Love of the Land: A beginner's guide to Israel Apartheid Week

A beginner's guide to Israel Apartheid Week

Based on the realities of the situation, it is clear that the apartheid label cannot be justified by the conditions faced by Arab citizens of Israel.


Jon Hollander
Columbia Spectator
07 March '10

Last Monday marked the beginning of what has become a yearly tradition on Western college campuses: Israeli Apartheid Week. If you have walked by the competing pro- and anti-Israel protests on College Walk, you can appreciate that labeling Israel as an apartheid state is a hotly contested issue. Who is right here? The only way to properly address this question is to look at the facts that underlie claims of Israeli apartheid, and to judge both their validity, and whether or not the apartheid label constitutes an unfair demonization of the Jewish State of Israel.

Before examining the claim that Israel is an apartheid state, it is important to make the critical distinction between Israeli-Arabs and Palestinians. In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to adopt the U.N. Partition Plan for the former British Mandate of Palestine, dividing the land into two states–one Jewish and the other Arab. The Jewish Agency (the de facto government for Jews in Palestine) accepted the plan, while the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq rejected the proposal and invaded Israel. By 1949, Israel had managed to defeat the Arab armies and signed an armistice that set the borders of what are today the West Bank and Gaza. Those territories that Israel conquered, other than the West Bank and Gaza, have been incorporated into the internationally accepted boundaries of Israel. The Arabs who resided in these areas are known as Israeli-Arabs.

Israeli-Arabs are citizens of Israel, and have full political rights. There are Arab political parties in Israel’s Parliament, high-ranking Arab bureaucrats and cabinet ministers, and Arab members of the Israeli Supreme Court. Moreover, Druze-Arabs are conscripted into the Israeli Defense Forces just like Israeli Jews, and several top IDF commanders are Druze-Arabs. More important than this small list of examples, however, is the fact that, unlike the blacks of South Africa, Israeli-Arabs are not denied basic political or economic rights. Economic, social, and political disparities between Arabs and Jews continue to exist in Israel, but these are more along the lines of those that exist here in the United States, not in pre-1994 South Africa.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: A beginner's guide to Israel Apartheid Week

Love of the Land: Targeting Israel, Hitting Palestinians

Targeting Israel, Hitting Palestinians

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
26 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

A ruling by the European Union’s highest court yesterday is a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences. The court ruled that the EU’s free trade agreement with Israel does not apply to the West Bank, and therefore, goods made by Israeli firms in the West Bank are subject to EU import taxes.

Legally speaking, it’s hard to quarrel with the ruling: even Israeli law doesn’t view the West Bank as Israeli, as it does East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. But for years, European countries ignored this detail and exempted Israeli firms in the territories from import duties. What has changed is not the law but the politics: seeking to persuade Israelis that “the occupation” doesn’t pay, EU countries recently began taxing such imports. A German importer then sued his country’s tax authorities, prompting yesterday’s verdict.

But as the Associated Press noted, the biggest victims may well be not Israelis but Palestinians. Many Israeli firms moved to the West Bank because they could export to the EU duty-free while also benefiting from cheaper Palestinian labor. Thus, if the new import taxes lower these firms’ profits, hundreds of Palestinians could lose their jobs. And because “Palestinians are largely barred from working in Israel and have few job opportunities in the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank, jobs in settlement factories are sought after.”

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Targeting Israel, Hitting Palestinians

Love of the Land: The Palestinians' Unilateral "Kosovo Strategy": Implications for the PA and Israel

The Palestinians' Unilateral "Kosovo Strategy": Implications for the PA and Israel

Dan Diker
Institute for Contemporary Affairs (JCPA)
No. 575
January-February '10

Mahmoud Abbas' new precondition that the international community recognize the 1967 lines in the West Bank as the new Palestinian border bolsters the assessment that the Palestinians have largely abandoned a negotiated settlement and instead are actively pursuing a unilateral approach to statehood.

Senior Palestinian officials note that Palestinian unilateralism is modeled after Kosovo's February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. European and U.S. support for Kosovo's unilateral declaration has led the Palestinian leadership to determine that geopolitical conditions are ripe to seek international endorsement of its unilateral statehood bid, despite that fact that leading international jurists have suggested that the cases of Kosovo and the Palestinian Authority are historically and legally different.

The Palestinians are legally bound to negotiate a bilateral solution with Israel. Unilateral Palestinian threats to declare statehood have been rebuffed thus far by the European powers and the United States.

