Europe's Jihad against Israel - Salim Mansur

by Salim Mansur

Resolution 2334 was as sickening a surrender to the Arab-Muslim jihad in the name of "peace," as was the surrender of UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to Adolf Hitler at Munich in September 1938.

• Resolution 2334 was as sickening a surrender to the Arab-Muslim jihad in the name of "peace," as was the surrender of UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to Adolf Hitler at Munich in September 1938.
• The UN before 1967 did not refer to the West Bank and Gaza as "occupied" territories when they were "occupied" by Egypt and Jordan after the 1948-49 war, which the Arab states launched against Israel. The Arab states then were the "occupiers" of parts of Palestine west of Jordan until 1967, and rejected any notion of Jews having a historic connection with Palestine, which they claimed was an integral part of Arab lands.
• From the time of the Balfour Declaration and the League's Mandate for Palestine until the UN Resolution 181 (1947), reference to Palestine meant land with historic connection to the Jewish people. It was on this basis that the Jews' (Zionist) claim to reconstitute their national home was given legal recognition by the League, which the UN, as its successor, was legally bound to protect.
• From the Arab perspective of religion and politics there never was a "Palestinian" people, or nation, distinct and separate from Arabs as a people or nation. The jihad called by the Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini against Jews in Palestine after 1921 was in the name of "Arabs" and Islam, and it has so remained since. According to the Hamas charter, "the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Trust] upon all Muslim generations till the day of Resurrection."
• Jerusalem, its principal city, was built by King David, a Jew, some ten centuries earlier.
• For the past nine decades and more, however, Arabs and Muslims, with 56 Muslim states in the OIC, have been waging jihad to destroy the one and only state of the Jews. And Christendom, as if oblivious of its own shameful past history of anti-Semitism, has even more shamefully supported the falsification of history. Now, with Security Council Resolution 2334, the UN, with the enthusiastic the backing of Europeans and the prodding of U.S. President Barack Obama, is complicit in this jihad against Israel.

UN Security Council Resolution 2334, adopted as a result of the United States abstention, on the instructions of outgoing President Barack Obama, confirmed the historic bigotry against Jews and Israel entrenched within the United Nations, just as it was within its predecessor, the League of Nations. As previously indicated, Arab and Muslim states could not move a single anti-Israel resolution in the Security Council without the complicity of the Western powers, representing the historically Christian nations.

The collusion of the Western powers and the Islamic countries against Jews and Israel is now ostentatious, without any subterfuge. Resolution 2334 was as sickening a surrender to the Arab-Muslim jihad in the name of "peace," as was the surrender of UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to the Adolf Hitler at Munich in September 1938.

The gathering in Paris on January 15, at the invitation of French President François Hollande, was further evidence of appeasing the Arab-Muslim world's jihad against Israel.

The timing of the Paris gathering – five days short of the 75th anniversary of the notorious Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942, held in the suburbs of Berlin, in which top-ranking Nazi officials finalized the preparation for the "Final solution to the Jewish problem" in Europe – could not have been more overtly insulting to Israel. Members of the European Union plotted shafting the Jewish state in accordance with the wishes of their Arab and Muslim friends of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – 56 Muslim states, plus "Palestine," and the biggest bloc at the UN.

"Fake news" and writing "fake" history have long been the modus operandi of tyrants; nothing new. The "big lie," repeatedly broadcast so that people might succumb to believing it, was an art that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister for propaganda, practiced to devastating results. The most notorious Arab ally of Hitler, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, as an admiring student of Goebbels, passed on the art of "fake" history and "big lie" to his allies.

It is grotesque and criminal that the EU and the UN, together in "ganging up," insist that Israel comply with their resolutions – Israeli withdrawal to pre-June 1967 boundaries – without having shown any attempt to have the "Palestinians" of the so-called "occupied territories" end their jihadi terrorism.

It was not an oversight in the Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967 that there was no mention of "Palestinian" people, or "Palestinian Arabs," or "Palestinians."

In the decades after the passage of Res. 242, there was a systematic push by the OIC states in the UN, supported by the EU and its predecessor, the European Community (EC), to refer to disputed territories taken by Israel in a defensive war initiated by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan as "occupied" territories. The Egyptians had closed the Strait of Tiran at the mouth of the Red Sea, an act that was a casus belli, legal cause for war.

The UN, before 1967, did not refer to the West Bank and Gaza as "occupied" territories when they were "occupied" by Egypt and Jordan after the 1948-49 war, which the Arab states launched against Israel. The Arab states then were the "occupiers" of parts of Palestine west of Jordan until 1967, and rejected any notion of Jews having a historic connection with Palestine, which they claimed was an integral part of Arab lands.

The entire jihad of Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, and since, is based on the argument that Jews have no historic rights.

From the Arab perspective of religion and politics, there never was a "Palestinian" people, or nation, distinct and separate from Arabs as a people or nation. The jihad called by Husseini against Jews in Palestine after 1921 was in the name of "Arabs" and Islam, and it has so remained since. According to the Hamas charter, "the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Trust] upon all Muslim generations till the day of Resurrection" (Article 11).

