RUTHFULLY YOURS

Even more pernicious than the money to terrorists is the promise that if they suspend the carnage for a month, the two state dissolution of Israel will resurface….Time to end the delusion of any solution that deprives Israel of total control of Judea and Samaria….rsk

In the twilight hours of the Obama administration, Secretary of State John Kerry authorized the transfer of $221 million to the Palestinian Authority—in violation of an informal agreement with Congress not to do so. Fortunately, President Trump stopped the transfer before the money left America’s shores. Now he has the opportunity—and the responsibility—to do more.

Lawmakers had good reason to oppose the transfer. Much like with the $400 million cash ransom paid to Iran last year, no meaningful effort was made to account for how the money was to be spent or to prevent it from being used to kill innocents.

Since 9/11, it has been accepted wisdom that stopping funds flowing to terrorism is a vital way to diminish its reach and incidence. In the fight against Islamic State, much of the success—albeit too little and too late—can be traced to efforts to target some of its principal sources of money: oil, trafficking in antiquities, and regional money exchangers that provide the commerce necessary for the killing.

A second operating principle growing out of 9/11 is that people who underwrite terrorism bear culpability equal to those who commit it. Much of the antiterrorism framework established in the Bush administration focused on imposing responsibilities on the international financial community to identify and prevent the transfer of terrorist funds. It is a difficult task because money intended to kill bears few DNA markers, whether transferred by ancient means (gold) or modern ones (digital). Notwithstanding those challenges, financial institutions that have turned a blind eye have faced punishing billion-dollar consequences.

Not so, however, the U.S. government. Over the past 10 years, Washington has provided more than $4 billion in foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority. The goal has been to promote a government in the Palestinian territories capable of assuming the responsibilities of a sovereign state, including the recognition of the state of Israel as a legitimate member of the community of nations. The aid has focused principally on security and criminal-justice programs, U.S. Agency for International Development sponsored assistance for schools, health clinics, water and economic development, and generalized support for the Palestinian Authority’s budget. But unlike the many nongovernmental organizations that contribute charitable funds to the region, American assistance programs, while obliged to vet how the money is spent, have yet to ensure effectively that taxpayer dollars are not diverted to support acts of terror.

Yet there is no question that this is happening. First, the State Department has acknowledged the diversion in reports to Congress, as documented most recently in a Dec. 16, 2016, Congressional Research Service report. As a remedy, Washington simply reduced its aggregate aid by an amount that is classified but is reported to be pegged to intelligence estimates of what the Palestinian Authority spends to sponsor acts of terrorism. But money is fungible, and it is sophistry to argue that funds provided for good deeds do not enable the bad deeds of the same political entity, particularly given the scarcity of resources.

Columnist Peter Beinart warned this week that “unless they change course, [U.S. ‎President] Donald Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu are going to ‎get Jews killed.”‎

Writing in The Forward about Palestinian threats of violence in response to Israel’s ‎authorization of 2,500 new housing units in existing settlements, and discussions in ‎Washington over a possible move of the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to ‎Jerusalem, Beinart hastily added that, “of course,” neither leader wants Jewish blood to ‎flow. ‎

Nor, he said, was he “trying to detract from the primary moral responsibility of those ‎Palestinians who detonate bombs or shoot guns or stab with knives. Palestinian terrorism ‎is inexcusable. It always has been. It always will be.”‎

And then he got to the crux of the piece: If Netanyahu ignores the assessments of ‎Israeli security experts — as well as the saber-rattling of a member of the Jordanian ‎government and chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat — he will be just as ‎guilty of the terrorism that is sure to ensue as those who perpetrated it.‎

To give greater weight to his argument, Beinart first presented the positions of those who ‎favor Israeli settlement construction and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy, and then ‎refuted their logic. ‎

One such position was that “Israel should never be cowed by the prospect of Palestinian ‎violence.”‎

‎”To do so,” he said, “would be to imply that Israel deserves some of the blame for that ‎violence, which is like blaming a woman who is raped for wearing a short skirt.”‎

Indeed. ‎

But here is where Beinart returned his own volley with a mighty whack. Unlike rape, he ‎wrote, which “is purely a product of male pathology, Palestinian violence … is a ‎pathological response to a genuine grievance.” Aha.‎

