The kidnapping is a casus belli

Posted on June 14, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
IDF soldiers search for 3 missing Jewish teenagers near Gush Etzion in Judea

IDF soldiers search for 3 missing Jewish teenagers near Gush Etzion in Judea

The kidnapping of three Jewish teenagers in Judea Thursday brings home a fact that might not stand out in abstract discussions about the significance of the Palestinian Unity Government, or the various 2-state, 1-state, or any-number-state plans.

This is the fact that the Palestinian Arabs — they want to be a nation, so call them the Palestinian Nation — is the deadly enemy of the Jewish state and individual Jews.

Palestinian sources are quiet now about the kidnapping, although there are reports that prisoners in Israel are ‘celebrating’, in the hope that there will soon be yet another “prisoner exchange” like the one that freed 1027 Arab prisoners in return for Gilad Shalit.

They understand that their Jewish enemies are upset and angry and they would prefer not to provoke them at this point. The jubilation will have to wait for the ultimate outcome, which, if everything goes their way, will be yet another instance of Jewish submission to Arab strength. They’ll shoot in the air and give out candy, and another thousand or so murderers will go home (it’s too painful to speculate about the condition the boys will be in, if they survive).

We could have coexisted with them peacefully and profitably for both peoples. But starting with al-Husseini, they chose a different path, the path of rejection. Yes — they chose. And it didn’t turn out well for them. But even when it was possible to go a different way, they were resolute. They made their choices and then they doubled down. They bear the responsibility for the consequences.

This kidnapping is a casus belli. Those who quote Rabin’s remark that “peace is made with enemies” leave out something important. Peace is made with defeated enemies, because undefeated ones are trying to kill you, or worse, your children. That’s what an enemy is.

Those who think that the whole idea of enmity is outdated and atavistic, an ugly remnant of tribalism that the human race should leave behind may be right, but if you have to deal with people who live in that world, you can’t ignore them. You can’t unilaterally disarm, physically and psychologically. If they are trying to kill you, you can’t stand above it and look down tolerantly on those people who are not as advanced as you are.

You have to fight them and kill them. When you have killed enough of them, they’ll give up. Then you can start making peace.

Update [1244 PDT]: I spoke too soon. They are already celebrating.

Palestinians distribute sweets to celebrate the kidnap of three Jewish teenagers

Palestinians distribute sweets to celebrate the kidnap of three Jewish teenagers

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Terrorism | 6 Comments

Stick to summer camps, Rabbi Jacobs

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Rabbis Jacobs (l), Yoffie (r) and Ehud Barak

Rabbis Jacobs (l), Yoffie (r) and Ehud Barak

A few days ago, I wrote a post about the former head of the Reform Movement’s lack of respect for the new President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin. I objected to the typically American mixture of “ignorance of Israeli security issues, politics and culture” with the arrogant implication that Israel had better pay attention to the instructions from their movement, or else.

I had no idea what was coming. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, current Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) head, has published a rant against Israel’s President that has me, as an American Jew and citizen of Israel, spinning with embarrassment.

 In 1989, you visited Temple Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue in New Jersey. In an interview after your visit you told a reporter from Yedioth Aharonot about your experience, where you disparaged, with stunning insensitivity, the dominant religiosity of North American Jewry, our Reform Movement.

I’m hoping that you’re ready to update your harsh and rather unenlightened views of our dynamic, serious and inspiring expression of Judaism that animates almost 900 congregations representing over a million and a half North American Jews. …

I, and our entire Movement, stand ready to work with you to strengthen our people and our Jewish State. I also hope you will accept my invitation to visit our thriving congregations, our academies of higher Jewish learning, our 14 overnight summer camps, the largest Jewish camp system in the world, teeming with young Jews living exuberant and committed Jewish lives.

So, 25 years ago President Rivlin was quoted saying that what he saw in a Reform temple looked like idol worship or Christianity. And since then he has had a difficult time applying the title ‘rabbi’ to Reform rabbis.

