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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; David Bedein</title>
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		<title>The Palestinian Hijacking of Rachel&#8217;s Tomb</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dbedein/the-palestinian-hijacking-of-rachels-tomb/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-palestinian-hijacking-of-rachels-tomb</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Nov 2014 05:05:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mosque]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinian authority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rachel's tomb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[text book]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UNRWA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244479</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How UN-funded textbooks are teaching children that the Jewish holy site is a shrine to a Muslim. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/RachelsTomb.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244480" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/RachelsTomb-450x294.jpg" alt="RachelsTomb" width="395" height="258" /></a>On the 11th of Heshvan, which this year falls on November 4, Jews observe the &#8220;yaarzeit&#8221; memorial for Rachel, the Biblical matriarch who bore Joseph and died in child birth as Benjamin was born.</p>
<p>As part of our agency&#8217;s continuing reportage of the PA school books now used in the UNRWA educational facilities, funded by the US, the EU and other western nations, we have come across a newsworthy phenomenon: UNRWA schools now teach that Rachel&#8217;s tomb is a shrine to a Moslem.</p>
<p>This is consistent with PA educational policy, which does not recognize any area in any part of Palestine, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, as Holy to Jews. UNRWA students learn that the Western Wall, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron are exclusively holy and special to Moslems, and devoid of anything Jewish.<br />
However, after the founding of the PA in 1994, the initial Palestinian Authority textbook recognized Rachel&#8217;s tomb, described as &#8220;Qabr Rahil&#8221; in a chapter about Bethlehem (pp. 87-90) in a paragraph titled &#8220;the most important historical and religious sites&#8221; (pp. 88-89), second to the Church of the Nativity. That text, on top of p. 89 is translated as: &#8220;Rachel&#8217;s Tomb: The mother of our lord Joseph and the wife of Jacob, peace be upon them both.&#8221; The textbook in which this sentence appears is titled &#8220;Palestinian National Education” for grade 6 and it was published by the Ministry of Education of the Palestinian National Authority in 1996.</p>
<p>However, The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education has now transformed the “Tomb of Rachel” into “The Mosque of Bilal bin Rabbah&#8221; in the &#8220;National Education&#8221; textbook which is used by the 492,000 students in the UNRWA camps for grade 7.</p>
<div id="attachment_244482" style="width: 263px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/rachels-tomb.jpg"><img class="wp-image-244482 size-medium" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/rachels-tomb-253x350.jpg" alt="rachel's tomb" width="253" height="350" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">P. 55, &#8220;National Education&#8221; textbook</p></div>
<p>In the chapter titled &#8220;Attempts at Obliterating the Palestinian Heritage&#8221; (pp. 54-57) there are features on p. 54 &#8211; photos of four places of which one is Rachel&#8217;s Tomb which the PA subtitled as &#8220;the Mosque of Bill bin Raba (Bethlehem)&#8221;. On p. 55, in a sub-chapter titled &#8220;The attempts at obliterating the Palestinian heritage include the following manifestations:&#8221; one can find the following: &#8220;The attempt to Judaize [tahwid] some of the Muslim religious places such as the Ibrahimi Mosque [the Cave of the Patriarchs] and the Mosque of Bilal bin Rabbah (near Bethlehem)&#8221;.</p>
<p>On p. 56, there is a tendentious paragraph which declares that: &#8220;Several Palestinian, Arab and Islamic centers and associations were established and they work to revive the Arab-Palestinian heritage in order to keep Palestine, and Jerusalem specifically, Arab”.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Ministry of Education has also issued educational pamphlets about Palestine and its “heritage”, such as: the Al-Buraq Wall – the Western Wall, the Mosque of Bilal bin Rabbah – Rachel&#8217;s Dome [Qubbat Rahil]&#8220;. At the bottom of the same page there are four questions for all students to answer. No. 2 reads: &#8220;Give the names of mosques and [other] Muslim and Christian religious sites of which the features the Israelis have tried to change.&#8221;</p>
<div id="attachment_244485" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/rachel-mosque.jpg"><img class="wp-image-244485 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/rachel-mosque-306x350.jpg" alt="rachel mosque" width="300" height="343" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Photo of Rachel&#8217;s Tomb and the inscription &#8220;Mosque of Bilal bin Rabbah (Bethlehem)&#8221;</p></div>
<p>On p. 57 there is an assignment in which the student is requested to write &#8220;Yes&#8221; or &#8220;No&#8221; next to various statements.</p>
<p>No. 3 in this assignment reads: &#8220;The holy site of Bilal bin Rabbah is located near Bethlehem&#8221;.</p>
<p>As for Bilal bin Rabbah, he was an Ethiopian (male, not a female) slave in Mecca who heard Muhammad preaching there and became a Muslim.</p>
<p>He was then severely tortured by his master but stayed a devoted Muslim. One of Muhammad&#8217;s companions, Abu Bakr, bought and freed him and Muhammad made him the first muadhin (caller to prayer).</p>
<p>Some sources say that he accompanied Caliph Omar on the latter&#8217;s trip to Jerusalem following its conquest in 636 and on their way back the time of prayer came and he called to prayer at the place that was always known as Rachel&#8217;s Tomb – until the Palestinian Authority arrived on the scene.</p>
<p>An aside: These new PA textbooks were financed by Ireland, Holland, Belgium and Finland. Italy had initially committed itself to help finance the new PA school books.</p>
<p>However, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, of blessed memory, who served as the Papal Nuncio, the Vatican ambassador in Jerusalem, between 1998 and 2006, reviewed the new Palestinian Authority school books and described them as “anti-Israel war manuals” and asked the Italian government to withdraw support for the new Palestinian school book project. Italy, indeed, cancelled its sponsorship of the publication of the new Palestinian Authority school books, at the request of the Vatican</p>
<p><em>Dr. Arnon Groiss did the research for this article. He holds a PHD in Islamic Studies from Princeton and has worked as senior correspondent for the Arabic language service of the Israel Broadcasting Authority for the past forty years.</em></p>
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		<title>When a “Cease-Fire” is Not a Cease-Fire</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dbedein/when-a-cease-fire-is-not-a-cease-fire/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=when-a-cease-fire-is-not-a-cease-fire</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Jul 2014 04:30:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ceasefire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hudaybiyyah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hudna]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tahadia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236310</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An advisory to journalists in the Middle East. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/hamas.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236315" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/hamas.jpg" alt="hamas" width="290" height="189" /></a>In the current conflagration between Israel and Gaza, news agencies mistakenly report that a “cease fire” is being discussed with Hamas.</p>
<p>In the imagination of the media, such a “cease fire” might result in the kind of armistice that ended hostilities in World War I, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the eleventh month on Nov. 11 1918, paving the way to the Versailles peace treaty and the genesis of the League of Nations.</p>
<p>However, the three Arabic nuanced terms being discussed with Hamas as a resolution to the current situation have nothing to do with a “cease fire”:</p>
<p>Those terms are Hudna, Tahadia and Hudaybiyyah. All three terms imply continued war, after a respite.</p>
<p><strong>Hudna:</strong> a tactical pause intended only for rearmament, a temporary respite in the war between Islamic forces and non-Islamic forces.</p>
<p>The authoritative Islamic Encyclopedia (London, 1922) defines hudna as a &#8220;temporary treaty&#8221; which can be approved or abrogated by Islamic religious leaders, depending on whether or not it serves the interests of Islam; a hudna cannot last for more than 10 years.</p>
<p><strong>Tahadia:</strong> a temporary halt in hostile activity which can be violated at any time.</p>
<p><strong>Hudaybiyyah:</strong> An understanding that there will be no fighting for 10 years named for the “treaty of Hudaybiyyah” in 628 AD.</p>
<p>The Islamic Encyclopedia mentions the Hudaybia treaty as an “ultimate hudna.”</p>
<p>The late PLO leader Yasser Arafat often referred to “a hudna” in his speeches when he defined and described the nature of the Oslo Accords.</p>
<p>In the words of the Islamic Encyclopedia, &#8220;The Hudaybia treaty, concluded by the Prophet Mohammad with the unbelievers of Mecca in 628, provided a precedent for subsequent treaties which the Prophet&#8217;s successors made with non-Muslims.</p>
<p>Mohammad made a hudna with a tribe of Jews back then to give him time to grow his forces, then broke the treaty and wiped them out. Although this treaty was violated within three years from the time that it was concluded, most jurists concur that the maximum period of peace with the enemy should not exceed ten years, since it was originally agreed that the Hudaybia treaty should last ten years.&#8221;</p>
<p>Hudna, Tahadia and Hudaybiyyah – the only options on the table with Hamas &#8211; do not compare to the &#8220;mu’ahada&#8221; treaty of peace that Egypt signed with Israel in 1979, or the mu’ahada treaty of peace that Jordan signed with Israel in 1994.</p>
<p>How many people remember that three hudnas already occurred with Gaza?</p>
<p>How many people remember what occurred during those &#8216;hudnas”&#8217;?</p>
<p>Well, the people in Sderot and the Negev region of Israel remember.</p>
<p>Let us refresh our memories.</p>
<p>From November 26, 2006, until May 15, 2007, a Hudna between Hamas and Israel went on for almost six months. One cannot ignore the statement made by Hamas five days before the hudna went into effect: &#8220;Hamas&#8217;s military wing will stop the rocket fire when residents evacuate the city of Sderot.&#8221; (from November 21, 2006)</p>
<p>During that hudna, Gazans launched 315 missiles targeted at Sderot and the western Negev, according to an IDF spokesman.</p>
<p>And there was another hudna with Gaza which lasted until the end of Dedember . 2008, which witnessed 878 attacks fired from Gaza.</p>
<p>And there was a hudna from the end of Operation Cast Lead on January 18, 2009, to the first day of Operation Pillar of Defense on November 12, 2012.</p>
<p>During that period, approximately 2,000 rockets and missiles were fired from Gaza, sending one million Israelis running to shelters</p>
<p>And from the end of operation &#8216;Pillar of Defense&#8217;, through June 30th 2014, 300 aerial attacks were launched from Gaza towards southern Israel- during yet another tenuous Hudna.</p>
<p>What country would tolerate one missile fired into its territory &#8212; and agree to a Hudna, Tahadia and Hudaybiyyah that promises yet more aerial attacks?</p>
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		<title>The U.N.&#8217;s Child Death Cult Education</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dbedein/the-u-n-s-child-death-cult-education/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-u-n-s-child-death-cult-education</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Apr 2014 04:16:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[martyr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Textbooks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UNRWA]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[New UNRWA textbooks caught urging war and jihad martyrdom to grade-schoolers. 
