RUTHFULLY YOURS

A definite gain of Israel’s new settlement policy is that it seems to have taken the settlement issue off the boil not just with the Trump administration but also with other friendly foreign governments. Among the losses, thanks to the Judea and Samaria Settlement Regulation Law, is UN Security Council Resolution 2334 of December 23, 2016, which vehemently denounced all Israeli settlement activity.

During March 2017, a delegation appointed by Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held lengthy discussions in Washington with the Trump administration over construction in the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (aka the “West Bank”). No summary of those discussions was published, but on March 30 the security cabinet of the Israeli government informed the media that it had drawn up guidelines limiting further construction. Now, however, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman — who has direct responsibility for approving all such construction plans — has confirmed that “Israel is coordinating its settlement construction with the White House.”

He specified that “while coordination is not happening on the level of every ’10 [houses],’ there is general understanding between Jerusalem and Washington about acceptable levels of construction in the West Bank.” This would explain why, whereas under the Obama administration any Israeli announcement about even a small number of housing units would provoke ritual squeaks of protest from U.S. officials, the recent announcements of larger numbers have escaped loud censure.

It should be noted that such announcements commonly give an exaggerated impression of the scale of construction. This is because Israeli urban planning involves a series of stages of approval before actual construction goes ahead. Thus the most recent announcement, billed as “building at the highest level since 1992,” aggregates plans at various stages of approval, some of which were included in earlier announcements. To add together all such figures over a long period would therefore be mistaken because of multiple counting of the same individual housing units.

The new settlement policy was released to various media, such as here, where it is stated:

“Israel, according to the security cabinet decision, will — as much as possible — only permit building within the existing construction lines of the settlements… In areas where this is not possible because there is no more available land inside the settlements, construction will take place close to the existing construction line. Where this too is impossible because of issues of land ownership, or security or topographic considerations, Israel will build as close to the existing settlement as possible… Israel also committed itself not to permit the establishment of new wildcat outposts.”

Several comments are in order. First, this is more or less what all Israeli governments did after the signing of the “Oslo Accords” of 1993 and 1995 and up to the middle of 2016. Second, the details are spelled out far more minutely than in any previous Israeli official statement. Third, the decision applies equally to all settlements whatsoever, whereas previous discussions might distinguish between settlements within or beyond Israel’s security barrier or between the main “settlement blocks” and “outlying settlements.” (Even the two major opposition parties in the Israeli parliament — the Labor Party and Yesh Atid — agree with the government that the settlement blocks should be kept by Israel in any final agreement with the Palestinians.)

On the other hand, two recent exceptions to that policy will be retained. One is the proposed construction of Amihai. This is an entirely new settlement, the first since 1992; it is to be inhabited by the 40 families expelled on February 1-2, 2017 from Amona, the wildcat outpost that they had set up back in 1995 without government permission and on land privately owned by Palestinians. (The expulsion was long delayed for various reasons, most recently because the settlers produced documents of purchase of the land, which were proven false in 2014.) The construction of Amihai was ratified by the security cabinet at the same meeting on March 30, but because Netanyahu had promised the settlers a new settlement at the time of their evacuation it was treated as a matter that preceded the discussions with the Trump administration. (The name “Amihai” itself was coined by the settlers only in May 2017.)

The other exception is the so-called “Judea and Samaria Settlement Regulation Law,” passed by the Israeli parliament on February 4, 2017 after long discussions that started in mid-2016 and that were provoked precisely by the case of Amona. The law addresses land occupied by settlers either within or outside officially created settlements, but which was subsequently found to be privately owned by Palestinians. As far back as 1979, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that settlements could not be built on such land. The law seeks to permit compulsory acquisition of the land while compensating the owners (either financially or with state land elsewhere) if occupation of the land occurred “in good faith” (i.e., without prior knowledge of Palestinian ownership) or if the Israeli state had de facto assisted the occupation (e.g., by connecting buildings to the water or electricity grid). It is widely expected that the law itself will be struck down by the Supreme Court.

I was honored and privileged to be asked by Robert Avrech of Seraphic Secret to undertake the Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture in memory of his son Ariel, who passed away at an early age.

