if there is a detailed mechanism for implementation and if it corresponds in some way to reality. For example, "A homeland for the Jewish people guaranteed in international law." On the other hand, if the slogan has no relation to reality and nobody really tries to implement it, it is worthless or turns into a bad joke. Examples include "Make the world safe for democracy" and "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

"Two state solution" is a significant corruption of the original slogan, which as "Two states for two peoples." The significant difference is that the "Two state solution" doesn't require recognition of a Jewish state. The departure means that after all, the Palestinian Arabs, for all their reliance on "international legitimacy." still do not accept the right to self determination of the Jewish people that was recognized implicitly by the League of Nations mandate for Palestine and embodied in UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which called for a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine. After 62 years, there has been no progress whatever on that point.

The first task of the Netanyahu government is thus to make "Two states for two peoples" the acceptable slogan and the policy of the United States. The second task is to point out that the implementation mechanism supposedly exists in the quartet road map, which must be updated to take account of new realities. There cannot be any progress toward peace as long as the Hamas movement is in power in Gaza, and as long as the Palestinian Authority does not prove that it is capable of governing and maintaining security without the intervention of the IDF, and as long as nobody can find a way to contain the influence of Iran through the Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Both of those organizations are sure to torpedo any US inspired peace. There also exists an agreed upon framework for negotiating peace, and that is the Oslo Interim Agreement. The agreement was violated by allowing Hamas to participate in the elections at the insistence of the United States, and the current impasse is the result of that violation. The Annapolis talks were an attempt to circumvent the provisions of the quartet road map, again at the insistence of the United States. Both resulted in disaster, because the United States would not follow its own plan or modify it in accordance with reality rather than wishful thinking. It is up to the Israeli government to challenge the Americans to show how the very real obstacles to a real two state solution can be overcome. Israel should also offer a moratorium on settlement housing construction providing the Palestinian Authority is willing to make a public declaration supporting the right of the Jewish people to self determination in Israel.

As for the Arab Peace Initiative, Israel can say that it welcomes the initiative to recognize Israel and make peace based on international legitimacy, and that it is prepared to accept a solution that includes peace based on secure and negotiated borders as required by UN Security Council Resolution 242 as well as recognition of the right of the Jewish people to self determination, and that it is prepared to meet at any time with Arab leaders to negotiate such a solution.

Realistically, it will probably be a cold day in August in Saudi Arabia before any Arab leaders will accept any of the above, but it is the only realistic way to bring about peace. It will also give the United States what it thinks it needs - progress in the peace process.

Since 1949, the principles of Arab peace diplomacy have not varied. A solution is always offered which looks "reasonable" to Americans, but which incorporates features that add up to destruction or dismemberment of Israel - generally these have included territorial demands such as cession of parts of the Negev and always they have included acceptance of large numbers of Palestinian Arab "refugees." The United States has always been beguiled by such plans and thought they were genuine attempts at peace. Israel can carry the war to the enemy in this field, simply by announcing that it accepts a solution of two states for two peoples based on the Clinton Bridging Proposals, provided the Palestinians will accept them as is and not "as the basis for further negotiations. The Clinton proposals of 2000 include this wording:

The solution will have to be consistent with the two-state approach - the state of Palestine as the homeland of the Palestinian people and the state of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.
...

The agreement will define the implementation of this general right in a way that is consistent with the two-state solution. It would list the five possible homes for the refugees:

1. The State of Palestine

2. Areas in Israel being transferred to Palestine in the land swap

3. Rehabilitation in host country

4. Resettlement in third country

5. Admission to Israel

In listing these options, the agreement will make clear that the return to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and area acquired in the land swap would be right to all Palestinian refugees, while rehabilitation in host countries, resettlement in third countries and absorption into Israel will depend upon the policies of those countries.

It is hardly possible for the United States and for Hillary Clinton to repudiate the Clinton Proposals. It is hardly possible for the Abbas government to approve the wording regarding recognition of a Jewish state or non-implementation of "right" of "return" to Israel.

Netanyahu should also understand that he had better not come to Washington with a big laundry list of "perks" and demands. That puts him in the position of a client state asking for favors from its patron. Each wish that is granted is another string that binds Israel to the United States. Independence is more important than a few dollars in aid or some probably worthless foreign policy concessions. Regarding Iran, Israel.

 has to understand what the game plan has been all along: The United States will do precisely what it thinks it is convenient, expedient and possible to do, and Israel has to preserve the option to do what it feels it needs to do. That has always been the game plan, not only for this crisis, or for Israel-US relations, but in all relations between independent states. It can never work any other way.

As Meir Amit proved just prior to the Six Day War, making clear to the United States what you will do is the only way to do something that everyone wants done, but nobody has the guts to tell you to do. As long as you ask, they have to say "No." No United States administration will ever be caught telling another country it is OK to go to war. If Israel has come to the conclusion that an attack on Iran will be necessary at some point, it must prepare to implement that attack independently of the United States, and if it has that capability, it should make it clear what it will do and in what circumstances it would do it.

