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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Charles Bybelezer</title>
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		<title>Has the Gaza War Doomed the Two-State Solution?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/charles-bybelezer/has-the-gaza-war-doomed-the-two-state-solution/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=has-the-gaza-war-doomed-the-two-state-solution</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Aug 2014 04:30:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dershowitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Two-State solution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237736</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ardent true believers signal doubts. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/F121018WN04-e1363721664401.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237739" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/F121018WN04-e1363721664401-450x350.jpg" alt="F121018WN04-e1363721664401" width="247" height="192" /></a>At the height of Operation Protective Edge, prominent American lawyer and pro-Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz penned a largely overlooked article entitled, “Has Hamas ended the prospects for a two-state solution?” (<i>Gatestone Institute, July 22.</i>)</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">His ostensible motive was Hamas’ targeting of Ben Gurion airport with a rocket that fell some 2 kilometers away, an act which he designated as a war crime.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In response, the Federal Aviation Administration made the questionable call of banning all US air traffic into and out of Israel for some 36 hrs. Many European airlines followed suit, causing a mass cancellation of flights, thereby providing Hamas with what Israel’s transportation minister described as a “victory for terror.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">A life-long proponent of the peace process, Dershowitz has in the past promoted a “two-state solution that does not compromise Israel’s security.” In the article in question, he elaborates in a seemingly unprecedented manner on what measures this should entail, which are replete with potentially landmark political implications.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The targeting by Hamas of Israel’s economic lifeline, Dershowitz argues, will justifiably make Israel “more reluctant than ever to give up military control over the West Bank, which is even closer to Ben Gurion Airport than is Gaza.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“When Israel removed both its civilian settlements and its military presence in Gaza,” he explains, “Hamas took control [and] fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian targets.… Israel could not accept the risk of a Hamas takeover of the West Bank.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That this would be the most likely outcome of an IDF withdrawal from the territories should be clear. One needs only to recall the events of 2007, some two years after Israel’s military unilaterally vacated the Strip, when vastly outnumbered Hamas fighters laid waste to a US-trained Palestinian security force, in a coup that ousted Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party from the coastal enclave and brought the Islamist terror group to power.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Jerusalem has repeatedly expressed fear of a growing Hamas foothold in the West Bank, most recently in the wake of the formation of the Palestinian unity government.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It turns out these concerns were well-founded.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Following June’s kidnapping and murder of three Israeli civilians, the IDF’s recovery operation exposed a significant Hamas presence in the West Bank. Hundreds of Hamas members and supporters were arrested during Operation Brother’s Keeper, which also saw the military destroy the makings of a formidable terror infrastructure, including an intricate maze of underground tunnels.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">After Hamas essentially shut down Ben Gurion, its  “leader-in-exile” Khaled Mashaal crowed, “the resistance is today in the Gaza Strip and tomorrow it is capable of surrounding you in the West Bank.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Likewise Amir Mousavi, a former adviser to the Iranian defense minister, recently vowed to provide missiles to Palestinian factions in the West Bank: “A new front must be opened from the West Bank, after it has been armed, especially with missiles, because we know very well that the distance between the West Bank and Tel Aviv, Haifa and other areas is much shorter than the distance from Gaza.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Because of this very real risk, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made his position eminently clear, never more so than in an uncharacteristically candid press conference held during the latest round of fighting with Hamas: “In Judea and Samaria there is no power that can guarantee Israel’s security other than the IDF…. Any [future peace] arrangement will include Palestinian political and economic control alongside Israeli security control.… We don’t want to rule over the Palestinians, but the necessary security measures [means] that some of their sovereignty will need to be limited.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">As one prominent Israeli commentator put it, “That sentence, quite simply, spells the end to the notion of Netanyahu consenting to the establishment of a Palestinian state.… He wasn’t saying that he doesn’t support a two-state solution. He was saying that it’s impossible.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Dershowitz seemingly concedes the same thing by likewise contending that, “Israel will have to retain military control over its security borders, which extend to the Jordan River. It will also have to maintain a sufficient military presence to assure that what happened in Gaza does not happen in the West Bank.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That he subsequently suggests that these military realities need not exist forever is beside the point; the reason being, they are non-starters for the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">No Palestinian leader would ever agree to a deal allowing a sustained Israeli military presence not only in the Jordan Valley, but also throughout the West Bank.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Dershowitz himself admits that, “the Palestinian Authority, however, is unlikely to accept such a condition, though it should.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">His following assertion thus seemingly requires clarification: “It may still be possible to create a two-state solution whereby Israel withdraws its civilian settlers from most of the West Bank and agrees to land swaps for areas that now contain large settlement blocks.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Overall, Dershowitz’s article is an apparent major shift from positions he expounded just over two years ago in a widely-cited <i>Wall Street Journal</i> piece, which opened with the sentence, “now that Israel has a broad and secure national unity government, the time is ripe for that government to make a bold peace offer to the Palestinian Authority.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In it, he pressed mainly for a construction freeze in West Bank settlements in order to jump-start peace talks, noting only passingly and towards the end of his piece that any future peace deal will require “assurances about Israel’s security in the Jordan Valley and in areas that could pose the threat of rocket attacks like those that have come from the Gaza Strip in recent years.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“Assurances” are a far cry from a long-term Israeli military presence throughout the territories.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The two ensuing conflicts with Hamas have apparently hardened Dershowitz’s positions, leading him to conclude that, “the Israeli public would never accept a deal that did not include a continued Israeli military presence in the West Bank. They have learned the tragic lesson of Gaza and they will not allow it to be repeated.… This will simply make it far more difficult for an agreement to be reached.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It would, in practice, seemingly make the two-state solution altogether untenable.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The question is whether, in light of new realities, one of the most outspoken supporters of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is on the road to drawing the same conclusion.</p>
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		<title>Preventing an Israeli Fifth Column</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/charles-bybelezer/preventing-an-israeli-fifth-column/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=preventing-an-israeli-fifth-column</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jul 2014 04:46:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IDF]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Knesset]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236880</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The disturbing statements of Arab-Israeli politicians -- who operate freely in the Knesset. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/haneen-zoabi.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236881" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/haneen-zoabi.jpg" alt="haneen-zoabi" width="273" height="205" /></a>As IDF troops were preparing to enter the Gaza Strip, with the goal of stopping incessant rocket fire on Israeli cities and neutralizing the threat caused by Hamas’ extensive tunnel infrastructure, Balad MK Haneen Zoabi penned an op-ed for the Hamas-affiliated <i>felesteen</i> news site imploring Palestinians to “besiege” the Jewish state (which she referred to throughout her article as ‘Israel,’ in quotations).</p>
<p>“‘Israel’ will in no way eliminate Hamas, the motives for the resistance or the motives for [pursuing] liberation,” she wrote. Zoabi justified Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians as a means to ending the “soft occupation” on the Strip.</p>
<p>In response, Hamas spokesman Husam Bardan praised Zoabi as a “Palestinian patriot worthy of the respect of our people.” He expressed hope that other Israeli-Arab politicians would follow her lead.</p>
<p>And indeed they have.</p>
<p>One day after the launch of Operation Protective Edge, MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al) accused the IDF of “committing war crimes in Gaza, including blowing up houses and killing entire families intentionally.”</p>
<p>During the same Knesset plenum, his fellow MK Ibrahim Sarsour read aloud the names of Palestinians who had been “murdered by IDF soldiers,” a scene bearing an eerie resemblance to the Yad Vashem exhibit in which the names of those who perished in the Holocaust are recited.</p>
<p>Arab MK Masud Gnaim, also from Tibi’s party, accused Israel of perpetrating a “massacre” in the Strip.</p>
<p>These outbursts parallel the Israeli-Arab leadership’s collective response to the recent kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens.</p>
<p>Zoabi again was front and center, describing the abductors not as terrorists, but rather as beleaguered people “forced to use these means until Israel will wake up a little.” When pressed in an interview whether she was openly siding with the kidnappers, Zoabi responded: “I’m surprised you’re still walking around freely.”</p>
<p>She went so far as to endanger the life of her own relative, rejecting seventeen-year-old Mohammad Zoabi’s call for the three boys’ immediate release as “stupid” and “twisted.” (Mohammad subsequently received multiple death threats, necessitating a round-the-clock security detail.)</p>
<p>For her actions, Zoabi did not receive so much as a slap on the wrist; this, despite the fact that a police investigation determined that sufficient evidence exists for Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein to investigate her for incitement.</p>
<p>Never to be outdone, Tibi too weighed in, responding to the kidnapping by denouncing the IDF’s “shooting of civilians and demonstrators” during its recovery mission in the West Bank. Hadash MK Afo Agbaria, like Zoabi, referred to Hamas not as a terror group, but rather as a “liberation organization.”</p>
<p>Despite this overt hostility by Israeli-Arab leaders, the public nevertheless responded with shock when riots subsequently broke out last month against Operation Brother’s Keeper.</p>
<p>Residents of Umm el-Fahm, one of the country’s largest Arab cities, threw stones at police, called for additional hostage-taking and repeatedly chanted, “With spirit and blood, we will redeem you Palestine.”</p>
<p>Arab MK and Hadash chairman Muhammad Barakei, who was on hand, described the violence as a “protest against the brutality of the IDF and against [its] illegal arrests and unlawful activities in the territories.”</p>
<p>Balad chairman Jamal Zahalka hailed the riot as the implementation of “our right and duty to protest against Israeli crimes.” Balad’s secretary-general, Awad Abderfattah, called it a legitimate expression of support for Palestinian prisoners.</p>
<p>The radicalism that reared its ugly head in Umm el-Fahm is the direct result of years of government inaction, the refusal of Israeli-Jewish leaders to punish their Arab counterparts for their provocations.</p>
<p>The case of Umm el-Fahm is particularly revealing, given the city’s former mayor is Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch, which is essentially the Muslim Brotherhood in Israel.</p>
<p>For decades, Salah was permitted to spew his anti-Israel invective with impunity. He urged young Arabs to wage war against Israel so they may die as martyrs, and accused Jews of “eating bread dipped in children’s blood.”</p>
<p>Salah was previously convicted of collaborating with, and raising millions of dollars for, Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood.</p>
<p>For his ongoing crimes, this past March Salah was given an eight-month prison sentence. Upon receiving the verdict, he affirmed: “Blessed is God—I got off cheap!”</p>
<p>Despite calls by Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman for the Umm el-Fahm rioters to “be treated as terrorists in the full sense of the word,” they, not unlike their leaders, will not be.</p>
<p>The reason is, partly, due to external pressure, given the international community’s pro-Arab disposition, and the influence of people like Meretz leader Zahava Gal-On, who accused Liberman of racism for attempting to hold to account those calling for Israel’s destruction.</p>
<p>The government’s failure to address the issue has allowed a virtual powder keg to form in the heart of the country. The volatility of the situation primarily accounts for the ongoing reluctance to take action against Israeli-Arab agitators, as doing so, at this late juncture, would have serious consequences.</p>
<p>This reality was reinforced by the widespread violence that erupted in the wake of the brutal murder of teenager Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a heinous crime that was in all likelihood a revenge killing by Jews.</p>
