Israel, Jews, and Judaism

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Settlements are not illegal

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:00:00 +0000

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Settlements are not illegal

BY DAVID SUISSA

If you think the West Bank settlements have been an albatross around Israel’s neck up until now, brace yourself. With the new governing coalition announced this week, and the settlers enjoying even more power, all bets are off.

As Barak Ravid writes in Haaretz about Israel’s new government, "it seems that most of the key positions will be filled by settlers and their supporters."

Since “Jewish settlements” are two of the most hated words in international diplomacy, we can expect that, peace process or no peace process, the pressure on Israel to stop its settlement activity will only get worse.

This pressure will be fueled by the global campaign to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state, commonly known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

What should Israel do in response to this pressure?

If it were up to me, I’d call a good lawyer.

That’s right, not a PR genius or a brilliant policy analyst, but a lawyer.

The most severe charge against Israel is a legal one. Let’s face it: The whole movement to delegitimize the Jewish state is based on this one accusation that the occupation of the West Bank is an illegal enterprise.

Much of the world has bought into the Palestinian narrative that Israel stole their land and needs to give it back.

It’s fine for Israel to keep repeating “we want peace” and “we’re ready to negotiate,” but if people think you’re a thief living on stolen land, it doesn’t have quite the same impact.

That’s why, even though one can argue that the Palestinians deserve most of the blame for the failure of the peace process, it is Israel that gets the blame.

Outlaws rarely get the benefit of the doubt.

A good lawyer would look at this mess and tell Israel: Until you can make a compelling case that you’re not an “illegal occupier,” nothing good will happen. Even friendly acts like freezing settlement construction will only reinforce the perception of your guilt.

As it turns out, and to the shock of many, a commission led last year by the respected former Israeli Supreme Court justice Edmund Levy did, in fact, conclude that “Israeli settlements are legal under international law.” (You can Google it. It’s pretty convincing.).

“The oft-used term ‘occupied Palestinian territories’ has no basis whatsoever in law or fact,” Alan Baker, director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a member of Levy’s commission, wrote recently in USA Today.

“The territories are neither occupied nor are they Palestinian. No legal determination has ever been made as to their sovereignty, and by agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, they are no more than ‘disputed’ pending a negotiated solution, with both sides claiming rights to the territory.”

Baker adds that Israel has “solid legal rights” to the territory, including “the rights granted to the Jewish people by the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1923 San Remo Declaration, the League of Nations Mandate instrument and the United Nations Charter,” and that the Oslo agreements “contain no prohibition whatsoever on building settlements in those parts of the territory agreed upon as remaining under Israel's control.”

The reason this point of view is so shocking to many is that it’s hard to separate one’s emotion from the law. In other words, you can love or hate the settlements on moral or strategic grounds, but that doesn’t make them illegal. “Disputed” is light years away from “illegal.”

What’s truly illegal and immoral, if you ask me, is how Israel’s enemies have exploited the dispute to try to delegitimize Israel as a criminal state worthy of the most extreme boycotts and condemnations.

So, given all this, why did the Israeli government not take advantage of the Levy report to push back and defend its honor? My guess is that they felt it would be too controversial and would only complicate things.

After all, since Israel has already shown a willingness to offer up land for peace, why make a big fuss over having a legal right to that land?

Well, for one thing, because you can’t make a deal if you’re seen as a thief who has stolen property. The other side has no reason to negotiate-- all they want is for you to return their stolen property. Your concessions have no value.

But if you assert your legal right to the land, you give your concessions real value and give the other side an incentive to negotiate.

Beyond the dynamics of the peace process, Israel’s failure to champion its legal rights has allowed dangerous movements like BDS to continue to wreak havoc. BDS is an anti-Israel runaway train. It sponsors hundreds of Israel Apartheid Week events around the globe. Its mission is not to seek peace but to isolate Israel as a criminal state, and its major piece of evidence is the “illegal occupation."

No amount of clever PR can rebut that evidence.

Israel’s best hope is to fight back by making a compelling legal case in international courts, while unleashing a global diplomatic offensive around this clear and simple message:

“According to international law, Israel has a legal right to settle in the West Bank. After 45 years, Israeli settlements account for less than 2% of the territories. Our willingness to dismantle settlements and give up precious land for a hope of peace-- which we’ve demonstrated in the past-- is not an endorsement of the spurious accusation that settlements are illegal. It’s a statement of how much we value peace."

“What is illegal, immoral and unacceptable is the attempt to use this dispute to delegitimize the Jewish state.”

This message is sure to trigger a few heart attacks at the United Nations, but the fact that it goes against the conventional wisdom is precisely why the legal case must be made. Silence in the face of accusation only conveys guilt and nourishes the forces that are out to delegitimize the Jewish state.

For far too long, while being hypnotized by the peace process, Israel has let its enemies portray its presence on the West Bank as a criminal act. This unchallenged narrative has not only undermined the peace process, it has damaged Israel’s standing beyond all proportion.

If Israel doesn’t respond directly and soon, its global isolation will only worsen.

You can hate and criticize the settlements all you want and still push back against unfair accusations that they are illegal. One doesn’t preclude the other. Any good lawyer understands that.

Maybe instead of looking towards Madison Avenue to defend itself, Israel’s new government should look towards Century City.

David Suissa is president of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal and can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/david_suissa/article/this_just_in_settlements_are_legal

The zero-sum game and Arab mentality

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

The zero-sum game and Arab mentality

In the wake of the 2006 Lebanon war, with hundreds of dead Lebanese civilians and a destroyed infrastructure, a Gulf News analyst - and professor of political science at UAE University - wrote:
The controversial discussion about the quality and significance of the victory and the size of destruction caused by the war is legitimate and healthy. But, despite the massive destruction in Lebanon, the Arabs seem to be better off after the war.

Logically, when Israel is in a worse condition, which is the case now, Arabs are definitely better off.

Although Israel was not routed in the battle, it surely seems defeated and frustrated. It is also living in a state of doubt and comprehensive review of its military and political performance during the war.

The equation of victory and defeat between the Arabs and the Zionist state has always been and will remain zero equation. This means that when Israel is defeated, Arabs have the right to celebrate victory.

Hatred of Israel can be found in the genes of all Arabs. Although it is hereditary, its intensity varies from time to time. All facts on the ground indicate that the Arab rejection of the Zionist entity reached its peak after the aggression.

The unification of Arabs in their deep enmity against Israel is a positive matter.
This is not some crazy member of the "Arab street". This is someone who has a respected job as an intellectual, who is saying that anything that is bad for Israel is, by definition, good for the Arabs. The Arab world, and a large number of its supporters, look at the Middle East as a zero-sum game where when one side wins, the other loses.

History shows that this is not an isolated opinion; in fact, it is still mainstream Arab opinion. Even as pragmatic and moderate a leader as Jordan's King Abdullah reveals that he still looks at the conflict the same way, that what is good for Israel is bad for the Arab world, although Abdullah is much more nuanced.

Westerners must understand this mindset. We grow up with the idea ingrained in us that the best solutions to problems are "win-win", where each side can gain or at least compromise in ways where their losses are minimized. This is so obvious to most Westerners that we cannot conceive of a mentality that is exactly the opposite - that if I win, you must lose, and vice versa.

The writings of the early Zionists show that rather than trying to hurt the surrounding Arab communities, Zionism intended to enrich them with a growing economy and modernization. When Israel won the Six Day War, it immediately set out to build a new infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank for the Arabs - electricity, hospitals, clean water. The Palestinian Arab mortality rates plummeted and their life expectancy soared under Israeli rule. From the outset, Zionism was meant to be a "win-win," not zero-sum.

On the other hand, the zero-sum mentality is heavily tied to the genetic hatred of Israel that was mentioned by the professor above that is endemic among the Arabs. It goes to the root of the divide between the two cultures. Zero-sum implies hatred and eternal conflict, "win-win" implies pragmatism and peace.

At the outset of Operation Cast Lead, Israeli President Shimon Peres asked an extremely good question:
Still I have not heard until now a single person who could explain to us reasonably: why are they firing rockets against Israel? What are the reasons? What is the purpose?
Everyone who has answered that question in the explosion of anti-Zionist articles that have been written recently uses a variant of this zero-sum answer. Rockets hurt Israel, therefore it is obvious that they must be good for Arabs. Hurting Israel is a worthy goal in and of itself, independent of any consequences. From their perspective, Israel's pain equals Arab gain.

This twisted mentality is most prominent in Hamas' actions now. Hamas has stated that Israel's killing of civilians is evidence of Israel's failure in battle. In other words, Hamas considers the death of Palestinian Arabs to be a victory! There is a complete disconnect between the major goal - Israel's pain - and any desire to defend Gazans.

For Westerners, it is self-evident that the purpose of a military is to defend one's citizens. When your own population is being killed, your military has failed.

Hamas' purpose, though, is not to defend Palestinian Arabs - it is to destroy Israel. This necessarily means that they want to inflict pain on the enemy by any means possible. Their own people are not to be defended: on the contrary, they are to be used for this ultimate goal. Dead civilians are just another weapon to "win."

Moderate Arab rulers have been able to at least understand the pragmatism of the West; they know that any open conflict with Israel will cause them to lose their own positions. But as we saw with King Abdullah, the Arab mentality of seeing Israel not as a partner but as an enemy is still ingrained in the collective Arab psyche. For the "moderates," the zero sum game is still very real, but it is played diplomatically, rather than militarily.

While Israel would be thrilled to send its experts throughout the Arab world to help with agriculture, desalination, solar energy or medicine, to increase two-way trade with the Arabs, the Arab world remains leery of anything that makes Israelis happy - even if it helps the Arabs. From the beginning, Israel has wanted "normalization" to be part of any peace agreements precisely because Israel thinks in terms of win-win - but the Arabs just cannot wrap their heads around this concept.

To the Arab world, if Israel wins, the Arabs must be losing. And as long as they have this mentality, there can be no real peace.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2009/01/zero-sum-game-and-arab-mentality.html

The 'Closed Circle' of the Arab

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:00:00 +0000

The 'Closed Circle' of the Arab

By Glenn Fairman

Viewed through the prism of the West, which draws its sustenance from the twin fountains of Athens and Jerusalem, the character and plight of Arab existence has been viewed as romantic, tragic, and uniquely foreign to our sensibilities. The fact that its spirit is wholly antithetical to ours has been a point of contention between advocates of multiculturalism and those jealous of the West's rich patrimony.

That the Arabs are a civilization deeply stratified along lines of family, clan, and tribe is a fundamental observation. If, however, one overlays the Arab's psychological predisposition to the "power/challenge," money-favoring, careerist, and "shame/honor" dynamics of culture, we in the West cannot hope for any genuine alliances based upon anything more solid than contingencies of transitory mutual advantage. Moreover, the liberal West must come finally to the stark realization that the Arab world is a zone where democracy and human rights, as we view them, cannot flourish, because such a Western abstraction cannot set its tendrils down in the flinty earth of unenlightened self-interest. In the realm of the Middle East, politics and prestige are as they have always been -- the currency of a zero-sum game.

In the late 1980s, David Pryce-Jones authored a book entitled The Closed Circle, in which he interpreted the psychic rudiments of the Arab weltanschauung -- and unless one understands this mentality on its own terms, the Occidental mind will never gain traction either in negotiations or in bridging the gulf between civilizations -- to the West's own peril. Although it was written several decades ago, no other book has ever offered a convincing understanding of the Arab's rationale in decision-making and conduct. Without understanding the dynamic of the Arabic "power/challenge" struggle, their entire culture appears to the West to be one of madness instead of intense and never-ending calculation for superiority and honor at the expense of anything that even approaches what the West views as political stability, human rights, and moral virtue.

In the light of such cultural dynamics, we err gravely when we rely upon projecting the suppositions of Western values into the cauldron of the Middle East. As a case in point, the Western powers have naively sought to reduce the Palestinian question to one of real estate and the contractual exigency of a settlement where give-and-take is an implicit axiom. However, undergirding the prospects of such an agreement are the complications of the "shame/honor" dialectic and the Islamic tenet that once a land has been claimed for Allah, it belongs in perpetuity to the faith. Therein, the struggle between Arab and Jew is fraught with the contagion of shame and the resulting loss of honor at having been bested by the loathsome Jew. If one throws into the mix the military humiliations of the last century at the hands of Israel and the Western Powers, it becomes readily apparent that the Arab psyche that glorifies domination and revenge cannot countenance such a transaction, especially now that the Star of Islam is ascending on the world's stage.

The Arab world and its Islamic worldview have proven inconsistent with the tenets of modernity and free intellectual exchange because of the former's inability to both wield and relinquish power and to brook dissent. Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the close of WWl and the creation of the Middle Eastern nations out of whole cloth, the orderly transfer of power in Arab States is practically a null set. Instead, we see the ancient motifs of "power challenging" occurring again and again -- actuated through conspiracy and temporary coalitions that are usually stratified along tribal loyalties. No sooner, however, than one dog reaches the top of the heap does a new round of murmuring arise through those participants who feel that they are being shortchanged or disrespected through the money-favoring nexus -- proving true the old adage quoted in a recent column that "an Arab cannot be bought, only rented."

Without institutional mores set in place in which power devolves peacefully and without rancor, ruthless violence has been the only means by which power is maintained or usurped in the Arab world. Despite the window dressing of political rhetoric that promises freedom and change following the downfall of a corrupt regime, no amount of ideological overlay ever changes the deep-set cultural barbarism in which only the names change at the top while the losers are purged and the weak brutally fleeced.

For the suffering millions who have endured life under Islamic theocracy or Pan-Arabic Socialism, the song has ever remained the same. The West, and in particular the American administrations of the past century, have been played like proverbial fiddles because in failing to understand the Arab consciousness and its animating interests, they believe, like all good liberals believe, that all cultures and moralities are commensurate and therefore rational and receptive to calculations of long term expedience. By not heeding the "power/challenge dialectic," we fail to understand what motivates the manifest treachery and butchery in the Middle Eastern arc -- either from paranoid dictators or in the rising host of new tyrannical carnivores who wait in the wings in hopes of one day being given the opportunity to strike and therein wield the reins of unmixed power.

By ignoring the "shame/honor" duality, we fail to grasp the subterranean darkness that motivates the honor-killings of daughters or apostates who "blacken the face" of the Arab family. In this perverse milieu, the shedding of "guilty" blood is the only manner in which a face can again "be whitened." As a tribute to the cultural gulf that separates our sensibilities, it is incomprehensible to us that this barbaric filial vengeance is not only deemed justice, but indeed morally laudable in the twisted logic of the Arab's exaggerated sense of pride.

The great schizophrenia of the Arab mind must wrestle with two mutually exclusive thoughts: that Arabs are the most blessed of the earth while in fact being the most wretched. Unable to reconcile these twin polarities and in turn incapable of the self-reflection necessary for a civilization's enlightened Reformation to occur, a host of scapegoats are necessary in the form of Jews, infidels, and imperialists who are persistently denying the chosen people their proper station. Until this transformation occurs, the remedy for the Arab soul will be "more Islam" and an unending return to filial bloodshed, intrigue, and unrelenting tyranny both between man and woman and between regime and subject. Having proved the biblical adage that "the dog returns to its own vomit," the closed circle of the Arab heart retains a sickness that is never cured and a lesson that is forever unlearned.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/01/the_closed_circle_of_the_arab.html

The Arab Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:00:00 +0000

The Arab Mind

John LeBoutillier

Well, it did not take long for the case of the two MIAs to end: They were brutally tortured and then apparently beheaded by the new head of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Perhaps this is their (demented) view of payback for our killing al-Zarqawi two weeks ago. Whatever it is, it further illustrates the brutality of the militant Muslim enemy that we face across the world. And it needs to be made clear that while most Muslims do not behave this way - indeed the overwhelming majority do not - that majority for whatever reason also does not condemn it.

However, the Iraqi government - elected thanks to the courage and sacrifice of our soldiers and taxpayers - seems incapable or unwilling to crack down on these militants.

In fact, many of these murderers are actually members of the Iraqi Army by day, and then at night maraud as Muslim militia members sometimes even killing their own fellow Army troops!

Today's abduction and murder of one of Saddam's lawyers is a case in point: He was abducted from his house by Iraqis wearing police uniforms - and then hours later he was found shot to death and dumped on the street in the Shi'a part of Baghdad.

This is a daily occurrence in Iraq. These militants play both sides of the game - and can't be trusted.

Now, as to our ultimate game plan in Iraq:

What is victory?

In the ideal sense, it is for the elected government to settle things down and establish that indeed democracy can work in an Arab country. The argument goes that in this case, the other neighboring Arab nations would see this, thirst for it and freedom and democracy would grow.

A noble goal indeed.

This depends on Arabs controlling Arabs, however. It requires Shi'a and Sunni to live peacefully together.

So far this is simply not happening.

And we haven't even mentioned the presence of al-Qaida helping to fuel the flames. We make a mistake to believe most of the violence in Iraq comes from al-Qaida; it doesn't. It is homegrown sectarian violence in the form of payback for Sunni brutality over the Shi'a majority under Ba'ath Party rule.

All of this has turned Iraq into a mess.

Yes, a majority of Iraqis were happy to get rid of the brutal Saddam and then to vote in three national elections.

But we have to remember something: They are devout Muslims who do not want Christian and Jewish American troops on their soil for any longer than necessary.

The problem is when do we begin to leave? G.W. Bush says that will be up to "the next president." Thus, we are staying - in some form - through 2008 anyway.

Do we really believe that Iraq will settle down? That Sunni and Shi'a will peacefully coexist? That Iran won't continue to fan the flames of this insurgency if only to gain a stronger foothold in Baghdad?

I believe the Arabs have proven themselves to be incapable of democracy and freedom and dissent and all that goes with it. Plus, other than oil, what have they produced for the world? Anything? Any scientific or creative advances? And progress for their own people?

No.

What we need to do is simple: Stop buying their oil and stop thinking we can change their mentality. They take those dollars and fund terrorists and enrich a few at the upper level - and treat the masses like dirt. Then they allow these poor souls to believe in this insane concept of martyrdom and violence against westerners.

The Arab mentality is the problem here - and we can't change it, as much as we would like to.

The sooner we realize our limitations, the better off we will all be.

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/6/21/100826.shtml

The Big (Arab) Lie

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:00:00 +0000

The Big (Arab) Lie

There is an anecdote about an Israeli driver who accidentally hits a sheep belonging to an Arab. The driver gets out and offers to pay for the sheep. The Arab refuses. The driver offers to pay for five sheep, for ten sheep. The Arab still refuses. “What do you want?” the frustrated driver asks. “I want that sheep,” the Arab says, pointing to the dead sheep. That is the Nakba in a nutshell. The Arabs don’t want to negotiate an agreement like adults. They want the dead sheep that represents their dreams of a united Arab empire ruling over the region. And the wars will go on until they finally learn that they can’t have it back.

via Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield.

I lived once in Kiryat Arba, before the intifada (first and second). I would actually walk alone down into the heart of Hebron toi catch an Arab Shirut to Jerusalem twice a week to attend a course I took there – there weren’t any buses from Kiryat Araba to Jerusalem in those mid-morning hours.

As my twice weekly journeys were pretty consistent, it occurred that I rode with a certain Ahmed who also started his daily Hebron-El Quds route around the same hours. Often as not I sat beside him and over the weeks and months we opened our own private Arab-Israeli dialog, each trying to understand the other better, hopefully with the hope of closing the wide gap that separated us.

It was during one of those trips, in response to some unfathomable remark made by an Arab politician of the time, that I asked my mentor on all things Arab, how could a man who did exactly the opposite in public, at the same time publicly declare he was against what he did? After a few minutes of quiet Ahmed answered me.

“Do you want to hear a story every Arab mother tells her children?”

Appreciating that this was to be one of those indirect answers to difficult questions I readily assented.

Acmed then shared the following story:
Mustafa wanted to get out of the late morning sun and take a nap before be returned to his labours in the early afternoon. To this end he sought a quiet out-of-the-way corner in the back of his home where a hammock beckoned him. No sooner had he climbed in and settled down but a small group of noisy children ran screaming into the yard playing some Middle Eastern form of Cowboys and Indians. When after a couple of minutes Mustafa saw that they were not about to leave, he yelled at them to be quiet and play somewhere else. Not particularly in awe of him, the children continued in their noisy activity. Finally, Mustafa realized that if authority wouldn’t work, he would have to use guile.

“What are you doing here?” Mustafa asked the boys.

When they answered uncomprehendingly that it was plain to all concerned what they were doing, Mustafa continued.

“Why aren’t you down at the marketplace?”

Normally the marketplace was not a welcoming environ for noisy boys. Vendors do not appreciate wild children running between their carts and annoying their customers. “Why should we be at the shuk?” was all the boys could muster as a reply.

“Haven’t you heard!” Exclaimed Mustafa, in as convincing a display of incredulity as he was capable. “Abbu Bechar is giving away dates for free!”

After a moment’s hesitation, the boys decided, despite their suspicions of being played, that it was worth the effort of going down to marketplace on the off-chance Abur Bechar really had lost his mind and was giving away his merchandise free.

Ahmed went back to his driving, satisfied that he had somehow answered my question. Similar stories and experiences have convinced me of one simple fact, reality for an Arab has much less to do with the objective facts and far more to do with whichever lie will best bolster their self-image and make them feel good about themselves. Like Ahmed they are more often than not going to give up the creäture comforts they crave to chase after an imaginary benefit they themselves dreamed up out of fantasy.

What is important to all of those who will now attack me for slandering the Arab and mocking the Arab “mentality”. This is not my story nor my answer but Ahmed’s! An Arab born and raised in Hebron who learned these stories with his mother’s milk and this was his way of trying to help me understand the illogical nature of Arab life.

http://yoel.ben-avraham.info/letters/the-big-arab-lie/

A Jewish state can be democratic and moral

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 02:00:00 +0000

A Jewish state can be democratic and moral

Joseph Levine is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and he has published an essay in (where else?) the New York Times, in which he argues that the proposition ‘Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state’ is false.

There are many things in the article to complain about, but I am going to content myself with pointing out the single massive howler by which his argument collapses.

He makes the distinction between “a people in the ethnic sense” and in the “civic sense,” which means either residents of a geographical area or citizens of a state. He generously grants that there is a Jewish people in the ethnic sense who live in Israel, but only an ‘Israeli people’, which includes Arabs, in the civic sense. Then he tells us,

…insofar as the principle that all peoples have the right to self-determination entails the right to a state of their own, it can apply to peoples only in the civic sense…

But if the people who “own” the state in question are an ethnic sub-group of the citizenry, even if the vast majority, it constitutes a serious problem indeed, and this is precisely the situation of Israel as the Jewish state. Far from being a natural expression of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, it is in fact a violation of the right to self-determination of its non-Jewish (mainly Palestinian) citizens. It is a violation of a people’s right to self-determination to exclude them — whether by virtue of their ethnic membership, or for any other reason — from full political participation in the state under whose sovereignty they fall…

Any state that “belongs” to one ethnic group within it violates the core democratic principle of equality, and the self-determination rights of the non-members of that group. [my emphasis]

His exposition is much more lengthy and you should read it. But I think I have extracted the gist of it.

