Check out this JPost article, about how Erekat recently remarked that he is rejecting direct talks with Israel, since the Quartet didn't ask for direct talks.
Actually, the Quartet did ask for direct talks. But when the PA refused even that, the Quartet despaired, and said that each side should submit their own proposal individually.
You can see why Israel would never want to do that - how can you give in proposals on borders and security without knowing what the other side is willing to negotiate over?? It's preposterous!
You can't have peace without direct negotiations. We had direct talks with Egypt and Jordan, and we got piece. We didn't have foreign intervention. And that's really the end of it.
And true, in both cases, both sides were willing to create peace. In this case, we see 40 years of Palestinian intransigence.
In that article, Erekat rejects direct talks with Israel. Erekat whines some more, then complains, and then finally, has an expression of utter shock when he discovers the U.S. has called for *gasp* direct negotiations.
Who can blame him? Direct negotiations are such a concept! It's a far too radical concept! Direct negotiations, could, gasp, possibly lead to peace! And if not, it would probably be, gasp, the fault of the PA (ex: Camp David in 2000, or Olmert's offer in 2008).
How can a country actually expect the Palestinians to make peace??? It contradicts the PA's most basic tenets! This is a hard slap in the face to the PA, and is completely uncalled for!
And yes, that is sarcasm.
Check out this poster I created for the occassion - feel free to use it (with credit please).
NOTE: While all three images may appear to be seperate images, they are actually one image, and they are the same file. They have a transparent seperation between them.
The United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO) has unanimously approved Syria's membership on two U.N. human rights committees.
Read the full article here.
I tell this to the Syrians who are pro-democracy, and don't seek a conflict with Israel - while the morally bankrupt U.N. may not support you, please know that there are real human beings out there who do support you, and who refuse to spit on your face.
This is a followup to my video about anti-Semitism hate crimes in the United States, as taken from FBI statistics.
The situation is pretty much the same around the world. Take what happened in Belgium, for example.
Some bigoted racist haters will believe that as long as Israel exists, and as long as the Jews get the same rights as everyone else - the right to self-determination and one country in the entire world the size of a little toe - then anti-Semitism is legitimate.
Not only is that morally abhorrent, and morally bankrupt, but it's completely wrong.
You see, the assumption there is that when Israel is destroyed, and when 5.7 million Jews are forced to live in exile around the world, anti-Semitism will disappear, Europe will love the Jews as they always did, and Arab countries will open the door to Jews and hold hands with them and dance around a campfire.
That is a very nice thought, but unfortunately, it leaves out 2000 years of persecution before 1948, before Israel was created, amongst them:
Europe in general
Massacres on the way to Crusades
Massacres as a result of the Bubonic Plague and conspiracy theories
Blood libels
Massacres as a result of blood libels
Cossacks (our second worst history in exile, just after the Holocaust).
Holocaust
Persecution and discrimination
Edicts and decrees
Arab attack on Peta Tikva (a community in what is now Israel, which was also built on purchased land) in 1886, or Arabs using the word "Jew" as a form of insult in Palestine in 1800's, amongst other things.
Treatment of Algerian Jews under the Janissaries
Pogroms
Dreyfuss Affair
Pogroms as a result of J'accuse
Holocaust
And much more...
And now that we have our own country - the idea for it being the result of the Dreyfuss Affair, and its establishment by the U.N. being the result of the Holocaust - you'd expect we'd be told to go live there so we can be gone from racist countries that hate us.
But no, instead, we are told that Israel must be destroyed.
Of course, Israel won't be destroyed. It is not Israel that suffers from the anti-Semitic world, or from racist morally bankrupt countries (I'm talking about bias, hatred, and rhetoric against Israel, not actual anti-Semitic attacks on Jews).
Rather, it is the MILLIONS of Sudanese who are being killed in genocide in Darfur in Sudan, without the U.N. doing anything about it (and Israel is the only country in the Middle East that accepts them in).
It is the tens of thousands of Kurds massacred by the Turks, an ongoing genocide.
It is the entire Baha'i population in Iran, persecuted and discriminated against without mercy, and without the U.N. caring.
It is the Green Movement, whom the world turned their backs on in 2009 instead of supporting them like any real human being would.
It is the Syrians, whose deatch count is around 3000 since the start of the Syrian Revolution.
It has been more than two and a half years since Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told to Israeli President Shimon Peres's face, "You (Jews) know well how to kill." Prime Minister Erdoğan has also declared more than a few times that the main obstacle to peace in this part of the world is Israel, once calling the Jewish state "a festering boil in the Middle East that spreads hate and enmity." In this holy month of Ramadan full of blood on Muslim territories, let's try to identify who are the ones who know well how to kill.
As the Syrian death count clicks every day to come close to 2,000, the Turkish-Kurdish death count does not stop, already over 40,000 since 1984, both adding to the big pool of blood called the Middle East. Only during this Ramadan, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK's, death toll has reached 50 in this Muslim Kurds vs. Muslim Turks war. This excludes the PKK casualties in Turkey and in northern Iraq due to Turkish military retaliation since they are seldom accurately reported.
