A Call to Action

A CALL TO ACTION: LEADERS, STEP FORWARD NOW

By Beth Gilinsky and Rabbi Aryeh Spero

We have been receiving numerous communications from the People of Israel expressing how demoralized and abandoned the Jewish People in Israel feel by the lack of any strong and meaningful statement and vigorous, public demonstrations sponsored by any of the major and established Jewish organizations in support of Israel’s position regarding Jerusalem.

They feel that the treatment of Israel during the last several weeks by President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and spokesmen for the Administration has been an unprecedented attempt to humiliate the Jewish State and a willful isolation of it among the community of nations.

In addition, they are alarmed at the silence of the Jewish community in light of how the Obama Administration has been making statements and taking measures that everyone knows give license for the Arab population within Israel and on its borders to renew intifada and rioting that will severely harm the individual Israeli, as is already being done.

Furthermore, the brazen and humiliating way in which the Prime Minister of Israel, the de facto representative of the entire Jewish People, was treated by the entire staff of the White House in front of all the eyes of the world should not be tolerated.  It is encouraging other Western countries, as well as Arab countries, to treat Israel as a diplomatic pariah and even question Israel’s legitimacy as a state itself.

The Israeli People are not looking for yet another statement from the establishment Jewish community as to how we are in favor of a peace process, a “two-state solution”, or that the last three weeks of humiliation “disrupts” further peace negotiations.  What they are looking for, and what the establishment Jewish organizations should do, is to express their outrage at the mistreatment and humiliation of the Jewish State and attempts to portray the Jewish State as being the sole entity blocking a successful War on Terror.  This is reminiscent of previous blood libels throughout history, where the Jewish People have been accused that their existence, rituals, or means of survival has been the cause for the loss of Muslim or Christian life.

The Jewish world is awaiting your affirmation that the entire city of Jerusalem must continue to be under Jewish sovereignty and is Israel’s eternal, united capital, and that Jews not be specifically outlawed from building and living in all of its neighborhoods.

Furthermore, it is apparent that the Obama Administration, from the President to Mrs. Clinton, to David Axelrod, and the President’s spokesmen are engaging in an attempt to overturn the will of the Israeli People who voted for the current Prime Minister and his coalition partners. They view it — and rightly so — as a belittlement not only to their sovereignty, but also to their right to determine who their leaders should be.

On so many fronts, the past three weeks have been an absolute and unwarranted, yet purposeful, humiliation of the Jewish People and the State of Israel.  We would expect that the establishment Jewish organizations and leaders would have the courage to stand up, with pride, for the Jewish People and its state.  Instead, we are witnessing a silence that conveys the message that the leadership of the Jewish community is more interested in being friends with the Administration than doing its duty by announcing to the world that this cannot be tolerated.  We look for the Jewish organizations and its leaders to speak Truth to Power.

The silence of the established Jewish organizations on this matter, in contrast to the outspokenness from J Street, has elevated and allowed J Street to become the most visible and prominent organization speaking out about these issues within the Jewish community.  No doubt, many of our leaders are working behind the scenes to repair the rupture of the last three weeks.  In this case, however, that is simply not enough and evades the real issue.  The world at large has seen a public humiliation and rebuke of the State of Israel go unanswered. Unless it sees a profoundly public rebuke of such treatment, it will assume that such humiliating treatment of Jews and the Jewish State are now acceptable and de rigueur.

The World must hear.  The World must see.  It takes little courage to meet with other leaders behind closed doors. The courage that is needed now is one where the world sees that Israel, its representatives and the Jewish People cannot tolerate that which no other nation or community would tolerate.  Failure to do so openly and in public will guarantee that this will happen again, even if this particular crisis is “smoothed out.”

Leaders are not simply men and women who work behind the scenes. Leaders of a community are those who have enough conviction and pride in the profile of their community that they boldly, with enthusiasm, defend their People when unjustly humiliated. Doing so stops the slide of demoralization in its people and restores their confidence in themselves as a People, a people with a legitimate destiny. The American Jewish Community expects that type of leadership from those who claim to be its leaders.

Mallory Danaher’s Speech at the April 25th Break the Silence Rally for Israel

Mallory Danaher is the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNaQ4pBIQJs&NR=1

Narain Kataria’s Speech, April 25, 2010, Break the Silence Rally for Israel

Narain Kataria’s Speech:

 

Brothers and Sisters:  Shalom:

 

I feel privileged and honored for your giving me an opportunity to speak before you.  I am really thankful to the organizers of this Rally.  I am living in this country for the last 40 years.  America has given me freedom of religion and liberty of expression.  Unlike Islamic nations, the American government does not force its citizen to accept Islam or say they would be killed or driven out of that country if they do not.

 

Dear friends like many Jewish people I am also the victim of Islamic Jihad. I am the survivor of the Partition of India that took place in 1947.  I was 17 years old when Islamists forced Hindus to divide British India into two parts in 1947 – Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan.

 

I was living in that part of India which is now called Pakistan .  Since I was a Hindu, my life was made miserable by Islamic police and Islamic militia.  I was hounded out by Radical Islamists.  Many of my friends and colleagues were singled out, chased and brutally killed.  Thousands of Hindu and Sikh girls were gang raped by fanatic Islamists.  More than 10 million Hindus and Sikhs were driven out of the region that is now called Pakistan .

 

In 1947, there were 23% Hindus living there in Pakistan .  Today the Hindu population in Pakistan has been reduced to 1% in just 60 years.  All the others have been ethnically cleansed.

 

The same thing happened in Bangladesh .  The Hindu population has been reduced from 35% in 1947 to 9% in 2010.  More than 400,000 Hindus were driven out in 1989 from Indian ruled Kashmir .  These Hindus are living as refugees in their own country.

 

Today we Hindus are here to express our sympathy and support to Israelis who are surrounded by militant and fanatic Islamic nations armed with deadly weapons. Islamic nations want to wipe out Israel from the world map. Let me tell you, Israel is the frontier of the free World.  Once we lose Israel , we lose the free world.  I repeat, once we lose Israel , we lose the free world.

 

The cowardly and politically correct media and its apologists have no idea as to what they are dealing with.  It is not just Jerusalem the Islamists are claiming; they are claiming Kashmir, Chechnya, Philippines, Sudan, Nigeria, Londonistan, Parts of France, Spain, Belgium, Holland and several other countries – and eventually the whole world.  They want all of us to surrender.  They want to subjugate all of us.  They want to plant the Islamic flag in London , They want to plant the Islamic flag at in Washington .  They have openly stated that they want to establish the supremacy of Allah all over  the USA , in India , in Israel and everywhere else.  Dear Brothers and Sisters, we have to resolutely and unitedly face this menace of terrorism.

 

We both – Hindus and Israelis – are the oldest surviving civilizations.  We both have been the victims of Islamic terrorism for more than a thousand year.  Hence, we both are the natural allies.

 

At the moment Israeli is under attack by radical Islamists.  Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East .  It has every right to exist.  We fully support Israel ’s right to exist as a free nation within its rightful borders.

 

GOD BLESS AMERICA###Narain Kataris is president of Indian American Intellectuals Forum

Dr. Daniel Pipes: My Peace Plan: An Israeli Victory

National Post
April 29, 2010

http://www.danielpi pes.org/8309/ my-peace- plan-an-israeli- victory

[DP note: The title is slightly changed]

This month, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak declared that Israel must withdraw from Palestinian territories. “The world isn’t willing to accept — and we won’t change that in 2010 — the expectation that Israel will rule another people for decades more,” he said. “It’s something that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.”

Is he right? Is peace even possible? And if so, what form should a final agreement take? Those are the questions we asked National Post writers in our series “What’s Your Peace Plan?”

Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister.

My peace plan is simple: Israel defeats its enemies.

Victory uniquely creates circumstances conducive to peace. Wars end, the historical record confirms, when one side concedes defeat and the other wins. This makes intuitive sense, for so long as both sides aspire to achieve their ambitions, fighting continues or it potentially can resume.

The goal of victory is not exactly something novel. Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese strategist, advised that in war, “Let your great object be victory.” Raimondo Montecuccoli, a seventeenth- century Austrian, said that “The objective in war is victory.” Carl von Clausewitz, a nineteenth-century Prussian, added that “War is an act of violence to compel the enemy to fulfill our will.” Winston Churchill told the British people: “You ask: what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory – victory – at all costs, victory, in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be.” Dwight D. Eisenhower observed that “In war, there is no substitute for victory.” These insights from prior eras still hold, for however much weaponry changes, human nature remains the same.

Victory means imposing one’s will on the enemy, compelling him to abandon his war goals. Germans, forced to surrender in World War I, retained the goal of dominating Europe and a few years later looked to Hitler to achieve this goal. Signed pieces of paper matter only if one side has cried “Uncle”: The Vietnam War ostensibly concluded through diplomacy in 1973 but both sides continued to seek their war aims until the North won ultimate victory in 1975.

Willpower is the key: shooting down planes, destroying tanks, exhausting munitions, making soldiers flee, and seizing land are not decisive in themselves but must be accompanied by a psychological collapse. North Korea’s loss in 1953, Saddam Hussein’s in 1991, and the Iraqi Sunni loss in 2003 did not translate into despair. Conversely, the French gave up in Algeria in 1962, despite out-manning and out-gunning their foes, as did the Americans in Vietnam in 1975 and the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1989. The Cold War ended without a fatality. In all these cases, the losers maintained large arsenals, armies, and functioning economies. But they ran out of will.

