Palestinian Authority incitement in schools

From a Palestinian Media Watch Special Report, 18 May 2011:

On the occasion of the 63rd anniversary of Israel's independence, Palestinian Media Watch has prepared a comprehensive report describing how the establishment of the state is depicted in the Palestinian Authority's educational system and official media, both of which operate under the supervision of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The report documents how the establishment of Israel and its continued existence are demonized by spokesmen and representatives of the PA in the official controlled media.

The report does not include quotes from the media controlled by Hamas, since the Hamas position concerning Israel's existence is well-known and its charter calls for the destruction of Israel. The aim of the report is to document the PA positions expressed in internal Palestinian discourse in Arabic that are not expressed to the outside world. The report focuses on statements by senior PA officials, columnists in the official PA press, and program hosts and reporters on PA TV, from 2010-2011.

Abstract:

"The Zionist gangs stole Palestine ... and established the state of Israel"
- this quote, from an official PA 12th Grade schoolbook, is an accurate depiction of how the PA educates its population to view the establishment of the State of Israel.

Presenting the creation of the state as an act of theft and its continued existence as a historical injustice serves as the basis for the PA's non-recognition of Israel's right to exist. In order to create an ideological basis for this, the PA denies there was an ancient Jewish history in the Land of Israel and also distorts modern history, presenting Zionism as a demonic Nazi-like phenomenon.

In order to explain what made Jews come to Israel, since they claim there was no historical connection to draw them, Zionism is presented as a colonialist movement created by the West to further its interests. First, the countries of Europe wanted to rid themselves of the Jews and needed a place for them. They also wanted a foreign body in the heart of the Arab world to serve Europe's colonialist aims. For these reasons, they sent the Jews to "steal Palestine."

Israel is further demonized through images and descriptions, such as "the foster child of the Nazis," "an organized terror state," "the cruelest enemy," etc. Accordingly, the idea of the State of Israel ceasing to exist is presented as the achievement of justice.

Today, following the establishment of a Fatah and Hamas unity government, many countries are demanding that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist as a condition for the world's recognition of their new government. Ironically, this very condition is violated daily by the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas.
The report:

1. "The Zionist gangs stole Palestine"

2. Not recognizing Israel's right to exist

3. Establishment of the State of Israel presented as "colonialist" plan

4. Demonic images and descriptions of the State of Israel

5. Justice will be achieved when Israel ceases to exist

1.    "The Zionist gangs stole Palestine"

"The Zionist gangs stole Palestine" is a quote from a Palestinian Authority official 12th-Grade schoolbook. It encapsulates how the PA views - and educates its population to view - the establishment of the State of Israel. The position that the establishment of the state was an act of theft and a fundamental historical injustice is the basis for the PA's non-recognition of Israel's right to exist. The establishment of the state is presented as the result of crime, robbery and theft by foreigners with neither the right nor any historical connection to the place, with the deliberate aim of harming the Arab inhabitants of the land. The term "Zionist gangs" is prevalent in Palestinian discourse and refers to the generation that founded the state. The word "theft" refers to the acts of developing the land and establishing the state.

The following are some examples:

In a 12th-Grade schoolbook:

"Palestine's war ended with a catastrophe that is unprecedented in history, when the Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people from their cities, their villages, their lands and their houses, and established the State of Israel."

[Arabic Language, Analysis, Literature and Criticism, Grade 12, p. 104.

The book is in current use.]

Special Ramadan supplement to the official PA daily features a daily competition with prizes. The text of the Balfour Declaration is shown, followed by the question:

"The cursed James Arthur Balfour Declaration led to the theft of the homeland and the expulsion of an entire people, in a campaign of ethnic cleansing unparalleled in modern history. On what date and what month in 1917 was this declaration issued?"

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 7, 2010]

PA TV item on the UN vote on the Partition Plan of 1948:

"The Zionist leadership, in its declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel, refrained from defining its borders - with the goal of justifying the plan for settlement and theft of Palestinian and Arab lands."

[PA TV (Fatah) Nov. 29, 2010]

PA TV item on UN Resolution 194, broadcast on International Refugee Day:

"The Resolution, which stipulated return and restitution for the Palestinian refugees who had been expelled by force from their homes and from their land by the Zionist gangs in 1948 in the greatest operation of ethnic cleansing, continues to be a black chapter in human history."

[PA TV (Fatah), June 20, 2010]

Columnist in the PA daily under the headline, "Zionism reproduces the Holocaust":

"They plundered the Palestinian land and national interests, and established their state upon the ruins of the Palestinian Arab people, under the faded and false slogan, 'A nationless land for a landless nation."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 19, 2011]

PA TV news item about disagreements among Israeli ethnic groups:

"This [internal Israeli conflict] is not the first time, nor will it be the last, in the history of the conflicts between the [different Israeli] ethnic populations of the world among those who stole Palestine in search of an alleged homeland that would take them in."

 [PA TV (Fatah), June 17, 2010]

                                                                                                                       Caricature in the official PA daily, depicting the establishment of the state ("1948") as a shark devouring "Palestine."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 23, 2010]

2.    Not recognizing Israel's right to exist

In order to substantiate the claim that the establishment of the State of Israel was an act of theft, the PA engages in historical revision. The ancient Jewish history in the Land of Israel is erased, while modern Jewish history is distorted in order to present Zionism as a demonic phenomenon. Thus,, the PA leadership creates the ideological basis for negating Israel's right to exist. PA spokesmen have claimed that the Jewish nation is an "invented nation," intended to justify Zionism; this ignores the reality of Zionism as the expression of the aspirations of the Jewish people returning to its homeland. This historical revision and erasure of the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel results in the verdict that the State of Israel has no right to exist.

The following are some examples:

PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash:

"History proves the Arab, Islamic and Palestinian right to this land and disproves all the Israeli claims that they have religious and historical rights in this land."

[PA TV interview (Fatah), March 2, 2010]

"The political science department at Bir Zeit University held... a political symposium with the participation of scholar Antoine Shalhat, who spoke about static and changing elements of Zionist ideology...
Shalhat said that the idea of Zionism is the establishment of a national home for Jews in Palestine and the invention of a new nationality, known as the Jewish nation, and that the first to propose this was the Jewish Theodore Herzl, who spoke in his book Altneuland about his ideas of establishing a Jewish state."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 27, 2010]

Adli Sadeq, columnist for the official PA daily:

"The very least [we can do] is to declare explicitly that recognition of Israel's right to be a state in this region represents an environmental and security hazard; it creates the basis for acute internal and regional tensions, and distorts history, just as it poisons the future."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 18, 2010]

Jordanian academic Muhammad Dohal, interviewed on PA TV documentary program about the UN Partition Plan:

"The Jews are hated in every society in which they have lived, because of their behavior relating to their great love of money. ... This was the source of their harm to the societies around them, including Palestinian society, Arab-Palestinian society. We all know that the Jews lived in Palestine and the Palestinian people adopted them, so to say, and they lived in dignity. But they contrived schemes by means of their secret organizations, which gave rise to the idea of the need to purchase tracts of land and to seize control of them, and then to claim that they were the owners of a great area of the land, and that they were the original inhabitants of this land, and that the people which had adopted them was simply accidental in this land... Their behavior led to [Shakespeare's] famous story, the story of Shylock about money lending, which clings to the Jews. This is how they harmed the societies that embraced them."

[PA TV (Fatah), Oct. 10 and 17, 2010]

On the same program, Jordanian scholar Daoud Al-Burin spoke about the alternatives that were raised for the Jewish State. He concluded:

"After that they chose Palestine because of a supposed historical connection to Palestine."

[PA TV (Fatah), Oct. 10 and 17, 2010]

In a ceremony broadcast on PA TV marking Land Day:

"The forces of evil conspired against them [the Palestinians] and in 1917 the cursed Balfour Declaration [was issued], establishing the right of the Jews on the land of Palestine."

