Shabak hints that Duma arson suspects did not set the fire

Posted on December 18, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

I have been following the investigation of the brutal arson-murders in the Arab village of Duma since the crime was committed in the early hours of July 31, 2015 (see here, here, here and here).

In a nutshell, someone set their house on fire while the Dawabshe family was sleeping within, a young child died in the fire, and his parents succumbed to their burns sometime later. Hebrew graffiti was found on the house.

Although there was a strong possibility that the fire was set by Arabs from the village who were involved in a feud with the Dawabshes, security officials and even President Rivlin announced on the morning after the fire, when the investigation had barely begun, that Jewish terrorists had set the fire.

Israeli security forces did not investigate the possibility that Arabs set the fire, leaving investigation inside the village up to Palestinian Authority police. Not so surprisingly, they found nothing. But from the beginning, a lot of things didn’t add up.

The Internal Security Service (Shabak) requested and got permission to use exceptional methods to obtain convictions. Several suspects were taken and held in administrative detention without being charged, were not allowed to see their attorneys for an extended period, and were subjected to what were called “aggressive interrogation techniques,” which their lawyers have described as torture.

In August, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon expressed his certainty that he knew who had set the deadly fire:

“I have no doubt we are holding the correct people in administrative detention,” he said of Jewish detainees such as Meir Ettinger, the 23-year-old grandson of assassinated extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the outlawed anti-Arab Kach organization.

When asked if he believed Ettinger was linked to the deadly arson attack, Ya’alon said “Ultimately, in principle, yes.”

Ultimately, in principle? How can someone be arrested for a crime committed in principle? What does that even mean?

The suspects are young people living in the territories, some of them minors, some of whom were involved in so-called “price tag” vandalism and perhaps assaults intended to get revenge against Arabs and other targets (a Christian church, army vehicles, Arab-owned agriculture). They also subscribe to a subversive political/religious ideology which does not recognize the government of Israel and calls for its overthrow and the establishment of a kingdom governed by Jewish law.

Their activities were used by the Arabs and their supporters to delegitimize all Jews living in the territories, and considered ‘terrorism’, although their crimes were almost entirely against property, not people. The security forces were apparently unable to arrest them, and were alleged to be deliberately protecting them (which was untrue). They were a great embarrassment and frustration for the government and security forces.

But despite the pressure that has been applied, the suspects did not confess. Some were released when it became clear that they could not be linked to the Duma arson. Ettinger and two others are still being held.

The Shabak has responded to the allegations of torture and other improprieties with a statement that appears to confirm my suspicion that it does not have actual evidence tying the suspects to the crime. Here is the relevant part [links in English, Hebrew]:

Recently, a Jewish terrorist organization has been investigated. Its operatives are suspected of severe terrorist attacks, which endangered lives, holy sites, and property.

This organization is characterized by an extreme, anti-Zionist ideology, which aims to use violent means to topple the State of Israel, including through terrorist acts to promote its goals.

Terrorist attacks carried out by the organization led to [הובילו], among others, the murder of three innocent Palestinians, and as a result, contributed to instability in the region, and worsened the security situation. [my emphasis]

How did they lead to the murders? Who committed them? Does the Shabak know? Why aren’t the actual murderers in custody?

No matter how embarrassing for the security forces and no matter how reprehensible the behavior of these youths or repugnant and dangerous their ideology; no matter how important it seems to officials to get them off the street, it is elementary that a democratic state that guards the rights of its citizens does not beat them into confessing to horrific murders that they did not commit.

It is conceivable that the security forces know that the suspects did not commit the murders, and used the occasion to justify the extraordinary actions that they felt were needed to get them to confess to their ‘price-tag’ activities. This is no less unacceptable.

Whoever decided to focus only on the Jewish terrorism angle is guilty of serious malfeasance. If Arabs were responsible for the fire, four months after the fact evidence will have been destroyed and the perpetrators long gone. The suspects may be convicted of various lesser crimes, but unless the real perpetrators are found, the world will continue to believe that ‘Jewish settler terrorists’ burned three innocent people to death. A blood libel will have been made against ‘settlers’ and the Jewish people as a whole.

This cannot be allowed to pass by. The state must give the suspects their basic rights and must make a serious effort to properly solve the case and arrest the murderers, whether they be Jews or Arabs. And whoever is responsible for the disastrous way this incident has been handled needs to go, even if it turns out to be the otherwise competent and dedicated Minister of Defense.

It would be painful to confirm that Jewish terrorists have committed this ugly crime. It would be worse to know that our government and security services have made a false accusation of murder for political purposes.

Posted in Duma arson-murder, Terrorism | 2 Comments

The Israeli Left’s Faustian bargain

Posted on December 18, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Barack Obama seems to oppose intervention most everywhere. He is especially committed to minimizing the friction between America and the Muslim world – even trying to align America with Islamic objectives – and so continues to reduce the US footprint in Afghanistan and to take as little action as possible in Syria.

But one place in which he seems happy to meddle is Israel. He’s sent John Kerry to press for a Palestinian state yet again (and to blame Israel for the lack of ‘progress’ in this direction). Recently, the ‘V15’ (Victory 2015) organization which campaigned against Netanyahu in the February elections has come back to life with a new name (‘darkeinu’, our way) and is setting itself up as a left-wing lobby in Israel’s Knesset. V15 got its funding primarily from American sources, and was considered close to the Obama Administration. Doubtless the lobby will be too.

Various Obama surrogates and allies have joined the “save Israel from herself” club. J Street, of course, has always taken this route, and at the Ha’aretz/New Israel Fund conference in New York last week, representatives of every imaginable left-wing group pushed for the US to apply pressure to Israel in one way or another.

