Jewish Issues Watchdog

Asia courts hi-tech Israel

2013-05-23T16:23:00.004+08:00

From: The Australian May 23, 2013, by Colin Rubenstein*:

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent visit to China was revealing... Beijing arranged a program that strongly hinted it regards Netanyahu as an important visitor.

In addition to the standard protocol for visits from heads of government - meetings with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang at the Great Hall of the People with full military guard - Netanyahu was invited to hold a live chat with Chinese citizens on Xinhua's website, and gave a speech at the Central Party School, the main academic institution that trains the Communist Party's future leaders. These less common gestures highlight a desire to reach out to a foreign leader.
The welcome mat put out for Netanyahu in Beijing is part of a growing trend across east, south and southeast Asia. Israel's reputation as the "start-up nation" - a dynamic economy centred on hi-tech, innovation and entrepreneurship - is causing regional leaders to sit up and take notice. Israeli leaders - long focused on the US and Europe - are starting to make the Asian region a new priority.
...Chinese leaders know that Israeli-Chinese trade and economic co-operation is highly valuable and only likely to become more so.
Netanyahu concluded his visit to China having signed a $US400 million ($408.5m) trade agreement. China followed up the Netanyahu visit by announcing that the University of International Business Economics had decided to create a new department of "Israeli economics and Judaism" dedicated to the study of Israel's economy, technology and business culture. This follows classes established at the University for Foreign Affairs in Beijing over recent years on Hebrew and Israeli culture.
Since Israel and China established diplomatic relations in 1992, trade between them has expanded almost 200 times to $US9.91 billion last year.
"If we offer a marriage between Israeli technology and Chinese manufacturing and global marketing capabilities, we can have a winning combination," Netanyahu said in Shanghai. Beijing apparently agrees, with Chinese ambassador to Israel Gao Yanping echoing these sentiments in the Jerusalem Post.
...Israel's regional economic ties extend beyond China to South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Mongolia, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and other countries.
While some connections date back more than 50 years - as in the case of Myanmar, Thailand and The Philippines - these relationships are today growing at an unprecedented rate. Even in countries with no diplomatic relations with Israel, such as Indonesia, there are growing ties, albeit indirectly.
Israel is also negotiating a free trade agreement with India that could lift annual trade volume between the two from $US5bn to $US15bn.
Israel's defence trade with India is about $US9bn. Tourism is also growing, with South Koreans and Indians visiting Israel in substantial and increasing numbers. Israel's two-way trade with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has reached $US28bn and exports to Asia continue to grow. They're about 22 per cent of the Israeli total.
Asian nations are recognising that Israel excels in innovation in a variety of areas of particular interest, including water conservation, irrigation methods, agriculture, medicine, communications and hi-tech.
Israel has also gained a reputation for ground-breaking entrepreneurship, pioneering technologies, profitable business opportunities and high investment returns. The Wall Street Journal magazine recently ranked Tel Aviv as the world's second "most innovative city", qualities recently singled out by business mogul and philanthropist Warren Buffett. Following his acquisition of the Israeli company Iscar, he said: "Israel is a good place for investment because of its people. There is no other place like it on earth where you can find people with such qualities."
Smart Australian companies are, and should be, looking for ways to leverage Israeli economic presence in our region.
*Colin Rubenstein is executive director of the Australia-Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.

Syrian front heats up

2013-05-22T12:34:00.000+08:00

From The Times of Israel 21 May 2013, by Aaron Kalman:

Israel’s military chief issued a severe warning to Bashar Assad on Tuesday, saying the Syrian leader would “bear the consequences” of any more attacks on Israeli forces near the Syrian border.

Benny Gantz uses binoculars to look across Israel's border with Syria, Tuesday 21 May 2013

(photo credit: IDF Spokesperson)

Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz issued his threat hours after an Israeli jeep came under fire during a patrol in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

Syria claimed it destroyed an Israeli vehicle that crossed the ceasefire line in the Golan Heights overnight. A statement issued by the Syrian Armed Forces said its troops destroyed the vehicle “with those in it.” It did not elaborate, but said any attempt to infiltrate Syria’s territory will face “immediate and firm retaliation.”

The IDF said the vehicle, which had not entered Syrian territory, suffered light damage. It said that the Israeli troops reported a “direct hit” from their return fire — a Tamuz missile, fired seven minutes after the Syrian fire.

Gantz said there was no doubt whatsoever that the routine IDF patrol was inside Israeli territory, and no doubt either that it was deliberately fired upon by Assad’s forces — “from a clearly marked Syrian position… not once, not twice, but three times.” Israel, he said, “cannot allow the Golan Heights area to become a comfortable space for Assad to operate from. If he causes [the situation on] the Golan Heights to deteriorate, he will have to bear the consequences.”

Although Israeli analysts said Tuesday’s incident was apparently a local initiative, “Assad encourages and directs the widening of different operations against Israel, including the Golan Heights,” Gantz told a conference at the University of Haifa.

Tuesday’s was the latest in a string of incidents in which gunfire and mortar shells have struck the Golan in recent months. Israel believes that most of the fire has been spillover from the Syrian civil war, but that several cases, including Tuesday’s, were intentional.

That was bolstered by the fact that Tuesday marked the first time the Syrian army has acknowledged firing at Israeli troops across the frontier, in what appeared to be an attempt by Assad’s regime to project toughness following three Israeli airstrikes near Damascus this year.

Ehud Ya’ari, a leading Arab affairs analyst, told Channel 2 news on Tuesday night that the situation between Israel and Syria was now “several times more explosive than it was this morning.”

He noted that a Syrian member of parliament, Sharif Shehadeh, warned after the Golan exchange of fire that Syria would respond to any future Israeli attacks; Shehadeh also spoke of “other regional forces” allied with Syria — in reference to Iran and Hezbollah.

“This marks a serious change of policy by Assad,” said Ya’ari. Assad has now “tied his own hands… committing himself to respond to any future Israeli attacks.” This was something the Syrian president had avoided doing for two years, because he didn’t want direct confrontation with Israel.

Israel has warily watched the Syrian civil war, fearing the two-year-old conflict could spill across its borders.

Israel is concerned that Assad, in an act of desperation, could try to escalate tensions on the border to draw in Israel and divert attention away from his struggles against the rebel groups seeking his ouster. Israel also fears that Assad’s sophisticated weapons could be transferred to Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon or fall into the hands of the rebels, including Islamic extremists connected to al-Qaeda who Israel believes will turn their attention to the Jewish state if they topple Assad.

Tensions have been rising between Israel and Syria in recent weeks, particularly following two airstrikes executed by Israel earlier this month that targeted Iranian arms shipments bound for Hezbollah via Syria. Israel has not confirmed carrying out the attacks.

The strikes marked a sharp escalation of Israel’s involvement in the Syrian civil war and raised fears that the conflict could turn into a full-fledged regional war.

Syria vowed to retaliate after the strikes and Assad said Syria was “capable of facing Israel” and would not accept violations of its sovereignty. Firing at an Israeli target seems to be in line with the tougher rhetoric that followed the airstrikes.

Gantz visited the area after the cross-border incident Tuesday and told soldiers stationed there to “stay alert during these challenging times.”

Speaking earlier at a conference in the north of the country Gantz described the precarious security situation that Israel faces in an unstable and volatile region, and said things could spiral out of control at a moment’s notice.

“A day doesn’t go by in which we don’t have to make decisions that could lead us to a sudden and uncontrollable deterioration,” he said. “That is something that will be with us for the near future. We need to be more alert.”

Later in the day, meanwhile, Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan warned that rockets raining down on densely populated areas in Israel “are only a matter of time” and could happen at any moment.

“The question is no longer will rockets be fired at the large populated areas in Israel, the question is when it’ll happen,” Erdan told reporters during a briefing ahead of a large drill scheduled for southern Israel Wednesday. He said the battles being fought no longer distinguish between the front line and the home front, as missiles and rockets allow strikes far from the battlefield.

“it could happen tonight, it could happen next week,” Erdan said of the next escalation. “Flare-ups along our borders aren’t something dependent only on the IDF or its will.”

Déjà Vu: “Peace in Our Time”

2013-05-14T16:26:00.005+08:00

From Isi Leibler, May 14, 2013:

“Peace in Our Time” was proclaimed by Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in defense of his disastrous Munich Agreement with Hitler. History testifies that his policy of appeasement and failure to confront the aggressive Nazi barbarians virtually made World War II inevitable.
It was in August 1993, just 20 years ago, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, strongly pressured by then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, embarked on what he described as a “gamble for peace” and consummated the Oslo Accords with the PLO, an act which bitterly divided the nation.
Passionate debates ensued, but in our desperate yearning for peace, until recently many of us deluded ourselves that we were engaged in an “irreversible” peace process. Some of us even mesmerized ourselves into believing that Yasser Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas were genuine peace partners, despite clear evidence from their own statements that in referring to peace, they did so with forked tongues and that their real objective was to end Jewish sovereignty.
In recent years the vast majority of us reluctantly concluded that the “gamble for peace” was a failure and that, in the absence of a Palestinian leadership genuinely committed to coexistence, any prospect for a genuine peace was a mirage. This has become especially obvious as Palestinian leaders even refuse to engage in negotiations without preconditions.
Yet, the vast majority of Israelis would still now endorse major concessions to the Palestinians if they were convinced that this would lead to a genuine peace.
Sadly, many - including some of our friends - fail to appreciate this and continue urging Israel to be more forthcoming about the peace process.
President Obama reversed his former confrontationist stance towards Israel and now even publicly endorses Israel’s right to take preemptive military action to defend itself. Nevertheless, an Alice in Wonderland atmosphere still dominates US Middle East policy.
Thus, Secretary of State John Kerry waxes eloquent over an allegedly revised and improved version of the so-called Arab League Peace Initiative.
The imperative of placating the US obligates our government not to outrightly reject this initiative which “agrees” to accept minor territorial swaps from the 1949 armistice lines yet still incorporates the right of return of Arab refugees which would result in an end to the Jewish state.
Moreover, the genocidal Hamas - with whom the PA seeks to merge - has condemned the scheme and adamantly reiterated that it would never countenance any compromise.
No Israeli government could conceivably contemplate acquiescing to a formula in which the opening benchmark in negotiations required acceptance of the 1949 armistice lines. This would entail East Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, as well as the major settlement blocs effectively becoming Palestinian territory until an agreement to engage in swaps is consummated. Precedents indicate that it is highly unlikely that agreement on swaps could be achieved with the current intransigent Palestinian leaders.
In this context, we must not ignore the reality that both Arafat and Abbas refused - and even failed to respond with a counter offer - when Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert offered them 97% of the territories over the green line.
Nor can we dismiss the criminal character of Palestinian society and the fact that the PA, no less than Hamas, inculcate children from primary school to kill Jews and become “martyrs” and publicly sanctify mass murderers and allocate state pensions to families of suicide bombers and terrorists in Israeli jails.
Indeed, even “respectable” Palestinian websites such as spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi’s Miftach, recently published an article reviving medieval blood libels, explicitly accusing Jews of drinking Gentile blood on Passover.
The Palestinian state-sponsored anti-Semitic brainwashing in the media, mosques and schools is in fact as lethal as the Nazi propaganda which transformed Germans into willing accomplices of mass murder.
It is thus not surprising that recent polls show that Palestinians are globally the most supportive Moslem nation favoring suicide bombings, with over 40% justifying them.
Those promoting Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as a “peace partner” or “moderate” would be hard pressed to quote a single positive statement by him about Israel to his own people. He may tactically have reached the conclusion that diplomacy is more effective for promoting Palestinian goals than terror. But while he consistently stresses that this is a pragmatic strategic approach, his Fatah subsidiary continues engaging in acts of terror and the PA continuously threatens to revert to the “armed struggle” if it fails to achieve its objectives by diplomatic means.
According to Palestine Media Watch, only this month Sultan Abu Al-Einem, a senior PLO official, “saluted the heroic fighter” who had stabbed an Israeli civilian to death. At the same time Jibril Rajoub, co-signer to the Oslo Accords and Deputy Secretary to the Fatah Central Committee, stated that “popular resistance – with all it entails - remains on our agenda” and that “if we had a nuke we’d have used it [against Israel] this morning”.
Despite the fact that Abbas has breached the Oslo accords by unilaterally obtaining UN diplomatic recognition and is now constantly threatening to charge Israel with war crimes at the International Court of Justice, the world continues today to pressure us to maintain the manifestly false charade of engaging with a nonexistent peace partner.
Moreover, the “peaceniks” and their Western supporters, including some misguided Jews and Israelis, still demand that the Israeli government be more forthcoming with concessions.
We are called upon to engage in further “confidence building” measures and release terrorists, many of whom are likely to resume their activities; make further territorial concessions despite our disastrous experience after the unilateral withdrawal in Gaza; freeze building of new settlements despite the fact that we did this for 10 months and failed to even get the Palestinians to join us at the negotiating table.
We are urged to specify our desired borders, as if this can be done in isolation from security and other factors. Besides, every time the possibility of another concession is even hinted, the Palestinians insist that it represent a new opening benchmark for future negotiations.
We have made major concessions but there has been no reciprocity because clearly the PA will not and cannot concede anything. We face a calculated strategy to destroy Israel in stages in which our adversaries seek to obtain and absorb concessions without reciprocity and will continue to demand more and more until they exhaust us.
We should firmly restate to our friends our readiness and desire to separate from the Palestinians. But we must not again jeopardize our security and lives by engaging in yet another “gamble for peace” with the odds stacked against us.
Were we to have a genuine peace partner we could achieve a peace treaty and grounds for long-term coexistence in a matter of days. But until then our friends should not seek to impose upon us a Chamberlain style “Peace in our Time” formula.

