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ISRAEL

The Key To Middle East Peace Is An Arab-Israeli Peace Shoshana Bryen

President Trump’s “peace process” envoy Jason Greenblatt hosted an odd and auspicious “ problem-solving meeting” at the White House to discuss the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” Among the 19 countries at the table were Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. And Israel. The Palestinians declined to attend and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was not invited.

In one way, it was a great move; in another…meh.

Kudos to Messrs. Trump, Greenblatt and Kushner for tossing out the Oslo parameters and — whether by design or just by following the logic — changing the conversation from limited and literally deadly Palestinian incitement and foot-stomping demands to a broad-based Arab State role in the process. By doing so, they have taken a step toward solving a problem they may not even have been planning to tackle.

The Palestinians are the weakest link in regional politics, which is why the “Palestinian-Israeli peace process” was doomed from the start. It is impossible for Palestinians to announce that they recognize the legitimacy of Jewish nationhood and are prepared to accept for themselves a split, rump state squeezed between their enemy Jordan and their enemy Israel while the Arab States with the money and the guns disapproved. The more the U.S. pressed for concessions that would rile the bankers, the more the Palestinians retreated. Intransigence and violence were their defense against having to defy their patrons.

The core issue was never drinking water — or a state — for the Palestinians. It is the failure of most Arab States, including most of those at the table, to recognize the legitimacy and permanence of the State of Israel in the region. “Secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force,” says UN Resolution 242, and that is the obligation of Arab States to Israel. The meeting did not fulfill the criteria, but it surely was a step in the right direction. Having met and sat and talked in the house of the world’s only superpower, Arab States can’t unmeet, unsit, or untalk. Or deny.

The New Palestinian Jihad to Obliterate Israel by Bassam Tawil

If and when Hamas is ever removed from power in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) will most likely seize control of the coastal enclave, where nearly two million Palestinians live.

PIJ’s new “political document” exposes the Palestinian terror group’s plan for “real peace” in the Middle East. This “real peace,” according to the jihadi group, can be achieved by eliminating Israel after “liberating Palestine, from the river to the sea, and after the original owners of the land return to their homes.”

This genocidal “peace” plan appears to be shared by other Palestinian terror groups, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and even certain parts of Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group is the second-largest terror group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas. Like Hamas, PIJ does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and believes that violence and terrorism are the only way to “liberate all Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.”

Like Hamas, in the past three decades PIJ has carried out thousands of terror attacks against Israel, including suicide bombings.

Recently, the PIJ wished to remind us again of its dangerous and poisonous ideology. This reminder came in the form of a new “political document” published by the Iranian-backed terror group in the Gaza Strip.

The document contains important information about the group’s strategy to destroy Israel and provides insight into the role Islam plays in the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Some may argue that there is nothing new in the PIJ document. However, PIJ is not just another Palestinian “resistance” faction, as some Middle East experts tend to describe it. Rather, it is one of the most dangerous Palestinian terror groups. It aspires to eliminate Israel and kill as many Jews as possible.

If and when Hamas is ever removed from power in the Gaza Strip, PIJ will most likely seize control of the coastal enclave, where nearly two million Palestinians live.

Western journalists often ignore the power and threat of PIJ, mainly because the representatives of the terror group rarely give interviews to the foreign media.

Besides, it is easier for Western journalists to take the short trip from Jerusalem to Ramallah to interview a Palestinian Authority official, who uses his or her fluent English to lie about the Palestinians’ desire for peace and coexistence with Israel.

Western journalists rarely, if ever, present to their readers and viewers what the terrorists preach to their own people.

That is precisely why there is a need to bring the main points of the PIJ document to the attention of the international media and decision-makers around the world. The PIJ is a major player in the Palestinian arena, and its political and military power can be ignored only at great peril.

DANIEL MOYNIHAN’S HISTORIC SPEECH AT THE UNITED NATIONS NOV. 10, 1975****

On 10 November 1975 by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, which declared “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. That vote came one year after UNGA 3237 granted the PLO “observer status”, following Arafat’s “olive branch” speech to the General Assembly in November 1974.

