The US-Related Saudi Predicament

by Yoram Ettinger

U.S. House Members and Senators are increasingly approached by panicky leaders of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman and Kuwait, who have always considered the U.S. global leadership and unilateral national security action to be their life insurance policy. These leaders are concerned about the adverse ripple effects of the lowered U.S. global profile on their own survival. Moreover, they consider the U.S. engagement with Iran their worst nightmare. They are puzzled by the U.S. lack of awareness that a retreat from the trenches of Islamic terrorism bolsters the presence of terrorists' sleeper cells on the U.S. mainland.

Riyadh is aware that Saudi Arabia and other pro-U.S. Arab oil-producing Gulf states -- and not Israel -- would be the prime target for a nuclear Iran, ravaging the supply and price of oil, which would devastate the economy of the U.S. and the Free World. The Saudis know that -- unlike North Korea -- Iran is driven by an imperialistic vision, encompassing the Persian Gulf as the first stage and then the Sunni Muslim countries.

Riyadh is convinced that a nuclear Iran could trigger a collapse of the pro-U.S. Gulf regimes, by blackmailing and further fueling subversion in the Gulf States, including the Shiite-populated Saudi oil-rich province of Hasa. 

Riyadh is mindful of the impact of a nuclear Iran on the intensification of Islamic terrorism, which haunts every pro-U.S. Arab regime in the Middle East.

Eyad Abu Shakra, the managing editor of the Saudi royal family-controlled, prestigious London-based daily, Asharq al Awsat, wrote on October 17, 2013 about "the rapid decline of the U.S. on the stage of world politics: Washington's rhetoric was initially loud, talking of 'red-lines.' However, neither Bashar Al-Assad nor Vladimir Putin and his counterpart in Beijing cared much about this…. America remains strong, despite the narrow-mindedness of its politicians…. Obama is haggling in the regional bazaar as if he were a petty retail trader, not the head of a massive international conglomerate…."

Amir Taheri, a globally-respected Asharq al Awsat columnist, warned on October 4, 2013: "Today, Americans are advised that they may not be safe in more than 40 countries. The Obama retreat could sharply increase that number. The U.S. needs and deserves something better than a 'Fortress America' strategy…. Bully powers may seize the opportunity provided by the U.S. retreat.… The Khomeini regime's heightened activism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon is yet one more example…." 

Riyadh is concerned that the U.S. may ignore President Rouhani's -- and other Iranian leaders' - track record of masterful dissimulations, deception, concealment and non-compliance.

Amir Taheri, who is intimately networked with Saudi leadership, wrote on October 11, 2013: "For more than three decades, the Mullahs and their associates have used [an] arsenal of deception against foreign powers and internal adversaries…. One [example] is taqiyya which means hiding one's true faith in order to deceive others in a hostile environment. Another term is kitman which means keeping an adversary guessing by playing one's hand close to the chest. A third is do-pahlu which means an utterance that could have two opposite meanings at the same time. The closest equivalent in English is double-talk…. In New York, Rouhani tried to seduce the Americans with smiles and sweet words…."

Riyadh knows that a nuclear Iran would generate a tailwind for the Arab Tsunami, which does not provide a transition to democracy, but to exacerbated violence. It recognizes that the Middle East zero-sum-game is not between democracy and tyranny, but between tyrannical military-backed regimes on the one hand and tyrannical anti-U.S. Islamic, terrorist, rogue regimes on the other hand. Riyadh is cognizant of the fact that a nuclear Iran would tilt the Middle East balance, decisively, in favor of anti-U.S. rogue regimes at the expense of military-backed regimes.

The well-connected Saudi managing editor, Eyad Abu Shakra, wrote on October 3, 2013 on "American regional blunders: Washington accepting Iran as a partner in the project of hegemony in the Middle East, including its full control over Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, in exchange for Iran's developing its nuclear capabilities [supposedly] for peaceful purposes only, rather than production of nuclear weapons…." 

Riyadh dreads the devastating non-conventional arms race, in the Middle East and beyond, which would follow a nuclear Iran.

Amir Taheri noted on Oct. 19, 2013: "There is consensus that if Iran were to build a nuclear arsenal, it could trigger a regional arms race with incalculable consequences. Over the past two decades, the U.N. Security Council has unanimously passed six resolutions to force Iran to abandon activities that could lead to a nuclear arsenal. Iran has ignored the resolutions but managed to buy time through dilatory tactics and "talks-about-talks…."

Riyadh is concerned that 28 years of unilateral and multilateral U.S.-led sanctions, accompanied by diplomatic pressure and cyber sabotage, have failed to deter Iran's pursuit of nuclear capabilities; 60 years of sanctions on North Korea have produced a nuclear rogue regime; the U.S. focus on sanctions and engagement has provided Teheran with more time to obtain nuclear capabilities; sanctions have devastated Iran's economy, but have not made a dent on Iran's nuclearization; and, it was the military option -- and not sanctions -- which forced Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait and the granting of independence to the former provinces of Yugoslavia.

Will the U.S. heed the Saudi concern and learn from history by avoiding -- rather than repeating -- past mistakes?

Yoram Ettinger

Source: www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6097

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

Ali Salim: Straightening the Dog's Tail

by Ali Salim

Iran's duplicity and the way its deceives the West regarding its nuclear intentions are perfectly obvious to those of us living in the Middle East. Further, any new state in the Middle East, such as a Palestine, will be taken down by jihadis before its flag is up.

 
This is the season for pilgrimages to Mecca and the Feast of the Sacrifice (Eid al-Adha), but the Arab world is occupied instead with internecine murder and bloodletting. As the Arab states come apart at the seams, gangs with no respect for human life flock in -- among them the Muslim Brotherhood, the Al-Nusra Front, Hamas and Al-Qaeda -- blowing up markets and mosques. Their advent is surreal: waving green and black flags they shoot everything that moves; and rape, slaughter and loot, all in the name of Allah (S.W.A.T.).

The situation in the Arab world is like the Shi'ite Islamic vision of the Yaom al-Kiama, the End of Days, with the sinners following the False Messiah, Al-Masīh ad-Dajjāl. It is ironic that the rulers and citizens of states that provide a safe haven for terrorists -- sending their death teams to attack innocent civilians in the West -- during the Feast of the Sacrifice now find themselves the victims of the same murderers they so willingly armed.

