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.

International troops in Israel - learn FROM history

George Santayana once said that those who can not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

We see that all the time.  Whether it's raising a large banner in Poland that says "Jihad" when the Hapoel Tel Aviv team is playing in Poland, or whether it's the Arab Spring taking the same course as the French Revolution.  It shouldn't surprise anyone all that much.

But yet, the world just can't learn from history.  I'm not talking about sitting down in a social studies class, taking notes, and studying fora test.  I mean just knowing basic facts about history, the past, and how to avoid such a thing in the present/future.

From Dore Gold of Israel Hayom:

It has become almost axiomatic for Western leaders who are aware of Israel's acute military vulnerability to suggest that international forces be deployed to address the  Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has even been suggested that the IDF withdraw from strategically vital parts of the West Bank, like the Jordan Valley, and instead let international forces take their place. This was in fact proposed in the past by General Jim Jones, President Barack Obama's first national security adviser. 

Some Israelis have also proposed this idea; former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told The New York Times earlier this year that he wanted to deploy international forces in the West Bank, though he suggested they be led by the U.S. The last major experiment with international forces was actually attempted under the Olmert government at the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701. It is worthwhile to look back five years to see how that international force actually functioned before more proposals of this kind are put on the table in the future by the international community.

At the time, Israeli diplomacy was focused on instituting security arrangements that were intended to prevent the return of the military conditions along Israel's northern border that had contributed to the outbreak of hostilities to begin with. Thus Resolution 1701 called for the creation of a larger UNIFIL force with a much more more robust mandate than before. It was not supposed to be just another U.N. force with underpaid third world soldiers, but rather European forces from France Spain, and Italy, like those who make up NATO, were deployed instead.

The resolution also reiterated the importance of UNIFIL actually disarming Lebanese militias, like Hezbollah, in accordance with past U.N. resolutions. Resolution 1701 sought to prohibit the transfer of arms into Lebanon that were not authorized by the Lebanese Government, thereby making any further Iranian arms transfers to Hezbollah a violation of a U.N. Security Council Resolution. In order to implement this arms embargo, German naval ships were deployed to monitor the Lebanese coastline in September 2006.   

But clearly the most important innovation that Resolution 1701 proposed was the establishment of a special area between the "blue line," which demarcated the Israeli-Lebanese border, and the Litani River, in which the only weapons and military personnel permitted would be those of the Lebanese Army or UNIFIL. It was a kind of internationally sanctioned security zone, without Israeli troops. This last provision was supposed to keep Hezbollah units away from the Israeli border and make it more difficult for them to open fire on Israeli patrols or to kidnap Israeli soldiers right across the border.

Before the Second Lebanon War, there were approximately 5,000 Hezbollah terrorists in this area who were equipped with 10,000 rockets. Hezbollah had another 5,000 rockets north of the Litani River. These weapons would have to be completely eliminated from the security zone south of the Litani. At the time, Resolution 1701 was hailed in Israel as a great diplomatic achievement.  

But what happened five years later to Resolution 1701 and the new, more robust international forces that it created? First, Hezbollah has returned to South Lebanon with a force similar to what it had prior to the Second Lebanon War. There are now close to 40,000 rockets in Hezbollah's total arsenal in Lebanon, of which 30,000 are located south of the Litani, in the zone that was not supposed to have any weapons other than those of UNIFIL or the Lebanese Army.

Second, in late March 2011, the Washington Post published IDF maps showing that Hezbollah had established not just a few military positions in southern Lebanon, but rather hundreds of military sites throughout its villages, sites that contained weapons, storage facilities, underground bunkers and observations posts. In some villages, like al-Khiam, a Shiite village that is only four kilometers from the Israeli border, these facilities have intentionally been placed next to schools and mosques as well as within civilian homes. 

According to Resolution 1701, UNIFIL should be going into the Shiite villages of southern Lebanon to remove the Hezbollah weaponry that is being stored there in violation of the provisions in Resolution 1701. The chances that even European troops would be willing to risk their lives and move into Shiite villages to take out weaponry is almost nil. Already in July 2011, France's UNIFIL force came under attack, leading President Nicolas Sarkozy to threaten that he was going to pull out his troops from southern Lebanon.

What does this experience mean for international forces in the Jordan Valley safeguarding the demilitarization of a Palestinian state? If UNIFIL cannot guarantee the de-militarization of Southern Lebanon, how will international forces help guarantee the de-militarization of a Palestinian state in the West Bank? 

Certainly, one of the main lessons of the Gaza Disengagement was that it was a cardinal error for Israel to withdraw from the Philadelphi Route. The Route became a corridor for Hamas to import huge quantities of rockets, explosives and even SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles into the Gaza Strip. Hamas used small, locally-made Qassam rockets before disengagement, but it only attacked Israel with longer-range Grad rockets for the first time in 2006, after the IDF was no longer operating against the smuggling in the Philadelphi Route.

In the case of the West Bank, the failure of UNIFIL in Southern Lebanon is only the latest reminder of why Israel must retain the IDF in the Jordan Valley as the front-line of its defense to the east. Anyone who proposes that Israel make its security dependent on international forces only has to look at what has happened in southern Lebanon over the last five years.

