Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water. The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car’s tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car. The electric powered car can run on any type of water (you can even use tea and soda…etc). The car can run for an hour at about 50 miles per hour on just a liter of water; about 2 cans of soda worth. Genepax, the company that invented the technology, aims to collaborate with Japanese manufacturers to mass produce it. Unlike other electric cars, the Genepax car does not require that batteries be recharged and has no emission. The water electrical generator is located in the back of the car and when water is poured it is then broken down in order to create electricity to power the car. Imagine what such a generator could do to the oil industry, the nuclear plants and the electrical grid.
http://presscore.ca/2011/?p=1910
March 29, 2011
The Other Tsunami By Dennis Prager
The Other Tsunami
By Dennis Prager
March 15, 2011
It is very difficult to hate babies.
It takes a special person.
As morally wrong as it is to murder innocent adults, mankind seems to
have a built-in revulsion against killing babies. If a baby does not
evoke any tenderness, if a baby is regarded as worthy of being
deliberately hurt or murdered, we know that we have encountered a
degree of evil that few humans -- even among murderers -- can relate
to.
That is why what Palestinian terrorists did to a Jewish family on the
West Bank this past weekend deserves far more attention than it
received.
Normally, Palestinian atrocities get little attention -- certainly far
less attention than Israeli apartment-building on the West Bank
receives. But this particular atrocity got even less attention than
usual because the world was focused on the terrible tsunami that hit
Japan.
On Friday night, Palestinian terrorists slipped into a Jewish
settlement, entered a home and stabbed the father, the mother and
three of their children to death: an 11-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a
three-month-old baby.
In order to understand what those actions mean, a seemingly separate
incident needs to be recalled: the prolonged sexual attack by up to
200 Egyptian men on Lara Logan, chief foreign affairs correspondent
for CBS News, in Tahrir Square, Cairo a few weeks ago. It was reported
that after stripping her naked and then molesting and beating her, the
men kept shouting, "Jew, Jew!"
The two incidents tell the same tale. In much of the Arab Muslim and
some of the non-Arab Muslim world today (such as Iran), "Jew" is not a
person. "Jew" is not even merely the enemy. In fact, there is no
parallel on Earth to what "Jew" means to a hundred million, perhaps
hundreds of millions of Muslims.
Think of any conflict in the world -- Pakistan-India, China-Tibet,
North Korea-South Korea, Tamil-Sinhalese. There are some deep hatreds
there, and atrocities have been committed on one or both sides of
those conflicts. But in none of those conflicts nor anywhere else is
there something equivalent to what "Jew" means to millions of Muslims.
There really is only one historical parallel, and it, too, involved
the word "Jew." The Nazis also succeeded in fully dehumanizing the
word "Jew." Thus, for Nazism, it was as important (if not more so) to
murder Jewish babies and children -- often through as cruel a means as
possible (being burned alive, buried alive or thrown up in the air and
impaled on bayonets) -- as it was to murder Jewish adults.
The human being does not have to learn to hate. It seems to come
pretty naturally. Nor does the human being have to learn to murder,
steal or rape. These, too, seem to be in the natural human repertoire
of evils.
But the human being does have to learn to hate children and babies,
and to regard the torture and murder of them as morally desirable
acts. It takes years of work to undo normal protective human attitudes
toward children.
That is precisely what the Nazis did and what significant parts of the
Muslim world have done to the word "Jew." To them, the Jew is not just
sub-human; the Jew -- and his or her children -- is sub-animal.
Palestinian and other Muslim spokesmen and their supporters on the
left argue that this unique hatred is the fruit of Israeli policies,
not decades of Nazi-like Jew-hatred saturating Islamic education,
television, radio and the mosque. But for this to be true, unique
hatred would have to be matched by unique evil on the Israelis' part.
Yet, among the injustices of the world, what the Israelis have done to
the Palestinians would not even register on a moral Richter scale. The
creation of Israel engendered about 750,000 Palestinian refugees (and
an equal number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries) and the death
of perhaps 10 thousand Palestinian Arabs. And all of that came about
solely because Arab armies invaded Israel in order to destroy it at
birth. Yet, when Pakistan was yanked from India and established as a
Muslim state at the very same time Israel was established, that act
engendered 12.5 million Muslim refugees and about a million dead
Muslims (and similar numbers of Hindu refugees and deaths). Why then
doesn't "Hindu" equal "Jew" in the Muslim lexicon of hate?
Here are some answers in brief:
First, many groups have been hated, but none have been hated as deeply
as the Jews.
Second, Jew-hatred is often exterminationist, which is why Jew-hatred
has little in common with ethnic bigotry, religious intolerance or
even racism. Rarely, if ever, do any of them seek the extermination of
the disliked or hated group.
Third, exterminationist Jew-haters are particularly dangerous people.
Non-Jews who do not recognize Jew-hatred as the moral cancer it is are
fools. Nazism was born in Jew-hatred and led to the death of more than
40 million non-Jews. Islamic terror started against Israeli Jews but
has spread around the world. More fellow Muslims have now been
murdered by Islamic terror than Jews have.
That is why the tsunami the world ignored this weekend -- the
Palestinian-Arab-Muslim flood of Jew-hatred -- is the one that will
prove far more dangerous to it than the Japanese one it understandably
focused on.
Dennis Prager is a radio show host, contributing columnist for
Townhall.com, and author of 4 books including Happiness Is a Serious
Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual.
==============================
Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green)
POB 7352, Jerusalem 91072, Israel
Tel: 972-2-624-9887 Fax: 972-2-624-5380
mailto:wfit2@womeningreen.org
http://www.womeningreen.org
By Dennis Prager
March 15, 2011
It is very difficult to hate babies.
It takes a special person.
As morally wrong as it is to murder innocent adults, mankind seems to
have a built-in revulsion against killing babies. If a baby does not
evoke any tenderness, if a baby is regarded as worthy of being
deliberately hurt or murdered, we know that we have encountered a
degree of evil that few humans -- even among murderers -- can relate
to.
That is why what Palestinian terrorists did to a Jewish family on the
West Bank this past weekend deserves far more attention than it
received.
Normally, Palestinian atrocities get little attention -- certainly far
less attention than Israeli apartment-building on the West Bank
receives. But this particular atrocity got even less attention than
usual because the world was focused on the terrible tsunami that hit
Japan.
On Friday night, Palestinian terrorists slipped into a Jewish
settlement, entered a home and stabbed the father, the mother and
three of their children to death: an 11-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a
three-month-old baby.
In order to understand what those actions mean, a seemingly separate
incident needs to be recalled: the prolonged sexual attack by up to
200 Egyptian men on Lara Logan, chief foreign affairs correspondent
for CBS News, in Tahrir Square, Cairo a few weeks ago. It was reported
that after stripping her naked and then molesting and beating her, the
men kept shouting, "Jew, Jew!"
The two incidents tell the same tale. In much of the Arab Muslim and
some of the non-Arab Muslim world today (such as Iran), "Jew" is not a
person. "Jew" is not even merely the enemy. In fact, there is no
parallel on Earth to what "Jew" means to a hundred million, perhaps
hundreds of millions of Muslims.
Think of any conflict in the world -- Pakistan-India, China-Tibet,
North Korea-South Korea, Tamil-Sinhalese. There are some deep hatreds
there, and atrocities have been committed on one or both sides of
those conflicts. But in none of those conflicts nor anywhere else is
there something equivalent to what "Jew" means to millions of Muslims.
There really is only one historical parallel, and it, too, involved
the word "Jew." The Nazis also succeeded in fully dehumanizing the
word "Jew." Thus, for Nazism, it was as important (if not more so) to
murder Jewish babies and children -- often through as cruel a means as
possible (being burned alive, buried alive or thrown up in the air and
impaled on bayonets) -- as it was to murder Jewish adults.
The human being does not have to learn to hate. It seems to come
pretty naturally. Nor does the human being have to learn to murder,
steal or rape. These, too, seem to be in the natural human repertoire
of evils.
But the human being does have to learn to hate children and babies,
and to regard the torture and murder of them as morally desirable
acts. It takes years of work to undo normal protective human attitudes
toward children.
That is precisely what the Nazis did and what significant parts of the
Muslim world have done to the word "Jew." To them, the Jew is not just
sub-human; the Jew -- and his or her children -- is sub-animal.
Palestinian and other Muslim spokesmen and their supporters on the
left argue that this unique hatred is the fruit of Israeli policies,
not decades of Nazi-like Jew-hatred saturating Islamic education,
television, radio and the mosque. But for this to be true, unique
hatred would have to be matched by unique evil on the Israelis' part.
Yet, among the injustices of the world, what the Israelis have done to
the Palestinians would not even register on a moral Richter scale. The
creation of Israel engendered about 750,000 Palestinian refugees (and
an equal number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries) and the death
of perhaps 10 thousand Palestinian Arabs. And all of that came about
solely because Arab armies invaded Israel in order to destroy it at
birth. Yet, when Pakistan was yanked from India and established as a
Muslim state at the very same time Israel was established, that act
engendered 12.5 million Muslim refugees and about a million dead
Muslims (and similar numbers of Hindu refugees and deaths). Why then
doesn't "Hindu" equal "Jew" in the Muslim lexicon of hate?
Here are some answers in brief:
First, many groups have been hated, but none have been hated as deeply
as the Jews.
Second, Jew-hatred is often exterminationist, which is why Jew-hatred
has little in common with ethnic bigotry, religious intolerance or
even racism. Rarely, if ever, do any of them seek the extermination of
the disliked or hated group.
Third, exterminationist Jew-haters are particularly dangerous people.
Non-Jews who do not recognize Jew-hatred as the moral cancer it is are
fools. Nazism was born in Jew-hatred and led to the death of more than
40 million non-Jews. Islamic terror started against Israeli Jews but
has spread around the world. More fellow Muslims have now been
murdered by Islamic terror than Jews have.
That is why the tsunami the world ignored this weekend -- the
Palestinian-Arab-Muslim flood of Jew-hatred -- is the one that will
prove far more dangerous to it than the Japanese one it understandably
focused on.
Dennis Prager is a radio show host, contributing columnist for
Townhall.com, and author of 4 books including Happiness Is a Serious
Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual.
==============================
Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green)
POB 7352, Jerusalem 91072, Israel
Tel: 972-2-624-9887 Fax: 972-2-624-5380
mailto:wfit2@womeningreen.org
http://www.womeningreen.org
March 26, 2011
Ben-Ari Forces Police to Promise Return of Stolen Sheep
Adar Bet 18, 5771, 24 March 11 09:38by by Gavriel Queenann
(Israelnationalnews.com) Realizing an ultimatum made by MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) to unilaterally act against Arab sheep thieves if police continue to look the other way, a group of several dozen Jews Thursday tried to recover a herd of sheep that was stolen from Jewish shepherds in Tel-Zion.
(Israelnationalnews.com) Realizing an ultimatum made by MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) to unilaterally act against Arab sheep thieves if police continue to look the other way, a group of several dozen Jews Thursday tried to recover a herd of sheep that was stolen from Jewish shepherds in Tel-Zion.
At about 2:00 A.M., a group of Arab rustlers entered the Jewish community of Tel-Zion and stole a flock of sheep worth 50 thousand dollars, smuggling them back to their own village of Qalandiya.
In an conversation with Israel National News, the flock's owner said, "Last night the Arabs stole 30 sheep. Just two years ago I suffered a similar theft and it took me a long time to recover. I built that herd myself and everything went down the drain."
"I went to the army and the police and they arrived at the scene and just told me 'don't worry,'" he continued. "I simply feel helpless. Nobody lifts a finger, I told the commander of the sector: if you are silent about the theft today it will cost human life tomorrow."
MK Michael Ben Ari then turned to Israel's Ministry of Public Security, and said: "If within three hours the security forces do not enter the village, I'll go to Qalandiya myself to pull out the herd. Today it's sheep, tomorrow it's slaughtered children. I will not allow an Itamar II."
At about 7:00 P.M. a group of several dozen Jews flocked to the entrance of Kochav Yaakov near Tel-Zion and, led by MK Ben-Ari, and his parlimentary aides Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir, headed for Qalandiya to liberate the sheep. MK Ben-Ari said, "Where the police will not act, we are forced to act to bring back our lost sheep."
According to Baruch Marzel, who spoke with Israel National News by telephone, the activists managed to evade police and army officers until they were within a few hundred meters of Qalandiya. Marzel said, "The officers promised us they would go in and return the sheep tonight. This is what we wanted... to force their hand. Before we did this they would not even speak with us."
"I went to the army and the police and they arrived at the scene and just told me 'don't worry,'" he continued. "I simply feel helpless. Nobody lifts a finger, I told the commander of the sector: if you are silent about the theft today it will cost human life tomorrow."
MK Michael Ben Ari then turned to Israel's Ministry of Public Security, and said: "If within three hours the security forces do not enter the village, I'll go to Qalandiya myself to pull out the herd. Today it's sheep, tomorrow it's slaughtered children. I will not allow an Itamar II."
At about 7:00 P.M. a group of several dozen Jews flocked to the entrance of Kochav Yaakov near Tel-Zion and, led by MK Ben-Ari, and his parlimentary aides Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir, headed for Qalandiya to liberate the sheep. MK Ben-Ari said, "Where the police will not act, we are forced to act to bring back our lost sheep."
According to Baruch Marzel, who spoke with Israel National News by telephone, the activists managed to evade police and army officers until they were within a few hundred meters of Qalandiya. Marzel said, "The officers promised us they would go in and return the sheep tonight. This is what we wanted... to force their hand. Before we did this they would not even speak with us."