Likewise, the Arab-Israeli conflict will be resolved only when one side gives up.

Until now, through round after round of war, both sides have retained their goals. Israel fights to win acceptance by its enemies, while those enemies fight to eliminate Israel. Those goals are raw, unchanging, and mutually contradictory. Israel’s acceptance or elimination are the only states of peace. Each observer must opt for one solution or the other. A civilized person will want Israel to win, for its goal is defensive, to protect an existing and flourishing country. Its enemies’ goal of destruction amounts to pure barbarism.

For nearly 60 years, Arab rejectionists, now joined by Iranian and leftist counterparts, have tried to eliminate Israel through multiple strategies: they work to undermine its legitimacy intellectually, overwhelm it demographically, isolate it economically, restrain its defenses diplomatically, fight it conventionally, demoralize it with terror, and threaten to destroy it with WMDs. While the enemies of Israel have pursued their goals with energy and will, they have met few successes.

Ironically, Israelis over time responded to the incessant assault on their country by losing sight of the need to win. The right developed schemes to finesse victory, the center experimented with appeasement and unilateralism, and the left wallowed in guilt and self-recrimination. Exceedingly few Israelis understand the unfinished business of victory, of crushing the enemy’s will and getting him to accept the permanence of the Jewish state.

Fortunately for Israel, it need only defeat the Palestinians, and not the entire Arab or Muslim population, which eventually will follow the Palestinian lead in accepting Israel. Fortunately too, although the Palestinians have built an awesome reputation for endurance, they can be beaten. If the Germans and Japanese could be forced to give up in 1945 and the Americans in 1975, how can Palestinians be exempt from defeat?

The United Nations Security Council, one factor extending the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Of course, Israel faces obstacles in achieving victory. The country is hemmed in generally by international expectations (from the United Nations Security Council, for example) and specifically by the policies of its main ally, the U.S. government. Therefore, if Jerusalem is to win, that starts with a change in policy in the United States and in other Western countries. Those governments should urge Israel to seek victory by convincing the Palestinians that they have lost.

This means undoing the perceptions of Israel’s weakness that grew during the Oslo process (1993-2000) and then the twin withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza (2000-05). Jerusalem appeared back on track during Ariel Sharon’s first three years as prime minister, 2001-03 and his tough stance then marked real progress in Israel’s war effort. Only when it became clear in late 2004 that Sharon really did plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza did the Palestinian mood revive and Israel stopped winning. Ehud Olmert’s debilitating prime ministry has been only partially remedied by Binyamin Netanyahu over the past year.

Ironically, an Israeli victory would bring yet greater benefits to the Palestinians than to Israel. Israelis would benefit by being rid of an atavistic war, to be sure, but their country is a functioning, modern society. For Palestinians, in contrast, abandoning the fetid irredentist dream of eliminating their neighbor would finally offer them a chance to tend their own misbegotten garden, to develop their deeply deficient polity, economy, society, and culture.

Thus does my peace plan both end the war and bring unique benefits to all directly involved.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

__._,_.___

Front Page Magazine

Solidarity with Israel

Posted by Fern Sidman on Apr 27th, 2010 and filed under FrontPage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Hindu and Sikh Groups Support “Rally for Israel” In New York

by Nagendra Rao 

More than 2500 people, braving inclement weather and driving rain assembled in front of the Israeli Consulate in the heart of the city of New York on Sunday, April 25th and whole-heartedly supported Israel ’s right to exist and to determine its own fate.

 

More than 50 organizations representing Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Sikh faiths took part in the Rally.  A formidable contingent of Hindus and Sikhs led by Narain Kataria and Arish Sahani, President and Vice President of Indian American Intellectuals Forum, Satya Dosapati and Nand Lal Ramsinghani of the Hindu Human Rights Watch and Bhupinder Singh Bhurji, Chairman, Namdhari Sikh Foundation, USA, participated in the Rally.  The chief organizer of the event was Beth Gilinsky, Political Strategist, Action Alliance .

 

The supporters carried playcards saying that since 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center , the followers of ISLAM the so called “religion of peace” have carried out 15,101 deadly terrorist attacks and killed more than 75,000 people.

 

In his brief speech, which he delivered with electric effect, Mr. Kataria touched the deepest cord in the psyche of the audience.  Mr. Kataria was widely cheered five times by the strong crowd.  First when Kataria greeted the energetic audience with “Brothers and Sisters Shalom”; second when he said we Hindus understand and appreciate your persecution and pain because we Hindus have suffered unprecedented brutalities and savageries at the hands of Radical Islam for the last 1400 years hence we both are natural allies; third when he said that Israel is the frontier of the free world – if we lose Israel we lose the free world; fourth when he poignantly described the ethnic cleansing of Hindus from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir; and fifth when he said that Islamists are not just claiming Jerusalem but they are also claiming Kashmir, Chechnya, Philippines, Sudan, Nigeria, Londonistan, Parts of France, Spain, Belgium, Holland and several other countries. 

 

GILAD SHALIT’s father speaks out

This young soldier, Gilad Shalit, was captured by the Hamas terror organization

and has been held in solitary captivity for four years.

At a Hamas rally, a Hamas representative, posing as Shalit, pretended to beg for his life for the

“amusement” of the terror organization’s rally participants. 

Shalit’s father has released this video on the occasion of Yom Ha’atzmaut. Please view and share with

others. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VH9xQbYJP8&feature=related

Phyllis Chesler: The Palestinians Already Have Two States

April 15th, 2010 10:34 am

The Palestinians Already Have Two States: The Truth According to Khaled Abu Toameh

The Real War is Palestinian vs. Palestinian

The world has gone mad—or at least, the American leadership has now formally joined the Islamist and international madness about “peace in the Middle East.”

President Obama has just claimed that American “vital national security” is linked to finding—or even imposing—peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. South Africa’s revered Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu, has just praised the recent Berkeley student vote (which the university’s president later vetoed) to divest university money from companies that “profit from the injustice of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in violation of Palestinian human rights.” Tutu writes that what he witnessed in occupied Palestinian territory reminds him of the conditions he “experienced in South Africa under the racist system of apartheid.”

Tutu—this is really too much! Who exactly gave you a tour of the territories? The usual diabolically skilled propagandists? Did you, perchance, bother to visit Israel? If not, why not?

I strongly recommend that both President Obama and Archbishop Tutu consult with Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab Muslim/Palestinian journalist whom I was privileged to hear speak the other night in Manhattan. Abu Toameh lives in Jerusalem and he really “gets it.” He is a charming, urbane man, who speaks English perfectly; I assume he speaks Arabic and Hebrew just as well.

Abu Toameh used to work for the PLO newspaper as a translator and fledgling journalist, then attended Hebrew University, and decided that he wanted to be a real journalist, not a mere propagandist. That meant working for an Israeli newspaper where “freedom of the press” is respected. Abu Toameh confirmed that journalists and distinguished visitors to the “territories” cannot just go anywhere on their own; they risk being barred from future visits or even death if they report something that the various Palestinian militias do not want the world to know. “All the news is controlled in Gaza and on the West Bank.”

Archbishop, President, are you listening?

Abu Toameh began working for the Jerusalem Post in 1988. He is not seen as a “traitor” for working for the free Israeli press in Jerusalem—but he has been attacked for doing so on campuses in California! He understands how fundamentalist and dangerous Hamas really is, and yet he reads that Hamas is becoming moderate—where? In Toronto’s Globe and Mail!

I urge—nay, I implore, I demand, that all those who keep talking about a “peace process” listen to what Abu Toameh has to say. I feel so strongly about this that I am presenting what he said, almost verbatim.

He spoke on the Upper West Side, at Aish HaTorah. Yes, an Orthodox Jewish religious center graciously gave Abu Toameh his platform and were very grateful to have him. Thus, the room usually reserved for religious services and study was precisely where the wry, ironic, witty Abu Toameh spoke. He is very much an Israeli–although not as hot-tempered as some, or as some Arabs.

First, Abu Toameh confirms that the worst possible thing for the Palestinian people were the various peace processes which were highly misguided, insincere, and unworkable. “Before the Oslo Accords, Palestinians had high hopes that we would have a democratic Parliament just as the Israelis do and a free media. Since Oslo, things have gone in the wrong direction.”

In Abu Toameh’s view, “Oslo was based on the assumption that Arafat and Fatah were reliable peace partners.” That was far from the case. Once Arafat was returned in triumph—“the show began, a one man show. Thirteen to fifteen militias roamed the streets. Most of the money given to Arafat for Palestine went down the drain, into secret Swiss bank accounts, and to his wife, Suha, in France. He built a casino—right across from a refugee camp.”

According to Abu Toameh, all those who were giving money to Arafat “simply refused to believe that he was corrupt.” Because Abu Toameh reported this, he was repeatedly asked if he was “on the payroll of the Jewish Lobby.” But, he said, it became more and more difficult to file stories abroad because “newspaper editors all wanted stories against the Occupation. They did not want to confuse their readers with facts.”

In his view, everyone was afraid to report the truth because Arafat and his goon squads would kill the truth tellers. Thus, Arafat and the mythic peace process embittered and “radicalized” the Palestinian people and they turned to Hamas, an Islamist organization funded by Iran. “People lost faith in the peace process.” Abu Toameh also confirmed that Arafat kept saying one thing in English about peace and in Arabic, kept inciting people against Israel.

