Questions and Answers update 31st July 2006.
Why is Israel conducting military operations against Lebanon?
" An unprovoked act of war was carried out against Israel from Lebanon. Israel must protect its population."
Israel has suffered an unprovoked cross-border attack from Lebanese territory. The attack was carried out by Hizbullah, which is a party to the Government of Lebanon. The attack was carried out against Israeli citizens – civilians and soldiers – while on sovereign soil. In these circumstances, Israel has no alternative but to defend itself and its citizens. For this reason, Israel is now reacting to an act of war by a neighbouring sovereign state. The purpose of the Israeli operation is two-fold – to free its abducted soldiers, and to remove the terrorist threat from its northern border. Israel views Lebanon as responsible for the present situation, and it shall bear the consequences.
How will Israel respond to the bombardment of its Northern cities?
"Israel has a responsibility to defend its citizens, and to remove the missile threat from its cities."
A: The thousands of ongoing rocket attacks from Lebanon by Hizbullah against Haifa and Israel's north, in which 17 civilians have been killed and hundreds wounded, should dispel once and for all any popular myth depicting Hizbullah as an ill-equipped guerilla force. As the proxy of Iran created in the 1980's to carry out the country's hostile acts toward Israel- in disregard and violation of Lebanese sovereignty – Hizbullah has received massive shipments of state-of-the-art weaponry from Tehran's arsenal, transported through Syria.
A senior Iranian army officer stated Sunday (16th of July) to the Arabic newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat that the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard set up dozens of advanced rocket and missile bases in the Lebanon Valley and along the border with Israel. Between 1992 and 2005 Hizbullah received some 11, 500 short to medium range missiles and rockets. The official also said Hizbullah is in possession of four types of advanced ground-to-ground missiles: Fajr missiles with a range of 100 kilometers, Iran 130 missiles with a range of 90-110 kilometres and 355 millimetre rockets with a 150 kilometre range. On Friday night, July 14, Hizbullah demonstrated a previously unknown capability when it fired a sophisticated, Iranian-made, radar-guided ship-to-shore missile at an Israel Navy missile corvette, the INS Hanit, killing four sailors.
In the face of this grave Hizbullah aggression, Israel will do whatever is necessary to remove the terrorist threat from its population centres, as would any other state in a similar situation.
Is Israel using disproportionate force?
" Israel is responding to a threat of 12,000 missiles aimed at its cities. Over a million Israelis are in bomb-shelters. How would any other country respond?."
A: Proportionality must be measured in terms of the extent of the threat. Israel's actions result not just from the Hizbullah's unprovoked attack against Israel and the abduction of two soldiers. Israel's military operation is also being carried out against the real and tangible threat against more than a million civilians, throughout northern Israel. The Hizbullah – a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel's destruction – has over twelve thousand missiles targeted against Israel and has launched over 1,500 of them in the past few days. The massive use by Hizbullah of these missiles, causing numerous civilian deaths, hundreds of casualties and widespread destruction, makes Israel's actions necessary. One should ask, ' what would other states do when confronted with a threat of this magnitude?'.
Why does Israel bomb civilian buildings and infrastructure?
"While Hizbullah tries to maximize civilian casualties, Israel does all it can to minimize them."
A: Hizbullah is carrying out indiscriminate missile attacks against Israeli population centres. Fifteen Israeli civilians – Jews as well as Arabs – have been killed, including three young children. Attacks have been carried out against large cities such as Haifa, small farms such as Meron, Arab villages such as Majdal Krum and religious sites such as Safed and Nazareth.
By contrast, Israel only targets facilities which directly serve the terrorist organizations in their attacks against Israel. For example, Israel targeted the Beirut International Airport and the Beirut-Damascus Hightway because they serve Hizbullah to re-supply itself with weapons and ammunition. Israel has also targeted buildings, such as the Hizbullah Television studios, which act as a vital means of communication for terrorist operatives. Unfortunately, the terrorists have purposely hidden themselves and stockpiled their missiles in residential areas, thus endangering the surrounding populations. Indeed, many of the missiles recently fired at Israel is taking extreme care to reduce to minimum the risk to which the population is exposed – often at the cost of operational advantages. For example, leaflets are dropped urging residents to avoid certain Hizbullah installations, even though such prior warning reduces Israel's element of surprise.
Does Israel use weapons prohibited by international law?
"Israel respects international law, even while fighting those who violate it"
A: The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are committed to conducting operations in full conformity with the law of armed conflict. These rules are enshrined in the IDF's Manual on the Law of Armed Conflict, which requires the military operations be directed only against military targets, and that only weapons which can be directed at such targets be used. Additionally, the manual requires that, where the risk of incidental injury to civilians outweighs the expected military advantage, the military operation cannot be carried out.
Regarding allegations that illegal use has been made of cluster bombs and phosphorous weapons, it should be noted that neither of these types of weapons is prohibited under the Conventional Weapons Convention, to which Israel is a party. Israel stresses that, in all circumstances, it makes strenuous efforts to ensure that military operations are conducted so as to minimize harm to civilians and damage to their property
Isn't Israel concerned about the mounting number of civilian casualties?
"We don't want to see anyone hurt, but Hizbullah is hiding behind Lebanese civilians in order to attack Israeli civilians. This has to stop."
Israel regrets the loss of innocent lives. Israel does not target civilians, yet is forced to take decisive actions against Hizbullah, a ruthless terrorist organization which has over 12, 000 missiles pointing towards its cities. Israel, like any other country, must protect its citizens, and has no choice but to remove this grave threat to the lives of millions of innocent civilians. Had Hizbullah not established such a missile force, Israel would have no need to take action, and had Hizbullah chosen to set up its arsenal away from populated areas, no civilians would have been hurt when Israel does what it obviously must do. The responsibility for the tragic situation lies solely with the Hizbullah.
Following the deaths on Sunday (16 July) of seven Canadians, what is Israel doing to help the foreign nationals stranded in Lebanon?
Israel has expressed its profound sorrow and regret at the deaths of any foreign nationals in Lebanon who are uninvolved in the violence. Israel is doing everything it can to coordinate, through discreet channels, the evacuation of all foreign nationals who wish to leave Lebanon.
What is Israel doing in order to help address the humanitarian needs of the Lebanese population?
"Israel is working with the UN in order to provide humanitarian aid to Lebanese civilians".
In spite of the very difficult security situation on the ground, Israel is acutely aware of the humanitarian situation as well. Israel has therefore established, though contacts with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a humanitarian corridor in order to meet the needs of those affected on the Lebanese side. This corridor is designed for the shipment of humanitarian supplies and the evacuation of civilians in need of medical care, as well as foreign nationals wishing to evacuate. At present, the route enters Lebanon through the sea port of Beirut and Israel is working with the international community with a view to expand the corridor to include other points of entry as well.
Why is Israel committing so many ground troops when it has stated that it has no designs on Lebanese territory?
"The terrorists are dug in along the border, and can only be removed by force"
Prior to the current crisis, Hezbullah gun positions were deployed all the way up to the Israel- Lebanon border. From these positions, the terrorists carried out unprovoked attacks with machine guns, grenades, anti-tank rockets, and other direct-fire weapons against Israeli towns, civilian vehicles and border patrols. Direct military confrontation with the terrorist fortifications arrayed along the border is critical in order to achieve the objective of dislodging the Hizbullah threat from Israel's north. Therefore, ground operations are a necessary component to the air and artillery operations being carried out against the Hizbullah infrastructure in depth. Israel is not carrying out a large scale ground campaign as was the case in 1982, and Israel has no desire to take and hold the Lebanese territory. Israel's ground operations are meant only to remove the entrenched Hizbullah military presence from along the border, so that the Lebanese Army will be able to extend Lebanese sovereignty to the area, in accordance with Resolution 1559.
Why did the IDF bomb a UN posted and kill four UN soldiers?
A: As part of its ongoing operations against the Hizbullah terrorist organization, the IDF operated on Tuesday 25th July in the area of Al Khiyam, from which Hizbullah has been launching missile attacks against Israel.
Following an initial inquiry, it appears that during the operation a UN post was unintentionally hit, killing four UN soldiers. The IDF expressed deep regret over the incident, stressing that it would never intentionally target any UN facility or personel.
Immediately following the tragic accident, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke with the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and expressed his profound regret over the accidental killing of the four soldiers. The Prime Minister said that he would instruct the IDF to hold a comprehensive inquiry into the event and would share the results with the UN Secretary-General.
Why didn’t Israel show restraint and use diplomacy before resorting to force?
"Israel has waited six years for Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah and take control of the south. That time has finally come."
Israel has shown restraint for over six years. In May 2000 Israel took the politically difficult decision to fully withdraw from southern Lebanon, having been compelled a few years earlier to establish a security zone there in order to prevent terrorist attacks and rocket shelling into Israeli towns. The UN Security Council acknowledged Israel's complete withdrawal from southern Lebanon in full compliance with Resolution 425. The Lebanese Government was given an opportunity to take full control of the south and establish a peaceful border with Israel. Instead it chose to succumb to terror rather than vanquish it, and allowed the Hizbullah to occupy the areas adjacent to the border and to accumulate a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles. Israel repeatedly sounded warnings, and called upon the international community to urge Lebanon to reign in the Hizbullah, remove its gunmen from their border positions and dismantle their growing stockpile of missiles. Sadly, Lebanon did not heed the demands of the international community to exercise its sovereignty and disarm Hizbullah , and today, the Lebanese people must unfortunately bear the consequences of their government's inaction.
How does Israel view the speech made by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday (16th July)?
The speech speaks for itself. It was filled with obvious lies, among which was Nasrallah's claim that Hizbullah targets only military objectives (when in fact his missiles are unguided and can only be fired towards area targets, such as Israel's cities). For Israel, the operative aspect of his speech was his promise to continue attacks unfettered by any "red lines". Israel will, as always, take such a threat seriously, and take the appropriate actions to protect its citizens. It was clear from his words that Nasrallah understands that Hizbullah's policy of randomly attacking Israel's population centres and plunging the region into instability is making his position increasingly isolated, even in the Arab world.
How does Israel expect the Government of Lebanon to take action after having demonstrated years of inaction and ineffectiveness?
"The Lebanese Government has both the ability and the international backing to take control of its own country – what it lacks is the will to take action."
The recent reduction of the Syrian military presence in Lebanon has allowed Beirut more freedom of action in order to promote Lebanese interests, yet no action whatsoever has yet been taken against Hizbullah.
The Government of Lebanon bears responsibility for the Hizbullah threat. It provided Hizbullah with official legitimacy and allowed its armed operations to proceed unhindered. Hizbullah would never have obtained the missiles and military equipment at its disposal had the Lebanese government not allowed this weaponry to reach Lebanon. Hizbullah's threat along Israel's broned would not have been possible if it were not the for the failure of the Lebanese government to deploy its forces in southern Lebanon.
It is the responsibility of the Government of Lebanon to fulfill its obligation as a sovereign state to extend its control over its own territory, as called for by Security Council Resolutions 425 and 1559. Through its operation, Israel expects both to pressure the Beirut government to take action, to facilitate this action by providing the international encouragement and the operational conditions favourable to the disarming of Hizbullah and the effective deployment of the Lebanese army southward to the Israel-Lebanon order.
Why does Israel say that Syria and Iran are involved in the Hamas and Hizbullah terrorism?
" Syria and Iran specialize instate sponsored terrorism – Hamas and Hezbullah are their foreign policy tools."
Syria hosts in its capital, Damascus, the headquarters of a number of Palestinian Jihadist terrorist groups, including Hamas. The Syrian regime provides shelter and logistical support for Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who has been living there for a number of years. From Damascus, Mashaal commands terrorists within the Palestinian territories who carry out ongoing attacks against Israel and its citizens, including the bombardment of southern Israel with Kassam missiles and the recent terrorist infiltration and abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Syria also provides support to the Hizbullah, including the transfer of arms, munitions and operatives through the Damascus airport and border crossings into Lebanon. The Hizbullah would not be able to operate in Lebanon without clear Syrian sponsorship.
Iran is the main benefactor of Hizbullah. It provides funding, weapons, directive and even Iranian cadre (the 'Pazdaran' Revolutionary Guards) for this terrorist organization. Most of the long-range missiles which hit the Israeli cities of Haifa and Carmiel (13 July) were manufactured by Iran, as was the guided missile fired against an Israeli missile boat off the Lebanese coast. For all practical purposes, Hizbullah is merely an arm of the Teheran Jihadist regime. Iran has also made considerable inroads of influence into Palestinian terrorist organizations, including Fatah's al-Aqsa Brigade and Hamas' Iz a-Din al-Kassam group. It provides their terror cells with funding, technical instruction and operational directives.
What motivates Hamas and Hizbullah, and why does Syria and Iran support them?
"It's a symbiotic relationship – while Jihadist terrorists hope to take over the world, their sponsoring states want to keep the world distracted."
Hamas and Hizbullah are driven by an extremist Jihadist ideology which calls for the immediate destruction of the State of Israel – as part of an international effort to wage 'Holy War' against the 'infidel' Western world in order that their radical brand of Islam prevail throughout the globe.
Syria and Iran support these groups, not only because they support their ideology, but also because they provide Damascus and Tehran with a tool to strengthen the influence of their own regimes to divert attention from other issues which have exposed them lately to international pressure. Syria is facing rising criticism over its involvement in the murder of ex-Lebanese affairs. Iran is exposed to a widening pressure over its nuclear development program. In addition, the international community is denouncing both regimes for their dismal human rights record. Consequently Israel views Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran as primary elements in the Jihad/Terror Axis threatening not only Israel but the entire Western world.
If Syria and Iran are behind the terrorism, why is Israel attacking Lebanon?
"Israel is targeting Hizbullah, not Lebanon – and will avoid military escalation whenever and wherever diplomacy may succeed."
