Olmert: No Words Needed

Of course, if you want to add a caption, go right ahead.

(Source: Yedioth Ahronot's front page today)

This is the Latest Peace Index

From the December 2006 Peace Index published monthly by the Tel Aviv University's Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof. Tamar Hermann

The education minister’s decision to have the Green Line marked on maps in schoolbooks, and the controversy it sparked, led us to reexplore this month the Israeli Jewish public’s views on the future of the settlements and relations with the Palestinians.

In keeping with the Education Committee of the Knesset, and unlike the minister’s position, the rate of those preferring that the Green Line not be marked on the maps is higher than the rate of those who agree with her. Likewise, even though a considerable majority of the Jewish public realizes that it is impossible to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians without evacuating most of the Jewish settlements in the territories, only a minority supports such an evacuation and an
even smaller minority thinks the Palestinians would sign a peace treaty in return.

At the same time, opinions are divided on the government’s recent decision to expand some settlements in the territories so that they can absorb evacuees from the Gaza Strip. That is, at least some of the opponents of an evacuation oppose a further expansion of settlements, apparently out of worry of aggravating relations with the Palestinians. In other aspects of relations with the Palestinians, too, there is a certain ambivalence in the public’s positions, resembling or perhaps influenced by the government’s policy on the issue.

Despite the prevailing assessments that most of the Palestinians would destroy the state of Israel if they could and that the recent decline in terror attacks was caused first and foremost by preventive Israeli actions and not by Palestinian measures, we found sweeping support in the Jewish public for holding contacts like the recent meeting between Olmert and Abu Mazen.

Those are the main findings of the Peace Index survey for December 2006 that was carried out on 1- 2 January 2007. Exactly half the public opposes the education minister’s decision to start marking the Green Line on schoolbook maps while 38% support it (the rest have no clear opinion on the matter). As expected, the support runs very high among Meretz voters— 78%, and Labor voters— 69%. Kadima voters are divided on the question. Among voters for the rest of the parties, opponents have a clear majority.

We checked, therefore, current views about the territories beyond the Green Line. It turns out that a clear majority of 59.5% think or are sure that it is now impossible to reach peace with the Palestinians without evacuating a majority of the Jewish settlements in the territories; 16% are not sure or have no opinion on the issue; and only about one- quarter think or are sure that peace can be reached even without dismantling most of the settlements. Nevertheless, 53% oppose evacuating most of the Jewish settlements in the territories for a full peace agreement and only 34% favor it (the rest have no clear opinion or no opinion on the subject). This opposition could be rooted in the widespread view— 68%— that even dismantling most of the settlements would not suffice for the Palestinians to sign a full peace agreement with Israel.

A cross- section of the two questions— readiness for a mass evacuation and assessment of the chances that the Palestinians would be satisfied— shows that both among supporters and opponents of an evacuation, a majority thinks it would not be enough to bring the Palestinians to sign a full peace agreement with Israel. As expected, this majority is slightly smaller among the supporters of an evacuation.

Despite the reservations about an evacuation, a majority of the public does not back the government’s decision to expand certain settlements so that they can absorb evacuees from the Gaza Strip. On this question the opinions are split with, in fact, a slight advantage for the opponents: 41% favor an expansion and 45% oppose it, apparently out of concern about aggravating relations with the Palestinians. A segmentation of the responses by voting for the Knesset shows a clear distinction between Left and Right. Eighty- nine percent of Meretz voters and 84% of Labor voters oppose an expansion. A majority— 56%— of Kadima voters are against it while 36% support it. In all the other parties, a majority of voters favor it.

Me in the Background

For all those keeping track of me, here's a recent photo - yes, that's me in the background - taken at the ceremony welcoming the 250,000 visitor to the Menachem Begin center this past Wednesday.

Crazy Jews Those NKers

New anti-Neturei Karta site.

(Kippah tip: RH)

I Wasn't Invited

JN sent me this:-

Reunion of participants in Madrid peace conference to take place this week

A reunion of participants from all sides who participated in the Madrid peace conference in 1991 is to be held in Madrid this week. The Madrid conference was a crucial moment in the launching of the peace process in the Middle East. It represented the first occasion in which Israeli representatives took part in direct talks with representatives from all its immediate Arab neighbours. The Palestinians at that time were represented as part of the Jordanian delegation.

The three-day reunion gathering is titled 'Madrid +15: Madrid 15 Years Later,' and is intended to help foster an international climate conducive to the revival of the currently stalled Middle East peace process. It is a civil initiative, being organised by the Toledo International Peace Centre, Search for Common Ground and the Fundacion Tres Culturas del Mediterraneo. The conference will be attended by an 11-person Israeli delegation, including former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and former military intelligence chief Uri Saguy. An eight-person Palestinian delegation, headed by Fatah senior leader Mohammed Dahlan, will also be in attendance, along with delegations from European countries, the US, Russia, the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.

Why was it sent?

Because JN, and BPO and some 15 others flew out to be there as what I call the "Unofficial Yesha Delegation".

You see, we didn't trust Shamir - and even Bibi - and we knew that this was a crucial event so we managed to get some donations and flew out. In addition, Yoram Hazoni was there, upstairs in Bibi's room producing independet Hasbara material; Yisrael Harel and Uri Elitzur and Shifra Blass and Shlomo Wach; Marc Zell and Yehiel Leiter; eventually Meir Indor showed up with bereaved parents. We had Yisrael from Maaleh Adumin and a girl from Barcelona who lives in Maaleh Adumin which helped out with the local lingo.

For almost a whole week we ate basically bananas and apples I bought in the street with my New York-Puerto Rican Spanish (although twice I went to the Community Center to eat an expensive Kosher meal and there wa salso a reception) and drank coffee. On Thursday night (I and JN and BPO arrived on the Sunday), we broke upon coldcuts Shifra brought.

Then eight of us stayed for the Shabbat (Uri hopped a ride back on Shamir's plane late on the Friday and some of the others went on the NY) and ended up at the home of people, the Smiths, who knew my sister in New Rochelle (small world; I've met them several more times on visits to my sister).

You don't believe me?

Here's a picture I once posted.

I guess we aren't invited this time.

Chutzpah

Dennis Ross criticized Jimmy Carter's book and two persons saw fit to attack him.

If you'll notice, they reach sublime heights of chutzpah, attempting to contradict facts and events that Ross was present at their happening and was a first-person witness, and yet the "paper of record" thinks that they know more about what happended than the person who was there.

To the Editor:

Re “Don’t Play With Maps” (Op-Ed, Jan. 9):

Dennis Ross rightly lambastes the mythologizing that has persistently impaired the Middle East peace process. But the idea that the Palestinians have refused to “accept and adjust to reality” is itself a myth.

Yasir Arafat’s rejection of the Clinton peace plan was utterly pragmatic. He rejected it because he knew that his people would see the “Palestine” proposed by the plan — overcrowded, geographically fractured, occupied by foreign troops — for what it was: a “Let’s Play Sovereignty” pseudo-state.

The real myth here is the notion that such a farcical imitation of a sovereign nation would have been fair or acceptable to the Palestinian people.

Saladin Ahmed
Brooklyn, Jan. 9, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Dennis Ross says he wants to “set the record straight” in his criticism of the use of maps in Jimmy Carter’s book “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid,” arguing that nothing has done more to set back the cause of peace than the perpetuation of “mythologies” on both sides.

Yet Mr. Ross himself perpetuates a mythology in his article through the repeated claim that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, “rejected” the parameters offered by President Bill Clinton in December 2000.

In fact, as was widely reported at the time and repeated in two of the most authoritative histories of that period, Charles Enderlin’s “Shattered Dreams” and Clayton E. Swisher’s “Truth About Camp David,” both the Israelis and the Palestinians expressed reservations about Mr. Clinton’s parameters, but both sides accepted them as the basis for further talks.

Indeed, a White House spokesman, Jake Siewert, told the media in a news conference on Jan. 3, 2001, “Both sides have now accepted the president’s ideas with some reservations, and that represents a step forward.”

Mr. Ross tells us that “for peacemaking to work, it must proceed on the basis of fact, not fiction.” He should follow his own advice.

Roane Carey
New York, Jan. 9, 2007
The writer, a senior editor at The Nation, edited two books about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Amzaing, isn't it?

Pal. Fragmentation Reasons (Shhhh, the Jews)

Hand on heart, who is responsible for the disintegration of Pal. society?

Could it be natural inclination to violence?
Could it be Islamic propensity for violence?
Could it be Fatah embezzlement?
Could it be Hamas desire for complete hegemony?

Nah. Read on.

From Stephen Pollard's blog:-

A BBC mole has sent me this briefing for BBC staff from the BBC's Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, on what lies ahead this year.

It's all too predictable. The "fragmentation" of Palestinian society has, in Mr Bowen's view, nothing to do with the Palestinians and everything to do with Israel ("the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriation and settlement building" and "the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas led government"). Indeed, Israel is to blame for almost everything. The Palestinians are not responsible for anything; Israel is the culpable party.

He has contempt for every Israeli politician he mentions; Ehud Barak, for instance, is described as having killed "various Palestinians", written as if he did so for the sake of it.