The Arab and Muslim incitement to massacre -- and the provision of arms and ideological support for most of the Islamist and Palestinian terrorist organizations -- have almost completely disappeared while the Arabs are now busy destroying themselves. The world stands by and watches as millions of Arab and Muslim refugees are expelled, murdered, raped and robbed. Millions of people who fled their homes live in cardboard boxes with plastic sheeting to keep out the rain and cold; and masses of hungry African refugees drown in the sea in a desperate attempt to reach a safe haven in the West.

In Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, civilians are murdered or flee with nothing; while Egypt is in the midst of a civil war, and millions of homeless refugees have scattered throughout the Middle East.

Despite all this need and chaos, the UN and the various NGOs are insistent on providing a political, economic and moral lifeline to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original 1948 Palestinian refugees, not only prolonging their inherited status, but also making them eternally dependent. The status of "refugees" does not generally pass from one generation to the next, so it is even more unfortunate that the enlightened Western world supports them at the expense of the millions of genuinely needy new refugees. By providing these descendents a commodity to trade in, the UN is alo ensuring that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians will never be resolved.

If an accounting were ever given of the billions of dollars the UN has poured into the Palestinian coffers over the years, enough money would be found to house each of them in villas with swimming pools across the entire Middle East. If the Arab-Muslim countries really wished to help the Palestinians, they would transfer to them the immense wealth and property left behind by the Jewish refugees, who were expelled in the late 1940s and fled to Israel. The UN, however, is suspiciously insistent on not providing the same -- or even similar -- care for any other group of refugees.

UN agencies (such as UNRWA) themselves benefit from the disabling aid structures they put in place, theoretically to help people in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and abroad, who are able to work and have so many other ways of receiving help; while in Syria, people are dying of hunger, and Muslim clerics in the collapsing Arab states have issued fatwas [Muslim religious opinions] for the Feast of the Sacrifice permitting the consumption of dogs, cats and donkeys.

Given that Europe is bankrupt, both morally and financially, the United States alone bears the burden of supporting over 22% of the malfunctioning UN and its often-corrupt agencies. Instead, the U.S. should demand that the oil-rich Arab states give citizenship, with attendant rights and privileges, to their Palestinian residents, to enable the UN to focus on rehabilitating the millions of new Arab and Muslim refugees created by the catastrophic Arab Spring. Even as we witness the artificial Arab states, created in 1916 by the Sykes-Picot Agreement, disintegrate, the United States and the West seem to insist on creating a new artificial Arab state called "Palestine," which will soon be a hotbed of extremism, terrorism and bloodshed, exactly like the others.

The "Palestinian people," we recall, are not a group at all, but rather Arab immigrants, many of whom who settled in the late 19^th-early 20^th century in what was part of the Ottoman Empire, and who fled in 1947, when Israel was attacked, then after the war asked to return. The Arabs who did not flee,still live in Israel and, whatever one thinks of Israel, are at least freely able to enter all leading professions, including the parliament and the highest court.

Of those calling themselves Palestinians, some have splintered into Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islamist Groups such as the terrorist organization Hamas; others are in the West Bank, both inside and outside Fatah; still others find themselves overseas or in Arab lands. If they were integrated into the existing Arab states, it would serve the quest for world peace. Any new state in the Middle East, such as a Palestine, will be taken down by jihadis before its flag is up.

Although the United States has a full quiver of advisors for Islamic and Arab affairs, the decisions made by its leadership seem to keep repeating the same inexplicable mistakes. It is like the old Arab saying, "The dog has a crooked tail, and if you put it in a cast for forty days, it will still be crooked." It is painful to watch the United States as its well-intended misconceptions of the Middle East cause it to fail: its limp-wristed negotiations with Iran, its weakness in the case of Syria, its helplessness in its dealings with Russia and China, and the fatal mistakes it is making in the sanctions it is imposing on Egypt after the stone-age rule of the Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown.

The most current example of American failure to understand the Middle East occurred when Chuck Hagel, the American Secretary of Defense, suggested to General Sisi that he resign or turn into another Mubarak (who was betrayed by the Americans). In an act of condescension, insult and hypocrisy, he gave Sisi a book about George Washington, and pointed out a chapter in which Washington walked away from power. By treating the Mansour-Sisi interim government in Egypt in such a demeaning fashion, America displays its lack of respect, lack of determination and lack of confidence, all of which will seriously boomerang.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (pictured left) gave Egyptian Minister of Defense Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi (right) a book about George Washington, and pointed out a chapter in which Washington walked away from power. (Photo source: DefenseImagery.mil)

It would be brilliant if the Americans were being deliberately devious when they spoke against the interim government in Egypt, and were secretly working as hard as they could to support it. That is how situations should be manipulated in the Middle East, where hatred of the United States is endemic and passionate. If that were what was occurring, the U.S. would triumph. What is much more likely, however, is that America is hedging its bets, flip-flopping to strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood in case it recaptures power.

The situation is the same of the other crooked dog's tail: Iran's duplicity and the way it deceives the West regarding its nuclear intentions are obvious to those of us living in the Middle East. The U.S. is in danger of making the Gulf States feel betrayed, especially as they watch their national security deteriorate. The regional arms race will increase and tensions will mount -- one of the reasons Saudi Arabia declined a seat on the UN Security Council. Here in the Middle East, America is seen as threatening allies and abandoning friends -- bringing on just what they hoped to avert -- and setting up new victims for the murderers they so willingly armed.


Ali Salim is a scholar based in the Middle East.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4033/straightening-the-dog-tail

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

Dore Gold: Still Bickering over Balfour

by Dore Gold

Last year, on the 95th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the former Palestinian minister, Nabil Shaath, wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph attacking Britain for issuing its famous statement of support for the establishment in Eretz Yisrael of a national home for the Jewish people. Shaath called the Balfour Declaration, which was issued by Britain's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour on November 2, 1917, the beginning of "British imperialism" in Palestine. 

At the heart of what he called Britain's "sins in Palestine" was the promise of this territory to the Jewish people, who, in the words of Shaath, "did not even live there." For him there was no Jewish history in Palestine, that needed to be acknowledged but only "colonial conspiracies" against the Arab residents living there. The rise of the Jewish national home, in short, was the product of external manipulations by outside powers, like Britain, and not the result of any authentic yearning of the Jews themselves. With the anniversary of the declaration again upon us, it is important to understand how Balfour's act still confounds Palestinian leaders who are prepared to distort its significance. 