<p>But even before a motive could be determined, rioting broke out in Jerusalem and continued there for days. In the so-called Triangle communities, including Taibe and Tira, Arab residents burned tires and attacked security forces.</p>
<p>The violence extended from the country’s center all the way up to the north.</p>
<p>This past week saw similar outbreaks of violence against Operation Protective Edge. In Jerusalem, young Arabs threw Molotov cocktails at police in Isawiya, Shuafat and At-Tur. A rally attended by thousands in Nazareth, Israel’s largest Arab city, saw demonstrators hold up placards reading, “Israeli army commits genocide in Gaza,” while some 200 masked protestors threw stones at security forces.</p>
<p>In Haifa, over a thousand Israeli-Arabs clashed with police as they attempted to block roads into the city. For her involvement, Zoabi was arrested and taken away in handcuffs and fellow Balad MK Zahalka was lightly injured in the rioting.</p>
<p>Apologists seek to justify such rampant and violent anti-Israel actions by Arabs as the byproduct of inequality; however, this argument simply confuses cause and effect.</p>
<p>While racism indeed exists in Israel—as it does in every other country—the “plight” of Israeli-Arabs, like that of the Palestinians, is primarily of their own making.</p>
<p>Since Israel’s founding, Arab parties have refused to form part of any ruling coalition, at the obvious expense of a smaller slice of the government pie. Israeli-Arab leaders have also failed their constituencies miserably by incessantly demonizing Israel—historically within the context of the greater Arab-Israeli conflict and today in relation to the Palestinians—which effectively prevented Arabs from integrating into society.</p>
<p>By contrast, had Israeli-Arab leaders ever agreed to sit in the government—especially between the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the start of the second intifada in 2000, when peace was formally made with both Egypt and Jordan and the Oslo Accords were signed with the PLO—they would have had much greater influence over the distribution of, and thus access to, state resources.</p>
<p>Had they shown even the slightest desire to embrace Israel as their own, their communities would almost certainly be far better off both socially and economically.</p>
<p>At the very least Israeli-Arabs would not be so openly disaffected.</p>
<p>Instead, Israel’s Arab leadership continues to maintain, and promote, rejectionist positions that view, and treat, the country as an abomination.</p>
<p>This reality was perfectly encapsulated by Tibi, when after being asked to quiet down during a recent Knesset debate by Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat, he responded: “You’ve been disturbing us since 1948,” suggesting Israel’s reestablishment was an affront to Arab sensibilities.</p>
<p>Increasingly commonplace, and explicit, opposition to Israel’s fundamental right to exist is not about to cease unless concerted action is counter-taken from the top-down; namely, by holding Arab leaders, especially parliamentarians, accountable for their anti-Israel incitement.</p>
<p>If sedition is otherwise permitted to continue unabated and without consequence, it will not be long before Israeli-Arabs become radicalized to such an extent that mini-Gazas begin popping up within a stone’s throw away from the country’s major population centers.</p>
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		<title>Iran’s Path to the Bomb</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/charles-bybelezer/irans-path-to-the-bomb/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=irans-path-to-the-bomb</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2014 04:30:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Bomb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inspections]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[And how Washington is enabling it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/76114095_3c03127b-b8dc-47c0-af9c-66715d0adff4.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235875" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/76114095_3c03127b-b8dc-47c0-af9c-66715d0adff4.jpg" alt="_76114095_3c03127b-b8dc-47c0-af9c-66715d0adff4" width="256" height="193" /></a>As nuclear negotiations resume between Iran and world powers, it is becoming increasingly clear that any deal signed will be considered negatively by Israel as “ill-conceived.”</p>
<p>According to most estimations, the focus of the talks has shifted from dismantling Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, as demanded by Jerusalem, to creating a verification network that would, ideally, grant inspectors unfettered access to Iranian sites to ensure the peaceful nature of its nuclear operations.</p>
<p>In “Inspections: The Weak Link in a Nuclear Agreement with Iran,” Dore Gold, a former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations and currently an advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, questions “the advisability of erecting a comprehensive agreement with Iran that is so highly dependent upon the efficacy of its inspection system and the willingness of Iran to agree to what some analysts call unprecedented levels of transparency.”</p>
<p>The drawbacks should be evident, especially when considering Iran’s ongoing refusal to grant the IAEA access to its Parchin facility, where the UN nuclear watchdog believes Tehran has conducted military research into the development of atomic weapons. That the underground Fordow nuclear plant remained unknown to the West for years casts further doubt on both the Islamic Republic’s trustworthiness and the ability of monitors to keep tabs on the whole of its nuclear activities.</p>
<p>The fact that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently revealed that Iran’s breakout capacity stands at a mere two months should alone obviate any such deal, as this window is surely too close for comfort.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, it appears as though the prospects of reversing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear progress by significantly reducing the number of its centrifuges is off the table.</p>
<p>In the prescient words of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, the “talks are not about nuclear capability…they are about Iranian integrity and dignity.”</p>
<p>But the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism is undeserving of respect.</p>
<p>Iran continues to fuel the debauchery in Syria, and now has boots on the ground in Iraq; with the aim there, in conjunction with local Shiite fighters, almost certainly to carve out an Iranian protectorate.</p>
<p>Moreover, the widely held belief that Iran opposes the Sunni terror group ISIS, which is active in both Iraq and Syria, is tenuous at best, with recent reports suggesting the organization may well have been spawn by Tehran.</p>
<p>As the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs’ Pinhas Inbari recently pointed out, “the more time passes, the more this notion of a link between ISIS, Syrian and Iranian intelligence has become fixed in the minds of leading Arab analysts.”</p>
<p>To support this claim, Inbari highlights a February 2012 U.S. Treasury Department document which states that ISIS’ precursor, “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” was provided with money and weapons by Iran. He also raises the intriguing possibility that Iran facilitated ISIS’ advances in Iraq in order to force the U.S. to deepen its coordination with Tehran.</p>
<p>As journalist Melanie Phillips recently noted in the <i>Jerusalem Post</i>, “the Iranian leadership [has] suggested the price of its ‘help’ in ‘stabilizing’ Iraq would be a deal over its nuclear program.”</p>
<p>And this is the key point: The road to an Iranian bomb is paved with instability.</p>
<p>Iran’s carefully crafted plan is two-tiered; first, to foment widespread regional unrest, thereby removing the focus on is illicit nuclear work while, concurrently, convincing the West, which shuns chaos in favor of stability, that the only solution is to engage, rather than defeat, Iran.</p>
<p>And it has worked.</p>
<p>The West has misunderstood, or otherwise turned a blind eye to, Iran’s strategy, devised to buy time while Tehran becomes a nuclear power, which, in turn, will allow it to pursue its ultimate ambition of spreading its Islamic “revolution” throughout the world.</p>
<p>The ramifications of an expansionist, nuclear-armed Iran would be devastating.</p>
<p>Even without the bomb, in the near future Iran will effectively control territory spanning from eastern Iraq to southern Lebanon. The so-called Shi’ite crescent warned of years ago by Jordan&#8217;s King Abdullah is, for all intents and purposes, a <i>fait accompli</i>.</p>
<p>An Iran with atomic bombs can be expected to set its sights on Sunni Gulf states, including Kuwait and Bahrain, where its meddling during the Arab Spring prompted Saudi Arabia to deploy troops to the country.</p>
<p>In fact, Tehran appears to be on a collision course with Riyadh (which, parenthetically, is alleged to have pre-paid atomic weapons waiting for it in Pakistan).</p>
<p>Were tensions to explode between the Mullahs and the House of Saud, the entire region could be drawn into a bloody conflict; not unlike the Sunni-Shiite proxy war currently being waged in Syria, although the effects of a direct clash between the leading purveyors of these competing forms of Islam would, almost inconceivably, be much worse.</p>
<p>Like it or not, such a prospect would force the hand of the United States, which could not sit idly by as its allies, as well as the global oil economy, became endangered.</p>
<p>It is possible that an emboldened Russia would likewise become involved, at the very least as an arms supplier, and perhaps even ascendant China if to protect its growing interests in the region.</p>
<p>Israel, undoubtedly, would be targeted by its enemies and thus dragged into the fighting.</p>
<p>This is but a snapshot of the bleak picture facing the Middle East if Iran goes nuclear, and the Obama administration in particular is seemingly oblivious.</p>
<p>While the U.S. president reiterated last month—this time to his outgoing Israeli counterpart—that he remains committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, Obama’s words are no longer trusted by many in Jerusalem given his willingness (eagerness) to treat a rogue regime, ideologically committed to the West’s destruction, as a friend.</p>
<p>Hence the recent dispatch to Washington of Israeli National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen and Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, in order to spell out the Jewish state’s positions perhaps for the last time.</p>
<p>Speaking to prior to his departure, Steinitz made clear that a good deal “will not allow the Iranians to remain a nuclear threshold state&#8230;. Our position is that an agreement needs to be based not only on supervision and verification, but on dismantling infrastructure,” he affirmed.</p>
<p>Netanyahu likewise weighed in last week, granting interviews to major television networks in each of the P5+1 countries.</p>
<p>“Inspectors can be deceived,” he warned, before advocating for an agreement along the lines of the Syrian one, which “remove[s] what’s not destroyed.”</p>
<p>But given Obama’s ongoing rapprochement with Iran, Israel&#8217;s expectations are surely being tempered. In fact, it would be surprising if the government was not already intensifying covert preparations for “plan-B.”</p>
<p>What this entails could be revealed as early as July 21st, the day after the deadline for a nuclear agreement is set to expire.</p>
<p>Only then will it become known whether Netanyahu is serious about preventing an Iranian bomb—and the lengths to which he is willing to go in order to do so.</p>
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		<title>The Morality of Occupation</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/charles-bybelezer/the-morality-of-occupation/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-morality-of-occupation</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Jun 2013 04:15:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IDF]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[occupation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=194827</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lessons from the post-WWII era for today's Israel.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Flickr_-_Israel_Defense_Forces_-_The_IDF_Honors_Its_Reservists.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-194846" alt="Flickr_-_Israel_Defense_Forces_-_The_IDF_Honors_Its_Reservists" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Flickr_-_Israel_Defense_Forces_-_The_IDF_Honors_Its_Reservists-441x350.jpg" width="265" height="210" /></a>The occupation of West Germany by the United States, Great Britain and France lasted a full decade, whereas East Germany essentially remained a Soviet satellite throughout the Cold War. Only in 1990, with the momentous fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification of the country on October 3rd of that year, did the occupation of Germany formally end.</p>
<p>During World War II, the Nazis laid siege to much of the globe, resulting in tens of millions dead, including the mass extermination of much of European Jewry. Nazi ideology posed a barbarian threat to the civilized world, which had first to be crushed on the battle field and thereafter contained.</p>
<p>The occupation of Germany post-1945 was thus unequivocally necessary, and indisputably moral.</p>
<p>Israel&#8217;s occupation of the West Bank is analogously moral, rooted profoundly in a defensive necessity, juxtaposed to the need to contain a doctrine equally toxic to Nazism.</p>
<p>Israel has been devastated by Palestinian terror and continues to face an existential threat from a hostile population, which, on the whole, inculcates its youth with a rabid strain of anti-Semitism; a potent mixture of Islamic fundamentalism and Nazism, originally expounded by the Palestinian &#8220;godfather,&#8221; Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WWII and Hitler collaborator Haj Amin al-Husseini.</p>
<p>Seven decades later, the demagoguery of this ideology continues to inform and permeate the foundation of Palestinian nationalism.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Israel&#8217;s occupation is demonized incessantly.</p>
<p>This is attributable to the concerted &#8212; and heretofore successful &#8212; propaganda war of the Jewish state&#8217;s detractors aimed at distorting Israel&#8217;s implementation of legitimate security measures in the West Bank &#8212; measures that would be employed by any other nation under similar circumstances &#8212; thereby attempting to turn Israel into an international pariah.</p>
<p>Nor has Israel adequately defended its own cause by having already ceded various territories captured in 1967, all the while expressing a willingness to forfeit additional areas to the Palestinians. This has effectively undermined Israel&#8217;s rightful presence in territories legally acquired in a defensive war, and to which the Jewish People held title to in accordance with the British Mandate.</p>
<p>Most significantly, Israel&#8217;s retreat has transformed what should be universally regarded as a moral issue into a geo-political one, a process which has eroded the &#8220;high ground&#8221; enjoyed by the country in the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War.</p>
<p>The deterioration of Israel&#8217;s standing has been fueled by the misrepresentation of another of its policies in the West Bank; namely, settlement construction.</p>
