The One-State Solution Is A...Fraud? (More Agha/Malley)

Who says it is a fraud?

Marty Peretz.

Here:

The one-state solution is a fraud. Those who press it know that it is a fraud. And those who publish it do, as well.

But, of course, he is thinking of a one state dominated by the Arabs due to demographics and the desire of the Jewish state not to be considered a non-democratic state.

He even gives some history:

Let's face facts: every Israel prime minister except Yitzhak Shamir has favored a two-state solution. It was the essence of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine which was the underpinning of Israel's international legality. Ben Gurion was for a two-state solution, and Sharret and Eshkol and Allon and Golda Meir and Begin and Rabin and Peres and Sharon and Olmert and Netanyahu, too.

Marty, I don't think Menachem Begin supported a second "Palestinian/Arab" state in the territory of the British Mandate - and in fact I am positively sure of that. Jordan was more than enough for Begin. And Sharon held to the "Jordan is Palestine" idea even to the end, although his end is somewhere neither here nor there at the moment.

And you're right on the mark here:

Had the Arabs accepted a two-state solution after the Six Day War, they would have gotten everything back that they lost, save for the ancient Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. But that is history that almost no one knows which is because almost no one knows any history at all.

And Peretz goes one:

...of course, the major impediment for the Arabs of Palestine and the Arabs outside Palestine is that Israel is and can only be a Jewish state. There is a certain insane chutzpah for the Arabs to object to the Jewish character of Israel. The fact is that its Jewish character was written into its very charter by the General Assembly 62 years ago. Indeed, the whole idea of peoplehood which informed the Wilsonian framework of the post-World War I formula for peace after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire is deeply enmeshed with Zionism. The envisioned Jewish commonwealth was as clear as a nation-state could be...

Marty, you could have quoted the League of Nations decision, based on Balfour:

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and

Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;

Non-Jews, not Arabs, not Muslims, not Christians. Simply put: there are Jews who deserve a national home in the area of their national homeland and everyone else gets less than that - no political right but full civil, personal and religious rights.

And there was nothing known as 'Palestinian Arabs' as an "existing community" at that time.

And he bangs away at Agha and Malley, as I have done:

Why the essential Jewish character of Israel should be problematic when all of the neighboring states--those actually adjoining and also the non-abutters--define themselves as both Arab and Muslim are exempt from the tribulations of self-definition is difficult to assess. It's not that any of those states are at all achievers. In fact, there is no Arab state that is a success, let alone a secular success.

Imagine for a moment the one-state solution in historic Palestine west of the Jordan. What peace will there be? What economic progress? What laws and what justice? What science? What kind of class system? Try to deny that all of this would be a nightmare.

Goodness. Such (deserved) anti-Arab flack in the pages of the liberal TNR.

But there is always the possibility of one state (Israel) and another, less-than-a-state entity for the Arabs that can't live among Jews.

Why not try it.

And as for the demographic/democracy threats, it's all not really there. Not in the numbers and not in the presumed apartheid.

It's all in the minds of Arabs who can't live under a non-Muslim regime, that's all.

Letters-to-the-Editor That Were Published - And One That Wasn't

I blogged on the Agha/Malley oped (here) and sent the paper a letter.

It didn't get published.

Here it is:

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley write in their op-ed that "But two states may not be a true resolution if the roots of this clash are ignored. The ultimate territorial outcome almost certainly will be found within the borders of 1967" ("The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything", Aug. 11).

"Within the borders of the 1967"? Do not they mean "without"? There was Arab aggression in 1967, and the losing side should be obliged to territorial concessions. Is one to perceive a suggestion of Agha and Malley that the new future borders of Israel will be between the 1947 UN Resolution borders and the 1949 armistice boundaries, the lines that invited thoughts and plans of an Arab attack?

As you may surmise, as usual, it didn't get published.

What did get published?

Here:-

To the Editor:

In discussing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute (“The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything,” Op-Ed, Aug. 11), Hussein Agha and Robert Malley stress dislocation
and subsequent refugee status as core Palestinian grievances.

Every people is defined by its own historical narrative. But the Palestinians became
refugees, in large measure, because of bad choices they made, especially rejecting the 1947 United Nations partition plan and joining a war to destroy the new state of Israel. Has any war not produced refugees?

Since then, the United Nations has protected the Palestinians by creating a separate agency,
the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, while all other refugees worldwide are under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. A separate definition of refugee eligibility has been created for Palestinians, allowing their descendants, without limitation, to fall under the purview of Unrwa, thus perpetuating a culture of victimization.

Being an actual refugee is not easy. I have seen it up close. My parents were both refugees. So
was my wife. And I worked in refugee resettlement long enough to understand the trauma caused by dislocation — and the capacity for renewal.

Isn’t it high time for the Palestinians to confront current realities and historical failures, and move on to embrace a pragmatic peace accord that promises a better future for all, Israelis and Palestinians alike?

David Harris
Executive Director
American Jewish Committee
New York,

•

To the Editor:

Without going into details, a resolution of the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian
conflict will be possible only if and when the two sides to the conflict learn to accept each other’s legitimate claims.

The Palestinians should once and for all acknowledge the fact that the Israeli Jews are not strangers who all of a sudden appeared from nowhere to disinherit them from their land.

Conversely, the Israeli Jews should understand that although it was indeed a Jewish dominion years back, when the Jewish pioneers came to rebuild their ancestral homeland — my parents among them — the land was not empty. Something took place in the intervening years.

Only a mutual understanding of the other side’s stance will breed respect and build the
confidence that will enable honest and true negotiations between the Jews and Arabs.

Rachel Kapen
West Bloomfield, Mich.

•

To the Editor:

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley are correct: A two-state solution featuring one state with limited sovereignty, as the current Israeli prime minister insists on, will never be sustainable. Nor will the status quo, which amounts to religious apartheid.

The ultimate solution to this conflict lies in a one-state solution that recognizes and respects the equal human rights of Jews, Muslims and Christians. The sooner policy makers — especially in the United States — realize this, the sooner this conflict will finally be resolved.

Tamer Samir Nassar
Palo Alto, Calif.

•

To the Editor:

The authors’ suggestion that the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be based on a one-state, rather than two-state, solution is long on ideology and short on pragmatism.

The events of 1948 cannot be undone any more than, say, the results of the American
colonists fighting the British and establishing the United States of America.

Yes, there are seemingly intractable issues that date back to 1948, but the broad outlines of a reasonable permanent peace arrangement have been in place since the waning days of the Clinton administration.

Israelis have already demonstrated several times, in clear and tangible ways, that they are
prepared to resolve this depressing conflict in a fair manner. Palestinians and the larger Arab world have been short on useful action and long on meaningless rhetoric.

So let’s put aside all this intellectual bombast about existential struggles and finally get everyone to agree to something that works, realizing that there are legitimate grievances on both sides and that in this world people rarely get everything they want.

Jerry Rapp
New York

•

To the Editor:

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley assert, “Few Israelis quarrel with the insistence that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state.” But this raises the question, what is meant by distinguishing Israel as a “Jewish state”?

If it means that my family can at any time flee persecution and seek out the safety of Israel no matter what because of our Jewish heritage, then I have no quarrel with this distinction.

But if a “Jewish state” means that I can travel to Jerusalem any time I want while my Palestinian friend who lives a mile away from Jerusalem and happens to have family there cannot obtain a permit to visit her loved ones, then I have to reject this privilege. I have seen first-hand how
the special status that Israel grants to Jews has come at the expense of non-Jews.

Mr. Agha and Mr. Malley are right to point out that the way we define the state of Israel is at the root of the conflict. Now it is time to have an honest debate about what defining Israel as a “Jewish state” really means.

Zachary Noteman
Astoria, Queens

•

To the Editor:

The authors argue convincingly: “The heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.”

The logical corollary of this conclusion as it bears on American policy is that Washington must move from characterizing the conflict as the Palestinian problem to defining it as the
problem of Israel in the heart of the Muslim-Arab Middle East.

Doing so will put the issue in its proper perspective and allow policy makers to fashion
regional policies in keeping with broader American strategic interests in the Middle East.

Mohammed Ayoob
East Lansing, Mich.

The writer is a professor of international relations at Michigan State University.

•

To the Editor:

My interpretation is that Hussein Agha and Robert Malley both believe that the two-state solution is essentially unworkable and that, by implication, a single country addressing Palestinian concerns is the only viable option.

This, of course, negates the concept of a Jewish state, means the death of Israel as we now know it and, fortunately, is a nonstarter as far as the people and government of Israel are concerned.

Joel Teisch
Hillsborough, Calif.

