Roseanne Barr's most-recent tailspin into the gutter involved a photo shoot with Heeb magazine wherein she is seen wearing an Adolf Hitler moustache and swastika as she takes burnt gingerbread "Jew Cookies" out of an oven. In another, in same costume, she is shown about to take a bite out of one of these burnt cookies.
Abraham Lincoln Incentive Grants Program West Bank/Gaza 2009-2010
Investing in the Future of Young Palestinian
AMIDEAST is now accepting applications for the Abraham Lincoln Incentive Grants Program, funded by the United States Department of State through the Middle East Partnership Initiative and the Consulate General in Jerusalem. The program will provide grants (financial assistance) to promising, academically qualified but economically challenged students who will be in grade eleven in the academic year 2009/2010 from both Gaza and the West Bank to assist them in competing successfully for scholarships to pursue their undergraduate studies in the United States. The program will assist the selected students to become competitive applicants for U.S. college and university admissions and scholarships.,,
AMIDEAST will provide students with the following range of educational advising, test preparation and testing services:
o Two hours of private, customized one-on-one advising consultations
o Two hours of in-center internet use each week
* College Application & Essay Writing Workshop (18 hours)
* Test Preparation Courses for iBT/PBT TOEFL and SAT I ( 30x2 hours) in addition to Online Practice Tests for iBT-TOEFL and SAT I
* Payment of application fees at up to six U.S. colleges or universities.
* Visa application fees, SEVIS fees and travel allowance for visa interview at the U.S Consulate General in Jerusalem, if admitted to a U.S. university.
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
...a student must meet all of the following requirements:
* My family is unable to meet the costs of applying to a U.S. college or university
* Be a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, East Jerusalem or Gaza Strip
Consulate General staff and Dr. Adel Yahya, Director of the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE), met to commemorate the first grant given to Palestinians under the U.S. Department of State’s Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation. The project will assist three historic villages in the West Bank – Beitin, Aboud, and Al-Jib – to preserve their cultural heritage and promote tourist destinations, while also raising awareness among residents of the villages about their cultural heritage, assisting local specialists and curators on the methods of cultural preservation, and educating the communities on the illegal procurement and sale of antiquities. The director of PACE and its staff thanked the Consulate General for its support and noted the importance of this grant, especially as it involves training Palestinians on the methodology and techniques of cultural heritage preservation.
The first scientific identification of al-Jib with the ancient Canaanite city of Gibeon was made by Edward Robinson in 1838.[4] Archaeological excavations led by James Pritchard in 1956, 1957, and 1959 confirmed this identification with the discovery of 56 jar handles inscribed with the Semitic triliteral gb'n.[4] The inscriptions were dated to the end of the Judean monarchy and have been cross-referenced against geneaological lists in the Book of Chronicles. While they include many Benjaminite names, they also include non-Israelite names, attesting to the intermixing of local population.[4]
In the Book of Joshua, ancient Jib or Gibeon is described as "a large city, like one of the royal cities." The flat and fertile land with many springs which surrounds it gave rise to a flourishing economy, attested to in the large number of ancient jars and wine cellars discovered there. The jars could hold 45 liters of wine each and 66 wine cellars two meters deep and dug out of rock have been unearthed in Jib.[4]
4 - Brooks, Simcha Shalom (2005), Saul and the Monarchy: A New Look, Ashgate Publishing
Aboud: The story of Aboud is another illustration of how the barrier is making life difficult for the remaining Christians in the West Bank. Aboud is a small village northwest of Jerusalem near Ramallah and is six kilometers from the Green Line, Israel's internationally recognized border. The Christian history of Aboud dates back to when Jesus and the Holy Family passed through Aboud enroute from the Galilee to Jerusalem. There are remains of nine ancient churches dating back to the early centuries and visited by pilgrims from all over the world. Today, Aboud is home to approximately 2200 people, half of which are Christian. In the 1980's land was confiscated from Aboud without any compensation for the construction of two settlements. In 2005, the Israeli military issued additional orders for the confiscation of land without compensation to build the barrier. The route of the barrier will confiscate around 1000 acres of land, leaving the settlements ample space to expand. The consequences for Aboud have been catastrophic. Thousands of olive trees have been uprooted with no adequate compensation. Many of these trees are over a thousand years old and are a part of the town's Christian heritage. More importantly, they are a major source of income for Aboud's families. One olive tree produces up to $200 of profit per season. The Israeli government's offer to buy or compensate each destroyed tree for $15.00 is not an equitable solution. In addition, the barrier will strengthen Israel's control of the water supply. Aboud sits on the Western Aquifer, one of the main sources of water for the area. The Israelis also control a small water reservoir on the east side (Aboud side) of the barrier. While this may appear to give control of the water to the residents of Aboud, it does not. The reservoir is surrounded with a high chain link fence topped with barbed wire. It is always locked and only Israeli officials and settlers have the keys. It is seldom accessible to the people of the village. The Israelis ration the water in Aboud during the summer months while the settlements enjoy a 100% flow of water year round.
"...and kept a steel engraving of the Temple Mount on the east wall of his room"
The president's approach isn't anti-Israel; it's a balance that could tip the scales toward a two-state solution.
...The idea that Obama is "anti-Israeli" is far-fetched. Speaking at Cairo University in June, Obama declared categorically to the Muslim world that the bond between the United States and Israel is "unbreakable." Israel remains a key ally, the No. 1 recipient of U.S. foreign aid at more than $2.7 billion this year. The special relationship between the two countries was demonstrated once again this week by visits from four high-ranking administration officials. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, national security advisor James L. Jones, special envoy George J. Mitchell and Mideast specialist Dennis Ross traveled there to assure Israel of U.S. military cooperation and opposition to Iran's nuclear ambitions, as well as to press the settlement issue and to try to put the peace process back on track.
That said, it is true that Obama has made significant policy shifts in order to serve as an effective peace broker...the future of settlements has to be resolved through negotiations. Such preemptive moves stand as proof to Palestinians and most of the Arab world that neither Israel nor the United States is serious about creating a viable Palestinian state.
This is why Obama is seeking -- dare we say? -- a more evenhanded approach to peace-making. He wants to shift the U.S.-Israeli alliance from what former U.S. Mideast negotiator Aaron Miller calls an "exclusive relationship that doesn't serve our interests to a distinguished special relationship, which we do need." In fact, that is also what Israel needs, given that the exclusive relationship has failed to provide security or produce a sustainable peace. Most Americans, Israelis and Palestinians support separate, side-by-side Israeli and Palestinian states. Rather than fear the Obama administration's shift, Israelis should hope that more balance will give Obama more clout to pursue a two-state solution -- Israel's best hope for a secure future.
...Arab states have been as resistant as Israel and just as wrongheaded. A Saudi Foreign Ministry spokesman said this week that "normalization" comes only after Israel has changed its ways...
...Obama has been criticized for failing to rally Israeli public opinion on the settlement freeze. That shouldn't be so hard because most Israelis do not support settlements, [not true] but he does have to reach out to them, and he needs the help of Arab states to do so.
...the goal of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel...ultimately this serves the interests of Israel, its Arab neighbors and the United States. And it is a goal more likely achieved with an evenhanded U.S. policy.
Palestinians can dream about a two-state solution but the realities on the ground present a grim picture and a dream that is more far-fetched than ever.
...I consider myself an optimist. I participated in the Middle East peace negotiations as a delegate. So why am I so gloomy?
The West Bank and East Jerusalem, the largest chunk of the territory that would be the base of the new Palestinian state, are being swallowed by Israel. They are looking more like Israel proper, except for the isolated and disconnected Palestinian communities.
...The Palestinian political landscape is a mess. Talks of reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas have been frequent, yet completely fruitless. There are irreconcilable differences between Hamas and Fatah that can only be overcome with the demise of one or the other.
...If history is our guide, prospects of peace, especially under a right-wing Israeli government, are grim as ever. What options do Palestinians have?
They can live with the status quo: a divided West Bank and Gaza (geographically and politically); hanging on to whatever they can from the clutches of Israel's expansionist policies; a continued dependence on foreign political and financial support; and a misguided hope that Israel will acquiesce to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Or, the Palestinians can give up the dream of Palestine and ask Israel to absorb Palestinians into Israel (politically and economically), provide them with equal rights as citizens, and allow Palestinian refugees to come back into the West Bank and Gaza under the same terms. Palestine can then become a state within a larger state such as Arizona is part of the U.S.
Any Israeli Jew in his right mind wanting to maintain the Jewish nature of Israel would say, "Hell, no!"
That is why I believe that the prospects of peace and the establishment of a Palestinian state at this juncture are a hallucination at best. I am, nevertheless, the first to hope that I am wrong.
Exchange of territory:
According to Article 6 Israel received a territory in the area known as Wadi Ara and the Little Triangle in exchange for territory in the southern hills of Hebron. [7] In March 1949 as the Iraqi forces withdrew from Palestine and handed over their positions to the smaller Jordanian legion, 3 Israeli brigades manoeuvred into positions of advantage in Operation Shin-Tav-Shin. The operation allowed Israel to renegotiate the cease fire line in the Wadi Ara area of the Northern West Bank in a secret agreement reached on 23 March 1949 and incorporated into the General Armistice Agreement. The green line was then redrawn in blue ink on the southern map to give the impression that a movement into green line had been made. [8]
The events that led to a change in the Green line was an exchange of fertile land in the Bethlehem area to Israeli control and the village of Wadi Fukin being given to Jordanian control. On 15 July when the Israeli Army expelled the population of Wadi Fukin after the village had been transferred to the Israeli-occupied area under the terms of the Armistice Agreement concluded between Israel and the Jordan Kingdom The Mixed Armistice Commission decided on 31 August, by a majority vote, that Israel had violated the Armistice Agreement by expelling villagers across the demarcation line and decided that the villagers should be allowed to return to their homes. However, when the villagers returned to Wadi Fukin under the supervision of the United Nations observers on September 6, they found most of their houses destroyed and were again compelled by the Israeli Army to return to Jordanian controlled territory.
The United Nations Chairman of the Mixed Commission, Colonel Garrison B. Coverdale (US), pressed for a solution of this issue to be found in the Mixed Armistice Commission, in an amicable and UN spirit. After some hesitation, this procedure was accepted and finally an agreement was reached whereby the Armistice line was changed to give Wadi Fukin to the Jordanian authority who, in turn, agreed to transfer some uninhabited, but fertile territory south of Bethlehem to the Israelis, (essentially a reversal of part of the March 1949 land swap). [9]
Palestine was under the rule of the Eastern Roman Emperors since 400 AC and until it was conquered by Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, who was given the keys of Jerusalem from Patriarch Safronios in 638 AC. The city then remained under Islamic-Arab rule until the Crusaders captured it in 1099 AC. Christian rule lasted until 1187 AC when Salah Eddin reconquered the city, which then was ruled by the Ayyubids until being recaptured by the Crusaders in 1129. Some 15 years later, the Arabs regained Jerusalem and the city remained in their hands until 1917.
In 1517, Turkish Sultan Selim I conquered Jerusalem and Palestine and incorporated both into the Ottoman Empire, which remained in control until the British occupation in 1917, with the exception of a short period of Egyptian rule (from 1831 until 1840). In the course of World War I, the Ottoman forces capitulated in Jerusalem on 9 December 1917 and mayor Selim Effendi Al-Husseini surrendered to the allied forces led by British Gen. Edmond Allenby, who officially entered the city two days later and established the British military administration in Jerusalem. In April 1920, the San Remo Conference awarded administration of the former Turkish territories of Syria and Lebanon to France, and Palestine, Transjordan and Mesopotamia (Iraq) to Britain. On 24
July 1922, the League of Nations Council approved the Mandate for Palestine without the consent of Palestinians (The terms of the Mandate became official on 29 Sept. 1923, until which time British military rule remained in place).
I have pointed out the signs that something is underway on the issue of the tax-exempt status of monies donated to charitable enterprises located in Jewish communities beyond the Green Line. Especially the David Ignatius article in the WashPost and another by Ronit Avni
Back in late March, I was quoted in a JTA article on the subject. And see this.
Well, now this:
Israeli NGO battles settlements in US
The left-wing organization Gush Shalom is launching a campaign against organizations soliciting donations in the United States, particularly those receiving US federal tax exemptions for settlements and illegal outposts, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The timing of the campaign has been stepped up from September to August because the Foreign Ministry recently launched its own campaign to block governments of foreign countries from donating money to human rights organizations in Israel.
...According to Gush Shalom, which refused to comment on this report, "while the public launch of the campaign, through publication of the first reports and legal actions, was originally planned for September of this year, recent events have prompted us to accelerate the timetable."The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Avigdor Lieberman, in a grossly undemocratic move and in close coordination with a number of purportedly independent organizations such as NGO Monitor, has decided to actively target the operations of Israeli human rights organizations active in the Occupied Territories by pressuring the government of friendly nations to cease critical financial support for them."
According to Gush Shalom, in criticizing the Dutch embassy in Israel for giving a grant of almost €20,000 to Breaking the Silence for its controversial report on alleged IDF human rights and war crime violations during Operation Cast Lead, the government acknowledged that the organization's actions were legal and legitimate but allegedly said they were politically incorrect.
On the other hand, "many of the activities of the organizations targeted by our campaign are illegitimate and/or illegal under international, US and EU law." In the first phase of its campaign, Gush Shalom will pressure the US to halt tax exemptions to Israeli organizations and NGOs which "directly and openly support the development and operation of illegal outposts.
...Gush Shalom said that in the second stage of the campaign, it will focus on the financing mechanisms of mainstream organizations such as Nefesh B'Nefesh, Christian Zionist philanthropies, the Jewish National Fund and the World Zionist Organization, which are also active in the West Bank.
P.S.
This:
Division 54 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 provides an income tax exemption for annuities and deferred lump sums made under structured settlements
...Less visibly, but we hope just as assertively, the administration is pressing the Palestinians and other Arab leaders to take concrete steps to demonstrate their commitment to a peace deal. Those must clearly contribute to Israel’s sense of security.
