A Short History Lesson

When Israel became a nation in May 1948, it was promptly invaded by all of its Arab neighbors. Israel was not able to maintain control of the entire city of Jerusalem, and part of the city fell into Arab hands and was controlled by Jordan. From 1948-1967 Jews were denied access to their holy sites by the Jordanians. In 1967, when Israel regained control of the entire city of Jerusalem, Christians, Jews, and Muslims were all given access to their holy sites. That is one illustration of the difference in the way Jews treat Arabs and the way Arabs treat Jews.

In 2001 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat refused a deal brokered by President Clinton that would have established a Palestinian State.

The deal included the following (source: The Jewish News of Northern California):

control over some 95 percent of the West Bank, 100 percent of Gaza, predominantly Arab areas of Jerusalem (including the Temple Mount and most of the Old City), the Muslim holy sites and the limited return to Israel for at least some of the Palestinian refugees.

That is not all: The Palestinians would have been compensated for the missing 5 percent of West Bank territory with an equivalent area inside pre-1967 Israel, presumably in the Negev Desert, contiguous with the Gaza Strip.

Arafat refused the deal. Had he accepted the deal, he probably would have met the same fate as Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated after signing a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

It needs to be understood that the ‘Palestinians’ do not want peace with Israel–they want to drive Israel into the sea. The Palestinians are teaching their kindergarten children to be martyrs to reclaim Jerusalem. Below is a picture of a Palestinian kindergarten class.

Fast forward to today…

The Times of Israel is reporting today:

The intention of the U.S. Biden Administration to reopen a consulate for the Palestinians in Jerusalem should be a trigger warning for Israel.

The consulate was closed in 2018 by former President Trump when the U.S. embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The closure shut down our enemies’ hope for the division of Israel’s capital, a hope that will be revived if it is reopened.

A unilateral decision by the Biden Administration in that regard without Israel’s consent would not only contradict international law, but would also send a message that day by day we are giving up increasing control over almost everything —over Jerusalem and the territories, over the nation’s fabric and identity, over the exorbitant transfer of money to Gaza which afterwards transforms into weapons against us. We would be giving up on ourselves, on our right to be in the Land of Israel.

The Biden administration is not leading us toward peace–they are leading us to war. Please follow the link to read the entire Times of Israel article. This is not a smart move by the Biden administration.

In Genesis 12:3, the Bible says, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

The earth has been blessed by Israel–Israel has received more Nobel Prizes for scientific discoveries than any other nation. We put ourselves at risk when we work against the interests of Israel.

Debunking The Myths

A lot of what the mainstream media is telling you about Israel is simply not true. On Friday, The Daily Wire posted an article detailing four of the biggest myths being spread about Israel.

Here is the list:

1) Jews did not “steal” Israel after World War 2. There has been a Jewish presence in Israel for thousands of years

2) Israel is not the roadblock to peace, or a Palestinian state. Israel agreed to give the Palestinians their own state on multiple occasions.

3) Israel is not occupying the Gaza Strip.

4) Israel is not an apartheid state

The article includes the history of the area being called Palestine:

Contrary to the notion that “Palestinans” pre-existed Jews in Israel, the name “Palestine” wasn’t even introduced until the Romans applied the name Palaestina to Judea in the second century C.E. “in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel.” Indeed, the Arabic word, “Filastin” is derived from this Latin name.

Another factor in the false narrative that Jews “stole” Palestinian land is the fact that Jews legally purchased land in the decades leading up to Israel’s declaration of independence as part of the early Zionist movement. Between the 1880s and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jews actively purchased land in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine — as it was known at the time — procuring the land from British or Arab landowners. By the end of 1945, various Jewish organizations had purchased 906.8 square kilometers of land.

The article notes that a two-state solution has been proposed an turned down:

The Jewish Agency, representing the region’s Jewish residents, accepted the plan. Had the Arab Higher Committee accepted it too, there would have been an independent Palestinian state since 1947. Instead, Arab nations refused and invaded, violating Resolution 181 and the UN Charter. They were later defeated by Israeli forces.

This pattern of refusal is common, with Palestinian leaders refusing to negotiate or accept generous offers, despite their repeated military failures to achieve their goals through force. In 2000, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected a proposed peace plan known as the “Clinton Parameters,” which would have provided the Palestinians with “‘custodianship’ over the Temple mount, sovereignty on all Islamic and Christian holy sites, and three of Jerusalem’s four Old City quarters,” choosing instead to return home and arguably oversee a flood of terrorist violence, including suicide bombing attacks against Jewish civilians.