Academic Lack of Perspective

I found this article from 2005 and I ask you to spend two minutes and read the abstract and come to the realization that the reality - continued terror, Hamas takeover, etc. - is missing from this academic analysis:

Disengagement - And What After?
Hasson Shlomo
2005
Abstract of publication #3/37e

What will happen the day after the disengagement? Will disengagement herald tranquility and stabilization for Israeli-Palestinian relations, and enable the parties to resume negotiations and progress toward a permanent status agreement? Or, will the opposite occur, and disengagement will reinforce extreme Islamic factions who believe that only force can influence Israel? This essay examines these questions, through the perspective of four central and prevalent geopolitical approaches in Israel:

* The Inevitability of Separation: this approach holds that demographic and security considerations make Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria a necessity – even unilaterally, if need be.

* The Two State Solution: this approach supports a final status agreement, based on the principle of two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean sea, in which both peoples will exercise their right to self determination.

* The Greater Land of Israel: The Greater Land of Israel approach calls for Israel to remain in the territories, for various reasons: National-Religious circles, who believe in territorial integrity, justify their position through national and religious reasoning. Security circles supporting this approach argue that given the present security circumstances, and especially in light of threats of terrorism and the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, Israel should not leave the territories.

* Bi-National State: This approach, which characterizes Jewish post-Zionist circles in Israel and nationalist circles among Israeli Arabs, sees a bi-national state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as inevitable.

The essay presents the various approaches, elaborates the scenarios relating to them, and points out the signs marking the realization of each approach. Analysis of the various geopolitical approaches suggests two main options, which are, in my opinion, those which will stand at the center of the internal Israeli political debate, and around which the main political positioning will be formulated:

1. Containing itself inside the border
2. Deployment in the frontier area beyond the border.

A geopolitical approach is a sort of psycho-political pattern of thought, resulting from life experience and affiliation to a defined cultural group. It reflects one’s personal and collective beliefs and life experience, the opinions one is exposed to, and the social groups to which one is connected. It acts as a filtering lens, through which reality is examined, processed and interpreted. Based upon this processed reality, one reaches conclusions regarding the desirable course of action.

Underlying each geopolitical approach is a basic assumption; an irrefutable axiom. This assumption is sometimes displayed as an imperative, or as an inevitable process. The Inevitability of Separation approach assumes that the demographic process endangers the State of Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish and democratic state, and therefore, that disengagement is inevitable. The Two State Solution approach assumes that moral imperative and economic needs necessitate separation and the achievement of peace. Supporters of the Greater Land of Israel believe that settling the Land of Israel accomplishes a national vision and fulfills a divine imperative. The Bi-National State approach is based on the assumption that both communities, Jewish and Arab, are irreversibly intertwined, territorially and community-wise.

Despite substantial differences between the four approaches, they all share the historicist approach: the view that historical development is not a matter of chance, and that there is a constitutional logic at its foundation, which determines the direction of events. The approaches differ regarding the identity of the factor which determines historic development. Each emphasizes a different, exclusive factor which determines historic development in general, and, specifically, the nature of the relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These factors, which include demography, morality and progress, national vision and divine promise, and irreversible intertwining, determine the history of the relations between Israelis and Palestinians. These factors determine who will take part in shaping history, and which political views and strategies will shape the settlement map.

The essay is guided by an approach of skepticism regarding the validity of the historicist worldview, that is, the worldview which seeks out a logic which determines the path of history. It also distances itself from philosophical-political relativism, which assumes that every geopolitical approach is legitimate. Policymakers must base their geopolitical approach upon a system of criteria maximizing the number of advantages. The essay presents six criteria, whose essence is the existence of a Jewish democratic state, living in security and peace and enjoying internal solidarity and international support. True statehood is the choice, between geopolitical options, which strives for harmony between the various principles, while moderating the contradictions between them and preserving proportionality in their realization.

The geopolitical option proposed in the essay in light of these principles, is an Israeli initiative to rein in within the borders and to stabilize the frontier beyond the border. This option fits the Inevitability of Separation approach, but is also aware of the dangers indicated by Greater Land of Israel devotees. It does not stop at the inevitability of separation, rather continues in the direction of a two state solution, while understanding that the process will be slow and paved with crises, as predicted by the Inevitability of Separation approach. The two state solution scenario will not be manifested in a complete separation, due to the special circumstances of the two states as indicated by the Bi-National State approach, and a certain amount of common space will exist in the future as well.

However, most of the public in Israel oppose such a state, whether as the Greater Land of Israel or as the post-Zionist version of a bi-national state. Israel cannot eternally maintain a situation of separation amidst increasing enmity; reality necessitates progress from unilateral separation to a two state solution of the conflict.

Worthless dribble for which he got paid.

So, Who Are Really the "Arabs" of 'Palestine'?

After circulating the article "Arabs of Jewish Descent in Israel", my friend received an interesting response from his friend in Israel who served in the IDF during the 1967 Six Day War. The story and comments are important and others may know of similar cases of people of Jewish descent living in the so-called “occupied territories” who were forcibly converted to Islam.

My friend writes:

"From childhood we’ve all been taught about the Spanish Inquisition and the Marranos or secret Jews who were forced to adopt Christianity. And of course today there are numerous Jewish organizations around the world searching for “lost” Jews and/or seeking to “bring back” the less observant. But what about the Jews who were forced to adopt Islam?

After reading "Arabs of Jewish Descent in Israel" I couldn’t help but wonder whether anyone has focussed on the descendants of Jews who now call themselves Moslems and, in particular, those who now seek their national self-expression as “Palestinians”. Considering the degree to which religion and nationalism are for the most part related to one’s state of mind, one might ask whether anyone has attempted to appeal to the minds of even a segment of the “Palestinian” population on the basis that they consider returning to their Jewish roots. And if they do wish to return, are we prepared to accept them?

I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised to learn today that considerable effort has in fact already gone into examining some of these very issues. Much of this is described on a website – “The Engagement” – which contains some rather interesting material, including: articles, videos, presentations & the full text of an intriguing book written by Israeli physicist Tsvi Misinai entitled “The Roots and Solution to the Problem in the Holy Land”.

In theory, Misinai’s proposed solution includes some very attractive elements. Of course, as is so often the case, progressing from the theoretical to the practical achievement of the desired ultimate outcome is undoubtedly a major challenge. Nevertheless, his overall approach to addressing the issues concerning the Land of Israel and its inhabitants turns much of the debate about Israel and the Palestinian Arabs on its head and points to new directions that have for the most part been totally ignored.

Sheldon

PS - To protect their identities, I deleted David’s surname & e-mail address and the name of the Arab village from the following e-mail. Should you wish to contact David, send me an e-mail and I’ll be happy to forward it to him.

Here's the e-mail Sheldon received:

-----Original Message-----
From: David _________
Sent: August 11, 2009 3:55 AM
To: Sheldon
Subject: Re: Wishful thinking? Perhaps we should be reclaimimg the people as well as the land

Hi Sheldon,

Just after the 6 day war I was sent to a village by the name of ___________ to search for weapons and P.L.O. while there I was assigned to take the local school principal to the school to search for weapons. On the way he told me that the whole village was of Jewish descent and told me the exact day in 638 when they were all forced to convert to Islam. He then told me that he is not sucking up to me as today they are all Muslim emphasis on the Muslim. It always bothered me that I didn't write it down at the time, both the date and the name of the principal but I was a combat soldier on a mission and didn't exactly carry writing utensils with me nor was it on my mind then. I was more worried about not getting into some ambush or something. The problem is that our Rabbis have no historical vision they only know how to stand on kotzo shel yud. I have no doubt that had we immediately after the 6 day war made a concentrated effort to convince forcibly converted arabs to come back to the fold maybe today there would be no question of the territories. Even now it would be possible but not with our rabbis who over 2000 years of diaspora have lost the meaning of nationhood.

David _______

Nostalgia of 'Forward to the Past'

Nachom Pachnik, a Gush Etzion resident, is a poet and holds yoga and laughter workshops. He recalls era of coexistence in Judea and Samaria in early 1980s:

The forgotten story

It’s the middle of summer and it’s hot. We’re in the midst of our vacation. About 30 children leave the community of Beit-El aboard a municipal bus and travel to the nearby town, Ramallah. The minibus enters town, crosses it, and climbs up a narrow and steep road until it reaches a Palestinian hotel. The children go into the lobby screaming with joy, and from there they head directly to the swimming pool, where they’ll enjoy themselves alongside Palestinian children

This story is not taken from the distant future, but rather, from the not-so-distant past. It was the end of the 1970s and beginning of the cheerful 1980s: Back then, war was about playfully “fighting” Palestinian children at the pool. We did not understand their language, but we were able to communicate without words.