<p>Most of the international community vilifies Israeli building across the Green Line (commonly referred to as the &#8220;1967 border,&#8221; but which in fact constitutes the 1949 armistice line that marked an end to the fighting during Israel&#8217;s War of Independence)  as a form of expansionism, reflective of a morally-corrupt occupation. The reality, however, is that the construction of settlements was implemented as a security policy following the 1967 war; and, then, only after Israeli peace overtures were rebuffed by the Arab world.</p>
<p>Israel attempted to return the territories captured in 1967 to those very Arab nations which had just attempted to destroy her. The Arab response came in the form of the now-infamous Khartoum Resolution, commonly referred to as the &#8220;three NOs&#8221;: &#8220;No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Only when it was apparent that the West Bank and Gaza would remain under its control, did Israel&#8217;s left-of-center government begin constructing settlements, with the primary aim of buffering the country&#8217;s main population centers from future attack.</p>
<p>Security, not &#8220;land-grabbing,&#8221; was the impetus for building.</p>
<p>While construction across the Green Line has since become increasingly driven by ideological factors, Israeli governments have consistently shown a readiness to uproot settlements in the pursuit of peace; both from the Sinai as part of the 1979 treaty with Egypt and unilaterally from the Gaza Strip in 2005.</p>
<p>For his part, Binyamin Netanyahu agreed, during his first premiership, to relinquish control over Hebron, burial place of the Jewish Patriarchs, to the Palestinians. His implementation in 2010 of a 10-month construction moratorium in the West Bank, as well as the current de facto building freeze in East Jerusalem, proves his commitment to peace trumps ideology.</p>
<p>The global fixation on settlements has obscured the fact that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) would nevertheless be required to maintain a presence across the Green Line even in the absence of Jewish communities there.</p>
<p>Memory is short, and the regularity with which, barely a decade ago, hundreds of Israeli civilians were blown to pieces simply while riding the bus to work or sipping coffee in a Tel Aviv cafe has faded from international discourse, and hence from public consciousness.</p>
<p>It was not until Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 that the IDF, out of sheer necessity, dismantled the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank, from which the bloodbath had been spawned. In conjunction with the construction of the security barrier, the Palestinian suicide bomber is now, for all intents and purposes, quiescent; a relative calm that prevails as the direct result of Israel&#8217;s ongoing measures of control and containment. As Palestinian society has not moderated since the Second Intifada, any IDF withdrawal to the indefensible pre-1967 lines would undoubtedly see the immediate resumption of the terror of yesteryear.</p>
<p>The precedents are Lebanon (Hezbollah), Gaza (Hamas), and, increasingly, the Sinai (al Qaeda-linked jihadists) too.</p>
<p>Further retreat would thus spell a death sentence for Israelis-men, women and children alike-who would invariably find themselves under renewed attack. The implementation of such a policy would therefore be inherently amoral. And while the occupation does indeed restrict Palestinians, it is an ethically superior recourse than the alternative; namely, the deaths of innocents.</p>
<p>In the interim, Palestinians maintain sufficient autonomy, if they so desired, to foster a new culture of tolerance that preaches and nurtures co-existence, as well as benefit from ample international aid to allow for the creation of basic institutions of state; together which, constitute prerequisites to ending the conflict, and, by corollary, the occupation.</p>
<p>It is imperative that the international community be reminded of the underlying reason for Israel&#8217;s ongoing military presence across the Green Line. This is especially important now, given the absence of a Palestinian negotiating partner, amidst increasing calls for further unilateral Israeli withdrawals.</p>
<p>The argument is sound, rational and unequivocally defensible: The occupation is a moral imperative that saves lives.</p>
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		<title>Mainstreaming Hamas</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/charles-bybelezer/mainstreaming-hamas/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mainstreaming-hamas</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 31 May 2013 04:22:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[fatah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The genocidal terrorist organization's lobby of the West pays off. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/6a00d8341c2c6053ef00e54f60a5ca8834-800wi.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-191520" alt="6a00d8341c2c6053ef00e54f60a5ca8834-800wi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/6a00d8341c2c6053ef00e54f60a5ca8834-800wi.jpg" width="302" height="250" /></a>On May 16, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to go through with a planned trip to the Hamas-ruled Gaza strip in June. Flanked by US President Barack Obama at the White House, Erdogan expressed “hope that my visit can contribute to the process [of establishing a Palestinian state].”</span></b></p>
<p>He then insisted—while standing next to the leader of the free world, whose country has designated Hamas a terror organization—that both Turkey and the US were “determined to fight jointly against terrorism.”</p>
<p>This blatant hypocrisy is apparently reconciled, rather problematically, by statements made by Erdogan just last month, in which he reiterated his position that “it is out of the question for [Turkey] to consider Hamas as a terrorist organization.” Rather, the Turkish leader has in the past described Hamas as a “resistance [group] fighting for their own land.”</p>
<p>During his press conference with Obama, Erdogan further declared that “a negotiating table where Hamas…is not represented cannot produce peace.… For us, Hamas is what [PA President Mahmoud Abbas’] Fatah is.” This was followed by a reaffirmation the next day that “the process of unity between Fatah and Hamas, this has to be achieved;” otherwise, he said, “I don’t believe that a solution or result will come out of Israeli-Palestinian discussions.”</p>
<p>Given the supposed US opposition to Erdogan’s plans, it is difficult to fathom that Obama could not have persuaded Erdogan to forego his trip to Gaza. The administration, after all, was in the position of obliging various Turkish security requests with respect to the implosion in Syria—as it did, for example, by agreeing to deploy NATO Patriot missiles along Turkey’s border with Syria earlier this year—in exchange for that <i>quid pro quo</i> from Erdogan. Obama could also have applied direct pressure on Erdogan, as was the case when he recently strong-armed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into apologizing to Turkey for the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident.</p>
<p>That Obama did not see fit to use similar pressure tactics in this instance, which contravenes an oft-declared US policy, suggests he does not, in reality, have any serious reservations about the proposed visit.</p>
<p>While in Israel in March, Obama offered a window into his thinking process. In his much-heralded speech in Jerusalem, the US president mentioned both Hamas and Hezbollah, but drew a stark distinction between them.</p>
<p>With respect to Hezbollah, Obama invoked last year’s bombing of an Israeli tour bus in Bulgaria, saying, “I think about five Israelis who…were blown up because of where they came from; who were robbed of the ability to live, and love, and raise families. That’s why every country that values justice should call Hezbollah what it truly is—a terrorist organization. Because the world cannot tolerate an organization that murders innocent civilians.…”</p>
<p>Regarding Hamas, however, Obama’s tone was markedly different: “When I consider Israel’s security, I think about children like Osher Twito, who I met in Sderot—children, the same age as my own daughters, who went to bed at night fearful that a [Gaza] rocket would land in their bedroom simply because of who they are and where they live.… That’s why Israel has a right to expect Hamas to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”</p>
<p>Far from defining Hamas as a terror organization that murders innocent Israelis, Obama instead outlined “expectations” for the legitimization of the intolerable.</p>
<p>Notably, following Obama’s speech, a PA official revealed that the White House was warming up to the possibility of Palestinian reconciliation. Azzam al-Ahmed, a member of the Fatah Central Committee and senior adviser to Abbas, said that US objections to Hamas-Fatah unification were becoming “less strong.”</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, it was recently announced that the two rival Palestinian factions have agreed on a timeline of three months to join forces. While this may or may not come to pass—all previous reconciliation attempts having failed—the key “take-away” must be that, amidst an ongoing US push for a renewal of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, it is highly unlikely that serious talk of such a rapprochement could proceed without tacit US approval.</p>
<p>Further reinforcing this perception is the summit convened in April by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Arab League foreign ministers regarding the possible resumption of the peace process. Heading the Arab delegation was Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, whose country is one of Hamas’ strongest proponents and which has, over the past two years, spearheaded attempts to incorporate Hamas into a Palestinian unity government.</p>
<p>To this end, Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani became, in March, the first head of state to travel to the Strip since Hamas seized power in 2007. The visit, during which the emir pledged $400 million to Gaza’s rulers, prompted Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor to issue the following statement: “It is quite strange that the emir of Qatar should choose sides within the Palestinian camp, and choose the wrong side while he is at it.” Accordingly, it is inconceivable that Qatar does not envision Hamas playing a prominent role in bringing about, and then governing, any future Palestinian state.</p>
<p>It is equally implausible that the Obama administration is oblivious of the Sheik’s position.</p>
<p>Efforts to whitewash Hamas are thus being conducting on two parallel tracks. First, with the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ having brought to power Sunni Islamist governments across the Middle East and North Africa (including Hamas’ progenitor the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt), through attempts by regional leaders to engender an allied Sunni front, including Hamas; a most predictable development.</p>
<p>Second, and far more distressing, is the apparent policy shift to the same end by various Western countries, including the US. This seems predicated on the fact that an increasing number of Western exponents of the two-state solution have finally concluded that this paradigm is unworkable so long as the Palestinians themselves are divided politically between Gaza and the West Bank. Moreover, these professional “a-peace-ers” appear to have belatedly realized that forging an end-of-conflict agreement is impossible when much of the Palestinian population supports, and is governed by, an overtly genocidal faction.</p>
<p>True to form, however, instead of accepting the obvious—that Hamas’ annihilationist agenda precludes peace with Israel—their new “solution” appears aimed at gradually rebranding an increasingly legitimized Hamas as “moderate” (which it is patently not) as a prelude to incorporating it into the diplomatic process. (If this sounds eerily familiar, it is how Israel got stuck dealing with arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat in the early ‘90s).</p>
<p>Cognisant that this charade cannot be tolerated, the government dispatched night none other than dovish Justice Minister and primary liaison to the Palestinians Tzipi Livni to reaffirm Israel’s position; namely, that there is no chance of reaching a peace agreement with Hamas.</p>
<p>Although an important first step, Livni’s lone interview with Army Radio is grossly inadequate to convey the government’s stance on such a paramount issue.</p>
<p>For while her message goes largely unheard (if not discounted altogether) outside of Israel, the Hamas politburo continues to lobby foreign governments discretely in order to have it delisted as a terror organization; this, in the aftermath of a major policy speech in December by Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, in which he proclaimed that “the time has come for the US and EU to remove Hamas from the list of designated terrorist organizations.”</p>
<p>To counter the emergent trend, Israel must mobilize its diplomatic forces and use all means necessary to ensure Haniyeh’s wish is never granted.</p>
<p><i>The author, a freelance journalist, recently made aliya from Canada.</i></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Has Iran Crossed Netanyahu’s ‘Red Line’?</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 04:39:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=189528</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the time for action may be closer than we think. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/o-NETANYAHU-IRAN-ISRAEL-facebook.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-189575" alt="Benjamin Netanyahu" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/o-NETANYAHU-IRAN-ISRAEL-facebook-450x312.jpg" width="270" height="187" /></a>In one the most important and overlooked articles written about the Iranian nuclear threat, the <i>Jerusalem Post</i>’s Gil Hoffman recently qualified statements made by former Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin that Tehran had crossed the &#8220;red line&#8221; delineated by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in his speech to the UN General Assembly in September.</span></b></p>
<p>Speaking on the sidelines of the <i>Jerusalem Post</i> conference in New York, Yadlin explained to reporters that the perception that Iran had diverted to civilian purposes a significant portion of its uranium enriched to 20% was partially flawed. Yadlin clarified that while Iran had indeed converted some of this stockpile into nuclear fuel rods—generally used in nuclear reactors to produce nuclear energy—the majority was in fact made into oxidized uranium, or yellowcake, which can be readily transformed into fissile material.</p>
<p>“Within a week, [yellowcake] could be turned into nuclear material for a bomb,” Yadlin is on record as saying.</p>
<p>To fully comprehend the significance of Yadlin’s assertion, some context, while dense, is necessary.</p>
<p>In August 2012, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran had, since Tehran began refining uranium to this concentration in 2010, produced nearly 190 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20%. At the time, there was widespread speculation of an imminent Israeli attack on Iran; talk of which infuriated Netanyahu to such an extent that he accused the media of perpetrating a “worldwide scandal” in order to “prevent Israel from independent action.”</p>