Israel National Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld refused to discuss the incident itself, telling Israel National News, "I'm not going to deal with this right now because right now we're dealing with much more important things like heightened security and the marathon. This isn't important. Just to put things in perspective for you."
The problem of theft - and sometimes outright robbery - targeting Jewish farms by Arabs in southern Israel has been pervasive for many years, with losses to rapine rising to tens of millions of shekels per annum. Such incidents sometimes have tragic endings.
In January 2007, Jewish farmer Shai Dromi was aquitted of manslaughter after he was put on trial for killing one of four Bedouin men who poisoned his dog and came in the night to steal his flocks. Dromi, who feared for his life, shot at the men's legs in self-defense, but one of them died of bloodloss after the incident (Dromi did attempt to administer first aid at the time).
In January 2007, Jewish farmer Shai Dromi was aquitted of manslaughter after he was put on trial for killing one of four Bedouin men who poisoned his dog and came in the night to steal his flocks. Dromi, who feared for his life, shot at the men's legs in self-defense, but one of them died of bloodloss after the incident (Dromi did attempt to administer first aid at the time).
March 25, 2011
Right-wing MKs tour near Temple Mount
Four National Union MKs overcame police attempts to block them from touring the Old City near the Temple Mount on Wednesday.
Lawmakers Uri Ariel, Ya’acov Katz, Michael Ben-Ari and Arye Eldad said it was their right to walk around in any section of Jerusalem they pleased, and expressed outrage when their attempt to tour in the vicinity of the Temple Mount was blocked by several special patrol officers armed with machine guns who had been deployed to the site by Jerusalem police chief Cmdr. Aharon Franco.
“Every month we walk around this area. We were prevented from doing this earlier this month, because of the visit by [US Vice President] Joe Biden,” Katz said. “But the prime minister said Jerusalem, just like Tel Aviv, is not a settlement, and is open to all. We merely want to implement what Netanyahu said.”
Asked if the tour was a dangerous provocation during a sensitive time, Katz said, “For 150 years, Jews have been accused of igniting tensions in Jerusalem. We’re not walking around with weapons.” Pointing at his walking stick, he added, “All we have is a cane and our cellphones.”
Eldad said, “The whole of the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. Not to the Arabs, not to the US, and not to Saudi Arabia.”
Eldad added that “there has never been a good time” for Jews to exercise sovereignty over Jerusalem.
“We have been in Jerusalem for 3,000 years. The Middle East has always been explosive.
“Did anyone tell King David not to attack because the Middle East was very explosive at the time? Things were tense when the Romans and Babylonians were here too,” he added.
Ben-Ari said that “the US has existed for 200 years, Islam has existed for 1,300 years, but we have been in Jerusalem for 3,000 years. Not Obama and not [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] Abu Mazen will stop us from fulfilling our rights.”
Members of the legislators’ entourage were prevented by police from proceeding, prompting outrage from Itamar Ben-Gvir, a Jewish National Front activist and Knesset aide to Ben-Ari.
“Why don’t you let us pass? By what right are you blocking us? Has the Old City been declared a closed military zone?” he asked a stony faced special patrol officer.
“They work for Obama,” Ben-Ari chimed in.
A smiling Katz attempted to diffuse the situation, praising “our brave brothers in the police,” and calling Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin with a request for assistance. “We just want to walk around the gate. A Knesset committee has given us permission... Can you help?” he asked. After several minutes, police allowed the group to pass.
“You see, everything can be resolved gently and with love,” Katz said, before disappearing into the Old City surrounded by police.
Earlier on Wednesday, Jerusalem police said they would continue to maintain an increased presence in the Old City and around east Jerusalem in general, to “prevent disturbances and maintain security in the city.”
In a statement, police referred to “calls by extremists from both sides that are aimed at creating tension in the eastern [part] of the city and on the Temple Mount. We will act with determination over the Pessah holiday to secure the visitors and pilgrims in Jerusalem.”
Lawmakers Uri Ariel, Ya’acov Katz, Michael Ben-Ari and Arye Eldad said it was their right to walk around in any section of Jerusalem they pleased, and expressed outrage when their attempt to tour in the vicinity of the Temple Mount was blocked by several special patrol officers armed with machine guns who had been deployed to the site by Jerusalem police chief Cmdr. Aharon Franco.
“Every month we walk around this area. We were prevented from doing this earlier this month, because of the visit by [US Vice President] Joe Biden,” Katz said. “But the prime minister said Jerusalem, just like Tel Aviv, is not a settlement, and is open to all. We merely want to implement what Netanyahu said.”
Asked if the tour was a dangerous provocation during a sensitive time, Katz said, “For 150 years, Jews have been accused of igniting tensions in Jerusalem. We’re not walking around with weapons.” Pointing at his walking stick, he added, “All we have is a cane and our cellphones.”
Eldad said, “The whole of the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. Not to the Arabs, not to the US, and not to Saudi Arabia.”
Eldad added that “there has never been a good time” for Jews to exercise sovereignty over Jerusalem.
“We have been in Jerusalem for 3,000 years. The Middle East has always been explosive.
“Did anyone tell King David not to attack because the Middle East was very explosive at the time? Things were tense when the Romans and Babylonians were here too,” he added.
Ben-Ari said that “the US has existed for 200 years, Islam has existed for 1,300 years, but we have been in Jerusalem for 3,000 years. Not Obama and not [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] Abu Mazen will stop us from fulfilling our rights.”
Members of the legislators’ entourage were prevented by police from proceeding, prompting outrage from Itamar Ben-Gvir, a Jewish National Front activist and Knesset aide to Ben-Ari.
“Why don’t you let us pass? By what right are you blocking us? Has the Old City been declared a closed military zone?” he asked a stony faced special patrol officer.
“They work for Obama,” Ben-Ari chimed in.
A smiling Katz attempted to diffuse the situation, praising “our brave brothers in the police,” and calling Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin with a request for assistance. “We just want to walk around the gate. A Knesset committee has given us permission... Can you help?” he asked. After several minutes, police allowed the group to pass.
“You see, everything can be resolved gently and with love,” Katz said, before disappearing into the Old City surrounded by police.
Earlier on Wednesday, Jerusalem police said they would continue to maintain an increased presence in the Old City and around east Jerusalem in general, to “prevent disturbances and maintain security in the city.”
In a statement, police referred to “calls by extremists from both sides that are aimed at creating tension in the eastern [part] of the city and on the Temple Mount. We will act with determination over the Pessah holiday to secure the visitors and pilgrims in Jerusalem.”
Israel, The Seat of Power...
| Written by Larry Gordon | |
| Thursday, 03 March 2011 12:40 | |
| Michael Ben Ari, one of the four Knesset members representing the rightist National Union (Ichud Leumi) party in Israel, believes that the uprising in some of the surrounding Arab countries is the best thing for Israel and the Jewish people. We are spending most of what has become a beautiful sunny day looking out large Knesset office and dining-room windows, talking with several members who sit in the seat of power in the Jewish State. The governing body features 120 representatives, eleven of whom belong to Arab parties bent on doing harm to the growth and development of Israel. There are about another 20 or so who are assorted leftists, leaving about 90 representatives out of a population of more than seven million people to chart a course for the future of a country that is minuscule in size but looms large on the international landscape. Reflecting on the experience, I wonder why these men and women spend so much time with representatives of media outlets that serve Diaspora Jews, people who are not part of their constituency and who cannot vote for their political parties. One MK gives me his personal cell number and says that anytime I am doing a story about Israel and its political or diplomatic situation and want a quote from him to just call him directly. I believe that it’s not just about the attention that political personalities may need to advance through the system. Mostly it speaks to the fact that regardless of where we reside in the world, we all have a stake in the future of Israel and how it is impacted by the ongoing situation in the world. Things are beautiful and calm in Israel, particularly in contrast to the growing tumult and air of revolution that is currently plaguing the Arab world. I’m sure you’ve seen the recent reference in the Torah about the stiff-necked nature of the Jewish people. Well, Moshe Rabbeinu’s assignation of that poignant characteristic did not come with an expiration date, and its validity is very much in evidence in the Knesset building. As a consequence, the philosophical mixture of the men and women remains steadfast and even firmer than their political positions may have been in the past. MK Ben Ari says all he wants is for the leftists in the Knesset to admit that they made a colossal miscalculation by dabbling in a peace process with the Palestinians, who remain bent on dismantling the Jewish State. “There is no peace partner, and people like Haim Ramon and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer parade around like everything is normal and going well,” Ben Ari says. He adds that even Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, said recently that because there is such turmoil in the Middle East, now is the time for Israel to accelerate efforts to enter into a peace agreement with the Palestinians. “It’s delusional and wrongheaded, and they won’t admit it,” Mr. Ben Ari says. Michael Ben Ari, though he is a member of the parliament of the most secure and indeed admirable democracy in all of the Middle East and perhaps the world, cannot, after almost two years in office, manage to secure a visa to visit the United States. He says the reason is his articulated association and admiration for Rabbi Meir Kahane, of blessed memory, whom he identifies as his mentor and inspiration. Ben Ari says that George Mitchell, special envoy to the Middle East for President Obama, made a point of specifically directing the State Department not to allow Ben Ari into the U.S. He is appealing that decision and hopes in the near term to secure permission to enter the country. MK Yaakov Katz says that when we write about him, unless we refer to him as “Ketzaleh,” no one knows whom we are referring to. We had a relaxed lunch at midday in the Knesset dining room. To my left, dining with some guests, was veteran MK Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a longtime member of the left-leaning Labor Party, a former minister in the Rabin and Barak governments, and a frequent visitor to Egypt as well as a close confidant of the now deposed president, Hosni Mubarak. So here I am sitting with the arch-religious-rightist in Ketzaleh, and a couple of tables away is Mr. Ben-Eliezer. Ketzaleh gets busy on the phone, and his assistant, Harel, sees me looking over at Ben-Eliezer and says to me that, by the way, Ben-Eliezer was Ketzaleh’s commander in the IDF during the Yom Kippur War. I suppose that the fact that I do not care for Mr. Ben-Eliezer’s vision of Israel’s political future was displayed on my face. Harel said of Ben-Eliezer that he was known as an extraordinarily courageous commander and fearless even when encountering enemy fire in war. Ben-Eliezer is 75 years old now. His politics, I was thinking, falls in line with what Michael Ben Ari was saying earlier that day, that those on the left simply cannot come to grips with their flawed approach to the Palestinians and peace. Ketzaleh is an interesting man and is the one individual I know who personifies the consummate Israel experience cloaked in the mantle of Torah and faith in Hashem. And on top of all that, he knows his way around the nooks and crannies of the complicated Israeli political process. Though he is in his first term as a member of the Knesset, he conducts himself like a seasoned veteran. Today he does not hide the rather low regard he harbors for Prime Minister Netanyahu. “Netanyahu is an actor; what you see is not the real Bibi, and no one knows for sure where he will stand on any given day on the important issues,” says Katz. As you know, Bibi leads the right-leaning Likud Party, which has traditionally been identified with the settler movement and continued building in Judea and Samaria. On that count, Ketzaleh tells us, “In the area of building in the territories, Bibi is the worst of all possible prime ministers.” He adds that all in the Knesset are aware that, except in name, Ehud Barak is the real prime minister. Katz believes in the power of the Right in the Knesset and what can be accomplished for the benefit of Israel if the parties can somehow unite. A natural ally of Ketzaleh’s National Union is Habayit HaYehudi, but the two groups have differences that to this point have prevented them from working together. I asked Ketzaleh what the differences between the two parties are, and all he could say was that they are not about issues but rather about personalities. He then said he believed he would have an announcement to make on the matter in a few weeks. He believes the parties are very close to overcoming their differences and hopes to announce that in the next election they will be able to run as a bloc that currently controls seven seats in the Knesset. “We must unite,” Katz says, “because voters are more inclined to vote for a party that has a more significant presence in the Knesset.” He says that in the last election, over 20 percent of the dati (observant) electorate cast their votes for Likud. He adds that he believes that in the next election, his faction as a united party can garner as many as 12 seats in the Knesset. That would make them a party to reckon with along the lines of Avigdor Leiberman’s Yisrael Beitenu. Later that afternoon, we visited with Shas MK Nissim Zeev, who last year was in New York and spoke at an event in the Five Towns. Rabbi Zeev is a founder of the Shas party and a close confidant of Rav Ovadia Yosef, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel and the guiding force of Shas. Our meeting, which was arranged by MK Zeev’s aide Shoshana Bekerman, was convened to discuss the matter of having the Jewish people declared by the United Nations to be the indigenous population of parts of Israel that include Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. This would make it illegal under international law for the so declared people to be evacuated from their homeland. The feeling in MK Zeev’s office is that this will be the determining factor in finally putting to rest the long-held notion that Jews are occupiers in the Land of Israel (see story on page 21). And finally we stopped in at the end of the day to say hello to Deputy Knesset Speaker Danny Danon. He was in another office at the other end of the Knesset building, where the immigration committee that he sits on was conducting meetings. He said that he is very focused on continued Jewish immigration into Israel and that earlier in the day the committee had decided to allow entry into Israel of the last group of Ethiopian Jews. “There are still 7,000 that want to live in Israel and we will be absorbing 200 per month until they are all here,” he said. He is also working actively on bringing many additional Jewish families to Israel from the former Soviet Union. He said that as a member of the Likud, he was very concerned about the lack of building permits being issued in the territories and that after our meeting he was going to a Likud ministers’ meeting where he would express his concern directly to the prime minister. He added that the lack of building in larger West Bank communities like Ariel has made it impossible for young couples to make Ariel home, and that as a result it was progressively becoming an area dominated by older residents. Danon commented that he hoped this was not by design but only a consequence of the pressure from the U.S. not to build. The local papers in Israel reported the next day that Netanyahu had for now rejected their demand. As you can see, each of the few MKs we met has his own special projects and concerns, though all at some point intersect with what is the greater good for the country. The Knesset is far from a simple governing body; on the contrary, it is rather complex and frequently difficult to comprehend. Add to that the fact that the major powers, including the U.S., Russia, the European Union, and the UN, are all observing with heightened concern every comment and move that emanates from members here. One cannot help walking away wondering what the future will bring. For now, this is just a tiny glimpse into the big picture of a very small but powerful and influential country. Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com. |
March 23, 2011
Blast at Jerusalem Bus Station: 31 Wounded, 1 Critically
An explosion across from Jerusalem's Central Bus Station Wednesday afternoon in Jerusalem wounded 31 people. One person is in critical condition.Initial reports indicated that this was not a suicide blast. A bomber's body was not found.
