Three Arab Assaults on Jewish Historical Cultural Sites

One:

A five-person gang of would-be thieves allegedly raided an ancient historical site in Israel over the weekend, apparently attempting to loot valuable relics and causing irreparable damage along the way.

The alleged thieves, all Palestinians from the West Bank town of Beit Ula, are suspected of sneaking into Israel from Judea and Samaria and vandalizing the site. The historical area can be traced back to the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt

...The thieves allegedly came armed with a sophisticated metal detector and an array of digging tools and equipment, and attempted to execute an amateur excavation in the hopes of unearthing historic coins and ancient underground hideouts. In the process, the perpetrators broke down ancient walls and destroyed buildings that are thousands of years old.

..."We are talking about a most severe case. The bandits caused devastating and irreversible damage to the ancient site. The devastation caused was unrestricted and unprecedented, even for the relatively small size of the site," said Amir Ganor, director of the Antiquities Robbery Prevention Unit on Sunday. "Unfortunately the site has been almost completely destroyed, Ganor added. "In one fell swoop, these bandits, with a blatant disregard and following a greedy quest for financial gain, managed to erase layers from our history."

Two:

The Jerusalem District Police on Sunday closed the Mughrabi Bridge, which connects the Western Wall and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City, and is the only access point to the holy site for Jews and tourists...Hamas officials on Monday said that Israel's closure of the Mughrabi Bridge marks the beginning of an assault on on the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Al-Aqsa compound, which houses the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Hamas officials previously said implementing the closure would be a "criminal act which constitutes a flagrant violation of the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque and a provocation to the feelings of millions of Muslims." Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, meanwhile, told AFP last week that the closure of the temporary bridge "shows their determination to judaize Jerusalem and to take over the city's Muslim holy places."...

MK Danny Danon (Likud), chairman of the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee...said on Sunday, "We need to exercise sovereignty over Jerusalem not just by law but in practice. We can't risk the safety of Jewish worshippers and security forces because of threats coming from foreign sources. If the Temple Mount is open to Muslims, it must be open to Christians and Jews as well. It is possible to allow access to the Temple Mount from alternative locations until a new bridge is built."

P.S. Take note of this reaction.

Three:

Palestinian officials are openly talking about using UNESCO to prohibit Jews from worshipping at Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs...Karl Vick of Time got himself a scoop sure to raise red flags:

Now that Palestine has been voted into UNESCO, the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, officials are preparing applications for the organization’s marquee designation: a World Heritage Site. Candidates are abundant. Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity stands atop the cave where believers kneel to kiss the spot, confidently marked by a starburst, said to be where Jesus Christ was born. Jericho, which marked its 10,000th birthday last year, is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities on the planet. And Hebron boasts the final resting place of Abraham, whose covenant with the Almighty led to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

There’s not much about the site that’s in doubt, including what Palestinian officials aim to do with the property if they get control of it — stop Jews from praying there.

The stated reason: The massive stone structure built atop the cave by King Herod, a Jew, and held for a time by Christian Crusaders, has since the 14th century been a Muslim house of worship. The Ibrahimi Mosque has minarets, rugs, washrooms for ablutions and anterooms lined with racks for storing shoes.

“It’s a mosque!” says Khaled Osaily, the mayor of Hebron. “You don’t have to be an architect to see it! Will you allow me to pray in a synagogue or a church?”

...of course...right now, anyone can pray at the Ibrahimi Mosque...

This must be combatted, vigorously.

^

Expanding

I was all for "retention" as the political buzzword.

I've been outflanked:

ZOA's Mort Klein asked Newt Gingrich:

What is your position about the right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and the right of Jews to live in communities there at this present time?

and Gingrich replied:

Well, it depends on where exactly you define the boundaries. I do not oppose any development in the [Israeli occupied] areas, because I think that’s part of the negotiating process. To the degree that the Palestinians want to stop the developments they need to reach a deal in which they recognize the right of Israel to exist… As long as they are waging war on Israel, they are in no position to complain about developments. I think the whole peace process has been absurd and has created a psychologically almost impossible position for the average person because once you say there’s a peace process you wonder why the Israelis aren’t being more forthcoming. But if you say, look, we’re still in the middle of a war. They’re still trying to destroy the country — they’re still firing rockets, they still have terrorists coming in — then you all of a sudden understand what the real situation on the ground is, and in that setting, why would the Israelis slow down in maximizing their net bargaining advantage?

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Was Israel Responsible for Arab Injury?

I was wondering, after reading about this incident of rocket fire:

A woman was injured after a rocket fired in southern Lebanon landed in a Lebanese village near the border with Israel, a senior security official told AFP.

The Katyusha rocket, fired from Lebanon's Bent Jbail valley, landed in the village of Hula, Lebanon near the border with Israel, said the official...

since if Israel hadn't been existing, and therefore, the cause of the rocket being fired, could Israel therefore be responsible for her injury?

I mean, after all, this is the Arab Middle East mentality and that would be the logical conclusion, no?

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"King's Law" Under Academic Scrutiny and Discussion

Despite opposition, led by "Banish the Darkness" Coalition, who claimed: אבל אסור לתת מקום להסתה מקום לגיטימי בשיח (they cannot be permitted a legitimate role in public discourse), the Hebrew University's Jewish Thought Department will be conducting tonight a critical evening dedicated to the book:

Speakers include Dr. Avinoam Rosnak, Prof. Rachel Elior, Dr. Eli Chadad, Dr. Mustafa Abu-Suweid and Rabbi Yisrael Ariel.

The Arab Communists, Hadash, are also opposed.  It's a racist book(*).  It is "illegal and immoral" and students are called to demonstrate.  Rabbis Ovadia Yosef and Shalom Elyashiv are not happy with the book, either.

I have discussed it previously

(*)   I left a comment there asking about some verses in the Koran:

I presume it should, at the least, a stirring evening.

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And The Arrested Are Released

The arrests last week of youngsters suspected of "price tag" activity was prominently reported.

Well, the developments are:

Again – Price Tag Suspects Released

The Israel Police's National Unit for Investigation of Serious and International Crime (known by its Hebrew acronym Yachbal) has failed once again in substantiating charges against people it suspects of carrying out so-called "price tag" actions.

On Sunday, the Tel Aviv Magistrates' Court released unconditionally two girls suspected of vandalizing IDF vehicles in the Binyamin Brigade base in Bet El. The Honenu NGO, which assists Jews suspected of nationalist crimes, reported that Yachbal investigators asked Judge Oded Shacham to extend the girls' remand by eight days but he refused to do so.  The girls were represented by Honenu lawyer Ariel Atari.

Meanwhile, Judge Shacham extended the remand of a soldier who is also suspected of "price tag" actions. Police asked to extend his incarceration for 8 days, but the judge only granted 4 days' remand.  The soldier told the court that the investigators have been denying him meals, and abusing him physically and mentally.

Now, the question is 'why were they arrested'?

After all, the girls were all arrested and interrogated previously. Was there new information? Did they decide to use harsher methods of investogation?

Or, faced with criticism for lack of results, and to cover their inability to act professionally, they decided to simply redo what they did before for the press and the public?

I am not sure who is guilty - and anyone may be guilty - but the point is that everyone is sure than a certain element must be guilty and they are to be pursued so that the entire camp may be stained. The police are puppets of the media instead of the correct job according to procedures that we expect they do. They should perform as police and not as servants of the critics of the nationalist-right.

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Transjordan?

Jewish settlement in Transjordan?

