Beware wishful thinking.

 

by Yoram Ettinger

 

Unstable Mideast makes Judea, Samaria crucial for Israel’s security

 

In 1967, Israel demolished the military forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Consequently, Israel developed the "Low Probability Arab Offensive" concept. The 1973 War - along with Mideast unpredictability and objective intelligence constraints - devastated that concept, threatening the Jewish State with oblivion.

 

In 2003, following the US occupation of Iraq, Israel recycled the "Low Probability" concept. Israel assumed that the US military in Iraq precluded the possibility of a conventional Arab offensive on Israel's eastern front – a lethal threat to Israel's "soft belly" (Jerusalem and greater Tel Aviv).

 

However, in 2009, that concept has been rendered obsolete by the gradual US evacuation of Iraq and by the lowered US military profile in the Mideast, which have energized Mideast radicals. The gradual US withdrawal from Iraq should free Israel from the "Low Probability" delusion, thus preventing a 1973 War-like disaster. It should put to rest the illusion that the US military presence in Iraq is a fixture, thus supposedly permitting dramatic cuts in Israel's defense budget, while lowering the critical significance of the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria to Israel's survival.

 

The potential implications of the drastic change in US policy – from an offensive and defiant posture to one of retreat and engagement – highlight the unpredictable, treacherous and brutal nature of the Mideast. It mandates a very high security threshold, especially for the besieged Jewish State.

 

For instance, in 1969, Libya was transformed abruptly from a US to a Soviet ally. The largest US (overseas) air force base, Wheelus, became, overnight, a Soviet base. In 1979, Iran was switched violently from the "US Policeman" in the Gulf to a chief "Anti-US Gangster." In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran in violation of their peace treaty, while avoiding US surveillance facilities in the region.

 

In 1989, the Communist USSR collapsed and policy-makers deluded themselves about peace dividends and the end of the war era. However, the globe and particularly the Mideast, have become less-certain, less-predictable, less-stable, less-familiar and therefore much more threatening.

 

In 1990, Iraq violated its peace treaty with Kuwait, plundering and raping the sheikhdom. In 1993, the Israel-PLO Oslo Accord was concluded and Shimon Peres authored "The New Middle East," claiming that borders and territory lost their significance. But, instead of peace, the Oslo Process ushered in an unprecedented wave of hate-education, non-compliance and terrorism. The IDF and Israel's Secret Service had to reenter Judea and Samaria, in order to defend Israel's "soft belly" in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the 9-15 miles coastal plain (pre-1967 Israel).

 

In 1948-9, Jordan's King Abdullah broke his commitment to Golda Meir to refrain from fighting the Jewish State. In 1966, King Hussein breached his commitment – to the US – to prohibit US-made tanks from crossing the Jordan River. In 1967 and in 1973, King Hussein was forced by Egypt and Syria to join the wars against Israel.

 

During 1968-1970, King Hussein provided the PLO with logistical and operational bases for anti-Israel terrorism. In 1990, King Hussein collaborated with Saddam Hussein. How would the toppling of Jordan's Hashemite regime (by pro-Iran, pro-Syria, or pro-Hamas or PLO terrorists) impact the Israel-Jordan peace treaty and the potency of the Eastern Arab Front threat on the Jewish State?!

 

The expected completion of the US retreat from Iraq and the minimization of the US as a global policeman would exacerbate local, regional and global conflicts in the Mideast, would intensify pro-Arab Russian, Chinese and North Korean involvement, would escalate Iranian and Syrian belligerence and would fuel Islamic terrorist subversion against Arab regimes in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Sheikhdoms.

 

The progressive US withdrawal from Iraq sheds light on the potential of uncertainty, instability, treachery, non-compliance and violence in the Mideast, irrespective of Israel's policy or existence.

 

Mideast precedents behoove the Jewish State to base its policy on realistic Mideast scenarios and not on lethal wishful thinking, such as the "Low Probability Concept." The Mideast requires (especially) Israel to maintain a high security threshold, which protects its most vulnerable eastern flank: The mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria, which constitute the "Golan Heights" of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv; the most effective tank obstacle in the region (3,000ft steep slope dominating the Jordan Valley in the east); a dream platform for invading the 9-15 miles sliver of flat land along the Mediterranean Sea (2,000ft moderate slope in the western mountain ridge).

 

 

Yoram Ettinger

 

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

 

Do Palestinians want peace?

