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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; P. David Hornik</title>
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		<title>Biden Spins Fantasies, Middle East Heats Up</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/biden-spins-fantasies-middle-east-heats-up/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=biden-spins-fantasies-middle-east-heats-up</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Dec 2014 05:22:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saban Forum]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247031</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Reports: Israel hits targets in Syria.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/628x471.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247032" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/628x471-450x321.jpg" alt="628x471" width="374" height="267" /></a>Speaking to the Saban Forum in Washington on Saturday, Vice-President Joe Biden <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/07/remarks-vice-president-joe-biden-2014-saban-forum"><span style="color: #0433ff;">said</span></a> that the talks with Iran, which began about a year ago and recently were extended for another seven months, had “brought significant benefits” and slowed down Iran’s nuclear program.</p>
<p>Biden added that the talks were providing time to “see if it’s possible to reach a comprehensive agreement that can peacefully ensure that Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon,” and that “all of this was accomplished with very modest sanctions relief.”</p>
<p>The speech also included very positive words about Israel and the U.S.-Israeli alliance. Israel, however, needs more than words.</p>
<p>On Sunday, one day later, Israeli national security adviser Yossi Cohen gave a briefing to the Israeli cabinet that <a href="http://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/iran-retains-its-nuclear-capabilities-as-sanctions-regime-eroding-nsc-chief-says-383899"><span style="color: #0433ff;">contradicted Biden on every point</span></a>.</p>
<p>In a statement that later was issued by the office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Cohen said that Iran was continuing to pursue a nuclear weapon, that the extension of the talks was enabling it to maintain and even strengthen its nuclear capabilities, and that the sanctions are “in danger of collapse. This is something that could lead to a regional nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”</p>
<p>Cohen also said Israel had played an important role in ensuring that the U.S.-led P5+1 countries did not reach a “bad” agreement with Iran last month, but that meanwhile Iran was continuing a huge military buildup and masterminding terrorism all over the globe.</p>
<p>That was Sunday morning. On Sunday afternoon two sites near Damascus were bombed from the air. Although Israeli officials are not saying a word about the incident, reports outside of Israel, as well as statements from Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah, say Israel was responsible.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,l-4600771,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">commentary</span></a>, Israeli military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was</p>
<blockquote><p><i>continu[ing] to play with fire by equipping Hezbollah with arms that have the capability to cause widespread losses and destruction in Israel…. It is widely believed that shipments of missiles and other arms destined for Hezbollah land in Iranian cargo jets at the airport in Damascus, then [are] transferred to a Syrian military storage site, until they are sent over the border to Lebanon.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>On Monday, Arab media <a href="http://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/report-two-hezbollah-operatives-killed-in-sundays-alleged-iaf-strikes-in-syria-384003"><span style="color: #0433ff;">were cited as reporting</span></a> that</p>
<blockquote><p><i>the airstrikes destroyed a storage facility housing anti-aircraft missiles and drones belonging to Hezbollah, and cut off the power supply from Damascus International Airport.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>It was also reported that “two Hezbollah militants were killed” during the strikes, one of them a “senior military official.”</p>
<p>According to reports outside of Israel, never officially confirmed by Jerusalem, in 2013 Israeli planes struck at least five weapons consignments in Syria that were on their way to Hezbollah, and earlier this year struck a Hezbollah base within Lebanon.</p>
<p>Although in most of these cases Hezbollah and the Syrian regime, both of them embroiled in the fighting in Syria, have refrained from retaliating, accounts say that in this latest case Israeli forces have been on high alert for a possible counterstrike.</p>
<p>Meanwhile it was also <a href="http://www.jpost.com/middle-east/russia-wants-israeli-explanation-for-aggressive-actions-in-syria-383986"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reported</span></a> on Monday that Russia was “demand[ing] an explanation” for Israel’s “aggressive action” in Syria and was “deeply worried by this dangerous development.”</p>
<p>And finally, a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/07/us-iran-economy-iduskbn0jl0h320141207?feedtype=rss&amp;feedname=topnews"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Reuters report</span></a> bears out the words of the Israeli national security adviser and belies the cheerful words of Vice-President Biden:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will hike military spending by more than a third in the next fiscal year despite presenting a “cautious, tight” budget to parliament on Sunday in response to falling oil prices…. [D]efense expenditure will rise 33.5 percent to about 282 trillion rials, most of which will be assigned to the elite Revolutionary Guards…. Iran is stockpiling rockets, missiles and other conventional weapons…. Nuclear talks between Iran and six powers have been extended until June. In the meantime, Iran can still access $700 million per month of frozen oil revenue held abroad. </i></p></blockquote>
<p>In other words: thanks to the talks Iran can keep funding its needs.</p>
<p>This confluence of events gives rise to two points.</p>
<p>One is that a belligerent, confident Iran, a belligerent, intrusive, and threatening Russia, is how the Middle East looks at a time of feckless U.S. policy based—at best—on self-delusion.</p>
<p>The other is that, even though Netanyahu’s government now faces an election campaign and is in a lame-duck status, no one should think it will take its eye off the ball.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><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"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Right on the Rise in Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/right-on-the-rise-in-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=right-on-the-rise-in-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2014 05:15:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benjamin Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coalition government]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why has it happened, and what will it mean?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2969579901.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246723" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2969579901-430x350.jpg" alt="2969579901" width="366" height="298" /></a>Israel’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/israeli_legislative_election,_2013#Date"><span style="color: #0433ff;">19</span><span style="color: #0433ff;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="color: #0433ff;"> governing coalition</span></a> collapsed this week after less than two years in office. It included two right-of-center parties totaling 43 seats (the Knesset has 120) and two ostensibly “centrist” (actually leftist) parties totaling 25.</p>
<p>In recent weeks the respective leaders of the two leftist parties, Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni, had been staging a palace revolt. They lashed out at the government and its leader, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in ways only befitting a vituperative opposition. Lapid, the finance minister, refused to implement government policy and insisted on his own misguided, destructive plans.</p>
<p>It left the exasperated Netanyahu with no choice but to fire these two and, in effect, dissolve the government. New elections have been set for March 17.</p>
<p>Meanwhile three polls (summarized at the end of <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-and-a-newly-right-wing-israel/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">this analysis</span></a> by <i>Times of Israel</i> editor David Horovitz) have indicated that, since the previous elections in January 2013, a lot has changed in Israel.</p>
<p>It was those elections’ right-leaning but equivocal results that gave rise to the dubious, rickety coalition that fell this week. But now all three polls tell the same story: the right will do much better in the new elections and be able to form a coalition without the “center” (or left), possibly with the ballast of ultra-Orthodox parties that are also right-leaning politically.</p>
<p>What changed?</p>
<p>Back in January 2013 things looked relatively quiet to Israelis. Successful terror attacks were down to very low levels. The November 2012 Gaza war had lasted only eight days with very few Israeli casualties. Iran was still under tough sanctions, creating hopes—illusions—that the West was serious about stopping its march to the bomb.</p>
<p>What a difference—at least, in perceptions—two years make.</p>
<p>While Israel won the 2014 Gaza war decisively, it had most of the country scurrying to bomb shelters for seven weeks and cost Israel 64 soldiers’ and seven civilians’ lives. In its aftermath, a wave of Palestinian terror attacks that started in September has killed 12.</p>
<p>And while the overall regional situation hardly looked calming in January 2013, it looks quite alarming now with the rise of ISIS and raging terror and war, while the West pursues an obviously, no longer deniably feckless policy toward Iran where talks keep getting extended for their own sake even as Iran <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/iaea-head-iran-dodging-questions-on-nuclear-weapons-components/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">treats an international inspections agency with obvious contempt</span></a>.</p>
<p>But those aren’t the only sorts of aggressions and threats Israel has been subject to.</p>
<p>Israelis are well aware that the Obama administration has stooped low enough to <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/the-crisis-in-us-israel-relations-is-officially-here/382031/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">call the Israeli prime minister scurrilous names</span></a> that are reserved solely for the leader of the Jewish state—amid subtle threats, and rumors, that the U.S. will refrain from vetoing a Palestinian-instigated UN Security Council resolution demanding Israeli withdrawal to indefensible borders.</p>
<p>And then there’s Europe, increasingly a cheerleading troupe for Palestinian terror as the French, Spanish, British, Irish, and Swedish parliaments have in recent months voted to “recognize” a nonexistent Palestinian state even as Israelis are subjected to Palestinian car-ramming, stabbing, and shooting attacks including an <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/new-york-times-morally-confused-by-synagogue-massacre/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">outright massacre in a synagogue</span></a>.</p>
<p>Israelis, in other words, see a more dangerous environment and so—if the polls are right—will opt for a more hawkish leadership. Seemingly nothing could be more simple and humanly understandable. Except that in Israel’s case understanding can be hard to come by.</p>
<p>In the above-linked article, the <i>Times of Israel</i>’s David Horovitz says that a more hawkish Israel in 2015 would find itself in a frontal clash with much of the world:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>BDS [boycott, divestment, and sanctions] campaigning against Israel would intensify. Unilateral recognition of a Palestine not at peace with Israel would gather yet more momentum. International empathy for Israel if, or more likely when, it next comes under attack by Hamas from Gaza or Hezbollah from southern Lebanon would be in still shorter supply.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Horovitz could be right, although, with a very sympathetic Congress taking office in January, it may not be as bad as all that. And Israelis may see such consequences as a price to be lived with for defending themselves. <i><br />
</i></p>
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		<title>New York Times Morally Confused by Synagogue Massacre</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/new-york-times-morally-confused-by-synagogue-massacre/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=new-york-times-morally-confused-by-synagogue-massacre</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Nov 2014 05:22:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[killing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[massacre]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Synagogue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[terrorist attack]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Aggressors, victims…what’s the difference?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/29906170001_3898124865001_thumb-645697987bded02d650f6a70670096d7.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245712" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/29906170001_3898124865001_thumb-645697987bded02d650f6a70670096d7.jpg" alt="29906170001_3898124865001_thumb-645697987bded02d650f6a70670096d7" width="328" height="246" /></a>This week’s terror attack in a Jerusalem synagogue evoked <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/opinion/horror-in-israel.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #0433ff;">a 300-word unsigned editorial</span></a> from the <i>New York Times</i>.</p>
<p>Seemingly, this was a straightforward case: two terrorists with a gun, axes, and knives entered the synagogue and proceeded to butcher peaceful, unarmed worshippers. But for the <i>Times</i>, nothing involving Israel is straightforward.</p>
<p>Yes, the <i>Times</i> called the attack a “bloody rampage” and said Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas “has a duty to make the moral case that such brutality and inhumanity can only bring shame upon the Palestinian people” (which, by the way, he’s never going to do).</p>
<p>But the <i>Times</i> also called the attack</p>
<blockquote><p><i>a tragedy for all Israelis and Palestinians. The two communities appeared increasingly locked in a cycle of hatred and hopelessness, where chances for stability, much less permanent peace, seem nearly impossible.</i></p>
<p><i>… it also is part of an alarming wave of violence fueled by a dispute over a holy site in the Old City known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The drift of that could not be clearer: both sides are at fault, both evincing “hatred” and “violence” that make peace “nearly impossible.”</p>
<p>But is that really true?</p>
<p>The attack on the synagogue immediately killed four Jews, three of them rabbis; a fifth person—an Israeli Druze policeman who fought the terrorists—died the following day.</p>
<p>In addition to those five, six other people <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/terrorism/palestinian/pages/victims%2520of%2520palestinian%2520violence%2520and%2520terrorism%2520sinc.aspx"><span style="color: #0433ff;">have been killed by Palestinian terror</span></a> since October 22: a three-month-old Israeli girl and an Ecuadorian woman in a car-ramming attack, an Israeli Druze border patrolman and a 17-year-old Israeli youth in another car-ramming attack, an off-duty Israeli soldier in a stabbing attack, and an Israeli woman in a car-ramming/stabbing attack.</p>
<p>Another Israeli, Rabbi Yehuda Glick, survived an attempt to shoot him to death by a Palestinian terrorist. And three other soldiers were injured in another car-ramming incident that now also <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,l-4594352,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">turns out to have been a terror attack</span></a>.</p>
<p>Now, in those five weeks, how many Palestinians have been killed or injured in terror attacks? The answer, of course, is none. The only Palestinians killed in the “conflict” have been those shot by Israeli policemen or soldiers during or after attacks.</p>
<p>By this standard, the United States and ISIS have been “locked in a cycle of hatred” and violence. Innocent Americans have been killed by ISIS; ISIS members have been killed in U.S. air strikes. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?</p>