Hence, that there ever had been a "Palestinian people" was a "big lie," pushed by Arab states after 1967, and that the Western nations unquestioningly swallowed.

"Palaestina" – in a still earlier effort to strip the area of its Jewish roots, this time by the ancient Romans – was the name the Emperor Hadrian gave to territory on both sides of the River Jordan – Judea and Samaria – after crushing the Jews in the Bar Kokhba Rebellion in 135 CE.

Jerusalem, its principal city, was built by King David, a Jew, some ten centuries earlier.

In the seventh century CE, Arabs seized "Palestine" from the Christian Byzantine Empire and it became part of the Arab, later Ottoman Empire.

The Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade, and subsequently the surrounding area, to establish the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the twelfth century. Arab armies evicted the Crusaders from Palestine at the end of the thirteenth century. For the next six centuries, in the name of Islam, Arabs, then Turks under the Ottoman Empire, ruled over Palestine until 1917, when the British Expeditionary Forces arrived during World War I.

The defeat of the Ottoman Empire left its former Arab territories between Egypt and the Persian Gulf, including Palestine, under the control of the victorious Allied Powers, Britain and France. In the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, the British government committed itself to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," while noting that this should not "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities" therein.

At the San Remo Conference of April 1920, the Allied Powers agreed that Britain, under the authority of the League of Nations, would be the Mandatory Power over Palestine. The League officially handed the Mandate for Palestine to Britain as a trust in London on 24 July 1922.

The Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the Palestine Mandate; the twenty-eight articles of the Mandate stipulated how Palestine would be governed until, as everyone understood, the Jews were capable of "reconstituting their [Jewish] national home" – meaning the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. There was no mention of a "Palestinian" people in the Balfour Declaration or in the Palestine Mandate, since speaking about Palestine primarily meant everyone there. Everyone born there at the time – Jews, Muslims and Christians – were Palestinians; that was what was stamped on everyone's passport.

From the time of the Balfour Declaration and the League's Mandate for Palestine until the UN Resolution 181 (1947), reference to "Palestine" meant land with a historic connection to the Jewish people. It was on this basis that the Jews' (Zionist) claim to reconstitute their national home was given legal recognition by the League, which the UN, as its successor, was legally bound to protect.

Britain's record as the Mandatory Power in Palestine between the two world wars was nothing short of shameful. British administrators of the Colonial Office, sent to Palestine, devised policies limiting Jewish immigration and favoring Arabs, as the first of a series of decisions that undermined the primary objective solemnly pledged in the Balfour Declaration and incorporated into the Mandate.

The subversion began with Sir Herbert Samuel, an English Jew, appointed the High Commissioner for Palestine in 1920, after the San Remo Conference. As the author William B. Ziff, documents in The Rape of Palestine – published in 1938 to the consternation of the British – Britain's "stiffing" of Jews under the specious policy of treating the demands of both Jews and Arabs "equally" was in effect deliberately prejudicial against Jews.

The British historian of the Middle East, Elie Kedourie, born in Baghdad, Iraq, also documented in The Chatham House Version (1970), how Samuel's policy, designed to conciliate Arabs, increasingly hurt Jews. Similarly, Pierre Van Paassen, a Dutch-American Unitarian minister, documented in The Forgotten Ally, (1943), the "stiffing" of Jews in Europe by the Western nations, and especially Britain as the Mandatory power in Palestine.

Britain's perfidy over Palestine took root with the election in 1921 of a known felon, Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, a younger brother of the deceased Mufti (religious head) and known to be a rabble-rouser, as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Husseini, despite the notoriety surrounding him, was the preferred candidate of Samuel for the position. The Grand Mufti, when World War II began, enthusiastically embraced the Third Reich, Hitler and his "Final Solution" for the Jews, and found his way to Nazi Berlin.

The poisonousness of Samuel's choice of Amin al-Husseini as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, however, was exceeded by his role in creating the Emirate of Transjordan (present-day Kingdom of Jordan) at the expense of the Palestine Mandate. This was done at the behest of the Colonial Office under Winston Churchill, reputedly the most ardent English friend and supporter of Zionists, to appease Arabs.

In 1922, the chunk of Palestine east of the River Jordan, amounting to about two-thirds of the Mandated territory, was sliced off and gifted to Abdullah, son of Sharif Hussein of Hejaz, under whose name the flag of the 1916 "Arab Revolt" against Ottoman rule was raised.

After the 1922 partition of Palestine, which gave most of the land promised to the Jews to Transjordan, the substantially reduced Mandated territory remained only west of the River Jordan. Transjordan, as an Arab state, became closed to Jewish immigration.

Consequently, the policy of allowing Jewish immigration, according to the formula of "absorptive capacity" adopted during Samuel's tenure in Palestine, turned increasingly restrictive. Arab opposition, with incitement to violence against Jews by the Mufti and his supporters, escalated, and Britain's appeasement of the Arabs became routine.

