RUTHFULLY YOURS

While the Jewish community in some quarters has lately been divided on Israel issues, some 5,000 evangelical Christians will gather in Washington, DC July 17-18 as a granite-like block of support to defend the Jewish State. They will be attending the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) policy conference held each year. Boasting more than 3 million members, CUFI is America’s largest pro-Israel group. A host of political luminaries, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), will appear at this year’s conference, sited in the Washington Convention Center. Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu will appear via live satellite feed.

The domestic political importance of CUFI’s zealous members is not lost on anyone in Washington. In response to a question, CUFI founding Executive Director David Brog stated, “CUFI represents a base of voters that helped deliver the White House and both houses of Congress to Republicans. Now our members are coming to town to remind these leaders that Israel is and always has been a top priority for them. We’re expecting a warmer welcome — and greater impact — than ever before.”

It is no wonder that the line-up of legislators, led by Rep. Trent Franks, who acts of co-chair of the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, also includes Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), and Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-KS).

Rep. Franks is a pivotal factor in supporting Israel’s defense systems, especially its tri-level missile shields. He sits on two key subcommittees of the House Armed Services Committee, vice-chairing the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, and as a majority member of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. Franks also leads the Missile Defense Caucus. The Arizona representative is at the pinnacle of support for the Jewish State and its military and defense superiority. Likewise, Rep. Lamborn joins Franks on two of those key subcommittees, Strategic Forces as well as Emerging Threats and Capabilities. On the Senate side, Sen. Ernst chairs the analogous Emerging Threats Subcommittee under the Armed Forces Committee.

In response to a question about his CUFI appearance, Franks asserted, “Israel is on the front lines in a battle to protect all humanity from an evil ideology that has no respect for innocent life anywhere on earth. Adherents of this ideology hate Israel’s existence – more than that, they hate Western Civilization. Israel deserves our support and respect. As co-chair of the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, I am happy to stand with Israel at the upcoming Christians United For Israel Summit.”

“We shall . . . prevent any theocratic tendencies from coming to the fore on the part of our priesthood. We shall keep our priests [by which is meant Rabbis] within the confines of their temples.” – Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat

Tough love may be an appropriate response in family matters, but boycotting a troubled nation which has become a pariah among the hard-left is not the appropriate response to the Israeli government’s recent decisions regarding religion. The answer is not disengagement, but rather greater engagement….

To do otherwise is to engage in a form of BDS – the tactic currently employed by Israel’s enemies to delegitimate the Nation state of the Jewish people. Supporters of BDS will point to these benign boycotts as a way of justifying their malignant ones…. The role of American Jews is limited to persuasion, not coercion.

Western Wall In Israel. (Photo from PublicDomainPictures.net)

Several prominent American Zionists – including long-time supporters of Israel – are so outraged at the Israeli government’s recent decision regarding the Western Wall and non-orthodox conversion, that they are urging American Jews to reduce or even eliminate their support for Israel. According to an article by Elliott Abrams in Mosaic, Ike Fisher a prominent member of the AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] board, threatened to “suspend” all further financial support for Israel. Daniel Gordis, a leading voice for Conservative Judaism, urged American Jews to cancel their El Al tickets and fly Delta or United. He also proposed “withholding donations to Israeli hospitals, so that ‘They start running out of money’ and ‘begin to falter.'” This sort of emotional response is reminiscent of the temper tantrum outgoing President Barak Obama engaged in when he refused to veto the UN’s recent anti-Israel resolution.

I strongly disagree both with the Israeli government’s capitulation to the minority of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who wield far too much influence in Israeli politics, and with the proposals to cut back on support for Israel by some of my fellow critics of the Israeli government’s recent decisions with regard to religion.

I strongly support greater separation between religion and state in Israel, as Theodor Herzl outlined in his plan for the nation-state of the Jewish People in Der Judenstaat 120 years ago: “We shall . . . prevent any theocratic tendencies from coming to the fore on the part of our priesthood. We shall keep our priests [by which is meant Rabbis] within the confines of their temples.” It was David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding Prime Minister, who made the deal with the Orthodox Rabbinate that violated Herzl’s mandate and knocked down the wall of separation between religion and state. He allocated to the Chief Rabbinate authority over many secular matters, such as marriage, divorce and child custody. He also laid the groundwork for the creation of religious parties that have been a necessary part of most Israeli coalitions for many years.

So, do not blame Israel’s current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the recent capitulation. His government’s survival depends on his unholy alliance with allegedly holy parties that threaten to leave the coalition and bring down his government unless he capitulated. The alternative to a Netanyahu government might well be far to the right of the current government, both on religious matters and on prospects for peace. Reasonable people may disagree as to whether Netanyahu did the right thing, but I believe that given the choice between the current government and what may well replace it, PM Netanyahu acted on acceptable priorities.

