The Laws of War Evidently Don’t Apply to Israel

by Evelyn Gordon

The New York Times reported Monday on a U.S. soldier charged with killing Afghan civilians for fun. Yet much of the report was devoted to explaining why civilian killings by soldiers usually don’t result in indictments — like a 2008 case in which Marines allegedly fired indiscriminately at an Afghan road, killing 19 people and wounding 50. The case was closed because “the shootings began after a suicide bomber attacked the unit’s convoy,” and “the Marines said they had taken hostile gunfire after the explosion and had fired to defend themselves from perceived threats.” The Times explained:

It can be difficult to win a conviction, specialists in military law said, when defendants can make a plausible claim that they believed, in the confusion of the “fog of war,” that their lives were in danger and they needed to defend themselves.

“You often see cases of kids who just make dumb decisions,” said Gary Solis, who teaches the laws of war at Georgetown University. “But killings in the heat of the moment, they don’t usually try those guys. The guys you try are the ones who have an opportunity to consider what they are doing.”

Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale, added that it’s often hard to gather evidence in conflict zones.

In many cases, he said, months have passed by the time an accusation surfaces, and so units have rotated back from the tour of duty, records are poor, and it is difficult to find witnesses.

Moreover, in the Muslim world investigators are deeply reluctant, for cultural reasons, to exhume bodies and perform autopsies.

Astoundingly, even the lone human-rights advocate quoted agreed. “The large majority of civilian harm in both Iraq and Afghanistan takes place during legitimate military operations,” said Sarah Holewinksi, executive director of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict.

Clearly, all the above considerations also apply to Israel’s military operations in Lebanon and Gaza. Civilian deaths occurred in the heat of combat, when soldiers could plausibly have thought themselves endangered. Few witnesses will talk to Israeli investigators, yet testimony given to nongovernmental organizations is problematic as courtroom evidence, because attorneys and judges cannot question the witnesses themselves or form an impression of their credibility. And most victims are Muslims, who have religious objections to autopsies.

Yet when it comes to Israel, these factors are somehow dismissed as unimportant. That same day, the Times reported on an Israeli court’s conviction of two soldiers for crimes committed during last year’s Gaza war. Altogether, it noted, 48 cases have been opened. A third are “still in progress,” a few produced convictions, and the rest were closed, for the reasons cited above.

“But human rights groups say that the military’s criminal proceedings are insufficient” and that Israeli troops committed “atrocities that require outside investigation.”

The principle that the law applies equally to all is a cornerstone of modern Western civilization. Yet too many Westerners seem to reserve the protections granted by the laws of war for their own soldiers while denying them to Israel.

By so doing, they don’t just undermine Israel. They undermine their own civilization.

Evelyn Gordon

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

Bolivia, Venezuela, Supply Uranium to Iran

by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

With Iran is calling for the expansion of ties with Bolivia, the Iranian Minister of Industries and Mines, Ali Akbar Mehrabian, visited the Latin American country and expressed his wish to develop business relations. In a joint press release, Bolivia's President, Evo Morales, went further: he expressed his appreciation for Iranian resistance against the US; criticized the international community over the "double-standard policies" of Western states, and said his country will remain beside Iran and against the "unilateral" policies of the US.

The same concepts were repeated in a recent meeting that Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad had with Morales in New York. Pointing to the friendly,brotherly relations between Iran and Bolivia, Ahmadinejad stressed that "today the ties between the two countries have their roots in the bottom of the two nations' and officials' hearts and are expanding intensively." During the meeting, Morales described Iran as a role model for the Latin American states, especially Bolivia, and said the two countries share common views on international issues.

These declarations of intent have not positively impressed Bolivia's Jewish community, worried by their country's increased ties with a regime that has made of Anti-Semitism one of its main platforms. Ricardo Udler, president of the Israelite Circle of Bolivia, expressed his concern for the new cooperation treaties between Bolivia and Iran: "Each time an Iranian official arrives in Bolivia," Udler said, "there are negative comments against the state of Israel; and soon after, the Bolivian authorities issue a communiqué against the Jewish State." Also, said Udler, "What worries me most is the transport of uranium. Although this was never confirmed officially by the state's authorities, there is information from international agencies that indicate that uranium from Bolivia and Venezuela is being shipped to Iran."

State minister Oscar Coca, when asked about uranium, said that the presence of uranium ore in the country had yet to be confirmed, and that certainly no uranium had been shipped to Iran. He insisted that the cooperation with Iranian government covered fields such as oil exploitation, construction of tractors and the likes.

However, an Israeli report of 2009 concludes that Bolivia, alongside Venezuela, is supplying Iran with uranium for its nuclear program. The three-page document about Iranian activities in Latin America was prepared for a visit to South America by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon before a conference of the Organization of American States in Honduras. "There are reports that Venezuela supplies Iran with uranium for its nuclear program," the Israeli Foreign Ministry document states, referring to previous Israeli intelligence conclusions. It added, "Now we have evidence that also Bolivia supplies uranium to Iran." There was no immediate comment from officials in Venezuela or Bolivia on the report's allegations.

Iran is an odd partner for the socialist regimes in South America that doing business with the Ayatollahs. Ideologically, it proposes a theological state, the opposite of what Socialist societies are seeking. Technologically and scientifically, Iran is still, despite some breakthroughs in the nuclear field, a largely underdeveloped country: even though Iran is a major oil producer, it is unable to refine enough gasoline to meet its needs. Geographically, it belongs to a totally different region. So what are the advantages of developing commercial and strategic ties with a partner from so far away, and having so little to offer, when much better capabilities are available in America and in Europe? What have countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Cuba, in common with the Islamic Republic of Iran? Nothing, really, except a deep rooted enmity toward the US.

In this process, Bolivia also fails to develop some of its most important mineral resources --- especially lithium. Half the world's reserves of lithium are buried in the Salar de Uyuni plain. What lies beneath the surface there could turn Bolivia --one of South America's poorest countries -- into the Saudi Arabia of the 21st century. As rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are vastly superior to nickel-based batteries, lithium is the oil of green technology.

The Salar de Uyuni is the latest and greatest discovery in the "Lithium Triangle": 16,000 square miles straddling northern Argentina, Chile, and southern Bolivia, where an estimated 75-90% of the world's lithium deposits are located. So far, Chile's Salar de Atacama has been the largest source and the best exploited—particularly by the Chinese, who imported 4,300 tons of it in 2008. But Bolivia cannot exploit its lithium without foreign investment and expertise, and its main competitors have the jump on it. Chile and Argentina already account for more than half the world's 27,400 metric tons of annual lithium production.

So far, the Morales government's way of working has been to sign accords or memoranda of understanding with everyone who comes along -- yet no sign of development can be seen on the ground. In four years of the Morales government, only a sum of approximately $300,000 has been spent – not even 1% of the new presidential plane that has just been bought.

International investors are also worried by the nationalistic stance taken by the Morales government, in particular the provision that the Bolivian state should maintain at least 60% of the ownership of any enterprise to be created. So while Morales is fiddling around with dismal economic deals with the Ayatollah's regime, a real opportunity is being passed up to change the economy of Bolivia for the good.

Anna Mahjar-Barducci

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

Saudi Arabia's Accelerating Social Unrest

by Irfan Al-Alawi

Social unrest has begun bursting out in Saudi Arabia since September 23. For the last five years, that date has been celebrated as Saudi National Day. Although discontent among women, non-adherents of the official Wahhabi sect, the Shia minority, and foreign workers is often predicted -- and even described -- in the kingdom, seldom does it result in significant incidents. This year, that week, including and following the holiday produced a new, and strikingly broad, wave of dissent.

This year, Saudi National Day witnessed riotous youth on the main roads in the Hejaz region --- traditionally resistant to Wahhabi intimidation. According to the Saudi Gazette, 100 young men were arrested after mass violence broke out during the holiday, including smashing windshields, stopping cars, throwing bottles, and starting fires on the highways around the cities of Taif and Medina.