<p>If you go back to last July 2, you’ll find a brutal murder by three Israelis of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy named Muhammad Abu Khdeir (supposed “revenge” for the earlier killing of three Israeli youths by Hamas members). The Israeli perpetrators of that crime, which shocked and horrified the whole country, are now <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/israeli-killers-of-arab-boy-aberrant-individuals/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">in jail awaiting trial</span></a>. The leader of the three was an individual so aberrant that he had earlier threatened to murder his one-month-old daughter.</p>
<p>Anyone who keeps track at all of this “conflict” knows the situation is very different on the Palestinian side, where murderers of Israelis—any Israelis—are systematically honored, glorified, and if possible, remunerated.</p>
<p>Meanwhile on Wednesday, behind the haze of disinformation and distortions of the <i>New York Times</i> and other big media, a sad but heartwarming event occurred in Israel.</p>
<p>Zidan Sayif, the 30-year-old Druze policeman who along with two other policemen fought the synagogue terrorists on Tuesday, paid for doing so with his life, and is survived by a wife and five-month-old daughter, was buried in the Druze village of Yanuh-Jat in northern Israel. The thousands in attendance included Druze notables and the Israeli president, internal security minister, police commissioner, and other officials.</p>
<p>And they also included hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews. The synagogue attacked on Tuesday was ultra-Orthodox. Although ultra-Orthodox Jews tend to be insular, they came out in appreciation of Zidan Sayif’s heroism as he and his fellow officers prevented what could have been a much larger massacre.</p>
<p>At the funeral, ultra-Orthodox Member of Knesset Eli Yishai <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,l-4593823,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">said</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>We all weep alongside the family. We are here to pay our last respects to a great hero who gave his life. . . . Your memory is forever engraved in our hearts.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Risha Segal, an ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem resident, had earlier posted online:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>We are calling for widespread solidarity throughout Israel, with an emphasis on gratitude. We will not be ungrateful and will show our thanks for those who sacrificed their lives for us. This is one of the most important principles in Judaism.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called Sayif’s father on Wednesday and <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=21613"><span style="color: #0433ff;">said</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Your son’s bravery prevented many victims. On behalf of the citizens of Israel I want to offer my condolences for his death while fulfilling his duty. It is precisely at this time that you must raise your heads high with pride and know that the death of your son was not in vain. Thanks to him many citizens can now continue their lives. </i></p></blockquote>
<p>And Sheikh Moafaq Tarif, spiritual leader of the Israeli Druze community, had this to say at the funeral:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The entire Druze community lowers its head together with the families of the victims of the terrible massacre in Jerusalem, and we hope for safer, quieter days ahead. We must take our covenant of blood and turn it into a covenant of life. We are a peace-seeking people, and our sons serve this state and the entire public, and we will continue to do so.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza, too, could live peacefully with the Jews of Israel and other peace-loving peoples of the Middle East. They could work out their differences with Israel without ramming, shooting, hacking, and stabbing men, women, and children. Realizing that, though, seems beyond the ken of the <i>New York Times.</i></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><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"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Britain to Crack Down on Muslim Brotherhood</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/britain-to-crack-down-on-muslim-brotherhood/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=britain-to-crack-down-on-muslim-brotherhood</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2014 04:45:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Crackdown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[If only the Obama administration could follow suit.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screen-Shot-2013-07-10-at-11.41.34-AM-620x406.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243671" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screen-Shot-2013-07-10-at-11.41.34-AM-620x406-450x294.png" alt="Screen-Shot-2013-07-10-at-11.41.34-AM-620x406" width="366" height="239" /></a>Britain’s <i>The Telegraph</i> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11171979/downing-street-set-to-crack-down-on-the-muslim-brotherhood.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reports</span></a> that Britain is aiming to take serious measures against the Muslim Brotherhood. The situation contrasts notably with the one in the U.S., where—among much else—the Obama administration has cut back ties with the current, geopolitically moderate Egyptian government because—backed by the <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-peace/2013/06/30/anti-muslim-brotherhood-protests-largest-political-event-in-world-history"><span style="color: #0433ff;">most massive popular protest in world history</span></a>—it came to power by overthrowing a Muslim Brotherhood regime that the administration favored.</p>
<p>As <i>The Telegraph</i> describes it:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Downing Street is to order a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and a network of Islamist groups accused of fuelling extremism in Britain and across the Arab world. </i></p>
<p><i>[Prime Minister] David Cameron launched an inquiry into the Brotherhood earlier this year, prompted by concerns it was stoking an Islamist ideology that had encouraged British jihadists to fight in Syria and Iraq.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), is an adviser to the inquiry and “is reported to have described [the Brotherhood] as ‘at heart a terrorist organization.’”</p>
<p><i>The Telegraph</i> adds that:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>A senior source close to the inquiry said its report—compiled but not yet published—had identified “an incredibly complex web” of up to 60 organisations in Britain, including charities, think tanks and even television channels, with links to the Muslim Brotherhood, which will all now come under scrutiny. </i></p>
<p><i>The inquiry, aided by the security services, has also investigated its network abroad. One expert said that the Brotherhood was now operating from three major bases—London, Istanbul and Doha, the capital of Qatar. </i></p></blockquote>
<p>That the Brotherhood operates out of Turkey and Qatar is, of course, not news to politically sentient people in the Middle East, who are well aware of the Turkey-Qatar-Brotherhood-Hamas axis.</p>
<p>As for what Britain plans to do about its domestic Brotherhood terror base:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The Government crackdown will stop short of outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood but action is expected to include: </i></p>
<p><i>Þ Investigations into charities that are effectively “fronts” for the  Brotherhood; </i></p>
<p><i>Þ Inquiries into funding of the organisation and links to jihadi groups abroad; </i></p>
<p><i>Þ Banning clerics linked to the group from countries such as Qatar and Turkey from coming to Britain for rallies and conferences</i>.</p></blockquote>
<p>In other words, the British government has come around to viewing the Brotherhood the way it is viewed in the U.S. by people who are considered Islamophobic and bigoted for raising such issues.</p>
<p>Politically incorrect U.S. conservatives have for years been calling attention to the role of Brotherhood-linked officials in the administration, the stealth jihad practiced by Brotherhood front organizations, the domestic Brotherhood’s ties to foreign terror, and the Obama administration’s very problematic sympathy and support for the Brotherhood.</p>
<p>As Andrew McCarthy, writing in 2012, <a href="http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/08/09/our-government-and-the-muslim-brotherhood-my-speech-in-washington/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">described the situation back then</span></a>:</p>
<ul>
<li><i> The State Department has an emissary in Egypt who trains operatives of the Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in democracy procedures. We’re helping them get elected. </i></li>
<li><i> The State Department announced that the Obama administration would be “satisfied” with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt….</i></li>
<li><i> On a just-completed trip to Egypt, Secretary Clinton pressured the ruling military junta to hand over power to the newly elected parliament, which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and to the newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, who is a top Brotherhood official.</i></li>
</ul>
<p>Last month on <i>Breitbart</i> Katie Gorka <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-peace/2014/09/09/has-the-new-york-times-just-provided-proof-of-muslim-brotherhood-influence-operations-in-the-united-states"><span style="color: #0433ff;">noted that: </span></a></p>
<blockquote><p><i>On June 13, 2012, five members of Congress called for an </i><a href="http://www.rand.org/topics/information-operations.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>investigation</i></span></a><i> into Muslim Brotherhood influence operations in the Obama administration. The five members—Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Tom Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)—were widely criticized for doing so, even by their own Republican leadership, including John McCain (R-AZ), John Boehner (R-OH), and Mike Rogers (R-MI).   </i></p></blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, Gorka points out, it is none other than the <i>New York Times</i> that has published a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers-buy-influence-at-think-tanks.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #0433ff;">major exposé</span></a> of foreign governments’ influence-buying at U.S. think tanks—focusing especially on Brotherhood-patron Qatar’s large donations to the Brookings Institution and other centers. The <i>Times</i> observed that these think tanks “push…United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities….”</p>
<p>Gorka also recalls the Justice Department’s “sweeping review” in 2011 of</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #101010;"><i>all counter-terrorism trainers and materials used throughout federal law enforcement and every branch of the military.  Hundreds of training slides were reviewed by an anonymous panel of reviewers. Many trainers were forbidden from future training and material that used terms like “jihad,” “Islamic terrorism,” or “Islamist violence….”  </i><span style="color: #000000;"><i> </i></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The general purge of “incorrect” terminology led famously, of course, to the administration’s dubbing the 2009 Fort Hood massacre as “workplace violence.”</p>
<p>The administration’s ongoing affinity for the Brotherhood camp was well evident this summer during the Gaza War when Secretary of State John Kerry demanded that Israel negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas under Turkey’s and Qatar’s auspices. Israel’s (along with Egypt’s) refusal to do so was one of the factors that led the administration to <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/revealed-u-s-cut-off-arms-supply-to-israel-during-gaza-war/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">embargo all arms to Israel for days</span></a>.</p>
<p>That Britain has come to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorist, jihadist nature is encouraging news. It can be hoped that, by 2016, a U.S. administration will—unlike the present one—be able to as well.</p>
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		<title>Revealed: U.S. Cut Off Arms Supply to Israel During Gaza War</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/revealed-u-s-cut-off-arms-supply-to-israel-during-gaza-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=revealed-u-s-cut-off-arms-supply-to-israel-during-gaza-war</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 04:50:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Arms]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Operation Protective Edge]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why the decision likely came from the White House. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/140730_FOR_GazaIDFInvasion.jpg.CROP_.promovar-mediumlarge.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243514" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/140730_FOR_GazaIDFInvasion.jpg.CROP_.promovar-mediumlarge-450x298.jpg" alt="140730_FOR_GazaIDFInvasion.jpg.CROP.promovar-mediumlarge" width="343" height="227" /></a>Last August 14 the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sway-over-israel-on-gaza-at-a-low-1407979365"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reported</span></a> that, in July, after Israel had launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, Washington had surprised Israel by turning down an Israeli request for “a large number of Hellfire missiles.” Hellfires are an important air-to-surface precision weapon, suited to the kind of warfare Israel was waging against Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza.</p>
<p>But as Amir Rapaport, a veteran Israeli military-affairs writer and editor of the <i>Israel Defense</i> site, now <a href="http://www.israeldefense.com/?categoryid=483&amp;articleid=3169"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reports</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The full truth…is much more severe: apparently, during Operation Protective Edge, the USA had completely stopped all connections with Israel’s defense procurement delegation based in the USA. For days, no item whatsoever could be shipped. The expected airlift of US ammunition had never even arrived at its point of departure.</i></p>
<p><i>The crisis began about ten days into Operation Protective Edge, pursuant to allegations that the percentage of uninvolved civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip was extremely high (IDF admitted that about one half of all Palestinian deaths were probably civilians who had not been involved in the fighting).</i></p>
<p><i>At that stage, the Israeli defense establishment submitted to the USA a request for various types of munitions, including Hellfire missiles, to replenish the dwindling inventories of IDF….</i></p>
<p><i>The order to stop the processing of all Israeli requests came from a senior echelon—probably the White House, among other reasons, because Israel had ignored the initiatives of Secretary of State John Kerry and preferred to end the operation through a direct channel with the Egyptians. The State Department had been annoyed with Israel for several months, since it was revealed that Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon had referred to Kerry as “Messianic” in closed sessions.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>No less than three reasons are given here for Washington’s ire toward Israel. Regarding the first—the allegedly high Palestinian civilian casualties—an ongoing study by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center has <a href="http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/article/20719"><span style="color: #0433ff;">found</span></a>, so far, that the death rate was indeed about 50%-50% between Palestinian combatants and civilians. This <a href="http://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/a-salute-to-the-idf"><span style="color: #0433ff;">compares favorably</span></a> with ratios of three civilians killed for every one combatant in Afghanistan, and four civilians for every one combatant in Iraq and in Kosovo.</p>
<p>As for Israel’s “ignor[ing]” of Kerry’s “initiatives,” those initiatives entailed negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas through the good offices of Turkey and Qatar—a move that was staunchly opposed by both Israel and Egypt because Turkey and Qatar are patently pro-Hamas actors.</p>
<p>And as for Yaalon dubbing Kerry “messianic,” he did so in the context of Kerry’s attempted Israeli-Palestinian peace process in which U.S. political and military officials had usurped Yaalon’s authority as Israeli defense minister by intensively planning an Israeli military retreat from the Jordan Valley—a step that Yaalon views as incompatible with Israel’s security.</p>