Just for the record, I believe that if Yasser Arafat had accepted the “Clinton Parameters,” he would have been assassinated very quickly. It needs to be understood that the Arabs want a one-state solution–an Arab state–and that peace is not the goal of their leaders although it may be the goal of some of the Arab residents in the area.

The article notes that Israel is not occupying the Gaza Strip:

However, when it comes to the Gaza Strip, Israel has not been an “occupying” force — ignoring that the term occupying implies an illegitimate presence — for 16 years. Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, dismantling Israeli settlements, removing military members, and evacuating Jewish civilians — sometimes by force. Gaza is now under complete Palestinian control.

When the people living in the Gaza Strip took over the land in 2005, one of the first things they did was destroy the greenhouses that supported the area. The economy in that area has never recovered–the leaders live very well and the poor people barely survive.

The article notes that Israel simply does not qualify to be an apartheid state:

This is demonstrably false. Not only do Arabs in Israel have equal voting rights, but Israel is also one of the few countries in the Middle East where Arab women are even permitted to vote. Four members of Israel’s parliament — the Knesset — are members of “Ra’am – United Arab List.”

As Rich Lowry of National Review noted, “Arab Israelis are full participants in Israeli society.”

“There are Arab justices on the Supreme Court. About 20 percent of doctors in Israel and about half of pharmacists are Arab,” Lowry added. “Roughly 17 percent of students seeking an undergraduate degree are Arab, a number that has roughly doubled over the past decade.”

As usual, the media follows a narrative whether it is true or not. We all need to learn to look beyond the media narrative.

Didn’t We Sign Some Sort Of Treaty With Iran?

The Washington Free Beacon posted a story today about a recent statement by an Iranian military leader. When dealing with Iran, we need to remember a lesson many people in the west learned when dealing with Yasser Arafat when he was alive. Mr. Arafat would say one thing in English when talking to an audience of western countries and another thing in Arabic when dealing with Arabs. Generally speaking, the speeches totally contradicted each other.

The article reports:

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country’s elite military force, is sending assets to infiltrate the United States and Europe at the direction of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to recent Farsi-language comments from an Iranian military leader.

The IRGC “will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” according to the Iranian military commander, who said that these forces would operate with the goal of bolstering Iran’s hardline regime and thwarting potential plots against the Islamic Republic.

Notice that the comments were in the Farsi language. I would also like to know why the leader believes that there are plots against the Islamic Republic.

The article concludes:

Another source who advises congressional leaders on Iran sanctions issues told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration is blocking Congress from taking action to stop this type of infiltration by Iranian forces.

“Iran is ideologically, politically, and militarily committed to exporting the Islamic revolution through terrorism, which is why even the Obama administration says they’re the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” the source said. “Congress wants to act, but Obama officials keep saying that new laws are unnecessary because the U.S. has enough tools to block Iranian terror expansion. Instead of using those tools, though, they’re sending Iran billions of dollars in cash while Iran plants terror cells in Europe and here at home.”

As I have said, I think it’s time to clean house in Washington.

Wisdom From One Of My Favorite Liberals

As a conservative, there are some liberals whom I truly respect and listen to when they speak. In the past that list included Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Zell Miller, and Bob Casey, Sr. Presently that list includes former Senator Joe Lieberman and Alan Dershowitz. All of these men had principles that they upheld regardless of the political shenanigans going on around them.

In a recent press conference, Jimmy Carter was asked about what he would like to see happen before he dies. This is what he said:

In international affairs I would say peace for Israel and its neighbors. That has been a top priority for my foreign policy projects for the last 30 years. Right now I think the prospects of are more dismal than anytime I remember in the last 50 years. Practically, whole process is practically dormant. The government of Israel has no desire for two-state solution, which is policy of all the other nations in the world. And the United States has practically no influence compared to past years in either Israel or Palestine. So I feel very discouraged about it but that would be my number one foreign policy hope.

With all due respect, President Carter, Israel is not the problem.

Alan Deshowitz recently made some comments about former President Jimmy Carter to NewsMax Magazine that I think are important.

These are excerpts for the article that included those comments:

“[Carter] recommended to Yasser Arafat that Yasser Arafat turn down the deal that … would have resulted in the Palestinian state,” Dershowitz said. “He has blood of thousands of Jews and Palestinians on his hands. He should just stop talking about the Middle East.