If this is what passes for high-level analysis at the BBC, is it any wonder its reporting is so poisonous?

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeremy Bowen
To: Editorial Board; Newsg World-Bureaux-Eds; Newsg World Asseds; News Leadership Group; Mark Byford & PA; Simon Wilson-NEWS; Jerusalem Bureau;
Newsg World-Affairs-Unit
Sent: Fri Jan 05 15:16:16 2007
Subject: FW: Mini briefing on the Israeli and Palestinians

2007 has started as unpromisingly as 2006 ended. The outlook is bleak because of fundamental instabilities and weaknesses on both sides.

Israel's major military incursion into Ramallah on Thursday, killing four Palestinians after a botched arrest operation, was a reminder of the non stop pressures of the Israeli occupation.

What is new in the last year, and will be one of the big stories in the coming twelve months, is the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting.

The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriation and settlement building – and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas led government which are destroying Palestinian institutions that were anyway flawed and fragile.

The result is that internecine violence between Hamas and Fatah is getting worse. On Thursday six people were killed in clashes between them in Gaza. The death of a major figure on either side would spark something much more serious.

In Israel the political turmoil that followed the inconclusive war with Hezbollah last summer continues unabated.

There are signs that PM Ehud Olmert is trying to set up his coalition partner Amir Peretz as a scapegoat for Israel's problems during the war and since, by ousting him from the defence ministry. Olmert may be hoping he'll get away with it because Peretz's position as Labour leader is already under attack from within his own party. Peretz's people say that if Olmert tries it, the government will fall.

Even if does manage to demote Peretz, he probably won't improve his parlous position in the polls. It is exactly a year since Ariel Sharon's stroke, so Israelis are comparing their lost leader with the one they have now, and finding him wanting. An air of incompetence hangs around Olmert when it comes to military matters. Typical was the timing of the raid in Ramallah, which ruined yesterday's summit with Mubarak which was supposed to bring closer the release of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Olmert wants to replace Peretz at the defence ministry with Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister. Barak is a retired general, former head of the Israeli army and its most decorated soldier. (Among his many exploits was disguising himself as a woman during a raid in Beirut to kill various Palestinians). The feeling in Israel is that 2007 will be a year of wars, so aside from coalition politics Olmert wants to have a warrior next to him when they make the tough decisions. The intray could include whether or not to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

Another serious problem for Olmert is that yet another corruption scandal is lapping close to him. This time the head of the PM's office in Jerusalem is under house arrest for her alleged role in corruption in Israel's tax authority. Olmert is not yet implicated, though he's already been under investigation over separate allegations.

The political crises in Israel - and violent political disintegration among the Palestinians - are not just internal matters. They make it impossible for the Israelis and the Palestinians to engage in a meaningful political dialogue, assuming that their protestations that they want one are true. (The one meeting that Olmert has had with Mahmoud Abbas can hardly be called a process.)

Only strong Israeli and Palestinian leaders would be able to make the tough choices necessary to relieve the serious pressures that are building up in the holy land. To persuade their people to make the necessary concessions, they would need a strong political base, which neither Olmert nor Abbas possess.

Because they are weak - many would say lame ducks - don't expect any progress. And since an uneasy status quo cannot hold, no political progress will equal more violence.

UPDATE: One of the commenters points out that, as the subject line starts 'FW:', Mr Bowen might not have written this. That's a good point, but I have seen the original and the subject line on my version has been altered to protect the identity of the source. (Nothing else has been changed.) It is indeed written by Jeremy Bowen.

(Kippah tip: Melanie Phillips)

Too Early to Brag, Dick

Did he speak too soon?

U.S. ambassador to Israel: U.S. reduced W. Bank settlements

Despite its support for Israel, the United States opposes expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and has succeeded in reducing it, the U.S. ambassador to Israel told The Associated Press.

In an interview on Tuesday, Ambassador Richard Jones said that while Israel approves construction of some new settlement housing each year, Washington insists that Israel honor a pledge to freeze settlement activity made under the U.S.-backed 'road map' peace plan in 2003.

"I think that we have definitely slowed efforts at settlement-building," Jones said. "It's certainly true that some units are approved every year, a couple of hundred here or there, but I think the U.S.-Israeli understanding has definitely slowed down the process of settlements. We continue to make our views known through public statements and private discussions."

Er...

Settlements population rises 6%

Published: Wednesday, 10 January, 2007, 11:29 AM Doha Time

JERUSALEM: The Jewish settler population in the occupied West Bank grew by nearly 6% in 2006, more than quadruple the rate of increase a year earlier, Israeli government figures showed yesterday.

The interior ministry statistics did not indicate how many of the new arrivals were children born in the 126 settlements Israel has built in the West Bank on land Palestinians want for a state, or Israelis moving to the territory.

According to the ministry, there were 268,379 Israelis living in the West Bank at the end of 2006, compared with 253,748 in 2005, a 5.8% increase.

The settler population grew by 1.4% in 2005. The figures did not include Israelis living in Arab East Jerusalem.

Israel has continued building in settlements in violation of a US-backed peace road map that contains a call for a freeze in settlement construction.

Condi, wasn't that a robust growth?

The Youth Bulge Principle

Christopher Caldwell of the Financial Times presents an amazing theory in

Youth and War, A Deadly Duo

Excerpts:-

Gangland slayings in the Palestinian territories this week have pitted the Islamist gunmen of Hamas against the secular forces of Fatah. The killings defy civilised norms: in December even children were targeted for murder. But the killings also defy political common sense. Ariel Sharon's wall cuts terrorists off from Israeli targets and what happens? The violence - previously justified with the cause of a Palestinian homeland - continues as if nothing had changed, merely finding its outlet in a new set of targets. This makes it appear that Palestinian violence has never really been about a "cause" at all. The violence is, in a strange way, about itself.

Gunnar Heinsohn, a social scientist and genocide researcher at the University of Bremen, has an explanation for why this might be so. Since its publication in 2003, his eccentric and eye-opening Sons and World Power (Söhne und Weltmacht, not available in English) has become something of a cult book. In Mr Heinsohn's view, when 15 to 29-year-olds make up more than 30 per cent of the population, violence tends to happen; when large percentages are under 15, violence is often imminent. The "causes" in the name of which that violence is committed can be immaterial. There are 67 countries in the world with such "youth bulges" now and 60 of them are undergoing some kind of civil war or mass killing.

...Since 1967, the population of the West Bank and Gaza has grown from 450,000 to 3.3m, 47 per cent of which is under 15. If Mr. Heinsohn is right, then Palestinian violence of recent months and years is not explained by Israeli occupation (which, after all, existed 30 years ago) or poverty (the most violent parts of the Muslim world are not the poorest) or humiliation. It is just violence.

Mr Heinsohn's view, reflects an inability to wage war, not a disinclination.

Mr Heinsohn's theory accounts for the way "idealistic" wars of national liberation can shift imperceptibly into "pointless" civil wars - as in Ireland 90 years ago or in Africa after decolonisation or in Latin America in the 1980s or in Palestine in recent months...

In an interview with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung last autumn, Mr Heinsohn noted that if Germany had had the same kind of population growth as Gaza (9 children per woman) over recent decades, it would now have 550m people and 80m young men aged 15 to 30. "Do you think these 80m young Germans would be 10 times as pacifist as the 7m we have today?" he asked. "Or is it not much more likely that they would be throwing bombs in Prague and Gdansk and Wroclaw and - just like the Palestinians - saying: 'This is our land, and it was taken from us for historical reasons that we had nothing to do with'?"

Nice theory but, still, I have this premonition that Arab/Islamist animosity to Jews/Zionism will not fade once the demographic wave passes.

(Kippah tip: KC)

Mort Klein Takes On Israel on Campus Coalition

Zionist Vs. Zionist

Controversy breaks out within the Israel on Campus Coalition.

A national pro-Israel campus group took a risk when several of its chapters brought former Israeli soldiers to their campuses to expose their country's military practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Now, it might be paying the price.

The Union of Progressive Zionists, some of whose chapters and affiliates brought the "Breaking the Silence" tour to places like the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Maryland, is a part of the Israel on Campus Coalition. This December, the 30,000-member Zionist Organization of America (an ICC member) sent a letter to the ICC demanding that the UPZ be removed from the coalition because of this tour. Other ICC members include the fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). UPZ is an affiliate member.

The speaking tour, which was covered in the mainstream media, featured former Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied Palestinian territories. The project has also interviewed former combat soldiers and has drafted testimonials of what goes on in the occupied territories. During the tour, participants also showed photos of what they considered excessive force and unethical military behavior.

This is a big problem for Morton Klein, the president of the ZOA. In reference to "Breaking the Silence," Klein maintains that when Israeli soldiers talk about the brutal things their military does to innocent Palestinians, they are only reporting isolated incidents and are painting an inaccurate, unfair picture. "Israel has the most humane army on earth," he says.

Media Power Quotation

It is a terrible thing for an academic to have to admit, but journalists do a much better job of educating the public than we do. True, academics have the ideas, but journalists decide which ones the public gets to know about.