Robert and Karen are incredible people who have managed to transmute their loss into a search for meaning. And it was a great responsibility to be part of that and to follow speakers like David Horowitz and Larry Elder who have delivered the lecture in the past. It was also a pleasure to meet up with fellow bloggers from Bookworm Room and Rob from Joshuapundit, as well as having colleague Mark Tapson and Kyle Kyllan, producer of The Enemies Within. And thank you also to those who came from as far away as Marin County and Orange County. I was happy to meet everyone and privileged to be able to participate in this event.

The following is the text of my remarks. You can see the video above. My speech begin after opening remarks by Robert, Karen and a friend of Ariel’s who shared some beautiful memories of him with us.

Year after year has passed and once again we are gathered here to remember an incredible young man. I have participated in these memorials remotely by watching them from afar. It’s an honor and also a great responsibility to stand here and to speak to you.

This day is a tribute to the impact that Ariel Avrech had on his community and that his parents continue to have on all of us.

Sooner or later we all pass on. The day will come when we all have a tombstone in some quiet place. When we are only a memory. We live on in two ways.

We continue on in the spiritual realm in the presence of G-d. And we live on here in the memory of our friends and our loved ones. And in the positive impact that we make through them.

The conversations you have with your children will echo in the conversations they have with theirs. The wisdom you learned from your parents is a faint echo of men and women whose names have been forgotten, but who were your ancestors thousands of years ago stretching back all the way to Sinai.

One day, hundreds of years from now, a descendant you will never meet, will pass on an echo of yours into a distant generation. And a part of you will live on in his words and the impact that they make.

As Jews, we know that we are a people of the book. But before much of the Oral Torah, the Torah she’Baal peh was set down, it was passed on through word of mouth.

We are a people perpetually in conversation with each other. Thank you for coming to join us in this conversation. There are many kinds of conversations. And there’s a saying.
Anti-Semitism has hit unprecedented levels. Defending Israel is harder than ever

Small minds talk about people. Great minds speak about ideas. It is a tribute to Ariel and to his parents, Robert and Karen, that their conversation is about ideas. And that Ariel’s conversations, the words that echo, are of ideas.

“Look in the Thesaurus under greatness — you get importance magnitude fame, size, immensity. Such are the values of our culture.” That was a quote that Ariel carried around with him.

We know how different his values were. And those values live on through the way that we remember him.

Ariel is no longer with us. But he is changing the world. And he is changing all of us. In his honor and memory, I want to speak about a world that he never saw. But which, through us, he is having an impact on.

Our world of today.

When Ariel passed away, the world was on the verge of the major challenges we face today.

Since then things have gotten much worse.

Anti-Semitism has hit unprecedented levels. Defending Israel is harder than ever. But why is that?

It’s 2017. Gay marriage is legal. Everything is more multicultural than ever. Everyone is tolerant of everything. Except the things they’re intolerant of.

If Anti-Semitism were just a garden variety bigotry, then things should be better.

And if Israel is being attacked because of the so-called Occupation, then its situation should be much better than it was since 1967. Look how many peace deals Israel has made and how much territory it’s given away.

Israel should be much more popular now. It should be much easier to be pro-Israel now than it was after the Six Day War.

So why doesn’t it work that way? Why instead does it seem as if the more tolerant society gets, the more intolerant of Jews it becomes? Why are Jews fleeing some of the most multicultural cities in Europe? Why is Berkeley a safe space for everyone except Jews?

Why is the anti-Israel movement much stronger after all of Israel’s efforts to make peace than it was when Israel refused to negotiate with the PLO?

Why is everything backward for the Jews?

When we try to do the things we’re supposed to do, when we work for a more tolerant society, when we try to appease our enemies, things get worse instead of better.

What we’re doing isn’t working.

The fact that it’s 2017 and I’m giving a speech about how to fight anti-Semitism and defend Israel shows it isn’t working.

The strategies we learned have failed. And we need to talk about why they failed.

And, taking a page from George from Seinfeld, I’m going to suggest that what we should be doing is the opposite of what we think we should be doing.
Anti-Semitism has existed since there were Jews

And for the same reason.

Instead of doing all the things that we think will make people like us, we should be true to ourselves. And then we might actually be liked. And more importantly, we’ll deserve to be liked.

I’m not going to devote this speech to going on about how terrible those who hate us are. If you’re sitting in this room, you already know that. I’m not here to talk about the enemies of the Jews. I’m here to talk about the Jews.

