Love of the Land: Nakba Myths: Refugees ... and Refugees ...

Nakba Myths: Refugees ... and Refugees ...

Daphne Anson
14 May '11

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/05/nakba-myths-refugees-and-refugees.html



David Ben-Gurion's Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948 (to use the secular calendar) was of course followed by the Arabs' determined but heroically thwarted attempt to wipe the fledgling state off the map, and in the course of hostilities - started of course by the surrounding Arab nations, not by Israel, which sought only peace - some 600, 000 Arabs (now termed, in hindsight, Palestinians, as cunning and effective a propaganda move as there ever has been) became refugees.



A few years ago a writer in a Palestinian Authority newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeedah, laid the blame for the so-called Nakba ("catastrophe") squarely where it indeed resides: with the Arab leaders themselves.

"…The leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the “Catastrophe” in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those “Arkuvian” [i.e. unkept] promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events…" (hat tip: Elder of Ziyon)

But, as David Gutmann, a former Palmach fighter, observed in an article entitled "The Arab Lie Whose Time Has Come" :

"To back up its demands for full repatriation to Israel of Arab refugees and their descendants, the Palestinian leadership has—for over fifty years—busily spun the story of their "Naqba," their catastrophic flight from Palestine during 1947-48, in all the media available to them. This version of events—replete with Jewish brutality and Arab victimization—is a lie whose time has come, one now almost universally believed by Gentile and Jew alike.


It has become the latest Blood Libel against the People of the Book; and like the others it will never go away. Nevertheless, many Jewish Peaceniks—both Israeli and American—have signed on to the Naqba narrative, and Jewish authors and intellectuals now number among its leading proponents...."

Testified Gutmann from his own firsthand knowledge:

"The Palestinians initiated the war that led to their Naqba. Troops from Tel-Aviv eventually conquered Jaffa, but it was Arab fighters in Jaffa who, from the towers of their mosques, first fired into Tel-Aviv, and turned the intercity border areas into a battleground.


The first refugees were not Arabs but Yemenite Jews, from the Tel Aviv-Jaffa No-Man's Land that Arab aggression had created. Unlike the Palestinians, theirs was only a temporary refugee status. Instead of packing them away and forgetting them in squalid refugee camps, their Ashkenazi compatriots took them into their own neighborhoods. For the most part the Yemenites camped out in Tel Aviv apartment lobbies, and used the cooking and sanitary facilities of the permanent residents. When Jaffa fell to Irgun soldiers, they went back home.


The Palestinians fled for many reasons and from many threats, both real and imaginary, and that thousands upon thousands fled when nobody pushed them. As an example, when my unit occupied the abandoned British police station at Sidn'a Ali in the Sharon Plain, British troops were still stationed in the vicinity, and we had to train and patrol with our few guns (antiquated or homemade) concealed. Nevertheless, the Arabs of Sidn'a Ali were long gone, way before we could have pushed them out, and while the Brits were still in place to protect them from us. Needless to say, in the absence of any Palestinian targets (save for some abandoned camels) we committed no rapes." (For the rest see: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=13508)

One of the most intriguing and insightful commentaries on the refugee issue and Arab rejectionism of Israel has been made by Francisco Gil-White in a well-documented article:

"Critics of Israel from the moderate ... to the most extreme portray it as an example of colonialism: European settlers push out the native population turning them into homeless refugees. And sure, they say, those Europeans were themselves victims of genocide, but do two wrongs make a right?

There are two problems with this view. First, it incorrectly portrays the makeup of the people who constitute most of the Jewish population in Israel. And second, it incorrectly describes the causes and nature of the Palestinian refugee problem....
Is Israel a European “Settler State”?

That is the commonly held view, but the truth is quite different."

Pointing out that, following the establishment of and Israel in 1948, refugees from Iraq (130,000), Yemen (45,000), Libya (35,000) and other mizrachi communities took refuge there - in such numbers that some of the countries were virtually depleted of Jews altogether, he states the obvious truth:

"Thus, the general perception that Arabs are the only refugees produced by the Arab-Jewish conflicts since 1947 is simply wrong. The difference is that Jewish refugees who fled to Israel – and who had everything taken from them in the process – became Israeli citizens (or citizens of other countries). By way of contrast, Palestinian refugees were refused citizenship by every Arab state except Jordan."

The number of Oriental Jews (450,000) who fled to Israel between 1948 and 1956 was markedly higher than the number (360,000) who made aliya from Europe and the USA.

Gil-White cites studies that show that by the early 1970s, the number of Israelis of mizrachi and background outnumbered Jews of other origins, and that in 1985, the "Oriental Jews" constituted the majority of the Israel's Jewish population, a proportion later diminished by the arrival of Jews from the Soviet Union.

Regarding the lands the mizrachim left behind:

'Many claim that the status of Jews in the Arab world was not like that of Jews in Europe (i.e., it was supposedly better), and therefore Arabs did not have anti-Semitic attitudes until Zionists came to Palestine. In truth, Jewish life in the Arab world was characterized by institutionalized racism....

Why did Zionism, the movement for a Jewish state in Palestine, elicit fury in many Arabs from its very beginnings? To understand this, one must look at the world from a traditionalist Arab/Islamic point of view.

The Arab upper classes saw "dhimmitude" as the cement of the social fabric, helping guarantee the loyalty of 'the street'. Many ordinary Arabs perceived in the lowly status of Jews – that is, in "dhimmitude" – a confirmation of their own worth. And there was special contempt for the Jews, perhaps because, unlike the Christian case, no Jewish states existed to compete with Islamic states....

Why did millions of Arabs all over North Africa and the Middle East, who never met a Zionist, hate them? There are two reasons. First, they did not act like proper dhimmis. Second, the Zionist Jews carried the dangerous contagion of modern ideas....

This helps explain why the Mufti of Jerusalem, Nasser, Arafat, Hamas, etc. have not merely called for defeating Israel and/or extracting political concessions, but rather have always agitated for Israel’s total destruction. The existence of a Jewish State in the Middle East is seen as an offense to the natural order of Allah-proclaimed Jewish inferiority – and as a source of ideas that challenge the traditional Middle Eastern practices and power-relations. Arab leaders use both these perceived offenses to mobilize popular support from the Arab 'street'.

This also explains some otherwise odd facts. For example, the Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, organized a murderous attack against Jewish civilians in 1920.

It was directed primarily at members of the ‘Old Yishuv’. These were not recent Jewish immigrants. Their families had been in Palestine for over 2000 years. In 1929, Mufti-organized Arabs slaughtered Jews in Hebron and other towns. Although Palestinian leaders speak of the Hebron massacre as a heroic act of resistance to Zionism, in fact, it was a terrorist pogrom, and directed largely at indigenous Palestinian Jews, not recent immigrants.

The context of "dhimmitude" explains why so much terrorist violence was directed against non-immigrant Jews in Palestine. By presenting themselves as equal to Muslims, the Zionists had cancelled the dhimma; therefore, jihad could resume. Since the dhimma was an agreement that applied to the entire community, all Jews were now subject to jihad slaughter...

The Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Saudi armies and Iraqi and Palestinian irregulars did not invade Israel because it had attacked or threatened those countries, but because Israel had chosen to exist. By doing so, it had cancelled the dhimma on a grand scale.'
Read all of Gil-White's article here:

http://www.ourjerusalem.com/opinion/story/opinion20030907.html

There's also another pertinent point to be made.

