Dear Arabs

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Dear Arabs,

The truth is we aren’t writing this for you, because you probably aren’t listening. But these things need to be said.

We are not going to lecture you about how the Jewish people are the original inhabitants of the land and you are newcomers, colonialists even. All that is true, but we don’t want to argue theoretically. We want to talk tachlis (you’ve been here long enough to know what that means).

You have been sold a false bill of goods by your leaders, who have grown fat over the years by maintaining the fiction that you are going to throw us out of the Land of Israel. They’ve been handsomely paid by anti-Zionists everywhere, from Hitler to the KGB to the Saudis to the Iranian regime to George Soros to the EU to Barack Obama.

You are not going to throw us out.

First of all, there are more of us. There is an absolute majority of Jews living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, even if we use your inflated population figures and even if we count Gaza. We are not the French colonists in Algeria or the Crusaders. Our birthrate is high and increasing, and yours is decreasing. Jews are moving here from the rest of the world, and Arabs are leaving.

Second, there is no place for us to go. The roughly 50% of our population that is descended from Jewish refugees from Arab countries are not going back to Syria, Iraq, Egypt, etc. (so much, by the way, for calling us ‘European colonialists’). Ethiopian Jews can’t go back to Ethiopia. And nobody else is going anywhere.

Third, we have a deep religious connection to the land. Our bible is a story about the relationship between God, the Jewish people, and the Land of Israel. The har habayit is the location of our holy temples, and our patriarchs are buried here (even if you set fire to their tombs). Don’t tell me about Mohammed’s horse.

Fourth (and this is important, pay attention), if you try to hurt us, you are going to die. This isn’t the way we want to be, but this is what necessity demands. This is what we have finally learned from our history.

Think for yourselves for once. Don’t listen to Mahmoud Abbas, Ismail Haniyeh or Raed Saleh. Especially don’t trust the Jewish traitors like those who write in Ha’aretz or who are on the payroll of Soros, Obama or the EU. They care even less for Arabs than your billionaire leaders do.

Before you take a knife or an ax and go out to kill a Jew, think about this: you will die and it won’t bring your objective even a little bit closer.

We don’t want to kill you, expel you, or humiliate you. We would be happy to live peacefully as neighbors. But we are prepared to fight for our land.

This is the state of the Jewish people in its historic homeland and Jerusalem is its capital. We insist on maintaining our sovereignty here. If you can’t deal with this, move. Go to Jordan (the original ‘Palestinian’ state), to Europe, South America, Australia, the United States. But we are not going anywhere.

Sincerely,
The Jewish people in the Land of Israel

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs | 4 Comments

No comparison

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

One would think that the American civil rights movement is as different as anything could possibly be from the racist, genocidal Palestinian movement.

But that is not the opinion of a group of black celebrities and left-wing intellectuals including Danny Glover, Lauryn Hill, Alice Walker, Angela Davis and Cornel West, who have made a video together with Palestinian activists called “When I see them, I see us” (video here).

Only a pathological racist would deny that blacks in America can be characterized as a historically oppressed people and that the US is still far from having expurgated the racism that began with the institution of slavery and continued through the years of official segregation, unofficial but pervasive Jim Crow customs, and into the era of hidden – but still pervasive – prejudice.

One thing which characterized the civil rights movement, both as led by Martin Luther King Jr. and some of his more militant successors, was its focus on attacking white racism rather than white people. Obviously there have been outbursts of anger that have targeted whites in general, but – with the exception of the ‘Islamic’ strain exemplified by Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan – it hasn’t itself been a racist movement.

A reason for this is what can be called the cultural character of American blacks. Now I know that generalizations are dangerous and all people are individuals, but there are certainly ways of behaving that are supported by the cultural mores and religious and philosophical beliefs which characterize a culture. And while you can’t extrapolate from such a generalization to predict the behavior of a particular individual in a particular situation – that is ‘stereotyping’ – in an overall sense there is such a cultural character.

In this sense American black culture is kind and empathetic. Perhaps this is its reaction to adversity or comes from the historical prevalence of a humble Christianity, but if a person of any color falls down in the street, a black person is likely to offer help. And as is often pointed out, empathy is the best antidote to racism.