[PA TV (Fatah), March 30, 2011]

Adel Abd Al-Rahman, columnist in the official PA daily:

"The false story of the Zionists, according to which Palestine is 'the promised land,' is simply a lie without any basis. No person of the Jewish faith who was born in any country of the world has the right to return to Palestine, other than Jews who were born in Palestine."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 16, 2010]

Adel Abd Al-Rahman, columnist in the official PA daily:

"The history and heritage of Jericho confirm the Arab-Palestinian-Canaanite narrative concerning the entire Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, negating anything else, especially the false Zionist narrative."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 21, 2010]

Abd Al-Rahman, columnist for the official PA daily, on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration:

"Today is a painful anniversary for the Palestinian people, the 93rd anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, in which those who had no ownership of the Palestinian soil and homeland - the British colonialists - gave to those who had no connection to the land, neither near nor distant - the Zionists, in order to realize a colonialist aim, in the service of the objectives of the colonialist West in the Arab region."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 2, 2010]

3. Establishment of the State of Israel presented as "colonialist" plan

In order to explain Israel's existence as a country of immigrants who have no connection with the land, the claim is made - in President Mahmoud Abbas's name - that "the Zionist movement is not Jewish, nor did it flow from the desire of the Jews themselves; rather, it was an imperialist colonialist movement which sought to use the Jews and to enlist them for the benefit of the west's colonialist plans." (See source below.) In other words, the State of Israel is the result of an international imperialist plot. The PA argues that the countries of Europe (led by Britain) tried to rid themselves of the Jews, who were a burden to them. They wanted a foreign body in the heart of the Arab world and establishing a state for the Jews there served this colonialist purpose.

The following are some examples:

PA President Mahmoud Abbas raised this claim in his research, as testified by a professor of political science at Bir Zeit University, Dr. Samih Hamouda:

"The department of political science at Bir Zeit University, in cooperation with Madar [The Palestinian Center for Israeli Studies], held a political symposium yesterday... Professor Samih Hamouda, from the department of political science at Bir Zeit University, presented an analysis of the research studies of President Mahmoud Abbas, on the subject of Zionist ideology. Prof. Hamouda said that in his writings and research, the President linked Zionism with imperialism, by examining the reasons for the growth of Zionism, through scientific analysis of European society and the problem of Jews in Europe, and linked this with western aspirations in the Arab East. He added, 'In the President [Abbas's] studies, the Zionist movement is not Jewish, nor did it flow from the desire of the Jews themselves; rather, it was an imperialist colonialist movement which sought to use the Jews and to enlist them for the benefit of the western colonialist plans.'"

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 27, 2010]

PA TV program reviewing the 20th history of the region, as reflected in the paintings of Palestinian artist Ismail Shammout:

"At the beginning of the 20th century, the European colonialists - especially Britain - found that their interests fit the aspirations of the developing World Zionist Movement, and they began to offer their patronage and support, not only with promises, but with all means that would allow this racist movement [Zionism] to realize its primary goal: the establishment of a Jewish entity upon the land of Palestine, at the expense of the authentic Palestinian Arab nation..."

[PA TV (Fatah), July 28, 2010]

Ahmad Hanoun, senior member of the PLO department for refugee affairs:

"Most of the world participated, clearly and directly, in the plot against the Palestinian people. Meaning, they are partners in [creating] the tragedy that befell the Palestinian people. Nowhere [else] in history did the UN partition a land, giving it and allowing a part [of the population] that was not authentic to establish a state in that land, while not allowing the other nation to establish its state."

[PA TV (Fatah), Nov. 1, 2010]

Adel Abd Al-Rahman, columnist for the official PA daily:

"The evil European and American forces enabled [the Jews] to achieve the idea of a 'national home,' in order to be rid of them and to remove from European society the results and ramifications of the Holocaust which they had carried out against the Jews of Europe in Nazi Germany. This was [done] with the aim of tearing apart the Arab land, by planting them as an imperialist colonialist enterprise in Arab Palestine. Instead of opposing the West's colonialist plans and ideas, the Zionist Jews were glad to be the pawns of and fuel for the colonialist enterprise."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 19, 2011]

PA TV report on the anniversary of the Al-Karameh battle of 1968:

"The Al-Karameh [battle] was the turning point in restoring [Arab] honor following the defeats of the Arab armies against Israel, which had been established by an international conspiracy upon the ruins of a people which remains alive."

[PA TV (Fatah), March 21, 2011]

4.    Demonic images and descriptions of the State of Israel

The Palestinian Authority demonizes Israel through horrific visual images and descriptions, and uses terminology that presents Israel as "the foster child of Nazism," "the organized terror state," "the cruelest enemy," etc...

The following are some examples:

Coordinator of the Prisoners' Committee of the National and Islamic Parties, Yasser Mazhar, on behalf of the Committee:

"Israel is the foster child of Nazism, and a strategic ally of racism, which has disappeared from the world - except for there."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 27, 2010]

Jamal Tamimi, a lecturer in communications at Al-Quds University, responding to the question, Where is Israel is headed?

 "To what is beyond Hitlerism, what is beyond fascism, what is beyond Nazism."

[PA TV (Fatah), Oct. 12, 2010]

Senior Fatah member, Marwan Barghouti, serving 5 life sentences in Israel for his involvement in terror activities, in an interview from prison:

"The great Palestinian people - generators of the longest armed revolution in modern history, and proprietors of the two mightiest and greatest Intifadas in the region, facing the cruelest enemy and Zionist settlement colonialism that is unparalleled in the modern history of colonialism..."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 28, 2010]

Adel Abed Al-Rahman, columnist in the official PA daily:

"The Israeli apartheid state, possessing no cultural heritage or any collective symbol for a society born from the womb of the Zionist and Western imperialist attack, aspires and exerts efforts to appropriate and take over symbols and elements of the Palestinian national identity. Even when it comes to agricultural produce, such as oranges and other fruits. All this is in order to strengthen its false claims and its fallacious stories to the world and its cultural and scientific institutions... The Israel organized terror state acts vigorously, and on more than one level, to eliminate the Palestinian issue... [Some] pretend not to know that all areas of life are [battle]fields for the conflict with the Zionist movement and with its racist and fascist state."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 19, 2010]

In an announcement published by the PLO Executive Council on the 22nd anniversary of the Palestinian declaration of independence (1988):

"Owing to its policy that is hostile to peace and stability, Israel has become a growing political and moral burden on all of humanity."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 15, 2010]

In an article on the subject of the huge fire in the Carmel Forest last December:

"Israel - whose preparations for destruction and war we hear about daily - is now unable to protect nature, which belongs to [all] mankind. This is a natural outcome for a country whose aim is destruction and ruin of humanity."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 8, 2010]

5.    Justice will be achieved when Israel ceases to exist

The Palestinian Authority policy is to present the conflict with Israel as a struggle between Palestinians who are said to be innocent, with justice on their side, and Israel, which is said to be oppressive and cruel, void of legitimate rights. For this reason, the PA objective - having a world without the State of Israel - is not perceived as negative or unjust towards the citizens of Israel. Rather, it is presented as the attainment of historical justice.

A Fatah member of the Palestinian Parliament, Najat Abu-Bakr, stated this explicitly:

"I am certain that the State of Israel - this entity which the world implanted in our body, in our bones and in our history - this is the beginning of the end of this oppressive entity."

[PA TV (Fatah), June 1, 2010]   

The same message was conveyed by the narrator on a PA TV program about refugee camps. The narrator addresses the Jews of Israel, asking them to leave - in the name of justice:

"Where are you [Israelis] from? Where are you from? Where are you from? Of course, you're from Ukraine; of course, you're from Germany, from Poland, from Russia, from Ethiopia, the Falasha (pejorative for Ethiopian Jews). Why have you stolen my homeland and taken my place? Please, I ask of you, return to your original homeland, so that I can return to my original homeland. This is my homeland; go back to your homeland!"

