ISRAEL AND THE IDENTITY OF AMERICAN JEWS
WHY? WHAT? WHERE? HOW?
(Based on a joint project of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America and ARZA, The Association of Reform Zionists of America)
In the current international political climate, with Israel under fire from every direction, American Jews are facing a challenging question: “should I be engaged in the complicated process of thinking through how Israel might be meaningful to me.” If so, how? There is no single answer that will appeal to each of us. Please join us in an interactive discussion program exploring the various possible relationships with Israel. You are invited to consider the history of the relationship between American Jews and Israel. Explore together where Israel is today and how she got there.
Listening to various views, challenging ideas and learning to talk about Israel effectively:
This six-session curriculum to explore your relationship with Israel, will meet monthly at Portland Chapter of Hadassah office on Second Sunday of each month beginning September 12, 2010.
• Dual Identity and dual loyalty—what is a “Jewish State”?
• Background of the Israel—U.S. relationship
• Israel and the International Community
• Law of Return—what it really is, defining Jews-- a people? A nation? A religion? A culture?
• Slogans & Reality—Jerusalem—Occupation—Settlements—Two-States/one state
• Contemporary Issues—what’s going on in Israel today and how does it relate to the past, the future and your relationship with the Jewish State.
• How to talk about Israel effectively. What you wanted to say but didn’t know how.
6 Sessions beginning Sunday, September 12 from 10:00 to 12:00 am.
Drinks and snack to be provided
RSVP as soon as possible, we would like to keep the group small enough to keep discussion effective and to ensure adequate space and materials.
Monday, September 6, 2010
WHOSE ZOOMIN' WHO/ Obama's peace initiative
WHO’S ZOOMIN’ WHO?
With apologies to Aretha Franklin, this seemed most appropriate to describe what happened in Washington on Wednesday. The start of the face to face “peace” talks between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas.
The amount of diplomatic hot air in the room could have been mistaken for a חמסין (an extremely hot desert wind).
Starting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who opines, unconvincingly, “I understand very well the disappointments of the past”. If she did, she would not be sitting in that room drawing moral equivalency between the participants. Dante’s idea that the “hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality” describes the current situation. A group of people sitting in a room, none of whom want to be there, while all are fully aware that they will come to no acceptable agreement except the agreement to participate in this charade. Telling the truth would not be acceptable as it would force reality in and neutrality out.
What is the truth?
Mahmoud Abbas, as President of the Palestinian Authority, is unelected. His term as President expired in January 2009. No elections have been held, because he knows he cannot win. He is so weak politically that even if he wanted to sign a peace deal, which is doubtful, he has no power to enforce it. In his remarks he refers to his organization as the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) not the Palestinian Authority, which the West pretends is an actual governmental entity.
His statement that “we are not starting over” takes him back to the 1993 Oslo accords which he refers to as a “document of mutual recognition”, when have they actually recognized Israel? The Oslo Accords cost Israel over one thousand lives from terrorism. Yitzhak Rabin paid with his life for this attempt at peace, while Yasser Arafat was rewarded with power and prestige from the international community, while continuing his thuggery against his own people as well as Israel.
What this tells us is that the west is so desperate to have a “moderate” to deal with it is willing to grasp any straw, even in this case, a “strawman”. Abbas cannot hold an election for fear of losing it and his second in command Salaam Fayad received only 2% of the vote in the last election. Hamas, it is widely reported, would take over the West Bank if an election was held. It is clear the contest right now is not between Israel and the PA but between the PLO and Hamas. There are regular reports in Israeli and Arab news media that Hamas is gaining strength in the West Bank. If Hamas succeeds in its goal to take over this territory what will the U.S. do? Perhaps name Mahmoud Zahara, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, as the moderate. So far that is as realistic as any idea coming from either America or Europe.
Zahara states today on the Hamas website, that “Abbas does not represent the Palestinian people”. He sites the cowardly murder of four Israelis driving on a road (from which Israel removed checkpoints as a gesture of goodwill) as a “heroic operation”. Calls over the loudspeakers in Gaza to come out and celebrate this brutal action, were acted on immediately as we saw Palestinians in Gaza dancing and celebrating in the streets. Of course, Abbas had no choice, he had to denounce this, as his life and presidency exist because of the protection and support of the west’s unreal views on the Middle East.
Major Garrett, of Fox News reported on Thurday morning one of the silliest ideas coming from these “talks”. Divide Jerusalem in three, one part Arab, one part Jewish and the third part would be some type of international or third party controlled entity. This is indicative of the kind of nonsense these talks can inspire. Let’s examine this one idea, obviously presented by someone completely bereft of knowledge of Jerusalem’s recent past, as well as its ancient history.
Under the 1947 United Nations partition plan, the territory of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, would be divided into one part Arab, one part Jewish with Jerusalem internationalized. Did that work? Only the Jews agreed (unhappily) but still they agreed. The Arabs said NO and war ensued. The result was Jerusalem, no longer an internationalized city, falling into Jordanian hands during which time every Jew had to leave or die. Jewish property was confiscated and/or destroyed. The Jewish quarter was destroyed, the historical Hurva syngogue blown up, Jewish access to holy places forbidden. This situation remained until Israel reunited the city in 1967. From then until today it is open to all faiths equally although Jews have a little less equality in their effort to please everyone, a Jewish disease.
Jews may be slow learners, it did take nearly 2000 years to understand we cannot live without sovereignty, nonetheless we do eventually learn. There is overwhelming consensus among Jews that Jerusalem will not fall again.
Abbas and the PLO leadership say “We want a Palestinian state”. Let’s examine that: An Arab state in that area was declined in 1948. By 1967 it was determined by the Arabs that a different tactic was needed, as military attacks weren’t working. From now on they will call themselves “Palestinians”. Fine, call yourself whatever name you want even though the records of discussions in the United Nations concerning this area drew angry disagreement from these same people claiming they were not Palestinians but Arabs or Syrians (this area was once Greater Syria)
Up to this point, no one in the Arab world was calling for a Palestinian state, however we will accept they changed their minds as well as their name. What it takes to build a state if they really want one, is for another blog. For now the Palestinians have done very little except to depend on the west and oddly, Israel to provide for their economic well being. If we focus on what Abbas says he wants it is:
1: All settlement activities to cease, no Jews can live in Arab areas although there is no problem with Arabs living in Jewish areas where many do, in fact, live.
2. Gaza Embargo totally removed, although Abbas has no control over Gaza. How would he guarantee offensive weapons would not be shipped in to be used against Israel?
3. Remove the IDF from the West Bank. This is not serious since Abbas is well aware that the IDF presence is what keeps stability, thus keeping him alive.
4. All final status items, borders, refugees, etc should be debated now rather than at the end. This of course, is impossible without solving the most significant issue, the recognition of the Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, first.
Compare these requirements to those of Prime Minister Netanyahu:
1. No potential for mass smuggling of arms into the West Bank, and demilitarization.
2. Recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people as the Arabs want Palestine recognized as the nation state of the Palestinian people.
3. Complete end to conflict, including incitement in schools and public places.
What does President Barack Obama want? This is difficult to discern. He hasn’t expressed any specific goals other than a “peace agreement”. Two thoughts President Obama should consider. First from Rabbi David Meyer: “Compromise and dialogue are not goals in themselves, if with whom is not asked.”
If, as it seems, President Obama is looking for consensus, this could happen in the manner that Abba Eban famously described it. “A consensus means everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.
John F Kennedy understood negotiations well, when Nikita Kruschev billdozed him in their first meeting in Moscow, he learned a valuable lesson. Know your adversary, don’t just think you know him, learn all you can from original sources. JFK: “Peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone..it lies in the hearts and minds of all people.”
Do the Arabs want peace with a country they cannot bring themselves to recognize as a legitimately, sovereign country?
I know Israel wants peace, but not at any price and certainly not to please the International community or even the United States. Jews are not suspicious of their detractors because of the Shoah, but because of Arab and World behavior.
If President Obama wants an agreement, he must first convince Israel that he is attuned to the moral values of democracy, human rights and trustworthiness that the United States and Israel embody.
With apologies to Aretha Franklin, this seemed most appropriate to describe what happened in Washington on Wednesday. The start of the face to face “peace” talks between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas.
The amount of diplomatic hot air in the room could have been mistaken for a חמסין (an extremely hot desert wind).
Starting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who opines, unconvincingly, “I understand very well the disappointments of the past”. If she did, she would not be sitting in that room drawing moral equivalency between the participants. Dante’s idea that the “hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality” describes the current situation. A group of people sitting in a room, none of whom want to be there, while all are fully aware that they will come to no acceptable agreement except the agreement to participate in this charade. Telling the truth would not be acceptable as it would force reality in and neutrality out.
What is the truth?
Mahmoud Abbas, as President of the Palestinian Authority, is unelected. His term as President expired in January 2009. No elections have been held, because he knows he cannot win. He is so weak politically that even if he wanted to sign a peace deal, which is doubtful, he has no power to enforce it. In his remarks he refers to his organization as the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) not the Palestinian Authority, which the West pretends is an actual governmental entity.
His statement that “we are not starting over” takes him back to the 1993 Oslo accords which he refers to as a “document of mutual recognition”, when have they actually recognized Israel? The Oslo Accords cost Israel over one thousand lives from terrorism. Yitzhak Rabin paid with his life for this attempt at peace, while Yasser Arafat was rewarded with power and prestige from the international community, while continuing his thuggery against his own people as well as Israel.
What this tells us is that the west is so desperate to have a “moderate” to deal with it is willing to grasp any straw, even in this case, a “strawman”. Abbas cannot hold an election for fear of losing it and his second in command Salaam Fayad received only 2% of the vote in the last election. Hamas, it is widely reported, would take over the West Bank if an election was held. It is clear the contest right now is not between Israel and the PA but between the PLO and Hamas. There are regular reports in Israeli and Arab news media that Hamas is gaining strength in the West Bank. If Hamas succeeds in its goal to take over this territory what will the U.S. do? Perhaps name Mahmoud Zahara, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, as the moderate. So far that is as realistic as any idea coming from either America or Europe.