You may not want to learn from history.  That's fine.  But don't expect Israel to sit there and let history repeat itself.  Don't expect us to accept an invitation to suicide.  Don't expect us to sit idly by and learn nothing from the past - just 5 years ago.

How the Palestinian Leadership is Ignoring History

Alan Dershowitz (a professor of Harvard law school and advocate for Israel; wrote numerous pro-Israel books such as "The Case for Israel"):

The Palestinians are in the process of seeking sovereignty from the United Nations, but in doing so, they are asking for more than what was offered them in any prior negotiation with Israel—including during the talks involving President Clinton and Ehud Barak in 2000 and 2001. Rather than more, it is imperative that the Palestinians get less.

It is imperative to world peace that the Palestinians pay a price—even if it’s only a symbolic price—for rejecting the generous Clinton/Barak offer and responding to it with a second intifada in which 4,000 people were killed. It is also important that Israel not return to the precise armistice lines that existed prior to the 1967 war. If the Palestinians were to achieve a return to the status quo prior to Jordan’s attack on Israel in June of 1967, then military aggression will not have been punished, it will have been rewarded. That’s why Security Council Resolution 242—which was essentially the peace treaty that resulted from the end of the Six Day War—intended for Israel to retain territory necessary to give it secure boundaries (Indeed, in the formal application submitted by Abbas, he sought membership based on UN General Assembly Resolution 1810-11 of November 29, 1947, which would put the borders where they were before the Arab armies invaded the new Jewish state in 1948. This would reward multiple aggressions.)

Yet, however important it is that aggressive and unjustified violence not be rewarded, the international community seems bent on doing just that. If the end result of Jordan’s 1967 attack on Israel—an attack supported by the Palestinian leadership and participated in by Palestinian soldiers—is that the Palestinians get back everything Jordan lost, there will be no disincentive to comparable military attacks around the world. If the Palestinians get more than, or even as much as, they rejected in 2000 and 2001 (and did not accept in 2007), then further intifadas with mass casualties will be encouraged. A price must be paid for violence. That’s how the laws of war are supposed to work and there is no reason to make an exception in the case of the Palestinians.

I support a two-state solution based on negotiation and mutual compromise. But the negotiations must not begin where previous offers, which were not accepted, left off. They must take into account how we got to the present situation: The Arab rejection of the UN partition plan and the attack on the new Jewish state that resulted in the death of one percent of Israel’s population; the attack by Jordan and its Palestinian soldiers against Israel in 1967, which resulted in Israel’s capture of the West Bank; Israel’s offer to trade captured land for peace that was rejected at Khartoum with the three infamous “no’s”—no peace, no recognition, no negotiation; Israel’s generous offer of statehood in 2000-2001 that was answered by violence; and Olmert’s subsequent, even more generous, offer that was not accepted by President Abbas.

Efforts to achieve peace must look forward but they must not forget the past. A balance must be struck between not rewarding past violence and not creating unreasonable barriers to a future peace. But the Palestinians made it clear last week that they reject such balance.

I was at the United Nations on Friday when President Abbas made his speech demanding full recognition of Palestine as a state with the borders as they existed just before the Jordanians and Palestinians attacked Israel. In other words he wants a “do over.” He wants the nations that attacked Israel to suffer no consequences for their attempt to destroy the Jewish State. He wants to get back The Western Wall, The Jewish Quarter, and the access road to Hebrew University. Only then will he begin negotiations from this position of strength.

But why then negotiate if the UN gives him more than he can possibly get through negotiation? Will he be in a position to seek less from Israel than what the UN gave him? Will he survive if he is seen as less Palestinian than the UN? Abbas blamed Israel for the self-inflicted wound the Palestinians cynically call the Nakba (the catastrophe). He denied the Jewish history of the land of Israel and he quoted with approval his terrorist predecessor Arafat. He refused to acknowledge Israel’s legitimate security needs. Abbas’s message, in sum, left little or no room for further compromise.

I also sat in the General Assembly as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to begin negotiations with Abbas, with absolutely no preconditions, in New York, at the United Nations, that very day. He said he would come to Ramallah to negotiate with him or keep the door of his Jerusalem office open. He did not even require as a precondition to negotiations that the Palestinians acknowledge what the UN recognized in 1947—namely, that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Although many in the international communities and on the editorial pages of newspapers claim that Abbas wants to negotiate a two-state solution, while Netanyahu has refused to do so, the truth was on full and open display at the General Assembly on Friday: Netanyahu wants to negotiate a peace now, whereas Abbas wants to win recognition from the United Nations before any negotiations begin. As Netanyahu put it: “Let’s stop negotiating about negotiating and let’s just start negotiating right now.”

If the Palestinians accept Netanyahu’s offer to negotiate a peaceful two-state solution, it will get a real state on the ground—a state that Israel, the United States, and the rest of the international community will recognize. It will not be on the pre-1967 borders because the Palestinians are not entitled to such borders and because such borders are not conducive to peace, but it will be close. The Palestinians will get a viable state and Israel will get a secure state.

If, on the other hand, the UN were to reward nearly a century of Palestinian rejectionism and violence by simply turning the clock back to 1967 (or 1947), it will be encouraging more cost-free rejectionism and violence. The Palestinians must pay a price for the thousands of lives their rejectionism and violence have caused. The price must not be so heavy as to preclude peace, but it must be heavy enough to deter war.