“Can Americans save Israel from its own extremism?” wrote Ha’aretz editor Aluf Benn. Benn should know extremism when he sees it, presiding over a staff that includes Gideon Levy, who caused hundreds of Israelis to cancel subscriptions when he viciously attacked the morality of Israeli pilots, and Amira Hass who asserted that throwing rocks at Jews is the “birthright and duty” of Palestinian Arabs. Both Levy and Hass spoke at the conference. Some people call Ha’aretz “the Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew.”

In his keynote address to its biennial convention in November, Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) President Rick Jacobs announced that his organization would not allow the fact that Israel is under assault by a wave of murderous terrorism to stop it from pushing its vision of “tikkun olam” in Israel, including everything from creating a Palestinian state to civil marriage to allowing egalitarian worship at the Western Wall to LGBT rights (although Israel is probably more LGBT-friendly than Jacobs’ Westchester County). Jacobs, too, spoke at the Ha’aretz conference.

Many of those who want to save Israel from itself like to say that the problem is that it is not ‘democratic’ enough, where democracy means such things as giving more power to the Arab minority, allowing African migrants freer access to our country, changing budget priorities to make Israel more like a European welfare state, funding non-orthodox streams of Judaism, and allowing foreign interests free rein in supporting Israeli NGOs.

Although they would not admit it, their real problem is that Israel is too democratic, continuing to elect politicians who oppose the Left’s agenda, particularly in connection with its fantasy of withdrawing from Judea and Samaria and entering into a blissful era of peace.

The minority of Israeli leftists, who present themselves as the voice of responsibility and moderation to the North Americans and Europeans who are so anxious to save Israel from theocracy and fascism, have been incapable of gaining political power in Israel because the majority are scared to death that – as already happened with the Oslo Accords and the Gaza withdrawal – they will somehow implement their impossible dream, which will turn Judea and Samaria into Gaza (or worse) and Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Airport into battlefields.

The Israeli majority, which might be receptive to some of the social themes of the Left like religious pluralism or civil marriage, will not give those ideas the time of day as long as they are accompanied by the suicidal ‘peace’ agenda.

The Left maintained an effective one-party government from 1948 to 1977, and has never reconciled with its loss of political monopoly. It is absolutely convinced of its rightness, as well as its moral and cultural superiority. It is frantic to get back into power and to enact its policies, especially to ‘end the occupation’, which it believes will herald a messianic age of peace and prosperity.

Because for them the end justifies almost any means, the small group of extremist politicians, media people, academics, intellectuals and NGO operatives that suffer from this obsession, are making alliances with European and North American interests that are prepared to support them. This includes the European Union and the Obama Administration, but also foundations supported by George Soros, anti-Israel religious organizations like the Quakers and Mennonites, and liberal dupes like the URJ.

Even those on the Left who have not made the decision to join the Dark Side with Levy and Hass are corrupted by this bargain. The European governments, the EU and Obama Administration (regardless of public pronouncements) pursue a policy that is intended to lead to the end of the Jewish state. This is also true of the Soros-funded organizations and surrogates like J Street. They think they can keep their integrity, but the Devil always gets your soul in the end.

The corruption is most evident in the various foreign-funded NGOs, who receive tens of millions of shekels every year from sources whose interests are often diametrically opposed to those of Israel. The Israelis whose salaries and perks come from these NGOs have become in effect if not in fact agents of hostile foreign powers.

But even those who benefit more indirectly are corrupted – like Ha’aretz, which makes money from its anti-Israel English edition and website, and Israeli academics who enjoy lucrative visiting professorships at universities abroad in return for taking the ‘correct’ line.

And last, but definitely not least, there are the political parties that are aided by groups like V15 at election time.

In Israel there is beginning to be a reaction to the influence of foreign money. The Knesset passed a ‘transparency law’ which is responsible for the documentation of foreign grants to Israeli NGOs that I linked above. But there are loopholes in the law, and a new law has been proposed that will not only require disclosure of grants, but will also require documents produced by these NGOs to be labeled as such, and lobbyists to wear ‘tags’ identifying them. An even stronger proposal would prevent such lobbyists from being in contact with government or military personnel. Under this law, anti-state NGOs could be dissolved by court order.

I’m convinced that some voters were turned off in the last election by the heavy-handed attempts of the Obama Administration’s proxies to tilt the vote against Netanyahu. This is a good sign, but what really ought to happen is that both the Likud and the Labor Party finally divorce themselves from the Oslo fantasy. Security can and should be a non-partisan issue, and the parties can compete on the basis of their domestic visions, or even create a National Unity Government.

In the case of the Likud, it is a question of declaring independence from the mendacious Obama Administration, which has forced it to pay lip service to a Palestinian state that everyone knows must never arise. Now is the time, when the Arabs are murderously demonstrating the absurdity of the idea of giving them a state, to do so.

It will be harder for Labor, which pays homage to the ‘heroic’ Yitzhak Rabin for giving us Oslo, which in fact he was sandbagged into adopting against his better judgment.

I hope that this idea can be made to appeal to Labor – if they understand nothing else, they should be able to see that this is their only chance to return to power!

Posted in Europe and Israel, Israeli Politics, US-Israel Relations | Comments Off on The Israeli Left’s Faustian bargain

Rivlin’s folly

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
Reservists demonstrate at the President's Residence. The sign reads "It's permissible to criticize, forbidden to lie."

Reservists demonstrate at the President’s Residence. The sign reads “It’s permissible to criticize, forbidden to lie.”