A: Israel is not attacking the government of Lebanon but rather, Hizbullah military assets within Lebanon. Israel has avoided striking at Lebanese military installations, unless these have been used to assist the Hizbullah, as were a number of the radar facilities which Israel destroyed after they helped the terrorists fire a shore-to-ship missile at an Israeli corvette. With regard to Syria and Iran, Israel has no desire to escalate the military action beyond the present theatres of operation in Lebanon and Gaza. Israel feels that the involvement of Syrian and Iran is best addressed, at present, through coordinated diplomatic pressure.
The Iranian issue will preoccupy the world in coming months, and what is happening now is merely preparation. Israel has told its allies that if the free world is unable to form a united front against Hizbullah, then it will be unable to convince Teheran that it is truly serious about stopping Iran's nuclear weapons program. Regarding Syria, Israel has publicly stated that it does not intent to attack Syrian targets. Syria therefore, has no justification for any intervention in the present operations against Hizbullah. If, however, it does intervene, Israel has stated that its response will be vigorous.
How will Israel pressure Syria and Iran?
"Israel is not alone in its fighting against terrorism"
There is a widening consensus in the international arena that Jihadist terror is a global menace which must be confronted with determination and resolve. Israel has been in intensive contact with foreign governments and world organizations, in order to coordinate pressure on these regimes, ensuring they understand that the price that they'll pay internationally for their support of terrorism will be unbearably high.
It appears that Israel faces a two-front conflict. Are the two fronts in fact connected?
Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, in his press conference after the 12 July attack, presented his list of ransom demands for the release of the abducted Israeli soldiers. It included a demand for the release of Hamas terrorist inmates as well as members of Hizbullah. This is indicative of the fact that the level of coordination of these two Jihadist terror groups is not just ideological but operational as well.
Israel has stated that it won't negotiate with Hamas, but what about Hizbullah?
Following the July 12 attack from Lebanon, Prime Minister Olmert stated that "Israel will not give in to extortion and will not negotiate with terrorists regarding the lives of the Israeli soldiers."
What are the diplomatic avenues available to end this crisis?
"Israel is telling is Palestinian and Lebanese neighbours: ' Return the hostages, disarm the terrorists, control the territory, and then we'll have peace'."
A. Regarding Lebanon, Israel understands that although military operations are now necessary to defend its citizens by neutralizing the threat posed by Hizbullah's terrorist infrastructure, the eventual solution is indeed diplomatic. On this level, there is no substantive difference whatsoever between the Israeli position and that of the international community. The components of such a solution are as follows:
- The return of the hostages, Ehud (Udi) Goldwasser and Eldad Regev
- A complete cease fire
- Deployment of the Lebanese army in all of the southern Lebanon
- Expulsion of Hizbullah from the area
- Fulfillment of United Nations Resolution 1559
On the Palestinian front, Israel will conduct continuous counter-terrorist operations until Hamas terrorism ceases, the hostage Gilad Shalit is returned home safetly and the shooting of Qassam missiles against Israeli cities bordering Gaza stops. There will be no negotiations on a release of prisoners.
17. What is Israel's view of the 16 July G-8 statements on the situation?
"Israel and the international community see eye-to-eye on the elementse of a solution."
A: Israel welcomes the recognition of the G-8 nations that Hizbullah and Hamas are responsible for initiating the current violence by their unprovoked attacks on Israel's civilians and abductions of Israeli soldiers within Israel's sovereign borders. The G8 statement attests the fact that Israel and the international community share common values and are facing a common problem – the grave threat posed by extreme Jihadist terrorist organizations, such as Hizbullah and Hamas. Like the G-8 Israel believes that the way to a solution lise with the release of the abducted soldiers, the cessation of rocket fire on Israel, and Lebanon's full implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1559 requring the disarming of Hizbullah.
Does Israel support the initiative put forward by the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi for a cease-fire? What about the initiative to establish a multi-national peace-keeping force?
A. Israel will support all international efforts meant to promote the return of the abducted soldiers and to enforce the international consensus already accepted by the UN Security Council in regard to Lebanon, namely to press the Lebanese government to implement Resolution 1559, impose its sovereignty on the region bordering Israel and disarm Hizbullah. In this regard, Israel would agree to consider stationing a military capable and battle-tested force composed of soldiers from the European Union member states, subsequent to the formulation of a mandate which would have to include control of the crossings between Lebanon and Syria, deployment in southern Lebanon and assistance to the Lebanese Army, all this within the context of a full implementation of Resolution 1559, as mentioned above.
How long will the Israeli operation last?
"We can't just call a truce and go back to way things were – we must change the ground rules."
A. The international community understands that in order for the objectives to be achieved, the operation cannot be halted before the implementation of the G-8 decision. While diplomatic negotiations will be necessary in order to facilitate implementation, the start of negotiations in itself will not halt the operations. This will only occur after the return of the abducted soldiers and the removal of the missile threat against Israel.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
ICJW President says 'thank you' from Jerusalem.
26 July 2006
Dear Friends:
I cannot thank you enough for the outpour of concern and good wishes that I have received from so many of you from around the world. The feeling of solidarity and unity with the people in Israel that you have expressed brings home to me once again the source of ICJW’s strength and that of the Jewish people in general.
These are not easy times for Israelis, especially those living in the north and south. However, even as civilian casualties mount, the people are exhibiting an unbelievable strength and fortitude. I believe that the close to 100 percent consensus on the necessity of the current military action derives from the feeling that Israel’s existence as an independent Jewish state, even after 58 years, is still being questioned. Yet the right of the Jewish people to realize its national expression in a Jewish state is recognized by most Jews around the world to be a just and inherent right.
May I ask that, when and wherever possible, to please support those in your countries who understand the "no-choice" situation in which Israel was forced to once again defend itself. And,. if you are so inclined, please explain this to those who might be less than convinced that Israel was the victim of aggression and not the initiator of the conflict.
We pray that soon we will overcome the present difficulties and return to the mundane yet welcome routine of normal life.
With fondest regards,
Leah Aharonov
President, ICJW, Jerusalem.
Sec.:ester [ester@emunah.co.il]
Dear Friends:
I cannot thank you enough for the outpour of concern and good wishes that I have received from so many of you from around the world. The feeling of solidarity and unity with the people in Israel that you have expressed brings home to me once again the source of ICJW’s strength and that of the Jewish people in general.
These are not easy times for Israelis, especially those living in the north and south. However, even as civilian casualties mount, the people are exhibiting an unbelievable strength and fortitude. I believe that the close to 100 percent consensus on the necessity of the current military action derives from the feeling that Israel’s existence as an independent Jewish state, even after 58 years, is still being questioned. Yet the right of the Jewish people to realize its national expression in a Jewish state is recognized by most Jews around the world to be a just and inherent right.
May I ask that, when and wherever possible, to please support those in your countries who understand the "no-choice" situation in which Israel was forced to once again defend itself. And,. if you are so inclined, please explain this to those who might be less than convinced that Israel was the victim of aggression and not the initiator of the conflict.
We pray that soon we will overcome the present difficulties and return to the mundane yet welcome routine of normal life.
With fondest regards,
Leah Aharonov
President, ICJW, Jerusalem.
Sec.:ester [ester@emunah.co.il]
Sunday, July 23, 2006
War in Israel & Lebanon: Issues and Opinions.
Subject: Issues and Opinion.
Israel's Moment - Lawrence KudlowAll of us in the Free World owe Israel an enormous "thank you" for defending freedom, democracy and security against the Iranian cat's-paw wholly-owned terrorist subsidiaries Hizballah and Hamas. Israel is defending its homeland and very existence but also America's homeland as our frontline democratic ally in the Middle East. Remember, Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon and Gaza. Later, when terrorist gangs kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Israel appropriately fought back. That is what sovereign nations do, and Israel's recent military actions deserve our unyielding support. Israel has the right to put the terrorist armies of Hizballah and Hamas out of business. When the dust clears the world will applaud Israel for its courage. Sensible freedom-loving people everywhere will realize Israel's furious response in the face of senseless terrorist attacks will have made the world a better place. In fact, we are all Israelis now. (Washington Times)
Order vs. Disorder - Thomas L. FriedmanThis is not just another Arab-Israeli war. It is about some of the most basic foundations of the international order - borders and sovereignty - and the erosion of those foundations would spell disaster for the quality of life all across the globe. Lebanon, alas, has not been able to produce the internal coherence to control Hizballah, and is not likely to soon. The forces of disorder - Hizballah, al-Qaeda, Iran - are a geopolitical tsunami that we need a united front to defeat. The only way this war is going to come to some stable conclusion any time soon is if The World of Order - and I don't just mean "the West," but countries like Russia, China, India, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia too - puts together an international force that can escort the Lebanese Army to the Israeli border and remain on hand to protect it against Hizballah. (New York Times, 20Jul06)
Now Isn't the Time for Restraint - Newt GingrichImagine that this morning 50 missiles were launched from Cuba and exploded in Miami. In addition to buildings and homes being destroyed, scores of Americans were being killed. Now imagine our allies responded by saying publicly that we must not be too aggressive in protecting our citizens and that America must use the utmost restraint. Our history shows us that we have never reacted to a direct attack on our soil with any restraint. Every time America has been attacked by an enemy, we set about defeating it and ending the threat. Israeli concessions to the Iran-Syria-Hizballah-Hamas terrorist alliance have consistently resulted in their enemies preparing for the next attack. This is only the latest cycle in an ongoing 58-year campaign to destroy Israel. Hizballah in its military form must be eliminated, the Iranian Guard in southern Lebanon must be removed, and allowing the Syrian and Iranian dictatorships to supply, train, and equip the terrorists must be stopped. The writer, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. (USA Today)
Israel Has a War to Win - Daniel PipesIsrael has a significant role in the U.S.-led war on terror; it can best defend itself and help its U.S. ally not by aspiring to agreements with intractable foes but by convincing them that Israel is permanent and unbeatable. This goal requires not episodic violence but sustained and systematic efforts to change regional mentalities. (Los Angeles Times)
European Reactions to Lebanon
Europe's Disproportionate Criticism - Gerald M. SteinbergIn early 2000, the European Union was an enthusiastic supporter of unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the security zone in southern Lebanon. In detailed talks that took place at the French ambassador's residence in Jaffa, in which I participated as an academic consultant, the Europeans assured us that once Israel retreated, Hizballah would lose its raison d'etre as a "militia" and transform itself into a political party. France and its partners would send peacekeepers to prevent terror and missile attacks against Israel, help the Lebanese army take control of the border, and disarm Hizballah. In May that year, the Israeli military left Lebanon, but Europe did nothing as, instead of the promised transformation, Hizballah took positions right across Israel's border and prepared for the next round of the war. Going forcefully after Iran's prodigy in Lebanon sends a powerful message to Tehran. A small war stopped prematurely now may only pave the way for a much larger war later. To view Israel's actions in Beirut and Gaza as "disproportionate" means ignoring the radical Islamic regime in Tehran, which threatens to destroy Israel and is bent on acquiring the weapons to actually carry out its threat. (Wall Street Journal, 17Jul06)
The Middle East Crisis - Local, Regional, and Global; Conventional and Nuclear - Y. Carmon, A. Savyon, N. Toobiyan, and Y. MansharofWhile resolutely supporting Iran on the nuclear issue, Russia was willing to cooperate with the other G8 members in resolving the local Hizballah-Israel crisis (in cooperation with Iran and Syria...). The U.S. got its way in that the G8's final statement endorsed the American position regarding the resolution of the local crisis (that is, the return of the kidnapped soldiers). But regarding pressures on Iran to give up its nuclear program, the U.S. lost, since the Russian pressure at the summit and the Iranian pressure on the ground (via Hizballah and Hamas) compelled the G8 summit to set this issue aside. (MEMRI)
Weekend Features
Amid Barrage, a Holocaust Heroine Shakes Off Fear - Matthew KalmanOrna Shorani, 76, was fast asleep last Thursday when a Katyusha rocket fired by Hizballah struck her home. All the windows in the front of her house were smashed, the doors were blown off their hinges, and the roof had a gaping hole. Orna lives in Nahariya, a few miles from the border with Lebanon. Half the town's residents have left, but Orna said she had no intention of leaving. "I lived through the Second World War and all of Israel's wars," she said. "I think I'll survive this one, too." With her mother and sisters, Orna hid 25 Jews from a Nazi labor camp next to their home in Hungary and smuggled them to safety. One of them, Ladislav Shorani, "came back and married me," Orna recalled. "After the war, we moved to Israel." Orna was later named a "Righteous Among the Nations" for her bravery in rescuing Jews from the Holocaust. (Boston Globe)
See also Israelis Offer a Helping Hand - Ruth EglashHundreds, if not thousands, of Israelis have opened their homes to distressed residents of the northern and southern border regions. (Jerusalem Post)
Israelis Seek Refuge on Beach - Aron HellerRevital Aburmad, 26, her husband, Meir, and her 2-year-old daughter are some of the thousands of Israelis who fled northern Israel to escape the unprecedented rocket barrage by Hizballah in the past week for a tent city on Nitzanim Beach in southern Israel. "You can't describe the anxiety of having to run into the shelter, without food, without drink," said Kati Bochris, 25, from Nahariya, who had a rocket land next to her home. "You can smell the smoke and the sky turns black." A Russian-Israeli billionaire erected the compound on Sunday, shelling out some $200,000 per day for tents, food, and entertainment for 5,000 people. Thanks to him, Nitzanim Beach is now lined with volleyball nets, pool tables, and inflatable playground structures. Its giant stage has attracted several of Israel's top performers. The conditions aren't ideal. Thin mattresses are packed one against the other in sweltering heat with no privacy. Many came with only the clothes they were wearing. Yet, all say the discomfort pales in comparison to the terror of being attacked in their own homes. (AP/Washington Post)
Wedding Under Fire - Miri ChasonMaya and Shlomi Buskila refused to let Nasrallah ruin their big day. On Thursday, they were married in a shelter in Kiryat Shmona. "We'll be celebrating the wedding night in a shelter as well," said the brand-new groom. When Maya got out of her car in her wedding dress, instead of guests, she was surrounded by news crews, all asking to document the triumph of the human interest in a time of turmoil. During the entire ceremony, many explosions were heard, but the guests hurried to comfort one another: "that's us firing, not them." (Ynet News)
Israel Leaves the Scuds Behind - Zev ChafetsStarting with the first Gulf War, Israel went from being the deterrent power in the neighborhood to being the chronic frightened patsy. At least that's what Sheik Nasrallah thought when his men snatched two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border. He figured the new prime minister, Ehud Olmert, would meet almost any price to get the soldiers back peacefully. Instead, Olmert attacked. He knew that retaliation would bring on the missiles and rockets, but he evidently thought it was worth the risk. What Olmert didn't know when he gave the order - what the Israeli public itself didn't know - was that the rockets wouldn't cause panic. Fear, yes. Caution, too, and some complaining (this is Israel, after all). But, amazingly, most people in even the most vulnerable areas have behaved with something like the sanguine good nature of the British during the Blitz. For Israelis, fighting back made all the difference. (New York Times)
Warned Against Harassment (Aftenposten-Norway) The Mosaic Religious Community has advised its Jewish members against speaking Hebrew loudly on the streets of Oslo or wearing Jewish emblems after a Jewish man wearing a kippa, or head covering, was assaulted on an Oslo street Saturday. The suggestion has infuriated some in the Jewish community.
