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The Heavy Price of Israeli Generosity No good deed extended to Palestinians goes unpunished. Mordechai Nisan

By on April 5th, 2018

Although some stubborn Israelis won’t agree, Israel is really to blame for the absence of peace with the Palestinians. This is not to say Israel is also guilty for the war with the Palestinians, though people might mistakenly think so, considering the recent killing of 18 Palestinians in Gaza who were engaged in a pseudo-civilian invasion of Israeli territory on March 30.

The real story is clear but generally misreported or unreported by the fake news outlets: Israel’s wanton concessions, innumerable gestures of good-will, and wide range of assistance that have all failed since the 1993 Oslo Accord to bring peace with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew from all of the Gaza Strip and parts of Judea and Samaria in the spirit of “territories for peace.” Facing Palestinians with their battery of terrorists and rock-throwing youth, knife-stabbers and arsonists, food-poisoners and maniacs crashing their vehicles into soldiers and pedestrians, Israel often showed undue indulgence where iron-clad firmness would have been expected and justified.

Israel’s complacent generosity has provided quality medical treatment in its hospitals for Palestinian enemies of Zionism, offered academic studies to convicted and imprisoned Arab terrorists, and transfers gas and electricity to Gaza and its Hamas jihad regime. And the courts – well, Israel’s Supreme Court – is on constant alert to block any government initiative to build its security wall through an empty field near an Arab village, and to cancel government punishment and deterrence decisions to destroy a terrorist’s home.

In Middle Eastern cultural terms, we have uncovered an explanation for the interminable conflict. We have to speak about this with frankness, free from PC thought-control and Edward Said mantras.

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Saudi Crown Prince Acknowledges Israel’s Right To Exist By Tom Knighton See note please

By on April 3rd, 2018

Okay the Prince is trying, but how ridiculous is the statement “acknowledges Israel’s right to exist”as if that was a big concession. Israel is a democracy with the most advanced scientific, technical, medical and social institutions that has contributed 100 times more than all the OPEC nations to the well being of the entire world….And, it is the only post colonial nation asked to accept recognition of its right to exist as an example of “moderation.” rsk

Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of the oil-rich kingdom, has been rapidly instituting big changes to one of the world’s most repressive countries. He’s still acting dictatorially, but change that could affect the whole region is occurring.

He just said this to The Atlantic in an interview: “I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation. I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land.”

The Atlantic noted the significance: “According to former U.S. peace negotiator Dennis Ross, moderate Arab leaders have spoken of the reality of Israel’s existence, but acknowledgment of any sort of ‘right’ to Jewish ancestral land has been a red line no leader has crossed until now.”

Needless to say, I expect social justice jihadis to protest bin Salman at every opportunity. After all, they’ve protested Gal Gadot for simply being a Israeli who landed a big movie role.

While the Palestinians have shown no interest in living side by side with the Jewish State, and the prince believes the Palestinians are a distinct people and deserving of autonomy, his acknowledge that Israel has a right to exist will have ripple effects.

Who knows what form those will take.

Bin Salman has enlarged the target on his back, but other Islamic nations will weigh their interests vis a vis Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United States, and act accordingly.

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Anti-Israel Hate on American Campuses A new book shines a disturbing light on the university, the suppression of free speech, and the poison of the BDS movement. Noah Beck

By on April 3rd, 2018

About six months after Andrew Pessin posted on his Facebook profile a defense of Israel during its 2014 war against Hamas, the once popular Connecticut College philosophy professor was subjected to an academic smear campaign. The school paper published articles defaming him. The administration hosted condemnations of Pessin from across the campus community on the school’s website, and tolerated other anti-Semitic activities that only worsened the climate for Jews and Israel supporters. Pessin received death threats and, in the spring of 2015, took a medical leave of absence. The Connecticut College administration offered no meaningful protection or support to Pessin, and never issued any apology for its role in his abuse.