Dr. Stephen S. Wise of New York, addressing today's session of the Eighteenth World Zionist Congress, launched a sharp attack on Dr. Chaim Weizmann, former president of the World Zionist Organization, and on the policies of the Zionist Laborite party. Shouts and exclamations from the Laborite section frequently interrupted Dr. Wise as he appealed to the congress to elect only such leaders to the organization's administration as do not oppose the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine and support the demand for a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan River...Rabbi Wise declared himself bewildered by Dr. Weizmann's criticism of constructive negotiations for the opening of Transjordania to Jewish settlement, especially as voiced by Dr. Weizmann in his speeches at the American Zionist convention in Chicago in July. The negotiations have been conducted by members of the Palestine Executive of the Jewish Agency with friendly Transjordan Arab leaders...Dr. Wise freely praised Emanuel Neumann, American member of the executive, and the late Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, for their conduct of negotiations leading to the opening of the spacious Transjordan area to Jewish effort.

That was from August 29, 1933. And Wise was a Reform Rabbi.

And this:

...in May 1937, Ben-Gurion had a meeting with some colleagues amongst whom was included Pinhas Rutenberg. Rutenberg was a Russo-Jewish electrical engineer and founder and director of the Palestine Electric Company, who had set up a hydro-electric power station in Transjordan to harness the waters of the upper Jordan and the Yarmuk rivers...At this meeting on 5 May, it was concluded that “We see need...to pressure the British Government” on the possibility of Jewish settlement in Transjordan...

...At that time [July 1937], there were already a number of Jewish settlements on the eastern side of the River Jordan. These were situated between the Sea of Galilee and the junction between the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers. Geographically, these settlements were in Transjordan, but in fact this small area of land was outside the boundaries of Transjordan as they had been fixed in 1922. According to the Peel Commission's recommendations the area of these settlements was to become part of the Arab State and its Jewish inhabitants transferred to the Jewish State. The Zionists made an immediate appeal for this small area to be incorporated within the boundaries of the Jewish State.(87) However, as Ben-Gurion noted in his diary, “In the event of the compulsory transfer being rejected by the Government, we will remain in Transjordan - even if the border suggested by the Commission, north of the Yarmuk-Jordan junction is not rectified.”(88)

And from this book, Nazism, the Jews, and American Zionism, 1933-1948 By Aaron Berman,

And from the book, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan By Mary Christina Wilson:

^

Who Practices Apartheid?

To the Editor:

Jeffrey Goldberg illuminates the likely appeal of the “The Unmaking of Israel” to an “Upper West Side” liberal mentality (which Goldberg seems to share), and he properly dismisses the malicious canard that Israel is an “apartheid state.” But he misleadingly concludes his review with an anecdote about a Palestinian in Hebron who “lives on a street that he shares with Jewish settlers” but is not a full citizen of Israel. This, Goldberg concludes, “is a situation that cannot go on forever.” But he fails to mention that Jews are not permitted to live in the Palestinian sector of Hebron, home to 120,000 Arabs and governed by the Palestinian Authority — a glaring example of apartheid that Goldberg ignores.

JEROLD S. AUERBACH
Wellesley, Mass.

The writer is a professor emeritus of history at Wellesley College.

Professor Auerbach is a friend.

^

Jabotinsky on Gt. Britain's Unfairness, 1933

Ze'ev Jabotinsky on British Mandatory Regime Policies,
November 26, 1933

Unfairness: we Jews are accustomed to injustice, but it would be difficult to quote another case of quite so gross a disregard of all the rituals of fairness as that committed by the Mandatory Administration in choosing just this moment for the announcement of new restrictions against Jewish immigration to Palestine. Why restrict? What has happened? Have there been any symptoms showing that the influx of our immigrants has, during the period immediately preceding this sudden explosion of restrictive zeal, overtaxed that famous "absorptive capacity" of Palestine? Any signs of aggravated unemployment? Any appeals to the Government Treasury for assistance on behalf of overcrowded Tel Aviv, Hadar ha Carmel, or Talpiyot and Rehavya? Nothing of the kind: on the contrary, Palestine is flourishing, is actually the only oasis of economic prosperity in a world of economic distress, is clamoring for more workers and is filling up its State Treasury with fat surplusses to the envy of all the Empires on the planet.

As the world goes we have always been taught to look for restrictive measures against a given practice after some kind of proof (let it even be an imaginary proof, a faked proof—but still something!) that the practice is actually obnoxious. In this case, the practice of "illicit immigration" under both its forms (crossing the border without any visa, and staying on in Palestine after the "tourist" visa has expired) had been known for years and grumblings tolerated for years; more than tolerated—actually condoned and sanctioned de facto, for no amount of quibbling can put any other construction upon such Government acts as the legalizing of some 5,000 "illicit immigrants" discovered during the 1931 census, or, especially, the repeated reservation of a part of certificates already granted for the frankly and publicly admitted purpose of keeping it in reserve in case the Government will have to legalize further bunches of such "illicits".

When a Government openly prepares a heap of passports to be issued eventually to people who may smuggle in without a passport, it obviously and undeniably means that such people, despite the original sin of their illegal entry, can after all be up to a certain extent "absorbed" without any catastrophe to the country's capacity. This and no other was the Government's opinion as late as in the last decade of October, when it issued a schedule of new certificates and again reserved several hundreds for the needs of eventual "illicits". Why then, such an outbreak of wrath in the first decade of November? What has happened?

Nothing has happened on the part of the Jews, there is no hint that during that short interval any considerable regiment of "illicit arrivals" should have burst the "capacity"; nor has anything happened on the part of the country's economy itself to suggest that the "capacity" begins to totter. What has happened was an outbreak of rioting on the part of the Arabs who object to any immigration of Jews in general, licit or illicit; and that was the only reason for this sudden explosion of bureaucratic Draconianism. This means that the Mandatory's attitude towards Jewish interests has nothing to do with the Jews' own behavior or the effects of that behavior on Palestine's welfare: the Government's attitude is to be guided simply by the intensity of the Arabs' readiness for causing trouble. The least we can call such policy is "unfair", and this is yet an acme of polite moderation: severer judges would speak of cowardice, blundering, and betrayal of trust.

As to "absurdity"—this crusade against Jewish tourists is probably the most preposterous of all the enormities I can recollect for the last twenty years during which I enjoyed the privilege of watching the workings of the famous and hallowed "muddle-through" system so dear to some British minds. First of all—as the hecatomb of the tourists is obviously meant to pacify the Arab chauvins, let it be stated at once that this noble and statesman-like object will not be attained: those Arabs know as fully as does the Government that the number of settlers reaching the country under tourist garb is very small in comparison with even the stingiest bunch of "certificates" and other permits so far quite legally issued—and it is the quantity of Jewish immigrants which the Arabs pretend to fear, not the legal or illegal method of their penetration for which they do not care two straws. If the Mandatory has really decided to be guided by Arab menaces it will have to stop the legal immigration, or in other words to resign the Mandate; the only alternative being to keep the rioters quiet, or in other words to do a Mandatory's duty and do it properly.

But there is another and more serious side to the absurdity. British statesmanship has ever prided itself on its "realism"; no preconceived ideas, no "principle-riding", "no nonsense" in general, only facts and adaptation to facts. If so, it seems strange that this realistic statesmanship has failed to notice the most essential "fact" of the whole situation: that a tourist who becomes a settler is just the healthiest type of immigrant. What can be economically healthier than this: a person goes to Palestine as a "tourist", just to see whether he will like the country; he looks round, he likes it, he is offered a job or an opportunity to invest his capital profitably enough for a living—and then he decides to stay on. To a genuinely realistic observer this should seem the soundest way of recruiting and selecting suitable immigrants.