Unless all sides deliver — the Palestinians, Arabs and Israelis — Mr. Obama’s credibility and the credibility of the peace process will be undermined.
The ultimate question of who controls which land will have to be resolved at the peace table with border negotiations and land swaps. Right now, some 300,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank; 200,000 in East Jerusalem. And the continued expansion of Israeli settlements has led Palestinians to doubt they will ever be allowed to build a viable state. The issue has also given Arab states a far too convenient excuse for inaction.
While Israeli governments have repeatedly promised to halt settlement activity — and no new settlements have been approved in nearly two decades — existing ones have continued to mushroom with government incentives. According to Americans for Peace Now, an activist group, 4,560 new housing units were built when Ehud Olmert was prime minister. Mr. Netanyahu has rejected demands for a freeze and insisted that “natural growth” (to accommodate births) must be allowed.
Under pressure from Washington, Mr. Netanyahu’s government has dangled a possible compromise: a temporary freeze in new construction, as long as 2,500 units now in process can be completed and Arab East Jerusalem is exempt. It is a weak offer.
While they press the Israelis, Mr. Obama and Mr. Mitchell are also asking the Palestinians and Arab states to do more. They are insisting that the Palestinians work harder to prevent incitement against Israel in schools and the media. They have asked Arab states — notably Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria — to signal the beginning of an acceptance by allowing Israel to fly commercial planes through Arab airspace or open government commercial offices in their capitals.
President Obama and Mr. Mitchell claim they are making progress, but so far there is little sign of it...
Israeli leaders do not often risk being at odds with an American president, but polls show broad support for Mr. Netanyahu’s resistance. President Obama, a skilled communicator, has started a constructive dialogue with the Islamic world. Now he needs to explain to Israelis why freezing settlements and reviving peace talks is clearly in their interest.
Washington Post: On Israel, More Catholic Than The Pope
By M.J. Rosenberg
If the Washington Post was an Israeli daily, it would not be Ha'aretz -- the New York Times of Israel which publishes editorials and columns on all sides of the issues -- it would be the Jerusalem Post, jingoistic and, if anything, to the right of the government.
Of course, the Washington Post is not an Israeli paper so its defense of even the most indefensible Israeli policy -- the refusal to freeze settlements -- is just weird. Fred Hiatt (the editorial page editor), neocon hero Charles Krauthammer and columnist Bill Kristol consistently defend Israeli policies with a zealousness they last demonstrated when pushing for war with Iraq.
...Nor are there any "parameters for curtailing settlements accepted by previous U.S. administrations." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton searched the archives and says that there is no evidence whatsoever that any agreement allowing settlement expansion exists. [this is BS]
The reason US relations with Israel have deteriorated is that the Israeli government is increasing, not decreasing, settlement activity. [more BS] This is its response to Obama's one demand: a settlements freeze, a freeze a sizable percentage of Israelis believe is acceptable. [how sizable? telephone booth size?]
...[now he gets a bit antiS] Israel is the number one recipient in the world of aid from the United States. And traditionally the aid relationship is a two-way street. The donor provides it and the recipient pays some heed to what the donor requests.
So far, that has not been the case with the Netanyahu government.
The Washington Post had better start thinking with at least a tad of objectivity about Israel's current policies. The last thing the world of journalism needs is a second Jerusalem Post.
Ta’anit 16b
Amen’ is not made use of in the Temple.6 And whence can it be adduced that the response, Amen, was not made use of in the Temple? — For it is said, Stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting; and let them say: Blessed be Thy glorious Name, that is exalted above all blessing and praise...What them was said in the Temple? Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed art Thou who redeems Israel; and the congregation respond, Blessed be the name of his glorious kingdom for ever and ever
and that alleyway has a sign, in Hebrew, pointing to the "Little Wall"
and you will come upon a section of the Western Wall north of the Western Wall Plaza:
another view of the congregation:
"Tisha B'Av will last forever," promised Kamal al-Khatib, deputy head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, to thousands of cheering Muslims at the Temple Mount a few days ago. Even the hearts of Jews far from the mountain saddened. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas mocked us in the same spirit a few months ago when he said, "Call yourself the Hebrew Socialist Republic - it is none of my business." He refused to accept Israel's Jewish identity. We, who have drifted away from Tisha B'Av and the Temple Mount, should be grateful to both of them, because sometimes a nation needs its haters to discover its real face in the mirror again.
...Tisha B'Av is filled with events organized by Temple Mount movements and groups interested in negotiations and public discourse, but the general public is not part of all that. It is doubtful whether legislation would help in this case...
...Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson once said that "had Israel not mourned its destruction for generations ... we wouldn't have had Hess, Pinsker, Herzl or Nordau ... Yehuda Halevy wouldn't have been able to create 'Zion, Won't You Ask' and Bialik couldn't have written 'Scroll of Fire.'" Chaim Arlosoroff, one of the most outstanding Labor Zionist leaders, defined Tisha B'Av at the beginning of the last century as "the nation's greatest mourning day."
...it is time to call, 'Arise! Let us go up to Zion," let us go to the Temple Mount. Within the limitations of halakha and of police directives, not as a provocation or demonstration.
A heritage trip to Morocco or Poland is all well and good, but going to the Temple Mount is the real heritage trip...no posters, demonstrations or ritual effects. This minimum, visiting the Temple Mount, is reserved by Israel's laws to any Jew who wants it, even if he wears a skullcap. The police, despite their balking, must allow it...
Jewish extremists raid Al-Aqsa Mosque, perform rituals
GAZA, July 29 (KUNA) -- A number of Jewish extremists on Wednesday stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque and preformed religious rituals, Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage said.
The foundation said in a statement that more than 200 Jewish extremists entered the Mosque within 30 minutes only and were positioned all over its vicinity, noting that the intrusion was "significance" in terms of timing and size, especially as it coincided with eve where the Jewish people celebrate the anniversary of temple ruins at Temple Mount...The Temple Mount; also known as Mount Moriah, and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, is a religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem. Due to its importance for Judaism and Islam, it is one of the most contested religious sites in the world.
A rare 2,000-year-old ritual vessel made of limestone and inscribed with 10 lines of text has been discovered in an excavation near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is an unprecedented find, according to Dr. Shimon Gibson..."Such stone vessels were used in connection with maintaining ritual purity related to Temple worship, and they are found in abundance in areas where the priests lived," Gibson reported...
Although the letters are clearly visible it will take some time before their meaning can be discerned...a group of experts consulting on the matter was not convinced; they say there is a possibility that the text contains the sacred name of G-d and is deliberately cryptic.
...Also uncovered were at least half a dozen Murex snail shells with holes drilled through them...Murex snails were cultivated in ancient times at sites along the Mediterranean Sea, and a royal blue dye was extracted from them...
The decision to evacuate Gaza Strip settlements in 2005 was "utter nonsense," the head of the Israel Defense Forces' ground troops during the Gaza disengagement said Thursday.
Israel Defense Forces General (Res.) Yiftach Ron-Tal made the comment during an interview on Army Radio, a day before the fourth anniversary of the disengagement on the Hebrew calendar.
"Today it is clear to everybody, that what at the time was an argument over a difficult event, was utter nonsense from a security perspective," he told Army Radio.
"I opposed it from the deepest meaning of the word opposition - from a security aspect, from a religious aspect and from a national aspect."
Ron-Tal added, however, that he decided without hesitation to participate in the disengagement.
"I suffered and didn't sleep at night, but the decision was completely wholehearted. In my opinion, the alternative for the people of Israel was even worse."
Security forces hunted door-to-door for Islamic militants in ______________ on Thursday after storming the compound of a radical sect and killing more than 100 people.
A top rights group said the government forces had killed bystanders and other civilians. A military spokesman denied the charge and said it was impossible for rights workers to tell who was a civilian and who was a member of the _____________, which the government blames for instigating days of violence in the mostly Muslim region.
The government warned people to evacuate the area, then shelled and stormed the group's mosque and headquarters Wednesday night, setting off a raging firefight with retreating militants armed with homemade hunting rifles, firebombs, bows and arrows, machetes and scimitars.
An AP reporter saw soldiers shoot their way into the mosque under fire and then rake those inside with gunshots. The reporter later counted about 50 bodies inside the building and another 50 in the courtyard outside.
An apocryphal story is told of Napoleon Bonaparte entering a darkened synagogue and observing weeping Jews, sitting on low stools. Asking what misfortune had occurred to cause such behavior, he was informed that it was the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av.
On that day, as Napoleon learned, Jews commemorate the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem and the fall of the Fortress of Betar. The day, marked with a 25-hour fast and a public reading of the book of Lamentations, signifies not only the loss of Judaism's singular holy site but the end of independent political sovereignty and the eventual expulsion, a second time, into exile.
On hearing that story, Napoleon exclaimed: "A people that cries these past 2,000 years for their land and temple will surely be rewarded."
Today, the 9th of Av, there are many new threats to Jerusalem, including the recent diplomatic dissing of Israel by the U.S. Fortunately, the words of President Obama and other U.S. officials have served to reinforce a consensus among Israelis that Jerusalem must remain exclusively under Israeli control and that even communities of Jews living outside the former Green Line, the armistice line drawn after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, must remain a part of Israel.
A liberal Washington think tank, the Center for American Progress, recently conducted a panel discussion based on the premise that the Old City of Jerusalem is the main impediment to solving the Israeli-Arab conflict. The group's plan recommends that Israel and a future state of Palestine appoint a third-party administrator that would run and police the city. An audience member who asked why the status quo could not be retained was informed by a panelist that that "would be too intangible."
We have to hope Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton knows better than to upset the status quo. As longtime diplomat Dennis Ross informed us in his book, "The Missing Peace," the only new idea Yasser Arafat raised at Camp David in 2000 was that the temple didn't exist in Jerusalem, claiming it had been located in Nablus. Her husband, then-President Clinton, was astonished at this. Instead of "Holocaust denial" we were given "temple denial."
U.S. policy toward Jerusalem has long tended toward the "denial" side of the equation. If an American living in Jerusalem gives birth to a child in either West Jerusalem or post-1967 East Jerusalem, for example, her progeny is not recognized by the U.S. as being born in Israel. The birth certificate and passport will list only a city name -- Jerusalem -- as the place of birth.
This rule follows the U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual, which notes: "For a person born in Jerusalem, write JERUSALEM as the place of birth in the passport. Do not write Israel, Jordan or West Bank ..." The "logic" for this is that Israel is considered by the United States to be "occupying" territories -- including Jerusalem -- whose final status must be negotiated.
As State Department spokesman Ian Kelly admitted on June 22, before being reined in, the recent Obama administration fixation on a "settlement freeze" also targets neighborhoods in East Jerusalem whose Jewish population's "natural growth" is to be halted.
And there is more State Department trickery. Births of children of American citizens in any of the Arab towns or Jewish communities outside of Jerusalem and beyond the Green Line will have their birthplace noted, as per the above-mentioned regulations, as the "West Bank." Is the "West Bank" a state? Is the State Department engaged in creating new states?
This is an illogical and quite unreasonable bureaucratic situation. On the one hand, the State Department has fashioned a new "state" while, on the other, it is ignoring Israel's status in its own capital.
The "West Bank" never existed as a geopolitical entity until April 1950, when Jordan annexed the area. That annexation, incidentally, was considered by all the world -- except for Britain -- as an illegal occupation. Yet the U.S. has established the "West Bank," with the stroke of a pen, as if it were a state entity.
If the U.S. insists on using boundaries dating to 1948, shouldn't it also use the place names in use at that time? "Judea" and "Samaria" were both names written into the U.N. partition resolution. A baby born to U.S. citizens in Shiloh, for example, should therefore be registered as having been born in "Shiloh, Samaria."
Today is a day of lament for a long-ago event seared into the collective memory of Jews the world over. But the contemporary pressures the Obama administration has brought on Israel have created another lamentable situation between the two nations. This year, the ancient fast days will also provide an outlet for contemporary frustration over issues of sovereignty, political independence and security.
Should "Country of Birth" for American babies born in Jerusalem be "Israel"?
Israeli public opinion, which normally leans against the settler movement, has rallied behind Mr. Netanyahu.
Internationally-renowned artist Leonard Cohen will not be performing in Ramallah as planned. The 74-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter has had his concert in Ramallah canceled in a development viewed as a small victory by groups calling to boycott Israel.
Pro-Palestinian activists said Cohen was not welcome in Ramallah as long as he insisted on performing in Tel Aviv, where a concert is planned for September 24.
The Palestinian Prisoners' Club, which was organizing the event, decided to cancel the concert because it was becoming too politicized, but the club insisted it did not bow to pressure from boycott organizations.
The official Leonard Cohen forum announced it will start selling tickets for the singer's Tel Aviv concert this coming Friday, July 31. The sale, which is offered only to registered members of the forum, will last until Saturday evening...According to the message, all the proceeds from the September 24 concert in Ramat Gan Stadium, titled "A concert for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace“, will go towards a newly-established foundation to benefit Israeli and Palestinian organizations working for reconciliation.
Tickets for Leonard Cohen¹s September 24 concert in Ramat Gan Stadium will go on sale Saturday night...Ticket prices will range from NIS 350 to NIS 1,200...
As reported exclusively in The Jerusalem Post, Cohen will be donating his proceeds from the concert to an Amnesty International-administered fund which will funnel the money to Israeli and Palestinian organizations that are working toward conciliation.
The initial recipients of the funds will be the
Parents Circle - Family Forum, the Peres Center for Peace Children¹s Medical Program, and Combatants for Peace, an organization which attempts to bring together IDF veterans and Palestinian terrorists who have renounced their ways.
The Palestinian Happy Child Center, a developmental center that works with special-needs children in Ramallah, has been vetted as another recipient but has not yet confirmed its participation.