See also Was NATO's Air War on Yugoslavia "Disproportionate"? - Elizabeth SullivanFrance should know whereof it speaks when it brands Israel for "disproportionate" force in bombing bridges, airfields and civilian power plants. Seven years ago, French pilots went after similar targets during NATO's 72-day air war against Yugoslavia. In fact, Israeli military tactics closely parallel those developed during the 1999 NATO air war and, more recently, by the U.S. against al-Qaeda. In 1999, dozens of NATO bombs and missiles hit Yugoslav bridges, communications grids, power plants, and a television station, killing at least 498 civilians. French fighter pilots flew more than 1,100 of the war's air strikes, or about 11 percent of the alliance's missions, according to Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
See also Fighting Hizballah with "Deliberately Disproportionate" Force - Pierre Atlas
Israeli strategic analyst Yossi Alpher notes that deliberate disproportionality "is an imperative when fighting a guerrilla enemy waging asymmetrical warfare." In assessing Israel's response, one needs to look beyond the asymmetry of power, to a second asymmetry in terms of goals. Israel's goals are strategic, while Hizballah's are existential. Israel has the greater arsenal, but it is fighting an enemy that won't be satisfied as long as Israel continues to exist. In this case the asymmetry is reversed. And it begs the question: how should you fight such a group as it wages war on you? The writer is an assistant professor of political science and director of the Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian College. (RealClearPolitics)
Israel's Moment - Lawrence KudlowAll of us in the Free World owe Israel an enormous "thank you" for defending freedom, democracy and security against the Iranian cat's-paw wholly-owned terrorist subsidiaries Hizballah and Hamas. Israel is defending its homeland and very existence but also America's homeland as our frontline democratic ally in the Middle East. Remember, Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon and Gaza. Later, when terrorist gangs kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Israel appropriately fought back. That is what sovereign nations do, and Israel's recent military actions deserve our unyielding support. Israel has the right to put the terrorist armies of Hizballah and Hamas out of business. When the dust clears the world will applaud Israel for its courage. Sensible freedom-loving people everywhere will realize Israel's furious response in the face of senseless terrorist attacks will have made the world a better place. In fact, we are all Israelis now. (Washington Times)
Order vs. Disorder - Thomas L. FriedmanThis is not just another Arab-Israeli war. It is about some of the most basic foundations of the international order - borders and sovereignty - and the erosion of those foundations would spell disaster for the quality of life all across the globe. Lebanon, alas, has not been able to produce the internal coherence to control Hizballah, and is not likely to soon. The forces of disorder - Hizballah, al-Qaeda, Iran - are a geopolitical tsunami that we need a united front to defeat. The only way this war is going to come to some stable conclusion any time soon is if The World of Order - and I don't just mean "the West," but countries like Russia, China, India, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia too - puts together an international force that can escort the Lebanese Army to the Israeli border and remain on hand to protect it against Hizballah. (New York Times, 20Jul06)
Now Isn't the Time for Restraint - Newt GingrichImagine that this morning 50 missiles were launched from Cuba and exploded in Miami. In addition to buildings and homes being destroyed, scores of Americans were being killed. Now imagine our allies responded by saying publicly that we must not be too aggressive in protecting our citizens and that America must use the utmost restraint. Our history shows us that we have never reacted to a direct attack on our soil with any restraint. Every time America has been attacked by an enemy, we set about defeating it and ending the threat. Israeli concessions to the Iran-Syria-Hizballah-Hamas terrorist alliance have consistently resulted in their enemies preparing for the next attack. This is only the latest cycle in an ongoing 58-year campaign to destroy Israel. Hizballah in its military form must be eliminated, the Iranian Guard in southern Lebanon must be removed, and allowing the Syrian and Iranian dictatorships to supply, train, and equip the terrorists must be stopped. The writer, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. (USA Today)
Israel Has a War to Win - Daniel PipesIsrael has a significant role in the U.S.-led war on terror; it can best defend itself and help its U.S. ally not by aspiring to agreements with intractable foes but by convincing them that Israel is permanent and unbeatable. This goal requires not episodic violence but sustained and systematic efforts to change regional mentalities. (Los Angeles Times)
European Reactions to Lebanon
Europe's Disproportionate Criticism - Gerald M. SteinbergIn early 2000, the European Union was an enthusiastic supporter of unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the security zone in southern Lebanon. In detailed talks that took place at the French ambassador's residence in Jaffa, in which I participated as an academic consultant, the Europeans assured us that once Israel retreated, Hizballah would lose its raison d'etre as a "militia" and transform itself into a political party. France and its partners would send peacekeepers to prevent terror and missile attacks against Israel, help the Lebanese army take control of the border, and disarm Hizballah. In May that year, the Israeli military left Lebanon, but Europe did nothing as, instead of the promised transformation, Hizballah took positions right across Israel's border and prepared for the next round of the war. Going forcefully after Iran's prodigy in Lebanon sends a powerful message to Tehran. A small war stopped prematurely now may only pave the way for a much larger war later. To view Israel's actions in Beirut and Gaza as "disproportionate" means ignoring the radical Islamic regime in Tehran, which threatens to destroy Israel and is bent on acquiring the weapons to actually carry out its threat. (Wall Street Journal, 17Jul06)
The Middle East Crisis - Local, Regional, and Global; Conventional and Nuclear - Y. Carmon, A. Savyon, N. Toobiyan, and Y. MansharofWhile resolutely supporting Iran on the nuclear issue, Russia was willing to cooperate with the other G8 members in resolving the local Hizballah-Israel crisis (in cooperation with Iran and Syria...). The U.S. got its way in that the G8's final statement endorsed the American position regarding the resolution of the local crisis (that is, the return of the kidnapped soldiers). But regarding pressures on Iran to give up its nuclear program, the U.S. lost, since the Russian pressure at the summit and the Iranian pressure on the ground (via Hizballah and Hamas) compelled the G8 summit to set this issue aside. (MEMRI)
Weekend Features
Amid Barrage, a Holocaust Heroine Shakes Off Fear - Matthew KalmanOrna Shorani, 76, was fast asleep last Thursday when a Katyusha rocket fired by Hizballah struck her home. All the windows in the front of her house were smashed, the doors were blown off their hinges, and the roof had a gaping hole. Orna lives in Nahariya, a few miles from the border with Lebanon. Half the town's residents have left, but Orna said she had no intention of leaving. "I lived through the Second World War and all of Israel's wars," she said. "I think I'll survive this one, too." With her mother and sisters, Orna hid 25 Jews from a Nazi labor camp next to their home in Hungary and smuggled them to safety. One of them, Ladislav Shorani, "came back and married me," Orna recalled. "After the war, we moved to Israel." Orna was later named a "Righteous Among the Nations" for her bravery in rescuing Jews from the Holocaust. (Boston Globe)
See also Israelis Offer a Helping Hand - Ruth EglashHundreds, if not thousands, of Israelis have opened their homes to distressed residents of the northern and southern border regions. (Jerusalem Post)
Israelis Seek Refuge on Beach - Aron HellerRevital Aburmad, 26, her husband, Meir, and her 2-year-old daughter are some of the thousands of Israelis who fled northern Israel to escape the unprecedented rocket barrage by Hizballah in the past week for a tent city on Nitzanim Beach in southern Israel. "You can't describe the anxiety of having to run into the shelter, without food, without drink," said Kati Bochris, 25, from Nahariya, who had a rocket land next to her home. "You can smell the smoke and the sky turns black." A Russian-Israeli billionaire erected the compound on Sunday, shelling out some $200,000 per day for tents, food, and entertainment for 5,000 people. Thanks to him, Nitzanim Beach is now lined with volleyball nets, pool tables, and inflatable playground structures. Its giant stage has attracted several of Israel's top performers. The conditions aren't ideal. Thin mattresses are packed one against the other in sweltering heat with no privacy. Many came with only the clothes they were wearing. Yet, all say the discomfort pales in comparison to the terror of being attacked in their own homes. (AP/Washington Post)
Wedding Under Fire - Miri ChasonMaya and Shlomi Buskila refused to let Nasrallah ruin their big day. On Thursday, they were married in a shelter in Kiryat Shmona. "We'll be celebrating the wedding night in a shelter as well," said the brand-new groom. When Maya got out of her car in her wedding dress, instead of guests, she was surrounded by news crews, all asking to document the triumph of the human interest in a time of turmoil. During the entire ceremony, many explosions were heard, but the guests hurried to comfort one another: "that's us firing, not them." (Ynet News)
Israel Leaves the Scuds Behind - Zev ChafetsStarting with the first Gulf War, Israel went from being the deterrent power in the neighborhood to being the chronic frightened patsy. At least that's what Sheik Nasrallah thought when his men snatched two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border. He figured the new prime minister, Ehud Olmert, would meet almost any price to get the soldiers back peacefully. Instead, Olmert attacked. He knew that retaliation would bring on the missiles and rockets, but he evidently thought it was worth the risk. What Olmert didn't know when he gave the order - what the Israeli public itself didn't know - was that the rockets wouldn't cause panic. Fear, yes. Caution, too, and some complaining (this is Israel, after all). But, amazingly, most people in even the most vulnerable areas have behaved with something like the sanguine good nature of the British during the Blitz. For Israelis, fighting back made all the difference. (New York Times)
Warned Against Harassment (Aftenposten-Norway) The Mosaic Religious Community has advised its Jewish members against speaking Hebrew loudly on the streets of Oslo or wearing Jewish emblems after a Jewish man wearing a kippa, or head covering, was assaulted on an Oslo street Saturday. The suggestion has infuriated some in the Jewish community.
See also Was NATO's Air War on Yugoslavia "Disproportionate"? - Elizabeth SullivanFrance should know whereof it speaks when it brands Israel for "disproportionate" force in bombing bridges, airfields and civilian power plants. Seven years ago, French pilots went after similar targets during NATO's 72-day air war against Yugoslavia. In fact, Israeli military tactics closely parallel those developed during the 1999 NATO air war and, more recently, by the U.S. against al-Qaeda. In 1999, dozens of NATO bombs and missiles hit Yugoslav bridges, communications grids, power plants, and a television station, killing at least 498 civilians. French fighter pilots flew more than 1,100 of the war's air strikes, or about 11 percent of the alliance's missions, according to Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
See also Fighting Hizballah with "Deliberately Disproportionate" Force - Pierre Atlas
Israeli strategic analyst Yossi Alpher notes that deliberate disproportionality "is an imperative when fighting a guerrilla enemy waging asymmetrical warfare." In assessing Israel's response, one needs to look beyond the asymmetry of power, to a second asymmetry in terms of goals. Israel's goals are strategic, while Hizballah's are existential. Israel has the greater arsenal, but it is fighting an enemy that won't be satisfied as long as Israel continues to exist. In this case the asymmetry is reversed. And it begs the question: how should you fight such a group as it wages war on you? The writer is an assistant professor of political science and director of the Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian College. (RealClearPolitics)
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Quote:what is a "proportionate response"?
Quotable quote!
"OF COURSE the Israeli response is disproportionate! If it were proportionate, Israel would have to devote itself to the annihilation of
56 Moslem countries, send suicide bombers to Palestinian cafes and markets, attack mosques worldwide, and conduct a massive and insulting propaganda campaign blaming Moslems for all the ills in the world etc. etc.'"
Perhaps the UN should undertake this task on behalf of the normal world!
"OF COURSE the Israeli response is disproportionate! If it were proportionate, Israel would have to devote itself to the annihilation of
56 Moslem countries, send suicide bombers to Palestinian cafes and markets, attack mosques worldwide, and conduct a massive and insulting propaganda campaign blaming Moslems for all the ills in the world etc. etc.'"
Perhaps the UN should undertake this task on behalf of the normal world!
Australian Editorial: Self-defence is a universal right.