The following week featured more public turmoil, much of it involving women's rights. Although Saudi schools are frequently criticized for their retrograde teachings about non-Wahhabis, non-Muslims, and non-males, on September 26, Walaa Hawari of the semi-official Arab News reported that a new school textbook on fiqh, the application of shariah or Islamic law, had been introduced, entitled Fiqh and Behavior. Its author, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Ahmed, earlier this year created an uproar when he suggested that the Great Mosque of Mecca, where millions of Muslims go as pilgrims, be torn down and rebuilt as a circle, with separate areas for men and women. His motive seemed to be to prevent the mingling of the sexes in tawaf, the practice of walking around the Ka'ba, the stone cube at the center of the complex, and Islam's most sacred site.

Sheikh Al-Ahmed's opinion contradicted fourteen centuries of Islamic history, in which men and women have never been segregated during religious journeys to Mecca – either the annual hajj, which has its own month in the Islamic calendar, or umrah, a shorter set of rituals that may be performed at any time during the year. Protests against his demand for gender separation were heard throughout the Muslim countries.

Sheikh Al-Ahmed said he had been assigned to produce the new school textbook on shariah-based conduct by the ultra-Wahhabi Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, where he is a former lecturer, and which Saudis call "the terrorist factory" for its indoctrination in extremism. He is also notorious for proposing that women be barred from working as supermarket checkout clerks. From such an individual, it was certain that the Saudi school text on Islamic law and personal behaviour would have a markedly retrogressive character – the opposite of what younger Saudi citizens want. Before the announcement of its adoption in the standard curriculum, rumours circulated that the text would be withdrawn. So far, however, it will remain in the schools.

As the world knows, Saudi women are not alone as victims of the Saudi denial of women's rights. Moroccan women, as well as families with young daughters, have recently been denied visas to perform umrah, on the argument that they are young tourists with questionable morals, rather than virtuous Muslim travellers; but the fulfilment of spiritual needs is hardly the only right denied women living in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi daily newspaper Okaz has been carrying a spirited debate about the inability of women to get work without the permission of a mehram or male guardian – either a father, husband or brother.

Nearly quarter of the Saudi population of 28 million is composed of foreign workers. Some are, naturally, highly-paid "first-world" technicians, who serve in the energy and related high-tech sectors, and live in special, Western-style compounds. But many more are household workers, drivers, and other ordinary folk recruited from Asia and Africa. Near the end of September, as reported in the Saudi Gazette, the condition of housemaids from India was dramatized when Fokasa, the Federation of Kerala Associations in Saudi Arabia – representing 28 organizations of migrants from Kerala state on the Indian southwest coast – petitioned India's minister for overseas Indian affairs, during a visit to Riyadh, to forbid further Saudi contracting of Indian women as domestic servants.

Fokasa leader R. Muraleedharan said that female domestic employees, like drivers and other personal servants, are not covered by Saudi labour laws and are subject to outrageous exploitation and abuse. The Fokasa petition described physical, mental and sexual harassment, as well as excessive working hours; forced labour for friends and relatives of their contractors; and treatment as "slaves," who could be sold by their contractors to other people. The Kerala group also said that when Saudi employers wish to avoid payment of overdue wages, they "dump" workers at the Indian Embassy in Riyadh or hand them over to deportation centers, which are known for harsh, overcrowded conditions.

"Saudi labour law" is something of an oxymoron, as even native Saudi workers have few of the employment rights typically guaranteed in developed countries. Unfortunately for the oil sheikhs, many of the large contingent of foreign workers come from countries where standards are, if only on paper, more up-to-date. In late September, Chinese contract laborers employed in the construction of a Metro system in Mecca went on strike for a week. Translators were required to inform Saudi police that the workers had not been paid for months. According to Saudi media, Mecca police intervened to obtain a promise of payment for the strikers, who then went back to work.

Protests over women's rights, labor grievances, and general liberties constitute a growing challenge to the Saudi rulers. In the realm of free communications, blogging and internet news sites have spread exponentially; a heated discussion broke out when the Saudi Ministry of Information domestic media supervisor, Abdulrahman Al-Hazzaa, announced on Al-Arabiyya television that a new electronic media law would require government registration of bloggers. Facebook and Twitter users were particularly outraged by the suggestion they might come under government control. Al-Hazaa quickly "clarified" that on-line news sites would require licensing, but that bloggers would merely be "encouraged" to register.

In the controversy, Al-Hazaa delivered a revealing remark about Saudi bloggers: "There are so many," he said, "we cannot control them". The comment could also apply to other advocates of human rights in the kingdom – Saudi women opposed to Wahhabi "morals" strictures, foreign workers of both sexes, and, above all, the young.

Social forces are developing, pressing with growing insistence against the bonds of the repressive Saudi state.

Irfan Al-Alawi

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

Free Speech on Trial in the Netherlands Geert Wilders vs. Judges Who Say They Already "Know Enough"

by Soeren Kern

The hate speech trial of Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders began in Amsterdam on October 4. Prosecutors say Wilders incited hatred against Muslims when he made remarks describing Islam as fascist and compared the Koran to Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf. Wilders argues that he has a right to freedom of speech and that his remarks were within the bounds of the law. If convicted of any of the five charges against him, Wilders faces a hefty fine and/or up to one year in prison. He could also be barred from seeking re-election for public office.

The Wilders trial, which is expected to last about a month, represents a landmark case that likely will establish the limits of free speech in a country where the politically correct elite routinely seek to silence public discussion about the escalating problem of Muslim immigration.

At the start of his trial, Wilders, whose popularity and influence in the Netherlands are at an all time high, said he speaks for more than one million Dutch voters, and he vowed not retract a word. "I am on trial, but on trial with me is the freedom of expression of many Dutch citizens," he told the Amsterdam district court. "I can assure you, I will continue proclaiming it.

"I have said what I have said and I will not take one word back," Wilders continued, "but that does not mean I have said everything attributed to me." Wilders, who has a round-the-clock police guard because of death threats, then invoked his right to remain silent and refused to answer judges' questions.

Presiding Judge Jan Moors responded by telling Wilders that the court "reads newspapers and watches television" and that Wilders has been blamed by others for being "good in taking a stand and then avoiding a discussion." By choosing not to testify, he said, "it seems you are doing that today as well."

Wilders objected, saying the remark showed that Moors had a negative view of him as the kind of person who picks a fight and then runs away. Wilders then challenged the impartiality of the three-judge panel because of what Moors said. "I thought I had a right to a fair trial, including the right to remain silent," Wilders said. "It is scandalous that the judge passes comment on that. A fair trial is not possible with judges like that."

The trial was temporarily suspended after Wilders' lawyer, Bram Moszkowicz, asked the court to replace the judges hearing the case because they may be biased against Wilders. A separate review panel was then convened to consider the request for the removal of the judges.

Judge Frans Bauduin, who presided over the review panel, rejected Wilders' argument that the judges are prejudiced. Bauduin said Moors' remark was "unfortunately formulated," he said, but that it was standard procedure for a court to question suspects about why they choose to remain silent. "The words used by the presiding judge in that last sentence were chosen unfortunately. They have given the requestor a wrong impression…However, there are no weighty indications that the judges have given the impression of being prejudiced." Bauduin then ordered the trial to continue with the current judges.

Wilders is being prosecuted after complaints following an August 2007 essay titled "Enough is Enough: Outlaw the Koran, published by the Dutch newspaper De Volksrant, in which Wilders called the Koran "fascist" and compared it to the book Mein Kampf. Wilders also wrote: "I've had enough of Islam in the Netherlands; let not one more Muslim immigrate;" adding "I've had enough of the Koran in the Netherlands: Forbid that fascist book." A year later, he released the documentary film "Fitna," in which he calls on Muslims to rip out "hate-preaching" verses from the Koran.

In a February 2008 interview with Britain's leftwing Guardian newspaper, Wilders said: "Islam is something we cannot afford any more in the Netherlands. I want the fascist Koran banned. We need to stop the Islamization of the Netherlands. That means no more mosques, no more Islamic schools, no more imams." He added that Islam was "the ideology of a retarded culture," and said that "not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims."

In February 2009, the British government led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown banned Wilders from entering Britain on grounds of Islamophobia. That ban was lifted in October 2009 after a British court ruled that the entry ban was illegal.

The attempt to bring Wilders to trial was initially dismissed after the Public Prosecutor (OM) originally said that Wilders was protected by the right to free speech. But an appeals court overruled him and ordered that Wilders be charged. The case against Wilders was initiated by the extreme left anti-racism group called Netherlands Admits Color.