The sordid legacy of Britain, as the Mandatory authority in Palestine, was the restriction of Jewish immigration from Europe when it turned out to be most urgently needed. As the desperation of European Jewry mounted after Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the response of the Western powers was completely to deny entrance to Jewish refugees who had started fleeing the Nazis.

Finally, a meeting of the Western nations to consider the Jewish plight was called at the initiative of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Thirty-eight countries attended this meeting in July 1938, known as the Evian Conference, held in France.

The Evian Conference was doomed even before it convened. Among the countries attending, not one – not even Canada, Argentina or Australia, with vast open spaces – was prepared to accept Jewish refugees from Austria and Germany. Even worse, the United States and Britain refused to open their doors to Jewish refugees from Hitler, while at the same time Britain also prohibited Jews from entering Palestine.

The Evian Conference was the last gasp of Western powers to lend assistance to a people threatened with extinction by their enemies. The spectacle of the Evian Conference as a charade, according to the historian Robert Wistrich, could only have firmed the resolve of Hitler to proceed with his plans for the "Final Solution." In his book, Hitler and the Holocaust, Wistrich wrote:

"If Nazi Germany could no longer expect to export, sell, or expel its Jews to an indifferent world that plainly did not want them, then perhaps they would have to do something even more drastic."

After the defeat of the Nazis, and after their crimes against Jews were no longer disputed or hidden, the Western powers, through the UN, could have established Israel, as justice demanded, in what was left of the Palestine Mandate on the entire territory west of the River Jordan.

But the subsequent history of Palestine, approached by the Western powers with a second partition under the UN resolution of November 1947, turned out predictably as sordid as that of the Mandate under Britain's supervision during the period 1922-48.

The Arab states, in failing to achieve their objective of defeating Israel during the 1948-67 period, adopted the unconventional means of jihadi terrorism backed by the repeated broadcast of the "big lie" that the Western nations, or Christendom, willfully accepted. The "big lie" is that the "Palestinians," as a people under a supposed "occupation" by Israel – to which the Arabs had agreed in the Oslo II Accord (section: Land) – deserve a state of their own.

The state for the "Palestinian" people (Muslims and Christians) in two-thirds of Palestine was created arbitrarily by Britain in creating Transjordan in 1922. The "two-state" solution in Palestine therefore has been in existence for the past ninety-five years.

For the past nine decades and more, however, Arabs and Muslims, with 56 Muslim states in the OIC, have been waging jihad to destroy the one and only state of the Jews. And Christendom, as if oblivious of its own shameful past history of anti-Semitism, has even more shamefully supported the falsification of history. The first time it was done by UNESCO, in calling ancient Biblical sites (including Jerusalem) Islamic, when Islam did not even exist at the time.

Now, with UN Security Council Resolution 2334, the UN, with the enthusiastic manipulations of U.S. President Barack Obama and the backing of most European leaders, is complicit in this jihad against Israel.

Salim Mansur is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute. He teaches in the department of political science at Western University in London, Ontario. He is the author of "Islam's Predicament: Perspectives of a Dissident Muslim" and "Delectable Lie: A Liberal Repudiation of Multiculturalism."

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9799/europe-jihad-israel

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Generals, gimmicks and gobbledygook - Dr. Martin Sherman

by Dr. Martin Sherman

Are “Commanders for Israel” aware of the deadly defects in their ill-conceived program, but persist in promoting it anyway; or they are unaware of them, and are promoting it out of sheer ignorance?

[After Gamal Abdel Nasser’s death] the ability of the Arabs to coordinate their political and military activities has diminished. Even previously this ability was not great–now it is even less.
There is no need to call up our forces, even when threats are made and enemy forces are deployed along the [post-1967] cease-fire lines. Before the Six Day War, every Egyptian troop movement into Sinai compelled Israel to call up reserves on a significant scale. Now, there is no need for such a call-up as long as Israel’s lines of defense are emplaced along the Suez Canal…Israel’s military strength is sufficient to prevent the opposing side from attaining any military objective and political realities prevailing between the superpowers is not conducive to a renewal of fighting as it was in 1969-1970…Accordingly, Israel has freedom of action to deal effectively in preventing another round of fighting, should Egypt wish to open fire again. – Yitzhak Rabin, “The slow road to peace”, Ma’ariv, July 13, 1973.

This hopelessly erroneous assessment of the prevailing political and security parameters in the Middle East was made by none other than the man who served as IDF Chief of Staff at the time of the Six-Day-War.