Jonathan Wolff
January 2, 2007
The Guardian

A New Historical Theory

In An unholy mess, Mary Beard reviews ROME AND JERUSALEM: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations, a new book by Martin Goodman. What's it all about?

The Romans quashed the revolt of the Jews, between 66 and 70 CE, with a brutality that was dreadful even by the usually low standards of ancient warfare. Under the future emperor Titus, the city of Jerusalem was besieged and ruthlessly starved into submission...Once the city fell, the Temple was burned to the ground, never to be rebuilt...

A key theme in Martin Goodman’s wide-ranging and impressive new book, Rome and Jerusalem, is the background to this revolt and its terrible suppression. It is an instructive story. Goodman shows that there had been no consistent animosity between Romans and Jews before the 60s CE...On their side, the Romans mostly found the Jews puzzling and weird rather than dangerous. According to one Jewish writer who came on a delegation to the Roman imperial court, the idea that the Jews would not eat pork prompted peals of laughter rather than disgust.

Goodman carefully explains that the revolt was the consequence of systemic deficiencies in the Roman government...the problem was the calibre of the governors on the ground...

Most significant of all perhaps, this stand-off between Romans and Jews had its effect on the small but ambitious Jewish sect of Christians, who wanted to establish their own foothold in the Roman world. Increasingly they took pains “not only to deny their own Jewishness but to attack Judaism altogether”. And so it is that in a bold final chapter Goodman wonders whether the origins of anti-Semitism are to be found in the events of 66-70 and their aftermath.

An Opinion

Who said and when?

The real problem is the incapacity of the Arab to make use of his land. It is increased by an ancestral preference for the desert leading to destroying trees on Arab land as well as anyone's else's. The country 1300 years ago (before the Arab era) was closely inhabited....for 1300 years the land has been desolate. Is that a title to have the right to keep it so?...Cooperation with the Jew and learning from him, will save more to the Arab than any other policy.

Sir William Matthews Flinders Petrie,
The Palestine Post
1936

as recorded by Abraham Rabinovitch, Jerusalem Post Magazine, June 8, 1990, p. 19

Info:

In 1890, Petrie made the first of his many forays into Palestine, leading to much important archaeological work. His six-week excavation of Tell el-Hesi (which was mistakenly identified as Lachish) that year represents the first scientific excavation of an archaeological site in the Holy Land.

At another point in the late nineteenth-century (year needed), Petrie surveyed a group of tombs in the Wadi al-Rababah (the biblical Hinnom) of Jerusalem, largely dating to the Iron Age and early Roman periods. Here, in these ancient monuments, Petrie discovered two different metrical systems.

Petrie was knighted in 1923 for services to British archaeology and Egyptology. In 1926, the focus of Petrie’s work shifted permanently to Palestine. He began excavating several important sites in the southwestern region of Palestine, including Tell el-Jemmeh and Tell el-Ajjul. In 1933, on retiring from his professorship, he moved permanently to Jerusalem, where he lived with Lady Petrie at the British School of Archaeology, then temporarily headquartered at the American School of Oriental Research (today called the Albright Institute).

Upon his death in Jerusalem in 1942, influenced by his interest in eugenics, Petrie donated his head to science, specifically the Royal College of Surgeons of London, so that it could be studied for its high intellectual capacity. It was duly severed and the body, minus its head, was interred separately in the Protestant Cemetery on Mt. Zion. However, due to the wartime conditions in the area (then still under threat from Rommel's advance in the North African campaign until the Second Battle of El Alamein later that year), his head was delayed in transit from Jerusalem to London, and was eventually lost.

Tilley vs. Medad - Round 3

Round 1.

Round 2.

Round 3:-

Tilley

I believe you are the writer who mentioned the "revenants" idea, to whom an LRB reader responded with the wonderful comment agreeing with your sentiments and proposing returning to the British Isles after a millennium to reclaim his ancestral land.(*) I have nothing to add to that wonderful letter -- it was spot on. Except that your implicit equation of Jews and Zionism is, as you well know, entirely false. Many Jews are horrified by what Israel is doing and consider the entire project of creating a Jewish state a disaster for Jews. And not just the Neturei Karta, either -- secular folks, including the "not in my name" Jewish movements all around the world. I know you probably consider these Jews "self-hating" but they consider you simply nuts.

Medad

Yes, I'm the "revenant" man.

And yes, the correspondent who mentioned the British parallel was a bit too clever for his own good. You see for almost all the years of being exiled Jews had consistently attempted and mostly succeeded in returning to the Land of Israel under terrible conditions including difficult travel conditions, oppressive foreign rule, physical and economic conditions in the country. Under Roman, Persian, Byzantine, Muslim, Crusader, Berber, Mameluke, Turkish and then British rule, Jews returned, established homes and developed meager livelihoods. They never broke the link. That's the difference that cynical people miss.

And that's why your reference to the "non-existing equation of Jews and Zionism" is not a matter of self-hating Jews but of ignorant Jews or those who simply don't want anything to do with the national ethos of the Jewish character.

I don't think I'm nuts, if you want to stoop to that sort of name-calling but rather one who reviews, analyzes history and seeks to comprehend just what the role of the Jewish people is in the march of civilization. If you seek to travel a parallel road, that's your private decision. But please, don't blame me for drawing your attention to your own errors of judgment.

(*) To be fair, here's that letter:-

May 27, 2004
Revenant and Illusion

The current issue of the London Review of Books includes a letter concerning the Middle East that is worth considering:

Yisrael Medad asks that we call the Jewish settlers in the West Bank revenants, as befits 'persons who have returned after a long hiatus to their ancestral homes' (Letters, 6 May). I know just how he feels. My family lost everything in the North of England in 1070, when William the Conqueror ethnically cleansed the landowners, and it's been annoying us ever since. If Medad would meet me next Thursday in Barnard Castle, with a few hundred of his armed friends, we could finally see justice done. It's tough perhaps to the non-revenants, who've been there for only 934 years, but we won't charge them back rent and there are plenty of people who speak their language next door. I'm sure they'll adjust and find other places to live, among their own kind.

Nicholas Blanton
Shepherdstown, West Virginia

Tilley Has Responded - As Have I

Dear Mr. Medad:

These deaths you cite of little Yehudah and Shalva are extremely sad and part of the miserable tragedy that is Israeli settlement policy in occupied land. And of course, Yehudah and Shalva are not alone. But of what, precisely, are they the victims?

Of course the violence is two-sided, but that does not signify that it is the same. The massacre of "innocent" white settler families in North America by angry Native American death squads was also a tragedy. No one excuses the Sioux or Comanche or Apache men who ran a hatchet through a little child's head, disemboweled her mother, and crucified her father next to their prairie log home, whatever their own frustrations, anger, and grief over the deaths by mutilation and/or starvation of their own families and clans. But the larger picture matters. Who is invading and displacing whom? Whose society is being decimated, who are being impoverished and humiliated, whose youth is being deprived of any future? What side is losing dozens, and what size is losing thousands? What is invasion and what is resistance to invasion? Most of all, what is necessary to make this violence stop?

You are fully aware that the vast majority of West Bank settlers live in major urban centres like Ma'ale Adumim and Gilo and Gush Etzion and now Har Homa. They do not even consider these settlements to be "settlements" -- they call them "neighborhoods". They do not even see the army, except as comforting checkpoints, that operates so freely beyond the comforting wall. They do not stand in the endless lines trying to reach a job, a school, a field, a family member. They do not see their year's crop rot in trucks stopped at sealed borders. They live in a carefully and artfully constructed bubble of quasi-normalcy, in which the violence of the displaced can manifest only as pathological because their own flowers bloom so hopefully and all they want is a decent life for their families in pretty homes.

Hence the settlements themselves cultivate a mind-set that casts all resistance as animalistic. These natives didn't even accept peace when it was offered to them (1947, 1967, 1995, whenever). Islam teaches hatred. The Jews have to have "somewhere to go". The Arab armies attacked us first. Etc., etc., etc.

All this is the classic worldview of the peaceful colonist who can't understand the savage attacks of the natives against their peaceful homes. If only the world would understand, the colonist thinks, it would stop worrying about these backward hateful people and defend civilization. But that dream is hopeless, I'm afraid. Little Shalva died, and probably more innocent young Jewish settler children will die before this is all over. But that is just part of the overall misery of taking someone else's land and pretending it is okay.

VT

==========

My response:-

So, the Jews had/have a choice: stay in the countries of exile and be killed in pogroms (Russia; and during the Crusades in Germany); be burned at the stake (Spain); tortured on the rack (Portugal & Spain); etc., etc. Or go back home and face the Arab.

The one advantage is, despite your avoidance of the issue, that Eretz-Yisrael is the Jewish national homeland and even the Arabs know that. Maybe that's why they are fighting so hard.