Zahara states today on the Hamas website, that “Abbas does not represent the Palestinian people”. He sites the cowardly murder of four Israelis driving on a road (from which Israel removed checkpoints as a gesture of goodwill) as a “heroic operation”. Calls over the loudspeakers in Gaza to come out and celebrate this brutal action, were acted on immediately as we saw Palestinians in Gaza dancing and celebrating in the streets. Of course, Abbas had no choice, he had to denounce this, as his life and presidency exist because of the protection and support of the west’s unreal views on the Middle East.
Major Garrett, of Fox News reported on Thurday morning one of the silliest ideas coming from these “talks”. Divide Jerusalem in three, one part Arab, one part Jewish and the third part would be some type of international or third party controlled entity. This is indicative of the kind of nonsense these talks can inspire. Let’s examine this one idea, obviously presented by someone completely bereft of knowledge of Jerusalem’s recent past, as well as its ancient history.
Under the 1947 United Nations partition plan, the territory of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, would be divided into one part Arab, one part Jewish with Jerusalem internationalized. Did that work? Only the Jews agreed (unhappily) but still they agreed. The Arabs said NO and war ensued. The result was Jerusalem, no longer an internationalized city, falling into Jordanian hands during which time every Jew had to leave or die. Jewish property was confiscated and/or destroyed. The Jewish quarter was destroyed, the historical Hurva syngogue blown up, Jewish access to holy places forbidden. This situation remained until Israel reunited the city in 1967. From then until today it is open to all faiths equally although Jews have a little less equality in their effort to please everyone, a Jewish disease.
Jews may be slow learners, it did take nearly 2000 years to understand we cannot live without sovereignty, nonetheless we do eventually learn. There is overwhelming consensus among Jews that Jerusalem will not fall again.
Abbas and the PLO leadership say “We want a Palestinian state”. Let’s examine that: An Arab state in that area was declined in 1948. By 1967 it was determined by the Arabs that a different tactic was needed, as military attacks weren’t working. From now on they will call themselves “Palestinians”. Fine, call yourself whatever name you want even though the records of discussions in the United Nations concerning this area drew angry disagreement from these same people claiming they were not Palestinians but Arabs or Syrians (this area was once Greater Syria)
Up to this point, no one in the Arab world was calling for a Palestinian state, however we will accept they changed their minds as well as their name. What it takes to build a state if they really want one, is for another blog. For now the Palestinians have done very little except to depend on the west and oddly, Israel to provide for their economic well being. If we focus on what Abbas says he wants it is:
1: All settlement activities to cease, no Jews can live in Arab areas although there is no problem with Arabs living in Jewish areas where many do, in fact, live.
2. Gaza Embargo totally removed, although Abbas has no control over Gaza. How would he guarantee offensive weapons would not be shipped in to be used against Israel?
3. Remove the IDF from the West Bank. This is not serious since Abbas is well aware that the IDF presence is what keeps stability, thus keeping him alive.
4. All final status items, borders, refugees, etc should be debated now rather than at the end. This of course, is impossible without solving the most significant issue, the recognition of the Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, first.
Compare these requirements to those of Prime Minister Netanyahu:
1. No potential for mass smuggling of arms into the West Bank, and demilitarization.
2. Recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people as the Arabs want Palestine recognized as the nation state of the Palestinian people.
3. Complete end to conflict, including incitement in schools and public places.
What does President Barack Obama want? This is difficult to discern. He hasn’t expressed any specific goals other than a “peace agreement”. Two thoughts President Obama should consider. First from Rabbi David Meyer: “Compromise and dialogue are not goals in themselves, if with whom is not asked.”
If, as it seems, President Obama is looking for consensus, this could happen in the manner that Abba Eban famously described it. “A consensus means everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.
John F Kennedy understood negotiations well, when Nikita Kruschev billdozed him in their first meeting in Moscow, he learned a valuable lesson. Know your adversary, don’t just think you know him, learn all you can from original sources. JFK: “Peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone..it lies in the hearts and minds of all people.”
Do the Arabs want peace with a country they cannot bring themselves to recognize as a legitimately, sovereign country?
I know Israel wants peace, but not at any price and certainly not to please the International community or even the United States. Jews are not suspicious of their detractors because of the Shoah, but because of Arab and World behavior.
If President Obama wants an agreement, he must first convince Israel that he is attuned to the moral values of democracy, human rights and trustworthiness that the United States and Israel embody.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
ISRAEL & KURDISTAN, VICTIMS OF TURKEY
June 06, 2010
Israeli and Kurdish victims of Turkey
By Victor Sharpe
Sometime ago, before Turkey chose to lurch further into the deadly embrace of Islamism, I received a plea from a Kurdish friend who remains supportive of Israel's epic struggle to survive among its hostile Arab neighbors. He is also devoted to the Jewish people for he knows of the shared ethnicities believed to exist between Jews and Kurds dating back millennia.
Here is some of my Kurdish friend's impassioned letter from two years ago, which uncannily warned against any alliance with Turkey:
"I wish the Jews in Israel and abroad would know better about the policy of their leaders concerning the Kurds, because it happens in the name of Israel, and that should matter to all Jews. Turkish oppression of the Kurds is unknown to most Israelis. It is hard for me to understand how Israel's cooperation with Turkey does not take into account the misery that it imposes upon the Kurdish people who yearn, as the Jews have for centuries, to be free from terror and persecution?
"Not so long ago, the Jews in Europe endured the Shoah (he used the Hebrew term for the Holocaust -- VS) and they know better than anyone else the horrors of that experience.
"Of course it's not only Israel but the whole world that is pro-Turkish and anti-Kurdish. It is not fair to criticize Israel only, but given the history of the Jewish people, there should be a heightened sensitivity towards Kurdish suffering.
"We Kurds have shared so much culture together and we still remember fondly the Jews who lived with us for centuries. But the Turks waxed and waned in their attitude towards the Jews; sometimes they were tolerant and sometimes hostile. There are many Turks today who share Islamist ideas and proclaim hostility towards the Jewish state. Within Turkey lies the same pestilence of anti-Semitism that exists throughout the Arab and Persian world.
"I remember your moving article in which you categorically made clear that the people who truly deserve an independent sovereign state are the Kurds; not the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. I also feel deeply that one day there will be an abiding and honorable alliance between the Jewish state and a free and independent Kurdistan. But arming Turkey, our people's oppressor, is morally and geographically not to Israel's advantage. Israel's cooperation with Turkey is, in reality, a misguided support for political Islam and its oppression of the Kurds. It undermines Israel's credibility with the only true friend it has in the Middle East."
Now in hindsight, it is glaringly obvious how correct my Kurdish friend's warning at the time was.
Turkey is now an enemy of both Israel and the Kurdish people. In a previous letter, as Turkish troops were invading Kurdistan and jet aircraft were bombarding Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, my friend was more pointed in his criticism of the Israeli leadership's shortsightedness. He defended without question what he called, "Israel's cause and the undying truth that Jews are the rightful owners of the historic Jewish lands -- now partially occupied by the Arabs. But he also pointed out that, "the legitimate arguments and rights Israel has are the same rights and truths it denies in its official policy towards the Kurds. For now and for the future, everything looks black. I fear the worst for us. The whole world is against us, and on the Turkish side there is no change...."
Coincidentally, Ruth King, a freelance writer who is a columnist for several magazines, urged those who read, "feelgood stories about Turkey" to remember the ship, Struma. In 1941, while carrying 769 Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazi German killing machine, it was not permitted to land in Turkey and sank with appalling loss of life.
With the reality of Israel's reconstitution as a sovereign nation in its ancestral and biblical homeland has come the equal reality of its uniqueness and isolation within a hostile world.
The rush to bash Israel by hypocritical national leaders and the falsehoods perpetrated by international news agencies such as the Associated Press (AP) despite the video tapes and pictures showing pipe wielding, masked thugs, screaming "kill the Jews," while beating up Israeli soldiers -- armed at first only with paint ball guns -- is despicable. Thugs, Islamists, and jihadists claiming to be "peace" activists aboard a Turkish ferry boat, with the Turkish Prime Minister's own direct collaboration, should be an indictment of Turkey, not Israel. But this is not a moral world.
The international outpouring of imbecilic hatred towards the embattled Jewish state for merely trying to defend its citizens from a future maritime pipeline delivering lethal weapons and deadly missiles into Gaza to be used to kill Jewish civilians is one of the most depressing indictments of humanity. In this, Israel shares with the Kurds a familial fate. Both endure relentless aggression from their neighbors. Even though it lives in a terrible neighborhood and desperately seeks friends, Israel must not evade its unique responsibility towards the Kurdish people, who also suffer from the depredations of their hostile neighbors -- especially Iran, Syria, and last but not least, Turkey.
The Jewish state, now undergoing what individual Jews endured for centuries -- a bloody and irrational persecution - must now, more than ever, not ignore the Kurds, who remain stateless and shunned by the world and who seek, at last, the historic justice they have craved for centuries but have been denied; an independent state of their own.
According to an article titled "Can Israel make it alone?" written some years ago by James Lewis in the American Thinker, Lewis wrote: "Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests -- like survival." With the stark reality now of a profoundly less friendly Obama Administration, it is more important than ever to see what he wrote: "If the United States abandons the Jewish State, Jerusalem will have to seek new alliances."
Turkey has now chosen to break its alliance with Israel and instead has sought alliances with rogue states such as Iran and Syria, along with the Hamas occupied and terrorist infested Gaza Strip. It has turned on Israel with a viciousness that is desolating to watch. It is a nation turning its back upon the Ataturk secular revolution of the 1920s. Instead, it is sliding remorsefully back to the 7th century mindset and cesspit that so many of its neighbors wallow in.
The Turkish regime is allowing ant-Semitic films and documentaries to be broadcast relentlessly, thus poisoning the minds of both its secular and Islamist population. One need only hark back to the demonization and vilification spewed against the Jews for years under Hitler in Nazi Germany to see how most Germans behaved and what horrors resulted.
