RUTHFULLY YOURS

At this time 50 years ago, Israel was fighting the Six Day War and conquering territories. Since then it has returned the Sinai to Egypt, withdrawn from Gaza, retained control of the Golan Heights, and created a self-governing Palestinian entity in part of the West Bank while retaining overall security control there.

This 50-year anniversary has seen a flood of statements lauding or lamenting the Six Day War and its outcomes for Israel. Statements of the former kind emphasize that the war gave Israel defensible borders, a close alliance with the United States (by showing that Israel was a regional power), and, eventually, peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.

Among the best in this vein were op-eds by Michael Oren and Bret Stephens.

Statements of the latter kind bemoan Israel’s “occupation” of the Palestinians and describe it as a disaster that has to end — fast. And UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres offers some of the most egregious remarks in this vein.

“This occupation,” Guterres writes:

… has imposed a heavy humanitarian and development burden on the Palestinian people. Among them are generation after generation of Palestinians who have been compelled to grow up and live in ever more crowded refugee camps, many in abject poverty, and with little or no prospect of a better life for their children.

Further, he writes:

Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will remove a driver of violent extremism and terrorism in the Middle East and open the doors to cooperation, security, prosperity and human rights for all.

Let’s start with Guterres’ first claim about the alleged misery of Palestinian life since Israel took over the territory.

A few days before Guterres posted his statement, popular Israeli columnist Ben-Dror Yemini published a piece called “The truth about the occupation.” Yemini is not a right-winger; he wants Israel to eventually withdraw from most of the West Bank and separate from the Palestinians. But he also wants the discourse to be based on truth and not propaganda.

Yemini looks at some key elements of Palestinian life and compares the situations before and after the “Israeli occupation” (I use the scare quotes because Israel has withdrawn from Gaza and — except for anti-terror operations — Area A of the West Bank):

Education: Before the Six Day War in 1967, there was not a single university in the West Bank (under Jordanian rule) and Gaza (under Egyptian rule). “Today, there are more than 50 higher education institutions in the territories.”

This apparent repudiation of terrorism is a startling development for Abbas. The only catch is that when it comes to Israel, Abbas takes quite the opposite line.

For the past two years, Palestinians have been waging a new type of “intifada” against Israel — one that consists of knife and car-ramming attacks, similar to the ones carried out in Britain, France and Germany. This wave of attacks, which began in September 2015, has claimed the lives of 49 people and injured more than 700. Since then, Palestinians have carried out more than 177 stabbings, 144 shootings and 58 vehicular attacks.

Adding to the hypocrisy, Abbas and his PA leadership often point an accusing finger at Israel for killing the terrorists. Instead of condemning the perpetrators, Abbas and the Palestinians regularly accuse Israel of carrying out “extra-judicial killings” of the terrorists. In other words, Palestinian leaders save their condemnation for Israeli soldiers and policemen for defending themselves and firing at those who come to stab them with knives and axes or try to run them over with their cars. How would the British or French governments react if someone condemned them for killing the terrorists on the streets of Paris and London?

Who says that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas does not condemn terror attacks against civilians?

As it turns out, he and his Palestinian Authority (PA) do indeed condemn terrorism — when it is directed against anyone but an Israeli. Israeli blood, it seems, is different.

Abbas led the international outcry after the June 3 London Bridge terror attack that left seven people dead and 48 injured.

A brief statement issued by Abbas’s office read:

“The President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, on Sunday condemned the terror attack in the British capital of London. His Excellency (Abbas) offered his deep condolences to Britain – its queen, government and people, and to the families of the victims of the terror assault. He affirmed his permanent rejection of all forms of terrorism.”

This statement is in line with others Abbas has made recently. Just two weeks ago, Abbas, during a joint press conference with visiting U.S. President Donald Trump in Bethlehem, condemned the May 23 terror attack in the British city of Manchester, the deadliest attack in the United Kingdom since July 7, 2005, in which 23 people were killed and 119 were injured, 23 critically.

Abbas described the terror attack as a “heinous crime” and said that the Palestinians were prepared to work with the U.S. as “partners in the war on terrorism in our region and the world.”

Two days later, Abbas was among the first leaders to condemn a terror attack that killed 28 Coptic Christians in central Egypt. Once again, Abbas said that he and the Palestinians stood with Egypt and its president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in the war against terrorism.

This verbal charade has been going on for some time.

Last April, Abbas was quick to condemn the terrorist attack that took place on the Saint Petersburg Metro, in Russia, in which 15 people were killed and 45 injured. Abbas, in a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that he and the Palestinians support Russia in its war against terrorism.

