Halfway through the opinion piece Friedman notes:

Israel needs a pragmatic centrist government that can lead it out of this multifaceted crisis — and seize the offer of normalization with Saudi Arabia that Biden has been able to engineer.

Except that the “offer of normalization with Saudi Arabia” comes with very serious strings – essentially a plan to reward the Palestinians with a state. Saudi Arabia has made it clear – without a clear roadmap to a Palestinian state there is no normalization of ties with Israel. Saudi Arabia is facing a rising Iran who is bolstered by China and a delusional American government who has been lifting sanctions on Iran in an effort to curry favor with mullahs so they won’t go and build a bomb. The administration seems bent on pursuing regardless this policy while the Iranians are pouring massive amounts of money and material to arm their proxies throughout the region in order to achieve regional superpower status. Saudi Arabia needs Israeli technology to help counter the Iranians – it’s in the kingdom’s best interest to normalize relations with Israel to better counter the Iranians. That they throw in the demand for a clear path and commitment for a Palestinian state is their way of trying to position themselves as the regional superpower who “solved” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (except it won’t be solved as the Palestinians will never accept a true and complete peace without Israel committing demographic suicide by allowing ALL Palestinians the fabled “Right of Return”. Friedman completely misses this.

As for Gaza – he talks of Israel simply

[accepting] Hamas’s key demand: Totally end the war now and withdraw from Gaza in exchange for the return of all Israeli hostages.

Friedman assumes that Sinwar and Hamas will actually do this. If Israel were to totally end the war now and withdraw with a “promise” by Hamas to free the hostages they would be facing a long period where Hamas will drag out the release – for years if possible – in order to further humiliate Israel and to increase Israeli pain. There’s no incentive for them to release the hostages – living or dead – as they will need them to threaten Israel should the army move back in. Once they have their “hostage shield”, Hamas will quickly move to rearm and threaten Israel all over again and we’ll be back where we were on October 6th. It may take them time, but that is their plan.

Friedman then notes that

The only people who can defeat Hamas are the Palestinians of Gaza. They, too, need better leadership, and if they find it, we should help them rebuild.

Seriously? Better leadership? You’d have a better chance of finding a needle in a haystack than finding better leadership among the Palestinians. These are the people who “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity” according to Israel’s foreign minister, Abba Eban, said in 1973.

Finally Tom Friedman claims that

I believe that the morning after the morning after Sinwar emerges from his tunnel, many Gazans will want to pummel him for the disaster he has visited on them. And if not, Sinwar and Sinwar alone will be responsible when the water doesn’t flow, when the building materials don’t arrive, when the sun doesn’t shine — not Israel. And if he is so foolish as to restart the war with Israel or attempt to smuggle in weapons instead of food and housing for his people, it will all be on him.

This is just his “Western” thinking trying to impose its perspective on a situation in which this sort of logic doesn’t work. If Sinwar emerges from his tunnels after the Israeli army leaves he will declare victory. Those who don’t agree with him and with Hamas’s leadership in this story will simply be executed brutally and the Palestinians will fall in line. He may not restart the war immediately but he will definitely start smuggling weapons again all the while demanding that the world provide food and building materials – which he will also steal. Sinwar and the Hamas leadership are psychopaths. They clearly don’t care about the number of dead Palestinians their actions create – they only care about their agenda. They’re not interested in actually governing Gaza for the benefit of the average Palestinian – their only focus is the destruction of Israel and the murder of every Jew on the planet. That Friedman would actually believe that Sinwar would actually care about the Palestinians or what they think outside of their use to further his genocidal goal is just plain delusional.

“The flight or expulsion of at least a quarter-million Palestinians from Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias, Beisan and other localities before the Israeli declaration of independence that May helped trigger the first war between the Arab states and Israel.”