Let's speak of facts.
Sudan is not in the conventional Middle East, so let's ignore the genocide there. Let's ignore, also, the West Pakistani massacres in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) totaling 1.25 million in 1971. Or 200,000 deaths in Algeria in war between Islamists and the government in 1991-2006.
But a simple, strictly Middle East research will give you one million deaths in the all-Muslim Iran-Iraq war; 300,000 Muslim minorities killed by Saddam Hussein; 80,000 Iranians killed during the Islamic revolution; 25,000 deaths in 1970-71, the days of Black September, by the Jordanian government in its fight against the Palestinians; and 20,000 Islamists killed in 1982 by the elder al-Assad in Hama. The World Health Organization's estimate of Osama bin Laden's carnage in Iraq was already 150,000 a few years earlier.
In a 2007 research, Gunnar Heinsohn from the University of Bremen and Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, found out that some 11 million Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, (0.3 percent) died during the six years of Arab war against Israel, or one out of every 315 fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.
According to Mssrs. Heinsohn and Pipes, the grisly inventory finds the total number of deaths in conflicts all over the world since 1950 numbering around 85 million. Of that, the Muslim Arab deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict were at 46,000 including 11,000 during Israel's war of independence. That makes 0.05 percent of all deaths in all conflicts, or 0.4 percent of all Arab deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In another calculation ignoring "small" massacres like the one that goes on in Syria and other deaths during the Arab Spring, only Saddam's Iraq, Jordan, the elder al-Assad's Syria, Iran-Iraq war, the bin Laden campaign in Iraq, the Iranian Islamic revolution and the Turkish-Kurdish conflict caused 1.65 million Muslim deaths by Muslims compared to less than 50,000 deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950, including fatalities during and after Operation Cast Lead which came after the Heinsohn-Pipes study. For those who don't have a calculator ready at their desks, allow me to tell: 50,000 is three percent of 1.65 million.
Golda Meir, the fourth prime minister of Israel, or rather the "Mother of Israel," had a perfectly realistic point when she said that peace in the Middle East would only be possible "when Arabs love their children more than they hate us."
This is also what Simon Deng said at the Perils of Global Intolerance, which was the counter-conference to the racist and anti-Semitic U.N. sponsored Durban III. I had the privilege of being just a few feet away and listening to Simon Deng speak at another rally against Durban III in New York.
I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.
It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state – Israel. Hitler couldn't have been made happier.
The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.
But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN's anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.
Please hear me out.
By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.
For over 50 years the indigenous black population of Sudan — Christians and Muslims alike — has been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.
In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.
The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them, and they are treated with a special privilege.
Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan's conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a "tribal conflict."
It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan, everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized. They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide!
But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur.
In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans – Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.
Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?
What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is "Israeli crimes" and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering. What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.
Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan. It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s. Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.
I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.
I don't like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.
I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family's left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word "no." All I could say was "yes," "yes," "yes."
The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish-led American Anti-Slavery Group — 16 years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.
But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN's actions.
My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.
As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.
I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered 26 black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo. They needed shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees' only hope was to reach Israel's side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.
Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!?
In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is "heaven."
Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Beautiful black Jews.
So, yes… I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.
Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We – a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis — all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.
In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a 12 year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: "This is our people." I was never able to find an answer to my question.
On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.
In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel's legitimacy.
Beyond the rather picturesque scene in Hebron today, conflict rears its head elsewhere. Now that the Palestinians have been accepted as UNESCO's 195th member in late October, they can now apply for World Heritage classification for cultural sites they deem exclusively theirs. Such sites would be protected by the UN and could receive funding from UNESCO for restoration.
The Israeli minister's visit last Monday came in light of Palestinian attempts to persuade UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to declare the Cave of Patriarchs as a World Heritage Site belonging to Palestinians only.
Also known as Ma'arat HaMachpela in Hebrew and the Ibrahim Mosque in Arabic, Edelstein declared that Israel "was now more motivated than ever to show that the connection of the Jewish people to the site goes back thousands of years ago."
The cave houses the tombs of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. According to the Bible's Book of Genesis, Chapter 23, Abraham purchased the cave and the adjoining field from Ephron the Hittite, to bury his wife Sarah there.
This past weekend marked the anniversary of Sarah's death as recorded in the Biblical portion read in synagogues across the world. Over 20,000 Jews from Israel and abroad, visited Hebron to pay homage to the first matriarch of the Jewish people.
UNESCO has worked tirelessly to undermine Israel's cultural and historical connection to holy sites. In November 2010, the agency classified Rachel's Tomb, the third holiest site in Judaism as a mosque, Bilal bin Rabah Mosque, "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories." A study of Palestinian Authority school textbooks in 2008, however found that the site was never referred to as such, and instead was known at the "Dome of Rachel," until 2001, when the term, Bilal bin Rabah Mosque suddenly emerged in new educational textbooks.
According to the Palestinian Minister of Tourism Khouloud Daibes Abu Dayyeh, in addition to Hebron, the Palestinians are also asking UNESCO to recognize 19 other sites in the Holy Land to be incorporated as Palestinian World Heritage Sites including Jericho and Bethlehem.