It is, in fact, a natural selection: the person who has only decided to stay on after he has found a job is presumably a fit person, the very fact of his remaining is a proof of his resourcefulness, ability, or financial force. At the same time, this kind of settler is just the kind which does not "overtax the country's meekest of terms applicable.

But I also said "ugliness", and I maintain it. There is no other name within the vocabulary of printable phraseology for what amounts to a system of world-wide espionage of every day and every hour. To carry out properly the anti-touristic crusade announced by the Mandatory both from Jerusalem and London, consular officers in the remotest countries will have to install a detective service for discovering the hidden intentions of every Jew applying for a tourist visa. In Palestine itself, not only spies will have to be employed for overhearing tourists' confidences to each other or to their friends, the residents, but even agents provocateurs impersonating as fellow-tourists in order to extract such confidences from unsuspecting greenhorns. Raids on tourists who overstay their period will have to become one of the staple amenities of Palestinian life. All that, naturally, for the benefit of Jews only: a consular officer who has just refused a tourist visa to Mr. N. N. because he took him for a Jew, will grant the same request with many apologies as soon as Mr. N. N. qualifies as a Christian. Many quite piquante complications may safely be expected to arise in the course of this practice, for instance: since only Jews are under suspicion of malafide tourism, does it also attach to a converted Jew? or should the racial test be applied, and, if so, what about quadroons and octoroons? Guide books for British consular officers will have to be ordered from Germany. . . .

It would be simply foolish to pretend that I exaggerate. Everybody knows that nearly all the items of intolerable moral and civic ugliness just sketched out are already in existence; the Peeping Tom in consular offices, the consular discrimination between Jew and Gentile applying for a visa, the invasion of Tel Aviv hotel halls and restaurants by a host of spies, the razzias.

It is all a cruel shame, both to England and to ourselves. The whole system of regulating immigration now in vigor stands definitely unmasked in all its nakedness of injustice, foolishness, and moral squalor. World Jewry will have to make some world-wide heave to stop this monstrosity, and the sooner the sounder.

A Bridge, A Mount and A Fall

Why is Israel still acting with total disregard to its own interests, obligations and lawful commitments vis a vis the Temple Mount?

I wrote something just recently that points to Netanyahu's shaky foundations.

Now, with the Jerusalem city engineer ordering the Mughrabi Gate access closed, by the way, again, things are moving but still, directionless.

The Jerusalem Municipality's chief engineer Shlomo Eshkol said Thursday that he planned to issue an immediate order for the closure of the Rambam Bridge (also known as the Mughrabi Bridge), currently the only entry point to the Temple Mount for Jews and non-Muslim tourists. In a letter to the Western Wall Foundation, which is responsible for the structure, Eshkol said that the bridge structure was very dangerous and in danger of immediate collapse, and could easily catch fire as well. The order to close the bridge would be issued within 7 days, the letter said.

As Nadav Shragai notes:

Israel has lost its bearings when it comes to the Mughrabi Bridge affair...we received support from UNESCO, and even from Turkey, who rejected the "Al-Aqsa is in danger" accusations that some have tried to pin on Israel. We installed cameras that broadcast live to the world the archaeological "rescue digs" conducted in the area, but mostly we chatted with Jordan ad nauseum.

Perhaps now it is time for us to admit our mistakes. After the Six-Day War, the Temple Mount turned into something of an "ex-territory" that Israel has tiptoed around on eggshells, cautiously enforcing its sovereignty and constantly taking into consideration the feelings of the Muslim world. In our peace treaty with Jordan, it was afforded special status as supervisor of Jerusalem's holy sites, and it was agreed that Jordan would serve as the leading Arab authority over the Temple Mount in the event of a comprehensive peace deal between Israel and its neighboring Arab countries.

...Israel's mistake has been that it never clearly delineated the Temple Mount from the areas surrounding it – thus giving Jordan increasing influence over the mount's external walls and the adjacent areas.

From there, the path was a short one to a Jordanian veto and threats to expel our ambassador over the Mughrabi Bridge, which, in any case, is part of the Western Wall Plaza!...

...The Mughrabi Gate is not a holy site, and there is no reason for it to be the only place for security forces, tourists and Jews to access the Temple Mount...

If we can't adequately deal with this issue, how can we take on Iran?

^

Fighting For Nablus

In 1918:

On 9 March 1918, the British launched another offensive towards Nablus. Three days of intense fighting was followed by a short period of silence and on 21 March, the British launched a new attack breaking through the Jordan River (also known as River of Şeria in Turkish) line in 5 days.

By 28 March, British forces were already at the outskirts of the city of Amman. However they had huge problems with transportation. The roads were all damaged and slippery because of the heavy rainfall. It was hardly possible to move the artillery guns under such conditions.

Meanwhile the city was defended by the 48th Division, which resisted well. Facing strong resistance, experiencing logistic problems and suffering from a Turkish counterattack, Allenby decided to withdraw on 31 March. It has to be noted, that during this phase of the war, and also later phases of the Palestinian campaign, German officers and troops fought with great dedication along with their Turkish comrades.

On 30 April, the British stroke struck back, but this time the Turks were reinforced with the 24th Division, commanded by German Colonel Boehme, and the 3rd Cavalry Division, commanded by Colonel Esat Bey. Turkish counterattacks between 2 and 4 May brought the British offensive to a quick termination.

As of mid-1918, the Yıldırım Army Group disposed 40,598 men, 19,819 rifles, 273 light and 696 heavy machine guns. Allenby had 56,000 men, 11,000 cavalry and 552 artillery pieces.

Battle of Nablus

On the morning of 19 September, at 5:50 AM, General Allenby launched a major offensive, which started with heavy artillery fire pounding the units of the Eighth Army. Within only one hour the British had broken through the Turkish defenses. The 7th Division and two regiments from the 20th Division collapsed without even having contact with the British infantry. By 10 am two British cavalry divisions were riding towards the Turkish rear. By 20 September, the British cavalry captured Nazareth. The XXII Corps was destroyed.

Mustafa Kemal Paşa had returned to his post as the commander of the Seventh Army on 1 September. His forces retired towards the River of Jordan. Between 21-23 September, the III Corps fought a gallant rear guard action from Tubas to the river, buying enough time for the retreating Turkish troops.

The great coastal cities of Haifa and Accra fell by 25 September. So did Megiddo. This was a huge success for the British cavalry. Two days later, Allenby’s forces entered Syria and the Battle of Nablus was over.

Why did the Turkish forces melt away so quickly? Erickson gives three explanations: (a) The terrain was favourable for the attackers, (b) there was scope at the operational level for Allenby to shift corps-sized formations around the battlefield for deception and concentration, (c) the British Army had made mighty improvements in its tactical techniques at the lower battlefield level in 1917 and 1918.

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"Palestine"? What Borders? Where?

Apropos the latest "outrage" of Arabs of the former Mandate for Palestine, let's recall that in The Treaty of Peace Between The Allied and Associated Powers and Turkey signed at SÈVRES, August 10, 1920, Section VII, Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Article 94, we read:

The High Contracting Parties agree that Syria and Mesopotamia shall, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22.

Part I (Covenant of the League of Nations), be provisionally recognised as independent States subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone.

A Commission shall be constituted within fifteen days from the coming into force of the present Treaty to trace on the spot the frontier line described in Article 27, II (2) and (3). This Commission will be composed of three members nominated by France, Great Britain and Italy respectively, and one member nominated by Turkey; it will be assisted by a representative of Syria for the Syrian frontier, and by a representative of Mesopotamia for the Mesopotamian frontier.