'Obama is a racist,' settler rabbi tells protestors in Jerusalem
The Yesha Council of settlements organized a demonstration in which some 1,500 rightists gathered near the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem...
Among the speakers at the demonstration was Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, the head of the Nir yeshiva in the settlement of Kiryat Arba. "Obama is a racist," Waldman told the assembled crowd. "If he continues with his actions, he will bring about the disintegration of the American superpower."
Fox News Channel...popular — host Glenn Beck, who Tuesday morning branded President Obama a "racist."
The combustable Beck ignited a firestorm when, during a Tuesday morning appearance on FNC's freewheeling "Fox and Friends," he said the President's reaction to the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest situation in Cambridge, Mass., suggested a "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture."
..."I'm not saying he doesn't like white people. I'm saying he has a problem," Beck responded. "This guy is, I believe, a racist."
I believe the president has been misled. There can be nothing illegal about a Jew living where Judaism was born. To suggest that residency be permitted or prohibited based on race, religion or ethnic background is dangerously close to employing racist terminology.
On the traditional Jewish day of mourning for the destruction of the first and second Temple, Peace Now printed and posted signs throughout Jersualem that warned:
"The Occupation will destroy the Third Temple."
Using paragraphs from the Torah the poster stated:
"Why was the First Temple destroyed? Because of three things – idolatry, incest and bloodshed.
Why was the Second Temple destroyed? Because there was unfounded hatred.
And what, heaven forbid, will lead to the destruction of the Third Temple? The settlements, fanaticism and occupation."
"For this I mourn
For the settlements that were built in the heart of Palestinian territory and that keep peace and quiet from our land.
For the settlements that were built, with or without permit, and that turn us into the loathsome scum among the nations.
For the outposts that were built by deception and by turning blind eyes.
For Jerusalem, the joy of the land, that has been turned into a city of strife and quarrel.
For the continued investment and construction in the settlements, that will ultimately lead to one state for two peoples – and thus put an end to the Zionist enterprise."
The poster is signed: "Seek peace, and pursue it. Not Obama's, not the world's. The settlements are our problem."
Explaining the poster, Yariv Oppenheimer, Peace Now Secretary General said, "This is not about hatred of settlers, but the clear understanding that without the realization of the two-state vision, the State of Israel cannot remain a Jewish, democratic state, and this, for us, is the destruction of the Zionist ideology."
...let's turn to their own sources. The Dome of the Rock was built during the caliphate of Abdul al-Malik and completed in 692 CE. It stands directly over the extensive rock which, by Muslim tradition, was the landing and departure point of Muhammad on his steed El-Burak during his Night Journey from Mecca. The "evidence" is the foot and hoof marks on the rock - a cultic relic from early days.
These marks also indicate that it is from here, and to here, that God will come and go at the End of Days. As His direction of travel is not known, the Dome of the Rock was built facing the four winds of heaven. It has no focus except the central rock, and entrances on all four sides. Does the central rock indicate the presence of a Jewish Temple? Not necessarily, but the Koran itself now makes that clear.
The prophet's night journey is described in Surah 17: "Glory be to Him who made His servant go by night from the Sacred Temple [Mecca] to the farther Temple [Al-Aksa, Jerusalem], whose surroundings We have blessed..." It goes on to say, "We solemnly declared to the Israelites: 'Twice you shall commit great evil in the land... and We sent against you a formidable army which ravaged your land... and when the prophecy of your second transgression came to be fulfilled, We sent another army to afflict you and to enter the Temple, as the former entered it before..."
Thus the Koran itself gives us the evidence of the destruction of the two Temples that had stood on the site of Al-Aksa.
Nothing could be clearer.
17:7 In ahsantum ahsantumli-anfusikum wa-in asa/tum falaha fa-itha jaawaAAdu al-akhirati liyasoo-oo wujoohakum waliyad khulooal masjida kama dakhaloohu awwala marratin waliyu tabbiroo maAAalaw tatbeeran
After the cryptic allusion to the Night Journey in verse 1, it continues (verses 2-8) with a warning to the Jews. Allah previously warned them that twice they “would they do mischief on the earth and be elated with mighty arrogance” (v. 4). Ibn Kathir elaborates: “Allah tells us that He made a declaration to the Children of Israel in the Scripture, meaning that He had already told them in the Book which He revealed to them, that they would cause mischief on the earth twice, and would become tyrants and extremely arrogant, meaning they would become shameless oppressors of people.”
Tisha B'Av, like Yom HaShoah and many other aspects of the Jewish calendar, can no longer be a politics-free zone. Our sense of victimhood, our righteous indignation at how we have always been the wronged party, has become a socio-psychological barrier to the political steps that are necessary for peace to be achieved.
We have been victims, but the Palestinians have also been victims.
The Shepherd Hotel site is a case in point. The most important fact about this particular project is that the building permit was granted July 2, just weeks after the Obama administration first signaled that it would object to any new building in the captured territories.
Israel’s timing couldn’t be more provocative. Giving the green light to the project now, after years of delays, may be part of a larger plan to Balkanize East Jerusalem, splitting neighborhoods in such a way that a future political solution for the city becomes impossible.
Or it might have been intended as a signal that Israel would continue to build as Israel saw fit, no matter what Washington said.
Either way, it is “unhelpful,” as Condoleezza Rice said as secretary of state in 2005 about other unilateral steps taken by Israel in East Jerusalem. That was her polite, and not very effective, way of telling Israel to hold off.
President Barack Obama...has begun with a direct and public challenge to Israel’s latest plan to build new settlements in East Jerusalem. It’s a risky move...This gambit puts the settlement issue at the center of the table, even before the next round of Arab-Israeli negotiations starts — if it ever does. The downside is that it might only serve to harden Israel’s stance, without softening Arab positions.
Which it already has.
Oh, well.
(Kippah tip: MZ)
Americans for Peace Now is urging U.S. senators not to sign a letter encouraging the Arab world to normalize ties with Israel because it does not mention efforts to halt Israeli settlements. The bipartisan letter to President Obama, circulated by Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) and backed by the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, is "unhelpful" because it "seems to make a straightforward and reasonable demand for the Arab world to normalize relations with Israel," but "the subtext of the letter directly contradicts and undermines the efforts" of the Obama administration "to promote Middle East peace...the Bayh/Risch letter conspicuously ignores Israel's continued refusal to stop settlement activity" and "never even once mentions the word 'settlements,'" states the Americans for Peace Now letter. "It sends a message that signers consider settlements more important than peace."...
As Tisha B'Av, the annual day of mourning over the destruction of the Temple, approaches, Members of Knesset met to talk about the Temple, its role in Jewish life, and Israel's approach to the Temple Mount today. The conference was organized by MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union).
The American non-governmental organization, USAID, is involved in an illegal building project on the site of the Shdema refugee camp, near Beit Sahur, members of a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee subcommittee discovered on a tour of the eastern Gush Etzion area.
National Union MK Arye Eldad protested the illegal building in a letter to the US embassy in Tel Aviv. Eldad, who is a doctor, said that there had been plans in the Civil Administration to build a hospital on the site but no permission had been given for USAID to build there.
"We cannot accept the fact that at the same time that the United States demands that Israel stop 'all illegal building projects' in Judea and Samaria, an American organization that enjoys tax exemption in the US is involved in illegal building activity in Judea and Samaria," Eldad wrote.
"Beaufort," an Israeli film describing events at an army post in the run-up to Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
"Waltz with Bashir" will be one of the five finalists competing for the Best Foreign Language Film award at the Oscars on February 22, the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced yesterday.
By referring only to the Holocaust, and ignoring the historical Jewish attachment to the land of Israel, the president has inadvertently reinforced Muslim misconceptions regarding Jewish indigenousness. The Holocaust helps explain why Israel fights, not why Israel exists. It doesn't explain why thousands of Ethiopian Jews walked across jungle and desert to reach Zion; nor for that matter why some Jews leave New York and Paris to raise families in a Middle Eastern war zone.
...can remember the appearance of the hills around Ramallah in 1979, before any Jewish settlement came to be established there. In the spring of that year I walked north from Ramallah, where I live, to the nearby village of A’yn Qenya and up the pine-forested hill. A gazelle leapt ahead of me. When I reached the top I could see hills spread below me like crumpled blue velvet, with the hamlets of Janiya and Deir Ammar huddled between its folds. On top of the highest hill in the distance stood the village of Ras Karkar with its centuries-old citadel that dominated the area during Ottoman times. I had been following the worrying developments of extensive settlement-building elsewhere in the West Bank and wondered how long it would be before these hills came under the merciless blades of the Israeli bulldozers. I didn’t have to wait long. A year later the top of the hill was lopped off and the settlement of Dolev, then a cluster of red-tiled Swiss-style chalets, was established.
Sixty-eight percent of the public who supported the disengagement in 2005 have changed their opinion on the issue, Army Radio reported Tuesday, according to a poll ordered by the Committee of the Gush Katif Evacuees.
Two thirds of those polled said that the government's handling of the evacuees was seriously flawed.
Do I agree with Obama that Jews should be forbidden to build in certain areas of Jerusalem? My Judaism will survive my inability to live in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem (which, last time I checked, have no particular holy significance for Jews). What matters in Jerusalem is the Temple Mount. Everything else is commentary...
...what I see on the West Bank and Gaza are societies that have made themselves so dysfunctional and self-hating that the UN collects their garbage for them. Somehow, the weaker and more divided the Palestinians get, the more powerful they become. And the more economically and militarily mighty Israel gets, the weaker it becomes.
Independent Northern Ireland-style go-betweens could ease tensions between police and protesters, say MPs.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights...report says a decision to "kettle" some of the London demonstrators had failed to recognise their rights. One man died after the London protests and investigators are looking at other formal complaints about police actions.
..."Both protesters and police must share information," said the report. "Whilst this happens in many cases it is clear that at least some aspects of communication at the G20 protests were poor. "Mutual distrust was apparent and the police and protesters seemed to have different expectations of what the dialogue should be about and how it should proceed.
"This ineffective communication led to frustration on both sides and, possibly, to the police taking a more heavy handed approach to the Climate Camp protest than would otherwise have been the case."
..."There is a case for considering the use of independent negotiators to facilitate dialogue between police and protests to overcome distrust and tensions," said the committee.
...Andrew Dismore MP, the committee's chairman, said: "While kettling may be a helpful tactic, it can trap peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders for hours. "There must be clear safeguards in place to make sure containment is used only when necessary and proportionate."
The committee also said officers should be legally obliged to wear their identifying numbers, after a number of complaints during the G20 that officers did not have them on display.
Media reporting of the build up to the G20 protests
31. The Climate Camp Legal Team, in its written evidence, commented on “increasing concern that the police were talking up the potential for violence in their press briefings”.78
Commander Bob Broadhurst, “Gold Commander” for the G20 operation, was reported as having spoken about activists planning in an “unprecedented” way to “stop the city”. The Metropolitan Police’s press spokesman, Simon O’Brien, was reported as having described the police as “up for it”, the implication being that the police were ready for violence. There was talk of old anarchist groups reforming and using new technology to thwart the police.79
Paul Lewis of the Guardian cited a briefing provided by Commander Broadhurst on 20 March in which it was alleged that he “told reporters of the possibility that protesters might storm buildings, damage property and bring large areas of London to a standstill”.80
32. AC Allison denied that the Metropolitan Police had talked up the prospect of violence. He said that police spokesmen had not mentioned the possibility of violence and had emphasised that plans to disrupt the City were “aspirational”.81 Quoting Commander O’Brien in full, he showed how his comment on the police being “up for the [G20] operation in all of its complexities” had been taken out of context and applied solely to the public order elements of the operation.82 He took issue with Mr Lewis’s recollection of Commander Broadhurst’s comments and said “the last thing we wanted to do was hype this up in any way, because we recognised that if we, in any way, hyped this up, all we were likely to do is encourage more people to come out and commit disorderly acts”.83
33. We have had the opportunity to review the transcripts of the press briefings provided by Commanders Broadhurst and O’Brien and they are consistent with the oral evidence we heard from AC Allison. The briefings clearly set out the police’s concerns that the G20 summit would create some difficult public order challenges, without forecasting violence or buildings being stormed and without giving the impression that the police were relishing the opportunity for a fight.84 Consequently, we conclude that the main responsibility for talking up the prospect of violence and severe disruption rests with the media, not the police. As AC Allison said, “our briefings were designed to say exactly what our intelligence was … sadly, the media took it in a particular way and started reporting it in a particular way”.85
34. AC Allison said that the police had responded to exaggerated press comment about the G20 protests by briefing the Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority to undertake a round of interviews to argue that the prospect of violence had been over-emphasised.86 We welcome this approach, but suggest that the Metropolitan Police could have done more to respond to exaggerated and distorted press coverage of its briefings. We note the conclusions of the parliamentary observers’ report that “aspects of the media strategy employed by the police prior to the demonstrations may have contributed to escalating expectations of violence”.87 We recommend that the Metropolitan Police review how the media reported its briefings on the G20 protests with a view to ensuring that exaggerated and distorted reporting can be countered with a quicker and more effective and authoritative response in future.
------------------------
78 Ev 58.
79 For example, “G20 summit: Britain’s biggest ever policing operation launched”, Telegraph, last internet update 3.4.09;
“Office staff warned of confrontation as City braces for mass G20 protests”, Observer, 22.3.09.
80 Ev 78 and Q84. Also Q19 and Policing of the G20 Protests, paragraphs 25-6.
81 Q81.
82 Ibid.
83 Qq84-88.
84 See Q234.
85 Q82.
86 Q81.
87 Executive Summary, paragraph 2.
Even as settler leaders, politicians and supporters rallied in the capital, other activists spent the day in Judea and Samaria trying to set up new outposts as part of an overall strategy by the Land of Israel Faithful group to expand Jewish holdings in the West Bank...At one called Netzer, located between the Elazar and Alon Shvut settlements in Gush Etzion, border policemen dispersed a group of 15 teens who had gathered there and detained three of them...Two other teens were detained by police at a site called Inbalmin, near the Ma'aleh Michmash settlement in the Binyamin region.