Israeli President Shimon Peres defended Arafat. Peres refused to factor in what Arafat was saying in Arabic. Abu Toameh thought to himself: “How stupid can this man be? Doesn’t he know that Arafat is describing the Jews as the descendants of pigs and monkeys. Why make peace with the Jews if they are this terrible?”

And so, in 2006, Hamas won a democratic election—an election which was held under American supervision and which was strongly supported by both President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Rice did not expect Hamas to win. Abu Toameh knew they would win; the people were angry at their hopeless situation at the hands of their own leaders. According to Abu Toameh, “Israel also facilitated the election of Hamas by allowing Arabs in Jerusalem to vote in that election. Israel did not know what every Palestinian child knew: That Hamas would win.”

And so now, Fatah has lost, Mahmoud Abbas cannot deliver peace nor can he make peace with Hamas. In turn, Hamas is not stepping down. Thus far, “this civil war among the Palestinians has so far claimed 2000 lives.”

Ironically, those who once clamored for a free and open election are now trying to bring down the duly elected with guns and bombs. Hamas kicked Fatah out of Gaza. Abu Toameh reports that he personally “saw Palestinians running away from Hamas towards Egypt, saw Egypt close the border to those in flight. Only Israel helped Muslims who were about to be slaughtered by Muslims.”

And so, wryly, ironically, Abu Toameh concludes: “We got our two-state solution. The Palestinians got two states. Hamas is funded by the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, and Iran and I would not want to live there. The West Bank is being run by Arafat’s former cronies. But Mahmoud Abbas is afraid of his own people. I have not once seen him in a village. He has no credibility. He cannot deliver peace.

“If Israel withdraws from the West Bank, Hamas will take over. The IDF is keeping Abbas from being hung. Israel is also keeping Fatah and Hamas from killing each other. They hate each other more than they hate Israel.”

In his view, “we cannot move forward with a peace process. There is no Palestinian partner…Did you know? Mahmoud Abbas’s office expired in 2009 but Secretary of State Rice told him to simply stay on. Look: Abbas has lost control of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Abbas is also seen as corrupt and ineffective. To whom will Abbas sell his peace agreement? Hamas will hang him at the entrance to Gaza, they will not wait.”

What does Abu Toameh suggest is the way forward?

“Dismantle all the Palestinian militias, start building Palestinian infra-structures, solve the Palestinian-Palestinian problems—and only then, sit down with the Jews. Obama thinks the ball is in the Israeli court. That is not true.”

Abu Toameh pauses, then says: “If I were Netanyahu, I would offer Palestinians ten states. Bring Obama over, ask him: To whom do I give the Palestinian states? To Hamas? Abbas? Islamic Jihad? He cautions Israel to be “careful about unilateral measures. Any land you give back, any land you give to Abbas, will end up in Iran’s hand. See how Gaza ended up. The same thing will repeat itself. The majority of Jews support the Palestinian state not because they love Palestinians but because they want to get rid of them.”

And then he issued a warning—to Israel which had nothing to do with two state solutions or with a peace process. “Israeli Arabs have been loyal to Israel. They are still discriminated against. No, Israel is not an apartheid state, but discrimination exists against 1.4 million of its own citizens. If Israel does not implement an emergency plan to solve this then the radicalization of the Israeli Arabs will explode. The next Intifada will be in Haifa, Umm al-Fahm, Nazareth, Rahat, Yaffo.”

President Obama: Please do not keep making the same mistakes that both your Republican and Democratic predecessors have made.

Rabbi Aryeh Spero’s Speech at April 25 Break the Silence Rally for Israel

Speech by Rabbi Aryeh Spero

Break the Silence Rally, April 25, 2010

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for coming out today in the rain in support of Israel and to protest the anti-Israel policies of the Obama administration.  It’s time to break the silence. 

Mr. President: Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is, all of it, the greatest Jewish city in the world!

President Obama: you are not Israel’s landlord. You are not Jerusalem’s landlord.  Neither is Hillary Clinton.

Jews have a right to build and live in all of their Israeli cities!

Mr. Obama, Secretary Clinton: you seem more angry over a Jewish family building a home and raising their children in Jerusalem than you do about Iran building a nuclear bomb to destroy Israel and America!

Mr. Obama, for too many centuries leaders have arisen demanding that certain cities and areas of the world be off limits to Jews – that certain areas be Judenrein, free of Jews. Now you demand that vast segments of Jerusalem, already populated by Jewish families, be free of Jews. You propose expulsion of the Jews.  To that we must say: Barack Hussein Obama – no, no, NO! Barack Hussein Obama – lo, lo, LO!

We now hear of plans from Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton to impose a solution on Israel. They want to divide Jerusalem, internationalize our holy sites and areas containing our historic synagogues. They want to populate Israel itself with Moslem Arabs hostile to the Jewish people who harbor hate in their heart and yearn for the destruction of Israel.  President Obama, your solution seems more like a Final Solution.

Mr. Obama: we have heard your blood libel – that Israel is somehow responsible for the loss of, as you say, “American treasure and blood.”  This is a canard, a self-serving distortion to frighten Israel and the Jewish community.

Mr. Obama, you treat Hugo Chavez better and with more regard than you do the Prime Minister of Israel. That may be your mode of conduct, but this sentiment and conduct is not in the American tradition. Your disgraceful conduct is an embarrassment to the American People. You have embarrassed the American people.  We don’t act the way you do.

—————–      ——————————–   ———————

And now, we must ask the most important question of the day: where are the heads of the major Jewish organizations? Where have they been over the last five weeks of day-to-day, 24/7 humiliation and vilification of Israel?  I’ll tell you: They have been hiding. They have been silent. 

Moreover, they have decided, in principle, to remain silent. They remain silent as they did 70 years ago becauset they don’t want to be on the “outs’ with the President and loose the invitations to the White House they love and crave. Worse, perhaps, is that some actually agree with Obama’s policy on Israel. 

But most of American Jewry disagrees with the Conference of Presidents and are appalled by your lack of leadership, your lack of courage, your lack of Jewish pride, your wimp-iness, your misguided world view. 

At crucial moments like this, when choices must be made, when sides must be chosen, one finds out where a person really stands.  Well, we now know. The major Jewish organizations have chosen Obama over Israel – because he’s their guy. They have chosen Hillary Clinton over Jewish nationalism – because she’s their gal.  They have chosen liberalism over Jerusalem.  

Yes, you are hiding.  If you can’t or won’t lead, step aside now and let others lead. With their silence, the Conference of Presidents have allowed and elevated the anti-Israel J Street to become the spokesgroup of the Jewish People. But the members of J street are traitors. They have gone over to the side of darkness.

The people of the George Soros-funded J Street, and some who head the major Jewish organizations, are, sad to say, embarrassed by a strong Israel, embarrassed by a distinctly Jewish state.They are first and foremost transnationalists.They care only about what their leftist cohorts think.They will jeopardize Israel if that’s what it takes to keep up their invitations to avante garde cocktail parties and events. We dare not depend on them.

Their heroes are not strong Israelis, nor strong, proud, Americans.Their heroes are those on the Left, the multiculturalists, who wish to weaken America and Israel .Their personal ambitions are more important to them than our survival.The Jewish leadership’s need to always appear reasonable, respectable, and accommodating to our enemies is a formula for Jewish suicide, American suicide. 

———————–   —————————   ———————-

And now let us say something to Prime Minister Netanyahu. The Obama Administration is not a true friend of Israel. You know who is? The American People – sixty eight percent of them, and even as high as 82 percent among Repubicans. The Obama Administration is not going to stop Iran from producing a nuclear bomb. The Obama administration’s view is, as one of their top men has said: “Just get used to living in a world with the Iranian bomb.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu, this is your moment in history. A moment where you can rise above the other frightened world leaders who are simply caving in. Now is your chance to be a Joshua, a Winston Churchill. You speak of your admiration of Winston Churchill who saved the West from Nazism. President Obama, on the other hand, is not an admirer of Winston Churchill. Indeed, one of his first actions when arriving at the White House was to remove the bust of Winston Churchill that for years was poised in the Oval Office and return it to Great Britain.

Some in America are acting like Chamberlain, not Churchill.

Stand tall, Mr. Netanyahu, and give your people pride. It is unseemly, it is unbecoming, it is so not like Winston Churchill to witness a nickel-and-diming away of this neighborhood in Jerusalem so as to retain and keep a different neighborhood in Jerusalem. It is unbearable to watch Jerusalem being treated as if it were an item being negotiated in the bazaar, the shuk. Jerusalem and Israel are not for sale; it’s not on the auction block; it’s not up for barter.

Do not act like one who is afraid. If you do, G-d Forbid, your nation, the citizens of Israel will be afraid. Act with courage and your people will be filled with courage.

Mr. Prime Minister, you do not have to prove that Israel is a peaceful nation. We all know that it is. To whom do you feel you have to prove that Israel is a peaceful nation? To Mahmoud Abbas, the United Nations, to President Obama? 

Do not participate in this never- ending game called “process” that demands that Israel, for the one hundreth time, has to give up land to demonstrate she wants peace.These clever demands for “just a little more land”, by Arabs, will not stop until they have utterly weakened , shrunk, and demoralized Israel. There is no such thing as Land for Peace. It must be simply: Peace for Peace. Take it or leave it!