Last September, a guest post on this blog reminded us of the uniqueness of the Palestinian Arabs' insistence on the right to return to their former homeland - other persons displaced as a result of other twentieth-century events, including catalysts during the 1940s, made new lives for themselves, but only in the case of the "Palestinian refugees" is the right to return - a sine qua non for a peace deal as far as the PA is concerned - demanded. See http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2010/09/in-contrast-to-palestine-partitions.html

See also: http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/04/true-number-of-palestinian-arabs-who.html

And for great posts on the Nakba question from the archives of a master see:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2006/12/pa-newspaper-admits-arabs-responsible.html
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2008/05/first-refugees-of-1948-war-were-jews.html
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2008/05/truth-about-1948.html
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2005/05/why-israels-creation-is-naqba.html
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2006/04/naqba-no-one-talks-about.html
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2008/04/definition-of-nakba-depends-on-audience.html
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2006/05/happy-naqba.html

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Love of the Land: Nakba Myths: Refugees ... and Refugees ...

Love of the Land: Glick: Obama's newest ambush

Glick: Obama's newest ambush

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
13 May '11

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2011/05/obamas-newest-ambush.php

It is hard to believe, but it appears that in the wake of the Palestinian unity deal that brings Hamas, the genocidal, al-Qaida-aligned, local franchise of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, into a partnership with Fatah, US President Barack Obama has decided to open a new round of pressure on Israel to give away its land and national rights to the Palestinians. It is hard to believe that this is the case. But apparently it is.

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that while Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is in Washington next week, and before the premier has a chance to give his scheduled address to a joint session of Congress, Obama will give a new speech to the Arab world. In that speech, Obama will praise the populist movements that have risen up against Arab tyrannies and embrace them as the model for the future. As for Israel, the report claimed that the Obama administration is still trying to decide whether the time is right to put the screws on Israel once more.

On the one hand, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told the Journal that Arab leaders are clamoring for a new US initiative to force Israel to make new concessions. Joining this supposed clamor are the administration-allied pro-Palestinian lobby J Street, and the administration-allied New York Times.

On the other hand, the Netanyahu government and Congress are calling for a US aid cutoff to the Palestinian Authority. With Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization, now partnering with Fatah in governing the PA, it is illegal for the US government to continue to have anything to do with the PA. Both the Netanyahu government and senior members of the House and Senate are arguing forcefully that there is no way for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians now, and that the US must abandon its efforts to force the sides to sign an agreement.

The Israeli and congressional arguments are certainly compelling. But the signals emanating from the White House and its allied media indicate that Obama is ready to plough forward in spite of them. With the new international security credibility he earned by overseeing the successful assassination of Osama bin Laden, Obama apparently believes that he can withstand congressional pressure and make the case for demanding that Israel surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to Hamas and its partners in Fatah.



THE SIGNALS that Obama is setting his sights on coercing Israel into agreeing to surrender its capital and heartland to Hamas and its partners in Fatah came in three forms this week. First, administration officials are trying to lower the bar that Hamas needs to pass in order to be considered a legitimate political force.

After Fatah and Hamas signed their first unity deal in March 2007, the US and its colleagues in the so-called Middle East Quartet - Russia, the EU and the UN - set three conditions that Hamas needed to meet to be accepted by them as legitimate. It needed to recognize Israel's right to exist, agree to respect existing agreements with Israel, and renounce terrorism.

These are not difficult conditions. Fatah is perceived as having met them even though it is still a terrorist organization and its leaders refuse to accept Israel's right to exist and refuse to abide by any of the major commitments they took upon themselves in precious agreements with Israel. Hamas could easily follow Fatah's lead.

But Hamas refuses. So, speaking to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius two weeks ago, administration officials lowered the bar.

They said Hamas had made major concessions to Fatah in their agreement because it agreed to accept provisions of the 2009 unity deal drafted by the Mubarak government that it rejected two year ago and because Hamas agreed that the unity government will be manned by "technocrats" rather than terrorists.

Even if these contentions are true, they are completely ridiculous. In point of fact, all the 2009 agreement says is that Hamas will refrain from demanding to join the US-trained and funded Fatah army in Judea and Samaria. As for the "technocratic" government, who does the Obama administration think will control these "technocrats"? And as to the truth of these contentions, in an interview last week with the New York Times, Hamas terror-master Khaled Mashal denied that he had agreed to the terms of the 2009 agreement.

Indeed, he said that Fatah agreed to add annexes to the agreement reflecting Hamas's positions.

The second pitch the administration and its friends have adopted ahead of Obama's address next week is that Hamas has become more moderate or may become more moderate.

Robert Malley, who in the past advised Obama's presidential campaign, made this argument last week in an op-ed in the Washington Post. Malley claimed that by joining the government, Hamas will be more moved by US pressure. A New York Times editorial last Saturday argued that Hamas may have moderated, and even if it hasn't, "Washington needs to press Mr. Netanyahu back to the peace table."

Adding their voices to the din, Middle Eastern leaders like Amr Moussa, the frontrunner to serve as Egypt's next president, and Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan, have given interviews to the US media this week in which they denied that Hamas is even a terrorist organization.

Here it is important to note that none of the administration's statements about the Hamas- Fatah deal and none of the media coverage related to it have included any mention of the fact that Hamas deliberately murders entire families and targets children specifically. No one mentions last month's Hamas guided rocket attack which deliberately targeted an Israeli school bus. Hamas murdered 16-year-old Daniel Viflic in that attack. No one has mentioned the café massacres, the bus bombings, the university campus massacres, the breaking into homes massacres, the Passover Seder massacres Hamas has carried out and bragged about in recent years. No one has mentioned that when seen as a portion of the population, Hamas has killed far more Israelis than al-Qaida has killed Americans.

The final pitch the administration and its surrogates are making is that the deal needs to be seen as part of the overall regional shift towards popular rule. This pitch too is difficult to make.

After all, the first casualty of the Arab world's shift towards popular rule is the 30-year-old Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Now that Egypt's citizens have gotten rid of US-ally Hosni Mubarak, they have committed themselves to getting rid of the peace he upheld with Israel throughout his long reign.

Again, despite the difficulties, the Obama administration is clearly willing to make the case. Regarding Egypt, they argue that the Muslim Brotherhood's rise to power is a good. This was the point of Obama's Passover and Israel Independence Day messages.

As for the regional shift, the fact that Obama reportedly intends to place the so-called Palestinian- Israeli peace process into the regional context signals that he sees potential for an agreement between Israel and Syria as well. His advisers telegraphed this view to Ignatius.

Obama's advisers made the unlikely argument that if Syrian leader Bashar Assad survives the popular demonstrations calling for his overthrow, he will feel compelled to distance his regime from Iran because his Sunni-majority population has been critical of his alliance with the Shi'ite mullocracy.

This argument is unlikely given that the same officials recognize that if Assad survives, he will owe his regime's survival to Iran. As they reminded Ignatius, US intelligence officials reported last month that Iran has "secretly supplied Assad with tear gas, anti-riot gear and other tools of suppression."