Free Syrian Army rebels are defecting to Islamist group

2013-05-13T08:26:00.001+08:00

8 May 2013, by Mona Mahmood and Ian Black:

Syria's main armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organisation with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The flag of the Islamist rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra flying over the main square of the city of Raqqa in Syria. Photograph: Reuters

Evidence of the growing strength of al-Nusra, gathered from Guardian interviews with FSA commanders across Syria, underlines the dilemma for the US, Britain and other governments as they ponder the question of arming anti-Assad rebels.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said that if negotiations went ahead between the Syrian government and the opposition – as the US and Russia proposed on Tuesday – "then hopefully [arming the Syrian rebels] would not be necessary".
The agreement between Washington and Moscow creates a problem for the UK and France, which have proposed lifting or amending the EU arms embargo on Syria to help anti-Assad forces. The Foreign Office welcomed the agreement as a "potential step forward" but insisted: "Assad and his close associates have lost all legitimacy. They have no place in the future of Syria." Opposition leaders were sceptical about prospects for talks if Assad remained in power.
Illustrating their plight, FSA commanders say that entire units have gone over to al-Nusra while others have lost a quarter or more of their strength to them recently.
"Fighters feel proud to join al-Nusra because that means power and influence," said Abu Ahmed, a former teacher from Deir Hafer who now commands an FSA brigade in the countryside near Aleppo. "Al-Nusra fighters rarely withdraw for shortage of ammunition or fighters and they leave their target only after liberating it," he added. "They compete to carry out martyrdom [suicide] operations."
Abu Ahmed and others say the FSA has lost fighters to al-Nusra in Aleppo, Hama, Idlib and Deir al-Zor and the Damascus region. Ala'a al-Basha, commander of the Sayyida Aisha brigade, warned the FSA chief of staff, General Salim Idriss, about the issue last month. Basha said 3,000 FSA men have joined al-Nusra in the last few months, mainly because of a lack of weapons and ammunition. FSA fighters in the Banias area were threatening to leave because they did not have the firepower to stop the massacre in Bayda, he said.
The FSA's Ahrar al-Shimal brigade joined al-Nusra en masse while the Sufiyan al-Thawri brigade in Idlib lost 65 of its fighters to al-Nusra a few months ago for lack of weapons. According to one estimate the FSA has lost a quarter of all its fighters.
Al-Nusra has members serving undercover with FSA units so they can spot potential recruits, according to Abu Hassan of the FSA's al-Tawhid Lions brigade.
Ideology is another powerful factor. "Fighters are heading to al-Nusra because of its Islamic doctrine, sincerity, good funding and advanced weapons," said Abu Islam of the FSA's al-Tawhid brigade in Aleppo. "My colleague who was fighting with the FSA's Ahrar Suriya asked me: 'I'm fighting with Ahrar Suriya brigade, but I want to know if I get killed in a battle, am I going to be considered as a martyr or not?' It did not take him long to quit FSA and join al-Nusra. He asked for a sniper rifle and got one immediately."
FSA commanders say they have suffered from the sporadic nature of arms supplies. FSA fighter Adham al-Bazi told the Guardian from Hama: "Our main problem is that what we get from abroad is like a tap. Sometimes it's turned on, which means weapons are coming and we are advancing, then, all of a sudden, the tap dries up, and we stop fighting or even pull out of our positions."
The US, which has outlawed al-Nusra as a terrorist group, has hesitated to arm the FSA, while the western and Gulf-backed Syrian Opposition Coalition has tried to assuage concerns by promising strict control over weapons...
Syria's government has capitalised successfully on US and European divisions over the weapons embargo by emphasising the "jihadi narrative" – as it has since the start of largely peaceful protests in March 2011. Assad himself claimed in a recent interview: "There is no FSA, only al-Qaida." Syrian state media has played up the recent pledge of loyalty by Jabhat al-Nusra to al-Qaida in Iraq.
...Jabhat al-Nusra is winning support in Deir al-Zor, according to Abu Hudaifa, another FSA defector. "They are protecting people and helping them financially. Al-Nusra is in control of most of the oil wells in the city." The Jabhat al-Nusra media, with songs about jihad and martyrdom, is extremely influential.
Abu Zeid used to command the FSA's Syria Mujahideen brigade in the Damascus region and led all its 420 fighters to al-Nusra. "Since we joined I and my men are getting everything we need to keep us fighting to liberate Syria and to cover our families' expenses, though fighting with al-Nusra is governed by very strict rules issued by the operations command or foreign fighters," he said. "There is no freedom at all but you do get everything you want." ...

Syrian conflict heading for even greater sectarian violence

2013-05-13T08:02:00.003+08:00

From The National (United Arab Emirates), 9 May 2013, by Michael Young, opinion editor of The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut:

There is seemingly no light at the end of Syria's tunnel... The massacres of civilians in two locations last week were particularly alarming, telling us something about the dismal direction of events in the country...
The massacres in the predominantly Sunni city of Baniyas and the nearby town of Bayda came after a relatively rare outbreak of fighting in the coastal region, the stronghold of the Alawite community. The coast is where Alawites may decide to fall back to and set up a mini-state if the regime of President Bashar Al Assad were to flee Damascus.
To grasp just what happened in Baniyas and Bayda, consider the context of the regime's continuing offensive in and around Homs and Qusayr, in conjunction with Lebanon's Hizbollah.
From the start of the fighting, the regime has regarded control over Homs and its surrounding area as a matter of strategic importance.

Homs lies on the main communications line between Damascus and the coast. It is a vital passage to and from the capital for a regime that needs to reinforce the city militarily so as not to lose ground to the rebels; and
it is an escape route if Mr Al Assad and his acolytes decide to withdraw to the coast.
Homs is also on the motorway to Aleppo, along which troops there can be reinforced.

Homs serves two other vital purposes.

It is the route through which Alawites along the coast can maintain secure land communications with predominantly Shia districts in Lebanon's northern Beqaa Valley.
And it provides a door to the coast that can be opened and closed at will to cut off Sunni communities there.

The former Syrian vice president, Abdul Halim Khaddam, a prominent foe of Mr Al Assad, comes from Baniyas, and this may have been an exacerbating factor in the massacre, carried out by pro-regime militias.
If the Alawites ever decide to create a rump state, one of their objectives will be to ensure that Sunnis do not challenge this plan. That means Sunnis must either be terrorised into silence or, in the worst case, forced out of coastal areas. The Baniyas and Bayda killings, while extraordinarily brutal, seemed primarily designed to achieve the first aim. Thousands of Sunnis reportedly left the city in fear, but appeared to be heading toward other coastal cities, namely Tartous, south of Baniyas, and Jableh, to its north.
However, the massacres were a reminder that worse may come, especially if the regime makes headway in Homs and Qusayr, allowing it to seal a major Sunni evacuation route. Sunnis in the north-east increasingly feel isolated from their brethren elsewhere in Syria. That is how the regime wants it. The Sunnis' sense of vulnerability will make them more reluctant to side with the rebellion, and their presence as potential hostages will make Mr Al Assad's enemies think twice before mounting military operations in coastal areas.
This may be the best the Assad regime can hope to achieve, since wholesale ethnic cleansing would be a major endeavour. There is still a significant Sunni population in coastal cities such as Tartous and Latakiya, and in the latter, Sunnis form a majority. Even if they were driven out for some reason, the consequences could be disastrous for the city itself, which would lose not only a large portion of its population, but many of its most dynamic economic actors.
Perhaps Mr Al Assad can learn from his Lebanese Druze antagonist, Walid Jumblatt. In 1983 his community routed Christian militias in the Aley and Shouf mountain districts, expelling most Christians. Victory was complete, but it was also double-edged because the economy of the areas died. This Mr Jumblatt had to seriously consider since his Druze community is small, mostly rural and relatively poor. When the Lebanese war ended in 1990, he organised the return of Christians to the mountains, a natural facet of post-war reconciliation, but also an economic necessity for the Druze.
Sectarian cleansing is traumatic, but it can also be more damaging to the perpetrators than expected. In Bosnia and Kosovo, the Serbs have yet to recover from their reputation as architects of ethnic cleansing, to the extent that the fate of fellow Serbs pushed out from the Krajina district by the Croats in 1995 has been mostly ignored internationally. Syria's Alawites could not forever live in autarky, and appear to realise that it is better to keep Sunnis in a state of fear rather than to carry out a policy of mass eviction that may ultimately turn against the Alawites.
The Israeli attacks against Syria last week were based partly on worries that the Assad regime, if it carves out an Alawite territory, would collaborate with Hizbollah-controlled areas in Lebanon, under the guiding hand of Iran. This could allow for a transfer of advanced Syrian weapons to the Lebanese party, which may use them against Israel.
Moreover, an opening from the Beqaa Valley towards the Syrian coast would permit Hizbollah to be rearmed by Iran during any conflict with Israel if Lebanese ports and Beirut airport were blockaded.
Mr Al Assad has no plans to abandon Damascus. However, we are witnessing a consolidation of the Alawite statehood option as a fallback position. The Syrian conflict is entering a new phase, where long-term territorial plans and alliances are taking shape. And the ensuing violence can only increase as the stakes become higher.

Dershowitz continues to flog the two-state dead horse

2013-05-11T09:09:00.000+08:00

From JPost, 9 May 2013, by Martin Sherman:

...we saw last month at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, where the bizarre notion of “constructive unilateralism” was aggressively touted, [that] there are a small number of extremely vocal left-wing Jews, with easy access to the media, who believe in relinquishing virtually the entire West Bank – even if this does not result in peace. Now there is irrational obsession for you....

Alan Dershowitz at the Jerusalem Post conference in New York, April 2013.

Photo: Marc Israel Sellem

[For example, Alan] Dershowitz suggests a scheme for reengaging the Palestinian Authority (presumably sans Hamas) in negotiations, in effect by offering it less – i.e. a conditional construction freeze – than what has already proven ineffective – i.e. an unconditional construction freeze.
Essentially, he counsels... “The first issue on the table should be the rough borders of a Palestinian state.”
According to Dershowitz this can be done by “recognizing that the West Bank can be realistically divided into three effective areas:

Those... relatively certain to remain part of Israel, such as Ma’aleh Adumim, Gilo and other areas close to the center of Jerusalem.
Those... relatively certain to become part of a Palestinian state, such as Ramallah, Jericho, Jenin and the vast majority of the heavily populated Arab areas of the West Bank beyond Israel’s security barrier.
Those reasonably in dispute, including some of the large settlement blocs several kilometers from Jerusalem such as Ariel (which may well remain part of Israel, but subject to negotiated land swaps).”

As for the mechanism of the construction freeze, he stipulates: “There would be no Israeli building in those areas likely to become part of a Palestinian state. There would be no limit on Israeli building within areas likely to remain part of Israel. And the conditional freeze would continue in disputed areas until it was decided which will remain part of Israel and which will become part of the new Palestinian state.”
Significantly, the said freeze would commence “as soon as the Palestinian Authority sits down at the bargaining table, and continue as long as the talks continue in good faith.”
...with regard to his confident assertion that certain area across the Green Line are “relatively certain to remain part of Israel,” would this, in Dershowitz’s eyes, include the contentions E1 area whose development has been endorsed by virtually all Israeli prime ministers, including Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert? If not, why not? After all, it is immediately adjacent to Jerusalem and comprises the territorial link between the capital and Ma’aleh Adumim, which Dershowitz designates as “relatively certain to remain part of Israel.”
Or does he recommend encapsulating Ma’aleh Adumim’s 50,000 Jewish residents within an isolated enclave almost completely surrounded by Palestinian territory, accessible only by a narrow, virtually indefensible – or at least easily disrupted – corridor? Would he envision the same fate for “other areas close to the center of Jerusalem” such as Pisgat Ze’ev and and Givat Ze’ev, with a combined population of about 70,000 Jewish residents? Clarification would be greatly appreciated, as well as any indication of who in the PA agrees these areas should remain part of Israel?
As for the areas that “are in reasonable dispute,” would the freeze be placed on both sides of the dispute, or merely on the Jewish side? ...
Clearly, if Jewish development is denied while Arab construction is allowed, the fate of these areas has been prejudged as being destined for inclusion in the putative Palestinian state, and their designation as “disputed” is deceptively misleading. So I would call on Dershowitz to enlighten us on this matter as well – a freeze on both sides, or only for Israelis?
Dershowitz seems to expose his prejudice on this issue when he endorses “encourage[ing] residents [in these areas] to move to areas that will remain part of Israel, especially if the freeze were accompanied by financial inducements to relocate.”
...Apparently Dershowitz sees no moral defects in providing financial inducements to fund the evacuation of Jews from disputed areas to allow their annexation to what, in all likelihood, will become a failed micromini- Islamist state and a forward base for radical terror groups. Accordingly, would he not agree that there is no moral defect in funding the evacuation of Arabs from these areas to allow their annexation to Israel, and to forestall the establishment of such a presumably undesirable entity? And if not, why not?
...according to Dershowitz, the building freeze in the areas in “reasonable dispute” will continue “as long as the talks continue in good faith.”
...What would be the criteria for determining – and who would be the arbiter to determine – whether the talks were “continuing in good faith”? Obama? The State Department? The EU? Egypt? The Arab League? I am sure that, on reflection, Dershowitz might admit that this could be a touch problematic, with Israel risking being locked into a perpetual construction freeze by a biased adjudicator of Palestinian “good faith.”
Or would Israel be able to decide this unilaterally and revoke the freeze at will, whenever disagreement arose? If so, why would the Palestinians agree to an arrangement which gives Israel the power to judge their good faith? Prof. Dershowitz, could you elucidate?
Dershowitz talks glibly of widespread support among Israeli leaders for “a two-state solution that does not compromise Israel’s security.”
For a myriad of reasons that I and others have detailed elsewhere, this is unattainable “pie in the sky.”
I would challenge him (and indeed any senior Israeli) to show how any two-state configuration, even remotely acceptable to the Palestinians as a permanent resolution of the conflict, could be implemented without gravely compromising Israel’s security.
Unless, of course, wildly optimistic, and hence irresponsible, assumptions as to the future conduct of the Palestinians are made, envisioning them behaving in a manner diametrically opposed to the way they have behaved for decades.
In his writings, Dershowitz has shown himself to be alive to perils any such arrangement might create, threatening to bring the realities of Sderot to the Coastal Plain: “Someday Hamas might gain control over the Palestinian government, either by means of a coup, or an election, or some such combination of both. Israel cannot be asked to accept a fully militarized Hamas state on its vulnerable borders.”
The question is why risk a policy that may well precipitate an unacceptable situation which you will have no power to prevent? ...