נתאי הארבלי אומר: הרחק משכן רע, ואל תתחבר לרשע, ואל תתיאש מן הפרענות – פרקי אבות א,ז
Nittai of Arbel says: Distance yourself from a bad neighbor; do not associate with a wicked person; and do not despair of retribution. Pirkei Avot 1,7

Today, December 13, the extreme-left Ha’aretz newspaper and the BDS-supporting New Israel Fund will be holding a conference in New York. The President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, will be one of the speakers.

The other speakers and panelists include politicians from the most farthest reaches of left-wing Israeli politics; anti-Israel propagandists like Gideon Levy and Amira Hass; representatives of J Street, the New Israel Fund, the Union for Reform Judaism and other US organizations that oppose Israeli policy and advocate American intervention in its affairs; Palestinian Authority negotiator and famous liar (“I am a descendent of Canaanite tribes”) Saeb Erekat; representatives of various foreign-funded anti-Israel NGOs; Rob Malley, Obama’s Mideast advisor, friend of Arafat, and partisan of the Palestinian Cause; Michael Sfard, distinguished practitioner of lawfare against the Jewish state; professional Israel bashers Lara Friedman, Peter Beinart, and numerous others – in particular, Avner Gvaryahu, of Breaking the Silence (BTS).

A word about BTS: the organization is massively funded by various foreign sources, including the EU, individual European countries and foundations associated with them, and the American New Israel Fund. BTS collects ‘testimonies’ of IDF “war crimes” or bad behavior of various types, and travels around the world preaching the gospel that the IDF is deliberately cruel and violates international law. When pressed by IDF investigators to document such behavior so violators can be prosecuted, they have been unwilling or unable to do so. Their reports have been called “propaganda, not journalism.”

IDF soldiers and reservists have accused BTS of spreading “lies and blood libels.” Journalist Amira Hass, they noted, had written that IDF soldiers and police have “executed” Palestinians and planted knives at the scene to justify their murders. They held a vigil outside Rivlin’s residence Saturday night calling on him to not attend the conference:

Amichai Shikli, one of the organizers of the protest, told Arutz Sheva that “at a place in which people like Amira Hass, Gideon Levy and ‘Breaking the Silence’ appear – you can’t give a speech there Mr. President.” …

“Tomorrow at the conference Amira Hass and Gideon Levy will speak. When we speak of the BDS movement, sometimes we think it’s all ghost stories. No; Amira Hass is BDS, Gideon Levy is BDS, there is no one else. They are the engine of the delegitimization of the state of Israel,” said Shikli.

“They are the people who tomorrow night will be quoted by the New York Times, by the Washington Post, and due to them students on campuses in the US will go out and say ‘the state of Israel is an apartheid state. The state of Israel commits war crimes.'”

Rivlin’s office responded with the remarkably lame excuse that since Gvaryahu would be on a different panel from Rivlin, there would be no connection between them, and that his appearance at the conference would be harmless.

Considering that at least 90% of the speakers at the conference will be attacking Israeli policy – and in many cases, are professionally engaged in the enterprise to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state – Rivlin’s presence will lend legitimacy to their anti-Zionist project.

This is the second time within a few days that Rivlin has allowed himself to be exploited to further someone’s inappropriate agenda. Last Thursday night, he attended a ‘Hanukah party’ at the White House. While Rivlin stood beaming and intermittently nodding and applauding, a simpering Reform rabbi named Susan Talve made a fatuous statement (video) of ‘progressive’ principles that had little to do with Hanukah or Judaism.

In less than 4 minutes, she managed to call for “the gates of this nation [to be] open for all immigrants,” to praise the Black Lives Matter movement and groups working to “get guns off the streets” and to clean up “the fires of toxic nuclear wastes.” She identified with the Women of the Wall and then denounced “islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism and anti-Semitism, and all the other ‘isms’ that dare to dim our hopes.”

Finally, she said that “we must do everything to ensure security for Israelis and justice for Palestinians, as allies committed to a lasting peace for all peoples.”

“Insha’allah, insha’allah,” said Rivlin. “Insha’allah,” repeated Talve, four times.

“No matter how much violence there is in the streets of Paris, in California, or in the streets of our nations, we will respond with more love, more understanding, and more compassion…” she added.

Islamophobia? Transphobia? “Justice for Palestinians,” while they are murdering Israelis on a daily basis? And how Christian of her to suggest turning the other cheek!

Throughout, Obama stood with a sardonic half-smile, as if he found the stupidity of these Jews amusing.

Rivlin should probably not have visited the US at all. Certainly he should have understood that Obama would try to sandbag him. And he should pointedly refuse to attend a bash-Israel-fest sponsored by Ha’aretz and the NIF.

Rivlin, I think, does not have the highly developed political sense he needs for his position. On the morning after the members of the Dawabshe family were horribly burned to death, Rivlin announced, before the investigation had gotten off the ground, that “Jewish terrorists” had set the fire. Today, four months later, four months during which the Shabak did its best to pin the murders on “Jewish terrorists,” they still do not have enough evidence to charge anyone with the crime. Perhaps that’s because the real arsonists weren’t Jews?

We are stuck with him for the time being, but couldn’t there be someone on his staff to keep an eye on him?

Posted in Israeli Politics, US-Israel Relations | 2 Comments

Notes on terrorism

Posted on December 11, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

History stands at the beginning stages of Islam’s latest attempt to dominate the world.

That’s a very broad statement, of course. Do I mean political subjugation and occupation, as in the Arab conquests of the 7th century? Do I mean some kind of ideological domination and political control, as with the Soviet empire?