Disproportionate Restraint - David Isaac
“Disproportionate force” is the accusation invariably hurled at Israel
when she does anything beyond lie down in response to Arab attack. In
Dec. 2008, for example, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in an
effort to reduce Hamas rocket fire coming in from the Gaza Strip
1,750 rockets and 1,528 mortar bombs were hurled at Israel that year
alone. Less than a year passed before the UN Human Rights Council
Commission on Gaza led by former South African Judge Richard Goldstone
accused Israel of “a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed
at the civilian population.”
But if Israel is guilty of anything it’s of disproportionate restraint.
We see this most recently in the government’s feeble reaction to the
Fogel family murders, in which a mother, a father and their three
children were stabbed to death. The youngest, a 3-month-old baby girl,
had her throat slit to the point of decapitation. It appears that the
terrorists, who are still at large, fled to a nearby Arab village.
“They murder. We build,” was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
remark to 12-year-old Tamar Fogel, the eldest daughter, who discovered
the slaughter after returning home from an evening out with her youth
group.
The prime minister was referring to the government’s decision, in
light of the attack, to approve the building of some 400 new
apartments in places like Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel, Kiryat Sefer and Gush
Etzion.
Notably absent from the list was Itamar, the town where the murders
actually took place. Itamar has been the site of many Arab terror
attacks 15 Jews were murdered at the height of the post-Oslo
“peace”. It especially behooves Israel’s government to build in Itamar
as it bears some guilt for the attack, having failed to provide
adequate defense for the community.
According to Arutz Sheva, “the IDF refused to fund essential security
equipment around the Itamar fence because the government’s legal
department claimed that the fence was illegal…. The army also refused
to help fund technological upgrading and installation of advanced
capabilities for the surveillance camera … The upgrading would have
made it possible, through the use of thermal sensitive devices, to
differentiate between an animal touching the fence and someone going
over it.”
Those who have followed news of the murders may recall that a guard on
the night of the grisly crime was alerted by a fence alarm at the
point where the terrorists infiltrated. Inspecting the area, he saw
that the fence hadn’t been cut (the terrorists had jumped over), so he
assumed an animal had triggered the alarm and did not pursue the
incident further.
The ‘they murder, we build’ approach has not gone over well with the
residents of Judea and Samaria. “It was an insult, Yesha Council
officials said this week,” according to a Ynetnews.com op-ed. “Linking
construction to this murder is simply insulting. It felt like the PM
was offering us a deal: Here, you deserve 500 housing units for this
murder. And even that figure quickly turned into 400 homes. And then
we discovered that some 200 of those are apartments already approved a
month ago and earmarked for young haredi couples in Beitar Ilit.”
The Netanyahu government says that it will also pursue the murderers.
It may very well catch them. But unless the perpetrators are killed
while being taken, they will end up doing time in an Israeli prison,
perhaps eventually to be released in return for the bodies of some
Israeli soldiers, as happened in the case of Sami Kuntar, who in 1979
shot dead 28-year-old Danny Haran and then killed his 4-year-old
daughter, Einat, by smashing her skull with a rifle butt. No one would
have believed that such a monster would have been released but he was
set free in 2008 to be feted by Lebanon, Syria and Iran. In an
interview, he remarked, “God willing, I will get the chance to kill
more Israelis.”
Another group of terrorists who will probably enjoy relatively cushy
confinement courtesy of the Israeli taxpayer are the Hamas terrorists
who carried out an attack in September, killing four residents of Beit
Haggai, a Jewish town near Hebron. The Arabs ambushed the four when
they stopped their car at an intersection, shot them and then pulled
their bodies from the vehicle and shot them again at point-blank
range. One of the murdered was a woman nine months pregnant.
Just as with the murders in Itamar, the Israeli authorities share some
of the guilt. As Arutz Sheva reported back in September, “The Victims
of Arab Terror organization said it had begun initial steps into suing
the Government of Israel for ‘having taking away the gun of Yitzchak
Imas [one of the four killed at Beit Haggai], which might have been
able to save his life and that of the other victims.”
Successive Israeli governments have pursued an upside down policy,
failing to defend its citizens, even depriving them of the means to
defend themselves, while at the same time releasing terrorists who’ve
committed the most heinous crimes. This suicidal approach is
reminiscent of the policy pursued by the Jewish Agency during the
years of the 1936 Arab Revolt in the Mandate period.
As Shmuel Katz wrote in "Days of Fire" (W.H. Allen, 1968):
After a very brief period of hesitation the Agency decided on a policy
called havlaga (self-restraint). This did not mean passivity. The
Haganah was active, maintaining a twenty-four-hour protective guard on
institutions in the towns, and a constant lookout in the agricultural
settlements, and ready at any moment to repel attackers. But havlaga
forbade carrying the war back to the attackers. They drove the enemy
off (if he attacked in mass) but they did not pursue him; they did not
liquidate his bases, nor counterattack. …
Dr. Chaim Weizmann in his memoirs, published twelve years later,
wrote: “Violence paid political dividends to the Arabs while Jewish
havlaga was expected to be its own reward. It did not even win
official recognition.”
Even as late as 1947, with a full-scale Arab invasion imminent, the
Haganah found it difficult to shed pre-conceived notions. As Katz
wrote:
Accidents and bad luck, even inefficiency in execution, are
understandable, even inevitable. What was disturbing throughout those
weeks was the strangely unreal political aspects of all Haganah
activity. They persisted in describing these reprisals as “punitive
operations” an empty phrase which emphasized their failure to
recognize the fact that they were waging a war of life and death. But
the Jewish Agency’s official policy was still “moderation and
non-provocation.” …
The Agency’s subservience to the British remained unchanged, although
the latter were openly exerting themselves to arm the Arabs and to
disarm the Jews. A number of police armories in Arab centers were
“taken over” by the Arabs. Again and again British police patrols met
Haganah units and demanded the surrender of their arms. Haganah
soldiers, acting on standing orders, meekly complied.
Why did the Jewish Agency leadership adopt such a policy? Katz offers that:
They saw their pioneering efforts as the foundation on which Jewish
political existence could be built. But with their gaze turned inward,
they were not capable of making a realistic assessment of the forces
ranged against Zionism. Confronted by a clear-sighted, purposeful
antagonist determined to set bounds to Jewish regeneration, they did
not even identify the antagonist, let alone pause to recognize his
motives.
Moreover these settlers were under the spell of the illusion of
British sympathy with Zionism, and persuaded themselves that this
interest in Zionism was a moral one. They believed that their social
revolution had endeared itself to the British people, and that the
virtues they personified (if only they could be sufficiently
publicized) would cement British friendship.
It’s unlikely Netanyahu is motivated by similar illusions regarding
Obama’s friendship. What Netanyahu shares with the “elite” of the
Jewish Agency is the folly of his approach. With murder to the left of
him and murder to the right of him, he intends to propose a new peace
initiative. This plan will include more concessions to the PA. His
motive may be that he wishes to head off, in the words of Defense
Minister Ehud Barak, a “diplomatic tsunami” whereby the international
community will recognize a Palestinian State, but as others in the
cabinet say, such an approach is “delusional”.
Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon points out that even so-called
moderates like PA head Mahmud Abbas want Israel wiped off the map. It
has been documented ad infinitum how the PA incites violence,
indoctrinates children and celebrates the murder of Jews. The PA says
one thing in English and another in Arabic. In the case of the Beit
Haggai attack, the PA captured the terrorists responsible only to
release them a few months later. When Sami Kuntar was released, the PA
made him an honorary citizen.
What is remarkable about the PA’s reaction to the Fogel family murders
is that it condemned them at all. In the end, the PA’s official media
made up for this uncharacteristic condemnation when in the next breath
it held Israel ultimately responsible and suggested, according to
MEMRI, “that the attack could have been perpetrated by an Israeli
settler.”
The Jewish Agency chose subservience to resistance. Netanyahu does the
same. But it was resistance (led by the Irgun and Lehi) that finally
drove the British from Palestine. It is resistance not pre-emptive
surrender that offers Israel its only chance to extricate itself
from the hangman’s noose.
http://shmuelkatz.com/
David_Isaac@shmuelkatz.com
==============================
Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green)
POB 7352, Jerusalem 91072, Israel
Tel: 972-2-624-9887 Fax: 972-2-624-5380
mailto:wfit2@womeningreen.org
http://www.womeningreen.org
when she does anything beyond lie down in response to Arab attack. In
Dec. 2008, for example, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in an
effort to reduce Hamas rocket fire coming in from the Gaza Strip
1,750 rockets and 1,528 mortar bombs were hurled at Israel that year
alone. Less than a year passed before the UN Human Rights Council
Commission on Gaza led by former South African Judge Richard Goldstone
accused Israel of “a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed
at the civilian population.”
But if Israel is guilty of anything it’s of disproportionate restraint.
We see this most recently in the government’s feeble reaction to the
Fogel family murders, in which a mother, a father and their three
children were stabbed to death. The youngest, a 3-month-old baby girl,
had her throat slit to the point of decapitation. It appears that the
terrorists, who are still at large, fled to a nearby Arab village.
“They murder. We build,” was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
remark to 12-year-old Tamar Fogel, the eldest daughter, who discovered
the slaughter after returning home from an evening out with her youth
group.
The prime minister was referring to the government’s decision, in
light of the attack, to approve the building of some 400 new
apartments in places like Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel, Kiryat Sefer and Gush
Etzion.
Notably absent from the list was Itamar, the town where the murders
actually took place. Itamar has been the site of many Arab terror
attacks 15 Jews were murdered at the height of the post-Oslo
“peace”. It especially behooves Israel’s government to build in Itamar
as it bears some guilt for the attack, having failed to provide
adequate defense for the community.
According to Arutz Sheva, “the IDF refused to fund essential security
equipment around the Itamar fence because the government’s legal
department claimed that the fence was illegal…. The army also refused
to help fund technological upgrading and installation of advanced
capabilities for the surveillance camera … The upgrading would have
made it possible, through the use of thermal sensitive devices, to
differentiate between an animal touching the fence and someone going
over it.”
Those who have followed news of the murders may recall that a guard on
the night of the grisly crime was alerted by a fence alarm at the
point where the terrorists infiltrated. Inspecting the area, he saw
that the fence hadn’t been cut (the terrorists had jumped over), so he
assumed an animal had triggered the alarm and did not pursue the
incident further.
The ‘they murder, we build’ approach has not gone over well with the
residents of Judea and Samaria. “It was an insult, Yesha Council
officials said this week,” according to a Ynetnews.com op-ed. “Linking
construction to this murder is simply insulting. It felt like the PM
was offering us a deal: Here, you deserve 500 housing units for this
murder. And even that figure quickly turned into 400 homes. And then
we discovered that some 200 of those are apartments already approved a
month ago and earmarked for young haredi couples in Beitar Ilit.”
The Netanyahu government says that it will also pursue the murderers.
It may very well catch them. But unless the perpetrators are killed
while being taken, they will end up doing time in an Israeli prison,
perhaps eventually to be released in return for the bodies of some
Israeli soldiers, as happened in the case of Sami Kuntar, who in 1979
shot dead 28-year-old Danny Haran and then killed his 4-year-old
daughter, Einat, by smashing her skull with a rifle butt. No one would
have believed that such a monster would have been released but he was
set free in 2008 to be feted by Lebanon, Syria and Iran. In an
interview, he remarked, “God willing, I will get the chance to kill
more Israelis.”
Another group of terrorists who will probably enjoy relatively cushy
confinement courtesy of the Israeli taxpayer are the Hamas terrorists
who carried out an attack in September, killing four residents of Beit
Haggai, a Jewish town near Hebron. The Arabs ambushed the four when
they stopped their car at an intersection, shot them and then pulled
their bodies from the vehicle and shot them again at point-blank
range. One of the murdered was a woman nine months pregnant.
Just as with the murders in Itamar, the Israeli authorities share some
of the guilt. As Arutz Sheva reported back in September, “The Victims
of Arab Terror organization said it had begun initial steps into suing
the Government of Israel for ‘having taking away the gun of Yitzchak
Imas [one of the four killed at Beit Haggai], which might have been
able to save his life and that of the other victims.”
Successive Israeli governments have pursued an upside down policy,
failing to defend its citizens, even depriving them of the means to
defend themselves, while at the same time releasing terrorists who’ve
committed the most heinous crimes. This suicidal approach is
reminiscent of the policy pursued by the Jewish Agency during the
years of the 1936 Arab Revolt in the Mandate period.