[PA TV (Fatah), May 4 and 7, 2010]

Conclusions
The call for Jews to leave Israel that was expressed on official PA TV - "Return to your original homeland, so that I can return to my original homeland" - exemplifies the basis of the Palestinian Authority ideology, as documented in this report. The PA's logic is:

Since "the Zionist gangs stole Palestine," justice will be attained only when that which was stolen is returned.

Since "recognition of Israel's right to be a state in this region represents an environmental and security hazard," then for the sake of peace, justice demands that the danger be neutralized.

Since "the European and American forces of evil facilitated for them [the Jews] the idea of a 'national home'... with the aim of tearing apart the Arab land, by planting them as an imperialist colonialist enterprise in Arab Palestine," then justice will be achieved only when this "colonialist enterprise" ceases to exist.

Since "Israel is the foster child of Nazism, and a strategic ally of racism, which has disappeared from the world - except for there," then justice demands the removal of the last remnant of Nazism in the world.

This position--that the State of Israel has no right to exist and therefore justice will be attained only with its termination--is a primary component of Palestinian Authority ideology. Today, following the establishment of a Fatah and Hamas unity government, many countries are demanding that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist as a condition for the world's recognition of their new government. Ironically, it is this very condition that the Palestinian Authority itself under Mahmoud Abbas violates daily.

"Peaceful" Palestinian Nakba Rally: "Massacre the Jews Like We Massacred Them in Hebron "

MEMRI Video clip #2929
92-Year-Old Palestinian Woman on Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas/Gaza) - May 13, 2011 - 01:32: Palestinians Should Massacre the Jews Like We Massacred Them in Hebron [often called "occupied Palestinian territory" - SL]



Following are excerpts from an interview with Sara Jaber, a 92-year-old Palestinian who participated in a Right of Return demonstration on the Jordanian Israeli border. The interview was aired on Al-Aqsa TV on May 13, 2011:

Interviewer: Please tell us who you are.
Sara Jaber: I am from Hebron. The Jaber family.
Interviewer: What is your name?
Sara Jaber: Sara Muhammad 'Awwadh Jaber.
Interviewer: How old are you?
Sara Jaber: I am 92.
Interviewer: So you remember May 15, 1948, the day of the Nakba.

Sara Jaber: Why wouldn't I remember? May Allah support us. I hope we forget those days. Allah willing, you will bury [Israel], and massacre the Jews with your own hands. Allah willing, you will massacre them like we massacred them in Hebron.

Interviewer: What does this day mean to you? You have lived 63 years since the Nakba. You have experienced the entire Nakba...

Sara Jaber: 92 years. That's 92. I lived through the British era, and I lived through the massacre of the Jews in Hebron. We, the people of Hebron, massacred the Jews. My father massacred them, and brought back some stuff...

Interviewer: Thank you very much.

Why Isn't Obama Pressuring the Palestinians?

From FP JANUARY 4, 2011, BY STEVEN J. ROSEN:

Mahmoud Abbas says he won't negotiate with Israel. Why is Obama letting him get away with it?

 

For the first time since the Oslo peace process started 18 years ago, Palestinian leaders are openly refusing to negotiate with the government of Israel, and U.S. President Barack Obama's administration is doing very little about it. As Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, explained the policy on Dec. 9, "We will not agree to negotiate as long as settlement building continues." The Arab League is backing Abbas in this refusal, says League chief Amr Moussa, because"the direction of talks has become ineffective and it has decided against the resumption of negotiations."

But Abbas himself negotiated with seven previous Israeli prime ministers without such preconditions. For 17 years -- from the Madrid conference of October 1991 through Abbas's negotiations with then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, which ended in 2008 -- negotiations moved forward while Jerusalem construction continued. Madrid, Oslo I, Oslo II, the Hebron Protocol, the Wye River Memorandum, Camp David, Taba, the disengagement from Gaza, and Olmert's offer to Abbas -- all these events over the course of two decades were made possible by a continuing agreement to disagree about Israeli construction of Jewish homes in Jewish neighborhoods outside the pre-1967 line in East Jerusalem. But now, peace talks cannot even begin. Why the change?

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledgesthat the Palestinians are creating a new precondition for talks to begin. Settlements, she says, have "always been an issue within the negotiations.… There's never been a precondition." But Clinton has not stated any public objection to Abbas making this a new excuse not to negotiate.

Abbas himself blames Obama. As he said in November, "At first, President Obama stated in Cairo that Israel must stop all construction activities in the settlements. Could we demand less than that?" ...

In refusing to meet with Israel, Abbas is violating one of the most important commitments his predecessor Yasir Arafat made at the start of the Oslo process, which included this pledge to then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Sept. 9, 1993:

"The PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process, and to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides, and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations."

It is also a direct violation of the pledge that Abbas himself made barely three years ago at the Annapolis conference. As witnessed by foreign ministers of 47 countries on Nov. 27, 2007:

"We agree to immediately launch good-faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty, resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception, as specified in previous agreements. We agree to engage in vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations."

Abbas is also rejecting the imperative laid down by the Middle East "Quartet" in March 2010, demanding "the resumption, without preconditions, of direct, bilateral negotiations that resolve all final status issues as previously agreed by the parties." It is a repudiation of Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who said, "We do not believe in preconditions. We do not impose them. And we urge others not to impose preconditions." It is a dismissal of an objective considered vital by the Obama administration, to "re-launch negotiations as soon as possible and without preconditions, which is in the interests of everyone in the region." Abbas is spurning all appeals from Clinton, who says that "negotiations between the parties is the only means by which all of the outstanding claims arising out of the conflict can be resolved."

But the Obama administration is raising no public objection to the Palestinians' stance. It has not expressed one word of criticism of Abbas, nor used anything resembling the pressure tactics Obama has so freely used against the Israeli side. In fact, Obama did quite the opposite on Oct. 7, when he issued a special waiver of Section 7040(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act to transfer additional funds directly to the Palestinian Authority, just as it was announcing its refusal to negotiate....

Why Is the World Expecting Israel to Make Peace With Hamas?

From New York Post, May 11, 2011, by Michael Goodwin:

Imagine this nightmare. Instead of sending a team of SEALs to ice Usama bin Laden, President Obama sent a team of negotiators to see if we could talk the terror lord into promises of peace. All he had to do was say the right words, and we'd say 9/11 and all the threats about destroying the Great Satan were forgiven, and gee, let's be friends.

It's a sickening scenario, yet it's not far from what the world, including the United States, is asking Israel to do with Hamas. The Israelis are expected to break bread with the people who still threaten to wipe them off the face of the earth and regularly fire rockets into towns and cities.

The Palestinian terror group, which gets its funding and weapons from Iran and its joy in murder from Al Qaeda, has signed a "unity" compact with Fatah, the main Palestinian faction. The groups have waged a low-grade civil war for years, with Hamas controlling Gaza while Fatah controls the West Bank. They now say they're joining forces and will hold winner-take-all elections in a year.

It's far from clear the truce will hold, and the jockeying for power has begun. Yet pressure is already building on Israel to make a deal that will lead to a unified Palestinian state, despite the fact that Hamas has not met the American and European demand that it renounce violence and accept Israel's right to exist.

Indeed, one top Hamas leader told Al Jazeera this week that Hamas would never recognize Israel and "the rule of Poles and Ethiopians in their land." Another denounced the killing of Bin Laden and called him "an Arab holy warrior" and martyr.

Those sentiments are hardly a surprise, but what is surprising is that the Obama administration doesn't see them as red flags. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton swatted away concerns, saying, "We are going to be carefully assessing what this actually means, because there are a number of different potential meanings to it, both on paper and in practice." She said the United States has not changed its demands on Hamas, but would make a decision when "we actually see what unfolds."