The Palestinian "Kosovo strategy" includes a campaign of delegitimization of Israel, seeking to isolate Israel as a pariah state, while driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The unilateral Palestinian bid for sovereignty will also likely turn the Palestinians into the leading petitioner against the State of Israel at the International Criminal Court. Although the PA is not a state and therefore should have no legal standing before the court, the petition it submitted to the court after the Gaza war was not rejected by the ICC.

Finally, a unilateral Palestinian quest for the 1947 lines may well continue even if the 1967 lines are endorsed by the United Nations. The PLO's 1988 declaration of independence was based on UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which recognizes the 1947 partition plan for Palestine, not the 1967 lines, as the basis for the borders of Israel and a Palestinian state.

(Read full report)

Love of the Land: The Palestinians' Unilateral "Kosovo Strategy": Implications for the PA and Israel

Love of the Land: [Solution at all costs?] Eiland calls for Jordanian troops next to Kfar Sava

[Solution at all costs?] Eiland calls for Jordanian troops next to Kfar Sava

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
10 January '10

The solution to the Israel's security concerns is to turn the West Bank and Gaza Strip into sovereign Jordanian entities with Jordanian troops deployed in those territories.

Sounds neat.

Another thorny problem solved.

It's Miller Time.

Now let's think for another moment.

Oh no. You mean think for a minute beyond the idea?

You mean actually think through some possible scenarios.

Say beyond a day.

Maybe even a year. Or more.

Gee.

That's not fair.

We Israelis didn't do that when we went into Oslo.

And we certainly didn't do it when we retreated from Gaza.

So why be a party pooper and actually think beyond the moment.

Here's a few hints:

#1. We don't know who or what will rule in Jordan in another year, let alone another decade.

#2. Putting the West Bank and Gaza under Jordanian control might contribute to and/or encourage the destabilization of Jordan, making #1 even a bigger concern.

#3. The deployed Jordanian troops could readily, even possibly against their will, become human shields for Palestinian terror activity against Israel - with Israel facing an extremely complicated challenge addressing the security challenge when any move over the line is a move that violates Jordanian sovereignty.

#4. There are numerous scenarios that have a cumulative probability considerably greater than 10% in the next decade that we could find ourselves, if this proposal were to be implemented, with Jordanian troops poised as the advanced forces for invading Arab armies literally a few hundred yards away from Israeli population centers.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: [Solution at all costs?] Eiland calls for Jordanian troops next to Kfar Sava

Love of the Land: Why Israel Is Free to Set Its Own Borders

Why Israel Is Free to Set Its Own Borders

Michael I. Krauss/J. Peter Pham
Commentary Magazine
July/August 2006

(I've introduced this article from the 4th paragraph, as this is relevant to the discussion of what may constitute the rightful borders of Israel in international law. Excellent article, worth reading in whole. Y.)

.... Other elements of the international community, however, have wasted no time in decrying Israel's effort formally to incorporate small parts of the West Bank. Speaking to the European Parliament in April, Javier Solana, the European Union's top foreign-policy official, lamented the “lack of dialogue with the Palestinian people in determining Israel's borders.” Not to be outdone, former President Jimmy Carter, writing in USA Today, condemned Kadima's program as a naked “land grab,” a violation of international law that no “objective member of the international community could accept.” On May 25, the New York Times chimed in, denouncing the idea of Israel's setting its own borders and lumping together Hamas, the government of Israel, and Bush as “two culprits and an enabler.”

In the view of Solana, Carter, the Times editorial board, and many other “objective” observers, the boundary between Israel and its Arab neighbors that prevailed between 1949 and 1967 is not just a historical baseline; it is a legitimate and well-established international border, one that the Jewish state has now ignored for nearly four decades. Such borders cannot be altered by force. As these critics see it, the Six-Day war of 1967 resulted in Israel's “occupation” of the West Bank (as well as of the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem). Much as that action might have been required by the exigencies of the time, it gives Israel no ongoing title to those lands. Indeed, in the view of the critics, it makes Israel's long-term presence there nothing less than an ongoing crime.

But are these claims supported by the history of Israel's conflict with its Arab neighbors, to say nothing of the standards of international law? In the West Bank, is Israel, in fact, an “occupier”?