 

by  Ami Isseroff

 It's not the first time Palestinian officials or Fateh officials have said frankly that they have no intention of keeping a peace agreement, and probably it won't be the last.  According to Palestinian Media Watch,  Fateh  activist Kifah Radaydeh said,

"Fatah is facing a challenge, because [Fatah] says that we perceive peace as one of the strategies, but we say that all forms of the struggle exist, and we do not rule out the possibility of the armed struggle or any other struggle. The struggle exists in all its forms, on the basis of what we are capable of at a given time, and according to what seems right...

What exactly do we want? It has been said that we are negotiating for peace, but our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; and the goal is Palestine. I do not negotiate in order to achieve peace. I negotiate for Palestine, in order to achieve a state." 

 

The young lady is convincing, engaging and well worth watching. Click to see video if it is not displayed below.

  

Others have said it much more explicitly in the past. In April of 2006, one "Abu Ahmed,"  Fatah member and leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in northern Gaza was quoted as saying:

 

The base of our Fatah movement keeps dreaming of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa and Akko..."  "There is no change in our position. Abbas recognizes Israel because of pressure that the Zionists and the Americans are exercising on him. We understand this is part of his obligations and political calculations."

 

 

More recently, in 2009,  Fatah Central Comittee member and PLO representative Abbas Zaki said,

 

Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine.

 

A recent FAFO poll asked Palestinians what their vision of peace with Israel was. The question and the major responses as FAFO reports:

 

The survey asked about people's hopes for a future political solution to the conflict with Israel...:

Two states (35 %; Fatah supporters 47 % versus Hamas supporters 21 %)

One Islamic state (33 %; Fatah supporters 17 % versus Hamas supporters 58 %)

One state with equal rights for all (20 %; Fatah followers 22 % versus Hamas followers 12 %)

Only 35% of Palestinians supported a two state solution, while 53% supported one state solutions. 9% "didn't know."

Is it really surprising that Israeli leaders are skeptical about the prospects for peace? Is it possible for even the most sincere advocates of peace, even for pro-Palestinian analysts, to believe that perhaps Palestinians do not want a state, or want a state that Israel  could never accept? Evidently it is, as Sever Plocker points out.

Can we understand that it is legitimate, in these circumstances, and in view of the experience of the Second Intifada, to be at least somewhat skeptical about the possibility of achieving peace with the Palestinians?  Can we admit that not every Israeli politician who is not eager for peace negotiations and optimistic about the outcome, and who is not willing to put their political career on the line in order to back another round of disastrous negotiations, is necessarily a "right wing ultranationalist extremist?"  

From his point of view, US President Barack Obama needs to take into account the possibility that if the Palestinians don't want a two state solution, they will never agree to any peace proposals. He will have forced numerous concessions from Israel  but still will not get peace in the Middle East. The Arabs will blame the United States and Israel, and the usual people in the United States will blame Israel.

That does not mean that we should not try. Let the failure be blamed on the Palestinians if there is to be a failure. But let's keep our eyes open.

Ami Isseroff

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

 

Fatah Official: “Our Goal is Not Peace, but Rather Palestine”

 

by Hillel Fendel

"Our goal has never been peace," says a Fatah official in a PA TV panel. "Peace is a means; the goal is Palestine" – meaning the conquest of Israel.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), directed by Itamar Marcus, reports on a panel discussion on a television program of the Fatah organization broadcast this past week. Headed by Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah is considered the more moderate wing of the Palestinian Authority, compared with Hamas.

The panel discussion shows that in actuality, Fatah is no less firm than Hamas in seeking the goal of Israel's destruction. Kifah Radaydeh, the deputy head of the Jerusalem chapter of Fatah, says openly that the PA will resume violence and terror against Israel when Fatah is "capable," and "according to what seems right."

"It has been said that we are negotiating for peace," she further stated, "but our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; the goal is Palestine." 

Radaydeh is considered a "promising and rising young force" in Fatah, according to a PMW source, "and this report will likely give her extra prominence. But we have to publicize her words in order that the truth about the PA and Fatah be known."

PMW was established in 1996 to "gain an understanding of Palestinian society through the monitoring of the Palestinian Arabic language media and schoolbooks," its website states. The organization "analyzes Palestinian Authority culture and society from numerous perspectives, including studies on summer camps, poetry, schoolbooks, religious ideology, crossword puzzles, and more. [It play the critical role of documenting the contradictions between the image the Palestinians present to the world in English and the messages to their own people in Arabic."

Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, writing this latest PMW report, emphasize that when Fatah refers to "Palestine," as when Radaydeh says the "goal is Palestine," the reference is to all of Israel. As proof, it is noted that the Fatah flag still shows the map of Israel under rifles.

In addition, Fatah MP Najat Abu Bakr said in a PA TV interview last year that Fatah's goal remains the destruction of Israel, but that their political plan is to focus on returning to the 1967 borders. "It doesn't mean that we don't want the 1948 borders," Abu Bakr said, referring to all of Israel," but rather that "our current political program is to say that we want the 1967 borders."

Just four months ago, senior PA official Mohammed Dahlan stressed that Fatah adamantly refuses to recognize Israel, and that even the Palestinian Authority's recognition is only for the sake of receiving foreign aid:

             "…the Fatah movement does not recognize Israel, even today... [such recognition i required of the government but not of the Fatah, so that this government will be able to offer the necessary assistance, to carry out the necessary reconstruction, to offer assistance to the sick, to bring relief to needy families... This can be dealt with [onl by a government that has relations with the international community, one that is acceptable to the international community, in order that we can work together and benefit from the international community." 

 

 

Hillel Fendel

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

 

Africa Vs. the Arab World.

 

By Anne Bayefsky

Why does Obama treat the two so differently?

Speaking in Ghana on Saturday President Obama lectured Africans on local repression, corruption, brutality, good governance and accountability. The startling contrast to his June speech in Cairo was revealing. Stroking Muslim and Arab nations has become the hallmark of Obama's foreign policy.

In Egypt, he chose not to utter the words "terrorism" or "genocide." In Egypt, there was nothing "brutal" he could conjure up, no "corruption" and no "repression".

In Ghana, with a 70% Christian population, he mentioned "good governance" seven times and added direct calls upon his audience to "make change from the bottom up." He praised "people taking control of their destiny" and pressed "young people" to "hold your leaders accountable."

He made no such calls for action by the people of Arab states—despite the fact that not a single Arab country is "free," according to the latest Freedom House global survey.

Before the Muslim world Obama donned the role of apologist-in-chief. Over and over again his examples of shortfalls in the protection of rights and freedoms were American: the "prison at Guantanamo Bay," "rules on charitable giving [that] have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation," impediments to the "choice" of Muslim women to shroud their bodies.

Christian Africa was to be treated to no such self-flagellation. In a rare tongue-lashing for Africans from any American president, he chastised: "It's easy to point fingers and to pin the blame of these problems on others. Yes, a colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict … But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy … or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants … tribalism and patronage and nepotism … and … corruption."

He might equally have said to the Arab and Muslim world: "It's easy to scapegoat Israel and blame your problems on the presence of Jews—albeit on a fraction of 1% of the territory inhabited by the Arab world—but Israel is not responsible for poverty, illiteracy, torture, trafficking, slavery and oppression rampant across your countries." But he did not.

In Ghana he pointed to specific heroes that had exposed human rights abuse, singling out by name a courageous investigative reporter. In Egypt, though journalists and bloggers are routinely threatened, jailed and worse, no such brave soul came to mind.

In a Christian African nation he said, "If we are honest, for far too many Africans, conflict is a part of life, as constant as the sun. There are wars over land and wars over resources. And it is still far too easy for those without conscience to manipulate whole communities into fighting among faiths and tribes."

To the Arab and Muslim world he could have said: "Since the day of Israel's birth Arab and Muslim countries have made conflict with Israel a part of life, warring over land and manipulating whole communities into fighting in the name of Islam to render the area Judenrein."

Instead, he turned on the only democracy in the Middle East and said the presence of Jews on Arab-claimed territory—settlements—is an affront to be "stopped." It didn't matter that agreements require ultimate ownership of this territory to be determined by negotiation or that apartheid Palestine is hardly a worthy pursuit.

From Ghana he chided Africans: "No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there. And now is the time for that style of governance to end."

For an Arab and Muslim audience he cooed: "America will defend itself, respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities, which are also threatened."

Ghanaians will likely turn the other cheek, secure enough to take it and even be grateful for the spotlight. But Obama's double-standard is not a victimless crime. The disparity between the scolding he gave in Ghana and the love-in he held in Cairo illuminates an incoherent and dangerous agenda.