Fatal Fallibility

Significantly, it was made barely two months prior to the outbreak of the traumatic 1973 Yom Kippur War, when he was proven disastrously wrong about everything:

-The ability of the Arabs  “to coordinate their political and military activities”;
- Arab inability to achieve any significant military objectives;
- The nature of superpower relations inhibiting the outbreak of war;

and, most of all

- The need to call up reserves to deal with Arab military build-ups.
The Israeli public would do well to keep this firmly in mind in evaluating the merits of a campaign launched (or more precisely, relaunched) this week by a group known as “Commanders for Israel’s Security” (CIS), reportedly comprising around 250 retired security experts from the IDF, Israeli intelligence organizations and police. In a costly media blitz, which included a full page advertisement (in Arabic) in leading dailies and prominent billboards on major highways, CIS warned ominously of the perils of annexing Judea-Samaria, urged the Israel government to:
- Undertake immediate measures to “separate” from the Palestinians;
- Unilaterally declare readiness for far-reaching territorial concessions in Judea-Samaria, and;
- Forgo, a-priori, any claims to sovereignty beyond the current security barrier.

In an attempt to enlist public trust, CIS highlights the years of accumulated security experience of its members, suggesting that their past record ensures the unchallengeable validity of their recommendations. 
There is of course little to back up this far-reaching, and somewhat haughty, contention.

After all, recent history is replete with instances where the most senior military officers and security officials have proven themselves to be fatally fallible.

Experts’ erroneous estimates 
Indeed, Rabin was not the only expert to err disastrously in his evaluation of impending events prior to the outbreak of the Yom Kippur war.
On October 5, 1973, a day before the coordinated Egyptian-Syrian attack on Israel, the then-head of Military Intelligence, Maj-Gen. Eli Zeira, informed a meeting of the General Staff: “There is a low probability of a coordinated Syrian-Egyptian attack. I would say the probability [is]...even lower than low...”
Zeira’s appraisal of the situation, proven catastrophically inaccurate within hours, was backed by the professional top-secret assessment from the Military Intelligence research branch, which, the same day, provided the following intelligence estimate: “In the area of the [Suez] Canal, there are sightings of an emergency deployment, on a scale previously unknown...Despite the fact these sightings...ostensibly entail indications of an offensive initiative, to the best of our assessment, there has not been any change in the Egyptians’ appraisal of the balance of forces between themselves and the IDF. Accordingly, the probability that Egypt intends to renew the fighting is low.”
Sadly—and significantly—grossly mistaken perceptions of enemy intentions by senior security experts are not confined to the 1973 Yom Kippur debacle. Indeed, the list of such erroneous estimates is disturbingly long.
Mistaken, misguided and misperceived
 
Take, for example, another former IDF chief of staff (1998–2002), Shaul Mofaz, later defense minister (2002–2006).
In the Knesset debate (October 24, 2005) on unilateral disengagement from Gaza, Mofaz, in his capacity as defense minister declared: “I am convinced the [disengagement] process...will provide more security for Israel’s citizens, and will reduce the burden on the security forces. It will extricate the situation from its [current] stagnation and open the door to a different reality, which will allow talks toward achieving coexistence.”

Three subsequent military campaigns—Cast Lead (2008-9), Pillar of Defense (2012), Protective Edge (2014)—and the tangible prospect of future ones, dramatically demonstrate how wildly inaccurate his prognosis was.
Indeed, during the same debate, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, one of the nation’s most iconic and experienced generals, told parliament: “I am firmly convinced and truly believe that this disengagement...will be appreciated by those near and far, reduce animosity, break through boycotts and sieges and advance us along the path of peace with the Palestinians and our other neighbors.”
Since then, Israel has faced increasing international censure, intensifying boycotts, and been compelled to engage in four bloody military campaigns (three in Gaza) to quell attacks from “the Palestinians and our other neighbors [Hezbollah],” who proved distinctly unappreciative of Sharon’s unilateral magnanimity.

Rank no real recommendation

Of course, no survey of mistaken evaluations of Israel’s adversaries’ intentions would be complete without reference to what, to date, is arguably the most disastrous policy misperception of all, the Oslo Accords, made by the man awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for it, Yitzhak Rabin.
In a 1995 radio interview barely six months after the award, Rabin attempted to scornfully dismiss criticism of the accords: “The nightmare stories of the Likud are well known. After all, they promised rockets from Gaza... For a year, Gaza has been largely under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. There has not been a single rocket. Nor will there be any rockets.”

The ensuing barrages of thousands of rockets from Gaza, the millions of Israelis forced to seek shelter from them for weeks on end, are enough to make one cringe in embarrassment on encountering such a ludicrous prognosis from one of Israel’s most prominent authorities on security.

Similarly, the hasty and undignified retreat of the IDF which abandoned South Lebanon to Hezbollah, precipitated the bloody 2006 Second Lebanon War and allowed the entire area to be transformed into a fearsome arsenal, bristling with over 100,000 missiles/rockets trained on virtually all major Israeli population centers, was initiated by none other than Ehud Barak, Israel’s most decorated soldier and former Chief of Staff.

So there you have it! Whether it was the 1973 Yom Kippur war, the 1993 Oslo Accords; the 2000 unilateral evacuation of South Lebanon or the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza – time and again the ability of the most senior and experienced security figures to accurately gauge the intentions of Israel’s adversaries have proven disastrously flawed—dramatically demonstrating that when it comes to assessing the outcome of strategic policy decisions, rank seems no real recommendation.