Franciscans in charge of Bethlehem's holy places do not want UNESCO to designate Christian shrines in the city as Palestinian World Heritage Sites. Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa told the Italian bishops' news agency, SIR, that the Greek Orthodox and Armenian patriarchates have asked the Palestinian Authority to exclude the Church of the Nativity from the UNESCO application. "The holy places may be used for political reasons...we do not want to be exploited for issues in which the holy places must not be involved," Pizzaballa was quoted as saying.
The Catholic Franciscans fear that UNESCO recognition will make it difficult for the church to run the holy sites because the sites would be under the jurisdiction of UNESCO and would have to abide by the agency's rules.
Meanwhile Edelstein believes that the current Palestinian Authority government is trying to excommunicate Israel from the Jewish site. "They want to wipe out our ties, and any Jewish trace from this area," he said.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, during his address to the UN General Assembly in September, referred to the entire Holy Land, as the "land of Palestine, the land of the Prophet Muhammad and the birthplace of Jesus."
"We don't want to exclude anyone from holy sites in Israel," Edelstein emphasized. "Under Israeli policy, Christian, Muslim and Jewish sites have always been open to people of all faiths."
For about 700 years, Jews were forbidden to enter the Cave of Patriarchs, following a Muslim Mameluk decree which restricted Jews from praying past the seventh step leading to the entrance. The Mameluks, who capture Hebron following the Byzantines and Crusaders in the 13th century, declared the structure a mosque which non-Muslims could not enter.
During the British mandate, the Jews were still forbidden inside the tombs to pray, although a Jewish presence had always been maintained in the city prior to British rule. When Jordan seized control of the area in 1948 during Israel's War of Independence, the Jordanians forbade the Jews from even living in the city and built an animal pen on the ruins of the ancient Avraham Avinu Synagogue built in the 16th century by the Jewish community. It was only in 1967, after Israel's Six Day War that Jews were allowed into Hebron again.
Following Israeli control of the Tomb of Patriarchs, arrangements were made which enabled both Muslems and Jews to worship and pray in an orderly manner on the basis of mutual respect. The tomb's Isaac and Rebekah Hall, the largest and most important hall to Judaism and Islam, as it contains the Imam's Pulpit (Mimbar) is kept exclusively for Muslim prayers. Jewish services cannot take place in that particular hall except for 10 days during the year.
"Only under Israeli rule can we be sure that this open policy continues," said Edelstein. "We want to continue to ensure that people of all faiths have access to holy sites here in Israel and can worship freely at them."
Walid, the local Palestinian tour guide in Hebron on the day of Edelstein's visit, however thinks differently. "We will have peace here once we get the Jews out of this city," he adamantly declared, as his group of German tourists lingered in the pottery shops a few feet away from the Cave of Patriarchs.
While a few comments were bigoted hatred, there were some very good commments on the first page, which I would like to attach below. These comments hit the nose right on the dot, and further show the duplicity of UNESCO and the Palestinians. I have attached some of them below (they are photoshopped to appear one below the other, although other comments may in reality seperate them).
The video was partially based upon this post and this post.
This is very shocking. It is crucial to stand up again tall forms of baseless hatred - amongst them anti-Semitism, and anti-Israel, which is often anti-Semitism, as it is singling out the Jews from denying them the right to self-determination, while doing nothing over the millions of Sudanese murdered in genocide orKurds murdered byTurks or Iranian gender apartheid, etc etc. See this op-ed in Hurriyet News (a Turkish newspaper) for more info and statistics.
This short clip is a very good portrayal of the anti-Semitic cartoons that Hamas frequently shows on T.V. (and yes, PA television also shows anti-Semitic cartoons and incites hatred).
Now, I used the term Hasbara (or very good and clear pro-Israel advocacy) in my title for two reasons: The first one is obviously the clip. Now, Jon Stewart didn't do this with a Hasbara intention, but rather because it is a comedic clip representing what is shown on Hamas television. The second reason is due to some of the comments on that clip. See the screenshot below.
As expected, the anti-Israel crowd immediately tried to justify these cartoons, throwing out blatant lies about how it's on par with Israeli actions, etc. I show in this screenshot two comments (although there are many others) that basically send a smack in the face to the anti-Israel crowd. They point out their hypocrisy by using a concise, but very clear, and very strong, message. Good job.
Here is another screenshot illustrating that point too.
And he's exactly right.
For those of you wondering what are the clips that the person "Asaf Schreiber" links to, I've embedded them below.
I also embedded and discussed the above video in this post about UNRWA.
I recently wrote a post about an IAF targetting of a Hamas cell responsible for shooting rockets into Israel which lightly injured the French consul to Gaza. I commented on the ridiculous hypocrisy, and the ridiculous nature of the French government. The post can be viewed here.
According to Israel’s clarification regarding Monday’s airstrike, the windows of the home of Majdi Shakoura, a Gaza resident who holds a French passport, were shattered by the blast, and he and another family member were lightly hurt by flying shards.