Whether or not President Barack Obama continues to act negatively towards the Jewish state, any new Israeli alliances should include the restoration of a profoundly just, moral and enduring pact with the Kurdish people, and assistance towards creating a future independent State of Kurdistan. That may be the silver lining from the present international flotilla of xenophobic hatred presently sailing towards Israel's shores.
I STRONGLY RECOMMEND VICTOR'S BOOKS FOR AN EXPOSITON OF THE POLITICAL REALITIES OF THE AREA:
Victor Sharpe is the author of Volumes One and Two of Politicde: The attempted murder of the Jewish state, available at LuluPress or on Amazon.com
Israeli and Kurdish victims of Turkey
By Victor Sharpe
Sometime ago, before Turkey chose to lurch further into the deadly embrace of Islamism, I received a plea from a Kurdish friend who remains supportive of Israel's epic struggle to survive among its hostile Arab neighbors. He is also devoted to the Jewish people for he knows of the shared ethnicities believed to exist between Jews and Kurds dating back millennia.
Here is some of my Kurdish friend's impassioned letter from two years ago, which uncannily warned against any alliance with Turkey:
"I wish the Jews in Israel and abroad would know better about the policy of their leaders concerning the Kurds, because it happens in the name of Israel, and that should matter to all Jews. Turkish oppression of the Kurds is unknown to most Israelis. It is hard for me to understand how Israel's cooperation with Turkey does not take into account the misery that it imposes upon the Kurdish people who yearn, as the Jews have for centuries, to be free from terror and persecution?
"Not so long ago, the Jews in Europe endured the Shoah (he used the Hebrew term for the Holocaust -- VS) and they know better than anyone else the horrors of that experience.
"Of course it's not only Israel but the whole world that is pro-Turkish and anti-Kurdish. It is not fair to criticize Israel only, but given the history of the Jewish people, there should be a heightened sensitivity towards Kurdish suffering.
"We Kurds have shared so much culture together and we still remember fondly the Jews who lived with us for centuries. But the Turks waxed and waned in their attitude towards the Jews; sometimes they were tolerant and sometimes hostile. There are many Turks today who share Islamist ideas and proclaim hostility towards the Jewish state. Within Turkey lies the same pestilence of anti-Semitism that exists throughout the Arab and Persian world.
"I remember your moving article in which you categorically made clear that the people who truly deserve an independent sovereign state are the Kurds; not the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. I also feel deeply that one day there will be an abiding and honorable alliance between the Jewish state and a free and independent Kurdistan. But arming Turkey, our people's oppressor, is morally and geographically not to Israel's advantage. Israel's cooperation with Turkey is, in reality, a misguided support for political Islam and its oppression of the Kurds. It undermines Israel's credibility with the only true friend it has in the Middle East."
Now in hindsight, it is glaringly obvious how correct my Kurdish friend's warning at the time was.
Turkey is now an enemy of both Israel and the Kurdish people. In a previous letter, as Turkish troops were invading Kurdistan and jet aircraft were bombarding Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, my friend was more pointed in his criticism of the Israeli leadership's shortsightedness. He defended without question what he called, "Israel's cause and the undying truth that Jews are the rightful owners of the historic Jewish lands -- now partially occupied by the Arabs. But he also pointed out that, "the legitimate arguments and rights Israel has are the same rights and truths it denies in its official policy towards the Kurds. For now and for the future, everything looks black. I fear the worst for us. The whole world is against us, and on the Turkish side there is no change...."
Coincidentally, Ruth King, a freelance writer who is a columnist for several magazines, urged those who read, "feelgood stories about Turkey" to remember the ship, Struma. In 1941, while carrying 769 Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazi German killing machine, it was not permitted to land in Turkey and sank with appalling loss of life.
With the reality of Israel's reconstitution as a sovereign nation in its ancestral and biblical homeland has come the equal reality of its uniqueness and isolation within a hostile world.
The rush to bash Israel by hypocritical national leaders and the falsehoods perpetrated by international news agencies such as the Associated Press (AP) despite the video tapes and pictures showing pipe wielding, masked thugs, screaming "kill the Jews," while beating up Israeli soldiers -- armed at first only with paint ball guns -- is despicable. Thugs, Islamists, and jihadists claiming to be "peace" activists aboard a Turkish ferry boat, with the Turkish Prime Minister's own direct collaboration, should be an indictment of Turkey, not Israel. But this is not a moral world.
The international outpouring of imbecilic hatred towards the embattled Jewish state for merely trying to defend its citizens from a future maritime pipeline delivering lethal weapons and deadly missiles into Gaza to be used to kill Jewish civilians is one of the most depressing indictments of humanity. In this, Israel shares with the Kurds a familial fate. Both endure relentless aggression from their neighbors. Even though it lives in a terrible neighborhood and desperately seeks friends, Israel must not evade its unique responsibility towards the Kurdish people, who also suffer from the depredations of their hostile neighbors -- especially Iran, Syria, and last but not least, Turkey.
The Jewish state, now undergoing what individual Jews endured for centuries -- a bloody and irrational persecution - must now, more than ever, not ignore the Kurds, who remain stateless and shunned by the world and who seek, at last, the historic justice they have craved for centuries but have been denied; an independent state of their own.
According to an article titled "Can Israel make it alone?" written some years ago by James Lewis in the American Thinker, Lewis wrote: "Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests -- like survival." With the stark reality now of a profoundly less friendly Obama Administration, it is more important than ever to see what he wrote: "If the United States abandons the Jewish State, Jerusalem will have to seek new alliances."
Turkey has now chosen to break its alliance with Israel and instead has sought alliances with rogue states such as Iran and Syria, along with the Hamas occupied and terrorist infested Gaza Strip. It has turned on Israel with a viciousness that is desolating to watch. It is a nation turning its back upon the Ataturk secular revolution of the 1920s. Instead, it is sliding remorsefully back to the 7th century mindset and cesspit that so many of its neighbors wallow in.
The Turkish regime is allowing ant-Semitic films and documentaries to be broadcast relentlessly, thus poisoning the minds of both its secular and Islamist population. One need only hark back to the demonization and vilification spewed against the Jews for years under Hitler in Nazi Germany to see how most Germans behaved and what horrors resulted.
Whether or not President Barack Obama continues to act negatively towards the Jewish state, any new Israeli alliances should include the restoration of a profoundly just, moral and enduring pact with the Kurdish people, and assistance towards creating a future independent State of Kurdistan. That may be the silver lining from the present international flotilla of xenophobic hatred presently sailing towards Israel's shores.
I STRONGLY RECOMMEND VICTOR'S BOOKS FOR AN EXPOSITON OF THE POLITICAL REALITIES OF THE AREA:
Victor Sharpe is the author of Volumes One and Two of Politicde: The attempted murder of the Jewish state, available at LuluPress or on Amazon.com
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Barack Obama and the Jews Part I
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
BARACK OBAMA AND THE JEWS
Barack Obama and the Jews Part 1
It’s said that to maintain power one must be trusted by his friends and feared by his enemies. We are now in an exercise to determine if that is an absolute truth. The current stand-off between the Obama administration and the State of Israel may be a test of this adage. The long standing friendly relationship between Israel and the United States has not been an even one, but at this moment it is more than strained. The level of Israeli trust in the Obama administration is at its lowest point (6%) since the relationship with the U.S. began to develop after the 1967 Six Day War.
In the early years of the States’ reconstitution, we remember that President Harry Truman was strong and decisive in recognizing the State immediately after its Declaration of Independence. He followed immediately with an arms embargo fully aware that the tiny country would be attacked by seven Arab countries, since the Soviets were supplying the Arabs with whatever they wanted, it was in effect, an embargo only on Israel. In desperate straits, Israel found a way; buying rifles from Czechoslovakia, with permission from Russia, not withstanding that Russia was solidly supporting the Arabs. France, in the nick of time, sold the nascent state mystere jets and the Zionists prevailed with no help from the U.S.
In October 1955, Egypt’s closure of the Straits of Tiran, an act of war in International law, was responded to with a few raised eyebrows, but the international community simply looked on even with the awareness that this move was a break in International law while crippling Israeli shipping. Only in July of 1956 when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, owned by the French and the British, was there an uproar, if only from the owners. The French and the British then came to Israel for help in correcting this illegal act. Israel agreed, as this was an additional blow to Israel’s security and shipping. Immediately after the success of the Israel-British-French success in capturing the Canal, the United States, in a fit of pique over not being informed of the operation put all its diplomatic efforts into demanding that all three countries withdraw and return to the status quo. The British withdrew quickly with virtually no consideration of its partners in this venture. Once they withdrew, the French followed, leaving Israel holding the bag. Israel at this point had no choice but to withdraw, no negotiation occurred. Lesson for Israel: even the most engaged ally cannot be trusted when the chips are down.
President Lyndon Johnson, probably the most emotionally supportive President Israel has worked with, was unable to help in the run up to the Six Day War in 1967. Congress and the American people were unwilling to get involved in any foreign entanglements in their drive to disengage from the Vietnam War. While Johnson was verbally supportive there was little he was able to do in supplying arms or other support. He was relieved to receive American intelligence estimates of the overall situation that indicated Israel would win handily.
While Johnson was emotional in his support of Israel, Richard Nixon was practical in looking at cold, hard facts. The immense losses to Israel in blood and resources in 1973 were of concern but the interest of the Nixon administration centered on the Soviet relationship with the Egyptians and the Syrians. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made an equally unemotional evaluation in his recommendation to help Israel with arms supplies. At the time the Cold War was the most important issue to the Nixon administration, certainly not Israel. Not allowing a victory by Russia’s’ allies was strategically important. Nixon being distracted by the Watergate scandal allowed Kissinger to take the lead and eventually Israel turned the war around. The Arabs, however were unforgiving and cut off oil supplies to the U.S. This was an unexpected turn, creating the most serious gas shortage since WWII. Oil became among the most important issues for all American politicians after this politically unfortunate event. Israel without oil or any natural resources to fill the gap left by the boycott had few cards in her hands.