Rivlin has always been very outspoken. He does not hide his feelings. But regardless of the number of Reform Jews in the US and how many summer camps they have (for some reason, Jacobs thinks this is important), Rivlin has a right to take a personal position about what Judaism is, and he is not required to change.

I am sure Jacobs feels slighted, but it is inappropriate to fire back 25 years later with his own insults intended to undermine the President of Israel before he has had a chance to even begin his duties. Everything isn’t about the sensitivities of American Reform Jews.

I wonder if Rivlin’s right-wing politics also have something to do with the URJ’s unhappiness.

Jacobs proudly mentions that he will be defending Israel against those who want the Presbyterian Church (USA) to divest from companies doing business in Israel. One wonders how he can do this, given that until he became URJ President he was a board member of the New Israel Fund, which supported organizations that called for boycott-divestment-sanctions against Israel.

He also was a member of the J Street Rabbinic Cabinet. J Street is a lobbying organization which claims to be “pro-Israel and pro-peace,” but which consistently takes anti-Israel positions.

Many Reform Jews strongly opposed Jacobs’ selection as URJ President because of these connections. It didn’t help that he gave a Yom Kippur sermon to his congregation in tony Scarsdale, NY in which he proudly told about taking part in an — I have to call it this — anti-Israel demonstration in Jerusalem.

The URJ offers to work with the President to “strengthen our people and our Jewish state,” but what it has done in the past is to stick its naive nose into Israel’s business with such things as a recent letter to PM Netanyahu, about which I wrote,

The letter lauds President Obama’s ‘leadership’ for helping to bring about Netanyahu’s apology to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara affair, which I and others believe to be a disastrous mistake.

And — almost incredibly, given the recent history of Israeli withdrawals and concessions answered only by war, terrorism and further demands — the letter has the chutzpah to call for Israel to make “painful territorial sacrifices for the sake of peace.”

What I think is that the folks displaying “stunning insensitivity” and holding “unenlightened views” are Rabbis Jacobs, Yoffie, et al. I suggest that they concentrate on the URJ’s important mission to manage the “largest Jewish camp system in the world” and spend less time trying to bully the state of Israel and Israelis, of whom they have very little understanding.

Posted in American Jews | Comments Off on Stick to summer camps, Rabbi Jacobs

Why the US supports Hamas, and why it may help Iran

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal

The US has given the Palestinian Authority (PA) about $5 billion since the mid 1990s. From 2008 to the present, US aid has averaged about $500 million a year. Some of this money goes directly to training and equipping PA ‘security’ forces, and the biggest part of the PA’s own budget goes to ‘security’. On numerous occasions, members these forces have been involved in terrorism against Israel.

For years, the PA has been paying salaries to convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons and pensions to the families of suicide bombers, regardless of the faction they belong to. This created a stir in the US Congress and European countries, so the PLO is taking over the payments from the PA. Since the PLO receives its funding from international support of the PA, this has no practical significance.

The PA Unity Government, sworn in last week, is a partnership between Hamas and the PLO. Supposedly, none of the official cabinet members are members of Hamas (the word they use is ‘technocrats’). The US pretends to believe that all decisions taken by the PA are therefore independent of Hamas.

Even though Hamas has refused to renounce terrorism, PA President Mahmoud Abbas says that the policies of the new government will be his policies, which supposedly oppose violence. The US pretends to believe him, and apparently pretends to believe that he can or wants to control Hamas terrorism against Israel.

Hamas is at war with Israel, a US ally. So far in 2014, more than 140 rockets have been fired into Israel from Hamas’ Gaza territory (about 12,800 since 2001). Since the formation of the unity government last week, there have been several rocket attacks, including one yesterday.

Although the Oslo Accords that created the PA allow it to have only police-type security forces and light weapons, Hamas has a 20,000-man army (as of 2008, more today) and missiles that can explode in Tel Aviv. Hamas officials have said that they intend to keep their military forces despite joining the PA.

And yet, the US intends to continue supporting the PA. A cynical person might think the US is paying the Palestinians to fight Israel.