At a hilltop outside of the Avnei Hefetz settlement in Samaria, however, former Kedumim mayor Daniella Weiss said that some hundred activists managed to gather near a new outpost site. Activists would return on Tuesday to the three sites as well as to eight others in Judea and Samaria, she said.
The Arabs got the Cairo speech; we got silence.
This policy of ignoring Israel carries a price. Though Mr. Obama has succeeded in prodding Mr. Netanyahu to accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, he has failed to induce Israel to impose a freeze on settlements. In fact, he has failed even to stir debate about the merits of one: no Israeli political figure has stood up to Mr. Netanyahu and begged him to support Mr. Obama; not even the Israeli left, desperate for a new agenda, has adopted Mr. Obama as its icon.
As a result, Mr. Netanyahu enjoys a virtual domestic consensus over his rejection of the settlement freeze. Moreover, he has succeeded in portraying Mr. Obama as a shaky ally.
as far as most Israelis are concerned, Mr. Obama has made a mistake in focusing on a settlement freeze. For starters, mainstream Israelis rarely have anything to do with the settlements...More important: in the past decade, repeated peace negotiations and diplomatic statements have indicated that larger, closer-to-home settlements (the “settlement blocs”) will remain in Israeli hands under any two-state solution. Why, then, insist on a total freeze everywhere? And why deny with such force — as the administration did — the existence of previous understandings between the United States and Israel over limited settlement construction? There is simply too much evidence proving that such an understanding existed. To Israelis, the claim undermined Mr. Obama’s credibility — and strengthened Mr. Netanyahu’s position.
...Mr. Obama seems to have confused American Jews with Israelis. We are close emotionally and politically, but we are different. We speak Hebrew and not English, we live in the Middle East and have separate historical narratives. Mr. Obama’s stop at Buchenwald and his strong rejection of Holocaust denial, immediately after his Cairo speech, appealed to American Jews but fell flat in Israel. Here we are taught that Zionist determination and struggle — not guilt over the Holocaust — brought Jews a homeland.
Winery's Nude Nymph Causes State Ban Winery says they will not be changing its label
Mon, Jul 27, 2009
For some wine lovers a nude nymph is artistic expression while for others it is offensive trash. A wine label showing a nude nymph is too much for Alabama's liquor control agency, which has told restaurants and stores not to sell the product.
The label on Cycles Gladiator wine, produced by Hahn Family Wines in Soledad, Calif., shows a vintage 1895 advertising poster for Cycles Gladiator bicycles. The French poster features a nude nymph flying beside a winged bicycle.
Bob Martin, staff attorney for the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, said the board's license bureau rejected the label last year as inappropriate for sale in the state. Early this month, a citizen sent a bottle of the wine to the board's enforcement bureau to show it was being sold in stores, he said.
The board then sent a letter to stores and restaurants reminding them that sale of the product is prohibited, he said Friday.
Alabama's liquor regulations prohibit labels with "a person posed in an immoral or sensuous manner," Martin said.
Hahn President Bill Leigon said Friday the company had been selling its product in Alabama since 2006 until it ran into problems with the label. "It is not pornographic," he said.
...Once your media profile is well established, it’s hard to modify. And that problem, faced by anyone who sustains a meaningful career, is greatly magnified when you have helped to construct the box into which critics eagerly put you...It’s a long way from New York City to Boise, a distance that has as much to do with ideology as geography. For all of its diversity, vast stretches of the United States remain strongholds of a white, Christian worldview that struggles to make sense of other cultural heritages even when it is open to doing so. That Matisyahu has achieved sufficient market penetration to merit features in those hinterlands as well as in the major cities and college towns where his name first circulated testifies to his talent and dedication. But the increased exposure has also contributed to an awkward lag in the reception of his work...Whether he wants to talk about other matters or not, his interviewers relentlessly force him back to the subject of his religious convictions.
And Matisyahu, as someone who cares deeply about his faith, takes the responsibility too seriously to play the rock star who brushes off difficult topics. It’s clearly a good thing that his music is helping to educate previously oblivious Americans about what it means to practice his kind of Judaism. At the same time, though, one gets the nagging sense that he will soon weary of pieces that wrap discussions of his music inside discussions of his religion.
...The release of Matisyahu’s new album Light, now due in late August, was put off at the behest of his record label. Significantly, it’s a major label, Epic, even though the trend in the music industry has been for many long-established artists to migrate to independent labels. That confirms the commercial potential that his work is deemed to have. But the decision to expand and revise the record’s contents suggests that there may be trouble ahead. Such delays are often a warning sign, suggesting that the artist has failed to produce the sort of music that label representatives expected, that they have deviated from the form that made them a desirable commodity.
So far, Matisyahu hasn’t conveyed any displeasure at the label’s decision. Yet if we read between the lines of the interviews he has been giving on his current concert tour, originally intended to accompany the album’s release, it’s not hard to see that he has been struggling with the burden of expectations. Although he continues to confirm his religious devotion in interviews, he has parted ways with the Lubavitchers in favor of an approach more open to kabbalistic Judaism. And although the album contains plenty of reminders of his music’s reggae roots, it also takes bold steps in the direction of rock and electronica...
In 1967, under attack, Israel struck back and conquered the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem (the West Bank) from Jordan...legal experts accepted Israel's right to "occupy" and settle its historic homeland, because the areas had been illegally occupied by invading Arab countries since 1948.
One organization, however - the International Committee of the Red Cross - disagreed.
Meeting secretly in the early 1970s in Geneva, the ICRC determined that Israel was in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Based on the Hague Convention, GC IV was drawn up after World War II to protect innocent civilians and restrict brutal occupations. Unilaterally, the ICRC turned it into a weapon to delegitimize and demonize Israel.
As far as is known, the ICRC did not rely on any legal precedents; it made up "the law."
Judge and jury, its decisions lacked the pretense of due process. Since all decisions and protocols of the ICRC in this matter are closed, even the identities of the people involved are secret. And there is no appeal. Without transparency or judicial ethics, ICRC rulings became "international law." Its condemnations of Israel provide the basis for accusing Israel of "illegal occupation" of all territory conquered in 1967.
Although most of the international community, its NGOs and institutions accept the authority of the ICRC and other institutions, such as the International Court of Justice, as sole arbiters of what is "legal," or not, it's strange that some Israeli politicians and jurists cannot defend Israel's legal claim to the territories. And Israel's case is strong.
ADOPTED IN 1945, the UN Charter (Article 80) states: "...nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."
This means that the designation of "Palestine" as a "Jewish National Home," incorporated in the British Mandate and established by international agreements adopted by the League of Nations and US Congress, guarantees Israel's sovereign rights in this area. All Jewish settlement, therefore, was and is legal.
...As of June 30, the settlements had 304,569 residents, an increase of 2.3 percent since January.
Most of the growth was in the most religious communities, including the ultra-Orthodox settlements. Modi'in Ilit gained 1,879 residents, a 4.5 percent increase. Beitar Ilit gained 1,074 residents, a 3.1 percent jump. [see the NYTimes report]
Excluding these two communities, the growth rate in the other Jewish settlements was 1.75 percent.
Generally, growth rates are higher in the second half of the year, because many families move over the summer. [and since the summer is over for another month, high growth will continue]
Among local councils, Har Adar (near Jerusalem) saw 5.7 percent growth, and Alfei Menashe (near the Sharon region, north of Tel Aviv) reported a 2.7 percent increase. [those two are secular though] Kedumim recorded 2.1 percent; Emanuel, 1.2 percent; and Kiryat Arba, 0.9 percent.
...The report also noted a 4.4 percent increase - 425 people - in settlers living outside municipal areas.
However, these figures do not include all of the residents of unauthorized outposts, as some are regarded as residents of adjoining settlements. The highest growth rates by percentage were in small settlements such as Itamar, Elon Moreh and Kfar Tapuah.
...Remember the 1990s’ version of the Sirens’ song?
Here’s the plan: Create a Palestinian Authority, give them lots of money and guns. Let them bring in tens of thousands of Palestinians. Turn over more and more of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
And by governing they will learn responsibility. And Yasir Arafat will become moderate, and a statesman. And there will be no more terrorism or incitement to terrorism. And there will be a two-state solution.
And what about the 2006 song: Stop the war with Hizballah and the UN will establish a strong force to patrol south Lebanon. Hizballah will not be able to return or to build military installations. Arms smuggling will be halted. For we are the entire international community, almost 200 nations strong.
And each time, the chorus goes: if this doesn’t work out, we will support you. We will recognize the risks you have taken, and the concessions you have given, and the losses you have suffered. And the name of Israel will be exalted as a great peacemaker. And the media will say nice things about you.
The above is written in what I hope to be an entertaining style. But it is deadly serious — as dead as hundreds of Israelis are as a consequence of Western advice and promises, along with hundreds of Palestinians whose deaths are also a direct result of these failures.
That’s what happened. And here we are at the end of that process as if none of it has happened.
As if the concept of having a “reset” of policy is just a euphemism for short-term memory loss.
If Israel’s leaders and people believed that a freeze in settlement construction would actually bring benefits...it would happen despite all the political obstacles. But the Israeli public is, for good reasons, doubtful.
If only, we were told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he would accept a two-state solution, how we will appreciate you! And he did. And they didn’t.
...With all seriousness, the absolute refusal of American and European leaders and journalists even to acknowledge this history and their own behavior guarantees Israeli refusal to heed their Siren song.
Repeatedly, without being tied to the mast, I have raised this issue in private conversations—What about your unfulfilled promises in the past? What about the risks we’ve taken unrewarded? What about all the other concessions that have backfired?--to Western political figures and diplomats. Not a single one responds.
Let me emphasize that: they don’t deny, they don’t apologize, they don’t even make a counter-argument. They simply go on without any reference to what I’ve just said. Not once have I ever heard an effort to address this issue from anyone in an official position. That’s no exaggeration.
They are the ones with wax in their ears. But if they refuse even to acknowledge the consequences of their past demands and advice, why should we listen to their latest versions of the same tune?
"'You can't build here, you can't build there' – it's as if we were their slaves," the rabbi protested. "We are being ruled by slaves," he said, adding that, "Our messiah will come and throw them out."
Rabbi Ovadia also bemoaned the current reality in the Temple Mount, saying: "Where is our temple? There are Arabs there!" He then promised that the messiah "will throw all these evil ones out of here."
Immigrants who choose to live and work in Scotland could earn British citizenship more readily, according to Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy.
Writing in Scotland on Sunday, he says moving to Scotland could see immigrants earn points towards their application. Points are granted according to things like skills, age and potential salary. Mr Murphy said he wants to see Scotland become a melting pot - but he stressed new arrivals must be controlled under a tight immigration policy.
Jerusalem Woodstock Revival
The Jerusalem Woodtock Revival will take place at the Kraft Stadium in Jerusalem on August fifth. Jerusalem is set to rock with a 5-hour music marathon on Tu B'Av, the traditional Jewish day of love. The event also commemorates 40 years since the historic 3-day Woodstock Festival in upstate New York, in the summer of '69.
The line up:
Bob Dylan by Ronnie Peterson
Crosby, Stills, and Nash by Long Time Gone
Neil Young by Geva Alon
Jimi Hedrix by Lazer Lloyd ("Yood")
The Doors by Crystal Ship
Details Kraft Stadium, Sacher Park near City entrance
Nadia Levene: 050-822-7887, ladidah2000@gmail.com
65 NIS until August 1st, 85 NIS after August 1st.
17:00
The insult was most bitter among the Syrian Sephardic community, a general term for Jews with roots in Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey. The Syrian Jews are considered one of the elites of Brooklyn, something they will always make sure to remind visitors of.
Arab responsibility for Palestinian refugees
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
"The radio stations of the Arab regimes kept repeating to us: 'Get away from the battle lines. It's a matter of ten days or two weeks at the most, and we'll bring you back to Ein-Kerem [near Jerusalem].' And we said to ourselves, 'That's a very long time. What is this? Two weeks? That's a lot!' That's what we thought [then]. And now 50 years have gone by." [PATV, July 7, 2009]
With these words an Arab resident of a refugee camp recounts the reason why his family left Israel in 1948, in an interview broadcast on PA TV this month.
Click here to view the interview on PA TV.
We in the West are living in the midst of a jihad, and most of us don't even realize it — because it's a brand of jihad that's barely a generation old.
Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War. It's called the House of War because it, too, according to the Koran, is destined to be governed by sharia, and it will take war — holy war, jihad — to bring it into the House of Submission.
Jihad began with Muhammed himself. When he was born, the lands that today make up the Arab world were populated mostly by Christians and Jews; within a century after his death, those areas' inhabitants had been killed, driven away, subjugated to Islam as members of the underclass known as dhimmis, or converted to the Religion of Peace at the point of a sword. The Crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were not wars of conquest by Europeans but attempts to take back what had once been Christian territory. America's very first foreign conflict after the Revolutionary War was with the Barbary pirates, who, sponsored by the Muslim governments of North Africa — just as terrorist groups today enjoy the sponsorship of countries like Libya, Iran, and Syria — had for generations been preying on European ships and selling their crews and passengers into slavery. (Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, over one million Europeans — including people like Cervantes, Saint Vincent de Paul, and French playwright Jean Francois Regnard — became chattel in North Africa, a minor detail that rarely makes it into Western history textbooks, perhaps because it would compel textbook writers to accord jihad a major role in their narratives of Western history.)
In 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, then the U.S. ambassadors to Britain and France respectively, met in London with the Tripolitanian envoy to Britain and asked him why his pirates were preying on American ships; he explained, as Adams and Jefferson reported afterward to the Continental Congress, that the pirates' actions were "founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."
Six months after Barack Obama became the first black man to move into the previously all-white residential facility at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, he is fighting to prevent integration in Jerusalem.