Stephen Hawking should boycott his own voice

2013-05-09T14:34:00.002+08:00

From Wired.co, 8 May 2013, by Olivia Solon:

An Israeli civil rights group is arguing that since Stephen Hawking has joined an academic boycott of Israel he should also relinquish his Intel-powered communications system to avoid being hypocritical.

Stephen Hawking, Intel's David Fleming (centre), and Martin Curley

Flickr.com/IntelFreePress/CC SA BY 2.0

On Wednesday 7 May, Hawking pulled out of a conference hosted by president Shimon Peres in protest at the treatment of Palestinians. The poor health of the 71-year-old theoretical physicist is likely to have also contributed to his decision. The conference in question is Facing Tomorrow, which this year coincides with Peres's 90th birthday.
The academic boycott aims to exert pressure on Israel to stop violent repression against the Palestinian people by encouraging people and organisations to cease supporting Israeli academic and cultural institutions.
Hawking was due to speak at the event, but wrote a letter to the Israeli president to say that he changed his mind. This hasn't been announced publicly, but the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine published a statement with his office's approval describing how he was respecting the boycott based on the "unanimous advice of his own academic contacts out there". You can read the statement here.
Israeli civil liberties group Israel Law Center argues that Hawking is being hypocritical by using a computer-based communications system that runs on a chip designed by Israel's Intel team.
"I suggest that if he truly wants to pull out of Israel he should also pull out his Intel Core i7 from his tablet", says director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner.
Hawking -- who has motor neurone disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) -- used an Intel-sponsored computer to allow him to talk since 1997. He was diagnosed just after his 21st birthday and lost the ability to speak during a bout of pneumonia in 1985, when doctors performed a tracheotomy to help him breathe. A speech synthesizer was fitted to give him his robotic voice, which he could operate by selecting words from menus by hand. You can read more about the technology in this article by Gordon Kelly.
Since 1997, his computer has been provided by Intel and is currently based on an Intel Core i7 processor. The core architecture was designed by a team in Israel that had also designed the Pentium M mobile processor...

United Jerusalem, for all ...under Jewish Sovereignty

2013-05-09T08:36:00.000+08:00

From The Times of Israel , May 8, 2013, by David Horovitz:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat (left) and Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser at a cabinet meeting on May 5, held at the Herzl Museum, in honor of the upcoming Jerusalem Day. (Photo credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO/FLASH90)

Mayor Nir Barkat says he’s repositioning the city to retake the role it fulfilled ‘amazingly well’ for a thousand years — where all peoples were equally accepted, but Jewish sovereignty was unquestioned

...In this interview, conducted to coincide with Wednesday’s Jerusalem Day, Barkat sets out his vision for Jerusalem both ideologically and at street level. ...much of it revolves around the mayor’s overall philosophy, which stands starkly at odds with the international community’s default attitude to Jerusalem and its future. As earnest as ever, and unusually candid, Barkat states flatly that he’s right and the world is foolish, hypocritical and plain wrong....

...What’s the latest demographic breakdown of the city?

Well, about 35% of the population is Arab — about 33% Muslim and 2% Christian. And then from the remaining 65%, you have about 22% ultra-Orthodox and 43% Zionist.

...In which areas is there space to build?

We’re talking about expansion of current neighborhoods. In Gilo, Givat Mesua… We can hit the target of creating 50,000 more apartments over the next 10-20 years.

To raise the city’s population from today’s 800,000 to one million?

Yes. It has to be done while developing areas for business and industry. This is another thing I’m very proud of. We’ve outlined a new business district at the entrance to the city which will enable us to build 13 towers of 35 stories. And with the expansion of the (nearby) government (office) areas, that’s 1.1 million square meters of office space, culture, hotels, that can employ about 40,000 people.

What’s the time scale?

We will see the first towers in the next five years, and it will complete itself in the next seven to eight.

...It seems to me that your philosophy is to try to unify the city as much as possible, bring harmony to the city, give East Jerusalem Arabs a stake in the city… But that’s not realistic. Israel is never going to be able to make peace with the Palestinians while maintaining sovereignty throughout Jerusalem, and therefore your vision, if there is to be a political accommodation, is destined to fail.

I disagree with you. I keep on saying to people, to better understand the future of the city, you have to understand what happened here when Jerusalem was functional for a thousand years. When Jews came to the Land of Israel, each tribe had a piece of the territory, except Jerusalem. It was not divided among the tribes. For a thousand years, it was managed as a city that all people came to, and they felt, ‘Wow, the city belongs to me as much as it belongs to the other tribes.’ And Jews and non-Jews alike that used to come to Jerusalem felt respect… for people different from them.

It’s sort of the foundation of modern democracy – where different people were equally accepted into the gates of Jerusalem. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a great idea for all tribes or all peoples around the world. But when something was successful in Jerusalem, by definition it’s accepted by all tribes, Jews and non-Jews alike.

Jerusalem had a role as a united city, whole, not divided into tribes. That is the DNA we have to develop because nothing else will ever work. The city has to work for all sectors. By definition, that DNA cannot be divided.

I’ll give you another perspective. Not one city in the world that was ever divided stayed functional. Now, the fact that there’s lots of pressure, that people think that, as you said…

That as long as Israel insists on sovereignty throughout the city, there’s no chance for a peace…

I totally disagree. That kind of thinking will get us nowhere. It will get us to a dead end, to a bad deal that will fall apart. And I prefer not to do a deal, if it’s a bad deal.

The Arab residents (of Jerusalem) are looking around. They’re looking at countries around us in the Middle East. Nothing to write home about. Egypt is not a role model for them, neither is Syria, nor Iraq, nor Iran, nor Lebanon, nor Gaza. They look at the Arab Israelis and in spite of all the challenges we have in Israel, by far they prefer to be part of Jerusalem than not. The vast majority of the Arab residents in Jerusalem do not want the city divided. The vast majority of them, if God forbid anybody imposes a division on the city, they will move to the west side. The quality of life in Jerusalem is increasing at a dramatic pace. Jobs, the quality of medicine, the school system — we have huge improvements in the school system. I’ll just give you an example: The bagrut (Israeli matriculation). We are introducing the bagrut into the schooling system in the Arab areas. They’re opting in to the Israeli way of learning.

I don’t doubt anything that you’re saying about what ordinary people want in their hearts, but the historical precedent you cited — of all the tribes – it was nonetheless an Israeli-controlled city. Now you have 250,000 Arabs.

An Israeli-controlled city.

Their leadership – never mind what they may say privately – their leadership is not going to agree…

That’s not true. They are living as residents of Jerusalem and there is lots of local leadership that works directly with us in a huge capacity of joint work. They’re working with the municipality of Jerusalem like many of the other residents of the city.

But their ‘national leadership’ has a stated ambition, endorsed by almost all of the international community, that they would have some kind of sovereign share of Jerusalem.

Well, when you poll the residents of Jerusalem you will find that you’re wrong. You’ll find that yes, some of them see themselves as Palestinians, but they see themselves as Jerusalemites first and I don’t think there’s a contradiction between the two.

Do you think the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be solved with Jerusalem in its current municipal size, under Israeli sovereignty?

I’ll state the question differently. The challenge is what can we do with our neighbors when they realize that Jerusalem has to stay united.

Do you think of a model in which you would have a Palestinian mayor-partner or deputy mayor?

The answer is no separation of the city. One city, period.

Under sole Israeli sovereignty?

Yes.

And you think that this is not a recipe for endless conflict with the Palestinians?

Any other idea is a theoretical, bad deal. It is a theoretical concept that I hear. In the practical world, I know, God forbid, if the world pushes us there, it’s just a matter of time before things will fall apart. It will not bring closer a resolution or a better relationship with our neighbors. There is no doubt in my mind. It will get much, much worse.

And the Olmert idea of non-sovereign control of the Old City and dividing the city into Israeli- and Palestinian-controlled neighborhoods is a terrible mistake?

Terrible mistake.

Thank goodness Abbas turned it down?

Thank God he’s not there.

Who’s the “he”?

Olmert.

That he’s not where? In the prime minister’s office?

Yeah. I think it would have been a bad deal. And I was deeply disappointed to hear him even think this way, because I did not hear this from him in the past, when he was here (as Jerusalem mayor).

Maybe he was like others. He may have given up on the city. It was in a negative spiral. But today, thank God, the city is in a positive spiral.

And yet, for example, I remember I was sitting in here with you a couple of years ago and you had the whole development scheme for Silwan (an Arab neighborhood just outside the Old City walls), a very ambitious project which would have made real change on the ground…

It’s still there and it will happen.

But it didn’t happen. You were ready to go with this and people told you privately at an individual level that this (development) is fantastic for Arab residents of the city. Yet when push came to shove, even your ally at the national level, Netanyahu, had to tell you that this is not workable.

Well, there are many, many elements to the whole Silwan side. The bigger part of (developing) Silwan, I was able to move it through the municipal system with zero objection. I’m talking about the larger part of Silwan. The Gan Hamelech area, which is the smaller part of Silwan, there’s a bit of controversy. There’s no doubt in my mind, it’s the best thing for the residents. And, by the way, the controversy is from both sides. From the extreme left and the extreme right… I’m still waiting for the national government to approve the new plan because once everyone understands that it’s the right thing to do, one must go ahead and do it.

By the way, at the time, when I proposed the plans for Silwan, it was the beginning of the term. There’s no doubt in my mind there’s no better solution because the current solution is worse. The current quality of life of the residents, who are all breaking the law (because their homes are built illegally) is much worse. And we cannot help them until we introduce the new plan. Now the new plan doesn’t call for any eviction, everyone improves their quality of life, you bring dramatic investments into the place, you enable commerce, and all the residents stay.

That was the goal when we planned this. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s defendable, it’s right, it’s honest, it’s fair. It’s much, much better than the current situation. That’s why eventually it will happen. It is indeed for the benefit of the residents. At the beginning of the term, the trust element was missing. Now I’m telling you that even the people who objected to it in the past are now considering supporting it. They’ve been here (and said) to me, ‘Oh, we didn’t know, we thought that the intention was whatever it is.’ Now they understand that the intention is: what you see is what you get.

They thought the intention was to ‘Judaize’ the area?

Yeah. Which was not the intention. So now, when people really understand that it’s for the benefit of the residents, and that it’s a much better solution than the current situation, there is a much, much wider acceptance of the plan.

I would not be surprised if in the term of this (national) government, my next term, we will be able to bring such new innovation to some of the parts of East Jerusalem, some of the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. They deserve it. It’s just a matter of making sure they understand that it’s an honest and fair plan. We’re very close to being there.

On housing, on the land, as you say, you are dependent on the national government. And the national government is operating in a global arena where any building for Jews over the ’67 line is controversial, headline-making and potentially problematic — as when a vice-president comes to visit. Have there been major projects that have actually gone all the way through, where there is now building going on? Ramat Shlomo, for example (where the announcement of building plans during Vice President Joe Biden’s 2010 visit caused a crisis in ties with the US), has anything happened there?

First, let me challenge the fundamental statement you just said. There was a period of a few years when there was a lot of pressure from the different governments of the world to freeze building in Jerusalem. I had a few questions (for those who made that demand). I said, ‘Here are the facts: We’re building 500 classrooms (in East Jerusalem) that were below standard; those are now 500 classrooms that are the best in the city. We’re building lots of infrastructure, investing in lots of roads. And we’re starting to resolve some of the legal challenges because there’s no proof of ownership on 90% of the land in East Jerusalem. So if somebody wants to build a building, we don’t know if he owns it or not because there’s no credentials. Which is absurd, but that’s life. We resolved some of those legal issues, to enable people to get a license or at least a temporary license until we know that nobody challenges their ownership claims.

We (now) have 50,000 registered apartments in East Jerusalem (up from 39,000). We’re still in a process of registering.

And how many are there?

We guesstimate that it’s between 55-65,000. We made a big, big change on that, and there was very little negative resistance – on the contrary. We’ve given names to practically all the streets.

So, I’d ask: ‘Should we stop all that? Or God forbid, are you saying that I as mayor, when somebody comes to build, that I have to ask him if he’s a Jew or not Jew? Not to give a license to the Jews and to give a license to the Muslims or the Christians? Under which law? American law? English law?’

As mayor, I can only check if the building is legal. I’m going out of my way to enable building even in places where the registry of land is not clear. I will go out of my way to enable people to build, to enable people to register their homes. Once their home is registered with the municipality, it’s worth much more for the resident.

Now, some of the government-owned land they had to dish out only by bid – to the highest bidder. They are not allowed to ask if the people who won the bid are black or white, or Jewish or Muslim or Christian. Anybody can use a lawyer and a proxy and win a bid. Government-owned land all over the country is sold to the highest bidder.

So, I totally reject this international pressure because it’s illegal, it’s unethical. We will continue working by Israeli law, which is similar to any other law, and we will not discriminate Jews from non-Jews, for good and for bad.

...Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that when you say, ‘We operate according to Israeli law,’ they will tell you that any building over the ’67 line is illegal under international law.

Which building – (for) the Jews or the Arabs?

Anything which Israel does which changes the status quo on the ground. You’re a big believer in the status quo. All the expansion of neighborhoods beyond the ’67 line, they will say, is a case of you changing the status quo.

But here’s the absurdity of this, okay? If you look back on the last 20 years, the Arab population is growing, in market share, faster than the Jewish population. So, if anything, they’re wrong. If anything, the status quo is the other way around. Natural growth of a city has to be planned. The master plan that we proposed, of scaling from 800,000 people to a million people, is an honest and fair plan. It enables natural growth, for the Jews and non-Jews alike. And the reality is that we’re investing and catching up with the challenges that we had in an honest and fair way. And to come and to make such statements is totally political…

When the International Criminal Court rules one day that it is illegal for Israel to be building in, choose whichever neighborhood you like, Ramat Shlomo, Gilo, Armon Hanatziv – your response to that is, ‘If that’s international law then international law is an ass, and what we’re doing is for the best interests of the residents of the city.’ Am I right?

