The Syria Sham and the Iran Deal

The Syria Sham and the Iran Deal

Syria cheated on its chemical commitments. Iran will cheat on its nuclear ones. Obama provides cover for both.

By BRET STEPHENS

Once upon a time Barack Obama chose multilateral diplomacy over military action for the sake of ridding a dangerous Middle Eastern regime of its weapons of mass destruction. The critics mocked and raged and muttered, but everything worked out well and now the only thing that’s missing is someone who will give the president credit.

Or so Mr. Obama would like you to believe.

“You’ll recall that that was the previous end of my presidency,” Mr. Obama told the New Yorker’s David Remnick of his September 2013 deal to get Syria’s Bashar Assad to hand over his WMD stockpile, “until it turned out that we are actually getting all the chemical weapons. And no one reports on that anymore.”

Nor were these the only hosannas the president and his advisers sang to themselves for the Syria deal. “With 92.5% of the declared chemical weapons out of the country,” said Susan Rice in May 2014, the U.S. had achieved more than any “number of airstrikes that might have been contemplated would have done.” John Kerry also boasted of his diplomatic prowess in a March 2015 speech: “We cut a deal and were able to get all the chemical weapons out of Syria in the middle of the conflict.”

And there was Mr. Obama again, at a Camp David press conference in May: “Assad gave up his chemical weapons. That’s not speculation on our part. That, in fact, has been confirmed by the organization internationally that is charged with eliminating chemical weapons.”

Note the certitude of these pronouncements, the lordly swagger. Now note the facts. “One year after the West celebrated the removal of Syria’s arsenal as a foreign policy success, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the regime didn’t give up all of the chemical weapons it was supposed to.”

So note the Journal’s Adam Entous and Naftali Bendavid in a deeply reported July 23 exposé that reveals as much about the sham disarmament process in Syria as it foretells about the sham we are getting with Iran.

Start with the formal terms under which inspectors were forced to operate. The deal specified that Syria would give inspectors access to its “declared” chemical-weapons sites, much as Iran is expected to give U.N. inspectors unfettered access to its own declared sites. As for any undeclared sites, inspectors could request access provided they furnish evidence of their suspicions, giving the regime plenty of time to move, hide and deceive—yet another similarity with the Iran deal.

The agreement meant that inspectors were always playing by the regime’s rules, even as Washington pretended to dictate terms. Practical considerations tilted the game even further. “Because the regime was responsible for providing security, it had an effective veto over inspectors’ movements,” the Journal reported. “The team decided it couldn’t afford to antagonize its hosts, explains one of the inspectors, or it ‘would lose all access to all sites.’ ”

In other words, the political need to get Mr. Assad to hand over his declared stockpile took precedence over keeping the regime honest. It helped Mr. Assad that he had an unwitting accomplice in the CIA, whose analysts certified that his chemical declaration “matched what they believed the regime had.” Intelligence analysts at the Pentagon were more skeptical. But their doubts were less congenial to a White House eager to claim a win, and hence not so widely advertised.

You can expect a similar pattern to emerge in the wake of the Iran deal. Western intelligence agencies will furnish policy makers with varying assessments; policy makers will choose which ones to believe according to their political preferences. Tehran will cheat in ambiguous and incremental ways; the administration will play down the violations for the sake of preserving the broader deal.

Over time, defending the deal will become a matter of rationalizing it. As in: At least we destroyed Syria’s declared chemical stockpile. Or: At least we’ve got eyes on Iran’s declared nuclear sites.

Perhaps the most interesting details in the Journal story concerned the sophistication of the Syrian program. Chemical weapons-production facilities were hidden in the trailers of 18-wheel trucks—exactly of the kind that were rumored to have been moved to Syria from Iraq in 2003. Inspectors were impressed by the quality of Syrian-made munitions. The regime was also able elaborately to disguise its chemical research facilities, even during site visits by inspectors.

The CIA now admits that Syria retains significant quantities of its deadliest chemical weapons. When Mr. Obama announced the Syria deal, he warned that he would use military force in the event that Mr. Assad failed to honor his promises. The threat was hollow then. It is laughable now. What ties the Syrian sham to the Iranian one is an American president bent on conjuring political illusions at home at the expense of strategic facts abroad, his weakness apparent to everyone but himself.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com.

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/the-syria-sham-and-the-iran-deal-1438039181-lMyQjAxMTI1NTI5ODYyMDgyWj

Hamas true goals - they are the same as the Nazis

Hamas true goals - they are the same as the Nazis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtLYzAzIIeQ

TIME TO CALL OBAMA AND KERRY WHAT THEY ARE: TRAITORS

TIME TO CALL OBAMA AND KERRY WHAT THEY ARE: TRAITORS


We have met the enemy and he is in the White House.

Daniel Greenfield

The last time a feeble leader of a fading nation came bearing “Peace in our time,” a pugnacious controversial right-winger retorted, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.” That right-winger went on to lead the United Kingdom against Hitler.

The latest worthless agreement with a murderous dictatorship is being brandished by John Kerry, a man who instinctively seeks out dishonor the way a pig roots for truffles.

John Kerry betrayed his uniform and his nation so many times that it became his career. He illegally met with the representatives of the North Vietnamese enemy in Paris and then next year headed to Washington, D.C. where he blasted the American soldiers being murdered by his new friends as rapists and murderers “reminiscent of Genghis Khan.”  

Even before being elected, Kerry was already spewing Communist propaganda in the Senate.

Once in the Senate, Kerry flew to support the Sandinista Marxist killers in Nicaragua. Just as Iran’s leader calling for “Death to America” didn’t slow down Kerry, neither did the Sandinista cries of “Here or There, Yankees Will Die Everywhere.”

Kerry revolted even liberals with his gushing over Syria’s Assad. Now he’s playing the useful idiot for Assad’s bosses in Tehran.

For almost fifty years, John Kerry has been selling out American interests to the enemy. Iran is his biggest success. The dirty Iran nuke deal is the culmination of his life’s many treasons.

It turns America from an opponent of Iran’s expansionism, terrorism and nuclear weapons program into a key supporter. The international coalition built to stop Iran’s nukes will instead protect its program.

And none of this would have happened without Obama.

Obama began his rise by pandering to radical leftists on removing Saddam. He urged them to take on Egypt instead, and that’s what he did once in office, orchestrating the takeover of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and across the region. The Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, but Obama had preserved the Iranian regime when it was faced with the Green Revolution. Now Iran is his last best Islamist hope for stopping America in the Middle East.

Obama and Kerry had both voted against designating Iran’s IRGC terrorist ringleaders who were organizing the murder of American soldiers as a terrorist organization while in the Senate. Today they have turned our planes into the Air Force of the IRGC’s Shiite Islamist militias in Iraq.