In his lofty, but empty, rhetoric in Ghana, Obama promised "we must stand up to inhumanity in our midst," pledged "a commitment … to sanction and stop" warmongers and embraced the Zimbabwe non-governmental organization that "braved brutal repression to stand up for the principle that a person's vote is their sacred right."

These are devastating words for Iranians struggling valiantly to keep the hope of democracy alive but forced to bear witness to the contradiction. Betrayed, they have watched the Obama administration pledge to move forward on negotiations with illegally ensconced Iranian thugs—at the very same time their victims are being rounded up, tortured and readied for show-trials in advance of certain execution.

On Friday, Obama, and the rest of the G-8 with his blessing, announced that thinking about more sanctions on Iran can wait until September. And then we can expect yet another round of Security Council dickering over minimalist responses to more Iranian stalling tactics—until an Iranian nuclear weapon is inevitable. Though it is 2,202 days since the U.N.'s atomic energy agency first declared that Iran was violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Obama pretends legitimizing those same nuclear-proliferating fascists makes it more likely the clock will stop ticking.

Iranians standing up for their allegedly "sacred rights" know Obama has it exactly backwards. Speechifying about "our interconnected world" and "common interests" in Ghana was cold comfort to the voices of Muslim dissidents and Jewish victims deserted in the Obama wilderness.

 

Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust.

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

 

Why the Oslo Accords should be abrogated by Israel Part I

 

by  Louis Rene Beres -

 

1^st part of 2

 

Benjamin Netanyahu, the new Prime Minister of Israel, intends to honor those portions of the Oslo Accords that have already become "facts on the ground." Although this intention would appear to support the authoritative expectations of international law, exactly the opposite is true. As the following argument makes clear, international law now requires abrogation, not compliance, with these invalid and illegal agreements.

 

The Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO are in violation of international law. Israel, therefore, is now obligated to abrogate these nontreaty agreements. A comparable argument could be made regarding PLO obligations, but this would make little jurisprudential sense in light of that particular nonstate party`s intrinsic incapacity to enter into a legal arrangement with Israel.

 

Taken by itself, the fact that the Oslo accords do not constitute authentic treaties under the Vienna Convention - because they link a state with a nonstate party - does not call for abrogation. But as the nonstate party in this case just happens to be a terrorist organization whose leaders must be punished for their egregious crimes, any agreement with this party that offers rewards rather than punishments is entirely null and void. Significantly, in view of the peremptory expectation known in law as Nullum crimen sine poena, "No crime without a punishment," the state party in such an agreement - here the State of Israel - violates international law by honoring the agreement.

 

According to Principle I of the binding Nuremberg Principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment." It is from this principle, which applies with particular relevance to Hostes humani generis ("Common enemies of humankind") and which originates in three separate passages of the Jewish Torah, that each state`s obligation to seek out and prosecute terrorists derives. Hence, for Israel to honor agreements with terrorists - agreements that require, among other pertinent violations - the release of thousands of other terrorists - is to dishonor the very meaning of international law.

 

Is Yasser Arafat personally a terrorist? In the U.S. case of Klinghoffer v. Palestine Liberation Organization, the court answered in the affirmative. In the Israeli courts, a petition to charge Yasser Arafat with terrorist crimes was submitted to Israel`s High Court of Justice in May 1994. This petition, filed by Shimon Prachik, an officer in the IDF reserves, and Moshe Lorberaum, who was injured in a 1978 bus bombing carried out by the PLO, called for Arafat`s arrest. The petition noted that Arafat, prima facie, had been responsible for numerous terror attacks in Israel and abroad, including murder, airplane hijacking, hostage-taking, letter-bombing and hijacking of ships on the high seas. The petitioner`s allegation of Arafat`s direct personal responsibility for terrorism was seconded and confirmed by Dr. Ahmad Tibi, Arafat`s most senior adviser: "The person responsible on behalf of the Palestinian people for everything that was done in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Yasser Arafat," said Dr. Tibi on July 13, 1994, "and this man shook hands with Yitzhak Rabin."