“We are obviously sorry for the light injuries incurred by the family, but the target of the attack, quite far away from their home, was a Hamas cell responsible for shooting rockets on Israeli civilians who suffer much more serious injuries – and even death – when Hamas rockets are fired,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.
One Israeli official wondered aloud about the “disproportional nature” of the French response.
“Thousands of Israelis suffer injuries that are similar or much worse during rocket attacks from Gaza, and they don’t draw the same sympathetic remarks from the French that were elicited by this single family, who suffered very light injuries,” the official said.
In October, 52 rockets and six mortar shells were fired into Israel. The IDF said it would not tolerate continued rocket fire against Israeli cities and that Hamas would be held responsible for such attacks.
It is true. When has France - or any other country in the world - condemned each rocket launched into Israel? When have they condemned the murder of Israelis, whether it was by rocket or by bomb? Oh, but a French consul in Gaza is lightly injured in response to a Hamas cell firing rockets at Israel immediately gets condemnation.
Old sentiments from the Dreyfuss Affair still haven't faded out? That's unfortunate. Although without the Dreyfuss Affair, modern-day Zionism would not exist.
This just in... From the most radical Muslim country, France, where citizens completely swarm their mosque, the Eifel Tower, to answer the call to prayer, comes this interesting news story.
The French consul in Gaza has been injured after an Israel Air Foce strike on Gazan terrorists.
This is just a few days after Sarkozy called Netanyahu a "liar," expressing his frustration that his fantasy peace process hasn't worked yet, and as such can't take part and receive glory (Egypt-Israel peace and Jordan-Israel peace was established in secret, without foreign intervention, the international community only harms the Israel-Palestinian peace process), and baselessly accusing the "rightist, hawkish" Netanyahu, who fulfilled the international community's demand with a 10 month unprecedented settlement freeze, and has built less settlements (which are about 1-2% of the West Bank) than any previou sgovernment. Check out this great review about scapegoating Netanyahu here and about the French government's policies here.
What is interesting is that Sarkozy tried to do "damage control" by sending a letter to Netanyahu stating his support for Israel and declaring himself a friend of Israel. He also said he would take actions against Iran. One wonders how he can be a friend of Netanyahu and call him a "liar" at the same time - that's stabbing him in the back while shaking his hand. It is also interesting what type of actions against Iran Sarkozy is talking about, as France has recently announced that they do not support a military strike on Iran. This leads us to the conclusion that it is not Bibi Netanyahu that is the liar, but rather Sarkozy himself.
This is just a few weeks after Sarkozy ordered that school textbooks avoid the use of the word “Shoah” to describe the Holocaust, preferring the term “anéantissement”, a word that merely means annihilation.
And just a few days after France welcomed Palestinian culture of terrorism and bombings into UNESCO, which has already been put to use through the restriction of freedom of speech for Jews only, jumping at the chance to bash a Ha'aretz cartoon about UNESCO, when in reality, the cartoon was bashing Netanyahu and not UNESCO. Check out my post about this here.
France's consul to the Gaza Strip, his wife and 13-year-old daughter were injured during an Israeli air strike on Sunday night, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said on Tuesday.
Valero told reporters the three were were hit by shrapnel at their Gaza residence , which is located 200 meters from the site of the IAF missile attack. "France condemns the consequences of the raid," he said. "While we are all for Israeli security, France recalls the utmost necessity to avoid civilian harm," Valero said, without specifying the nature of their injuries.
The IDF was looking into reports.
The air strikes killed one Palestinian and wounded four others after terrorists from the coastal territory fired a rocket into southern Israel.
This is most interesting! It is interesting that France has a consul to the Gaza Strip, who is ruled by the Hamas government, which is declared a terrorist organization by much of the international community (and the European Union), who oppresses Gazans, whose charter calls for the genocide of Israel (aka no "two state solution," which has always been supported by Israeli governments), and who routinely launches rockets at Israel or takes no care to stop other organizations from launching rockets at Israel.
Why would a French consul actually place his entire family in the Gaza Strip? Besides for the fact that he's stealing homes from innocent, poor Gazans, he is knowingly placing his life in danger.
He was 200 meters from a terrorist activity hub. Did he really think that Israel would accept the rockets with open arms and not take measures against those terrorists? Israel has done all they could to avoid civilian harm, and the past few weeks of fighting has seen no civilian deaths, which is incredibly tough in the Gaza Strip.
Blaming Israel for an injury in Gaza is equivalent to blaming any country for causing casualties (or as in this case, injuries) during wartime - and especially in response to attacks on that country.
Perhaps the international community needs to do some thinking and imagine that Hamas was situated right next to them. Place themselves in Israel's shoes. Who would they blame? Would they blame Israel for defending themselves and attacking terrorists who were launching rockets? Or would they blame Hamas for launching these rockets (or taking no measures from preventing others from launching rockets, such as Islamic Jihad), in conjunction with a partial blame on themselves for setting up a consul next to a terrorist activity hub in an area ruled by a terrorist entity who calls for the genocide of its neighbor?