<p>In any case, Rapaport calls the munitions cutoff a “major trauma in US-Israeli relations” that has already had repercussions. Among other impacts, he reports that</p>
<blockquote><p><i>within the Israeli defense establishment, this recent affair has led to a reassessment of the almost automatic reliance on an airlift of ammunition from the USA as a part of practically every wartime scenario.</i></p>
<p><i>Among the measures currently under consideration is…a massive transition to Israeli-made munitions. For example, the Hellfire missiles the Americans failed to deliver may be replaced by IAI [Israel Aerospace Industries] missiles, while precision guided munitions by Rafael may replace US-made air-to-surface munitions. Since Operation Protective Edge, Israeli defense industries have already received urgent procurement orders for arms and munitions worth billions of NIS.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Rapaport notes, however, that</p>
<blockquote><p><i>the arms issue was resolved toward the end of Operation Protective Edge and…despite the recent events, the strategic defense relations between the two countries continue even now, including extensive intelligence cooperation. US DOD [Department of Defense] and IMOD [Israel Ministry of Defense] are also proceeding with numerous joint research and development projects and US defense aid will remain a substantial element of the Israeli defense budget, which enables Israel to acquire such extremely costly systems as the F-35 future fighter aircraft. The Americans have also increased their support for the Iron Dome project during Operation Protective Edge….</i></p></blockquote>
<p>All in all, this episode may signal a major learning experience for Israel and a step toward its maturation as a country: the realization that, while the United States is a friend and ally, it is not a Big Brother to be relied on to the extent that one puts one’s fate in its hands.</p>
<p>By Rapaport’s account and others, the deeply institutionalized U.S.-Israeli strategic relationship is surviving and even thriving in the Obama era. But that does not mean an ideologically hostile administration like Obama’s will not exploit Israel’s dependence to punish it for perceived wrongs, even—or especially—at a time when Israel is under attack as it was from thousands of Hamas rockets last summer.</p>
<p>Since there may well be other such ideologically hostile or Israel-unfriendly administrations in the future, it is good to know that Israel is reassessing its “almost automatic reliance” on U.S. airlifts and considering a “massive transition to Israeli-made munitions.” It would be a lot more realistic.</p>
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		<title>Israel Batters Hamas &#8212;- Kerry to the Rescue</title>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2014 04:39:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[casualties]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ceasefire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[concern]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[With Israel's enemies watching, the Obama administration undermines the Gaza war effort. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/F140711HP36.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236737" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/F140711HP36-450x335.jpg" alt="." width="250" height="186" /></a>As of Sunday evening, on Day 13 of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas was still fighting on against Israel, although its prospects didn’t look good.</p>
<p>With Hamas’s rocket fire on Israel intensifying two weeks ago, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, with Iran’s nuclear program the main thing on his plate, kept ordering only small-scale retaliatory strikes from the air, hoping to avoid a larger conflict. But Hamas kept firing—more and more. So Israel launched Operation Protective Edge—but still tried to keep it limited, without boots on the ground in Gaza.</p>
<p>On Wednesday morning Netanyahu made an adroit move, publicly accepting an Egyptian ceasefire proposal. Hamas turned it down flat. Netanyahu, who told the Israeli public in a televised address on Sunday evening that he has been in constant contact with the leaders of the U.S., Canada, Britain, Germany, France, and other countries, undoubtedly drove that point home to them.</p>
<p>With Israel’s diplomatic position strengthened, and with Arab media <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8073.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">growing harshly critical of Hamas</span></a>, Hamas responded by…escalating the war. On Thursday at dawn the Israeli army <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/tunnel-infiltration-thwarted-near-kibbutz-sufa/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">spotted and repelled</span></a> a group of 13 Hamas terrorists who had infiltrated into Israel through a tunnel from Gaza, on their way to perpetrate a massacre at nearby Kibbutz Sufa. The near-catastrophe was a pivotal moment that put an end to Israel’s boots-on-the-ground debate.</p>
<p>On Thursday night Israeli infantry, tank, and engineering units entered Gaza. The stated goal was to find the tunnels along the border—in which Hamas has invested vast sums and years of work—and destroy them, removing an intolerable danger of murderous attacks and kidnappings from residents of southern Israel.</p>
<p>In his speech Sunday evening Netanyahu spoke of somewhat broader aims—“an extended period of calm and security” and “inflicting serious damage” on Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza. While the IDF has indeed been finding and destroying tunnels, Sunday also found it locked in heavy fighting in the Shejaia neighborhood of Gaza City, a Hamas stronghold.</p>
<p>Which brings one to the issue of casualties.</p>
<p>People who complain of “asymmetry” and “disproportion”—meaning that something has to be wrong because Israelis aren’t dying—could feel somewhat better on Sunday evening, as the IDF <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,l-4547088,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">officially announced</span></a> that the total of soldiers killed since Israel invaded Gaza on Thursday night now stood at 18, 13 of them in the previous 24 hours. As for the Palestinian side, the death toll since the war started <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,l-4547139,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reportedly</span></a> came to over 400, including 65 in the fighting in Shejaia on Sunday.</p>
<p>On the Israeli side, sensitivity to casualties is particularly high, and Netanyahu devoted a good part of his speech to the issue on Sunday evening. But with most of Israel under constant rocket fire for almost two weeks, and ongoing infiltration attempts from Gaza, Israelis will tolerate the casualties because they know the alternative is an Israel that is no longer viable.</p>
<p>Palestinian casualties are, of course, a different matter—the cause célèbre not only of Israel-bashers but also of Western governments that typically start pressuring Israel for a ceasefire as soon as it starts seriously fighting Palestinian terror.</p>
<p>The reasons for the “asymmetry” between Israeli and Palestinian casualties should be clear by now to anyone who is informed and has a conscience. Israel invests vast sums to protect its citizens, particularly with the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-shoots-down-hamas-drone/2014/07/14/991c46da-0b47-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Iron Dome missile-defense system</span></a>; Hamas positions weapons stockpiles and command centers in and under mosques, schools, and hospitals. Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to warn Gazans of impending strikes, and encourages them to leave conflict zones; Hamas <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/news.aspx/182741#.U8wgtECWmSo"><span style="color: #0433ff;">orders them to stay where they are</span></a>.</p>
<p>It gets down to the moral difference between a democratic state with a Jewish ethos and a terror organization with a jihadist ethos. But it’s a distinction to which the world seems particularly resistant.</p>
<p>There were already signs of trouble on Sunday when U.S. secretary of state John Kerry—who has <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10979052/john-kerry-caught-on-open-microphone-discussing-israels-gaza-offensive-in-candid-terms.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">publicly made statements</span></a> supportive of Israel and critical of Hamas—was <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10979052/john-kerry-caught-on-open-microphone-discussing-israels-gaza-offensive-in-candid-terms.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">caught in an open-mike moment</span></a> bitterly criticizing Israel for Palestinian casualties and implying that he needed to come to the rescue.</p>
<p>A short time later President Obama chimed in with a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/20/obama-netanyahu-call_n_5603794.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">call in a similar spirit</span></a> to Netanyahu—in which he announced that Kerry was on his way.</p>
<p>Hamas is isolated, despised by most of the Arab world, caught in a vise between Israel and the fiercely anti-Hamas regime of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt, inconsequentially supported by Turkey and Qatar, and in serious danger of sustaining a major, lasting blow.</p>
<p>A decisive Israeli win in this war will bolster Israel’s deterrence, discourage its jihadist foe Hizballah to the north, and demonstrate to the region that ideological jihad is a losing proposition and no match for Western military prowess. Obama’s “concern” and Kerry’s impending arrival are, then, very worrying.</p>
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		<title>Operation Protective Edge: The Real Peace Process</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/operation-protective-edge-the-real-peace-process/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=operation-protective-edge-the-real-peace-process</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jul 2014 04:49:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Operation Protective Edge]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The only way for Israel to end hostilities is to end Palestinian terrorism. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/120311095504-israel-iron-dome-story-top1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235987" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/120311095504-israel-iron-dome-story-top1.jpg" alt="120311095504-israel-iron-dome-story-top" width="265" height="215" /></a>It was slightly under a year ago that the not-real peace process, the one driven by the U.S. administration and especially Secretary of State John Kerry, got under way.</p>
<p>In that “process,” Israel and the ostensibly moderate Fatah wing of the Palestinians, led by Mahmoud Abbas, were supposed to negotiate for nine months and reach a conflict-ending two-state solution.</p>
<p>There was a hitch: to reach that pot of gold, Israel would have to release 104 Palestinian prisoners in phased batches. They could not be car thieves and the like; they had to be terrorist murderers. Sometimes the road to peace has strange bumps in it.</p>
<p>That peace process ended with something less than a bang in April. Even though Kerry’s envoy Martin Indyk <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/09/us-palestinian-israel-usa-idusbrea4801v20140509"><span style="color: #0433ff;">admitted</span></a> that Abbas—insufficiently appeased by the prisoner releases—had “shut down” and stopped talking with Israel by December, both Kerry and Indyk managed to blame Israeli building in “settlements,” primarily Jerusalem, for the talks’ failure.</p>
<p>Now, three months since those talks wound down, Israel is at war. It’s been a fierce war, but it offers more hope of peace than Kerry and Indyk’s “process” ever did.</p>
<p>It offers such hope because, after two days, Israel in Operation Protective Edge is displaying even more stunning capabilities than in its previous war against Gaza-based, mainly Hamas terror, the eight-day-long Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012.</p>
<p>As a “senior security official” <a href="http://www.jpost.com/defense/iaf-destroyed-more-targets-in-36-hours-than-in-whole-of-2012-clash-362122"><span style="color: #0433ff;">told the <i>Jerusalem Post</i></span></a> on Wednesday evening:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Hamas has been surprised by Israel’s response. We systematically struck operational infrastructure… In the past 36 hours we destroyed more than what was destroyed during all of Operation Pillar of Defense, and many targets were areas where senior Hamas commanders operate….</i></p>
<p><i>There’s not a single Hamas brigade commander that has a home to go back to….</i></p></blockquote>
<p>So much for offense. On defense, Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile system has been doing even better than in Pillar of Defense, downing over 90% of rockets headed for populated areas.</p>
<p>Iron Dome has been doing so even though, in the year and a half since Pillar of Defense, Hamas has not only upped its supply of rockets but also their ranges. During Pillar of Defense, Hamas celebrated wildly when a handful of rockets reached as far as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In this new round they’ve reached considerably farther, all the way to Haifa—but, thanks mainly to Iron Dome, to no avail.</p>
<p>As of Wednesday evening, the casualty count was: on the Hamas side, about 50 dead and a few hundred wounded; on the Israeli side, no dead and no wounded.</p>
<p>The questions for Israel concern how far to take this war, whether or not to launch a ground invasion in addition to the aerial assault, and how the final outcome should look. Israeli higher-ups consider Hamas a lesser evil than the global-jihad groups likely to replace it; they want to damage and deter Hamas but probably not destroy it. Israel does not want to return to ruling well over a million hostile Muslims in Gaza, and if it goes in, it will need an exit strategy.</p>
<p>There is, however, no question about who will win this war, and the early indications are that it will be an even more decisive win than Pillar of Defense, which in turn was a more decisive win than Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. That’s where hope for the future, and even for peace, comes in.</p>
<p>In Israel’s first 25 years, from 1948 to 1973, it fought five wars against Arab states and (except for the inconclusive 1967-1970 War of Attrition with Egypt) won them decisively. Since 1973, Israel has had no wars against Arab states. It’s not that Egypt and Jordan, and certainly not Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and so on, came to love Israel. But, generally speaking, they came to realize that fighting it was a losing proposition.</p>
<p>True, those were relatively rational states with nationalist leaders. The enemies Israel faces today—the religious radicals of Hamas, Hizballah, the jihadi groups now crowding into Syria, and the Iranian regime—are of a different ilk. But it turns out that even these warriors of God prefer to remain intact. With all the bungling and poor planning that Israel displayed in its war against Hizballah in 2006, Hizballah sustained major damage and has not fired a missile at Israel since.</p>
<p>Operation Protective Edge still has a long way to go. The Palestinian casualties inevitably include civilians, and it is only a matter of time before the U.S., EU, and UN start weighing in on that. What has seemed so far like understanding that Israel is fighting another vicious Middle Eastern terror organization will probably deteriorate into harsh diplomatic pressure for a ceasefire. Optimism has to be tempered with caution.</p>
<p>Even so, it is not too early to say that Israel’s growing prowess as a high-tech military powerhouse, now on display to the Middle East in Gaza, augurs better for its future than phony peace talks.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><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"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Palestinian &#8216;Unity&#8217; in Action: Israeli Teens Kidnapped</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/palestinian-unity-in-action-israeli-teens-kidnapped/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinian-unity-in-action-israeli-teens-kidnapped</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Jun 2014 04:13:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kidnapped]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinian authority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[teens]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234128</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hamas extends a "peace" offering. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/1976708560.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-234130 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/1976708560-450x260.jpg" alt="1976708560" width="279" height="161" /></a>On Thursday night three Israeli teenage boys were kidnapped in Judea (part of the West Bank) and have not been seen since. Although Israel has been riveted on the story, it hasn’t gotten much play in the international media, overshadowed by the events in Iraq and by the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament in Brazil.</p>