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Why Israel Is Free to Set Its Own Borders

Love of the Land: "Jewish Only Road" Falsehood Corrected

"Jewish Only Road" Falsehood Corrected

CAMERA/Media Analysis
05 January '10

After dispatching a story that referred to Israel's (non-existent) "practice of reserving some roads for Jews," the Associated Press modified its wording to correctly describe the roads, which in actuality are open to Israeli citizens and residents of all religions and ethnicities.

Before the AP caught and corrected its mistake, though, the Boston Globe published the early version of the story, along with its error. To its credit, the newspaper quickly cleared the record with a correction after CAMERA brought the inaccuracy to the attention of editors there.

The initial AP story, a December 29 dispatch by Amy Teibel asserted:

Israel's Supreme Court ordered the military on Tuesday to allow Palestinians to travel on the part of a major highway that runs through the West Bank, handing Palestinians their biggest victory yet against Israel's practice of reserving some roads for Jews.

Some hours later, on Dec. 30, the AP sent out the same story with corrected language:

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: "Jewish Only Road" Falsehood Corrected

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: No Jews Allowed

No Jews Allowed

Obama's plan for Peace on the West Bank is not new.

The Nazis invented two words for it.
"Judenfrei" refers to "freeing" an area of all of its Jewish citizens. "Judenrein" (literally "clean of Jews") was also used. This had the stronger connotation that the area had been cleansed of Jewish blood.-more

Love of the Land: No Jews Allowed

Love of the Land: Amnesty's travesty

Amnesty's travesty

Martin Sherman
Guest Columnist:JPost
19 November 09

The Israeli occupation changed local agriculture profoundly. It introduced modern technology, including mechanization, precision tillage, pest control, plastic covering of crops for temperature control, high yielding varieties, postharvest processing of produce, marketing and export outlets. It also introduced efficient methods of irrigation, including sprinkler and especially drip irrigation. Consequently, output increased greatly, and farming was transformed from a subsistence enterprise to a commercial industry.

Daniel Hillel, Rivers of Eden, Oxford University Press, 1994

The above excerpt is sufficient to heap richly-deserved ridicule on the recent Amnesty report claiming that Israel's avaricious water policy has gravely compromised Palestinians' human rights. Miraculously, the Amnesty report was published to coincide perfectly with a vicious crusade launched across US campuses by Omar Barghouti, a Tel Aviv University graduate student, campaigning for - among other things - the boycott of Tel Aviv University, together with the entire Israeli academic establishment (avowed leftists and all).

By some curious coincidence, one of the issues raised by Barghouti to justify the BDS (boycott-cum-divestment-cum-sanctions) campaign was Israel's alleged exploitation of water resources to implement a process of "ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid." Predictably - if not persuasively - Amnesty denied any hint of collusion with the Barghouti initiative, emotively entitled "Palestine: Thirsting for Justice."

The facts, however, paint a very different - indeed antithetical - picture to that painted by the A/B (Amnesty/Barghouti) duo. For by every conceivable measure of consumption of fresh water, the lot of the Palestinians has improved dramatically - indeed beyond all recognition - since 1967 under Israeli administration, whether it be overall consumption, per capita consumption, consumption relative to Israel/Israelis, conveyance of running water to households, area under agricultural cultivation or size of the agricultural product.

In the period 1967-2006 the overall annual consumption of the Palestinians in the West Bank grew by 300 percent - from 60 million cubic meters to 180 million cu.m. The annual per capita consumption in the same period rose by almost 15% - from 86 cu.m. to 100 cu.m. By contrast the overall consumption by Israel dropped by 15% (from 1411 million cu.m. to 1211 million cu.m.), while the per capita consumption plummeted an amazing 300% from 508 cu.m. to 170 cu.m. - a decrease made possible not only by more efficient usage but also massive replacement of fresh water by recycled sewage for agricultural irrigation and of naturally occurring water by artificially produced (desalinated) water for domestic use. The Palestinians, by contrast, have steadfastly refused to undertake agreed upon sewage purification plants, allowing untreated effluents to endanger "downstream" Israeli supplies.

Moreover, from 1967 to the years preceding Oslo, the Palestinian household consumption of water rose dramatically under Israeli rule - by almost 600%, significantly higher than in Israel where domestic consumption in the same period rose by approximately 230%. But not only did consumption by households improve, so did conveyance to households. In 1967 only 50 West Bank villages were connected to a running water system whereas by the early 1990s the number rose to 260.