...And here is yet another story about those days: A woman who today is happily married to one of the Jewish leaders in Judea and Samaria took driving lessons with a Palestinian instructor in one of the West Bank towns. Try to imagine the small details: How she leaves the house in the morning with her well-known husband, gets into the Arab instructor’s vehicle, and drives off. Just him and her, as she gently hold the wheel while entrusting her life in his hands. And she wasn’t the only woman to do it. Back then, many men and women learned how to drive in Arab towns.

I think back, with a sense of longing, to the buds of mutual respect that were growing between us, the Jewish residents in Judea and Samaria and the Palestinians, and my heart aches.

...my mother took me shopping in Ramallah...I recall how we used to stop for fuel at the gas stations of al-Bireh, Ramallah. How we traveled in their cabs and purchased goats from Palestinian shepherds...

...This was reality until the stone throwing started, followed by the Molotov cocktails, and finally the gunshots and shells and our military operations.

...What enabled all of this to happen? It was an atmosphere of familiarity and an initial sense of accepting the other that were prevalent in Judea and Samaria back then...I completely believe that if we invest our energies and talents in becoming mutually familiar with our Palestinian cousins, if we learn to respect them and they learn to respect us, if we accept their presence here and they accept our presence – we’ll be able to spare the settlement enterprise another round of destruction and another expulsion...

...Quite a few Jewish residents, many of them young ones, are interested in embarking on the path of peace. However, the process has to be parallel. The Palestinians also have to get to know us, recognize us, and educate their children to know that we are no monsters...

Flash!!! Drive-by Shooting Near Maaleh Levona

Channel One TV just reported two wounded in drive-by shooting near Maaleh Levona, close to Shiloh.

And Ynet:


2 Israelis lightly injured in West bank shooting

Two men reported Palestinians opened fire at their car from passing vehicle. Injured evacuated to Jerusalem hospital, IDF searching area for shooters

08.12.09, 21:21 / Israel News

Two Israelis were lightly wounded near Givat Haroeh outpost in the West Bank Wednesday evening, apparently by shrapnel. The two reported that Palestinians opened fire at their vehicle.

The injured were evacuated to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem and the IDF launched searches for the shooters. Bullet marks have been found on the car.

An initial investigation revealed that while the car was moving between the settlement of Eli to Maale Levona, fire was opened at it, possibly from another vehicle.

Two of the three passengers were injured but managed to get to the entrance of Maale Levona, where they alerted security forces and Magen David Adom to the scene.

Will The Progressive Left Now Boycott the NYTImes?

Well, that's what Haaretz reported:

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman lectures IDF brass on visits to Arab states

Senior New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gave a lecture last week to a number of members of the IDF General Staff. He spoke to them about his impressions of his recent visits to Arab countries.

Friedman visited Israel and the territories last week and published a two-part column on the situation in the territories after most IDF checkpoints were removed and Palestinian security forces moved in.

Friedman met personally with IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi during his visit, and spoke to the deputy chief of staff, the head of Military Intelligence, the head of the Home Front Command and the head of the planning branch.

Ain't that the darndest.

Should we launch a boycott of Friedman or the NYTimes for cooperation with the meanest military-machine in the Middle East?

Or should we question the intelligence of whoever organized this meeting?

Sweet News

At Shiloh, we've had beehives for honey production for at least two decades as have other communities.

But, it's always good to know you're being copied.

From

Israel looks to West Bank beekeepers to meet honey demands

The hive in Eli is just one of about 200 that have been constructed in West Bank settlements since January. Now that the harvest season has begun, the honey will soon be collected and marketed throughout the country.

However the goal of the project, which is being carried out in conjunction with Tel Aviv University and the University Center in Ariel, is not just to enable the beekeepers to make money. It is primarily intended to examine the West Bank's suitability for the cultivation of bees.

This project was prompted by the fact that Israel's consumption of honey has risen steadily in recent years, and local production can no longer keep up with demand. Therefore, some 500 tons of honey a year are being imported, at an annual cost of about $2 million.

...It is very easy to plant it with vegetation that consumes little water while making the land suitable for bee cultivation, explains Dr. Miriam Billig of the Ariel-based R&D Center - Samaria and Jordan Rift, which is also involved in the project.

The current study is examining the most suitable vegetation to plant as well as the quality and quantity of the resultant honey. Among others, both rosemary and eucalyptus were found to produce good results. Moreover, both grow year-round and consume very little water, making them ideal for bee cultivation.

For Ben Sa'adon, who maintains hives in both Eli and Har Bracha, it has been a learning experience....he is content. "We live on a wonderful bit of land, where our forefathers grew grapes, made wine and also produced honey. We try to love the land, and the land loves us back."

Agha & Malley Are At It - Again

Hussein Agha and Rober Malley have an op-ed in...the NYTimes (how'd you guess?).

The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything


Excerpts and comments and I'll keep it short:

1.

Bowing to American pressure, Mr. Netanyahu conceded the principle of a Palestinian state, but then described it in a way that stripped it of meaningful sovereignty.

Anything truly 'meaningful', well, means existential survival danger of Israel: uncontrolled weapons imports; alliances with other countries; unchecked refugee return; influx of other various terrorists; etc.

2.

The dueling discourses speak to something far deeper than and separate from Palestinian statehood. Mr. Netanyahu underscores that Israel must be recognized as a Jewish state — and recalls that the conflict began before the West Bank or Gaza were occupied. Palestinians, in turn, reject recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, uphold the refugees’ rights and maintain that if Israel wants real closure, it will need to pay with more than mere statehood.

Exactly. But the 'conversation' or 'communication', rather than 'discourse', was initiated by the Arbs who reacted and responded to increased Jewish immigration and the recogniztion of the world of our patrimonial rights to the Land of Israel in extreme and blind violence.

3.

The exchange, for the first time in a long while, brings the conflict back to its historical roots, distills its political essence and touches its raw emotional core.

So, is that bad for the Jews, bad for the Arabs, good for who?

Who will lose out?


4.

The modern Palestinian national movement, embodied in the Palestine Liberation Organization, has been, above all, a refugee movement — led by refugees and focused on their plight.

Really? And here I thought it was about killing Jews and preventing a Jewish state from being established. What does he mean by "modern"? There was no 'ancient' movement, at least not, for sure, as ancient as the Jews. It only started in the early 1920s and only due to the Jews.

5.

The ultimate territorial outcome almost certainly will be found within the borders of 1967.

Within? Don't they mean "without"? Or do they mean the 1947 borders?

6.

...the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

Exactly. But moreso: will there be a Jewish state if the Arabs have their way?

Explaining The Kooks on Israel

Stephanie Gutmann was a journalist in Manhattan for about 16 years. She is the author of The Kinder, Gentler Military: Can America's Gender-Neutral Fighting Force Still Win Wars? and The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy and this is from her op-ed:

Israel is just too successful for the losers of the Leftist intelligentsia

...George Gilder has just come out with a new book, entitled The Israel Test...The thrust of The Israel Test is that the real issue behind support (it doesn’t have to be unconditional support) or disapproval of Israel (he’s talking about significant disapproval, the kind we see marching in Trafalgar Square draped in keffiyehs) are people’s deepest, most primal feelings about achievement. Do you admire achievement and think it should be encouraged? Or do you reflexively distrust it, think it comes at the expense of someone else, and seek to limit it? The issue comes up because Israel, against formidable odds, has become a powerhouse in the fields of bio tech and high tech (industries Gilder particularly admires) while also hosting healthy music, design, and literature sectors.

...his tone is a bit too over-the-top for me, but I think he’s getting at something important here. For me it’s the more basic point that attitudes about Israel often don’t really seem to be about Israel, that tiny scrap of rocky land, squeezed between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

After spending several years doing research for a book on media coverage of the conflict, I began to sense that Israel/Palestine is like a Rorschach test, a projective screen for peoples’ personal sense of grievance. There was the housewife in Tennessee who apparently devoted all her time in between laundry loads and dishing out Hamburger Helper to her kids to a website which meticulously catalogued Israel’s supposed injustices against Palestinians. There was the retired man in New York state who used hallucinogenic Nazi imagery (”the storm troopers ascend the stair; there is the knock on the door…”) in a newspaper letter to describe what he “knew” Israel was doing to Palestinians on a daily basis in the disputed territories of the West Bank.

Criticisms of Israel are legitimate – as are criticism of the US, the UK, and the Republic of New Guinea – but you have to suspect that “something else is going on” as the psychologists put it, when you see the level of passion, the seething, usually coming from people who’ve spent little time in the area. There are dozens of human rights and disputed territory issues about which they could stew and fume – Darfur, Tibet, Kashmir – but it’s Israel/Palestine that seem to attract people like a magnet.

...Gilder identifies the out-sized and misplaced passions as coming from conditioned distrust of achievement. But world attitudes are also based on a canonization of victimhood. In these days of canonized victimhood, survival, particularly if it has involved aggression (even if that aggression is in self defense) is always suspect. At the start of the period known as “the second intifada”, a Palestinian leader told New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, “We will win this conflict because we die better.” He was right...Israelis simply aren’t dying well enough for the intelligentsia of the world.