WHAT IS perhaps most remarkable about Obama's apparent plan to use the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as an excuse for a new round of diplomatic warfare against Israel is how poorly coordinated his steps have been with the PLO-Fatah. Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat always viewed the US obsession with getting the Arabs and Israel to sign peace treaties as a strategic asset. Anytime they wanted to weaken Israel, they just needed to sound the fake peace drum loudly enough to get the White House's attention. US presidents looking for the opportunity to "make history" were always ready to take their bait.

Unlike his predecessors, Obama's interest in the Palestinians is not opportunistic. He is a true believer. And because of his deep-seated commitment to the Palestinians, his policies are even more radically anti-Israel than the PLO-Fatah's. It was Obama, not Abbas, who demanded that Jews be barred from building anything in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. It is the Obama administration, not the PLO-Fatah, that is leading the charge to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood.

Like his belated move to demand a permanent abrogation of Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Abbas arguably embraced Hamas because Obama left him no choice. He has no interest in making peace with Israel, so the only thing he can do under the circumstances Obama has created is embrace Hamas. He can't be less pro-Islamic than the US president.

ALL OF this brings us to Netanyahu and his trip to Washington next week. Obviously Obama's decision to upstage the premier with his new outreach-to-the-Arab-world speech will make Netanyahu's visit more challenging than it was already going to be.

Obama is clearly betting that by moving first, he will be able to coerce Netanyahu to make still more concessions of land and principles.

Certainly, Netanyahu's earlier decisions to cave in to Obama's pressure with his acceptance of Palestinian statehood and his subsequent acceptance of a Jewish building freeze give Obama good reason to believe he can back Netanyahu into a corner. Defense Minister Ehud Barak's hysterical warnings about a diplomatic "tsunami" at the UN in September if Israel fails to capitulate to Obama today no doubt add to Obama's sense that he can expect Netanyahu to dance to his drums, no matter how hostile the beat.

But Netanyahu doesn't have to give in. He can stick to his guns and defend the country. He can continue on the correct path he has forged of repeating the truth about Hamas. He can warn about the growing threat of Egypt. He can describe the Iranian-supported butchery Assad is carrying out against his own people and note that a regime that murders its own will not make peace with the Jewish state. And he can point out the fact that as a capitalist, liberal democracy which protects the lives and property of its citizens, Israel is the only stable country in the region and the US's only reliable regional ally.

True, if Netanyahu does these things, he will not win himself any friends in the White House.

But he never had a chance of winning Obama and his advisers over anyway. He will empower Israel's allies in Congress, though. And more importantly, whether he is loved or hated in Washington, if Netanyahu does these things, he will be able to return home to Jerusalem with the sure knowledge that he earned his salary this month.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post


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Love of the Land: Glick: Obama's newest ambush

Love of the Land: Guardian delusions over the Palestinians can't change the hard facts

Guardian delusions over the Palestinians can't change the hard facts

Robin Shepherd
The Commentator
12 May '11

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/154/guardian_delusions_over_the_palestinians_can_t_change_the_hard_facts

The tragedy of the Palestinian people is a tragedy of their own making. Guardian columnists need to learn the basic facts

It takes a lot these days to raise hackles among decent and reasonable people at anything written in the Guardian about the State of Israel.

This is a paper, after all, that back in January slated the Palestinian leadership for being “weak” and “craven” after it was revealed they had accepted – as any sane and normal person would – that practically all the so called “settlements” in east Jerusalem would become part of Israel under any real-world peace agreement.

So after you’ve effectively described even the most obvious concessions in meaningful negotiations as the actions of surrender monkeys, the sheer fanaticism of your antipathy to the Jewish state is established once and for all.

Thursday’s piece on the paper’s flagship Comment is free website by the Belgian-Egyptian writer Khaled Diab plumbs no such depths of depravity. It’s just an exercise in pathological self-delusion.

The central point is that with all the revolutions taking place across the Middle East it’s surely time for the Palestinians to rise up in a peaceful uprising to bring unity and democracy to Palestinian society in order to end the occupation. Palestinian youth would join hands with Israeli peaceniks and the conflict would finally be resolved.

“Being the dreamer that I am,” says Diab, “I cannot shake the vision in my head of the joint Israeli-Palestinian activism infecting the masses, with large-scale joint action as the most effective way to end the occupation and bring about peace”.

Diab calls himself a “dreamer” so I suppose he at least has a defence for his ideas in that he came up with them when he was asleep. Those of us who try to generate our thinking in the cold light of day can tell him the following:

1. The Palestinians don’t need a revolution to get a state. They just need to accept Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people and put aside dreams – that word again – of annihilating it. It’s really that simple. The rest is detail.

2. A Palestinian state has been on offer from day one of the conflict. The Jewish/Israeli side accepted a Palestinian state under UN Resolution 181 – the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which was adopted in November 1947. The Arab/Palestinian side rejected it and opted for war and violence. That’s why there’s a conflict.

3. Up until the Six Day War in 1967 the so called “occupied territories” were ruled by Jordan and Egypt. “Occupation” took place after the Arab armies again went to war with the aim of destroying Israel.

4. Since 1967, Israel has tried numerous times to give the Palestinians statehood, only to be rejected, as in 2000 and 2001, by the Palestinian leadership.

5. The Palestinian leadership inculcates hatred of Israel on a daily basis in schools, in the mosques and on television. That is why the large majority of Palestinians oppose a two state solution.

6. A comprehensive poll by the Israel Project in November 2010 showed 60 percent of Palestinians supporting the proposition that: “The real goal should be to start with two states but then move to it all being one Palestinian state”. 66 percent supported the proposition that: “Over time Palestinians must work to get back all the land for a Palestinian state”. And 71 percent said Yasser Arafat was right to reject Bill Clinton’s peace proposals in 2000 and 2001.

Amid all the complexities in this conflict, these are the hard facts that simply won’t go away. And the hardest fact to internalise, and the one that encapsulates all of the above, is that the tragedy of the Palestinians is a tragedy of their own making.

Khaled Diab and his friends at the Guardian can “dream” and “hope” all they like. But until the Palestinians put aside their delusions and see the world for what it is, their national tragedy is destined to continue.

Robin Shepherd is owner/publisher of the Commentator. His book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe's Problem with Israel, is out in paperback.


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Love of the Land: Guardian delusions over the Palestinians can't change the hard facts

Love of the Land: Fighting on a Different Front – Debunking the Arab Narrative

Fighting on a Different Front – Debunking the Arab Narrative

West Bank Mama
12 May '11

http://westbankmama.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/fighting-on-a-different-front-debunking-the-arab-narrative/

Im Tirzu has done a public service once again. They have just published Nakba Charta - which in Hebrew means Nakba BS. This 70 page pamphlet refutes the lies and distortions that the Arabs have been publicizing for decades about what happened during the Israeli War of Independence, which they call the Nakba – “The Catastrophe”. It punches holes into the narrative that too many people, including many Israelis, swallow hook, line and sinker.

The pamphlet is only in Hebrew (now). I urge those of you who can to read the original, linked above. For those of you who do not understand Hebrew, I will just give you some of the main points in English.