Abbas also ran to condemn the wave of terrorist attacks that has hit Belgium, France and Germany in the past two years. This apparent repudiation of terrorism is a startling development for Abbas. The only catch is that when it comes to Israel, Abbas takes quite the opposite line.

For the past two years, Palestinians have been waging a new type of “intifada” against Israel — one that consists of knife and car-ramming attacks, similar to the ones carried out in Britain, France and Germany. This wave of attacks, which began in September 2015, has claimed the lives of 49 people and injured more than 700. Since then, Palestinians have carried out more than 177 stabbings, 144 shootings and 58 vehicular attacks.

This wave of terrorism is the direct result of incitement by various Palestinian groups and leaders, including Abbas himself.

Wafa al-Biss is only one among hundreds if not thousands of Palestinians who have tried to smuggle guns, knives, suicide vests and bombs into Israel. Should anyone be surprised if Israel uses checkpoints and other security measures to save Jewish, Christian and Muslim lives?

In the wave of terror that has continued for the past eighteen months, Palestinians, including children, have used knives, scissors, and machetes to stab Jews, and cars to ram and kill pedestrians or police. Palestinians also suffer from the security this demands, by having to wait in queues at checkpoints or searches. That is regrettable, but hardly a reason to condemn Israel.

The Palestinian narrative and the wider Arab and Muslim demand that Israel must be wiped out is not a Christian narrative. It is an Islamic narrative.

A few days ago, some friends in Australia alerted me to a blog post written by former Bishop George Browning, who had been the 9th Anglican bishop of Canberra and Goulburn. Entitled, “Capitalism, Anti-Semitism & the Judaeo-Christian Ethic” (5 May 2017), this was an anti-Israel rant of biased and profoundly inaccurate misdirection, mixing outright lies with exaggerations. Towards the end, Browning denies that his article is anti-Semitic (“… rather than this critique being anti-Semitic, I believe it to be…”). Is he aware of the leading modern definition of anti-Semitism written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and recognized by some 32 countries? This definition, like others before it such as the European EUMC and US State Department definitions, includes several clauses that identify unfair, incorrect and biased criticism of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, or setting double standards for it, that are anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, Browning’s article, as shall be seen, falls without reserve into that definition. It is hard to understand how a man of his intelligence and personal involvement in Israeli-Palestinian matters should not know of or respect the IHRA definition. In order to make this clear, here are two clauses from the IHRA definition:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Now, let me turn to several statements made by Browning.

“Universal justice appears to have become an unwelcome stranger in the land of Israel. Zionism’s compulsive identification with land, has replaced justice as its core value.”

What on earth can he mean? People all round the world have high regard for their land, and over centuries have fought and died for it. Patriotism is a common position for the Irish, the Scottish, the English, the Americans, the French, the Italians, the Tibetans, and hundreds more. The Palestinians, to whom Browning is intensely loyal — he is, after all, President of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network — talk about little else but their right to the land and their love for it. But in Browning’s mind, Jewish love of their ancestral land, a place to which Jews prayed to return for more than two millennia, supposedly overturns the ancient Jewish love for justice in a way other nations’ love for their land does not. That is anti-Semitism.

Just after this he writes:

“The having, holding and conquering of land has seemingly become the arbiter of nationhood…”

Does Browning know so little about history? Jews did not conquer the modern land of Israel: they have lived on that land for three thousand years; and were officially given it first through the League of Nations Mandate system, then the United Nations Partition resolution, both reinforced by UN resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), all internationally-recognized and binding agreements.

In 1947, the Palestinian Arabs rejected the offer of a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state, and in 1948, five Arab countries launched an offensive war to drive the Jews out. Although this war failed, the Palestinians lost Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan, but few Palestinian Arabs complained. In 1967, Israel, fighting another defensive war, forced Egypt and Jordan out, but later made peace treaties with both countries, and in 2005 moved out of Gaza completely. Settlements within the West Bank, (originally the Jewish territories of Judea and Samaria) are legal under international law despite claims to the contrary, and all borders will be negotiated when and if the Palestinian leadership agrees to a peaceful resolution. Such offers that have been made in 1947, 1967, 2000, 2001, and 2008, but turned down every time by the Palestinians and their Arab allies.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: When Israeli officials seemingly questioned their country’s narrative of the Six-Day War, politicized historians and commentators seized on their words as vindication of their claim that Israel had been the aggressor. But what these officials had actually said was abridged, misrepresented, and taken out of context. This distortion provided fodder for a tendentious rewriting of history. https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/rewriting-six-day-war/

In 1972, retired Israeli general Matityahu Peled sparked a public debate when he claimed that in the run-up to the June 1967 war, the Israeli government “never heard from the General Staff that the Egyptian military threat was dangerous for Israel.” British journalist John Cooley described it as “newer evidence” that Israel was culpable for the war, while another prominent British journalist, David Hirst, observed that “Peled … committed what … seemed nothing less than blasphemy.”