In other words, Israel really is at fault for getting raped — whether it wears dresses or ‎pants; curtsies or bows; begs or pleads; or fights back. It is to blame for the plight of the ‎Palestinians. In fact, if not for the “violence” of Jewish oppression, they would be ‎teaching their children to sing “Kumbaya” and plant flowers, instead of raising them to ‎become martyrs for Allah.‎

Yes, according to Beinart, “Snuffing out their hopes of ever tasting the basic freedoms ‎that David Friedman and Jared Kushner take for granted is violence.” Kudos for so ‎deftly killing two Jews — the incoming U.S. ambassador to Israel, and Trump’s son-in-‎law/adviser — with one stone.‎

There is a broad sense of relief among pro-Israel Americans and most Israelis that ‎the Obama years are over, and at least as far as U.S.-Israeli relations are concerned, things will be ‎on the mend with the new Trump administration. ‎

Barack Obama’s first call as president in 2009 was to Palestinian leader ‎Mahmoud Abbas, and one of his final meaningful actions as president was the ‎decision to abstain on the vote on U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, ‎thereby allowing the broad condemnation of Israeli settlements beyond the 1949 ‎armistice line to be approved by the Security Council. The Obama’s team’s ‎machinations on the recent Security Council vote went beyond the abstention on the ‎actual vote. They included conversations with and visits (no doubt lobbying) with ‎nonpermanent members of the council, and discussions with the Palestinian ‎Authority to include some boilerplate on violence and incitement in the language ‎that would enable the administration to defend the resolution as “balanced” ‎enough not to require an American veto. ‎

Two years ago, Obama joked about his bucket list of things he wanted ‎to get done in his last years in office. He noted then that the list might be more ‎of something that rhymes with “bucket.” ‎

In the same spirit as singer Madonna’s comments at the Women’s ‎March in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, the president may well have been acting out ‎his bucket list rhyme with regard to Israel.‎

Obama’s belligerence toward Israel seemed obsessively focused on Israeli ‎settlements. From the start of his time in office, administration members regularly ‎and publicly condemned every Israeli decision at any step of an approval process ‎to build new apartments or homes anywhere beyond the Green Line, even within ‎the boundaries of settlements that President George W. Bush and many of the ‎peace processors in the Clinton, Bush and even some in the Obama administration, ‎have accepted would likely remain part of Israel if there were ever a final ‎resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

1. Israeli Arabs strongly oppose Defense Minister Liberman’s land – not population – swap proposal, which stipulates the transfer of Arab-majority land in Israel to the Palestinian Authority, while Jewish majority land in Judea & Samaria (the West Bank) would be transferred to Israel. They are determined to remain Israeli citizens, rather than become subjects of the Palestinian Authority.

2. 70,000 Jerusalem Arabs, holding Israeli ID cards, who relocated from tiny apartments in eastern Jerusalem to spacious homes in neighboring Arab villages and towns in Judea & Samaria (the West Bank), returned to Jerusalem once Israel built a security wall and fence around the city. They were concerned that the wall and fence reflected Israel’s intention to withdraw from the neighboring Arab towns and villages, fearing that it would deny them Israel’s civil liberties as well as educational, employment and welfare benefits.

3. Judea & Samaria (West Bank) Arabs enjoyed the highest-ever population growth – 89% – during Israel’s full-control of the area from 1967 (560,000) through Oslo 1993 (1,050,000), following a population growth stagnation during Jordan’s rule from 1950 to 1967, which was characterized by outrageous infant mortality rates, short life expectancy and extremely high emigration. The unprecedented development of health, medical, employment and educational infrastructures, by Israel, dramatically reduced Arab infant mortality, increased Arab life expectancy and reduced Arab emigration.

4. All 1.6 million Israeli Arab citizens are eligible to vote upon reaching the age of 18. The United Arab Party holds 13 – out of 120 – seats in Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, while identifying with Israel’s arch enemies, opposing Jewish historical, religious and national roots and rights in the Land of Israel, as well as the Jewish ingathering to Israel, which the United Arab Party considers divinely-ordained to Muslims, not the “infidel” Jews. Five additional Arab Members of Knesset represent five non-Arab parties, such as Likud and Labor. Hebrew and Arabic are the only two official languages in Israel. Israel’s education system in the Arab sector is conducted in Arabic.