The introduction explains that our war with the Arabs is being fought on the military front and the front of “justice”. We are winning the first, and unfortunately losing the second. Where in the past we were able to fight bravely against our enemies in the strong belief in the justice of our cause, now there are many who doubt. The Arab narrative has taken root especially in the “elite” of Israel - in academia, culture, and the court system. These elites have expended tremendous effort to convince the Jews to feel guilty, and are deliberately trying to blur the Jewish identity of the state of Israel. The purpose of the pamphlet is simple – to tell the truth.

1. The Arabs attacked the Jews

The authors of the pamphlet point out that they do not refute that the Arabs suffered as a result of the War of Independence. They want to point out, though, that the Arabs brought the sufferring upon themselves. The myth of the Nakba – the “Catastrophe” – is based on so many lies and distortions, that it rewrites history so that the aggressor becomes the victim, and the person defending himself against massacre becomes a war criminal.

The Arabs brought the disaster upon themselves because they attacked the Jewish state – hoping to kill every Jewish man woman and child. The Jews fought back bravely, and won.

2. They fled

The authors go on to state that the refugee problem was caused in large part by the Arab League itself. The authors point to what happened in Haifa as an example, and show that not only did a third of the Arab residents start to vacate Haifa in November of 1947 (months before the war), and that in March women and children were taken out, but that during the war itself the Arab League called the Arab residents to vacate, despite the fact that the Jews urged the Arabs to stay. The Arab League did this as a way to undermine the idea that Arabs and Jews could live together. Afterwards those who fled were warned not to return, as they would be considered traitors and would be killed.

3. Who is really a refugee?

The authors bring up two main points in this section: one, the definition of a refugee, and how this definition was changed by the UN just for the Arabs displaced by the War of Independence. First, the definition of a refugee was changed from those who live in a place and where his ancestors lived from “time immemorial” to someone who lived in a place for two years. Second, the definition of a refugee was changed to include their descendents. Yes, you read correctly: for every other refugee the world over, the status is just for a person with a long past in a region, and the status is for the person actually displaced. But for the Arabs displaced by the War in 1948, the status has been extended to those residing in a place for just two years, and the status was granted to his children and grandchildren. Two, the section discusses the actual statistics of how many Arabs were here at the time, and for how long - and how the Arab narrative about the numbers is exaggerated.

4. What about the Jewish refugees?

This section points out the historical fact that is ignored by most of the world – that many Arab countries in the Middle East persecuted the Jews for centuries, forcing them to flee, and many expelled the Jews outright as a result of the establishment of the State of Israel. In fact, there were 560,000 Arab refugees displaced in 1948, and 900,000 Jews displaced by Arab countries. So for every Arab refugee there are 1.5 Jewish refugees. All of the Jewish refugees were absorbed, mostly by Israel.

5. The Arabs sided with the Nazis

The last section of the pamphlet details the involvement that the Arab League had with the Nazis, including the fact that the Mufti al- Husseini toured Auschwitz with Eichman, and vowed to build similar death camps to exterminate the Jews in the Middle East. He pleaded with the European countries not to let the Jews leave and come to Israel. When he heard that the government of Hungary was to let 900 Jewish children leave, he pressured them to rescind their decision, and in the end these 900 Jewish children were sent to the death camps.

Although it is not stated explicitly in the pamphlet, the last two sections contain important information in order to challenge the Arab narrative. Those who champion the “Palestinian” cause claim that the Arabs are an innocent party, and that the UN imposed upon them the State of Israel to compensate the Jews for the Nazi Holocaust. This narrative ignores the active persecution and killing of Jews that occured in Arab countries for centuries, the Arab riots and terrorist attacks against Jews in Israel even before the War of Independence (let alone the Six Day War), and the support of the Nazis in World War II.

I sincerely hope the whole thing is translated into English soon, and if so I will of course link to it. I also think it needs to be translated into Arabic and Persian and publicized on the internet.

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Love of the Land: Fighting on a Different Front – Debunking the Arab Narrative

UNIVERSAL TORAH: BECHUKOSAI

UNIVERSAL TORAH: BECHUKOSAI

By Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum

Torah Reading: Parshas BECHUKOSAI, Leviticus 26:3-27:34
Haftara: Jeremiah 16:19-17:14

IF YOU WILL GO IN MY STATUTES

Our parshah, BECHUKOSAI, puts the seal on the book of Leviticus, which is the "heart" of the Torah (Genesis being the "head", Exodus the "arms", Numbers the "legs" and Deuteronomy the "mouth", Malchus). BECHUKOSAI marks the conclusion of G-d's revelation to Moses in the Sanctuary in the camp at Sinai and the sealing of the Sinaitic Covenant, while the coming book of Numbers recounts the journeying of the Children of Israel on their way to the Promised Land.

As the seal on Leviticus, the book of the "heart", BECHUKOSAI addresses the two sides of the heart: love and fear. Our love of G-d is aroused by the promises of blessing if we will GO in His statutes, while our fears are aroused by the dire punishments for failure to do so.

What does it mean to GO in His statutes? This is explained by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov:

The life of Torah and mitzvos should be one of constantly striving to move forward from level to level in our fulfillment of the actual commandments. In every commandment that we carry out, there is a level of meaning that we can grasp within our minds, yet at the same time, the mitzvah has profoundly deeper meaning that is now beyond our grasp. These two levels are those of NA'ASEH ("we will do") and VENISHMA ("we shall hear") respectively. NA'ASEH applies to that which is within our grasp now, the physical mitzvah with its plain intention -- WE WILL DO. We must go ahead and do it now on the simple level even if as yet we do not have deeper understanding, even if the level of VENISHMA, WE SHALL HEAR -- understanding -- is still beyond us. To GO in G-d's statutes means to strive constantly to turn that which is as yet beyond us -- our VENISHMA -- and make it into our NA'ASEH, something that we CAN meaningfully accomplish. This is brought about when we pray to G-d to help us in our practice and to give us deeper understanding. Deeper understanding also depends upon deeper study.

When we thus turn what was our VENISHMA into a new level of NA'ASEH -- because we now incorporate our newly attained, deeper insight into our practice -- we thereby discover that a new level of VENISHMA opens up ahead of us. It is this higher level of VENISHMA that we must now strive to attain and turn into a new, higher level of NA'ASEH for ourselves. We must continue this way striving to go from level to level, constantly integrating new levels of understanding into our practice. Thus we constantly GO from level to level in our practice (Likutey Moharan Part I, Torah 22).

* * *

AND IF NOT.

Rashi in his commentary on BECHUKOSAI explains how the terrible penalties for failure to follow the path of the Torah are built upon a seven-fold schema, because the essential cause of the exile was the violation of the Sabbath and the Sabbatical years. At the very core of the sins that invoke the terrible cycle of punishment are seven basic sins, each of which drags the next in train: (1) Neglect of study. (2) Neglect of practice. (3) Despising others who practice. (4) Hatred of the sages. (5) Preventing others from practicing. (6) Denial of the divine origin of the commandments. (7) Denial of the existence of G-d.

Graphic illustrations of the fulfillment of all of the terrible penalties described in our parshah in actual Jewish history are recounted in the Midrash. The infringement of the seven basic sins causing the exile has been a recurrent theme in all of Jewish history from biblical times until today. The rebellion of the Ten Tribes under Jereboam son of Nevat against the House of David under Rehav'am represented a craving for greater license than was permitted by the House of David, whose royalty depends upon constant study of the Torah and in particular the oral tradition. Under the northen king Ahab [whose influence is said to have been worldwide], hatred and persecution of the sages -- the prophets -- became institutionalized. Later on, the Assyrian King Sennacharib's chief spokesman marching against Jerusalem under Hezekiah was a renegade Jew, Ravshekah.

