Blaming the Jews - Nothing Comparable in History

So many great articles today!

A recent post discussed why Israel differs from Europe.

A writer for Asia Times wrote this great article - at least Asia gets it!

Here's your final exam question in Middle Eastern studies:

A mass of Coptic Christians marches through Cairo to protest the military government's failure to protect them from Muslim radicals. They are attacked by stone-throwing, club-wielding rowdies. Armed forces security personnel intervene, and the Copts fight it out with the soldiers, with two dozen dead and scores injured on both sides. Who is to blame?

The full credit answer is: Benjamin Netanyahu, for building apartments in Jerusalem. If that's not what you wrote, don't blame me if you can't get a job at the New York Times.
Rarely in the course of human events have so few been blamed by so much for so many.

There are precedents, for example, when Adolf Hitler claimed that a Jewish "stab in the back" lost World War I for Germany. The notion that the problems of three hundred million Arabs revolve around the governance of a few million Palestinians has the same order of credibility.
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations always presumed that Israel's peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan would remain intact - that Egypt would interdict terrorists infiltrating Israel from the Sinai, stop weapons from reaching Hamas in Gaza, and otherwise fill its obligations. But Egypt is dissolving. The Egyptian army crossed a red line on October 9, according to Egyptian blogger Issander al-Armani. [1] Soldiers attacked Coptic demonstrators who were demanding protection from the army, The military not only shut down news coverage of the massacre, but used state television to call on Egyptian Muslims to "defend the army from the Copts".

On September 19, the Egyptian army showed that it could not protect Israel's embassy in Cairo; on October 9, it showed itself ready to murder members of the country's Christian minority. Egypt is dissolving because it can't feed itself, and it can't feed itself because it is going bankrupt. Former International Atomic Energy chief Mohamed ElBaradei, now a candidate for Egypt's presidency, warned last week that Egypt would run out of money within months, according to the English-language edition of Almasry Alroum:

Egypt might face bankruptcy within six months, Egyptian reform advocate and presidential hopeful Mohamed ElBaradei warned on Monday. During a meeting with labor leaders at the Center for Trade Unions and Workers Services (CTUWS) in Helwan, south of Cairo, ElBaradei attacked the "failing" policies of Egypt's ruling military council.He criticized the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) for what he called incompetence and lack of experience, saying that experienced government officials don't have enough power. Egypt is currently relying on its cash reserve with no gross domestic product, he said [2].

ElBaradei, the undeserved winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize (he helped Iran cover its tracks en route to enriching uranium to near weapons grade), nonetheless is the closest thing to a responsible figure in Egyptian politics. His warning that Egypt is burning its cash reserves is accurate. On October 5, the Financial Times reported that Egypt's foreign exchange reserves had fallen from $35 billion in January to only $19.4 billion, [3] enough to cover less than five months' worth of imports.

The central bank had reported $25 billion of reserves in August, [4] so the monthly decline appears to be around $6 billion; it is hard to tell precisely because the Egyptian central bank publishes contradictory data about its reserve position. The earlier $25 billion figure might have counted loans expected from the Gulf states, but as the FT explains, "Only $500m of some $7bn of promised aid from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have arrived so far."

Almost 60% of Egyptians live in rural areas, yet the country imports half its caloric consumption and spends $5.5 billion a year in food subsidies. When it runs out of money, millions will starve. Many already are hungry. The state-controlled newspaper al-Dostour warned on October 9 that an "insane" increase in the price of food - up 80% so far this year - has left citizens "screaming". [5]

The newspaper added that the "current state of lawlessness has left merchants and businesses with no supervision", leading to hoarding, price-gouging and shortages. This was evident at the outset of the uprisings, [6] and a breakdown of the country's food distribution system was evident by May, as I wrote at the time. [7]

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces appears baffled. Its leader, Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, does not appear in public. Previously he ran Egypt's military industries. Prime Minister Essam Sharaf was briefly transportation minister, having taught highway engineering for most of his career.