From the transcript of yesterday’s State Department briefing:

QUESTION [Matt Lee, AP]: So how many more rocket attacks do there have to be before you decide that it’s – that we made a mistake?

MS. PSAKI: Well, again, Matt, you’re familiar, I’m sure, with what the criteria are for delivering assistance. While we’re very concerned about these rocket attacks and we feel President Abbas needs to do everything possible to prevent them, we understand that his ability to do that is severely limited at this point in time.

QUESTION: So but then I don’t understand why – I can’t – I mean, if you think that this guy doesn’t have control over everyone who is either a member of or is backing his unity government, why would you do business with it? Why would you give it money? I mean, if you were one part of – I don’t know, one segment of the Israeli society, political society or otherwise, you could, if you hold Abbas responsible for this attack, hold the United States, in a sense, responsible for this attack because you guys are just continuing to support the unity government.

MS. PSAKI: Well, as you know, there are no members of Hamas in the technocratic unity government – technocratic government, I should call it, which is the accurate … term for it. That is one of our criteria for continuing to provide assistance. We’ll be watching closely over the course of the coming weeks and months.

Why is the US supporting the PA? Ostensibly because it is the most likely candidate to take over in the territories that the US so passionately wants Israel to vacate. But negotiations between the PA and Israel broke down because the Palestinians were unable to accept the existence of a Jewish state between the river and the sea with any borders. Now with Hamas in the government, an agreement is even less likely.

What will it take for the administration to understand that a) the only acceptable deal with the Palestinians involves Israel’s suicide, and b) Israel isn’t suicidal?

I suspect that the US fears that even Hamas is better than the more radical Sunni Islamists out there. But if it wants stability, why doesn’t it simply support Israeli sovereignty over the territories?

That would be too logical, apparently.

If the prospect of Israel and the US on opposite sides of a war feels strange, the situation in Iraq is equally strange. The prospect of ISIS overthrowing the al-Maliki regime in Iraq has the US contemplating intervention of some kind — which would put it on the same side as Iran.

This is happening very rapidly — as I write — so a decision will have to be made soon.

Posted in Terrorism, US-Israel Relations | 1 Comment

The new President of Israel deserves respect

Posted on June 10, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Reuven Rivlin, newly elected President of the State of Israel

Reuven Rivlin, newly elected President of the State of Israel

Reuven ‘Ruby’ Rivlin has been elected President of Israel, and it warms my heart to see an admirer of Jabotinsky replace the dangerous Shimon Peres, about whom the best I can say is “at least he’s not a convicted rapist.”

But rather than dump on Peres, to whom I wish a peaceful (and quiet) retirement, I want to use this opportunity to go after another of my favorite targets: the remarkable arrogance of the American Reform movement, which, despite its total ignorance of Israeli security issues, politics and culture, thinks that it has the right to dictate to Israel in every sphere, from its relationship to the Palestinians to the behavior of women at the Kotel.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the former President of the Union for Reform Judaism, has a problem with Rivlin, which he expressed last week in an article for Ha’aretz:

I have a question for Knesset member Reuven “Ruby” Rivlin: If he is elected president of the State of Israel, will he address Reform rabbis by the title “rabbi”?

I ask this question now, because I have asked it before, to no avail. In 2007, I was the leader of the North American Reform Judaism movement. Rivlin had announced his intention to run against Shimon Peres for president. I visited his office and asked for his assurance that he would use my rabbinic title following his election. He hedged. I asked twice more, and he still hedged. The best he would do is say that as president of Israel, his door would be open to all segments of the Jewish people.

Not good enough. I left disappointed and dismayed.

“Not good enough?” Can you imagine Rabbi Yoffie interviewing Barack Obama before his election and then judging his answers “not good enough?” I can’t either.

