Alleged Israel airstrike near Damascus

From Ynet News 7 Dec 2014, by Roi Kais:

Syrian sources release short video reportedly documenting moment of attack on target in town of Dimas; Former Syrian Commander says target may have been arms shipments meant for Hezbollah. 

Syrian sources released on Sunday night a short video documenting the IAF strike on a security installation in the town of Dimas, one of the three targets that were bombed, according to Syrian reports, by Israeli Air Force warplanes. There were no casualties, according to the reports.

Earlier, Syrian television said that IAF warplanes attacked three targets on the outskirts of Damascus, two of which were near the international airport and in the town of Dimas. 

The Syrian army confirmed facilities were damaged ...

Alleged Israeli strike on Damascus installation

Salim Idris, former head of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, spoke to a subsidiary station of the Al Arabiya news channel, saying that the target of the alleged airstrike in Syria may have been shipments of weapons that were to be delivered to Hezbollah.


Since Syria's conflict began in March 2011, Israel has carried out several airstrikes in Syria that have targeted sophisticated weapons systems, including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, believed to be destined for Israel's arch foe – the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group.

Israel has never confirmed the strikes, and on Sunday the Israeli military said it does not comment on "foreign reports."...

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors the country's civil war through a network of activists on the ground, said the strike near the Damascus airport hit a warehouse for imports and exports, although it was unclear what was in the building.

The Observatory also said that around 10 explosions could be heard outside a military area near Dimas. It had no word on casualties in either strike.

Alleged IAF strike

While Israel has tried to stay out of the war in neighboring Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to take military action to prevent Syria from transferring sophisticated weapons to its ally Hezbollah. Israel and Hezbollah are bitter enemies and fought an intense monthlong war in 2006.

In May 2013, a series of Israeli airstrikes near Damascus targeted what Israeli officials said were shipments of Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles bound for Hezbollah.....

Holy Russia...?

From Spengler, 6 Dec 2014, by David P Goldman:

Russian President Vladimir Putin took a lot of ridicule in the West for his assertion that Crimea is as sacred to Russia as the Temple Mount is to Jews and Muslims. Even in the context of Orthodox theology, Putin struck a cognitive dissonance. But there should be no surprise at the invocation of Holy Russia. Russia has considered itself holy since the fall of Byzantium, when the headquarters of the Orthodox Church passed from the “second Rome” at Constantinople to the “Third Rome” of Moscow.

Laugh at Putin at your peril. The bell tolls for you. Every nation that ever has existed considered itself holy in some way. It is impossible to have a nation except on the premise of the sacred. Men cannot bear mortality without the hope of immortality, and it is the continuity of our nation that vouches for this hope. We are not immortal as disembodied spirits playing harps on clouds, but concretely, in our earthly form. Nations that give up their hope of immortality roll over and die, often through infertility, for example today’s Germans, Italians, Spanish, Hungarians and Poles.

To be sacred is not necessarily to be good: the Aztec priest excising a captive’s heart had a sense of the sacred as intense as Mother Teresa’s. Putin’s assertion of the sacred character of his country is no more or less than a statement that Russia intends to survive. After all we have read of Russia’s impending demographic collapse, Russia’s fertility rate has climbed back to 1.7 last year from just 1.2 a decade ago, an unprecedented peacetime recovery. America’s total fertility stands at just 1.86. Russia is in much worse demographic shape because of the extremely low birth rates of the past generation, to be sure. THe point is that Russia won’t be written off.

America’s mishandling of Putin shows once again the utter bankruptcy of secular political science. The devotees of Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu and Machiavelli, the game theorists and systems analysts, the liberal idealists and neoconservatives, failed to grasp that Russia would look on any attempt to sever Crimea from Russia as an existential threat. Russia threw itself into the arms of its old rival China, and the Russian population rallied behind Putin, in a response that leaves America at a strategic disadvantage.

It isn’t simply that Russia wants a warm water port at Sevastopol: the dismemberment of historic Russian territory is an assault on Russia’s self-conceived sanctity. The difference between Russia and other European nations is that among the Europeans, Russia is the last to give up the religious nationalism that drove European politics during the past millennium. I do not assert that Putin’s nationalism is a good thing. But Europe knows only two states of mind: national self-sanctification and moribund quiescence. That is Europe’s tragedy, and Vladimir Putin’s.

....From the Gothic invasion of Italy in A.D. 401 to the defeat of the Magyars at Lech in 955 and the conversion of St. Vladimir in 1015, the barbarians often entered Christian life not as individuals joining the new People of God but as tribes brought into Christendom through conquest or alliance. Christian universalism triumphed over the ethnocentric impulses of the converted tribes through a supranational political model, from Constantine to Charlemagne and finally until the time of Charles V (when Christian polity broke up in the Reformation and Wars of Religion).

Because Christians are a new people called out of the nations, Christian theocracy must be supranational in character. The various political states of Europe were fostered by the Church, which furnished them with language and culture; but those states were ­subordinated, in some sense, to a Latin-speaking supranational Church that was senior partner to a ­universal empire.

No Christian thinker from Augustine through Thomas Aquinas doubted this. Never has the Church taught that the destiny of each ethnic group must be realized independently. On the contrary, Christianity can only flourish within a political model that transcends nationality such that the Christian’s citizenship in the People of God takes precedence over citizenship in a Gentile nation. As a citizen of a universal empire, the individual Christian was subject to a supranational political authority that stood above the Gentile nation and suppressed its ethnocentrism.

Apart from this European model of universal empire, only one other political form has appeared that fosters Christian universality. That is the nonethnic state embodied in the United States of America. Americans, too, belong to no single ethnicity. If a special grace accords to America, then it is by design rather than accident that America is both the most Christian of all industrial countries and home to the largest ­Jewish population outside the State of Israel.

Despite the thousand-year reign of Christian ­universal empire, the ethnocentric impulses of the ­converted tribes never disappeared. Indeed, Christianity gave them a new and in some ways more pernicious morphology. As Franz Rosenzweig observed, once the Gentile nations embraced Christianity, they abandoned their ancient fatalism regarding the inevitable extinction of their tribe. It is the God of Israel who first offers ­eternal life to humankind, and Christianity extended Israel’s promise to all.

But the nations that adhered to Christendom as tribes rather than as individuals never forswore their love for their own ethnicity. On the ­contrary, they longed for eternal life in their own ­Gentile skin rather than in the Kingdom of God promised by Jesus Christ. After Christianity taught them the election of Israel, the Gentiles coveted election for themselves and desired their own people to be the chosen people. That set ethnocentric nationalism in conflict both with the Jews”the descendents of Abraham in the flesh”and with the Church, which holds itself to be the new People of God.

...After the fall of Communism, the majority of Western strategists assumed that liberal democracy would spread eastwards from NATO and the European Community, enveloping Russia in an expression of manifest destiny. The trouble is that Western Europe is hardly a model to be emulated: it will disappear, or at least become unrecognizeable, during the present century. Putin knows this and denounces the moral deterioration of the West.

Russia’s response (and the response of the Russian population above all) confounded Western policy: more than four decades after Nixon went to China, we stood godfather to a new Eurasian power bloc uniting Russia and China (and probably India before long).