I work under Israeli law. I work for Israel, as an Israeli, and I have 100 percent confidence as mayor of the city of Jerusalem that we’re doing the right thing for all residents. It’s not against anyone. The fact is that all residents are happier today than they were in the past. The fact is that the model we’re proposing for Jerusalem, I did not invent. It worked amazingly well for a thousand years. We’re repositioning Jerusalem to its role in the world.

Sometimes I feel people have triple standards. Here’s where the world stands: They expect from us in Israel more than they expect from themselves. Which is fine. I accept that. They try to hold us accountable to higher ethics and standards. And I can live with that. On the other hand, they have no expectations from our Arab neighbors.

When one criminal dies from cancer in an Israeli prison, the whole world goes crazy. When you have 50,000, 70,000 people murdered and killed in Syria, the outcry is less. That’s absurd.

There’s no accountability. I didn’t hear the international world come to the Arab residents of Jerusalem and demand of them to build legally, to do what they are obliged to do. I don’t hear that. So building illegally is totally okay. But for Jews to build legally, anywhere in the Holy Land, is not okay? So there’s very, very clear triple standards.

What are your thoughts on the dispute surrounding Jewish rights to pray on the Temple Mount? One might be forgiven for assuming that you would say, ‘This was recaptured, liberated by Israel in ’67. How ridiculous that this is the one place in the world where Jews are not allowed to pray?’ Is that what you think?

It is ridiculous. The status quo is ridiculous. But it’s the status quo.

And therefore, you’re fine with that.

(Sighs) No, I don’t feel comfortable with it.

You think Jews should be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount.

Well, theoretically, yeah. Why not? I mean, I don’t think the Muslims should feel that enabling Jews to pray in their holiest site should be a problem. But, again, it’s the status quo and changing the status quo is a huge challenge, especially in things like this. And I wouldn’t rush to make a change without working it out with the different players.

Do you have relations with the different players? I mean, are there such consultations taking place? The (relevant Muslim authorities) would be utterly resistant to the idea (of Jews praying on the Temple Mount).

I’m not involved in any of this at this point. I don’t think it’s prudent to deal with this at this point. That doesn’t mean I’m happy with it.

US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a welcoming ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport on March 20, 2013. (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/Pool/Flash90)

...President Obama was recently here. What you’ve said to me today about how you see the future of Jerusalem, in terms of who controls it, is anathema to the worldview that even our closest ally stands for. You’re running against the current of international thinking, even from our closest friend.

Unfortunately, they’re wrong. You want to hear the truth. You want to understand what will work, not what our allies are telling you. And if anything, I would recommend to our allies to ask us and to better understand the big writing on the wall. For every complex problem, there is one simple, wrong answer. What they’re seeking is the simple, wrong answer for this region, for Jerusalem, for the Middle East and for the relationship between us and our neighbors.

I propose a different solution, which is derived from our past. And I believe that we’re showing and demonstrating that it works – much better than any other solution they could propose. The fact that they’re saying what they’re saying doesn’t mean they’re right. And I will do everything I can, the best I can, not only to fulfill the vision I have for Jerusalem, but through doing and developing the city, to convince the rest of the world, or whoever doesn’t understand what’s going on here, that while they are thinking right and left, we’re thinking up and down. While they’re thinking in a certain format throughout these years, that format will never work.

This vision of yours does not sentence Israel to endless friction with the Arab world? Your vision of a pastoral, harmonious city doesn’t mean that we are going to be in a forever antagonistic relationship with the Arab world?

I will answer it differently. I think we should stick to our strategy and manage the conflict until there’s a window of opportunity to create peace – where our neighbors understand our strategy. You see, doing a bad deal? Better not do it.

So what would be your vision of an accommodation with the Palestinians?

Well, it would probably be in line with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s understanding of the two-state solution. But not dividing Jerusalem.

And not giving the Palestinians any share of sovereignty.

No, no, there’s no such thing. No such thing in the world.

Is there room in that vision for something next to Jerusalem, the Abu Dis kind of idea although [the Arab neighborhood of] Abu Dis is partially in Jerusalem — some kind of Palestinian sovereignty that could be considered…?

Call Ramallah “Jerusalem.” ...Change its name to Jerusalem, to northern Jerusalem, ok? Give it another name. But it’s not Jerusalem.

How the Palestinians Have Trapped Themselves and Dragged the West Along

2013-05-09T07:59:00.003+08:00

From Middle East and terrorism Blog, Wednesday, May 8, 2013, by Barry Rubin:

...Today, as in 1948, the Zionist side is more eager for the existences of an independent Palestinian state living in peace inside permanent borders than is the Palestinian Arab leadership.
That statement might strike misinformed people as ludicrous, but it is nonetheless true, as they should have known since Yasir Arafat’s destruction of the Camp David summit meeting and rejection of the Clinton peace initiative of 2000. And that only followed on the earlier Palestinian rejectionism of the original Camp David summit in 1977, which offered a pathway to statehood, or various other initiatives.
And this pattern of behavior is being reinforced daily.

Consider a recent incident. On April 30, an Israeli civilian father of five was stabbed to death by a Palestinian at the Tapuach Junction on the West Bank. The killer was a prisoner who had just completed his sentence and been released by Israel, as Secretary of State John Kerry wants Israel to release hundreds of other prisoners before their sentences are done.
The killer is a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Note the following details:
–For many years Fatah, the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority (PA), denied the link with the brigade. Legal cases were held in the United States over the murder of Americans by the al-Aqsa Brigade in which PA lawyers strenuously denied any connection. But in 2009, the Fatah Congress, that organization’s highest authority, admitted that the al-Aqsa Brigades were part of Fatah, a fact one might have known earlier since that’s what it said on the Brigades’ web-site.
Fatah proudly took responsibility for earlier terrorist attacks by the group.
In the case of the April 30 murder, the official Al-Aqsa Brigades statement was very interesting, saying it had “received a green light to carry out military actions against Israeli targets in response to the deaths of prisoners Arafat Jaradat and Maysara Abu Hamdia in an Israeli prison.”
A green light from whom?

Since the Brigades did not receive a green light from itself, this is an open admission that they were ordered to murder ...civilians by the Fatah leadership, in other words by those ruling the PA, a Western-financed and supported entity.
–The two prisoners had been examined at autopsies conducted in the presence of PA officials. Thus, the PA knew that these two men died of natural causes. It was thus lying to its own people to incite them into supporting murders of Israeli civilians that the PA was ordering.
–In this case, however, a junior member of the Fatah Central Committee named Jamal Muheisen, while defending the attack, tried to distance his organization from responsibility:
“The Za’atra action was a natural response to attacks by the occupation and settlers [on Palestinians], but it does not express the general policy of the Palestinian Authority and of Fatah, who have espoused [the option of] popular resistance to the occupation.”
But it was Muheisen and not the killer or the al-Aqsa Brigades that was criticized universally by Fatah. Nobody came to Muheisen’s defense. On the contrary, the killer was praised as a hero who restored Fatah’s pride. No doubt, a street, a square, or something else will be named in his honor in future.
One Fatah member put it this way:
“[The killer] is a hero of the Fatah movement, a revolutionary and a fighter who restores Fatah’s pride and former glory; he exposes the dark [face of] interested parties and unmasks the mercenaries.”
–But why use the phrase about restoring Fatah’s pride?

Because the organization’s pride is counted by the number of Israelis it kills.

That’s how score is kept in Palestinian politics, even in 2013. When Fatah isn’t killing Israelis it is ashamed (restores…former glory), while any Palestinian—like Muheisen—who doesn’t support it is one of the “mercenaries,” presumably of the Zionists and Americans. If Fatah doesn’t keep up the killings, it believes that means it loses ground to Hamas.
...the PA is ... in a box of its own making.

It cannot win militarily against Israel, nor will it engage in serious diplomacy with Israel. During a recent meeting in Washington, supposedly to show Arab state support for a two-state solution, the PA’s representatives glowered in making clear they weren’t interested in serious negotiations with Israel.
Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the Fatah chiefs finally rid themselves of relatively moderate Prime Minister Salam Fayyad who was too honest for their purposes. Fayyad blasted the PA’s corruption and incompetence in a New York Times interview and then denied he had said these things, hoping for political survival. It isn’t clear whether he might return but clearly the credibility of the PA regime’s front-man, who was effective at collecting international donation, should be undermined.
So what can the PA do? Collect billions of dollars in Western aid, stage occasional terrorist attacks, try to use the UN General Assembly’s designation of Palestine as a “non-member state” to try to get into international groups and someday sue Israel in the World Court.

It is precisely because it lacks any active alternative that the PA and its allies are engaged in an unprecedented public relations’ campaign complete with strenuous attempts to subvert support for Israel in Jewish communities, boycotts, and disinvestment drives. This echoes the old PLO strategy although in this case it is not Arab state armies but armies of activists that will weaken Israel to the point that it must make huge concessions and subsequently collapse. Of course, this strategy won’t work as it did not work in the 1960s and 1970s.
Meanwhile, the PA leadership benefits from the status quo, they live well, pocket the aid money, posture as revolutionaries, and avoid being “traitors” by refusing to make peace.
...we all know the broad outlines of a potential comprehensive agreement and we can play at drawing borders and have fun imagining the status of Jerusalem.
Yet the deadlock nonetheless prevails and it will prevail.

...Why...is there such a growing gap between the lynch mobs hating Israel being trained on many college campuses and other public or media institutions, and the far different Western policies toward Israel on the government level?

...the policymakers know the truth but conceal it from their publics sometimes because it benefits their perceived state interests (make Arabs and Muslims generally happy) and political interests (plays up to the left-wing activists). That’s too bad but reality remains unchanged.

46 years since re-unification!! Happy Jerusalem Day!

2013-05-08T14:52:00.002+08:00

Is a bombed out and burning Damascus a dress rehearsal for Iran?

2013-05-07T12:03:00.000+08:00

From Al-Monitor, 5 May 2013, by Ben Caspit:
... Israel’s highest ranking defense officials have made it clear that Israel would ...stop “game-changing” weapons from making their way to Hezbollah. And not only chemical weapons.
The Israeli airstrikes, according to Western Intelligence sources, around Damascus over the weekend were proof that Israel means business.

As far as Israel is concerned, three types of Syrian weapons constitute casus belli, game changers, the types Israel will never allow to flow to Hezbollah. And that's without addressing the issue of chemical weapons. According to experienced military sources, these are

high precision, lethal Yakhont missiles that are able to strike ships or marine platforms from a distance of 300 km or farther. Missiles such as these would put the gas excavations in Israel's economic waters within strike range.
... SA17 anti-aircraft missiles, which are considered game changers in terms of the Israeli air force's freedom of operation.
... the weapons hit in Damascus in recent days.

... the targets that were bombed twice (during the night between last Thursday and Friday, May 2, and the night between Saturday and Sunday this week, May 4) were Fateh-110 missiles depots and their solid fuel depots. Why are they considered “game changers”? Because they are far more precise than the old Scuds and Nasrallah’s rockets, and because they are propelled by solid fuel and launched from mobile launchers. In other words: precision is the critical element here. If Nasrallah gets missiles with a dispersion range of only a few dozen meters, like the Fateh missiles, it means that he would be able to threaten the Israeli air forces’ airports and other strategic facilities. Israel cannot allow itself to be in that position. Another, even more serious matter for the Israelis: the fact that launching Fateh missiles does not require a lengthy and complex launch process that can be seen by Israeli Unmanned Aerial Vehicles [UAVs]. Because it is equipped with solid fuel, the Fateh can be launched quickly, within a matter of minutes, from a relatively small vehicle, and strike its target with lethal precision, with a war head weighing half a ton. You can’t make predictions, you can’t shoot them down from the air. If there is such a thing as “game-changing” weapons in the match between Israel and Hezbollah, this is it.

It is believed that the operation was coordinated with the United States through a very long series of discussions between the parties, at all levels. The issue was also raised during US President Barack Obama’s visit to Jerusalem at the end of March this year.

...What does Israel get out of all of this?

First of all, it has reduced the risk of transfer of missiles or “game-changing” technologies into what it believes are dangerous hands. It is not a far stretch to believe that there will be other strikes, if and when. It is not unimaginable that Israel will take advantage of the chaos to drastically reduce the potential of such technology and equipment falling into the wrong hands.

Second of all, Israel has once again put on a show of military, and especially intelligence, strength. The consignments that exploded with a thundering boom in Damascus in recent days are underground, protected by thick layers of concrete. While it’s true that this is still not the Fordow site, there are very few air forces in the world that know how to crack such caches, and with such ease.

And we still haven’t mentioned the excellent and precise intelligence.

I believe that in Jerusalem they assume that Tehran is looking at bombed out and burning Damascus and understanding several things. The United States is supportive, the world is silent and the sides are ready in a face-off, closer than ever to conflict. If we think about it, we are actually right in the middle of the dress rehearsal.

*Ben Caspit is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor's Israel Pulse. He is also a senior columnist and political analyst for Israeli newspapers, and has a daily radio show and regular TV shows on politics and Israel.

Israel Targeted Iranian Missiles in Syria Attack

2013-05-07T11:30:00.001+08:00

From New York Times, 5 May 2013, by ANNE BARNARD, MICHAEL R. GORDON and *JODI RUDOREN**:

Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The missile shipment struck by Israel was reported to include Iranian-made Fateh-110’s, a type of mobile, accurate, solid-fueled missile, like this one in a military parade in Tehran in 2010.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A series of powerful explosions rocked the outskirts of Damascus early Sunday morning, which Syrian state television said was the result of Israeli missile attacks on a Syrian military installation.

See video here

Twice in four months Israel has sought to disrupt the pipeline of weapons to Hezbollah.

If true, it would be the second Israeli airstrike in Syria in two days and the third this year.

The airstrike that Israeli warplanes carried out in Syria overnight on Thursday was directed at a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran that Israel believed was intended for Hezbollah, American officials said Saturday. That strike was aimed at disrupting the arms pipeline that runs from Syria to Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese organization, and it highlighted the mounting stakes for Hezbollah and Israel as Syria becomes more chaotic.