The determination of the other frontiers of the said States, and the selection of the Mandatories, will be made by the Principal Allied Powers.

ARTICLE 95.

The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may 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.

The Mandatory undertakes to appoint as soon as possible a special Commission to study and regulate all questions and claims relating to the different religious communities. In the composition of this Commission the religious interests concerned will be taken into account. The Chairman of the Commission will be appointed by the Council of the League of Nations.

Although there is some dispute regarding the legality of the treaty - for

"while the treaty was under discussion, the Turkish national movement under Mustafa Kemal Pasha split with the monarchy based in Constantinople and set up a Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara in April 1920.  On October 18, the government of Damat Ferid Pasha was replaced by a provisional ministry under Ahmed Tevfik Pasha as Grand Vizier, who announced an intention to convoke the Senate with the purpose of ratification of the Treaty, provided that national unity were achieved. This required seeking for cooperation with Mustafa Kemal. The latter expressed disdain to the Treaty and started a military assault. As a result, the Turkish Government issued a note to the Entente that the ratification of the Treaty was impossible at that time.  Eventually, Mustafa Kemal succeeded in his fight for Turkish independence and forced the former wartime Allies to return to the negotiating table.  Arabs were unwilling to accept the French rule in Syria, the Turks around Mosul were attacking the British, the Arabs were in arms against the British rule in Baghdad. There was also disorder in Egypt...the former Allies of World War I [returned] to the negotiating table with the Turks and in 1923 negotiate the Treaty of Lausanne, which replaced the Treaty of Sèvres...

Nevertheless, the point I am making is the principle:

"Palestine" had no boundary definition.  There was no physical concept or identity.  No delineation. It was all in the mind. The Turks and the Arabs didn't conceive of a country but of a general territory.  The Allies in the League of Nations drew the maps and before, in the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference, the instruction was "from Dan to Beer-Sheva".

It, in this sense, didn't really exist.

^

Faith vs. Knowledge vs. Truth

From the Introduction of Lev Shestov's Athens and Jerusalem comes relevant thinking to current political activities in Yesha:-

The task which I have set for myself in this book, Athens and Jerusalem, consists in putting to proof the pretensions to the possession of truth which human reason or speculative philosophy make. Knowledge is not here recognized as the supreme goal of man. Knowledge does not justify being; on the contrary, it is from being that it must obtain its justification. Man wishes to think in the categories in which he lives, and not to live in the categories in which he has become accustomed to think: the tree of knowledge no longer chokes the tree of life.

In the first part…I try to show that, in pursuing knowledge, the great philosophers lost the most precious of the Creator's gifts - freedom;...The second part, the most difficult,…reveals the indestructible bond between knowledge, as philosophy understands it, and the horrors of human existence;…In the third part,… the fruitless efforts of the Middle Ages to reconcile the revealed truth of the Bible with the Hellenistic truth are dealt with. The fourth part…begins by assuming that the truths of reason perhaps constrain us but are far from always persuading us and that, consequently,…[what] flows from them not only do not find their solution in the intelligere but, when they attain a certain tension, enter into a struggle against the intelligere - a terrible, desperate struggle - and sometimes overthrow and destroy it. Philosophy is not a curious looking around, not Besinnung, but a great struggle.

A similar purpose underlies all four parts of the book: to throw off the power of the soulless and entirely indifferent truths into which the fruits of the tree of knowledge have been transformed…and consequently lead to the true philosophy. To speak as did Pascal: the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and not the God of the philosophers. The God of the philosophers, whether he be a material or ideal principle, carries with him the triumph of constraint, of brutal force. That is why speculation has always so obstinately defended the universality and necessity of its truths. The truth spares no one, no one can escape it; it is this, this alone, that has enticed the philosophers…But Jerusalem holds only to this truth. The constraining truths, and even the truths which seek the approbation and fear the reprobation of autonomous ethics - those eternal truths which, according to Leibniz, were introduced into the mind of God without asking His permission - not only do not persuade Jerusalem but are, on the contrary, the abomination of desolation. Within the "limits of reason" one can create a science, a sublime ethic, and even a religion; but to find God one must tear oneself away from the seductions of reason with all its physical and moral constraints, and go to another source of truth. In Scripture this source bears the enigmatic name "faith," which is that dimension of thought where truth abandons itself fearlessly and joyously to the entire disposition of the Creator: "Thy will be done!" The will of Him who, on his side, fearlessly and with sovereign power returns to the believer his lost power: . . . "what things soever ye desire . . . ye shall have them."

…Can we "understand," can we grasp, what the prophets and the apostles announce in Scripture? Will Athens ever consent to allow such "truths" to come into the world?... Faith, only the faith that looks to the Creator and that He inspires, radiates from itself the supreme and decisive truths condemning what is and what is not. Reality is transfigured…

…The power of the biblical revelation - what there is in it of the incomparably miraculous and, at the same time, of the absurdly paradoxical, or, to put it better, its monstrous absurdity - carries us beyond the limits of all human comprehension and of the possibilities which that comprehension admits. For God, however, the impossible does not exist. God - to speak the language of Kierkegaard, which is that of the Bible - God: this means that there is nothing that is impossible. And despite the Spinozist interdictions, fallen man aspires, in the final analysis, only to the promised "nothing will be impossible for you"; only for this does he implore the Creator. It is here that religious philosophy takes its rise. Religious philosophy is not a search for the eternal structure and order of immutable being; it is not reflection (Besinnung); it is not an understanding of the difference between good and evil, an understanding that falsely promises peace to exhausted humanity. Religious philosophy is a turning away from knowledge and a surmounting by faith, in a boundless tension of all its forces, of the false fear of the unlimited will of the Creator, that fear which the tempter suggested to Adam and which he has transmitted to all of us. To put it another way, religious philosophy is the final, supreme struggle to recover original freedom and the divine "very good" which is hidden in that freedom and which, after the fall, was split into our powerless good and our destructive evil. Reason, I repeat, has ruined faith in our eyes; it has "revealed" in it man's illegitimate pretension to subordinate the truth to his desires, and it has taken away from us the most precious of heaven's gifts - the sovereign right to participate in the divine "let there be" - by flattening out our thought and reducing it to the plane of the petrified "it is."

...Human wisdom is foolishness before God, and the wisest of men, as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, however unlike each other, both perceived, is the greatest of sinners. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. As for the philosophy that does not dare to rise above autonomous knowledge and autonomous ethics, the philosophy that bows down will-lessly and helplessly before the material and ideal "data" discovered by reason and that permits them to pillage and plunder the "one thing necessary" - this philosophy does not lead man towards truth but forever turns him away from it.

Shestov's development as a thinker lead him to undertake a vast critique of the history of Western philosophy which he saw broadly as a monumental battle between Reason and Faith, Athens and Jerusalem, secular and religious outlook.

As Czeslaw Milosz writes:

Shestov opposed Jerusalem to Athens in a most radical, uncompromising manner. Those names stood for faith versus reason, revelation versus speculation, the particular versus the general...

and this from John Bayley:

Before he died, Shestov realized a longcherished dream when he was invited to lecture in Jerusalem, where his grandfather had been buried and where in his old age he was hailed as one of the great Jewish thinkers of the century.