“The idea that the International Criminal Court should create moral equivalence between a democracy — which has the most moral army in the world and has fewer civilian casualties than any other army in history — facing comparable threats to a terrorist regime that includes Hamas, that commits multiple war crimes every time it sends a rocket, is so obnoxious and so hypocritical and so typical of Jimmy Carter that the world understands that he has made himself irrelevant and tossed himself into the trash pan of history.”

…”Jimmy Carter has always had a problem with Jews and it borders on anti-Semitism,” he said. “In the midst of this tragedy, in the midst of this serious debate, to again blame it on Israel. He said that the terrorism and the reason the Jews and this anti-Semitism problem (exist) is because of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

…Continuing to create a moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel, as Carter suggests, only encourages Hamas acts of terror, Dershowitz added, feeding right into their hands.

…”Jimmy Carter goes back to the time he was running for governor. He has a long, long history of theological anti-Semitism coupled with virulent anti-Israelism. He never met a terrorist he didn’t like. He loved Yasser Arafat and he hated every Israeli leader he ever met.”

President Carter has made many statements about Israel that show either a total lack of understanding of the Middle East or a rather wide streak of anti-Semitism. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is not the country lobbing rockets into civilian populations, and Israel is not the one tunneling under the border in order to attack and kill kindergarten children. President Carter’s statement that Israel is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East is simply wrong.

A Department Of Misinformation

The United States State Department has become a department of misinformation. As reported at red flag news, this is one of their recent statements (Marie Harf was appointed Deputy Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State in June 2013.):

MATTHEWS: How do we stop this? I don’t see it. I see the Shia militias coming out of Baghdad who are all Shia. The Sunnis hate them. The Sunnis are loyal to ISIS rather than going in with the Shia. You’ve got the Kurds, the Jordanian air force and now the Egyptian air force. But i don’t see any — If i were ISIS, I wouldn’t be afraid right now. I can figure there is no existential threat to these people. They can keep finding places where they can hold executions and putting the camera work together, getting their props ready and killing people for show. And nothing we do right now seems to be directed at stopping this.

HARF: Well, I think there’s a few stages here. Right now what we’re doing is trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the battlefield in Iraq and Syria. That’s really where they flourish.

MATTHEWS: Are we killing enough of them?

HARF: We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether —

MATTHEWS: We’re not going to be able to stop that in our lifetime or fifty lifetimes. There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor muslims, and as long as there are poor Muslims, the trumpet’s blowing and they’ll join. We can’t stop that, can we?

HARF: We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people…

Note to Ms. Harf–the 9/11 hijackers were not poor. Osama bin Laden was not poor, Yasser Arafat was not poor. This is not about economics, it is about being trained to hate. In the Gaza Strip, children are graduating from kindergarten in camo clothes carrying wooden guns, and saying that they want to kill Jews. This is the problem. If all of the Arab countries disarmed, there would be peace in the Middle East. If Israel disarmed, there would be no Israel. That tells you all you need to know.

 

 

The Rocky Road To An Impossible Peace

As Secretary of State John Kerry prepares to bring peace to the Middle East, he would do well to look at some of the history of the people and countries involved.

In 1979, under the leadership of Anwar el-Sadat, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel. In 1981, Sadat was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood, who felt that he had betrayed them by signing that treaty. In 2000, Yassar Arafat rejected a peace offer by Ehud Barak (with the encouragement of President Clinton) at Camp David that would have given the Palestinians parts of the Old City of Jerusalem and 91 percent of the West Bank. Arafat rejected that offer because he knew that if he accepted it he would be assassinated. Being the leader of a terrorist group is not unlike being a Mafia Don–it is a powerful, dangerous job with a lot of unwritten rules that must be followed very carefully.

So where are we now? Last week Breitbart.com reported that in preliminary negotiations for a peace treaty between Israel and her Palestinian neighbors, Secretary of State John Kerry has successfully negotiated the release of 82 Palestinian terrorists, all of whom have been serving life sentences since 1993. Sounds like a great step forward for peace–release people who kill people they don’t like.

The article reports:

Additionally, the Palestinian delegation in the disputed West Bank has rejected the notion that the release of terrorists is enough to get them to the negotiating table. They would like to see Israel unilaterally withdraw from its present sovereign borders and return to where the state’s territorial boundaries were before 1967. 

The fact that Israel’s territorial gains post-1967 ultimately came from defending its nation from its genocidal neighbors seems to have, time and time again with both the Obama Administration and the Palestinian leadership, fallen upon deaf ears.