The contrast between this and the implacable hatred that is the essence, indeed the reason for being, of the specifically Palestinian culture (as opposed to the broader Arab culture) couldn’t be greater. When Odel Bennett ran through the Old City bleeding from the wounds inflicted by the terrorist who had just stabbed her husband and another man to death, she was kicked and spat on. Can you imagine a mass movement among American blacks to stab and run over arbitrary whites in the street? I can’t. But that is exactly what Jews are experiencing today in Israel.

The black movement in the US has recently been co-opted by academic post-modern/post-colonial (pomo/poco) theorists like Davis and West, who see American blacks as a subgroup of oppressed ‘people of color’ worldwide who are engaged in an often violent struggle to free themselves from colonialist oppressors. As a corollary, different moral standards are applied to the ‘oppressed’ and the ‘oppressors’, which allow the oppressed much more latitude of action than the oppressors.

Unfortunately this way of perceiving the conflict emphasizes and exaggerates racial differences, by making ‘white’ synonymous with ‘oppressor’ and ‘person of color’ with ‘oppressed’. It tends to change the struggle from a struggle against racism to a struggle against whites. In order to avoid the charge that they themselves are racist (which they are) the pomo/pocos redefine ‘racism’ so that it only applies to prejudice by ‘oppressors’ (whites) against ‘people of color’!

It is important to them to draw parallels between various ‘oppressed’ groups around the world. And Palestinian activists, whose movement elicits visions of terrorism and bloody violence, are anxious to be associated with the moral exemplar of the nonviolent civil rights movement of Dr. King.

Of course the ‘Palestinians’ do not even fit the paradigm of a colonized indigenous people. They are the opposite, foreign colonialists who want to drive the indigenous Jewish people out of their homeland. But they have hitched a ride on every ideological train that goes by, from Nazism to communism, and now pomo/poco leftism.

It is a match made in Hell, between the racist and genocidal Palestinian movement, whose goal is not to obtain human rights for themselves but to take them away from another people, and the struggle of American blacks to be treated decently.

The masked faces of Palestinian stone-throwers are more reminiscent of the hoods of the KKK than of anything related to the civil rights movement. There is no parallel between these, and the attempt to draw one is obscene. It damages and dirties the African-Americans that are associated with it, and can only hurt their just cause.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs | 1 Comment

Lessons learned

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

If you keep up with the news, you may know how many terror attacks have been perpetrated against Israelis in the last couple of weeks, how many have been murdered or maimed. For myself, I’ve lost count.

Here in Rehovot we’ve been lucky. So far we haven’t experienced what they are undergoing in Jerusalem, or even Ra’anana. There’s still plenty of anxiety. When my daughter was very small and we read her the story of Little Red Riding Hood, she expressed concern about wolves. We reassured her that there were no wolves anywhere near where we lived. “Do they have feet?” she asked. Terrorists have feet, cars, and the ability to ride buses and trains like anyone else.

When something bad happens, we should make it a learning experience. What do we know about this latest murder epidemic and what lessons can be learned?

Some terror attacks seem to be organized by groups like Hamas, and some are spur-of-the-moment attacks by amateur terrorists, young women, university students, municipal employees, telephone installers, and 13-year old boys. All you need to do is take a stout kitchen knife with you in the morning. If you see a Jew, come up behind him and bury it in his neck. Anyone can do it. Someone may shoot you, but martyrdom is part of the appeal.

It seems to be extra points to get a soldier (female soldiers are sometimes softer targets), but visibly religious Jews also seem to be singled out.

Many have noted the cold hatred, the lack of empathy that characterizes the terrorists and those that cheer them on. Odel Bennett, whose husband Aharon was murdered and her son injured in a vicious stabbing attack in the Old City, reported that local Arabs laughed and spat at her as she bled from her wounds.

Some Israelis and other Westerners have difficulty understanding the motivation of the murderers and the apparent ease with which they can approach a stranger and try to slaughter him or her in cold blood. It seems to me that there are three important explanatory factors.

One is ideology, closely intertwined with the second, Islam. And the third is Arab culture.

When Israel made the historic mistake of reintroducing the poisonous PLO and particularly Yasser Arafat into its own body, the very first thing Arafat did was take control of the mosques, media and educational system of the territories. Imams, teachers or journalists were required to follow the PLO line, and anyone who did not was removed. They were instructed to teach the myth of an indigenous ‘Palestinian people’ who were dispossessed from their ancestral land by the subhuman Jews from Europe, and to aspire to the ultimate ‘liberation’ of all of ‘Palestine’.

