| Volume 236, September 28, 2011 |
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The Committee for Truth and Justice
Seeking Justice Through Truth |
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We wish everyone a Shana Tova and a wonderful and healthy new year. In honor of the new year we present the writings and humor of Caroline Glick, one of the clearest thinkers concerning Israel. Caroline will be in Chicago during October and she will be presenting a number of pro-Israel programs and we will highlight them. We encourage you to attend them.
CTJ
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A prayer for 5772
September 27, 2011, 6:09 PM
Upon
his return to Ramallah from New York, Palestinian Authority Chairman
Mahmoud Abbas was greeted by a crowd of several thousand well-wishers.
They applauded him for his speech at the UN. There, Abbas erased Jewish
history from the Land of Israel, denied Israel's right to exist and
pledged his commitment to establish a racist Palestinian state
ethnically cleansed of all Jews.
Many of
Abbas's supporters in Ramallah held posters of US President Barack
Obama. On them Obama was portrayed as a monkey. The caption read, "The
First Jewish President of the United States."
The
fact that the Palestinians from Fatah and Hamas alike are Jew-hating
racists should surprise no one who has been paying a modicum of
attention to the Palestinian media and general culture. Since the PA was
established in 1994 in the framework of the peace process between
Israel and the PLO, it has used the media organs, schools and mosques it
controls to spew out a constant flow of anti-Semitic propaganda. Much
of the Jew-hating bile is indistinguishable from anti-Jewish propaganda
published by the Nazis.
As for their anti-black
bigotry, it is enough to recall the frequency with which Condoleezza
Rice was depicted as a monkey and a devil in the Palestinian and
pan-Arab media during George W. Bush's presidency to realize that the
racist depiction of Obama was not a fluke. Moreover, and more
disturbingly, it is worth recalling that like its fellow Arab League
members, the PA has strongly supported Sudan's genocide of black
Africans in Darfur.
To a degree, the
willingness of African-Americans to turn a blind eye to Arab anti-black
prejudice is understandable. Since the mid-1960s, oil rich Arab kingdoms
led by Saudi Arabia have spent hundreds of millions of petrodollars in
outreach to African-Americans. This outreach includes but is not limited
to massive proselytization efforts among inner city blacks. The
combination of a strong and growing African-American Muslim population
and a general sense of amity towards Muslims as a result of outreach
efforts contribute to a willingness on the part of African- Americans to
overlook Arab anti-black racism.
Unlike
African-Americans, Jewish Americans have been targeted by no serious
outreach campaigns by the likes of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab
world. To the contrary, as Mitchell Bard documented in his book The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East,
these Arab nations have spared no effort in anti-Israel lobbying in the
US. Among the Arab lobby's goals is to undermine the legitimacy of
American Jewish lobbying on behalf of Israel.
Furthermore,
the anti-Jewish atmosphere in the Arab world is far more comprehensive
and poisonous than its anti-black prejudice. A Pew global opinion poll
from 2008 showed that hatred of Jews is effectively universal in the
Arab world and overwhelming in non-Arab Muslim states. In Jordan, Egypt
and Lebanon, between 95 and 97 percent of respondents expressed hatred
of Jews. In Indonesia, Turkey and Pakistan between two-thirds and
three-quarters of respondents expressed hatred of Jews.
Jew-hatred
among Muslim minorities in the West is less overwhelming. But Muslim
antagonism towards Jews vastly outstrips that of the general populations
of their countries. According to a Pew survey from 2006, while 7% of
British citizens express unfavorable views of Jews, 47% of British
Muslims admit to such views. In France, 13% of the general population
admits to harboring negative feelings towards Jews and 28% of French
Muslims do. Likewise in Germany, 22% of the general population
acknowledges anti-Semitic views and 44% of German Muslims do.
More
dangerously, the quantity of anti-Semitic attacks carried out by
Muslims in the West far outstrips their percentage in the general
population. According to Pew data, in 2010 Muslims comprised just 4.6%
of the population of the UK but carried out 39% of the anti-Semitic
attacks. Moreover, according to the Times Online, in 2006, 37% of
British Muslims claimed that British Jews are legitimate targets for
attacks. Only 30% of British Muslims disagreed.
WITH
THE overwhelming data showing that throughout the Arab world there is
strong support for organizations and regimes which advocate the genocide
of world Jewry, the American Jewish community could have been expected
to devote the majority of its attention and resources to exposing and
combating this existential threat. Just as the American Jewish community
dedicated itself in the past to causes such as the liberation of Soviet
Jewry and fighting neo-Nazi groups in the US and throughout the world,
it could have been expected that from the Anti-Defamation League to the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, that major American Jewish
groups would be using the financial and human resources at their
disposal to defend against this violent, genocidal hatred.