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Screen-Shot-2014-04-06-at-4.56.08-PM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222849" alt="Screen Shot 2014-04-06 at 4.56.08 PM" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Screen-Shot-2014-04-06-at-4.56.08-PM-450x335.png" width="315" height="234" /></a>Following our center’s March 13 presentation at the British Parliament concerning the indiscretions of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) education, Sir Peter Luff, MP for Mid Worcestershire, requested concrete evidence that would support the findings of the center that UNRWA is preparing its students for war.</p>
<p>In response to MP Luff’s request, the Center for Near East Policy Research commissioned Dr. Arnon Groiss, who holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from Princeton University and who has worked with the Arabic Language Service of the Voice of Israel Radio for the past 40 years, to prepare documentation as to how the values of armed struggle, jihad and martyrdom are taught in schools operated by UNRWA in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza.</p>
<p>Below are the findings from Dr. Groiss’s report:</p>
<p>Palestinian Authority (PA) schoolbooks used by UNRWA in its schools in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip promote the goal of a violent struggle for the liberation of Palestine. That struggle, which is never restricted to the territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip alone, is made more compelling in the books with the help of the traditional Islamic ideals of jihad and martyrdom (Shahadah), aided by the description of the violent return of the refugees. Thus, the Palestinian child in UNRWA schools is exposed to an atmosphere of violence and is mentally prepared for his or her actual participation in that armed struggle in the future.</p>
<p>The following examples taken from recently published PA schoolbooks that have been in use in UNRWA schools during the current school year (2013/14) clearly attest to this phenomenon. One can find the spiritual foundation of the behavior expected from prospective martyrs in the following text, which appeared in an Islamic Education textbook for grade 6:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Jihad in the cause of God for raising the flag of Islam and preventing oppression and corruption on earth: … When a Muslim man believes that God is the one who gives life and death, gain and loss, and that victory and power are in His hand, he then liberates himself from others&#8217; control, and bravery and a desire to seek martyrdom in God&#8217;s cause are enlivened within his soul.&#8221;</p>
<p>(Islamic Education, Grade 6, Part 1 (2012) p. 22)</p></blockquote>
<p>A comment in another Islamic Education textbook gives this general notion a dimension of certain urgency:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;We, Muslims, dearly need these days to approach Sublime God so that He would grant us power and victory!&#8221;</p>
<p>(Islamic Education, Grade 7, Part 2 (2013) p. 82)</p></blockquote>
<p>However, most pieces glorifying jihad and martyrdom in the context of the conflict appear in language and literature textbooks, rather than in Islamic Education ones, mainly in poems and language exercises. Examples:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Palestine [By] Ali Mahmud Taha [Excerpts]</p>
<p>O brother, the oppressors have exceededed all bounds and Jihad and sacrifice are necessary</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Would we let them rob Arabdom of the ancestors&#8217; glory and power?</span><br />
…</p>
<p>So, draw your sword from its sheath, for it should be sheathed no more</p>
<p>O brother, O proud Arab, I see that our date is today, not tomorrow</p>
<p>O brother, we have a sister in Jerusalem to whom the slaughterers have prepared the knives</p>
<p>O brother, rise towards the prayer-direction [Qiblah] of East and West and let us defend the Church [of the Holy Sepulcher] and the [Al-Aqsa] Mosque</p>
<p>O brother, if on her soil my blood flows and the hand closes on its pebbles</p>
<p>And death calls and the sword turns mad and the fire burns there…</p>
<p>[Then] kiss the martyr on her ground who called to God in her name and fell as a martyr</p>
<p>O Palestine, the youth will redeem your sanctuary; may both the sacrificing person [fidai] and the redeemed one be exalted!</p>
<p>O Palestine, our chests will defend you; [It is] either life or destruction!</p>
<p>(Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1 (2013) p. 44)</p></blockquote>
<p>Verses taken from this poem serve in language exercises:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;O brother, the oppressors have exceeded all bounds and Jihad and sacrifice are necessary</p>
<p>O brother, we have a sister in Jerusalem to whom the slaughterers have prepared the knives.&#8221;</p>
<p>(Linguistic Studies, Grade 8, Part 2 (2012) p. 14)</p></blockquote>
<p>In the following poem one can find an explicit call for martyrdom: &#8220;By your life, this is men&#8217;s death and whoever wishes a noble death – here it is.&#8221;</p>
<blockquote><p>The Martyr [By] Abd al-Rahim Mahmud [Excerpts]</p>
<p>&#8220;I will carry my soul on my palm and toss it into the abyss of destruction</p>
<p>For [I will have] either a life that gladdens [my] friends or a death that irritates [my] enemies<br />
…<br />
By your life! I see my death but I hasten [my] steps toward it</p>
<p>I regard my death for my stolen right and for my country as a desired one</p>
<p>Hearing [weapon's] clink is pleasant to my ear and the flow of blood gladdens my soul</p>
<p>As well as a body thrown upon the ground and skirmished over by the desert predators<br />
…</p>
<p>By your life! This is men&#8217;s death and whoever wishes a noble death – here it is!&#8221;</p>
<p>(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 7, Part 1 (2013) p. 75)</p></blockquote>
<p>A language exercise featuring a verse from this poem:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;By your life! I see my death but I hasten [my] steps toward it</p>
<p>I regard my death for my stolen right and for my country as a desired one.&#8221;</p>
<p>(Linguistic Studies, Grade 9, Part 1 (2013) p. 41)</p></blockquote>
<p>Other examples:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;When, among the rest of this world&#8217;s mothers, Palestinian mothers alone continue for the sixth decade in a row to bury their children with trilling cries of joy!</p>
<p>When Palestinian fathers continue to commit their sons to the earth calmly and promise to keep doing so with the rest [of their sons]!</p>
<p>When the Palestinian [person] of whatever age, religion, gender and affiliation becomes a martyr project!&#8230;&#8221;</p>
<p>(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 7, Part 2 (2013) p. 58)</p>
<p>&#8220;Good Morning, O My Homeland [By] Lutfi Zaghlul [Excerpts]<br />
…<br />
Good morning, O my Homeland<br />
…<br />
A morning of glory and red liberty watered by the martyrs&#8217; blood&#8221;</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>(Reading and Texts, Grade 9, Part 1 (2013) pp. 9-10)</p></blockquote>
<p>An exercise related to this poem is the following:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;I will connect the poetic verses with the feelings they express in the following [cases]:<br />
…<br />
A morning of glory and red liberty watered by the martyrs&#8217; blood… –<br />
The hope for the liberation of Palestine.&#8221;</p>
<p>(Reading and Texts, Grade 9, Part 1 (2013) p. 12)</p></blockquote>
<p>The issue of the claimed &#8220;Right of Return&#8221; of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to their previous homes inside today&#8217;s Israel is also described as part of the violent struggle for liberation. Examples:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;We Shall Return [By] Abu Salma [Excerpts]</p>
<p>Beloved Palestine, how could I live far away from your plains and heights<br />
…</p>
<p>Tomorrow we shall return and the generations will listen to the footfalls during the return</p>
<p>We shall return with the thundering storms, with the sacred lightening and the shooting star</p>
<p>With the winged hope and the songs, with the soaring vulture and the eagle</p>
<p>Yes! Thousands of victims shall return; victims of oppression shall open every door&#8221;</p>
<p>(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 7, Part 1 (2013) p. 28)</p>
<p>&#8220;We Are Returning [By] Harun Hashem Rashid</p>
<p>Returning, Returning; we are returning</p>
<p>Borders shall not exist, nor citadels and fortresses</p>
<p>Cry out, O those who have left:</p>
<p>&#8216;We are returning&#8217;</p>
<p>Returning to the homes, to the plains, to the mountains</p>
<p>Under the flags of glory, Jihad and struggle</p>
<p>In blood, sacrifice, fraternity and loyalty</p>
<p>We are returning</p>
<p>Returning, O hills; returning, O heights</p>
<p>Returning to childhood; returning to youth</p>
<p>To Jihad on the highlands, to the harvest in the land</p>
<p>We are returning&#8221;</p>
<p>(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 5, Part 1 (2013) p. 50)</p></blockquote>
<p>A language exercise featuring a verse taken from this poem:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Returning, Returning; we are returning</p>
<p>Borders shall not exist, nor citadels and fortresses</p>
<p>Cry out, O those who have left: We are returning.&#8221;</p>
<p>(Linguistic Studies, Grade 8, Part 2 (2012) p. 19)</p></blockquote>
<p>There are other examples repeating the same motifs. The following one likens martyrdom to a wedding party:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;O my homeland,</p>
<p>I shall not cry in this wedding party</p>
<p>For our Arabness refuses that we cry over the martyrs&#8221;</p>
<p>(Linguistic Studies, Grade 8, Part 2 (2012) p. 60)</p>
<p>&#8220;The martyr&#8217;s blood [watered] the ground.&#8221;</p>
<p>(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 6, Part 2 (2012) p. 8)</p>
<p>&#8220;If I fall take my place, O my comrade-in-arms</p>
<p>Carry your [my?] weapon and do not let my blood that flows from the weapon frighten you…&#8221;</p>
<p>(Linguistic Studies, Grade 9, Part 1 (2012) p. 14)</p></blockquote>
<p>The following is an assignment for seventh graders:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;I will write up to ten lines about one of the martyrs whom I know, being assisted by the following elements: his name and place of birth, his life and achievements, the circumstances of his martyrdom, society&#8217;s attitude to his family after his martyrdom, the martyr&#8217;s rank in Islam.&#8221;</p>
<p>(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 7, Part 2 (2013) p. 49)</p></blockquote>
<p>In addition, the PA schoolbooks used in UNRWA schools feature language exercises with the following warlike messages:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The army wins.</p>
<p>The enemy is defeated.&#8221;</p>
<p>(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 4, Part 1 (2013) p. 65)</p>
<p>&#8220;The army defeated the enemy.&#8221;</p>
<p>(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 4, Part 2 (2012) p. 45)</p></blockquote>
<p>A story titled &#8220;An Evening Visitor&#8221; tells of a Palestinian father who lost his son in the 1967 war and later joined one of the Palestinian armed organizations and became a Fidai – a title given to members of such organizations. The story presents their raids against Israel from southern Lebanon in a favorable light and thus makes of them role models for the young children. Excerpts:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Everyone knows that I have been in the South [authors' note: South: South Lebanon] for ten years. I have left the city [Amman] and the family to join the fighters…</p>
<p>We in the South face death any minute… Youths like Saleh [his killed son] fall every day on the South&#8217;s land. We bury them and bury our grief with them…&#8221;</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>(Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1 (2013) pp. 30, 33)</p></blockquote>
<p>The foregoing does not cover the whole picture of preparing Palestinian schoolchildren for jihad and martyrdom. One could add the Palestinian national anthem itself, here cited to first graders, including the following verse: &#8220;…I shall live as a Fidai and continue as a Fidai and die as a Fidai…&#8221;</p>
<p>See the whole page in full, with an illustration of a teacher saying: &#8220;let us repeat the national anthem:&#8221; (the extracted verse is the fourth one).</p>
<div id="attachment_222848" style="width: 266px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Screen-Shot-2014-04-06-at-4.42.46-PM.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-222848 " alt="Screen Shot 2014-04-06 at 4.42.46 PM" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Screen-Shot-2014-04-06-at-4.42.46-PM-256x350.png" width="256" height="350" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">(National Education, Grade 1, Part 2 (2012) p. 58)</p></div>
<p>A language exercise demonizing Israel, in which the Palestinian child is likened to a soldier, could be added as well to this literary genre:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The Palestinian child stood facing the enemy&#8217;s bullets like a brave soldier.&#8221;</p>
<p>(Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 2 (2013) p. 28)</p></blockquote>
<p>Recently introduced National Education textbooks for grades 8 and 9 in Hamas-controlled Gaza feature far more explicit pieces encouraging children to engage in acts of war. One example out of several:</p>
<div id="attachment_222850" style="width: 340px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/resistance.png"><img class=" wp-image-222850 " alt="resistance" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/resistance.png" width="330" height="235" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">&#8220;By resistance we shall win&#8221;<br />(National Education, Grade 8 (Gaza, 2013) p. 65)</p></div>
<p>From the above-given quotations taken from PA schoolbooks in current use by UNRWA, one could easily have a solid idea about the war education hundreds of thousands of Palestinian schoolchildren get, apart from other alarming aspects of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish indoctrination that is antithetical to any chance of peace in the Middle East. That kind of &#8220;education&#8221; should cease immediately and it is the responsibility of UNRWA&#8217;s democratic donor states to guarantee that.</p>
<p>_____</p>
<p><em>Dr. Arnon Groiss is an Arabic-language journalist who has been working for the Voice of Israel Arabic Radio since 1973. He is also an expert on Middle Eastern affairs having earned his Ph.D. degree from Princeton University&#8217;s Department of Near Eastern Studies, as well as an MPA degree from Harvard University&#8217;s Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Groiss taught for several years at the Hebrew University in the 1990s and 2000s. Between the years 2000-2010 Dr. Groiss served as chief researcher and, later, as Director of Research at the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE, formerly known as the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace – CMIP), a non-political NGO committed to studying the attitude to the &#8220;other&#8221; and to peace in the Israeli and in other Middle Eastern curricula. During his work there Dr. Groiss studied hundreds of textbooks of various school subjects and authored over ten reports on Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian, Saudi Arabian, Iranian and Tunisian schoolbooks. The reports are available on the Institute&#8217;s Web site http://www.impact-se.org. A summary of his ten-year research of this subject is to be found in &#8220;De-legitimization of Israel in Palestinian Authority Schoolbooks&#8221;, published in Israeli Affairs, Vol. 18 (2012), Issue 3, pp. 455-484, where he compares the PA schoolbooks with other Arab and Middle Eastern ones, including their Israeli counterparts. </em></p>
<p><em>Dr. Groiss has presented his findings since 2000 to both policy makers and people of the press on numerous occasions in various places, including the US Congress, the European Parliament, the UK House of Commons, the Israeli Knesset, the Canadian Parliament, the French Assemblée nationale and elsewhere. On the basis of his experience in this field, Dr. Groiss was appointed as a member of the Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) of the Palestinian-Israeli Schoolbook Research Project commissioned by the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land (CRIHL). The project was funded by the US State Department and ended in February 2013. Dr. Groiss&#8217; evaluation paper of this research project is to be found <a href="http://israelbehindthenews.com/library/pdfs/EVALUATION-1.pdf">here</a>. </em></p>