Daniel Moynihan, United States Ambassador to the United Nations delivered this eloquent and stinging response the same day the resolution was passed:

“There appears to have developed in the United Nations the practice for a number of countries to combine for the purpose of doing something outrageous, and thereafter, the outrageous thing having been done, to profess themselves outraged by those who have the temerity to point it out, and subsequently to declare themselves innocent of any wrong-doing in consequence of its having been brought about wholly in reaction to the “insufferable” acts of those who pointed the wrong-doing out in the first place. Out of deference to these curious sensibilities, the United States chose not to speak in advance of this vote: we speak in its aftermath and in tones of the utmost concern.

The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.

Not three weeks ago, the United States Representative in the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee pleaded in measured and fully considered terms for the United Nations not to do this thing. It was, he said, “obscene.” It is something more today, for the furtiveness with which this obscenity first appeared among us has been replaced by a shameless openness.

There will be time enough to contemplate the harm this act will have done the United Nations. Historians will do that for us, and it is sufficient for the moment only to note the foreboding fact. A great evil has been loosed upon the world. The abomination of anti-Semitism — as this year’s Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov observed in Moscow just a few days ago — the abomination of anti-Semitism has been given the appearance of international sanction. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty — and more — to the murderers of the six million European Jews. Evil enough in itself, but more ominous by far is the realization that now presses upon us — the realization that if there were no General Assembly, this could never have happened.

As this day will live in infamy, it behooves those who sought to avert it to declare their thoughts so that historians will know that we fought here, that we were not small in number — not this time — and that while we lost, we fought with full knowledge of what indeed would be lost.

Nor should any historian of the event, nor yet any who have participated in it, suppose, that we have fought only as governments, as chancelleries, and on an issue well removed from the concerns of our respective peoples. Others will speak for their nations: I will speak for mine.

In all our postwar history there had not been another issue which has brought forth such unanimity of American opinion. The President of the United States has from the first been explicit: This must not happen. The Congress of the United States in a measure unanimously adopted in the Senate and sponsored by 436 of 437 Representatives in the House, declared its utter opposition. Following only American Jews themselves, the American trade union movements was first to the fore in denouncing this infamous undertaking. Next, one after another, the great private institutions of American life pronounced anathema in this evil thing — and most particularly, the Christian churches have done so. Reminded that the United Nations was born in struggle against just such abominations as we are committing today — the wartime alliance of the United Nations dates from 1942 — the United Nations Association of the United States has for the first time in its history appealed directly to each of the 141 other delegations in New York not to do this unspeakable thing.

The proposition to be sanctioned by a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations is that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Now this is a lie. But as it is a lie which the United Nations has now declared to be a truth, the actual truth must be restated.

The very first point to be made is that the United Nations has declared Zionism to be racism — without ever having defined racism. “Sentence first — verdict afterwards,” as the Queen of Hearts said. But this is not wonderland, but a real world, where there are real consequences to folly and to venality. Just on Friday, the President of the General Assembly, speaking on behalf of Luxembourg, warned not only of the trouble which would follow from the adoption of this resolution but of its essential irresponsibility — for, he noted, members have wholly different ideas as to what they are condemning. “It seems to me that before a body like this takes a decision they should agree very clearly on what they are approving or condemning, and it takes more time.”

