RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/israel-annexation-plan-prime-minister-netanyahu-takes-long-term-risk/

Grasping for a short-term gain, Netanyahu takes a long-term risk.

Facing Israel’s plethora of political parties with different agendas, and with a narrow timeline before U.S. elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting to pass a historic annexation of areas in the West Bank. It would reverse more than 50 years of Israeli policy and potentially damage Israel’s relations with European countries and the few Middle Eastern states it has relations with. Netanyahu is gambling on a symbolic move for his legacy — and taking a huge risk.

On June 8, Netanyahu met with leaders of Israeli communities in the West Bank and tried to spell out what his annexation plan looked like. There were no final maps, and a rushed schedule awaits before the July dates when the governing coalition wants to move forward. How did it come to this? How did Netanyahu, the “Mr. Security” of Israel, heralded as “King Bibi,” lead the country for ten years only to end up scrambling for this legacy?

Israel has annexed before. In 1980, it effectively annexed what was once Jordanian East Jerusalem, as a new law gave hundreds of thousands of Palestinians municipal residency but not citizenship. Israel also extended its laws to the Golan Heights in 1981, enabling members of the Druze minority who live there but are Syrian citizens to get Israeli citizenship. In the West Bank, however, where hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis live, Israel has been cautious to upset the status quo. Peace accords signed with the Palestinians in the 1990s were supposed to be a road map to a Palestinian statehood. But that never happened. Instead, wars followed and the Palestinians were divided between their institutions in the West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza.

For decades Netanyahu has warned of the dangers of a Palestinian state that does not renounce terror.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/netanyahus_defining_moment_.html

Last weekend, thousands of Israelis protested Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to apply Israeli sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria beginning on July 1. The protest was organized by the far-left Meretz party and the communist wing of the Arab Joint List Party (Hadash). The heads of both parties called the sovereignty bid “apartheid.” In a video statement, Bernie Sanders opposed the plan and, again, falsely accused Israel of “occupation.” Sanders has an abysmal record when it comes to Israel.

Despite all the naysayers, Netanyahu has a clear mandate for applying sovereignty, which is Israel’s inalienable right. Israelis support this move in large numbers (50.1 percent according to an Israel Democracy Institute poll, versus 30.9 opposed and 19% not knowing/refusing to answer) and over 60 percent, according to a recent Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security poll. After three years of political deadlock, Netanyahu now leads a unity government that supports sovereignty. By boldly moving forward, Netanyahu can gain a legacy as one of the greatest Israeli prime ministers.

What the Greater Sovereignty Plan Should Look Like

Netanyahu should submit a bill containing the following to the Knesset:

A statement explaining why Israel’s claim to Judea and Samaria, the heartland of the Land of Israel, is not one of “occupation”;
A statement explaining why Israel has a right to build Jewish communities (known to many as “settlements”) in Judea and Samaria;
A statement explaining why Israel should apply sovereignty to most of Judea and Samaria;
A statement explaining why Israel should oppose a Palestinian state; and
A map delineating Netanyahu’s vision of what Israel’s borders should be.

J Street’s leader, Jeremy Ben-Ami, last week tweeted that the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which his group in not a member of, should follow the lead of some of the honchos of the British Jewish establishment and speak out forcefully against Israeli government plans to annex large parts of Judea and Samaria. That is, extend Israeli law formally over land Israel has controlled for more than 50 years and where hundreds of thousands of Israelis already live.

The timing of the announcement—just as Israel was preparing to mark two important historic anniversaries—begs for comment.

J Street is the controversial Washington, D.C.-based Jewish pressure group that was created specifically, and almost exclusively, to lobby for an independent Palestinian state. It was founded by Ben-Ami in 2007. He made his statement on the 53rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Six-Day War and days before the 39th anniversary of “Operation Opera,” in which Israeli fighter jets eliminated former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s under construction nuclear reactor in a daring raid.

Iraq was building a nuclear bomb. In 1981, 14 Israeli Air Force F-16s struck and destroyed the Osirak reactor, nearly 700 miles from Israel’s borders. The successful operation put an end to Hussein’s nuclear program. The United Nations adopted Security Council Resolution 487 criticizing Israel for the attack.
Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories

The strike on Osirak established what has been called the Begin Doctrine (name for Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin), which unconditionally declared that the surprise raid was not a one-time thing. As Begin himself explained in a June 15 interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, “This attack will be a precedent for every future government in Israel. … Every future Israeli prime minister will act, in similar circumstances, in the same way.”

What very few J Streeters know is that Yitshaq Ben-Ami (Jeremy’s father) was a key organizer in the United States for support in the 1940s for Begin’s Irgun underground army.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israelis-cant-mask-a-lack-of-anxiety/

Most Israelis are unlikely to accept another proverbial jail term, regardless of COVID-19 rates.