Some of the most prominent legal scholars in the Netherlands have spoken out against the case, arguing that "this prosecution does not befit a civilized country." Adding to speculation that the proceedings against Wilders are pre-cooked, the Amsterdam court is refusing to allow Wilders to call four legal scholars as witnesses because the judges say they have already "learned enough" about the case from other sources.

The trial comes at a moment when Wilders is close to seeing many of his policy goals realized. On September 30, Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) agreed to support a new minority government made up of the Liberals (VVD) and the Christian Democrats (CDA). Following inconclusive elections in June, the new government is expected to take office in October with a tiny majority (76 seats in the 150-seat parliament). It will be led by Mark Rutte, the VVD leader, as prime minister.

In return for the support of Wilders' 24 seats in parliament, his political allies have promised to ban the burqa, turn away more asylum-seekers and cut immigration from non-Western countries in half. Under the pact, radical religious leaders could be barred from entering the country; immigrants convicted of crimes would be expelled more rapidly, and those who failed an integration exam would lose their residence permits.

The coalition government also plans to pursue more Euroskeptic policies, and invest in Dutch relations with Israel. "This is an historic event for the Netherlands," Wilders said after reaching the coalition agreement. "We will be able to rebuild our country, preserve our national identity and offer our children a better future. We want to stop the Islamization of the Netherlands."

Wilders, who is viewed by many people as a martyr for liberty and free speech, is also resonating with voters in other European countries. Speaking to the members of a new German political movement called "Die Freiheit" (The Freedom) in Berlin on October 2, Wilders argued that Islam is the new communism, and he paraphrased Karl Marx to declare that Islam is now the specter haunting Europe.

During his Berlin speech, which was aimed at establishing a trans-national European movement against Muslim immigration, Wilders said: "I am standing trial … because of my opinions on Islam … and because the Dutch establishment – most of them non-Muslims – wants to silence me. I have been dragged to court because in my country freedom can no longer be fully enjoyed … In Europe, the national state, and increasingly the EU, prescribes how citizens – including democratically elected politicians such as myself – should think and what we are allowed to say."

Wilders also argued that Islam is bent on dominating the West, deliberately flooding Europe with migrants. "We must realize that Islam expands in two ways. Historically, Islam expanded either by military conquest or by using the weapon of hijra, immigration. Muhammad conquered Medina through immigration. Hijra is also what we are experiencing today. The Islamization of Europe continues all the time. But the West has no strategy for dealing with the Islamic ideology: Our elites say that we must adapt to them, rather than the other way around."

"We should not accept the unacceptable as inevitable without trying to turn the tide." Wilders concluded. "It is our duty as politicians to preserve our nations for our children."

Soeren Kern

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

J Street Co-Founder Daniel Levy: Israel’s Creation “An Act That Was Wrong”

by Omri Ceren

Quite the few days that J Street had last week, what with all the admitting they’re foot soldiers in Soros’s anti-Israel army after lying about it for years and then trying to get ahead of the story by lying about it some more. Most of the criticism has focused on co-founder Jeremy Ben-Ami, who did not exactly fall on his sword and instead tried to hamfistedly change the subject. But it’s probably unfair to blame him for all of J Street’s failings, from rigging polls to being more anti-Israel than the Saudis to expressing fake confusion about Hamas’s intentions.

Per Eli Lake’s first story, Ben-Ami seems to have been the one who did most of the “misleading” about J Street’s fundraising, from furtively squirreling away Soros’s cash to opaquely raising 50% of the group’s 2008 money from a single foreign source.

But per Lake’s second article, when it came time to shuttle Goldstone around DC and peddle his endlessly inaccurate and venomously biased libels around the Hill, J Street delegated the task to one of the adults in the organization. It was J Street co-founder, advisory board member, and international socialite Daniel Levy “who accompanied the judge to several of the [10-12] parleys” with Congress. It was also Levy’s New America Foundation that hosted a high-caliber lunch for Goldstone with “a group of analysts and Middle East wonks.”

The Goldstone tour wasn’t the first time that Levy willingly served as a channel for de facto Hamas propaganda. He’s been a tireless advocate of pro-Hamas diplomacy, and sees the Iranian proxy as an integral part of Palestinian civil society. A few years ago Noah Pollak took him out to the woodshed for historical revisionism that seemed jarringly anti-Israel and borderline anti-Zionist.

If sometimes it seems like Levy doesn’t really think that the modern Jewish State deserves defending, it’s because he kind of doesn’t really think that the modern Jewish State deserves defending. You can be confident on that point because he said so himself – quite definitively – at last May’s Fifth Al Jazeera Forum. Levy was on a panel with Al-Quds Al-Arabi editor-in-chief Abdel Bari Atwan, NAF Strategic Program Director Steve Clemons, surreal Hamas apologist and one-stater Allister Sparks, and accused terrorist Basheer Nafi.

Mere Rhetoric has obtained a transcript of Levy’s remarks. They conclude with him asserting that it’s “natural” for Gazans to want to attack Israelis on account of the ostensibly unbearable situation in the Strip or something, and with him nonetheless urging Palestinians to hold off on their genocidal campaigns because those aren’t very strategic or disciplined.

But the most ideologically pointed part was just before those musings. Levy quite explicitly revealed that he thinks that Israel’s creation was a “an act that was wrong.” Quote unquote. For good measure he added that “there’s no reason a Palestinian should think there was justice” in Israel’s founding. Gamely, he also implied that had he been a diplomat in 1948, he would have been so overwrought at the incineration of six million Jewish souls that he would have deemed the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland “excused.” Generous!

I’ve put the full quote, in all of its prevaricating nuance, at the bottom. Begin reading it for the risible claims of Hamas pragmatism, and stay around for the spectacle of a “pro-Israel” activist dismissing the moral basis for Israel as misguided and historically fleeting. In the middle, don’t miss how the only flavor of Zionism he’s willing to support is a kind that exists only in his mind.

In fairness, you can’t blame him for the “natural” violence stuff too much. There aren’t a lot of places you can argumentatively go after something as blunt as “an act that was wrong.” Once you’ve embraced the anti-Israel version of Middle East history – where the revival of the Jewish State was an ethically injudicious colonialist overreaction to the Holocaust rather than a centuries-old legally-codified international movement – you can’t then forcefully insist that Jews have an ethical right to live securely in the Holy Land. Because those two things mean the opposite of each other.

No wonder J Street wants to redefine “pro-Israel” to justify their rhetorically creepy “we beat up Israelis for their own good, and it hurts us more than it hurts them” campaign. The group’s directors are beholden to major anti-Israel donors. They have political skin in anti-Israel diplomatic gambits. And their personal feelings about the Jewish State leave them no room for speaking out in defense of Israel’s ethical legitimacy, legal basis, or strategic importance. So they end up shilling for Hamas in Congress. At least that’s consistent.

Anyway, to preempt the inevitable claim that Levy was taken out of context, here’s the extended quote:

One can be a utilitarian two-stater, in other words think that the practical pragmatic way forward is two states. This is my understanding of the current Hamas position. One can be an ideological two-stater, someone who believes in exclusively the Palestinian self-determination and in Zionism; I don’t believe that it’s impossible to have a progressive Zionism. Or one can be a one-stater. But in either of those outcomes we’re going to live next door to each other or in a one state disposition. And that means wrapping one’s head around the humanity of both sides. I believe the way Jewish history was in 1948 excused – for me, it was good enough for me – an act that was wrong. I don’t expect Palestinians to think that. I have no reason – there’s no reason a Palestinian should think there was justice in the creation of Israel.