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		<title>Palestinian Terror Schools Receive Press They Deserve</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dbedein/palestinian-terror-schools-receive-press-they-deserve/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinian-terror-schools-receive-press-they-deserve</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 09 Jan 2014 05:04:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HATE]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[israeli government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jewish state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PA schools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vatican]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214905</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How a Vatican official helped lead the way. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ps.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214910" alt="ps" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ps-450x252.jpg" width="315" height="176" /></a>Israeli Intelligence Affairs Minister Dr. Yuval Steinitz and the Director General of his ministry, Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Yossi Kuperwasser, recently held an unprecedented  press conference in which they denounced the Palestinian Authority school system and shared evidence with the media that Adolf Hitler now plays a central figure as a role model in PA schools.</p>
<p>From the very genesis of the PA school curriculum, in 2000, the new schools of the PA, many of which are located in facilities run by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and funded by more than 40 donor nations, adopted a policy of teaching the next generation to venerate the &#8220;right of return&#8221; to Palestine, all of Palestine, by means of holy war, martyrdom and education.</p>
<p>The PA rejected other curricula prepared by Ber Zeit University, a Palestinian academic facility located near Ramallah, which emphasized reconciliation and peace.</p>
<p>On March 1, 2000, Shimon Peres, then the Israel Minister of Regional Development, addressed the international colloquium of the Jewish media, where Peres lavished praise on the new Palestinian school curriculum for peace.</p>
<p>When I asked Peres to comment on the fact that the Palestinian school curriculum for peace that he referred to had been vetoed by the Palestinian Authority, Peres simply answered “I know,” but encouraged me to go directly to the Palestinian Authority Minister of Education to get the new school books, since they would be issued in a few months&#8217; time, and that is exactly what I did.</p>
<p>On August 1, 2000, on the day that the new PA school books were issued. I traveled to Ramallah and met with the Palestinian Minster of Education, Dr. Nayim Abu Humus, who authorized our agency to buy all the new PA school books.</p>
<p>Dr. Abu Hummus asked that we give publicity to the new school books, which we readily agreed to do. Returning to Jerusalem, giving a cursory review of the school books, our Arabic language journalist colleagues noted that the new PA school books were problematic.</p>
<p>I brought a set of the books to Dr. Shlomo Ben Ami, then the Israel Minister of Foreign Affairs and showed him the books, where he could see that the new maps produced by the nascent Palestinian Authority deleted Israel so that every PA school child was taught that only Palestine existed between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.</p>
<p>In those textbooks, there were lessons where Palestinian children learned about the armed struggle to liberate all of Palestine. Palestinian children learned about Zionism as a war crime, and specific lessons instructed Palestinian children to revere those who murdered Jews.</p>
<p>Ben Ami looked at the new PA school books as if I had brought him the Manhattan telephone book for his perusal.</p>
<p>As I left the minister&#8217;s his office, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Pope&#8217;s “ambassador to the Holy Land,” called my cell phone with a request: Could I bring the PA school books to him immediately. &#8211; &#8220;the Pope wants to see them.&#8221; The honorary chairman of the ADL in Israel, the late Jack Padwa, had informed the Archbishop that our agency had purchased these books.</p>
<p>Together with Padwa, I traveled to the Archbishop&#8217;s office on the Mount of Olives and delivered the books to the Archbishop &#8211; the set that the Israel Minister of Foreign Affairs did not want to look at.</p>
<p>The Vatican&#8217;s ambassador assured us that the Pope would commission the first translation of the new Palestinian Schoolbooks, which he did.</p>
<p>Archbishop Sambi brought the books with him to Rome, and initiated a study of the PA textbooks, which the Vatican determined to be anti-semitic and pro-war in nature.</p>
<p>One month later, at the recommendation of the Pope and with the encouragement of Archbishop Sambi, the Italian government announced that it would pull its money out of the Palestinian Ministry of Education&#8217;s PA text book project.</p>
<p>Here are some pearls of wisdom that Palestinian children learned from the new PA school books of the Palestinian Authority, which were introduced between 2000 and 2006, and which have been used ever since:</p>
<p>1. Israel does not appear on any maps of the world in the new PA textbooks, while maps of Israel replace the name &#8220;Israel&#8221; with &#8220;Palestine&#8221; in all of the new Palestinian Authority school books.</p>
<p>2. The new Palestinian School Books &#8220;annex&#8221; sites in Israel to Palestine.</p>
<p>For example: &#8220;Haifa is a Palestinian seaport,&#8221; (p. 7) (Lughatuna al-Jamila [Our Beautiful Language], Vol. 2, 5th grade textbook, p. 86).</p>
<p>And: &#8220;Galilee, Nazareth and Beit She&#8217;an are regions in Palestine,&#8221; (p. 7) (Al-Iqtisad al-Manzili [Home Economy], 10th grade textbook, pp. 36-37).</p>
<p>3. The new Palestinian school books mention Israel only as an enemy, in reference to &#8220;occupation of lands&#8221; in 1948 and 1967:</p>
<p>&#8220;There is no doubt that the Israeli occupation has a negative impact on [Palestinian] agriculture and its export,&#8221; (p. (Lughatuna al-Jamila [Our Beautiful Language], Vol. 1, 10th grade textbook, p. 102).</p>
<p>4. The new Palestinian school books present Zionism only as an enemy movement:</p>
<p>&#8220;The Palestinian people are under an oppressive siege, limiting their movement and way of life,&#8221; (p. 9) (Al-Tarbiyah al-Islamiyyah [Islamic Education], Vol. 1, 5th grade textbook, p. 49).</p>
<p>Accusation against settlements [from 1948!] of damaging water sources &#8220;the influence of settlement on sources of water in Palestine,&#8221; (p. 9) (Ulum al-Sihha wal-B&#8217;ia [Health and Environmental Sciences], 10th grade textbook, p. 122).</p>
<p>&#8220;The Palestinian family has problems&#8230;stemming from the occupation&#8230;it loses father, mother or son to death or imprisonment&#8230;endures the difficulties of life&#8230;,&#8221; (p. 11) (Al-Tarbiyah al-Wataniyya [National Education], 5th grade textbook, p. 23).</p>
<p>5. The new Palestinian School Books make the false claim that an &#8220;extremist Zionist&#8221; set fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969, (p. 12) (Tarikh al&#8217;Alam al-Hadith wal-Mu&#8217;asir [History of the new Modern World], 10th grade textbook, p. 106) when it was really a mentally unstable fundamentalist Christian Australian.</p>
<p>6. The new Palestinian School books teach that the only ancient inhabitants of Israel were Arabs, ignoring any ancient Jewish presence:</p>
<p>&#8220;Concentrated&#8230;in the land of Al-Sham [Greater Syria]&#8230;was the culture of the Canaanite and Aramaic peoples who migrated there from the Arab peninsula,&#8221; (p.14-15) (Tarikh al-Hadarat al-Qadima [History of Ancient Civilizations], 5th grade textbook, Foreword).</p>
<p>7. The new Palestinian school books teach that Palestinians must use war and violence &#8211; especially martyrdom &#8211; to accomplish their goals:</p>
<p>The heroic mother, &#8220;who incessantly presents one sacrifice [fida'] after another.&#8221; (Lughatuna al-Jamila [Our Beautiful Language], Vol 2, 5th grade textbook, p. 31).</p>
<p>The warrior goes to war faced with one of the good options: victory or martyrdom in battle for the sake of Allah. (Ibid. Vol. 1, 5th grade textbook, p. 70).</p>
<p>&#8220;Allah gave the people of this land (Al-Sham and Palestine) an important task: they must stand on the forefront of the Muslim campaign against their enemies, and only if they fulfill their duty to their religion, nation, and land will they be rewarded as stated in the scriptures.&#8221; (Al-Tarbiya al-Islamiyyah [Islamic Education], Vol 2, 10th grade textbook, p. 50).</p>
<p>8. The new Palestinian school books feature children with names such as Jihad (holy war) and Nidal (struggle). (p.22) (Tarikh al-Hadarat al-Qadima [History of Ancient Civilizations], 5th grade textbook, p.6).</p>
<p>9. The new Palestinian school books stress the importance of &#8220;return&#8221; of refugees to all of Palestine &#8211; by violence: &#8220;The wrong must be made right by returning them to their homes: we returned to the homeland after a long absence.&#8221; (Lughatuna al-Jamila [Our Beautiful Language], Vol 2, 5th grade textbook, p. 43). &#8220;Returning to the homes, the plains and the mountains, under the banners of glory, jihad [holy war] and struggle&#8221; (Lughatuna al-Jamila [Our Beautiful Language], Vol 1, 5th grade textbook, p.88).</p>
<p>Since Shimon Peres, now the President of Israel, constantly attests to the moderate  and peaceful intentions of Machmud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, our agency has been submitting a request to Peres for a response to Abbas’s new educational system for the last six years. We have spoken to all of Peres’s spokespeople and to Peres’s advisers. Yet the response from Peres’s office is consistent refusal to respond.</p>
<p>At the press conference conducted on Monday, Israeli government education experts described Abbas’s school system as “war curriculum,” and  stressed that Abbas’s schools were inculcating Palestinian youth with the idea that Hitler is a role model for every Palestinian child to emulate.</p>
<p>Our agency asked the spokesman of Shimon Peres for comment. After all, Peres convened a special briefing for visiting US senators during the first weekend of 2014 to say that he had “full confidence” in Abbas as a peace partner .</p>
<p>The response from the office of the President of Israel: No comment.</p>
<p>However, the government of Israel finally heeded the initial warnings of the Vatican that the new Palestinian Authority school books are war-like in nature.</p>
<p>Archbishop Sambi, who died in July, 2011, while he was the Papal Nuncio in Washington, DC, would have been proud. In my last conversation with Archbishop Sambi, shortly before his death, he asked if the Israeli government would ever make an official comment on the Palestinian school curricula. Now they have.</p>
<p>It took 13 years for the Israeli government to denounce the official curriculum of the Palestinian Authority, but now the Jewish state has done so, on the record.</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 Terror Education: Funded by U.S. Taxpayers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dbedein/palestinian-terror-education-funded-by-u-s-taxpayers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinian-terror-education-funded-by-u-s-taxpayers</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Jan 2014 05:04:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[camp]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Textbooks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214652</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Time for Americans to demand a stop to aid sent to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Hamas_Children_1594729i.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214655" alt="Hamas_Children_1594729i" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Hamas_Children_1594729i.jpg" width="279" height="211" /></a>UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, shapes the mindset of a new generation of Palestinian youth, educating 492,000 students in 699 schools.</p>
<p>The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 3.1 of the Convention, requires that &#8220;in all actions concerning children&#8230; the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.&#8221;</p>
<p>Article 6 requires UN agencies to recognize &#8220;that every child has the inherent right to life,&#8221; and, further, that UN agencies &#8220;shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.&#8221;</p>
<p>Article 29 requires that such education be directed to the &#8220;preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of the sexes, and friendship among all peoples&#8230;.&#8221;</p>
<p>In direct contradiction to the mandate of UN education, UNRWA uses new school books from the Palestinian Authority, which violate sacred UN principles of peace.</p>
<p>A depicted in the film &#8220;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iURo_lsdXvA">Camp Jihad</a>,&#8221; produced by the Center for Near East Policy Research this past summer, UNRWA instructors openly incorporate virulent anti-Semitic teachings into the classroom, demonizing Jews as part of their UNRWA summer camp program, telling child campers that Jews are nothing but &#8220;wolves&#8221; who chased their grandparents from their homes.</p>
<p>UNRWA educational facilities are sites of indoctrination, exploiting the malleability of children&#8217;s minds to breed hostility toward Israel and the West and to encourage violent homicide-suicide attacks, effectively grooming pupils for recruitment by terrorist groups like Hamas, which controls the teacher&#8217;s union in Gaza.</p>
<p>Where is the accountability? With Islamic states that remain at war with Israel?</p>
<p>The United States, the largest donor nation to UNRWA, contributed more than $275 million to the agency in 2013 alone, while the rest of the donors are spread among 38 democratic nations. The US continues unbridled funding of UNRWA, which results in the<br />
use of US taxpayer dollars for teaching Palestinian children to revere suicide-homicide bombings. Letters to US AID to condition funds to UNRWA on the cessation of such indoctrination have gone unanswered.</p>
<p>At the same time, UNRWA openly hires teachers with ties to designated terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, ignoring US law that forbids aid to agencies hat hire terrorists. While UNRWA has agreements with Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon for the verification of criminal records by potential agency employees, no such agreement exists between UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority, where 19 UNRWA camps function under Palestinian jurisdiction.</p>
<p>Terror education abounds in the UNRWA schools. A fifth grade textbook taught in UNRWA schools known as Our Beautiful Language reads, &#8220;We shall return to the homes, to the valleys, to the mountains/Under the flag of glory, Jihad and struggle/With blood, sacrifice [fida’], fraternity and loyalty/We shall return.&#8221;</p>
<p>Another PA school book goes even further: &#8220;O brother, the oppressors have exceeded all bounds and Jihad and sacrifice [fida’] are imperative&#8230;.&#8221;</p>
<p>A ninth-grade PA textbook indoctrinates students into martyrdom. In an exercise where students are asked to connect two sentence, a correct answer links the phrase &#8220;Morning of glory and red redemption, nourished by the blood of Martyrs&#8221; with the concept of &#8220;hope for the liberation of Palestine.&#8221;</p>