<p>Weeks later, Netanyahu appeared before the UNGA to delineate his &#8220;red line&#8221; on Iran’s nuclear progress, his now-infamous caricature of a bomb in hand.</p>
<p>One month later, then-defense minister Ehud Barak gave an interview to the British <i>Telegraph</i>, in which he confirmed that Iran had delayed the “moment of truth” by converting approximately forty percent, or 70 kg, of its 190 kg stockpile of higher-grade uranium to other forms; thereby leaving Tehran with 120 kg of the substance, well below the 250 kg threshold required to build a nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>By February, however, the IAEA disclosed that Iran’s total production of 20% enriched uranium had reached 280 kilograms, an addition of 90 kg in the preceding six months. Its stockpile stood, at that point, at 170 kg (up from 120 kg in August); meaning that another 40 kg had been diverted towards other purposes.</p>
<p>Overall, then, the IAEA extrapolated that Iran had converted to other forms some 110 kg (70 kg + 40 kg) of the 280 kg of higher-grade uranium it had produced since 2010.</p>
<p>Yadlin’s “blockbuster” was to reveal that, contrary to popular belief, only 30 kg of this had been transformed into fuel rods, whereas 80 kg was turned into yellowcake, which, as Yadlin cautioned, can be converted expeditiously into bomb-grade material. He therefore concluded that Iran had crossed Netanyahu’s red line, as the 80 kg of yellowcake in question, when added to Iran’s stockpile (as of February) of 170 kg of 20% enriched uranium, exceeds Netanyahu’s 250 kg threshold; or, in Gil Hoffman’s words, what we have is “a crossed red line, an undermined prime minister and a serious problem.”</p>
<p>Ironically, despite the enormous publicity generated by Yadlin’s comments, the fact of the matter is that this information was already outlined by the IAEA in its February report: “28.3 kg of UF6 enriched up to 20% U-235 were fed into the conversion process at FPFP [Fuel Plate Fabrication Plant],” while the rest was transformed into U3O8, a form of yellowcake.</p>
<p>Given these facts, the question arises: Has Iran crossed Netanyahu’s &#8220;red line&#8221;?</p>
<p>In his speech to the UNGA, Netanyahu specifically stated that “a red line must be drawn, first and foremost, in one vital part of [Iran’s] program—on Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium.” Netanyahu reasoned that “the only way that you can credibly prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon is to prevent Iran from amassing enough enriched uranium for a bomb,” since Tehran could covertly produce other components of a nuclear weapon, such as a nuclear detonator, for example, with relative ease and without the knowledge of the international community.</p>
<p>Netanyahu thus asserted that “a red line should be drawn before Iran completes the second stage of nuclear enrichment [to 20%] necessary to make a bomb.” Specifically, “before Iran gets to a point where it’s a few months away or a few weeks away from amassing enough [higher-grade] enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon.”</p>
<p>While debatable, it seems, then, that Iran has indeed technically crossed Netanyahu’s limit, as the country has to date manufactured more uranium enriched to 20% (280 kg+) than is required to build a nuclear weapon (even though its current stockpile allegedly remains below the 250 kg threshold required to build a nuke). Most importantly, as Yadlin noted, Iran has shortened the time required for it to reach “breakout” capacity to mere days, a significantly shorter timeframe than the “few months” or “few weeks” outlined by Netanyahu in September.</p>
<p>Iran is thus on the brink of achieving nuclear weapons capability, having reached the stage whereby it can decide at any moment to make a week-long dash towards a point of no return; an interval which is, &#8220;red lines&#8221; aside, too close for comfort.</p>
<p>In his interview last October, Barak claimed that Iran had rolled back its nuclear progress by “eight to ten months,” and stressed that Tehran would likely reach the “zone of immunity,” depriving Israel of its military option, by the “spring or early summer.” This prediction coincides with Yadlin’s recent assertion that the Islamic Republic could reach nuclear breakout capacity as early as June.</p>
<p>Likewise, Netanyahu stated in his speech to the UNGA that Iran will have produced enough higher-grade enriched uranium for its first bomb “by next spring, at most by next summer.” This reality, Netanyahu said, precipitated his delineation of limits on Iran’s nuclear program, as “red lines don’t lead to war, red lines prevent war.”</p>
<p>The evidence suggests that we’ll soon find out if he’s right.</p>
<p><i>The author recently made aliya from Canada.</i></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Palestinians Break Ceasefire</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/charles-bybelezer/palestinians-break-ceasefire/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinians-break-ceasefire</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Mar 2013 04:08:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abbas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ashkelon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coalition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=179848</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New rocket attack on Israel -- while the country's government remains fractured.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/charles-bybelezer/palestinians-break-ceasefire/4481425099098408283no/" rel="attachment wp-att-179856"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-179856" title="4481425099098408283no" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/4481425099098408283no.jpg" alt="" width="245" height="170" /></a>Last week’s “under-the-radar” rocket attack on Ashkelon, Israel was the inevitable outcome of cumulative, distressing circumstances, foremost of which was the recent joint call by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal for a “peaceful Intifada.” Their promotion of a “popular resistance” manifested, initially, in mass protests in the West Bank, ostensibly against the detention of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in Israel, but quickly devolved into a series of clashes between IDF soldiers and Molotov cocktail- and rock-throwing Palestinians.</p>
<p>This “non-violence” intensified significantly after Arafat Jaradat, a Palestinian arrested during one of the demonstrations, died in Israeli custody. That Jaradat’s autopsy determined heart failure as the cause of death—and concluded that injuries to his torso resulted from attempts to resuscitate him—did not prevent the Palestinian leadership from disseminating conspiratorial claims that Jaradat had been tortured. This, in turn, stoked further unrest which, like all “peaceful” Palestinian initiatives, culminated with the firing of a rocket from Gaza into Israel, thus shattering the brief truce that ended Operation Pillar of Defense.</p>
<p>That the armed wing of Abbas’s Fatah party, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack is unsurprising, given the terror group admitted to firing 516 rockets at Israeli civilian centers, in addition to perpetrating the Tel Aviv bus bombing, during November’s eight-day conflict. It is also unabashedly convenient, providing Hamas with plausible deniability even though rocket attacks from the Strip, if not perpetrated directly by Gaza’s rulers, must generally receive their pre-approval.</p>
<p>Accordingly, Israel could not be faulted for responding to the breach of the ceasefire either militarily, with airstrikes on the Strip, or diplomatically, by scaling back the concessions delineated in the agreement, which included easing a multitude of restrictions ranging from the flow of goods into Gaza to freedom of movement and even fishing. The Israeli government could also suspend the indirect negotiations with Hamas that have taken place intermittently in Cairo over the past few months.</p>
<p>Yet Israel will probably do nothing, effectively acquiescing to the terrorists’ strategy of extracting tangible concessions in exchange for ephemeral promises that are never kept. This distorted paradigm—whereby Israel gives and the Palestinians take—has defined the so-called peace process for two decades, and accounts for how the minimalist parameters of the pseudo-Palestinian state, originally envisioned in the Oslo Accords, have, over time, become so engorged as to now encompass all of the territories legally acquired by Israel in a defensive war in 1967, including half of Jerusalem. The perpetuation of this dysfunctional dynamic—spearheaded by the Arab-Islamic world and shamefully facilitated by the West—also explains the gradual acceptance as gospel of illusory Palestinian prerequisites for peace, such as the “right of return” and the “release of Palestinian prisoners,” which constitute the foremost obstacles to any negotiated settlement and which currently render the pursuit of any comprehensive peace deal futile.</p>
<p>The willful blindness of the international community to this patent reality is the by-product of its seemingly unconditional support of the allegedly oppressed Palestinians, and explains why Abbas conspired with Hamas to escalate tensions ahead of Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to Israel. As the <em>Jerusalem Post</em>’s editors pointed out, “Scenes of rioting in Palestinian towns across the West Bank on the eve of the US president’s arrival might push the Palestinian issue back on the top of the White House’s agenda for the region.” Specifically, from Abbas’s perspective, chaos in the West Bank provides Obama, who has adopted the Palestinian narrative laying claim to the territory, with the impetus, as well as greater leverage, to push for a resumption of negotiations by pressuring Israel into complying with the PA’s demands.</p>
<p>Indeed, Abbas has every reason to believe his strategy will work, given Obama’s one-sided handling of the peace process during his first term in office, and considering the US administration continues to draw a moral equivalence between Palestinian-initiated violence and Israelis attempting to quell the mayhem. In this respect, the US State Department responded in typical fashion to the “peaceful Intifada” by calling on both sides to “exercise maximum restraint,” which, in diplomatic-speak, constitutes a warning to Israel not to over-reach in defending itself. Notably absent was any US condemnation of the Gaza terror attack, which has contributed to the overall whitewashing of the event and thus its proper analysis.</p>
<p>Most conspicuously, the missile attack occurred exactly one day after Egypt, which mediated the ceasefire agreement on behalf of its Hamas offshoot, publicly condemned the Jewish state’s “inhuman practices.” Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr went so far as to warn, seemingly prophetically, that Israel’s policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians would cause an explosion in the region; which, given the next day’s events, might, in hindsight, be regarded as an allusion to, or perhaps even a veiled call for, renewed rocket fire from Gaza.</p>
<p>Equally noteworthy is that the rocket attack transpired on the very same day that the P5+1 renewed nuclear negotiations with Iran, which just happens to be the largest supplier of missiles to Gaza-based terrorists. While it is impossible to determine with certainty whether Iran had advanced knowledge of, encouraged, or perhaps even had a direct hand in the attack, it is not unreasonable to postulate that the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, which has a strong foothold in Gaza, might have been sending a message of defiance to the international community. Lending further credence to Iran’s possible involvement are comments made last week by Abbas to Al-Arabiya television, in which he curiously invoked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s support for the Palestinians’ Intifada, as well as Israeli media reports claiming the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had dispatched expert rocket makers to Gaza mere days before the attack.</p>
<p>Yet perhaps the most troubling potential contributory factor to the rocket attack remains the growing dysfunction of Israel’s political system, which for nearly six months has left the country without a sitting government to combat effectively threats of the forgoing nature. This situation, typified by the cynical political wrangling that has endured for more than five weeks since the January 22 election, has left the country fractured, thus weakened and vulnerable, at a time the region is teetering on the brink of a meltdown. The prevailing disunity, and resulting political inertia, amounts to nothing less than an open invitation for Israel’s enemies to attack.</p>
<p>In the end, however, the root cause of last week’s terror attack is of secondary import. Whether attributable to the world’s toleration of Palestinian intransigence, which invariably manifests in violence; the Islamization of Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s support for its terror proxy in Gaza; an emboldened Iran, striving virtually unimpeded towards nuclearization; or internal Israeli political bickering—or any combination of the above— what matters most is the inevitability of ongoing terrorism given the overarching regional circumstances; which, together, create a toxic environment conducive to such attacks.</p>
<p>Accordingly, Israel must, first and foremost, get its house in order promptly in order, thereby, to refocus, in a unified manner, on neutralizing enemy threats; failing which, it will not be long before missiles are striking not only Ashkelon but, once again, the heart of the country.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The New ‘Zionists’</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/charles-bybelezer/the-new-zionists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-new-zionists</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 04:05:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peter Beinart]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World Zionist Organization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zionism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=174216</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Anti-Israelism rebranded. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/charles-bybelezer/the-new-zionists/showimage-ashx-6/" rel="attachment wp-att-174225"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-174225" title="ShowImage.ashx" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ShowImage.ashx_.jpg" alt="" width="266" height="200" /></a>An article recently written by David Breakstone, vice chairman of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), evidences the degree to which the founding principles of Zionism have been manipulated in a contemporary, concerted attempt to nullify the original meaning and purpose of the Jewish nationalist movement.</p>
<p>The title of the piece, “Beinart&#8217;s good old-fashioned Zionism,” is itself problematic, as it is difficult to conceptualize how Breakstone could label Peter Beinart, the fringe American author of <em>The Crisis of Zionism</em>, who advocates for a boycott of Israeli products manufactured across the Green Line, as a “good old-fashioned” Zionist.</p>
