Tag Archives: West Bank

Because Land For Peace Has Worked So Well In The Past…

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President Obama is scheduled to visit Israel this month. Those of us who support Israel and her right to exist had hoped that the President would bring an olive branch to make peace after his anti-Israel actions and cabinet appointments. Unfortunately, those hopes have no relationship to reality.

Arutz Sheva reported today that the reason for President Obama’s trip to Israel might have more to do with setting a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. This information is based on an unconfirmed report by World Tribune.

The article at Arutz Sheva reports:

According to the report, Obama, who is scheduled to arrive in Israel on March 20, wants Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to present him with a detailed Israeli withdrawal plan during his visit to Israel. The sources said the Israeli plan “would be considered in what could be an imminent U.S. initiative to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank in 2014.”

 “Obama has made it clear to Netanyahu that his visit is not about photo-ops, but the business of Iran and a Palestinian state,” a source said. “The implication is that if Israel won’t give him something he can work with, then he’ll act on his own.”

Bad things happen to America when we pressure Israel to do things against their national interest. Giving up Judea and Samaria is definitely not in Israel’s best interest. This is Biblical land that is sacred to the Jews (and to Christians).  Based on the state that now exists in Gaza, Israel should not give up any land until the Palestinians prove that they can establish a state that is not a threat to the existence of Israel and that they are willing to provide the infrastructure a state needs. Giving more land to the Palestinians in their present form would be like giving a fourteen-year-old boy a driver’s license and a Lamborghini–it might be fun for the first thirty seconds, but it would go downhill quickly.

President Obama is not a friend of Israel.

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While We Are In The Silly Season Of American Politics, The Middle East Is Preparing For War

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Yahoo News reported that the Israeli air force shot down a drone in Southern Israel on Saturday.

The article reports:

The drone was first spotted above the Mediterranean in the area of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to the west of Israel, said military spokeswoman Avital Leibovich.

It was kept under surveillance and followed by Israeli air force jets before it was shot down above a forest in an unpopulated area near the border with the occupied West Bank.

It was reported that the drone was not carrying any explosives. Security sources have stated that it is unlikely that the drone came from the Gaza Strip. Defense officials were also not confirming a statement made by Israeli parliament member Miri Regev, a former chief spokesman of the military, that the drone was an “Iranian drone launched by Hezbollah.”

 

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Why We Need Alternative Media

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Today’s Washington Free Beacon posted a story about a CBS News report aired on  “60 Minutes” that blamed Israel for the persecution and ensuing exodus of Palestinian Christians.

The story blamed Israeli security policies for the fact that Christians are leaving the traditionally Christian areas such as Nazareth and Bethlehem.

CBN News painted a much more accurate picture of what is really happening in a story  posted in December:

Unpredictable — that’s how Israeli author and human rights lawyer Justus Weiner describes the plight of Christians in Bethlehem and the West Bank.

For years they’ve suffered from human rights violations such as land theft, beatings, and even forced marriages between Christian women and Muslim men.

The worst persecution has come against converts to Christianity.

“If they were born Muslim but they decided to find Jesus, this is like being a traitor to God,” Weiner told CBN News. “There’s very substantial chance they’ll be beaten, forced to leave the country, or killed.”

Somehow those facts were overlooked in the CBS News report.

The Washington Free Beacon points out:

Experts on the region noted that Palestinian Christians live in fear of their Muslim neighbors, who routinely intimidate them and sometimes carry out violent attacks. For this reason, it is incredibly dangerous to criticize the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which control the areas they live in.

“As a persecuted minority, if [Christians] shift the blame to Israel, they take the heat off of themselves,” said Jordanna McMillan, director of outreach for the International Israel Allies Caucus Foundation, a group that unites pro-Israel advocates across the religious spectrum.  “‘60 Minutes’ doesn’t understand the intricacies of the issue.”