The U.S. has opposed Israel many times, even threatening arms embargoes and military sanctions. Think of President Kennedy’s fierce opposition to Israel building a nuclear reactor, and the denunciation from the U.S as well as many other countries for bombing Osirak (Iraq's nuclear reactor), the demand from the U.S. to not strike first in the days preceding the Yom Kippur War, a pressure that cost Israel nearly 3000 lives and over 7,000 wounded. In each case Israel’s leaders made the decision they thought best for Israel’s security and in each case the country survived and thrived. In any relationship the junior partner cannot be the servant of the senior partner, by bowing to the wishes of the U.S. we make ourselves the junior partner, but are we? How many Israeli and Arab lives could have been saved if Israel had acted without the permission of the U.S.?
Certainly the three billion dollars of U.S. military aid are important, but how would we manage without them? This is less than 1% of Israel’s total budget; we are required to spend 75% on American products. This is leveraged to keep Israel out of competitive bidding on sales of products to other countries, in which American companies are also bidding.*(see below) Israel benefits from a strong relationship with the U.S. but when administrations change so might the relationship and as we are not the 51st state, we must be prepared. We are an independent sovereign state which is obligated to meet the needs of our own people first, not the wishes of a foreign power no matter how powerful.
We can say much more about the U.S.—Israel relationship especially the contributions to the U.S. from Israel. That is for another blog. The point here is that allies for our little country have not had a record of dependability even so, we have continually found a way to not only survive but to thrive and build, continuing to integrate refugees and new immigrants even though in 61 years there has not been a moment in time to relax from Arab violence against us.
The decision of Barack Obama to flip the relationship with Israel from a solid if argumentative one is obvious. Starting with the ambush of Prime Minister Netanyahu in Washington and the very public demands on Israel without negotiation or warning was shocking to Israelis. Although Israel was accustomed to the European Union telling Israel what its policies should be on issues of defense, diplomacy and even what kind of government it should have, it was new coming from the U.S. Past pressures had been quiet and behind the scenes. After the Cairo speech President Obama left no doubt his goal was a warm and loving relationship with the Islamic world and if that didn’t work for Israel well Israel is expendable. We have kept our face towards Jerusalem for two thousand years and I don’t expect that to change, rarely have the Jewish people been able to feel safe and secure.
It seems this administration is moving in the direction of every European country in saying “Israel has a right to defend herself”, until she does, then the true feelings come out in accusations from “disproportion” to “war crimes”. It is obvious that the Arab world has many more people, much more wealth and most importantly large oil reserves. The continual question that comes up in discussing this turn of events is why is Obama so adamant about “settlements”? The only logical answer is that “settlements” are one of two non-negotiable issues, first, “Jews should be allowed to live where they choose” as Arabs are allowed to live wherever they choose in Israel, not allowing Jews to live among Arabs is the definition of racism, Jews have been subject to racism enough to recognize it, secondly, the division of Jerusalem is non-negotiable. No Israeli government can stand while agreeing to divide Jerusalem. Picking out non-negotiable issues, demanding from Israel what she cannot give, while asking nothing from her opponents sounds like the Obama administration throwing down the gauntlet. A Nationalist government was elected by the Israeli people because they are sick of war but can find no peace partner.
To stand up vigorously to the overthrow of the unconsitiutional Honduran government and at the same time tell Israel its democratically elected government is not satisfactory to the U.S. and should be changed is not a demand typical of allies. The weak response to Iran’s undemocratic process, while making public demands of Israel that are simply not possible to fulfill fits into the strategy of attempting to win the affection of the Muslim world, even at Israel’s expense. The U.S. must act in its own interest as all nations, including Israel, must. The road the President is taking is sure to fail as it did when a previous President, Jimmy Carter, tried that path.
Israel must do what it can, without damaging itself, to hold together a good relationship with the U.S. but also she must look for other partners. Many nations want to do business with Israel and she should pursue those allies. Israel today is under perhaps the greatest existential threat since 1948 and she must stand up for her own best interests. This is why the Israeli electorate voted for a decidedly nationalist government, having confidence in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s strong leadership, and with the backing of the cabinet he has chosen Israel will, as a country, exercise the creativity, industriousness and courage necessary to continue to build this miraculous work that is the State of Israel.
*. Pentagon Halts Israeli Fighter Jet Bid, US a Rival on Tender (Arutz Sheva, 2009–07–06) --- by Malkah Fleisher
A scandal has arisen out of the United States military establishment after Pentagon pressure on Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to withdraw from a massive aircraft tender for the Indian Air Force leaves competing American aerospace companies in prime position to win it.On the table: a $12 billion Indian Ministry of Defense tender for 126 multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) for the Indian Air Force.In a bid to win the tender, IAI was offered a partnership with Sweden's Saab AB to jointly develop an advanced model of the JAS-39 Gripen jet fighter. Israel was to build the electronic systems for the craft, including communications, electronic warfare and radar systems.The Pentagon contacted Israel's Ministry of Defense, ordering them to force IAI out of contention, citing concerns that Israel would integrate American technology into the fighter jets.However, two of the remaining four bidders are American companies, leaving Israeli officials speculating that the actual reason for the demand was America's interest in winning the bid without having to compete by lowering prices, according to Israeli officials quoted in Israeli mediaLockheed Martin's F-16 and Boeing's F-18 Hornet are still in the running, as well as Russia's MiG-35 and the UK's BAE Eurofighter.The United States has a history of intervening to thwart Israeli military contracts, to America's benefit. Last summer, Israel's defense establishment backed down from a $500 million Turkish tank tender in order not to compete with the Americans.In 2006, the IAI lost a $2 billion South Korean Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) tender after the US imposed technological and commercial restrictions, which prevented Israel from meeting the terms of the tender.In 2003, the US opposed a $1 billion AWACS contract between Israel and India, citing India's stance against the US war in Iraq. The US offered Israel $1 billion in US military goods to back down from the agreement. However, Israeli officials speculated that the US may have opposed the deal for commercial reasonspART 1
BARACK OBAMA AND THE JEWS
Barack Obama and the Jews Part 1
It’s said that to maintain power one must be trusted by his friends and feared by his enemies. We are now in an exercise to determine if that is an absolute truth. The current stand-off between the Obama administration and the State of Israel may be a test of this adage. The long standing friendly relationship between Israel and the United States has not been an even one, but at this moment it is more than strained. The level of Israeli trust in the Obama administration is at its lowest point (6%) since the relationship with the U.S. began to develop after the 1967 Six Day War.
In the early years of the States’ reconstitution, we remember that President Harry Truman was strong and decisive in recognizing the State immediately after its Declaration of Independence. He followed immediately with an arms embargo fully aware that the tiny country would be attacked by seven Arab countries, since the Soviets were supplying the Arabs with whatever they wanted, it was in effect, an embargo only on Israel. In desperate straits, Israel found a way; buying rifles from Czechoslovakia, with permission from Russia, not withstanding that Russia was solidly supporting the Arabs. France, in the nick of time, sold the nascent state mystere jets and the Zionists prevailed with no help from the U.S.
In October 1955, Egypt’s closure of the Straits of Tiran, an act of war in International law, was responded to with a few raised eyebrows, but the international community simply looked on even with the awareness that this move was a break in International law while crippling Israeli shipping. Only in July of 1956 when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, owned by the French and the British, was there an uproar, if only from the owners. The French and the British then came to Israel for help in correcting this illegal act. Israel agreed, as this was an additional blow to Israel’s security and shipping. Immediately after the success of the Israel-British-French success in capturing the Canal, the United States, in a fit of pique over not being informed of the operation put all its diplomatic efforts into demanding that all three countries withdraw and return to the status quo. The British withdrew quickly with virtually no consideration of its partners in this venture. Once they withdrew, the French followed, leaving Israel holding the bag. Israel at this point had no choice but to withdraw, no negotiation occurred. Lesson for Israel: even the most engaged ally cannot be trusted when the chips are down.
President Lyndon Johnson, probably the most emotionally supportive President Israel has worked with, was unable to help in the run up to the Six Day War in 1967. Congress and the American people were unwilling to get involved in any foreign entanglements in their drive to disengage from the Vietnam War. While Johnson was verbally supportive there was little he was able to do in supplying arms or other support. He was relieved to receive American intelligence estimates of the overall situation that indicated Israel would win handily.
While Johnson was emotional in his support of Israel, Richard Nixon was practical in looking at cold, hard facts. The immense losses to Israel in blood and resources in 1973 were of concern but the interest of the Nixon administration centered on the Soviet relationship with the Egyptians and the Syrians. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made an equally unemotional evaluation in his recommendation to help Israel with arms supplies. At the time the Cold War was the most important issue to the Nixon administration, certainly not Israel. Not allowing a victory by Russia’s’ allies was strategically important. Nixon being distracted by the Watergate scandal allowed Kissinger to take the lead and eventually Israel turned the war around. The Arabs, however were unforgiving and cut off oil supplies to the U.S. This was an unexpected turn, creating the most serious gas shortage since WWII. Oil became among the most important issues for all American politicians after this politically unfortunate event. Israel without oil or any natural resources to fill the gap left by the boycott had few cards in her hands.
The U.S. has opposed Israel many times, even threatening arms embargoes and military sanctions. Think of President Kennedy’s fierce opposition to Israel building a nuclear reactor, and the denunciation from the U.S as well as many other countries for bombing Osirak (Iraq's nuclear reactor), the demand from the U.S. to not strike first in the days preceding the Yom Kippur War, a pressure that cost Israel nearly 3000 lives and over 7,000 wounded. In each case Israel’s leaders made the decision they thought best for Israel’s security and in each case the country survived and thrived. In any relationship the junior partner cannot be the servant of the senior partner, by bowing to the wishes of the U.S. we make ourselves the junior partner, but are we? How many Israeli and Arab lives could have been saved if Israel had acted without the permission of the U.S.?
Certainly the three billion dollars of U.S. military aid are important, but how would we manage without them? This is less than 1% of Israel’s total budget; we are required to spend 75% on American products. This is leveraged to keep Israel out of competitive bidding on sales of products to other countries, in which American companies are also bidding.*(see below) Israel benefits from a strong relationship with the U.S. but when administrations change so might the relationship and as we are not the 51st state, we must be prepared. We are an independent sovereign state which is obligated to meet the needs of our own people first, not the wishes of a foreign power no matter how powerful.