He has spoken publicly about only one topic of political importance, namely the peace treaty with Israel, which he proposes to change, as he told Turkish television on October 8. [8] Egypt's leaders face a crisis brewing for two generations in which the Egyptian government kept half of its population illiterate and mired in rural poverty as an instrument of social control. As ElBaradei warns, they have no idea what they are doing.

Syria, meanwhile, is in civil war, which may turn into a proxy war between the Sunni powers and Iran. And Iraq's leader Nuri al-Maliki, the leader of the supposed Iraqi democracy we spent a trillion dollars and 4,000 lives to put in place, is backing the Bashar al-Assad regime in alliance with Iran. [9]

Turkey, the self-styled rising power in the region, is about to get its come-uppance in the form of a nasty economic downturn. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's belligerence has risen in inverse proportion to the market price of the Turkish lira:

...In short, there is not a patch of ground in Israel's proximity that is not roiling and boiling with political and economic turmoil. Echoing in the ears of Israel's leaders are the words of Isaiah (57:20-21), which Jews around the world read on October 8 on the Day of Atonement: "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked."

Spengler's corollary states: Neither is there peace to the stupid. We have Nicholas Kristof writing in the October 6 New York Times: "Now it is Israel that is endangered most by its leaders and maximalist stance. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is isolating his country, and, to be blunt, his hard line on settlements seems like a national suicide policy. Nothing is more corrosive than Israel’s growth of settlements because they erode hope of a peace agreement in the future."

Kristof is talking about the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, which was undeveloped land before 1967 and which every conceivable peace agreement would assign to Israel.

Nothing will appease the liberals, because if liberal social engineering can't fix the problems of the Middle East, the world will have no need of liberals. The New York Times will demand [14] that Israel concede and apologize, as surely as a gumball will roll out of the machine when I crank in a quarter. Existential need trumps rationality, most of all among the self-styled priesthood of rationality.

For extra credit, class: If 15 million Egyptians starve to death, and all the Copts are murdered, and Syria plunges into a genocidal civil war, and Turkey kills another 40,000 Kurds, and the Iraqi Shi'ites and Iraqi Sunnis all fight to the death, whose fault will it be?

I bet you guessed right this time. Israel's, for building apartments in Gilo.

Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. Comment on this article in Spengler's Expat Bar forum.

"P" for "Provocation" and "DD" for "Double Standards"

Today, my posts focused on lies, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy theories.

This post will deal with an offshoot of this, which is double standards & hypocrisy.  This post is in response to the condemnation over Israel's building in (East) Jerusalem.

Excerpt from JPost:

Clearly, both Clinton and Hague are suffering from “selective provocation syndrome,” which is when one deems Israel’s actions to be provocative while ignoring similar moves by the Palestinians.

Consider the following. According to data compiled by Peace Now, since the government ended the building freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria last October, there have been a grand total of just 2,598 buildings started.

It is this small number of new Jewish homes in the territories that has the critics up in arms.

They claim that by expanding Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, Israel is prejudicing the outcome of any final-status negotiations.

And yet, when it comes to Palestinian efforts to create facts on the ground, these very same critics inexplicably fall silent.

Indeed, this past Sunday, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) released data indicating that the number of Palestinian homes in Judea, Samaria and Gaza has soared by over 25% in the past four years.

This year alone, the Palestinians will build more housing units than Israel did in all of last year, even though our population is more than three times the size of theirs.

According to the PCBS, in 2011 the Palestinians will finish a whopping 33,822 dwellings, or 13 times the number currently being built by Jews in Judea and Samaria.

There is no doubt that this feverish building activity by the Palestinians will have an enormous impact on the ground, greatly expanding their presence in the “disputed” territories.

So why, then, is this too not regarded as a “provocation” that undermines peace efforts? Or is it only when Jews lay down cement that construction suddenly becomes confrontational? I guess not all “provocations” are created equal.

The fact is that it is neither logical nor fair to expect Israel to freeze building in Judea and Samaria or anywhere else while the Palestinians are busy at work.

Read the full article here.

Check out my previous post in response to this condemnation.