LIKEWISE, AS can be inferred by the opening citation from Hillel, there was a dramatic enhancement of agricultural performance - even though water allocations were not increased. This was facilitated by more advanced methods of cultivation/irrigation introduced under Israeli rule. (In this regard it should be remembered that Israeli farmers have had their water allocations significantly reduced since 1967.) This resulted in an increase of the cultivated area by about 160% and of the agricultural product by 1200%.

Furthermore, the malicious and mendacious claims that the luscious lawns and shimmering swimming pools in the Jewish settlements are unfairly and provocatively depriving Palestinians of water are belied by a single statistic. For Israel in fact conveys more water from inside the pre-1967 borders into the West Bank (nearly 56 million cu.m.) than the total consumption of the entire Jewish population in the settlements across the Green Line ( just over 48 million cu.m.).

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Amnesty's travesty

Love of the Land: Hamas' West Bank Popularity Up, So Abbas Isn't Running

Hamas' West Bank Popularity Up, So Abbas Isn't Running

JINSA
JINSA Report #: 938
November 9, 2009

Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority (West Bank division) has announced that he will not run in the Palestinian election currently scheduled for January 2010. He blames Israeli "intransigence" on the issue of houses for Jewish people east of the 1949 Armistice Line.

We offer another perspective.

"Strengthening Abu Mazen" has been U.S., European and Israeli policy since Abbas took over control of Fatah after Yasser Arafat's death. President Bush, who shunned Arafat, was the first American president to call the establishment of an independent Palestinian state an American objective. Billions of dollars, shekels and euros have been poured into the Palestinian Authority territory; the Palestinians are far and away the largest per capita recipients of international largesse. President Obama received Abu Mazen in the White House. The United States sent an American Army general to create a "police force" that has the structure and potential to become a Palestinian army, loyal to Abu Mazen.

In his limited range, Abu Mazen has had some limited success. He has cracked down on corruption, crime and, in particular, on violent criminal gangs on the West Bank. With that and Israel's removal of a large number of security checkpoints, economic growth on the West Bank has been about seven percent in 2009-better than in most of the world. [He has no function in Gaza except to continue to use Western funds to pay salaries for government employees there who now work for Hamas.]

But if Abu Mazen is the darling of those non-Palestinians who wanted him to lead the Palestinians toward the Western construct of a "two-state solution," he has largely been a failure as a Palestinian leader pursuing Palestinian national goals and appears unwilling to ask Palestinians for a renewed mandate.

Abu Mazen is the leader of Fatah, just one party within the Palestinian political constellation. Hamas, Palestinian Jihad, PFLP are other parties, and Iran is a looming presence. In August, the first Fatah convention in 20 years resulted in a restatement of the "right of armed resistance" and "right of return." Jerusalem was labeled holy only to Christians and Muslims. Committee recommendations rejected negotiations with Israel until after 14 conditions are met, including lifting the blockade of Gaza and releasing all prisoners. Younger, harder-line members were elected to the Central Committee.

Since then, Abu Mazen has tried to burnish his hard line credentials-reneging on his promise to President Obama to leave the Goldstone report alone, and insisting on a total settlement freeze even after the United States changed its view.

But it may be too little too late. Despite the economic gains under Fatah, Hamas is increasingly popular among West Bank Palestinians. Instead of running and losing in his remaining satrapy, Abu Mazen is talking about canceling the election and maintaining the political status quo, i.e., himself in charge, spending our money.

Somehow, that's not surprising.

Love of the Land: Hamas' West Bank Popularity Up, So Abbas Isn't Running

Love of the Land: Palestinian Affairs: Abbas's big bluff

Palestinian Affairs: Abbas's big bluff

Khaled Abu Toameh
JPost
06 November 09

Mahmoud Abbas's decision to hold new presidential and parliamentary elections at the beginning of next year is seen by some of his aides as one of the strangest moves he has made since he was elected to succeed Yasser Arafat five years ago.

These aides are now trying to persuade Abbas to find an honorable way to come down from the high tree he climbed when he issued a "presidential decree" a few weeks ago calling for a vote on January 24. One aide in Ramallah said that Abbas was "actually digging his own grave" by insisting on holding the elections before reaching an agreement with Hamas.

The Islamic movement has already made it clear that it won't participate in the elections. Moreover, Hamas has declared that it won't allow the vote to take place in the Gaza Strip and would punish any Palestinian there who is involved in the electoral process.