Iran and Hezbollah have both backed President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, now in its third year. But as fighting in Syria escalates, they also have a powerful interest in expediting the delivery of advanced weapons to Hezbollah in case Mr. Assad loses his grip on power and Syria ceases to be an effective channel for funneling weapons from Iran.

The missiles that were the target of the Israeli raid had been shipped from Iran and were being stored in a warehouse at Damascus International Airport when they were struck, according to an American official.

Iran has sought to use the threat of a Hezbollah missile attack against Israeli territory as a means of building up its ally and deterring Israel from conducting airstrikes on Iranian nuclear installations that Israeli and American officials believe are part of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

In Lebanon, some analysts said they believed that a strong Hezbollah could also emerge as a powerful ally for Mr. Assad if he is forced to abandon Damascus, the Syrian capital, and take refuge in a rump Iranian-backed state on the Syrian coast, a region that abuts the Hezbollah-controlled northern Bekaa Valley.

“The relationship between Hezbollah and the Assad regime is stronger now,” said Talal Atrissi, a professor at Lebanese University in Beirut who has good relations with Hezbollah. If Mr. Assad falls, Hezbollah knows the axis of Syria, Hezbollah and Iran will be greatly weakened, he said.

Israel, for its part, has repeatedly cautioned that it will not allow Hezbollah to receive “game changing” weapons that could threaten the Israeli heartland even if a new Syrian government takes power.

As the Obama administration considers how to dissuade Mr. Assad from ordering a chemical weapons attack — the use of such weapons, the White House has said, would cross a “red line” — Israel, by striking the warehouse, is clearly showing that it is prepared to stand behind the red lines it has set.

“The Israelis are saying, ‘O.K., whichever way the civil war is going, we are going to keep our red lines, which are different from Obama’s,’ ” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

On Friday, SANA, the official Syrian news agency, reported an attack on the Damascus airport by Syrian rebels firing rockets at an aircraft and fuel dump — an account that American officials say may have been intended to obscure the fact that the target was a warehouse full of missiles.

An American official, who asked not to be identified because he was discussing intelligence reports, said the targeted shipment consisted of Iranian-made Fateh-110s — a mobile, accurate, solid-fueled missile that has the range to strike Tel Aviv and much of Israel from southern Lebanon, and that represents a considerable improvement over the liquid-fueled Scud missile. Two prominent Israeli defense analysts said the shipment included Scud Ds, a missile that Syrians have developed from Russian weapons with a range of up to 422 miles — long enough to reach Eilat, in southernmost Israel, from Lebanon.

Syrian forces loyal to Mr. Assad have used Fateh-110 missiles against the Syrian opposition. Some American officials are unsure whether the new shipment was intended for use by Hezbollah or by the Assad government, which is believed to be running low on missiles in its bloody civil war. But one American official said the warehouse that was struck in the Israeli attack overnight Thursday was believed to be under the control of operatives from Hezbollah and Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force.

Hezbollah is now believed to have more missiles and fighters than it had before its 2006 battle with Israel, when Hezbollah missiles forced a third of Israel’s population into shelters and hit as far south as Haifa. A Pentagon official said in 2010 that Hezbollah’s arsenal was believed to include a small number of Fateh-110s, and additional shipments would add to Hezbollah’s striking power.

In carrying out the raid overnight Thursday, Israeli warplanes fired air-to-ground weapons, apparently staying clear of Syrian airspace and operating in the skies over neighboring Lebanon.

A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to acknowledge the attack, saying only in a statement, “Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, especially to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

In late January, Israel carried out a similar airstrike in Syria, which it also refused to publicly confirm, that used similar tactics, including a route over Lebanon, according to a former senior American official. The January attack was against a convoy carrying SA-17 antiaircraft weapons, which were supplied by Russia. The transfer of those weapons to Hezbollah would jeopardize the Israeli Air Force’s ability to operate over Lebanon.

On Sunday, the Syrian government said that the Israelis had launched a missile attack against the military complex at Jamraya just outside Damascus overnight.

Large blasts sent towering plumes of flame and smoke into the night sky above Qasioun Mountain, which towers over downtown Damascus, according to residents and videos posted by opposition activists. The videos showed multiple explosions over a period of several minutes, suggesting that more than one target may have been hit.

The mountain is home to an array of Syrian military facilities, including military research centers, and is the source of much of the government shelling of rebel positions in the suburbs. Residents and activists said the explosions struck the mountain headquarters of the army’s Fourth Division, the elite and feared unit run by the president’s brother Maher, as well as al-Hamah, where the command of the Republican Guard, one of the government’s elite forces, is located.

...Israeli officials had no comment on the explosions. Nor did American officials, who signaled that the United States did not carry out the attack.

“They are definitely going after military facilities on or around Qasioun,” said Andrew J. Tabler, an expert on Syria as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “There are a lot of research and military facilities there that are tied into the command and control structure of the regime.”

“It is unprecedented and something all of Damascus can see,” he added, stressing that it would likely have an important political impact in Syria.

The Jamraya complex, the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, is Syria’s main research center for work on biological and chemical weapons, American officials have said, raising questions about whether the motivation for the attack went beyond stopping the flow of arms to Hezbollah. The Israeli raid in January was in the same area and the complex suffered moderate damage in that attack.

Israel’s official silence reveals the broader dilemma it faces in how to handle Syria’s upheaval. After 40 years of quiet on its northeastern border, Israel is now deeply worried about violence spilling over into its territory and about a post-Assad Syria being a vast, ungoverned area controlled by Islamist or jihadist groups, with no central authority to control militant activity.

But leaders in Jerusalem believe that they have few options beyond the targeted airstrikes, seeing greater military intervention as likely to backfire by uniting anti-Israel forces.

President Obama, who is traveling in Central America, said Israel was entitled to defend itself from its enemies.

“The Israelis, justifiably, have to guard against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah,” he told the Spanish-language TV station Telemundo.

Few experts expect the Israeli airstrike to put an end to Iran’s attempts to ship arms to Syria and its Hezbollah ally. Jonathan Spyer, an expert on Syria and Hezbollah at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, predicted more attempts to transfer weapons — and Israeli efforts to stop them.

“Clearly Hezbollah is hoping to benefit from its engagement in Syria, and clearly Israel is committed to preventing that,” said Mr. Spyer, who noted that Israel was taking a “calculated risk” that its limited intervention would provoke only a limited response, if any.

Certainly, nothing in recent comments by Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, suggested that his organization would pull back from its support of Mr. Assad or its alliance with Iran.

Days before the Israeli strike, Mr. Nasrallah issued some of his strongest statements yet of support for Mr. Assad, edging closer to confirming what the Obama administration has already reported: that Hezbollah is backing him militarily, not merely tolerating border crossings by some of its members to defend Lebanese citizens in Syria, as Hezbollah has officially maintained.

Mr. Nasrallah said Hezbollah — using the word “we” — would not allow Syria to fall to an armed assault that he said was backed by the United States and Israel, and added that the party was defending civilians of all sects in Qusayr, a city in Homs Province near the Lebanese border, where rebels say Hezbollah has led recent battles against them.

*Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, Lebanon; Michael R. Gordon reported from Washington; and Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem. Reporting was contributed by Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger from Washington, and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.

Iran’s Plans to Take Over Syria

2013-05-06T15:46:00.000+08:00

From JCPA Vol. 13, No. 10, 5 May 2013, by Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira:

In mid-April, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah paid a secret visit to Tehran where he met with the top Iranian officials headed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Gen. Qasem Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Suleimani prepared an operational plan named after him based upon the establishment of a 150,000-man force for Syria, the majority of whom will come from Iran, Iraq, and a smaller number from Hizbullah and the Gulf states.

Suleimani’s involvement was significant. He has been the spearhead of Iranian military activism in the Middle East. In January 2012, he declared that the Islamic Republic controlled “one way or another” Iraq and South Lebanon. Even before recent events in Syria, observers in the Arab world have been warning for years about growing evidence of “Iranian expansionism.”

An important expression of Syria’s centrality in Iranian strategy was voiced by Mehdi Taaib, who heads Khamenei’s think tank. He recently stated that “Syria is the 35^th district of Iran and it has greater strategic importance for Iran than Khuzestan [an Arab-populated district inside Iran].” Significantly, Taaib was drawing a comparison between Syria and a district that is under full Iranian sovereignty.

Tehran has had political ambitions with respect to Syria for years and has indeed invested huge resources in making Syria a Shiite state. The Syrian regime let Iranian missionaries work freely to strengthen the Shiite faith in Damascus and the cities of the Alawite coast, as well as the smaller towns and villages. In both urban and rural parts of Syria, Sunnis and others who adopted the Shiite faith received privileges and preferential treatment in the disbursement of Iranian aid money.

Iran is also recruiting Shiite forces in Iraq for the warfare in Syria. These are organized in a sister framework of Lebanese Hizbullah. Known as the League of the Righteous People and Kateeb Hizbullah, its mission is to defend the Shiite centers in Damascus. It is likely that Tehran will make every effort to recruit additional Shiite elements from Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and even from Pakistan.

Follow the link to read the full article.

Holocaust Survivors Say 'Never Again' at Mauthausen

2013-05-06T15:35:00.003+08:00

From Arutz Sheva, 6 May 2013, by Elad Benari:
Leaders and camp survivors commemorate the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

Holocaust memorial - Flash 90

Leaders and Nazi camp survivors made a stirring appeal to combat racism as they commemorated the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria on Sunday, urging "never again."
...The 68th anniversary of the camp's liberation by the U.S. army coincided with the inauguration of a new visitor center at Mauthausen, and was marked by a large ceremony attended by the presidents of Poland and Hungary, Bronislaw Komorowski and Janos Ader, Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and Russian State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin.
Some 30 survivors of Mauthausen, some wearing the striped caps that were part of the uniform given to inmates of the Nazi concentration camps, also took part in the ceremony, AFP reported.
In a moving moment, they deposited pictures and testimonies in a time capsule that will become part of the new exhibit, as their harrowing stories were read out to the public.
"This is the right moment and the right place to make an urgent appeal to all who are in a position of authority in Europe to learn from our tragic past and confront each and every form of racism or anti-Semitism: decidedly, consistently and clearly," Austrian President Heinz Fischer urged.
"That's the minimum that should come out of this day,” he said, according to AFP.
David Harris, head of the American Jewish Committee, also sounded words of warning, pointing to rising anti-Semitism in Europe and the presence in a few parliaments of xenophobic or anti-Semitic parties.
"We must wake up. The words 'never again' must apply not just on commemorative events but must apply 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he urged.
"We each have a responsibility to ensure the words 'never again' truly mean 'never again'. Not for the targets of Mauthausen, not for the Jewish people, not for any people.
"Then we can hand off to the next generation a more perfect and just world," said Harris.
Some 200,000 people from 40 nations -- around a quarter of them Jewish [including my father Israel Lieblich - SL], but also Soviet civilians and 7,000 Republican Spaniards -- were incarcerated between 1938 and 1945 at Mauthausen.
Around 90,000 didn't make it, perishing in back-breaking labor in granite quarries from malnourishment, disease -- or shot by the guards, hanged, throttled, beaten to a pulp or gassed.

Delegitimisation is war by other means

2013-05-06T08:49:00.000+08:00

From Prof. Ofira Seliktar's Lecture for the IAM Round table, May 3, 2013:

... Unlike ordinary criticism of Israel, the delegitimization campaign is part of Soft Asymmetrical Conflict (SAC). The Pentagon defines SAC as a campaign to delegitimize the target country and to improve the image of the challenge group and the causes it represents.

The anti -Israel SAC involved an extensive, complex, multilayered, interlocking and well-financed network. Its components include NGOs, UN-based forums, EU-sponsored entities, sovereign governments, religious organizations, academic associations, scholars, committees, conferences, symposia, journals and presses.

Michel Foucault developed the idea of soft asymmetrical conflict by inverting the idea of famous dictum of Clausewitz that “war is a continuation of politics by other means” to read "politics is war by other means." Foucault and his disciplines considered the “discursive arena” as a battlefield; using critical approaches, intellectuals and scholars can delegitimize “hegemonic” narrative and substitute it with the narrative of the of the powerless and suppressed strata in the society.

The core of the delegimitzation is in the academy, since it is the academic paradigms that structure our view of social reality. There are two paradigms that are currently used in liberal arts (humanities and social sciences)

Positivist: “Truth” is arrived at through a discursive-pedagogical process with fixed rules, including objectivity and neutrality. The liberal arts classroom becomes the “marketplace of ideas.”

Neo-Marxist, Critical: There is no social “truth,” there are “narratives,” critical scholars need to expose the “hegemonic” narrative” of the dominant classes. The scholar is urged to use teaching and research to advance social justice and other progressive issues.

...Predictably, Israel looks very different in the two paradigms.

Israel in the positivist paradigm:

Membership/territory: Jews are an authentic ethno-religious community rooted in its ancestral Biblical home; Authority system: western-style liberal democracy (as ranked by Freedom House); Distributive justice system: Market economy.

Israel in the neo-Marxist, Critical Paradigm:

Membership/territory: Jews are an “invented people” with no legitimate right to an ancestral (Biblical) home; Authority system: Israel is a “Herrenvolk” democracy limited to Jews, an apartheid state modeled on South Africa; Distributive justice system: a capitalist system that exploits workers, the Mizrahim, women and Palestinians.

There are a number of reasons why the neo-Marxist, critical paradigm and its depiction of Israel has become so successful in Israel. One of them is that Israeli scholars who operate within this paradigm have been part of the anti-Israel SAC and have benefited from its vast resources. For instance, the probability of publishing a book or an article reflecting the neo-Marxist, critical paradigm is probably six to seven times higher than a comparable work in the positivist paradigm. Critical scholars have a much better chance to spend sabbatical leave in Ivy League universities than positivist scholars.

Another and arguably the most important reason is the expansive academic freedom that Israeli faculty enjoys as opposed to their peers in other countries. This relation makes sense since today "Israel in the Middle East" has become the litmus test of freedom of faculty, replacing such older test cases as IQ of African-American etc.

To test this proposition the study compared Israel to three countries – Germany, Great Britain and the United States (public universities). All three of them have influenced the educational system of Israel and all three are academic leaders.