What Shaath and other Palestinian spokesmen found so objectionable about the Balfour Declaration was that it constituted the first step in a long effort to get the historical rights of the Jewish people to their homeland acknowledged by the international community. That recognition actually required a tough diplomatic struggle by the leaders of the Zionist movement during the First World War and in the years that followed. 

Britain was not the only state involved. For example on June 4, 1917, they received a letter from the French foreign minister, Jules Cambon, who wrote: "...it would be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist, by the protection of the Allied Powers, in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago."

It turned out to be much more difficult to extract language that strong in the British cabinet at that time. What became the Balfour Declaration went through a number of drafts during the summer and fall of 1917. The original language of the declaration that was approved by the British foreign office and Prime Minister Lloyd George on September 19, 1917 specifically stated that Britain accepted the principle that "Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people." 

Use of the term "reconstitute" meant that the land was once their homeland before and should now be restored to them. It meant that the Jews had historical rights. For that reason, this language had been sought by the Zionist leadership led by Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow who wanted it indicated that the Jewish people had a historical connection to their land. This original formula had been approved by President Woodrow Wilson, to whom the text was submitted in advance.

It was not such a far-fetched goal to seek formal acknowledgement of Jewish historical rights. A little over two decades earlier a well-connected Protestant clergyman from Chicago, Reverend William Blackstone, received broad backing for a petition for a Jewish homeland signed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the speaker of the House of Representatives, university presidents and the editors of The New York Times and The Washington Post. Top industrialists, like John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan, also lent their support. In short, the idea of the Jewish people re-establishing their country had become acceptable in the elite sectors of the American establishment. 

Blackstone's petition specifically characterized the connection of the Jewish people to Eretz Israel as "an inalienable possession from which they were expelled by force." In other words, the Jewish people had not willingly given up their claim to their land. Indeed, there was no act in which they relinquished title to the Romans or their successors; in fact from the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 C.E. until the Muslim conquests, there were Jewish resistance movements that tried to recover Jerusalem, and afterwards a constant stream of Jewish immigrants followed. 

Blackstone may have not known all this but he touched upon the idea that there were historical rights of the Jewish people, which were recognized at the time he sought signatories to his petition. The petition was submitted to President Benjamin Harrison in 1891 and in another version to President Wilson in 1917, with the aim of influencing his attitude to the Balfour Declaration.

Despite the growing popularity of the idea in the West, there were British opponents to making any commitment to a Jewish national home. This group sought to water down the language of what was to become the Balfour Declaration. Edwin Montagu, the secretary of state for India and the only Jewish member of the British cabinet ironically lead the internal fight against what Balfour was doing. 

Montagu feared that acknowledging Jewish rights in Eretz Israel would lead to the denial of Jewish rights to live in Britain or elsewhere in the Diaspora. He was also ideologically committed to Jewish assimilation. So under his influence all references to the Jewish people "reconstituting" their homeland were dropped. He announced at the time: "I assert that there is not a Jewish nation." He moreover insisted: "I deny that Palestine today is associated with the Jews." Montagu could not stop the Balfour Declaration, so he tried to weaken its contents. It is not surprising that Shaath makes Montagu the hero of his analysis.

In any case, the Balfour Declaration was basically a statement of British policy; it did not establish legal rights. This first occurred with the meeting of the victorious allied powers at San Remo, Italy in 1920, where they adopted the Balfour Declaration in an international agreement. Then in 1922, 51 members of the League of Nations approved the document for the Palestine Mandate. 

The Mandate document restored important elements that had been taken out of the Balfour Declaration as a result of the debate in the British cabinet, for it stated: "...recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." The British Government issued a White Paper in 1922 that further clarified this point by saying that the Jewish national home "should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection."

Nabil Shaath wanted his British readers last year to believe that the process that began with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and ending up with the British Mandate in 1922 created the Jewish claim to a homeland. For him the Jewish homeland was entirely invented by British imperial interests and had no historical roots. In short, it was an illegitimate claim. 

But that is a distortion of what happened for what was involved at the time was a British recognition of a pre-existing right. Moreover that British recognition was fully accepted by the international community by 1922, through the League of Nations. Finally, it must be added, that those rights were not suspended when the League of Nations was disbanded, but rather they were transferred to the United Nations, which replaced it. 

In summary, Shaath refuses to acknowledge the steady buildup of the Jewish national home over the centuries; the Ottoman census already showed a Jewish majority in Safed in the 16th century. European consular reports in the 19th century showed that by the 1860s the Jews re-established their majority in Jerusalem -- decades before British armies took over the Middle East. The Balfour Declaration reflected a historical trend that was already underway, but it did not launch the Jewish return to Eretz Israel. This return was a product of the national will of a people which Shaath and his colleagues still refuse to recognize, thereby perpetuating the conflict with Israel to this day.

Dore Gold

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6095

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

Caroline Glick: Israel’s European Challenge

by Caroline Glick

 

Originally published by The Jerusalem Post. 
 
Last month, the European Union pushed European- Israeli relations to a new low.

In mid-September, the IDF enforced a High Court of Justice order to destroy 250 structures built illegally by Palestinian squatters in the Jordan Valley.

The High Court acted in accordance with the agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel. Those agreements gave Israel sole control over planning and zoning in the Jordan Valley and throughout the area of Judea and Samaria defined as Area C.

Five days after the IDF destroyed the illegal structures, Palestinian activists arrived at the site with tents. Their intention was to act in contempt of the law and of the agreements the PLO signed with Israel, and to resettle the site.

The Palestinians did not come alone. They were accompanied by European diplomats. The diplomats were there to provide diplomatic cover to the Palestinians as they broke the law and breached the agreements the PLO signed with the Israeli government.

This would have been bad enough, but in the event, one European diplomat, Marion Castaing, the cultural attaché at the French Consulate in Jerusalem, decided that her job didn’t end with providing diplomatic cover for lawbreakers. She joined them. She punched an Israeli border policeman in the face.

Rather than apologize to Israel for using European diplomats to support Palestinians engaged in criminal activity, and for Castaing’s shocking violence against an Israeli soldier lawfully performing his duties, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton attacked Israel.

Ashton called the tents, presumably paid for by European taxpayers, “humanitarian assistance,” and declared, “The EU deplores the confiscation of humanitarian assistance carried out by Israeli security forces yesterday in Khirbat al-Makhul.