Throughout the process they chanted, “No deal is better than a bad deal.” But their deal isn’t just bad. It’s treason.

Obama isn’t Chamberlain. He doesn’t mean well. Kerry isn’t making honest mistakes. They negotiated ineptly with Iran because they are throwing the game. They meant for America to lose all along.

When Obama negotiates with Republicans, he extracts maximum concessions for the barest minimum. Kerry did the same thing with Israel during the failed attempt at restarting peace negotiations with the PLO. That’s how they treat those they consider their enemies. This is how they treat their friends.

A bad deal wasn’t just better than no deal, it was better than a good deal.

Obama did not go into this to stop Iran from going nuclear. He did it to turn Iran into the axis of the Middle East. After his failures in the rest of the region, this is his final act of spite. With the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood and the decline of Islamists in Turkey, supporting Iran is his way of blocking the power of his successors in the White House to pursue a more pro-American foreign policy.

Obama made this deal to cripple American power in the Middle East.

Iran get to keep its nuclear facilities, its reactors, including the hidden underground fortified Fordow facility which Obama had repeatedly stated was, “inconsistent with a peaceful program.”

The deal gives Iran a “peaceful” nuclear program with an equally peaceful ballistic missile program. It puts into place a complicated inspection regime that can be blocked by Iran and its backers. It turns Iran into the new North Korea and the new Saddam Hussein, lavishing money on it while running future administrations through a cat and mouse game of proving violations by the terrorist regime.

And Obama made sure the Iran deal was written to make the proof as hard to obtain as possible.

That hasn’t stopped Obama from lying and claiming that “Inspectors will have 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear facilities.” Meanwhile France's Foreign Minister, somewhat more accurately put it, “The IAEA will be able to gain access to Iran's military sites, if necessary, under certain conditions.”

Iran will be able to stall for almost a month, offer alternatives, and then put the matter down to a vote. It will do this as many times as it can to wear down the nerves and attention of investigators. The practical process is routed through a separate roadmap which references separate arrangements and leaves the consequences unstated. It’s a bureaucratic rabbit hole with nothing at the other end.

Bureaucrats will pore over maps and argue over timetables for inspections schedules while Iran goes nuclear right under their noses.

The centrifuges will go on spinning and Iran will receive aid in developing its “peaceful” nuclear program. Obama’s $140 billion sanctions relief will flow into Iran’s weapons programs as Ayatollah Khamenei has ordered that “at least 5% of the public budget” go to the military with a special emphasis on “missile technology” for the terrorist state.

One of the first items on Iran’s shopping list will be Russia’s S300 missile system to keep Israel or a future American administration from taking out Iran’s nuclear program. But Iran is also pursuing ICBMs that can strike at Europe and America. Obama’s decision to phase out the ballistic missile sanctions on Iran will make it easier for Iran to build weapons that can destroy major American cities.

And Iran’s new cash will empower it to fund terrorism in Israel, America and around the world.

Obama claims to “have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons” by allowing Iran to keep enhancing its nuclear program and rewarding it with ballistic missiles for its “peaceful” intentions. He claims to have negotiated “from a position of strength and principle” when in fact he surrendered to the Iranians on position after position. Tehran negotiated from strength and principle. Obama sold out America.

As Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen put it, “This deal sets in place every key component of a nuclear program that Iran needs to develop a weapon.”

Obama has turned America into a state sponsor of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

 “When I was a platoon leader in Iraq, my soldiers and I faced deadly roadside bombs, made and supplied by Iran. I tried to reassure them, but I could only tell them to hope it wasn’t our day to die by Iran’s roadside bombs,” Senator Tom Cotton said. “If Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, I fear the United States will only be able to hope it isn’t our day to die by an Iranian nuclear bomb."

Obama and Kerry had opposed standing by American soldiers under fire from Iran’s terrorism. Now their treason has taken Iran from aiming roadside bombs to aiming nuclear bombs at Americans.

Instead of stopping Iran from going nuclear, Obama has become the Ayatollah’s economic errand boy, committed by the deal to pressure municipal funds in California and New York to reinvest in Iran.

When Senator Tom Cotton, a man who unlike Obama had served in the military, dared to warn Tehran that the United States was a democracy whose elected officials would get a vote on the Iran deal, the administration’s flunkies denounced him and fellow senators as the #47Traitors in a hashtag.

The real traitor was always in the White House. And it’s time we called his foreign policy what it is.

Treason.

Obama and Kerry have not made this deal as representatives of the United States, but as representatives of a toxic ideology that views America as the cause of all that is wrong in the world. This is not an agreement that strengthens us and keeps us safe, but an agreement that weakens us and endangers us negotiated by men who believe that a strong Iran is better than a strong America.

Their ideology is that of the screaming anti-war protester denouncing American forces and foreign policy anywhere and everywhere, whose worldview has changed little since crying, “Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh. NLF is going to win” in the streets. The only difference is that he now wears an expensive suit.

Their ideology is not America. It is not American. It is the same poisonous left-wing hatred which led Kerry to the Viet Cong, to the Sandinistas and to Assad. It is the same resentment of America that Obama carried to Cairo, Havana and Tehran. We have met the enemy and he is in the White House.


http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259466/time-call-obama-and-kerry-what-they-are-traitors-daniel-greenfield#.VauESfkfYds.facebook

'Their Hatred For Us Bends the Nations' Views'

'Their Hatred For Us Bends the Nations' Views'


Prominent Religious Zionist rabbi tells Arutz Sheva that Israel must stand up and ignore international pressure to gain the world's respect.

By Hezki Ezra

Rabbi Dov Lior, a prominent Religious Zionist leader in Israel, visited the area set to be demolished by July 30 in Beit El for the first time on Friday, after an emergency meeting with the mayor of Beit El, Shay Alon, and the head of the Yeshiva (Torah academy) of Beit El, Rabbi Zalman Melamed. 

"What rabbis can do is to express protest and sorrow in the view that it is a Torah prohibition to uproot a Jewish home in the Land of Israel," Rabbi Lior stated to Arutz Sheva at the site. "We must explain to the public that anyone who has influence on elected officials must stop the evil decree, not to lift our hands up and say 'this is G-d's will.'"

Rabbi Lior also lamented Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's reneging on his campaign promises vis-a-vis Judea and Samaria (Shomron). 

"These were just promises," he said. "He never promised to keep them according to Torah law - and public leaders, especially, must stand behind their words, as this violates the public trust of public officials." 

Despite this, Rabbi Lior views the government as a right-wing government - although not necessarily a more nationalistic one than the previous administration. 

"I do not see any difference between this government and the previous government," he opined. "I'm not saying it's not a right-wing government but that is not what we expected."

