Love of the Land: The real nakba

The real nakba

Palestinian refugees from
Iraq after the fall of
Saddam Hussein
(2007 photo)

Fresnozionism.org
16 May '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/05/the-real-nakba/

I don’t have to tell you that every day we are bombarded with stories about ill-treatment, racism and apartheid perpetrated against Palestinian Arabs by Israel. Fifty, a hundred NGOs painstakingly document every tiny humiliation suffered by the noble Palestinian Arabs at the hands of the Jews. Half the world directly supports the Palestinian Cause, which is always described in terms of human rights and justice, although we know that as a matter of fact it is the opposite.

But I’ll bet there is some recent history of the Palestinian Arabs that you don’t know. It’s not surprising — the West doesn’t really care about Arabs; they are just barely above black Africans on the ladder of importance in our media and to our politicians (quick: how many died in the Second Congo War between 1998-2008? Did you even hear about the Second Congo war? Try 5.4 million human beings).

Of course since 1967 everyone’s heard the Arab version of the Palestinian story ad nauseum. But here are some questions to think about (and then I’ll tell you where to find the surprising, even shocking answers):

Who has practiced apartheid, de jure as well as de facto, against Palestinian Arabs?

What countries do not allow Palestinian Arabs to work in various professions, to go to regular schools, to be appointed to civil service jobs, to vote, etc.?

Who really made the Gaza Strip an “open-air prison?”


What country expelled 450,000 Palestinians?


Why does no Arab country except Jordan allow Palestinians to become citizens (and even in Jordan their rights are strictly circumscribed)?


What country has killed more Palestinian Arabs than have died as a result of their struggles with Israel since 1948?


In 1967, the life expectancy of a Gaza resident was 48 (today it is 72). Why is that?


Why are there 4-5 million claimants of Palestinian refugee status today (about 600,000 fled from Israel in 1948)? Why has this problem persisted longer than any other refugee problem in history, including that of 850,000 Jews who were kicked out or fled from Arab countries at about the same time?

Thanks to Ma’ariv writer Ben-Dror Yemini, and the bloggers Elder of Ziyon and IsraeliNurse, you can find the answer to these questions, as well as the real story of the Palestinian Arab refugees here.

Don’t miss it. Seriously, read it (you won’t find it in English anywhere else) and ask yourself why Israel should pay the price for the real nakba of the Palestinian Arabs.

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Love of the Land: The real nakba

Love of the Land: A Letter to Gaza

A Letter to Gaza

Nonie Darwish
Frontpagemag.com
15 April '10

I recently received an email accusing me of hating Arabs and my father. This email is typical of Arab media accusations of my views regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since most Arabs have no chance to read my book, Now They Call Me Infidel, Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror, which explains in detail my position, I will answer the email in this article. First, below is the translation of the Arabic language email which I received without a signature:

Salam to you,

With all of our pride in your father we pray that Allah will bless him with entering paradise, which is the wish of every person after this short prideful meaningless life. I want to ask you, has your father become your enemy after his death? We in the city of Gaza take pride in your father and I live on a street by the name of Shahid Moustafa Hafez which also has a school by the name of Shahid Moustafa Hafez. We never forgot his sacrifice, so how could you become an enemy to the tortured Palestinian people who are still suffering at the hands of Arab Zionists? I ask Allah to give you health and strength.

Awaiting your response and thank you in advance.

Here is my response:

Dear Gaza resident,

Your email touched me as sincere even though your accusations are wrong. I am not the enemy of Arabs and I assure you that I love my original culture and people. What makes me different is that I do not only love Arabs, but I also love the Jewish people. I am speaking my conscience. I respect their right to live in peace in their tiny homeland, Israel. I understand how that could be puzzling and unbelievable to many Arabs, to love both Jews and Arabs.
We Arabs have suffered from an unnatural and consistent indoctrination into Islamic supremacy and Jew hatred for over 1400 years. Thus it has become unfathomable to the Arab mind to comprehend loving both Arabs and Jews and wishing both well. Our culture has deprived us for many centuries from loving all of humanity as equals, through intense religious indoctrination resulting in self-imposed isolation and non-integration with other cultures. This isolation and jihad against non-Muslims has become increasingly difficult to maintain. Muslims everywhere are trying desperately to save face, reform Islam’s image and deny the undeniable. But they also want to have their cake and eat it too. While they are telling the world Islam is a religion of peace, they still want to continue with the jihad against non-Muslim countries. While one leader says, let’s kill all the Jews and take over Rome, another says to Western media that Islam is a religion of peace and we are deeply offended by the anti-Islam rhetoric. To play this sick game, Muslim culture must live a dysfunctional double life where everyone is deceived, including Muslims.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: A Letter to Gaza