<p>When UNRWA promotes such sentiments, UNRWA schools violate children&#8217;s basic right to protection from harmful influence. The question remains: Will US citizens file complaints against UNRWA with Congress and with the courts, or will US citizens let this kind of US-funded education for terror continue unabated?</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>A Mandela Moment in Jerusalem</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/a-mandela-moment-in-jerusalem/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-mandela-moment-in-jerusalem</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Dec 2013 05:05:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[conflict]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Mandela]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oslo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[How the Palestinians dealt with the Mandela Institute's message of peace. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/jerusalem.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212943" alt="jerusalem" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/jerusalem.jpg" width="330" height="247" /></a>The death of Nelson Mandela at 95 provided pundits of the world with the opportunity to ponder the legacy of the South African leader of the campaign against Apartheid.</p>
<p>Very few people on earth earn their legacy in their lifetime.</p>
<p>It would seem that almost as soon as Nelson Mandela emerged from prison and was catapulted into a post Apartheid South African presidency, there were those who adapted Mandela&#8217;s gospel of peace and reconciliation to resolve other wars in the world.</p>
<p>And so it was in Jerusalem.</p>
<p>In 1994, in the early stages of the Middle East Oslo negotiation process, optimism and wishful thinking dominated the Jerusalem landscape.</p>
<p>Delegations descended on a land torn with war, wanting to hear messages of peace.</p>
<p>The newly formed Mandela Institute, named for the legacy of Nelson Mandela, was one one of those delegations that held a press conference across from my office at the Beit Agron Press Center in Jerusalem.</p>
<p>These former anti-apartheid activists had arrived on a mission: to teach both sides of the Middle East conflict how to live and respect the other in a time of peace.</p>
<p>That was their message in South Africa, where they repeated their theme in Jerusalem, quoting Abe Lincoln in the last days of the American Civil War: “<em>With malice toward none, with charity for all.”</em></p>
<p>The Mandela Institute Jerusalem press conference was packed.</p>
<p>Civil liberties groups mixed with religious and non-religious Jews who came there to hear and cheer the upbeat message of the Mandela Institute. The Black and White spokespeople appealed to receptive ears of the Israeli audience to “see the humanity in the Arab who was your enemy” ever so recently.</p>
<p>The Mandela people made it clear that this was the process that they were going through in South Africa, to break down walls between Blacks and Whites, after Apartheid.</p>
<p>I am only sorry that I do not find my notes from almost 20 years ago, so I cannot recite the names of the articulate spokespeople who expressed themselves so eloquently.</p>
<p>In the final moment of the Jerusalem press conference, the Mandela convener announced that they were taking a bus to Ramallah, to deliver the same message of peace, reconciliation, and understanding to the other side.</p>
<p>The Mandela Institute delegation announced they would hold a follow up press conference, two days hence, when they would return from Ramallah.</p>
<p>However, the follow up press conference never happened.</p>
<p>The Mandela people did return to Jerusalem, however, but they were not too interested in talking to the press about what happened.</p>
<p>Later at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, they did not hesitate to say what had happened. PLO chieftain Yasser Arafat had made the arrangement for a modest town meeting for the Mandela Institute. But when the Mandela devotees made their appeal for peace, recognition and understanding of Israelis, they were booed and jeered, and when they tried to deliver that message in an Arab school, the students chanted in unison that “the war is not over: we want the right of return!!”</p>
<p>The Mandela Institute had hit a raw nerve. And, as one delegation member described the scene, the Arabs pushed them back on the bus, yelling at them never to come back.</p>
<p>Twenty years have passed. The tenacity of the Arabs who run the Palestinian Authority under the premise and promise of the right of return, convey their daily message that the war against Israel is not over…while the vast majority of Israelis still ascribe to some hope of  peace in the future, however unrealistic it is.</p>
<p>The sequel to the story is that the Mandela Institute reconstituted itself as a permanent fixture in Ramallah, as an agency concerned for Arab convicts who sit in Israeli jails. The Mandela Institute no longer preaches respect and reconciliation of the other.</p>
<p>So much for a fleeting Mandela moment in Jerusalem.</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>Israel&#8217;s Secret Retreat Map</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/israels-secret-retreat-map/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israels-secret-retreat-map</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/israels-secret-retreat-map/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Nov 2013 04:04:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[retreat map]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Explaining the code of silence about the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/map.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-209471 alignleft" alt="map" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/map-450x346.jpg" width="315" height="242" /></a><i></i></p>
<p><em><strong><a href="http://israelbehindthenews.com/library/pdfs/map.pdf">[Click here</a> to enlarge the map.]</strong></em></p>
<p>There is a code of silence about what is being discussed in current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. However, the results of those talks were reached almost nine years ago.</p>
<p>In March 2005, Yuli Edelstein, then a deputy government minister and now the speaker of the Knesset, appeared at the Alon Shvut community center in Gush Etzion in which he reported to a stunned audience that the February 20, 2005 retreat decision of the Israeli government did not only apply to Katif and to four small Jewish communities in Samaria.</p>
<p>Edelstein warned that the February 20, 2005 Israeli government decision was to redraw the areas of Jewish residency in almost all areas that Israel acquired in the 1967 war.</p>
<p>The new map approved by the Israeli government was immediately posted on the web site of the <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/">Washington Institute for Near East Policy</a>, and is posted there to this day for all American government officials to peruse.</p>
<p>That Israeli government-approved retreat map means that an additional 63 Jewish communities can be expelled and dismantled in their entirety by an Israeli government decision that has already been made. Without any further government decision, the Israeli government is authorized to order the IDF to implement the next stages of the February 20, 2005 Israel government retreat decision</p>
<p>Prominent members of that Israeli government included Benyamin Netanyahu, now the prime minister of Israel, Tzippi Livni, then and now the Justice Minister of Israel, and Shimon Peres, now the president of Israel.</p>
<p>Jewish communities slated for destruction under the 2005 Israeli government decision are spread throughout Samaria, Judea, Hebron and the entire Jordan Valley, demarcated on the National Geographic Atlas as parts of the “West Bank,” alluding to the west bank of the Jordan River.</p>
<p>This Israeli-government-approved retreat map remains unknown in Israel.</p>
<p>It has never been posted by the Israeli government nor has this retreat map ever been discussed in the Israeli public domain &#8212; not in the media, not in the Knesset and not in the current Israeli government.</p>
<p>That February 20th, 2005 retreat decision empowers the Israeli security establishment to implement surrender of almost all of Samaria, Judea, Hebron, and the entire Jordan Valley to an entity which remains in a state of war with the state of Israel.</p>
<p>In other words, the conclusion of current Israel Palestinian talks has already been reached.</p>
<p>The government of Israel should share the Israel-government-approved retreat map with the Israeli public, the Knesset, and the media.</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>Netanyahu Responds to Abbas’s Praise of Hitler&#8217;s Mufti</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/netanyahu-responds-to-abbass-glowing-praise-of-the-mufti/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=netanyahu-responds-to-abbass-glowing-praise-of-the-mufti</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Oct 2013 04:10:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[abbas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[final solution]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Mufti]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What does it mean when Israel's "peace partner" honors a collaborator in the Final Solution?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/mufti.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-206530" alt="mufti" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/mufti-450x336.jpg" width="315" height="235" /></a>On January 4, 2013, Mahmoud Abbas, spoke via video link on a wide screen to the masses in Gaza, who gathered to celebrate the founding of Fatah (Arabic word for &#8220;conquest&#8221;),  otherwise known as the Palestine Liberation Organization.</p>
<p>In his New Year’s speech, Abbas spoke glowingly of the legacy of the Godfather of the PLO, the Mufti of Jerusalem, <a href="http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3381" target="_blank">Hajj Muhammad Amin Al-Husseini</a>, who during the 1920&#8242;s and 1930’s instigated pogroms against the Jews of Palestine and who during his residence in Nazi Germany actively plotted a Final Solution to be carried out once his German allies would win the war.</p>
<p>Abbas praised the Mufti as a man whose ways should be emulated by all Palestinian Arabs.</p>
<p>&#8220;We must remember the pioneers, the Grand Mufti of Palestine, <a href="http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3381" target="_blank">Hajj Muhammad Amin Al-Husseini</a>, as well as Ahmad Al-Shukeiri, the founder of the PLO,&#8221; Abbas said, according to <a href="http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/3706.htm">a translation of the speech</a> made by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).</p>
<p>At the time, our agency asked Israeli President Shimon Peres and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu for comment on the Mufti’s praise of Hitler’s ally. Since the Israeli government is on record as defining Abbas as a partner for peace, one would have expected a response which expressed horror and revulsion.</p>
<p>Instead, there was silence from the highest officials of the Israeli government.</p>
<p>Peres’s office said that there would be no response. Netanyahu’s office said that there would be a response, in due time.</p>
<p>Nine months after the Abbas praise of the Mufti, on Oct. 6, 2013, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu chose the venue of a policy speech at Bar Ilan University to respond to the emulation lauded on the Mufti by Abbas and by the official curriculum of the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>Israel’s Prime Minister quoted the protocols of the Hitler-Mufti pact, presented as evidence against the Mufti in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. The records of the meeting between Hitler and the Mufti explicitly state that Hitler would exterminate the Jews in Europe, while the Mufti would enlist Nazi aid to exterminate Jews in Palestine, so as to establish a “JudenRein” state of Palestine.</p>
<p>To that end, the Mufti ensconced himself in Hitler’s bunker, from where he recruited an Islamic unit of the Waffen SS, which actively engaged in the mass murder of Jews, while issuing Arabic language appeals on Nazi radio that incited Moslems to join the Nazi cause and to prepare for mass murder of Jews in Palestine.</p>
<p>The Protocols of the Nuremberg trials concerning the Mufti were published in a 1946 book, titled &#8220;Mufti of Jerusalem,&#8221; authored by journalist Maurice Pearlman, who was appointed in 1948 by Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, as the first director of the Israel Government Press Office.</p>
<p>Pearlman reported that the refusal of the British government to arrest the Mufti in Cairo caused the head of the Zionist revisionists in the United States at the time, Ben Zion Netanyahu, the late father of Israel&#8217;s current Prime Minister, to launch an unsuccessful campaign to push the US to demand the arrest of the Mufti in Cairo.</p>
<p>In his Bar Ilan speech, Netanyahu cited affidavits of senior SS prosecution witnesses who testified that the Mufti, working directly under Eichmann and Himmler, identified the Mufti&#8217;s instrumental role in making sure that millions of Jews were murdered, and not ransomed.</p>
<p>Netanyahu referred to the affidavit of one of Eichmann’s subordinates, SS Hampsturmfuerer Dieter Wisliceny, who appeared as a witness for the Nuremberg prosecution, where the Nazi officer testified that,</p>
<blockquote><p>The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry for the Germans and had been the permanent collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of the plan&#8230;According to my opinion, the Grand Mufti, who had been in Berlin since 1941, played a role in the decision of the German government to exterminate the European Jews, the importance of which must not be disregarded, He had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with who had been in contact, above all before Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry. He considered this as a comfortable solution of the Palestinian problem. In his messages broadcast from Berlin, he surpassed us in anti-Jewish attacks. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures&#8230;</p></blockquote>
<p>Discussion of the Mufti’s role in the extermination of the Jews has been downplayed for years by Israeli officials, who were hesitant to attack the George Washington of the PLO. Perhaps that would spoil the moderate image of the PLO as a peace partner.</p>
<p>Now Israel’s Prime Minister has placed the Mufti’s legacy on the agenda.</p>
<p>A little known fact concerns the Mufti’s special relationship with a young relative in Cairo, to whom the Mufti would affectionately give the name “Yassir Arafat.” In December 1996, Haaretz interviewed Yassir Arafat&#8217;s younger brother and sister, who said that the Mufti performed the role of a surrogate father figure and mentor to the young Arafat.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Netanyahu’s erudite reference to the Mufti&#8217;s role in the mass murder of Jews in World War II was not lost on pundits who followed every word of his speech. After all, that mass murder of Jews is currently taught in Palestinian Authority schools in accordance with Abbas’s 1983 doctoral thesis at the University of Moscow, which concludes that the World Zionist Organization, not the Nazi party, was responsible for the destruction of European Jewry.</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>Fourteen Questions For Shimon Peres</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/fourteen-questions-for-shimon-peres/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=fourteen-questions-for-shimon-peres</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:05:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace Process]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[president]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shimon peres]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yasser Arafat]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[How would the president of Israel explain his failed legacy? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Shimon_Peres_at_2009_WEF.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-193905 alignleft" alt="'Gaza: The Case for Middle East Peace': Shimon Peres" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Shimon_Peres_at_2009_WEF-450x346.jpg" width="270" height="208" /></a></p>
<p><em>The big &#8220;event&#8221; this week In Israel is the &#8220;celebration&#8221; of the 90th birthday of Shimon Peres and the conference that was organized in connection with this.  That is the same conference Stephen Hawking decided to boycott, joining the BDS terrorists.</em></p>