Interestingly, while he explains what he means by ‘a people’ and draws a distinction between two senses of the expression, he does not even hint about his understanding of the concept of ‘democracy’ and especially “the core democratic principle of equality,” the violation of which he believes disqualifies Israel from continued existence as a Jewish state.

Levine explains how Israel violates these principles:

The distinctive position of [a favored ethnic people] would be manifested in a number of ways, from the largely symbolic to the more substantive: for example, it would be reflected in the name of the state, the nature of its flag and other symbols, its national holidays, its education system, its immigration rules, the extent to which membership in the people in question is a factor in official planning, how resources are distributed, etc.

Actually, concerning the “more substantive” things, Arab citizens of Israel are doing quite well: they have the right to vote, to hold political office, and a large degree of control of their educational system; there are rules against discrimination in housing and employment (with exceptions related to national security), etc. In other words, they have full civil rights.

Naturally there are differences in the treatment of Jews and Arabs. Some are due to cultural differences — Arab towns are governed by Arabs and distribute resources differently — some are related to security, and some to anti-Arab prejudice. But the degree of prejudice in Israeli society is not particularly great compared to other advanced nations like the US, and nobody is suggesting that the US does not have a “right to exist” unless all discrimination can be eliminated.

In any event, discrimination in what he calls “substantive” ways are not essential to the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, and there is a general consensus that such discrimination is wrong and should be eliminated.

Israel’s immigration rules are certainly unequal. But immigration rules by definition do not apply to citizens; and few — if any — of the world’s nations permit free immigration.

Levine also does not consider security issues at all. If Israel ignored them it would cease to exist without philosophical arguments. This would be bad both for the Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel (just ask any of them if they would prefer to be citizens of Israeli or the Palestinian Authority).

Levine is quite correct, though, that symbolic items like the name of the state, the flag, and the national anthem belong to only one group of citizens. But are these included in the “core democratic principle of equality?” Why should they be?

After all, many states with ethnic or religious symbolism associated with them have been called ‘democratic’ since the word was invented by the ancient Greeks (incidentally, most of the residents of Athens, the paradigm of democracy, weren’t even citizens).

I could argue strongly that only civil rights are essential to democracy and that “equality” in many senses is not. And Arab citizens of Israel have civil rights, even if they find the national anthem — which they are not required to sing — offensive.

And here we come to the fallacy in Levine’s argument. Can you say petitio principii? No? Then how about “assuming what you purport to prove?”

Because that is exactly what this Professor of Philosophy has done. He has built the negation of the fundamental idea of an ethnic nation-state — the expression of the beliefs, yearnings and fellow-feeling of an ethnic group in the symbols and moral principles of a state — into his definition of ‘democracy’, and then ‘proves’ that no such state can be democratic, and therefore ought not to exist in that form!

Another way of looking at it is that there is a hidden premise that is not true. In this case, that would be that democracy entails “group political equality” in which every group, whether a majority or minority, has an equal vote on all matters. But the usual idea of democracy is that each individual has a vote, as long as the civil rights of minorities are maintained. This is quite different.

There is another hidden premise, which is that if a state is not completely democratic, it is morally defective. This is also not self-evident; indeed, both Plato and Aristotle thought the opposite.

Many years ago, I had a short career as a college teacher of Philosophy. This is an undergraduate error; Levine should be embarrassed.

***

But now I have further questions for Professor Levine:

Why did you not write an article about whether Saudi Arabia has a right to exist as a Kingdom, or indeed whether any of the kingdoms, dictatorships, Islamic ‘republics’ or other undemocratic entities have a ‘right to exist’ as such?

Why did you not argue that the Kingdom of Jordan should not exist as such, not only because is it an undemocratic monarchy, but because a minority of Bedouins there rule over a majority of other Arabs? This is especially relevant, because Transjordan was created from the territory called ‘Palestine’, precisely to create an Arab state that would be a counterpart to the Jewish National Home that Britain was supposed to nurse into existence in Western Palestine.

Why do you find the relatively mild discrimination against Arab residents of Israel — especially in the context of the security situation — important when so many other Middle Eastern states with ethnic or religious minorities completely disenfranchise, even viciously oppress them (e.g., the Kurds or the Palestinians in Lebanon)?

You will say that this is because the question of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is much-discussed today, and as a philosopher you are equipped to add clarity to the discussion.

But it is discussed today precisely because those who deny it primarily do so not as an academic exercise, but in the context of a desire to end Jewish sovereignty, to establish insecure borders, and to allow the almost 5 million claimants to ‘Palestinian’ nationality (an absurdity if there ever was one) to enter the territory, which would result in the re-dispersal of the Jewish people and quite probably the deaths of many of them. If this isn’t an antisemitic enterprise, I don’t know what is.

So your focus on Israel among states, your hypersensitivity to its perceived (by you) moral defects, your fallacious attempt to lend support to those who would destroy it, is de facto antisemitic, even if some of your best friends (and relatives) are Jews.

The antisemitic shoe fits. Wear it proudly.

http://fresnozionism.org/2013/03/a-jewish-state-can-be-democratic-and-moral/

Learning to Think like an Arab Muslim: a Short Guide to Understanding the Arab Mentality

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Learning to Think like an Arab Muslim: a Short Guide to Understanding the Arab Mentality

By Edward V. Badolato, Executive Vice President for Homeland Security

XXXX Pennsylvania Ave., 9th Fl.
Washington DC 20006
edward.badolato@XXXXX.com
Phone 202.261.XXXX
Fax 202.261.XXXX

Dealing with terrorism, especially Islamic Fundamentalists, requires an intimate knowledge of terrorism, terrorist operations, and especially the key cultural features that makes up the Arab psyche. An understanding and detailed background knowledge of the Arab mentality is critical to performing accurate threat analysis. Understanding Arab culture can provide valuable insights into the changing nature of Post 9-11 terrorism, and how to rank and prioritize potential threats. To outsmart our clever and elusive Islamic terrorist foes, one must first understand what makes him tick. This paper is bases on years of experience in the Middle East, and is dedicated to helping the reader understand the Arab mentality.

INTRODUCTION

The Arabs are a proud and sensitive people whose culture is mainly derived from three key factors: family, language, and religion. No adequate understanding of Arab culture is possible without first examining these three major elements and the pervading impact they have had on their culture. Cultural understanding by Americans of the Arabs is especially important at present because it can provide a basis for our own interactive behavior with them as well as a basis for interpreting their actions.

The Arab's cultural system has proven functionally useful in the Middle East because it provides the Arab with an accepted behavior pattern which dominates daily life. In the Middle East, these accepted behavioral patterns have been developed over centuries through the Arab's social response to various stimuli such as images of human nature, man's dealing with good and evil, idealistic images of correct personal behavior, concepts of political relationships and an Arab's commonly accepted view of the world as basically threatening and harsh. The Arab response to these various stimuli over a period of centuries has produced cultural attitudes which eventually developed into their behavioral characteristics.

To begin to understand the Arabs, one must first understand the major factors influencing Arab culture: family, language and religion. The kinship characteristic includes a set of group dynamics that are built around the family. Their language exerts tremendous influence on their personal interaction and emotional tenor. Their religion, Islam, is an ultimate expression of the idealism of the Arab. Any discussion of Arab culture must also include their dominant cultural concerns, such as continuation of the close knit family. Loss of their Arab identity, the corruption of youth, the incursion of the West, and the issue of Islamic fundamentalism.

The 'Five Pillars' of Islam are the foundation of Muslim life:

1. Faith or belief in the Oneness of God and the finality of the prophet hood of Muhammad;

2. Establishment of the daily prayers;

3. Concern for and almsgiving to the needy;

4. Self-purification through fasting; and

5. The pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.

Imam or Faith

To a Muslim there is none worthy of worship except God and Muhammad is the messenger of God. This declaration of faith is called the shahadah, a simple formula that all the faithful pronounce. The significance of this declaration is the belief that the only purpose of life is to serve and obey God, and this is achieved through the teachings and practices of the Last Prophet, Muhammad.

Salah or Prayer

Salah is the name for the obligatory prayers that are performed five times a day, and are a direct link between the worshipper and God. There is no hierarchical authority in Islam and there are no priests. Prayers are led by a learned person who knows the Qur'an and is generally chosen by the congregation.

Prayers are said at dawn, mid-day, late-afternoon, sunset and nightfall, and thus determine the rhythm of the entire day. These five prescribed prayers contain verses from the Qur'an, and are said in Arabic, the language of the Revelation. Personal supplications, however, can be offered in one's own language and at any time.

Although it is preferable to worship together in a mosque, a Muslim may pray almost anywhere, such as in fields, offices, factories and universities. Oftentimes visitors to the Muslim world are struck by the centrality of prayers in daily life.

A translation of the Adan or Call to Prayer is:

God is Great.

God is Great.

God is Great.

God is Great.

I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God.

I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God.

I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.

I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.

Come to prayer!

Come to prayer!

Come to success!

Come to success!

God is Great!

God is Great!

There is none worthy of worship except God.

Zakah. The financial obligation upon Muslims.

An important principle of Islam is that everything belongs to God, and that wealth is therefore held by human beings in trust. The word zakah means both "purification" and "growth." Our possessions are purified by setting aside a proportion for those in need and for the society in general. Like the pruning of plants, this cutting back balances and encourages new growth.

Each Muslim calculates his or her own zakah individually. This involves the annual payment of a fortieth of one's capital, excluding such items as primary residence, car and professional tools.

An individual may also give as much as he or she pleases as sadaqah, and does so preferably in secret. Although this word can be translated as "voluntary charity" it has a wider meaning.

The Prophet said, "Even meeting your brother with a cheerful face is an act of charity." The Prophet also said: "Charity is a necessity for every Muslim." He was asked: "What if a person has nothing?" The Prophet replied: "He should work with his own hands for his benefit and then give something out of such earnings in charity." The Companions of the Prophet asked: "What if he is not able to work?" The Prophet said: "He should help the poor and needy." The Companions further asked: "What if he cannot do even that?" The Prophet said: "He should urge others to do good." The Companions said: "What if he lacks that also?" The Prophet said: "He should check himself from doing evil. That is also an act of charity."

Sawm or Fasting

Every year in the month of Ramadan, all Muslims fast from dawn until sundown--abstaining from food, drink, and sexual relations with their spouses.

Those who are sick, elderly, or on a journey, and women who are menstruating, pregnant or nursing, are permitted to break the fast and make up an equal number of days later in the year if they are healthy and able. Children begin to fast (and to observe prayers) from puberty, although many start earlier.

Although fasting is beneficial to health, it is mainly a method of self-purification and self-restraint. By cutting oneself from worldly comforts, even for a short time, a fasting person focuses on his or her purpose in life by constantly being aware of the presence of God.

God states in the Qur'an: "O you who believe! Fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed to those before you that you may learn self-restraint." (Qur'an 2:183)

Hajj or Pilgrimage

The pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj) is an obligation only for those who are physically and financially able to do so. Nevertheless, over two million people go to Mecca each year from every corner of the globe providing a unique opportunity for those of different nations to meet one another.

The annual hajj begins in the twelfth month of the Islamic year (which is lunar, not solar, so that hajj and Ramadan fall sometimes in summer, sometimes in winter). Pilgrims wear special clothes: simple garments that strip away distinctions of class and culture, so that all stand equal before God.

The rites of the hajj, which are of Abrahamic origin, include going around the Ka'bah seven times, and going seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa as did Hagar (Hajir, Abraham's wife) during her search for water. The pilgrims later stand together on the wide plains of 'Arafat (a large expanse of desert outside Mecca) and join in prayer for God's forgiveness, in what is often thought as a preview of the Day of Judgment.

The close of the hajj is marked by a festival, the 'Id al Adha, which is celebrated with prayers and the exchange of gifts in Muslim communities everywhere. This and the 'Id al Fitr, a festive day celebrating the end of Ramadan, are two key holidays of the Islamic calendar.

MAJOR FACTORS OF ARAB BEHAVIOR

The Family.

The first major factor overshadowing all other societal demands of an Arab is that of family and kin.

The family is the foundation of Islamic society. The peace and security offered by a stable family unit is greatly valued and seen as essential for the spiritual growth of its members. A harmonious social order is created by the existence of extended families; children are treasured and rarely leave home until the time they marry.

Parents are greatly respected in the Islamic tradition. Mothers are particularly honored: the Qur'an teaches that since mothers suffer during pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing, they deserve a special consideration and kindness.

It is stated in the Qur'an: "And we have enjoined upon man (to be good) to his parents. With difficulty upon difficulty did his mother bear him and wean him for two years. Show gratitude to Me and to your parents; to Me is your final goal." (Qur'an 31:14)

A Muslim marriage is both a sacred act and a legal agreement, in which either partner is free to include legitimate conditions. As a result, divorce, although entirely uncommon, is permitted only as a last resort. Marriage customs vary widely from country to country.

An Arab's concept of the world has occasionally been described as a series of seven concentric circles with the individual Arab at the center. He is surrounded by the circle of his immediate family, and outside that circle is his extended family or tribe. Next are his immediate geographic region and then his country. Outside of his country ring is the rest of the Arab world; then the rest of the Muslim world, the "Dar al Islam," or the area of Muslim peace and stability. Outside this ring is the rest of the world viewed by the Arab as the "Dar al Harb" or war area.

The principal means of reinforcing familial relationships is through marriage. Arab marriage patterns are usually within their own family group with the most desired partners being cousins. One of the long-term results of this custom has been the development of a highly organized social structure among a closely-knit family. Even with extended family members, the goals of family well being and honor are principal considerations.

The style of Arab parenting is responsible for much of their behavioral traits according to the noted Arab cultural expert, Dr. Raphael Patai who claims that Arab children have difficulty establishing a predictable pattern arid a differentiation between love and discipline. This fluctuation between a loving mother and stern disciplinarian father can add to the complexity of growing up and often fosters schizoid personality traits. Many Arabists have commented on the rapid change of Arab emotions and reasoning. Lawrence of Arabia spoke of this when he said that the Arabs view "everything black or white with no middle ground." This roller coaster type of behavior is often demonstrated by cool self‑control followed by uncontrolled public outbursts of emotion. This also illustrates the ease with which a crowd can become violent in the Arab world. No doubt, tightly controlled families, closeness of living space and intense family pressures contribute to another important Arab behavioral trait stemming from group dynamics. That trait is conflict.

CONFLICT

Arab behavior has a propensity for conflict.

The Muslim community expanded rapidly after the Prophet's death. Within a few decades, the territory under Muslim rule had extended onto three continents--Asia, Africa and Europe. Over the next few centuries this Empire continued to expand its conquests and Islam gradually became the chosen faith of the majority of the world’s inhabitants. Among the reasons for the rapid spread of Islam was the simplicity of its doctrine--Islam calls for faith in only One God, Allah, and it was made relatively easy for conquered peoples to convert..

Reasons for Arab conflict may lie again with the family where competitiveness is instilled at an early age, and life generally exists under various forms of intense pressure. An old Arab saying aptly describes the competitive, hostile spirit bred into Arab children:

"I against my brother, my brother and I against our cousins, my brother, my cousins and I against the world."

Another probable cause of this intense conflict is Arab history itself, which has been dominated by warfare, domestic upheaval and struggles against invasions from outside the Arab world. The legacy of this history is a basic, almost visceral mistrust of‑ any outside group, or more specifically, any Western state whose true ultimate intentions cannot readily be determined, but which they feel will most likely be bad for the Arabs.

There are many other internal sources of conflict in the Middle East, which have existed among the Arabs themselves for centuries. Some of these long‑standing sources of conflict are strategic conflicts, economic rivalries, ideological wars, tribal and religious disagreements--and just plain cultural differences. For example, there has been strategic rivalry between the Mesopotamians of the Fertile Crescent and the Egyptians since ancient times. More recently, strategic struggles have taken place over the Lebanon, the White Nile, the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf (as most commonly refer to as the Persian Gulf).

Also economically, the conflict over scarce resources now continues with oil, land, water, and mineral rights taking the place of food, (although still strategically important in some countries), and caravan routes. Today's ideological conflicts often place the progressive socialists (Iraq, Libya, Syria and Algeria) against the conservative traditional states. There are also problems within these groups as Iraqi Baathi's against Syrian Baathi's, various "isms" such as Pan Arabism, progressivism, Wahabism, and socialism all typify the general ideological fragmentation of the Arab population and add to the spectrum of conflict. In the area of tribal and religious conflict, numerous rivalries predate recorded history. Consider that the early Islamic wars after the death of the Prophet brought on the Sunni‑Shiite tensions, which remain today in many areas such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

When asked why the more recent Iran‑Iraq war began, one Arab historian noted that it really began at the battle of Qaddisiya over a thousand years ago when Mohammed's son‑in‑law, Ali, was defeated by the forerunners of today's Sunni Arabs. Viewed from this perspective, even the Christian‑Muslim struggle in Lebanon appeared to be part of this historic trend of religious conflict. Dynastic rivalries, such as between the House of Saudi and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has always been a factor in Arab life. Also, there is the age old struggle between the desert bedouin and the townsman such as was rekindled in the intense 1970 conflict between the Jordanian Army's bedouins of the Desert Legion and the Palestinian townsmen in Jordan.

In dealing with Arabs, consideration must always be given to their patterned behavior for dealing with potential conflict. Especially in military affairs, the undercurrents of traditional conflict can limit the number of options available to a decision maker and limit his overall capability to correct a problem. Historically, this has been evident in the difficulty in making and maintaining Middle Eastern alliances. Suspicion of a traditional enemy's territorial ambitions die hard, and international troop movements to shore up Arab allies or as part of a peacekeeping force are usually very difficult because of the fear that the visiting soldiers may be used against the host government or that they will be very reluctant to leave. Likewise, new pacts on military agreements with western foreign powers are initially viewed negatively by an Arab state's neighbors because of the potential impact on inter‑Arab affairs as well as a xenophobic fear of the West. Experience has shown that it is fairly unusual for an Arab state to enter into an agreement with an outside power without first consulting with its neighbors to allay their fears about a potential change in the local balance of power and to forestall potential conflict.

Because conflict appears to be such a normal behavioral characteristic in Arab group dynamics at the individual. group or even international levels, it seems reasonable that the Arabs would have developed a traditional means of settling their differences--and they have. Over the centuries they have developed a ritualized. form of mediation for dealing with conflict. A study of Arab history, and even present day events. points out that the traditional methods of mediation have been used time and time again. In large scale hostilities the mediation may at times seem ineffective to a Westerner, but it does serve several purposes. It interrupts the fighting, lets cooler heads prevail and gives each side an honorable way out of the quarrel.

The methodology is essentially the same for a small personal quarrel or a war. It is arranged around a mediator who plays a specific role. The mediator or wasit is usually a man (or country) of personality, status, respect, wealth and influence with both sides. Picking or persuading the perfect mediator is obviously the sine qua non of successfully mediating a conflict. Traditionally it has been the rule that a mediator meets with much greater success if he is a man of prestige. Custom requires that the steps in mediation follow a specific pattern: separate the fighting parties, make it physically impossible to continue the fighting, arrange a solution which will not cause a loss of face or honor to either side, and then guarantee the restitution or final agreement. There are numerous examples of conflict mediation in the Arab world from the personal to the international level. They are all ritualized and it appears that the major difficulty lies in getting the right mediator at the outset. A lesson the United States has had difficulty grasping in its long quest for Middle East peace.

CROWD MENTALITY

In the Arab world there is little stigma placed on the loss of self control and what westerners would consider hysterical public outbursts of emotion. This is a particularly frequent factor in group dynamics, and it is often demonstrated by the way in which a crowd can suddenly give way to outbursts of anger and violence. Reasons given for this generally lead back to the Arab family--closeness, competitiveness and conflict. Also, some cause might be related to the Arab means of vocal expression where they routinely express themselves by shouting, often accompanied by angry gestures in the marketplace, when correcting children, at funerals, etc. Opportunities for emotional outpourings are frequent in an Arab's daily life, and with the impetus of crowd mentality, these emotions are likely to break loose with chain reactions.

An Arab crowd is high strung emotionally, and violent crowds are a frequent occurrence during periods of stress and crisis. Deaths of national leaders, political rallies, anti‑western rallies, etc., all qualify as reasons for Arab disorders. There can even be less serious reasons, for example in Lebanon the author witnessed a severe riot in 1978 over the unpopular outcome of a beauty contest.

EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF THE ARABIC LANGUAGE

Arab Emotions and Hyperbole.

The second major factor influencing Arab culture is language. The Arabs place a high value on the Arabic language, and it exerts an overpowering psychological influence over their behavior. Arabic scholars have long known that even though most languages are influenced by the culture and people who speak it‑, Arabic has an influence over the psychology and culture of the people who use it. "English cannot even challenge Arabic for its sheer power and ability to impact on the emotions of the listener," according to the noted Arab‑‑American historian, P. K. Hitti who also states that "no people in the world has such enthusiastic admiration for literary expression and is so moved by the word, spoken or written."

Not only are the listeners moved, but Arabic has an impact on speakers as well. Orators are prone to be carried away in verbal exaggeration when speaking before an audience. This exaggeration is called mubalagha in Arabic, but it is not considered to be a derogatory term by the Arabs. Rather it is considered to be an admirable capacity for oratorical eloquence. A key point in understanding Arab hyperbole is that their mentality finds nothing wrong with eloquent exaggeration because they feel that words really shouldn't be taken at all times at their face value. The Arab Scholar, Edward Atiyah, supports this by his comment that Arabs as a people are swayed "more by ideas than by facts." The mastery of a rich rhythmic vocabulary with lyrical phrases is a highly valued oral skill which is often attained even by illiterates.

It is an understatement to say that the Arabs merely value their language, for it is a most beloved possession. One reason for their love affair with Arabic is the melodious pleasure derived from hearing and saying certain traditional words and patterns of words derived from its rich literary heritage. But probably the most important underlying reason for their love of Arabic is the Qur'an and the belief that this holy book, set forth in Arabic, is an expression of man's highest earthly linguistic achievement.

Understanding the Arab's love of Arabic makes it easier to comprehend that speakers are admired, not so much for what they say, but how they say it. For example, Egypt’s President Nasser could hold crowds spellbound for hours with his eloquence. After the Six Day War in fact, crowds of Arabs would gather around every village television set to admire and applaud the Rais—the President's--marathon speeches because of their elaborate flowing classical style. Even today, Nasser's speeches remain as a prime example of the orator's craft, and for years students of Arabic at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute in Washington. D.C. studied them as an example of mubalaghato hear his long speeches, appreciating not so much what he said, but how he said it.

EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF THE ARABIC LANGUAGE

Arab Emotions and Hyperbole.

The second major factor influencing Arab culture is language. The Arabs place a high value on the Arabic language‑, and it exerts an overpowering psychological influence over their behavior. Arabic scholars have long known that even though most languages are influenced by the culture and people who speak it‑, Arabic has an influence over the psychology and culture of the people who use it. "English cannot even challenge Arabic for its sheer power and ability to impact on the emotions of the listener," according to the noted Arab‑‑American historian, P. K. Hitti, who also states that "no people in the world has such enthusiastic admiration for literary expression and is so moved by the word, spoken or written."

Not only are the listeners moved, but Arabic has an impact on speakers as well. Orators are prone to be carried away in verbal exaggeration when speaking before an audience.

One should never underestimate the behavioral impact that the Arabic language has on the Arab people. Its psychological influence lies in three main areas: general vagueness of thought; overemphasis on words at the expense of their meanings and stereotyped emotional vocal responses to specific situations. The most difficult of these behavioral influences for Americans to understand is overemphasis and exaggeration. There are numerous examples of how exaggeration and emphatic overemphasis can lead Arab speakers down the path to outlandish public statements. For example, Patai tells the amusing story of the A‑‑bomb made by a Syrian tinsmith: "On the eve of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, Musa Alami. a well known Palestinian leader was attempting to gain support in various Arab capitals. In Damascus the President of Syria told him: "I am happy to tell you that our Army and its equipment are of the highest order and we'll be able to deal with a few Jews; and I can tell you in confidence that we even have an atomic bomb ... yes it was made locally; we fortunately found a clever fellow, a tinsmith..."

Most Arabic scholars feel that this mubalagha as well as tawkid (assertion) is almost a linguistic game played between speaker and listener. In his article on the influence of language on Arab psychology, the Arab scholar, Dr. Edward Shouby, comments on mubalagha and tawkid, and his words are worth remembering:

"Arabs are forced to over‑assert and exaggerate in almost all types of communications, as otherwise they stand a good chance of being gravely misunderstood. If an Arab says exactly what he means without the expected exaggeration, other Arabs may think that he means the opposite. This fact leads to misunderstandings on the part of non‑Arabs who do not realize that the Arab is merely following a linguistic tradition."

Shouby's comments emphasize the important concept that the average Arab uses exaggeration and overemphasis without even being aware that he is doing it. It is very difficult for an Arab to make a simple statement of fact. For this reason it usually pays to be cautious about focusing on exact translations of Arabic statements such as the long rambling tirades of Gadhafi from which the emotional and inflammatory mubalagha statements are usually quoted directly by the Western press

There is also a bit of wish fulfillment in Arab exaggeration. They at times can have such a strong desire for an event to take place that they make a statement that confuses the desired action with an accomplished fact. The general vagueness of thought and ambiguous structure of the Arabic language itself also contributes to this tendency to exaggerate and substitute words for action. For example, in sentences expressing wishes such as Wallahi la fa' altu which can be literally translated "By Allah, I did not do (it) , can actually mean "By Allah I shall not do (it)." Another example is the word phrase badrab which literally translates "I want to beat," but actually means "I shall beat." This linguistic subtlety between desired actions and accomplished fact should be considered when listening to the emphatic statements of Arabs. It is obvious that time and action can have very subtle connotations in the translation of Arabic. Westerners should be wary of this.

ISLAM

Arab idealism as expressed through Islam is a dominant cultural feature.

Based on its linguistic origin, the Arabic word 'Islam' means to achieve peace--peace with God, peace within oneself, and peace with the creations of God through submission to God and commitment to His guidance.

Islam is not a new religion but the final culmination and fulfillment of the same basic truth that God revealed through all His prophets to every people. For a fifth of the world's population, Islam is not just a personal religion but a complete way of living.

Over a billion people from all races, nationalities and cultures across the globe are Muslim--from the rice farms of Indonesia to the heart of Africa; from the skyscrapers of New York to the Bedouin tents in Arabia. Only 18% of Muslims live in the Arab world; a fifth are found in Sub-Saharan Africa; and the world's largest Muslim community is in Indonesia. Substantial parts of Asia are Muslim, while significant minorities are to be found in the Central Asian republics, India, China, North and South America, Eastern and Western Europe.

The Islamic religion has always been a source of law and sociopolitical ideology, and from past to present,

As Muslim civilization developed, it absorbed the heritage of ancient civilizations like Egypt, Persia and Greece, whose learning was preserved in the libraries and with the scholars of its cities. Some Muslim scholars turned their attention to these centers of learning and sought to acquaint themselves with the knowledge taught and cultivated in them. They, therefore, set about with a concerted effort to translate the philosophical and scientific works available to them, not only from the Greek and Syriac languages (the languages of eastern Christian scholars), but also from Pahlavi, the scholarly language of pre-Islamic Persia, and even from Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language. Arab scholars became the keepers of the period’s science and knowledge—an accomplishment upon which many modern Arabs look back upon with great pride.

Over the years, Arab philosophers have attempted to rationalize and legitimatize their ideals in terms compatible with Islamic idealism. The Islamic scholar. W. Cantwell Smith, has aptly described the Muslim's almost quixotic loyalty to the Islamic ideal as "a passionate but rational pursuit of that social justice that was once the dominant note of the faith and the dominant goal of its forms and institutions." The idealism of Islam can be viewed as the ultimate set of personal rules for Arab behavior, and it provides an all encompassing code of interpersonal relations. This code is embodied in the Shari'a which is a sacred body of Islamic law derived from the Qur'an The Shari’a dominates all aspects of life and society in a way that is almost incomprehensible to an American.

The Qur'an is the very word of God, Almighty. A complete record of the exact words revealed by God through the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. The Qur'an was memorized by Muhammad and his followers, dictated to his companions, and written down by scribes, who cross-checked it during the Prophet's lifetime. Not one word of its 114 surahs (parts or chapters) has been changed over the centuries. The Qur'an is in every detail the same unique text that was revealed to Muhammad fourteen centuries ago.

The Qur'an is the principal source of every Muslim's faith and practice. It deals with all subjects that concern us as human beings, including wisdom, doctrine, worship and law; but its basic theme is the relationship between God and His creatures. At the same time, the Qur'an provides guidelines for a just society, proper human conduct and equitable economic principles. For example, it encompasses how they run their government, their legal courts, their schools, their businesses, their social life, and their religion. It has been described as being as totally encompassing. It is as if one single document contained our constitution, our legal code, national education policy, business practices, inter‑personal etiquette, and the Bible.

Some might argue that Islam is another means developed by Arab culture as a way to cope with and forestall the Arab's basic behavioral tendency towards conflict. Nonetheless, Islam is interwoven with Arab culture and its rules give a distinctive pattern to the Arab's daily life. Various verses of the Qur'an symbolize this acceptance by man of God's pattern. The Arab doesn't always live in a tight patterned world of justice and order, but as Smith says: "he tries".

It is this mixture of Islam and Arabism which provides an interesting combination of many prized elements of Arab culture. Pride and sensitivity, the ideal of manly virtue, the Arabic language, dignity, and the all important concept of honor are all interwoven between Islam and Arabism. it is these valued ideals which hold Arab society together. Consider that Arab society, like most societies, has common loyalties and traditions. Yet, in the Muslim world there is an additional system based on personal conviction with a carefully worked out system of values and beliefs based on Islam as the common ideal. In a very real sense the Arab community is a living example of a religious ideal with "religious" being used in a truly personal sense.

THE BEDOUIN

Even though the nomadic bedouins presently make up a very small portion of the Arab population, they have always been considered the "Arabs par excellence" and the repository of traditional Arab culture and values. The bedouin ethic is thought to be the ideal moral code by most Arabs. The code of the bedouin is simple: it is essentially based on courage, hospitality, honor, generosity and self‑respect. These simple but admirable virtues make up the basic code of the desert which is admired as an ideal by all Arabs. In fact, tracing one's lineage to bedouin stock has been considered a claim to social status for many Arab leaders. For example, in Iraq both former President Kassem and Saddam Hussein both had their genealogy traced to desert tribes.

Some motivation for this could be attributed to a form of nostalgia for a better time, when life was simpler and more manageable, such as it was with the nomadic bedouins. It must be emphasized here that most bedouin traits are derived from honor, dignity and self‑respect, and an American would heed well the importance of these to an Arab. Honor (sharaf) has been highly valued since early Arab history because it was conducive to group cohesion and survival. Sharaf probably follows from the fact that shameful behavior or cowardice would weaken the group and endanger society.

Arabs are extremely sensitive to any slight to their honor, and it follows that any insult to one's honor must be revenged. There are even times when a personal incident can bring dishonor on an entire family, such as a scandal involving a female family member's sexual honor or in the instance of a blood feud. During 1968, the author observed that as part of their security duties, Israeli Druze border guards would kill or injure Palestinian commandos operating in the Jordan Valley area. The Palestinian's family was then honor bound to take revenge against the Druze guard or his family unless a conciliation involving blood money could be arranged.

Honor can also be the collective property of as large a group as an entire army. For example the relaxed, conciliatory approach taken by King Hussein towards the gradual takeover of the country by Palestinian fedayeen in 1970 shamed and angered his Bedouin Army. The King's strategy was essentially to avoid a fight until a solution could be worked out, but this situation, along with strident Palestinian actions, caused the Jordanian Army to feel insulted and to have lost face (more specifically in Arabic terms "to blacken their face"). Symbolically, some armored units tied women's brassieres to their vehicle antennas to express their collective dishonor and the feeling that Hussein had made them into women.

A key point to consider is that right or wrong, in all matters involving honor, an Arab must behave with dignity and self‑respect or lose face (wujah). It is important in any confrontation to leave the Arab a way to withdraw or back down without losing face. Nasser's dispute with Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles over Aswan in 1956, served to illustrate this. What Dulles began as a routine reappraisal of our foreign aid program became personalized by Nasser into a matter of national honor.

Because dignity, self‑respect and honor are so vulnerable to external actions, the Arab is extremely heedful of being slighted and may often see personal insult in comments or deeds which carry no such intentions. Even long‑time residents of the Middle East, such as Jordan's legendary Glubb Pasha, could mistakenly provide such an unintended slight. The day before a ceremonial review of the Arab Legion was to take place, Glubb said to his orderly: "I don't really want you tomorrow; you can have the day off and take your wife to the review, if you like." Whereupon the deeply insulted orderly replied: "So you think I am the kind of person to sit with women?"

Any discussion of the role of bedouin traits in Arab ideals would not be complete without mentioning hospitality and generosity which go hand in hand. Providing hospitality is a matter of both face and honor to an Arab. To be inhospitable is shameful. During the hospitality, the host is always expected to be generous and Arabs often entertain lavishly. It is interesting to note that the Arab word for generosity, karim, also means distinguished, noble‑minded, noble‑hearted, honorable and respectable. This gives some idea of the esteem with which generosity is valued.

PAN ARABISM

The Pan Arab movement involves a "one world" consciousness of the Arab world as well as an important Arab political concept. Indeed, this feeling of a monolithic Arab entity is enhanced by the strong religious, linguistic, social and economic ties uniting most Arabs. This would appear logical because of their similar attitudes toward life, language and history. The Islamic religion itself provides a powerful cohesive effect and gives a further spiritual sense of commonality within the Arab world.

Pan Arabism as a powerful political ideal has been a unifying force in the Arab's struggle for independence, first from the Turks, and in recent times, from the West. Arabs can become very emotional about Pan Arabism, and a strong feeling of solidarity with Arabs in other countries has become a potent political consideration. These feelings of Arab solidarity have also been given expression by the Arab League which was founded to promote inter‑Arab cooperation. It is in these expressions of brotherhood that Pan Arabic ideals actually can occasionally cause political motives to disappear and internal differences to be smoothed over in the emotional climate of Arab unity‑ It must be understood, however, that although Pan Arabism is an emotional state of mind which is very important to Arabs, the Arab people are still a long way from becoming one nation.

AREAS OF DOMINANT ARAB CONCERN

Although the Arab considers the family as the basis of Arab society, he holds even stronger views about Islam as the complete solid structure of society. Another area where there is a challenge to traditional Arab identity is with the elite class, and especially the western trained technocrats. These bilingual individuals frequently suffer an ethnic identity crisis, not belonging to the West, yet not able to fully return to basic Arab life.

The most dramatic response to the Arab identity crisis is presently being made by the Islamic fundamentalists. These fundamentalists such as seen among al Qaeda, the muhajidiin of Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and the Afghan Taliban, who all signify a change in the political behavior of Muslims. According to Professor Leonard Binder of the University of Chicago, these fundamentalists are seeking cultural authentication through domination of the political scene.

Another significant concern is the danger of the loss of Arab identity. The proud Arab sees and intimately feels the daily impact of modern technology, new social mores and western culture. The long haul diesel trucks are replacing the camel caravan, the quick snack shops are replacing the coffee shops, and western movies and music are frequently preferred by Arab youth. Infringement on Arab identity may cause a nostalgic quest for the good old days, and even in some cases, a reactionary backlash against symbols of western progress.

One of the most bitter and frequent complaints of theses groups against the West is that it is attempting to corrupt Arab society. Some Arabs feel that even simple, innocuous entertainment such as Western films and music are counter to the general morality of the Arab world. Relaxed standards of dress, women's liberation, alcohol and rock music are all considered by some Arabs to be an affront to Islamic purity. Not only do Arabs see tangible evidence that individuals are falling prey to Western influence, but they frequently sense that the fundamental values of the population are generally being corrupted.

The disintegration of traditional Arab society, along with loss of identity and outside corruption, is another paramount concern of the Arab. Huge segments of the population simply cannot cope with modernity and the social and political changes taking place. No one really knows where it will end. Westernization of the education system, women’s rights and inclusion in the work force, vastly improved literacy levels, better nutritional standards, advanced health and hygiene, introduction of social services and inclusion of the poorer classes in democratic political processes are all having tremendous impact on the old way of life. The Arabs wonder if it will be for the better.

This paper was initially written by Ed Badolato in 1980 when he was a student at the US Naval War College in Newport, R.I, and it was part of a three-part research effort on Arab culture. Part I . "A Clash of Cultures: The Expulsion of Soviet Military Advisors from Egypt," was published in the Naval War College Review, March-April 1984, pp.69-81. It was a standard handout used by various military attaché offices in the Middle East to describe how not to act when dealing with the Arabs. Part II. “A Short Guide to Understanding the Arabs”, formed the basis of this article. Part III.” The Cultural Mindset of the Arab Military” was also used in training US military personnel headed for the Middle East.

Ed Badolato, a career Marine officer, was the distinguished graduate of the War College’s Class of 1980. He began his first of several tours in the Middle East in 1967, shortly after the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, when he was stationed on the Golan Heights. He was one of the first US military to actually deal with emerging Middle Eastern terrorists. He spent three tours in Viet Nam serving mainly with infantry and long-range Marine reconnaissance units. During his career, he commanded every sized Marine unit from platoon to regiment.

He served in various capacities in nearly every country in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, including tours as the Defense and Naval Attaché in Beirut, Damascus, and Nicosia where he organized various special counter terrorism activities. Following his retirement from the Marine Corps, he served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for Presidents Regan and Bush, (1984-89)where he was the principal architect of the U.S. government's readiness and response to terrorist threats to our energy infrastructure--as well as all counterterrorism security planning for the US’ fifty-eight nuclear weapon facilities.

http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=359230

The world really needs to understand the Arab mentality

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

The world really needs to understand the Arab mentality

Here is an unremarkable article in Assabeel, a Jordanian newspaper. Well, it is unremarkable for Arab media. Westerners who believe that Arabs think just like them might be a little surprised.

The author, Akram Alsoir, says that when he saw footage of Jews scrambling for shelter from Qassam rockets, he held his head high.

Granted, he says, that Jews are cowards. Not just cowards, but the most cowardly of all cowards. This assumption was proven when he saw the footage of Jews running to avoid being hit by rockets - the Jews aren't so powerful as Arabs thought!

Not only that, but in this author's (and most Arabs') mind, Israel's agreeing to a ceasefire is even more evidence of its cowardly nature. Israel, by agreeing to a truce with Hamas, increased Hamas' prestige to be equivalent to Israel, which is a huge defeat for Israel.

Alsoir wonders - if Hamas could force the cowardly Jews to accept a cease fire (i.e., surrender,) imagine what would happen if all the Arab countries shot rockets at Israel! The detested Jews would surrender even more quickly! Why didn't they join in?

The concept that Israel only wanted the rockets to stop is completely foreign to Arabs. Since they live in an honor/shame society, everything is seen through the lens of honor. To have an opportunity at vanquishing the enemy and to choose a truce instead is not considered praiseworthy - but contemptible, and evidence of cowardice.

It always comes down to the difference between the Arab "honor/shame" culture and the Western "guilt" culture. The consequences of the honor/shame mentality are huge, for example, by treating women and minorities as inferior in order to boost the fragile ego of the Arab male.

Israel's existence is an affront to the Arab honor/shame mentality, because it is a constant reminder of Arab defeat. No amount of compromise will ever change that. Until Jews are reverted to their proper place as second-class dhimmis paying tribute to their Arab masters, the Arab world will not accept Israel.

Every single move Israel does that is remotely conciliatory, or peaceful, or that shows any attribute that is not naked macho aggression, is not greeted with praise but with derision.

As a result, every time Israel shows restraint, it feeds Arab hopes that the Jews can be defeated - and it encourages them to continue to provoke the Jews and prove their weakness anew.

The irony, of course, is that if Israel felt weaker, it would react with much less restraint. Israel's willingness to take chances for peace is a direct consequence of its security and strength, not of weakness. If Israel felt it was up against a wall, it would not be negotiating a truce with anyone!

The West insists that Israel must act according to Western standards of morality. But the West must realize that in the Middle East, those actions will not be reciprocated - they will be derided.

While real peace is impossible, the only chance for a long-term detente is by maintaining a posture of strength that the Arabs can understand. Unless Arab culture is changed from top to bottom, Israel will always be caught in the middle between the nebulous consequences of acting like Europe insists or the longer-term benefits of acting like the Arabs would if the positions were reversed.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-world-really-needs-to-understand.html

Inside the Arab Mind!

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Inside the Arab Mind!

Moslems believe the 21st century to be the “century of Islam,” when all the world must be subjugated to Islam -- and they also believe that the annihilation of Israel is their precursor to conquering the West. Unfortunately, the average Western mind simply does not understand the violence and cunning that makes up the Arab mentality. Unless we come to terms with the Arab mind and combat the Moslem threat to Western civilization, the future could be very grim indeed.

Ramon Bennett

A volatile region is volatile by reason of the cast of mind peculiar to the people dwelling there and that of those who govern it. Peoples and their leaders are prisoners of their cultural values. Arab culture, customs and mind-sets took root thousands of years ago and were the common denominators that ensured survival for this ancient people. Descended from Abraham, the Bedouin Arab desert dwellers possess, to the mind of the modern city or village dwelling Arab, the epitome of everything desirable in manners and customs. Some wealthy Arabs, whose families have lived in cities for generations, send their sons to noble Bedouin villages to experience their traditional customs much the same as the British gentry send their sons to Eton or Cambridge. Arab culture and custom remain the factors that govern the action and thought patterns of the Arab people. This culture is imbibed with the mother’s milk, and its pattern is burned into the very cells that make up the modern Arab mind. It is, more often than not, a prison from which there is no possible escape.

Arab Coffee Service

The Arab world has some customs of which it can be justifiably proud. Arab hospitality, for example, is legendary and has changed little from the Biblical patterns of their ancestors. Just as Abram, in Genesis 18:2-8, killed the fatted calf for three passing strangers, so will today’s Arab feed a stranger the finest of everything he has, and as much as that person can humanly hold. And just as Lot, in Genesis 19:1-3, insisted that the two travelers stay in his house for the night, so, also, will the modern Arab pressure a stranger to remain under his roof and partake of his hospitality. The customs of hospitality and generosity have changed little in 4,000 years, nor have the customs of raiding (thieving, rustling), saving face or savagery.

For the ancient Bedouin, raiding neighboring tribes and villages was a favorite pastime as well as an economic necessity. It was practically the only way they could improve their situation or standard of living. Raiding your enemy, your neighbor and even your own brother was considered to be “one of the few manly occupations” (Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind, p. 81). Today’s farmers, living in the regions of Israel where Bedouin Arabs abound, complain of losing tractors, implements, equipment, livestock, fertilizers, fencing, etc. to their neighbors. And when, because of a rash of murders of Israeli citizens, the Israeli government closed off the administered territories and refused entry to some 100,000 Arab workers from the West Bank and Gaza in 1993, Israeli police reported a 30% drop in car and house thefts. These workers constituted a small percentage of the 5.5 million people in the land, yet they were responsible for nearly one-third of the nation’s car thefts and house burglaries! Some 650,000 Arabs hold Israeli citizenship and live in Israel proper; the reader can thus imagine what percentage of car thefts and burglaries that number is probably responsible for!

“Face”

The terms, “saving face,” and “loss of face,” are Western terms that describe prominent characteristics endemic to the Eastern world. The Arab either “whitens” the face (saves face), or “blackens” the face (loses face). “Face is the outward appearance of honor, the ‘front’ of honor which a man will strive to preserve even if, in actuality, he has committed a dishonorable act” (ibid., p. 101). In the Arab world “honor” and “face” are so closely related that the words are almost interchangeable. This “face,” or “honor,” is such an integral part of the Arab mind that a person is considered perfectly justified in resorting to deceit and falseness in order to “whiten,” or save, their own, someone else’s or the entire Arab world’s face. The Arab mind is in perpetual motion -- working against “blackening” the face (losing face), and thus sculptures its words accordingly. When it comes to “whitening” or saving somebody else’s face or the face of the Arab world, lying is even considered to be “a duty” (ibid., p. 105).

Arab lying, like Arab hospitality, generosity and raiding, is an echo from the past, as made clear by an early Islamic theologian: “We must lie when truth leads to unpleasant results” (al-Ghazali, quoted in Laffin, The Arab Mind, p. 79). “It is sometimes a duty to lie” (ibid.). “If a lie is the only way to reach a good result, it is allowable” (ibid.). And a medieval Syrian poet also wrote: “I lift my voice to utter lies absurd, for when I speak the truth, my hushed tones scarce are heard” (Abu l’Ala 973-1057, quoted in ibid., p. 50). Lying, therefore, has been a normal, integral, prevalent and perfectly acceptable facet of Arab culture since time immemorial. And until the West, its leaders and its politicians understand the full implications of this reflex action of the Arab mind when dealing with members of the Arab world, they can never hope to arrive at the results they aim for. So often one reads statements made by prominent politicians to the effect that it is not what is said by Arab leaders in Arabic that counts, but what they say publicly in English. Such statements are not only naive, but also completely absurd. When push comes to shove, it is only what is said in Arabic that contains the truth. Former United States Ambassador, Malcom Toon, understood this when he said: “If you want to know what leaders of non-democratic regimes really believe, don’t listen to their declarations to Western statesmen and journalists, but to what they say among themselves” (quoted in Dispatch From Jerusalem, Jan/Feb. 1994).