What made Peled’s “revelations” particularly odd is that at the time of the prewar crisis, he was one of the generals who argued most forcefully for a preemptive strike to stave off the Arab threat. According to one account, Peled used “aggressive, highly pejorative language” to entice the Israeli government into a decisive blow against the Arab armies massing on Israel’s doorstep. To delay, he argued at the time, was to cast doubt on the abilities of Israel’s armed forces, and Peled was particularly concerned with protecting the military’s reputation as a deterrent against future Arab aggression. “We deserve to know why we have to suffer this shame!” he demanded of Israel’s civilian leadership.

In his post-army incarnation, Peled became a well-known leftist activist and politician. This swerve could, of course, neither change his actual behavior in the run-up to the war nor give him carte blanche to rewrite history to accord with his later political agenda. Nevertheless, the Peled thesis continued to be promoted as vindication of Israel’s supposed culpability for the 1967 war.

In 1982, the argument was amplified by another statement, this time coming from then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who had been a member of the national unity government formed by Levi Eshkol shortly after the mobilization of the Arab armies in May 1967. In a speech at Israel’s National Defense College, Begin made a passing reference to the 1967 War in order to justify his own controversial decision to wage war against the PLO in Lebanon. Some Western observers, however, saw it as another confessional moment. According to one account: “In Israel itself … a little of the truth about the June war has seeped out over the years.”

To be sure, Begin seemed to contradict Israel’s moral justification for 1967 when he said, “The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” However, while most historians stop there when quoting Begin, his reference to the Six-Day War went on. The crux of the speech was that there are two types of war: “[W]ar without choice, or a war of one’s choosing.” Begin classified the Six-Day War as the latter, because Israel decided to preempt rather than absorb the Arab attack (as happened in October 1973).

Yet he viewed the war as a fight for survival – i.e., there was, in fact, no choice involved, because Israel faced the threat of annihilation at the hands of multiple Arab armies. Thus, he went on to say: “This was a war of self-defense in the noblest [sense]. The Government of National Unity … decided unanimously: we will take the initiative and attack the enemy, drive him back and thus assure the security of Israel and the future of the nation.”

Indeed, it was common knowledge in 1967 that the Arab wartime strategy was predicated on Israel’s taking the first shot. Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser was confident that his forces could take on and outperform the IDF, and his mouthpiece at the Egyptian daily al-Ahram, Muhammad Heikal, openly taunted Israel in widely publicized editorials.

In short, Begin’s comments were abridged and taken out of context by historians and commentators seeking to score political points.

The false narrative of Israeli “confessions” gained further traction on the 30thanniversary of the war, this time involving a posthumously published interview with wartime minister of defense (not to mention one of the most universally recognized heroes of the war) Moshe Dayan. However, the authenticity of the interview is unclear, since it was allegedly adapted from a series of private conversations with Dayan in 1976 of which there is no original record. Nonetheless, this has not stopped Israel’s critics from quoting its most striking portion and hailing it as another key admission.

The Six-Day War was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967 by Israel against the more populous and well armed neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, who were cheered on by all the Arab/Moslem states, heeding Nasser’s bloodthirsty calls for Israel’s annihilation. Against all odds Israel succeeded in lightning strikes that liberated and unified Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank of the Jordan River-The East Bank is comprised of Jordan), captured Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.

For most of the ‘ignoranti” academics and journalists, that is when the history of the Israel/Arab conflict began…..a Jewish Palestinian land grab of Arab Palestinian land, and an ensuing “occupation.” The Balfour Declaration, the partitions of Palestine in 1922 and 1947, the 1948 war of Independence, the illegal occupation of Judea and Samaria by Jordan which trashed every single Jewish shrine in the area and limited access to Christian tourists, are all air-brushed.

Furthermore, Israel’s immediate offer to return all territories was categorically rebuffed by The Khartoum Resolution of 1 September 1967. The Arab League summit was convened in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan and was attended by eight Arab heads of state: Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, and Sudan. The resolution is famous for containing (in the third paragraph) what became known as the “Three No’s”: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with the Jewish State.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (S/RES/242) was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council on November 22, 1967, in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. It was adopted under Chapter VI of the UN Charter.

It states: “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in recent conflict. The word “all” was deliberately omitted regarding territories.