QUESTION: And can I just ask, back on the Middle East, can you just – I know we’re getting fact sheet later. This $200 million is money that she pledged in March in Sharm el-Sheikh?
MR. CROWLEY: This is part of the tranche. I think roughly speaking, she made a $900 million pledge in Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this year. I think this tranche brings us about halfway through that.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Via Teleconference
Washington, DC
July 24, 2009
...SECRETARY CLINTON:...I wanted personally to announce the delivery of budget support to the Palestinian Authority, under the leadership of President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad. Because what is at stake for the Palestinian people, for the future of a Palestinian state, for the future security of Israel, and for the region is so critical. This is important also to the United States and the Obama Administration...The broader goals we seek to accomplish – a comprehensive Arab-Israeli agreement and a two-state solution – are more likely to grow out of opportunity than futility, out of hope rather than misery.
As I also said, the point of our engagement is to help the parties make the decisions that are in their best interests. And it is our hope that the support of the United States and other nations will help foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realized, a state that is a responsible partner, is at peace with Israel and its Arab neighbors, accountable to its people, a state that Palestinians everywhere can be proud of and that will be respected worldwide.
This shared goal depends on strengthening the Palestinian Authority and its ability to meet the needs of its people. In just over two years, President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad have put in place the foundations of a responsible, transparent, accountable government. Therefore, I am pleased to announce that the United States has transferred $200 million in direct support to the Palestinian Authority. This transfer fulfills a critical portion of the assistance package that I announced in March in Sharm el-Sheikh. The ability of the United States to provide support directly to the Palestinian Authority is an indication of the bipartisan support for the effort to secure the peace in the Middle East, as well as for the fundamental reforms that the Palestinian Authority has undertaken. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle worked closely with us to make this assistance possible.
An important marker of progress is that the Palestinian Authority now has systems in place to ensure that donor funds are handled transparently and in an accountable manner. We will continue to work with the Palestinian leadership to bolster these safeguards to make sure that the funding ends up exactly where – and for whom – it is intended.
But we are confident, because the Palestinian Authority, under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, has a very exceptional two-year track record of performance on economic reform and prudent financial management, as noted by the World Bank, the IMF, and our own internal reviews. These fiscal reforms serve a larger purpose. We are seeing the positive impact that responsible government is having on the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, daily improvements in security, law and order, and economic opportunities.
For these improvements to take root, the capacity of the PA must be both deepened and strengthened. To continue this impressive record of reform, the PA needs financial help, and they need it now. President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad have worked hard to lower the burden on donors, but continued progress will depend on donors meeting their commitments. The United States has and will continue to be a partner with the Palestinian people for peace, prosperity, and security.
Now many other nations, including our European partners, have contributed generously to support the PA. I call on all nations that wish to see a strong, viable Palestinian state living in peace and security with its neighbors to join us in supporting the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority has proven to be a reliable partner for peace. It offers the Palestinian people the option of a peaceful, free, and prosperous future, and an end to the violence and conflict that have deprived so many Palestinians of the opportunity to fulfill their hopes and dreams and for their children to live up to their God-given potential.
So these are the goals we seek to accomplish: a comprehensive Arab-Israel peace agreement and a two-state solution. And it is our hope that this support will further conditions in which a Palestinian state can be realized.
Letters Regarding Israel-Palestine
Thursday July 23, 2009
SETTLER MOVEMENT
Editors, Daily Planet:
I am writing in response to Yisrael Medad’s July 16 letter to the editor. I am thrilled to hear Mr. Medad is writing from Israel. He should be able to go to B’Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, (www.btselem.org for those not in Palestine/Israel) which is located in Jerusalem. He will find that the effort to expand Jewish presence on territory the Palestinians had claimed for their future state is exactly what the goal of the settler movement in the early 1990s was.
Tracie De Angelis Salim
•
ISRAEL’S JEWISH COLONIES
Editors, Daily Planet:
Yisrael Medad defends the colonial Jewish settlements by writing from Israel that they are built “within the legally recognized community area.” That is exactly the problem. Israel’s apartheid laws consider the theft of Palestinian lands to build Jewish colonies “legal.”
Not long after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Ariel Sharon, later an Israeli prime minister, exhorted his followers to “move, run, [and] grab more hills, expand the territory. Everything that is grabbed will remain in our hands. Everything we don’t grab will be in their hands.”
The same Sharon wrote In 1973, “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years, neither the United Nations, nor the U.S.A, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
People who defend Israel’s colonial settlements under any pretext have no shame. Equally shameful is that the American taxpayer, unknowingly for the most part, subsidizes these colonies by billions of dollars of direct and indirect assistance while many Americans are without healthcare, adequate education or proper infra structure.
Hassan Fouda
Board Director, Israeli Committee Against House Demolition
(ICAHDUSA.org)
Kensington
SETTLEMENTS
Editors, Daily Planet:
Tracie De Angelis Salim claims that “Settlers began building settlement outposts in the early 1990s in an effort to expand Jewish presence on territory the Palestinians claim for part of a future state. These settlers had no government sanction” (“The Settlements Are the Real Barrier,” July 9). This is incorrect.
The so-called outposts were built on land properly zoned and registered within the boundaries of existing communities. The process accelerated when the Barak government agreed to redefine the limits of the communities by agreeing to Arafat’s demand that the Palestinian Authority could encroach as close as 50 meters from the last house rather than the previous arrangement. Faced with this alteration, outposts were set up as far away from the built-up area but within the legally recognized community area.
Yisrael Medad
Israel
NOT SO COMPLEX
Editors, Daily Planet:
In response to Rabbi Andrea Berlin’s letter to the editor:
Dear Rabbi, I need to inform you that the Israeli-Palestinian situation is not complex at all. On one side are a people who had prospered in their orchards and towns for more than 1,000 years, without invading and murdering their neighbors. On the other side are violent and criminal ideologues, who used the deaths of six million Jews in World War II death camps (where another six million gypsies, the retarded, disabled and others from at least six national populations also died) for their justification to enact the Jewish National Fund plan for invading Palestine in 1948. The Irgun and Lehi soldiers began the slaughter of civilians and the destruction of towns and orchards in 1948, and those who continue to murder civilians and destroy others property today are criminals and terrorists. Ninety-five percent of the world’s adult population realizes that the State of Israel treats the defenseless Palestinian population with the same contemptuous zeal that the German SS and Gestapo treated European Jewry in World War II. Fanatics with a cause, and cowards with power, attacking defenseless women and children. Theodore Hertz, the founder of Zionism, articulated the policy: “Both the process of expropriation and removal of the poor (Palestinians) must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” Not so complex, Rabbi, ya think?
Mark A. Wetzel
And for those who continue to be in denial about the new atmosphere between Israel and Washington, let’s have an explanation for State Department spokesman Robert Wood’s statement on Tuesday night, according to which financial sanctions on Israel were merely “premature,” in case Israel did not bend to the administration’s will regarding building homes in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Premature? That is more or less the same way this administration has spoken about adopting tougher sanctions on Iran.
Talk of financial pressure on Israel to freeze settlement building is "premature," the State Department spokesman said.
Robert Wood was asked Tuesday whether the Obama administration was considering financial disincentives to resolve differences between Israel and the United States on settlement expansion.
QUESTION: Would U.S. be ready to exert some financial pressures on Israel to
convince the government to stop settlements?
MR. WOOD: Well, Sylvie [AFP reporter Sylvie Lanteaume], it's premature to talk about that.
Source
What we're trying to do, as I said, right now is to create an environment which makes it conducive for talks to go forward. And as I said, Senator Mitchell is working very hard on this. And what we all need to do in the international community is support this effort, and that means Americans, that means Arabs and Israelis, to do what they can to kind of foster a climate in which the two sides can come together and negotiate their differences peacefully so that we can get to that two-state solution.
QUESTION: But Robert --
MR. WOOD: Yes.
QUESTION: Dan Meridor has said - that the agreement we had with the Americans is binding on us and them. And he added that they should keep to the agreement. He's calling the U.S. to keep to the agreement.
MR. WOOD: I think we've been very clear with regard to settlements. They need to stop, and that includes natural growth. I don't have anything more to add to that. The Israelis are well aware of our position. And we'll obviously continue to have talks with the Israelis on this subject and other issues, but our policy remains the same.
QUESTION: But they are continuing building in --
MR. WOOD: Well, I said, we're having --
QUESTION: -- Jerusalem.
MR. WOOD: -- discussions with our Israeli partners about this issue and a whole host of other issues related to the Middle East - Middle East peace. So that's about the best I can offer for you right now.
...the Obama administration has gone to great lengths to avoid directly renouncing the Bush-Sharon agreement regarding settlements. Plainly, the Obama team doesn’t want to abide by the terms of that understanding (which allowed for growth within existing settlements), yet they feel obliged not to say so. On one hand, this is curious for an administration that prides itself, indeed defines itself, on being “not George Bush.” But...it is, after all, poor form to insist Israel keep its agreements while America declines to keep hers.
So the effort to twist and evade has begun. The latest incarnation is to insist the Bush-Sharon agreement was never “implemented” and therefore carries no weight. There are two responses to that.
First, this is not the behavior that has characterized the Israeli-U.S. relationship, at least not recently. We haven’t generally engaged in legalisms and diplomatic fencing with our friend and ally...The very fact that Hillary Clinton now speaks of “enforceable agreements” bespeaks a Rose Law Firm sharp litigator, not a friend or ally of Israel.
Second, let’s talk about “implemented” and “enforceable.” Again, remember the context: Sharon was being asked to withdraw from Gaza and West Bank settlements and his domestic political standing was tenuous. So the U.S., in an effort to protect Sharon domestically and assist our ally, threw a lifeline...What happened? Even the Obama spinners acknowledge that Israel (both under Sharon and Olmert) ”implemented” the agreement by reducing new settlement growth...
So what is to be gleaned from all this? Well, the Obama administration certainly has a new mode of dealing with Israel. And if they want to play lawyer, they should get better legal advice.
Israeli settlers on horseback set fire to fields of olive trees and stoned Palestinian cars in the West Bank yesterday, apparently in response to the Israeli army’s removal of an illegal outpost in the area.
At least 1,500 Palestinian-owned trees were destroyed and two Palestinians were injured in the attack, near the city of Nablus, by about 30 settlers, security officials said. Farmers fought fires late into the afternoon, as fears grew that the flames would spread across the dry summer fields.
It was the most recent example of the “price tag” policy, in which settlers seek revenge by attacking Palestinians for every outpost that is demolished. “The goal is to create a price for each evacuation, causing Israeli authorities to think twice about carrying them out,” the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said.
A settler activist, Itamar Ben-Gvir, put it more directly: “We will not be suckers for the Israeli Government. We will not sit idly by and allow them to remove our homes,” he said.
The settlements, built on land earmarked for a future Palestinian state, have emerged as a key sticking point in efforts between Israel and the international community to forge a peace deal. While the US and Britain have pushed Israel to agree to a complete settlement freeze and the dismantling of dozens of outposts, the Jewish state has sought a compromise that would mean only a partial freeze, and the completion of 2,500 homes already in the late stages of construction.
"תג מחיר"? גול עצמי!
בתגובה על הריסת צריפים ופחונים בכמה מאחזים, דקירות-סיכה של ברק, חסרות פשר כפי שהן נבזיות ומרגיזות, הגיבו צעירים יהודים ביידוי אבנים ובשריפת שדות של ערבים, ולהתפרעות הזאת הם קוראים "תג מחיר".
במטותא מכם, חברים, ממי אתם גובים את המחיר הזה? האם לא רצוי לחשוב לפני שפועלים, לכוון היטב בטרם יורים?
אז הנה:
1. "תג מחיר" אמור להיות עונש. אבל את מי מענישים כשפוגעים בערבים בתגובה על רשעות שר הביטחון? האם גירוי הערבים להתקומם מרתיע את ברק? האם לא להיפך, דווקא נוח לו שהערבים ייראו כקורבן והמתנחלים כתוקפן?
הלא כללי המשחק השתנו. כיום, ברק ועימו הממסד השמאלני במשרד הביטחון ובמינהל האזרחי משתפים פעולה עם הרש"פ נגד המתנחלים, ושני הצדדים מעוניינים שמן הפגיעות הבלתי מוצדקות בערבים – הערבים יצאו טוב, והמתנחלים – רע!
2. זה כמה שנים שהשמאל סובל מ"בצורת" בהשחתת עצי זית של ערבים על ידי מתנחלים, שכל כך הצליחה להשחיר את פניהם ולרצוח את אופיים: פורעים, חוליגנים, פוגרומיסטים – כבר אמרנו? עד כדי כך, שהיה צורך להביא משור ולביים כריתות עצים. כעת באו פעילי "תג המחיר" ומספקים את הביקוש של אויביהם.
כי זאת לדעת: אפילו דיקטטורים, כשהם רוצים לפגוע במישהו, מפעילים נגדו תחילה מסע תעמולתי כדי להכשיר את הלבבות. ואיך עושים את זה? מייחסים לקורבן המיועד את הפשעים שזוממים לבצע נגדו. רוצים לגזול את רכושו? מציגים אותו כגנב וכרמאי. רוצים להרגו? מאשימים אותו ברציחת ילדים לאפיית מצות. כך עשו ליהודים, וכך עשה ויעשה למתנחלים שלטון שזומם להחריב את בתיהם, לשבור את עצמותיהם ולהפכם לפליטים. הצגת מתנחלים את עצמם כשורפי שדות וכתוקפי שכנים ערבים באבנים על לא עוול בכפם, מעשה שכל אדם הגון יתקומם נגדו, משרתת היטב את מתכנני קץ ההתנחלות. היכן כאן התבונה?
3. ויש גם הצד הערבי. הם אינם חובבי ציון, ונכון שהיו מעדיפים לראות אותנו מתאדים. אבל ראוי לזכור תמיד, שיכול היה להיות, חלילה, הרבה יותר גרוע. לשם כך לא צריך להפעיל את הדמיון, די בזיכרון. אנחנו נהנים עכשיו משקט יחסי, לאחר הדברת האינתיפאדה השנייה ולפני ש"תהליך השלום" המתחדש יביא עלינו חלילה את המלחמה הפלשתינית השלישית.