This Is Clarification?

ICRC clarifies



Sir, - Moshe Dann's op-ed of July 24 "How settlements became 'illegal,'" contained a number of misrepresentations with regard to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), two of which I would like to put right.

First, the ICRC did not "make up the law" which considers the settlements to be illegal. This law, also known as the law of occupation, is part of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), the law applicable in times of armed conflict, including situations of belligerent occupation. Occupation law is encoded in the Hague Regulations of 1907 and in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, both drafted and agreed upon by States.

[this is obfuscation. what Moshe meant was that in the 1970s, no formal court or international legal body had delivered any judicial-like decision, so by adopting the position of "illegality" as regards Jewish communities, the ICRC was indeed 'making up the law']

The applicability of this law to the West Bank is widely accepted by the international community, including the UN. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the transfer of the civilian population of the occupying power into the occupied territory. The establishment of settlements, as a form of population transfer into occupied territory, is therefore forbidden under IHL.

[no, the "establishment of settlements" is not a form of transfer. moving Jews out of territory assigned to them by the League of Nations as their national homeland, while assuring them of the 'right of close settlement on the land', as the Mandate reads, is true transfer as the sometimes successful attempts by Arabs to kick Jews out of their homes during the Mandate period was ethnic cleansing]

Second, the ICRC has never condemned or accused Israel of "illegal occupation" because it is not the role of IHL or the mandate of the ICRC to make determinations regarding the legality of occupation; this is another area of international law (known as jus ad bellum) which is governed by the UN Charter. Once a situation exists which factually amounts to an occupation, however, as is undoubtedly the situation in the West Bank, the ICRC works for the faithful application of the relevant rules of IHL in accordance with the mandate given to it by the international community.

[ah, "settlements" are "illegal" but the "occupation is not "illegal"? does Monsieur Wettach think we are idiots?]

The ICRC will therefore continue its dialogue with the Israeli authorities on the issue of the settlements and their humanitarian implications while strictly adhering to its humanitarian, neutral, impartial and independent nature.

PIERRE WETTACH

Head of ICRC Delegation

Israel Occupied & Autonomous Territories Tel Aviv

Hillary A Bit Touchy? (Updated)

Either that or her below-the-waist bulge is problematic.

P.S.

Here.

(Kippa tip: RA)

==============

UPDATE

Hillary’s KO in the Congo on Monday made the covers of both New York tabloids. Using tough hand gestures not seen since “The Sopranos” went off HBO, Hillary snapped back at an African college student who asked about the growing influence of China on Africa and then, according to the translator, wanted to know: “What does Mr. Clinton think?”

It turned out that the student was trying to ask how President Obama felt about it. But before he was able to clarify, the secretary of state flared: “Wait, you want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not the secretary of state. I am.”

This raw, competitive response showed that the experiment in using the Clintons as a tandem team on diplomacy may not be going as smoothly as we had hoped; once more, as with health care, the conjugal psychodrama drags down the positive contribution the couple can make on policy.

At Tuesday’s State Department briefing, Assistant Secretary P.J. Crowley explained that Hillary was particularly irritated to feel overshadowed by men in Africa, where she is pushing her “abiding theme” of “empowering women.”

Nice try, P.J. But we all know Hillary could just as well have made the same comment in Paris. (And looking unhinged about your marriage on an international stage hardly empowers women.) She may have been steamed about Bill celebrating his upcoming 63rd birthday in Las Vegas with his posse. The Times’s Adam Nagourney irritated Clinton Inc. when he reported that Bill went to the pricey Craftsteak restaurant at the MGM Grand HoteltMonday night with Hollywood moguls Steve Bing and Haim Saban, and former advisers Terry McAuliffe and Paul Begala, among others.

Nothing Less, Goes Black

Ian Black, that is.

Goes very black.

To him,

"Israel's eviction of Palestinian families from the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah" is "the ugly face of ethnic cleansing and the creation of new 'facts on the ground' that make nonsense of hopes for any movement in the moribund peace process."

And he doesn't think that

the pro-Nazi and antisemitic views of a long-dead Palestinian leader are relevant to today's struggle.

Glad he went back to the UK.

For $50 A Day You Too Can Be An Active Anti-Zionist

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions has announced a "rebuilding camp" for the summer:

August 2 – August 15, 2009

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) is proud to announce its 7th annual summer rebuilding camp...During two weeks we will construct two homes from the foundations to the roof, and hand the key to the families...For two weeks in August, camp participants engage in building activities punctuated by evening meetings with Palestinian and Israeli political figures, activists, academics and artists, including tours throughout the West Bank, Jerusalem and Israel...For two weeks the work site is a hive of construction, interaction, learning, discussion, and constructive resistance [and subversive activity].

We offer transportation to the camp every morning at 8am leaving from the New Gate in East Jerusalem...Suggested donation: $50 for the day; $25 for ½ a day.

The cost covers meals, all activities on site, and transport from the Old City to Beit Arabyia and back, and contribution to construction costs.

If you ask me, $50 is a rip-off expense.


And if we're talking about money, check this:

ICAHD Funding:

* ICAHD has received funding from the EU since at least 2000. In 2005, this NGO received 472,786 Euros for 24 months from the EU through the Partnerships for Peace program (EU link has expired, from NGO Monitor report, December 18, 2008). In 2008, PfP funding for ICAHD was not renewed.
* ICAHD received (p.3) $80,000 from the NGO Development Committee (NDC) which is made up of the pooled funding from the governments of Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, and Sweden in 2008-9.
* ICAHD’s annual budget (NIS):

2003 - 1,837,178
2004 - 1,928,743
2005 - 2,220,975
2006 - 2,346,196

* For 2005 and 2006, EU funding represented approximately half of ICAHD’s budget

In 2008, EU funding was halted.

I wonder who really needs the $50.

A Double-Take News Item: Relocated from Hebron

Upon reading this, I did a double-take:

A monument will be unveiled in Hebron today for residents who were relocated from the northern Labrador Inuit community in 1959. The plaque will include the apology from the provincial government, as well as the names of those who were forced to move away from the community. In January 2005, Premier Danny Williams apologized on behalf of the government, for the way in which the decision to close the communities of Hebron and Nutak was made and for the difficulties experienced by the residents and families, as a result of the closures. Today's ceremony will be attended by former residents or their descendants, as well as Nunatsiavut President Jim Lyall, Premier Williams, and ministers and officials from both governments. Lyall says it's an historic event for Labrador Inuit and represents the end of a sad chapter in history. A similar ceremony will be held at a later date at Nutak.

Shades of 1929, Hebron, Land of Israel.

Pollard, AIPAC, Antisemitism

Inter alia on Pollard in the Washington Post:

The AIPAC Case and Prejudice

By Gary Wasserman

The conspiracy case against two former AIPAC lobbyists came to an inglorious end in May when the government dropped all charges after 3 1/2 years of pre-trial maneuvers.

...the most curious element of the case is why it was ever brought. Why set up a sting unless you believe there's some underlying pattern of wrongdoing to be exposed? What were the counterespionage people after?

After three years of working on a book on this case, I am still not sure. But now the wired informant in the middle of the affair, Larry Franklin, has raised the specter of bias...Anti-Semitism was "part of this investigation and may have been an initial incitement of this investigation."

If so, Ground Zero would be the 23-year-old case of Jonathan Pollard. Here one had a real spy, an American Jew working for the Navy who, out of concern for Israel as well as cash, copied and delivered thousands of classified documents. After his arrest in the 1980s, the belief took hold within counterintelligence circles that he was part of a larger spy ring. This led to the search for a "Mr. X," a high-ranking national security official who had helped direct Pollard to needed documents and continued to operate within the government. So the creation myth was born.

That no Mr. X was ever found is beside the point. More relevant is that Pollard could support an operational frame for organizing and understanding a murky, dangerous world. This anti-Zionist concept holds that Israeli objectives run contrary to U.S. national interests; that many American Jews, including those in senior policymaking positions, suffer from divided loyalties; and that pro-Israel political influence holds sway over U.S. government decisions.

While this politically incorrect frame is not going to be discussed in public speeches, its outline appears with a vengeance in the Rosen-Weissman case...

Europe's Demographic Problem (Not Israel's)

You always wanted to know:

A fifth of European Union will be Muslim by 2050

Britain, Spain and Holland will have an even higher proportion of Muslims in a shorter amount of time, an investigation by The Telegraph shows.

Pal. Style Numbers Inflation But What About Percentages?