As Shmuel Katz wrote in "Days of Fire" (W.H. Allen, 1968):
After a very brief period of hesitation the Agency decided on a policy
called havlaga (self-restraint). This did not mean passivity. The
Haganah was active, maintaining a twenty-four-hour protective guard on
institutions in the towns, and a constant lookout in the agricultural
settlements, and ready at any moment to repel attackers. But havlaga
forbade carrying the war back to the attackers. They drove the enemy
off (if he attacked in mass) but they did not pursue him; they did not
liquidate his bases, nor counterattack. …
Dr. Chaim Weizmann in his memoirs, published twelve years later,
wrote: “Violence paid political dividends to the Arabs while Jewish
havlaga was expected to be its own reward. It did not even win
official recognition.”
Even as late as 1947, with a full-scale Arab invasion imminent, the
Haganah found it difficult to shed pre-conceived notions. As Katz
wrote:
Accidents and bad luck, even inefficiency in execution, are
understandable, even inevitable. What was disturbing throughout those
weeks was the strangely unreal political aspects of all Haganah
activity. They persisted in describing these reprisals as “punitive
operations” an empty phrase which emphasized their failure to
recognize the fact that they were waging a war of life and death. But
the Jewish Agency’s official policy was still “moderation and
non-provocation.” …
The Agency’s subservience to the British remained unchanged, although
the latter were openly exerting themselves to arm the Arabs and to
disarm the Jews. A number of police armories in Arab centers were
“taken over” by the Arabs. Again and again British police patrols met
Haganah units and demanded the surrender of their arms. Haganah
soldiers, acting on standing orders, meekly complied.
Why did the Jewish Agency leadership adopt such a policy? Katz offers that:
They saw their pioneering efforts as the foundation on which Jewish
political existence could be built. But with their gaze turned inward,
they were not capable of making a realistic assessment of the forces
ranged against Zionism. Confronted by a clear-sighted, purposeful
antagonist determined to set bounds to Jewish regeneration, they did
not even identify the antagonist, let alone pause to recognize his
motives.
Moreover these settlers were under the spell of the illusion of
British sympathy with Zionism, and persuaded themselves that this
interest in Zionism was a moral one. They believed that their social
revolution had endeared itself to the British people, and that the
virtues they personified (if only they could be sufficiently
publicized) would cement British friendship.
It’s unlikely Netanyahu is motivated by similar illusions regarding
Obama’s friendship. What Netanyahu shares with the “elite” of the
Jewish Agency is the folly of his approach. With murder to the left of
him and murder to the right of him, he intends to propose a new peace
initiative. This plan will include more concessions to the PA. His
motive may be that he wishes to head off, in the words of Defense
Minister Ehud Barak, a “diplomatic tsunami” whereby the international
community will recognize a Palestinian State, but as others in the
cabinet say, such an approach is “delusional”.
Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon points out that even so-called
moderates like PA head Mahmud Abbas want Israel wiped off the map. It
has been documented ad infinitum how the PA incites violence,
indoctrinates children and celebrates the murder of Jews. The PA says
one thing in English and another in Arabic. In the case of the Beit
Haggai attack, the PA captured the terrorists responsible only to
release them a few months later. When Sami Kuntar was released, the PA
made him an honorary citizen.
What is remarkable about the PA’s reaction to the Fogel family murders
is that it condemned them at all. In the end, the PA’s official media
made up for this uncharacteristic condemnation when in the next breath
it held Israel ultimately responsible and suggested, according to
MEMRI, “that the attack could have been perpetrated by an Israeli
settler.”
The Jewish Agency chose subservience to resistance. Netanyahu does the
same. But it was resistance (led by the Irgun and Lehi) that finally
drove the British from Palestine. It is resistance not pre-emptive
surrender that offers Israel its only chance to extricate itself
from the hangman’s noose.
http://shmuelkatz.com/
David_Isaac@shmuelkatz.com
==============================
Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green)
POB 7352, Jerusalem 91072, Israel
Tel: 972-2-624-9887 Fax: 972-2-624-5380
mailto:wfit2@womeningreen.org
http://www.womeningreen.org
March 22, 2011
UN intervention into Libya an ominous precedent for Israel
Center for Security Policy | Mar 21, 2011 By Frank Gaffney, Jr.
There are many reasons to be worried about the bridge-leap the Obama Administration has just undertaken in its war with Muammar Gaddafi. How it will all end is just one of them.
Particularly concerning is the prospect that what we might call the Gaddafi Precedent will be used in the not-to-distant future to justify and threaten the use of U.S. military forces against an American ally: Israel.
Here's how such a seemingly impossible scenario might eventuate:
It begins with the Palestinian Authority seeking a UN Security Council resolution that would recognize its unilateral declaration of statehood. Three top female officials in the Obama administration reprise roles they played in the Council's recent action on Libya: U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, a vehement critic of Israel, urges that the United States support (or at least not veto) the Palestinians' gambit. She is supported by the senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, Samantha Power, who in the past argued for landing a "mammoth force" of American troops to protect the Palestinians from Israel. Ditto Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose unalloyed sympathy for the Palestinian cause dates back at least to her days as First Lady.
This resolution enjoys the support of the other four veto-wielding Security Council members - Russia, China, Britain and France - as well as the all of the other non-permanent members except India, which joins the United States in abstaining. As a result, it is adopted with overwhelming support from what is known as the "international community."
With a stroke of the UN's collective pen, substantial numbers of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli citizens find themselves on the wrong side of internationally recognized borders. The Palestinian Authority (PA) insists on its longstanding position: The sovereign territory of Palestine must be rid of all Jews.
The Israeli government refuses to evacuate the oft-condemned "settlements" now on Palestinian land, or to remove the IDF personnel, checkpoints and facilities rightly seen as vital to protecting their inhabitants and, for that matter, the Jewish State itself.
Hamas and Fatah bury the hatchet (temporarily), forging a united front and promising democratic elections in the new Palestine. There, as in Gaza (and probably elsewhere in the wake of the so-called "Arab awakening"), the winner will likely be the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Palestinian franchise is Hamas).
The unified Palestinian proto-government then seeks international help to "liberate" their land. As with the Gaddafi Precedent, the first to act is the Arab League. Its members unanimously endorse the use of force to protect the "Palestinian people" and end the occupation of the West Bank by the Israelis. Turkey (which is still a NATO ally, despite its ever-more-aggressive embrace of Islamism) is joined by Britain and France - two European nations increasingly hostile to Israel - in applauding this initiative in the interest of promoting "peace." They call on the UN Security Council to authorize such steps as might be necessary to enforce the Arab League's bidding.
Once again, Team Obama's leading ladies - Mesdames Clinton, Power and Rice - align to support the "will of the international community." They exemplify, and are prepared to enforce, the President's willingness to subordinate U.S. sovereignty to the dictates of transnationalism and his personal hostility towards Israel. The concerns of Mr. Obama's political advisors about alienating Jewish voters on the eve of the 2012 election are trumped by presidential sympathy for the Palestinian right to a homeland.
Accordingly, hard as it may be to believe given the United States' longstanding role as Israel's principal ally and protector, Mr. Obama acts, in accordance with the Gaddafi Precedent. He warns Israel that it must immediately take steps to dismantle its unwanted presence inside the internationally recognized State of Palestine, lest it face the sort of U.S.-enabled "coalition" military measures now underway in Libya. In this case, they would be aimed at neutralizing IDF forces on the West Bank - and beyond, if necessary - in order to fulfill the "will of the international community."
Of course, such steps would not result in the ostensibly desired end-game, namely "two states living side by side in peace and security." If the current attack on Libya entails the distinct possibility of unintended (or at least unforeseen) consequences, application of the Gaddafi Precedent to Israel seems certain to produce a very different outcome than the two-state "solution": Under present and foreseeable circumstances, it will unleash a new regional war, with possible worldwide repercussions.
At the moment, it seems unlikely that the first application in Libya of the Gaddafi Precedent will have results consistent with U.S. interests. Even if a positive outcome is somehow forthcoming there, should Barack Obama and his anti-Israel troika of female advisors be allowed, based on that precedent, to realize the foregoing hypothetical scenario, they would surely precipitate a new international conflagration, one fraught with truly horrific repercussions - for Israel, for the United States and for freedom-loving people elsewhere.
A Congress that was effectively sidelined by Team Obama in the current crisis had better engage fully, decisively and quickly if it is to head off such a disastrous reprise.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.
Lawsuit Against Jimmy Carter - Unterberg-v-Carter-and-Simon-and-Schuster
The plaintiffs, who hope to have the case certified as a class action, are members of the reading public who purchased Carter’s book expecting that they were buying an accurate and factual record of historic events concerning Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. The lawsuit contends that Carter, who holds himself out as a Middle-East expert, and his publisher, intentionally presented untrue and inaccurate information and sought to capitalize on the author’s status as a former President to mislead unsuspecting members of the public. The complaint alleges that the defendants’ misrepresentations, all highly critical of Israel, violate New York consumer protection laws, specifically New York General Business Law § 349, which makes it unlawful to engage in deceptive acts in the course of conducting business. While acknowledging Carter’s right to publish his personal views, the plaintiffs assert that the defendants violated the law and, thus, harmed those who purchased the book.
The suit is the first time a former President and a publishing house have been sued for violating consumer protection laws by knowingly publishing inaccurate information while promoting a book as factual.
http://www.scribd.com/Unterberg-v-Carter-and-Simon-and-Schuster-Inc-NYSD-11-cv-0720-01-COMPLAINT/d/48251407
--
- Next Email From Jerusalem -
"In every generation, there are always a few who understand; Always understand... even if you remain among the few." - Meir Kahane
But from the cities of these peoples that HaShem, your G-d, gives you as an inheritance, you shall not allow any person to live. Rather you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivvite, and the Jebusite, as HaShem, your G-d has commanded you, so that they will not teach you to act according to all their abominations that they performed for their deities, so that you will sin to HaShem, your G-d.
http://www.jewish1.blogspot.com/
--
שלם
Turn the State of Jews to a Jewish State
Avi - אביגדור
March 21, 2011
The Beginning of the Left's End: By Moshe Feiglin
11 Adar Bet, 5771
March 17, '11
An uncomfortable feeling filled me in the face of the Itamar massacre. Everyone is in shock. I feel horrible pain. But I am not shocked.
Shock is the result of surprise. And I am not surprised by what happened. I honestly don't understand why others are surprised, either. We didn't read what they did to the bodies of the 35 Gush Etzion martyrs? We didn't live through years of suicide bombings? Just recently, Israel released the terrorist Samir Kuntar, who smashed the skull of 4 year old Einat Haran on the Nahariya beach years ago. What is the difference between this murderer and the murderer of Hadas Fogel? What has changed? This is how the Arabs act. There is nothing to be surprised about.
The shock most severely affected those people who, with all their might, insisted on deceiving themselves. They convinced themselves that we are in a peace process; that all the Arabs want are political rights, sovereignty, self-definition and the like. They wanted so badly to be normal. On the way they fashioned an enemy for themselves who demanded what they wanted him to demand. Now they are shocked. For a moment they had to face the truth: This enemy is not normal and his goal is not what their Western minds are trying to force into reality. Logical goals like self-definition and other palatable concepts are not part of the true picture.
Slaughter of a sleeping baby is unacceptable as a tool in the struggle for any type of liberation. It comes from a dark place, from a place that simply wants to destroy you. It is Ukrainian, Polish, German behavior. Actually, it is behavior with which we are quite familiar - behavior that says to the shocked Israeli, "What are you talking about? I do not want you out of Shechem and Ramallah. I have them, anyway. All the money that you invest there will not make me like you. I simply want you out of this world. Go back to the Ukrainians, the Polish, the Austrians and the Germans. Let them take care of you. I did not slaughter the baby because she is an occupier on my sovereign soil. I slaughtered her because she is a Jew."
This is the source of the shock: The understanding that there is nobody with whom to make peace, because they do not want to. The Arabs simply cannot stand the fact that we live anywhere in the world - certainly not in the Land of Israel.
In the past, the leftist elite managed to deal with the shock engendered by terror attacks. Their quintessentially demagogic and confusing slogan, "We will not let the enemies of peace achieve their goal" (and so we will continue with the retreats euphemistically known as the peace process) worked quite well on the public. But now it seems that something is starting to change. The massacre in Itamar shocked Israeli society more than similar attacks in the past because it no longer has anywhere to hide from the conclusions. The Oslo-spin no longer works.
The Itamar massacre was perpetrated on the backdrop of the collapse of the regimes in Arab lands. Mubarak's ouster revealed the fragility of our peace agreement with Egypt. It brought to the surface the fact that the dictators sold us the illusion of peace in the lowest dosage possible to keep us ignoring how their countrymen really felt about Israel. Suddenly, in Tahrir Square, the photograph of the hated dictator is waved high with the symbol most despised by the masses: Not the swastika, but the Star of David. Suddenly, the Jordanian Minister of Justice praises the murderer of the young girls from Beit Shemesh. When the nation is out in the streets, the murderer is no longer a crazed soldier. And if we no longer have peace with Egypt and Jordan, what can we possibly expect from the murderous animals in Awarta? The bottom line is that the Arab world is changing. What we are witnessing now is just the beginning. We are well on the way to becoming once again a "nation that dwells alone."
That is what made the Itamar massacre so shocking, brought all our top statesmen to the funeral, created the new perspective in the reporting of the tragedy and the live coverage on Army Radio.