Actually, both. Islam is both a religion and a political ideology, an ideology that is essentially expansionist, one that wants to expand dar al islam (the lands of Islam) at the expense of dar al harb (the lands of the sword; and they mean that literally). This struggle for domination, violent or not, is called ‘jihad’.

Is there a ‘radical Islam’ and a ‘moderate Islam’? Not really. To quote Turkish PM Erdoğan, “There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” Of course there are radical Muslims who try to achieve their goals by means of war or terrorism, and there are others that prefer more civilized means such as persuasion, propaganda, infiltration/subversion, migration, politics or demography. The latter are the ‘moderates’. But there are none who do not believe that it would be better if everyone in the world were Muslim.

There are two main headquarters of the worldwide jihad today: Iran and Saudi Arabia lead the Shia and Sunni factions respectively. Iran’s tactics are radical, including terrorism and war, while the Saudis are more moderate, mostly using their petrodollars to buy influence. There are also autonomous and semi-autonomous groups. The Islamic State (Da’esh) practices the most radical form of jihad, conquering territory by force and coercing the inhabitants to become Muslim by violent means (when they don’t just kill them for the effect).

While there are doctrinal disagreements between those waging jihad, most seriously between the Sunni and Shia branches, they often cooperate and support each other against their common enemies (Shia Iran helping Sunni Hamas is an example).

Although it’s impossible to find a single hand coordinating the worldwide jihad, we can see various tactics being applied in various places:

  • In Iraq and Syria, Da’esh and Iran are both attempting to conquer territory and subjugate the inhabitants by force.
  • In Israel (but also Europe and North America) terror groups are inciting ‘decentralized’ acts of violence, inspired and incited – but not directly controlled – by them. These are almost impossible for security forces to prevent, because the perpetrators (often young people) have no records and few direct connections to known organizations.
  • In Europe, the mass migration of Muslims, few of whom are actually ‘refugees’, is combined with murderous terrorism, both organized and spontaneous.
  • In the US, terrorism continues, much or all of it decentralized. In addition, tactics of infiltration, subversion and propaganda are employed to prevent the authorities from responding and to open the doors for additional migration. The very Muslim-friendly Obama Administration almost seems to be cooperating to facilitate the jihad.

Terrorism is the deliberate murder of noncombatants to achieve political goals. In this post, I would like to take a closer look at terrorism as a tactic of jihad.

How does stabbing a few Jews on the street or shooting up a concert or a meeting at a government agency advance the goal of jihad? Actually, quite a lot. Terrorism has multiple objectives:

  • It provokes responses from the authorities which can be used to justify more terrorism and to impugn the victim in world opinion.
  • It attracts attention to Muslim grievances and prompts concessions to them.
  • It intimidates the population. The psychological effect is to cause someone to seek safety for himself by identifying with the terrorists. Recent well-publicized terrorism in Paris and California coincided with a spike in Americans calling for an increase in immigration of Muslim ‘refugees’, and undoubtedly an increase in those seeking to convert to Islam, as happened immediately after 9/11. I can’t prove it, but I speculate that there is a connection.
  • It damages confidence in governments and authorities and destabilizes them. The pressure to “do something” about terrorism turns the public against their leaders.
  • It accumulates ‘honor’ for Muslims, who often feel that they have been humbled by Western colonialism and economic and technological superiority.
  • It encourages jihadists – violent and non-violent – to redouble their efforts.

In the case of Israel, jihadists believe that they can make life unpleasant enough for the Jewish ‘colonists’ to get up and ‘go back to where they came from’. This is a serious misunderstanding of Israeli attitudes, especially of those of Mizrachi descent, who are not prepared to go back to Morocco or Iraq, for example, or for those whose parents survived the Holocaust.

In the past, terrorism persuaded some Israeli politicians that they should make concessions to the Arabs, whom they foolishly expected to respond by stopping it. So the Oslo accords followed the first Intifada, and the withdrawal from Gaza (the ‘disengagement’) followed the second. Unfortunately, concessions only facilitated and encouraged more pressure and more terrorism.

The Israeli electorate has learned its lesson, and will not vote for this type of politician in the future. Somewhat ironically, since it is becoming generally known that the Palestinian Arab leadership is not interested in any outcome in which a Jewish state continues to exist, terrorism is less effective at extracting concessions to them.

Israelis are also much harder to intimidate than Europeans or Americans, since several generations have grown up with terrorism as a daily companion. Nevertheless, there are still some cases – especially in the shrinking Israeli Left – of the so-called “Oslo Syndrome,” which causes sufferers to internalize the anti-Jewish attitudes of their persecutors. For examples, see anything by Gideon Levy in Ha’aretz.

The recent wave of terrorism has definitely caused a great deal of criticism of the Netanyahu government, which has struggled to contain decentralized terrorism with little success. So in this respect, it is achieving its goal. On the other hand, nobody thinks the Opposition has any better ideas.

In Europe and the US, it seems that the use of terrorism to promote concessions and to intimidate has been much more effective. In Europe, political leaders have welcomed Muslim immigration and blamed Israel for Muslim terrorism. In the US, the Attorney General has suggested that the threat of a backlash against Muslims is more worrisome than that of actual Islamic terrorism (two words that the President is unable to bring himself to say).

The policies of the US and most European governments are inconsistent and ineffectual. They do not inspire confidence in their ability to overcome the Islamic jihad. In many cases they aren’t even able to define their problem and name their enemy.