Hopelessly naïve and shortsighted

I confess that few things sadden me in the political discourse on Israel and its future more than the phenomenon of CIS.  Indeed, I am personally acquainted with several of the groups more prominent and active members and maintained cordial relationships with them—until they opted to associate themselves with this appallingly absurd initiative that the group is now trying to foist onto the public and elected government—perversely professing that it will—in some unspecified manner—enhance security, when it is patently obvious that it will do precisely the opposite.

Indeed, perhaps the most charitable way to characterize the CIS “plan” (for want of a better word) is to describe it as hopelessly naïve, shortsighted and totally devoid of any political foresight…or forethought.

Thus, apparently aware of strong public resistance to the notion of any further “unilateral” initiatives given the Gaza and South Lebanon fiascos (both orchestrated by individuals with impeccable security credentials, Sharon and Barak), CIS attempts to allay these misgivings by assuring us: “In contrast with unilateral withdrawal carried out in 2000 (from South Lebanon) and 2005 (from Gaza) the "[our] Plan calls for the IDF to remain in the West Bank and retain complete security control until a permanent status agreement with the Palestinians ushers in alternative concrete, sustainable arrangements.”

It requires little imagination to envision the pernicious political predicament such an injudicious move would create for Israel, were it to heed the CIS counsel. 
First of all, CIS’s proposal would, in a stroke, convert Judea-Samaria from “disputed territory” to “occupied territory” and IDF from a “defense force” to an “occupying force”. Worse, it would do so by explicit admission from Israel itself.

Entrapping the IDF in open-ended occupation

Moreover,  as I have pointed out repeatedly, the basic elements of CIS’s “new unilateralism”—(a) the forswearing of claims to sovereignty over most of Judea-Samaria,; and (b) the continued deployment of the IDF in that territory— replicate precisely the conditions that prevailed in South Lebanon until IDF’s ignominious retreat in 2000.
Clearly, by conditioning the end of IDF deployment on the emergence of “a permanent status agreement with the Palestinians [which] ushers in alternative concrete, sustainable security arrangements”, CIS is in fact promoting a formula for open-ended occupation, whose duration is entirely dependent on the Palestinian-Arabs.

After all, according to CIS’s plan, “the IDF [is] to remain in the West Bank and retain complete security control”, until some suitable Palestinian  interlocutor appears, sufficiently pliant to satisfy Israel’s demands for said “permanent status agreement and concrete sustainable security arrangements”, but sufficiently robust to resist more radical domestic rivals, who oppose any such agreement/arrangements.

But, as I have asked before, what if such an elusive interlocutor fails to emerge? After all, CIS’s plan clearly prescribes persisting with Israeli military presence in the territory because, as CIS itself concedes: “The situation on the West Bank requires…continued deployment of the IDF until satisfactory security arrangements are put into place within the framework of a permanent status agreement”.

So in effect, all the Palestinian-Arabs need to do to entrap the IDF in what will inevitably become an increasingly unpopular and untenable “occupation”,  exposed to continual guerilla attacks by a recalcitrant population, backed by armed Palestinian internal security services, is…well, very little.

Just like South Lebanon

Indeed, all they need do is wait until (a) mounting IDF casualties in a “foreign land” create increasing domestic pressure to “bring our boys home”, and (b) mounting international  impatience with unending “occupation” create growing external pressure, which make continued IDF deployment untenable—and withdrawal becomes inevitable, without any “permanent settlement” or “sustainable security arrangements”.

Obviously, under such circumstances, any hope that the conflict can be officially resolved with some negotiated final-status agreement is hopelessly detached from reality. Indeed, why should the Palestinians offer any quid-pro-quo to negotiate the withdrawal of the IDF when Israel has a-priori conceded sovereignty to them and ceased all construction of the settlements, condemning them to inevitable decay and disintegration? Indeed, what would be the justification for further IDF deployment in the sovereign territory of others – especially as that deployment itself is likely to be cited as the major grievance precipitating the belligerency between the sides?

Accordingly, the CIS proposal for deploying the IDF for an indeterminate period, in territory over which it lays no sovereign claim—and hence, by implication, acknowledges that others have such claims to it—will clearly create an unsustainable political configuration, which, sooner or later, will generate irresistible pressure on Israel to evacuate it—leaving the country exposed to the very dangers the IDF deployment was intended to obviate. Just as it did in Lebanon!! Only this time in territory abutting major trans-Israel transportation axes, adjacent to the country’s major population centers and overlooking its only international airport.

Hardly “rocket science”
This is hardly rocket science!

Can the esteemed members of CIS really be oblivious to all this? Indeed, it is difficult to know which is more troubling: Whether they are aware of these deadly defects in their ill-conceived program but insist on promoting it anyway; or whether they are not, and are promoting their ill-conceived program out of sheer ignorance.  In future columns I will attempt to address these perturbing questions.

Meanwhile we are left to hope that with the new US administration, CIS will have a far less sympathetic ear in Washington.
   