One aspect of “whitening” another’s face is to tell a person, usually with all sincerity intended, what he really wants to hear. Thus, when the conversation is terminated, that person comes away with a positive but completely inaccurate view of the events discussed. As John Laffin, the English Arabist and author of a book entitled The Arab Mind, succinctly put it: “The Arab means what he says at the moment he is saying it. He is neither a vicious nor, usually, a calculating liar but a natural one” (p. 70).

The most incredible thing about the Arab mind’s ability to lie and its unlimited creativity in conjuring up the preposterous, is that it sincerely believes the lies it creates. In Madrid in October 1991, Hanan Ashrawi, the spokeswoman for the PLO negotiating team and the darling of the news media, sidestepped a legitimate question from a Christian journalist and said: “I am a Palestinian Christian and I know what Christianity is. I am a descendant of the first Christians in the world, and Jesus Christ was born in my country, in my land. Bethlehem is a Palestinian town” (from “A Palestinian Version of the New Testament,” Jerusalem Post, International Edition, Jan. 18, 1992). Like most of her other statements, political or otherwise, this one was a series of colossal lies also. Ashrawi is an Arab, and Arabs did not come into the land until Islam conquered the Christians in 637 A.D. All the first Christians were Jews, as was Jesus himself. Bethlehem was in Judea, “in the land of Israel” (Matthew 2:21, 22). Most of those who heard or read her outrageous statement believed it as much as she did, and this only helps to delegitimatize Israel’s presence in the land.

Jordan entered the Arab’s coalition against Israel in the humiliating and devastating 1967 war, because the commander of Egypt’s forces sent a coded communique to King Hussein claiming that Egypt had destroyed 75 percent of Israel’s attacking warplanes, destroyed Israel’s bases in a counterattack, and that its ground forces had penetrated Israel itself (Patai, The Arab Mind, p. 102). The world now knows that Israel almost entirely destroyed Egypt’s air force along with those of three other nations in less than three hours from the commencement of hostilities. But on the strength of repeated Egyptian claims of massive victories, Jordan entered the war and not only added the loss of its air force to that of the other four, but also lost more territory than all of the other aggressors combined. King Hussein of Jordan said: “These [Egyptian] reports -- fantastic to say the least -- had much to do with our confusion and false interpretation of the situation” (ibid., p. 103). John Laffin comments: “To claim to have inflicted heavy military losses on an enemy makes this a fact, even if no military action whatever took place” (Laffin, The Arab Mind, p.50). And an Egyptian Arab says, “When we Arabs praise some imaginary deed, we are carried away by the same feeling of satisfaction that we would feel if we had really carried it out” (the editor of Al-Ahram. Quoted in John Laffin, Fedayeen: The Arab-Israeli Dilemma, p. 105).

“This is a difficult concept for a Westerner to grasp, but until he does so, many Arab actions and statements make little sense” (Laffin, The Arab Mind, p. 50). The Arab mind struggles with reality and, therefore, usually operates more in the realm of fantasy. It lives in the glories of its people’s past and not in actualities -- it fabricates events to explain current or past failures.

Violence

One needs only to read the Bible to gain some understanding of the savage and cruel nature of the people who inhabit the Middle East. With the exception of around 40 percent of today’s Israelis, the inhabitants of the Middle East have had their roots firmly fixed there for thousands of years -- they are the descendants of men who have fought each other for thousands of years, and who still threaten war in the same sun-scorched desert sands. Approximately 60 percent of Israeli Jews were either born in Arab lands or were born to those who came from Arab lands. Hundreds of thousands of Jews lived among the Arabs during their almost 2,000 years of exile from the Promised Land.

Arab youth parade through streets of Beirut

While the contemporary Israeli is in no way barbarous like the inhabitants of the modern Arab nations (particularly Iraq and Syria), there is a definite tendency among many of the Jews of Eastern origin to exhibit rather violent behavior with very little provocation. This has been most evident in recent days when Israeli policemen from this background disburse those demonstrating against the government’s agreements with the PLO. Wife beating is also prevalent among Israelis of Eastern origin. Some 200,000 women -- five percent of Israel’s Jewish population -- are victims of domestic violence. And the “shame” culture is very much in evidence. Many Israelis will readily tell a lie rather than lose face. All these behavior patterns are the result of exposure to centuries of Arab culture. But Israelis in general are both shocked and outraged by violent or brutal acts, and brutality is neither condoned nor acceptable in Israeli society.

The Arab propensity for barbarity, however, is as old as the Arab people themselves. The LORD said of Ishmael, Abraham’s son by Hagar: “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” (Genesis 16:12 NIV). The truth of those words are contained in an widespread, oft-quoted Arab proverb today: “I against my brothers; I and my brothers against my cousins; I and my cousins against the world” (cited in Patai, The Arab Mind, p. 42). And an Arab writing of his people said, “all our people are armed, all fight, and all kill for the least thing. We are very jealous of our rights...If in this village two houses should suddenly engage in a fight, the entire population would split into two parties and join in the fight. War could break out in the village. When it subsides, and only then, would the people ask what the cause of the fighting was. They fight first, and then inquire as to the cause of the fight. This is our way of life” (Ameen Faris Rihani, quoted in ibid., p. 219).

Another feature of the Bedouin ethos is the law of blood revenge. A much quoted Arab proverb is, “Blood demands blood.” Relatives must avenge the blood of the slain by killing either the actual murderer or one of his relatives. Even when a murderer is apprehended, convicted in a court of law, and executed, it does not fulfill the requirements of blood revenge. One of the relatives of the executed man must die by the hand of one of the victim’s relatives. And, of course, the murdered relative’s blood must be avenged by his relatives. Thus it continues ad infinitum. An Arab man once remarked that “both the Japanese and the Arabs are ready to kill to regain their lost honor; but the Japanese will kill himself, while the Arab will kill somebody else” (cited in ibid., p. 212).

Terrorism

Almost every native English speaker is conversant with the words, assassin, assassinate and assassination. But few would know that these words originate in the Middle East. Assassins was the name given to a medieval “murderous group of Syrian Moslems” (Laffin, The Arab Mind, p. 38). The Assassins belonged to a sect of Islam known as Isma’ili, and in a calculated war of terror, they murdered sovereigns, princes, generals, governors and even the divines of Islam. Their murders were designed to frighten, to weaken and ultimately to overthrow the Sunni sect of Islam.

Face of the Devil?

The Assassins terrorized the Middle East from the 11th to the 13th century and derived their name from the Arabic word, Hashshashin, meaning “smokers of hashish.” They whipped themselves into a religious frenzy by the smoking of hashish before committing their murders and were the “forerunners of today’s terrorists” (ibid.). The Assassins seized or bought fortresses for use as bases for their campaign of terror. They gained a great deal of influence and were given a building (traditionally a palace) in Damascus itself for use as their headquarters (ibid., p. 39). Another name by which the ancient Assassins were known was Fedayeen. This word is in common use in Arabic today and is generally applied to all Arab terrorists.

Little has changed in the Middle East. Numbers of well financed, murderous terrorist groups have bases and headquarters today throughout the entire region. Names like Abu Nidal (who was recently killed in Baghdad), Ahmed Jibril (believed to be the mastermind behind the bombing of the 1989 Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed all 269 people on board and another 11 on the ground), considered to be the world’s most dangerous terrorist next to bin Laden, George Habash, Yasser Arafat, Nayef Hawatmeh and a host of others whose names are synonymous with murder and terror, operate from within the Middle East. Their victims include both Arabs and non-Arabs, and the numbers killed, maimed or injured annually is in the tens of thousands. Terrorism is so much a part of Arab culture that most Arab countries “levy a two percent ‘fedayeen tax’ on all entertainment tickets” (Laffin, Fedayeen, p. 100).

“Terrorist warfare has allowed Arab regimes to attack Western targets while denying any responsibility for these attacks. Sovereign Arab states such as Syria, Iraq and Libya have provided arms, embassies, intelligence services and money to various terror organizations operating against the West and other objects of their animosity, thereby transforming terrorism that had been a local peculiarity of Middle Eastern politics into an International malignancy. For international terrorism is the quintessential Middle Eastern export, and its techniques everywhere are those of the Arab regimes and organizations that invented it. The hijacking and bombing of aircraft, the bombing of embassies, the murder of diplomats, and the taking of hostages by Arab terrorists have since been adopted by non-Arab terrorists the world over” (Netanyahu, A Place Among the Nations, p. 102).

Arabs are unpredictable -- “a gentle, peaceful man, on the spur of the moment may commit brutal murder” (Winifred Blackman cited in Patai, The Arab Mind, p. 158). A man’s best friend of yesterday might well be his murderer tomorrow -- once aroused, his wrath has no limits. How true is the Arab proverb: “At each meal a quarrel, with each bite a worry” (cited in Ibid., p. 161).

Arab spokesmen tell Westerners, “If it were not for the Israelis, all would be peace and harmony in the Middle East” (quoted from “The Old Villain,” New Leader, Oct. 29, 1990). The Middle East was a bloody and insecure region long before Israel raised her head in 1948. And most of the coups, conflicts and killings in the Arab states and Iran in the last 40 years have not been connected to Israel at all. The former Secretary General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, wrote in 1982: “In the last three decades alone, more than 30 conflicts between Arab states have erupted.” Some of these “conflicts” were, in fact, full-scale wars. In addition to these conflicts, John Laffin writes: “Between 1948 and 1973 the Arab world suffered thirty successful revolutions and at least fifty unsuccessful ones” (Laffin, The Arab Mind, pp. 97-98). Laffin adds that in the same period, “22 heads of state and prime ministers were murdered.” Laffin gives the main reason for conflicts as “the desire for power,” and says that some of the wars were “hideously brutal.”

Savagery

It was mentioned earlier that Arabs in general endeavor to emulate Bedouin customs, holding them in high esteem and believing them to be virtually sacrosanct. Next to Mohammed himself, an Arab philosopher of the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun, has had the most influence on the Arab world. And he wrote: “Bedouin are a savage nation, fully accustomed to savagery and the things that cause it. Savagery has become their character and their nature. They enjoy it...They care only for the property they might take away from people through looting...civilization always collapses in places the Bedouin took over and conquered” (Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), The Muqaddimah -- An Introduction to History, quoted in Laffin, The Arab Mind, p. 97). Centuries have passed since Khaldun wrote those words, but the Bedouin qualities, including savagery, survives throughout the modern Arab world. “Western soldiers who fought the Arabs were always trained to keep their last bullet for themselves -- an insurance against the torture they inevitably faced” (ibid., p. 95). During the Arab’s war with France between 1954-1962 French soldiers caught by Arabs in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia or Syria were “buried to their necks in sand to die in the blazing sun and were sometimes smeared with honey or jam to attract the ants. Bestial indignities were inflicted on captives before they were killed. When the Arabs captured a group of Frenchmen they would sometimes cut off their hands, shuffle them and leave them in odd pairs stuck in the sand in attitudes of prayer. To the disgust of the French, women were usually more barbarous than their men” (ibid).

Arabists believe that each particular Arab group has its own particular type of barbarism, but my own research shows a uniform bestiality common to all parts of the Arab world. A military coup brought an end to Iraqi royalty when King Feisal II and all but one of the other members of the Royal Family were murdered. The body of the heir apparent, Prince Abd al-Iiah, was given into the hands of the Iraqi populace. “With ropes the regent’s body was attached by the neck and the armpits to the back of a lorry [truck] which dragged it through the streets to shouts of ‘Allah is great!’ Men armed with knives and choppers dismembered the body, and the young men ran off waving the limbs with joyful shouts. When the procession reached the ministry of defense the body was no more than a mutilated trunk but it was hoisted to a balcony where a young man with a knife climbed a lamp-post and repeatedly stabbed the corpse in the back. He then began cutting off the flesh, working from the buttocks upwards. From the street a long white stick was brought which was inserted into the corpse and forcibly pushed inside. What was left of the regent’s body that evening was socked with petrol and set on fire, the remains being thrown into the Tigris” (ibid., p. 108).

Of eight captured Israelis that were returned to Israel from Syria, only “one was in mental condition to give a coherent account of their sufferings and to restart a normal life. Another of the eight committed suicide in his parent’s home in Tel Aviv a few months after his release. The remaining six are likely to spend their lives in mental institutions” (ibid., pp. 101-102). Numbers of Israeli soldiers, who were overrun on the Golan Heights in the first hours of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, were found tied hand and foot with bullet holes in the backs of the heads. Their genitals had been cut off and stuffed in their mouths.

During the intifada (Palestinian uprising), the local Arabs killed nearly twice as many of their own people as the Israeli army. Many of these Arabs were butchered in the most cruel fashion for no reason at all. Simply for working in an Israeli administered hospital in Gaza, a nine-months pregnant Arab nurse was dragged out of the operating room in the middle of an operation and hacked to death in the corridor. Arab violence is “handed on from father to eldest son to youngest son to the family donkey or dogs” (Laffin, The Arab Mind, p. 116). The whole Arab tradition is “one of violence. They know no better” (ibid., p. 111). “Arab violence is non-selective; the identity of the victims is immaterial. For the Arab, violence in itself is consolatory” (ibid., p. 121). “Violence,” a Libyan cabinet minister told Laffin, “is the Moslem’s most positive form of prayer.” “Violence has become a commodity. It was always exportable within the Arab world, but in modern times it reaches further afield and has the more open sanction of governments and political leaders” (ibid., p. 119).

Books dealing with the issues of the Arab world are full of brutal accounts of Arab savagery. Newspapers, magazines and periodicals chronicle them also. There is arguably no other people quite so determinedly violent and pitiless as the people of the Arab world, where violence is “a chronic mental condition” (Hitti, History of the Arabs, quoted in Patai, The Arab Mind, p. 81). What is it that feeds this barbarism and actually fuels the fires of cruelty? To find the answer to the question, it is necessary to study Islam, works by eminent authorities on the Arab mind, Arab literature and statements made by Arab leaders and politicians. Almost all Arab cruelty is generated by one or more of the following -- honor (face), hatred and sex.

Hatred

Hatred of anything non-Arab or Islamic is axiomatic in the Arab world. And to the Arab mind, either Israel or the West (or both) is responsible for the stagnant conditions prevailing within the Arab world -- for disease, for illiteracy, for the lack of Arabic literature, for maliciously falsifying and distorting their glorious Arab history, etc. Just as the failing student will blame the exams instead of himself, so will the Arab world lay the blame for its failures upon others. “Most Westerners have simply no inkling of how deep and fierce is [that] hate” (Smith, Islam in Modern History. Cited in ibid., p. 296).

Stone-throwing youth

Arab children are first indoctrinated with hate in the home, and for those fortunate enough to receive an education, the school system and text books ensure its students will graduate in the subject. Hatred, especially toward Israel and the Jews, is nurtured and developed in the minds of Arab children and occupies a great deal of space in Arabic text books. A former Syrian Minister of Education, wrote: “The hatred which we indoctrinate into the minds of our children from their birth is sacred” (Suleiman Al-Khash in Al-Thaura, the Ba’ath party newspaper, May 3, 1968). Throughout the Arab world school children are constantly faced with the following type of exercises: “Israel was born to die. Prove it” (Glances at Arab Society, p. 117, an exercise for Jordanian first-year high school students). “We shall expel all the Jews from the Arab countries” (Basic Syntax and Spelling, an exercise for Syrian fifth-year elementary students). “The Arabs do not cease to act for the extermination of Israel” (Grammar, p. 244, an exercise for Egyptian first-year junior high school students). “Israel shall not live if the Arabs stand fast in their hatred” (Zionist Imperialism, p. 249, for Egyptian ninth-grade secondary schools). And on the back of a standard exercise book there is a map of Israel. “The Arab armies are shown encircling it, and a missile is aimed at Tel Aviv” (Laffin, Fedayeen, p. 88).

A Jew, born and educated in Syria, but who later escaped to Israel recalls: “I remember that the Moslem boys threw stones at me, and I remember, too, the education I received in school. The Jewish school, but the majority is Moslem. I remember it is written that the Jews are evil, I don’t know why. And their God is a God who wants to drink the blood of all the other peoples. This was in the Arabic book at the education system. I was taught this in the Jewish school, because I am a student and want to pass through these schools to graduate” (cited in Peters, From Time Immemorial, p. 113). And an Arab boasted on Israeli television that his eight-year-old son is fed no breakfast before he throws his quota of rocks on Israeli vehicles (David Bar-Illan, Eye on the Media, p. 211).

But no education of Arab children would be complete without the actual witnessing of brutality and violence. Arab nations execute most of their victims in public squares. In Baghdad’s Liberation Square, for example, when Jews were hanged, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis converged on the square “to view the bodies dangling on the gallows; large parties of school children [were] taken to view the scene” (Laffin, The Arab Mind, p. 109).

Several thousand Israelis have been brutally murdered by Arab terrorists, many of those murdered were women and children. The weak and innocent have always been prime targets for Arab terrorists. Typical attacks took place in April 1994: A 23 year-old mother was stabbed seven times as she nursed her two-week old baby -- miraculously both the mother and baby survived. A bus taking on high school pupils in Afula was the target for a car bomb in which eight died and another 51 were injured, some critically -- severed limbs were strewn over a wide area. The car was detonated right next to the bus. Investigation revealed that “the car, which had been stolen, contained several gas canisters to increase the force of the explosion, and a large quantity of nails to maximize the number of wounded. Many of the victims were teenagers from two nearby junior high schools where classes had just let out. ‘Two boys were burning like torches. They came running toward me, and I took one and doused the flames with a rag, and then I ripped off his clothes,’ said Albert Amos, 43, a driving teacher. ‘He was burned all over. When I touched him, pieces of his skin came off in my hand. The other boy was put into an ambulance. He was shouting: ‘What happened to me? What did I do?’”

Symbol of Arafat's Fateh Organization. Shows two guns superimposed over map of Israel with a grenade underneath.

The great majority of the victims of the 1974 massacres in Kiryat Shmonah and Ma’alot were children, and those murders were “publicly applauded throughout the Arab world” (Laffin, The Arab Mind, p. 167), just as the recent destruction of the World Trade Center in New York was. The Kiryat Shmonah massacre left 18 dead, including five women and eight children. The attack on the Ma’alot school left 20 dead and wounded another 70, nearly all children. “In Arab thought,” says Laffin, “a victim is responsible for his own suffering. Against all this it is pointless to appeal to conscience and ask, ‘How can you wage war on children?’ Given a lifetime’s indoctrination, a man can wage war on anyone” (ibid., p. 168).

A word needs to be added here concerning the February 1994 massacre of 29 Moslems in a Hebron mosque by Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish doctor from Kiryat Arba. The mosque was in the Cave of the Patriarchs (cave of Machpelah, Genesis 25:8-10), where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah and Leah are all buried. The area inside the Cave of the Patriarchs is partitioned, enabling Jews to pray there also.

Goldstein was an immigrant from America and was described by all who knew him as “a quiet, kind, gentle man.” Goldstein attended to a number of Kiryat Arba’s victims of Arab terror. And his friend, Mordechai Lapid, a father of 14 and a former Russian “Prisoner of Zion,” together with one of Lapid’s sons, died in the doctor’s arms from a terrorist attack a few weeks before he committed the Hebron massacre. The evening prior to the massacre, Goldstein left the Cave without completing his prayers because “a large group of Arabs inside the Cave of Patriarchs were chanting ‘Slaughter the Jews’...’Death to the Jews,’ and no one responsible among the Arab community found anything wrong with such pronouncements and conduct” (”To Our People of Israel,” Jerusalem Post International Edition, March 19, 1994). The next day Goldstein came to the Cave dressed in his IDF uniform and carrying his IDF-issue automatic rifle. He gained access to the Cave by convincing the guards that he was on duty, and while the Moslems were kneeling in prayer, he opened fire.

There was universal shock and outrage in Israel. The Prime Minister, Yitzak Rabin, spoke of his absolute disgust at the massacre as did all of Israel’s leaders. The President of Israel, Ezer Weizeman, spoke of the shame the massacre had brought upon the Jewish people and visited Hebron to bring Israel’s condolences to the families of the victims. Nearly 80 percent of all Israelis loudly condemned the massacre, and the Israeli government paid NIS 40 million (U.S.$13.3 million) in compensation to the families of the dead and injured. The Hebron massacre was a rare, isolated incident, and both the reactions of the public and the actions of the government were those of shock, repulsion, sorrow and shame. This is in stark contrast to Arab reactions to news of the murders of Israelis.

Sex

Unlike the western world, sexual restraints upon Arab women are strictly enforced. Throughout almost the whole of the Arab world, death follows a girl’s loss of virginity except to her new husband. And adultery brings death for married women. But a married man is not expected to refrain from extramarital sexual activity, he is guilty of sexual offense “only if the woman with whom he has sexual relations commits thereby an act of sexual dishonor” (Patai, The Arab Mind, p. 124). It is the female’s duty to protect both her honor and her life.

Men are usually circumcised without anesthesia at age 13, primarily as a means to increase virility but also as a test of their “manliness, bravery, and courage” (ibid., p. 123). Female circumcision is also very widespread among the Arab peoples, but in the case of clitoridectomy, it is performed to prevent the girl from desiring premarital sex. And in the case of infibulation (either affixing a device to the vulva, or operating so that only an opening the size of a matchstick is left for the passing of urine and the menses), to make it altogether impossible, until her genitals are either cut or forced open (ibid.). During the traditional wedding night, “the husband is sometimes obliged to cut open hardened scar tissue with a knife.”

The traditional unavailability of willing girls with which to satisfy a young Arab’s high sexual urge accounts for the extremely high rate of homosexuality among Arab males. The active homosexual act is considered to be an “assertion of one’s aggressive masculine superiority” (Patai, The Arab Mind, p. 134), with the result that male homosexuality continues after marriage, with sheiks and the “well-to-do men lending their sons to each other” (ibid., p. 135).

Professor Raphael Patai, the eminent Israeli Arabist who is quoted in this article, says the “rules that restrict contact between men and women, have the effect of making sex a prime mental preoccupation in the Arab world” (ibid., p. 118). And an Arab wrote of his own people: “Sex is our eternal headache, the incubus that devours us day and night. If you ask me about the size of the sexual problem I will tell you that it is exactly the same size as our cranium, so that there is not a single convolution in the Arab brain which is not tumescent with sex” (Nazar Qabbani, On Poetry, Sex and Revolution).