Personally, I wouldn't blame Israel. But hey, that's just me.
Foremost among the voices crying foul is that of MK Zehava Galon (Meretz). "The bills raised at the Ministerial Committee for Legislation poison democracy even without being voted upon," she stated Sunday. "Just by being presented, they encourage violence against activists for human rights and peace, strike terror into hearts and encourage self-censorship, which we are already witness to in several media outlets."
"Without the possibility of advancing a world view, opinions and aims that are not held by the majority at a particular point in time – there is no democracy, and when the majority attempts to silence the minority and deny it freedom of organization, expression and protest, this is not majority rule but majority dictatorship."
Interestingly it is Galon herself who, as leader of the Meretz faction, was instrumental in the court petitions that led to the State's shutting down of Arutz Sheva Radio eight years ago.
Arutz Sheva had broadcast for 14 years from a ship anchored at sea -- unfettered by centralized political regulatory procedures -- and was very popular among Israeli nationalists as the only alternative to mainstream leftist stations. An ultra-leftist station named the Voice of Peace had broadcast in precisely the same way for three decades, unmolested. Some feel that the government was already making preparations for the Disengagement from Gaza and possibly did not want Arutz Sheva making trouble.
As the High Court debated the motions against Arutz Sheva and eventually found in their favor, Galon and other Meretz heads repeatedly demanded that the Attorney General order Arutz Sheva closed down, their much-touted belief in free speech notwithstanding. Eventually, this is exactly what happened, on October 20, 2003.
A few weeks later Galon launched an attack on Arutz Sheva's sole remaining means of expression – its internet website (the one you are currently reading).
Galon again appealed to then-Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein and claimed that an Op-Ed article on the Hebrew site entitled "Expulsion, not Transfer" constituted a violation of laws against incitement. She claimed the article was a call to "murder hundreds of thousands of Palestinians."
The article in question, by Gil Ronen, assumed that since there is no chance for reaching peace with the Arabs of Yesha (Judea and Samaria), Israel has no alternative but to "remove this 'nation' from our midst." Ronen wrote that he does not support "transfer," as "the Palestinians are not European Jews, and we are not Germans." Instead, he painted a scenario of "gradual deterioration" in which the war against terrorists expands to include more targeted killings, more house demolitions, and more air raids. All of the actions envisioned in the article were depicted as being taken by the IDF. As Arutz Sheva noted at the time, Ronen specifically wrote that "no one will have to take the law into his own hands."
The article was written at the height of the Terror War launched by Yasser Arafat in which over 1,000 Jews were murdered and buses full of innocent passengers of all ages exploded on a near-daily basis.
AG Rubinstein accepted Galon's demands and ordered an investigation against Arutz Sheva. The investigation was closed after police found no grounds for prosecution.
Analyst Ariel Natan Pasko noted at the time that Galon was not just after Arutz Sheva's freedom of speech: "Clump-clump, clump-clump, clump-clump, hark, I hear the sound of the goose-stepping Bolshevik Israeli thought police in the distance," he wrote.
MK Zahava Gal-On, just a couple of months ago, asked the Attorney General to look into a Jerusalem Post editorial she said had "words of incitement to murder" in it. The Jerusalem Post editorial said, "The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly as possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage stop us. And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative." Where is Freedom of the Speech? Where is Freedom of the Press? When was it ever "incitement to murder", to call for the death of the enemy in wartime? Only in Israel, only on the Bolshevik Left, only to shut people up and divert attention from discussing the real issue, Arafat's war against Israel. By the way, in the end the Attorney General found nothing prosecutable in the editorial. Freedom of Speech 1, Thought Police 0.
Back in May 2003, MK Gal-On called on the Attorney General to "warn" members of the Yesha Rabbinical Council against releasing a Halakhic - Jewish law - ruling against the Road Map "peace" plan. Well, what are they supposed to issue, an economic impact report, they're rabbis? What? They're not allowed to think differently from Zahava?
Eight years down the line, it is Galon who claims that the nationalists are the ones guilty of censorship -- and that her camp is the victim being stifled.
Interestingly, the American Foreign Agent Act was created also to prevent foreign muddling in American internal affairs - at the time, to prevent Nazi propaganda. There is absolutely no reason why foreign countries that wish ill for Israel should be allowed to donate billions of dollars to organizations that seek the destruction of Israel (slyly, by slapping the words "human rights" and "peace activists" onto themselves - human rights for all, except for the Jews in Israel). Israel should handle its own internal affairs, without foreign countries trying to influence Israeli politics and running contrary to what the majority of the Israeli public wants.
Oh and by the way, doing something contrary to what mainstream Israeli public wants is not democratic. So a 10 month unprecedented settlement freeze by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure from President Obama, was a huge risk, which cost him much popularity, and angered many Israelis. That would be acceptable, except Mahmoud Abbas still refused to negotiate. As such, nothing came out of the freeze.
