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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2008/07/media-watch-international-some.html
Here are some notes on Media Watch International, a pro-Israel advocacy group that has been mentioned in media reports about Prime Minister Olmert's finances.
Israel police on July 9 questioned Sharon Tzur, executive director of the New York-based group. Investigators reportedly asked Tzur about her connection to Morris Talansky, who had told police that Tzur was present on at least one occasion when Olmert received an envelope containing thousands of dollars. Media articles have described Tzur as an Olmert confidante and former Likud activist, and as "the mastermind behind HonestReporting.com."
In May, the newspaper Haaretz reported that in 2005 Tzur and Media Watch International paid a $2,200 bill for Olmert and his wife, Aliza, at the Peninsula hotel in New York City. According to the newspaper, Tzur said Olmert, who was then a cabinet minister, took part in eight meetings on behalf of her organization.
According to the group's website, "Tzur founded Media Watch International to counter the growing media bias in coverage of the Middle East. She oversaw the runaway success of Honestreporting.com, until it reached over 50,000 activists and became an independent organization."
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency quoted Tzur in 2001 as explaining that Aish HaTorah helped create Media Watch International: "In December [2000], the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah, an Orthodox group focused on outreach to secular Jews, provided close to $150,000 in seed money to create Media Watch International for a dual purpose: to absorb HonestReporting and continue with its activism and media watchdog work, and to educate the media with position papers, Tzur said." HonestReporting began as a project of Jewish university students in London after the Second Intifada broke out in late September 2000.
On its U.S. tax return, Media Watch International states that its primary purpose is to "monitor, review and evaluate the accuracy, quality and fairness of media coverage regarding the Middle East."
In 2006, the most recent period for which its tax return is available, Media Watch International reported it received tax-exempt gifts of $496,468 and spent $522,566. The outlays included $111,430 in salary and pension benefits for Tzur, who is listed as the organization's president. Its assets at the end of 2006 were $29,100 in cash, according to the tax return.
According to the tax return, the group's corporate name is "Media Caravan Inc. D/B/A Media Watch International."
The Media Watch International website states that its flagship program is Caravan for Democracy, which "fosters pro-Israel sentiment about Israel and the Middle East on colleges throughout the United States."
Media Watch International's website lists four other key people in addition to Tzur:
* Laura B. Newmark, manager of programs
* Lenny Ben-David, consultant and writer. A former deputy chief of mission at the Israel embassy in Washington, Ben-David is an independent consultant and publishes a blog at http://lennybendavid.com/
* Ronn Torossian, communications and marketing consultant. Owner of a New York public-relations business with a Los Angeles office, Torossian publishes a blog at http://ronntorossian.com.
* "Our ghost writer," described as a New York native who lives in Israel.
How does Media Watch International compare to other pro-Israel organizations engaged in public affairs and media monitoring? Here are some highlights from tax returns for 2006:
The Israel Project, Washington, D.C.
Purpose: "The purpose of the Israel Project is to help protect the existence of Israel and the Jewish people and to combat anti-Semitism by educating the public in the US and in other countries about Israel and situation in the Middle East, and by educating opinion leaders and the media to the same effect."
Total revenue: $6,088,157
Officers' salaries and benefits:
$200,000 - Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi
Net assets: $2,808,608
Zionist Organization of America, New York City
Purpose: "Public affairs -- to create public awareness in communities around the country about the happenings affecting the Jewish people. Zionist education -- to educate the public concerning the values of Zionism."
Total revenue:
$4,199,958
Officers' salaries and benefits:
$279,346 - Morton Klein, president
$170,144 - Meir Jolovitz, executive director
$48,000 - Sheldon Fliegelman, executive director
Net assets: $11,315,771
Middle East Media and Research Institute, Inc. (MEMRI) Washington, D.C.
Purpose: "to serve as a clearinghouse for information regarding news and other cultural media in and on the subject of the Middle East"
Total revenue: $4,078,038
Officers' salaries and benefits:
$87,268 - Steven Stalinsky, executive director
$62,314 - Yigal Carmon, president (20 hours per week)
Net assets: $1,551,622
Committee on Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, Inc., Boston, Mass. (CAMERA)
Purpose: "To provide the educational services necessary to give members and the general public the ability to evaluate Middle Eastern reporting"
Total revenue: $2,559,469
Officers' salaries and benefits:
$174,368 - Andrea Levin, president
$115,707 - Alex Safian, associate director
Net assets: $4,169,269
HonestReporting.com, Inc., New York City (Middle East Media Watch, Skokie, Ill.)
Purpose: "To monitor and promote objective reporting by the media of events emanating from the Middle East in connection with the Israeli-Arab conflict."
Total revenue: $1,146,018
Officers' salaries and benefits:
None.
Net assets: $230,626
NOTE: HonestReporting.com, Inc., reported a total U.S. payroll of only $20,880. It listed as key officers [Rabbi] Ephraim Shore, Beitar, Israel, president; Joe Hyams, Beit Shemesh, international director; [Rabbi] Shraga Simmons, Kiryat Sefer, Israel, secretary; and Michael Weinstein, Jerusalem, treasurer. Its largest expense item was a $414,476 payment to HonestReporting Israel.
--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv Labels: Campus, Israel, Media
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2008/04/yair-lapid-asks-whats-wrong-with-israel.html
As Israel's 60th birthday draws near, a chorus of complaints about the country's failures, large and small, is being heard throughout the land. Columnist Yair Lapid cataloged some leading criticisms and took issue with them in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israeli's largest-circulation daily newspaper. A translation of Lapid's column appeared April 26 on Ynetnews, Yedioth's English-language website.
Is Israel really that bad?
Yair Lapid has a few questions for Israelis who think that things are so bad around here
by Yair Lapid
Published: 04.26.08, 15:14
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3536046,00.html
If the state of education is so bad here, academia is in a freefall, and the brain-drain is in full force, how do you explain the fact that our high-tech sector is so successful, that the number of scientific publications is the highest in the world per capita (just like the number of patents,) and that we invented the disk-on-key and cell phone text messages?
If we don’t care about anything anymore and have no interest in what’s happening in the country, how do you explain the fact that Rabin Square gets filled up by protestors five times a year, that the evening newscasts are the most watched TV shows, and that most arguments around here are about politics?
If the public lost its faith in the IDF, our mutual responsibility is fading, and the number of draft-dodgers is skyrocketing, how do you explain the fact that all of us are so preoccupied with the fate of our captives, and that the round of recruitment that enlisted to the IDF immediately after the Second Lebanon War broke an all-time record after 70.8% of new recruits asked to join combat units?
If government corruption is everywhere and the law is a joke, how do you explain the fact that the son of a former prime minister is in jail, the former Labor minister was recently convicted over a bribe, and that our prime minister is constantly under investigation?
If our press has became silly like in America, yellow like in England, and irresponsible like in Italy, how do you explain the fact that newspapers last week cast aside all our supermodels to make room for publishing a chapter from David Grossman’s new book?
If the economy is collapsing, the concern for the poor is constantly declining, and the Treasury has been taken over by a gang of neo-conservatives who do whatever they feel like, how do you explain the fact that the number of poor Israelis has declined for the second year in a row, that the Wisconsin Plan appears to be a success story, and that not even one person has died of hunger in the history of our country?
If every ultra-Orthodox family has 10 children and more people are becoming religious, how do you explain the fact that the ultra-Orthodox have remained 8% of the population, exactly as they were when Israel was established?
Life expectancy high, unemployment low
If the Russian immigrants are failing to integrate, prefer to live in their own ghettos, read Russian newspapers, watch Russian television, and shop at their own shops, how do you explain the fact that all of them learned Hebrew, that their children are joining the IDF en masse, that about 80% of them own their apartment (a higher percentage than the general population), and that they show no intention of returning to Moscow?
If our youths are violent and detached, drink too much alcohol, and only care about going to clubs and stabbing each other, how do you explain the fact that close to 250,000 children are members of youth groups, and that tens of thousands choose to embark on a year of social service or join groups that help the needy?
If our immigration police is facing collapse because of the burden, the Agriculture Ministry brings here masses of Thai workers, every elderly Israeli has a Filipino nurse, and thousands of Palestinians come here to work every day, how do you explain the fact that unemployment in the first quarter of the year dropped to 6.5%, a 15-year low?
If our healthcare system is collapsing, our doctors are leaving, and extra health insurance coverage costs a fortune, how do you explain the fact that our per capita national expenditure dedicated to healthcare is only 7.8% of our GDP, roughly half of what it is in the US, and only two thirds of what it is in Germany and France? And how do you explain the fact that life expectancy here is higher than in all the abovementioned countries?
If President Bush is the best friend Israel ever had, Italy’s Berlusconi declares that he is warmly pro-Zionist, France’s Sarkozy decided to include Holocaust studies at every school in the country, Germany’s Angela Merkel ended the support for the Palestinian Authority and visited the Knesset to tell us how much she loves us, and Tony Blair appointed himself as a peace ambassador, how do you explain the fact that we feel like everyone hates us?
If our personal safety is declining, crime is skyrocketing, and we no longer can leave the house for fear that someone will rob us, how do you explain the fact that in a particularly broad national poll 81% of Israelis said that they are satisfied with their neighborhood and 75% said that “they feel safe when they walk alone on the street at night?”
If girls here have bad taste in clothing, every third girl gets a piercing in her belly button, half of them are tattooed like an Irish sailor, and the sweat wipes off their makeup three minutes after they leave the house, how do you explain the fact that every tourist who arrives here immediately declares that Israeli women are the most beautiful in the world?
If we have turned into a bunch of uncultured barbarians who yell on the street, swear, show contempt to academia and the arts, and only watch television, how do you explain the fact that we are number one in the world when it comes to museums per capita, number two in the world when it comes to reading books, that the percentage of Israelis who go to the theater (41%) is double the percentage of those who go to soccer games, and that one of four Israelis attended a classical music performance this year?
If we suffer so much, a plane ticket on sale is only $240, and Canada is happy to let us in, how do you explain the fact that we’re still here?Labels: Israel
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2008/04/white-house-statement-on.html
Here is the text of a statement from the White House press office about the Syrian installation which Israeli aircraft destroyed last year. The White House states, "We have good reason to believe that reactor, which was damaged beyond repair on Sept. 6 of last year, was not intended for peaceful purposes." The statement doesn't mention Israel.
The White House
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 24, 2008
Statement by the Press Secretary
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/04/20080424-14.html
Today, administration officials have briefed select Congressional
committees on an issue of great international concern. Until Sept. 6,
2007, the Syrian regime was building a covert nuclear reactor in its
eastern desert capable of producing plutonium. We are convinced, based
on a variety of information, that North Korea assisted Syria's covert
nuclear activities. We have good reason to believe that reactor, which
was damaged beyond repair on Sept. 6 of last year, was not intended for
peaceful purposes. Carefully hidden from view, the reactor was not
configured for such purposes. In defiance of its international
obligations, Syria did not inform the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) of the construction of the reactor, and, after it was destroyed,
the regime moved quickly to bury evidence of its existence. This
cover-up only served to reinforce our confidence that this reactor was
not intended for peaceful activities.
We are briefing the IAEA on this intelligence. The Syrian regime must
come clean before the world regarding its illicit nuclear activities.
The Syrian regime supports terrorism, takes action that destabilizes
Lebanon, allows the transit of some foreign fighters into Iraq, and
represses its own people. If Syria wants better relations with the
international community, it should put an end to these activities.
We have long been seriously concerned about North Korea's nuclear
weapons program and its proliferation activities. North Korea's
clandestine nuclear cooperation with Syria is a dangerous manifestation
of those activities. One way we have chosen to deal with this problem is
through the Six Party Framework. Through this process we are working
with our partners to achieve the verifiable denuclearization of the
Korean Peninsula. The United States is also committed to ensuring that
North Korea does not further engage in proliferation activities. We will
work with our partners to establish in the Six Party Framework a
rigorous verification mechanism to ensure that such conduct and other
nuclear activities have ceased.
The construction of this reactor was a dangerous and potentially
destabilizing development for the region and the world. This is
particularly true because it was done covertly and in violation of the
very procedures designed to reassure the world of the peaceful intent of
nuclear activities. This development also serves as a reminder that
often the same regimes that sponsor proliferation also sponsor terrorism
and foster instability, and cooperate with one another in doing so. This
underscores that the international community is right to be very
concerned about the nuclear activities of Iran and the risks those
activities pose to the stability of the Middle East. To confront this
challenge, the international community must take further steps,
beginning with the full implementation of the United Nations Security
Council resolutions dealing with Iranian nuclear activities. The United
States calls upon the international community to redouble our common
efforts to ending these activities and preventing the spread of weapons
of mass destruction in this critical region.
# # #Labels: Israel, Nuclear Weapons
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2008/01/wingrad-report-is-bigger-failure-than.html
This is my take on the Winograd report at ZioNation Web log. Ami Isseroff The long awaited Winograd report on the Second Lebanon War (see text of press conference on Winograd findings) has finally arrived. The suspense, if there was any, has ended, not with a bang, but a whimper. The public part of the report noted strategic failures at the military and political levels, but the report is so vaguely worded that everyone can make any claim they wish.
We should put the failure of the Second Lebanon war in context and understand its significance. Failures of individual operations are nothing new and plague every army. IDF has never been immune from such failures, from the Israel War of Independence and throughout each campaign, successful or otherwise.The political decisions made after every war have always likewise not been uniformly optimal, and the decision to go to war has sometimes been questionable. However, never before has Israel seen such a combination of failures at every level, inflated expectations, incompetent military strategy, failure to protect civilians, low morale, failure of national purpose, decisions that disregarded the value of the lives of soldiers and diplomatic and public relations bungling. The Israel government tried to match the most powerful army in the Middle East against an enemy whose main weapon is his mouth, and the mouth won.
The report itself is a continuation of the failures of the Lebanon war and the political reaction to the report is a further continuation of those failures. The report was obviously tailored to serve political interests and protect those in power, at least in the public version. The politicians are each interpreting the report in terms of their own interests. Hassan Nasrallah of the Hezbollah joined forces with Likud and other Israeli opposition leaders in claiming that the report indicates Olmert is a failure and has lost all credibility. Kadima party members insist that the report exonerates Ehud Olmert.
Labels: Hezbollah, IDF, Israel, Israel-2, Lebanon, Politics, Security, Terror
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/12/israeli-arabs-want-to-be-israelis.html
This poll confirms the results of many others - Israeli Arabs want to remain in Israel. However, increasing numbers of them want to be known as "Palestinians" - they want to have their Israeli citizenship and destroy it at the same time, it seems. Ami Isseroff
Israeli Arabs prefer remaining Israeli citizens over PA citizenship 62%:14%
Dr. Aaron Lerner 26 December, 2007
Poll Methodology Representative sample 514 Israeli Arabs Over 18 years old
Phone calls: 3-5 Dec. 2007
+ - 4.5% margin of error. KEEVOON Research, Strategy & Communications.
Questions:
1. "There has been a lot of talk lately about the formation of a new Palestinian State. It has been suggested by some that Israeli Arabs could continue to live in Israel, but change their citizenship to the new Palestinian State. Given the choice, and continuing to live where you presently live today, would you prefer to be a citizen of Israel or of a new Palestinian State?"
Remain Israeli citizens 62% Join a future Palestinian State 14%
No opinion or refused to answer 24%
The strongest support for remaining citizens of Israel was exhibited by members of the Druse community, 84% of whom would choose Israel. Lower income households also showed strong support with 71% of them choosing Israel. Men were more likely than women to choose to remain Israeli citizens (67% vs. 56%). The strongest support for becoming citizens of a future Palestinian State was among students with 21% as opposed to the average of 14%. The largest percentage of undecided citizens was among Christian Arab Israelis with 43% compared to the average of 24%.
2. Among Olmert, Barak or Netanyahu, who is more likely to make peace with the Palestinian Authority and Israel's neighbors?
Barak 18% Olmert 8% Netanyahu 7% None of them 36% no opinion or refused to answer 28%
Barak's greatest support is among the Druse with 29%. Netanyahu's greatest support is among residents of the Negev (22%) and 45-55 year olds (19%). 47% of Christian Arabs and students didn't know or refused to answer this question.
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il Labels: Arabs, Human Rights, Israel
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/12/bringing-isrelis-back-to-israel.html
The number of Israelis living abroad and their descendants is probably underestimated below. Wouldn't it be better to focus on the conditions that cause so many to leave, in order to give people a bigger incentive to stay? Last update - 23:33 09/12/2007
Absorption Ministry seeks to bring back Israelis living abroad
By The Associated Press
Israel is trying to persuade hundreds of thousands of its citizens living overseas to return home in a project to coincide with the state's 60th anniversary next year, the Absorption Ministry announced Sunday. The project, dubbed "coming home", will try to lure Israelis living abroad to come back with tax breaks, employment and small business loans.
About 650,000 Israelis live abroad, 450,000 of them in North America, the ministry said. The ministry began contacting them last month through direct phone calls, an Internet site and a hot line. "What surprised us most is the amount of positive feedback we received from countries where the standard of living is very high," said Erez Halfon, director of the Absorption Ministry. "We received 285 calls from Israelis living in Switzerland, and of them, 15 families have committed to coming home." Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed support for the project at a cabinet meeting Sunday. "Every Israeli, even if he lives abroad, is Israeli at heart and knows that his home is here. I call on all Israelis to return home," Olmert said. "The project aims to bring 10,000 ex-pats back to Israel in the first year and double that number of the next few years. Between 18,000 and 21,000 Israelis emigrate each year," Halfon told reporters. The estimated cost of the campaign is NIS 140 million a year, an amount the ministry believes will be paid back by the returning Israelis themselves. Within half a year of their being reintroduced into society as consumers, the government will get all their money back, Halfon said. Halfon said the project aims to remove the social stigma faced by those who leave Israel, so they will have a softer landing upon their return.
Labels: Aliya, Israel
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/11/speeches-of-ehud-olmert-and-mahmoud.html
See also: Joint Israeli-Palestinian Declaration, and its meaning The full text of Olmert, Abbas' speeches at the Annapolis summit By Assaf Uni, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service PRIME MINISTER EHUD OLMERT
The honorable president of the United States, George Bush, my colleague, president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, heads of delegations, and distinguished guests, I came here today from Jerusalem, Mr. President, at your invitation, to extend, on behalf of the people of Israel and the state of Israel, to the Palestinian people and to our neighboring Arab states, to extend a hand in peace, a hand which marks the beginning of historic reconciliation between us and you, the Palestinians, and all of the Arab nations.
I had many good reasons not to come here to this meeting. Memory of failures in the near and distant past weighed heavy upon us. The dreadful terrorism perpetrated by Palestinian terrorist organizations has affected thousands of Israeli citizens, has destroyed families and has tried to disrupt the lives of the citizens of Israel. I witnessed this when I served as mayor of Jerusalem in days of bombings at cafes, on buses, and in recreational centers in Jerusalem, as well as in other cities in the state of Israel. The ongoing shooting of Qassam rockets against tens of thousands of residents in the south of Israel, particularly in the city of Sderot, serves as a warning sign, one which we cannot overlook. The absence of governmental institutions and effective law enforcement mechanisms, the role of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the ongoing activity of murderous organizations throughout all the territories of the Palestinian Authority, the absence of a legal system that meets the basic criteria of democratic government, all of these are factors which deter us from moving forward too hastily. I am not overlooking any of these obstacles which are liable to emerge along the way. I see them. But I came here, despite the concerns and the doubts and the hesitations to say to you, President Mahmoud Abbas, and through you to your people, and to the entire Arab world, the time has come. We no longer and you no longer have the privilege of adhering to dreams which are disconnected from the sufferings of our peoples, the hardships that they experience daily, and the burden of living under ongoing uncertainty, which offers no hope of change or of a better future. We want peace. We demand an end to terror, an end to incitement and to hatred. We are prepared to make a painful compromise, rife with risks, in order to realize these aspirations. I came here today not in order to settle historical accounts between us and you about what caused the confrontations and the hatred, and what for many years has prevented a compromise, a settlement of peace. I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart that I acknowledge the fact I know that alongside the constant suffering that many in Israel have experienced, because of our history, because of the wars, the terrorism and the hatred toward us, a suffering that has always been part of our lives in our land, your people, too, have suffered for many years; and there are some who still suffer. Many Palestinians have been living for decades in camps, disconnected from the environment in which they grew up, wallowing in poverty, in neglect, alienation, bitterness, and a deep, unrelenting sense of humiliation. I know that this pain and this humiliation are the deepest foundations which fomented the ethos of hatred toward us. We are not indifferent to this suffering. We are not oblivious to the tragedies that you have experienced. I believe that, in the course of negotiations between us, we will find the right way, as part of an international effort, in which we will participate, to assist these Palestinians in finding a proper framework for their future, in the Palestinian state that will be established in the territories agreed upon between us. Israel will be part of an international mechanism that will assist in finding a solution to this problem. The negotiations between us will not take place here in Annapolis but rather in our home and in your home. These negotiations will be bilateral, direct, ongoing, and continuous, in an effort to complete the process in the course of 2008. The negotiations will address all of the issues which we have thus far avoided dealing with. We will do this directly, openly and courageously. We will not avoid any subject. We will deal with all the core issues. I am convinced that the reality that emerged in our region in 1967 will change significantly. This will be an extremely difficult process for many of us, but it is nevertheless inevitable. I know this. Many of my people know this. We are prepared for it. In the course of the negotiations, we will use previous agreements as a point of departure. U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map, and the letter of President Bush to the prime minister of Israel dated April 14, 2004. When the negotiations are concluded, I believe that we shall be able to arrive at an agreement that will fulfill the vision expressed by President Bush: two states for two peoples, a peace-seeking Palestinian state, a viable, strong, democratic and terror-free state for the Palestinian people; and the state of Israel, Jewish and democratic, living in security and free from the threat of terrorism, the national home of the Jewish people. Clearly the implementation of the agreement will be subject to the implementation of all obligations in the road map with all of its phases and according to its complete sequence, as concluded between us from the very beginning. We will abide by all of our obligations, and so will you. The agreement with you and its gradual implementation, cautiously and responsibly, is part of a much wider whole which will lead us, I believe and hope, to peace, to a peace agreement with all of the Arab states. There isn't a single Arab state in the north, in the east or in the south with which we do not seek peace. There isn't a single Muslim state with which we do not want to establish diplomatic relations. Anyone who wants to make peace with us, we say to them, from the bottom of our hearts (SPEAKING IN ARABIC) welcome. I am pleased to see here in this hall representatives of Arab countries. Most of them do not have diplomatic relations with Israel. The time has come for you as well. We cannot continue to stand by indefinitely and to watch the -- watch you standing and watching from the sidelines, watching the peace train, as it were, going by. The time has come to end the boycott, the alienation and the obliviousness toward the state of Israel. It does not help you and it hurts us. I am familiar with the Arab peace initiative, which was born in Riyadh, affirmed in Beirut and recently reaffirmed by you in Riyadh. I value this initiative, I acknowledge its importance, and I highly appreciate its contribution. I have no doubt that we will continue to refer to it in the course of the negotiations between us and the Palestinian leadership. The Arab world represented here by many countries is a vital component in creating a new reality in the Middle East. The peace signed between Israel and Egypt, and subsequently between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a solid foundation of stability and hope in our region. This peace is an example and a model of the relations that we can build with Arab states. My close relations with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and with His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan are extremely significant for the process of building trust and understanding with the Arab states. However, these relations, important though they may be, are not enough. We aspire for normalization with those Arab states which eschew as much as we do radical and fanatical fundamentalism and which seek to grant their citizens a more moderate, tolerant and prosperous world. This is an interest that all of us share. There is quite a lot that separates us. There are memories, there is a heritage, that do not emanate from the same historical roots. We have different ways of living, different customs. And the spontaneous emotional identification that you feel with our neighboring Arab countries, which have been trapped for a long time in this age-old, bloody conflict between us. Nevertheless, there is also a great deal that we share. Like us, you know that religious fanaticism and national extremism are a perfect recipe for domestic instability, for violence, for bitterness and, ultimately, for the disintegration of the very foundations of coexistence based on tolerance and mutual acceptance. We are a small country with a small population, but rich in good will and with a significant ability to create a partnership that will lead to prosperity, to growth, to economic development, and to stability for the entire region. From here, from Annapolis, we can come forth with a message of a new political horizon, renewed hope, not only for the Palestinians and the Israelis but also, together with you, for the entire region. Mr. President of the United States, my colleague Mahmoud Abbas, distinguished guests, almost two years ago, under very sad circumstances, the prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, was no longer able to carry the heavy responsibility of leading the state of Israel and this responsibility was passed on to me, first as a result of formal procedures and subsequently on the basis of an election in Israel's democratic system of government. Prior to my election, I stated that my heart's desire and the desire of my people was to achieve a peace agreement, first and foremost with the Palestinian people. This is what I believed then, and this is what I continue to believe in now, with all my heart. The past two years have been difficult for all of us. The hardships have not been alleviated. The terrorist organizations have not been weakened. The enemies of peace have not disappeared. And we are still anxiously awaiting the return of our missing and captive sons who are being held by terrorist organizations. I long for the day when I can see Gilad, Eldad and Udi back with their families. And I will continue relentlessly in my efforts to achieve their release. I believe that there is no path other than the path of peace. I believe that there is no just solution other than the solution of two national states for two peoples. I believe that there is no path that does not involve painful compromise for you, the Palestinians, and for us, the Israelis. I would like to thank you, President of United States George Bush, an ally in the path of peace, for your willingness, for the preparedness of your government, your administration, and for the assistance of the secretary of state, Ms. Rice, to assist us in the historical process of peace and reconciliation between us and our neighbors. I believe that the time has come. We are ready. I invite you, my friend, Mahmoud Abbas, and your people to join us in this long and tormenting and complex path for which there is no substitute. Together, we shall start. Together, we shall arrive. Thank you very much.