<p><em>Bill Clinton pulled up his britches to attend and lots of Hollywood stars are attending, perhaps the one getting the most press being Barbara Streisand.  The funniest story about the &#8220;stars&#8221; I think is <a href="http://www.israellycool.com/2013/06/18/photo-of-the-day-109/">this one</a> about Sharon Stone. Robert De Niro is also in Israel, although in the past he made disgusting anti-Israel statements.</em></p>
<p><em>The best commentary on the festivities in Israel is the “Fourteen Questions for Shimon Peres&#8221; piece below by David Bedein.</em></p>
<p><em>I myself still think that the two most amazing facts about Shimon Peres are these:</em></p>
<p><em>1.  That he managed to spend so many years over the past decades in Israeli political life while at the same time pursuing his acting career and playing the Montgomery Burns character on &#8220;The Simpsons&#8221; TV show;  and</em></p>
<p><em>2.  The fact that Peres did not spend the past two decades in prison.  His Oslo &#8220;peace process&#8221; has directly produced close to 2000 murdered Israelis, and I think that in any normal country he would have been charged with hundreds of counts of depraved indifference second degree murder.</em></p>
<p><em>&#8211; Dr. Steven Plaut, pundit and professor of Business Administration at the University of Haifa, Israel.</em></p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The President of Israel, Shimon Peres, pushing 90, celebrates his longevity with a birthday bash this week that includes thousands of invited guests and hundreds of reporters.</p>
<p>It behooves the journalists who cover the Peres birthday event to hold Peres accountable for policies that Peres stands for. In the media, longevity allows for long memories.</p>
<p>1. In 1981, Peres opposed and tried to interfere with Menachem Begin’s 1981 decision to bomb Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi nuclear reactor. Does Peres have any regrets for his opposition to the destruction of that nuclear reactor?</p>
<p>2. Peres is proud of the Oslo peace accord which he helped facilitate between Israel and the PLO on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993. However, on October 7, 1993, the left-wing newspaper Al HaMishmar revealed that the PLO would not ratify that accord, and, indeed, the PLO has never ratified that accord. Instead of heeding the Al HaMishmar report, Peres, then Israel’s foreign minister, dispatched his Deputy Minister, Yossi Beilin, to fly to Tunis to thank Arafat for ratifying the Oslo accord, which Arafat and the PLO never did. Why does Peres promote an unratified accord?</p>
<p>3. In 1994, Rabin, Peres, and Arafat made an agreement that Arafat’s armed forces would comprise no more than 9,000 inductees, and that any Palestinian under arms would first have to be vetted by Israeli intelligence to ensure that he did not have a background in terrorist activity. Yet as early as December 1993, it was discovered that the PA had drafted two Arab residents from the Arab village of Tequa who had murdered the curator of the Herodian, David Rosenfeld, in 1982. In December 1995, Arafat announced that his commanders for Ramallah and Nablus were men who planted bombs in Jerusalem’s Zion Square on July 5, 1975, killing thirteen people. As of 1995, the PA armed forces counted as many as 19,000 people under arms by 1995 and now at least 30,000. Since 1995, the IDF acknowledges that it no longer knows who has been recruited into the PA security force. Can Peres answer the question as to whether the PA armed forces now includes volatile terrorists within its ranks?</p>
<p>4. Throughout 1994 and 1995, when private agencies produced videos of Arafat’s speeches where Arafat expressed support for Jihad to liberate Palestine, Peres implored Israel TV not to air Arafat’s speeches in the Arabic language. Peres also asked the US Congress not to view the videos of what Arafat was saying in Arabic. Does Peres express regret for trying to obfuscate Arafat’s message in the Arabic language?</p>
<p>5. In December 1994, when Peres and Rabin conducted a briefing for the media in Oslo before they both received the Nobel Peace Prize together with Arafat, I asked them if Arafat had fulfilled his commitment to crush the Hamas. Both Rabin and Peres indicated that he would do so. A few hours later, when I asked Arafat the same question as to whether the PLO leader would crush the Hamas, Arafat’s response was clear: “Hamas are my brothers. I will handle them in my way.” And Arafat did handle the Hamas – by bringing them into his new regime, as full coalition partners. In May 1995, Arafat’s security forces announced that they would provide Hamas with arms. In December 1995, Arafat invited the Hamas to join his provisional regime. In 1996, Arafat appointed Hamas officials to run the religious departments and schools under his authority. By fall 2001, the IDF confirmed that Islamic terror groups train and operate in the full view of the Palestinian Authority security services, and that the Islamic terrorists get a clear message that their activity operates with the full blessing of Arafat’s regime. The promise of the Oslo process was that Arafat would crush the Hamas, not co-opt the Hamas. Does Peres feel today that Arafat betrayed him?</p>
<p>6. Norwegian statesmen Kare Kristiansen resigned from the Nobel Prize committee because of the Nobel Prize bestowed upon Arafat. The same Kare Kristiansen told the Norwegian media that Peres had promised financial remuneration to fellow Nobel Prize Committee member Terje Larsen in order to ensure that he would share the Nobel Peace Prize with the late Prime Minister Rabin. In 2002, I interviewed Mr. Kristiansen and he explicitly affirmed that he had witnessed the deal made between Peres and Larsen which assured Larsen that he would be “well rewarded for his efforts.” How does Peres respond to the allegation that he paid good money for the Nobel Peace Prize?</p>
<p>7. The Palestine National Council meeting in April 1996 did not vote to nullify the PLO charter to destroy Israel. However, Peres proclaimed that Arafat did fulfill his promise to amend the PLO charter. It turned out that the resolution that Arafat had told Peres that they would pass was not even brought up for a vote. What is Peres’s current perspective of the PLO charter, which was never changed?</p>
<p>8. In March 2007, when a new “Palestinian unity government” was formed to include Hamas and the Fatah in a coalition government, Peres declared that “only with economics can we make peace.” Peres went on to say that if members of terrorist groups perceive economic incentives, they will cease to be terrorists. Does Peres truly believe that a terrorist organization, which acts upon a deep-rooted ideology, can be enticed by a good business opportunity to abandon the path of terror?</p>
<p>9. Peres repeats over and over that the “gap between Israel and the PA is very small,” while consistently describing Abbas as “Israel’s hope for peace.” However, Peres refuses to comment on the war curriculum that Abbas and the PA ministry of education have introduced in the PA. Peres consistently refuses to say if he has even reviewed the new PA school books, which have introduced a curriculum of war for the next generation of Palestinian Arab school children. On March 1, 2000, Peres addressed an international colloquium for the Jewish media, where Peres announced that the PA had adopted a PA school curriculum for peace. When I pointed out to Peres that the curriculum that he had quoted from had been vetoed by the PA, Peres moved away from the microphone and said “I know.” Why will Peres not comment on the current PA curriculum of war?</p>
<p>10.     Before the Gaza retreat, Peres, then deputy Prime Minister, announced on July 7th, 2005 that the American government had allocated $2 billion to cover the costs of disengagement. That assurance was quoted by the mainstream Israeli media for months to come. However, on July 12th, 2005, the spokesman for the US treasury department told Israel’s leading business newspaper, GLOBES, that the US was not giving one penny for the Disengagement Policy. Where did Peres get the idea that the US would fund the Israel retreat from Gaza?</p>
<p>11.     Before Israel’s 2005 retreat from Gaza, Shimon Peres accused southern Israelis of “stoking hysteria” about the rockets and asked, “What’s the big deal?” while describing the Kassam missile as harmless. “Kassam Shmassam,” said Peres. Since then, the southern region of Israel has suffered 29,000 aerial attacks from Gaza and 49 people killed over the past ten years, what is Peres’s perspective on the assurances that he gave the people of southern Israel before Israel withdrew its civilians, soldiers, and bases from Gaza?</p>
<p>12.     In 2011, Shimon Peres dispatched a <a href="http://conference.jstreet.org/system/storage/166/17/f/206/president_shimon_peres_letter_of_support.pdf">letter </a>of praise to J Street, one day after J-Street called on the US to support the PLO resolution at the UN Security Council calling for the halt of settlement construction, including east Jerusalem, which the Obama administration vetoed after all other permanent members voted in favor. Does Peres have any second thoughts about sending such a letter of support to J Street?</p>
<p>13. On January 4, 2013, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, delivered a new year’s message in which he lauded Adolf Hitler’s Arab ally, Haj Amin Al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, as someone whose legacy should be &#8220;emulated” by the Palestinian people. Since Israel’s President Shimon Peres never stops in his adulations of Abbas, Peres was asked if he would condemn Abbas’s praise of the Mufti, yet Peres refused comment on Abbas’s praise of the Mufti. Why would Peres not condemn Abbas’s praise of the Mufti?</p>
<p>14. Peres continually endorses an independent Palestinian state under the leadership of Abbas, as a Palestinian state that would coexist as a peaceful neighbor with Israel. Yet UNRWA remains in tact, maintaining 5 million Arab refugees and their descendants in “temporary” refugee camps, under the premise and promise of the right of return to Arab villages that no longer exist within Israel. Why does Peres not support a change in the UNRWA mandate, which contradicts his vision of a “two state solution”?</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Demand the PLO Ratify the Oslo Accords</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/demand-the-plo-ratify-the-oslo-accords/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=demand-the-plo-ratify-the-oslo-accords</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 04:03:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oslo accords]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PLO]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=192526</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If Sec. Kerry wants to reignite the peace process, here is where he should start. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/LON009D_wa.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-192791" alt="LON009D_wa" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/LON009D_wa.jpg" width="288" height="191" /></a>Recently, US Secretary of State Kerry passionately called for the renewal of talks with the PLO. Former President Bill Clinton, who hosted the PLO-Israel ceremonies on the White House lawn twenty years ago, is en route to Jerusalem for high profile lectures where he will call also call for for renewal of negotiations. And Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, who served as Israel’s foreign minister at the outset of negotiations with the PLO two decades ago, is about to convene thousands of dignitaries at a conference at the President’s mansion that will call for jump starting negotiations with the PLO.</p>
<p>Veteran observers of Middle East politics may ask: what is there to negotiate about?</p>
<p>Indeed, there is an item on the table that is hardly a minor detail: The Palestinian Liberation Organization <em>did not ratify</em> the Oslo Accords after Arafat and Abbas signed the agreement on the White House lawn.</p>
<p>On September 13, 1993, at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Simon Peres signed the &#8220;Declaration of Principles&#8221; (the DOP) between Israel and the PLO together with Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas of the PLO. The agreement, which had been hammered out in Oslo, stipulated mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. It required the PLO to cease and desist from terrorism, and for the PLO to nullify its covenant, which calls for Israel&#8217;s destruction.</p>
<p>The Israeli Knesset ratified the accord by a vote of 61 to 50, with 9 abstentions, a week later. However, what received hardly any attention was the fact that on October 6, 1993, the PLO executive did not ratify the Oslo accord, for lack of a quorum.</p>
<p>Very few people know or remember that Pinchas Inbari, the only Israeli correspondent covering the PLO in Tunis at the time, writing for the Israeli left-wing Hebrew newspaper <em>Al HaMishmar</em>, broke the story that Arafat announced in Tunis that he could not get a quorum of the executive council of the PLO to ratify the Declaration of Principles of the Oslo Accords. <em>Al HaMishmar</em> then ran a headline on October 7, 1993 that reported that the PLO did not ratify the peace accord that Arafat and Abbas had signed together with Peres and Rabin only a few weeks before, with US and Russia as co-signers.</p>
<p>Carrying <em>Al HaMishmar</em> in my hand, I walked into the office of the Israel Government Press Office director at the time, Mr. Ori Dromi, and showed him the headline of PLO non-ratification of the Oslo Accords. Dromi, an appointee of Prime Minister Rabin, made it clear that from the point of view of the Israeli government, this meant that Arafat signed the accord on his own, without the sanction of the PLO.</p>
<p>The rest of the Israeli media, however, did not report that the PLO never ratified the accord, but the Israeli government acted as if the PLO had done so.</p>
<p>Inbari was scheduled to appear on the popular morning KOL YISRAEL radio show when he got back from Tunis.</p>
<p>However, the Prime Minister&#8217;s office asked Kol Yisrael to cancel that appearance.</p>
<p>Instead, the Israeli government dispatched then deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, Yossi Beilin, to fly to Tunis to thank Arafat for facilitating the ratification of the Oslo Accords, which the PLO never did.</p>
<p>Why is this important? According to the Israeli law, since the PLO did not ratify the Oslo Accords, which renounce terrorism, the PLO and Fatah were not stricken from Israeli law books as “a terrorist entity,” a status that the PLO received on March 1, 1980. And if you check the law books today, you will find that the PLO is still defined in Israeli law as a terror entity, because the PLO never ratified the Oslo Accords.</p>
<p>The same goes for American law. In March 2002, the US government designated the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah as a terror organization. That terror designation  was never  changed. Under US law, any government that aids and abets an organization defined as a terror organization will forfeit US foreign aid assistance. This should include the de facto Palestinian government, the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>The other concrete commitment made by the PLO on the White House lawn was that it would officially cancel the PLO Covenant, which calls for Israel&#8217;s destruction.</p>
<p>On two occasions, the Palestinian National Council gathered to discuss the PLO Covenant &#8211; on April 24, 1996 and on December 14, 1998. On neither occasion did the PNC cancel the PLO Covenant.</p>
<p>In other words, there is a real reason to renew negotiations with the PLO:</p>
<p>The first items on the agenda would be to ask that the PLO to finally ratify the Declaration of Principles of non-violence and mutual recognition, which constituted the essence of the Oslo Accords. The other request would be to cancel the PLO Covenant, which calls for Israel&#8217;s destruction.</p>