<p>Also tending to diminish interest is the fact that the three kidnap victims <a href="http://honestreporting.com/kidnapped-israeli-teens-the-worst-coverage/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">are identified as “settlers,”</span></a> a heavily stigmatized group that much of the West does not regard as having human rights in any case. Actually, only one of the three lived in a community over the 1949 armistice lines. All three, however, were religious Jews and were attending a yeshiva in Judea, which, unfortunately, is not the way to gain world sympathy.</p>
<p>Israelis are also well aware that a headline such as “Settlers Kidnap 3 Palestinians” would kick up much more of a storm.</p>
<p>Israel is also having trouble getting world governments interested in the fact that the kidnapping, as confirmed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, was carried out by Hamas. It was just two weeks ago that the new Fatah-Hamas unity government was sworn in. <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.596839"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Jerusalem was dismayed</span></a> when the Obama administration announced it was ready to “work with” the new government. The European Union and the United Nations, of course, fell all over themselves in welcoming it.</p>
<p>Jerusalem warned at the time that the new “unity,” however tenuous, would likely give terror a boost. With Hamas already ruling Gaza, “unity” would give it greater inroads in the West Bank. The new arrangement would also make Hamas anxious to show the Palestinian masses that it had not gone soft and not given up “resistance” to Israel.</p>
<p>Last Wednesday 88 senators <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=18103"><span style="color: #0433ff;">informed President Obama</span></a> that they shared Israel’s view, expressing “grave concern” over Hamas’s inclusion in the government, noting that it “has openly called for Israel’s destruction,” and warning that “these troubling developments…have undermined congressional support for U.S. assistance to the Palestinians.”</p>
<p>The upshot was that the U.S. could find itself funding an explicitly terrorist government.</p>
<p>It did not take long for the worries to materialize. The kidnapping on Thursday was followed on Saturday by <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/iaf-strikes-gaza-after-rocket-attacks/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">seemingly celebratory rocket fire</span></a> at Israel from Gaza, which was <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,l-4530742,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">renewed on Sunday</span></a>. Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza, in any case, were <a href="http://www.israellycool.com/2014/06/15/reaction-of-palestinians-and-supporters-to-kidnapping-of-three-israeli-boys/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">explicitly celebrating</span></a> the kidnapping.</p>
<p>As of Sunday evening, the Israeli public, three days after the kidnapping, still had no word as to whether the young men were alive or dead or where they had been taken. Earlier on Sunday Israeli security forces had <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/news.aspx/181719#.U531uHaWmSo"><span style="color: #0433ff;">arrested 80 Hamas leaders and operatives</span></a> including at least one major figure, Hassan Yousef. There were also persistent reports of Israeli forces <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,l-4530748,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">imposing a dragnet</span></a> on Hebron, a known Hamas stronghold on the West Bank.</p>
<p>As for the allegedly “moderate” faction, Fatah, most reports said or implied it was not cooperating with Israel in the search. Its leader Mahmoud Abbas, though his <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,l-4530637,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">wife was being treated in an Israeli hospital</span></a>, had made no condemnation of the kidnapping. Fatah, however, had lauded the kidnapping with a <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/news.aspx/181726#.U535dHaWmSp"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Nazi-style caricature on its Facebook page</span></a>, depicting the three young men as rats caught on a fishing rod.</p>
<p>Israel, in any case, is deeply averse to another prisoner deal if it turns out the three are still alive, and will be cracking down on Hamas. Convincing the world that terrorists who attack Israelis are just as heinous as other terrorists, and gaining international support—instead of condemnation—for its antiterror measures, will be an uphill climb as always.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><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"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Hamas Gains Ground &#8212;- And Washington Approves</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Jun 2014 04:50:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[What’s behind it?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/hamas.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-233397" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/hamas-450x298.jpg" alt="MIDEAST ISRAEL PALESTINIANS" width="307" height="203" /></a>Buzzfeed</i> <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/the-us-has-been-speaking-to-hamas-through-backchannels-for-o"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reports</span></a> that during the six-month run-up to this week’s announcement of a Fatah-Hamas unity government, Obama-administration officials were holding “secret back-channel talks with Hamas” to discuss its role in this government.</p>
<p><i>Buzzfeed</i> quotes a “U.S. official familiar with the talks” as saying: “Our administration needed to hear from them that this unity government would move toward democratic elections, and toward a more peaceful resolution with the entire region.”</p>
<p>State Department deputy spokesman Marie Harf told <i>Buzzfeed</i>: “These assertions are completely untrue. There is no such back channel. Our position on Hamas has not changed.”</p>
<p>In any case, very soon after the new Palestinian government <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/palestinians-form-new-unity-government-including-hamas/2014/06/02/c681d5c6-ea46-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">was announced</span></a> on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/world/middleeast/abbas-swears-in-a-new-palestinian-government.html?_r=1"><span style="color: #0433ff;">told</span></a> Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu that the administration would “work with the new Palestinian government while continuing to watch it closely.”</p>
<p>Israel <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.596839"><span style="color: #0433ff;">expressed</span></a> “deep disappointment.” Its ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, noted that Hamas is “a terrorist organization responsible for the murder of many hundreds of Israelis, which has fired thousands of rockets at Israeli cities, and which remains committed to Israel’s destruction.” Netanyahu <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymghp73i5ca"><span style="color: #0433ff;">recorded a statement</span></a> saying he was “deeply troubled” by the U.S. decision.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?id=e7771ddd-d26f-481e-81f3-19ec3ff1c80f"><span style="color: #0433ff;">letter to Kerry</span></a>, Republican senators Marco Rubio and Mark Kirk noted that: “Current U.S. law is clear—any government over which an unreformed Hamas exercises undue influence and which emerges from a Fatah/Hamas deal is not an appropriate recipient of U.S. assistance.”</p>
<p>For a few reasons—despite the State Department’s denial—the <i>Buzzfeed</i> report of secret U.S.-Hamas talks has considerable plausibility.</p>
<p>First, there is the alacrity with which Kerry announced the U.S. intention to “work with” the new government. Not even a day or two for deliberations before reaching a decision.</p>
<p>Second is the fact that Hamas is an offshoot of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood, and the administration’s sympathy for that body is well known. The administration favored its takeover of Egypt from the deposed Mubarak regime, supported it during the year it was in power, and sharply objected to its removal by the Egyptian army backed by a massive popular revolt.</p>
<p>And third, the new Fatah-Hamas government appears carefully crafted to, as Rubio and Kirk put it, make an “end run around” U.S. law. It’s composed of 18 “technocratic” ministers with no explicit Hamas affiliation, and Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah and the West Bank Palestinian Authority, announced that this government would uphold principles of recognizing Israel and avoiding violence.</p>
<p>Even so, as Lee Smith <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/174994/palestinian-authority-hamas"><span style="color: #0433ff;">notes</span></a>, U.S. acceptance of this government</p>
<blockquote><p><i>is against the letter of U.S. law—indeed, a number of U.S. laws. The 2006 </i><a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/s2370/text"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act</i></span></a><i>, for instance, prohibits any U.S. funds from going to Hamas, Hamas-controlled entities, or a power-sharing PA government that includes Hamas as a member, or results from an agreement with Hamas. Most recently, the 2014 Consolidated Appropriations Act prohibits “assistance to Hamas or any entity effectively controlled by Hamas, any power-sharing government of which Hamas is member, or that results from an agreement with Hamas and over which Hamas exercises undue influence.”</i></p></blockquote>
<p>For the Obama administration, though, these may just be legal niceties. The new government is, indeed—as the “official” mentioned to <i>Buzzfeed</i>—supposed to hold democratic elections in both the West Bank and Gaza in six months, enabling both Fatah and Hamas to participate.</p>
<p>Neither the Obama administration nor the European Union—which, of course, also lost no time <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/news.aspx/181362#.U5CMAHaWmSo"><span style="color: #0433ff;">welcoming</span></a> the new government—is likely, then, to heed a <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-opts-for-the-hezbollah-model/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">warning</span></a> about it by veteran Israeli Arab-affairs analyst Ehud Yaari. Yaari’s warning carries special weight since he knows the turf well and is in no way a member of the Israeli right or a partisan of the Netanyahu government.</p>
<p>Yaari reports that</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Hamas leaders held a number of meetings in recent weeks with Iranian officials in Tehran and Hezbollah leaders in Beirut. There, the group’s representatives were advised to adopt a more ambitious plan than merely defending Gaza, namely, by contesting Fatah in its own West Bank territory instead. Hezbollah’s modus operandi in Lebanon—which can be summed up as “add ballots to your bullets” —was pushed as a model to be emulated.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Yaari warns that this could lead to</p>
<blockquote><p><i>[t]he emergence of a Hezbollah model in the Palestinian Authority…. If the current electoral and transitional timetable holds, by this time next year Hamas could have not only an intact military force and terrorist agenda in Gaza, but also a solid foothold in the West Bank and at least a say in—if not veto power over—[PA] decisions. In that case, a new system would take shape in the Palestinian territories in which an armed-to-the-teeth political party gradually overshadows the central government and begins to take over numerous institutions.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>We may still be quite a way from that point; first, unlike all previous attempts at Fatah-Hamas “unity,” the current arrangement would have to hold water, leading up to the successful conduct of elections. But already at this stage, Yaari asserts,</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Western countries quick to endorse the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation should be aware of what is really happening here: Instead of the PA regaining its “southern provinces” in Gaza, it is in fact Hamas reentering the “northern provinces” in the West Bank.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The questions Israel needs to confront are whether that development really troubles “Western countries,” and how it can go about handling the crisis without Western support.</p>
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		<title>Jews, Get Out of Europe</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/jews-get-out-of-europe/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jews-get-out-of-europe</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 23 May 2014 04:33:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anti defamation league]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[European Jewish Association]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[survey]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The only dignified response to post-Holocaust anti-Semitism.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/jewish-cemetery_2495092b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-226008" alt="jewish-cemetery_2495092b" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/jewish-cemetery_2495092b-450x280.jpg" width="315" height="196" /></a>The Anti-Defamation League created a stir last week by </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://global100.adl.org/">releasing the results</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of a global survey of antisemitism, the most comprehensive ever.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These results are considered shocking by many. Actually, for those who bother to keep up with reality, they contain no surprises.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Middle East and North Africa come out worst, with 74 percent among population groups qualifying as antisemitic according to the poll’s 11-question index. The most antisemitic political entities in the world? The West Bank and Gaza, coming in at 93 percent. (Yes, those same Palestinians with whom Israel is always under pressure to “make peace.”) </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The next worst region is Eastern Europe, with 34 percent scoring as antisemites. But not too far behind is Western Europe—the home of multiculturalism, advanced environmental awareness, bevies of human rights NGOs, and so on—at 24 percent.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The West European countries scoring highest for antisemitism were Greece with a whopping 69 percent, France at 37 percent, and Spain at 29 percent. Germany did itself proud by coming in above the West European average at 27 percent—a bit over one-quarter antisemitic seven decades after the Holocaust.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Over the weekend the European Jewish Association (EJA), along with other European Jewish organizations, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/news.aspx/180822#.U3y-w9KSzlt">held a briefing</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> on the survey in Brussels for EU ambassadors and officials. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One of the West European countries scoring lowest for antisemitism was the Netherlands at 5 percent. Yet Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, chief rabbi of the Netherlands, told this gathering: </span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Today, there is a strong political polarization, especially in Holland. Radicals from both sides of the political spectrum have become more extreme, and the middle ground is disappearing. I can’t walk a whole day in the street without having at least one person shout the words “dirty Jew” at me, because I am visibly Jewish.</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If so, one hates to think what it’s like in the high-scoring countries.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Rabbi Menachem Margolin, head of the EJA, “called upon all EU member states to establish central committees, directly accountable to the respective prime ministers, in order to lead the fight against anti-Semitism.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But would establishing committees really be an adequate response at this stage?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Then things got really ugly.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In Milan, Spain on Sunday night, the Israeli professional basketball team Maccabi Tel Aviv won the European championship in a stunning upset by beating Real Madrid. Many Israelis—not least the 9,000 loyal fans who flew to Milan to cheer their team—were ecstatic. The prime minister and the president congratulated the team, and on Monday night Tel Aviv held huge celebrations.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Spanish fans reacted differently. Of course, they weren’t expected to be happy that their team lost. But it wasn’t just a matter of not being happy.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It turns out that Spanish Twitter users reacted to the loss by </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/spanish-jews-cry-foul-over-anti-semitic-basketball-tweets/">“post[ing] 17,500 messages of anti-Semitic abuse.”</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> After the game they “created an expletive anti-Semitic hashtag in their messages…, which briefly became one of the most popular keywords on Twitter in Spain.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Specific reactions included “Jews to the oven” and “Jews to the showers.”</span></p>