Love of the Land: A Bronner Botch - It's All in a Name

A Bronner Botch - It's All in a Name

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
26 February '10

Ethan Bronner displays the subtle bias that permeates our media reality - even if unintended - when on the issue of eastern Jerusalem he writes:-

no utterance escapes politics. All labels and names here are contested. The mayor calls the neighborhood not by its Arabic name of Al Bustan but by a Hebrew one — Gan Hamelech, or the King’s Garden, a reference to the spot some believe King David wrote psalms

Ethan, Bustan in Arabic means Garden or Orchard. The Arabs are foreigners, and have been since 638, and are occupiers, turning Jewish land into what they wish you and other to supposedly consider as Arab land since time immemorial". Hebrew came first.

You see, the Arabs "borrowed" not only the name but the history of the Jews there. It's not even a contest.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: A Bronner Botch - It's All in a Name

Love of the Land: Land swaps and right of return

Land swaps and right of return

Fresnozionism.org
13 February '10

News item:

Israel and a future Palestinian state should agree to land swaps that would make settlement blocs part of Israel proper and certain Arab towns now in Israel part of a future Palestinian state, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said in an interview published on Saturday.

Ayalon also said that the Palestinian demand to stop settlement construction as a precondition to negotiations was unrealistic, and would be like Israel demanding that the PA, as a precondition to talks, give up its demand for a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees.

In an interview with the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Alawsat, Ayalon said Israeli Arabs “would not lose anything” by joining the Palestinian state as part of a land swap.

“If Israeli Arabs say that they are proud Palestinians, why should they not be proud in the Palestinian state?” the Israel Beiteinu minister asked. This population could contribute to building the Palestinian state due to its high socioeconomic status, he said.

I don’t know how much of the above was simply rhetorical, but a few comments:

A) Israeli Arabs have always been violently opposed to land swaps, for two reasons. One is that they know that they are far better off economically and more secure physically as citizens of Israel than of ‘Palestine’. The other is that they believe that the land of Israel belongs to them and that ultimately they will control it. Here’s my favorite quotation to demonstrate this:

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Land swaps and right of return

Love of the Land: Bibi Versus The Iceman

Bibi Versus The Iceman

I thought that I'd draw Obama and Bibi Netanyahu as battling SuperHeroes, but they came out looking like a pair of phony costumed TV wrestlers putting on a show!

* * *

The Arab-Israeli conflict will end when the Arab states accept the existence of a Jewish State in the region as natural. Political correctness requires that we ignore this obvious truth and pretend that the problem is simply a border dispute between "Palestinians" and Israelis.

Love of the Land: Bibi Versus The Iceman

Love of the Land: This is our Land

This is our Land

And Lavan answered and he said to Jacob, the daughters are my daughters and the children are my children and the flocks are my flocks and all that you see is mine.
And now, let us make a covenant.
If you will afflict my daughters and if you will take wives in addition to my daughters, no man is with us, see G-d is witness between me and you. (From this week's Torah portion, Vayetzeh, Genesis 31: 43-44, 50)

It's strange. Time and again, Jacob catches Lavan in his lies, but Lavan persists in playing the role of the victim - and not of the perpetrator.

"The daughters are my daughters?" Jacob worked for them - above and beyond the time upon which they had originally agreed. Furthermore, he continued working for Rachel even after Lavan tricked him into marrying Leah.

"The flocks are my flocks?" Here, too, Jacob kept up his side of the bargain, while it was Lavan who dishonestly changed the rules.

Where does Lavan get the chutzpah to lie without compunction? What makes him so confident? How can it be that after Lavan makes a treaty with Jacob and bids him farewell, he makes new conditions; "If you will afflict my daughters," as if Jacob was some sort of lowlife from the Charan marketplace?