Lest I be unclear, the United Nations has in fact on several occasions defined “racial discrimination.” The definitions have been loose, but recognizable. It is “racism,” incomparably the more serious charge — racial discrimination is a practice; racism is a doctrine — which has never been defined. Indeed, the term has only recently appeared in the United Nations General Assembly documents. The one occasion on which we know the meaning to have been discussed was the 1644th meeting of the Third Committee on December 16, 1968, in connection with the report of the Secretary-General on the status of the international convention on the elimination of all racial discrimination. On that occasion — to give some feeling for the intellectual precision with which the matter was being treated — the question arose, as to what should be the relative positioning of the terms “racism” and “Nazism” in a number of the “preambular paragraphs.” The distinguished delegate from Tunisia argued that “racism” should go first because “Nazism was merely a form of racism.” Not so, said the no less distinguished delegate from the Union Soviet Socialist Republics. For, he explained, “Nazism contained the main elements of racism within its ambit and should be mentioned first.” This is to say that racism was merely a form of Nazism.

The discussion wound to its weary and inconclusive end, and we are left with nothing to guide us for even this one discussion of “racism” confined itself to world orders in preambular paragraphs, and did not at all touch on the meaning of the words as such. Still, one cannot but ponder the situation we have made for ourselves in the context of the Soviet statement on that not so distant occasion. If, as the distinguished delegate declared, racism is a form of Nazism — and if, as this resolution declares, Zionism is a form of racism — then we have step to step taken ourselves to the point of proclaiming — the United Nations is solemnly proclaiming — that Zionism is a form of Nazism.

What we have here is a lie — a political lie of a variety well known to the twentieth century, and scarcely exceeded in all that annal of untruth and outrage. The lie is that Zionism is a form of racism. The overwhelmingly clear truth is that is it not. READ IT ALL

Fundamentalist Terrorists Benefit from “Fundamental Fairness” by Sandra Parker

Sandra Parker is an attorney and the Chairwoman of the Christians United for Israel Action Fund.

An American jury unanimously found the PLO and the Palestinian Authority (PA) liable for the terror that had been inflicted against these American citizens.

Late last year, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the verdict. The Circuit’s strange reasoning was that “fundamental fairness” does not allow U.S. courts to exercise civil jurisdiction over terrorists who act outside of U.S. territory.

American courts have long held that the Due Process Clause does not bar the federal government from freezing the assets of terrorists, bringing them to face criminal trial, or even imposing the death penalty upon them.

Given the Second Circuit Court’s controversial decision, the case warrants an opinion from the Supreme Court.

In January of 2002, a 28-year-old Palestinian woman named Wafa Idris detonated a 22-pound bomb outside a Jerusalem shoe store. The explosion killed 81-year-old Pinhas Tokatli, and injured more than 100 other people – including an American citizen named Mark Sokolow. His wife and two of his daughters were also wounded in the attack.

Two years later, Sokolow joined with ten other American families who had been wounded or lost loved ones at the hands of Palestinian terrorists, and sued the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) under the 1992 Antiterrorism Act.

The plaintiffs in the case alleged that Idris and other Palestinian terrorists had killed and wounded Americans with the PLO’s support. In addition, in what has come to be known as the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) “pay-to-slay” policy, the plaintiffs also alleged that terrorists and their families were receiving salaries and stipends as compensation for their crimes.

Arab-Palestinian relations defy conventional wisdom Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Western conventional wisdom has systematically failed in assessing Middle East developments.

For example, in 1978, conventional wisdom turned its back on the Shah of Iran – who was the USA Policeman of the Gulf –providing a tailwind to Ayatollah Khomeini, who transformed Iran into the most critical, clear and present threat to regional and global stability, as well as the homeland security of the USA and Europe. In 1981 and 2007, conventional wisdom aggressively criticized Israel for bombing of the nuclear reactors of Iraq and Syria. Until Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, conventional wisdom considered the ruthless Iraqi dictator an ally of the USA, worthy of intelligence-sharing, dual-use systems and multi-billion-dollar loan guarantees.

In 1994, conventional wisdom awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Arafat, a role model of hate education, terrorism and intra-Arab treachery. In 2010, conventional wisdom misread the volcanic eruption of the anti-Western Arab Tsunami as the Arab Spring, a Facebook and Youth Revolution. In 2012, conventional wisdom turned its back on Egyptian President Mubarak, welcoming the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Islamic terrorist group in the world.