We’re a minority. That means we’re other directed. We’re insecure. We’re neurotic. We’re self-conscious. We care what everyone on the outside thinks of us.

And when we talk about anti-Semitism or Israel, we focus on them. Not us.

Why do they hate us? Why don’t they like us? Why is the world so unfair to us?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-a-lesson-of-the-1967-war-1497998869

The Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran, testifying before the U.N. Security Council about the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War, June 20:

May I again remind you of the example of [Egypt’s] Gamal Abdel Nasser ? A revisionist school of historiography claims that he never wanted war in 1967. His best military units were bogged down in Yemen, his economy was a shambles, and his relations with Jordan and Syria, his putative allies, were abysmal. Why would a leader in such a precarious position behave so recklessly?

The revisionists have much of the story right but they miss a crucial factor. Nasser was applying lessons that he learned a decade earlier, during the Suez Crisis. Then, as in 1967, he had precipitated a war that he could not possibly win militarily, but which he believed he could win politically, because, he gambled, the superpowers and the United Nations would intercede on his behalf. In 1956, that proved a very smart bet. In 1967, however, it utterly failed—with disastrous consequences for Egypt—to say nothing of the Palestinians. How much better would it have been for all parties if, back in 1956, the United Nations had insisted that, in return for an Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory, Nasser must grant Israel meaningful security guarantees?

The key lesson of 1967 war is that peace is best achieved not by United Nations intercession but by facilitating direct negotiations between the parties.

Assuming that Livni is telling the truth and Likud’s denial is false, we need to ask why Netanyahu courted the former foreign minister.

The homes of the terrorists who murdered Border Police officer Hadas Malka on Friday evening are now bedecked with Fatah flags and banners reading, “Our heroes.”

Far from condemning the terrorist attack, Palestinian Authority chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and his comrades are condemning Israel. Its security forces, they allege obscenely, committed a “war crime” when they killed the three terrorists to stop their rampage.

The only reason that these actions are not enough to warrant the US and the rest of the West – not to mention the Israeli Left – treating Fatah/PLO as the terrorist group they are and have always been, is because doing so would require them to stop playacting at peace making.

And they couldn’t have that.

Instead, they mimic or recycle “peace process” lingo about “windows of opportunity,” and reincarnate failed peace processors.

In apparent bid to do the latter, last Friday Channel 10 first reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked MK Tzipi Livni to join his government with her Knesset faction and serve as his foreign minister.

While Likud denied the report, Livni claims Netanyahu made the offer through mediators that have been carrying out indirect negotiations between the two politicians.

Livni also has said that she rejected Netanyahu’s offer because she doesn’t believe he is willing to adopt her expansively pro-PLO positions.

Assuming that Livni is telling the truth and Likud’s denial is false, we need to ask why Netanyahu made the attempt.

There’s certainly no love lost between the two. Netanyahu’s last campaign centered on Livni’s radicalism.

The fact that the Labor Party formed a joint candidates list with Livni radicalized the party, he argued. Livni, for her part, was the main reason Netanyahu’s last government fell apart. She was disloyal and subversive throughout her brief tenure as justice minister.

Politically Livni has nothing to offer Netanyahu. As things stand today, Livni has no future in politics. She is unpopular in the Labor Party. And if she as an independent list, she is unlikely to even pass the four-seat threshold to be reelected to Knesset.

Yair Lapid, whose Yesh Atid Party has been leading Labor as the most popular Center-Left political party, has evinced no interest in joining forces with Livni.

President Donald Trump’s straight talk about veneration of violence in Palestinian society has had important consequences. It was the catalyst for Norway and Denmark to disassociate from the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) habit of naming public spaces for terrorists. UNRWA, the Red Crescent (UAE), and the U.N. secretary general have all denounced various terrorist behaviors of both Hamas and the P.A. Whether they did it from conviction or are just moving in the direction they believe the president of the United States wants them to go is almost irrelevant – they’re going there.