This is a complete fabrication. “Helped trigger the first war”? Is he serious? Facts are facts. History is a series of events that aren’t subject to subjective interpretation in the whole. The “trigger” for the first ware between the Arab states and Israel was the actual declaration by the Jews of the modern State of Israel. That was it. It had nothing to do with the Arabs. Little note here: prior to 1948 if you said “Palestinian” you actually meant the Jewish population of the Palestine Mandate – not the Arabs. If anything the Arabs who were there were, for the most part, transplants from other places – Syria, Egypt, Jordan – but they weren’t Arabs who lived in the Mandate since time immemorial – despite what they would like to claim.

The migration of the Arabs from “Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias, Beisan and other localities” as Mr. Khalidi notes was due more to the fact that they were encouraged by their Arab brethren in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere to evacuate so that the Arab armies could go in and slaughter the Jews. Hmmm…in a strange way this is similar to what the IDF is asking Palestinians to do now – get out of the way so they can fight Hamas while minimizing civilian casualties.

Israel does not want to reoccupy the Gaza Strip – but it does want the Gaza Strip to be free of Hamas. We cannot accept a situation where things go back to the previous status quo after a short conflict. Hamas has proven that they are nothing more than a band of murderous thugs whose sole raison d’être is to slaughter Jews – men, women, the elderly, children – every one of us. We’ve seen this story before and we’ve learned, the hard way, that when someone says that they’re coming to kill you – you should believe them.

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Khalidi places all of the blame for this on Israel and, by extension, the US and absolves the Palestinians for any responsibility for the current situation. His apologetics for Palestinian actions is nauseating to say the least and framed solely in one of Israeli oppression with no condemnation of the horrors which Hamas visits not only on the Israeli population but also on the Palestinian one too. He closes his op-ed with the statement

“The only possible solution is one that ends the oppression of one people by another and guarantees absolutely equal rights and security for both peoples.”

He misses the mark a bit and I’ve corrected it for him: “The only possible solution is one that has Palestinians establishing their own government and society based on peaceful coexistence with Israel and guarantees equal rights and security for both peoples.”

I was born in Israel and have come home to the this wonderful place many times – and I look forward to the day that I come home on a more permanent basis in the near future. I was amazed as Tel-Aviv is such a vegan-friendly city (which is good for me since I am vegan myself) and even Jerusalem seems a little more vegan friendly then it was three years ago. Israel has made a lot of progress – yes, I am well aware that it has its warts but no society is perfect. As much as the BDS crowd and the Palestinians wish to portray Israel as the worst possible country in the world it is most certainly nowhere near that. All countries have their problems – Israel is not immune to that for sure but Israel has people who are working to improve their society and their country. And like all other countries Israelis are people who yearn for peace with their neighbors – be they Lebanese, Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian and Palestinian.

As I sit here on the day before I leave back to the United States (where we also have our fair share of problems which I will not detail here) I marvel at what a jewel Israel has become over the past 71 years. There is still much work to be done but, as always, I am optimistic about Israel and her future.

I am reminded of the joke about the guy who dies and goes to be judged. It is determined that he go to Hell but he’s given options by an angel – he can go to Soviet Hell, Nazi Hell or Israeli Hell. He thinks for a moment and considers: “Hmmm…Soviet Hell – no way that is too oppressive; Nazi Hell? No…that would be like Auschwitz forever.” So he tells the angel “I’ll go to Israel Hell”. Immediately he’s transported to Israeli Hell. He opens his eyes and he’s standing on the side of the road on top of a hill and everywhere he looks there are orchards and fields of crops and beauty all around and thinks “Huh? Is this right?” A few seconds later an IDF Jeep drives up and the driver asks the man if he needs a ride to which he enthusiastically replies, “Yes”. He gets in and he says to the driver “I thought this is Israeli Hell – but it’s so beautiful.” The driver replies “You should have seen what a hellhole this place was 71 years ago!”