A favorite topic of discussion among Arabs is the immorality of Western women, and John Laffin says: “Because of the frustrations and repressions which follow the rigidly held sexual mores and prohibitions of his own society, the Arab is dangerous to women of other nationalities...When Arabs go abroad their projected sexual adventures loom more important than any work or study” (The Arab Mind, p. 86, 90). Dr. Sania Hamady, herself an Arab and one of the leading authorities on Arab psychology, observes that “whenever an Arab man finds himself alone with a woman, he makes sexual approaches to her” (ibid., p. 90).

Sex is an all-consuming passion. It occupies an Arab’s thoughts night and day and often expresses itself in violence and brutality brought about by sheer sexual frustration. Sigmund Freud, and other psychoanalysts and psychologists, find a clear link between aggression and sexuality. The intensity of aggression is always related to the intensity of the sex drive. The continuous upheavals and violence in the Arab world is a way of “taking the mind off the consuming pre-occupation with sex” (Laffin, The Arab Mind, p. 93). This “pre-occupation” is “expressed by going to near certain death in a coup against the establishment, in a factional fight, or in an act of terrorism. Death in such an event would bring its own reward -- the martyr would find himself among many beautiful, and more importantly, willing girls in paradise” (ibid.).

Substituting Words for Actions

The Arab is notorious for substituting words for actions. It is believed by most Western Arabists and even by many Arabs themselves, that Arabs never carry out their threats or intentions. Students of the Arab world rightly conclude that there is a penchant to substitute words for actions, but this is not an ironclad rule, and it is extremely dangerous to regard it as such. Certainly, there are topics on which the Arabs have waxed eloquent for over 50 years without any action having taken place, but given a sufficiently powerful motivation, they will always attempt to carry out their threats. Israeli defeats of Arab armies in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1969, 1973, and again in 1982 provides such motivation. The Arab world has been repeatedly shamed -- honor must be restored, and Arabs will patiently plan revenge for years, even decades, if need be.

Concerning the belief that words are always substituted for actions, take as an example the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. The Egyptian Deputy Foreign Minister, Salah Gohar, was asked by Time magazine about all the sabre-rattling declarations against Israel. Gohar replied: “When Arabs argue, they start on opposite sides of the sidewalks and shout at one another, ‘I will carve you in pieces!’ and ‘You’ll never see another sunset!’ Then, after ten or 15 minutes, they walk away and nobody gets hurt” (cited in Patai, The Arab Mind, p. 60). Time believed him. The world believed him. The Israeli government believed him. Even Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of General Staff during the 1967 Six Day War and then Israel’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, believed him. Three months prior to the outbreak of war Rabin wrote: “There is no need to call up our forces even when the enemy makes threats and deploys its forces along the cease fire-line” (”A Misplacing of Confidence,” Jerusalem Post, May 10, 1994).

But the Arabs had a sufficiently powerful motivation. On October 6, 1973, they attacked Israel on its most holy day of the year and almost succeeded in destroying it. An avalanche of over 1.2 million men and a formidable array of equipment came against an unprepared Israel. It took three days to mobilize its small army that reached only 300,000 men with all the reserves mobilized. Believing that Arabs always substitute words for actions almost cost Israel its life.

Another case in point is Saddam Hussein’s December 1990 statement that if the United States and her coalition partners launched a “first strike” against Iraq for her invasion of Kuwait in August of the same year, “Israel will suffer the second (blow) in Tel Aviv” (Associated Press report published in Bangkok Post, Dec. 28, 1990). The coalition forces, of whom Israel was not a part, delivered their “first strike” at Iraqi targets in the Gulf War on January 16, 1991. That day saw the first of the 39 Iraqi missile strikes on the civilian population centers of Israel which destroyed or damaged some 5,000 Israeli homes. Believing that Arabs now want to make peace and not war with Israel is equally as naive and dangerous as believing that they always substitute words for actions.

The motivation to destroy Israel has increased, not decreased. Only the tactics have changed. Arab honor must be restored, and only the annihilation of Israel can restore it. The establishment of the State of Israel and the defeat of the Arab armies is described by the leaders of the Arab world as “the disaster” or “the great defeat;” “the day of the greatest shame in the modern history of the Arabs;” and, “a smear on the entire Arab Nation. No one can forget the shame brought by the battle of 1948” (speech by President Nasser on Aug. 11, 1963). According to the Arabs that “smear,” that “shame,” can only be removed from the Arab nation’s face by “Israel’s total and absolute annihilation” (Al-Ahram editorial, Feb. 25, 1971). Five further wars against Israel since 1948, each more devastating than the last, should be ample proof that the greatest of motivations to restore Arab honor courses through the veins of the entire Arab world. It should be carefully noted that the Arab’s preoccupation with revenge against Israel is all that restrains them from unleashing all their violence upon the West.

Arab?

At this point the question should be asked, “Who is an Arab?” It is generally believed that the Arab world has its roots in the union of Abraham and Hagar, the Egyptian maid of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. This is only true to a point. There are numbers of nations described today as “Arab” that are not really Arab at all. The word “Arab” means “Bedouin” or “nomad,” and the name was given to those who inhabited the Arabian peninsula and the Syrian Desert.

Abraham himself came from Chaldea, known today as Iraq. Iran is not Arab and neither is its language Arabic. Iran is ancient Persia; Islam is her only common denominator with the Arab nations. The founding father of Egypt, Mizraim (Mizraim is Hebrew for Egypt -- the leader of the so-called “Arab” nations), was a grandson of Noah as were the fathers of Libya, Canaan and Ethiopia (Genesis 10:6). Obviously, if Ishmael, the son of Abraham, had an Egyptian mother, he is not responsible for fathering the nation. From Mizraim came the Philistines (Genesis 10:14). Lot, Abraham’s nephew (Genesis 12:5), was also an Iraqi. He fathered Ammon and Moab in an incestuous drunken spree (Genesis 19:36-38), and these men were the fathers of modern-day Jordan. The father of the nation of Yemen (Hebrew: Teman) was the grandson of Jacob’s brother Esau (Genesis 36:11, 34). From the genealogies we can see that many of those living in the Middle East are indeed blood relations, but it is as equally incorrect to say that Abraham is responsible for the nations of the Middle East, as it is to say that all the nations of the Middle East are Arab.

In the Arab world the answer to the question, “Who is an Arab” is usually this: “One whose mother tongue is Arabic.” Scholars, both Arab and Western, give rather more defined answers to the question, but their thoughts seem to converge upon Arabs as being those who speak Arabic, are brought up in Arab culture, and live in an Arabian country. Neither of these answers are satisfactory, however, because the Christian Copts of Egypt satisfy all of the above requirements but fervently deny being Arab. Hundreds of thousands of Jews born and raised in Arab lands, and who also satisfy all the given requirements, neither consider themselves to be Arabs, nor would the Arabs dream of considering them as such. Therefore, from what has been written here, we can arrive at the correct answer to the contemporary question of “Who is an Arab?”

Iran is radically Islamic, the only Middle Eastern country not considered to be Arab and the only Middle Eastern country to have held to its ancestral language after embracing Islam. The Egyptian Copts never converted to Islam, and neither did the Jews. Thus, leaving history aside, today’s Arabs are those whose mother tongue is Arabic, and who hold to the teachings of Islam.

http://hope-of-israel.org/amind.html

IMPORTANT....Win friends and influence people with emotional appeals

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:00:00 +0000

IMPORTANT....Win friends and influence people with emotional appeals

Yesterday, I attended several events here in Fresno with the regional Consul General of Israel, Dr. Andy David.

He discussed various topics, including one very close to my heart, the ongoing information war against Israel (my words, not his). In response to a question about how American friends of Israel can help, he said that we should do what we can to change the way people envision Israel, from a site of conflict to a “normal country.”

It’s better for people to think of Israel as a beautiful country with a high-tech economy and a cultured population than as a target of terrorism and war. Americans are simply not interested in things that they can’t relate to their everyday lives, so we should stop talking about rockets and start talking about how much fun it would be to spend a few weeks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. We should send our kids on Birthright trips, etc.

There is no doubt that he has a point. For example, a college student tells me that he supports BDS (boycott-divestment-sanctions) against Israel because “they stole the Palestinians’ land.” I respond, “no, let me explain about the Mandate, Arab immigration into Palestine in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Mufti, resolution 242 … instant glazed eyes.

But if he had visited Israel, perhaps studied there, if he knew Israelis and understood that they are normal people with normal aspirations, it would be harder for him to accept that these people were actually vicious oppressors and thieves; he would perhaps be more prepared to listen to their side of the story.

It doesn’t help to bombard Americans with stories about terrorist atrocities, said David. They don’t relate to them, and the other side is doing the same. They are lying and we are not, but the listener doesn’t care. He tunes out.

As I said, he has a point. Nothing is more important than letting our young people see Israel for themselves, because, as he said, for a Jew or a Christian it is a powerful, sometimes life-changing, experience.

But there is another point of view. Not exactly a contradictory one, but perhaps another aspect. Orit Arfa starts with a similar premise — that Israel is losing the information war — but has a different prescription:

At almost every pro-Israel lecture I attend, someone feels compelled to ask an unrelated question at the end: “Why does Israel have such bad PR”? …

Part of the problem with Israel’s PR is the fact that we even refer to an intellectual defense of Israel as “public relations.”It’s not a matter of mere PR or image. It’s a matter of our core values and our willingness to stand up for what we believe and know is right and true, no matter what the cost. We could have exponentially more effective PR if we spent less money, but tapped into our other hidden treasures: our conviction, passion, honesty, and fearlessness.

Israel’s enemies are good because they offer “black and white” messages, using humanitarian language that makes Israel’s enemies sound like the oppressed and downtrodden. They do not sugarcoat their lies. They say:

-Israel is an apartheid State

-Israel is an occupying power

-IDF soldiers are war criminals

And how do Israel’s spokespeople—both in and out of the Israeli government–fight these lies?

-They give long, arduous facts to debunk those claims

-They assert that Israel simply wants peace

-They assert that “it’s complicated/complex”

-They boast that Israel is a leader in hi-tech. (Without Israel, you wouldn’t have cell phones!)

I’ll tell you why these strategies rarely make a dent. The general population doesn’t care about drawn-out facts, especially in this television/Facebook obsessed, fast food/fast consumption culture. We need to answer such claims with strong messages as simple and pure as the ones that Israel’s enemies use - except ours will be honest. You can’t fight lies with “it’s complicated.” You have to throw the intellectual attacks back in their court, with statements like:

The Arab world consists of apartheid states

-“Palestine”is a made-up nation and the “Palestinians” are a made-up people

-Palestinian leaders are war criminals

Hit them hard, don’t be afraid of being called an ‘extremist’, and above all, be consistent, she says. People are not influenced by rational argument, but rather by emotion, so make your appeals powerful and emotional.

Anti-Zionists understand this. They use art, theater and even physical intimidation (I am not recommending this last, but you have to admit it is a powerful emotional tool). We present legal briefs tracing Jewish rights in Judea and Samaria to the San Remo conference of 1920, and they make up stories about ‘settlers’ uprooting Palestinian olive trees.

Interestingly, both David and Arfa point to the same phenomenon — that emotion is the key to influencing opinion. And of course there is more than one way to trigger an emotional response. So by all means, let’s continue to send our Jewish kids on Birthright trips, and make it possible for the Christian ones to walk where Jesus walked.

Arfa mentions the fact that anti-Israel views permeate the artistic and academic community. She suggests that we need to develop a “new generation of Zionist artists and academics.” For example — a particularly painful one in view of the two Israeli films nominated for Academy Awards this year — where are the Zionist filmmakers? Give them grants! And let’s fund pro-Israel academic programs to counteract the Saudi-paid “Middle East Studies” departments.

And finally — let’s not pretend that we don’t understand what our enemies are, and let’s make sure everyone knows it.

http://fresnozionism.org/2013/03/win-friends-and-influence-people-with-emotional-appeals/

Thinking Like an Arab

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Thinking Like an Arab

By Alan Caruba
Monday, March 6, 2006

If it hasn't occurred to most Americans by now, Arabs don't think like us. They see the world in very different terms. Rationality, logic, and common sense do not rate high among their priorities.

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to briefly work with Edward V. Badolato, a retired U.S. Marine Colonel with a distinguished career in government and private enterprise. Col. Badolato is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College with several tours of duty in the Middle East, beginning in 1967 shortly after the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. His tours took him to nearly every country in the Middle East. Following his retirement, he served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy in both the Reagan and Bush administrations (1984-89). As such, he was the principal architect of the government's readiness and response to terrorist threats to our energy infrastructure.

In 1980, he wrote a white paper, "Learning to Think like an Arab Muslim: a Short Guide to Understanding the Arab Mentality". I am going to provide a brief introduction to it. At only 14 pages, it is not a long document, but it succinctly explains why Americans and others in the West are encountering such difficulty understanding why Arab Muslims appear, by our standards, to be completely insane.

Why, for example, would people who believe they have the one, true religion, not hesitate to blow up mosques and other holy places? Why would they attack weddings and funerals? Why is beheading so popular among terrorists? Why would a few cartoons set off rioting and killing? And what does all this mean to us in terms of the threat it represents?

Badolato begins by describing Arabs as "a proud and sensitive people whose culture is mainly derived from three key factors: family, language, and religion." The Arab cultural system has existed for centuries and predates the introduction of Islam around 610 AD and its rapid spread after the death of Muhammad in 632 AD. "An Arab's commonly accepted view of the world (is) basically threatening and harsh."

Arab Muslims and presumably others because Islam has more than a billion adherents, divide the world between themselves and what they call Dar al Harb, literally, "the world of war." So, you are either a Muslim or you are an infidel and, by definition, a threat to Islam until you convert or are killed.

This may seem harsh, but true believers in Islam hold all other religions in contempt. The view of Judaism is psychopathic. Christians do not fare much better. The contempt for Hindus and Buddhists, religions deemed not to have "a book", completes the utter certitude of Muslims that they alone are truly religious.

You might feel that way, too, if you were compelled to pray five times a day, at dawn, midday, late afternoon, sunset, and nightfall. There are five prescribed prayers and all are in Arabic, a language Arabs will tell you is superior to all others. Verbal grandiosity is greatly applauded by Arabs. When facts are trumped by "ideas", however, you have entered Alice's bizarre Wonderland.

Badolato writes that, "An Arab's concept of the world has occasionally been described as a series of seven concentric circles with the individual Arab at the center. Thus, he has his family, an extended family or tribe, an immediate geographic region, and then his country. It is within the family that the psychology of the Muslim Arab is formed and observers have noted that, "the fluctuation between a loving mother and stern disciplinarian father can add to the complexity of growing up and often fosters schizoid personality traits." To put it another way, Arabs can go from hot to cold and back again so fast that it is bewildering. Arabs live in a black and white world with no shadings of grey.

Why do Arabs seem to be so violent? Conflict can be found in a family culture of competitiveness that is instilled at an early age. An old Arab saying aptly describes this. "I against my brother, my brother and I against our cousins, my brother, my cousins and I against the world." Add to this the way Arab history has been dominated "by warfare, domestic upheaval, and struggles against invasions from outside the Arab world" and you begin to grasp a mindset that will resist anything that is not Arab.

As Badolato describes it, it is an "almost visceral mistrust of any outside group or more specifically any Western state whose true ultimate intentions cannot readily be determined." For Arabs, their wars such as the conflict between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s really began at the battle of Qaddisiya over a thousand years ago!

The Islamic wars following the death of Mohammad led to the Sunni and Shiite divisions within Islam. It is a history of tension and conflict that literally dates back to the earliest years of Islam. Westerners might dismiss this by saying, "Get over it!" but the Arab mentality is totally rooted in the past.

And why not? Not one single word of the 114 surahs (chapters) of the Quran has been changed in fourteen centuries and they describe in detail the conduct of every hour of every day of an Arab Muslim's life. As Badolato describes it, "It is as if one single document contained our Constitution, our legal code, national education policy, business practices, inter-personal etiquette, and the Bible." Welcome to the seventh century AD!

What America and the West are up against are Islamic fundamentalists and countless sympathizers who would destroy us in a desperate effort to retain their Arab identity. Thus, when Palestinians elect Hamas, a terrorist organization, as their government, the West recoils, but the same is true throughout the Middle East and across northern Africa. In any election, Islamic fundamentalists would take control of the politics of these nations.

Their very identity as Arabs and/or Muslims is at stake. The validity of Islam as the one, true faith is at stake. "Huge segments of the population simply cannot cope with modernity and the social and political changes taking place."

What we see as an improvement in the lives of millions of Arabs, changes in their educational system, women's rights and their inclusion in the work force, improved literacy rates, better nutritional standards, advanced health and hygiene, all things that Westerners embrace, threaten Arabs. This explains why the Middle East has remained the most backward region of the world for centuries and why it now constitutes the greatest threat to the modern world.

Arab Muslims are not like us. They do not want to be like us. If they become more like us they will have to let go of a culture that both stunts their humanity and provides an odd, brutal security blanket at the same time.

For the West that leaves us with the same demand we made of Japan and Germany in the last century, unconditional surrender.

The complete text of Badolato's essay can be read at www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2004/articles/0503arabs.html
Alan Caruba of The National Anxiety Center maintains an Internet site at www.anxietycenter.com. Caruba writes a weekly column, "Warning Signs", posted on the site and excerpted widely on many others. Alan's new book, "Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy" has been published by Merril Press. In 2003, a collection of his columns was published by Merril Press. Alan can be reached at: letters@canadafreepress.com

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/caruba030606.htm

Obama Meets With Pro-Hezbollah Groups Ahead of Mideast Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Obama Meets With Pro-Hezbollah Groups Ahead of Mideast Trip

By Ryan Mauro

On Monday, President Obama prepared for his trip to the Middle East by meeting with around 10 Muslim and Arab officials that provided him with “recommendations.” The attendees included representatives from the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, two anti-Israel groups with a record of pro-Hezbollah advocacy. The meeting came four days after his meeting with Jewish leaders.

A joint press release by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), American Task Force for Palestine, American Federation of Ramallah Palestine and the Arab-American Institute boasted of the meeting. Separately, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) alerted its supporters that the director of its Washington D.C. office, Haris Tarin, also attended. He was previously thanked by President Obama in a personal phone call for his activism on July 13, 2011. The ADC earlier tried to get President Obama’s attention by helping to organize an interfaith “No Blank Check for Israel” rally in the capital near Inauguration Day.

The meeting took place in the Roosevelt Room near the Oval Office and also involved unidentified national security officials and Valerie Jarrett, the senior adviser who was a keynote speaker at the 2009 annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, a group with Muslim Brotherhood origins. The meeting apparently wasn’t all good news for the invitees. The president of ADC, Warren David, complained that President Obama has let down many Arab-Americans with his Middle East policy and said he left with a “bittersweet feeling.”

The ADC was founded by the first Arab-American Senator, who praised Hezbollah during its war with Israel in 2006. He also has stated that Zionists were secretly behind the 9/11 attacks. The ADC leadership opposed its designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. In 2000, an ADC spokesperson called Hezbollah a “responsible liberation force.” The ADC also honored Helen Thomas after she said the Jews in Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go to Poland.

Similarly, MPAC stood against the designations of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups in a 2003 policy paper. On the other hand, it called Israel a state sponsor of terrorism in 2001. It said that the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon did not qualify as terrorism. In 2006, MPAC explained it was only stating a “highly relevant fact” and did not support the attack. In 1998, MPAC co-founder and senior adviser Maher Hathout said Hezbollah’s attacks on armed forces are “legitimate” and the following year, MPAC president Salam al-Marayati said that its attacks on Israeli soldiers are “legitimate resistance.”

On 9/11, al-Marayati said that Israel should be considered a suspect. Hathout similarly entertained suggestions of a 9/11 conspiracy. In 2000, Hathout referred to Israel as “butchers” and “an apartheid state” and predicted that the Arab governments would be “flushed down in the cesspools of history of treason” by a “general intifada.”

Hathout and his brother, another MPAC co-founder, are disciples of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and formerly served in his organization. They continued to promote al-Banna’s Islamist preaching in the 1990s. However, Hathout has stated that he opposes the Muslim Brotherhood’s power grab in Egypt and that Sharia’s penal code is not applicable anymore. He recently expressed a tolerant view of homosexuals. Regardless of what his views on Sharia Law may be, MPAC’s record on Israel and Hezbollah is undeniable.

This meeting is the latest entry in the Obama Administration’s record of ties to the ADC and MPAC. Kareem Shora, who was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council and then served as a community engagement liaison for the DHS, was an ADC official since 1999 and was its national executive director.

In September 2009, MPAC celebrated that it participated in a dozen Iftar dinners with government agencies. In 2010, the State Department asked al-Marayati to speak in Europe. The Department of Defense apologized to MPAC in February 2012 for the accidental burning of a Koran in Afghanistan. On February 8, 2012, MPAC, ADC, the Islamic Society of North America and other groups met with the director of the FBI to discuss its counter-terrorism training content. Afterwards, the FBI said it would consider forming a panel with them to help with the review.

The meeting with President Obama to provide policy “recommendations” is unsettling. Were their records even considered? What type of advice are they given to the President, his administration and elected officials? And why aren’t more moderate voices being asked for their assistance in combating Islamism, anti-Semitism and the other causes of the ongoing conflict?

Monday’s chat shows the influence these groups have had in the past and, most importantly, the influence they will have for the next four years.

This article was sponsored by the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/obama-meets-with-pro-hezbollah-groups-ahead-of-mideast-trip/

Condemn terror, not settlements, Peres tells EU President rebuffs EU designation of West Bank building as obstacle to peace, calls for Hamas and Hezbollah to get terror label

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Condemn terror, not settlements, Peres tells EU President rebuffs EU designation of West Bank building as obstacle to peace, calls for Hamas and Hezbollah to get terror label

By JOSHUA DAVIDOVICH

President Shimon Peres pushed back against recent European Union condemnation of Israeli settlements Wednesday, saying terror, not construction, was the real obstacle to peace.

Peres, in Brussels for a Holocaust ceremony and meetings with EU leaders, called on the European body to aim its opprobrium at anti-Israel violence.

“The EU can help us in putting an end to terror by condemning Hamas because they are the center of terror, the same for Hezbollah,” he said during a joint press conference with EU President Herman Van Rompuy.

Van Rompuy had begun the press conference by noting “illegal expansion of settlements.”

“I don‘t take this criticism, that, because of the settlements, we lost the chance of implementing the two-state solution,” Peres said, though he agreed with Van Rompuy’s statement that there was need for action on a two-state solution.