Dr. Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) served for seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli Defense establishment, was ministerial adviser to Yitzhak Shamir's government and lectured for 20 years at Tel Aviv University in Political Science, International Relations and Strategic Studies. He has a B.Sc. (Physics and Geology), MBA (Finance), and PhD in political science and international relations, was the first academic director of the Herzliya Conference and is the author of two books and numerous articles and policy papers on a wide range of political, diplomatic and security issues. He is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategicisrael.org). Born in South Africa,he has lived in Israel since 1971.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/20068

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Anti-Semitism Awareness Act Sparks Hysteria on Campus - Asaf Romirowsky

by Asaf Romirowsky

The new Act would enhance the Education Department's ability to identify, investigate, and punish all forms of anti-Semitism, including anti-Zionism and anti-Israel harassment.

^{Originally published under the title "Anti-Semitism Only on Our Terms."}

Anti-Zionism is rampant on university campuses in the United States.

The US Senate has unanimously passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, introduced by US Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Bob Casey (D-PA). If approved by the House, the bill will give the US Department of Education the statutory tools to examine anti-Semitic incidents in the broadest and effective way possible.

The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act will mirror the State Department's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism's definition of anti-Semitism, including critical language to define where anti-Israel bias crosses the line into anti-Semitism. The new Act would enhance the Education Department's ability to identify, investigate, and punish all forms of anti-Semitism, including anti-Zionism and anti-Israel harassment.

When asked about the Act, Senator Casey channeled Natan Sharansky's "3D" definition of anti-Semitism and listed the following examples of where the bill's tools would be helpful:

• Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews,
• Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust,
• Demonizing Israel by blaming it for all interreligious or political tensions,
• Judging Israel by a double standard that one would not apply to any other democratic nation.

Because of the bill's potential impact on anti-Israel activities, we have seen a steady flow of hysteria and condemnation, in particular from the far left. Israel boycott groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) claim that the bill's "overly broad language has the potential to define any criticism of Israeli policy as anti-Semitic," and that it would prevent "frank discussions of the impact of Zionism, campus disagreements about the future of Israel/Palestine, and in fact, much of what falls under Jewish studies in all facets, including courses."

Anti-Semitism is becoming more socially acceptable in the guise of anti-Zionism.

The irony is that JVP in particular, which supports and advocates for boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) against Israel, is only willing to have "frank discussions" through its own prism, which sees Israel as the source of all evil in the Middle East and something to be abolished.

University administrators like Chancellor Howard Gillman and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky from the University of California, Irvine also took issue with the bill, despite living on a campus with one of the country's most hostile educational environments for Jewish students.

Earlier this year at Irvine, a Jewish student emerging from a Holocaust-related event was chased by a mob of "anti-Israel" protesters and was forced to barricade herself in a school building as her pursuers banged on the doors and windows and chanted "Long live the Intifada!" She had to be rescued by the police.

In 2010, following the shouting down of then-Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, Dean Chemerinsky wrote that he has not seen "the slightest indication of anti-Semitism" at UC Irvine, nor "heard one complaint about an anti-Semitic incident on campus."

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky is willfully blind to anti-Semitism at UC-Irvine.

Despite being a distinguished constitutional scholar, Dean Chemerinsky mischaracterized the proposed Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, claiming that the bill would "require the Education Department, when deciding whether to investigate incidents on campus, to consider the State Department's definition of anti-Semitism."

That is not what the bill says. Rather, under the proposed legislation, the Department of Education would consider the State Department definition – adopted in 2010 – when deciding whether severe, persistent, and pervasive harassment and intimidation (that federal civil rights statutes are designed to prevent) were motivated by anti-Jewish animus. That distinction is critical. On its face, the proposed legislation would not in any way encourage or permit the government to investigate or take action against protected speech-based and expressive activities.

In academia, only Jews are seen as unworthy of having a sovereign state.

In fact, Irvine provides the strongest evidence that the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act is needed now more than ever. It is dismaying, but not surprising, that these two administrators and groups like JVP would rather misrepresent the text and constitutional soundness of the proposed legislation than address the culture of anti-Semitic hate that has arisen around the country, particularly at universities.

Academia has unconsciously revealed that Jews and Israelis are the canaries in the coal mine. If universities are indicators of social trends, then anti-Semitism is becoming more acceptable in the guise of anti-Zionism. Only Jews are seen as unworthy of having a sovereign state, thanks to various sins past and present.

Such attitudes are quite common on university campuses, and are protected by "academic freedom." Yet it is also another reason for the growing gap between academia and the public; on moral issues, like defending democracy against jihadi terror, Americans and its elected officials are learning that universities are choosing their own way to define racism which may not always align with reality.

Asaf Romirowsky is the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.meforum.org/6487/anti-semitism-awareness-act

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Jimmy Carter's Lifelong Pursuit of a Palestinian State - A.J. Caschetta

by A.J. Caschetta

Unfortunately, Carter gets too much credit for Camp David. He almost botched the whole deal with two ill-advised strategies

Perhaps sensing that he would soon have to relinquish his position as America's worst ex-president, Jimmy Carter reminded everyone last month how he earned the title with yet another call for the U.S. to recognize a Palestinian state. Carter's call is a departure from American diplomacy, which insists, per UN Resolution 338, that an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement can only be reached through negotiations "between the parties."