<p>Reasonable requests, no?</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Genesis of an Anti-Semitic State</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/genesis-of-an-anti-semitic-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=genesis-of-an-anti-semitic-state</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 27 May 2013 04:14:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abbas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinian authority]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=190887</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why won't Jewish groups publicly oppose the formation of a Judenrein Palestine? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/mahmoud.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-190931" alt="mahmoud" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/mahmoud.jpg" width="310" height="218" /></a>This week, a &#8220;Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism&#8221; will gather in Jerusalem.</p>
<p>The time has come for the Global Forum to consider the fact that a new anti-Semitic state is in formation.</p>
<p>Imagine, if you would, if any nascent nation-state anywhere in the world was in formation, and that it had taken on the following features:</p>
<p>* Selling land to a Jew would be defined as  a capital crime.</p>
<p>* Its new constitution would not allow for juridical status for Judaism and  Jews would not even be allowed to live in the country.</p>
<p>* The school system would inculcate children to make war on the Jews.</p>
<p>* Those who murder Jews would become the heroes of the new country.</p>
<p>* The designated head of state earned his Ph.D. on the basis of a published thesis arguing that the millions of Jews who were murdered during World War II were actually executed by the Zionists, who were allies of the Nazis.</p>
<p>The reaction to such a “state in formation” would be an outcry from all of the Jewish groups that monitor anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>Yet there has been no outcry from most Jewish groups in the case of the proposed Palestinian Arab state, based on the ideology of the Palestine Liberation Organization, even though the proposed state possesses these six characteristics, as described above.</p>
<p>However, there are some influential non-Jews who have expressed concern about the anti-Semitism of the nascent Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>A case in point: Ten years ago, our agency covered a briefing for a visiting United States congressional delegation provided by the former Vatican representative to Israel, Archbishop Pietro Sambi. The Papal  Nuncio warned US lawmakers that the new Palestinian Authority approved a draft state constitution, funded by USAID, which provided no juridical status for religions other than Islam in the new Palestinian Arab entity.</p>
<p>The Papal Nuncio also warned that the Palestinian Authority had adopted a Shariah law that was modeled on the Sharia law that rules in Saudi Arabia, which dictates absolute supremacy of Muslims, as matter of law.</p>
<p>Archbishop Sambi provided the text of that proposed PA constitution, with the hope that Jewish groups which would object to such a proposed Palestinian state constitution.</p>
<p>In addition, Archbishop Sambi initiated a Vatican study of the new PA textbooks, which the Vatican would determine to be anti-Semitic in nature.</p>
<p>As a result of the Vatican study of the PA textbooks, the Italian government withdrew its money from the Palestinian Ministry of Education textbook project.</p>
<p>An expert whose research is impeccable on this subject is journalist Dr. Arnon Groiss, who earned his Ph.D. in Islamic studies at Princeton, and who worked for ten years as a researcher for IMPACT.se, also known as the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, where Dr. Groiss became an expert on Arab school books.</p>
<p>Over the past year, Dr. Groiss made presentations for staffers and members of the US Congress and the Canadian Parliament, in which he showed how the new textbooks of the Palestinian Authority, instead of educating for peace with Israel, promote the “armed struggle” to liberate Palestine &#8212; all of Palestine.</p>
<p>From these textbooks, Groiss showed that the PA curriculum teaches the following fundamentals:</p>
<p>* Jews are foreigners and have no rights in Palestine.</p>
<p>* The Jews have a dubious, and even murderous, character.</p>
<p>* Israel is an illegitimate usurper that occupied Palestine in 1948 and 1967.</p>
<p>* Israel is the source of all kinds of evil done to the Palestinians.</p>
<p>* Peace with Israel based on reconciliation is not sought.</p>
<p>* Armed struggle for liberation is encouraged instead.</p>
<p>* The exact area to be liberated is never restricted to the areas taken by Israel in 1967.</p>
<p>* Jihad and martyrdom are explicitly encouraged.</p>
<p>The list of accusations against Israel appearing in the new Palestinian Authority schoolbooks includes more than 25 allegations, including:</p>
<p>* Israel contributes to Palestinian social ills and family violence.</p>
<p>* Israel causes the increase of drug abuse cases in Palestinian society.</p>
<p>* Israel pollutes the Palestinian environment.</p>
<p>* Israel usurps Muslim and Christian holy places.</p>
<p>* Israel strives to obliterate the Palestinian national identity and heritage.</p>
<p>Over the past two years, New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, a 34-year Republican veteran of Congress, announced that he would lead a campaign for the US to condition aid to UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority on the nullification of the anti-Semitic curriculum of the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>Rep. Smith’s initiative was reminiscent of Archbishop Sambi, who died two years ago while serving as the new Papal Nuncio in Washington.</p>
<p>Archbishop Sambi was never afraid to take a stand on the official anti-Semitism which he discerned in the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether mainstream Jewish groups will follow the lead of Rep. Smith and the late Archbishop Sambi to make such demands of the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>Sometimes it takes a courageous gentile to speak up, so that Jews will not hesitate to follow their example. Perhaps the Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism will toast the legacy and the message of Archbishop Pietro Sambi, whose warnings about the anti-Semitism of nascent Palestinian Arab entity should be heeded.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Former Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad: A Moderate?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/palestinian-prime-minister-fayad-was-hardly-a-moderate/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinian-prime-minister-fayad-was-hardly-a-moderate</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:15:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[refugees]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[resign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Salman Fayad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[state]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=186934</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Good riddance to another general in the war to wipe the Jewish State off the map.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/1572385327.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-187047" alt="1572385327" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/1572385327-450x309.jpg" width="270" height="185" /></a>Former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad, who recently resigned, is being eulogized as the last great hope of moderation for the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>The time has come to question such a characterization of Fayyad.</p>
<p>A case in point: In May 2009, our agency, the Center for Near East Policy Research, facilitated an informal briefing for staffers of the Middle East Subcommittee of the US Foreign Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives on the subject of the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA education. Journalist and scholar Dr. Arnon Groiss, who regularly translates new PA textbooks used in Palestinian Authority and UNRWA education, was featured at this briefing.</p>
<p>These translations can be easily perused on the net <a href="http://israelbehindthenews.com/library/pdfs/RightofReturninUNRWASchools.pdf">here</a> and <a href="http://israelbehindthenews.com/library/pdfs/PA-schoolbooks.pdf">here</a>.</p>
<p>Dr. Groiss updated Congress on the content of the new PA texts, which:</p>
<ul>
<li>Deny the historical and religious presence of Jews in Palestine;</li>
<li>Fail to recognize the State of Israel;</li>
<li>Demonize Jews and Israel;</li>
<li>Assign blame for the conflict exclusively on Israel, totally absolving Palestinians; and</li>
<li>Stress the idea of a violent struggle of liberation rather than a peaceful settlement.</li>
</ul>
<p>In August 2009, a delegation of fifty members from both sides of the aisle of the US House of Representatives met with Salam Fayyad when he was appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>Several members of Congress raised the issue of the Palestinian Authority schoolbooks with Fayyad, who assured the delegation that the school books would be changed for the new school year, which was just about to begin.</p>
<p>Hearing the report from the congressional delegation, our agency immediately dispatched a reporter to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority Education Minister Lamis Al Alami to ask her about the PA curriculum for the new semester.</p>
<p>We asked her about changes in the curriculum. Al Alami answered that she was under strict orders from Fayyad not to change anything in the curriculum.</p>
<p>Yet you would not be surprised by Fayyad&#8217;s real educational policy if you were to read Fayyad&#8217;s position paper for a future Palestinian state, available on the net <a href="http://www.geneva-accord.org/images/Offical%20Paper%20-%20Program%20of%20the%20Thirteenth%20Government,%20August%202009.pdf">here</a>.</p>
<p>In that position paper, Fayyad spelled out his platform, in clear terms and in English.</p>
<p>Every embassy, consulate, and news outlet in the Middle East received a copy of Fayyad&#8217;s platform, entitled “Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State: Program of the Thirteenth Government.”</p>
<p>In his platform, Fayyad asserted that “Jerusalem” will be the Palestinian capital of the Palestinian state – with no mention of “East Jerusalem.”</p>
<p>In case anyone was wondering if Fayyad had made a typographical error by not mentioning “east” Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, Fayyad repeated &#8212; ten times &#8212; that he meant Jerusalem &#8212;  all of Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Fayyad left nothing to the imagination, and wrote that the Palestinian state will “Protect Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Palestinian state,” because Fayyad asserted that:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Jerusalem is our people’s religious, cultural, economic and political center. It is the Flower of Cities and Capital of Capitals. It cannot be anything but the eternal capital of the future Palestinian state. Jerusalem.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Fayyad went on to claim that Jerusalem “is under threat” and that:</p>
<blockquote><p>“the occupying authority is implementing a systematic plan to alter the city’s landmarks and its geographical and demographic character in order to forcibly create facts on the ground, ultimately separating it from its Palestinian surroundings and eradicating its Arab Palestinian heritage.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Fayyad further claimed that:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Palestinian life in Jerusalem is under daily attack through systematic violations perpetrated by the occupation regime” and that “It is the right and the duty of all Palestinians to protect their land, reject the occupation and defy its measures,” adding that the Palestinian state “bears special responsibility for nurturing our people’s ability to persevere and protect their homeland.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Fayyad added that the Palestinian government will maintain its:</p>
<blockquote><p>“unreserved commitment to defending the Arab character and status of Jerusalem&#8230;. The Government will continue to do all that is possible to achieve this goal. The Government will work with all organizations to preserve the landmarks of Jerusalem and its Arab Palestinian heritage, develop the city, and secure its contiguity with its Palestinian surroundings.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Fayyad framed Jerusalem as an illegal settlement, postulating that:</p>
<blockquote><p>“the occupying authority is pursuing its intensive settlement policy in and around Jerusalem&#8230;The occupation regime has shut down our national institutions, neglected the development of Palestinian life, continued to demolish and evacuate Palestinian homes, and restricted access to sacred Christian and Islamic sites.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Fayyad went on to present a practical plan to Arabize Jerusalem, by “Maintaining Jerusalem as a top priority on the Government’s agenda&#8221; and highlighting “its predicament in the media.”</p>
<p>Fayyad reassured his readers that a future Palestinian state would not be satisfied with Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza as the national home for Palestinians, and says that the Palestinian government will continue to advocate for “Palestinian refugees in accordance with relevant international resolutions, and UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in particular,” which mandates that Palestinian refugees and their descendants have a right to return to the homes and villages that Palestinians left during the 1948 war and its aftermath.</p>
<p>Fayyad reminded Palestinians that:</p>
<blockquote><p>“the refugee issue will remain under the jurisdiction of the PLO, through its Department of Refugees’ Affairs&#8230;in a manner that does not exempt the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from its responsibilities.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In Fayyad&#8217;s view, UNRWA will therefore continue to confine Palestinian refugees and their descendants to the indignity of refugee camps, under the premise and promise of the “right of return.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Fayyad expressed full support for Palestinians who have been convicted of murder and attempted murder, saying that “the state also has an enduring obligation to care and provide for the martyrs, prisoners, orphans and all those harmed in the Palestinian struggle for independence.”</p>
<p>Fayyad expressed a point of view indicating he could not understand why Palestinians convicted of capital crimes should be jailed.</p>
<p>Fayyad proclaimed that “the continued detention of thousands of Palestinian detainees and prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention camps in violation of international law and basic human rights, is of great concern to all Palestinians” and declared that “Securing the freedom of all these heroic prisoners is an utmost Palestinian priority and it is a fundamental duty all Palestinians feel to honor their great sacrifices and end their suffering.”</p>
<p>Fayyad also asserted that the PLO has signed “all provisions of agreements &#8230; with Israel,” yet forgot to mention that the PLO never ratified the signed agreements with Israel. On October 6, 1993, the now defunct Mapam newspaper Al HaMishmar’s correspondent in Tunis revealed that the late PLO chairman Yasser Arafat could not get a quorum for the PLO executive to ratify the Oslo Accords that Arafat had signed with Rabin on the White House lawn.</p>
<p>Fayyad’s view of justice was clearly presented in his position paper when he stated that “All Palestinians are equal before the law.” Simply put, anyone who is not a Palestinian is therefore not equal.</p>
<p>Fayyad also proclaimed that a future Palestinian State will be an Islamic state and that it will:</p>
<blockquote><p>“promote awareness and understanding of the Islamic religion and culture and disseminate the concept of tolerance in the religion through developing and implementing programs of Shari’a education as derived from the science of the Holy Qur’an and Prophet’s heritage.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In sum, Fayyad concluded with a demand for a Palestinian state in the next two years, along the parameters that he has outlined, with an Palestinian state that will have all of Jerusalem as its capital, in an Islamic Sharia state that will campaign for all convicts to be freed and for all refugees to return to the homes and villages that they left in 1948.</p>