Along with harsh condemnations, voices within the EU have called for the body to sanction Israel for settlement building in the West Bank. A non-binding report by EU consuls in the West Bank recently called for the organization to cut funding to Israeli companies with assets in the West Bank, and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton last week threw her weight behind an initiative to have settlement goods labeled.

However, the body has also come under pressure to label Hezbollah a terror organization, especially after a report by Bulgaria last month fingered the Lebanese Shi’ite group as behind a terror attack that killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian near the resort city of Burgas in July.

The case may get a further boost Thursday when the trial of a Hezbollah-linked man arrested in Cyprus for tracking Israeli tourists is set to come to a close. A verdict is expected in the coming weeks.

It was not known if Peres or Van Rompuy discussed the Burgas bombing report with Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev, who was also in Brussels Wednesday.

Peres praised the EU for being a symbol of European unity after centuries of war, saying he hoped the Middle East could emulate the model.

“I hope the time will come when the Middle East will become a peaceful, united region like you,” he said.

On Tuesday, Peres and the crown prince of Belgium recognized 11 families who saved Jews during the Holocaust.

The president is currently on an 11-day tour to Belgium and Strasbourg for meeting with European leaders and lawmakers as well as Jewish groups.

JTA contributed to this report.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/condemn-terror-not-settlements-peres-tells-eu/

Why it matters

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Why it matters

Sarah Honig

There might not be any point to responding if it were only Shaul Mofaz who wondered why we need harp on Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Mofaz has just barely managed to cross the Knesset entry threshold (having started out not too many months back with a 28- member parliamentary contingent). Since he nearly failed to hold on to his own seat, it’s safe to conclude that he doesn’t represent a powerful or even a relevant political camp. Therefore, what does any of his kibitzing matter?

Ordinarily it indeed wouldn’t, except that Mofaz’s professed failure of comprehension might reflect the intellectual indolence of others, alongside the trendy heedlessness popularized by assorted opinion-molders.
To hear them, it’s perfectly fine to embrace this particular incomprehension – be it expediently feigned or an actual inability to grasp the basic cause for the war waged against Israel.

The premise for the apparent incomprehension is that demanding recognition for Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state is all much ado about not very much. As Mofaz put it, “Do we need a seal of approval from the Palestinians? We know we are a Jewish state and we shall remain so eternally, whether or not the Palestinians recognize us as such.”

This pretty much echoes Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s oft-reiterated mantra, averring that the Israelis “can call themselves what they will.”

But Abbas goes on: “We will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state. We have rejected, and will reject, this demand. We know what Netanyahu’s intention is. He wants to undermine the Palestinian-Arab presence inside Israel and prevent the return of refugees.”

Yet what is Abbas’s intention? His refusal to recognize the Jewish state’s legitimacy means that he reserves for himself the right to Arabize the de facto entity provisionally known as Israel by overrunning it with millions of so-called refugees.

In other words, rather than be accepted as rightfully a Jewish state, Israel is regarded at most as a multinational temporary entity and a candidate for impending Arabization. It wouldn’t be left in peace unless it submits meekly to said Arabization and the eradication of its Jewishness.

This is a surefire recipe for perpetuating the conflict (albeit by mutating means) rather than ending it, as presumed pursuers of peace would ostensibly wish to do. The refusal to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state is tantamount to affirming an enduring Arab aspiration to obliterate the Jewish state, subsequent to an arrangement that would falsely parade as peace.

This goes right to the very heart of the conflict between Jews and Arabs – a conflict which had long predated Israel’s birth. This conflict isn’t and never was about a Palestinian state. There would have been no strife were the establishment of such a state the ultimate objective of the Arab world. A Palestinian Arab state could have been declared independent in 1948 – together with Israel – but no Arab would hear of it.

This country’s Jews cheered the 1947 UN Partition Resolution aimed at creating a Jewish and an Arab state. That resolution, however, was ferociously rebuffed by the entire Arab world. Hence it’s inherently dishonest to deny that the feud is and always was about the creation and continued existence of the Jewish state.

The Palestinians and the entire Arab/Muslim realm demand strategic sacrifices of Israel that plainly jeopardize its survival prospects. All Israel demands in return is that the war against it cease. That can only happen when the initial pretext for the attacks on Israel is annulled. Since Israel was attacked because the very notion of a Jewish state was anathema to its Arab neighbors, then discontinuing the state of war must start with recognition of the very legitimacy of a Jewish state that was rejected from 1947 onward.

Now, gallingly, the demand for recognition of the right of Jews to a state is extensively portrayed as an obstructionist tactic. That tactic moreover is portrayed as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s own personal negotiation-paralyzing pet ploy. Such spurious spins serve both in-house political rivals doggedly snapping at Netanyahu’s heels and foreign detractors whose automatic point of departure is that Israel can never be right.

Nonetheless, the still blatant refusal to concede the legality of Jewish sovereignty isn’t a semantic quibble. True, we know who we are regardless of Arab acknowledgement but that acknowledgement is not inconsequential.

To understand this we need to set aside the acquired postmodern contempt for history. The past isn’t insignificant. The present is a direct, ongoing attempt to resolve what was started yesteryear.

Without historical context there can be no valid evaluation of Israel’s existential predicaments – certainly not of crucial continuities. That’s why those who seek to obfuscate and skew do their utmost to erase telltale fundamental perspectives and portray whatever they focus upon as vital, isolated concerns. Disinclination to retrace the steps which, for better or worse, brought us hitherto messes with our perceptions and dictates profound misperceptions.

Those whose time count begins on the morning of June 5, 1967, invariably seek to advance a predetermined agenda, whereby all that preceded Israeli ”occupation” is discarded, as is everything that triggered the direct outbreak of hostilities.

Their bottom line is to persuade the uninitiated that Israelis woke up one sunny day, and overtaken by uncontrollable and inexcusable territorial appetites, invaded their peace-loving neighbors’ homes and usurped them arbitrarily. The cruel conquistadors then illegally settled in their neighbors’ property, which impelled the downtrodden natives to resist the interlopers.

The propagandist logic here is unmistakable. Justice demands a return to the status quo ante – in other words to the situation as it was on June 4, 1967 (while failing to mention that on that date Israel was existentially vulnerable, surrounded and threatened with extinction by the aforementioned neighbors who blusterously bayed for Jewish blood).

An equally popular distortion is that all regional misery resulted wantonly out of the blue from Israel’s birth in 1948. Everything which led up to that turning point is assiduously ignored. Tendentious rewriters of history prefer we forget that the conflict didn’t begin in 1948 but reached its culmination then.

Forgotten quite expediently are recurrent pre-1948 massacres by Arabs shouting “Itbach el-Yahud” (“Slaughter the Jews”), denial of asylum to Jews fleeing the Holocaust and, not least, active and avid Arab collaboration with Nazi Germany.

The logic of this misrepresentation too is unmistakable. It inescapably leads to Israel’s utter delegitimization. If Israel’s inception is the original sin, then the only rightful long-term remedy can be Israel’s termination.

But while Israel’s independence formally began in 1948, its struggle didn’t. The Arabs brutally opposed the Jewish community which existed in this country pre-World War II and which was ripe for statehood before the Holocaust. The “Great Arab Revolt” of 1936-39 – fomented by the still-revered Haj Amin al-Husseini and financed by Nazi Germany – delayed Jewish independence.

The Arabs denied asylum here to desperate Jewish escapees from Hitler’s hell. Thereby they doomed these refugees to death. The blood of these exterminated Jews indelibly stains Arab hands.

But that’s not all. Husseini, in the role of pan-Arab prime minister, spent the war years in Berlin, where he chummily hobnobbed with his financers and hosts – Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann et al. He broadcast Nazi propaganda, recruited Muslims to the SS and actively foiled the rescue of any Jews, even children, during the Holocaust.

This country’s Arabs were avidly pro-Nazi, saluted each other with Heil Hitler, flaunted the swastika, hoarded arms, harbored German spies and planned to heartily welcome Rommel’s invading Afrika Korps.

The war which the entire Arab world launched against newborn Israel, three years post-Holocaust, was explicitly geared to complete Hitler’s unfinished mission. Not only was there no attempt to camouflage this genocidal goal, but it was broadcast boastfully for all to hear and be intimidated.

Its declared aim was to thwart UN General Assembly Resolution 181, adopted on November 29, 1947. That resolution called for the partition of western Palestine into two economically integrated states – one Jewish and one Arab.

Eastern Palestine, comprising nearly 80 percent of the total, was arbitrarily ripped off by the British Mandate in 1922 and handed over to a princeling from what has since become known as Saudi Arabia. Emir Abdullah’s gift-package was artificially dubbed Transjordan, a country entirely unheard of in human history and whose bogus nationality is today known as Jordanian. It is, in fact, the product of the first division of Palestine.

Although on paper Jews received 54% of the remainder, they actually got three non-contiguous slivers, the largest of which included the Arava, eastern Negev and the Negev’s far south (down to then-nonexistent Eilat). Most of the moonscape terrain wasn’t arable and was certainly unsuitable for large-scale urban habitation. Another bit was wedged in the eastern Galilee around Lake Kinneret. The most densely populated mini-slice was an unimaginably narrow noodle along the Mediterranean, where most Jews congregated and which was chillingly vulnerable. Within it was enclosed the Arab enclave of Jaffa, while Nahariya was left outside the Jewish state.

Jerusalem and Bethlehem were to comprise a “corpus separatum,” an international zone, this notwithstanding the fact that Jerusalem had an undeniable Jewish majority going back at least to the beginning of the 19th century (there were no censuses beforehand). But organized Christianity couldn’t abide the affront of Jewish dominion in the holy city.

Untenable and implausible though this hodgepodge partition was, Jewish multitudes rejoiced in the streets. At that point it didn’t matter how nightmarish and absurd the disjointed territorial splinters assigned to them were.

What mattered was that for the first time in 2,000 years Jewish self-determination – if even on a ridiculously diminutive and fragile geographical fragment – appeared increasingly like a viable reality, despite immediate Arab venomous denunciation of any compromise whatever with any Jewish entity.

This is what it was all about then. This is what it’s still about. This is why it still massively matters. This is why Mofaz is so fundamentally wrong.

All Israel asks is that the Arabs belatedly accept 1947’s UN Partition Resolution, which they violently violated merely because it provided for a Jewish state. That Jewish state became the Arab casus belli. The Jewish state still is the Arab casus belli.

Peace cannot begin to be made before the malignant characterization of Jewish statehood as a casus belli is recanted convincingly and comprehensively once and for all.

http://sarahhonig.com/2013/03/08/another-tack-why-it-matters/

The Samira Ibrahim affair

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

The Samira Ibrahim affair

Samira Ibrahim in Tahrir Square. Not afraid of Zionists
This isn’t a big story, but it has some interesting aspects.

In observance of International Women’s Day today, Michelle Obama and John Kerry will be recognizing 9 International Women of Courage, including — posthumously — the anonymous victim of the infamous Delhi rape.

There were to be ten honorees, but one of them, Samira Ibrahim of Egypt was caught sending several vicious tweets, one calling the terrorist bombing of a bus full of Israelis in Bulgaria “sweet news,” one quoting Hitler approvingly, and even one celebrating the anniversary of 9/11. When the State Department put her award on hold, she at first (unconvincingly) claimed her account had been hacked, and then said “I refuse to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America regarding my previous anti-Zionist statements under pressure from American government therefore they withdrew the award.”

Despite hating Jews and the United States, Ibrahim certainly was courageous. She was originally picked because she sued the Egyptian government when they performed a degrading “virginity test” on her after she was arrested for protesting in Tahrir Square, and forced them to end the ‘tests’. And of course, she is not afraid of the “Zionist lobby” either.

If we include Ibrahim, five out of the ten women selected are Muslims, possibly illustrating the importance the State Department attaches to establishing good relations with the people who, more than anyone else in the world, want to kill Jews and Americans.

But it is not surprising that — especially in Egypt — they had a hard time finding someone who did not share the common prejudices.

Let’s understand that Egypt, which has rendered itself almost entirely free of Jews (it’s estimated that there were less than 100 in 2004), is nevertheless a nation obsessed with hatred of Jews.

When non-Jewish journalist Lara Logan was swarmed and sexually attacked in Tahrir Square in 2011, the crowd shouted “Jew!” They also decorated pictures of Hosni Mubarak with the star of David. Egyptian TV often casts Jews as villains, and recently presented a series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Hitler’s Mein Kampf, in Arabic, is a bestseller in Egyptian bookstores (I mentioned that one of Ibrahim’s tweets quoted Hitler).

It isn’t just Egypt. They would have had a hard time in the ‘advanced’ nation of Turkey, too:

A study by Turkey’s Hrant Dink Foundation has found that Jews have become the main object of hate speech in the country, followed by Armenians, Christians, and Greeks.

I bet it would have been much easier to find a courageous Israeli woman, perhaps one who lives in the southern part of Israel and who has been subjected to rocket bombardments day after day and year after year, who doesn’t hate Arabs, Egyptians or Turks. But that wouldn’t help the message, which is that the US is a friend to the oppressed; and by definition an Israeli can’t be oppressed, she can only be an oppressor.

One more interesting connection: The New York Times blogger Robert Mackey, known for his anti-Zionist take, asked Samuel Tadros, who originally broke the Ibrahim story, whether he was a Coptic Christian and if this could have influenced his reporting.

The mind boggles. If a Coptic academic sees and translates a Jew-hating or anti-American tweet, is his reporting thereof invalid? Is everything now ethnically relative?

http://fresnozionism.org/2013/03/the-samira-ibrahim-affair/

French city grants honorary citizenship to murderer of Israeli minister

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:00:00 +0000

French city grants honorary citizenship to murderer of Israeli minister
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

Terrorist Majdi al-Rimawi was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 80 years for participating in the planning and murder of Israeli Minister Rechavam Zeevi in 2001.

A few weeks ago, the city of Bezons in France decided to grant Al-Rimawi "honorary citizenship." The inscription on the plaque prepared by the municipality of Bezons referred to Al-Rimawi as a "political prisoner."

Al-Rimawi participated in Zeevi's murder and was a member of the terrorist organization PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Palestinian terrorist prisoners are glorified by the PA and even receive PA salaries. In this case, the French city of Bezons directly supports this PA policy by itself glorifying the Palestinian terrorist.

The following is the story as reported on PA TV:

PA TV host: "The French city of Bezons awarded honorary citizenship to the prisoner Majdi al-Rimawi from the village Bani Zeid Al-Gharbiyya. This title and award were given during an official ceremony held in France, to which the wife of the prisoner, Fathiya al-Rimawi, was invited... Prisoner Majdi al-Rimawi, of course, has been jailed in the occupation's (i.e., Israeli) prisons for 11 years and is sentenced to life imprisonment plus 50 years (80 years, -Ed.)"

Terrorist Al-Rimawi's wife: "This connection between the city of Bezons and the Municipality of Bani Zeid Al-Gharbiyya began in 2008... The matter of prisoners in our region caught the attention of [our] French brothers, and they decided to honor them by granting honorary citizenship to a prisoner from this area. Of course, all prisoners deserve all the good, all the honor and all the admiration, from the smallest of them to the greatest, from the most lenient sentence to the heaviest sentence. However, as part of the historical ties [between the municipalities], and since we in the [Bani Zeid] municipality started the relationship with the French brothers, prisoner Majdi Al-Rimawi was the one chosen to be recognized and granted this honorary award. For us, the family of the prisoner, this award is a great gesture from the French [people] and [shows their] support of the issue of Palestinian prisoners in general, and in particular the issue of prisoners sentenced to long prison terms."

PA TV focused on a plaque from the city of Bezons, which included the following dedication (in French):

"The city of Bezons has promoted
Mr. Majdi Irhima Al-Rimawi
[to] Honorary Citizen
at the extraordinary city council on February 13, 2013"

PA TV also zoomed in on the following text:

On the left:

"An olive branch for the Palestinians (literally "olive tree").
A state for the Palestinians on the 1967 borders.
A city for peace and solidarity."

On the right:

"In solidarity with the Palestinian people, on February 13, 2013, the city council promoted Majdi Irhima al-Rimawi (political prisoner) to the rank of honorary citizen of the city of Bezons."

[PA TV (Fatah), Feb. 20, 2013]

The Mayor of the city of Bezons, Dominique Lesparre, made a speech at the ceremony in which he justified the acts of the terrorist convicted of murder, calling him a "victim." He also defended all 4,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons as "Palestinian resistance." The transcript of his speech was posted on his blog:

Dominique Lesparre, Mayor of Bezons: "Majdi is a direct victim of this occupation... As are the 4,500 Palestinian resistance [fighters] who were imprisoned for having dared to defend their country against an occupier whose military means are oversized and whose methods constantly violate UN resolutions and international law."

(French original: "Majdi est une victime directe de cette occupation... Comme le sont aussi les 4 500 résistants palestiniens emprisonnés pour avoir osé défendre leur pays face à un occupant dont les moyens militaires sont surdimensionnés et dont les méthodes violent sans cesse les résolutions des Nations Unies et le droit international.")

[http://dominiquelesparre.com/2013/02/17/majdi-ihrima-al-rimawi-prisonnier-palestinien-fait-citoyen-dhonneur-de-la-ville-de-bezons/,

posted Feb. 17, 2013, accessed March 10, 2013]

http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=8640

Norwegian MP says government "indirectly" funds terrorism

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Norwegian MP says government "indirectly" funds terrorism
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

MP calls on Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs
to investigate if former Foreign Minister "wrongly" informed Parliament about PA salary payments to terrorist prisoners

After NRK TV publicized PMW's findings, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry agreed to again check into the question

of PA payments of salaries to terrorists in prison

Norwegian state-owned NRK TV launched an inquiry into Norway's support of the PA's general budget. The PA uses this budget to pay salaries of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for security offenses. Palestinian Media Watch has reported that the recipients of the monthly salary include all imprisoned terrorists including those serving multiple life sentences for murder. NRK's publication of PMW's findings has led to complaints by Norwegian MPs that their government is indirectly funding terror and has "wrongly" informed parliament.

MP Peter Gitmark to NRK TV:"This is very serious and especially the fact that it almost seems to be an aid program to terror-convicted prisoners in Israel, not to mention that it increases according to the length of the sentence."
...

NRK TV newsreader: "Do you think that Norwegian tax money is being used to fund terrorism?"
MP Peter Gitmark: "Yes, this is an indirect form of that."

Click to view

In past parliamentary debates about these salaries to terrorists, Norway's former Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre defended funding the PA budget, stating that the PA payments were social welfare to the families and not salaries. PMW has published extensive documentation that the payments are in fact "salaries" controlled by the prisoners. PMW has shown that even though the terrorists cannot personally receive the money in jail, it belongs to them and they have the sole right to appoint a power of attorney to receive the money on their behalf. In some cases, wives and families of prisoners do not receive the money. PMW has also noted that more than 60% of the jailed terrorists are single. Nevertheless, they receive the salary payments.

MP Peter Gitmark: "Parliament has been informed on several occasions by then Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. It now appears that former Foreign Minister Støre, was wrong and informed Parliament wrongly. Naturally the [Parliamentary] Scrutiny Committee (Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs) should examine this and check if this should have consequences in Parliament because of the bad information."

Following the recent debates, the Foreign Ministry told NRK TV that it will again turn to the PA for clarification:

State Secretary Larsen: "After new questions have been asked, new claims have been made, we find it necessary, together with Great Britain, once more, to ask for clarifications from the PA regarding aid levels, amounts and determination of need related to this type of social aid."

Larsen's insistence on referring to the salary payments as "social aid" is striking, as PMW has already reported that the PA Minister of Prisoners himself recently rejected this categorization of the payments as social welfare. Rather, they are out of "esteem" for the "struggle" of the prisoners:

"[Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Issa] Karake denies rumors about changing salaries (Arabic: rawatib) into social assistance (Arabic: i'anat ijtima'iya)... He noted that the government headed by Salam Fayyad considers the prisoners' cause central, and has authorized regulations to support and protect them out of esteem for their sacrifice and struggle."

[WAFA (the official Palestinian Authority news agency), Dec. 27, 2012]

Larsen's mention of Britain is a reference to the fact that in response to PMW's reports, Britain has likewise been debating the UK's funding of the general PA budget, which pays the salaries payments to the terrorists.

Click to view PMW's latest bulletin on PA salaries to terrorists in Israeli prisons.

Click to view PMW's four in depth reports documenting the PA's payment of salaries to terrorists.

The following is the transcript of the Norwegian NRK TV News' report on PMW's documentation of the PA's payment of salaries to terrorists in prison:

NRK TV newsreader: "Convicted Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons receive salaries from their government, an Israeli organization [PMW] claims. Norway provides substantial financial aid to the PA and the Foreign Ministry confirms that there is a financial aid program for prisoners, including terrorists. But the Foreign Ministry calls it social aid for the families and will now ask for clarification on how the [Norwegian] money is spent."

Footage of scene of bombing at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is shown.

NRK TV narrator: "A bomb was placed in the cafeteria at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Nine civilians were killed that day in July 2002. The man behind [the attack] was Ibrahim Hamed, convicted of the murder of a total of 46 Israelis. Ibrahim Hamed is one of the approximately 4,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, who, according to the Israeli organization Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), receive salaries from the PA while they are in prison."

PMW Director Itamar Marcus: "Every Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail who is there for security offenses, who is there for - that includes any terrorist offense, including murder, receives a monthly salary from the Palestinian Authority. This includes people who've murdered 50-60 people in suicide bombings that they organized."

NRK TV narrator: "Since 2008, Norway has given over 300 million [Norwegian] kroner annually in direct budget support to the PA in the West Bank."

Visual of PMW's special report on the PA's payment of salaries to terrorists: "Is the PA lying to European governments in order to receive European funding?"

NRK TV narrator: "This is the same PA that according to PMW's last report, gives salaries to Palestinian prisoners, among them several hundred inmates convicted of terror-related actions. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry several times has rejected such complaints. Last year in Parliament, [then Foreign Minister] Jonas Gahr Stoere said that 'this is not salaries, it is support for the prisoners' families and canteen money for the prisoners.' The Norwegian Foreign Ministry gave the same answer to NRK TV two weeks ago.
But NRK was not satisfied with this answer. We asked for supplementary information from the Foreign Ministry, which we have now received. The Foreign Ministry now says that a separate aid program for Palestinian prisoners who are convicted in Israeli military court does exist."

Norwegian Foreign Ministry State Secretary Torgeir Larsen: "First of all, I would like to say that rewarding terror is not acceptable. Social aid is given, we have been informed by the PA, to different categories of Palestinian prisoners. One of those categories is those 5000 Palestinians who are imprisoned after conviction in military court in Israel."

NRK TV reporter: "Among them terrorists?"

State Secretary Larsen: "It's everything from stone throwing youths to Hamas MPs to long term prisoners who are imprisoned for serious terror attacks."