There are three factors that shape the amount of academic freedom of a given country: 1) cultural-academic history; 2) case law and the amount of government intervention; 3) transition to management (corporate) university.

Academic freedom in Germany has been rather restricted because of #1- the democratic reeducation campaign has restricted certain topics such as denial of the Holocaust or denying the guilt of Hitler and the Nazi Party in starting the war, the Constitutional Court is in charge of overseeing academic expression, German professors are considered government employees and thus not allowed to stray too far from their field of expertise. The transition to Management University also meant that economic and business considerations have to be taken into consideration, business people have been appointed to the boards of governors of universities.

Academic Freedom in Great Britain has been greatly constrained by the Education Reform Act instituted by the Thatcher Government. Traditional tenure was abolished, making faculty less likely to speak out on controversial issues; stringent quality control of faculty and department makes is harder for faculty to engage in politics.

In response to the growing anti-Semitism in Europe, the European Union Monitoring Center has proposed a “Working Definition of anti-Semitism:” which states that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. The definition was adopted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. As a result, certain expressions such as comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, known as “nazification of Israel” are considered new anti-Semitism.

In the United States public universities (known as state universities) have enjoyed more limited freedom than private universities. The governor appoints the board of directors and the board of directors appoints the president of the state university. State legislatures demand accountability for the budgetary allocation to the universities. Case law plays a large role in dictating the limits of freedoms; for instance, a district court ruling decreed that a faculty member cannot call for sanctions that would undermine his/her institution and have an adverse impact on the higher education system. Even at the height of the Vietnam War, there was no faculty call to boycott the United States. Balanced view on the Middle East is required of all public and private universities that receive Title IV federal grants.

In Israel, academic freedom is very broad because of the unique historical circumstances surrounding the founding of the Hebrew University. Judah Magnes, the founder and president of HUJ and most of the influential professors, including Martin Buber were anti-Zionists. The HUJ was financially supported by a group of wealthy donors from the anti-Zionist Council for American Judaism. Magnes and his professors did not consider themselves to be accountable to the Jewish community in Palestine, but to a greater universal ideal of pursuit of academic excellence. As a result, they refused the request of Ben Gurion to add applied science and technology departments. Even after the independent state was created that supported the higher education budget, the attitude that the academy is not accountable to the state persisted. The Maltz Report that suggested a transition to a Thatcher style management university was only partially implemented due to fierce resistance of faculty.

As a result, there is a very broad scope of academic freedom in Israel in both the intramural (within the classroom) dimension and the extramural (outside the campus dimension)

For instance: Israeli scholars can compare Israel to Nazi Germany with impunity, something that they cannot do in EU or the United States (public universities) without taking a serious professional risk.

Before the Knesset law, Israeli scholars could call (and some still do) for boycott of Israel, an action that would not be tolerated in other countries. As a matter of fact, radical Israeli scholars were among the architects of the boycott, divestment and sanction movement (BDS) against Israel. Other faculty were involved in demanding that IDF commanders be tried for war crimes.

Israeli scholars switch from research in the field for which they were hired in order to “research” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something that would not be tolerated in other countries.

Liberal arts in Israel have paid a heavy price for this state of affair.

v The frequently heard assertions that restriction on academic freedom will lead to a lower quality of education is not born out empirically: Israeli liberal arts, especially social sciences, are trending well below average.

v Students are not well served by faculty using their classroom as a platform for political indoctrination rather than a “marketplace of ideas.”

v Taxpayers and society are not well served by faculty who abandon their field of research to engage in writings which support their political agenda. It should be emphasized that this would not be tolerated in the comparative cases.

The Case of the Department of Politics and Government at BGU

The case of the Department of Politics and Government at BGU has introduced a unique complication to the system of higher education in Israel.

BGU appealed to the international community of scholars to prevent the closing of the department.

The strategy was allegedly conceived by the Dean David Newman (as revealed in a leaked e-mail published by Israel Hayom.

The response of the international community was swift and overwhelming; some 40 professional associations and hundreds of individual scholars, including at least one Nobel laureate , sent letters and petitions to the Minister of Education and the Council of Higher Education (CHE, or Malag) to protest the proposed closure. The fact that academic associations which normally act at a glacial pace have responded so fast has been most interesting.

Of course, it is difficult to speculate on the final decision of the Malag- but there is a possibility that it was influenced by this massive protest; if this is indeed the case, the BGU affair created a unique precedent in annals of higher education in the sense that Israel lost some sovereignty over its higher education system. There is no comparable case of such massive intervention in the educational system of another country.

Such massive intervention did not happen in a vacuum; it is part and parcel of the campaign to delegitimize Israel which as I noted, has originated on the campuses...

Muslim Brotherhood worked hand-in-hand with Hamas in Egypt's "revolution"

2013-05-06T07:42:00.002+08:00

From JPost, 2 May 2013, by Zvi Mazel*:
New revelations throw a startling light on how the Muslim Brotherhood worked hand-in-hand with Hamas during the mass demonstrations that brought about the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
According to the Al-Masry Al-Youm daily, quoting a high-ranking security source, Egyptian homeland security head Khaled Tharwet gave Khairat el- Shater – No. 2 in the Brotherhood’s supreme guidance office – transcripts of five phone calls that were allegedly intercepted between Brotherhood members and Hamas leaders during the crucial January 2011 period.
The Brotherhood, it seems, wanted Hamas to put added pressure on security forces by contributing to the general turmoil. Another, no less important goal was to secure the release of extremists imprisoned in Wadi Natrun prison – most notably Mohamed Morsi, who was to become Egyptian president a year later.
From the transcripts, it appears that the Brotherhood knew in advance about the protests which erupted on January 25 – and that they participated in the planning. The first two calls took place between senior Brotherhood members before the mass demonstrations of January 25 and 27. On the 21st, one of them mentions preparations for the demonstrations and adds, “Don’t worry, we shall be helped by our neighbors.” The following day, he says, “Things are okay, the neighbors are ready.” In both cases, “Hamas” may be substituted in place of “neighbors.”
On the 24th, one day before the demonstration, a high-ranking Brotherhood member asks a Hamas official if they know exactly what they are supposed to do; “absolutely,” answers his correspondent.
There is another call on February 2, when the mass protests are reaching a paroxysm. An agitated Brotherhood member asks, “Where are you, I don’t see any of your people,” and the Hamas official replies, “Don’t worry, we are behind the museum [the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square] with our slingshots at the ready.”
The last conversation took place on February 11, after the resignation of Mubarak. The Hamas official congratulates the senior Brotherhood member, saying that “this is our victory also.” The Brotherhood members replies: “You have helped us and we owe you. We shall meet soon.”
That there are links between Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood – which was set up in Gaza in 1987 – and the movement is nothing new; indeed, for many years they were both a favorite target of Mubarak’s repressive apparatus. However, these conversations put a whole new slant on the revolution narrative. Far from having waited a number of days before joining the protests as was previously believed, the Brotherhood was in the know and participated from the very beginning. Hamas terrorists, too, were right there in Tahrir Square, agitating and taking part in attacks on public institutions – though from the phone calls their precise role is not clear.
Interestingly, Gen. Mansour el-Essawy, who was interior minister during the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, confirmed last week that there had been Hamas members in Tahrir Square and that some of them had been killed. He added that Hamas and Hezbollah terror agents had taken part in attacks on a number of jails to free political prisoners. It is worth noting that Habib el-Adly – who was interior minister from 1997 to 2011 and is now on trial for his role in the repression – had been accused in the past of having ordered that the prisoners be allowed to escape, in order to frighten the people.
Apparently, this was not true. Adly stated in court last week that it was indeed Hamas and Hezbollah fighters who broke into the jails, and he appears to have some evidence to back his claim. A journalist from Al- Masry Al-Youm said that he himself had witnessed the arrest of members of both organizations near Tahrir Square on February 4.
Two years ago, the paper published the results of an investigation carried out over a period of six weeks – in March-April 2011 – at great personal risk by two courageous journalists. Among the many eyewitnesses interviewed in the piece were a number of prisoners who had been freed, as well as some Sinai Beduin. The tale of the storming of the al-Marg prison north of Cairo is a case in point. Ayman Nofel, a senior member of Hamas, was imprisoned there; so was Muhammad Yusuf Mansour, codenamed “Sami Shehab,” the head of the Hezbollah terror cell in Egypt.
On January 30, 2011, the prison was surrounded by dozens of heavily armed gunmen, who arrived on brand-new cars and motorcycles and opened fire on the guards, who were primarily new recruits with little or no experience; they then broke in and freed all prisoners. Eyewitnesses said the attackers were Sinai Beduin fighters who spoke with the same type of accent – that is, people from the Gaza Strip. Former prisoners said that Nofel and Mansour had been in touch by phone with the attack organizers and that they had told their comrades to be ready to flee.
The two men disappeared immediately after the break-in. Nofel surfaced in Gaza a few hours later, while Sami Shehab appeared on Lebanese television from Beirut after four days; Egypt has yet to ask for their extradition.
Al-Masry Al-Youm argues that Tharwet should not have been given secret transcripts to Shater, who has no official standing and is merely the No. 2 in the guidance office of the Brotherhood – a movement that was not even legal. For the paper, this is the proof of collusion between the Brotherhood and the top levels of national security, and it demands that an investigation be launched by the prosecutor-general on the links between the security apparatus and the Brotherhood.
According to a spokesman for the paper, the transcripts as well as details of the way they were handed over to Shater were given to Al-Masry Al-Youm by a highly reliable national security source. In the request sent to the prosecutor-general, the daily states that the names of the Brotherhood and Hamas members who were recorded in the five phone calls are known to it, though it only published their initials.
Some commentators are already calling for the Brotherhood to be indicted for treason, since it called on foreign elements – i.e. Hamas – to operate in a seditious manner on Egyptian soil. Others are outraged by what they see as the infiltration of the national security apparatus by the Brotherhood, and claim that this is yet another attempt at taking over the country while endangering the security of Egypt. There are reports that Shater and Essam el-Erian, a prominent member of the Brotherhood, pay frequent visits to the offices of the state security, and that they use a passage reserved for the interior minister.
Shater’s bodyguard was arrested while “loitering” by the voting stations during the parliamentary elections more than a year ago; he was carrying a weapon without a permit. It transpired during his trial that he had traveled several times to Gaza through the tunnels and had contact with Hamas leaders. He was sentenced to one year in prison, but nothing filtered out about the content of these contacts. A few days ago it was announced that he had been transferred to what was described as an “easier prison.”
Predictably, Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzouk denied there had been conversations between his organization and the Brotherhood at the time. A number of spokesmen for the Brotherhood also denied that transcripts of any kind had been handed over to Shater, and said it was just a ploy to discredit their movement. Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry published a communiqué that did not address the issue, but threatened to prosecute those who try to harm its activities.
There has been no comment from the president, and it is easy to understand why. The commander of the Wadi Natrun prison, who testified last week about the break-in, stated that all political prisoners from the Brotherhood and jihadi movements had been sent to his jail. From January 25 onward, he said, there was a great deal of agitation among them; they threatened him and said they would soon be freed. Indeed, on January 30, some 80 heavily armed men attacked the prison with automatic fire, broke down the doors and freed all inmates, including Morsi; some of the recaptured prisoners, now standing trial, want the president to testify together with the actual and previous heads of the intelligence services.
So far there is no sign that this will occur.
Interestingly, why was Morsi in jail? According to the Brotherhood, he was considered “dangerous” by the government, but it is well known that he was a secondrate politician, not a fighter. According to one source, he was arrested and accused of spying following a lengthy phone call with a Hamas leader – recorded by national security – discussing what Hamas would do in Egypt during the revolution.
However, if Hamas expected the new regime to open the borders between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, and to allow people and goods – let alone arms – to flow freely on both sides, they were bitterly disappointed.
The border is still closed and Egypt carefully monitors those who are allowed in and out. Worse, more and more tunnels are being destroyed by the Egyptian army.
In actuality, despite their common ideological ground, Egypt is acutely aware of the security threats posed by its small neighbor. Over the past months, the role of Hamas in Egypt has becomes a hot topic.
Hamas is accused of having had a hand in the attack that caused the death of 16 Egyptian soldiers last August, and some say Nofel himself was involved. Hamas is also accused of letting jihadi terrorists cross into Sinai, and of being behind the kidnapping of three police officers who disappeared in Sinai last year and were allegedly taken to Gaza through the tunnels. Some also say Hamas wants to set up an outpost in Sinai and settle Palestinians in the peninsula with the help of Qatar.
The Muslim Brotherhood has nothing to say on these subjects, although short denials are regularly issued.
Egyptians are increasingly uneasy about the links between the Brotherhood and Hamas. The latest revelations add fuel to the fire, and deepen the crisis of confidence between the people and the movement now ruling the country.

*The writer, a fellow of The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, is a former ambassador to Romania, Egypt and Sweden.

We'll See You in Court, Abbas

2013-05-03T19:47:00.003+08:00

From Israel Hayom, 1 May 2013, by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner*:For months now, the Palestinian Authority has threatened to file for membership at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, which would enable it to press war crimes charges against Israeli soldiers and senior officials. This was one of PA President Mahmoud Abbas' primary objectives when he submitted the PA's candidacy at the U.N. for nonmember observer state status, because one year earlier, devoid of this status, the ICC denied the PA's membership request.

Abbas uses this threat like a Sword of Damocles over Israel's head. If the peace process fails to move forward, and if the Israeli government builds in E1, he will use this weapon.

The ICC is eager to pursue cases that don't involve the slaughter and all-out warfare against tribes in Africa. The debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially when Israel is on the defendant's stand, tops the wish list for the war crimes tribunal, which portends to be the ultimate authority pertaining to human rights. Out of the hundreds of claims submitted to the ICC, it will choose to tackle those it has desired the most: the prosecution of Israeli soldiers.

Such prosecutions could have fateful consequences. The ICC has the authority to issue arrest warrants against those it convicts, and it is the duty of member countries to make these arrests. IDF soldiers, therefore, will be prevented from stepping foot in more than 100 member countries, such as Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K.