<p>In fact, “good old-fashioned” Zionists, from Theodor Herzl to Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, promoted Jewish settlement throughout Palestine, a geographical region formerly under Ottoman rule encompassing all of the territory currently claimed by the Palestinians. If Herzl or Jabotinsky were alive today, it is unfathomable that either of them would do anything less than vehemently denounce any proposed Israeli boycott over the “occupation” of land they themselves envisioned as an integral component of the future Jewish state.</p>
<p>In a half-hearted attempt to reconcile this glaring paradox, Breakstone, towards the end of his article, finally does “take issue” with Beinart’s call for a boycott, though he makes certain to inform the reader that, “My rejection of Beinart’s prescription of how to heal that which ails Israeli society does not mean I reject his diagnosis of the disease.”</p>
<p>This “qualification” is grossly inadequate coming from a senior executive of an organization founded at the First Zionist Congress—convened by Herzl himself in 1897—and which, according to its website, maintains a commitment to “establishing for the Jewish people a legally assured home in <em>Eretz Yisrael</em>”; in the past by “promoting the settlement of Jewish farmers, artisans, and tradesmen in Palestine,” and presently through “settling the land.”</p>
<p>Therefore, to alleviate any possible confusion arising from Breakstone’s article, the following clarification is necessary: Peter Beinart is in reality a leading proponent of a “New Zionism,” the central tenet of which demands the creation of a Palestinian state, whereas “good old-fashioned Zionism” promoted the emergence, and then advocated for the rights of the Jewish state.</p>
<p>To convince people that they are “pro-Israel” when, in practice and effect, their platform advances pro-Palestinian positions, the New Zionists have undertaken, systematically, to chip away at the ideological foundations of the Jewish nationalist movement. This process of historical revisionism has resulted in the transformation of the definition of Zionism, such that today’s “real” Zionists are those, ostensibly, who promote Palestinian sovereignty on land previously allocated by the international community, at the behest of “good old fashioned” Zionists, to the Jewish People.</p>
<p>To “validate” this twisted logic, Beinart is dependent on people like Breakstone, who hold high-profile positions in organizations such as the WZO, to assure the public that the New Zionists are in fact “zealously concerned” about Israel, despite their anti-Israel tendencies. In this manner, the New Zionists gain “legitimacy,” while Zionism becomes “inclusive,” incorporating even those who promote damaging Israel economically.</p>
<p>In this New Zionist wonderland, devoid of historical and theoretical context, cause and effect have become subjective. This, in turn, has enabled Beinart’s thesis—that Israel’s demise will come about less “because Arab armies invade the West Bank than because Israel permanently occupies it”—to gain traction; when, in fact, Israel’s survival depends on its continued control over parts of the West Bank, as evidenced by the emergence of existential threats, in the form of Arab-Islamic terror enclaves, in the wake of previous withdrawals from Lebanon (Hezbollah), Gaza (Hamas) and increasingly in Sinai (al-Qaida-linked jihadist groups).</p>
<p>And herein resides the true appeal of the New Zionists: History is a blank slate. In their distorted paradigm, the millennia-long Jewish struggle for independence; the repeated subsequent attempts by Arabs, including Palestinians, to annihilate Israel; and ongoing Palestinian rejectionism and terrorism are minimized, if not discounted altogether. This allows Beinart to claim, as paraphrased by Breakstone, that “collectively [Jews] might yet avoid our own undoing” by withdrawing from the West Bank, even though historical precedent assures said territory would eventually be overrun by sworn enemies committed to bringing about “our undoing.”</p>
<p>This rejection of history, coupled with a fundamental misunderstanding of “good old-fashioned Zionism,” precludes the New Zionists from accurately “diagnosing” what “ails” Israel, particularly as regards its declining global status.</p>
<p>To begin with, Israel was not created so that the Jewish People’s destiny would become intimately intertwined with that of Arab Palestinians, but, rather, to reaffirm for the first time in 2000 years Jewish independence. This always has been, and forever will remain, Zionism’s guiding principle, from which the most obvious moral obligation stems: To advance and defend Jewish rights.</p>
<p>In this respect, Zionism does not mandate that Israel forge “peace” with the Palestinians in order to survive, but rather that the Jewish People extricate itself from the Palestinians in order to thrive as a distinct nation in its rightful land. Although present circumstance precludes this from being achieved in all of historical Palestine—as the mistakes of the previous generation have made this impractical—this can yet, and should include those parts of the West Bank essential to securing Israel’s citizenry. Once these vital territories, comprised primarily of Jews, are incorporated into Israel, the Palestinians should be left—even encouraged—to carve out in the remaining areas the autonomous statelet originally envisioned for them in the Oslo Accords.</p>
<p>In the absence of such “unilateralism,” Israel’s global standing will continue to deteriorate; not, as the New Zionists propose, because of a refusal to vacate for a fourth time in its brief history territory claimed by Arabs, but, rather, because the continuing failure of the Jewish People to assert its sovereign rights invites ongoing attacks.</p>
<p>This failure to assert independence is intimately connected to what Beinart describes as Israel’s ongoing “ethical collapse,” which he claims portends the Jewish state’s “physical collapse.” Ironically, Beinart is, in all likelihood, correct in his estimation that Israel is doomed “if [Jews] abandon the moral foundations of what it is that the Zionist movement set out to do.” The problem is that Beinart and his supporters have confused their own “morality” with that promoted by Israel’s founders.</p>
<p>If ever Israel did have a moral obligation to the Palestinians, in accordance with Zionist principles, the Jewish state fulfilled it by offering them comprehensive peace/statehood proposals in 2000 and 2008, respectively. That the Palestinians responded with terror absolves Israel from any further responsibility.</p>
<p>The Jewish state’s moral decay, therefore, is not predicated on the “occupation,” but rather on misguided policies of appeasement of Palestinian tyranny, which has jeopardized the security of Israel’s population.</p>
<p>Israel’s “ethical collapse” did not begin when it legally acquired territories gained in a defensive war in 1967, but, rather, when the Jewish state agreed to engage in a “peace process” with arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, who at the time had been exiled by Lebanon to Tunis. This moral degeneration has continued for two decades in the form of unending concessions to the Palestinians—the so-called “bold sacrifices for peace” so admired by the New Zionists—which have resulted not in peace, but countless Jews maimed and killed by Palestinian “martyrs.”</p>
<p>This “ethical collapse,” in parallel to Israel’s decreasing international standing, accelerated significantly with the uprooting of Israeli citizens from Gaza in 2005, and accounts for why Hamas continues not only to terrorize Israelis, but also to rule over half of the Palestinian people, who, despite their alleged peaceful nature, democratically elected the terror group to represent them at the first opportunity. This ongoing “ethical collapse” is currently best exemplified by the incessant pandering to Arafat’s deputy-in-terror Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah party’s armed wing recently took credit for the indiscriminate launching of 560 rockets at Israeli civilian centers, as well as the Tel Aviv bus bombing, during Operation Pillar of Defense.</p>
<p>In the result, Israel’s “ethical collapse” began when the country shifted its focus towards promoting Palestinian sovereignty at the expense of its own legitimate rights of statehood; that is, precisely when the Israeli government progressively embraced the New Zionists’ doctrine.</p>
<p>Unless this ideology is rejected outright, the standing—and resolve—of the Jewish state will continue to erode, as will the continued purpose of its people, until reaching a critical moral decay; at which point, the New Zionists and pro-Palestinian sympathizers worldwide will have their way and Israel’s “physical collapse” will usher in “Palestine”—in the words of the Hamas terror organization, the most popular Palestinian faction—“from the Jordan River to Mediterranean Sea.”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>In the Shoes of an Israeli</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Nov 2012 04:38:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dome]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rockets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terror]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=165812</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What would it be like to live amid a constant barrage of rockets? I now know.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/charles-bybelezer/in-the-shoes-of-an-israeli/sderot-7/" rel="attachment wp-att-165830"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-165830" title="sderot" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/sderot-450x253.jpg" alt="" width="315" height="177" /></a>I often try to place myself in the skin of an Israeli southerner. It is an abstract exercise to envision, however inadequately, but I have often wondered: what would it be like to live amid a constant barrage of rockets, dashing for shelter with every renewed blast of the siren?</p>
<p>But never did I conceive actually taking a small step in their shoes.</p>
<p>Such was the case last week, as the “Code Red” early warning rocket alarm system blared throughout Tel Aviv for the first time since the Gulf War in 1991. As I looked out my window, the tension was palpable. Nobody so much as flinched. It took 30 seconds—what seemed like a small eternity—for the enormity of the situation to sink in. As people regained their senses, panic set in, sending everyone racing for cover.</p>
<p>And then the explosion.</p>
<p>The whole surreal sequence lasted all of 45 seconds—less than one minute to find shelter; not a bomb shelter, mind you, as there simply is no time, but rather any enclosed space, devoid of windows of course, preferably a hallway or staircase.</p>
<p>Fourty-five seconds. Count it out. In Israel, it can be the difference between life and death.</p>
<p>Tragically, three more Israelis fell victim to this harsh reality last week, after their apartment building in Kiryat Malachi was struck by a rocket fired by Gaza-based Palestinian terrorists.</p>
<p>The missile was one of approximately 1000 fired towards Israel from the Strip between Wednesday and Sunday, following the launch of Operation Pillar of Defense, a military offensive which saw the Israel Air Force strike an <em>equal</em> number of terror targets in Gaza over the same period.</p>
<p>It is important to keep this in mind as accusations of “disproportionality” inevitably begin to be hurled form all directions at Israel. It is hogwash. The Jewish state cannot be faulted—but rather should be hailed—for investing billions of dollars to develop a technological miracle: Iron Dome. By intercepting in the last week upwards of 300 rockets destined for Israeli civilian centers, the anti-missile defense system saved countless Israeli lives. Likewise, it also saved Palestinian lives, which surely would have been lost in the event the IDF was forced to retaliate to a direct hit, say, on Tel Aviv.</p>
<p>This is in stark contrast to Hamas’ practice of concealing weaponry in residential buildings, schools, hospitals and mosques thereby guaranteeing the unnecessary loss of life despite the precision of Israeli strikes.</p>
<p>On this point, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s statement to the foreign press at the outset of Pillar of Defense was particularly poignant:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Seven years ago, Israel withdrew from every square inch of Gaza. Now, Hamas took over the areas we vacated. What did it do? Rather than build a better future for the residents of Gaza, the Hamas leadership, backed by Iran, turned Gaza into a terrorist stronghold.</p>
<p>“I’m stressing this because it’s important to understand that there is no moral symmetry; there is no moral equivalence, between Israel and the terrorist organizations in Gaza. The terrorists are committing a double war crime. They fire at Israeli civilians, and they hide behind Palestinian civilians.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The fact of the matter is that Israel had no choice but to act, given that residents of the south have been living in a state of paralysis for nearly a month. The mission, after all, was initiated only after Palestinians fired over 150 rockets into southern Israel from November 9- 11; mass terror attacks which came on the heels of the more than 100 rockets fired from Gaza into the Jewish state in a span of 24 hours in late October.</p>
<p>But with restraint comes consequences, and the bitter truth is that, even with this temporary ceasefire in place, it may be too late to defuse the Gaza ticking time bomb. The geopolitical conditions in the region have changed, and Hamas’ newfound assertiveness is the direct outcome of the emergence in Egypt of its progenitor and patron, the Muslim Brotherhood. In the result, any future ground incursion into Gaza, which constitutes the only way to root out Hamas’ terror infrastructure, now risks setting off a full-scale war with Cairo.</p>
<p>Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi made this clear by recalling Egypt’s ambassador to Israel at the onset of the “brutal assault” on Gaza. Last Friday he vowed that “Cairo will not leave Gaza on its own. Egypt today is not the Egypt of yesterday.”</p>
<p>In a further show of solidarity, an Egyptian prime minister for the first time travelled to the Strip; the visit was, in Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh’s words, “a message to the occupation.”</p>
<p>The nature of that message was repeatedly conveyed throughout Hesham Kandil’s trip—the beginning of which was supposed to usher in a three hour ceasefire—with the launching of fifty rockets at Israel, including two at Tel Aviv. That Egypt’s new Islamist government backs Gaza’s terrorist rulers was expressly confirmed by Hamas’ armed wing, which claimed responsibility for the attack on Tel Aviv while Kandil was still in the coastal enclave. And for good measure, as Shabbat descended on Jerusalem, an emboldened Hamas fired two rockets at Judaism’s holiest city.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="center">The point is this: when strategic threats are permitted to fester, they inevitably intensify. In this respect, for far too long one million Israelis living in the south were left to endure inhumane conditions. The eventual outcome of inaction in the face of terror was entirely predictable: what was tolerated in Sderot became the norm in Ashdod and Ashkelon, and then in Beersheva. Now, the rockets are being fired at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, as the front lines of the Arab-Islamic war against Israel shift to the heart of the country.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="center">(<em>Charles Bybelezer recently moved to Israel to begin working as a breaking news editor at</em> The Jerusalem Post.)</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s &#8216;Red Line&#8217; For Syria, But Not for Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/charles-bybelezer/obamas-red-line-for-syria-but-not-for-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-red-line-for-syria-but-not-for-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Sep 2012 04:25:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Assad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[red lines]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=144759</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Which poses the greatest danger to U.S. interests? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/basharal-assad-460x307.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-144761" title="basharal-assad-460x307" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/basharal-assad-460x307.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>On August 20, US President Barack Obama held an impromptu news conference after reports surfaced that Syrian President Bashar Assad was moving his country&#8217;s chemical weapons stockpiles.</p>