Photo:
* Ralph Alswang / Center for American Progress Action Fund [Flickr]

References:
* J Street owns up to Soros funding [Kampeas / JTA]
* Journos Slam Liberal ‘Pro-Israel’ Group for Lying About Soros Money [Goodman / NewsBusters]
* J Street’s Half-Truths and Non-Truths About Its Funding [Good / Atlantic]
* J-Street President Answers Soros Funding Charges “Guilty With an Explanation.” [Yid With Lid]
* New J-Street Poll Is Rigged In Particularly Stupid, Obnoxious Ways [Mere Rhetoric]
* Of Course: “Pro-Israel” J-Street Is More Anti-Israel Than Israel’s Sworn Enemies, Equates Israeli Self-Defense With Hamas Violence [Mere Rhetoric]
* JStreet Tools Proudly Declare Their Inability To Distinguish Between Reality And What They’d Like Reality To Be [Mere Rhetoric]
* Soros revealed as funder of liberal Jewish-American lobby [Lake / WashTimes]
* Israel lobby aided Hill visits for U.N. report author [Lake / WashTimes]
* Goldstone’s Daughter: Israel Should Thank My Dad For Legitimizing The UN’s Vicious Anti-Israel Smear Campaign [Mere Rhetoric]
* Blair ‘will fail unless he talks to Hamas’ [Shipman / Telegraph]
* Levy: Fallout of the Fatah-Hamas Breakdown [Levy / FP Marc Lynch]
* Rewriting History [Pollak / NRO]
* Keynotes and Sessions [Fifth Al Jazeera Forum]
* Allister in Wonderland—Part 1 [It's Almost Supernatural]
* Basheer M. Nafi, Co-Editor and Accused Terrorist [Pipes]
* Israel Publishes Gaza Travel Guidebook For Pro-Hamas Freedom Flotilla [Mere Rhetoric]
* Representative Joe Sestak ‘Regrets’ Signing J Street’s ‘Gaza 54’ Letter [NY Mag]

Omri Ceren

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

Messaging System

by Lee Smith

Iran maintains an information-warfare front—it’s called Hezbollah

A Facebook group about Hassan Nasrallah.

CREDIT: Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is going ^[1] to Lebanon next week, where he intends to throw a stone at Israel across the border. While this set piece of information warfare, or propaganda, may seem more Japanese than Persian in its stark simplicity, it is best to think of it as a metaphor for Tehran’s regional strategy. For the last 30 years the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has been throwing the same stone at Israel, a stone called Hezbollah.

Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s general secretary, is credited by many Arabs and Westerners, including his adversaries, as among the greatest of all modern Arab statesmen and warriors, a man of probity and honor. Unlike other Arab leaders, he makes his threats against the Jewish state come true, sometimes even before the very eyes of his captivated audience, as when Hezbollah struck an Israeli boat in the first week of its summer 2006 war with Israel. “Look at the warship that has attacked Beirut, while it burns and sinks before your very eyes,” Nasrallah said ^[2] on live television, as though he were directing a movie. This was one of his most famous information operations, but the fact is that everything Hezbollah does is part of its information-warfare strategy.

The Hezbollah T-shirts and lighters sold to tourists are Hezbollah media, and the coloring books that indoctrinate children into Nasrallah’s cult of personality are as much a part of Hezbollah’s information war as the party’s Al-Manar ^[3] TV station. Even Hezbollah’s military operations are part of its larger information-warfare strategy. Kidnapping Israeli soldiers and firing missiles on civilian population centers are real military actions, but sinking a single ship is of little strategic value against a state with an army, lots of other boats, and even nuclear submarines. As an asymmetrical warrior, Nasrallah understands that even his most capable guerrilla units are no match for Israel, so he wages war against what he correctly perceives as the Jewish state’s center of gravity—public opinion. Hezbollah’s information operations are among the most sophisticated in the history of modern warfare because the Party of God is itself an information operation, designed by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

What makes the relationship between Iran and Hezbollah seem complex is the fact that the Party of God is an information operation directed at several audiences at once. For instance, when Nasrallah says that Israel is like a spider’s web, flimsy and on the verge of being swept away by the winds of history, he is speaking not only to the Israelis. He is also addressing a Lebanese and a regional Sunni Arab audience and even an Iranian audience. And yet even with all the smoke and mirrors, the multiple audiences, and Nasrallah’s reputation, there is nothing ambiguous about the fact that Hezbollah is a projection of Iranian military power on the Eastern Mediterranean. There is nothing Lebanese about Hezbollah except the corporal host; its mind belongs to the Revolutionary Guard.

“During the 2006 war, we captured a number of Hezbollah documents, dealing with everything from religious ideology to military doctrine, the lion’s share of the important texts was clearly written by and for the IRGC and then translated into Arabic,” Shmuel Bar, a former Israeli intelligence officer, told me. “In human influence operations, Hezbollah’s modus operandi is the same as Iran’s.”

Bar, the founder of IntuView ^[4], an Israeli tech firm that does automated meaning-extraction from terrorist-related documents, likens it to how the Soviets produced material for their Arab clients, from Syria to Palestinian organizations. “We couldn’t understand the Arabic used to explain how to utilize a certain weapon, so we translated the Arabic into Russian, then went to our Russian linguists, who explained what it meant. The Iranians have done the same with Hezbollah. These documents were not authored by Hezbollah but translated from Farsi and prepared by the Iranians.”

The difference is that the Palestinians were notoriously difficult to control, with Yasser Arafat often playing the Soviets against his various Arab backers. “But unlike the Palestinian organizations of the 1970s and 1980s, which jockeyed back and forth between Syrian, Libyan, and Iraqi patrons,” Bar said, “Hassan Nasrallah cannot wake up one day and decide that he has chosen to side with someone else. Hezbollah is a surrogate; it has no existence without Iran.”

This interpretation of course runs counter to the standard account ^[5], which sees Hezbollah as a strictly Lebanese entity—a militia that may receive support from Iran, as well as Syria, but has steadily integrated itself into the fabric of Lebanese politics and society. Known as the Lebanonization thesis, this idea is itself a Hezbollah information operation, one whose target audience consists of the Western intelligentsia and, more dangerously, policymakers like the White House’s counterterrorism czar, John Brennan, who would like to find a way to engage Hezbollah but need a cover story ^[6] that whitewashes Tehran’s real role. In this account, Hezbollah owes its existence less to Iran than to the Israeli occupation that brought it to life.

A Hezbollah poster prepared for the arrival of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Lebanon next week. The text reads “Welcome” in Arabic and Farsi.

“The popular view of Hezbollah’s origins sees it as a reaction to Israel’s 1982 invasion, which presumably radicalized the Shi’a,” said Tony Badran, a Hezbollah specialist at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies ^[7] (and a Tablet Magazine contributor ^[8]). It’s not just left-wing academics hostile to Israel and war correspondents ^[9] stage-managed by Hezbollah’s media handlers who believe that Israel’s 18-year occupation, from 1982 to 2000, gave rise to the party. Even Israel’s current defense minister, Ehud Barak, argues ^[10] that, “It was our presence [in southern Lebanon] that created Hizbullah”—a rationalization for his decision as prime minister to withdraw from Lebanon that dovetails perfectly with this Hezbollah info op.

In reality, Hezbollah’s conception pre-dates the Israeli invasion, Badran said. “Hezbollah is the result of an inter-factional ^[11] struggle between two strands of the Iranian regime, who fought bitterly between 1979 and 1981. The faction that prevailed, the Islamic Republic Party, dubbed itself the Party of God and created its namesake in Lebanon, which was a critical theater for projecting power, including against its domestic enemies in Iran.”

There were also Iran’s Arab enemies, especially Saudi Arabia, and hence one of the audiences for Hezbollah is the Arab political arena, both the ruling regimes and the masses, which the Iranians hoped to set against each other. By continuing the fight to liberate Jerusalem, Tehran had picked up the banner of Arab nationalism that the Sunni Arab regimes had tossed by the wayside. Here was another reason for the Arab masses to despise their cruel and now obviously cowardly rulers—and admire a Shia and Persian power they might otherwise fear and detest: As the Arabs got weaker, Iran got stronger, even in the eyes of the Arabs.

In other words, what seems like Hezbollah’s war with Israel is in reality the Iranian Republican Guard’s 30-year war against almost everyone else. The Zionist entity in this contrived scenario is a little like the Washington Generals to Hezbollah’s Harlem Globetrotters—except that here it’s the eternal rival who sets the tempo and the Globetrotters who can’t get a break. Nasrallah boasts ^[12] that he understands his Israeli enemy well, that he has made a study of their society and mores. But the fact that he says he reads biographies of all of Israel’s military and political leaders is just an index of how much time he has on his hands, hiding underground since the end of the 2006 war in fear of an Israeli assassination attempt. Hezbollah is never going to tip the balance of power against Israel, but that was never Iran’s main project. Understanding the political terrain of their real target audiences, the Republican Guard sought to create an effect that was best elicited by making war against the Jewish state.