PA CHAIRMAN MAHMOUD ABBAS
In the name of God, the compassionate, with great hope, but it is accompanied with great worry that this new opportunity might be lost. But the meanings of your message are well known and they carry your personal bridge and commitment by your great country and its determination to embrace the Palestinian and Israeli peace and the Arab-Israeli peace to be converted in the arena of negotiations to be the first and foremost arena for making peace. And that this initiative would culminate your term of office is an outstanding achievement which would add a new shining star in the skies of the world, the world of the future free of violence, oppression and bigotry. And also we would like to applaud you, Mr. President, for choosing this charming city, Annapolis, as a venue for convening this international conference. In addition to its beauty and distinctive location, it bears the symbol of freedom; the most sublime value in our life. "Freedom" is the single word that stands for the future of the Palestinians and captures the meanings of all their generations. It is their sunshine and it is the life that inspires their future. It is the last word voiced by the martyrs and victims, and it is the lyric (ph) of their prisoners. I must also pay tribute to the role played by Dr. Condoleezza Rice and her aides. For without here relentless resolve and determination and her vision vis-a-vis all aspects of conflict in our region, we would not have been convening here. Dr. Rice took important strides with us in order to affirm that the path of peace is the only choice and it is irreversible. And that the path to negotiations for peace and to achieve peace is the right path. It is important for me to indicate here that this distinguished participation and large participation from sister Arab and Islamic countries, the quartet, and the group of great industrial countries, and the permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations, and many prominent European and Asian countries, as well as non-aligned countries and African states and from South America, in a unique conference in the history of the conflicts would provide impetus and protection, in addition to the fact that it carries the meanings of encouragement to pursue the path of Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations and move that forward and the need to reach the solution of two states, based on ending occupation and the establishment of the state of Palestine side by side to the state of Israel, and the resolution of all issues relating to the Palestinian- Israeli conflict, Arab-Israeli conflict in all their aspects, as an indispensable qualitative step, so that comprehensive and normal peace relations would be established in our region. I am proud that this Arab and Islamic contribution and this broad international that this Arab and Islamic contribution and this broad international participation in the work of this conference is a testimony to the fact that sister and friendly states are standing by us, the people of Palestine, as a leadership, and for our efforts to achieve peace. It is a support of our approach that calls for a balanced historical settlement that would ensure peace and security for our independent state and for Israel, as well as for all countries in the region. This Arab and Islamic participation in today's meeting is also an affirmation that the Arab peace initiative was not a step without well-defined targets, but indeed it was a bold strategic plan that aims changing the nature of relations in the region and to usher in a new era there. But to achieve that does not depend on the Arab and Islamic position by itself, but requires meeting this position by a reciprocal strategic willingness that would basically lead to ending the occupation of all Palestinian occupied territories in 1967, including East Jerusalem, as well as the Syrian Golan and what remains of occupied from Lebanese territories, and to resolve all other issues relating to the conflict, especially the Palestinian refugees question in all its political, humanitarian, individual and common aspects, consistent with Resolution 194, as emphasized by the Arab peace initiative and the participation of sister states that host refugees and carry huge burdens in this regard. I am not making an overstatement, Mr. President, if I say that our region stands at a crossroad that separates two historical phases, pre-Annapolis phase and post-Annapolis phase. In other words, this extraordinary huge opportunity provided today by the Arab, Islamic and international position, and the overwhelming support from the public opinion in both the Palestinian and Israeli societies for the need to exploit the occasion of this conference that would launch the negotiating process and not to do away with the potential that it carries, I say that this opportunity might not be repeated. And if it were to be repeated, it might not enjoy the same unanimity and impetus. Mr. President, what we are facing today is not just the challenge of peace, but we are facing a test of our credibility as a whole: the United States, members of the quartet, and all members of the international community, Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, the Arab and Islamic group, as well. It is a test that would leave its indelible impact on the future of the region and on the relationship among its peoples and the international powers that are entrusted in the peace, stability of our region on the other hand. We came with this perspective to Annapolis today. And, therefore, we do recognize the volume of this possibility that we are bearing and the gravity of the burden that we must shoulder. We do recognize, and I presume that you share me this view, that the absence of hope and overwhelming despair would feed extremism. Therefore, we have a common duty to spread genuine hope in order to achieve full transformation toward complete peace (inaudible) and long term during your term of office, Mr. President, thanks to your support and understanding. Tomorrow, we have to start comprehensive and deep negotiations on all issues of final status, including Jerusalem, refugees, borders, settlements, water and security and others. We have to support this negotiating process in concrete and direct steps on the ground that would prove that we are moving in an irreversible path toward negotiated, comprehensive and full peace, and to ensure ending all settlement activities, including natural growth, and reopening closed Jerusalem institutions, removal of settlement outposts, removal of road blocks, and freedom of prisoners, and to facilitate our mission in the authority to enforce law and the rule of law. Here, I must defend in all sincerity and candor, and without wavering, the right of our people to see a new dawn, without occupation, without settlement, without separation walls, without prisons where thousands of prisoners are detained, without assassinations, without siege, without barriers around villages and (inaudible). I look forward, Mr. President, to see that our prisoners have been set free and returned to exercise their role in supporting peace and to stand by us in our mission to build our statehood and our homeland. It is my duty to say that, to have peace, we need the fate of the city of Jerusalem to be a critical component in any peace accord that we might reach. We need East Jerusalem to be our capital and to establish open relations with western Jerusalem, and to ensure for all the faithful from all religions their right to exercise their rituals and to access holy shrines without any discrimination and on the basis of international and humanitarian goals. In this regard, I wish to emphasize that we shall pursue our obligations under the road map, in order to combat chaos, violence, terrorism, and to ensure security, order and the rule of law. The government of the Palestinian National Authority works tirelessly and without any wavering under extremely conditions to achieve this noble goal that represents, first and foremost, a Palestinian national interest before it becomes a political requirement that is imposed by signed accords or the road map. Our people distinguish completely between emphasis on the danger of terrorism and using it as a pretext to maintain the status quo and to pursue the current practices that we suffer from every day. There must be a chance given to us to build our civilian security and economic institutions. And the international community must sponsor this opportunity so that our authority and our government would fully fulfill their mandates. I must emphasize that our determination to end occupation emanates from our vision that we would remove the most important reasons for terrorism in our region and worldwide without underestimating the need to fight terrorism under all circumstances and from any source. Because it is a comprehensive threat that threatens the future of every people and imperils human civilization, its gains and achievements, and brings dire consequences on all of us. Here, I must applaud the tireless efforts undertaken by Mr. Tony Blair, who continues to work in order to build and enhance building Palestinian institutions and to complete great projects at the economic level in order to improve the living conditions and the terms of peace. And in that endeavor, he continues to submit very constructive ideas. And I wish to pay tribute to the role of the European Union, Japan and our Arab brothers who made commitments to support these economic projects and building the future Palestinian state institutions. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to address the mind and conscience of every citizen in Israel from this rostrum. I'm speaking on the basis for our recognition that, despite the importance of international and regional support for the success of the peace process, but the most determining factor for the making peace and stability and its sustainability at the end of the day is the public opinion in Palestine, Israel and their legitimate leaders. I start by saying that, despite our disagreements on critical issues, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert showed desire for peace that I have perceived during our bilateral discussions, and that genuinely contributed to reach this important step for which we are meeting today in order to launch. Mr. Prime Minister, I wish that we, together, continue and closely work in order to achieve a historical mission that we have waited for too long. Each one of us must pitch in our weight and experience and sense of resolve in order to overcome the obstacles that we will face and to close the gaps between our positions in a bid to achieve a solution that would end occupation and the long years of suffering of the refugees and ensure good neighbor relations, economic cooperation, humanitarian openness so that all of them would ensure guarantees for peace that are stronger than any documents, commitments or pledges, despite the importance of these all. I say to the citizens of Israel, in this extraordinary day, you, our neighbors on this small land, neither us nor you are begging for peace from each other. It is a common interest for us and for you. Peace and freedom is a right to us, in as much as peace and security is a right for you and for us. Time has come for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to come to an end. Time has come that both of us should look at the future with confidence and hope, and that this long-suffering land, which was called the land of love and peace, would not be worth of its own name. Peace is not impossible to achieve if there was will and good faith and every party got its legitimate right. Those who say that peace-making between us is impossible, actually does not need except to perpetuate this conflict toward the unknown, but it is, we all know, in other words, that continuation of bloodshed for many decades to come. After that, we would not reach the solution proposed today, all of which we know, all its components and elements. Or the ideal of peace would be killed in the hearts and minds. Indeed, peace is possible but it requires our common efforts so that we could make it and preserve it. And on this day we stretch our hands to you as equal partners in peace. The whole world is our witness and the world as a whole is supporting us. Therefore, we should not lose this opportunity which might not be available once again. Let us make a peace with a brave (ph) and protect that peace in the interest of the future of our children and your children. To our friends across the globe, members of the international quartet, and all participants in this conference, powers and states outside this conference who have been and continue to lend support for us, I say to all of you that our people will never, ever forget your support for it under all circumstances and under our most difficult times. We look forward that your political presence will continue to be with us after this conference, in order to support Palestinian-Israeli negotiations with a view to reach the desired results. We all hope that the work of this conference would be supported by the success of the Paris economic conference to be held after a few weeks. The continuation and success of negotiations would be the real key to change the face of the entire region. Allah, the Lord, said in the Koran, in the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful, all you who believe, enter into peace, all of you, don't follow the steps of Satan. Satan is your obvious enemy." The Lord also said, "If they move toward peace, then you should move to peace and have faith in the Lord, because God, the Lord, will listen and support that effort." And on this occasion, may I record here, as we are here in the United States of America, the words of former United States President John F. Kennedy, who said, quote, "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate," end of quotation. To our Palestinian people, to all Palestinians in Gaza, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and in refugee camps and the diaspora, may I address these words? I do recognize that each one of you has his or her personal pain, personal tragedy as a result of this conflict and as a result of the years of tragedy and occupation. These are very bitter years. Don't be depressed, Don't lose confidence and hope, For the whole world today now is stretching its hand toward us in order to help us put an end to our tragedy, to our holocaust that has been running for too long, and to lift the historical injustice that our people suffer. And we shall be ready as individuals and as a people to overcome pain and the tragedy when we reach a settlement that would ensure our rights, that would make us equal with all other peoples in the whole world: the right to independence and self-determination. To the Palestinian mothers who are awaiting the return of their children from prisons, to the Palestinian children who are dreaming of a new life, a better future - more prosperous, more safe future, to our brave prisoners - my sisters, brothers, children - wherever you are, have confidence in the future and tomorrow, because future Palestine is coming, because this is the promise of the whole world to you. Be confident that the dawn is coming. To my people and relatives in the Gaza Strip, you are at the core of my heart. The hours of darkness will end in the face of your resolve and determination. For your insistence on the unity of our people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as one geographical political unit without any divergence, your suffering will end. Right and peace will prevail. May I close by recalling some words of Abraham Lincoln in one of the darkest moments of American history? Quote, "Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations," end of quotation. We started with peace and I end on a note of peace and we hope that peace would prevail. Peace be upon all of you Labels: Israel, Palestinians, Peace, US Policy
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Anyone who has ever tried to put in a good word for Ehud Olmert knows the drill. In the best case, he receives questioning glances, as if his mind had slipped a gear. In the less-best case, he is considered an incorrigible coddler protecting a deceitful prime minister for political reasons. In the worst case he is branded a garden-variety sycophant, bought by the regime for some unknown favor. In all these cases one gets the sense that to support the prime minister, however insubstantially, is to commit an act of moral turpitude. The polls confirm this perception. Even after the operation in Syria (which was supposed to rehabilitate his military image) and the disclosure of his cancer (which was supposed to provoke empathy), more than 75 percent of Israelis are dissatisfied with Olmert and think he is unfit to be prime minister. Israel has never had a prime minister who is less well-liked and whose rivals march well ahead of him in the popularity parade. .... To find the deepest reason for the Olmert hatred, one must search the depths of mass psychology, in the general sense of the crumbling of the state's authority, the lack of vision - all the factors that make up a leadership crisis. Israelis may be content on the personal level, but they are depressed on the national one. They have no direction. Author David Grossman put it well: "The people leading Israel today are unable to connect Israelis to their identity .... [to] give some meaning to the exhausting and despairing struggle for existence." Olmert is a victim of this dynamic, but he also contributes to it through his personal and political behavior. As a leader, he personifies the Israeli identity crisis - he lacks a clear vision, he is not built for greatness, he conducts small, shady business deals and is beholden to the techniques of survival. It isn't as if there are other great lights at hand, but when we look at him we see ourselves instead of who we could be. That's why we don't like him. I confess that I believe it too. I don't hate Olmert. I despise him because he is a shopkeeper - a beancounter. He would not call up the reserves in the Lebanon war because he wanted to save money. He is the Jew who, when confronted by a bandit who says "Your money or your life," says "Take my life, I need my money for my old age." But I know that a lot of people hate Olmert because he threatens their precious settlements. If they had a beancounter and a crook in charge who liked settlements, they would love him. They had no problem with Sharon's "moral turpitude" as long as he was for Greater Israel. They only discovered that it is not nice to take bribes when Sharon announced the disengagement plan. And I also remember the other Prime Ministers who were hated. Remember when Rabin had an approval rating of about 25%? And there was one other guy who was a shopkeeper, a coward, hesitant and so on. He had no charisma. He stuttered. He made deals. Remember him? He was Levy Eshkol, whose quiet leadership made possible a military victory that changed the history of the Middle East. Olmert unfortunately doesn't seem to be a Levy Eshkol, does he? But having a beancounter PM is not the worst possible thing. The worst case scenario is that we will have a beancounter as PM and LIKE him. Ami Isseroff Labels: Israel, Politics
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/10/rabin-took-responsibility-for-failed.html
 (Cross-posted from Israel: Like this, as if)Israel's media are busy reminiscing about Yitzhak Rabin. Today (Oct. 24) on our Hebrew lunar calendar is 12 Heshvan, the 12th anniversary of the assassinated Prime Minister's death. (On the Gregorian calendar, the assassination took place Nov. 4.) One Rabin memory which stays with me is hearing the rumble of his deep voice in a television broadcast that echoed from open windows along the silent streets of Tel Aviv on Sabbath Eve, October 14, 1994.
Rabin had gone on the air to announce the failure of a rescue mission. A Sayeret Matcal commando force acting on precise intelligence had raided a house north of Jerusalem in an effort to free Nahshon Wachsman, a young Israeli soldier who was being held hostage by Hamas. The hostage died in the rescue attempt, which also took the life of the Israeli mission commander, Capt. Nir Poraz, 23.
Today in a radio interview one of his aides recalled that Rabin insisted that night on publicly taking responsibility for the failure of the mission. Ehud Barak, who was then the military chief of staff, was ready to go on the air with the announcement, the aide said, but Rabin emphasized, "I was responsible."
Rabin later said that approving this rescue operation was one of the most difficult decisions of his life.
Taking responsibility is a quality for which people remember Rabin. How many other heads of government can you recall going on national television to take responsibility for a mission that failed?
-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv, October 24, 2007 Labels: IDF, Israel, Security
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TEL AVIV - While Israeli political leaders may still harbor hope of diplomatically dismantling Iran's nuclear program, Ministry of Defense (MoD) officials are forging ahead with plans to develop new top-tier defenses against doomsday-like threats should diplomacy fail.
"Unlike the diplomats and politicians, we don't have the luxury of hope," a senior military planner here said. "Our job is to anticipate the most extreme, worst-case scenarios and make sure we're prepared to handle them."
Defense and industry officials say the prospective top-tier defensive layer - known here as Arrow-3 - requires development of an entirely new interceptor capable of blunting potentially devastating salvo attacks by nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles. Preliminary MoD plans envision the exo-atmospheric Arrow-3 as the nation's future front line of active defense, with the operational Arrow-2 deployed as a second-echelon guard against lesser threats and so-called leakers.
The planned upward extension of Israel's defensive envelope promises more opportunities to intercept incoming missiles, thereby boosting success rates - or so-called kill probabilities - from current levels of more than 80 percent to "somewhere in the very high 90s," said the planner, a general officer in the Israel Defense Forces.
"After careful analysis, we've come to the conclusion that we need an upper layer," said Arieh Herzog, director of the MoD's Israel Missile Defense Organization. "Our requirement is now quite clear: We need to give ourselves more chances to intercept the threats we will face."
Herzog said he is confident that existing Block 3 and new Block 4 upgrades of the Arrow-2 are now capable of defending against current and projected near-term threats. But for the longer term, given the specter of synchronized launches of increasingly high-performance nuclear-tipped missiles, the top tier becomes imperative, he said.
Looking at All Threats
In a preliminary conceptual design study conducted over the past year or so, Herzog's team and experts from the Israel Air Force examined options for defending against future threats. Options included more Arrow-2 upgrades and the U.S.-planned Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system."What we discovered is that THAAD is an excellent system, and I'm sure
whoever uses THAAD will derive great benefit from it. But in our specific case, it cannot fit our requirements," Herzog said.
According to Herzog, Israel's operational force of Arrow-2 and PAC-2 systems now provide the type of high-low mix that the MoD plans to recreate - through Arrow-2 and the proposed Arrow-3 - for future, far more sophisticated threats.
"Right now, with Arrow-2 and existing Patriot systems, we have a good solution against the Scud-family of threats from Iran, Syria and other points in the region," he said.
The Israeli missile defense boss said security classification prevented him from discussing specific reasons that his evaluation team ultimately disqualified the THAAD. He said, however, Israeli professionals are discussing the top-tier report and the new Arrow-3 with counterparts from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
He said MDA support for the prospective interceptor is critical, not only for the considerable funding anticipated from Washington, but because of the need to share data and subsystem technologies over the life of the program.
"We've not yet decided how much year-by-year funding each side must earmark for the program, and we'll probably need to sign new documents about how technical information should be handled," Herzog said. "But I hope by the end of this year, all these details will be sorted out and we'll be able to say we have a real program."
He estimated it would take at least five years and "several hundred million dollars" for the first Arrow-3s to become operational.
Herzog said the new interceptor would use the same radar, battle management and other supporting systems developed for Arrow-2, helping to keep interoperability up and costs down.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) will remain the prime contractor and lead integrator for the prospective Arrow-3 program, Herzog said.
In interviews here, industry sources said IAI has already begun negotiations with Boeing Missile Defense Systems to extend the co-production partnership begun in 2003. Boeing produces nearly 40 percent of Arrow-2 components under a complex, U.S.-funded government-to-government teaming agreement managed by Israel's MoD and the Arrow program office in Huntsville, Ala.
Two-Part Iran Strategy
Israel's two-pronged strategy for countering the Iranian threat was clearly evident last week, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Moscow pushing harsher sanctions on Tehran and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Washington drumming up support for strategic cooperative initiatives.
In an Oct. 16 Pentagon meeting focused largely on the Iranian threat, Barak and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates agreed to collaborate jointly on multiple layers of anti-rocket and anti-missile defense. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the two sides agreed to establish a committee to evaluate Israel's proposed Arrow-3, as well as new developments aimed at halting "Palestinian rockets coming from Gaza."
Barak also reaffirmed Israel's "understanding" of multibillion-dollar arms packages planned for Arabian Gulf states as part of Washington's Iran-focused Gulf Security Dialogue, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. The Iranian threat also dominated discussions Barak held with U.S. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and key congressional leaders, Israeli sources here said.
Meanwhile, Olmert was attempting to persuade Russian President Vladmir Putin of the need for get-tough sanctions favored by Israel, the United States and many leading European states. In three hours of one-on-one deliberations - which included presentation of the latest Israeli intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program - Olmert managed to offset some of the Russian-Iranian solidarity exhibited during the Russian leader's visit to Tehran earlier last week, an Olmert aide said.
Yet key issues remain open, including pending Russian arms sales to Iran and Syria, the aide said. And while Putin "expressed genuine interest in understanding our security concerns," the aide said Moscow remains opposed "at this time" to sanctions.
Earlier last week, following meetings with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Putin rebuffed U.S., European and Israeli calls for sanctions and insisted he had seen no convincing evidence to counter Tehran's claims that ongoing nuclear efforts are for peaceful, energy-related purposes. In an Oct. 16 news conference in Tehran, he upbraided Bush, French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy and other world leaders for even hinting at use of a military option to solve the dispute.
Israeli officials are taking comfort in Washington's commitment to deny Iran nuclear weapons.
They are also intensifying efforts in China, where they are appealing for support - or, at least non-active objection - to sanctions. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is scheduled to visit Beijing later this week in attempts to persuade Chinese leaders not to veto resolutions planned for introduction in the U.N. Security Council.
Labels: IDF, Iran, Israel
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An op-ed about the peace virus captures much of the tragic reality of the current "peace" negotiations and has a correct prognosis in many ways. However, being a worshipper in a particular temple of received opinion, the author, Gadi Baltiansky, makes assumptions that are not in evidence. He writes:If the summit succeeds, the historical turning point shall come if the principles of a final-status agreement are formulated, and if negotiations are launched on the details of the core issues. Yet it is very possible that the skeptics and cynics are right. The deal won't be reached and the summit will fail. However, even at such case, we could see a historical turning point --- for the worst.
Even were a deal to be reached, there is no way that Mahmoud Abbas would be able to keep his part of the bargain, as he doesn't control the Palestinian "street" and shows no will to do so.
The peace talks and the peace conference are supposed to be his party and the party of the Fatah, but Abbas can't seem to raise support for them even in the West Bank. They would grant greater legitimacy to the government of Mahmoud Abbas as opposed to his Hamas rivals. On October 18, there was to be a major peace event. It was planned before anyone knew of the November summit, perhaps before The United States policy makers Bush thought of the idea, but its timing was fortuitous. It required months of preparation. The One Million Voices group was to hold simultaneous concerts in Jericho, Tel Aviv and numerous other cities as a public demonstration of the will for peace. Attendees would be called on to sign a declaration demanding of both governments that they negotiate sincerely for peace. The declaration takes no position at all regarding the outcome of the negotiations or the nature of the final status agreement to be negotiated. You can read it and sign it at the One Million Voices Web site. Threats by Palestinian terrorist groups and their groupies against the performers and organizers of the event first caused cancellation of the Jericho event (See ) and now have caused cancellation of all the events. Danny Lubetzky's One Voice Movement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, often a target of right wing Zionist extremists, was behind the event. The event was cancelled, but the campaign to gather grass roots support for peace in Israel and among Palestinians goes on.
The peace-loving Palestinians were called upon to stand up and be counted. The One Million Voices event was a way of mobilizing "people power" for peace on both sides. But the Palestinian people sat down and shut up instead - both the ordinary people and their leaders. From a BBC article about the canellation of the event we learn: Leading Palestinians who initially supported the event have since distanced themselves from it.
These Palestinian leaders are not stupid. They understood which way the winds are blowing and what is in the interests of their longevity. "WARNING: The surgeon general of Palestine has determined that supporting peace is hazardous to your health." As long as Palestinian society is ruled by bandits -- latter day incarnations of Hajj Amin al Husseini and his gangs and various do-it yourself abu-Gilda's (an infamous Palestinian Arab bandit) -- there is no chance for peace, because there is no political organization that can support peace. The only "peace" conditions acceptable to the peace thugs are conditions that would result in destruction of Israel. They have never been interested in anything else. They make it clear that the "occupation" that has to end is the one that began in 1948, and the "aparheid" that has to end is the "aparheid" that prevents millions of Arabs from coming to live in Israel and destroying Jewish self-determination. As for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, she is apparently clueless about the Middle East. She told reporters:"Frankly it is time for the establishment of a Palestinian state," Ms Rice told reporters in a news conference which she held with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
If she is serious, then surely she is mad. Mahmoud Abbas cannot control his own back yard in Jericho or Nablus without the help of IDF security. What sort of state could this be? And what sort of peace could it make with Israel, if the Palestinian dark side won't even allow a concert that supports peace negotiations? As for the Israelis, there will surely be no cause for joy if and when the conference is disastrous failure. Every Israeli must ask themselves if they have done their utmost to ensure the success of these efforts, even if the chances are slim. If it fails, it must not be our fault. Those who urge Israel not to make "concessions" or to shun the conference are not friends of Zionism and are not promoting the welfare of Israel. We must understand that the peace thugs -- the Jeff Halpers and Neta Golans, the ISM and the Electronic Intifadah and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel are right from their point of view. Peace is a ZIonist plot, that should be opposed by all right-thinking followers of CODOH and Stormfront and other such organizations obsessed with the Jews. What will be on the table at the November conference is the heart of Zionism. The heart of Zionism is not some real estate in the West Bank. The heart of Zionism is the recognition by the Arab world and in particular, the Palestinians, of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. The two state solution would recognize the rights of both peoples to be "a free people in their own land" - the 2000 year old Jewish wish of Hatiqva. This would put all the peace thugs out of business once and for all, and that is why they are working overtime to stop it. Anyone who opposes the peace conference is thus an enemy of the Jewish people, as well as an enemy of the Palestinians. Ami IsseroffLabels: Israel, Palestinians, Peace
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/10/israel-officially-denies-responsibility.html
Headline: Israel officially denies responsibility for death of al-Dura in 2000Twelve year old Muhammad al-Dura was killed by someone in Gaza in 2000. Using film shot by France 2, Palestinians dramatized his case, and made it an excuse for dozens of terror attacks in the violence that followed. What was really odd about the case, was that there was no possible operational necessity for firing in the direction of the unarmed boy or his father, yet the film clearly showed or seemed to show that someone was firing on them repeatedly over a long period. At the time, the IDF neither confirmed nor denied the report, nor, strangely enough, did the IDF conduct an in depth investigation. Efforts of independent volunteers have forced France 2 to air the films in court. Seven years after the event, the government has now realized that it ought to have denied the killing. It did not wait until the films had been aired in public -- a matter of a few days, to announce its conclusions. Also - it appears that this "official" denial was just a letter by the head of the GPO, and that the Israeli government doesn't know anything about it.
Ami Isseroff Seven years after death of Gaza boy captured by France 2 cameraman was blamed on Israel, Prime Minister's Office issues first official document stating incident was staged. French reporter defends video, calling it 'authentic' Ronny Sofer Published: 10.01.07, 22:16 / Israel News
Seven years after the death of the Palestinian boy Muhammad al-Dura in Gaza, the Prime Minister's Office speaks out against the "myth of the murder".
An official document from Jerusalem denied - for the first time - that Israel was responsible for the death of al-Dura at the start of the second intifada.
The document argued that the images, which showed al-Dura being shot beside his father and have become a symbol of the second intifada, were staged.
"The creation of the myth of Muhammad al-Dura has caused great damage to the state of Israel. This is an explicit blood libel against the state. And just as blood libels in the old days have led to pogroms, this one has also caused damage and dozens of dead," said Government Press Office director Daniel Seaman.
The arguments were based on investigations that showed that the angles of the IDF troops' fire could not have hit the child or his father, that part of the filmed material, mainly the moment of the boy's alleged death, is missing, and the fact that the cameraman can be heard saying the boy is dead while the boy is still seen moving.
On September 30, 2000, on the second day of the intifada, then 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura was going with his father to buy a car. The two got caught between heavy fire clashes between Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian gunmen.
The incident lasted some 45 minutes, 27 of which were filmed by Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, who was working for the France 2 television network.
Charles Enderlin, Jerusalem bureau chief of France 2, who was not present at the incident, broadcasted the report. The report accused the IDF soldiers who were involved in the incident of causing the child's death and the father's injury.
The report has been investigated by various bodies over the years, and four intensive journalistic inquiries examining the incident said there was no evidence that the boy was shot by the soldiers. Some of the inquiries stated that according to calculations of the angle in which the boy and his father were hit, they were most likely shot by the Palestinians.
During the past seven years, Israel has preferred not to confront the most popular television station in France, but following repeated requests by Shurat HaDin, Israel Law Center, the first official document from the Prime Minister's Office, signed by the GPO director, was issued last week.
The document argued that based on investigations that were carried out, the boy's death was staged by the French network's cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma.
In a letter to Shurat HaDin, Seaman wrote, "It turns out that the events could not have occurred as they were described by the network's reporter Charles Enderlin, since they contradict the laws of physics
Furthermore, it was not even possible to hit them (the boy and his father) in the place they were hiding according to the report."
Nonetheless, following consultation with Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, the GPO director decided that Israel should not take criminal steps against France 2's reporters or revoke the government journalist certificates that were given to them in Jerusalem.
In his letter to Shurat HaDin, Seaman said he was instructed by the attorney general the treat the matter "on the public-media plane and not on the criminal plane".
Shurat HaDin Chairwoman Nitzana Darshan-Leitner said she did not accept the GPO's position. "Shurat HaDin plans to continue to act in order to bring the truth to light," the chairwoman said.
"Among other things, we plan to petition the High Court of Justice and demand the journalist certificates and other GPO certificates are revoked from all France 2 crew members in Israel reporters, cameramen, produces, etc as long as the network does not publicly announce that the al-Dura report was staged and was biased.
"In addition, Shurat HaDin is considering filing a damages claim for the accumulated damage the report has caused, and specifically for the line of attacks and riots it has led to. This modern-day blood libel has led to the death of hundreds of Arabs and Jews and has ignited hatred solely for the purpose of ratings and poor journalism. We will demand that those responsible for this crime pay for their deeds."
Charles Enderlin, the France 2 reporter who is still working in Israel, said in response to this report, "This is not the first time that Seaman makes such allegations against me it is nonsense. It is pure slander. The video that we filmed is authentic and I stand behind it.
"We plan to show the film in court in France, and I am certain it will end the repeated mudslinging," the French reporter said.
Labels: Israel, Palestinians
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/09/jewish-agency-and-immigration-to.html
Headline: PM: Jewish Agency still has key role in bringing Jews to Israel OK - so let them bring Jews. What is it all about? Like everything else that is not about sex, it is about money and power. Groups like Nefesh benefesh and Nativ have succeeded in bringing many more Jews to Israel than the Jewish Agency, whose functionaries have not functioned very well in about forty years.The Jewish Agency workers protested: Following the decision, the Agency's workers union held a stormy meeting that resulted in a letter to Olmert accusing him of "breaking the old agreement between the Jewish Agency and the government of Israel over exclusivity in encouraging Aliyah and belittling the Agency's experience and its emissaries whose enormous efforts brought three million people from over the world to Israel."
The problem is that many of these people came to Israel in spite of the Jewish Agency rather than because of it. Horrible regimes in Arab countries, as well as Nazi and Polish persecution, are among the factors whose "enormous efforts" brought those three million Jews to Israel. Nearly every immigrant has a tale of woe connected with the Jewish agency and its functionaries. Groups that were established to bring immigrants rather than to be the Jewish Agency have done much better in bringing immigrants from places like the North America, where nobody is chasing Jews out. Consequently, the government has made allocations of funds to these groups permanent. The Jewish agency meanwhile, has not been contributing its promised share to Nefesh benefesh, causing budgetary shortfalls.
A few modest suggestions -
1, The available funds should be allocated among the organizations in proportion to the number of immigrants they have brought to Israel, and the number they undertake to bring in the coming years.
2. A small number of jobs in these organizations - on the Israeli side - should be allocated to new immigrants. "Oleh mevi Olim" - an immigrant brings immigrants.
3. A special agency should be set up to bring back some of the estimated 800,000 Israelis living in North America.
4. The government should undertake to examine the reasons why Israelis leave, and to show yearly progress in stopping the "brain drain" of trained Israelis to North America and Europe.
Ami Isseroff
Labels: Israel, Zionism
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Seth Frantzman, a doctoral student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has compiled a survey showing that Arabs killed 1,256 Palestinian Jews between the United Nations Palestine partition vote Nov. 29, 1947, and the outbreak of war May 15, 1948. Frantzman presents the data, drawn from newspaper archives, in an article disputing anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappe's contention that Jews committed ethnic cleansing against Arabs during the birth of Israel.
Frantzman writes: "Sixty-two Jews were murdered by Arabs in the first week after the UN partition plan was passed, and by May 15, 1948, a total of 1,256 Jews had been killed, most of them civilians. These deaths were caused by Arab militias, gangs, terrorists and army units which attacked every place of Jewish inhabitation in Palestine."
"Even before the first Arab villages were captured in April, 924 Jews had already been killed," he adds.
Franzman suggests that the eventual Jewish victory might have been less sweeping if the Arabs had not carried out across-the-board attacks throughout the Yishuv in 1947-48.
"As it was," he writes, "the ceaseless attacks against all isolated Jewish settlements only gave Zionist commanders every reason to see neighboring Arab villages as threatening and to act accordingly."
He concludes: "Scholarship - including that of the 'new historians' - on the 1948 war will remain incomplete until methodical studies are carried out about widespread and often well-planned Arab assaults on the Yishuv."
Frantzman's article is titled "Ethnic cleansing in Palestine?" It appeared in The Jerusalem Post on Aug. 17. The text follows.
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The Jerusalem Post, Aug. 17, 2007
Guest Columnist: Ethnic cleansing in Palestine?
by Seth Frantzman
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1186557466176&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
As negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority aimed at creating a Palestinian state willing to live side-by-side with Israel in peace resume, one of the major sticking points continues to be the Arab refugee issue. Bitter arguments among politicians and scholars continue to surround the creation of the refugee problem during Israel's War of Independence in 1948.
It has become fashionable in recent decades to frame the 1948 war as one in which the Arabs were victims of Zionist aggression. Anti-Zionist scholars such as Noam Chomsky, Rashid Khalidi and Ilan Pappe have presented the war as if the only important events were Deir Yassin and the flight or expulsion of Arabs from Haifa, Acre, Tiberias, west Jerusalem, Jaffa and numerous villages.
IN THIS context, Ilan Pappe's work deserves special attention. He was born to a German Jewish family in Haifa in 1954. The former senior lecturer in the University of Haifa's Department of Political Science recently announced he was moving to the UK because it had become "increasingly difficult to live in Israel" with his "unwelcome views and convictions."
These views are those of the "new historians" - leftist scholars who in the 1980s began to reinterpret Israeli and Palestinian history. He is the author of six works on the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Middle East. In his recently released book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappe claims that Israel prepared a special plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's Arab population known as Plan D for dalet. Pappe's "evidence" is derived from his interpretations of files found in the Hagana and Israel state archives.
One of his most damning pieces of evidence is the village surveys carried out by the Hagana's intelligence units. These surveys go into minute detail about many Arab villages, including the number of armed men, the mukhtar and any anti-Jewish activity in the village. Pappe lends further evidence to his thesis by showing that Jewish forces, whether Hagana, Irgun or Lehi, attacked Arab villages even before the declaration of the state on May 15, 1948.