Part of what they learned is that as an oppressed people they have the right to use any means necessary to achieve liberation. The choice of terrorist violence, peaceful protest, lawsuits, diplomacy or all-out war is entirely based on the efficacy. Whatever works is good.

Every subject taught in the schools, every sermon in the mosques, radio and television programs, summer camps, everything was utilized to carry the message of Palestinian victimization and ultimate vindication, along with generous helpings of anti-Jewish themes taken from Islamic and European sources, and countless stories of how the Jews have stolen from, humiliated, raped and murdered Palestinian Arabs.

Jews are not seen as individuals, with personalities and families. Jews are Zionists or ‘settlers’, representatives of the forces of oppression.

This is what I refer to as ‘ideology’, and you can hear it echoed in the speeches of the Arab members of the Knesset. Every ‘Palestinian’ believes this to a greater or lesser extent, and much of it is taught in Israeli schools in the Arab sector.

The influence of Islam is important: the constant humiliation of Muslims living in a state where the sovereign power is not only non-Muslim but Jewish; the availability of triggers for furious action, like the always-effective lie that “Al-Aqsa is in danger,” which has been used to provoke riots and murder at least since the 1920s; and the appeal of martyrdom, especially for young or especially susceptible Muslims.

Traditional Islamic Jew-hatred is invoked in the mosques of the PA and Hamas, where Jews are dehumanized as descended from apes and pigs. So not only are Jews not individuals, they are not even people.

Today the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the Islamic Movement in Israel are saying over and over that Israel plans to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque and build a third Temple on its ruins. Some are explicitly calling on Muslims to become martyrs in its defense.

Finally there is the Muslim-Arab culture, with its honor-shame motivators. Every day that an Arab allows the humiliations and thefts to stand takes away from his honor and adds to his shame. The honor must be regained and the shame wiped out – and the only act powerful enough to do this is a violent one, the bloodier the better.

I must also note their familiarity with the slaughter of animals – every year on the holiday of Eid Al-Adha, mass public slaughterings of cows, sheep and goats take place (videos too disturbing to link), and Palestinian children participate in slaughtering animals at home. In general, Palestinian Arabs are exceptionally cruel to animals by Western standards.

We can put this together: the ideology provides a reason for violent acts and a justification for them, Islam ignites their anger and provokes action, and culture demands that the action draw blood. And their particular relationship to slaughter makes plunging a knife into living flesh – especially if that flesh belongs to a being that is less than human – a comfortable, or at least familiar, act.

Westerners, including most Israelis, may be able to understand the ideology, but the religious motivations are harder to grasp, particularly the veneration of martyrdom. The honor-shame concept is also alien in the West. And how many of us have slaughtered an animal with a knife, or could do so?

All this contributes to our latest learning experience.

In 2000-2002, we learned that the Arabs, led by the PLO and Hamas, didn’t want their own state; they wanted ours. In 2005, we learned that withdrawal from any part of the land of Israel brings war and not peace.

In the short term, this uprising will have to be put down by force. There is no one to negotiate with about it. The inciters will have to be stopped as well as the terrorists themselves, something that has never been tried. Maybe now we are beginning to learn how important that is. That’s the first lesson of 2015.

The second lesson, which is nothing new and is really just being reinforced, is that the conflict isn’t about borders or anything concrete. It’s about Arabs denying our right to be here, arrogating our indigenous status and ownership of the land to themselves. It’s about Muslims who won’t live under Jewish sovereignty and who will only tolerate us in a subordinate role. It’s about lost honor that can only be regained by murder.

There is another lesson from all this. That is that there is no way we can change to make it possible to coexist with them. Either they must change or one or the other side will disappear.

I promise it won’t be us.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Terrorism | 1 Comment

How to beat terrorism and win the diplomatic war at the same time

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

As I write it is just past noon on October 13, and there already have been five terror attacks in the country, with at least three dead and tens injured. They included shootings, stabbings and car attacks. Chances are that by the time you read this, there will be more.

I’m not going to go into detail, because early reports are often confused. Most of the Arab terrorists involved in the recent wave of murders have been from the PA areas or eastern Jerusalem, but a few have been Israeli citizens. In the past few days, terrorists have struck all over the country, including Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Petach Tikva, Ra’anana, Afula, and other places.