But
this has not occurred. Many leading American Jewish organizations
continue to be far more involved in combating the currently relatively
benign anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church and Evangelical Christians
than confronting the escalating dangers of Muslim anti-Semitism.
According
to a Gallup poll released last month, 80% of American Jews have
favorable views of American Muslims. Seventy percent believe that they
are not supportive of al-Qaida. These data indicate that American Jews
are second only to American Muslims in their support for Muslim
Americans. Indeed 6% more American Jews than American Muslims believe
that American Muslims face prejudice due to their religion.
American
Jewish championing of American Muslims is disconcerting when compared
with American Jewish treatment of the philo-Semitic Evangelical
Christians. Matthew Knee discussed this issue in depth in a recent
article published at the Legal Insurrection website.
In
a 2003 Pew survey, 42% of American Jews expressed antagonism towards
Evangelical Christians. In a 2004 American National Election Study, Jews
on average rated Evangelical Christians at 30 out of 100 on a "feeling
thermometer," where 1 was cold and 100 was hot.
A
2005 American Jewish Committee survey found that Jews assessed that
following Muslims, Evangelical Christians have the highest propensity
for being anti-Semites. And yet, in the same 2004 American National
Election Survey, Evangelical Christians rated Jews an average of 82 on
the 1- 100 feelings scale. Evangelical Christians rated Catholics at 80.
Consistent
survey data show that levels of anti- Semitism among Evangelical
Christians is either the same as or slightly lower than the national
average. According to a 2007 ADL survey, the US average is 15%.
There
is a clear disparity between survey data on anti-Semitism among various
American ethnic groups and American Jews' assessment of the prevalence
of anti-Semitism among the same groups. The AJC survey found that
American Jews believed that 29% of Evangelicals are largely anti-
Semitic. They assessed that only 7% of Hispanics and 19% of
African-Americans are anti-Semites.
As it works
out, their perceptions are completely incorrect. According to the 2007
ADL survey, foreign born Hispanics, and African-Americans, harbor
significantly stronger anti-Semitic views than the national average.
Twenty-nine percent of foreign born Hispanics harbor very anti-Semitic
views. Thirty-two percent of African-Americans harbor deeply
anti-Semitic views. Like Jews, Hispanics,
African-Americans and Muslims vote disproportionately for the Democratic
Party. Evangelical Christians on the other hand, are reliably
Republican. A 2009 survey on US anti- Semitism conducted by the
Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco found that
Democrats are more likely to be anti-Semitic than Republicans. The
Gallup survey from last month showing American Jews' deep support for
American Muslims is of particular interest because that support stands
in stark contrast with survey data concerning American Jewish perception
of Muslim American anti-Semitism.
THE 2005 AJC
survey showed that American Jews believe that 58% of American Muslims
are anti- Semitic. That is, American Jews are Muslim Americans'
strongest non-Muslim defenders at the same time they are convinced that
most Muslim Americans are anti-Semites.
What
can explain this counterintuitive behavior? And how can we account for
the apparent pattern of incorrect Jewish perceptions of anti-Semitism
among Evangelical Christians on the one hand and fellow Democrats on the
other hand?
As Knee argues, the disparity may
very well be due to partisan loyalties. The Democratic Party has openly
engaged in fear mongering and demonization of Evangelical Christians in
order to maintain Jewish loyalty to the party. Knee quotes
then-Democratic national chairman Howard Dean's statement that "Jews
should feel comfortable in being American Jews without being constrained
from practicing their faith or be compelled to convert to another
religion."
As for Muslims, Knee cites a press
release from the National Jewish Democratic Council from March attacking
Congressman Peter King's hearings on the radicalization of American
Muslims. In the press release, the council claimed that such hearings
"can and will" harm religious tolerance in America. That is, the council
implied that by investigating the radicalization of American Muslims -
and its concomitant transformation of American Muslims into supporters
of the genocidal Jew-hatred endemic among radical Muslims worldwide -
Rep. King is endangering Jews.
If American Jews
are most concerned with being able to maintain their loyalty to the
Democratic Party, then it makes sense for them to wildly exaggerate
Evangelical anti-Semitism. It is reasonable for them to underestimate
African-American and Hispanic anti-Semitism, and ignore the higher rates
of anti-Semitism among Democrats than among Republicans. Moreover, it
makes sense for them to follow their party's lead in failing to address
the dangers of global Islamic anti- Semitism.
None
of this makes sense, however, if American Jews are most concerned with
defending Jews - in America and worldwide - from anti-Semitic sentiments
and violence.
On Wednesday evening we begin
our celebration of the New Year. Rosh Hashana marks a period of
soul-searching among Jews. We are called upon at this time to account
for our actions and our failures to act and to improve our faithfulness
to our people, to our laws and to God.