This would be a decisive blow not only to Israeli backpackers recently discharged from the army, but to all fighting units, which new recruits will seek to avoid due to the risk involved. What's the point, they'll say, in not only sacrificing three years to the IDF, but also the freedom to move around in the world afterward.

Of his two options -- starting a third intifada or turning to the ICC -- Abbas will choose the most preferable: the one that doesn’t come at the cost of blood, that grants him credit with European leaders for choosing the nonviolent path, and that affords him the greatest odds of winning. He'll turn to The Hague.

The Hague's authority, however is a two-way street. From the moment the PA becomes a member, it opens itself to similar war crimes claims. Its leaders are liable to find themselves responsible for crimes against humanity and genocide.

Sending terrorists to commit suicide bombings; launching tens of thousands of missiles and rockets against civilian communities; inciting and directing its own population and security forces to kill innocent civilians, as these efforts have become increasingly systematic to the point of long-standing official policy against another civilian population -- these are all crimes against humanity and genocide. There is already such a precedent, after a New York federal court in 2007 ruled that intifada-related crimes were crimes against humanity, and that Israeli victims of terror had the right to pursue legal action against those who aid and abet terrorism.

The only way to protect IDF soldiers from international prosecution is to deter the PA from turning to The Hague, and this is by threatening to submit thousands of countersuits against it on behalf of terror victims.

Subsequently, the Israeli-based civil rights organization Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center) has in recent days commenced with a pre-emptive attack. We are collecting testimonies from any Israeli who was a victim of terrorism and are asking that these testimonies be posted to our Facebook page as evidence that can be used in countersuits against leaders of the Palestinian Authority for their roles in the perpetration of war crimes.

If Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh want to go to The Hague -- we will be there to meet them.

*The writer is director of Shurat HaDin, which acts to protect human rights and the security of the State of Israel.

New Research on Nazi Influence in Arab World

2013-05-03T18:01:00.000+08:00

From Algemeiner, 30 April 2013 by Dr. Rafael Medoff *:

Haj Amin el-Husseini, better known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, with Nazi SS officers in November 1943. Photo: German Federal Archives.

[With the 70th anniversary of the Mufti’s sabotage of a plan to rescue Jewish children from Europe coming up next month] Nazi Germany’s effort to recruit supporters in the Arab world is attracting new attention among scholars.
...During the Holocaust years, Haj Amin el-Husseini, better known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, lived in Berlin, where he recorded pro-Nazi radio broadcasts that were beamed to the Arab world and recruited Bosnian Muslims to join an all-Muslim unit of the SS.
Seventy years ago, on May 13, 1943, Husseini caught wind of a plan to permit 4,000 Jewish children, accompanied by 500 adults, to travel to Palestine in exchange for the release of 20,000 German prisoners of war. Both the Germans and the British had agreed to the exchange, but the Germans backed down when the Mufti objected.
The Mufti was the most prominent Arab figure to support the Nazis, but he was not alone.
“My research tracks the effort by the Germans, Italians, and Japanese to spread their propaganda and influence in Palestine and various Arab countries,” said Dr. Cohen [from Israel State Archives]... “They worked hard at it and, to a significant extent, they succeeded.”
Cohen has been combing through Arabic-language Nazi and Axis leaflets and radio broadcasts that were collected and analyzed by Haganah intelligence in the 1930s and 1940s.
Some of the leaflets found by Cohen feature stark headlines such as “Kill the Jews and the British!” Some were printed on the back of facsimile British pounds or American dollars, so that when they were dropped by German planes over Arab regions of Palestine, they looked like money and immediately attracted attention.
According to Cohen, some of the Arabic-language Nazi propaganda promised that those who attacked Jews would be rewarded by being given “the most beautiful of the Jewish girls” after Palestine’s Jewish community was vanquished. “That sort of language makes one think of the promise that Muslim terrorist leaders today sometimes offer—that those who die while killing Jews will receive seventy virgins in heaven,” Cohen said.
The text of the leaflets and broadcasts were composed by Nazi authors, and then translated into Arabic by members of the Mufti’s entourage in Berlin.
Some of the Mufti’s men in Germany were more than writers: several parachuted into Palestine in 1944 with vials of poison that they intended to dump in the Tel Aviv water system. They were intercepted by the British police before they could carry out the attack.
Cohen found an internal memo from British police headquarters in Jerusalem in 1939 reporting, “The Arab population in Palestine are listening to the Berlin Broadcasts in Arabic most attentively, particularly in town and village coffee shops where large crowds gather for the purpose ...uneducated classes are undoubtedly being influenced” ...
In 1945, the activists known as the Bergson Group successfully lobbied the government of Yugoslavia to indict the Mufti as a war criminal, because of atrocities committed against Allied soldiers and civilians by members of the Bosnian Muslim SS unit, known as “Handschar,” that he helped create. The Yugoslavs never took steps to extradite him, however.
Husseini fled Berlin during the final days of the war but was briefly detained by the French authorities and placed under house arrest in a Paris villa. In response to Arab pressure, the French permitted the Mufti to stage a faux escape, and he found haven in Cairo. Later he moved to Beirut, where he passed away in 1974.
Earlier this year, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas stirred controversy when, in a PA television broadcast, he listed the Mufti’s name among a number of “martyrs and heroes” who have died while fighting Jews or Israelis.

*Dr. Rafael Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, in Washington, DC. His latest book is “FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith,” available from Amazon.

"Human-rights" prize nominee supports rocket attacks on civilians

2013-05-02T09:09:00.002+08:00

From UN Watch, 1 May 2013:

Egypt's Mona Seif, finalist for the Martin Ennals Award for "Human Rights Defenders"

GENEVA, May 1, 2013 – In response to new revelations, a top contender for the world's premier human rights prize -- one of three Final Nominees selected by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and eight other NGOs -- today acknowledged having posted "anti-Israel tweets." See UN Watch's original protest here.

Mona Seif was announced last week as one of three finalists for the Martin Ennals Prize for Human Rights Defenders, considered "the Nobel for human rights."

But UN Watch yesterday exposed Seif's tweets advocating terrorism, and protested the nomination together with two courageous Egyptian rights activists, Amr Bakly and Maikel Nabil, who believe in peace and non-violence and oppose hate.

In a letter to HRW director Ken Roth, UN Watch asked him to cancel Seif's nomination. We also appealed to former Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey, head of the foundation; to the nine other NGOs on the jury, along with the chair, Hans Thoolen; and to prize patron Theo Van Boven, a Dutch law professor and former UN expert. None has yet responded. To help with UN Watch's Twitter campaign, see below.

UN Watch's protest, supported by many on Facebook and Twitter, now appears in numerous news sites, including today's Washington Times ("Human Rights Watch selects proponent of terrorism as finalist for award"), and in popular blogs ("Disturbing: Radical anti-Semite nominated for international human rights award"). More major media are expected to report the story. The Israeli press is expected to remain oblivious.

Earlier today, human rights prize nominee Mona Seif responded on Twitter:

"Just a note: all my anti-Israel tweets were written in English precisely so that the international community celebrating our revolution understands that we support the resistance of the palestinian nation against israel. I didn't fool anyone or hide my thoughts... I support a nation's right to resist occupation! Sending me tweets calling me a terrorist won't change the fact that [the] real terrorist is Israel."

Although dozens of Seif's supporters in the Arab world have rallied to her side, and endorsed her anti-Israel comments, none has denied that she support the deliberate targeting and killing of Israeli civilians, nor has Seif herself denied it.

Moreover, though they sang her praises up until yesterday, not a single international human rights group has defended Seif since the UN Watch revelations.

In a similar incident in March, Egyptian activist Samira Ibrahim went to Washington to receive a State Department award when suddenly it was revealed that she had cheered a terrorist attack against Israelis and made other antisemitic comments. Though initially she claimed her Twitter account had been hacked, she eventually acknowledged having made "statements hostile to Zionism," for which she refused to apologize. Her award was canceled.

Say No to Terror: Join Twitter Campaign

Don't let a proponent of violence against civilians get rewarded on the world stage as a model of human rights. Please send a polite message on Twitter to the jury members below asking them to cancel Mona Seif's nomination, and to condemn her support for terrorism.

Hans Thoolen, Chair of Martin Ennals Award Jury: @thoolen

Human Rights Watch: @kenroth @hrw

Amnesty International: @amnesty

International Federation of Human Rights: @fidh_en

World Organisation Against Torture: @omctorg

Front Line: @frontlinehrd

International Commission of Jurists: @ICJ_org

Human Rights First: @humanrights1st

International Service for Human Rights: @ISHRglobal

Diakonie Germany: @diakonie

Hurdidocs: @huridocs

Sample tweet to all (cut & paste):

Jury, REJECT Seif #tweets4terror: @amnesty @hrw @fidh_en @omctorg @FrontLineHRD @ICJ_org @humanrights1st @ISHRglobal @diakonie @huridocs.

It's not about land

2013-05-02T07:14:00.000+08:00

From The Washington Post Thursday, May 2, By William Booth:

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel and the Palestinians could not achieve a peace deal based on land swaps alone and insisted that the most important thing is for Palestinians to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state.
“You saw what happened when we left the Gaza Strip. We evacuated the last settlers, and what did we get? Missiles,” he said, referring to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal of soldiers and settlers from the Palestinian coastal territory in 2005.

Netanyahu seemed to offer a cool response to remarks made Monday in Washington by members of an Arab League delegation, including Qatari Prime Minister Hamad Bin Jasim al-Thani, who suggested that the Arab states would support a limited, mutually agreeable exchange between Israel and the Palestinian territories of lands that fall outside the pre-1967 borders.
“The root of the conflict is not territorial,” Netanyahu said ... “The Palestinian lack of will to recognize Israel as the national state of the Jewish people is the root of the conflict.”
... In 2002, the Arab League offered recognition of Israel by Arab states in exchange for a complete Israeli withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their capital. So the statements by the Arab leadership that land swaps were acceptable is seen by some as a step forward.
... In his address at the Foreign Ministry, Netanyahu said, “Until the Palestinians recognize our right to exist as a national state — no matter what the borders — and until they declare that the conflict is over, there will not be peace.”

Israel is Doing Remarkably Well

2013-05-01T22:28:00.006+08:00

From Rubin Reports, 1 May 2013, by Barry Rubin:

Israel's economic and strategic situation is surprisingly bright right now. That’s partly due to the government’s own economic restraint and strategic balancing act, partly due to a shift in Obama Administration policy, and partly due to the conflicts among Israel’s adversaries.

Let’s start with the economy. During 2012, Israel’s economy grew by 3.1 percent. While some years ago this would not be all that impressive it is amazing given the international economic recession. The debt burden actually fell from 79.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product to only 73.8 percent. As the debt of the United States and other countries zooms upwards, that’s impressive, too.

Israel’s credit rating also rose at a time when America’s was declining. Standard and Poor lifted the rating from A to A+. Two other rating systems, Moody’s and Fitch, also increased Israel’s rating.

And that’s not all. Unemployment fell from 8.5 percent in 2009 to either 6.8 to 6.9 percent (according to Israel’s bureau of statistics) or 6.3 percent (according to the CIA).

In terms of U.S.-Israel relations, the visit of President Barack Obama and Israel’s cooperation on Iran and on an attempted conciliation with Turkey brought quick rewards. For the first time, Israel will be allowed to purchase KC-135 aerial refueling planes, a type of equipment that could be most useful for attacking Iranian nuclear facilities among other things.

The same deal—which includes sales to Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to make U.S. allies feel more secure vis-à-vis Iran—includes V-22 Osprey planes that can switch between helicopter and plane mode. Israel is the first foreign country to be allowed to purchase this system. It could be used for border patrols—a bigger problem given the decline in the stability along the Egyptian and Syrian borders—and troop transport.

Finally, there would be more advanced radars for Israeli planes and a new type of missile useful for knocking out enemy anti-aircraft sites, potentially useful against Iran among other targets. In addition, an Israeli company is now going to be making the wings for the advanced U.S. F-35 fighter planes.

The completion of the border fence with Egypt increases security in places where Palestinian and Egyptian Islamist groups are trying to attack. It also has reduced illegal civilian crossings to zero. Ironically, Israel has gotten control of its border while the U.S. government proclaims that task to be impossible for itself.

And of course there is the usual and widely varied progress on medical, agricultural, and hi-tech innovations. Here is a summary of those inventions.

The picture is even bright regarding U.S.-Israel relations, certainly compared to the previous four years. This point is highlighted by Wikileaks publication of a U.S. embassy dispatch of January 4, 2010...

“[As far as Israel is concerned] what is important is that Obama and his entourage has learned two things. One of them is that bashing Israel is politically costly. American public opinion is very strongly pro-Israel. Congress is as friendly to Israel as ever. For an administration that is more conscious of its future reelection campaign than any previous one, holding onto Jewish voters and ensuring Jewish donations is very important….

“The other point is that the administration has seen that bashing Israel doesn't get it anywhere. For one thing, the current Israeli government won't give in easily and is very adept at protecting its country's interests. This administration has a great deal of trouble being tough with anyone. If in fact the Palestinians and Arabs were eager to make a deal and energetic about supporting other U.S. policies, the administration might well be tempted to press for an arrangement that largely ignored Israeli interests.

“But this is not the case. It is the Palestinians who refuse even to come to the negotiating table -- and that is unlikely to change quickly or easily. Arab states won't lift a finger to help the U.S. on Iran, Iraq, or Arab-Israeli issues. So why bother?”

I think this analysis really fits the events that came to fruition in March 2013 with Obama’s coming to Israel, signalling a change in U.S. policy.

Face it. The obsession with the “peace process” is misplaced and misleading.

The big issue in the region is the struggle for power in the Arabic-speaking world, Turkey, and Iran between Islamists and non-Islamists. And, no, the Arab-Israeli conflict has very little to do with these issues. Those who don’t understand those points cannot possible comprehend the region. Secretary of State John Kerry may run around the region and talk about big plans for summit conferences. But nobody really expects anything to happen.

This is not, of course, to say that there aren’t problems. Yet what often seems to be the world’s most slandered and reviled country is doing quite well. Perhaps if Western states studied its policies rather than endlessly criticized them they might gain from the experience.