The PM has called an emergency meeting of his security cabinet to decide on immediate steps to be taken. Among other things — Americans obsessed with the pro/anti gun debate will appreciate this — a relaxation of Israel’s strict gun regulations has been suggested by the Internal Security Minister, Gilad Erdan.

Hamas has claimed ‘credit’ for the attacks, but Palestinian Authority radio praised terrorists who were ‘martyred’.

No doubt the government will decide to beef up police and other security forces, possibly close off PA areas or Arab neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem, and so forth. The real question is whether any substantive action will be taken to change the situation in a fundamental way, or will today’s terrorism be tamped down temporarily, to return the next time it is convenient for the Arabs.

The Arab leadership that incites terrorism isn’t stupid. They have an objective now, as they have in the past. This time it is to attract the world’s attention to the ‘unsustainable occupation’ and to promote the idea of coercing Israel to withdraw from Judea/Samaria/eastern Jerusalem.

We can expect to hear expressions of great concern from Barack Obama and the Europeans — as if they care in the least when Jews are butchered! — about how the ‘cycle of violence’ needs to be stopped right away, and of course the way to do that is to engineer an Israeli surrender to the same forces that are murdering our people today. The French will make their proposal to the Security Council that declares the Israeli presence outside the 1949 lines illegal and calls for the establishment of ‘Palestine’ there, and quite possibly Obama will not veto it.

PM Netanyahu understands this, which is why he has strongly opposed suggestions that Arab terrorism be met with increased building in the territories or other actions that our Western ‘friends’ will interpret as ‘anti-peace’ and use as an excuse to support the French initiative.

But I think this is a poor strategy. Obama and the Europeans are dead set on getting Israel back to 1949 lines — and yes, I believe they understand that this means the end of the Jewish state in the near future — and if we dodge the bullet that is heading at us today, they will fire another, and another.

I would like to propose another approach, which will combine striking a blow against terrorism with defeating the US/EU diplomatic offensive.

How do we attack terrorism? Jabotinsky argued correctly that the Arabs will continue to fight as long as they think they have a chance to throw us out. And since the 1990s, they have been successful, driving us out of Gaza and South Lebanon, and much of Judea and Samaria. We need to turn this around, which means annexing strategic and otherwise important parts of Judea and Samaria, and increasing Jewish construction in J/S and eastern Jerusalem.

Combined with stronger security measures and action against the inciters (for example, expelling hostile elements from Jerusalem and other parts of Israel), this is the best way to fight terrorism.

But that will trigger increased pressure from Obama and his friends, will it not? Of course it will, but the important thing to understand is that this pressure will come anyway. We know that appeasement of military or terrorist threats just causes increased pressure, and the same goes for the diplomatic threats coming from Obama and the EU.

What we need is an ally that will help us resist that pressure. And I think there is only one possible candidate.

Israel has a great amount to offer Russia in the present geopolitical contest: critical intelligence, military support in the eastern Mediterranean, reduction in US influence and ability to project power in the Middle East, great embarrassment for Obama, economic and technical assistance, and more. And Russia can help provide a quiet Syrian border, control Iran and Hizballah, and veto undesirable Security Council resolutions.

Indeed, even if Israel just begins to tilt in the direction of Russia, it would have a salutary effect on Obama’s behavior.

There are obvious problems. The IDF would have a harder time obtaining parts for its American weapons, and integrating Russian weapons and equipment into its strategic systems would not be easy. And it would probably have to do without US military aid. But Israel has met worse challenges of this kind before.

The pragmatic Putin could probably put aside any anti-Jewish attitudes he may have better than Obama can override his pro-Muslim bias. And any deals must be structured in such a way that Russia can’t achieve its objectives without also meeting its commitments.

Could Netanyahu pull it off? There would be great opposition from the IDF, which is addicted to its American suppliers. Some would say that dealing with Putin is like dealing with the devil; but Obama’s ideology is at bottom more dangerous than Putin’s opportunism.

Dangerous? Certainly. But the present situation is also dangerous. Israel is facing a triple squeeze, from Iran, the Palestinians and the US/EU. A bold move might break all of these threats at the same time.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Terrorism, US-Israel Relations | 4 Comments

A note to the Quartet

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

News item:

Representatives of the Middle East Quartet will visit the region next week to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and push forward with a renewed effort to revive the stalled peace process.