Yoffie continues:

In the 1980s, when I led the Reform movement’s Zionist arm, we brought a Knesset delegation that included Rivlin to the United States. On Erev Shabbat, the delegation prayed at a Reform synagogue in Westfield, New Jersey, then as now a thriving center of Jewish life. That evening, hundreds of Jews came to greet the Israeli lawmakers. Rivlin, however, had never experienced men and women praying together and had never seen a woman hazan. While others in the delegation were impressed by the enthusiastic davvening, he was appalled. Immediately after Shabbat, he phoned a reporter for Yediot Aharonot and informed him that Reform Judaism was like Christianity — a story that was featured prominently the following day.

Reform Jews were furious. After one visit to an unquestionably vibrant synagogue, Rivlin had rushed to the press to announce that American Reform Judaism was not really Judaism at all. In subsequent years, I worked on Ruby, hoping to open his mind a bit. But I made very little progress, as my meeting in 2007 demonstrated.

Here is the same arrogant tone. They were furious! Furious because the man has principles that are important to him, and he sticks to them?

I’m sure Rabbi Yoffie has a bottom line for what he would call Judaism. I’m sure he would say that Jews for Jesus don’t practice Judaism, and he might question the semicha of a ‘rabbi’ from that movement. Doesn’t Rivlin have the right to draw the line in a different place? And if he does, should he lie about it?

One can see, from an Orthodox point of view, how it’s possible to question whether Reform Judaism is Judaism. After all, daily prayer, observance of kashrut and above all Shabbat, are missing or sharply attenuated in Reform Judaism. There is a commitment to “Jewish ethics,” but this refers to a set of beliefs that are closer to secular humanism than to Torah mitzvot as an Orthodox Jew understands them. So what’s left? If Yoffie can’t understand this, perhaps it is his mind that needs to be opened a little.

Personally, I see myself as ‘traditional Jew’, which someone has defined as an insufficiently observant one who should know better. So I don’t make judgments about who is or isn’t a rabbi, although I do admit to believing that Jews for Jesus are not practicing Judaism.

The Reform Movement has an attitude problem toward Israel. An amateur psychologist might say that it feels inadequate when it compares its ideological emptiness and  fading constituency to the vital Jewish culture being created in Israel, so it overcompensates by acting like an 800-pound gorilla when dealing with the Jewish state.

I think Rivlin, who has shown himself to be both a strong Zionist and a defender of minority rights, is perfect for the Presidency.

Posted in American Jews, Israeli Politics | 4 Comments

The rabbi has things backwards

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Karachi, Pakistan, airport yesterday.

Karachi, Pakistan, airport yesterday.

Here is a snippet from a dvar Torah by Rabbi Laurie Rice, which the Reform movement sent to its “Ten Minutes of Torah” email list. The piece was about standing up for moral but unpopular positions, as Calev and Yehoshua Ben Nun did on returning from their reconnaissance mission to the Land of Israel. The general point is unexceptionable, but she said this:

The Help is a story about black women serving as maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s, just 50 years ago. It’s a story about black women and the white women they served. As I read about the segregation, the attitudes of whites toward blacks, the depraved lines of distinction that were drawn, and the brutality and cruelty that was so very socially acceptable, I had to remind myself that I was not reading a fictional take on a time 200 years ago. This was just 50 years ago, down the road from where I live in Nashville, Tennessee.

I am continually amazed/shocked/appalled/disgusted that human beings have the capability to be so cruel, so devoid of compassion, so un-God-like. I know this feeling. It’s familiar. I’ve felt it before. I felt this way standing at the Birkenau concentration camp with my dearest childhood friend–who is not Jewish–who felt as angry and disillusioned as I did. I feel this way when Americans, in a post-9/11 world, mistakenly view all Muslims as Islamic fundamentalists, disparaging Islam and Muslims in any form, in what has become a type of acceptable discrimination.

Wait — does Rabbi Rice think “disparaging Islam and Muslims in any form” is the equivalent of the systematic degradation and oppression of blacks in the Jim Crow South? Can she be suggesting that it is comparable in any sense at all to the thinking that gave rise to the murder factory at Birkenau?

I’m dumbstruck. She would probably say that of course she doesn’t think “disparaging Islam” is like lynching or mass murder, but the moral revulsion that she feels at all these things is similar. Is that better? Not much.