Many Jews are frustrated by the continuum of Israeli Prime Ministers delivering the Arab narrative, and how the Muslims must have a state of their own, and this of their  own, and that of their own. Oh-so sensitive to Moslem needs and honor.

We are looking for an Israeli leader to speak of the Jewish narrative, to speak of how Israel is ours by virtue of the Bible and history, and how we built it and made the Land shine once again. We want to hear about Great Jewish Aspirations, Jewish honor, Jewsh Destiny. The Big Idea — not about Ramot, yes, French Hill, no, maybe Gilo II.  

The American People will support and respect those who show self-respect — vigorous, emphatic self-respect. It’s about time we heard someone say: We sure as hell are not going to uproot our citizens, forfeit our land, and continually turn our country inside-out like a guilt-ridden, wounded pretzel to get approval for our right to exist. We have the right to exist – because we exist.

The world must know that this Arab conflict against Israel is not simply a local issue, but part of the greater Jihad. Islam wants the Philippines, Kashmir, parts of India, southern Asia, Israel, Europe, countries in South America and all of Africa. They accomplish this through terror, and too many are appeasing and submitting to this terror. Sadly, President Obama and Hillary Clinton want to hand Islam, Jerusalem. Whose capital is next?  What other parts of the world will President Obama, in the name of “peace”, hand over to Islam?

President Obama and secretary Clinton’s policies of U.S. disarmament, their vilification of Israel, their tacit nod to Islamization, and their preference for dictators has become a curse on this great nation, America, and a plague on Western civilization. Stay away from it! Caveat emptor!  Stay away from it!

Am Yisrael Chai!  G-d Bless America, Sweet land of Liberty.

The Hon. Edward Koch: “THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING”

Please forward this YouTube video of the legendary former Mayor of New York City to others.

Inappropriate Use of the Fourth Geneva Convention

February 2, 2010 | Eli E. Hertz

In advising that Jewish settlements are illegal, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) went beyond its own mandate from the General Assembly without being asked to do so.

In paragraph 120 of the Court’s opinion [Advisory Opinion July 9 2004), the ICJ declares:

“The Court concludes that the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem) have been established in breach of international law.”

The ICJ based its conclusion on the inappropriate use of an article of the Fourth Geneva Convention which stipulates:

“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Once the ICJ has ‘established evidence’ that the West Bank and Gaza are unlawfully occupied territories, it then applies this status to the Fourth Geneva Conference de jure, stating in paragraph 120 of the opinion that:

“As regards these settlements, the Court notes that Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides: ‘The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.‘ [italic by author]

“In this respect, the information provided to the Court shows that, since 1977, Israel has conducted a policy and developed practices involving the establishment of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, contrary to the terms of Article 49, paragraph 6, just cited.” [italics by author]

One can hardly believe this baseless ICJ assertion that Israel used “deportation” and “forced transfer” of its own population into “occupied territories. ”

The Court unlawful attempts to broaden the definition of Article 49 to possibly ‘fit’ some wrong doing on the part of the State of Israel, all with no authority or reference to law, adding:

“That provision prohibits not only deportations or forced transfers of population such as those carried out during the Second World War, but also any measures taken by an occupying Power in order to organize or encourage transfers of parts of its own population into the occupied territory.” [italics by author]

In the above conclusion, the ICJ fails to disclose the content of the “information provided” (information the Court based its decision on), and the anonymous ‘authorities’ that provided such. Anyone interested in the subject at hand is aware of the difficulties the Israeli Government faces in its decision to relocate some Israeli settlements out of the “Territories, ” a fact that seems to be contrary to the “information provided” to the ICJ.

Professor Stone touches on the applicability of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention. Writing on the subject in 1980:

“That because of the ex iniuria principle, Jordan never had nor now has any legal title in the West Bank, nor does any other state even claim such title. Article 49 seems thus simply not applicable. (Even if it were, it may be added that the facts of recent voluntary settlements seem not to be caught by the intent of Article 49 which is rather directed at the forced transfer of the belligerent’ s inhabitants to the occupied territory, or the displacement of the local inhabitants, for other than security reasons.) The Fourth Geneva Convention applies only, according to Article 2, to occupation of territory belonging to ‘another High Contracting Party’; and Jordan cannot show any such title to the West Bank, nor Egypt to Gaza.”.

Support to Stone’s assertion can be found in Lauterpacht’ s writing in 1968:

“Thus Jordan’s occupation of the Old City-and indeed of the whole of the area west of the Jordan river-entirely lacked legal justification; and being defective in this way could not form any basis for Jordan validly to fill the sovereignty vacuum in the Old City [and whole of the area west of the Jordan River].”

Professor Rostow concludes that the Convention is not applicable to Israel’s legal position and notes:

“The opposition to Jewish settlements in the West Bank also relied on a legal argument – that such settlements violated the Fourth Geneva Convention forbidding the occupying power from transferring its own citizens into the occupied territories. How that Convention could apply to Jews who already had a legal right, protected by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, to live in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was never explained.”

It seems that the International Court of Justice “never explained” it either.

For more on the subject see: http://www.mythsand facts.org/ article_view. asp?articleID= 164

Caroline Glick: The Strategic Foundations of the US-Israel Alliance

April 19, 2010, 6:27 PM

In honor of Israel’s 62nd Independence Day, and in light of President Obama’s repeated claims that US interests are best served by distancing itself from Israel, I decided to write the following essay explaining why a strong Israel is essential for US national security.

Yom Ha’atzmuat Sameach.

Israel’s status as the US’s most vital ally in the Middle East has been so widely recognized for so long that over the years, Israeli and American leaders alike have felt it unnecessary to explain what it is about the alliance that makes it so important for the US.

Today, as the Obama administration is openly distancing the US from Israel while giving the impression that Israel is a strategic impediment to the administration’s attempts to strengthen its relations with the Arab world, recalling why Israel is the US’s most important ally in the Middle East has become a matter of some urgency.

Much is made of the fact that Israel is a democracy. But we seldom consider why the fact that Israel is a representative democracy matters.The fact that Israel is a democracy means that its alliance with America reflects the will of the Israeli people. As such, it remains constant regardless of who is power in Jerusalem.

All of the US’s other alliances in the Middle East are with authoritarian regimes whose people do not share the pro-American views of their leaders. The death of leaders or other political developments are liable to bring about rapid and dramatic changes in their relations with the US.

For instance, until 1979, Iran was one of the US’s closest strategic allies in the region. Owing to the gap between the Iranian people and their leadership, the Islamic revolution put an end to the US-Iran alliance.

Egypt flipped from a bitter foe to an ally of the US when Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1969. Octogenarian President Hosni Mubarak’s encroaching death is liable to cause a similar shift in the opposite direction.

Instability in the Hashemite kingdom in Jordan and the Saudi regime could transform those countries from allies to adversaries.

Only Israel, where the government reflects the will of the people is a reliable, permanent US ally.

America reaps the benefits of its alliance with Israel every day. As the US suffers from chronic intelligence gaps, Israel remains the US’s most reliable source for accurate intelligence on the US’s enemies in the region.

Israel is the US’s only ally in the Middle East that always fights its own battles. Indeed, Israel has never asked the US for direct military assistance in time of war. Since the US and Israel share the same regional foes, when Israel is called upon to fight its enemies, its successes redound to the US’s benefit.

Here it bears recalling Israel’s June 1982 destruction of Syria’s Soviet-made anti-aircraft batteries and the Syrian air force. Those stunning Israeli achievements were the first clear demonstration of the absolute superiority of US military technology over Soviet military technology. Many have argued that it was this Israeli demonstration of Soviet technological inferiority that convinced the Reagan administration it was possible to win the Cold War.

In both military and non-military spheres, Israeli technological achievements – often developed with US support – are shared with America. The benefits the US has gained from Israeli technological advances in everything from medical equipment to microchips to pilotless aircraft are without peer worldwide.

Beyond the daily benefits the US enjoys from its close ties with Israel, the US has three fundamental, permanent, vital national security interests in the Middle East. A strong Israel is a prerequisite for securing all of these interests.

America’s three permanent strategic interests in the Middle East are as follows:

1 – Ensuring the smooth flow of affordable petroleum products from the region to global consumers through the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal.

2 – Preventing the most radical regimes, sub-state and non-state actors from acquiring the means to cause catastrophic harm.

3 – Maintaining the US’s capacity to project its power to the region.

A strong Israel is the best guarantor of all of these interests. Indeed, the stronger Israel is, the more secure these vital American interests are. Three permanent and unique aspects to Israel’s regional position dictate this state of affairs.

1 – As the first target of the most radical regimes and radical sub-state actors in the region, Israel has a permanent, existential interest in preventing these regimes and sub-state actors from acquiring the means to cause catastrophic harm.

Israel’s 1981 airstrike that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor prevented Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons. Despite US condemnation at the time, the US later acknowledged that the strike was a necessary precondition to the success of Operation Desert Storm ten years later. Richard Cheney – who served as secretary of defense during Operation Desert Storm – has stated that if Iraq had been a nuclear power in 1991, the US would have been hard pressed to eject Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army from Kuwait and so block his regime from asserting control over oil supplies in the Persian Gulf.