NRK TV reporter: "The Foreign Ministry also confirms that the salary amounts increase with the length of the sentence and says that the initial salary per month is 2,300 [Norwegian] kroner. Those who have been imprisoned for more than 30 years can receive as much as 18,000 kroner per month according to Palestinian Media [Watch]. This is an amount that, as NRK TV understands, no other type of prisoners receive.
After NRKs inquiry, the Foreign Ministry will bring up the issue once more."

NRK TV reporter: "The Foreign Ministry thinks it is important to add that the founder of PMW, Itamar Marcus, lives in an illegal settlement in the West Bank, and that the organization is on the right in Israeli politics.
NRK has given the PA the opportunity to answer regarding this issue. The [PA] Ambassador to Norway [Yasser Al-Najjar] does not want to be interviewed, but says in an e-mail that the money going to prisoners is for supporting the family of the prisoners who are unable to provide for the family while in prison."

NRK TV newsreader: "[MP] Peter Gitmark (Conservative Party), how seriously do you view this?"

MP Peter Gitmark: "This is very serious and especially the fact that it almost seems to be an aid program to terror-convicted prisoners in Israel, not to mention that it increases according to the length of the sentence."

NRK TV newsreader: "But is it not fair that people receive support to provide for the family if its breadwinner is imprisoned?"

MP Peter Gitmark: "Yes, absolutely, and canteen money and also simple payments to the family is okay, but having large amounts like 18,000 [Norwegian] kroner a month [paid], whether it is for the family or the individual prisoner, because he has committed a terrorist act, is unacceptable."

NRK TV newsreader: "Do you think that Norwegian tax money is being used to fund terrorism?"

MP Peter Gitmark: "Yes, this is an indirect form of that. However, it is also important to emphasize that the Norwegian support to the Palestinian areas is vital in order to create an opportunity to reach a two-state solution, and that is what is needed for peace."

NRK TV newsreader: "So you will not stop your support [to the PA]? A quick yes or no?"

MP Peter Gitmark: "No."

NRK TV newsreader: "How well do you think Parliament is informed by the government here?"

MP Peter Gitmark: "Far too badly. Parliament has been informed on several occasions by then Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. It now appears that former Foreign Minister Støre, was wrong and informed Parliament wrongly. Naturally the [Parliamentary] Scrutiny Committee (Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs) should examine this and check if this should have consequences in Parliament because of the bad information."

[NRK TV Evening News (Norway), Feb. 28, 2013]

http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=8630

Norway update: Parliamentary committee investigating if Norway is funding terrorists in prison
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

A parliamentary committee is now investigating Norwegian funding of the PA. This follows Norwegian NRK TV's news reports about Palestinian Media Watch's findings and the recent debate in parliament.

The following is the Norwegian NRK TV news report:

"The Parliamentary Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs requests the Foreign Ministry to document that Norwegian aid is not going to pay Palestinian terrorists in prison. The Palestinian Authority has a separate financial support [program] for prisoners convicted of security offenses, including terrorism. Norway is one of the biggest financial contributors to the Palestinian Authority."

The request for information by the committee was sent to the Foreign Minister. If the committee is not satisfied with the Foreign Minister's response, a full committee hearing could be called.

http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=8637

The viral power of a lying image and the editors who make it all happen

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:00:00 +0000

The viral power of a lying image and the editors who make it all happen

Front page news all over the world
in November 2012: Source

For most people, much of what is reported as news is confusing unless simplified and accompanied by illustrations.

News of the Arab/Israel conflict - so often beset with conflicting versions of reality - is especially confusing for many reasons, including the fact that many of the people reporting it have only the most tenuous grasp on the history of the protagonists or of the languages in which the events happen and in which each side tells its own story to its own people.

There’s an expression we all know: that a picture is worth a thousand words. The problem is very few people have the patience to read or listen to the thousand words. And those with the motivation and agenda to drive their message forwards via pictures are very often able to get away with tremendous distortions of reality. In a fast moving, competitive news industry, far too few editors do what we expect them to do – check the imagery and validate the reality that it seems to be representing before showing it to their audiences.

Sydney Morning Herald

The thousand words represented by the picture too often turn out to be a thousand malicious, distorting, lying words.

In this post, we have pasted numerous versions of a powerful, painful image from November 2012. It shows a man called Jihad Masharawi who works for the BBC in its Arabic department. He is holding a child – sometimes wrapped up in a white shroud, sometimes in other poses. There are many photos of Jihad on the web from that month. His face displays the grief of a father. A shooting war is going on in the background. Thousands of rockets have been fired by the terrorist forces of the Gaza Strip at Israelis. The terrorists never claimed to be firing them either at the Israeli army or at strategic Israeli sites like power stations or roads. They were being fired wherever Israelis could be found and hit, and damn the consequences (our words, not theirs).

According to the news reports that came along with the images, Jihad said his home in Gaza had been hit and his infant son Omar was killed, as were other people. In some versions, the people who did the hitting were simply "the Jews". In others, it was the IDF. The analytic blog Powerline expressed deep suspicion at the time about how this story was being reported and tried to learn more:

BBC

Paul Danahar is the BBC Middle East Bureau Chief and Masharawi’s colleague. He spent much of the day at Masharawi’s house on the day on the day Masharawi’s son was killed, tweeting a photo of the hole in the roof of Masharawi’s house. The house wasn’t bombed. There is no way Pexton’s Post colleagues verified that Israelis bombed Masharawi’s house. Pexton is in fantasy land on this point. In his Twitter feed, Danahar describes the munition that did the damage as a “shell.” I tweeted Danahar to ask him on what basis he identified the munition as Israeli. I doubt that it was. I think it is more likely to have been a Hamas rocket that failed to hit its intended target in Israel. (As I recall, something like 10 percent of the Hamas rockets landed in Gaza.) Danahar failed to respond to my tweet. [Powerlineblog]

Aljazeera

Now flash forward four months. We’re in March 2013, and the memories of the intense and frightening battles of November are receding into the background. The Elder of Ziyon blog, that followed this story closely from the start, reported Friday that "UN verifies that BBC reporter's son was killed by Hamas". The Jewish publication Algemeiner carried a similar report on its website yesterday.

The UN Human Rights Council released an advanced version of its report on Israel’s November conflict with Gaza terrorists this week. The report is unusually fair to Israel, and disputes several claims made by Western media against Israel during Operation Pillar of Defense. Most significantly the report says that in all likelihood the 11-month-old child of a BBC employee Jihad Misharawi was killed during Operation Pillar of Defense by Hamas rocket fire rather than by Israel, the side initially blamed in reports by the BBC and several other media outlets covering the conflict. The UNHRC report says: “On 14 November, a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.⁶⁹"

If you click on footnote 69, it says the incident was monitored by the OHCHR and they believe the attack came from a Hamas rocket.

Rockets intended to hit Israelis and fired by Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza routinely ‘fall short’ as we have noted here many times. See for instance "18-Nov-12: Fell short? Not just the Hamas rockets but the ethics of the journalists covering them"; "8-Sep-12: Familiar routine: rocket and mortar attacks during Sabbath"; 2-May-12: Terrorists' rocket falls short, crashes near security fence" and many more similar reports here.

From the Spanish news site 20 Minutos

Even if (to be ridiculously cautious about this) no one can say with utter certainty that it was a Hamas rocket - as distinct from an IDF rocket - that killed Jihad's baby, we can say with complete certainty that the matter is in doubt - at least.

But people who watched news reports in some of the world's most influential channels and via some of the most credible newspapers this past November know nothing of that doubt. For them, Israel stands behind the death of yet another innocent child. And there is no room for doubt because, if there were, the news sources would have surely said so.

Except that it's a lie.

And lies like this one have real consequences. They are part of a phenomenon increasingly recognized ascognitive warfare. For instances when the protagonists persuade you that a little girl of 3 called Raja Abu Shaban was killed by Israelis when they know it was untrue [source], and then much later admit something entirely different happened.

And when an unarmed and terrified boy of twelve appears to come under sustained point-blank gunfire by Israeli forces for three-quarters of an hour until one of them finally manages to hit him and kill him [source], except that a video shows him alive after he "died".

The Sun (UK)

You would have to be made of rock not to feel devastated by the death of a baby and the grief of the father. The fact that the father is parading his grief in front of photographers over and again does not change that. (And that's before we speculate as to who stage managed this, and what the father was instructed to do.)

But after we pause to share the pain of a family whose child is now certainly dead, we are left to think about the cynical manipulation of the imagery of grief and of death in the cause of a war prosecuted by terrorists.

And about the reporters, photographers, sub-editors and editors, working for major international media companies and government-controlled corporations, without whose incompetence (at one end of the scale) and agenda-driven political passion (at the other) these outrageous acts of journalistic sabotage could never happen.

http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2013/03/9-mar-13-viral-power-of-lying-image-and.html

Obama: Bad president, good for Israel?

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 02:00:00 +0000

Obama: Bad president, good for Israel?

By BARRY RUBIN

Israeli leaders should applaud Obama, say what a good friend he is, and do everything possible to maximize cooperation on the critical issues that both countries face.

I have just returned from briefing a high-ranking official of country X on the Middle East. We kept coming back to a vital theme: the incredibly shrinking power of the United States. Try to explain American behavior to neutral, open-minded third parties for whom US policy activities have become just plain bizarre!

I have just published an article about how terrorists, including the murderers of four American officials in Benghazi, are literally laughing at the United States and its inability (or unwillingness) to do anything effective to defend its interests.

This item in a CBS News report particularly caught my eye: “US officials [in December 2012] lamented the lack of cooperation with the governments of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt in their ongoing investigation into the [Benghazi] attack, saying most of the suspects remain free.”

Let’s review:

• Tunisia, where the US government supported not only the overthrow of a regime allied to itself but also elections that led to a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government. Helpful hint: You should have intervened behind the scenes to get the four non-Islamist (secular, if you wish) parties to work together, run their campaigns successfully, and win. They got 60 percent of the vote but lost the election.

• Libya, where the US government installed the current regime, which is basically an American client regime, by military (NATO, technically) force and pumped in support yet feared to send in a rescue mission to Benghazi.

Obama should have called the Libyan leader on the evening of September 11, 2012, and said, “We’re on our way and expect your cooperation.” And the only reason for not doing that would have been knowing the Libyan government could rescue the Americans, which it was unable to do or even to try doing.

• Egypt, where the US government was cheerleading for the Muslim Brotherhood as early as Obama’s Cairo speech and backed it all through the revolution. There was the alternative of backing the military to get rid of Hosni Mubarak and then make reforms. Or there was the alternative of backing the disorganized, under-financed moderates (and helping them to unite, get money, and be effective).

But Obama did neither and his administration for all practical purposes endorsed the Muslim Brotherhood.

And now we see that these three governments won’t even cooperate in getting terrorists responsible for murdering Americans.

Remember that Tunisia and Egypt, even if they are Islamist-ruled, have no direct interest in helping these terrorists – the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t like al-Qaida – but won’t help due to anti-Americanism, a generalized Islamic solidarity, and knowledge that they can stick their finger in America’s eye and taunt, “What are you going to do about it?” How the mighty have fallen! But what’s most amazing is that this isn’t murder but suicide. It is voluntary. Is it reversible? Nobody knows, but it isn’t going to be reversed in the next four years.

You have to understand, I tell the diplomat, that there’s been for all practical purposes a revolution in the United States, at least in terms of its governance. Regarding foreign policy, all the old rules don’t apply – credibility; punishing enemies and rewarding friends; deterrence; don’t leave your men behind to die; don’t appoint a muddleheaded fool to be secretary of defense. In each case there is a nicely crafted rationalization for going against centuries of diplomatic and security practices. But so what? It’s still wrong.

Obama is too busy in apologizing for real or imagined past US bullying, proving he only believes in multilateral action, has so much respect for local customs, and trying to demonstrate to those that hate it that America is their buddy in order to win them over.

The language above is harsh, but it is also true.

Once upon a time there were two superpowers, the United States and USSR, in the Cold War. Then there was one superpower, the United States. Now there are none.

And yet what this means from Israel’s standpoint may be very different from what you’d expect.

Israel can cope with this situation, especially since it continues to receive US military aid, some diplomatic backing, and nice rhetoric about the ironclad special relationship between the two countries.

And those assets rest on a foundation of public and congressional support for Israel in the United States.

Indeed, it is clear that Israel is the only – the only – factor that Obama doesn’t like that has been able to preserve its interests while other seemingly far more powerful forces – the health industry, the energy industry, the National Rifle Association, for example – have been battered into defeat or are hard-pressed.

Moreover, Israel can defend itself. It is willing to take unilateral action and can succeed in doing so.

That’s why, as I know from first-hand observation, that it is a myth that Israel’s government has done anything to undermine Obama. People who make such charges provide no proof or even references to specific events.

On the contrary, the Israeli government consciously developed the policy of seeking to avoid any friction with Obama and his government. One key reason was that it knew coexistence with Obama was possible. The other was that it knew avoiding making the situation worse was imperative.

The seemingly most obvious exception – building in east Jerusalem – was based on a prior secret agreement with the US government. The other apparent exception – Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress – came after Obama ambushed Netanyahu by changing US policy toward Israel while the prime minister was on a plane to Washington.

And here’s a powerful item of proof on the other side: not a single pro-Israel Democrat in political life has turned against Obama. If Israel is so influential, why did a supposed anti-Obama campaign not change anyone’s position? In fact, pro-Obama American Jews, who comprise a large majority of the community, and pro-Israel political figures have either reconciled the discordant information (Obama is Israel’s best friend); kept their mouths shut; had other priorities; or tried to keep relations as good as possible.

And in practice – a point on which Obama’s supporters are correct – there have been no real, material, huge problems in direct US-Israel relations. What they leave out is that this was also largely due to Arab, Iranian and particularly Palestinian intransigence. These forces lost the opportunities Obama offered them to undercut Israel and the US-Israel relationship because they didn’t rush to seek deals on much better terms.

If they had done so, Obama would have pressured Israel to make big concessions and would have been far more antagonistic if Israel refused. Israel’s enemies threw away that chance and it will not come again in his second term.

By the same token, it is equally foolish for some to criticize, for example, President Shimon Peres for giving Obama a medal or Israeli leaders for lauding Obama on every possible opportunity. And the same applies to AIPAC not objecting to Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, never criticizing Obama, and inviting him to speak at its annual meetings. Whoever is president or secretary of defense, AIPAC and Israel will have to work with him.

All of these people, then, are doing their jobs properly by avoiding entanglements in such internal American issues.

Israel needs good relations with the United States.

Obama is the president of the United States twice elected by the American people and he will be president for the next four years. It is not the task of Israel’s government to interfere with America’s internally made choices. It is the job of Israel’s government to live as best as possible with those rulers, minimize the disadvantage, and wait out this period by agreeing, smiling, giving in on small things, and doing everything possible to protect the nation’s security.

And thus Israeli leaders should applaud Obama, say what a good friend he is, and do everything possible to maximize cooperation on the critical issues that both countries face. These include continued military and intelligence cooperation as well as the maximum possible support on Iran and other issues. In this context, Israel – like every other country friendly with the United States able to do so – retains its independence of action while minimizing friction.

People like me are free to express our views about the damage he is doing. That damage is first and foremost to US national interests; second to the lives of people in Arabic- speaking countries, Turks, and Iranians; and only in third place to Israel.

The author is the director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=305955

Waiting for Obama in the shadow of Iran

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Waiting for Obama in the shadow of Iran

Boaz Bismuth

Many festive events were organized for the 13,000 delegates from the U.S. as well as Jewish leaders from Europe who descended on Washington for the three-day conference held by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The highlight of the conference was undoubtedly the speech delivered by Vice President Joe Biden. In Washington, both the Democrats and the Republicans realized that to move forward they needed to line up behind a single message. Even the large number of Jewish Republicans who came to the conference eagerly listened to and applauded Biden. As evidenced by the vice president's remarks, the administration resolved to warmly embrace Israel with both words as well as deeds, the most dramatic of which is Obama's upcoming visit to the region.

A year ago, the presidential election was the hot topic among AIPAC delegates and guests at the annual soirée. This year, however, Obama's trip to Israel — and not the appointment of Chuck Hagel to the post of defense secretary — was all anyone wanted to talk about.

According to a now debunked report that appeared in World Tribune, immediately after his arrival to Israel on March 20, Obama was to have demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spell out a precise timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, a move that Obama supposedly saw as necessary to realize his vision for the establishment of a Palestinian state during his second term in office.

In reality, however, the president has other plans. "This visit will be devoted mainly to gaining the trust of the Israeli public," a senior Washington source told me.

The administration is aware that the political constellation in Israel has changed after the recent election. As such, to more effectively apply pressure and nudge Israel diplomatically, Obama will have to capture the hearts and minds of its citizenry. To that end, the president will do his utmost to mimic one of his successors who knew how to do just that — Bill Clinton.

According to the source, Obama will travel to Israel "even if there is no government in place, since his target audience is the Israeli public, and not the government."

Those planning the president's visit still do not know where his meeting with Israeli government officials will take place, though Obama is scheduled to visit Yad Vashem. He will also lay a wreath at the tombstone of Theodor Herzl, pay a visit to President Shimon Peres at the President's Residence, and meet with Netanyahu.

"He is scheduled to spend two days in Israel, of which five hours will be spent in Ramallah and a few hours will be set aside for sleep," said the source. This doesn't leave much time for surprises or last-minute changes.

If Obama is intent on pushing forward the diplomatic process, he knows that a solution cannot be attained without going through Jerusalem. A senior Washington insider said that the Americans have come to the realization that a warm embrace of Israel is an effective means of goading the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. If Obama were to harden his tone toward the Israelis, it would only make Abu Mazen more averse to resuming talks, since he would see himself as free to make more demands.

As such, Obama knows that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a matter that is very dear to the heart of his new secretary of state, John Kerry, is not the only burning issue in the Middle East. There are also the Syrian and Iranian fronts. As it stands today, the situation in the Middle East poses a very high threshold for the administration. To appreciate the enormity of the challenges, Obama could take a glance at the report Kerry prepared following his recent visit this week to Saudi Arabia.

During the visit, the Americans gained a greater sense of what Abu Mazen and the Palestinians expect from them. More importantly, however, they heard the demands of the Gulf States — in addition to those of Israel — who are eager to see Washington solve the issue of Iran's nuclear program.

The Biden show

At the start of the conference, AIPAC President Michael Kassen warned delegates about the perils posed by the growing winds of isolationism in American politics, the potential consequences of which are "extremely dangerous" for Israel's security and the future of Washington's relations with Jerusalem. The Saudis are also fearful of the prospect of lesser American involvement in foreign relations, though unlike Kassen, they will never admit to this openly for fear of antagonizing Arab public opinion.

The increasingly popular notion of American isolationism in the Obama era clashes with the expectations nurtured by Washington's allies in the region. They want the U.S. to be the judge, policeman, and fireman, a daunting task for a country that wishes to devote more of its energies to urgent domestic problems that will require steep cuts. The average American citizen is sure to feel the pain of austerity.

In U.S. public opinion, Israel is still highly popular. The numbers are similar to those recorded during the first Gulf War, when Israel was besieged by Iraqi Scud missiles. These days, however, the Middle East is hardly at the top of the administration's list of priorities.

The new secretary of state said this week that America's Arab allies in the Middle East expect Washington to first and foremost extinguish the Syrian conflagration, and only afterward to impose a solution or some kind of forced negotiating process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. They also want the U.S. to stop the Iranian nuclear project, which threatens not just Israel but also the Gulf states. That is quite a tall order for an administration which is more intent on lowering its profile in the region.

Obama's America doesn't have the appetite to solve the world's problems on its own. That is why officials in Washington and Moscow resolved to share the workload despite both powers not sharing the same interests.

After Kerry's meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, it was agreed that Moscow would take it upon itself to remind Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of the predicament in which he finds himself. The administration has made it clear that it wishes to see Assad depart. The problem, however, is that there are a number of shady figures — jihadists, al-Qaida operatives, and Muslim Brotherhood devotees — who are circling the skies over Syria like vultures.

Not surprisingly, Iran was a major topic of discussion during the conference. In his speech, Biden took a page out of Prime Minister Netanyahu's playbook by creating a linkage between the Iranian nuclear project and the Holocaust.

"We've always disagreed at some point or another on tactic," Biden told the delegates. "But, ladies and gentlemen, we have never disagreed on the strategic imperative that Israel must be able to protect its own, must be able to do it on its own, and we must always stand with Israel to be sure that can happen."

"We especially understand that if we make a mistake, it's not a threat to our existence," the vice president said. "But if Israel makes a mistake, it could be a threat to its very existence."

To illustrate his special connection with the Jewish people, Biden even mentioned the meetings he held with Golda Meir. Some viewed his speech as his opening salvo for the presidential election in 2016. Is he too old to hold office? Ronald Reagan was no novice when he won.

AIPAC officials had every reason to be satisfied, particularly given the 2,000 young delegates who attended the festivities. In his speech, Biden appealed to them, telling them that they are the future. In an ever-changing reality, one thing remains constant for this lobby, and that is its total love and loyalty for the U.S.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3649

Something is Rotten in a Denmark Unsafe for Jews

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:00:00 +0000

Something is Rotten in a Denmark Unsafe for Jews

It’s just as unsafe in 2013 to be a Jew in Copenhagen as it is to be a Jew in an Arab country. In 2001, a poster in Arabic was pinned up on the notice board at a Copenhagen college. It promised a reward of $35,000 to anybody who would kill a Jew.

Giulio Meotti

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet there is a line that has become famous:, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”.

Denmark, the first Scandinavian country to permit Jews to settle in the 17th century and still one of the world’s most attractive nations for immigrants and tourists alike, has become a very dangerous place for the Jews. Denmark, which was considered a positive exception in the history of the Holocaust, today is a bit of an exception once again, in Europe’s post-Holocaust anti-Semitism.

It’s just as unsafe in 2013 to be a Jew in Copenhagen as it is to be a Jew in an Arab country.

The Danish Jewish community documented 40 anti-Semitic incidents in 2012, almost double the number in 2009. An exodus of Danish Jews has already begun. They are moving to countries where Jews can live in comparative safety, such as Israel and the United States.

The orgy of hatred began in 2001, when an anonymous poster in Arabic was pinned up on the notice board at the Niels Brock College in Copenhagen. It promised a reward of $35,000 to anybody who would kill a Jew.

Today there is a network of “no-go zones” in suburbs of Copenhagen and other Danish cities that are now autonomous enclaves ruled by Islamic groups. Areas where Danish police fear to tread. It has become acceptable that in one of Europe’s great capitals someone wearing a Star of David cannot walk safely in the streets or in the shopping malls.