None of this was inevitable, as Henry Kissinger argued last month in an interview with Der Spiegel. Putin’s form of religious nationalism is the same nasty variety that set the world on course for the First World War. I do not share the admiration for Putin that some religious conservatives display: the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

I am concerned first of all with America’s strength, and we have weakened our position materially, perhaps decisively, by misreading Russia. Hurling insults at Putin will have all the impact of a small child displaying his courage in front of the lion cage at the zoo. How many disasters will befall us before our policy-making elite stops to consider the basic flaws in its thinking?

Arabic-language branches of the Nazi Party

From Spengler, 23 Nov 2014, by David P. Goldman:

The overriding, terrible theme of the 21st century is the suicide of cultures. Small civilizations die for any number of reasons; great civilizations die because they want to...

The suicide of cultures is incomprehensible to liberalism... We flounder in the face of suicidal cultures because we lack the intellectual tools to confront them. Men do not always seek the good, as Aristotle opines in at the outset of the Nicomachean Ethics: often they seek nothingness.

When in history have so many volunteered to commit suicide to murder civilians, as the jihadists now do? When in history has a combatant tried to maximize the number of casualties among its own civilians, as does Hamas? The liberal mind reels with horror at the phenomenon of mass suicide.

We learn how to grapple with cultural suicide from Ecclesiastes, from Augustine’s reflections on Ecclesiastes, and from Goethe’s reflections on Ecclesiastes in Faust, which take us to Kierkegaard, Rosenzweig and Heidegger. The latter’s embrace of “Non-Being,” as Michael Wyschogrod observed in his masterwork The Body of Faith, is consistent with his support for Hitler. Our highbrow culture averts its gaze from the philosophical inquiry into Non-Being; our popular culture cannot take its eyes off the personification of self-destruction in the form of zombies and vampires. Our popular culture is infested by existential horrors which our intellectual culture refuses to acknowledge.


Muslim soldiers of the Handschar Waffen SS reading a pamphlet authored by Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini titled 'Islam and Judaism.' They wear distinctive Handschar tarboosh headgear, and insignias (curved-blade weapons and swastikas) on their lapels.

The Muslim Brotherhood (and its Palestine chapter, Hamas) and ISIS are the Arabic-language branches of the NSDAP [German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - Nazi Party], and they employ the same theater of horror to demoralize their enemies. Mere rationalism quails before such horrors. We require a phenomenology of the irrational to address it.



We simply do not understand the world in which we live. That is why we mistook the terminal decline of Muslim civilization for an opportunity to extend Western democracy to the Middle East. That is why we mistook Russia’s desperate efforts to revive its old nationalism as an antidote to cultural despair for a replay of Munich in 1938. These have had baleful consequences: we destroyed an ugly but efficient system of governance in the Middle East and left chaos in its place in Libya, Syria and Iraq. We undid one of the premises of Cold War victory, namely keeping Russia and China apart, and stood godfather to a new Sino-Russian alliance. And we did this systematically and deliberately, because we think the wrong way.

In doing so we demoralized a generation, much as the failures of Vietnam motivated the counter-culture of the 1960s. The inability of evangelical Christians to retain a majority of their young people has a good deal to do, I suspect, with disillusionment over America’s frustration in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have lost the confidence of the American public in foreign interventions through overreaching. Our blunders helped elect Barack Obama, the gravedigger of America’s influence in the world.

Alas: there is no-one left to teach the intellectual tools required to repair the damage. I could sketch a full curriculum in philosophy, history and politics (as I have for literature); if a billionaire wrote a blank check, he couldn’t find the faculty for it. Prof. Wyschogrod was among the last (he is now frail and retired). Perhaps there still are a few survivors hiding in remote crevices of academia.

We will make more mistakes. If there is a consolation, it’s that God looks out for drunks, small children, and the United States of America. America never looked worse than it did in 1859, and never looked better than it did in 1865. Abraham Lincoln, as Mark Noll observes in “America’s God,” had no institutional precedent or formal connection to the theology of his time, yet he was his era’s great theological mind. That is as close to a miracle as we are likely to get in politics. I believe in miracles, and I am praying.

Mourn for the voiceless Christians of the Middle East

From The Australian, 4 Dec 2014, by Greg Sheridan:


Christians have been present in Iraq for almost 2,000 years. In 2003 they numbered approximately 800,000 and although suffering discrimination, the community enjoyed relative freedom and security under the Ba'ath Party rule.
Today their numbers have dwindled to a mere 200,000. The rest have fled their homeland, as they stand unprotected before the threats, kidnappings, forced marriages, and killings by terrorists, religious extremists and organized crime. Clergy have been murdered and churches bombed.

...The persecution and effective ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Middle East during the past century is one of the most profound and important historic changes we have witnessed. The mass killings of Turkish Armenians a century ago was its first big episode.

..The nonsensical Edward Said popularised the idea that the West dehumanises the “other” by making it exotic. Thus we are warned in every part of our culture not to demonise the other. That is quite right, so far as it goes. But this translates into a weird reflex in which any group at war with the West is presumed to be, at least in part, virtuously the “other”. We demonise ourselves, and we especially demonise anything which smacks of Western civilisation in any part of the world which was once colonised.

Middle East Christians suffer from this prejudice in the West. Israel does, too. 
As part of Western civilisation, it earns whole layers of extra hostility. Hating Israel is part of hating Western civilisation, the default position of the inheritors of the detritus of Marxism in successor ideologies like the Greens.

This is only a small part of ­Israel’s problems of course. Trad­itional Arab anti-Semitism is also a big part. But anti-Western bias among Western commentators also contributes to the shocking ­silence on the Middle East’s ­Christians.

Once there were large Christian and Jewish communities all over the Middle East. Almost all are gone. 

The two big remaining Christian communities are the Copts in Egypt and the Christians in Lebanon. The Copts are under perpetual siege. Their position is a little better, it seems, under the new military dictatorship than it was under the brief rule of the Muslim Brotherhood brought about by the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring was an unmitigated disaster for the Middle East’s Christians. 
In Syria, Bashar al-Assad was a dictator. But before the civil war broke out he was nowhere near as brutal as his father or numerous other Middle East dictators. Because he relied on a religious minority among his country’s Muslims — the Alawite sect of Islam — he made de facto accommodations with other minorities. Regimes based on minorities, while they may privilege their own minority in various ways, tend to operate a secular system to avoid being overwhelmed by the religious majority.

The Syrian civil war has been a catastrophe for Syria’s Christians. 
Many have been killed. Many have fled. When Syria is one day reconstructed it will be substantially without what was until recently its big Christian minority. That is not to say Christians have suffered more than others, just that the civil war has played its part in cleansing the Middle East of its remaining Christians.
.
.. Christians fared a little better in Iraq under Saddam Hussein than during the past 10 years. 
For the sad reality is that more political freedom in the Arab world has almost always meant more Islamism, and at the least a greater civic emphasis on Islam and greater discomfort for Christian minorities.

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot that rules Gaza, makes life extremely uncomfortable for the Christian minority. 

Bethlehem was once a Christian city. No more. 

Australia has benefited enormously from the immigration of Lebanese Christians but this is evidence of that community’s decline in Lebanon. 