Lebanon was fertile ground for such an info op, where any arms taken up against Israel are considered sacred. The Palestinians set the precedent in the 1970s by using Lebanon to wage war against the Zionists, so Iran could do the same, through Hezbollah. And yet now the Lebanese are confounded that Hezbollah calls anyone who doesn’t stand entirely behind the resistance and all of its actions an Israeli agent. But this turn of events is the logical outcome of the information war that Iran has been waging against Lebanon, with Lebanese connivance, for three decades.

Consider that it took most Lebanese some five years to recognize that the organization that pioneered the car-bombing during the 1980s might have had a hand in assassinating ^[13] former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri with a massive car bomb. Few Lebanese believed that the resistance would ever turn their arms against fellow Lebanese before Hezbollah killed their Sunni and Druze neighbors in the streets of Beirut in May 2008. Those arms were pure, the Lebanese thought, because they had been directed at Israel—even as few asked what it means to “resist” an enemy whose enmity you have brought upon yourself with acts of terror. Iran can destroy Lebanon anytime it likes, either by getting Israel to retaliate massively, or directly through Hezbollah.

If Hezbollah engineers the coup against the Lebanese government that many dread ^[14]—there is speculation that this is why Ahmadinejad is coming to Lebanon—and finally takes total control of the country, the most significant audience for this info op is domestic—not Lebanese but Iranian. The Iranian foreign legion that runs Lebanon has no problems slaughtering their Lebanese countrymen in the streets of Beirut, and the Iranian people should understand that the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s supreme leader, and its president will do at least as much in the streets of Tehran to hold on to power.

[1] going: http://www.smh.com.au/world/israel-pressures-lebanon-to-cancel-ahmadinejad-visit-20101005-1668y.html

[2] said: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3275792,00.html

[3] Al-Manar: http://www.almanar.com.lb/newssite/news.aspx?language=en

[4] IntuView: http://www.intuview.com/

[5] standard account: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section~fulltext=713240928~dontcount=true~content=a788162034

[6] cover story: http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=442&PID=0&IID=3983

[7] Foundation for Defense of Democracies: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/index.php

[8] contributor: http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/36751/syriana/

[9] war correspondents: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/books/review/Klein-t.html

[10] argues: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004585.html

[11] inter-factional: http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArchiveDetails.aspx?ID=199929

[12] boasts: http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/35848/craving/

[13] assassinating: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/12/getting-away-with-murder/7149/

[14] many dread: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2010/09/15/Hezbollah-plotting-a-coup/UPI-30671284576477/

Lee Smith

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

Avoiding a Huge Mistake

by Rick Richman


Some have surmised that President Obama’s request for a 60-day extension of Israel’s settlement moratorium — combined with a promise not to request any further extensions — is simply a transparent attempt to avoid an embarrassing collapse of the peace process a month before U.S. elections. But Leslie Susser reports that Benjamin Netanyahu has a “major strategic concern” regarding the request:

According to confidants, [Netanyahu] fears that as soon as any new 60-day freeze ends, the Americans will put a “take it or leave it peace plan” of their own on the table. With the U.S. midterm elections over, Obama might feel able to publicly present parameters for a peace deal that Netanyahu would find impossible to accept.

Israel might then find itself totally isolated and under intolerable international pressure. That is a scenario Netanyahu hopes the current negotiations with the Americans will help him avoid.

The continuing failure of the Obama administration to endorse the 2004 Bush letter — a document negotiated at great length, line by line, between the U.S. and Israel, and then endorsed by both houses of Congress in a concurrent resolution, and then relied upon by Israel both in approving and proceeding with the Gaza withdrawal – is obviously one of the causes for Netanyahu’s concern. The proposed Obama letter lacks assurances to Israel of the “defensible borders” to which both the Bush and Clinton administrations committed the United States (as well as the other commitments memorialized in the Bush letter).

Susser writes that the U.S. might have to “sweeten the pot” to secure the approval of the seven-member Israeli “Septet,” the 19-member Israeli Security Cabinet, and the full 29-member Cabinet, all of which currently oppose the proposed deal. What is necessary, however, is not simply a “sweetened pot” but an acknowledgment of obligations the U.S. has already incurred.

And there is an even more fundamental point involved: a peace agreement that does not involve defensible borders will be one that repositions the parties for another war. As Elliott Abrams wrote in August, the 1967 lines will not produce peace, and those who back away from the idea of defensible borders are “making a huge mistake.”

Rick Richman

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

Youtube Shuts Down MEMRI's Channel, Jihadi Channels Stay Up Truth is the New Hate Speech

by Pam Geller

MEMRI is the most vital source of news from the Middle East. Hands down. They translate programs, newscasts, etc., coming out of the Muslim world. Unfamiliar with MEMRI? Go here.

Shutting down MEMRI is the equivalent of shutting down Edward R. Murrow back in the day. The implications of such action are unquantifiable.

They want to eliminate all information that is damaging about Islam. The TRUTH that is. Everybody needs to be silenced and listen to the MSM Dawa and their praise of Islam. (Hat tip Armaros)

I will be sending MEMRI a donation to fight this leftist/Islamic totalitarianism. May I ask you to do the same? I know times are tough in Omerica, but we must support those who are doing the heavy lifting in this fight of our lives, our children's lives .......... the life of our very civilization. I cannot overstate the importance of MEMRI. The Islamic machine is getting bigger, bolder, brasher with the indispensable aid of the debased left.

If not for MEMRI, I would not know who Wafa Sultan is or the proper way to beat the wife. But these are just two of thousands of critical examples.

This is shocking. Jonathan Narvey of The Propagandist has this:

With YouTube's suspension of The Middle East Media Research Institute's (MEMRI) video channel, a critical resource for those looking to understand Middle East politics and the global jihadist threat is now gone. Will they bring it back?

MEMRI's methods are simple: take publicly available videos of things like speeches by dictators like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, statements by terrorist spokespeople or even samples of children's programming inciting violence in Egypt. And they translate these statements from Arabic or Farsi into English, with basic context (Name of the speaker, date and location. Just the facts, ma'am).

What sort of things are you likely to see in MEMRI videos, exactly? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for death to America and Israel. A Yemeni cleric explaining how Jews are like pigs and monkeys. Instructions about how to beat your wife from an Islamist television host. With MEMRI providing the context, these videos become compelling evidence that the Islamist war on civilization is not merely some bizarre imaginary concoction from Dick Cheney's brain.

The need for this kind of service is obvious. The jihadi threat to both Muslim nations and the outside world is very real. Seeing precisely what these people are saying, as opposed to what is being reported that they are saying by second-hand sources, is invaluable for understanding the mindset and intentions of the ones making the statements.

Has YouTube caved into Islamists who are using the platform as a propaganda and recruiting channel? That's the most likely conclusion.

Without accurate translations of primary sources, those opposed to the jihadi agenda are less equipped to carry out their own work.

Will YouTube switch it back on?

For now, MEMRI has an alternative channel set up at http://www.youtube.com/user/MemriTelevision

Check it out while you can.

Pam Geller

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

How Anti-Israel Groups Undermine Their Own Credibility

byEvelyn Gordon

Liberal American Jews are often appalled by allegations of Israeli “war crimes” against Palestinians — and equally appalled by Israelis’ apparent indifference to these allegations. What is wrong with their Israeli brethren, these well-meaning Jews wonder, that they seemingly countenance such heinous acts?

Haaretz’s woman in Ramallah, Amira Hass, unintentionally provides the answer in her citation today of the following testimony collected by Breaking the Silence, a group formed to allow ex-soldiers to “break their silence” about Israeli “war crimes”:

And there is another soldier who suddenly understood, during Operation Defensive Shield, that “the tank is a crazy source of fire. You’re moving around in (a populated area ) with all these refugee villages around and all these clumsy weapons, and you fire in a place like that. To fire with a cannon inside a neighborhood … I felt bad.

“Defensive Shield is a complicated and hysterical story … they constantly spoke in terms of war. It took me two or three months to understand … that I hadn’t returned from a war. I was in some campaign … that was worthless in many senses.

“And all the time there was that terminology of shoot in every direction, at anything that moves, and all the time the word war was repeated. … To this day, I go around with the feeling that someone from the outside orchestrated the atmosphere.”

Two ostensible facts about Defensive Shield, Israel’s April 2002 incursion into the West Bank, emerge from this testimony: soldiers opened fire indiscriminately, and the operation was militarily unjustifiable to begin with — downright “worthless.” Yet both are demonstrably false.