Gilo is a neighborhood, not a settlement.  Saeb Erekat even offered Gilo to Israel in 2008, although this offer led to nowhere, mainly because of the prospect of a divided Jerusalem.  Why now are the Palestinians and the world growing so upset over the natural building in a neighborhood, which would remain part of Israel in any peace agreement, and when the Palestinians build much more in the disputed territory?

In 2009, France stated that settlement building in Gilo is not an obstacle to peace.

I can't fully explain why countries like America and the U.K. are condemning this.  Perhaps they want to appease the Palestinians too, or they just don't know that much about Gilo.  Maybe it's become so implanted in their brains that when an Israeli builds a home, it's gotta be provocative and terrible and worthy of condemnation.

But I can answer you why the Palestinians are condemning it.  They're condemning it because otherwise they'd have no excuse as to why they can't return to the negotiating table.

Mind you, asking that Israel give up everything prior to negotiations/negotiating over negotiations isn't really a good excuse either...

Nor is asking for a freeze to settlement construction when Netanyahu did precisely that - an unprecedented 10 month settlement freeze.  What does Abbas do? Refuses to negotiaties, walks to the negotiating table in the tenth month, and when the month is over, and the freeze is lifted, leaves the table. 

If they don't even care about negotiating - as seen by the settlement freeze and Abbas walking in on the tenth month - then how can the world expect them to make peace?

Peace requires two parties.  But it requires more than that.  It requires two parties who are willing to make peace.

Israel has shown that multiple times - whether when giving back Sinai Peninsula to make peace with Egypt, when making peace with Jordan, when accepting Oslo Accords, during Camp David Accords, during Taba Accords, when they uprooted their own citizens from Gaza and got 12000 rockets in return, and when Prime Minister Olmert offered the most generous offer in 2008 which Abbas refused.

The real reason why Israel is isolated

From The Jewish Week:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was quite right to observe this week that Israel is becoming increasingly isolated in the Mideast. What’s unnerving, though, is to suggest, as he did, that Jerusalem is at fault for this situation.

“Real security can only be achieved by both a strong diplomatic effort as well as a strong effort to project your military strength,” Panetta said en route to the region for the umpteenth U.S. effort to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

We appreciate and support Washington’s attempts to get the negotiations on track. The current urgency is driven by the Palestinian Authority’s end-around diplomacy at the United Nations in its quest for statehood by avoiding rather than dealing with Israel. But a reality check is in order, and it indicates that Jerusalem is not the culprit here. Far from it.

In truth, Israel has accepted the Quartet’s invitation to come back to the table, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he is ready to sit down and negotiate with PA President Mahmoud Abbas immediately.

It is Abbas who is holding back, as usual, insisting that Israel first must agree to a moratorium on settlement building. Netanyahu’s response is, in effect, “been there, done that.” He points out that at some internal political risk, the Jerusalem government declared a 10-month halt to building in the West Bank, but the Palestinians dragged their feet for nine months and the talks ended after two weeks.

We would prefer that Netanyahu issue another short-term moratorium on West Bank building — if for no other reason than tactical. Such a move might score a few diplomatic points with Washington and a few other countries. More importantly, though, it would reveal that the sticking point for the Palestinians is not the settlements. After all, the PA negotiated off and on with Jerusalem for many years without raising the issue, and only made it a deal-breaker after President Barack Obama did.

Rather, the critical considerations for the leaders of the PA, as Abbas noted in his UN speech last month, are that they believe the “occupation” goes back to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, not 1967, and their refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or compromise on the “right of return.”

In all the calls for a Palestinian state, how many have noted that it would have racist, apartheid laws — no Jews allowed — and follow Islamic dictates? Not to mention that the PA is financially broke, has deep divisions with Hamas in Gaza and can’t control militants without the help of the Israeli army.

Yes, Israel finds itself isolated in the region. That’s because Turkey has cast its fate with Iran rather than the West and has been looking for fights to pick with Jerusalem to bolster its status in Tehran. It’s because Egypt, without Mubarak, has made it clear that it wants to pull back the relationship. Israel displayed great restraint in the face of border attacks and having its embassy in Cairo attacked by a lynch mob.

Yet Jerusalem is somehow perceived as causing rather than enduring increasing hostility and snubs from its neighbors.