The Pessin affair was part of a growing trend of anti-Israel hostility on U.S. campuses, but at least his story has a somewhat happy ending. Pessin resumed teaching last fall after an extended paid sabbatical, and – together with a colleague – convinced the school to establish a Jewish Studies program. Moreover, he has edited a new book with Fordham University’s Doron Ben-Atar on the general campus trend: Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS. Ben-Atar, who is part of Fordham’s American Studies program, protested at a faculty meeting about the 2013 passing of a resolution calling for a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) targeting Israel, only to find himself soon being investigated for unspecified charges, resulting in a Kafkaesque campaign of intimidation and vilification. This volume of essays, by faculty and students who have confronted anti-Israelism on their campuses, documents and analyzes how this movement masks an underlying anti-Semitism that creates a hostile environment for Jews while undermining free speech and civility.

Writer Noah Beck interviewed Pessin via email.

Q: Your book catalogues the many underhanded tactics used to promote the anti-Israel agenda on college campuses, which should help Israel advocates prepare for what awaits them. Did your personal ordeal inspire you to create a potential resource for campus Israel advocates? Or did you have the idea for such a book even before what happened to you?

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Arab Leaders Abandon the Palestinians Facing threats from Iran and Turkey, they want peace—and to strangle Hamas. Walter Russell Mead

By on April 3rd, 2018

On the surface it was business as usual in the Gaza Strip. Hamas bussed thousands of residents to the border with Israel to begin a six-week protest campaign ahead of the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence—or, as the Palestinians call it, the nakba, or “catastrophe.” This protest would mark “the beginning of the Palestinians’ return to all of Palestine,” according to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

It didn’t. Stones were thrown, tires were set aflame, and shots were fired. When the smoke cleared, the borders were still in place and 15 Palestinians lay dead, with three more succumbing later from injuries. While families endured their private tragedies, familiar controversies swirled. The usual people denounced Israel in the usual ways, countered by the usual defenders making the usual arguments.

But what is happening in Gaza today is not business as usual. Tectonic plates are shifting in the Middle East as the Sunni Arab world counts the cost of the failed Arab Spring and the defeat of Sunni Arabs by Iranian-backed forces in Syria.

In headier times, pan-Arab nationalists like Gamal Abdel Nasser and lesser figures like Saddam Hussein dreamed of creating a united pan-Arab state that could hold its own among the world’s great powers. When nationalism sputtered out, many Arabs turned to Sunni Islamist movements instead. Those, too, have for the time being failed, and today Arab states seek protection from Israel and the U.S. against an ascendant Iran and a restless, neo-Ottoman Turkey.

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David Isaac :How Not to Secure Israel Review: ‘Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for An Era of Change’ by Charles D. Freilich

By on April 2nd, 2018

“Surprisingly, perhaps, Israel does not have a formal national security strategy, or defense doctrine, to this day,” writes former Israeli deputy national security adviser Charles D. Freilich. Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change is his effort to move Israel closer to creating one. According to Freilich, David Ben-Gurion was the only “sitting leader to conceptualize an overall national security strategy,” and with the dramatic changes to Israel’s security situation since, a new one is needed. He may be right, but the reader leaves this book hoping that Freilich isn’t the one to develop it.

Freilich describes “a growing sense among both practitioners and scholars alike, that Israel has lost sight of its strategic objectives and course as a nation.” On the practitioner side, he notes that there have been efforts to chart a course, notably the 2006 Meridor Report, and a 2015 document “IDF Strategy.” But the former proposal was never adopted and the latter is a military paper and not the required higher-level strategic overview, something that the report’s authors themselves admit. On the scholarly front, Freilich describes as “remarkable” the lack of comprehensive assessments of Israeli national security strategy in academia–the “vast literature” on Israel’s foreign and domestic affairs notwithstanding.

Freilich sees it as his mission to fill the gap, and he makes a serious attempt to provide a bird’s-eye view of Israel’s strategic situation. He covers a wide-range of topics, from the numerous military and diplomatic threats Israel faces to socioeconomic factors that affect Israel’s strategic posture to the influence of the U.S.-Israel “special relationship.” A good editor could have profitably cut as much as 100 from the book’s 384 pages, given the extent of repetitions.