To such a thinker God's existence is no problem, for a Jew's existence is that of Godhead. Where Kierkegaard had to strive and suffer to realize himself as a "knight of the faith," Shestov could identify himself tranquilly in that faith with the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, which had made Jews so much hated and feared by Christians who had come to realize-consciously or unconsciously-that their God was mortal and had no resurrection. Shestov insists on a logic which only his race could command. "Man must himself become God"- (as the Jews once did) -"create all things out of nothing; all things, matter together with forms, and even the eternal laws."

And this by Bernard Martin:

In his last years Shestov brooded incessantly over what he called, in a letter to Bulgakov, "the nightmare of godlessness and unbelief which has taken hold of humanity." He was convinced that only through "the utmost spiritual effort," as he termed it, could men free themselves from this nightmare. His own life was concentrated on a passionate struggle against the "self-evident" truths of speculative philosophy and positivistic science which had come to dominate the mind of European man and made him oblivious to the rationally ungrounded but redeeming truths proclaimed in the Bible. This struggle is most fully reflected in his last and greatest book, the monumental Athens and Jerusalem, on which he worked for many years and completed just a year before his death.

In it he set himself the task of critically examining the pretension of human reason to possession of the capacity for attaining ultimate truth... This pretension, he concluded, must be firmly rejected...Shestov repeatedly insists in Athens and Jerusalem...European man, according to Shestov,[18] has languished for centuries in a hypnotic sleep induced by the conviction that the entire universe is ruled by eternal, self-evident truths (such as the principles of identity and non-contradiction) discoverable by reason, and by an everlastingly unalterable and indifferent power which determines all events and facts. This power is commonly known as "necessity."...To resist the self-evident truths of science and philosophy, to stop glorifying and worshipping them, however, is not necessarily an exercise in futility.

If man will attend to the ancient message of the Bible, Shestov maintains, he will find there a conception of God, of the universe and of himself that not only lends meaning to such resistance but also makes of it the first and most essential step in becoming reconciled with God and regaining his freedom. For the Bible, in opposition to Western science and philosophy, proclaims that God is the omnipotent One for whom literally nothing is impossible and whose power is absolutely without limits, and that He stands not only at the center but at the beginning and end of all things. God, according to the Bible, created man as well as a universe in which there is no defect, a universe which - indeed - He saw to be "very good." Having created man, God blessed him, gave him dominion over all the universe and bestowed upon him the essentially divine and most precious of all gifts, freedom.

...There can be no reconciliation, Shestov contends,[23] between science and that philosophy which aspires to be scientific, on the one side, and biblical religion, on the other. Tertullian was right in proclaiming that Athens can never agree with Jerusalem - even though for two thousand years the foremost thinkers of the Western world have firmly believed that a reconciliation is possible and have bent their strongest and most determined efforts toward effecting it. The biblical revelation not only cannot be harmonized with rationalist or would-be "scientific" metaphysics but is itself altogether devoid of support either from logical argument or scientific knowledge. For biblical man based his life totally and unreservedly on faith, which is not, as has often been suggested, a weaker form of knowledge (knowledge, so to speak, "on credit," for which proofs, though presently unavailable, are anticipated at some future time), but rather a completely different dimension of thought. The substance of this faith, emphatically denied both by science and philosophy, is the daring and unsupported but paradoxically true conviction that all things are possible.

I think the relevance of Shestovian thought is apparent to in the genuine approach of the Tesha residents.


^

"Palestine 22%" vs. Qatar

It seems that Qatar has slighted "Palestine" by displaying on screen a map of "only 22%" of the country.

Below is a screensnap (k/t=ChallahHuAkbar - "k/t" is kippah-tip) from a story on the opening ceremony of the Pan Arab Games for the year 2011 which caused "a sensation among the spectators and Arab youth, by showing the map is incomplete for Palestine as it contain on the West Bank and Gaza Strip only."

See for yourselves from the clip:

The arrows point to Gaza (l.) and the "West Bank" (r.).

The map, which portrays only 22% of "Palestine" also, OMG!!!, granted "explicit recognition of the Israeli entity and implementation of the scheme of America's new Middle East".

Incidentally, Qatar also

introduced the Kingdom of Morocco without the Sahara, which in turn raised the anger of the Moroccans and regarded as a 'betrayal and the labor-Zionist and an insult to them.' The large pages filled in with Facebook great criticism of Qatar, accusing the U.S. go along with the Zionist project to divide the Middle East.

P.S. The other 78%, of course, is....Israel. But, wait, where did Jordan go?

^

Zumba Night - For Ladies Only!

There'll be a Zumba night of dancing for the women of the Mateh Binymain Council region, including bellydance workshop:

December 26th.

^

Uri Avnery Blithely

In Haaretz:

In a column that you wrote, you draw a link between present-day legislation and the collapse of the Weimar republic.

"I was nine when the Nazis came to power, and as a child in a very political household I was very much aware of what happened. Especially when the child sees what is going on, in a very visual way: the uniforms, the parades, the music. So I know how the republic fell. I was aware of it, stage by stage, one small step followed by another small step, and then the whole thing collapsed. Collapsed because the public did not understand why it was important. The public did not summon up from within the emotional strength to oppose.

"When I see the first sign, that first red light goes on for me. I wake up a little earlier than the others. Others are waking up, too, but it takes time. At the beginning they said to us: How can you make a comparison to Nazi Germany? How could you even compare the two? So it doesn't have to be Nazi Germany, which truly was unique in human history ... It doesn't have to be Hitler - what about Mussolini? And if not Mussolini, how about Franco? Or Pinochet in Chile? Or the colonels in Greece? And if not any of these, how about Ceausescu, or Putin now? There are so many levels - from the very worst to the less worst, but each of them creates hell."

And where are we in the hierarchal ranking you described?

"We are past the first step. We are far from the last step, but in my opinion it is the first step that determines where it will head. The barricades have fallen...

However, consider this:

In 1941, Avnery wrote a pro-Nazi article in the Paris journal "Shem", whose contents were later revealed by the Hebrew University Orientalist Prof. Yehoshua Porat in his book "Shelach V'At B'yado", page 182. Herr Avnery was also fond of using the concept of "Hebrew Blood" in a racial sense, in the same way as Hitler spoke of German Aryan Blood. In those days he was anti-Marxist, although today has no problem with associating himself with Stalinists. Back then he repeatedly expressed admiration for the great job Hitler was doing in remolding and renewing the German nation. Avnery was an open admirer of Nazi propagandist Alfred Rosenberg, adopted the latter's rhetoric, and repeatedly declared that he saw himself as the Hebrew Alfred Rosenberg (which, in a sense, he is). Avnery ran a tiny "journal" called The Struggle, an obvious imitation of the name "Mein Kampf". He ran his own one-man party, whose official salute was a Nazi raised hand.

Avnery in those days advocated creation of a Semitic "race" that would lead the Middle East to greatness when combined with a new Hebraic non-Jewish culture. As such, he advocated the end of the Jewish people as a national entity and expansion of the new race into its "Semitic Lebensraum" (yes, he used that Nazi concept!). He later wrote of his dream for a new and better Hitler emerging, an anti-Nazi Hitler who will lead the struggle for peace and will promote the Palestinian cause (well, at least he got THAT part right!).

Avnery then left for Israel/Palestine.

^

Fudging History

Pay attention to this retelling of the flight of Arabs from their homes in 1947-1948:

What began slowly soon developed into a mass exodus, especially following the death in battle of the Palestinian leader Abdel-Qader Al-Husseini and the Deir Yassin Massacre. After the Jewish victories at Haifa and Jaffa in the last ten days of April, the pressure of war forced the Palestinians to relocate. At first they moved internally, to "safer" areas within exposed cities and in Arab-dominated areas of Palestine, as they sought to get out of harm's way. The relentless pressure of the Jewish militias (the Haganah, the Irgun, and others), together with the random but deliberately orchestrated bombardment of the largely civilian population, lay behind this initial exodus.