Are the West Bank settlements really to blame here rather than decades of virulent Arab anti-Semitism and refusal to accept the reality of a Jewish presence in the region?

The U.N. is the "Theatre of the Absurd"

Melanie Phillips:

Some 1941 years ago, the Romans conquered the ancient Jewish kingdom of Judea by force and attempted to expunge all memory of the Jews’ claim to the land by renaming the area Palestine. Two days ago, Mahmoud Abbas attempted to do the same thing by diplomatic force at the UN.

The whole thing was of course a grotesque charade, outdone in its surrealism only by the reaction of the western world. For the UK and US governments and others said that such a unilateral declaration of independence was a setback for peace and a Palestinian state, which could only be achieved through negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.

Not so. Negotiations do not have to be re-started in order to achieve this. If Abbas really wanted a state of Palestine to live in peace alongside Israel, he could have said a handful of words in New York which would have ended the conflict there and then and brought such a state into actual being.

For all that is needed is for Abbas to say, in Arabic as well as English, that he accepts the right of Israel to exist as the nation state of the Jewish people, and that his own people will no longer wage war against it. If he were to say that, and to match those words by deeds to show he meant them – for example, by ending the incitement in the educational materials and media under his command to hatred and murder of Jews and Israelis – there would be peace and a state of Palestine.

The problem is not the absence of a state of Palestine. The problem is that the Arabs want to get rid of Israel.

But this will never happen. For the dominant assumption in the west, the assumption that underpins virtually every political utterance on the subject and every interview on the BBC and the reporting even in notionally pro-Israel papers such as the Times or Telegraph that a state of Palestine would end the Middle East conflict, is not only wholly mistaken but is to mis-state that conflict.

For peace to be achieved, the belligerent has to stop making war. The Arabs have made war on the Jews in their ancient homeland since Israel became a state and indeed for three decades before that. For a solution to be arrived at, it’s necessary correctly to state the problem. The problem is not the absence of a state of Palestine. The problem is that the Arabs want to get rid of Israel.

For anyone paying attention to the actual words used, the evidence was there in Abbas’s own speech. His people, he declared, had been suffering for 63 years. What happened 63 years ago? The state of Israel came into being. So what Abbas was saying was not that the absence of a state of Palestine was the problem. The problem for him was the very existence of the state of Israel.

He also said:
        ‘...we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22 per cent of the territory of historical Palestine – on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967.'

But the West Bank and Gaza were not 22 per cent of historical; Palestine; they were far, far less. It was Israel that was established on a fraction of ‘historical Palestine’, having settled for that fraction as better than nothing at all. And if the Palestinians truly had accepted a state merely in the West Bank and Gaza, why then did they refuse the offer of precisely such a state on more than 90 per cent of that territory which was made to them in 2000 and 2008? Why does the very Palestinian logo on their flags and insignia show a map of this state of Palestine to which they aspire as having swallowed up Israel altogether?

In Ramallah on September 16, Abbas made his position even plainer. 'The Palestinian people', he stated, 'have been abused for 63 years, generation after generation, under occupation'.

No, it is not the settlements but the existence of Israel itself that is the problem which Abbas believes UN recognition of a state of Palestine would help resolve. It is Israel itself that Abbas wants to subsume into Palestine. In other words, as he himself has previously said, declaring UDI at the UN was a way of internationalising the conflict with Israel. UN recognition of a state of Palestine is therefore not a move towards peace but a signal for genocidal war.

The truly incredible bone-headedness (or worse) of the western response was encapsulated by a BBC Today programme interview on Friday morning with the UK’s former ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock. Sir Jeremy declared that a state of Palestine was ‘not a threat to Israel’, and that the Palestinians were ‘desperate’ to end the ‘injustice’ done to them and to restart negotiations. Eh? What ‘injustice’? The Palestinians are the ones waging war on Israel, not the other way round. What desperation, when they have repeatedly turned down the offer of a state? What keenness to re-start negotiations, when Israel repeatedly offers them negotiations and they repeatedly refuse?