<p>Obama publicly issued this warning: “We have been very clear to the Assad regime…that a<em>red line</em> for us is [when] we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.”</p>
<p>Obama then implied he would intervene militarily if the delineated threshold was crossed, cautioning of “enormous consequences” if Assad did not heed his words. He also stated that while he had refrained up to “this point” from ordering troops into Syria, the deployment of chemical weapons “would change [his] calculations significantly.”</p>
<p>Fast forward to September 9, less than three weeks later. Following Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu&#8217;s appeal to the international community to set limits on Iran&#8217;s nuclear progress, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bluntly retorted: “We’re not setting deadlines.” US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland elaborated the next day, “it is not useful to be…setting deadlines one way or the other [or] red lines.”</p>
<p>The inconsistency is striking: According to the Obama administration, it is appropriate, even beneficial, to delineate “red lines” on Syria, but not Iran.</p>
<p>And to prove there is no disconnect between Clinton’s statements and the US president’s Iran policy—given that Obama himself did not weigh in on Iran as he did on Syria, which itself is telling—consider her remarks on August 11, ten days before Obama’s Syria comments, which prove they are on the same page: “Everyone has made it clear to the Syrian regime that [the use of chemical weapons is] a <em>red line</em>,” Clinton revealed during a press conference in Turkey.</p>
<p>So what exactly is going on here?</p>
<p>Ultimatums are productive only when the corresponding threat is credible. In other words, because Obama apparently is prepared to go to war in Syria to prevent Assad from using chemical weapons, he is ready to state so definitively. That the same rule does not apply in the case of Iran, however, suggests that Obama is not willing to confront the Mullahs militarily, despite his repeated affirmations that &#8220;all options are on the table.&#8221;</p>
<p>In fact, that Obama&#8217;s strongest declaration to date on Iran&#8217;s nuclear program is that he reserves the right to use force to stop it—as if this is not rhetorical given his role as commander-in-chief—further reinforces this impression. Moreover, just because an option is lying around on a table somewhere does not entail that such recourse will be implemented or even that it is seriously being considered.</p>
<p>Obama’s vagueness on the matter speaks for itself.</p>
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		<title>The U.S.&#8217;s Iran Delusion</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/charles-bybelezer/the-u-s-s-iran-delusion/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-u-s-s-iran-delusion</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Sep 2012 04:20:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deadlines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[red line]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sanctions]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=144328</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sanctions have only seen the acceleration of the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/2012-09-14t205705z_1_cbre88d1m7p00_rtroptp_3_usa-libya-clinton-statement.grid-6x2.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-144330" title="2012-09-14t205705z_1_cbre88d1m7p00_rtroptp_3_usa-libya-clinton-statement.grid-6x2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/2012-09-14t205705z_1_cbre88d1m7p00_rtroptp_3_usa-libya-clinton-statement.grid-6x2.gif" alt="" width="375" height="251" /></a>The United State of America is “not setting deadlines” on Iran and is still committed to negotiations which are “by far the best approach” to prevent Tehran from becoming a nuclear power, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared last week.</p>
<p>To ensure the message was not lost in Hebrew translation, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland elaborated the next day, “it is not useful to be…setting deadlines one way or the other [or] red lines.”</p>
<p>So according to the US’s top diplomats, representatives of president Barack Obama who describes the prospect of a nuclear Iran as “unacceptable,” it is detrimental to delineate the thresholds of the intolerable, which at the very least would make the Iranians think twice before dashing towards nuclearization.</p>
<p>Hypocrisy, like Iran’s nuclear progress, knows no bounds.</p>
<p>Notably, Clinton’s comments came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stated that all efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear progress thus far have failed “because [Iran] doesn’t see a clear red line from the international community.”</p>
<p>So much for the US and Israel being on the same page; consider the Obama administration’s vehement refusal to place any limits on Iran’s nuclear progress as a sharp rebuke of Jerusalem. This is the same “pro-Israel” Obama, mind you, that the majority of American Jews will vote to re-empower in November, and to whom a significant segment of Israeli officialdom deems it prudent to outsource the responsibility of dealing with the Iranian nuclear—existential—threat.</p>
<p>Not to worry, they say. Obama “has Israel’s back.” That is, besides the fact that his administration has completely eroded the credibility of the “military option.”</p>
<p>So how exactly does Obama intend to stop Iran from achieving nuclear status? According to Clinton, “we’re convinced that we have more time to focus on these sanctions, to do everything we can to bring Iran to a good-faith negotiation.”</p>
<p>Given the monumental failure of the three-staged talks conducted between world powers and Iran earlier this year in Istanbul, Baghdad, and Moscow, that leaves sanctions as the US’s most plausible measure.</p>
<p>In Hillary’s estimation, “the sanctions, we know, are having an effect.”</p>
<p>Yet the administration is playing a fool’s game, predicated on invoking Iran’s struggling economy to mask a flawed policy. After all, it is impossible to deny that sanctions are indeed “hurting.” This argument, however, is deceptive, as a devalued rial is merely a means to an end—halting Iran’s nuclear program.</p>
<p>In this respect, sanctions have failed miserably. In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s August report showed that sanctions are having the exact opposite effect of the one intended: Iran is <em>accelerating</em> its nuclear program.</p>
<p>The IAEA confirmed that Iran doubled since May the number of centrifuges installed at its underground Fordow facility, and produced an additional 145kg of higher-grade enriched uranium over the same period. The report again accused Iran of sanitizing its Parchin military complex, at which suspected nuclear-related experiments have been conducted.</p>
<p>That Iran’s response to sanctions—particularly the embargo on Iranian oil imports implemented by the EU in July—is to fast-track its nuclear program proves the regime’s intent to build nuclear weapons. Iran was left with two choices in the face of international sanctions: Stop the suffering by curbing its nuclear progress, or limit the overall suffering by going nuclear as quickly as possible.</p>
<p>The Iranians have chosen the latter.</p>
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		<title>Israel&#8217;s Futile ‘Goodwill Gestures’</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/charles-bybelezer/israels-futile-%e2%80%98goodwill-gestures%e2%80%99/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israels-futile-%25e2%2580%2598goodwill-gestures%25e2%2580%2599</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Sep 2012 04:10:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abbas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[holy land]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Judea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ramadan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Samaria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[west bank]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=142596</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Netanyahu's overtures earn only more Palestinian denial of the Jewish connection to the Holy Land.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/netanyahu-abbas.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-142658" title="netanyahu-abbas" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/netanyahu-abbas.gif" alt="" width="375" height="253" /></a>Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to extend well-wishes on the occasion of Id al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan.</p>
<p>He did so despite the fact that Abbas continues to shun negotiations with the Jewish state and again has threatened to pursue a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood at the UN General Assembly in September.</p>
<p>Netanyahu’s “goodwill gesture” reportedly was followed by similar phone calls to Abbas by Israeli envoy Yitzhak Molcho and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Molcho also called PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad.</p>
<p>The calls came on the heels of other goodwill gestures made by Israel over the last few months aimed at coaxing the Palestinians back to the negotiating table; including, but not limited to:</p>
<p>1. The issuance of thousands of additional Israeli work permits to Palestinian laborers;</p>
<p>2. The advance to the PA on the eve of Ramadan of approximately NIS 200 million in levies collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinians so that government salaries could be paid;</p>
<p>3. The signing of an economic accord with the PA in order to enhance trade;</p>
<p>4. The signing of a deal to end a hunger strike by Palestinians jailed in Israel, in which Israel even agreed to allow convicted terrorists to pursue academic studies;</p>
<p>5. The tabling of an offer, confirmed by PA Minister of Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqe, to release in four stages 125 Palestinian security prisoners, many of whom were convicted of murdering Israelis (the proposal was summarily rejected by Abbas, who demanded the prisoners be released simultaneously);</p>
<p>6. The transfer to the PA of the bodies of approximately 90 deceased terrorists, whose remains subsequently were glorified en masse in official ceremonies.</p>
<p>So the question begs: What exactly have these goodwill gestures achieved?</p>
<p>Answer: Last Tuesday, Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement denying the Jewish People’s historical connection to Jerusalem.</p>
<p>On the 43rd anniversary of an attempt by a non-Jewish Australian—Denis Michael Rohan—to set fire to the al-Aksa mosque, Abbas wrote:  “The fire, set by a criminal under the eyes of the Israeli occupation authorities, was the first [attack] in a series aiming to demolish al-Aksa mosque and build the<em>alleged</em> <em>Temple</em>, in order to uproot [Palestinian] citizens, Judaize [the city] and eternalize its occupation.”</p>
<p>He concluded by assuring his target audience that Israel’s actions “will not undermine the fact that [Jerusalem] will forever be <em>Arabic, Islamic and Christian</em>.”</p>
<p>In response, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev condemned Abbas’ call for Jerusalem to be “liberated.” He also reaffirmed the 3000-year-old Jewish connection to the city, and stressed that by ignoring Jerusalem’s Jewish heritage the Palestinian president was “ignoring reality.”</p>
<p>Regev then conveyed the Israeli government’s “disappointment.”</p>
<p>In retrospect, however, Regev’s characterization of Abbas’ denial of Jewish history is woefully inaccurate; for Abbas’ revisionism is, in fact, concerted and purposeful, and therefore constitutes an attempt to <em>alter</em> reality.</p>
<p>To this end, Abbas gave two other major international addresses over the past year in which he explicitly denied the Jewish connection to Israel, including Jerusalem.</p>
<p>In February, at the “International Conference for the Defense of Jerusalem” in Doha, Qatar, Abbas accused Israel of “using the ugliest and most dangerous means to implement plans to erase and remove the Arab, Islamic and Christian character” of Jerusalem. He also called on non-Jews to visit the “occupied” city in order to show that “Jerusalem is the cause of every Arab, Muslim and Christian.”</p>
<p>The Doha speech was preceded by Abbas’ now-infamous tirade at the UN General Assembly last September, in which he declared: “I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad…and the birthplace of Jesus Christ.”</p>
<p>Abbas omitted any mention of Jewish patriarch Abraham, whose presence in Israel superseded both Jesus’ and that of Muhammad’s descendants, and whose divine connection, indeed claim to the Holy Land is indisputable.</p>
<p>Considering the forgoing, how can we explain the Israeli government’s “disappointment” over an entirely predictable and consistent pattern of behavior? To expect anything different of Abbas suggests that it is in fact Israeli officialdom which is “ignoring reality.”</p>
<p>However, given that Netanyahu has had a front-row seat from which to witness Abbas’ slights of speech, a more logical conclusion is that his administration is <em>deliberately</em> ignoring reality. More specifically, Netanyahu must believe that it serves Israel’s interests to downplay Abbas’ overt hostility towards the Jewish state in order to portray him as a “moderate.” This notion is reinforced by Regev’s description of Abbas’ most recent inversion of history as “the usual domain of <em>extremist elements</em>,” a category of Middle Eastern players from which Regev implies the Palestinian leader is excluded. And if Abbas is not an extremist, then by extension he must be a moderate.</p>