 

Terrorism is not the only crime in which Arafat and many of the released Palestinian prisoners are complicit. Related Nuremberg-category crimes, including crimes of war and crimes against humanity, were also committed by these persons. In this connection, the new Prime Minister should recall that units of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) served with Saddam Hussein`s forces in occupied Kuwait, making them, and Yasser Arafat personally (the legal principle of command responsibility is known as respondeat superior, or "Let the Master Answer") responsible for multiple crimes of extraordinary horror and ferocity. And if these offenses were not enough of an affront to world law, many of the terrorists now being released from Israeli jails in furtherance of the Oslo accords are immediately accepting high positions in the Palestine Authority`s security forces.

 

Even if the nonstate party to the Oslo accords were not a terrorist organization, Israel would have entered into an agreement of unequal obligations, an agreement where the PLO would not be held under international law to the same standards of accountability. Several recent federal court decisions in the United States reaffirm that agreements between nonstate and state parties impose asymmetrical compliance expectations. For example, in a concurring statement in the case of Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, a 1981 civil suit in U.S. federal courts in which the plaintiffs were Israeli survivors and representatives of persons murdered in a terrorist bus attack in Israel in 1978, Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards stated: "../...I do not believe the law of nations imposes the same responsibility or liability on nonstate actors, such as the PLO, as it does on states and persons acting under color of state law."

 

The PLO, of course, is a terrorist organization, and Israel has no right to honor the Oslo accords` requirement to release convicted members of that organization. No government, in fact, has the right to lawfully pardon or grant immunity to terrorists with respect to criminally sanctionable violations of international law. In the United States, it is evident from the Constitution that the President`s power to pardon does not encompass violations of international law, and is limited to "Offenses against the United States." This limitation derives from a broader prohibition that binds all states, including Israel, namely the overriding claims of pertinent peremptory rules stemming from Higher Law or the Law of Nature. These claims are identified in Blackstone`s COMMENTARIES, which acknowledge that all law "results from those principles of natural justice, in which all the learned of every nation agree../..../.."

 

In its apprehension and incarceration of terrorists, Israel acted, however unintentionally, not only for itself, but on behalf of the entire community of states. Moreover, because some of the jailed terrorists had committed crimes against other states as well as against Israel, the government in Jerusalem cannot possibly pardon these offenses against other sovereigns. The Jewish State, therefore, possesses absolutely no right to grant immunity for terrorist violations of international law. No matter what might be permissible under its own Basic Law and the Oslo accords, any freeing of terrorists is legally incorrect. By its freeing of terrorists, Israel is guilty of what is known in law as a "denial of justice."

 

Israel`s obligation to abrogate the Oslo accords, as we have seen, stems from certain peremptory expectations of international law. Israel, however, has substantial rights of abrogation here apart from such expectations. These rights derive from the doctrine of Rebus sic stantibus. Defined literally as "So long as conditions remain the same," this doctrine of changed circumstances now augments Israel`s obligations to cease compliance with Oslo. This is because Israel`s traditional obligations to the accords ended promptly when a fundamental change occurred in those circumstances that existed at the effective dates of the accords and whose continuance formed a tacit condition of the accords` ongoing validity. This change, of course, involved multiple material breaches by the PLO, especially those concerning control of anti-Israel terrorism and extradition of terrorists. In short, Rebus sic stantibus has become pertinent for Israeli abrogation because of the profound change created by the PLO in the very circumstances that formed the cause, motive and rationale of consent.

 

According to Oslo expectations, Arafat should be actively committed to control of anti-Israel terrorism. Yet, as THE JERUSALEM POST pointed out correctly in a mid-March 1996 editorial, "Arafat not only shelters terrorists; he lets them incite, recruit, organize, train, arm, raise funds, and launch operations from areas under his control. This is now indisputable."

 

The "head of the snake," admitted former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, "is in Gaza." And it is in Gaza, PLO-controlled Gaza, that Hamas - allegedly at odds with PLO - has been fomenting much of its terror campaign against Israel. It is the Palestinian security services that sustain this Hamas campaign. In the words of THE JERUSALEM POST:

 

"It was the Hamas leadership in Gaza which decided on terrorist strikes and issued operational orders for the bus bombings. It was in Gaza that the Hamas military organization trained suicide bombers and assembled explosives. It was in Gaza that "the engineer" Yihye Ayyash found shelter until he was killed, and where his successor Mohammed Dief has been living openly. It was in Gaza that Arafat`s Preventive Security chief was negotiating with Dief - a close friend - both before and after the first bus bombing. He knew of Dief`s involvement in the bombing and did nothing either to detain him or prevent the next outrage."