Even worse, Sir Jeremy also said that what was much more important for Israel than a state of Palestine was not to imperil any further its relationship with other countries in the region such as Egypt, Turkey or Iran. What?? Doesn’t Sir Jeremy realise that the Palestinians are despised by every country in the region? Hasn’t Sir Jeremy noticed that Turkey is now pursuing an Islamist agenda, with appalling implications not just for Israel but for the interests of the UK and the west, and that Egypt may well fall to the Islamists too? And as for Israel not upsetting Iran by its attitude to the Palestinians, hasn’t Sir Jeremy Greenstock understood that Iran is threatening Israel with nuclear extinction because it is a Jewish state? On what planet is Sir Jeremy Greenstock living?

To anyone with a scintilla of knowledge of the nine-decade Arab and Islamic war against the Jews in the Middle East, Abbas’s speech at the UN consisted of lie after lie after lie. He claimed that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were illegal and in breach of international law (untrue); he claimed that the settlements were in breach of the terms of negotiation (untrue; it is Abbas’s own unilateral declaration which tears up successive bilateral treaties); he claimed that Israel was targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza (untrue; Israeli attacks, which carefully avoid hitting civilians wherever possible, are only in defence of its civilians against Hamas attacks --with which Abbas has now publicly lined himself up, not least by hailing as ‘martyrs’ those in Gaza who murder Israelis).

As for his claim that the settlements were the reason there was no peace, this was demonstrably ridiculous. As Netanyahu said in his own fine speech at the UN:

‘President Abbas ... said that the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the settlements. Well, that's odd. Our conflict has been raging for -- was raging for nearly half a century before there was a single Israeli settlement in the West Bank. So if what President Abbas is saying was true, then the -- I guess that the settlements he's talking about are Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Be'er Sheva. Maybe that's what he meant the other day when he said that Israel has been occupying Palestinian land for 63 years. He didn't say from 1967; he said from 1948. I hope somebody will bother to ask him this question because it illustrates a simple truth: The core of the conflict is not the settlements. The settlements are a result of the conflict.’

The Arab response has always been to refuse and instead to attempt to destroy the Jews’ presence in their own ancient homeland.

History records that, from the 1930s onwards, the Jews have never stood in the way of a Palestinian state if that would end the war of annihilation the Arabs have continuously waged against them. A Palestine state has been on repeated offer. The Arab response has always been to refuse and instead to attempt to destroy the Jews’ presence in their own ancient homeland. As certain Palestinian spokesmen themselves have acknowledged, Palestinian identity was itself constructed purely to destroy Israel. The reason for the objection to a state of Palestine is that it would be used to bring about the final destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, an aspiration which Abbas never ceases to proclaim.

As Netanyahu said in his speech:

‘We believe that the Palestinians should be neither the citizens of Israel nor its subjects. They should live in a free state of their own. But they should be ready, like us, for compromise. And we will know that they’re ready for compromise and for peace when they start taking Israel’s security requirements seriously and when they stop denying our historical connection to our ancient homeland.

I often hear them accuse Israel of Judaizing Jerusalem. That’s like accusing America of Americanizing Washington, or the British of Anglicizing London. You know why we’re called “Jews”? Because we come from Judea.”’

What Israel should be stating explicitly and repeatedly is that it is the Jews who are the indigenous people of what are now Israel and the West Bank – and indeed beyond. Commentators often refer to Judea and Samaria as ‘Biblical’ names as if they can therefore be disregarded today. Not so. Judea and Samara were the true historical names for Israel and the West Bank, used in international treaties and official documents of the Palestine Mandate period, and throughout which land the Jews were given the legal right to settle. Only now as the west mimics the Arab attempt to airbrush the Jews out of their own history have these names become synonymous with Jewish extremism.

What really illustrates the west’s moral bankruptcy over Israel and the Palestinians is that the day before the Abbas charade, the very same UN gave the stage to Iran’s Ahmadinejad from where he spouted his murderous lies and hatred of the west, including his implication that 9/11 was a US conspiracy. This is the leader of a regime which executes teenagers for homosexuality and which is developing nuclear weapons to commit genocide against Israel and hold the western world hostage. Yet far from expressing outrage at this use of the UN by such a man, far from drawing attention indeed to the utter suicidal madness of having the UN as a global policeman when its own Security Council is now chaired by Lebanon, a country in thrall to Iran through Hezbollah, the appearance of Ahmadinejad elicited barely a shrug by western media which instead worked themselves into a frenzy over Abbas and the ‘plight’ of the Palestinians.