We can say much more about the U.S.—Israel relationship especially the contributions to the U.S. from Israel. That is for another blog. The point here is that allies for our little country have not had a record of dependability even so, we have continually found a way to not only survive but to thrive and build, continuing to integrate refugees and new immigrants even though in 61 years there has not been a moment in time to relax from Arab violence against us.
The decision of Barack Obama to flip the relationship with Israel from a solid if argumentative one is obvious. Starting with the ambush of Prime Minister Netanyahu in Washington and the very public demands on Israel without negotiation or warning was shocking to Israelis. Although Israel was accustomed to the European Union telling Israel what its policies should be on issues of defense, diplomacy and even what kind of government it should have, it was new coming from the U.S. Past pressures had been quiet and behind the scenes. After the Cairo speech President Obama left no doubt his goal was a warm and loving relationship with the Islamic world and if that didn’t work for Israel well Israel is expendable. We have kept our face towards Jerusalem for two thousand years and I don’t expect that to change, rarely have the Jewish people been able to feel safe and secure.
It seems this administration is moving in the direction of every European country in saying “Israel has a right to defend herself”, until she does, then the true feelings come out in accusations from “disproportion” to “war crimes”. It is obvious that the Arab world has many more people, much more wealth and most importantly large oil reserves. The continual question that comes up in discussing this turn of events is why is Obama so adamant about “settlements”? The only logical answer is that “settlements” are one of two non-negotiable issues, first, “Jews should be allowed to live where they choose” as Arabs are allowed to live wherever they choose in Israel, not allowing Jews to live among Arabs is the definition of racism, Jews have been subject to racism enough to recognize it, secondly, the division of Jerusalem is non-negotiable. No Israeli government can stand while agreeing to divide Jerusalem. Picking out non-negotiable issues, demanding from Israel what she cannot give, while asking nothing from her opponents sounds like the Obama administration throwing down the gauntlet. A Nationalist government was elected by the Israeli people because they are sick of war but can find no peace partner.
To stand up vigorously to the overthrow of the unconsitiutional Honduran government and at the same time tell Israel its democratically elected government is not satisfactory to the U.S. and should be changed is not a demand typical of allies. The weak response to Iran’s undemocratic process, while making public demands of Israel that are simply not possible to fulfill fits into the strategy of attempting to win the affection of the Muslim world, even at Israel’s expense. The U.S. must act in its own interest as all nations, including Israel, must. The road the President is taking is sure to fail as it did when a previous President, Jimmy Carter, tried that path.
Israel must do what it can, without damaging itself, to hold together a good relationship with the U.S. but also she must look for other partners. Many nations want to do business with Israel and she should pursue those allies. Israel today is under perhaps the greatest existential threat since 1948 and she must stand up for her own best interests. This is why the Israeli electorate voted for a decidedly nationalist government, having confidence in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s strong leadership, and with the backing of the cabinet he has chosen Israel will, as a country, exercise the creativity, industriousness and courage necessary to continue to build this miraculous work that is the State of Israel.
*. Pentagon Halts Israeli Fighter Jet Bid, US a Rival on Tender (Arutz Sheva, 2009–07–06) --- by Malkah Fleisher
A scandal has arisen out of the United States military establishment after Pentagon pressure on Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to withdraw from a massive aircraft tender for the Indian Air Force leaves competing American aerospace companies in prime position to win it.On the table: a $12 billion Indian Ministry of Defense tender for 126 multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) for the Indian Air Force.In a bid to win the tender, IAI was offered a partnership with Sweden's Saab AB to jointly develop an advanced model of the JAS-39 Gripen jet fighter. Israel was to build the electronic systems for the craft, including communications, electronic warfare and radar systems.The Pentagon contacted Israel's Ministry of Defense, ordering them to force IAI out of contention, citing concerns that Israel would integrate American technology into the fighter jets.However, two of the remaining four bidders are American companies, leaving Israeli officials speculating that the actual reason for the demand was America's interest in winning the bid without having to compete by lowering prices, according to Israeli officials quoted in Israeli mediaLockheed Martin's F-16 and Boeing's F-18 Hornet are still in the running, as well as Russia's MiG-35 and the UK's BAE Eurofighter.The United States has a history of intervening to thwart Israeli military contracts, to America's benefit. Last summer, Israel's defense establishment backed down from a $500 million Turkish tank tender in order not to compete with the Americans.In 2006, the IAI lost a $2 billion South Korean Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) tender after the US imposed technological and commercial restrictions, which prevented Israel from meeting the terms of the tender.In 2003, the US opposed a $1 billion AWACS contract between Israel and India, citing India's stance against the US war in Iraq. The US offered Israel $1 billion in US military goods to back down from the agreement. However, Israeli officials speculated that the US may have opposed the deal for commercial reasonspART 1
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Obama and Israel-Imperialism or ignorance?
BARACK OBAMA’S AGENDA FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE
ALL POLITICIANS HAVE AN AGENDA, SOMETIMES FOR THE GOOD AND SOMETIMES NOT, SOMETIMES THEY ARE UP FRONT AND HONEST ABOUT IT AND SOMETIMES NOT.
Stealth agendas work in a democratic society when the public isn’t paying attention. Here is where Barack Obama’s Middle East “peace agenda” comes into play. He and his Secretary of State and other acolytes are making constant public pronouncements towards Israel using words such as “rock solid”, “unbreakable” and many other words swearing commitment to Israel’s security. His actions speak differently and unfortunately we often do not see the dangerous intent behind his actions.
An honest difference of opinion is settled between “friends” privately and through discussion in which each helps the other to understand their differences and why. When Barack Obama publicly and loudly makes demands that are potentially destructive and show a callous disregard for Israel’s needs and spiritual issues, he is showing either ignorance or an ominous warning that his desire to be loved and accepted by the Muslim countries is more important than Israel’s continued existence.
Kind words mean nothing when used as a cover for attendant attempts to demean and denigrate. The President has shown repeatedly a strategy to demean and denigrate when faced with disagreement with his policies. Review this strategy in action against opponents to his policies on stimulus, health care, financial regulation, tea party participants. Instead of mature discussions of differences we get attempts at adolescent schoolyard derision.
Even after Prime Minister Netanyahu instituted compromises that were difficult and unpopular, such as dismantling hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints and opening the Allenby Bridge 24 hours to allow greater flow of goods, the Presidents attitude was dismissive while making even more demands of Israel. What demand was made from the Arab side? What action was taken? Would they stop teaching hatred of Jews in their schools, glorifying terrorists in their streets? These are not very difficult things to do if their leadership cared one iota about a true peace. How can you have peace with a populace that has been taught virulent hatred from birth for the other side? There is no sign the President has even tried to pressure PA President Abbas and his minions.
What if the Abbas-Salaam Fayyad government did show honest signs of wanting peace, what would Hamas do? What would happen in Gaza? Has President Obama thought even momentarily what that would mean? Certainly no public demands have been made by the President on the Arab side, in the manner he has insisted on from Israel. Insinuating that Israel is responsible for the violence of the Arabs is a clear sign that either the American administration is ignorant of the past history or has decided Israel has no right to exist thus accepting the Arab narrative.
While the United States is large, wealthy and rich with natural resources, Israel has none of those advantages. Israel cannot take chances with the survival of her people and their sovereignty and the sooner President Obama understands that truth, the sooner he can come to some agreement with Israel, the most earnest and loyal of allies. There are many advisors close to President Obama who do not wish to continue the alliance with Israel and have written and publicly spoken to that idea. To name just a few, Jimmy Carter’s former advisor Zbigniev Brzezinski, Jim Jones, Robert Malley, Samantha Power, Rashid Khalidi and others. Jews all over the world have a stake in Israel’s survival, whether or not they realize it or wish to admit it. More importantly the democratic world has a stake in the survival of the only open, democratic society in that region of the world. Israel is surrounded by some of the most regressive and oppressive regimes on the planet. Can we afford to lose the tiny wink of freedom and democracy for the sake of appeasing dictatorships whose primary value to the outside world is oil?
Former Ambassador Martin Indyk’s recent diatribe clearly threw down the gauntlet “Israel has to adjust its policy to the interest of the United States or there will be serious consequences” to Israel. The absolute arrogance of this statement demanding Israel put its own interests on the backburner in order to do the bidding of President Obama overlooks the fact that Israel is not a colony of the United States. Indyk’s interview with Israel Army Radio and his op-ed in the NY Times were designed to verify Obama’s policy and let Israel know clearly how enraged the President is with Israel’s lack of obedience.
As for Mr. Obama’s rumored intent to replace Prime Minister Netanyahu with Tzipi Livni points further to the President’s refusal to face reality. Ms. Livni’s poll numbers have dropped precipitously since the last election and the Prime Minister’s have increased. Ms Livni could have formed a government after the last election if she would have agreed to protect the unity of the holy city of Jerusalem. Mr. Obama must face the reality that Jerusalem is a rare case of unanimity on the part of the Jewish people. Three Thousand years of longing and prayer will not be broken to please Mr. Obama. Apparently he does not know what happened when Jerusalem was not in Jewish hands, or has no interest in the preservation of the sanctity of the city. If he succeeds, which is highly unlikely, in unseating the current government he will see a more nationalistic government in its place.
If Mr. Obama understood Israeli society he would know that after more than 2000 years of surviving every persecution known to man, Jews have learned “we stick together or hang separately”, to steal a phrase. Nothing unites Jews more than being threatened with extinction. Some of the empires who have tried? Ancient Egypt, the Philistines, the Assyrians, Babylon, Persia, Greece, The Roman Empire, The Byzantine Empire, The Crusaders, The Spanish Empire, Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union, and now Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, El Aksa Martyrs Brigade, Iran, Syria and so on. Israel may be one of the smallest nations but it is the largest in determination, dedication and belief in a G-d given mission to improve the world. It is not an accident this tiny group of people has survived for so long against the constant tyranny of the majority. Mr. Obama, you might want to rethink where you are placing your bets.