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		<title>Obama on Libya vs. Obama on Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/charles-bybelezer/obama-on-libya-vs-obama-on-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-on-libya-vs-obama-on-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Mar 2012 04:02:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strike]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=125015</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If Iran were threatening France and Britain, would the president hesitate to support their right to self-preservation? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/030512-obama-israel-2.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-125055" title="030512-obama-israel-2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/030512-obama-israel-2.gif" alt="" width="375" height="252" /></a>Imagine for a moment that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini, at a Martyrs Day rally in Tehran, repeated his longstanding call for both the UK and France to be wiped off the map. Imagine then, that after failing for nearly a decade to persuade Iran to abort its nuclear program through diplomatic overtures and intensifying sanctions, the UK and France began advocating, in response to Khameini’s genocidal threats, preventive military action against Iran’s nuclear installations.</p>
<p>Not only would UK Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy unquestionably garner Barack Obama’s unconditional support, but the US President also would likely agree to do the heavy lifting for them.</p>
<p>How do we know this? Because less than one year ago Obama did just that in Libya. That is, the US led a NATO campaign at the behest of close allies to depose Moammar Qaddafi. And this despite the fact the Libyan dictator posed no threat whatsoever—never mind a mortal one—to either the UK or France. Moreover, Obama was so eager to accommodate American allies that he went to war in Libya without obtaining approval from Congress—arguably a violation of the US Constitution—and in a manner that vastly exceeded the parameters of the coalition’s so-called UN mandate. No amount of “leading from behind” rhetoric can alter this truth.</p>
<p>Yet here is tiny Israel—the US’s most stalwart ally in the world’s most strategically imperative region—having its <em>real</em> existential threat not only shunned by the same Barack Obama, but also <em>publicly</em> undermined by his most senior defense and intelligence officials. Granted Iran is no Libya, but can this alone account for the discrepancy in the way the US president treats his most dependable allies? No. And thus Obama’s inherent bias against the Jewish state should be undeniably confirmed to all. His actions also prove once again that Israel is held to unique, unfair standards, thereby reinforcing the importance of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assertion that “Israel must have the ability always to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.”</p>
<p>We have two pieces of evidence indicating that Netanyahu’s core Iran policies were rebuffed by Obama during their meeting in Washington. These being: to persuade the US president to articulate clear “red lines,” preferably but not necessarily defined as Iran’s achievement of a “nuclear capability,” an second, in the absence of any willingness to directly engage Iran militarily, a US commitment to indirectly support (at the very least tacitly approve of) an Israeli-led strike. Should this bare-minimum not be met, another hoped for objective was that Obama would set three basic pre-conditions before agreeing to resume fruitless “engagement” of Tehran’s Mullahs: that Iran close its underground Fordow nuclear facility near Qoms, stop enriching uranium, and remove from the country all uranium enriched beyond 3.5 percent.</p>
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		<title>Palestinian &#8216;Reconciliation&#8217; a Blessing in Disguise?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/charles-bybelezer/palestinian-reconciliation-a-blessing-in-disguise/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinian-reconciliation-a-blessing-in-disguise</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:05:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fatah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mahmoud abbas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=122038</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the death of the "peace process" farce may benefit the Netanyahu government in dealing with Iran. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gty_benjamin_netanyahu_jt_120203_wmain.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-122052" title="gty_benjamin_netanyahu_jt_120203_wmain" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gty_benjamin_netanyahu_jt_120203_wmain.gif" alt="" width="375" height="246" /></a></p>
<p>On Monday, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas let the cat out of the bag again. In the presence of Qatar’s rabidly anti-Israel Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa, and alongside Hamas’s exiled Politburo chief, Khaled Meshal, Abbas’s Fatah party signed a reconciliation agreement with Hamas, paving the way for the formation of a Palestinian unity government. With the stroke of a pen, Abbas’s prior assertion that “there are no more differences between [Fatah and Hamas]” was sanctified. Abbas officially considers as a primary Palestinian aim the annihilation of Israel.</p>
<p>And to alleviate all doubt (or misplaced hope), when asked the next day whether the reconciliation agreement would “moderate” Hamas, Political Bureau member Izzat al-Rishq declared: “The Palestinian people maintain their right to all forms of resistance, and we are committed to armed resistance…to confront the…Zionist enemy’s plans.” Abbas is now openly complicit in this murderous endeavor.</p>
<p>As for the so-called “international community,” the response was relatively muted.</p>
<p>A spokesman at the US mission in Tel Aviv said the Obama administration would not articulate a “formal position on a speculative event,” but rather would “wait to see what happens.”</p>
<p>If only Israel’s “speculative” approval of the construction of a few hundred houses in its capital city drew such remarks.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, the EU also refrained from assuming an official stance. However, given the EU’s reaction in November following a previous round of reconciliation talks—“[the EU has] consistently called for reconciliation under Abbas’ authority”—no doubt the Europeans still consider Hamas’s inclusion in Palestinian politics as “an opportunity rather than a threat,” as well as, incredibly, and without justification, “essential for securing a lasting peace with Israel.”</p>
<p>Less surprising was UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s message to Abbas: Fatah’s reconciliation with a terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction should not be viewed as contradictory or mutually exclusive from negotiating with the Jewish state. In a twisted sense, Ki-moon is correct. Abbas’s partnership with genocidal Hamas will in no manner affect his policy of rejecting direct negotiations with Israel.</p>
<p>For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu left little to the imagination: “Hamas is a terrorist organization that strives to destroy Israel, and which is supported by Iran. I have said many times in the past that the Palestinian Authority must choose between an alliance with Hamas and peace with Israel. Hamas and peace do not go together.… If Abu Mazen [Abbas] implements what has been signed, he will have chosen to abandon the way of peace[.]”</p>
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		<title>Why Thomas Friedman Hates Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/charles-bybelezer/why-thomas-friedman-hates-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-thomas-friedman-hates-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:00:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benjamin Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mitt romney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York Times]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newt Gingrich]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thomas Friedman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vladimir Putin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=116539</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The desperate flailing of a bankrupt ideology.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Thomas Friedman created a firestorm with his most recent <em>NY Times</em> article, “Newt, Mitt, Bibi, and Vladimir,” in which he intensifies his “friendly” assault on Israel.</p>
<p>Given the heightened concentration of poison in his already-toxic anti-Israel venom, it is necessary to contextualize Friedman’s latest attack on the Jewish state, to understand who Friedman is, the ideology he promotes, and how this shapes his views on, and actions towards, Israel.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Picture-23.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-116749" title="Picture-23" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Picture-23.gif" alt="" width="375" height="259" /></a></p>
<p>Friedman is a self-professed “friend” to Israel only because Israel represents the ultimate litmus test of his “progressive” agenda. If only Israel could make peace with the Palestinians—should a glorious symphony be crafted out of Middle East chaos—then, to him, this would vindicate his far-Left ideology. If it can happen in Israel, then peace can be forged anywhere and everywhere. And this is Friedman’s goal, an objective which has come to define his being—the quest for trans-national, fully-integrated world peace, beginning with the “two state solution” in the Middle East, and then radiating outwards.</p>
<p>Given this perspective, it is not surprising that Friedman refers in his article to pseudo-dictator Vladimir Putin. He does so, ostensibly, to imply that Israel, led by Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, is transforming into authoritarian Russia, its democracy being undermined by “right-wing” elements. However, I propose a different, perhaps even subconscious reason to evoke Putin. In reality, for Friedman, the struggle to forge Israeli-Palestinian peace constitutes a type of ideological “Cold War,” with Israel playing the part of the former USSR. If only stubborn Israel would “democratize” (i.e. make peace with the Palestinians), then <em>his</em> Cold War—the battle against global turmoil, inequality, poverty, death and destruction—would be won, leaving in its wake a grand utopian village.</p>
<p>What Friedman fails to recognize, though, is that the real Cold War ended a long time ago—and the world is still an imperfect place. Moreover, Friedman has it backwards: in fact, it is the Palestinians that represent the “USSR” in his twisted analogy. Israel wants peace, has stated so many times, and, more importantly, has taken “bold,” tangible steps to achieve peace (see comprehensive proposals tabled to the Palestinians in 2000 and 2008, as well as the Gaza withdrawal in 2005). More concretely, Israel has already made peace with two Arab nations—when there was a real peace to be made. The Palestinians, on the other hand, fundamentally reject the notion. Whether it is preaching “death to Jews” to children in official PA schools and media, or the recent reunification between alleged “moderate” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, his Fatah party, and Hamas, Palestinians across the board unequivocally call for Israel’s demise, and overtly work towards that goal—by refusing to recognize the Jewish state’s legitimacy; by “de-Judaizing” Jerusalem by decimating archaeological sites while concurrently fabricating historical falsities to justify their claim to the holy city; by foregoing negotiations, and instead seeking a unilateral declaration of independence at the UN, etc.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Friedman targets Israel uniquely, presumably since “the Jews should know better.” And this is where his elitism comes into play. According to Friedman, only Israel can make peace; the Palestinians, being “weak” non-entities cannot possibly be held accountable for their actions given Israel’s “supremacy.” Hence his obsession with Israeli policies and complete disregard for Palestinian belligerence.</p>
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		<title>Gilad Shalit and the Future Palestinian State</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/charles-bybelezer/gilad-shalit-and-the-future-palestinian-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=gilad-shalit-and-the-future-palestinian-state</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Oct 2011 04:00:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[gilad shalit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian Statehood]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=109769</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What the prisoner swap really tells us about "Palestine." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Palestinian-President-Mahmoud-Abbas-speaks-at-a-celebration-for-the-release-of-hundreds-of-Palestinian-prisoners-in-an-exchange-for-Israeli-soldier-Gilad-Shalit-in-Ramallah-West-Bank_16.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-109815" title="Palestinian-President-Mahmoud-Abbas-speaks-at-a-celebration-for-the-release-of-hundreds-of-Palestinian-prisoners-in-an-exchange-for-Israeli-soldier-Gilad-Shalit-in-Ramallah-West-Bank_16" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Palestinian-President-Mahmoud-Abbas-speaks-at-a-celebration-for-the-release-of-hundreds-of-Palestinian-prisoners-in-an-exchange-for-Israeli-soldier-Gilad-Shalit-in-Ramallah-West-Bank_16.gif" alt="" width="375" height="257" /></a></p>
<p>Last week, Israel rejoiced as one of its sons returned home. After five years of captivity, held by the Hamas terrorist organization without so much as a Red Cross visit, Gilad Shalit was reunited with his family, with his people. Of course, it was a bitter-sweet moment, as Israel paid an exorbitant price to secure Shalit’s freedom: the release of 1027 Palestinian prisoners, a third of whom were serving life sentences for perpetrating crimes against humanity.</p>
<p>It is indisputable that Israel will pay for this lop-sided deal with the blood of its citizens. Israel’s Almagor Terror Victims Association estimates that since 2004, 183 Israelis have been killed in attacks carried out by terrorists who were released from Israeli jails. This trend will no doubt continue. Yet the deal was made and Shalit is home, a representation of Israel’s unmatched belief in the power of human potential, that which has fuelled Israel’s success in the first place.</p>
<p>Right or wrong, the focus now shifts to what can be learned from the Shalit ordeal.</p>
<p>The most obvious realization is that a just peace cannot be forged with those whose notion of justice incorporates clemency for criminals, in a ratio exceeding 1000:1. How can a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be achieved when the Palestinians glorify death above statehood; with a people that celebrates destruction and not creation? Palestinians across the board hailed the Shalit deal as a “national achievement.” What type of “nation” is this?</p>
<p>The nature of Palestinian society was perfectly encapsulated by an event that took place immediately following the release of Palestinian prisoner Wafa al-Biss. Biss was arrested in 2005 while traveling to Beersheba’s Soroka hospital for medical treatment, when Israeli soldiers at the Erez border crossing noticed she was walking laboriously. The soldiers found 10 kilograms of explosives sewn into Biss’s clothing, and she later admitted that her intent was to blow herself up at the checkpoint, but her detonator malfunctioned. Biss’s first destination upon her release was a Palestinian school in the West Bank, where she told dozens of exuberant children, “I hope you will walk the same path we took and G-d willing, we will see some of you as martyrs.” After she spoke, the children cheered and waved Palestinian flags and chanted, “We will give souls and blood to redeem the prisoners. We will give souls and blood for you, ‘Palestine.’” These children are the future leaders of a Palestinian state.</p>