But Pappe makes one egregious mistake. He never bothers to ask the same question of the Arabs he does of the Jews: What about their lists, their intelligence reports and their ethnic-cleansing plans? What were Arab intentions in the five months between the passage of the UN partition plan on November 29, 1947, and the birth of Israel?
THE ARCHIVES of The Palestine Post, now The Jerusalem Post and then the newspaper of record of Mandatory Palestine, provide some of the answers and tell a very different story from the one presented by Pappe.
Sixty-two Jews were murdered by Arabs in the first week after the UN partition plan was passed, and by May 15, 1948, a total of 1,256 Jews had been killed, most of them civilians. These deaths were caused by Arab militias, gangs, terrorists and army units which attacked every place of Jewish inhabitation in Palestine.
The attacks succeeded in placing Jerusalem under siege and eventually cutting off its water supply. All Jewish villages in the Negev were attacked, and Jews had to go about the country in convoys. In every major city where Jews and Arabs lived in mixed neighborhoods the Jewish areas came under attack. This was true in Haifa's Hadar Hacarmel as well as Jerusalem's Old City.
Massacres were not uncommon.
THIRTY-NINE Jews were killed by Arab rioters at Haifa's oil refinery on December 30, 1947. On January 16, 1948, 35 Jews were killed trying to reach Gush Etzion. On February 22, 44 Jews were murdered in a bombing on Jerusalem's Rehov Ben-Yehuda. And on February 29, 23 Jews were killed all across Palestine, eight of them at the Hayotzek iron foundry.
Thirty-five Jews were murdered during the Mount Scopus convoy massacre on April 13. And 127 Jews were massacred at Kfar Etzion on May 15, 1948, after 30 others had died defending the Etzion Bloc.
IN ARAB countries more than 100 Jews were also massacred and synagogues were burned in Aleppo and Aden, driving thousands of Jews from their homes.
Back in Palestine many small kibbutzim were subjected to attacks, including Gvulot, Ben-Shemen, Holon, Safed, Bat Yam and Kfar Yavetz - all in December. In January and February, it was the turn of Rishon Lezion, Yehiam, Mishmar Hayarden, Tirat Zvi, Sde Eliahu, Ein Hanatziv, Magdiel, Mitzpe Hagalil and Ma'anit.
In March and April these attacks culminated with an assault on Hartuv by 400 Arabs based in the village of Ishwa and an attack on Kfar Darom by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Arab attackers also bombed The Palestine Post in February. In March, the Jewish Agency, the Solel Boneh building in Haifa and an Egged bus were also bombed.
SOME OF today's scholars prefer to present every massacre of Jews as a "response" to some Jewish deed, and to portray as a "myth" the very idea that Israel struggled desperately for existence in 1948.
But it was no myth.
The fact is 1,256 Jews were killed in five months. Even before the first Arab villages were captured in April, 924 Jews had already been killed. Ilan Pappe should have pondered what might have been if those Jews had not been slaughtered.
What if attacks and riots had not been the first Arab reaction to the partition plan?
Plan Dalet was a plan, it was one of many plans. The lists compiled by the Hagana had been cobbled together for a decade before 1948, but they were not blueprints - merely intelligence assessments. The British also kept lists of everything; they knew about weapons in various kibbutzim, about the Hagana and illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine. Those lists weren't blueprints for ethnic cleansing anymore than were the Hagana files on Arab villages.
When a Jewish area was overrun - and some were - the homes were looted or destroyed and any survivors were killed, as at Kfar Etzion (only three of the defenders survived the massacre).
The potential for the ethnic cleansing of Jewish Palestine was never realized because of the discipline, determination and sheer luck of the Yishuv.
If the Arabs had not carried out across the board attacks throughout the Yishuv between 1947 and 1948, perhaps the nature of the subsequent Jewish victory would have been different. As it was, the ceaseless attacks against all isolated Jewish settlements only gave Zionist commanders every reason to see neighboring Arab villages as threatening and to act accordingly.
Scholarship - including that of the "new historians" - on the 1948 war will remain incomplete until methodical studies are carried out about widespread and often well-planned Arab assaults on the Yishuv.
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The writer is in the doctoral program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His master's thesis was on the 1948 war.Labels: Arabs, Israel, Jews, Palestinians
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The article states: 11% received exemptions this year on grounds of being ultra-Orthodox, an increase of 1% over last year. As it is Jerusalem Post, we can assume that they mean that last year there were 10% ultra-Orthodox exemptions, and this year there were 11%. That is an increase of about 10%, not 1%. For our mathematicians: assume that the number of ultraorthodox increases at the rate of 10% of current ultra-orthodox draft dodgers each year. In what year will all draftees be exempt because they are all ultra-orthodox, unfit or abroad? Now assume that there is a non-induction induction effect. By that I mean that for each ten ultra-orthodox draft dodgers, there will be 3 or 4 non-ultra-orthodox who decide they aren't going to be suckers: if the ultra-orthodox don't go to the army, why should they serve? Can you imagine the absurdity of the fact that Druze youth volunteer to serve in the army of the Jewish state, while ultra-orthodox Jews do not? Can someone explain how and why this is justified? Can you explain why a kibbutznik who belongs to peace now should be guarding settlements, while an ultra-orthodox Shas or United Torah Judaism voter who insists that Israel must never give up a millimeter of the occupation is busy making believe he is studying the Talmud? There is a solution however. "Medically unfit" includes those who died before age 18 - we can start drafting the dead as well as the quick. For the rest of us, an easy question: If it costs NIS 40,000 (currently - soon to be increased) to pay university tuition for one future Israeli engineer, how much does it cost to pay tuition for 100 ultraorthodox draft dodgers? Answer NIS 0. Yeshiva tuition is paid for. The Israeli government can hardly complain, since they promulgated the Tal law. It is impossible that the majority of Israelis support this unfair, suicidal law, and yet periodically it is renewed, the monstrous offspring of incestuous coalitions. Ami Isseroff Barak: Draft dodging a security threat
Yaakov Katz, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 30, 2007
Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Monday that the growing number of youth who dodge the IDF draft will eventually harm national security and turn the IDF from a "people's army" into an "army of half the people."
"When a soldier who goes out to the battlefield feels like a sucker, this harms national security," Barak said during a conference at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security in memory of Ha'aretz military commentator Ze'ev Schiff who passed away last month.
Barak said that Israel needed to return to the days when military service was something to be proud of and draft dodgers carried the mark of Cain. Barak added that Israel's true heroes were those who served in the IDF.
Burning Issues: The Tal Law and IDF non-enlistment
"A society under an existential threat will only know how to survive if it respects those who defend it," he said.
Ahead of the August draft, the IDF reported damning statistics showing a sharp rise in the number of teenagers dodging military service. The total reaches 25 percent of youth born in 1989 and scheduled to enlist in the IDF this summer.
Of the 25%, some 11% received exemptions this year on grounds of being ultra-Orthodox, an increase of 1% over last year. Seven percent did not enlist for medical reasons, including physical and mental conditions. Four percent did not enlist because of criminal records, and 3% live abroad.
Barak further blasted university lecturers and employers who do not accommodate students or workers who are called up for reserve duty.
"I wonder what Schiff would have said about the delegitimization that military service has been granted by elements in Israeli society starting with university lecturers who don't find solutions for students who miss exams due to reserve duty," Barak said. Labels: IDF, Israel, Jews, Zionism
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Richard Baehr makes many valid points and offers valuable insights in Why Does the Left hate Israel. However, like many American Thinker articles, it is prone to dangerous generalizations that are a indicative of lack of thought, rather than thought. Perhaps "American Thinker" is an oxymoron. For example, "the left" is not monolithic. There are leftists who do not hate Israel. There are contrariwise, also people like Pat Buchanan, who cannot be imagined to be a "leftist" by anyone, but hates Israel and apparently doesn't have much use for people of the Mosaic persuasion (AKA Jews). Additionally, Baehr seems to engage in some shaky logic, including circular reasoning. For example, Baehr offers us this tidbit in conclusion: The evidence I believe is clear today that Israel faces far greater threats from the left than the right. The left is reflexively anti-Israel and has established important beachheads in significant American institutions -- academia, the media, and the old line Protestant 'high' churches, as well as in the very seats of government power in many Western European countries, and their intelligentsia. It is not surprising that Israel seems unable to get a fair shake from college professors, the BBC, Reuters, NPR, or liberal churches. Being anti-Israel has become part of their religion.
This sounds like the fellow who believed the communists are tring to sap our vital bodily fluids. Does Baehr really believe that all of the above hate Israel and all are leftists? If all college professors hate Israel, then why has there been such a vocal protest against the initiative to Boycott Israel? If all the "liberal churches" hate Israel, then why did the Presbyterians and UCC reverse their anti-Israel resolutions? Are all college professors "leftists?" Is Reuters news service "leftist?" Baehr asks if why the left hates Israel, without checking first to what extent it is true that the left hates Israel. More than that, the above conclusion seems to imply that according to Baehr, anyone who hates Israel is a leftist. What is Baehr's evidence for example, that Reuters news service has been infiltrated by the international Bolshevik conspiracy, other than the fact that some of their articles were unfair to Israel? If they had a "creative" Arab photographer who liked drawing smoke over Beirut, does that make Reuters "leftist?" Ami Isseroff Labels: Israel
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Israeli education is in trouble, as Avirama Golan explains in Ha'aretz. By Avirama Golan
The outrageous slap that Amnon de Hartog gave MK Yakov Cohen blurred the evil that gave birth to it: cancelation of the requirement that ultra-Orthodox schools teach a core curriculum. This cancelation, included in a bill that the Knesset has approved in preliminary reading, rests on an agreement between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the ultra-Orthodox, with Labor Party Chairman Ehud Barak remaining enthusiastically silent.
The weaker the political system is, the weaker public education becomes; and the more the political system disintegrates into sectors, the more the education system does, too. Since there never was a uniform education system, and since political sectors (the national religious and the ultra-Orthodox) have been implanted in this system from the start, the conditions for implementing the core curriculum do not exist. The desire to rehabilitate public education on the basis of civic, democratic, humanistic and knowledge-seeking values has therefore now run into a high sectorial wall. Enthusiasm for the multicultural fashion, which denigrates anything that looks like state involvement in education, has ruined public education, along with the desire of various groups for unique cultural expression (which is legitimate in itself), the state's abandonment (under the cover of a neoliberal ideology that widens social gaps) of its obligation to provide equal education to all, and the demographic growth of the ultra-Orthodox and religious publics.
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In less than a decade, every fourth child will be in the ultra-Orthodox education system. Even today, secular public education is the weakest and most neglected of the various Jewish school systems - only the Arab public education system is weaker. The Education Ministry and proponents of the core curriculum must therefore understand that the attempt to restore the public education of the 1950s and 1960s is a rearguard action that is destined for failure. The old public education system has reached the end of the road. Anyone who wants to prevent its final collapse would do better to adopt realistic solutions. Professor Yitzhak Kashti of Tel Aviv University's School of Education, for instance, proposed new principles for dealing with the change in a recently published academic article. Unlike other education experts, Kashti sees education not as a tool for shaping students' characters, but as part of a social policy. The uniform republican education of the state's early years could have succeeded, he says, had it been supported by a well-developed social safety net that would have strengthened the margins and integrated them with the center. But because Israel did not choose the model of a European welfare state, "and the new modernizers in Israel's education and welfare fields were strong-minded, on one hand, but blind to cultural needs and expressions, on the other," its momentum was cut short in its prime, and it produced only short-term results. The weaker sectors on the margins grew, and the state-oriented center was weakened. In response to this reality, he recommends that the system recognize the existence of different cultural circles and set up "educational clusters" catering to them. These clusters would provide equal educational services to all, with their public funding anchored in law - no special allocations, no political intervention and no semi-private but state-supported education. The only difference among them would be their cultural content. Parents would be able to choose whichever cluster they preferred. This would not be means-influenced "parental choice," but a choice between alternatives that differ only in terms of content. Each of the different clusters would be required to sample portions of the content offered by the others, in order to give them a deep familiarity with the culture, language and values of the others. This mutual transparency is a sophisticated solution that enlightened countries such as England and Sweden have begun to adopt. Like them, Israel, too, would let go of its centralization and move to a supervised federative system. And what will connect these various clusters, fans of the core curriculum may ask? Beyond the obvious subjects like sciences, languages, etc., Kashti proposes the strongest collective asset in our possession "thanks to the vision and persistence of the previous generations": the Hebrew language. Language, Kashti explains, "is not merely a tool and a gateway to a world of meaning; it is also a system via which meaning is shaped and interpreted." Indeed, the Hebrew language, with all the layers of its historic creation and modern revival, is an interesting and proper basis, the quintessential product of Israeliness, which could rescue public education from the bonds of its perplexing weakness. In the worst case, it will prevent total segregation. In the best case, it will discover a civic and cultural kernel at the heart of Israeliness that is far stronger than any "core curriculum." Labels: Israel
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/07/israeli-government-versus-zionist.html
Bradley Burston, at his usual excellent best, raises important and worrisome questions in Why Israel was created, why it still exists. Can Israel be killed by the greed, short sightedness and incompetence of its own leaders? We should add to the list below, discrimination against Reform and Conservative Jews that is preventing immigration from the United States, laws that make it difficult for non-Jews to join the Jewish people, lack of action on democracy, lack of action on demographic issues, lack of action to save the Jews of Russia and many more policy blunders that "just happen." By Bradley Burston
One way or another, Israel will spend this summer fighting the last war.
Never has a prospective war been more expected. Well before the Second Lebanon War was over, the Third was already being confidently predicted by a broad consensus of experts. But even if the predictions of a new war are proven mistaken, the last war is likely to remain a focus of the nation's attention though the summer and beyond. Inquiries on the government's wartime failings are likely to monopolize the attention of a prime minister whose every calculation is keyed to political survival. At the same time, there is every danger that in dealing with the fallout of the last war, the government will find ways to refrain from working to resolve issues that go the very heart of why the state of Israel was created, and why it continues to exist. The problems represent critical tests of the very idea of Zionism. As such, the government may have every interest in trying to skirt them, ignore them, or otherwise dodge them. Here are five: 1. The new Palestinian refugees - the settlers of Gaza Israel was not created in order to settle and hold the West Bank. Ironically, however, the 2005 disengagement from Gaza may serve to keep the West Bank in Israel's hands indefinitely. Any future peace prospects will hinge on Israel's treatment of the Jews it expelled from Gaza. The logic is simple. Israel has shown itself unable or unwilling to find adequate permanent housing and satisfactory employment for less than 2,000 families evacuated from an area for which a large majority of Israelis felt no affinity and which polls showed most had wanted to abandon years before. How can the government then expect to win support for the expulsion of tens of thousands in the West Bank, an area which many more Israelis consider traditionally Jewish land. And this consideration is brought into even greater relief at a time when Qassam rockets are still being fired from abandoned settlements into Israel ? some of them striking areas to which evacuated settlers have been moved. The situation is oddly advantageous for the larger settlement movement, which can rest assured that the treatment of Gaza settlers, and the overkill evacuation of the illegal Amona outpost in January, 2006, coupled with Qassams, virtually guarantee that present settlements will remain where they are. As such, the situation bears peculiar reminders of the plight of Palestinian refugees still in Gaza. For sixty years, Arab states and fellow Palestinians made strenuous efforts to enshrine the misery of the Palestinian refugees. They blocked efforts to resettle them in improved housing, and generally took advantage of their own and Israel's inaction, holding the refugees hostage for their own ends. 2. The refugees from Darfur Israel was not created as a refuge for all the world's threatened and displaced persons. Nonetheless, when peoples are threatened with genocide and appeal for help, Israel cannot turn its back. Jews cannot continue to complain about the world's silence during the Holocaust, if they are willing to stand on the sidelines while another people is systematically slaughtered. In recent months, refugees from the Sudan, currently the site of the signal human rights atrocity in all the world, have made their way on foot through the Sinai desert and across the border into Israel. Government agencies and the Knesset have ducked and deferred policy decisions regarding their status. Soldiers who have picked them up as they cross the border, have been instructed to simply take them to Negev cities and leave them there. The government cannot decide how - or when, or whether - to deport them. The Knesset cannot even decide whether to discuss the issue. "We as Jews are obliged to help not only Jews." Nopel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel told Haaretz last year. "I was a refugee and therefore I am in favor of admitting refugees." "I thought it was very laudable when Israel became the first country to admit the Vietnamese boat people. History constantly chooses a capital of human suffering, and Darfur is today the capital of human suffering. Israel should absorb refugees from Darfur, even a symbolic number." 3. The people of Sderot Sderot is a test case for Israel, and for the world as well. It is a daily target of war crimes violations. The world should pressure Hamas to stop rocket attacks targeting civilians. The world has shown itself unwilling. Israel's military efforts have also been unable to stop the attacks. In the present reality, protecting the people of Sderot and the western Negev must be a primary priority of the government. Resources must be marshaled, here and abroad, to make certain that homes, schools, and workplaces receive proper reinforcement, that children and adults receive needed psychological support. Israelis must redouble their efforts to show the people of the western Negev that they are not an expendable appendage, but that their resistance to what Palestinians have laughably called "resistance" is crucial to the future of all Israelis. 4. Economic support of destitute Holocaust survivors Over the past year, Israelis have learned in detail that large numbers of the hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors in the country are living in poverty. Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik has announced that she will seek to block passage of the State Budget unless and until the treasury agrees to address the needs of survivors. If the effort fails, this will be the surest proof that the very foundation of the state has been sold to finance some Thatcherite ideal. 5. The end of the People of the Book In large part, the Jewish people, and the state it created, are alive today because of education. Unsexy, not violent, the subject barely draws yawns in crisis-inured Israel. But public education is being allowed to die a slow death. When it does, the rest of this enterprise will not be far behind. Labels: Israel, Zionism
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School study for 12 years mandated reads the headline. They are talking about Israel. It is about time, no? But they should introduce it gradually: First one year of actual studying, then two... What they really mean (and would know how to write had they gone to school) is that students will now have to attend classes for 12 years. No law can force them to study, just as no law can force the Jerusalem Post to write their articles carefully. It is inexplicable why Israel did not have a 12 year compulsory education act until now. Even more inexplicable, is why Yeshiva students get free tuition and supported study, while those studying engineering and chemistry must pay huge tuition fees, which the state is contemplating increasing even further.
Ami Isseroff Labels: Israel
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US President Bush delivered a major speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this evening. The speech supposedly initiates a new push for Israeli-Palestinian and regional peace. Some of the main points: The United states will call an international conference this fall, of all regional states who support a two state solution. The United States will support the government of President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad with major incentives including $190,000,000 in aid. The Fayyad government must provide good government and security for the Palestinians, and the soluton must provide security for both Israelis and Palestinians. The United States will push for a two state solution and calls upon Hamas to recognize Israel and foreswear violence and incitement. Israel must dismantle illegal outposts and freeze settlement activities. The negotiated solution must be based on borders that provide for a contiguous Palestinian state, and that take into account historical and existing reality. "The vision of President [Mahmoud] Abbas and Prime Minister [Salam] Fayad is the vision of a peaceful state called Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people," he continued. "By following this path, Palestinians can reclaim their dignity and future and establish a state of their own." "All responsible nations have the duty to help clarify the way forward by supporting the reforms of President Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayad." Both PM Olmert and President Abbas welcomed the speech. Unfortunately, there is abig shortage of responsible nations in the Middle East. The speech is being viewed by skeptics as a "last ditch effort" to salvage the two state vision of the Bush administration, but it reflects a deeper problem. Mr. Bush is caught between Iraq and a hard place. US failure in Iraq, which becomes ever more evident with each daily SNAFU of the Iraqi government and each guerilla attack, successively erodes the ability of the US to influence Middle East states regarding Israeli-Palestinian peace. At the same time, pressure from those same states -- particularly Saudi Arabia, is mounting for a solution to the Palestinian problem, which Bush must deliver in order to get support for continued US intervention in Iraq. The peace initiative has several fatal weakpoints. Peace cannot be made in the Middle East by ignoring reality. Hamas is reality. They are a big, bad reality. They control the Gaza strip, and a large portion of the Arab Palestinian population. They will certainly not cooperate in this effort, because peace in the Middle East would put them out of business. Their business is genocide. Likewise, the Syrian and Iranian backers of Hamas are not interested in this peace effort or any peace effort, which is why they back Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In particular, they are not interested in the success of an American-backed peace effort, because it is American-backed. The inevitable, unlooked for and unwanted result of this peace effort must therefore be a dramatic escalation in terror attacks, similar to escalations that accompanied all previous peace efforts. It may even help to catalyze the threatened war between Israel and Syria. Unless the United States has a plan for neutralizing the Hamas, Syria and Iran, this peace effort is very likely doomed. The second major weakness is the Palestinain government headed by Mahmoud Abbas. It is hard to believe that the Fateh organization, which failed to reform itself in all the years of the Oslo process, will suddenly become a force for progress, rectitude and good government. Salem Fayyad has a good reputation, but he is one man. The performance of Fateh security forces in Gaza, where they were routed by tiny Hamas forces, does not suggest that any amount of training is going to turn the Fateh into winners again. The third weakness is the Olmert government, which shows every sign that it is not interested in peace or war, but rather in staying in power. This government that has been doing everything possible to stay afloat, that has done little to reform the IDF or itself, cannot be expected to take risks for peace. The fourth weakness is the Bush government and the "quartet." The Bush government forced Israel to allow the PNA to hold those disastrous elections in which Hamas took power, against the provisions of the Oslo accord, and the Bush government and the quartet all but abrogated responsibility for the consequences. Despite all the verbiage about peace and isolation of the Hamas, Qassam rockets continued to rain down incessantly on Sderot, while the quartet and the US and the "international community" did nothing at all. The political consequence in Israel is that "disengagement," "concessions," and "peace," have become dirty words. Ehud Olmert is well aware that even the smallest act of terror will be ascribed to any further peace moves made by his government. Under obvious pressure, Israel has agreed to release 250 Fateh prisoners, and is allowing absorption of "wanted men" into the Palestinian security forces. We can hope that these moves will gradually catalyze the start of a real peace process, but hoping is not enough. Even if all these ex-terrorists become loyal servants of law and order, and even if the Israeli government makes a good and honest peace offer, there is still the Hamas to be reckoned with in Gaza. The PNA wants to start discussing a final settlement, but the PNA can't really offer anything in return, as they do not control the Gaza strip and the Hamas. Ami Isseroff Labels: Israel, Palestinians, Peace
Continued (Permanent Link)
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/07/american-jews-pity-of-it-all.html
In Ha'aretz, Shmuel Rosner published a very interesting reaction of an anonymous American Jew to the proposition that Israel is the center of Jewish life. To my silly mind, this proposition must be self evident to every person who studies Jewish religion and Jewish culture, and it has been true for 3,000 years. In the farthest reaches of China and Africa, wherever they were, orthodox Jews prayed toward Jerusalem, and vowed, "Next Year in Jerusalem." A millennium ago, a Jewish poet wrote, "My heart is in the East and I am at the ends of the West." The common language of all the Jewish people, East and West, was always Hebrew, the holidays celebrated by Jews were mostly related to the land, and the shared history of the Jewish people always began with the land and ended with return to the land. "The land" has always been only one place for Jews - it is here, in Israel, not in beautiful California, or fabulous Florida or Florence Italy nor even in majestic London or cosmopolitan New York. Jews means "people of Israel." And when, in the 19th century, many Jews stopped being religious, they nonetheless came to realize that they could not be French or Russian or German precisely like their neighbors, but rather that they had something in common with religious Jews: Israel. This innocent, straightforward proposition meets the fiercest sort of opposition from some Jews. Here is author Aaron Hamburger: "Israel is not a pillar of our religious belief." I wonder what that religious belief could possibly be. If Hamburger is a Hindu or a Muslim, Israel and the relation of the Jews to Israel might not be part of his religious belief. If he is a religious Jew, or belongs to any one of many Protestant denominations, then Israel is necessarily central to his religious belief, even if he is an anti-Zionist who believes that Israel can only be established when the Messiah comes, or a Christian of the replacement theology persuasion who believes that the Church replaced the Jews in God's promises. A former American Jewish functionary, Steve Hoffman, asserted apparently, that he is still not prepared to view Israel as the center of the Jewish people. There are two centers, Israel and the U.S. he claims. Indeed. When Hoffman goes to synagogue, no doubt they pray, "For from America will come forth the Torah, and the word of the LORD from Washington D.C." Places like Vilna, Lodz and Satu-Mare were also once "centers" of some of the Jewish people. Most of the Jews of those places, if they didn't leave, became ashes. In ancient times, there were centers in Iraq too. Some of your sons may be fighting Jihadists in those places now. There are no Jews there, and few Jews remember or know where those places were. Nobody but fools thought that they could compete in Jewish cultural centrality with Zion and Israel, even when there was nothing here but barchash flies and malaria. No Jews prayed to be "Next Year in Vilna," though perhaps many Israelis wish for next year in Cupertino or Miami. One of Rosner's readers, a great philosopher named Jack, who would not give his last name, wrote: If Israel, god forbid, disappears (and we all know, deep down, that this is not some distant unimaginable possibility) suddenly American Jews will find themselves wandering in empty space. On the other hand, if the center is here, we have nothing to worry about. America is strong and so are we. "America is strong and so are we," quoth he. Jews are two percent of the population of the United States. In every generation, anti-Zionists repeat the same shibboleths as though they were original "wisdom." Here is another quote, which that reader should consider: We are not immigrants -- we were born here -- and so we cannot claim any other home: either we are Americans or we have no homeland. Whoever disputes my claim to this my American fatherland disputes my right to my own thoughts, my feelings, my language -- the very air I breathe. Therefore, I must defend myself against him as I would against a murderer. I am sure that reader, Jack, would agree with the above. However, I cheated. I changed the quote a bit. Here is the real quote: We are not immigrants -- we were born here -- and so we cannot claim any other home: either we are Germans or we have no homeland. Whoever disputes my claim to this my German fatherland disputes my right to my own thoughts, my feelings, my language -- the very air I breathe. Therefore, I must defend myself against him as I would against a murderer. (Gabriel Riesser, German Revolutionary National Assembly, 1849, Quoted in Amos Elon, The Pity of it All) Jack is so sure of himself. He will no doubt insist that the comparison is absurd. After all, nothing could happen to American Jews. They are strong, as he says. I am sure that all American Jews agree, and I too would not be so brash as to predict a bad end for the Jews of America. After all, the Holocaust happened only once in Germany, and the expulsion from Spain, well that happened only once too. And the pogroms in Russia, they happened a few times. Of course, history does not repeat itself, necessarily. But I would not be so brash as to predict a good end either. We all know that every Jewish Diaspora in history has been threatened at one time or another, and the most brilliant Jewish Diaspora communities, in Spain, in Germany and in Poland, all met with disaster. It is possible that history has suddenly changed its course, and that what was true for 2,000 years is no longer true. The Sun might also fail to rise tomorrow. It is possible. But it is impossible to be certain that the Sun will not rise, and it is tempting fate to believe that Jews are absolutely safe in any Diaspora. Now you are all angry at me, a doctrinaire Zionist and crazy Israeli, for saying these things, I know. But actually, Mr. Jack is not so sure of himself after all. Perhaps the tiniest sliver of a doubt exists in his mind, for he wrote: "...Any connection to Israel only weakens us, and causes trouble. " Really Mr. Jack! What sort of trouble could be caused by a connection to Israel? Don't the Irish march proudly each year in their St. Patrick's day parade? Would Americans have it any other way? Would America be the same America without St Patrick's day? Aren't you as proud to be Jewish as Kennedy is to be Irish? Aren't all Americans supposed to be proud of their roots? Is there, perhaps, something different about Jews? It is impossible? Here's what Mr. Jack says: Supporting Israel weakens our position in America and opens the door to accusations regarding loyalty etc. So both from our own selfish psychological point of view AND from the point of view of the society around us, it's much better for us to be on our own, without any special connection to Israel. Such an original thesis! This man's mother must think he is a genius. But I'll tell you what Jack - Ireland was neutral in World War II. I doubt if it entered anyone's mind that Americans of Irish descent were Nazi spies. Irish were fighting Britain, an ally of the United States at one time, and yet the issue of double loyalty never really came up. And don't forget that America fought Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, but there were no pogroms of Italians and Germans - only Japanese. But you don't look Japanese, I bet, so there is no problem. So why are you worried? Jews are no different from other Americans, isn't that so Jack? Or maybe you don't really believe that. Jack probably never heard of the anti-Zionist Jew, Edwin Montagu, a member of the British cabinet in 1917, who opposed the Balfour declaration for precisely those reasons. He was certain that the creation of a national home for the Jews would be an impetus to European anti-Semitism. There was plenty of European anti-Semitism to be sure, but it was not caused by the Balfour declaration. Jack, nobody is forcing you to be Jewish. If you want to repudiate your heritage, it is your business. It is America after all. But I know that Jack is a Jew. He will remain a Jew. A Jew of the old kind, not the kind we want to create in Israel. This is how I know. He wrote: Imagine: all the money and hours wasted on Israel by Jewish Americans is suddenly available for Jewish schools, Jewish community centers, Jewish outreach, Jewish renewal, and all the other great project that will make us ? not just Jews but rather Jewish Americans ? stronger and more vital. What a wonderful dream." Ah, Now we understand what is bothering you Jack. It is a typical Jewish complaint. As the anti-Semites say: "Money. All you people ever think about is money." That is what is bothering you Yankel, your pocket. In the end, all you are thinking about is money. Keep your money, Mister. You cannot buy your part in what we are building here with your money, if your heart does not go with your money. Keep your money and be damned. I wonder what American Jews could teach in such schools, devoid of Israel, and what they would do in such community centers, and how it would be related to Judaism. They could not teach the Tanach ( Old Testament) , which is mostly about God's promise of Israel to the Jewish people, and about the fulfillment of that promise, and the history of the Jews in the land of Israel. The whole book is set in the Middle East. America is not mentioned even once as far as anyone knows. They could not teach the prayers, which vow, "Next Year in Jerusalem." They could not teach Hebrew, the language of the ancient Israelites. They could not teach about Passover, a holiday not only of release from bondage, but of return to Israel. They could not teach the children to celebrate Hannukah, the holiday that celebrates liberation of Jerusalem. They could not teach about Tu Bishvat, the holiday of Israeli trees and fruits. Forget Tish'a Be'av too - it mourns the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. They would be left with Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah and Purim. Perhaps they could teach Yiddish and help kids develop a taste for bagels and lox. Would they then be accused of double loyalty to Germany? How would that education be "vital?" Of what would their Judaism consist? Ami Isseroff Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Jews, Zionism
Continued (Permanent Link)
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/07/ehud-olmert-paid-secret-visit-to-jordan.html
TEL AVIV, Israel, July 13 (UPI) -- Israel is keeping an official silence on why Prime Minister Ehud Olmert paid a secret visit to Jordan, where he met King Abdullah II.