2 – Israel is a non-expansionist state and its neighbors know it. In its 62 year history, Israel has only controlled territory vital for its national security and territory that was legally allotted to it in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate which has never been abrogated or superseded.

Israel’s strength, which it has used only in self-defense, is inherently non-threatening. Far from destabilizing the region, a strong Israel stabilizes the Middle East by deterring the most radical actors from attacking.

In 1970, Israel blocked Syria’s bid to use the PLO to overthrow the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Israel’s threat to attack Syria not only saved the Hashemites then, it has deterred Syria from attempting to overthrow the Jordanian regime ever since.

Similarly, Israel’s neighbors understand that its purported nuclear arsenal is a weapon of national survival and hence they view it as non-threatening. This is the reason Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal has never spurred a regional nuclear arms race.

In stark contrast, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, a regional nuclear arms race will ensue immediately.

Although they will never admit it, Israel’s non-radical neighbors feel more secure when Israel is strong. On the other hand, the region’s most radical regimes and non-state actors will always seek to emasculate Israel.

3– Since as the Jewish state Israel is the regional bogeyman, no Arab state will agree to form a permanent alliance with it. Hence, Israel will never be in a position to join forces with another nation against a third nation.

In contrast, the Egyptian-Syrian United Arab Republic of the 1960s was formed to attack Israel. Today, the Syrian-Iranian alliance is an inherently aggressive alliance against Israel and the non-radical Arab states in the region. Recognizing the stabilizing force of a strong Israel, the moderate states of the region prefer for Israel to remain strong.

From the US’s perspective, far from impairing its alliance-making capabilities in the region, by providing military assistance to Israel, America isn’t just strengthening the most stabilizing force in the region. It is showing all states and non-state actors in the greater Middle East it is trustworthy.

On the other hand, every time the US seeks to attenuate its ties with Israel, it is viewed as an untrustworthy ally by the nations of the Middle East. US hostility towards Israel causes Israel’s neighbors to hedge their bets by distancing themselves from the US lest America abandon them to their neighboring adversaries.

A strong Israel empowers the relatively moderate actors in the region to stand up to the radical actors in the region because they trust Israel to keep the radicals in check. Today’s regional balance of power in which the moderates have the upper hand over the radicals is predicated on a strong Israel.

On the other hand, when Israel is weakened the radical forces are emboldened to threaten the status quo. Regional stability is thrown asunder. Wars become more likely. Attacks on oil resources increase. The most radical sub-state actors and regimes are emboldened.

To the extent that the two-state solution assumes that Israel must contract itself to within the indefensible 1949 ceasefire lines, and allow a hostile Palestinian state allied with terrorist organizations to take power in the areas it vacates, the two-state solution is predicated on making Israel weak and empowering radicals. In light of this, the two-state solution as presently constituted is antithetical to America’s most vital strategic interests in the Middle East.

When we bear in mind the foundations for the US’s alliance with Israel, it is obvious that US support for Israel over the years has beenthe most cost-effective national security investment in post-World War II US history.

http://us.mc383.mail.yahoo.com/mc/showFolder?&.rand=1650220172&&abnumadded=1&abnames=+Ami++Horowitz+&abids=16781375&abgrpup=1&abnuminlist=1&abgrpname=Israel+Activists&abgid=16781294#_pg=showMessage&sMid=1&&filterBy=&.rand=1219748704&midIndex=1&mid=1_47341445_ABZ9v9EAAQRqS801FAK8XCcXoFc&fromId=caroline@carolineglick.com&m=1_47342175_ABF9v9EAASAYS8016ARuwSgtB08,1_47341445_ABZ9v9EAAQRqS801FAK8XCcXoFc,1_47340915_ABJ9v9EAABS9S80wrQi3bRVVCBg,1_47340278_ABR9v9EAAPrtS80tDA4FXzqyQdo,1_47339628_ABd9v9EAAO7SS80sLA7B1B4g3mI,1_47339035_ABZ9v9EAAMaIS80sFQi21ghOc%2FQ,1_47338391_ABV9v9EAAPaDS80mAwmFjiaoPJA,&sort=date&order=down&startMid=0&.jsrand=1670285Posted on April 19, 2010 at 6:27 PM

Hundreds of lawmakers urge Obama to take ‘punishing measures’ against Iran

Bridget Johnson and Russell Berman – The Hill,  April 14th, 2010

Congressional proponents of swift, tougher sanctions on Iran have finished gathering signatures on letters to President Barack Obama.

The letter recently recirculated by Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.) is being submitted to Obama with 363 House members’ signatures.

“Mr. President, you have stated this issue is a priority for your administration. You have attempted to engage the Iranian regime for over a year. You have gone to the United Nations Security Council in an effort to impose tough new sanctions on Iran. But time is not on our side,” the letter states.

“We cannot allow those who would oppose or delay sanctions to govern either the timing or content of our efforts,” it says, in reference to the lack of support at the Security Council by veto-wielders China and Russia.

The letter calls on Obama to “fulfill your June 2008 pledge that you would do ‘everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,’” to “rapidly” implement the sanctions legislation when it comes out of conference and use whatever presidential powers at his means to impose “punishing measures” on Tehran.

Jackson and Pence, along with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), as well as Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Dan Burton (R-Ind.), confirmed the culmination of their effort at a Wednesday afternoon press conference.

“This is a moment where traditional loyalties and interests give way to the interests of the United States of America,” said Pence, who characterized the letter to Obama as “firm but respectful.”

“We are assuring the president of strong bipartisan support for tough and decisive measures,” Pence said. “We urge the president to move rapidly.”

“It has been the consistent policy of this administration and a consistent policy of this Congress that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable,” Hoyer said. “We need to act. We need to act now, and we must act decisively.”

In the Senate, a similar letter circulated by Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has gathered 76 signatures and was expected to be sent to Obama as early as Wednesday afternoon.

“Preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons remains a diplomatic imperative,” the letter states. “But time is not on the side of those who seek to prevent a nuclear Iran.

“… We urge you to move quickly to implement your existing authority on Iran and the legislation we send you, and to galvanize the international community to take immediate, substantive steps. Now is the time for action focused on preventing a nuclear Iran. We look forward to working with you on this important task.”

In December, the House approved 412-12 a measure enabling Obama to ban foreign firms that supply Iran with refined petroleum from doing business in the U.S. The Senate passed its own version of sanctions targeting Iran’s energy sector by voice vote on Jan. 28.

“I don’t think there is any other bill that is as important insofar as furthering U.S. national security interests as this bill,” Cantor said at the Wednesday press conference.

Cantor acknowledged Obama’s attempts to gain international consensus on resolutions at the United Nations, but noted that Congress was on “a separate track””It is of the utmost importance that this Congress act now and act decisively,” Cantor said. “There will be some teeth in these sanctions if all goes as planned.”

Cantor said he expected an announcement on a congressional schedule for action on sanctions on those doing business with Iran in the next couple of days.

Benny Morris: Obama is denying Israel the right to self-defense when it is not his, or America’s, life that is on the line.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morris16-2010apr16,0,6295075.story

April 16, 2010

I take it personally: Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants to murder me, my family and my people. Day in, day out, he announces the imminent demise of the “Zionist regime,” by which he means Israel. And day in, day out, his scientists and technicians are advancing toward the atomic weaponry that will enable him to bring this about.

The Jews of Europe (and Poles, Russians, Czechs, the French, etc.) should likewise have taken personally Adolf Hitler’s threats and his serial defiance of the international community from 1933 to 1939. But he was allowed, by the major powers and the League of Nations, to flex his muscles, rearm, remilitarize the Rhineland and then gobble up neighboring countries. Had he been stopped before the invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, the lives of many millions, Jews and Gentiles, would have been saved. But he wasn’t.

And it doesn’t look like Ahmadinejad will be either. Not by the United States and the international community, at any rate. President Obama, when not obsessing over the fate of the ever- aggrieved Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, proposes to halt Ahmadinejad’s nuclear program by means of international sanctions. But here’s the paradox: The wider Obama casts his net to mobilize as many of the world’s key players as he can, the weaker the sanctions and the more remote their implementation. China, it appears, will only agree to a U.N. Security Council resolution if the sanctions are diluted to the point of meaninglessness (and maybe not even then). The same appears to apply to the Russians. Meanwhile, Iran advances toward the bomb. Most of the world’s intelligence agencies believe that it is only one to three years away.

Perhaps Obama hopes to unilaterally implement far more biting American (and, perhaps, European) sanctions. But if China and Russia (and some European Union members) don’t play ball, the sanctions will remain ineffective. And Iran will continue on its deadly course.

At the end of 2007, the U.S. intelligence community, driven by wishful thinking, expediency and incompetence, announced that the Iranians had in 2003 halted the weaponization part of their nuclear program. Last week, Obama explicitly contradicted that assessment. At least the American administration now publicly acknowledges where it is the Iranians are headed, while not yet acknowledging what it is they are after — primarily Israel’s destruction.

Granted, Obama has indeed tried to mobilize the international community for sanctions. But it has been a hopeless task, given the selfishness and shortsightedness of governments and peoples. Sanctions were supposed to kick in in autumn 2009; then it was December; now it is sometime late this year. Obama is still pushing the rock up the hill — and Ahmadinejad, understandably, has taken to publicly scoffing at the West and its “sanctions.”