Subject: Editorial -- The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19847517-7583,00.html
Editorial: Self-defence is a universal right
July 20, 2006
THE tyranny of distance still afflicts Australia, or at least certain segments of the Australian commentariat. For from a distance of nearly 15,000km, many local media outlets look at the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and see a decidedly one-sided affair. Last week, The Sydney Morning Herald headlined a front-page story declaring Lebanon "UNDER SIEGE" by what its correspondent called "Israeli attacks causing soaring civilian death tolls in Gaza and Lebanon", setting the tone for the paper's coverage of the conflict. Meanwhile, at the ABC on Tuesday night, Tony Jones badgered former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak over Israel's refusal to call a ceasefire, while the UK Independent's Robert Fisk regularly rants against Israel on the nation's broadcaster. Yet the closer one gets to the front lines, the less Israel cops the blame. In the Middle East, the normally anti-Israeli Saudi Arabian Government has said Hezbollah bears "full responsibility for . . . ending the crisis". In Lebanon, there is even more support for Israel's actions. On Tuesday night's 7:30 Report, of all places, several Lebanese officials placed blame for the current conflict on Hezbollah – not Israel. The question that comes to mind, then, is whether those who effectively suggest Israel should meekly accept its neighbours' attacks actually support the Jewish state's right to exist? It's a legitimate question. Certainly Israel should not be immune to criticism. But if Israel's right to exist is accepted, then the exercise of its corresponding right to protect itself should not be treated with such outrage. Since Israel pulled out of Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah has become more powerful in southern Lebanon, thanks to its friends in Iran and Syria. During this time it has also subjected Israel to regular harassment – even as Israel has, until the kidnapping of two of its soldiers last week, been restrained in retaliation. One wonders how those who criticise Israel's response to Hezbollah would urge the Howard Government to respond were a foreign enemy seizing cops and dropping artillery shells into Balmain in Sydney or Fitzroy in Melbourne. Those who condemn images of Israeli girls writing messages on artillery shells are rarely if ever heard denouncing the relentless propaganda that brainwashes Palestinian children to hate their Jewish neighbours and celebrate the deeds of suicide bombers. Meanwhile, the ancient idea of proportionate response has lately become a rhetorical cudgel for those who would hobble Israel. Yet in taking the possibility of overwhelming retaliation off the table, the doctrine encourages bad behaviour on the part of Israel's enemies who know they would never be called to account. In retaliating against Lebanon and evicting that country's Shia interlopers, Israel is simply behaving as a rational actor. And in doing so it strikes a blow for the principle that all states should be treated similarly. This is the only way forward for Israel in dealing with the Palestinians: if Hamas wants to be recognised as the legitimate government of the Palestinian people, then the world should go along with this and no longer accept "rogue state" claims that Qassam rockets and suicide terrorist missions launched from its territory are not its responsibility. Violent internal politics or historic grievances about dispossession and occupation do not excuse bad behaviour. The situation is still fluid in the Middle East. And any attack on Tel Aviv by Hezbollah would radically change the equation. But the quick defeat of Hezbollah – and by extension its mad backers in Tehran – would not just be a win for Israel but for Lebanon and the region as well.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19847517-7583,00.html
Editorial: Self-defence is a universal right
July 20, 2006
THE tyranny of distance still afflicts Australia, or at least certain segments of the Australian commentariat. For from a distance of nearly 15,000km, many local media outlets look at the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and see a decidedly one-sided affair. Last week, The Sydney Morning Herald headlined a front-page story declaring Lebanon "UNDER SIEGE" by what its correspondent called "Israeli attacks causing soaring civilian death tolls in Gaza and Lebanon", setting the tone for the paper's coverage of the conflict. Meanwhile, at the ABC on Tuesday night, Tony Jones badgered former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak over Israel's refusal to call a ceasefire, while the UK Independent's Robert Fisk regularly rants against Israel on the nation's broadcaster. Yet the closer one gets to the front lines, the less Israel cops the blame. In the Middle East, the normally anti-Israeli Saudi Arabian Government has said Hezbollah bears "full responsibility for . . . ending the crisis". In Lebanon, there is even more support for Israel's actions. On Tuesday night's 7:30 Report, of all places, several Lebanese officials placed blame for the current conflict on Hezbollah – not Israel. The question that comes to mind, then, is whether those who effectively suggest Israel should meekly accept its neighbours' attacks actually support the Jewish state's right to exist? It's a legitimate question. Certainly Israel should not be immune to criticism. But if Israel's right to exist is accepted, then the exercise of its corresponding right to protect itself should not be treated with such outrage. Since Israel pulled out of Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah has become more powerful in southern Lebanon, thanks to its friends in Iran and Syria. During this time it has also subjected Israel to regular harassment – even as Israel has, until the kidnapping of two of its soldiers last week, been restrained in retaliation. One wonders how those who criticise Israel's response to Hezbollah would urge the Howard Government to respond were a foreign enemy seizing cops and dropping artillery shells into Balmain in Sydney or Fitzroy in Melbourne. Those who condemn images of Israeli girls writing messages on artillery shells are rarely if ever heard denouncing the relentless propaganda that brainwashes Palestinian children to hate their Jewish neighbours and celebrate the deeds of suicide bombers. Meanwhile, the ancient idea of proportionate response has lately become a rhetorical cudgel for those who would hobble Israel. Yet in taking the possibility of overwhelming retaliation off the table, the doctrine encourages bad behaviour on the part of Israel's enemies who know they would never be called to account. In retaliating against Lebanon and evicting that country's Shia interlopers, Israel is simply behaving as a rational actor. And in doing so it strikes a blow for the principle that all states should be treated similarly. This is the only way forward for Israel in dealing with the Palestinians: if Hamas wants to be recognised as the legitimate government of the Palestinian people, then the world should go along with this and no longer accept "rogue state" claims that Qassam rockets and suicide terrorist missions launched from its territory are not its responsibility. Violent internal politics or historic grievances about dispossession and occupation do not excuse bad behaviour. The situation is still fluid in the Middle East. And any attack on Tel Aviv by Hezbollah would radically change the equation. But the quick defeat of Hezbollah – and by extension its mad backers in Tehran – would not just be a win for Israel but for Lebanon and the region as well.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Why the LEFT should be supporting Israel. Eric Lee.
http://www.ericlee.info/2006/07/the_left_should_be_supporting.html
Eric Lee
The Left should be supporting Israel in this war
[Web exclusive]No socialist group in Britain is saying what needs to be said today about the crisis in the Middle East. All the groups on the organised Left are busy denouncing Israel for its "aggression" against Gaza and Lebanon. Many are expressing their solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples. None are saying that Israel needs and deserves the support of the Left.But that is exactly what they should be saying. One doesn't have to go back decades, as is the tradition in articles of this sort, to explain. Let's just go back to the dawn of the twenty-first century. In Israel, the far Right has been defeated in elections. A coalition government including the Left is in power, and is committed to ending the conflict with the Arab world. In 2000, as a first step, it completely withdraws all Israeli forces from every last inch of Lebanese soil. Even the United Nations admits that the Israeli withdrawal is complete, and conforms with all UN resolutions. The Lebanese government is obligated to move its army up to the international border. It does not do so.Now fast-forward five years. It's 2005 and the Israeli government decides to withdraw from Gaza after 38 years of occupation. Every single Israeli settlement is closed, despite a massive campaign of civil disobedience by settlers and their supporters. The country is torn apart by angry debate, the Right implodes, but in the end, every last Israeli soldier is withdrawn from every inch of the Gaza strip.Israel still occupies the Golan Heights and West Bank, and those of us on the Left legitimately call for the Israeli government to negotiate the return of those territories. And let's not forget that those territories were seized in a war of self-defence in June 1967. If there had been a violent uprising among Palestinians in the West Bank, or among the Druze living in the Golan, one might have understood. After all, their Arab brethren in Lebanon and Gaza were now free of Israeli soldiers and their hated roadblocks and searches and arrests. But while the West Bank remained relatively calm, and the Golan completely quiet, Israel suddenly found itself under attack from precisely those territories which it had evacuated. Let's be absolutely clear about the nature of the attack. It was not the case that some Palestinian "militants" (as the BBC calls them) seized one Israeli soldier near Gaza. Those same terrorists (let us call things by their right names), having interpreted the 2005 withdrawal as a sign of Israeli weakness, have been bombarding the western Negev desert for months with their Qassam missiles. And at the first opportunity, the Palestinians voted out the regime which had recognised the right of the Jewish state to exist and replaced it with the Islamo-fascist Hamas, which aims to create an Islamist state from the Jordan river to the sea.The Islamo-fascists of Hizbollah joined in the fun shortly thereafter with a massive rocket barrage attacking Israeli towns, cities and kibbutzim from the shores of the Mediterranean to the foothills of the Golan, destroying homes and killing and wounding innocent civilians. Under cover of that barrage, they launched a raid to kill and capture Israeli soldiers on Israeli soil.Israel is under attack -- unprovoked, brutal attack. Attack by forces such as Hamas and Hizbollah with which socialists have nothing in common.And Israel is responding in the way that any state, even a state with a workers' government, even an ideal socialist state, would respond. It is hitting back with all the firepower at its disposal, but doing so in a way to minimize civilian casualties. That is why it decided to flatten Hamas' foreign ministry building at 2:00 in the morning, when it was unoccupied. Or used targetted aerial bombardment to create craters in the runways of Beirut airport, rather than bombing terminals crammed with people. (Either way, they would have shut down the airport -- but they chose a way that saved innocent lives.)At the present time, Israel has more powerful and more effective weapons than their opponents. Their situation today is a bit like that facing the Allies near the end of the second world war. By that time, Germany and Japan were severely weakened. Did that lead the Soviet Union, which was doing the bulk of the fighting, and its western allies to let up? To give the Nazi regime a break? Not at all. They took advantage of their superiority and hit harder -- to bring the war to and end as quickly as possible.Israel's military should use all its power to defend the country and decisively defeat its enemies -- while taking every precaution to reduce the number of innocent civilian casualties on both sides to an absolute minimum.The real question for socialists when a war like this breaks out is to look at what will happen if either side wins. Let us imagine that Israel wins -- meaning that the captured soldiers are returned and the rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon end. The result will not only be good for Israel, but good for the Palestinians and Lebanese as well. The Islamo-fascists will be weakened. Democratic and secular forces will be strengthened. Socialists should cheer this on.Now image what happens if Hamas and Hizbollah win. They over-run the Jewish state, slaughtering and expelling its several million Jewish inhabitants. They create a reactionary theocratic dictatorship along the lines of their benefactor, Iran. No one benefits -- not the Jews, not the Arabs. This a result that only fascists could applaud.Some socialists are pacifists and oppose all wars. But most of us understand that sometimes a country has to fight. And sometimes two peoples go to war against each other, and we have to take sides. We look at the reasons behind the fighting and more important -- we look at the consequences of victory for one side or the other.Looking at the war taking place today in the Middle East, it is clear to me that the position taken by the Left in Britain and elsewhere is wrong. We should be giving our full support to Israel, while of course insisting that the Israeli military behave according to international law and keep civilian casualties to a minimum. We should insist that at the end of the fighting, Israeli forces be pulled back to the international border with Lebanon, and withdrawn from Gaza. And we should support a renewal of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians leading to a withdrawal from the West Bank.Our view as socialists of Hamas and Hizbollah should be absolutely clear: these are the enemy. We have nothing in common with Islamo-fascism and look forward to it suffering a crushing defeat in battle.As I write these words, I realize that many friends and comrades will disagree with me. I invite them to respond, to engage in debate, and above all to listen and try to understand. In the end, the important thing is not to say what is popular, what wins friends and gets applause. Our job as socialists is above all to tell the truth. And that is what I have done here.Posted by Eric Lee on July 15, 2006 12:10 PM Permalink __._,_.___ =================================================http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JewsREAD
Eric Lee
The Left should be supporting Israel in this war
[Web exclusive]No socialist group in Britain is saying what needs to be said today about the crisis in the Middle East. All the groups on the organised Left are busy denouncing Israel for its "aggression" against Gaza and Lebanon. Many are expressing their solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples. None are saying that Israel needs and deserves the support of the Left.But that is exactly what they should be saying. One doesn't have to go back decades, as is the tradition in articles of this sort, to explain. Let's just go back to the dawn of the twenty-first century. In Israel, the far Right has been defeated in elections. A coalition government including the Left is in power, and is committed to ending the conflict with the Arab world. In 2000, as a first step, it completely withdraws all Israeli forces from every last inch of Lebanese soil. Even the United Nations admits that the Israeli withdrawal is complete, and conforms with all UN resolutions. The Lebanese government is obligated to move its army up to the international border. It does not do so.Now fast-forward five years. It's 2005 and the Israeli government decides to withdraw from Gaza after 38 years of occupation. Every single Israeli settlement is closed, despite a massive campaign of civil disobedience by settlers and their supporters. The country is torn apart by angry debate, the Right implodes, but in the end, every last Israeli soldier is withdrawn from every inch of the Gaza strip.Israel still occupies the Golan Heights and West Bank, and those of us on the Left legitimately call for the Israeli government to negotiate the return of those territories. And let's not forget that those territories were seized in a war of self-defence in June 1967. If there had been a violent uprising among Palestinians in the West Bank, or among the Druze living in the Golan, one might have understood. After all, their Arab brethren in Lebanon and Gaza were now free of Israeli soldiers and their hated roadblocks and searches and arrests. But while the West Bank remained relatively calm, and the Golan completely quiet, Israel suddenly found itself under attack from precisely those territories which it had evacuated. Let's be absolutely clear about the nature of the attack. It was not the case that some Palestinian "militants" (as the BBC calls them) seized one Israeli soldier near Gaza. Those same terrorists (let us call things by their right names), having interpreted the 2005 withdrawal as a sign of Israeli weakness, have been bombarding the western Negev desert for months with their Qassam missiles. And at the first opportunity, the Palestinians voted out the regime which had recognised the right of the Jewish state to exist and replaced it with the Islamo-fascist Hamas, which aims to create an Islamist state from the Jordan river to the sea.The Islamo-fascists of Hizbollah joined in the fun shortly thereafter with a massive rocket barrage attacking Israeli towns, cities and kibbutzim from the shores of the Mediterranean to the foothills of the Golan, destroying homes and killing and wounding innocent civilians. Under cover of that barrage, they launched a raid to kill and capture Israeli soldiers on Israeli soil.Israel is under attack -- unprovoked, brutal attack. Attack by forces such as Hamas and Hizbollah with which socialists have nothing in common.And Israel is responding in the way that any state, even a state with a workers' government, even an ideal socialist state, would respond. It is hitting back with all the firepower at its disposal, but doing so in a way to minimize civilian casualties. That is why it decided to flatten Hamas' foreign ministry building at 2:00 in the morning, when it was unoccupied. Or used targetted aerial bombardment to create craters in the runways of Beirut airport, rather than bombing terminals crammed with people. (Either way, they would have shut down the airport -- but they chose a way that saved innocent lives.)At the present time, Israel has more powerful and more effective weapons than their opponents. Their situation today is a bit like that facing the Allies near the end of the second world war. By that time, Germany and Japan were severely weakened. Did that lead the Soviet Union, which was doing the bulk of the fighting, and its western allies to let up? To give the Nazi regime a break? Not at all. They took advantage of their superiority and hit harder -- to bring the war to and end as quickly as possible.Israel's military should use all its power to defend the country and decisively defeat its enemies -- while taking every precaution to reduce the number of innocent civilian casualties on both sides to an absolute minimum.The real question for socialists when a war like this breaks out is to look at what will happen if either side wins. Let us imagine that Israel wins -- meaning that the captured soldiers are returned and the rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon end. The result will not only be good for Israel, but good for the Palestinians and Lebanese as well. The Islamo-fascists will be weakened. Democratic and secular forces will be strengthened. Socialists should cheer this on.Now image what happens if Hamas and Hizbollah win. They over-run the Jewish state, slaughtering and expelling its several million Jewish inhabitants. They create a reactionary theocratic dictatorship along the lines of their benefactor, Iran. No one benefits -- not the Jews, not the Arabs. This a result that only fascists could applaud.Some socialists are pacifists and oppose all wars. But most of us understand that sometimes a country has to fight. And sometimes two peoples go to war against each other, and we have to take sides. We look at the reasons behind the fighting and more important -- we look at the consequences of victory for one side or the other.Looking at the war taking place today in the Middle East, it is clear to me that the position taken by the Left in Britain and elsewhere is wrong. We should be giving our full support to Israel, while of course insisting that the Israeli military behave according to international law and keep civilian casualties to a minimum. We should insist that at the end of the fighting, Israeli forces be pulled back to the international border with Lebanon, and withdrawn from Gaza. And we should support a renewal of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians leading to a withdrawal from the West Bank.Our view as socialists of Hamas and Hizbollah should be absolutely clear: these are the enemy. We have nothing in common with Islamo-fascism and look forward to it suffering a crushing defeat in battle.As I write these words, I realize that many friends and comrades will disagree with me. I invite them to respond, to engage in debate, and above all to listen and try to understand. In the end, the important thing is not to say what is popular, what wins friends and gets applause. Our job as socialists is above all to tell the truth. And that is what I have done here.Posted by Eric Lee on July 15, 2006 12:10 PM Permalink __._,_.___ =================================================http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JewsREAD
Sunday, July 16, 2006
The Jihadists are in control.