As for Netanyahu's claim that Israel is under great "international pressure," Rabbi Lior noted that the pressure should not make a difference in Israel's public policy - because Israel is under pressure for anything it does. 

"There is international pressure over the very fabric of our existence and international pressure on the Iran deal," Rabbi Lior said. "The prime minister and the Cabinet ministers should know that our return to Israel means settling the land and applying sovereignty over all of the Land of Israel."

"We are not dependent on the nations; we must instead do what is right for us." 

He did, however, give Netanyahu credit for putting up with the pressure as much as he has thus far. 

That said, "I'm not saying it's easy, but if you are ruling according to truth, then [the Land] belongs to the people of Israel - and then even honest people among the nations of the world can understand this." 

"But their great hatred bends their opinions and we have to stand firm," he added. 

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/198305#.VarEQyqqqko

Managing Obama’s war against Israel

Managing Obama’s war against Israel

By CAROLINE B. GLICK

First we need to understand that the administration’s hostility has little to do with Israel’s actions.

As Max Boot explained Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, the administration’s animosity toward Israel is a function of Obama’s twin strategic aims, both evident since he entered office: realigning US policy in the Middle East toward Iran and away from its traditional allies Israel and the Sunni Arab states, and ending the US’s strategic alliance with Israel.

Over the past six years we have seen how Obama has consistently, but gradually, taken steps to advance these two goals. Toward Iran, he has demonstrated an unflappable determination to accommodate the terrorism supporting, nuclear proliferating, human rights repressing and empire building mullahs.

Beginning last November, as the deadline for nuclear talks between the US and its partners and Tehran approached, Obama’s attempts to accommodate Tehran escalated steeply.

Obama has thrown caution to the winds in a last-ditch effort to convince Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei to sign a deal with him. Last month the administration published a top secret report on Israel’s nuclear installations. Last week, Obama’s director of national intelligence James Clapper published an annual terrorism threat assessment that failed to mention either Iran or Hezbollah as threats.

And this week, the administration accused Israel of spying on its talks with Iran in order to tell members of Congress the details of the nuclear deal that Obama and his advisers have been trying to hide from them.

In the regional context, the administration has had nothing to say in the face of Iran’s takeover of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden this week. With its Houthi-proxy now in charge of the strategic waterway, and with its own control over the Straits of Hormuz, Iran is poised to exercise naval control over the two choke points of access to Arab oil.

The administration is assisting Iranian Shi’ite proxies in their battle to defeat Islamic State forces in the Iraqi city of Tikrit. It has said nothing about the Shi’ite massacres of Sunnis that come under their control.

Parallel to its endless patience for Tehran, the Obama administration has been treating Israel with bristling and ever-escalating hostility. This hostility has been manifested among other things through strategic leaks of highly classified information, implementing an arms embargo on weapons exports to Israel in time of war, ending a 40-year agreement to provide Israel with fuel in times of emergency, blaming Israel for the absence of peace, expressing tolerance and understanding for Palestinian terrorism, providing indirect support for Europe’s economic war against Israel, and providing indirect support for the BDS movement by constantly accusing Israel of ill intentions and dishonesty.

Then there is the UN. Since he first entered office, Obama has been threatening to withhold support for Israel at the UN. To date, the administration has vetoed one anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council and convinced the Palestinians not to submit another one for a vote.

In the months that preceded these actions, the administration exploited Israel’s vulnerability to extort massive concessions to the Palestinians.

Obama forced Benjamin Netanyahu to announce his support for Palestinian statehood in September 2009. He used the UN threat to coerce Netanyahu to agree to negotiations based on the 1949 armistice lines, to deny Jews their property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to release scores of terrorist murderers from prison.

Following the nationalist camp’s victory in last week’s election, Obama brought to a head the crisis in relations he instigated. He has done so for two reasons.

First, next week is the deadline for signing a nuclear agreement with Iran. Obama views Netanyahu as the prospective deal’s most articulate and effective opponent.

As Obama sees it, Netanyahu threatens his nuclear diplomacy with Iran because he has a unique ability to communicate his concerns about the deal to US lawmakers and the American people, and mobilize them to join him in opposing Obama’s actions. The letters sent by 47 senators to the Iranian regime explaining the constitutional limitations on presidential power to conclude treaties without Senate approval, like the letter to Obama from 367 House members expressing grave and urgent concerns about the substance of the deal he seeks to conclude, are evidence of Netanyahu’s success.

The second reason Obama has gone to war against Israel is because he views the results of last week’s election as an opportunity to market his anti-Israel and pro-Iranian positions to the American public.

If Netanyahu can convince Americans to oppose Obama on Iran, Obama believes that by accusing Netanyahu of destroying chances for peace and calling him a racist, Obama will be able to win sufficient public support for his anti-Israel policies to intimidate pro-Israel Democratic lawmakers into accepting his pro-Iranian policies.

To this end, Obama has announced that the threat that he will abandon Israel at the UN has now become a certainty. There is no peace process, Obama says, because Netanyahu had the temerity to point out that there is no way for Israel to risk the transformation of Judea and Samaria into a new terror base. As a consequence, he has all but made it official that he is abandoning the peace process and joining the anti-Israel bandwagon at the UN.

Given Obama’s decision to abandon support for a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians, modes of appeasement aimed at showing Israel’s good faith, such as Jewish building freezes, are no longer relevant. Scrapping plans to build apartments in Jewish neighborhoods like Har Homa will make no difference.

Obama has reached a point in his presidency where he is prepared to give full expression to his plan to end the US’s strategic alliance with Israel.

He thinks that doing so is both an end to itself and a means of succeeding in his bid to achieve a rapprochement with Iran.

Given this dismal reality, Israel needs to develop ways to minimize the damage Obama can cause.

Israel needs to oppose Obama’s policies while preserving its relations with its US supporters, including its Democratic supporters. Doing so will ensure that it is in a position to renew its alliance with the US immediately after Obama leaves office.

With regards to Iran, such a policy requires Israel to act with the US’s spurned Arab allies to check Iran’s expansionism and nuclear progress. It also requires Israel to galvanize strong opposition to Obama’s goal of replacing Israel with Iran as America’s chief ally in the Middle East and enabling it to develop nuclear weapons.

As for the Palestinians, Israel needs to view Obama’s abandonment of the peace process as an opportunity to improve our diplomatic position by resetting our relations with the Palestinians. Since 1993, Israel has been entrapped by the chimerical promise of a “two-state solution.”

By late 2000, the majority of Israelis had recognized that there is no way to achieve the two-state solution. There is no way to make peace with the PLO. But due to successive governments’ aversion to risking a crisis in relations with Washington, no one dared abandon the failed two-state strategy.

Now, with Obama himself declaring the peace process dead and replacing it with a policy of pure hostility toward Israel, Israel has nothing to gain from upholding a policy that blames it for the absence of peace.