 

Israel`s obligation to terminate the Oslo accords stems also from a related principle of national self-preservation. Under this peremptory norm, any agreement may be terminated unilaterally following changes in conditions that make performance of the agreement injurious to fundamental rights, especially the rights of existence and independence. Known in law as "rights of necessity," this norm was explained with particular lucidity by none other than Thomas Jefferson. In his "Opinion on the French Treaties," written on April 28, 1793, Jefferson stated that when performance, in international agreements, "becomes impossible, nonperformance is not immoral. So if performance becomes self- destructive to the party, the law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligation to others." Later, in that same document, Jefferson wrote: "The nation itself, bound necessarily to whatever its preservation and safety require, cannot enter into engagements contrary to its indispensable obligations." Israel, the reader should recall, has an "indispensable obligation" to endure.

 

 

Louis Rene Beres                                                    

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

 

Why the Oslo Accords should be abrogated by Israel Part II

 

by  Louis Rene Beres -

 

2^nd part of 2

 

How, exactly, do the Oslo accords impair this obligation? Here is what THE JERUSALEM POST had to say about the expected consequences of Oslo II:

 

" ../...the implementation of Oslo II signals the relinquishment of Israel`s security control over the territories and the assumption of such control by the PLO. For the first time, there will be a large PLO army on the outskirts of Israel`s major population centers, and it will be in control of strategic areas which dominate Israel`s heartland. Soon, Israel will be able to control neither the influx of Palestinians from refugee camps in neighboring countries nor the importation of arms. To expect such an arrangement to bring anything but unrest, terrorism and ultimately war, is to live in a world of make believe."

 

To better understand this "world of make believe," it is instructive to consider the Charter of Hamas, another terrorist organization that is central to current difficulties in implementing "peace." According to this Charter:

 

Peace initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad../..../..There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad../..../..In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad../..../..We must imprint on the minds of generations of Muslims that the Palestinian problem is a religious one, to be dealt with on this premise../..../.."I swear by that who

holds in His Hands the Soul of Muhammad! I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill;, assault and kill, assault and kill.

 

 

Regarding relationships with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Hamas Charter offers the following: "The PLO is among the closest to the Hamas, for it constitutes a father, a brother, a relative, a friend. Can a Muslim turn away from his father, his brother, his relative of his friend? Our homeland is one, our calamity is one, our destiny is one and our enemy is common to both of us../..../.." On the primacy of hatred toward Judaism, not Israel (i.e., Israel is despised because it is Jewish), the Hamas Charter states: "Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. `Let the eyes of the cowards not fall asleep.`"

 

After the assassination of terrorist Yechya Ayyash, known widely as "The Engineer," Yasser Arafat delivered a eulogy in Dura, near Hebron. Speaking before a large crowd of Hamas supporters, Arafat praised all "Palestinian martyrs," including those who had murdered Israeli women and children in schools, buses and homes. Referring to the imminent takeover of Jerusalem from the Jews, Arafat expressed confidence that, "in a few months, we will pray together at the Al-Aksa mosque,:" adding that "those who don`t like it can go and drink the water of the Dead Sea."

 

At a eulogy given on June 15, 1995, for Abed Al Karim Al Aklok, a former PLO official, Arafat remarked: "We are all seekers of martyrdom in the path of truth and right toward Jerusalem the capital of the State of Palestine../..../..We will continue this difficult Jihad, this long Jihad, this arduous Jihad, in the path of martyrs - via death - the path of sacrifice../..../.." On January 30, 1996, speaking to 40 Arab diplomats at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, Arafat`s topic was: "The Impending Total Collapse of Israel." Said Arafat, "We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem../..../..All the rich Jews who will get compensation will travel to America." Further: "We of the PLO will now concentrate all our efforts on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps. Within five years we will have six to seven million Arabs living on the West Bank and in Jerusalem../..../..You understand that we plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State../..../..I have no usefor Jews; they are and remain Jews. We now need all the help we can get from you in our battle for a united Palestine under total Arab-Moslem domination."

 

Regarding the Oslo accords and Israel`s vulnerability to war, Israeli security is now increasingly dependent upon nuclear weapons and strategy. Faced with a codified and substantial loss of territories - a loss that might still be enlarged by transfer to Syria of the Golan Heights - the Jewish State will have to decide on how to compensate for its diminished strategic depth. While this shrinkage does not necessarily increase Israel`s existential vulnerability to unconventional missile attack, it surely does increase that state`s susceptibility to attacking ground forces and to subsequent enemy occupation. And the loss of strategic depth will almost certainly be interpreted by enemy states as a significant weakening of Israel`s overall defense posture, an interpretation that could lead to great enemy incentives to strike first.