In Saudi Arabia it is illegal to practise Christianity, even for US troops when they were stationed there to protect the kingdom. 

Hatred of Christians is common across the Middle East. It was hostility to Christian infidels on Saudi soil that first motivated Osama bin Laden.

Nobody is going to do anything to help Christians in the Middle East. We might at least mourn their tragic and terrible passing.

Iran seeks post on key U.N. committee, Israel deems it "absurd"

From Reuters, 2 Dec 2014:

Iran is seeking a senior post on a United Nations committee that decides accreditation of non-governmental organizations, a move that Israel on Tuesday compared to gangster Al Capone running the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Iran was elected to the 19-member committee in April for a four-year term from 2015. The United States and Israel are also members of the committee, which acts as a kind of gatekeeper for rights groups and other NGOs seeking access to U.N. headquarters to lobby and participate in meetings and other events.

When Iran was first elected to the committee, the United States sharply criticized it as a "troubling outcome" because of what it said was Tehran's poor human rights record. The U.S. mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment on Iran's bid to become vice chair of the committee.

In a letter obtained by Reuters, Iran presented its candidacy for vice-chair of the committee, which will begin meeting in late January.

Israel, which views Iran and its nuclear program as an existential threat, was clearly displeased by the idea.

"Imagine if Iran ran this committee in the same way it runs its country - human rights activists would be detained, journalists would be tortured, and anyone with a social media account would find himself arrested on fabricated charges,"

Israeli U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor told Reuters.

Iranian officials were not immediately available to comment on Prosor's remarks.

...Late last month a U.N. General Assembly committee adopted a resolution condemning Iran's human rights record and urging the government to make good on promises of reform.

US Congress passes Israel strategic partnership bill

From Yahoo News, 3 Dec 2014, by AFP:

Washington (AFP) - US lawmakers voted unanimously Wednesday to pass legislation making Israel a "major strategic partner" of the United States, deepening a bilateral bond that has recently shown signs of strain.

In a voice vote, the House approved the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014, which expands cooperation in defense and security, energy, research and development, business, agriculture, water management and academics.

The measure reflects "the sense of Congress that Israel is a major strategic partner of the United States," and declares Washington's "unwavering support" for Israel as a Jewish state.

The bill, which passed the Senate unanimously in September, now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.

The legislation would expand the US weapons stockpile in Israel by some $200 million in value, to a total of $1.8 billion, so that the Pentagon can be better prepared to conduct military operations in the volatile Middle East.

It also crucially allows Israel to use the weapons in the event of an emergency, as it did this summer during its operation "Protective Edge" in Gaza.

Earlier this year Congress dramatically increased US funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, to $351 million for fiscal year 2015 from $235 million the previous year.

"Israel is a bright light in a very, very dark region," veteran Democrat Eliot Engel said on the House floor shortly before the vote.

He noted how the bill was aimed in part at helping Israel maintain a "qualitative military edge" over its adversaries.

"We must always be working to ensure that our support for Israel keeps pace with the threats proliferating against the country -- from Iran to Hamas," House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce added in a statement.

The legislation also requires the Obama administration to move toward allowing Israel to be included in the top-tier category for license-free exports of certain US technologies and products, and it places Israel on the US list of countries that participate in the visa waiver program.

Abbas Shuts the Door to Negotiations with Israel

From the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Institute for Contemporary Affairs, Vol. 14, 39,   December 4, 2014, by Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi:


Abbas - prefers terrorism to negotiations

 On Nov. 29, the Arab League approved a political action plan by PA President Mahmoud Abbas aimed at imposing the establishment of a Palestinian state without any political compromise on the Palestinians’ part. Jordan, currently the only Arab member of the UN Security Council, will submit a resolution to the Council along the lines of Abbas’ plan in the coming days.

 The plan involves internationalizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by having the Security Council fix a date for the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines with east Jerusalem as its capital.

 Abbas, who claimed there was no longer an Israeli partner for a political settlement, said his plan includes having the “state of Palestine” join international conventions and organizations, particularly the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and requesting the UN to provide protection to the Palestinian people.

 Abbas’ political plan shuts the door to any possibility of reaching a political settlement through negotiations with Israel. The conditions he has presented for resuming negotiations impose terms on Israel with no reciprocity from the Palestinians in the context of a political compromise.

 Abbas is trying to exert pressure on the U.S., the international community, and Israel simultaneously. Abbas hopes to goad the international community into forcing Israel to recognize a sovereign Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines without a peace agreement being signed.

 The Palestinian Authority is determined, even at the price of a run-in with the U.S. and Israel, to advance a unilateral political process that is aimed against Israel. The rioting and terror in Jerusalem and the West Bank, which are being encouraged by the Palestinian Authority, serve as a form of pressure on Israel and are also aimed at spurring the international community’s intervention.

On November 29, 2014, the Arab Peace Initiative Committee of the Arab League Council approved a political-action plan submitted by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen)...A diplomatic official told the Al Arabiya network that Jordan, currently the only Arab member of the UN Security Council, will submit in the coming days a proposal for a resolution along the lines of Abbas’ plan.

The political plan Abbas presented ...involves internationalizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by submitting a proposal for a resolution to the Security Council, whereby the Security Council would fix a date for the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines with east Jerusalem as its capital.

In his speech Abbas, who claimed there was no longer an Israeli partner for a political settlement, set forth the other components of his plan. They include: the “state of Palestine” joining international conventions and organizations, particularly the International Criminal Court in The Hague and a conference of states parties to the Geneva conventions, where one of the resolutions would be to declare the conventions applicable to the state of Palestine;” requesting the United Nations to provide protection to the Palestinian people; and a diplomatic effort to convince additional states to recognize the “state of Palestine.”

Abbas’ political plan shuts the door to any possibility of reaching a political settlement through negotiations with Israel. Whereas Abbas conveys to the world at large that he remains committed to the path of negotiations, the conditions he has presented for resuming them entail imposing terms on Israel with no reciprocity from the Palestinians in the context of a political compromise.

Abbas says Palestinian conditions for renewing the talks include: ending construction in the settlements, freeing the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners (terrorists who are Israeli citizens and are serving prison sentences), withdrawing IDF forces from parts of Area A in the West Bank that are supposed to be under the Palestinian Authority’s full security control, and Israeli agreement to negotiate with the Palestinians on making the 1967 lines the border between the state of Israel and the state of Palestine.

Abbas’ Pressure Tactics Include Violence
Abbas is trying to exert pressure on the United States, the international community, and Israel simultaneously. He told the Arab League Council that he sees no need to wait for the results of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to bridge the Israeli and Palestinian positions, and that, if the United States vetoes the resolution in the Security Council, he would then reassess relations with Israel, end security cooperation with it (which is aimed at preventing terror), and transfer control of the “state of Palestine” to Israel, which he called “the occupying state.” By means of that scenario – which could foster political and security chaos leading to an Israeli-Palestinian confrontation (a third intifada) that would have a regional and international impact – Abbas hopes to goad the international community into forcing Israel to fulfill the Palestinian condition of recognizing a sovereign Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines, without a peace agreement being signed.