After the end of the Babylonian exile, the return to the land and the building of the Second Temple, new challenges to the authority of the Torah arose, such as from those who denied the afterlife or the oral law, or denied the giving of the Torah at Sinai. Among the most notorious enemies of the Torah were those who hellenized in the Second Temple period, when it was "politically correct" to be Greek. The festival of Chanukah commemorates the miraculous saving of the authentic Torah pathway from the assault upon it by Greek culture.

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, the Rambam (Maimonides) wrote a letter known as IGERET TEIMAN encouraging the Jews of Yemen to remain faithful to the Torah and give their lives if necessary rather than submit to forced conversion by their Moslem rulers. In this letter, Maimonides explains the difference between the assault upon the Torah by Greek thought and the assault upon the Torah by Christianity and Islam.

The Greek philosophers denied the existence of G-d (Level 7) and the revelation at Sinai (Level 6) and accordingly provided justification for preventing Jews from practicing the Torah, e.g. Shabbos, circumcision, etc. (Level 5). leading to open violation and vilification of the Torah by the Hellenists. Greek philosophy was a direct assault upon the Torah, leaving the Jews of the time with a choice -- whether to go after the Torah or after the Greeks.

On the other hand, Christianity and Islam did not blatantly repudiate the entire Torah of Moses. What they did was to establish alternative Torah's that were more acceptable to non-Jews, leaving the Jews of their respective periods with a different kind of choice: whether to remain faithful to the traditional Torah of Moses or to follow an alternative "Torah".

Hatred of the sages of Israel is deeply entrenched in Christianity, because the claims of its founder and his followers about his divinity were a direct assault upon the authority of the sages and an attempt to steal the Torah from its true guardians, the House of David under Hillel (as later handed down in the Mishneh and Talmud). The adherents of the new religion wrote their own "Torah" openly mocking the Torah of Moses, as when their leader is displayed licensing the plucking of grain on the Sabbath for charitable reasons against the protests of the "Pharisees", who are depicted as being mean. In the writings of the new religion, the Pharisees (i.e. the rabbis of the Mishneh) are characterized as the evil face of institutionalized religion. The new religion drew all of its teachings from the Torah, but detached them from the accompanying stringencies of the Law, while attaching them instead to its own devotional system focussing on its own saints and heroes. Particularly after the conversion of Saul (Paul), who was a Pharisee, the new religion institutionalized the systematic vilification of the Torah tradition of the rabbis, turning the written Torah (Torah, Nevi'im & Kesuvim, TaNaCh) into a mere introduction to its own new "Torah" or "Testament", which was meant to replace the Sinaitic Covenant.

Denial of the pathway of the Torah of Sinai -- the written Torah and the oral Torah -- is thus deeply built into the very structure of Christianity, which became the dominant religion in the western and many other parts of the world and one of the main foundations of its culture, together with that of Greece and Rome. As Christianity gained strength, persecution of Torah-observant Jews together with burnings of Torah scrolls and Talmuds became a regular occurrence.

Denial of the Torah given to Moses at Sinai is also inherent in Islam, the founder of which claimed to have supplanted Moses as the ultimate Prophet. The founder of Islam was initially enamored of the Torah of Moses, but wanted to adapt it in his own way. Angered at the stubbornness of the Jews in resisting his changes, he established his own new "Torah" as an alternative to the "old" Torah. Islam saw itself as the stick with which to beat the recalcitrant Jews who despised and neglected their own Torah. In the writings of Islam the "People of the Book" are depicted as renegades to their own teachings.

During the long exile since the destruction of the Second Temple, the Jews who have remained faithful to the Torah of Moses have been surrounded until today by a most formidable cultural assault against their own tradition from the two younger sister religions, Christianity and Islam. This two have gained the ascendancy and taken all the glory, parading their own alternative Torahs in the face of the Torah of Moses.

It is understandable that over the generations, many Jewish souls, subject to this cultural onslaught, have fallen victim to the allurements of the surrounding religions. In addition, since the time of the European renaissance and the "Age of Reason", secularism has become a new alternative to religion of any kind, creating yet another allurement from the stringent code of Judaism, which looks more irrelevant than ever in the modern world.

In this way the Torah of Sinai has been apparently completely marginalized by almost the entire world. The Sinai tradition is guarded by seemingly powerless networks of rabbis and their students, sitting in the Yeshivahs, daily studying the oral tradition as brought down in the Talmud, and by the numerically tiny proportion of the world's population who are Torah-observant.

What is it about the real Torah that makes those who love her cling to her even in the face of adversity on every side? Throughout the generations until today, those who keep the Torah of Moses and abstain from the 39 forbidden labors on the Sabbath have been the butt of every jester and jeerer. Meanwhile Christianity, Islam and every other religion are on the ascendant, including the religion of Satanism and the universal religion of self-indulgence and material consumption.

What love is it that makes those who strive to follow the authentic Torah of Moses continue day after day in the face of all this? How do we keep on GOING in the Torah, even though her face is shrouded in a dark cover -- for in this upside down world, the deeper meaning of the Torah is not revealed?

But if we keep studying the Torah, she will reveal her face to us. The way to keep GOING in the Torah is to GO ON STUDYING the Torah!

In the merit of our study of the book of Leviticus and our on-going study of all the Five Books of Moses, may we be blessed with all the blessings of our parshah: "If you will GO in My statutes."

Shabbat Shalom!!!

Avraham Yehoshua Greenbaum

--
AZAMRA INSTITUTE
PO Box 50037 Jerusalem 91500 Israel
Website: www.azamra.org

Israel Matzav: Overnight music video

Overnight music video

Here's a classic: Reb Shlomo Carlebach singing HaMavdil Bein Kodesh l'Chol (He who distinguishes between the Holy and the profane), which is sung immediately after the Havdala service on Saturday night.

Let's go to the videotape.

Israel Matzav: Overnight music video

Israel Matzav: Why Winston Churchill won’t be getting an honorary degree from CUNY

Why Winston Churchill won’t be getting an honorary degree from CUNY

Reader Sunlight has been after me for quite some time to read The River War, a book written in 1899 by Winston Churchill. Like so many other things I’d like to do, I haven’t gotten around to it….

When you see this video, which includes quotes from that book, you will understand why Sunlight wants me to read it. And you will also understand why Winston Churchill won’t be getting any honorary degrees from the City University of New York anytime soon.

Let’s go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Dan F).

Israel Matzav: Why Winston Churchill won’t be getting an honorary degree from CUNY

Israel Matzav: On John Demjanjuk

On John Demjanjuk

A German court convicted former Nazi concentration camp guard John Demjanujuk of 30,000 murders on Thursday, sentenced him to five years in jail… and then released him.

Pending an appeal from Demjanjuk’s attorney, Ulrich Busch, and the court’s statement that there was no compelling reason to keep him in jail until the sentence could be legally imposed, Judge Ralph Alt declared, “The defendant is released.”

Demjanjuk is not deemed at risk of fleeing Germany because of his age and the fact that he is stateless, Alt said.