Op-Ed Columnist
As Israel Goes for Withdrawal, Its Enemies Go Berserk
By DAVID BROOKS
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/opinion/16brooks.html
Why is this Middle East crisis different from all other Middle East crises? Because in all other Middle East crises, Israel’s main rivals were the P.L.O., Egypt, Iraq and Syria, but in this crisis the main rivals are the jihadists in Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and, most important, Iran. In all other crises the nutjobs were on the fringes, but now the nutjobs in Hamas and Hezbollah are in governments and lead factions of major parties.In all other crises, the Palestinians, thanks to Yasir Arafat’s strenuous efforts, owned their own cause, but now the clerics in Iran are taking control of the Palestinian cause and turning it into a weapon in a much larger struggle. In all other crises there was a negotiation process, a set of plans and some hope of reconciliation. But this crisis is different. Iran doesn’t do road maps. The jihadists who are driving this crisis don’t do reconciliation.In other words, this crisis is a return to the elemental conflict between Israel and those who seek to destroy it. And you can kiss goodbye, at least for the time being, to some of the features of the recent crises.You can kiss goodbye to the fascinating chess match known as the Middle East peace process. That chess match was dependent on a series of smart and reasonable Arab players with whom Israel could negotiate. Those smart and reasonable interlocutors still exist. They still invite visiting Westerners to dinner and may still represent the majority of their countrymen. But they are not running the show now. Iran has conducted a semi-hostile takeover of what used to be known as the Arab-Israeli dispute. Iran has deepened and widened its support for its terrorist partners. Iran and the Islamists are fueled by the sense that the winds of history are blowing at their back. They pushed the Soviets out of Afghanistan, the U.S. out of Lebanon, Israel out of Lebanon and Gaza and they seem on the verge of pushing the U.S. out of Iraq. After centuries of Muslim humiliation, these people know how to win.So Hamas and Hezbollah audaciously set the pace of confrontation. Maybe the moderates will eventually crack down on the radicals (there’s a first time for everything), but in the meantime there will be no peace process. There will be no shuttle diplomacy. Instead, the main mode of communication will be death: the minuet of missile launches and retaliations, escalations and de-escalations that irreconcilable enemies use to talk with one another.You can also kiss goodbye to the land-for-peace mentality. In all other crises there was the hope that if Israel ceded land and gave the Palestinians a chance to lead normal lives, then tensions would ease. But this crisis follows withdrawals in Lebanon and Gaza, and interrupts the withdrawals from the West Bank that were at the core of Ehud Olmert’s victory platform.Israel’s main enemies in this crisis are not normal parties and governments that act on behalf of their people. They are jihadist organizations that happen to have gained control of territory for bases of operations. Hamas and Hezbollah knew their kidnappings and missile launches would set off retaliation that would hurt Gazans and Lebanese, but they attacked anyway — for the sake of jihad. They answer to a higher authority and dream of genocide in his name.What’s happened over the past few years, in short, is that public opinion in Israel has moved to the center at the same time that decision-making power on the other side has moved to the extreme.Now there is a debate over how Israel should respond to this situation. Some say Israel should temper its response so Arab moderates can corral the extremists, which would be great advice if the moderates had any record of ever doing that or any capacity to do so in the near future. Others say Israel simply must degrade the capabilities of its fanatical opponents.But this is a secondary issue. The core issue is that just as Israel has been trying to pull back to more sensible borders, its enemies have gone completely berserk. Through some combination of fecklessness and passivity, the Arab world has ceded control of this vital flashpoint to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar al-Assad. It has ceded its own destiny to people who do not believe in freedom, democracy, tolerance or any of the values civilized people hold dear.And what’s the world’s response? Israel is overreacting.
Copyright belongs to the New York Times. Distributed for non-profit educational purposes. Posted at http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000163.html where you may comment. Distributed by ZNN - Subscribe by sending mail to znn-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Please forward with this notice.
As Israel Goes for Withdrawal, Its Enemies Go Berserk
By DAVID BROOKS
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/opinion/16brooks.html
Why is this Middle East crisis different from all other Middle East crises? Because in all other Middle East crises, Israel’s main rivals were the P.L.O., Egypt, Iraq and Syria, but in this crisis the main rivals are the jihadists in Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and, most important, Iran. In all other crises the nutjobs were on the fringes, but now the nutjobs in Hamas and Hezbollah are in governments and lead factions of major parties.In all other crises, the Palestinians, thanks to Yasir Arafat’s strenuous efforts, owned their own cause, but now the clerics in Iran are taking control of the Palestinian cause and turning it into a weapon in a much larger struggle. In all other crises there was a negotiation process, a set of plans and some hope of reconciliation. But this crisis is different. Iran doesn’t do road maps. The jihadists who are driving this crisis don’t do reconciliation.In other words, this crisis is a return to the elemental conflict between Israel and those who seek to destroy it. And you can kiss goodbye, at least for the time being, to some of the features of the recent crises.You can kiss goodbye to the fascinating chess match known as the Middle East peace process. That chess match was dependent on a series of smart and reasonable Arab players with whom Israel could negotiate. Those smart and reasonable interlocutors still exist. They still invite visiting Westerners to dinner and may still represent the majority of their countrymen. But they are not running the show now. Iran has conducted a semi-hostile takeover of what used to be known as the Arab-Israeli dispute. Iran has deepened and widened its support for its terrorist partners. Iran and the Islamists are fueled by the sense that the winds of history are blowing at their back. They pushed the Soviets out of Afghanistan, the U.S. out of Lebanon, Israel out of Lebanon and Gaza and they seem on the verge of pushing the U.S. out of Iraq. After centuries of Muslim humiliation, these people know how to win.So Hamas and Hezbollah audaciously set the pace of confrontation. Maybe the moderates will eventually crack down on the radicals (there’s a first time for everything), but in the meantime there will be no peace process. There will be no shuttle diplomacy. Instead, the main mode of communication will be death: the minuet of missile launches and retaliations, escalations and de-escalations that irreconcilable enemies use to talk with one another.You can also kiss goodbye to the land-for-peace mentality. In all other crises there was the hope that if Israel ceded land and gave the Palestinians a chance to lead normal lives, then tensions would ease. But this crisis follows withdrawals in Lebanon and Gaza, and interrupts the withdrawals from the West Bank that were at the core of Ehud Olmert’s victory platform.Israel’s main enemies in this crisis are not normal parties and governments that act on behalf of their people. They are jihadist organizations that happen to have gained control of territory for bases of operations. Hamas and Hezbollah knew their kidnappings and missile launches would set off retaliation that would hurt Gazans and Lebanese, but they attacked anyway — for the sake of jihad. They answer to a higher authority and dream of genocide in his name.What’s happened over the past few years, in short, is that public opinion in Israel has moved to the center at the same time that decision-making power on the other side has moved to the extreme.Now there is a debate over how Israel should respond to this situation. Some say Israel should temper its response so Arab moderates can corral the extremists, which would be great advice if the moderates had any record of ever doing that or any capacity to do so in the near future. Others say Israel simply must degrade the capabilities of its fanatical opponents.But this is a secondary issue. The core issue is that just as Israel has been trying to pull back to more sensible borders, its enemies have gone completely berserk. Through some combination of fecklessness and passivity, the Arab world has ceded control of this vital flashpoint to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar al-Assad. It has ceded its own destiny to people who do not believe in freedom, democracy, tolerance or any of the values civilized people hold dear.And what’s the world’s response? Israel is overreacting.
Copyright belongs to the New York Times. Distributed for non-profit educational purposes. Posted at http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000163.html where you may comment. Distributed by ZNN - Subscribe by sending mail to znn-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Please forward with this notice.
Australian Muslim cleric, Sheik Hilali, accuses Jews of exploiting the Holocaust.
WHEN LIVES DON'T MATTER.
WHAT ARE A FEW MILLION PEOPLE MORE OR LESS TO HILALI?
The so-called "nation's Islamic leader", Sheik Taj Din-al-Hilali fo Sydney is quoted in the national press (The Australian, 15/7)this weekend as saying in his Arabic sermons:"What's six million all about? Is there six million?"
Therein lies the difference between the Hilalis of this world, the Jihadists and we of the Jewish, Judeo-Christian, Buddhist and all benign faiths whose preachers preach elimination of evil:
To us, even one life is important ,- while to the Jihadists, even millions don't matter.
To us, life itself matters,- both its quality and its quantity. They glorify death.
The world sees daily how even among the Moslems,- Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other wherever they live,- from Afghanistan, Pakistan, across Asia in India, Indonesia to Iraq and right across Africa; -they slaughter other human beings just because they are of even a slightly different variant of their faith, let alone of a different religion. Such preachers of hate, are the current leadership in e.g. Iran, and they are the leaders of their surrogates , al-Queda, Hamas in Gaza and Hitzbullah in Lebanon, etc..
They donnot use democracy for the benefit of their people, but abuse it,- as Hitzbulla is doing as part of the Government of Lebanon.They donnot allow the living to get on with their lives on earth, but aim to produce murderous "martyrs" for death. Instead of being productive like the West for the benefit of humanity, their aim is to destroy the good and the beautiful in our world by arming for war,- right up to weapons of mass destruction.
These preachers' incitement to hatred, including Hilali, is not about land or helping their fellow Muslims. It is all about saving the "Islamic pride" and "their honour".- The honour of murderers? The tragic part for all of us is that their people listen to these purveyors of hate.
Youssef Ibrahim (NY Sun 7/7) and other Arab writers are trying to tell them otherwise.
(See below).
These preachers' followers must be the stupidest and most evil on earth. Don't they realize that there are already more than 6 million genuine martyrs in heaven and there is no room for their hatemongers and terrorists,- except in hell?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,19793435-2,00.html>
-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Brethren, the War With Israel Is Over
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
July 7, 2006
As Israel enters the third week of an incursion into the same Gaza Strip it voluntarily evacuated a few months ago, a sense of reality among Arabs is spreading through commentary by Arab pundits, letters to the editor, and political talk shows on Arabic-language TV networks.The new views are stunning both in their maturity and in their realism. The best way I can think of to convey them is in the form of a letter to the Palestinian Arabs from their Arab friends:
Dear Palestinian Arab brethren:
The war with Israel is over.
You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children.
We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel.
Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.
At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan. It isn't going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.
You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you.
You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins.
Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.
In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day.
What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world's have-nots?
We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.
Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.
Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.
Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours,Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods - more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives - while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.
The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Youssef M. Ibrahim is an Egyptian-born American reporter serving for twenty-four years as a senior Middle East regional correspondent for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, mainly covering political, economic, energy and military issues. Mr. Ibrahim has been based throughout the world, filing hundreds of reports detailing the conflicts and issues between the Middle East and the West
HYPERLINK "http://www.nysun.com/article/35606"
WHAT ARE A FEW MILLION PEOPLE MORE OR LESS TO HILALI?
The so-called "nation's Islamic leader", Sheik Taj Din-al-Hilali fo Sydney is quoted in the national press (The Australian, 15/7)this weekend as saying in his Arabic sermons:"What's six million all about? Is there six million?"
Therein lies the difference between the Hilalis of this world, the Jihadists and we of the Jewish, Judeo-Christian, Buddhist and all benign faiths whose preachers preach elimination of evil:
To us, even one life is important ,- while to the Jihadists, even millions don't matter.
To us, life itself matters,- both its quality and its quantity. They glorify death.