It is
possible that American Jews are simply unaware of the disparities
between reality and their perceptions of reality. But it is the duty of
all Jews to educate ourselves about the threats that reality poses to
ourselves and our people.
At the UN last week,
Abbas received accolades and applause from all quarters for his
anti-Semitic assault on Jewish history and the Jewish state. Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's remarks were applauded by
Israel-supporters in the audience in the General Assembly.
As
Israel is increasingly isolated and Jews worldwide are under attack, it
is my prayer for the coming year that the American Jewish community
will come to terms with a difficult reality and the choices it entails,
and act with the majority of their fellow Americans to defend Israel and
combat anti-Semitism in the US and throughout the world.
|
NRO blog post - Israel at the UN: A sucker's game
September 23, 2011, 2:05 AM
This
week's Palestinian-statehood extravaganza at the U.N. is being billed
as something of a modern-day showdown at the O.K. Corral. If the
Palestinians gain recognition of their state, then Israel is the big
loser. And if the Palestinians fail to gain U.N. recognition of
"Palestine" as a member state, then Israel is the big winner.
But
the situation is more complex. By going to the U.N., the Palestinians
have shown their absolute bad faith in previous negotiations with
Israel, and indeed exposed the entire peace process as a lie. The peace
process was based on the assumption that a Palestinians state could
emerge only at the end of a comprehensive peace settlement between
Israel and the Palestinians. That is, such a state would be at peace
with Israel. By bypassing negotiations, the Palestinians seek to gain a state that will be born in a state of war with Israel.
The
U.S. and European response to this initiative has been utterly
shocking. The Europeans, led by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, have
given their enthusiastic support to the Palestinians.
As
for the U.S., by rejecting a cutoff of financial assistance and
political support to the Palestinians in the face of their rejection of
peace with Israel, the Obama administration has signaled to the
Palestinians that there is no price to be paid for their aggressive bad
faith.
In short, the EU and the U.S. are
rewarding the Palestinians for abandoning the centerpiece of European
and U.S. Middle East policy for the past generation -- the
Palestinian-Israeli peace process.
Given this situation, even if their bid for U.N. membership fails, the Palestinians will have won.
#more#From
Israel's perspective, the best possible outcome of the current standoff
at the U.N. is for the Palestinians to present their resolution for
statehood to the Security Council and for the U.S. to immediately veto
it. Such a move would provide closure to this particular round of
anti-Israel aggression. But it certainly wouldn't end the danger. The
Palestinians can renew their request as often as they please. And given
the sympathetic -- indeed enthusiastic -- reception they have received
at the U.N., there is little reason to doubt that they will do so.
The
worse scenario from Israel's perspective is quickly becoming the more
likely one. That scenario is that the Security Council will not bring
the Palestinian-statehood resolution to an immediate vote but will
instead delay voting on it for an indeterminate period. During that
period, the U.S. and the EU will exert massive pressure on Israel to
capitulate to whatever Palestinian preconditions for renewing
negotiations are on hand.
Israel will face the
prospect that if it fails to surrender to all the Palestinian demands,
the U.N. will retaliate by passing the Palestinian-statehood resolution.
At a minimum, Israel will find itself under a constant barrage of
criticism blaming it for the Palestinian decision to abandon the peace
process and ask the U.N. to grant them what they refuse to negotiate
with Israel. All of this could have been
averted or at least mitigated if the Obama administration had behaved
differently. If the White House had announced at an early date that it
would automatically veto any resolution calling for Palestinian U.N.
membership and would end all U.S. financial and political support for
the Palestinian Authority if it went through with its stated aim of
applying for U.N. membership as a state, the Palestinians would likely
have set aside their plans. But still today President Obama has refused
to take any punitive action against the PA and, according to the New
York Times, forced Israel to lobby Congress not to cut off foreign aid
to the PA.
On the positive side, the
Palestinian decision to abandon the peace process provides Israel with
justification for doing the same. If Israel's government is wise and
courageous, it will end its financial and political support for the PA.
It will also take steps toward applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria
much as it applied Israeli law to Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in
the past. |
Israel's path to victory
September 22, 2011, 11:55 PM
There
is something surreal about the coverage of developments this week at
the UN. The general tenor is akin to the showdown at the OK Corral.
Either the Palestinians win recognition of statehood, or they don't. If
they do, they win. If they don't, Israel wins.
The
problem with this message is that even if the Palestinians don't
receive UN membership they still win. There is no scenario in which
Israel wins at the UN. The reason is simple. The UN is profoundly
hostile to Israel. It has a large, permanent, automatic majority of
members that always supports harming Israel.
In
the present circumstances, the best case scenario for Israel is that
the Palestinians bring their membership resolution before the Security
Council and the US immediately vetoes it. If that happens, at least
we'll have closure in this particular fight.