The reopening of the Israeli economy after nearly two months of COVID-19 closures was bound to lead to laxity on the part of the public. And it did, in spite of endless Health Ministry warnings that a release from lockdown bondage would require extra vigilance where social-distancing, mask-wearing and hand-washing were concerned.

This was inevitable.

Israelis’ initial anxiety about the contagiousness of the deadly virus—fed by predictions of mass casualties and other doomsday scenarios—made it relatively easy for the powers that be in Jerusalem to force the populace into weeks of virtual and actual quarantine.

In addition, the draconian measures appeared to pay off. The death toll and need for ventilators remained relatively low. The curve flattened. Life gradually began to resume a semblance of normalcy. Even some of the most stir-crazy among us felt, in retrospect, that perhaps the insanity had been worth the trouble.

Such people embraced their newfound freedom to stray as far from their residences as they pleased, meet with friends and visit family.

The millions of Israelis who lost their jobs, on the other hand, never really came to terms with having their places of employment shut down or businesses destroyed—all for a virus that killed fewer people than other diseases during the same period last year.

 To begin, please open http://q4j-middle-east.com to see a Roman coin of conquest for another of its very troublesome provinces. Note please, Iudaea (Judaea) Capta—not Palaestina Capta.

Vespasian helped subdue early Brits as he‘d done with Jews. See accounts of contemporary Roman historians, Tacitus and Dio Cassius, here http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10171

While not a British citizen nor subject, I can’t help hearing upbeat Rule Britannia without sensing pomp and glory. At times, the song has taken on different meanings, but it has certainly epitomized the heyday of British imperial power… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule,_Britanni!

Across the Channel, other hypocrites have been in full bloom as well, adding to British audacity… “European Union foreign-policy chief Josip Borrell put forward a surprise resolution on Israel’s new government that included the following: ‘The E.U. does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank. The E.U. reiterates that any annexation would constitute a serious violation of international law’”… https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2020/04/27/applying-israeli-sovereignty-changing-the-when-not-the-what/

Indeed, much of the world is now having a conniption over the thought of Judeans once again residing and ruling in parts of Judea and Samaria.

Why is the red carpet, which welcomes Palestinian leaders to Western capitals, exchanged for a shabby rug when they land in most Arab capitals?
In 2020, the widely-disseminated Arabic hashtag, “Palestine is not my cause,” reflects the growing Arab disdain toward Palestinians.

It is consistent with the policy of key Arab leaders, who facilitated the successful conclusion of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace negotiations, by avoiding the myth of Palestinian centrality.  For example, Morocco’s King Hassan, who provided an essential tailwind to the initial stage of the peace negotiations, proclaimed: “The PLO is a cancer in the Arab body.” It is also compatible with a statement made by Egypt’s former President Sadat, a co-signer of the peace treaty: “Why would I want a Palestinian state?! A Palestinian state would enhance the Soviet standing in the region and would join the radical Arab camp.”  This position was echoed by Mubarak, Sadat’s deputy, who succeeded him as President: “Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are not concerned about the Palestinians, and Jordan does not want a Palestinian state either…nor does Israel” (No More War, E. Ben Elissar, 1995, pp 106, 209, 207).

The tangible Arab walk – rather than the placating Arab talk – on the Palestinian issue reflects Arab contempt of the Palestinian track record, as well as the peripheral role played by the Palestinian issue in shaping Middle East reality.

In 2020, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and all other pro-US Arab regimes are preoccupied with domestic and regional epicenters of subversion, terrorism, conventional, ballistic and nuclear threats, which significantly transcend the Palestinian issue.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16093/palestinians-problem-peace

As far as the Palestinian leadership is concerned, Israel and the US administration are now the main enemies of the Palestinians. It is prohibited to talk to any Israeli or US official. It has also become taboo for any Palestinian to talk about holding meetings with Israeli or US officials.

When you radicalize your people against Israel and the US in such a way, how can you expect Palestinian leaders not to veto meeting with Israelis?

Moreover, as Malki is also under attack also from the “moderates,” one can only ask what the “non-moderates” could have in store for the besieged foreign minister — or for any leader who might dare to return to a negotiating table with Israel?

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Malki seems to have committed a “crime”. He said that the Palestinians are prepared to hold a meeting with Israelis! Malki made this scandalous statement during a meeting last week with foreign journalists.

“The Palestinian leadership has confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Malki said, referring to the possibility of holding a video conference meeting between PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under the auspices of the Russian president. “The Palestinians will consider this possibility if Russia determines that its useful.”

The Palestinian leadership, since 2014, has been boycotting peace talks with Israel. Since 2017, the Palestinian leadership has also been boycotting the US administration in response to President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.