No matter how loudly Netanyahu declares his allegiance to the establishment of a Palestinian state in Israel’s heartland, Obama will keep castigating him and Israel as the destroyer of peace.

The prevailing, 23-year-old view among our leadership posits that if we abandon the two-state model, we will lose American support, particularly liberal American support. But the truth is more complicated.

Inspired by the White House and the Israeli Left, pro-Israel Democrats now have difficulty believing Netanyahu’s statements of support for the establishment of a Palestinians state. But those who truly uphold liberal values of human rights can be convinced of the rightness of Israel’s conviction that peace is currently impossible and as a consequence, the two-state model must be put on the back burner.

We can maintain support among Republicans and Democrats alike if we present an alternative policy that makes sense in the absence of an option for the two-state model.

Such a policy is the Israeli sovereignty model. If the government adopts a policy of applying Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria in whole – as I recommend in my book The Israeli Solution: A One- State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, or in part, in Area C, as Economy Minister Naftali Bennett recommends, our leaders will be able to defend their actions before the American people, including pro-Israel Democrats.

Israel must base its policy of sovereignty on two principles. First, this is a liberal policy that will ensure the civil rights of Palestinians and Israelis alike, and improve the Palestinians’ standard of living.

Second, such a policy is not necessarily a longterm or permanent “solution,” but it is a stable equilibrium for now.

Just as Israel’s decision to apply its laws to united Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the past didn’t prevent it from conducting negotiations regarding the possible transfer of control over the areas to the Palestinians and Syrians, respectively, so an administrative decision to apply Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria will not block the path for negotiations with the Palestinians when regional and internal Palestinian conditions render them practicable.

The sovereignty policy is both liberal and strategically viable. If the government adopts it, the move will rebuild Israel’s credibility and preserve Israel’s standing on both sides of the aisle in Washington.

Never before has Israel had to deal with such an openly hostile US administration. Indeed, until 2009, the very notion that a day would come when an American president would prefer an alliance with Khamenei’s Iran to its traditional alliances with Israel and the Sunni Arab states was never even considered. But here we are.

Our current situation is unpleasant. But it isn’t the end of the world. We aren’t helpless. If we act wisely, we can stem Iran’s nuclear and regional advance. If we act boldly, we can preserve our alliance with the US while adopting a policy toward the Palestinians that for the first time in decades will advance our interests and our liberal values on the world stage.

www.CarolineGlick.com

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Managing-Obamas-war-against-Israel-395282

Obama’s conduct toward Israel can’t be excused

Obama’s conduct toward Israel can’t be excused

By Jennifer Rubin

Having conducted two interviews, which vividly display the administration’s hostility toward Israel, Jeffrey Goldberg says President Obama is not anti-Israel. He insists:

Oh sure he can. One can be very much in favor of separating Palestinians and Israelis into their respective states and yet conclude Obama has been the U.S. president least friendly toward the Jewish state since its founding. (That in fact is the view of most pro-Israel groups and many of Israel’s closest friends of both parties in Congress.) Honest observers reading Goldberg’s two prior pieces could not help but notice the anti-Israel bile leaking from every pore of this administration. Even Goldberg viewed Obama’s comments about Israel as a threat.  (“’I took it to be a little bit of a veiled threat, to be honest,’ Goldberg said. ‘It’s almost up there with, you know, nice little Jewish state you got there, I’d hate to see something happen to it.’”)If you believe that the status quo in the Middle East is sustainable, which is to say, if you believe that Israel can maintain its settlements across the West Bank ad infinitum, and continue, into the indeterminate future, to subvert those Palestinians still working for a two-state solution, then Obama can plausibly be judged — rhetorically, at least — as anti-Israel.

If, however, you believe that the status quo is unsustainable — that Israel, for its own sake, should move expeditiously to disentangle itself from the lives of the Palestinians in advance of an eventual divorce, or else face a future in which it becomes a bi-national state or a country that legislates the permanent disenfranchisement of Palestinians (and therefore becomes a true global pariah) — then Obama can’t plausibly be labeled anti-Israel.

The president’s refusal to personally apologize or to find and fire the culprit who made the offensive remarks about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Goldberg reported certainly is telling. The near-obsession with blaming Israel for the breakdown in peace talks, the angry and vulgar attacks on the prime minister and the lack of concern about the Palestinians’ behavior speak for themselves. This is more than a matter of ill-designed tactics or strategy.

And the worst of these recent comments Goldberg revealed had nothing to do with the peace process. The remarks that the administration snookered Israel on Iran were arguably worse: “The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. ‘It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.'”

But of course there is far more evidence of Obama’s hostility toward Israel. He “condemned” the building of houses in Jerusalem, not some distant settlement, in 2010. The administration consistently misstates the extent of settlement “expansion.” (“In the last decade the Israelis removed all the settlements in Gaza and four very small ones in the West Bank. The days of building new settlements all over the West Bank are long gone. And ‘settlement expansion’ has meant expansion of population, not territory, so their footprint in the West Bank has not changed. The so-called ‘peace map’ is the same.”) Even if you characterize some actions as pure incompetence (i.e. surprising Netanyahu on the 1967 “borders” speech), you would think that in the law of averages Obama once in a while would stumble in ways favorable to Israel.

And there is more. Obama’s administration was “appalled” and found civilian deaths in Gaza “inexcusable” when in fact our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has recognized the extraordinary efforts by the IDF to avoid civilian deaths. The administration tried to undermine the Egypt-Israeli truce terms and introduced demands put forth by Hamas’s ally Qatar.

And let’s not forget in his Cairo speech he cast Palestinians in the role of African American slaves (thereby making Israel the slave masters) and refused to identify the historical roots of Jews in Israel (in essence adopting the Palestinian narrative that Israel’s existence is rooted in the Holocaust).

Whatever Obama’s intent (maybe he is anti-an ally that opposes Iran detente) the result is a president widely perceived in Israel of being un-supportive.  That view transcends Israel domestic political lines. And here in the United States, few Middle East watchers would dispute that we have the worst relationship with our closest ally since the founding of the Jewish state.

Moreover,  I strongly suspect that if Hillary Clinton runs for president she will characterize herself as much more sympathetic toward Israel and much better at maintaining the alliance than her ex-boss. (She better or she’ll lose some big supporters.) Granted it is a low bar to hop over but Clinton, even I would concede, is more supportive of Israel than the president. So if he is not anti-Israel, can we at least agree he is the least pro-Israel president ever?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2014/11/10/obamas-conduct-toward-israel-cant-be-excused/

Obama’s anti-Israel blitz has gone too far

Obama’s anti-Israel blitz has gone too far

By Jennifer Rubin

At times President Obama sounds almost incoherent on Iran. On one hand he says, like the Israeli prime minister, that he does not see a peace deal in the near future. (“What we can’t do is pretend that there’s a possibility for something that’s not there. And we can’t continue to premise our public diplomacy based on something that everybody knows is not going to happen at least in the next several years.”) So they are on the same page? Nope. Obama insists, “We believe that two states is the best path forward for Israel’s security, for Palestinian aspirations, and for regional stability. And Prime Minister Netanyahu has a different approach.” Netanyahu has repeatedly said that is not the case, but Obama is determined to be disagreeable with Israel and overly solicitous toward Iran.