במקום לנצל את השקט הזה כדי להתחזק, להביא עוד מתנחלים ולבנות ולהתרחב על אף הגזירות – האם חסר לנו לפתוח לעצמנו עכשיו חזית שנייה עם הערבים?
4. ומי ייקח אחריות למותו, חלילה, או לפציעתו של אדם שייפגע ממעשי נקם של ערבים שיהודים פגעו בהם ללא כל פרובוקציה מצידם?
5. בוודאי שמתם לב שלשמאל מפריע השקט השורר בין מתנחלים לשכניהם הערבים, מפני שהוא סותר את משנתם, שיהודים וערבים אינם יכולים לחיות בשכנות, ולכן היהודים צריכים ללכת. ומה אתם עושים? מספקים להם ראיות, שאכן השכנות היהודית פוגענית ותוקפנית, ועל כן – ימיה ספורים!
6. אין ספק, שבקונסוליה האמריקנית אוספים בשקיקה את תצלומי שדות הערבים שהוצתו על ידי יהודים. לא מן הנמנע שגם מלשינים משלום עכשיו ממציאים להם את החומר. אך מי ייצר את "הראיות המרשיעות"? אנחנו בעצמנו!
אפשר לסכם: ההתנכלויות של ברק (באחריות ראש הממשלה) אכן ראויות לגביית מחיר, אך למען השם - לא המחיר הזה, ולא מן הערבים!
The U.S. administration has issued a stiff warning to Israel not to build in the area known as E-1, which lies between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim. Any change in the status quo in E-1 would be "extremely damaging," even "corrosive," the message said.
Obama anger stimulates Israeli settlement expansion.
Obama’s attempt to freeze building for Jews in Judea and Samaria appears to be backfiring according to a real estate agency report, which finds a boom in new home sales in Maaleh Adumim (located several minutes east of Jerusalem) further increasing the number of Jews living in the West Bank. The price of a three-bedroom apartment in Maaleh Adumin was $215,000 before Obama’s campaign against Israel. The price for the same unit now is $244,000. The city’s mayor Benny Kashriel said that all 450 apartments under construction are almost sold out. Maaleh Adumim resident and American native Beth Gordon, who has been discussing buying property for her children, laughed at President Obama’s description of her city as a (mere) settlement.
PATNA, India (Reuters) – Farmers in an eastern Indian state have asked their unmarried daughters to plow parched fields naked in a bid to embarrass the weather gods to bring some badly needed monsoon rain, officials said on Thursday.
Witnesses said the naked girls in Bihar state plowed the fields and chanted ancient hymns after sunset to invoke the gods. They said elderly village women helped the girls drag the plows.
"They (villagers) believe their acts would get the weather gods badly embarrassed, who in turn would ensure bumper crops by sending rains," Upendra Kumar, a village council official, said from Bihar's remote Banke Bazaar town.
"This is the most trusted social custom in the area and the villagers have vowed to continue this practice until it rains very heavily."
But judging from the crowd’s reactions, it is clear that sentiments ran deeper and that many of the 4,000 activists gathered at Washington’s convention center held strong views regarding Obama’s attitude toward Israel.
“Obama goes on in a manic, obsessive way about the settlements as if the settlement [issue] is key for peace,” said Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard to a roaring crowd. He then added that “the whole idea of land for peace is dead.”
Democratic congresswoman Shelly Berkley of Nevada had the crowd on their feet when she called the debate over the settlements a “red herring” and said there is “no way” that Israel should be restricted from building for the purpose of natural growth. “To pin the peace process on the settlement issue is fool hearted and for the United States to publically dress down the prime minister of Israel is a huge mistake,” Berkley said.
Encouraged by the positive response of the audience and the warm welcoming of host Gary Bauer, Berkley added: “If I wasn’t so Jewish, I’d think about converting right now.”
Marijuana plants valued at more than $1.26 billion have been confiscated and 82 people arrested over the past 10 days in Fresno County. The operation started last week and is continuing.
By comparison, Tulare County's leading commodity -- milk -- was valued at about $1.8 billion in 2008.
Officials say the marijuana-eradication operation will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the exact amount won't be known until agencies can add up staffing, vehicle and other costs.
In Operation SOS, more than 314,000 plants were uprooted in 70 gardens -- numbers expected to rise as the enforcement action continues. Agents also seized $41,000 in cash, 26 firearms and three vehicles.
...One hundred growers may still be on the loose, said Fresno County sheriff's Lt. Rick Ko. Many may have gotten rides out of the area, but some could still be in the Sierra, Ko said.
Last year, Fresno County deputies seized 188,000 marijuana plants.
A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.
The case began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in a seaside town...It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash — once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000.
...All told, some $3 million was laundered for Mr. Dwek since June 2007, prosecutors said...Maher Khalil is accused of accepting $30,000 in bribes from Mr. Dwek...The bulk of the corruption charges arose in Hudson County. The president of the City Council in Jersey City, Mariano Vega Jr., and the city’s deputy mayor, Leona Beldini, were also arrested. Mr. Vega took three $10,000 payments before and after the municipal elections in May, prosecutors said. Anthony R. Suarez, the mayor of Ridgefield, in Bergen County, was charged with accepting $10,000 in bribes. The court papers suggest the ease, and the relatively modest payments, with which local officials seemed willing to be part of the scheme...
...Weysan Dun, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Newark office, emphasized that the case was motivated by neither religion nor politics...“Any corruption is unacceptable — anywhere, anytime, by anybody,” the governor said in a statement. “The scale of corruption we’re seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated.”
Describing his recruitment to the NKVD, a predecessor of the KGB, when Blunt was a tutor and Burgess was a student at Trinity College in 1935 and 1936, Blunt said in the memoir that Cambridge at the time was rife with Marxist sympathizers. “Faced with the advent to power of Hitler and later by the Spanish Civil War,” he said, he realized that “the ivory tower no longer provided adequate refuge.”
He describes coming under intense pressure from Burgess — depicted in histories of the period as a heavy-drinking, show-stealing egoist but in the memoir as “an extraordinarily persuasive person” — to join him in working for Soviet intelligence. “The atmosphere in Cambridge was so intense, the enthusiasm for any anti-fascist activity was so great, that I made the biggest mistake of my life,” he wrote.
...the absence of any apology to those who suffered as a result of his actions, including secret agents working for Britain whose identities he passed to the Russians during World War II, contributed to harsh criticism of the document on Thursday from British historians and commentators...Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge historian specializing in intelligence matters, said the memoir reflected Blunt’s unwillingness to acknowledge the evil he had served in spying for Stalin. “The thing that he could never come to terms with afterwards was that, actually, he had entered the service of one of the most wicked men in Europe’s history,” Dr. Andrew told the BBC. “He simply describes it as a ‘mistake.’ ”
The decision to suspend the use of the short-range Qassam rockets that for years have flown into Israel, often dozens a day, has been partly the result of popular pressure. Increasingly, people here are questioning the value of the rockets, not because they hit civilians but because they are seen as relatively ineffective.
“What did the rockets do for us? Nothing,” Mona Abdelaziz, a 36-year-old lawyer, said in a typical street interview here.
How long Hamas will hold its fire and whether it will obtain longer-range missiles — which it says it is seeking — remain unclear...
...A senior Hamas police commander who spoke on condition of anonymity said the focus on culture and away from rockets was appropriate for now. He said Hamas was working on increasing the range of its rockets. But he said: “We have made a decision not to fire. As long as Israel is committed to an unofficial truce, so are we.”...
Weysan Dun, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Newark office, said the rabbis arrested — including the grand rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in the United States, Saul Kassin of Brooklyn — were part of a vast money-laundering conspiracy with tentacles in Israel and Switzerland.
...Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently postponed a decisive discussion aimed at setting a date for beginning the construction of the new Mugrabi Gate on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Ynet has learned...security sources have expressed their fear that making such a decision on the eve of the Ramadan fast would set Jerusalem on fire and spark another international row, in addition to the dispute over the construction of a hotel in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
..."The goal of the discussion in this forum was to renovate the bridge over the dike which collapsed, without hurting the public feelings involved – and nothing more. The decision on when to start building the new bridge is in the hands of the Jerusalem Municipality by law. This date has yet to be set, as it is a long and open procedure in any case," the official explained.
The current sensitive situation began on February 14, 2004, when the dike under the old wooden bridge collapsed, and fears were raised that entering the Temple Mount would be dangerous. Experts, including then-Jerusalem City Engineer Uri Shitrit, ruled against climbing the dike for safety reasons.
According to the engineer of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the winter rains have worsened the dike's condition, and it now endangers the temporary wooden bridge and the worshippers praying at the women's gallery in the Western Wall.
Following rescue excavations which enraged Muslims, who launched a violent protest and led to the arrival of a Turkish delegation of monitors, a decision was made to build a permanent bridge which would be coordinated with all parties involved in the matter – Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and the Waqf.
...A preliminary discussion was held several days ago by professional elements, including representatives of the Prime Minister's Office, the attorney general, the Shin Bet, the Mossad, the Public Security Ministry and the police, the Jerusalem Municipality and the National Security Council...on Wednesday, several hours before the discussion, Netanyahu decided to postpone it. His motives for doing so included the Muslim world's object to the new bridge project, due to fears that it would allow the entry of Israeli fighting forces and damage their holy site.
...According to estimates, the prime minister will convene a meeting following the Ramadan month and after the current dispute with the United States over the construction in east Jerusalem fades away.
Another dispute between the Muslim world and Israel is over the Jewish state's plan to expand the Western Wall plaza, taking advantage of the space created under the bridge, after a plan to use this area in order to expand the women's gallery was rejected.
The Muslims, who base their claims on disputed archaeological findings, say that the al-Buraq Mosque is located under this area. From this place, according to Muslim tradition, Prophet Muhammad's horse ascended to heaven.
...The opening of the tunnel on September 1996, which he referred to as "the rock of our existence", led to violent clashes between the Palestinian police and Israel Defense Forces soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza. Fifteen Israelis and dozens of Palestinians were killed in these events.
...After the exemplary hangings at Nuremberg, many of Hitler’s lesser creatures vanished into German society, where they were protected by fellow countrymen. Both the Soviet and western intelligence services cynically recruited scores of terrible men for their own purposes, and protected them from justice thereafter. One of the worst, Friedrich Buchardt, responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews, was employed by the British because of his spying contacts in eastern Europe.
Senior Vatican figures, many of them with ideological sympathies, played a deplorable role in assisting Nazis to reach South America. Adolf Eichmann wrote: “It was odd how throughout my escape journey I was helped by Catholic priests… In their eyes, I was just another human being on the road.”
A fascist named Clarita Stauffer ran an escape network through Spain. A 70-year-old English fascist vet named Arnold Leese hid two Dutch SS men on the run in Guildford. Only MI5’s intervention prevented their escape abroad. Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife tried to “do their bit” for old Nazis around the world, and Diana Mosley even founded a support network, the Bond of Brotherhood, for “our German colleagues”. It is extraordinary that some people regard her indulgently as the Mitford family’s “fun fascist”. She was an impenitent Nazi sympathiser until the day she died...
One way or another, only a tiny fraction of Nazis guilty of crimes against humanity faced legal process, and most served laughably short sentences. Tom Bower wrote the first important book about the allied failure to exact justice, Blind Eye to Murder, in 1981. Now, Walters has updated the story, aided by much new information. He gives gripping accounts of the international odysseys of such monsters as Eichmann, Mengele, Klaus Barbie and Erich Priebke.
Churchill was always uneasy about war crimes trials. He feared demands that allied personnel should be indicted — for instance, for murdering prisoners or even for bombing cities. I am aware of scarcely any case of British or American soldiers being tried for the illegal killing of Germans, though there were plentiful examples. To say this is not to subscribe to a doctrine of moral equivalence — of course the Nazis were vastly more wicked — but merely to acknowledge a difficulty.
Sir, – Suppose that A. N. Wilson is right in every judgement he makes of Isaiah Berlin, whom he knew – “malicious, snobbish, boastful, cowardly, pompous”, guilty of “loghorrhoea” and of “somewhat obsessive social climbing” (July 16) – he is nevertheless too narrow and lacking in historical imagination.
It is one thing to have been born, like Wilson, to a British family in 1950 and to have grown up in the long peace of this country of this generation, and quite another to have been a Latvian Jew born in Riga in 1909, arriving in this country, as Wilson recalls Berlin telling him, “with a little cardboard suitcase”. Berlin’s demeanour really was that of someone as Wilson describes him, “an exile in a foreign land”.
My friend and trial colleague, Eli Weinberg, with whom I shared a cell in prison in South Africa, the author of the best-known photographs of Nelson Mandela from before his arrest, was like Berlin a Latvian Jew, born in Riga a year before Berlin.
At the age of six Weinberg was a mascot of the Cossacks in the First World War, separated from his family in 1914 by the turmoil of the German advance; later arrested and tortured in post-war Latvia under the “Grey Barons”; arriving afterwards as a refugee in South Africa, none of whose languages he spoke, but several of which he mastered fluently, including Zulu and Sotho; his immediate family in Latvia wiped out under Hitler.
Might it not have been more charitable for Wilson to have imagined Berlin as formed by similar terrors, a shipwreck from the mincing machine of Stalin and Hitler?
Since we are the beneficiaries of Berlin’s gifts to this culture, from a part of the world of which we know – almost – nothing, Wilson should have been more perceptive about the inner demons that could well have driven this man, who gave us his priceless interview with Anna Akhmatova in Leningrad in the winter of 1945–6, when he was her “Guest from the Future”.
In their personal formation, A. N. Wilson and Isaiah Berlin are worlds apart.