The world sees daily how even among the Moslems,- Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other wherever they live,- from Afghanistan, Pakistan, across Asia in India, Indonesia to Iraq and right across Africa; -they slaughter other human beings just because they are of even a slightly different variant of their faith, let alone of a different religion. Such preachers of hate, are the current leadership in e.g. Iran, and they are the leaders of their surrogates , al-Queda, Hamas in Gaza and Hitzbullah in Lebanon, etc..
They donnot use democracy for the benefit of their people, but abuse it,- as Hitzbulla is doing as part of the Government of Lebanon.They donnot allow the living to get on with their lives on earth, but aim to produce murderous "martyrs" for death. Instead of being productive like the West for the benefit of humanity, their aim is to destroy the good and the beautiful in our world by arming for war,- right up to weapons of mass destruction.
These preachers' incitement to hatred, including Hilali, is not about land or helping their fellow Muslims. It is all about saving the "Islamic pride" and "their honour".- The honour of murderers? The tragic part for all of us is that their people listen to these purveyors of hate.
Youssef Ibrahim (NY Sun 7/7) and other Arab writers are trying to tell them otherwise.
(See below).
These preachers' followers must be the stupidest and most evil on earth. Don't they realize that there are already more than 6 million genuine martyrs in heaven and there is no room for their hatemongers and terrorists,- except in hell?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,19793435-2,00.html>
-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Brethren, the War With Israel Is Over
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
July 7, 2006
As Israel enters the third week of an incursion into the same Gaza Strip it voluntarily evacuated a few months ago, a sense of reality among Arabs is spreading through commentary by Arab pundits, letters to the editor, and political talk shows on Arabic-language TV networks.The new views are stunning both in their maturity and in their realism. The best way I can think of to convey them is in the form of a letter to the Palestinian Arabs from their Arab friends:
Dear Palestinian Arab brethren:
The war with Israel is over.
You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children.
We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel.
Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.
At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan. It isn't going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.
You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you.
You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins.
Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.
In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day.
What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world's have-nots?
We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.
Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.
Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.
Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours,Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods - more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives - while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.
The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Youssef M. Ibrahim is an Egyptian-born American reporter serving for twenty-four years as a senior Middle East regional correspondent for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, mainly covering political, economic, energy and military issues. Mr. Ibrahim has been based throughout the world, filing hundreds of reports detailing the conflicts and issues between the Middle East and the West
HYPERLINK "http://www.nysun.com/article/35606"
Thursday, July 13, 2006
ISRAEL:PATRONS OF TERROR FORCING THE ISSUE.
Yossi Klein Halevi: Patrons of terror forcing the issue
Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah is the target in Israel's new war, says Yossi Klein Halevi
THE AUSTRALIAN
14jul06
THE next Middle East war - Israel against genocidal Islamism - has begun. The first stage of the war started two weeks ago with the Israeli incursion into Gaza in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and the ongoing shelling of Israeli towns and kibbutzim. Now, with Hezbollah's latest attack, the war has spread to southern Lebanon.
Ultimately, though, Israel's antagonists won't be Hamas and Hezbollah but their patrons, Iran and Syria. The war will go on for months, perhaps several years. There may be lulls in the fighting, perhaps even temporary agreements and prisoner exchanges. But those periods of calm will be mere respites.
The goals of the war should be the destruction of the Hamas regime and the dismantling of the Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Israel cannot coexist with Iranian proxies pressing in on its borders. In particular, allowing Hamas to remain in power - and to run the Palestinian educational system - will mean the end of hopes for Arab-Israeli reconciliation not only in this generation but in the next one, too.
For the Israeli Right, this is the moment of "we told you so". The fact that the kidnappings and missile attacks have come from southern Lebanon and Gaza - precisely the areas from which Israel has unilaterally withdrawn - is proof, for right-wingers, of the bankruptcy of unilateralism. Yet the Right has always misunderstood the meaning of unilateral withdrawal.
Those who have supported unilateralism didn't expect a quiet border in return for withdrawal, but the creation of a border from which Israel could more vigorously defend itself, with greater domestic consensus and international understanding.
The anticipated outcome, then, wasn't an illusory peace but a more effective way to fight the war. The question wasn't whether Hamas or Hezbollah would forswear aggression but whether Israel would act with appropriate vigour to their continued aggression. So it wasn't the rocket attacks that were a blow to the unilateralist camp; rather, it was Israel's tepid responses to those attacks. If unilateralists made a mistake, it was in believing its political leaders, including Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, when they promised a policy of zero tolerance against any attacks emanating from Gaza after Israel's withdrawal. That policy was not implemented until two weeks ago. Now, belatedly, the Olmert Government is trying to regain something of its lost credibility, and that is the real meaning of this initial phase of the war in Gaza and in Lebanon.
Absurdly, despite Israel's withdrawal to the international borders with Lebanon and Gaza, much of the international community still sees the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers as a legitimate act of war: just as Israel holds Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, so Hamas and Hezbollah now hold Israeli prisoners.
One difference is that inmates in Israeli jails receive visits from family and Red Cross representatives, while Israeli prisoners in Gaza and Lebanon disappear into oblivion. As with Israeli pilot Ron Arad, who was captured by Hezbollah 20 years ago, then sold to Iran, and whose fate has never been determined. That is one reason why Israelis are so maddened by the kidnapping of their soldiers.
Another reason is the nature of the crimes committed by the prisoners whose release is being demanded by Hezbollah and Hamas. One of them is Samir Kuntar, a Palestine Liberation Organisation terrorist who in 1979 broke into an apartment in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, took a father and child hostage and smashed the child's head against a rock. In the Palestinian Authority, Kuntar is considered a hero, a role model for Palestinian children.
The ultimate threat, though, isn't Hezbollah or Hamas, but Iran. And as Iran draws closer to nuclear capability, an Israeli-Iranian showdown becomes increasingly likely.
According to a very senior military source, Israel is still hoping that an international effort will stop a nuclear Iran. If that fails, then Israel is hoping for a US attack. But if the Bush administration is too weakened to take on Iran, then, as a last resort, Israel will have to act unilaterally.
For Israelis, that is the worst scenario of all. Except, of course, the scenario of nuclear weapons in the hands of the patron state of Hezbollah and Hamas.
[Yossi Klein Halevi is a foreign correspondent for The New Republic and senior fellow of the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem. ]
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19779301-601,00.html
Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah is the target in Israel's new war, says Yossi Klein Halevi
THE AUSTRALIAN
14jul06
THE next Middle East war - Israel against genocidal Islamism - has begun. The first stage of the war started two weeks ago with the Israeli incursion into Gaza in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and the ongoing shelling of Israeli towns and kibbutzim. Now, with Hezbollah's latest attack, the war has spread to southern Lebanon.
Ultimately, though, Israel's antagonists won't be Hamas and Hezbollah but their patrons, Iran and Syria. The war will go on for months, perhaps several years. There may be lulls in the fighting, perhaps even temporary agreements and prisoner exchanges. But those periods of calm will be mere respites.
The goals of the war should be the destruction of the Hamas regime and the dismantling of the Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Israel cannot coexist with Iranian proxies pressing in on its borders. In particular, allowing Hamas to remain in power - and to run the Palestinian educational system - will mean the end of hopes for Arab-Israeli reconciliation not only in this generation but in the next one, too.
For the Israeli Right, this is the moment of "we told you so". The fact that the kidnappings and missile attacks have come from southern Lebanon and Gaza - precisely the areas from which Israel has unilaterally withdrawn - is proof, for right-wingers, of the bankruptcy of unilateralism. Yet the Right has always misunderstood the meaning of unilateral withdrawal.
Those who have supported unilateralism didn't expect a quiet border in return for withdrawal, but the creation of a border from which Israel could more vigorously defend itself, with greater domestic consensus and international understanding.
The anticipated outcome, then, wasn't an illusory peace but a more effective way to fight the war. The question wasn't whether Hamas or Hezbollah would forswear aggression but whether Israel would act with appropriate vigour to their continued aggression. So it wasn't the rocket attacks that were a blow to the unilateralist camp; rather, it was Israel's tepid responses to those attacks. If unilateralists made a mistake, it was in believing its political leaders, including Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, when they promised a policy of zero tolerance against any attacks emanating from Gaza after Israel's withdrawal. That policy was not implemented until two weeks ago. Now, belatedly, the Olmert Government is trying to regain something of its lost credibility, and that is the real meaning of this initial phase of the war in Gaza and in Lebanon.
Absurdly, despite Israel's withdrawal to the international borders with Lebanon and Gaza, much of the international community still sees the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers as a legitimate act of war: just as Israel holds Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, so Hamas and Hezbollah now hold Israeli prisoners.
One difference is that inmates in Israeli jails receive visits from family and Red Cross representatives, while Israeli prisoners in Gaza and Lebanon disappear into oblivion. As with Israeli pilot Ron Arad, who was captured by Hezbollah 20 years ago, then sold to Iran, and whose fate has never been determined. That is one reason why Israelis are so maddened by the kidnapping of their soldiers.
Another reason is the nature of the crimes committed by the prisoners whose release is being demanded by Hezbollah and Hamas. One of them is Samir Kuntar, a Palestine Liberation Organisation terrorist who in 1979 broke into an apartment in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, took a father and child hostage and smashed the child's head against a rock. In the Palestinian Authority, Kuntar is considered a hero, a role model for Palestinian children.
The ultimate threat, though, isn't Hezbollah or Hamas, but Iran. And as Iran draws closer to nuclear capability, an Israeli-Iranian showdown becomes increasingly likely.
According to a very senior military source, Israel is still hoping that an international effort will stop a nuclear Iran. If that fails, then Israel is hoping for a US attack. But if the Bush administration is too weakened to take on Iran, then, as a last resort, Israel will have to act unilaterally.
For Israelis, that is the worst scenario of all. Except, of course, the scenario of nuclear weapons in the hands of the patron state of Hezbollah and Hamas.
[Yossi Klein Halevi is a foreign correspondent for The New Republic and senior fellow of the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem. ]
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19779301-601,00.html
HAMAS: "a despicable Organization". Saudi columnist.
[ZNN] Saudi Columnist on June 25 Gaza Attack: This is a Despicable Organization .
In an article in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa titled "The Crime at the Kerem Shalom Crossing," Saudi columnist Yusuf Nasir Al-Suweidan argues that the June 25, 2006 attack at the Kerem Shalom crossing, in which Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit was taken hostage, has turned the Palestinian dream of an independent state into a thing of the past, and that after Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians should have laid down their weapons and worked to develop Palestinian society.
The following are excerpts from the article: [1]
"When Vietcong Fighters Dug Underground Tunnels in Order to Reach the American Danang Base in South Vietnam... They Did so Inside the Borders of Their Homeland"
"When Vietcong fighters dug underground tunnels in order to reach the American Danang base in South Vietnam in the 1960s, they did so inside the borders of their homeland, Vietnam, and in the context of a minor world war in which the strong players were the Americans, the Chinese, and the Soviets.
"But the faulty course of action taken by the Palestinians, for instance this war of tunnels, is something else entirely. The tunnel dug by the terrorists from the Gaza Strip to the Kerem Shalom crossing took them outside the Palestinian border, and they used it to penetrate into Israel - an independent, sovereign, U.N. member state. There [in Israel] they perpetrated the crime of murdering two Israelis, kidnapping a third, and wounding others, with all the dangerous consequences that [such a] despicable attack has caused and will cause to the Palestinian side. As Palestinian Presidential Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina put it: 'Things are back to square one'..."
Hamas' Claims of "Important Victory" in This Attack are Absurd :
"It would be absurd to try to believe the claims of the terrorist Hamas movement, and of its allies and masters in Tehran and Damascus, that speak of an 'important victory' over the Israelis in this desperate attack. This [claim is absurd], for the simple and obvious reason that the military, political, and economic balance of power, along with every other parameter, will always favor Israel to a considerable degree, so that the very notion of equilibrium between the two sides in the conflict is [nothing but] a wild fantasy.
"[In addition] it would [be] a complete fantasy to think that the Israelis will react like 'harmless lambs' to what occurred near the Kerem Shalom crossing last Sunday. Several minutes after the terrorist attack, the crossings [were] closed and the Israeli military units began moving in battle readiness. This was the largest Israeli military build-up since the withdrawal from Gaza last September. This shows that the Israelis are determined to invade the Gaza Strip within hours [if three conditions are not met]: firstly, if the kidnapped Israeli is not released; secondly, if the firing of Qassam missiles into Israeli territories does not cease; and thirdly, [if] the terrorist infrastructure is not dismantled.
"If this invasion materializes, then this time, a new reality will be created in the Gaza Strip in which all talk about 'back to square one' will be nothing but wild optimism - since the [situation] will regress [far beyond that], to a level where it is possible to talk of a plan of deportation and demographic change in Gaza, and this [plan] might even be implemented soon. This will turn the Palestinian dream of an independent state into a thing of the past..."
"What [The Palestinian Masses] Need Most is Food, Medicine, Clothing... Not Explosive Belts, Car Bombs, and the Slogan, 'Congratulations, Oh Martyr, the Black-Eyed Virgin Awaits You'"
"The main mistake lies in the fact that the Palestinian organizations did not respond correctly to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza... and its consequences. Instead of beating their swords into plowshares, pens, and other things that are needed for the development of Palestinian society - in terms of the economy, society, culture, and so on - most of them read the developments incorrectly and immaturely. This was exploited by the terrorist networks, that are funded and run by the regimes of the ayatollahs in Tehran and the Ba'th [party] in Syria, and [people] have been taken in by delusions and empty slogans like 'liberation from the river to the sea' [that are heard] among the poor, hungry, and desperate Palestinian masses. At present, what [these masses] need most is food, medicines, clothing, and other essentials - not explosive belts, car bombs, and the slogan, 'Congratulations, oh Martyr, the black-eyed virgin awaits you.'"
[1] Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), June 27, 2006.