To reward loyalty with contempt and humiliation while handling enemies with a velvet glove reverses the standard foreign policy notion of keeping the trust of friends and fear in ones enemies. With remarks that have come out of Poland, the Czech Republic and the Ukraine, it seems Israel is not the only friendly country who feels betrayed.
We all want a good relationship with this natural ally for whom we have great affection, but at what cost? How far can we travel with this partner before Barack Obama leads us down a path of destruction?
Israel’s Prime Minister has visited Washington three times, entering the White House in back doors, being treated with none of the standard courtesies toward other heads of state, such as press conferences, dinners and photo ops, which may seem unimportant on the surface if not put into a larger context. Since January 20, 2009 the list of actions that demonstrate, not just naiveté, but an intent to distance the United States from Israel to fit Mr. Obama’s larger agenda, which appears to be switching the America-Israel alliance to an Arab-American alliance.
The old children’s taunt “sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me” has been proven over and over again to not be true. Words not only can hurt, they often drive violence and death.
ALL POLITICIANS HAVE AN AGENDA, SOMETIMES FOR THE GOOD AND SOMETIMES NOT, SOMETIMES THEY ARE UP FRONT AND HONEST ABOUT IT AND SOMETIMES NOT.
Stealth agendas work in a democratic society when the public isn’t paying attention. Here is where Barack Obama’s Middle East “peace agenda” comes into play. He and his Secretary of State and other acolytes are making constant public pronouncements towards Israel using words such as “rock solid”, “unbreakable” and many other words swearing commitment to Israel’s security. His actions speak differently and unfortunately we often do not see the dangerous intent behind his actions.
An honest difference of opinion is settled between “friends” privately and through discussion in which each helps the other to understand their differences and why. When Barack Obama publicly and loudly makes demands that are potentially destructive and show a callous disregard for Israel’s needs and spiritual issues, he is showing either ignorance or an ominous warning that his desire to be loved and accepted by the Muslim countries is more important than Israel’s continued existence.
Kind words mean nothing when used as a cover for attendant attempts to demean and denigrate. The President has shown repeatedly a strategy to demean and denigrate when faced with disagreement with his policies. Review this strategy in action against opponents to his policies on stimulus, health care, financial regulation, tea party participants. Instead of mature discussions of differences we get attempts at adolescent schoolyard derision.
Even after Prime Minister Netanyahu instituted compromises that were difficult and unpopular, such as dismantling hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints and opening the Allenby Bridge 24 hours to allow greater flow of goods, the Presidents attitude was dismissive while making even more demands of Israel. What demand was made from the Arab side? What action was taken? Would they stop teaching hatred of Jews in their schools, glorifying terrorists in their streets? These are not very difficult things to do if their leadership cared one iota about a true peace. How can you have peace with a populace that has been taught virulent hatred from birth for the other side? There is no sign the President has even tried to pressure PA President Abbas and his minions.
What if the Abbas-Salaam Fayyad government did show honest signs of wanting peace, what would Hamas do? What would happen in Gaza? Has President Obama thought even momentarily what that would mean? Certainly no public demands have been made by the President on the Arab side, in the manner he has insisted on from Israel. Insinuating that Israel is responsible for the violence of the Arabs is a clear sign that either the American administration is ignorant of the past history or has decided Israel has no right to exist thus accepting the Arab narrative.
While the United States is large, wealthy and rich with natural resources, Israel has none of those advantages. Israel cannot take chances with the survival of her people and their sovereignty and the sooner President Obama understands that truth, the sooner he can come to some agreement with Israel, the most earnest and loyal of allies. There are many advisors close to President Obama who do not wish to continue the alliance with Israel and have written and publicly spoken to that idea. To name just a few, Jimmy Carter’s former advisor Zbigniev Brzezinski, Jim Jones, Robert Malley, Samantha Power, Rashid Khalidi and others. Jews all over the world have a stake in Israel’s survival, whether or not they realize it or wish to admit it. More importantly the democratic world has a stake in the survival of the only open, democratic society in that region of the world. Israel is surrounded by some of the most regressive and oppressive regimes on the planet. Can we afford to lose the tiny wink of freedom and democracy for the sake of appeasing dictatorships whose primary value to the outside world is oil?
Former Ambassador Martin Indyk’s recent diatribe clearly threw down the gauntlet “Israel has to adjust its policy to the interest of the United States or there will be serious consequences” to Israel. The absolute arrogance of this statement demanding Israel put its own interests on the backburner in order to do the bidding of President Obama overlooks the fact that Israel is not a colony of the United States. Indyk’s interview with Israel Army Radio and his op-ed in the NY Times were designed to verify Obama’s policy and let Israel know clearly how enraged the President is with Israel’s lack of obedience.
As for Mr. Obama’s rumored intent to replace Prime Minister Netanyahu with Tzipi Livni points further to the President’s refusal to face reality. Ms. Livni’s poll numbers have dropped precipitously since the last election and the Prime Minister’s have increased. Ms Livni could have formed a government after the last election if she would have agreed to protect the unity of the holy city of Jerusalem. Mr. Obama must face the reality that Jerusalem is a rare case of unanimity on the part of the Jewish people. Three Thousand years of longing and prayer will not be broken to please Mr. Obama. Apparently he does not know what happened when Jerusalem was not in Jewish hands, or has no interest in the preservation of the sanctity of the city. If he succeeds, which is highly unlikely, in unseating the current government he will see a more nationalistic government in its place.
If Mr. Obama understood Israeli society he would know that after more than 2000 years of surviving every persecution known to man, Jews have learned “we stick together or hang separately”, to steal a phrase. Nothing unites Jews more than being threatened with extinction. Some of the empires who have tried? Ancient Egypt, the Philistines, the Assyrians, Babylon, Persia, Greece, The Roman Empire, The Byzantine Empire, The Crusaders, The Spanish Empire, Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union, and now Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, El Aksa Martyrs Brigade, Iran, Syria and so on. Israel may be one of the smallest nations but it is the largest in determination, dedication and belief in a G-d given mission to improve the world. It is not an accident this tiny group of people has survived for so long against the constant tyranny of the majority. Mr. Obama, you might want to rethink where you are placing your bets.
To reward loyalty with contempt and humiliation while handling enemies with a velvet glove reverses the standard foreign policy notion of keeping the trust of friends and fear in ones enemies. With remarks that have come out of Poland, the Czech Republic and the Ukraine, it seems Israel is not the only friendly country who feels betrayed.
We all want a good relationship with this natural ally for whom we have great affection, but at what cost? How far can we travel with this partner before Barack Obama leads us down a path of destruction?
Israel’s Prime Minister has visited Washington three times, entering the White House in back doors, being treated with none of the standard courtesies toward other heads of state, such as press conferences, dinners and photo ops, which may seem unimportant on the surface if not put into a larger context. Since January 20, 2009 the list of actions that demonstrate, not just naiveté, but an intent to distance the United States from Israel to fit Mr. Obama’s larger agenda, which appears to be switching the America-Israel alliance to an Arab-American alliance.
The old children’s taunt “sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me” has been proven over and over again to not be true. Words not only can hurt, they often drive violence and death.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Land for Peace or Oblivion
Land for Peace or Oblivion?
by Victor Sharpe
Immediately after the June 1967 Six Day War, a secret memorandum was issued by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Their conclusions were that any peace settlement between Israel and the Arab belligerents would only succeed if Israel retained certain territories vital for its continued existence and survival.
The areas the Joint Chiefs declared as the minimum defensible borders for the Jewish state included the Golan Heights, the western half of Samaria (the northwestern part of the West Bank), all of Judea (the southern part of the West Bank), the Gaza Strip and several portions of the eastern Sinai Peninsula.
This, of course, occurred before the world became obsessed with the creation of an Arab terror state within Israel’s narrow territory between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan.
Since that report in 1967, the Begin government gave away all of the Sinai. The first city that Joshua liberated during the Israelites entry into the Promised Land, Jericho, was given away by Binyamin Netanyahu during his first term as Prime Minister, followed by most of Hebron, King David’s first Jewish capital and one of Judaism’s four holy cities. Both cities are practically lost to the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. Under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his deputy, Ehud Olmert, Israel gave away the entire Gaza Strip in 2005, with catastrophic consequences for the Jewish state. These breathtaking concessions to the Arabs have all been made under the hope that it will bring peace with the Arab enemies. But it has not. “Peace, peace, but there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14.)
Ehud Barak, Israel's present Defense Minister, had years earlier withdrawn from the southern Lebanon security strip, thus allowing the Islamist Hezbollah to fill the vacuum with dire consequences for northern Israel. A conflict broke out - the Second Lebanon War - disastrously mismanaged by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was launched too late and ended too soon.
After Israel endured over 12,000 incoming missiles from Hamas-occupied Gaza, Operation Cast Lead was finally launched by Israel. It ended too soon, and the Islamist Hamas continues to pursue its ambition of finally destroying Israel. Just this last week after the visit by Vice President Biden, who attacked Israel for planning to build apartments in a north Jerusalem suburb followed by a vituperative call from Secretary of State Clinton making yet more demands upon Israel, the Palestinian Authority gave the green light to launch riots by Arab mobs in Jerusalem, Hebron and throughout Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank). Suspicions that President Obama used an application for zoning approval for future housing in Jerusalem as the excuse to ratchet up unbearable pressure upon the Jewish state are more than persuasive. It may be that if the rioting continues, it will be henceforward known as the Obama intifada.
Israel is now under the greatest pressure in years from an American administration to give away the ancestral Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria. President Barack Obama is perceived by many to be a clear and present danger to the very survival of the reconstituted Jewish state. His deafening silence, along with that of his lieutenants, Biden, Clinton, Mitchell and his army of anti-Israel advisors, at the disgusting ceremony held in Ramallah by the Palestinian Authority honoring a female terrorist and her grisly accomplices who murdered 38 Israeli civilians in 1978, speaks volumes about the towering anti-Israel bias of this president: Barack Hussein Obama.