That was just one year ago. And yet, foreign countries are demanding another settlement freeze, brainwashed by Abbas repeating that Israel must freeze settlements to engage in peace talks. Because to these foreign countries, the agenda of fantasy peace is so high on their list that all other affairs come only after it. And to them, the Israeli-Arab conflict can only be solved through their help, and so they can have the title. Only then will ultimate harmony and peace be brought to Earth. Only then will everyone hold hands around a campfire and sing "Kumbaya."
They disregard that peace between Egypt and Israel was established secretly, without foreign countries. The same goes for the peace deals between Israel and Jordan.
So what exactly is this ridiculous nonsense coming from the left? And why do foreign countries feel an imperative need to donate tons of aid to leftist organizations that wish ill for Israel and want to muddle in Israeli internal affairs? Take for example, Great Britian. For every pound (unit of currency in Britian) that Britain spends on NGO's in non-democratic Arab countries to promote democracy, Britian spends six pounds on suicidal NGO's in a democratic country - Israel.
A new video I created - Gilad Schalit - The Journey Home.
I know I'm a bit late on this... This was actually created around the time of his release, but issues with the audio arose and only now did I get a chance to fix it.
Great news! The U.S.-Israel relationship is crucial - and it's not just politicians who understand this, but everyday citizens. This was the result of a very recent poll, as seen here.
But the news gets better. A new poll shows that a majority of Americans support a military strike on Iran.
This poll, AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARD ISRAEL, THE PALESTINIANS AND PROSPECTS FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST, was taken by the ADL. The results can be viewed here.
The ADL also included a convenient summary of the results:
By decisive numbers, Americans remain more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians when thinking about the conflict in the Middle East.
A majority of Americans remain skeptical about the prospects for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Americans continue to believe that Israel is very serious about wanting to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.They are divided about Palestinian leaders’ seriousness about wanting to reach a peace agreement.
Americans believe that the Israelis and the Palestinians must directly negotiate their own solutions.
American support for U.S. involvement in the peace process has decreased since 2009. They also reject the preconditions for resuming negotiations that the Palestinians have been demanding.
Some 63% of poll respondents characterized Israel as a "crucial ally" and said that the Jewish state's relationship with the US does not undermine America's image in the world.
Iran Nuke Site
As to Iran's development of nuclear weapons, the poll showed that 57% of Americans support Israeli military action to prevent such scenario while only 31% opposed such move. Some 50% of respondents supported US military action against Iran, while 44% expressed their objection to such strike.
Meanwhile, nearly half of all Americans said they sympathize with the State of Israel, while only 18% said they sympathize with the Palestinians. Some 63% of respondents said they believe Israel is serious about peace, while only 37% thought otherwise.
Overall, 73% of Americans said that the US can count on Israel as a strong ally.
This is a very good sign of the strong U.S.-Israel relationship!
The poll demonstrated that support for Israel among President Barack Obama’s Democratic voters was on the rise, and that the majority of Americans believed that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was more committed to peace than his Palestinian counterpart.
Support for Israel among Democrats has risen by 10 percentage points in the past six months, while support among independent voters and Republicans has remained steady.
The current support for Israel reflects the highest rate since 2009 among polls conducted for the Israel Project. “Opinion elites” – responders who display high engagement in foreign policy, education and income – showed an even more pronounced level of support, exceeding the general sample by 7 percentage points.
“This poll shows that Israel is significantly more popular among American voters than either the president or Congress,” Israel Project Founder and President Jennifer Laszlo-Mizrahi said. “Second, it shows that the American public really supports the peace process and the two-state solution.”
Another excerpt from this article:
Respondents characterized Israel as “one of our strongest allies” (68%) and a “democracy” (66%) while rejecting the notion that Israel is “extremist” (61%) or “responsible for the violence” (65%).
Over half of those polled – 56% – consider Palestinians to be “extremist” and an “obstacle to peace,” and 55% do not consider Palestinians to be “victims.”
The voters polled cited women’s rights, freedom of speech, voting, freedom of religion, and the threat of terrorism (24%) as the top reasons they are proud of America’s strong alliance with Israel – although none of those reasons appeared as clearly dominant.
Lazslo-Mizrahi said that some of these reasons, particularly women’s rights, resonate particularly strongly in contrast to recent developments in Arab countries, such as calls to institute Shari’a law and polygamy in Libya.
What was dominant was support for a two-state solution that would recognize “Israel as a homeland of the Jewish people and Palestine as the homeland of the Palestinian people.” Seventy- three percent of voters, and 86% of opinion elite said that they supported such a plan.
Days before Obama, in a conversation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, was caught expressing frustration with Netanyahu’s efforts on the peace process, a majority of American voters (60%) said that Netanyahu and Israel are committed to peace, while 52% say that President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are not committed to that end.
The poll also found strong concern regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“America has become very partisan, but this is a subject that seems to cross that divide,” Lazslo-Mizrahi said.
Two-thirds (65%) of those polled view Iran negatively, and there is strong support for varied actions against Teheran, including supporting opposition groups in the country (82%), which can be taken toward Iran if it does not stop its nuclear program.