It seems that Lavan is playing on the last vestiges of Jacob's dependence on him. While it is true that Jacob honestly earned his family and possessions, the platform upon which they were earned belonged to Lavan. Jacob has not yet completely freed himself of the "womb" in which his family and wealth developed.

The evil Lavan immediately identifies Jacob's weak point.

Today, the Arabs in the Land of Israel will settle for nothing less than the entire Land. All of our groveling and attempts to "compromise" have not helped. They abduct a soldier and conduct negotiations for his release as if they were the lords of the Land.

Where does their chutzpah come from? Like Lavan, they have identified our weak point; the point at which we feel dependant upon them. Israel's leaders also believe that the Land of Israel really belongs to the Arabs, that their struggle against us is just and that they kill us because we have stolen their land. In the eyes of Israel's leaders, the daughters are the Arabs' daughters and the flocks are their flocks.

Our weakness allows them to portray themselves as victims and not as perpetrators.

Leadership that is incapable of relying on our covenant with G-d and declaring that this is our Land will come out on the short end of every negotiation.

Shabbat Shalom,

Moshe Feiglin

Love of the Land: This is our Land

Love of the Land: Why Are Arabs Unhappy with Hillary? Blame Obama

Why Are Arabs Unhappy with Hillary? Blame Obama

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
02 November 09

If Hillary Clinton is unhappy about the abuse she is taking from the Arab world over her equivocal attitude toward Israel, then she should blame President Obama and those of his foreign-policy advisers who urged him to make picking a fight with the Jewish state over settlements one of their top priorities once they took office. Clinton is taking flack for her comment that Israel’s offer to “restrain” the building of housing in Jewish settlements in the West Bank was “unprecedented.”

She’s right, in that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone a long way toward trying to mollify the Obama administration on this issue. But having spent much of the past year hounding Netanyahu over settlements in a futile attempt to undermine the Israeli’s hold on power (in fact, Netanyahu’s popularity has grown as a result of his refusal to bow to Obama, while the Israeli public has lost all faith in the U.S. president’s goodwill), the Americans have raised Arab expectations to the point where any Israeli gesture on the issue is considered insignificant. Even more, when the United States reacts to such Israeli gestures with anything but complete contempt, it is interpreted by the Arabs as American acquiescence with the entire settlement enterprise. The Arab world was wrongly encouraged by months of Washington skirmishing with Jerusalem to think that the administration intended to completely ditch the U.S.-Israel alliance. Anything less than a break with Israel winds up being seen as a betrayal of those unrealistic hopes that were engendered by Obama’s ill-advised strategy.

So what does Clinton say in her defense in response to Arab criticisms? All she can do is repeat past rhetoric that attacks Israel on settlements, which does nothing to ameliorate Arab hard feelings. Allowing more “daylight” between Israel and the United States has turned out to be dead end from which the administration cannot extract itself.

But let’s go back to the basics about this whole dispute. The settlements argument was utterly pointless, because even if Israel continued to build everywhere at a breakneck pace, it wouldn’t mean that they couldn’t or wouldn’t surrender territory if a real peace deal was in the offing. But it isn’t. In fact, the Palestinians still have no interest in negotiating with Israel for reasons that have everything to do with the toxic nature of Palestinian nationalism and their refusal to accept a Jewish state within any borders and nothing to do with any gestures the Israelis have or have not made. So the argument with Israel accomplished nothing to undermine America’s standing on both sides of the argument, which is, when you think about, quite a trick.

The bottom line of Obama’s and Clinton’s first 10 months in office is worsened relations with both Israel and the Arab world, with peace just as far off as it was under Bush. All of which should leave us wondering just how much worse off another year of Obama’s foreign-policy incompetence will leave the Middle East.

Love of the Land: Why Are Arabs Unhappy with Hillary? Blame Obama

Love of the Land: Another Tack: Uri's beloved Ada'le

Another Tack: Uri's beloved Ada'le

Sarah Honig
JPost
29 October 09

Most of us Israelis were literally dumbstruck by the imbecilities which our latest Nobel laureate, Ada Yonath, spouted. No sooner had she made us proud, Yonath proceeded to slap us hard across our collective face. We're still smarting from the supposed smart one's slurs, which is perhaps why it's better to pretend that she never advised we forthwith liberate all convicted terrorists - regardless of Gilad Schalit's ongoing captivity and certainly regardless of whatever atrocity they committed and were duly tried and convicted for.