Their methods initially were very rudimentary and poor in that they produced pamphlets that had limited circulation and were of low quality that is was obvious that their target audience was simply like-minded individuals.  Initially much of their effort seems to have been devoted to exonerating Germany’s role in the war and portraying the Nazi regime as more victim of the Allies and of Jews in particular.  The early deniers focused more on minimizing the numbers of Jews murdered in the death camps like Aushwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Buchenwald and others and on blaming those deaths to starvation and to the deprivations Nazi Germany experienced due to the Allies bombing campaigns.  The initial focus was not on the gas chambers but rather explaining away the deaths and minimizing them and even equivocating them to the German deaths due to the Allies.

Over time their tactics changed more to denying that any Jews actually were murdered in the homicidal gas chambers at the death camps.  The deniers focused on making claims that there was insufficient proof of wholesale slaughter (when in reality there has always been ample proof) and that the homicidal gas chambers were actually used for delousing prisoner’s clothes and property.  Over time they went from printing pamphlets to whole books (usually published by neo-Nazi publishing houses) and to updating their presentation to having a pseudo-scholarly look to it by creating an “Institute” for historical research that publishes a “journal” (I hesitate to call it that since the “methods” used by the authors of the “articles” in this “journal” are nowhere near the historiographic bar for legitimate journals). 

Dr. Lipstadt does an amazing effort to expose these people for who they really are: Antisemites who simply are looking to white-wash Germany’s crimes committed during World War 2 (particularly in reference to the Holocaust) and to bolster their false claims that Israel (and Jews in general) are trying to pull a “fast one” over the rest of the world. These people cherry pick their facts, misquote historical documents, or just fabricate lies to bolster their claims. Their behavior deserves to be derided by all – but yet they continue to attract like-minded neo-Nazis and Antisemites to them. What’s worse is that even those who are *NOT* neo-Nazis or Antisemitic sometimes fall into their traps and help promulgate their message unwittingly. The worst cases of these happens on university campuses where students and professors alike – who should have critical thinking skills – fail to realize that not all ideas or speech have merit and need to be defended.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about these deniers and their false messages and the danger they pose to historical accuracy and truth. We must be ever vigilant against them and call them out whenever they appear. Thank you Dr. Lipstadt for this wonderful work.

*FYI – Spoilers ahead*
This was quite an amazing book. I read it not really knowing what to expect but now that I have finished it I am rather surprised by the responses some of the individuals who were asked to write a response to Wiesenthal’s question of “What would you do?” if you were faced with a similar situation.

First a little background. The first part of the book is a retelling of Wiesenthal’s experience in a concentration camp where the prisoners are made to work endlessly and relentlessly by their German and German-allied captors (apparently in this case these were Ukrainians who tended to be more brutal to the Jews than even the Germans). The story revolves around the situation where Wiesenthal and other prisoners are brought to a German military hospital (which, it so happens, is situated in Wiesenthal’s former technical school where he was harassed by the other Polish students because he was Jewish) to work and clean up the medical waste. While there a nurse gets him and brings him to an isolated room where a patient is lying completely bandaged from head to toe.

As it turns out the patient was an SS officer who was dying from his wounds. He had asked the nurse to bring him “a Jew” so that he could speak with him and ask him for his forgiveness for the crimes that he had committed against the Jewish people. The SS officer, whose name is Karl, was raised as a Catholic by his parents but joined the Hitler Youth (against the wishes of his parents) and when the work broke out volunteered for the SS which resulted in his estrangement from his father. During his time in the war in the East Karl had witnessed and partook in atrocities against the Jews population. However one particular incident seems to have broken him. This incident occurred when in the city of Dnepropetrovsk in Russia the SS rounded up the Jews, put them all in a building and then set the building on fire. If the Jews tried to get out they were shot. But it was the father who threw his young son out of a second (or perhaps third) story window in order to save him from being burned alive and perhaps with the hope that he would survive the fall and somehow escape (in the end the fall killed the child) which sticks in Karl’s mind and won’t give him peace. Now, however, that he is close to dying the SS officer wishes to make his peace. So, he asked the nurse to bring him “a Jew” to whom he could confess and ask for forgiveness with the expectation that whomever she brought would give him the solace he seeks and which would allow him to die in peace.