Now that the Palestinians have joined the morally bankrupt rewriting history cultural organization anti-Semitic anti-America UNESCO, it is only fitting that they spread their "beautiful culture" into UNESCO.
Wow! Talk about people who can't handle some criticism and freedom of speech!
Israel's ambassador to UNESCO didn't know whether to laugh or cry when a senior official at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization called him in for a tongue-lashing on Wednesday.
The reason? A cartoon published in Haaretz.
The November 4 cartoon, a riff on the government's anger at UNESCO's decision to accept Palestine as a full member, showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak sending an air force squadron to attack Iran, with Netanyahu ordering, "And on your way back, you're gonna hit the UNESCO office in Ramallah!"
hen he met with Eric Falt, UNESCO's assistant director general for external relations and public information, Ambassador Nimrod Barkan was stunned to be handed a copy of this cartoon and an official letter of protest from UNESCO's director general, Irina Bokova. Falt told Barkan the cartoon constituted incitement.
"A cartoon like this endangers the lives of unarmed diplomats, and you have an obligation to protect them," Falt said, according to an Israeli source. "We understand that there is freedom of the press in Israel, but the government must prevent attacks on UNESCO."
Barkan pointed out that the government has no control over editorial cartoons printed in the papers. "Ask yourselves what you did to make a moderate paper with a deeply internationalist bent publish such a cartoon," he suggested. "Perhaps the problem is with you."
After Barkan reported the conversation to the Foreign Ministry, it cabled back: "What exactly does UNESCO want of us - to send our fine boys to protect UNESCO's staff, or to shut down the paper? It seems your work environment is getting more and more reminiscent of 'Animal Farm.'"
The ironic thing is that I view the cartoon, published by the leftist media outlet Ha'aretz, as a satire on Israel - NOT UNESCO. It appears to be mocking Israel's overreaction to Iran (although I strongly disagree, a nuclear Iran is a threat to the world), saying that after Israel attacks Iran, they should attack UNESCO for accepting Palestine as a state, which itself is just silly.
Well, at least U.S., Israeli, and Canadian taxpayer money isn't going to fund organizations that restrict freedom of speech and don't tolerate criticism!
Which reminds me of this video of the morally bankrupt hoster of human rights abusers U.N. Human Rights Council, refusing to accept criticism and silencing opponents:
Foremost among these is David Heap, a University of Western Ontario faculty member who claims to have been “tasered” and “bruised” as Israeli soldiers hauled his unco-operative self from the high seas. From the title of the article he wrote for the left-wing site Rabble.ca — “I write from cell 9 in the Apartheid State of Israel” — you would think he was Martin Luther King with a Twitter account, penning manifestos from a Birmingham jail. But even by his own morally self-aggrandizing account, he is “basically ok” after his high-seas experience.
But “basically ok” doesn’t get you on the front pages. So now a Toronto Star writer has gassed out the story for another day by reporting that Heap’s friends and family are “outraged,” “scared” and “worried” by his “brutal” treatment.
No one else in Canada seems to care much, though: Even among protest junkies, flotilla theatrics now play a distant second to the ongoing Occupy phenomenon. In fact, as far as “brutality” goes, the troops who ushered Heap into Israel don’t have a stitch on cops in Oakland.
“Outraged,” “scared” and “worried” would be good words to describe our thoughts about captured activists who did something that was actually brave and useful — like bringing aid to protesters in, say, Syria, just a few hundred kilometers up the Mediterranean coast. Instead, Heap and his friends set their compass for a confrontation with the Israeli Defense Forces, the most humane and professional military in the Middle East. And their only real punishment for trying to bring material goods to a terrorist-controlled regime in Gaza is to spend a few days in climate-controlled, Internet-equipped Israeli jails complaining about their ordeal to journalist pals back home.
Mr. Heap’s whining campaign isn’t nearly as dangerous as the tactics used by other activists, but it certainly is far more annoying.
These so-called "peace activists" and "Free Gaza humanitarian activists" really don't care about human rights. If they did, then they wouldn't be sending a flotilla to Israel to protest the legitimate blockade (see Palmer Report) on the terrorist organization Hamas. Instead, they would be sending a flotilla to protestHamas' bombardment of rockets into Israel, ruining life for the million Israelis living in southern Israel.
If they really cared about human rights, as they claim by strapping the words "humanitarian" and "peace" to their name, they would be protesting Hamas' cruel and repressive treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. If you're a Fatah member in Gaza, you don't stand a chance of surviving. If you disagree with Hamas, expect a visit. And if you dare criticize Hamas, off with your head.
If they really cared about human rights, they would've sent a flotilla to Turkey, where just a week beforehand, an earthquake shook Turkey and devastated the lives of hundreds. If they really cared, they would've sent aid to Turkey, instead of trying to provoke Israel's legitimate blockade.
If they really cared about human rights, they would've sent a flotilla to Syria to help the protestors who are just fighting for "freedom" from Dictator Assad's rule. But they didn't.
Oh, and if they really cared about the Palestinians in Gaza, they would've carried aid on their ship. The IDF reported that they did not. Which leads us to question - did they care about the Palestinians at all, as they claim, or did they just hate Israel so much out of baseless hatred that they wanted a confrontation?