In an article in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa titled "The Crime at the Kerem Shalom Crossing," Saudi columnist Yusuf Nasir Al-Suweidan argues that the June 25, 2006 attack at the Kerem Shalom crossing, in which Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit was taken hostage, has turned the Palestinian dream of an independent state into a thing of the past, and that after Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians should have laid down their weapons and worked to develop Palestinian society.
The following are excerpts from the article: [1]
"When Vietcong Fighters Dug Underground Tunnels in Order to Reach the American Danang Base in South Vietnam... They Did so Inside the Borders of Their Homeland"
"When Vietcong fighters dug underground tunnels in order to reach the American Danang base in South Vietnam in the 1960s, they did so inside the borders of their homeland, Vietnam, and in the context of a minor world war in which the strong players were the Americans, the Chinese, and the Soviets.
"But the faulty course of action taken by the Palestinians, for instance this war of tunnels, is something else entirely. The tunnel dug by the terrorists from the Gaza Strip to the Kerem Shalom crossing took them outside the Palestinian border, and they used it to penetrate into Israel - an independent, sovereign, U.N. member state. There [in Israel] they perpetrated the crime of murdering two Israelis, kidnapping a third, and wounding others, with all the dangerous consequences that [such a] despicable attack has caused and will cause to the Palestinian side. As Palestinian Presidential Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina put it: 'Things are back to square one'..."
Hamas' Claims of "Important Victory" in This Attack are Absurd :
"It would be absurd to try to believe the claims of the terrorist Hamas movement, and of its allies and masters in Tehran and Damascus, that speak of an 'important victory' over the Israelis in this desperate attack. This [claim is absurd], for the simple and obvious reason that the military, political, and economic balance of power, along with every other parameter, will always favor Israel to a considerable degree, so that the very notion of equilibrium between the two sides in the conflict is [nothing but] a wild fantasy.
"[In addition] it would [be] a complete fantasy to think that the Israelis will react like 'harmless lambs' to what occurred near the Kerem Shalom crossing last Sunday. Several minutes after the terrorist attack, the crossings [were] closed and the Israeli military units began moving in battle readiness. This was the largest Israeli military build-up since the withdrawal from Gaza last September. This shows that the Israelis are determined to invade the Gaza Strip within hours [if three conditions are not met]: firstly, if the kidnapped Israeli is not released; secondly, if the firing of Qassam missiles into Israeli territories does not cease; and thirdly, [if] the terrorist infrastructure is not dismantled.
"If this invasion materializes, then this time, a new reality will be created in the Gaza Strip in which all talk about 'back to square one' will be nothing but wild optimism - since the [situation] will regress [far beyond that], to a level where it is possible to talk of a plan of deportation and demographic change in Gaza, and this [plan] might even be implemented soon. This will turn the Palestinian dream of an independent state into a thing of the past..."
"What [The Palestinian Masses] Need Most is Food, Medicine, Clothing... Not Explosive Belts, Car Bombs, and the Slogan, 'Congratulations, Oh Martyr, the Black-Eyed Virgin Awaits You'"
"The main mistake lies in the fact that the Palestinian organizations did not respond correctly to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza... and its consequences. Instead of beating their swords into plowshares, pens, and other things that are needed for the development of Palestinian society - in terms of the economy, society, culture, and so on - most of them read the developments incorrectly and immaturely. This was exploited by the terrorist networks, that are funded and run by the regimes of the ayatollahs in Tehran and the Ba'th [party] in Syria, and [people] have been taken in by delusions and empty slogans like 'liberation from the river to the sea' [that are heard] among the poor, hungry, and desperate Palestinian masses. At present, what [these masses] need most is food, medicines, clothing, and other essentials - not explosive belts, car bombs, and the slogan, 'Congratulations, oh Martyr, the black-eyed virgin awaits you.'"
[1] Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), June 27, 2006.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Right to exist? Who else asks for it?
Yehuda Avner, THE JERUSALEM POST
There is irony in the thought that were Menachem Begin alive today he would be saddened, indeed outraged, at Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's insistence - in consort with the US and the EU - that Hamas's political legitimacy be conditioned, inter alia, on its recognition of Israel's right to exist. "Right to exist?" I can hear the late prime minister roundly chastising his younger successor who declares himself to be a Begin disciple. "Are you telling me, Ehud, that our right to exist in Eretz Yisrael has to be sanctioned for political purposes by an intrinsically anti-Semitic, murderous Palestinian Arab terrorist organization? Have you lost your Jewish self-respect? Where is your Jewish memory?"
Menachem Begin had a surfeit of both - Jewish self-respect and memory. He had an all-encompassing grasp of Jewish history. Instinctively his memory went back thousands of years and his vision forward thousands of years. Jewish nostalgia fed his soul; it nurtured his deepest convictions. SO WHEN, on the first day of his premiership in 1977, he was waylaid by a tall, debonair, rakishly good-looking Englishman in a bow tie and a perfectly pitched BBC announcer's voice, and saucily asked whether he looked forward to a time when the Palestinians would recognize Israel, his jaw tightened in restrained Jewish anger. But honed as he was by years of legal training, he answered with the composed demeanor of a practiced jurist, saying,
"Traditionally, there are four major criteria of statehood under international law. One - an effective and independent government. Two - an effective and independent control of the population. Three - a defined territory. And four - the capacity to freely engage in foreign relations. Israel is in possession of all four attributes and, hence, is a fully fledged sovereign state and a fully accredited member of the United Nations."
"But, surely, you would insist, would you not, that the relevant Palestinian organizations recognize Israel as a sine qua non for negotiations with them?" persisted the fellow. "Certainly not! Those so-called relevant organizations are gangs of murderers bent on destroying the State of Israel. We will never conduct talks about our own destruction."
"And were they to recognize Israel's existence - would you then negotiate with them?" pressed the correspondent.
"No, sir!" "Why not?" "Because I don't need Palestinian recognition for my right to exist."
TWO HOURS later Menachem Begin stood at the podium of the Knesset, presenting his new cabinet. He began by dryly outlining the democratic processes that led to the changing of the guard, from Labor to Likud. And then, in recollection perhaps, of his acerbic exchange with the BBC man, he began talking about Israel's right to exist.
"Our right to exist - have you ever heard of such a thing?" he declared, passion creeping into his voice. "Would it enter the mind of any Briton or Frenchman, Belgian or Dutchman, Hungarian or Bulgarian, Russian or American, to request for its people recognition of its right to exist?"
He glared at his audience and wagged a finger, stilling every chattering voice in the Knesset chamber. And now, using his voice like a cello, sonorous and vibrant, he drove on: "Mr. Speaker: We were granted our right to exist by the God of our fathers at the glimmer of the dawn of human civilization four thousand years ago. Hence, the Jewish people have an historic, eternal and inalienable right to exist in this land, Eretz Yisrael, the land of our forefathers. We need nobody's recognition in asserting this inalienable right. And for this inalienable right, which has been sanctified in Jewish blood from generation to generation, we have paid a price unexampled in the annals of nations."
Then he rose up on his toes, his shoulders squared, thumped the podium, and perorated in a voice that was thunder, "Mr. Speaker: From the Knesset of Israel, I say to the world, our very existence per se is our right to exist!" A spontaneous applause rose from the benches. Many got to their feet in full-throated acclaim. It was a stirring Knesset moment - a moment of instinctive self-recognition affirming that though the State of Israel was then but 29 years old, its roots in Eretz Yisrael ran 4,000 years deep.
THREE WEEKS later, the very same issue cropped up once more when prime minister Begin first met president Jimmy Carter in the White House. As their encounter drew to a close, the president handed the premier a piece of heavy bond White House stationary on which the formal communiqu to be released in their name was drafted.
"I trust this will meet with your approval," said Carter in his reedy Georgian voice. Begin ran his eye over the one page text, and said, "Totally acceptable, Mr. President, but for one sentence." Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, an unruffled man as a rule, who had invested much effort in drafting the document, became momentarily agitated. After a year at the job he had perfected a manner of drafting such joint statements designed to convey as little meaning as possible. "And what might that be?" he asked. "Please delete the sentence which reads, 'The United States affirms Israel's inherent right to exist.'" President Carter's steely pale-blue eyes flared in surprise. "It would be incompatible with my responsibilities as president of the United States were I to omit this commitment to your country," he said. "To the best of my knowledge, every Israeli prime minister has asked for this public pledge." "I sincerely appreciate you sentiment, Mr. President," said Mr. Begin, his tone deeply reflective as if reaching down into generations of memory, "But it would be equally incompatible with my responsibilities as prime minister of Israel were I not to ask you to erase that sentence." "But why?" "Because our Jewish state needs no American affirmation of our right to exist. Our Hebrew bible established that right millennia ago. Never, throughout the centuries, did we ever abandon or forfeit that right. Therefore, sir, we alone, the Jewish people - no one else - are responsible for our country's right to exist."
So yes, Menachem Begin would, indeed, have had what to say to Ehud Olmert, were he around today. Never would he have put on the table a demand for recognition of Israel's right to exist as a quid pro quo for negotiation. To him, this was a high ideological principle, a fundamental axiom, an absolute given, a natural corollary of his all-embracing view of Jewry's extraordinary history.
Ehud, take it out.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The writer served on the personal staff of five prime ministers, including Menachem Begin.avner28@netvision.net.
There is irony in the thought that were Menachem Begin alive today he would be saddened, indeed outraged, at Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's insistence - in consort with the US and the EU - that Hamas's political legitimacy be conditioned, inter alia, on its recognition of Israel's right to exist. "Right to exist?" I can hear the late prime minister roundly chastising his younger successor who declares himself to be a Begin disciple. "Are you telling me, Ehud, that our right to exist in Eretz Yisrael has to be sanctioned for political purposes by an intrinsically anti-Semitic, murderous Palestinian Arab terrorist organization? Have you lost your Jewish self-respect? Where is your Jewish memory?"
Menachem Begin had a surfeit of both - Jewish self-respect and memory. He had an all-encompassing grasp of Jewish history. Instinctively his memory went back thousands of years and his vision forward thousands of years. Jewish nostalgia fed his soul; it nurtured his deepest convictions. SO WHEN, on the first day of his premiership in 1977, he was waylaid by a tall, debonair, rakishly good-looking Englishman in a bow tie and a perfectly pitched BBC announcer's voice, and saucily asked whether he looked forward to a time when the Palestinians would recognize Israel, his jaw tightened in restrained Jewish anger. But honed as he was by years of legal training, he answered with the composed demeanor of a practiced jurist, saying,
"Traditionally, there are four major criteria of statehood under international law. One - an effective and independent government. Two - an effective and independent control of the population. Three - a defined territory. And four - the capacity to freely engage in foreign relations. Israel is in possession of all four attributes and, hence, is a fully fledged sovereign state and a fully accredited member of the United Nations."
"But, surely, you would insist, would you not, that the relevant Palestinian organizations recognize Israel as a sine qua non for negotiations with them?" persisted the fellow. "Certainly not! Those so-called relevant organizations are gangs of murderers bent on destroying the State of Israel. We will never conduct talks about our own destruction."
"And were they to recognize Israel's existence - would you then negotiate with them?" pressed the correspondent.
"No, sir!" "Why not?" "Because I don't need Palestinian recognition for my right to exist."
TWO HOURS later Menachem Begin stood at the podium of the Knesset, presenting his new cabinet. He began by dryly outlining the democratic processes that led to the changing of the guard, from Labor to Likud. And then, in recollection perhaps, of his acerbic exchange with the BBC man, he began talking about Israel's right to exist.
"Our right to exist - have you ever heard of such a thing?" he declared, passion creeping into his voice. "Would it enter the mind of any Briton or Frenchman, Belgian or Dutchman, Hungarian or Bulgarian, Russian or American, to request for its people recognition of its right to exist?"
He glared at his audience and wagged a finger, stilling every chattering voice in the Knesset chamber. And now, using his voice like a cello, sonorous and vibrant, he drove on: "Mr. Speaker: We were granted our right to exist by the God of our fathers at the glimmer of the dawn of human civilization four thousand years ago. Hence, the Jewish people have an historic, eternal and inalienable right to exist in this land, Eretz Yisrael, the land of our forefathers. We need nobody's recognition in asserting this inalienable right. And for this inalienable right, which has been sanctified in Jewish blood from generation to generation, we have paid a price unexampled in the annals of nations."
Then he rose up on his toes, his shoulders squared, thumped the podium, and perorated in a voice that was thunder, "Mr. Speaker: From the Knesset of Israel, I say to the world, our very existence per se is our right to exist!" A spontaneous applause rose from the benches. Many got to their feet in full-throated acclaim. It was a stirring Knesset moment - a moment of instinctive self-recognition affirming that though the State of Israel was then but 29 years old, its roots in Eretz Yisrael ran 4,000 years deep.
THREE WEEKS later, the very same issue cropped up once more when prime minister Begin first met president Jimmy Carter in the White House. As their encounter drew to a close, the president handed the premier a piece of heavy bond White House stationary on which the formal communiqu to be released in their name was drafted.
"I trust this will meet with your approval," said Carter in his reedy Georgian voice. Begin ran his eye over the one page text, and said, "Totally acceptable, Mr. President, but for one sentence." Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, an unruffled man as a rule, who had invested much effort in drafting the document, became momentarily agitated. After a year at the job he had perfected a manner of drafting such joint statements designed to convey as little meaning as possible. "And what might that be?" he asked. "Please delete the sentence which reads, 'The United States affirms Israel's inherent right to exist.'" President Carter's steely pale-blue eyes flared in surprise. "It would be incompatible with my responsibilities as president of the United States were I to omit this commitment to your country," he said. "To the best of my knowledge, every Israeli prime minister has asked for this public pledge." "I sincerely appreciate you sentiment, Mr. President," said Mr. Begin, his tone deeply reflective as if reaching down into generations of memory, "But it would be equally incompatible with my responsibilities as prime minister of Israel were I not to ask you to erase that sentence." "But why?" "Because our Jewish state needs no American affirmation of our right to exist. Our Hebrew bible established that right millennia ago. Never, throughout the centuries, did we ever abandon or forfeit that right. Therefore, sir, we alone, the Jewish people - no one else - are responsible for our country's right to exist."