In this story, it seems the Pals. are inflating numbers of Jewish communities but the real surprise for them is the percentage I think I figured out at end:

RAMALLAH, August 2, 2009 (WAFA)- The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), said the number of occupation sites in the West Bank totaled 440 [??!!], 144 of which colonies, 96 were outposts inside the colonial boundaries, 109 were outposts outside the colonial boundaries, 43 occupation sites were classified as other, and 48 were military bases.

The PCBS released Sunday a statistical report about the Israeli colonies in the Palestinian Territory (OPT) for the year 2008...

According to colonies distribution, the data shows that, most of them were in Jerusalem Governorate (26 colonies) and 16 of them were annexed by Israel [Jerusalem neighborhoods?]. At the end of 2007, 38.3% was beyond the reach of Palestinians of the West Bank total area. The area of built-up land in different occupation sites reached 235,209 thousand square meters by the end of 2006.

Available data indicate that the number of colonizers in the West Bank reached 500,670 colonizers by the end of 2008; most of them live in Jerusalem Governorate (261,885 colonizers) 198,458 of them in (J1), then Ramallah & Al-Bireh Governorate (87,059 colonizers), then Bethlehem Governorate (54,111 colonizers), then Salfit Governorate (30,824 colonizers). While the minimum number of colonizers, 1,328 colonizers are in Tubas Governorate.

Btw, the 2007 PA Census results are, at page 156 or 35 in English section:

Final results show that the total number of the West Bank population on the midnight of 31/11-1/12/2007, was 2,350,583 people

So, Jews are, what, 21% of the indigenous population?

Not bad.

Apologetica Friedman

Tom Friedman absolves the fanatic, murderous Arabs of the territory of "Palestine" of all responsibility for their fate and the fate of the Jews they kill:

For Palestinians, long trapped between burgeoning Israeli settlements and an Israeli occupation army, subject to lawlessness in their own cities and the fecklessness of their own political leadership...

And he goes on the praise, sickeningly, the new security forces the US is training.

New Poll Findings

From the latest Peace Index Poll:

Sixty-six percent endorse Netanyahu’s view that Israel should continue the construction given that Jerusalem as a whole is Israel’s capital and there is no controversy over Israel’s right to build anywhere in the city. Only 27%, the overwhelming majority of them Meretz and Labor voters, oppose Netanyahu’s position while the rest do not know. The positions on this question accord with the distribution of the public’s views on the Netanyahu government’s handling of Israel’s foreign policy in general: 53% assess it positively while only 33% judge it negatively. A clear majority of voters for all the parties, with the exceptions of Labor and Meretz, currently view the government’s foreign policy positively.

Another Two Clips of Dancing at A Wedding

The Baizer/Halamish Wedding at Beir Orot:

Haveil Havalim #229

Here

One of Those "Oh MY" Posts

A French-Israeli man from Sderot is demanding that the European Union shoulder the cost of making his home rocket-proof, in a precedent-setting lawsuit against the EU which the man intends to file tomorrow in Brussels.

In the lawsuit, which will be filed to the European Commission, petitioner Eyal Katorza cites Article 3.5 of the European Treaty, which states the Union will "contribute to the protection of its citizens" regardless of their whereabouts.

Quotable Words

The demand for a cessation of settlement construction will have no impact on the political process as long as they are not telling the Israeli and Palestinian public what will happen with the half-million Israelis who already live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. How many of them will have to be evacuated? How much money will this cost and who will pay for it? Evacuating 7,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip cost more than NIS 10 billion.

Even if only 100,000 Jews are evacuated from the West Bank the move will cost, on the basis of this estimate, some NIS 150 billion - about 50 percent of the national budget for an entire year. It is true that it amounts to "only" about 8 percent of the cost of the American war in Iraq to date, and maybe for the sake of peace in the Middle East the U.S. administration would be willing to invest another 8 percent in the area, but someone in Washington must articulate this clearly.

Zvi Bar'el

Follow The J Street Money Trail

If you go here, and review the IRS 900 form of J Street, on page 5 you'll discover that Davidi Gilo is President and a Director of J Street.

Who is Davidi Gilo?

This site reveals that:

Davidi Gilo has served as our Chairman of the Board of Directors since 1996. Mr. Gilo served as our Chief Executive Officer from April 1999 until October 2000, and was reappointed as Chief Executive Officer in October 2001 until April 2007. Mr. Gilo also served as our Interim Chief Financial Officer from October 2001 until August 2002. From October 1998 until November 1999, Mr. Gilo served as chairman of the board of directors of DSP Communications, Inc., a developer of chip sets for wireless personal communication applications, and from June 1999 until November 1999, he served as DSP Communications; chief executive officer. Mr. Gilo also served as the chairman of the board of directors of DSP Communications from its founding in 1987 through November 1999. Mr. Gilo served as chairman of the board of directors of Zen Research N.V., a developer of technology and intellectual property for use in CD and DVD optical storage devices, between July 1995 and December 1999, and served as Zen Research plc;s chairman from April 2000 to October 2003. Between 1987 and 1993, Mr. Gilo was president and chief executive officer of DSP Group, Inc., and he served as chairman of the board of directors of DSP Group from 1987 until April 1995. Mr. Gilo is a director of several privately-held corporations and is highly active with several US and Israeli based charities.

And who is this "our"?

Vyyo.

Here:

Vyyo, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides cable and wireless broadband access solutions for residential and business services in the United States, Malaysia, the People’s Republic of China, and internationally. It operates in two segments, Cable Solutions and Wireless Solutions...Vyyo’s products are designed for use by utilities, cable television, telecommunication, and wireless Internet service providers. The company was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Norcross, Georgia.

I also found this, with an Israeli spin-off (with emphasis on "off"):

Vyyo faces $45M buyout tender from group that includes former chairman, CEO
By Mike Robuck, CedMagazine.com - October 24, 2008

An investment group led by former Vyyo chairman and CEO Davidi Gilo has extended its offer to buy the company.

Vision Acquisition Corp., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Gilo Ventures II,(*) made an offer to buy the 7,967,781 shares of Vyyo’s common stock for 17 cents per share. As of Wednesday, the number of outstanding shares represented 53 percent of the shares that are not held by Vision Acquisition or its affiliates as of Sept. 15, and includes debt and equity.

Norcross, Ga.-based Vyyo announced that its 3 GHz spectrum overlay was in use by Cox Communications last year (story here), but the company has struggled to find additional cable operator customers. In March of last year, Vyyo announced that Singapore-based Starhub was using its 3 Ghz spectrum overlay.

In January, Vyyo shuttered its research and development facilities in Israel, as well as laid off 70 employees in that country.

And this:

Davidi Gilo, has more than 20 years of technology and business expertise and a proven track record of innovation and execution in identifying and fostering the growth of emerging trends and technologies including DSP chips, cell phones, medical information technology and broadband networks...During the last 20 years he created over $4 billion in shareholder value and raised approximately $3 billion in equity and debt to his various business ventures.

Okay, that's business, or part of it. What interested me?

Well, I am a graduate of the Gilo Center at the Hebrew University for my MA studies.

Here:

The Gilo Center for Citizenship, Democracy and Civic Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was founded in October 2001. The Center's establishment and activity is made possible by the collaboration and generosity of the following supporting institutions: The Gilo Family Foundation

How involved philanthropically politically involved is Gilo?

Here:

Davidi Gilo Contribution List in 2008

$2,300 09/26/2008 G SCHAKOWSKY FOR CONGRESS - Democrat
$2,300 09/26/2008 G BERKOWITZ FOR CONGRESS - Democrat
$2,300 09/21/2008 G MASSA FOR CONGRESS - Democrat
$1,300 09/21/2008 G DARCY BURNER FOR CONGRESS - Democrat
$2,300 09/20/2008 G SESTAK FOR CONGRESS - Democrat
$2,300 09/20/2008 G TOM ALLEN FOR SENATE - Democrat
$2,300 09/20/2008 G JEFF MERKLEY FOR OREGON - Democrat
$1,300 09/20/2008 G HALVORSON FOR CONGRESS - Democrat
$2,300 08/27/2008 P MADIA FOR U S CONGRESS - Democrat Farm Labor
$2,300 06/30/2008 G SHULMAN FOR CONGRESS - Democrat
$1,000 06/30/2008 G HALVORSON FOR CONGRESS - Democrat
$2,500 06/30/08 P DEMOCRATIC SENATORIAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE
$2,300 06/30/2008 P STEVE COHEN FOR CONGRESS - Democrat
$2,300 06/30/2008 P OBAMA FOR AMERICA - Democrat
$1,000 06/30/2008 G KILROY FOR CONGRESS - Democrat
$1,000 06/30/2008 G JSTREETPAC
$1,000 06/30/2008 G JSTREETPAC
$2,300 06/30/2008 G JSTREETPAC
$1,000 06/30/2008 P JSTREETPAC
$2,300 06/30/2008 P JSTREETPAC
$1,000 06/29/2008 P DARCY BURNER FOR CONGRESS - Democrat
$5,000 02/25/2008 P JSTREETPAC
$5,000 12/31/2007 P JSTREETPAC

And that's just 2008. There's more there:

2006 Transaction Count/Amount 1/$26,000
2004 Transaction Count/Amount 7/$25,000
2002 Transaction Count/Amount 5/$5,000
2000 Transaction Count/Amount 19/$1,127,500

So, he mixes business with pleasure:

On October 11, 2000 Gilo convened a press conference to proclaim the inauguration of offices in Israel, funded by $100 million of his own money.