That's the wrong answer. As Elliott Abrams writes on his blog at the Council on Foreign Relations, "The United States needs to be far clearer: we cannot and will not support any government where Hamas has a real influence and the security forces stop fighting terror."

A deputy national security adviser for Mideast affairs under President George W. Bush, Abrams adds that "we must certainly not fund such a government."

That's got to be the American bottom line, but by taking such a wait-and-see attitude, the White House is doing something far worse than merely kicking the can down the road. It is effectively giving a green light to letting Hamas join, and maybe run, the Palestinian government without giving up its charter, which calls for the elimination of Israel. Coming as Israelis celebrate their 63rd anniversary of independence, it's a mighty strange gift.

Alarmed by the White House approach, 27 Democratic senators wrote to Obama, reminding him that the U.S. cannot legally provide aid to any government that includes Hamas, which is a listed terror group. It also cited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's warning that Fatah can have "peace with Israel or peace with Hamas" but "there is no possibility for peace with both."

The letter, signed by both New York senators, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, has the right tone of urgency and makes all the right points. But it is distressing that the issues needed to be spelled out for the president, because they are so obvious.

Israel has the moral high ground and should use it in public diplomacy

From YnetNews, May 12, 2011, by Yoram Ettinger:

Secretaries of State, Schultz and Baker did not agree with Prime Minister Shamir's worldview, but they respected his principle-driven tenacity. Upon concluding a meeting with then Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, George Mitchell and Bob Dole, the latter told Shamir: "Irrespective of our disagreement with your policy, we respect you, because you're tough."

The international arena does not respect Israeli prime ministers who seek popularity rather than respect, transforming Red Lines to Pink Lines, in order to avoid confrontation. The world does not appreciate prime ministers who subordinate long-term vision and conviction to short-term diplomatic and political convenience.

In contrast to the legacy of Prime Ministers Ben Gurion, Eshkol, Golda Meir, Begin and Shamir, Israel's current public diplomacy reflects frail conviction, while expressing empathy for claims made by Israel's enemies. It tolerates simplistic Western assumptions about the Arab-Israeli conflict and downplays Israel's contribution to the national security of the USA. Israel has hardly leveraged the current Arab turmoil that underscores the tenuous/violent nature of Israel's enemies and the inherent obstacles to intra-Arab peace (let alone to Israel-Arab peace). Israel has failed to emphasize the uniquely high threshold of security requirements of the Jewish State in the most dangerous neighborhood in the world and the special role played by Israel as an outpost of Western democracies and a sole beacon of democracy.

In contrast with the Arabs who highlight their "rights," Israel highlights security-requirements, while minimizing well-documented and unique ancient roots. While Israeli leaders pride themselves on their "pragmatism" and willingness to distance themselves from historical roots, they, in fact, undermine Israel's global legitimacy. The Jewish State ignores the lesson of King Solomon's Trial: He who agrees "to split the difference" forfeits his rights to everything.

Since 1993, the Jewish State has downplayed its moral high ground, embracing moral-equivalence. Therefore, it has legitimized the Palestinian Authority as a supposed partner for peace negotiations, despite Abu Mazen's track record: establishing Palestinian hate-education, Holocaust denial, coordinating PLO relations with ruthless Communist regimes, co-planning of the Munich Massacre, perpetrating subversion in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon and collaborating with Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. Moreover, Israel has adopted the "Land-for-Peace" state of mind, in spite of the fact that the conflict has always been over the existence – and not the size – of the Jewish State. Since 1993, land conceded to the Palestinian Authority has been transformed into a platform of hate education and terrorism, fueling the conflict.

The current seismic events in the Arab World beg for an Israeli public diplomacy offensive. Such events should remove the "Middle East Screen Saver," exposing the region as the role model of instability, ethnic-religious-tribal-geographic fragmentation, terrorism, violence as a norm of settling political disputes, hate culture, one-man one-revolution regimes, tenuous regimes-accords-alliances, treachery, volatility, unpredictability and uncertainty. The deeper the uncertainty and the violence, the higher the Israeli security requirements, the more critical become the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights of Jerusalem and of the 15 miles wide pre-1967 Israel. Israel stands out as the only stable, reliable, capable, democratic and unconditional ally of the USA.

The intra-Arab upheaval also removes the "Palestinian Screen Saver," revealing the Middle East order of priorities. Hence, the Palestinian issue is not the root cause of regional turbulence, not the crown-jewel of Arab policy-making, not the core cause of anti-Western Islamic terrorism and not the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Regardless, Israel persists in subordinating its vision, policy, security requirements and public diplomacy to simplistic misperceptions, which are resoundingly refuted on the Arab Street in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Syria, etc.

But, like a deer caught in a headlights-look, Israel is glued to the "Palestinian Screen Saver." On the other hand, Arab leaders shower Palestinians with rhetoric but not with resources. They do not shed blood on behalf of the Palestinian issue. Furthermore, they consider the Palestinians a subversive element, based on PLO violence in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait. What do Arabs know about the PLO that Israel refuses to share with the world?!

Israel has refrained from presenting the threat posed - to vital American and Western interests - by the proposed Palestinian state: death sentence to the pro-US Hashemite regime; a tailwind to anti-US terrorism in Iraq and throughout the region; enhanced access by Russia, China, North Korea, and possibly Iran, to the eastern flank of the Mediterranean; rewarding a regime which drives Christians out of Bethlehem; an additional anti-US vote at the UN, and an added fuel to the Middle East inferno.

The late General Alexander Haig, who was the Supreme Commander of NATO and US Secretary of State defined Israel as "the largest American aircraft carrier, which does not require a single US soldier, cannot be sunk, most cost-effective and battle-tested, deployed in a critical area for vital US economic and national security interests, sparing the US $20BN annually, which would be required to deploy real aircraft carriers."

Will Israel's public diplomacy leverage the aforementioned significant data, shifting to a determined, lucid, defiant, politically-incorrect and principle-driven tactic, or will it persist in its hesitant, ambiguous, popularity-driven and apologetic tactic, which intensifies pressure and threats, undermines security, distances itself from peace and brings war closer?

Arabs Repeating their mistakes again

From a JPOST EDITORIAL 12 May 2011:

Instead of devoting so much energy to emphasizing their victimization, Arab Israelis and Palestinians would do well to learn from their mistakes.

For Arab Israelis and Palestinians, the creation of Israel was a “nakba,” a catastrophe. On Friday, Arab towns across the nation [kicked off] three days of Nakba commemorations with marches, conferences and rallies.

Though these ceremonies take place every year, this year is different in a significant and positive way. The absurd practice by which organizations and municipalities were allowed to use state funds to pay for Nakba events has been stopped. Legislation approved by the Knesset in March, known as the “Nakba law,” empowers the state to fine those who finance their commemoration ceremonies with public money.

The Nakba law will not, and was not intended to, prevent Arab Israelis or anyone else from commemorating Israel’s Independence Day in any way they wish to, as long as they do so peacefully. Rather, the legislation has put an end to the folly in which Israel underwrites activities that undermine the very foundations of Zionism by falsely presenting it as an imperialist movement that engaged during the War of Independence in ethnic cleansing and the intentional, wholesale transfer of the Arab population outside the borders of Israel.

However, while it is Arab Israelis’ and Palestinians’ right to commemorate the Nakba in a way that not only incriminates Israelis for crimes they never committed but also places all the blame for failure on the Zionist movement, it is self-defeating and a major obstacle to peace for them to do so.
If Palestinians were to look clearly and objectively at their behavior around the time of Israel’s founding, they would realize that today they are repeating many of the same mistakes.