<p>By the way, in Spain today—with its antisemitism ranking of 29 percent—there are about 45,000 Jews out of a total population of 47 million.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The report goes on to say that “Twelve Jewish groups in the northeastern Catalonia region lodged a legal complaint over the messages.” The leader of one of these groups “presented copies of anti-Semitic tweets to state prosecutors.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Again, getting some of these vicious people in trouble—if that indeed happens—might be worthwhile; but would it really solve the problem?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Instead of committees, lawsuits, and the like, I would suggest a different solution: for Jews, at last, to give up on Europe. For good. To leave it and not go back to it (to live, at least) for a long time, if ever.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If the Holocaust was not enough to convince some Jews that they are not wanted in Europe; if, seven decades later, the situation is one where a rabbi in one of the less antisemitic countries cannot walk the streets without being called &#8220;dirty Jew,&#8221; is it not time to conclude that one is in the wrong place?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I would prefer for European Jews to come to Israel—which also has to cope with an antisemitic environment, but where Jews are in a qualitatively different situation because they stand on their own two feet and look out for themselves.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But if not Israel, at least not Europe.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The only remaining dignified response is for Jews to bid Europe adieu.  </span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><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"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Ehud Olmert: Symbol of the Peace Process</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/ehud-olmert-symbol-of-the-peace-process/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ehud-olmert-symbol-of-the-peace-process</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 20 May 2014 04:13:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Olmert]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace Process]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[six years]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225841</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The common root: bribery.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Mideast-Israel-Olmert_Cham640.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225844" alt="Mideast Israel Olmert_Cham640" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Mideast-Israel-Olmert_Cham640-450x310.jpg" width="315" height="217" /></a></p>
<blockquote><p>…We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies.</p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Those words were </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=106962">spoken by Ehud Olmert</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> in a speech to the dovish, American Jewish, Israel Policy Forum in June 2005. At that time Olmert was Israel’s deputy prime minister. Less than a year later, in April 2006, he became prime minister.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The words shocked many at the time; they sounded morally and intellectually corrupt. The Second Intifada, a savage five-year Palestinian terror war waged mostly against Israeli civilians, was then still winding down—thanks only to the courageous fighting of the Israeli security forces. To intimate that Israel was exhausted, and only looking to get chummy with “enemies” of murderous ilk, sounded like stunning, cavalier cynicism. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Olmert was prime minister from April 2006 to March 2009. Last week a Tel Aviv District Court judge, David Rozen, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.jpost.com/national-news/court-sentences-olmert-to-years-prison-time-first-pm-ever-to-go-behind-bars-352083">sentenced him to six years in prison</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and a million-shekel ($290,000) fine for taking bribes as part of a massive real estate scandal, both while Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003 and subsequently when he was a cabinet minister.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Judge Rozen censured Olmert with particularly harsh words:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">A public official who accepts bribes, an individual who abuses his power to gain illicit benefits for his own gain, is no better than a traitor. An individual who offers bribes is corrupt and his actions corrupt others. Those who accept bribes evoke nothing but disdain, as they antagonize the public and undermine state institutions.</i></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Some in Israel—generally those who still share the dovish outlook that Olmert adopted—see the sentence as excessive and put hopes in Olmert and his lawyers’ planned appeal to the Supreme Court. Others note that Olmert, going back to when he was mayor, was known to be a focal point of corruption in Israel and see the sentence as justice finally catching up with him.</span></p>
<p>Eli Hazan, a commentator for the right-of-center daily <i>Israel Hayom</i>, notes that Olmert as mayor</p>
<blockquote><p><i>left behind enormous debts, failing municipal services, a mass exodus…from the city…. Ahead of the 2006…election, many Jerusalemites tried to raise the question of Olmert&#8217;s conduct in the national media…. The sentence given to Olmert on Tuesday provided Jerusalem residents with closure.… Olmert learned that everyone is equal before the law. This is how things work in a properly run country.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>That Olmert’s corruption continued well after his tenure as mayor was <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=17541">dramatically affirmed</a> on Thursday, just two days after his sentencing, in testimony by a former bureau chief. As part of a plea bargain, the former aide implicated Olmert in taking undeclared donations, a double-billing scheme, and obstruction of justice.</p>
<p>One can speculate whether there is a psychological link between Olmert’s personal corruption and that other kind of corruption evident in his “We are tired of fighting…” statement. What is clear, though, is that Olmert was known for most of his career as a hawkish Likud politician; that by the time he made the statement, 2005, he had crossed over to a dovish outlook; and that the Israeli dovish outlook is based largely on bribery—that is, the notion that peace with the Palestinian Authority can essentially be bought with sweet inducements of land, sovereignty, and economic benefits.</p>
<p>It hardly escapes notice that Olmert’s comeuppance roughly coincides with the demise of yet another round of peace-processing, this one American-driven in the persons of John Kerry and Martin Indyk. What is lost on Israelis like Olmert and Americans like Kerry and Indyk is that the Palestinian side has certain—passions? principles?—out of which it cannot be bribed. Such as that the whole land is Palestine, and allowing any part of it to be, and remain, Israel is a horrible, unthinkable transgression.</p>
<p>Ehud Olmert may have been too far gone to think anyone was beyond being bribed. His example is not one to emulate but, rather, to detest.</p>
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		<title>Peace Talks Dead &#8212;- For Now</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Apr 2014 04:54:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace Process]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[unity]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[But what will happen if the Fatah-Hamas unity deal falls apart?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/YS-130409-08_wa.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224422" alt="YS-130409-08_wa" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/YS-130409-08_wa.jpg" width="326" height="218" /></a>Yesterday was April 29, the US deadline for the Israeli-Palestinian talks that began nine months ago. Instead of marking the achievement of a peace agreement as planned, the deadline passed with the talks dead—for now, at least.</span></p>
<p>They were officially suspended by Israel last week after Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah signed a unity pact with Hamas, the explicitly jihadist-terrorist group now running Gaza. The Obama administration has given Israel’s response to that move lukewarm, tentative support.</p>
<p>Where things will go from here is not certain; the present state of affairs raises some questions.</p>
<p>First, is the Fatah-Hamas agreement authentic, and will it really lead to a Palestinian unity government? If one goes according to precedent—three previous Fatah-Hamas unity deals in 2007, 2011, and 2012, each of which collapsed quickly—then the chances are not high.</p>
<p>Among Israeli Arab-affairs commentators, Khaled Abu Toameh <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4286/abbas-hamas-unity-goal">sees the agreement as</a></p>
<blockquote><p><i>a tactical move [by Abbas] aimed at putting pressure on Israel and the U.S. to accept his conditions for extending the peace talks after their April 29 deadline…. [There is no] sign that Hamas is willing to allow the Palestinian Authority security forces to return to the Gaza Strip, which fell into the hands of the Islamist movement in 2007…. Neither Hamas nor Fatah is interested in sharing power or sitting in the same government…. Abbas is now waiting to see what the U.S. Administration will offer him in return for rescinding his plan to join forces with Hamas….</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Avi Issacharoff, however, <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-stepping-down-from-government-hamas-plans-bid-for-greater-power/">suggests that Hamas</a>—now in difficult shape with Iran having scaled back support, Egypt having closed its smuggling tunnels from Sinai, and Israel pressuring it to put a stop to rocket attacks by small, even more radical Salafist groups—has decided to gamble by hitching itself to Fatah and hoping to win the Palestinian elections envisaged by the unity agreement in about another six months, thereby regaining rule in both the West Bank and Gaza.</p>
<p>That Hamas, a totalitarian movement, is really prepared to act with such self-abnegation and restraint, accepting a subordinate role in some “unity” framework, all in the hope of winning elections while risking a sharp decline in its fortunes if it loses them, does not seem likely. Issacharoff also does not explain what would be in it for Abbas. “Unity” with rambunctious Hamas has always failed him in the past, most dramatically in 2007 when it <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/world/middleeast/14mideast.html?_r=0">led to Fatah’s ouster from Gaza</a>.</p>
<p>In other words, the two Palestinian groups distrust each other and for good reason.</p>
<p>If, then, the current ostensible Fatah-Hamas rapprochement is destined to unravel—which, in the erratic Middle East, is not certain but probable—where will that leave the “diplomatic process” and U.S. and Israeli policy?</p>
<p>One possibility is that Abbas’s brinksmanship will succeed, with the U.S.—loath to see the “process” end—pushing for and eventually obtaining terms that Israel and the Palestinians—both of which want to stay in Washington’s good graces—will agree to as a basis for further talks.</p>
<p>If so, further rounds of pointless, sterile talks will be held, attended by the usual U.S.-Israeli frictions as Washington publicly berates and threatens Israel, until it turns out—once again—that even by <a href="http://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/amidror-yaacov-pp242-recognition-of-jewish-israel-is-critical-for-palestinians-7-april-2014.pdf">agreeing to once-inconceivable concessions</a> the Netanyahu government cannot get the Palestinian side to reciprocate in coins of peace, compromise, and acceptance of Jewish sovereignty that it simply does not possess.</p>
<p>The other possibility is that, whether because the Obama administration is discouraged or because, even if it keeps trying, it can no longer bridge the gaps between the sides, the talks will not revive and all those—Washington officials, the Israeli left, and so on—for whom the “process” is an addictive lifeline will somehow have to survive without it.</p>
<p>Israel could then try emphasizing that the Palestinians in the West Bank already have autonomy, have rejected a state so many times that contemplating another massive effort to get them to accept one is madness, and that, given the condition of already-existing Arab states like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, and others, to think that creating yet another such state, this one on the outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, would somehow be a boon to Israel, the U.S., or the West does not pass the reality test to put it mildly.</p>
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		<title>Pollard and the Last-Ditch Effort to Save the Peace Talks</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/pollard-and-the-last-ditch-effort-to-save-the-peace-talks/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=pollard-and-the-last-ditch-effort-to-save-the-peace-talks</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Apr 2014 04:50:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jonathan Pollard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace Talks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prisoners]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[An offer Israel can't refuse? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Jonathan-Pollard1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222465" alt="Jonathan-Pollard1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Jonathan-Pollard1.jpg" width="279" height="265" /></a>Secretary of State John Kerry hopped over to Israel from Brussels on Monday and left Tuesday morning. The mission: rescue what is known as the peace process, which has been tottering at the brink of collapse. </span></p>