"It's unclear to me why we're holding these Palestinians - the ones we call 'terrorists' - instead of releasing everybody from the outset, without any link to a deal for Schalit," Yonath opined in an Army Radio interview. Her incisive scientific logic continued: "It's in our power to change the present situation. When one is incarcerated for years, friends and family around him grow angry. That's how we create terrorists.... If no terrorists sat in our prisons, nobody would abduct Israelis to effect their release. By holding terrorists, we give the other side an appetite to launch kidnapping operations. Once we no longer imprison terrorists, they'd have no reason to kidnap."

If taken seriously, the implications of the above babble are staggering. It's akin to suggesting that the surefire crime stopper is to empty all prisons, halt all law enforcement activities, desist from arresting, prosecuting, sentencing and punishing miscreants - no matter how heinous their felonies. A free-for-all will safeguard our freedoms.

FOR A state like ours - the only one worldwide overtly threatened with genocide - the implications are altogether scary. They plainly mandate we stop defending ourselves.

If, as Yonath contends, hopelessness is the mother of conflict, then it might well be asked why well-off British-born youths of Pakistani extraction chose to detonate themselves at a beachfront Tel Aviv club. Were they so hopeless in the Labor-led UK that they decided to take it out on us?

If, according to Yonath, violence is triggered by sending murderers to prison, how is it that Arab massacres began many decades before we gained sovereignty and attendant authority to apprehend anyone?

How did Jews nettle Palestinian idol Haj Amin al-Husseini to induce him to join Hitler in Nazi Berlin and became an active accomplice in the "final solution?"

Does Yonath believe the masterminds of the Park Hotel, Sbarro Pizzeria, Maxim Restaurant and many more suicide bombings deserve no reckoning? Would she let off scot-free executioners, like those who shot (at point-blank, one-by-one) expectant mother Tali Hatuel and her four tiny daughters (as well as the fetus she carried to nearly full-term)?

If even legal action is illegitimate, how do we safeguard ourselves? By surrendering?

The so-called political right and center fear vocalizing their indignation, lest they thereby amplify Yonath's delegitimation of Israeli self-preservation. The embarrassment caused by so honored an Israeli echoing enemy rhetoric is too bitter a pill. Even our ever-voluble left-of-center crowd seems embarrassed. There's no exultant crowing, no "we told you so."

Yonath isn't even on the fringes of our consensus. Unbeknownst to most Israelis, who hadn't heard of her until the Nobel committee lifted her from anonymity, she is one of Uri Avnery's loyal sidekicks, a true disciple, even a quasi-protégée.

Read what he himself wrote: "Our table celebrated with Ada Yonath. This 'table' just had its 50th anniversary. It started by accident in California, the café established at the time by Abie Nathan, who later became famous as the Peace Pilot. Afterward, we met for many years at the legendary artists' café Cassit." Then "the table wandered to several other places and became known as the 'Cassit exiles' table." The "House of Lords," one newspaper nicknamed it.

"The habitués of the table come from different walks of life. There is a former director of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, several senior journalists, a linguist and Bible expert, a film producer, a professor of medicine, a psychiatrist, a town planner, an industrialist, a translator of literature, a radio program producer. And a scientist." The latter is Yonath.

AVNERY CONTENDS that "the table is not political. But all its habitués tend, as it so happens, to lean toward the Left. For years, Ada Yonath has been our candidate for the Nobel Prize. I recount all this not only in order to boast about the fact that Ada 'belongs to us.'"

In radio interviews, Avnery was downright fatherly and called Yonath "our Ada'le." He couldn't stop boasting that she indeed "belongs to us." In this context it's instructive to note that Avnery asserted in a recent op-ed that Schalit wasn't kidnapped, that he's a POW, that Israeli government propaganda claims otherwise to foil a swap, that it's wrong to classify "Palestinian candidates for release" as "terrorists with blood on their hands, criminals beyond the law, lowly murderers." Doesn't Ada'le sound like her mentor?