I too am horrified when I think about Jim Crow (or worse, slavery), and the Holocaust. But I maintain my right to disparage Islam when stuff happens like what happened at the airport in Karachi, Pakistan last night.

Was Rabbi Rice disgusted yesterday when 23 Shiite pilgrims were gunned down, also in Pakistan, in the name of Islam? Was she shocked to hear that 36 people were killed by dual suicide bombings in Iraq on Friday, in the name of Islam? How does she feel about the tens of thousands of missiles aimed at Israel by Hamas and Hizballah, in the name of Islam?

She tells us that there are those who “mistakenly view all Muslims as Islamic fundamentalists,” and this makes her feel “amazed/shocked/appalled/disgusted.” I have never heard anyone say this. Have you? What I have heard, and believe to be true, is that violent and intolerant aspects of Islamic ideology are more and more becoming dominant in the way Muslims understand and practice their faith, and that this is a threat to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

There is something very wrong with Islam and Muslims today, and if we are going to survive it, we should be allowed to talk about it. Rabbi Rice — and many others — insist that such talk is on the level of racism and mass murder, and they want to suppress it.

She has things backwards, I think.

Posted in American Jews, Islam | 1 Comment

Game over

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
The PLO 'recognized' Israel the way we might recognize a bear walking down the middle of the street: you can't ignore it, but you don't admit that it has a right to be where it is

The PLO ‘recognized’ Israel the way we might recognize a bear walking down the middle of the street: you can’t ignore it, but you don’t admit that it has a right to be where it is

The establishment of a Palestinian Authority (PA) unity government that includes Hamas is the last inning of a ballgame which has been in extra innings far too long.

The PLO and its Fatah faction which have controlled the PA since its inception in 1993 are just as committed to Israel’s destruction as Hamas. Fatah is the heir of Haj Amin al-Husseini, pogromist and close ally of Hitler, by way of the terrorist’s terrorist, Yasser Arafat. They follow different strategies, but for Israel the goal is the same.

The US and EU (and today’s Israel!) draw a distinction between Hamas and the PLO, as if to say “see, we really do believe that there is such a thing as terrorism. Take Hamas, for example.” This is the same kind of maneuver the US executes by denouncing al-Qaeda while supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

The ‘secret’ of the US and EU is that they really don’t much care who rules the Palestinian Arabs, as long as they get the Jews out of the territories. Even if al-Qaeda or Arafat’s ghost took over the PA, they would continue to fund it. Now they have quickly found a way to ignore the presence of Hamas.

But from Israel’s point of view, this may be the moment that it is possible to escape from the bind it got into in 1993 when it allowed itself to be suckered into a self-delusional agreement with Arafat that included accepting the pretense that the PLO ‘recognized’ the legitimacy of the Jewish state. In fact, the PLO ‘recognized’ Israel the way we might recognize a bear walking down the middle of the street: you can’t ignore it, but you don’t admit that it has a right to be where it is!

A reasonable time to have declared ‘game over’ was in 2000, when Arafat started a war in which most of the over 1000 Israeli casualties were noncombatants. Apparently Israel was unable to stand against American and European pressure then, so the charade of a ‘peace process’ was continued for another 14 years.

The PA itself was created by the Oslo accords, and the PLO has consistently violated them in every imaginable way: by supporting terrorism, inciting its population to murder, militarizing, unilaterally appealing to the UN for statehood, and now combining with Hamas.

If you want to understand the depth of hypocrisy of the US and EU, consider that Hamas and Fatah have agreed that Hamas will keep its army and its missile forces even as it becomes a part of the PA, which is forbidden by Oslo to have such forces. Hamas still refuses to accept the conditions of recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and accepting the PA’s agreements. Although the PA was created by Oslo, Hamas can join without accepting it!

Now we are at another critical juncture. Israel can and should take the position that the PA has abrogated Oslo by its actions. Oslo and the PA itself are null and void. The legal status of the territories reverts to what it was before Oslo, which is that the entire area of Mandatory Palestine belongs to Israel. Indeed, the ‘occupier’ is the PLO.

