Love of the Land: American Neutrality Toward Israel Invites Violence

American Neutrality Toward Israel Invites Violence

When Israel is alone, its opportunistic enemies pile on.


Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
22 April '10

American relations with our once-staunch ally Israel are at their lowest ebb in the last 50 years.

The Obama administration seems as angry at the building of Jewish apartments in Jerusalem as it is intent on reaching out to Iran and Syria, Israel’s mortal enemies. President Obama himself, according to reports, has serially snubbed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A new narrative abounds in Washington that Israel’s intransigence with its Arab neighbors now even endangers U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East. Obama is pushing Netanyahu’s Likud government to make concessions on several fronts, from supplying power and food to Gaza to hasten Israel’s departure from the West Bank.

These tensions follow the Obama administration’s new outreach to the Muslim world. Obama gave his first interview as president to the Middle East newspaper Al Arabiya, in which he politely chided past U.S. policy on the Middle East.

In his June 2009 Cairo address, the president again sought to placate the Islamic world — in part by wrongly claiming that Islamic learning had sparked the European Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Lost in all this reset-button diplomacy is introspection on why past American presidents sought to support Israel in the first place. We seem to forget why no-nonsense Harry Truman, against worldwide opposition, ensured the original creation of the Jewish state — or why more than 60 percent of Americans in most polls continue to side with Israel in its struggle to survive.

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Love of the Land: American Neutrality Toward Israel Invites Violence

Love of the Land: How to please the Arab League

How to please the Arab League

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
14 March '10

Right from the beginning of his administration, President Obama made it a priority to win over the Arab and Muslim world. So here's a thought: while you struggle to keep up with the flood of commentary about the "new low" in US-Israeli relations, it's perhaps worthwhile to keep in mind that the next Arab League summit is scheduled for the end of March.

The summit will be held in Tripoli, Libya's capital, where the Arab League representatives will be hosted by Muammar Gaddafi, who just last month called for a "jihad" against Switzerland - well, actually, not just Switzerland, because he reportedly added: "Let us fight against Switzerland, Zionism and foreign aggression."

A quip about this call for "jihad" from a State Department spokesman required an official apology that apparently seemed warranted after the head of Libya's state oil company summoned executives from US energy companies Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, Hess and Marathon and warned them that "the dispute could hurt US businesses in Libya."

Arab commentators don't seem to expect much from the meeting in Tripoli: "Another lame summit" was the dismissive headline in a recent issue of Al-Ahram. Nevertheless, the related article offered a lot of advice on how to overcome the "lameness", and unsurprisingly, Israel was an important issue in this context. One piece of advice was that the Arab League should consider revoking any support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; instead, the Arab League was urged to endorse the so-called "one-state solution" resulting in "a single state covering the whole of historic Palestine in which all inhabitants would be guaranteed full and equal rights as citizens, regardless of ethnic or religious affiliation." Another piece of advice was that the Arabs should realize that with regard to the tensions with Iran, "Israel is the chief instigator."

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Love of the Land: How to please the Arab League

Love of the Land: Lessons from the IDF in Haiti: Opportunities in Global Health Diplomacy for the Muslim World

Lessons from the IDF in Haiti: Opportunities in Global Health Diplomacy for the Muslim World

Qanta Ahmed, MD
Huffington Post
07 March '10

The Talmud describes Jews as rachmanim b'nei rachmanim: a compassionate people who are sensitive to human suffering. They are unable to sit by and ignore the terrible drama of human misery. Instead, they get up and do something about it.

As the world learned the news about Haiti one Tuesday in January, the Israeli Defense Forces were already planning their response. By Friday they had already pitched camp in Haiti. I watched a handsome IDF officer explain the facilities that had been erected within 8 hours of landing after a 16-hour flight across the world. He described the distinct tents serving critically ill obstetric, neonatal and adult patients as well as the surgical operating theaters they had erected in so short a time. Having practiced critical care medicine for a decade myself, I could imagine clearly the amount of planning and infrastructure required. Somehow these structures had gone up overnight.

The IDF had sent an initial team of 220 soldiers and among them 120 medical personnel. They were already operating, treating, delivering care for the earthquake survivors as network cameras rolled. Their initial mission included 40 doctors, 20 paramedics and 24 nurses, as well as medics and medical technicians, all of whom report to IDF chief medical officer Brigadier General Nachman Ash. Over a third of the manpower was specifically called up out of reserve to serve this humanitarian mission.

Humbled, I wondered why we were not watching a Muslim officer also from the Middle East showing similar services flown in perhaps from somewhere in the Arab world? Why were elements from the Muslim world not evident in such emphatic force and at such speed. Imagine semi permanent hospitals flying the Saudi Arabian National Guard Insignia just as these IDF facilities bore their insignias.