Here's one comment by a pro-Zionist Muslim:-

THE QUR'AN SAYS THAT ALLAH GAVE THE LAND OF ISRAEL TO THE JEWS
AND WILL RESTORE THEM TO IT AT THE END OF DAYS

THE QUR'AN SAYS:

"Pharoah sought to scare them [the Israelites] out of the land [of Israel]: but We [Allah] drowned him [Pharoah] together with all who were with him. Then We [Allah] said to the Israelites: 'Dwell in this land [the Land of Israel]. When the promise of the hereafter [End of Days] comes to be fulfilled, We [Allah] shall assemble you [the Israelites] all together [in the Land of Israel]."

[Qur'an, "Night Journey," chapter 17:100-104]

SHAYKH PROF. PALAZZI COMMENTS:

God wanted to give Avraham a double blessing, through Ishmael and through Isaac, and ordered that Ishmael's descendents should live in the desert of Arabia and Isaac's in Canaan.

The Qur'an recognizes the Land of Israel as the heritage of the Jews and it explains that, before the Last Judgment, Jews will return to dwell there. This prophecy has already been fulfilled.

The fundamentalist Muslim program to use Islam as an instrument for political warfare against Jews finds a major obstacle in the Qur'an itself. Both the Bible and the Qur'an state quite clearly that the right of the Israelites to the Land of Israel does not depend on conquest and colonization. This right flows from the will of almighty God Himself.

Both the Jewish and Islamic Scriptures teach that God, through His chosen servant Moses, decided to free the offspring of Jacob from slavery in Egypt and to constitute them as heirs of the Promised Land. Whoever claims that Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel is something new and rooted in human politics denies divine revelation and divine prophecy as explicitly expressed in our Holy Books (the Bible and Koran).

The Qur'an relates the words by which Moses ordered the Israelites to conquer the Land:

"And [remember] when Moses said to his people: 'O my people, call in remembrance the favour of God unto you, when he produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave to you what He had not given to any other among the peoples. O my people, enter the Holy Land which God has assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.'" [Qur'an 5:20-21]

Moreover - and those who try to use Islam as a weapon against Israel always conveniently ignore this point - the Holy Qur'an explicitly refers to the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel before the Last Judgment - where it says: "And thereafter We [Allah] said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd.'" [Qur'an 17:104]

Therefore, from an Islamic point of view, there is NO fundamental reason which prohibits Muslims from recognizing Israel as a friendly State.

In any case, I presume that I wish to emphasize to you that we are not "colonists" nor "settlers". We are not like the people who invaded North America or South Africa. Our culture, religion and national psyche are inherently bound up with the Land of Israel.

However, my point about "pottering" still holds. The antipathy to Jewish nationalism eventually leads very moral people to disdain the persons who are "causing problems" and instead of expressing sympathy with the victims, they themselves get blamed. That is abhorrent to me.

I Guess He Feels a Bit Guilty

Retiring High Court Justice Aharon Barak answers critics a fortnight after issuing his final ruling:'I am not a post-Zionist, but a Zionist with every fiber of my being'

Two weeks after stepping down as President of the High Court of Justice, Aharon Barak allowed himself on Thursday to respond to the criticism directed at him throughout his tenure and especially after ruling that Palestinians can sue the state of Israel for damages. Speaking before a conference audience at the Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv Barak told the crowd: "It is important for me to state in this university that I am not a post-Zionist, but a Zionist with every fiber of my being."

Conference-goers said that Barak's emotional statements came after other conference speakers excoriated the former Justice. "I have always believed that criticism is welcome," said Barak, "but not disparaging criticism. Criticism that comes from understanding, the kind that stems from understanding, that means to better the situation."

Three Years Later: Tilley Totters

Virginia Tilley published an article promoting a One-State Solution in the London Review of Books in November 2006.

I managed to get a letter published afterwards:-

Unfair to Revenants
From Yisrael Medad

Virginia Tilley (LRB, 6 November 2003) wrote of 'settlers in "Judea and Samaria" who are indeed gun-toting religious zealots (mostly from the US)'. In the same article, she also presumed that Ariel Sharon would not support the dismantling of Jewish communities in the disputed territories.

As a resident of Shiloh, a Jewish community pejoratively called a 'settlement' populated by 'settlers', and a member of the communities' representative body, the Yesha Council, I can tell Tilley that the people here, and more properly they should be referred to as revenants, persons who have returned after a long hiatus to their ancestral homes, who number more than 250,000 (and more than 400,000 if eastern Jerusalem is included), are secular in the main. The number of Americans who live beyond the Green Line armistice demarcation boundary does not exceed 20 per cent of that population.

Yisrael Medad
Shiloh, Samaria

She replied:-

From Virginia Tilley

In accusing me of mischaracterising the settler population in the West Bank, Yisrael Medad (Letters, 6 May) misquotes my article. The full sentence read: 'Nor does the problem lie with the minority of settlers in "Judea and Samaria" who are indeed gun-toting religious zealots (mostly from the US), even if their domestic political influence is daunting.' I had meant to highlight, not obscure, the minority status of the extremists who, in stereotype, are the face of settler intransigence, while explaining why this minority has unique political leverage. Certainly the settlers are 'secular in the main'. In briefly acknowledging that many of the most militant are from the US I intended an oblique reference to their insulated origins, which have fostered a particularly chauvinistic attitude toward Arabs.

The term 'revenants' that Medad prefers for that majority (as reflecting a 'return' to 'ancestral homes' and a right to sovereignty after 'a long hiatus') indicates more graphically than I could have managed that where the land is concerned the secular settler world-view is not so very different.

Virginia Tilley
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York

Well, Tilley, now in South Africa, has forged ahead publishing this piece in the far-left Counterpunch:-

A Beacon of Hope? Apartheid Israel

Here's some of her logic:-

Still, some things are happening. The Palestinians are slowly winning the propaganda war, at terrible cost. Israel's stunning crimes in Lebanon and Gaza have turned the tide: Israel has never been such an international pariah in all its years. The Arab states finally ended the financial boycott of the Hamas government that they should be ashamed before their families and clans that they ever deployed in the first place. The heroic new international boycott movement, finally standing up to shrieking Zionist slander and charges of anti-Semitism, expands rapidly through cyber-space and into serious and principled activism. Hopeful eyes turn to Ireland's victories and bold statements from Canada.

She's angry, even at Olmert, for using the terms Judea and Samaria:-

But "areas in Judea and Samaria" is especially ominous wording. First, "Judea and Samaria" are biblical-era terms for the West Bank used by Israelis to conceptualize the West Bank as an intrinsic part of Israel. Using them in diplomatic language regarding peace negotiations signals that Mr. Olmert is now so secure in this notion that he is willing to deploy it casually as a political given. Second, Israel will evacuate only "areas" (plural) of the West Bank. Later, Mr Olmert again uses the plural form when he says that Israel "will agree to the evacuation of many territories and communities which were established therein". To everyone else, the West Bank is one territory. Now carved up by Israeli settlements, it is several territories only if those settlements remain.

Here she becomes a fan of Yuli Tamir:-

Jewish-Israeli settlers potter about peacefully in their gardens in the West Bank because they know it is "Israel". The big settlements around Jerusalem, which divide the West Bank in half, are called "neighbourhoods". Israeli government maps of the country still do not show the green line. The West Bank, as we know it, is not there for Israel.

Well, I wrote her the following:-

We've crossed pens before in the London Review of Books but your piece in Counterpunch leads me to make one comment, which I hope you will consider despite our inability to agree on much else.

You wrote: "Jewish-Israeli settlers potter about peacefully in their gardens in the West Bank".

Now, you can view our presence here as illegal or imperialistic or apartheidic or whatever. That's your privilege. However, facts are facts and as you are well aware, Arab terror (or resistance, I won't quibble with you on this point) has been the cause of death of many Jewish revenants in the areas of Judea and Samaria. Our victims have included a 5-month old resident of Shiloh, Yehudah Shoham, whose head was crushed by a rock and 10-month old Shalva Pas, killed by a sniper's bullet to the head in Hebron and 17-year old Yosef Chaim Siton of Shiloh, who was attacked while playing basketball at his highschool at Itamar, chased down and shot in the back multiple times. All were unarmed, needless to say.

Sometimes we do potter about but peace is a two-sided affair. And since Jewish civilians and many infants and children among them have been murdered by Arabs, starting in 1920 before there was a state, it would seem that in your passionate arguments against Israel, you at least display a modicum of respect for the facts.

Her e mail is: tilley@hws.edu if you want to write her as well.

If she replies, I'll post it at this site.

The Religion of Peace

LGF pointed me to this:-

Abdullah ibn Khatal used to be a Muslim. The Prophet once sent him to collect zakah from people who lived far away. He traveled with another man and a servant of his who was a Muslim. At one stage on the way they stopped. He gave the servant orders to slaughter a big goat and prepare food for him while he himself went to sleep. When he woke up, he discovered that the servant had not done anything. He killed his servant and, fearing the Prophet’s punishment, reverted to idolatry. He also had two slave girls who used to sing for him and for his companions songs full of abuse of the Prophet. The Prophet’s instructions specified that the two slave girls should also be killed. The man was killed as he was actually holding on to the coverings of the Kaaba. Abu Barzah Al-Aslami and Saeed ibn Hurayth Al-Makhzumi killed him along with one of his slave girls. The other managed to flee until someone sought a special pardon for her from the Prophet, which he granted.