Despite Freilich’s insistence that “Israel has never been stronger and more secure militarily,” the picture that emerges from his prose is actually quite disturbing. While Israel may not have faced an existential threat since 1973, neither has it won a decisive military victory since Lebanon in 1982. “Indeed, all of the major rounds between Israel and Hezbollah, from 1983 to 2006, ended unsatisfactorily for Israel,” Freilich writes. Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s strategy of a war of attrition seems to be working. Israel is severely limited in its response. It wants to avoid escalation, international opprobrium, and high casualties. It also wants to steer clear of controlling more territory. Freilich notes that the Winograd Commission (the commission that investigated the failures of the 2006 Lebanon War) laid the blame for that war’s operational shortcomings on the “IDF’s mystical fear of conquering additional territory.”

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Palestinians: A March to Destroy Israel by Bassam Tawil

By on April 2nd, 2018

Based on statements made by Hamas leaders, the “March of Return” campaign is not about improving the living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Nor is it about finding ways to solve the “humanitarian” and “economic” crises in the Gaza Strip.

The mass protests are aimed at forcing Israel to accept millions of Palestinian “refugees” as a first step towards turning Jews into a minority in their own country. The next step would be to kill or expel the Jews and replace Israel with an Islamic state. Did they expect the Israeli soldiers to greet them with flowers?

The Palestinian “March of Return” is being mistakenly referred to by some journalists and political analysts as a “peaceful and popular” drive by Palestinians demanding freedom and better living conditions.

Palestinians’ living conditions in the Gaza Strip could be improved if the Egyptians only opened the Rafah border crossing and allowed Palestinians to leave and allowed Arabs and others to come and help the people there. Their lives could be improved if Hamas stopped building terror tunnels and smuggling weapons.

On March 30, an attempt by tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to infiltrate the border with Israel launched a six-week campaign of mass protests — called the “March of Return” — organized by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other radical Palestinian groups.

The groups encouraged Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to head to the areas adjacent to the border with Israel. The protesters were also encouraged to try to infiltrate the border, thus putting their lives at risk.

Hamas and its allies told the protesters that the “March of Return” marked the beginning of the “liberation of all of Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.” In other words, the Palestinians were told that infiltrating the border with Israel would be the first step toward destroying Israel.

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Geraldo Rivera outs himself: wishes he had supported second intifada By Thomas Lifson

By on April 2nd, 2018

Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera, aka Gerry Rivers before being Hispanic was fashionable, is out peddling his memoir, titled The Gerlado Show. On the Fox News program The Five, he was asked if he regrets any news story he reported, and his answer was shocking, particularly in the light of the border storming currently underway in Gaza.

Aaron Klein reports his comments at Breitbart:

I regret in 2002 backing down from backing the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel. The Second Intifada. Because I saw with my own eyes how. And I know how this is going to resonate very poorly with the people watching right now. But still, I have to tell you how I feel. I saw at firsthand how those people were. And now you said 14, 15 people killed in Gaza. Palestinians killed by the IDF forces. I saw what an awful life they live under constant occupation and oppression.

And people keep saying, “Oh, they are terrorists. Or they are this or they are that.” They are an occupied people and I regret chickening out after 2002 and not staying on that story and adding my voice as a Jew, adding my voice to those counseling a two-state solution. It is so easy to put them out of sight, out of mind. And let them rot. And be killed. And keep this thing festering. And I think a lot of our current problems stem from – that’s almost our original sin. Palestine and Israel. I want a two-state solution. I want President Trump to re-energize the peace process.

Here is video of the segment

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Palestinians Hold Protests Against Backdrop of Crumbling Gaza Economy At least 15 Palestinians are killed in clashes with Israeli forces during demonstrations along the border By Rory Jones and Abu Bakr Bashir

By on March 31st, 2018

THEY TRASHED ALL WORKING AND PRODUCTIVE FARMS WITH STATE OF THE ART EQUIPMENT, RAINED ROCKETS ON SDEROT, AND INSTEAD OF BLAMING ABBAS AND OTHER SO CALLED LEADERS THEY RIOT AGAINST ISRAEL. …THIS IS A PREVIEW OF THE DISASTER THAT A 2 STATE DELUSION WOULD BRING….RSK

GAZA CITY—Tens of thousands of Palestinian protesters massed Friday along the Israeli border, as Western officials warn the economic situation in the Gaza Strip is at breaking point, raising the risk of civil unrest or even war.

At least 15 Palestinians died in clashes with the Israeli military and more than 1,000 were injured, Palestinian authorities said. Crowds rolled burning tires and threw stones and fire bombs at Israeli soldiers, the Israeli army said.