Said mentor, it needs be stressed, had long ago crossed the lines - physically, intellectually, spiritually and emotionally. He identifies with the enemy and subscribes to its perspective. Nevertheless, Avnery parades as the preeminent freethinking Israeli and is the darling of Israel-bashers for doing their dirty work. He's incidentally the single most popular Israeli in his native Germany.
(Full Article)

Love of the Land: Another Tack: Uri's beloved Ada'le

Love of the Land: Settlement Freeze May Be Permanent If Amorphous Requirements Met

Settlement Freeze May Be Permanent If Amorphous Requirements Met

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
08 September 09

So the settlement freeze will be extended if I we get some minor gestures from Arab countries that we have already had in the past and - here is the big requirement for the Palestinians: something is done about incitement.

Why the cynicism about making incitement the litmus test?

Take a look at the article for a hint: "The official said Israel expected that in return for the moratorium there would be an end to incitement against Israel in the PA media and education system - although a way of measuring this still needed to be worked out."

Repeat: "a way of measuring this still needed to be worked out".

Been there. Done that.

When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wanted to keep his buddy Uri Dan busy so he wouldn't be tempted to share his misgivings over Sharon's policies with the public, he appointed him the "Anti-Incitement Committee". Dan seized the opportunity to meet with Palestinian officials and complain about Palestinian incitement. He got nowhere. Which is no surprise since none of the people before him and none of the Israelis after him got anywhere in what amounted to nothing more than a debating society since it was impossible to come up with a workable measurable definition of incitement.

Consider the following: Which is worse? An inciting item in a Palestinian school book or unfriendly remarks in a pamphlet distributed in some synagogues?

So when the Netanyahu team focuses on what anyone who knows the history of Oslo knows is a profoundly unenforceable requirement you have to wonder:

Either:

#1. They don't remember.
#2. They are fooling themselves.
#3. They are trying to fool us.

Which is worse?
====

'Settlement freeze will last 6 months'
HERB KEINON and TOVAH LAZAROFF , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 8, 2009
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804514211&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

A moratorium on new construction in the settlements, expected in the wake of Monday's announcement of 455 newly approved housing units in the West Bank, will last for six months, with an extension dependent on whether the Palestinian Authority and neighboring Arab countries step up to the plate and deliver what is expected of them, a senior political official told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

The official's comment came a week before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with US Mideast envoy George Mitchell to discuss the US-brokered package that is expected to lead to a renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu spoke to the official over the past few days and explained both the sudden approval of the 455 homes and the soon-to-be-announced moratorium.

The new construction plans in the settlements, which were announced on Monday morning, included 149 apartments for Har Gilo, 12 for Alon Shvut, 89 in Ma'aleh Adumim, 84 in Modi'in Illit, 76 in Givat Ze'ev, 25 in Kedar and 20 in Maskiot, as well as a sports park in Ariel and a school in Har Adar.

Mitchell is expected to arrive on Saturday night for two days of high-level meetings in Jerusalem.

At a Ma'aleh Adumim rally on Monday, MK Uri Ariel (National Union) said that the Construction and Housing Ministry had issued an order not to make any more plans for Jewish housing in east Jerusalem.

But political officials said that in addition to the six-month moratorium, Netanyahu would reiterate to Mitchell that Jerusalem will not be included, and that public buildings in the settlements will be approved where necessary to enable normal life to continue.

The official said Israel expected that in return for the moratorium there would be an end to incitement against Israel in the PA media and education system - although a way of measuring this still needed to be worked out - as well as significant normalization steps from the Arab world.

If these steps were not forthcoming, the source intimated, the construction moratorium would end.

Israel, according to the official, expected a number of Arab countries - such as Morocco, Qatar and Oman - to renew their former low-level presences in Israel, as well as allow for educational and cultural exchanges, and for Israeli airline flights over their territory.

The prime minister's plans to please the settlers, the US and the Palestinians, did not mollify anyone.

The Americans and the Palestinians continued to publicly demanded an immediate and total freeze.

Read All at :

Love of the Land: Settlement Freeze May Be Permanent If Amorphous Requirements Met

Israel Matzav: Arabs moving into Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem

Arabs moving into Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem

I warned as far back as 2006 that Arabs were moving into Jewish neighborhoods on the edge between the Jewish and Arab parts of the city - neighborhoods like Pisgat Zev and French Hill. Of course, you won't hear any outcry about it from the US or the EU. No pious platitudes about how they're predetermining the outcome of 'negotiations.' No complaints about how they're changing the city's demographics. I leave it to the reader to decide why.