So yes, Menachem Begin would, indeed, have had what to say to Ehud Olmert, were he around today. Never would he have put on the table a demand for recognition of Israel's right to exist as a quid pro quo for negotiation. To him, this was a high ideological principle, a fundamental axiom, an absolute given, a natural corollary of his all-embracing view of Jewry's extraordinary history.
Ehud, take it out.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The writer served on the personal staff of five prime ministers, including Menachem Begin.avner28@netvision.net.
SHANGHAI STOPOVER
SHANGHAI, China.
After the enforced o/night rest at Heathrow's Ramada Hotel (not recommended, basic and too far, unless u use their shuttle), the BA flight was not very comfortable at all. On our arrival at the huge Pudong airport, we decided unwisely to follow the hostesses who escort you to the "Maglev" train (hitting 430km/hr) and then by taxi from downtown to the hotel. Bad move with all our luggage! On top of it taxi-driver "took us for he proverbial ride" and it cost us double what it should have,- from the airport!!!!
June/July temperatures in Shanghai hover around mid-30s, high humidity and not pleasant at all. We were happy to meet up with our son and daughter after 2 months at the hotel Ramada Plaza in Nanjing Rd., in the centre of town. This hotel and others in the same area are favourites of the tour groups, but personally we would not recommend that area for most of us Westerners. Apart from McDonalds and KFC, it really does not cater for Western palates,- whether for food or for shopping. Its redeeming features were the indoor pool plus gym where the guys could work-out while we girls went- shopping!
The up-market area is in the former "French-concession" district where we had stayed before, around the Okura Gardens Hotel (superb!) in Huai Hai Rd. This is where the smaller boutiques are situated, on either side,- as the parallel Changle Rd. is equally good,- plus the general ambience is less crowded and there are more places for us Westerners to visit comfortably. We girls, (Hedy and niece Mandy and I,) spent quite a bit of time around there; and at night we took them all to Xintiandi, an international- restaurant and shopping development which allowed us to have a proper meal,- Western-style (steaks at a German beer-hall!)
The former BUND area has been converted into expensive "label-boutiques" complexes, but at least we were able to find the Sybilla Café next to the Peace Hotel, where the Zegna shop is, and we could indulge in a soup, salad and toasted sandwich lunch even at 3pm,- a rarity even in all the big hotels after 2pm! (Buffet lunches are offered bet. 12-2pm, thereafter only drinks, with possibly a cake!)
Shopping for us Western females beyond size10, creates merriment all around! Luckily there is the Dong Jia Du Fabric Market where you can buy materials to have clothes made up overnight if necessary, for males and females. We ordered some things there,- some came out better than others, but what the hell,- they were cheap enough to have them altered if necessary, at home. The 'fake market" was also opp. the Okura Gardens originally, but it closed down there the week we arrived and reopened with shop-stalls in a multistorey building in Nanjing Rd. They are not only fakes, but also cheats,- so 'buyer beware' is the rule of thumb!
FINALLY WE WERE HAPPY TO SEE OURSELVES BACK HOME,- SWEET HOME,- albeit full of a cold which I caught on the way! BUT WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MELBOURNE'S MILD WEATHER WHILE WE WERE AWAY? It is awful just now!
After the enforced o/night rest at Heathrow's Ramada Hotel (not recommended, basic and too far, unless u use their shuttle), the BA flight was not very comfortable at all. On our arrival at the huge Pudong airport, we decided unwisely to follow the hostesses who escort you to the "Maglev" train (hitting 430km/hr) and then by taxi from downtown to the hotel. Bad move with all our luggage! On top of it taxi-driver "took us for he proverbial ride" and it cost us double what it should have,- from the airport!!!!
June/July temperatures in Shanghai hover around mid-30s, high humidity and not pleasant at all. We were happy to meet up with our son and daughter after 2 months at the hotel Ramada Plaza in Nanjing Rd., in the centre of town. This hotel and others in the same area are favourites of the tour groups, but personally we would not recommend that area for most of us Westerners. Apart from McDonalds and KFC, it really does not cater for Western palates,- whether for food or for shopping. Its redeeming features were the indoor pool plus gym where the guys could work-out while we girls went- shopping!
The up-market area is in the former "French-concession" district where we had stayed before, around the Okura Gardens Hotel (superb!) in Huai Hai Rd. This is where the smaller boutiques are situated, on either side,- as the parallel Changle Rd. is equally good,- plus the general ambience is less crowded and there are more places for us Westerners to visit comfortably. We girls, (Hedy and niece Mandy and I,) spent quite a bit of time around there; and at night we took them all to Xintiandi, an international- restaurant and shopping development which allowed us to have a proper meal,- Western-style (steaks at a German beer-hall!)
The former BUND area has been converted into expensive "label-boutiques" complexes, but at least we were able to find the Sybilla Café next to the Peace Hotel, where the Zegna shop is, and we could indulge in a soup, salad and toasted sandwich lunch even at 3pm,- a rarity even in all the big hotels after 2pm! (Buffet lunches are offered bet. 12-2pm, thereafter only drinks, with possibly a cake!)
Shopping for us Western females beyond size10, creates merriment all around! Luckily there is the Dong Jia Du Fabric Market where you can buy materials to have clothes made up overnight if necessary, for males and females. We ordered some things there,- some came out better than others, but what the hell,- they were cheap enough to have them altered if necessary, at home. The 'fake market" was also opp. the Okura Gardens originally, but it closed down there the week we arrived and reopened with shop-stalls in a multistorey building in Nanjing Rd. They are not only fakes, but also cheats,- so 'buyer beware' is the rule of thumb!
FINALLY WE WERE HAPPY TO SEE OURSELVES BACK HOME,- SWEET HOME,- albeit full of a cold which I caught on the way! BUT WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MELBOURNE'S MILD WEATHER WHILE WE WERE AWAY? It is awful just now!
Cruising the Adriatic and Mediterranean.
"CELEBRITY" CRUISE LINER "MILLENIUM".
We boarded the ship on the Monday evening, in Venice, but it still stayed in port until the following day, departing at 5pm.
It is no small matter embarking 2000 passengers on a 90,000+ ton ship, in these days of security concerns in particular. We experienced difficulties immediately as my ID pass was missing and Ernie's suitcase showed something 'fishy' (a pair of sharp, long scissors which he had completely forgotten about) when checked by the screeners, so firstly we were kept waiting while we got a security clearance, then later, he was called back to the embarkation deck. The Hebrew-speaking security personnel (who else has such a good record for security management as the Israelis), insisted in my thorough identification before letting me on board and then unpacking everything in Ernie's suitcase until the suspicious item was found,- much to Ernie's embarrassment. My small suitcase lost its tag and was eventually returned to me late at night,- while many passengers complained of lost luggage from all over the world, at airports and in transit! I would imagine that it's a logistical nightmare for the crews of the hundreds of cruise-liners roaming the seas these days!
Departing Venice at sunset, cruising slowly along the Grand Canal, in front of Piazza St. Marco, was just beautiful. For the next week we were able to go back to a more normal routine of eating what we liked whenever we liked , exercising in the gym or walking the track on deck, dining in style or casually, breakfasting in bed or at the buffet or preferably, at the health-bar around the air-conditioned ,glass-enclosed second whirl-pool & spas deck area,- our favourite spot. And the nightly entertainment,- well, that again is one of the best parts of cruising, particularly it seems on the Celebrity liners.
The weather became very warm to hot and the seas beautifully calm and smooth-sailing for us all along the Adriatic to Dubrovnik once again, as our first port-of-call. Tours are organized at every stop for those who want them, often booked well in advance from home. But we had visited all the ports before, so we were able to disembark at leisure if at all, walk-about wherever we wanted to and return at our convenience. Ernie often preferred to stay on board and spend the time at the gym or reading around the pool.
Santorini, the picturesque Greek island was our next stop after a day at sea. This was magical,- the island itself is beautiful, the shops are lovely ( a shopping channel on TV and a shopping-guru advises everyone what to buy where in every port, with the admonition:" if you see it and like it,- buy it,- or you'll be sorry later!") Our ship stayed in Santorini Bay area until
11 pm. so that we could see the famous "Santorini sunset" which was really spectacular! They organised a Greek-theme buffet around the pool for that evening, which we chose to attend instead of the dining-room,- complete with lamb-on-the-spit and musicians from the island entertaining us. It was a magical night!
(Being Friday evening, we attended the Shabbat service first, which they provided on board this American Liner, complete with wine and Challa and a couple of youngsters expertly took over reading the service from the photocopied pages which were distributed to the 2 dozen or so of us there!)
After Piraeus/ATHENS, we had another day at sea and our next stop was NAPLES. The beautiful weather and calm seas made it very pleasurable to be on board. The lecturers on various topics, individual entertainers, the Broadway-style extravaganzas on a couple of nights and the various bands and musicians wherever we turned, made this a very enjoyable holiday for all generations,- each group finding their own level of entertainment and company. Families, the disabled of all ages,- all could enjoy some aspect of this holiday and this is why cruising has become the number one form of holiday travel these days.
Naples offered the prospect of visiting Pompeii, the island of Capri, Sorrento and the Amalfi coast, or all of these in one tour costing some $350US pp. We picked up the local ferry to Sorrento, then by taxi for a drive around the coast to Positano where we lunched, walked down the steep hillside to the beach and picked up the ferry back to Sorrento and then again to Naples,- all at minimal cost.
Next day it was farewell-time for us to our fellow passengers and the ship, in Civitavecchia/ROMA, as we were transferred to the airport to pick up our BA-flight to Shanghai via London. (Again, this was an unnecessary expense to have arranged and paid from home,- at least half the cost to do it on the spot, with absolutely no trouble at all!)
We hope that our friendly dinner-table companions, the Greens and Goldenbergs from the USA and the Woodcocks from the UK, continued to enjoy the 4 days of the rest of the cruise and the other ports which we missed, all the way to Barcelona.
We boarded the ship on the Monday evening, in Venice, but it still stayed in port until the following day, departing at 5pm.
It is no small matter embarking 2000 passengers on a 90,000+ ton ship, in these days of security concerns in particular. We experienced difficulties immediately as my ID pass was missing and Ernie's suitcase showed something 'fishy' (a pair of sharp, long scissors which he had completely forgotten about) when checked by the screeners, so firstly we were kept waiting while we got a security clearance, then later, he was called back to the embarkation deck. The Hebrew-speaking security personnel (who else has such a good record for security management as the Israelis), insisted in my thorough identification before letting me on board and then unpacking everything in Ernie's suitcase until the suspicious item was found,- much to Ernie's embarrassment. My small suitcase lost its tag and was eventually returned to me late at night,- while many passengers complained of lost luggage from all over the world, at airports and in transit! I would imagine that it's a logistical nightmare for the crews of the hundreds of cruise-liners roaming the seas these days!
Departing Venice at sunset, cruising slowly along the Grand Canal, in front of Piazza St. Marco, was just beautiful. For the next week we were able to go back to a more normal routine of eating what we liked whenever we liked , exercising in the gym or walking the track on deck, dining in style or casually, breakfasting in bed or at the buffet or preferably, at the health-bar around the air-conditioned ,glass-enclosed second whirl-pool & spas deck area,- our favourite spot. And the nightly entertainment,- well, that again is one of the best parts of cruising, particularly it seems on the Celebrity liners.
The weather became very warm to hot and the seas beautifully calm and smooth-sailing for us all along the Adriatic to Dubrovnik once again, as our first port-of-call. Tours are organized at every stop for those who want them, often booked well in advance from home. But we had visited all the ports before, so we were able to disembark at leisure if at all, walk-about wherever we wanted to and return at our convenience. Ernie often preferred to stay on board and spend the time at the gym or reading around the pool.
Santorini, the picturesque Greek island was our next stop after a day at sea. This was magical,- the island itself is beautiful, the shops are lovely ( a shopping channel on TV and a shopping-guru advises everyone what to buy where in every port, with the admonition:" if you see it and like it,- buy it,- or you'll be sorry later!") Our ship stayed in Santorini Bay area until
11 pm. so that we could see the famous "Santorini sunset" which was really spectacular! They organised a Greek-theme buffet around the pool for that evening, which we chose to attend instead of the dining-room,- complete with lamb-on-the-spit and musicians from the island entertaining us. It was a magical night!
(Being Friday evening, we attended the Shabbat service first, which they provided on board this American Liner, complete with wine and Challa and a couple of youngsters expertly took over reading the service from the photocopied pages which were distributed to the 2 dozen or so of us there!)
After Piraeus/ATHENS, we had another day at sea and our next stop was NAPLES. The beautiful weather and calm seas made it very pleasurable to be on board. The lecturers on various topics, individual entertainers, the Broadway-style extravaganzas on a couple of nights and the various bands and musicians wherever we turned, made this a very enjoyable holiday for all generations,- each group finding their own level of entertainment and company. Families, the disabled of all ages,- all could enjoy some aspect of this holiday and this is why cruising has become the number one form of holiday travel these days.
Naples offered the prospect of visiting Pompeii, the island of Capri, Sorrento and the Amalfi coast, or all of these in one tour costing some $350US pp. We picked up the local ferry to Sorrento, then by taxi for a drive around the coast to Positano where we lunched, walked down the steep hillside to the beach and picked up the ferry back to Sorrento and then again to Naples,- all at minimal cost.
Next day it was farewell-time for us to our fellow passengers and the ship, in Civitavecchia/ROMA, as we were transferred to the airport to pick up our BA-flight to Shanghai via London. (Again, this was an unnecessary expense to have arranged and paid from home,- at least half the cost to do it on the spot, with absolutely no trouble at all!)
We hope that our friendly dinner-table companions, the Greens and Goldenbergs from the USA and the Woodcocks from the UK, continued to enjoy the 4 days of the rest of the cruise and the other ports which we missed, all the way to Barcelona.
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