It further calls for “Termination of all states of belligerency and acknowledgement of the sovereignty of every state in the region to live within secure and recognized boundaries.”

By relinquishing the Sinai peninsula (23,166 square miles) and Gaza (140.0 square miles) Israel has returned 92% of all lands captured in 1967 and fully met all its obligations to Resolution 242 and all the Arabs, including those in Judea and Samaria whose life is better and more free than in any other Arab nation.

God bless Israel- an amazing and inspiring democracy…rsk

Israel’s military triumph over three enemy states in June 1967 is the most outstandingly successful war of all recorded history. The Six-Day War was also deeply consequential for the Middle East, establishing the permanence of the Jewish state, dealing a death-blow to pan-Arab nationalism, and (ironically) worsening Israel’s place in the world because of its occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Focusing on this last point: how did a spectacular battlefield victory translate into problems that still torment Israel today? Because it stuck Israelis in an unwanted role they cannot escape.

First, Israeli leftists and foreign do-gooders wrongly blame Israel’s government for not making sufficient efforts to leave the West Bank, as though greater efforts could have found a true peace partner. In this, critics ignore rejectionism, the attitude of refusing to accept anything Zionist that has dominated Palestinian politics for the past century. Its founding figure, Amin al-Husseini, collaborated with Hitler and even had a key role in formulating the Final Solution; recent manifestations include the “anti-normalization” and the boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) movements. Rejectionism renders Israeli concessions useless, even counterproductive, because Palestinians respond to them with more hostility and violence.

Second, Israel faces a conundrum of geography and demography in the West Bank. While its strategists want to control the highlands, its nationalists want to build towns, and its religious want to possess Jewish holy sites, Israel’s continued ultimate rule over a West Bank population of 1.7 million mostly hostile Arabic-speaking, Muslim Palestinians takes an immense toll both domestically and internationally. Various schemes to keep the land and defang an enemy people – by integrating them, buying them off, dividing them, pushing them out, or finding another ruler for them – have all come to naught.

The Israelis vastly increased the size of Jerusalem (the lined area) on unifying it.

Third, the Israelis in 1967 took three unilateral steps in Jerusalem that created future time bombs: vastly expanding the city’s borders, annexing it, and offering Israeli citizenship to the city’s new Arab residents. In combination, these led to a long-term demographic and housing competition that Palestinians are winning, jeopardizing the Jewish nature of the Jews’ historic capital. Worse, 300,000 Arabs could at any time choose to take Israeli citizenship.

These problems raise the question: Had Israeli leaders in 1967 foreseen the current problems, what might they have done differently in the West Bank and Jerusalem? They could have:

Made the battle against rejectionism their highest priority through unremitting censorship of every aspect of life in the West Bank and Jerusalem, severe punishments for incitement, and an intense effort to imbue a more positive attitude toward Israel.
Invited back in the Jordanian authorities, rulers of the West Bank since 1949, to run that area’s (but not Jerusalem’s) internal affairs, leaving the Israel Defense Forces with only the burden to protect borders and Jewish populations.
Extended the borders of Jerusalem only to the Old City and to uninhabited areas.
Thought through the full ramifications of building Jewish towns on the West Bank.

Preventing blindness in the elderly. (TY Nevet) 30% of adults over 75 suffer retinal degeneration with 6-8% going blind. Researchers at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital transplanted retinal pigment cells from embryonic stem cells into five such sufferers and the new cells were absorbed into the retina, preventing loss of vision.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4961206,00.html

Fast-track treatment for ALS patients. (TY Nevet) Scientists at Ben Gurion University have slowed the progress of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s). They used part of an FDA-approved cancer / autoimmune disease treatment to combat glial cells, which kill the body’s motor neuron cells. It may also treat other brain diseases.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientists-announce-new-treatment-for-als/
https://aabgu.org/bgu-develops-new-drug-therapy-for-als-patients/

Positive trials of migraine treatment. Israel’s Teva has reported positive results from Phase III trials of its chronic migraine treatment fremanezumab. Patients experienced statistically significant reduction in the number of moderate severity headache days vs the placebo. FDA approval is expected by end 2017.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-teva-reports-positive-phase-iii-migraine-drug-trial-results-1001190672

Avoid unnecessary chemotherapy. Israeli biotech NewStem, founded by Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor Nissim Benvenisty, has developed a test that verifies if a tumor will be susceptible to chemotherapy. It prevents a patient having to endure needless treatment with its associated severe adverse side effects.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-startup-finds-way-to-predict-tumor-resistance-to-chemo/