But
even such a "victory" will have little lasting effect. There is nothing
preventing the Palestinians from reinstating their membership request
whenever they want. And given the sympathy their current membership bid
has won them, the Palestinians have every reason to repeat the process
again and again and again.
By Thursday, it
appeared that the most likely outcome of their present statehood bid
will not be a quick US veto in the Security Council, but rather
something much worse for Israel. On Wednesday morning, talk had already
begun of a long, drawn out period of deliberation at the Security
Council which could last weeks or months or even longer.
The
idea is that during that time, the US and the Europeans will place
massive pressure on Israel to make more concessions to the Palestinians
in order to restart stillborn negotiations. And the specter of a
Security Council endorsement of Palestinian statehood will loom over
Israel's head the entire time like the Sword of Damocles.
Rather
than wash its hands of this loser's game and move its policies to a
diplomatic battlefield where it has a chance of actually winning, the
Netanyahu government is playing out its losing hand as if what Israel
does makes a difference. Even worse, the government is refusing to
consider crafting a strategy for victory that it can advance outside the
hostile confines of the UN.
This is not simply
a failure of imagination. It is a failure of cognition. It is a failure
to notice the significance of what is already happening.
Israel's
friends in the US Congress have put forward two measures that pave the
way for just such a strategy for victory. By failing to recognize the
opportunity they represent for Israel, the government is showing a
distressing lack of competence.
The
government's behavior is probably due to force of habit. Since the
initiation of the phony peace process with the PLO 18 years ago, at
their best, Israel's governments have justified the Jewish state's
control over territories it won control over in the 1967 Six Day War on
the basis of our security needs. Without the Jordan Valley, Israel is
vulnerable to foreign invasion from the east. Without Gush Etzion to
Jerusalem's south and Gush Adumim to its north, the capital is
vulnerable to attack. Without overall Israeli security control over
Judea and Samaria, Israel's population centers are vulnerable to
terrorist attacks. And so on and so forth.
All
of these statements are accurate. But they are also defensive. While
Israel has been defending its right to security, the Palestinians have
been on the offensive, arguing that all the land that Israel took
control over from Jordan in 1967 belongs to them by ancestral right. And
so for the past 18 years, the conflict has been framed as a dispute
between the Palestinians' rights and Israel's security requirements.
Like
its willingness to place itself at the UN's mercy, Israel's willingness
to accept this characterization of the Palestinian conflict with Israel
has doomed its cause to repeated and ever-escalating failure. For if
the land belongs to the Palestinians, then whether or not their control
of the land endangers Israel is irrelevant.
This
is the reason the US's support for Israel's right to defensible borders
has been reduced from support for perpetual Israeli control over
unified Jerusalem and some 50 percent of Judea and Samaria in 1993, to
US support for a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines -
including the partition of Jerusalem - in 2011. You can define
"defensive needs" down. Defining rights down is a more difficult
undertaking.
The irony here is that Israel's
sovereign rights to Judea and Samaria are ironclad while the
Palestinians' are flimsy. As the legal heir to the League of Nations
Mandate for Palestine, Israel is the legal sovereign of Judea and
Samaria. Moreover, Israel's historic rights to the cradle of Jewish civilization are incontrovertible.
And
yet, because Israel has not wanted to impede on the possibility of
peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians, for the past 18 years it has
avoided mentioning its rights and instead focused solely on its
security requirements. Consequently, outside of Bible-literate Christian
communities, today most people are comfortable parroting the totally
false Palestinian claim that Jews have no rights to Judea, Samaria or
Jerusalem. They further insist that rights to these areas belong
exclusively to the Palestinians who did not even exist as a distinct
national community in 1967.
As for Israel's
allies in the US Congress, they have responded to the PLO's UN statehood
gambit with two important legislative initiatives. First Rep. Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
introduced a bill calling for the US to end its financial support for
the Palestinian Authority and drastically scale-back its financial
support for the UN if the UN upgrades the PLO's membership status in any
way. Ros- Lehtinen's bill shows Israel that there is powerful support
for an Israeli offensive that will make the Palestinians pay a price for
their diplomatic aggression.
Ros-Lehtinen's
bill is constructive for two reasons. First, it makes the Palestinians
pay for their adversarial behavior. This will make them think twice
before again escalating their diplomatic warfare against Israel. Second,
it begins an overdue process of delegitimizing the Palestinian cause,
which as is now clear is inseparable from the cause of Israel's
destruction. Were Israel to follow
Ros-Lehtinen's lead and cut off its transfer of tax revenues to the PA,
and indeed, stop collecting taxes on the PA's behalf, it would be
advancing Israel's interests in several ways. It would remind the Palestinians that they need Israel far more than Israel needs them.