Barbed-wire and security guards are a regular part of Jewish children’s’ school day in Denmark. The entrance of the Caroline Jewish Skole in Copenhagen’s Østerbro district is surrounded by a 2.5 meter-high barbed-wire fence, while the Humlehave School in Odense, the birth place of Hans Christian Andersen, admitted it would refuse Jewish parents’ wish to place their child at his school. It is too dangerous.

Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community in Denmark, Bent Lexner, said that “these are unfortunately the conditions, not just in Odense, but also in other places in the country”.

A Danish city hall recently requested that the Israeli flag not be displayed at a street festival intended to promote “diversity”. The Israeli group could become a target for terrorists.

Jews in Denmark have been warned by Israeli officials not to appear publicly wearing Jewish religious symbols such as yarmulkes or stars of David in order to avoid attacks. “We advise Israelis who come to Denmark and want to go to the synagogue to wait to don their skull caps until they enter the building and not to wear them in the street”, said Israel’s ambassador to Denmark, Arthur Avnon.

If one is Jewish, he will avoid wearing a kippa when going through Nørrebro in Copenhagen. The risk of being lynched is so great that the head of the Mosaic Faith-Society, Fin Schwarz, advised his members to hide their religious head covering when they go to Nørrebro. Here a Jewish shop owner was stabbed with a knife by a gang of Palestinian youths.

This is the new Danish normality for the Jews.

An immigrant contacted the guards at the Copenhagen synagogue, and wanted to discuss Islam and Judaism. The guards asked him to leave. After a short while, he returned, this time more aggressive, and started to threaten the guards: “Allah is great, and he will kill all the Jews, and there will be bombs in the synagogue...”.

A Jewish lecturer from the Theology Department of the University of Copenhagen was also attacked. Five Muslims beat him and kicked him claiming that it was forbidden for a Jew to read from the Koran during his lessons.

Members in the Jewish community received postcards saying: “...if not, we’ll take the things in our own hands - you will not stand a chance”.

The Jewish school Carolineskolen received a letter calling Jews“rats, snakes, vampires, pedophiles, aids, psoriasis” and “snakes with yarmulkes and pejes”. The letter concluded with a threat: “Maybe you have forgotten that we have gasoline and stones a trip to the Jewish houses, farms, and centers”.

A group of Arab youths opened fire on a number of Israelis working at a mall in the Danish city of Odenza. The Israelis were operating a stall in the Rosengarden shopping center and were wounded in their legs.

The Muslim organization Hizb al-Tahrir distributed leaflets including a call to murder Jews. It read, in a quote from the Koran: “Kill them everywhere you find them, and banish them from wherever they settle”. Then a participant in the Politiken web site’s chat room called for the murder of Jews and even provided the names of six prominent members of the Danish Jewish community.

The Islamic mainstream bears a special responsibility for this anti-Jewish wave. Fadi Madi, the head of the Arab-Islamic-European Congress in Copenaghen, wrote a letter to the Islamic Conference Organization in which he claimed that there is a connection between the Danish Jyllands Posten, which were the first to publish the caricatures offending the Prophet Mohammad, and the World Jewish Congress.

Jewish children are also in grave danger. An 11-year-old Jewish child was the victim of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of young Arab thugs at the Ryparken Railway Station in Copenhagen. The boy was on his way home from soccer practice at the Jewish Hakoah Sports Club. The Arabs identified the logo on the boy’s pants and surrounded him. They threw apples and stones at him. The Jewish boy arrived home frightened and in tears.

Unlike in other European countries under Nazi rule, when the German police began searching for and arresting Jews, the Danish police refused to cooperate, but today the Danish authorities refuse to protect the Jews (the government offers no security funding for the country’s 8,000 Jews).

Unlike Jews in other European countries under Nazi rule, when the Jews of Denmark were never forced to wear the Star of David, today the Holocaust survivors and their relatives must avoid showing the same Jewish star for fear of being persecuted in the streets.

As my late friend Oriana Fallaci once wrote, “I find it shameful that in Denmark the youth flaunt the kaffiah as Mussolini’s avant garde flaunted the fascist badge”.

Anti-Semitism has become socially acceptable in Europe once again. Seventy years ago the Nazis had a word to say for it: “Salonfähig" (i.e.socially acceptable in polite society) . It is all in those two little dots of the German diaeresis . Scratch it and under the vowel you find the capital letter “J”. Jude. Jøde. Jew.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12987#.UTzreuvwLbw

Honesty vs. Honey When Dealing with Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Honesty vs. Honey When Dealing with Obama

The difference between the two words is only two letters, but there is a vast difference in the results.

Gerald A. Honigman

My late friend. Marvin used to like to gently remind me that you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.

I had much affection for this man--but disagreed with him.

I don't believe that one should be deliberately impolite or aggressive in promoting or defending one's position But I also do not believe that one should have to cower or grovel for simply asking for fairness

Honey should never take the place of honesty.

Reasonable people should be able to discuss issues on which they disagree without one expecting the other to grovel in order to be heard or for their cause to be handled in a just manner.

A few weeks ago, President Shimon Peres apparently decided to pre-empt President Obama's upcoming visit with a bit of honey.

The Israeli leader announced that Obama will be awarded one of Israel’s highest honors, the Presidential Medal of Distinction, when Mr. Obama visits in March. The medal recognizes Mr. Obama’s “unique and significant contribution to strengthening the state of Israel and the security of its citizens."

Like Peres's frequent flattering of the late Egyptian ghoul, Yasser Arafat, such sweetness will only be laughed at and used against him--and Israel--later on down the road.

Honesty being sacrificed for the sake of honey.

Because no matter how much military assistance and economic aid any American administration offers to Israel, it will not make up for forcing it to return to the suicidal conditions which existed prior to the June 1967 War.

Those conditions only invited repeated attacks by Israel's enemies who still refuse to recognize a state of the Jews in the region--regardless of its size. Additional fighter aircraft, ineffective promises about Iran, the Iron Dome, or whatever cannot make up for Israel not receiving the territorial compromise and buffer that it was promised by the final draft of UNSC Resolution 242.

Given such "honesty", no amount of honey will make any difference.

Mr. Obama has likely saved his first presidential visit to Israel to play hardball by forcing it to abandon 242's call for the establishment of more secure and defensible borders (what the settlement issue and building in Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria are largely all about) to replace the travesty of 1949's United Nations' imposed armistice lines.

Earlier American leaders, such as Johnson, Reagan, and Bush II, are on record endorsing 242's promise.

One should not be able to both force Jews to return to their ultra-vulnerable, nine to fifteen-mile wide zipper of a state existence and receive the Presidential Medal of Distinction for strengthening the security of Israel's citizens.

Who does Israel's Peres think he is kidding by indulging in such demeaning endeavors and behaviors?

All that occurs is that we lose respect among those who don't and won't expect Israel to prostrate itself and sacrifice its own critical concerns this way.

A 22nd Arab nation--and second, not first, in the original April 25, 1920 Mandate of Palestine (Jordan created in 1922 on almost 80% of the total land) should not be created by grossly endangering the sole resurrected, minuscule state of the Jews. To reasonable minds, this should be a no brainer.

Yet, the above is precisely what both the latter day Arafatians of Abbas and Hamas have come to expect--especially with the advent of the Obama Administration. Recall that the first phone call Obama made to a foreign leader after his election in 2008 was to Mahmoud Abbas, and that he has repeatedly stated that Israel would be crazy--exact words--to not accept the alleged Saudi Peace Plan--which calls for a total withdrawal of Israel to the '49 Auschwitz/armistice lines.

In just one of too many other examples of the pitfalls of choosing honey over honesty, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently had a chance to sit across a table from the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu.

And just as Peres was repeatedly played the fool by the Arabs' Arafat, Barak looked pathetic pleading for acceptance from none other than a representative of perhaps the biggest hypocrites in the entire Middle East--the Turks. He whimpered because Davutoglu refused to shake his hand.

These are the same Turks who have slaughtered--regardless of whatever excuses may be offered--some two million various non-Turkic peoples over the years in the name of their own national interests. Dare I mention the "A-" words (Armenians and Assyrians)? What's Cyprus all about, anyway? And why do the Turks call Hamas members heroes but PKK members terrorists?

As Arabs did elsewhere, Turks have outlawed the languages and cultures of other native peoples' (who have lived in Anatolia and adjacent areas long before a Turk ever invaded from Central Asia) in attempts to forcibly Turkify them. They have conquered other peoples' lands and repeatedly take any and all steps deemed necessary to defend Ankara's interests.

The latest official count of the Turkish Statistical Institute published the birth records of its citizens. It showed some twenty-three million Kurds--over a quarter of Turkey's population. Over the years, they have been re-named "Mountain Turks" by their subjugators.

Why no "roadmap" for Kurdistan while Ankara feels free to demand yet additional state for Arabs? All together, there are about forty million truly stateless Kurds in the region.

Imagine if Israel did such things to its Arab citizens. While its record isn't perfect either (what nation's is?), by any objective study, there is simply no comparison between how Kurds are treated in Turkey (and elsewhere) and how Arabs are treated in Israel.

Disgracefully, when Israel is forced to take measures to defend itself against those who openly declare intent to destroy it, Jews like Peres and Barak feel the need to bend over backwards to appease.

Perhaps even more worrisome, along these same lines, the thinking behind Prime Minister Netanyahu's recent courtship of Tzipi Livni in his coalition-building in the days leading up to President Obama's visit become suspect as well. Like Peres and Barak, Livni is also more "flexible" when it comes to issues Team Obama holds dear--like getting Jews to cave to his demands to stay within their 1949 oversized ghetto.

Nations which have fought wars, acquired territories, proclaimed sovereignty, in and over lands hundreds or thousands of miles away from home have no right to dictate suicidal concessions to Jews.

The Muslim Brotherhood's Egypt, a likely twin replacing Assad's Syria, is but a frightening hint at what can be expected down the road.

In the days which lie ahead--with even more nightmares of the "Arab" Spring," Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and so forth unfolding in this most volatile region of the world (and who knows what will yet become of Iraq?)--the gap between honey and honesty goes far beyond a mere two missing letters.

Honey and honesty must be Israel's guidelines--not one instead of the other.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12994#.UTzq9OvwLbw

Time for a New Peace Process

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Time for a New Peace Process

"Land for Peace” is dead. It’s time to try ‘Peace for Peace’. A genuine, sincere peace agreement shouldn’t require the surrender of Israel’s heartland to a band of armed terrorists.

David Rubin, former Shiloh Mayor

With U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Israel planned for this month, speculation is building as to the main focus that he will be bringing to his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While pundits on both sides of the ocean are expecting the two leaders to put a positive public spin on their meeting and relationship, the fact is that the tension and disagreements of the past four years are not easily forgotten, not by them and not by their advisors.

It has been reported that Obama is planning to pressure Netanyahu against launching a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and that may be so, but other reports have begun to emerge that Obama’s expected push to renew the sluggish peace process will be even more intense. While the brunt of this pressure will likely be exerted on Netanyahu in private, it will undoubtedly be based once again on the “land for peace” formula, under which Israel is expected to eventually vacate all or most of Judea and Samaria (the 'West Bank') and the eastern half of Jerusalem to create a Palestinian state.

It has long been the mantra of the primary peace process promoters that Israel, a country roughly resembling in size the small state of New Jersey, would need to surrender these areas to bring Israel the elusive peace that it has always sought, even long before its reestablishment as a sovereign nation in 1948. However, after over thirty years of Middle East peace summits and conferences, with millions of dollars wasted on these efforts, resulting in over 1,600 Israeli lives lost in terrorist attacks just in the past twenty years, with thousands of others wounded, perhaps its time to try something new?

The sad fact is that the peace process has always failed and will continue to fail until we do an abrupt restart and begin to base any future peace process on biblical principles, historical justice, and common sense. Toward this end, I have proposed a new peace plan, which is called Peace for Peace, which does away with the failed land for peace formula and the hopelessly stalled negotiations and offers a unilateral path to peace between Israel and its primarily Arab Muslim neighbors, who it should be clear by now have never abandoned “the stages plan”, of using peace negotiations and the land for peace formula to chip away at Israel’s concrete assets piece by piece, thereby weakening the Jewish State’s resistance. This is an Arab strategy that we have until now foolishly accepted as legitimate, but Peace for Peace changes the rules of the game and stops unrealistically arousing the appetite of the Palestinian wolf. At its core are four key principles:

1. The entire land of Israel is the eternal sovereign inheritance of the Jewish people and no other sovereign nation or quasi-governmental authority can exist within the borders in Israel’s possession, which at this time consists of the territory from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

2. Israel extends its hand in unconditional peace and cooperation, peace for peace, to all of its neighbors, including those Arabs who live within its borders in Judea and Samaria (the 'West Bank').

3. A path to loyal citizenship in the State of Israel will be offered for all non-citizens of Israel currently living within its borders, including Judea and Samaria. Such a path will include an extensive two-year course in Zionist, Jewish history, culminating in a required oath of loyalty to the Jewish State of Israel, with hand on the Tanach, the Bible of Israel and followed by a 2-3 year commitment of national service to Israel, as performed by all other citizens.

4. Those who refuse this path of citizenship will be offered a stipend to be resettled in one of the neighboring countries. The option of subsidized transfer will be on the table for one year. After that point, only a small number of non-citizens will be allowed to remain, based on Israel’s needs.

As has been revealed in recent demographic studies, Israel need not fear such a scenario. The demographic delusions of Israeli Knesset member Tzippi Livni, who incessantly harps on the demographic threat to Israel that would be caused by the annexation of Judea and Samaria, need not be heeded. As reported extensively by demographic researchers, such as Yoram Ettinger, Israel’s growth in Judea and Samaria is now outpacing the Arab growth. In fact, it is the only part of the world in which the demographic struggle opposite the Muslim world is being won.

The time has come for Israel’s politicians to learn from past failures and to adopt this new approach to peace – a peace based on biblical principles, historical justice, and common sense.

A featured speaker throughout North America, Europe, and in Israel, David Rubin is a frequent guest commentator on national and international radio and television programs and a regular OpEd contributor on Israel National News and the Jerusalem Post.

To Schedule an Interview with David Rubin who is on a speaking tour in North America to promote his new book "Peace for Peace: Israel in the New Middle East", which presents the ideas above in depth, write to David@ShilohIsraelChildren.org or call his American cell 845-499-5828.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12996#.UTzqIevwLbw

Obama to Demand Israel Withdrawal from Judea & Samaria?

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Obama to Demand Israel Withdrawal from Judea & Samaria?

By Joseph Klein

Waiting until his second term, Barack Obama has finally decided to visit Israel in his official presidential capacity, beginning on March 20th. Obama will also be spending several hours in Ramallah to meet with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Freed by his re-election from domestic political constraints, Obama can be expected to vigorously renew his call for Israel to retreat back to the pre-June 1967 lines with minor land swaps and to continue to refer to “East Jerusalem” as the capital of the new Palestinian state. He hasn’t asked the Palestinians to give up their insistence on the so-called “right of return,” which would send potentially millions of Palestinian refugees back to live within the land of pre-June 1967 Israel and effectively destroy its Jewish identity. Don’t expect him to do so on this trip.

Obama will be facing off with a politically weakened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is struggling to put together a governing coalition and may have to partner with centrists willing to make more concessions to reach an agreement with the Palestinians for a two state solution.

For example, Prime Minister Netanyahu has entered into an alliance with the Hatnua party and its chair Tzipi Livni, a strong proponent of a negotiated two state solution who has reportedly been offered a leading role in the negotiations. “We need to say ‘Yes’ from time to time too,” Livni said back in 2010 when referring to Netanyahu’s refusal to extend the settlement freeze as Obama had then demanded.

There is also the centrist Yesh Atid party, led by former television journalist Yair Lapid, which finished second, with 19 seats, and could join a Netanyahu-led coalition if certain demands are met. Although he ran largely on economic issues and on a platform countering the influence of the ultra-orthodox in Israel’s political affairs, Lapid also said that he will demand a resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

However, Obama recognizes that Netanyahu will continue to be pressured from the Israeli right as well, including from his orthodox party allies and from Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett, who is adamantly opposed to giving up any West Bank land to the Palestinians.

Thus, Obama will be seeking to leverage Israel’s dependence on the United States for maintaining its qualitative military advantage in the region and for assistance in neutralizing Iran’s potential nuclear threat in order to tilt Netanyahu decisively towards the centrists’ position on negotiations with the Palestinians and a freeze on settlements.

According to an unconfirmed report by World Tribune, quoting unnamed Israeli sources, Obama wants Prime Minister Netanyahu to present him with a detailed Israeli plan for withdrawal from the West Bank so that a Palestinian state can be established there as early as 2014.

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

Whether or not this report turns out to be true, a key argument Obama can be expected to make to Netanyahu is that Abbas represents Israel’s last chance at making peace with a “moderate” Palestinian leader. Failure to seize this opportunity now, so the argument goes, will further enhance Hamas’s reputation at the expense of Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, and will feed the fires of a third intifada already at risk of being sparked by the death of a Palestinian prisoner and the sickened condition of Palestinian hunger strikers in Israel’s custody. Abbas’s only chance of survival is to play the same kind of extortionist game that Hamas is so adept at playing, which is to bargain for more concessions from Israel in return for a promise to keep violence against Israelis from getting out of hand. Obama may well end up as the enabler of this strategy during his visit to Israel and the West Bank.

Will Obama offer his own plan on reinforcing the faltering security apparatus of the Palestinian Authority during the period of resumed negotiations and suggest replacing it with some sort of international military presence as part of the final peace settlement? Obama has a blueprint to turn to if he is so inclined, co-authored by his new Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. This 2009 report recommended the two state solution boundaries embraced by Obama, enforced by a “U.S.-led multinational force” which would be “under a UN mandate” and “feature American leadership of a NATO force supplemented by Jordanians, Egyptians and Israelis.” Jerusalem would have “a special security and administrative regime of its own.” A NATO researcher estimated that about 60,000 US/NATO troops and about 160 billion dollars over 10 years would be required to carry out this plan.

President Obama has another card to play in pushing Netanyahu towards making the concessions required to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. He can play on the emotionalism in Israel surrounding the life sentence of Jonathan Pollard, a former Navy intelligence officer who once had dual U.S. and Israeli citizenships and pled guilty to passing classified information to Israel. Pollard has been in prison since 1987. Under normal circumstances, he will be eligible for parole, and may be released, on November 21, 2015. Obama could use his clemency powers and cite humanitarian health reasons for considering an earlier release, if the price is right.

“The time has long since come for Jonathan to go free,” Netanyahu said recently. “This issue will come up during President Obama’s visit. It has already been raised countless times by myself and others, and the time has come for him to go free.”

Obama may listen to Netanyahu’s plea this time, believing that the promise of a prompt release of Pollard in exchange for a moratorium on settlements and the release of more Palestinian prisoners, including the hunger strikers, may be enough to jump start resumed negotiations with the Palestine Authority, forestall at least temporarily a third intifada and enhance Abbas’s legitimacy vis-à-vis his Hamas rivals.

The Iranian nuclear threat is also certain to come up during the two leaders’ discussions, with Obama saying he needs more time to see whether the current negotiations with Iran and the sanctions will bear fruit and Netanyahu trying to convince Obama that time is rapidly running out to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear arms capability. Whether there is any new intelligence to be shared by the two leaders, or whether they will agree on a timetable for possible coordinated military action if all other measures fail, is anyone’s guess.

At least, after visiting other countries in the Middle East region while skipping Israel during his first term, President Obama is finally going to Israel. Expect him to pay his public respects to the victims of the Holocaust and repeat Vice President Joe Biden’s declaration to AIPAC on Monday of “our deep commitment to the security of the state of Israel.” It is what Obama will say to Netanyahu in private, and what he may threaten to do if Netanyahu does not heed Obama’s advice on concessions to the Palestinians, that remains very worrisome.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/obama-to-demand-israel-withdrawal-from-judea-samaria/

Palestinians Plan "Warm" Welcome for Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Baruch Wohlmeuth) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Palestinians Plan "Warm" Welcome for Obama

by Khaled Abu Toameh

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3616/palestinians-welcome-obama

There is no reason why Obama should not take all these threats seriously.

US President Barack Obama is coming to the Middle East later this month to explore the possibility of resuming peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

But while Obama is thinking of ways to revive the stalled peace talks, Palestinian activists say they are planning a "warm" welcome for him when he visits Ramallah or any other Palestinian city in the West Bank.

One plan being discussed among Palestinian activists includes staging anti-US demonstrations in Palestinian cities, particularly outside the place Obama is scheduled to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Activists in Ramallah said they would try to block the roads leading to the location of the Obama-Abbas meeting to protest against US "bias in favor of Israel."

Some activists have even prepared American flags and portraits of Obama that would be set on fire in front of TV crews covering the visit.

Palestinian activists say they are also hoping to humiliate Obama when and if he decides to visit the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Many Palestinians have already called on Obama to refrain from visiting the holy site, especially if he would be escorted by Israeli policemen and security officials.

Leaders of various Palestinian and Israeli Arab groups this week appealed to Obama to stay away from the Aqsa Mosque during his planned visit.

Members of Hizb al-Tahrir, a radical Islamist group, said this week that they would throw shoes at Obama and his entourage if they arrived at the Aqsa Mosque.

There is no reason why Obama should not take all these threats seriously.

Earlier this week, the British Consul-General to Jerusalem, Sir Vincent Fean, had to flee Bir Zeit University near Ramallah after angry Palestinian students attacked his car.

The top British diplomat had arrived at the campus to deliver a lecture explaining his country's position regarding the Palestinian issue. His presence on campus triggered protests from students, who shouted slogans denouncing the Balfour Declaration and Britain's alleged bias in favor of Israel.

Palestinians are disappointed with Obama because of what they perceive as his unwavering support for Israel. They are particularly upset with Obama for failing to force Israel to accept their demands, including a full cessation of settlement construction, the release of Palestinians from Israeli jails, and a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.

Palestinian activists said they were also disappointed with Obama because they believe that Iran, and not the Palestinian issue, is now at the top of his list of priorities.

By planning protests against Obama, Palestinians are hoping to bring their issue back to the top of the US Administration's list of priorities. But they are also hoping to humiliate Obama and the US for not being supportive enough of the Palestinians.

Palestinians are also angry with Obama because of his refusal to support Abbas's statehood bid at the UN late last year.

Some Palestinians admitted that plans to disrupt Obama's visit to the Aqsa Mosque are also aimed at embarrassing Israel and drawing the world's attention to what they claim, without evidence, is an Israeli plot to "destroy" the mosque and replace it with the Third Temple.

So while Obama is seeking to revive the peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis, many Palestinians are thinking of ways to humiliate him and the US. When and if Obama visits the West Bank or the Aqsa Mosque, he will be reminded of the fact that many Palestinians continue to regard the US as an enemy, not a friend.