However Wiesenthal listens to the officer’s story and is repulsed by the man. Instead of saying he forgives him, Wiesenthal stays silent. In the end the SS officer dies and bequeaths to Simon Wiesenthal whatever belongings he had left (which Wiesenthal rightly rejects).

After the war Wiesenthal goes out and searches for Karl’s mother. He wants to meet her (and possibly his father) to find out what kind of parents could have raised him and why they didn’t manage to prevent him from doing what he did. In the end he finds Karl’s mother and presents himself as someone who knew Karl before his death. He speaks with her (Karl’s father having died during the war) and discovers she has no knowledge of the things Karl did and the crimes he committed during the course of the war. In the end he does not tell her about what Karl told him – about the crimes he committed or the atrocities he witnessed and remains silent about those facts and allows her to continue to believe that Karl was good.

At the end of the story – Wiesenthal asks the reader: “What would you have done?” Would you have remained silent or spoken up (both with Karl and with the mother – although I felt the question was more towards the situation with Karl).

The second half of the book revolves around responses by various thinkers and intellectuals around the world as to how they would have responded to Karl’s desire for forgiveness and whether Wiesenthal should have forgiven him. The responses are varied but generally fall into two camps:

Those who argue not to forgive and
Those who argue to forgive

What’s most interesting about the responses is that the fault line in the responses falls pretty much where you would expect it to: along religious lines. Jews tend to fall in the unforgiving camp – but the reasoning is somewhat varied. In general everyone who falls into this camp argue that in order to attain forgiveness one must ask for forgiveness from those who were wronged. The problem for Karl is that those who could forgive are all dead. In Judaism there are sins between man and his fellow man and sins between man and God. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement provides for forgiveness for sins between man and God. But for sins between man and his fellow man this must be done by reaching out to the victim and asking for their forgiveness. Karl, whether in his arrogance or due to the inculcation of Nazi ideology, seemed to believe that if he just got “a Jew” – any Jew – then he could ask for forgiveness for the crimes and atrocities he committed against Jews through his actions while in the SS. He sees Jews as some amorphous “blob” – one is no different than the other. So, for him it doesn’t matter which Jew gives him forgiveness – any Jew can.

But that is where he is mistaken. He must ask for forgiveness for those whom he has wronged and murdered. But he can’t – because they are dead. Also, in Judaism, true repentance comes to an individual after making a sincere effort to change one’s ways. Karl seems to honestly regret his actions but, given that he’s near death, he has no way of showing that he is truly sincere in this repentance because he will never have a chance to prove it. The only way that could happen would be if he were to be put into a similar position in the future and turns away from that action. So, we have no way of truly knowing is he is truly repentant of his evil actions.

The other camp – which is espoused predominantly by Christian and Buddhist writers – holds that Wiesenthal should have forgiven him as it would have shown Wiesenthal to be the better man and that it would ease Karl’s conscience at the time of his death. The problem I have with this is that it presents a concept of “cheap grace” where someone can commit any atrocity and manner of crime and yet so long as he truly repents at the end and admits his faults he can achieve forgiveness. Some crimes are simply unforgivable – and the crimes which Karl committed were beyond the pale of tolerance by man or God.

The book really makes the reader ponder – what would you do if placed in a similar position. Would you forgive the Nazi?

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Today our separation is enforced by the Waqf which retained authority over the Temple Mount after the Six-Day War at the suggestion of then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.  And today the Waqf uses every means and effort, in coordination with the Palestinian Authority, to undermine Israel’s rightful claim to the Temple Mount and the rights of Jews to visit there – whether they pray or not.