Israel would make them pay a price for their diplomatic aggression. Israel
would end its counterproductive policy of giving the openly hostile PA
an automatic seal of approval regardless of its treatment of Israel. Israel would diminish the financial resources at the PA's disposal for the advance of its war against Israel.
Finally, Israel would pave the way for the disbandment of the PA and its replacement by another authority in Judea and Samaria. And
this brings us to the second congressional initiative taken in
anticipation of the PLO's UN statehood gambit. Earlier this month, Rep.
Joe Walsh and 30 co-sponsors issued a resolution supporting Israeli
annexation of Judea and Samaria.
While
annexation sounds like a radical formula, the fact is that Israel
already implemented a similar move twice when it applied Israeli law to
Jerusalem and to the Golan Heights. And the heavens didn't fall in
either case. Indeed, the situation on the ground was stabilized.
Moreover,
just as Israel remains willing to consider ceding these territories in
the framework of a real peace with its neighbors, so the application of
Israeli law to Judea and Samaria would not prevent these areas from
being ceded to another sovereign in the framework of a peace deal.
And
while not eliminating the prospects of a future peace, by applying
Israeli law to Judea and Samaria, Israel would reverse one of the most
pernicious effects of the 18-year-old phony peace process: the
continuous erosion of international recognition of Israel's sovereign
rights to these areas.
With each passing round
of failed negotiations, offers that Israel made but were rejected were
not forgotten. Rather they formed the starting point for the next round
of failed negotiations. So while then-prime minister Ehud Barak for
instance claimed that his offer to cede the Temple Mount was contingent
on the signing of a peace treaty, when the so-called Middle East Quartet
issued its road map plan for peace, Barak's ostensibly canceled offer
was the starting point of negotiations.
By
applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria, Israel would change the
baseline for future negotiations in a manner that enhances its
bargaining position.
Perhaps most important, by
applying its laws to the areas, Israel would demonstrate that it
finally understands that rights need to be asserted by deeds, not just
by words, if they are to be taken seriously.
On Thursday, The New York Times
published a news story/analysis that essentially rewrote the history of
the last two-and-a-half years. The paper ignored Palestinian leader
Mahmoud Abbas's open admission that US President Barack Obama compelled
him to radicalize his own policies towards Israel when Obama demanded
that Israel abrogate Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and
Samaria as a precondition for negotiations. This
was a precondition the Palestinians themselves had never demanded. And
by making it a US demand, Obama ended any possibility of resuming
negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.
By the Times'
telling, Obama is a victim of the combined forces of an intransigent
Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby that holds sway in Congress.
These nefarious forces made it impossible for Obama to bring the sort
of pressure to bear on Israel that would have placated the Arab world
and paved the way for a peaceful settlement. And in the absence of such
presidential power, Israel and its lobbyists wrecked Obama's reputation
in the Arab world.
The lesson that Israel should take from the Times'
borderline anti-Semitic historical revisionism and conspiracy theories
is twofold. First, Israel will never be rewarded for its concessions.
The Times and its fellow anti-Israel activists don't care that
since 2009 - and indeed since 1993 - Israel has made one concession
after another only to be rewarded time after time with ever-escalating
demands for more concessions. The Times and its fellow
Israel-baiters have a story of Israeli conspiracies and bad faith to
tell. And they will tell that tale regardless of objective facts and
observable reality.
This brings us to the second lesson of the Times
article, specifically, and the experience at the UN generally. Israel
has nothing to lose and everything to gain from going on the offensive.
Our friends in the US Congress have shown us a path that lays open to us
to follow. And we must follow it. Since we'll be blamed no matter what
we do, we have no excuse for not doing what is best for us.
|
Funding the enemy
September 20, 2011, 2:27 AM
Speaking
Sunday at the UN's conference of donors to the Palestinian Authority,
Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon warned that while Israel supports
economic assistance to the PA now, that is liable to change within the
week.
As he put it, "Future assistance and
cooperation could be severely and irreparably compromised if the
Palestinian leadership continues on its path of essentially acting in
contravention of all signed agreements which also regulate existing
economic relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority."
Ayalon's
position is eminently reasonable. Unfortunately, it contradicts utterly
the official position of the Government of Israel.
The
government's position was transmitted on Friday to the same donor
conference that Ayalon was participating in. According to the government
document, "Israel calls for ongoing international support for the PA
budget and development projects that will contribute to the growth of a
vibrant private sector, which will provide the PA an expanded base for
generating internal revenue."