Envoys from the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia will hold direct talks with officials in Jerusalem and Ramallah and explore “concrete actions” that are “consistent with prior agreements” in order to facilitate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the group said. …

Members noted in the statement “that the intensifying threat of terrorism, sectarian extremism and radicalization in the Middle East reinforces the need to pursue a negotiated two-state solution,” and expressed “deep concern” about “recent violence and escalating tensions surrounding the holy sites in Jerusalem.”

From: AH
To: BN
Subject: Your note to the Mideast Quartet

Bibi, I cleaned up the English a bit for you.

***

Dear Quartet,

Thank you for inviting yourselves to meddle in our affairs once again your concern, but next week doesn’t work for us. We are presently at war with the so-called Palestinians busy with urgent matters of national security and I will be unavailable to discuss how you want us to surrender the two-state solution.

We think that the accelerating chaos in the Middle East is just another reason that negotiating with the terrorists who are inciting the murder of Jews in our streets Palestinian Authority would be beyond stupid unproductive at this time.

We are aware that all of you aspire to see the Jewish state disappear a peaceful Mideast, and are doing your best to bring that about. I especially detest am grateful to President Obama, who has shown himself to be one of the greatest enemies of the Jewish people in  history a friend and ally.

I will be pleased to let you know as soon as we have crushed the PLO and Hamas once and for all the current unrest subsides, and we can hang their murderous leaders from the gallows as they richly deserve sit down for serious talks.

Nothing is more vicious heartwarming than the way the whole world gets together at times like these to screw Israel work for peace.

Thanks for nothing caring.

Binyamin Netanyahu

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs | 5 Comments

Learning from Putin

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

I’ve been thinking about status quos (stati quo?) lately.

There’s the one on the Temple Mount, the absurd one that says that Jews may visit but may not pray. Lately Muslims have been trying to prevent Jews from visiting altogether. When you consider that this is and always has been the holiest site in Judaism, that Muslim colonialists built a triumphal shrine atop the ruins of the Jewish Temple – which those Muslims now say wasn’t really there anyway – the absurdity is even more manifest.

I went up to the Mount around 1981, together with my cousin and her husband. Nobody asked if they were Jewish, and they even entered the Dome of the Rock. Nobody paid attention to whether any of us moved our lips, and needless to say nobody screamed curses at us from close range. Little by little, threats and violence have changed the status quo unfavorably for us.

Another status quo is the one the Left keeps calling “unsustainable,” the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria. There’s no time left, they say, we’d better hurry up and surrender to our enemies who want to kill us before the European Union boycotts our products. It should be instructive that the EU is already working up its boycott of at least some of our products.

Here too, the balance is changing unfavorably for us as the Arabs build wherever they want (often with EU support) while Obama gives us ultimatums to freeze Jewish construction.

Finally, there is the status quo in which Israel’s government continues to support the Palestinian Authority financially and militarily, even though it incites murderous terrorism against Jews, operates a terrorist militia that kills Jews, runs a diplomatic and legal war against our state, and pays salaries to both Fatah and Hamas terrorists in Israel’s prisons. Our government even encourages the donation of billions of dollars by the US and European countries to the PA and to UNRWA, on the grounds that a Palestinian collapse would be worse than the present situation.

The PA runs an educational and media system originally set up by Yasser Arafat whose function is to indoctrinate young people to hate Jews and Israel and to prepare themselves to fight us. UNRWA, which operates schools in refugee camps both in Gaza and Judea/Samaria, does the same, often with teachers who are members of Hamas.

Today’s wave of terrorism and murder, especially the so-called “individual operations” in which a jihadist just gets up and kills Jews with knives or cars without any organizational support, can be traced directly to the incitement by the PA and UNRWA. But we prop this structure up because we are afraid of the alternative.

The Prime Minister’s reaction to the escalating terrorism of the last few months is an example. On the one hand, he wants to get tough with the stone- and firebomb-throwers. But on the other, he rejects the idea of changing the status quo with the PA, either by increased building or cutting off subsides. This is an attempt to treat the symptoms while feeding and stimulating the disease.

In all of these situations Israel is being forced to give up its sovereignty bit by bit. In each case, the government chooses to give in to blackmail. Our ‘strategy’, if you can call it that, is to walk between the raindrops. Unfortunately, as time goes on it rains harder and there is less and less room. We may have reached the point in all three of these cases that the old non-strategy no longer works.