Meanwhile, the president chooses to ignore evidence that Iran is already refusing to comply with its obligations. The Post reports:

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran has failed to provide the information or access needed to allay the agency’s concerns about the weapons potential of the country’s nuclear program.

With the deadline nearing for international talks on constraining Iran’s nuclear program, Yukiya Amano, director general of the IAEA, said in an interview that Iran has replied to just one of a dozen queries about “possible military dimensions” of past nuclear activities.

Amano said that Iran has provided only “very limited” information about two other issues, while the rest have not been addressed at all.

“Recently, the progress is very limited,” he said.

If the Iranians are behaving this way now, imagine how they will flout their obligations once they have pocketed concessions and sanctions relief. Since the White House has caved on allowing Iran to keep thousands of centrifuges, a deal must rely more heavily on inspections, which Iran has consistently thwarted. It also becomes doubly important to disclose past nuclear activities so that inspectors will know where to look. That has not happened either.

The disparity between the president’s treatment of Israel and his rush to embrace our enemy is so evident that even the mainstream media are forced to acknowledge it. The Hill reports: “Congress is growing hostile to the emerging nuclear deal with Iran, leaving President Obama with little political cover as he approaches a critical deadline in the talks. . . . But as details of the still-evolving talks have dribbled out of Geneva, where Secretary of State John Kerry is leading the process, lawmakers are amplifying concerns that the administration is granting too many concessions to Tehran.” And when theNew York Times starts raising the red flag that Obama may be “overplaying” his hand, you know things have gone way beyond anything we have seen in any prior administration. The Times agrees with many critics’ assessment of what is going on:

Israeli analysts are now suggesting that Mr. Obama and his aides might be overplaying their hand, inviting a backlash of sympathy for Mr. Netanyahu, and that they may not have clearly defined what they expected to gain diplomatically by continuing to pressure the Israeli leader.

The president’s harsh words have been deemed by some to be patronizing and disrespectful not only to Mr. Netanyahu but also to the voters who rewarded his uncompromising stances with a resounding mandate for a fourth term.

The president is known to be vitriolic toward those who cross him, but what is going on here is more than peevishness. Obama is on the cusp of achieving his grand design, remaking the Middle East so as to reconcile the United States with Iran and gain him a legacy-building achievement. But the idea is so preposterous — that we would kick Israel to the curb, allow Iran to run rampant in the region and ignore the mullahs’ support of terrorism — that he must do backflips (sustaining a narrative to paint Netanyahu as a racist while conceding virtually every key point to Iran) that rightly alert both the media and lawmakers that something is very, very wrong here. And if that was not bizarre enough, the administration keeps hinting it may not reveal the contents of the deal until everything is sealed and delivered. Huh?! Only Obama and our fellow negotiators will know what is in it, but not allies, Congress or the American people? We’ve gone from the ridiculous to the absurd. Well, with a deal as bad as the one Obama is cooking up, I suppose keeping it secret is the best option. But wait, how will we know if Iran is abiding by — oh, never mind.

Both parties should call a halt to this circus, express strong bipartisan support for the original aims of the negotiations, issue a declaration in support of Israel, admonish the administration and see to set a new bar for talks with sanctions designed to wring more concessions out of Iran. Michael Makovsky, chief executive of JINSA, remarks, “The alternative is no deal for now, and working to apply more pressure and gain more leverage against Iran to try to get a better deal later.” The president will claim it is this deal or war, but that’s another false Obama choice. “Obama can begin to [regain leverage] by reversing course and supporting tough new sanctions. He could also gain more leverage by starting to coordinate closely with our close regional allies, Israel and the Sunni Arabs, and presenting a common front with them. That could begin by his stopping his Administration’s verbal attacks and threats against Israel and its democratically elected prime minister,” says Makovsky.  “Also, he should begin to confront Iran in the region instead of suggesting non-opposition or support to Iranian enlargement of its influence across the Middle East. And he could seek to restore a credible military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, by the United States or through support for Israeli military action. If Obama took these steps, he could enhance the chance of reaching an acceptable nuclear deal with Iran.” But he will not, and hence it is up to Congress to, as Makovsky put it, “conduct an intervention.” Perhaps lawmakers can invite the leaders of France and Saudi Arabia, whose displeasure with the deal is now public, to speak to Congress.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/03/25/obamas-anti-israel-blitz-has-gone-too-far/

Is the United Nations anti-Semitic?

Is the United Nations anti-Semitic?

By ERIC R. MANDEL

States that support terror overwhelmingly control the UN. They mouth the words of moderation, but defend nations that give sanctuary to terrorists.


“When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews.” 
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In our world of cultural relativism, calling someone anti-Semitic is usually dismissed as beyond the pale. The usual retort is that legitimate criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism. At the UN, it goes much further. Israel is a nation designated for special treatment, much like South Africa was years ago. Critics use the template of apartheid South Africa for the Jewish state. Because apartheid is beyond the pale of civilized norms, they argue, Israel deserves special treatment. This allows the UN to bypass any legitimate defense of Israel and Zionism. No one can defend apartheid, so it must be destroyed.

Non-democratic states overwhelmingly control the UN. They often mouth the words of moderation, but defend nations that give sanctuary to terrorists. How else can one explain that some of the most odious nations on earth are elected to the UN Human Rights Council? In fact, Israel’s judge and jury at the UN are often nations that enable terrorism and anti-Semitism.

To accurately judge the United Nations, we need a definition. If Israel is treated and judged completely differently than other nations and held to a standard not applied to any other member nation, then that should be considered anti-Semitism.

The Inter-Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism (ICCA), composed of 140 parliamentarians from 40 countries, affirmed the definition of anti-Semitism by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA). It states, “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” is anti-Semitism.

As Abe Foxman of the ADL said, “anti-Zionism constitutes anti-Semitism if Zionism is the only nationalism being opposed.” When criticism of Israel devolves into demonization and delegitimization of its right to exist as a Jewish state, you have anti-Semitism. If Zionism is described conspiratorially as scheming to take over the world, you are dealing with anti-Semitism.

Robert Wistrich, of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, said, “The deplorable combination of discrimination, delegitimization and double standards at the United Nations has in recent decades been a lethal source of globalized anti-Semitism.”