 

Should Israel`s sacrifice of strategic depth occasioned by the Oslo accords result in a Palestinian state, the geostrategic victory of the Islamic world would be complemented by something less tangible but no less critical: an Arab and Iranian perception of an ongoing and unstoppable momentum against the Jewish State, a jihad-centered perception of military inevitability that would reiterate the policies of war. Recognizing such perceptions, Israel could be forced to take its bomb out of the "basement," and/or it could have to accept a greater willingness to launch preemptive strikes against enemy hard targets.

 

For their part, certain Arab states and/or Iran would respond to such Israeli decisions. Made aware of Israel`s policy shifts - shifts that would stem from both Israel`s Oslo-generated territorial vulnerabilities and from its awareness of enemy perceptions spawned by the Oslo-generated creation of Palestine, these enemy states could respond in more or less parallel fashion. Here, preparing openly for nuclearization and aggression against Israel, these states would illustrate dramatically certain far-reaching results of the Oslo accords - results that are still generally unrecognized and that provide, together with other above-listed rationales, a fully authoritative basis for permissible abrogation.

 

There is one last point that would need to be emphasized by Israel`s new Government. Contrary to widely disseminated but wholly erroneous allegations, a Palestinian state did not exist before 1967 or 1948. A state of Palestine was not promised by authoritative U.N. Security Council Resolution # 242. Indeed, a state of Palestine has never existed.

 

As a nonstate legal entity, Palestine ceased to exist in 1948, when Great Britain relinquished its League of Nations mandate. When, during the 1948-49 War of Independence, Judea/Samaria and Gaza came under illegal control of Jordan and Egypt respectively, these aggressor states did not put an end to an already-existing state. Fromn the Biblical Period (ca.1350 BCE to 586 BCE) to the British Mandate (1918-48), the land named by the Romans after the ancient Philistines (a naming intended to punish and demean the Jews) was controlled exclusively by non-Palestinian elements. Significantly, however, a continuous chain of Jewish possession of the land was legally recognized after World War I at the San Remo Conference of April 1920. There, a binding treaty was signed in which Great Britain was given mandatory authority over Palestine (the area had been ruled by the Ottoman Turks since 1516) to prepare it to become the "national home for the Jewish People."

 

Palestine, according to the treaty, comprised territories encompassing what are now the states of Jordan and Israel, including Judea/Samaria and Gaza. Present-day Israel, including Judea/Samaria and Gaza, comprises only twenty-two percent of Palestine as defined and ratified at the San Remo Peace Conference. In 1922, Great Britain unilaterally and illegally split off 78 percent of the lands promised to the Jews - all of Palestine east of the Jordan River - and gave it to Abdullah, the non-Palestinian son of the Sharif of Mecca. Eastern Palestine now took the name Transjordan, which it retained until April 1949, when it was renamed as Jordan.

 

From the moment of its creation, Transjordan was closed to all Jewish migration and settlement, a clear betrayal of the British promise in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and a patent contravention of its Mandatory obligations. On July 20, 1951, a Palestinian assassinated King Abdullah because of his hostility to Palestinian nationalist aspirations. Several years prior to Abdullah`s killing, in 1947, the newly-formed United Nations, rather than designate the entire land west of the Jordan River as the Jewish National Homeland, enacted a second partition. Ironically, because this second fission again gave unfair advantage to the Arabs, Jewish leaders accepted the painful judgment while the Arab states rejected it.

 

On May 15, 1948, exactly one day after the State of Israel came into existence, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, declared to the tiny new nation founded upon the ashes of the Holocaust: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre../..../.." This genocidal declaration has been and remains to this day at the heart of all subsequent Arab orientations toward Israel. In 1967, almost twenty years after Israel`s entry into the community of nations, the Jewish State - as a result of its stunning military victory over Arab aggressor states - gained unintended control over Judea/Samaria and Gaza. Although the idea of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war is enshrined in the U.N. Charter, there existed no authoritative sovereign to whom the territories could be "returned." Israel could hardly have been expected to transfer these territories back to Jordan and Egypt, which had exercised unauthorized and cruel control since the Arab-initiated war of extermination in 1948-49. Moreover, the idea of Palestinian "self- determination" was only just beginning to emerge after the Six-Day War, and was not even codified in U.N. Security Council Resolution #242, which was adopted on November 22, 1967. For their part, the Arab states convened a summit in Khartoum in August 1967, concluding "No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it../..../.."