Peace in the Middle East is a wonderful idea. Peace everywhere is a wonderful idea, but at some point you have to face reality. The fact that Israel exists is a fantastic recruiting tool for every Arab extremist on the planet. Peace is NOT a goal of Islam–a world-wide caliphate is.

The Hamas Charter states:

Article Thirteen: Peaceful Solutions, [Peace] Initiatives and International Conferences

[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad: “Allah is the all-powerful, but most people are not aware.” From time to time a clamoring is voiced, to hold an International Conference in search for a solution to the problem. Some accept the idea, others reject it, for one reason or another, demanding the implementation of this or that condition, as a prerequisite for agreeing to convene the Conference or for participating in it. But the Islamic Resistance Movement, which is aware of the [prospective] parties to this conference, and of their past and present positions towards the problems of the Muslims, does not believe that those conferences are capable of responding to demands, or of restoring rights or doing justice to the oppressed. Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the nonbelievers as arbitrators in the lands of Islam. Since when did the Unbelievers do justice to the Believers? “And the Jews will not be pleased with thee, nor will the Christians, till thou follow their creed. Say: Lo! the guidance of Allah [himself] is the Guidance. And if you should follow their desires after the knowledge which has come unto thee, then you would have from Allah no protecting friend nor helper.” Sura 2 (the Cow), verse 120 There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. The initiatives, proposals and International Conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility. The Palestinian people are too noble to have their future, their right and their destiny submitted to a vain game. As the hadith has it: “The people of Syria are Allah’s whip on this land; He takes revenge by their intermediary from whoever he wished among his worshipers. The Hypocrites among them are forbidden from vanquishing the true believers, and they will die in anxiety and sorrow.” (Told by Tabarani, who is traceable in ascending order of traditionaries to Muhammad, and by Ahmed whose chain of transmission is incomplete. But it is bound to be a true hadith, for both story tellers are reliable. Allah knows best.)

The goal of the ‘peace process’ for the Palestinians is to drive Israel into the sea and destroy the country forever.

For those of us who believe in the Bible, we would do well to remember Genesis 12 :3 (Good News Translation):

I will bless those who bless you, But I will curse those who curse you. And through you I will bless all the nations.

America needs to be very careful about undermining the existence of Israel.

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It Has Taken A While For The Truth To Come Out

Yesterday the Daily Caller reported that Suha Arafat, the wife of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, stated last month in a TV interview that the Palestinian terror campaign against Israel launched in 2000 was a premeditated act orchestrated by her husband, not a spontaneous “intifada,” or uprising, as many have claimed.

The intifada was supposedly triggered by the visit to the Temple Mount by then-leading Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon. What actually occurred was that Yasser Arafat felt that he was being pressured to betray the Palestinian cause and was not willing to do that. He told his wife in Paris after the failure of the Camp David negotiations, ‘You should remain in Paris because I am going to start an intifada. They want me to betray the Palestinian cause. They want me to give up on our principles, and I will not do so.’” It would be interesting to know exactly what those principles were.

The article reminds us:

In a summit convened by President Bill Clinton at Camp David in July 2000, Arafat rejected an offer by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack to create a Palestinian state in the equivalent of roughly 97 percent of the West Bank, including land swaps, and all of the Gaza Strip, according to an account by America’s chief Middle East negotiator at the time, Dennis Ross. East Jerusalem was to be the Palestinian capital.

It should be noted here that had Arafat agreed to that offer, he would have been signing his death warrant. Anwar Sadat was murdered by the Muslim Brotherhood for making peace with Israel, and it is quite possible that Arafat would have suffered the same fact. His body is currently being exhumed to determine the actual physical cause of his death, but I am not sure that if evidence reveals that he was murdered, there will be an obvious choice of motive.

The article concludes:

As a result of the four-year terror campaign, more than 1,000 Israelis were killed by Palestinian terror groups, while more than 3,000 Palestinians, including terrorists, died as result of Israel’s efforts to stop the violence.

The world’s media accepted the fact that the visit to the Temple Mount was the cause of the intifada. The world’s media has accepted many false stories about tensions and violence in the Middle East. It is refreshing to see that (even years later) someone told the truth.

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How We Got Where We Are In The Middle East

Dr. Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School. He posted an article at CNN on Friday entitled, “Why Land For Peace Is Dead.”

The article reminds us that September 18, 1978, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the so-called Camp David Accords.This agreement set up the idea that Israel could trade land and receive peace in exchange. In 1979, a peace treaty was signed between Israel and Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Anwar Sadat for signing that treaty. Despite the loss of Anwar Sadat, the idea that the Sinal Peninsula had been successfully traded to bring peace brought hope.