<p>His game was to offer both sides inducements that, he hoped, they couldn’t refuse. To the Palestinians: 426 freed prisoners including 26 convicted murderers, along with a partial Israeli building freeze in Judea and Samaria (but not in East Jerusalem). In return for those favors, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was supposed to agree to keep talking with Israel until the end of this year, and not to go to UN bodies to wage diplomatic warfare against it.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">To Israel: Jonathan Pollard. In return for that favor, the Israeli government was supposed to—once again—swallow the lopsided terms and agree to keep up the pretense of the talks. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">For Israel the terms were still worse than that may sound. Four hundred of the freed Palestinian prisoners were supposed to be minor offenders whom Israel would choose, and who would be released gradually over the course of the year. But of the 26 convicted terrorists (they would be the fourth such group to be released by Israel since last summer), 14 were supposed to be Israeli Arabs.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">For Israel that carries a special sting. As president of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas has no authority over Arab citizens of Israel, and his demand for the release of the 14 is a particularly brazen slap to Israel’s judicial autonomy—one that, once again, he appeared to be getting away with.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Kerry, aware of what a bitter pill Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition was being asked to ingest, decided—not necessarily, it appears, with President Barack Obama’s approval—to throw Pollard in as a sweetener.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Pollard, of course, was a U.S. navy intelligence analyst who in 1987 was given a life term for spying for Israel. Israelis are united in seeing his nearly three decades behind bars as disproportionately long, especially in light of the fact that most other Americans convicted of spying for U.S. allies have been imprisoned for less than ten years and none for nearly as long as Pollard. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Distinguished Americans who share that view and have called for Pollard’s release include former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz; former CIA director James Woolsey; Lawrence Kolb, deputy defense secretary at the time of Pollard’s apprehension and sentencing; former Senate Intelligence Committee head Dennis DeConcini, and others. Anti-Defamation League president Abraham Foxman has finally <a href="http://www.jta.org/2014/01/28/default/adls-foxman-calls-pollards-incarceration-on-the-verge-of-anti-semitism">acknowledged an antisemitic element</a> in Pollard’s excessively lengthy confinement. <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Former-CIA-director-accuses-US-of-anti-Semitism-on-Pollard-340881">Woolsey</a> concurs: “…people shouldn’t be hung up on him being Jewish or Israeli. Pretend he’s Greek and release him.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Pollard is up for parole in November 2015. At 59, though, he is reportedly in fragile health and was recently hospitalized twice. Netanyahu has been striving for a couple of decades to get him released. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">By late Tuesday evening in Israel, reports said that while some in Netanyahu’s coalition were still against the tentative deal, the Pollard factor would probably be enough for it to pass a cabinet vote. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The other side was a different story, with Abbas—despite all the blandishments—<a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Abbas-Israel-has-procrastinated-enough-signs-document-to-join-UN-agencies-unilaterally-347193">signing documents in Ramallah</a> to apply for 15 UN agencies in what was variously interpreted as either a final rebuff to Kerry’s efforts or a move aimed at wringing still more concessions. Reportedly the PA objected to the proposed deal because it did not include the freeing of two particularly heinous terrorists, Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Saadat, and because the number of additional prisoners to be freed came to 400 instead of the initial demand of 1000.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Kerry, for his part, had reportedly canceled plans to fly back on Wednesday and meet with Abbas in Ramallah. Obama had also reportedly <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Pollard-dilemma-on-the-presidents-desk-but-no-decision-made-347197">not yet decided</a> to pardon Pollard in any case, and some lawmakers <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-strategy/202322-lawmakers-slam-possible-release-of-israeli-spy">came out strongly against the idea</a> of Pollard as bargaining chip. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Whether or not the talks get extended for another nine months or so, they will break down and fail in the end for the simple reason that the Palestinian Authority continues to view Israel as its enemy and is not prepared to end the conflict. From a standpoint of common sense, that should have been clear by last summer when it turned out the only way to get the Palestinian side to participate was by freeing dozens of murderers. But Kerry, as Israeli defense minister Moshe Yaalon perhaps undiplomatically but astutely pointed out, did not appear driven by common sense but by a <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Yaalon-criticized-for-reportedly-calling-Kerry-obsessive-messianic-338109">messianic fervor detached from reality</a>.</span></p>
<p>Netanyahu, forced to deal with a delusive administration heavily biased against him and in favor of the Palestinian side, has been trying to clarify that the reason “peace” does not work is that the other side does not want it no matter how many grievous concessions Israel agrees to. If he cannot get that point across—and it may be impossible—then Israel could be left facing the PA’s post-“peace”-talks diplomatic warfare without U.S.—or any significant—support.</p>
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		<title>Israel Under Siege as Nuke Talks Open</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2014 04:25:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Moshe Yaalon]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221421</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Jerusalem does not have the luxury of fantasizing.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/lat-israel-syria-wounded-wre0016142975-20140318.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221423" alt="APphoto_Mideast Israel Syria" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/lat-israel-syria-wounded-wre0016142975-20140318-450x315.jpg" width="315" height="221" /></a>On Tuesday an explosive device that was planted along the Israeli-Syrian border wounded four Israeli soldiers, one of them seriously. Early Wednesday morning Israeli planes struck back—notably, not against Hizballah but against Syrian military targets, killing one Syrian soldier and wounding seven.  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=16239">said</a> the Syrian targets that were hit “not only enabled the attack on our troops, they cooperated with it. Our policy is very clear—we strike at those who strike at us.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A former chief of military intelligence said:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The execution of [Tuesday’s] attack was professional. There is no doubt that the Syrians knew about it—they may even have carried it out for Hizballah. Something like this, if it proves true, is a game changer…. </span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It’s a game changer because, while there has been a string of attacks along the Syrian and Lebanese borders involving Hizballah and global-jihad elements, and while Syria has long been part of the Iran-Syria-Hizballah axis, Israel’s operative assumption has been that Syria’s Assad regime has its hands full with the country’s civil war and no desire to open another front with Israel.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Although Tuesday’s attack was probably carried out on the ground by Hizballah operatives, direct Syrian facilitation appears to be a new development and part of a threatening trend.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The incident comes—ironically—against the backdrop of the opening of yet another round of nuclear talks with Iran. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That Israel takes a dim view of the talks was made explicit this week by Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, who <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/defense-minister-we-cant-rely-on-us-to-deal-with-iran/">said</a> that “the U.S. at a certain stage began negotiating with them, and unfortunately in the Persian bazaar the Iranians were better. [Therefore] we [Israelis] have to look out for ourselves.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">White House officials <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4501067,00.html">reportedly</a> reacted with shock and outrage. Yaalon had already taken an <em>enfant terrible</em> posture by dismissing the U.S.-orchestrated Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as pointless and even calling Secretary of State John Kerry’s role in them “messianic” and “obsessive,” a choice of words for which Yaalon later apologized.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But if Washington was upset by Yaalon’s latest words on Iran, it could hardly take comfort from a <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.580701">report</a> in <em>Haaretz</em> on Wednesday that Netanyahu and Yaalon had ordered the Israeli army to prepare for a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2014.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Given that Yaalon, as strategic affairs minister in Netanyahu’s previous government, opposed a strike on Iran but now publicly acknowledges that he has changed his mind, and that the third member of Israel’s top political-security echelon, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, is a known Iran hawk, the report carries plausibility.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It also carries plausibility because of a recent, marked escalation against Israel by Iran’s proxies. On March 5, the Israeli navy <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Israel-Navy-intercepts-Gaza-bound-Iranian-rocket-ship-near-Port-Sudan-344369">intercepted</a> an Iranian arms ship carrying Syrian-manufactured rockets to the Iranian-sponsored Islamic Jihad terror group in Gaza. On March 12 Islamic Jihad fired dozens of rockets at Israel from Gaza. And incidents along the northern border reached a new peak on Tuesday with apparent direct Syrian involvement.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Unlike the Western diplomats launching yet another round of talks in Vienna this week with a <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp/story.asp?NewsID=47334&amp;Cr=execution&amp;Cr1=#.UynWHKLrvKc">brutal regime</a>, Israel does not have the luxury of living in a fantasy world. Jerusalem is well aware that Iran is capable of accurately taking the measure of a weak, bumbling U.S. president and his allies and feels emboldened. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Jerusalem is also well aware that if Iran had the bomb, the current difficult situation of attacks by Iran’s proxies and allies would turn into a nightmare. Yaalon’s words may be grating, but Israelis are getting subjected to even less pleasant sounds.</span></p>
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		<title>Abbas to Obama: No &#8216;Peace&#8217; Without 26 Freed Terrorists</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Mar 2014 04:51:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[abbas]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221236</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Extortion attempt at the White House.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2121664613.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221238" alt="2121664613" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2121664613-402x350.jpg" width="281" height="245" /></a>One wonders if, during his meeting with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas at the White House on Monday (reports </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/obama-to-abbas-palestinians-must-take-risks-for-peace/">here</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Abbas-to-Obama-Time-is-not-on-our-side-for-two-state-solution-345624">here</a>), President Obama ever felt he was being subjected to a shakedown. In front of the press, Abbas expressed his concern about Israel’s freeing of a fourth and last batch of 26 convicted Palestinian terrorists on the scheduled date, March 29, saying this would “give a very solid impression about the seriousness of the Israelis on the peace process.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This latest “process,” which began for a nine-month period last July, is due to end—unless extended—in April. To put it mildly, it would not go over well in Israel, and certainly not in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition, if the prisoners were freed carte blanche, without even the talks’ continuation as a supposed recompense.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Abbas, of course, is under pressure from home to get the 26 sprung from jail. He is not under pressure to “make peace” with Israel, a Western concept foreign to the Palestinian population, which has been fed—under Abbas’s tutelage—a diet of pure hatred and delegitimization of Israel. </span></p>
<p>Abbas further pursued the shakedown effort by claiming the Palestinians had already recognized Israel in 1988 and 1993. It was an attempt to evade Israel’s demand for recognition as a Jewish state. It was also untrue.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/arafat-jewish-state-setting-record-straight/">noted</a> by Alan Baker, a former legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the supposed 1988 recognition of Israel as a Jewish state by Yasser Arafat, Abbas’s predecessor, was rejected as totally inadequate by the U.S. at the time. As for 1993, at that time Arafat <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/the-oslo-process-and-the-jewish-state-issue/">purportedly recognized</a> Israel’s “right to exist”—but with no mention of its Jewish character.</p>
<p>That ongoing evasion has a simple basis: acknowledging Israel as a Jewish state would—albeit only semantically—entail an end to demands to flood it with “refugees.” It is something Abbas is <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Why-Abbas-thinks-Jewish-state-is-a-delusional-myth-345549">adamantly unwilling</a> to do—not even to promote that other supreme value of getting the convicted terrorists released.</p>
<p>It sounds, in other words, like a deadlock—as just about everyone knowledgeable in these matters predicted back when this latest “process” was getting underway.</p>
<p>Obama, for his part, praised Abbas as “someone who has renounced violence” and did not subject him to any of the <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-02/obama-to-israel-time-is-running-out">belligerent criticism</a> to which he subjected Netanyahu as he made his way to the White House two weeks ago.</p>
<p>Again, some things are predictable; no one expected the “violence-renouncing” Abbas, who earlier this month <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=135&amp;doc_id=10872">sent a wreath</a> to honor a suicide bomber who in 2002 killed eight people by blowing himself up on an Israeli bus, to catch any of the <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/25/president-allegedly-dumps-israeli-prime-minister-dinner/">special antagonism</a> Obama reserves for the Israeli leader.</p>
<p>A note of realism did seem to creep in when Obama called peace an “elusive goal” and said, “It’s very hard. It’s very challenging. We’re going to have to take some tough political decisions and risks if we’re able to move it forward.”</p>
<p>A few days earlier Israel’s straight-talking defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=16171">put it bluntly</a> and—to his credit—undiplomatically when he said:</p>
<blockquote><p>Unfortunately, an agreement will not happen in my generation…. Abbas is a partner who takes, not a partner who gives. He is not a partner for a permanent peace agreement that includes recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. He just takes back prisoners….</p></blockquote>
<p>In other words, what is known as a shakedown. The next couple of weeks should tell which of two unpalatable possibilities faces Israel: the shakedown continues; or it ends, with the Palestinian Authority turning to the UN to wage diplomatic war against Israel, and Israel hardly assured of U.S. support.</p>
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		<title>Netanyahu at AIPAC: Rebutting Obama, Affirming Israel</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Mar 2014 05:39:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220267</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The lowdown on the Middle East—for those able to listen.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/bibi-e1393950872492-635x357.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-220269" alt="bibi-e1393950872492-635x357" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/bibi-e1393950872492-635x357-450x347.jpg" width="315" height="243" /></a>On Sunday, even before Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu had arrived in America for his current visit, President Obama was portraying him in an <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-02/obama-to-israel-time-is-running-out">interview to Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg</a> as the obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace.</span></p>