Yet it’s not enough that the Waqf, supported by the Palestinian Authority, does everything it can to negate and erase any claim or archaeological trace of Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.  Today they now are working to extend their authority to the Western Wall (what they call the “Al-Buraq Wall”).  In October of 2015 the Palestinian Authority tried to get UNESCO to declare the Western Wall plaza an official Muslim holy site.  That effort was criticized widely by western organizations.  In April of 2016, UNESCO’s executive council passed a resolution that referred to the Western Wall plaza only by its Arabic name (“Al-Buraq”) and relegated the Hebrew terms to quotations after the term “Al-Buraq Plaza thereby placing a stake in the ground proclaiming UNESCO’s illegitimate position.

In July 2017 three Israeli Arabs from Umm Al-Fahm used weapons smuggled into the Al-Aqsa mosque to attack and kill two Israeli border policemen of Druze heritage.  In response the Israeli government closed the Temple Mount to Muslim prayer for several days before reopening the Mount with enhanced security through the use of metal detectors at the gates to the Mount and security cameras.  After a standoff between the Waqf and the government the security measures came down and the status quo prior to the murder of the two Israeli border policemen returned.

Now the Waqf as well as the Palestinian Authority and their supporters among Israeli Arabs are setting their sights on the Western Wall plaza again.  After the metal detectors came down, the Palestinians rejoiced and celebrated.  Israeli MK Taleb Abu Arar (Joint List) declared that “Jews have no rights at al-Aqsa Mosque,” and “some people are trying to re-write history in order to strengthen their mistaken claim to legitimacy over al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as to the occupied al-Buraq Wall (the Western Wall), which Muslims demand to be returned to our sovereignty [Emphasis Added].”

Now, on Tisha B’Av 2017 the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, claimed that thousands of settlers “raided the courtyard of the Al-Buraq Wall, the Western Wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and organized events, prayers and ceremonies on the occasion of the so-called 9th of Av”  (the Al-Aqsa Foundation did something similar in 2012 when thousands of Jews went to the Western Wall Plaza as Yom Kippur approached that year). In addition the Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi decried the visit of over 1000 Jews to the Temple Mount on Tisha B’Av 2017 by claiming that “the number of extremists who stormed Al-Aqsa today stands at a record number that has not been recorded since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967.”

These efforts are not new.  It was Yasser Arafat who pushed the concept of Temple Denial to new heights when he used it as an excuse to scuttle the Camp David peace talks in 2000.  The Palestinians have for years been exclaiming the false narrative that Jews have no connection to the Land of Israel, to Jerusalem and that if the Temples existed at all then they were somewhere either near Bethlehem or in Shechem. Combined with the increasing political machinations of the Palestinians through the United Nations and its sub-organizations the Palestinians are making a full effort to deny our Jewish history, our Jewish heritage, our Jewish connections to Israel and our Jewish connections and rights to Jerusalem.  The goal of their effort is to paint the picture that the Jewish claim to Jerusalem is a fabrication when, in fact, recent archaeological evidence continues to strengthen our claim to not just Jerusalem but to Israel as a whole.  The Jewish claim to Israel, Jerusalem, and Israel as whole is historical and without doubt.  The Palestinians desire to wash away our connections to these places is ridiculous at best and, at worst, scurrilous.

I’m an Israeli citizen…and I’m proud of that.  I’m proud that my son is serving in the IDF in an elite unit and that my daughters have expressed their desire to do likewise.  This story starts when my younger daughter and I went to the consular section of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. to register her as an Israeli citizen.  By law, you’re supposed to register a child born to an Israeli parent (I’m Israeli…my wife isn’t – though we’re both Jewish) within 30 days of the birth.  Well…suffice it to say I didn’t know about that until recently and it’s been 14 some-odd years since my younger daughter’s birth.

Anyway – back to the story…we went to the consular section of the embassy to register her as an Israeli citizen and to apply for her Israeli passport.  There was an earlier visit the same week where we were told that the birth certificate which we brought needs an apostille (it’s a document that should accompany official documentation like birth certificates based on a treaty that a whole bunch of countries signed on to – if you’re really interested in the nitty-gritty details, see here).  I got the apostille for the birth certificate and, confident that I had everything we needed to get the paperwork done, we went back to the embassy.  We get to the embassy early (first in line) and go inside.