However, when it comes to what the P.A. itself says, caution and a heaping tablespoon of salt are required. The P.A. fears that a key source of foreign aid – the U.S. government – is finally fed up with Palestinian behavior, both incitement and payments, and may pull the plug. The House and Senate are considering the Taylor Force Act – which would require certification that the P.A.:

Is taking steps to end acts of violence against U.S. and Israeli citizens perpetrated by individuals under its jurisdictional control, such as the March 2016 attack that killed former Army officer Taylor Force;
Is publicly condemning such acts of violence and is investigating, or cooperating in investigations of, such acts; and
Has terminated payments for acts of terrorism against U.S. and Israeli citizens to any individual who has been convicted and imprisoned for such acts, to any individual who died committing such acts, and to family members of such an individual.

That’s good reason for them to worry, but the salt of skepticism was missing when U.S. secretary of state Rex Tillerson announced in a Senate hearing, “They [the P.A.] have changed that policy and their intent is to cease the payments to the families of those who have committed murder or violence against others. We have been very clear with them that this is simply not acceptable to us.”

He may have been clear, but Palestinian “intent” is a twisty, bendy thing, especially since the P.A. claimed that it had already stopped paying in 2014. If it stopped then, why does it have to “intend” to stop now?

Two months ago, I wrote for The Gatestone Institute:

Largely through the work of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), the question of payments to terrorists and their families has come to the fore. Worried about foreign aid payments from the U.S. and the EU, in 2014 the Palestinian Authority claimed it stopped paying salaries and that future money would come from a new PLO Commission of Prisoner Affairs. However, PMW reported from Palestinian sources:

“The PLO Commission was new only in name. The PLO body would have the ‎same responsibilities and pay the exact same amounts of salaries to prisoners; the former P.A. Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs, Issa Karake, became the Director of the new ‎PLO Commission and P.A. Chairman Mahmoud Abbas retained overall supervision of ‎the PLO Commission.”

President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA), which is funded by Americans and Europeans, has once again chosen to maintain silence following a terror attack perpetrated by Palestinians. This silence of Abbas and his PA leadership, specifically their refusal to condemn the terror attack, can only be interpreted as an endorsement of the killing of Jews.

This is the twisted logic of Abbas and his people: How dare Israeli police officers shoot terrorists armed with knives and a submachine gun and prevent them from killing more Jews?

One wonders: how does this public endorsement of the Jerusalem terror attack and the terrorists stand up to Abbas’s promise to President Trump to stop anti-Israel incitement and “promote a culture of peace” among Palestinians?

For many Palestinians, the stabbing murder of a 23-year-old Israeli Border Police officer in Jerusalem on June 16 is an act of “heroism” that proves that the “revolution against the Zionist entity will continue until the liberation of Palestine, from the (Mediterranean) sea to the (Jordan) river.”

For many Palestinians, the three terrorists who murdered the young woman, Hadas Malka, are “heroes” and “martyrs” who will be rewarded by Allah in Paradise.

President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA), which is funded by Americans and Europeans, has once again chosen to maintain silence following a terror attack perpetrated by Palestinians. This silence of Abbas and his PA leadership, specifically their refusal to condemn the terror attack, can only be interpreted as an endorsement of the killing of Jews.

The silence of Mahmoud Abbas following the Jerusalem terror attack, specifically his refusal to condemn the attack, can only be interpreted as an endorsement of the killing of Jews. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)

Moreover, in a move reminiscent of a demented Alice in Wonderland, Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction, which is often described by Westerners as “moderate” and “pragmatic,” publicly blasted Israel for killing the three terrorists who murdered the policewoman and wounded several others.

In a statement published in Ramallah shortly after the terror attack, Fatah “condemned the Israeli occupation forces for killing three young Palestinian men in East Jerusalem.” It said that the killing of the three terrorists “proves that the Israeli government is pursuing its policy of escalation.” Fatah called on the international community to “seriously look into providing protection for the defenseless Palestinian people.”

The Fatah statement failed to mention that the three Palestinian “young men” were armed with knives and a homemade submachine gun. Nor did Fatah mention a word about the Border Police officer who was stabbed to death in the terror attack.

Such a statement could never have been published without the approval of Abbas and his top cronies in Ramallah. They even seem to have endorsed the Fatah communiqué by publishing it on the website of the PA’s official news agency, Wafa. This agency is managed and funded by the PA, which also appoints the editors and journalists working there.

This is the twisted logic of Abbas and his people: How dare Israeli police officers shoot terrorists armed with knives and a machinegun and prevent them from killing more Jews?