It wasn't so much the politics of this contested city that drew Majlaton to Pisgat Zeev, however; it was the prospect of escaping the potholed roads and scant municipal services he endured for 19 years while renting in an Arab neighborhood.

"You see that air conditioner?" he said, pointing to the large wall unit cooling his living room. "In the Arab areas, the electricity is too weak to run one that big."

Majlaton, 50, says some Jewish neighbors are warming up to him, but the influx bothers others, who say they're thinking of moving out or refuse to sell or rent to Arabs.

This is much more than a simple matter of real estate. Demographics could figure heavily in how Jerusalem is partitioned in a future peace deal. If that happens, it is expected the city will be split along ethnic lines - Jewish neighborhoods to Israel, Arab neighborhoods to Palestine.

...

In 2007, the latest year with available statistics, about 1,300 of Pisgat Zeev's 42,000 residents were Arabs. In nearby French Hill, population 7,000, nearly one-sixth are Arabs, among them students at the neighboring Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Neve Yaakov, with 20,000 people, had 600 Arabs, according to the Israel Center for Jerusalem Studies, a respected think tank.

Read All at :

Israel Matzav: Arabs moving into Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem

Love of the Land: Holy City Twist: Arabs Moving Into Jewish Areas

Holy City Twist: Arabs Moving Into Jewish Areas

By Ben Hubbard
The Associated Press
06 September 09

(While somewhat long it's important to get to the punchline at the end)

JERUSALEM -- Yousef Majlaton moved into the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev for such comforts as proper running water and regular garbage pickup. But he represents a potentially volatile twist in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over the holy city.

The hillside sprawl of townhouses and apartment blocks was built for Jews, and Majlaton is a Palestinian.

Pisgat Zeev is part of Israel's effort to fortify its presence in Jerusalem's eastern half which it captured in the 1967 war.

But Majlaton, his wife and three kids are among thousands who have crossed the housing lines to Pisgat Zeev and neighborhoods like it in a migration that is raising tempers among some Jewish residents.

It wasn't so much the politics of this contested city that drew Majlaton to Pisgat Zeev, however; it was the prospect of escaping the potholed roads and scant municipal services he endured for 19 years while renting in an Arab neighborhood.

"You see that air conditioner?" he said, pointing to the large wall unit cooling his living room. "In the Arab areas, the electricity is too weak to run one that big."

Majlaton, 50, says some Jewish neighbors are warming up to him, but the influx bothers others, who say they're thinking of moving out or refuse to sell or rent to Arabs.

This is much more than a simple matter of real estate. Demographics could figure heavily in how Jerusalem is partitioned in a future peace deal. If that happens, it is expected the city will be split along ethnic lines - Jewish neighborhoods to Israel, Arab neighborhoods to Palestine.

Palestinians see east Jerusalem as their future capital. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows the whole city will remain united as Israel's capital.

Palestinians have long accused those among them who sell land to Jews of betraying their homeland, and last week similar language was heard from a group of rabbis. Meeting in Pisgat Zeev, they issued an edict denouncing Jews who sell land to Arabs as "traitors" and barring them from participating in communal prayers.

Read All at :

Love of the Land: Holy City Twist: Arabs Moving Into Jewish Areas

Love of the Land: Another Tack: It's not the settlements, stupid

Another Tack: It's not the settlements, stupid

Sarah Honig
JPost
03 September 09

Without historical context there can be no real understanding of existential issues, certainly not of essential continuities. That's why those who seek to obfuscate and skew do their utmost to erase telltale fundamental perspectives and present whatever they focus upon as cogent isolated concerns.

Case in point: US President Barack Obama's fixation on settlements, whether they be a collection of squatters' makeshift lean-tos on a stony hill in the middle of a barren nowhere or entire populous urban quarters of Jerusalem.

The real issue is a layer deep beneath surface palaver. It's a layer which Arabs implicitly understand, which Jews pretend (or prefer) not to understand, and which Obama righteously denies. To paraphrase what Bill Clinton hectored during his first presidential campaign: "It's not the settlements, stupid."