If Israel does not have the capability to attack Iran without United States cooperation or active assistance, it has no bargaining chips. It should not ask for favors because it will not be granted any. At most, the United States would do whatever it was going to do anyhow and exact a price for it from Israel. If the United States cannot understand that Iran is going to build a bomb unless it is stopped, and that this is a threat to the United States and its Arab allies, it is hardly likely that anything Benjamin Netanyahu says or does will change their minds.

Ami Isseroff

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Fight terrorism with all your might!

 

 

If you are Moslem, you have to behave according to the rules of Islam which are set down in the Koran and which are very different than the teachings of the Bible. Islam was born with the idea that it should rule the world. Islam has to fight the Jews and the Christians and this fighting is called Jihad. Jihad means war against those people who don’t want to accept the Islamic superior rule. That’s jihad. History reveals very clearly that the apathetic give way to the passionate and the complacent are subdued by the committed. This is the time for people to rise up and defend our freedoms. Defeating global terrorism is the single most important issue of our time. It is more important than global warming, than welfare reform, than stem cell research, even than reproductive rights. And that’s because none of those issues can be addressed if we’ve been subjugated to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

 

The war against Israel is not a war only against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Israel is our first line of defense.

 

Just open :

 

http://www.road90.com/watch.php?id=9UC15TqxUb

 

The Politics of Palestinian Demography Part I

 

by Yakov Faitelson

 

1^st part of 2

With every generation, it seems, a new demographic panic strikes Israel. Opening the Israeli Knesset (parliament) on October 8, 2007, after the Jewish New Year, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned of "a demographic battle, drowned in blood and tears," if Israel did not make territorial concessions.[1] As a new administration in Washington seeks to revive the peace process, the demographic question has again moved front and center. Citing Israel's eroding demographic position, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen urged Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton to try "tough love" to force Israeli concessions.[2] Proponents of the argument that demography mandates concessions might be sincere, but they get the science wrong. Not only does demography not show an imminent Jewish minority in Israel, but even a cursory look at Palestinian numbers shows just how false and politically motivated recent Palestinian surveys are.

 

On February 9, 2008, Luay Shabaneh, the new president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), published the results of a December 2007 Palestinian Authority population census.[3] According to the new data, since 1997, the Arab population has increased to 1,460,000 in the Gaza Strip and 2,300,000 in the West Bank (including 208,000 in East Jerusalem) to a total of 3,760,000 people—an increase of 30 percent in one decade. East Jerusalem is under Israel's administration, but the Palestinian Authority nevertheless counts its Arab population as part of the territory it administers. Thus, the East Jerusalem Arabs are double-counted: once as part of the Arab population of Israel, and again as a part of the population of the Palestinian Authority.

 

The 30 percent population increase again caused renewed demographic panic in Israel. According to a BBC news report, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said that failure to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinians would bring the end of the State of Israel.[4]

 

But unlike what had happened during previous demographic panics, Israeli experts began to raise serious questions about the accuracy of the census. Such questions had been a long time in coming: Most of the middle- and long-term demographic forecasts for Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip—formulated by demographers over the last 110 years—have turned out to be unsound, often dramatically so. This is due to the fact that long-term military, political, economic, and social changes in the region particularly, and in the world in general, cannot be accurately predicted; what is presented with a patina of scientific legitimacy is often simply someone's best guess. Added to this problem is a more troublesome one: Population statistics and birth rates play such an important role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—from the way that foreign aid is allocated to Israel's decision to hold or relinquish territory—that those attempting to manipulate the perceptions of both the public and policymakers are irresistibly drawn to the field.

Those who questioned the new Palestinian census were correct: The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' demographic data arrived at its data not through objective scientific inquiry but rather by overstating the size of the Arab population residing in the territories administered by the Palestinian Authority.

 

The History of Demographic Forecasts

In a March 1898 letter, the famous Jewish historian, Simon Dubnow, criticized Zionist ideas, writing,

 

During seventeen years of tense work to encourage substantial emigration, after the expense of vast means and with the help of millions donated by Rothschild, we managed to place on the land of Palestine only about 3,600 settlers, which makes up approximately 211 people per year. Let us allow that the Western Zionist committees will work with significantly larger capitals and energy and will move to Palestine not two hundred, but one thousand settlers annually … then in a hundred years the Jewish population of Palestine will reach one hundred thousand men. Let's increase this number five times and add to this the natural increase and inflow of the industrial population to the cities, then we shall receive about a half million Jews in Palestine after one hundred years … Certainly, all of us treasure the hope to see at the beginning of the twenty-first century about a half-million of our brothers living in our ancient homeland, but can it solve the problem of 10 millions Jews, who are dispersed?[5]

 

In May 1948, only fifty years after Dubnow's projections, the Jews in Palestine already numbered 649,600 people.