“EU representatives have already contacted the Israeli authorities to demand an explanation and expressed their concern at the incident. The EU underlines the importance of unimpeded delivery of humanitarian assistance and the applicability of international humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territory,” Ashton said.

The EU’s role in financing illegal Palestinian building efforts in the Jordan Valley is not unique. For some time, in contempt of Israeli law and the agreements signed between Israel and the PLO, the EU has been financing illegal building by Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

What was new in last month’s incident was the deployment of European diplomats at the scene to provide diplomatic cover for Palestinian law-breakers, and of course their willingness to physically assault Israeli security forces.

In recent months, there has been a palpable escalation of European hostility toward Israel. The significance of this escalation must be properly understood, for only by understanding precisely what is new in the EU’s treatment of Israel, will it be possible to develop proper responses to what is happening.

The incident in the Jordan Valley followed the EU’s announcement in July that beginning in January 2014, it will impose guidelines barring cooperation between the EU and EU member nations and Israeli entities located or operating beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Those guidelines constitute a low-grade trade war against Israel. They advance the goal of forcing Israel out of joint undertakings with Europeans and denying us access to European markets.

The Europeans are so eager to begin their economic war against Israel that they have launched it even before the guidelines have come into force. Firms in the Netherlands and Germany involved in waste treatment projects in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, whose completion would benefit Palestinians and Israelis alike, have received warnings from their home governments to cease their operations lest they face legal consequences.

In addition to barring European-Israeli economic activities that may even indirectly benefit Jews beyond the 1949 armistice lines, Ashton has promised to soon introduce EUwide rules requiring member nations to place special labels on Israeli goods produced by Jews beyond the 1949 armistice lines.

By placing special labels on goods produced by Israeli Jews in specific areas of Israel, the EU is shaping European public opinion to view all Israeli products produced by Jews as morally inferior, and therefore less desirable than all other products they come into contact with. Foes of Israel hope this opinion-shaping will lead to the initiation of European consumer boycotts of Israeli products.

Most Israeli responses to Europe’s ever-escalating hostility have focused on European hypocrisy. We have repeatedly decried the unique standard to which the Europeans hold Israel and Israel alone.

European hypocrisy is infuriating. But it is nothing new.

It was decades ago that Europe created a separate standard that it applies only to Israel.

Consider the European’s position on Jerusalem. Since Israel was established, the Europeans have denied the Jewish state the right they accord to every other state on earth: the right to determine its capital city.

Or consider Europe’s position on Israeli communities built beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Europe wrongly asserts that these communities are illegal. But even if they were right, Europe’s behavior toward Israel would still make a mockery of its proclaimed devotion to international law. Europe has no problem, indeed it has actively supported settlements for citizens of a belligerent occupying powers in areas ruled through occupation. As Profs. Avi Bell and Eugene Kontorovich from the Kohelet Policy Forum explained in a recent paper on the EU’s guidelines, the EU supports settlements by occupying powers in Northern Cyprus, Abkazia and Western Sahara. In light of this, it is clear that the guidelines directed against Israel are inherently discriminatory.

The EU’s supposed commitment to international law is similarly exposed as a sham by its willingness to turn a blind eye to the Palestinian Authority’s diversion of EU aid monies to finance terrorism. Despite mountains of evidence accumulated over the past 13 years that aid is being siphoned off to finance terrorist attacks against Israel, the EU has refused to take action. And its refusal to act is itself a breach of international law.

Then there is the EU claim that its actions are undertaken to advance the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

This claim is also not credible. By encouraging the Palestinians to breach their signed agreements with Israel, and by engaging in economic warfare against Israel for refusing to capitulate to all Palestinian demands preemptively, the Europeans are escalating Palestinian intransigence.
Throughout the years, Europe’s policy has been inconsistent.

At the same time some European leaders have led the diplomatic war against Israel, other leaders were cultivating close ties with the Jewish state. Over the years, Europe signed a series of economic association and free trade agreements with Israel. Europe has willingly cooperated with Israel in areas where it believed it had something to gain from that cooperation.

For instance, European nations, and the EU, have cooperated with Israel in the areas of science, technology, economics, intelligence gathering and military affairs. Until recent years, there was a distinct separation between the European leaders who sought to discriminate against Israel and those who sought cooperation with it.

But recently the distinction between “good Europe” and “bad Europe” has eroded. What we are seeing today, and what distinguishes the discriminatory behavior Israel faces from Europe today from what it has faced from Europe for decades, is the increased control that anti-Israel forces are exerting over all areas of European-Israel relations.

Consider European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani’s visit to Israel this week. Tajani came to promote business relations and expand cooperation in science and other fields with Israel. While here he signed an agreement with Science, Technology and Space Minister Yaakov Perry that will enable Israelis to participate in the EU’s Galileo satellite project.

But according to media reports, the only thing Israelis wanted to discuss with him were the new European guidelines and the fact that they make it impossible for Israel to participate in the Horizon 2020 scientific research program. Israel has participated in the program since the mid-1990s. But for Israel to participate in the upcoming round of the Horizon program, it will have to discriminate against Israelis based or operating beyond the 1949 armistice lines. And so Israel will be unable to participate.

Until now, Europeans like Tajani, who have been interested in fostering cooperation with Israel where such cooperation benefits Europe, have had no trouble doing so. But now, due to the economic regulations against Israel, his hands, and those of like-minded Europeans, are tied by leaders like Ashton whose opposition to Israel has reached obsessive heights.

There are lessons that Europeans who do not support the downward trajectory of EU-Israel ties and Israelis need to draw from the current state of those relations. First, Europeans interested in maintaining and fostering good relations with Israel need to be willing to confront their fellow Europeans.

Until now they never questioned the goodwill of those who claimed that it is illegal for Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital, or for Jews to live wherever they have property rights in the Land of Israel.

But the hypocrisy and discrimination inherent in these claims needs to be pointed out. European supporters of close European-Israeli relations need to show the duplicity of proclamations of devotion to the peace process and international law by officials like Ashton. If they wish to stop the precipitous decline in Europe’s relations with Israel, they can no longer pretend that these claims are open to interpretation.

As for Israel, we need to recognize first and foremost that we do not control what happens in Europe. In adopting anti- Israel policies, European leaders are not responding to actions Israel undertakes. When 40 percent of Europeans tell pollsters they believe that Israel is enacting a genocide against the Palestinians, it is clear that European views of Israel are not based on facts of any kind, and certainly not on anything Israel does.