Israel's Channel 2 TV reported that Olmert went secretly to Jordan on Wednesday. But it was not clear why he helicoptered there, what they discussed and why the visit was considered secret. The Prime Minister's Office would not comment on the report.
The Haaretz daily, however, said that Olmert had told his ministers he would focus on bilateral issues. Relations have been usually good, and on July 5 Israel removed another hindrance when it handed over four Jordanians who had been serving life sentences for killing two Israeli soldiers. They did so before the two countries formally concluded peace in 1994 and Amman has been pressing for their extradition.
The deal provided Jordan would jail them for 18 months. The Jordanian government said this was a "positive achievement and substantial shift."
According to the TV report, Olmert also intended to discuss rebuilding a bridge over the Jordan River at Damiya. That would be a step towards opening another crossing between the West Bank and the Hashemite Kingdom, which currently share only one crossing, the Allenby Bridge near Jericho. Damiya is in the northern West Bank, along the road from Nablus to Jordan, and a crossing there had existed in the past.
The two leaders want to help Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whom Olmert is supposed to meet next week. One topic that would involve Jordan calls for strengthening Abbas by sending over the Palestinian Army's Badr Brigade that has been based in Jordan. Abbas also reportedly wants armored personnel carriers for his security forces.
None of the above would have justified a secret visit, of course. Ami Isseroff Labels: Israel
Continued (Permanent Link)
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/07/irans-regional-ambitions-implications.html
Who would have thunk it?
Iran's Regional Ambitions
Implications for Israel, Iraq, and the Gulf States
Amir Taheri
Iran's national interest would be to regard Israel as a strategic ally and partner because Iran does not want a Middle East which is entirely Arab. But the Islamic Republic wants to lead the Muslim world, create an Islamic superpower, and save mankind from a Judeo-Christian conspiracy.
Jerusalem contains the al-Aqsa Mosque, but it is a Sunni mosque. Iranians are Shi'ites and cannot pray there because their prayers would not be accepted. So liberating Jerusalem is a totally useless project from an Iranian religious perspective.
The majority of the Shi'ite clergy, in Iran and elsewhere, are against the Iranian regime. There are more Iranian mullahs in prison today than workers or intellectuals. All of the grand ayatollahs are now bitter enemies of the regime because it is a distortion of Shi'ite theology.
Those who are fighting the regime inside Iran are mostly industrial workers, who have been on strike in many areas. Another group fighting the regime is women, who are very active, especially in hundreds of NGOs. The regular Iranian armed forces, as distinct from the Revolutionary Guards, are also unhappy with the present situation.
The real issue in Iran is how it can find a way to emerge from its revolutionary experience, keep part of it, discard other parts, and really become a nation state. Once Iran has become a nation state, instead of a country devoted to an abstract cause, then it will display normal behavior and not be an existential threat to anybody.
Continued hereLabels: Iran, Israel
Continued (Permanent Link)
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/07/canadian-antisemitic-cartoons.html
For some reason, this cartoon controversy doesn't get a great deal of media attention. This time, the cartoons are offensive to Jews, but they don't riot in the streets and burn embassies. Their leaders don't set them against the newspapers that published them or against Quebec which has a history of antisemitism. Ratna Pelle Canada's Cartoon Controversy
From the desk of Rondi Adamson on Mon, 2007-07-09 15:40 There's a new cartoon controversy -- this time in Canada. And the controversy is that there hasn't been one. Some three weeks ago, in close succession, anti-Semitic cartoons-- at least two of which appeared to have been borrowed from Der Sturmer -- were published on the editorial pages of three mainstream newspapers in the Canadian province of Quebec. The cartoons concerned the meeting between Mario Dumont the leader of Quebec's opposition party, the Action Democratique du Quebec , with fundraisers who had traditionally supported Quebec's Liberal Party -- the party currently in power. Some of the fundraisers were Jewish businessmen.
View the cartoons and the complete article on Israel en Palestijnen Nieuwsblog Labels: Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Israel, Zionism
Continued (Permanent Link)
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/07/creative-zionism.html
Uriel Heilman Participants in the PresenTense Institute for Creative Zionism work on innovative ideas at the program's home in Jerusalem By Uriel Heilman Published: 07/09/2007 JERUSALEM (JTA) When Eli Winkelman first had the idea of transforming her weekly challah sale at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., into a charity benefiting Sudanese refugees, she thought it would be a cool way to sell a few extra peanut-butter loaves.
Winkelman never thought the idea would galvanize hundreds of students to write letters to their lawmakers about the genocidal campaign in Darfur, raise $30,000 for the refugees, spark interest in replicating her Challah for Hunger program at campuses from coast to coast and earn her a mention in a speech by former President Bill Clinton.
"People who aren't involved anywhere else in Jewish campus life think baking challah to help people in Darfur is cool," she said. "It becomes a steppingstone for people who are getting in touch with their Jewish roots."
Two-and-a-half years after starting Challah for Hunger, and weeks after graduating from college, Winkelman, 22, is pondering her next big move. She is one of 18 fellows spending time in Israel this summer participating in the PresenTense Institute for Creative Zionism.
The brainchild of another pair of young innovators, Ariel Beery and Aharon Horwitz, both 27, the institute is a six-week summer program in Jerusalem for a select group of enterprising 20- and 30-somethings from Panama to the West Bank all of whom are looking for ways to change the Jewish world with fresh ideas.
Organizers of the institute hope the program, which they dreamed up several months ago, will serve as an incubator for creative Jewish concepts.
The idea is to produce great Jewish achievements not just as a result of the training the fellows receive in such fields as Web publishing, podcasting, grant writing and business development, but also as a result of the synergy among talented people working together.
"There is so little Jewish leadership development," Beery said. "There is so much talk about it, but there isn't really an intensive skill-building workshop for these kids to come in and get the skills they need. We want to open up new paths for them. The idea is to have professional development for these innovators.
"It's the next paradigm for Jewish collective existence," he said.
It's basically the same idea as another recent gathering in Jerusalem, the Global ROI Summit, where 120 young Jewish innovators from all over the world assembled for a four-day meeting of the minds.
Run under the auspices of birthright israel and the Center for Leadership Initiatives, the summit also offered participants workshops in building online communities, publishing webzines and making films.
But the primary goal appeared to be networking. Computer geeks mingled with bloggers, filmmakers dissected Kafka with doctoral students and artists shared their creative visions with anyone willing to listen over a glass of wine.
"The idea is to train emerging leaders in the Jewish community," Yonatan Gordis, director of programs at the Center for Leadership Initiatives, said over cocktails at sunset in the Israel Museum sculpture garden. "Here in Israel they have a chance to engage, cross-country and cross-topic. They think collectively."
Participants came from Russia, Latin America, Israel, the United States, Australia, South Africa pretty much anywhere there are Jews. There were TV reporters, Webmasters, Hillel directors, CEOs of start-up companies, environmental activists, Israel advocates, museum programmers and, of course, an assortment of Jewish community professionals. A few of the Creative Zionism Institute fellows were there, too.
"It's an interesting group," said Jeremy Kossen, 34, founder of the recently launched Jewish culture and entertainment site JewTube.com.
Promoted as "Facebook meets YouTube for Jews," JewTube aims to become the central address for Jewish entertainment, culture, education and advocacy insofar as it can fit into a five-minute video clip.
Kossen said he originated the idea when he couldn't find relevant, interesting Jewish multimedia content on the Internet. He said the summit was helpful mainly in getting his new Web site widespread attention in the Israeli media. Philanthropist Lynn Schusterman, who sponsored both the ROI summit and the Creative Zionism Institute through the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, said participants in these events are the rising stars of the Jewish people.
"I'm sorry I don't have the time to sit and visit with each and every one of them," she said.
Schusterman said it's no coincidence that the programs are in Israel.
"One of the tracks of the summit is Israel advocacy," she said, "and Israel is the Jewish people's home."
Horwitz, of the Creative Zionism Institute, said Israel should be the creative platform for the Jewish people. As the co-editor of BlogsofZion.org, he also was one of the ROI fellows. "Israel is a hub for the Diaspora. In Israel we have the spirit, wisdom, knowledge and social capital to take the next step forward in Jewish collective life," he said.
Beyond all the argot and hype, it appeared as if something indeed was being accomplished at 3 HaRan St., where the Creative Zionism Institute is housed in an apartment turned dormitory with a broadband Internet connection.
Wires crisscrossed the floor where one fellow sat tapping out computer code for an easy-to-use Web-based publishing system, while another, Matt Barr, worked on Bible-inspired rap music (http://mattbar.com/music-43.html).
Horwitz said the institute is modeled on high-tech incubators, where people with promising ideas are given the resources they need to succeed and make money for their investors.
In this case, he and Beery said, the dividend is new and improved Jewish life.
"We're trying to create 360-degree solutions for Jewish problems," Beery said, speaking rapidly and peppering his monologue with the latest buzzwords. "The Jewish world is at a crossroads right now, with the information age affecting entire humanity, but specifically the Jews, who are spread around the world," he said. "We're trying to unify the Jewish world and create new ways for the Jewish world to think, act, work and program."
A lofty goal, Beery acknowledged as he took a breath, but one worth aiming to reach.
Perhaps, he admitted with a yawn, it's why he finds so little time to sleep.
Labels: Israel, Zionism
Continued (Permanent Link)
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/07/american-immigrants-to-get-better-idf.html
This will be good news to some, bad news for others. In the past, "Anglos" used to get less training, but they served in reserves and in the army and did "meaningful" service nonetheless, in artillery and tank units. As yet however, Israel is not exactly getting millions of immigrants from the US and Britain. We once calculated that each and every American who came and stayed in Israel cost the Jewish agency and Jewish community about $100,000. The former USSR has a much larger potential for Aliya, and a Jewish community that is in need of help. Ami Isseroff Anglos to get better jobs in the army
Haviv Rettig, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 4, 2007
Men who immigrate to Israel between the ages of 24 and 29 are often drafted by the IDF for an abbreviated and - many complain - purposeless service as truck drivers or guards. Now, with the focus of aliya shifting to the affluent nations of the West, the government is launching a program to offer these young men, who often have valuable skills, a more meaningful military service.
The program, a joint effort of the Immigrant Absorption Ministry and the IDF, will take participants through two weeks of basic training and integrate them into the army's professional corps as officers.
"They'll be able to work as computer programmers, engineers, doctors, and those sorts of positions," said an Immigrant Absorption Ministry representative, who added that the list of eligible positions was still being finalized by the IDF's Human Resources Directorate.
The new program seeks not only to better utilize the knowledge of Western olim, but to encourage that aliya in the first place. To that end, the ministry plans to advertise its new partnership with the army on its Web site and in the target communities in the West.
Since the State of Israel, from the days of Ben-Gurion, refrains from soliciting other nations' citizens to become Israeli, there may be a problem if the ministry advertises aliya overseas. (Jewish Agency emissaries encourage aliya in Jewish communities around the world, not official Israeli representatives.) Currently, the ministry has yet to sort out an arrangement for this activity, but will do so in the near future, the spokesperson said.
The program is also seen as a way to better integrate new immigrants into society.
"The integration of olim in the IDF has a decisive influence on how they are absorbed in the country," outgoing Immigrant Absorption Minister Ze'ev Boim said of the program. "[Military] service is the express ticket into Israeli society."
Labels: Israel
Continued (Permanent Link)
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/07/poll-israelis-are-liberal.html
This poll confounded democratic values (the newer definition of liberalism) with 19th century free market economics liberalism. Surprisingly, Arab Israelis opted for minimal government intervention in the economy, though the economic status of the Arab community would benefit most from such intervention. Poll Measuring Liberal Values and Attitudes of Israelis
Benchmark Survey commission by Friedrich Naumann Stiftung The Friedrich Naumann Foundation is an independent, nonprofit, nongovernmental organisation that is committed to promoting liberal policy and politics.
www.fnst-freiheit.orgMay 2007
609 respondents: 437 Hebrew (72% ), 91 Russian (15% ), 81 Arabic (13% )
+/- 4.1% margin of error for total
Calls by Mutagim 28-30 May 2007 .Data processing by DataWise - Utah, US
Overall project: KEEVOON Research, Strategy & Communications
[Results converted by IMRA from power point presentation]
+ Which is of most concern to you and your family?
18% Economy/Jobs
25% Foreign Policy/Security
19% Healthcare
19% Education
4% Environment
5% Welfare
3% Culture
3% Municipal Issues
5% DK/Refuse
+ Personal Freedom vs. Responsibility to the Community
Community has to have a dominant role in society and the individual.
Total: 33% Hebrew: 31% Russian: 18% Arabic: 60%
Community should have a minimal role in society and the individual.
Total: 14% Hebrew: 15% Russian: 4% Arabic: 16%
Personal freedom and responsibility to the community do not contradict one
another.
Total: 37% Hebrew: 37% Russian: 62% Arabic: 11%
This issue has no relevance to me.
Total: 12% Hebrew: 13% Russian: 8% Arabic: 12%
+ Israel as a "Jewish and Democratic State"
The Jewish character of Israel is most important and takes precedence over
democracy.
Total: 24% Hebrew: 28% Russian: 9% Arabic: 22%
The Democratic character of Israel takes precedence over the Jewishness ofthe State.
Total: 26% Hebrew: 23% Russian: 25% Arabic: 47%
The Jewish and democratic character of Israel are equally important.
Total: 46% Hebrew: 47% Russian: 60% Arabic: 27%
+ Guarantee that ALL Citizens are Treated Equally Regardless of Religion or
Ethnicity
Very Good
Total: 52% Hebrew: 51% Russian: 42% Arabic: 72%
Somewhat Good
Total: 25% Hebrew: 23% Russian: 43% Arabic: 15%
TOTAL GOOD
Total: 77% Hebrew: 74% Russian: 85% Arabic: 86%
Not Good But Necessary
Total: 12% Hebrew: 14% Russian: 4% Arab 6%
Total Good or Necessary
Total: 77% Hebrew: 74% Russian: 85% Arabic: 86%
Not Good
Total: 8% Hebrew: 9% Russian: 8% Arabic: 5%
DK / Refuse
Total: 3% Hebrew: 3% Russian: 3% Arabic: 2%
+ Initiate legislation that would guarantee that only a Jew could be elected PM of Israel
Not Good at All
Total: 22% Hebrew: 12% Russian: 37% Arabic: 57%
Not Good But Necesary
Total: 12% Hebrew: 14% Russian: 5% Arabic: 6%
Somewhat Good
Total: 13% Hebrew: 12% Russian: 20% Arabic: 11%
Very Good
Total: 51% Hebrew: 60% Russian: 32% Arabic: 20%
Good or necessary
Total: 76% Hebrew: 86% Russian: 57% Arabic: 37%
+ Constitution for Israel
TOTAL Good: 75% Not Good: 16%
Hebrew Good: 71% Not Good: 19%
Russian Good: 88% Not Good: 3%
Arabic Good: 84% Not Good: 14%
+ Separate Religion and State - Selected Tabs
TOTAL: Good: 59% Not Good: 36%
Russian: Good: 71% Not Good: 20%
Arabic: Good: 63% Not Good: 34%
Ashknz: Good: 69% Not Good: 25%
Sephrd: Good: 47% Not Good: 48%
+ Protect the Civil Rights of Arab Israelis
Total: Good: 55% Not Good: 39%
Hebrew: Good: 56% Not Good: 39%
Russian: Good: 21% Not Good: 63%
Arabic: Good: 84% Not Good: 14%
+Require Israeli Arabs to perform 2 years of National Community Service
Very Good
Total: 26% Hebrew: 27% Russian: 26% Arabic: 16%
Somewhat Good
Total: 25% Hebrew: 23% Russian: 26% Arabic: 32%
Not Good But Necessary
Total: 12% Hebrew: 13% Russian: 9% Arabic: 14%
Good or Necessary
Total: 51% Hebrew: 50% Russian: 52% Arabic: 48%
Not Good
Total: 33% Hebrew: 33% Russian: 29% Arabic: 36%
DK / Refuse
Total: 5% Hebrew: 4% Russian: 10% Arabic: 2%
+ Regardless of what you think regarding the refugee issue or the "right ofreturn". Do you think Israel is obligated to compensate Arab refugees who left in 1948?
TOTAL: Yes: 24% No: 68% DK: 8%
Hebrew: Yes: 16% No: 77% DK: 7%
Russian: Yes: 8% No: 80% DK: 12%
Arabic: Yes: 90% No: 4% DK: 6%
+ Violate Civil Rights of Terror Suspect
TOTAL: Violate: 75% Not violate: 20%
+ Do you think that Jews and Arabs should be treated equally with regard to
budget allocation?
Total: Yes: 61% No: 33%
+ Grant equal rights to gay and lesbians regarding same-sex unions, pension
and survivorship rights
Very Good
Total: 23% Hebrew: 29% Russian: 9% Arabic: 10%
Somewhat Good
Total: 22% Hebrew: 22% Russian: 21% Arabic: 21%
Not Good But Necessary
Total: 11% Hebrew: 11% Russian: 16% Arabic: 4%
Total Good or Necessary
Total: 56% Hebrew: 62% Russian: 46% Arabic: 35%
Not Good
Total: 36% Hebrew: 31% Russian: 36% Arabic: 58%
DK / Refuse
Total: 9% Hebrew: 7% Russian: 18% Arabic: 7%
+ Reduce the State's involvement in citizen's affairs
VERY GOOD: 20% SOMEWHAT GOOD: 31% NOT GOOD BUT NECESSARY 14%
Total Good or Necessary: 65%
NOT GOOD AT ALL: 24% DK/REFUSE: 12%
+ Government corruption is a danger to democracy and the rule of law,and that "political corruption is like a cancer very deep in the body of theState."
Strongly Agree 60% Agree 29% Disagree 7% Strongly Disagree 2%
+ Which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel's existence?
Corruption
Hebrew: 19% Russian: 12% Arabic: 40%
Arab Countries
Hebrew: 22% Russian: 34% Arabic: 10%
Terrorism
Hebrew: 16% Russian: 20% Arabic: 21%
Soc Gap/Pov
Hebrew: 15% Russian: 11% Arabic: 6%
Demographics
Hebrew: 12% Russian: 8% Arabic: 0%
Jew/Israeli Arab relations
Hebrew: 5% Russian: 5% Arabic: 11%
Religious/Secular relations
Hebrew: 5% Russian: 2% Arabic: 6%
+ Deregulate all industries and allow for a free market economy
Good 61% Not Good 25% DK/Refuse 14%
+ Minimum Wage - Selected tabs
TOTAL: Gov't set: 61% Market forces: 33%
Arabic: Gov't set: 47% Market forces: 52%
Orthodox: Gov't set: 78% Market forces: 18%
Soldier: Gov't set: 80% Market forces: 20%
Student: Gov't set: 51% Market forces: 46%
+ Israel and Globalization
59% Great opportunity for Israel to advance economically, socially and culturally
21% Will have negative impact on Israel economically, socially and culturally
7% It makes no difference
13% DK/Refuse
+ Free Competition vs. Social Welfare
35% More competition
50% More social welfare.
10% Same
4% DK
+ Liberal political principles stand for civil rights, equal opportunities, free market competition, pluralism, openness and the limited role of Government, who today in Israel best represents that ideology?
Netanyahu 7% Peres 5% Liberman 4% Gedaymak 2%
No One: 43% Don't Know: 27%
+ Based on that same definition of liberal political principles, which political party best represents that ideology?
Likud 9% Labour 8% Meretz 6% Kadima 4% Yisrael Beiteinu 3%
Balad 2% None 42% DK/Refuse 22%
+ Do you think there is a need for a new political party based on liberal political principles of civil rights, equal opportunities, free market competition, pluralism, openness and the limited role of Government?
Hebrew Yes 43% No 50% DK 6%
Russian Yes 36% No 42% DK 22%
Arabic Yes 73% No 23% DK 4%
+ How likely would you vote for a new political party based on those ideals?
Hebrew Likely: 22% Somewhat: 10% Very Likely: 20%
Russian Likely: 24% Somewhat: 15% Very Likely: 7%
Arabic Likely: 27% Somewhat: 10% Very Likely: 47%
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il Labels: Israel
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/07/kidnapped-gilad-shalit-is-in-hamas.html
Schalit's kidnappers: We handed him over to Hamas
JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 4, 2007 The kidnappers of Cpl. Gilad Schalit have transferred him to the custody of Hamas, Abu Mutfana - a leader in the Army of Islam - said Wednesday in an interview broadcast on Channel 10. Abu Mutfana, who spoke on television with his face obscured by a kaffiyeh, called on Schalit's family to "pressure your government to release the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim prisoners held in Israeli prisons." Otherwise, Abu Mutfana warned, the Army of Islam "would take action." Abu Mutfana stressed that the cross-border raid near Kerem Shalom in which Schalit was abducted over a year ago had been carefully planned by his group in cooperation with the Aksa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Army of Islam, Abu Mutfana said, had been holding Schalit but had handed him over to Hamas because they had been "busy with other things." However, a Channel 10 commentator said that Hamas had offered Abu Mutfana's group money and weapons in exchange for Schalit. Overnight Tuesday, the Army of Islam released BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, who was kidnapped in Gaza nearly four months ago.In response to Johnston's release, Abu Mutfada told Hamas that their victory celebrations wouldn't last long. "You're banging your drums as if Alan Johnston were a soldier in the Army of Islam that you freed from the American tyrants' jails," he said.
Abu Mutfada said that the Army of Islam had freed Johnston of its own free will, and not because of pressure to do so by Hamas.
Labels: Israel
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/07/israeli-sandy-koufax-pitches-no-hitter.html
Israel's first baseball season is in full swing. Last update - 06:21 04/07/2007 By Haaretz Sports Staff
Australian lefty Matt Bennett pitched the Israel Baseball League's second no-hitter of the 10-day-old season to out-duel Brooklyn native Alper Ulatas Tuesday night, as the Modi'in Miracle beat the Petah Tikva Pioneers 2-0 in a game that lasted just one hour and 36 minutes.
Bennett dominated his seven innings of work, striking out 10 and giving up only one walk. Modi'in's scoring came off the bat of Californian Aaron Levin, who hit a solo home run in the fourth inning to put the Miracle up 1-0. Dominican centerfielder Adalberto Paulino added an insurance run in the bottom of the sixth with an RBI double. Modi'in improved to 3-2 on the season. Ulatas gave up two runs and four hits in five-and-two-thirds innings for Petah Tikva, which dropped to 1-6. At Yarkon Field at the Baptist Village in Petach Tikva, the Beit Shemesh Blue Sox stayed undefeated, beating the Ra'anana Express 5-0 to improve to 7-0 on the season. Dominican right-hander Juan Feliciano pitched a complete game two-hit shutout, striking out nine and walking just two batters to improve his record to 2-0. The Blue Sox were aided by a shaky Ra'anana defense as well as the bats of star hitters Jason Rees and Johnny Lopez. Rees went 2-3 on the night with an RBI, raising his batting average to .579, and Lopez went 3-4 with a run scored putting him at .440. Manager Ron Blomberg's club is now 2.5 games ahead of the second-place Tel Aviv Lightning. Wednesday's games will be played at noon due to the Fourth of July celebration. It will be the Netanya Tigers vs. the Modi'in Miracle at Gezer Field, and the Beit Shemesh Blue Sox vs. the Petah Tikva Pioneers at Yarkon Sports Complex. Labels: Israel, Sports
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The Hon. Alexander Downer, MP
MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, AUSTRALIA
Alexander Downer Speech
26 June 2007, King David Hotel, Jerusalem
Speech to the Israel Australia Chamber of Commerce Gala Dinner
Minister Ezra, Professor Stanley Fischer, Gurion Meltzer, Moshe Kaveh, the President of Bar Ilan University and other distinguished guests here tonight.
I can only say that tonight is a very important evening for me and I feel very touched by the great honour that's been bestowed on me by Bar Ilan University. I feel that it's exciting on the one hand but I feel very humbled by it as well - perhaps a little undeserving. I did get an honours degree at university but my wife says to me that "Darling, you're now a doctor but you've not done a stroke of work towards a thesis". When I graduated as an undergraduate I thought that was enough university and it was time to go out and make money and I failed at that and went into politics [laughter]. Anyway, I've come full circle and now I'm a doctor and so I appreciate the great honour.
A lot of people ask me why I seem to be so committed to Israel - I mean, I'm a Christian, not Jewish and although I remember staying here in this hotel about three years ago ... and I think I could almost be described as an honorary Jew with a lot of the views that I hold about the issues that Jewish people confront. But a lot of people do ask me why I am so committed to Israel. And I think there are a variety of explanations for that. One of them is a bit historic and I think some of you have heard me say this before. When I was a child at school and subsequently when I went to university in England, for no particular reason, Jewish people seemed to befriend me as some other people did as well [laughter], but I seemed to have quite a lot of Jewish friends.
When I was at university I shared a house with four people. One of them was a New Zealander, one of them was Jewish - her name is Judy - and a Scotsman. This was in 1972-73, that sort of time, the significance being 1973. And Judy had a cousin come and stay with her from Israel. And it was at the time, just as the cousin came, the Yom Kippur War broke out. And I remember this just as though it were yesterday, going down into our little kitchenette - imagine a student's kitchen how completely disgusting it was, with washing up not done for about four days, just a complete mess really, and we ate such disgusting food as well. Judy's sitting there in her dressing gown with her cousin from Israel and the cousin from Israel had tears in her eyes. They were both listening to BBC radio, to the details of the Yom Kippur War and you'll remember better than I do how in the early days it wasn't going so well. This cousin of Judy's brother was in the Israeli army and - you know all of this so much better than I do.
But I was tremendously struck by the power of the moment. I was tremendously struck by the Jewish people, as in the Israelis in this case, under siege and so unreasonably in my view - now some people will criticise me for that - but I think completely unreasonably under siege in the way that they were and suffering so much yet again after all the wars that they'd been through. And, I don't know, it seemed to me that somebody had sometimes to stick up for the Israeli people and as the years have gone by the cause of Israel has, in many countries around the world, become decreasingly fashionable. I don't think there's any doubt about that. It hasn't changed my mind that it's become decreasingly fashionable, in fact I've never claimed to be fashionable, I've just tried to do what I thought was the right thing.
So for those sort of historic reasons, I've had a strong feeling for Israel. One of the other reasons I have a strong feeling for Israel - when I come here and it's forty degrees it reminds me of Adelaide, it's like going home. When I come here and look at Israeli politics it also reminds me of home. The interesting way that Israelis conduct their politcs, the same robust - dare I say it - slightly rude way in which your politicians deal with each other, the volatility of your politics - a bit more volatile than ours. Yes, you've had more Foreign Ministers, as Stanley was pointing out, than we have over the last eleven years, but nevertheless the volatility, the confrontation, the partisanship of your politics is very familiar to us.
Of course in a broader sense Israel shares so many of the core values that Australia has as well. Australia is the world's sixth oldest continuingly operating democracy; its democratic roots are very deep. Israel is such a vibrant democracy as well, it's one of the great heartlands of modern democracy as well - the passionate belief in the freedom of the individual that we have in our own society. There's something else about Israel that Australia shares as well and that is that your country seems to me to be a kind of brutally egalitarian society and we kind of like that in Australia. Airs and graces don't go down very well in our country - that's why Europeans think that we're very noisy and perhaps a touch common [laughter]. But it's just that we're very egalitarian. And I think that Israelis suffer from - if you could call it that - the same thing. So there are those great sort of bonds of kinship, I guess, that we have.
We have in Australia a wonderful Jewish community about 100,000 strong. They are just enormous contributors to our country. Our country would not be the great country it is if not for our small but incredibly successful Jewish community in the professions, in business, not so much in politics in our country but there have been from time to time in politics - the first Australian-born Governor General of Australia was Jewish and we've had two Governors General - I think, two - who have been Jewish. Jewish people have been an enormously important part of our society - continue to be - and we're very proud of that as well.
But I suppose on top of all of those things, in very recent years we have kind of been bound together yet again because of the way the world has evolved. I suppose for Jewish people one of the most defining experiences is what happened to them in the 1930s and 1940s. So for Jewish people they understand more than anyone else on earth the pain of the confrontation between liberal democrats, social democrats on the one side and fascism and Nazism on the other side and totalitarianism. After that we had the confrontation between liberal and social democrats and Communism. And I think when we got to 1990-91, the Berlin wall was torn down, Communism collapsed, it became a barren and bankrupt ideology. The Soviet Union itself broke up, we thought it was, to use Francis Fukuyama's phrase, the end of world history, meaning that the great ideological confrontations had finished. We thought that we could pocket a 'peace dividend' as they used to say in the early 1990s, we could put away our arms and spend that money on the things we'd truly love to spend it on - health and education, services and so on.
But then we were very brutally reminded, as time went on, that in fact the great conflicts were not over. That the world still faces a great conflict, which I often define as a conflict between moderate people, between tolerant people, between caring people on the one hand and between extremists, and the intolerant and the uncaring on the other hand. And the intolerance of a minority is an intolerance that causes great death and great suffering.
Now I ask myself what should we do about those who are intolerant, those who have ideologies which they wish to impose on others, and those who are prepared to cause suffering to others for the cause of an ideology because the ideology is more important than human life or it's more important than any individual, that in fact individuals don't count, the corporate ideology is what counts? And this is what we see from the Islamic extremists from, in our part of the world, in south east Asia, from Jemaah Islamiyah, the Abu Sayyaf group, you see from Al Qaeda, and you see to some extent from both Hamas and Hizbollah right around you here in Israel.