Dr. Rubin reminds us:

It was this example that Bill Clinton sought to capitalize upon in the 1993 Oslo Accords. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) agreed to recognize Israel and work toward peace in exchange for land in historical Palestine. I was in Bahrain in 1994 when PLO chairman Yasser Arafat entered the Gaza Strip to establish the Palestinian Authority. Enthusiasm was palpable across the region. Within weeks, Jordan had signed its own peace accord with Israel, and Persian Gulf emirates, Tunisia, and Morocco looked like they might follow suit.

The concept of land for peace was also the reason Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.

Dr. Rubin further reminds us:

The logic of land for peace became the basis for Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000. The formula of trading land for peace had already begun to unravel. Israel expected if not peace, then quiet. They had removed the last remaining dispute between Israel and Lebanon. Alas, Israel’s withdrawal foreshadowed greater conflict. Even though the United Nations certified Israel’s withdrawal as complete, Hezbollah laid claim not only to the Shebaa Farms – an Israeli occupied area which historically is part of Syria – but also seven villages in the Galilee, a region well within Israel’s recognized borders.

It sounds as if the concept of land for peace was being exploited early on. From there, things go downhill quickly.

The article reports:

Peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority was also rapidly deteriorating. Certainly, when it comes to the Arab-Israel conflict, there are always mutual recriminations. What is clear, however, is that Arafat had voided his pledge to resolve future conflict with Israel at the negotiating table. Many commentators mark the beginning of the “Second Intifada” as Likud leader Ariel Sharon’s September 28, 2000 visit to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. But this is dishonest. On August 24, 2000, several weeks before Sharon’s visit, Palestinian Justice Minister Freih Abu Middein threatened, “Violence is near, and the Palestinian people are willing to sacrifice even 5,000 casualties.” Communications Minister Imad al-Faluji reportedly admitted to Palestinian radio that “Arafat ordered preparations for the current intifada immediately after the Camp David summit, as part of the negotiating process with Israel.” The Oslo Process and the land-for-peace formula that underlay it had begun to breakdown.

There are two very telling quotes in the conclusion of the article:

Most Israelis view their experience of land-for-peace in the same fashion that Native Americans consider their experience with the concept.

...Hamas’ decision to turn Gaza into a forward missile base rather than the engine for an independent Palestine condemns 35 years of peacemaking to history’s garbage bin and sets the stage for a conflict far more disruptive than anyone in the region has seen in a half century.

Israel has been seeking peace since 1948. They are not the problem. Until Hamas seeks peace and acknowledges Israel’s right to exist, there will be no peace.

 

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Mugged By Reality

“Mugged by reality” was the expression used by Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the Jerusalem Post Herb Keinon to describe Israel when he spoke at the Ahavath Torah Congregation’s Memorial Lecture Free Speech Series. The Free Speech Series lectures are always enlightening, and the speakers are always people who have been involved with their subjects for many years. Mr. Keinon has lived in Israel for 28 years. He has a first-hand perspective on current events in the Middle East as well as friendships with many of the key players.

He reminded us that many of the events in Israel over the past twelve years are the result of the Second Intifada, which began in September 2000 and ended roughly around 2005. The Second Intifada began a few months after the July 2000 Camp David Summit failed to bring a negotiated peace between the Palestinians and Israelis.  In July 2000, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was offered probably the best deal possible by the left-leaning government of Israel, and Arafat turned down the offer. Mr. Keinon stated that the terrorism that the Palestinians inflicted on Israel during the Second Intifada permanently influenced the minds and viewpoints of Israelis. The events created a sense of insecurity and vulnerability that changed the nation. One example of this is that the government of Israel, which tended to be center left, has now moved toward the right.

Mr. Keinon pointed out that the Israelis embraced the Oslo accords of the 1990’s, believing that negotiations were the path to peaceful co-existence with their Palestinian neighbors. The Israelis have always wanted peace; it seems as if the Arabs only wanted Israel. When the Palestinians went to the United Nations last year in an attempt to force a settlement without negotiations, that ended the possibility of further negotiations.

Mr. Keinon dealt with current events (will Israel attack Iran?) and stated quite frankly that no one really has the answer to that question. He provided a lot of insight into the impact of terrorism on Israel and the feelings of Israeli families in dealing with the threat. Sometimes when we look at world events, we forget that there are actual people involved.

The Free Speech Series put on by the Ahavath Torah Congregation is always an evening well spent.

 

 

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