We have allowed our fear of international reactions to keep us from exercising our rights in Judea and Samaria, and our fear of terrorism to limit actions against the PA. But at the same time, the US and EU keep increasing the pressure, and the PA keeps inciting and financing terror. So what have we gained?

As America abandons the Middle East, the various players – Iran, Turkey, Russia, Saudi Arabia – all maneuver to improve their own positions and damage those of their enemies. All wish to change the situation in their favor. Only Israel continues to stand pat without challenging any of the status quos that are becoming less and less acceptable.

I’m not going to try to provide a detailed prescription for solving these difficult problems. But in all of them we are moving in the wrong direction, from strength to weakness, from more to less independence and sovereignty.

There is a reason for this: it is because we haven’t articulated a clear picture of the desired end result. Lacking clear objectives, we are passive. Everything we do is a reaction to our enemies’ actions. No wonder we get boxed in – they are writing the screenplay, and we are performing our role in it.

For example, is the desired end result in Judea and Samaria a peaceful Arab state – something which is geopolitically impossible – or is it Jewish sovereignty? If the latter, the government should say so and work toward achieving it, even if it is a long-term project.

Do we think that all faiths should be able to worship on the Temple Mount, including Jews? If so, we should insist on it. Rav Shlomo Goren wanted to build a synagogue on the Mount (not a third Temple, a synagogue). Why should this be an impossible goal?

And isn’t it past time that the PLO, the organization that has murdered more Jews because they are Jews than any other since the Nazis, joined their Nazi role models in oblivion?

I am not a fan of Vladimir Putin, but we could learn from him. The chaos of recent times is also an opportunity.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Terrorism | 2 Comments

Sovereign or satellite?

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

News item:

The US issued an ultimatum to Israel regarding construction in the West Bank, threatening to avoid vetoing at the UN a French resolution calling to declare the settlements illegal, Channel 2 reports. …

Netanyahu vehemently opposed more construction, during the security cabinet meeting he headed yesterday.

According to Channel 2, senior White House officials told Netanyahu they are closely watching the decisions of the Israeli cabinet and warned that if Israel approves more building in the West Bank, it will come at a price.

“We will not risk international backing for some declaration of building or expanding construction in Itamar,” a senior official close to the prime minister is quoted by Channel 2 as saying.

This is not about homes in Itamar or apartments in Jerusalem. It is about whether we are a sovereign state or a satellite of the US.

Freezing Jewish construction while Arab construction is not limited (indeed in many cases it’s paid for by the EU) is dangerous from a security standpoint, as well as establishing a political precedent that the land does not belong to us. If it is intended to make a partition possible (even if such were desirable) by preventing the establishment of facts on the ground, it is biased toward the Arabs.

It is also racist, specifically discriminating against Jews. There is no way a Jewish state can acquiesce to this and maintain its self-respect.

We can’t continue the policy of making concessions in response to Obama’s threats. The seriousness of the threats and the size of the concessions demanded will only increase. Concessions will be pocketed and become the basis for further demands. Isn’t it clear yet that the man who took the side of Hamas in the recent Gaza conflict isn’t our friend?

Far worse, Obama has greatly empowered Iran, our worst enemy, with a huge financial windfall and removed the obstacles from its path to nuclear weapons.

Israel ought to have a close relationship with the US, because we share many of the same ideals. We certainly have the potential to be a valuable ally in a dangerous part of the world. But the present administration in Washington does not behave like an ally. Because of the support for Israel in the streets of America — no, not in the elite universities, but among ordinary Americans and their Congress — the president and his appointees like to talk about how much they care about Israel’s security. But they continue to act in ways that directly damage it.

I propose that we do implement a freeze, not on construction, but on our relationship with the Obama Administration.

The Prime Minister should publicly announce that while Israel wishes to continue its close relationship with the American people, it does not see the Obama Administration as an appropriate partner with which to do so. Therefore, until January 20, 2017, Israel will downgrade its relationship with the administration to the minimum required for diplomatic relations.

The PM should say that Israel does not see the administration as an unbiased broker in any negotiations with the PLO or anyone else.