What's a slave girl worth anyway?

And in Judaism, holding on to the altar provides sanctuary (see I Kings 1:51 and Adoniah)

An Observation

Fark's comment on this story:

Muslim cleric shot dead after he delivered a sermon in the Gaza Strip calling for an end to fierce factional fighting.
That shut him up.
Back on with the fighting lads

Some people have finally grasped the logic of our local dispute here.

Watch Out

David M. Elcott is the director of the Israel Policy Forum, one of the more vigorous far-left and progressive support groups for a concessionist viewpoint regarding Israel's existence (that is, yield, surrender and give up and the world will love us - what the Arabs will do is understood) that is called "peace promotion".

The IPF is where Olmert made his infamous "we are tired" speech.

Anyway here are some details of the fellow:

David Elcott, Ph.D,...has traveled the world to help invigorate Jewish life and to promote Christian and Muslim understanding of Judaism..."God does not have only one blessing," Dr. Elcott once wrote. "As God's agents, we must work to bring the blessing of peace to all - Palestinians and Israelis, Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. To do less is a sin for which we all will be held accountable."

David Elcott has worked throughout his life to help other cultures understand the Jewish community. He also has assisted numerous religious communal organizations, social justice agencies, and international corporations to retool their missions and vision in response to new conditions and challenges of the 21st century...

...Dr. Elcott was the U.S. director of Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee,...instrumental in the creation of a broad-based Christian-Jewish coalition of national leaders, and succeeded in diverting an anti-Israel divestment campaign into positive advocacy for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Dr. Elcott has advised political and religious leaders worldwide...For 16 years prior to his time with DME, he was vice president of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership...He is the author of "A Sacred Journey: The Jewish Quest for a Perfect World." He received a Ph.D. in Political Psychology and Middle East Studies from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Political Science from University of California, Los Angeles, among other degrees.

When I was a kid, Zionism was about our people returning after millennia to our home, a “land without a people for a people without a land.” And after the 1967 war, it was a glorious time when the Israeli David slew the Arab Goliath, and we now had the whole Land of Israel to ourselves.

The Zionist story, though, was getting more complicated...As a Zionist committed to justice for my people in our own land, I sought a righteous Israel that would be a “light unto nations.”

...The Zionist world seemed evenly divided between those who supported the settlers and those who called for a Palestinian state, between hawks and doves, those who wanted peace and those who wanted more land. The left was seen as naïve, the right as inhumane.

Those days are over. There is no right or left of consequence in the true Zionist camp. There are few among our people who continue to see the Palestinians as innocent victims of Israeli injustice. It is obvious that the 1967 occupation is not the root cause of the terror and violence perpetrated against Jews. Any naïve dovish commitment to a two-state solution based on a shared future of Palestinians and Israelis holding hands and living in peace has been shattered. Yet there also are few Zionist hawks...It is not dovish to return territories occupied by millions of Palestinians committed to Israel’s destruction if it provides for Israel’s security. It is not patriotic to force young Israelis to protect settlements surrounded by an irredentist Arab population. Such settlements undermine Israel’s ability to defend itself and its citizens.

and this:-

'Serious dollars' behind proposed Israel lobby'

"I think there are serious dollars on the table," was about as specific as Israel Policy Forum Executive Director David M. Elcott would be when asked recently about the outcome of an October meeting in New York intended to bring together top Jewish philanthropists and U.S. Israel policy activists to explore funding for a new pro-Israel lobby.

Initially characterized in the media as an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, officials associated with the proposed lobbying coalition and with AIPAC later said it was incorrect to describe the proposed coalition as an "alternative" to AIPAC.

..."We are going forward with the next steps toward building a coalition that will bring together two groups that have never worked together," said Elcott. "Our hope is we are going to have the financial resources, the political clout and the prestige and the hype that goes with something like this," he added.

...Pressed on how much money may have been committed to the coalition effort, Elcott pointed to his organization's $2 million annual budget. "We need to spend a little bit more on this effort to try to end this conflict, so were looking for multiples of that," he said, still declining to be specific.

...Elcott believes that the way we talk about the conflict needs to change: "The old paradigm, dove-hawk, left-right, peace, are gone."

He assigned the Oslo accords to history's trash heap.

"The idea that we can achieve a peace settlement, that two peoples (Israelis and Palestinians) will come together, hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' failed miserably," said Elcott. "You'd have to be unbelievably naïve to believe that the Palestinians are going to be our friends; We've seen enough evidence to know that a peace settlement, in the ways countries understand peace settlements, is not in the offing. So, Oslo failed in that sense."

...Elcott thinks the entire conversation needs to be reframed.

He described what he called "a pragmatic response" by asking, "What is going to better the security of the state of Israel?"

Then he posed a series of what-ifs that argued for abandoning tiny West Bank settlements "surrounded by 100,000 Palestinians," and dismantling the estimated 100 Jewish settlements that the Israeli government itself identifies as illegal under its own law.

"Is it patriotic to not dismantle them and therefore undermine the rule of law in Israel? Or is true patriotism and attempting to protect the integrity of the state of Israel—getting rid of those settlements?"

Finally, "Illegal" Applied to the Pals.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday declared Hamas' militia in the Gaza Strip illegal.

Dear readers, this may be a first.

After all these years of "illegal settlements", we now have "illegal" applied to something 'Palestinian'.

Use it often. Use it well.

We have begun the campaign to take back proper semantics.

(Okay, so I'm being a bit sarcastic. But nevertheless, the possibilities are varied and inviting for us pro-Israel activists. Pound away at "illegal"!)

And remember:

More than two dozen people have been killed in the past month of factional fighting. And not one of them by an Israeli bullet, missile or whatever.

Throwing Good Money After Bad

From today's news:-

U.S. to provide Abbas' forces with $86 million

The Bush administration will provide $86.4 million to strengthen security forces loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, expanding U.S. involvement in Abbas' power struggle with Hamas, U.S. documents showed on Friday.

This theme sounded familiar.

So I searched.

Look what I found:-

1.

US to put more money into Abbas security forces
Source: Associated Press
Oct 06, 2006

The Bush administration plans to spend $20 million in US taxpayers' dollars on additional training and arms for the personal security forces of PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas.

2.

Dubov, Dmitri and Suponina, Elena, “Hamas won’t get any money,” 11 May 06, Vremya Novostei

The Quartet only recently decided to channel money to Abbas, hoping to bypass the Hamas-led government. This tentative decision, which was made on 9 May, at the UN headquarters in New York City, calls for an initial three-month plan before the Quartet meets again to reassess the situation.

3.

MIDEAST OUTLOOK: INTO THE ABBAS
Posted on May 29, 2005 3:39 PM EST

President Bush pacified Mahmoud Abbas the old-fashioned way on Thursday. He bribed him.

His offer of $50 million in direct aid to the Palestinian leader capped a busy week of Israel-related news that was as substantial as a Seinfeld episode about nothing. Nothing happened, or so it seemed. Except that the week’s events exposed the collection of contradictions and complications which threaten the peace process.

I guess I could go on and on. But it's too close to Shabbat and I have to sweep the floor.

You get the drift of things.

How much money will American citizens allow to fund terror disguised as 'fighting terror' and ending up in all the wrong pockets?

Fence Overrunning; I've Told You So

I'm not going to say "I told you so", since nothing has actually happened, well, at least not here in Israel. But it did somehwere else.

One of the points I have been making for a dozen years or so is that if Israel withdraws in retreat and sets up a fence (and eventually those idiots in charge of our security did do that), eventually some Pals. are going to come up with the idea that if they amass hundreds of women, children and old men and try to march down the fence, at places where it is a simple chain-fence or even a barbed-wire, what is Israel to do? Shoot them and mow them down?

That wouldn't show up in the media too nicely, now, would it?

Anyway, see what happened in the U.S.:-

Guardsmen overrun at the Border

12 News
Jan. 4, 2007 02:44 PM

National Guard unit stormed while patroling the border
Border attack raises security concerns

A U.S. Border Patrol entry Identification Team site was overrun Wednesday night along Arizona's border with Mexico.

According to the Border Patrol, an unknown number of gunmen attacked the site in the state's West Desert Region around 11 p.m. The site is manned by National Guardsmen. Those guardsmen were forced to retreat.

The Border Patrol will not say whether shots were fired. However, no Guardsmen were injured in the incident.

The Border Patrol says the incident occurred somewhere along the 120 mile section of the border between Nogales and Lukeville.

Okay, now I've told you so.

Holy Quran!

Somethin to know:-

Congressman Takes Oath of Office on Thomas Jefferson’s Quran

Keith Ellison finds book symbolic of U.S. founding fathers’ religious tolerance

Incoming Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison became the first Muslim member of the U.S. Congress January 4, swearing his oath of office on a copy of the Quran that belonged to the author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson.

In an interview with USINFO, Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert said the choice of Jefferson’s Quran was significant because it “dates religious tolerance back to the time of our founding fathers.”

“Jefferson was … one of the more profound thinkers of the time, who recognized even then that there was nothing to fear, and in fact there was strength in recognizing religious tolerance,” he said.

The Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson and used by Representative Keith Ellison during his swearing-in ceremony (© AP Images)Jefferson’s 6,000-volume personal library was the largest in North America at the turn of the 19th century. He obtained his English translation of the Quran in 1765 as he was finishing his law studies at the College of William and Mary. The translation by British historian and solicitor George Sale first was published in 1734. The Quran, along with the rest of Jefferson’s books, became the basis of the Library of Congress after British troops burned the U.S. Capitol, destroying the old congressional collection in the War of 1812.

Btw, Jefferson's copy is spelled Koran.

Uri Davis Doesn't Like Zionists

Uri Davis is an enemy of Zionism. No, this is not my opinion - it is his.

Israel Academic Monitor has distributed this e mail corrrespondence as proof.

Necessary background to the Teddy Katz Affair is that he wrote a MA thesis on a supposed Hagana massacre of Arabs in 1948 but it was found to be based on false research techniques, besides downright lying and fibbing. Ilan Pappe thinks differently, of course. Oh, Katz received research funds for the PLO for his project.

Anway, this letter speaks for Uri Davis famously:-

From: Uri Davis

CC: ALEF
Subject: Re: [alef] RE: Condolences
Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007 23:27:22 +0200

Dear Teddy,

In order to defeat the likes of Tuvia Blumenthal, despicable apologists for the crimes against humanity and war crimes perpetrated by political Zionism and the various instruments of the State of Israel it is necessary to call a spade a spade.

The late Faysal al-Husayni was not only a "good friend" whose humanity was much superior to those of your/our detractors - but a senior member of the FATH, who, in the wake of the 1993 Oslo accords, was also co-opted as a member of the PLO Executive Committee. You have every reason to take pride in receiving moral and financial support from Faysal al-Husayni, both in his personal capacity as well as in his political capacities. An attempt to ignore or underplay the political implications of this support does injustice to all parties concerned.

You did not just "sign, by mistake, at midnight, a paper saying I didn't have enough materials, to prove that that massacre did happened". On 19 December 2000, under tremendous family pressure and in deteriorating health (fearful of a relapse of the stroke you suffered from a year before when the story of the hit the press), you also allowed yourself the failure of being convinced to enter the negotiating room and face the legal representatives of the Alexandroni Brigade without your defence lawyers Avigdor Feldman, Hasan Jabarin and Orna Cohen present. It was in their absence that you signed a false apology which includes a denial the the Tantutra massacre had taken place.

I actually believe that the root cause of your failure was not primarily the fear of relapse of your medical condition, but rather your affiliation to MERETZ.

In the apology you signed you gave the Zionist and Israeli war criminals and the perpetrators of crimes against humanity the sentence they were after:

"I did not mean to say that there was a massacre in Tantura, and also today I say that there was no massacre in Tantura. I believe the Alexandroni people who have wholly and completely denied that a massacre in Tantura took place, and I retract every conclusion that may be implied from my [MA] Dissertation regarding the occurrence of the massacre or regarding the killing of unarmed and defenceless people."

You will have to bear the cross of this false apology and your said failure for the rest of your life.

Only if you do not try and make excuses for, or downplay the enormity of this failure will you be able to maintain your dignity.

You quite rightly point out that the real truth of what happened in 1948, exactly like the truth of nowadays, is stronger than all of the lot of the likes of Tuvia Blumenthal; that the latter lot will learn their lesson, willing or otherwise, very soon; and that with time, and sooner rather than later, the whole truth will be revealed.

You clearly deserve salute for your achievements, Teddy. But the whole truth also incorporates our owning up to, rather than downplaying, our failures.

In solidarity

Uri

Uri Davis (Dr)
P O Box 99
Sakhnin 20173
Israel

Cellular: 00 972 54 452 3838
Fax: 00 972 4 674 7028 & 08 924 8940
Tel: 00 972 4 674 7016

I am a member of IAM's board.

We've Come a Long Way

Found here.

Is It Too Little for a L'CHAYIM?

A New Book on Jewish-Christian relations

Interfaith Approach to Forgiving Trespass

And from the book review:-

The premise of “The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus” is simple: Jews and Christians need to understand one another. The implicit corollary: Despite years of trying, and to their mutual harm, they do not.

In a book intended for Jews and Christians alike (but mostly addressed to Christians) Ms. Levine offers both critique and corrective on topics as seemingly disparate as the Jewish content of the Lord’s Prayer and Christian responses to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...

...Ms. Levine’s documentation of the insouciance with which liberal Christians slander Jews and Judaism is perhaps the book’s most important contribution. She cites numerous examples of contemporary scholars, particularly theologians of liberation, who first “invent a bad Judaism” and then “explain how Jesus abrogates this bad system.” In her most outrageous example, Jesus’ crucifixion is said to mark the “triumph of the patriarchal god of Judaism.”

Many of the works Ms. Levine cites were published by the World Council of Churches, a group committed to overcoming anti-Semitism. How can well-meaning Christians perpetuate such theological abomination? Mostly, argues Ms. Levine, through sloppy scholarship and lazy reading.

Christian seminarians are taught little about Judaism, either ancient or modern (Judaism does not count as a “different” tradition in many programs that require study of a non-Christian tradition), and so look to the only “Jews” available — the Israelites of the Old Testament — for a model of what Jews do and believe. First-century Jews are seen either as figures transplanted from the Old Testament or as practitioners of a “late Judaism” that has corrupted Old Testament ideals. Modern Jews, in turn, embody the already-fossilized religion practiced by Jesus’ first-century enemies.

...Ms. Levine’s chilling tales of casual anti-Judaism among scholars who should know better rekindles the urgency of the task. She covers a vast canvas and of necessity does so in broad strokes, some more effective than others. But it is a book whose strengths far outweigh its flaws, and whose flaws count only because its subject matters so deeply.

Saw Melanie Phillips Last Night

At the Vidal Sassoon Symposium and introuduced myself and said hello.

My impression was that she recalled my name from previous communications.

Oh, the symposium:

Islam, British Society and the Terrorist Threat.

Participants: Avinoam Armoni (Vice President, Hebrew University), Chair, Melanie Phillips (Daily Mail, Londonistan), Robert Wistrich (Vidal Sassoon Institute), Isi Leibler (JerusalemCenter for Public Affairs). Maiersdorf Faculty Club, Mt. Scopus Campus, Hebrew University.

The Danger of Unrestricted Media

The probe was revealed on Channel 10 television Monday night, and on Tuesday morning, police conducted a massive raid on the homes and offices of 20 suspects, confiscating many documents. The suspects were also taken in for questioning for the first time.


Law enforcement officials said they hoped Channel 10's disclosure had not damaged the probe. However, they noted, that report gave the suspects several hours to destroy evidence before the police could mount their raid.

Source.

The Holocaust Memory and Israel

Once again, this theme is mentioned but at least, in this instance, in a more presentable fashion.

From a book review:-

His book vividly depicts the life of East European Jews before the war, and chronicles his experiences without sentimentality. It may seem ungenerous to suggest that this does not represent an important addition to Holocaust literature. Yet it fulfils a certain purpose, in helping to explain the mindset of modern Israel. If Israeli governments seem implacable in their determination to place their own perceived interests first, second and last, this is surely because their state was founded in the horrors described by Halter and his contemporaries.

While the "before the war" period refers to the few years prior to World War II, he doesn't realize the anamoly of the Jewish existence in an exilic mode.

Israel is ours because it is our homeland and we are a national group - with our own language, our own culture, our own religion and our own historic narrative that is all vastly different then any of the countries around us.

Even if there had been no antisemitism and no Nazis and no Holocaust, but only some simple case of exile - the Land belongs to us and we belong to the Land.

Israeli Bullshit, Literally

Jordanian King Abdullah II has complained of bovine odors coming from the Israeli side of the frontier along the countries' shared southern border

Speaking to Israel Radio, Gideon Ezra said the smells, from a livestock quarantine facility, were blown across the frontier toward the king's palace in the town of Aqaba, on the Red Sea next to the Israeli town of Eilat. Jordanian officials contacted Israel last week and requested the odors be neutralized, Ezra said.

Jordan and Israel, enemies for decades, signed a peace agreement in 1994 and now enjoy close ties.

In response to the Jordanian complaint, Israel has ordered the owners of the facility - where imported livestock is held in quarantine before being released to farmers - to clean up large amounts of animal waste that had built up at the site, Environment Ministry spokesman Sharon Achdut said.

Ezra said that upon receiving the complaint, Israeli officials immediately spread "deodorants" around the site to offset the smell affecting Abdullah's palace, and that a thorough clean-up would begin within days.

But How Will We Get In?

Nadav Shragai reports:-

The engineer of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, Ofer Cohen, has again warned that the remains of the ramp upon which the temporary entrance to the Moghrabi Gate of Jerusalem's Old City was built is in danger of collapse.

Cohen wrote to the head of WWHF, Rabbi Mordechai Eliav, that a significant snowfall, or even large amounts of rain, could threaten the stability of the bridge.

The rabbi of the Western Wall, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, said in response that as far as he is concerned the Moghrabi Gate could be locked and its use discontinued immediately.