Hamas's decision means that the elections, when and if they are held, would be confined to the West Bank, where Abbas is partially in control, and perhaps some areas in Jerusalem that are under Israeli sovereignty.

Abbas's opponents can then argue that since the election was not held in the Gaza Strip, he does not represent the entire Palestinian people. As Hamas legislator Salah Bardaweel explained: "Abbas will then become the mayor or governor of the West Bank."

As such, maintaining the status quo would be the best option for Abbas. Under the current circumstances, Abbas can always argue that he represents a majority of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who voted for him in the 2005 presidential election.

If Gaza is excluded from the planned elections, Abbas or whoever replaces him as head of Fatah will never be seen as a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This means that the new Palestinian leader would not have a mandate to negotiate or sign a peace agreement with Israel because he was not elected by a majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
(To full article)

Love of the Land: Palestinian Affairs: Abbas's big bluff

Love of the Land: Amnesty Water Report Falsehood #2

Amnesty Water Report Falsehood #2

TS

CAMERA/Snapshots
1 November 09

My colleague Alex Safian has published an in-depth backgrounder refuting Amnesty International's broader claims of discriminatory Israeli water policies.

Meanwhile, Snapshots will continue to refute more detailed specific claims in the Amnesty Report ("Troubled Waters -- Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water").

Falsehood #1 is here.

We find Falsehood #2 on page 4 of the Amnesty report:

The 450,000 Israeli settlers, who live in the West Bank in violation of international law, use as much or more water than the Palestinian population of some 2.3 million.

This statement is absurd for so many reasons.

1) There are some 280,000 Israelis -- not 450,000 as Amnesty states -- living across the Green Line, called either the West Bank or by the biblical terms Judea and Samaria. (Here, we are citing numbers from the anti-settlement group Peace Now, which if anything would exaggerate, not understate, the number of settlers.)

As Amnesty itself states on page 7 of the very same report: "Currently more than 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the OPT, about half of them in East Jerusalem." In other words, Amnesty cannot be relied upon to even accurately state the number of Jews residing in the West Bank, let alone complex data concerning water usages among the populations.

2) Is it true that 280,000 Israelis living in the West Bank consume more water than the 2.3 million Palestinians residing there? According to page 3 of the Amnesty report,

Palestinian consumption in the OPT is about 70 liters a day per person -- well below the 100 litres per capita daily recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) -- whereas Israeli daily per consumption, about 300 liters, is about four times as much.

For argument's sake, let's accept Amnesty's numbers for Israeli and Palestinian consumption. On the Palestinian side, 2.3 million people multiplied by 70 liters is 161 million liters a day. On the Israeli side, 280,000 people multiplied by 300 liters totals totals 84 million liters a day. So, which is larger? You got it, even according to Amnesty's own numbers, Israelis in the West Bank use half the amount of water that the Palestinian population uses -- not more.

3) There is evidence that Amnesty knowingly manipulated its statistics. The footnote on the page 4 falsehood, regarding the 450,000 Israeli settlers and 2.3 million Palestinians allegedly living in the West Bank, states:

This figure excludes the more than 200,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem; though part of the OPT, East Jerusalem has been annexed by Israel.

Thus, while Amnesty was careful to make a distinction between Jerusalem and West Bank Palestinians, it lumped together Jerusalem and West Bank Israelis and passed them all off as West Bank residents.

Love of the Land: Amnesty Water Report Falsehood #2

The Torah Revolution: Where? In the "West Bank"?

Where? In the "West Bank"?

B"H -

Beitar Illit is not in the "West Bank" in as much as there is no "West Bank" today. You can say that Beitar Illit is in Judea or, in Gush Ezion. The "West Bank" is a name given to Judea and to Samaria by the occupying Jordanian forces in '48 to symbolize the de-Judaization of the area. It seized to exist with their defeat in '67. If you want to call Judea and Samaria "West Bank", you should call Jerusalem "Al Quds" too. It is the exact same Arab imperialist nonsense.

- This is a censored talkback on "Relatives: Teitel wouldn't destroy his family's life"

The Torah Revolution: Where? In the "West Bank"?

Love of the Land: End the Arab Occupation of Israel

End the Arab Occupation of Israel

Ron Breiman
Haaretz
04 October 09

(How this ended up in Haaretz is anyones guess.)