Settlements are mere transitory pretexts, alleged irritants which in fact conceal a far darker but basic truth.

Obama hints at it when he admonishes against creating "new facts on the ground" ahead of the deal he proclaims he's about to concoct. Peace is feasible providing Israelis effectively stay inanimate and refrain from altering reality beyond the non-border (1949's armistice line, a.k.a. the Green Line). Otherwise they jeopardize Obama's magic remedy to all that ails the region but which thus far eluded cure by lesser healers than himself. His unspoken apparent assumption is that whatever betokens Israeli/Jewish life and vitality perforce undermines harmony and bliss. Bottom line priority - weaken Israeli/Jewish interests.

THIS HAS been the Arab subtext since the very advent of Zionism, though at different intervals the casus belli assumed different facades. In all instances the pro forma grievance was that Jews were "changing facts on the ground," just as now.

On occasion, as currently, the outcry centered on settlements, or more specifically on land purchases. (Jews weren't always accused of robbing Arab land. Sometimes their crime was buying stretches of wasteland.) At times it was immigration.

Read All at :

Love of the Land: Another Tack: It's not the settlements, stupid

Love of the Land: Krauthammer's Take

Krauthammer's Take

On a prospective re-opening of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations by the end of September:

NRO: The Corner

National Review Online

1 September 09

The whole delay in the peace process is a self-inflicted wound of the Obama administration. Let's remember that for over a year, the previous prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, had been negotiating with the head of the Palestinians and made an astonishingly generous offer in December of '08, which the Palestinians refused, as they always refuse.

So Obama comes in and instead of picking up and trying to get the Palestinians to moderate, what does he do? He attacks Netanyahu. He tries to make an issue of settlements, which had been in consensus — the U.S. and Israelis had agreed: no new settlements, no new expansion of territory in [existing] settlements and dismantling of illegal settlements.

And the Palestinians had accepted that, had never refused negotiations [under these conditions]... But then Obama adds a condition of no thickening of settlements, i.e., you don't construct a kindergarten if children are born, which the Israelis have rejected.

And all of a sudden the Palestinians and Arabs have said: No negotiations until Israel jumps through this higher hoop.

So the Arabs and Palestinians have said: We are not going to move. We're going to let Obama extract unilateral concessions out of the Israelis, and that is why the process has stopped.

Love of the Land: Krauthammer's Take

Love of the Land: Naqba Is As Naqba Does

Naqba Is As Naqba Does

Posted by Rachel Abrams
The Weekly Standard
1 September 09

Israel’s education minister, Gideon Sa’ar, yesterday announced that when third-graders file into their classrooms for the first day of school tomorrow and open their Arabic-language textbooks, they will no longer find “al-naqba” in their pages. The phrase, which roughly translates as “devastation on a par with the Holocaust,” and is invoked by Arabs throughout the Middle East to describe the establishment in 1948 of the “Zionist entity,” was inexplicably approved for use in the textbooks a couple of years ago (another Israeli government, another education minister) but has now been un-approved. “The creation of the State of Israel cannot be taught about as a catastrophe inside the country's schools,” said a ministry spokeswoman.

Israeli Arabs are “dismayed and outraged.” Atef Moaddi, head of the Follow-up Committee on Arab Education in Israel, told the Jerusalem Post: “For Israeli Arabs, who consider themselves a part of the Palestinian people, the Nakba is not up for debate, it is a historical fact.” Added Sawsan Zaher, of the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel,

Prohibiting Arab students from studying about the Nakba is illegal and violates international law, which obliges states to enable national minorities to learn and study about their own history, culture and tradition.

Of course, no one -- not even the “naqba”-averse Netanyahu government -- is advocating excising the story of what happened at the founding of the State of Israel, which was disastrous indeed for the Arabs expelled from their homes and forced into exile in the aftermath of a war launched by their leaders against the Jews. On the contrary, “What Israeli Arabs experienced during the [1948 War of Independence] was certainly a tragedy,” Sa’ar said. “But the word ‘Nakba,’ whose meaning is similar to ‘Holocaust’ in this context, will no longer be used.”