Since this is the main entrance to the Temple Mount, close to the Kotel and very secure (as the other gates are located amidst densely populated Arab narrow streets), I would think the dear Rabbi should be a bit more sympathetic to our needs.

But Really Bad Aim

I'm still anticipating the news of the annual stomping and trampling festival in Mecca (*) but until then, this story points to either the fact that amateur slaughterers have lousy aim or that the "animals" just may be humans:-

Animal sacrifices maim 1,400 in Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Over a thousand Turks spent the first day of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in emergency wards on Sunday after stabbing themselves or suffering other injuries while sacrificing startled animals.

At least 1,413 people — referred to as "amateur butchers" by the Turkish media — were treated at hospitals across the country, most suffering cuts to their hands and legs, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Four people were severely injured, crushed under the weight of large animals that fell on top of them, the agency reported. Another person was hurt when a crane used to lift an animal tumbled onto him, the agency said.

Three other people suffered heart attacks and died while trying to restrain animals, CNN-Turk television reported.

Muslims sacrifice cows, sheep, goats and bulls during the four-day religious holiday, a ritual commemorating the biblical account of God's provision of a ram for Abraham to sacrifice as he was about to slay his son. They share the meat with friends, family and neighbors and give part of it to the poor.

Turkish authorities have introduced fines for those who slaughter animals outside facilities set up by local municipalities, but many Turks ignored the rules and sacrificed animals in their backyards or on roadsides.

--------------------

(*)

Millions of Muslims are taking part in the final day of the Hajj, which has passed without major incident after new security measures were introduced.
Thousands of Saudi police, backed by helicopters, were deployed for the final stoning of the devil rite at the Jamirat bridge in Mina.

At the last Hajj, at least 345 pilgrims died in a crush during the stone-throwing ritual.

She's Green From Envy

Education Committee votes against adding Green Line to maps

The Knesset's Education Committee rejected Monday Education Minister Yuli Tamir's decision to include the Green Line on maps in all future textbook publications.

The committee adopted Knesset Members Zevulun Orlev and Zeev Elkin's decision proposal to adopt the government's decisions from 1967, according to which the country's borders will not be marked according to the ceasefire lines (the Green Line).

The committee concluded that "the textbooks in the education system include satisfactory material, which properly instructs on the history of the country and State's borders, including the ceasefire lines." The committee called on Tamir to cancel her decision regarding the Green Line. MK Orlev told Ynet, "The education minister is trying to put the Green Line back on the agenda, and etch it in the students' consciousness out of a Peace Now political perspective."

"I want to believe that the education minister will not fail the citizenship test – every minister pledges to be loyal to the State of Israel and abide by the Knesset's decisions. If the education minister fails to follow the Education Committee's decision, she should be dismissed," he added.

During the committee's meeting Tamir explained her decision to include the Green Line on maps, saying that "The marking is important in light of the wide-spread usage of the term 'Green Line' in the internal Israeli debate, as well as the international discourse." Tamir stated that that one of the education system's objectives is to deal with issues that are on the State's agenda, one of them being the question of the country's borders.

"The students should get to know the borders and the discussion surrounding them," Tamir said, "The Israeli student should know that there is a historical and judicial significance to the Green Line issue."


Knesset Member Zevulun Orlev said in response that "according to the government's decision the Green Line is dead, and there's no point dealing with this."

Tamir responded by saying, "The Green Line has a judicial status, even if you don't like it. Unless you wish to tell me that the status of the Golan Heights and Nablus is equal."

What judicial status? As a temporary armistice line?

Well, Another Letter That Didn't Get Published

I had sent this letter in to the Int'l Herald Tribune after commenting on it on a previous posting:

You report that Ehud Olmert's decision to remove checkpoints on West Bank roads "could remove, or at least reduce, a source of great frustration there" ("Israel agress to remove 2 dozen checkpoints", Dec. 26). Indeed, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has repeated this theme of "frustration". Nevertheless, another result is possible.

Over the years since the roadblocks have become a target of concern for those sympathetic to local Arabs, not once has a removal of a roadblock ever led to a decrease in terrorism, including suicide bombers, but quite the opposite. May I suggest that the responsibility for these roadblocks be shifted to the Arabs and that for every time an incident of smuggling munitions or arms or a terorist succeeds, the roadblock then becomes permanent. Let it be their choice because between the alternative to frustration seems to be killing and the there can be no moral equivalency between the two.

The IHT selected two other letters and just as well:-

Dealing with Hamas

Robert Malley and Henry Siegman ("The Hamas factor," Views, Dec. 28) think it is "unfortunate" that Hamas will not recognize Israel and ask whether it is really worth plunging the region into greater chaos because Hamas will not recognize Israel.

The issue here is not recognition of Israel, it is Hamas's declared goal to destroy Israel. There are several nations in the world that do not recognize Israel and have no diplomatic relations with Israel. But Hamas is the only elected political entity that openly advocates the destruction and annihilation of an entire state and its people. Fortunately this is not acceptable to the majority of the world's nations.

Michael Seelig, London

Robert Malley and Henry Siegman say that Hamas must be dealt with by the Israelis to secure peace in the region. At the same time, they admit that Hamas will never agree to Israel's right to exist. Malley and Siegman are seeking a solution to the wrong problem.

Hamas is not Israel's problem. Hamas is the central problem of the Palestinian people. There is nothing that Israel can do to remedy the situation other than to capitulate to the demands of Hamas, an inflexible terrorist group. The Palestinians voted Hamas into power. Therefore it is up to the Palestinians to work out a solution to the dilemma they created.

Israel should allow the Palestinians to sort out the Hamas problem. Only then can an Israel-Palestinian conference on a two-state solution have real meaning.

The United States refuses to deal with terrorists. So should Israel.

Bernard Ilson, New York

Ease? Easing? Easy?

Information Department, Israel Foreign Ministry - Jerusalem
Website: http://www.mfa.gov.il
E-mail: feedback@mfa.gov.il
====================================================================
Jerusalem, 1 January 2007

Easing of restrictions in Judea and Samaria (Communicated by the IDF Spokesman)

Following directives of the Minister of Defense as part of the political echelon's policy to ease restrictions on the Palestinian population, the IDF's Central Command has prepared for the implementation of easements, as follows:

1. Maximal easing of the checking of goods and services provided to the Palestinian population.

2. Easements on the movement of Palestinians between villages and cities.

3. Easements of the security checks of the Palestinian population at the different crossings.

4. Building of interchanges that will allow freer movement of Palestinian vehicles.

The IDF will make every effort to maintain the daily life of the Palestinian population while using all means at its disposal to act against terrorists in order to protect the citizens of Israel.

So, is this, as in the past, going to make it easier for terrorists to terrorize?

He May Be Bald But He's No Eagle

Source here.

Imagine This in Israel (No Way)

America means free speech.

KATY, Texas (AP) -- A man unhappy with an Islamic association's plans to build a mosque next to his property has staged pig races as a protest during afternoon prayers.

Craig Baker, 46, sold merchandise and grilled sausages Friday for about 100 people who showed up in heavy rain. He insisted he wasn't trying to offend anyone with the pigs, which are forbidden from the Muslim diet.

"I am just defending my rights and my property," Baker said. "They totally disrespected me and my family."

Muslims don't hate pigs, they just don't eat them, said engineer Kamel Fotouh, president of the 500-member Katy Islamic Association in this Houston suburb.

"I don't care if he races, roasts or slaughters pigs," said Yousef Allam, a spokesman for the group.

The dispute began when the association asked Baker to remove his cattle from its newly bought land. The association plans to build a mosque, community center, athletic facilities and a school.

Baker agreed to move his cattle but thought the Muslims also wanted him off the land his family has lived on for more than 100 years.

Earlier this month, Baker conceded that the Muslims probably aren't after his land, but he said he had to go through with the pig races because "I would be like a total idiot if I didn't. I'd be the laughingstock now because I've gone too far."

All the same, Baker plans to continue the weekly pig races until interest dwindles.

The association never meant to imply it wanted Baker to move, Allam said.

"If we somehow communicated that to him, then we apologize," he said.

Resident Susan Canavespe said the pig racing wasn't mean-spirited -- "It's just Texas-spirited."

Liberalism Under Attack By Judge

St. Louis judge's outspoken book causing controversy

A liberal-bashing book by a veteran St. Louis judge is to become available publicly this week, but it is already causing a stir in political and legal circles — and prompting some to say it could cost him his job...

In a recent interview, however, Dierker defended the book's themes, welcomed the criticism and said his own lawyers say the book doesn't break any rules.

The first chapter was heavily discussed at the recent holiday party for the Women Lawyers' Association of Greater St. Louis. One judge who attended noted, "Everyone's just pretty much shocked." Association President Lynn Ricci said, "I have read it. I find it disturbing." She also said, "I frankly think that it is a shame that this very smart man has lowered himself to name-calling."...

He may face repercussions in the courtroom. Lawyers could cite the book as evidence that Dierker is unable to be impartial on issues involving women, or liberals, or the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, forcing his removal from cases.