From Gideon Levy to Barack Obama, from Yariv Oppenheimer to Ismail Haniyeh, from Zahava Gal-On to Tzipi Livni - they all recite the same phrase: It's time to put an end to the "occupation." Once the "occupation" ends, peace will be sealed. Once the Jews are expelled from the heart of their country, redemption will come to Zion. From here emerges "the solution" - two states within the tiny piece of prized property that remains, the western Land of Israel, not the Greater Land of Israel.

We would do well to recall that the PLO - the (all of!) Palestine Liberation Organization - was founded in 1964 before there was an "occupation," "the West Bank," "territories," and the other political terms that were designed to disinherit the Jewish people from the heart of their country, those swaths of land that were occupied - without quotation marks - by the Jordanian army in 1948, an occupation that lasted just 19 years. The PLO's goal was not to liberate the territories from Jordan, because those lands were in Arab hands. Rather, it aimed to liberate the "occupied" territories from the State of Israel, which lay within "the Green Line."

We would do well to recall that the PLO never changed its spots. It failed to do so when it signed for "peace" with the naive Yitzhak Rabin, who was lured into the trap sprung for him by the Osloites. And it failed to do so when it allegedly abrogated its charter. Even the recent Fatah conference and the statements by the "moderate" Holocaust denier, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, can attest to this. The goal was and remains to this day: the liberation of the "occupied" territories from Israel, namely the State of Israel within the confines of the Green Line.

On the other hand, when the Osloites let Yasser Arafat and his gang of henchmen come into the heart of the country with his army of terrorists, they brought with them their own army of occupation. As things went, thanks to the shock after the Rabin assassination, the Osloites quickly handed the cities of Judea and Samaria over to the occupier, an error that the slain prime minister apparently did not intend to commit. This is how liberated territories became occupied territories, without quotation marks. In Operation Defensive Shield, the Israel Defense Forces was compelled to pay a steep price in blood to liberate the heart of the country from Arab occupation.

Most of the Arabs in the Land of Israel immigrated here after our waves of aliyah. In other words, Zionism and the prosperity it engendered spawned "the Palestinian people." Since the Arab occupation of the Land of Israel in the seventh century, and throughout the centuries of Muslim occupation, not one of the occupiers viewed this land as anything more than a distant imperial outpost.

The demand to grant a state to Arab immigrants to this country and their army, which is stationed here thanks to the blindness of certain Jews and the nations of the world, is without foundation. It is tantamount to legitimizing a reality that was created here after the criminal act that allowed an occupying army to enter this country.

The critics' responses are predictable: What do you propose, that the Arabs just evaporate into thin air? In contrast with the critics who espouse a racist transfer of Jews from Judea and Samaria, I reject any forcible transfer of any population group. Perhaps there is no solution to the problem. There is certainly no solution at this point. But this is no reason to commit suicide or sacrifice the Zionist vision on the altar of "peace."

I do not want a binational state. If there is a solution, it cannot be found within the confines of just the western Land of Israel. In the long term, the solution will be a regional one that combines democracy, demography and geography. The Arabs of the Land of Israel will continue to live in their present homes and will hold Jordanian and Egyptian (for Gazans) citizenship, voting for their respective parliaments. In the long term, citizens of Jordan who comprise an overwhelming majority in eastern Transjordan will gain power in Amman. It is there that a solution will be found for their brothers who live west of the Jordan River.

But in the meantime, we must end the occupation. The Arab occupation in the Land of Israel.

The writer was the chairman of Professors for a Strong Israel from 2001 to 2005.

Love of the Land: End the Arab Occupation of Israel

Love of the Land: the Tricky Part (1999)

the Tricky Part (1999)

Today's Golden Oldie is from September 6, 1999.

A cartoon from ten years ago that is as fresh as the latest pressure on us coming out of the Obama White House.

Love of the Land: the Tricky Part (1999)

Love of the Land: The Bogeyman in The Hills of Judea and Samaria

The Bogeyman in The Hills of Judea and Samaria

Ariel Harkham
JPost
07 September 09

Earlier this month, Ori Nir, a spokesman for Americans for Peace Now and former Haaretz reporter, revealed an alarming, even terrifying, bit of news in an opinion piece for the Washington Jewish Week: There are bogeymen in the hills of Israel. Citing only an incident in 1988, and one in 2000, Nir argued that the "brutality" of soldiers and settlers in the West Bank has spread across the Green Line, causing the wave of violent crime the country seems to be experiencing lately.