Some people said that the best way to deal with Nazism was through a policy that was very fashionable and very popular in the 1940s called appeasement. And we all know in this room that that policy was the wrong policy. And yet it's so often repeated, despite the fact that we know it's the wrong way to deal with extremists we're still inclined to want to repeat it. So when it came to the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism and the challenges that laid down some people thought, "Well that's the way the world is, we just have to find ways of accommodating it".
A lot of you won't agree with me here, because you can see I don't mind always whether people agree or not, but I reckon one of the great speeches of the 20th century, or at least the second half of the 20th century, was Ronald Reagan's speech in 1987 in Berlin where he said, "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall". The importance of that speech was that it was a speech where Reagan was saying, "I want to confront this type of regime, I want to confront this totalitarianism, and I want to defeat it". And he and his successors and a number of other people - there were a lot of people involved in that victory, but they did.
When it's come to Islamic extremism and terrorism, there are still people who think we shouldn't confront it, and we shouldn't try to defeat it, and we should try to negotiate our way out of it. I'm often reminded of the phrase that Osama bin Laden uses - you want to watch these people's videos - just as it was important to read Mein Kampf, so it is important to look at and take seriously what people like Osama bin Laden say. And he says the West is a weak horse. That if you keep confronting the weak horse for long enough eventually it will walk away, that it won't be able to sustain for a long time a campaign against extremism and terrorism. And when I think about the debates that there are - the debates there are about what to do with Hamas or with Hizbollah and Al Qaeda - what should we be doing in Iraq and Afghanistan - should we let the Taliban take over and just go back home, go back to bed and have a cry at night.
Or, in our case, should we and the Americans and the British and others just walk out of Iraq and leave people like Al Qaeda and other extremists to play merry havoc in that country. Imagine what that would mean for you nearby, here in Israel. And people say that's the easy way, that's the way we should do it. I keep thinking to myself, "It would be quite easy", and sometimes I think it might give us a bit of a boost in the polls if we were to do that sort of thing at home. And then I think, "What will it mean for my children? What will it mean for future generations? What will it mean for you here in this country?" if in the end we show weakness, if we are weak horses, if we run away. Will that mean these people themselves will disappear, will their ideology vanish? Will they become our friends as a result of us being weak horses? I think the answer to that is perfectly obvious. And therefore when we think about confronting this great challenge that we have today, that you have of course right here in the forefront of it, and that we have to some lesser extent in south east Asia.
When we think about it we need to work with people who are like-minded, and we need to show a sturdy courage in continuing to confront it. And I don't just mean a physical courage, and it certainly requires on the part of many people that above all and, I'm sorry to say, very often very sad sacrifice. But also for politicians, a lot of political courage as well to continue to make their arguments in their own countries. And some have done that and you know I've admired those people who have been prepared to do that in their countries, sometimes in the teeth of public opposition.
So I say all those things here in Israel on this wonderful evening here tonight, I think our countries have joined together in that great struggle that we have. And what I want to see is an Israel that can live in peace, of course, in peace with its neighbours with two states there, with the State of Israel entirely secure. You don't want to have to spend ten per cent of your GDP, as we were discussing, on defence, but much less, and with a Palestinian state too which is a secure and a prosperous place and a prosperous neighbour and a good neighbour for Israel. And we want to see a world where people are able to live in freedom and democracy and I think Australia and Israel and a number of other countries know that can't be achieved for free - we do have to show strength if we are going to achieve those things. And you know those of us who believe in those things - let's try to stick together, let's not argue too much and fall out with each other.
So, it's always an enormous pleasure for me for all of those reasons and I've talked about them at great length to be in Israel and to be here in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a spectacular city. I always say to people there are about 10 cities you have to see before you die and one of those cities is Jerusalem. It's a wonderful city, a controversial city, a very divided city, but a magnificent city. I think Sydney actually - although a lot of people here come from Melbourne - [laughter] don't worry, I'm from Adelaide, the city with the greatest football team [laughter] - but I think, just to look at, Sydney is one of the 10 cities you have to see. So those of you who are Israelis who have never been to Sydney you must make sure you at least go there and perhaps go to Adelaide as well [laughter]. It has quite a small Jewish community, Adelaide, but a very good one.
So I'd like to, if you'll just let me, say once more what an enormous honour it is to be here this evening. It's a wonderful feeling to receive from Bar Ilan University the honorary doctorate, I appreciate that enormously, and I look forward to coming back before too long, after our election - confidently, in the same position I've got here today [applause]. The one thing that I definitely want on the record, Professor Kaveh, is that I would like to make a commitment to going to Bar Ilan University and giving a lecture there about some of the things that I believe in. So, thank you very much.
Labels: Israel
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http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/07/israeli-policy-options-where-is-carrot.html
Among the options that Brom doesn't seem to include in this INSS briefing are an active program of carrot and stick that will make peace and the Fateh a bit more popular, and thereby bolster Israeli image with EU and the US, giving us a freer hand to deal with Hamas and other extremists - including Fateh extremists - if needed. This program could include evacuation of illegal outposts and a settlement freeze, contingent upon disarmament of all the armed factions in the West Bank. Mahmoud Abbas adopted the policy of disarming factions, but the Al-Aqsa brigades refuse to comply. Ami Isseroff No. 7 July 1, 2007 Israel's Policy Options after the Hamas Takeover in Gaza Shlomo Brom The Hamas takeover in Gaza is a dramatic event that has ramifications for Israeli-Palestinian relations, as well as regional significance. The forceful takeover by an Islamic movement of an Arab political entity generates repercussions and shockwaves in the Arab world. The question that now confronts various players – Israel, the Arab world and the international community – is how to deal with this new situation. Does the situation contain only risks, or are there also opportunities? Among the characteristics of the new situation: - The separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has deepened, and each has become a different political entity. Israel can clearly differentiate between actions against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank that is ruled by Fatah and actions against Gaza.
- For the first time the Hamas government is in a situation where it has full control over a geographic area and full responsibility for what transpires there. This situation seems stable and irreversible, at least in the near future.
- The establishment of a separate Fatah government in the West Bank has already prompted the rescinding of international sanctions in this area.
- The Hamas takeover of Gaza aroused great concern in Egypt and increased its motivation to take more effective control over the border with the Strip, although doubts remain regarding Egypt's actual ability to prevent smuggling along this border.
- On the other hand, Hamas's control of the Gaza-Egypt border makes weapons smuggling easier on the Palestinian side.
- To a certain extent, Hamas has trapped itself by creating a situation in which it bears responsibility for what happens in the Gaza Strip, and it faces a Palestinian public that automatically compares it with the Fatah administration in the West Bank. Hamas cannot succeed without quiet and stability in Gaza, and it is in need of Israel in order to manage daily affairs properly.
- On the other hand, if as a result of this situation the pressure on Hamas intensifies and it is pushed to the wall, it could resort to the easy option of renewing the confrontation with Israel and diverting the attention of the Palestinian public to this confrontation.
- The newly-created situation is to a certain extent also easier for Israel, because for the first time there is one effective address in Gaza vis-א-vis which Israel can operate militarily or in the civil/diplomatic realm.
- The takeover of Gaza was apparently not a result of a decision by the political leadership, and it reflects dissent within Hamas.
Principal Challenges The central questions facing Israel are: - How should Israel relate to the two new political entities, the one in the Gaza Strip and the other in the West Bank? Should the separation between them be encouraged? Should they be considered equally or differentially?
- On the likely assumption that the Hamas government in Gaza will have an interest in maintaining quiet vis-א-vis Israel in order to stabilize its government and illustrate to the Palestinian people that it can provide the population with a better reality than what existed under the Fatah administration, does Israel need to cooperate with this trend, attain a ceasefire in the Strip, and create a more or less normal reality on the border with the Strip (commercial traffic, etc.), or should it oppose this, since it could damage Israel's more long term interests?
- Is this the opportunity to create a Palestinian partner for dialogue, since the common interests between the Fatah Palestinian administration in the West Bank and Israel have strengthened? Or, in circumstances where there is no single entity that can purport to represent the Palestinian people, is effective dialogue impossible?
An answer to any of these questions must be examined as to its contribution to achieving Israel's goals vis-א-vis the Palestinians and as to its feasibility. At the same time, the limitations of Israel's ability to influence developments on the Palestinian side must also be taken into account. Israel's long term goal is to reach an agreement with a reliable Palestinian partner that is willing and able to implement a two-states-for-two-nations solution. In the shorter term, the goal is to prevent security threats to Israel that originate from the Palestinian territories. There are five possible courses of action open to Israel that address the questions listed above. They are not all mutually exclusive, and various combinations could be considered. It is also possible to move from one course of action to another over time. Possible Courses of Action The first course of action is to encourage the separation between the two areas, to strengthen the Fatah government in the West Bank and at the same time, to punish the Hamas government in Gaza and weaken it. This is the course of action that may seem inevitable since Hamas, the ruling power in Gaza, is a movement that is Islamist, armed, militant, does not recognize Israel, and aims for Israel's destruction. In the West Bank, the ruling movement has recognized Israel and wants an agreement with it. In that case, what might be warranted is to harm the former organization and support the latter. There are those who claim that in this way, it will be possible to turn the West Bank into a success story, encourage the expansion of economic activity, and raise the standard of living since the sanctions have been removed, and international aid money and tax money that Israel has been holding will be released. Israel will also contribute to this improvement by removing roadblocks and easing the movement of goods and persons, as well as taking other actions that will strengthen the standing of Fatah, such as the release of prisoners. On the other hand, the Gaza Strip, which will continue to be under Israeli and international sanctions with the pressure on it only increasing, will turn into a story of failure. The Palestinian public will see the respective performances of the two governments, and will abandon Hamas and return to Fatah. There are a number of reasons to doubt the success of this course of action. First, the Fatah government in the West Bank is not a result of popular support but the presence of Israeli bayonets. Fatah is ruling because Israel is consistently damaging the Hamas infrastructure. In the final analysis, Israel cannot help Fatah as long as it doesn't help itself. In the meantime, Fatah does not show any sign of true reform that will enable it to rehabilitate its standing in the eyes of the Palestinian population and once again become an effective political movement. Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is not an effective leader. Israel can certainly help to some extent by releasing Marwan Barghouti and encouraging the replacement of the current generation of Fatah leadership, but its ability to influence is very limited and its involvement frequently backfires. To the same extent, an enthusiastic hug of Abu Mazen by Israel can harm his standing. Hamas is already describing him as a traitor who collaborates with Israel. There is also a good chance that the Palestinian public will not interpret the crisis in Gaza as a Hamas failure, but will place the blame on Israel, the US, and their Arab allies, chief among them, Fatah. Another essential problem with this course of action is the expected reaction of Hamas. If it is pushed against the wall, it will resort to the only recourse available to it, which is the use of violence. If it acts wisely, it will concentrate its terrorist efforts in the West Bank and will try to launch suicide attacks from there. The dramatic reduction in the scope of suicide attacks derives to a large extent from the effective actions of the Israeli security forces in the West Bank, but it is also due in part to the decision by Hamas not to launch suicide attacks from there. Notwithstanding the major successes of the Israeli security forces, there is still a Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank, and it should be assumed that the movement will succeed in realizing some attacks. In this case, Israel will be forced, despite all good intentions, to renew its network of roadblocks and even to reinforce them. The limitations on travel will become harsher, and economic activity will collapse. The question also arises as to what extent a renewal of the diplomatic process with Abu Mazen and his government in the West Bank will serve the purposes of this course of action. On the one hand, it is questionable whether in Abu Mazen's weak condition and in light of his competition with Hamas he can reach an agreement with Israel on essential issues such as the refugee problem, and even if he can reach an agreement, he will not be able to implement it while he represents only a part of the Palestinian public and there is dissent as to his legitimacy. On the other hand, one can claim that the very dialogue with Abu Mazen and the ability to reach agreements with Israel will strengthen his position among the Palestinian public. The conclusion could be that renewing the diplomatic dialogue might be productive, but excessive hope should not be attached to it. The second course of action is to try to create positive competition between the two governments via preparedness to work with both of them. In this case also there would be preference given to the Fatah government in the West Bank since the governments would be judged by their performance, and it is clear that the government in the West Bank would meet Israeli and international community expectations more readily than its Gazan rival. At the same time, there would be a readiness to work with the Hamas government and allow it to function. It would be judged by its actions on the ground. If it maintains quiet and stability along the border with Israel, it would be rewarded accordingly, and normal economic activity with Israel as well as certain international assistance would be enabled. It can be assumed that in these circumstances, competition will be created between the two governments as to which of them would provide more effective governance and a better life for the population under its control. In this course of action, Israel would cooperate with Hamas in stabilizing and broadening the ceasefire. Those who support this course of action also generally estimate that it will be possible to encourage a process of pragmatization with Hamas that could help it become a Palestinian partner in the more distant future. Intra-Palestinian attempts to once again reach an understanding between Fatah and Hamas do not oppose this course of action. There are a number of problems that challenge the possible success of this course of action. First it can harm the Fatah government and weaken it further. Second, it can be interpreted as awarding a prize to the Islamic movement that seized power by force. Third, choosing this course of action will enable members of the international community to change their approach to Hamas, and could bring about the erosion of sanctions that will prevent the application of real pressure on Hamas to change its positions, or that will make it impossible to harm Hamas if it doesn't change its positions. In addition, anyone who thinks that an Islamic movement such as Hamas cannot undergo a true pragmatization process will claim that while this course of action ensures quiet for the short term, it enables Hamas to solidify its control, strengthen its military force, and prepare itself to initiate combat with Israel when it feels it is ready. In light of the dissent within Hamas, the question also arises as to whether the takeover of Gaza does not reflect a takeover of the entire movement by the military arm of Hamas. The priorities of the military arm might differ from those of the political leadership and promote renewing the military confrontation with Israel rather than stabilizing the situation in Gaza and improving the lives of the population. The third course of action is to take advantage of the new situation to strengthen the disengagement from Gaza. The intention is to aim for a situation in which there would be no contact between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and Gaza would receive all that it needs from Egypt. The assumption is that via this course of action, Israel would sever its responsibility for what happens in Gaza. The problem is that this course of action provides no answer to the real problems of the security situation vis-א-vis Gaza and the need to promote a resolution of the conflict, or at least reasonably manage the conflict with the Palestinians. The assumption that Israel would absolve itself of all responsibility for Gaza is also apparently unrealistic, since as long as Israel maintains a blockade on the Gaza Strip and controls the air and sea space, the international community will not absolve Israel of responsibility. In addition, complete disengagement from the Gaza Strip means forfeiting the leverage and influence that Israel has vis-א-vis Gaza. The fourth course of action is to take advantage of the new situation to conduct a persistent military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, aiming at harming it and weakening its power. The assumption is that after Hamas took over Gaza by force, there is an international atmosphere more conducive to military action against Hamas. Arab countries and the Fatah government in the West Bank would also likely view this favorably, even if they don't say so out loud. This course of action is based on the viewpoint that it has fallen to Israel to fight until it destroys Hamas, since this is an extremist Islamic movement that aspires to Israel's destruction and will never change its approach. Any ceasefire will work to Hamas's benefit since it will enable the movement to replenish its strength and return to combat more empowered. The problems with this course of action are the direct price of such military actions, the possibility that Israel would be dragged into a renewed conquest of the Gaza Strip, with all that entails regarding the ability to separate from the Palestinians, and the renewal of the constant friction with the Palestinians. It is also doubtful whether there would be international legitimacy for Israel's military actions in a situation where Hamas is prepared to maintain quiet and even shows that it is doing so. The fifth course of action is to do nothing. The assumption is that any Israeli involvement would be more harmful than beneficial. The question is whether there is such an option. The dependency of the Palestinian territories on Israel is so deep that any action or non-action by Israel would affect them. For instance, it is impossible to escape the question of whether or not to enable the import and export of commercial goods to and from or through Gaza to Israel, and any answer will impact on the Palestinians. Ideas have also been raised as to positioning an international force in Gaza that will "establish order." The emphasis is mainly on deploying an international force along the Gaza Strip-Egypt border that would prevent weapons smuggling. It seems that there is no real substance to these ideas. The international community can decide to send peacekeeping forces where there is a civil war and the aim is to prevent a humanitarian crisis. But there is no civil war in Gaza. Hamas won, and the situation in Gaza is stable. Another option is to position such forces as a wedge between combating armies, but this would depend on the agreement of the warring forces, Israel and Hamas. Hamas will definitely not agree to the positioning of an international force whose purpose is to obstruct the weapons smuggling pipeline. There is also no chance that there would be countries who would agree to send their forces when Hamas is opposed. In conclusion, it is possible that in the immediate future the easiest policy is not to make decisions beyond what is necessary, and to monitor developments on the Palestinian side. It is clear that Israel cannot lend its hand to the creation of a humanitarian crisis, and it will be necessary to allow the transfer of humanitarian assistance and essential items to Gaza. However, sooner or later, the government of Israel will have to decide upon a strategy – or a combination of strategies – that will better serve its interests. Here, too, the strategies can be staggered over time. For instance, It may be possible to attempt to create a situation of calm and stability across the Gaza border and then move to another course of action if it becomes clear that this is not possible or that the price is too high. Labels: Israel
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According to a Bnai Brith poll, 55% of Israelis ranked relations with Diaspora Jewry as most important (10) and only about 4% ranked them unimportant (ranks 1-4). 78% claim they are interested in news about Diaspora Jews. 88% are willing to support programs that bring Jews on visits to Israel. However, 54% believe that criticism of Israeli government policies by Diaspora Jews is improper. 46% believe all Jews should live in Israel. Ami Isseroff Israelis Attitudes Toward Diaspora Jewry B'nai B'rith World Center June 2007 [Converted from a power point presentation by IMRA] The following are the results of a poll designed by Keevoon, Research, Strategy & Communications of a representative sample of 500 adult Israeli Jews carried out by Mutagim on 6, 7 and 10 June 2007. The poll was commissioned by B'nai B'rith World Center Jerusalem. Statistical error/- 4.5 percentage points. On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the least important and 10 being the most important, how important is Israel's relationship with Diaspora Jewry? 1 - 1% 2 - 2% 3 - 1% 4 - 0% 5 - 7% 6 - 2% 7 - 7% 8 - 19% 9 - 8% 10- 55% Average: 8.6 How interested are you in television, radio, newspapers and internet reports concerning Diaspora Jewish communities or issues pertaining to Israel-Diaspora relations? Interested 78% Not Interested 22% Over the past few years the Government of Israel has been providing financial support for programs like "Taglit" and "Masa" which bring thousands of Diaspora youth to Israel for educational purposes, most for the first time. Do you support or oppose your tax money being used to fund these programs? Oppose 11% Support 88% In the past there have been times when Jews in the Diaspora have publicly criticized the elected Government of Israel in their home countries. Which statement best represents your view? 54% Jews who live in the Diaspora have no right to publicly criticize the Government of Israel because the don't live in Israel 40% Jews who live in the Diaspora can publicly criticize the Government of Israel because every Jew is a partner in Israel no matter where they live 6% Don't know/Refuse During last summer's War in Lebanon and throughout the recent rocket attacks on Sderot, various Diaspora Jewish communities have donated funds to help rebuild damage areas, fortify buildings, and lend economic support to those in need. Are you satisfied or unsatisfied with the level of support extended by Diaspora Jews? Total Satisfied 77% Total Not Satisfied 10% Don't Know 13% For many years Israel's leaders have called on all Jews to make Aliya. Which statement best represents your view? 46% All Jews should live in Israel because this is the only way Israel and the Jewish people will be strengthened. 41% Jews should live dispersed in various communities in the world as diversity and global support is the only way Israel the Jewish people will be strengthened 13% Don't know/ Refuse Of the following, which will strengthen your personal connection most to Diaspora Jewry 36% Diaspora Jews visiting Israel 25% Increased media coverage of Diaspora communities in the Israeli media 16% Visiting Diaspora communities 14% Increased support from Diaspora communities for projects in Israel 9% Don't know/ Refuse B'nai B'rith World Center Jerusalem Keevoon, Research, Strategy & Communications -------------------------------------------- IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis Website: www.imra.org.il Labels: Israel
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Miliband, the son of a Polish Marxist Jew, is not sympathetic to Israel.
Newly instated British Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed the Jewish son of Holocaust refugees and a critic of Israel to be foreign secretary.
Brown's decision to replace Margaret Beckett with David Miliband came just weeks after Beckett's first visit to Israel in the post, and occurred despite her repeated expressions of interest in continuing in the role.
Miliband previously served under Tony Blair as Britain's environment secretary. Last summer, he crossed Blair by criticizing Israel during the war against Hezbollah .
Miliband is the son of Polish Jews who immigrated to England to escape the Holocaust. His father, Ralph Miliband, arrived in England from Poland via Belgium on one of the last ships across the Channel in 1940, and became a leading Marxist writer.
At 41, David Miliband is the second youngest foreign secretary in British history.
Beckett made her first official visit to Israel earlier this month. After a meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Beckett told reporters: "If we proceed carefully, there exists at the moment a possibility to push the peace process forward."
In 2006, during the Hezbollah war, Beckett made a formal complaint to the United States over its use of an airport in Scotland for transporting bombs to Israel.
Labels: Israel
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Ex-President Moshe Katsav pleaded guilty to sexual harassment to avoid more serious charges. He can't really step down as president, because everyone except Katsav now considers Shimon Peres to be president. Katsav was elected president on the votes of ultraorthodox party members who had promised to vote for Peres. They were not happy over Peres's dovish stance and opposition to religious coercion. By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times | June 29, 2007 JERUSALEM -- Moshe Katsav was expected to step down as Israel's president after agreeing yesterday to plead guilty to sexual harassment to avoid more serious charges that he raped female staffers.
Under the plea agreement announced by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, Katsav, 61, will avoid jail time, raising an outcry among women's rights activists who saw the case as an important test of Israel's commitment to stamp out sexual harassment in the workplace. The presidency in Israel is largely a ceremonial position; political power rests with the prime minister. The Katsav case was among a series of scandals that have eroded Israelis' confidence in their leaders. Justice Minister Haim Ramon quit after being accused of forcibly kissing a female soldier and later was convicted of an indecent act. Corruption allegations also have swirled around top officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The president faced possible indictment on charges that he raped and sexually harassed female subordinates while serving as president and earlier as tourism minister. In January, Mazuz warned Katsav that authorities had enough evidence to indict on allegations involving four women, but the attorney general had yet to issue formal charges. Katsav agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges, including sexual harassment, indecent acts, and harassment of a witness, Mazuz said yesterday. Katsav will pay damages, but prison time was suspended under the deal, which requires court approval. The court is expected to act next week Labels: Israel
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Small comfort to be better than Iraq! June 29, 2007
Bush touts Israel as yardstick for Iraq
By Jennifer Loven
Associated Press
NEWPORT, R.I. -- President Bush held up Israel as a model for defining success in Iraq on Thursday, saying the U.S. goal there is not to eliminate attacks but to enable a democracy that can function despite violence.
With his Iraq policies under increasing fire from the American public and lawmakers from both parties, Bush went to the U.S. Naval War College here to declare progress. As the president pleaded for patience, his top national security aide went to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican critics.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, delivered a lengthy floor speech earlier this week contending Bush's war strategy won't have time to work and that U.S. troops should start leaving now.
National security adviser Stephen Hadley met with Lugar and others, including Sen. John Warner, R-Va. Hadley wouldn't discuss the meetings, but Warner said a defense policy bill expected to attract several war-related amendments in July was a main topic.
The White House thought it had until an expected September assessment by military commanders to deal with political fallout on the unpopular war.
But criticism is mounting. A majority of senators now believe troops should start coming home within the next few months. And House Republicans want to revive the independent Iraq Study Group to give the nation new options.
In Israel, Bush said, "terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it's not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that's a good indicator of success that we're looking for in Iraq."
It was likely to be controversial for Bush to set out Israel as a model for a Muslim Middle Eastern nation. Israel has been locked for decades in a dispute with Palestinians in the neighboring occupied territories. Labels: Israel
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Perhaps Ben-Meir's optimism that the Hamas boycott has paid off is premature. Aren't we all supporting the Fateh government? Nobody will boycott them, of course. And isn't that government being urged to enter into unity talks with Hamas? By Yehuda Ben-Meir
The Hamas government was set up about a year and a quarter ago. Israel announced it would boycott the government, since it considers Hamas a terrorist organization. To the surprise of many, the United States, Europe and the international Quartet (which also includes a representative from the United Nations and from Russia) joined the boycott.