“Jihadism” – or the hatred of the infidel and a desire to kill him – to a great degree underlay the Palestinian assault on Zionism through the 1920s-1940s period. The leader of the Palestinian national movement during these years, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a rabidly anti- Semitic Muslim cleric with close ties to the Nazis.

Similarly, today, many Palestinians have chosen to embrace the most extreme form of Islamist leadership. In the West Bank-Gaza elections of 2006, Hamas trounced the ostensibly secular Fatah. And the national unity deal signed on May 7 in Cairo, which enjoys broad Palestinian support, has brought Hamas – a rabidly anti-Semitic Islamist terrorist organization that has launched dozens of suicide bombings and thousands of mortar shells and rockets against the Israeli civilian population – back to the heart of the Palestinian leadership in all its rejectionist, reactionary glory.

It was this sort of religious extremism and intransigence that exacerbated the plight of the Palestinians back in 1948. In the first weeks of the War of Independence, for instance, Jaffa mayor Yousef Heikal tried to reach a non-belligerency agreement with neighboring Jewish Tel Aviv, to allow the citrus crop to be harvested and exported. But Husseini vetoed this and called for “jihad against the Jews.” As a result, many of Jaffa’s Arabs were expelled during the ensuing war.

Another repeated Palestinian blunder over the past century has been the rejection of a two-state solution.

Offered successive compromises – in 1937, the Peel Commission partition of Palestine with a Jewish state on only 17 percent of the land; in 1947, the UN partition with the Arabs getting 45% of the land; and in 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and US president Bill Clinton’s partition with Arabs getting 20%) – the Palestinians consistently said no. And each uncompromising refusal was accompanied by violence and terrorism.

IN THE 1948 War of Independence, after they had rejected the UN partition plan that would have given them a state, Palestinians launched a bloody offensive to prevent the emergence of a Jewish state. If they had won the war, the result would have been a massive slaughter of Jews just a few years after six million Jews had been massacred in the Holocaust.

The violent, unsympathetic and ungenerous Arab population of Palestine repeatedly attempted to destroy any hopes that the Jewish people would return to their homeland after nearly two millennia of exile and after suffering the worst genocide ever known to mankind.

Thankfully, they failed.

The world’s only Jewish state is now surrounded by 21 Arab nations and has shown a willingness to help establish a 22rd state, for Palestinians.

Yet in large part due to their distorted view of history – the Nakba being just one example – Palestinians continue to focus on their victimization and suffering while ignoring personal responsibility for their predicament. One of the crucial psychological barriers to peace today is Arab Israelis’ and Palestinians’ stubborn insistence on ignoring their own role in creating the refugee problem and in the failure to obtain Palestinian political autonomy.

Instead of devoting so much energy to emphasizing their victimization, Arab Israelis and Palestinians would do well to learn from their mistakes. At present, they seem bent on repeating them.

The hunger to come in Egypt

From The Asia Times, 10 May 2011, by Spengler (David P Goldman):

Egypt is running out of food, and, more gradually, running out of money with which to buy it. The most populous country in the Arab world shows all the symptoms of national bankruptcy - the kind that produced hyperinflation in several Latin American countries during the 1970s and 1980s - with a deadly difference: Egypt imports half its wheat, and the collapse of its external credit means starvation.

The civil violence we have seen over the past few days foreshadows far worse to come.

The Arab uprisings began against a background of food insecurity, as rising demand from Asia priced the Arab poor out of the grain market (Food and failed Arab states, Asia Times Online February 2, 2011). The chaotic political response, though, threatens to disrupt food supplies in the relative near term. Street violence will become the norm rather than the exception in Egyptian politics. All the discussion about Egypt's future political model and its prospective relations with Israel will be overshadowed by the country's inability to feed itself.

...The Ministry of Solidarity and Social Justice is already forming "revolutionary committees" to mete out street justice to bakeries, propane dealers and street vendors who "charge more than the price prescribed by law", the Federation of Egyptian Radio and Television reported on May 3.

According to the ministry, "Thugs are in control of bread and butane prices" and "people's committees" are required to stop them. Posters on Egyptian news sites report sharp increases in bread prices, far in excess of the 11.5% inflation reported for April by the country's central bank. And increases in the price of bottled propane have made the cost of the most widely used cooking fuel prohibitive.

The collapse of Egypt's credit standing, meanwhile, has shut down trade financing for food imports, according to the chairman of the country's Food Industry Holding Company, Dr Ahmed al-Rakaibi, chairman of the Holding Company for Food Industries. Rakaibi warned of "an acute shortage in the production of food commodities manufactured locally, as well as a decline in imports of many goods, especially poultry, meats and oils". According to the country's statistics agency, only a month's supply of rice is on hand, and four months' supply of wheat.

The country's foreign exchange reserves have fallen by US$13 billion, or roughly a third during the first three months of the year, Reuters reported on May 5. The country lost $6 billion of official and $7 billion of unofficial reserves, and had only $24.5 billion on hand at the end of April. Capital flight probably explains most of the rapid decline.

Egypt's currency has declined by only about 6% since January, despite substantial capital flight, due to market intervention by the central bank, but the rapid drawdown of reserves is unsustainable.

At this rate Egypt will be broke by September.

Egypt imported $55 billion worth of goods in 2009, but exported only $29 billion of goods. With the jump in food and energy prices, the same volume of imports would cost considerably more. Egypt closed the 2009 trade gap with about $15 billion in tourist revenues, and about $8 billion of remittances from Egyptian workers abroad. But tourism today is running at a fraction of last year's levels, and remittances are down by around half due to expulsion of Egyptian workers from Libya. Even without capital flight, Egypt is short perhaps $25 billion a year.

Egyptian Stock Market Index (EGX 30)

Source: Bloomberg

Price controls and currency depreciation have made it more profitable for wholesalers - including some employees of state companies - to export rice and cooking oil illegally. According to the daily al-Ahram, hoarding of rice by wholesalers has pushed up the price of the grain by 35% this year, while 200 containers per day are sold to Turkey and Syria.

"What is happening," the newspaper claims, is that that traders are storing basic items such as rice and barley, hoarded in barns and in large quantities, and are reluctant to send it to the rice mills in order to raise the price of this strategic commodity". The al-Ahram report, headlined, "Conspiracy to Monopolize Rice," demands physical inspection of containers leaving Egyptian ports.
The rest of the story is predictable. Once the government relies on young men with guns to police its merchants, hoarding will only get worse. The Egyptian revolution has cracked down on the commercial elite that ran the country's economy for the past 60 years, and the elite will find ways to transfer as much of its wealth to safety as it can. The normal chain of distribution will break down and "revolutionary committees" will take control of increasingly scarce supplies. Farmers won't get fuel and fertilizer, and domestic supplies will fail.

The Egyptian government will go to the International Monetary Fund and other aid agencies for loans - the government reportedly will ask for $7 billion to tide things over - and foreign money at best will buy a few months' respite. The currency will collapse; the government will print IOUs to tide things over; and the Egyptian street will reject the IOUs as the country reverts to barter.

... Egypt, which imports half its wheat and a great deal of the rest of its food, will actually starve.
... The 1921 famine after the Russian civil war killed an estimated five million people, and casualties on the same scale are quite possible in Egypt as well. Half of Egyptians live on $2 a day, and that $2 is about to collapse along with the national currency, and the result will be a catastrophe of, well, biblical proportions.

Has Israel lost the will to fight?

From JPost, 16 May 2011, by MORDECHAI KEDAR*:
...Recently, a few things changed in the Arab milieu, and we saw the consequences on Sunday.

First and foremost is the development of ...the belief that unarmed masses can overcome and defeat dictators. The “exposed body” protest is the new nonconventional weapon of frustrated, unemployed young people, a weapon against which the regime is expected to be helpless. Tunisians, Egyptians, Yemenis and Syrians use and have used this weapon against their rulers; now the Palestinians have adopted it for use against Israel.