Israel is on the ‘seam line’ between Islam and the West, and therefore is a prime target of terrorism. As I’ve suggested, Israel is the single nation best adapted to fight terrorism and to deal with its effects. But unfortunately its jihadist opponents have been remarkably successful with their propaganda aimed at Europe and the US, falsely portraying Israel as a colonialist oppressor, war criminal and apartheid state. Europeans and left-wing elements in the US (including the Obama Administration) have become convinced that Israel, rather than a bulwark against Islamic jihad, is a ‘problem’ that needs to be solved by forcing it to surrender to the jihadists.

As a result, Israel is unable to be a source of support for Europe and the US, and indeed needs to devote considerable resources to counteracting their efforts to push it into the hands of its enemies.

This is stupid, self-defeating behavior on their part. If the democratic West wants to survive, it must cooperate with all those who are also targets of the jihad, especially the one country that probably has the best intelligence in the region and the most experience in dealing with their common enemy.

Even if that country is the Jew among nations.

Posted in Islam, Terrorism | Comments Off on Notes on terrorism

Why Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria are legal

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Europeans like to say that “Israeli settlements outside of the Green Line are illegal under international law.” The US State Department prefers “illegitimate.” But they are wrong.

Usually the explanation has something to do with Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which says that

The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

The original intent of this is generally understood to prohibit transfer against the will of the transferees, such as the expulsion of Jews from Germany into occupied Poland that took place during WWII. But since the text does not say this explicitly and it does mention “forcible transfer” in another context, it is often argued that it applies to Israeli Jews who have moved by their own volition across the Green Line, especially if they have received government support to do so.

The argument has also been applied to the transfer of Turkish settlers to the part of Cyprus occupied by Turkey.

This would be a stretch, even if Israel were to be an “Occupying Power.” But unlike Turkey in Cyprus, it isn’t. Here is a generally accepted definition of ‘military occupation’:

Military occupation is effective provisional control[1] of a certain power over a territory which is not under the formal sovereignty of that entity, without the volition of the actual sovereign.[2][3][4] [notes at link]

So who is the “actual sovereign” in the case of Judea and Samaria? Let’s look at history.

The territory called ‘Palestine’ was controlled by the Ottoman Empire until the Empire was dissolved after World War I. In 1922, the League of Nations issued a Mandate to Britain to hold the land of Palestine, from the river to the sea, in trust for a national home for the Jewish people.

The Mandate explicitly guaranteed the rights of Jews to live anywhere in its territory and called for “close settlement of Jews on the land.” This guarantee is independent of whatever meaning is attached to the expression “national home.”

In 1948, the Mandate was terminated and the British withdrew from its territory. The League of Nations had been replaced by the UN. However, Article 80 of the new UN Charter carried forward to the UN obligations created by trusteeships like the Mandate, such as the obligations to the Jewish people.

On the same day, the State of Israel was declared in eretz yisrael, the Land of Israel. Although the Declaration of Independence stated that the new state would cooperate with the UN in the future implementation of UNGA resolution 181, the partition resolution, no borders were explicitly delimited.

The State of Israel was immediately recognized by a majority of the member states of the UN. It was also immediately invaded by the armies of several Arab nations, whose intent was destroy the Jewish state and take its territory for themselves (not to create a ‘Palestinian’ Arab state).

Note that the state was not ‘created by the UN’. Its legitimacy as a sovereign state rests on its effective control of its territory and population, its ability to enter into relations with other states, and its recognition by them. Resolution 181 was a non-binding recommendation in the first place, was rejected by the Arabs and never in fact implemented.

When an armistice agreement with Jordan was finally obtained in 1949, the so-called Green Line which marked the final positions of the armies was delimited. Both sides agreed that the lines were not ‘borders’ and had no political significance:

Art. II, 1: The principle that no military or political advantage should be gained under the truce ordered by the Security Council is recognised;

Art. II, 2: It is also recognised that no provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine question, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations.

Art. VI, 9: The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto.

However, in 1950, Jordan violated both this agreement and arguably the UN Charter (which forbids acquisition of territory by force) and annexed Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. Judea and Samaria were henceforth called “The West Bank” as opposed to the rest of Jordan, which was east of the river. The only country that formally recognized the annexation was Britain.

In 1967, after Jordan participated in yet another war intended to destroy the Jewish state, the land was retaken by Israel, leaving it in possession of the area of the original Palestine Mandate, more or less.

Jordan’s 19-year occupation was neither legal nor recognized. The only legitimacy it had was that of a temporary military occupier. Therefore, when in 1988 King Hussein finally ended all Jordanian ties to “the West Bank” in favor of the PLO, he had nothing to give them.

Jews living in the Land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria, were granted the right to do so by the Mandate. This right has never been revoked, although it was denied during the illegal Jordanian occupation. In fact, the UN is obliged to support it today!

And to answer the question I posed above, the only legitimate sovereign power in the Land of Israel since the end of the Mandate is Israel. And therefore, Israel cannot be an occupying power.

As Naftali Bennett said, “you can’t occupy your own land.”

Posted in Middle East politics, The UN | 2 Comments

A monstrous culture of cruelty

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

The headline story in today’s Israel Hayom is about how the 1972 Munich Olympics terrorists tortured and mutilated their Israeli hostages.

I didn’t bother to read it. I don’t need further reinforcement about the degree to which the Palestinian movement is all about hate. Mahmoud Abbas, who organized the financing for the Munich attack, and Yasser Arafat, who approved it, went on after Oslo to create a hate-education apparatus probably matched only by Pol Pot’s indoctrination of child soldiers. While Israel changed its school curricula to “educate for peace,” deemphasizing Zionism and emphasizing the new ‘reality’ of coexistence brought about by Oslo, the Palestinian Authority went full speed in the opposite direction, teaching their students that ‘Palestine’ would be redeemed from the Jewish usurpers by their blood.