"And so, since yesterday, I sit here in the corner, frustrated and frightened, internalizing that it is possible that in the end we will not have the peace that we dreamed of," wrote Guy Maroz in Ma'ariv after the massacre.
He even gives a tongue in cheek clue as to the only hope that he can think of: "Since yesterday, I want to hide under the wide Messianic dress of (settler leader - mf) Daniella Weiss."
We are at the threshold of a new reality. On the one hand, we are still firmly meshed onto the Western, Oslo playing field. We do not attack, but only retaliate. We are completely subordinate to the Western values that always force us to try to prove that we are the most miserable victims on the block. We are still very far from the ability to substantially change direction. On the other hand, though, the entire playing field is crumbling away.
Never fear - the shock will dissipate and Guy Maroz and all his friends will revert to their "peace" consciousness. Soon they will demand the destruction of the settlements. After all, this is reality, not a feel-good Hollywood movie. The consciousness of a nation does not change overnight. But within all the events and upheavals, there is a major change taking place: The virtual Oslo ground is crumbling under the feet of the elites that are nurtured by it. The new playing field is going to be "Daniella's wide dress."
Well, not exactly Daniella. We do not expect to win a political victory that will allow us to change the rules of the game in Israel. On the contrary. The game itself is about to change. The only relevant players in the new game will be those of us who have toiled throughout the years for a genuinely Jewish state.
March 17, '11
An uncomfortable feeling filled me in the face of the Itamar massacre. Everyone is in shock. I feel horrible pain. But I am not shocked.
Shock is the result of surprise. And I am not surprised by what happened. I honestly don't understand why others are surprised, either. We didn't read what they did to the bodies of the 35 Gush Etzion martyrs? We didn't live through years of suicide bombings? Just recently, Israel released the terrorist Samir Kuntar, who smashed the skull of 4 year old Einat Haran on the Nahariya beach years ago. What is the difference between this murderer and the murderer of Hadas Fogel? What has changed? This is how the Arabs act. There is nothing to be surprised about.
The shock most severely affected those people who, with all their might, insisted on deceiving themselves. They convinced themselves that we are in a peace process; that all the Arabs want are political rights, sovereignty, self-definition and the like. They wanted so badly to be normal. On the way they fashioned an enemy for themselves who demanded what they wanted him to demand. Now they are shocked. For a moment they had to face the truth: This enemy is not normal and his goal is not what their Western minds are trying to force into reality. Logical goals like self-definition and other palatable concepts are not part of the true picture.
Slaughter of a sleeping baby is unacceptable as a tool in the struggle for any type of liberation. It comes from a dark place, from a place that simply wants to destroy you. It is Ukrainian, Polish, German behavior. Actually, it is behavior with which we are quite familiar - behavior that says to the shocked Israeli, "What are you talking about? I do not want you out of Shechem and Ramallah. I have them, anyway. All the money that you invest there will not make me like you. I simply want you out of this world. Go back to the Ukrainians, the Polish, the Austrians and the Germans. Let them take care of you. I did not slaughter the baby because she is an occupier on my sovereign soil. I slaughtered her because she is a Jew."
This is the source of the shock: The understanding that there is nobody with whom to make peace, because they do not want to. The Arabs simply cannot stand the fact that we live anywhere in the world - certainly not in the Land of Israel.
In the past, the leftist elite managed to deal with the shock engendered by terror attacks. Their quintessentially demagogic and confusing slogan, "We will not let the enemies of peace achieve their goal" (and so we will continue with the retreats euphemistically known as the peace process) worked quite well on the public. But now it seems that something is starting to change. The massacre in Itamar shocked Israeli society more than similar attacks in the past because it no longer has anywhere to hide from the conclusions. The Oslo-spin no longer works.
The Itamar massacre was perpetrated on the backdrop of the collapse of the regimes in Arab lands. Mubarak's ouster revealed the fragility of our peace agreement with Egypt. It brought to the surface the fact that the dictators sold us the illusion of peace in the lowest dosage possible to keep us ignoring how their countrymen really felt about Israel. Suddenly, in Tahrir Square, the photograph of the hated dictator is waved high with the symbol most despised by the masses: Not the swastika, but the Star of David. Suddenly, the Jordanian Minister of Justice praises the murderer of the young girls from Beit Shemesh. When the nation is out in the streets, the murderer is no longer a crazed soldier. And if we no longer have peace with Egypt and Jordan, what can we possibly expect from the murderous animals in Awarta? The bottom line is that the Arab world is changing. What we are witnessing now is just the beginning. We are well on the way to becoming once again a "nation that dwells alone."
That is what made the Itamar massacre so shocking, brought all our top statesmen to the funeral, created the new perspective in the reporting of the tragedy and the live coverage on Army Radio.
"And so, since yesterday, I sit here in the corner, frustrated and frightened, internalizing that it is possible that in the end we will not have the peace that we dreamed of," wrote Guy Maroz in Ma'ariv after the massacre.
He even gives a tongue in cheek clue as to the only hope that he can think of: "Since yesterday, I want to hide under the wide Messianic dress of (settler leader - mf) Daniella Weiss."
We are at the threshold of a new reality. On the one hand, we are still firmly meshed onto the Western, Oslo playing field. We do not attack, but only retaliate. We are completely subordinate to the Western values that always force us to try to prove that we are the most miserable victims on the block. We are still very far from the ability to substantially change direction. On the other hand, though, the entire playing field is crumbling away.
Never fear - the shock will dissipate and Guy Maroz and all his friends will revert to their "peace" consciousness. Soon they will demand the destruction of the settlements. After all, this is reality, not a feel-good Hollywood movie. The consciousness of a nation does not change overnight. But within all the events and upheavals, there is a major change taking place: The virtual Oslo ground is crumbling under the feet of the elites that are nurtured by it. The new playing field is going to be "Daniella's wide dress."
Well, not exactly Daniella. We do not expect to win a political victory that will allow us to change the rules of the game in Israel. On the contrary. The game itself is about to change. The only relevant players in the new game will be those of us who have toiled throughout the years for a genuinely Jewish state.
The "Rule of Law" Act
And Isabel his wife said to him, now you will have kingdom over Israel, arise, eat bread and satiate your heart and I will give you the vineyard of Navot the Jezreelite. And she wrote decrees in the name of Achav and she signed them with his seal and she sent the decrees to the elders and to the Horim in his city, who dwelled with Navot. And she wrote in the decrees, declare a fast and seat Navot at the head of the people. (Kings II, 21:7-9)
And he sent royal decrees to all the states of the king, each state in its form of writing and each nation in its language, so that every man would rule in his home and speak the language of his nation.
(The Scroll of Esther 1:22)
What do the decrees of Isabel and Ahashverosh have in common? In both cases, they are an attempt to squelch justified disobedience. In both cases, the decrees are based on "the law."
Navot the Jezreelite is unwilling to sell his family inheritance. Vashti is unwilling to embarrass herself in public. In the face of disobedience that is obviously just, all that a king can use is the most corrupt of tools: The rule of law.
It is impossible to miss the similarity in style. They make laws, sign them with the royal seal and send them throughout the kingdom. It is reminiscent of the Evacuation/Compensation law, enacted with careful attention to the letter of the law. This was not a criminal act, heaven forbid. It was the product of an orderly legislative process that encompasses everyone!
When the assassination plot of Bigtan and Teresh is exposed, there is no need for all this. Everyone understands that they will receive the death penalty. But when justice is not with the king, he can always pull the "rule of law" act out of his hat.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Purim,
Moshe Feiglin
And he sent royal decrees to all the states of the king, each state in its form of writing and each nation in its language, so that every man would rule in his home and speak the language of his nation.
(The Scroll of Esther 1:22)
What do the decrees of Isabel and Ahashverosh have in common? In both cases, they are an attempt to squelch justified disobedience. In both cases, the decrees are based on "the law."
Navot the Jezreelite is unwilling to sell his family inheritance. Vashti is unwilling to embarrass herself in public. In the face of disobedience that is obviously just, all that a king can use is the most corrupt of tools: The rule of law.
It is impossible to miss the similarity in style. They make laws, sign them with the royal seal and send them throughout the kingdom. It is reminiscent of the Evacuation/Compensation law, enacted with careful attention to the letter of the law. This was not a criminal act, heaven forbid. It was the product of an orderly legislative process that encompasses everyone!
When the assassination plot of Bigtan and Teresh is exposed, there is no need for all this. Everyone understands that they will receive the death penalty. But when justice is not with the king, he can always pull the "rule of law" act out of his hat.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Purim,
Moshe Feiglin
Three Jewish children
Our World: Three Jewish children
By CAROLINE B. GLICK, The Jerusalem Post
March 15, 2011
People are no longer ashamed to parade negative feelings toward Jews.
Ruth Fogel was in the bathroom when the Palestinian terrorists pounced
on her husband Udi and their three-month-old daughter Hadas, slitting
their throats as they lay in bed on Friday night in their home in
Itamar.
The terrorists stabbed Ruth to death as she came out of the bathroom.
With both parents and the newborn dead, they moved on to the other
children, going into a bedroom where Ruth and Udi’s sons Yoav (11) and
Elad (four) were sleeping. They stabbed them through their hearts and
slit their throats.
The murderers apparently missed another bedroom where the Fogels’
other sons, eight-year-old Ro’i and two-year-old Yishai were asleep
because they left them alive. The boys were found by their big sister,
12-year-old Tamar, when she returned home from a friend’s house two
hours after her family was massacred.
Tamar found Yishai standing over his parents’ bodies screaming for
them to wake up.
In his eulogy at the family’s funeral on Sunday, former chief rabbi
Yisrael Meir Lau told Tamar that her job from now on is to be her
surviving brothers’ mommy.
In a rare move, the Prime Minister’s Office released photos of the
Fogel family’s blood-drenched corpses.
They are shown as they were found by security forces.
There was Hadas, dead on her parents’ bed, next to her dead father Udi.
There was Elad, lying on a small throw rug wearing socks. His little
hands were clenched into fists. What was a four-year-old to do against
two grown men with knives? He clenched his fists. So did his big
brother.
Maybe the Prime Minister’s Office thought the pictures would shock the
world. Maybe Binyamin Netanyahu thought the massacre of three little
children would move someone to rethink their hatred of Israel.
That was the theme of his address to the nation Saturday night.
Netanyahu directed most of his words to the hostile world. He spoke to
the leaders who rush to condemn Israel at the UN Security Council
every time we assert our right to this land by permitting Jews to
build homes. He demanded that they condemn the murder of Jewish
children with the same enthusiasm and speed.
He shouldn’t have bothered.
The government released the photos on Saturday night. Within hours,
the social activism website My Israel posted a short video of the
photographs on YouTube along with the names and ages of the victims.
Within two hours YouTube removed the video.
What was Netanyahu thinking? Didn’t he get the memo that photos of
murdered Jewish children are unacceptable? If they’re published,
someone might start thinking about the nature of Palestinian society.
Someone might consider the fact that in the Palestinian Authority,
anti-Jewish propaganda is so ubiquitous and so murderous that killing
the Fogel babies was an act of heroism. The baby killers knew that by
murdering Udi, Ruth, Hadas, Yoav and Elad they would enter the
pantheon of Palestinian heroes. They can expect to have a sports
stadium or school in Ramallah or Hebron built for them by the
Palestinian Authority and underwritten by American or European
taxpayers.
And indeed, the murder of the Fogel children and their parents was
greeted with jubilation in Gaza.
Carnivals were held in the streets as Hamas members handed out sweets.
Obviously YouTube managers are not interested in being held
responsible for someone noticing that genocidal Jew hatred defines
Palestinian society – and the Arab world as a whole. But they really
have no reason to be concerned. Even if they had allowed the video to
be posted for more than an hour, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
The enlightened peoples of Europe, and growing numbers of Americans,
have no interest in hearing or seeing anything that depicts Jews as
good people, or even just as regular people. It is not that the
cultured, intellectual A-listers in Europe and America share the
Palestinians’ genocidal hatred of the Jewish people.
The powerful newspaper editors, television commentators, playwrights,
fashion designers, filmmakers and professors don’t spend time thinking
about how to prepare the next slaughter. They don’t teach their
children from the time they are Hadas and Elad Fogel’s ages that they
should strive to become mass murderers. They would never dream of
doing these things. They know there is a division of labor in
contemporary anti-Semitism.
The job of the intellectual luminaries in Western high society today
is to hate Jews the old-fashioned way, the way their greatgrandparents
hated Jews back in the days of the early 20th century before that
villain Adolf Hitler gave Jewhating a bad name.
Much has been made of the confluence of anti-Semitic bile pouring out
of the chattering classes. From Mel Gibson to Julian Assange to
Charlie Sheen to John Galliano, it seems like a day doesn’t go by
without some new celebrity exposing himself as a Jew hater.
It isn’t that the beautiful people and their followers suddenly
decided that Jews are not their cup of tea (or rail of cocaine). It’s
just that we have reached the point where people no longer feel
embarrassed to parade negative feelings towards Jews.
A DECADE ago, the revelation that French ambassador to Britain Daniel
Bernard referred to Israel as “that shi**y little country,” was
shocking. Now it is standard fare. Everyone who is anyone will compare
Israel to Nazi Germany without even realizing this is nothing but
Holocaust denial.
The post-Holocaust dam reining in anti-Semitism burst in 2002. As
Jewish children and parents like the Fogels were being murdered in
their beds, on the streets, in discotheques, cafés and supermarkets
throughout Israel, fashionable anti-Semites rejoiced at the
opportunity to hate Jews in public again.
The collective Jew, Israel was accused of everything from genocide to
infanticide to just plain nastiness.