In 2018, Western conventional wisdom embraces Mahmoud Abbas as a moderate, in comparison to Hamas, highlighting Abbas’ talk, rather than focusing on his walk: intra-Arab subversion, the terror-oriented K-12 education system, generous monthly subsidies to terrorists and their families, and maintaining close ties with enemies and adversaries of the USA.

“It’s All Israel’s Fault” 2.0 Conspiracy theories for those who need more than “grievances” to pin on Israel. Raymond Ibrahim

One way or the other, Israel is to blame for all of the Middle East’s problems, claim many leading Muslims.

Consider the logic of the highly respected Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb—once voted the “most influential Muslim in the world”— as expressed during a televised interview. After claiming that “the genocides perpetrated by the Zionist entity” prompt aggrieved Muslims to turn to terrorism, he added:

[T]here would never have been any problem [had Israel not existed]. The Middle East and the region would have progressed, and the Arab individual would have been like any other person in the world, enjoying a good life, or at least enjoying the right to live in peace. However, this is… Allah willing, if we have time, I will explain how come this place was selected in the days of British colonialism, and how a most devious and malicious plot was hatched to plunge this dagger into the body of the Arab world, so that it would remain sick [emphasis added].

Thus, for those unconvinced by the “grievance” myth—that Israel “provokes” Muslims to resort to terrorism—Tayeb offers another angle: Israel itself is the creator and controller of Islamic terrorism. Continues the well-respected imam:

Recently, I’m sad to say, we had to swallow a dose of poison. It is manifest in our own preoccupation with our own [infighting], while the [Zionist] entity can relax. All we hear about is Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, whatever, the “Arab Spring,” or the “Arab Hell”… Has anybody heard anything about Israel or the Zionist entity recently? Has it occurred to people that this might be premeditated?

In other words, that Arab/Muslim nations everywhere are experiencing internal turmoil and fighting one another—while the Jewish/infidel state is left to “relax”—must be proof that the latter is controlling events behind the scenes.

Such are the conspiracy theories that top ranked Muslim clerics, above and beyond al-Tayeb, regularly disseminate throughout the Muslim world.

For the record, I am not one to dismiss what are labeled “conspiracy theories” out of hand—since to believe that there are no conspiracies and that whatever the powers-that-be think or do is “transparent” and will be reported to the average citizen is also irrational. The problem, however, with this conspiracy theory is that, just as Islamic doctrine and history gainsay the grievance accusation against Israel, so do they gainsay the “Israel as puppet master” claim.

The Palestinian Peace Plan by Bassam Tawil

Opposing a peace initiative because you do not like its content is one thing. Opposing a peace initiative designed to improve the lives of your people is another thing entirely.

Palestinian leaders do not care about their own people, so why should they care about peace with Jews?

They will never accept another plan, even if it comes from Prophet Muhammad.

It is easy to see why Palestinians would be opposed to the US administration’s upcoming plan for peace in the Middle East. The Palestinians do not like what they are hearing about the plan, which has not yet been made public.

Opposing a peace initiative because you do not like its content is one thing. Opposing a peace initiative designed to improve the lives of your people is another thing entirely. The latter defies logic and reveals the disappointing aspects of human nature.

Palestinian hatred of the US administration and President Donald Trump is so intense that the Palestinians are prepared to prolong the misery of their people.

Palestinian leaders care nothing for their people’s ongoing suffering. Give those leaders jobs, money and power, and their people be damned.

Once again, the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have fallen victim to their leaders’ greed, carelessness and idiocy.

Last week, we witnessed another example of how Palestinian leaders are prepared to fight for their own interests, at the expense of their people, all in order to remain in power and keep the funds flowing to their secret (and sometimes public) bank accounts.

US Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, announced that the White House would soon host a meeting of “key countries and stakeholders to find real solutions to the problems has caused” in the Gaza Strip.