First, Palestinian allegations of an Israeli-perpetrated “massacre” in Jenin during the operation sparked intensive investigations. Yet even the UN — not an organization known for its pro-Israel bias — concluded that the death toll in Jenin was exactly 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers, while Human Rights Watch (another organization not known for pro-Israel bias) concluded that only 22 of those Palestinians were civilians.

Given the difficulty of fighting in a crowded urban environment where combatants and noncombatants are intermingled, and where combatants don’t even wear uniforms (making them harder to distinguish from civilians), this is an extraordinarily low civilian casualty rate, one no other Western army involved in urban warfare has matched. Thus, far from constituting indiscriminate fire, Defensive Shield exemplified the most discriminating fire imaginable.

Second, far from being “worthless,” this was one of the most successful operations in Israel’s history. The number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terror — which peaked at 449 in the intifada’s second year (September 2001–September 2002), including 134 in March 2002 alone — fell by about 50 percent a year in each of the next several years. And the main reason was Defensive Shield, launched in response to that deadly March 2002.

Allegations are rarely so easily disprovable; most pit one person or group’s word against another, with no way to know who’s right. But when organizations like Breaking the Silence treat even such patently false allegations as credible indictments, most Israelis find it hard to give their other claims any credence.

Evelyn Gordon

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

The Problem with the Obama Letter

by Rick Richman

Paul Mirengoff concurs with Evelyn Gordon’s suggestion that Barack Obama’s proposed letter, promising significant “goodies” for Israel if it extends its settlement moratorium, is unreliable — given Obama’s failure to abide by promises made by the U.S. in his predecessor’s letter. My own view is that the problem with the proposed letter is not simply its credibility but also its substance.

The Obama administration has refused 22 times to state whether it considers itself bound by the Bush letter, which conceded that it “seems clear” that Palestinian refugees must be resettled in a Palestinian state rather than in Israel and that it is “unrealistic” to expect a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, given the major Israeli population centers there. Those factual statements remain true notwithstanding Obama’s refusal to acknowledge them. But the critical part of the Bush letter was the promise that the U.S. would stand by its “steadfast commitment” to “defensible borders” (a term with a long diplomatic history and military meaning) — a commitment made not only by Bush, but by the Clinton administration in its own letter to Israel’s then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to David Makovsky’s quasi-official summary of the proposed Obama letter, the administration promises to help ensure “a complete ban” on the smuggling of arms and terrorists into a Palestinian state; maintain a “transitional period” for Israeli enforcement of security in the Jordan Valley; and enhance Israel’s defense capabilities in a “post-peace era.” But there was no reiteration of the prior U.S. commitment to such borders as are necessary for Israel to defend itself if the ban proves less than complete, the transitional period not quite long enough, and the “post-peace era” similar to the one that followed withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza.

The failure of the proposed letter to reiterate the commitment to defensible borders made by both Democratic and Republican administrations is another indication the Obama administration has reneged on it. In its place, the administration offers a “complete ban” that no one can guarantee; a “transitional period” no one can assure will be long enough; and a promised enhancement of Israel’s defense capabilities, which is an implicit admission that Israel’s current capabilities are insufficient for the risks involved in a “post-peace era.” Even if given in good faith, the Obama letter cannot substitute for defensible borders, but that is the function the proposed letter seems intended to serve.

Rick Richman

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

Do Jews Have Civil Rights?

by Caroline Glick

A striking aspect of the so-called building freeze in Judea and Samaria that expired last week is that an enormous amount of construction went on throughout the last 10 months. The Arabs of Judea and Samaria were not only building without restrictions, the US, Europe and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf bankrolled much of their construction.

The presumptive purpose of the freeze was to prevent Israel from creating "facts on the ground" that would prejudice the outcome of the so-called peace talks with Fatah. This goal is justified on the basis of the Palestinian misinterpretation of a clause in the 1995 agreement between Israel and the PLO in which they agreed that "neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations."

The clause was never intended to refer to construction, and "neither side," of course, relates to both Israel and the Palestinians.

But since the agreement was signed, while the Palestinian misinterpretation has been widely adopted, only one side has been held to account.

Whereas every Jewish home built since 1995 has evoked a storm of international criticism, the Palestinians have built thousands upon thousands of buildings throughout the areas. They have done so in total disregard for planning and zoning ordinances and even the basic considerations of supply and demand. For instance, a motorist travelling from Jerusalem to Ma'aleh Adumim will pass hundreds of empty five-story buildings in Issawiya and other Arab neighborhoods built for the sole purpose of preventing Israel from connecting the two.

So too, Fatah-appointed Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has been absolutely clear that the Palestinians are building the new city of Rawabi to "change the status" of Judea and Samaria and prepare the ground for the establishment of a state outside the framework of the negotiations.

As the Binyamin citizens' committee has warned, the Palestinians chose to locate the new city in the heart of the predominantly Jewish area to undermine the territorial contiguity of the Jewish communities there.

The situation in Judea and Samaria at the end of the moratorium is not what the participants in the global anti-Israel pile-on would have us all believe. We do not have avaricious Jews gobbling up all available land at the expense of the guileless, disenfranchised Palestinians. And what is at stake with the end of the freeze is not the fate of the so-called peace process.

What we have is a situation in which there are two sets of rules - one for Arabs and one for Jews. Not only are Jews not given extraordinary rights, they are being denied what are supposed to be their inviolable rights to their private property. Not only are laws being enforced with great prejudice to the benefit of the Palestinians, they are being enforced with great prejudice against the Jews.

So what is at stake with the end of the freeze is not the fate of a future peace. What is at stake is the principle that Jews can expect minimal protection of their fundamental rights to their property from the Israeli government. And if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu manages to withstand the new tsunami of pressure from the Obama administration to reinstate the abrogation of Jewish rights, he will not be harming peace any more than if he bows to that pressure, he will advance the cause of peace.

A "peace" based on the nullification of Jewish rights is nothing more than a recipe for more war.

If Netanyahu manages to withstand US President Barack Obama's threats and harangues, all his action will do is maintain a bare minimum of protection for Jewish rights. That is, if he manages to keep his pledge to the Israeli people and not prolong the discriminatory freeze, he will have done the bare minimum to maintain Israel's commitment to the rule of law and liberal norms.

WHEN WE recognize that the demand for a moratorium on Jewish building is an issue of civil rights and the rule of law rather than an issue of peace, we recognize that the plight of the Jews in Judea and Samaria is little different from the plight of Jews throughout the country. Jews in the Negev, the Galilee and the Golan Heights face discrimination that is little different from that faced by the Jews of Judea and Samaria.

Take the plight of Yehuda Marmor, a third generation rancher in the Lower Galilee community of Yavniel with a herd of 220 cattle. For the past eight years, he and his ranch have been regularly attacked by a gang of Israeli Arab livestock thieves and squatters from the Bashir clan. The clan hails from the Arab villages around Moshav Tzipori some 40 kilometers from Yavniel.

Marmor alleges that he was shot by members of the clan while he was trying to prevent them from stealing his cattle in 2002. Six hours after he testified against them in court, 2,000 dunams of his grazing land were set ablaze. He has suffered from regular theft of his cattle every two to three months for the past eight years. Two years ago, seven kilometers of fences around his grazing land were destroyed.

Marmor has a thick stack of complaints he has filed against the Bashir clan. The police have closed investigations into all of them on the grounds of lack of public interest in the complaints or lack of evidence.

Marmor went to court to get a restraining order against the clan. The police have refused to enforce it.

A walk around Marmor's ranch shows that his land, which overlooks the Jezreel Valley along the Sea of Galilee, has clear military significance. As Jews like Marmor are increasingly leaving ranching and allowing Arab land thieves to overrun their properties due to lack of police protection or court enforcement of their rights, the need to defend those who remain expands by the day. Marmor is able to continue ranching due to the efforts of the volunteers from the New Israeli Guardsmen, a voluntary organization established three years ago by the sons of farmers and ranchers who banded together to protect their parents' livelihoods and lives in the face of police paralysis.

Or take Ilan Milles from Neveh Atib in the northern Golan Heights. For seven years, he worked to realize his dream of building a farmers' market at the entrance to the Mount Hermon National Park.