 

Such mistaken projections, however, have been the rule rather than the exception. At the end of 1944, Roberto Bachi presented to the Jewish National Council, the main institution of the Jewish community during the British Mandate, a secret demographic report[6] that included four forecasts: optimistic and pessimistic, and with Jewish immigration as a variable. Bachi based his forecasts on the existing demographic data for 1938-42 and on estimates of trends that could be accepted as reasonable. He assumed that Arab fertility for the ensuing sixty years would continue to be very high (seven children or more per woman) or that it would decrease only slightly (six children per woman). He also assumed that Jewish fertility would remain at about two children per woman but might increase slightly to three children per woman. He also predicted that Jewish immigration might bring about one million Jews to Israel during the five to fifteen years starting from 1946.[7]

 

These estimates could not be treated as prophecy, wrote Bachi, since the differences between reality and forecast increase as the projected time period lengthens. According to Bachi's pessimistic scenario, by 1971, the population of Palestine would include 2,467,000 Arabs and 604,000 Jews without Jewish immigration[8] or 1,695,000 Jews should there have been one million Jewish immigrants.[9] According to Bachi's more optimistic forecasts, the population of Palestine in the same year could consist of 2,186,000 Arabs and 698,000 Jews without immigration or 1,898,000 Jews with a million Jewish immigrants.

 

Fast-forward to 1971. Israel controlled the whole territory of the former British Mandate in Palestine, and 2,662,000 Jews already lived in Israel—about half a million more than in Bachi's most optimistic projection. The Arab population stood at 1,460,000,[10] about one million fewer than he had predicted. Then in 1972, Bachi predicted, as he had in 1956,[11] that immigration to Israel would stop as the Jews of the West were indifferent and the Jews of the Soviet Union were forever trapped.[12] Nevertheless, over the next seven years, more than a quarter million Jews migrated to Israel.

 

His projections for 2001 were similarly off-base: According to the pessimistic forecast, the population of Palestine in 2001 would comprise 5,871,000 Arabs and 563,000 Jews without immigration or 1,580,000 Jews with a million Jewish immigrants. Following his optimistic forecast, the population of Palestine in 2001 should have been 4,415,000 Arabs and 831,000 Jews without immigration or 2,258,000 Jews with a million Jewish immigrants.

 

The reality was quite different. The Jewish population reached 5,025,010, nine times more than his pessimistic projection, and 2.2 times more than his most optimistic forecast. When combined with the immigrant population from the former Soviet Union, the total comprised 5,281,300 people.[13] The total Arab population reached 3,570,000, some 1,300,000, or 39 percent less than Bachi's projection for 2001.

 

Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics forecast in 1968 that, by 1985, the Jewish population would increase to 2,923,000, and the Arab population would rise to 49 percent of Israel's total population.[14] In reality, there were 3,517,200 Jews in 1985, representing 62.7 percent of the total population.

 

Amidst the 1987 Palestinian uprising against Israeli control in the West Bank and Gaza, demographic predictions—no matter how sloppy—became the stuff of headlines. In 1987, the Israeli newspaper Yedi'ot Aharanot quoted Arnon Sofer's bombshell forecast: "In the year 2000, Israel will become non-Jewish."[15] The New York Times' Thomas Friedman picked up Sofer's prediction and ran with it in an 1800-word, page one story.[16] Sofer claimed that by 2000 there would be "4.2 million Jews versus 3.5 million non-Jews. The 3.5 million Arabs would include: 1.2 million Israeli Arabs within the Green Line, one million Arabs in the Gaza Strip, and between 1.1 and 1.5 million in the West Bank."[17] Sofer's tally indicated for 2000 a range of between 2.1 to 2.5 million Arabs in the Palestinian territories.

 

Putting aside the fact that the figures did not justify the headlines proclaiming a Jewish minority, Sofer actually miscalculated the Arab population twice: First, by using the 1986 Central Bureau of Statistics forecast made for 2002 for all Arabs—defined officially as citizens and permanent residents of the State of Israel, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights—as the Arab population of Israel only "within the Green Line," i.e., exclusive of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights; and, second, by folding the Arab population of East Jerusalem into the forecast of the Arab population in the Palestinian territories. Then, he presented the forecast for the West Bank and Gaza Strip including East Jerusalem, as it was usually done by the U.N., CIA, and Palestinian sources. In effect, this results in double counting the East Jerusalem population, first as permanent residents of the State of Israel and then as the residents of Palestinian territory.

A month later, Sofer explained his forecast: "Without even considering birth rates, to make up one percentage point today, we need an additional 170,000 Jews ...Who among us really expects that sort of aliya (migration to Israel) in the near future?"[18] Two years later, though, just such a migration occurred, underlining the inability of the demographers to forecast political developments. Over the ensuing decade, more than one million Jews were repatriated to Israel from the former Soviet Union. Including mixed Jewish families, this wave of immigration totaled 1.2 million people and increased Israel's Jewish population by 31 percent. Demographic prediction is such an uncertain science that even Israeli specialists get it wrong repeatedly.

 

 

Yakov Faitelson

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.