The second development is Facebook and Twitter, means by which a public can organize despite the regime’s efforts to stifle it, and where leaders can mobilize a rebellion without the danger of revealing their real names. Social media was indeed the way Sunday’s events were organized.

The third change is the involvement of the Syrian and Lebanese regimes in events, since bus upon bus of disgruntled Palestinians could not have reached the border with Israel on Sunday without those governments’ knowledge and consent. The regimes’ cooperation stems from their effort to export their internal problems to Israel, and turn TV cameras away from what happens in Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip to Israel and its actions against the Arabs.

...The fourth fresh element is the link between Syria, Lebanon and Gaza – the Iranian link. These three arenas are all under the influence of the ayatollahs, and there is no better date on which to blame Israel for the mess in the Middle East than May 15, the notorious “Nakba.”

But we must not overlook the Israeli factor, which has an important role:
In past years, Arab players have seen and heard that Israel concedes whenever it is subject to external pressure. The Likud, which historically was strongly opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state, is today willing to accept one. A unified Jerusalem, an Israeli consensus for years, is today on the verge of division. Even the return of refugees – once considered anathema across the political spectrum – is contemplated, at least to a limited extent, by some politicians on the left.

And when Israel’s enemies see it compromising its core “principles” under external pressure, and realize its “red lines” are at most pale pink, hope rises that further pressure will be rewarded with further concessions; strong pressure from the refugees, for instance, will bring war-weary Israelis to give up on that point, too.

Israel’s image today ...is that of a weak, wimpy state, a state that can be nailed to the global cross by Richard Goldstone... Its neighboring countries are certain that Israeli society – especially the elite living in ostensibly hedonist, pacifist, post-Zionist Tel Aviv – will sell out all that it once held sacred in return for peace and quiet on Shenkin Street, because it has lost the will to fight...

*Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University and a research associate at the University's Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies.

Hamas prepares for genocide of the Jews

From The Wire, 16 May 2011:

Hamas MP argues that Jews were brought to Palestine for a ‘great massacre’, in order to ‘relieve humanity of their evil’.

Following the comments made last Wednesday by Hamas’ foreign minister, Mahmoud Zahar, reiterating that the Islamist group would never recognise Israel, further statements by senior figures have emerged that also highlight the group’s extreme ideology.

The Hamas cleric Yunis Al-Astal, who is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, argued that:

‘All the predators, all the birds of prey, all the dangerous reptiles and insects, and all the lethal bacteria are far less dangerous than the Jews.’

According to Memri, Al-Astal made the comments on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV channel on 11 May, expressing his belief that Allah had brought Jews to Palestine in order to ‘relieve humanity of their evil’:

‘The [Jews] are brought in droves to Palestine so that the Palestinians – and the Islamic nation behind them – will have the honour of annihilating the evil of this gang.’
‘In just a few years, all the Zionists and the settlers will realize that their arrival in Palestine was for the purpose of the great massacre, by means of which Allah wants to relieve humanity of their evil.’

The translation of Al-Astal’s words comes the day after Ismail Haniyeh, the incumbent leader in Gaza, told hundreds of Palestinians to ‘pray for the end of the state of Israel’. According to official website of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades:

‘The Zionist project in Palestine must end,’ Haniya told participants at the dawn prayers at al-Omari Mosque, as Palestinians were marking Nakba Day.’

Haniyeh’s comments were widely cited during the coverage of the Nakba protests, which saw hundreds of Palestinians in various locations stream towards Israel’s borders. Notably, there was no mention of his statement in any of Harriet Sherwood’s coverage for The Guardian, despite her authoring five different articles on the subject for the broadsheet.

Arabs revert to blaming Israel for all of their problems (again)

From The Wall Street Journal, MAY 17, 2011:

Sunday's coordinated attacks on the Israeli border mark a dangerous turn back toward Mideast conflict. Such a coda to the Arab Spring would be cheered only by Iran, Arab dictators and Islamists. And as perennial pawns in games played by stronger Muslim players, the Palestinians will suffer the worst consequences.

On the day that Palestinians call "nakba," or catastrophe, which follows the day Israelis celebrate their independence, thousands rushed military checkpoints in the Golan Heights, Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon. More than a dozen people were killed. Protestors also sought to break into the Israeli embassy in Cairo.

The usual suspects in the West are calling this a Palestinian version of the Arab Spring, but it looks more like the familiar violence of rock-throwing at Israeli conscripts. Then there's the role of Syria's Bashar Assad, otherwise engaged in murdering domestic opponents. Syria's regime engineered the worst clashes in the previously quiet Golan to distract attention from his own troubles.

Most of the Palestinians were bused to the border from two camps controlled by factions friendliest to the Assad regime. Syrian border guards, who since the 1974 truce have kept anyone on their side far from the frontier, let the arrivals rush through.

The attacks in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon were not as well organized as in Syria. Jordanian and Egyptian security pushed the Palestinians back.

President Assad faces the gravest challenge to his family's 40 year hold on Syria, and though too weak to fight Israel himself, he would certainly benefit from a change of subject in the region. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas—Iran's terrorist proxies to Israel's south and north—are always spoiling for a fight with Israel.

As ominously, Egypt's post-Mubarak elites are brushing up on their Nasser-style nationalism and anti-Israel populism. Some of the leaders who helped mobilize the protesters on Tahrir Square joined in calls for a "Third Intifada"—this time bringing the whole Arab world, not just the Palestinians, together against Israel. Secular groups have joined with the Muslim Brotherhood in demonstrations outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo.

The Arab Spring began as an effort by Arab publics to reform their own sclerotic politics. Rather than invoke the usual bogies of America or Israel, Arabs rose up against domestic injustice and talked of promoting more widely shared prosperity. If they now retreat to blaming Israel for all of their problems, the uprising in the streets will be for naught.

The 1993 Oslo peace agreement put Palestinians in charge of the West Bank and Gaza strip. Corruption, terror, authoritarianism and stagnation were the result, particularly in Hamas-run Gaza. Fatah did better in the West Bank after Yasser Arafat died in 2004. But its unity deal with Hamas earlier this month, brokered by Egypt, puts them back in bed with a group that vows to destroy Israel. As long as Israel is threatened by a terrorist entity next door, an independent Palestine won't be established through negotiations.

President Obama plans to deliver a major speech on the Middle East Thursday, and he could help by saying candidly that this latest Arab turn is self-defeating. At a moment of great hope for a changed Arab world, nothing would be as destructive as a fourth Mideast war.

Ehud Barak’s latest Nakba

From JPost, 16 May 2011, by CAROLINE B. GLICK:.

...On Sunday, Israel was invaded along its border with Syria. More than 100 Syrians successfully infiltrated the country and rioted violently in Majdal Shams for several hours.
The IDF was reportedly surprised by these events. It was more prepared for violent riots along the borders with Lebanon and Gaza. And security forces were deployed more or less effectively in Jerusalem, the Galilee, the Negev, Judea and Samaria on Sunday.

Jerusalem, a focal point of the unrest since Friday, witnessed rioting in several Arab neighborhoods, which reached its peak with an assault on Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus.

...In 1998, at the height of the so-called peace process, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and PLO/Fatah chieftan Yasser Arafat invented a new Palestinian holiday – the Nakba.

That year, for the first time, Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza rioted on May 15 – the secular date of Israel’s establishment in 1948. The purpose of Israel’s “peace partner’s” initiative was to escalate anti-Israel sentiments of Arabs on both sides of the 1949 armistice lines. And indeed, the next year, for the first time, the Nakba – or catastrophe – of Israel’s birth on May 15, 1948 was marked by Israel’s Arab citizens.

In the years since, the Palestinians and their brethren throughout the Arab world have consistently escalated their May 15 attacks, with anti-Israel mass demonstrations now common fare throughout the Arab world.