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.
And yet when that same Europe turns its gaze on the Middle East, the country they have the most contempt for is the only country in the entire region to reject capital punishment, and they have the most admiration for a country that among a widespread political culture that extensively uses torture and execution for the maintenance of public order, shows perhaps the most contempt for the lives of its own peoples and its enemies.
Normally, this would not be even worth mentioning. Most people would just roll their eyes while others complain about Zionist imperialists trying to divert attention from their oppression of the Palestinians. But if you want to understand the “hostage-for-prisoner-exchange” that just took place in Israel and the Western media’s coverage of the event, then you need to pay attention to the issue.
Israel first outlawed the death penalty in 1954, thus reversing the Mandate Law, which, in most other instances, Israel took over from the British. They based themselves both on rabbinic precedent (concerns for both respecting the image of God in man and the unattainable burden of proof) and modern liberal sentiment. In doing so, they became the first modern Western democracy to ban the death penalty, followed a decade later by Britain (1965), Sweden (1972), Canada (1976) and France (1981).
...If the Israelis had hundreds of terrorists in their prisons, in some cases serving multiple life sentences, available to trade for Gilad Shalit, a soldier kidnapped from Israeli soil by Hamas combatants five years ago, it’s because of this attitude towards human life, both their own and those of the Palestinians. And that attitude was on full display throughout this exchange, with agonising over endangering future Israelis by releasing these men contrasting with a profound commitment to getting Gilad Shalit back. Some Arabs recognised the unflattering light this shed on their own culture, while others revelled in it.
Palestine, on the other hand, represents almost the polar opposite. This is a place in which killing daughters and wives and homosexuals for shaming the family with (even suspected and loosely interpreted) inappropriate sexual behavior is a regular feature of society, where “collaborators” are summarily executed, where official statistics for executions put the PA at a rate of formal, legal execution that cedes only to China, Iran, N Korea, Yemen and Libya.
The trade of over a thousand Palestinians for one Israeli highlights the radical differences between the cultures. As Hizbullah’s Nasrullah put it after a prison exchange in 2004: “We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.”
If a European, concerned about the nature of the aggressive Islam that has begun to crop up in his cities, citing for example Sharia zones, wanted to understand the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he might spend a moment visiting the sites of Palestinian anti-Zionists, where this profoundly perverse culture teems. But of course, that would be politically incorrect. To spend any time pointing out the problems here constitutes the highest level of politically incorrect Islamophobia.
So instead of helping Europeans understand what’s at stake, most of the media and the NGO community have spun this story as one of violations of human rights on “both sides” with a heavy focus on Israeli misdeeds. The prisoners were considered “equal,” and Israeli primarily held accountable by the Geneva Convention for the treatment of enemy combatants when, in reality, the only one protected under these conditions was Shalit, a uniformed soldier kidnapped on his own soil in non-combat situation, and the thousand Palestinian prisoners where convicted in a court, primarily of crimes related to terror attacks on civilians (an, alas, necessary redundancy in these days of sophism).
Thus, The New York Times’s Robert Mackee could speak glibly about the “joy of parents on both sides” at the return of prisoners, and the UN could voice its concern that the prisoners Israel released might be subject to illegal forced transfer. “Returning people to places other than their habitual places of residence is in contradiction to international humanitarian law.” The UN’s concern for the full exercise of free will by convicted mass murderers illustrates the problem. Humanitarian discourse has been turned on its head to protect the ugliest players in this particular game, threatened by ugly forces within their own society, all the while implying that Israel, in its haste to get its own soldier back, trampled their rights and violated humanitarian law. Not surprisingly this led Ban Ki Moon to a moment of moral vertigo where he denounced the violation of everyone’s rights.
Of course, in order to present the moral equivalence of all the “prisoners” in the swap, one has to play down the heinous nature of the crimes and personalities of the Palestinian prisoners released. BBC correspondent Jon Donnison showed the extent of ignorance among the supposedly professional news media by interviewing a man in prison for organising and abetting several suicide bombings. (Because the attacks only injured but did not kill, he did not receive life sentences.) “You are 31 years old, 10 years in prison, serving a life sentence for being a member of Hamas, I mean, how do you feel today?” BBC viewers could be excused for sympathising with a political prisoner, inhumanly incarcerated for belonging to an opposition party, free at last.
In acquiescing with a narrative in which hatred and murder are considered legitimate expressions of “resistance” to “occupation,” Western human rights activists – including many journalists – have degraded humanitarian language at the same time as they have allowed into the public sphere a discourse of genocidal hatred. They have excluded any sympathy for Israelis who defend themselves from the onslaught they have shut out from their and their audiences’ consciousness.
It may seem cost-free to Westerners, but it’s not. In misreading the nature of the threat Israel faces, in adopting a degraded language of human rights to protect the greatest enemies of human rights on the planet, in adopting a corrupted advocacy journalism that masquerades as empirically accurate, they embrace all the kinds of techniques that put them in danger when faced with the same enemy.