Milles received all the permits and licenses, raised the money and was all set to begin work earlier this year. But before his contractor could begin the job, the pro-yrian [sic] Druse from neighboring villages decided they wanted the project for themselves.

So they threatened the contractor.

After repeated attempts to reach an accommodation with the Druse failed, Milles asked Regavim, a nonprofit group that lobbies government bodies to protect Jewish land rights, for help.

Regavim convinced the relevant ministries to permit him to move ahead with construction. Everything was set to go in May. But then, the police intervened.

Claiming that beginning construction would endanger the lives of construction workers, the police slapped a no work order on Milles the night before he was scheduled to break ground.

Regavim petitioned the High Court to force the police to protect Milles's property rights. This month the court ruled in his favor and construction is set to begin on November 1. Whether this is the end of the story is anyone's guess.

The court's decision is a welcome departure from its general practice. In its 2004 landmark ruling in the Ka'adan case, the court ruled that the state may not discriminate against Arabs in leasing land. This put an end to the establishment of Jewish communities throughout the Jewish state.

The ruling might have been justifiable on liberal grounds if it were applied across the board. However, it does not apply to Arabs.

The state continues to issue tenders for land leases to Arabs only. While the state actively develops Arab-only communities in the Negev and Galilee, Jews are barred from building Jewish communities even on lands owned by the Jewish National Fund - a private trust which is bound by its charter to only develop its lands for Jewish settlement.

When the non-enforcement of the criminal code against Arab livestock rustlers, land squatters, illegal builders and tax evaders is brought into the equation, we have a situation nationwide where there are two sets of rules: one for Jews and one for Arabs. Jews are denied their basic property rights and protection under the law, while Arabs are not only protected, they are immune from prosecution if they fail to abide by the law of the land.

The most bizarre and glaring example of this is the situation in Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, otherwise known as Sheikh Jarrah. There, every Friday self-proclaimed liberals stage violent riots with local Arabs to try to transform the area into a Jew-free zone.

The Jews who live there are not illegal squatters. They are the lawful owners of their properties who fought in the courts for years to have their ownership rights vindicated. What we see in Shimon Hatzadik every Friday are not peaceful demonstrations in favor of a discriminated against Arab minority. They are organized, violent assaults on the very notion of the rule of law. And these assaults are undertaken by a consortium of Arabs and leftist radicals who believe that Jews have no civil rights because they are Jews.

Facing these rioters is a Jerusalem municipality that is still smarting from the Obama administration's unprecedented assault last spring. That attack was precipitated by the Jerusalem planning board's decision to approve the construction of housing units in a Jewish neighborhood.

Today Mayor Nir Barkat is ignoring court orders to destroy dozens of illegal Arab buildings in eastern Jerusalem out of fear of the international outcry that would ensue.

The lesson of all of this is clear enough. As Israel faces the ire of the international hanging jury for refusing to reinstate the prohibition on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria, our citizens and our leaders need to make a decision.

Will we take the necessary steps to protect and strengthen our liberal democracy and guarantee that Israel is a place where the rule of law is defended and the principle of equality before the law is upheld? Or will we bow to international pressure and allow the Jewish state to become an illiberal democracy-in-name-only where the rights of Jews are systematically denied?

Caroline Glick

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

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire: NOT A PEACEFUL WOMAN

by Ben-Dror Yemini

We must not mistake her: The Nobel peace prize laureate is no “peace activist.” She identifies in absolute terms with Hamas, despite the fact that she knows that it is an anti-Semitic organization that has insisted on continued violence, openly preaches for the annihilation of the Jews and supports global jihad and the Islamic conquest of the entire free world.

I am merely worried about the children of Gaza, said Nobel peace prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire in court, and we almost wanted to send her flowers. Worry about the fate of children, as such, is important. But Maguire couldn’t resist the temptation and said: I swore to myself during a visit to the concentration camps that I would never be silent in the face of suffering children.

The penny dropped. There are millions of children in Asia and Africa who are crying for help. They are being murdered. They are being pressed into military service against their will. They are being used as slaves. Maguire takes no interest in them. She has not demonstrated on their behalf and she has not acted on their behalf. She has just one thing that she is interested in doing: Comparing Israel to the Nazis. This wasn’t the first time that she has given voice to this despicable comparison.

Palestinian children were hurt. That is regrettable and tragic. But one really ought to be accurate with the facts. Children were turned into weapons by Hamas. Hamas has brainwashed them. Hamas has taught them to murder and to hate - not only to hate Jews, but to hate the free world. Hamas has educated them to be martyrs and suicide bombers. Hamas has admitted to using them as human shields. So, yes, children were hurt. Not because Israel wanted to hurt children. It happened because Hamas uses them and enslaves them. Has Maguire ever once spoke out against that destructive abuse of children? Besides, the number of children who were hurt in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that includes Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, is the smallest number in comparison to every other conflict in the world. Thousands of children were killed in recent years in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia. Most of them were killed as a result of attacks by political Islam. Hamas is one of the cancerous branches of that very same political Islam. The children who live there could never even dream of a standard of living of the kind that exists in Gaza.

Maguire has boarded ships of hatred to support Hamas three times, disguising herself as a “peace activist.” She organized no help for children who suffer in the world. Like many others, she suffers from an obsession when it comes to the State of Israel. In the wake of the last flotilla to Gaza, Maguire claimed that: All the participants of the flotilla (including the passengers on board the Mavi Marmara) were committed to the spirit of peace. Indeed? The truth, of course, is diametrically opposed to Maguire’s description. The passengers on board the Mavi Marmara sang with fanatical zeal the war song for annihilating the Jews (“Haibar, Haibar).” Indeed, that is the “spirit of peace” that is maintained by Hamas and its supporters. When the question at hand is Israel, Maguire becomes blind deaf and obtuse. The facts have no impact on her.

I am not in favor of Hamas, said Maguire in an interview to Yair Lapid on Israeli television. Let’s check that statement. Well, Maguire is a signatory on a letter calling on the European Union to remove Hamas from the list of terror organizations. Maguire is a signatory on a letter calling for the banishment of the Israeli ambassador to Ireland. Maguire is a signatory on a call to impose a commercial boycott on Israel, a call that is rife with bald-faced and outrageous lies.

She is not alone. A large herd of anti-Semites who disguise themselves as anti-Zionists have signed petitions of that sort. When did you ever call for a boycott on Sudan, which is committing genocide against its own citizens? When did you call for the banishment of the ambassador of Saudi Arabia or Iran, where women are still stoned to death and human rights aren’t even one-one-thousandth of what the Palestinians have? So this is not a matter of conscience or a protest against injustice. It is an obsession. Once that obsession was against Jews. An obsession of demonizing and delegitimizing. Today it is an obsession against Israel. An obsession of demonizing and delegitimizing.

One can certainly criticize Israel. Israel makes mistakes. Israel is a vibrant democracy and an incisive debate is held within Israeli itself on a long list of issues that pertain to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are a lot of Maguire supporters in Israel. That is part of the democratic discourse. But even democratic discourse cannot blur the distinction between criticism and this anti-Israel lunacy that includes identification with Hamas.

Actually, Maguire is not an enemy of Israel. She is an enemy of the Palestinians and of the chance for peace. Because she and her ilk do nothing to bolster peace; rather, they bolster rejectionism, a perpetuation of the conflict and Palestinian suffering. Maguire is a signatory on a demand for the mass return of Palestinians into Israel. This is a demand to do away with the State of Israel - a demand that the moderate Palestinian camp has already abandoned. It is a ludicrous demand since it is applied only to Israel, out of all the countries of the world. After all, neither Maguire nor any of the others have signed similar demands in the aftermath of the tens of millions of people across Europe and Asia who were affected by population swaps in order to create nation-states. That demand bolsters Hamas and the Palestinian rejectionist camp.