Thus the Palestinian Authority is determined, even at the price of a run-in with the United States and Israel, to advance a unilateral political process that is aimed against Israel and has the full support of the Arab League. The rioting and terror in Jerusalem and the West Bank, which are being encouraged by the Palestinian Authority, serve this political process as a form of pressure on Israel and also are aimed at spurring the international community’s intervention. Abbas not only has not condemned the wave of Palestinian anti-Israeli terror but, in traditional fashion, his speeches have reiterated the formula of “praise to the pure martyrs, freedom to the heroic prisoners, and rapid recovery to the heroic wounded.” What this adds up to is backing for every Palestinian who takes part in the struggle against Israel, including terrorist murderers.

The unilateral Palestinian political process marks the launching of an all-out political campaign against Israel accompanied by terror that could develop into an armed intifada. 

In relation to the international community Abbas has a supreme interest in maintaining the tenuous unity agreement with Hamas, since it indicates that the Palestinian Authority exercises rule (actually only apparent) over Gaza as well. Hamas, the real and unquestioned ruler of Gaza, is extending a rope to Abbas because it sees him as a means, in the international sphere, of attaining the “liberation” of the West Bank, which Hamas wants to take over in a similar way that it drove Fatah from Gaza in the summer of 2007. Hence, for the time being, Hamas is not likely to initiate hostilities with Israel from Gaza, and most of the terror effort will be directed at the West Bank and, from it, at Israel, while continuing to rehabilitate and build up terror infrastructures and military capabilities in Gaza.

What about the Jewish Nakba?

From Ynet Nws, 28 Nov 2014, by Dror ben Yemini:

Op-ed: For decades, the Palestinians have nurtured the ethos of the Nakba while Israel chose to downplay the persecutions and expulsion of the Arab Jews. It is time to set the record straight.

"If the Jewish state becomes a fact, and this is realized by the Arab peoples, they will drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea." 

This statement was made by Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, about a month and a half after the declaration of the independence, and with the Egyptian Army already having invaded the territory allotted to the Jewish state.


The Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, explained in his memoirs:

"Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world."

And the Arab League at the time also adopted two decisions, which materialized into a bill designed to seize the bank accounts of Jews and strip them of their possessions – a bill that was subsequently put into practice among well-established and wealthy Jewish communities in places such as Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iraq. Entire communities were destroyed.

For decades, the Palestinians have nurtured the ethos of the Nakba. It has become the defining experience of Palestinian identity. Israel, on the other hand, chose to downplay the persecutions, expulsion and dispossession of the Jews of the Arab states.

Palestinians mark Nakba Day in Gaza Strip 

(Photo: Reuters)

The Knesset decided only this year to set aside a special day, November 30, to mark the Jewish Nakba. Most school children in Israel know about what was done to the Jews of Kishinev and also about what was done to the Arabs in Deir Yassin.

But most Israeli students don't know about Jewish Nakba. They don't know about a long series of pogroms and massacres perpetrated against Jews in most Arab countries. The Kishinev pogroms in 1906 claimed the lives of 29 Jews. A year later, in pogroms in Morocco, 50 Jews were murdered in the city of Settat, and another 30 were killed in Casablanca.


How many high school students know about them? And how many know about the pogrom in Aden in 1948 in which 82 Jews were murdered? And how many know about the hundreds more who were killed during that period in Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Libya only because they were Jews?

The "narratives" have taken control of the university campuses and school system. On their behalf, Israeli students are told "the other side's version of the story." Not that one should belittle the pain of the Palestinians. God forbid. The thing is that there is nothing unique about the Palestinian story in particular. People fled. Some were deported too. But where were things any different?

And yet, the Jewish Nakba vanished into thin air, despite the fact that it was far more severe. After all, the Jews of the Arab states didn't declare war on the Arab countries; they didn't have a leader like the Mufti who was planning and plotting to eradicate all the Arabs – every last one. On the contrary, they were peaceful citizens wherever they were.

* * *
Let's set the record straight. The disintegration of the empires, beginning with the Ottoman, through to the Austro-Hungarian, and on to the British, intensified the demand on the part of various peoples for self-determination – no more multi-ethnic states under imperial rule, but nations with a sense of independent identity instead. Some would call it an imaginary heritage, but that's not important.

The result was huge waves of population transfers, beginning in 1912 and through to the years following World War II. Around 52 million people underwent the experience, including tens of millions in the period after the war.

Millions of Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Indians, Pakistanis and more and more were forced to leave their birthplaces to make way for national entities, old and new. One would be hard pressed to find a single conflict during the period in question that did not end without a population exchange.

Remains of shop attacked on Kristallnacht 

(Photo: Gettyimages)

And the same happened in the Jewish-Arab conflict too. When the Peel Commission decided in 1937 on a population exchange, one of the reasons it offered to support its decision was the fact that the Iraqis had carried out against the Assyrian minority, despite earlier assurances to safeguard their rights.

The population exchanges between Greece and Turkey also served as a backdrop for the commission's decision. At the time, this was the position held by statesmen, scholars and intellectuals. Furthermore, in 1930, the Permanent Court of International Justice, the highest international judicial instance at the time, approved population transfers by force when it ruled that the purpose of mass population transfers was to "more effectively aid the process of pacification of the Near East."

* * *
That's the background. The Arabs of Palestine paid a price for two reasons – firstly, because of the recalcitrant and reckless actions of their leaders; and secondly, as mentioned, because that's the way things worked during that period.

It wouldn't have happened without the big Arab invasion, which was accompanied by declarations of destruction from Arab leaders, like the Arab League secretary-general at the time, who declared: "This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre or the Crusader wars."

The war against the fledgling Jewish state ended in resounding defeat. But among those who paid the price were the hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Arab countries. Take note, not all were expelled; but those who weren't knew, too, that their time was up. 

There've been attempts here and there to gauge the value of the Jewish property left behind in Arab states. According to estimates offered by economist Sidney Zabludoff, assets abandoned by Arab refugees amount to $3.9 billion, as opposed to the $6 billion in assets abandoned by Jewish refugees (in 2007 terms). There are other assessments too.

What is clear is the fact that those tens of millions who underwent the experience of population exchanges didn't receive a single penny, and certainly not the "right of return." Just a few years ago, the European Court of Human Rights rejected a property restitution claim filed by Greek refugees from Cyprus.

The Jews of European received compensation because their story is a different one. They were dispossessed through no fault of their own, and not in the framework of population exchanges. Not only that, they are believed to have received just 20 percent of the value of the assets they once possessed. When viewed in the light of the real situation, and not "narratives," the right of the Jews to compensation is far greater than that of the Arabs.

* * *
A ceremony to mark the Jewish Nakba will take place on Sunday at the President's Residence, following the recent enactment of a law designating November 30 as a day to mark the departure and expulsion of Jews from the Arab states and Iran. And the ceremony, in essence, is an expression of our need to recognize the broad picture. We need to know there were huge population exchanges.

Counter-protest against Nakba rally at Tel Aviv University 

(Photo: Shahar Hay)

We need to know these huge population exchanges also saw hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled and dispossessed. We need to know that overplaying the Palestinian Nakba – like in the form of the Nakba film festival at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque – has actually become a factor that is holding back the chance for an agreement and understanding, and that recognizing the broad picture will make it clear to all that there's no turning back the clock.