PAUL TREWHELA
31 Berryfield Road, Aylesbury.
A young Muslim woman has been warned by police that her life is in danger after a male friend lost his tongue in an alleged assault using acid in an apparent “honour attack”.
The Asian man is in a serious but stable condition in hospital after an incident in Leytonstone, East London, three weeks ago. Sulphuric acid is said to have been thrown in his face and he was stabbed twice in the back.
The 24-year-old, being treated in a specialist unit in Essex, is now blind, his tongue has been destroyed and he suffered 90 per cent burns.
The woman, who claims the relationship is an innocent friendship, and the man live in the Asian community of East London, where their relationship is said to have upset her family for bringing dishonour on them.
Scotland Yard have issued what is known as an “Osman warning” — telling the woman that there is a threat to her life.
One hundred years ago this month, Marion Wallace-Dunlop (1864–1942) became the first modern hunger striker. She came to her prison cell as a militant suffragette, but also as a talented artist intent on challenging contemporary images of women. After she had fasted for ninety-one hours in London’s Holloway Prison, the Home Office ordered her unconditional release on July 8, 1909, as her health, already weak, began to fail. Her strike influenced those of Mohandas Gandhi, James Connolly and others who followed her example.
15 Then Esther bade them return answer unto Mordecai: 16 'Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day; I also and my maidens will fast in like manner; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish.' 17 So Mordecai went his way, and did according to all that Esther had commanded him.
The 29th of Tammuz is Ze'ev Jabotinsky's yahrtzeit, anniversary of his passing.
1919. With the war over, and as preparations for the Paris peace talks began at Versailles in early 1919, border requirements were again refined by each side, as follows.
Zionist position
The Zionists began to formulate their desired boundaries for the "national home," to be determined by three criteria - historic, strategic, and economic considerations (Zionist publications cited in Ra'anan 1955, 86).
Historic concerns coincided roughly with British allusions to the biblical "Dan to Beersheba." These were considered to be minimum requirements, which had to be supplemented with territory that would allow military and economic security. Military security required desert areas to the south and east as well as the Beka'a Valley, a gateway in the north between the Lebanon Mountains and Mount Hermon.
Economic security was defined by water resources. The entire Zionist programme of immigration and settlement required water for large-scale irrigation and, in a land with no fossil fuels, for hydropower. The plans were "completely dependent" on the acquisition of "the headwaters of the Jordan, the Litani River, the snows of Hermon, the Yarmuk and its tributaries, and the Jabbok" (Ra'anan 1955, 87).
In a flurry of communication between world Zionist leaders, the aspects of historic, strategic, and economic security became increasingly linked with the Jordan headwaters. These leaders of diverse backgrounds (including Chaim Weizmann, a British chemist whose wartime contribution of the gunpowder-refining process to the Allies granted him a certain status among British decision makers; Aaron Aaronsohn, a Palestine-born agriculturalist who had undertaken intelligence operations on Turkish troop movements for the British; and Louis Brandeis, a US Supreme Court Justice) each became demographer, cartographer, hydrologist, and strategist, in preparation for the Peace Conference.
The guiding force in refining the thinking on the necessary boundaries was Aaron Aaronsohn. He was in charge of an agricultural experimental station at Atlit on the Mediterranean coast, where his research focused on weather-resistant crops and dry-farming techniques. Convinced that the modern agricultural practices that would fuel Jewish immigration were incompatible with "the slothful, brutish Ottoman regime" (Sachar 1979,103), he concluded that Zionist settlement objectives required alliance with the incoming Allied Forces. Aaronsohn initiated contact with the British to establish a Jewish spy network in Palestine, which would report on Turkish positions and troop movements. Perhaps because of his training both in agriculture and in security matters, he became the first to delineate boundary requirements specifically with regard to future water needs. Aaronsohn's "The Boundaries of Palestine" (27 January 1919, unpublished, Zionist Archives), drafted in less than a day, argued that
In Palestine, like in any other country of arid and semi-arid character, animal and plant life and, therefore, the whole economic life directly depends on the available water supply. It is, therefore, of vital importance not only to secure all water resources already feeding the country, but also to insure the possession of whatever can conserve and increase these water - and eventually power - resources. The main water resources of Palestine come from the North, from the two mighty mountain-masses - the Lebanon range, and the Hermon ...
The boundary of Palestine in the North and in the North East is thus dictated by the extension of the Hermon range and its water basins. The only scientific and economic correct lines of delineation are the water-sheds.
Aaronsohn then described the proposed boundaries in detail, as delineated by the local watersheds. He acknowledged that, with the exception of the Litani, the Lebanon range sends no important water source towards Palestine and "cannot, therefore, be claimed to be a 'Spring of Life' to the country." It is the Hermon, he argued, that is "the real 'Father of Waters' and cannot be severed from it without striking at the very root of its economic life."
Returning to the Litani, however, Aaronsohn suggested that[it] is of vital importance to northern Palestine both as a supply of water and of power. Unfortunately its springs lie in the Lebanon. Some kind of international agreement is essential in order that the Litani may be fully utilised for the development of North Palestine and the Lebanon.
Aaronsohn's rationale and boundary proposals were adopted by the official Zionist delegation to the Peace Conference, led by Chaim Weizmann. The "Boundaries" section of the "Statement of the Zionist Organization Regarding Palestine," which paraphrased Aaronson's proposals, read, in part (see appendix II for the complete text):
The economic life of Palestine, like that of every other semi-arid country depends on the available water supply. It is therefore, of vital importance not only to secure all water resources already feeding the country, but also to be able to conserve and control them at their sources.
The Hermon is Palestine's real "Father of Waters" and cannot be severed from it without striking at the very root of its economic life ... Some international arrangement must be made whereby the riparian rights of the people dwelling south of the Litani River may be fully protected. Properly cared for these head waters can be made to serve in the development of the Lebanon as well as of Palestine. (Proposals dated 3 February 1919, Weizmann Letters 1968, appendix II)
Interestingly, Aaronsohn thought his ideas had been badly mangled in the Proposals, perhaps because he was not included in the final drafting. In an angry letter to Weizmann, he complained that the draft was "a disgrace and a calamity" (emphasis Aaronsohn's), and expressed shock that, for one of the delegates, "a 'watershed' is the same as a 'thalweg.' Incredible, but true" (unpublished fetter, 16 February 1919, Weizmann Archives).
In June 1919 Aaronsohn died in a plane crash (at the time deemed by the Zionists "mysterious") on his way to the Peace Conference and the Zionist proposals were submitted without revision. Nevertheless, the importance of the region's water resources remained embedded in the thinking of the Zionist establishment. "So far as the northern boundary is concerned," wrote Chaim Weizmann later that year, "the guiding consideration with us has been economic, and 'economic' in this connection means 'water supply"' (18 September 1919, Weizmann Letters, 1968).
His sympathy for the "stateless, dispossessed, and dispersed Palestinians" did not blind him to the ineptness of their leaders. He had met enough Arab and Palestinian politicians to know just how inadequate they were to the tragedy of their peoples and the tasks facing them. In all his writings, notably an influential 1996 New York Review essay entitled "Israel and the End of Zionism," he was distinctly evenhanded in acknowledging the errors of both sides. But the historic mistakes of the Palestinians had come primarily before 1948, whereas Israel was overwhelmingly responsible for the disastrous missteps that followed its great victory in 1967.
Zionism, as Amos came to realize, had outlived its usefulness.
the historic mistakes of the Palestinians had come primarily before 1948
In contrast to the attritional trench warfare on the major fronts of the First World War, the Arab Revolt in Arabia and Syria between 1916 and 1918 was an extreme form of asymmetrical warfare, in which small numbers of highly mobile and lightly equipped guerrillas waged war against the regular forces of the Ottoman Empire.
The effectiveness of the Arab insurgents in this conflict has been debated ever since. Pioneering archaeology in the deserts of Southern Jordan is now revealing an extensively militarised landscape that implies something more than ‘a sideshow of a sideshow’. The implication is that thousands of Ottoman troops were dispersed across the landscape and tied down in static defensive bases in a wide-ranging war without fronts against an invisible but all-pervasive enemy.
The Arab Revolt turns out to have been a prototype for ‘people’s war’ – with T. E. Lawrence its seminal theorist – that is, war of a kind that has since shaped much of the history of the 20th century, and which continues to shape that of the early 21st.
The term 'Palestine' is a widely-attested Western and Near Eastern conventional name for the region that includes contemporary Israel, the Israeli-occupied territories, part of Jordan, and some of both Lebanon and Syria. Its traditional area runs from Sidon on the coast, to Damascus inland, southwards to the Gulf of Aqaba, and then north-west to Raphia.(*)(*)
The Sinai Desert is usually considered a separate geographical zone to the south. 'Palestine' is first attested in extant literature in the 5th cent. BC, when it appears in the Histories of Herodotus (Hist. 2: 104, etc.) as Palaistinê. It seems to have its origins in the root form p-l-s-t , denoting the land of the Philistines, though it has generally in Western usage referred to a much wider region than coastal Philistia, including the area that is known in Biblical, Rabbinic and Samaritan literature as the Land of Israel (Eretz-Yisra'el) or ancient Canaan. The term 'Palestine' has over many centuries retained its relevance as an apolitical geographical term regardless of the nation-states and administrative entities that have existed in this region. (**) It has no political associations when used by the Palestine Exploration Fund.
Except in the west, where the country is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, the limit of this territory cannot be laid down on the map as a definite line. The modern subdivisions under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire are in no sense conterminous with those of antiquity, and hence do not afford a boundary by which Palestine can be separated exactly from the rest of Syria in the north, or from the Sinaitic and Arabian deserts in the south and east; nor are the records of ancient boundaries sufficiently full and definite to make possible the complete demarcation of the country. Even the convention above referred to is inexact: it includes the Philistine territory, claimed but never settled by the Hebrews, and excludes the outlying parts of the large area claimed in Num. xxxiv. as the Hebrew possession (from the " River of Egypt " to Hamath). However, the Hebrews themselves have preserved, in the proverbial expression " from Dan to Beersheba " (Judg. xx.i, &c.), an indication of the normal north-and-south limits of their land; and in defining the area of the country under discussion it is this indication which is generally followed.
(**)Taking as a guide the natural features most nearly corresponding to these outlying points, we may describe Palestine as the strip of land extending along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea from the mouth of the Litany or Kasimiya River (33° 20' N.) southward to the mouth of the Wadi Ghuzza; the latter joins the sea in 31° 28' N., a short distance south of Gaza, and runs thence in a south-easterly direction so as to include on its northern side the site of Beersheba. Eastward there is no such definite border. The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine; but it is practically impossible to say where the latter ends and the Arabian desert begins. Perhaps the line of the pilgrim road from Damascus to Mecca is the most convenient possible boundary. The total length of the region is about 140 m.; its breadth west of the Jordan ranges from about 23 m. in the north to about 80 m. in the south.
After the Jewish rebellions of the first and second centuries CE, the Romans merged the province of Iudaea with Galilee, Samaria and Idumaea, uniting the entire area in a new province bearing the Greco-Latin name Syria-Palaestina. The application of the Latinized name Palaestina to the region of the Iudaea Province by the Roman emperor Hadrian following the crushing Bar Kochba's revolt in 132-135 is seen by some historians as an attempt to suppress Jewish national feelings.
The Shepherd Hotel sits in Sheikh Jarrah, a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood that also contains foreign consulates, such as the British embassy, and Israeli government buildings.
Irving Moskowitz, a Miami-based millionaire who has supported numerous Jewish building projects in East Jerusalem, purchased the Shepherd Hotel in 1985. From 1987 to 2002, Moskowitz rented the building out to Israel’s border police until Israel granted him permission to construct a housing development.
Moskowitz’s goal is not to construct housing for its own sake, but rather to change the facts on the ground and ensure Israeli control of a neighborhood that is overwhelmingly Palestinian. The Palestinians understand Moskowitz’s intentions and voiced their protest to the United States. Their fear is that they will lose yet another East Jerusalem neighborhood to Israeli settlers.
Jewish Rights of Presence and Settlement in West Bank
...Is not the opposition to the “occupation” really an expression of Arab-Islamic opposition to a Jewish right of presence in the West Bank, with equality of the right to acquire land, construct homes, and reside and work in the area?
...[there exists] the Palestinians’ claim that Israeli settlement activity brought about in consequence of the occupation is contrary to International Law and therefore is illegal. The claim is rooted in Article 49(6) of Geneva IV:
”The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”
...[however] Israel and its Jewish population have a second and independent right of settlement in the West Bank directly linked to Turkey’s ceding of sovereignty over Palestine following WW I. Israel’s claim is grounded in the following international legally recognised instruments:
• San Remo Conference Resolutions, April 1920 in which the Allied Powers, after defeating the Central Powers in W.W.I, accepted Turkey’s relinquishing of sovereignty in respect of Syria, Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine. The Treaty of Sevres provides in Article 95:
“The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22 [of the League of Nations Covenant], the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November [2], 1917 by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, ...”
• Palestine Mandate, 1922.
The terms of the Palestine Mandate, implemented by the Palestine Order-in Council 1922, creates the substructure for the legal settlement of Jews in Palestine, on land lying to the west of the Jordan River. Article 6 declares:
“The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, … close settlement by Jews on the land, including State Lands and waste lands not required for public purposes”
Although Britain exercised its power under the Mandate contrary to its terms in respect of Jewish immigration and land acquisition (especially in its 1939 White Paper policy) and surrendered its responsibilities in 1948 to the United Nations which replaced the League of Nations, neither fact nullifies, ipso facto, the validity and continuing legal effect of the Palestine Mandate or any other Mandates by virtue of UN Charter, Article 80. This preserves the rights granted to peoples and states under Mandates, notwithstanding the establishment of the United Nations Trusteeship system.
Except as may be agreed upon in individual trusteeship agreements, made under Articles 77, 79, and 81, placing each territory under the trusteeship system, and until such agreements have been concluded, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.