Defenders of the UN claim it was created in the wake of the Holocaust, and that the organization annually commemorates the world’s most heinous genocide against the Jews. That is commendable, but historical revisionism has universalized the Holocaust, and its special characteristics pertaining to Jews have been watered down until the Holocaust has become merely one among many genocides throughout the ages.

A 2014 ADL poll revealed “the most anti-Semitic region in the world is the Middle East and North Africa, with 74 percent harboring anti-Semitic views.” The Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza had a 93% anti-Semitic rating.

If the double standard of treating Israel profoundly differently than other UN members is anti-Semitism, consider the following: 

The UN Human Rights 

Council Israel is the only nation in the world that has a standing agenda item against it at every session of the UNHRC. Not North Korea, not China, not Pakistan, not Syria, not Sudan, not Iran. The Council never has mentioned the word “Hamas.”

From 2006 through 2013, Israel has been subjected to 45 condemnation resolutions. No other nation in the world comes close.

Special Rapporteur on Palestine John Dugard said in 2006, “Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories has many features of colonization. At the same time it has many of the worst characteristics of apartheid.” In explaining Palestinian violence, UN “expert” Dugard sees moral equivalence with the partisans who fought the Nazis! Mr. Dugard is also a judge on the UN’s International Court of Justice.

UN General Assembly Resolutions

From 1947 to 1991, there were about 300 anti-Israel General Assembly resolutions against Israel. In 2012, there were 22 GA resolutions specifically against Israel, while there were only four for the rest of the world combined.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency

The Palestinian refugee organization UNWRA changed the definition of “refugee” to create a unique status for Palestinians. While other refugees lose refugee status in the following generation, only Palestinians remain refugees forever. This allows UNWRA to receive 50 percent of the UN’s money for all the refugees in the world. Instead of having only 30,000 original Palestinian refugees (if they were counted as every other refugee in the world is), we now have over 5,000,000 Palestinian Arabs refugees – courtesy of the UN.

UN Security Council 

The real power of the UN lies in the Security Council. Israel is the only member state that has not – and cannot – serve on the Security Council. From 1948 to 2010, there were 77 resolutions directly aimed at Israel. No other nation on earth even comes close to this record of infamy.

Israel’s Exclusion from Regional Groups 

Israel is the only UN member excluded from membership in its own regional group in the Middle East and Asia 

The UN’s Durban Conference

The three UN Durban Conferences on Racism have found racism in only one of the 192 nations of the UN: Israel. One of the flyers distributed at the first Durban conference pictured Hitler asking the question, “What would have happened if I had won?”

Ignoring and not acting against the worst nations in the world

Anne Bayefsky, a Senior Fellow with the Hudson Institute, said: “There has never been a single resolution about the decades-long repression of the civil and political rights of the 1.3 billion people in China.... Every year, UN bodies are required to produce at least 25 reports on alleged human rights violation by Israel, but not one on an Iranian criminal justice system which mandates punishments like crucifixion, stoning and cross-amputation. This is... demonization of the Jewish state.”

UN Special Rapporteurs Richard Falk (2008-2014) and Makarim Wibisono (2014-2020)

Richard Falk is a notorious anti-Semite, infamous 9/11 conspiracy theorist and Boston Marathon bombing apologist.

His successor, Makarim Wibisono, according to UN Watch, has accused Israel of “unconscionable use of force against the Palestinians,” and of having a “policy of retribution against the entire Palestinian nation.” Wibisono described Israel as showing “ruthless contempt for the lives of the innocent.” His home country has no diplomatic relations with Israel.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Navi Pillay is the UN official who questioned the legality of the killing of Osama bin Laden, and is an enthusiastic supporter of the anti-Zionist Durban conferences. According to Pillay, “The Israeli occupation of Palestine led to large-scale violations of international law.”

Is anti-Zionism at the UN anti-Semitism? You decide.

Here is how United States can fight anti-Semitism at the UN while advancing American foreign policy interests: The US pays for 22% of the UN’s annual $5 billion budget. Congress should legislate support for only humanitarian efforts at the UN. Don’t support or defer to an institution that glorifies anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.

End financial support for UNWRA until it adopts the definition of “refugee” which applies everywhere else. This would end a root cause of the conflict, as it would reduce from 5,000,000 to 30,000 the number of Palestinian Arab Refugees.

Find democratic coalition partners to support American national security priorities and protect America’s allies.

As the leader of the free world, the US should speak out unapologetically in the UN. Fighting institutionalized anti-Semitism hiding behind the cloak of anti-Zionism would be a great start.

Soon there may be a new Islamic caliphate of al-Qaida in the Levant. So who will be elected to the UN Human Rights Council first, Israel or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)? 

The author is the founder and director of MEPIN, the Middle East Political and Information Network.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Is-the-United-Nations-anti-Semitic-361842

HISTORY in Maps. Israel & "Palestine"

 HISTORY in Maps.
Israel & "Palestine"

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Israel  + Jordan  = "Palestine" Before 1923      Take a close look at this PRESENT DAY MAP of the Middle East in which you can see that 22 Arab and/or Muslim [Iran is not considered Arab] nations completely engulf Israel. Can anyeone explain how "expansionist Israel" has "taken over" the Middle East? The Arab countries occupy 640 times the land mass as does Israel and outnumber the Jews of Israel by nearly fifty to one. So much for Arab propaganda!     Now notice the TOTAL  area of  Israel and  Jordan.  This was referred to as "Palestine"and mandated under British administration following World War I (see next map below). How convenient that today's Arab propagandists forget that land east of the Jordan River was also part of "Palestine" and was, in fact, established to facilitate the recreation of a Jewish national home in Palestine - Eretz Israel!

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From 1517-1917 Turkey's Ottoman Empire controlled a vast Arab empire, a portion of which is today Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.  During World War I (1914-1918), Turkey supported Germany. When Germany was defeated, so were the Turks. In 1916 control of the southern portion of their Ottoman Empire was "mandated" to France and Britain under the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Arab region into zones of influence. Lebanon and Syria were assigned (mandated) to France... and "Palestine" (today's Jordan, Israel and "West Bank" and Gaza ) was mandated to Great Britain.       Because no other peoples had ever established a national homeland in "Palestine" since the Jews had done it 2,000 years before, the British "looked favorably" upon the creation of a Jewish National Homeland throughout ALL of Palestine. The Jews had already begun mass immigration into Palestine in the 1880's in an effort to rid the land of swamps and malaria and prepare for the rebirth of Israel. This Jewish effort to revitalize the land attracted an equally large immigration of Arabs from neighboring areas who were drawn by employment opportunities and healthier living conditions. There was never any attempt to "rid" the area of what few Arabs there or those Arab masses that immigrated into this area along with the Jews! In July 1922, the League of Nations entrusted the Great Britain with The Palestine Mandate, including the land east of the Jordan river, recognizing "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine."