The fund's philosophy is simple. "We believe people are the key to all successful endeavors...We also work with people we like," he said...He was expected to be a new daddy for Israel's promising community of hungry startups.

Yet somehow the dream seems to have gone awry, at least for said startups. Somehow he seems not to be investing less in Israel's fledgling firms, and more in companies affiliated with him or his family.

These were the people helped him turn into one of Israel's richest entrepreneurs, by selling DSP Communications to Intel Corporation (Nasdaq:INTC) for $1.6 billion in 1999.

...Advocate Avi Fischer, chairman of Gilo Ventures, is a childhood friend of Gilo. He is a managing partner at the Fischer, Bahar and Chen law offices, and has advised several of Gilo's companies since 1985. Fischer served as a director at DSP Group, and served for seven years as a director at Vyyo (Nasdaq:VYYO), another of Gilo's companies. He also serves as co-chairman of the Ganden Holdings investment company, which is controlled by Israeli businessman Nochi Dankner.

Ilan Judkiewicz, a high-ranking official in the Gilo group, will be running Gilo Ventures' operations in Israel. But he doesn't work out of the company's offices in Daniel Frisch Street of Tel Aviv. He's moved to Cupertino, Califonia.

...the Israeli offices of Gilo Ventures seem to be bereft of life. The office was supposed to employ three or four people. But its chief job seems to be maintaining the troubled companies Gilo is busy reviving

.

I am going to stop now but it is obvious that with J Street, there is more that meets the eye.



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

(*)

Gilo Ventures is a venture capital firm that seeks companies positioned for high growth technology markets with a US $1+ billion market potential. It prefers to invest in companies with proprietary technology. It also considers companies that possess first mover advantage and the potential to capture significant market share quickly. Gilo Ventures focus primarily on technologies and services for carrying and managing broadband communication over various platforms including fiber optics, wireless, copper. Its investments typically range in size from US $250,000 to $20 million.

Keeps Rolling Along

I blogged about exploiting a UN award which used the term "settlements" for the purpose of promoting the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

My friend, David Ha'Ivri put it up at his web site. Arutz 7 copied it.

What next?

Ma'an New Agency reported on it (and it was copied here):

Bethlehem - Ma'an/Agencies - A group of Israeli settlers has launched a campaign for the United Nations Habitat Prize in "human settlement," the West Bank-based Israeli Channel Seven reported on Wednesday.

The annual prize, the Habitat Scroll of Honor, is handed out annually to acknowledge "outstanding contributions in developing and improving settlements and the quality of urban life," according to a fabricated quote on Channel Seven's English-language website.

The awards are actually presented for "outstanding contributions in various fields such as shelter provision, highlighting the plight of the homeless, leadership in post conflict reconstruction," and finally improving human settlements, also known as cities or towns.

Channel Seven quoted "Shomron Liaison Office" director David Ha'Ivri as saying that by voting, "Now you can show your appreciation for the dedicated pioneers of the Jewish communities in the Shomron," a Hebrew word meaning the northern West Bank in English.

But Ha'Ivri and his ilk may run into a number of problems in the application process, which according to the UN includes suggestions that projects have a "positive impact." Applicants are asked to list "types of beneficiaries (e.g. women, children, poor, war victims)," and to describe "how long the positive impact has been sustained so far."

However, Israeli settlements are all but universally considered detrimental to the indigenous population whose land was stolen to build them, and even a large percentage of Israeli society believes the colonies are immoral and destructive.

Award judges may also be concerned by information obtained from the applicants' required background submissions, including "substantive information about the organization or individual being nominated including their mission, goals, history, size," and length of experience, which if undertaken honestly would include admissions of radicalism and religious fanaticism.

But the eighth award criterium could derail the whole application in its entirety, as it asks for "a list of references, articles, publications, media reports about the initiative starting with the most recent ones and where possible, send copies of the actual articles as an annex."

The most recent winners of the prestigious award, which has been presented annually since 1989, have included efforts to improve shelter and urban services.

If the settlers are successful, they will win a plaque engraved with the name of the winner and their achievement will be presented during the Global Observance of World Habitat Day on 5 October 2009, according to the award's website.

Five initiatives will be selected, and winners will be announced in October.

Will we win?

Would You Like To Listen To Me? Literally

If you go here, you can hear an interview with me over Arutz 7 radio.

Click on Part 2.

I'm speaking about Shiloh, its history and archeology in honor of Tu B'Av.

It's...Obama Chamberlain

Found here.

Sidney Zion, In Memoriam

Sidney Zion, a Daily News columnist (and more), covered the Middle East since the Six Day War for numerous publications. He won the Overseas Press Club award, with Uri Dan, in 1979 for a series in The New York Times Magazine titled "Untold Story of the Mideast Talks."

He passed away last Sunday.

Here's from his "The Palestinians Have a State" from 2003:

It's called Jordan.

...The Oslo peace process lies in ruin, and the road map plan is off to a shaky start, due to the inability of the parties involved to agree on a formulation of principles concerning the right, or lack thereof, of the Palestinians to determine their own future on the West Bank of the river Jordan -- the area universally regarded as the historic, political, geographic, and demographic landmass of Palestine.

But...a lot of well-intentioned people will tell you that there is not now and never has been a Palestinian nation.

The problem with this notion is that it is not true. There is and has been a Palestinian nation since May 14, 1946 - only two years to the day before there was an Israeli nation.

Originally called the Kingdom of Transjordan, that nation is now the Kingdom of Jordan. It lives on the East Bank of the Jordan River and comprises 80 percent of the historic, political, geographic, and demographic landmass of Palestine. It has a population of three million people, virtually all of whom were either born there or arrived there from the other 20 percent of Palestine - Israel plus the ``occupied territories`` known as the ``West Bank.``

...These boundaries were universally acknowledged from the end of World War I until 1946, when Great Britain created by fiat the independent Kingdom of Transjordan - thus lopping off four-fifths of Palestine and handing it to the Arabs, in direct violation of the mandate over the territory granted to Great Britain by the League of Nations...

...Israel - it is said - now controls the whole of Palestine. Its refusal to cede completely the territory occupied after that war - from East Jerusalem to the Jordan River, plus the Gaza Strip - is therefore considered the bar to national rights or 'self-determination' of the Palestinian Arabs.

So goes the conventional wisdom of much of the world, and, because it is so widely believed, it is naturally thought to be fair and objective. No matter that it is based on an incredible distortion of history, politics, geography, and demography.

Yet, unless this distortion is corrected, there is little hope for anything close to enduring Middle East peace. A brief look at relatively recent events puts the problem in perspective.

Before World War I, the word 'Palestine' had no clear-cut geographical denotation and represented no political identity. In 1920, however, the Allied powers conferred on Great Britain a 'mandate' over the territory formerly occupied by Turkey. It was called the Palestine Mandate and included the land on both sides of the Jordan River.

This mandate was confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922 and remained unchanged during the League`s lifetime.

The mandate incorporated the Balfour Declaration, the famous 1917 proclamation by which Great Britain committed itself to provide a homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people; it did not provide a homeland for the Arabs living there, but it did protect their 'civil and religious,' although not their political, rights.

However, two months after the League of Nations approved the mandate, Winston Churchill, then Britain`s colonial secretary, changed the rules of the game.

"One afternoon in Cairo," as Churchill later boasted, he simply took all the land east of the Jordan River and inserted the Hashemite Abdullah - the great-grandfather of the present King Abdullah - as its emir.

But he did not free it from the mandate, and the people living on the East Bank were in all respects Palestinians. The people living there traveled under Palestinian passports, as did the Jews and Arabs living on the West Bank. But the whole country was effectively ruled by Britain...Britain`s East Bank representative, Sir Alec Kirkbride, [said] this land, constituting 80 percent of the mandate, was "intended to serve as a reserve of land for use in the resettlement of Arabs once the National Home for the Jews in Palestine, which they were pledged to support, became an accomplished fact. There was no intention at that stage of forming the territory east of the river Jordan into an independent Arab state."

Indeed, Churchill persuaded the Zionists to go along with the suspension of Jewish immigration to the East Bank on the grounds that this would mollify the indigenous Arab population on the West Bank - then 200,000 strong - and thus make possible a Jewish homeland west of the Jordan.