Israel's move was
reportedly championed by the Defense Ministry and the IDF senior brass,
which reportedly adamantly opposes cutting off any aid to the PA,
including aid to the US-trained and financed Palestinian army in Judea
and Samaria. As The Jerusalem Post reported on Sunday, senior
Defense Ministry officials argue that an aid cutoff is liable to lead to
the PA's collapse and PA employees - which comprise the majority of
Palestinian workers - may become violent.
As
one Defense Ministry senior official told the paper, "It is important
that we retain financial stability, even after their unilateral moves.
Stopping money transfers could lead to a financial crisis which could
lead to a violent escalation."
In other words,
the Defense Ministry argues that if the donor countries stop paying off
the Palestinian militias - including the US-trained and funded
Palestinian army - then their supposedly moderate forces will turn to
the terror business to support themselves.
Aside
from being strategically insane, this position bespeaks an
unjustifiable unwillingness on the part of the leftist-dominated Defense
Ministry to understand the basic nature of the Palestinian cause and
what it requires from Israel.
Since the IDF and
the Foreign Ministry and the rest of the government bureaucracy
embraced the PLO as Israel's "peace partner" 18 years ago, they have
been operating on the assumption that the PLO and its spinoffs - Fatah
and the PA - are interested in reaching a peace deal with Israel. But
this has never been the case.
For the PLO and
its spinoffs, the Palestinian conflict has always been and will always
be a zero sum game. The goal of the Oslo process, the goal of the PA, of
the Palestinian militias, and of the UN bid is one: to strengthen the
Palestinians and weaken Israel.
As far as
Israel's "peace partner" is concerned, Israel can never concede enough.
There is no deal that Israel can ever offer that the Palestinians will
ever accept. Even if Israel offered to destroy itself and hand its ruins
to the Palestinians, the Palestinians would pocket the concession and
then declare war against whatever remnants remain of the defunct Jewish
state in order to "liberate" the land from its Jewish "occupiers."
We
know this is the case because this is what the Palestinians - led by
the PLO/Fatah/PA - did in Gaza after Israel unilaterally surrendered.
The last military vehicle had barely cleared the border when the
Palestinians torched the synagogues Israel had left standing.
So
too, after Ehud Barak essentially offered the Palestinians Israel's
head on a platter when he offered them the Temple Mount, they pocketed
his offer and began butchering Israelis in a bid to "liberate" the
Temple Mount.
The much vaunted Palestinian
security forces organized, funded and directed the terror war. And the
internationally financed PA budget paid for it. The
reason that the Palestinians are turning to the UN is not because they
cannot receive statehood in the framework of a peace deal with Israel.
They are going to the UN because they don't want a peace deal with
Israel. They want sovereignty and they want to remain at war with
Israel.
For 18 years the IDF's top brass has
refused to recognize the game that the PLO has been playing since the
onset of the fake peace process. Informed by the leftist establishment,
the IDF's senior officers vacuously argue that Israel's only option is
to strengthen the PA, including its US-trained and funded army. This
appeasement mindset has paralyzed the IDF's ability to develop
comprehensive strategies for victory for nearly a generation. And the
IDF's leadership clings to appeasement despite the fact that the public
has completely rejected it due to its consistent failure.
The
basic rule of commonsense policy-making is to be good to your friends
and bad to your enemies because then people will want to be your friends
and they will not want to be your enemies. The appeasement mindset
turns this rule on its head.
As far as the
appeasers are concerned, you must be good to your enemies and bad to
your friends because your enemies will stop hating you if you're nice to
them. As for your friends, they are wrong to be your friends since you
have yet to be worthy of friendship since you have not yet appeased your
enemies.
By supporting continued foreign aid
to the Palestinians in the aftermath of their UN bid the government has
adopted a classic appeasement policy. It has told the Palestinians that
they will pay no price for their act of aggression. Worse, Israel just
told them they will be rewarded. Israel has gone on record saying it
cannot manage without the Palestinian governing body that exists to
destroy it.
As for Israel's friends, the
government just pulled the rug out from under their feet. Cong. Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is a
true friend of Israel. Her bill calling for a cutoff of US aid to the PA
and a massive decrease of US aid to the UN in the event the UN upgrades
the Palestinians' diplomatic status is one of the most important pieces
of pro-Israel legislation to be introduced in the US Congress in a
generation. By announcing it opposes an aid cutoff, Israel undermined Ros-Lehtinen's position. It betrayed its good friend.
No
doubt Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor
Liberman were under great pressure from the IDF and from the Obama
administration to call for continued international funding of the PA.
But the public didn't elect them with the expectation that they would
abandon Israel's national interest and harm its friends just because
they feel the heat. The appeasers claim that
Israel wins international approval by being good to its enemies. But 18
years of consistently attacking its friends and praising its foes has
brought Israel to the brink of international isolation. We have
empowered our foes and demoralized our friends. And now we continue to
squander what little diplomatic influence we still have left in a bid to
again aid the Palestinians in their continued war against us.