These parties all made it clear that despite Hamas' victory in the Palestinian elections, so long as the government did not recognize Israel, renounce terrorism and take upon itself a commitment to all the agreements signed between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, they would not recognize it, would not hold contacts with it, and would not transfer money to it. The analysts and the journalists were quick to inform the people of Israel that the international boycott would not last long. They even showed contempt for the naivete of the Israeli government, that was deluding itself thinking that the boycott would continue for a long time. I recall the response of a TV anchor on one of the commercial stations who, with a wink of her eye and a look of disdain, remarked to the reporter who spoke about the Quartet's position: "Let's see how many days it will last." There were quite a few experts and politicians who urged the government to talk with Hamas, or else Israel would find itself isolated - after all, it was clear that the collapse of the international boycott against the Hamas government was merely a matter of time. Lo and behold, what an amazing thing has happened! Despite all the forecasts and the predictions of those "in the know," the opposite has happened: The boycott has remained in force. With the establishment of the Palestinian unity government, these analysts and journalists had another chance. Israel will remain alone, they warned, perhaps only with the United States, but the rest of the world will rush to recognize the unity government. One evening newspaper even announced in its headline across the entire front page, that "the international boycott has collapsed." True, Norway and South Africa recognized the unity government, but the European Union and the UN secretary general did not follow in their footsteps. Despite all the dire warnings, and despite all the skepticism and the cynicism, the international boycott has remained in force, and is continuing to this very day. Today, after the conquest of the Gaza Strip, the international boycott of the Hamas (Haniyeh) government is almost total since both Egypt and Jordan have joined it. The moral of the story is that sometimes patience and determination pay off. Now it is up to Israel to continue with this boycott and isolation of the Gaza Strip with even greater effort. It must not heed the extreme right that knows only how to propose war after war, occupation after occupation. And it must likewise not heed the extreme left that knows only how to propose one concession after another. True, peace is made with enemies, but with enemies one sometimes also needs to go to war. The wise thing is to know how to distinguish between one enemy and another. There are those among the Palestinians who wish to arrive at a peaceful settlement with us. I know many such people. Abu Mazen represents them. These are the people with whom we must speak. The gaps between us are huge, but it is our duty to make every effort to bridge them. Hamas, on the other hand, is an extreme ideological adversary, a bitter, cruel, murderous and bloodthirsty enemy. Hamas will not give up its extremist Islamic ideology of which virulent anti-Semitism is a central component. With Hamas we do not have anything to talk about. Hamas and its government in Gaza must be boycotted, isolated, and cut off from the world. They must be fought with determination and perseverance. The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies. Labels: Israel, Palestinians
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The message: ...Beyond these is the third circle - and I shall be brief here: the Western world, the international community. The international community can, of course, choose the right side, maintain the illegitimacy of Hamas, promote relations with the new government and bolster it, and also give the Palestinians an economic horizon, in addition to the political horizon that Israel can give it. It can prepare a "package", and I don't mean one for immediate consumption. Various gestures, assistance, humanitarian aid - all that is already taking place, should take place and will take place regardless. But I am talking about a different type of package, the type that says: it is ready and waiting, it can happen, all you have to do is make progress with the process with Israel. The compromise that you may make on some of your principles, a compromise you will have to reach with Israel, will pay off many times over. Through the international community, new economic options, infrastructures - a whole series of things can be accomplished with the help of the international community. Therefore, within the new situation, I think that we must adhere to those principles we spoke of. And I think we must act, using language from the world of sports, hard and fast. Hard and fast, for and against. Hard and fast against the Hamas, its takeover of Gaza, against terror. And also hard and fast to give the new Palestinian government a politically bolstering shot-in-the-arm. I wholeheartedly believe that this is not a zero-sum game. It is high time that the international community and the Arab community understand that this is not a case where supporting the Israeli stance means being against the Palestinians or the Arabs. It means that you are supporting a process shared by a large group. The sooner everyone realizes this, the sooner we will live to see the process which, I hope, will determine the meta-purpose of the State of Israel. Address by Vice Premier and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni to the Israel Council on Foreign Relations Jerusalem, 24 June 2007 [Translated from Hebrew by the Ministry if Foreign Affairs] I'll begin with a few basic observations about the situation in the region, and mainly about the complex relations between Israel and the Palestinians which have obviously changed in recent days. These basic observations are necessary, among other things, for us to understand where we're heading in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We also must look at processes taking place. Whereas in the past we saw that conflicts tended to be national ones, nowadays we see a process whereby increasingly more conflicts are becoming religious conflicts. And we must keep in mind that national conflicts can usually be resolved, whereas religious conflicts cannot be resolved in a way that is acceptable to both parties. Another process we can see is one in which, in the struggle between fanaticism based on religious ideology and the moderates or more pragmatic parties, we see expressions of fanaticism that come less from countries and more from various organizations. This makes it all the more difficult for us to deal with such extremism. It is far easier for a country, and definitely for Israel, to cope with a situation in which extremism, the threat, comes from a country. It is more difficult to deal with situations in which a country, say Iran, sends its tentacles to a different country, such as in case of Hizbullah in Lebanon; or when such a country strengthens terror organizations in a different region, like the Hamas in the Palestinian Authority. In these cases we must contend with terror organizations, some of which are well placed in certain countries, some are located worldwide. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the international conflict in which Israel finds itself, smack in the middle. If we wish to discuss extremism that is reflected in a country, the best example, the one that threatens world peace, is Iran. In the case of Iran, we must realize that when there is a common understanding of the threat - and today there is a common understanding of the threat posed by Iran - it can lead to two completely different processes. The first is a type of understanding that the more moderate countries, the pragmatic countries, are the weak countries. The extremists are stronger. Time works against the moderates. Therefore those countries that understand that Iran poses a threat to them (and I don't mean Israel, because Israel won't choose between moderates and extremists, it is by definition on the side of the moderates) - such as the Gulf states, Muslim countries, Arab counties, who see how Iran is trying to undermine the stability of their regimes by working with fanatic elements in their own back yards - must make a choice: to remain on the side of those who are trying to avert the threat, or to join it. Because, unfortunately, we are living in the same neighborhood as the neighborhood bully. You either manage to avoid him, you beat him up; or you join him - it all depends on the decisiveness of the international community. The more decisive the international community is in the face of this threat, the easier it will be for the new partners joining this party. Those who understand that Iran is the threat must stick together and adhere to their mission. Should Iran see hesitation on the part of the international community, should each member make its own choice, we might then see the domino effect in action, whereby the new party will gradually dissolve, with powers that are today working together, drifting apart. We can see some of this process in the context of the Mecca agreement, which is also relevant for understanding the current situation. Iran is embracing Hamas, and some of these countries, out of fear that they are about to lose some elements of the Palestinian Authority to Iran, rather than confront the problem head-on, tried to embrace them. This resulted in the Mecca agreement, which created the Palestinian Unity Government. This is the problematic side that may surface as a result of understanding the common danger. The positive side of understanding this danger is the creation of partnerships that sometimes seem like strange bedfellows. Only a few years ago some of these partnerships would seem inconceivable, totally illogical. Nonetheless I think it is possible, and indeed necessary, to try and translate the understanding of the common threat into a joint objective. This objective should be undertaken by all those who understand that the problems in this region are not of Israel's making; that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict obviously requires a solution, but its solution will not free the region, nor the world, from the fanatic religious ideology as it is reflected, for example, in the Shiites of Iran, the Sunnis of the Hamas, and other organizations. Therefore we now have to examine whether this new partnership is only for the sake of the common threat, or whether we can make the most of it and create a common goal for Israel, the pragmatic elements of the Palestinian Authority, some of the Gulf states, Jordan, Egypt, and any other state or body that realizes the nature of the threat and the need for a realistic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I would like to apply this regional observation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the current situation. What I am about to say stems from seeing reality for what it is. It is not just an attempt to create some Israeli dream of peace, but stems from true awareness of the issues, which I will analyze one by one. First of all, as Israelis, we must set our number one, top-level objective. Any process which we want to promote must be derived from Israel's meta-objective as a state, as an Israeli society. As such, our top objective is simply Israel's existence as a state that is a national home for the Jewish people, and a democratic state, with these values intertwined. A secure country that lives to the extent possible in peace with its neighbors, and exists on the land of Israel. This is the meta-objective of the State of Israel, which we tend to avoid writing on the wall, but it is nonetheless written there, all we have to do is reiterate and emphasize it. Because whatever steps we take, whatever process we embark on, we must analyze and determine whether it promotes that objective or not. In order to promote Israel's values as a Jewish and democratic state, and so that these two aspects do no conflict, Israel as a whole (and I think there is a social and political consensus on this) has concluded that Israel's existence, as a democratic nation-state, compels it to promote a process which boils down to two separate nation-states. This includes giving up on part of something that to my mind also includes the right of the Jewish people to certain parts of the Land of Israel. From this, we derive the plan of Israel's principles for peace. These principles stipulate that in order to fix and promote this meta-objective, we must promote a process culminating in two nation-states, each providing a national solution to its people in a different place. One is the State of Israel, which provides a full and comprehensive solution to the Jewish people; a state that, upon its establishment, gave a home to refugees that were forced to leave Arab countries and came here, and to those who were forced to leave Europe and came here. A state which, by its very definition, sees itself as a national home both to Israeli citizens who live here and to Jews living elsewhere. Similarly, the second part of the solution must be a future Palestinian state that will provide a full and comprehensive solution to the Palestinians, wherever they may be. Those who currently live in Gaza, in Judea and Samaria, in the territories, and those who left and are kept as refugees, maintained as bargaining chips for some future negotiations, usually under very difficult conditions. They are kept in such conditions purposefully, out of some thought or demand which is in contradiction of the principle of two nation-states; a concept which is called by some of the Palestinians, or by part of the Arab world, "the right of return". It follows therefore, that a basic building block on which the process stands is the idea that establishing a Palestinian state is the full and comprehensive solution also to the refugee problems, in terms of concept. This, then, is the first principle in Israel's basic principles. And by the way, this should not be an Israeli basic principle, but rather a basic principle of anyone supporting two nation-states living in peace side by side. I repeat: living in peace. This means that the road to the establishment of a Palestinian state must pass through declaring war on terror. Absolutely the last thing that Israel can afford, and the last thing the world needs, is the establishment of another terror state in the Middle East. Therefore, these are the two building blocks which anyone in the international community who espouses the principle of two states living in peace, must support. Not as a purely Israeli interest, but as something that can advance a just process between Israel and the Palestinians. Naturally, the borders are a topic open to negotiations between the two sides. Israel will bring along its principles and, as is only natural, the Palestinians will bring theirs. Before I go any further, one comment: There is often a tendency, even among some of my friends and some in the international community, to think that if only we could turn back the clock to 1967 and have those borders back, everything would be solved and hardly any discussion of borders would be required. I wish to remind you that in 1967 there was no such entity as a Palestinian state; there was no link between Gaza and the West Bank; the former was part of Egypt, the latter part of Jordan. Ergo, we are now being asked to create a totally new creation, whose product must be the result of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians - direct negotiations. Regarding the process itself, I would like to address three circles, each of which is supposed to support the other. The first circle, the innermost one, between Israel and the Palestinians, is the direct negotiations I just mentioned. The first supporting circle should be the Arab world. And the second supporting circle, the external one, ought to be the international community. When discussing the process between Israel and the Palestinians, if we have both feet firmly on the ground, we must ask ourselves, considering the problems we are up against, how do we deal with them, and is it at all possible to deal with them - considering the present state of affairs of pragmatists versus fanatics. On the one hand, there are terror elements - as I understand their ideology, and in light of the peace principles I just outlined - with whom it is impossible to reach a settlement. And on the other hand, there are the moderate elements, which generally speaking may be easier to reach a settlement with, but their executive powers are lower. We must ask ourselves, when it comes to those pragmatic elements: can we really bridge the gap when it comes to negotiations. And assuming we do succeed, will the pragmatic elements be able to implement whatever was agreed upon, considering the fact that those pragmatic elements are usually the weaker elements, all the more so today, after recent events in Gaza and the takeover of Gaza by the Hamas. The strategy adopted by Israel since the elections in the Palestinian Authority concerning this unnatural phenomenon of a terror organization winning the elections and overthrowing the Palestinian Authority, is differentiation. Namely, distinguishing between the moderate and the extremist elements, so as not to slam the door shut, out of an understanding that time works against anyone espousing the two-state solution which I mentioned earlier. All the more so in a place where, as time goes by, those pragmatic elements grow increasingly weaker and are almost disappearing in some places. So, we adopted the strategy (by saying "we" I mean the entire international community, including Israel) of trying to act against terror, against Hamas, to isolate them, not to give them any legitimacy, not to give them a chance at economic prosperity, not to create a situation wherein they can supply the Palestinians with the goods for which they were chosen. At the same time, to try and create some sort of alternative rule via the pragmatic elements. This distinction worked for a while, until - after several events in Gaza - all parties involved were called to Mecca and were asked to bring about a Palestinian unity. From that moment on, any distinction we could have made earlier - between the good guys and the bad guys, the Hamas and Fatah, Haniya and Abu Mazen, the terrorists and advocates of the two-state solution - went down the drain. Some kind of government was created which made the earlier distinction or differentiation well-nigh impossible. What we see today is a renewal of that distinction, as a result of recent events in Gaza, as a result of the fact that a Hamas decision that brought about the disintegration of the "unity government". The idea of unity just didn't work. The existing distinction, the one by which we want to continue to act, the distinction between moderates and extremists, now has also a territorial manifestation. And not only because the territorial distinction is a representation of Israeli policy. It actually happened. As we progress with the process, it will become easier for us to make this distinction on the ground, because of that distinction which is also a territorial distinction, not just a theoretical distinction between people, bodies or parties. In effect, a new government has been formed, which seemingly accepts the very principles that the international community demanded that the unity government and the Hamas government accept - and didn't accept. Thus, this distinction has now become very clear. This enables us deal with the security challenge poses by Gaza. Gaza presents us with a security challenge, but enables us to deal with it by military means, just as it is forcing us to deal with the new government that's been created. Or else it presents us with political challenges, on which we must act to strengthen this new government. The only chance we have today is to maintain this clear distinction. Once again, when I say "we", I mean Israel, the moderate elements, the international community, and that part of the Arab world which would like to advance this process. Each one must now choose sides. Of course, a Palestinian has a hard time choosing sides. There's an entire public out there, who are sometimes subjected even to physical threats. But I've also seen people who were ministers in the unity government and made their decision. Salam Fayad, who was the Minister of Finance in the unity government, chose a side, and he is now the head of the new government. Some have decided not to choose, and that also happens in the Arab world. The Arab world, too, will have to take sides. The Arab world does not want to see the Hamas succeed. The Arab world understands that the Hamas is a phenomenon of the type that might emerge in anyone's back yard. These things may be said out loud or they may be said behind closed doors, but it is nonetheless clear and well-known. But only if the Arab world, too, and each and every one of the countries, make this crystal clear, only then is there a chance that we can continue working with this distinction for any length of time. Calls for unity sound very tempting, they sound very morally right, they sounds like the right thing to do. But in this case, unity is a problem, because it does not reflect the true state of affairs and does not contribute to the process. It reflects the lowest common denominator when it comes to any future process between the Palestinians and Israel. Any such process requires compromise. Of course it requires compromises on Israel's part, too. But certainly when it comes to making serious decisions and making concessions to Israel, the temptation to revert to the warm embrace of the unity government, or the bear-hug of the Hamas, will certainly lead to the failure of the process, even if it might imply some type of increased stability in some places. Just as there are some Arab countries who have stated this and declared it loud and clear, so is there an expectation, that each side will stick to his own guns, and the sides, in this context, are very clear. The correct order of going about things in this context is to decide now, to embark on a process, to reach a settlement, and then to produce the required internal conclusions within the Palestinian public and Palestinian society. This should be the way to go about things, rather than going back and trying to create some sort of process that may be perceived as more stable, but in fact closes down the options in negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel. Obviously, once we've analyzed the strategy and want to act on it, we still need to ask ourselves, we owe it to ourselves to find out: Will it work? With the help of this integrated strategy, can we really create some sort of agreement between us and the moderate elements? This integrated strategy always works in parallel: you have to act against the extremists while working with the moderates; you can't have only half of the equation working. We must ask ourselves that question because history shows that where we didn't ask such questions but entered a closed room with a high level of expectations, it brought about a process of deterioration, violence, intifada - as we saw after Camp David 2000. Therefore we must ask ourselves whether, in such a dialogue, a permanent settlement is now realistic. It would seem it isn't, yet I do think that there are some points on which agreement can be reached with the right parties. When speaking of bolstering the moderate elements, working in tandem with the pragmatists, what tools do we have at our disposal? Yes, at the disposal of the international community too, but mostly at Israel's disposal. It can be money, arms, easing conditions, opening border crossings, and so on, and what we call a political horizon. That is, making it possible for the moderate elements to come to the Palestinian people and say, "We are the only ones who can, in addition to immediate relief, also give you a future, a future of peace, with a state of our own, a future in which we can make progress with Israel." Usually, when we reach the point of making gestures, Israel's gestures do not go beyond its security. Because what is at stake is always "can we take this one more step, or is any further step detrimental to our security." This is the question we are compelled to ask ourselves over and over again, before every gesture. First of all, some gestures are by their very nature a once-off affair, such as money. This type of gesture by its very nature has a limited effect, its impression dissipates pretty fast. It has to be done, but we must be aware that it is good only for a particular phase; it cannot support a process in the long term. Perhaps contrary to appearances, among all the list of "gestures" or the tools we have at our disposal, the so-called "political horizon" is the tool which can best be used without harm to Israel's security - so long as there is a clear distinction between the dialogue, the agreements, what can be reached on paper, and what can actually be carried out. Therefore, in the current situation, within the framework of the current relations between us and the Palestinians, after all the dramas and events in Gaza, after the new government in the Palestinian Authority, what we need to do is of course take the necessary action in Gaza, but at the same time work with the new government in two separate ways. Let's call one the "short-term package" and the other the "forward-looking package". The first, the short-term package, comprises the type of gestures that are currently being discussed and that translate into economic and other gestures. The second, forward-looking package, is the type of dialogue that we should conduct with the new Palestinian government. In this "package", we have to place on the table things that not only give the Palestinian public hope, but also serve and represent the Israeli interests in the process. For many years now we have been repeating phrases, let's not call them slogans, such as "two states, living in peace". Fine. But what would be the meaning of such a Palestinian state, if we truly don't want it to present a threat to Israel? There must be some basic Israeli interests which we have to lay on the table now. So, what will that state be like? Will it be demilitarized? That must be an Israeli interest, and a legitimate one. After having seen events in Gaza, how do we ensure that such events aren't repeated in the future in Judea and Samaria? The Palestinians, on their part, will probably present us with principles that are relevant and important to them, which is fine. But this would be part of a discussion aimed at ensuring Israeli security. This a debate that has not been held for many years. It has been seven years since the last debate, and even then we were unable to reach any agreement. It represents the interests of both sides, because it can provide a political horizon, to turn the word "state" into something more concrete, and provide Israel with its needs, in order to achieve progress in the peace process and provide the understanding that making progress in this process does not endanger safety, but rather serves it. Aren't there any other things on which we can reach an agreement in principle with the moderate group in the Palestinian Authority? We must find out, and the sooner the better, because as time goes by, the ability to achieve such understandings is dwindling. All the above is on condition that applying these understandings would be subject to the terms, some of which appear in the Roadmap; some can be pre-agreed, before arriving at the agreements in principle. But in any case they can be achieved only where there is a new Palestinian government, one that recognizes Israel, one that wishes to promote the idea of two states wherever it has control or influence. This is what I say to colleagues who say to me, "Be serious, is this the time to talk to the moderate elements? Can't you see they can't deliver? So what is there to talk about?" And I reply that talking is always an option; ultimately the acting on it is up to them. But by giving them tools to strengthen themselves, I am also strengthening my own interest of promoting the process of two states, by subordinating the application of principles to their actual implementation. As I said earlier, gaps have been created between places where the new government can act and places that are under Hamas control. And I can make the Palestinians see that distinction, make them aware of what a government means - the difference between having a government that can promote a dialogue versus a government that attempts to achieve certain objectives by way of terror, and it will not be able to achieve them via terror. However, it is not enough to say that terror will not achieve its objective if, at the same time, we do not provide an alternative to terror. I am not in the least naive, I have both feet firmly on the ground, and if we work in the right way all this can be translated into action. Moreover, if we don't do it, we may lose our last chance. There may be other processes, other solutions, other ways, within a different reality that may come about in the future. But in the present window of opportunity there is a serious military challenge in Gaza, but also a political challenge that must be answered. The second circle is the circle of the Arab world, and I hear a lot of debates, initiatives, the Arab League, yes, no, how should we respond, and so on. First of all, as a rule, I prefer conducting discussions with the relevant party, and the relevant party is the Palestinians. Secondly, I prefer conducting discussions when I have my own plans to place on the table, not just the other side's plans. Perhaps I can't free myself from old habits, but in the days when I was still a regular citizen and practicing a regular profession and gave legal counsel, I usually preferred being the side handing in my own drafts which would serve as a basis for the work, rather than accepting a ready-made draft from opposing counsel. And, last but not least, to create a situation in which the parties interested in contributing to the process, can do so in a positive way. Let's consider the matter of the Arab League. The Arab League's initiative started with an article by Tom Friedman in the New York Times, which spoke of willingness on the part of the Arab world to normalize its relations with Israel after peace is achieved between Israel and the Palestinians, with the terms of the settlement already decided upon. I don't know whether to call them terms, criteria, parameters- whatever, but these are: a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the 1967 borders. This was the starting point. Later, the Arab League convened in Beirut and two more items were added, which, from our point of view are contrary to the concept. As you may recall, earlier on this evening I said, when speaking of the concept, that in addition to the principles of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and 1967 borders, a solution must be provided to the refugee issue. Therefore I say, this is not "in addition to", it is part of the basic solution of establishing a Palestinian state. In light of the new understanding that has dawned on the Arab world that the danger is in fact coming from a different source, and perhaps there is a chance here to positively promote the process between Israel and the Palestinians - this initiative was once again tabled. I met with two representatives of the Arab League who were appointed for this purpose: the Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs. I started with the first question. I asked them, "Just to make things clear, do you now wish to negotiate on a permanent settlement between Israel and the Palestinians? Do you wish to represent the Palestinians in the negotiations?" They said, "No." I said, "Okay, so the first thing we can note that we agree on is that the negotiations - and here I go back to the first circle - must be bilateral, between Israel and the Palestinians." And they said, "Exactly so." The second thing I said to them was: Listen, any peace process requires compromise, both on Israel's side and on the Palestinians'. They realize that. That is, the moderate elements, though weak, will have to deal with Hamas, with extremist elements, and every concession will be difficult to agree upon, difficult to get the Palestinian public to accept. Your job is to give them the strength to contend with this challenge. And instead, what do you do? You make up parameters, run around marketing them to the world with all sorts of emissaries who travel the world saying go ahead and adopt the terms of the Arab League as a settlement. But this "settlement" you're pushing represents the Arab narrative; the Palestinian narrative. That's all well and good, but it is obviously not the result of a joint settlement. This is merely your position. And the more you enlist other countries to support it, the more you make a true settlement impossible. And if you present these as parameters, (or terms, depending on whom you ask, Amr Mussa or someone else) then you are restricting the ability of any Palestinian, even one who really wants the two-state option, even if he wants peace with all his might, if he has to make even the slightest concession, how can he? If that is the case, I said to them, lay aside all parameters. Just as we, Israel, have our own principles, which I presented to you, so in any process, in any dialogue between us and the Palestinians, each side will come and present its own ideas. But your job is to say that you will support any compromise, whatever it may be, which the Palestinians will reach with Israel. This idea was finally accepted. It took some time, but they realized that the mere presentation of the parameters as terms obstructs the process rather than promotes it. And lastly, I said to them: Look, it's a very positive thing, from Israel's point of view, that you are talking about normalization with Israel at the end of the Israeli-Palestinian process. I suppose this was meant as an incentive to Israel to advance the peace process with the Palestinians. But I said to them, Israel has its own reasons for advancing the peace process between itself and the Palestinians, it doesn't really need that end-of-process incentive. I wish that we were already at that point. However, I said to them, we are in a situation where every process is one that advances by fits and starts, and the Palestinians usually have difficulties in giving something in return when Israel makes them a gesture. So instead of waiting with the normalization you speak of for the end of the process, why don't you use it now. Just as Israel gives the Palestinians a political horizon, why don't you give Israel a political horizon. Just as we are willing to do this in stages, why don't you do so with us. I won't be the one to tell you when to strengthen Israel in this context. You will be the ones to examine and decide, according to your own criteria - when Israel makes a move which you too consider to be in the right direction, in this process with the Palestinians; when the Palestinians, in their weak state, cannot create a situation in which the Israeli public, which also deserves some political horizon, also needs to understand that all these discussions of a settlement are not merely castles in the air - that's when you should embark on some steps. It doesn't have to be all of you at once. But meetings of the type you currently hold with me only in closed chambers, why not start having them in the open. Instead of the only representatives of the Arab League in such a meeting being those of Jordan and Egypt - countries with whom we have relations anyway - why don't you add countries with which we don't currently have relations. When Israel makes another positive move, open an office in Tel Aviv. Not all of you at once, but some. But create dynamics that support the process, not merely wait for its conclusion. Show us that the League supports the process. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the second circle. The Arab world must understand, first of all, that it must take sides - and the sides are within the Palestinian Authority, and they are very clear. It is not a matter of choosing between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. That is not what they are up against. They must choose between the two sides within the Palestinian Authority - the pragmatists of the new government versus Hamas. If they make the most of the idea of supporting the pragmatist elements in the Palestinian Authority, strengthening them and strengthening Israel in its efforts, then the Arab world can play a dramatic role. They may have not done so in the past, and perhaps that made it difficult for Palestinian elements to reach an arrangement. Beyond these is the third circle - and I shall be brief here: the Western world, the international community. The international community can, of course, choose the right side, maintain the illegitimacy of Hamas, promote relations with the new government and bolster it, and also give the Palestinians an economic horizon, in addition to the political horizon that Israel can give it. It can prepare a "package", and I don't mean one for immediate consumption. Various gestures, assistance, humanitarian aid - all that is already taking place, should take place and will take place regardless. But I am talking about a different type of package, the type that says: it is ready and waiting, it can happen, all you have to do is make progress with the process with Israel. The compromise that you may make on some of your principles, a compromise you will have to reach with Israel, will pay off many times over. Through the international community, new economic options, infrastructures - a whole series of things can be accomplished with the help of the international community. Therefore, within the new situation, I think that we must adhere to those principles we spoke of. And I think we must act, using language from the world of sports, hard and fast. Hard and fast, for and against. Hard and fast against the Hamas, its takeover of Gaza, against terror. And also hard and fast to give the new Palestinian government a politically bolstering shot-in-the-arm. I wholeheartedly believe that this is not a zero-sum game. It is high time that the international community and the Arab community understand that this is not a case where supporting the Israeli stance means being against the Palestinians or the Arabs. It means that you are supporting a process shared by a large group. The sooner everyone realizes this, the sooner we will live to see the process which, I hope, will determine the meta-purpose of the State of Israel. Thank you. Labels: Israel
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Israeli officials took issue on Wednesday with the doomsday outlook on Iran that former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton articulated to The Jerusalem Post a day earlier, saying Jerusalem believes a combination of diplomatic pressure and stepped-up sanctions may get Teheran to rethink its nuclear program.
"We believe that the integration of concrete financial measures and UN sanctions can bring the Iranians to a tactical decision not to move forward with their nuclear program," one government official involved in the issue said.
"This, of course, will require continued determination and an uncompromising approach on part of the international community," he said. "Bolton'scomments reflect his belief that the international community is incapable of this. We are cautiously optimistic."
Bolton, in his interview with the Post, said that "diplomacy and sanctions have failed."
He said two options remained for stopping Iran: overthrowing the regime from within - he said it might be too late for this - or "a last-resort use of force."
"We have fiddled away four years, in which Europe tried to persuade Iran to give up voluntarily," he said. "Iran in those four years mastered uranium conversion from solid to gas, and now enrichment to weapons grade... We lost four years to feckless European diplomacy and our options are very limited."
While expressing a great deal of esteem for Bolton's "proactive" view of how nuclear proliferation issues should be handled, and saying that he agreed with the gist of Bolton's argument that a lot of time has been wasted, the Israeli official said, "We part ways on his view of the effectiveness of political, diplomatic and financial steps."
The official said Bolton was "too categorical."
"It is possible that his comments were meant to expedite the process," the official said. "We would all like to see more aggressive diplomacy."
But, the official said, there was no doubt that Iranian financial institutions, and now people on the street, were feeling the "heat" from the various sanctions and financial steps that have been taken.
Another government official dismissed Bolton's remarks by saying he was the US's "Avigdor Lieberman," referring to the strategic affairs minister from Israel Beiteinu.
"I don't think he is more concerned than we are," the official said. "We just don't believe we are on the verge of Gog and Magog. We do not believe we have reached the point where you can say that the sanctions are not effective."
Bolton also harshly criticized the Bush administration, saying it did not recognize the urgency of the situation and still held the misguided notion that sanctions could work.
At the end of the day, the government official said, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was satisfied with the way US President George W. Bush was dealing with the problem. "Bolton said that he doesn't think sanctions are effective. Okay, that's his opinion," the official said. "We disagree."