Never mind, for the moment, that Israel has one of the lowest murder rates in the world - a statistic that even the most basic level of research would have confirmed for Nir. But the fact that the Peace Now spokesman so vigorously set out to identify the settler movement as the cause of a pseudo-effect goes to show just how much this cause is an apparition conjured by fear mongering, a moral bogeyman in the hills of Judea and Samaria.

NIR'S OPINION piece, like the logic of the entire anti-settler machine, reminds me of the story of the man who walked into a bar, only to be physically assaulted by another customer. Rising to defend himself, the man inadvertently broke a few bottles and glasses. After tensions had cooled, the bartender took the man aside and berated him, but left the instigator alone with his drink. The man, indignant at being unfairly targeted, retorted, "Why aren't you saying this to the other guy? I mean, he's responsible." The bartender stared at him incredulously, and said, "It wouldn't make any difference. That guy is deaf."

Read All at :

Love of the Land: The Bogeyman in The Hills of Judea and Samaria

Love of the Land: The Ghost of Quisling Returns to Haunt Norway as Israel Boycott Movement Gets Major New Boost in Europe

The Ghost of Quisling Returns to Haunt Norway as Israel Boycott Movement Gets Major New Boost in Europe

Robin Shepherd
Think Tank Blog
04 September 09

Given that Norway’s most notable contribution to 20th century history was to give the world a new word for cowardice and treachery, reports that the country’s massive $400 billion sovereign wealth fund — the second largest such fund in the world — has been banned by the Norwegian government from owing shares in an Israeli arms company would not usually raise eyebrows.

But at a time of increasing hysteria against the Jewish state the move from the country that gave us “Quisling cowardice” — after wartime collaborationist leader Vidkun Quisling — may set an important precedent for the wider boycott movement across Europe. According to the international wire services, the fund was instructed to divest from Israel’s Elbit Systems because it provides surveillance equipment for the security barrier which has prevented countless suicide bombings emanating from the West Bank.

“We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law,” Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen was quoted by Reuters as saying.


Decisions of this kind are apparently made by Norway’s “Council on Ethics”. I’m glad that Norway feels it is in a position to make ethical judgements about companies that participate in attempts to stop fanatics from slaughtering innocent Jews. The country certainly has plenty of experience to draw upon.

According to the Wikipedia entry on the subject, Quisling “is a term used to describe traitors and collaborators. It was most commonly used for fascist political parties and military and paramilitary forces in occupied Allied countries which collaborated with Axis occupiers in World War II, as well as for their members and other collaborators.

“The term was coined by the British newspaper The Times on 15 April, 1940, entitled “Quislings everywhere.” The editorial asserted: “To writers, the word Quisling is a gift from the gods. If they had been ordered to invent a new word for traitor… they could hardly have hit upon a more brilliant combination of letters. Actually it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous.”‘

Enough said, I think.

Love of the Land: The Ghost of Quisling Returns to Haunt Norway as Israel Boycott Movement Gets Major New Boost in Europe

Love of the Land: An Open Letter

An Open Letter

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Sir:

In your Cairo speech [June 4, 2009] you referred to the West Bank as "occupied" by Israel. You implied that the Palestinian Arabs were being denied the sovereign rights to their homeland. But the West Bank was never a sovereign state to Palestinian Arabs. In the ancient world, Judea and Samaria belonged to what was then a sovereign Jewish state, a state from which the Jews were repeatedly driven by foreign conquerors: among them Babylonians, Romans, and Christian crusaders. However often they were driven from their ancient homeland, Jews always returned.

The millennial claims of the Jews contrast with the fact that the Palestinian people of today have no such historic claims. In fact, the Palestinians whose national identity you recognize did not exist before 1967. The West Bank was conquered in 1948 by Jordan, which subsequently annexed it and then later de-annexed it. It was de-annexed when the King of Jordan discovered he had added to his kingdom Palestinians who wanted to overthrow his monarchy. For the same reason, Israel does not want to add enemies to its body politic.

During the 19 years that Jordan controlled the West Bank, not a word was heard of a Palestinian people. After Israel's victory in 1967, Palestinian nationalism was a creation of the larger Arab world, which saw in a Palestinian state a platform from which to launch Israel's ultimate destruction. But they recognize that that victory will never come until America's support of Israel is sufficiently undermined.

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Love of the Land: An Open Letter