While reviewing the paperwork the consulate staff member asks me “Do you have the confirmation from the hospital?”

I look at her a bit dumbfounded and ask “What?”

She then repeats the question: “Do you have the confirmation from the hospital that your daughter was born there and that she is indeed your child?”

I still not quite sure I understand her.  I replied “Isn’t that what the birth certificate is for?”

To which she replies “Yes, but we also require confirmation from the hospital or the doctor that your wife actually gave birth and that this is the child of that birth.”

Ok – I’m still not quite grokking what she’s saying…I mean, why doesn’t the birth certificate suffice in that regard?  She continues by saying that people might come with the appropriate documentation (birth certificate, passports, forms, etc.) and the child is not actually their child but is actually the child of someone else.

I’m still not sure why the birth certificate isn’t sufficient.  It has my daughter’s name, my name, my wife’s name – isn’t that sufficient?  No…apparently not to the Israeli government.  Now, in their infinite bureaucratic wisdom, they also want confirmation from the hospital or my wife’s doctor (in this case the OB/GYN) to provide additional documentation attesting to the fact that my wife actually did give birth and that the child is actually our offspring.  As the embassy’s website states, they now require (emphasis added):

The original birth certificate, verified with an apostille stamp in countries that are signatories to the 1961 Hague Convention, or presentation of a certificate verified by the relevant authority in that country, as well as documentation from the hospital or maternity ward that the mother in fact gave birth and that the said child is in fact her offspring.

Given that this occurred 14 years ago – I’m guessing that the hospital may not be so helpful in getting this documentation to me and I can only hope that the doctor is still alive and actually remembers this specific birth.  Also, what format should said documentation take?  A letter?  A form to be filled out? If it’s a form, what relevant information is necessary?

What we have here is a failure to create a working policy (see how I slid in my Cool-Hand Luke reference ).  Given that I work as an Information Security Manager for a large organization (a very large organization) I am well familiar with the idea of creating a policy and all of the supporting materials that need to go along with it: a framework for compliance (that’s called governance), exceptions, documentation…small things like that.

What has happened here, though, is that the someone, somewhere in the Israeli government, has created a policy but failed to provide the governance framework or the documentation that should go along with that policy.  In other words, this was probably a knee-jerk reaction to a specific issue and the policy formulated but nothing more than that.  This is a case of a policy that has no details regarding compliance.  If you’re going to do that then you should expect this kind of failure.

Now, admittedly, I could easily be a corner case.  I mean, yes, I waited 14 years before trying to register her with the Interior Ministry.  But, to be fair, I did this very thing two years ago for my older daughter – back when this policy was not in place – with nary a problem.  Sometime in the past two years the Israeli government decided that Israeli citizens registering children for citizenship without actually having given birth to those children was a serious enough problem that they needed to enact this policy.  And that they enacted this globally.  I could understand if they had chosen to enact this policy in Russia, Eastern European countries, and third-world countries, but they chose to do so even here in the United States where I would suspect this problem doesn’t really occur that often.

So, now, to meet the requirements of a policy that I think is a) pretty stupid and b) so badly implemented because there are no governance controls around it, I am calling the hospital records office and trying to get them to understand what I need.  My wife is calling her OB/GYN and trying to get them to understand what we need.  Hopefully one of us will succeed and our daughter will be able to claim her Israeli citizenship.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I found this to be an excellent book – even though I am very much a novice in this particular field and know little of the details on the topic. The authors were extraordinarily well researched and the writing was clear. The complexity of the tapestry of individuals and groups that are fighting for power and control of Syria, Iraq and the wider Middle East is astounding.