Millions of Indians are not going to go back to Pakistan. Millions of Germans are not going to go back to parts of Poland that were once Germany. Millions of Poles and Ukrainians won't return to Ukraine or Poland. Millions of Palestinians aren't coming back to Israel, and millions of Jews are not going to return to Arab states.

Today, ignoring the broad picture is detrimental to peace. The ceremony that will take place on Sunday at the President's Residence won't change the misguided perceptions, not of the Palestinians and not of parts of the Israeli left.

This can only be achieved through massive investment in the school system – not to teach the Zionist or Palestinian narrative, but to teach instead the truth. Perhaps we've forgotten, but there is such a thing.

It’s Our Fault

From The Jewish Press, November 27th:

The following are remarks Moshe Feiglin made at a Knesset deliberation on Sweden’s recognition of a Palestinian state:

I have no complaints against the Swedish government. From their point of view, they reached a logical conclusion.

After all, since the Oslo Accords, every Israeli government – including the current one – has promoted the two-state solution. When Israel does not speak the truth, and declares that the very heart of our land belongs to a different nation...The world, in turn, says, “If that is the case, let us recognize the ‘Palestinians.’”

Sweden’s position is a direct result of the stand Israel has decided to adopt for itself. Israel’s policies prompted Sweden’s declaration and we have no reason to complain. Recently, Google also recognized the “Palestinian state.” Of course it did. We recognize the “Palestinian state,” so what do we want from Google?

We recognize the fabrication called a Palestinian nation; we recognize the great lie, that this land belongs to the fabricated nation. So what do we want from the Swedes?

But a Palestinian state will not arise. Not because Israel opposes its establishment. Not for lack of effort on the part of the nations of the world. A Palestinian state will not arise because the last thing the “Palestinians” want is a state.

In the entire history of nation states – approximately the past 200 years – there has never been an ethnic group that has received so much aid and assistance to establish its state and yet did not succeed in doing so. The reason for this failure is because the last thing the “Palestinians” want is a state. They do not want their own state: they – including their representatives in the Knesset – want to destroy our state. That is their main drive.

When Judea and Samaria were under Jordanian sovereignty and when Gaza was under Egyptian sovereignty – Arab sovereignty, not Jewish sovereignty – nobody made any demands to establish a Palestinian state. The “Palestinians”’ entire focus will always be on the last centimeter of land under Jewish sovereignty. On the day that the state of Israel is G-d forbid destroyed, the Palestinian nation and all its aspirations will disappear.

And so, I have no complaints against the Swedes. My complaint is against ourselves. Let us tell the truth: There is only one nation here that is sovereign over the entire land. That is the Jewish nation.

Palestine is Israel

From Atlas Shrugs, 15 Nov 2014, by Pamella Geller:

The fact is that Palestine is Israel – the Jewish homeland.


After the Romans conquered the Jews in the Jewish-Roman wars, the Romans renamed Israel after the Jews’ worst enemies — the Philistines — in order to further humiliate them.

The term was first used to denote an official province in c.135 CE, when the Roman authorities, following the suppression of the [Jewish] Bar Kokhba Revolt, combined Iudaea Province with Galilee and the Paralia to form “Syria Palaestina”. 

It was a Roman Emperor who first coined the name.

In AD 135, the Emperor Hadrian blotted out the name “Provincia Judea” and renamed it “Provincia Syria Palaestina”. This was the Latin version of the Greek name and soon became a name to be used as an administrative unit. This name was shortened to Palaestina and the name “Palestine” was derived from it as a modern and anglicized version. (more here) 

In other words, it was always Jewish.

Leading up to Israel’s independence in 1948, it was common for the international press to label Jews, not Arabs, living in the mandate as Palestinians. It was not until years after Israeli independence that the Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were called Palestinians. In fact, Arabs cannot even correctly pronounce the word Palestine in their native tongue, referring to area rather as“Filastin.”...
1939 Palestinian Flag. What does it look like?...



This a Larousse French dictionary from 1939. In the appendix it lists all the then current flags of the world in alphabetical order. You’ll notice that for Germany at that time the flag was the Nazi one replete with Zwastika which proves that this was pre-1945 ( before 1945).

Now, alphabetically, look for the Palestinian Flag. YES , there is one. What does it look like? Surprised? Oh, but you thought (Mandate Jewish) Palestine was an Islamic Arab-,Turkish-, Circassian Sovereign State that the bad Jews took over, right?




Confused?

From 1920-1948 a ( class ‘A’ Mandate) State of Palestine existed as per international law but it was, as all of its major institutions, Jewish. Until the 1960s, name “Palestine” resonated as something Jewish to European ears; the Muslims rejecting the name saying it didn’t belong. The 4,000 year old Jewish homeland or “Land of Israel” or the “Holy Land” were all synonymous!!

The British as legal Mandatory over the Mandate managed or mismanaged the state partially with Jewish Auxilary until Jews regained official sovereignty in 1948, by declaring independence.

The U.N. did not recreate Israel as some people claim.

There are a lot of cultural and historic relics, artifacts and icons that validate the Jewish identity of Palestine.

Take, for example, the leading newspaper of “Palestine,” the Palestine Post (or as it is now known, the Jerusalem Post).

 
16 May 1948 edition of The Palestine Post

The Jerusalem Post is a broadsheet newspaper based in Israel, publishing only English and French editions. Its predecessor the Palestine Post was founded in 1932 by Gershon Agron. The name change occurred in 1950.



...The Origins of the term “Palestinian Arabs”: 

No “Palestinian Arab people” existed at the start of 1920, but, by December, it took shape in a form recognizably similar to today’s.

Until the late nineteenth century, residents living in the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean identified themselves primarily in terms of religion: Moslems felt far stronger bonds with remote co-religionists than with nearby Christians and Jews. Living in that area did not imply any sense of common political purpose.

Then came the ideology of nationalism from Europe; its ideal of a government that embodies the spirit of its people was alien but appealing to Middle Easterners. How to apply this ideal, though? Who constitutes a nation and where must the boundaries be? These questions stimulated huge debates.

Some said the residents of the Levant are a nation; others said Eastern Arabic speakers; or all Arabic speakers; or all Moslems.

But no one suggested “Palestinians,” and for good reason. Palestine, then a secular way of saying Eretz Yisra’el or Terra Sancta, embodied a purely Jewish and Christian concept, one utterly foreign to Moslems, even repugnant to them.

This distaste was confirmed in April 1920, when the British occupying force carved out a “Palestine.” Moslems reacted very suspiciously, rightly seeing this designation as a victory for Zionism. Less accurately, they worried about it signaling a revival in the Crusader impulse. No prominent Moslem voices endorsed the delineation of Palestine in 1920; all protested it.

Instead, Moslems west of the Jordan directed their allegiance to Damascus, where the great-great-uncle of Jordan’s King Abdullah II was then ruling; they identified themselves as Southern Syrians.

Interestingly, no one advocated this affiliation more emphatically than a young man named Amin Husseini. In July 1920, however, the French overthrew this Hashemite king, in the process killing the notion of a Southern Syria.