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Love of the Land: Lessons from the IDF in Haiti: Opportunities in Global Health Diplomacy for the Muslim World

Love of the Land: Fitzgerald: When it comes to Islam, please stop this "problem" and "solution" nonsense

Fitzgerald: When it comes to Islam, please stop this "problem" and "solution" nonsense

Hugh Fitzgerald
Jihad Watch
16 January '10

Many continue to believe that if we argue that Islam itself is the problem, this will leave the West with no solutions.

The word "solution" leapt out at me. I have written about it many times before, in regards to those who speak of a "two-state solution" to the Arab Muslim Jihad against Israel. I have written many times about what a foolish idea it is to believe that further Israeli surrenders, of claims, legal and moral and historic, and of tangible assets, especially the supreme asset, as it is viewed in the Muslim world, of land, would somehow change the immutable and uncreated words of the Qur'an, or somehow change the Hadith -- that is, change either the contents, or the rank of "authenticity," assigned to the Hadith (the written records of the words and deeds of Muhammad) more than a millennium ago by the most authoritative Muhaddithin.

I noted that Americans, unlike Europeans, are used to identifying situations that are troublesome or difficult or unpleasant as "problems," and, as problems, they are assumed to be susceptible of solution and therefore can be "solved." In some ways it is an attractive attitude. It testifies to a certain strain in the national character, a belief that may come from the encounter in this country with Nature, that the settlers in order to survive had to learn to subdue. And they felt, in a different way (a way we find not quite so unobjectionable today) it was felt necessary to subdue the indigenous Indians. Nature could be overcome, other men could be overcome. And when there was a need for something to be invented, born of necessity that invention would emerge. Yankee know-how and stick-to-it-iveness, the attitude that there is "no problem in the world that cannot be solved" if we just put our minds to solve it, may seem to some comically naïve, but for many it reflects an attitude that will not disappear, and of which many of us apparently cannot be disabused.

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Love of the Land: Fitzgerald: When it comes to Islam, please stop this "problem" and "solution" nonsense

Love of the Land: A world of walls?

A world of walls?

Shiraz Maher
Standpoint Magazine
09 November 09

Israel has one - but have you heard about the others?

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. During that time scores of other barriers and walls have gone up around the world as documented in a fascinating report by the BBC.

Of course, the one we've all heard about is the Israeli security fence which attracted fierce criticism after its construction in 2003. Built in response to the Palestinian intifada which claimed more than 900 lives since September 2000, the fence has dramatically halted the number of terrorist attacks inside the country.

Excuse the pun - but from the wall-to-wall coverage it received - you could be mistaken for thinking that Israel's decision to defend itself in this way was unprecedented. Yet, not only is this wrong but, ironically, a lot of the physical barriers currently in place are located in the ‘Muslim world'.

The Saudi-Yemeni border is just one place where a physical barrier is used by a Muslim regime to defend itself against ‘smuggling' and ‘terrorism'. The head of Saudi Arabia's border control, Talal Anqawi, has described it as

a sort of screen ... which aims to prevent infiltration and smuggling

Saudi Arabia's border with Yemen has always been problematic, providing a trafficking route for weapons smuggling. Indeed, the explosives used in the 2003 Riyadh bombings which targeted compounds housing western expatriates were blamed on Yemeni smugglers. It was not the first time Saudi Arabia blamed the Yemenis for not doing enough to stop terrorism. Yemeni smugglers are also believed to have helped facilitate the bombing campaign against US military bases in the mid-1990s.

Once the Saudi government lost confidence in Yemen's ability to curb domestic terrorism, they decided to build a physical barrier. Much of it runs through contested territory. According to the 2000 Jeddah border treaty between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, a demilitarised ‘buffer zone' should exist between both countries, protecting the rights of nomadic Bedouin tribes which live in the cross-border area.

Yet, parts of the Saudi barrier stand inside the demilitarised zone, violating the 2000 agreement and infuriating Yemen. The Foreign Minister, Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi, made official representations to the Saudi government in 2003 arguing

This area is supposed to be for pasturing. That was part of the agreement. The tribesmen have been allowed to cross over from one side to another for pasturing. That is a traditional way of life for tribesmen in that area.

Not anymore. A prominent leader of the Wayilah tribe which occupies the disputed area explains

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Love of the Land: A world of walls?

Israel Matzav: Discussing Israel with the 'Muslim world'

Discussing Israel with the 'Muslim world'

I've said many times before that I believe that our war with the 'Palestinians' is a religious war, and that the 'Palestinians' and their Arab patrons will never accept our presence here because they are religiously proscribed from doing so. But I was surprised to find out that Barack Obama apparently believes the same thing (Hat Tip: Tom Gross).

Obama, the White House press office told reporters last week, will address among other issues the Arab-Israeli issue. What does it imply to raise this issue in a speech to the "Muslim world"? Nearly 700 million of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims live in Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, countries which share no linguistic or cultural affinities with the Arabs, and have only religion in common.

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Israel Matzav: Discussing Israel with the 'Muslim world'