<p>At the same time, Obama lavished praised on Netanyahu’s opposite number on the Palestinian side, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, calling him “somebody who has been committed to nonviolence and diplomatic efforts to resolve this issue.” Abbas, in another one of countless such instances, has just <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=10832">sent a representative</a> to glorify a Palestinian who murdered an Israeli mother and her two children, and has also sent a wreath to honor a suicide bomber who killed eight Israelis on a bus.</p>
<p>But as for Netanyahu, Obama told Goldberg: “When I have a conversation with Bibi, that’s the essence of my conversation: if not now, when?” And: “where you’ve got a partner on the other side who is prepared to negotiate seriously…for us not to seize this moment I think would be a great mistake.”</p>
<p>And if Netanyahu were to keep failing to seize the moment and make peace with this ideal partner, Obama—as <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/threatening-for-peace/">Secretary of State John Kerry did last month</a>—foretold dire consequences. He claimed Israel was “already more isolated internationally,” and warned of an “absence of international goodwill…the condemnation of the international community,” a situation in which America’s “ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited.”</p>
<p>As commentators have noted, this is a direct threat to a democratic ally from a president who has great difficulty taking credible stances toward the likes of Syria, Iran, and Russia.</p>
<p>Netanyahu, for his part, in his <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/03/04/full-transcript-prime-minister-netanyahu’s-speech-at-2014-aipac-policy-conference/">speech to AIPAC</a> on Tuesday night, took pains to depict Israel for what it is—a humane democracy radically different from its enemies. He described his recent visit to an Israeli army field hospital on the Golan Heights that treats Syrian civilians injured in that country’s civil war, and said the patients there have</p>
<blockquote><p>discovered what you’ve always known to be true: in the Middle East, bludgeoned by butchery and barbarism, Israel is humane; Israel is compassionate; Israel is a force for good.</p></blockquote>
<p>It should not need pointing out—but it does at a time when a U.S. president and secretary of state keep berating Israel for allegedly not even wanting peace, or not wanting it as much as that exemplar of democratic, peace-loving values, Abbas.</p>
<p>From there Netanyahu turned his focus to the Iranian nuclear issue. Again, his words contrasted sharply with Obama’s in his Bloomberg interview.</p>
<p>There, after Obama described the current Iranian regime as “capable of changing” and as “strategic…not impulsive…respon[sive] to costs and benefits,” Goldberg asked him: “If sanctions got them to the table, why wouldn’t more sanctions keep them at the table?”</p>
<p>The essence of Obama’s reply:</p>
<blockquote><p>The notion that in the midst of negotiations we would then improve our position by saying, “We’re going to squeeze you even harder,” ignores the fact that [President Hassan] Rouhani and the negotiators in Iran have their own politics. They’ve got to respond to their own hardliners&#8230;.</p></blockquote>
<p>Netanyahu, not surprisingly, painted a much gloomier picture of the situation. Referring to Iran’s current purported moderates, its “smiling president and “smooth-talking foreign minister,” he said that “if you listen to their words, their soothing words, they don’t square with Iran’s aggressive actions.”</p>
<p>Even in the midst of the diplomatic talks, Netanyahu stressed, Iran keeps building intercontinental ballistic missiles, “whose only purpose is to carry nuclear warheads” and that “can strike, right now, or very soon, the Eastern seaboard of the United States….” And as he also noted:</p>
<blockquote><p>It’s not only that Iran doesn’t walk the walk. In the last few weeks, they don’t even bother to talk the talk. Iran’s leaders say they won’t dismantle a single centrifuge, they won’t discuss their ballistic missile program. And guess what tune they’re singing in Tehran? It’s not “God Bless America,” it’s “death to America.” And they chant this as brazenly as ever. Some charm offensive.</p></blockquote>
<p>As well as being effective rhetoric, this is, it should be pointed out, factually true.</p>
<p>On the Palestinian issue, Netanyahu reiterated his basic positions that what prevents peace is the Palestinians’ ideological negation of the Jewish people and their right to the land, with the accompanying “fantasy of flooding Israel with refugees”; and that only Israeli forces—not foreign troops—can ensure Israel’s security.</p>
<p>Again, the former position puts him squarely at odds with Obama’s paean to Abbas as peace angel; and the latter one is a rebuff to Kerry’s efforts to get Israel to accept foreign deployments in the Jordan Valley.</p>
<p>Netanyahu’s last topic was the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaign against Israel. While saying it did not “mean that the BDS movement shouldn’t be vigorously opposed,” Netanyahu stated that “BDS is nothing but a farce.”</p>
<p>And he explained what he meant:</p>
<blockquote><p>Beyond our traditional trading partners, countries throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America…these countries are flocking to Israel. They’re not coming to Israel; they’re flocking to Israel.</p>
<p>They want Israeli technology to help transform their countries as it has ours. And it’s not just the small countries that are coming to Israel, it’s also the superpowers. You know, the other superpowers: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Facebook, Yahoo. They come because they want to benefit from Israel’s unique ingenuity, dynamism and innovation.</p>
<p>And I could tell you the BDS boycott movement is not going to stop that anymore than the Arab boycott movement could stop Israel from becoming a global technological power. They are going to fail….</p></blockquote>
<p>Again, this may fly in the face of Obama’s and Kerry’s admonitions about the isolation supposedly overtaking Israel, but it is factually accurate and is the reason most Israelis don’t take these warnings seriously. (For recent overviews of Israel’s thriving trade and other ties with both state and nonstate actors, see <a href="http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/boycott-mirage/">here</a>, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303426304579402771597851680">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.theettingerreport.com/Overseas-Investments/How-Isolated-is-Israel-.aspx">here</a>.)</p>
<p>Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech was essentially, then, a well-crafted rebuttal of the threats and delusions emanating from Washington, which does not believe Israel understands much about the region and remains blind to its insights. Israel will manage regardless.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><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"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>&#8216;Friends&#8217; Tell Israel: Take Risks, Endanger Yourself</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/friends-tell-israel-take-risks-endanger-yourself/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=friends-tell-israel-take-risks-endanger-yourself</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Feb 2014 05:45:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rockets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saeb Erekat]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218789</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why must the Jewish State make "dangerous" concessions for peace?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/gaza-rockets.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218848" alt="MIDEAST ISRAEL PALESTINIANS" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/gaza-rockets-450x310.jpg" width="315" height="217" /></a>Since 2014 began there’s been a spike in rocket firings from Gaza at Israel—over 30 rockets in six weeks. They have either landed in open fields or been downed by Israel’s Iron Dome system. Israel has responded with some pinpoint strikes on military targets and individual terrorists. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Among other things, having a rocket fall on your country about three out of every four days—in a period considered relatively quiet—is not conducive to optimism about a purported peace process. A </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=63090" target="_blank">poll</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> late last month found 71% of Israelis “not believing” that the current Israeli-Palestinians talks, initiated and relentlessly driven by Secretary of State John Kerry, will “lead to peace.” A grand total of 7% “strongly believed” they will.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">According to chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, the sides have already </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Palestinian-envoy-to-peace-talks-rebuffs-Livni-We-wont-recognize-Israel-as-a-Jewish-state-340961" target="_blank">stopped talking to each other</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and are “negotiating” only with Kerry.  The sides, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Kerry-Netanyahu-Abbas-entitled-to-express-objections-of-framework-accord-340762" target="_blank">Kerry says himself</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, would not even have to agree to the framework deal he is now trying to concoct—but the pious hope is that it would get them talking to each other again.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If it all sounds desperate and pathetic, colliding once again with the Palestinian </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/02/12/abbas-shuts-down-the-peace-process/" target="_blank">inability to come near</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> even highly accommodating Israeli positions—it is. But whether the appropriate lessons can—now or ever—be learned is a different matter.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Earlier this week columnist Jeffrey Goldberg </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-06/kerry-s-israel-boycott-talk-will-backfire.html" target="_blank">criticized</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Kerry for warning Israel about “boycotts and other kinds of things” if the peace talks fail. Goldberg accused Kerry of “terrifying Israelis”—but added: “and terrified Israelis are not the sort of people who will make dangerous compromises for peace.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But that, in turn, raises the question: should one ever make “dangerous compromises for peace”? If peace is supposed to be in the offing, the prize you get in return, why should the compromises be dangerous in the first place?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Goldberg’s phrase is actually a mantra—that is, a substitute for thought—going back decades. Googling “Israel take risks for peace” yields 137 million results.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“Risks for peace” has never caught on in Israel; not even the left uses it. </span></p>
<p>It would, after all, grate on people’s ears. Risk whom—my children? Risk is not an abstract concept in Israel.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Instead of using inane phrases like “framework deal” and “dangerous compromises,” and running up repeatedly against the same wall—essentially, the profound gap in culture and values between Israel and its neighbors, including the Palestinians—how much better it would be if Israel’s purported friends, the Kerrys and Goldbergs, could try on some new notions instead of the same old stale, discredited platitudes:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Get over the obsession with a Palestinian state in the West Bank, in addition to the ones </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.567301" target="_blank">already existing in Gaza and Jordan</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Somehow, America can get by without this state. Indeed, would it even be beneficial? Is America currently drawing benefit from the existence of Syria, Iraq, or Lebanon, which were also created by Western powers? Why would the West Bank Palestinian state be any different? What evidence is there that Palestinian Arabs have any way to distinguish themselves meaningfully from other Muslim Arabs except through a self-definition as victims of Israel? What evidence is there that they have in any way given up this self-definition, and what they see as the concomitant duty to fight Israel? In short, there is none.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Instead of pressuring Israel and demanding it to endanger itself, respect it. If the large majority of Israelis are dismissive of the current talks and barely even interested in them, perhaps there are good reasons for it. If the Israeli defense minister, a former chief of staff, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140125/DEFREG04/301250025/Israelis-Rally-Against-US-Plan-Strategic-Jordan-Valley" target="_blank">insists</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that there is no substitute—not drones, not sensors, not foreign forces—for Israeli forces in the Jordan Valley, perhaps he knows what he’s talking about.</span></li>
<li>Show some humility. When Israeli “peace” moves go wrong, it is not on you that the rockets fall. Don’t sit in far-off, comfortable places and demand that other people do dangerous things. Value Israel, give it credit, as the world’s sole democracy that lives under constant siege, and indeed comes through the crucible as the world’s most creative, innovative democracy per capita. Autonomy for the Arabs of the West Bank, instead of an independent state, is hardly a human rights catastrophe. Start pointing that out to other people, like Europeans, and focus on some real problems instead.</li>
</ul>
<p>*</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov&#8217;s</strong> video interview with <b> Mudar Zahran, </b>a secular leader of Palestinians in Jordan who has been living in exile in the UK since 2010. He calls out John Kerry on his Mideast &#8220;Peace&#8221; Plan &#8212; and asks why a U.S. Secretary of State is threatening Israel to commit suicide:<em><br />
</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2AjTjpmC5q4" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>To sign up for </strong><em><b>The Glazov Gang</b></em><strong>: </strong><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><b>Click here</b></a><strong>.</strong></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><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"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Saluting Barry Rubin</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/saluting-barry-rubin/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=saluting-barry-rubin</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Feb 2014 05:45:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America’s Middle East studies establishment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barry Rubin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[memorial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tel Aviv]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217996</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A protean intellectual and loyal son of Israel.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/barry-rubin.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217997" alt="barry-rubin" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/barry-rubin.jpg" width="280" height="200" /></a>On a night a few years ago, I sat by my computer well past the witching hour, emailing rapidly and copiously with Barry Rubin. The subject was a couple of American Jewish “peace” organizations and what could be done to counteract them, to expose their ignorance and dangerous folly.</span></p>
<p>I finally—I think it was getting on toward two—had to type, “Barry, got to close up shop” or something in that vein. I’m not, as Barry was, a person of infinite energy and if I don’t get my five hours (preferably more) of sleep, I feel lousy and sub-par the next day. For Barry, the hour was not an issue. We were discussing something potentially important, something that might help Israel, the Jewish people, and truth, and when it came to that—and a lot of other matters—his energy was boundless.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Barry Rubin, the American Israeli scholar and commentator who died in Tel Aviv this week at 64, published close to 20 books in his lifetime on subjects running from Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and Iran to anti-Americanism to Jewish dilemmas in the modern era—and much else, and two more books are forthcoming. He was also director of an Israeli research institute, editor of two scholarly journals (one on the Middle East, one on Turkey), Middle East editor of PJ Media—and again, much else as well.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">By which I mean that, in recent years in particular, Barry Rubin was simply the most prolific writer of high-quality articles I was aware of in the world. If you were among the many thousands of people on his email list, you received—on almost every single day of the year—at least two, often three articles by him, lively, brilliant, and insightful, mostly on the Middle East but ranging widely into other topics as well. Reading all of them, for me at least, was impossible, but so was knowing which ones to pick, since they were uniformly excellent and worthwhile.</span></p>