Isolated by the events of April and July, the Moslems of Palestine made the best of a bad situation. One prominent Jerusalemite commented, just days following the fall of the Hashemite kingdom: “after the recent events in Damascus, we have to effect a complete change in our plans here. Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine.”

Following this advice, the leadership in December 1920 adopted the goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state. Within a few years, this effort was led by Husseini.

Other identities – Syrian, Arab, and Moslem – continued to compete for decades afterward with the Palestinian one, but the latter has by now mostly swept the others aside and reigns nearly supreme.

Lebanese Armed Forces exposes a politically isolated and militarily weary Hezbollah

From Middle East Institute, 25 Nov 2014, by Basem Shabb:

In the past, the Lebanese Armed Forces’ (LAF) inability to confront or deter Israel was reflected as political weakness for the Lebanese government vis-à-vis Hezbollah. Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 heralded a growing political role for Hezbollah. This role was further enhanced by the 2006 war with Israel, with Hezbollah claiming victory and consolidating its influence within the LAF and the government. Neither Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701, which mandated the disarmament of Hezbollah, nor Western support for March 14 forces could reverse the rising tide of the group, which had forged an alliance with General Michel Aoun, thereby securing credible Christian support. Even a sizeable faction of the Sunnis was sympathetic to Hezbollah due to its role as a deterrent force against Israel. The Palestinians, the second best armed faction after Hezbollah, were close allies. As such, the Lebanese government could not do much to confront Hezbollah. In May 2008, the group, in response to a government decision to dismantle its land-based communications network, took over Beirut while the LAF stood by. Hezbollah's military and political dominance was complete.

Hezbollah today

The Syrian crisis is changing all that. Quietly over the past few years, the LAF has been developing a credible force, with U.S. assistance. The training and materials geared toward counterterrorism, internal security, and border control were not seen by Hezbollah as a threat to its military arsenal of rockets and long range missiles. As it turns out, the LAF was better prepared for the Syrian crisis and its spillover into Lebanon. The elite units of the LAF, notably the rangers, commandos, and navy seals, were specifically trained in urban warfare and in confronting irregular forces and counterinsurgency. U.S. military equipment, while not relevant in a context of confrontation with Israel, is well suited to countering irregular forces and border control. A modest but credible helicopter force provides mobility. More importantly, the delivery of Cessna aircraft gave the LAF advanced surveillance and reconnaissance abilities as well as pinpoint firepower with Hellfire missiles. More conventional weapons such as M198 Howitzers as well as M-60A3 and M48A5 tanks offer accurate and continuous firepower.

On the other hand, Hezbollah's involvement in Syria exposed its lack of direct firepower as well as its inadequate surveillance for guerilla-style warfare in which it is on the receiving end. The conflict now involved jihadis with light weapons and mobile anti-tank missiles facing Hezbollah fighters with similar weapons. In a sense, Hezbollah had prepared for the wrong war. Long range missiles and short range Katyusha rockets designed for a war against Israel were now of little use. Chinese anti-ship missiles as well as concealed anti-tank and short range missiles in south Lebanon facing Israel seemed of little military value when the real threat to Hezbollah came from across the long and ragged border with Syria. Hezbollah did not anticipate this and was ill prepared for irregular warfare and border control. It has resorted to erecting fixed positions not unlike what the Israelis erected in south Lebanon.

The battles by the Syrian Army and Hezbollah 18 months ago to control the Damascus-Homs highway drove several thousand Jabhat al-Nusra fighters into the Qalamoun plateau, an area roughly 60 by 20 kilometers straddling Lebanon and Syria. Isolated from Syria, the town of Arsal in Lebanon was the logistical base supplying the insurgents. On August 2 in a surprise attack, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State struck the LAF in Arsal. Though 36 military personnel were taken hostage, the LAF quickly repulsed the attack, putting to good use its Hellfire-armed Cessna with a ground counteroffensive. The insurgents suffered an estimated 150 to 200 casualties.

Having given up on Arsal, the Syrian insurgents most recently attacked ten Hezbollah positions. The attack on one position, Nabi Sbat in Lebanon, was seen in a video that showed the position being stormed and the bodies of several Hezbollah fighters. A booty consisting of TOW missiles (probably of the Iranian type) was also shown. It is rumored that out of 60 or so Hezbollah fighters, many fled. On the Syrian side of Qalamoun in Asal al-Ward, several Hezbollah fighters were reportedly taken prisoner, among them an 18-year-old who was shown on YouTube pleading for his life. Hassan Nasrallah had to appear in military fatigues in east Lebanon to shore up the morale of Shi‘i towns and fighters.

The Syrian conflict has been detrimental to Hezbollah's political standing as well. In addition to antagonizing the Sunni Lebanese and Palestinians, Hezbollah’s involvement inflamed sectarian tensions. Despite a few Sunni defections, the LAF shows little signs of fracturing though Sunnis constitute almost half of the forces. In a recent bold move, the LAF took control of Tripoli, the second largest and predominantly Sunni city in north Lebanon with a sizeable Alawi community. Tripoli had been a hotbed of Sunni radicalism and had seen violent clashes between Sunni radicals and Alawi fighters supported by Hezbollah. The LAF move was endorsed by all Lebanese leaders, including those from the Sunni community.

Thus, despite sectarian tensions the LAF has overwhelming popular support in countering extremism and terrorism. In contrast, Hezbollah has lost ground politically and is overstretched militarily.

The political void Hezbollah has left behind is gradually being replaced by a more assertive LAF. 

LAF monitoring towers are being erected in sensitive areas along the Lebanese-Syrian border, to which Hezbollah would not have acquiesced three years ago. An offer by Iran to supply the LAF with ammunition and light weapons, which would endanger U.S. support, was politely rejected by the Lebanese government. A Saudi gift of $3 billion will further boost the capabilities of the LAF.

The most immediate danger to Lebanon is not from an ISIS incursion from Syria, but would be from a fracturing of the LAF due to sectarian tensions. By remaining a united, effective force with widespread popular support, the LAF has thus far helped Lebanon weather the sectarian storm. As the dust settles on a politically isolated and militarily weary Hezbollah, only a strong LAF can ensure a smooth transition to sovereignty and normalcy.

West Ready to Cave on Iran Full Disclosure Demands

From The Tower, 22 Nov 2014:


[Photo: PersianMedia / YouTube]

The Western nations currently negotiating with Iran over the fate of the country’s illicit nuclear program will “likely stop short of demanding full disclosure of any secret weapon work by Tehran,” according to a report in Reuters:

Officially, the United States and its Western allies say it is vital that Iran fully addresses the concerns of the U.N. nuclear agency if it wants a diplomatic settlement that would end sanctions severely hurting its oil-based economy. 

“Iran’s previous activities have to come to light and be explained,” a senior Western diplomat said. 

Privately, however, some officials acknowledge that Iran would probably never admit to what they believe it was guilty of: covertly working in the past to develop the means and expertise needed to build a nuclear-armed missile.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, has long demanded that Iran come clean about the possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran’s nuclear program. Iran has consistently stonewalled IAEA investigations into this matter; earlier this week, IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano stated that “Iran has not provided any explanations that enable the agency to clarify” the issue.