Of course, it did no such thing; instead, it whetted Arab appetites for the whole of Palestine, an objective which was nearly achieved several time: the Palestinian Arab uprising against the Jews in 1936; the British White Paper of 1939, which cut off the Jewish immigration to the Holy Land, locking European Jews in with Hitler; and the united Arab war against the newly proclaimed State of Israel in 1948...what began in 1920 as a mandate to turn Palestine into a Jewish homeland turned into a reverse Balfour Declaration, creating an Arab nation in four-fifths of Palestine and leaving the Jews to fight for statehood against the Arabs on the West Bank.

The upshot: Jordan is now considered an immutable entity, as distinct from Palestine as are Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

But a country whose population is virtually all Palestinian can hardly be considered as something less than a Palestinian nation.

...When the Zionists agreed in 1922 to suspend immigration to the East Bank, in accordance with Churchill`s request, Vladimir Jabotinsky signed on.

But Jabotinsky -- the elegant, fiery Zionist leader who later became the father of the underground Irgun Zvai Leumi and the "eagle" of its commander, Menachem Begin -- changed his mind about the deal a year later after it became clear that the Jews had traded away most of the mandate for nothing.

...The Jabotinsky vision held that both sides of the Jordan belonged to Israel; he wrote a song about it: ``The West Bank is ours, and the East Bank is ours.``

Menachem Begin marched to this tune most of his life. For domestic political reasons he dropped it in his later years, but it was surprising, to say the least, that he did not even allude to it after he became prime minister.

Had he insisted on educating the world about the true history of Palestine, Begin could have cleared up the confusion and made a contribution toward peace.

Thus, if the world were to understand that Israel occupies only 20 percent of Palestine rather than 100 percent, would it not make a difference?

If it became clear that the Arab refugees and their children who crossed over to Jordan in 1948 did not enter a "host country" but rather the Arab part of their own country, would it not make a difference?

Of course it would make a difference.

Israel is being robbed of its political, historic, and geographic legitimacy while seeming to rob the Palestinians of a nation it already has.

...said the late Peter Bergson, who led the Hebrew Liberation Movement in the 1940's - "But if we paint Jordan as if it`s just another Arab nation, as if it`s Saudi Arabia, then the fight is on for the extinction of Israel in stages.

"Because," Bergson added, "if we insist that the whole of Palestine is the West Bank, anything we return is simply the fruit of a crime. But if we tell the truth, if we point out that 80 percent of the land is already in the hands of the Palestinian Arabs, everyone - here and around the world - will see this dispute for what it is."

...Indeed, no neighboring Arab nation really wants a separate state on the West Bank - not Egypt, not Saudi Arabia, not Syria, not Lebanon.

Some of them say they want it, but whosoever accepts rhetoric in the Middle East belongs in the U.S. State Department.

And this:

Don't Tell Me Brits Were Benign, from July 10th 1997

"The British love freedom almost as much as they love depriving people of it," wrote Ben Hecht. I know of no better history of the British Empire, whose sun just fell into the China Sea and barely flickers over Northern Ireland.

Misery followed the Union Jack across the seas and across the centuries. The world was its outhouse, however civilized it appeared at home. Check India, Palestine, Egypt, Hong Kong, Ireland check America on the Fourth of July.

So imagine my surprise and maybe yours when I read on this very page the other day the headline over a column by Charles Krauthammer: "Sun sets on Brit empire, but not on its fine legacy."

Krauthammer sees the handover of Hong Kong as a "melancholy" end to British colonial rule over the Pacific, and he waxes nostalgic over the "benevolent" empire, under which he was raised as a child in Montreal.

Montreal was maybe the exception that proved the rule, but oh, Charlie, don't sing "Melancholy Baby" to us about the Brits. Not a good Jew like you, who backs Israel to the hilt, and ought to know what the English did to your people.

Fifty years ago, the Hebrew Revolution was in full swing against the British occupation of Palestine. The Brits, who had closed off Jewish immigration to Palestine in 1939, on the eve of World War II, thus locking the Jews of Europe into Hitler's death camps, now had 100,000 troops in the Holy Land with the sole purpose of killing off a Jewish State. Against this, the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, and the tiny but lethal Stern group, fought a street revolution unparalleled in history. Never more than 5,000 strong, they blew up British installations, copped British arms and flogged and hanged in retaliation British soldiers.

Condemned in the world press as "terrorists," informed against, kidnaped, tortured by the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, they somehow managed to drive the British out of the Holy Land.

The Brits were brutal; as always the broken neck was their answer. In the spring and summer of 1947, they hanged Jewish patriots in Acre prison as a matter of course.

Dov Gruner, an Irgun soldier captured by the British, became the symbol of the Jewish revolt. His poignant letters from prison caught a little of the world's sympathy. The Brits hanged him anyway, and in secret, even as they invited his sister to visit him.

Few remember Dov Gruner in Israel, and far fewer remember him in America. Who, after all, knows that there was a Hebrew Revolution? Say the word and people shake their heads like a batter fighting off a fastball from Randy Johnson.

The reason is that Israel has denied its revolution, because the "wrong people" fought it. The official Jewish Army, the Haganah, laid down its arms in the midst of the fray. In the summer of 1946, the British arrested the leaders of the Jewish Agency, and that was that for their fight against the British.

"The Hebrews learn it backward, which is absolutely frightening," said Henry Higgins. In that vein, Israel had as its first leaders Ben-Gurion, Chaim Weizmann and Golda Meir those who collaborated with the English by opposing those who fought them, the Irgun and the Stern group.

When Menachem Begin finally took over in 1977, he was no longer a revolutionary. And so the history of the Hebrew Revolution has been buried like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Next year the Israelis celebrate the 50th year of the War of Independence, which they say began after the British left the country, when the Arab world attacked the new Jewish State.

It's as if our War of Independence was the War of 1812. Israel's real War of Independence was against the British Empire. A guy as wise as Charles Krauthammer would know this, if history hadn't been blotted out like a foggy day over London town.

Hague, Geneva, Palestine, Occupation

From a communication with Howard Grief, author of The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel Under International Law", commenting on some issues I raised:

Under the Hague Regulations of 1907, the definition of the juridical concept of “occupation” absolutely demands the existence of a previous or ousted sovereign from whom land was captured by a hostile state in war with it. If there was no such sovereign, then there cannot be by definition any belligerent occupation of land in accordance with Article 42 of the Hague Regulations. In such circumstances, neither the Hague Regulations nor the Fourth Geneva Convention would apply to the conquered land after the close of military operations...

In regard to Judea, Samaria and Gaza, their characterisation as Israeli “occupied territory” is wrong because these areas were specifically allotted to the Jewish People for the purpose of reconstituting the Jewish National Home and future Jewish State. This allocation was made under the Franco-British Boundary Convention of December 23, 1920. The provisions of this Convention were implicitly approved by the Council of the League of Nations when it confirmed the Mandate for Palestine on July 24, 1922. There was never any legal allocation of the territory to an Arab state or people. The U.N. Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947 which purported to make such an allocation was illegal in that it violated the then existing Article 5 of the Mandate for Palestine which prohibited the partition of the land. It was also illegal because the proposed partition plan violated Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, the purpose of which was to preserve the existing rights of the Jewish People to all of Palestine under the Mandate instrument, immune from any alteration until a trusteeship agreement could be concluded between the states directly concerned...Jewish rights to the whole country remain inviolable.

...after Israel liberated the territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza from Jordanian and Egyptian occupation respectively in the Six-Day War, it decided for reasons of demography and future peace prospects not to assert its lawful rights to these lands by applying Israel law to them, but chose instead to apply the laws of war by issuing various military proclamations to that effect, which contravened the existing Israeli constitutional law applicable to Eretz-Israel. This in turn led the whole world to believe that Judea, Samaria and Gaza were indeed subject to the rules of belligerent occupation since that is the natural meaning of what was done by the Government of Israel...The application of the laws of war to the liberated Jewish territories, instead of Israeli law, was done on the egregious advice of then Military Advocate-General, Meir Shamgar...

It is certainly true...that the [Israeli] Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the IDF “held territories” of Judea, Samaria and Gaza are governed by the rules of belligerent occupation as set down in the Hague Regulations and Fourth Geneva Convention. However, this did not necessarily mean that the “held territories” were in fact “occupied territories” under international law embodied in the laws of war...Had the Government not voluntarily agreed to the applicability of the laws of war by deliberate choice rather than by strict law, the Court would have found it necessary to adjudicate the issue of the legal status of the “held territories” to determine if they were in fact and law territories under occupation. Alternatively, the Court may have requested the Government of Israel to provide it with a certificate on the legal status of these territories. This was never done. Therefore to this day and despite appearances to the contrary, the Court has never pronounced a definitive legal opinion on the legal status of Judea, Samaria and Gaza preferring to leave this question in limbo for the Government to ultimately decide.