<p data-tabpoints="[{&quot;id&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;point&quot;:&quot;2.0833333333333335in&quot;,&quot;leader&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;align&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}]"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And to that one has to add still more—his constant vivacity on Facebook. I would stare in disbelief, not comprehending how he had time for <em>this</em>, too. Posting, drawing large numbers of comments, responding to the comments, and—my impression was that this was just about what he loved best—sharing his knowledge and insights with whoever wanted to look beyond the headlines, clichés, and distortions and get some real understanding of Israel and the Middle East.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Barry Rubin was a cosmopolitan intellectual who had, at the same time, a pure and total loyalty to the Jewish people and Israel. Though never considering himself a conservative, not enamored of settlements, not opposed in principle to a Palestinian state, he moved toward positions associated with the Israeli right because he knew the deeply troubled Middle East so well and refused to entertain illusions about it. He cared about Israel and truth, not about having an identity as a writer and thinker that may have been more comfortable and more propitious for him.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Things would be a lot better if there were more like him.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">My last communication from him came a little less than a year ago. Having seen an article of mine in a personal vein, not at all related to Israel, the Middle East, or larger issues in the political sphere, he emailed me: “Absolutely magnificent and moving. Thanks.”  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It’s something to treasure, a token of his huge generosity and connectedness to others.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><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"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Threatening for Peace</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/threatening-for-peace/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=threatening-for-peace</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Feb 2014 05:53:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boycott]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intifada]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[process]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217890</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Kerry warns Israel to concede or reap the wrath of the gods.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/kerry-300x203.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217891" alt="kerry-300x203" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/kerry-300x203.jpg" width="270" height="183" /></a>Secretary of State John Kerry has been repeatedly warning Israel of dire consequences if the current talks with the Palestinians do not lead to a negotiated peace. In November he </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Kerry-extends-his-stay-in-Mideast-says-significant-progress-made-in-some-areas-of-peace-talks-330912" target="_blank">warned of a third intifada</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> on Israeli TV.</span></p>
<p>And on Sunday at the Munich Security Conference, Kerry <a title="" href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/US-responds-to-Israel-uproar-says-Kerry-never-called-for-boycott-340097" target="_blank">had this to say</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Today’s status quo, absolutely to a certainty, I promise you 100 percent, cannot be maintained. It is not sustainable. It is illusionary. You see, for Israel there is an increasing delegitimization campaign that has been building up. People are very sensitive to it. There is talk of boycott and other kinds of things. Are we all going to be better with all of that?</p></blockquote>
<p>Many Israelis reacted angrily. Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz called Kerry’s words “offensive, unreasonable and unacceptable. It is impossible to expect Israel to negotiate with a gun to its head.”</p>
<p>State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki came to Kerry’s defense, saying:</p>
<blockquote><p>Secretary Kerry has a proud record of over three decades of steadfast support for Israel’s security and well-being, including staunch opposition to boycotts…. [He] expects all parties to accurately portray his record and statements.</p></blockquote>
<p>It is an accurate portrayal to say that to most Israelis, these statements sound like threats. “Make peace, or really bad things will happen to you” is perceived as a threat. Resentment is only intensified by the fact that—at least in public—Kerry <a title="" href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=7239" target="_blank">makes no comparable threats to the Palestinian side</a>.</p>
<p>But aside from the propriety of what Kerry said in Munich, is it true? Will Israel be an increasingly delegitimized, boycotted country if the current talks end without an agreement?</p>
<p>On the one hand, in moves regarded by many as alarming, in recent days two major European banks have taken action against Israeli banks. Sweden’s Nordea Bank—Scandinavia’s largest—asked for “clarifications” from two Israeli banks involved in building in the West Bank. Denmark’s Danske Bank—largest in that country—announced on its website that it was boycotting Israel’s Bank Hapoalim for that same alleged sin of building in places Europe thinks should be Jew-free.</p>
<p>On the other hand, as an Israeli official <a title="" href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/US-responds-to-Israel-uproar-says-Kerry-never-called-for-boycott-340097" target="_blank">observed to the Jerusalem Post</a>, “The success of the so-called boycotters has been limited in the extreme.” The official pointed out that</p>
<blockquote><p>[Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu returned last week from the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he met both with leaders of countries—such as Mexico, Panama, Nigeria and China—and international companies who were very eager to do business with Israel, “not because they are Zionists, but because they understand there is so much to gain from doing business with us.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile <a title="" href="http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/10/06/the-ten-worst-purveyors-of-antisemitism-worldwide-no-9-roger-waters/" target="_blank">antisemitic rock star Roger Waters</a> has been <a title="" href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=15223" target="_blank">lashing out angrily</a> at the likes of rock star Neil Young and actress Scarlett Johansson for refusing to ostracize Israel.</p>
<p>But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Kerry and others who bludgeon Israel with warnings about terrible outcomes if peace talks fail—a binational state, a boycotted state, an intifada—are right.</p>
<p>Even if that were the case, there would still be problems.</p>
<p>For one thing, imagine being on the Palestinian side and hearing that Israel is essentially desperate; that for Israel the talks are do-or-die. You would react, of course, by driving as hard a bargain as possible—or just letting the talks drift into failure and watching Israel meet its bitter fate.</p>
<p>But there is an even more fundamental problem. What if, despite Israel’s best efforts, the other side is not interested in peace?</p>
<p>Evidence for that supposition is not exactly lacking; it’s abundant. Israel has had to free dozens of Palestinian terrorists just to have the talks at all; they were <a title="" href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-prisoners-on-way-to-ramallah-for-festive-welcome/" target="_blank">received as heroes</a> and got big boosts in their stipends. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has said that the Palestinian side would <a title="" href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/hard-line-speech-from-abbas-marks-turn-from-position-in-talks/" target="_blank">never relinquish the right of return</a>, a formula for Israel’s demographic doom, and <a title="" href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/176491" target="_blank">never recognize Israel as a Jewish state</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the Palestinians—as “peace talks” continue—keep <a title="" href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=10603" target="_blank">naming their schools after terrorists</a> and raising another generation with terrorists as role models. One can easily go on in this vein. What one cannot do is convince a hard-core peace processor like John Kerry that it matters.</p>
<p>Instead the onus is put on Israel, while the entity that celebrates and cultivates terror gets a free pass. It’s a disgrace.</p>
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		<title>Abbas Says No to Israel as a Jewish State</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/the-oslo-process-and-the-jewish-state-issue/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-oslo-process-and-the-jewish-state-issue</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 27 Jan 2014 05:57:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abbas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jewish state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace Process]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recognize]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What did the Palestinians agree to exactly in 1993 at the start of the Oslo process?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/mahmoudAbbas_1581534c.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217329" alt="mahmoudAbbas_1581534c" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/mahmoudAbbas_1581534c.jpg" width="263" height="202" /></a></b><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">At Davos, Switzerland on Friday, at the meeting of the World Economic Forum, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu again sounded the Jewish-state theme.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">After meeting there with U.S. secretary of state John Kerry, Netanyahu </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=15007">told reporters</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">The meeting was very good. &#8230; I restated the two principal issues that concern us: mutual recognition of two nation states—with one of them being recognized as the Jewish people&#8217;s nation state—and of course, security.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The next day on Israeli TV, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, a dove and outspoken believer in a “two-state solution” who is also chief Israeli negotiator in the current Israeli-Palestinian talks, made a surprising, uncharacteristically stern statement of her own:</p>
<blockquote><p><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">If [Palestinian Authority president] Mahmoud Abbas continues to insist on positions that we and the rest of the world consider unacceptable, the Palestinians will be the ones who pay the price. </i></p></blockquote>
<p>At least one of the “positions” she was referring to was undoubtedly one that Abbas voiced yet again—as on many other occasions—last week. In an interview to Moroccan TV, Abbas <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/176491">said</a> quite plainly: “Palestine can never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Just a week before that he had received backing from nine foreign ministers of the Arab League, who </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-ministers-back-abbas-in-rejecting-jewish-israel/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&amp;utm_campaign=4d475b36b3-2013_01_13&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_adb46cec92-4d475b36b3-54433993">notified Kerry</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that they, too, would not accept Israel as a Jewish state.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Some believe the Jewish-state issue is no big deal in itself, a hitch created by Netanyahu to foil the negotiations. Didn’t the Palestinians already recognize Israel in 1993 at the start of the Oslo process?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That was, of course, the “peace process” that resulted in the creation of the Palestinian Authority, waves of terror against Israel, and repeated attempts—up to the present one driven by the Obama administration—to reach a final agreement.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The process was officially launched by an </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_%E2%80%93_Palestine_Liberation_Organization_letters_of_recognition">exchange of letters</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, dated September 9, 1993, between the then leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, and the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. Arafat’s letter stated:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security…. [T]he PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel&#8217;s right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid.</i></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The PLO in fact </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.israelbehindthenews.com/bin/content.cgi?ID=5566&amp;q=1">never invalidated</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> those articles and provisions of its Covenant. Even more significantly, though, the meaning of Arafat’s “recognition” of Israel emerged in the 2000 Camp David Summit, which basically broke down over Arafat’s insistence on the “right” of millions of descendants of refugees to “return” to Israel. </span></p>
<p>In other words, Israel could exist—so long as it was flooded by Arabs and, by demographic fiat, ceased being the Jewish state.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As Yair Rosenberg has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/160131/did-netanyahu-invent-the-demand-that-israel-be-recognized-as-a-jewish-state">made clear</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, Netanyahu was not the first to realize that without the “Jewish state” clause, no Palestinian—or larger Arab—“recognition” of Israel would have any meaning or even hold out a hope for “peace and security.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Jewish-state demand was first made by a group of leftist Israeli intellectuals in talks with a group of Palestinian intellectuals in July 2001—nine months after the “Second Intifada” terror onslaught against Israel had erupted in the wake of Camp David.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The demand was first officially raised by none other than Livni, then foreign minister in Ehud Olmert’s government, in 2007 negotiations with a Palestinian delegation.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In adopting the demand, then, Netanyahu was in no way breaking new ground.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Which brings us back to the present—and the continued ironclad Palestinian and Arab refusal to accept the existence in their midst of a single non-Arab, non-Muslim, Jewish state.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In a sense, all the failure and havoc wrought by the “Oslo process”—from suicide bombings and rocket attacks to UN-centered Palestinian diplomatic warfare against Israel to unending incitement—were implicit in that lack of a “Jewish state” proviso in the original Oslo documents.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It is not that, even if a Palestinian or Arab leader were to endorse those words, a miraculous transformation would occur. The absence of those words, however, speaks volumes about the real, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/21/muslim-anti-semitism-is-only-decades-old-obama-claims/">religio-historical depth</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of the regional delegitimization of Israel.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">On the Israeli left, in Washington—including, in recent times, the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations—there is great resistance to internalizing that lesson. Finally assimilating it, however, would mean getting over the pointless obsession with the Palestinian issue and taking the U.S.-Israeli alliance out of its baneful shadow.</span></p>
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