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In 1923, the British divided the "Palestine" portion of the Ottoman Empire into two administrative districts. The Great Britain made a deal with Hashemite Kingdom, Egypt and France in order to obtain control over Suez canal and oil reserves in Kerkut, as well as accommodate Bedouin refugees from the Saudi Peninsula, who were allowed to settle, ‘temporally’, in 1922 on the Eastern side of the Palestinian Mandate: The trans-Jordan (77% of the Palestinian Mandate) was given to the Saudi Arabian king's brother The Sinai, which was given to Egypt. Golan Heights (5% of the Palestinian Mandate) was ceded to the French controlled Syrian Mandate. In 1946 Trans-Jordan was renamed to "Jordan". In other words, the eastern 3/4 of Palestine would be renamed TWICE, in effect, erasing all connection to the name "Palestine!" However, the bottom line is that the Palestinian Arabs had THEIR "Arab Palestinian" homeland. The remaining 18% of Palestine (now WEST of the Jordan River) was to be the JewishPalestinian homeland.  However, sharing was not part of the Arab psychological makeup then nor now. With the help of British Jews were forced out of Trans-Jordan!     Encouraged and incited by growing Arab nationalism throughout the Middle East, the Arabs of that small remaining Palestinian territory west of the Jordan River launched never-ending murderous attacks upon the Jewish Palestinians in an effort to drive them out.  Most terrifying were the Hebron massacres of 1929 and later during the 1936-39 "Arab Revolt." The British at first tried to maintain order but soon (due to the large oil deposits being discovered throughout the Arab Middle East) turned a blind eye. It became painfully clear to the Palestinian Jews that they must fight the Arabs AND drive out the British.

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The Palestinian Jews were forced to form an organized defense against the Arabs Palestinians.... thus was formed the Hagana, the beginnings of the Israeli Defense Forces [IDF]. There was also a Jewish underground called the Irgun led by Menachem Begin (who later became Prime Minister of Israel). Besides fighting the Arabs, the Irgun was instrumental in driving out the pro-Arab British.  Finally in 1947 the British had enough and turned the Palestine matter over to the United Nations.     The 1947 U.N. Resolution 181 partition plan was to divide the remaining 18% of Palestine into a Jewish Palestinian State and a SECOND Arab Palestinian State (Trans-Jordan being the first) based upon population concentrations.  The Jewish Palestinians accepted... the Arab Palestinians rejected. The Arabs still wanted ALL of Palestine... both east AND west of the Jordan River. Therefore, the resolution was not carried out and is not legally binding! Our Arab Cousins started the '48 war, and in so doing released the warlike appetites of a nation of survivors, a people with no place to run, who had repressed their rage for millennia, and had now earned full title to it!     On May 14, 1948 the "Palestinian" Jews finally declared their own State of Israel and became "Israelis." On the next day, seven neighboring Arab armies... Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen... invaded Israel. Most of the Arabs living within the boundaries of the newly declared "ISRAEL" were encouraged to leave by the invading Arab armies to facilitate the slaughter of the Jews and were promised to be given all Jewish property after the victorious Arab armies won the war. The truth is that most of the Arab Palestinians who left in 1948 – between 400,000 to 500,000 – never saw an Israeli soldier! They did not flee because they feared Jews, but because of a rational and reasonable calculus: the Jews will be exterminated; we will get out of the way while that messy and dangerous business goes forward, and we will return afterwards to reclaim our homes, and to inherit those nice Jewish properties as well. They guessed wrong; and the Arab Palestinians are still tortured by the residual shame of their flight. So much for the blatant lie about Jews throwing out all the [Palestinian] Arabs!  Israel survived  despite a 1% loss of its entire population! Those Arabs who did not flee became Israeli-Arab citizens. Those who fled are still called and artificially maintained as "Palestinian Arab refugees" The Arab propagandists and apologists almost never mentioned that in 1948, Arab armies launched a war against a one-day-old Israel. Instead he focused on the main consequence of that war: the creation of Arab refugees, stating that Israel "short of genocide" expelled 800,000 of them. This not only disagrees with UN estimates of a bit over 400,000 refugees but also ignores the fact that most of the Arabs/Palestinians were encouraged to leave by the Arab World itself!

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The end result of the 1948-49 Israeli War of Independence was the creation of a Jewish State slightly larger than the ridiculous partition plan (see above) which was proposed by the 1947 United Nations Resolution 181. Egypt (occupying the Gaza Strip) and Trans-Jordan (occupying Judea-Samaria (a.k.a. the "West Bank" of the Jordan River) and East Jerusalem. In the next year (1950) Trans-Jordan formally merged this West Bank territory into itself and granted all those "Palestinian" Arabs living there Jordanian citizenship.  Since Trans-Jordan was then no longer confined to one side of the  Jordan River, it renamed itself simply "Jordan."  In the final analysis, the Arabs of Palestine ended up with nearly 85% of the original territory of Palestine... called Jordan but in reality their ARAB "Palestinian state! But that was still not 100% and thus the conflict between Arab and Jew for "Palestine" would continue through four more wars and continuous Arab terrorist  attacks upon the Israeli citizenry. It continues to this very day.     From 1949-67 when all of Judea-Samaria [West Bank & Jerusalem] and Gaza ... were 100% under Arab [Jordanian & Egyptian] control, no effort was EVER made to create a second Palestinian State for the Arabs living there.  Surely you do not expect Israel to now provide these same Arabs with their own country when their fellow Arabs failed to do so!  And isn't it curious how Arafat and his PLO (formed in 1964)  discovered their "ancient" identity and a need for "self-determination" and "human dignity" on this very same West Bank ONLY AFTER Israel regained this territory (three years later in 1967) following Jordan's attempt attempt to destroy Israel!  Why was no request ever made upon King Hussein of Jordan by the Arabs living on the West Bank when he occupied it?  PLO was formed to DESTROY Israel! And that is STILL their goal! A cosmetic name change from PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) to PA (Palestinian Authority) does not change the stripes on THIS tiger!