Questionable US personnel in Israel (those suspected of working for the CIA) should be made persona non grata and asked to leave. The US-operated X-band radar station on Mt. Keren in the Negev, which serves as much to spy on Israel as to warn of an Iranian attack, should either be transferred to IDF control or shut down. Intelligence cooperation with the US should be limited.

These steps should be taken with a view not only of embarrassing Obama, but as a practical means of improving the probability that military moves against Iran would not be detected until it is too late to stop them.

It should be made clear that this action is being taken because of the policies and attitudes of specific individuals in the administration, starting with the President, and does not represent a divergence from Israel’s traditional admiration of the values and principles on which the US was founded.

I’m sure such an action would be met with outrage, and threats to cut military aid and to vote against Israel in the UN. Nevertheless, it would be considered a diplomatic defeat for Obama, and while he could hold up deliveries of arms, it would be painful for his constituencies in the areas where defense industries that supply those arms are located. Once a new president takes office, these steps can be reconsidered.

Yes, the US would vote for the French resolution and others inimical to Israel. But this is a reasonable trade-off for the recovery of Israel’s sovereignty. Indeed it might even be possible to arrange a Russian veto in return for embarrassing Obama!

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, The UN, US-Israel Relations | 2 Comments

We get it, Obama

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Barack H. ObamaI was going to write about the way the US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, was instructed to boycott PM Netanyahu’s speech, but Elliott Abrams beat me to it:

Think of how petty that instruction, which can only have come from the White House, really is. To sit in the seat and listen to Netanyahu isn’t endorsing his remarks, it is the politeness we owe an ally. Deliberate absence recalls the years in which dozens of delegations, Arab and “Third World,” would leave the chamber when any Israeli rose to speak. The Obama administration is still griping about diplomatic errors Netanyahu has made, but a refusal to have the U.S. ambassador listen to his speech is petty and damaging, hinting to anti-Israel delegations that the United States may be willing to let all sorts of anti-Israel measures go without opposition or criticism.

Secretary of State Kerry wasn’t there either. Supposedly he was called away to participate in a video conference with President Obama. Abrams went on to call it a “low point for seven years of Obama diplomacy.”

What strikes me is that there was absolutely nothing to be gained from this exercise. There’s no way Netanyahu can torpedo Obama’s Iran deal, there are presently no negotiations going on with the Palestinian Authority, and Netanyahu isn’t running for office. All it can do is make a statement that the President holds our PM, and therefore our nation, in contempt.

He made this gesture at a time when the Iranian regime almost daily announces that it intends to destroy Israel, and when the Arabs in Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria — incited to do so by PA President Mahmoud Abbas — have stepped up terrorism at all levels, from rock-throwing to stabbings, firebombs and shootings. Four Israelis were murdered this week and numerous others injured or terrified.

We get it, Obama. We get that you don’t like us for deep ideological reasons. We got it last summer when you took the wrong side during our conflict with Hamas in Gaza, and on so many other occasions since you became president. We get it that you want to see us with indefensible borders surrounded by enemies armed to the teeth by Iran with money that you provided as part of your nuclear deal.

We understand that your sympathies lie with the Muslim world, not with the ‘colonialist’ West, which you view as the root of evil in the world. We understand how your intellectual laziness and ignorance led you to accept the anti-Western post-colonial worldview overall and the ‘Palestinian’ narrative in particular. You heard it from your mentors Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, among others, and you didn’t have the tools to distinguish fact from falsehood.

Actually, while this is a problem for us, it is a much bigger problem for the people of America, who are nervous about your apparent anti-Americanism and your uncomfortable closeness to Islam, who don’t trust Iran and don’t see how the deal you made is going to keep the terror-supporting regime from getting nuclear weapons.

But you don’t know how to play it smart. Maybe you could have fooled us at one point — you certainly fooled many Americans, and continue to fool the ones that have been seduced by the syrupy cult of personality that your sycophants have built around you. But stupid moves like this one give you away.

Israel doesn’t trust you. We know what you are. We are well acquainted — both the Jewish people and the leadership of the state of Israel — with those that despise us. We have a history of thousands of years of dealing with your kind. Unlike you, our PM has studied history, not just ideology. We know better than to accept your assurances or believe your promises.

Israel will take the steps it needs to take to protect herself despite your attempts to prevent her from doing so. And I hope that a future American president will strengthen the relationship between two peoples that love freedom and democracy that you have worked so hard to tear apart.

Posted in US-Israel Relations | 1 Comment