In recent months, Hamas and Fatah have been ratcheting up their incitement and calling for their followers to descend on Jerusalem on May 15. Millions worldwide participated in social media campaigns calling for a third Palestinian intifada to begin on May 15.

Regionally, in recent weeks, as Syrian anti-regime protesters have escalated their calls to overthrow the Assad regime, Hezbollah and the Syrian media have been joining the Nakba incitement efforts. In Egypt as well, as the Muslim Brotherhood consolidates its power, the calls for invading Israel and avenging the Nakba have escalated daily.

Politically, the Nakba campaigns couldn’t be an easier target for an Israeli information counteroffensive.

The assertion that Israel’s establishment was a catastrophe for the Arabs makes clear that the Palestinian leadership has no interest in living at peace with Israel. This goes for both Fatah, which popularized the term, and Hamas, which was happy to adopt it. If Israel’s existence is the Palestinian catastrophe, then obviously, every patriotic Palestinian must seek Israel’s destruction.

Actually, the Palestinian and pan-Arab embrace of the Nakba myth doesn’t merely demonstrate that they aren’t interested in peaceful coexistence. It proves that their true aspirations are nothing short of genocidal.

The declared goal of the Arab armies that invaded the infant State of Israel on May 15, 1948 was to throw every Jewish man, woman and child in the country into the sea. By calling the Arab failure to carry out that plan a catastrophe, today’s Nakba rioters and mourners are saying they support the genocidal purpose of the 1948 Arab invaders.

And of course, by making the issue Israel’s establishment in 1948, the Palestinians and their supporters are showing that the popular myth that they have no problem with Israel existing within the 1949 armistice lines, and seek only the “liberation” of Israel’s heartland of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem is a complete fabrication. Those areas were lands the Arabs successfully conquered and emptied of Jews in 1948. The Arab occupation of these areas only ended in 1967 because they again invaded Israel with the declared purpose of throwing every Jewish man, woman and child in the country into the sea.

In short, the entire notion of the Nakba is proof that the Palestinians specifically and the Arab world as a whole remain dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jewry.

... TWO aspects of Sunday’s events must be borne in mind. First, in general, the events of Nakba day are simply an escalation of the suicide protest campaign that has been ongoing since 2001. The most famous suicide protester to date is Rachel Corrie. And the most successful suicide protest to date was last year’s Mavi Marmara suicide flotilla.

Suicide protests have two aims. The first is to humiliate the IDF and Israel. If unarmed suicide protesters are able to take control of a military target for any length of time, their achievement will harm the reputation of the IDF. This goal was achieved on Sunday, when Druse villagers in Majdal Shams were allowed to mediate between the Syrian infiltrators and the IDF.

The second aim is to force the IDF to use lethal force against the protesters and so portray the IDF as a criminal army that kills unarmed civilians. This goal was also partially achieved on Sunday along the Syrian and Lebanese borders.

Since the IDF has already faced suicide protests, it is inexcusable that it has not yet managed to put together a coherent doctrine for contending with them. For instance, why weren’t there water cannons along the border with Lebanon?

The other aspect of Sunday’s Nakba riots worth noting is that they were the first suicide protests to have taken place on a regional scale since the popular rebellion began in Syria, and since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in Egypt.

IDF sources interviewed on Sunday claimed that since the Syrian border has been quiet since 1973, they didn’t expect it to be active on May 15. What this means is that the IDF failed to recognize ahead of time what its officials were able to recognize after the fact. Namely, that the populist upheavals in the Arab world give Assad (and a lot of other Arab leaders who have kept out of the direct fight against Israel in recent years) good reason to attack. And this new impetus to attack should have led the IDF to deploy forces along the border in sufficient numbers to prevent infiltration.

So why was the IDF unprepared?

THE PERSON most responsible for the IDF’s poor handling of events on Sunday is Defense Minister Ehud Barak. And his incompetence is not surprising. Barak is a serial bungler. He is the same man who armed the naval commandos who boarded the Mavi Marmara with paintball guns, even though it was known that the Turkish IHH, which organized the pro-Hamas flotilla, had links to terror groups.

In recent months, Barak has been too busy warning about the widely exaggerated diplomatic “tsunami” at the UN in September, when the Palestinians declare their independence for the second time, to notice events in the Middle East in May....

Italy rules out recognition of unilateral statehood declaration by Palestinians

From WJC, 12 May 2011:

Italy will not recognize a unilateral declaration of statehood by the Palestinians, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said.

At a celebration of Yom Ha'atzmaut in Rome he praised the Jewish state as the only democracy in the Middle East. He was the guest of honor at an Israeli reception hosted by Ambassador Gideon Meir. "No, absolutely not," he was quoted as telling reporters when asked whether Italy would recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state.

"I think that there is no other course other than an agreement between the two states," Berlusconi added. "Our policy has always gone in this direction, and it is also the policy of the European Union," he pointed out.

During a speech, the Italian leader said Israel was "the only real democracy in the Middle East and Italy is concerned there are difficult situations for Jews. There can be no solution for your people and your state but peace with your neighbor Palestine." Berlusconi also reiterated Italy's support for Israel.

Violence on Israel's borders

From Reuters, 15 May 2011, by Haim Shafir, MAJDAL SHAMS, Golan Heights*:


Violence erupted on Israel's borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on Sunday, leaving at least eight dead and dozens wounded, as Palestinians marked what they term "the catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948.


Israeli troops shot at protesters in three separate locations to prevent crowds from crossing Israeli frontier lines in the deadliest such confrontation in years.

Israeli and Syrian media reports said Israeli gunfire killed four people after dozens of Palestinian refugees infiltrated the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria, along a disputed border that has been quiet for decades.

Witnesses on the nearby Lebanese frontier said four Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces fired at rock-throwing protesters to prevent them from crossing the border.

The Lebanese army had also earlier fired in the air in an attempt to hold back the crowds.

On Israel's tense southern border with the Gaza Strip, Israeli gunfire wounded 60 Palestinians as demonstrators approached Israel's fence with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave, medical workers said.

In Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial hub, a truck driven by an Arab Israeli slammed into vehicles and pedestrians, killing one man and injuring 17 people.

Police were trying to determine whether the incident was an accident or an attack. Witnesses said the driver, who was arrested, ran amok with his truck in downtown traffic.

...In the Druze village of Majdal Shams, on the Golan Heights captured by Israel from Syria in 1967, Mayor Dolan Abu Salah said between 40 and 50 Nakba demonstrators from Syria tore through the frontier fence.

...Israeli troops attempted to mend the breached fence..."We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations," said the army's chief spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Yoav Mordechai.

Syria is home to 470,000 Palestinian refugees and its leadership, now facing fierce internal unrest, had in previous years prevented protesters from reaching the frontier fence.

"This appears to be a cynical and transparent act by the Syrian leadership to deliberately create a crisis on the border so as to distract attention from the very real problems that regime is facing at home," said a senior Israeli government official who declined to be named.

...in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian youths threw rocks at Israeli soldiers, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets in a clash at the Israeli military checkpoint outside the city of Ramallah ...

(*Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Jeffrey Heller, Dan Williams and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Yara Bayoumy in Beirut, Writing by Douglas Hamilton; editing by Crispian Balmer)

Happy birthday Israel!!

From Isi Leibler, 9 May 2011:

... Israel represents the greatest national success story of the past century; there is no remotely comparable example of a people renewing its nationhood after 2,000 years.


Yes, we are saddened that peace with our neighbors remains a distant dream, and that much of the world has turned against us. We also realize that far from advancing democracy or human rights, the turmoil in the Arab world will almost certainly strengthen Islamic fundamentalism and intensify hatred against us and the West.

And as many of us predicted, our “peace partner” has united with Hamas, and in September will endeavor to obtain global endorsement for a Palestinian state dominated by genocidal terrorists.