Carter's presidency was mired in bad foreign policy decisions, and his post-presidency has been marred with excusing terrorism, attempting to revise history, and meddling in the affairs of every subsequent occupant of the White House – especially where the Middle East, which Carter considers his forte, is concerned. At each stage of his post-presidency, he has advocated on behalf of the Palestinians and against Israel, a nation he considers an apartheid state.

The Carter presidency is notable mostly for its failures: a 21.5% prime interest rate, the aborted April 1980 mission to rescue American hostages held in Iran, and dreary speeches to the nation, like the "crisis of confidence" or "malaise" speech. The only bright spot, and the one achievement upon which he has built his post-presidency reputation, is the Egyptian-Israeli peace deal known as the Camp David Accords. Were it not for that lone foreign policy success during his presidency, few would listen to Jimmy Carter today.

At each stage of his post-presidency, Carter has advocated on behalf of the Palestinians against Israel.

Unfortunately, Carter gets too much credit for Camp David. He almost botched the whole deal with two ill-advised strategies: bringing the USSR into the negotiations and insisting on a comprehensive deal that would create a Palestinian state.

Egypt had been moving out of the Soviet orbit long before Camp David. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat wrote in his autobiography: "I wanted to put the Soviet Union in its place... to tell the Russians that the will of Egypt was entirely Egyptian; I wanted to tell the whole world that we are always our own masters. Whoever wished to talk to us should come over and do it, rather than approach the Soviet Union."

In a secret meeting on September 16, 1977 in Morocco, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Hassan Tuhami conducted the second round of negotiations, without the assistance or even the knowledge of anyone in the Carter administration. At that meeting, Tuhami told Dayan that Sadat "do[es] not wish to be in touch with the Soviet Union, but only with the U.S."

The other flaw in Carter's plans was his attempt to involve the Arab states in a deal that would create a Palestinian state, even after Sadat made it clear that he was pursuing a bilateral arrangement with Israel. Sadat told the American ambassador in Cairo that the negotiations "are getting lost in the papers," meaning the process Carter was cooking.

A few weeks into his presidency, Carter spoke about the Palestinians in a way that no previous U.S. president had ever spoken. Abandoning the positions of every prior administration since Harry S. Truman's, he said: "There has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years."

Jimmy Carter had nothing to do with the defining moment that made bilateral Israel-Egyptian negotiations possible.

Though contrary to U.S. official policy at the time, Carter even reached out secretly to Yassir Arafat, only to be snubbed by the PLO leader.

Carter's two errors converged when U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko announced a return to the 1973 Geneva Conference in a joint statement. An incensed Sadat rejected the call and soon made his own historic trip to Israel. It was the defining moment that made bilateral negotiations possible, and Jimmy Carter had nothing to do with it.

In the best book on the topic, Heroic Diplomacy, Kenneth W. Stein describes the American reaction to Sadat's trip:

In Washington there was a sense of disarray and surprise, because Carter and Brzezinski were particularly immersed in getting to Geneva. The administration had not been consulted, and the American game plan was thrown out of kilter.

Sadat went to Israel, breaking what Stein calls "the Arab psychological barrier by recognizing the existence and legitimacy of the Jewish state.

Menachem Begin soon made his own historic trip to Egypt and the peace accord they eventually signed in 1979 bowed neither to Carter's comprehensive negotiating formula nor to his demand for a Palestinian state.

It is no accident that Begin and Sadat were co-recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 -- the year before the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty was signed. The brave actions each man took paved the way for the treaty. Jimmy Carter, whose advocacy for a Palestinian state almost made the treaty impossible, got his Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 -- largely because a politicized Nobel Committee sought to reward him for undercutting George W. Bush's response to 9/11.

Carter left office convinced that he could have brokered a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement.

Carter came into office believing he could personally arrange an Israeli-Arab peace deal. After losing his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan, he left office convinced that he could have finalized a deal in his second term, and has been, in Asaf Romirowsky's words, "practicing foreign affairs without an electoral mandate" ever since.

After Hamas won control of the Palestinian parliament in the 2006 election, Carter fretted in the Washington Post that, as Hamas is a terrorist organization, the West would henceforth be unable to distribute aid in the territories and thereby further "alienate the already oppressed and innocent Palestinians." Carter seemed unconcerned that these same "innocents" had just elected a terrorist organization to represent them.

Carter receiving a warm reception by Gaza standards, June 2009.

In 2014 Carter wrote in Foreign Policy that the West needs to recognize Hamas' "legitimacy as a political actor" in order to facilitate peace in Gaza. Here he was echoing his former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's November 2007 open letter to President George W. Bush urging him to open "a genuine dialogue with the organization." This is the same Brzezinski who suggested in 2008 that a President Obama might order the downing of Israeli airplanes should they cross into Iraqi airspace on a mission to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.