Advice on the best cancer treatment plan. (TY WIN) 33% of US cancer patients get poor advice. Eliran Malki, founder & CEO of Israeli startup Belong, describes his new app for cancer patients to chat with physicians, receive good advice and make treatment choices as they battle the disease. Belong currently supports 25,000 patients in 88 countries. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gm_msH1TKRY?rel=0

Blood test for lung cancer. Israeli scientists from the Rehovot-based company Nucleix succeeded in developing a first of its kind blood test to diagnose lung cancer long before it spreads in the body, thus increasing the chance of survival. The test examines anomalies of the bonds holding the DNA base Cytosine.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4942284,00.html

Early detection of Polio virus. Scientists from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have developed a model for preventing the reintroduction of the Poliomyelitis virus into a previously polio-free country. They use environmental surveillance to detect the virus – rather than the alternative of waiting for the disease to strike.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientists-find-way-to-detect-polio-outbreaks-earlier/

Israelis health improves. (TY Jacques) In the latest annual report from the World Health Organization (WHO), Israeli males born today can expect on average to live 80.6 years, whereas Israeli women should live 84.3 years. Israel’s Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy (HALE) ranking was 5th.
http://israelbetweenthelines.com/2017/06/01/life-expectancy-in-israel-on-the-rise/

When a bone marrow donor says “No”. Avigayil is head of TED – the organization that arranges Technology Entertainment and Design talks. But she contracted Leukemia and Israeli charity Ezer Mizion found her a rare bone marrow match. But the donor changed his mind. Ezer Mizion then found another match who cancelled his holiday to donate. http://www.ezermizion.org/blog/a-bone-marrow-registry-nightmare-he-said-no/

Helping toddlers to walk. (TY Karen) I reported previously (Dec 2013) about the foot brace from Israel’s UNFO Med that rectifies infant foot deformities within six weeks. Inventor Dr. Izak Daizade and his son Eilon now have FDA and CE approval and the device is sold in Israel, Italy, Africa, Ukraine, and South Korea.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4962918,00.html

“ISRAEL WILL NEVER AGAIN BE NINE MILES WIDE”

[Note by Tom Gross]

Tomorrow marks the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the 1967 Six Day War – a war that some say changed the Middle East. In the run up to the anniversary, there have been a number of attempts at historical revisionism by some academics and journalists, distorting the facts in a bid to turn the Arabs into victims and Israel into an aggressor. For example, a new BBC online “backgrounder on the Six Day War” suggests that Egypt’s President Nasser had no intention of fighting Israel.

I attach three articles below which help counter these distortions. The first is by Israeli commentator Ben-Dror Yemini, who points out, citing examples, that Arab leaders announced unequivocally that their plan for Israel was annihilation. For instance Syria’s Hafez Assad declared: “Pave the Arab roads with the skulls of Jews… We are determined to saturate this earth with your (Israeli) blood, to throw you into the sea.” The second piece is by Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to Washington, who writes confidently that “Israel will never again be nine miles wide”. And the third is by Bret Stephens, who recently moved from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times to become their token non-anti-Israeli columnist, who says that “for the crime of self-preservation, Israel remains a nation unforgiven”. (All three writers are subscribers to this Middle East dispatch list.)

“DOES ANYONE THINK THAT THERE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A MASS SLAUGHTER?”

Ben-Dror Yemini (Yediot Ahronot, Tel Aviv):

There is a mega-narrative that exempts the Arabs from responsibility for the Six-Day War. Yet both the Arab League and the leaders of all neighboring states announced in an unequivocal manner that their plan for Israel was annihilation. Considering the fact that the Arab and Muslim world was engaged in endless massacres – which are still going on – it was pretty clear that what they were doing to themselves they would also do to Israel.

The Arab states never accepted the State of Israel’s existence, not for a moment. There was no occupation from 1949 to 1967, but a Palestinian state wasn’t established because the leaders of the Arab world didn’t want another state. They wanted Israel. In 1964 the Arab League convened in Cairo and announced: “collective Arab military preparations, when they are completed, will constitute the ultimate practical means for the final liquidation of Israel.”

In 1966, then-Syrian defense minister Hafez Assad declared: “Pave the Arab roads with the skulls of Jews… We are determined to saturate this earth with your (Israeli) blood, to throw you into the sea.”

Nine days before the war broke out, Egypt’s Nasser said: “The Arab people want to fight. Our basic aim is the destruction of the State of Israel.”

Iraqi president Abdul Rahman Arif said: “This is our chance… our goal is clear: To wipe Israel off the map.”
There are extracts first for those who don’t have time to read the articles in full.