The five-year sentence cannot be implemented until the appeal process is exhausted.

In a signal that Demjanjuk may not serve the entire term, or even any of it, even if his appeal fails, Alt said that an incarceration period of five years is “not commensurate” with such an elderly defendant.

Demjanjuk has been in German jail for two years.

“It doesn’t seem likely that Demjanjuk will actually serve any more time in the end. The appeal will take at least a year and at that time his health may not allow putting him in prison,” Alt told journalists after the court ruling.

Demjanjuk cannot return to the United States because the US government stripped him of his citizenship in 2002.

How many of Demjanjuk’s victims were spared because they were elderly and/or stateless? What a load of hogwash. Those who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind.

Israel Matzav: On John Demjanjuk

RubinReports: By The End of This Year Egypt Might Be Run By a Radical Islamist Regime

By The End of This Year Egypt Might Be Run By a Radical Islamist Regime

This article--in an earlier version--was my Jerusalem Post column. I own the rights so only link to this site if forwarding or reprinting.

By Barry Rubin

I'm not saying this lightly. For the first time, there is serious evidence not only for an Islamist-controlled parliament but even potentially for an Islamist president! It's iran all over again except in 1979 Carter didn't publicly demand the shah's overthrow and say he had no problem with Khomeini taking over. In fact, that's what Obama did in Egypt.

First the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood said it wouldn't run a candidate for president and would only contest one-third of the parliamentary seats.

Next, it said it wouldn’t run a presidential candidate and contest just 50 percent of the parliamentary seats. Even that is misleading since it could arrange with other Islamist parties not to compete against each other, thus potentially adding 5 to 10 percent more Islamists, that is a majority, to parliament..

Now, the Muslim Brotherhood says it will run a presidential candidate who might even conceivably win the election. Oh, but he will run as an independent. So that doesn’t count?

One reason for this change on the presidential election is that earlier on the Brotherhood was backing Muhammad ElBaradei. But since the two broke up over the referendum regarding the election timing and rules--ElBaradei thought the changes were too favorable to the Brotherhood so they dropped him--they had no one to support. By the way, the Brotherhood won that referendum by a landslide.

Ah, but it's okay because, according to Reuters, Abdel Moneim Abul Futuh, the Brotherhood’s candidate for president is a leading "reformist member" of the Brotherhood's Shura Council, its highest governing body. Right! He wants to reform Egypt into being an Islamist state.

An al-Ahram poll (it's still early, of course, to know how people will vote) shows Amr Moussa and Abul Futuh are tied at 20 percent with ElBaradei at 12 percent.

Note that since a presidential election would come after a strong Brotherhood showing in the parliamentary election, a lot of voters would be likely to want to join what seems to be the winning side. Also note that the Brotherhood candidate will have a strong organization behind him while Moussa won’t even have a party at all and ElBaradei’s forces should be pretty weak and concentrated largely in Cairo.

Then add into the mix that Abul Futuh will also be supported by non-Brotherhood Islamists while ElBaradei is running against three other “moderate democratic” types in competition for that sector of the votes.

The bottom line is that for the first time this week a Brotherhood takeover of Egypt in 2011 is really possible. Let me underline that point: before one could conceive that this might happen. Now there is hard evidence and real reason to believe that it might actually take place.

Up until now, I had thought that Amr Moussa might be Egypt’s next president with a strong Islamist presence in parliament but not a majority or near-majority. But now Moussa himself predicts that the Brotherhood will have, along with its allies, a majority. And even more recently it is possible that a Brotherhood leader will be elected president.

So here are our alternatives:

Best-case scenario: A radical nationalist president, Moussa, and a strong Islamist contingent in parliament that will also have a big influence in writing the new Constitution. Moussa is anti-Israel and anti-American but might be restrained by his pragmatic streak. On the other hand, the need to play demagogue—he won’t have any money to subsidize food more and provide additional jobs—and to keep the Islamists happy or even outbid them—pushes him toward adventurism.

Worst-case scenario: A Brotherhood president and parliament transforming Egypt into an Islamist state, backing Hamas fully, subverting U.S. influence and other Arab states, and potentially playing jihad in a full-scale war with Israel.

Remember that President Barack Obama said that having the Brotherhood in government is okay with him. So I guess he'll just watch the result of his handiwork and cheer on the results of the process he helped set in motion.

A taste of the future was provided by the massive anti-Israel demonstrations in Cairo today.

Supposedly the rally was to protest sectarian violence within Egypt but it turned into one favoring more sectarian violence next door.

The Brotherhood has now escalated its demands to breaking diplomatic relations with Israel and expelling the Israeli ambassador. Remember all of those articles and statements about how the revolution was good for Israel if only those silly Israelis woke up and understand reality as well as people in Washington DC and the Upper West Side of Manhattan?

Oh, and guess how the demonstration was largely organized. Ready? On Facebook! Hahaha. Those youthful hip twittering moderate young people!

We can also look forward to similar demonstrations in Palestine’s capital, after independence takes place, demanding an abrogation of the Israel-Palestine peace treaty and the end to Israeli occupation of…Israel.

After people finally figured out in April-May what they should have known in January-February about Egypt, might be better to learn the lesson now rather than to repeat the same mistakes infinitely?

PS: Love the AP's "evenhanded" explanation of the Right to Return issue:

"The Palestinians have long maintained that the refugees have a moral and legal right to return to what was once Palestine—including land which is now Israel. But Israel has argued that granting the right of return would compromise the country's identity as the world's only Jewish state."

Yes, all those riots and massive terrorism leading to bloody civil war, with all the neighbors joining in, followed by the genocidal murder of millions of Jews and the transformation of Israel into an Arab and possibly (probably?) Islamist state that would ally with Iran, work to overturn all the region's non-radical regimes, trigger additional wars and massive suffering, and destroy U.S. influence in the Middle East would definitely be an inconvenience.

Ah, but it's okay because, according to Reuters, Abdel Moneim Abul Futuh, is a leading "reformist member" of the Brotherhood's Shura Council. Right! He wants to reform Egypt into being an Islamist state.

An al-Ahram poll (it's still early) shows Amr Moussa and Abul Futuh are tied at 20 percent with ElBaradei at 12 percent..

RubinReports: By The End of This Year Egypt Might Be Run By a Radical Islamist Regime

Sefer Chabibi Deepest Torah: BEHAR: Child Vision

BEHAR: Child Vision

by Rabbi Baruch Binyamin Hakohen Melman


Spending feels good. Whether spending money at the mall or time with one's friends, it is a welcome form of release.

In the Jubilee year all originally designated properties were to be released back to G*d, reverting back to their G*d designated tribal-based owners, regardless of intervening economic happenstance.

There are many levels of reading text. There is the plain meaning, the symbolic meaning, the homiletical meaning and the mystical, esoteric meaning.

The word "Jubilee" in hebrew is yovel. Livlot, in Hebrew, means "to spend," as in money or time. YoVeL means "G*d spends." The earth is His property, He can assign it or re-assign it to whomever He sees fit. G*d "owns the deed," so to speak, for nations, tribes, and even individuals. G*d is the ultimate owner of the land; we are merely its stewards. Like people, G*d feels good when he spends. And His credit ain't so bad either.