In the 22 years since Oslo, the PA/PLO hasn’t backed off one iota in its campaign to make its children candidates for martyrdom, despite agreeing to stop numerous times. That’s why today Arab teenagers in Jerusalem go looking for Jews to stab as an after-school activity.

The diverse Arabs that have called themselves ‘Palestinians’ since the 1960s talk a lot about their cultural traditions. But what are they, in addition to the Arab culture they brought to the land from Syria, Egypt, Jordan, the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Yemen, and other places, mostly after the beginning of Zionism? The unique Palestinian part of their culture is the mythic presumption of victimhood at the hands of the Jews, their burning hatred of us, and their intention to get revenge. Their heroes are terrorists, and the most important qualification for a Palestinian politician is how strongly he opposes Israel (and how many Jews he has personally murdered). Their founding fathers were pogromist and Nazi supporter Haj Amin al-Husseini, and Yasser Arafat, a man responsible for several wars and countless acts of terrorism.

The rest of the world has consistently made wrong decisions in its relationship with them, and as a result massively increased the number of Palestinians, fed their grievances and encouraged them to continue their conflict. And it paid the price. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Palestinian terrorism was international in scope; the PLO was not the first group to hijack airplanes for political purposes, but it popularized this form of terrorism, as well as attacking airports and even cruise ships. In 1968, a Palestinian terrorist named Sirhan Sirhan even assassinated American presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.

Literally billions of dollars every year are pumped from the pockets of Western taxpayers into the Palestinian Authority, UNRWA and EU initiatives, out of alleged humanitarian concern. Most of this money pays the salaries of thousands of policemen, teachers, bureaucrats, and soldiers whose primary function is to support the Palestinian movement to destroy Israel and only secondarily to provide services to the Arab refugees and the populations of the territories. Much of it is siphoned off to support the various terrorist militias and the lavish lifestyles of the leadership.

Palestinians are the only group of people in the world for whom refugee status is hereditary. By providing per-capita welfare payments to them, UNRWA insures that the dependent, disaffected, frustrated, angry and often murderous population will continue to grow over the years. As a result, the number of Arabs with refugee status has increased from about 700,000 in 1948 to about 5,000,000 today. The total number of ‘Palestinians’ in Israel, the refugee camps and the rest of the world is claimed to be more than 12 million! Meanwhile, the millions of non-Palestinian refugees from WWII were resettled within about 10 years, as were the 850,000 Jews forced out of Arab countries after 1948.

The UNRWA educational system is no better – probably worse – than that provided by the Palestinian Authority. This isn’t surprising, because many of its employees are members of Hamas.

This is a sick society, a very sick society, which openly worships death and sends its children out to die in the service of its hatred. And yet, the West has coddled it, supported it, fed it and helped it grow – and then come back time and again to pressure Israel, the target of Palestinian hate, to give up land, to release murderers that it has imprisoned to protect itself, and to pretend that Palestinians are a normal people, not a hate-filled fanatical cult whose reason for being is to kill the Jewish state.

The Palestinians have found an effective strategy to attract left-wing support, which is to claim that Israel is guilty of every social ill that is opposed by progressive people anywhere. So they claim absurdly that Israel is a racist and apartheid state, that it oppresses women and children, and that it is an environmental polluter. Recently, Mahmoud Abbas told the climate summit in Paris that Israel was “destroying the Palestinian environment.”

Palestinians often falsely accuse Israel of precisely the crimes that they themselves commit. The world ignores the facts that the PLO’s and Hamas’ essence is anti-Jewish racism, that they wish to establish a Jew-free state, that Palestinian Arabs are often guilty of honor killings and sexual violence against women and children, and that the Palestinians massively pollute their environment (funds given to them to mitigate environmental problems have been stolen by corrupt officials or used for military purposes).

One of their favorite accusations is that the IDF deliberately targets Arab children. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but what is true is that there have been numerous Palestinian terrorist attacks aimed at Israeli children, schools, nurseries, school buses, outings, and young peoples’ clubs. For a Palestinian, a Jew is a Jew and a child is a soft target.

Palestinians inject their Israel-hatred everywhere. Palestinians have even assimilated the grievances of the Ferguson, MO protests to their movement, claiming that both are “fighting a common system of injustice, control and racism.” Regardless of the absurdity of their claims, Western academics, religious leaders, trade unions, and other organizations eat them up and pass resolutions to boycott or divest from the Jewish state.

Why does the most of the world consistently take their side? There are multiple reasons, including some brilliant PR decisions – to appropriate the anti-colonialist mantle from the Jews, to claim to be an oppressed indigenous people seeking national liberation, to turn the racism/apartheid label around and apply it to the Jews – and some practical tactics, like intimidating the West with terrorism. And of course there is always the advantage that they have the right enemy, the Jew among nations.

But in any event, it is stupid for the West to continue feeding this monster. And it is even stupider for Israel to do so.

I would like to see Israel publicly denounce the fake Palestinian historical narrative, and refute their claims to be the original indigenous people of this land. I would like Israel to officially end the farce of the Oslo ‘peace process’, shut down the Palestinian Authority, outlaw the PLO, throw its leaders out of the country and dismantle the indoctrination system established by Yasser Arafat. I would like to see Israel assert its historical, moral and legal rights of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.

Now everyone will come up with reasons why this is impossible. How can we rule over these Arabs? Do we give them citizenship? Do we administer a loyalty oath and kick out the ones who don’t sign it? Where to? Nobody wants to do reserve duty in the territories. And on and on and on.