Israel’s leaders were caricatured as Fagin, Shylock, Pontius Pilate
and Hitler on the front pages of newspapers throughout Europe. IDF
soldiers were portrayed as Nazis, and Israeli families were
dehumanized.
No longer civilians with an inherent right to live, in universities
throughout the US and Europe, Israeli innocents were castigated as
“extremist-Zionists” or “settlers” who basically deserved to be
killed.
Professors whose “academic” achievements involved publishing sanitized
postmodern versions of anti-Jewish Palestinian propaganda were granted
tenure and rewarded with lucrative book contracts.
Today, when properly modulated, Jew hatred is a career maker. Take
playwright Caryl Churchill’s 1,300- word anti-Semitic monologue Seven
Jewish Children.
The script accuses the entire population of Israel of mass murders
which were never committed.
For her efforts, Churchill became an international celebrity. The
Royal Court Theater produced her anti- Jewish agitprop. The Guardian
featured it on its home page. When Jewish groups demanded that The
Guardian remove the blood libel from its website, the paper refused.
Instead, it left the anti-Semitic propaganda on its homepage, but in a
gesture of openmindedness, hosted a debate about whether or not Seven
Jewish Children is anti-Semitic.
From London, Seven Jewish Children went on tour in Europe and the US.
In a bid to show how tolerant of dissent they are, Jewish communities
in America hosted showings of the play, which portrays Jewish parents
as monsters who train their children to become mass murderers.
Seven Jewish Children’s success was repeated by the Turkish
anti-Semitic action film Valley of the Wolves- Palestine, which
premiered on January 28 – International Holocaust Memorial Day. The
hero of that film is a Turkish James Bond character who comes to
Israel to avenge his brothers, who were killed by IDF forces on the
Turkish-Hamas terror ship Mavi Marmara last May.
No doubt owing to the success of Seven Jewish Children and Valley of
the Wolves-Palestine and other such initiatives, anti-Semitic art and
entertainment is a growth sector in Europe.
Last month Britain struck again. Channel 4 produced a new piece of
anti-Semitic bile – a four-part prime-time miniseries called The
Promise. It presents itself as an historical drama about Israel and
the Palestinians, but its relationship with actual history begins and
ends with the wardrobes. In what has become the meme of all European
and international left-liberal salons, the only good Jews in the
mini-series are the ones who died in the Holocaust. From the show’s
perspective, every Jew who took up arms to liberate Israel from the
British and defend it from the Arabs is a Nazi.
WHAT ALL this shows is that Netanyahu was wasting his time calling on
world leaders to condemn the murder of the Fogel family. What does a
condemnation mean? France and Britain condemned the massacre, along
with the US. Does that exculpate the French and British for their
embrace of anti-Semitism? Does it make them friends of the Jewish
state? And say a British playwright sees the YouTubecensored
photographs. No self-respecting British playwright will write a play
called Three Jewish Children telling the story of how Palestinian
parents do in fact teach their children to become mass murderers of
Jews. And if a playwright were to write such a play, The Royal Court
Theater wouldn’t produce it. The Guardian wouldn’t post it on its
website. Liberal Jewish community centers in America wouldn’t show it,
nor would university student organizations in Europe or America.
No, if someone wanted to use the photographs of Yoav’s and Elad’s
mangled corpses and clenched fists as inspiration to write a play or
feature film about the fact that the Palestinians have no national
identity outside their quest to annihilate the Jewish state, he would
find no mass market.
The headlines describing the attack make all this clear.
From the BBC to CNN the Fogels were not described as Israelis. They
were a “settler family.” Their murderers were “alleged terrorists.”
As far as the opinion makers of Europe and much of America are
concerned, the Yoavs and Hadases and Elads of Israel have no right to
live if they live in “a settlement.”
So too, they believe that Palestinians have a right to murder Israelis
who serve in the IDF and who believe that Jews should be able to live
freely wherever we want because this land belongs to us.
Until these genteel Jew haters learn to think otherwise, Israel should
neither seek nor care if they condemn this or any other act of
Palestinian genocide. We shouldn’t care about them at all.
caroline@carolineglick.com
==============================
Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green)
POB 7352, Jerusalem 91072, Israel
Tel: 972-2-624-9887 Fax: 972-2-624-5380
mailto:wfit2@womeningreen.org
http://www.womeningreen.org
By CAROLINE B. GLICK, The Jerusalem Post
March 15, 2011
People are no longer ashamed to parade negative feelings toward Jews.
Ruth Fogel was in the bathroom when the Palestinian terrorists pounced
on her husband Udi and their three-month-old daughter Hadas, slitting
their throats as they lay in bed on Friday night in their home in
Itamar.
The terrorists stabbed Ruth to death as she came out of the bathroom.
With both parents and the newborn dead, they moved on to the other
children, going into a bedroom where Ruth and Udi’s sons Yoav (11) and
Elad (four) were sleeping. They stabbed them through their hearts and
slit their throats.
The murderers apparently missed another bedroom where the Fogels’
other sons, eight-year-old Ro’i and two-year-old Yishai were asleep
because they left them alive. The boys were found by their big sister,
12-year-old Tamar, when she returned home from a friend’s house two
hours after her family was massacred.
Tamar found Yishai standing over his parents’ bodies screaming for
them to wake up.
In his eulogy at the family’s funeral on Sunday, former chief rabbi
Yisrael Meir Lau told Tamar that her job from now on is to be her
surviving brothers’ mommy.
In a rare move, the Prime Minister’s Office released photos of the
Fogel family’s blood-drenched corpses.
They are shown as they were found by security forces.
There was Hadas, dead on her parents’ bed, next to her dead father Udi.
There was Elad, lying on a small throw rug wearing socks. His little
hands were clenched into fists. What was a four-year-old to do against
two grown men with knives? He clenched his fists. So did his big
brother.
Maybe the Prime Minister’s Office thought the pictures would shock the
world. Maybe Binyamin Netanyahu thought the massacre of three little
children would move someone to rethink their hatred of Israel.
That was the theme of his address to the nation Saturday night.
Netanyahu directed most of his words to the hostile world. He spoke to
the leaders who rush to condemn Israel at the UN Security Council
every time we assert our right to this land by permitting Jews to
build homes. He demanded that they condemn the murder of Jewish
children with the same enthusiasm and speed.
He shouldn’t have bothered.
The government released the photos on Saturday night. Within hours,
the social activism website My Israel posted a short video of the
photographs on YouTube along with the names and ages of the victims.
Within two hours YouTube removed the video.
What was Netanyahu thinking? Didn’t he get the memo that photos of
murdered Jewish children are unacceptable? If they’re published,
someone might start thinking about the nature of Palestinian society.
Someone might consider the fact that in the Palestinian Authority,
anti-Jewish propaganda is so ubiquitous and so murderous that killing
the Fogel babies was an act of heroism. The baby killers knew that by
murdering Udi, Ruth, Hadas, Yoav and Elad they would enter the
pantheon of Palestinian heroes. They can expect to have a sports
stadium or school in Ramallah or Hebron built for them by the
Palestinian Authority and underwritten by American or European
taxpayers.
And indeed, the murder of the Fogel children and their parents was
greeted with jubilation in Gaza.
Carnivals were held in the streets as Hamas members handed out sweets.
Obviously YouTube managers are not interested in being held
responsible for someone noticing that genocidal Jew hatred defines
Palestinian society – and the Arab world as a whole. But they really
have no reason to be concerned. Even if they had allowed the video to
be posted for more than an hour, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
The enlightened peoples of Europe, and growing numbers of Americans,
have no interest in hearing or seeing anything that depicts Jews as
good people, or even just as regular people. It is not that the
cultured, intellectual A-listers in Europe and America share the
Palestinians’ genocidal hatred of the Jewish people.
The powerful newspaper editors, television commentators, playwrights,
fashion designers, filmmakers and professors don’t spend time thinking
about how to prepare the next slaughter. They don’t teach their
children from the time they are Hadas and Elad Fogel’s ages that they
should strive to become mass murderers. They would never dream of
doing these things. They know there is a division of labor in
contemporary anti-Semitism.
The job of the intellectual luminaries in Western high society today
is to hate Jews the old-fashioned way, the way their greatgrandparents
hated Jews back in the days of the early 20th century before that
villain Adolf Hitler gave Jewhating a bad name.
Much has been made of the confluence of anti-Semitic bile pouring out
of the chattering classes. From Mel Gibson to Julian Assange to
Charlie Sheen to John Galliano, it seems like a day doesn’t go by
without some new celebrity exposing himself as a Jew hater.
It isn’t that the beautiful people and their followers suddenly
decided that Jews are not their cup of tea (or rail of cocaine). It’s
just that we have reached the point where people no longer feel
embarrassed to parade negative feelings towards Jews.
A DECADE ago, the revelation that French ambassador to Britain Daniel
Bernard referred to Israel as “that shi**y little country,” was
shocking. Now it is standard fare. Everyone who is anyone will compare
Israel to Nazi Germany without even realizing this is nothing but
Holocaust denial.
The post-Holocaust dam reining in anti-Semitism burst in 2002. As
Jewish children and parents like the Fogels were being murdered in
their beds, on the streets, in discotheques, cafés and supermarkets
throughout Israel, fashionable anti-Semites rejoiced at the
opportunity to hate Jews in public again.
The collective Jew, Israel was accused of everything from genocide to
infanticide to just plain nastiness.
Israel’s leaders were caricatured as Fagin, Shylock, Pontius Pilate
and Hitler on the front pages of newspapers throughout Europe. IDF
soldiers were portrayed as Nazis, and Israeli families were
dehumanized.
No longer civilians with an inherent right to live, in universities
throughout the US and Europe, Israeli innocents were castigated as
“extremist-Zionists” or “settlers” who basically deserved to be
killed.
Professors whose “academic” achievements involved publishing sanitized
postmodern versions of anti-Jewish Palestinian propaganda were granted
tenure and rewarded with lucrative book contracts.
Today, when properly modulated, Jew hatred is a career maker. Take
playwright Caryl Churchill’s 1,300- word anti-Semitic monologue Seven
Jewish Children.
The script accuses the entire population of Israel of mass murders
which were never committed.
For her efforts, Churchill became an international celebrity. The
Royal Court Theater produced her anti- Jewish agitprop. The Guardian
featured it on its home page. When Jewish groups demanded that The
Guardian remove the blood libel from its website, the paper refused.
Instead, it left the anti-Semitic propaganda on its homepage, but in a
gesture of openmindedness, hosted a debate about whether or not Seven
Jewish Children is anti-Semitic.
From London, Seven Jewish Children went on tour in Europe and the US.
In a bid to show how tolerant of dissent they are, Jewish communities
in America hosted showings of the play, which portrays Jewish parents
as monsters who train their children to become mass murderers.
Seven Jewish Children’s success was repeated by the Turkish
anti-Semitic action film Valley of the Wolves- Palestine, which
premiered on January 28 – International Holocaust Memorial Day. The
hero of that film is a Turkish James Bond character who comes to
Israel to avenge his brothers, who were killed by IDF forces on the
Turkish-Hamas terror ship Mavi Marmara last May.
No doubt owing to the success of Seven Jewish Children and Valley of
the Wolves-Palestine and other such initiatives, anti-Semitic art and
entertainment is a growth sector in Europe.
Last month Britain struck again. Channel 4 produced a new piece of
anti-Semitic bile – a four-part prime-time miniseries called The
Promise. It presents itself as an historical drama about Israel and
the Palestinians, but its relationship with actual history begins and
ends with the wardrobes. In what has become the meme of all European
and international left-liberal salons, the only good Jews in the
mini-series are the ones who died in the Holocaust. From the show’s
perspective, every Jew who took up arms to liberate Israel from the
British and defend it from the Arabs is a Nazi.
WHAT ALL this shows is that Netanyahu was wasting his time calling on
world leaders to condemn the murder of the Fogel family. What does a
condemnation mean? France and Britain condemned the massacre, along
with the US. Does that exculpate the French and British for their
embrace of anti-Semitism? Does it make them friends of the Jewish
state? And say a British playwright sees the YouTubecensored
photographs. No self-respecting British playwright will write a play
called Three Jewish Children telling the story of how Palestinian
parents do in fact teach their children to become mass murderers of
Jews. And if a playwright were to write such a play, The Royal Court
Theater wouldn’t produce it. The Guardian wouldn’t post it on its
website. Liberal Jewish community centers in America wouldn’t show it,
nor would university student organizations in Europe or America.
No, if someone wanted to use the photographs of Yoav’s and Elad’s
mangled corpses and clenched fists as inspiration to write a play or
feature film about the fact that the Palestinians have no national
identity outside their quest to annihilate the Jewish state, he would
find no mass market.
The headlines describing the attack make all this clear.
From the BBC to CNN the Fogels were not described as Israelis. They
were a “settler family.” Their murderers were “alleged terrorists.”
As far as the opinion makers of Europe and much of America are
concerned, the Yoavs and Hadases and Elads of Israel have no right to
live if they live in “a settlement.”
So too, they believe that Palestinians have a right to murder Israelis
who serve in the IDF and who believe that Jews should be able to live
freely wherever we want because this land belongs to us.