Arabs are waking to Hezbollah's deceit

2013-04-29T07:29:00.003+08:00

From Arshaq Al-Awsat (pan-Arab daily newspaper), 27 April 2013, by Mshari Al-Zaydi:

In Syria, what was hidden has been revealed.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah has cemented the image that some of its supporters in the Islamic world have tried so hard to deny, namely that of Hezbollah as Khomeinist Iran’s iron fist.

...Every critic of Hezbollah, particularly over the group’s ties to the Khomeinist Iranian project, would face counter accusations of being “agents of the Americans and Zionists”.
Hezbollah is blatantly interfering in the war currently raging in Syria, particularly the battles taking place in border villages in the Al-Qusayr region. In fact, former Hezbollah Secretary-General Subhi Al-Tufayli acknowledged that the group is involved throughout Syria.
This is something that Moaz Alkhatib has brought to the attention of current Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, emphasizing the deceit of the “resistance”. He stressed that the “resistance” slogan is nothing more than an empty political mantra that is used for propaganda purposes and to manipulate Arab and Islamic sentiments.
The “resistance” slogan truly is nothing more than a deceit, not just today ...but rather this has been used as a false slogan for more than ten years.
Do you recall how Arab television channels and writers rushed to condemn all those who criticized Hezbollah’s actions in dragging Lebanon into its military adventures with Israel? Do you recall how the Hezbollah media, along with the pro-Assad media in Lebanon, and so-called pro-resistance satellite channels, seemed to join forces to oppose the Arab moderate camp? Of course, this is something that was completely wiped out by the rising wave of the Arab Spring.
Figures like Egyptian journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal expressed their “understanding” of Hezbollah’s takeover of western Beirut. In addition to this, Islamic figures like Salim Al-Awa in Egypt attempted to promote ties between the Iran, Hams, and Hezbollah camp and the rest of the Arab world. Meanwhile Hamas chief Khaled Mishal bit his tongue and did not issue any statements about Hezbollah’s campaign to intimidate and suppress its political opponents.
It is ironic that Hezbollah, along with the Bashar Al-Assad regime, claim to stand against sectarianism, when in reality they are the ones stoking the sectarian fire.
...Hezbollah has been shown to be nothing more than a mere tool of the mullahs in Tehran, promoting the lies of the “resistance” while condemning all those who have refused to fall for this charade. Indeed, this is an approach that Hezbollah continues to follow today.

Free Ouda Seliman Tarabin

2013-04-29T06:49:00.001+08:00

From The Times of Israel, 24 April 2013, by Stuart Winer:

An Israeli citizen, held for over 12 years in an Egyptian prison on charges of spying that he denies, said he is starting a hunger strike in protest against both Egyptian and Israeli authorities that have failed to bring about his release.

“I am the only one who is paying the price of the revenge and hatred for the State of Israel and the prime minister that come from the Egyptian government and those who head it,” wrote Ouda Tarabin, a Bedouin from Rahat, in a hand-written letter to Israel’s ambassador in Cairo, Yaacov Amitai, on Tuesday.

Tarabin said that he began his fast because Israel has violated its commitments to him by not doing enough to secure his freedom, even though it knows that he is innocent. Tarabin also asked for the letter to be delivered Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.

“I request from the honorable sir, that by virtue of his being the ambassador of Israel and the representative of the prime minister in Egypt, to bring a notification of my hunger strike to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi,” he wrote.

In recent years there has been talk of a prisoner exchange of dozens of Egyptians held in Israel in return for Tarabin, but so far they have not come to fruition. Likewise, he was not included in the 2011 Ilan Grapel exchange.

In 2000, the 19-year-old Israeli Bedouin Tarabin was captured by Egyptian forces after he illegally crossed the border. He was tried for espionage in absentia by an Egyptian military court and sentenced to 15 years in prison under Egypt’s emergency laws, which allow possibility for parole. Tarabin has maintained his innocence from his Cairo jail since his arrest.

It is unknown why Tarabin crossed the border from Israel to Sinai, but Tarabin’s brother claims that he was likely planning to visit his sister in El-Arish. Another version contends that Tarabin, a shepherd, strayed across the border while searching for a lost camel.

Although Israel lobbied for Tarabin’s release in October 2011 as part of the deal negotiated for the release of Ilan Grapel, the Egyptians were not willing to consider the suggestion. Grapel, a law student with dual US and Israeli citizenship, was jailed for five months on espionage charges before being released in exchange for 25 Egyptian prisoners.

From Egypt Independent, 29 April 2013:

In a letter to the Israeli ambassador in Cairo that was featured in a Voice of Israel Radio broadcast on Wednesday, Tarabin urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to file a complaint with the UN Security Council and a lawsuit with the UN's International Court of Justice for his release.

Addressing Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy, he said that he was not given a fair trial and held the Israeli prime minister responsible for his life....

...According to an Israeli television channel, a team from the United Nations Commission of Human Rights that investigated Tarabin’s case said in 2012 that he was subjected to arbitrary arrest and had not received a fair trial.

From JPost, 24 April 2013, by Gershon Baskin, co-chairman of the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information, a columnist for The Jerusalem Post and the initiator and negotiator of the secret back channel for the release of Gilad Schalit:

...Ouda Seliman Tarabin is a national of Israel. He was 10 years old when his family moved from Egypt to Israel, and was subsequently granted Israeli citizenship. I have been told that during the time that Israel controlled Sinai, Tarabin’s father probably collaborated with the Israeli security forces there. When Israel handed Sinai back to Egypt, Tarabin and his family were given Israeli citizenship and they moved to the Negev.
In September 1999, Tarabin and his mother traveled to Egypt on their Israeli passports to visit his sisters who were residing in El-Arish, Egypt. They returned to Israel at the end of their visit.
On December 2, 2000, while on another visit to Egypt, Tarabin was arrested by the local police at his sister’s home in El-Arish, allegedly for illegally crossing the border and for espionage. The arrest took place two days after he had arrived in Egypt.
Following his arrest, Tarabin was taken for interrogation by the Egyptian Military Intelligence and told that he was being sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. He was informed that his cousin had confessed to the allegation that he and his father were connected to the Israeli army. According to the information received from the source, he did not have access to a lawyer or legal assistance during his interrogation or thereafter. The source submits that the cousin had been interrogated about whom he had visited when he crossed the border into Israel. Reportedly, he responded that he had gone to visit his uncle, Tarabin’s father.
Tarabin was allegedly sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment by a military court in Sinai in March 2000. We have been informed that his prisoner card indicates that he was arrested on December 3, 2000. Therefore, it seems that he was tried and sentenced by the court, prior to his arrest. The source contends that he was not present at the trial and upon arrest he was not given the opportunity to be promptly brought before a competent tribunal. The source further reports that the Egyptian State Security Office stated that his trial took place in March 2000. At that time, Tarabin was not in Egypt; he had not received a summons from any court and he was not aware of any charges against him...

French appeals court rules Israel is not illegally occupying land

2013-04-26T15:28:00.002+08:00

From Dreuz [in French], 13 April 2013:

"L’occupation du territoire palestinien n’est pas illegal ...L’occupation ne viole aucune loi internationale"

which BING translates to:

"The occupation of the Palestinian territory is not illegal ...Occupation does not violate any international law"

The PLO had argued in a long trial that just ended in the Court of appeal of Versailles, March 13, 2013, that Israel was violating the Geneva Conventions by "transferring" citizens to the territories and destroying property, as well as a host of other claims.
The court ruled, however, that Israel was acting within the Hague Regulations of how an occupier must act...

Going beyond that, the court ruled that the Geneva Conventions and Hague Regulations only apply to states, and to signatories, and the PLO is neither.

" ...First, all these international texts are acts signed between States, and that the obligations or prohibitions contained therein are addressed to States. Neither the Palestinian Authority nor the PLO are States, so none of these texts apply to them.

Secondly, the Court notes that these texts address "the contracting parties", referring to two parties who have signed - and there again, neither the PLO nor the PA have ever signed these documents...."

‘Anarchy in Sinai and no solution in sight’

2013-04-26T13:01:00.002+08:00

From JPost, 23 April 2013, by Zvi Mazel, former Ambassador to Egypt:

Analysis: Mubarak’s fall and the subsequent decline of the central authority have only made matters worse in Sinai.

Love affair with Sinai unabated Photo: Linda Epstein

The first Egyptian reactions to the grad rockets that targeted Eilat were of flat denial. No fewer than three individuals – a self-proclaimed expert, a retired general and a military commentator – explained at length that there was no way the missiles had been launched from Sinai.
One said that determining what had happened would take time and would require satellite images; another argued that the Iron Dome system, recently deployed to the Eilat area, is designed to intercept only projectiles launched from beyond Israel’s borders — the rockets must have been launched from Israeli territory, he duly concluded. South Sinai’s governor joined the chorus, rejecting out of hand the notion that the rockets could have been shot from the peninsula.
It may be remembered that in December 2010, this governor’s predecessor accused the Mossad of dispatching a shark to the waters of Sharm e-Sheikh in order to harm local tourism. A “high ranking army source wishing to remain anonymous” added that the ongoing investigation had found no indication that the missiles had originated in Egypt.
A few hours later, perspectives Egyptian views were shifting, perhaps because a Salafi group had taken responsibility for the launch.
An Egyptian Army spokesman posted a statement on its Facebook page indicating that a commission of inquiry had been immediately set up to check the situation on the ground in Sinai.
In the statement, the spokesman wrote that Egyptian territory had never been and would never be a threat to neighboring countries.
The presidency followed suit with a similar communiqué, while another military source indicated that the Egyptian Defense Minister General Abdel Fattah Alsisi had given orders to raise the state of alert along the Israeli border to its maximum level.
No one seemed aware that Iron Dome radars and other installations had tracked the missiles, and that the likely explanation for the decision not to fire at them was that such an interception would have taken place in Egyptian airspace.
At this stage, Israel is unwilling to violate its neighbor’s sovereignty. In Egypt, as in all Arab countries, denial is the name of the game whenever Israel is involved. They are never the ones at fault, it seems; it is always the Zionists or the Jews.
This reality does not make the necessary security cooperation between Israel and Egypt any easier – even when Egyptian personnel are at risk – despite being in both countries’ best interests.
They must join forces to fight the spread of Jihadi terror in the Sinai Peninsula and in Gaza, a trend which presents a serious threat not just to Israel but also to Egypt. This is not to say that there is no exchange of information — what happens after Israel has passed sensitive material to Egypt, however, is anybody’s guess.
Back in August, Israel warned the former head of Egyptian security that Islamist militants were planning to attack an army post, but he refused to take action, and 16 Egyptian soldiers were slaughtered. He was sacked.
Conversely, deploying the Iron Dome to Eilat 10 days ago may well have been the result of information received about a plot to fire rockets, but if this was the case, there is no indication that the Egyptians did anything at their end to prevent the rocket fire.
Sinai is for all intents and purposes a war zone. The traditional distrust felt by the peninsula’s Beduin towards the central government has only been exacerbated by years of neglect. Nothing has been done to improve the lot of the population; there are no workplaces, there is no meaningful development and not even a decent school infrastructure.
Hamas found a willing ally in the Beduin – ready to transport arms and ammunition, rockets included.
Much of this contraband originates from Iran, traveling through Sudan and mainland Egypt to Sinai and to the Gaza Strip.
Other Jihadi terror organizations loosely linked to al-Qaida have followed suit, setting up local cells and paying Beduin handsomely for their assistance.
Mubarak’s fall and the subsequent decline of the central authority have only made matters worse in Sinai.
Concurrent with his removal from power, security forces left the area, turning Sinai into a drug-smuggling haven as well as a major artery for Africans seeking a new life in Israel.
With the fall of Gaddafi, Libyan munitions joined the flow. And still nothing has been done to develop the peninsula and improve conditions for its inhabitants.
Last October the government took steps to allow the purchase and rental of land by Beduin who could demonstrate Egyptian citizenship for themselves and their parents and that they did not hold a second nationality. The ink on that piece of legislation was barely dry when the defense minister issued a decree forbidding the purchase of land on a strip 5 kilometers deep along Egypt’s border with Israel and with Gaza.
This was done in order to exercise better control of the area, prevent terrorist infiltration and supervise the tunnels moving contraband to Gaza.
The Beduin were bitterly disappointed: They demanded that the decree be rescinded and threatened civil disobedience. Intense negotiations are ongoing, but so far no solution has been found, and violence could break out at any moment.
There is yet another conflict brewing in Sinai, this one between the Beduin and the Muslim Brothers.
The former supreme guide of the Brotherhood, Muhammad Mehdi Akef, told the Kuwait daily Al Jarida last week that all Beduin are collaborators: One third collaborate with state security services, another with army intelligence, and the final third spies for Israel. (He did not mention collaboration with Jihadist and Hamas groups).
Hundreds of angry Beduin demonstrated in front of Brotherhood headquarters in Sinai, threatening to turn it to rubble unless Akef apologized.
More demonstrations, as well as a civil suit for slander, are planned.
It can hardly be expected that Beduin will help the central government fight terror, considering so many of them earn their livelihoods by smuggling drugs, people or arms on behalf of those terror groups.
What then is Israel to do? Thousands of armed terrorists in dozens of groups operating in the peninsula are openly threatening Israel’s security, and yet it is greatly limited in the measures it can adopt against them.
There is indeed a measure of intelligence- sharing between the Israel and her southern neighbor, but without increased levels of cooperation — similar to those during the Mubarak years — such efforts will remain ineffective.
A few months ago the Egyptian army announced it was launching an all-out campaign against terror in Sinai.
Yet terrorists continue to operate in broad daylight, attacking police stations, setting up road blocks and targeting army patrols. Last week one policeman was killed and another injured by terrorists or smugglers.
Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has no meaningful contact with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The Brothers do not speak with Israel. Only last week, in an interview with Al Jazeera Arabic, Morsi couldn’t even bring himself to utter Israel’s name, saying of the limited contact Egypt and Israel do maintain that “even enemies occasionally speak.”
Only close cooperation on both sides of the border will put an end to the state of lawlessness in the peninsula, but with the Muslim Brothers at Egypt’s helm, it does not look like this will happen anytime soon.