Labels: Israel
Continued (Permanent Link)
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At a press conference with Australian FM Downer, Israeli Foreign minister Tzippi Livni was asked about prisoner release issues and the return of Gilad Shalit. Q (translated from Hebrew): Madam Foreign Minister, do you support in principle the Prime Minister's declared intention to release 250 Palestinian prisoners? And, in a related issue, the PM is under enormous pressure, from the abductors, from the public, from the media, etc., to make progress in the case of Shalit. Are you in favor of relinquishing some of Israel's
preconditions in order to make this deal happen? FM Livni: Regarding your first question, the release of Palestinian prisoners from the Fatah who "have no blood on their hands", the answer is yes. The Prime Minister consulted with me before he went to Sharm a-Sheikh, and this distinction - only Fatah detainees, only those who "have no blood on their hands" - also conveys a message to the Palestinians. The clear distinction between moderates and extremists, between Hamas and Fatah, has practical implications for the way the Israeli government relates to Abu Mazen as president as well as our working relations with the new Palestinian government, including what we are willing to do to strengthen the moderates who wish to live in peace, who want to advance the two-state process and who are prepared to reject terrorism. Fatah is the group that currently represents these principles and, therefore, the answer to your question is yes. Obviously, we are not going to conduct the negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit in the media. Gilad's voice is still echoing in our ears. I don't think there is a person in Israel, certainly not a minister, who isn't walking around today with Gilad's voice settled in his heart. But, there is no doubt that the Hamas is, in the cruelest way possible, exploiting the pain of the Shalit family and of the Israeli people in an attempt to impose its agenda and to try to torpedo the meeting in Sharm. They believe that their strategy is beginning to weaken him and it is important, after hearing Gilad, that the responsibility for his health and welfare is placed squarely on the Hamas. The government of Israel will continue to act to bring him home. As for the conditions, that is, of course, not a subject for public discourse. Labels: Gaza, Israel, Palestinians, Terror
Continued (Permanent Link)
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 PAGE ONE Blaming Materialism For Lebanon Stalemate;
Zionism Meets Feng Shui By PETER WALDMAN
June 26, 2007; Page A1
MOSHAV BNEI ZION, Israel -- For 60 years, this farming cooperative near Tel Aviv has been a bulwark of Zionism. Its original 97 families cultivated grapefruit and oranges for export, and molded their teenagers for elite combat jobs in the Israel Defense Forces. Today, the moshav's old chicken coop houses an industrial-design firm and a company that makes steering-wheel sensors to alert dozing drivers. In a corner office, a real-estate broker moonlights as a feng shui consultant. Several farm lots have been sold off for multimillion-dollar homes, inhabited by suburban families whose kids have only tenuous links to the youth groups that kindled Zionist spirit here for decades. ![[no]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/nowides03202003164521.gif) ISRAEL'S GROWING PAINS -- Yuval Katzir, 26 years old, one of 23 members of a new kibbutz in Rehovot, Israel, talks with The Wall Street Journal. See full transcript. * * * -- Eitan Mor-Yosef, secretary-general of the Jerusalem-based Bnei-Akiva, Israel's largest religious Zionist youth movement, speaks with The Wall Street Journal about changing attitudes toward religion. See full transcript. The makeover shows how Israel has flourished beyond the wildest dreams of the ardent socialists who founded the Jewish state. Powered by high-tech exports, the Israeli economy grew 6.3% in the first quarter this year, with a 28% jump in personal consumption of durable goods, such as cars and refrigerators. Sales of Porsches doubled in 2006 from 2004, and last year Lexus opened shop in the Jewish state. Yet prosperity has not brought security. As Israelis begin another summer fraught with regional instability, some are pondering a troubling question: Is the idea of an advanced consumer society, with its attendant individualism, compatible with the solidarity and focus required to defend a small state bordered by hostile neighbors? And could the growing gap between poor and wealthy Israelis undermine its national drive to protect itself? Such concerns have grown particularly stark in recent months, as Israel has grappled with a crisis of confidence. Last summer's military stalemate with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas's recent conquest of the Gaza Strip over rival Palestinians have reinforced Israeli worries that it takes more than a high-tech army to address the terror and missile threats it faces from enemies on its borders. Later this summer, the independent Winograd Commission, appointed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, will release its review of last summer's war. The commission's harsh preliminary report suggests it will recommend an overhaul of Israel's national-security system, and possibly the resignation of Mr. Olmert himself. One lesson from last summer's war: Even the world's best precision-guided weapons, fired from the most advanced military aircraft, can't quell a committed guerrilla force on the ground without support from trained and tested combat troops. Now the question is whether Israelis, like citizens in many developed countries, are losing the stomach for that sort of slog. "If Israel is a shopping mall in a jungle of extremism," says columnist Ari Shavit of the Ha'aretz newspaper, "the challenge is keeping the mall going from within, while protecting it from without." At the center of the commitment quandary is Tel Aviv, Israel's go-go commercial hub and its most westernized city. After last summer's war, the Israeli army's chief of human resources, Maj. Gen. Elazar Stern, sparked a public furor when he decried that just three out of Israel's 119 war dead came from Tel Aviv, a city of 380,000 inhabitants and Israel's second-largest after Jerusalem. By contrast, the West Bank settlement of Eli -- population 2,500 -- lost three soldiers as well. Evading Service Tel Aviv's count would be expected to be higher, because military service is obligatory for men and women in Israel. Gen. Stern attributed the disparity to Tel Aviv teenagers' high rate of evading service and low enlistment rate, compared with the national average, in combat units. He also castigated Israeli society at large for going soft. "In this war, I had a feeling that the value of human life was above sticking to the mission," Gen. Stern told the paper Yediot Ahronot. ![[Service Gap]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/P1-AI272_ISRAEL_20070625211633.gif) Moshav Bnei Zion, just 16 miles north of Tel Aviv, is a showcase for the changes roiling Israeli society. In the past decade, several of Israel's richest tycoons have bought large farm lots here from the original moshavniks and built Beverly Hills-style mansions. Their arrival has pushed the "Tel Aviv bubble," as Israelis call the Western aura that envelops the financial capital, into the nation's heartland, spreading the tension in Israeli society between sacrifice and self-aggrandizement. Founded in 1947, Moshav Bnei Zion was structured on the semicollective model forged by the first moshavim in the 1920s. In a moshav, residents farm their own plots as well as community land, and share the profits. They own their homes and manage their own financial and family affairs. This contrasts with the better-known kibbutzim, where members have traditionally resided in community-owned housing and drawn on communal resources for everything from meals to vacations to child rearing. Moshavim and kibbutzim were both instrumental in fulfilling the early Zionists' goal of transforming waves of Jewish refugees into farmers, factory workers and soldiers. Largely secular, the founding Zionists envisioned a place where Jews, through strength and self-reliance, could make a break from centuries of anti-Semitism in Europe. Such a Jewish state, the thinking went, would serve as an egalitarian model for the rest of the world. Steeped in Zionist ideology, Israel's farming collectives produced many of the country's statesmen and military leaders, from the first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to Six-Day War hero Moshe Dayan and the highly decorated Ehud Barak, Israel's current defense minister. While kibbutzim have never accounted for more than 7% of Israel's population, as many as half the pilots in the Israeli air force have hailed from the communal farms. In recent years, the socialist ideals of the founding Zionists have given way to one of the most successful entrepreneurial economies on earth. In place of solidarity, some Israelis argue, there is a growing gap between haves and have-nots. Rates of poverty are high among the country's 20% Arab population, but are also growing among Israeli Jews. Though the average Israeli salary has risen steadily, to more than $22,000 a year currently, one in four families live below the official poverty line. The poverty rate among children is 35%. Rich and poor live side by side at Moshav Bnei Zion. One of the first tycoons to move here was Shari Arison, who controls Israel's largest bank and is the daughter of the late Ted Arison, founder of Carnival Corp. cruise lines. She paid $1.3 million for her 2.5-acre lot in 1997. In 2005, Noam Lanir, an online-gambling impresario, bought the same-size lot next door for $3.5 million. Prices for modest homes in the moshav are also soaring. Several 3,000-square-foot houses built a decade ago for children of the founding families have recently sold for more than $1 million each. In the adjoining community of Harutzim, built in the 1950s to house North African immigrants, stucco "Sachnut specials" -- tiny bungalows named for the Jewish Agency that threw them up -- look like servants' quarters next to the new, bougainvillea-draped villas on the same quiet lanes. The moshav's 300-student school, Hovev, serves the children of the North Africans, farming families and wealthy newcomers. Talia Naim, a 22-year-old kindergarten teacher who grew up here, has noticed a dramatic change in just the past five years. She and her friends came of age in the cocoon of their Zionist youth movement, Farmers' Unity. They spent their teen years on hikes, at campfires and songfests, and doing community projects. Today, the teacher says, the suburbanites who have moved into the area stick more to their private worlds. Many of her 17-year-old sister's peers come and go as they please, with their own cars and motorcycles. Instead of attending Farmers' Unity summer camp, the affluent kids travel abroad. "They're spoiled," Ms. Naim says. Real-estate agent Yoav Hadari is torn by the transformation he has helped propel. He and his family pulled up stakes in Tel Aviv seven years ago for a home with a garden on the moshav. As the first-generation immigrants have died off in neighboring Harutzim, Mr. Hadari has done a brisk business selling their bungalows to commuters who've ripped down the old structures and built large houses on the lots. He fields frequent inquiries from real-estate speculators in the U.S. and Europe. He also gets calls from ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel and abroad, whose black-clad sects are considering nearby farmland for new communities, he says. Despite his success, the 41-year-old broker, who has a side business advising clients in the Chinese design principles of feng shui, says he's fed up with what he calls Israel's "post-Zionist culture." A land and people that once stood for something have become nearly indistinguishable from other Western consumer societies, he argues. His 11-year-old daughter belongs to the Farmers' Unity movement on the moshav, "but it's all about exploring nature. It has nothing to do with Zionism any more," he says. Avid Surfer He's thinking about pulling up stakes again for a new suburb in a more tranquil place. An avid surfer, Mr. Hadari wants to move to Australia, where his sister-in-law's family fled a few years ago from a rash of Palestinian terror attacks. "It's not worth the struggle," he says. Many Israelis have also grown weary from decades of unremitting conflict. Ron Gazit, whose family owns a caf? next to the moshav, grew up attending a Zionist youth movement and served in Lebanon a decade ago as an elite paratrooper. He loves life in Israel, he says, but he recently secured European passports for his family, a hot trend among Israelis of European origin. He is considering emigrating with his wife and baby girl. ![[All Consuming]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/P1-AI274_ISRAEL_20070625202834.gif) "When my father and grandfather fought in wars, they each believed their children would one day live in peace. But now I have more experience," says Mr. Gazit, 33. "Every 10 years there's a clash, and every 10 years it's more extreme." Col. Tziki Sela, the Israel Defense Forces' head of manpower, says the country's young remain firmly committed to fulfilling their conscription obligations. More reservists than needed volunteered to serve in last summer's war, including many Israelis who flew back from homes overseas, he says. And despite the conflict's mixed results, the number of applicants for combat units from this year's enlistment class jumped 4% over last year, defying the army's expectation of a drop, says Col. Sela. It's the longer-term trends that worry many Israelis. The number of draftees requesting psychological discharge is also on the rise -- up 7% from a decade ago, Col. Sela says. Most of these people are perfectly healthy shirkers, the colonel believes, who are exploiting a lax evaluation process for personal gain. "There's a lot of pressure on youngsters to get out and earn money," Col. Sela says. To crack down, the military is developing tighter psychological screening procedures and a new category of dishonorable discharge to stigmatize fakers, the colonel says. Also under development is a plan that would, for the first time, create incentives for Israelis to prolong service in the more-dangerous army units. Code-named "star certificate," the award would entitle selected veterans to discounts on consumer goods, vacations and other services, Col. Sela says. The heart of the Tel Aviv bubble is Allenby Street, where the dance clubs don't rev up until after 2 a.m. In the predawn heat on a recent morning, music and young bodies rippled onto the sidewalks, as a clutch of half-a-dozen revelers wandered between bars. They resent Tel Aviv's image as mammon, the youngsters say. "What's wrong with wanting a normal life?" asks Rotem Levy, 23. "It's global. People everywhere think more about themselves nowadays." Though members of this group say they served in the army, they all have friends who received psychological deferments for dubious reasons. One of their buddies, they say, told the army he hears ghosts; another said he's a bed-wetter. A third described an inch-tall companion who converses with him from a perch on his shoulder. "People don't want to waste three years in the army when they could be starting their careers," says Adi Cohen, 23. Religious Israelis, whose commitment to the land is rooted in scripture, are filling the gap. "We teach kids it is beautiful to serve your country and care for your neighbor," says Eitan Mor-Yosef, head of Bnei-Akiva, a national youth movement that pairs Zionism with orthodox religious training. "If people move away from traditional Judaism and the Torah, they lose their idealism." With government funds, Bnei-Akiva has opened more than 80 religious high schools in the past 15 years, Mr. Mor-Yosef says, and tripled its youth-group membership, to 75,000 children. It also operates religious schools for soldiers. The group is strongest in nonaffluent areas: The group's membership has soared in Jerusalem and in poorer areas of central and southern Israel, he says, while chapters have dwindled in Tel Aviv and in some wealthy suburbs nearby. Observant Jews now account for a growing proportion of military personnel, Mr. Mor-Yosef says. Though about 20% of Israeli Jews are observant, the religious make up roughly 40% of the army, he says, up from less than 15% two decades ago. The army says it doesn't track such figures, and a spokesman says he believes Mr. Mor-Yosef's percentage is high. Traditional left-wing Zionist groups believe the solution lies not in religious training, but in wiping out the wealth gap -- by restoring the welfare state. Over the past decade, economic changes have eroded the socialist infrastructure of the founding Zionists, from numerous moshavim and kibbutzim to national labor and health-care systems. State subsidies for families, based on size, have also been slashed. Bomb Shelters As a result, Israel has broken its compact with the people, says Chagit Shvarzman, 25, an organizer with the General Federation of Students and Young Workers, one of the oldest and largest Zionist youth groups. During last summer's war, she says, thousands of Israelis in the north went hungry in bomb shelters. No one came to help, she says, because the government had privatized relief duties to companies that fled when the missiles fell. The Israeli government is reviewing procedures so that never happens again. "A lot of reservists saw how the state treated those people," Ms. Shvarzman says. "The next war, they won't understand why they should go." Her youth group is attempting to revive the spirit of Zionism through new kibbutzim organized not as farms but as educational collectives. At one experiment, at the Ayalon Institute in the central city of Rehovot, 23 young people live communally and many work as tour guides at an old bullet factory located 25 feet beneath the kibbutz bakery. At its peak in the 1940s, the clandestine plant produced 40,000 bullets a day for Jewish fighters battling for independence. One of the guides, Yuval Katzir, says Israelis are reaching a "crucial time." They must restore Zionism's quest to build a moral society, or face worsening internal alienation, he says. Israel can't be just another high-tech suburb along the global consumer highway, he argues. "Israel isn't France," says Mr. Katzir, 26. "If it's not just and good, it won't last." --Nancy Shekter-Porat in Tel Aviv contributed to this article. Write to Peter Waldman at peter.waldman@wsj.com Labels: Israel
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IRD PRESS RELEASE The Institute on Religion and Democracy June 25, 2007 Contact: Loralei Coyle 202-682-4131
United Church of Christ Chooses Fairness Toward Israelis and Palestinians
"The United Church of Christ is willing to admit that the situation in the Middle East is not readily reducible to good-guy Palestinians versus bad-guy Israelis--or vice versa." -- James D. Berkley , IRD Director of Presbyterian Action Washington, DC - The United Church of Christ (UCC) took a major step toward evenhanded treatment of Palestinian and Israeli interests at its General Synod meeting in Hartford, CT, on June 22. A General Synod resolution acknowledged that two previous resolutions from 2005 focused entirely on Israel, and that the General Synod "has yet to fully address other forces contributing to the ongoing violence, oppression and suffering in the region." The statement indicated significant reconsideration of the 2005 resolutions: "The escalating violence between Fatah and Hamas now calls us to consider whether we may have overlooked many aspects of an extraordinarily complicated situation." The rationale of this latest UCC resolution explained, "As a peacemaker, the Church in all of its settings must continue to speak out whenever violence, hatred, and oppression occur, standing in support of all who are oppressed and subjected to injustice." Therefore, the General Synod established "a Task Force to engage in ongoing and balanced study of the causes, history and context of the conflict." James D. Berkley, IRD Director of Presbyterian Action, commented: "I am impressed by the magnanimity of the United Church of Christ in this action. It has recognized the narrow partiality of its previous resolutions and is willing to admit that the situation in the Middle East is not readily reducible to good-guy Palestinians versus bad-guy Israelis--or vice versa. "It is difficult to admit error and pursue a fairer and more faithful course of action, and yet the UCC General Synod rose to the occasion. The IRD commends the UCC for its action. Now this church body is no longer placed in the untenable role of strident champion of the unsupportable. "In June 2006, the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly set an example by replacing a 2004 resolution that threatened anti-Israel divestment with a balanced resolution that seeks the welfare of both Palestinians and Israelis. Now such evenhandedness appears to be providentially contagious. First the United Church of Canada (later in 2006) and now the United Church of Christ have made similar turns toward fairness in their approach to the Middle East." ------------------John Lomperis Research Associate The Institute on Religion and Democracy 1023 15th Street NW, Suite 601
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 682-4131
(202) 682-4136 (Fax) Labels: boycotts, Israel, Palestinians
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The parts I liked best: " One of the models who took part in the photo shoot said that "this particular bit of bikini modelling draws from the same spirit as the original Israeli settlers." She even said that it is "an act of Zionism." --- Nothing like doing it for old glory.
"
"I wonder if the best way to encourage tourism is by advertising sex," said Labour party MP Colette Avital."
It is probably better than advertising war. On the other hand, encouraging tourism is not necessarily the major goal and rationale for existence of the Israeli government.
Al Jazeera is just jealous, but don't worry, the Saudi government is promising a Burqa fashion show. The Hamas will demonstrate the sexiness of female suicide bombers as well. That ought to draw big crowds.
Ami Half-naked soldiers: Israel's latest propaganda campaign Source: aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=13922
23/06/2007 09:22:00 AM GMT Comments (27) Add a comment All the models are said to have served in the Israeli Defence Force "I wonder if the best way to encourage tourism is by advertising sex," said Labour party MP Colette Avital. By Karima Saifullah The Israeli government is desperate to improve its image and manipulate people who only link the Jewish state with wars, occupation and brutal aggression against the Palestinians. Recent polls show that Israel isn't well-regarded in the country's closest ally, the United States, where the majority of young men believe that the Jewish state is "too religious and too militaristic." In an attempt to improve its tainted image, the Israeli consulate in New York came up with what could be described as a cheap idea: resorting to pornography by publishing images of half-naked female soldiers in the U.S. men's magazine Maxim; a move that was strongly condemned by Israel's religious right, who said that the government was degrading the Jewish state and promoting sex tourism. "We found that Israel's image among men aged 18-38 is lacking, so we thought we'd approach them with an image they'd find appealing," said David Saranga, consul for media and public affairs at the Israeli consulate. Maxim magazine, which promises its readers "girls, sex, sports" and usually avoids politics, initially refused the Israeli consulate's request to publish the photographs, but it changed its mind after it saw the pictures of 12 of Israel's top models. "The Israeli models", Saranga said, were a "Trojan horse" to present Israel as a modern country with pretty women. The photo feature, entitled "Women of the Israeli Defense Forces", will be published in Maxim's July issue. One of four former female soldiers photographed in their underwear in the magazine, Yarden, describes how she enjoyed firing her M16 rifle before she entered the military intelligence corp. Israeli model Nivit Bash - who served in Israeli military intelligence also says sthat her job in intelligence was so secret that she cannot talk about it. According to The Guardian, most Israeli women do compulsory military service for two years from the age of 18. While they do not fight in combat units, they undergo basic training and can be seen at checkpoints in the occupied West Bank. However, there is nothing military about the indecent photographs, which were taken in different locations in Tel Aviv. Not everyone in Israel is excited about this cheap tourism campaign. Zahava Gal On, the leader of the Meretz party, said it's inappropriate for Israel to market itself using half-naked women. "It is unfortunate that the New York Consulate thinks that Israel's relevance will be expressed by the use of naked women who are treated as an object, and not as women of substance who exude achievement and success," she said. Colette Avital, a member of the Labour party and the first woman to seek Israel's presidency, described the move as a "pornographic campaign sponsored by the Foreign and Tourism Ministries to encourage tourism". "Israel's image has been tainted by sex-scandals involving high-ranking officials as it is. I wonder if the best way to encourage tourism is by advertising sex," she said. Avital has already approached Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik and demanded an urgent meeting be called to discuss the campaign which Israel's Tourism Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich said the ministry has nothing to do with. It's not the first time that Israel has used sex to advertise itself. The Israeli Ministry of Tourism has an advertising contract with Arsenal FC to promote Israel which features women in swimsuits. Israel wants to sell itself as a western country with beaches and nightclubs rather than a country full of religious sites which has been in a permanent state of emergency since its creation. Despite the criticism over the naked photo shoot, Ambassador Arye Mekel, consul-general of Israel in New York, defended the consulate's decision and said: "Israel is always mentioned in the context of wars and violence. We want to show there is a normal life. Among the beautiful things we have are our women." "This is the first time we used the word 'shoot' in connection to Israel and we're not talking about killing people," he added. Former Miss Israel Gal Gadot also defended the campaign, arguing that she just used her "assets" to improve Israel's war-torn image. One interesting fact is that all the outrage in Israel is focused on the idea of using women as sex objects to promote tourism. But what's more shocking is that sex here is not just being used to "improve" Israel's image, but also to promote Zionism and gloss over the bitter realities of Israel's occupation and apartheid. One of the models who took part in the photo shoot said that "this particular bit of bikini modelling draws from the same spirit as the original Israeli settlers." She even said that it is "an act of Zionism." "The fact that I can represent this country makes me proud," said Tali Handel, a 25-year-old former air force sergeant. Although she said she'd never heard of Maxim before, Handel expected the article would be "serious" and encourage young Jewish males living in the United States to consider moving to Israel. "I don't see anything negative about it. Nothing else brings [people] here, not Jerusalem, not the beautiful nature. People are not interested. So, I think it's okay to use something else to bring them." Labels: Israel, Women
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The comic part of the Arab press review, Lessons from Palestine, is the way in which each side in the Hamas-Fateh conflict blames the other side for being creatures of the Zionist ogres. In certain countries in the Middle East, "Jewish son of a dog" is a standard epithet for an enemy. However, the serious portion addresses frustration and disgust with the Palestinians and fear of the Hamas. Ami Isseroff By Zvi Bar'el The aching heart of the Palestinian national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, could be heard this week throughout the Middle East as his feelings on the situation were published on the front page of the Al Hayat newspaper, published in London. "Did we have to fall from such lofty heights and did we have to see our blood dripping from our own hands so that we could know we are not the angels we thought we were?" he asked. "Did we have to expose our nudity in public so that our reality would not remain virginal? Oh, how we lied to ourselves when we said: We are something special. It is worse to believe yourself than to lie to your fellow man..." "The month of June has inflamed us with the memory of 40 years of defeat. For if we did not find someone to defeat us a second time, we have managed to defeat ourselves by our own hands, let us not forget. It is not the religious zealots who anger me, because after all, they believe in their own special way. It is their secular supporters who anger me and the infidels among their supporters who do not believe in anything else but one religion - their pictures on television." This deep soul-searching on the part of Darwish is the refined essence of the Palestinian national wailing that found expression in dozens of articles, forums, talkbacks and sermons in the mosques. It was reminiscent of some kind of tremendous Shi'ite self-flagellation - in memory of the Day of Ashura, the day of mourning that has its roots in the martyrdom of the Prophet's grandson in the seventh century. "Arab society has in the past been faced with difficult days," the eminent columnist Abdel Rahman Al-Rashed wrote in the popular newspaper Asharq Alawsat, "but this is the most difficult time it has faced." The most difficult time? In the talkbacks, Al-Rashed got a dressing down from a reader who identified himself as Muhammad Abda and reminded him that Hamas was not an agent of Iran, as Al-Rashed had accused it of being, any more than Iraq is. The reader asked him: "Why do you merely see the hair that is in the eye of Hamas and not the beam that is in Iraq's eye? Beyond that, who said that Hamas and [deposed Palestinian] prime minister Ismail Haniyeh are the reason for the civil war? No way. The international siege and the Arab conspiracy were the sole reason for the failure of the unity government. After all, this is what the Palestinian minister of information, Mustafa Barghouti [an independent], said." Well-mannered Hamas That talkback is typical of the discourse about treason and treachery that started immediately after it became known that Gaza had been fallen into the hands of Hamas, but it serves mainly to spark a debate on the significance of the analogy: Is what is happening in Palestine similar to what is happening in Iraq? Is Hamas like the Iraqi government? And perhaps it is Lebanon in particular that should learn from the lesson of the Hamas and ask itself, "What would have happened if Beirut woke up to find itself like Gaza," as the headline of an article in the Lebanese paper Al-Nahar asked. But perhaps the Arabs should make the comparison between Hamas and Hezbollah, as suggested by Abd al-Bari Atwan, the editor of Al Quds Al Arabi, in an editorial he wrote this week: "We would like to hope that Hamas would wrap itself in the cloak of culture of Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah. Following the most difficult campaign that it waged against Israel last summer, this organization did not kill even one of its opponents, nor did it loot a single house or break into any government office, and it did not remove the Lebanese flag or trample with its boots on the picture of an adversary. The source of such behavior lies in education toward lofty religious principles, something we had hoped to be able to see in Gaza." Is Hezbollah well-mannered? And free of sin? Abd al-Bari Atwan could have read what was written by his colleague Zuheir Kseibati in a column in Al-Hayat, if he wanted to get a sense of just how fearful the Lebanese are about the Hamas phenomenon trickling into Lebanon and particularly via Hezbollah. "Lebanon is threatened by a second Gaza", Kseibati wrote. "People in Gaza are asking who blew up the Mecca agreement, and in Lebanon the question is whether the time has come for the disintegration of the Taif agreement [of 1989, which ended the civil war in Lebanon - Z.B.] ... Just as in Gaza, so in Lebanon the citizens are threatened by a struggle between two governments [that of Siniora and that which Hezbollah would like to see - Z.B.] and by the threat of the disintegration of national unity." This is not concern for the fate of the Palestinians, as Al-Rashed would have it, but rather local Lebanese fear, from the shadow of Gaza, and the same pleasant and easygoing Hezbollah of Atwan. The question of what happened to the Palestinians is of interest to the writers only when it remains theoretical. What will happen to the Arabs, or more exactly to the "private" country of every one of the writers, and what lesson can Palestine teach every other country, are much more interesting questions. Backwardness and primitiveness Palestine may have turned into the producer of insights for the Arab world, but the Palestinian problem can go to hell. "We have had enough of cheating ourselves by marketing the Palestinian as if he is someone more learned and someone who knows more. After all, the Palestinian whom we see on the TV screens when he is attacking the flesh of one of his brethren, is a symbol of backwardness and primitiveness," wrote Egyptain intellectual Mamoun Fendi in Asharq Alawsat. In the article, he warns the Arabs in general, and not the Palestinians, about the implications of the developments in Gaza. The Palestinians themselves, so it seems according to Fendi, have been afflicted by leprosy. And if in Lebanon they're afraid of what will happen, how much more so in Egypt? Hamas, from the point of view of Abdullah Kamal, editor of the pro-government Egyptian newspaper Rose el-Youssef, is a Palestinian issue that affects Egypt only insofar as it insulted the Egyptian efforts to reach a Palestinian understanding. But the greatest importance of the Hamas movement is to serve as a tool that allows for an attack on the "real" Egyptain problem - the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent of Hamas. If Kamal can succeed in proving that Hamas is treacherous and untrustworthy, dangerous and evil, then it must follow that the Egyptian mother of the organization shares those qualities. And how does one prove the treachery of Hamas? The rhetoric is somewhat new but the basics are the same: Tie Hamas to Israel and to Zionism in general. "I wish to devote some space to the matter of Hamas' accusations against Fatah that it is part of the Zionist camp, considering that Hamas itself, as the historical facts have proven, is an Israeli creation," Kamal states. And the "facts" are well known: Israel attacked Yasser Arafat's regime, his status and his influence, and in the end put him under siege in the Muqata in Ramallah; Israel nurtured Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala) at Arafat's expense and in this way created a double leadership. Israeli and American pressure on Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) to push forward the date of the Palestinian elections last year assisted Hamas in securing its victory. Rabin as benefactor There are quite a few stories extant about the financial assistance Hamas received from Israel, but the greatest support for that movement came from Yitzhak Rabin, when he expelled some 400 Hamas activists from Israel to Lebanon in 1992. In this way, he bestowed on it the status of a national movement. But Kamal's proof is even more detailed. The unofficial tahadiya, a period of temporary calm, between Israel and Hamas was born out of Israel's desire to make it possible for the Islamist organization to gain control of Gaza. Later, the publication of information according to which Fatah had received American or Israeli arms, was intended to cause the revilement of Fatah and to improve the status once again of Hamas. In short, Hamas serves the Zionist interests very well and it is therefore not surprising that the Israeli government has helped it to such an extent over the years, Kamal says, while making sure to add the title of the "brotherly stream" to Hamas - terminology meant to allude to its intimate linkage to the Muslim Brotherhood. Kamal is less interested in proving that Hamas was an Israeli creation than he is in establishing the link between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He lets the cat out of the bag when he suggests, in his article, that the Taliban are located not only on the border of Egypt but right inside the country, where they act as the emissaries of the Zionists. Labels: Israel, Palestinians
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Mikael Knighton reports on his visit to Israel, Lawlessness in Gaza and parallels to Iraq. Iraq and Gaza A History Lesson Unleashed
by Mikael Knighton
Christians Standing with Israel
Lawlessness in Gaza
My apologies for the extended hiatus since my last entry. I have recently returned from Israel and jet-lag isn't exactly a writer's best friend. In walking the present-day streets of Jerusalem, one is hardly able to discern that just over the Judean Hills to the South, on the coastal sand dunes of the Gaza Strip, the essence of pure evil has manifested itself in the form of an isolated, radical Islamist state. Generally speaking, a visitor in Israel needs only to look at the faces of its everyday citizens in order to accurately discern the levels of safety and stability in the Holy Land. Quite literally, if they look worried, so should you.
Surprisingly, Israelis--or at least the ones I've encountered--have remained quite calm and collected despite Israel bearing witness to full-blown, Arab civil war within her borders. Israel has been here before. However, let us in no way be unclear: all hell has broken loose in the Gaza Strip, and the "flood waters" of chaos and anarchy have spilled over into the territories. Such is the case when the essence of pure evil is disengaged, allowed to multiply in numbers, and left to its own devices.
The manifestation of pure evil in the form of radical Islam in Gaza was left unchecked when Ariel Sharon ordered the complete, Israeli evacuation of the Gaza Strip in August of 2005.
Ever-willing to play the role of "control freak" in all things concerning Arab-Israeli relations, the foreign policy of the United States--specifically, the Bush administration's "vision" of a "two-state solution", ultimately cornered Sharon, applied the "chokehold" of international pressure on Israel to concede more land for nothing but death in return, and coercedthe Jewish state into taking yet another step toward demographic suicide.
Playing with Fire
Nearly five years ago to the day, President Bush, in an address outlining his "vision" for a new Middle East, stated, "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders". Well documented, in the days leading up to the Gaza evacuation, was the Bush administration's staunch opposition to Israel's further expansion of settlements in Judea and Samaria. Of no secret are several meetings between Bush and Sharon in which Bush advised the Israeli Prime Minister not to expand settlements in Judea and Samaria, while praising him for his "courage" in dismantling and evacuating all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip. Such "courage" gave birth to democratic elections in Gaza in January of 2006 through which Hamas--a lawless band of Islamic, terrorist, Iranian-backed thugs sworn to Israel's destruction--emerged the more popular. While indescriminately capping off AK-47 rounds into the skies over southern Israel, the Arabs of Gaza rejoiced in the streets--certain the "new sheriff in town" would bring with them the economic and social reform they promised. They brought only death and destructon.
Continued here http://www.christiansstandingwithisrael.com/Gaza-Civil-War.html
Labels: Islam, Israel, Terror
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Last update - 15:04 23/06/2007 By Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
Israel Defense Forces troops on Saturday arrested senior Hamas militant Saleh Aruri, who is considered the founder of Hamas' military wing in the West Bank, in a village near Ramallah.
The detainee, Saleh Aruri, was taken from his home before dawn, his wife said. Aruri was described on a Hamas Web site as the founder of Iz a Din al-Kassam, its West Bank military wing. Aruri had served 15 years in an Israeli prison and was released in March, the Web site said. Hamas alleged in a statement that its political rival, the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is coordinating with Israel in an attempt to crush Hamas in the West Bank. IDF officials said Aruri resumed involvement in violent Hamas activity in recent months. Earlier on Friday IDF soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man at a West Bank roadblock near the city of Hebron. The man was later identified as Shadi Matoor, 25. The IDF said Matoor had tried to enter a military outpost north of Kiryat Arba. When he did not respond to soldiers' calls to stop, the troops shot at him, the army said. According to a preliminary investigation, Matoor was unarmed. The man was seriously wounded and taken to a hospital in Hebron, where he later died of his wounds. Sources in the IDF maintain that Matoor was wearing IDF army pants and high boots, and soldiers suspected he was attempting to infiltrate to the outpost. Security forces nab 'Hezbollah-trained' suspect in W. Bank raid
IDF and Border Police troops early Friday morning arrested three suspected militants in an overnight raid in the West Bank city of Nablus. Security forces said one of the suspects, Yusuf Abu Layla, is a senior member of the Fatah-affiliated Tanzim who had received training and instructions from Hezbollah to carry out terror attacks in Israel. The two other suspects are Moeib Hoteri, also of Tanzim, and Yusuf Mabruk, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. During the operation, soldiers opened fire on a car with five suspects that fled the scene, wounding one of the passengers. The wounded man and another suspect escaped, while the three others barricaded themselves in a building. Troops surrounded the structure and called on them to surrender. They were caught while trying to escape. No IDF soldiers were hurt in the firefight. Abu layla is an explosives device expert who planned bombings in Israel, the army said. In addition, it claimed he was involved in manufacturing suicide belts for Tanzim in Nablus, as well as training others how to make bombs.
Labels: Islam, Israel, Terror
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Conference Call with Journalist Khaled Abu ToamehEllen Schor sent us this account of a conference call with journalist Abu Toameh a few days ago.
Highlights: Regarding the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Abu Toameh has not heard about anyone starving in the Gaza strip and there is no shortage of water and fuel, Drinking water is supplied by Israel, which is continuing to send water. "Abu Toameh warns the United States and Israel not to rush to support Abbas, since it is not sure that Abbas will be able to control the West Bank. He said Abbas has failed to take action and failed to reform his party. Money given to Abbas didn't go into the right hands. The conflict in the Gaza strip was over money and power. There were bad guys fighting bad guys." ... His concern is that Abu Mazen will continue to fail as a leader, as he has not learned from the election nor from the military action in Gaza. He has to convince Palestinians that he can reform the party and get rid of corrupt leaders. He does not see this trend occurring. He feels Abbas' position is that of "Give me more money or you will get Hamas". In the future, the West Bank may accept Hamas, as they have enforced law and order. Fatah is not united now. It is still in turmoil and is still weak.