Until these genteel Jew haters learn to think otherwise, Israel should
neither seek nor care if they condemn this or any other act of
Palestinian genocide. We shouldn’t care about them at all.
caroline@carolineglick.com
==============================
Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green)
POB 7352, Jerusalem 91072, Israel
Tel: 972-2-624-9887 Fax: 972-2-624-5380
mailto:wfit2@womeningreen.org
http://www.womeningreen.org
March 19, 2011
Hamas wins Cairo's recognition, strikes Israel with 50 mortars
Israeli civilians living around the Gaza border woke up Saturday, March 19, to the most massive mortar attack in years – 50 rounds fired in 15 minutes. Two civilians were injured and substantial damage caused to property. Hamas unusually claimed responsibility, emboldened by the support it has won from a new ally, the new rulers of Cairo, which have now lined up with Syria and Iran.
The Netanyahu government has not informed the Israeli public about the ominous new winds blowing in fromCairo although they are already in motion: Cairo has given Hamas rule of the Gaza Strip de facto recognition, is about to lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip and is forging new understandings with Damascus and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad radicals based there.
The Egyptian military which has taken over in Cairo also turned a blind eye to at least two or three Iranian arms ships which, prior to the capture of the A.S. Victoria last week, made it through the Israeli sea blockade and delivered weapons, including C-704 shore-to-sea missiles at El Arish. Hamas will be free to go out and collect them through the reopened Rafah crossing.
It is now obvious that Cairo's permission for two Iranian warships to transit the Suez Canal on Feb. 22, knowing that at least one was laden with weapons for extremists, was in line with the new Egyptian policy.
Israel had earlier allowed two Egyptian mechanized infantry brigades to enter Sinai and deploy along its Mediterranean coast, although this opened up the demilitarization clause of the 1979 peace treaty. Israel expected these troops to guard the gas pipeline carrying gas to Israel and Jordan and block the Iranian arms deliveries to Hamas. But this did not happen.
This week, spokesmen on behalf of the pipeline company announced that Egyptian gas was again flowing. It was not. After Israel appealed to the White House and the heads of the Senate and House foreign relations committees to intercede with Egypt, just a trickle of gas reached the pipeline on the pretext that the pipeline needed testing after it was blown up by Hamas on Feb. 5.
The Egyptian charade is ably supported by the Israeli government and its defense spokesmen, who keep on assuring everyone that nothing has changed in Egyptian-Israeli peace relations.
According to debkafile's Cairo sources, the live wire behind the Egyptian policy U-turn is the new foreign minister Nabil Alaraby. Only two weeks on the job, the first tasks he set himself were to lift the Egyptian-Israeli embargo on the Gaza Strip, reopen the Fatah crossing to free passage of people and goods, downgrade relations with Israel and the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, and open a new page with Syria.
During the two days US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent in Cairo (March 15-16), the Egyptian Supreme Military Council sent the Mahabharat (Secret Service) chief Gen. Mourad Mwafi to Damascus. Syrian President Bashar Assad received him for a long conversation Friday, March 19, on the third day of his visit.
Thursday, the Egyptian general met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. He was not put off by Meshaal's participation in the Iran-backed Islamist radical summit in Khartoum in the first week of March and its approval of two missions – to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Cairo and to step up terrorist attacks on Israel.
So far, Israeli forces have had no success in tracking down the Hamas perpetrators of the vicious murders of five family members at Itamar on March 11. Considering the precipitous downturn in Israel's political and military situation and the ostrich-like reactions of its leaders, it looks very much as though Hamas is now dictating Israel's security agenda. Hamas, backed to the hilt by Iran, Syria and now Egypt, feels it can safely intensify its warfare on Israel without being slapped down.
The Netanyahu government has not informed the Israeli public about the ominous new winds blowing in fromCairo although they are already in motion: Cairo has given Hamas rule of the Gaza Strip de facto recognition, is about to lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip and is forging new understandings with Damascus and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad radicals based there.
The Egyptian military which has taken over in Cairo also turned a blind eye to at least two or three Iranian arms ships which, prior to the capture of the A.S. Victoria last week, made it through the Israeli sea blockade and delivered weapons, including C-704 shore-to-sea missiles at El Arish. Hamas will be free to go out and collect them through the reopened Rafah crossing.
It is now obvious that Cairo's permission for two Iranian warships to transit the Suez Canal on Feb. 22, knowing that at least one was laden with weapons for extremists, was in line with the new Egyptian policy.
Israel had earlier allowed two Egyptian mechanized infantry brigades to enter Sinai and deploy along its Mediterranean coast, although this opened up the demilitarization clause of the 1979 peace treaty. Israel expected these troops to guard the gas pipeline carrying gas to Israel and Jordan and block the Iranian arms deliveries to Hamas. But this did not happen.
This week, spokesmen on behalf of the pipeline company announced that Egyptian gas was again flowing. It was not. After Israel appealed to the White House and the heads of the Senate and House foreign relations committees to intercede with Egypt, just a trickle of gas reached the pipeline on the pretext that the pipeline needed testing after it was blown up by Hamas on Feb. 5.
The Egyptian charade is ably supported by the Israeli government and its defense spokesmen, who keep on assuring everyone that nothing has changed in Egyptian-Israeli peace relations.
According to debkafile's Cairo sources, the live wire behind the Egyptian policy U-turn is the new foreign minister Nabil Alaraby. Only two weeks on the job, the first tasks he set himself were to lift the Egyptian-Israeli embargo on the Gaza Strip, reopen the Fatah crossing to free passage of people and goods, downgrade relations with Israel and the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, and open a new page with Syria.
During the two days US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent in Cairo (March 15-16), the Egyptian Supreme Military Council sent the Mahabharat (Secret Service) chief Gen. Mourad Mwafi to Damascus. Syrian President Bashar Assad received him for a long conversation Friday, March 19, on the third day of his visit.
Thursday, the Egyptian general met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. He was not put off by Meshaal's participation in the Iran-backed Islamist radical summit in Khartoum in the first week of March and its approval of two missions – to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Cairo and to step up terrorist attacks on Israel.
So far, Israeli forces have had no success in tracking down the Hamas perpetrators of the vicious murders of five family members at Itamar on March 11. Considering the precipitous downturn in Israel's political and military situation and the ostrich-like reactions of its leaders, it looks very much as though Hamas is now dictating Israel's security agenda. Hamas, backed to the hilt by Iran, Syria and now Egypt, feels it can safely intensify its warfare on Israel without being slapped down.
March 18, 2011
AN Iranian cargo plane en route to Syria was forced to land in Turkey last night amid fears it may be carrying military or nuclear material.
The plane was being searched at Diyarbakir airport in southeastern Turkey a day after Israeli commandos operating deep in international waters boarded a ship carrying arms allegedly on their way from Iran to Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.
The plane, which took off yesterday from Tehran bound for the Syrian city of Aleppo, landed following an order from the Turkish foreign ministry. Two F-16 jet fighters were put on standby to intervene if the Iranian plane did not obey the orders to land, security sources said.
Anti-nuclear, biological and chemical material units of civilian defence teams took part in the inspection of the plane, Anatolia news agency reported.
In the southern Israeli port of Ashdod, military specialists were checking 39 containers on the deck of the ship Victoria to ascertain the exact amount and type of arms and munitions that they contained.
Sappers would first check for booby traps, they said.
The Liberian-flagged Victoria was intercepted late on Tuesday as it sailed about 200 nautical miles west of Israel's territorial waters. It arrived at Ashdod yesterday.
Top defence officials said earlier that its cargo included Chinese-made C704 anti-ship missiles, which would be a threat to Israeli naval patrols off the Gaza coast.
"(There are) two to four missiles, shore-to-sea missiles, of type C704, a missile with . . . a range of 35km," the deputy commander of the Israeli navy, Rear Admiral Rani Ben-Yehuda, said. "Anything within its range, of course, will find itself in danger."
Defence Minister Ehud Barak made an apparent reference to the same items. "We suspect, we think, that among the weapons there is also the beginnings of an advanced system which could affect our freedom of action along the Gaza shores," he said.
During Israel's 2006 war with Lebanon's Hezbollah, guerillas hit an Israeli warship off Beirut with an Iranian-made missile based on Chinese technology, killing four crewmen.
Israel said the Victoria had sailed from the Turkish port of Mersin, headed for Alexandria in Egypt, but that the arms originated in Iran and were destined for Gaza. "On the boat, we discovered many weapons destined for terror groups in the heart of Gaza," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "We had clear evidence that the vessel was carrying weapons intended to harm Israel.
"The source of the weapons was Iran, which is trying to arm the strip," he said, adding that Tehran had sent the arms through a "relay station" - seemingly alluding to Syria.
The plane, which took off yesterday from Tehran bound for the Syrian city of Aleppo, landed following an order from the Turkish foreign ministry. Two F-16 jet fighters were put on standby to intervene if the Iranian plane did not obey the orders to land, security sources said.
Anti-nuclear, biological and chemical material units of civilian defence teams took part in the inspection of the plane, Anatolia news agency reported.
In the southern Israeli port of Ashdod, military specialists were checking 39 containers on the deck of the ship Victoria to ascertain the exact amount and type of arms and munitions that they contained.
Sappers would first check for booby traps, they said.
The Liberian-flagged Victoria was intercepted late on Tuesday as it sailed about 200 nautical miles west of Israel's territorial waters. It arrived at Ashdod yesterday.
Top defence officials said earlier that its cargo included Chinese-made C704 anti-ship missiles, which would be a threat to Israeli naval patrols off the Gaza coast.
"(There are) two to four missiles, shore-to-sea missiles, of type C704, a missile with . . . a range of 35km," the deputy commander of the Israeli navy, Rear Admiral Rani Ben-Yehuda, said. "Anything within its range, of course, will find itself in danger."
Defence Minister Ehud Barak made an apparent reference to the same items. "We suspect, we think, that among the weapons there is also the beginnings of an advanced system which could affect our freedom of action along the Gaza shores," he said.
During Israel's 2006 war with Lebanon's Hezbollah, guerillas hit an Israeli warship off Beirut with an Iranian-made missile based on Chinese technology, killing four crewmen.
Israel said the Victoria had sailed from the Turkish port of Mersin, headed for Alexandria in Egypt, but that the arms originated in Iran and were destined for Gaza. "On the boat, we discovered many weapons destined for terror groups in the heart of Gaza," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "We had clear evidence that the vessel was carrying weapons intended to harm Israel.
"The source of the weapons was Iran, which is trying to arm the strip," he said, adding that Tehran had sent the arms through a "relay station" - seemingly alluding to Syria.
March 16, 2011
The Political Solution - Feiglin
"And what is your solution?" the leftist asked me.
"I don't have one," I answered.
"You don't have one?"
"I do not have a solution for your problem, but I do have a solution for mine."
When we outline a political program, we must first of all honestly define what the program is supposed to achieve. In other words, how do we understand the strategic objectives of the State of Israel? Current Israeli consciousness dictates that the most important objective is peace. Both Right and Left claim that peace is their desire and that their program will bring the longed-for peace more efficiently.
But both sides are not telling the entire truth. For the Left, peace is a means to an end; the achievement of "normalcy." For the faith-based public, peace is a result and not an objective. It is the result of the achievement of the Jewish goals that our ancestors dreamed of.
Strange as it may sound, the National Camp has never clearly defined its strategic objectives. As a result, it never managed to present a political program and to stand behind it. If you do not define where you want to go, you will never be able to explain how to get there.
The definition of the strategic objective is not the definition of the borders of Israel or the status of the Arabs. That is part of the program. The definition of the strategic objective does not answer the question, "How should we conduct ourselves here in Israel," but rather, "Why do we have to be in Israel?"
The Left answers: So that we can be like the rest of the nations of the world.
The faith-based public says: So that we can be holistic Jews.
The truth is that the faith-based public does not dare reveal its real strategic objective - but at least it has one. Nevertheless, the only objective left on the table - the objective that dictates all of Israel's tactical plans - is the objective of the Left. That is the reason that the Left always rules. Neither the media nor the justice systems are to blame for that. We are - because we never placed an alternative to the Left's agenda on the playing field.
Let us explore the strategic objectives and dreams of the Left.
The Left's objective is for Israel to be a state of all its citizens that conducts itself by Western, liberal standards and that is not committed to Jewish values.
"For me, the Oslo Accords mean forgetting that I am a Jew."
(Authoress Dorit Rabinian, in an interview to Israel's Channel 1 on the first anniversary of Rabin's assassination).
We can say that the strategic objective of the Left is to blur our Jewish identity and to make us forget it by fashioning a liberal state of all its citizens.
All the tactical solutions and political programs proposed by the Left are the logical conclusion of its strategic objective. This is the only way to understand the apparent lack of logic of its plans. The Left strives to achieve its strategic super-objective and to detach the State of Israel from its Jewish identity. Our return to our Biblical landscape and the ideological, faith-based settlement of Biblical Israel are obstacles in its path. The Left does not desire to uproot the settlements and retreat from Hebron and Jerusalem in order to achieve peace. It desires to make peace so that it can uproot the settlements and retreat from Hebron and Jerusalem - the flagships of our Jewish identity.
What then, is the strategic objective that will dictate the tactical solutions of the faith-based public? The objective of the faith-based public is to establish a Jewish State of freedom based on the eternal values of the Nation of Israel: a state that will restore sovereignty to the Jewish Nation that was expelled from its Land, will ingather its exiles, will be a tool to develop its authentic culture, will build its Holy Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and will establish an exemplary society that will sanctify G-d's Name. In short, to create a culture and society for all humanity to emulate.
Do we think that we can achieve this entire lofty goal by tomorrow morning? That would be great, but even if there is a long road ahead of us, we will not be deterred. Our strategic commitment is to continue to march in this direction and certainly not in the opposite direction - by surrendering sovereignty on the Temple Mount to the Moslem wakf, for instance, or by surrendering parts of our Holy Land to foreigners.