To restate, the initial flight of Arabs was caused by Jewish violence.

But,

a. the Arabs began the violence on November 30th.

b. "initial exodus" refers to what period? By mentioning Deir Yassin, April 9th, he creates a problem because up until then, the Jews were losing all over. The major battles had not yet started.

c. and if you continue reading there, you'll find this about Jaffa:

...there was a belief that the Jews were generally cowards. Thus the people of Jaffa, as well as the members of the National Committee, believed that if they made ready a bit, and if the British army did not interfere on the side of Jews, as it had done previously, then they were sure to emerge victorious.

and this:

During the first three weeks following the UN Partition Resolution people began to evacuate the frontline district, and by the end of December 1947 all these areas had become a no man's land.

And this:

At the beginning, those who left Jaffa were the affluent. They were ashamed of their desertion, and gave various excuses for leaving, such as that they were going to Cairo for a honeymoon (my family squatted in a flat of a newly-wed couple who never returned from their honeymoon); that they were having to go abroad for medical treatment or for some other personal emergency; and so on. We young ones used to view these people with disdain and talk about how typical their desertion was of the behaviour of the rich and well-to-do.

and this:

I arrived in Beirut on 4 May, I believed that we would be returning to Jaffa in a couple of weeks.

So, the basic Zionist claim, that the majority of Arabs who left actually did flee, thinking they were to return after a great Arab "victory", and those who felt forced were the result of their own iniated violence and expectations.

Oh, the writer of this is Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University, Evanston, and Professor of International Studies at Birzeit University.

^

Which Is The More Silly Statement?

This one:-

"I believe that the Jewish people have the right to have a state," Gingrich said in the interview. "Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, who are historically part of the Arab community."

He added, "And they had a chance to go many places and for a variety of political reasons, we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s. I think it's tragic."

or this one:-

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Gingrich needs to reexamine the history books.

"The Palestinian people inhabited the land since the dawn of history, and intend to remain in it until the end times," Fayyad said Saturday at an event in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "People like Gingrich must consult history, as it seems that all what he knows about the region is the history of the Ottoman era."

Source

Of course, you also have this by one Jamal Kanj:

Israel was built on a web of myths: God was made a real estate landlord granting land ownership to Jews only; history became a 3,000 years old parable anecdotal tale, and geography was molested to suit the modern Zionist vision. The Zionist's media engine took advantage of the West's unawareness of the diverse Arab world's geography...

P.S.

Read these:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/12/palestinian-arabs-are-jebusites-rofl.html

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/12/invented-people-in-18th-century.html

http://www.danielpipes.org/8025/the-year-the-arabs-discovered-palestine

http://www.danielpipes.org/352/the-year-the-arabs-discovered-palestine


^

December 11, 1947: British Soldiers Shoot Jewish Civilian Dead

December 11, 1947:

Arara was 20, born in Turkey and immigrated in 1935.

Sensual Zionism: Is That "Desire" or "Love"?

A new book, written by Boaz Neumann, assistant professor in the Department of History, Tel Aviv University, is out and is described as an "innovative study" in that it

...examines the responses of early-twentieth-century pioneers to "the Land" of Palestine...Neumann argues for something else that historians have yet to identify - desire. Desire for the Land and a visceral identification with it begin to explain the pioneer experience and its impact on Israeli history and collective memory, as well as on Israelis' abiding connection to the Land of Israel...For Neumann, the Zionist revolution was an existential revolution: for the pioneers, to be in the Land of Israel was to be!

The main chapter headings read:

• Pioneers and Pioneerism
• Desire and Rebirth
• Dissolving Boundaries
• Articulating the Physical Territory of the Land
• Articulating the Pioneer Body
• Pioneer Language: The Conquest of Hebrew

"Desire"?

Or love of the homeland?

Well, the theme has been researched previously:

- "Reimagining Herzl and other Zionist sex symbols" by M. Berkowitz, Professor of Modern Jewish History at University College London.
- "Zionism as an Erotic Revolution" by David Biale

and it could be worse or more ridiculous:

Circumcising Zionism, Queering Diaspora: Reviving Albert Memmi's Penis by Jarrod Hayes at Wasafiri, Volume 22, Issue 1, 2007.

How ridiculuous?

Try this:

...Memmi's retrieval of the Jewish diaspora as queer helps to imagine the undoing of Zionism as a political project (as opposed to queering the Israeli state) by allowing the rhizomatic connections of diaspora to return in the process of returning to origins in a homeland of the mind (as opposed to a physical territory already inhabited by Palestinians). Memmi thus allows us to carry forward Gopinath's queering of diaspora by helping us to tease out the queer potential of the very concept of diaspora itself.

While Memmi's revival of his penis relies on the same phallic genealogy Helmreich alludes to, his Jewissance entails spilling his seed rather differently. Indeed, it is not through heterosexual reproduction that he plants the seeds for a Zionist state; rather, the promised land flows forth like milk and honey every time he touches himself ‘to verify [the] definitive mark [of the Orient]’. J and D Boyarin retrieve a feminised diasporic anti-Zionism by performing ‘the double mark of the male Jew’, that is, their circumcision and head-covering, thereby undoing the body/mind opposition...

And you thought that the recent pinkwashing controversy was silly.

^

December 10, 1947: 2 Jews Killed By Stray British Bullets

From The Palestine Post here:

^

More Progress on American Political Front

As my readers know, I and my friends have been engaged these past decades in attempting to realign strategic thinking on the part of the US administrations, Congress and State Department officials. As American citizens, we view this as part of the democratic process which, of course, is employed by many other immigrant groups and, to be clear, is more moral than what many of our local NGOs attempt to do, with foreign money, here in Israel.

Recently, five congressmen visited the area (in the 1980s we even had Senators - Helms, Hecht and Furenberger) out here in Yesha and we have been in House corridors.

Several Republican candidates have spoken out forcefully (1 & 2) on the issue of whether the Jewish communities are legal and whether Judea and Samaria should be retained by Israel.

Now this story:

...Mr. Gingrich suggested that he might break with it [the so-called "two-state" solution], calling Palestinians an “invented” people and the current stalled peace process “delusional.”...He also said the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which has pledged to respect Israel’s right to exist, really harbors “an enormous desire to destroy Israel.”

In his comments, Mr. Gingrich has gone beyond the other Republican presidential candidates, who have condemned President Obama for proposing that Israel’s 1967 borders, with mutually agreed land swaps, should be the basis for negotiating peace with the Palestinians.

...Discussing the origin of the state of Israel in the 1940s, Mr. Gingrich said: “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places.”...

...Mr. Gingrich, who is leading in recent polls, has repeatedly criticized the Obama administration for bending too far in favor of the Palestinians. He was applauded at a candidates’ forum on Wednesday by a coalition of Jewish Republicans for characterizing the administration’s view as “it’s always Israel’s fault — no matter how bad the other side is.”

And then you have Martin S. Indyk reacting in hysterical fashion:

...if Mr. Gingrich believed that Palestinians did not have a right to an independent state, “as implied in his language, then he’s not pro-Israel at all.”

as well as another "Establishment" figure:

David A. Harris, chief executive of the National Jewish Democratic Council, an American Jewish group, said Mr. Gingrich’s views reversed decades of American policy by both Democratic and Republican administrations. “This is as clear a demonstration as one needs that he’s not ready for prime time,” Mr. Harris said.