Ami Isseroff Friends: This morning I participated in a conference call with Khaled Abu Toameh in Jerusalem. I would like to share the words of this veteran outstanding journalist, who specializes in Palestinian Affairs. He said the security level now is calm. There has been no fighting on the ground since Friday. As we have heard, the United States and Israel will release the financial restrictions on the Fatah government in the West Bank. Currently, there is hope and optimism in the West Bank, The question is what will happen to the 1.4 million Palestinians living in Gaza. Will Abu Mazen, the head of Fatah succeed in controlling the West Bank? We do not know what will happen to Gaza. Will there be extreme isolation of Hamas resulting in shortages in food, medicine, fuel, etc.? Regarding the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Abu Toameh has not heard about anyone starving in the Gaza strip and there is no shortage of water and fuel, Drinking water is supplied by Israel, which is continuing to send water. He feels that the West Bank will give aid to the Palestinians living in Gaza. Regarding Gaza's financial situation, Hamas has been smuggling millions of dollars into Gaza for the last 1 1/2 years. This money comes from donations, the last donation is from Yemen. 50 million dollars has been raised for the Gaza strip. Some questions that arise: Sharia law is one of the main points included in the constitution. Will Hamas impose a Taliban style in the Gaza Strip? The Palestinians there are very religious and conservative. If public beheadings are staged in public squares and hands are chopped off for thievery, Abu Toameh predicts they will lose the support of the people. He does not believe that the emergence of an Islamic Republic between Egypt and Israel will become a military threat, so there shouldn't be a security problem for Israel. Hamas will want to show the world that they are capable of governing and establishing law and order. Olmert is presently in the United State to consult with Bush. He said they will have to determine what can be done to contain Gaza and if they want to boost Abu Mazen in the West Bank. He thinks Israel might be safer now. The number of rockets aimed at Israel from Gaza has dramatically stopped. He says that Hamas wants to be in full control and they do not want to drag Israel into the conflict. He tells us that Hamas has been confiscating arms from huge clans. Jordan is sending food and medicine that come through Egypt. He reports that the Palestinians have mixed reactions to Hamas being in control. He hasn't seen any Palestinians shedding tears over Fatah's loss. Perhaps they don't really miss the Palestinian Authority or perhaps, they are afraid to talk. Abu Toameh states that they believe that United States' and Israel's backing of Mahmoud Abbas is really a conspiracy to pull down their democratically voted government. A reporter from the Daily News asked whether the West Bank will join with Jordan. Abu Toameh responded that Jordan has 80% Palestinians in their Hashemite Kingdom and they don't feel they need any more. Abu Toameh warns the United States and Israel not to rush to support Abbas, since it is not sure that Abbas will be able to control the West Bank. He said Abbas has failed to take action and failed to reform his party. Money given to Abbas didn't go into the right hands. The conflict in the Gaza strip was over money and power. There were bad guys fighting bad guys. Now is the time to extract promises from Abbas, if he is given money. Abu Toameh says that he must get rid of Fatah's gangsters and reform his party. He needs a new list of people in the government and he must offer Palestinians a better authority. Answering a questions about the fate of Christians in the Gaza strip, he said it was not clear if Hamas was behind the attack on a Latin church. Masked gunman were involved. He said there are less than 3000 Christians in the Gaza Strip. In April, a Christian Book Store was attacked. The Christians are not only being pressured to leave the Gaza Strip, but also the Christians in Bethlehem, Ramallah and other areas. Answering a question about Hamas building up an army and attacking the West Bank, Abu Toameh said Hamas has many supports in that area. Instead of an army attacking, he thinks sleeping cells of Hamas will wake up in the West Bank. His concern is that Abu Mazen will continue to fail as a leader, as he has not learned from the election nor from the military action in Gaza. He has to convince Palestinians that he can reform the party and get rid of corrupt leaders. He does not see this trend occurring. He feels Abbas' position is that of "Give me more money or you will get Hamas". In the future, the West Bank may accept Hamas, as they have enforced law and order. Fatah is not united now. It is still in turmoil and is still weak. He said that in the Middle East, you go to sleep with one reality and wake up with a different reality. Palestinians have never been so divided, Toameh noted. The dream of a Palestinian state is as remote as ever. He wonders how America and Israel will deal with the new reality. He asks can you really ignore Hamas now that it is in power? What to do about the 1.4 million people who live there? Abu Toameh said the emerging government is composed of good guys, most of whom are technocrats who can run the affairs of their ministries. He concluded by saying the firing that came from Lebanon is an attempt by certain Palestinians to provoke Israelis to return to Lebanon, so the attention will move away from the Gaza Strip. Jennifer Lazlo Mizrahi of the Israel Project, which sponsored this conference call, concluded the conversation by bringing up the fortieth anniversary of the Six Day War, the consequences of which are still being faced. She said it is very hard to assess what this new "Six Day War" in Gaza will bring. Ellen Schor Labels: Arabs, Gaza, Israel, Palestinians, Terror
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According to a recent poll, U.S. 'elites' support Israel, but aren't sure it wants peace: 70 percent cited the need to be "a leader in working for peace" as heading the list of 13 qualities required of an American "ally." But only 16 percent saw this among Israel's traits.
That is something to think about when doing "Israel advocacy" - isn't it? My dear fellow Zionists, it sure is great to blow off steam at the Hamas and their allies, but you really aren't going to nuke Mecca or Tehran, and you don't even really want to do it, so why write such things under the rubric of "Zionism?" Portraying Israel, Zionism and Zionists as being against peace is a falsification of reality. It is "auto-demonification" of "self-hating Jews," isn't it? If you write that "there is no diplomatic solution," you can hardly blame anti-'Zionists' for drawing cartoons of baby-eating Ariel Sharon, and you can't blame Radio Islam and Electronic Intifadah for their rants against Zionist warmongers either. Of course, it is a vicious and cynical libel to say that Zionists do not want peace, because tiny Israel cannot survive in the Middle East without peace. A Jewish state that will not be able to live in peace with its neighbors, whose right to exist is not recognized, has no future. The work of Zionism is certainly not done until we achieve peace. Then we might talk about a "post-Zionist" period, provided we can bring the majority of Jews here. Until then, peace must remain the cardinal goal of Zionism. Peace is a Zionist plot. Just ask any Hamas representative and he (not 'she,' for certain) will tell you that. So it is ironic and unfortunate that Americans think Israel doesn't want peace, and it is even more ironic when would-be "Zionist" advocates try to project a ferocious and uncompromising image of Israel, to fulfill the propaganda fantasies of our enemies. In all of the horrific landscape of Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab relations, there are a few tiny rays of hope, however imperfect, however quixotic. The Ayalon-Nusseibeh plan offers a reasonable compromise that will allow self determination and a bright future for the Jews and for Palestinian Arabs in two independent states. It is unfortunate that Palestinian Arab advocacy groups like BADIL insist that Sari Nusseibeh is a traitor for giving up the "Right of Return" of Palestinian Arab refugees and the struggle against the "Zionist enemy." It is also indicative of what stand supports of peace and supporters of Israel should be taking with regard to Ayalon-Nusseibeh. The Onevoice initiative for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tries to unite Palestinians and Israelis around an agreed two state peace solution, that is refined in a series of e-referenda. They are educating youth for peace, and creating a constituency that will lobby leaders for peace. It would seem that any decent person would get solidly behind these projects and initiatives, which offer rallying points for those who support peace. We do not need to agree with every word. We all want two independent states for two peoples, living side by side. However, I am embarrassed to say that it is not so: these projects are attaced not only by Islamists and hardline Palestinian 'drive em into the sea' folks, but by "Zionists" as well. Both these projects, and many like them, have been attacked for various reasons by squadrons of "Zionist" publicists and bloggers who live in Chicago or California and other "Zionist" places. One of them decided, on flimsy evidence, that Onevoice supports terrorism, and this bit of rubbish was repeated in a popular "Zionist" publication that appears in the United States. Others misunderstood or deliberately distorted both the Ayalon Nusseibeh document and the Onevoice initiative, so that they would appear to be "unfair" or threats to Israel. Of course, any peace solution is going to be a compromise, so it is easy for extremists to point out what their side is risking, and what their side is losing in any proposed agreement or peace initiative. The people who lead the anti-peace-group campaigns are often well-meaning. Bitter experience with the peace process of the past thirteen years has illustrated the dangers of misconceived peace agreements. But the peace process foundered because there was no support for peace among the Palestinian people, who elected the genocidal Hamas to lead them. The enemy is not Onevoice or Ayalon-Nusseibeh, which are both, essentially, educational initiatives for peace rather than political statements. The enemy is opposition to the existence of Israel, which these initiatives are trying to overcome. Those supporters of Israel who want to carry on a political war for or against the occupation or for or against election of a particular Israeli leader, have a right to do so. But they should not confuse their political opinions with "Zionism" and they should not speak in the name of Zionism or of Israel when they insist on opposing peace. On the other hand, Americans need to do some thinking too: 57 percent "strongly agree" that "the Arab countries around Israel are hostile to its existence," and 85 percent overall said they "agree" with that statement. Some 75 percent said they agreed that "the Arabs don't really accept Israel's right to exist."
That being the case, with whom is Israel to make peace? Those who say there is no partner just now seem to right, and the horrific events in Gaza bear them out. Ami Isseroff Labels: Anti-Zionism, Israel, Peace, Zionism
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B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
18.6.07
Press Release
B'Tselem demands that perpetrators of war crimes in Gaza be tried warns against revenge attacks in the West Bank
The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem today calls on the Palestinian leadership of Hamas in the Gaza Strip to investigate all war crimes that may have been committed during the clashes in the Gaza Strip, and to bring all suspects to criminal trial.
In addition, B'Tselem warns against illegal attacks on people or institutions affiliated with Hamas in the West Bank, whether through acts of revenge by individuals or groups identified with Fatah, or in the course of arbitrary arrests by the Palestinian Authority. We are already seeing worrying signs of such attacks in the last few days, and the security forces of the Palestinian Authority bear the responsibility to prevent them.
B'Tselem's call follows last week's events in the Gaza Strip, during which individuals affiliated with both Fatah and Hamas were documented as having committed flagrant violations of customary international humanitarian law. These included summary executions, in some cases of civilians who did not take part in the hostilities, severe abuse, and launching deliberate attacks on hospitals. These acts constitute war crimes under international law and impose personal criminal responsibility on those involved in their commission.
B'Tselem also reminds the Israeli government, which has effective control in the West Bank, that it bears overarching responsibility for the human rights of all people in the West Bank, including for acts committed by agencies operating with Israel's agreement, including the Palestinian Authority.
-----------------------
Sarit Michaeli
Communications Director
B'Tselem
www.btselem.org
Labels: Gaza, Israel
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This is the Middle East, where anything can happen. The Hamas takeover of Gaza has brought a brave new reality of militant Islamism.
There is nothing funny about the murderous fighting in Gaza, and the strange and tragic inaction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Human Rights Watch has condemned both Hamas and Hezbollah for "grave crimes." The crimes include killing civilians, invading hospitals and endangering journalists. People were thrown off the top of buildings, doctors were thrown out the window.
But there is a ligher side to everything, for those with a sufficiently macabre sense of humor. Hamas has been broadcasting victory jingles, including one in Hebrew. The propaganda technique is borrowed from the Hezbollah.
This was not invented by a satirist apparently, but actually broadcast on Hamas radio in Gaza. For those who cannot read Hebrew, the words are:
"Hamas my eyes (from "'Ayuni" in Arabic - which is big praise) destroyers of the Merkava (tank), a pigua (terror hit) every minute, scared soldiers in black bags, pieces of Jewish meat, we want the head of Sharon."
Or in English idiom,
"Hamas Cola Hits the spot,
Twelve dead Jews and that's a lot" Islamism Lite, anyone?
Ami Isseroff Labels: Gaza, Israel, Palestinians, Terror
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An optimistic view of Israeli entrepreneurship. NYTimes, June 10, 2007
Israel Discovers Oil
[source: Wordfairy2-owner@yahoogroups.com] By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN BEERSHEBA, Israel Lucien Bronicki is one of Israel's foremost experts in geothermal power, but when I ran into him last week at Ben Gurion University, in Israel's Negev Desert, all he wanted to talk about was oil wells. Israel, he told me, had discovered oil. Pointing to a room full of young Israeli high-tech college seniors, Mr. Bronicki remarked: "These are our oil wells." It was quite a scene. Once a year Ben Gurion students in biomedical engineering, software, electrical engineering and computing create elaborate displays of their senior projects or as in the case of a student-made robot that sidled up to me demonstrate devices they've invented.
On this occasion, Yossi Vardi, the godfather of Israeli venture capitalism ever since he backed the four young Israelis who invented the first Internetwide instant messaging system, Mirabilis, which was sold to AOL for $400 million in 1998 brought some of his venture capital pals, like Mr. Bronicki, down to Ben Gurion to scout out potential start-ups and to mentor the grads.
The first student exhibit I visited was by Yuval Sharoni, 26, an electrical engineering senior, whose project was titled an "Innovative Covariance Matrix for Point Target Detection in Hyperspectral Images" (which has to do with military targeting). When I told him I was from The Times, he declared: "This project is going to make the front page, I'm telling you." The cover of Popular Mechanics, maybe, but it could one day make the Nasdaq, where Israel now has the most companies listed of any nation outside of the United States.
"Today, every Israeli Jewish mother wants her son to be a dropout and go create a start-up," said Mr. Vardi, who is currently invested in 38 different ones.
Which gets to the point of this column: If you want to know why Israel's stock market and car sales are at record highs while Israel's government is paralyzed by scandals and war with Hamas and doesn't even have a finance minister it's because of this ecosystem of young innovators and venture capitalists. Last year, VCs poured about $1.4 billion into Israeli start-ups, which puts Israel in a league with India and China.
Israel is Exhibit A of an economic phenomenon I see a lot these days. Of course, competition between countries and between companies still matters. But when the world becomes this flat with so many distributed tools of innovation and connectivity empowering individuals from anywhere to compete, connect and collaborate the most important competition is between you and your own imagination, because energetic, innovative and connected individuals can now act on their imaginations farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before.
Those countries and companies that empower their individuals to imagine and act quickly on their imagination are going to thrive. So while there are reasons to be pessimistic about Israel these days, there is one huge reason for optimism: this country has a culture that nurtures and rewards individual imagination one with no respect for limits or hierarchies, or fear of failure. It's a perfect fit with this era of globalization.
"We are not investing in products or business plans today, but in people who have the ability to imagine and connect dots," said Nimrod Kozlovski, a top Israeli expert on Internet law who also works with start-ups. Israel is not good at building big companies, he explained, but it is very good at producing people who say, "Wouldn't it be great if you could do this ...," then create a start-up to do it which is later bought out and expanded by an Intel, Microsoft or Google.
"The motto here is not work hard but dream hard," Mr. Kozlovski added. "I had some guy come see me the other day and say, `You know Google? They make a lot of money, very famous, right? They're not that good. We have a much better system that correlates to the cognitive process of searching. Google is worth $50 billion? Probably we can match their numbers.' He was dead serious."
My guess is that the flatter the world becomes, the wider the economic gap we will see between those countries that empower individual imagination and those that don't. High oil prices can temporarily disguise that gap, but it's growing.
Iran's ignorant president, who keeps babbling about how Israel is going to disappear, ought to pay a visit to Ben Gurion and see these rooms buzzing with student innovators, with projects called "Integration Points for IP Multimedia Subsystems" and "Algorithms for Obstacle Detection and Avoidance." These are oil wells that don't run dry Labels: Israel
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In this interview, Avram Burg presents his controversial case against Israel, elaborated in his book. It seems that though there are valid criticisms in his point of view, he has carried them to an extreme. Likewise, his notion that the EU is Jewish is absurd, even disregarding the growing population of Muslim extremists there. In a television interview he gave for Israeli Channel 2 television, he appeared to be much more reasonable. Ami Isseroff
Ari Shavit We met 25 years ago. Exactly 25 years ago. Avraham - Avrum - Burg and I were then part of a small group of reserve soldiers and officers who came out against the First Lebanon War. "Soldiers Against Silence," we were called. Very quickly Avrum was taken from us. In the great demonstration of the 400,000 [the peace rally in Tel Aviv following the September 1982 massacre in the Sabra and Chatilla camps in Beirut], he became a star and immediately turned to politics. At first he was one of Shimon Peres' smart young men. Then he was the great hope of the Labor Party's Young Guard. After that the chairman of the Jewish Agency, Speaker of the Knesset, a candidate for the Labor leadership.
And then, suddenly, three years ago, Burg got up and left. Went to feather his nest. Got entangled in a problematic and failed privatization deal. Was slandered in the papers, scrutinized by the state comptroller, investigated by the police. And all this time he was writing a book.
All this time he was formulating the bold insights of "Defeating Hitler."
Burg will not admit it, but from his point of view the book he is launching now, to coincide with Hebrew Book Week, is a book of prophecy. A book that is intended to vest the kingdom with prophecy. For others, the book will not be easily definable. It contains deep thoughts about Israel and Zionism, a prolonged comparison between Israel and Germany, trenchant criticism of Eichmann's hanging, reflections on Judaism in the age of globalization and memories from his father's house.
Yosef Burg, the refugee from Dresden, accords the book a certain softness that is not to be found in the angry words of his son. True, toward the end the optimist Avrum tries to transform his eulogy into a paean, but the attempt is not entirely convincing. The Israel of "Defeating Hitler" is a very harsh place. Brutal and imperialist, confrontational and insular. A shallow place, thuggish, lacking spiritual inspiration.
I was outraged by the book. I saw it as a turning away of an Israeli colleague from our shared Israeliness. I saw it as a one-dimensional and unempathetic attack on the Israeli experience. Still, the dialogue with Avrum was riveting. We got angry at each other and raised our voices at each other and circled each other warily like two wounded gladiators in the arena. You can't take away from Avrum what he has. You can't take away the education or the articulateness or the ability to touch truly painful places. Maybe that's why he is so infuriating. Friend and predator; brother and deserter.
Avrum Burg, I read your new book, "Defeating Hitler," as a parting from Zionism. Am I wrong? Are you still a Zionist?
"I am a human being, I am a Jew and I am an Israeli. Zionism was an instrument to move me from the Jewish state of being to the Israeli state of being. I think it was Ben-Gurion who said that the Zionist movement was the scaffolding to build the home, and that after the state's establishment it should be dismantled."
So you confirm that you are no longer a Zionist?
"Already at the First Zionist Congress, Herzl's Zionism was victorious over the Zionism of Ahad Ha'am. I think that the 21st century should be the century of Ahad Ha'am. We have to leave Herzl behind and move to Ahad Ha'am."
Does this mean that you no longer find the notion of a Jewish state acceptable?
"It can't work anymore. To define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's dynamite."
And a Jewish-democratic state?
"People find this very comfortable. It's lovely. It's schmaltzy. It's nostalgic. It's retro. It gives a sense of fullness. But 'Jewish-democratic' is nitroglycerine."
We have to change the national anthem?
"The anthem is a symbol. I would be ready to buy into a reality in which everything is fine and only the anthem is screwed-up."
Do we have to amend the Law of Return?
"We have to open the discussion. The Law of Return is an apologetic law. It is the mirror image of Hitler. I don't want Hitler to define my identity."
Should the Jewish Agency be dismantled?
"Back when I was chairman of the Jewish Agency, I suggested changing its name from the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel to the Jewish Agency for Israeli Society. There is room for philanthropic tools. But at the center of its experience it have to deal with all of Israel's citizens, including the Arabs."
You write in your book that if Zionism is catastrophic Zionism, then you are not only post-Zionist but anti-Zionist. And I say that since the 1940s, the catastrophic element has been integral to Zionism. It follows that you are anti-Zionist.
"Ahad Ha'am made the charge against Herzl that his whole Zionism had its source in anti-Semitism. He thought of something else, of Israel as a spiritual center - the Ahad Ha'am line has not died, and now its time has come. Our confrontational Zionism vis-a-vis the world is disastrous."
But it's not just the Zionist issue. Your book is anti-Israeli, in the deepest sense. It is a book from which loathing of Israeliness emanates.
"When I was a boy I was a Jew. In the language prevalent here: a Jew-boy. I attended a heder [religious school]. I was taught by former yeshiva students. After that, for most of my life I was an Israeli. Language, signs, smells, tastes, places. Everything. Today that is not enough for me. In my situation today, I am beyond Israeli. Of the three identities that form me - human, Jewish and Israeli - I feel that the Israeli element deprives the other two."
On the face of it, your position is conciliatory and humanistic. But out of that approach you develop a very harsh attitude toward Israeliness and Israelis. You say terrible things about us.
"I think that I have written a book of love. Love hurts. If I were writing about Nicaragua, I wouldn't care. But I am coming from a place of tremendous pain. I see my love withering before my eyes. I see my society and the place I was raised in and my home being destroyed."
Love? You write that Israelis understand only force. If someone were to write that Arabs understand only force or that the Turkmen understand only force, he would immediately be condemned as a racist. And rightly.
"You can't take one sentence and say that this is the whole book."
It's not just one sentence. It is repeated. You say that we have force, a great deal of force and only force. You say that Israel is a Zionist ghetto, an imperialistic, brutish place that believes only in itself.
"Look at the Lebanon War. The people returned from the field of battle. There were certain achievements, there were certain failures, things were revealed. You would expect people in the mainstream and even on the right to understand that when the IDF is allowed to win, it doesn't win. That force is not a solution. But then comes Gaza, and what is the Gaza discourse? We will smash them, we will erase them. Nothing has sunk in. Nothing. And it's not just between nation and nation. Look at the relations between people. Listen to the personal conversation. The graph of violence on the roads, the discourse of the battered women. Look at the mirror of Israel's face."
What you are saying is that the problem is not just the occupation. In your eyes, Israel as a whole is some sort of horrible mutation.
"The occupation is a very small part of it. Israel is a frightened society. To look for the source of the obsession with force and to uproot it, you have to deal with the fears. And the meta-fear, the primal fear is the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust."
That is the book's thesis. You are not the first to propose it, but you formulate it very acutely. We are psychic cripples, you claim. We are gripped by dread and fear and make use of force because Hitler caused us deep psychic damage.
"Yes."
Well, I will counter by saying that your description is distorted. It's not as though we are living in Iceland and imagining that we are surrounded by Nazis who actually disappeared 60 years ago. We are surrounded by genuine threats. We are one of the most threatened countries in the world.
"The true Israeli rift today is between those who believe and those who are afraid. The great victory of the Israeli right in the struggle for the Israeli political soul lies in the way it has imbued it almost totally with absolute paranoia. I accept that there are difficulties. But are they absolute? Is every enemy Auschwitz? Is Hamas a scourge?"
You are patronizing and supercilious, Avrum. You have no empathy for Israelis. You treat the Israeli Jew as a paranoid. But as the cliche goes, some paranoids really are persecuted. On the day we are speaking, Ahmadinejad is saying that our days are numbered. He promises to eradicate us. No, he is not Hitler. But he is also not a mirage. He is a true threat. He is the real world - a world you ignore.
"I say that as of this moment, Israel is a state of trauma in nearly every one of its dimensions. And it's not just a theoretical question. Would our ability to cope with Iran not be much better if we renewed in Israel the ability to trust the world? Would it not be more right if we didn't deal with the problem on our own, but rather as part of a world alignment beginning with the Christian churches, going on to the governments and finally the armies?
"Instead, we say we do not trust the world, they will abandon us, and here's Chamberlain returning from Munich with the black umbrella and we will bomb them alone."
In your book we are not only victims of the Nazis. In your book we are almost Judeo-Nazis. You are careful. You do not actually say that Israel is Nazi Germany. But you come very close. You say that Israel is pre-Nazi Germany. Israel is Germany up to the Nazis.
"Yes. I started the book from the saddest place. As mourning, but for the loss of Israel. During most of the writing the book's title was 'Hitler Won.' I was sure it was finished. But slowly I discovered the layer of not everything being lost. And I discovered my father as a representative of German Jewry that was ahead of its time. These two themes nourished the book from beginning to end. In the end I am an optimistic person, and the end of the book is also optimistic."
The end may be optimistic, but throughout its entire course the book repeatedly equates Israel with Germany. Is that really justified? Is there sufficient basis for the Israel-Germany analogy?
"It is not an exact science, but I will describe to you some of the elements that go into the stew: a great sense of national insult; a feeling that the world has rejected us; unexplained losses in wars. And, as a result, the centrality of militarism in our identity. The place of reserve officers in society. The number of armed Israelis in the streets. Where is this swarm of armed people going? The expressions hurled publicly: 'Arabs out.'"
What you are actually claiming is that we have viruses of Nazism within us.
"The term 'Nazism' is extremely charged."
Avrum Burg writes in his new book: "It is sometimes difficult for me to distinguish between the primeval National-Socialism and some national cultural doctrines of the here-and-now."
"There is a difference between saying 'Nazi' and saying 'National-Socialist.' Nazi is an ultimate icon; in us it goes to final and terminal places."
OK, we will leave Nazism. Are you concerned about a fascist debacle in Israel?
"I think it is already here."
Do you really believe that the racist slogans which, appallingly, do indeed appear on the stone walks in Jerusalem are akin to the slogans of the 1930s in Germany?
"I see that we are not weeding out those utterances with all our might. And I hear voices coming out of Sderot .... We will destroy and kill and expel. And there is a transferist discourse in the government .... We have crossed so many red lines in the past few years. And then you ask yourself what the next red lines that we cross will be."
In the book you both ask and answer. "I feel very strongly," you write, "that there is a very good chance that a future Knesset in Israel ... will prohibit sexual relations with Arabs, use administrative means to prevent Arabs from employing Jewish cleaning ladies and workers ... like the Nuremberg Laws ... All this will happen, and is already happening." Didn't you get carried away, Avrum?
"When I was Speaker of the Knesset, I heard people talking. I conducted in-depth conversations with members from all parts of the House. I heard people of peace say -I want peace because I hate Arabs and can't stand to look at them and can't tolerate them, - and I heard people on the right use Kahanist language. Kahanism [referring to the ultranational doctrine of Rabbi Meir Kahane] is in the Knesset. It was disqualified as a party, but it constitutes 10 and maybe 15 and maybe even 20 percent of the Jewish discourse in the Knesset. These matters are far from simple. These are roiling waters."
I will tell you frankly. I think we have serious moral and psychological problems. But I think that the comparison with Germany on the eve of the rise of Nazism to power is baseless. One example: There is a problem with the place of the army in our lives and with the place of the generals in our politics and in the relations between the political echelon and the army. But you are likening Israeli militarism to German militarism, and that is a false comparison. You describe Israel as a Prussian Sparta living by the sword, and that is not the Israel I see outside. Certainly not in 2007.
"I envy your ability to read the situation as you read it. I very much envy you. But I think we are a society that in its feelings lives by the sword .... It is not by chance that I make the comparison with Germany, because our feeling that we are obliged to live by the sword stems from Germany. What they deprived us of in the 12 years of Nazism necessitates a very large sword. Look at the fence. The separation fence is a fence against paranoia. And it was born in my milieu. In my school of thought. With my own Haim Ramon. What is the thinking here? That I will erect a big wall and the problem will be solved because I will not see them. You know, the Labor movement always saw the historical context and represented a culture of dialogue, but here we have terrible pettiness of soul. The fence physically demarcates the end of Europe. It says that this is where Europe ends. It says that you are the forward post of Europe and the fence separates you from the barbarians. Like the Roman Wall. Like the Wall of China. But that is so pathetic. And it is a bill of divorce from the vision of integration. There is something so xenophobic about it. So insane. And it comes just at a time when Europe itself, and the world with it, has made such an impressive advance in internalizing the lessons of the Holocaust and has fomented a great advance in the normative behavior of nations."
The truth is that you are a salient Europist. You live in Nataf but you are all Brussels. The prophet of Brussels.
"Completely. Completely. I see the European Union as a biblical utopia. I don't know how long it will hold together, but it is amazing. It is completely Jewish."
And this admiration you show for Europe is not accidental. Because one of the riveting things in your book is that the sabra Avrum Burg turns his back on being sabra and connects very deeply with some sort of yekke [a reference to Jews of German origin] romanticism. Zionist Israel comes across as a vulgar baron in the book, whereas German Jewry is the ideal and the paragon.
"You are dichotomous, Ari, and I am inclusive. You slice off and I try to contain. Therefore I do not say that I am turning my back on being sabra but that I am turning in a different direction. And that is true. Completely. true."
I have a bone to pick with this romanticism. You describe a thousand wonderful years of German Jewry. In large measure you view German Jewry as a model. But it ends in Auschwitz, Avrum. It leads to Auschwitz. Your yekke romanticism is understandable and attractive, but it lies.
"Is there a well-grounded romanticism? Is your Israeli romanticism grounded?"
My Israeliness is not romantic. On the contrary: It is cruel. It stems from understanding necessity. And you blur the necessity. Emotionally, you prefer the move from Dresden to Manhattan over coping with the Jewish-Israeli fate.
"We do not want to accept this, but the existence of the Diaspora dates from the beginnings of our history. Abraham discovers God outside the borders of the Land. Jacob leads tribes to outside the borders. The tribes become a people outside the borders. The Torah is given outside the borders. As Israelis and Zionists, we ignored this completely. We rejected the Diaspora. But I maintain that just as there was something astonishing about German Jewry, in America, too, they also created the potential for something astonishing. They created a situation in which the goy can be my father and my mother and my son and my partner. The goy there is not hostile but embracing. And as a result, what emerges is a Jewish experience of integration, not separation. Not segregation. I find those things lacking here. Here the goy is what he was in the ghetto: confrontational and hostile."
There really is a deep anti-Zionist pattern in you. Emotionally, you are with German Jewry and American Jewry. They excite you, thrill you, and by comparison you find the Zionist option crude and spiritually meager. It broadens neither the heart nor the soul.
"Yes, yes. The Israeli reality is not exciting. People are not willing to admit it, but Israel has reached the wall. Ask your friends if they are certain their children will live here. How many will say yes? At most 50 percent. In other words, the Israeli elite has already parted with this place. And without an elite there is no nation."
You are saying that we are suffocating here for lack of spirit.
"Totally. We are already dead. We haven't received the news yet, but we are dead. It doesn't work anymore. It doesn't work."
And you see in American Jewry the spiritual dimension and the cultural ferment that you don't find here.
"Certainly. There is no important Jewish writing in Israel. There is important Jewish writing in the United States. There is no one to talk to here. The religious community of which I was a part - I feel no sense of belonging to it. The secular community - I am not part of it, either. I have no one to talk to. I am sitting with you and you don't understand me, either. You are stuck at a chauvinist national extremity."
That is not completely accurate. I am aware of the Jewish richness you are talking about. But I am also aware that the basic Zionist analysis was correct. Without Israel there is no future for a non-Orthodox Jewish civilization.
"Take the purest Israeliness there is. Moshe Dayan, for example. And we will shed all the Avrums from him. Totally immaculate Israeliness. No nudniks. No effete types. Nothing. Are you sure that this living-in-order-to-live will endure? Take on the other hand the 'kites.' Martin Buber, George Steiner. You say that these [etherea |