We have seen the way that Muslims treat Christians when they take over a country, e.g. the Coptic Christians in Egypt are fleeing the country because they fear for their safety. Why wasn’t CBS News able to look at the entire picture of the Middle East to see what was happening in Israel? Israel is the only country in the Middle East that allows true freedom of religion. Even some of the countries that we regard as free or as friendly to America will not allow tourists with Israeli passports or Israeli visa stamps to visit their countries.

I don’t know if the report on 60 Minutes was simple ignorance or Anti-Semitism, but either way, there should be a more balanced report aired to counter what has already been reported. Again, the Internet proved its value in exposing erroneous reporting.

 

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Being Willing To Change

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Nicky Larkin, an Irish artist, posted an article in The Independent on Sunday. Nicky is a young man in his late twenties who believed the politically-correct line he was fed about the Israel-Palestine conflict. He applied for funding from the Irish Arts Council to make a film in Israel and Palestine, and headed off to show the world how badly behaved Israel was.

Well, it didn’t turn out quite that way. He made the film ‘Forty Shades of Grey’ after spending seven weeks dividing my time evenly between Israel and the West Bank.

He reports on the outcome of his efforts:

The problem began when I resolved to come back with a film that showed both sides of the coin. Actually there are many more than two. Which is why my film is called Forty Shades of Grey. But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.

An Irish artist is supposed to sign boycotts, wear a PLO scarf, and remonstrate loudly about The Occupation. But it’s not just artists who are supposed to hate Israel. Being anti-Israel is supposed to be part of our Irish identity, the same way we are supposed to resent the English.

But hating Israel is not part of my personal national identity. Neither is hating the English. I hold an Irish passport, but nowhere upon this document does it say I am a republican, or a Palestinian.

Every now and then you have to sit down and compare what you have been told with what you see before your eyes. I can relate–I used to be a liberal Democrat–I voted for George McGovern! Kudos to this young man for being willing to investigate and draw his own conclusions.

Nicky Larkin’s ‘Forty Shades of Grey’ will premiere in Dublin in May;

www.facebook.com/ fortyshades;

www.nickylarkin.com

 

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Legitimizing AntiSemitism

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Street in Jerusalem Old City

Image via Wikipedia

I expect that sometime in the next few days, the United Nations will vote on whether or not to recognize a Palestinian State. There has never been a state of Palestine, although Jordan was originally established as a home for Palestinians, but the United Nations will be voting on one shortly. What would that state look like?

Haaretz reported on September 14th that:

Answering a question about the legal status of a Jewish minority in the future state, Areikat apprently rejected the issue, saying: “I believe, I still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated,” adding “I think we can contemplate these issues in the future.”

“After the experience of the last 44 years, of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it will be in the best interest that the two peoples should be separated,” Areikat added. 

USA Today reported on September 15th:

Habbash’s comments come after the ambassador for the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United States, Maen Areikat, said when asked Tuesday whether he could foresee a Jew being elected mayor of Ramallah, the capital of the West Bank: “I personally still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated, and we can contemplate these issues in the future.”

Areikat, speaking at a breakfast for reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, continued: “After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated first.”

These statements have been walked back slightly, but I believe the original statements are probably the truth. I would like to remind anyone too young to remember that prior to 1967, when the Arabs controlled the Old City of Jerusalem that Christians and Jews did not have access to their holy sites. In recent years, the Jews have controlled the Old City, and the area is open to people of all faiths. It seems to me that history tells us what a Palestinian state would be like.

There seems to be an effort on the part of some Palestinians to claim that Palestine would be a peaceful, equal-opportunity state. USA Today reports:

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have called for a secular, pluralistic Palestinian state, says Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine, which advocates a non-militarized Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The article in USA Today further reports:

Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, said he read Areikat’s comments to mean a ban on Jews.

“That’s the state that the Palestinians want to declare unilaterally, without negotiations, and have recognized by the U.N.,” Oren said

I think I agree with Michael Oren. I have a hard time believing that the large number of weapons currently being smuggled into the West Bank are for peaceful purposes.

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