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Throughout much of May 1967, the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies mobilized along Israel's narrow and seemingly indefensible borders in preparation for a massive invasion to eliminate the State of Israel. The battle cry heard throughout the Arab world was then, as it continues to be... "Slaughter the Jews" and "Throw the Jews into the Sea!" But the Jews of Israel, remembering 2,000 years of being butchered, gassed, burned and skinned (eg. The Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition, the Arab rampages of early Palestine and particularly the Holocaust), planned and executed a perfect pre-emptive strike against Egypt .  Within two hours the Egyptian Air Force did not exist... most of its planes destroyed while still on the runways! Unaware that the Egyptians had no more air force, King Hussein of Jordan , launched his attack from the his West Bank into Israel 's belly while Syrian troops prepared to descend down the Golan Heights high ground into northern Israel . Some facts about "occupation." Firstly, the Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians lost Gaza, the West Bank and Golan Heights (respectively) by participating in a failed attempt at genocide against the Children of Israel. Had Israel lost this 1967 defensive war, the Arab-Palestinians and their Arab allies would have raped, butchered or driven out every Israeli they could get their hands on and gobbled up all of Israel. Now, 35+ years later and despite the fact that Israel won a war BROUGHT UPON THEM, the Israelis are still willing to allow the Arab-Palestinians to have a state on much of the West Bank and Gaza if only they will stop sending their suicide/homicide bombers into the heart of Israel! (Talk about misplaced compassion!) From 1948 to 1967, Egypt ruled Gaza, Syria ruled the Golan Heights, while Jordan ruled the West Bank. They could have set up independent Arab-Palestinian states in any or all of those territories, but they didn't even consider it. Instead, in 1967 they used the Golan Heights, Gaza and the West bank to launch a war that was unambiguously aimed at destroying Israel, which is how Israel came into possession of those territories in the first place.

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After ONLY six days of air, sea and hand-to-hand ground warfare, Israel defeated all three Arab armies along three separate fronts, taking control of the entire Sinai Desert from Egypt, the 37mile x 12mile Golan Heights from Syria and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem and its Old City) from Jordan. The God of Israel was surely watching over His children!  Most importantly was the return to Israel of its holy 3,000 year old capital city of Jerusalem along the western edge of the West Bank... the same Jerusalem from which all Jews had been denied access for the 19 years (1948-1967) following Jordan's seizure and control over it following the first Arab-Israeli War of 1948-9.     Unfortunately, the world saw things differently and considered Israel an "occupier" of this disputed "West Bank" and the Gaza Strip along with the 850,000 Palestinian Arabs living there. These Arabs would refer to themselves as "refugees" and joined the masses of refugees from the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948-9. Once again Israel was forced to fight a battle for survival and, sadly, once again Palestinian [in reality, Jordanian and Egyptian] Arabs becoming refugees by their own actions, the actions of their leaders and from the actions of fellow Arabs from neighboring states!  ISRAEL SCREWS UP TOO!     Israel was responsible for bringing about some of its own problems. The Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were packed and ready to leave following their 1967 defeat.  Suddenly the victorious one-eyed IDF General Moshe Dayan persuaded them to stay. This singular act stunned no one more than the Arab enemy himself who could not believe such an incredible manifestation of Jewish madness!  After all, the Arabs knew what THEY would have done to the Jews if they had won!  Dayan's plan was to educate them, offer them modern medical treatment, provide them with employment both in the West Bank, Gaza AND inside Israel Proper itself ... living amongst each other in hopes of building bridges to the Arab world.  Israel is now paying dearly for this typically naive "Leftist" gesture.  That "bridge" led to two Intifadas and world-wide Arab-Palestinian terrorism.  From a frightened and defeated enemy, these "Palestinian" Arabs under Israel's jurisdiction turned into a confident, hateful and dangerous enemy now on their way toward forming a terrorist state determined to destroy Israel!   Note: Some people say Jordan (first called Trans-Jordan) is an Arab-"Palestinian" State! Jordan accounts for 3/4 of Palestine's original land mass. Though they may call themselves "Jordanians," they are culturally, ethnically, historically and religiously no different than the Arab-"Palestinians" on the "West Bank." Even the flag of Jordan and the flag of the proposed 2nd Arab-Palestinian state on the West Bank / Gaza look almost identical. So, if the Arab-Palestinians and Jordanians think of themselves as one and the same, why should WE fall for the lie that the Arab Palestinians west of the Jordan River are any different from the Jordanian Arabs on its eastern shore? Jordanian Flag Proposed Palestinian Flag

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The Middle East war is not now and never was a conflict between Israelis/Jews on the one hand and Palestinians on the other. In fact, the Arab-"Palestinians", while currently the perpetrators of most of the anti-Jewish atrocities, were never a very important part of the conflict. In fact, before about 1970, virtually no one in the world considered the Middle East conflict to be one between Israelis and Palestinians.  The term "Palestinian" itself had referred to Israeli Jews back in the 1940s, and had been slowly deconstructed and redefined to refer to the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. The Middle East Conflict was always a war by Arabs against Jews, not a conflict between Israelis and "Palestinians." The war was repackaged as a conflict between Jews and Palestinians as a public relations gimmick by the Arab fascist regimes. These regimes had never had any interest in "Palestinians," in creating a "Palestinian" state, or in "Palestinian nationalism" before 1967. That is because Palestinian nationalism did not and DOES NOT exist. The Palestinians were a regional group of Arabs having virtually no cultural nor national distinctive traits separating them from Syrians, Lebanese, and Jordanians. They are all basically Arabs!.  The bulk of what are called "Palestinian Arabs" are members of families who migrated into the Land of Israel beginning in the late 19th century. Palestinian nationalism is a mislabeling of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism exists, although it is closely bound up with Islamic nationalism and even Islamism. Palestinian nationalism, however, is a phantom. It is nothing more than genocidal hatred of Jews! Until the Jews began returning to the Land of Israel in increasing numbers from the late 19 th century, the area called Palestine was a God-forsaken backwash that was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. 1880-84 Turkish government settles Muslim Circassian refugees in the Golan to ward off Bedouin robbers. Other settlers in the area include Sudanese, Algerians, Kurds... In 1878, an Ottoman law granted lands in Palestine to the Moslem refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Carmel region, in the Galilee and in the Plain of Sharon and in Caesarea. The refugees were further attracted by l2-year tax exemptions and exemption from military service. The same colonization policy was also directed toward Moslem refugees from Russia - particularly from the Crimea and the Caucasus. They were Circassians, Cherkesians and Turkmenians - leading to their settling in Abu Gosh, near Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights. Refugees from Algeria and Egypt were also settled in Jaffa, Gaza, Jericho and the Golan. For example: Yasser Arafat’s family came to Gaza from Egypt and a wealthy family of current PA President Mahmoud Abbas moved to Tzfat from Damascus, Syria! The Arab assaults and aggressions against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1968, and 1973 had nothing to do with Palestinians. The Palestinian terror campaign would itself be easy to suppress today and eradicate if the Middle East conflict were really a Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel would simply obliterate the terrorists and expel their supporters to Syria and Lebanon. The Middle East war continues because it is really an Arab-Israeli war, not an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also in large part a war between barbarism and civilization. In many ways an Islamic religious jihad against the Jews. http://www.shamrak.com/Masada2000-HistoryofPalestine.htm