Does this have consequences? You bet it does. But the continued maintenance of a fictitious process with a hostile ‘partner’ has consequences too — for example it has already initiated a bloodless takeover of much of the territories by Hamas. This will shortly become a concrete problem for the IDF.

Any negotiations with any parties about the status of any part of the territories should be undertaken from the starting point of the legitimate rights of Israel under international law, and not from the artificial Green Line or from ‘rights’ claimed under the false historical narrative of the artificial ‘Palestinian people’. By agreeing to these frameworks, Israel gives away its rights before it begins to negotiate.

There is no PA (and there is even less a ‘State of Palestine’). There are only terrorist organizations: Hamas and the various PLO factions. Perhaps Israel can talk to them or perhaps not, but whatever is done should be done honestly.

Posted in 'Peace' Process, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Terrorism | 1 Comment

Honor matters

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Dr. Salam Fayyad, Western-educated economist and former Palestinian PM.

Dr. Salam Fayyad, Western-educated economist and former Palestinian PM.

Honor is a difficult concept, particularly for modern-day progressives. It is archaic, elusive, unquantifiable, profoundly personal, stubborn, indifferent to public opinion, beyond the grasp of economic incentives, social norms and government coercion. — Bret Stephens

But honor matters. I think I’ve mentioned this Middle-Eastern fable before: a rich and powerful man discovers that someone has stolen a blanket from him. Although he knows who did it, he has many more blankets than he needs, so he overlooks the theft. But soon thefts become more frequent and more valuable things are taken; ultimately the man finds himself alone in the desert, his sons dead, his wives raped and stolen, and all his animals and even his tent gone.

The moral is that if you don’t sweat the small stuff, then it can quickly become big stuff. Lose your honor and you lose everything.

When Israel traded a thousand dangerous Arab prisoners for Gilad Shalit, members of WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) cultural groups saw it as an indication of how much Israelis cared for their children. Arabs saw it as a blow struck against Israel’s honor.

Hizballah propaganda likes to talk about the honor gained when it fought Israel to a stalemate in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. But Nasrallah also said that if he had known what it would lead to, he would not have ordered the kidnapping that started it. He gambled that he could hit Israel with impunity and thereby damage its honor; but Israel’s violent answer had the opposite effect. Honor and deterrence are closely related, and a disproportionate response is one way to get both.

Westerners think of justice as an impartial ideal. Their justice demands that a murderer go to prison or be executed. But honor demands that the victim’s people get revenge. That’s entirely different, and is why the Arabs celebrate so joyfully when Israel is forced by the US to release terrorist murderers.

Symbols are important where honor is concerned. In 1967, Moshe Dayan thought it would be a gesture toward reconciliation and a practical way to reduce tension to give control of the Temple Mount to the Muslim waqf. In one stroke it negated the honor gained from the capture of the holy site.

Another way to surrender honor is to put it in play and then back down, as Barack Obama did for Assad’s chemical weapons.

American negotiators were mystified by the Arabs’ refusal to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. They shouldn’t have been: Jewish sovereignty over ‘Arab land’ is a direct slap at Arab honor.

Most Americans don’t get this, and the more educated they are, the less they get it. Israelis with Mizrahi backgrounds get it better than Ashkenazim, especially if they are old enough to remember life in an Arab country.

Palestinians are deeply concerned with the loss of honor they suffered in 1948. To Muslims, being defeated in war by non-Muslims is particularly shameful, and the existence of Israel is a continuous reproach, a reminder of their lost honor. The honorable way to get it back is not by agreeing to compromise ‘peace’ agreements, but by killing Jews.

In Palestinian politics, the way to get votes is to promise to get Palestinian honor back, the more aggressively the better. Hamas won the PA legislative election in 2006 with 74 out of 132 seats. Fatah, its closest rival, got only 45. Polls taken beforehand and even exit polls predicted a Fatah victory, but I believe that there was one overriding consideration when Palestinians stood before the ballot box: who will best regain Palestinian honor. And in recent years, Hamas has eclipsed its rivals in its concrete (read: murderous) efforts to do so.