But we must retain a sense of perspective and reprimand those exaggerating our shortcomings and promoting doom and gloom scenarios. We have overcome far greater threats in the past.

...In 1948, 600,000 Jews created a people’s army which successfully repulsed repeated unprovoked onslaughts by its Arab neighbors. And to this day it remains on the front lines of the global battle against Islamic terror.

...One of our major achievements was the in-gathering of Jewish exiles from all over the world: Holocaust survivors from Europe, refugees from Arab persecution, Ethiopian Jews, and the miraculous absorption of over a million Jews from the former Soviet Union.

These Jews from different cultures and societies were integrated, and emerged as a resilient nation - the largest Jewish community in the world.

We are entitled to be proud of our vibrant social, cultural and religious creativity, which flourishes despite the ongoing wars and terror. We are the only country in the region guaranteeing genuine freedom of religion. We remain a democratic oasis in a region of autocracies, dictatorships and Islamic fundamentalist regimes. We provide the vote to all citizens, regardless of race, religion or gender - including 1.4 million Arabs, who elect their own representatives, many of whom openly promote subversive behavior.

Our social welfare system, in particular our medical system, provides services for all 7.7 million Israeli citizens without discrimination, even providing amenities for Palestinians.

Economically, despite pockets of poverty, we are a veritable powerhouse. We were one of the countries least affected by the global economic meltdown. Our economy grew 7.8% in the last quarter of 2010; hi-tech and startup facilities make this tiny country second in the world, surpassed only by the United States; we are at the forefront of alternative energy development.

And despite all the media complaints, in a recent poll, 63% of Israelis described themselves as “thriving,” resulting in Israel being ranked seventh out of 124 countries.

...Regrettably, the conflict with our neighbors is intensifying.

Yet the PA-Hamas merger is not necessarily a negative development. Many of us were always convinced that the corrupt PA - which murdered more Israeli civilians than Hamas - would never become a genuine partner for peace because its primary objective has also always been the elimination of Jewish sovereignty. The difference is that while Hamas speaks the truth, and its charter unashamedly promotes genocide, the PA expresses sentiments of peace and moderation to the West, but internally incites the vilest forms of anti-Semitism.

The merger will clarify to our friends why we could never sanction a state pledged to our destruction. Should the Palestinians abort the Oslo Accords and gain recognition in lieu of negotiating with us, it would provide grounds for us to annex at least the major settlement blocs.

We harbor no illusions about achieving peace in our time, but must remain strong and resilient until our neighbors accept us as a sovereign Jewish state. We should exult that having overcome greater challenges in 1967 and 1973, when we genuinely faced annihilation, today we are better able to defend ourselves.

We are therefore entitled to take pride in our achievements.

... We must explain how the Holocaust may have been averted had a Jewish state existed then. We must convey how their ancestors in the Nazi death camps never dreamt their people would rise like a phoenix from the ashes and create such an extraordinary nation...

...On Independence Day, we will continue yearning for the peace that has eluded us. But we should also be profoundly grateful for what we have achieved, and pray that with the help of the Almighty we will continue to overcome the challenges facing us and maintain a thriving and creative Jewish commonwealth.

Surge in foreign investment in Israel

From "Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom" #152, May 06, 2011, by Yoram Ettinger
(here's what's happening in Israel while Hamas and Fatah kiss and make up, to work on the two pillars of their economy: international aid and terrorism):

1.  Israel's unemployment has declined to 6% in February, 2011, compared with 6.2% in December 2010 and 7.7% in December 2009 (April 29, 2011). The Houston-based ATP Oil & Gas, which specializes in deep off-shore drilling, received a license to drill in Israel (Globes, April 15).

2.   The NY-based OrbiMed, the largest healthcare investment firm, established a $200MN Israel-dedicated fund, in order to leverage cutting-edge Israeli innovations (Globes, April 7).  The NY-based Yorkville Capital intends to invest $100MN in Israeli companies during 2011. Last week Yorkville invested $50MN in Israel's Elbit Imaging (Globes, April 5).

3.  The Irvine-based Broadcom acquired Israel's Provigent for $340MN, Broadcom's 8th Israeli acquisition since November 2000 – VisionTech for $250MN, Dune Networks - $178MN, Pecello - $86MN, Siliquent - $84MN, Octalica - $31MN, SighticVista - $15MN and MStream - $10MN (Globes March 22). The San Jose-based Align Technology acquired Israel's Cadent for $190MN (Globes, March 31). Santa Clara-based Internet security giant, Mcafee, acquired Israel's Sentrigo for $35MN (Globes March 24).  Boston Scientific acquired Israel's S.I. Therapies for $20MN - $5MN in cash and the balance according to milestones (Globes, April 5). The Seattle-based Getty Images acquired Israel's PicScout for $20MN (Globes, April 28).  India's Ybrant acquired Israel's PicApp for $10MN, its 2nd Israeli acquisition – Oridian for $15MN in 2007 (Globes, April 8).

4.   A 39% increase in high-tech investments during the 1st quarter of 2011 - $479MN invested in 140 companies – the best quarter in two years, compared with $234MN in 91 companies during the 1st quarter of 2010. 28% invested by Israeli investors (Globes, April 14).

5.  The London-based Sam Capital and the Minneapolis-based Piper Jaffray participated in a $60MN investment in Israel CleanTech Ventures (Globes, April 13).  The Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital Partners, the Menlo Park-based Benchmark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners, the Palo Alto-based DAG Ventures and the NY-based Insight Venture Partners participated in a $40MN round by Israel's Weeks (Globes, March 30). The Hong Kong-based Pacific Technology Fund and the Menlo Park-based Bessemer participated in a $26MN 4th round by Israel's Altair (Globes, April 11). The Boston-based Spark Capital and the Menlo Park Bessemer and Redpoint Ventures participated in a $20MN round by Israel's AdaptTV (Globes, March 30).  The Menlo Park-based Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson and the Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins co-led an $18MN round by Israel's agro-tech Kiima (Globes, April 6).  The UK-based Lewis Trust Group participated in an $18MN round of private placement by Israel's OrSense (Globes, May 3). The Boston-based Globespan and the Menlo Park-based Sequoia Capital participated in a $15MN 3rd round by Israel's Kaminario (Globes, May 3).  Motorola Ventures, the Needham-based Stata Ventures, the Tulsa-based Argonaut Private Equity, the San Jose-based Stryker Endoscopy and the Japan-based NTT invested $15MN in Israel's Amimon (Globes, March 25).  Germany's medical giant, Merck committed 10MN Euro to Israel's biomed incubator in Yavneh (Globes, March 31). The Menlo Park-based Benchmark, the Palo Alto-based DAG Ventures and the Menlo Park-based Opus Ventures participated in a $12MN 4th round by Israel's Clarizen (Globes, May 2). The S.F.-based Saints Capital led a $12MN 5th round by Israel's AngioScore, which is located in California (Globes, April 28).  The NY-based OrbiMed invested $10.5MN in Israel's SMT (Globes, April 4).  The London, NY and Sidney-based Generation CleanTech Investment Management invested $10MN in a 3rd round by Israel's Tigo Energy, its second Israeli investment - $10MN in GreenRoad in 2010 (Globes, April 14). The Waltham-based Northbridge Venture Partners, the Boston-based Egan Venture Capital and the Deerfield-based Vernon & Park Capital invested $4MN in a 3rd round by Israel's CurrenSee (April 21).  The Boston-based Schooner Capital participated in a $4MN 1st round by Israel's Zixi (Globes, April 13).  The Menlo-Park Benchmark and the Bellevue-based Trilogy Partners and Ignition Partners invested $4MN in a 4th round by Israel's Xeround (Globes, April 6).  Eric Schmidt, Google's outgoing CEO invested $1MN in Israel's EyeView (Globes, May 2).