After seven seven-year cycles of Shemittah, of giving the land to an opportunity to rest, on the fiftieth year we have a super-shemittah year - a Jubilee year. We still observe the Shemittah year in Israel, but do we still observe the Jubilee year today?

The Talmud (BT Aruchin 32b) states "...deTanya, misheGalu Shevet Reuven veShevet Gad veChatzi Shevet haMenashe bitlu yov'lot,"

which means " ...as we learned in a baraita (outside the canon of the Mishna), from the time when the tribes of Reuven, Gad and half of Menashe were exiled (721 BCE), the (observance of) the Jubilee Years were anulled." I would say that's a pretty long time ago. It hasn't been observed for over 2700 years!

But the Torah is eternal and so even if the observance of the Jubilee Year is anulled, it is incumbent for us to try and make it relevant for our own day, perhaps in a different way.

"Behar" could be read as meaning " two mountains (bet=2 har)," for the Two Torahs- the Oral Torahand the Written Torah; alternatively as two parents-a mother and father- the father who corresponds to the Written Torah, with its overtones of strictness, and the mother, who corresponds to the Oral Torah's compassionate softening of the Law's literal meaning.

In verse 25:10, the text states "veshavtem ish el achuzato, and each man shall return to his heriditary property (achuza)."

And the Torah is suggesting to us, that from this perspective, we should re-imagine ourselves as young children, gazing up at the towering mountain-like influence of our parents. Further, leACHoZ, to "take hold," bespeaks a child-like imagery.

Children are usually seen as grabbing. But that is a misunderstanding. It's simply not true. Very young children (babies) just want to merge with everything around them. There is no "other" with a young baby. The baby puts everything in her mouth because she simply wants to merge with the whole world. It's not an ego thing for a baby. It's just the opposite. All borders are blurred- not because I don't want to see a border. There's simply a sense that all is of the same Divine unity.

On the deepest level the baby knows that everything is connected. Our task, the Torah seems to be telling us, is to recharge ourselves, to view life again from the perspective of an infant, and to know that G*d will meet all our needs for us. Some of us resent G*d because our parents may not have met all our needs for us.

In the shemittah year we let go of the land and let it rest and return to its own child-like, unrestricted, unpruned, untrained natural state of being. And on the Jubilee, the land itself lets go of its anthrocentric human-decreed owners and returns to its G*d-decreed state.

This reflects the double meaning of what shabbat means to us - as both well-resting and returning. That is why the word shavtem in verse 10 above is in the plural form even though it seems to be qualifying the word ish (man) which remains in the singular.

On the plain, or peshat level of meaning this makes no sense without this deeper understanding which resolves the tension in the grammatical incongruity of our text. Thus, in this new dual understanding, we let our physical bodies rest and rejuvenate, all the while letting our spiritual souls return to their Divine dimension, uniting with the holiness of the Sabbath.

Finally, we can read it on the deepest sod, or "secret" level,reading SVA as not "sova" or "sheva," but as SHaVuAh, meaning "oath." Thus it now becomes, "and you shall eat according to the oath." Oath? What oath? This means that just as parents take an oath to feed their child unconditionally, so too G*d will promise to feed us and nourish us if we return to a child-like state of openness to His magnificent bounty.

Of course, we should learn to grow up and take responsibility, but never at the price of losing our child-like sense of awe and wonderment about the world - and its Divine source. Chazon is the Hebrew word for "a vision." When the Torah says "each man shall return to (his) aChuZato (vs 10), it's hinting in the strongest sense possible that we should all return to our "original vision (chazon)."

This means that our holy task in life is to return to and try to attain once more that child-like vision. We should try very much to connect ourselves to the world as does a child- to see ourselves as both inseparable and connected to every other being on the planet. If we truly have a sense of merging with all life, then it would not be possible to ever oppress our neighbor; we would only be oppressing ourselves.

A child always believes in fairness. The adult cynically says,"that's life." But the Torah's utopian vision is that ALL is connected to the ULTIMATE ONENESS, that all is of and from G*d. There is none other. The baby knows best what heaven wants. After all, he just came from there.

Shabbat Shalom

© 2000 - 2011 by Rabbi Baruch Binyamin Hakohen Melman

Sefer Chabibi Deepest Torah: BEHAR: Child Vision

Love of the Land: Feiglin: Throw Achmadinijad into the Sea

Feiglin: Throw Achmadinijad into the Sea

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut Yehudit
4 Iyar, 5771
(May 8, '11)




Translated from the NRG website

When news of Arafat's terminal illness became public, I hurriedly put up a sign on my car that read: "Kill Arafat Now." I wrote an article entitled: Quick! Kill him Before he Dies and put an ad in the newspaper with the same message. The country was up in arms. Major headlines announced that the Attorney General was considering putting me on trial (again) for sedition.

I was reminded of this entire episode after Bin Laden's assassination.

"Justice has been done," Obama declared. How unusual to hear a Western leader speak of justice. And not just any justice, but justice attained by eliminating the enemy and throwing his body into the sea. The Americans killed him before he could die. They didn't send him a computer virus to unwind his centrifuges. They dragged his body out to sea, threw it overboard and went out to celebrate the great sedition, the sweet taste of revenge, in the streets.

The Americans celebrated the stability that they found in positioning their crumbling world on the foundation of justice. They celebrated a just act of heroism that since the days of Oslo, we in Israel have been brainwashed to think is completely foolish and will ignite a war.

Obama's supporters and opponents are united now in celebrating a tiny historical moment in which they decided to be just and not necessarily smart. There will be Americans who will pay the price of the assassination – that is quite clear. There would have been many more that would have had to pay the price of surrender.

The Holocaust did not begin with the outbreak of World War II. It began six years earlier, when the German leader came into power and initiated a campaign to de-legitimize the Jews. In his venomous speeches, Hitler, may his name be blotted out, created the "Jewish Question." When a Jew is forced to justify the air that he breathes – to pay to stop the Iranian nuclear installations – the door is wide open for the physical destruction that follows.

Achmadinijad is currently following exactly the same pattern and timetable. He, like Amalek, is the first to openly speak about the destruction of Israel. He was also originally viewed as a fanatical and deranged demagogue espousing his hateful views to strengthen his local interests. In his case as well, the Jews prefer to be pragmatic, as recommended by former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan – to be practical, to deal with the technique and not with the substance.

The result is the same as over sixty years ago. Just look at the state of our existential legitimacy. Who is the demagogue and who is melting away?

"Don't be just – be smart" our Mossad Chiefs, foreign ministers and other suits and decorated officers remind us. "Why take a risk if an Iron Dome or anti-centrifugal virus can take care of the problem? Let the rest of the world fight for us. After all, it is in their best interest. What can be stupider than attacking Iran just before it will be neutralized by others?"

What they do not understand is that the real danger stems not from the nuclear weapons, but from the loss of our sense of justice, fostered by the legitimacy given to the calls to destroy us. Today, respectable universities throughout the world openly debate how the world will look without Israel. The Jewish Question of 60 years ago has morphed into the Israel Question of today.

An Israeli attack on Iran can still restore our sense of justice and save us from the destructive process that is well under way. We must learn from the Americans and throw Achmadinijad into the sea. The extent of our success does not matter. And yes, we must be willing to absorb any reaction. Achmadinijad's nuclear weapons are not the danger. The question mark that he has hung over our right to exist is. As long as we do not respond to it, the question mark will grow and grow.