Reuters continued, quoting a flabbergasted Western official:

“I believe the PMD issue is not a deal-breaker even though it probably should be,” another Western official said. The official added that many inside the IAEA and Western governments shared concerns about the deadlocked investigation and felt uneasy about compromising on the issue.

UN Security Council Resolution 1929, passed in 2010 with the approval of all parties currently negotiating with Iran, called on the Islamic Republic to “cooperate fully with the IAEA on all outstanding issues, particularly those which give rise to concerns about the possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear programme, including by providing access without delay to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the IAEA.”

If the Reuters report is true, it reflects a change in the Obama Administration’s longstanding demand that Iran fully disclose its PMD. As Barack Obama said in September 2009, “Iran is on notice that when we meet with them on Oct. 1, they are going to have to come clean.” During confirmation hearings to be appointed Secretary of State in 2013, John Kerry, who is currently negotiating with the Iranians in Vienna, said that “The president has made it definitive” that Iran needs to answer all “questions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program.”

A senior Western official told Reuters that they are working at “being creative” at resolving this issue.

BDS is racist, in more ways than one...

From the UK Telegraph, 20 Nov 2014, by Alan Johnson:

...[An] anti-Zionist ideology (a system of demonising ideas and representations about Israel and the Jews) now exercises [a profound influence] in our culture. 

At the heart of the ideology is a deeply buried, often unconscious, assumption about the dichotomous natures of Israelis and Palestinians that warps our understanding of the conflict...:

Palestinians (and Arabs in general) do not have agency and choice, and so cannot be held accountable and responsible. Israelis do and can; always, and exclusively. 

Palestinians are understood as a driven people, dominated by circumstance and emotion, lacking choice, below the age of responsibility, never to be held accountable. Israelis are the opposite; masters of all circumstances, rational and calculating, the root cause of everything, responsible for everything. 

It is, palpably, an Orientalist view of the Palestinians as the Other, except this time they are affirmed as noble savages. It’s a bit racist, to be honest. For example, the Liberal Democrat David Ward MP tweeted that the Palestinian synagogue terrorists had been "driven to madness" - which not only removes agency from them but also sanity.

This groupthink is the reason that parts of the media are reluctant to challenge the Palestinian national movement when it is guilty of rejectionism, terrorism, authoritarianism, corruption and the promotion of a vile culture of incitement, demonization and antisemitism.

After all, those things are just not the "the Israel story", are they? As Matt Seaton, comment editor at the New York Times, tweeted recently, his opinion pages will only cover Palestinian racism when “they have [a] sovereign state to discriminate with.”

The world view is being spread by ...public intellectuals. They are shaping much of the debate about the conflict in Britain because their ideas are not remaining in the seminar room but are being 'translated' and popularised by determined activists with status and authority in universities, churches, trade unions, NGOs, political parties and popular culture.

• Academic and writer Jacqueline Rose says Israel is “the agent” that is responsible for Palestinian suicide terrorism. She uncritically passes on to her readers a defence of the suicide bomber given by Hamas leader Abdul Aziz al-Ratansi (“If he wants to sacrifice his soul in order to defeat the enemy and for God’s sake – well, then he’s a martyr”).

• The Israeli novelist (and Peace Now founder) Amos Oz complains that incitement by extremist Palestinian intellectuals leads some Palestinians to be “suffocated and poisoned by blind hate.” The anti-Zionist writer Yitzhak Laor is outraged, denouncing Oz for… “incitement” against the Palestinians.

• Shlomo Sand - whose books are found in Waterstones stores across the UK –expresses his disgust at Jewish Israeli intellectuals who opposed Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War. Now, Saddam was firing scud missiles at Israeli civilians at the time, so how did he justify his stance? Palestinians felt “joy” at an ““Arab” show of force”, he wrote, and that should have been decisive. 

• Ilan Pappe’s recent book The Idea of Israel (Summary: it was a very Bad Idea and should now be Corrected) offers an apologia for the pro-Nazi war-time Palestinian leader Al-Husseini. So keen was Al-Husseini on Adolf that he formed a Muslim SS Unit, but Pappe reduces all this to “an episode” in the “complex” life of a nationalist; a “foolish flirtation” that should only be of interest to the reader because it has been exploited by Zionists to “demonise” the Palestinians. Pappe argues that Al-Husseini was – here it comes! - “forced” into the alliance with Hitler. 

The idea that good/innocent/authentic Palestinians are in a Manichean struggle against bad/guilty/inauthentic Israelis is part of a mind-set - a "theory" of sorts - that became dominant on much of the Left after the 1960s. Let’s call it reactionary anti-imperialism. It divides the world, and everything in it, into two opposed “camps”: Imperialism versus Anti-Imperialism. 

Anyone shooting at Imperialism (the USA, the UK, Israel, "the West", "the Global North", or just "the Man") is now part of the progressive anti-imperialist “resistance” to imperialism. Once in thrall to this ‘theory’, parts of the left redefined themselves as (not very) critical supporters of, or at least apologists for, the reactionary forces doing the shooting, including radical Islamists. 

Here is the Socialist Workers Party theoretician John Molyneux instructing the members in the finer points of reactionary anti-imperialism: 

"To put the matter as starkly as possible: from the standpoint of Marxism and international socialism an illiterate conservative superstitious Muslim Palestinian peasant who supports Hamas is more progressive than an educated liberal atheist Israeli who supports Zionism (even critically)." 

And here is Judith Butler - a professor at Berkeley a...drawing the political conclusions: 

“[Hamas and Hezbollah are] social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left.” 

(See 16:24 in this video.) 

...anti-Zionist ideology, the ludicrously simplistic assumptions it makes about Palestinians and Israelis, and the demonising/exculpatory framework through which it distorts our understanding of the conflict, is now bleeding from the cloisters of academia into those wider structures of feeling and patterns of response that shape our public square.... 

Turkey roast

From Times of Israel, November 21, 2014, by Avi Issacharoff:

Israel has arrested dozens of members of a Hamas terror network operating throughout the West Bank in recent weeks who were planning a series of attacks against Israeli targets, senior Palestinian officials told The Times of Israel. The network...was funded and directed by Hamas officials in Turkey who have set up a de facto command center in the Muslim country.

The network was similar in its operational characteristics to one uncovered in August during the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the officials said Thursday night, adding that according to information received from Israel, this terror ring was even larger. Its operatives had already attempted several attacks against Israel, they added, but they had all failed.

As with the previous network, the man behind the terrorist grouping was Saleh al-Arouri, a Hamas leader who was deported from the West Bank to Turkey in 2010, the sources said.

Arouri, they said, built up and funded the network, and has effectively established a Hamas command post in Turkey which is leading terror efforts in the West Bank. Arouri is reportedly aided by dozens of operatives, some of whom were deported by Israel in the wake of the Gilad Shalit prisoner deal in 2011.

Hamas operative Saleh al-Arouri 

(photo credit: YouTube screenshot)

The officials accused Turkey as well as Qatar — the current home of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal — of enabling Hamas to operate freely within their territories to carry out attacks against Israel and undermine the Palestinian Authority.

In August, Israel’s Shin Bet security service said it had arrested over 90 operatives and thwarted a Hamas coup attempt in the West Bank aimed at toppling PA President Mahmoud Abbas and starting a third intifada uprising.