Dierker responds that he is always fair in the courtroom, and paraphrases the book: "Conservative judges are much more likely to know where their biases are and how to draw the line."...

Dierker said that he had to be "polemical" in the book to get attention, and said "controversy is inevitable." But, he said, the controversy may draw
attention to an issue that is permeating the law and the judiciary. "If I wrote
a law review article, who would read it?" he asked.

"I think unquestionably, the more controversy, the more interest it generates from the mundane to the philosophical," he said.

Dierker said criticism of the book may be unpleasant. But, he adds, "If you dish it out, you have to be able to take it."

Deb Does "Palestine" (and Santa)

Deb Reich sends us Greetings from the Occupied Holy Lands

Dear Santa,

I live in Israel/Palestine and I think I am probably addicted to the big bad conflict we have here...Santa, tell me: What in God's name have we done to the children?

If I feel like praying, I can access a direct line to the Almighty by email or fax They have these handy services now. Here's what you do: (1) Compose your prayer. (2) Send it by email, fax, or post and the company will print it and take it to the ancient Western (formerly Wailing) Wall in Jerusalem and stuff it in the cracks with thousands of other supplications to the Most High. Express delivery guaranteed! (3) Pay by credit card, from anywhere - unless you're in Gaza: Gaza the besieged, the starving, where there is no email, fax, or post, no credit card, no electricity, no water, no work, no bread, and not much else, either. You can still pray there, but the company cannot guarantee delivery, and anyhow the service is not really designed for Muslims.

Santa, I have a few other outgoing letters If you know how to get them to their destinations, give me a hand here, okay? And thanks for listening.

Dear Spirit of Love,

Or whatever your name is - get us into rehab, quick! We need help! We are massacring the neighbors - we are killing each other here. People are besieged, shot, bombed, terrorized, and I swear, some folks justify this. They justify it. How sick is that?! We need help! Most of us want to stop the killing but we don't know how. Help!

Dear Abby,

I am a Jewish freethinker in Israel. (Sometimes I write "in Israel/Palestine" because it seems to make more sense, but we won't go into that now.) I have a question. If Jewish renewal in Palestine after a thousand generations is visionary and noble, why is the idea of repatriating the displaced Palestinians after a mere fifty or sixty years seen as delusional? I don't get it.

Deb Reich is a writer and translator in Israel/Palestine. Contact her at debmail@alum.barnard.edu.

Finkelstein Flunks

Norman Finkelstein wages battle.

From its initial encounter with Palestine the Zionist movement confronted a seemingly intractable dilemma: How to create a Jewish state in a territory that was overwhelmingly non-Jewish? Israeli historian Benny Morris observes that Zionists could choose from only two options: "the way of South Africa"--i.e., "the establishment of an apartheid state, with a settler minority lording it over a large, exploited native majority"--or "the way of transfer"--i.e., "you could create a homogeneous Jewish state or at least a state with an overwhelming Jewish majority by moving or transferring all or most of the Arabs out."

During the British Mandate period (1917-1947) Zionist settlers labored on both fronts, laying the foundations of an apartheid-like regime in Palestine while exploring the prospect of expelling the indigenous population.

Ah, so they did nothing else?

Mapam did nothing.

Ihud did nothing.

Brit Shalom did nothing.

Mapai and its Histadrut did absolutely nothing.

There was no cooperation. No negotiations. No mediation.

Finkelstein flunks history.

Those Democrats and the Jews

The 2006 midterm elections confirmed once again a truism of American politics: American Jews remain overwhelmingly devoted to the Democratic party. According to exit polling, the tilt this year was, if anything, even more pronounced than it has been in the past. Some 88 percent of Jewish votes went to Democratic candidates, while a mere 12 percent went to the GOP.

Along with this lopsided outcome, a historical extreme, comes the news that the number of Jewish representatives in Congress has itself reached an all-time high...

...the paradoxical and disturbing fact is that even as Jewish voters remain unwaveringly loyal to the Democrats, and even as Jewish representation in national office, almost entirely Democratic in color, has risen to an all-time high, the Democratic party itself is becoming demonstrably less hospitable to Jewish interests. Indeed, on at least one matter of central concern—the safety and security of the state of Israel—the party and the American Jewish community may be heading toward a slow-motion collision.

Read more.

What A (You Should Excuse Me) Dumb Question

Can we
Restrain ourselves
When the Qassams
Land in Sderoth
And hurt people?

Can they
Restrain themselves
When we kill
Dozens of Palestinians
In the West Bank?

These people are so very clever, are they not?

Well, maybe "clever" but not that smart.

Tel Shiloh in London's Daily Telegraph

The London Telegraph had a story on Tel Shiloh and I missed it at the time.

Here it is:-

'Church of the Ark' found on West Bank
By Harry de Quetteville in Shiloh
Last Updated: 1:40am GMT 04/12/2006

Archaeologists claimed yesterday to have uncovered one of the world's first churches, built on a site believed to have once housed the Ark of the Covenant.

The site, emerging from the soil in a few acres in the hills of the Israeli occupied West Bank, is richly decorated with brightly coloured mosaics and inscriptions referring to Jesus Christ.

According to the team, led by Yitzhak Magen and Yevgeny Aharonovitch, the church dates to the late 4th century, making it one of Christianity's first formal places of worship.

"I can't say for sure at the moment that it's the very first church," said Mr Aharonovitch, 38, as he oversaw a team carrying out the final excavations before winter yesterday. "But it's certainly one of the first." He said the site contained an extremely unusual inscription which referred to itself, Shiloh, by name.

"That is very rare and shows early Christians treated this as an ancient, holy place," said Mr Aharonovitch. According to the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, was kept by the Israelites at Shiloh for several hundred years.

It was eventually moved to the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple that the Bible says was built by King Solomon around 1000 BC. When the temple was sacked by the Babylonians 400 years later, the Ark was lost, sparking theories about whether it had been hidden or destroyed.

The team at Shiloh is considering whether to dig under the beautiful mosaics that they have uncovered, in order to find traces of the Ark. "We have to decide whether to fix the mosaics here or take them to a museum," said Mr Aharonovitch.

Jewish residents in the modern settlement of Shiloh, which sits on a hill amidst Palestinian villages, want the team to keep digging.

David Rubin, a former mayor of Shiloh, said: "We believe that if they continue to dig they'll reach back to the time of the Tabernacle," referring to the portable place of worship where the Israelites housed the Ark.

Oh My, Diplomatic Robbery

In Jerusalem, December 9:-

Yesterday, M and I, along with two other friends from the consulate, decided to do the ramparts walk in the Old City. That is where you walk around the top of the Old City walls. The views are great and we all took some great pictures. We were all talking about what a beautiful day it was, how much fun we were having and how Jerusalem overall is a pretty easy place to live. That is probably what jinxed us.

We walked up the stairs to a wide part of the rampart (maybe 20 feet wide by 40 feet long....most of it was only a few feet wide). In hindsite, all of us looked up at the two Palestinian teenagers and thought it was odd that they were up there. But all of us dismissed it...true we were on a remote part of the walk, but we were barely a few steps from Lion's gate, the end of the tour, where the police stand. And we knew most of the Old City is covered by cameras, so few crimes more serious than pickpocketing ever occur there.

I was in the lead and the first guy, by the stairs up onto that part of the rampart, asked me in English "what clock," pointing to his wrist. I told him it was almost 1. He said thank you in Hebrew, then stammered a bit and said "you're welcome" in English. I continued on across, figuring this wasn't a place to dally and plus I was hungry and ready to go get lunch. And I as I walked past the second guy, who was standing near the stairs going down on the other side, he said, "wait wait." I looked at him and he said, "give money." I thought he was begging and I said no. Then he pulled out his knife and said "give money." This made me mad, and I said no again. Then he pointed to my camera (a little canon elph) and said "give camera." And I yelled no and put it in my pocket. What I didn't see was that the first boy, the one I had told the time, was clearly the leader (the guy demanding money from me was clearly nervous) and was angry at my defiance. M said he lunged towards me with his knife, a switchblade. She yelled, "Give him the f**king money." This stopped the first guy, and I reached in my pocket and pulled the first bill off the money in my pocket, a 100 shekel bill (a little less than $25 dollars) and handed it to him. M told him I had her money and I told him that was all we had.

In the meantime, our two friends pulled out their wallets. One handed them everything she had, $150 and 120 shekels. The other pulled out a 20 shekel bill and when they demanded more she gave them another 20 shekels (she had about 800 shekels on her). They kept demanding more, but Mary yelled "that's enough." And since some more tourists were coming, the two ran off. In retrospect, I think the one friend giving them so much money was what kept them from continuing to demand more or from hurting us. I don't think the one who asked me for the money and my camera would have hurt us. He was clearly nervous. But the other seemed more dangerous.

We went straight downstairs and reported it to the police, who ran into the city and grabbed every Arab kid they could find in a red shirt (none the right one). One poor group of boys got brought to us twice. Our security came down and sat with us while were inviewed in the police station. It took hours. We didn't get out until nearly 5.

I am hopeful they will catch the guys because of all the cameras. Plus, the police seemed really concerned about the boys having weapons and attacking diplomats.