In the aftermath of the Six Day War, the US Joint Chiefs were not interested in Jewish patrimony or Biblical history. They were solely concerned with the strategic necessities for Israel's survival in a very bad neighborhood. That is why they set out what the bare minimum retention of territory for Israel should be.
Col. Irving Kett (USA, ret.) also prepared an Army War College study on Israel's security needs in 1974. His study was called, "A Proposed Solution to the Arab-Israel Conflict". In it, he strongly suggested that, from a military point of view, Israel's borders should be constituted to make it a compact state with natural boundaries on all sides - the Jordan River to the east, Golan Heights to the northeast, the Litani River in the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the historic boundary with the Sinai Peninsula to the south. As a direct result and consequence of Arab aggression, most of those borders had been attained by Israel at one time or another.
Colonel Kett pointed out what the IDF has always known, but what too many Israeli politicians preferred to ignore; namely, that there is vital strategic value in the mountain range which forms the spine running through Judea and Samaria. The highlands run some 54 miles from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south and dominate Israel's coastline. The spine is 12 miles wide and Israel simply cannot afford to vacate it.
It was assumed for years by both the Israeli military and politicians that if a Palestinian Arab state came into existence it would have to permit an Israeli defense line on the Jordan River (the Allon Plan), and that such a state would have to be demilitarized.
The answer, of course, would be to have made permanent the suggested boundaries proposed in both Kett's memorandum and the earlier JCS report of some 40 years ago. Events have moved on since then. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank would never agree to this and Hamas in Gaza would scornfully dismiss it out of hand. The Arabs have become even more vicious in their anti-Jewish rhetoric and behavior, and a jihadist Iran has all but encircled the Jewish state through its Islamist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon.
The Arab-Israel conflict is not, and never has been, merely a war over territory. It is, and always has been, a religious war. Islam will never accept a non-Muslim state, whatever size or shape it may be, within lands previously conquered by Muslims in the name of Allah. Even if Israel shrank to just one down town square in Tel Aviv it would still be a provocation to the Arab and Muslim world. “Land for Peace” and a “Two State Solution” are euphemisms that are no different to the dread slogan, which greeted the hapless Jews arriving at the Auschwitz death camp: “Arbeit macht frei – Work makes Free.”
The "Two-State Solution", so beloved of President Obama, requires Judea and Samaria to be given away to the Palestinian Arabs. Obama has upped the ante. Now he wants those Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem built on land liberated from the Jordanian occupiers to also be given to the Palestinian Arabs. We are now talking about a potential plan to expel some 700,000 Jews from their biblical and ancestral heartland of Judea and Samaria along with many suburbs of the Jewish capital city: Jerusalem.
But the Arabs have no intention of making peace whatever territorial concessions Israel makes. That should be enough for an Israeli government and Prime Minister with intestinal fortitude to defy the world's pressure for the Jewish state to slowly and surely disappear. After all, Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Shamir all said "no" to American presidents in the past and prevailed.
Interestingly, Colonel Kett had also suggested that the Palestinian Arabs be resettled in a state in the Sinai. The other famous suggestion is that Jordan is Palestine, which is based upon the historical fact of the first "Two-State Solution" enacted in infamy by Great Britain some 87 years ago.
Even President George W. Bush, when visiting Israel as Governor of Texas, was moved to utter, "The whole of Israel is only about six times the size of the King Ranch near Corpus Christie." Yet even he, after becoming president, called for a "Two-State Solution" west of the Jordan River.
Pushing Israel back to the "Auschwitz borders", as Abba Eban called them, where the Jewish state is only nine miles wide at its most populous region, is what the "Two-State Solution" is all about. That other dread euphemism "The Final Solution" then comes to mind.
Hopefully Binyamin Netanyahu will stress the territorial insanity of that fact during his visit to Washington, DC. Perhaps he will have the opportunity to do so with President Obama; provided the president does not give the Israeli head of state the cold shoulder.
Victor Sharpe is the author of the highly acclaimed book: Politicide – The attempted murder of the Jewish state. The second volume, updated to the end of 2009, continues documenting in some 46 easily readable chapters the relentless war of the Islamist and Arab world against Israel. It has just been published by Lulu Press and can be found with Victor Sharpe’s other books on Amazon.com
Copyright ©Victor Sharpe 2010
by Victor Sharpe
Immediately after the June 1967 Six Day War, a secret memorandum was issued by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Their conclusions were that any peace settlement between Israel and the Arab belligerents would only succeed if Israel retained certain territories vital for its continued existence and survival.
The areas the Joint Chiefs declared as the minimum defensible borders for the Jewish state included the Golan Heights, the western half of Samaria (the northwestern part of the West Bank), all of Judea (the southern part of the West Bank), the Gaza Strip and several portions of the eastern Sinai Peninsula.
This, of course, occurred before the world became obsessed with the creation of an Arab terror state within Israel’s narrow territory between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan.
Since that report in 1967, the Begin government gave away all of the Sinai. The first city that Joshua liberated during the Israelites entry into the Promised Land, Jericho, was given away by Binyamin Netanyahu during his first term as Prime Minister, followed by most of Hebron, King David’s first Jewish capital and one of Judaism’s four holy cities. Both cities are practically lost to the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. Under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his deputy, Ehud Olmert, Israel gave away the entire Gaza Strip in 2005, with catastrophic consequences for the Jewish state. These breathtaking concessions to the Arabs have all been made under the hope that it will bring peace with the Arab enemies. But it has not. “Peace, peace, but there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14.)
Ehud Barak, Israel's present Defense Minister, had years earlier withdrawn from the southern Lebanon security strip, thus allowing the Islamist Hezbollah to fill the vacuum with dire consequences for northern Israel. A conflict broke out - the Second Lebanon War - disastrously mismanaged by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was launched too late and ended too soon.
After Israel endured over 12,000 incoming missiles from Hamas-occupied Gaza, Operation Cast Lead was finally launched by Israel. It ended too soon, and the Islamist Hamas continues to pursue its ambition of finally destroying Israel. Just this last week after the visit by Vice President Biden, who attacked Israel for planning to build apartments in a north Jerusalem suburb followed by a vituperative call from Secretary of State Clinton making yet more demands upon Israel, the Palestinian Authority gave the green light to launch riots by Arab mobs in Jerusalem, Hebron and throughout Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank). Suspicions that President Obama used an application for zoning approval for future housing in Jerusalem as the excuse to ratchet up unbearable pressure upon the Jewish state are more than persuasive. It may be that if the rioting continues, it will be henceforward known as the Obama intifada.
Israel is now under the greatest pressure in years from an American administration to give away the ancestral Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria. President Barack Obama is perceived by many to be a clear and present danger to the very survival of the reconstituted Jewish state. His deafening silence, along with that of his lieutenants, Biden, Clinton, Mitchell and his army of anti-Israel advisors, at the disgusting ceremony held in Ramallah by the Palestinian Authority honoring a female terrorist and her grisly accomplices who murdered 38 Israeli civilians in 1978, speaks volumes about the towering anti-Israel bias of this president: Barack Hussein Obama.
In the aftermath of the Six Day War, the US Joint Chiefs were not interested in Jewish patrimony or Biblical history. They were solely concerned with the strategic necessities for Israel's survival in a very bad neighborhood. That is why they set out what the bare minimum retention of territory for Israel should be.
Col. Irving Kett (USA, ret.) also prepared an Army War College study on Israel's security needs in 1974. His study was called, "A Proposed Solution to the Arab-Israel Conflict". In it, he strongly suggested that, from a military point of view, Israel's borders should be constituted to make it a compact state with natural boundaries on all sides - the Jordan River to the east, Golan Heights to the northeast, the Litani River in the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the historic boundary with the Sinai Peninsula to the south. As a direct result and consequence of Arab aggression, most of those borders had been attained by Israel at one time or another.
Colonel Kett pointed out what the IDF has always known, but what too many Israeli politicians preferred to ignore; namely, that there is vital strategic value in the mountain range which forms the spine running through Judea and Samaria. The highlands run some 54 miles from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south and dominate Israel's coastline. The spine is 12 miles wide and Israel simply cannot afford to vacate it.
It was assumed for years by both the Israeli military and politicians that if a Palestinian Arab state came into existence it would have to permit an Israeli defense line on the Jordan River (the Allon Plan), and that such a state would have to be demilitarized.
The answer, of course, would be to have made permanent the suggested boundaries proposed in both Kett's memorandum and the earlier JCS report of some 40 years ago. Events have moved on since then. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank would never agree to this and Hamas in Gaza would scornfully dismiss it out of hand. The Arabs have become even more vicious in their anti-Jewish rhetoric and behavior, and a jihadist Iran has all but encircled the Jewish state through its Islamist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon.
The Arab-Israel conflict is not, and never has been, merely a war over territory. It is, and always has been, a religious war. Islam will never accept a non-Muslim state, whatever size or shape it may be, within lands previously conquered by Muslims in the name of Allah. Even if Israel shrank to just one down town square in Tel Aviv it would still be a provocation to the Arab and Muslim world. “Land for Peace” and a “Two State Solution” are euphemisms that are no different to the dread slogan, which greeted the hapless Jews arriving at the Auschwitz death camp: “Arbeit macht frei – Work makes Free.”
The "Two-State Solution", so beloved of President Obama, requires Judea and Samaria to be given away to the Palestinian Arabs. Obama has upped the ante. Now he wants those Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem built on land liberated from the Jordanian occupiers to also be given to the Palestinian Arabs. We are now talking about a potential plan to expel some 700,000 Jews from their biblical and ancestral heartland of Judea and Samaria along with many suburbs of the Jewish capital city: Jerusalem.
But the Arabs have no intention of making peace whatever territorial concessions Israel makes. That should be enough for an Israeli government and Prime Minister with intestinal fortitude to defy the world's pressure for the Jewish state to slowly and surely disappear. After all, Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Shamir all said "no" to American presidents in the past and prevailed.