Fatah spokesperson Osama Qawassmeh went as far as accusing Israel of committing a “war crime” by killing the terrorists and thwarting a bigger attack. He called on the international community to condemn Israel for the “cold-blooded” killing of the three terrorists in Jerusalem, dubbing it a “cruel crime.” Qawassmeh, who is considered a trusted advisor and confidant of Abbas, seized the opportunity to heap praise on the terrorists, describing them as “martyrs.” Palestinians, he added, should remain faithful to the “blood of the martyrs” by “holding on to their lands and holy sites and defending them.”

One wonders: how does this public endorsement of the Jerusalem terror attack and the terrorists stand up to Abbas’s promise to US President Donald Trump to stop anti-Israel incitement and “promote a culture of peace” among Palestinians?

This is but further proof in an endless string of damning evidence concerning the ‘peace lies’ spouted by Abbas and his PA. The PA president is always among the first to denounce terror attacks around the world, including Britain, France and Germany. Yet when Palestinians murder Israelis, they suddenly become “heroes” and “martyrs.”

How would the British government and public have reacted had someone condemned the British police for killing the three terrorists who carried out the recent London Bridge attack?

How would the British government and public have reacted had the international media run headlines such as, “British policemen kill three Muslim men in London attack?” This is precisely how Abbas’s media outlets — and the BBC — reported on the Jerusalem terror attack: “Israeli policemen shoot dead three Palestinians in Jerusalem” and “Three Palestinian youth martyred at the hands of Israeli occupation policemen.”

It is no wonder, then, that many Palestinians have been celebrating the terror attack in Jerusalem. If these are the messages Abbas and his PA and Fatah cronies are sending to their people, why should it come as a surprise that many Palestinians have been glorifying the terrorists and calling for more attacks against Jews?

Hamas, notably, was the first party to applaud the Jerusalem terror attack, saying it proves that the Palestinian intifada was continuing and would escalate.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist Palestinian terror group, also joined the chorus of those heaping praise on the terrorists for murdering the Israeli policewoman. Hamas and the PFLP have claimed responsibility for the “heroic operation” and dismissed as “false” a statement by ISIS taking credit for the attack.

To be clear: the two terror groups are furious with ISIS for attempting to rob them of the “honor” of murdering a young policewoman on the streets of Jerusalem. This is the surreal reality in the Middle East today.

Not to be left behind in the promotion of Jew-killing, Palestinians across the political spectrum took to social media to applaud the latest terror attack and express their jubilation over the murder of the policewoman.

In innumerable postings on Facebook and Twitter, dozens, if not hundreds, of Palestinians praised the terrorists, describing them as “heroes” and “martyrs.” They particularly expressed excitement over the use of a homemade submachine gun (often referred to as a “Carl Gustav”). This type of weapon is often produced in workshops in various parts of the PA-controlled territories in the West Bank.

A New Zealand production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” sponsored by a local council has been forced to issue an apology to famed lyricist Tim Rice after removing “Israel” from the lyrics to one of the songs.

Festival organizers said they were doing so to keep things simple for students who would be performing, but did not explain why they found the word Israel in the play problematic.

The substitution was discovered by Twitter user, Kate Dowling, who noted on Friday that in the song “Close Every Door,” the line “Children of Israel” had been replaced with “Children of kindness.”

She wrote to the Wellington city council and to Rice, one half of the famed musical writing team, together with Andrew Lloyd Webber, to ask for clarification.

The changed lyrics were the work of the New Zealand capital’s Artsplash festival, in which 10,000 elementary school pupils take part. They distributed song sheets to those who were taking part with the changed lyrics to one of the best known songs.

The musical, written by Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, tells the biblical story of Joseph and the Israelites leaving Canaan and going to Egypt.

In both the biblical story and the musical, the word “Israel” does not refer to the country, but to Jacob, who was given a second name, and “children of Israel” means Joseph and his brothers.

Rice was unhappy at the “unauthorized” change, tweeting, “This is a totally unauthorised change of lyric by @WgtnCC. Plus it’s a terribly drippy and meaningless alteration.”

He tweeted to the Wellington City Council asking them to explain.

“Please explain Joseph lyric change: ‘children of Israel’ to ‘children of kindness’. Permission not given. Tim Rice.”