5. Many Israeli Arabs do not consider the United Arab Party their most authentic representative, as evidenced by the turnout during the national election – 64% – which is far below the 87% for local elections. Ali Salam, the Arab mayor of Nazareth, swept the March 2014 special mayoral election in Nazareth – defeating a 19-year incumbent anti-Israel mayor, Ramiz Jaraisey – by stating that “Nazareth is more important than Ramallah in the Palestinian Authority.” Ali Salam has defied the United Arab Party, criticizing its focus on Israel’s conflict with the Palestinian Authority, rather than on the social, educational and economic concerns of Israeli Arabs.

The Palestinian cause is “no longer a top priority” for the Arab world, a Saudi journalist declared earlier this month.

In an article published by the Saudi daily Al Jazirah newspaper — andtranslated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) — Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh wrote that the reliance of radical Palestinian groups on armed resistance “constitutes a kind of political suicide that only political ignoramuses [can] condone.”

According to Al-Sheikh, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the sole option “that can be demanded and which enjoys the support of most of the international community.”

Some Israeli citizens traveling in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula were undeterred by an urgent warning issued by their government on Tuesday…

What the Palestinians, Al-Sheikh went on to say, “need to understand is that the Arabs of today are not the Arabs of yesterday, and that the Palestinian cause has lost ground among Arabs. This cause is no longer a top priority for them, because civil wars are literally pulverizing four Arab countries, and because fighting the ‘Islamic’ terrorism is the foremost concern that causes all Arabs, without exception, to lose sleep. It is folly to ask someone to sacrifice [tending to] his own problems and national interests in order to help [you solve] your own problems.”

“All I can say to my Palestinian brethren is that stubbornness, contrariness, and betting on the [support of] the Arab masses are a hopeless effort, and that ultimately you are the only ones who will pay the price of this stubbornness and contrariness,” he concluded.

In recent years, Israel has been quietly developing ties with the Sunni-Arab axis in the Middle East – including Saudi Arabia. In his September address to the UN General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that in addition to Egypt and Jordan, which already have signed peace treaties with the Jewish state, “Many other states in the region recognize that Israel is not their enemy. They recognize that Israel is their ally. Our common enemies are ISIS and Iran. Our common goals are security, prosperity and peace. I believe that in the years ahead we will work together to achieve these goals.”

There seems to be no end to the myths surrounding the Jewish state. Israel is accused of being an apartheid state, an occupier of Palestinian Arab lands, and an international war criminal. On December 28, 2016, US Secretary of State John Kerry added another canard to this litany when he warned that if Israel rejects a two-state solution, “it can be Jewish or it can be democratic-it cannot be both.”

Mr. Kerry, thereby, demonstrates his limited understanding of how Israel is governed as well as how against incredible odds the country remains both Jewish and democratic. Nor did the Obama administration even attempt to draw such a distinction in its outright support of the Muslim Brotherhood-based government of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt.

Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US, observed that the U.S. Britain and Canada are among the few countries in the world that have had continual democratic governments. Although from inception Israel has been threatened with extinction, she has never yielded to the wartime demands of instituting onerous restrictive laws that often destroy other democracies.

Equal Rights to All Even to Those who Refute Israel’s Right to Exist

If anything, the Palestinian Arab/Israeli conflict has “tempered” Israeli democracy, providing equal rights even to Arabs and Jews who refute her right to exist. “Is there another democracy,” Oren asks, “that would uphold the immunity of legislators who praise the terrorists sworn to destroy it? Where else could more than 5 percent of the population — the equivalent of 15 million Americans — rally in protest without incident and be protected by the police. And which country could rival the commitment to the rule of law…whose former president was convicted and jailed for sexual offenses by three Supreme Court justices — two women and an Arab? Israeli democracy, according to pollster Khalil Shikaki, topped the US as the most admired government in the world — by the Palestinians.” [1]

What is equally remarkable Oren opines, is that Israel was founded by Jews from autocratic societies who were forced to grapple with issues of identity and security that would have overwhelmed even the most seasoned democracies. These discussions occurred at a time when they were occupied in absorbing almost two million Jewish immigrants from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. [2]

A Nation-State where National Character and Language of the Arab Minority is Officially Recognized

While Israel’s institutions and principles of governing are democratic, the Jewish state is nevertheless different. Like Bulgaria, Greece, and Ireland, Israel is a nation-state, but with a large Arab minority, whose national character and language are officially recognized.