Interestingly, Colonel Kett had also suggested that the Palestinian Arabs be resettled in a state in the Sinai. The other famous suggestion is that Jordan is Palestine, which is based upon the historical fact of the first "Two-State Solution" enacted in infamy by Great Britain some 87 years ago.
Even President George W. Bush, when visiting Israel as Governor of Texas, was moved to utter, "The whole of Israel is only about six times the size of the King Ranch near Corpus Christie." Yet even he, after becoming president, called for a "Two-State Solution" west of the Jordan River.
Pushing Israel back to the "Auschwitz borders", as Abba Eban called them, where the Jewish state is only nine miles wide at its most populous region, is what the "Two-State Solution" is all about. That other dread euphemism "The Final Solution" then comes to mind.
Hopefully Binyamin Netanyahu will stress the territorial insanity of that fact during his visit to Washington, DC. Perhaps he will have the opportunity to do so with President Obama; provided the president does not give the Israeli head of state the cold shoulder.
Victor Sharpe is the author of the highly acclaimed book: Politicide – The attempted murder of the Jewish state. The second volume, updated to the end of 2009, continues documenting in some 46 easily readable chapters the relentless war of the Islamist and Arab world against Israel. It has just been published by Lulu Press and can be found with Victor Sharpe’s other books on Amazon.com
Copyright ©Victor Sharpe 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Barack Obama , Jerusalem and the Jews
Many periods of Israel and USA relations have been rocky, but never hostile to the degree we see today. (see the below posting Barack Obama and the Jews July 28,2009). After watching the news in the USA, Europe and here in Israel, I am seeing a situation that could seriously deteriorate in one of two ways. Both unfortunate, but not fatal for this little country, but very damaging to the world in general. The Obama adminstration is encouraging reckless and irresponsible behaviour on the part of the Palestinians and the Jihadists, particularly Hamas and Hizbullah. Weakening the relationship between the U.S. and Israel is their fondest dream and they already believe it is happening and so they just have to wait it out. The relationship could actually break temporarily and it would be temporary because of the affect of the unleashing of Jihadism all over the world. Any opening will be seen as a weakness and will be taken advantage of by this drive for Islamic domination.
First, let's get the facts straight, the misrepresentation of the situation in the press: which refers to the home building in Jerusalem as "new settlements on the West Bank". Jerusalem is not in the West Bank, Barack Obama agreed that Jerusalem was not included in the "freeze", and no country that I have found in my research has allowed the outside world to tell their own people where they can and cannot live. Jerusalem, as the Prime Minister has repeated many times is the undivided capitol of the Jewish Nation State of Israel. Whether the rest of the world likes it or not, this is a fact that no amount of political pressure will change.
Second, the Obama administration has shown not one sign of respect or friendship to it's most reliable ally in this region. Except for pretty words that are soon offset by unreasonable and insulting actions Israel has been of little interest. Instead of a reliable ally he seems to see an annoyance that he would like to stop buzzing around his quest to win the love and support of the Muslim countries of the region. Why we insist on taking at face value his claim that the Vice President, Joe Biden, came to smooth relations and develop a warmer connection with Israel is a mystery. The Vice President came to pressure Israel to bend to the Palestinian demands, which of course would mean suicide for us. If the building in Ramat Shlomo (a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem) had not come up it would have been something else i.e. Heritage sites, settlements, checkpoints,occupation, Arab humiliation. When "painful concessions" need to be made they are always Jewish, when was a "painful concession" ever made by the Arabs?
At the same time that the President and the Secretary of State were castigating Israel in the harshest manner ever, not a word appeared anywhere about the effect on peace prospects with the Arabs, when at the same time they are showering rocks down on supplicants praying at the Western Wall, or the Palestinian Authority preparing a major public dedication of a public square to honor Dalal Mugrahbi as a "courageous fighter who held a proud place in Palestinian history" according to a Fatah statement. What was this courageous fighters deed? Murdering an American photo journalist and 38 Israeli civilians including 13 children, very brave indeed.
Of course cold blooded murder is not nearly as serious as an announcemnt that a country will allow homes to be built in its own territory for its own citizens. Just weigh this: on the one hand, Jews building homes on the other hand, Palestinians making a hero out of a murderer.
Jews are banned from building because they are Jews, there is no mention of the fact that Arabs are also building and often illegally (without building permits, try that in the U.S.).
The incendiary and public nature of the remarks from the Obama administration indicate the worst of intentions. As I mentioned in my previous post, Israel unquestionably wants only the best of relations with the United States, a natural ally, but it will not be at any price. There is an old song that says "I got along without you before I met you and I will get along without you now" It will be difficult and unpleasant and even dangerous but we know that the American people and the American Congress by 75% do not support the attacks by this administration. So in time things will work out. The Prime Minister is balancing on the edge of a very sharp knife and doing it very well. We must let him know we support him in being firm with President Obama, Israel is not an American colony and that government cannot dictate her policies. She is a sovereign country and its citizens will live where they like. Israel will not tell Americans were they can live and Americans cannot tell Israelis where to live.
When Barack Obama's Presidency is over the Jews will still be here, harried, stressed and embattled, but still determined to look out for our own best interests with or without our much loved and admired ally across the ocean.
Thanks to Arlene Kushner:OK. The situation is horrendous, and every bad thing we imagined would come from an Obama administration is materializing before our eyes.
We cannot simply be horrified. We absolutely must act. And at this juncture I would like to recommend a couple of specific things, with more to follow:
First, it is absolutely imperative that we give Netanyahu as much support as possible. Please, contact him! Large numbers make a difference.
Tell him that:
[] You are behind him and will support him as he stands strong for Israel.
[] He must not be pushed into concessions that are not in Israel's best interests because of threats from the Obama administration.
[] He must take the offensive, missing no opportunity to expose the insincerity of the PA and its consistent incitement.
[] He must, at all times, remember that Israel is a sovereign state and does not answer to the US. And that there is no need to apologize for this.
Fax: 02-670-5369 (From the US: 011-972-2-670-5369)
Phone: 03-610-9898 (From the US: 011-972-3-610-9898)
E-mail: Memshala@pmo.gov.il and also pm_eng2@it.pmo.gov.il (underscore after pm) use both addresses.
First, let's get the facts straight, the misrepresentation of the situation in the press: which refers to the home building in Jerusalem as "new settlements on the West Bank". Jerusalem is not in the West Bank, Barack Obama agreed that Jerusalem was not included in the "freeze", and no country that I have found in my research has allowed the outside world to tell their own people where they can and cannot live. Jerusalem, as the Prime Minister has repeated many times is the undivided capitol of the Jewish Nation State of Israel. Whether the rest of the world likes it or not, this is a fact that no amount of political pressure will change.
Second, the Obama administration has shown not one sign of respect or friendship to it's most reliable ally in this region. Except for pretty words that are soon offset by unreasonable and insulting actions Israel has been of little interest. Instead of a reliable ally he seems to see an annoyance that he would like to stop buzzing around his quest to win the love and support of the Muslim countries of the region. Why we insist on taking at face value his claim that the Vice President, Joe Biden, came to smooth relations and develop a warmer connection with Israel is a mystery. The Vice President came to pressure Israel to bend to the Palestinian demands, which of course would mean suicide for us. If the building in Ramat Shlomo (a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem) had not come up it would have been something else i.e. Heritage sites, settlements, checkpoints,occupation, Arab humiliation. When "painful concessions" need to be made they are always Jewish, when was a "painful concession" ever made by the Arabs?
At the same time that the President and the Secretary of State were castigating Israel in the harshest manner ever, not a word appeared anywhere about the effect on peace prospects with the Arabs, when at the same time they are showering rocks down on supplicants praying at the Western Wall, or the Palestinian Authority preparing a major public dedication of a public square to honor Dalal Mugrahbi as a "courageous fighter who held a proud place in Palestinian history" according to a Fatah statement. What was this courageous fighters deed? Murdering an American photo journalist and 38 Israeli civilians including 13 children, very brave indeed.
Of course cold blooded murder is not nearly as serious as an announcemnt that a country will allow homes to be built in its own territory for its own citizens. Just weigh this: on the one hand, Jews building homes on the other hand, Palestinians making a hero out of a murderer.
Jews are banned from building because they are Jews, there is no mention of the fact that Arabs are also building and often illegally (without building permits, try that in the U.S.).
The incendiary and public nature of the remarks from the Obama administration indicate the worst of intentions. As I mentioned in my previous post, Israel unquestionably wants only the best of relations with the United States, a natural ally, but it will not be at any price. There is an old song that says "I got along without you before I met you and I will get along without you now" It will be difficult and unpleasant and even dangerous but we know that the American people and the American Congress by 75% do not support the attacks by this administration. So in time things will work out. The Prime Minister is balancing on the edge of a very sharp knife and doing it very well. We must let him know we support him in being firm with President Obama, Israel is not an American colony and that government cannot dictate her policies. She is a sovereign country and its citizens will live where they like. Israel will not tell Americans were they can live and Americans cannot tell Israelis where to live.
When Barack Obama's Presidency is over the Jews will still be here, harried, stressed and embattled, but still determined to look out for our own best interests with or without our much loved and admired ally across the ocean.
Thanks to Arlene Kushner:OK. The situation is horrendous, and every bad thing we imagined would come from an Obama administration is materializing before our eyes.
We cannot simply be horrified. We absolutely must act. And at this juncture I would like to recommend a couple of specific things, with more to follow:
First, it is absolutely imperative that we give Netanyahu as much support as possible. Please, contact him! Large numbers make a difference.
Tell him that:
[] You are behind him and will support him as he stands strong for Israel.
[] He must not be pushed into concessions that are not in Israel's best interests because of threats from the Obama administration.
[] He must take the offensive, missing no opportunity to expose the insincerity of the PA and its consistent incitement.
[] He must, at all times, remember that Israel is a sovereign state and does not answer to the US. And that there is no need to apologize for this.
Fax: 02-670-5369 (From the US: 011-972-2-670-5369)
Phone: 03-610-9898 (From the US: 011-972-3-610-9898)
E-mail: Memshala@pmo.gov.il and also pm_eng2@it.pmo.gov.il (underscore after pm) use both addresses.
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