<p>Nor is this an isolated event. As <em>Jerusalem Post</em> contributor Marc Belzer noted, “They [the released Palestinian prisoners] are not deviants of society, but rather society itself.” Even the so-called “moderate” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed home the “martyrs” in an elaborate ceremony. Needless to say Hamas has already confirmed it will continue to target Israeli soldiers for abduction, and it is now using the Shalit deal to shore up political support, having already challenged Abbas “to enter into elections to see the extent of his popularity in the Palestinian street.”</p>
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		<title>The Destruction of &#8216;Peace&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/charles-bybelezer/the-destruction-of-peace/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-destruction-of-peace</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Sep 2011 04:15:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afternoon Edition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why the Egyptian-Israel peace treaty is over. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/egyptian-students-shout-anti-israel-slogans-as-they-burn-an-israeli-flag-during-a-rally-to-protest-against-the-egyptian-burn-israeli-flag.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106211" title="egyptian-students-shout-anti-israel-slogans-as-they-burn-an-israeli-flag-during-a-rally-to-protest-against-the-egyptian-burn-israeli-flag" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/egyptian-students-shout-anti-israel-slogans-as-they-burn-an-israeli-flag-during-a-rally-to-protest-against-the-egyptian-burn-israeli-flag.gif" alt="" width="375" height="255" /></a></p>
<p>Article 22.2 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the international treaty defining a framework for diplomatic relations between countries, stipulates that the &#8220;receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of [a visiting] mission against any intrusion or damage[.]”</p>
<p>Accordingly, last week’s decision by the head of Egypt’s ruling Supreme Military Council, Mohammed Tantawi, to ignore Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s plea for intervention while the Israeli Embassy in Cairo was being ransacked constitutes a gross violation of international law. And, as Article 3 of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty requires that the &#8220;Parties apply between them…the principles of international law governing relations among states,” and that &#8220;each Party undertakes to ensure that acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence do not originate from and are not committed from within its territory,” Tantawi, in effect, conveyed to Israel a powerful message: The peace treaty is over.</p>
<p>If this was ever in question, Egypt’s acting Prime Minister, Issam Sharaf, alleviated all doubts shortly thereafter by affirming that “the peace agreement with Israel is not sacred and is always open for discussion.”</p>
<p>Coupled with the fact that Israel last week was forced to evacuate its embassy in Amman, Jordan—in response to an organized march under the banner of “No Zionist Embassy on Jordanian Territory”—and that Jordanian King Abdullah II this week blamed Israel uniquely for the impasse in peace talks with the Palestinians, accusing leaders in Jerusalem of “sticking their heads in the sand,” and a frightening reality emerges: peace treaties are transitory.</p>
<p>Proponents of Israel’s pacts with Egypt and Jordan invariably retort with the following: “At the very least, was it not worth 30 years of security?” They have a point, as any length of tranquility is preferable to war. However, ultimately, the assertion is myopic. The reason being that peace and security, although inter-connected, represent two distinct states. Peace is long-term, a by-product and benefit of which is security; whereas security is short-term and cannot usher in peace, but rather acts in the manner of a temporary ceasefire.</p>
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		<title>The Point of the Palestinian Statehood Bid</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/charles-bybelezer/the-point-of-the-palestinian-statehood-bid/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-point-of-the-palestinian-statehood-bid</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:14:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afternoon Edition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[In their own words, independence is not the goal.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/hamas_1881875c.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-105028" title="hamas_1881875c" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/hamas_1881875c.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a></p>
<p>In his <em>Huffington Post</em> article, “Support Peace: Oppose Palestinian UN Gambit,” David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, opens with the following: “Once again, the Palestinians, with the help of their international enablers, are about to shoot themselves in the foot—or worse.”</p>
<p>In describing the Palestinian Authority’s upcoming September gambit at the United Nations, Mr. Harris overstates his point: he could easily have left out the words “or worse.”</p>
<p>In fact, according to a recent <em>Haaretz</em> report, entitled “IDF Training Israeli Settlers Ahead Of ‘Mass Disorder’ Expected In September,” the Israeli army is conducting “detailed work” to determine a “red line” for each settlement in the West Bank, which, if crossed by Palestinians, “will allow…soldiers…to open fire at the legs of the demonstrators[.]”</p>
<p>Not quite the “foot,” but nonetheless, the same vicinity.</p>
<p>Indeed the Palestinians are setting the stage for yet another conflict with Israel, which, ironically, is the exact opposite outcome of their purported UN goal.</p>
<p>Or is it?</p>
<p>The true motivation behind the Palestinians’ UN move was overtly conveyed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in an op-ed written for <em>The New York Times</em>: “Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one.” In other words, not an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but rather the perpetuation of it.</p>
<p>And what better way to achieve this than to execute a “Million Man March” on Israel’s borders, prompting Israeli retaliation, which, in turn, will enable the Palestinians to further delegitimize the Jewish state by “pursu[ing] claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice,” in Abbas’ words.</p>
<p>Moreover, the IDF “is also planning to provide settlers with tear gas and stun grenades as part of the defense operation,” according to Haaretz.</p>
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		<title>The Arabs&#8217; Indifference to Palestinians</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:23:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afternoon Edition]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why the supposed commitment to the Palestinian cause is a mirage.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_104165" style="width: 385px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Picture-131.gif"><img class="size-full wp-image-104165" title="Picture-13" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Picture-131.gif" alt="" width="375" height="252" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Jordanian Palestinian refugee</p></div>
<p>There is a long standing conviction that much of the West’s approach to Israel, in particular <em>vis-à-vis </em>the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is directed by a purported need to kowtow to Arab demands, mainly due to the West’s dependence on Arab oil. Yet a closer look reveals that the Arab nations’ supposed commitment to the Palestinian cause is a mirage, a political concoction used as a “soft” weapon against the Jewish state.</p>
<p>It has been widely reported that the primary reason for the Palestinian Authority’s intensifying financial crisis is due to a shortfall in the aid pledged to it by Arab countries. Last month, Palestinian Authority president Salaam Fayyad confirmed that only $331 million of the $970 million promised to the PA had been received, alleging that “the drop off has been in contributions from the region” (ironically, Israel is not among said regional delinquents). PLO Secretary-General Yasser Abed Rabbo went one step further, attributing the “unprecedented” financial crisis to “the failure of the Arab countries to fulfill their financial promises.” Since the Palestinian economy, and thus the quality of life and overall well-being of the Palestinians, relies almost entirely on foreign aid, the Arab countries’ backtracking on their obligations is telling.</p>
<p>Then there is the muted Arab response to the recent slaughter of Palestinians in Syria (not to mention the obvious fact that the massacre was itself perpetrated by an Arab country). An ensuing <em>Wall Street Journal</em> editorial, entitled “Assad and the Palestinians,” posed an appropriate question: “In the Department of Bottomless Cynicism, does anything match the treatment of Palestinians by their ostensible champions in the Arab world?” The article goes on to describe the scene: “In the latest example, Bashar Assad’s regime [recently] launched an assault on a Palestinian neighborhood in the Syrian port city of Latakia, and some 10,000 residents have fled, died, or gone missing.… Though Syria’s nearly 500,000 Palestinians are not citizens—they have been frozen into refugee status for 63 years to be used as pawns against Israel—they have suffered their share of the regime’s indignities.… Now they’re in [Assad’s] gun sights.”</p>
<p>Syria’s repression of its Palestinians is no anomaly. In Lebanon, nearly 400,000 Palestinians not only cannot become Lebanese citizens, but also have been barred from more than 70 professions, including medicine, law and engineering. Palestinians in Lebanon are not allowed to own property, and even need a special permit to leave their “refugee” camps. Amnesty International has reported that the treatment of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is in violation of: a) The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; b) The International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; c) The Convention on the Rights of the Child; d) The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; e) The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and; f) The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.</p>
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		<title>The Hypocrisy of the Israeli Left</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Aug 2011 04:12:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Palestinian intransigence cannot be laid at the feet of the Israeli Right. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/polls_Livni2_5650_579191_poll_xlarge.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-103639" title="polls_Livni2_5650_579191_poll_xlarge" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/polls_Livni2_5650_579191_poll_xlarge.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a></p>
<p><em>Jerusalem Post</em> contributor Alon Pinkas recently penned an article entitled “September: Palestine, Stalemate or Armageddon?” in which he spews venom on the “policy-devoid [Israeli] government,” and condemns Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for “not com[ing] up with a peace plan” to avert the Palestinians’ September gambit to seek UN statehood recognition. Likewise, self-proclaimed far-leftist-<em>cum</em>-centrist Benny Morris last week wrote a <em>National Interest</em> article, “How Netanyahu Could Have Stopped Palestinian Statehood Bid,” denouncing Netanyahu’s failure to “publicly, clearly chart out the main lines of a territorial compromise,” which, Morris presumes, would have induced the Palestinians to abide by the Oslo Accords and forego the UN option.</p>
<p>The great paradox is that according to the Professional Peace-Processor Association (PPPA), which counts as members both Pinkas and Morris, a comprehensive peace plan is intended to be devised through bilateral <em>negotiations</em>, which Netanyahu is unequivocally calling for. In Netanyahu’s own words, “I am prepared to immediately start direct negotiations with [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas. I am willing to invite [Abbas] to my house in Jerusalem and I am willing to go to Ramallah.”</p>
<p>Yet Netanyahu’s willingness to resume negotiations with an obstinate PA is irrelevant to both Pinkas and Morris, since the prime minister, according to Pinkas, is presently “enhance[ing] the [international community’s] impatience with the perpetual &#8216;Israeli-Palestinian&#8217; conflict/peace process/crisis/stalemate.” By refusing to do what, one might ask? Who knows: neither author informs the reader as to the steps they believe Netanyahu should be taking (although Pinkas does implore Netanyahu to “entertain” the Saudi Peace Plan, conveniently omitting the fact that the “peace” plan was devised by a country that bars entry to Israelis). Instead, they simply criticize the prime minister for “blatantly and foolishly, almost frivolously, fail[ing] to play the game,” in Morris’ words. The irony is that if Netanyahu had in fact forwarded a peace plan, chances are Pinkas and Morris would have devoted their columns to condemning the prime minister’s “offensive” unilateralism, while explaining away the Palestinians’ UN bid as a fair, in kind reaction.</p>
<p>Furthermore, like all leftists, both Pinkas and Morris view the current impasse in a contextual vacuum, ignoring that Netanyahu has already taken considerable steps to propel the peace process forward. They neglect that Netanyahu already broke with his own ideological lines by formally endorsing in 2009 the creation of a Palestinian state. They also ignore the fact that Netanyahu implemented a 10-month construction moratorium last year in Israeli “settlements,” which the Palestinians spurned (Morris nonetheless goes so far as to overtly blame the prime minister for not curbing settlement expansion, despite the fact that the construction moratorium for the most part remains <em>de facto</em> in place). Most importantly, both authors overlook that Netanyahu recently succumbed to the Palestinian—and White House—demand that Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders as a basis for jump-starting negotiations with the Palestinians, specifically in order to ward off the Palestinian Authority’s UN ambitions.</p>
<p>To recap: Netanyahu is to be condemned for not playing a “game” (although he has clearly done so via ongoing concessions to the Palestinians for more than two years), which, incredibly, both Pinkas and Morris then concede is merely a charade that has no chance of success given the Palestinian unwillingness to engage. In Morris’ words, “Abbas would still have refused to negotiate…[as] he has no interest in a two-state solution and is unwilling to recognize Israel as a Jewish or legitimate entity.” According to Pinkas, the “Palestinians seem to have concluded that a meaningful peace process is not tenable.”</p>
<p>Go figure.</p>
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