'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"

---

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!

---

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."

---

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.

---

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!

---

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!

---

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.

---

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

---

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

Lawless Administration Won’t Enforce Law Against Israel Boycotts

Jonathan S. Tobin 

The signing of a trade bill last week that included provisions specifically requiring U.S. trade negotiators to oppose European boycotts of Israel was a signal defeat for the BDS — boycott, divest, sanction — movement. The willingness of a bipartisan majority of Congress to label efforts to wage economic war on the Jewish state as inconsistent with American law was especially important since it rightly dismissed any distinction between boycotts of all of Israel and those that only target Jewish communities in the West Bank and Jerusalem. But it appears celebrations about that victory were premature. Comments by State Department spokesman John Kirby let it be known that, although President Obama signed the bill, he won’t enforce it. As it has on so many other issues, such as immigration, this administration regards laws that it likes differently from those it doesn’t and will simply ignore the latter.

The statement by Kirby, which was related on Twitter by the Associated Press’ Matt Lee and picked up by Lori Lowenthal Marcus of the Jewish Press, makes it clear that laws passed by Congress and signed by the president are null and void if they conflict with administration policy. According to Kirby:

By conflating Israel and “Israeli-controlled territories,” a provision of the Trade Promotion Authority legislation runs counter to longstanding U.S. policy towards the occupied territories, include with regard to settlement activity. Every U.S. administration since 1967 — Democrat and Republican alike — has opposed Israeli settlement activity beyond the 1967 lines. This administration is no different. The U.S. government has never defended or supported Israeli settlements and activity associated with them, and by extension, does not pursue policies or activities that would legitimize them.

Kirby is right that the U.S. government has never formally recognized the right of Jews to live in Jerusalem or the West Bank. But he’s wrong to assert that President Obama’s policies are entirely consistent with that of his predecessors. This administration has made an issue of the existence of 40-year-old neighborhoods in Jerusalem in a way that is unprecedented since it treats the presence of Jews in parts of Israel’s capital as being just as illegitimate as the most remote West Bank settlement. Moreover, no previous administration has ever considered boycotts of Israel, whether of the entire country or of the half million Jews who live on the other side of the 1967 lines as legitimate. Kirby’s statement is an implicit endorsement of some Israel boycotts while opposing others.

Nor does the focus on settlements aid the cause of peace as the administration claims. Israel has already made far-reaching offers of withdrawal from the West Bank including statehood that has been repeatedly rejected by the Palestinians. The refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn is the obstacle to peace, not the presence of Jews in Jerusalem or the West Bank.

As I have written previously, the notion that it is okay to boycott some Jews but not others is one that sends a dangerous signal to Israel’s enemies. Once it is deemed lawful to anathematize parts of the Israeli economy, it is a slippery slope to treating all such boycotts as legitimate. Since the original Arab boycott that sought to strangle the Israeli economy was only broken by U.S. efforts to ban trade with those who enforced the boycott, a Congressional effort to move against BDS now was entirely in keeping with longstanding U.S. policy. But since this administration is obsessed with the idea of banning settlements, it is prepared to let a Europe in which a rising tide of anti-Semitism has fueled support for BDS activity get away with such boycotts.

This is a disgrace, but any thought of a legal challenge to the decision is a waste of time. Since the U.S. Supreme Court gave President Obama the right to invalidate laws about Israeli rights to Jerusalem in a decision handed down earlier this month, he can be confident that he will be granted similar latitude to ignore anti-BDS law.

But it isn’t just friends of Israel who should be outraged about this decision. This is an administration that views law enforcement as an option, not an imperative. Just as he did on immigration, where he ignored the will of Congress and used executive orders to effectively annul legislation by not enforcing those concerning illegal immigrants, President Obama regards his personal opinion as being above the law. That is a dangerous tendency to substitute his preferences for the rule of law ought to scare all Americans, regardless of their views about trade or Israel.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/07/01/lawless-administration-israel-boycotts/