But Gingrinch seems to be quite cognizant of the political realities:

...“I mean, we have an armed truce with a Palestinian Authority that’s relatively weak,” he said. “And on its flank is a Hamas authority, which may become relatively weak because it can’t deliver anything. But both of which represent an enormous desire to destroy Israel.”

He described Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, as denying Israel’s right to exist.

“You have Abbas, who says in the United Nations, ‘We do not necessarily concede Israel’s right to exist,’ ” Mr. Gingrich said. “So you have to start with this question: ‘Who are you making peace with?’ ”

Sheldon Adelson seems to be assisting.

Seems, a major change is in the works. It will seep down and finally, a true discourse on the possibilities for peace and the requirments of security will be fixed.

_____________

The clip:

_____________

The clarification:

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said afterward that the candidate was merely referring to the "decades-long history that has surrounded this issue," and has long supported the concept of Palestinian statehood. "Gingrich supports a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which will necessarily include agreement between Israel and the Palestinians over the borders of a Palestinian state," Hammond said in a statement. "However, to understand what is being proposed and negotiated you have to understand decades of complex history -- which is exactly what Gingrich was referencing during the recent interview with Jewish TV."

But

on March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zuheir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

Quote:
The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan. Unquote.

And this from Daniel Pipes:

Everyone from the PLO to a Mitt Romney spokesman jumped on Gingrich for this assertion, but he happens to be absolutely correct: no Arabic-speaking Muslims identified themselves as "Palestinian" until 1920, when, in rapid order this appellation and identity was adopted by the Muslim Arabs living in the British mandate of Palestine.
So why get angry at Gingrich?

Go Ging!

Gingrich sticks by Palestinian comment, draws rebukes from GOP candidates

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Republican presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich stood by his assertion that the Palestinians are an "invented people," drawing criticism from other GOP candidates.

"Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes," Gingrich said during a GOP debate Saturday night in Iowa. "We are in a situation where every day rockets are fired into Israel while the United States -- the current administration -- tries to pressure the Israelis into a peace process."

"Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth,” he continued. "These people are terrorists, they teach terrorism in their schools."...

^

Arab Attacking IDF Vehicle Killed

A new death reported:

A Palestinian protester who was struck in the face by a tear gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier at close range died of his wounds Saturday, activists said, accusing the army of using disproportionate force.

The 28-year-old, Mustafa Tamimi, was hurling rocks at the military vehicle on Friday in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh

when a soldier inside opened the rear door and fired at him from just a few yards away, witnesses said.

He was taken to an Israeli hospital, where he died of his injuries on Saturday.

Tamimi is the 20th person to be killed over the past eight years at similar demonstrations in rural villages throughout the West Bank, said Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli rights group B'Tselem...Photographs taken by a pro-Palestinian activist from Israel, Haim Schwarczenberg, show Tamimi rushing after an armored military vehicle. The photographer says he was throwing rocks. He then crumples to the ground a few steps from the vehicle. His friends rush to help, covering his bloodied face with a black-and-white Palestinian checkered scarf.

"As he was throwing stones, a soldier opened the door of the back of the jeep. A soldier took his gun out and shot him directly," Schwarczenberg said.

I am not sure that the soldier fired "directly" at him but in any case, we know that in being killed by the cannister, Tamimi was obviously much too close to the vehicle and it could be the soldier presumed his intent was to do damage to thew vehicle and its occupants, perhaps with a firebomb or maybe worse.
If I was a demonstrator, I would adopt true non-violent methods.  I would not throw rocks at security forces.  I would not chase after military vehicles.  I would not get close to a military vehicle.

And if I did, I would not complain that I am being targeted.

^

Highway 60 Ceremony

Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz and company at the ceremony marking the end of the road works on Highway 60:

"And we are in the shadow of Tel Shiloh and it is only through the link with sites such as Shiloh that we possess a right to this Land".


Video via Miriam-Feyga Bunimovich
 and her stills are here.


^

The Media as a Politburo

From Dror Eydar's "Welcome to the Politburo":-

When the Eilat conference on Israeli media ended and people began to leave, a certain veteran "Mr. Television" left the stage and quipped sarcastically, "Hilltop Youth for government," addressing several conservative journalists who stood there. When I heard his words, a Latin phrase came to mind: "Sic transit gloria mundi." Thus passes the glory of the world...



...the hypocritical fear and loathing over Israel Hayom reveals the widespread intellectual disgrace that Israeli journalism is in. Like Louis XIV, when he declared "I am the nation," journalists band together and declare in one version or another, "I am democracy" and "I am freedom of expression."

Those who, for ages, silenced the majority of the Israeli public and did not bring Ariel Sharon to justice because he fulfilled their political dreams by destroying settlements, those who did not gather at conferences to protest the disgrace of our democracy when Sharon shunned his own promises to those who elected him, as well as the Likud's referendum and more, dare to rise up now and teach us morality and speak about a "tyranny of the majority."...

...One evening, I spoke with a senior media personality who worked with all the "great ones" (she provided an impressive list of names and programs). I gave her my pitch about the exclusion of the conservative public (rightists, the observant, Likud, settlers, and others) from radio and television studios for ages. I explained that I wasn't referring to the interviewees, but to the interviewers, hosts, those who formulate the questions, those who hold the microphones. I told her that I grew up in a reality in which I, and others with similar views, had no voice in the media. If we review election results over the past decades, we can see a pattern of a tyrannical minority silencing the majority.

The lady was not confused, and in a few sentences revealed the ethos according to which the media has operated for too long. She said that right-wing and observant Jews are not "enlightened" and "have a moral dilemma" because they do not appreciate their fellows - the Palestinians - and therefore "do not deserve to be given the microphone." The word "occupation" was used a lot as well. How could it not be so?...

...A French journalist who was experiencing culture shock sat next to me. "How can it be that everyone is in agreement here," she asked. "Here's your lesson in Israeli journalism," I thought. "Look at the stage and you will see the Politburo of the party that no one elected, but nonetheless takes the liberty of setting our daily agenda."

^

How Big Is That "Occupation"?

From SoccerDad:

In December, 1995 the Los Angeles Times reported:

In the last seven weeks Israel has handed over six West Bank towns and more than 400 villages to the Palestinian Authority. The authority now controls about 90% of the West Bank's more than 1 million Arabs, and about one-third of the land in the Delaware-size territory.

Efraim Karsh has expanded on this (h/t Daled Amos):

On September 28, 1995, despite Arafat's abysmal failure to clamp down on terrorist activities in the territories now under his control, the two parties signed an interim agreement, and by the end of the year Israeli forces had been withdrawn from the West Bank's populated areas, with the exception of Hebron (where redeployment was completed in early 1997). On January 20, 1996, elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council were held, and shortly afterward, both the Israeli civil administration and the military government were dissolved.

The geographical scope of these withdrawals was relatively limited; the surrendered land amounted to some 30 percent of the West Bank's overall territory. But its impact on the Palestinian population was nothing short of revolutionary. In one fell swoop, Israel relinquished control over virtually all of the West Bank's 1.4 million residents. Since that time, nearly 60% of them – in the Jericho area and in the seven main cities of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Kalkilya, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron – have lived entirely under Palestinian jurisdiction. Another 40% live in towns, villages, refugee camps and hamlets where the Palestinian Authority exercises civil authority but where, in line with the Oslo accords, Israel has maintained "overriding responsibility for security."

In short, since the beginning of 1996, and certainly following the completion of the Hebron redeployment in January 1997, 99% of the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have not lived under Israeli occupation; rather, they have been under the jurisdiction of the Arafat-led PA.