The issue of government subsidies for Palestinian terrorist salaries is again in the international spotlight. What began in November 2013, as a barely believable revelation — that taxpayers in Great Britain, the US, and other Western nations were bankrolling terrorist salaries — has now become a universally-acknowledged, impossible-to-deny, and impossible-to-defend embarrassment for governments.

For years, officials dissembled and dodged when the question came up. After a period of silent disbelief, the mainstream media now openly confirms the salaries and routinely refers to the program with ipso factuality. Political challengers on both sides of the Atlantic stridently demand that incumbents terminate foreign aid that amounts to taxpayer-incentivized terrorism. A recent in-depth study in Israel calculates that all terror incentives and rewards paid by the Palestinian Authority over the past four years total a mind-numbing one billion dollars.

As more citizens are victimized in Great Britain, Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere, Western donor governments find their financial involvement with the Palestinian Authority terrorist salary program increasingly indefensible.

Whether things might be changing is anyone’s guess.

Intense public pushback and the spread of terrorism, from “something over in Israel” to atrocities in leading European and American cities, have cracked entrenched governmental refusals to stop the financing. But it has been a long road.

In November 2013, revelations first leapt into global headlines that convicted Palestinian terrorists were receiving monthly salaries paid by the Palestinian Authority using foreign donor funds. The Palestinian “Law of the Prisoner” openly rewards those convicted of even the most heinous attacks with generous monthly “salaries” and phantom jobs with automatic advancement in the PA government.

The salaries increase on a sliding scale. The more carnage inflicted, the longer the prisoner sentence, the higher the salary. Terrorists receiving a five-year sentence are granted just a few hundred dollars each month. The bloodiest murderers are paid as much $3,000 monthly. Checks are sent directly to the prisoner, who appoints a power of attorney to distribute the funds.

In 2013, the first spotlighted salary program operated by the Ministry of Prisoners was estimated to consume some $5 to $8 million monthly, with other benefit programs doubling that sum. In all, some 8 percent of the PA budget was diverted to terror. But that money was the tip of the cash pile.

The chronically bankrupt PA relies upon foreign aid to pay the salaries. and prioritizes the monies received into the salary program before any civic expenditures on health, welfare, education, or infrastructure programs. In every Western country, financial support for terrorism makes such funding illegal. Yet, the UK, EU, and the US, through their fungible aid, effectively act as the chief bankers of the terrorist salaries. Thin attempts by government paymasters in various countries sought to portray the monies not as “salaries” but as “welfare.” Ironically, the PA itself vigorously refuted that claim, bragging that such payments are proud rewards to its cherished fighters, including the type of terrorist that would slash the throat of children in their kibbutz beds. Indeed, the term for the payments is rawatib, which in Arabic does not mean “welfare” — it means “salaries.”

Please Watch my 9-minute movie on the Allon Plan:

https://youtu.be/awyM3DI-BAU

And read my article in English & Hebrew: ‘Rabin’s “Allon Plan”‘
www.marklangfan.com/rabinsallonplan.html
www.marklangfan.com/rabbinsallonplanhebrew.html

President Donald Trump entered the White House committed to finding “the ultimate deal” to bring about an Israeli/Palestinian Arab peace. Though putting himself on record in February as favoring no particular type of solution other than one that commends itself to both sides, President Trump’s advisers are now reportedly examining a plan for a Palestinian state.

The plan, devised by General John Allen during the Obama Administration, calls for a sovereign but demilitarized Palestinian state to be established within the 1949 armistice lines. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would be withdrawn from within its territory, including the strategically vital Jordan Valley –– something Yitzhak Rabin, weeks before his murder, insisted on Israel retaining under any peace agreement. Instead, Israel would have to rely for its security upon a US military force operating in the Jordan Valley and, perhaps a continuing IDF presence for a 10-15 year period.

Colonel Kris Bauman, who assisted General Allen in the formulation of the original plan, is now serving as adviser to Trump’s National Security Council –– an indication of the seriousness with which the Plan is being considered.

Is the Allen Plan a good one? Unfortunately not, for several reasons.

Reliance on foreign forces holds a cautionary history for Israel.

The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), which was designed to keep the peace between Egypt and Israel after the 1956 Suez War, was simply withdrawn at Egypt’s request in 1967, leading to the Six Day War.

President Eisenhower’s 1957 military guarantee to Israel of free, unmolested maritime shipping through the Straits of Tiran turned out to be unenforceable when Israel needed the US to provide it in 1967 –– another factor that produced the Six Day War.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) never prevented the PLO or, later, Hizballah from attacking Israel and has actually become a hindrance to Israel stopping Hizballah militarizing the Lebanese-Israeli border, resulting in several wars.

With the emergence in the last two years of jihadist groups on the armistice lines with Israel on the Golan Heights, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has similarly ceased to provide any form of protection for Israel or accountability from its attackers. International forces and guarantees can vanish overnight.