We do not strive to erase our Jewish identity but rather, to strengthen and develop it. This also requires that we do not surrender the Biblical Land that ties us to our identity. On the contrary, we must do all that we can to strengthen our hold on our Land.
Now that we have clarified our objective and priorities, we can outline policies that will deal with foreign claims on our Land.
But first, a question: Is the strategic objective of the Arabs clear to us? Can we embark on a political plan without examining the objectives of the Arabs? After all, if we wish to adequately respond to the challenge with which they confront us, shouldn't we examine what they want?
The person who most accurately defined the strategic objectives of the Jews and Arabs was the (anti-Semitic) Foreign Minister of Great Britain, Ernest Bevin. In February, 1947, in his speech before the United Nations in which he transferred the mandate over Palestine from Britain to the UN, Bevin shared some of the insights he had gained from thirty years of British rule over the Land of Israel: Remember - Bevin did not like the Zionists. But he did not deceive himself, as we are wont to do. He astutely observed the following:
"For the Jews, the main point is the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state. For the Arabs, the main point is to oppose Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine to the very end."
We like to deceive ourselves into thinking that the Arabs and Jews share the same objective. But that is not true. The Jews want a state. And the Arabs want to make sure that the Jews do not have it.
Nothing has changed in the 63 years that have passed since Bevin's speech. If the Arabs would have wanted a state, it would have been established long ago. Never has an ethnic group received such generous international aid to establish its state - and the state has not been born. Their objective is not to build their own state - but to destroy ours. The last thing that interests them is a Palestinian state.
Now that we understand the objectives of both sides within our nation and the objective of the Arabs, we can go to the drawing board and design our political plan.
Believe it or not, the Likud constitution clearly states the starting point for a political plan dictated by the faith-based strategy. Not only that, but it deeply understands the Arab strategy:
"The preservation of the right of the Jewish Nation over the Land of Israel as an eternal, inalienable right, persistence in the settlement and development of all parts of the Land of Israel and the application of the sovereignty of the State upon them."
(From the Likud Constitution, Chapt. 4, "The Goals")
It's as simple as that. Just as we applied Israeli sovereignty to Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, so we must do for all parts of the Land of Israel that are in our hands. If we do so with confidence, if we do not leave any doubt as to our firm belief that this is our Land, if we stop nurturing the hopes of the Arabs to succeed in their strategic objective to destroy our sovereignty here - then peace will be at hand. As a result - not as an objective!
And what about the demographic problem?
The Land of Israel is the strategic foundation around which we solve the tactical problems. Herzl understood this when the Jews made up merely a few percent of the total population in the Land. Ben Gurion understood this when he declared the independence of the tiny state of Israel, with a 50% Arab population. Today, we have a solid Jewish majority in Israel of over 60% from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. According to realistic forecasts, the demographic scales are tilting in our favor.
Of course, we must encourage the Arabs who live in Israel to emigrate to any one of the 22 Arab countries or to any other place in the world. These Arabs have developed a culture of work in a modern, Western society. They have professional knowledge in many important areas. Western states are desperate for this type of immigration because they are in the throes of a negative growth pattern. The question is not "Who will build in Canada?" but rather, "Will the builders in Canada be Sudanese, who specialize in building huts, or Arab immigrants from Israel who specialize in building skyscrapers?" A simple calculation shows that if Israel takes the money that it continues to spend on the Left's false solutions of retreat and spends it instead on encouraging Arab emigration, it will have over a quarter of a million dollars per Arab family that chooses to emigrate over the next decade.
What about those Arabs who remain? Will we give them the right to vote?
An Arab who is a loyal resident and completely accepts Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel will enjoy full human rights and permanent resident status. He will not have voting rights. Today, there are American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan who do not have voting rights in the US.
The automatic connection that we are used to making between human rights and political rights is false. Every country must honor human rights, protect the life, property and honor of any minority that accepts and respects it sovereignty and power. Actually, what Israel did to its loyal citizens in Gush Katif would be forbidden to do to any foreigner or citizen in any country. Political rights, however, are a different issue. Some countries grant unchecked citizenship while other Western countries, like Japan and Switzerland, do not necessarily grant residents citizenship even if they are third generation residents of those countries.
The State of Israel is both a Jewish and a democratic state. Not the opposite. We did not return to our Land just to establish another democracy. For that, we could simply have emigrated from Russia to America. We returned to the Land of Israel to establish a Jewish state. Around this principle, a democracy was formed to serve - not eliminate - the Jewish State.
In addition, voting rights should be given to Diaspora Jews who have tied their fate to the State of Israel. For after all, we are the State of the Jews - the state of all the Jews - not just the Israelis.
Will the world accept this plan? The existing Jewish identity-blurring plan has convinced the world, and it no longer recognizes the legitimacy of the Jewish State that even the Israelis do not want. The world expects us to be our authentic selves and to conduct ourselves in accordance with our Jewish strategic objective. When that happens, it will ultimately accept this plan.
And what about the Left? I do not have the solution for the Left's problem. I do not know how to flee my identity and I have no desire to do so. Other than continuing to love them, I have no answers for the identity crisis plaguing the leftist minority. But there certainly is a solution for the large Jewish majority in the Land of Israel.
"I don't have one," I answered.
"You don't have one?"
"I do not have a solution for your problem, but I do have a solution for mine."
When we outline a political program, we must first of all honestly define what the program is supposed to achieve. In other words, how do we understand the strategic objectives of the State of Israel? Current Israeli consciousness dictates that the most important objective is peace. Both Right and Left claim that peace is their desire and that their program will bring the longed-for peace more efficiently.
But both sides are not telling the entire truth. For the Left, peace is a means to an end; the achievement of "normalcy." For the faith-based public, peace is a result and not an objective. It is the result of the achievement of the Jewish goals that our ancestors dreamed of.
Strange as it may sound, the National Camp has never clearly defined its strategic objectives. As a result, it never managed to present a political program and to stand behind it. If you do not define where you want to go, you will never be able to explain how to get there.
The definition of the strategic objective is not the definition of the borders of Israel or the status of the Arabs. That is part of the program. The definition of the strategic objective does not answer the question, "How should we conduct ourselves here in Israel," but rather, "Why do we have to be in Israel?"
The Left answers: So that we can be like the rest of the nations of the world.
The faith-based public says: So that we can be holistic Jews.
The truth is that the faith-based public does not dare reveal its real strategic objective - but at least it has one. Nevertheless, the only objective left on the table - the objective that dictates all of Israel's tactical plans - is the objective of the Left. That is the reason that the Left always rules. Neither the media nor the justice systems are to blame for that. We are - because we never placed an alternative to the Left's agenda on the playing field.
Let us explore the strategic objectives and dreams of the Left.
The Left's objective is for Israel to be a state of all its citizens that conducts itself by Western, liberal standards and that is not committed to Jewish values.
"For me, the Oslo Accords mean forgetting that I am a Jew."
(Authoress Dorit Rabinian, in an interview to Israel's Channel 1 on the first anniversary of Rabin's assassination).
We can say that the strategic objective of the Left is to blur our Jewish identity and to make us forget it by fashioning a liberal state of all its citizens.
All the tactical solutions and political programs proposed by the Left are the logical conclusion of its strategic objective. This is the only way to understand the apparent lack of logic of its plans. The Left strives to achieve its strategic super-objective and to detach the State of Israel from its Jewish identity. Our return to our Biblical landscape and the ideological, faith-based settlement of Biblical Israel are obstacles in its path. The Left does not desire to uproot the settlements and retreat from Hebron and Jerusalem in order to achieve peace. It desires to make peace so that it can uproot the settlements and retreat from Hebron and Jerusalem - the flagships of our Jewish identity.
What then, is the strategic objective that will dictate the tactical solutions of the faith-based public? The objective of the faith-based public is to establish a Jewish State of freedom based on the eternal values of the Nation of Israel: a state that will restore sovereignty to the Jewish Nation that was expelled from its Land, will ingather its exiles, will be a tool to develop its authentic culture, will build its Holy Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and will establish an exemplary society that will sanctify G-d's Name. In short, to create a culture and society for all humanity to emulate.
Do we think that we can achieve this entire lofty goal by tomorrow morning? That would be great, but even if there is a long road ahead of us, we will not be deterred. Our strategic commitment is to continue to march in this direction and certainly not in the opposite direction - by surrendering sovereignty on the Temple Mount to the Moslem wakf, for instance, or by surrendering parts of our Holy Land to foreigners.
We do not strive to erase our Jewish identity but rather, to strengthen and develop it. This also requires that we do not surrender the Biblical Land that ties us to our identity. On the contrary, we must do all that we can to strengthen our hold on our Land.
Now that we have clarified our objective and priorities, we can outline policies that will deal with foreign claims on our Land.
But first, a question: Is the strategic objective of the Arabs clear to us? Can we embark on a political plan without examining the objectives of the Arabs? After all, if we wish to adequately respond to the challenge with which they confront us, shouldn't we examine what they want?
The person who most accurately defined the strategic objectives of the Jews and Arabs was the (anti-Semitic) Foreign Minister of Great Britain, Ernest Bevin. In February, 1947, in his speech before the United Nations in which he transferred the mandate over Palestine from Britain to the UN, Bevin shared some of the insights he had gained from thirty years of British rule over the Land of Israel: Remember - Bevin did not like the Zionists. But he did not deceive himself, as we are wont to do. He astutely observed the following:
"For the Jews, the main point is the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state. For the Arabs, the main point is to oppose Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine to the very end."
We like to deceive ourselves into thinking that the Arabs and Jews share the same objective. But that is not true. The Jews want a state. And the Arabs want to make sure that the Jews do not have it.
Nothing has changed in the 63 years that have passed since Bevin's speech. If the Arabs would have wanted a state, it would have been established long ago. Never has an ethnic group received such generous international aid to establish its state - and the state has not been born. Their objective is not to build their own state - but to destroy ours. The last thing that interests them is a Palestinian state.
Now that we understand the objectives of both sides within our nation and the objective of the Arabs, we can go to the drawing board and design our political plan.
Believe it or not, the Likud constitution clearly states the starting point for a political plan dictated by the faith-based strategy. Not only that, but it deeply understands the Arab strategy:
"The preservation of the right of the Jewish Nation over the Land of Israel as an eternal, inalienable right, persistence in the settlement and development of all parts of the Land of Israel and the application of the sovereignty of the State upon them."
(From the Likud Constitution, Chapt. 4, "The Goals")
It's as simple as that. Just as we applied Israeli sovereignty to Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, so we must do for all parts of the Land of Israel that are in our hands. If we do so with confidence, if we do not leave any doubt as to our firm belief that this is our Land, if we stop nurturing the hopes of the Arabs to succeed in their strategic objective to destroy our sovereignty here - then peace will be at hand. As a result - not as an objective!
And what about the demographic problem?
The Land of Israel is the strategic foundation around which we solve the tactical problems. Herzl understood this when the Jews made up merely a few percent of the total population in the Land. Ben Gurion understood this when he declared the independence of the tiny state of Israel, with a 50% Arab population. Today, we have a solid Jewish majority in Israel of over 60% from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. According to realistic forecasts, the demographic scales are tilting in our favor.
Of course, we must encourage the Arabs who live in Israel to emigrate to any one of the 22 Arab countries or to any other place in the world. These Arabs have developed a culture of work in a modern, Western society. They have professional knowledge in many important areas. Western states are desperate for this type of immigration because they are in the throes of a negative growth pattern. The question is not "Who will build in Canada?" but rather, "Will the builders in Canada be Sudanese, who specialize in building huts, or Arab immigrants from Israel who specialize in building skyscrapers?" A simple calculation shows that if Israel takes the money that it continues to spend on the Left's false solutions of retreat and spends it instead on encouraging Arab emigration, it will have over a quarter of a million dollars per Arab family that chooses to emigrate over the next decade.
What about those Arabs who remain? Will we give them the right to vote?
An Arab who is a loyal resident and completely accepts Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel will enjoy full human rights and permanent resident status. He will not have voting rights. Today, there are American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan who do not have voting rights in the US.
The automatic connection that we are used to making between human rights and political rights is false. Every country must honor human rights, protect the life, property and honor of any minority that accepts and respects it sovereignty and power. Actually, what Israel did to its loyal citizens in Gush Katif would be forbidden to do to any foreigner or citizen in any country. Political rights, however, are a different issue. Some countries grant unchecked citizenship while other Western countries, like Japan and Switzerland, do not necessarily grant residents citizenship even if they are third generation residents of those countries.
The State of Israel is both a Jewish and a democratic state. Not the opposite. We did not return to our Land just to establish another democracy. For that, we could simply have emigrated from Russia to America. We returned to the Land of Israel to establish a Jewish state. Around this principle, a democracy was formed to serve - not eliminate - the Jewish State.
In addition, voting rights should be given to Diaspora Jews who have tied their fate to the State of Israel. For after all, we are the State of the Jews - the state of all the Jews - not just the Israelis.
Will the world accept this plan? The existing Jewish identity-blurring plan has convinced the world, and it no longer recognizes the legitimacy of the Jewish State that even the Israelis do not want. The world expects us to be our authentic selves and to conduct ourselves in accordance with our Jewish strategic objective. When that happens, it will ultimately accept this plan.
And what about the Left? I do not have the solution for the Left's problem. I do not know how to flee my identity and I have no desire to do so. Other than continuing to love them, I have no answers for the identity crisis plaguing the leftist minority. But there certainly is a solution for the large Jewish majority in the Land of Israel.
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