Netanyahu again called it right. He said the world was menaced by a malignancy.

‘That malignancy is militant Islam. It cloaks itself in the mantle of a great faith, yet it murders Jews, Christians and Muslims alike with unforgiving impartiality. On September 11th it killed thousands of Americans, and it left the twin towers in smouldering ruins. Last night I laid a wreath on the 9/11 memorial. It was deeply moving. But as I was going there, one thing echoed in my mind: the outrageous words of the president of Iran on this podium yesterday. He implied that 9/11 was an American conspiracy. Some of you left this hall. All of you should have.'

Netanyahu called the UN a ‘theatre of the absurd’ and the ‘house of lies’. The western media mostly didn’t bother to report that, just as they didn’t bother to report much of his speech. What they are really waiting for is for the Palestinians to resume attacking Israelis as a sign of their ‘desperation’. They won’t report those attacks either. But they will report the Israelis’ response and call that ‘aggression’. That’s the prospect over which the western media, sensing a final kill, are now slavering.

True, true, and even more so, true.  Excellent article.

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon - "Palestinians are using settlement issue as distraction"

JPost:

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said on Sunday that the Palestinians are using the issue of settlement construction in order to distract the world from the so-called Quartet of Middle East mediators' demand to renew peace talks, according to Israel Radio.

Speaking during a tour of Gilo for foreign journalists, Ayalon added that construction plans for the east Jerusalem neighborhood are not a matter of "political timing," but rather a response to the needs of residents.

Israel on Sunday formally accepted the Quartet's proposal for re-starting negotiations with the Palestinians, following a meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his senior ministers.

"Israel welcomes the Quartet's call for direct negotiations without pre-conditions with the Palestinian Authority, which was already suggested by US president Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, even though Israel has a number of reservations which it will bring up in the negotiations."

Israel received rebukes from European and American diplomats over the plans in Gilo, with the US calling the move "counter-productive" and Europeans, including European Foreign Affairs chief  Catherine Ashton, saying it was the kind of "provocative" action that should be avoided as per the Quartet's statement. 

Ashton called on Israel to "reverse" its decision to build 1,100 new housing units in Gilo.

The government, however, has insisted that construction in the Jewish neighborhoods of Gilo is standard Israeli policy, and that Gilo is not a settlement nor should construction there be considered settlement development.

The statement called on the PA to enter negotiations without delay.

A fellow blogger, Elder of Ziyon, confirms this tactic by showing multiple maps and pictures of Gilo in relation to the Green Line and Arab villages, and shows that Gilo isn't a settlement but rather a neighborhood on area that would be kept as Israel in any peace agreement.

But once again, the Palestinians must always seek an excuse as to why they can't enter into negotiations.

"It's Israel's fault, they want to actually negotiate, instead of giving up everything in preconditions! This isn't something we will accept!"

"It's Israel's fault, they're building homes for residents of Israel in areas that would remain Israel in any peace agreement!"

"It's Israel's fault for building settlements! The settlements are the obstacle to peace! That's why terrorism against Zionists started in the 1920's, and the 1948 and 1967 war, and many acts of terrorism, took place before 1967 - before any settlements!"

"It's Israel's fault for refusing to give into our lunatic demands that Israel commits suicide! Israel doesn't want to negotiate!"

"Israel is the obstacle to peace! Our incitement of hatred on Palestinians T.V., newspapers, indoctrination of youth, declaring all of Israel as "occupied," refusal to accept any peace talks - including the very generous Olmert offer in 2008 -, training our children to become terrorists, throwing stones at Israelis which led to the death of Asher Palmer and his infant son, have nothing at all to do with the failure to establish peace!"

Speaking of Danny Ayalon here, check out his excellent video, "The Truth about the West Bank," to learn more about the West Bank and the settlements.