Moreover, we need to recognize that like our European friends, we have given the benefit of the doubt to our continental adversaries, believing their empty claims of commitment to the peace process and international law. As a consequence, since the outset of the peace process with the PLO 20 years ago, most of the steps we have taken to demonstrate our good faith have strengthened those Europeans who wish us ill at the expense of those who wish us well.

Like our European friends, we need to stop giving a pass to those who distort the very meaning of international law while making empty proclamations of support for the cause of peace. Only be exposing the truth behind the lies will we strengthen our European friends and so increase the possibility that our relations with Europe may improve one day.


Caroline Glick

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/israels-european-challenge/

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

Report: Iran could Build Nuclear Bomb within one Month

by Israel Hayom Staff

As of today, Iran could produce sufficient quantity of uranium for a nuclear bomb with its installed centrifuges and low enriched uranium stockpiles in as little as one month, a report by the U.S. Institute for Science and International Security has found.

Will Iran soon be able to arm its long range missile with nuclear warheads? | Photo credit: Reuters

As of today, Iran could "break out" and produce a sufficient quantity of uranium for a nuclear bomb by using its installed centrifuges and low enriched uranium stockpiles in as little as one month, a report by the U.S. Institute for Science and International Security has found.

Using its existing equipment and uranium stockpiles, Iran could produce "sufficient quantity in as little as approximately 1.0-1.6 months, if it uses all its near 20 percent low enriched hexafluoride stockpile. Using only 3.5 percent LEU, Iran would need at least 1.9 to 2.2 months and could make approximately 4 sufficient quantities of weapons grade uranium using all its existing 3.5 percent low enriched uranium stockpile," the report from the highly respected organization states. 

In a paper entitled "Iranian Breakout Estimates, Updated September 2013", authors Patrick Migliorini, David Albright, Houston Wood, and Christina Walrond write that since their last report in October 2012, Iran has steadily expanded the number of centrifuges installed at both its Fordow and Natanz gas centrifuge plants. 

Additionally, the report states, Iran has started installing its more advanced centrifuge model, the IR-2m centrifuge, at the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant. It is these "substantial changes" which have merited the group to update its previous breakout estimates of the time Iran would need to produce one significant quantity of weapon-grade uranium.

The report states that if Iran successfully produced enough weapons grade iranium for a nuclear weapon, the ensuing weaponization process might not be detectable until Iran tested its nuclear device underground or otherwise revealed its acquisition of nuclear weapons. "Therefore, the most practical strategy to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is to prevent it from accumulating sufficient nuclear explosive material, particularly in secret or without adequate warning. This strategy depends on knowing how quickly Iran could make weapons grade uranium," the report states.

Assuming Iran possessed covert nuclear facilities with "optimized cascade structure and very good centrifuge performance, it is possible that Iran could use a covert plant to break out in as little as approximately one to two weeks," the report states.

The Institute recommends that nuclear negotiations be guided by "the need to lengthen breakout times significantly from their current values. A reasonable minimum breakout time should be six months or preferably longer. If breakout took greater than or equal to six months, the IAEA could clearly detect 

It is long before sufficient quantity is produced, and the international community would have time to marshal a response to stop Iran producing enough weapons grade uranium for a nuclear weapon."

Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=12833

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

The Anti-Israel Peace Partner

by Evelyn Gordon


The Anti-Defamation League issued its list of America’s top 10 anti-Israel groups this week. In compiling the list, the ADL used various criteria, including how active the groups are in sponsoring anti-Israel activity, how vicious their slurs against Israel are, and whether their accusations are “balanced with an acknowledgement of Israel’s repeated efforts to make peace with the Palestinians or the legitimate terrorism concerns faced by Israeli citizens,” as ADL National Director Abraham Foxman put it.

While I have no quarrel with either the ADL’s criteria or its choices, the list inspires an obvious question: How can you blame fringe groups like Jewish Voice for Peace for doing exactly what Israel’s so-called “peace partner”–a man feted in capitals the world over, including Washington–does every single day?

The Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, are world leaders in sponsoring anti-Israel activity and promoting boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaigns. Just this week, for instance, Abbas toured European capitals to urge the EU to step up sanctions against Israel, while the PA took the bizarre step of asking the French government to strip French nationals living in Israeli settlements of their citizenship. A few weeks ago, Palestinian legislators asked the Inter-Parliamentary Union to approve a motion urging national parliaments to boycott Israel. Last month, the PA sent letters to 50 countries urging them to impose commercial boycotts on Israel. And all this anti-Israel activity is taking place while Israeli-Palestinian talks are ostensibly at their height, with negotiators meeting several times a week.

Nor can you beat Abbas and the PA for hurling vicious slurs at Israel. Earlier this month, for instance, the PA’s culture minister granted an award to the author of a poem describing “my enemy, Zion” as “Satan with a tail,” and the PA’s official television station has repeatedly shown children reciting this charming poem. PA officials regularly accuse Israel of disseminating drugs to encourage Palestinian addiction and plotting to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque; indeed, in his UN address last month, Abbas accused Israel of “near-daily attacks” on Al-Aqsa and other religious sites in Jerusalem (in reality, since a 1969 arson attack on the mosque, the only attacks at Al-Aqsa have been Palestinians stoning Jews–see here, here or here, for instance). And this year’s UN speech was tame compared to last year’s, in which he accused Israel of “one of the most dreadful campaigns of ethnic cleansing and dispossession in modern history,” as well as of launching a military operation in Gaza solely to punish the Palestinians’ bid for UN recognition.

Abbas also excels at denying Israel’s “legitimate terrorism concerns.” In last month’s UN speech, for instance, he accused Israel of “relying on exaggerated security pretexts and obsessions in order to consecrate occupation.” The 1,200 Israelis killed in terrorist attacks following Israel’s partial withdrawal from the territories under the 1993 Oslo Accords, like the years of daily rocket launches at Israel after it left Gaza entirely in 2005, are evidently figments of its imagination: Far from being legitimate grounds for concern about security under a final-status agreement, they are mere “pretexts” to “consecrate occupation.”

In short, by the ADL’s own criteria, any list of anti-Israel bodies ought to be headed by Abbas and his Palestinian Authority. The only question that remains is why both Israel and the world are instead dignifying them with the undeserved title of “peace partners.”