Friday’s demonstrations called for a right to return to homes in what is now Israel. But Gaza’s flat-lining economy—battered by fighting, blockades and an intensifying power struggle between Palestinian factions—has further inflamed tensions.

Growth is near zero, unemployment is 44% and consumer spending has plummeted in this strip of Palestinian territory, sandwiched between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea.

Gazans live with three to six hours of electricity a day due to shortages and more than half of the strip’s nearly two million residents receive food assistance from the United Nations.

The economic situation is so dire that some warn it could lead Gaza’s rulers, the extremist group Hamas, to start a war with Israel. U.S. and Israeli officials believe Hamas started a conflict with Israel in 2014 in part because Israel and Egypt squeezed the group economically.

Gaza is on the brink of “total institutional and economic collapse,” Nickolay Mladenov, U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, told the Security Council last month. “This is not an alarmist prediction…it is a fact.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Secret World of the Palestinian Authority by Bassam Tawil

By on March 29th, 2018

The failure of the donors — mainly the US and the EU — to demand accountability and transparency from the Palestinian Authority has deprived Palestinians of a significant part of the funds.

It has also encouraged Palestinian leaders to continue pocketing millions of dollars, enriching their private and hidden bank accounts.

The Palestinians, of course, are the primary victims in this story.

A report published this week offers a rare glance into the secret world of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was established in 1994 in accordance with the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the PLO.

Headed by Mahmoud Abbas, the PA has since received billions of dollars in aid from the US, EU and several other donor countries.

However, the failure of the donors to demand accountability and transparency from the Palestinian Authority has deprived Palestinians of a significant part of the funds. It has also encouraged Palestinian leaders to continue pocketing millions of dollars, enriching their private and hidden bank accounts.

One would have expected the Western donors to have woken up and noticed that Palestinian leaders are misusing the taxpayer money they send.

One would have expected the Americans and Europeans to come to Abbas and his cronies, bang on the table, and demand that they start using and investing money for the welfare of their people, and not for their friends and family members.

The report, published by the Coalition For Accountability And Integrity (AMAN), established in 2000 by a number of civil society organizations working in the field of democracy, human rights, and good governance, shows that the Western donors have learned nothing from their past mistakes.

The report also shows that the Palestinian Authority remains the same corrupt body it has been since its inception more than twenty years ago.

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Jericho, We Have Not Forsaken You An excursion to the ancient city reveals its historic and spiritual Jewish nexus. Ari Lieberman

By on March 29th, 2018

We departed from Kochav Yair, a quaint, affluent town in central Israel, at precisely 7 a.m. Our destination was the ancient city Jericho, one of civilization’s oldest and the first to be liberated by the Israelites when they crossed the Jordan River some 3,400 years ago. Our guide was former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Uzi Dayan. Ironically, he also happens to be nephew to the late Moshe Dayan, who as Israel’s Minister of Defense, led the IDF to victory during the 1967 Six-Day War and returned the city of Jericho to its rightful owners.

Dayan’s manner of speaking is authoritative and deliberate, likely a product of his years of service in the military. His spiritual and nationalistic connection to the land is obvious. And his knowledge of its history and geography is impressive. This is a man who wanted to impress upon us the historical and spiritual nexus of Jericho to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. He succeeded beyond expectation.

Jericho is located in Judea & Samaria near the strategic Jordan Valley, about 70km south of the Israeli city of Bet She’an. We approached the city from the north driving along Route 5, which cuts across part of the breathtaking Samarian landscape and then took a number of smaller roads until reaching Route 90. At Route 90, we traversed southward toward Jericho.

In 1994, The Israeli government handed the city over to the entity known as the Palestinian Authority as part of the calamitous Oslo Accords. The Accords, which were supposed to usher in an era of peace, instead resulted in an orgy of Palestinian terrorism and the dismemberment of parts of ancient Israel.

Judea & Samaria is currently divided into three distinct districts – Areas A, B and C. Area C is currently under full Israeli control and constitutes some 40% of Judea & Samaria. Area B is under PA civilian control and Israeli military control. Area A is under full Palestinian civilian and security control. Together, Area A and B constitute 60% of the landmass of Judea & Samaria.

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