Despite the Court’s reluctance to determine their legal status, the existing constitutional law of Israel, as embodied in the Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance and the proclamations validated under this law’s umbrella as well as Section 11B of the Law and Administration Ordinance, does assume that Judea, Samaria and Gaza, being indisputable areas of the Land of Israel, legally belong to the Jewish People and hence the State of Israel and thus should be governed by Israeli law rather than by the laws of belligerent occupation...

The International Committee of the Red Cross which argues that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to Judea, Samaria and Gaza regardless of their legal status misrepresents or distorts the actual meaning of this Convention. As noted above, their stated position is true only while the war or military operations are still taking place. However, once the military phase of the war is terminated, the legal status of the conquered territory then becomes of crucial importance, for under Article 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the latter only continues to apply one year after the general close of military operations in the case of occupied territory for the duration of the occupation. To determine if “occupation” exists to justify the continued application of the Fourth Geneva Convention, one must then know exactly what the legal status of the conquered territory is. Who in fact has the legal right to govern this territory? Is it Jordan, Egypt, the local Arabs of the land, or Israel?

In the particular case of Judea and Samaria, Israel did not occupy Jordanian sovereign territory, but restored that territory to the Jewish People (which includes the State of Israel), to whom it originally belonged as an integral part of the Jewish National Home. Jordan’s acquisition was based on its illegal aggression and conquest of this land in the 1948 War of Independence, which it then illegally annexed on April 24, 1950. On the other hand, Israel’s re-acquisition of the same territory was based on the title it had inherited from the Jewish People who acquired it under international law by virtue of the considered decision of the Principal Allied Powers, who defeated Ottoman Turkey in World War I. That decision was founded on the Allied recognition of the Jewish historical connection with Palestine in both the First and Second Temple periods. In consequence of that recognition, the Allied Powers adopted the Balfour Declaration as the basis for governing Palestine and transformed the Declaration into an act of international law by means of the San Remo Resolution that was then incorporated into the preamble of the Mandate for Palestine. The boundaries of Mandated Palestine included Judea and Samaria, as confirmed by the Franco-British Boundary Convention of December 23, 1920. No title to this land was ever bestowed on the local Arab inhabitants.

In the case of Gaza, this land was never under Egyptian sovereignty and therefore it too cannot be legally designated as “occupied territory”.

...when France regained possession of Alsace-Lorraine in 1918 in World War I from Germany which had earlier acquired it in a war of conquest in 1871 (the Franco-Prussian War), a war provoked by the Prussian Chancellor, Otto Von Bismark as part of his plan to create a united German Empire. When France reconquered Alsace-Lorraine, the territory was not called “occupied Germen territory” even though it had previously been annexed by Germany and remained under German sovereignty for several decades. In like manner, Judea, Samaria and Gaza which historically and legally belonged to the Jewish People both in ancient days and upon the disposition of the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers, on April 24-25, 1920, at the San Remo Peace Conference, should never have been called “occupied Arab territory” or “enemy territory” but rather the liberated areas of the Jewish National Home returned to the bosom of the Jewish People and its assignee, the State of Israel.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has a self-serving interest in describing Judea, Samaria and Gaza as “occupied territories” since this allows it to assume the role of protector of the local Arab inhabitants in the Land of Israel and thus to massively intervene...

Inasmuch as Judea, Samaria and Gaza are not today nor have ever been Israeli occupied territories under international law, Israel is not debarred either by the Hague Regulations or by the Fourth Geneva Convention from sanctioning the building of Israeli settlements in the restored areas of the Jewish homeland. The contention...that Israel has no right to build these settlements is based on the flawed opinion of Theodor Meron that these lands were, for him, amazingly enough, “enemy territory”, rather than areas of the Jewish National Home, a mindset that originated not with Meron himself, but with Meir Shamgar, long before the Six-Day War erupted. This erroneous opinion of Meron was rejected by the Government of Israel at the time he gave it and he then emigrated to the United States. In establishing well over a hundred settlements in the restored areas of the Land of Israel, including the Golan Heights and at least half of Sinai, the Government thereby affirmed by that action alone that those areas could not be considered “occupied territory” but rather were sanctioned by Israel’s Law of Return which applies to the whole of the Land of Israel, not just the State itself...

Well, Now I Am Losing My Patience

Robert D. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic and an author (*), in a piece in the Atlantic Monthly, suggests that "more than democracy, Washington wants stability in the Middle East. That means leaning against the interests of the Jewish state" which leads to the idea that America (and its liberal elitist Jews I would add) are Losing Patience with Israel.

America’s foreign policy toward Israel, he writes, "been characterized by such an attitude of unsentimental realism."

But, at his conclusion, he becomes quite unreal. Maybe, because "In his book Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, published shortly after 9/11, Kaplan offered the opinion that political and business leaders should discard Christian/Jewish morality in public decision-making in favor of a pagan morality focused on the morality of the result rather than the morality of the means."

Excerpts from his latest piece:

Many, both in the Administration and in the wider Washington establishment, have simply lost patience with what they see as Israeli intransigence over settlements in occupied territories. This may not be fair, or even wholly logical, for the issue of settlements is highly complex. But the reality is that Washington’s quiet passions have turned decidedly against Israel.

...Iran threatens Israel much more than it does America. It may very well be in Israel’s best interest to attack Iran. But it is probably not in America’s for Israel to do so, given America’s exposure in Iraq. And an Israeli attack could destroy President Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Muslim world. If you think the tension between the U.S. and Israel is high now, just wait until there’s a significant spike in casualties in Iraq following an Israeli strike on Iran.

...Israel’s incompetent war in Lebanon in 2006 and its inconclusive one in Gaza last winter have made it look like the boorish regional aggressor. Moreover, in the past, America’s military establishment admired Israel for its military innovation and derring-do. But Israel’s inability to cope sufficiently with unconventional enemies in Lebanon and Gaza has reduced its appeal.

One striking indication of the extent to which Israel has lost American sympathy was the publication in 2007 of The Israel Lobby...the fact that two highly distinguished political scientists—one from Harvard and the other from the University of Chicago, who have contributed significantly to their field in their other works—felt confident enough to go so far out on a limb on this sensitive issue is telling...The Israeli-Palestinian problem is increasingly becoming seen as a leftover irritant from a passing era.

All of this leaves Israel in an increasingly lonely position. With whom can it negotiate? With Fatah, which is relatively moderate, but lacks support among Palestinians themselves? With Hamas, which has support, but which demonstrates no proclivity to make peace?

Both politically and demographically, time is not on Israel’s side. Now that Iran is weakened by domestic turmoil, it may actually be in Israel’s best interests for America, Saudi Arabia, and other moderate Arab states to impose a peace agreement by leaning hard on the Palestinians, as America twists Israel's arm. The result would be the return of almost all of the West Bank to a fundamentally demilitarized Palestinian state, even as many Israeli settlements are dismantled. What other resolution can there be?

Another one, not that I support it, but use it to challenge Kaplan and others, is one we suggested in 1978: first we go through a significant period when the Arab side proves it can fufil its commitments of a peace treaty and then Israel will do what it is to do.

The Egyptian peace was based on "normalization" but no one demanded that first we see what is meant by "normal" by the Egyptians. So, today, we have a cold peace: little commercial business, little cultural exchange, next to no tourism but lots of academic antisemitism.

Mr. Kaplan, what's a "fundamentally demilitarized Palestinian state"? Is it a Hamas fundamentalist state? Islamic Jihad? Hizbollah?

If the issue of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria is "highly complex", as you are convinced, why cannot thinking people resolve it or recognize the justice and necessity of their continued existence? If Bill Clinton read your book on the Balkans but adopted a different policy than that which you might have wished, why give enemies of Israel more ammunition as you have done?


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(*)

His "Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite" supplies a secondary source of minibiographies sketching the lives of dozens of Protestant missionaries and U.S. State Department officials who worked in the Arab world over the past 200 years. Addressing current concerns, he shows that the opposition of missionaries and Foreign Service officers to Israel's creation--meant to appease the Arabs--led to the various wars in the Middle East and, ultimately, to the Gulf War of 1991...[and] tells how American "Arabists"--diplomats, intelligence agents, scholar-adventurers, Protestant missionaries, military attaches--formed an elitist, expatriate professional caste in the 19th-century Middle East. The Arabists, in Kaplan's ( Balkan Ghosts ) view, carried on a "romance" with exotic Islamic cultures, and many supported pan-Arab nationalism. Blind to what Kaplan deems the inevitability of the birth of Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust, American Arabists today often see Israel "in only the simplest stereotype," he asserts.


(Kippah tip: AJG)