He does this because he knows that sanctions, if they are ever passed, are likely to be toothless, and because the American military option has been removed from the table. Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates — driven by a military that feels overstretched in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and a public that has no stomach for more war — have made this last point crystal clear.

But at the same time, Obama insists that Israel may not launch a preemptive military strike of its own. Give sanctions a chance, he says. (Last year he argued that diplomacy and “engagement” with Tehran should be given a chance. Tehran wasn’t impressed then and isn’t impressed now.) The problem is that even if severe sanctions are imposed, they likely won’t have time to have serious effect before Iran succeeds at making a bomb.

Obama is, no doubt, well aware of this asymmetric timetable. Which makes his prohibition against an Israeli preemptive strike all the more immoral. He knows that any sanctions he manages to orchestrate will not stop the Iranians. (Indeed, Ahmadinejad last week said sanctions would only fortify Iran’s resolve and consolidate its technological prowess.) Obama is effectively denying Israel the right to self-defense when it is not his, or America’s, life that is on the line.

Perhaps Obama has privately resigned himself to Iran’s nuclear ambitions and believes, or hopes, that deterrence will prevent Tehran from unleashing its nuclear arsenal. But what if deterrence won’t do the trick? What if the mullahs, believing they are carrying out Allah’s will and enjoy divine protection, are undeterred?

The American veto may ultimately consign millions of Israelis, including me and my family, to a premature death and Israel to politicide. It would then be comparable to Britain and France’s veto in the fall of 1938 of the Czechs defending their territorial integrity against their rapacious Nazi neighbors. Within six months, Czechoslovakia was gobbled up by Germany.

But will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu follow in Czech President Edvard Benes’ footsteps? Will he allow an American veto to override Israel’s existential interests? And can Israel go it alone, without an American green (or even yellow) light, without American political cover and overflight permissions and additional American equipment? Much depends on what the Israeli military and intelligence chiefs believe their forces — air force, navy, commandos — can achieve. Full destruction of the Iranian nuclear project? A long-term delay? And on how they view Israel’s ability (with or without U.S. support) to weather the reaction from Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria.

An Israeli attack might harm U.S. interests and disrupt international oil supplies (though I doubt it would cause direct attacks on U.S. installations, troops or vessels). But, from the Israeli perspective, these are necessarily marginal considerations when compared with the mortal hurt Israel and Israelis would suffer from an Iranian nuclear attack. Netanyahu’s calculations will, in the end, be governed by his perception of Israel’s existential imperatives. And the clock is ticking.

Benny Morris is the author of many books about the Middle East conflict, including, most recently, “1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War.”

Arutz Sheva: Clinton Pushes Israel, not PA, to Take Risks for Peace

 Arutz Sheva – April 16, 2010

by Maayana Miskin

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has increased the pressure on Israel again to strengthen the PLO and Fatah and make concessions to the Palestinian Authority. The pressure is an apparent response to an impasse in talks between Israel and the PA, which has refused to hold direct negotiations. It is in direct contradiction to Obama’s recent remarks about not continuing to concentrate on the Middle East, since he sees no progress after all the U.S. efforts to start talks.

For an analyst’s look at how to get things going, click here.

Clinton spoke Thursday at the opening of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace think tank. While she called for the PA, led by Mahmoud Abbas, to end its incitement against Israel, she had a number of steps for Israel to take.

“We encourage Israel to continue building momentum toward a comprehensive peace by demonstrating respect for the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, stopping settlement activity and addressing the humanitarian needs in Gaza,” she said. “And to refrain from unilateral statements and actions that could undermine trust or risk prejudicing the outcome of talks.”

Israel must strengthen the PA and the PLO in order to counter Hamas, Clinton said. “Israel can and should do more to support the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to build credible institutions and deliver results,” she argued.

Clinton praised Abbas’s work in the PA, but said that if Abbas is seen as unable to get results, “there is no doubt his support will fade and Palestinians will turn to alternatives – including Hamas.”

As Israel has halted construction in Judea and Samaria’s Jewish communities, Clinton’s reference to “settlement activity” was apparently in regard to the construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem. Israel’s capital city was split in 1949 as Jordan seized half the city, and reunited in 1967 during the Six Day War.

Israel has declared united Jerusalem as its capital. The PA has demanded that those areas that were under Jordanian control for 18 years be given to the PA as the capital of a future Arab state.

When Clinton served as senator of New York she supported Israel’s position, stating that Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s undivided capital “must never be questioned.” However, since her appointment as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton has changed her position in favor of the PA, and recently called the construction of housing in the Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo “insulting”.

Following the Obama administration’s insistence that Israel cease construction in much of Jerusalem, the PA took up the same demand and PA leaders have now stated that they will not hold direct talks with Israel as long as Jews are allowed to build in areas once under Jordanian control – including historically Jewish neighborhoods such as the Old City.

Jonathan Tobin — The Times Makes It Official: Obama Has Shifted U.S. Policy Against Israel

Commentary Contentions blog,

Jonathan Tobin – 04.15.2010

If there were any lingering doubts in the minds of Democrats who care about Israel that the president they helped elect has fundamentally altered American foreign policy to the Jewish state’s disadvantage, they are now gone. The New York Times officially proclaimed the administration’s changed attitude in a front-page story this morning that ought to send chills down the spine of anyone who believed Barack Obama when he pledged in 2008 that he would be a loyal friend of Israel. In the view of the paper’s Washington correspondents, the moment that signaled what had already been apparent to anyone who was paying attention was the president’s declaration at a Tuesday news conference that resolving the Middle East conflict was “a vital national security interest of the United States.” Mr. Obama went on to state that the conflict is “costing us significantly in terms of blood and treasure,” thus attempting to draw a link between Israel’s attempts to defend itself with the safety of American troops who are fighting Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.

By claiming the Arab-Israeli conflict to be a “vital national security interest” that must be resolved, the “frustrated” Obama is making it clear that he will push hard to impose a solution on the parties. The significance of this false argument is that it not only seeks to wrongly put the onus on Israel for the lack of a peace agreement but that it also now attempts to paint any Israeli refusal to accede to Obama’s demands as a betrayal in which a selfish Israel is stabbing America in the back. The response from Obama to this will be, the Times predicts, “tougher policies toward Israel,” since it is, in this view, ignoring America’s interests and even costing American lives.

The problem with this policy is that the basic premise behind it is false. Islamists may hate Israel, but that is not why they are fighting the United States. They are fighting America because they rightly see the West and its culture, values, and belief in democracy as antithetical to their own beliefs and a threat to its survival and growth as they seek to impose their medieval system everywhere they can. Americans are not dying because Israelis want to live in Jerusalem or even the West Bank or even because there is an Israel. If Israel were to disappear tomorrow, that catastrophe would certainly be cheered in the Arab and Islamic world, but it would not end the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, cause Iran to stop its nuclear program, or put al-Qaeda out of business. In fact, a defeat for a country allied with the United States would strengthen Iran and al-Qaeda. But undeterred by the facts and the experience of a generation of failed peace plans that have always foundered not on Israeli intransigence but rather on the absolute refusal of any Palestinian leader to put his signature on a document that will legitimize a Jewish state within any borders, Obama is pushing ahead. In the view of unnamed administration officials who have helpfully explained Obama’s policies to the Times, it is now only a matter of time before the president puts forward his own peace plan. And as the debate on health care illustrated, Obama will attempt to shove his diktat down the throats of the Israelis, whether the vast majority of Americans who support Israel like it or not.

As the Times notes, there is a great irony to Obama’s blazing anger at the Israelis and the urgency with which he views the issue. It comes at a time when the overwhelming majority of Israelis have “become disillusioned with the whole idea of resolving the conflict. Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government has long been skeptical about the benefits of a peace deal with the Palestinians. But skepticism has taken root in the Israeli public as well, particularly after Israel saw little benefit from its traumatic withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.” In other words, after countless concessions made to the Arabs at Oslo, and in subsequent accords and after offers from Israel of a state comprising Gaza, the West Bank, and parts of Jerusalem were refused by the Palestinians in 2000 and 2008, most Israelis have finally figured out that the other side doesn’t want to end the conflict. And they are baffled as to why Obama and his advisers haven’t come to the same all too obvious conclusion. But with the Obama administration now so passionately committed to hammering Israel even as it apparently neglects to take action to stop Iran’s nuclear program, the question remains what will be the response of pro-Israel Democrats. As Obama draws closer to all-out diplomatic war on Israel’s government, the obligation for principled Democrats to speak up in open opposition to these policies cannot be avoided.

While many Democrats have sought to confuse the issue or avoid conflict with the president, stories such as the one on the front page of the Times this morning make it clear that sooner or later, pro-Israel Democrats are going to have to decide whether partisan loyalties will trump their support for the Jewish state’s survival.

###

Britain Bans Israeli Tourism Ad Showing Western Wall

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu – IsraelNN.com,  April 14th, 2010

Britain has banned an Israeli Tourism Ministry ad because it “misleads” the public to think that the Western Wall and Temple Mount are part of the country. The publicity was banned by the government advertising regulator.

Britain, like the United States and most of the international community, do not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the parts of Jerusalem that were restored to Jewish sovereignty during the 1967 Six-Day War.

The “problematic” ad, with the pictures of the holy sites, tells readers that they can “travel the entire length of Israel in six hours.”