The book does a great job in providing the origins of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (al-Sham is the Arabic word for the Levant and given that its name is actually that it has finally made sense to me why the Obama administration kept calling it ISIL versus Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). The origins pre-date the second Gulf War but really take a massive injection of energy with the existence of one man: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi…a Jordanian low-level thug who turned to religion at the prodding of his mother who hoped it would keep him out of trouble. It was Zarqawi (a name I had heard and knew about since the early days of the second Gulf War when he became the source of agitation against American troops and efforts to rebuild Iraq) who helped drive the effort to start a sectarian civil war among the Iraqi nationals. The catalyst for a lot of this though was the American blundering into Iraq and to a great extent getting rid of the structures that Saddam Hussein had in place to control things. Iraq – according to Weiss and Hasan – was pretty much ruled like a mafia state by Hussein. He gave specific tribes what essentially amounted to monopolies in certain areas and to certain resources and they then pledged allegiance to him. Additionally, he kept the Shias in check – albeit brutally. By eliminating all that and then trying to stand up a democracy – a concept that didn’t fit with the tribal mentality that Hussein leveraged to his advantage we essentially “broke” the Iraqi model.

In so doing we opened a Pandora’s box of issues and suppressed hatreds that continue to plague the region till today. On top of that Iran – seeing an opening – has played the US for fools by encouraging the Iraqi Shia and supplying them with money and armaments.

On the other side – in Syria – the collapse of the al-Assad regime has been just disastrous. When the Arab Spring began to sweep through the Middle East Assad did what he knew he had to do in order to maintain power (how could he not do what he did – he saw the results of what happened in Libya). He also was involved in sending terrorists to Iraq to try and destabilize the American efforts there – all the while claiming that he was fighting terrorism. When things spun out of control and the Free Syrian Army – along with a large number of other rebel groups including the al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front – began to take him to town the inevitable intervention of the Russians was the only thing that saved him.

The Russians – as much as they claim to be there to help Assad against ISIS are actually spending the majority of their time bombing Syrian rebel groups and even Syrian civilians and then claiming that ISIS is the one doing it. This is an old tactic that the Soviets used so well in WWII – when they got close to Warsaw towards the end of the war the Free Polish Army rose up against the Germans thinking that the Soviet Army would help them. The Soviet forces stopped short of Warsaw, waited for the Germans to brutally suppress and destroy the Free Polish Army and then rolled in after it was all done. The Russians are pretty much trying to do the same thing here. Given how ISIS and the anti-Assad rebel factions hate each other – the Russians are letting them fight it out (while also attacking the rebels as well) with the idea that once they’ve expended their resources on each other then the Russians and the Syrians will go in and clean up the mess and re-establish Assad’s control over all of Syria.

The book covers so much more than just what I’ve mentioned above – I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’m eagerly waiting to see the next edition of this book (this edition was published in early 2016) as the events are still quickly unfolding over there and the authors definitely have excellent insights into what is happening. I highly recommend this book – even if you’re a neophyte like me on this specific topic – it is an excellent resource and gets you up to speed very quickly on these things.

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The definition of apartheid according to Merriam-Webster is “racial segregation; specifically :  a former policy of segregation and political and economic discrimination against non-European groups in the Republic of South Africa.”

“Apartheid”, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apartheid, accessed February 23, 2016)

In Israel today there are 1.7 million Arab citizens who make up 20 percent of Israel’s population.  These Arabs are full citizens and enjoy the same rights as their fellow Jewish citizens.  The Arab citizens of Israel are able to pursue careers in any field they wish – actors, singers, models, news anchors, soldiers, politicians, athletes, etc.

They, along with Christians, Druze, Baha’i, Hindus, and others all have equal rights to live their lives in freedom and safety. All of Israel’s citizens enjoy freedom of religion as well as equal rights for genders and sexual orientation.  Among the many notable Israeli Arabs there are two Supreme Court justices, the captain of the Israeli Hapoel soccer team, the Israeli ambassador to Ecuador, the mayor of Nazareth and a general in the Israel Defense Forces. Arabs have their own political parties and have served in the Knesset as members of their own parties as well as the non-Arab parties.  Today there are currently 17 members of the Israeli Knesset who belong to the Arab political parties – many of whom actively work against the state of Israel while enjoying all of the benefits!