Carter needs to ask himself why the world should accept a Palestinian state comprised of the highest concentration of Muslims who believe that suicide bombing is justified when carried out "against civilian targets in order to defend Islam from its enemies." Why should the U.S. accept a nation ruled by terrorists who have repeatedly killed Americans, even when we were there to offer scholarships to Palestinian students? And why should Israel to accept a state on its borders that does not recognize its own right to exist?

The world should not confuse admiration for Jimmy Carter's charitable and philanthropic work and joy that he beat brain cancer with the delusion that he was an effective president whose wisdom can see us through troubled times 35 years after he left office.

A.J. Caschetta is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Source: http://www.meforum.org/6469/jimmy-carter-pursuit-of-palestinian-state

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PM Netanyahu's Message to the Iranian People - PM Binyamin Netanyahu

by PM Binyamin Netanyahu

WATCH: Israel's Prime Minister sends special message to the Iranian people, says, "You are shackled by a theocratic tyranny."

Israeli President Binyamin Netanyahu posted on Facebook on Saturday night, "I plan to speak soon with President Trump about how to counter the threat of the Iranian regime which calls for Israel's destruction.

"But it struck me recently that I've spoken a lot about the Iranian regime and not enough about the Iranian people, or for that matter, to the Iranian people.

"So I hope this message reaches every Iranian - young and old, religious and secular, man and woman.

"I know you'd prefer to live without fear. I know you'd want to be able to speak freely, to love who you want without the fear of being tortured or hung from a crane. I know you'd like to surf the web freely and not have to see videos like this one using a virtual private network to circumvent censorship.

"You have a proud history. You have a rich culture. Tragically, you are shackled by a theocratic tyranny.

"In a free Iran you will once again be able to flourish without limit. But today, a cruel regime is trying to keep you down.

"I'll never forget the images of brave young students hungry for change gunned down in the streets of Tehran in 2009; and I'll never forget beautiful Neda Sultan gasping for her last breath on that sidewalk.

"This ruthless regime continues to deny you your freedom. It prevents thousands of candidates from competing in elections. It steals money from your poor to fund a mass murderer like Assad.

"By calling daily for Israel's destruction, the regime hopes to instill hostility between us.
This is wrong. We are your friend, not your enemy. We've always distinguished between the Iranian people and the Iranian regime.

"The regime is cruel – the people are not; the regime is aggressive – the people are warm.
I yearn for the day when Israelis and Iranians can once again visit each other freely in Tehran and Esfahan, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

"The fanatics must not win. Their cruelty must not conquer our compassion.

"Our two peoples can work together for a more peaceful and hopeful future for both of us. We must defeat terror and tyranny and we must ensure that freedom and friendship win the day," Netanyahu concluded.


PM Binyamin Netanyahu

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/223609

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Most Israelis support sovereignty over Judea and Samaria - Shimon Cohen

by Shimon Cohen

A new poll finds that 75% of Israelis support sovereignty in Judea and Samaria in some form, while only 7% support a Palestinian state

A new poll finds that the vast majority of the Israeli population would like to see Israeli sovereignty being applied over Judea and Samaria. Only seven percent of the public is interested in establishing a Palestinian state in these areas.

The poll, released on Thursday, was conducted between January 10 and 15 among a representative sample of the adult Jewish public in Israel, by the Maagor Mohot Research Institute directed by Prof. Yitzhak Katz. The poll surveyed a random probability sample of 514 responders online, with a 4.5% margin of error.

29 percent of those asked support the establishment of autonomy in Judea and Samaria under Israeli sovereignty, 19 percent support a gradual application of Israeli sovereignty, while 29 percent believe that Israeli sovereignty should be fully and immediately applied. Only seven percent supported the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. 18 percent replied with 'I don’t know'.

Calculating the percentages of respondents with an opinion (that is without the respondents who replied 'I do not know'), the balance of the results is as follows: 35% support autonomy under the sovereignty of Israel, 21% support a gradual Israeli sovereignty, 35% prefer immediate and full Israeli sovereignty and 9% support establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria.

The poll also reveals that the vast majority of the Israeli public believes that a Palestinian state will not be established because of persistent refusal on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs. The poll was taken ahead of the upcoming sovereignty convention, scheduled to be held in Jerusalem on February 12, 2017, by the Women in Green movement and the Besheva newspaper. Its main points are being released now, ahead of the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu is a man of history,” said Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar of the Sovereignty Now movement founded by Women in Green. “This is a historic opportunity to lead Israel forward to sovereignty and peace. The people of Israel are ready for sovereignty – now.”

“The Trump Administration has given clear signals that now is the time for Israel to dream big,” said Sam Solomon of Sovereignty Now. “The people of Israel are ready, our strongest ally America is ready, and now we call upon our leadership to rise to this historic opportunity to lead Israel to sovereignty and peace.”


Shimon Cohen

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/223563

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