<p>Was Fayyad a voice of reform and moderation?</p>
<p>Think again.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>10 Steps to Assess Palestinian Readiness for Peace</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/10-steps-to-assess-palestinian-readiness-for-peace/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=10-steps-to-assess-palestinian-readiness-for-peace</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Apr 2013 04:41:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[abbas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace Process]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[refugees]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[right of return]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[If Secretary Kerry is serious about jump starting negotiations, here is his necessary starting point. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/10-steps-to-assess-palestinian-readiness-for-peace/palestinian-president-mahmoud-abbas-meets-with-us-secretary-of-state-john-kerry-on-april-7-in/" rel="attachment wp-att-184994"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-184994" title="palestinian-president-mahmoud-abbas-meets-with-us-secretary-of-state-john-kerry-on-april-7-in" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/palestinian-president-mahmoud-abbas-meets-with-us-secretary-of-state-john-kerry-on-april-7-in-450x342.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="205" /></a>This week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he will use his visit to the Middle East to implore the Palestinian Authority (PA) to return to peace talks with Israel.</p>
<p>Here is a suggested 10-step process for how the Hon. John Kerry could, indeed, conduct an inquiry about the readiness of the PA to assume a posture of peace.</p>
<p><strong>Step One:</strong></p>
<p>Enter a PA classroom. Examine the new PA curriculum, whose focus revolves around preparation of a new generation to conquer all of Palestine. Most recently, the Center for Near East Policy Research dispatched a TV crew to follow the classrooms of PA schools located in UNRWA facilities, and witnessed teachings that did not focus on peace or reconciliation. Translations of the new PA school books yielded the conclusion that they focused on a curriculum of “suspended war.”</p>
<p><strong>Step Two:</strong></p>
<p>Peruse the news output of the PBC (Palestine Broadcasting Corporation) on radio and TV. Follow the messages of jihad conveyed by the PBC to the Palestinian Arab people, the PBC adulation of Palestinians who commit suicide attacks, and PBC news clips which laud attacks on Beersheba, Sderot, Ashkelon and Ashdod. The PBC calls these cities “illegal Jewish settlements,” since they are situated on lands &#8220;taken&#8221; from the Arabs in 1948 – not 1967.</p>
<p><strong>Step Three:</strong></p>
<p>Spend time in an UNRWA facility, where thousands of descendants of Arab refugees languish under the premise and promise of the “Right of Return.”</p>
<p>While nearby PA urban areas flourish, note how the new Palestinian city, Rawabi, built near teeming UNRWA refugee facilities, will not allow UNRWA camp residents to live there. Meanwhile, in August 2012, Hamas terror groups won their fourth consecutive election to take charge of the UNRWA trade union and the UNRWA teachers’ union in Gaza. Ask for a report on UNRWA-Hamas cooperation.</p>
<p><strong>Step Four:</strong></p>
<p>Peruse  “right of return&#8221; (<a href="http://www.palestineremembered.com/">www.PalestineRemembered.com</a>) computer program that operates throughout the PA, which helps UNRWA residents locate the villages of their grandparents from 1948, even though these towns no longer exist, to prepare them to realize their right of return.</p>
<p><strong>Step Five:</strong></p>
<p>Visit PA-controlled mosques on Friday. Follow the incendiary messages conveyed by the mosques that function with PA funding and are under PA control.</p>
<p><strong>Step Six:</strong></p>
<p>Review the new official maps published by the PA, which show all of Palestine as the location of any future Palestinian state, where Palestine actually replaces Israel.</p>
<p><strong>Step Seven:</strong></p>
<p>Visit the PA security force. Following the expectation that the PA security force would be engaged to crush Hamas, review reports of Hamas-PA cooperation. While the PA security force has worked with Israel on matters of petty crime, the PA will not take on Hamas. Moreover, the PA has no laws against money laundering for terror groups – indeed, PA statutes do not define any group as a terrorist organization.</p>
<p>Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror (res.), former head of the IDF’s Research and Assessment Division and currently serving as national security adviser to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, observed that: “There is a huge difference in the Palestinian view between law enforcement, which is seen as legitimate, and anti-terrorism, which is not seen as legitimate.”</p>
<p><strong>Step Eight:</strong></p>
<p>Ask for an evaluation of the food distribution program in Gaza, which the Hamas regime in Gaza and UNRWA have been running. Funds are delivered in cash dollars at the Gaza crossing to UNRWA, once a month, to the tune of $13 million. How much of these funds are geared to the purchase of food? Does the Hamas regime siphon off some of the foreign aid cash for the purchase of munitions or for any other purpose? Why is there a demand for “cash delivery”? What follow-up reports have been submitted to US AID on funds delivered to the UNRWA food distribution program?</p>
<p><strong>Step Nine:</strong></p>
<p>Review the published political program of PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who has earned a reputation as a “moderate,” and note Fayyad’s endorsement of a Palestinian Jerusalem (no mention of east Jerusalem), the Palestinian “right of return” to villages from 1948 that no longer exist, and the demand to free all Palestinians in Israeli jails, ignoring the fact that this includes thousands of Palestinians who have been convicted of first-degree murder in a court of law. Fayyad’s paper titled “Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State: Program of the Thirteenth Government – August 2009” is available <a href="http://www.israelbehindthenews.com/bin/content.cgi?ID=3716&amp;q=1">online</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Step Ten:</strong></p>
<p>Review recent speeches of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, where Abbas himself conveys consistent praise for Palestinians who have murdered civilians. Review the telecast New Year’s speech in which Abbas concludes his litany of praise for killers with a salute to the legacy of Hitler’s ally, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Once Secretary Kerry takes these ten steps of inquiry, the US government can make a realistic assessment of the readiness of Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to engage in a Middle East Peace Process.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>How the U.S. Aids Hamas Through the Palestinian Authority</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/how-the-u-s-aids-hamas-through-the-palestinian-authority/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-the-u-s-aids-hamas-through-the-palestinian-authority</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Feb 2013 04:35:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fatah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=177722</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Your tax dollars at work. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/how-the-u-s-aids-hamas-through-the-palestinian-authority/118013615_363447b/" rel="attachment wp-att-177727"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-177727" title="118013615_363447b" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/118013615_363447b.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="186" /></a>On February 5, 2013, the reconstituted US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa held a subcommittee hearing on the subject of &#8220;Fatah-Hamas Reconciliation: Threatening Peace Prospects.”</p>
<p>Two senior expert witnesses from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy testified and expressed optimism that US trained Palestinian Security Forces, affiliated with the Fatah, will combat the Hamas terror group which competes for power in the nascent Palestinian Arab entity.</p>
<p>Yet the Fatah policy and attitude towards Hamas can be summarized in an exchange that I had with Fatah founder Yasser Arafat at a press conference in Oslo, on December 10, 1994, the night before Arafat became one of the recipeints of the Nobel Peace Prize.</p>
<p>My question/statement:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Mr. Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister of Foreign Affairs Peres said a few hours ago in answer to my question, that you deserve the peace prize because you have committed yourself to crushing the Hamas terror organization.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Arafat response: &#8220;I do not understand the question. Hamas are my brothers.&#8221;</p>
<p>When the Palestinian Authority was founded in 1994, President Yasser Arafat, by design, established a multiplicity of security forces with overlapping authority and in competition with one another.</p>
<p>The 17 diverse forces of the PA, which often constituted no more than private fiefdoms, were ineffective and corrupt. What mattered to Arafat was that no force was of sufficient size or competency to seize power.</p>
<p>In several instances while Arafat was in power, PA forces turned their weapons on Israel. In September 2000, Arafat recruited security forces to organize attacks on civilians and soldiers in the course of what was called the Second Intifada, or uprising.</p>
<p>The Israeli military decimated the PA security forces in 2002, with facilities demolished and weapons seized.</p>
<p>Serious involvement by the West began to revitalize the PSF, the Palestinian Security Forces, after Arafat’s death in November 2004.</p>
<p>Subsequent US support for the PA Security Forces was intended to be a step towards creation of that stable Palestinian Arab entity.</p>
<p>In 2005, the Office of the US Security Coordinator was established. The 16 US officers who work within that office are assigned to the State Department. The Coordinator reports directly to the Secretary of State.</p>
<p>Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s successor, reorganized the security services into six main forces, and instituted a policy of mandatory retirement at age 60. Efforts by the US to strengthen the PA forces were delayed, however, by the Hamas victory in the Palestinian Authority legislative election in 2006. Hamas held a majority of the seats in the legislature and was heavily represented in the government. In addition, it had created its own security forces, with generous funds from Iran and Syria.</p>
<p>In June 2007, Hamas fighters routed a US-equipped and US-trained PA force that was 10 times bigger and captured the Gaza Strip. The failure of the PA forces was plain to see, and the US was prepared to invest more vigorously in strengthening that force because Abbas then ostensibly separated a Fatah-controlled government from direct involvement with Hamas.</p>
<p>By 2008, the Office of the Security Coordinator, with a staff of 145, defined as a key goal of its efforts, the development of a PA security force with paramilitary capabilities that could protect Abbas’ regime from Hamas. The American investment in this venture encompassed major assistance in reforming the forces and rebuilding of infrastructure, providing of equipment and major involvement in training.</p>
<p>In 2011, the Security Office enlarged its focus to include the development of PA indigenous readiness, training, and logistics programs as well as the capability to maintain and sustain operational readiness and support infrastructure. By that year, U.S.-financed training programs had graduated 4,761 Palestinian cadets from the U.S.-supported Jordanian International Police Training Center in Amman. The Coordinator&#8217;s Office also conducted training in the West Bank attended by 3,500 security commanders and troops. Washington helped build joint operations centers for planning, command, and control, as well as the National Training Center in Jericho.</p>
<p>However, as we consider the situation now, in early 2013, we see that not only has that goal of providing PA Security Forces with the capacity to repel Hamas not been achieved; over the past year, the influence of Hamas within the PA security forces has grown significantly. This, in spite of all the funding, training, and weaponry that has been supplied.</p>
<p>All other factors aside, there is an underlying cause that is routinely overlooked: the nature of traditional Arab (which includes Palestinian Arab) culture. Whatever the PR promoting a Palestinian state would have us believe, the reality is that for many Palestinian Arabs, loyalty does not rest with some abstract notion of a state that must be defended. Primary, loyalty is to the extended family: the clan. Training does not significantly alter this perception.</p>
<p>The problem lies with the fact that within the same extended clan there may be those serving in the PA security forces and those who are members of Hamas. Security forces officers are loath to do battle with their brothers in Hamas. In a 2011 report done by the Center for Near East Policy Research on “The Dangers of US aid to PA security forces,” this issue was addressed. Dr. Mordecai Kedar, research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, said the troops can be loyal to the PA for the present:</p>
<blockquote><p>However, when (not if) there will be domestic problems in the PA/Palestinian State these people will be loyal primarily to their clan [Arabic: hamula] rather than to the state, since they will never shoot their brothers or cousins…</p></blockquote>
<p>A prominent Palestinian-Israeli journalist explained that the clan system is not as strong as it once was, however:</p>
<blockquote><p>This is Arab society. You can’t erase a centuries-old tradition—can’t tamper with culture. It will never work. You can’t impose a solution on anyone.</p></blockquote>
<p>Another cultural predisposition among the Palestinian Arabs has to do with combating terrorism. General Amidror, former head of the IDF&#8217;s Research and Assessment Division and currently serving as Security Advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu, observed that:</p>
<blockquote><p>There is a huge difference in the Palestinian view between law enforcement, which is seen as legitimate, and anti-terrorism, which is NOT seen as legitimate.</p>
<p>The US confuses the two.</p></blockquote>
<p>This assessment has never been properly assimilated by US authorities involved with the training program. The PA has no laws against money laundering for terror groups; PA statutes do not define any group as a terrorist organization. There has never been action against Hamas undertaken by PA security forces out of an anti-terrorist ideological conviction.</p>
<p>We might ask then, why American government and military officials have blithely ignored these realities, instead proceeding according to their own version of the situation: a version that is likely doomed to fail.</p>
<p>But even beyond these basic cultural facts lie other problems. There has been a decline of the PA security forces that has been accelerated by the fiscal crisis that began in the fall of 2012. With monthly salaries withheld or partially issued, many PA officers have stopped any semblance of work. With the consent of their commanders, the officers clock in and then go off to other jobs. This search for money has been exploited by Hamas, made rich by donors such as Iran and Qatar.</p>
<p>Numerous PA officers have been quietly working for Hamas, notably in its military wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades<strong>. </strong>Hamas penetration has been strong in several areas of the West Bank, particularly in the Hebron region, where senior PA intelligence officers are believed to be providing intelligence to Hamas.</p>
<p>Coupled with this is a new rapprochement in process between the PA and Hamas, with talk of a unity government.</p>