Read All at :

Love of the Land: Naqba Is As Naqba Does

Israel Matzav: What Holocaust denial among 'Palestinians' and other Arabs means for peace prospects

What Holocaust denial among 'Palestinians' and other Arabs means for peace prospects

In Wednesday's Washington Post, Michael Gerson does a survey of the prevalence of Holocaust denial among the 'Palestinians' and in the Arab world generally, and then reaches a conclusion regarding the prospects for 'peace' that appears to be spot on.

The politics of conspiracy and victimhood makes it infinitely more difficult to confront the real sources of social, economic and political dysfunction in the broader Middle East.

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Israel Matzav: What Holocaust denial among 'Palestinians' and other Arabs means for peace prospects

Israel Matzav: Arabs feel the love from Obama

Arabs feel the love from Obama

They still hate America, but in the Arab world they feel the personal love from America's President Barack Hussein Obama (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

Ipsos said its poll, conducted in March, involved 7,000 adults in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan.

Of those surveyed, 33% had a favorable view of the United States, 43% had a negative view, 14% were neutral and 10% said they did not know, Ipsos said.

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Israel Matzav: Arabs feel the love from Obama

DoubleTapper: Syria blames USA for Swine Flu

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DoubleTapper: Syria blames USA for Swine Flu

Israel Matzav: And again: Soldier attacked by 'Arab looking man' on Ramat Gan bus

And again: Soldier attacked by 'Arab looking man' on Ramat Gan bus

An IDF soldier was stabbed in the neck this evening by an 'Arab looking man' on a Ramat Gan bus. The soldier is hospitalized in Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital in moderate condition.
"The motive for the attack is unclear at this stage," a Tel Aviv police spokesman told The Jerusalem Post. "We don't yet know what the background is. We do have a description of the suspect and we have launched a hunt for him," the spokesman added.

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Israel Matzav: And again: Soldier attacked by 'Arab looking man' on Ramat Gan bus

ARABS WANT TO BE ISRAELIS

Arabs want to be Israelis

Anyone with any familiarity at all with the reality in Israel knows that an enormous majority of Arabs living in Israel would never dream of living in Palestine were there ever to be such a country, and it's not hard to fathom their line of reasoning: Israel is a free democracy with an ever-rising standard of living (and at the moment one of the strongest currencies in the world, but that's a different matter), while the Palestinians can be relied upon to screw up whatever chances they're offered with perfect consistency. That's why there was such an outcry among Israel's Arabs when in 2004 Arik Sharon proposed redrawing Israel's border so that the towns alongside the north-western flank of the West Bank be re-mapped into the West Bank. That's why Avigdor Lieberman is perhaps the most hated and feared of all Israeli politicians in the eyes of Israel's Arabs: he advocates a similar move. (And note: not a single Arab would have to leave his home. The border would simply be moved a few miles west, leaving the homes in putative Palestinian territory... shudder...).

Life for Israel's Arabs is far from perfect and leaves much to be desired, but it's a lot better than life in any other Arab country, unless you're a millionaire Saudi sheik or a fully subsidized citizen of a Gulf State living off oil and the sweat of disenfranchised Pakistanis.

It's also a well-known but never mentioned secret that the Arabs in East Jerusalem, who aren't even full Israeli citizens, dread the day the city will be divided and they'll end up on the Palestinian side; when Israel began putting up that evil wall a few years ago, tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled to make sure they were inside it, on the Israeli side, and not outside it, on the Palestinian side. It doesn't take much imagination to understand them: would any of you make a different choice in their situation? Of course not.

Still, having said all that, it's still a bit surprising to read that 77% of the Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship, wouldn't want to live in any other country in the world. Not in America, not in Norway, not in Australia, not even in the UK, home of the Guardian. Nope. They want to stay in Israel. Moreover, if you follow the link, you'll find lots of other interesting statistics, almost all of them positive. I recommend.

Now, if you were a person who cares about people and their well-being, a mantle often claimed by the so called Progressives, or the political Left, or Liberals, depending on the country you live in, you would be celebrating all this, and perhaps even commending Israel for having proven that Arabs actually can be productive and functioning citizens in a modern democracy even in the Mideast, and not only when they move to New Jersey, and if so they can certainly be encouraged to do so in France, Algeria, Saudi Arabia or Lebanon. But I wouldn't recommend holding your breath until the praise starts coming in, not from those people anyway.

taken from the Blog Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations - http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/