Evelyn Gordon

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/10/25/the-anti-israel-peace-partner/

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The Morsi-Zawahiri Connection

by Raymond Ibrahim

Nabil Na’im

More people, and from the least expected places, are stepping up to confirm that the now ousted Brotherhood-government of Morsi in Egypt was closely working with al-Qaeda and other jihadi/terrorist organizations in the Sinai — and all with U.S. support.

Nabil Na’im, the former leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group (where Ayman Zawahiri was before merging with al-Qaeda), recently made such scandalous allegations, especially concerning the relationship between the United States government and the Muslim Brotherhood during a televised broadcast of On TV.

Among other things, he asserted that Egyptian “reconciliation with the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing but a conspiracy by the American administration,” and that the Brotherhood, when in power, had betrayed Egyptian sovereignty, adding that ousted president Morsi granted Egyptian citizenship to more than 60,000 Palestinians.

Concerning the former Brotherhood government’s relationship with al-Qaeda and Hamas, Na’im said that Egyptian security possesses phone recordings that took place between Morsi and Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian leader of al-Qaeda.

Indeed, there appears to be a long paper trail between Morsi and al-Qaeda.
Finally, the ex-jihadi confirmed that “Hamas is the head of the snake in the Sinai,” and that the Brotherhood is a close collaborator with the jihadis and terrorists in Sinai.


Raymond Ibrahim

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/the-morsi-zawahiri-connection/

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Study: Main German Political Party Foundations Fund Anti-Israel Activity

by Benjamin Weinthal

The Reichstag building seen from the west. Inscription translates to 

"For/To the German People"  

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

 

Berlin- Germany’s main political parties transferred public funds through their foundations to Israel-based NGOs, as well organizations in the disputed territories, which are rife with bias against the Jewish state and, in some cases, anti-Semitism, according to a study released last week by the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor.

Professor Gerald Steinberg, the head of NGO Monitor, told The Jerusalem Post, "As NGO Monitor's detailed report shows, while German political foundations claim a mandate for promoting democracy, peace and human rights, a significant portion of their activities related to Israel are immoral. And despite the use of taxpayer funds, the foundations fail the transparency test.”

He said of the German foundations “Their positive contributions do not justify demonization and political warfare targeting Israel -- Germany should be leading the way in ending Europe's role in attacking the legitimacy of Jewish sovereign equality."

The 75-page study titled “German Funding for Political Advocacy NGOs Active in the Arab-Israeli Conflict“found the Green Party’s Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Christian Democratic Union party’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation funded the pro-Palestinian MIFTAH. The allegations levelled against Miftah in the NGO Monitor report are its publications have accused Israel of “massacre,” “cultural genocide,” “war crimes,” and “apartheid.”

The MIFTAH Arabic-language website published an article on an anti-Semitic blood libel in response to U.S. President Obama’s support for Israel and his celebration of the Passover Seder. After allegation of anti-Semitism, MIFTAH removed the article. The Böll foundation funneled $24,416 to MIFTAH in 2011.The Adenauer Foundation distributed $92,869 in 2011 and 2012 to MIFTAH. Chancellor Angela’s Merkel’s party is affiliated with the Adenauer Foundation.

The German Left Party’s organization, The Rose Luxemburg Foundation, funded the Coalition for Women of Peace (CWP) with NIS 197,969 in 2010 and NIS 146,026 in 2011. NGO Monitor claimed CWP officials have been photographed hoisting a flag of the terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The CWP supports the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, wrote NGO Monitor.

In an email to The Post, Zohar Elmakias, a spokesperson for CWP, wrote "CWP is a leading women's peace movement, and we stand with integrity behind every our word and action. With increasing domestic and international criticism of the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, it is not surprising that reactionary, extremist right-wing and
anti-democratic groups disguising themselves as ‘objective’ desperately try
to slander progressive forces in the Israeli society.”

NGO Monitor’s report noted that the Luxemburg Foundation, and the German Holocaust foundation Remembrance, Responsibility, Future( EVZ), distributed funds to the Israeli NGO Zochrot, which seeks to “raise public awareness of the Palestinian Nakba… Along with it, the rights of the refugees to return must be accepted” and has accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing.”

EVZ did not respond to Post queries.

According to NGO Monitor, the agenda of Zochrot is the “equivalent to calling for the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.” Post queries to Zochrot were not immediately answered.

The Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), which is aligned with the German Social Democratic party, used its office in Jerusalem to blame Israel for the failed peace talks with the Palestinians, according to NGO Monitor. In late 2011, Michael Broning, director of FES’ Jerusalem office, co-wrote an article with the director of the Palestinian Government Media Center in Ramallah, Ghassan Khatib, stating “What about Israeli Rejection.” The authors stated Palestinian rejectionism is not the problem, noted the study.

The Free Democrats party’s The Friedrich Naumann Foundation funded the Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies (RCHRS). The Free Democrats refused to disclose their financial support to RCHRS. NGO Monitor claimed in its report “Following the March 2002 suicide bombing attacks and“Operation Defensive Shield, RCHRS issued a statement promoting the false claim that Israel committed ‘massacres’ in Jenin and Nablus. RCHRS has also accused Israel of ‘terrirorist [sic] crimes,’ and making children the ‘sacrifice for the racial hatred [sic].”’

The Christian Social Union, the Bavarian-based sister party of Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democrats, used its Hans Seidel Foundation to fund The I’lam Media Center for Arab Palestinians in Israel . According to NGO Monitor, “I’lam’s reports and publications reflect promotion of the demonization campaign, including unsupported claims of bias and discrimination against Israeli Arab citizens of Israel in the media.” Seidel does not reveal its funding amounts.

The NGO Monitor study found that there was an overall lack of accountability and transparency throughout the German political foundations and their funding streams in terms of work in Israel and the disputed Palestinian territories.

In response to a Post query, the representatives of the six German political foundations in Israel, wrote in a letter,”The German political foundations are a unique instrument of the Federal Republic of Germany. We take pride in the wide range of our contributions to political dialogue, stipends, academia and development cooperation as well as in the endorsements we receive from all sectors of Israeli society. It is the belief in pluralistic democracy that remains the guiding principle for our work and for our diverse contributions to our partner countries.”

The representatives of the foundations continued, ”We jointly reject the one-sided and limited conclusions, which NGO Monitor draws in the above-mentioned report. We regard your conclusions as unfounded allegations resulting out of a biased, incomplete and scientifically flawed research.