I don’t have the answers. But this is what we need to do. We can’t cooperate with the monstrous culture of cruelty whose reason for being is to destroy our state. We can’t let them keep getting stronger while we pretend that some day we will be able to live at peace with them.

Nothing has changed since 1972 except now they have produced a generation of children who can stick a knife in a Jew as easily as kicking a football.

It won’t get better. The lesson we should have learned since 1972 is that ultimately it’s going to be them or us. Let it be us.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Terrorism | 2 Comments

Calling their bluffs

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

The strategy of the Palestinian Arabs is simple. We can see it in operation in “micro” and “macro” forms. Everyone is familiar with the micro form: an Arab protester, even a child, comes up to an Israeli soldier and tries to provoke him. The protester might throw rocks or he might push the soldier. If he responds, the protester has been successful. The more violent a response that can be provoked, the more successful the tactic. The goal is to delegitimize and demonize Israel and to stimulate the ‘world community’ (the US and Europe) to punish her.

In the macro form, the Arabs launch massive rocket barrages at Israeli towns, or, as they have done recently, send masses of brainwashed children out to stab Jews on the streets of Israel. When Israel responds by bombing or invading Gaza, or by placing restrictions on the movement of Arabs in Judea and Samaria, then the Arabs appeal to the ‘world community’ to intervene to force Israel to give in to demands that will in the long run weaken the state.

In the background there is the ongoing highly professional and well-financed campaign to demonize Israel, including anti-Israel polemics masquerading as academic research, BDS campaigns, student activism, and pressure in every arena, including sports, the UN, academic conferences, and even entertainment.

The strategy will succeed when the UN Security Council, backed by muscle from the US and Europe, declares Judea and Samaria to be Palestine, thus legitimizing Arab terrorism and delegitimizing Israel’s attempts to defend herself. Weapons embargoes and economic sanctions will be follow, weakening our capability to resist, and pressure from terrorism will supposedly crush our will, causing Jewish emigration and the ultimate collapse of the state.

Israel’s response until now has been ineffective. For years after the Oslo accords until at least 2008 we attempted to conciliate our enemies by offering compromises and concessions, reaching a peak with Ehud Olmert’s 2008 offer of territory equal to 100% of Judea and Samaria that was contemptuously rejected by Mahmoud Abbas.

Since the Arabs’ objective was not to establish a state but to destroy ours, none of our proposals (which after all couldn’t simply be the unconditional surrender that they wanted) was accepted. The ‘process’, however, was a useful way for them to get piecemeal concessions and to expose our population to terrorism.

All during the ‘process’ – and continuing to this day – the Arabs carried out their dual cognitive warfare offensives: the one aimed at the world to delegitimize and demonize Israel, and the one aimed at their own people to create a generation so marinated in hate that they would do anything, even lose their lives, for the Palestinian Cause.

I think and hope that our leadership has finally learned that the path of conciliation leads nowhere but to more war and terrorism. So what is the alternative?

It must be the opposite: to recognize the enemy as an enemy and to forcefully oppose it. This might mean disarming the PLO and retaking full control of Judea and Samaria, overthrowing Hamas in Gaza, annexing the Golan, expelling terrorists, and other aggressive steps.

This sort of action can be looked at in two ways: either a) we are falling into the trap set by the Palestinian strategy and will be slapped down by the West for it, or b) we are calling their bluff and can break up their plan for once and for all.

Of course there is also the alternative of doing nothing except responding in an ad hoc way to terrorism and diplomatic challenges, ‘mowing the grass’ in Gaza every few years, trying to keep game-changing weapons out of the hands of Hezbollah, and hoping that an opening of some kind (it’s not clear just what that might look like) will appear. This seems to be the alternative chosen by the present government.

This is not a totally bad plan, given the chaos in today’s Middle East, and the dangerous anti-Israel administration in the White House. But it isn’t really a strategy.

I am not saying that Netanyahu should emulate Vladimir Putin, but there are things we can learn from him. One of them is not to be too timid and to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. This would be a good time to annex the Golan, although asking for permission from Washington was not at all a good idea (really, what did Netanyahu expect?).

Another is the importance of public relations. The Russians are pulling out all stops to (effectively) take credit for fighting Da’esh in Syria, despite the fact that they have so far done little against it. We, on the other hand, are talking about how victimized we are, while the international media barely cover Palestinian terrorism.

Israel needs to put the Palestinian Authority out of the delegitimization/demonization and incitement business and at the same time present its own case as the holder of historical, moral and legal right to Judea and Samaria as the homeland of an indigenous people. It isn’t easy or cheap, but we have to do it.

And we should be thinking about bold moves to change the situation on the ground as well. How did it happen that the despised terrorist PLO became a “non-state member” of the UN, a more respected international entity than the state of Israel?

The US and Europe have their own problems today. Obama is weak – he folded in the face of Russia, and even Bashar al-Assad made a fool out of him – but he could lash out at us. So we will have to do our homework and see to our alliances first.

But then let’s call the PLO’s bluff. We created this monster, and we can destroy it.

Posted in Information war, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Terrorism | 4 Comments

My journey from Left to Right

Posted on November 27, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Yes, I admit it. I started out in life as a leftist. In 1982 I thought that we went too far in Lebanon; we should have stopped at the 40 km. line promised by Sharon. I was horrified by the Sabra/Shatila massacres, and participated with the other members of my kibbutz at a Peace Now demonstration in Tel Aviv, calling for the replacement of Begin’s government. I saw myself as ‘pro-peace’, unlike those ‘settlers’.