They are evil enemies:
Hadassah Ein Karem 2009 is a modern version of Dr. Mengele:
Israel's contention has long been that since no Palestinian state existed before the 1967 war, there is no recognized border to withdraw to, because the pre-1967 border was merely an armistice line. Moreover, since Resolution 242 calls for a "just and lasting peace" that will allow "every state in the area [to] live in security," Israel holds that it must be allowed to change the armistice line, either bilaterally or unilaterally, to make it secure before it ends the occupation.
These are specious arguments for many reasons, but principally because UN General Assembly Partition Resolution 181 of 1947, which established the Jewish state's international legitimacy, also recognized the remaining Palestinian territory outside the Jewish state's borders as - at the very least - the equally legitimate patrimony of Palestine's Arab population, on which they were entitled to establish their own state, and it precisely mapped the borders of that territory. Resolution 181's affirmation of the right of Palestine's Arab population to national self-determination was based on normative law and the democratic principle that grants statehood to the majority population. (At the time, Arabs constituted two-thirds of the population in Palestine.) This right does not evaporate because of delays in implementation.
The final pillar of the council's Middle East staff is Henry Siegman, resident at the council for more than a decade. His official biography trumpets him as the "Foremost expert on the Middle East peace process and inter-religious relations, Arab-Israeli relations, and U.S.-Middle East policy."[20] Yet, like Kipper, Siegman possesses no specialist qualifications. He holds only a bachelor's degree from the New School for Social Research. Prior to joining the council, Siegman was executive director of the American Jewish Congress for sixteen years.
Criticism of Israel and the support it receives from the American Jewish community[21] is a frequent theme of Siegman's writing. His perspective of the Arab-Israeli conflict is not based on fieldwork or practitioner experience but rather upon reference to his own background as a refugee from Nazism, which, he says, sensitized him to the tribulations of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.[22]
Siegman argues that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict,[23] a conclusion that discounts both pre-1967 hostilities and attempts by rejectionist states like Iran and Syria to undermine Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. It also ignores statements by Yasir Arafat that the Oslo agreement was merely a part of the Palestine Liberation Organization's "phased strategy [for] the complete liberation of Palestine."[24]
...QUESTION: Do – Israel apparently rejected a new demand from the U.S. to stop a settlement project in East Jerusalem. Can you confirm that? Can you confirm that U.S. tried to stop this project and that it was rejected?
MR. CROWLEY: Well, I think there have been – this is not a new issue. There have been issues revolving construction in East Jerusalem have come up a number of times. I believe they came up when some of you might have been with the Secretary in the region back in February. We have made our views to – known to Israel. Our views are not new either, that this kind of construction is the type of thing that should be – is the type of issue that should be subject to permanent status negotiations, and that we are concerned that unilateral actions taken by the Israelis or the Palestinians cannot prejudge the outcome of these negotiations. That’s one of the reasons why we’re working hard through George Mitchell and others to create conditions so that you can have a resumption of negotiations that would lead the parties to address these final status issues. George Mitchell will be traveling to the region later this week. His itinerary is still not completely set, but he will be traveling to talk to Israeli officials, Palestinian officials, others in the region. I think he’s got a speech scheduled in Bahrain later this week, where I think he’ll have the opportunity to express once again our gratitude to Sheikh Salman for his message last week.
QUESTION: Can you confirm – excuse me --
QUESTION: Has he had any conversations with Ambassador Pickering about this meeting last week with Hamas leaders?
MR. CROWLEY: I think Ambassador Pickering is a private citizen. I’m not aware that we’ve had – we had any contact with him before or after that meeting.
QUESTION: Can we go back to settlements? Can you confirm that the Israel ambassador in Washington was summoned to the State Department on Friday?
MR. CROWLEY: We’ve had conversations with the Israeli ambassador recently on this and other subjects.
QUESTION: Well, can you clarify when that meeting actually was?
MR. CROWLEY: Last week sometime, I think.
QUESTION: Last week; not over the weekend?
MR. CROWLEY: No.
QUESTION: Friday --
MR. CROWLEY: Not to my knowledge.
QUESTION: And he met with who?
MR. CROWLEY: He met with a number of high-level officials, not the Secretary.
QUESTION: Deputy?
MR. CROWLEY: A number of high-level officials.
The Significance of 20 Units
- 07.20.2009 - 5:23 PMAfter refusing 21 times to stand by the U.S. commitment in the 2004 letter to Israel; after reneging on six years of understandings about the meaning of a “settlement freeze”; after responding to complaints that public disputes with Israel are not conducive to peace by saying that distance from Israel is necessary; and after saying Israel needs some “serious self-reflection” because there has supposedly been “no progress” in eight years, Barack Obama chose last week — in the midst of negotiations about re-defining Israel’s freeze obligation — to enter into still another dispute with Israel: this time by defining half of Jerusalem as a “settlement” in which not even 20 new housing units can be built.
To appreciate the audacity (a better word is probably chutzpah) of Obama’s latest hope, it is necessary to recognize several points:
First, it has been U.S. policy since 1995, when Congress enacted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, that Jerusalem should be “recognized as the capital” of Israel and “remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected.”
Second, in his address to a joint session of Congress in 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his views on Jerusalem in terms virtually identical to those he used yesterday...
Third, the status of Jerusalem is expressly an issue to be addressed in final status negotiations under the Roadmap. It is not an issue for pre-negotiation concessions by Israel in order to get the Palestinians to enter into final status negotiations once again.
Fourth, the fact that Jerusalem is to be the subject of final status negotiations is commonly — and erroneously — assumed to mean Jerusalem is to be divided based on such negotiations. But that is the opposite of what making Jerusalem a “negotiable” issue was intended to mean. UN Resolutions 242 and 338 — the express basis of final status negotiations under the Roadmap — call for Israeli withdrawal from an unspecified portion of “territories” in exchange for recognized borders that are “secure” (which no one at the time thought meant the 1967 boundaries, with or without “minor adjustments”).
Neither Resolution 242 nor 338 mentions Jerusalem, and the omission was intentional. On March 12, 1980, Arthur J. Goldberg, who was U.S. ambassador to the UN when Resolution 242 was adopted, wrote a letter to the New York Times to “set the record straight”:
Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate. . . . In a number of speeches at the UN in 1967, I repeatedly stated that the armistice lines fixed after 1948 were intended to be temporary. This, of course, was particularly true of Jerusalem. . . . I made it clear that the status of Jerusalem should be negotiable and that the armistice lines dividing Jerusalem were no longer viable. In other words, Jerusalem was not to be divided again. [Emphasis added]
Barack Obama once supported an undivided Jerusalem. In his June 2008 speech to AIPAC, he said, “Let me be clear . . . [Jerusalem] must remain undivided” — a position he had taken in writing at least twice before. But he retracted that statement a day later and gave a series of increasingly disingenuous explanations for his retraction.
Now he wants all building within the eastern half of Israel’s capital stopped — at least all Jewish building — so he can get the Palestinians to agree to resume final status negotiations, where they will once again demand Jerusalem be divided, this time with implicit U.S. backing from a construction freeze imposed by Obama (or perhaps explicit backing from a U.S. peace plan the administration still appears to be preparing).
In a perceptive article, Elliott Abrams [below for your convenience] has explained why the Obama “settlement mania” has now created a problem not only for Israel but also for the Abba/Fayyad Palestinian Authority as well. The stakes over the dispute regarding 20 housing units are pretty large.
An Unworkable Compromise
The Palestinians lose on a ‘settlement freeze’ too.
By Elliott Abrams
Everyone knows that the Obama administration’s demands for a settlement freeze are a huge problem for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition in Jerusalem. But they are also a great problem for the Abbas/Fayyad government of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.
Why? Because the United States is now seeking some form of compromise, while the Palestinians are seeking a true, unalloyed, immediate, total freeze.
Having failed to bully Netanyahu into a total freeze, U.S. negotiator George Mitchell is said to be asking for a moratorium that would allow completion of all projects already underway...
...Why Netanyahu and his government loathe this entire Obama project is clear. Morally, it accepts the argument that Israelis have no right to live in the West Bank (or even some parts of Jerusalem). Politically, agreeing to any sort of “freeze” threatens the governing coalition.
...but look at what the Obama administration has done to its friends in Ramallah as well. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and his negotiator Saeb Erekat are on record demanding a total freeze — including in Jerusalem, without a time limit, all over the West Bank, every settlement, all sorts of buildings. No exceptions...Where do they stand when the United States government announces its deal...“There are no middle-ground solutions for the settlement issue: Either settlement activity stops or it doesn’t stop,” Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio last week....
...settlement construction continues as well, but the Palestinian leaders aren’t stupid; they know it’s a made-up issue. They know that life in the West Bank is getting better, the economy is improving, the Israelis are removing roadblocks and obstacles to movement — and they know that settlement construction provides badly needed employment for Palestinian construction workers. So, Mitchell’s failure would be sheer heaven for them, while a compromise — well, Erekat said it. Bad news.
...So, this Obama settlement mania will end up damaging not only Netanyahu but Abbas as well. What a triumph of American diplomacy.
Obama Hits Out At Wall Street Banks
On domestic policy, Obama’s overriding concern has been to defend the wealth of the most powerful sections of the corporate and financial elite. Through cash injections, subsidies and loan programs, trillions have been handed out to the banks and financial institutions, with no strings attached. The administration has opposed any real constraints on executive pay or bonuses.
Utilizing the government handouts, the largest banks reported massive profits in the second quarter of 2009, including $3.44 billion for Goldman Sachs and $2.7 billion for JPMorgan Chase. The banks plan on handing out record bonuses this year to their executives and traders.
The very institutions that precipitated the economic crisis through their speculation and looting operations are doing better than ever. This is not an accident. It is the intended outcome of the policy carried out by the Obama administration.
It is always darkest just before the Day dawneth.
...water resources are being diverted from Palestinian towns into settlements and that this theft can only increase as consumption within the settlements increases. On average, one settler uses five times as much water as one Palestinian in the West Bank. As settlers pour copious quantities of water on their emerald lawns, nearby Palestinian families often encounter dry faucets, forcing them to purchase water -- water that is sometimes delivered in unsanitary containers, causing illness...In addition to this diversion of water, the settlers are polluting Palestinian agricultural lands by dumping garbage and industrial waste...
Does the WaPo print any lie that besmirches Israel? Carole Burnett repeats the canard of Israelis using five times more water than Palestinians. A study, "Water for the Future," by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences along with their Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli counterparts ten years ago, found little difference between water consumption in Israeli and Palestinian urban areas. “Per capita water use for urban Palestinians reaches a maximum of 100 cubic meters a year, similar to Israeli use.” The study suggests that low figures for rural Palestinians “is likely to increase with improvement in the level of living.” More telling, however, is the report’s finding that “water losses unaccounted for [theft of leaks] in the [Palestinian] distribution network” reach 55 percent[!]
Lastly, all modern, developed 21st century societies use much more water than developing societies. “The United States and Canada are the highest per capita water users in the world,” according to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, “…per person usage is more than 2.5 times that in Asia or Europe, and over six times that in Africa.” Cross the border into Mexico and per capita water usage drops by two-thirds.
7/21/2009 12:39:16 AM
b)
Looking in:
b)
Where'd the bus stop go?
One tree for shade
Senator Bob Corker returned on Monday from a weekend trip to Israel...Senator Corker also made a brief trip into Gaza, and while there, saw the tunnels at the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt where supplies and goods are being trafficked.
Senator Corker said, “In my meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, I expressed my strong support for the long term relationship and many mutual interests shared between the United States and Israel and my hope that peace discussions between him, George Mitchell and Palestinian leaders are productive. We know that the issues are complex, particularly the domestic political currents Prime Minister Netanyahu must navigate in reaching a conclusion that Israelis and the international community can accept and simultaneously appropriately dealing with Israel’s security needs.
...Since Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization, seized control from the Palestinian Authority in Gaza two years ago, Israel has limited cross border traffic into Gaza to humanitarian assistance and some other essential goods. Hamas has subsequently permitted the construction of hundreds of new smuggling tunnels for the trafficking of materials from Egypt into Gaza.
After being in Gaza on a visit coordinated by the United Nations, where several of the meetings focused on the smuggling activity, Senator Corker drove unannounced to the city of Rafah to see the tunnels firsthand.
“The unrestricted flow of goods across the Egyptian border, which common sense says must include weapons and other illicit activity, is stunning,” Senator Corker said. “One of the many problems this leads to is that Hamas takes a tariff from all the goods that are smuggled across the border through hundreds of these tunnels, which enriches this terrorist organization financially in the short term. There has to be a better way of managing the need for humanitarian assistance and, at the same time, assessing sanctions.”
This one warns of an evil Zionist axis of Hadassah-Social Service-Zionist Police and that every family could suffer the same fate:
The 1950s affair of kidnapped Yeminite children is recalled in a "new edition":
The 5769 Blood Libel:
Scandal!
Firefighters were struggling on Monday afternoon to extinguish a blaze in an olive grove in the Palestinian village of Kafr Burin, near the settlement of Yitzhar in the West Bank. Security forces suspect extreme right-wing activists set fire to the trees in retaliation for the evacuation of illegal structures in several West Bank outposts earlier Monday.
Beliak helped launch the Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens & Jerusalem to stop the flow of money from the bingo hall to the settlements. Its investigations of tax records show that the Moskowitz Foundation's donations include grants to Beit Hadassah, a militant Jewish settlement in the heart of the West Bank city of Hebron.
...Beliak is particularly angered that the fundraising takes place without interference from the American authorities. In contrast, he says, Muslim charities which raise money to help Palestinians have been targeted for investigation, shut down and some of their administrators jailed because providing welfare to Gaza indirectly helps Hamas.
"After 2001 there was a whole discourse about how supposedly Muslims [in America] used these charitable donations to support violence.
"There was never ever in the US anything substantially that made that case. But here they did have a case where somebody was using money to support settlers, money that fosters extremism and violence, and they completely ignored it," said Beliak.