If
the government thinks that Ayalon's statement can repair the damage it
just caused the country, it should think again. The only way to fix what
just happened is for the government to issue a new policy supporting
the cutting off of foreign aid to the Palestinians and announcing that
Israel will stop transferring tax revenues to them if their status at
the UN is upgraded in any way. And Netanyahu should pick up the phone
and personally apologize to Ros-Lehtinen for his government's
disgraceful behavior.
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The Palestinian obsession
September 16, 2011, 3:40 AM
If
nothing else, the Palestinians' UN statehood gambit goes a long way
towards revealing the deep-seated European and US pathologies that
enable and prolong the Palestinian conflict with Israel.
In
a nutshell, the Palestinian Authority - or Fatah - or PLO initiative of
asking the UN Security Council and the General Assembly to upgrade its
status to that of a sovereign UN member state or a sovereign non-UN
member state is an act of diplomatic aggression.
Eighteen
years ago this week, on September 13, 1993, the PLO signed the
Declaration of Principles with Israel on the White House lawn. There,
the terror group committed itself to a peace process in which all
disputes between Israel and the PLO - including the issue of Palestinian
statehood - would be settled in the framework of bilateral
negotiations. The PA was established on the
basis of this accord. The territory, money, arms and international
legitimacy it has been given was due entirely to the PLO pledge to
resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel through bilateral
negotiations.
By abandoning negotiations with
Israel two years ago, and opting instead to achieve its nationalist aims
outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel, the Palestinians
are destroying the diplomatic edifice on which the entire concept of a
peace process is based. They are announcing that they have no intention
of living at peace with Israel. Rather they intend to move ahead at
Israel's expense.
In truth, there is little new
in the Palestinians' behavior. They have been using the UN to weaken
Israel diplomatically since the early 1970s. Moreover, even if their bid
does provide them with upgraded diplomatic status, it won't change the
reality on the ground, nor are the Palestinians particularly interested
in changing the situation on the ground.
As the PLO ambassador in Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, made clear in an interview Wednesday with Lebanon's Daily Star,
in the event that the UN recognizes some form of Palestinian statehood
at the UN, the new "State of Palestine" will still expect the UN to
support the so-called Palestinian "refugees."
This
is true, he said, even for the "refugees" who live in Gaza, Judea and
Samaria. That is, the same UN that the Palestinians seek recognition of
statehood from will be expected to provide relief to Palestinian
"refugees" living inside "Palestine."
As he
put it, "Even Palestinian refugees living in [refugee camps] inside the
[Palestinian] state, they are still refugees. They will not be
considered citizens."
So if nothing will change
on the ground, why do the US and the EU care what the Palestinians do
at the UN next week with their automatic General Assembly majority?
Why
have the senior peace-processors of Washington and Europe descended on
Jerusalem and Ramallah, begging and pleading with the Palestinians to
cancel their plans?
Why have the Americans and
the Europeans been pressuring Israel to make massive concessions to the
Palestinians in order to convince them to put out the diplomatic fire
there have set at the UN?
Why are the White
House and the State Department telling the media that the US will
consider it a major diplomatic embarrassment if the Palestinians go
through with their threats? Why in short, do the Americans and the
Europeans care about this?
THE PALESTINIANS
have certainly never given either the Americans or the Europeans a good
reason to support their cause. Just this week, the PLO representative in
Washington told reporters that the future state of Palestine will ban
Jews and homosexuals.
And yet, the Obama
administration and the EU have made the establishment of a racist,
homophobic Palestinian state the greatest aim of their policies in the
Middle East.
Every single Palestinian leader
from the supposedly moderate Fatah party has rejected Israel's right to
exist and said that they will never set aside their demand that Israel
accept millions of foreign-born Arabs - the so-called Palestinian
"refugees" - as citizens. They say this with the full knowledge that
this demand is nothing less than a demand for Israel's destruction.
And
yet, both the US and the EU, which certainly do not support the
destruction of Israel, insist that it is imperative to strengthen and
support the supposedly moderate Fatah party which seeks the destruction
of Israel. Every year, the US and Europe
transfer collectively approximately a billion dollars in various forms
of aid to the Palestinian Authority and yet, the PA has failed to
develop a market economy capable of supporting the Palestinians without
foreign assistance. Instead, they have developed a welfare society where
most economic activity stems from foreign handouts.
Rather
than feel embarrassment at their failures, PA leaders use their
economic corruption to continuously threaten their patrons. If aid is
cut off, they say, the PA will disintegrate and the far more popular
Hamas movement will take over, and then, woe of woes, the peace process
will be destroyed. Of course, Hamas is also
sustained by Western aid money. Every month, the same PA that warns of
the dangers of a rising Hamas transfers tens of millions of dollars in
foreign aid to Hamas-controlled Gaza to pay salaries of Hamas
"government" employees.