We did ponder about clarifying the vast amount of shortcomings of your report through a close and collaborative interaction with your organization. “

Our scope of action will remain unaffected by your report. We certainly will continue to provide - with full integrity, legality and accountability - our value-based contributions to the German-Israeli relations, to the strengthening of pluralistic and democratic societies, and to the Middle East peace process towards a viable Two State Solution,” the representatives added.

Steinberg told The Post, “We urge the foundation heads to respond through dialogue and cooperation, in contrast to simplistic attacks and attempts to silence this long overdue debate.”

Israel’s Embassy in Berlin declined to comment on the NGO Monitor study. Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs has a copy of the study.

When asked about the role of the German foreign ministry’s alleged role in funding anti-Israel work in the Jewish state, according to the study, a spokeswoman for the German foreign ministry wrote The Post, “Germany’s foreign policy stands firmly on the side of Israel” and is in line with a “fair and just” two-state solution. 

 

Benjamin Weinthal

Source: http://www.jpost.com/International/Study-Main-German-political-party-foundations-fund-anti-Israel-activity-329788

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Egypt: Constitutional Committee Source says Islamic Articles Disputed

by Waleed Abdul Rahman

Disagreements continue to rage over articles about the role of Islami in the state, says constitution-drafting committee member 

 

 

Members of Egypt’s constitution committee meet at the Shura Council for the final vote on a draft Egyptian constitution in Cairo. (Reuters)

Cairo, Asharq Al-Awsat—Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat on the condition of anonymity, a member of Egypt’s constitution-drafting committee revealed that committee chairman Amr Moussa has failed to resolve a dispute between Islamic groups and Egypt’s churches over constitutional amendments dealing with Egypt’s identity. 

The 50-member constitution-drafting committee is currently meeting behind closed doors to discuss proposed amendments to Egypt’s constitution. The precise wording of a number of constitutional articles is still subject to debate, particularly those dealing with Egypt’s religious identity and the role of Islamic Shari’a law. 

The committee member told Asharq Al-Awsat: “On Thursday evening, Moussa met with the representatives of Al-Azhar, the church and the [Salafist] Al-Nour Party to discuss the crisis surrounding the issue of identity, but this meeting failed to produce anything new.” 

Speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of his or her position, the committee member informed Asharq Al-Awsat that there are disagreements over Articles 2, 3, 4 and 219. 

Articles 2 and 219, which explicitly mention Islamic Shari’a law, have served as major sources of controversy since the constitution-drafting process started. 

Article 2 of current Egyptian constitution states: “The state’s religion is Islam, its language is Arabic, and Islamic Shari’a is the source of its legislation.”

The committee member emphasized the Egyptian Christian community’s delicate position in relation to Islam’s formal position in the Egyptian state, noting that church leaders opposed the more strongly worded version of the article introduced under Mursi.

This firm stance comes as sectarian violence escalates in Egypt, both during Islamist president Mohamed Mursi’s administration and following his ouster, with Muslim Brothers’ anger at the turn of events often being taken out on Egypt’s Christian minority. 

However, Al-Azhar has called for Article 2 to remain in Egypt’s new constitution, saying it “defends Egypt’s Islamic identity,” according to the source.

Article 219 states: “The principles of Islamic Shari’a include its commonly accepted interpretations, its fundamental and jurisprudential rules, and its widely considered sources, as stated by the schools of Sunna and Gamaa.”

This article has been a particular source of contention, and is viewed as being linked to Article 2 in that both articles would define the role of Islamic Shari’a law in the country. 

While Article 219 has been severely criticized by Egypt’s liberal and secular forces, who have vowed to ensure its removal from the amended constitution, the Salafist Al-Nour Party has called for it to remain. 

The committee member told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Al-Nour Party is particularly insistent that the term “principles of Islamic Sharia’a law” be kept somewhere in the constitution, adding that the phrase has been used in all former iterations of modern Egypt’s constitution. 

Article 3 of the suspended constitution stipulates that “the canon principles of the People of the Book [Jews, Christians and Muslims] are the main source of legislation for their [respective] personal status laws, religious affairs and the selection of their spiritual leaders.”

The latest revelation regarding disagreements over Article 3 comes after the Catholic Church’s representative to the 50-member committee, Bishop Antonius Aziz, claimed that an agreement had been reached to change this term from “People of the Book,” which is considered offensive by some Christians and Jews. 

According to the source, disagreement continues to rage over the precise wording of this article, with representatives of Egypt’s Coptic, Orthodox and Evangelical churches calling for it to be changed to “non-Muslims,” while Al-Azhar and the Al-Nour Party are calling for it to be changed to “Christians and Jews.”

The source added that Al-Azhar feels the use of the broader-term “non-Muslims” in this article would open the country “exploitation” by followers of other religions and sects in the future. According to the constitutional committee source, Al-Azhar is refusing to back down over the wording of Article 3, fearing Egypt becoming an “oasis of rival cultural beliefs and religions in the future, changing the identity of Egypt until it is like other multi-doctrinal Arab states, like Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.” 


Waleed Abdul Rahman

Source: http://www.aawsat.net/2013/10/article55320412

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Hard-Left J Street and New Israel Fund Rebuke ADL for including Islamic Supremacist MPAC among its Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups in America

by Robert Spencer

This is rich: two far-Left Jewish groups hitting another far-Left group for noting correctly that an unsavory Islamic supremacist organization is anti-Israel. Yet J Street is anti-Israel as well. Isi Liebler, former chairman of the Governing Board of the World Jewish Congress, has challenged J Street’s “duplicity in trying to masquerade as a Jewish mainstream ‘pro-Israel’ organisation while consistently campaigning against the Jewish state.” Philip Klein, The American Spectator’s Washington correspondent, has noted that “while the group bills itself as the ‘pro Israel’ and ‘pro peace’ alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in reality it is a liberal organization actively campaigning against Israel’s right to defend itself.”

According to Liebler, as of October 2009 “Arab and pro-Iranian elements were providing approximately 10% of J Street funding, a somewhat bizarre situation for a genuinely ‘pro-Israel’ organisation.” Federal Election Commission records showed that tens of thousands of dollars flowed in to J Street from Arabs and Muslims, including some donations from groups involved in agitating for the "Palestinian" jihad.