 

Prime Minister Netanyahu, please take heed. International law does not require compliance with the Oslo Accords. It requires abrogation of these illegal agreements.

 

 

Louis Rene Beres is Professor of International Law, Department of Political Science, Purdue University

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The four tools of delegitimization

 

by  Vic Rosenthal

I've talked about the 'information war' being waged against Israel, and how her enemies and their supporters are constantly trying to delegitimize her historically, legally and morally — in order to weaken Western support and clear the path for the physical destruction of the Jewish state that is their ultimate goal:

• Historically, they attempt to revise history to show that today's Jews have no roots in the Land of Israel

• Legally, they try to prove that Israel's creation was not justified and that her actions violate international law

• Morally, they accuse Israel as acting for the basest of motives and in the most despicable ways, to show that Israel does not deserve to exist as a nation

While reading the very biased Amnesty International report on alleged war crimes during the recent Gaza war, I started thinking about how they do these things. I've discussed the historical revisionism on several occasions. Today I want to write about how they try to distort perceptions of current events.

They use four basic tools:

1. Lies
2. Exaggerations
3. Facts without context
4. False imputation of motives

Lies are sometimes just stories about things that never happened. For example, it's said that such-and-such a woman was denied permission to leave Gaza for medical treatment, but upon investigation it turns out that she doesn't exist.

Or they can be elaborate hoaxes, such as the videotaped drama of the shooting of the boy Mohammed al-Dura. This was particularly notable because of the far-reaching consequences of the story — "al-Dura" became a rallying cry of the intifada — and the involvement of the well-known France II TV bureau chief Charles Enderlin and even the President of France at the time, Jacques Chirac

Exaggerations take advantage of the normal tendency to say "the truth lies somewhere in between" when two sides make opposing claims. Start with an outrageous exaggeration when the other side tells the truth, and you have automatically gained ground. An obvious example is the inflated Palestinian figure for civilian casualties in the Gaza war.

Sometimes an exaggeration changes not just the degree, but the nature of  something. Consider the accusation that Israel fired white phosphorus  munitions directly at civilians, a war crime. Israel did use white phosphorus, for smoke and illumination. There undoubtedly were some people injured by the residue which fell from air bursts of such shells.  But the number and severity of these incidents were multiplied beyond measure in Palestinian reports.

Facts without context: Pro-Arab NGOs say that the Israeli navy interferes with Gazan fishing boats. But they don't tell you the context — that the boats have been used to smuggle explosives, weapons and terrorists.

False imputation of motives: Palestinians say that Israel's actions are always designed to punish and humiliate them, not for legitimate security purposes. Israel is accused of deliberately targeting civilians in the Gaza war. But reports of civilian casualties caused international pressure which ultimately forced Israel to withdraw without achieving its military goals. The IDF was aware of this possibility from the beginning; is it logical that it would behave this way?

Note that the first three techniques make the fourth possible. A noncombatant is hurt — was it an accident or was it done on purpose? If such incidents are rare, you can infer that it is probably accidental. But if it seems to be part of a pattern, then maybe it was deliberate — and the lies, exaggerations and facts presented without context are intended precisely to establish such a pattern.

For example, the Amnesty International report mentioned above includes a number of unverifiable second-person atrocity stories, which it follows by accusing the IDF of remarkably evil intent.  Here is a quotation from the report with the implications of motive highlighted:

Much of the destruction was wanton and deliberate, and was carried out in a manner and circumstances which indicated that it could not be justified on grounds of military necessity. Rather, it was often the result of reckless and indiscriminate attacks, which were seemingly tolerated or even directly sanctioned up the chain of command, and which at times appeared intended to collectively punish local residents for the actions of armed groups. [my emphasis]

All of these techniques are designed to work together to produce an image of Israel as an outlaw nation. And they are effective, especially when they fall on the fertile ground of those who are disposed to believe — either for ideological reasons, or because they've already been conditioned to do so by the massive flow of propaganda that appears in most media today, or from a predisposition to antisemitism.

 

Vic Rosenthal

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