Hamas is an organization whose official platform is anti-Semitic. It contains not only a call to destroy Israel but also to annihilate the Jews. The Hamas leaders, in the most overt way, perceive Israel as being merely the vanguard. Khaled Mashal, Younes al-Astal, Mohammed Abu-Itta and many other Hamas leaders explicitly and openly call for the murder of Jews, for the military occupation of the entire free world by Islam, and voice their identification with global jihad. They declare that terrorism is the path. But the useful idiots, such as Maguire, continue to tell bald-faced lies. They talk about a blockade, a humanitarian crisis, children, but ignore the full and real picture. They side with the anti-Semitic Hamas. Israel does not want to lay siege to Gaza or to boycott it. Israel left the Gaza Strip, down to the last centimeter. Hamas forcibly seized power in the Gaza Strip in a violent coup, in the course of which it murdered hundreds of its political opponents, imposed Sharia law, introduced the oppression of women and the use of terrorist tactics against its adversaries and Christians. Despite all that, Israel sends in hundreds of trucks laden with supplies every week. The Israeli blockade is the necessary minimum, given the terrifying regime that has seized control of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas was asked by the Quartet, not by Israel, to renounce terrorism and to recognize previous agreements. Not more than that. The Arab states also supported those demands. Except that Hamas wants neither peace nor reconciliation. Hamas could receive enormous international aid tomorrow if it only wanted to; it could establish industry and provide the residents of the Gaza Strip with a better future. That is its decision. All it needs to do is to agree to the minimum requirements put forward by the international community. Except that Hamas has insisted on persevering with terrorism, preaching annihilation and war against the entire free world. Against you too, Ms. Maguire. Your sycophancy will be of no avail. They speak their minds most explicitly. They are racists. They are misogynists. They murder Muslims who do not think the way they do. But you and your ilk have chosen to support a terrorist organization, which has rejected an end of violence and a peaceful arrangement.

Humanity has already paid an awful price for the folly of people like you. You and your colleagues have to be exposed because you aren’t only the enemies of Israel or peace. You are the enemies of the free world.

Ben-Dror Yemini is a Senior Writer for Maariv Daily Newspaper in Israel.

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

Planting the Flag: Starting Gun in the Race to Jerusalem

by J. E. Dyer


If you need proof that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to plant the Revolutionary Iranian flag in Jerusalem, consider this. A replica of the Al-Aqsa mosque is being constructed by Iran in southern Lebanon as a prop for Ahmadinejad’s visit next week. The Iranian president will officially open the mosque for business and be photographed in front of it throwing stones toward Israel. And the mosque, according to Israeli reports, has the flag of Iran flying over it.

Hezbollah has flown Iranian flags in southern Lebanon for some time. The terrorists operate an Iran-sponsored fiefdom there; UNIFIL has been unable for months to conduct patrols in towns denied to it by Hezbollah, a pattern repeated this past weekend when the UN force sought to investigate a Hezbollah weapons cache in its patrol zone.

But Iran and Hezbollah have chosen to take advantage until now of the minimal independent news coverage in southern Lebanon. Little gets into the Western press about the situation there, and when it does, it doesn’t come from Hezbollah or Iran. What Ahmadinejad plans to do next week, with media coverage and pointed images, marks a major “informational” break. It’s a plan to draw back the veil and clarify Hezbollah’s loyalties and Iran’s involvement. And the central theme is the Iranian flag symbolically aloft over Jerusalem.

This blatant signal is something Ahmadinejad should be prevented from sending. It will be as much a shot across Saudi Arabia’s bow as across Israel’s: a symbolic announcement that the “race to Jerusalem” is on. As discussed here, the Saudis — default leaders of the Arab world — already show signs of preparing to compete in that race.

Unfortunately, the fecklessness of the UN extends beyond an impotent UNIFIL. The UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, British diplomat Michael Williams, met with an Iranian envoy last week to discuss the visit by Ahmadinejad and approved it as a “significant event.” He went on to hail “Tehran’s balanced approach and inclusive relations with all political and religious parties in [Lebanon].” The UN will not be a source of responsible diplomacy; neither will Russia, which is positioning itself to back the winner of the race to Jerusalem. The EU remains mired in domestic constituency tending, and therefore focused on the legal status of Gaza flotillas and the arguing of anti-Israel resolutions in Brussels.

Among the Middle East Quartet, only the U.S. retains such a posture as would make it possible to take action against the beginning of a “race to Jerusalem.” The pressure point is the government in Beirut, which, if it accepts Ahmadinejad’s visit, must exercise its formal sovereignty over the southern territory and ensure that no Iranian flags are flown over anything but Ahmadinejad’s official convoy. Israel is pressing the Lebanese to cancel the visit; if the U.S. cannot bring itself to do that, our diplomats should at least embolden the Lebanese to get the Iranian flags out of there. This is not meaningless symbolism. The fact that it’s Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah who feel emboldened at present is the most meaningful one of all.

J. E. Dyer

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BDS and South Africa – 3

by Jon Haber


A BDS debate involving South Africa usually follows certain predictable patterns. BDS advocates claim that those involved in the struggle to topple Apartheid in SA see the Arab-Israeli conflict in the same terms with Israelis serving as stand-ins for the Boers. Various names are dropped, but since most Americans are unfamiliar with the cast of characters (and because most students at schools targeted for BDS campaigns weren’t even born when Apartheid existed or ended), the only two names with any resonance are Desmond Tutu and, of course, Nelson Mandela.

Because Reverend Tutu is a four-square champion for BDS, his support for a boycott or divestment program can only be trumped by invoking the name of Mandela whose relationship with Jews and Israel is more ambiguous. One of the reasons the recent attempt to break ties between the University of Johannesburg and Ben-Gurion University in Israel failed was because of Mandela’s involvement in the relationship between the two centers of learning. This is why the endorsement of Mandela is so sought after that BDS advocates are not beyond using fraud to pretend to obtain it.

Like most things, the actual relationship between Israel and South Africa (like the relationship between South Africa and every other country in the world – including Israel’s loudest critics) was and is a complicated affair. As is usually the case when $$$s mix with global politics, few hands are clean when it comes to international affairs vis-à-vis pre-Mandela SA. And South Africa’s relationship with Israel since Apartheid fell is as multi-faceted as one would expect between two such intense and vibrant societies.

But when BDSers lay down their Tutu card (as they do in nearly every BDS battle) or supporters and opponents of boycotts try to read the Mandela tea leaves, they are taking for granted the assumption that the South African experience gives those that fought against Apartheid unique moral weight in discussion on other topics (notably the Middle East). But, without diminishing the courage and patience of all those involved with the successful overthrow of Apartheid, is this a reasonable assumption?

After all, if suffering and courage lent all who practiced it unquestioned moral authority, why are Jews (who suffered one of history’s greatest mass murders only to revive and build a thriving nation and Diaspora) treated by BDSers as uniquely damaged by these experiences? Apparently, if the South African experience created saints who cannot be criticized in any way (lest critics be banished from decent society), the Holocaust turned Jews into proto-Nazis who learned nothing from the experience other than how to behave like their former tormentors.

This knot can be untangled if you look at the world not through the lens of ideological need, but of actual human experience. As has been pointed out before, the BDS “movement” is part of an “Apartheid Strategy” designed to brand Israel as the inheritor of the mantle of the late 20th century’s most reviled nation and political system. But on its own, the “Apartheid Strategy” is simply an accusation, one that can be counter by facts and blunted by counter-accusation of the Apartheid-like nature of Israel’s most vocal critics.

Which is why the endorsement of those involved with the original fight against the original Apartheid becomes so critical. And just as importantly, we are asked to take it on faith that any South African endorsing the Israel=Apartheid analogy must be doing so based on nothing more than an unvarnished quest for justice.

But South Africa is a real place containing real people involved with real political (now geopolitical) decision-making. Yes, they won a marvelous victory against a vile and bigoted political system, and projects like Truth and Reconciliation commissions showed the world that there were options other than vengeance when old orders make way for new. But why were the Arabs states who supplied Apartheid with the oil it needed to run its machinery of repression given a unique pass from this Truth and Reconciliation process? Why do South Africa’s leaders, considered saints when they hurl their barbs at the Jewish state, behave with the same mix of vision, patriotism, virtue, venality, greed and hypocrisy seen in every other political leader in human history?

The voice of South Africans with regard to the Middle East (as with any other issue) are many and varied and the motivation behind some South Africans (including Tutu) endorsing BDS projects can and should be subjected to the same scrutiny as any political statement made by

any other political leader. No supporter of Israel I have ever met has demanded that all political discussion stop because a Jew (even a Holocaust survivor) has spoken (quite the opposite, in fact). And without in any way diminishing the valor of those who helped bring down the Apartheid system, It is well past time that the same approach be taken with regard to South Africans.

Jon Haber

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