When it comes to justice, you cannot lose. The results on the ground are not as important as the red line that you can once again draw for the entire world to see; the red line that says that there is no Jewish Question or Israel Question that must be solved.

It is high time to throw Achmadinijad into the sea – and to go out to celebrate in the streets.

Love of the Land: Feiglin: Throw Achmadinijad into the Sea

RubinReports: Massive Anti-Israel Rally in Egypt Organized by...Facebook

Massive Anti-Israel Rally in Egypt Organized by...Facebook

This article is published on PajamasMedia.

By Barry Rubin

Repeatedly we were told about the alleged absence of anti-Israel rhetoric and signs in Tahrir square during the revolution. I don’t think it was true then. I certainly don’t think it is true now.

So check out the massive anti-Israel demonstrations in Cairo today. A picture is worth a thousand foreign policy mistakes that got us into this mess. That one is of the massive size of the demonstration; here's a nice one of an Israeli flag being burned.

Supposedly the rally was to protest sectarian violence within Egypt but it turned into one favoring more sectarian violence next door. The main focus became supporting the Hamas-Fatah coalition agreement and calling for Israel’s extinction.

Other demonstrations demanded breaking diplomatic relations with Israel and expelling the Israeli ambassador.

Remember all of those articles and statements about how the revolution was good for Israel if only those silly Israelis woke up and understand reality as understood in Berkeley and the Upper West Side of Manhattan?

Oh, and guess how the demonstration was largely organized. Ready? On Facebook! Hahaha. Those youthful hip twittering moderate young people!

Also notice how this is all happening before elections install a radical, nationalist, anti-Israel, anti-American president and a parliament dominated by revolutionary Islamist anti-American antisemites. What are we going to see after the people have spoken?

We can also look forward to similar demonstrations in Palestine’s capital, after independence takes place, demanding an abrogation of the Israel-Palestine peace treaty and the end to Israeli occupation of…Israel.

After people finally figured out in April-May what they should have known in January-February about Egypt, might be better to learn the lesson now rather than to repeat the same mistakes infinitely?

PS: Love the AP's "evenhanded" explanation of the Right to Return issue:

"The Palestinians have long maintained that the refugees have a moral and legal right to return to what was once Palestine—including land which is now Israel. But Israel has argued that granting the right of return would compromise the country's identity as the world's only Jewish state."

Yes, all those riots and massive terrorism leading to bloody civil war, with all the neighbors joining in, followed by the genocidal murder of millions of Jews and the transformation of Israel into an Arab and possibly (probably?) Islamist state that would ally with Iran, work to overturn all the region's non-radical regimes, trigger additional wars and massive suffering, and destroy U.S. influence in the Middle East would definitely be an inconvenience.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

RubinReports: Massive Anti-Israel Rally in Egypt Organized by...Facebook

RubinReports: President Obama’s “Reset” of Relations with Muslims and a Massacre in Pakistan

President Obama’s “Reset” of Relations with Muslims and a Massacre in Pakistan

This article is published on PajamasMedia.

By Barry Rubin

There’s something particularly poignant about news that at least 80 people were killed in Charsadda, Pakistan, by a Taliban attack on a police training center there. It isn’t that the event was so unique—except for one feature—but it is a suitable symbol of the situation in the Muslim-majority world today and how messed up is the Western perception of that part of the world.

The unique aspect is that the attackers said they are taking revenge for the killing of Usama bin Ladin by the United States.

And so as Americans cheer, 80 Pakistani families are in mourning. Let me quickly add that I do not blame the United States for this new mass murder. The crime is on the terrorists’ head. Nor do I believe the United States should not have killed bin Ladin. Not at all.

But this is a teachable moment so let’s summarize the lessons.

--Terrorism goes on. The death of one man or even of one organization won’t end it.

--If the United States had not killed bin Ladin on that particular day, in that place, or in that way, the Charsadda attack would have happened anyway. Thus, terrorists use specific events as excuses to do what they would have done anyway.

--Pakistan, albeit not to its credit, had nothing to do with the killing. In fact, major elements in the government protected bin Ladin while even more of the regime opposed the U.S. attack. Terrorists don't kill people because their victims are "guilty" nor do they need a "good reason" for murder. Their reason is the attempt to stage a revolutionary transformation of their society which they believe is mandated by the will of God and also would give them wealth and power.


--The main cause of terrorism is not America (or Israel, or any other country) killing terrorists but revolutionary Islamism’s attempts to seize state power or of those revolutionary Islamists (and their allies) already in power (see Iran, Syria, Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah in Lebanon, and perhaps soon the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt?) to overthrow neighbors.

--These policemen were targets not because they were oppressive instruments of capitalism or imperialism but because the revolutionaries want to destroy order so they can operate in a situation of anarchy which they hope to replace with their own rule.

--Most of the victims of terrorism are Muslim but those who proclaim their love of Muslims and of Third World people (the Western left and most Muslim activists there) couldn’t care less about these thousands of killings. Their only interest is to blame them on America, Israel, the West, or Islamophobia. In fact, they attempt to interfere with the battle against the terrorists and revolutionary Islamists, thus leading to the death of more Muslims.

--Revolutionary Islamism uses terrorism because it is a reflection of the movement’s ultimate totalitarian and repressive aims.

--If revolutionary Islamism was just a heretical caricature of Islam then no Muslims would follow it. Why did millions of Iranians support the Islamic Republic? Why has Hizballah come to dominate the Lebanese Shia community? Why will millions of Egyptians vote for Muslim Brotherhood candidates? The reason is that revolutionary Islamism is a "legitimate" interpretation of Islam based on its texts and traditions. But it is not the only, or "best," or most beneficial (for Muslims and others) interpretation. To deny that Islamism is derived from Islam won't convince any Muslims because they know better. This is a battle over politics and interpretation, not "Islamophobia," a concept largely created by Islamists for their own benefit.

--Relatively moderate Arab governments are not just using the threat of revolutionary Islamism to stay in power (although they do that also) but as a reflection of a very real danger to their countries and societies. Whatever one thinks of the Mubarak regime, a Brotherhood regime would be worse. In contrast, it is ridiculous to protect the Assad regime in Syria because it is an ally of revolutionary Islamists, helping them to murder people in Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon.

--Any true friend of Muslims would want the revolutionary Islamists defeated and the regimes supporting them overthrown. Such a person would join the fight against not only al-Qaida but also Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, and the Taliban.

--Most of the obsessive demonization of Israel today does not spring from some humanitarian impulse but is orchestrated by revolutionary Islamists and their Western allies (witting or otherwise) to commit genocide on Israeli Jews, expel or oppress Palestinian Christians, and impose a totalitarian state on Palestinians.

--Until Western leaders understand the above principles, their policies will not only fail they will be counterproductive for the interests of both their own countries and millions of Muslims, who do not want to be ruled by revolutionary Islamism.

Now here's an interesting question. Suppose the above list of propositions was submitted to leading politicians, policymakers, journalists, and academic experts, how many of these points would they accept as obvious and how many totally reject? If this list was given to average people how many of these points would they say that they've never heard expressed by their mass media or leaders?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

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