The Advertising Standards Authority prohibited the advertisement after receiving a complaint that the pictures show sites that are located in the ”occupied territories” and implies they are part of the country. Israeli Tourism Ministry official said the advertisement contains “accurate information.”

“The status of the occupied territory of the West Bank [is] the subject of much international dispute, and because we considered that the ad implied that the part of East Jerusalem featured in the image was part of the state of Israel, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead,” the British agency said, as quoted by the London Guardian and Jewish Chronicle.

The Kotel is a remnant of the outer wall of the Temple Mount compound that housed the Jewish Temples for more than 1,000 years, until the year 70 CE. It is the Jewish People’s holiest site.

When British occupying forces left the Land of Israel in 1948, Jordanian forces overran Jewish defenders in the Old City and took the Temple Mount, but there was never any international recognition of Jordan’s sovereignty there. Jordan did not allow Jews into the area. Israel liberated the Old City, including the Temple Mount and Kotel, 19 years later.

Israel advocate Dr. Emmanuel Navon commented Wednesday that “East Jerusalem was never part of a sovereign country in modern times. Either you consider Jordan’s 1949 annexation as illegal and illegitimate and then Israel did not conquer a sovereign land in 1967, or you do consider Jordan’s 1949 annexation as legal and legitimate and then Israel’s 1967 annexation is even more so since it was the result of a war of self-defense and not of aggression.” (IsraelNationalNews.com)

How About an Arab ‘Settlement’ Freeze?

Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2010

By RUTH R. WISSE

When she is surrounded by a swirl of conversation she cannot understand, my two-year-old granddaughter turns to me expectantly: “What they talking about, Bubbe?” Right now, I would have to confess to her that the hubbub over 1,600 new housing units in Jerusalem defies rational explanation.

Of the children of Abraham, the descendants of Ishmael currently occupy at least 800 times more land than descendants of Isaac. The 21 states of the Arab League routinely announce plans of building expansion. Saudi Arabia estimates that 555,000 housing units were built over the past several years. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced during a meeting in Baghdad last year that “Some 10,000 units will be built in each province [of Iraq] with 100 square meters per unit” to accommodate citizens whose housing needs have not been met for a long time. Egypt has established 10 new cities since 1996. They are Tenth of Ramadan, Sixth of October, Al Sadat, Al Shurouq, Al Obour, New Damietta, New Beni Sueif, New Assiut, New Luxor, and New Cairo.

In 2006 the Syrian Prime Minister, Mohammad Naji Atri, announced a new five-year development plan that aims to supply 687,000 housing units. Kuwait expects to have a demand for approximately 100,000 private housing units by 2010. Last year Jordan’s King Abdullah launched a National Housing Initiative, which aims to build 120,000 properties for low-income Jordanians.

Arab populations grow. And neighborhoods expand to house them. What’s more, Arab countries benefited disproportionately from the exchange of populations between Jews and Arabs that resulted from the Arab wars against Israel. Since 1948 upward of 800,000 Jews abandoned their homes and forfeited their goods in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Yemen. In addition to assets valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, the property deeds of Jews from Arab lands is estimated at a total area of 100,000 square miles, which is five times the size of the state of Israel, and more than Israel would include even if it were to stretch over all the disputed territories of the West Bank.

These preposterous disparities are a result of contrasting political cultures. The Arab League was founded at the same time as Israel with the express aim of undoing the Jewish state’s existence. Although much has changed over the ensuing decades, opposition to the Jewish state remains the strongest unifying tool of inter-Arab and Arab-Muslim politics. Trying to eliminate the Jews rather than compete with them has never benefited nations.

It is unfortunate that Arabs obsess about building in Israel rather than aiming for the development of their own superabundant lands. But why should America encourage their hegemonic ambitions? In December the White House issued a statement opposing “new construction in East Jerusalem” without delineating where or what East Jerusalem is.

Ramat Shlomo, the neighborhood at the center of the present altercation, is actually in northern Jerusalem, west of the Jewish neighborhoods of Ramot, home to 40,000 Jewish residents. Why does the White House take issue with the construction of housing for Jewish citizens within the boundaries of their own country? The same White House raised no objection when Jordan recently began systematically stripping citizenship from thousands of its Palestinian citizens rather than providing new housing units for them in a land much larger than Israel.

Perhaps Israel has been at fault for not doggedly insisting on unconditional acceptance of its sovereign existence, and for not demanding that Arab rulers adhere to the U.N. Charter’s guarantee of “equal rights of . . . nations large and small.” Preposterous as they would have thought it, perhaps Israelis ought to have called for a freeze on Arab settlements to correspond to unreasonable Arab demands on them.

Any peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict will begin with a hard look at the map of the region in which 21 countries with 800 times more land are consumed with their Jewish neighbors’ natural increase.

Ms. Wisse, a professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, is the author of “Jews and Power” (Schocken, 2007).

Breaking News: Israel tells its citizens to get out

By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer Mark Lavie, Associated Press Writer 8 mins ago

JERUSALEM – Israel issued an “urgent” warning Tuesday to its citizens to leave Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula immediately citing “concrete evidence of an expected terrorist attempt to kidnap Israelis in Sinai.”

The statement from the Israeli prime minister’s anti-terror office took the unusual step of calling on families of Israelis visiting the Sinai to establish contact with them.

The commander of the anti-terror office, Brig. Gen. Nitzan Uriel, acknowledged that there had been rumors that Israelis have been kidnapped in Sinai. “We don’t work according to rumors,” he the Israel TV. “We work according to firm intelligence.” He said it would “take some time” to disprove the rumors, which circulated all day Tuesday.

Uriel told another TV station that about 1,200 Israelis are in Sinai now.

While tens of thousands of Israelis routinely vacation in the Sinai over the Passover holiday, most return after the weeklong festival, which ended a week ago.

In unusually strong wording, the Israeli anti-terror office called “on all Israelis residing in Sinai to leave immediately and return home. Families of Israelis residing in Sinai are asked to contact them and update them on the travel warning.”

Israel’s anti-terror office has a standing travel advisory telling Israelis to stay out of the Sinai desert because of the threat of terror attacks. However, many Israelis routinely ignore the warning and vacation in the desert and along its Red Sea coast.

In 2004, suicide bombers attacked Egypt’s Taba Hilton Hotel, just across the Israeli border, and several campsites where Israelis are known to vacation. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds wounded.

Israel controlled the Sinai from its capture in the 1967 war until returning it to Egypt in 1982 in the framework of a peace treaty between the two nations. The desert is just across the border, and many Israelis flock to the inexpensive seaside resorts nestled at the foot of stark desert mountains.

The Sinai Peninsula’s campsites and resorts along the Red Sea coast are all within driving distance of Israel.

The Sinai has been the scene of number of terrorist attacks, including bombings in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in 2005 and Dahab in 2006, which killed dozens. Disgruntled Bedouin influenced by extremist groups were implicated in the attacks.

___

Additional reporting by Ashraf Sweilam in Rafah, Egypt.

Ed Koch: A Dangerous Silence

A Dangerous Silence

April 12, 2010 | Ed Koch

I weep as I witness outrageous verbal attacks on Israel. What makes these verbal assaults and distortions all the more painful is that they are being orchestrated by President Obama.

For me, the situation today recalls what occurred in 70 AD when the Roman emperor Vespasian launched a military campaign against the Jewish nation and its ancient capital of Jerusalem. Ultimately, Masada, a rock plateau in the Judean desert became the last refuge of the Jewish people against the Roman onslaught. I have been to Jerusalem and Masada. From the top of Masada, you can still see the remains of the Roman fortifications and garrisons, and the stones and earth of the Roman siege ramp that was used to reach Masada. The Jews of Masada committed suicide rather than let themselves be taken captive by the Romans.

In Rome itself, I have seen the Arch of Titus with the sculpture showing enslaved Jews and the treasures of the Jewish Temple of Solomon with the Menorah, the symbol of the Jewish state, being carted away as booty during the sacking of Jerusalem.

Oh, you may say, that is a far fetched analogy. Please hear me out.

The most recent sacking of the old city of Jerusalem – its Jewish quarter – took place under the Jordanians in 1948 in the first war between the Jews and the Arabs, with at least five Muslim states – Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq – seeking to destroy the Jewish state. At that time, Jordan conquered East Jerusalem and the West Bank and expelled every Jew living in the Jewish quarter of the old city, destroying every building, including the synagogues in the old quarter and expelling from every part of Judea and Samaria every Jew living there so that for the first time in thousands of years, the old walled city of Jerusalem and the adjacent West Bank were “Judenrein” — a term used by the Nazis to indicate the forced removal or murder of all Jews..

Jews had lived for centuries in Hebron, the city where Abraham, the first Jew, pitched his tent and where he now lies buried, it is believed, in a tomb with his wife, Sarah, as well as other ancient Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs. I have visited that tomb and at the time asked an Israeli soldier guarding it – so that it was open to all pilgrims, Christians, Muslims and Jews — “where is the seventh step leading to the tomb of Abraham and Sarah,” which was the furthest entry for Jews when the Muslims were the authority controlling the holy place? He replied, “When we retook and reunited the whole city of Jerusalem and conquered the West Bank in 1967, we removed the steps, so now everyone can enter,” whereas when Muslims were in charge of the tomb, no Jew could enter it. And I did.