DR. MORDECHAI KEDAR: TWO EXCELLENT VIDEOS

1. https://youtu.be/A8E77TrxWDA – VIDEO – Mordechai Kedar – Only weak sue for peace

2. http://mordechaikedar.com/a-taste-of-my-debate-on-al-jazeera-about-jerusalem/ – Dr. Mordechai Kedar interview on al Jazeera

Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state by Victor Sharpe Reviewed by Joan Swirsky

The word Politicide was first coined by Abba Eban—Israel’s foreign minister in 1967—to describe the attempted murder of the sovereign, independent State of Israel by enemies both within and outside of the fledgling state.

When Victor Sharpe first read the word, he told me how it resonated in “the deepest parts of my heart and soul.”

A passionate student of Jewish history—as well as a prolific writer on contemporary Jewish and geopolitical issues—Sharpe was mobilized into action, believing that his determination to protect and defend Israel and to illuminate the wider public about the tiny state’s chronically imperiled status, demanded that he write a book about…Politicide!

His first Politicide book was published in 2006, with a second book following in 2009, and a third book in 2011. Now he has written his fourth opus: Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.

In this riveting volume, Sharpe describes in painful detail the annihilating attacks upon the ancient Jewish homeland by the immensely powerful Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman empires, which, significantly, no longer exist.

He also describes the inexpressible suffering endured by the stateless Jews throughout their 2,000 years of exile in the diaspora, during the Crusades and the Inquisition, and through the cruel expulsion of Jews from various countries including England, Spain and Portugal, the bleak pogroms in Poland and Russia, and to the worst crime in human history, the genocide during the 1940s of six-million Jews in Hitler’s German-occupied Europe.

But to counter this painful history, Sharpe describes in vivid detail the exceptional history of Jewish life from its beginning with Abraham the first Jew—the Holy Convert—who left his idol-making father after discovering the existence of the one-and-only God, thus establishing monotheism for the entire world.

He describes how Abraham and his wife Sarah, along with Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob and Leah and Rachel, became the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish People in the eternal and Covenanted Land of Israel to which God brought them.

And finally, Sharpe tells the story of the miniscule but powerful 14-million Jews who now exist—half of them in the miraculous and flourishing State of Israel—in a world of seven-and-a-half billion people, including over a billion Christians and over a billion Muslims.

The House of Windsor and Those Expansionist Jews… by Gerald A. Honigman

The House of Windsor, with Prince William’s projected summer arrival, will make its first official visit to Israel since David Ben-Gurion proclaimed independence on May 14, 1948, a nice birthday present for my own arrival on Planet Earth on May 8th and, coincidentally, also the birthday of the American President who would fight his own State Department in recognizing the resurrected Jewish nation.

In good times and in bad, pre-and post-statehood Israel has been tied to Great Britain.

From the days of 19th and early 20th century British Christian Zionists culminating in Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour’s 1917 Declaration; to the separation of almost 80% of the original land envisioned by Balfour in the post-World War I 1920 Mandate of Palestine (all the land east of the Jordan River) in 1922, engineered by Colonial Secretary Churchill as a gift to Arab nationalism for Hashemite support for London’s war effort; to Lt. General Sir John Bagot Glubb’s British-led Transjordanian Arab Legion’s attack on a reborn Israel in 1948; to London’s White Papers limiting entrance of Jews fleeing for their lives from Nazi gas chambers; etc. and so forth, the Jews’ and the Brits’ histories have been closely intertwined.

Add to this the irony that right now, today, as London joins most others in the United Nations assailing Israel for refusing to return to its pre-’67 war existence as a 1949 armistice line-created, 9-15 mile wide sardine can of a state, it was Great Britain’s own Lord Caradon, the chief architect of the final draft of carefully-worded UNSC Resolution 242 after the ’67 fighting, who saw to it that Israel would not have to return to the status quo ante and withdraw to the ’49 lines. As corroborated by 242’s other architects, like Professor Eugene Rostow, Israel was to get real, more defensible, secure, and (wishful thinking) recognized borders instead.