Recently Sa'eb Erekat said something incredible:

In an interview with the Arabic radio station As-Shams two weeks ago, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat​ said that based on an aerial photograph provided by European sources, the settlements cover only 1.1 percent of the West Bank.

So if settlements cover only 1.1 percent of the West Bank, why does the entire West deem them the main obstacle to peace? Because admitting that settlements aren’t the main obstacle to peace would force it to confront an unpalatable truth: that the real obstacle to peace is Palestinian unwillingness to accept a Jewish state in any borders.

So a vast majority of Palestinians do not live under Israeli jurisdiction and the percent of the West Bank on which Jewish communities exist, is miniscule. How exactly do these data demonstrate an ongoing "occupation?"

^

"Contempt is the snobbery of the cognitive elite"

.

Jewish left-wing antipathy toward Israel poses a bit of a puzzle, but not a mystery. Guys like these are sometimes described as "self-hating Jews," but you understand everything if you realize that is a misnomer. They don't hate themselves at all. They have an inflated self-regard that leads them to disdain fellow Jews. It's simply the Jewish variant of oikophobia. (Perhaps someone will think to coin the portmanteau "joikophobia.")

James Taranto

_______
See this:-

The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude: oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' " What a perfect description of the pro-mosque left.

Scruton was writing in 2004, and his focus was on Britain and Europe, not America. But his warning about the danger of oikophobes--whom he amusingly dubs "oiks"--is very pertinent on this side of the Atlantic today, and it illuminates how what are sometimes dismissed as mere matters of "culture" tie in with economic and social policy:

The oik repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed on us from on high by the EU or the UN, though without troubling to consider Terence's question, and defining his political vision in terms of universal values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community.

The oik is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of the oik that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe. For we are seeing a massive expansion of the legislative burden on the people of Europe, and a relentless assault on the only loyalties that would enable them voluntarily to bear it. The explosive effect of this has already been felt in Holland and France. It will be felt soon everywhere, and the result may not be what the oiks expect.

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Meet the Keystone Kops

Haaretz story:

Dozens of criminal cases closed due to Israel Police negligence in West Bank

and the bottom line:

Complaints by settlers, Palestinians are handled with equal incompetence

Some details

The police's Shai District, which is responsible for the West Bank, consistently fails to conduct even the most basic investigatory actions, such as taking fingerprints, checking alibis, questioning witnesses and conducting identification line-ups. As a result, case after case - against settlers and Palestinians alike - is either closed without going to trial or thrown out of court...

...In another recent case, Mustafa Oudeh of Walaja was arrested on suspicion of shoving a border policeman off a cliff and causing him to break his leg. As evidence, police submitted footage confiscated from the camera of a foreign volunteer who was present at the scene. But it turned out police didn't bother viewing the footage before submitting it as evidence - and when the judge viewed it during Oudeh's remand hearing, he discovered that it actually showed Oudeh flat on his back, and the border policeman pushing him until both fell down the cliff.

In March, Yifat Alkoby of Kiryat Arba was acquitted of assaulting a Palestinian when it turned out that instead of asking the victim to pick his assailant out of a line-up, police had simply ordered a child to point to a picture of Alkoby and identify her as the culprit...

...And sometimes, the police's conduct is simply farcical - as when two Jewish minors were arrested last week for sneaking into Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, which is off-limits to Israelis except for specially arranged group visits. Their parents came to the Ariel police station and signed the necessary forms to get the boys released. But the station's fax machine was broken, and police insisted the boys couldn't be freed until it was fixed, so the forms could be faxed to the proper location. It took a lawyer's intervention to persuade them that the boys shouldn't be kept in jail until the fax was repaired...

The police are supervised by the Ministry for Internal Security.

When does he resign?

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Refugees

Danny Ayalon has a new good video up about the issue of "Palestinian refugees".

As for the use of the term refugees, let's remember, Jews were refugees in Palestine, too, in 1929 from Gaza, Shchem and, of course, Hebron:

and later, as well, from Jerusalem, Gush Etzion, Bet Haarava, Atarot, Kraf Darom, Neveh Yaakov and other locations.

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The Mackey-Blumenthal Nexus

Guest post:

Considering the source

A few months ago, the Columbia Journalism Review published an essay Conflict in Israel? by Max Blumenthal. Stringing together a number of disparate facts Blumenthal alleged that the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief had a conflict of interest.

The public editor of the New York Times, Arthur Brisbane, concluded that while the appearance on conflict, the case for an actual conflict of interest was "slender."

After the Mavi Marmara raid, The Lede blogger, Robert Mackey, quoted Blumenthal arguing that Israel had doctored the audio of a transmission of the raid. The IDF later explained that the original audio had been edited for clarity, but not as Blumenthal alleged (and Mackey parroted) that Israel had added its own audio to make the Mavi Marmara "activists" look worse.

Finally, a few weeks ago Patrick Pexton, the ombudsman of the Washington Post quoted Blumenthal regarding a blog that Jennifer Rubin had tweeted about.

That's two public editors, a magazine devoted to journalism, and a reporter covers blogging all relied on Max Blumenthal. Why is this relevant?

Because it now appears that Blumenthal is a liar. Jeffrey Goldberg checked with a recent source of Blumenthal for a damaging story about Israel and the source claims that she never said what was quoted. (via memeorandum)

If this was the first time Blumenthal prevaricated that might be one thing. But Elder of Ziyon noted that Blumenthal's history is dodgy.

So will these guardians of media integrity (the public editors and CJR) acknowledge that someone they've relied on in the past is a liar? Or is dishonesty in criticism of Israel legitimate?

In the case of Mackey the story is different. He resents being portrayed as anti-Israel. So if his source which is critical is dishonest, will he admit it? Or does Mackey judge credibility by how critical a source is of Israel?

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Egyptian Women Cannot Get High

High heel shoes, that is:

Preacher Mustafa al-Adawi issued a fatwa prohibiting Muslim women from wearing high heels because they are a source of seduction for men.

“A woman can only wear high heels for her husband but she is not to do so outside her house,” he said.

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Another New Media Comment Column

Here, at the Jerusalem Post:

Journalist's Feast

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3 vs. 21 - The Pals. Win

As if this was a sport:-

Three Israeli soldiers were arrested on Tuesday for suspected involvement in pro-settler vandalism and arson, the military said, following a series of attacks in the West Bank that have exacerbated tensions with Palestinians.

vs.

Israeli forces detained 21 people in home raids across the West Bank early Wednesday, witnesses and the army said.

And in the reserves:

The Israeli army Monday arrested nine Palestinians from the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank and the cities of Bethlehem and Hebron in the southern West Bank, according to security and local sources.

and

Israeli forces Thursday arrested seven Palestinians from the Bethlehem and Qaliqilya areas in the West Bank, according to witnesses.

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West Bank Expands; New Takeover

Sorry, that's AmericanWest Bank.

AmericanWest Bank completes Viking Bank acquisition

AmericanWest Bank has announced its holding company completed the acquisition of Seattle-based Viking Financial Services Corporation, parent company of Viking Bank. Immediately following the close, Viking Bank was merged into, and became part of, AmericanWest Bank.

The Viking Financial Services Corporation shareholders overwhelmingly voted to approve the merger and acquisition at their November 3 special shareholder meeting. The necessary regulatory approvals have also been received, clearing the way for the completion of the sale.

“We are pleased to officially welcome Viking Bank customers and employees to AmericanWest Bank,” said Scott A. Kisting, Chairman and CEO, AmericanWest Bank...

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