I am not a religious person. I am comfortable in a synagogue, but generally attend only twice a year, on the high holidays. When I entered the tomb of Abraham and Sarah, as I recall, I felt connected with my past and the traditions of my people. One is a Jew first by birth and then by religion. Those who leave their religion, remain Jews forever by virtue of their birth. If they don’t think so, let them ask their neighbors, who will remind them. I recall the words of the columnist Robert Novak, who was for most of his life hostile to the Jewish state of Israel in an interview with a reporter stating that while he had converted to Catholicism, he was still a cultural Jew. I remain with pride a Jew both by religion and culture.

My support for the Jewish state has been long and steadfast. Never have I thought that I would leave the U.S. to go and live in Israel. My loyalty and love is first to the U.S. which has given me, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, so much. But, I have also long been cognizant of the fact that every night when I went to sleep in peace and safety, there were Jewish communities around the world in danger. And there was one country, Israel, that would give them sanctuary and would send its soldiers to fight for them and deliver them from evil, as Israel did at Entebbe in 1976.

I weep today because my president, Barack Obama, in a few weeks has changed the relationship between the U.S. and Israel from that of closest of allies to one in which there is an absence of trust on both sides. The contrast between how the president and his administration deals with Israel and how it has decided to deal with the Karzai administration in Afghanistan is striking.

The Karzai administration, which operates a corrupt and opium-producing state, refuses to change its corrupt ways – the president’s own brother is believed by many to run the drug traffic taking place in Afghanistan – and shows the utmost contempt for the U.S. is being hailed by the Obama administration as an ally and publicly treated with dignity. Karzai recently even threatened to join the Taliban if we don’t stop making demands on him. Nevertheless, Karzai is receiving a gracious thank-you letter from President Obama. The New York Times of April 10th reported, “…that Mr. Obama had sent Mr. Karzai a thank-you note expressing gratitude to the Afghan leader for dinner in Kabul. 選t was a respectful letter,’ General Jones said.”

On the other hand, our closest ally – the one with the special relationship with the U.S., has been demeaned and slandered, held responsible by the administration for our problems in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. The plan I suspect is to so weaken the resolve of the Jewish state and its leaders that it will be much easier to impose on Israel an American plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, leaving Israel’s needs for security and defensible borders in the lurch.

I believe President Obama’s policy is to create a whole new relationship with the Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, and Iraq as a counter to Iran – The Tyrannosaurus Rex of the Muslim world which we are now prepared to see in possession of a nuclear weapon. If throwing Israel under the bus is needed to accomplish this alliance, so be it.

I am shocked by the lack of outrage on the part of Israel’s most ardent supporters. The members of AIPAC, the chief pro-Israel lobbying organization in Washington, gave Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a standing ovation after she had carried out the instructions of President Obama and, in a 43-minute telephone call, angrily hectored Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Members of Congress in both the House and Senate have made pitifully weak statements against Obama’s mistreatment of Israel, if they made any at all. The Democratic members, in particular, are weak. They are simply afraid to criticize President Obama.

What bothers me most of all is the shameful silence and lack of action by community leaders – Jew and Christian. Where are they? If this were a civil rights matter, the Jews would be in the mall in Washington protesting with and on behalf of our fellow American citizens. I asked one prominent Jewish leader why no one is preparing a march on Washington similar to the one in 1963 at which I was present and Martin Luther King’s memorable speech was given? His reply was “Fifty people might come.” Remember the 1930s? Few stood up. They were silent. Remember the most insightful statement of one of our greatest teachers, Rabbi Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

We have indeed stood up for everyone else. When will we stand up for our brothers and sisters living in the Jewish state of Israel?

If Obama is seeking to build a siege ramp around Israel, the Jews of modern Israel will not commit suicide. They are willing to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinians, but they will not allow themselves to be bullied into following self-destructive policies.

To those who call me an alarmist, I reply that I’ll be happy to apologize if I am proven wrong. But those who stand silently by and watch the Obama administration abandon Israel, to whom will they apologize?

When Israel Stood Up to Washington

by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
April 6, 2010

http://www.danielpipes.org/8196/israel-stood-up-to-washington

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As U.S.-Israel tensions climb to unfamiliar heights, they recall a prior round of tensions nearly thirty years ago, when Menachem Begin and Ronald Reagan were in charge. In contrast to Binyamin Netanyahu’s repeated apologies, Begin adopted a quite different approach.

The sequence of events started with a statement from Syrian dictator Hafiz al-Asad that he would not make peace with Israel “even in a hundred years,” Begin responded by making the Golan Heights part of Israel, terminating the military administration that had been governing that territory from the time Israeli forces seized it from Syria in 1967. Legislation to this effect easily passed Israel’s parliament on Dec. 14, 1981.

Menachem Begin with Samuel Lewis on a friendlier occasion in May 1977.

This move came, however, just two weeks after the signing of a U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation Agreement, prompting much irritation in Washington. At the initiative of Secretary of State Alexander Haig, the U.S. government suspended that just-signed agreement. One day later, on Dec. 20, Begin summoned Samuel Lewis, the U.S. ambassador in Tel Aviv, for a dressing-down.Yehuda Avner, a former aide to Begin, provides atmospherics and commentary on this episode at “When Washington bridled and Begin fumed.” As he retells it, “The prime minister invited Lewis to take a seat, stiffened, sat up, reached for the stack of papers on the table by his side, put them on his lap and [adopted] a face like stone and a voice like steel.” Begin began with “a thunderous recitation of the perfidies perpetrated by Syria over the decades.” He ended with what he called “a very personal and urgent message” to President Reagan (available at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website).

“Three times during the past six months, the U.S. Government has ‘punished’ Israel,” Begin began. He enumerated those three occasions: the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor, the bombing of the PLO headquarters in Beirut, and now the Golan Heights law. Throughout this exposition, according to Avner, Lewis interjected but without success: “Not punishing you, Mr. Prime Minister, merely suspending …,” “Excuse me, Mr. Prime Minister, it was not …,” “Mr. Prime Minister, I must correct you …,” and “This is not a punishment, Mr. Prime Minister, it’s merely a suspension until …”

Fully to vent his anger, Begin drew on a century of Zionism:

What kind of expression is this – “punishing Israel”? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we youths of fourteen who, if they don’t behave properly, are slapped across the fingers? Let me tell you who this government is composed of. It is composed of people whose lives were spent in resistance, in fighting and in suffering. You will not frighten us with “punishments.” He who threatens us will find us deaf to his threats. We are only prepared to listen to rational arguments. You have no right to “punish” Israel – and I protest at the very use of this term.

In his most stinging attack on the United States, Begin challenged American moralizing about civilian casualties during the Israeli attack on Beirut:

You have no moral right to preach to us about civilian casualties. We have read the history of World War II and we know what happened to civilians when you took action against an enemy. We have also read the history of the Vietnam war and your phrase “body-count.”

Referring to the U.S. decision to suspend the recently signed agreement, Begin announced that “The people of Israel has lived 3,700 years without a memorandum of understanding with America – and it will continue to live for another 3,700.” On a more mundane level, he cited Haig having stated on Reagan’s behalf that the U.S. government would purchase $200 million worth of Israeli arms and other equipment “Now you say it will not be so. This is therefore a violation of the President’s word. Is it customary? Is it proper?”

Recalling the recent fight in the U.S. Senate over the decision to sell AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia, Begin noted that it “was accompanied by an ugly campaign of anti-Semitism.” By way of illustration, he mentioned three specifics: the slogans “Begin or Reagan?” and “We should not let the Jews determine the foreign policy of the United States,” plus aspersions that senators like Henry Jackson, Edward Kennedy, Robert Packwood, and Rudy Boschwitz “are not loyal citizens.”

Responding to demands that the Golan Heights law be rescinded, Begin sourced the very concept of rescission to “the days of the Inquisition” and reminded Lewis that

Our forefathers went to the stake rather than “rescind” their faith. We are not going to the stake. Thank God. We have enough strength to defend our independence and to defend our rights. … please be kind enough to inform the secretary of state that the Golan Heights Law will remain valid. There is no force on earth that can bring about its rescission.

 

Menachem Begin consulting with Yehuda Levy.

The session ended without Lewis responding. As Avner recounts, “Faced with this unyielding barrage, which to the ambassador seemed somewhat hyperbolic and, in part, even paranoid, he saw no point in carrying on, so he took his leave.”Comments: (1) Late 1981 marked the nadir of U.S.-Israel relations during the Reagan administration. In particular, strategic cooperation made headway in subsequent years.

(2) The ministry website calls Begin’s blast “an unprecedented move”; to which I add, it was not just unprecedented but also unrepeated.

(3) Begin’s sense of destiny, combined with his oratorical grandeur impelled him to respond to current policy differences by invoking 3,700 years of Jewish history, the Inquisition, the Vietnam War, and American antisemitism. In the process, he changed the terms of the argument.

(4) Notwithstanding intense American aggravation with Begin, his blistering attack improved Israeli pride and standing.

(5) Politicians in other countries quite frequently attack the United States. Indeed, Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, did so last week. But his purpose – to convince his countrymen that he is not, in fact, a kept politician – differed fundamentally from Begin’s of asserting Israel’s dignity.

(6) It is difficult to imagine any other Israeli politician, Binyamin Netanyahu included, who would dare to pull off Begin’s verbal assault.

(7) Yet that might be just what Israel needs.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.