By the time Oslo was signed I was starting to have my doubts. Sure, only a two-state solution would bring peace, the settlement movement was made up of religious fanatics, but – Arafat? Would he really become ‘moderate’? At least, I thought, we were on the right track with Rabin rather than a dangerous right-winger.

During the 90s, I became aware that Arafat lied all the time, calling for jihad in Arabic while he talked about ‘peace’ in English. I also noticed that terrorism was increasing rather than decreasing (much later, my son was part of a force that entered PLO headquarters in eastern Jerusalem and found documentary evidence that Arafat was paying the terrorists to kill Jews).

In 2000 the dream of a two-state agreement with the Palestinian Arabs disintegrated in the explosions of the Second Intifada. By the time the intifada had been suppressed by Operation Defensive Shield, I realized that there would not be an agreement. But we had to separate from the Palestinians, didn’t we? I recall a conversation with one of my son’s friends. “We have to build a wall between us and the Arabs,” I said. “We can’t live together with them in places like Hevron.”

“Hevron?” he said. “Davka (especially) Hevron!” where Abraham bought land from Ephron to bury Sarah, and where the Jewish population was brutally murdered in 1929. Davka Hevron. I couldn’t answer him.

But Arik Sharon had a plan, called “disengagement.” We would build walls and unilaterally separate from the Arabs. “Separate,” not withdraw. It would be done from strength, not weakness. It would be our choice, not theirs. If they tried anything, we’d crush them.

In 2005 my son got married. All the cars in the wedding procession displayed orange banners in opposition to the destruction of the Gaza settlements and the expulsion of their Jewish residents. I felt bad for them, but Arik, “the bulldozer,” thought it was the right choice. If we couldn’t trust Arik, whom could we trust?

The Arabs, it turned out, didn’t see it the way Sharon did. They saw it as weakness, a surrender and a vindication of their terrorist tactics, proof that the intifada had been a success after all. An argument to continue the violent “resistance.”

Could Arik have made it work? I doubt it, but we didn’t find out because Arik had his ultimately fatal stroke and was replaced by the common criminal and uncommon traitor Ehud Olmert, the worst Prime Minister in the history of Israel, who bungled a war and tried to give the country away to Mahmoud Abbas. To our great good fortune, Abbas wouldn’t take it.

Several wars and countless terrorist murders later, I began to understand the spiritual dimension to the conflict. I saw that the biblical homeland of the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria was important for more than strategic military reasons. I understood, as Moshe Dayan in 1967 had not, that the Temple Mount was not just of historical importance to the Jewish people. Dayan’s decision to give control over it to the Muslim authorities, just like Sharon’s abandonment of Gush Katif, was seen by the Arabs not as a gesture of strength, but as a surrender. And just like the disengagement from Gaza, it exacerbated the conflict rather than calming it.

But I still clung to the idea that there could be partial solutions. Couldn’t we just annex Area C, where most of the settlements are, and leave the mass of hostile Arabs in Areas A and B? Couldn’t we somehow wall them off and promise to strike them hard if they fire rockets over the walls?

After my long journey, I finally realize that the answer is no. There is no partial solution. To win the physical war we must win the spiritual war as well. We must take full control of all of the historic homeland of the Jewish people, and that includes Hevron, Shechem (Nablus) and of course the Temple Mount.

We need to once and for all show the Arabs and the rest of the world that we are serious that the Land of Israel will remain in Jewish hands. Our compromises only encourage the Arabs and their supporters in the West to fight harder to push us out of the land. The Arab-Muslim ideology doesn’t have room for a sovereign Jewish state in the Middle East of any size and anything we offer them is only the starting point for new demands.

John Kerry is here as I write, to tell us that we need to take steps to give the Palestinian Arabs hope. That way, he says, they will be less likely to stab us or run us over in the street. He has it backwards. They are stabbing us because they have hope – hope that if they make it bad enough for us we will leave. Peace will come when we take away that hope.

There is a simple answer to those who object that we can’t annex Judea and Samaria and still have a Jewish and democratic state. Of course we can. All it takes is that we treat the Arabs there as responsible actors and ask them what they want.

In other words, those Arabs in the territories who will agree to live in a Jewish state, like most of the Arabs within the Green Line today, can be given a choice of citizenship or permanent residency, like the Arabs in eastern Jerusalem.

Those who, for religious or ideological reasons, cannot live under Jewish sovereignty can leave, to Jordan, the Sinai, Gaza, Europe, South America or South Paterson, New Jersey. This also applies to those who presently live within the Green Line or in Jerusalem who also can’t abide a Jewish state, like Haneen Zoabi for example. I don’t object to our providing financial assistance to those who need it. Forcing them to stay in a Jewish state is coercive and undemocratic. Remember that “two-state” plans envision the forced transfer of tens of thousands of Jews away from their homes. Arabs, too, can make sacrifices for peace.

Finally there are those whose ideology requires them to be at war with us. We will be at war with them. The PLO is such an organization. It should be disarmed and outlawed like the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement.

The one option that we will not give them is to stay where they are and oppose the Jewish state.

This plan will be monumentally unpopular in the West, but unlike all the other plans, it isn’t just a fig leaf placed over the piecemeal destruction of the Jewish state.

This era has been called a historical inflection point. Humanity is poised at the edge of a chaotic descent into a new dark age. Or maybe not. Israel is on the “seam line” where the forces of Islam and the West are contending for control. What happens here will be of great import for the rest of the world, but we have to win the battle to survive by ourselves. If we do, they’ll thank us in the long run.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Politics | 3 Comments