Yet despite its mafia
economy, and its exploitation of their aid funds to support a terrorist
organization, the US and EU insist on maintaining the PA's status as the
largest per capita foreign aid recipient in human history. And they do
so even as the Eurozone is on the brink of collapse and the US is
descending rapidly into a new recession.
Finally,
in the interest of maintaining the peace process, aside from periodic
pro forma statements, the US and the EU have turned blind eyes to the
PA's routine and institutional glorification of terrorist mass murderers
and Nazi-style anti-Semitic indoctrination and incitement of
Palestinian society. Given their absolute
commitment to the so-called peace process, it would be reasonable to
expect the US and the EU to oppose the Palestinians' decision to move
their conflict with Israel from the negotiating table to the UN. After all, in acting as they are, the Palestinians are making clear that they are abandoning the sacrosanct peace process. Alas, this is not the case.
The Obama administration is engaging in desperate eleventh hour diplomacy to convince the Palestinians to cancel their UN plan, because it does not wish to oppose it. Most EU member states are expected to support the Palestinian bid at both the Security Council and the General Assembly.
The
fact that the US and the EU are reluctant to oppose the Palestinian UN
initiative, despite the fact that it destroys the foundations of the
peace process, tells us two things about the Americans and the
Europeans. First, their support for the Palestinians has more in common
with a psychological obsession than with a rational policy decision.
The
Obama administration, the EU bureaucracy and most EU member states are
obsessed with the Palestinians. There is nothing the Palestinians can
say or do to convince them that the Palestinian case is anything other
than wholly and completely just.
There are many
possible explanations for how they arrived at this obsession. But the
fact is that it is an obsession. Like all obsessions, their faith in the
justice of the Palestinian cause is impermeable to contrary facts or
rational interests.
The flip side of this
obsession is, of course, a complementary obsession with blaming Israel
for everything that goes wrong. For if the Palestinians are always in
the right, and they are fighting Israel, then it naturally follows that
Israel is always in the wrong.
This "Blame Israel First" mindset was exposed in all its madness in a New York Times editorial on Thursday.
Despite
the Palestinians' refusal to negotiate with Israel, despite Fatah's
unity-government deal with Hamas, and despite their rejection of
Israel's right to exist, the Times argued that Israel is to blame for the current crisis in relations. In
the paper's view, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu "has been the most
intractable" party to the conflict. Netanyahu's crime? He has permitted
Jews in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to exercise their property rights
and build on land they own.
Of course, that is not how the Times put it. In the Times' words, Netanyahu has been "building settlements."
Intrinsic to the Times'
claim, (and to the Obama administration's EU-supported demand that
Israel disregard Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and
Samaria), is an embrace of the Palestinians' bigoted position that Jews
must be banned from the future Palestinian state.
That is, like the administration and the EU, the Times'
support for the "just Palestinian cause" is so comprehensive that its
editors never even question whether it is reasonable for them to be
completely committed to the establishment of a racist state. It is this
inability to consider the significance of their actions that removes
Western support for the Palestinians from the realm of policy and into
the sphere of neurosis.
The second lesson of
the US and European unwillingness to oppose the Palestinians' UN
statehood bid is that the Obama administration and the EU alike are
obsessed with getting on the right side of inherently anti-Western
international institutions.
Here, too, the
reason that the position is an obsession rather than a considered policy
is because no conceivable rational US or European interest is advanced
by strengthening the UN and similar bodies.
Administration
officials have repeatedly said that they do not wish to veto a
Palestinian statehood resolution at the Security Council because they do
not want to isolate the US at the UN. It is due to their aversion to
isolation that the administration has worked so intensively in recent
weeks to convince the Palestinians to cancel their UN plans, by
pressuring Israel to give them massive concessions.
It
never seems to have occurred to anyone at the White House that standing
alone at the UN more often than not means standing up for US interests,
and that standing with the crowd involves sacrificing US interests. As
for the EU, their automatic support of the UN is somewhat more
reasonable. Although the UN majority systematically empowers states and
forces that are hostile to Europe, many EU member states share the UN
majority's anti-Israel and anti-American positions. So by voting with
the majority, EU member states are able to act on their prejudices
without having to own up to them. Moreover, many EU states have
irredentist Islamic minorities. Joining the Israel-bashers at the UN is a
low-cost way to appease them.
On Thursday,
Netanyahu announced that he will address the UN General Assembly in New
York next week and put the truth about the Palestinian cause on the
table.
Perhaps someone will be moved by his words. Perhaps not.
But whether he makes a difference or not, at least reason will have one defender at the UN next week. |
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