The Palestinian sources, however, maintained Thursday that the two networks were more concerned with carrying out attacks against Israeli military and settler targets in the West Bank. A rough Israeli response and the consequent weakening of the PA was a secondary objective, they said.

The officials added that several Hamas operatives connected to the recently uncovered network were also being held in PA detention facilities.

3

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman speaking at a meeting in the Knesset to discuss Operation Protective Edge, on August 4, 2014. (photo credit: Flash90)

On Thursday the Shin Bet said it foiled a Palestinian plan to assassinate Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman during the summer war. A group of Hamas members from near Bethlehem in the West Bank planned to purchase a rocket-propelled grenade, which would be shot at Liberman, who lives in an Israeli settlement in the area.

The group gathered intelligence on Liberman’s convoy to carry out the attack, according to the Shin Bet, and turned to Hamas officials in the area for help in acquiring the RPG. Israeli officials said they also uncovered during the interrogations Hamas plans to fire weapons and carry out hit-and-run attacks against settlers and Israeli troops in the area....

See also 

Erdogan: Israeli Attack on Al-Aqsa Is Attack on Turkey (Zaman-Turkey)
Speaking in Algeria on Wednesday, Turkish President Erdogan said, "Israel's barbaric attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque is tantamount to an attack on Turkey and Algeria because Al-Aqsa Mosque belongs to all of us."

Turkey had previously called on other Muslim countries to display a joint position to protest the actions of Israel.

Israel: Erdogan Rhetoric Befits Tehran or Damascus, Not a NATO Capital - Herb Keinon (Jerusalem Post)

Responding to Turkish President Erdogan's remarks, one government official said that Israel has been facing "a malicious campaign of slander concerning a so-called threat to Al-Aqsa. This campaign has been led by Islamist extremists who claim there is a Jewish threat to Al-Aqsa. This is baseless and ridiculous, it is slander that has no relationship to the truth whatsoever."

"Ultimately this sort of extremist and malicious rhetoric is what one expects to hear from Tehran and Damascus, not from a NATO capital."     

No choice but war?

From JPost, 22 Nov 2014, by Michael Wilner:

"sunset clause" in proposed comprehensive deal...guarantees Iran a path into the nuclear club and may corner Israel into war. 

Israel Air Force planes fly over Tel Aviv.

(photo credit:IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT) 

WASHINGTON – Historic negotiations with Iran will reach an inflection point on Monday, as world powers seek to clinch a comprehensive deal that will, to their satisfaction, end concerns over the nature of its vast, decade-old nuclear program.

... Israel has issued a stark, public warning to its allies with a clear argument: Current proposals guarantee the perpetuation of a crisis, backing Israel into a corner from which military force against Iran provides the only logical exit.

The deal on the table
World powers have presented Iran with an accord that would restrict its nuclear program for ten years and cap its ability to produce fissile material for a weapon during that time to a minimum nine-month period.

Should Tehran agree, the deal may rely on Russia to convert Iran's current uranium stockpile into fuel rods for peaceful use. The proposal would also include an inspection regime that would attempt to follow the program's entire supply chain, from the mining of raw material to the syphoning of that material to various nuclear facilities across Iran.

Israel's leaders believe the best of a worst-case scenario, should that deal be reached, is for inspections to go perfectly and for Iran to choose to abide by the deal for the entire decade-long period.

But "our intelligence agencies are not perfect," an Israeli official said. "We did not know for years about Natanz and Qom. And inspection regimes are certainly not perfect. They weren't in the case in North Korea, and it isn't the case now – Iran's been giving the IAEA the run around for years about its past activities."

"What's going to happen with that?" the official continued. "Are they going to sweep that under the rug if there's a deal?"

On Saturday afternoon, reports from Vienna suggested the P5+1 – the US, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany – are willing to stop short of demanding full disclosure of any secret weapon work by Tehran.

... compounding Israel's fears, the proposal Jerusalem has seen shows that mass dismantlement of Iran's nuclear infrastructure – including the destruction, and not the mere warehousing, of its parts – is no longer on the table in Vienna.

"Iran's not being asked to dismantle the nuclear infrastructure," the Israeli official said, having seen the proposal before the weekend. "Right now what they're talking about is something very different. They're talking about Ayatollah Khamenei allowing the P5+1 to save face."

Officials in the Netanyahu government are satisfied that their ideas and concerns have been given a fair hearing by their American counterparts. They praise the US for granting Israel unprecedented visibility into the process. 

But while those discussions may have affected the talks at the margins, large gaps – on whether to grant Iran the right to enrich uranium, or allow it to keep much of its infrastructure – have remained largely unaddressed.

"It's like the chemical weapons deal in Syria," the official said. "They didn't just say: Here, let's get rid of the stockpile and the weapons, but we will leave all the plants and assembly lines."

'Sunset clause'

Yet, more than any single enforcement standard or cap included in the deal, Israel believes the Achilles' heel of the proposed agreement is its definitive end date – the sunset clause.

"You've not dismantled the infrastructure, you've basically tried to put limits that you think are going to be monitored by inspectors and intelligence," said the official, "and then after this period of time, Iran is basically free to do whatever it wants."

The Obama administration also rejects this claim. By e-mail, the senior US administration official said that, "'following successful implementation of the final step of the comprehensive solution for its duration, the Iranian nuclear program will be treated in the same manner as that of any non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT – with an emphasis on non-nuclear weapon."

"That has in no way changed," the American official continued, quoting the interim Joint Plan of Action reached last year.

But the treatment of Iran as any other signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty –189 countries are members, including Iran – would allow Tehran to ultimately acquire "an industrial-sized capability," the Israelis say. "The breakout times [to a nuclear weapon] will be effectively zero."

Israel and world powers seek to maximize the amount of time they would have to identify non-compliance from a nuclear deal, should Iran choose to defy its tenets and build a bomb.

But in the deal under discussion in Vienna, Iran would be able to comply with international standards for a decade and, from Israel's perspective, then walk, not sneak, into the nuclear club.

"You've not only created a deal that leaves Iran as a threshold nuclear power today, because they have the capability to break out quickly if they wanted to," the Israeli official contended. "But you've also legitimized Iran as a military nuclear power in the future."

From the moment this deal is clinched, Israel fears it will guarantee Iran as a military nuclear power. There will be no off ramp, because Iran's reentry into the international community will be fixed, a fait accompli, by the very powers trying to contain it.

"The statement that says we've prevented them from having a nuclear weapon is not a true statement," the Israeli official continued. "What you've said is, you're going to put restrictions on Iran for a given number of years, after which there will be no restrictions and no sanctions. That's the deal that's on the table."

Revisiting the use of force

Without an exit ramp, Israel insists its hands will not be tied by an agreement reached this week, this month or next, should it contain a clause that ultimately normalizes Iran's home-grown enrichment program.

...By framing the deal as fundamentally flawed, regardless of its enforcement, Israel is telling the world that it will not wait to see whether inspectors do their jobs as ordered.

"Ten, fifteen years in the life of a politician is a long time," the Israeli said, in a vague swipe against the political directors now scrambling in Vienna. "In the life of a nation, it's nothing."...