There was one party that favored reform, economic progress and more democracy. This was the Third Way party, led by former Finance Minister and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a Western-educated economist who fought corruption and had been more successful than anyone else in obtaining aid from the US and EU. If any party had a chance of building a viable state focused on the welfare of its citizens rather than making war against the Jews, it was the Third Way.

It came in sixth with about 2.4% of the vote.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs | 1 Comment

Hamas moves in, US shrugs

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Hamas technocrats. "Based on what we know now, we intend to work with this government" -- Jen Psaki, State Dept. spokesperson

Hamas technocrats. “Based on what we know now, we intend to work with this government” — Jen Psaki, State Dept. spokesperson

State Department briefing, today:

QUESTION: What is the U.S. Government’s view of the so-called Palestinian unity government that was sworn in today by Palestinian President Abbas?

MS. PSAKI: Well, at this point, it appears that President Abbas has formed an interim technocratic government that does not include ministers affiliated with Hamas. Moving forward, we will be judging this government by its actions. Based on what we know now, we intend to work with this government, but we’ll be watching closely to ensure that it upholds the principles that President Abbas reiterated today.

QUESTION: One follow-up on this.

MS. PSAKI: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: When you say, “Based on what we know now, we intend to work with this government,” does that mean that based on what you know now, you intend to continue disbursing U.S. foreign assistance to the Palestinian Authority and this government?

MS. PSAKI: It does, but we will continue to evaluate the composition and policies of the new government and calibrate our approach accordingly.

Now, this is a “unity government,” and one of the partners is Hamas. All of the ministers were approved by Hamas, even if none of them comes to work wearing a Hamas headband, and it is unthinkable that Hamas will not have significant input into its decisions. The “technocratic government” is only a fig-leaf to allow the US and the rest of the ‘civilized’ world to ignore restrictions it placed on dealing with — and paying — murderous terrorists.

With a wink and a nod the restrictions passed by the US Congress disappear, as we knew they would, because the keystone of US policy in the Mideast is still, as it has been since the Arab oil boycott of the 1970s, to reverse the results of the Six Days War.

Considering that if Israel had lost that war it most likely wouldn’t exist today, the decision to fund Hamas is perversely logical.

Although US initiatives, presidential speeches, etc. always refer to a commitment to Israel’s security, in concrete terms this commitment has not extended past military aid — which is as much aid to US defense contractors as it is to Israel. Nothing is more important to Israel’s security than defensible borders, but the US has consistently pushed for territorial concessions to hostile entities like Syria and the PLO.

The sheer dishonesty of the present administration’s approach was made clear by John Kerry’s laughable proposal that the presence of the IDF in the Jordan Valley could be replaced by a “high-tech warning system.”

One of the arguments against allowing a Palestinian state to arise in Judea and Samaria has been that it might be taken over by Hamas, which would create a terror base next to Israel’s population centers, precisely as Gaza has become in the South. Now, with Hamas in the PA, there won’t even need to be a takeover! So if one believes that the US cares about Israel’s security, one would expect that the US would let up a little on the pressure against Israel for territorial concessions.

Nope.

Ten days after Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon told The Times of Israel that Benjamin Netanyahu had imposed a “silent freeze” on settlement building, the prime minister reportedly confirmed that he has suspended some construction in West Bank settlements, and cited American pressure.

Netanyahu told a group of settler leaders that the activity of the planning council of Israel’s Civil Administration, the body responsible for authorizing construction in the West Bank, had been partially suspended because the United States demanded it, the news site nrg.co.il reported Friday.

Netanyahu, who met Thursday night with mayors from 20 West Bank settlements, said the United States recently demanded that the Civil Administration not only refrain from issuing tenders for construction, but also freeze the activity of its planning committee altogether and not approve new projects that would later require tenders.

Posted in US-Israel Relations | 2 Comments