The ADL, meanwhile, although it is right about MPAC, has defamed Pamela Geller and me for speaking out against Islamic supremacists just like those of MPAC. They have libeled the preeminent lawyer and orthodox Jew David Yerushalmi, a leading authority on Sharia oppression, as an “extremist,” an “anti-Muslim bigot” and a “white supremacist.” The ADL has even condemned Israel for fighting anti-Semitism. According to Charles Jacobs of Americans for Peace and Tolerance: “The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) – biggest Jewish ‘defense’ organization -- admits in private that the biggest danger to Jews since WWII comes from Muslim Jew-hatred, but because it fears offending its liberal donors and being charged with ‘Islamophobia,’ the organization remains essentially silent on the issue. In a study of ADL press releases from 1995 to 2011– a good if not perfect indicator of ADL priorities – we found that only 3 percent of ADL’s press releases focus on Islamic extremism and Arab anti-Semitism.” (For the full study, see www.charlesjacobs.org.) Now when it takes a feeble stand against MPAC, it gets attacked by Jewish groups that are even more sold-out and compromised than it is.

Regarding MPAC, Discover the Networks has this:

Holding Israel entirely responsible for the "pattern of violence" in the Middle East, MPAC asserts that Hezbollah “could be called a liberation movement.” The Council likens Hezbollah members to American “freedom fighters hundreds of years ago whom the British regarded as terrorists.” In a November 1997 speech at the University of Pennsylvania, MPAC Co-Founder and Executive Director Salam Al-Marayati steadfastly refused to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization; he justified the existence of Hamas as a political entity and a provider of social programs and “educational operations”; and he equated jihad with the sentiments of the American statesman Patrick Henry, whose “Give me liberty or give me death” declaration was, in Al-Marayati’s view, “a way of looking at the term jihad from an American perspective.” In a 1999 position paper, MPAC justified Hezbollah’s deadly 1983 bombing of the American Marine barracks in Lebanon as a "military operation" rather than a terrorist attack. As Maher Hathout puts it: "Hezbollah is fighting for freedom, an organized army, limiting its operations against military people, this is a legitimate target against occupation. … this is legitimate, this is an American value -- freedom and liberty."

And:

In November 2011, MPAC held a Washington, DC event in honor of Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahda, the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate that had recently emerged victorious in the political elections in Tunisia. Ghannouchi is a longtime Islamist who, during the 1990s, was invited to the United States by Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian but was banned from the country. Yet by MPAC's reckoning, Ghannouchi is “one of the most important figures in modern Islamic political thought and theory.”
Just a few months prior to the November 2011 event, in an interview with an Arab-language website, Ghannouchi had stated that the Arab Spring “will achieve positive results on the path to the Palestinian cause and threaten the extinction of Israel.” Added Ghannouchi: “I give you the good news that the Arab region will get rid of the bacillus of Israel. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, said that Israel will disappear by the year 2027. I say that this date may be too far away, and Israel may disappear before this.”

"J Street, New Israel Fund pan ADL’s top 10 list," by Daniel Treiman for the JTA, October 24 (thanks to Maxwell):

Apparently, not everyone loves lists — or at least not every list. J Street and the New Israel Fund have rebuked the Anti-Defamation over its recent list of “Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups in America in 2013.” (And it wasn’t because the ADL didn’t include any GIFs or cute animal photos.) The two left-leaning Jewish groups warned in a statement yesterday that the list “exacerbates, rather than quiets, unnecessary confrontation.” While expressing respect for the ADL, they wrote:

Issuing such blanket denunciations is ultimately self-defeating. Indeed, such condemnations have been issued, and are occasionally still issued, against our own organizations by various self-appointed guardians of ideological purity, who often turn out to be fronting an ultra-nationalist, pro-settlement agenda in Israel. That’s why we believe so strongly in open debate, why we do not launch guerrilla media campaigns against those who oppose our progressive values and why we must speak out when other organizations, including those with whom we profoundly disagree, are smeared with the same tactics.

In particular, they criticized the ADL’s inclusion on its list of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council. J Street and NIF noted that MPAC publicly supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (You can read a pair of MPAC policy papers on Israeli-Palestinian affairs here and here.) MPAC itself tweeted that it was “puzzled” by the ADL’s decision to put it on the list.

NIF and J Street suggested that the ADL is targeting MPAC because the Muslim advocacy organization has partnered with groups that advocate the use of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. The two Jewish groups — both of which oppose BDS — conclude that this is “guilt by association and an unfair indictment of an organization that seeks dialogue with our community.”
But while the ADL does note MPAC’s co-sponsorship of events at which Israel is a target for harsh criticism, it also does cite numerous examples of MPAC’s own criticisms of and actions toward Israel that the league judges to be beyond the pale. (See pages 15-16 in the ADL’s full report.)
While MPAC has been at odds with Jewish groups over Israeli-Palestinian issues, it has also worked closely with segments of the Jewish community. It had particularly warm relations with the Los Angeles-based Progressive Jewish Alliance when the latter group was led by Daniel Sokatch, who is today the New Israel Fund’s CEO. (PJA later co-founded and was subsumed into Bend the Arc, a liberal Jewish advocacy group focused on domestic policy issues.)
The ADL’s list included a range of groups, which would likely have varying reactions to their inclusion on such a list. Whereas MPAC was puzzled, the fervently anti-Zionist haredi group Neturei Karta would probably have little objection to its inclusion.
Meanwhile, another listed group, Jewish Voice for Peace, issued a response blasting the ADL. But JVP also said that they “appreciate the ADL’s recognition of our growing strength, especially among younger Jews” and called it “a badge of honor, that the ADL would attack us on the basis of our identification with anti-apartheid and civil rights struggles.” (In the statement, JVP — which neither endorses nor opposes a two-state solution — neither concurs with nor explicitly disputes the ADL’s characterization of it as an anti-Israel organization.)
Along with MPAC, JVP and Neturei Karta, the ADL’s diverse top-10 list included ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), American Muslims for Palestine, CODEPINK, Friends of Sabeel-North America, If Americans Knew/Council for the National Interest, Students for Justice in Palestine and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
Incidentally, J Street has not always shied away from blanket denunciations of diverse groups of ideological foes. Indeed, the first video that J Street produced to introduce itself back in 2008 showcased on a single screen nine individuals who it suggested were negative influences on Israel-related discourse in America, ranging from Christian conservatives like Pat Robertson and John Hagee, to foreign policy hawks like Bill Kristol and John Bolton, to Vice President Dick Cheney, an avowed supporter of a two-state solution.

Robert Spencer

Source: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/hard-left-j-street-and-new-israel-fund-rebuke-adl-for-including-islamic-supremacist-mpac-among-its-t.html

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