Israel does not have separate water fountains, toilets or public transportation systems which is typically seen in countries with racial or ethnic segregation.  During the apartheid regime in South Africa laws dictated where Black South Africans could live, work, go to school and travel.  They were completely disenfranchised and were not even considered citizens of South Africa even though they formed the overwhelming majority of the population.

Contrast this situation with the treatment of Palestinians, women and homosexuals in Arab countries.

In Lebanon Palestinians are banned from owning property or passing it on to their descendants, and they are also barred from employment as lawyers, doctors and more than 20 other professions. (Amnesty International, “Annual Report: Lebanon 2013”, http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-lebanon-2013?page=show and “Lebanon’s Apartheid Laws”, The Gatestone Institute, July 21, 2013, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3770/lebanon-apartheid-laws)

In Saudi Arabia women are banned from walking without a chaperone, driving a car, going for a swim, or even interacting with men.  During the recent renovation of a Starbuck’s in Riyadh the owner asked that women send their drivers in to place an order to avoid the possibility of interaction between men and women. (“Eleven Things Women in Saudi Arabia Cannot Do”, The Week, February 4, 2016, http://www.theweek.co.uk/60339/eleven-things-women-in-saudi-arabia-cant-do)

In Iran Reyhaneh Jabbari was hanged in 2014 for killing the man who was in trying to rape her while he was in the act of assaulting her. (“Iran’s Hanging of Reyhaneh Jabbari Condemned”, BBC, October 25, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29769468)

The obsession which the organizers of the Israel Apartheid Week completely ignores the fact that Israel is a democratic, multicultural, multiracial society.  Israel airlifted tens of thousands of black men, women and children from Africa and gave them citizenship. Today, more than 130,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel and have served in the Knesset, achieved high ranks in the military, served as an ambassador and won the Miss Israel.

In a 2014 poll of Arabs 77 percent of Israeli Arabs prefer to live in Israel – not under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority. (“Poll: Arabs Prefer to Live in Israel – Not ‘Palestine'”, United With Israel, December 22, 2014,  http://unitedwithisrael.org/palestinians-want-to-live-in-israel-not-under-the-pa/)

The Israel Apartheid Week organizers prefer to ignore the above facts and prefer to falsely claim that Israeli “apartheid” drives the Palestinian situation in the West Bank. However that’s completely incorrect.  Israel’s policy in the West Bank is driven not by racial or ethnic discrimination but rather by the security needs of Israel.  The Palestinians have had multiple opportunities to reach a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel – most notably in 2000 with Ehud Barak’s offer at the Wye River Plantation talks and more recently in 2008 with Ehud Olmert’s peace proposal which Abu Mazen dismissed outright because, as he claimed, he didn’t have access to a map at the time!

95% of all Palestinians in the West Bank live under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority and have been doing so since the implementation of the Oslo agreements over 20 years ago.  Israel withdrew from Gaza back in 2005 and since then has lived under the constant threat of rockets, mortar, gun fire and now terror tunnels.  Gaza is 100% ruled by Hamas – an organization that is not only dedicated to the destruction of Israel but in the genocide of the Jewish people as a whole.  In the West Bank the denial of basic freedoms such as the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the freedom of assembly comes from the Palestinian Authority itself (“Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_Palestinian_territories).

Israel Apartheid Week is a out and out lie.  Israeli Arabs enjoy a standard of living that ranks among the highest in the Middle East and, to some extent, the world.  They are able to live, work, and enjoy all of the benefits of an open, pluralistic society which is exactly what was denied to Black South Africans under the apartheid regime.  Israelis come from a wide range of backgrounds – racial, ethnic, and religious – and all of them enjoy the freedoms that many in the West enjoy as well.  One day the Palestinians in the West Bank (and hopefully Gaza) will also be able to enjoy such freedoms – but they will have to choose leaders who truly embrace those freedoms and be willing to achieve an honest peace with Israel.