<p>Separation between the PA and Hamas following the Gaza coup was never as total as was popularly imagined. As early as 2008, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter charged that the PA was committed to transferring roughly 4 billion shekels each year to Hamas to help pay salaries of its workers and security officers. Abbas also arranged for the PA to pay for the electricity generated for the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>Now there is evidence of Fatah-Hamas coordination in parts of the West Bank. The PA has lifted the ban against Hamas rallies, and Hamas has gained control of many West Bank mosques. Israel&#8217;s intelligence community has determined that Hamas politburo Chief Khaled Masha&#8217;al has ordered the establishment of military cells to take over the West Bank.</p>
<p>What Israel now faces is a worst-case scenario: PA security forces have a history of turning on Israelis. With the increased cooperation between the PA and Hamas, the likelihood of this happening again grows more likely. Statements of late by PA officials suggest such cooperation. Former PA Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, for example, has called for unity with Hamas that would &#8220;win further victories for us.&#8221; With Hamas cooperation, he said the PA would escalate “the struggle against Israel” in 2013.</p>
<p>However, should there be a repeat of prior attacks by PA forces, bolstered by cooperation with Hamas, dealing with the situation will be far more difficult than it has been previously. Now those PA forces are far better equipped and trained, thanks to a US policy that may have been ill-advised from the outset.</p>
<p>The time has come for an evaluation of the impact of US aid to the PA Security Forces, however well intended.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Moral Imperative to Refuse an Immoral or Illegal Military Order in Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dbedein/the-moral-imperative-to-refuse-an-immoral-or-illegal-military-order-in-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-moral-imperative-to-refuse-an-immoral-or-illegal-military-order-in-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Dec 2012 04:09:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IDF]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[orders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[remove settlers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sharon]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What if 30,000 Israeli soldiers refused to follow orders during Sharon's expulsion and retreat process in Gaza in 2005?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dbedein/the-moral-imperative-to-refuse-an-immoral-or-illegal-military-order-in-israel/sold-3/" rel="attachment wp-att-170982"><img class=" wp-image-170982 alignleft" title="sold" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/sold-450x299.jpg" alt="" width="252" height="167" /></a>The statement of “Jewish home” political leader Naftali Bennet used about his refusal to carry out orders to demolish Jewish or Arab communities must be placed in proper perspective. Israel is one of the few nations which mandates that a soldier may refuse an order, if that soldier deems the directive from his commander to run against the moral grain of his conscience. Israel applies the letter and law of the moral code that emerged from the Nuremberg Trials, which established the principle that a soldier cannot say that “he was following orders,” if these orders are illegal or immoral.</p>
<p>Sharp precedents loom on the horizon in Israel where the Nuremberg principles were applied. There was the 1956 incident which occurred in the Israeli Arab village of Kfar Kassam, which happened while Israeli troops were engaged in full-scale combat with Egypt.  A curfew had been clamped on the village. A truckload of Kfar Kassam villagers violated the curfew, returning from work after dark. The IDF local commander gave an order to open fire on the curfew breakers. More than fifty villagers were shot to death by IDF troops.</p>
<p>The IDF conducted an investigation and determined that the IDF officer who had given this order had issued an illegal and immoral order.  Every IDF soldier involved in the operation, down to the lowest private, was indicted by the IDF court and convicted of carrying out an illegal and immoral order, in what came to be known as the Kfar Kassam massacre.</p>
<p>A second precedent can be ascribed to activism of the late Israeli writer, Amos Kennan. I interviewed Kennan when I was a student at the University of Wisconsin in 1970 and heard his account first hand &#8212; at a time when I was considering the status of draft resister to Vietnam. Kennan served as a reservist in an IDF unit, north of Jerusalem following the 1967 war.</p>
<p>A senior IDF officer gave Kennan an order to demolish Arab villages in the Latrun area where Kennan&#8217;s unit was based. Kennan refused the order. Facing possible court martial, Kennan went a step further, and galvanized support from all walks of Israeli life in opposition to this order, and the order was rescinded.</p>
<p>Writing in the Israeli newspaper Yediot and later in English in the October 1968 issue of Midstream Magazine, a publication of the World Zionist Organization, Kennan wrote a seminal piece titled “A Letter to all the Good People,” in which he related that:</p>
<blockquote><p>the action that I undertook was in flagrant violation of any military law. According to military regulations I should have been court-martialed. I have no idea what would have been the sentence of a Red Army soldier were he to violate national and military discipline in such a manner&#8230;</p></blockquote>
<p>After the village demolition orders were revoked by the IDF, Kennan added that he asked for and received permission from the IDF to visit every area that Israel acquired after the 1967 war, to make sure that no orders like that would ever be issued again.</p>
<p>In passionate support of Kennan’s assertion that Israel cannot demolish communities, Prof. Eliav Schochetman, Dean of the Shaari Mishpat Law College in Israel, testified in 2005 at Israel’s Knesset Parliament Law Committee that any decision of Israel to demolish Arab or Jewish communities would represent a clear “human rights infraction “ which violates Israel&#8217;s own &#8220;Basic Human Rights Law&#8221; which oversees Israeli democratic institutions in matters of human rights and civil liberties, in the same way that the US Bill of Rights ensures that the US government can never trample on the human rights and civil liberties of American citizens.</p>
<p>In his testimony, Schochetman noted that this Israeli government’s decision to demolish Jewish communities, because of its new map, represented a blatant violation of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which all democratic governments are adherents. Schochetmen added that Israel&#8217;s decision to expel entire communities also represented a violation of international human rights law.</p>
<p>Prof. Schochetman cited clause 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which mandates that it is illegal for sovereign governments to expel their own citizens and ethnic minorities from their homes, from their private properties or from their farms. Since the only group that Israel now slates for expulsion are Jews, it should be recalled that the government of Serbia was held liable for international prosecution at the International High Court of Justice in the Hague, under the charge of &#8220;ethnic cleansing,&#8221; after leaders of Serbia singled out one ethnic minority for expulsion, solely because of their religion.</p>
<p>Prof. Schochetman also recalled clauses in the San Remo Treaty that was ratified by the League of Nations in 1923 and ratified by the new United Nations in 1945 which provided international recognition of the right of Jews to purchase and dwell in the &#8220;Jewish Homeland,&#8221; defined by both international bodies as any land which lies anywhere east of the Jordan River.</p>
<p>After Schochetman&#8217;s testimony at the Knesset, the Knesset Law Committee could not find a single law professor in Israel who could or would contradict Schochetman&#8217;s assessment that the Israeli government&#8217;s intention to destroy and exile entire communities would indeed represent a massive human rights violation</p>
<p>In addition to the human rights travesty involved in an order to destroy Jewish communities, the handover of IDF army bases to an Arab entity in Gaza that was defined by the Israeli government as a hostile entity represented a clear illegal action.</p>
<p>Ariel Sharon&#8217;s government had added a specific clause to the final version of the disengagement plan, which was ratified by the Israeli government on June 6th, 2004, after the April 18th version had been rejected by the Likud referendum on May 2nd, 2004, which mandated that all properties from evacuated Israeli communities would be transferred to &#8220;a third, international party which will put them to use for the benefit of the Palestinian population that is not involved in terror.&#8221; Sharon and the IDF simply ignored the law.</p>
<p>That is why orders to expel Jewish communities and hand over their property to the enemy would present an immoral and illegal order that must be disobeyed.</p>
<p>During Sharon&#8217;s expulsion and retreat process, 6,000 Israeli soldiers asked to be excused from active service, while 60,000 IDF troops carried out orders. Had 30,000 Israeli soldiers refused to follow orders, there would have been no IDF retreat and no IDF expulsion and demolition of 21 thriving Jewish communities near Gaza and 4 communities in Northern Samaria.</p>
<p><em>David Bedein is the Director of the Israel Resource News Agency at the Center for Near East Policy Research.</em></p>
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		<title>The Mystery of the Missing Palestinian &#8216;Refugee&#8217; Monument</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dbedein/the-mystery-of-the-missing-palestinian-refugee-monument/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-mystery-of-the-missing-palestinian-refugee-monument</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Jul 2012 04:15:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=136569</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A PLO propaganda tour kicks off in Germany. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/090928-elmuti-aida.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-136583" title="090928-elmuti-aida" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/090928-elmuti-aida.gif" alt="" width="375" height="247" /></a>For the past four years, adjacent to the UNRWA headquarters, the Al Aida refugee facility in Bethlehem hosted a two-ton key rested on top of the entrance to Al Aida, which is shaped in the likeness of a mammoth <a href="http://a7.org/Resizer.ashx?source=albums&amp;image=28471&amp;a=450&amp;b=550">keyhole</a>.</p>
<p>That mammoth key and keyhole were erected at the entrance to the UNRWA Al Aida refugee facility during a celebration on May 15, 2008, to mark 60 years since the creation of Israel and the displacement of Arabs who consider themselves to be refugees entitled to the “right of return” to Arab villages which no longer exist inside Israel.</p>
<p>This week, however, when a news crew visited the Al Aida refugee facility in Bethlehem, the journalists discovered that the massive two-ton key was missing.</p>
<p>Rather than contact the UNRWA lost and found department, the reporters asked UNRWA residents about the whereabouts of the missing key. They had no idea.</p>
<p>The reporters asked UNRWA officials, who also said that they did not know.</p>
<p>Had there been sudden misgivings about the key to the right of return, the  subject that forms the basis of UNRWA education?</p>
<p>Hardly.</p>
<p>A google search on the Arab media led to the discovery of the key’s whereabouts: The Palestinian Authority is taking the key on a tour of&#8230;Germany</p>
<p><a href="http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/05/10/213226.html">Here</a> is the link to an Arab media report about the tour of the key in Germany.</p>
<p>This key has been taken on a PLO public relations campaign to promote German support for the right of descendants of Arab refugees to take back  531 Arab villages that they claim from 1948, which have been replaced by Israeli towns, collective farms and woodlands within Israel’s 1967 lines.</p>
<p>Germany’s role in any campaign to promote the “right of return” to homes from the 1940s may be considered to be unusual, since nine million Germans who were forced out of their homes after World War II have never demanded the “right of return” to places like East Prussia and the Sudetenland.</p>
<p>However, Germany  plays an important role in the promotion of the Arab “right of return” to Arab villages from the 1940s which no longer exist.</p>
<p>A case in point. A consistent aspect of cultural life in the UNRWA camps are  film screenings in the UNRWA youth clubs which motivate descendants of Arab refugees to long for the Palestinian &#8220;right to return&#8221; to villages that they left in 1948.</p>
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		<title>Why Publicize What Arabs Say in Arabic?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dbedein/why-publicize-what-arabs-say-in-arabic/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-publicize-what-arabs-say-in-arabic</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jul 2012 04:10:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arabic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arabs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Haaretz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[west bank]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=136183</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Israeli left-wing media's cluelessness in their own words. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Memri-ss.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-136229" title="Memri-ss" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Memri-ss.gif" alt="" width="375" height="279" /></a>At the annual American Jewish Press Association (AJPA) Conference, held recently in Philadelphia, a newsworthy session was held with Chemi Shalev, the newly appointed US correspondent for the English language edition of HaAretz.</p>
<p>Working with foreign journalists in Jerusalem for the past 25 years, the significance of HaAretz reaches beyond its scope as a daily newspaper in Israel.</p>
<p>The HaAretz English edition, sold in Israel together with the International Herald Tribune, is the paper of record for reporters who cover complexities of Middle East issues.</p>
<p>Therefore, the opportunity for AJPA to hear Shalev&#8217;s insights into Middle East reporting policies was significant.</p>
<p>After hearing Shalev&#8217;s insightful analysis of current Israeli politics and the current state of Israeli-Arab negotiations, our news agency posed a question to Shalev:</p>
<p><em>Why does HaAretz not report what the Palestinian Authority communicates to their people in their language, on the PBC TV, the PBC radio, Palestinian Authority newspapers and the Palestinian Authority schools?</em></p>
<p>After all, over the past few weeks, PBC TV has conducted daily features that promote the armed struggle to liberate all of Palestine, praise for those who martyr themselves while murdering Jews, transforming Israeli cities into Arab cities, and worse.</p>
<p>And then there are the new school books of the PA, which indoctrinate the next generation to liberate all of Palestine by the force of arms, while the theme of PA education remains the “right of return” to Arab villages from 1948 within the green line which no longer exist.</p>
<p>15 years ago, access to PBC TV and to PA school books was difficult.</p>
<p>Our agency would dispatch messengers to the heart of Ramallah or Gaza to buy DVDs of PBC telecasts or purchase new PA school books and then commission translations of both.</p>
<p>Today, all a journalist has to do to view PBC TV is to peruse the PMW or MEMRI web sites, or to do what our agency does: we paid a technician 125 shekels to adjust our TV to gain access to PBC TV.</p>
<p>Today, all a reporter has to do to see the new PA school books is to buy the PA school books which are sold on Salach A Din Street in Jerusalem. And the PA school books can now be seen online.</p>
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